Look out. It's only films to be buried with.
Hello, and welcome to films to be buried with. My name is Brett Goldstein. I'm a comedian, an actor, a writer, a director, an AX wielding maniac, and I love films. As George Elliott once said, what do we live for? If it's not to make life less difficult for each other? Why not show a loved one inside out and ask them who their bing bong was? Then hold them close? Yeah, okay, if they can remember. I think the point is that they can't remember. Anyway, It's a nice thought, George Elliott.
Well done.
Every week I'm by a special guest over. I tell them they've died. Then I get them to discuss their life through the films that meant the most of them. Previous guests include Barry Jenkins and The Ruffin, Mark Frost, Sharon Stone, and even Keed Blambles. But this week it is the amazing writer, producer, director and Actorhowit tell Edgie. For head over to the Patreon at patreon dot com forward slash Brett golds where you get extra fifteen to twenty minutes of chat with Chew Hotel. He tells me
a secret. We talk about the making of one of his best films. We talk beginnings and endings. You also get the whole episode, uncut, adfree, and there's a video. Check it out over at patreon dot com. Forward slash Brett Goldstein, so tewtel Edgifour is one of my favorite actors. You know him from a series of classic films. He's in some of the greatest films ever made. He has also just written and directed his second film, rob Piece, which is out very soon in cinemas and I highly
recommend you see it. We recorded this on Zoom last weekend and he was an absolute delight and I really think you're going to love this one.
So that is it for now.
I hope you're all well, and I very much hope you enjoy episode three hundred and ten of Films to be Buried With.
Hello, and welcome to Films to be Buried With.
It is I Brett Goldstein, and I am joined to day by an actor, a kinky bootster, a twelve years a slaver, a children of men, and a fellower, a salter. He's scar he's inside man. He's a writer, he's a director, he's a producer, he is one of the genuine finest actors that we have currently working on Planet Earth. He's made a new film, he's done all of it himself, he's carried everything, he's done it a lot. He's here, he's real. Can you believe it? Please want to do the show.
It's too teligible.
Thank you. Hello, I need to have that always. Hello and welcome to films to be buried with. What a treat, great pleasure. I'm such a fan of yours. Thank you, Thank you and me and you thank you for having me.
You're brilliant.
You are now I've got many things to ask you before we get into it, if I may. Firstly, should we talk about your new film? Yeah, great, it's this coming out. So you have written and directed and acted in a brilliant film called Rob Peace, which, thank you, is the second film you've made, written and directed.
Yeah, and it is another true story. Yeah.
And I'm curious as to what drew you to these projects that you were like, I want to direct this, I want to write this. And also, if I may, the kind of responsibility of the true and how you navigate that and if you've shown it to the family and things like that, if you wouldn't mind.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, I came across the book really about so it's these two adaptations, both The Boy and Hanness the Wind in my first film, and Rob Peace and adaptations of these two books, and with Rob Peace. You know, I came across it not long after it was written. It was actually written by Rob's roommates at Yale, and I thought it was just a brilliant book. I just
thought it was beautifully emotional. It touched on subjects that I had been thinking about but hadn't sort of seen as clear a light shed on them as Jeff hr
did in the book. I thought it was a really wonderful investigation of generation really, of a kind of all of these systems that worked in a way against Rob, and this intersection of all of these elements in his life as very brilliant young man from a very impoverished, difficult upbringing who became sort of obsessed really with trying to get his father out of prison, who had been
incarcerated for a double homicide in nineteen eighty seven. I mean, he was the crime was committed in nineteen eighty seven. He wasn't incarcerated all nineteen ninety but Rob spent a lot of his life trying to figure this out and trying to and it opened up all of these questions about the criminal justice system, about education, and then goes into sort of these questions about race and housing and
this all these intersections that Rob is facing. And I just thought it was an absolute brilliant analysis as well as this very emotional story of this young man as he sort of unravels under this.
This kind of pressure.
I'm always cue is when actors direct and are in it. How is it when you're in the scene, Because you're in it and you're brilliant in it, but you're also directing and are you running to the monitor out to take so are you're trusting someone?
How is it working?
It's a complicated process, I think, you know, I mean, I think you do have to rely on other people a little bit. And you know, I had a brilliant cinematographer because in your Soreda, and we would work together very closely just to make sure I was aware of just very clear about how everything was looking, so I could just run a few takes together that things could, you know, sort of flow. There's something very nice though, I think as an actor who doesn't. Necessarily, I'm very
comfortable in the space of an actor. So sometimes it's very helpful to be able to affect the tone of a scene by being in the scene, as opposed to having to explain what you are trying to get out of the scene. You're just sort of play it the way that and everybody's able to sort of inture you know what you're doing and where you want this thing to go and how you want to feel, and so I think that's very helpful.
I think that it's harder.
I think the hardest thing is to understand how to perform, you know, I think that's always quite complicated because you're not really bouncing your own performance of anybody else, which is I think is that is the complicated area. And also because you're directing, your pressure is in a slightly different direction. So you're you're feeling like ordinarily you would want to give the actor all the space in the world. You know, you find it, you know, let's go again, let's.
Do all of this. But when it's your take, you know, you feel like, I know, we've.
Got to be out of this location forty five minutes ago, I know, you know, So I'm going to get through this close up, so you know what I mean, that's what you feel. That's the sort of sense of pressure that you put yourself under, which isn't at all the space that you would ever imagine a director putting you under. So trying to find a way of kind of using you know, sort of just balancing both sides of your head I think, and allowing yourself the room to be an actor in that context is interesting.
God, that's tricky.
And also to have the do you have I assume you do because you've done it, but the you know, I talk to a lot of actors and so many of them like I can't watch myself.
I can't watch myself Like there is a reality.
You have to be objective about what you're doing as an actor as well on the day, not even later.
You have to go, yeah, that felt right, that's how do you? Was that new?
And you know, and later in the edit you've got to be completely ruthless about your own shortcomings.
There's no you know, there's.
No way to hide, you know, and if you have an editor who's also very honest with you, you know, and you're sitting there going, yeah, don't you think that this speech really is important in them.
I'm not worrying at this am I not worry? God?
And what about in terms of the real people, have you had any feedback from people from the story or any Yeah?
Yeah, no, yeah, yeah absolutely. Is that scary?
Well yeah, I mean initially it's you know, obviously there's people who were very affected by the story and very effective by what happened. And so Rob's mum, Jackie, you know, was one of the first people that I went to see, you know, to discuss the film and discuss my intentions for the film, and so I sat with her in her house, you know, the house that Rob grew up in, and we talked for a very long time on several occasions, and she was incredibly supportive of the whole process.
It was very difficult for her, but she was very supportive.
Of everything that we were doing, and we really talked her through all of the sort of stages of it, which went over a long period of time because we were initially going to shoot just before the pandemic and then everything got shut down and we came back two years later, so it was a long sort of period
of time of her being involved. I mean, you know, in the context of these conversations really and then she came to sun Dance, you know, to the premiere of the film with other family members, and she was right there and the audience was incredibly gracious with her as well and as the film and gave her a standing ovation, and so it was it was very emotional, but it
was wonderful. I was able to sit with her, you know, watching the film, so we were going to sit together, and which I was really glad of, you know, that I was able to be with her, and so yeah, all of those things, you know, I think it was really important to me to have that connection and blessing of the family.
To talk about Rob brilliant, to tell his story, fascinating.
Can I ask you a question and asks a question on a different film that a film that comes up a lot comes up a lot in greatest film of all time?
Question is Children of Men? Children Men comes up a lot?
And I think it's one of the all time greats. And there is a sequence in it that I am forever fascinated about in the car that appears to be one long take where they get attacked in the car. I don't know how it happened, I still don't believe it, and what was it like today?
It was such a unique experience that with with Alfonso Quadron and emmanuel lewedski Achieva shooting and just the fact that it was there was so I'd never been in a circumstance where your choreographed where the camera is a performer. You know, in a choreography, the camera is part of the dance, so you've got to kind of accommodate this other performer, you know, and that you know, the car, you know, it's sort of all rigged up, so it was all on hinges.
It's the roofs coming up and down and spinning and going up.
Yeah, the camera there was a sort of there was the roof was taken off the car, so there's another layer on the car, which is where Chivo and and Alfonso are sitting up above the car. So it was like a sort of double decker car, you know. And so I'm not driving. There's somebody in the where the sort of engine is and they're inside there driving the car. So I'm just sort of fake driving. But it's not on a low lan or anything. It's on the ground.
But it's sort of been fake driven and so my seat is on a hinge so that I can do these lines and it's all intense and blah blah blah blah blah.
And then the camera comes toward me. It goes past my face.
I go back on the hinge, you know, and it goes round over me and it just gets everybody out and then it comes back onto me. So I'm swinging back up and I'm back and I'm crazy. So it was a real choreograph to dance with the camera in order to achieve this effect of you know, but it was really brilliantly thought through. And we've got a chance to really play that, you know, rehearsal to within an inch of its life and then do it.
Can I ask this sort of time of it, like how long were you rehearsing that? And how many tastes did you do? I'm fascinated by that particular.
See, I feel like we were there on that scene for we rehearsed I think for a couple of days, you know, or came up and did a few hours in the afternoon if we were shooting something else.
I think we did. We were shooting other things in the.
Woods, so we rehearsed the car sequence over a few hours, over a sequence of days, and then shooting it was also a sequence of days for the whole because some of those that one shot is sort of a one shot in burd of comments. Some of it slice spliced together. So we shot through that sequence over a few a few days maybe i'd say ten ten days, two weeks total, including the sunrise stuff when the car is getting taken
from the farm, which was all a magic hour. So it was magic hour over a sequence a day, so you would literally just.
Go up to work for an hour that would be wrapped.
You know, come back the next day just for just that little bit of light in the sky. It's just magical experience filming that and a wonderful fire.
I think worth its worth it. And so you've made these two films.
As about director, is it sort of whatever comes up that takes your interest or do you are there specific things that you're looking for as a as an actor and as a writer and director.
Yeah, I think it's all always I think for all of it.
It's a surprise, you know, to me, you know that it just it's as as when I engage with it, as I come you know, just sort of start to engage with that. I sort of know at some point, you know, whether it's kind of whether you've sort of crossed over and you're invested. You know, you're involved, You're part of whatever this is, you know, whatever the story of this continues to be, it sort of includes you now.
And and I think that that's it's an interesting feeling, you know, I think as a writer and as a director, and you know, and as an actor, you know, just the moment even sort of isolating the moment where it changes where you think, oh, I see, I'm this is part of my own experience, you know, and you start having to sort of think of how to manage the rest of your life to accommodate doing this thing.
You know, and that's.
Wonderful, you know, when when as and when it happens, you know, but I think that's the only way for me to really gauge what I want to do next. You know, it's just instinctual. It's it's a feeling.
Interesting.
I hadn't realization the other day there was a part in something. It was this part I was kind of in talks for it. It was like nearly nearly happening, and then it didn't happen. And afterwards I was so relieved it didn't happen, and I realized that I never know that feeling. But I'm like, it's in your gut, right. But what I realized was I could never envisage it
this part. Like I realized that actually somewhere there is kind of a vision of playing it or doing it of whatever the thing is writing, like I kind of see something. And it was only by this guy in a way that I realized, Yeah, I never saw it. I was always slightly ambivalent. There was like lots about it that seemed good and sensible to do this thing.
I never could picture.
It, you know what I mean, I totally do Yeah, And I realized that's what's missing.
Yeah, well you can't in a way.
I mean, you know, there's a bit sort of debate about it, but there was I remember there was a line in TUTSI, you know, the film That's Nothing film. He says, you can't play a part that's not in you. And it's something I actually do kind of believe, you know that. I feel like you sort of know. It
can be obfuscated, it can be subtlely in you. It can be buried in you, but I feel like it's it's in you, and you know that it's in you when you read a part and you think this actually speaks to me in a way that I don't know if it speaks to everybody. And that's what kind of drives you, that kind of compels you, like there's something I'm involved, I'm invested in it.
I mean something to this and it means something to me. Yes, that's exactly it.
And you know what, the person that played that part, because the whole time I was bringing this part is like, I know this part is good, but I don't see it. I don't see it. And when I spoke to the act that did the part and I said, I said, out of curiosity, what drew you to this part? And they said, it reminds me of my brother. It's exactly like my brother. And I was like, oh, then you have a connection to it that you know what I mean? That's brilliant.
Yeah, that's it. That is it? True tale.
I've forgotten say something and I should have said it up top. Stupid that I didn't say this first, but I'll I'll just say it.
You've died you're dead.
Oh oh no, you're taking it quite well, but yeah, sort of not very fast. But yeah, yeah.
How did you die? Nasty business?
Falling ice, Yeah, falling falling ice got me New York, New York City, only there for a little bit of a quick break, you know, and I was downtown Salt Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, they just don't you know, there's just no protection on the top of those buildings. And it's not the sort of thing you expect to happen, obviously, so but yeah, apparently, Yeah, it kills a few people every year, you know, under ten, but it happens.
And yeah, and my top ten, top.
Ten, exactly exactly, you know, my number was up and there we had it.
Yeah, boom, ice through the head, Yeah straight, yeah, wow, Yeah it was quick, you know, it's the good news.
How old were you? How did you want to be when this happened? Oh? No, I was, you know, I was getting I was up there, I was up.
There, I was you know, yeah, deep in the nineties, deep in the night, and still sort of moving around, still still had it. Yeah, fucking icy conditions as well. You were placing around exactly exactly do you worry about death?
I do.
I mean, I think I think about it. I don't know if I worry about it. I think about it, think about death, dying, what that means. I think I read somewhere about the number of people who had died. I think it was like a hundred billion people have died or something, which is, you know, it's a lot of people, and you know.
Every you know, I.
Mean, and so it's something that so many people have experienced. You know, there are you know how many people on the planet, seven eight billion, you know, who are the only people who haven't who haven't who haven't experienced it, And there's a lot of precedent for it.
So it's a it's a it's a it's a.
Big thing, and it's coming our way, and we don't really have a good I don't know if we have a healthy relationship with it sort of culturally for the most part. And you know, I think there's still so much that's sort of weirdly stigmatized about about death and dying and that process, even though it's it's, as we say, it's popular.
So I feel like it's important to.
Think about it's important to think about that we're all heading in the one direction. And that, and that every day and every moment that you have is of such profound significance, you know, if you want it to be, you know, and and allowing it to be that, and allowing it not to be that, if that's your choice, but to have it in mind, you know, to not feel that it's something to befied of, I suppose to
be aware of and engaged with. But it's such an important part of allowing us to see the value of life is to know that it's not forever.
What do you think happens when you die? Do you think there's enough to life? I mean, that's a great question. I think that there is.
My feeling is I suppose that it would be bizarre if there wasn't something that was going on, you know, you know that it would be so sort of ridiculous to with all the things that we don't know, all the things we can't explain, it would seem to me kind of very peculiar that that massive thing.
Exactly. A really central question is also.
Just like you know, a sort of nothing burger, you know, but you know that all of the you know, we're on this sort of rock expanding universe, This kind of you know, this infinity of space and time, and this idea that there isn't any other thing that's going on here, you know, it just seems it sort of seems absurd. So I think there is some other experience, you know, I feel like we are passing through you know, some
this experience in this way. I think it's unimaginable, unimaginable for us in our humanity to understand what the bigger picture is, you know, and that's sort of necessarily. So there are so many things that, like I say, so many things that we don't understand. You know, we don't understand half a fraction of how our brains work. We don't know how our consciousness works, let alone understand what the universe is or what it means to us as we.
Go through it.
You know, we don't know eighty percent of what's in the sea or something like that exactly.
That seems you know, that seems a lot eighty percent you would fail that test, you know, of what's in this.
Is definitely So that's my feeling.
I feel like, as humans, I think we are going to have a lot of extraordinary experiences coming to us, you know, as we passed through whatever this consciousness is.
Well, you're absolutely right correct, there is a heaven as well, and heaven is filled with your favorite thing. What's your favorite thing? Films? Great, then you're in the right place. They're very excited to see you. They're huge fans of you, but they want to know about your life through film. And the first thing they ask you is, what is the first film you remember seeing?
True itality foot.
I remember seeing Holiday with Carrie Grant and Katherine Hepburn on the TV on little TV. This is back in the days of I think four channels. He might even have been three quote me on it, but there were just a few channels on the television and one of them was playing Holiday, and I think we recorded it. I think we recorded and I just remember, you know, I've actually always and ever since been a fan of
Carry Grant. You know, maybe because of that film and because it's so seid in my memory is my first real conscious idea of like, this is a film and this person is playing this character and just being very young watching TV, and but then also I then also just sort of yeah, I always love Carry Grant because he could eat comedy, he could you know, he could
do drama. He could he was he could have that sort of intensity, but he was deeply kind of charismatic and sort of could do the whole kind of thing and was accepted in every role.
You know.
It wasn't like anybody. There was no sort of pushback. He was never sort of pigeonholed in that way. But yeah, I remember that film being you know, just fun and alive and the sort of repartee and all of that stuff.
Just flashes of the memories of it. Yeah, and with this with you, who are you watching this? With? With it everywhere?
I feel like I was in the family home, but I feel like my memory of it is that I was on my own watching watching the television, but the like I in the kitchen, the little kitchen dining room area. But you know, I've learned over the years that my memory is a very strange thing.
You know, it's a very faulty sort of mechanism.
So it could have been packed with fifty people, but my memory is that.
I was alone in this the in the room and watching it.
And do you remember thinking you wanted to act from that or is it you just liked going forward?
I feel like.
It wasn't as direct as that that I felt like I want to do what they're doing. But I did like as a child, there are certain things that hit you and you know that they'll stay with you. You know that you just have a sort of a knowledge
of things. It's funny I had sort of randomly, I was having a lunch with an old teacher of mine, you know, he was my English teacher when I was in high school, and we were talking about how you know, some people remember, and he was sort about for him, he remembers the moment when he was able to understand how were worked, you know, the how words on a page worked into speech, like you remember being four years old or something.
Now I don't remember.
That, but obviously as an English teacher or whatever, the way that his profession, like his life went, this was something very significant that he brought into his own experience. So I think that as children, as very young people, we do have these moments where we remember and hold on to certain things very clearly. And I think for me, that was one of those moments that I that although I hadn't made any decisions about what I was going to do, it was significant for me in some meaningful way.
It's the thing it's what we were talking about. It's the thing within you. It was always within you. Yes, it's like we're talking about a part your journey was always in you.
Yeah.
I think that there was something that just kind of stood out for me and you know, just was like, oh, this person is doing this, let me just park that for a second, run outside and do this exactly, but I have registered this is happening.
You know, what is the film that made you cry the most? And are you a crier? Are you the town crier? So exactly here, I don't. I'm not a I don't cry huge.
Amounts of movies, Like, it's not like a thing that I do. But the film that made me cry the most was in the circumstance where I do cry, which is on aeroplanes. A lot of people cry on and I'm I'm and I'm one of them. I mean bizarre films. I cry, you know, on aeroplanes. I remember that there's a Matthew McConaughey film where he's searches for gold.
Do you I don't know if you know the film I'm talking about. Isn't it called gold?
No?
It's but it's not.
There's I think there's another Matthew McConaughey film called He's called God, but he's like a diver and he's in this film and he's looking for gold.
Not with Kate Hudson. With Kate Hudson exactly.
Is that the film that we're talking about the same film is that I think we're talking It might be called Fool's Gold or something. And then there's another film called Gold where he's kind of a businessman, kind of.
Y.
So anyway, I just said that by example of films that have made me cry on the plane that I don't think would be making me cry on dry land. But the but the film that made me cry that I saw on a plane, and I don't know for the record, it's Gold.
Yeah, the one is called God.
Yeah, yeah, you know, you're exactly.
But the one that I mean, they you know, they might have had to land the plane. I was crying that much, you know what I mean. It was like it was a problem. Was a diving bell and the butterfly and that's it. That's that's a film anyway, if you put it into somebody who has a susceptibility to crying on planes. But when they asked me if I was okay. They literally the students came to ask me if I was okay. And I was trying to explain the plot of the movie. I was crying so much
I could I couldn't get it out. It's like, you know, gasping and saying, you know, this guy is locked in syndrome.
It's just just desires, just the blinking, blinking.
Oh my god. I told my friend, actually my very close friend.
I said to him, listen, man, if anything like this ever happens, you just know I will come round to your hospital bed and I will read to you every day. It's like, let's just be clear, Please do not do that. Let me say this now on the record, while I am able.
To do not do If you don't cry in films, can I ask you something? Both of your films make people cry. Was there any moment in the edit or did you ever cry in the putting together of your film?
Watching it back?
Like, did you cry at the premiere or were you always separate from it?
You know, it's so interesting.
That's such an interesting question because people that people people, yeah, people and people who are around being close to the work, you know, as we're doing the work you know that happened.
You know, people cry when we're in the air.
People are crying when we're doing some of the you know, putting music onto certain parts. People are emotional just all the way through the process. There are different people in the editorial and the different departments who see the film, but I'm I don't.
Know why I'm never one of them, you know, I never.
It's not it's it's very sort of there's something I think quite analytical, like I notice how people are responding and and I'm engaged with that response, you know, the response to the to the film, but it's not something that I let myself do in a way. It's sort of there's something there's a sort of strange distance to
that emotionally. I think it's because you know, there's a kind of personal math that I feel like once you open it becomes very difficult to operate a certain a certain way, and once you sort of start to let in a lot of personal emotions into something. I feel like I'm the sort of person that once I start to do that, that will be very I just will struggle to kind of function in the way that I want to.
You know, Yeah, that makes sense to me if I may ask maybe too personal, as in I asked this because I'm the opposite. Like I don't cry in life, but I do cry films, and I sometimes think that's sort of where I go to get it out, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, but if you don't cry in films, do you cry in life? Where you just not cry anyway? No, No, I do cry in life.
There are definitely moments where where you know that I feel that, you know, in those kind of interpersonal spaces and those sorts of dynamics that healthy most definitely moved me exactly, the definitely moved me to tears. But it's it's it's on the whole, not something that I find in the work.
You know.
Interesting, what's about being scared? What's the film that scared you the most? And do you being scared?
Nightmare and Elm Street Nightmare arm Straight was was the film? And I was young as well, I mean I was too young, too young to be Yeah, when it came out, I don't know what year was it. Yeah, it was under ten, under ten, oh shit, yeah, And I think and I don't know how we even got hold. I mean it must have been in the house and you know, I mean just like put it in these you.
Know, an older brother, you know, my older brother probably put it in.
And but I just remember being I mean still you know, Robert England as Freddy Krueger. You know, it's it's still such a fascinating I do think about. I don't watch scary films that much, you know, just generally.
I don't know why I don't.
It's not a feeling that I respond to that well. You know, I know people, some people like get a real kick out of it and really engaged with it, which is why it's a big thing. I mean, I'm not saying anything that people don't know. You know, some people enjoy horror movies. But yeah, for me, just that feeling I don't engage with that much. But I think it's from that time because I was really terrified by that film.
Really wow, it's such a brilliant horror film.
You've never done one, have you? Forgive me if I've got that wrong.
Not really, I don't think I've done anything that I would describe as a straight horror film in that genre. No, like in the sort of genre of horror. I mean, it's something that would be interesting to do you know from that other side, you know, just to kind of understand the mechanics of it. But but yeah.
All right, what is the film that you love? It is critically not acclaimed, but you love it unconditionally.
You don't care what anyone says.
A film that I think, you know, was just didn't get a lot of love, but I think people want to see it.
Was the last action hero, which is the Nie Arnie grat Yeah, that did not get And I just think.
It's just everything about that film I just thought was brilliant, even the kind of way that it was marketed.
I remember the press.
I don't know where this was, you know, but there was the kind of when Arnie's talking about playing Hamlet when he sort of says, I'm actually thinking is it in the film.
Or is it part of the press package? Anyway, I think it's it's in the film. You see like a clip as.
A clip of him doing this thing where he talks about being all my career people told me I wouldn't play Shakespeare, and here I have.
Like Shakespeare is that to be or not to be? Not to be? And everything blows up around me.
You know.
It's like I mean, I love the.
I just think the film is kind of brilliant, sort of just the kind of genius film and Charles Dance fantastic.
Yeah, and it's just like.
It's also way ahead of its time. I think it was very meta and all that and now things like that.
I think it was. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, I think it was. Yeah, great, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant film.
I haven't seen it from you haven't seen it for a while, so it's it's rewatch.
But I've probably riddled with problems. But for now that's perfect. Let me have the memory. Yeah, Well, what about on that subject, a film that you used to love but you've watched recently and you've gone, oh, I don't like this anymore. And it might because the film it maybe you've changed anything.
Yeah, I think you know, and this is absolutely not and I know probably everybody who answers this question probably there's a full disclaimer that this is not about the filmmaker, This is not about the Yeah, and all of that's true, you know, because I am a big, big fan of Dave Fincher, and but.
As I really you know, coming back.
To Fight Club, it's very interesting and it's and I probably wouldn't be the first person that says it. It's a very interesting thing to come back to a film that at the time felt like it was really sitting in a certain mindset that was very exciting and very kind of had a real sort of a sort of a masculine diy animism to it, but not problematic in certain ways, even though they're literally blowing up the world.
But it's kind of there's sort of something fun about that, and there's something kind of cool, you know, and there's a and the Durden character, Tyler Durden, and this kind of coolness and this sort of wanting to be him and this that the character was reflecting on. And of course, intellectually, you know, you can come back and say, oh, I see Fight Club for what it is, which is a critique of this sort of you know, right wing in
cell masculinity that's very sort of problematic masculinity. But it didn't feel like that necessarily at the time, and it wasn't marketed like that, and you know, it didn't sit in the zeitgeist quite like that.
And so yeah, coming back to that film.
I do feel it like it's sort of the sort of problematic nature of it weighs on me much more. You know, what it's messaging is kind of is complicated for me in a way that that means I struggle to watch it without amount of discomfort. Actually, yeah, as a film, and it's strange because when I came out, I just I thought it was brilliant, you know, I loved it.
I'm always curious and you, as an artist, I wonder if you Often people will go like, you know, I make the thing and I put it in the world, and how people interpret it is up to them, and like, that's great and that's what art is. But if your film, if in your heart you're like, I've made this cool satire, but then it is embraced by it in a theoretical thing, not fight club anything else, embraced by Nazis, and they use it as an emblem or something. Would you come
out and go, hey, guys, I didn't mean that. This is definitely not what this film was going to be, you know what I mean. It's yeah, but the problem is it's too late, you know it is. The film will tell you what the film is, you know, the film will tell you and the audiences will tell you
what your film is. And if you meant something completely different than that, is you know something that you that is a course correction that you probably need to make for your next film, You know what I mean, Like because your.
Film this swastick is out, take the really forget rid of it not working the last you know that?
I mean, I think it's down to you. The film is going to it's going to do what it's going to do. It's like a piece of music or anything else. It's going to be what it's going to be, and people are going to see it for what it is in its own way. So I think that I don't know if you can quite sit behind that in a sense.
What is the film that means the most to you? Not necessarily the film itself is any good, but the experience you had around seeing that film will always make it meaningful to you.
I remember seeing The Golden Child in Ilford in the Ilford Cinema in East London in like the eighties, and I think came out like eighty six eighty seven, and and it was a family outing, my family altogether, and we went to see it. We lived in East London then, and I remember the que was around the block, like way way down the street to get in to see
the film. And I mean, I think what struck me about that was it was one of the last memories that I had of us, you know, just my father passed away when when I was young and he was young, and so it was one of the last memories that I had of us as a family. And also just being struck again by the sense of the importance I suppose, or the kind of impact of cinema, of just what all of these people were doing and why all these people were crowding to get into this place and why
everybody was super excited. And actually that film in its own way could go on the other list as well, the films that are kind of not you know, not that well but I totally get a kick out of and really, really, you know, I won't deny, you know,
Eddie mus just being brilliant. And yeah, so I think for those reasons, it's when you know, thinking about my all of my experiences in cinemas, with all of my experience going to cinema, it's sort of centers on that one that one evening and again just a memory seared into mind and you.
All loved it like it was a night you all enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah, we all had a blast.
I mean there was no way that we weren't going to have fun, you know, and to have fun together and have fun as a family.
So it was a magical evening. Sorry. The Golden Child nineteen eighty seven.
Perfect answer, you get ten points. What is the film you most relate to?
So, yeah, it's such an interesting question about how my relationship to film in that way, about what I relate to or how I where I see myself in film. But you know, Lynch, David Lynch made the film The Elephant Man, obviously about about the Elephant Man, about John or Joseph Merrick, and the film is brilliant and everybody loves the film, obviously. And I don't say this to feel like, oh, and I see myself in this kind of way, you know, in this sort of Joseph Merrick way.
He had a very specific journey and a very specific relationship.
To the world.
But the reason why The Elephant Man comes to mind for me is because I see myself in both those
roles at different times. You know, I see myself as Frederick Treves, you know, the doctor, the kind of you know, a sort of empathetic, sensible person who engages with the world in a certain way, maybe a little aloof at times, a little bit distance at times, you know, needing to get a kind of kick into a kind of emotional gear perhaps, But I also see myself in with the hurt sometimes and the vulnerability, and this desire to be engaged with him, to be loved in a certain way
of Joseph Merrick, you know, I've n and so it's fascinating to me when I watched that film and I and I actually I watched it fairly recently, you know,
any couple of maybe too to a couple of Christmases. Again, I was so struck by how rare it is to be sitting in a you know, watching a film and in the scene both the characters that are engaged in the scene are both people that you feel that somehow represent your own experiences in the world, you know, just sort of very clearly, and sometimes the sort of struggles that you have, and you know, and in a way it's Frederick Treves's struggles that are the adopted trees and
struggles that are the most like the sort of internal struggle of personality, you know, whereas Joseph America is in a way trying to change.
The world around him, you know.
And yet maybe we all have that balance to strike, you know, that we all feel that the ways of ways in which we affect the world positively and negatively, and the way we want change in the world to allow us to are the better versions of ourselves, you know.
Yeah, but it's it's also like America is the actor trace as the director.
It's you.
It's your two professional sides as well, and that and the director is being empathetic to the actors, but he's also moving them, manipulating them, making the thing happen. And then the actor is this wounded love child for sure.
Yeah, you know, I think that's really interesting because that relationship of the doctor, the position of somebody who knows is very reflective of the kind of position sometimes as a director or as a writer, but somebody who understands the fuller picture, you know, and the doctor, you know, doctors kind of embrace that energy a lot, you know. And then and the and the actor sort of wanting
to understand like what does this all mean? You know, and that sort of vulnerability, and you know, besides those things, you know that that film has these two unbelievable performances. I mean beautifully directed, but absolutely you know, just so so clean, Like the performances are so clean, they're so clear. It's of crystal clear and unencumbered brilliant actors. Very difficult to do to achieve that film.
I think, have you read David Lynch's book A Room to Dream? Is like it's like semi memoirs where it's like half a half a biography someone's written. So someone writes a chapter about him and then he writes his memories of it. And when he talks about Elephant Man, he went to London and everyone was very wary of him because he was a young he was only he's very young, and he was American and he'd never been to England. They're like, what the fuck is he doing?
And he says, he went for a walk and he went down it was like in Soho or something, and he went down a cobbled street and he closed his eyes and he felt a wind go through him and suddenly he felt imbued with the Victorian London. And then he made that film. And you look at that film and he goes, yeah, I believe you. I totally believe, but.
It feels rich and it feels honest in a way that very few films of that time are, you know, and also it has you know that Victorian era had a certain kind of the epic quality of daily life,
you know, was really reflected. You know, that there was a sense of kind of just elevation and engagement with the world that was that was pretty special, I think, you know, because I guess the country at that point was in this very unique place in terms of how the amount that it was able to dominate so much of the globe and so much of the commerce of the world, and I think it was kind of reflected in a lot of the people and a lot of the kind of ideas, but also in a lot of
the kind of cruelty and a lot of the kind of dismissal, a lot of a way in which other people or the sort of non perfect you know in verty comments were treated and sort of so a very interesting space I think, you know, coming out of you know, the other part of English is you know, sort of regency period, you know, which was very very different, you know, very kind of alive, not this sort of tight moralistic framework, but this very sort of looche idea, you know, of what life should be.
So, yeah, interesting, what is the sexiest film you've ever seen? You know?
It's it's very interesting because obviously, in terms of the sexiest film, it becomes about what you're like.
It's a very revealing it's a very revealing.
Question in its own way, you know, and so you're like, okay, this is but I think if I'm honest about what is sexy, it's I think it's like that element of what is danger like in cinema.
I feel like it's that element of what is.
Dangerous, you know, that that makes a film sexy, you know, and obviously that can go to the very extreme of kind of basic instinct and that sort of farm which, although is a kind of classic, doesn't necessarily feel sexy in a way. But I feel like the film that captured that the most for me, the dangers sexy in that sense of danger is to Die for. Oh that's great? Was the was Nicole Kidman and great? Yeah, it's never
come up on it. Yeah, that's a great shot. That was like whacking Phoenix's Yeah, yeah exactly, and Nicole Kim and just that, you know, obviously, this incredible performance by Nicole Kimmen.
But also this very dangerously.
Sexy you feel whacking Phoenix getting drawn into this net with this, you know, in that kind of way that body heat sort of captures a bit of that element.
But in a way this is even sexy to me, buddy.
He pushes the idea of sexists and this is just being being unable to just break any of that sort
of magnetic pull, you know that. I feel like we've all we've all felt in some way, you know, to somebody, and and it's not been kind of as the sort of extreme sort of version you know, in the Dripping Button and I think it's New Orleans the body set or somewhere like that, you know, that sort of sexiness, you know, but it's this is much more commonplace feeling of just desire, you know, I mean, just like and and really really good, believable and it's yeah, so I think that's a really good film.
There's a sub category if you think that was revealing. The subcategory is traveling boner is worrying. Why does film founder housing You weren't sure you should?
I'm quite sure.
Well, so again this is kind of an interesting so, I you know, I think for me, like, I think of that of that kind of in the sort of, you know, what's the dynamic of the relationship and the sort of leaving Las Vegas kind of way, you know that I feel like is that I kind of, you know, just am I allowed to participate in what this character is participating in in terms of the sex scene of
what's happening. But I think what it really evokes for me is a kind of slightly more complex, slightly stranger conversation that I was having around sexuality and sexiness in film and politics, you know just what. I was discussing this with a friend of mine, you know, not recently, I mean, you know, a while ago, but we were talking about Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. And again, I don't know if this is something that people have spoken about.
I'm sure it's been kind of talked about.
But the film centers on this love triangle, you know, and and it's you know, Sean Connory, Harrison Ford and this girl who is a Nazi you know, and is sexy, you know, and the and the and the plot hinges on the plot and the dynamics hinge on their sexual attraction to her, and by extension are the audience's sexual attraction, you know, and because we're invested or who's going to get the girl? You know, who's going to get? Yeah, like, how's this going to work out?
You know?
And that's our and we're not sort of horrified by this, you know, in the film, that's advice us to be horrified.
We're invested, you know, and then.
You sort of again it's that thing where you sit back on those questions later on and you're like, look, these are undeniably brilliant films. These a great performances. He's amazing, But when you're dealing with something is sort of volatile as sexiness, and maybe they're slightly you know, maybe we do need to look at like the eighties and nineties and at unreconstructed times, you know, because maybe certain things we didn't we didn't necessarily culturally.
We weren't as aware of just how tricky this stuff is.
You know that that if films I films push certain things and obviously these aren't the intentions of the filmmakers, you know, in any way, but it's something is pushed in a certain way. How is that entirely received, you know by the audience? How is that entirely received by young people? They're young guys, you know how what is there? So that's something that I think is something that I feel like retrospectively, at the time, you enjoy the sexiness,
you enjoy the sexiness of that triangle. It's only later on that I don't know if I should have been feeling all of these things.
Maybe it's a.
Really good sure and should have walked away.
What is objectively the greatest film of all time might not be your favorite, but it is the pinnacle of cinema.
Well for me it is.
You know, I think that there's so much in the kind of humanistic approach to cinema which I think is really important and I try to make in my films. You know that that is the sort of that I'm
that I'm most engaged with. The film that I think rises to the sort of height of that is Bicycle Thieves or the Bicycle Fees, the Bicycle Thief The Seekers from nineteen forty eight's, I think, in that kind of postwar Italian era, it is the best film that I can think of that depicts this idea of poverty and the personal moral ethical choices that people are faced with in these very complex and systemically difficult circumstances, and it's so humane, you know, and its heart is so firmly
with this family that by the end of the film that it'll spoiler love for those I haven't seen it, but it was made in nineteen forty eight, so but you know, for him, as he when he steals the bicycle at the end, this idea that just this collapsing. And it's not really his action that yours sort of
decimated by. It's the face of his son, Bruno, seeing his father's father the hero stealing and then getting jumped and sort of beaten up by everybody, you know, who to kind of just call him a regular thief, you know.
And it's heartbreaking and it's beautiful. And I saw it.
I happened to see it at the Lemley on Wiltshire Boulevard for the first time, and this was only fifteen years ago or something, and I hadn't seen it before. And I remember coming out of the cinema and you know, I've only done this with one other film where I've gone out of the cinema and bought the ticket for the next literally just come out to the desk and gone in and it was and it was one of them.
Was the other way.
The other one was actually it was Werner Hertzel's remake with Nicholas Cage, which I just, you know, completely different movie as a Chinese man in Hollywood, and it just sort of captured me in this. Yeah, I was really stunned by it, and I think in a way I was trying to also just completely continue to sort of understand the film. I was still so in the film that I just needed to go back into that world
immediately again. And you know, I've seen films over periods of time, even short periods of time, more than once, but those are the two films that I've actually come out of the cinema to buy another ticket to go back in.
That's cool.
What is the film you could or have watched the most over and over again?
Well, I would say that the film that I suppose it's split, really the films that I would watch whenever wherever are Predator and Aliens.
You know, like I think that those are just separate, exactly exactly separately. You like them separate, Okay, but.
I hadn't even thought about that, but that's exactly right. Yeah, two as individuals. I think Aliens the Camera and Aliens, Citquel and and Predator the first one.
I just think they're just perfect, you know.
I mean, you know you can throw and die hard into that part as well, but it's you know, I just think that there's a certain that they kind of got.
That energy totally right for just repeat viewing. You know.
I think when I was growing up, we knew every me and some friends Mike, and we knew every line of Aliens, like every single line. And the game would be you say the line, and some of the other persons say the line before and the line after, and and it became so so of esoteric that it would be like people like, okay.
That's when.
Great or you know, it was like really down to you know, we knew the film back.
Is it still in there? Defeat? I mean not, not.
Not quite to that, you know, but the but I definitely it wouldn't take much for me to be you know, it would be my university challenge or mastermind, you know, would be Aliens.
You but those are films that I could watch.
Whilst still being a lovely man. What is the worst film you've ever seen?
So again, all the disclaimers, you know, because this is a filmmaker who I absolutely think is completely brilliant, and you know, down by Law, Broken Flowers, Ghost Dog.
Obviously is extraordinary.
I love Patterson. Recently, I loved Only Lovers Left Alive. So this is in no way a comment.
On Jim Jummies.
But when I and it may also just be that where I was just the space that I was, because even the actors in this film, Isaac banc Is in the film that I'm about to talking about, and I love Isaac the bancal, you know that as an actor.
But Limits of Control.
I saw it at in the Angelica Theater in New York, and for some reason, you know, it just the chemistry of it just did not sit with me in this moment at all. And you know that, and I guess that that happens, and it's not a but it's not a feeling that I've had in the cinema that much. I mean, obviously we've all had films that we don't engage.
With or we don't you know, we don't like or whatever.
And it wasn't really that necessarily, it was something sort of slightly more visceral, is the kind of reaction to the film and I and I've heard other people talk about other movies, in fact, some movies that I've liked. People some people talk about Tree of Life in this way, you know. And I really engaged with Three of Life and I saw it in this and I thought it was a beautiful film. But I know people who had this kind of similar reaction to Tree of Life that
I had experienced only once with limits of control. And I was on my own, so it wasn't like I was sort of influenced by other people.
But I came out of that experience and I was just like, I don't know what's happened, but I feel like that was not like that.
There's something that I've kind of that I need to reflect on about what is what has gone on in this last this last two hours, and maybe and I also can see that that might be the sign of a filmmaker doing something absolutely brilliant, you know, that allows an audience, allows an audience member, me in this case, to have this completely visceral reaction to this, to this, to this film that I just have not had with anything else.
Wow, it's a very good What's the film that made you laugh? The most. I fucking love.
That is a great film I.
Mean to have.
I mean, I think it's just so rare to have two geniuses in a movie, you know, like given full weight, but felt both geniuses given full weight and full kind of you know, they're both the lead in a way. You know, obviously technically Steve Martin, but you know, but Eddie's Eddie Murphy's got both those characters, and it's just so it's it's.
So balanced, like how they are completely and they are.
Both hilarious in the film, and the script is and the premise.
You know, just everything about the film. It's just like so great, Chubby Rain, You're just like.
Everything, every sort of detail of the film suckers.
I say that every day.
And Terrence Stamp probably brilliant keep it together.
Just my god, you have been absolutely brilliant. What's a tree? However, when you were deep into your nineties, you were ninety seven, and you've gone to New York, You've been working. You didn't stop. You never stopped. You're always making stuff whatever whenever the instinct took you and making stuff. Continue to make amazing stuff. But you think, you know what, I should have a weekend off you take yourself to New York.
You've got You've got people around me, like, I'm just gonna go for a walk, and they go, it's cold out, you know, it's cold. It's really cold. And you go, hey,
i'm cool, I'm fit. And you go for a walk and you walk here there, and I'm it pace it quite fast, really in good shape, and a stalk tight from really hot from one of the skyscrapers just cracks off and it's moving as you almost step into it, and it steps in there, goes right through your scale, splits your head open, like the like the T one thousand and terminator two, and you collapse on the floor.
And I'm walking past with a coffin, you know what I'm like, And I'm like, is that tutor split in two? And people go, yeah, yeah, he's ninety seven. He's just wondering about this in this weather. And they go, he's mad.
Anyway.
We come over and go, I don't know how we're going to get this in the corn because you're split in two. Anyone got any axes we get makes me chop you up, chop you up, chop you up, put you in the coffin, We stuff you in the coffin. But there's more of you now I was expecting, what with all the ice and ship. There's no room in this coffin. There's only enough room in this coffin to slip one DVD into the side for you to take across to the other side. And on the other side,
it's movie night every night. What film are you taking to the people of heaven when it is your movie night to as you for.
Go, it's very difficult. I would take Decalogue.
I would take that might be a cheek because it's it's a little bit of a box set, but.
It's been one DBD booklet.
Okay, Okay, we've technology and get it all onto one disc Okay.
If I wasn't allowed that, I would probably take Sandsle by Chris Marker. But the decologue I think is well, you know because in Heaven, of course they probably want to reflect on the ten Commandments.
And it's gonna be a long night.
Yeah, I mean, it's a long movie, a ten hour movie night. But I think it's just a brilliant, just a brilliant achievement like Keslawski and.
You know, it gets it gets love, you know, don't get me wrong.
It gets love, but it doesn't necessarily get the kind of love that I think it deserves, you know, on a just a you know, on a daily basis.
I just think that to.
Create what he did and with those parameters, just in one block of housing, you know, to try and tell ten stories, and that's what you come up with as the ten stories reflecting the ten Commandments. Absolutely brilliant, talking about you know, humanism, talking about all of the kind of aspects of our social interaction and emotional interaction.
You know, it just doesn't get better.
Yeah, Is that anything you would like to tell people to watch or to look out for in the coming months that you have made well?
Of course, you know, I would love people to check out my film.
Is it coming out in England this week? When does it out? It's this week, right, it's out soon. I'm not sure.
It's out in the States on August sixteenth, and then it's here a tiny bit later, but I think so it's just to be looked out for over.
The fall a Sason, but it's don't go watch out soon.
Thank you very much. I've loved this. Thank you, this has been brilliant. I hope you have a lovely death, good day.
Thank you. So that was episode three hundred and ten.
Head over to the Patreon at patreon dot com forwards last Bret old Soon for the extra secret chats and video with Chewtail with you for go to Apple Podcast. Give us a five star rating. But right about the film that means the most of you and why it's a lovely thing to read. My naby more and loves it helps with numbers of amazing grammar week and we really appreciate it. Thank you so much the Churytale for giving me his time, Thanks to Scruby's pip and the
distraction pieces of Network. Thanks to Buddy Peace for producing it. Thanks to iHeartMedia and Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network posting it. Thanks Adam Richardson for the graphics at least the lighting for the photography. Come and join me in a week for another incredible episode with an amazing guest. I hope you're all well. I really appreciate you listening. Thank you very much, and I hope all is good.
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