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My name is Brett Goldstein. I'm a comedian, an actor, a writer, a director, a book and I love film. As Charles Xavier once said, just because someone stumbles and loses their path doesn't mean they're lost forever. Just because I haven't released new episodes for a few weeks doesn't mean I've not been recording new ones. Oh wow, me too, Charlie Nice one man. Every week I invite 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 Kevin Smith, Barry Jenkins, Sharon Stone and even But this week it's the incredible actor, writer, comedian, director, producer and award winner, the amazing and wonderful Stephen Merchant. Head over to the Patreon at patreon dot com forward slash Brett Goldsteam, where you get an extra fifteen minutes with Stephen, where we talk secrets, we talk beginnings and endings.
You also get the whole episode, uncut, ad free and as a video check it out over at patreon dot com. Forward slash Brett Goldstein, So sorry I've been away for a while. Thank you to Buddy Peace for taking care of things. I think he's been fucking brilliant and I'd quite like him to do all the intros. Anyway, we're here with a brand new episode. Stephen Merchant is a legend. I've wanted to do this with him for ages. He co created the original Office, he did the same with extras,
he made movies, he's been in logan. He's a brilliant actor. He's a brilliant writer. He's a brilliant gregg. He's good at all of it. His show The Outlaws season three is out on BBC and Amazon Prime very soon. We recorded this on Zoom a few weeks ago, and he was a fucking joy. I really think you're going to enjoy this one. So that is it for now. I very much hope you enjoy episode two hundred and ninety eight of Films to be Buried With. Hello, and welcome
to Films to be Buried With. It is I Brett Goldstein, and I am joined today by a creator, a writer, an actor, a director, a producer, an executive producer, a BBC legend, an HBO legend, a w w E megastar, a outlaw, a singer, a stand up, a lover, a fighter, but only with his heart. It's the word and only. He's a legend. I can't believe he's here. Can you believe he's here?
Well? He blood he is, look right out, I'm here, he is. It's the amazing. It's Steve, imagine. Thank you so much. What an introduction. You are right in every capacity except singer, right singing? Don't feel confident singer? No, no, I'm not a karaoke fan. If that's simple, that's a deal breaker for you. But I just know I just don't want to listen to people being mediocre at singing.
I've never understood the joy of karaoke, and I think maybe it's because I often hang out with people who were like very good singers.
So I'm like, what do we do?
Yes, I'm just sort of watching you show off, spent the day showing off, and now we're watching new show off somewhere. I don't really get it, and I'm terrible.
Is it also, though, because we're performers, you and I that we know that we want to do a good job of performing right, and the idea that we're going to do a sort of under rehearsed song that we haven't practiced that we're not very good at, that's not in the right key.
That just seems Yeah, that's not like willfully dying at a gig. It's like, oh, you want me to die friends exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a terrible Well.
That was why I was one of the co creators of the hit TV show lip Sync Back Oh Yeah, in which you simply lip SYNCD and didn't have to say, of course, that is the craziest show. I one time went to a recording and Stevie Wonder was there miming playing the piano and miming singing, And You're like, we've got him all the way to the studio and he's not actually singing or playing. We've got the equipment, we've got the microphones. Who could.
It wants to show you how good he'd be at pretending to do it. That is fucking mad. It's really weird. So you're in we're both in Los Angeles for those listening, we're quite near each other, but we're doing this on zoom because you know, that's how the world works and how it should be and we should have no actual human contact. But's right, I've got so many things I wanted to ask you. I've always wanted to ask you things. Somebody I've always thought it's fascinated by you. Hey, listen,
I'm a huge fan. I think you're fucking brilliant. Thank you so much. Well, right back at your boy, Let's get that done. Let's get that out of the way. But something I've always felt with you, and I don't know if it's true, And maybe I've misunderstood you as a as a public in your public seconly, you always seem to me somebody who doesn't have confidence issues. Maybe
you always seem like a very confident man. And I remember reading something about your stand up, which I also love, but you in an interview you said when you did your Hello Lady's stand up tour, you said something like you didn't really love the act of touring because once you'd figured out the show, there was no joy in an audience laughing. For you, it was just like all you cared about is does the joke work? And once you know it works, the rest of it is boring. Does that hold true?
Well, given that I've started doing stand up again recently and I'm hoping at some point to sell tickets, I feel bad slagging the audience off, and I didn't mean any disrespect to the audience. And I suppose what I meant was that the thing which is most enjoyable is creating the act. It's the same reason I think I love writing and directing and all these different like never
picking one lane. It's so I sort of like the making of the thing, and once you've made the thing, sort of doing it again and again is not as exciting as the process of making it was. And so I did a play once and I'm fascinated by the rehearra saw and the working and the developing all that, and then when you're actually performing at night after night, that's not as pleasurable as the sort of making of it was. And I think that's sort of what I
meant there. I would hate someone to think that they saw me and I was phoning it in because the other thing's very important to me. Having read Bruce Springsteen's autobiography, and there are many similarities bred between me and the Boss,
as you can imagine. To bring that up later, but he He makes a really good point about how even though you've done it many nights in a row, for the people in the audience, they might have waited twelve months, they might have had their ticket on the fridge, and it's a big night out for them, and they've got to go out, and they've got to get the babysitter on the whole thing, and that it's important you deliver
for them. And I think that's really endearing that someone of his stature and success still keeps that in mind, you know, And so I do take that on board, and I do feel that way. So basically, if I am bored performing to you, I will try and keep that hidden from you.
So when do you see my eyes looking dead that in the very back of my mind, I was thinking this was a nice.
Thing to do for you. That's right. But you say about confidence, it's weird. It's funny to say that, because I think if I was to look back at me saying school, I could present I could give the illusion of confidence. We're not really having it. So for instance, if you'd ask me to go and ask a girl for her phone number, I'd have crumbled, yes. But if you asked me to goof around on stage. I'd have
jumped on it, you know what I mean. So it's sort of it's confidence maybe in certain directions, but not in others. Well, I think you're you're listen, You're an inspiration to many people myself, you know. But the fact that you're like having think about like hanging out with
American people. The thing that I've noticed is the difference, one big difference that blow my mind is that if an American has an idea for something, they just do it, whereas an english person will think of a hundred reasons they can't do it, they will be told they can't do it, they'll realize they're not good enough. It'll be such if they ever do do the thing, it will take about ideas to get to the decision of do you know what? I Am going to give it a go? Well,
I think it's that thing. Do you feel that way that when I don't know when you were growing up, But it seems to me that in America they teach their kids that you could one day be president and why not shoot for that? And of course most kids won't become president and should never try, but they're somehow told to do that, whereas if you had said in my school, I'd like to one day be prime minister, they'd be like, yeah, right, Merchant thinks he can be
prime minister. He can't. He can't even he can't even ask out Lucy Jackson.
And he wasn't you know what I mean, Like he was sick on his shot exactly.
And that would be the teachers, let alone the kids like the idea that. So I just think there is this feeling in the UK. I don't whether there's something, and maybe it's changing, but it used to feel like when I was younger, that sort of ambition was something to be slightly ashamed of. Yeah, they should have had to pretend you just stumbled into everything. Yeah, and you hadn't tried your hardest.
You know, you're you're like looking at oh what my HBI show, this happened exactly. But I really I remember thinking, you went, you went to America, You fucking went to HBO.
You did this show that was so.
I remember being so impressed by Hello Ladies in terms of many things, but also you directed all of them or most of them, about three of them, I think three of them. Yeah, it's really like well crafted, like it was really well made, and like there's this sequence where the limo is trying to back up and blocks everyone, and I was like, this is a fucking huge, big old production that you are doing very much not where you're from, you know what I mean, Like you just
come over and you've done this thing. It's very impressive, and maybe it's all good, and maybe you never want to reveal this. You never give off the impression of someone who is going, oh fuck, oh fuck, I'm just holding this together by a thread of.
What I'm doing.
This is a nightmare, or if it was actually like just quite kind of you've always felt like I know what I'm doing with this.
I appreciate that. There's a description I saw somewhere once of directing films or TV is like you're being chased down a hill by a boulder and you're just trying
not to get crushed by it. You're just trying to stay one step ahead of it, kind of Indiana Jones style, right, And that is my experience of directing, And so there is always a sort of undercurrent of panic and anxiety and can you make the days and sort of putting out the fires that never to be come up, But there is also part of me that's quite sort of like, well, we can only deal with one problem at a time, and most things have a solution, you know, like I
should quite I can kind of become quite practical and pragmatic. Okay, right, well we've lost that location. Okay, oh cod oh COVID's it and we're all we're all gonna die, all right, Okay, Well, like I'm quite good and sort of does anyone here and I have to work on a vaccine? Yeah? Yeah, so so I don't know if that's confidence more than sort of all right, let's just roll across sleeves and figure out.
Yeah, you know, impressive, really impressive. Now can we talk about Fighting with My Family? Which I think is one of the great I think it is such a great film. Oh that's very sweet of you.
Bro.
If anyone is listening hasn't seen it, you must go and see it. It was not what I expected, a fun sports movie, silly, and it was not fun.
It made me cry. It is fun.
It's really really fun, and it does all the sports movie stuff that you wanted to and it's really funny, but it's also incredibly moving and I found it like one of the great films about siblings and about success and the whole story of the brother I just think it's so it's I think it's a really really good film.
And you also made a film in the middle of a fucking WWE match. I just don't know how you did it, but I think it's wonderful. How was it?
You're very very complimentary and and I appreciate that. And I think what's interesting you say that about what your perception of it was and what the actual experience was, because going into it, because it's about wrestling, I had no interest in wrestling, didn't know anything about wrestling, And I think that inevitably puts people off potentially because like me, they're like, I don't know what this world is and I don't understand it. And yet the film in the
end is not really about wrestling. It's about you say, like you say, the families. It's about sibling rivalry, about ambition, about kind of dreams versus reality, all those things, and that resting just happens to be the thing they're doing. But they could have been trying to be a band, or try to be ballet dancers, or try to run a fish and chip shop or whatever, like it could have been anything. Really, I appreciate that you said you
were emotional, because that was always the aim. Like, I think if a movie can make you kind of well up at the end, that's a real achievement because you know, nineteen minutes before, you didn't know these characters, you didn't know this world, you didn't know any thing about it. And by the end, you know, we've actually managed to change your emotions. And that I think is quite a hard thing to do, and I think sometimes it's sort of dismissed as being either too easy or sort of
glib or not glib. What am I looking at? It's like I think people think it's easier than it is, Yeah, to create emotions.
You know, Well there's that I've never quite understood sentimental as a word and as a sort of negative I've never quite understood like like whenever, like Spielberg films, they're accused of being too sentimental, I'm like, what do you mean? Do you mean that they work too well?
Like? What? Like? What it's right? Like? What's right? That's right? What's the crime you felt? You're upsets et? Is going home? Well, what's your upset is? Going home you're supposed to be because the little boys upset.
But I wondered, with my family, I haven't seen many things about it in terms of you if I may spoil it, and if you haven't seen it, skip ahead, skip ahead a minute. But there are brother and sister who wrestle, and they both want to be wrestling stars, and they get this chance and she is the only one that's picked and he is in, and then that is quite a serious part of the story that is then followed through and he sort of falls apart and they fall apart, and it felt very real and very unusual.
I hadn't sort of seen that story done, and I wondered if any of that was I don't know if you have siblings or you're obviously a very successful person. I don't know if you have siblings in whether any of that was true of your experience, and I don't know. It felt very well real And as you probably know, it was based on a documentary that have been made about the real life family.
It is a true story. It's a real family of wrestlers from Norwich in England, so that documentary covers If you like the first I don't know twenty minutes of the movie, and that documentary was watched while he was in a hotel room in England by Dwayne the Rock Johnson, a former wrestler, and he was the one who wanted to make it to a movie, and I ended up teaming up with him, having worked so successfully together in
the movie Tooth Fairy. You've scene, You're welcome and so no. So I guess it wasn't so much that I related to the brothers sister dynamic as I think it was about the idea of people pursuing a dream and the difficulties of that and the sort of sacrifices of that, and how you know, she travels as she did in real life to America and she's trying to become successful, and she's alone and she doesn't feel supported, and she
feels like she's sort of alienated people. And there were aspects of that, not so much to do with my family, but just generally that I relate to. And I just I met the real family and I discovered there was just so much more to the story than the documentary had covered, and it just was a very rich set of people of real life people to kind of explore how old were you when The Office hit?
I was about to talk to twelve, because again, you always seem very cool with everything, and I know public life is not real, but like you sort of became this phenomenon that shouted and you did and you're twenty five year old man, and I'm assuming your friends were not in the same position, Like it was that a difficult time of adjustment within your sort of social life or was it fin or was it a bit much like how did that away?
Yeah? I think it probably was. I think the thing about something like The Office, and because I was a writer chiefly and a director, not a performer, was that it was a very it felt like quite a slow burn. So you know, we were making the show and then you're waiting for it to come out, and then it first it comes out and no one pays any attention, and it famously or infamously got the lowest test audience
score for the BBC. The only other thing that scored lower was women's lawn bowls, which I didn't even realize was televised. And so by the time it had sort of become whatever phenomenon it became, it was quite a few years. It's like maybe two or three years sort of by since we'd started. And so because it wasn't like I was suddenly famous, I was just I just
had had success behind the scenes. I think I acclimatized at the same speed as my friends and family did in or what, you know, because I wasn't suddenly thrust into It wasn't like I was on X Factor and suddenly everyone knew who I was, you know. So I think it was a much more incremental thing. But over time,
I think, yeah, you do start to drift away. And I think one of the things you feel guilty about is talking about the life experience you've had, because you get to do so many exciting things and you get to be on set, or you get to meet famous people, or you get to go to award shows, and that's all very exciting, and you don't want to be the person that comes back to the pub and starts boasting about that stuff, because you don't want to be that guy. And so you feel like, who can I share this
stuff with? Because it's so crazy, as you know, and it's so absurd, and it's not even that you want to show off. You just want to share how weird it all is. And I think that's why famous people become friends with famous people, because they can sort of share all that stuff, you know what I mean, You don't have to apology. Doesn't sound like name dropping because you don't have to apologize for it.
I think, Yeah, it's interesting. And my last question for you before I remember to tell you something is is is your coming back to stand up? You did this huge stand up to it and then you stop doing stand up for years, ten years, fifteen years. Yeah, yeah, and now you've decided to come back. You've come crawling back to stand up where you beloved And what's brought this on?
And are you enjoying it more at this time? I think it's that, as I sort of mentioned earlier, I did I was quite exhausted doing it last time. Just you know, again, whatever outward projection of calm I present, I do get quite stressful stressed about these things. And I do find it anxiety and juicyeing going in front of an audience for an hour and a half because it is a weird thing to do. It's not a normal human state of being, and so I did find
it quite stressful. I think I got sidetracked with other things including the Holiday's TV show and the film. And as you know, with stand up you sort of have to give it your full attention and energy. It's a hard thing to do sort of occasionally because you just you need to get match fit. And so I just found like I had a bit more time and bandwidth to kind of think about it again, and I started just dabbling and doing ten minutes here in a club and I just and I just kind of enjoyed it again.
I just was rejuvenated and I was enjoying the again, the puzzle of putting a stand up show together and what works and what doesn't, and how people's tastes have changed in the tenure since I last did it, and the sensitivity is now are different, and it's just again, it's really it's a kind of becoming a really stimulating thing to do. I'm really finding it interesting and nutritious. Great, well, I'm excited. I'm just thinking about the payday. Wherett thinking
about the payday? Oh yeah, Stephen, And I.
Forgot to tell you something, and I should have told you earlier. I should have told you when we connected on the zoom. But I did make a note of it, and I just forgot to tell you as well. Let me see, I guess I just I don't know how you how you take it, but I'll probably just say it and then we'll deal with it. You've died, You're dead. Oh okay, yep, you're dead. Okay, Well I'm I'm coping with it quite well.
Again. I can can present the calm, yeah, but there's an anxiety underneath. Right, how did you die? How did you die? I think I died doing something really dumb that I knew better than doing. I was thinking that they Well, so Big Bear Lake, which is a you know, it's a little resort, Big Bear kind of north of I think it's north of Los Angeles. And I went there once with my family and my mum and dad,
my sister, her kids, niece and nephew. And you can take out these kind of little little raft boats onto the lake and sign says do not jump in the lake. Right, And you know, I'm a forty five year old man, and I'm thinking, ah, no, probably jump in the lake because he looks really nice. And so I jumped in the lake and then I realized the reason they have that sign is you can't get back onto the boat.
There's no ladder, the undersides kind of curved, and so I'm scrabbling to try and get back on the boat, and my family and these Nissa nephew all about oblivious to my panic, and I don't want to worry the kids, but I'm starting to think. I think this is how I die. I think I'm going to drown in the big bed lake with all of my family around me, which I guess is the way I wanted to go. And I'm you know, I'm tall as you know, and my legs are getting dragged towards the propeller of the
engine under the boat. And in the end I managed to sort of notify my brother in law who kind of hauled me aboard, and I sort of cut my legs on the side of the boat. And I just look back on it, like, what was I thinking? They said, don't jump in the lake. Oh, this is real, this is all real. I'm up, this is real. Actually, how you died? This is a factor your story. Sorry, I should have I should have. I should have said that at the beginning, because the story will take on more
Oh my god, more resonance now that you know it's real. Yeah, this all actually happened and I survived, but it felt like touch and go. And I think that's what I mean by just doing something dumb without really thinking it through, like jumping in a lake when you were told not to. And I'm not an adventurous man. I'm not a parachute guy. I'm not doing bungee jumps. But you don't like to be terrible today. And if someone says you can't jump, even.
Though you don't even want to get in a lake, I can't judging lake. Yeah, you know you jumped in a lake, so the way that you will die getting chopped up by a propeller on your own boat. You're so successful, You've got a yacht that is so big that you can't climb back on it. You jumped off because someone's told you not to. Yep, and you get dragged into the propeller and chopped up in front of your entire family who are cheering.
Yeah. Or the pilot of my own private helicopter says, Steve, you're a tall lad bend when you get out, mind the propellers, And I'm like, now, you don't tell me what to do, it's my helicopter, and yeah.
Into my head that's how it happens. Oh my god, that's the worst, what terrific dead? Yeah, that's a film. There's an actual there's a horror film. I think it's called stranded. It's called where it is a group of people unlike a yacht, jump off to go swimming and then realize they never put a ladder out, and then none of them can get back in the whole film? Is that an hour and a half and then trying to get back on the boat until they're eaten by sex.
Anyway, I completely relate to him, do it. It was a documentary about your life? Do you worry about death? Do you know what? I don't know if we can say his name anymore. I don't know where he stands on the general counsel ladder. I think he probably is canceled. But Woody Allen was a formative comic influence on me, So whether or let's just park whatever our opinions are of him now, you know, forty years ago, he was
a big influence on me. And he used to joke a lot about his fear of death, and there was one aspect of his comedy I could never relate to, never understand it. But Now as I'm older, I definitely am getting a Woody esque anxiety about death that I didn't used to have. Yeah, definitely. Do you know when that started? Probably for death started turning forty, probably turning forty. Yeah. What do you think happens when you die? Nothing? I mean,
it's just over. Yeah, and that's why it's sad, I think. Yeah, Well, I mean I got news for you.
Yeah.
But there's a lot more than that. There's a whole afterlife.
There's a fucking heaven, mate, There's a heaven, and it's it's huge, and it's filled with all your favorites.
It's filled with your favorite thing. What's your favorite thing? Well, movies.
Then in the right place, it seems like you're welcoming heaven, Steve. Imagine they're big fans, big fans of all your stuff. Some of them are still laughing about the way you died, and others act quite traumatized having watched your head. I'm off an anicopter, but you're welcome coming in, and they all they all want to talk to you.
And God's in there. He's not mad. He's like, I get it. You thought you were. I get it. Don't worry about it. Yeah, everyone's welcome, I mean the good people, et cetera.
And yeah, and then what they want to do is talk to you about your life, but they want to talk about your life through the medium and film. And the first thing they ask you, what's the first film you remember seeing? Steve Merchant.
I'm going to answer that in a second, but I have to say, Brett, when you turn this to a TV show, you're going to need to make that section a lot quicker because on Desert Island discs, it's just a doeser Island. You get seven records, all right or whatever it is, eight records, but here we go, whereas I mean, you've got like a twenty minute, we've done, We've done twenty five minutes. Just go in the door. Start to really gonna start to my films. Okay, first
film I remember seeing. Yeah, again, I'm not going to dwell on this one because I'm sure this comes up all the time. I do remember seeing Empire Strikes Back in a cinema, and I do remember queuing around the block with my uncle for e T. But the movie that really I remember, I remember it being vivid in my mind, and I can't I must have been maybe eight years old was a movie called The Land That Time Forgot, starring Doug McClure as a soldier in the
First World War. He somehow ends up hijacking a U boat and he ends up in a land of dinosaurs. And I think it was stop motion dinosaurs or whatever. It was in the seventies, and I must have seen it before because I remember it was a Saturday and it was going to be on around tea time, around five point thirty. And I was so excited to watch The Land That Time Forgot. I couldn't believe my luck there was going to be on TV. And you remember
in the seventies early eighties, this is before VCRs. You know, if it was on, that was your chance to watch it, right. I knew it was going to be on. I must have seen something trailer or my dad told me. I'm so excited. It's a great day, Brett because in the afternoon before the movie, I get to go to a fair. It's like a local fair or a fate or something. There's coconut shy, there's the whole thing, and there's you can have your face painted, you know, where you can
like a kid. You get the lion or the dog or whatever. So I have this my face painted. Whatever it was, a frog, whatever it is, I've had the face painting. I'm loving that five p thirties approach, and I'm on the way home. It's The Land at Time Forgot. What a day this is gonna be. My mother says before the movie starts, I'm gonna wash your face because you've got the face paint on. She washes my face. I get soap in my eyes. I'm screaming because I can't. I can't open my eyes. I can't open my eyes.
So I missed the first fifteen minutes of the Land at Time Forgot. So I knew it was on. I could hear it. I was in the room with it. But my eyes, my eyes, my eyes, because I could have probably just opened them, but in my mind they were just full of soap and they were stinging and they were red and so and so the landt Time Forgot.
It's drifting away from me, and I'm like, if this, if they get to the dinosaurs and I have been able to open my eyes, I mean and so that's a really vivid early memory of me, of the of the highs and lows of cinema. Do you know what I mean? I do know what you're in. That's fucking heartbreaking. But you did fifteen minutes and you open tho. I think I think the people's got open because I remember the saying the dinosaurs, so don't worry. There's a happy ending.
It's not like the helicopter story. There's a happy ending here, Thank God, Thank you God. And was it then you thought I want to make stuff like this? I think probably initially I thought I want to get into the face painting business. That's where the money is. What is the film that scared you the most? Do you like being scared? I don't love being scared? But the film which again I watched it too, This one I watched
too young. I was maybe probably ten or something, and my dad was watching it with his mates this week. We had did have a VCR by this point, and he was watching The First Alien on VCR with his friends and I snuck in to watch it, which I think he knew I was in there, but my mum was out and he kind of let me watch it and I sort of sat right at the back of the room, but I was keeping and to this day I am I get so freaked out by the alien.
If I see the alien, if I've the Alien movies, any alien related, you know, the alien from the movies, not just general aliens, but that specific one. It still sends shivers through me. The chest Burster scene, just seeing it. You know, it's its mouth within a mouth. And this came to a head, Brett. Where have you ever been to the Universal Studios Halloween horror nights? So it's unblievble. So for those who don't know, there's this Universal Studios
theme park, but Halloween season they throw it. They put kind of these these mazes in the park that are movie themed, and they're scary mazes and you walk around them and they have all the production values of movies, and they are often themed around jump out, people jump out. And one time they had an Aliens theme maze and they had people dressed as the alien, but all the lighting and the smoke and the whole thing, and it
was terrifying, and I think my memories. I was on a date, I was pushing the girl ahead of me like she was going to take the brunt of the attack, and these aliens are jumping out from sort of doorways and from above you and below you, and this alien jumps out and I'm freaking out because it's the alien and one of them, and it sweeps with its claw. It sweeps, and its claw hooked my glasses by mistake and pulled my glasses off and it fell to the floor.
And now I'm like, I'm screaming because the alien has attacked me. My worst nightmare. It's take it. It's blinded me. It's the face paint all over again. Right, I'm blinded. People are walking, They're going to step on the glasses. The date thinks I'm just a loser. And the only solace I took was I could hear the guy inside the alien costume going sorry, sorry about that, so sorry, sorry, So that has gone some way to offsetting my fear
of the alien. But honestly, in that moment, when he swooped my glasses off, I thought, this is I was right to be scared of these bastards. This is it.
You know what's interesting about that? When I went to the Halloween Has of Horror whatever it is, terror Nights, I went with Mae Martin.
It was so scary.
At one point someone jumped out and I threw May into the wall like may was a bomb, and I jumped on them and went.
Through anyway.
I was impressed by you could walk down the streets in this universal and characters will attack you with chainsaws and knives.
But they really straightly scary. I really liked swing at you.
But I never saw anyone make contacts, and I was like that it's actually quite a skill because they're often jumping out of people you don't know how to react. But I never saw anyone make contact. But obviously you were the one person.
There was the one guy. But the fact that it was the alien my arch nemesis. Since I was about ten years old, I knew this day would come. But I was trying to reason with them inside because my feeling was they're probably out of work actures right inside the costume. So I'm going around the maze going, don't jump out, and I'll give you a job. I'll give you a job. I s I'll put you in something, I'll cast you in something. I'm trying to reason with them.
Do you like wrestling? Like wrestling? I've got wrestling for me. What is the film that made you cry the most? To me?
You have made lots of things that make you cry. I don't know if that means you're a crier or if you're a clude hearted psychopath.
I'm not so much a crier, but I do get emotional and I do well up, and I think as I get older, I get more emotional. And I've cried in one form or another to the most unlikely things, often watching movies on a plane. I don't know if you found that that you're more emotional on a plane. I once I cried at the end of the movie Moneyball,
which is largely about baseball statistics. So I don't know about word, but the one that when I was in my late teens early twenties, I did movie reviewing for a local magazine in my hometown and I got sent to see various films that the general movie guy, the main movie guy, I didn't want to see, and one of them was Clint Easchoods The Bridges of Madison County,
which is a tier jerker with Meryl Street. And I was not thinking this was going to be my cup of tea because I was, you know, twenty one or something twenty two and loved it, and at the end I was I was really emotional, and I was shedding a tear and all the other kind of hard bitten movie critics were in there and they're all like, see you in the lobby, and I was like, yeah, I didn't want them to see me in the dark, so I was like, yeah, I'm just going to wait and watch.
I want to see you the best boys on the credit and I'll see you. I was so moved by it. I think it really caught me unaware. It is kind of how emotional I would be, and given it's about sort of you know, people in there, probably in their sixties, and kind of this feeling of a life not lived and dreams that sort of you know, were crushing all the rest of it, and kind of late blooming romance.
The idea that's sort of a twenty something related to that, and funny enough, that used to be a real reference point for Ricky and I when we were doing The Office really was the kind of Tim and Dawn romance and the idea of the sort of bitter sweetness of that film and the kind of feeling of like the chance at romance slipping away. And I don't want to give away the ending of the movie, but it's very
sweetly done. The ending of the film and the choice that Meryl Streep has to make between Clint and her husband and how that's played out and how that's dramatized, and that was a big influence on the ending of The Office. The British version of The Office, the kind of Christmas specials were very influenced by the.
Same trying to capture some of that same feel that that movie did so effectively. It's really a perfect thing, the UK Office and what you did with that story. And I remember the Christmas specials being what's so impressive about them is the first one is so dark. The first part of Yes is so bleak to the extent that it works because it makes you think, I don't think it's going to have a heavy end, have a happy ending because it's so bleak. Yeah, Like the clouds
are really heavy on this and you earn it. I don't know how it's so perfectly calibrated, and I don't know. I assume that wasn't easy. But I think he raised an interesting point there about the fact that I think one of the reasons the original origion of The Office for those that found it very moving, it was moving for them because they I don't think they were expecting a happy ending.
Yeah. I think they thought we were cynical, yes, and that it was going to be sort of downbeating, kind of existential. And I think therefore, because it was the first thing we'd ever done, I think they weren't. They didn't know what to expect, and therefore we had one chance to kind of surprise them. And I think in a weird way, because I didn't know what The Bridges of Madison Country was because I was reviewing it before
it had been released, I hadn't read any reviews. I had no knowledge of what this movie was going to be. And so because I hadn't been told that it was going to be a tear jerker, it's going to be a fifteen tissue movie. I don't mean that in a porn sense. I just mean I think because I didn't know what to expect, I was sort of surprise and it caught me unawares. And I think there's a lot to be said for watching movies when you have no knowledge of what they are. You just sit down and
let it on. And it's very hard now to consume entertainment without having read everything and knowing what this rotten tomatoes, verdict is and all that stuff, and so said.
The thing of I think the game of when you're writing something or making something, of the balance of surprising the audience and also giving the audience what they want and then not giving them what they want, but giving them something else that whatever it is. Sometimes it's like the story you have told has to have a happy end. Sometimes it has to in yes, the story you've told needs to end happy because that's the journey you've taken
people on. And if you if you think and that'd be cool if it was a sad and he's like, well, you've cheated them because that was yeah, you know what I mean. Like sometimes yes, absolutely, and sometimes vice versa. It's like you have to be true to the thing that reveals itself as it goes, you know what I mean.
Absolutely. And it's funny, isn't it, Because sometimes people will say, oh, I knew that ending was I knew that the ending was coming, And the other times I'd be like, that was brilliant, and it's somehow like you you have to Yeah, it's very hard. You have to give the audience what they want without realizing quite that that's what they wanted, or they say they didn't want it quite in that way, or they weren't expecting it. It's really hard to get right.
And I think there's an interesting other area, which is the sort of ambiguous art movie ending and Sidney Lumette, I think in his book about film directing Sydney, I can't remember exactly what it is, but he says something about even a film which has an ambiguous ending sort of needs to have set up its ambiguity. You can't just end a movie with nothing there you way, you're looking at it right there and making movie. Sidney Lymett, Yeah, yeah, great,
there's an art. There's an it team in that where he says about it's like, even with a film that has an ambiguous anything, you somehow have to give the audience like options A and B and then like not answer either or something. But you can't just keep it vague and like it has to even an open ending has to sort of somehow have the audience to that open ending. Yeah, exactly.
I think That's why I love to impick so much, is all the kind of areas it leaves you to dream for yourself, but it does it is satisfying in this way is absolutely mystery. It doesn't go like it's the thingling. When it's bad is when you feel like, oh, they didn't know how to end this exactly. Yes, that's exactly. We'll stop there. That's when you know, and you could be wrong, But where it feels like you didn't know what to do, you still have to hold their hand,
even if it's to an ambiguous place. That's right, that's right. Interesting, I love it. But yes, anyway, congratulations, you did a really good job. It really was, and it was the thing of exactly what I hadn't thought of it that. Yeah, it's that we thought it was. We thought you the makers were cynical. Yeah, you'd led us to believe that anyway. Well, so, what is a film that you used to love? No, yeah, all right, disorder, what is the film that you used
to love? You loved it very much, but you've watched it recently? For this does not hold up for me. I don't like this anymore.
Well, I'm going to answer that in a way. It's a really interesting question, and I the movie I'm going to say, I still think is an excellent film, and I still think it's very very good, and it's it's not like I watched it and think this is a bad film, but looking at it through modern eyes, it's very hard to enjoy in the same way. And that
is Saturday Night Fever, Yes, which unbelievably dark. I'm not the first to have made this point, but it's it's not just the darknes because I always knew it had a darkness to it, but it's the misogyny and the two rape sequences that I don't think I was really even as aware of until I watched it with my partner Marsea a couple of years ago, and I remember thinking, oh, do you know what they should do, Like like what they did for Creed and Rocky, they should do for
Saturday Night Fever, And they should have him. He's an older guy and he teaches a younger to dance. So I thought, I'll watch Dot Fever because I wonder, maybe that's an idea I could sell it to a studio. And then you watch it and you realize that you forget that he tries to rape someone and there's another sexual assault and it's and for whatever, it's like, how is this the hero? And he's like casually racist and homophobic, and it's an accurate reflection of men working class men
in Brooklyn in the seventies. But your memory of it is not that. Your memory is that he's quite cool, and he's sexy, and he dances beautifully and he maybe will escape that kind of tough world that he lives in, and you realize that he's a really ugly character. And it's not that it's not truthful. There's an authenticity to it that so you can't criticize that. And the performances are great, but there's you're just left thinking, I don't
know what I'm supposed to feel about this man. He's such a toxic person that growing up watching it, I just would see it as a sort of coming of age movie and that stuff, that darker stuff you just I don't know what was my interpretation of it. I can't think now looking back. Is that also like because
that's the seventies film, right? It was it like seventies American cinema where all the protagonists are incredibly complicated and actually difficult people and unlikable people, And was it part of that or was it I think it is part of that, and I think that's one of the reasons it's so good is because he is a really complicated character.
But I think what's confusing is the iconography of the white suit and the disco dancing and the endless times it's been pastiche including in the office and the Beg's soundtrack and the kind of musical stage versions and the they even did a PG version where they cut out all the kind of naughty stuff and sort of sanitize it, and so and the idea of John travoltas kind of pin up in the seventies, like so that aspect doesn't seem to tally with the dark, complicated seventies sort of
alternative movie. That's that's in the heart of it. And it's really tricky to watch now because you it's pressing kind of weird buttons. As you watch it, you know it's really it's a complicated film and it's still brilliantly interesting to see, but it's not an easy watch.
And he they win, but he knows they win for the wrong reasons, right, It's it's the whole thing is incredibly yeah, great, and there's there's a suicide, and it's a really dark film and again I think a brilliant I'm very and it's very.
Interesting in the acting section. But it's just, yeah, it's a hard film to watch now because you just don't quite know what you're supposed to be feeling.
Yeah, because it has all the trappings of like a sports movie. Even it's like, yeah, the structure is when the dance contest, but.
That's right, rehearse can you can you win? And I think somehow it also gets conflated with in my mind, with Grease, Yeah, the other big reravolial film of the seventies, which is again I'm much much more lighthearted, although that has its own moments and problematic stuff, but do you know what I mean? So it's just, yeah, it's interesting, just how But I think also what really struck me because wile what she was saying, she's like, what, who
is This guy's horrible? And I just I'd never I'd watched it so many times and it never occurred to me that a woman might find this a really objectionable movie.
Well, there's also like I watched Cocktail recently and it's a mad it's a mad film, Like he's horrible, Like there's a there's a scene in it after he's sort of cheated on her and he's bet on having sex with another woman and all this stuff's happened. The sort of climax, says he goes to her house and she's like, I don't want to see you, and he essentially sort of kidnaps her. He punches her dad and sort of drags her out, and as he dragged her out, he says to the dad.
You made me do this. And it's like, this is the hero. What's happening? But what funny she said, because that's sort of the same. It's sort of the same thing in setting Fever is that somehow the woman is blamed for the sort of frustrations that John Travolta is feeling, you know. And it's interesting that it's such a streng
I mean in terms of weird films like that. I remember the first time I ever came to la which is some time ago now, I was jet lagged and I stuck on TV and Footloose came on with Kevin Baker and that if you've not seen that, it's a film like it's like it was made by aliens that have been watching pop culture from their spacecraft and think they understand what humans are. And now we're going to make a movie because no one acts like they do
in life. The town has banned dancing, and like Kevin Baking has to go to a warehouse to have a dance, just to have a private dance system. It is so funny, you know. And I guess in the aies people are like, yeah, yeah, no, I so much go to a barn for a dance. That makes sense. I relate to that.
It's a metaphor. It's a metaphor the basics, isn't it least it's I don't know. That's my new theory. I just come up with it. Tell me this, what is a film that is not critically acclaimed, most people don't like it, but you love it unconditionally.
I think there's a huge sway of the people that probably do love this. But it is also a film that I have heard people dismiss out of hand, and it angers me when they do. And that is Connair. Connor is fucking grey and conn Air is absolutely magnificent. And even at the time, I remember the people feeling that it was too preposterous, that it wasn't as good as say The Rock, the movie The Rock, or other action movies from that time. But I've loved it since the moment I saw it when it came out, and
it's so operatic and preposterous. It's kind of camp in all the right ways. It's that weird, brilliant moment in movie history where mainstream blockbusters needed to inject a sort of Tarantino esque bit of weird quirkiness. And so like, there's this Steve Bumi who's a killer, who's like having a tea party with a girl in a disused swimming pool, and the whole thing is, oh my god, he's gonna probably murder her, and in the end he and the big reveal is he didn't murder her, and we're like, yay,
the serial killer didn't murder the little girl. A nice time with a little girl. And there's just so many quotable moments when it's so and it's too long, and it's got about four different climaxes, but it's just everyone's chewing the scenery in the most delicious way. Like it just works in every direction. It's just the joy.
Yeah, great, so wonderful film. What is the film that means the most to you? Not necessarily the film itself is good, but the experience you had around seeing it will always make it important to you.
What is that film? Well, I'm going to choose, and it's not because it's the film, but it's the experience. Is I'm going to refer back to Fighting with My Family, Okay please, And not because I'll leave you to judge the film. It's because it was the first film I've directed on my own, and it's the first time I had to go through the in quite this way, the test audience experience. And for those that haven't done it, you talk about whether I can present an illusion of calm.
That was one of the most stressful days of my life. Because you've worked on a movie and you'll know a lot this, but I'm saying it for those listening who perhaps haven't had that experience. You know, you work on a film from script to the moment it's finished, and it can take years, as it did in the case of Fun in My Family, and you suddenly are find yourself in this instance in Los Angeles, in the valley,
in a random cinema with an invite on audience. I don't quite know how they recruit them, and they sneak you in the back and you sit in the back row, and you watch the movie with strangers that don't know you're there, and the entire movie they don't know anything about it, right, they don't even they don't know anything about it. They're just random people and they and the future of the movie is resting on their opinion of it, whether the studio that's paid for it thinks it's going
to be good or bad. Way they're going to put marketing support behind it. So you're literally sitting in this room watching people watch your thing, seeing if they're laughing, if they're if they're getting uncomfortable. And then once if that's not tough enough, most people leave and they hold back maybe twenty twenty five people, And now a guy comes out and hosts a Q and A with them about what they thought of the movie, and they're encouraged
to criticize it in any possible way they can. And you've got to sit at the back and listen to them marking your fucking homework. And then you have to wait around once they've left for scorecards where they've literally
given it a mark. I mean, it's it's it's such a tough that's a tough few hours, I'll tell you, man, And So the reason that's it's so important to me is because in that instance it was actually they liked the movie and it did score very well, and whether we made some changes off the back of it, it was it sort of went as well as it could
have gone. But just to have sort of been through that experience and the rollercoaster of that and the emotions of it, it just will always be meaningful because it was like a kind of I don't know, it was like in as a dpend or something. It was a trial by fire.
The thing I don't understand about those test screenings is they have these cards and the cards say like, what were your three favorite scenes or things like that, and it's like great, But then it says what were your three worst scenes? And I'm like, don't give them three. They think that has to fill it. And then people can say, well they didn't like these. I'm like, I
don't know if they didn't like them. They just were trying to fill They were thinking of the three things negative things because you asked them.
Well, that's right. I mean I remember someone telling me that with the American version of the Office they tested it. They would have people sit in a room and they would have a dial and they could turn the dial whether they were enjoying it or not enjoying it literally second by second. But how is that's not how you watch things?
Right?
You're not like because it seems to me that by that logic, if you were in the test audience of Nightmare on Elm Street, when Freddy Krueger came on and killed someone, you'd be like, no, don't like him, get rid of this character very with knivy fingers, He's not no, just the nice just Johnny Depp and the other nice teenagers, more of them, please, Like, that's not how you watch things. But like you say, if you invite an opinion, they'll give it.
And also sometimes things are a build up, things like that bit was boring when they weren't doing a joke exactly fascinating. Well, can you give me one example of something that you changed in fact with my family based on those tests screenings?
Well, well, for instance, one thing was you mentioned about the brother kind of spins out and becomes quite depressed, as he did in real life. And I think what we learned was that they felt we lingered in that too long. They were feeling the sadness of that story too much, and it was it was dragging them down.
They sort of they weren't they understood that you needed to feel that, but it was there was too much of it, or it we went on too long, or so that was an interesting point just about It was actually a perfectly smart observation about the sort of how much you can feed an audience of a certain tone in any moment, you know, So that that was quite instructive.
I'm sure I've said this on the podcast once or twice in the many many episodes I've done, but I will tell you just in case. My favorite test thing there is that you can find it on YouTube. I don't know if you've ever seen it. In Austin Power's gold Member, the third Austin Powers film, there is a sequence that was cut from the film that you can find that was on the dv amster. It's online and it is a song where where it's like the sad bit of the film and it's What's it all about?
Alfie is the song, but it's What's it all about? Austin And it's like a montage of all the characters singing this song. And I'm telling you it's one of the most beautiful sequences. It's so fucking good. It's genuinely like a beautiful it's moving, it's funny, it's really well done, and apparently the reason it is not in the film is because it was so moving that people then never
laughed again for the rest of the film. So they sort of feel like, we have to get rid of this bit because it's sort of changes people, makes them too sad that they don't recover from it.
Really interesting. Wow, that's really interesting, well, actually funny enough.
One of the things that we struggled with in a movie about wrestling is that the audience at home, the viewer, and also the audience in the movie obviously know that wrestling the outcome is predetermined, right is it's sort of scripted, And so we had a long debate about, like one of the original versions of the movie is that that the heroin is told she's going to win or lose the final big fight, and so we actually had a version where she gets told the outcome, and the audience
watching the movie it gets told and it's so it's can you still enjoy the end of the movie knowing what the outcome is going to be? And we discovered. We thought that was interesting because it's a you know, you knew the outcome, but will you. And it turns out the audience doesn't. They want to forget about that. They want to enjoy the rocky can she overcome adversity aspect,
even though it's a sort of artificial sport. You know, it's a good example of what you said of like the audience not necessarily knowing what they want.
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I remember that watching it. I was glad that I didn't know, Yes, yes, what is the film you most relate to? Well, I don't know if it's so much that I relate to it now, but I remember with the first time I saw it, it really felt like this was the first time I'd seen a movie where these I thought these could be my mates at that time in my life. And again it was when I was doing my film reviewing, didn't know anything about this movie, went along to review it
complete oblivious, never heard of any of the actors. And it was the movie Swingers that brought us Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau and you know, the kind of hipster speak and the sort of had never been to la but they were just the way they kind of interacted with each other as friends, the way they they made
fun of each other, but it was with affection. The kind of all the attempts to sort of talk to women, and the kind of bad hopelessness of the Favreau character, and the moment where he leaves a voicemail message for a girl that he's got the number of and then he calls back and calls back again. I just all of that as a sort of guy in his early twenties, just it just felt so relatable and like they had
just captured it in essence. And I had never been to la I had never been to America, but just even growing up in Brittle, it just felt like those could have been my friends, even though they were slightly older than me.
But it just it just, yeah, that one really struck a chord with me when I first saw it, although again, if you see it now, it's again it's slight like I think the film is very much mocking the guys and they're sort of ways of trying to pick up women. But again, I think now I'm fortunate you could see it, and sort of it can feel a little bit I don't know, misogynistic or something. But I but I think the characters are being laughed at as much as they're being celebrating.
Yeah. Well, I always think the thing that saves it from that is the end when you see Vince Bulm when he's like, oh, he's all grows up, when he's sort of angry that John Favre has done it on his own. Yes, What is the sexiest film you've ever seen?
Stephen Merchant? What makes you footloose? There are films that I find very sexy now, like, for instance, the movie In the Mood for Love, which is a beautiful film and kind of you know, there is no sex in it, and it's very chased and there's no flesh or anything like that, but it's just the sort of pent up sexual tension between the leads is so palpable and amazing. But the film that for me was like the first film where I was like, damn, this is sexy, was
again probably watching it. What age was I like? Fourteen thirteen fourteen was The Spy Who Loved Me? The James Bond film. I'll tell you why, because it had Barbara Back Missus Ringo star. Yeah, as the sort of Russian
agent absolutely beautiful. It had Caroline Monroe, who was in a lot of sort of sinbad movies and kind of British horror of the sixties and seventies, who was absolute babe, and the two of those two women and kind of just I don't know, and just the idea of sort the idea that looking back that I thought Roger Moore was sexy. But I just thought, I guess this is what adults that's what adult men need to do. This is how you bed stunners like this, You've got to
go around acting this way. You've got you've got to kill a man and then make a glib joke afterwards. And for a long time that was my image of sort of what sex he was, right. It was a man in a suit, you know, and a tie making kind of cheeky remarks to women who've got English as a second language. Like that was that seemed to be That seemed to be the main And it took me a long time to realize that James Bond is he's a horrible he's a horrible role model. He's a terrible
human being. In that movie, like he in that movie, he he rams a guy off the road who smashes through a truck carrying mattresses and all the mattress feathers fly out, and the guy plummets to his death off a mountain, and Bond says, all those feathers, he still couldn't fly. And you're like, and the girls have ah, that's so sexy. I must suck your cock, and you're like, no, he's a psychopath. He just killed a man. It's not attractive.
It's everything about him is ultimately objectionable. But at the time, like the thirteen fourty year old mate, it's like, yep, sexy guy, the coolest guy. This is how you do it.
What about then we have a subcategory traveling boner is worrying. Why does a film you found arousing you weren't sure you should?
Well, I mean, you must have had this many times already, so I'm embarrassed to say because you might, not only because you've must have had it a lot. Is surely who framed ros your rabbit? I don't know what is.
Traveling about that, boner. It depends on what's giving you the horn. If it's the baby with the cigar, I get it.
But it's obviously obviously Jessica rabbit who for those who haven't seen it, is not actually a rabbit. No, she's you know, she said she's not bad. She's drawn that way. But I remember, again, I forget exactly when that came out, or eighty eight or something eight. It's again, I was a round fourteen, so I think just I don't know if it gave me a boner, but I definitely remember thinking I was confused that there was a there was a sexy animation.
Kind of sexy drawing, very sexy. It's very sexy done by a man. Just a man's drawn this very sex yeah, and then animated her and then she's also in love with a rabbit. I mean, there's a lot going on in there. There's a lot to umpact that wouldn't.
Pass, a lot of that wouldn't pass, a lot of meetings now that wouldn't get passed through a lot of layers.
For the kids film. Yeah, a very strange film for a PG. It's a very dark it is a dark film film.
Yeah, I should clarify it was it was her that was the thing, and not as you say, either the cigar smoking baby or that moment where Christopher Lloyd has crazy bullba sizes that wasn't it? Okay?
What is objectively the greatest film of all time? Objectively it might not be your favorite, but it's the greatest, well objectively the best film of all time. Again, I'm sure this has come up a lot. Is Casablanca lovely answer? A very lovely answer? And you can absolutely have it.
Yeah, it's sort of immaculate, really, and it sort of works in every every aspect of it works. The casting, the script, it's funny, setting, the story, it's really funny. All of the characters, even the small minor characters are beautifully drawn and kind of you care about everyone, and the older couple that are sort of trying to leave, and the young girl who you know, who's trying to escape with her young boyfriend, and even you know, all
these minor characters, even aside from the main cast. And the ending is beautiful and it's sad and it's heroic. And the bit where they sing the Marcier's or however you pronounce it, that's a teary moment. Every time, even now, I get choked up, and it's just it's a beautiful piece of filmmaking. And the fact that famously, you know it went through all these different writers, and people thought it was going to be a B movie and it just all the alchemy came together and made it, made
it a masterpieces. It's hard to beat. I think.
I love that answer. You get five points for it. What is the film that you could or have watched the most over and over again?
Well, there's definitely movies that I returned to a lot, and if they come on TV, I watched them a lot, like The Fugitive from Harrison Ford. Okay, But the one I love and I love I'll watch it a lot is Martin Scorsese's After Hours, Oh Yeah, which I think is sort of one that often slips under the radar of his movies. But my friend introduced it to me when I was kind of, I don't know, in my late teens, and I just have watched it regularly in
different forms ever since. And I remember when I first got a little bit of money, I bought an original print of the post of the poster, you know, and had that framed, and that was my first little expense. It probably only cost like one hundred and fifty quid,
but seemed like a huge amount. And I've bought it in various formats on various you know, Blu rays and DVDs and things over the years, and I always go back to it and it just has it's just sort of there's sort of nothing else quite like it, because it has all of Scorsese's brilliant filmmaking, but it's so
unlike him. The idea of this guy who you know, who goes on a sort of ill fated date in sort of Soho of the New York Soho of the sort of mid eighties, and count seem to get home and find himself in a sort of purgatory trying to
get home. But it's sort of darkly comic, and again, all the surrounding characters are brilliant, and they each come on and sort of and the atmosphere creates and again probably because I watched it as a young man, and maybe there's a theme here, but there's like it was a film about a man trying to get a shag and then it just doesn't work out for him, you know, and then he just trying to he's trying to get home and he might get killed, and all he wanted
to do was get laid. And I think when you're sort of twenty something that probably relates you relate to that, but it's just it's a very unusual film. Man, it's just but it's very funny and beautifully played. And Griffin Dunn the lead actor. I don't know why you have a bigger star. Yeah, yeah, anyway, it's a film I constantly go back to, such an odd film, great film.
It's a really it's a really odd film, but it's it's terrific And I think again when you're like when I first moved to London, I used to watch it lot because it was so thing about this sort of as a single guy, the nights out where you'd you know, you'd go you'd taken an hour and a half on the tube and the bus to try and go to a party where a girl said she might be and then she's not there, and then you you don't know anyone you know, and then you're getting home.
Yes exactly, Yeah, what is I don't like to be negative, but we've got to do it quick. What's the worst film you've ever seen?
That's tricky, isn't it? That question? Because I don't want to insult someone, And let's be honest, the worst films are the ones that people always talk about, like planning from out of space or or the room. They are the worst films. But the thing is, I'm going to say something because I've said it before, and I'm and I'm I'm going to be glib because it's not. It's obviously not the worst film ever made. But I can't get with the Lord of the Rings. I don't know
what's going on. I listen, listen. He knows what he's doing. Peter Jackson, Jacko's great film. He's a talented man. He knows what he's doing. I'm not disrespecting him at all, or is his talent. But I don't know what's going on. I don't know why I care. It's like hours an hour of this trapesing around and they've got big feet, and there's at one point some trees are walking. Trees are walking, and then they get and then you have
to wait. I remember I saw the first one with my family at Christmas, and then we waited another twelve months, and the next one and the next one we watched each Christmas. We went to see them. It turns out none of us were enjoying them. We were just going because we thought everyone else was enjoying them, and so that's like nine hours or something right of our lives.
We get I could have flown to fucking Tokyo and back, and I just and then at the end he gets all the way there, and then the giant eagle pops up and flies them home, and it's like, why couldn't you fucking fly them there in the first place? We could have got this done in forty five minutes. I I just it's not the filmmaking, which is bad, because
of course it's brilliant. I just don't And I think probably what I'm criticizing here is the book, the underlying book, because I can I must be missing something, because I don't.
Know why people are so in love with those stories. They just seem absurd. Well, it's a computer game, isn't it. It's walk a live fight something, walk along fight, something bigger, walk along fight and end of level bus.
Yeah. Yeah, it's clearly a lot of people's back. I'm clearly in the wrong here, I fully admit. Yeah.
Yeah, it's very well done, very well done, and good luck to it. You're in comedy, you're very funny, You're you're one of the greats. What's the film made.
You laugh the most. Well, I mean again, that's an endless list. And going back, I'm thinking about things like some of the early Woody Allen films that I saw again if you can mention his name, but Sleeper. I remember I used to watch that relentlessly, mel Brooks Young Frankenstein. I just used to think that was I used to
watch that. Concio was always in hysterics. I remember when Airplane was first shown on TV, or at least we were old enough to watch it, and everyone in my school, everyone came in the next day, did he saying, did you watch Airplane last night? Like it isn't that amazing the idea? Not even in the theater. We all watched it on ITV one I TV as it was called then,
and all came in and talked about it. But the film that I that I just remember loving so much as a kid is on a really old Marx Brothers film called Monkey Business from like nineteen thirty three, in which the Marx Brothers just run a mock on a cruise liner for basically an hour with no real story, and they just cause chaos and there's a sort of there's an anarchy to it that feels so kind of ahead of its time, you know, just they're just trapesing
over furniture, and they have no respect for anyone or any institution or men, women, people in authority, kids like no one. They just mock and ridicule and run and
mock around everything. And there's a sort of punk rock kind of postpont before it was even a thing like And I just think there was as a kid seeing that, you know, and that sense of irreverence and sort of even it was even though it was an old film and those guys were long since dead, there was just something about it that just it always struck with me. And I just remember giggling. I don't know, the sort of the and the silliness of it and the irreverence
of it and the one liners and everything. I just I have great fond feelings for that film that I think.
There's instant with comedy, because comedy often dates, but the comedies that don't date are the silly ones. It's right, Yeah, if it's sort of silly, they tend to last. I think it's when.
Yeah, there's no there's not really any satire as such. It's just it's just irreverent. Yeah, And I think there's something about the Marx brothers the thing I admire, Like I think as I got older, I sort of just respected them a lot and groud show Marx. And I remember when I was doing some interviews about Jojo Rabbit, which is a film I did with and he was getting criticized. But you know, people were saying, you know, is this a subject that you can laugh about? In
that case? You know, the World War two and Hitler and everything, and and I kept coming back to sort of that there's something about the Marx brothers, Like I remember Groutchow Marx wrote this letter once because a country club wouldn't let it daughter used the pool because she was Jewish, And he wrote to the country club saying, she's actually only half Jewish? Can she go in the
pool up to her waist? And I just think, even now, that's the most perfect encapsulation of racial prejudice, because it's just it just typifies how absurd it is if she's half Jewish, how much of the same rules apply, Like where does it stop? You know? And it's just he's captured. He's captured. In one line, I think he's just said so much more than any weighty tome on the subject could cover, you know, And I think that there's something
about that in the Marx Brothers. There's a sort of intelligence behind their their attitude and their irreverence that's really sort of timeless. I love the idea, Rabbit. I think it's brilliant.
It was very sort of surprised had there's one of them films when when it had mixed people anyone negative.
I was like, what are you talking about? Brilliant? Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Yeah, it's also so funny to me that you that. But also why would like the idea that critics are constantly lambasting the fact that it's just superhero movies and blah blah blah. And then someone makes a movie in which I was a talking imaginary friend who was Hitler and they're like, oh, we don't want this, sorry, that wasn't fresh enough for you. Just
yet to another imaginary Hitler movie. Stephen Merchant, you beyond a delight. I've wanted to do this with you for so long. You've been amazing.
However, when you had made so much money that you didn't even go to the news agent unless it was by a helicopter, and you're in your helicopter and you were flying around you instead of a morning stroll, sometimes you just go for a fly around like a weather man, and you're in a coverit and you land by the local news agent because you want to get some sweets, and the helicoptervers is. Remember mister Merchant, don't stand up straight out of the helicopter because you're very tool and
you said, don't fucking tell me what to do. Piece of shit I like, and you stood up and your head got chopped off by.
The top of the head.
Got a lot of people standing around because you just landed in the middle of a street. Ys and blood, all these children, everyone covering, but everyone's screaming. I'm walking past with a coffin, you know what I'm like, and I go, Jesus, what just happened. Then one goes, I think, Steven Merchant, off the telly and the films. It's just chopped his head off, and your head is rolled into the the road. It's been squashed by an eighteen wheeler. And so I'm like pluck, I say, could you help me?
Guys? So everyone sort of side the street stops the traffic.
I go let's try and get his head, the bits that are left of it, right, So we're having to scrape up bits of concrete.
Get your head. Your body's a mess. I go to the to the hell.
You've got an axe that goes Yeah, I've got an act. Give it to one of the kids. Kids starts chopping up your body into bit. We packing your body and everything we can into the coffin. But there's more of you than that even I was expecting. And the coffin is absolutely jammed. There's no room in this coffin. There's really only enough room for me to slip one DVD into the side for you to take across to the other side. And on the other side is movie night
every night? What film are you taking the show the People of Heaven when it is your movie night, Stephen Merchant? Am I taking one of the films we've mentioned? It could be anything, but it can also be when you've mentioned hmmm, to the other side, because obviously if it was Aliens, I would be taking either Alien or Footloose, Yeah, the.
Two Alien films. Yeah, yeah, But if if I got to take that one film and it's so and is it so that it's I'm going to watch it for eternity. You're presenting it.
There's a different movie every night because someone brings their own movie, but when it's your movie, you go, hi.
Everyone, thanks for coming. Here's this film.
I might do a Q and a ups you want to talk about it, but this is the film I've brought to show everyone in Heaven. So really I'm looking for something that's going to be entertaining to every agent. Sort of movie you're trying to create for the night. But I think I probably want them to like me in Heaven. Yeah, and it feels like it's quite an upbeat place. I don't imagine that they're looking for a sort of bleak existential drama.
Maybe they want to change of you know, change of pace for because there's obvious ones like Singing in the Rain something you know, which is just pure joy, the best from start to finish. But I'm thinking that Heaven's been there a long time and there's a lot of people, there's been a lot of movie nights, and I need to show up with something perhaps that people aren't expecting. They're thinking, ohh and I'm going to choose a left.
I'm gonna chose a famb perhaps not expecting, because I think it's a film that I think it's really good and not everyone's seen it, and it's it's not going to put you in a happy mood, but it's an interesting piece of work. I'm going to choose the movie Clute Donald, It's an unusual choice and j Paoola's Clute from about nineteen seventy one. Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland Murder Mystery. She is a high class call girl. Won an Oscar for the performance. And it's a really wonderful film, intriguing,
the central relationships really interesting. Jane Fonder's excellent, her characters really intriguing, and you get real depth and you understand her. It's tense. The soundtrack is eerie and very strong piece of work.
I love that no one else has brought it. I think that was an excellent choice. Thank you, Yeah, and are my favorite actors. Stephen Merchant, what a joy, What a joy You've been as much of a joy as singing in the rain, as you mentioned. Now tell me this is there anything people should listen to look out for. Watch in the coming weeks or months, well, depending on when you drop this bad Boy. There is series three
of my show The Outlaws. In the UK you can watch it on the BBC end of May, I think it will be out and then in the US and everywhere else it's on Amazon Prime Video. And it's the third series of my show about people in community service with myself, mister Christopher Walken. Terrific cast, amazing. Quick question, how do you find doing a series three? That is the furthest you've done of it? Yeah, isn't it?
Did you? How was doing a season five? I'm going to do more of it because what you realize by the time you get to serious three is that everyone's really in a groove. The cast are really in a groove. They all know their roles, and everyone gels together and you sort of know what works and what doesn't. I might jump straight to Serious three in future. So would you like to do more Outlaws? Possibly? Never say never, But I don't know. Like I was saying earlier, I'm
always kind of a bit itchy for something else. You know, I'm doing one thing and I'm thinking about what else I can do.
So okay, you know, well, so we've got the Outlaws and are you going to go on tour with your new stand up or are you tinkering?
I will, but I don't. I'm just I'm just trying to work up and act at the moment. I'm sort of slow process. So how long does it take you to build up a standarpackt You're sort of always doing it.
Well, any deadline, I'll do. Whatever the deadline is, give yourself. Yes, I will, I will, but I will english. I think a year is probably about right. Yeah, Stephen, what a joy, absolute pleasure talking. Thank you, see you again. Thank you very much for your time on this. Have a good death, Good day to you. So that was episode two hundred
and ninety eight. Head over to the Patreon at patreon dot com forward slash break Golds scene for the extra fifty minutes of chat, secrets and video with Stephen Merchant. Go to Apple Podcasts, give us a five star rating and write about the film that means the most to you and why it's a lovely thing to read. My neighbor Marian loves it and she always cries when she reads them. Thank you so much to Stephen forgiving me his time. Remember to watch Outlaws on BBC and Amazon Prime.
Thanks to Scrubiu's Pip and the distraction Pieces Network, Thanks to Buddy Peace for producing it, Thanks to iHeartMedia and Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network for hosting it. Thanks to Adam Richardson for the graphics and Lisa lay Them for the photography. Come and join me next week for another smash her of a guest. But in the meantime, I hope you're all well, have a lovely week, and please, now more than ever, be excellent to each others.
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