Friday Round Table CTJ: The Lighthouse

I did a funny thing a minute ago. I was in the kitchen to get a refreshing beverage, and our lovely office manager was restocking the fridge to the left and the door was open, and the fridge to the right the door was closed. But I was looking at the left fridge and reached into the right fridge thinking that door was open, and it was closed, and my hand smashed into the glass like a bird hitting a windshield. Yeah,

that all happened, just now, just now. I'm okay. It was a weedy little grab, wasn't It wasn't that resolution. I know you're grab. It's not a firm grab. So before we get going on the lighthouse, I want to chat briefly about your movie. Are you. Okay, no, we weedy little sneeze. I want to talk about Paul's movie. Paul made a movie everyone that we believe we mentioned briefly, but it is actually out now on Amazon Prime. It

is called Annie in the City. That is a N N E Y in the c I T T E Y. Just kidding, uh, And let's chat about it because Casey, you shot the movie, you were the cinematographer of record, that it's correct, and you wrote and directed it. Yeah. I I co wrote it with Annie Reese, who's also the star of the movie. Titular Annie. Yeah, who you know from the Slasher round tables. And I'm going to record into the Spider Verse with Annie right after this. And a little meta trivia here. The movie contains a

movie that I made many years ago. Like within the movie, it's a fact to TV. Yeah, in fact, I don't know. I'm always corrected when I used to Yeah, you know what you tell those people go to hell because factoid you can certainly use it that way. I think you can do it. I think if it is a fact a little nugget, you know, people say technically affect oid. Yeah, just punch them in the base with you next time.

Ben Bolan corrects me. Oh god, so mad at him. So, uh, I want to know how you got the movie on Amazon Prime. How does that work? How do you get distribution? Uh? So, I don't know if it it technically counts as district ribution, Okay, but it is. I mean it counts, it counts, it's available. Basically,

it's quite easy. I just Amazon has a thing called Amazon Video Direct and you kind of, if you have an Amazon account already, which I did, you basically sign up for Amazon Video Direct and it allows you to publish videos on their platform. And you just have to sign up and give your sort of uh your bank information and if so, I have an LLC that I set up for making the movie that's separate, separate from me personally. It's an LLC just made for the movie.

So I had to give that information. Uh, And you need all that information. So the money that you make, the profits you make off of the movie through Amazon, through Amazon, and obviously they take a cut. I actually it doesn't. Amazon takes a cut. Sure. Yeah shocking. I was being facetious. Sorry I missed that. He's always got that hands, got to get his a little guy. Yeah.

So so it's it's it's surprisingly easy. And then um, once you make all that account stuff, you can you know, create uh, basically a project for the for the video for the movie. It can be a short film or a movie or whatever, and it requires a lot of information that you have to enter, and you have to have the movie exported in a certain format file formats, not just a bunch of YouTube garbage. They're really weeding

that kind of thing out. Yeah, and then once you actually get all your ducks in a row and have everything filled out and all the information, you submit it to them and that takes a couple of days and it actually goes through an approval process where it could be rejected if the file format doesn't conform to certain standards, or if the artwork you used for the cover image

is incorrectly format and stuff like that. All right, so you just gotta have your ducks in a row, follow through on everything, and YouTube can get your movie on Amazon Prime. Yes, yes, very cool. And as far as like a promotion and stuff that obviously be a separate yes, they have like a guidebook where it's basically, uh, here's how to promote your movie, tweet about it with the hashtag prime video or it's you know, it's all you doing it yourself, you know, unless you're a big studio. Uh.

So it's on Amazon Prime. It's free to stream, you can prime member, and it's a dollar ninety two rent if you're not all right, So you see it everyone, Yeah, it's really good. I'm just gonna go ahead and put that out there, like, it's really fun, it's really heartwarming, it's uh, it's got it's a cool story and and it's beautifully shot and it's just a cool movie. Yeah.

I told Paul that I've I'm watching it in pieces, well not in pieces, really two pieces because uh, as soon as he said that email the other day, it's like, oh man, like I can't watch it right now. So if I got I got to see some of it because I gotta get a sense of it. So I'll watch like the first fifteen minutes before I had to get in the shower, and then I'm going to finish it up probably tonight. And I liked what I saw, and he's great. If she's so endearing as a human

being and that comes through on screen. Yeah, uh, and make sure yeah you ask her about it when you record. Uh, nope, your Yeah, we'll talk about that for sure. Our buddy Chandler Mays too, isn't it And he played he does a great dust turn as a kind of a scheezy weed dealer. Um. That was a stretch, but fantastic. If you tell anyone listening, if you do watch it, please I hate having to ask this, but please rate it

and review it if you feel so inclined. Even if you don't like the movie, it does mean a lot. And also just it does help with like discover ability and all those silly things to help the movie get seen. So I love it. Names with the podcasts, yeah, same thing, the podcasts. All right, guys, let's talk about the Lighthouse. Casey saw this back in May and France. Correct, correct,

Yeah it was. It was not in the official competition, but it was in the sidebar the Uncertain My God so um, which is where they put a lot of kind of steing slightly more experimental stuff. And I think it fit right in. I think I thought I was going to play on the ha ha ha day No, no, not surprisingly not interesting. Uh do you feel like you're pretty fresh on it? Still? Well, that's the thing I was going to try to see it again before we

did this, and it just didn't come together. So I'm relying on my memory from May and yeah, you'll be it's it's I mean, it's I feel like it's a movie that the plot matters, maybe a little less than your average movie. It's it's more about the atmosphere and so on. So sure, you know, what, when did you see it? I saw on Halloween? O? Yeah, all right, yeah on Halloween Halloween day night. Yeah, when't that spooky

cold weather came through? It was just when just so got out and tried to have a chat about it with my friends outside and then realized it was far too cold and we weren't going to continue our hangs indoor else indoors elsewhere, so we parted ways. But that is pretty funny after a movie about true elemental human suffering and you're outside and you're like, I can't talk about this movie. It's uh And when did you see it, PAULI? I just saw it last Today's Wednesday. I saw it

last Friday. Okay, yeah, I saw it in New York UM when I was there a couple of weeks ago. And boy, let's just get into it. I mean a movie that uh, you know, I was really interested in this one a because of Egger's uh Robert Eggers and The Witch was so great and original, I thought, but also because and I've talked about it on the show before, but I wrote a lighthouse movie, a period piece thriller horror not horror, more thriller um a couple of years ago that I tried to get money to make and

sort of started and never never did it. But I was like, oh, Man, Eggers is doing a lighthouse movie. I was like, I'm sure it's way better than what I was gonna do. And it was, um, but it it definitely piqued my interest because I was just like, why has no one written a great movie with the lighthouse is the primary setting, because it forces so many things upon you. Um, probably the most important thing is

is isolation. Yeah, which is a good foundation for a I guess they're calling this on Wikipedia at least a psychological horror film. It's like a cabin fever movie, sort of in the tradition of like The Shining or something, where your hold up against the elements and you know, you kind of lose your mind. Yeah. I didn't feel it was a horror movie, did you guys, No, it's it's maybe unsettling is the word more than horror. And also it definitely has some comedy in it, Oh, a

lot of comedy. It's hilarious. Yeah, yeah, through which were very again, I mean the character of the old grizzled sea captain, you know, I mean, it's like the most stock character you can imagine. Of course, that guy's farting all the time. Yeah, it's absolutely you know, I mean,

it doesn't it is. It does make you giggle a little bit, but it doesn't come off as like completely out of nowhere, Like it makes absolute sense for his character and it and it makes sense for the Robert Pattinson's character to be, like he's dealing with this asshole and he's getting fucking farted in his face on top of it all. It's sort of like the the stinky cherry on top. Just for the record, real quick, I just typed in Lighthouse movies and uh, we've got Pete Dragon.

Lighthouse places pretty prominently in that. A movie from nineteen nine, a horror thriller called Lighthouse, a movie from five called Voice of the Whistler, which looks pretty cool. Um, then we've got The Light at the Edge of the World, which very much centers around the lighthouse, and my personal favorite horror on Snape Island from nineteen seventy two. Um, I want to see all of these. Then you have another movie called The Lighthouse from nineteen it's a foreign film,

so it's called faro Um from Argentina. And then to the Lighthouse, the Fog, Hysterical and Shutter Island. There was a lighthouse. My movie was called The Graves head Light because the I should just tell people what it was because I'm never gonna make it, or you know what, maybe we'll make it as a podcast. There you got,

there you go. That's cool. And that's the thing I wanted to point out too by this movie, like it is just as sonically interesting as it is visually interesting, like the sound design and the palette and the sparseness

and the choices they make on point. So it just it lulls you into this weird fugue state almost while you're watching it, and you start to almost feel that malaise and kind of confusion that the characters are feeling, which is neat because a quick set up two dudes older grizzled sea captain and younger you know, new recruit kind of greenhorn Greenhorn going to this island as Rock as they call it to do some maintenance work for a short period of time. I think it's meant to

be two weeks or something like that. Yeah, And that's just like how they did it. They rotated people in and out of stations and lights and this was there whatever their next stop. Yeah, because it's literally a functional thing as lighthouses to keep ships from crashing, right, so they have to, you know, make sure everything's functioning, do some maintenance work, some light repairs and roofing and etcetera. And that's what they're there for. Yeah, because the lighthouse

gets beat up. You gotta paint those things like once a year. The seagulls pecking, all the seagull stuff is phenomenal. There's a whole credit at the end of the movie that's just seagull crew and it's a huge list of people. I don't don't know if it was a joker now, but I don't think no, No, I think they had like wranglers. Yeah, for sure. You got the scene where

the beats that seagull to death is fucking brutal. It really made me laugh when it sne came up like it's brutal, but it also is very cathartic when you just finally there was a bit I think. I mean, parts of this movie seem like a black comedy. It's weird. Yeah. I think. The thing that's interesting, though, is there's a line that you don't even you can't hardly tell when it gets crossed, Like even in that seagull beating the

death scene. Yeah, it's comical and muppety looking at first, but then all of a sudden, he's just holding this bag of guts and you know, black blood and stuff, and then it becomes kind of disturbing what started off as funny. I think that's a good kind of microcosm of the whole movie, you know what I mean, because it's like it's funny until it's not, and then it

gets real unfunny pretty quick, you know. Yeah? Yeah, Um, I mean, let's let's talk a little bit, I guess just about the look, uh, and maybe some more about the sound. Does anyone know much about how they shot this? So they shot it on actual black and white thirty five millimeter film, uh, double X that a Kodak makes, and they use lenses from Pano Vision, but they were lenses that there's one that's like a hundred years old. Heard that, and then there's other lenses in the set

that are like from the nineties. Um. And they had to have them kind of modernized and fitted to the cameras that they're using, and um, you know, so that all their accessories and so on would kind of be inner compatible. Um. And they also shot with a blue filter over the camera, which is kind of unusual for black and white because it it tends to darken the image and lower the contrast. Um, but it also brings out like imperfections and skin and it's not a very

flattering filter. Yeah. I mean, this movie is not when you think black and white. It can there's a range when you talk about black and white, and uh, what I tend to think of is just that gorgeous really black blacks and crisp and this movie is almost just gray, right, which is sort of like a like the foggy, kind of hazy atmosphere and so um yeah, and they they shot in a very kind of unusual aspect ray show one point one nine to one, which is almost square.

It's it's a lot taller than we're used to seeing. Did that because of the lighthouse? So yeah, because of the lighthouse, and also because a lot of kind of early cinema was shot closer to that aspect ray show. I really like this aspect ray show. I thought it was cool. It's yeah, I mean, I love I love people. I of seeing films that play with, um, you know, aspect ratios that we don't see all the time. I think Wes Anderson for the Hotel movie did that right.

It's four by three, but yeah, close enough. I mean he's he's got like two three, five and four by three. There might be one six six in there somewhere. Yeah. A lot of television from the nineties is in a more square aspect ratio. I believe four three, four by three. Yeah, I mean that's like a TV predescreen. Yes, of course,

of course exactly. But it's interesting too. There's always a big fuss that gets made when they reissue some of that stuff and then they squish it and where they stretch it and so you lose parts of the image when they do that. Right, to accommodate a wider frame, they have to push in it depends on how it

was shot. But yeah, basically, yes, like there's certain shows like The Wire for instance, when they when they when they redid that for h D, like there was more information in the negative on the sides that they could open up. But the problem is is that when they were shooting, they only protected for like what was in

the frame. You know, so there's like stands and you know, cables and that they had to paint out and see g I to like interest redo that show basically, and you know a lot of purists myself included, were kind of like, I wish you had just done four by three because that is like that's the show I watched, you know, but I mean it looks good in six. Yeah, well this movie looks great. Uh. And it's just so like, um, so realistic and and I know that they I mean,

he put these guys through a living hell. And Robert Pattinson uh was talking about basically like for all intents and purposes, at times, it felt like they were living in the nineteenth century, you know, on set because they were there, you know, they were in a remote location, you know, Scotia. I think, yeah, you can't fake that ship and the weather was really brutal, and you know all those scenes where he's got that rickety wheelbarrow and he's going through the mud and you're just like that

that had to have been a miserable experience. You can't fake that kind of duress. You know, it's not like they got a stand in to do it. Maybe there's a couple of scenes that they did, but in general, it's like it's because of the aspect racio. A lot of it's super close up and claustrophobics claustrophobics, so he you know, he absolutely was shoveling that ship like you know, painting that house on that like weird uh Pulley system thing.

It seemed very dangerous to begin with, and then he of course falls and I don't know, like, yes, it's a real commitment of acting. That's at the very least you can you have to give it that. Whether you like it or not, you cannot deny that it is some powerhouse acting going on in that film. And it's a very physical role, like he has to actually do all this stuff. And Robert Eggers, in an interview as reading, talked about how you know these older lenses they're not

coded as well. They tend to fog up quite easily, especially in like that kind of weather. So there were

numerous takes. I think he said one scene they had to do like twenty five takes of Robert Pattinson walking into the water and uh, you know with the waves and everything, and um, they had to do that like twenty five times just because they kept having problems with the lens fogging up all the time, and so a take would be perfectly good except for that, and again and didn't Pattinson kind of loses cool with him a

little bit. I saw a thing where he was saying, at least an interview that he wanted to punch him, or that he almost punched him because they were a thin blasting him with a hose at some point to get him wetted down properly. I don't remember exactly. Yeah, I don't think it was a fun shoot. Guys. Well, it's so it's so dirty and grimy and gritty, and just like it feels like for the entire duration of that shoot, they probably didn't feel like they ever got clean.

You know, it just kind of wears on you after a while. I wonder where they stayed it's a good question. Yeah, I don't know. It couldn't have been too close to any amenity, right right. I wonder if they just rented some houses nearby or something. Yeah, yeah, probably. Uh. This is a kind of movie where, like the acting is so good and it's just two of them. It's almost it almost feels like you wish you could give them a joint Academy Award or something. It's for like best

you know, best duo. Mean there's one is not a supporting actor. I mean, they're both the lead actors. I would like to see them both getting nominated for Lead Actor, you know, for the Oscars. I think if you had to pick one, though, I would say Defoe, Yeah, just because like he gets all these amazing monologues. He gets more dialogue then. I mean, I think Pattinson's physical performance is probably a little more intense, but like as far as acting, you know, like in delivery, just choose it up,

he brushes it man. That curse that he does is a scene where he smites Pattinson's character with this insane curse and all these horrible things that are gonna happen to him, all because he says he didn't like his cooking. Yeah, that was great because he didn't even like me, lobster. You're fond of me lobster Ange. It was hard not to think of the Simpsons Sea Captain. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's totally that character. Yeah. Um, there's a lot

of chamber pot stuff. There's a lot of gross human waste. Um, there's a lot of sort of old seafaring and a no Egger's and his brother wrote this. They did a lot of really good research John just sort of the

superstitions of of the life of a lighthouse keeper. Yeah, and there's there's all these like vintage light keeper diaries that that they were reading to to actually pull not so much like entire lines of dialogue from, but certainly like turns of phrase and vocabulary and so on to kind of inhabit that voice, which they did on The

Witch too. Yes, yeah, even I think even more so on The Witch in terms of like their their lines and you know, exchanges in The Witch that kind of comes straight from some some of these primary period sources. But this one it was more like they just kind of wanted to capture that spirit and style of the matter of speaking. But the dialogue itself is more of like an invention of Eggers and his co screenwriter, his brother. Yea,

is this a movie you like? It's a weird question, but like so, you know, we've we've been talking a lot about the great technical achievements of this movie, acting, cinematography, sound design, which are all stellar, but so far, for me personally, I haven't had much to say on it because I personally did not like the movie that much.

I was very lukewarm on it. I felt like it was a movie in search of a purpose to exist in that all of these technical aspects are great, can't deny it, but I was also kind of like, what's the point. And I'm not saying that a movie needs to have some great, deep thematic meanings to have any value to me, but it just wasn't enjoyable enough for

me to really get much out of it. I don't know, like, after the first probably forty minutes, I actually found the movie a bit tedious to watch, and at the end, I was kind of like, Okay, that's just me personally, you know. Well, here was my take is it's not enjoyable in the sense that you go to a movie and sort of have that familiar experience of a hero's journey or a the character who's overcome something in the end.

Like it it is shoes traditional film narrative so much that it's it feels almost borderline and experimental film in a lot of ways, and an exercise and sight and sound and making an audience uncomfortable. Uh, because it's not very plotty. I mean, there's not a lot happens. But to what end? To what end of all that stuff? That's my question. I think I think Eggers is playing with a different deck of cards than other filmmakers. I

don't think he's making movies. I mean, The Witch was a little more traditional, but this is like he's out there man. The Witch also was in a particularly pleasant film. It's more that the Witch the Witch kind of and Eggers has talked about this that when you made the Witch, he made it in this kind of almost deliberately austere, heavy, like serious art house kind of tell and for this he wanted to bring in more silliness, more humor, you know, to kind of stand alongside the kind of austere look

and feel of it. And for me, I think I was expecting more of the tone of the Witch or something where it was going to be a little bit more like just straight laced and kind of heavy the

whole time like it. Yeah, I was like I was mixed on it, and you know, like Paul said, like everything about it from a technical standpoint, the performances, the way it looks, the way it sounds is all, you know, top notch and clearly the work of like an extremely talented filmmaker who I think is gonna, you know, give us many many great films probably over the course of his career. This one did feel a little bit like I was kind of at the end left wondering, like

what was the point of all that? Sort of It's weird. It's weird because I I like, um, I mean, I like certain movies like um, you know, somebody like Nicholas Winning Refin when he makes a film like The Neon Demon, which is very much style over substance, which is also maligned. Yeah, yeah, a lot of people dislike that movie. I tend to like that movie a lot um so, so it's so it's not it's not just that, you know, I think that the film has to have some like greater significance

or something for me to like it. But yeah, just I I reached that same point, like forty five minutes an hour in where like there was just one too many like long monologues to camera, single take kind of like these bravera acting moments where it's like, Okay, they're doing an amazing job of performing right now. I just don't know from a from a kind of larger film

ex standpoint, like what it's doing, what it's driving at. Yeah, I think he was almost just trying to do an experimental film where he's like, let me see if I can put an audience through make them feel something like these characters are feeling, because there is a little bit of that like oh man, like please let this end. You know, I do think too. I personally, I wish you would have embraced the silliness and humor even more.

I guess that's what I'm saying. I wish they had more fart jokes, because those moments of at least levity at least made me enjoy myself while I was watching it, because otherwise it's so austere and it has this feeling of take this movie seriously, you know that I wish he would have embraced that silliness a little more. Okay, yeah, it is. It is almost like an over the top, almost cartoon version of what we think of as like an art film in terms of just the black and white,

the severity of it and everything. You could you could verily, very easily tweak it to be almost like a sketch about you know, what these films are like. Did you like it? No? And that's it is a tricky question because, like you know, like I said, I didn't find it to be a particularly pleasant film, but I left it feeling away and it made me think about what I had seen, and it made me kind of want to

see it again, to look a little deeper. But I also think that you're right in that maybe it didn't have as much of a purpose as you know, a film that I might have walked away from feeling a little bit more satisfied by. But I feel like what Eggers is really good at doing is giving you, like this lens into a world that you should not be a part of, and that in and of itself as an accomplishment. To me, It's like the which again also pretty light on plot. Plot is sort of second secondary.

It's more about the experience of like witnessing this transformation and these this family's kind of deterioration, you know, in this isolated state. This movie does very much the same thing. You know, it's about seeing these two men kind of lose their mind in real time. But then you start to kind of be a party to that madness because you start losing the sense of time and how long

have we been here? And you know that disorientation that I was talking about at the top of the show, which a lot of it has to do with the sound design and the foggy vibes of the whole thing. Um. But to me, this movie is about witnessing like the creation of a myth, Like if you think about all those sea shanties and all of those like tales that

they got from the light Keeper's journals and stuff. To me, this film is actually witnessing what that might look like like of a myth or a parable or like some kind of like you know, even like a Bible story that then is like regurgitated and turned into all this lore or whatever. To that, to me is what it was, and I think that's fascinating. Well, he definitely likes to to do that deep dive into like a period and um, I mean he has like a kind of a set

design costume design background. I believe Robert Eggers does. So he's he's extremely hands on with all this stuff. He really likes using you know, the actual materials and everything authentic and um, he's very, very dedicated to small details like that. And for him, I think it's it's sort of like the sum of all that research that kind of creates this feeling of just being immersed in a period and authenticity and and all that, which you know, again,

I think it's great. Um. I just wish that from a like a screenplay standpoint, like for instance, you know, The Witch, I thought actually had a lot more going on thematically, um that you could kind of sink your teeth into afterwards and would kind of reward multiple viewings. But so more satisfaction out of The Witch, it sounds like for me, yea, even even though it's weird. I I'm not a big horror guy, So just the experience of watching the which I guess isn't wasn't that enjoyable

for me. But I think I liked The Witch more. You're saying you were scaredy pants. I'm saying, shut I'm not scared. But to Casey's point, like, I feel like I got more out of The Witch, and I feel like it's, in my mind, a better film than The Lighthouse. Yeah, what about you it, man? I thought it was like a true masterpiece. Um yeah, I mean again, not like a it's not a movie. It's not anything you're really going to quote unquote enjoy. But um, I like that

this guy is is making these challenging experimental films. Um that the ending of this movie is just so bonkers. And I loved all the all the you know hallucination uh see creature hallucination stuff and the Mermaids stuff. I just thought it was fucking great. Well spoiler alert now that we've we've already kind of done that a little bit.

But like this whole thing is I think that, uh, that Pattinson's character is in hell and that um deposed character is like some sort of his like keeper that's that's putting him through these, uh, these mind games, and it's just going to start all over again at the end because the last shot where uh Pattinson's characters having his guts eaten by the by the seagulls. Um, that's the first shot of the movie from a distance pulls back and you see the foggy shape of the rock,

and it's the same exact shot. And I think that was intentional, where it's like, this is a loop and he's going to start back over and have to do this again for all eternity, because Pattinson's character has found out to have been a murderer and you know, a bad man who in person, who murdered somebody and took

his identity at some point. Um the foe even says, you know what if, what if I'm in your imagination or this whole places in your imagination, And then that seems like a little bit lazy, but and and it doesn't have to be this, But I think that's one

interpretation that you could you could you could see. Um Yeah, Eggers says that for him, like in terms of the camera and just everything that we're seeing, the whole film is from Robert Pattinson's interior perspective as his state of mind deteriorates, and it's only at the very end that we get like a handful of shots that are quote unquote objective reality that everything else is kind of his imagination.

So definitely the wim Defoe character could just be a complete whole cloth like invention of Like would they even need two people to do like you know for two weeks? You know, it seems like you could get all this stuff done with just one, but maybe you need someone to That's that's true. That's a good point. That's that's raight. I think that's historically accurate because I did a lot of lighthouse research when I wrote my my garbage thriller, Um,

what do you what? What'd your take on the the that they had that beautiful for Nell lens, which is that was one of the hardest parts when when I was kind of doing vague pre pro for for my movie. Is fine finding a something to use as the lens. They're not cheap to get a real one, and they're hard to fake because it's such a specific thing for the lighthouse lamp itself. You mean, yeah, well the lens, it's called it for Nell lens. It's spelled Fresnel, but

it's pronounced for Nell. And it's that um, you know coke bottle, you know, ribbed thick glass that it's shaped in such a way that it casts light further um, and it's sort of the star of the show. If you're gonna do a lighthouse movie and you can't can't get around it. And that was sort of the trouble we were having there, like, jeez, what are we gonna

do for this lens? But um, they got a real one, of course because they had the resources and it looked amazing, But what was your take on the lens and the light and you know what he was hiding up there? Because it's never really Maybe part of the lack of satisfaction is is you don't really find out anything in the end. You kind of catch like little glimpses of but there's no good there's no great payoff. Yeah yeah, yeah, Like the Witch had that really great payoff at the end,

yeah yeah, and this doesn't really have that. Yeah. Well, I mean yeah, for for me, it's kind of the whole lighthouse thing. It's it's very symbolic that you have this thing up at the very top that you're kind of asking yourself what is it? You're catching little glimpses of it, but you're you're you're only seeing kind of the tip of the iceberg. Um, yeah, I don't know. It's it's kind of a metaphor for like buried thoughts in your mind or you know, just just something that's

kind of lurking almost in like the subconscious or something. Yeah, I think that for me, that's maybe why I wasn't as satisfied with the movie, because whatever metaphorical significance, the light has just felt kind of, I don't know, ham fisted a little bit really, yeah, I guess. And I did enjoy at the end where he actually goes up there and he's looking at the light and it's the sound gets all crazy and his eyes kind of burned out, and it's very h takes a cue from David Lynch

a little bit in that sequence, especially almost. Yeah, it's not very much like he's crossed over to the other side, something that he wasn't prepared to actually handle, and it kind of broke him. You know, I don't feel a lot of Lynch DNA and some of his stuff if you compare this to like a racer Head or something similarly, kind of like really thick atmosphere and something that was you know, every frame feels kind of handcrafted very slowly

and caringly. And the sound too, Lynch sound design his films. Yeah, it was one of my favorites, and just all the all the texture and grit and just like nothing feels casually, you know, like put together. Everything feels like it really is aged and weather. Yeah, I mean the set, it's just it feels so authentic. It's ridiculous. Like the you know, it's tough to drink a beverage in this movie because

there basically two forms of liquid that putrid, disgusting. Ah cistern water that you know he pumps out of that thing. It's just you can almost taste it. It's so nasty. And then the firewater alcohol that Willem Dafoe is just consuming, like you know, pounding, and you know it's gonna go bad, Like Robert Pattins is not drinking for a reason. And when he finally makes him drink out of this, you know, you can even hear the rusty tin mugs. You're like,

oh man, this is not going to end well. Oh and then he devolves in they run out of the firewater, he starts drinking straight caressing. Yeah. Well then they find uh, they think they find more provisions at one point, because you know they're kind of stranded, not kind of stranded, they're exactly strange and what they find is just more booze. Yeah, they being buried, just like, oh god, this is gonna

get really bad. But it gets a little fun for a little while when they're drinking and dancing and yeah, you know, you get their feeling. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of that tension going on. Yeah, a lot of spooning and just like the sexual tension overall of like you know, being on this island, being isolated. Um, like what happens on The Mermaid. Yeah. Interesting. My dearly departed old friend Billy used to say life would be a whole lot better if you could just suck your buddies

here here great quotes. Yeah, no, I loved it. Yeah, I want to see it again. I very much want to see it again because I saw it. I'm really bad at seeing nighttime movies. I get a little sleepy, and this one it's very conducive to that because it does have this drony foghorn. Did you fall asleep? Yeah? I might have dozed a couple of times, but then I was, you know, jarred awake by some crazy shit happening. You know. And Casey, I think you had a sort

of similar experience. Yes, I had Did you fall asleep? This is well? This is why I wanted to see it again because when I saw it the day I saw it, it was probably my third or fourth movie that day, and it was like a ten pm screening, so I was also like fading kind of on and off. Did you all asleep? I didn't doze, but I did the thing where your head kind of falls forward and he realized what you're doing and you're kind of awaking. Did you fall asleep? I did not? Good, I was

fully conscious the whole movie. I can say that. Well. I saw it as a daytime film because I don't go see night movies. Um. I saw the matinee in New York, and this is a movie too. New York at least is a little dirty. But it was a nice sunny day and it's a weird matinee. The worst was when you lived in l a and you would go to like the fucking Grove for a matinee and see a movie like this, and then you walk out

into what feels like Disneyland. It was like palm trees and a little like they have a fake little train trolley car that rides by with tourist and it's always this weird, shocking adjustment when you walk out outdoor escalators. Oh yeah, that's great. Um, what else we got? I mean or did we cover? It was a thumbtime I had. I had a couple of things. All right, let's go. So you know, like I said, Robert Egger's he loves to do his research for these things. We had already

mentioned some some like previous Lighthouse movies. But there's two filmmakers in particular that he's referenced in interviews, both kind of working in France and like the nineteen twenties, one named Jean Epstein or Epstein, who was like a film theorist, kind of experimental filmmaker. UM makes these kind of beautiful poetic um films, And he made a series of films in the Brittany region of France and Um which kind of has its own separate culture and history and so on.

And UM he made this film called Finnish Terrey, like the End of the Earth, and uh, it's it's about four guys on an island. They're there to gather seaweed just off the coast of the island, and then you burn the seaweed and apparently the ashes are useful for

something or other. And um, very quickly, one of the guys cuts his hand on a on a bottle that breaks, and uh, the hand gets infected and he can't use that arm anymore, and very quickly, like he's in kind of a survival situation and he's getting sicker by the day. He's having these fever dreams. And there's a whole fever dream sequence where he's dreaming about the lighthouse on this island and the lights kind of shining in his eyes

and there's all these kind of cool abstract images happening. Um, very clearly I think an inspiration for this movie. Yeah, it sounds like it. And uh, and eventually there's there's like a whole rescue that happens to kind of get him off the island. And nineteen I think nine when you made this. It's an interesting, interesting movie because he he does this thing where he cuts away to these close ups, and oftentimes those close ups are in slow motion.

It almost feels like Peck and Pop or something, but it's like forty years before Peck and Pot did it. In the Wild Bunch, so very very innovative. Cool filmmaker there's also like a lot of handheld in that movie, which you never saw in nine hardly. Um. And then also it's it's it's almost like half documentary half narrative because um, it's shot all with people that are native like that live on those islands, and um, they're they're

non actors and they just have these amazing faces. And of course it's a silent so they don't have to deliver dialogue or anything, so it works pretty well. That's one of the filmmakers he referenced. Then the other one another French filmmaker of that period Johan Galeon who um made a film called The Lighthouse Keepers, which again is you can actually find it on YouTube. There's a really terrible quality copy on YouTube because it it doesn't really

have a modern day available version. Yes, yeah, that was the only one in the lighthouse most exactly just a father and a son, yeah, in a lighthouse situation. And so you know, I think it's I I do like that he is so dedicated to doing his research, doing his homework, and um, I'm mean I think he's going to make a number of great films. You know, this one is next well his so his next one well, he he was trying to keep this under wraps, but some details leaked out. So it's called The Northman. Uh,

it's a Viking movie, like the tenth century. I think I think the Foe is going to be in it again. Um, and I don't know too much else of the plot details. I think you can find kind of like a little summary online. But Eggers was kind of like peeved that the details kind of slipped out. Yeah. Interesting of Viking movie. That really does not surprised you know, sounds right, seems perfect. Yeah, are you gonna hate that one too, Paul, We'll see. We'll see crush to judgment when it comes out. Boy

Pattinson is just he impresses me more and more. Um, it's uh, it's a shame that I think there are still people that think of him as the Twilight Guy, because he's just left that in the dust. I don't know those people. Is one of the great actors of his generation. He's incredible, good times, one of my favorite movies of that year. If not, he's got the good few years and he's going to be the next Batman. Yeah, yeah, he's got that job. I gotta say, I'm excited for

it you and I'm not. I'll go see every Batman ever. I mean, who am I to say? Yeah, I'm happy for the guy's pay day, but I'm also kind of just over shuffling of the Batman. The Batman. You know. Well, I'm excited because he'll make a lot of money on Batman and hopefully that allows him to do more interesting projects. That's good. He seems to be intent on doing interesting projects. Like everything he's been in lately has been Cosmopolis, good time,

high life. Yeah. Like he's he's he worked with choices, City of Ze. I mean, he's he's made like I thought it was? Okay, it was. It was probably my least favorite Jane's Gray movie so far. What else did he do? Gosh? Um, Little Odessa, the Yards, Um we on Denight, Two Lovers, the Immigrant and the New One at Astra at Astra. Yeah, I haven't seen that yet either. Yeah. I got some work to do, so all right, I guess let's rate this puppy. Um, what do we do?

Nold thumbs thumbs one to five thumbs thumbs, Uh, casey, let's start with you. Um, I'm gonna say three three out of five thumbs. Three from yeah, okay, No, I'm gonna do four point five thumbs. Now four thumbs, okay, all right, two point five thumbs, two point five thumbs. Just a regular human with the extra little little knob or something. Yeah, um, what do you call it when you have a like a little bit of a tail growing? What's that called? I'm not sure, Chuck, I'm maybe maybe, maybe,

I'm gonna give it cheese. I mean, I'm gonna give it. I'm gonna give it at least. Yeah, I'm gonna give it four and a half thumbs. And what and that half thumb is like got a really big thick fingernail, like lighthouse Willem Dafoe fingernail that's got disgusting junk underneath it.

I thought it was a masterpiece. It was, you know, when I described it, Emily asked, you know, she didn't go to the movie in New York, but yes, what I thought about it, and so did Paul Schneider and dinner, and I was like, you know, it's hard to describe. It's like it's unlike any movie I've seen, um and bold and experimental, and I like that this guy is out there making these kinds of movies. I'm very happy

that he's out there doing what he's doing. I think it's really cool that, you know, a black and white like austere arthouse movie is you know, getting people out to see it. Yeah, and I like it. I like the idea of testing an audience and what they can take, um because it's not extreme, like you know, some kind of horror core thing where like, oh you could just barely sit through it, but it's extreme in in another way. Yeah for sure. All right, how many things is that total?

I can't do math? Let's see I gave four, four, four point five. No, I I didn't see right, four and a half and nine a half, ten and a half, eleven. I had three, so fourteen and a half something like that, all right, and went and divide that by four, and what's our average rating? Go see it? Everybody but the dumb filmmaker types don't know math. Al right, thanks, dudes, like these round tables. We'll get another one going here, because there's a lot of good movies coming down the pike.

Obviously the Irishman it's got to be on the short list. Yeah, let's do that. It's easy for us all to just watch at home because it's actually doesn't come out on Netflix till that's right, that's right here in Atlantic. Okay, yeah, yeah, we should make a good point to see that one in the theater. I think I'm I'm going to be their day one. Well, I know you are, Casey. You're gonna be running the film through the projector that is true, it's going to actually be film. It'll be a d CP.

You're gonna hit there's like some some prints that might circulate, but now it'll be DCP, DCP all the way. Guys. All right, thanks dudes, Thank you for more podcasts for my Heart Radio. Visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.