It's the Movie Crypt! And welcome to another edition of the Movie Crypt. I'm Adam Green. I'm Joe Lynch. We are recording this episode way back on Monday, December 16th, 2024. We are nine days away from Christmas, although by the time you guys are hearing this, Christmas is probably the last thing you want to hear about for another year. But yeah, this is great. It's not all that often we have people come back on the show.
But Beck and Woods, I mean, God, like the first time they came on, it was like A Quiet Place and Haunt was like just coming out, I think. And look at all they've been up to. Quiet Place. Now it's a franchise. You got 65. friggin' Kylo Ren and Dinosaurs, for fuck's sake. And now, of course, Heretic, which is, I'm sure by the time this is running, has probably been nominated for 20 other things. Hopefully, Hugh, you know, like, we're...
We're recording this a couple weeks before they start announcing anything Oscar-wise. But just like two weeks ago, they just announced that Hugh Grant got a nomination for Best Actor in Comedy. For Golden Globes. For Golden Globe. And SAG Awards. Which is crazy. Crazy, you know? Well-deserved. What's interesting, though, is with that nomination, do you necessarily say that Hugh's performance is comedy? Or is it just because it's genre? What do you mean?
Would you say that that's a comedic performance? He was nominated in the comedy category? Yeah. What? Yeah. It was a typo. I think. I don't know. But we both love this movie. And any chance, again, any chance that you can get to be able to talk to these guys, it's always fun. We also get to talk about their new movie theater.
new it's it's just celebrated its first anniversary the last picture house which is great viewer mail questions from from you guys so yeah let's just get right into it yeah let's get into it so enjoy our conversation with beckon woods all right we are super excited right now because it's very rare that we have returning guests on the movie crib but holy
these two you know, it's always fun to catch up with somebody again, a few years later, but the run that they have been on is just incredible. You first heard them on episode. 331, which was five years ago. And at that point, their movie, A Quiet Place, which they wrote, had just come out. but then like haunt as well. Immediately after that was haunt and then 65, which they wrote and directed. But the big thing that.
everybody's raving about, which hopefully you have already seen before you listen to this is the movie that they just wrote and directed heritage. Yes. You got it right. Which. Hugh Grant is being nominated left and right. It's absolutely incredible. Please welcome back to the Movie Crypt, Scott Beck and Ryan Wood. Yay! Hey, Adam.
Joe, thanks for having us back. Thanks for having us back. And thanks for, I can't believe we were just saying, like, it's so inspiring that you guys are filmmakers, but then you also religiously keep up with your amazing podcast. It's, I don't know how you do it. but it's really, really fucking cool. And I can't believe it's been five years already. It's crazy.
That's all well and good, but the one thing that Adam didn't mention is also in that time you opened your own movie theater. Yes, you opened your own movie theater. That's way cooler than a podcast. That is... I subscribe to the newsletter. I'm on the Instagram. I'm always going like, why the fuck do I not live there? The last picture house, which is in your hometown. I love even just like the fact that.
You guys have cultivated a theater there for the locals, but you also made it like a... fun place for filmmakers to go you know like i love the fact that you bring people in and stuff like that but we'll get to all that um first question right off the bat topher grace how the fuck i didn't even know it was him until afterwards no one knew no we've gotten on big action so many times which is fantastic because um you know it's it's a small role it's uh it's uh
to a certain degree a cameo um i don't know if we're we're going into spoilers but i'll tread around here let's let's throw the spoiler alert up now because if you haven't seen heretic or as adam like to call it heretic um which is the porn version um it's out on VOD Now. It's been out in theaters. Obviously, it's been out for a while, which is great because it's a testament to how great this movie has kind of sustained itself.
I know you saw it a couple weeks ago. I saw it a couple weeks ago, too. And it was well over a month since it's been out. And my theater was fucking packed. It was packed with people. See, we went to the 10 a.m. screening.
on like Tuesday or whatever. So it was just my wife night. It was amazing. Especially because I had COVID at the time. So if there was anyone else in the theater, we were going to have to leave. So it worked out well. But this is one of those movies that, okay, now I've thrown spoiler alert out there.
This is one of those movies where, and I feel like all of your films have done this as well, because I've seen Haunt in the theater. I've seen A Quiet Place. I saw 65 in theater. But this one is one where you want to feel the... like the audience temperature while things are unfolding. Cause there was a lady who was next to me the entire time who went, Oh, get the fuck out of here. Oh, get the fuck out of here. What? And I kept thinking.
She's not liking this movie at all. And when we were walking out of the AMC Century City and she was like, best movie of the year. 20 minutes in, my wife was like... Best script ever. Best script ever. My wife very much is hates everything. Well, no, no, no. She's very much like. Hugh Grant's character in terms of her looks, opinions. Yeah, she's just always smiling and charming. But wait, going back to the Topher Grace thing, though.
Was there any pushback about that? Dude, if we're going to have Topher Grace, everyone should know it's him. I mean, I don't know. It's tricky because we wanted to cast somebody that the audience is a familiarity with because we're intentionally building up an anti-climax. We're kind of, you know, we're pressing the misery Richard Farnsworth. button.
Sheen, the scat man crawlers and the shining button. And we're kind of leading you down a road where he's either going to save the day or get killed. It's one or the other as movie history has taught us. And then we're giving a third kind of hopefully surprising, but also.
kind of comically anticlimactic resolution to that character. So we are, our feeling was like, Oh, we hope like the audience senses a relationship senses like, okay, this, this kid, this is really going somewhere. This is like, we're building something up.
here um but but we also didn't want it to be distracting like wait that's is that toe for grace so it was like we're trying to thread that needle and i don't know if we did but um but uh so i think that's why we have a recognizable unrecognizable uh uh actor in that role but usually whoever is financing it will be like what the wait what did you guys do if we have this huge star what
No one even realizes he's in it. Like for an actor, that's a dream. You're disappearing into a role and no one even realizes it's you. So there was no... oh it's just 824 i mean they're just the they're just the coolest yeah i mean they they that's kind of like a blanket um statement like that extends to this topher grace casting is they really listen to filmmakers. And if you have an instinct, they will be happy to let you chase that. And they're populated with so many...
smart film lovers in their company that it's not like they put on mandates or they're like, oh, you're casting Topher. You have to use them in a bigger, bombastic way.
they understand the intent. They take the time to listen to understand the intent. So making this movie was like a balm to the creative soul because it really did... to reignite like the the pure love of cinema from our standpoint but also working with cinema lovers from their standpoint by the way i don't want to skip over the fact that you guys said that you saw the movie in theaters thank you so much and thank you for seeing our other films in theaters and
I think you mentioned AMC Century City that I used to work there. I used to like rip tickets and, you know, serve popcorn. And like, that's just, that's, it's so cool that you. made the effort to see it in theaters and, and, and super cool that you, you saw it at, at the, at the, at the home turf century. It's a great theater.
So as you probably remember from the last conversation we had, we go on a lot of diatribes. And this one in particular, what's funny is that the only time that my wife and I could go see the movie at that time was at the Century City. go to the amc burbank 16 which in my opinion has one of the best like mixes of audience members you have professionals but you have a lot of just fans who go that's what you really want you know you don't want every
out-of-work screenwriter sitting there going like, I could have fucking gotten that A24 deal. It kind of sucks the life out of the room. And when we went on, when we went to go see the movie a couple weeks ago, you know, again, packed house. And it just, it like that audience has a different vibe. Maybe it's because it's like in smack dab in the middle of fucking, you know, Hollywood, the Nakatomi is right next door and shit like that.
But I that what was interesting was that I usually I stopped going there because of all of those out of work. you know like industry people who are just going to the theater because they're like pissed off and they don't have any money and they usually go in very cynical how do they go to the theater all the time if they don't have stubs card man the fucking stubs card that's the way you do it century is an interesting place It was a lot of like really wealthy people from like Beverly Hills.
like, unrelatable wealthy people. And they would, like, try to tip you, you know, here, here's $30. And then, like, our manager would be like, you can't take tips. And, like, it was, like, kind of a weird vibe. I met... Oh, my God. Why am I blanking on his name? Hans Zimmer? I met Hans Zimmer. I didn't mean I'd serve. Oh, you met Larry Cohen. Larry Cohen.
growing he uh he was with um a friend who was asking me like wow like what do you want to do when you grow up or when i grow up i was like i was well out of college at this point um and i said that like a screenwriter and i want he's like oh you gotta meet larry um and and and then she brought larry over and um and it was such a it was so surreal because we're such huge fans like obviously
um his commercial work uh like his like hollywood work of like spec writing with with phone booth and and cellular and all that yeah Exactly. But of course, like then his like the cool films that he had made as well. And he was like so generous with this time and like sat there and like talk to me for.
an hour. And that's like one of the fun things about working with the movie theaters, the random people you, you come across, but century city is a bizarre mix of yeah. Random movie goers, industry people. And then just like.
crazy and then like tourists and like people who are like don't live in and in los angeles as well um i have two quick things before there's some sort of structure to this conversation um the first one I think you guys are aware of the charity event that we usually would do it every Christmas, but Yorkethon 9, we had to push off to the spring because of...
filming so obviously there was no yorky thaw on this christmas um but sue and dell at dark delicacies gave us a full set of haunt figures that you guys autographed for the silent auction which uh i'm sure There's lots of fans out there who hearing this, I'm sure that's going to bring a lot of money to save a handful of dogs. So thank you for that. And then my other question, and this was even a question. I guess that was a statement.
Is that terrible? Hugh Grant's character in the movie, Mr. Reed, was that inspired at all by Darren Brown? No, actually, no. it it was a handful of so many different people but like um Christopher Hitchens, if you were stuck in a room with Keith Ranieri of the NXIVM cult, Richard Dawkins. I mean... like for us it was like so many atheist thinkers um that we were we were thinking of but like darren brown
was not somebody that was like top of mind, but I totally see the connection. It's not somebody we talked about, but it actually does. it does make similar similarly to that um james randy you know i was gonna say james randy next yeah because it's those hyper intelligent sophisticated people who they're not like trying to shit on religion they're just trying to
you know, break it down and show you the problems. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's been a fascination of ours for years, because it's, yeah, you know, heretic for anyone who's seen it, they may have a certain point of view. But I think our point of view was like, the fear of certainty the certainty that oh i know for sure that there is a god or certainty of like there is no god and it's it's the degree at which james randy always picked apart
people that were preying upon others and yes thing that as uh as a foothold to gain whether it was money or power or whatever it was that's what felt dangerous um for james randy and that's what feels dangerous to us and that was was definitely one of those core um examinations but i mean anyone that is in like the mentalist you know community or or whatnot where they're not trying to prey upon others but pick things apart
That's endlessly fascinating to us. We love stuff. I, one of the things that I love just in cinema in general, which considering that last night I went to go see. Gladiator 2, which is just all scope and all bombast and huge, you know, like landscape shots and thousands of soldiers on fields and everything. And truth be told, I was fucking bored to tears. Whereas you can take something like this, which is three people in a room.
and create tension, create story, character reveals. There's such an intricate weaving of so many different elements that all ultimately come down to the script. But when you start to... crew up so to speak there are people in your crew that become tantamount to sustaining that kind that level of interest throughout an entire film First off, I wanted to ask just in terms of influences for this, because I think all of us as filmmakers, when...
You know, and I know that you guys are big movie geeks like us when it comes to when you when you kind of set yourself into, OK, this is the subgenre that we're making. We're making a quote unquote like a. one location kind of situation. Yes, you know, spoiler alert, it obviously it branches out into other rooms, but for all intents and purposes, other than those few moments that we cut away in the Topher Grace character.
It's mostly, you know, it feels like, like you said before, like Misery or Wait Until Dark or even no one talks about this movie. And I was like the whole time I kept thinking about it. Do you guys ever see the mammoth movie Oleana? yeah oh yeah that's a huge influence for us oh yay good i'm like i walked out and i told my wife because she's like we were going back and forth on movies i'm like i wonder if they watched oleana because
Andre Sekula was the DP on that, and he also did Pulp Fiction, but he also did Reservoir Dogs. And Tarantino was first to say, like. It was all of those shadows that Andres Akula used in Reservoir Dogs that made that warehouse always pop. It never felt flat. But he was also, where am I putting the camera? Where's the camera placement? What are the specific cameras?
movements that deliberately tell the story or or hint at a character um i think two of your secret weapons or maybe not so secret because i know that you guys have talked about them a little bit in another podcast and stuff but um Chung Hoon Chung's cinematography is fucking unbelievable. I've been a fan of his like you guys since old boy and just even just.
Simple shots of looking up at the ceiling and seeing the light and seeing where you're putting the camera or the moment where the camera is slowly creeping around Hugh as he's starting to reveal things about Blueberry. and stuff I thought was so masterfully done and then Phil Messina who I love I love his work I think the way that he created the sets in Mother or sorry
You got to put the exclamation point in there. It becomes a character. So when when you guys were essentially greenlit and you're starting to put your collaborators together. what was it what was it about these two guys in particular these two crew members in particular that kind of radiated to you in that you know This is the type of movie that could go off the rails immediately if you start losing the audience's attention from a pure cinema standpoint. What was it about those guys?
Well, so the movie was was very it's it is literally. um a two-hour conversation with three people in a room intentionally so because the the thing we were asking ourselves is like could we and i know this sounds obnoxious and cringy so just forgive me for two seconds this is just i'm just trying to be honest we were asking ourselves like can you replace the jump scare with conversation can like a lot
dialogue be as terrifying as like a monster popping out of the shadows that was so so we wanted to do this conversation piece but we got very nervous as you can imagine early on of like um you know we're movie we're movie guys and um and and we hated the idea of like doing a stage play on on screen that that uh wrong to us and so we kept saying, like, how do we make this the most cinematic chamber piece that you can kind of come up with? And so that...
Of course, immediately you go, who are your partners that are going to help visualize the film? Phil Messina, I think, was probably the first person that we hired. We, too, love his working mother. obvious correlation between mother and this in this film where it's like this one
one set that has to evolve and, and, um, have layers to it and, and, and, and be engaging for the audience. Um, but, but also like, there's just other work that he's done, like, like Steven Soderbergh Solaris. Solaris. I was just going to say, fuck man. No one. gives that movie enough. I get it. It's a remake. But if you're going to take the condensed version of the original film, you cannot do any better than what Soderbergh did. And in record time.
totally i hate to say it i'd watch that one a lot more than oh yeah but yeah what phil did in that is amazing It's amazing that the production design of that film is so impressive. And our assumption, I don't know what the budget of that movie was. Maybe it was a big budget movie, but our assumption was like, it was like kind of like a hybrid, like mid tier studio indie type.
thing and to create a world and in a science fiction world, that's, that's credible, but also gorgeous. And anyways, so just been huge fans. And so he came on very early and helped it start brainstorming what this house is going to look like because.
there was a technical component of like, we wanted the house to be almost a Mobius strip. It kind of is this endless thing that circles back on itself, but they're also like practical, like demands that needed to be answered in that. And so he's got. You know, he's an artist and he can he can read the script and understand it from story, but then he can also like crack the puzzle. And then Chung Hoon, I mean, my God, like.
What a what a genius. But like I was I was just thinking about our first meeting with Chung Hoon. We actually we had worked with him before on like a brief shoot, and he was just so wonderful to work with, so collaborative. which to us for being as staggeringly of an artist as he is, we were so happy to have that ease of relationship.
And when we first talked to him about this, these ideas never made it into the final movie, but we love the bold conceptual thinking where he was like, let's hide cameras in the wall and let's shoot in like black and white. And he was like throwing these. crazy ideas that were so unorthodox but that's exactly like the sweet spot that we want to be in like these bold swings that you're not afraid to be you know left of center of the convention
And we really we we wanted someone like who's a visual virtuoso because we're like, all right, let's make this the most cinematic thing ever. The irony is that Chung Hoon, like like we started Scott and I storyboard everything because. There's two of us. So it helps us mind meld and visualize the movie and get on the same page, basically kind of hash out some arguments and differences of opinion. So we go through this process and we kind of start.
talking to chung hoon who's again super collaborative and sweet and we're showing him our storyboards for like the first like three scenes like the park bench and we're just meeting the characters but you know we're but we're having fun because it's it's we love we love movie making so we're like all right the camera
Like Dolly's over here and then there's an axis change while they're talking. And the first half of the scenes on this side of the line, then we go over here and we're like pitching all these like very visually dynamic ideas. And Chung Hoon's like.
oh that's that's super interesting like i really love what you guys are pitching but i do wonder should the first you know 30 40 minutes of the movie be boring like should we should the opening shot actually be really flat and simple and should we have somewhere to go and we're like of course this is why you're a genius you know what i mean it's not like it's not even the obvious kind of stylish That's the storytelling that he's.
he's so good with. And so he really reigned us in for that, for the earlier parts of the thing. And we just thought that was so, so fascinating for, for somebody like him to kind of approach it from like a slightly different point of view than we originally had. Going back to the. to the script and the conception of this at any point as you guys started throwing ideas around were you concerned with the fact that anytime you
You even like approach religion, you know, you're going to ruffle some feathers. Like there's a lot of people that really get angry if they're challenged in the slightest when it comes to that stuff. And have you gotten any. um, colorful feedback from our conservative friends. Oh, do you didn't see the smoke that came out of the Pope's, uh, chimney? It was a big eight 24 with a circle around it with a square. It's weird to see. I have some.
very religious friends who welcome questioning and they love to question it even themselves and think about it. Not like, but then you have other people who just know, shut up. You're evil. Yeah, no, I've got like, I think the impetus for it is Brian and I, we've known each other since we were 11 years old. And so the idea of like talking about religion, why do we come to the conclusions that we do, whether we're non-religious or religious?
or fascinations with cults or like we were talking about James Randi and his dismantling of so many people that were predatory upon others that wanted to believe in a higher power. That's all born of like our personal interest. I mean, we have this really close friend, Travis Shepard, who the three of us have gone on like these giant diatribes and explorations of Mormonism. And that was like.
over the last 15 years or so. And and I feel like this movie is an extension of the conversation that like Brian and I have always had with our friend Travis, where we just want to do something very personal. And that's not to say like the other movies that we've we've. written or directed aren't personal but it's this is wearing it like very much on our sleeve but it's also very personal to everyone viewing it because everyone's coming from somewhere and feeling a reaction to what's being said
It's so true. And I think I feel like the reaction we don't have, we're still kind of like a little bit in the eye of the storm, but the reaction we're feeling is. it doesn't feel like the reaction comes down on belief or disbelief. I think there are believers who like the movie and don't like the movie. And I think that there are non-believers who like the movie and don't like the movie, but it hasn't.
hasn't been like universally alien between one or the other. I think what you guys did so well, though, is that it's a it's more of a challenge about what do you believe and why do you believe it? It wasn't, there was no point of view of this is all right, or this is all wrong. It was questioning. It was, do you actually believe that or not? I appreciate.
that you are able yeah but thank you for saying that because it we felt like um absurd like what are we going to like end the movie and go and now the one true religion is it's like that would be what we're trying to say with the movie uh one way or the other it's like uh yeah yeah the certainty is not you know we do not have the answer that is what But that is where the terror comes from. That is why.
all of us are i assume on some level afraid to die because who knows for sure like they're that's very frightening and i think similar to the the oleana reference which we we certainly were inspired by like that that movie and and that play as well you get to the end of that and there's so much to chew on there's so much to debate about gender dynamics and especially in the educational system but
I think those are the movies that Brian and I just love. And so we were like, if we can try to set that as the bar that we try to hit, I'm not saying we did, but if that's our ambition. Then that'd be fun. That'd be really engaging to have this movie like our friends see it. And then we can actually discuss, you know, these these ideas of religion, especially coming from Iowa and the community we grew up in, which is just.
predominantly Christian, you know, it's a little bit of an echo chamber. And so people just... take their beliefs for granted without truly challenging them, at least in an outward way with conversation. So I think we were inspired by that own sense of upbringing and what we saw in our little bubble growing up in Iowa. Everyone knows the only people that there's an afterlife for are Jedi Knights.
I saw the twinkle in your eye. They get to come back. You're kind of see-through and blue. It's nice. I want to get, if you don't mind me getting a little granular because. You know, one thing that we don't talk a lot about on the show or enough about that all four of us have gone through is the coverage politics. When you have three actors like Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East.
Three amazing actors who are coming from, I wouldn't necessarily say different disciplines, but they are three amazing actors who could... on their own command an entire day of masters, overs, you know, like oners, what have you. When you have the three of them in a room. uh you know knowing how prepped you guys are knowing that you have very specific shots that and this is one thing that i completely from a filmmaking standpoint that maybe some moviegoers don't really know how to verbalize but
you know it is that there was a lack of coverage that it wasn't just you know master over over um there's one shot in particular where hugh is all the way squeezed off to the left of the frame oh yeah just when he's starting to reveal that you know maybe the missus isn't in the back And I remember watching it going,
But that's not a, you know, or maybe it was, who knows, but that wasn't a, hey, we just found it in the coverage. You know, that was a deliberate choice. But the thing is, the dynamic, and I'm sure that, you know, Hugh's been through it for, you know, many, many years already. maybe Sophie and Chloe a little bit less so, but when you get into the mode of, okay, which side do we shoot first? Do we give it to Hugh?
and let the girls kind of go off of him or, and I've had this before with certain actors where they're like, no, no, let them go first because I want to be able to kind of see where they're coming at dynamic wise and then build off of that. Yeah.
with those three actors did you did you find that there was a like i guess a formula for how you wanted to approach each scene and did you go through the entire scene Yeah, so, I mean, usually the rule of thumb, and this wasn't for everything, but we would shoot the scenes, not start to finish, but like if we have a...
You know, the living room scene, which is something like 15 pages. I think we shot over the course of like three days where we would shoot like six pages and in one sitting and we would actually just set up the camera and start off just really with. plain like master shot and just really capture all three performances. And it was a way for us to all find the rhythm of the scene because it was so dialogue driven that we wanted to figure out.
how do we do this is there something in the first take that we discover that's spontaneous that we want to add to the blocking and just kind of observe that which is very different than how i feel like brian and i have shot our other movies where literally we
start to finish and we know exactly you know 10 seconds into this scene we're going to be in this shot and then you know 15 seconds later we cut to this other shot like we very much edit in our heads in real time as we're making these movies but We knew the performance had to be the showcase first and foremost. So while we did storyboard sequences and we knew where we needed the camera to be for certain moments.
we wanted to be more freeing for the actors. So that meant starting in these wider shots and then starting to like move in tighter. And we usually, if I remember correctly, we usually went to Hugh first. Yep. And. But but there's no there were no egos on this. It wasn't like we we could have started with the with the with the girls, but we liked like we felt like the more exhausted they got and the more.
it became real and the less they were thinking like the better they were. So it was, it was kind of great. And Hugh, you know. he's always kind of on like his bad like he'll he would always say like all right like let's just do the you know let's just rehearse and do the like bad version no acting like no acting but like his idea of no acting is like
oscar-winning performance he's just he's got to be so thrilled over this i mean to be getting he's got a golden globe nomination at this point right he's got a sag award nomination is that right he's doing well he's really proud of the movie and he was really damn excited to like come do a genre movie and like get into it and like do something different and a little dangerous and a little gross. And he.
He gave us everything. I got it. I got to be. But I think I want to say it's because like Hugh and the two of us felt. Like we could fall on our face at any moment with this movie too. So there was like this crazy fear and anxiety that we always had. We're like, are we going to sustain an audience's attention?
with a majority of just dialogue and how can we make it interesting but that like it was one of those pressure points that in retrospect like we're so grateful to have had um chasing us every single day of being on set because it it made us think on our feet sometimes. And if we felt like something wasn't necessarily the right choice, the three of us would have that conversation and try to course correct. So it was a lot of pressure, but it was a good type of pressure.
finish the, I guess the question you asked is we, we actually, we would run really long takes. We would run, I mean, we would do from any given angle. Sometimes we would do like five, six, seven pages. Sometimes the actors would just.
keep going beyond what we kind of agreed upon but they were just in it and they were just in the zone and we we'd let it roll and we shot a lot of masters and um sometimes moving masters sometimes just um kind of wide statics but we just tried to let them go and really um in in some ways changed how we had been directing movies in the past. This movie was all about performance and trying to humble ourselves.
in service of like whatever they needed. And we were kind of constantly asking, checking in with Hugh mostly, but Sophie and Chloe as well. Like how can we help you? How can we service what you guys need to be your best? Well, especially after coming off of 65, which is, and please don't take this the wrong way, but for a movie that felt so much about the prep and the animatics and the, you know, the kind of scope and scale.
Sometimes the actors get swallowed up by that. Sometimes literally, whereas here it's the actors who are doing the swallowing, you know, no pun. And, and one thing that I wanted to compliment you guys on, which is for a part like this. which has made huge ripples in the industry right now because there's like three different projects that I have that are going like that are in development, whatever. And all of a sudden.
hey, is there a part for Nicole Kidman? Or is there a part for this actor or that actor who've never really done hard genre before? And I'm like, wow, where did that come from? Oh, it's because it's the hue effect.
because no it's true but now because Hugh said I want to do genre now all these actors who might not have done genre before are all going well fuck man it worked for him you know and they're all lean into well nicole hitman wants to do a vampire movie or something like that sure let her do it you know but i'm so curious like do you guys think that's going to be good for the bit like i sometimes question like you have a lot of
filmmakers right now. I'm not going to say good or bad or whatever. I'm just, it's just an observation, but you have a lot of filmmakers who like that. Let's just say their entire career was like, you know, making romantic comedies and now they're doing a horror movie. And it's like, on the one hand.
wow, that's really interesting, like fresh, you know, like new perspective, you know, new different talents coming into the genre. On the other hand, there's the kind of cynical part of me going like cash grab. Why are they doing it? the only thing they can get made right now but they don't actually have the like genuine love of the of the genre so to speak do you know what i mean like i like to hope that like everybody you you do something and god willing
it gets a response and it does well. And then you get put in that box and maybe the whole time they've been doing romantic comedies. Look at remember when we first met James Wan, he wanted to be doing romantic comedy. Yeah. Yeah. And he's never done. Like he's done everything but at this point. But I guess you are right, though, where it is different, where when you're doing genre, no matter how much money it makes, no matter how popular it is, no matter.
how many conventions there are worldwide in every city, every weekend, it's still considered a step above porn by a lot of the executives in this business. Yeah. and then and then they use the term elevated horror to be like oh yeah but this other thing over here you know that that's not you know one step above porn so it's two steps yeah there's there's a weird reactionary movement sometimes in in horror whether it's you know
people that are coming into it from a career that otherwise did not carry over. But I think with Hugh, like what we loved about Hugh coming into it is one. layer of the white worm you know he did have that dude i would have spent all day asking him about fucking like fucking ken russell and layer the white worm it would have been ridiculous there's so many
There's still so many questions we have for Hugh about Lair of the White Worm. We're so curious. But it was also that like Hugh carried with him like outside of it or rather concurrently with his romantic comedy films. he he had an edge all the time like that entire like decade of the 90s and early 2000s he had he had an edge there was a wit there was an intellect that he was um using to like combat uh the the phone hacking scandals in the united kingdom so you knew he was like
definitely anti-system. And it just felt like all of those traits of Hugh lent itself to like this thriller and this horror and being able to channel that darkness that... He loves to bring out, you know, in media interviews and not just like answer a question at face value, but find like a very Hugh Grant way of answering it. And the other thing that I wanted to mention, too, that I was.
dreading this is you know again i went in there going like oh my god hugh grant this is gonna be great i love those actors and everything and the whole time i was praying that there wouldn't be that switch that so many of these characters have where the second
That blood hits their face They turn to 11 Then it becomes a Gary Oldman performance Where it's like There's never a moment Nothing wrong with a Gary Oldman performance No but there's like the There is the, because it's genre, there is the kind of tendency to... you know, go for the cheap seats or go like, I can be big and bombastic now because, you know, we're off the rails. Was there ever a discussion of like, do we go that way? Because I think, again, it was something that I.
I guess I've been conditioned to expect from other movies and other actors who do that, those moments and it never happens, but in a good way. Like I think the fact that he stayed somewhat mannered, he only screamed. It's like that thing that I'm. sure you guys deal with too.
I'm not a screamer on set, but when I did, every once in a while, the whole crew listened. I think that's in general. But if you scream all day, then everyone's like, oh, fuck, Michael Bay is doing it again. I'm just going to go to my fucking trailer. I've never screamed. Really? Maybe that's why your movies suck Maybe I should start screaming Start screaming more Was there ever that discussion of Do we need to crank it up now?
Really quick regarding screaming, we do ask ourselves sometimes like if you have to be an asshole to be a great director. Our hope is that the answer is no. And we're always trying to be as nice as possible and not scream. But we do wonder because some of the greats, I think it's a different.
different film film used to be a very kind of it still is a little bit about bullies and screamers but i think it's phase out anyways um your question no i mean he was very much that it's all about the character for him and the character was kind of
in a certain way there was like um there were maybe elements in the script where where reed gets a little bit like a slightly more unhinged towards the end of the movie but it was never um it was never anything overtly dramatic and um and his process is just all about What would this character do? What would this character be? He writes like a backstory. Excuse me. He writes a backstory about the character and every take is slightly different.
Because it's like he's performing it for the first time. It's really unlike... pretty much unlike anything we've experienced. Yeah. And it's really cool. I feel like we're the benefactors of him, you know, being a working actor for the last 40, 45 years and just. Having enough experience under his belt to know what the right notes are to hit, it really became a director's dream because not to say it was easy, but he he was so damn prepared that.
You don't have to have deep conversations about like the character's backstory, the motivations or whatever. Like we worked that out, the three of us, like in advance during pre-production. So for four months, it was emails flying back and forth. He would question certain lines and understand the intent of it or challenge the intent of it. And it all meant that homework was done before we had cameras rolling. And then he could just live in the embodiment of Mr. Reed. Well, he was.
so in the embodiment of mr reed which was just it was just so great to see because we're so used to just seeing him being charming and yeah lovable But he was so in it. People have asked this before, especially of actors on the podcast, like when you're done with a role where you had to play a despicable person or a bad guy or whatever. how does it take you a while to come down from it and oh boy i mean i don't know i think after this one hugh grant must have needed just a little therapy
And now it's time for Hollywood therapy. The doctors are when. That's right. It's time for everyone's favorite part of the movie crypt. It's time for Hollywood therapy with Dr. Arwen. This is where the. four of us do the best job we possibly can answering your more personal questions on behalf of the good doctor we would let her answer but she's a dog all right uh our question grant version of a oh that was good thank you that was good it's charming uh this
Question comes from Charlie. Hey guys, I'm typing this through clouded vision. So I apologize for any typos or confusing sentences. My dad died today. I don't know what to do. Our relationship struggled for many years due to alcoholism and drug addictions, but after a few health scares, he became sober and our relationship started to grow strong again. It's absolutely true when people say nothing prepares you for the death of a loved one because I'm lost.
What I miss the most is hugging him. I look back on it and all I can think is, God, I wish I had hugged him more. I know this won't get easier and only time can heal these wounds, but what do I do now? This happened so unexpectedly that I have to put a pause in planning my wedding to plan a funeral It kills me knowing he won't be attending or even standing up there next to me on my wedding day
I feel so lost guys. Any words of encouragement or any kind of suggestions on how to not let this destroy me? Thank you guys. And to everyone reading or listening to this, please give your loved ones a hug. That's one thing you will miss the most. I think. you should probably start this. Why? Fuck. Because you've lost a father. Yeah. Um, uh, I know the guys are like, what the fuck did we get ourselves into? Um, I, yeah. Uh,
Well, thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate that you did. It all comes back to, I hate to use the term media memory, but... you know, that's part of my life was movies and he wasn't as much a part of it. Like it was my mom. That was one that always fostered my love for cinema. Whereas my dad was not really a movie head, but he knew that.
that's what connected us or even if it was like those sunday nights where it's like all right what are we watching jaws to revenge all right fuck it let's go you know like he wasn't as into it but he knew that it made us happy um so All those times that I ever got a chance to go to the movies with him, like I specifically remember going to see movies like Serpent in the Rainbow or Creepshow 2 or Silence of the Lambs, all three of which have very...
you know, kind of squirm inducing scenes that you don't want to watch a movie with your parent, like afterwards walking out going, what did he throw on her and hit her hair? Like when he said, look at the blood. My dad's like, well, we'll talk about that in a few years, you know? But it was those movies or those experiences, because I find seeing a movie as being very experiential, whether you're seeing it in a theater.
or watching it at home. I think seeing it in a theater, you're actually making more of an effort to go to. And for me, it was like having those moments and having those experiences. So my answer, to be honest with you, is... Kind of relive them in a way like I found that like the first two years that I that when I when I lost my dad I kept going back to all those movies and I was watching them as if he was there
He also was a big music fan, as many of us all are. But there were specific... you know songs like or specific artists that i knew he listened to in the back of his garage when he was working and i would put those on it was kind of like um someone mentioned it's kind of like lighting a candle If you can continuously light a candle.
In whatever form that is. And for me, it was movies. Or for me, it was listening to music. Those are the things that felt like I was connecting with him still because I was having that memory of... Kind of sitting there awkwardly watching Creepshow 2 and going like, oh, man, that girl's boobs are really like, wow, I'm really like, I don't know how to deal with this. And my dad going, I'll talk about it later. Just keep watching the movie. But having those memories were huge. You also.
have something in common with charlie though and that like this happened right as he's planning a wedding when your dad died your first son had just been born like weeks so you have this big life-changing celebratory moment
right when something this horrible loss yeah takes place it's it's just a man like i still don't feel like i've gotten over it i think it's just because i don't think you do no you don't you know and they always say time heals and to a degree i think it just makes it easier to cope um but
Anytime than any of those movies that we would because we would also my family would go to Sunday night, we would go to the movies. And, you know, like, for some weird reason, I specifically remember seeing Star Trek. The one where they go to... The Voyage Home? Yes, the Voyage Home. But that's what I mean. Like...
I would normally not even think about that movie as much as I do, but I remember sitting in the theater, watching it with him, and he laughed so hard during the scene when they were in the bus. Remember when they're getting confronted by the... punks and they're like the the most generic version of
punks that you would see like walking down this, like the sound stages, whenever you would watch a movie that's like in Hollywood, you see like, you know, the, the gladiators and you'd see the show girls and you'd see a bunch of punks walking by and like, Oh, that's stage six. Like they could not be. more generic, but my dad laughed so fucking hard during that. And even saying it now brings like a bittersweet feeling to me, you know? So try to find those moments, you know, cause yeah.
life is going to be abrupt like this. I don't remember the exact adage, but it's like... you know, when, when you try to make plans, God's got other plans, you know, like don't, don't try to fit anything into a conformed box in terms of like, well, this wasn't supposed to happen. Cause my wedding was supposed to, you know, like it was supposed to be at this time. Don't ever.
Do that, you know, because you're only setting yourself up for disappointment or heartbreak. But try to find those things, whether it's whether it's movies, whether it's, you know, going to certain places, even food, things that will. remind you how much joy you had with him or even just feelings that you had for him and just hold on to those and revisit those because having those memories, like you want to, you want to be able to.
collect those and to hold on to those as much as you possibly can. Scott and Brian, anything? Yeah. You know, I... i my dad's still around but he was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year and um it's like it's one of those things i've been doing this exercise uh where It's about gratitude. So I think it's very similar, Joe, to what you were saying, where I think about like when I feel like that dark cloud of like sadness or whatever, I'm like, oh, but I think about this moment that.
My dad took me to like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 and we got Wendy's beforehand. And like we never we didn't go to the movies just the two of us too often. But I'm like. That was a conscious decision. He was like, I want my kid to have like a fun time at the movies or thinking about grateful things where I'm like, I'm grateful that my dad was like.
71 by the time he or 70 by the time he was diagnosed with cancer not 40 you know like there's so many little things that i start uh thinking of that i'm so grateful for that it lines like whatever the shit storm that i'm feeling that day it helps me cut through that a little more clearly to think about the things that i actually am very
before in life when all of a sudden it can seem like a big mess so i i don't know that's like a small exercise that i've been doing that has helped and granted everybody's situation is stressfully different but it's at least something that um costs you nothing to try. And, and I've, I've personally found the benefit in that and it helps realign any, any tough days that I have. Just some, I guess, sort of practical.
advice um along the lines of everything you guys just said um there's a tendency when you go through any type of trauma like this to immediately and it's completely understandable internalize like this hurts i feel this i feel that and you should and i think some of the best and worst advice that there is to give but it's the only true advice is that it will get
it will find a place in time even if it doesn't get better or easier you're always going to miss them you're always going to regret time you didn't spend together um but it you you will find a place for it Guarantee you, but don't do what I've done in the past. I've been working on this as well. But like when Dave Brockie died and it came out that it was drugs, I immediately blamed myself.
How did I not know? What could I have done differently? Maybe if this had happened, he wouldn't have been in Richmond anymore. And he would have been with our crew and he wouldn't have been doing that. Or maybe like it just it wasn't. Productive in the least but once I started trying and again, this took time But when you remember and you're sad and you're heartbroken But you try to remember
the triumphs and the good things. And, and then all of a sudden one day you find yourself laughing about something, even when it was a complicated relationship, like you said, Charlie, that you had with your, your dad, it is going to get better. But try be sad and be bummed out, especially right now. But when you think of them along the lines of what everybody else said, try to connect it to one of those good memories. If it's.
hugging him whatever it is hug somebody else like he hugged you and uh you'll only be like joe said lighting a candle and that is arwin's final word It's funny. I've listened to at least four interviews with you guys on like some of my favorite podcasts. So I feel like you're probably so sick of all these fucking questions at this point.
But I wanted to throw a little curveball your way, just in terms of technicality. You know, we talked about your DP. And, you know, one of the things that I find is a... I'm trying to think the right word. It's like a hidden hindrance sometimes when you're dealing with a very particular cinematic process. But you guys shot this anamorphic, right? Correct, yeah.
So when you shot anamorphic, one of the things that I like, cause I've, I've shot two films anamorphically. And one thing that I never even, as many tests as I've done, you know, even like. You know, kind of doing like a pre-light the day before. Once you actually get into the mechanics of your shots, like the days, you know, like the shots that you know that you need that are going to tell the story and do it as dynamically as possible and get the quote unquote coverage that you need.
Anamorphic can sometimes be feisty, I guess. Especially a dark movie like this. And there are beautiful moments in the movie where you're moving the camera in very specific sort of ways.
did you ever find when you were shooting that like the anamorphic was not doing what you wanted to that was in your heads that was in your prep like did it did ever throw you for a loop and did is there any moment that uh that you were surprised by that you got because there's one shot and it's always so funny and i'm sure you guys deal with this too when you're watching a movie sometimes certain shots just stick with you like like
Fucking peanut butter at the roof of your mouth. There's a shot. I'm trying to remember who it was It was one of the I think it was I think it was Chloe's character where it's a shot of her feet and she just kind of like gets up on the balls of her feet and the way that it shot.
It's funny, I don't even think I even remembered that Chung Hoon had shot it before, because I think the credits come at the end. But I went like... oh my god that's such a Chung Hoon Chung shot like just the way that he shoots he just has a very particular way of like in The Handmaiden the way he would get inserts they just felt very much like him yeah
First off, did anamorphic surprise you at all whenever you were shooting? And then secondly, are there any favorite little shots that you guys have from the movie itself? Well, I'm glad you picked out that little character detail of her like standing on the balls. I love that shot. There's a few shots throughout that that are very simple, but they're so important. I remember like.
Eli Roth telling us like before we went into shooting hot, he's like, get those little inserts. Nobody's going to care about except for you. And then you'll be so grateful and editorial and. That's stuck with us. We did shoot anamorphic on 65. And I only bring that up because I remember certain limitations where we designed, you know, whether it's the cockpit of the spacecraft or escape pods.
You know, you only have a finite amount of room that you can build those before they start feeling like they're too massive or silly. And the trick with it that we carried on with Heretic is always find a complementary set of spherical lenses that you can get. just a little closer, or you can, you know, change the stop a little bit if it seems feeling too dark. But by and large, we love anamorphics. We love the tendencies of the lenses, especially.
The ones that Chung Hoon brought onto this set, which were these older Ukrainian lenses. And I think the thing we loved about it was the distortion, especially when you would do pans. they first enter the um the library where we reveal like the books and then all of a sudden you see the purple door and you see the altar and then the green door and there's this oddness about the lens qualities that also
you know, echoes the oddness of entering this room. I think the difficulties are just when you are in a dark space or you're trying to get super tight and super close up. And so that depends on getting... you know a zoom lens or or building the set we build our sets a little bit just a little bit oversized to just there's room to move the camera around um because that we do scott's right we have run into that problem many times
Did you have flyaway walls? We did, yeah. It was one of those. We had flyaway ceilings. The whole set could like... that's like one of the amazing things that you don't get to see from watching the movie is just like how nimble the set actually was and like what
the things that could get torn away and quickly. And it's like one of those things I sure you guys have been in this situation a million times where you're, you're building a set and, and you're like, you're asking, you know, the crew or your production designer or director, like, okay, this wall, like.
uh you know can you get can you take the wall out to put a camera oh yeah yeah that wall can go away okay well how long will it take oh it really fast you know the wall just comes right out and then really five minutes later three hours sometimes Yeah, hours sometimes. Exactly. This was the one time where when Phil was like, yeah, that that wall just flies right out. It literally just flew right out. It was crazy. So it's a lot of that.
pre-production mentality of like how do we make this efficient so we're not you know wasting so much time our whole like producing angle on this film was all about um we didn't have a lot of money to make this movie but all the money went into days like making sure we have enough days to feel like we could competently make a movie and then shooting and sequence. Cause we felt that was important for the, Oh yeah.
Shooting 10 hour days also, which we had never done before. So we shot for like 30 days, but they were 30 10 hour days. Wait, was that like French hour days? Yeah, because it was... like we've we've done plenty of those like 12 hour days that then turn into like 14 with overtime and and you start losing your edge at least we feel like we did and it was something that hugh was very much
an advocate for to do order hours. So we didn't really have overtime, right? So we had the days we had, but we, and we had the hours we had, which was not a lot, but to hear the rest of this episode, go to patreon.com slash the movie crypt for only $1. Every Monday, download it right to your podcast app of choice.