TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

Ladies and gentlemen, and everyone in between. Emilia Perez is the most Oscar-nominated film of the year, with 13 nominations, including Best Picture. It's nominated for 11 BAFTA awards, including Best Picture, Best Director Jacques Audillard, and Best Actress Carla Sevilla. Emilia Perez, back in cinemas now and on Netflix. When passions run high and secrets run deep, when plots twist and turn and turn and twist, when you love and loathe characters in equal measure...

Ooh, I think she's a wrong one. Yeah, it's the shifty eyes. Nothing brings us together like great TV. And a TV licence covers you to watch all TV channels plus BBC iPlayer so you can bond over your favourite soaps and dramas. Search TV licence together. I don't like blood and guts But I love them when they're lengthily disguised Cause nothing's more relaxing than the cries of death and lust. So spend a ten.

Paul, Matthew, it's all been leading to this for me. Intrigue we trust with Grieg and Rust. But it's really been up to this moment, beginning with In Voorhees We Trust with Gourley and Rust. It's true. This is one of my... all-time favorite movies, and I was just reading how the director Thomas Alfredson considers this a horror movie, or shot it like a horror movie. Yes, should I read that quote? Because I thought it was...

Pretty wonderful because when I was watching it... I'm just saying my point is it's fully justified. I think so. I mean, when I was watching it, I was like, I definitely got the horror vibe. Yeah. Okay, so this is the director on, and this is from Brantley Palmer's notes. He says, the director, the horror, the horror is 90% inside people. The gap between reality and what's happening in their mind, that's what creates the horror. Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy is a horror.

precisely because you don't know how far this conspiracy and lies stretch. It could be much worse than you think. I want to recreate that doubt and fear, even for those who know the book already. And when he said, I want to create that doubt and fear, I figured he meant the Meryl Streep movie doubt and the Mark Wahlberg movie fear, right?

Because both of those elements are in it. That's right. He always wanted to do a follow-up, Smiley's People, but only after he had done remakes of Doubt and Fear. Only after doing... what I understand to be a perfectly executed production of The Snowman. Oh, boy. I've never seen the snow, man. Oh, I have. You have? Yeah. Well, I mean. Did you get all the clues? Mr. Police? Yeah. Mr. Gourley? Listen.

He made Let the Right One In, which I think is an amazing, amazing movie. I would use the M-word, Matt, masterpiece. I agree. Yeah. And I would use the M-word for this movie, too, Matt. I would, too. Oh, God. I mean, you don't even have to. to like this movie you just have to respect it yeah no but i i adore it it's oh it's quite i'm so glad to hear it i have so much to say i don't know why this is one of my favorite films of all time

Well, bring me back to 2011 when you first saw it, man. Okay, well, first of all, I just started dating Amanda. Hey, those are two great things. Did you guys go to the movie together? We did with our friend Brandon. So it was me, Brandon, and Amanda. Was Brandon, when you guys came to pick him up, he was like, oh, so this bicycle just became a tricycle and I'm the third wheel. How did Brandon feel? You know.

I think we'd also gone to see the reissue of Titanic with him. So for some reason we had this groove going. I don't know what it was. We were like movie swingers, movie throuples. And I really kind of threw it on Brent. I didn't mean to. What a weird line of question. What am I, George Smiley looking for the mole? I'm like, what's this third wheel doing there?

We all lived in Long Beach. Or no, Amanda actually lived up here in Thai town. And I lived in Long Beach and so did Brandon. Brandon was my buddy. But Amanda would ride the gold line down, the subway down, and we'd hang up. hang out or I'd ride it up. And then she was down for a weekend and it was, I think a kind of rainy day. And I was like,

I really want to see this movie. Do you guys want to go see this movie? I'd never read the book. I think I'd seen some of the BBC series with Alec Guinness. But I knew that, like the same way I felt when I met Amanda, I knew I loved her. Oh, that's beautiful. I knew I loved this story. Yes, that's good. There's something about it.

And we went and I just sat in the movie theater, not like with my mouth open, like blown away, but like the version of blown away that is... commensurate with this movie, which was like a dull kind of, like a low thrumming or throbbing or something. For a movie that doesn't have like, isn't a spectacle or pyrotechnics. Yeah.

As much as a non-pyrotechnic movie can blow you away. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember walking out of the theater, like looking at them like, huh? Huh? And they're both kind of like, I didn't really follow it. And I was like, I get it. And I barely did. And there's even... I'm sorry. I'm not one to read a lot into movies, but I think...

You've got Shakespeare, who purposely puts some ambiguity into things, so you would apply some stuff to it, Hannah being the prime example. This movie has some elements of that, I believe. And so I just feel like there's so much to talk. I think there's treasure. not to use a circus term, to be found. There's also treasure you can bring to it and add to it. Every time I watch it, I'm finding new levels. Every time I read it, I find new levels.

Ooh, I want to hear about it. Oh, my God. Yeah, I mean, for me, I couldn't follow the story. You couldn't? No, no, no, no. I'm here to elucidate. That's, yes, what I'm hopeful for. But I was still... You would think that my reaction would not be this. But I liked how much the movie wasn't like...

spoon feeder-y? No, it sure isn't. Or was it like hand-holding? It's not even feeding you. I mean, I loved it though because... It's putting meals outside of your jail cell just outside of your reach until the end when it gives you a dry biscuit.

It's the Pirates of the Caribbean ride with the dog with the set of keys in its mouth. Exactly. And we're whistling to try to get the dog to bring the keys over. Because... I don't know if it's just the mood I'm in right now with movies, but I'd say in general...

As soon as I start feeling a little spoon feeding happen, my defenses go up. It's like the opposite of what it's supposed to be doing. It's supposed to make you lean towards closer because you're like, oh, they're giving you information. But sometimes it feels a little too sweet. Sweaty or desperate. So I was in the perfect mood for this movie. That's like, it is kind of a cat.

Of movies. Oh, it really is. It's a sleepy cat who at one point just pounces, but lies dormant for all day until it pounces. And I know I said no pirate. Technics are a spectacle, but I think the movie is like a spectacle and like...

The aesthetics. The aesthetics. I mean, it's like... And the shots, the cinematography, Hoyt Van Hoytema. The cinematography and the art direction, all of that. And then the multiple... locations and the way they'll show up at like just at the very end there where there's like a crummy corner of a building in the rain. I don't know if it's on one of the schoolyards or something like that, but I was like, oh.

To go here and set up a whole shot for the day just for this little corner, the dedication of this movie is what blows me. It does blow you away, even though it doesn't have... Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Harrier jet blasted a guy off on a missile. I mean, there's never been a more adult... espionage movie than this and I don't mean like oh kids can't handle it I mean just like like you said it's not spoon feeding you action or spectacle it's just pure paranoia and intrigue and conspiracy yes

And at the heart of it is the least reactionary character ever, by definition, George Smiley. He's the anti-James Bond. I think it's brilliantly... illustrated by the little scene in the car with the bee. Uh-huh. So the bee's buzzing around after Mendel, the guy who has a history in the George Smiley story as well. Oh, interesting. Uh-huh.

Keeps bees. And they're in the car. They're driving in, I think, the Citroen. And Mendel's swatting the bee. And then Peter Gwilliam is swatting the bee. And George Smiley just looks at it. Doesn't react. opens the window and lets the bee do his thing. Just like he lets Carla do his thing. He lets Bill Hayden do his thing. And he's just, he's the ultimate.

patience monger you know yeah and then in Brantley's notes how uh it sounded like that patience uh mongering was maybe slightly based on what he was what Gary Ullman was acknowledging in uh John uh la cara yeah yeah that it was like oh um it would just be like the tilt of a head or something that would let you know he was interested in something and like i i noticed that in the scene where um When Benedict Cumberbund comes in and starts smacking around Tom Hardy. Yeah. And...

most guys, they'd go, hey, hey, come on. What are you guys doing here? Let's break this up. And he just lets it play out. He lets the bee buzz around for a bit. Before he looks at the other guy and then just gives him a little nod, like take care of it. Yes, yes, yes. When you said it's an adult movie, it's like the most adult espionage movie. It's adult and, yeah, the sort of not holding your hand. But it also seems like the most adult in...

Like, it's all about a group. So maybe adult and maybe even more like midlife adult. I think there's a reason I didn't get into Le Carre until I was... Well into my 40s. Because it all seems like people who are past their idealistic period. Definitely. And have entered an age of cynicism or sort of world weariness. And...

That feels like something that a teenager going to see a spy movie isn't going to be able to necessarily plug in. It's like all people accepting that the world can't really be... fully changed it's like oh human behavior is always going to be the same no matter what and that's the only thing you can really rely on is like uh people's bitterness rather than their idealism and stuff it's uh and it's bleak and it's set

in the mid seventies when England's in decline. Yeah. And the world to a certain extent is in decline. I mean, I don't want to be one of those people who like tries to. make things timely or something. But I was like, it's crazy that a movie that was made almost 15 years ago. About a time period that was 40 years before that. I feel so resonant to these days. Like watching something that was sort of like post-empire economic.

like constraints and a sort of like leaking old department that used to have power it's now falling apart like all that stuff was like really resonating i mean the that first shot where it's like an old door And you hear like rain leaking, like either in the hallway or inside. And then it enters into John Hurt's apartment. It's all like pack ratted and hoarded up and stuff. I was like, oh, this is not...

M's sleek office that James Bond goes and visits. But the way he still signs with a C as if it's this almost purposeful... Like, you want to play this game? Let me show you how it really is. Yes, yes. John Le Carre's novels are so often bleak, and many of them die, and with the main character dying. unceremoniously sometimes. This one, and there's the trilogy, the Carla trilogy of novels. Oh, here I have two of them.

Oh, yeah. My precious first edition. Ooh, look at this. Yes. This is given to me by a listener, Ian, who is so kind. We're showing this on the live. Well, hey. Oh, my gosh, Matt. We're so excited to talk about this movie. We haven't done. So this is with Gorley and Russ. Yeah. You're Matt Gorley. I'm Paul Russ. We're doing a little series here based on espionage.

conspiracy thrillers. And right now we're on the live stream where Matt is holding up his book. And you can join the live stream with us at the patreon.com slash with Gourley and Russ. We have bonus episodes and commentaries. We just did a commentary on Friday the 13th, part five. So fun. And just right in line with this movie. Yes, they're both austere. Drab.

Characters who hold their feelings close to the vest. Like the hillbilly mom who says, would you shut the fuck up? Can you imagine if she just walked the hillbilly? mom from Friday the 13th part 5 walked into She's not far off from Connie Sachs in this. I'd love to see Tom Hardy seduce the redneck woman. It's crazy. The Friday the 13th mom.

Yes. Looks a lot like the woman, I think her name's Beryl Reed, who plays Connie Sachs in the BBC series. Oh. Curly hair, kind of similar face. Uh-huh. Interesting, yeah.

That's awesome. I mean, hopefully she'll appear. Well, thank you for handling all that business. Oh, yeah. So now with these books. Yes. And this is Smiley's People. Is Smiley's People part two? It's part three. Part three. So I have... the second one coming in the mail and it's called The Honorable School Boy and it features a little bit of Carla as a kind of specter and George Smiley's in the background but

It's not really. It's really like these two are the stories. Is Tinker Tailor the first? Tinker Tailor. It's not the first George Smiley, but it's the first of the Carla trilogy. So the first George Smiley. The Carla? Carla trilogy. It's three books about Rhea Perlman's most beloved character. Yes, that's exactly right. And they completely cut that out of the movie. I was paging through these books and I noticed the beginning of each chapter, it says, Norm!

And I was like, why would they do that? You're shattering the norms. So wait. When did he start John LaCara? John LaCarrie. John LaCarrie. What's a little way that I can remember to pronounce? Don't get... Perrier, Carrier. Carrier, Carrier, Carrier. John Le Carre. But say it how you like. In fact, you wouldn't... Le Car! His name's David Cornwell. He changed his name to have a pen name. So he was himself a spy.

Briefly. Yes. So is that what the pen name is kind of for? To make sure he was... Or no, it's just a pen name sounds cool. I believe it was because... I believe so. And then he became a full-time author. But he has this crazy... life where his dad was a con man and a charlatan and used him in schemes and all this stuff and there's a semi-autobiographical book which I'm reading right now which is kind of

known to be his best piece of literature so le carré is kind of like a genre writer first but recognized as really one of the few genre authors that is also like really a literary you know, master. Yeah. And I would have to imagine that if you're going to write a, or if you're going to cook up a spy story.

Literature is a pretty good place to do it because you can get in people's minds and know what they're thinking, but you don't know what the other person's thoughts are. But maybe the author can jump into that other person's thoughts. It's a little maybe harder to do in movies.

So he wrote some spying novels before Tinker Tailor? Yeah, and many of them, not many of them, but a number of them featuring George Smiley, namely The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, which was his breakout success. Heard of that one. And that's a great... Great movie with Richard Burton. He's not George Smiley in that, though? Or is George Smiley just in the background? George Smiley's played... I forget the guy's name. He only played him once. There's also...

A Call for the Dead, and they made a movie of it called A Deadly Affair, where James Mason plays George Smiley. Oh, cool. And Maximilian Schell. I really like that movie. Then there's... There's like a murder mystery with George Smiley that's not even political. Oh. Why can't I remember the name of that one? Sherlock Smiley? That's it.

And then he lets him go for a while. Then he comes back with this trilogy. So it goes Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. And you'll notice like at the end of this, they figure out who the mole is, but they don't get Carla. Carla's kind of a specter in The Honorable Schoolboy, but The Honorable Schoolboy concerns a character named Jerry Westerby, who's in this movie played by Stephen Graham. But what's weird, and I don't know why they did this, that character...

in the book and also the miniseries, is named Sam Collins. I don't know why they switched him to Jerry Westerby. Jerry Westerby in the book and the original series... is kind of a gadfly reporter who also works for intelligence. And then he goes on to have this story in, I think it's like Southeast Asia.

Then we get back to the real story with Smiley's People. And so if you want the continuing story, you can watch the BBC version of Smiley's People, which is pretty good and has Michael Lonsdale from David Jackal. And Patrick Stewart plays Carla. Never says a word. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. And then that's... He never says it worse. It's just Patrick Stewart just bopping around like Waldo style. Barely. Like, do you have to squint? You see him... No, he's got a beard. He's got a beard.

But is he bald? Yes. Oh my gosh. So it's like those magnetic... um, games, you know, where the, you can move the hair up to the head or to turn it upside down. Yeah. So God's magnetic pad for Patrick Stewart. He moved the little magnets down to his face. And then Smiley's in multiple.

further books, but these are his main ones. And you'd know a lot of Le Carre titles, maybe even if you don't know their Le Carre, like Constant Gardner, Our Kind of Traitor, The Night Manager, Little Drummer Girl. Oh my... Gosh, yes, I know all those titles. And so is that, those aren't necessarily, and I'll coin this term right now, those aren't necessarily guaranteed smileys? Those are not a one of them. Smilies, I believe. Legacy of Spies.

It seems like he should be in a series of comedy books if his last name's Smiley, right? I know. Well, that's Le Carre for you. I mean, if anything, based on this movie, it's not George Frowney. No. It's more just George Neutrally. There's a continuation set of novels I hear in the works. George Neutrally Jr. Well, and then Smiley...

because of when he was born and works in the history of these stories, would be dead by now. In 2025. And even back, Le Carre died, I think, in 2017, but was writing Smiley. virtually up to his death. And even acknowledging that when Peter Gwilliam sees him later coming out of the shadows to help him, basically, almost like Batman, like a... middle-aged, round, bald-headed Batman with owl spectacles. I mean, Batman's cowl kind of automatically makes him look like he's wearing Iowa. Yeah.

Owl spectacles and he's bald. Yeah. Do you think maybe that's what Batman's going for? It has to be George Smiley. Yeah, he's like, you know, I'm kind of a handsome, dashing Bruce Wayne type, but when I put that Batman, I want to look like I'm wearing glasses and I'm goddamn bald. how Kennedy read Fleming, Bruce Wayne was reading Le Carre. And then...

So he's acknowledged as being too old to be alive, but it becomes kind of like James Bond in the sense that Smiley will exist through time. So now... We talked about this on a previous podcast, but Le Carre's son, Nick Harkaway, wrote the first Smiley continuation novel. It's excellent. It's so good. Yeah, you said it's possibly better than the old man's work. Well, it's hard to say that, but there's a little bit more fun.

to be had because not all Le Carre is very fun. And when I said better than the old man's work, I didn't mean his dad. I meant Gary Oldman's work. No, I didn't. Or the old man. Wasn't there a movie called the old? Oh, it's the TV show with Jeff Bridges. Yeah. Gary Oldman should be an adaptation of The Old Man and The Sea. Oh, yeah. And then John Hurt plays The Sea. Oh, yeah. It's just the two of them in a book. I'd watch that. Rest in peace. I think John Hurt is the only cast member.

That isn't with us anymore, which means they could still theoretically do Smiley's people. I know they never will. That's right. But it'd be amazing if they would. And bring back Patrick Stewart to play Carla. Yes. Well, and then also the way the... I don't know if this is necessarily a meta-level thing they were going for, but I do like how the little network of spies, it does kind of break down to how...

each of them as a thespian sort of functions in the acting world. Like John Heard is like the... Oh, yeah. The master. The master. And all of them probably grew up watching him and being like, oh, he's the shit. And then Tom Hardy's kind of the guy who's like, I just go out and I do these workman jobs for you.

but I'd like to be a movie star. He's out in the field or in the parlance of this movie. Forgive me as I throw in these terms. They only mention it once in this movie, but it's heavy in the novels. He's what's called a lamplighter. His... The guy who does the kind of... Tom Hardy. They're called... Oh, why? Because it's like the guy who has to go out at night and just do the... Like in the old days, yeah, get out in the field. And they all work under Toby.

In this movie, he's called Esther House, but in the series into the book, I don't know why they changed it for this movie. It's Esther Hazy. Huh. It's weird that they changed it to our friend on the pod, Joe Esterhaus. And I can't get it out of my head because of Guinness, who's just the way he says it. Toby. Esther Hazy. Yeah, and he says Toby too, right? Even though that's the actor's name too? No, Toby Esther Hazy is the character, David Densick, who plays him in this, but Bernard Hepton.

Plays him, and he's so good in the... And Toby features a pretty major character in Smiley's People. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. When you... Toby survives the call, by the way. You don't really see it in this. In a way. Uh-huh. Yeah. When you mentioned... that Kennedy read Fleming. Yeah. That reminded me, I want to tell you real quick. This very edition. Oh my gosh. From Roger Wood Love. That's the one that he had on his nightstand was this edition. Yes.

Oh, my God, this cover is awesome. You guys want to see it? It's got this illustration of a... What kind of gun is that, Matt? That's just like a snub-nosed, probably Smith & Wesson, but the... The reason that the trigger guard is sawed off is so you could do a quick draw and get your finger out of your shoulder, your shammy leather shoulder hose. But it allows for the... The Rose...

the stem of the rose to also fit. Yes, which is every scene. Can I just apologize right now at the top of this episode that I'm going to be effusive and talk a lot, and I'm just... Hey, buddy! I couldn't be more excited to talk about this movie that... It's so dull. No apologies necessary whatsoever. Yeah, I love that cover, and I like to imagine Kennedy laying in bed holding this book. his wife comes to bed and is like, uh...

Oh, you love that book, don't you, Jack? More than me. Yeah, you love that book more than me sometimes, Jack. Hey, baby, calm down. Just let me finish this book. That's my, uh... Does that book sing you happy birthday, Mr. President? In fact, it does. There's like this weird promotional thing inside the book. Like the old thing, like a greeting card thing. Happy birthday. I told you about the...

My friend Neil Campbell, he had a Rolling Stone that had a Twix ad in it. And when you open it up, it was like, it wanted to say Twix, but it couldn't get the X out. So it was like, Twish. One for me, none for you. Two for me, none for you. Twish. So I guess in this John F. Kennedy version, it would be like, happy birch day to...

Yow. I'm sorry. I'm just beside myself because I don't honestly don't think I either didn't remember or didn't know that this is fucking signed by Ian Fleming. What the hell? Oh my god. Oh, my God. I didn't pay a ton for this. Where did you find that? I found it online. And it's signed by the man? That's crazy. Oh my God. And this one, I think I've told before, because I think it happened while we were doing this podcast at a used bookstore in Long Beach, The Man with the Golden Gun.

I got this first edition. They didn't know it was the first edition. I bought it for a hundred and it's worth about a thousand. Oh my goodness. Yeah. What would you say a signed copy of From Russia With Love? From Russia With Love. From Russia With Love. From Russia With Love. I don't know. I really don't know. That's cool. It's not in the best condition. That's probably why I got it at that price. My first editions, I have six first editions of three Bonds.

And three Le Carres. Yeah, let me see this first edition of Thunderball. Oh, cool. They're either on the affordable end in nice condition, or I bought them like, you know... not so nice. I just wanted to have them. So people who can't see the covers, Thunderball is a skeleton's hand with a knife through it. I say this in like the... the best way. These illustrations look like...

Like a high schooler is like... Yeah. Like, what if a skeleton's hand is holding a couple of playing cards with a knife through it? I know. And then the man with the golden guns, there's like two dead flies on the... Yeah. Or just flies. I don't mean to say that they're dead. And then the golden bullets. They're certainly dead by now.

Yeah, isn't it? I always think that whenever I look at the book cover and it has a fly on it, I always think, oh, that fly's probably dead now. It breaks my heart. I do think about that about pets in movies. Oh, definitely. Definitely, yeah. I mean, I don't even try to entertain the thought when I'm watching Gremlins and I think about...

Mushroom. Or what about when you just see mushrooms growing in the grass? Those are certainly dead by now. Oh, I know. Watching a movie with a garden in it is so hard because I think about all the plants that have wilted. Let's get back to the Constant Gardener. That's why they never die. He's out there constantly. Well, the Fleming detail I was going to share just four days ago. Yeah. My wife, she gets a FaceTime from her friend, and her friend is...

I love her friend. She's great. So we all were talking to her on FaceTime, my wife, my daughter, and I. And she's in Jamaica. And she's drinking a Red Stripe. And we're like, you are living the Jamaica life right now. And she's like, I am, I am. And I'm like... And we said, where are you at? No. She's like, I'm at Goldeneye. What is she doing there? She's at a friend's 40th birthday party.

Oh, my God. Have you ever been to Goldeneye? No, but I was in talks with Goldeneye Resort itself to do... This was like a few months ago. We were in talks to do a thing where I would... You could... As a Bond fan, as a podcast listener, whatever, you could book a trip there and I would run a series of seminars. Oh, damn! The ideas I was pitching were like...

We do cocktail, like cocktails of Bond at the GoldenEye, Ian Fleming. I mean, that's worth the price of admission right there. Yeah. Then screen a film and I would either we'd watch it together. I'd do a commentary. Oh, I was going to do. A meal in each course was paired with music from a James Bond movie. Hell yeah. So like what were you the... I hadn't even gotten that far. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then do a reading of one of the novels as... Deserts are forever.

See? I owe you a little something for that. The man with the golden bun. It's just a bun course. Oh, thank you. A single bud, but it is golden. And then I was going to do like readings from the books as Ian Fleming.

Hell yeah. And then I think we would have like a formal cocktail ball at some point and people would get to stay there. Yeah, because when our friend told me, told us that she was staying at Goldeneye, I didn't... inquire but I was wondering is it like a resort like it is now and then is it but before that was his whole estate it was just and it was it was a modest house on a lot of land

And now there's bungalows and stuff built around it. But the Ian Fleming house still exists, including the little corner desk where he wrote all the Bond novels. Oh, cool. So when people go there, how many people can it hold? And is it one island? I think it's on Jamaica proper. And I don't know what the capacity of the resort is, but there's lots of little bungalows and stuff. Yeah, yeah. And I assume it's a pretty penny. I believe it is. Yeah. And it's run by, oh, God, Bob Marley's manager.

I forget his name. He's older now, but he bought it a couple decades ago or something. And he was the one that kind of turned it into something. I forget his name, but yeah. I would love like a Bob Marley, James Bond mashup. The world's screaming for it. Nobody expects the reggae. Like, you know, he goes on global tours to play concerts. But when he's there, between soundcheck and performance, he gets up to spy stuff, and nobody suspects him.

Live in one love and let die. One love and let die. Live and let one love. One love and let tie-dye. Sold in the room to who? Well, we have no buyers, but... For your bongs only. Yes. Yes. Very good, Paul. For your bongs only. Wait. Hold on. There's no Bond titles with the word dead, is there? Half of them have some sort of... Die, but not dead, huh? Oh, like Grateful Dead. I was going to do Dread. No time to tie-dye. That's...

That's good. We noticed, Paul, you used tie-dye twice. But yeah, dread, but also the... The Dead, like The Grateful Dead. Grateful Dread. Yeah, The Grateful Dread. I'm sure there's a reggae cover band of The Grateful Dead called The Grateful Dread. If it's not, we're starting it. Yes, we are, just because we thought of it. And then...

How many people have played Smiley? When you mentioned those names, I was like, wow, that's a... Well, one of them is Denholm Elliott. What? Yep. When did he play? He played that murder mystery... I think it was a TV movie. Why can't I remember the name of it? There's the guy that played him in... It's James Mason, the guy who played him in Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Denham Elliott.

Yeah, like Guinness. And then it kind of stopped there. Everybody's like, I don't want to touch that anymore. And then Gary Oldman. So there was a gap between Guinness and Oldman. Yeah, there was a 30-year gap. Because Alec Guinness was the man who was most... When they were in the notes, they were talking about how Gary Oldman had some reticence being like, ooh, those are big glasses to fill. And then the director was like, hey, I knew it was...

taking a risk here because this is so beloved, there's been adaptations before. It made me wonder, what do you think is, when was the Alec Guinness stuff? It was like in the 70s? Late 70s. And then I think Smiley's people might have been 80. Okay. What do you think is the equivalent in America of an American genre novel that has been adapted? that to go back and readapt it, people would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa there, Charlie.

But then I wondered, is there such a thing? Maybe it was Shogun. Uh-huh. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. And nobody's ever done like a re-adaptation of like The Exorcist. No. But even that doesn't have a series of books that come out every few years that people have an affinity for. It was more me thinking, is it kind of its own special... These George Smiley books, is there really an American equivalent? It would be a bit like if you recast...

Indiana Jones or redid Jaws in a way but like again on a dull adult level it's kind of like when they recast Bond It didn't really take for people, but enough time had passed in this. If you recast, like... You redid the Maltese Falcon and dared to recast Humphrey Bogart. Yeah. Well, I guess they did this with Gone with the Wind about the same amount of time later. Remember, they did a sequel with Timothy Dalton? Yes. And I forget who played.

Scarlett O'Hara. I believe it was... The wife... Phyllis Diller. It was Phyllis Diller, I believe. It was... Oh, my gosh. Who's the... It was the wife of the Joanne Whaley Kilmer... Val Kilmer's wife, right? Oh, really? Oh, I love her. Yeah. I mean, when I watched... I only saw Gone with the Wind like 15 years ago. But when I saw it, I was knocked out by it. I loved it so much. I've never seen it all the way through. And because I thought it was going to be a boring movie about boring people.

But it's really, they should change the Gone with the Wind to Bitch and Asshole Raise Hell. I don't even remember enough to know. Scarlett, she's just a little pain in the butt. Is that right? And then a rep butler. He's a little jerk. Yeah. And the two of them, they get together and they raise hell together. It made me...

I mean, speaking of Gary Oldman, they were like the Sid and Nancy of their time, Matt. There's a funny quote behind the scenes, thanks to our beloved Brantley, who wrote that when... Uh, Gary Oldman had to do those scenes swimming in the water and he got up and went to the video playback to watch it. He goes,

I was in Sid and Nancy, looking at him now. And he didn't want to complain about swimming in there because there was men who were much older than them who were swimming in a river in October and not complaining about the cold weather. But I want to bring back the days of you swim in a river. I know. With a bunch of just old retired dudes. Yeah, it's like, forget the why, okay? The why is yesterday. The future is swimming in a river. Tired the why. Wired swimming in a river.

Yes. So Gary Oldman has played George Smiley and the polar opposite, Jackson Lamb from Slow Horses, who couldn't be more different, but kind of has the same... status and position at head of intelligence. What's different about the two characters? Jackson Lamb is a cast out. He runs the misfit spy ops. He's... slovenly uh uh flatulent he just he farts all the time oh my god burps drunken

Like asshole. Uh-huh. So outspoken, but so good. And long hair, like unkempt. It's so good. Is it the same period? No, it's Slow Horse's current day. It's a couple years ago. Do you think when Gary Oldman was... cast in that it was like some sort of acknowledgement of oh he's been an espionage thing but now he's playing somebody different I can tell you exactly because he literally turned he's told the story a couple times he said to his agent or manager

I want to play something that's at home where I can use my own accent. I don't have to wear a wig. And if it's in the world of espionage, that'd be a plus. Oh, wow. And they were on a plane and his manager was reading the script of Slow Horses based on the books. And he said, I think I have it for you right now. That's perfect. And it's so good.

I keep hearing that we're in a golden age of espionage television, and I think that's true to a certain extent. What I'm finding, though, is that the cream versus the chaff is really disparate. So... I loved the Bureau, this French spy show. Uh,

The ending didn't work for me, but there's a reason behind that. Have you ever heard about that? It's this brilliant series and the showrunner who did everything. Oh yeah, you told me. Yeah, he handed the last episode over and said, do whatever you want. Script, production.

Style, whatever. I just don't think it worked. But it didn't diminish the show for me. The show's amazing. Gotcha. So they're making an American version, or I think it's a co-production with England. Michael Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright, Richard Gere. Holy. Of this story. It's called The Agency. It's out. Oh, it's out. Yes, yes, yes. And I'm like...

Nothing could be better. I can't wait. And watched two episodes and I couldn't believe I was saying this to myself and Amanda felt the same way and so have some other people I've talked to. It's just a little boring. And which is like... Big words for me coming from loving Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but there is a difference between...

There is a tension underlying this that is, to me, so palpable. It could be the difference between a two-hour movie and a limited series. It might be, but the Bureau sure made it work. Yeah. The Bureau had a lot of humor in it. This one's really a little dry. And then I really liked... The Day of the Jackal Show, we watched that whole thing until the end. The end really lost me. Ooh, the endings. But the end of The Bureau didn't really ruin The Bureau for me. The end of The Day of the Jackal...

Kind of tainted the whole thing. Yeah. It just felt, it felt knowing, I think it doesn't help knowing it's on Peacock and you can just feel Peacock going, give us a season two.

I don't care what that does to the story. Give us the season two. The year of the jackal. No kidding. The season, the multiple season arc of the jackal. And then there's Black Doves on Netflix, which had... a lot of strengths, but ultimately like... it all just seems these things all seem driven by algorithm and data just like i think we may have talked about the big dust up between barbara broccoli and amazon about how amazon called bond content and she's like whoa

Whoa. Yeah. And Bond, you know, I think it's appropriate to talk about it right now. It's sort of like in this limbo zone, right? I read a headline that was like... No actor, no story, no director. None known. And it was Barbara Broccoli saying to Amazon, like, we're not going to just make this...

out of data-driven algorithm requirements. It's a cinematic thing. It's a family heirloom. We're going to give it the care it needs. Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you sold it off to the... The company that... They didn't. They... doles out content and makes their workers pee in bottles and not have bathroom breaks. It's because the portion of the company was owned by MGM. The broccolis, they...

have creative control, but they don't own it all. So her level of frustration, would you say broccoli is steaming? Is broccoli boiling? Seared. crunchy garlic. But God bless her for that. I mean, for real. And then you have Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which is the least... the farthest away from content you can possibly get. We'll see if they ever, I wouldn't be surprised if they develop a series of this, which I would welcome as long as they were.

All the TV versions of Akare have been pretty good. Night Manager was great. Little Drummer Girl was pretty good. I saw that they were developing The Spy Who Came in from the Cold with... Aidan Gillen, is that his name? He played Littlefinger in Game of Thrones as Alec Lemus, which is the Burton role. I would love it. But it does feel like we're getting a glut of spy stuff. And aside from Slow Horses...

There's not a lot. Yeah, what do you... That's really good, I mean. Yeah, my one question is, like, why now? Why do you think...

spy stuff is. That's a good question. Maybe because there's so many conspiracies and stuff and everybody does feel like you're either on a side that thinks there's a deep state or you're on a side that wants to see like... something made sense of uh-huh there's information out there i can sense it but i can't get my hands on it so maybe if i watch a spy do it it's like satisfying yeah but then yeah i happened upon something that first of all

I'm offended that no one has ever brought this to my attention before because if they ever knew of it and kept it from me, they were doing me a disservice. I can only believe they just weren't aware of it like I wasn't. It was apparently a big show in England. It's called Lovejoy. It's from 1986. Tell me if this is not the most Matt Gourley thing. Again, I apologize for just talking, talking, talking. I know this is a podcast, but...

It stars Ian McShane, who's Al Swearingen from Deadly. Wow. He plays an antique dealer, former con man, part-time detective who solves antique, like, capers. What? In England in 1986. It is heaven. I have been burning through this show. It is so comfy. It's like Murder, She Wrote with a little bit of an edge. Yeah. Occasionally someone will die.

There's an occasional topless scene or they'll curse. Plus it's BBC, so anytime they go into the pub, there's just like Eric Clapton or Dire Straits playing in the background. It's so, so good. That's awesome. So how does the story, does somebody come in and they're like... I want to buy an old music box for my daughter. I also have this mystery that's been giving me trouble. I mean, you're not far off. It's different every time. And he's also got this cast of regulars, like a lady.

Everybody in this town just seems to be in the antiques trade. So there's a lady that they have a kind of flirtatious, unspoken love because she's married. And then he has his like drunken... Buddy named Tinker, of all things. And then a young man who his father is paying Lovejoy to apprentice him into the trade, but he's like a heavy metal loving kid. Oh, cool. And then a bad guy.

Who plays the bad guy? Is his name Mark Tierney? You might know him from Braveheart. He's the magistrate that cuts... the throat of his new wife, of Braveheart's new wife. Oh, okay. You know what, Matt? I've never seen Braveheart. You've never seen Braveheart? You mentioned, I think, Braveheart last, when we did the commentary, you were like, oh, I just watched Braveheart, but I've never seen it. I don't know.

know how it would play today I saw it by myself in a theater in 95 and just you know ever since I was a lad I've never been a Gibson head I have to admit to have being been one. I like the Lethal Weapon movies despite him. Really? So you actually don't like him? I don't like him. Oh, wow. I like him... in spite of who he is, which is the problem. Yeah, I don't know why... You know how you talk about how Pierce Brosnan, you don't like his pain face? Like...

Mel Gibson gives a lot of like pain face. Oh, that's interesting. Cause he does, but I feel like he's the master of the hurt acting. Yeah. I think he likes it too much. You're probably right. Yeah. It's just like, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh God. Especially knowing what we know about him now, you can read a level deeper. Maybe it's a fellow Catholic, me.

Seeing the, reading the number of the other Catholic. I see what you're, you love the last couple of stations that have crossed, don't you? A little too much. You little weirdo. Why don't you make a movie about it? Yeah. And now I see it in his eyes. Yeah. He just looked, his eyes are just like sinister. You just look at him and you're like, he's the devil. I haven't seen anything since his downfall that, well, I don't think I've seen anything he's been in, but that.

I've wanted to see. I can tie this all back. This is crazy. You brought up Joanne Whaley. She's in a miniseries called Edge of Darkness. I talked about this on the show because remember she plays the daughter of the main character who dies and then he goes into her room looking through things, finds her vibrator, smells it and gives a wistful look like I miss her. It's fucking insane. That being said, otherwise a great.

Great miniseries with a score by Eric Clapton. And then Mel Gibson did a remake of that movie, Edge of Darkness. Oh, is that payback? No, it's called Edge of Darkness. It was in his fallow period before he fell. But remember, he wasn't doing great up until that point. Does it have the vibrators? I was crazy. It would like tease us with it.

It does. Because he goes into the room and looks around her stuff, and I'm like, how far are they going to go with this? And they don't. I don't believe they do. It would be great if he opens the door, pulls out the vibrator. And then like turns the camera and goes, nah. Oh, that's another thing about Ian McShane in Lovejoy. He breaks the fourth wall and occasionally will look at the camera and go like, what?

And always gives a little mini monologue soliloquy at the beginning of every episode. That's awesome. It's so good. A little proto fleabag. Yes. Yeah. It was like fleabag. Well, what if we took out the antique stuff?

And the mystery stuff, but we keep the looking into camera, Riley. There's that Fleabag quality. It's because he's a lovable scamp. Uh-huh. Ian McShane, you know? I mean, the... this character that Gary Oldman plays, George Smiley, you would think that would be not an actor's... dream role because you don't get to have like speaking of pyrotechnics you don't get to do acting

pyrotechnics. He doesn't speak until 18 minutes into this movie. I checked! I looked! And he's in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that was so cool. But I... I saw Sid and Nancy at a very formative age, and I loved his portrayal of Sid Vicious. So that might always be up there for me. But maybe more than Sid Vicious. I would say this is like Gary Oldman's best performance because you got so little tools to work with, but then he conveys so much in a look or a glance. Gary Oldman really took...

a rollercoaster ride for me. In the early days, Sid and Nancy, I loved him. And then like around the professional, you could just start to see him like... loving acting a little too much and I was kind of like oh this is crazy and then Dracula he's just so over the top but good but so over the top and then he hits the Dark Knight years where I think maybe Christopher Nolan and Thomas Albertson

or maybe just of his own accord, he starts dialing it back. Yeah. And he's never been better. I know, I think he also crawled out of the bottle. I think so. I think he sobered up too, so maybe that... You gotta see Slow Horses. He's so, so good in that. You know,

My sister is a big Slow Horses fan, and they're riding those Slow Horses as well. You got it. The other thing that I thought was... real cool about this movie was and it got me thinking like um obviously the it's the it's the atmosphere yeah and i was like oh that's the other thing it shares with horror movies is like um I started thinking of the difference between atmosphere and tone. And I was like, thrillers and horror movies and mysteries.

the x factor that makes them great that you either nail or you don't but if you do nail it it makes uh that genre great is is is atmosphere and i was like i wonder if it's because that stuff is like mysteries, thrillers, horror movies are all kind of based around the stuff like you don't fully know, you don't have clarity about it. So an atmosphere just kind of gives you like the... sensation of like well that's okay that I don't know because this whole thing feels a little like creepy and so if

I'm not understanding who the killer is or what the person's intentions are. That's okay because the atmosphere is a guiding hand. And then I was thinking about the genres where it's not like a comedy doesn't necessarily need... nailing atmosphere but it is like tone right and action movies are like it's not about atmosphere it's about like

Yeah. And maybe there's not a big difference between those two. I think there is, yeah. But like, because in a comedy, if there's an atmosphere, if it has a quality of a mystery... It hurts the comedy because having clarity about... Yeah. Kramer wants this and he can't get it. So just knowing the tone and the, as soon as I fall out of a comedy, it's usually like the tone isn't right. I'm like, Oh, they go back and forth between being dry or being slapstick.

or a movie can do that. You're so right about that. A good example actually is some Bond movies. I always found the tone of Brosnan's Bond movies to be at odds with each other where... Connery was kind of gritty. Roger Moore was lighthearted. Brosnan was trying to have it both ways. And it worked for the lighthearted stuff, but that undid the grittiness. I could never take it seriously. Then you get to a movie like...

Casino Royale is my favorite, but Skyfall has more of an atmosphere to it that is so good. And so does Quantum, actually. And then it really works because Daniel Craig's decide on something. The movies are uneven and the scripts are rough at times, but yeah, but the.

The directors usually brought a pretty good tone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would have loved if Thomas Alfredson would have done a Bond movie. Holy cow. I know. I know. Hey, it still could happen. I guess, but it seems like Snowman almost killed his... career at least in the states i hope not he's i like that had to have been an anomaly in a studio thing because you can't make two what we both said were masterpieces yeah and then follow up with the snowman and

have it be you that's doing it. It can't be. I mean, it sounds like he went into the movie and wasn't able to finish like 20% of it or something. Yeah, and also you had Val Kilmer who couldn't speak, so they had to like... fake voiceover for him because he had his cancer issue. There's a lot of factors going wrong. And when you watched this, you saw it, you said? Yeah.

what's your experience when you're watching? Is it like confusing or is it like bad? I went into it knowing all this. I watched it at home. It wasn't like I saw it in the theater. But I remember really enjoying it because not because it's good, but just be going like it was one of those days where I think it was raining. Amanda and I sat down going like, let's watch a pot boiler. movie like this that I already knew was not good so I was kind of watching it

Half removed. Yeah. And I love Michael Fassbender, who was supposed to play Ricky Tarr in this. Yeah, but he was doing the X-Men movie, right? And Jared Harris was going to play Percy Allen. I got to say, that broke my heart reading that Jared Harris could have played Percy Allen. that part I know I mean I love Jared Harris and anything but that part seems like really suited for him I was okay losing um

Vassbender. I love Michael Vassbender, but his performances, but switching him out with Tom Hardy. And Tom Hardy's really good at this. I thought it was interesting. Yes, most definitely. I thought it would have been interesting if Vassbender would have... played that part because tom hardy and gary ullman are different physical types and acting types yeah but if it had been vast bender i think the whatever the resonance of oh

Smiley's kind of looking at a younger version of himself, or they could project into each other like, oh, I could be Smiley. Interesting. I could have been Hardy. But when Tom Hardy comes in, it makes it kind of a different... Yeah, and Tom Hardy's supposed to be a field guy, so he would be more of a blunt instrument. What's interesting is the character of Peter Gwilliam, in the books, he's...

not gay or bisexual as he is in this movie. If anything, he's a bit of a ladies' man and kind of at times remarked upon. He settles down in Smiley's People, but... I'm not sure why they entered that part into the movie. This is another thing where they give him some ambiguity as they do Bill Hayden, but Bill Hayden... is both the movie doing a red herring, but also Bill Hayden doing a red herring to try to cloud Smiley's vision. He explained that if I had an affair with Anne...

You would never see me straight, good or bad. You would not look at me as a suspect of the mole because you'd be looking at me as the person that your wife... betrayed you for you know right but in the early part of the movie when Benedict Cumberbatch Peter Gwilliam is coming into the circus he passes a woman and he turns and he looks at her and that is not No one's watching him. So he's bisexual, I'm assuming. But this is something that comes up a lot in Le Carre.

And I think was a real thing, especially in the mid-century spy world, because a lot of spies ended up being homosexual, not because they were made that way, but because they were... schooled at living a double life and they kind of had it went hand in hand so i think if they were raised knowing that they weren't straight or they were bisexual they were already learned how to play a part

Interesting. And they were recruited often out of colleges in Oxford and things like that as being smart, but at times detached and had the ability. to compartmentalize. Which is interesting because with McCarthyism and Roy Cohn, they were trying to find, root out homosexuals because they, in the... Communist Party. Yeah, because they thought that that would make them easy to blackmail and become tools of the Communist Party. Yeah.

So in the books, Benedict Cumberbatch's character is straight. Yeah. And I don't know. I'm not the biggest Cumberboy. I'm not the biggest fan of it. Do you think Michael Fassbender should have played this role? Yeah. That would have been really good. And the thing I didn't care for necessarily in this movie with Cumberbatch is Gremlins 2, the new Cumberbatch.

Is that like... Keebler's soft cumberbatch cookies. He wasn't as good as like... I know it's the hardest thing probably for an actor is how do you show that you've been caught like lying? Or something like that. I don't know how to articulate it. Oh, when he's being grilled by Percy. Yeah. I like that. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Because if I, as an audience member...

can watch and go, oh, he's rattled right now. Then I go, well, then the smartest people in the room whose whole jobs are to understand when somebody's lying are going to see it. I like it in a movie. I mean, the best version of this is in, what's that movie with Viggo Mortensen? History of Violence? Yeah. Oh. Where he comes in and the guy's like, you're that guy. And he goes, no, I'm not. And you're like...

Oh, well, there's no indicators whatsoever that he's lying. So you have to, I don't know, when I can see somebody indicating lying or being caught. I agree with you. I guess I didn't catch it in this because there's three levels going on. He's lying. He thinks they've caught him, but they actually want to talk to him about something else. So he's working ahead.

when he doesn't realize he doesn't have to be working ahead. Yes, yeah, yeah, that's true. But I see what you're saying. There's a moment when Smiley says to him, this is another one of those moments of ambiguity that I love in the movie, when he says to Gwilym, we're going deep. So if you have any affairs, you better put them in order. That's when we see him go home and break up with his lover because he can be blackmailed. But do you think Smiley knows that?

And that's why he's saying it or he's just saying it just in case. I think he knows. I think if you read the book, Smiley just kind of... In the series Lovejoy, he's... Ian McShane's character is called a Divi, which is short for Diviner because he has a pre-ternational gift to be able to tell when an antique is real or fake. And I feel like at times if...

Whenever the Le Carre novels get heightened, it's that George Smiley has a secret sense and a gut instinct about people and things and situations. At least that's a Tom Hardy's character, right? You've always told me, or somebody always told Tom Hardy. already like trust your instincts about uh women yeah uh so if you have like a spidey sense yeah about people you can trust your gut about it smiley's only flaw is that when it comes to ann he can't he can't see

It was clouded by it, and Carla was so right about that. Yes, yes, that's right. That's right, yeah. Can I use the bathroom real quick? Oh, yes, as someone wrote somewhere on our pages that we should take an S.P. Onage. Oh, yeah. I could also take a Tinkle Taylor P. We'll be right back. Okay.

Ten gentlemen. And everyone in between. Emilia Perez is the most Oscar-nominated film of the year, with 13 nominations, including Best Picture. It's nominated for 11 BAFTA awards, including Best Picture, Best Director Jacques Audillard, and Best Actress Carla-Sofia. And winner of four Golden Globe Awards, including Best Supporting Actress Zoe Saldana and Best Picture. Time Magazine calls it an exuberant ode to human possibility. Emilia Perez, back in cinemas now and on Netflix.

When passions run high and secrets run deep, when plots twist and turn and turn and twist, when you love and loathe characters in equal measure... Oh, I think she's a wrong one. Yeah, it's the shifty eyes. Nothing brings us together like great TV. And a TV licence covers you to watch all TV channels plus BBC iPlayer so you can bond over your favourite soaps and dramas. Search TV licence together. Anything on the live screen, Matt?

Well, someone did bring up the show The Sandbaggers, which I don't know if I've talked on here before. It's one of my all-time favorite shows. It's a BBC spy show from, I think, the 70s. And what do you like about it? It's just like... I can't believe how kind of gritty and real it is for something on TV. Oh, cool. And it's really dated in its politics, social politics.

I love it. I started watching it early COVID when I would wake up like at five or four in the morning for no reason. And I'd go out and watch an episode every morning. Nice. The first episode... It's kind of like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It's like a lot of bureaucratic stuff. And the first episode, you just see the main character walk through London for like...

Three minutes. That's how it starts. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. The thing I maybe thought was most impressive about this movie is that the... stuff on screen and the people don't necessarily have like a style but the movie is so Stylish? Yeah, that's a good way to put it. It's pretty easy to make a stylish movie with James Bond stuff, with all the gadgets and the villains' big layers and stuff. How could you not make a stylish movie when...

Everybody in it dressed so stylishly and make things so stylishly. But this, I'm like, wow, so much cool style for, like, a shitty-looking, like, world a lot of times. Like, broken-up tiles and... Yeah, and those that... Have style, have style. Like in the books, Bill Hayden and Toby Esterhazy are stylish. Bill Hayden, he's a playboy.

And Toby Astorhazy is kind of a gadfly. And he goes on to run an antiques shop. Oh, right next door to Lovejoys? It must be. And it's like Middle Eastern antiques. But they get all that right. Yeah. Well, mentioning the Bill Hayden, Colin Firth character, I found this note in Brantley's notes very intriguing, which was Colin Firth. said to Gary Oldman, there's a great eyewear shop in Pasadena where I got my specs for a single band that you should go to get it for George Smiley.

And, you know, Gary Oldman was like, the glasses were the most important thing. So both... Of these two very stylish men. Yeah. Go to an eyewear shop in Pasadena. Do you know what this shop is? I own glasses from this shop. Of course I do. What's the shop? It's called Old Focals. You've mentioned this, so this is the, oh, wow. It's on mission in South Pass. It's near the caros from the Terminator, though that's closed now.

It's great. They do great work there. Very friendly. Sometimes you'll go in there and they're playing music, like a guitar and a drummer. What if it was... The music is played by Colin Firth and Gary Oldman. Oh, don't I wish. Firth thing Firth. Is the name of the band. But I did not know that he got his iconic smiley glasses from there until I saw it in Brantley's notes, but I did a little reading up yesterday too. And I saw that because they are so iconic.

We mentioned last episode that you watch his glasses to see what timeline you're in. That helped a lot, by the way, that little tidbit. And his glasses, his new glasses in this. are very similar to the Alec Guinness smiley glasses. Those very distinct... You can get period glasses that still work fashionably today, and you can argue these do as well, but you don't see many people wearing...

these kind of like almost, I don't know what the shape is, but they're big, they're owl-like, but they're thicker, they're framed. I bet Laurie Strode wishes she didn't know what the shape is. If she had her druthers, she would never know what the shape is. Speaking of South Pass. Yes. Do you think Michael Myers ever went in there for glasses? He had to. Yeah. He had to. Are there any glasses I can wear where...

If I'm eating a dog, dog juices don't stick on the legs. Sure. We have these ones here that I just sold to a kid named Bob. He dates Linda and drives a van. Keep an eye out for him. It's going to go far. It's the Opti grab. Yeah. Opti for eyes and grab because you grab it. Matt just did a funny cross-eyed. Speaking of Logo Loco, is this our first Focus Features movie? Is it?

I don't know. I feel like I watch a lot of focus features films, so I can't tell you when we've watched one. Because I love that logo. It's very cozy. I mean, that might be one of the coziest logos ever made. Oh, that's another thing I love. about this movie, the score. Yes, let's talk about it. It's both orchestral but jazzy, period, but not. Alberto Iglesias, it's so good. Yeah, what other scores has he done? I don't know. He did...

Did he do Let the Right One In? Probably, yeah. And speaking of Iglesias, the live version of La Mer that ends this movie by Julio Iglesias. Is so good. Are they the Iglesias's related? I don't know. And I will not know. I don't want to know. I don't want to ruin the magic. I don't want to find out this has been some whole nepotism thing. Reverse nepotism. But ending on...

The way this movie somehow pulls off an upbeat ending is such a coup because the book isn't quite like that. The same events happen, but... Do you think it's because you're happy for Smiley? You are, yeah. And that little... This is where I do love Benedict Cumberbatch. That little look after he passes and when they're both, when Smiley's reinstated and Peter Gwilliam gets a kind of look on his face. Because the Gwilliam-Smiley relationship is...

present through a lot of the books. So if you read the books, you really are invested in these two. They mentor an apprentice and there's a lot more to it. And in the BBC series, you get a lot more to it. Peter Gwilms played by... the actor Michael Jaston in Tinker Taylor, but for some reason that actor's not in Smiley's People. He's played by Michael Byrne, who is everywhere. We've talked about him before. He's the bad Nazi in Last Crusade. He's actually in Braveheart, which is...

filled with English character actors. That's one reason I love it. Yeah, I mean, when I was watching this, I was admiring English... character actors, of course. How could you not? Celia Hines? Kieran Hines. Kieran Hines. Yeah, he's awesome. Who plays Roy Bland. Yeah, I mean, all the actors. Mark... or what's his uh yeah Mark Strong yeah it's uh just a so good he wonderful gallery of these character actors Jim Predue his character is played by Ian Bannon in the

who's in Braveheart as well. Whoa. And then Bill Hayden is played by Ian Richardson, who was one of the people that was originally considered to play the Jackal. No kidding. Oh. So there's just everything so inbred. Yes. Yeah. Because what I was going to say, what I like, you know, and I know people.

filmmakers and stuff say hey you do yourself a big favor if you cast a what would you use English actor British actor I don't know the difference sometimes between British and English and I use them interchangeably Yeah, I guess, I could be wrong about this. If you're English, you're from England. If you're British, you're from the UK, excluding Southern Ireland. So what should I say? English?

English actors? Well, I guess unless they're Welsh or Scottish or Northern Irish. Because when I was watching this movie, I was thinking like, ooh, what I like, it's twofold. It's theatrically trained, so there's an exquisite craftsmanship to the acting that's just like crisp. And like precise, that's like really satisfying to watch as a moviegoer. But then it's also...

What they, of course, got in spades, a little bit of the subtlety. Like having somebody who's not an actor who has precision and then isn't... telecasting their choices is like, it's kind of perfect for movies. Yeah, I know. I really like Toby Jones in this quite a bit. I would love to have seen Jared Harris play Percy Allen in the BBC series. They're all, they all seem a little bit older, but you know how it is when you watch something from 40, 50 years ago.

You realize, oh, they're 20 years younger than I think they are. But they're all kind of gray where they're not necessarily in this. And it's a different... but it's also so good because it's so much slower because it's over, I think it's eight hours as broadcast in the US, but maybe 10 hours in England. So there's so much more to Jim Predu's.

mission into, I think it's Czechoslovakia in the BBC, but here it's Hungary. They do a great job of condensing in this, an impossible task, but you see his whole infiltration into the country. a whole meeting gone wrong, his whole escape or attempted escape and everything, all of that. There's way more of the Ricky tar and the girl in there. And I think they're in like Cypress in the book.

um, but Istanbul here. So, yeah, that was, um, I loved all the, um, that tar story, uh, was great. And I noticed, you know, um, our, uh,

Intrigue We Trust picture was the cover of these Russian nesting dolls on the cover of the book Tinker Tailors Hold Your Spy. But I know that the characters themselves are kind of like little... nesting dolls you know like oh you can go deeper and deeper yeah but i like the storytelling in this felt like very nesting doll it would be like yes you're ostensibly hearing the story through Smiley but then he meets Hardy but then Hardy inside him has a story that's this own like little

Love story. So like deep inside George Smiley is this little like spy love story. It's brilliant. And it's why the movie rewards repeat viewings and why probably it doesn't always connect with people the first time. I watched it Sunday. It was raining. I had the afternoon. I have a weighted blanket. I had a coffee. That's great. It was heaven. And then this morning, I was setting up the mics before you got here, and Brantley had sent us a little behind the scenes.

featurette i put it on and i already wanted to watch the movie again ah that's the best so it does reward you and i've watched it so many times and if i go a few months without watching it I don't remember how the story goes. But when I watch it, and now I think I've got, if you have any questions about how it goes. Yeah, this was the second time I saw it. I saw it in theaters when it came out. Did you like it initially? I did, yeah. I mean, it's my same...

even in my second viewing, I would say this is the case. It's the same way I watch like a detective movie or a mystery movie where I've never really been good at following. plots in movies and then it becomes really that becomes very true when I'm watching a movie that has a complicated plot but I get engrossed in them because I can understand scene by scene, what the scene is about. And it doesn't lessen the impact of the reveal. Right.

That's when you know you're watching a good movie. Yes. Because there are some where you can't follow it and then they reveal it and you're like, okay, why am I supposed to care? Exactly, yeah. But when... a mystery or this movie or whatever scene by scene can carry me through because I understand what each scene is sort of about or really a lot of times it'll be just like the vibe.

of a scene is compelling enough that I keep watching it, or a moment in a performance is the thing. So you re-watching... this and seeing new things probably you know i love like inherent vice and that's something that i'll like go back and re-watch and new stuff will uncover to me as i watch it because i'm noticing new things but also

If I don't want to follow that stuff and I just want to see cool period clothes and music and stuff like that, that's enough of a watch for me too. This is basically replaced. view to a kill for the put-on movie just in the background for me. I mean, you lucked out because we haven't had rain since April here in Los Angeles. And then finally, when it's time to watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, you get a rainy day. I should have put it on earlier. It's the Rainmaker.

Hey, no. And then I even put on the Rainmaker and no rain came. There's a moment in Casino Royale when I saw it in the theater, I've mentioned it, when he's up on top of the crane and the bomb. guy pulls out his gun to shoot him and he's out of bullets and throws the gun at Daniel Craig and Daniel Craig just catches it and throws it back. And I remember at that moment going, I am.

so unbelievably in on this movie. That was the movie it clicked. For this, I remember being in theater and it was seeing that orange egg crepe foam behind them in their soundproof offices going, I mean, because it was so wholly different from the BBC miniseries, which just takes place in a small, like third floor, nondescript English bureaucratic office with, but not like.

metal furniture or anything. It's still wood furniture. This was just a whole new version of that. And I just, when they do those, the music's playing and they do those dedicated shots on the four. Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy, basically, or Beggar Man. Is it Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Beggar Man, right?

That's what they end up using. So it's Percy, Roy, Toby, and Bill. And they do those looks on them. Yeah. It's just so good. It's awesome. And then the little tape on the chest pieces. Yeah. I know when the... You initially, when they're in that orange egg crate room...

They don't even have beginning the establishing shot of them entering it, right? I don't think so. The third time they go in there, you realize it is its own little trailer on the floor. Every office in that floor is raised above ground so you can...

I assume, make sure nothing's, that no bugs have been. That's awesome. No wire or anything like that. And they're all sound booth. And that's where a lot of the, I mean, to me, the look of it is very like anti- bond yeah the offices kind of seem yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah um then the uh uh Yeah, and also William Hurt's apartment at the beginning isn't sleek, like I said. But when they mention when they go to Budapest... And they bring up goulash. Oh, yeah.

When I was a kid, my mom made goulash a lot of the time. Are you culturally Hungarian in any way? No. I mean, or ethnically? Yeah, no. The closest that came, I worked at a... You're just making me think of this. Maybe I've shared this before, but the Wells... I worked at the Wells Blue Bunny ice cream plant after I graduated high school. It was sort of a rite of passage for everybody who...

Before they went off to college, they would go and they would work this job at the ice cream factory in my town. For the summer and you get some bread in your pocket man before you went to college, but it was like long hours and I Worked there Two and a half days and I quit because it was just, I was not happy there. But when I was there, so I did not have bread in my pocket. But when I was there.

They had just brought in some people from Hungary to work in the factory. And at that time, I had shaved my head. So I was like... constantly with how I looked, just mistaken as somebody from Hungary. Oh, interesting. Like people would come up to me and like talk very slowly to me and were like, we're going to take a break. And then they would go. break with their hands like break and then point at their watch break time but I remember thinking like well in Hungary

The similar word for breaking something didn't make any sense. But no, I think my mom just made a... Goulash because it was like a yummy pasta meat dish. But I haven't had goulash in probably 20 plus years. I don't know if I've ever had goulash. Or that other thing they talk about, pork halt. Yeah, I've never had that. I haven't either. Let's talk about that.

first opening. Hell yeah, dude. Because the way that unfolds too with the waiter getting nervous and they're not spelling out everything. You don't know what the situation is yet. And how he shoots the mother nursing. I mean, it's like kind of what only movies can do and what movies do best, which is isolating.

people's glances at things it's like yeah you can't do that in plays it's hard to like pinpoint on somebody's look and then show what they're looking at but like to create an idea based on how people are looking at things is like so cool like you can tell just by like the sweat dripping off the waiter and then the woman looking out her window on the second floor and that

he's noticing another person is looking at something is the tip off that something is like going awry. And the way he says, excuse me, I'll be right back, but gets up and accidentally knocks over the chair, but doesn't.

turn around yes to pick it up which means like a normal person would turn and go oh sorry but he's already given up he already knows he's blown so he doesn't need to to keep up pretenses and yet he doesn't run either right it's that moment of like nothing's been fully defined yet so everybody is trying so hard not to take it to the breaking point yeah and even the general there who's

the double agent and Carla's sitting inside, we find out later with the lighter, isn't blowing it. It's the waiter that panics and shoots him. And then in such a couple of...

direction style of the way people die. It's the nursing mother. The baby's okay, but the nursing mother. It's so tragic and so... unique and quirky and distinct yeah I partly yeah I wonder if like that stuff is um satisfying because I don't know it life you're I don't know, I feel like it's a constant trying to read people's faces to get clues into how they feel about you.

what the situation we're in right now, not you and me right now, but just like in a situation, you're like, that's what you think. Oh my God, Matt, you got two fingers pointed at me in the shape of a gun. I know. But like, um, uh, This sounds like a brag, and maybe it is. I feel like I'm pretty good at being able to read...

I feel that way too, but I wonder if everybody does. I think everybody probably thinks they're their own little Sherlock. I feel like I rely on that. I really listen to that. Yes, yeah, and I'm usually... Not incorrect. I'm not clouded by paranoia. I can feel like I have pretty good clarity about being able to read people. But I thought I don't... And maybe everybody has that ability, but like a spy has that ability and uses it to win.

yeah it's they're using it as like they're it's in their toolbox to get what they want and like I feel like to have that ability and to exploit it is like evil. I agree. It's sinister. It's sinister. I think that's what makes you honestly a sociopath. And I think that's why a lot of spies are sociopaths.

And I think like sociopaths like in show business. Yeah. Like somebody who can read somebody's like... weakness or their fallibility and like get into it as a way to get what they need or to read somebody it's also like I've never played poker and I'm sure poker can be fun but I've always like I don't want to dabble in those waters because I'm trying to read somebody's weakness as a way to...

get money from my friends. I know nobody likes it when I say that, when I'm like, oh, so poker is getting together, trying to figure out how to lie best to steal money from friends. It is. That's the game. And some people play it as a game. Yeah. And that's when... It's fun. And some people play it as a self-fulfilling value system. Yes. And that's the same with spying and sometimes acting. Have you ever had a friend? I've had, I had a friend.

maybe two friends even, that were like that. And it took me a while to realize... Oh, you're manipulative and you're reading me and playing off what you know my responses will be in a manipulative and cynical and contrived way that I had to cut them out of my life. I mean, maybe I'm sure I use it.

to manipulate we all do on some level and I've had but maybe I don't manipulate it for financial gain no I hope yeah no but I'm saying like I think maybe I do manipulate for emotional gain everybody does and I've had periods of my life, especially if you're a young man in this day and age where you don't use it for good. And I think that's what maturing is all about, is being able to recognize it.

I think, you know, if you're not a sociopathic person, all it takes is you recognizing it. And then, I mean, I remember getting to a point going, oh, I've had that trait. And then luckily the feeling I got was skis. I was like. I was grossed out by myself. Yeah. I think if you don't have that, then you're in trouble. Yeah.

Yeah, when somebody is like a good detective or something in a movie, I'm always like, well, you have a trait that everybody else has. You're just like using it to solve mystery, buddy. You have no qualms about putting... your desires above people's well-being. Yes. Even if it's on a small level or something. To that point, speaking of spies, Sean Connery, I saw...

I woke up this morning. It was the first thing I saw on my phone. It was like, Sean Connery explains why golf is a great game. Oh, yeah. I saw that somewhere. I didn't watch it. And I clicked on it, and I was pretty impressed by it. He was talking about how... It's an inherently unfair game. Jack Nicholas calls it the most unfair game. And he's like, so he's like, it's a very unfair game.

but it's also the one that's easiest to cheat at. And he said, you can cheat, but you know that you've cheated it.

And what's the win if you know that you had to cheat to win? And, you know, they compared it to life. They're like, life is an unfair game. You can cheat, but if you ever cheated and you know that you got away with something, what kind of... value can you really put on like oh i um but uh it seems like it's similar to this uh what we're talking about is like oh you can read you can know the rules and know how to break them but uh what's the real win if you do

I mean, I don't mean to get into this topic, but I will say I see this a lot in religion too, and especially in my limited... time and experience with evangelical christianity that there was more of an ego and a manipulation involved in people with status and churches than any kind of reverent Christian-like behavior. I thought it was an ego-feeding thing. I mean, that's probably the thing that rubs people wrong about politicians and reverends is that it's like...

We're putting you in this position with a hope for some, with trust that you'll do, you'll not be a shit about this. But then, because what they're playing on is like the, I mean, honestly, it's like the easiest. fucking thing to manipulate somebody about either. Like, is the government going to like, look after me or not. And if somebody tells you that they're going to look out for you, it's a very comforting thing, but a very.

easy manipulation and then somebody being like hey i know you kind of feel shitty about the things you do come over here and listen to my homily and you'll be on the right side is also a pretty unfair manipulation to put on somebody. This is exactly why James Bond is for the first half of your life. Like you said...

And then Le Carre is for the second half of your life when you've matured and you've realized something about life. And that George Smiley is a hero. He's just the best hero you can hope for. under the circumstances because he's not manipulative. He might be if there's lives to be saved. He sits back and he watches and he lets people hang themselves by their own rope and hoist by their own petard. Yeah. But he...

plays golf the honorable way as much as he can in this game. And I just don't think in my 30s I would have responded to that kind of... of a leading man or woman, I wanted more black and white. And this is as gray as you can possibly get. It's only gray. There's not even a black or a white in this. Right. Yes. Yes. Right. So much more true to life.

And you realize pragmaticism overtakes melodrama and you go, this is what I want because this is actually achievable. Or the other thing is pure escapism and fantasy. So you respond to it in a different way, especially like... family and if you have kids like i would kill to have a george smiley in charge right now because that's the best we'd ever get and you know obama was probably the closest we'll have to a george smiley he was

measured you know clinton was no george smiley trump obviously wasn't biden wasn't carter kind of was but he's a little too positive yeah obama had a little bit of a a cynicism to him understanding humanity but having some hope and he would put on a public positive persona but you could tell when he went home he was cynical and I don't mean that as a judgment did you know that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump are all born in a three-month span. Who?

Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump are all born in a three-month span of each other. Isn't that crazy? We should have just wiped those months. I know. I was like, what was in the ether? Second to going back and killing Hitler. You go back and you do like a fake plague. Yeah. No, because then people be home and they'd be... Or you go, you have a little orphan Annie, like, well...

Because when would have they been conceived? I think around like 1947. So whatever radio show everybody was listening to, in the commercials you go, you have a little jingle that's like, the pull-out method, the pull-out method. Daddy's do the pull-out method. And the guy's like, what is this pull-out method? Maybe I'll do that for the next few months. Hey, gents. Government Dan here. Remember, this three-month span is pull-out season. Do it.

For our boys overseas. What boys overseas? Well, we're between the wars, but that doesn't mean we're not in Ramstein, Germany or Tokyo, Japan. Oh, yeah. Like a victory garden. Yeah. Save your tin sort of. mission that's about like it helps the country boys if you pull out and ladies you help out too push out push out remember you future boomers you're gonna tell

the system and all your children and grandchildren aren't going to be able to have their social securities. I mean, maybe it is just a numbers game and it would have been like, oh, because the boom, baby boom was happening. Yeah. Any three-month period where a bunch of babies are being produced are going to produce three people who did damage to our country.

They're all pigs in their own way. They're each like different versions of a pig. They really are. It's crazy if you would have told me years ago. I look back at these three, obviously. Trump's, for me, and I'm sure I'm speaking for you too, miles above the worst. But I'm looking back now and somehow putting George W. Bush above Clinton, and I don't know if that's just...

It's personality. Obviously, policy-wise, I don't probably agree with that. But Clinton schemes me out in such a big way now. Say what you will about Bush and war crimes included. Sure. Maybe this is what we're talking about, the ability to read people and exploit that understanding of humanity is worse in Clinton. Because... Yes.

The manipulation of understanding how people work is maybe not the same as, as it is. I obviously don't policy wise. Yes. Policy. It's a different thing. Thank you for saying that. That's what I mean. Like just as a man.

Yes. And I don't mean this as the, who would you want to have a beer with? Right. I don't really want to have a beer with any of these three men. Yes. I mean, I'd like to have a beer with all three of them at once. Are you kidding? I'd like to be in that poker painting where it's the four of us playing liar's poker. Oh my God. And George Washington and Abe Lincoln standing behind us. Yeah, I don't know what it is. Everything's upside down. I mean, he's a pig. Huh?

Yeah, he's a true pig. And I think it is that thing where you can sense the need to feed his ego and he will manipulate at any cost where George Bush is maybe not the brightest guy, but he doesn't seem... to me, as manipulative as Clinton. Yeah, he was... I mean, if you're just looking at things on the spectrum of to manipulate or to be manipulated...

W. Bush's problem was he was easy to be manipulated. Not to give him a pass, but I think you're right. And I think if we're looking at this, probably what I'm saying here is a narcissist scale. Right. Where it's exponential and it goes bush at the front and then it rises quite a bit to Clinton but then skyrockets to John Jingleheimer Trump.

All right, let's get off politics. We've got spies to talk about. That was good, though. I like that little chat there. Also, another place this movie had me right away was the jets flying with the kids looking at it, just showing you what... the cold war is in the matter of two seconds yes kids playing and then war jets flying over i know i thought that too and uh also it had some sort of uh resonance of um

You know, this was, speaking of, not to bring it back into development, but like this was the end of the, this came out in 2011. Oh, this would have been like three years out from... George W. Bush of like in terms of like whatever planes were doing and whatever kind of geopolitical world you were living in at the time.

Yeah. Oh, here's something that you can explain to me, Matt. What is Operation Witchcraft? Okay. Witchcraft? Let me see if I... I understand this movie, but I wonder if I can even articulate it. What happens is Carla devises this plan. You don't find this stuff out till later. So witchcraft first is revealed as something that is beneficial to the circus, which is the English intelligence. They think...

This diplomat, Polyakov, who you see in the movie, has a secret source high up in the Russian government that wants to help the British. So he's sending them intelligence through Polyakov, and that's why they have this safe house that the four of them go to. Bland, Percy, Roy, Percy, Toby, and Bill. And any one of them can go and get this...

information. Then they give Polyakov information to give back to this source so that this source can take it to his Russian superiors and go, look, I'm doing this. But what they're giving him... is called chicken feed, which is real information, real intelligence, but it's minor and it's enough to make them think they're getting some real stuff, but it doesn't hurt them. But in fact, what's happening is the opposite.

They're getting chicken feed, and Bill Taylor, who's the mole, though nobody else knows it, is giving them real intelligence. Which actor is Bill Taylor? Colin Firth. Colin Firth is the mole. He's the mole. Yes, that's what... Okay, when I watched the movie, I thought, yes, he's the mole. He's secretly giving them...

Through the same system where they think they're benefiting, they're actually being duped. Witchcraft is that operation, and Witchcraft is the codename for this source who they don't know it is, but it's actually Carla. Carla's Witchcraft, only Carla... is pulling the strings, not helping them, he's hurting them. I see, I see. And it was all devised by Carla. And the sort of movie casting...

fun trickery, the same thing you would use in like a whodunit or something, is casting Colin Firth as the mole, right? Because he's Mr. Romantic Comedy. And not only that, but also within the story. bill taylor everybody you get this more in the book everybody loves bill taylor he's he's a playboy and everybody knows he can't be trusted on women and the women know this but they they throw themselves at him everybody loves him and

There's just, he just like, no one would suspect Bill Taylor. God. Bill Hayden, sorry. Bill Hayden, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. And then, because yeah, the other actors, they have bad guy.

the heavy kind of qualities to them. A little bit. They're played up a little bit more in this. In the BBC series, the guy, like I said, the guy, Bernard Heptin, who plays Tobias, so he's kind of... obnoxious but he's I love him he's so fun and then Percy's a lot more he's like Toby Jones in this he's very stern and Roy Bland is a little bit less significant in both the stories. He's just kind of there as another red herring. Gotcha. But you learn in the book that Roy Bland was Smiley's kind of

He trained him. He was his mentor. Smiley was his mentor as well as Peter Gwilliam's too. So they have more of scenes in the book, in the BBC show, but you still don't know. Yeah. I mean, what a cool setup for a spy movie, though, is we know there's a mole in our ranks. We got to figure out who it is. And it's based on the real thing, the Kim Philby story. Oh, what is that? High up spy turned.

And he was a mole for Russia. Yeah. And like Bill Tate. Post-war? That's when he was doing it? Yeah, I think in the 50s or 60s. I can't remember. But like Bill Hayden, they, I think, initially just let him go to Moscow. And they could have stopped him. But... it was this kind of thing of like, don't, let's not admit it. Let's let them go. Cause we can do a big trial, but it did become a big scandal. And that's why at the end, Bill Hayden, Colin Firth is talking about how he's.

And Polyakov says this before it's revealed, but you hear Polyakov saying like, you're going to go to Moscow and get a medal. I'll be sent to Siberia. Oh, yeah. And so Bill Hayden is about to be sent to Moscow like Kim Philby ended up. going and living in Moscow until Jim Preeto shoots him. Both, I think, for being a traitor to his country, making him look bad, and also because he loved him. And I think in a way...

That's another thing I love about the ambiguity of this. Is he shooting him for being a traitor and betraying him, or is he shooting him to put him out of his misery? Yeah, right. Oh, yeah, that's a cool notion. The effect of the, like... small caliber bullet hitting him under his eye and he doesn't even know it. He's just looking at his lover. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who he himself, there's a girl, there's a boy that Smiley has to clear up things with, but right.

you do get the sense that pre-do and Hayden do love each other and he's just watching him and he doesn't even know he's shot and he just, his body just ends. But you feel like he goes down still just kind of looking at him. Right. You know, his eyes are dead. Yeah, yeah. It's amazing to me. That's cool. Yeah. What was the reason the guy was in cahoots with the Russians in real life? Was it money?

He says, this is the thing that I always found very confusing when I first started looking at all these spy movies and books. It's like, well, it's got to be money or ideology. And you find out that it's not ever really that black and white. It's either money, blackmail, or ideology. Sometimes, though, as with Kim Philby, he has said it's ideology. Same with Bill Hayden in this.

believed that capitalism had become corrupt. But there becomes this new thing where I think especially when you're ingrained in the life of a lie and a spy, there's a... ego feed and a power thing where you're like i can just me personally i can change the scope of the geopolitical landscape and i can make these superpowers listen to me and they will kind of need me. And I think that over time they don't even realize it, that there's a gradual.

call to that kind of power and manipulation is basically what it is. And so that's a fourth thing that I think becomes a factor in this. It's a little like, you know, before... Deep Throat was revealed to be Mark Felt. And people were trying to figure out who Deep Throat was. It always came from an ideological perspective. It was like...

oh, somebody wasn't happy with what Nixon was doing and thought he had crossed a line and wanted to make sure justice was done and a wrong was righted. And then you just find out that Mark Felt was pissed off that Nixon... Petty grievance. didn't put him in J. Edgar Hoover's position after J. Edgar Hoover died. Yeah. And ironically, J. Edgar Hoover would have probably never allowed Watergate to become the thing it was. And then it all happens because this guy, it's petty, ego.

Petty office ego. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So to what you're saying, like, oh, it might just come down to somebody's own... ego about the work they do and about the thing, the position they were, because I was like, oh, maybe somebody would defect or whatever, bop over to the KGB just because they don't like what they're, it's nothing about. Yeah. It's not like the whatever the economy is for the secret spy world that they just happen to be in the same. Yeah.

that they could just be like, oh, I just don't like what my boss is doing. Right. There's a great documentary. I can't remember what it's called because the real life story of Kim Philby is he first goes to Beirut and his best friend, worked in intelligence too and was very betrayed by him. And they send him to Beirut to kind of like find out why. And it's this gray area before he goes to Moscow and he's kind of like...

just living free, even though he's completely upended everything and betrayed his country. And the whole intelligence system has to be like rebooted basically. Wow. And I can't remember. Like the guy's kind of trying to talk to him about like, and they, and Philby just kind of goes to dinner parties the whole time he's in Beirut.

It's just a fascinating thing where they often would find these huge traders and just their option was to quietly send them to Moscow so that there's not a scandal in the public eye. But I don't, that wasn't because that would be worse if people do that. Like, yeah. And like in this too, they're saying after the Jim Prito thing happens in Hungary, the Americans don't trust them.

And that Carl is ultimately doing this to get to the Americans because the British are small potatoes in this. Small bangers. Small bangers, yes. Small chips. Then the way they catch the traitor is so brilliant because Ricky Tarr has come back, but nobody knows it except for Smiley, Gwilliam, and Mendel. There's one other guy there. Right. And...

So they send him back to Paris to send a cable that he wants to come home. And all Carla and Hayden are thinking is we've got to get Ricky Tarr because he knows there's a mole.

Because he sent earlier, he sent the cable home saying there's a mole. Right. I've heard there's a mole. So they've got to kill him or silence him. So that's why when Ricky Tarr at the end goes to Paris and holds the Paris like... version of of mi6 hostage so that they'll send the cable that's why bill hayden panics goes to the safe house so he can send a message to carla like

We got him. We can get him. We're going to be okay, basically. They don't spell all that out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah, I didn't pick up on that little part. Yeah, the first words that I thought Smiley said was, where did you get this? Is that right? Yeah, or something like, you fired me, Oliver. Yeah, yes, yes, that's right. Played by Simon McBurney, who I always thought should play Roman Polanski.

Oh, that's true. Yeah, right, right. He's in Nosferatu. Did you see Nosferatu? No, Nosferatu. He's really good. Nosferatu. Who does he play in it? He plays... the Renfield character. It's not named Renfield, but. Oh, okay. Um, uh, I love the, um, That woman he goes to visit. Connie Sachs. Yes. The greatest character. It's such a cool... She's in Smiley's People, too. Oh, okay. She has a nice big scene in that.

Kind of also seems like an anti-Bond, anti-Fleming choice of just like, oh, there is a woman in this agency who has a crush on the boys, but she's not... money penny no yeah yeah yeah i love love connie saxon she's so good both played by this woman and

barrel read in the original too. I know. I love the thing about where she was like, don't tell me when you find out who the mole is, don't tell me who it is. Cause I just want to imagine you boys as like the soul, the beautiful handsome soldiers that you were in world war two. Part of the sacrifice of this movie being cut down so much is, you know, you don't really see Connie leaving. She's at those parties, those flashback parties. Yeah. All of them are.

Control, Smiley, everybody. Yeah. And when the Jim Preeto failure of mission happens, you see Control and Smiley leave. Control's been fired. So is Smiley because he's Control's man. They just don't say anything, but then they part ways. But alongside of that is Connie Sachs has to go. Anybody that's been in the camp of... Oh, I see. So that's why she's living in Oxford now. Kind of, I think, just...

the den mother to like a, a theatrical house of college. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which I thought, uh, had like a little, um, yeah. Residence. Like the kids are playing like, uh, It's like swords. Julius Caesar or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And in Brantley Palmer's, the lovely Brantley Palmer's notes, he talks about how... a lot of the specifics about the parties. Yeah.

is what John... John Le Carre is John Le Cameo. Yes. Yeah, who was he in the cameo? You barely see him. He has said that he's basically playing a gay librarian. Uh-huh. But he's... He's tall and... Almost kind of looks a little like John Lithgow, but with more hair. Okay. I also just love that they play the Russian national anthem and then there's a Santa Claus with a Lennon mask. Yes. I love that detail. That was like one of my favorite details of the movie is like those parties.

John Hurt saying, admonishing him for not making the drinks right. And then he says, it'll take five hours to get drunk on this monkey piss. It'll take five hours to get drunk on this monkey's piss. It made me think about John Hurt. Is he the only English actor in the original Alien? No. The guy who plays... Ian Holm. Ian Holm. Yeah. But it's funny that the two people who are, like, have turns in that movie that, you know, John Hurt...

you think it doesn't have an alien inside him. But then he holds the twist. And then Ash, Ian Holm, holds... the twist of being like a, but all the American actors are like, we're above board. We're fine. You know what we are. Ian Holm is in the Len Dayton series. There's a mini series.

called like London set, London game and London match. And he played, it's a pretty good spice. Oh, cool. I don't know how the show is, but I read the books. Yeah. You're making me think that Gary Oldman has played a lot of real life. George Smiley isn't real, but I guess Sid Vicious. Churchill. Churchill and Mankiewicz. Oh, yeah. And Dracula. And Dracula. Vlad Tepes. It was a real man. But yeah, I wonder if you're an acclaimed English actor that you eventually are going to play some...

real-life World War II figure or some sort of espionage. I think so. Or somebody who's a teacher at Hogwarts. Yes. I talked about this a little bit on a previous podcast, but now if you've rewatched this movie, you might appreciate some of the stuff in Carla's choice that they recontextualize. That is so good because the book takes place.

between the spy who came in from the cold and before Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. So Bill Hayden, Toby Esterhazy, they're all characters in this book. And Bill Hayden... It's not revealed as a mole, but you read the book knowing at this time he's a mole. So there's little things that he throws into this book that are so rewarding. That's cool. Also throughout this and Smiley's people and George's wife.

is always just a philanderer, comes back to him when it's convenient for her. But it's just been one-sided this whole time. I think there's always been maybe one criticism of Le Carre's writing is that he not only doesn't necessarily write... females to the greatest dimension. He barely includes females in his story. Although Connie's an amazing character. In the Harkaway book...

You see early in the relationship that George Smiley just keeps choosing his job over her. And you see the first affair she has on him. And it's not... saying that it's justified, but it's just she clearly is neglected by George Smiley time and time again. And it is such a recontextualization that adds so much more dimension to not only the character, but the story. and is so, I think, it's what...

What elevates Le Carre so much is because it adds just another level of grayness to something that was maybe the only black and white. You never had an... Even Carla has... grace notes and George Smiley has flaws and was always kind of treated as this just like frigid kind of self-serving woman in the books. And so it was so rewarding to see that. Yeah. Makes me think of, um, What I really like in a casino is that Robert De Niro's character, his whole, the way he survives in his career.

is knowing who's lying to him or not or who's betraying him or not. And the way he makes his money is by looking over... the casino's ability to lie and to trick people, but then the person he chooses as his wife and who he's most attracted to... isn't somebody who's flim flammed him. If anything, it's like he recognizes in her, she's a con artist. And that's like what makes it attractive to him is like, oh, is this the one?

con that could con me or or having the desire to try to like but yeah if uh if george smiley's wife is like somebody who's uh like he's like oh This could be just as exciting as my spy work. That's cool. I love the... relationship with um mark strong as the english teacher when he kills that bird i just what that scene says so much yeah

Because they're already making fun of him. The kid's walking around like Quasimodo because he's... This was an artifact from an earlier version of the script where he was more debilitated from the shooting.

But the kid is mocking him in the thing as that happens. And the owl comes and he, I think it's a bat in the book. I can't remember. And then, yeah, he swats it down and all the kids are like, whoa. Whoa. And you're like, oh, this guy. Yeah. Probably a really good spy or something. And then, and then. relationship he has with that student and then it's heartbreaking the way it ends you're a good watcher us loaders always are

And then the way he sends him off in the Harry and the Henderson sort of cruel to be kind way of like, don't be a watcher, join. You're going to be miserable. Yeah. And it's because he cares, but he's so mean about it. And it's so heartbreaking. Love it. Love the... I noticed that the Tom Hardy stuff, which... It's funny that he was speculated possibly as a Bond at some point. And this story kind of has like Bond element, like the last name Trench.

Is it his story? But then also... Who's Trench? Like Sylvia Trench. But they say somebody's last name is Trench. But then also he's going after somebody named like Boris, which is like the most classic name for a... Boris. I also love that his... The guy running Istanbul Station. And he's a character that appears more. He doesn't die in the book. They kill him in the movie. Tufty Fezzinger. I love that name. I want that name. I know.

But the thing that was occurring to me with all this, everybody is so like... fuck you you can't do you put me in a you know like everybody's kind of combative yeah and what's amazing about George Smiley is that he seems to be this like seemingly like kind and gentle person who's able to like be above the fray and not get down in the dirt. Yeah. So good. I love the little...

cross cutting that's going when Benedict Cumberbatch is trying to go up to that upper floor and steal files and people are listening to the music on the radio and like tapping their feet and singing along with it. Yeah. But it's so different than the like. Tom Cruise stealing the files at Mission Impossible 1. But there's so much tension. Do you know what they're listening to, right? No, what is that? She's listening to the music coming from the garage.

where Mendel is calling to be the fake mechanic so that he can get him to get his bag. Oh yeah. Yeah. I love that scene. That's the benefit of talking to somebody who's re-watched this movie. Before, I was just like, oh, that's a song that's playing in the house. That's cool. I love that they're playing squash. Lakin. Yeah. Also, I believe... Walleyball, we call it. Walleyball? Walleyball, yeah. Yeah. The term mole comes...

Most people say it comes from John Le Carre, that he invented it. Really? And he himself has said, I either did or I heard it somewhere myself. But it's the first usage comes from basically this. I didn't know that. Yeah. So the... Austin Powers, Fred Savage, Mole Seed would have never have happened if these books had never been... No, they would have had to invent it. Yeah, so the Jerry...

Westerby. Yeah, Westerby. Can you explain that section to me? He's telling a story to Smiley about reporting. Yeah, so he's another person that... it's hard to tell in the movie that has been let go with Connie and George. And so that's why when you see him, he's in a tuxedo in a casino room because his new job is he runs like a casino thing. Oh, it's like when the Blues Brothers go and get all the old bandmates together. Yes, exactly.

Same place. He's in Chicago. They don't show the flight. He, everybody in these stories, the real Jerry Westerby, Sam Collins, who this character actually is. They all go on to other things, but they're all still one foot in the intelligence world. I see. And so he's telling George Smiley what happened the night that Ricky Tarr cabled the circus that...

He's been told by that woman that there's a mole. He doesn't say that in the cable, but he says, have some information that will affect the circus to the highest levels. That's when they... Bill Hayden and Carla go into action. And so what Jerry Westerby, Sam Collins, is saying is that Bill Hayden was the first to arrive. And he was, I'm trying to remember this myself. He said, how could he have known? And that's the night that Bill Hayden was at Ann's. Mm-hmm.

to do the ruse that he's sleeping with and he is sleeping with Ann, but he doesn't care about her to mess with George Smiley. And it happened the same night. Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah. No, it does. Yeah. Yeah. Um, the, uh, And I love that whole section of him getting worked and tortured. Mark Strong, that stuff is like... Brutal. Yeah. Speaking of Budapest and brutal...

Have you seen The Brutalist? No, is it good? Not good, huh? I didn't care for it. I really, really wanted to like this movie. It should be something I'm into, but a three-hour... I don't know. Something about it feels, I have no proof for this, but it feels like a bit of it, too much of an ego project for the creator. Perhaps. Yeah. I get that vibe from it. Yeah.

I don't know why I'm getting Vincent Gallo vibes. No, that seems, yeah. You know, I've, I think, shared before where I'm like, I can't. like a drama if the attempts for humor aren't actually funny? Oh, is that what... Yeah, and it's not even that many attempts at humor. I'm just like, it's just not that funny. I know that's not the fairest, but I'm just like... If there's humor, it should be... Yeah, and also, if somebody has...

very little humor, that I'm also kind of like, well, you're not really showing the full spectrum of life. Life has many funny moments in it or funny people. And so that there's not as many... And there's not, and then when there is, it's not that funny. But also, just like, to me, it felt like coming up with... characters to make statements rather than building characters because you have an interest in...

people and how people behave. That's a polemic. Yeah, yeah. Those don't interest me. I should see it, I hope too, because the subject greatly interests me. I know it's an immigrant story too, but the like... the brutalist architecture thing is fascinating. Yeah. I'm fascinated by that style. It's not my favorite, but it certainly has its connections to the Cold War. Right, right, right. Yeah, and also I...

I thought the look of it was going to blow me away. Yeah, because did you see it in VistaVision? Yeah, I saw it at the... on the IMAX screen at CityWalk. But the, like, honestly, the look, like, didn't, like... blow me away and then sometimes like this is nitpicky but like the characters who are supposed to be like wealthy like they'd come on screen and their collars would kind of be like

wrinkly. You could tell it was an actual independent production. Yeah. I was like, make sure that the rich people have like crisp colors. Like there was just stuff like that that just felt... A little like a... junior high production of a period movie. Interesting. I thought that was going to be the one thing that was going to kind of blow me away is that like, oh, it's a low budget movie that manages to look like it has scope. That's what you hear about it. Yeah.

didn't deliver for me that's probably good that stuff's got to be magnified if you're doing this 70 millimeter vista vision stuff and it's if it's not Right? Yeah. In detail, it's going to be bigger. I mean, maybe it was high expectations. I had too high. I went in really, really wanting to like it a lot. It didn't knock me out.

Yeah, I kind of felt the same way about Nosferatu. I liked it, and it was really cool to look at, but it felt a little soulless. And Nosferatu himself was a little ridiculous. I mean, I thought... ridiculous and silliness is kind of like the word I would use for a lot of the brutalists. There was just some stuff that I was like, this feels like a silly, like if you were trying to be silly about.

Oscar bait movies. You would kind of have scenes like this. Between that and Amelia Perez, it seems like subtleties being, subtleties are like rare. thing these days. Maybe that's why I liked this movie. Tinker Taylor was like, I'd gotten out of a period movie that wasn't... Yeah, the... Confidence that a filmmaker has that their point is being made without the character saying it out loud for you is like kind of the real mark of a...

true genius creator. We're not living in subtle times, and subtlety just goes such a long way for me. I don't mean to generalize, but maybe it is that Generation X thing of like... kind of like playing your cards closer to the best. No, I agree. I think so. I think like the... And that it's... I, yes, subscribe to the notion that to try to be understood is kind of inherently uncool.

And like for normies, like to make something that's like not trying to necessarily like, that also felt like a little bit like, and I say this as a millennial. There's something about a lot of the artists. You're a Gen Xer at heart, though, my friend. Well, I'm on the cusp, man. You're definitely ahead of your time.

I'm April 81. So I'm like a year away from a Gen Xer. And so truly in my heart, I am a Gen Xer. And I was raised by Gen X art. Yeah, yeah. But the thing that I don't like about... a lot of the acclaimed, I mean, my favorite probably filmmaker of the millennial generation who doesn't have these qualities that I'm talking about that I'm... complaining about is um

is Greta Gerwig, who I'm like, oh, she's really funny. And her movies are really, really funny. And that's enough for me to be excited about the movies she makes. And she doesn't have this quality. which I think is something in this generation. There's some sort of like grade grubber, like Gen X's...

There's not many grade grubbers in there. What's a grade grubber? I'm going to make a project that I don't really... I'm going to write an essay. I don't believe in the essay, but I know teacher likes... Oh, yes.

what I'm going to have to say, and I'll get a... I'm grubbing for a grade. It's for the grade, not for the... Yeah, I'm going to get an A on this. Yeah. Like... but I don't necessarily like La La Land feels like a grade grubbers movie where it was like, older Oscar voters will like my throwback to the, and it's like, no.

or very few Gen X filmmakers would be trying to make a movie to get the grownups to like them more. It's just not in their DNA. Like, Bret Easton Ellis is kind of like the prime Gen X writer, and he wasn't writing stuff to make sure that... his mommy and daddy liked the stuff he was writing. Is a complete unknown to grade grubber for boomers? I think so. Yeah. I haven't seen it. But the, like...

The Brutalist felt like sort of like a kid trying to make an Oscar. Oh, interesting. Now I want to see it more than ever. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not articulating this well at all. It's just like there's something like whatever. Kurt Cobain didn't write songs to make sure that the boomers liked him or to get Grant, like he was just doing something to please himself. And I don't know, some of the movies I watch, I'm just like, this feels like you're making it so mom and dad like give you an A.

Anyway. The... The... I love the moment near the end here when Smiley, that last 20 minutes has such power to it. When he's like...

connected the dots and now it's about sort of just going and finding his man and getting the truth out of him. Take off your socks, pop a mint in your mouth, pull out a Walter PPK out of what I know to be a... pencil pouch that I used to have those like clear plastic plastic zipper things that's what he keeps his gun in is amazing like that's how you know not only is it not bond

Cause of how he stores his gun, but he's got the same gun as bond. Yeah. And he would have, that was the gun you would have used. Um, and then all of the, like, uh, unpeeling of the mints yeah the little mint in there is like such a little texture touch that I loved um and then uh uh So the idea at the end is that he was... Who was trying to serve two masters? Or he was like the bald guy. Toby. Yeah. Yes. Toby was... Toby...

Didn't do anything wrong. He's a bit of a sort of greasy kind of worker. But he just thought that they were giving chicken feed to the Russians and getting intel. but he knew like he was part of that cabal of the four of them and excluding everybody else in the circus. They all knew that they were their own little tight circle and they weren't letting buddy in because they thought they had this great thing going with witchcraft and they didn't want to compromise it. I see.

And so the reason that they, this great scene where they bring Toby to the airfield and that great shot with that, I don't know what kind of lens that is, but it makes the background look as close as the foreground. So it looks like. And the way that all Smiley's saying is, do we have to send you back? Meaning back to Hungary, back to the Iron Curtain, and you...

you'll be killed. Yeah. So he's basically threatening him so he can get the address of the safe house. Cause he knows, I think he knows Toby isn't. the mole. Yeah. And Toby's a little bit more of an underling, but it's also, it has the, that scene has a power cause it's sort of the first like real, um, expression of like some. Yeah. Like when the guy's saying, I'm loyal, I'm loyal. And he's like crying. Yeah. And I think in his own way, he thinks he is being loyal, but he's also very just...

He's ironically corrupted by the decadence of the West. He's high on his own supply of power. He's the one that's an immigrant. He's from Hungary. So he dresses... more upscale than he is above his station. And he's bought into this whole thing and got swept up in it. And I think George knows he will be the first to crack because he was found by control as a boy on the streets and recruited. and brought in. And yeah, and David Densick's so...

good in that role. Way different than the guy in the BBC show is having so much more fun with it, especially in Smiley's people. He's just, George, how you doing, George? And he's just got this amazing face. He kind of looks like Ian Fleming. Um, and yeah, and then, uh, so they threatened him and he gives them the address and then, then they send Ricky Tarr to Paris to send the cable and that's setting the trap and they just know whoever shows up at that safe house.

is going to be the mole. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah. And then, so what's, at the end of the story, what's John Hurt up to? He's dead. He's dead. Okay. See, they don't telegraph this either. They just show him briefly.

They just show a shot of him in the hospital. Do you remember that shot? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like collapsed and there's pills on the ground. He dies pretty early. Okay, yeah. I assume like just because he wasn't around that maybe he had died. Yeah, and that's when... Gwilym and Smiley go to his apartment and it reeks. It's because no one's been in there for... I see. And then that's... They have to... They knew... See, I thought it was like a world where books fart.

I was like, Oh, is this like a fantasy movie? It is. He just has a ton of books and they're all fart books. So, um, in the beginning when, Control tells Predue that there's a mole and he's one of these five people, including Smiley. I'm trying to remember what the timeline of this is. And that's basically, once they capture Predo, they get out of him. He tries to last as long as he could, but they get out of him that he knows that there's a mole. And so...

The failure of that mission, and everybody wants to get control out, and they get control out. That's why Percy, Toby Jones, is elevated to the top of the circus and only trusts his three underlings. And they oust Smiley too. yeah gotcha okay thank you for the uh yeah i mean it's you really gotta one thing you can just i've i've mentioned this in a letterbox review before it's like marked spoiler but in the very beginning when the titles go and it goes tinker

Taylor, Soldier, Spy. They're also showing the names. Oh. Well, Taylor, Tinker and Taylor come up together and Tinker and Spy, or Taylor and Spy come up together. And it's just telling you, Taylor, who's Bill Hayden, Spy. Oh. i don't know if that's on purpose it's just that's cool i love that i also love the lighter i've talked about that yeah replica of that lighter uh-huh um yeah when did you get that uh like

maybe like a year or two ago, I bought the lighter and had to find a place to engrave it like that. That's awesome. This is just, this episode is revealing all my secret and nerdy passions. We should also get a lighter with the, um, to, uh, um, tennis rackets from, I won't, I've thought about it. Yeah. There was a time where I even, I think I have a letterboxd list of lighters that are significant in movies. Yeah. I'm trying to think of other lighters and movies. There's one in, uh,

Butterfield 8 apparently has a very fancy lighter. People keep bringing it up, but it's a movie that doesn't fascinate me. I forget what it is. I watched a movie with a lighter. I watched the Man from Hollywood segment, the fourth segment in Four Rooms. Oh, yeah. And that has a lighter. Can a lighter be flicked 10 times? And if it's not, then the guy gets his finger cut off. Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Let me look at this list. But I watched that yesterday. So that's the Zippo lighter that's most in my mind. Oh, there's also Last Crusade, the Irish. I have a list called Movies with Bitchin' Lighters. It's Tinker Tailor. Oh, License to Kill is another one. He has a genuine Felix Leiter at the end. Butterfield 8, Strangers on a Train, The Man with the Golden Gun, Roman Holiday, and The Tamarin Seed. But I feel like someone else.

Harold and Maude, Charlie's Angels, Usual Suspects, Die Hard, Constantine, Kingsman, Blood Simple, Four Rooms, somebody wrote. Oh, yeah. Blood Simple has a good one. Yeah. Yeah. Well... Could I take a bathroom break? Well, we can wrap up. Yeah, I have no more notes. Okay. And I won't subject any more to this. Matt, I loved it. I loved it all. We'll do Baby Xenomorphs next episode. Okay. Because we went a little long. Cool.

Appreciate your indulgence. Hey, no indulging whatsoever. I was born for this moment. Looking at the live stream here. Thank you all for joining us today, guys. Ooh, uh-huh. Yes, that's right. Well, thank you guys for joining us. And if anybody goes on to read the books or watch Smiley's People, reach out and let me know. Tell me what you think. Well, that's my question. Do you think there would ever be a Smiley's People?

God they could still do it yeah right so so great I don't think they will because the movie industry is not the same anymore. They don't make this budget. They barely ever make this kind of movie anymore. I mean, it was a rarity in the...

the time it came out as something, you know, it kind of reminds me a little bit of, um, uh, Zodiac. Yeah. Of like period, not, um, Like period and patient and also seeing the toll that a particular line of work or way of thinking takes on somebody who has to live in that world for years.

I think there's a decent chance they'll do another TV version. I had heard somewhere that they were starting to develop more Le Carre TV stuff. And I think because now that he's gone and his estate is handled by his children and the... They're making books. I think they're going to start making TV. I would love them to do... I hope they do a TV version that's Tinker, Tim Taylor. Tinker Tool Man, Tim Taylor. Tinker... Tim the Toolman Taylor soldier spy. And it's like George Smiley. Thank you.

Hey, why was that person selling out his own agency? Pretty obvious. He wanted more power. We're going to end on that, guys. Hey, we got to rate this movie. Oh, my God. Oh, like it's any surprise. Should we institute a once in a lifetime or once a 14? Whoa, Matty. You can if you want to. Do you want to do 14 out of 13? You can do that. No, I don't think that's... I mean, or we get... I know the...

The podcast I love for many years, Film Junk, they'll do that. They do a star rating out of five, but I think... Like two times or once a year, they get to do a six. Ooh, would have been some six out of fives for them. Do you remember? I can't remember. But like for me, it would be on here, what we've done. I don't know.

This may be my first 14. Nice, dude. More importantly, I'm obvious. What are you going to give it? I'll give it 13 out of 13. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not just you just being friendly? No, I really love the movie. Okay, so I give it a 14. and it's my favorite kind of movie which the rewards come in thinking about it more and watching it more sometimes I don't do this much anymore where I just put on a movie soundtrack but I do put this soundtrack on that's awesome Do do do do do do.

All right, thanks for indulging me, everybody. Oh, thank you, buddy. This has truly been a treat. And so next week, or two weeks from now, we'll be covering... Three Days of the Condor. Three Days of the Condor. A Christmas movie, I believe. Really? I think it takes place at Christmas. So the three days are ho, ho, and ho? Now I have a machine gun. Bye, everybody. Bye.

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One gentleman and everyone in between. Emilia Perez is the most Oscar-nominated film of the year, with 13 nominations, including Best Picture. It's nominated for 11 BAFTA awards, including Best Picture, Best Director Jacques Audillard, and Best Actress Carla-Sofia Gascon. and winner of four Golden Globe Awards, including Best Supporting Actress Zoe Saldana and Best Picture. Time Magazine calls it an exuberant ode to human possibility. Emilia Perez, back in cinemas now and on Netflix.

When passions run high and secrets run deep. When plots twist and turn and turn and twist. When you love and loathe characters in equal measure. Oh, I think she's a wrong one. Yeah, it's the shifty eyes. Nothing brings us together like great TV. And a TV licence covers you to watch all TV channels plus BBC iPlayer so you can bond over your favourite soaps and dramas. Search TV licence together.