Nick Helm - Comedian

Joining me this week is Nick Helm

Nick first took to the stand-up comedy stage in 2007 and quickly became a circuit legend with his tour de force of one-liners, stories, poems and jokes. Since then, he’s become one of Britain’s most loved comedians for his multiple, memorable and moving television appearances, his critically acclaimed writing and his legendary rollercoaster live shows.

Across the years, Nick has taken multiple mega hit shows to the Edinburgh Fringe including the must-see Keep Hold of the Gold, the Fosters Edinburgh Comedy Award nominated Dare to Dream and the completely sold out This Means War. In 2017, he embarked on his first full tour, hitting 25 dates across the UK with his hilarious show There Is Nothing You Can Do To Me That I Haven’t Already Done To Myself. He also released two successful albums Nick Helm is F*cking Amazing and Hot ‘n’ Heavy, which feature hit songs from his solo shows and are available on iTunes and Bandcamp.

Nick has become a firm TV favourite having appeared on multiple shows both acting and as himself. He was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award for his starring role in critically acclaimed BBC Three sitcom, Uncle, and also played the adorable Watto is Channel 4’s Loaded which was later broadcast on AMC in America. He’s also fronted his own food travelogue show Eat Your Heart Out with Nick Helm on Dave and his own high-octane variety show Nick Helm’s Heavy Entertainment on BBC Three. This is all in addition to his other unforgettable TV appearances such as 8 Out of 10 Cats, Russell Howard’s Good News and Celebrity Mastermind.

Nick's Instagram

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Transcript

SPEAKER_07 0:00

Welcome to Your Life in Film. I'm your host, Ted Bennett. Joining me this week. Comedian, actor, songwriter, Nick Helm. Nick is a staple of British telly. You'll have seen him on 8 out of 10 Cat's Does Countdown, Sunday Brunch, House of Games. He's done lots of good telly. Talking about good telly, he was also an uncle. Very good show. I didn't realise Nick was such a film guy, which was such a lovely discovery to make. I said, Thank you very much. I'm gonna have back in the New York Groove, stuck in my head all night now, and then promptly left. Then I decided I should probably reach out and uh ask if he wanted to do this podcast. We had a wonderful conversation, it's quite a long one, so strap in. Enjoy. So you are a big uh film guy.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Yeah. Yeah. All my life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 0:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Yeah, that's my thing. I was never into football. Uh my family weren't into football. Well, they kind of do the tournaments, but I was never I was never in into into sport or anything like that. And my dad was always much more interested in kind of like music and uh the arts and opera and stuff like that, and he always sort of like encouraged us to be artistic. And then um yeah, and then uh I kind of like latched onto films and that was that was kind of a real kind of lifesaver when I was a kid, because you know you just sit in front of the TV for hours and hours and hours in your own world, or in the world that the films created, and it would just you know eat up your weekends, it was brilliant.

SPEAKER_07 1:41

I used to love that feeling of leaving the cinema and sort of having that feeling of, oh, I'm I'm still in that world. I'm continuing about with my life, but that world is real and it's kind of happening elsewhere and feeling like you're still there. It's a window.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

It was a win it was a window into an adventure. I remember very specifically when I went to see uh Back to the Future 2, um, which it must have been nine. I I saw it at the cinema, so it was 1990, I think it came out. Um I'm gonna switch that off. And um don't want that happening. And um yeah, and I remember I remember being really frustrated leaving Back to the Future because I wasn't there anymore, and I wanted to be my uh Martin McFly more than anything else in the world. Yeah, it was just such like it was it was it was such um you know uh food for the imagination of a child and uh and like you say, yeah, when you you you'd get I loved uh because we had I mean we uh when I was a bit older, when when you know when I was probably because we grew up in London, um and then we moved when we were about seven or eight, and uh and then there was a cinema that was about a mile up the road, and so me and my sister would walk up to the cinema, and so I would uh we had an Odeon on in St Albans. There was an Odeon on London Road, and we'd uh walk up a mile and we'd you know have our pocket money and we'd get some popcorn and a drink, and then we'd go in, and it was this beautiful it was this beautiful big I think they had like two screens, maybe maybe it was two, maybe it was three, I think it was two, and um and yeah, we'd go up and we'd watch anything that was on, like literally anything. I remember we went to see a Paul Riser, Randy Quaid uh Matthew Modine comedy called Bye Bye Love, which I've never ever ever heard of ever again. No, but never walk up. We walked, we walked up to see it, we walked a mile to see it, we watched it, we came back again, and it was like we would just watch absolutely anything that was that was available, you know. Um yeah, it was great, it was great.

SPEAKER_07 3:54

There is something about it, isn't there? That that the whole ritual of going to the cinema, especially with a friend or a family member, my friend Sam. Uh, we moved from London up to Shropshire at the age of six or seven, and then I met Sam sort of like a year later, and then he and I instantly were like just film friends, like that's all we did. We watched film, and that's that. And it's funny how we can look back chronologically about how long our friendship is or when certain things happened in our friendship because it was something to do with going to the cinema, you know. So, like we have one story where we went to go see uh Ben Affleck's Daredevil, and we got there, and we were like, There's a lot of couples coming in to see Daredevil. That's a bit weird. I wouldn't I wouldn't have thought this was a couples film, and then Sam sort of just looked at me and was like, It's Valentine's Day, and I was like, and we're watching Ben Affleck in tight leather. Sounds like we're having a lovely day.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

Yeah, oh yeah. Uh I accidentally went to see uh Hot Fuzz with my dad on Valentine's Day, and uh and that was fun, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 5:02

I can imagine that goes like um no no no, no, no, no. Yeah, he's just my dad.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Yeah, he's just he's just my dad, you know. Um he's a great kisser though. So yeah, that that was a weird one. But yeah, I I agree, it's kind of like because some of your questions are like, what was the first film you ever seen? And can't like go, well, I I remember films, um, and so um uh they obviously came out at a certain time, so it's kind of like you know that it couldn't have been before that, and maybe it was maybe even if you saw something at the cinema that was new, it was probably maybe a year after the release date because we used to get everything a lot later in England. Um yeah, it's kind of it's uh and and also it's kind of like I mean, I'm I'm I'm a comedian and I've um I was talking to my dad. I'm going through all my archives of stuff, I'm kind of like organizing all my papers and stuff. And my dad was like saying, God, look at this, you're so lucky because um you can literally uh you've got you've got all of these date specific things that you have done, and it's so rare in a life that you can look at it and you can actually uh you know account for every single year of your life, you know. And you can like look at a poster and you go, I did that, that that year, and I did that, that yeah. And films are really similar in terms of that. It's kind of like well, I remember I remember going to see all these films, and it's kind of like, Well, well, that was that summer, and then that was that summer, you know. And um I I think that that's just a really comforting uh it's your it you know, it's it it it's your journey with films, and it's kind of like a personal journey. Everyone's got their own personal journey if they're into that sort of thing. Yeah, and um uh and yeah, you can kind of like account for stuff and you can like look at it, you can go, oh right, yeah, and then that's what that happened, and then you know. So yeah, I love that relationship that I have with films because I love films, but I appreciate them as uh pieces of art. Like like in the same way that if you looked at a painting and then you get up close and you can look at the brush strokes and then you step back. I'm not into like um uh I think some people especially nowadays, I think people watch them in terms of like realism, in terms of like people are obsessed with continuity errors.

SPEAKER_07 7:25

It really ruins it, the fact that we have to have like this that's unrealistic in a police procedural, and it's like it's a piece of fiction. So we have cop law and we have film law. Yeah. Like you you enjoy it as for the story it's being told to you. Don't dig into it and be like, well, that's unrealistic. It's like it's a film.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

But also, it's a piece of art that um that's been created by thousands of artists that are all kind of doing their bit on this big project. And what I love about it is that it's it's man-made, it's home or it's uh human-made, you know. Um you know, like uh when you look at the original King Kong and you can see the thumbprints on all of the fur and stuff while they're doing it. I love that. And it's kind of like uh you know, uh on the one hand you have like the um the suspension of disbelief where there's there's a 30-foot giant gorilla that's walking around.

SPEAKER_05 8:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:25

But on the other hand, it's like this stop motion piece of animation, which is beautiful that they've even kind of like, you know, worked out how to make kind of like the dimensions work with the actors, and you know, so the so just the logistics of how they made it is incredible, and then you look at all of the artists that went in to make it. So you know, I went to see um Alien at Prince Charles Cinema, and I've had sort of I have sort of like a love-hate relationship with Prince Charles Cinema because I it's such a it's such a they have such an amazing kind of like bill, and there's always something I want to see every week, and they have so many different events that are great. And if you want to go but I I would say if you want to go and see like a classic, it's a di you're probably better off at BFI because um I would see Alien, and it's the bit with uh Ian Ian Holmes Head, and uh and you know that comes on, and then the whole room laugh, and you kind of like go.

SPEAKER_04 9:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

I've only ever watched Alien by myself. I'm a child funny film. I was a child when I saw it, and there's not it's a serious film, and um and the tone of it and I think what I love most about Alien I probably prefer Alien to Aliens. Good. Um although Aliens is its own thing. Alien Aliens is like a complete roller coaster.

SPEAKER_07 9:47

It's Alien, Aliens and Alien 3, in my opinion, are three standalone excellent films. And if you were to choose which is your favourite, it's like I they're three separate films, they're not they just happen to be in the same universe.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

You can watch them in any order, but if but if you watch them back to back, it's jarring because the dialogue in Aliens is so kind of like one-liner-centric, and it's uh like hard-boiled kind of you know uh pulp fiction kind of uh dialogue, whereas Alien is so naturalistic. Um, I would say uh one of the last times I remember watching Aliens, I was with uh me and my ex-girlfriend now, but me and my girlfriend we were sat on the sofa, and uh and she'd never seen it before, and so we watched Aliens, and uh and then at the end of the film we realized that we'd been uh holding hands, but and when we let go, we'd been holding hands so tight that our fingers were indented in each other's hands for about five minutes, yeah, because the last 40 minutes of aliens is the tensest, it's the it's it's absolutely incredible. Whereas Alien, it's like uh the the whole tone of it, the kind of lonely, bleak, you know, uh ungodly tone of alien is is is chilling. The whole the whole when they're on the planet, it's chilling, you know, when they're in the spaceship, it's chilling, even before they meet the alien, it's it's already kind of you know um uh tense and kind of scary. And I and I just think I think that's amazing. So when you watch it, when you have the opportunity to see that at the cinema and you go and see it with a bunch of people in the cinema and they're laughing at the special effects, it's kind of um which works both ways, I think, because like um because seeing Alien with an audience for the first time and uh and people are laughing at it, and you're kind of uh frustrated because I've only ever watched it on my own, and it never occurred to me once that that was funny. I just accepted it as like, yeah, that's a special effect. I'm a I'm a grown-up. Obviously, it's all special effects. I have a suspension of disbelief that I'm enjoying it, and so something like um a wonky prop or something doesn't pull me out of it. It kind of reminds me it reminds me that people have made it.

SPEAKER_07 12:08

Also, I like to look at that wonky prop and be like, oh, that's how you did it. Oh, interesting. I can oh, there's the th oh that's nice. And then I appreciate like you're saying, like I appreciate it for the piece of art. It's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Uh I think you know, uh with with the when you look at 90s films, where because I I mean I I I love I love all eras of films. Uh one of my favourite films is Casablanca. Uh I go right the way back to Silent Era. I love them all. Um I have a particular fondness for the 90s because um that was the decade I started taking myself to the Xenar.

SPEAKER_07 12:44

90s thrillers, they don't get better.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

Well, I'm always in the mood for a John Grisham. And um like I but yeah, 90s thrillers, specifically 90s thrillers, and maybe maybe it was 80s, but stuff like Narrow Margin with Gene Hackman, you know. Oh yeah, yeah. Like if it like if everyone visiting my parents and we don't know what to watch, it'll always be like, right, let's watch Gene Hackman because you know he's just like Safe bet. He's like a quality standard, and um um but the 90s, I mean, when they first started introducing CGI, uh what was great about stuff like uh Jurassic Park and Titanic, you know, they use different, you know, they use uh miniatures and animatronics and uh you know CGI and uh rear projection and they use all these different kinds of uh disciplines.

SPEAKER_07 13:34

And seamlessly blend them between each one.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Well your brain can't keep up, so it's kind of like you but but you're kind of like going, how do they do that? and then they go on to the next thing and they've done it differently, and you're kind of like, well, how do they do that? And then so you so you just kind of like it, you just it it creates like this huge kind of experience.

SPEAKER_07 13:53

I watched Matrix uh reloaded uh the other day, and I was just like, God, these these graphics were shit when they first came out, and they have just not aged well, and because there's so much of it, all I'm seeing is these rubbery men and women fighting, and you're like, oh, this doesn't work. And then yesterday I watched Air Force One, and it was spectacular because, like you're saying, they've got the rear projection, they got the miniatures of like the plane, and the plane's three foot you know long, it's a huge miniature, but it's it's going along a runway, and then the explosions are sort of comped in, but they're not CG, they're a real explosion comped in. And you're just like, How is this? How does this work? How does this work? I believe that Harrison Ford has just punched Gary Oldman out of a plane. You know what I mean? Yeah. Whereas I'm looking at Neo and I'm like, Keanu, man, did you even turn up that day?

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Like there's no need. Yeah, but uh but once you can kind of wave your hand away and say it's all CGI, then it's kind of I think the magic is sort of lost, and then they become something different.

SPEAKER_07 14:58

They're kind of like corporate experiences where When my eyes know I'm not looking at anything real. And uh it doesn't apply for animation like a Kira I absolutely adore because it's hand drawn. And it is uh CGI is all hand worked. But when I know I'm only just looking at green screen and that, my brain kind of just goes like, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

Well, I I just always it's a shame because you just think of it as like it's a tool. It's like a tool, and just like just like practical effects tools, and um and obviously there is a lot of skill that goes into it, but um it's expensive as well, and it's kind of I guess it's I guess I mean it is it it is because it's profit and uh and you can make all sorts of changes in post-production that you wouldn't be able to do if you filmed it all, you know. Like with the thing remake that or the the prequel that they made with the thing. Oh yeah, and it's kind of like they did the whole thing with practical effects, so then they just at the end of it decides to CGI it all. Or the Wolfman as well. I mean, I think we were really robbed of uh Rick Baker's last proper, you know, werewolf movie. Um, although I loved the Wolfman, I thought it was great, and I think Rick Baker's actual uh practical costume design was was like you know, he took the original uh Lon Cheney Jr. design and then he kind of upgraded it and gave him kind of like you know, dog legs, uh knee knees on the back of his knees. Yeah, and uh and I loved I I loved, I mean I probably loved that film, but um but it was a real shame that they kind of like went the CGI route with it. Um but I just think that that's that's that so I'm probably less into kind of films uh probably within the last 15 years because that's when well that's when really Marvel took over and it's uh and I'm not so interested in that stuff.

SPEAKER_07 16:47

I think uh it's made me branch out to more um not the hits of world cinema, like really digging into world cinema and being like, oh, who who are you and what are you what was your first film, and then digging all the way back and being like, okay, here's something that's new, an original story, something I haven't seen before, and then that's great, and then obviously that makes me you know learn more about world cinema, and that's always a good thing. And that's my way of sort of being like, Okay, well, Hollywood cinema doesn't do it for me at the moment. It m it might win me back, I hope it does. So that means I now have all this time to go focus on South Korean cinema. Like it's got all this time to go look at like mainly Hong Kong thrillers from the 80s, but that's what I usually tend to deviate to.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

I just went to see Hardboiled at the BFI. Oh lovely. Was that last week or two weeks ago? And that that's incredible. I think they're spring like they're re-appraising them at the moment, are they? I think the killers on at um at Prince Charles's in Prince Charles's defence, they do have huge like adverts before the film starts saying don't be a dick and stop talking. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 17:54

I saw uh Alien and Aliens as a double feature at the Prince Charles. Right. This was a few years ago, maybe almost ten. And it was the same deal. Like I had seen Alien recently as uh at the BFI because they did a 4K of the of it at the IMAX. So I saw it there and everyone took it seriously. But then during Aliens, everyone were like you were saying, they were just like quoting out the lines, yelling it all out, and I was like No, people, let's let's respect the medium. I'm not yelling at the Mona Lisa, cheer up, bitch. I had to know what I mean.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

I had to walk out of a Paul Verhoeven sci-fi triple bell because I just couldn't handle they were more oh god, they were morons during Robocop, and then um Total Recall came on and they were shouting at the screen all the way through to and I was just like if they can't handle Robocop and Total Recall, then Starship Troopers is gonna be a fucking nightmare. So I left. I was just like, I'm not doing I'm not doing the thing.

SPEAKER_07 18:59

I think that's a smart move.

SPEAKER_02 19:00

Um but on the flip side of that, what I would say is kind of like growing up and watching films as a child on like TV and uh video, the flip side of that is kind of uh it was probably 15 years ago. Um uh they would have done what would have been it would have been a 35 or a 25 a 35-25 year anniversary for Back to the Future.

SPEAKER_07 19:24

That'd be 35.

SPEAKER_02 19:25

No, it would have been 25-15 years ago, and it would have been 40 this year, or 40 last year, wasn't it? And Back to the Future was the first like when I saw it in 2010, it must have been the first time I'd ever seen it with a c in a cinema with an audience.

SPEAKER_05 19:38

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

And then again, I saw it last year. Uh, me and uh my friend uh Nathaniel Metcalf uh went to Los Angeles to see John Carpenter in concert on Halloween.

SPEAKER_07 19:50

And um can I can I give you uh an extra piece on that? Two years ago I went to Scream Fest and I watched the thing with John Carpenter and Dean Cundy.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Oh wow, was it great?

SPEAKER_07 20:02

It was bloody lovely, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

Yeah, that's such a good film. It's like joint first of my favourite John Carpenter films, but yeah, it's good.

SPEAKER_07 20:11

Uh yeah, fair, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

But we were out there and we watched, you know, we were out there for two, we were with our other friend David Trent, and he had to leave, and we had like limited time before his plane. We were like, what do we do? Uh and it was like, oh right, well, back to the futures on uh uh Graham Chinese theatre um on Hollywood Boulevard in IMAX. It's like what are you gonna do? You're gonna go to Los Angeles and watch a f like watch a new film. Yeah, yeah, thanks. So we were just like, you couldn't get a pop, you couldn't possibly get a more perfect cinematic experience than like a like a pretty much flawless film, uh, one of the most entertaining films ever in IMAX at one of the most famous cinemas on the planet in the place where films are pleased and thank you. Yeah, so we went to see that. What's so interesting about Back to the Future? You know, uh I grew up watching it, you know, uh by myself or with friends, or whenever it was on tele or whatever, we probably taped it off the TV and we watched it. My sister saw it at the cinema, and I was taken to see Black Cauldron instead.

SPEAKER_07 21:17

Uh oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

And I was uh furious. But um well I didn't mind I have similars.

SPEAKER_07 21:23

I didn't mean I I didn't mind Black Cauldron, but it's not it's it wasn't that Black Cauldron was bad, it's just it wasn't Back to the Future, and as an adult, knowing that you missed out, it hurts.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Yeah, I well I didn't even I didn't really know uh I didn't even really understand what the title Back to the Future meant. Um I know that she came home with a sticker album, and I think that there was a there was a Back to the Future sort of board game on the back of Wheat of Bix, uh, and you had to kind of like cut out the little DeLorean cars and glue them together and then uh go around this board. So I just remember Back to the Future, but when you see it in the cinema, it's a comedy and I did not I did not I knew I knew there was humour in it.

SPEAKER_05 22:05

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

And I knew that Michael J. Fox is a very kind of like uh you know, he's got such a light touch with comedy, he's just he's too like one of the I mean everyone loves uh Michael J. Fox and everyone loves Back to the Future and I feel like it's kind of a given but but you Martin McFly is one of the all-time greatest performances, you know.

SPEAKER_07 22:31

Yeah, completely believable.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

It's like he's just it it like everything from kind of like the physicality that he brings to it to kind of his delivery and he's just got such a lightness of touch, and I think it he's sort of incredibly underrated. Like, even though everyone loves him, it's almost like, oh yeah, it's back to the future because we love back to the future because we have nostalgia for Back to the Future. When actually, no, he's like Cary Grant in that film, you know. He's like he's incre he's he's incredible, he's got like that real lightness of touch. Um uh but yeah, when you see it with a with an audience, it's like everyone's laughing at all of the punchlines, and you're like going, oh my god, this film is like obviously I enjoyed it on my in my on my own level, but when you see it and people are like kind of like signposting that these are the points where everyone else is laughing, you're like oh you you kind of appreciate it on a completely different level. Um I love that. I love that.

SPEAKER_07 23:26

Though I had a an odd one, I went to see the 89 Batman at the Prince Charles, and there was a woman sat in front of me who I couldn't I couldn't pinpoint what was the trigger, but she would just laugh. Like the Joker would be halfway through saying something that was not a funny line, like and she'd just be like and I was like, Wait, wait, what have I missed? I've seen this film hundreds of times. Why are you laughing? And for the rest of the film, I was just like, When are you gonna laugh again? And I kept looking over, and my friend was like, What are you doing? And I was like, She's laughing at the at just normal dialogue, and he was like in the wrong places, and he was like, Stop it, you're being weird, and then he was like, Oh yeah, she is laughing. What's going on over there? Yeah, it was great.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

Well, you ruined it for him as well.

SPEAKER_07 24:12

Yes, yes, yes. I had to, if I wasn't gonna have a nice time. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Um, there was also uh the same friend that when we went to go see Akira at the Prince Charles, we we were both really excited to go see it, but we were both also absolutely shattered. So we were like, please be dubs, not subs, please be dubs, not subs, please be dubs, not subs. And then obviously it comes in in the original Japanese, and we were like, I'm happy, yeah, but I'm fucking shattered.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 24:38

So then we're just reading it like alright, alright, I'm having a lovely time. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

I mean, this might be quite controversial, but um, I don't really see the point in subtitling animation.

SPEAKER_07 24:50

Uh fair. I think there's as long as the performance, the voice performance is done with the same vigour and an intensity. Yeah. Couldn't care less.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

I mean, there are some real fucking left-field choices on Studio uh Ghibli. Uh is it Ghibli or Ghibli?

SPEAKER_07 25:07

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 25:08

There's some real left-field choices on Studio Ghibli. Um Billy Crystal and Hal's Moving Castle pretty much ruined it.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

You're like, what are you doing, mate?

SPEAKER_02 25:22

What are you doing? I think he's like trying to channel Robin Williams from Aladdin and it's no no no no no. But um, but yeah, I mean I obviously the dialogue changes slightly, and um but if it's already like animation is dubbed by it by its very nature, so yes, um I I can't remember what it was, um, but it was a it was a it was a couple of years ago I went to see some animation at Prince Charles and it was on in the middle of the day, and that had subtitles, and there were like kids in, and it was like, Oh no, you're in for a real rough two hours, kid, because it was just all reading. And when you're reading it, you're not looking at the beautiful animation.

SPEAKER_07 25:59

So yeah, I think that's uh because a friend, uh say a friend, my therapist, he was talking about showing his son um some Kurosawa, and I sort of said, like, oh, are you gonna do it um dubbed or subbed? Because he's I think the kids like I'm not gonna out the kids' kids' age, but the kid's young. And um he was like, No, I'm gonna go for something that's not as torky and let it be subbed, and then get him used to reading and then looking and reading and looking. And I was like, that's a very smart way of doing it. Whereas I would have just been like, crack on with the dub mate, enjoy the film. If you like it, go back and watch it again with the subs and realise you're better than people for listening, watching it with subs.

SPEAKER_02 26:41

Yeah, yeah. Um no, I I mean I think that is uh that is a um that is a good way of doing it. I can't remember what I was watching, I'm just trying to remember. I was watching.

SPEAKER_07 26:52

Was it Ghost in the Shell? I feel like they did that recently.

SPEAKER_02 26:55

No, um it I don't think it was animation, it was something that I was watching that was um oh my god, I don't even think I put it in letterbox. Oh, it was probably hardboiled. It was hardboiled. And you know, there's a lot of subtitles in Hardboiled, but uh but then there are just huge action sequences that don't need any dialogue whatsoever, and it's kind of uh that I thought that's what was kind of incredible about it is that it's visual storytelling. Subtitles really do bring out the fact that there's visual you know, that cinema is visual storytelling because a lot of the time you can follow the plot without actually reading anything.

SPEAKER_07 27:32

You of course have been in film and TV, uh see that segue.

SPEAKER_02 27:35

This is true.

SPEAKER_07 27:36

Uh I realised when I was looking at your uh IMDB recently, unrelated to asking if you'd want to be on the pod. And um I saw that you did uh is it the lady in the dress?

SPEAKER_02 27:50

Yeah. That was a short film, yeah. I did a short film.

SPEAKER_07 27:53

It was a short film. And I had done I had shot the EPK for uh some candid observations on the Eve of the End of the World, which was shown at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 28:04

Oh right, okay, right.

SPEAKER_07 28:06

And I remember you went up on stage and like did a little speech before the film, I think, or after.

SPEAKER_02 28:11

At the BFI was this, isn't it? Yeah, I remember, yeah. I didn't um uh I didn't st I didn't watch the screening. I but I but I came in and I did the intro and then I left.

SPEAKER_06 28:22

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

But um uh yeah, I do remember that. That's funny. The girl in the dress. Um she's my friend now, Natalie Marlon. She's she kind of lives uh she's sort of like my neighbourhood neighbour. Oh nice. I think she'd I think she'd seen Uncle and then she kind of got in card. No, I did I did a short film. I wrote an I I directed a short film that I wrote with Esther Smith um called Elephant, which got BAFTA nominated and then Well done, sir. Thank you very much. First one out of the you know, knocked out of the park.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

And uh we didn't we didn't win, but what's interesting about being what's interesting about being nominated for a BAFTA is that everyone just thinks that you've won anyway. So they go, Oh, well done with winning the BAFTA and you're like Thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_06 29:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

Uh nomination, nominee. There it is.

SPEAKER_07 29:20

Um, it's just I've got it the the the old mask is getting not polished, so you can't see it right now.

SPEAKER_02 29:26

I can't see it right now, yeah. And um, so she saw that, and then uh she kind of like said, Would you do this short film for me? And I was like, Yeah, sure. And we met up and we talked about it, and I was gonna be um the idea was that I was playing kind of like one of those human statues that you get in Calvent Garden, and then this woman in a dress. And I'm dressed as Henry VIII, who famously had lots of wives. Loved it, and uh loved them, loved, loved, loved the wives he did until he didn't until he didn't. And then um and so the idea was that there was this woman that had uh ran out of her wedding, so she was wearing a wedding dress, and she's confronted by this uh human statue that's dressed as Henry VIII, and then he helps her sort out her relationship stuff, and it was a really it was a really nice uh script, and I agreed to do it. I said, Yes, that sounds great, and uh we had like some chats about it. I think we even had a rehearsal. Oh wow, and then on the day we filmed it, I turned up and they sent me to the costume and makeup department, and they were just like, we just need to do a quick little skin test on you to make sure that the makeup doesn't hurt you. And I was like, Uh, what do you mean? And they fucking sprayed me gold, and I was just like, What do you mean I'm gold? Right? What do you mean? What do you mean I'm gold? And she goes, Yeah, you're gold. I told you you were gold. I said, No, you never, you didn't tell me I was gold.

SPEAKER_07 30:47

You said I was golden.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

She kept and she kept like saying, No, look, I told you you're gonna, I said, where did you say I was gold? She goes, I said that you're a human statue, and I was just like, at no point does that say that could be anything that from head to toe, I'm gonna be completely sprayed gold. Uh so I found that out just before we started filming, and I was just like, oh fucking hell, I'm like a right knob. But um, no, no offense to actual professional human statues. Um yeah, yeah, so that was that was really funny. But yeah, I did that, I did that. And we oh right, so we have history.

SPEAKER_07 31:21

We do, we do. And I and I was really like, oh yes, of course. Like it was brought back to that whole script much we were talking about with memories and film. I was then brought back to remember that short film I had worked on and that that summer that I'd worked on it, and it was like, oh, this is that's lovely to remember that.

SPEAKER_02 31:37

So so yeah. I mean what I was gonna say was that I quite like the police academy films. Um I think Hey, you're a comedian, you're allowed to.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

I I think that that would actually uh that would actually rule me out. I'm I'm an award I'm an award nominated comedian.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

I've won a couple. I'm award I'm an award nominated comedian. I think that uh the police academy film shouldn't be anywhere near my radar. Fair enough. I think the first four with Steve Gutenberg.

SPEAKER_07 32:10

They do work as like a Oh, you really think when Gutenberg left that's when the quality went downhill?

SPEAKER_02 32:14

Well, it did. I mean it's undeniable. They had four films that were kind of like they all followed on from each other, and you know, I because uh during the pando I um I just I binged them all, but I managed to do them all in one day, and it was just like, oh great. Jesus it was absolutely exhilarating. Because once you've decided once you've got halfway through three and you've gone, nah, I'm doing them all. Might as well. It's kind of like you you you locked in, but those first four, you know, they all work together as a set, and then when Steve Gutenberg left, they kind of panicked and they were like, right, what do we do without him? Uh well we'll take him uh we'll do like on the buses, uh go on holiday, and uh they'll all go to Miami and and Mahoney won't be there, and uh we'll have a Mahoney replacement, and it's kind of like so I they kind of attempted to do it with sort of a similar budget and it doesn't quite work. And then they uh and then with six they were like, Well, let's do it with a skeleton crew and uh we'll film it on bat lots and we'll halve the budget again, and that doesn't work, and then like five or six years later when the uh the iron curtain drops, Russia go uh Russia come over to Russia turned around to Hollywood and they say we'd love it if you made a police academy film here. And uh Police Academy 7 was the first Western film to be made in Russia after the Cold War. And and that one is re that one is really awful, but like after after four, you can see how like the seventh one is awful, but they weren't they weren't all as bad as the seventh one.

SPEAKER_06 33:52

Right.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

And um, you know, I've just seen Scream Seven and I don't I think there's there's more good police academy films than there are Scream films, right? And so by the time you get to by the time you get to the seventh one, yeah, it's it's dog shit, right? But you can see how it kind of had to be scaled down from the fifth one, and they were just ringing ringing all the money out of it. But the first four are great, and they have they have a structure where you know they like to their credit, they try and do something different in every single police academy film. So um I I can't remember what the finale of the first one is, but I think uh uh the second one um I I don't think I've watched them since I was a kid. There's the the fourth one ends with a um uh hot air balloon uh chase, and I think the third one ends. I think the third one has speed boats maybe. Um there's definitely one that's got um this might be Miami, that's one that's on like the Everglades. Um and um and so they try and try and do like this big kind of stunt heavy vehicle-based uh set piece at the end of each one that's always different from you know, and and it's kind of like it's like James Bond in that way, right? Where they've kind of like gone, right? Well, let's let's mix this up, let's not do like the same location. Let's yeah, so I think you know that they deserve a bit of credit, and and they try to evolve. I by no means are they masterpieces, but I do there's a joke in the fourth one that links back to the first one, which ties the first four together. Yeah, and and I found uh George Gaines says it, he's talking to a bunch of uh ambassadors around a table, and it just cuts in halfway through an anecdote, and he's just finishing off his anecdote, uh, and uh and it's a reference to the blowjob scene in the first one, and you just kind of like go, you didn't have to do that. I laughed out loud. I just thought it was just like this, like there was a level of care to it, yeah, that um that you wouldn't associate with the police academy film, and also they all loved each other, they all they all loved each other and they all loved working together, and you can just imagine like by the time they get on to the fourth one, they're all clocking in and going, yeah, you know, it's not really about the film anymore, it's about oh, we're just cranking out another one of these, are we? But like there's like this communal kind of experience that you're watching as well with the police academy films, and I don't watch them often, but like I'd say that last time. Yeah, we'll never live on we'll never live on telly. I don't like I could talk I could talk at this length about anything, right? It just so happens we've landed on police academy right now, right? We we've landed. I do have a point where it's kind of like there's like a house style to it, right? And once you once you've bought into the house style, you're no longer comparing the police academies to you know uh Shanders List or Gone with the Wind. Yes, yes, they're there's they're they're those films, and when you're watching the Godzilla movies, you're completely locked in and you go, This is how it works. I'm not kind of like going, bloody hell, the the special effects in this aren't as good as Jurassic Park. You're kind of like going, this is what it looks like. And I also think like if they were ever gonna make a sequel or do a remake of Jaws, um, you know, there was there was I think I think the complaints about the rubber shark uh have kind of subsided over the years because the film the the the quality of the film has taken over. But I think as kind of like um uh as a way to beat the film up, people always kind of reference the rubber, oh it's just a fake shark, oh it's a rubber shark. They even mention it in Back to the Future 2, because that was one of the big complaints about the film. You know, uh oh the shark looks fake, and it's kind of I don't know what a 25-foot great white shark looks like, right? And for all intents and purposes, this is this is the this is the villain of the movie. This is your Michael Myers, this is your Jason Voorhees, this is your Freddie Krueger, this is what the shark looks like. And if you were gonna do it again, I don't want it to look like an actual real shark. I want it, I want it to look like the the the the sh the shark character in Jaws because that's what Jaws is, it's that shark. If you were like people, you know, they've done stuff uh on the internet uh where people have kind of like done sort of uh you know special effects um tests and gone, this is what the shark would look like if it was real, and it and and it doesn't look as good and it pulls you out.

SPEAKER_07 38:23

No, I completely agree. The ominous sort of slow dread of that shark just going, and because it they knew it didn't look quite good, so we never saw it all the time.

SPEAKER_02 38:33

There is the it didn't work most of the time, so they couldn't film it.

SPEAKER_07 38:36

So there's a fear. There is a thing like, oh, I've not looking at it all the time, which means I can't get used to what I'm seeing. If I'm only ever seeing a certain element of it, then I don't ever get the full picture. And when the full picture finally does fucking come out and grab Quint, you're like, fuck me, this thing's huge. I don't care that it looks rubbery. I went to the Academy Museum a couple of years ago, and they got Bruce hanging from the rafters.

SPEAKER_02 38:57

What in um Los Angeles? Yeah. Yeah, we went when we went. It was incredible. It's beautiful. Looks real to me. It we did the whole well, it looks like a real prop. Yeah. It looks like a real thing, and then and uh you know, um we we did the whole exhibition. We took about we took about an hour going around the exhibition, and then we came out, and then um because we were only there for the day, so it's just like well let's do it again. So we then we did a speed run to make sure we hadn't missed anything. But I but I it was one of the best uses of my time I've ever I've ever done.

SPEAKER_07 39:27

When I was there, they had a cyberpunk exhibit and all over. Yeah, we had that as well. Oh sick, yeah. That was I loved that. That was really nice.

SPEAKER_02 39:34

Yeah, it was it was it was it was good. And then we went to see John Carpenter in the evening, it was a good day out. Perfect. Um but uh yeah, though it's not that it's not that the shark looks real, it's just like that is the shark from Jaws. And also, I love Jaws, right? I know uh I think it's I think it's the great uh the greatest movie ever made. Um, and I've been saying that for years, and then I recently saw a uh clip of Quentin Tarantino saying it, and I was just like, I guess, I guess we're uh we're both geniuses. Uh except why do you hate Paul Dano? Except I like Paul Dano and Matthew Lillard was the best thing in Scream 7. Yes. Um but um but yeah, it's kind of like uh because Jaws is probably one of my earliest film memories of just seeing the yellow barrels on TV once and being kind of like yeah, I was tiny and I was sort of like the yellow barrels were enough to scare me. And um, so Jaws is one of my earliest memories, and it's it's it's followed uh with me my whole life. Um, you know. Uh I'm not a huge Spielberg guy. Um I like uh Jaws and I like uh Jurassic Park and I do love um I love Last Crusade and I really really really like Raiders of Lost Ark and Temple Doom, I'm kind of getting into. But a lot of his other films I can take or leave. He's not my guy, you know. Yeah, fair enough. Um uh I love George Lucas, um, uh and and Spielberg, I always felt a bit sackarin, and uh I always kind of gravitated more towards people like John Carpenter. But um but with Jaws it's like you know so much about the making of and behind the scenes, it's almost impossible to see this film without without without knowing about the behind the scenes tensions that's going on. Even even the relationships between you know the actors, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfus, and you know, all of all of like the soap opera drama that was going on, and I've read like uh uh what's his face is Carl Gottlieb's uh set diary, and I've kind of I I've got a Jaws themed toilet. Like like I'm in my office, and next door I've got my bathroom, and uh the all of the walls are covered in Jaw stuff and lovely, and it's kind of like I I absolute I absolutely love Jaws.

SPEAKER_07 41:57

We are yet to frame, but we have a by order of Amity Bill PD, no swimming that needs to go up in the bow.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

Oh I've got one of them, yeah. Yeah, it's like I I just love everything about Jaws. I love the making of it, the behind the scenes stuff. I love the and so you know, um I still can't I still have to take my feet off the ground during the estuary victim uh bit when the I think it's the most horrifying image in uh in in almost in film history, certainly, uh of the shark just gliding underneath the surface of the water and just dragging him under. I have to take my feet off the ground. If I'm watching it at home, I have to take it off the ground. I probably watch Jaws once or two times a year. Uh I remember they released it a couple of years ago um in 3D at the cinema, and again I'm in the cinema, I have to take my feet off the ground because you just like you have that icky feeling, and uh and I'm pretty sure my thalassophobia stems from Jaws. What's philosophal what is it?

SPEAKER_07 43:03

Thalassophobia is the fear of deep water.

SPEAKER_02 43:06

Oh well, yeah. I mean, uh yeah, swimming pools, you know, like when we were on holiday and uh you'd be in a villa and uh not my villa, but um there'd be kind of like a pool and you kind of like go, you know, it's night time and you start to go into a park. There's gonna be a shark in there, 100%. Well, yeah, like absolutely. I find all of that terrifying. And it's kind of like even though we have kind of absolutely deconstructed and cannibalized this movie and taken it to pieces, and it's been pastiche loads, and there's been, you know, uh worse sequel. I mean, the first four police academy films as a set are better than the first four Jaws films, right? Um it's upsetting but true. Uh the there's the at least they're consistent, right?

SPEAKER_03 43:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:49

Um and uh so it's kind of like even though we know everything there is to know about Jaws, and even though, you know, I still watched the 50th anniversary documentary, knowing that I knew everything.

SPEAKER_07 44:01

The only thing I didn't know was that the film poster came from the book cover.

SPEAKER_02 44:05

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_07 44:06

That was the only thing, and I was like, ha. Go on then.

SPEAKER_02 44:09

But I still find it just like the behind-the-scenes stuff uh as interesting as the film. And then when you watch the film, none of that takes away from it because the film is still powerful and strong. It's got, you know, it's got amazing performances, I think. Um so there's there's a couple of shots in there which are kind of like when the shark almost comes like vertically out of the water and is and jumps on the boat. And you kind of go, these shots are a bit wonky and they don't kind of like, but um, it doesn't affect the film, it doesn't take me out of here. And all I'm thinking is, God, how many takes did it take them to just get that? And uh and it makes me appreciate the film, but I can also switch that aspect of it off. I you can you can appreciate the film as a piece of escapism, a piece of entertainment, a thriller, a drama, a comedy. It's all of these things. You can appreciate it as on the level that the film is like a window into an imaginary world. You can appreciate it on that level, but you can also appreciate it on the level that you know a thousand artists uh laboured on getting this thing made, and it was impossible to film on the water, and they were doing script rewrites every day, and they had to cobble together this thing, and it ended up being a masterpiece. And you know, I just uh I just I love film for that reason, you know. I love film because I do like the adventure of a movie, but it's not just about escapism, it's about just sort of like marvelling at you know uh the human process of creating things, you know. I just I I just love everything about it. So Jaws is kind of like this um this film where the special effects have aged, uh or or maybe they were maybe they haven't, maybe they were always as shonky as they always were, but it doesn't affect the film, and it definitely doesn't affect the film, and I think storytelling really makes a big part in that as well.

SPEAKER_07 46:05

If you're if I'm bought in, I'm not looking for faults, you know. Like I I'm not looking for any mistake in the thing, and I'm sure there are loads.

SPEAKER_02 46:15

Well uh on top of all of that, technically, on a technical level, it's just a flawless film. The camera work is incredible. So it's not like um the shark is rubbish and uh so's the camera work. Yeah, it's not like a knockoff B movie, you know, um uh what'd you call it? Kind of like a alligator. Like an allig, yeah. Alligator's alligator's great, right? But um is it William Forsyth, isn't it? And uh and he spends the whole film talking about you know, he's bald and he's like I'm bald.

SPEAKER_07 46:50

I love that. Like you're gonna look at my hair? Yeah. Alright. No bumps, it's a thing.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

Um but but but it but it's a knockoff, right? And it's and it's a cheapie that is more entertaining. Yeah, than it not than it has any right to be, but it's kind of like what Jaws should have been, right? Oh yeah. But but Steven Spielberg made it, and so this like he's an incredible filmmaker, and and and you know, Jaws is great, and then you do have this thing, but it's like it kind of because the rest of the film is so well acted and produced and and made, it's kind of like you're I don't even I don't even I don't really even have a problem with the shark, even though we're gonna do it. And what I would say about it, knowing all of that, knowing everything that I know, um I watched Jaws last year for the uh that'd be the 50th, wouldn't it? And um and uh the I I do not know how it happened, but the bit when he goes under the boat and he um uh and he chisses the tooth out and then he drops the tooth and then the head comes out. I've seen this film uh you know a hundred times and uh and on the hundred and first time I've seen it, the head coming out of the thing made me jump, and you kind of go for the first time. Oh, for the I've it I've always like I've I don't know what it was. I think maybe um I think maybe I've always been looking at the hole in the boat and when the head comes out it's kind of slow. And I think maybe this time when I watched it, I was actually looking at his hands with the tooth and the knife, and then the and then the head comes out and and and I jumped and I was just like that is crazy. That bit I not only have I seen that bit like a hundred times, yeah. But it and and not only has that been disgust, ad nauseum, uh, and that was the that was the insert shot that they put in, uh that they filmed in a swimming pool, you know. Not only do I know all of that, but it was the but it made me jump for the first time in all those stuff. So I just think yeah, it's I love that. That's that's my appreciation of film, right? I love I love um I love films, but I love everything about the process behind the films as well. Um I'm a big fan of the process, and I guess that's you know, I am drawn to sort of um uh I don't have a specific favourite genre. I like I I I love horror because they're kind of easy watches for me. And um uh and I love science fiction and I love comedy. Uh but uh and I grew up with action. Um but um I love you know what I really miss these days is like your your mid-budget uh dramas or tight nighty.

SPEAKER_07 49:38

Just a nice 90-minute thriller drama thing where you're just getting a real story with real actors, adult actors, and I'm not being flippant when I say adult actors, adults like actors that take their craft very seriously, and you don't need to look sexy or make a funny joke. You can just look grim and be an arsehole, Gene Hackman, and just still be like, Oh yeah, man, that works. Like you're an absolute scumbag in most of your films, but I fucking love you.

SPEAKER_02 50:05

Yeah, or like Susan Sarandon, it's kind of like you know, she she your reward in Hollywood is that you know you get you get promoted to the point where you're doing trash, and uh and it's kind of like Susan Sarandon, she pops up here and there and stuff, and you kind of go, Yeah, it's great, but she's playing Susan Sarandon in a part where it's just like, hey, we've got Susan, you know, you love Susan Sarandon, here's Susan Rendon. Whereas in the 80s and 90s, she was in all these films, and it's kind of like where are those films? Where are those films?

SPEAKER_07 50:34

I didn't l get why everyone lost their mind for Meryl Streep because when I was growing up, Meryl Streep was already Meryl Streep. So every time I saw her, and unfortunately, I think the first time I saw her anything was stuck on you, where she has a cameo. Um I I was just very much like, I don't get it, she's always playing the same character, what's going on? And then I watched Kramer vs Kramer and I was like, I was an idiot. This woman's spectacular, like she's a great actress.

SPEAKER_02 50:59

Well, you but you weren't an idiot, it's just sort of like the qual the I missed sort of like that tone of uh uh the weight of 70s dramas and you know.

SPEAKER_07 51:15

That Hollywood Renaissance period was so good for film.

SPEAKER_02 51:18

You kind of get you do you still you do still get it in the 80s uh and then in the butt you know backed up with blockbusters and then the nineties kind of like tips over more to like blockbusters and um you know what I love about those John Grisham adaptations is that um they're all from John Grisham books, right? So they've all they've all got like the same source in a way. But depending on who's directing them, you get a completely different style of film. So uh who did um who did uh the firm?

SPEAKER_07 51:51

Was that um I'm gonna say it's Tony, but it's not Tony.

SPEAKER_02 51:56

I think it was was it Sydney Lumet? Or was it or was it Sydney Pollock? Or or was it let's it Pollock?

SPEAKER_07 52:07

Uh let's have a look at the firm. Oh I'm not on the internet. Pollock.

SPEAKER_02 52:14

Well done, sir. Oh right, there you go. Um so Sydney Pollock, I mean the firm is quite a broad film. Uh I mean it starts with like Tom Cruise doing I I don't I don't love the firm, but um it starts with Tom Cruise doing like backflips down the down the the pavement, and it's kind of like oh wow, this is kind of bonkers. But it's like this big glossy kind of thriller, and then you've got the client, which is Joel Schumacher, and again that's kind of like this really kind of like glossy, slick kind of thriller, but then you've got the Rainmaker, which is Francis Ford Coppola, and then when you watch The Rainmaker, the emphasis isn't about the plot anymore, the emphasis is about um the acting and the character work, and you know, Matt Damon and Danny DeVito, and and so Francis Ford Coppola is kind of like uh created he's used kind of um this John Grisham book to kind of do almost like a theatre production where he's he's broken them all down, and then I there's a scene where Matt Damon has to turn up and he's looking tired and uncomfortable. So they taped a rock to his back so that he kind of like was physically and then you have the gingerbread man, which is Robert Altman, which again is kind of really loose and it's kind of and so it's kind of you have you have this John Grisham is the standard where it's just like right, that they're all based on John Grisham, but depending on who's directing them, you get different sorts of films out of them. I find that really interesting.

SPEAKER_07 53:39

That is really interesting, because you would have thought that having a Grisham at the as the backbone there would be a unifying theme well like Marvel movies, it's like we'll make sure that they're all kind of the same.

SPEAKER_02 53:49

Oh, Sam Raimi directed this one, okay. Thank you for telling me, but you know, because he fucking didn't, because you know, it you know uh uh the Empire review was like going flourishes of Sam Raimi, and you kind of like go, well, are there really it's Bruce Campbell's in it, but yeah, sure. Um whereas when you see something like uh send oh send uh send help, which just came Oh yeah, I haven't seen that yet, and it's kind of like you know, it's it's he's back to kind of uh drag me to hell kind of Sam Raimi where it's like it's not quite up there with you know your evil deads and your dark man's, but it's uh it's uh uh it's kind of like a return to to form where you kind of I've I've missed this Sam Raimi and I didn't get this Sam Raimi even through the Spider-Man movies, you know.

SPEAKER_07 54:39

No, like I it's not that I forget that Raimi did the Spider-Mans, but I always just think they're just they're different films that Raimi did.

SPEAKER_02 54:47

Well he's a gun for hire, and I I feel like I feel like Sam Raimi's contribution is the tone of them where like like his his main contribution is the tone of them where he's got kind of like that kind of nostalgic like cheesiness to it, you know, where he's like uh he's he's he's like he's like an unashamed nerd, and he's kind of like it's corny, that's what you and that's and that's his style, he loves corny kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_07 55:16

Are you an Evil Dead 1 or two man? Two.

SPEAKER_02 55:18

Well, I'm an Army of Darkness guy completely through me. Army of Darkness.

SPEAKER_07 55:24

I mean enough.

SPEAKER_02 55:26

I saw Army of Darkness when I was young, and then uh and then I worked back and I watched Evil Dead 2, and then uh eventually I grew I I built up the courage to watch Evil Dead 1, but I did it in reverse order.

SPEAKER_07 55:37

Evil Dead One all day for me.

SPEAKER_02 55:39

Yeah, well, I mean again, it's like it's I mean it's a high card, as my friend Nathaniel would say. Um it's uh you know that what I love about Evil Dead is it's a group of 20-year-olds in the woods that are making stuff up, and they they made a film that was so horrific to some people that it got banned.

SPEAKER_07 55:58

It's so beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 55:59

And it's like they made it with plasticine in the woods. What are you talking about? But like uh, you know, the Evil Dead companion book that I had where they have all the diagrams of them oh, they taped a camera to the middle of a two by four and then they ran it through the woods and all that stuff. Again, that goes back to like like you can see the thumbprints on screen, right? Of of like where they've made it and where they've stitched it all together.

SPEAKER_07 56:24

That's that's why I keep my VHS of it, because to me I don't I like a friend, he had never seen any of them, and he said, like, oh should I get them all on 4K? And I was like, No, no, like get at most DVD. I was like, because you want it to be a bit knackered and you want to be able to not quite see it, because in my opinion, it looks better. Like if you can see that it's all that and you're not bought in, you're gonna be criticising it.

SPEAKER_02 56:48

It's the experience, isn't it? It's it you kind of want it to be like grindhousey.

SPEAKER_07 56:52

Yeah, I want I want it to feel like it's a tape I shouldn't be watching.

SPEAKER_02 56:55

Yeah, I don't want to watch Texas Chainsaw Masquerine 4K. I want to watch it with kind of like lines through it and uh and jumps in the film. But um, but you know, I like that about I like that about Evil Dead. I like the fact that it's kids in the woods that have made this film, and I love the special you know, the special effects are gross, right? Yeah, and I and I love the I love the special effects in it, and I love the fact that they made it themselves, I think it's great. And then what I love about Evil Dead too is not just that the film is uh a step up and uh production-wise it's better, uh it's funny, um there's some like amazing set pieces in it, blah blah blah, all of that. But what I think what I what I like what I like about it is that it's you know it's the next evolutionary step for them where they're doing the same gags from the first one but uh slicker, and then when you get to Army of Darkness, they're doing the same gags again. There's always the bit where um he uh makes a cross out of wood and he stakes it into the ground on a grave, and they do that in all three films, and in the first one it's sort of a sketch of an idea, and the second one they've refined it, and on the third one they've mastered it. It's like so they'd use the same gags, which is like uh which George Lucas would call rhyming, and uh and in each in each in each film they kind of like get better and better at it. And I love that as a franchise because normally it's not like no you watch the fur you know, you don't watch Spider-Man one and go, God, they didn't know what the fuck they were doing with this one, and now they worked it out. Although Spider-Man 2 is a huge step up from Spider-Man 3. Sure, but not I don't know.

SPEAKER_07 58:32

I mean it's a it's a hard one, isn't it? But like I um judge a film festival in North Carolina and um there was uh one of the short films that some guys had like uh submitted, it was shot on an old DV camera, and it was clearly three mates having a really good time making a short film. And I was like, this this is the best one. Like this deserves an award, this is so good. And someone was like, What about this one? I'm like, it's slick, it's lovely, it does everything as it's meant to, a bit soulless, doesn't really do it for me. Whereas this one where I can see a bunch of mates making a film and having a good time, that's what I'd rather promote. And I feel like that's what you get with Evil Deads. It's like you do know that people are having a nice time making this, people are having a great time making it.

SPEAKER_02 59:18

It it works on the level of the film, uh, and then it also works on the level of being kind of like um like a film archaeologist where you're trying to work out how it all fits together and how it all works, and be it you know, it doesn't take anything away from the film, in fact, it actually adds to the film. Um you know, I love Sam Raimi. I th I you know John Carpenter and Sam Raimi and uh you know some aspects of John Anders were like my favourites growing up. Um but uh yeah, and and and it's not to take anything away from what he did with the Spider-Man films. I think the tone of it is Sam Raimi. I think the tone and the era and you know the the Peter Parker that he wanted to tell a story about was Sam Raimi, that's him. And he does get some Sam Raimi S camera movements in there which do lend themselves to Spider-Man, but it doesn't feel like this is Sam Raimi off the leash and he is making Spider-Man. And maybe the closest you get to that is Spider-Man 3, where it's like absolute batshit bonkers crazy.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:25

Um I don't mind three.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:27

I don't mind three, I don't mind three at all. And in actual fact, I think like uh all of like the uh emo Peter Parker stuff is it's it's really funny.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:36

I mean it's what I imagine Peter Parker would think is cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:39

Yeah, which meant it's makes sense, you know what I mean? He's a loser, yeah. Um he's a loser, and it's gone to his head, and you know, people were like going, This isn't cool, and it's just like Peter Parker isn't cool. That's why. That's the point. Like my favourite bit in that that I only noticed recently was uh he's walking down the road and he's clicking at all the women and all the stuff, and then he goes in and he buys himself that suit, and it's that this this he's got himself this cool black suit. But when he goes into the shop, uh all the posters on the outside of the shop say, Sail, sail. And so it's like Peter Parker, you know. You I've missed it for years, but it's just like it's Peter Parker and he's buying this suit, and you think, Oh yeah, Peter Parker's bought himself this cool suit, and it's just like no, the joke is he's bought himself a cheap suit, cheapest suit that he could find, cheapest suit he could afford, right? And it was uh, and that's funny because they're like, I think that if you miss that, you're kind of reading it like, is this meant to be cool? And it's like, no, no, no, it's not meant to be cool, it's meant to be it's meant to be cringe-makingly awful, and because you are cringing, it has worked, but you uh you haven't given it the credit it deserves. You think that you you've invented that.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:49

But um I always I always know when uh when there's a film that I absolutely adore, it's when I have to get it on as many formats as I can. So Jaws, like I have it on 8 mil, I have it on video, I have it on Laserdisc, I have it on Blu-ray. Like it's every time they've made a nicer version, I'm like, yeah, go on then. And then with Evil Dead, it was another one. Like I've got the Japanese Laserdisc because it had cut stuff that wasn't in the other version, and it's all that kind of stuff. And like nowadays I can watch whatever version it is, however I need to watch it, but I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Let me get what was originally the gruesomest, the spookiest, the word, the most bloodiest. And then talking about COVID lockdown sort of antics, uh, I built a scale model of the cabin from the first Evil Dead.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:34

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:34

And it was like us and you're gonna.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:36

Oh wow, yeah, I'd love to see that.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:37

Yeah, it's really nice.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:39

Yeah, I mean, I I had to stop buying Evil Dead because uh there's only so many uh versions of the same. I mean, oh god, I used to get but I I've still got so many I've got like three or four Army of Darknesses on PHS, and I've got kind of yeah, they had this amazing, I can't remember what I think it might have been a German box set, and it's got um the US theatrical release, the UK theatrical release, the Australian TV edit. Uh it's got I think it's got five or six versions of the film, like the U the German version, and it it's kind of like oh my god, like um uh I because uh because uh Army of Darkness, my friends had this um uh compilation comic book called Total Carnage and it had uh Bruce Campbell uh I didn't know who he was. Uh they used to do those free magazines that used to get like I think it was called Flicks at um Oh yeah at the at the Odeon, and they did uh and I remember it must have been 1991, um, but they had a uh like a preview section of what's coming next year, and uh it was called Medieval Dead, and uh it was like a little description of it, and there was a picture of Bruce Campbell, and I think that was the first time that it had entered my brain, and I linked it in with uh Return of the Living Dead and Night of the Living Dead and all of that stuff. Yeah, so that was all like lumped in together in my head. I think um Return of the Living Dead 3 was coming out that year as well. I think they came out the same year. So um uh and and I never watched any of those films because they were all top shelf as and I was too scared to watch them all.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:25

Have you watched them since?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:26

Um yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean horror's my genre now, but like um, but uh like that's my go-to. Um but um but and then my friend had this comic book that was called uh Total Carnage, and it was like um you'd get like you know five pages of different comic books throughout. And it was uh Army of Darkness, and it was so beautifully illustrated. It was just it was it's like if you can ever find it, it's I've I've got them as actual comic books now, but um but it's just so beautifully illustrated, and there was nothing that really kind of gave you the tone that it was a comedy. Uh but the front had like Bruce Campbell, uh like an illustration of Bruce Campbell with a shotgun and his chainsaw, and you're kind of like that looks cool. And then eventually it came out in the video shop and it said uh trapped in time, surrounded by evil, low on gas. And I was like, That's funny. Um and uh me and my sister were gonna go, uh our parents, it was the Easter holidays, and our parents were gonna go and take us to see Beauty and the Beast on Ice at Wembley Arena. And um because I must have been 12 or yeah, I think it was about 12. Um, and I think we'd just been to Disney in Orlando the year before, where we'd seen Beauty and the Beast. Um but we were staying in a hotel and they had kind of like a uh vending machine in the lobby, and you could rent videos. Oh, sick. So so so we rented, we rented so fucking cool. We had a day. The team parks, and then we rented Butte and the Beast, and we we all fell asleep watching Button the Beast. And um it was great, and we're gonna go sit on ice, and uh and then in the day to fill up time before the evening, we were allowed to go to the video shop and I rented out Army of Darkness, and then by the time I finished Army of Darkness, I wasn't interested in Beauty and the Beast anymore. I was yeah, I was I was a big boy, and um and I just thought it was the funniest film, and he was the coolest guy, and it was just brilliant, and um, and then I remember I I I I used to rent it out every week from the video shop. Um uh and my mum used to have to 15 and I was 12 or 13, and my mum used to have to rent it out for me, and then eventually um he started just letting me rent it out by myself because he knew that I'd seen a you, what's it matter? Yeah, and uh and I'd I must have rented it out like 25 times by then. And my mum, you know, um uh who is a great mum, but um it was unexpected that she bought me Army of Darkness on VHS. But she bought me Army of Darkness for Christmas without me even asking for it because I rented it out, because I rented it out so much, and she I guess it saved her money if I just bought it from the video shop. So I loved it, and then I was talking to my friend, uh like I didn't have loads of friends at school, and I was a bit of a loner, and uh, there was this one other kid in the in another classroom, and we were talking together, and it turned out he also liked Army of Darkness, and we were talking about it, and we must have talked about it for weeks, and then one day he uh uh he mentioned like the the ending in the supermarket, and I was like, What do you mean? And he goes, Well, you know, the ending is in the supermarket, and I was like, No, the ending is him uh and waking up in the future, and it turned out what had happened was uh I was brought up uh when they released Army of Darkness on uh video, it was the it was the UK theatrical release, but when they sold it over to Sky, it had the American ending. So my friend had watched it on Sky Movies with the American ending, and I'd watched it on VHS, and then it was like, oh my god, there's an alternate cut, and then I could you know I've I've had to see the American cut and it and and uh the like Duke Newcomb used to use um uh used to steal clip they used they used uh the bubblegum line out of They Live and they used um Hail to the King and stuff from from Army of Darkness, and there were these quotes that came up that weren't in Army of Darkness, uh that were in actually the American version of Army of Darkness, which is an alternate cut. And so eventually I tracked down the American cut and I watched that, and uh uh I think they released that on kind of like a double DVD where you had the American and then the UK cut.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:55

Um and then um and the UK cut is much better, and um uh and the American cut they they reorganise the um structure of the battle at the end, and there's no weight to it in the American cut, and it feels just like a series of vignettes that are strung together, whereas the uh there's a natural build of tension, and then Henry the Red comes in at the end, and look the way it's structured in the UK cut is much better. Uh and they add in the London Bridges falling down bit in the American cut, which is rubbish, and and so they cut that out of the UK cut, and it's much better. And um, and so the UK cut, I don't mind which ending it is, I prefer the nihilistic uh Planet of the Eighth Future ending to the uh to the American ending, but the American ending is I think it's just what you saw first, really. But um, but yeah, it's it's amazing. Anyway, I've got this box set which has kind of like got seven or eight different cuts of it, and you're watching the Australian TV cut, and it's kind of like that none of it's been finished off, and like like uh the camera angles in Army of Darkness, and and the camera work in Army of Darkness is great, but when you're watching the UK cut, it looks so amateur. The Australian cut, it looks so amateurish because it's obviously stuff that like experimental shots that they've just whacked every I think they probably had to reach a two-hour, yeah, a two-hour window for TV, and the film is like I think the UK cut is 92 minutes and the American cut is maybe um 86 minutes or something like that. Like there's like huge like time jumps in her her uh in the and it's not just footage footage added and footage subtracted, it's like different, you know, they've like mixed it all around a bit.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:44

It it's not it's not uh You're making me want to rewatch this in every variation now.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:49

Well, it's not that it's uh it's not that it's an unrecognisable film, and I think to the untrained eye, you might not notice much differences, but it was my favourite film growing up, it's the one that I watched every weekend, you know. You'd watch it on the Friday night, the Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, your friends come over, you'd watch it again, you'd take it back to the video shop, and I just watch it over and over and over again. And so when you have like a different edit to it, it is jarring, but um, but yeah, it's it's kind of like it's just I don't know, I just love it. I just I just love the film. Um but the UK cut is just I I I tell you what it is, it's like the UK cut was very difficult to find with the um with the apocalyptic ending on it. They you'd you'd sometimes get the UK cut with the uh supermarket ending on it, and if you were ever showing like a friend or a girlfriend or a partner or you know uh anyone, the f it would always be like, I don't know which version to show them. So you'd you'd end up watching the film and then you'd watch the ending, and then you'd say, but but this is the better end, and then you'd have to like restart this thing, and then you'd have to get the extra ending out, and it's kind of not a very satisfying film sharing experience because it's like I don't know, I don't know which I don't know which version this is. And I would if you're gonna watch it for the first time, you have to watch the UK version because you can't watch the American version.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:12

I oh god, that the when when you uh this frustrates me so much when I like you pick up a film and they're like, Do you want to watch especially with uh old Hong Kong films, they're like, Do you want to watch the Cantonese version or do you want to watch the original like Chinese version? And you're like, uh I don't know. Like, you have to give me more information. Like, it obviously I want to watch the original theatrical version because that's the one we all know. But if you're gonna tell me, yeah, but actually, a bit like Blade Runner, it really needed a bit of tweaking before we got to the a good version. Then we went a bit too far, and you're like, Oh, well, uh which is the one? And then you Google it, and people are like, Well, this is the one I saw first, and that's why it's better, and you're like, Is it better because it's that or is it because it's and you don't know?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:56

It's the reason I don't um I don't go back and watch Blade Runner or Close Encounters because there's so many there's so many versions of it. It's kind of like if I'm gonna sit down and want to watch the version, yeah. But um, I mean I I think I've seen the original cut of Blade Runner once with the voiceover, but I watched the director's cut when that came out in ninety one or ninety two.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:19

Something like that, yeah. They did that big box set of all of them, that's when I watched them all.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:23

There's like five versions. So what? You actually like set aside some time and you said this is the project I'm gonna do, I'm gonna watch all the Blade Runners.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:31

Yeah. I I'm that kind of guy, much like you by the Sands things, where No, I think that that's the way to do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:38

I'm gonna watch it all versions, uh, see what there is, see the differences, know the differences, and go like, okay, cool. Didn't like that one, did like that one. No why, no, I don't know why, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:49

But that's because we love everything about films, and it's like uh and and I think some people were just kind of like I've seen it, why do I need to see it again? You know, it's a a piece of uh piece of entertainment or it's a time killer, or it's kind of like they'd be just as happily watching, you know, EastEnders or Strictly Come Dancing, or oh, is there a film on um you know? Uh whereas I I I don't really have much interest in TV.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:13

I'm more I'm specifically like to the point where I only just watched Six Feet Under this year because it's been on my list of like uh it's meant to be good telly, I'll get to it eventually. Because every time I don't watch a film, I feel like I'm wasting time. I could be watching films over here.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:28

Yeah, I think when when Breaking Bad finished at four series, I was like, okay, I'll watch that. So then I watched it all when it finished, but with some something like Game of Thrones, and everyone's going on and on about Game of Thrones, and it's Game of Thrones, Game of Thrones, and you're like, oh god, I don't, I don't, it's never ending, it's endless, and it's like I don't I don't want to commit to 50 50 weeks of my life. I want to commit to two hours where I get a beginning, a middle, and an end in one go, and then you know, Game of Thrones gets to the final season and everyone says it's shit, and you kind of like go, yeah. Good. Well, I'm not gonna watch it now. Do you know what I mean? Um but yeah, it's it you know, I I've got a bit of OCD, I think, with it as well. But uh um I watched um I watched uh I watched a video podcast, um uh what's it called? The movie dumpster. I watch I watched the movie dumpster every so often, and they were talking about um one of the Cheech and Chong films and I was like I've never seen a Cheech and Chong film. Um and I I I I grew up with uh Robert Rodriguez, who was kind of like he was my uh you know, he he I liked him more than Quentin Tarantino.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:44

Um and uh I thought El Mary Archie, you know, I saw Desperado go back and watch El Maria Archie. Oh my god, and I and I think those two films, and maybe the first Spikers film, I didn't love From Tust Till Torn. Um really, but um, but I think uh I just think Desperado is one of the coolest films ever made.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:03

I just rewatched Planet Terror and Oh yeah, I'll be honest, like when it when they first came out, I was actually more of a deathproof guy, and I was like, mainly for Kurt, but I was like, this is rad, I love this, Planet Terror is fine. I then watched the full groundhouse at the Prince Charles a few years back with the trailers in the middle, and I was like, I think they're both all right, and then recently I watched them again, and I was like, Deathproof is dog shit. I cannot I cannot stand Tarantino's writing anymore. But Planet Terror, I was like, this is such a good time.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:33

I think Deathproof would have been really greatly improved if there was a murder at the beginning. It takes so long to get going, it's so torky, and I know what he's doing. He's trying to make it like a Grindhouse film where they didn't have a big budget, so there were loads of talky scenes. But if they'd have kind of started the film off with kind of like a murder and then built up to the next one, I think it would have solved a lot of the problems.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:58

But like there's plenty of films, like is it Road Games? The um Oh wow, yeah. You know what I mean? Like that starts with a beautiful murder at the very beginning.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:07

Is that Tom Holland? Is that or is that it's the guy that did Psycho 2, right?

SPEAKER_07 1:17:12

Is it? It might be.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:15

Jamie Lee Kirs and uh Stacy Keach. Not Powers Booth, Stacy Keats.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:20

Right, the other day I was like John Saxon, there's Powers Booth, there's Stacey Keach, and who's the other one?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:25

Right, yeah. Yeah, that's funny because I always get Powers Booth and Stacy Keach mixed up in my head. Um there's Roy Steiger, Roy Schneider, and Rob Schneider. Um which one's induced Bigelow? It's Rod Schneider. Um yeah, it's uh yeah, what were we talking about?

SPEAKER_07 1:17:48

Um we would go let's backtrack on that. Uh road games. Starts with a beautiful kill, and then you get a nice bit of nothing, which gives some nice world building. And you're right, Deathproof would have had a would have been really beneficial if we had got a quick kill and then the follower of the girls. Yeah. Then another kill.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:09

It takes so long to get going. It's the Alfred Hitchcock thing, isn't it? It's uh you can have two people talking and then a bomb goes off and you get a shock, or you can show the bomb underneath the table and then talking, and then you've got the tension of the bomb all the way through it. If you know that there's something horrific jaws, you know, there's a shark attack, and then it takes a while of character development, and then there's another shark attack, right? But um, but you need to know that you're watching a movie about a shark, yeah. Um so uh yeah, so I I so I was a massive Robert Rodriguez fan um uh with Desperator. Why would we talk about Robert Rodriguez though? I always do this. I go off on a tangent and then I kind of have to I have to trap back because You were saying you watched Oh, OCD. So I I knew um I knew uh I've I've yeah I do have a yes going back and watching someone's back, yeah. So I was like, um so I saw like Cheech Marin, obviously, and I knew him, and there was also a film called National Lampoon Senior Trip, which had Tommy Tommy Chong was the bus driver. Um and uh so I I was really aware of Cheech Marin, I liked him a lot. Um I didn't really know Tommy Chong that much, but I was aware of his existence. This is this is last year.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:32

Oh and I'm agreeing because I only watched uh Up in Smoke like two years ago.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:37

I so I um I I rented out Up in Smoke off of uh Amazon. I I you know streamed it. And um I couldn't believe how good it was. I thought I thought it was pretty Like when it started I do know what I'd tell a lie, I rented out a uh I rented out a Cheech and Chong film from my video shop when I was very young, so maybe like uh eight or nine or ten, and it was one of the later ones. Right, and um and it was it was kind of really shoddy, and um, and that's what I thought it was. When you watch the original Up in Smoke, it's a proper movie. It's got um the opening credits are really cool and they play that Lowrider song, and it's just really cool. And Cheech Marin is cool, it's cool as fuck, and it's just like it's this fucking, it's this it's cool, and then and then Tommy Chong, the bit in the beginning in the car when Tommy Chong is eating all the drugs, and um and uh the bit when he realizes that Cheech Marin is taking the most amount of acid that he's ever seen a human take, and it's like uh that bit was just I was I was and all of a sudden I just absolutely fell in love with Tommy Chong, and I was like, oh my god, he's so brilliant. And so I rented that off Amazon, and then I went on eBay and I got a job lot where it was just like I've got all seven of the Cheech Chong films now, and then every night I'd sit down and I work my way through another one. So, do you get Scream magazine? Do I get it now? Yeah, no, I don't get any, I don't get any film magazines.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:14

So Scream magazine is the only one I get still, and they usually do like uh a retrospective, let's say, of like all of the Children of the Corn films or all of the uh Texas Chainsaw films, and then I'll see that and I'll be like, you're right, I should watch all of them. And then I'll go do what you do, and it's just sort of like I'll go to the there's Megstore Collectibles in Shrewsbury, which is a secondhand DVD shop. It's spectacular. I love that place because I'll go in with like 20 bucks and I'll sort of be like, okay, I'm gonna get all of these films, and I'll walk out with all of them, and I'll go and sit in my office and I'll just watch them all. And I'm like, I love this. Now I know, now I've seen all of X.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:53

And I've done them, I've done them in one go, and you go tick, I've done that.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:57

Done that, add that to letterboxed, problem solved.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:00

There are a couple of those Cheech and Chong films that I'll go back to. I mean, there is a drop-off, and then by the time you get to the seventh one, it's really homophobic and horrible, and you kind of go, Oh, is that what I've been watching for six films? Oh no! But um, but when but when Scream Six came out a couple of years ago, yeah, um, I went back and I re-watched all the Scream films getting and then I watched Scream 6. I didn't redo it for the Scream 7 because it was still fairly fresh, but um No, I love doing it.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:26

And when I watched The Matrix recently, I I I cancelled some plans and a friend sent me the gif of Morpheus, like doing the kung fu thing, and I was like, you're right, I should watch all the Matrix films, including the Animatrix, and he was like, What? I didn't say that, and I was like, that's what you fucking told me. So then I sat and I watched Matrix, Animatrix, Reloaded, Revolutions, and then pretended there wasn't a fourth.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:49

Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, because it can backfire, can't it? Because um Avatar 2 came out, and I've still I've still not met anyone that's seen it. But even though it's the second or third biggest movie of all time, the amount of people that I know that have seen it is like non-existent. Yeah, I but when it was coming out, um uh I I had a girlfriend that uh hadn't seen any films whatsoever, which uh which is it was kind of um because I think she liked films. But she had time to delve into them. She she wasn't brought up in a family that had videos and stuff like that. Weird.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:35

Uh can I can I say I find that weird. I uh I have an ex-wife and uh she was from a family that didn't watch films. And like I think I saw like the their DVD collection and it was one little shelf inside a cupboard and it was just upstairs, downstairs. And I just was just like, What do you mean? What do you mean you don't watch films? They're like, oh we just we do other things. And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, but I do other things, but I also watch films and my family watch films, and we we all sit round and we watch a film together, and then mum and dad'll make a reference and I'll be like, What's that from? And they're like, Oh, it's from this film, and then it's part of my personal journey to go and find that film and then watch it. And to me, it just makes so much sense that you would engage, and I find it very weird when people aren't film people. And I'm not saying they need to be, you know, I'd done a degree in it, I'd make films through my job. Like, I film is everything to me, but I imagine the next level down is the normal amount of film consumption.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:37

Sure, but I think um uh film is visible, right? You have you have celebrities and Hollywood and posters, and they're on the side of buses, and um they're in supermarkets, and uh and so they're everywhere. So if you love films, it's everywhere. You can see it everywhere. But if you're not into films, then you can blinker it off. And uh oh, it doesn't it doesn't it's just people, yeah. If I if I was obsessed with football, I would see it everywhere, right? That's true. Um and I I I did a I did a short-lived podcast uh quit uh called the movie the movie quiz. And Harry Hill was on it. Sick. And uh and and he's my friend. And um He is hilarious.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:26

Are you gonna be on his podcast?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:27

I have. I did his I did his podcast when it was a podcast, it's a video podcast now, so they're repeating guests here. Um I did it and um uh and he came on and he goes, Oh Nick, it's a great podcast. It's just a shame it's so niche. And I was like, What do you mean it's niche? He goes, Well, films, you know. And I was like, What do you mean films are niche? And uh and I think if you're really into films, then you can't think of anything other than films. But I think films are niche. Like the the majority of time I have to suggest a film to my family and say, Do you want to watch a film? And they'd be like, Yeah, yeah, sure. But it wouldn't be like top of the cards, they'd just have the TV on. Um I had this uh I had this this is a two-part of this little this little story, but it's um the first part of it is that she hadn't seen Avatar, and Avatar 2 was coming out, and because it was such a huge, you know, it's a huge blockbuster spectacle, it was the first Avatar film in however many years, like 15 years.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:24

Yeah, about that.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:25

Um, and she'd been working on it for all this time, going, Avatar 2's coming out, and so uh she goes, uh, well, should we go and see Avatar 2? And it's just like, well, yeah, but if you're gonna go and see Avatar 2, you may as well see Avatar 1. And if you're gonna watch Avatar 1, uh rather than like watch it uh watching it on your laptop or a tablet or on the TV, the film isn't that good, but the thing that is amazing about it is the 3D. So if you're gonna watch it, let's watch it at the cinema. So we went to the cinema, uh, we went to this lovely cinema called uh the Odin Luxine, uh just off um just in uh Angel, and it's like this underground dark deco kind of it's beautiful. It's like it's like 10 seats, and they're all like recliners. Oh yeah, that's great. And so we went to see Avatar in the best possible circumstances we could, and by the end of the first one, we were like, can't be bothered to watch the second one. But the flip side of that is she hadn't seen anything, and it was like you'd be like, So what do you mean you haven't seen uh you haven't seen Terminator? Uh it's just like no, not seen Terminator. It's like you've not seen Terminator, you've not seen she hadn't seen any of like the um, you know, there's kind of like these are the films that you need to watch before you before you watch the other films, right? These are the films that we all brought we were brought up on, like Back to the Future, Terminator 2 Terminator 2, like uh you know, these are the these are the blockbusters, Jurassic Park, you know, these are the movies that we all grew up watching that are just like these are the standards, you will like these. Yes. Once you've got a taste for these, then you can start digging and go and see other stuff, right? Um which, I mean, to be fair, we watched Casablanca together and uh she really liked it. And I think Casablanca's a really kind of like it's got it's it's it's like a movie, you know? It's not like a f it's not a film, it's like a it's like a big, swanky, kind of glossy, you know, romantic movie. And it's got really good pacing to it, and it's got real good humour that drags you through it, and it's oh it's just it's just got absolutely everything that you want out of the book.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:31

Did you see the piano at the Academy Museum?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:34

What from Casablanca? Yeah. No.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:38

Where was it? There was one at the Academy Museum, and there was another one at Warner Brothers.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:43

Oh really? Oh well we didn't go to Warner Brothers, but I did a a fucking private tour, mate.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:49

I went over for my birthday. I was over in LA and it happened to be on my birthday, so I was like, I'm gonna treat myself.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:54

And I did like a full-on thing, and they were like, This is the piano, and I was like I was on tour in England, and uh uh I had a gig in Southampton on Wednesday and a gig in Newcastle the following Tuesday, and Halloween was on the Friday.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:10

Oh right. So I literally I got on a plane, went to Los Angeles, watched John Carpenter, went to Jaws, went to see Back to the Future IMAX, and then uh bought some weed and then came back home and uh and then I got uh got back on stage in Newcastle and I was like, thank fuck the planes didn't fucking cancel.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:31

But um, so you so you're in this situation with the with your partner or whoever, and they haven't seen any of the films that are just sort of like cultural touchstones for people, and so you're you get to watch these films for the first time again through their eyes, and it's like and it's and it's kind of it it's great, but this is the fucking mindfucker, right? She didn't know that Arnold Schwarzenegger was a good guy in Terminator 2. So, like Oh my fucking Christ. That was that was ruined for everyone in the trailers when it came out, right? And all the promotion, I was too young to see Terminator 2 and it came out as annoyed. Yeah, we all knew we all knew he was a good guy, right? So then when you go back as a kid and watch Terminator and all that in Terminator 2, we we watched Terminator and she enjoyed it, and then like 40-50 minutes into Terminator 2, her mind is and you're like going, this is how it was meant to work. You're maybe you're maybe in the 1% people where the twist in Terminator 2 actually worked because it wasn't room for you in order that and you kind of like go, that's magic, that is magic.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:46

I'm I'm jealous of your experience.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:48

Yeah, I mean it was just like oh yeah, I was jealous, I was jealous of her. Like, imagine that of oh god, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:55

That'd be sick, that'd be fucking sick, man. We should actually get into the proper questions proper.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:31:02

You know what I mean? Otherwise, we're gone forever. Also, you've kind of hinted at some of the answers, and I can kind of see where your uh sort of your personal journey through film has developed and how it's come around. But what was the first film you saw at the cinema?

SPEAKER_02 1:31:18

I mean, I I can't remember specifically what the first film I saw at the cinema was. I remember we were living in London and we were part of the Barbican Kids Club, and my dad would drop us off on Saturdays, me and my sister, my sister's three years older, and he'd drop us off at the Barbican on Saturdays, and I think he'd sit in the lobby and he'd do sort of paperwork and stuff for work. And um the the ones I specifically remember watching was uh Ghostbusters, Flash Gordon, and Sound of Music. And if it wasn't one of those specifically, it would have been on one of those occasions where we went. My sister's first film was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Um because famously when the dwarfs turned up, my sister got so excited that she started jumping up and down and she knocked uh the contact lens uh out of my mum's eye. Whoa! And my mum had to spend like the rest of the film searching around for it on the floor. So I know that that was my sister's first film, but mine was either Ghostbusters or Flash Gordon or Sand of Music, I think. It would have been like 1984, 1985.

SPEAKER_07 1:32:24

I still haven't seen Sound of Music. What? Uh not for any like wanky big tough guy reason. It's just it wasn't on our on my radar as a kid, like we didn't watch it as a kid, and then as an adult, like I've gotten into uh musicals a lot more. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:42

But it's just never you know I would say that even if you don't like musicals, um I I think the Sound of Music, uh despite despite the title of the film, it it kind of works as more than a music. It's what it's a per I think it's a perfect movie.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:01

It's um it's it's yeah, it's it's always stuck with me. Especially as a child when you watch it, there's you know, characters in it that let you down. Um the Nazis uh Ah, they always let us down, don't they? The N the Nazis take over halfway through the film. So it's a film of two halves, you know. The first half of the film is so joyous and magical and beautiful, and the second half of the film is just filled with kind of like dread, and you know, it's just it's not like Just like Irreversible. It's like uh just like irreversible. It's um it it like there's this heavy weight over the second half of the film that's not necessarily but it's kind of it's it's always there. Chris uh Julie Andrews is amazing in it. Christopher Plummer is just like one of the all-time great screen performances, you know. He's uh he's just amazing in it, and um the songs are great, um but as a child you could you know you love the first half, but there's there's a there's a bit when they do a marionette um uh bit in the film where they've got puppets and they're entertaining the kids and um or the kids are entertaining the the parents and uh and as a kid that really appeals to you. But then the Nazis come in halfway through, and it's kind of like as a child you can understand, you know, one of the girls is in love with uh uh a a post boy um uh and they sing I am sixteen going on seventeen to each other in the in the greenhouse and it's beautiful, and then he uh joins the Nazi party halfway through, and when he turns up, you know, you're on her side you're like, Oh god, it's like a betray you know, you feel betrayed, and it's um yeah, it's just like it's it's a wonderful film. Um and I'll I'll watch it like every couple of years.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:00

I think the last time I saw it was when Christopher Plummer died, and I I I went through a load of his films that I've never seen before. And he kind of you know Christopher Plummer was yeah, amazing. You know, um I saw Murder by Degree uh which is um him playing Sherlock Holmes, and you kind of think, God, he's probably one of the best on-screen Sherlock Holmes. Like he's perfect for it. He's got the right he's got the right face, you know, uh, he's got the right nose, he's just looking and he's and it's Christopher Plummer, he's got like that twinkle in his eye where he's kind of intelligent, but he's taking the piss. And then there's the other one, um he made these two kind of Canadian sort of TV movie things. So one of them was uh Murder by Degree, and the other one was um uh Silent Partner with Elliot Gould, and he plays uh have you seen that?

SPEAKER_07 1:35:52

I haven't I know of that one though.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:53

He plays like this uh like murderous bank robber thief guy, and he's just one of the most evil characters you've ever seen. And you put that performance next to his performance as Captain Von Trapp in Cell Music, and you just go, the range this guy has is incredible, and then he's like the Duke of Wellington in Waterloo, and it's kind of you couldn't think of a better casting for the Duke of Wellington than Christopher Plummer. So next to Roy Schneider, uh like uh uh and uh uh Rob uh Steiger. Um I remember that when Roy when Roy Schneider died, Stephanie Beecham was on uh uh on the Oscars and we were talking talking to her in the breaks in between, you know. She was on the doing the Sky One footage or whatever it was, Sky Movies footage uh coverage, and uh and she was calling him uh Roy Schneider. And I was like, your name is Stephanie Beacham, right? But you must have been called Stephanie Beechman your whole life. You must know, and do it, you knew him as well. You're calling him Roy Schneider, and it's like um yeah, um yeah, I can't remember why I'm talking about that either now, but um yeah, god, fucking hell. Uh so yeah, sound of music. Um Christopher Thoman was incredible in that, and um and then Ghostbusters was one of those things where um I didn't know that was a comedy until much later because it was a horror film. It was terrifying, just like the ghost at the the live at the beginning. And uh the uh taxi uh skeleton zombie thing.

SPEAKER_07 1:37:36

I mean that's that that skeleton zombie thing is a real I think that's an out-of-the-blue piece of horror. Like that could be in an Evil Dead or Eternal Living Dead, and it doesn't doesn't really belong in a PG-rated ghost.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:51

That's an Iron Maiden album cover. It's yeah, it's it's it's terrifying. You go, oh but even Slimer was scary. And yeah, I I I I uh I loved Dan Ackroyd because I was a child, and I think you kind of relate to him a little bit more than sex pest Bill Murray, but um sorry, sex pest Peter Venckman. Yeah, thank you, thank you, yeah, yeah, that's right. But uh but like uh as you get older, you know, you like you even appreciate uh Egon a lot more when you get older. You know, I never found Egon particularly funny, but I tell you what, it was he's always been my favourite.

SPEAKER_07 1:38:26

Um but Winston.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:29

Winston, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:38:30

Because the the line, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say. Like, even as a kid, I was like, that makes sense to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:37

Yeah. I've uh and I've seen shit that'll turn you white.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:43

And uh it was only much later on that you realised, oh he's black.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:49

Like, oh that's the joke. Yeah, that is the that's the joke. Alright, okay. But like, yeah, and and I suppose there was like uh Dicklace here, and he goes, Is it true? Is it true? This man has no dick. You know, but they're like little asides that are uh going on in the office where it's like, Well, that's what I and um uh because he heard it two seconds later. Um so but so it's like but but when you're little it's only really it it it's not working as a sophisticated comedy. There are moments of lightness, and everyone liked the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man and all that stuff, but um but really it really worked as a horror film when I was little, and it was only much later on that I realised it was it was funny. And by that point, I was all in with the real Ghostbusters cartoon series, and I loved Ghostbusters too. But Ghostbusters I love Ghostbusters too.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:39

Uh last time I was in New York, I went to the firehouse.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:42

Oh yeah. I mean the firehouse is weird, isn't it? Because you can kind of walk past it without realizing it's that, and then you kind of like go, oh no, that is it.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:49

Oh, that's the one, and then they've put a barrier up because people are like, you can't walk in here, this is a real working firehouse.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:54

And they're like, Oh, but can I just no fuck off? And if you go on tiptoes and look through the window, you can see the Ghostbusters to kind of like Marquis that a sign that they had. But um, yeah, so uh so I I remember that and uh Flash Gordon was the other one which like really stuck with me, which again was um it was just everything that because I I didn't watch I didn't watch Star Wars. I think I'd probably seen bits of Return of the Jedi, but I hadn't watched Star Wars or Empire Strikers Back or anything until I was probably in secondary school, so maybe like 12 or 13. I wasn't brought up with it. My sister went to see Return of the Jedi when I was two or three, right. And again came back with the sticker book with all the Ewok stuff, and it was like that looks good. And I had friends with all of the toys and stuff growing up, but I never really had any contacts for and then when I got older uh yeah, I was still 10 or 11 or 12, but um then I watched um the Star Wars films and it wasn't until the 199 or like 97 re-release that I was fully aware of Star Wars. Oh right, yeah. Well uh having having said that, I do remember that in the b uh going back to the um uh the Barbican Kids Club, I do remember that they showed Caravanna Courage, the ego adventure film. So there was sort of like some experience with that, and I think the kid was deliberately uh casting that to look like Luke Skywalker.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:20

Oh okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:21

And so there was kind of in my in my child brain, uh I couldn't quite differentiate what I was watching. Um all young line kids look the same. Flash Gordon, uh they had the same bow hair kind of. Yeah, exactly. Um but Flash Flash Gordon, which was obviously kind of like you know, put into production as a Star Wars knockoff, um it's so much more than that. It's uh and also Peter Duncan was in it, and he was from Blue Peter, and so to see Peter Duncan get mercilessly uh murdered by a a a tree scorpion in a game of Russian roulette, it was kind of like, oh my god.

SPEAKER_07 1:42:06

I love it when you catch like early performances from people that you now know. So have you ever seen I Bought As On uh Vampire Motorcycle?

SPEAKER_02 1:42:13

No. Neil Morrissey film from Oh yeah, I do know of this, I do know of this.

SPEAKER_07 1:42:19

Wonderful, but it's like that's that's Neil Morrissey, that's member him that that's not what's he doing, you know? And then you're like, it's great, I love it.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:28

I saw a clip of uh film uh maybe last week of Neil Morrissey uh fighting a uh turd.

SPEAKER_07 1:42:37

Oh, that's the film. Is that the I bought a vampire motorcycle?

SPEAKER_02 1:42:42

Oh well, that's so funny. I saw a think of it last week and I was like, what the fuck is this? Um yeah, right, so I have seen a bit of it. I'll send you the video.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:49

I think it's on Amazon Prime, yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:52

Um yeah, uh I I really um I really loved Flash Gordon. I think the special effects are great, and as a child Brian Blessed was brilliant, and I loved Flash and I loved um and it was really kind of like uh confusingly sexy. Um but the costumes were brilliant and the bad guys were brilliant. It kind of was a little bit like He-Man, yeah, you know. Um and you know, the sky, the sky, you know, the the way that they used the uh ink in the water to make all the clouds, the pink clouds swirl and all of that. There's so Timothy Dalton, there's so many like set pieces in it that are amazing, and this the soundtrack is great, and is his name Topol or Topov Topol out of Fiddler on the Roof is and um it's just got this amazing kind of art. I mean, Flash Gordon as a child was just absolutely just everything you wanted out of a movie. Um, and I still love it, I still think it's brilliant. Excellent, excellent.

SPEAKER_07 1:43:57

I will add these, like normally I try and find at least one film from a guest and be like, oh, I haven't seen that, I'll add it. You've added a few so far, so I'm quite pleased about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:09

Yeah. Oh yeah, good. Oh good.

SPEAKER_07 1:44:11

And obviously we should follow each other on Letterboxd. I just broke 4,000 films.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:15

Oh, really? I'm so bad with it. I'll watch it and then I'll forget to do it. No, no, I'm straight on it. And then I have to kind of like go back through my Amazon history and kind of go, what did you watch last week?

SPEAKER_07 1:44:26

Yeah. Yeah. I have to check my IMDB search because there's a chance I would have done the trivia while watching the film. And then I'll be like, Oh yeah, I watched that. So I have to and then having to go through that. But so we we have alluded to this next question, uh, but what film did you watch over and over again as a kid, I'm guessing.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:48

Well, yeah, I mean like I'd say Army of Army of Darkness as a teenager, yeah. Uh or or like between uh being twelve and being uh like all the way up to university. Um in fact I watched it and I watched it and I watched it and I watched it and I watched it, and it was like my barometer of uh whether you can be uh in my inner circle. Yeah. If you don't like Army of Darkness, then you kind of don't like me. Um and if they could get all the way through Army of Darkness, I'd be like, great. Um so that was kind of like the one that I watched probably the most, but then uh Ghostbusters I would watch a lot. Um and then uh there was like an Arnold Schwarzenegger season that was on uh ITV. They did a Diet Coke ITV season uh in the early 90s, I'd say. Um and they showed kind of like I think it was uh Commando Predator Red Heat Running Man Raw Deal. Maybe Raw maybe Raw Deal was in there as well. But Commando and Predator I watched over and over again. I watched Commando two nights ago. Oh, beautiful. Um it was it was literally just starting. He had the tree trunk over his shoulder, the credits hadn't even started yet. Yeah, and I switched on the TV and it was just starting, I was like, fuck it, I'm watching this.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:08

Might as well sit down and watch this.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:10

That's 88 minutes, I'm not getting back again, Arnold. Um, and uh yeah, Commando is uh I know it's a B movie, but it is such a relentlessly entertaining B movie where Arnold Schwarzenegger is like if Arnold Schwarzenegger was going to be like Chuck Norris, yeah, and these were the movies that he was regularly making, you know, Commando is is a jewel in the ground.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:38

That's his invasion USA, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:40

But he didn't make loads of those films, he was always swapping genres and he always had one foot in light entertainment and comedy, you know. He like he started off doing kind of the villain and Hercules Goes Bananas and all that stuff. Cactus Jack and Cactus Jack, and then he got like hijacked by the action genre, and you know, like even Conan is kind of a fantasy movie, Terminator's a science fiction movie, and then he started making like these things where he's like a man in the jungle with guns, and it's kind of like he did a bit of that, and but as soon as he did um I I'm still there, uh as soon as he did uh Predator, he went off and did twins, yeah. You know, and and he was kind of putting together his his crew, so it would be like he worked repeatedly with Ivan Reitman, John McTinn, and uh James Cameron, and they were like his guys that he'd go back to. But did you know that he could you could you even could you imagine a world where Paul Verhoeven directed Running Man over uh Paul Michael Glazer? It's kind of like Running Gause I keep forgetting it's Paul Michael Glazer. It's kind of like because that is what's wrong with Running Man. The reason why Running Man isn't a classic. It's got everything going for it, but it feels cheap. It feels like it feels like TV. Whereas if Paul Verhoeven, it's a but it's essentially it's a it's a you know, he did he did Running Man, he saw Robocop, and he went, that's how we should have done it, and then he made Total Recall, you know. Um so I would so I was a huge Arnold Schwarzenegger fan uh when I was when I was young, and then I kind of transitioned transitioned over to Stallone in the 90s because Stallone basically had a film out a year, yeah, and I would I go and see all of his films, whereas Arna Schwarzenegger he did Terminator 2 and then he took two years off before he did Last Action Hero, and then that was a flop, and so he was how do I fix this? And so he was just like, Alright, I'll go back with James Cameron and I'll make kind of like a comedy action movie, you know. But uh Stallone was kind of no pal intended on the ropes after Rocky V and Oscar and Stop on My Mum will shoot, and so then he you know he came back in 1993 with Cliff Hanger at the beginning of the year, Demolition Man at the end of the year, and then you each like every year you'd have like Assassins, Daylight Judge Dredd, the specialist, you know. It was kind of like there would be a Stallone film every year through the 90s, yeah. Assassins. Uh like I loved those films. Uh I loved uh and I'd and I'd go to the cinema, you know. I thought Judge Dredd was an absolute masterpiece when I first saw it. I just absolutely loved him.

SPEAKER_07 1:49:28

It's such a shame, like as a Judge Dredd film, it's a piece of shit. But as a almost sort of like a uh demolition man, not sequel, but like equal, if that makes sense. As a sci-fi film, it works as just a standalone sci-fi film.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:42

It looks fair like there's not loads of original ideas in it, but um in like you know, Cityscape Escape is Blade Runner and the biker scene is uh the the speeder bikes in Return of the Jedi, and you know, there's all this stuff that you kind of like looks familiar, but it's done with 1995 special.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:00

And so it's kind of they've updated all of these things. So you're watching this, you're oh my god, this is the future of science. This is incredible. So when I saw it as a child, it was it was brilliant. Demolition Man is incredible.

SPEAKER_07 1:50:15

Oh 90s Sandra Bullock has a lot to answer for. Oh what uh it's it's I mean I mean today's Sandra Bullock as well, but 90s Sandra Bullock.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:26

You got Demolition Man, and then the following year you got Speed, and uh it was like here she is. She's she's the one, she's she's the new one. Um yeah, she's she's great, but um yeah, like I Judge Dredd being kind of like I know what Judge Dredd is without having read read it. I thought as a film it was fine. But obviously, when you watch it, when you grow it's it's not great. And Stallone is kind of doing this, you know, he's a very unlikable character, and Armando Sante is like chewing the uh chewing the scenery in the floor. I love it. Well if I if it wasn't for Judge if it wasn't for Judge Dredd, I wouldn't have watched the Mambo Kings, right? And The Mambo Kings is an amazing film, totally worth it. And uh and and then you know, and then you see Desperado and it's like oh it's Antonio Banderas from the Mambo Kings, you know.

SPEAKER_07 1:51:21

I think my dad wants to karaoke with Danny Cannon, who directed Judge Dredd.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:26

And the Young Americans, and I still know what you did last summer.

SPEAKER_07 1:51:29

You did I still know what you did last summer? Oh sick. Yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:34

Um yeah, Danny Cannon. Oh right, what was he like?

SPEAKER_07 1:51:38

Well, that's the thing, like we were over it was when I was about nine, we went over to uh LA because a friend of the family was directing, you know, Paul Lee with Tony Shaloupe, the Talking Parrot film? Oh yeah. Yeah. So John, a friend of the family, he directed that. So we went over to LA to sort of just hang out while they were shooting and stuff. And then mum, dad, uh Julie and John all went out, and they I think they did karaoke with uh Danny Cancel. I never met him, but they all speak fondly of that night.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:07

Yeah, I just think you know, be careful what you wish for, isn't it? You know, he got to direct a huge budget science fiction movie starring Sylvester Stallone and he got absolutely ravaged by it. Um you know, I I think I especially mid-90s Stallone, he must have been an absolute fucking nightmare to work with.

SPEAKER_07 1:52:25

He's top of the world. He he's competing against Arnie. Like, there's no one else Western cinema-wise that's getting box office numbers.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:32

Like also, Arnie has had his first real big flop, and um Sylvester Sloan must have, you know, even though they were technically friends then, um Sylvester Sloan must have been, you know, delighted by all that.

SPEAKER_07 1:52:45

I will say though, if you Sylvester Sloan's straight out of the gate, getting an Oscar for Rocky, like I could always no matter what you say about like, oh, who's got the best numbers, who's got the biggest biceps, like he can be like my little gold friend here begs to differ.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:59

Like Well, what would what would Stallone's career have been like without Schwarzenegger?

SPEAKER_07 1:53:04

Because Yeah, he wouldn't have had the other person to play off, and he'd be the only First Blood was a drama.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:10

It was a drama about a Vietnam war vet. It wasn't really an action film, it was a survival, it was a survival thriller, and um uh you know he was doing stuff like Nighthawks, yeah, and then you know Terminator came along, James Cameron came along, he wrote Rambo 2 and turned it into that, yeah. Stallone was obsessed with kind of like, oh I I need big muscles too, and then Arnie made commando, and it's like right, okay, I'm gonna do that. And you know, the the 1980s movie landscape these were the biggest films around, and and the 1980s landscape would have been completely different without um without Arnold Schwarzenegger arriving on the scene.

SPEAKER_07 1:53:53

I I absolutely love Arnie, like there's even from back in his sort of early days when he was like a builder, and like on like in uh like Venice and stuff, like when he was doing his bodybuilding and then using all of his bodybuilding mates to create a building firm and then being just known for that guy, and then sort of being like this idea that before he even made a single film, he was a millionaire through entrepreneur stuff. And I'm just like, he's the absolute epitome of the American dream, even marrying a fucking Kennedy, and like I don't know why there is something about it. I'm just like, I fucking love you, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:25

Like he's he's one of the most charismatic people on the planet, you know. Yeah, uh like um when I was young, and I don't agree with this, but everyone used to say that he was a terrible actor, and you kind of go, Well, why is he so good? And um, and there's more to him than the acting. He he's a movie star. Yes, he is but he he is the reason to go and see a movie. Back back then, you wouldn't go and see, oh, I'm gonna see the the new Iron Man film or the new Thor film. You'd go, I'm gonna see the new Arnold Schwarzenegger film. Yeah, and um and he was he was a a real life superhero that that was put in these situations, and you go, he's incredible. He's he's physically impressive, uh like he's physically spectacular. Um he could do one-liners in a way that a kind of more coherent Stallone couldn't.

SPEAKER_07 1:55:17

Well, his one-liners, do you know who his comedy fucking mentor was? Who? Milton Bell. Oh wow. Like, you're gonna tell me like you're gonna be fucking hand-tutored by Milton Bell, and you're not gonna come up with some absolute bangers for delivery.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:32

Lucille Ball gave him his first break. She he was he had a part on the Lucille Ball show, and she she took him under her wing and she kind of like took him through Hollywood when he first started. Um he's just he's just got so much you uh you can't underestimate how charismatic he is, you know. You you compare him to kind of like who I love, Dolph Lundgren, but you compare him to Adolf Lundgren, and it's kind of like it's a different it's a different ball game.

SPEAKER_07 1:55:56

Look, Showdown in Little Tokyo is a great film, but yeah he's not amazing in it.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:02

No, he's he's you feel like he's being pushed to the absolute uh edges, limits of his ability, whereas uh Schwarzenegger, you know, he's he's not he's not he's not bad. And uh in I would say like one of his early ones, like Predator, he's excellent in it. He's uh he's he's he's he's he's brilliant. Yeah, perfect for that role.

SPEAKER_07 1:56:26

There's no way you could have done anyone else.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:28

I would say Predator's another one of those perfect films where it's kind of like um you know, you've got you've got a jungle full of these the biggest guys on the planet, and they're getting picked off one by one like uh like babysitters in Halloween, you know, and it's kind of just but I just it's it's it's one of the best action films, science fiction films, Arnold Schwarzenegger films, war films, but like even thrillers, horror.

SPEAKER_07 1:56:53

Bill Duke is amazing in it, and you're just like, how come you get Bill Duke and Shane Black as actors who then go on to make some absolutely stonkingly great films of themselves?

SPEAKER_02 1:57:02

And you're just Sister Act 2 back in the habit. That's so bonkers, isn't it? That Bill Duke directed Sister Act 2. I was gonna say deep cover, but sure. Yeah. Um but yeah, but the but the lineup of those guys, they're all br they're all brilliant.

SPEAKER_06 1:57:21

Jesse the Body.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:22

Jesse the Body Ventura. Um, yeah, they're just uh Carl Weathers, just Carl Weathers. We got we got Apollo Creed in it, you know. Yeah, uh it's we killed Apollo Creed before before Rocky killed Apollo Creed. Um or maybe it was the same yeah, um, but you know, it was like Predators is a fantastic film, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is great in it. And what I would say, I mean, I think I I think I've kind of made peace with it. I'd say his two one-liners that come in within about a two-minute period of each other, where he goes, nog, nog, and then he goes, stick around, and you kind of go, they're so jarring in that film because that film doesn't really need any Arnie one-liners, but I guess what they're doing is they're trying to set it up like this is your typical classic. This is an Arnie film.

SPEAKER_07 1:58:11

That's what we got.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:12

Yeah, and now halfway through, we're gonna do it a dust till dawn and we're gonna change genres. Um, but yeah, I think he's I think he's great. So when I was when I was little, my my real true love was Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I would just watch his films over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_07 1:58:26

He he was my first um he was my first, he was my first like completionist journey, if that makes sense. It was him then Bruce Willis. Like I just wanted to watch everything they were in. I was just like, I have to watch everything, I have to, and I have to, and then then it became Chaki Chan films.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:42

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_07 1:58:43

So that's my progression. Um so yeah, uh I mean it could be, but what was the first 18-rated film you saw? I mean, you mentioned Predator and Evil Dead. Even though Evil Dead was uh 15, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:58:56

Uh Evil Dead was an 18, but um uh three, sorry.

SPEAKER_07 1:58:59

Evil Dead 3.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:00

Army of Heartless was a 15. Yeah. Um and that was later. I think that was uh I I watched Evil Dead maybe when I was about 15. Um I was just found the whole thing really terrifying, and I just I thought it was gonna be uh unbearable. But um but I I loved it when I was bearing it. And I and I wouldn't really count those on a Schwarzenegger films because they were taped off TV and all of like the swearing and the violence was. I know that in 1990 um uh Total Recall came out on video, and uh I went round my friend's house and he was a year younger than me, but his parents let him watch anything. And I wasn't allowed to watch 18s, and I went round my friend's house, and his dad had rented out Total Recall, and they were all sat in the living room and they just all watched Total Recall, but I wasn't allowed to watch it, so I I sat in the room, but I looked at the carpet for the entire way through the film and I listened to Total Recall because I'm such a good boy, such a good boy, and uh and so I and it the just the the the squelch sound effects of every kind of like bullet wound, and like yeah, and that was that was just as traumatic. Um, I would say that the first proper 18 that I watched was um James my friend at school who um uh liked Army of Darkness um uh it was called James Norris and he lent me uh die hard. Um and my sister was uh uh had like a maybe I got home from school first, or maybe my sister had after school activities. I remember watching I had diehard in on a in a VHS uh from you know Shopport VHS that I borrowed off a friend, and I probably watched it in like 20-minute instalments while my mum went out to pick my sister up. I'd go upstairs and I'd get the box out from under my bed and then I'd put it in an underwatch in the family living room VHS player, and I'd watch 20 minutes of Die Hard and I'd hear the car in the driveway, and then I'd get it out and then I'd put it back again. I never found like I was always sort of like I was sort of disappointed with Die Hard uh in that it's an 18, but really if it was to be reserved now I 12A, yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's the amount of time maybe it's the amount of times they say fuck and motherfucker and stuff in it that made it an 18 rather than the Oh it used to be you could only say fuck three times before it had to be a 15.

SPEAKER_07 2:01:38

Uh it had to be an 18. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:39

And you can you can say f you can say fuck once in a 12A uh now, but um but yeah, then it gets but the but in terms of the gore and the violence, I was a little bit disappointed that there wasn't there wasn't more that would like I mean there was also cocaine and a couple having sex, and I think you see some titties, so yeah, you do, you do. That is true. But like still it's not like a hard 18, is it? It's kind of like um The camera panned away, I couldn't tell. A little bit more than a 15. Um so I think yeah, but I think I think Die Hard was probably the first like proper 18 that I watched from beginning to end.

SPEAKER_07 2:02:14

Okay, nice, nice. I mean Die Hard's one of those hard ones where uh like obviously Die Hard 1 is is a very fun, good, fun film. I never watched two, and because of that, I always like pine for two more than I pine for one. Like, if ever I think like, oh I could watch Die Hard, I'm like, I might watch two.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:35

Yeah, well I also think that there's something in well I'd rather watch Empire Strikes Bat than Star Wars. There's something in there's something in joining your friends on another adventure as opposed to getting to meet them for the first time again. Um I think I think Die Hard 2 is a really good film. I think it's great film. I think I think all the Diehards are really good, but I would say that r my 18 certificate films that I watched were action movies with explosions and bullet wounds and guys with big muscles saying funny things after they kill people, and so they're kind of like they're pieces of entertainment, you know. Um, and I didn't get into horror until uh much later. And Evil Dead was my gateway into horror.

SPEAKER_07 2:03:19

I I wasn't a horror guy uh as a kid. As a kid, I was a Red Scaredy Cat. I couldn't do it. I would just anything scary would just completely play with my mind, and then in the middle of the night I'd wake up terrified. Yeah, and then it wasn't until I got into um like props and understanding how like they made the scary things that I'd start watching horror films to be like, oh well how do they do that? How did they make that? And then I'd be like, Oh, that's really good. And now horror films are what I love the most because I think there's the they're the most fun, like not regardless of whether it's silly fun, it's still they're the most fun to watch.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:54

Yeah, and knowing it's a roller coaster, it's an emotional roller coaster. And uh even knowing everything that I know about films, um they still have the ability to scare me and to make me like you know, squirm in my seat and flinch, you know.

SPEAKER_07 2:04:10

I watched something I can't remember what it is now, but I remember I watched something recently and it made me properly jump, and I had to go downstairs and tell Kirsi, like, this film just made me jump. And she was like, Oh fucking hell. And I was like, right? And I was so excited.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:23

Yeah, I uh but I was a scaredy cat as well, and uh like growing up in London in the 80s, there was like a nightmare on Elm Street film out every year, and going down the underground. I remember I've got I've got it, I've got it. It's the it was the um uh quad poster of um uh Nightmare on Elm Street 3 Dream Warriors, and it's sort of like a grey background with smoke, and it's Freddie Krueger wearing a trench coat and his hat. Yes, um, and it's not an illustrated picture, it's a photo of him, and that was everywhere on the underground, and I just remember like you wouldn't know if it was gonna be there when you went round a corner, and I almost had to have my blinkers on in the 80s when I was in uh you know when I was a kid because those horror movie posters used to absolutely terrify me.

SPEAKER_07 2:05:13

Oh, but like there was the Brian Yusner films, The Dentist, and they're great films.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:19

On and the video covers for stuff like The Dentist were terrifying.

SPEAKER_07 2:05:23

The razors and the Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:25

The video boxes.

SPEAKER_07 2:05:26

The video boxes were scary as shit.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:29

Once you get past the posters, when you actually like the posters on the underground for the films, when when video shop started, Thriller, Michael Jackson's Thriller. Oh my god. Couldn't couldn't couldn't look at a picture of him as the zombie because too much. There was like a there was a VHS of Thriller, I think it was like the 10-minute music video and then a 20-minute making of with Rick Baker, and you know, couldn't watch stuff like that. It was absolutely terrifying, but the video boxes of um yeah, and Dr. Giggles and stuff like that was like really scary. I had a f we had a friend that was like uh like a bit older than my sister, so he's probably about four years older than me, and he'd go and see all of the films, and I would go and quiz him afterwards, and I'd say, What's what's yeah, what's the bit?

SPEAKER_07 2:06:11

What's the scary bit?

SPEAKER_02 2:06:12

What's What's Freddy's Dead like? What's that about? And he'd tell me about Freddy's Dead, and I'd be like, Okay, what's because I used to get Predator and Terminator mixed up in my head, so the it's like the Predator. So what's uh what's Predator like? What's Terminator? You know, I'd quiz him about all of these films that I couldn't sing, and eventually when I you know got around to watching them, they're not scary, they're lovely, they're brilliant, they're just so entertaining and just and great, and yeah, but I was terrified of horror as a kid, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:06:40

But I like it. I like that uh I like being a scaredy cat and now not being as much of a scaredy cat.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:06:46

Um which now leads perfectly into what was the first film that you watched that you can that you that you thought was grown up.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:54

Well, not the first film I watched that made me a grown-up, right? But the first film that I watched was just like this is grown-up. Yeah, it's I've got two I've got two answers here, but I've also just remembered something as well. Um I would say I I remember Amadeus being on TV in the 80s and the scene at the beginning when Salieri has slit his own throat. Um I remember that being particularly traumatic for me. I watched it again recently, and it's like I in my head, there's like a slit throat with blood piercing out of it, and it's just like, oh god. And I watched it again recently, and there's a little bit of like red paint on him, but it's kind of um uh but then after you have that, you have Tom Hulse's Amadeus with pink hair, and he's got that laugh and a thing, and it's kind of like uh uh and as a child I really kind of uh responded to that. But that opening for Amadeus was like, oh hang on a minute, this is a grown-up film. Um, and my mum rented out Fitzcaroldo um with uh Klaus Kinski and uh it was a Werner Hertz object. Yeah, and it now this m this is weird because this might be a fake memory. Okay, or it may not have been Fitzcaroldo, right? Because I went to see that at the cinema, at the BFI, I went to see it at the BFI uh maybe two years ago, and um and I was surprised with that it was in English because I have a distinct memory of the Amazonian rainforest natives or or maybe they're the Brazilian rainforest, wherever they are. Because the story is that they've got this big uh steamboat and he wants to build an opera house on the other side of this uh hill and they're getting there by this big boat, and they've got to basically get this boat over this um this sort of mountain. They've got to get it off the water, over the mountain, and back onto the water to get to this opera house. And um and the film was kind of made in real time where they kind of actually took the boat over the mountain and they filmed it as they went. And I have distinct memories of Klaus Kinski in the jungle uh with subtitles, and every time there was a subtitle, I would get my mum to pause the video so you could read them, so that I could read the subtitles, and eventually, quite quickly, she lost her patience. So it was kind of but I remember I remember that, but when I watched it recently, that there either are no subtitles or there are less subtitles than I remembered, so maybe it's a mixed memory, but I do remember that.

SPEAKER_07 2:09:40

Maybe it was a Gwir?

SPEAKER_02 2:09:42

No, or maybe no, I don't think it was. I think Fitzgerald was kind of like the movie of the 80s for for that kind of thing. Um was it maybe maybe it was.

SPEAKER_07 2:09:52

Was it Billy Freakin' the Sorcerer?

SPEAKER_02 2:09:55

No, no, no, no, because I've I I've seen that recently as well within within the last ten years, and it definitely wasn't that okay. But again, uh there are subtitles in that at the beginning, aren't they? I don't think sorcery would be something that my mum would have watched.

SPEAKER_07 2:10:10

She was more of a wages of fear girl.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:13

I mean I watched Sorcerer because I watched Wages of Fear. And uh Wages of Fear is the better film.

SPEAKER_07 2:10:21

Uh 100%. Uh Wages of Fear was one of the films that my dad, when I was a kid, would talk about. Like he'd say the word Jellignite so many times that I was like, what the fuck is Jellignite? And then as soon as I found Wages of Fear, I was like, I've got to watch it. And I watched it, I was like, this is so good. And then it was years until I found out that it had been remade by Billy Friedkin with uh Rod Steiger in. And um it's callbacks, people, it's a callback. And uh I I was like, Oh, I should I should give it a go. And it was one of the ones that we did at uh Charlie's, and it was just like this is good, this is good, but it's no wages affair.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:57

Yeah, and I think I think that I watched them too close together. Okay. Um, and uh I've got a signed William Freakin Sorcerer poster from when they re re re-released it. Um uh I think Sorcerer is really great, and I and I love obviously everything that Roy Scheider did, you know, Jaws Jaws to European gig log. Um so I do I oh what I was gonna say about Roy Scheider was that you know when when you look at Jaws, Roy Scheider never gets the credit he deserves, it always goes to uh Robert Shaw. Uh as a kid, I really relate to Richard Dravers, but um but Roy Scheider is uh he's like Rayleigh Otter in Goodfellas, where all of the credit goes to Robert De Niro and Joe Pesce, and right in the middle you've got Rayleigh Otter giving the best performance keeping the whole movie together, and he never gets the credit he deserves for being the best thing in Goodfellas. Fucking hundreds of things. Rayleigh Otter is the best thing in Goodfellas. Roy Scheider is the best thing in Jaws. He's incredible.

SPEAKER_07 2:12:03

Because he's holding that shit together. He is the everyman. He's not the kooky fucking rich guy, and he's not the angry shark. He is you and me. He is the real life situation. And at no point does he think this is all bullshit. And at no point does he go, I'm gonna join in with the bullshit. He's like, go on then. Now tell me more. And you'll I believe every fucking element. And that's the same with Rayleigh Otter. Like, even the bits when he's fucking looking for the helicopter by the car, you're just like, it's just a man getting about his fucking business, and it's all gone horribly wrong for him.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:33

Yeah, that's how I make uh spaghetti bolognese every time now. I just rack up a load of cocaine and give myself give myself a paranoid breakdown.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:47

That's so funny. Have you ever seen that interview with Rayleigh Artter and they say, What did you use for cocaine on the staff good fellas? And he just goes, Cocaine, cocaine, what are you talking about?

SPEAKER_02 2:12:56

Cocaine. Um yeah, yeah. But Wages of Fear is just like an absolute masterpiece. And Source Dro is kind of is it's kind of is really cool. I'll give it another few watches before before.

SPEAKER_07 2:13:09

I mean, if Criterion released it, it's got to be at least a Criterion film.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:13

It is it's good, but like Wages of Fear is um is Fundamentally a better film. Was it 50s? It's a it's a black and white French movie based on a book, and it was made in the 50s, and you know, expectations are low, and you go and see it, and it's one of the tensest, hottest it's as in like temperature-wise, you feel the fucking sweat in every scene, and it's oh what's gonna happen. There's no kind of like trying to adjust your brain to old-fashioned sensibilities. It's like it like that's what I think about Casablanca, it works as well today as it does then, right? And uh it's not like oh god, the pacing's a bit slow, you know. Like even Star Wars, the pacing is a bit baggy, you know. Um, which I wouldn't agree with with Jaws, but with Star Wars, I find that first one it's a bit baggy. But um, but you know, you don't get that with Wages of Fear, it's is it's incredible. Um but yeah, I would say that, but then the other thing uh would be that there was a Woody Allen season, a Woody Allen season on channel four when I was very young, and my dad taped all of them, and I what did I watch?

SPEAKER_01 2:14:23

I I mean it was inappropriate, it was inappropriate back then, so it's it's child abuse now. But um yeah, I watched it.

SPEAKER_07 2:14:32

Careful when you relate that to a Woody.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:35

Yeah, but well I I think the chance of us being in a room together were slim. Um but yeah Sir, you've been nominated for a BAFTA.

SPEAKER_07 2:14:45

You don't know.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:48

I don't think he I think his BAFTA days are behind him. Um I think I think uh so as a child I watched Bananas, uh Sleeper.

SPEAKER_07 2:15:04

Yeah, that's my one.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:06

Maybe Annie Hall.

SPEAKER_07 2:15:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:09

Um, and uh not Manhattan, I think. Or I wouldn't watch Manhattan because it was black and white.

SPEAKER_04 2:15:16

Right, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:16

But the one that was really like was everything you always wanted to know about sex, but we're afraid to ask. I was what, five? Six?

SPEAKER_07 2:15:23

Far too afraid to ask.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:24

You got Willie Wonku in the chocolate factory, fucking a sheep, and you're like, what? It's like what? Um yeah, I but yeah, as a personality, as a child, you know, Woody Allen was like this, you know, he he was like he had like a comedy look, didn't he? He was like, he had his look, he was like Groucho Marks, or he was like, you know, Mickey Mouse. He was like, this is what Woody Allen looks like. And so as a child I sort of related to kind of uh his sort of personality. I would probably say that out of those films, you know, Bananas I thought was hilarious, which was like a slapstick comedy, Sleeper, again, hilarious, sleeperess comedy so good. Uh but Annie Hall, where they don't end up together, spoiler alert, and uh and you you're left at the end of it with this real sort of like sadness of um oh what might have been, you know, that's a complicated feeling for a child to experience, and I think that that was a real grown-up kind of film for me.

SPEAKER_07 2:16:27

I think that's such a good one as well, as as in as a choice, because uh you're so used in films to be told like happy endings. Hollywood is just built on happy endings, and uh film like Hollywood films specifically, they didn't start referencing explicitly sort of Italian cinema until sort of that sort of early 70s and onwards. And that Italian cinema thing is like we don't you the the filmmaker doesn't um owe you a happy ending, they don't even owe you a fucking conclusion, like you'll it'll stop when we're done. And when Hollywood takes just a hint of it and throws it in, it's always so nice because it's like, yeah, you've given me all of that joy and that richness, and like meeting the family, the brother being a weirdo, the lobsters, it's all memories, and then not getting together, you're like, uh no, and that's how you feel in reality as well. You're like, I thought this was a thing, I thought we were going places, and we're not, and it's such a good one. I think that is a real good one for feeling grown up, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:17:29

Yeah, yeah. Complicated emotions rather than explicit content. It's like the emotional aspect of it is what I think affected me most as a child. You know, and like I can't think of specific examples, but there'd be like characters in uh TV shows or films that would get killed off and just be an inconsolable.

SPEAKER_07 2:17:55

I still get that that is there's two things that trigger me in films. It's when an alcoholic breaks uh their sobriety. I'm always like, oh come on, man, like we're we're still going, let's let's go. And the other one is when like a character I genuinely give a shit about does die. I'm like no, no, maybe they'll come back, maybe they'll come back. And it's like it's it they're an actor, you can watch them anything. It's like, no, it's that character. Like that character means something to me, you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:24

Yeah. I mean, the last time that I properly cried in a film for those reasons would be uh Force Awakens when Han Sardo died. Oh really? Because I knew it was coming. Yeah, like even when they announced him, you kind of like go, well, he wanted to die in Jedi, this'll be it.

SPEAKER_07 2:18:43

Also, I said to a friend, like, whoever the villain is, because I didn't know what the story was gonna be. I was like, whoever the villain is is gonna kill Han Solo, because that's the only character that any of us care about, and if the villain kills Han, we will then instantly hate the villain. And my friend was like, I don't know. And then like I wasn't I wasn't gonna be like, and it's gonna be his son, but when I watched it and it happened, I was like, Yeah, yeah, that's the only way that could have worked.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:08

Yeah, even even when they're outside, him and John Baeger are outside uh the base and they're going in, you still kind of like think, nah, they're not gonna be able to get out of here. They're not going to.

SPEAKER_07 2:19:16

They're not going to.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:17

And then when it when he gets on the on the gangway, and you know and obviously the film my opinion of the film has changed over the last ten years. Um it I you know, it doesn't I I think it was a waste of a waste of that character in the end, and you know, um but at the time it it I I cried. It was it was oh god, but it's Harrison Ford as well, you know.

SPEAKER_07 2:19:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:45

I mean talk about charisma and carry Carrie Grant and a lightness of touch.

SPEAKER_07 2:19:50

Yeah, I I like I said, watching Air Force One last night. I was like, yeah, that man could be the fucking president. I'd believe that. He's got the fucking charisma to pull it off.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:58

I didn't want to say this, but I'm not an Air Force One guy. I heard recently that Kevin Costner was meant to be in Air Force One and he swapped out to do Hmm, now what would it have been? It wouldn't have been Wire Earp. No, it's too early. That was ninety three, I think. Um He swapped out to do something else. No, that was 95. When was Air Force One? '97? It was about the same time as Con Air. And um uh yeah, I remember.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:20:34

I think Costner ditched Air Force One to maybe do the postman and he suggested Harrison Ford in his place, and I think that Air Force One is beneath Harrison Ford. I think why would you put Harrison Ford in a diehard knockoff? He is too good for that.

SPEAKER_07 2:20:58

I will say I think a lot of the cast are too good for it. Bill Macy just plays like some generic guy in the background.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:04

Glenn Close? What the fuck is Glenn Close doing in that? Like, what? They're all getting paid. I mean, that's what it looks like. It's like you're all getting paid today, aren't you, great? Good for you. Gary Oldman doing a fucking Russian accent. Yeah, great. Have a good bad guy for higher brilliant, yeah, great.

SPEAKER_02 2:21:24

So I I like Air Force One never did it for me. But there is a world where you kind of go, I think maybe a Kevin Costner presidential Air Force One diehard knockoff would would have maybe screwed up. Could have had the watch a bit more. Yeah, I think maybe I did, I did I do well, I still kind of have fondness for Kevin Costner, but I did really like him.

SPEAKER_07 2:21:44

JFK will always be there for me. Like it I uh he's great, like, because of JFK.

SPEAKER_02 2:21:52

Talk about films on repeat, you know. Uh my sister just uh absolutely loved uh Robin Hood and we watched Robin Hood over and over and over and over and over again. That was one of our videos, and and you know, I would say in terms of best director at the Oscars that year, um uh Martin Scorsese definitely should have won for Goodfellas, right? But I don't have a problem with Dunce with Wolves winning Best Picture. I think it is I think it is legitimately one of the best films ever made.

SPEAKER_07 2:22:20

It's lovely. Like, and it was one of those films that I thought everyone took the piss out of because it was shit, and then I watched it and I was like, oh no, you just don't want to give him credit.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:30

You don't want to give it's it's it's oh it's a vanity project. He wrote it, he directed it, he produced it, he's in it, and you can't let go. Yeah, but it's amazing.

SPEAKER_07 2:22:38

But he gave it he gave a shit, and that's the thing.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:41

He gave a shit. It's an inc it's an incredible film. The director's cut, which is 45 minutes longer than the three-hour theatrical cut, is even better. Beautiful, and you know, it has a lot of stuff about um oh, you know, uh he's a white saviour and and all of that, but it's like yeah, but uh um he is the only good white person in the entire film. Every other white person in it is a monster, they're all awful, and it's kind of like he's very much on the Native American side with this. He's kind of using him as a gateway character to introduce the rest of the rest of the audience into the into the world that he's like um he's showing off. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_07 2:23:28

Between him and Clint Eastwood, I think they're they give off very sort of, you know, conservative Republican views and everything. But when you watch their films, I genuinely think that there is such a love for uh the indigenous peoples and like uh the Mexico sort of crossover in a lot of like uh Clint's films, that you're like, oh no, actually, I think I think what they're doing is showing that you can be a conservative and a Republican or whatever, and still have compassion for uh like an understanding. And I think a lot of it is like just completely ignored sometimes, and you're like, no, Costner does a really good job in a lot of films to sort of acknowledge the guys that came before him, and I don't know, that I think I think they do good work.

SPEAKER_02 2:24:15

I think politics have changed a lot over the last twenty twenty-five years, and I think that you know uh you could be left or right, you know, w without it being a it was a it was a difference of an opinion. Necessarily a complete moral um you know choice. It's not like it's not like the core of my very being is that I am gonna be this or that. It's like I my politics are this or my politics are that. That doesn't really have uh that doesn't really need to have uh anything to do with uh how you treat other people um and how you treat other cultures or anything like that. You can still be um interested, you can still be uh uh uh compassionate, you can still be all of those things. I mean I'm I'm le I I'm I lean left.

SPEAKER_07 2:25:02

But um This mustache would suggest that I don't, but I do.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:06

But it's I think it's a beautiful mustache. I can't imagine you without the mustache. Um yeah, so I I I don't I don't really know oh oh yeah. Well it looks much better with it. Um I I I I don't really get into Kevin Costner's politics really. Um and I and uh you know I don't I I d I wouldn't want to work with him.

SPEAKER_07 2:25:33

Fair, fair, fair, fair, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:35

But um I wouldn't even really want to meet him. But um but uh I think dance with the rules is is kind of open to a chance.

SPEAKER_07 2:25:43

Yeah, I think there is uh that that also that separating the artist from the artist. I think a lot of people Yeah, I think when it comes to those like separating the art from the artist, I always I I I struggle with that quite a lot because there's a lot of people who also a film isn't made by one fucking person. Like it's made by an entire crew of people and the actors have done their own thing. So if if it turns out that the director was a piece of shit then we just do our best to not watch his stuff in the future. And I'm gonna say his because it's invariably a he. Like, but everyone else who put in the work shouldn't be dismissed because of one person's actions.

SPEAKER_02 2:26:21

I think you could say that about almost everyone except Woody Allen, where um Yeah. Like you could like Manhattan is an incredibly uncomfortable watch. Um uh and and it basically his whole bat catalogue is kind of tainted. But with something like Annie Hall, it's it's such a not just it's oh I like it, you know, oh I like it, I want to keep hold of Annie Hall. Like you said, it's like it's it's an emotionally complicated film that you don't really get in a lot of other uh uh in a a lot of other places and and you kind of don't want to throw the baby out with a bath bath water, but um but I don't really know anything about Kevin Costner and uh and Clint Eastwood is such a solid, safe pair of hands.

SPEAKER_07 2:27:11

He's made so many amazing films and and he's the only person in the last 15 years who that's not true, there are Jagos Lathama and uh Lathamos and um Jasper Noah and Paul Thomas Anderson, those people I'll happily watch anything that they bring out. But Clint Eastwood is one of those people that it's just like, oh, you make a grown-ups film. And I like that.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:37

And I like I like I like watching a film that's made for grown-ups and um and I don't I I I haven't kept up to date with loads of Clint Eastwood's latest things.

SPEAKER_07 2:27:47

The Mule is great fun.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:49

Yeah, I've not seen that, and uh and I probably I mean I going back to I probably haven't seen any of his new ones really since maybe the Jave Gahoover one he did. Oh, okay. Um maybe Gran Torino was the last one that I saw at the cinema. No, I wouldn't say that that's true. I pro I I I probably would, but I'm not like drawn to them because I know that they're kind of like uh I'm more happy for the fact that he's just cranking them out rather than the fact that I I I particularly want to watch them. But going back and watching stuff like the Dirty Harry films, um, you know, they're right wing fantasies, but they're great fun. They're entertaining and they're really fun.

SPEAKER_07 2:28:27

Last year, I think I watched fifty of his films and a lot of uh Rawhide. Oh wow I really went for it. Couldn't couldn't not. My brain wouldn't let me just be like, oh let's just watch one Clinton user film. It's like, no brain, let's watch all of them.

SPEAKER_02 2:28:43

He's great, you know, he is great. He's excellent. There was a world in the in the 90s where they were saying that Kevin Costner was gonna be playing uh Indiana Jones' evil twin brother or evil brother, where uh Kevin Costner was gonna be a Nazi and uh uh Harrison Ford was Indiana Jones and you kind of like go I oh if they'd have made an Indiana Jones film in the nineties I think I think that that was a real missed opportunity. Because they made they made more anyway, yeah. So it's not so it's like well you should have made one earlier.

SPEAKER_07 2:29:18

What would be our closest? Quigley down under. No, um that was 80s.

SPEAKER_02 2:29:24

Uh I think that was bang on 90.

SPEAKER_07 2:29:27

Oh, do you reckon?

SPEAKER_02 2:29:28

I think it was ninety or ninety.

SPEAKER_07 2:29:29

Because the other film I was gonna say was The Mummy, but that's 99, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 2:29:33

99 or 90.

SPEAKER_07 2:29:34

So they just they just couldn't do it. They just bookended the 90s, like we can't do indie.

SPEAKER_02 2:29:39

Well, by the end of the 90s, they're like, if you're not gonna do anything with it, we'll make the mummy then.

SPEAKER_07 2:29:43

I mean the that mummy film, goddamn, it's good. Um it was one of the films that when uh we got it on video, my mum watched it, rewound it, and watched it straight away.

SPEAKER_00 2:29:53

Right.

SPEAKER_07 2:29:54

Like she loved it. Um Can I ask how how old are you? I'm 37, 38, I see. We're I I feel like we're in the same category of uh like film watching, if that makes sense, like age-wise, I think.

SPEAKER_02 2:30:11

I th I think so, but I think the difference is that uh, you know, I grew up I was born in 80. So um all of these films were coming out as as I was growing up. Whereas they were like um after the fact when you when when when you saw him. Like the world was already established that we're making these movies, whereas it was like, oh my god, they're making these movies.

SPEAKER_07 2:30:35

So Jurassic Park, I've said this a couple of times, like Jurassic Park was the first film I watched, like yeah, and I was five when it came out, five or six, and I was deemed too young and it was too spooky for the boys, as mum and dad said it, so we weren't allowed to go to the cinema to see it. So when it came out on video, I watched it, and when I watched it, I must have been about seven when it came out on video because it was a couple of years after, and from that age on, I was like, right, who's this Steven Spielberg guy? Right I I I like this, I whatever he's making, I like this. And I saw Hook. Hook was the first one I saw at the cinema, and I was told, like, oh, he did hook, and I was like, Okay, whatever this guy's doing, I want to do, and that's where like the career choice of mine from like the age of seven was like, I want to make films, and then when I got to 27 and didn't make jaws, I was like, Well, I've failed.

SPEAKER_02 2:31:25

Oh, we all feel that.

SPEAKER_07 2:31:26

Yeah, yeah. It's great, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 2:31:29

Yeah, but that's only if you're judging it based on uh you have to make a a masterpiece in your twenties. Whereas you've got your whole life to make a masterpiece.

SPEAKER_07 2:31:40

It's easy when you're nominated for a BAFTA.

SPEAKER_02 2:31:43

Well the butt it's not actually, it gets even harder than that.

SPEAKER_07 2:31:46

Oh yeah, actually, I can I can imagine that. Um I held uh a BAFTA once. I was at I was at John did did you not even get to hold one?

SPEAKER_02 2:31:57

I mean I've I've I've I've held one. It's they're heavy, aren't they?

SPEAKER_07 2:32:01

They are and I was at uh I was at John Roberts's house and I picked it up and put it to my face, and my mum was like, Fucking put that down. I was like, mum.

SPEAKER_02 2:32:13

He does that.

SPEAKER_06 2:32:13

Yeah, you're looking better.

SPEAKER_02 2:32:15

Um yeah, I remember my dad took me to see Hook uh at the cinema, and I remember coming out of it, and uh my dad said, That was quite good, wasn't it? And I remember going, You're in it. That was awful. I hated Hook. And I was ten, I was like, I was built for it. I think Hook is probably the thing that's tainted my Steven Spielberg uh appreciation the most.

SPEAKER_07 2:32:39

I think considering Jurassic Park was like I was seven years old, Jurassic Park was perfect. Whereas if I was scary scary, excellent, like Laura Dern was fucking kick ass, like everything was rad about it. I think if Hook was that one for seven, I too would have a different like I think watching Hook as what like a fucking three or four-year-old great like excitement were at the cinema.

SPEAKER_02 2:33:06

Yeah, but whereas now I would pick never-ending story over Hook, do you know what I mean? And Hook is definitely the better-made film.

SPEAKER_07 2:33:14

Glenn Close again.

SPEAKER_02 2:33:15

But uh of course, famously starring Hook, famously starring Glenn Close. Um and uh yeah, I uh I guess I guess if I had that nostalgia to kind of like push me through it, I'd I'd pre I don't watch Never Ending Story that much. But I'd every so often I do kind of like uh uh I won't show my tattoos. Um but um uh but do you know what I mean? It's like every so often I do have kind of like uh oh I'd quite like to see um I'd quite like to see never ending story. I never want to see Hook.

SPEAKER_07 2:33:50

Well you're a tree records in the background.

SPEAKER_02 2:33:53

Yeah, ever every uh all of my friends love Hook, so it's kind of I I am the odd one now.

SPEAKER_07 2:33:58

I met JV Hart, the writer. Of Hook and I shook his hand and I said I liked Hook.

SPEAKER_02 2:34:04

And that was good. Oh great. His kids, his kids, um his kid came up with the line, um there's a lot there's some sort of line in it where it's like you're shorter than I remembered, and he goes, Well, you've grown up, or you were a child. Uh or you're not as tall as I remember you being. And uh that was a line that his kid gave him. I remember that from the Blue Peter special. Oh lovely.

SPEAKER_07 2:34:34

He also wrote Bram Stoker's Dracula and Contact though.

SPEAKER_00 2:34:38

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 2:34:39

Like two absolute middle of the road bangers.

SPEAKER_07 2:34:48

Contact's got that wonderful shot in the mirror. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:34:53

Oh, do you want do you fancy watching contact tonight? Said only Sagan.

SPEAKER_02 2:35:05

Never, never happens. It's never happened.

SPEAKER_07 2:35:08

Let's watch a really good sci-fi film with Matthew Mohanah in. Oh yeah, we should watch Contact exactly.

SPEAKER_02 2:35:13

We should watch Contact. Do you know what I'm in the mood for? Contact, yeah. Um what was the other one that you wrote? Bram Stoker's Dracula. Oh yeah. I mean, you know, that is a film where the more you know about the behind the scenes stuff, the better it gets.

SPEAKER_07 2:35:29

Oh, the forced perspective with the train and the book, lovely.

SPEAKER_02 2:35:32

And the book, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:35:33

Love it.

SPEAKER_02 2:35:33

All of the the uh the was it Roman Coppler that did all that?

SPEAKER_07 2:35:36

I think so, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:35:37

I think he did all of the because he was interested in magic and stuff, and so he um he did like the uh practical effects in Dracula. And you know, yeah, it's it's a bonkers film, but it's not I d I think that my um Dracula is a little bit like uh a Christmas carol where I know the story so well I just cannot be bothered to watch them go through the bits.

SPEAKER_07 2:36:00

And that one isn't my Dracula, if you know what I mean. Like I've got I don't know what mine is, but my vampire film is probably from Dust Till Dawn. It's not Bram Stoker's Dracula, it's a real you know what I mean? Like it's uh that's not how I consume it.

SPEAKER_02 2:36:13

And then obviously Christopher Lee is more my yeah, it's a lavish luxury experience for from a master filmmaker getting a payday. Yeah, yeah. And it's like great. But you know, Godfather 2 was him getting a payday, and Godfather 1 was him getting a payday, you know.

SPEAKER_07 2:36:32

Look, you're not gonna turn down a job and you're gonna do the best you can. Simple as that. Um Jack. You're gonna say no to working with Robin Williams? Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:36:48

What's your most controversial famous What's your controversial film opinion?

SPEAKER_02 2:36:54

Uh yeah, right, okay.

SPEAKER_07 2:36:56

Um well I guess uh we've got the what's the film that holds a special place in your heart? What's that one?

SPEAKER_02 2:37:02

What's the film that holds a special place in my heart? Uh the the films that hold uh while we're on the topic, the films that hold an extra special place in my heart would be uh the universal uh monster movies. Lovely. The black and white ones.

SPEAKER_07 2:37:17

Um you're gonna love the promo I I shot yesterday, then. Oh really? I I had my dad spray paint a graveyard scene onto some drapes of black velvet, and then I made fake trees and tombstones and like dressed it up, and then I did the sort of like Criswell from Plan 9 kind of character, and I did this little promo for something. And uh I spent far too much time and money on this project. I'm not gonna see any profit from it, but I was just like, oh yeah, yeah, let's uh let's hire out this giant hall and I'm gonna get all my fucking good lights out and I'm gonna paint some fucking black velvet and I'm gonna do it properly, and it was great. I loved it.

SPEAKER_02 2:37:55

Yeah. Well they're they're they're they're works of art, they're they're beautiful. You can take any frame from that and uh and it's a it's a painting, you know. Um I preferred uh Frankenstein and Brider Frankenstein um to Dracula, but I saw Dra I just saw Dracula at Prince Charles a couple of uh a couple of years ago um on the big screen, and when you watch it on TV it's kind of the the shots are very static and the the camera isn't as interesting as it is in the Frankenstein, you know, James Whale like really elevates it all. Um is it Todd Brown uh that did or Todd Browning that did it? Todd Browning did Dracula and Freaks.

SPEAKER_07 2:38:38

Oh, if he did yeah, if it's the same guy that did freaks, then it is Todd Browning, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:38:42

Um and so like the it's not as interesting, but then when you see it on the big screen, there's you know, there's a static shot of um a horse and carriage going up a mountain. You watch that on a TV and it's like yeah. You watch it on the screen, it's a it's a it's a moving painting where it's this beautiful, detailed, lavish, black and white shot with this thing moving through it. And those films are just spectacular. The wolf man is amazing. My favourite, I'm wearing it now, but my favourite is Claude Raines and The Invisible Man, um, which I just think is uh just it's so funny. Claude Raines, obviously from Casablanca. Um just yeah, they're just amazing, and uh and uh even when you get into the colourised ones with um uh Phantom of the Opera and stuff like that, they're still they're still you know just so when we went to Universal Studios in 1993, you know, um they still were really promoting all of the old black and white Universal movies. That was part of their identity. I just I just love it. I just love it all you know so much. They're not they're not scary, they're kind of tragic, tragic stories. The monsters are all kind of victims in a way, and um except for Dracula, but it's kind of well that that that kind of like even Dracula.

SPEAKER_07 2:40:14

Even Dracula, like he I know he's a a piece of shit, but like he is stuck as well. Like there's a a sense of making the best of the situation and having to be a villain because existence has no longer become anything that holds any value. So, you know, he can't taste, he can't do anything, he can't enjoy.

SPEAKER_02 2:40:37

I just sure. But they don't explore that no no no uh to the to to uh hardly any extent in the in the universal one, whereas you do get all of that, the real you know, Boris Karloff, you know, his performance in Frankenstein is just is beautiful, and and Brider Frankenstein and Lon Cheney and um Lon Cheney Jr. Yeah, Wolfman is beautiful and um Elsa Lanchester does such a good job in with very little and um yeah just uh they're just they're just they're part of the wallpaper of my life, you know, where they they've they've always they've always been there, and um they've you know Frankenstein as an you know Frankenstein's monster Boris Karloff in the makeup is like one of those iconic movie images that that no one has ever beaten that design, you know. Every time you see a new Frankenstein, they're trying to reinvent it. Re-reinvent it reinvent the wheel, and it's like you've already nailed it, you can't, you know. The wolf man, you know, that upgrade that they did with the Rick Baker in the 2010 one, you know, it's uh it it's only good because it's based on this thing that we're familiar with, and it's like this modern update, you know. Whenever it's actually just like, oh, and now they're a wolf, it's always a lot less interesting than being a wolf man. And um uh yeah, I just though those films, those films uh are uh the ones that hold a special place, and then um you know uh John Carpenter is my uh you know, his first however many films were up to up to um Invisible Man. No, what was the one he did after that? It was um Oh Vampires. No, it's one of my absolute favourites. Uh In the Mouth of Mad Master.

SPEAKER_01 2:42:32

Oh, okay, right.

SPEAKER_02 2:42:34

I think that's his last legitimately uh legitimate almost masterpiece. But um and then all the others are like a bit of fun and you can take or take or leave it.

SPEAKER_07 2:42:43

I've got this Let me move this around so you can see it. Got a lovely, yeah, lovely one of them going on.

SPEAKER_02 2:42:51

Well that's what I was gonna say. I was gonna say that my my first I I I talk about the thing so much, but my favourite John Carpenter is Big Trouble in Little China. It's just it's it's it's it's amazing, and and we uh it's only come to my mind much more recently, but basically Jack Burton is Ash from Army of Darkness It's the same character, but but but what's amazing about Big Trouble in Little China is that your main character is actually the sidekick, um, and he's an idiot, but when you're little you think he's the hero, and when you get older you just realise he's an idiot, and Kurt Russell's amazing in it, it's so good, it's so much fun. And I heard Kate Hudson because I always associate Kate Hudson more with Goldie Horn than Kurt Russell, and Kate Hudson was telling a story about growing up uh on the set of Big Trouble in Little China, and she said it was the most fun, it was the most fun set to grow up on because there's uh there's there's a bit where they all slide down this thing and they go into this pit of water with all of these kind of like uh like you know skeletons and stuff in it, and she was saying that the the only way to get down from one level of the set to the other level of the set was to slide down it, and so you know, even moving in between and and uh Kurt Russell and Goldie Horn were like you can come to the set, but you have to have a job, you can't just be there as a tourist, you've got to have a job. So then she'd work in like the hair and makeup department or the costume department, and she'd like you know put together like the kits that they needed to apply the makeup for the next day, and uh she was like saying that John Carpenter was like the sweetest, nicest whole man. And you kind of like go, yes, this is what I want to hear. He's my hero, I love him. So I just yeah, so it's the universal horrors, and then um and then John Carpenter like in real time got me through my youth, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:44:42

That's that's beautiful. I mean, yeah, no notes. You're correct.

SPEAKER_00 2:44:48

Oh, thanks, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:44:49

Um so go on, what's your controversial opinion on a famous film?

SPEAKER_01 2:44:54

Don't like the matrix. Don't like the matrix.

SPEAKER_02 2:45:00

Don't don't like the matrix. Uh first one. Think uh Attack of the Clones is the best out of the prequels. Uh there's got to be another real batshit bonkers one. Go and find a third. It will come to me while we're talking, but uh okay, let's go with the matrix.

SPEAKER_07 2:45:23

Well, don't you like because on this rewatch I just did of the trilogy, I think the first one is uh four and a half out of five.

SPEAKER_00 2:45:29

Oh really?

SPEAKER_07 2:45:30

Like last time I watched it, I think I gave it like a two and a half out of three, like a three out of five. But now I'm like, oh no, this is this is good.

SPEAKER_02 2:45:37

Yeah. Yeah, it's boring, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 2:45:42

It's like they're all saying it's so profound, and you go, yeah, yeah, but we've all had chats like that in the pub and from it, yeah. It's like it's like what if it's not real?

SPEAKER_07 2:45:54

Yeah, you're right, man. What if?

SPEAKER_01 2:45:55

What if, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_07 2:45:57

You've clearly never fucking had a moment with yourself. Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 2:46:01

The difference between this is that I'm not five pints deep by now, right? Um, but yeah, I I just I for uh like I saw it um like 1999 was uh like is famously one of the best years in cinema. And uh the Matrix, I saw The Matrix, the Mummy, and the Phantom Menace just before I went to uni.

SPEAKER_07 2:46:26

And then early Trinity.

SPEAKER_02 2:46:28

And then in when I got to uni, it was like every every week was something else. What did you do at uni? Uh did uh drama and film.

SPEAKER_07 2:46:38

So watching film was encouraged at least, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:46:40

Uh it was a bit. It was it was it was mainly kind of coursework and essay based on it. It was a terrible course. It was a terrible course. But um, but I on the first day we turned up and there was 300 people on the course, and then they told us what the course was, and then on the next day there was 30. And I felt so bad for the lecturers that I just stuck with it, right?

SPEAKER_07 2:47:04

But um My course was uh started with 30, and by the end I think there was eight of us.

SPEAKER_02 2:47:09

Oh right. Over the years.

SPEAKER_07 2:47:12

Over the years.

SPEAKER_02 2:47:13

Oh right. This was a this was a overnight exodus. Savage. It was it was it was like bloody hell, they must feel bad. So I'll no pinter. I'm at it. Do this for yeah, do it for three years. Um yeah, there were so many good things, but like I just I I feel like um yeah, it just didn't it just didn't do anything for me at the time, and then it became this big thing, and then like I I mean for any younger listeners, you can't uh overemphasise that there was a little bit of kind of like goth culture. Um I was friends with loads of goths and stuff, and everyone used to wear like black trench coats and stuff when The Matrix came out, just you know, your regular, you know, Sunday Joes would be turning up in like black leather trench coats, everyone would it was kind of like alright, it just became this like it was the same with in a way it was the same with Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me, where the first film sort of came and went, but the second film was a I think this first film must have been huge on VHS, and then when the second film came out, it was a legitimate blockbuster, and you couldn't fucking move two feet at uni uh because that came out summer '99. And um uh that was the last my dad took me to see that just before I went to uni. And um and then when you're at everyone's dressed up as Austin Powers, everyone's shouting groovy, baby, like across the across the across the campus, and it's just like, oh my god, you're ruining this. And I feel like I feel like um the Matrix, the culture around the Matrix was like a culture that I didn't really want to be a part of.

SPEAKER_06 2:48:57

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_02 2:48:57

And then and then weirdly, I found the movie incredibly violent. And um for someone that was brought up on Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, like that last bit, I would I I was always sort of like, so hang on a minute. If you die in the Matrix, you die in real life, and now they're just machine gunning all of these people in the matrix, so technically they're killing them all in real life as well. It's not like they're com they're shooting these computer simulations and they're just computers, they're real lives that they are killing.

SPEAKER_07 2:49:27

When when the Smith's agents take over the small Korean woman in the market, and then they fucking murk her later, and the Smith agent dies. That's a small Korean woman that has just been murdered on the rooftop somewhere, and they're gonna the police are gonna have to explain that to their kids.

SPEAKER_02 2:49:44

Hmm. Yeah. So I found I found I I found that element of it like really kind of a bit distasteful. I mean, maybe I'm just being a bit of a coward.

SPEAKER_07 2:49:55

I am a big cyberpunk fan, like literature-wise, films, TV, all that shit. So and and you know, as a kid as a kid of a certain age, that fucking new metal era hit me really hard, and I was like, oh yeah, cool, I'm gonna get into this kind of music. So the fact that like Marilyn Manson and fucking Rage were in the soundtrack for the first Matrix, to me, it was like, oh, the music I like's never in these films.

SPEAKER_02 2:50:23

Yeah, but then uh like maybe two years earlier the Spawn soundtrack came out for the Spawn movie, and that had an amazing.

SPEAKER_07 2:50:31

I will say, I would say Spawn definitely felt like that was for adults and Matrix was for teenagers.

SPEAKER_02 2:50:38

Oh, do you think I felt like um Spawn made me stop buying the comics? Ooh. What about the animated one? Um, I it was always on HBO. It was it was really difficult to get, and so I didn't watch I I've only seen bits of it later on in life. I mean, I got every single issue of Spawn up until the film, and then the film came out and it kind of killed it for me. But the soundtrack came out maybe a year before the film came out, or maybe six months. We were so fucking hyped up with that soundtrack before we went to see the film. Um, I think it's weird that I don't like The Matrix, but there are so many. I love Keanu Reeves. I but like everyone goes on about The Matrix, and you go, speed! Oh yeah, he's he's amazing in speed, speed, speed, speed is the one and point break. Point break isn't my film, speed. My mum took me to see speed at cinema, and we it blew our minds. We fucking loved it.

SPEAKER_07 2:51:35

That was one when Jeff Daniels dies. That's me for me. I was like, but yeah, but no, you can't kill the man's main character.

SPEAKER_02 2:51:43

Yeah, he's uh it's one of the best, it's one of the best screen deaths. You know, it it has a huge because Jeff Daniels and Kiana Reeves, personality-wise, are opposites, you know. Kiana Reeves is sort of like a meathead monosyllabic kind of character, and um, and Jeff Daniels is the brains of the operation, and he's the one that's all like uh uh funny and wit witty and clever, and he's the one that gets killed, yeah. And then Keanu Reeves is on his own in this fucking on this fucking bus. When he like smashes up the bus because his friend has died, it's kind of like he's it's just like Jeff Daniels' performance in that film when he is out of the film, it's not that you miss him, it's that it just it communicates in a way that the stakes are just raised to this next level. You don't miss him in the way that oh, I wish he was still in it like this. But his death has such a huge impact in the way that you see the rest of the film and the way that you see Kenna Reeves's character. It's like Keanu Reeves is on his own now, he's really got to step up, and he doesn't have all the skills that Jeff Daniels has, you know. If Jeff Daniel, if Jeff Daniels was with him, it would be an easier job, but it's not, he's on his own, and now he doesn't even have him on the end of the radio, and it's just like, yeah, what an impact. But I would say that I love Kiana Reeves. Keanu Reeves is like he's a movie star, he's not necessarily the best actor, but he's got charisma, and you want to watch him, and you don't have to be a good actor in that way to be a movie star, you just need to be like watchable, and and Keanu Reeves is that he's like everyone's everyone's little brother, everyone wants to protect Keanu Reeves, right? And um and he's brilliant, and my Keanu Reeves film is uh Bill and Ted's excellent and bogus, and um and you know uh speed. I just think he's just absolutely just absolutely incredible. And I will watch anything that he's in, but I think you know he was very unlucky with Dracula and um uh much do about nothing.

SPEAKER_05 2:53:58

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:53:59

Where it's kind of like we're gonna do these films that are that aren't very marketable for teen audiences. We're gonna get Kenneth Browner, Denzel Washington, Emma Thompson, Michael Keaton, Ben Elton. Um and we're also gonna stick in Keanu Reeves, and he's got to go shoulder to shoulder in scenes with Denzel Washington, but he's only in it so that they can sell it to teenage girls, and it's so unfair. It is so unfair, and um and the same with Dracula, it's just like you've got him in scenes with Anthony Hopkins, it's Keanu Reeves, you know. Um, and he's made him do this British accent, and he's there to sell tickets to teenage girls, and it's like he's always he's always kind of like singled out in those two movies as the worst thing about them. It's like he was a marketing, he was a he was he was used as a marketing tool, um, and it's an unfair comparison because in actual fact in terms of movie star status, he wipes the floor with it.

SPEAKER_07 2:54:58

Oh, yeah, because in in the films like Speed, he is He's up against Dennis Hopper, and uh they hold the screen just as much as each other.

SPEAKER_02 2:55:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:55:07

Like it's so good. But go on then, um Attack of the Clones. I'd say Revenge of the Sith. But no.

SPEAKER_02 2:55:16

Well, Revenge of the Sith. I what I like about I don't I think that um you know I think we all imagined a better prequel trilogy than we got.

SPEAKER_07 2:55:26

Sure. Uh bear in mind when I I was it was 99 when it came out, and I So you loved it. Well I was I was 88, so I was eleven when it came out. No, ten. Eleven. Like, I feel like it hit me at the perfect time, you know? Like, so when I watched Phantom Menace, I enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 2:55:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:55:46

I was excited. When Attack of the Clones came out, I loved it. I got the toys, I cared. When Revenge of the Sith came out, I thought it was a good ending. When I go back to try and rewatch the Star Wars films as a six-part film, you know? Empire and Revenge are probably the only two that I actually enjoy. Um I I do that machete order where you watch New Hope, Empire, then go back and watch Attack of the Clones, Revenge, and then you finish with Return. And that way you get like the full payoff of Darth Vader's outcome. Like I enjoy them as a whole, but as individual films, I think I'd really struggle to watch any of them.

SPEAKER_02 2:56:27

Oh, right. Well I enjoy them. Um uh I don't watch the sequels uh anymore. Um I mean The Last Jedi did actually kill kill it for me. Um so I don't I don't you know I don't watch the sequels. I d I rarely watch the prequels. Um but uh I will watch Empire I think Empire Strikes Back is one of the best films ever made. And I will watch that on its own. Yeah uh and I think there are elements of Return of the Jedi. Um Luke Skywalker's not my favourite character, but the Luke Skywalker stuff in Return of the Jedi is uh is about as good as Star Wars gets. The the bit at the end with The Emperor and Darth Vader is as good as it gets, I think. Um and Star Wars, like I say, it's a bit baggy, and I've I'd much prefer joining friends on an adventure than starting out and meeting them for the first time. So um I feel like you always like reset to block one with uh with the original Star Wars. So um uh but I love George Lucas and um the uh Attack of the Clones, uh Revenge of the Sith was kind of like we grew up in the 90s hearing stories of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi fighting on the side of a volcano, and when you finally see it, and there's all this CGI shit that's over it, and they're jumping on little robots over lava pools, and you're like, oh is this better than a very dramatic, intense fight up the side of a hill with lava going everywhere?

SPEAKER_07 2:58:01

Well, I was gonna say, like, look at all the fucking Kurosawa films, like you can do sword fights with a lot of intensity and a lot of fucking like energy and passion, and they don't necessarily have to be, you know, uh CG laden. You can definitely do those fight scenes without it.

SPEAKER_02 2:58:19

I think it's a mix of kind of like uh he wants to show off his shiny new toys and a lack of confidence as a director.

SPEAKER_05 2:58:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:58:28

Um, where it's like, well, we can't just have two people fighting, we have to put all this other shit in to distract people from it from it. And it's like so um, and then I feel like all of the all of the plot beats that they were trying to set up uh that they rushed at the uh in the last 15 minutes is like, oh, I've just been tortured Qui-Gon and he reckons he can come back as a ghost.

SPEAKER_01 2:58:46

So that that's that sorted. Twin minutes, by the way, she's having twins.

SPEAKER_02 2:58:49

She's having twins. Uh you take him over there, yeah, right, okay. Are you not gonna change his name from Twin? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. Okay, right, sure. Um so it's Well, you think he's gonna look for his kids?

SPEAKER_07 2:59:00

You think he's gonna look for his kids? You're off your nutmate.

SPEAKER_01 2:59:03

What on his home planet? No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_07 2:59:05

To his only relative, no chance, no chance.

SPEAKER_02 2:59:07

No, uh it's it's yeah, it's it so there's like it it tries to sew up plot holes, but it makes more plot holes. And Phantom Menace is kind of you spend the whole film getting to know this kid, and then he's not in the next one, it's uh another actor, and you kind of and also with Jar Jar Binks, it's like you've made us watch Jar Jar Binks for an entire film, and rather than up your game and do something interesting with him, you just have a cameo and it's like that's him. And it's like, why did you make us watch the film of it?

SPEAKER_07 2:59:38

Well, he had to get us through Naboo. No, he didn't. We could have got to Naboo anyway, and still got the Gungans to help us.

SPEAKER_02 2:59:46

I feel like Phantom Minnesota is almost like a standalone movie, and it has very little connection to the next two films. And um what I like about Attack of the Clones is it's like uh it's like a Raymond Chandler mystery with Obi-Wan Kenobi on a water planet.

SPEAKER_07 3:00:00

I mean that's fine.

SPEAKER_02 3:00:01

I like all the fan.

SPEAKER_07 3:00:03

Like I'm a big Ewan fan.

SPEAKER_02 3:00:04

I love Yun the Great. And um and I and I like the uh I like the arena bit at the end with like with the with the monsters that come out and they all look like stop motion monsters and stuff. And I I love I I I I love all that stuff.

SPEAKER_07 3:00:18

Love it.

SPEAKER_02 3:00:19

I I don't think it's obviously a great film, but out of the prequels, it's the one that I'm most interested in re-watching.

SPEAKER_07 3:00:25

Fair enough. Alright, I'll give you that. I mean, to be fair, like we were saying, like uh Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, I think they're both just fun watches, and I think Star Wars fandom is so toxic and horrible, and everyone gets so precious over it, and it's like, well, which ones do you enjoy? It's like you enjoy Empire, we all agree on that, and you all enjoy maybe one of the prequels, then they're the ones you watch, just enjoy them.

SPEAKER_02 3:00:51

But but you know, um what you find out with these legacy sequels where other people take over is that they like different things about the films that you like. So when they made Terminator 3, and it's uh you know, I remember the back of the video box saying uh featuring that classic Terminator humour, and uh and then you watch Terminator 3, and it's like it's like they've made gremlins too. It's like what the fuck is this? And um uh it's kind of like with with Star Wars, it was like, oh, we need loads of lightsaber battles in it everywhere, and you kind of like go the Jedi's were an element to the original Star Wars trilogy, but it wasn't all lightsabres, and I find the Jedi's, you know, I don't find it that particularly interesting, you know. I I I like the adventure and I like the battles and everything, but I'm not so interested in watching a bunch of monks with swords go around.

SPEAKER_07 3:01:44

Well, it's a bit like DD. You can't have a an entire DD campaign of everyone being a fucking rogue or a ranger. Everyone someone has to be a monk, someone has to be a a thing, someone has to be the dwarf, someone has to do the thing. Because everyone brings their own element, and that's what that that wonder of the first few Star Wars films are, the first three, is that no one's the same, everyone's a little different and they're all hobbled together. Whereas like everyone in Star Wars could take take care of business, and it was like, Oh, well then there's no threat, really, is there? Everyone's wearing plot armour, and I can see that.

SPEAKER_02 3:02:21

But it's but it's also you know, when you see like whenever they make a predator film and they go, Well, we've got to have uh your one ugly motherfucker in there somewhere, and someone's gotta say get to the chopper and all that stuff. You go, No, you don't need any of that. That's not what I want out of a sequel. I want you to create new memorable moments.

SPEAKER_07 3:02:38

So you aren't a fan of Alien Romulus, either?

SPEAKER_02 3:02:42

Um because I fucking hate it. I just think it it was the like I like I like the challenge of um one person makes a film and then they hand it off to another director and then they have to make that film. And I that's what I liked about the original Mission Impossibles where it was like we're handing it over and we're getting a different take on each one. Uh and and because of that, I I like the first three alien films.

SPEAKER_04 3:03:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:03:10

Um Alien Resurrection is uh, in my opinion, dog shit. I it's not it's not it's not my movie. I hated it, I hated it at the cinema, I can't rewatch it.

SPEAKER_07 3:03:23

It's weird that the man that did City of Lost Children made an alien film that doesn't feel weird and slimy in any way.

SPEAKER_02 3:03:32

Oh, it does feel weird and slimy, don't you think?

SPEAKER_07 3:03:34

I think it's it's not got that wet metal feel that all of Jean-Pierre Genet's films have.

SPEAKER_02 3:03:40

Oh, really? I think it's but I think it's particularly uh slimy and Chris. And what one of the th one of the things that I think is actually really interesting about it, which had to be explained to me years and years later, is that the you know the face huggers are different, right? The the the the the eggs are different. They kind of they're a little bit more um flexible and all of that, and that's because there's human DNA in the eggs. And you kind of go, oh, right, well that makes that that's why they're that's why they're slightly different designs, right? Okay, right. Well that makes some sense, right? But no, I think what's but even that is like, well, we've tried something else, we've got another director to come on and give us their take, and they're all set in different time periods, so it allows for difference in technology and great. Alien Romulus is the first one that they've made where they are deliberately aping two other directors' visions of what an alien film is, and it's kind of like I like Alien, it's a Ridley Scott film, I like Aliens, it's a James Cannon film, I like Alien 3, it's a David Fincher film-ish. And um, and then you've got this guy who is his own legitimate guy. Yeah, he made Evil Dead He made Evil Dead his own film, you know. When they made Evil Dead Rise, I thought the whole point of the Evil Dead films was that they would get a new young hotshot uh director in the in the vein of Sam Raimi, a hungry director, and we'd get them to do their take on Evil Dead. And Fede Alvarez, his Evil Dead is great. Evil Dead Rise, they got this new guy to come along and direct a Sam Raimi movie, and it's like, well, you've absolutely hampered, you know, you've tied you've you've handcuffed him, you he can't he can't make his own thing. And and and Evil Dead Rise wasn't great, but you've got Fede Alvarez who who has his own vision, so he's making his own thing, and he's kind of like he's he's just gone and done like um a retro nostalgic thing, and um I find that less interesting. Um and I did I didn't I didn't particularly like I I didn't hate it. Um, you know, it's probably the fourth the fourth best alien film, but you know Yeah, yeah, I'd agree with that.

SPEAKER_07 3:05:49

But I mean there is a fucking gulf between all of that. First three then Romulus on one.

SPEAKER_02 3:05:59

Romulus is kind of like a nostalgic kind of a fan film.

SPEAKER_07 3:06:02

Oh yeah. Well apparently there is a a fan edit where they get rid of all of the Ash stuff and they retweak some of the stories so that like certain elements happen before other elements so that they actually that like it kind of makes sense more, and they get rid of all of the callbacks. Um and I have yet to watch it, I've got it downloaded, but I will watch it uh at some point and see if it's like okay, yeah, now it's not doing all of those things. Can I just enjoy it?

SPEAKER_02 3:06:30

The bit when he says get away from her, you bitch, is I think one of the all-time worst moments in cinema. It's just sort of like, and by that point in the film, it's like we're on board by this point, right? This isn't gonna make it better for anyone, right? It's not gonna if you're enjoying it, it's not gonna improve the film. And if you're not enjoying it, it's not gonna suddenly make you go, oh yeah, the uh alien.

SPEAKER_01 3:06:55

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, oh I love that. I like it when they say the bits that I know.

SPEAKER_07 3:07:00

I thought if they could have said that line if there was like a ship cat, again, call back to a Jonesy element, and then if the cat went to go grab something off someone's plate, and they went, get away from it, you bitch. And it was a throwaway line, and it's like showing different weight.

SPEAKER_02 3:07:17

No. I I would have hated that as well. I just think it's pathetic. It's like write your own lines.

SPEAKER_07 3:07:24

Oh no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 3:07:24

I'm pleased, it doesn't impress me. It doesn't impress me. Um, you know. It's it's i i I there are there are a lot of them where people come along and they make a sequel and they go, well, we have to put this in, and kind of go, you like, you know, the people that are making Star Wars, you like Star Wars uh in a different way than I like and the people that are making the Terminator films, you like Terminator for for different reasons than I like Terminator, and you've made a sequel that doesn't really um fall in line with what I really want out of this. Um and I I think that you know for people that love the Star Wars films, that's great, uh you know, but there is a world where they made films that um that a lot more people liked. And I think that if your favourite Star Wars movie is The Last Jedi, I would argue that maybe you don't really like Star Wars that much.

SPEAKER_07 3:08:27

No, no, I think that's fair. I think there is like and then I've got nothing against it if you if you don't mind it, if you're like it's fine. I'm like, okay, cool. Like you don't you've not engaged, you've not gone deep into it, you've just watched it and you've gone, it's fine. And it's like fine. But if it is like I absolutely loved that one, it's like have you tried another franchise? Have you tried watching anything else?

SPEAKER_02 3:08:54

Because because uh because The Last Jedi is Gremlins 2. It's like it's like the eighth film in a nine film. Also, it's that whole Marvel Arcation bullshit where it's let's all make everything silly and everyone's a child and but there's a bad joke every ten minutes that drags you out of the film, and they're not jokes like oh uh Harrison Ford's uh you know, oh we're all fine here, we're all fine now, everything's fine. No, that's um th those are like funny that that's that's character-based. In The Last Jedi, you've got like a spaceship coming down, and then it reveals that it's an iron, and the iron is ironing a uniform, and it's like that's a naked gun joke. Do you know what I mean? It's like you're breaking the fourth wall with these jokes that you're putting in the it's fucking bonkers that you made that as the eighth film, and it's that like we know, and it's like I don't want you to know, I don't need you to know, like I need you to make me a fucking film. And um, but I'm not a gatekeeper, and I also think that if if that is your favourite film, I don't have a problem with it. I find it interesting. I find it interesting.

SPEAKER_07 3:10:03

The fact that you're watching films is enough for me.

SPEAKER_02 3:10:05

Everyone's like allowed to like everything, anything they like. You know, I love films, everyone knows how much I love films, and uh, you know, and I'll be like, Oh, what's your favourite film? And they'll say, Oh, you think it's silly, and I'll be like, No, go and tell me what your favourite film is, and they'll say something like Mrs. Doubtfire or something, and you'll kind of like go, Well, that's legitimate. I mean, you're allowed to and you know, a lot of the time they're just like really like who was I talking to? I was on another podcast, and they said, Um, oh god, what was their favourite? I think they said the departed, and you kind of like go, what's wrong with that? It's Martin Scorsese. It's probably not the best Martin Scorsese film, but you're on the right track.

SPEAKER_07 3:10:43

There's some great performances in that film.

SPEAKER_02 3:10:45

You know, who knows why you like stuff?

SPEAKER_07 3:10:47

Who knows why people like because you find Infernal Affairs too much to watch as a whole trilogy? You'd rather just watch the departed, that's fine. Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_02 3:10:54

Just crack on. Um yeah, but that's what I like about films, is that there's so much of your personality that comes through in terms of what you like watching and what I also like being that level of film fan that if someone says to me, Oh, I really like and then they'll just say, like, I really like the Fast and Furious films, I'm like, Oh yeah, cool, what do you like about them?

SPEAKER_07 3:11:13

Like, and then I'll happily talk about Fast and Furious films, and it's like I really like the first one because it's point break again. But like, you know, it's and I get you know you can play with it, and then if someone wants to go all fucking film wanky, it's like great, I'll go film wanky, I don't care. I'm happy to shift however you want to engage in film, I'll talk that way with you about it. And I think that's that's the most fun way to do it, innit? Like, watch everything. If you watch everything, you can enjoy more. Maybe.

SPEAKER_02 3:11:44

Maybe.

SPEAKER_07 3:11:44

Maybe have you got a third contr controversial opinion?

SPEAKER_02 3:11:50

Well no, but um I'm sure that I covered it with the police academy movie.

SPEAKER_07 3:11:53

Have you ever seen Night Patrol? Jackie Kong film. It's like a Jackie Kong film and it's mental, but it it it feels like a police academy ripoff. And it uh yeah. It I I want I'd like to know your opinion on it, uh, being a massive fan of the police academy movies. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:12:18

Well I'm not a massive fan.

SPEAKER_07 3:12:20

No, no, no, you're a massive fan, mate.

SPEAKER_02 3:12:22

Well, I I might be one of the biggest fans on the planet, but um but that's not saying much. But I have a very uh I think that I think that I think that they've got such a reputation of being shit that actually credit where credit is due, the first four workers a series, and uh there is lots to be had out of them. And even by the fourth one, I was I laughed at and I probably didn't uh laugh out loud at the first three, but I laughed out loud in the fourth one, and it was like, oh there you go, it still got me somewhere.

SPEAKER_07 3:12:58

Alright, well then I'll add that to the list of uh rewatches after this. Um What have you been watching recently?

SPEAKER_02 3:13:08

I'm sort of watching stuff as it comes to me. Um I'm watching kind of like I see if I've put anything in my letterbox recently.

SPEAKER_07 3:13:17

But I'm sort of um Are you public with your letterbox handle or is it uh personal?

SPEAKER_02 3:13:22

I just use it for I just use it to make a note of the stuff that I that I'm watching myself, but um what have I watched recently? Oh I watched Commando this week. Um I watch what was that? I watched a film called Crawl Space. Uh the Wes Graven one. No. No, it's it stars Klaus Kinski. And um I know of it.

SPEAKER_07 3:13:50

I haven't seen it.

SPEAKER_02 3:13:51

It's I saw it the other day and it's kind of yeah, it's kind of absolutely bonkers. Um but it was uh and Klaus Kinski is just incredibly watchable. He is like like he's just uh and and he's such a weird performer and he's playing kind of like this weird Nazi psychopath character. And um and it I don't know why I watched it, it was just sort of like I think it was leaving Amazon in 18 days or whatever, and uh I was just like let's watch that. I think it was because it was an hour and 25 minutes and it was late, and um so I watched that and I really enjoyed it. I watched Backdraft for the first time.

SPEAKER_07 3:14:29

Oh nice thoughts.

SPEAKER_02 3:14:31

Um I one of the things that I thought was really impressive, or or no, not impressive. One of the things that I really liked about it was that Kurt Russell plays his own dad at the beginning of the film, and then he dies. And everyone's bought a ticket for a Kurt Russell movie, so everyone knows Kurt Russell's not gonna die in the opening scene, and then he dies in the opening scene, and it's like wow, what a cool rug pull! Nice, that's brilliant, that's really good. Um so I I I like that. I think it's a bit weird that there's like a Donald Sutherland serial killer in it, uh like a Donald Sutherland uh Hannibal Lecter character that that's just loves set and fire to shit. But I thought it was I thought it was much better. I've always thought it looked really boring, but what I realised while I was watching it was that um you kind of like go, what what is this, you know? Because the action sequences are kind of like it's fire. I know that they did loads of work on the practical effects to do it and to make the fire move the way it moved, but um, but uh it's kind of as a concept, it's not that I guess that's why people don't talk about it at loads, but um, but when I was watching it, I it kind of dawned on me, it's like, oh, this is Top Gun for the fire service.

SPEAKER_07 3:15:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:15:50

So you so you've made this like romantic.

SPEAKER_07 3:15:53

It's cool to be a fireman, and everyone's gonna agree with you after this, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:15:57

And every and everyone is gonna leave this movie and sign up to be a fireman, you know. And uh and when I watched it in that context, it was kind of like it was a much more enjoyable. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 3:16:06

Ron Howard, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 3:16:08

Yeah, and is it is Robert De Niro in it?

SPEAKER_07 3:16:11

I always feel like the Robert De Niro sort of is always the forgotten element in that film.

SPEAKER_02 3:16:18

Like he's he's a cameo, he's kind of like in a couple of scenes, he's not in it low.

SPEAKER_07 3:16:22

So that era of uh Bobby De Niro as well, I really like.

SPEAKER_02 3:16:25

Well, it's madness because you've got Kurt Russell, Donald Sutherland, Billy Baldwin, Rob Robert De Niro, but it stars Billy Baldwin, and it's kind of like, alright, he's the starring.

SPEAKER_07 3:16:39

He's not even gonna give us the good one, Daniel.

SPEAKER_02 3:16:41

Yeah, Daniel, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 3:16:43

Is he the vampires one?

SPEAKER_02 3:16:45

Uh Daniel's vampires, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 3:16:47

Friend of mine uh said, he goes, I was watching vampires the other day, and you look a lot like him. And I was like, I don't think that's the compliment you think it is. And he was like, No, no, that's there's definitely an element, and I was like, um I don't know if I want that, mate.

SPEAKER_02 3:17:02

Funnily enough, you I mean you say it as a joke, but Daniel Baldwin probably is the best Baldwin now.

SPEAKER_07 3:17:08

Now he is, yeah, sure. Yeah, now he is.

SPEAKER_02 3:17:14

But still, um it was weird, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 3:17:16

Because Stephen Baldwin was in the usual suspects, and you go, bloody hell, Stephen Baldwin's in the usual suspects. What's he in next? Biodome. Okay. Alright.

SPEAKER_07 3:17:27

Biodome is uh when I was a kid, Pauly Shaw films were watched a lot.

SPEAKER_01 3:17:32

Oh right, yeah. I mean I like I liked Biodome, but it's like I knew it was shit.

SPEAKER_07 3:17:38

You're in the army now as a an all right like Pauly Shaw film. I'd recommend.

SPEAKER_01 3:17:44

Great. Um I'll stick I'll stick with Jewry Duty. Uh it's got Jewry Duty, it's got Tia Carrera in it.

SPEAKER_06 3:17:53

Um back in.

SPEAKER_02 3:17:56

Oh turn, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 3:17:58

Okay, nice. Um Do you have anything that's coming up that you're uh interested in watching? Like, is there anything at the cinema that you're after?

SPEAKER_02 3:18:06

I was really excited about The Bride and Yeah, same and everything I've heard about it is offensive, and it's like, oh, okay, maybe not. I thought the trailers looked pretty.

SPEAKER_07 3:18:17

I thought the trailer looked better than Del Toro's Frankenstein.

SPEAKER_02 3:18:21

Which I um aside from certain elements in it, I thought I I loved it. I thought I thought it was great. Um I thought um what's his face? Poe Tamarin.

SPEAKER_07 3:18:35

Oh, I really like Poe.

SPEAKER_02 3:18:37

Um what's his name?

SPEAKER_07 3:18:39

Yavin Four. Um Oscar Eiser.

SPEAKER_02 3:18:44

I thought he was terrible in it. Oh really? I thought it was I thought it was a terrible performance. Um and um and I didn't like the fact that they basically made uh Frankenstein's monster into Wolverine. But then um you watch it and then you kind of like go, well, he did the shape of water as well, and um he's basically made Frankenstein's monster immortal. So is he setting up some sort of monster verse that he's gonna do later on down the line where he's gonna whack in Frankenstein's monster next to his creature from the Black Lagoon knockoff, you know. Is he gonna do is Cron is Cronos gonna turn back up again and he's gonna, you know? So uh but I th you know it's not my favourite film by any by any means, but I did hear that it was terrible and I um and I saw it and I loved it.

SPEAKER_07 3:19:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:19:40

Um and I thought also Luke Besson's Dracula was really good.

SPEAKER_07 3:19:44

I've not watched that one. Um Besson's another one that I struggle with watching anything new by Besson, but you know, I I fucking love Fifth Element.

SPEAKER_02 3:19:54

I watched it because it was Dracula rather than it was with Besson, but um but uh I thought it was uh it was a interesting enough take, and I I got probably more out of it on my first watch than I did when I watched Bram Stoker's uh Dracula. So, you know. But I'm not really uh entirely up to date on what's coming out at the moment. I am going to the cinema a lot, but I go I mainly go and watch um you know black and white films that I haven't seen or um uh stuff, you know, like foreign language films that I can't focus on when I'm at home. I like going to the cinema and just kind of like you know, locking into the screen.

SPEAKER_07 3:20:31

Oh, that's why my office upstairs, like the internet has decided to just no longer work in my office, which is wonderful. Uh, but it's an absolute uh nightmare to focus on anything. So the way I've done it is like I got my desk and I've got all my bookcases and all my other stuff, but then to the one side there's just this big 55-inch 4K telly with an armchair in front of it, and it's like if I put on a film, that's the only thing I can see, and then I can just absolutely just it pitch black, just zone in, and it's uh it's delightful.

SPEAKER_02 3:21:03

Yeah, I love it. I I I think that going to the I I love films, I have a limited ability to watch films at home. Um, and uh I f I fe I feel like when I go to the cinema, it's a real luxury experience. I just I just enjoy it. I've got favourite cinemas, I go to different ones. I do love going to the Prince Charles. I do I do love uh screen one at BFI is my absolute favourite.

SPEAKER_07 3:21:28

It's a lovely screen. What do you think of the Odeon up the road toward from you? Towards Holloway Odeon?

SPEAKER_02 3:21:34

Yeah, that's my that my mum used to take me to that when we were little.

SPEAKER_07 3:21:37

Oh, so you're local to Holloway?

SPEAKER_02 3:21:40

I I I I I I live in a like a block of flats, and if I stand on the roof, uh I can see the Holloway Odeon. Um my mum, she took me to see Batteries Not Included, my dad took me to see Masters of the Universe, uh, I saw Star Trek 4. Um you know, I've uh we that was our local cinema, and now it's my local cinema again. And and part of the reason why I really wanted to move to this place was to be like, oh, that's my local cinema. I think it's lovely. All of the seats are recliners, it's kind of the big screen is huge. So to have like a huge screen right next to you, and then just over at Finchby Park, you've got the picture house, and that's a great that's a great cinema. Um, and then down over in Angel, you've got you've got the everyman, and you've got the Odeon Lux, and you've got the uh Angel View, and you know, there's loads of cinemas near me. I got I go into I go into town more often than not to watch um stuff at Prince Charles and BFI, and and every so often you go and see something worth seeing at the IMAX, like one battle after another. That car chase at the end where it goes up and down rather than left to right, and you know, on the IMAX, that what that was an incredible experience. Nosferatu at the IMAX was an incredible experience, and then Nosferatu at the uh Prince Charles with the live accompanies. Um when they did the original silent one, that was incredible. So I like all of my I I enjoy watching I don't I don't like bad films, but I enjoy watching uh uh any film, uh, and whether you like it or not, you can have a conversation about it afterwards, and the whole experience of seeing stuff is is you know, it it goes back to what we were talking about originally, where it's like I don't just like it as uh like a piece of entertainment, I like everything that surrounds it, I like the the work that's gone into it, I like the team effort that's behind the camera, I like um uh you know the memories I have from uh various different cinemas and films, and the nostalgia I have from old films that I've seen. I loved read I love discovering new films, I love rediscovering old films, and I find that that experience of queuing up, getting a ticket, getting your drink and your snack, and then going into a film and just sitting in there for two and a half hours is it's my favourite, it's my favourite thing, and um you know I love it. I'm so I'm so grateful I've got something in my life that I love as much as that.

SPEAKER_07 3:24:14

A friend of mine said, if your biggest worry at the end of the day is what film should I watch? You're living a pretty good life, and I was like, Alright, make me feel bad.

SPEAKER_02 3:24:22

That's that's a nice way of thinking about it.

SPEAKER_07 3:24:24

It is lovely because that is most nights. I'm just like, oh, do I watch this or do I watch this? Oh and I get frustrated because I'd want to watch both, and it's like, isn't that lovely? But I do love shit films. I'm a big fan of like really shitty B movies, big fan of them.

SPEAKER_02 3:24:41

Yeah. Yeah, I love all films. You know. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_07 3:24:48

Alright.

SPEAKER_02 3:24:49

They're beautiful.

SPEAKER_07 3:24:50

They are, they are beautiful. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for coming on.

SPEAKER_02 3:24:54

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_07 3:24:55

Is there anything you want to plug? Anything you got coming?

SPEAKER_02 3:24:58

Um I've got an album coming out this year. We haven't got a launch date yet, but it will probably be the summer. Um, and um uh that's gonna be a huge uh double album um with kind of ten years worth of songs that I haven't released on it. Um so that's exciting, and uh uh I'm gonna be doing some kind of uh support uh you know promotional uh gigs in the autumn to kind of promote it and um show it off. So that's what I'm focusing on this year, and then the rest of the year I'm kind of doing gigs and doing a bit of stand-up here and there and writing uh I'm writing a book, I'm writing a poetry book at the moment. Oh nice so uh but I haven't got much information about all of that yet. But I'm you know, I've got I've got a load of stuff that's happening this year that I'm kind of excited about, but it's uh it's uh I've got to do it.

SPEAKER_07 3:25:53

The worst bit and the best bit. Alright, well thank you very much, and I'll make sure I'll link all that stuff in the uh description notes so people can find your stuff.

SPEAKER_02 3:26:02

Um I've got a podcast that I do with my friend Nathaniel called uh called Consume and Consume and Obey, uh, which is a film-based podcast where me and my friend Nathaniel uh meet up like every so often. It's not like as regular as I want it to be, but we meet up every so often and we have like five-hour conversations about what films we saw this week. And it's two best friends chatting about films, it's a really nice it's a nice listen.

SPEAKER_07 3:26:32

I mean when I started this podcast, the first one with with my buddy Sam, who I mentioned earlier, because I was like, who else would I start a podcast about film with? I'm gonna talk to him about it. And what's bad is that like his is the shortest episode. And it's like, oh, it's because we we spaff all of our good conversation throughout the week in just like I just watched this. Oh yeah, what do you think of this? So yeah, but maybe I'll go back and do another one with him. Well, that sounds great. I'll uh I'll add all that on. And uh it's lovely to meet you.

SPEAKER_02 3:27:01

Lovely to meet you too. Um I've really enjoyed this.

SPEAKER_07 3:27:04

Good. I'm really pleased about that.