Are some ANIMAL FARM adaptations more equal than others? With ANDY SERKIS

0:00Simon Mayo: Now, Mark, I don't know why all these trendy podcasters need to sell such tat in their online shops these days. You'd have thought the show would have been enough for them. I mean, look at this tea towel. Simon, I think that's our shop you're browsing, isn't it? Oh, so it is. Actually, those Kermode and Mayor director's chairs are very nice, and it's all incredibly slick and easy. That's probably what confused me. That's because it's powered by Shopify. Shopify is where you go to start your business. Everything you need to start selling is included and ready from day one, which means our top production team can concentrate on, well, whatever it is that they do.

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0:41Simon Mayo: And Shopify checkout helps more customers finish their purchase. Then when they come back, their details are already saved. One tap and they're done. Simple. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.co.uk slash take. Start your free trial at shopify.co.uk slash take. Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip. The Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime.

1:22So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone.

1:52Simon Mayo: devices there's never been a better time to become a vanguard easter free offer now available wherever you get your podcasts and if you're already a vanguard easter we salute you

2:15Simon Mayo: so i'm sitting watching uh england play argentina and um hi and then so everyone's gathered around you know just because it's the world cup and all that and it's pretty tense and then my phone buzzes i imagine it's someone someone saying you know this is a tense match or you know what do you think or we're doomed or something like that but no it's a message from mark saying okay our films for the next week are i'm thinking what what you're do you not what how how is this possible and this continued i think you said another one during the world cup final as well. Yep, this is what we're working on next films.

2:54Simon Mayo: I think anyway, I mean, I know you're not up for sport but I would have thought that you'd have been aware of what everyone else was doing. If I can be quite clear, I sent those messages during the hydration breaks. Oh, I see. Okay, so firstly I watched three football matches, right? I watched England-Argentina when we scored and then went into a defensive crouch. Hang on. I feel as though the world is rearranging itself. No, I know. But I mean, even I was, after we scored, why is it that we're no longer going anywhere near their end of the pitch? And anyway, so there was that. Then I watched England-France, which I thought was terrific.

3:36It was just like, goal, goal, goal. I mean, it was 4-0 at the end of the first half.

3:41Simon Mayo: I feel very disturbed now because this is the kind of conversation that I might have with someone else on the team. And you'd be going, what? What is this? what is a goal? No, no, no. I really enjoyed it. And also what I really liked was the good-naturedness of it all. I mean, I know, obviously, because they hadn't qualified for the final, so therefore – but I thought everyone was giving it their best and then they were all, you know, hugging us. As opposed to – As opposed to – People download this podcast for football chat anyway. And I did think – I wish we'd asked Mark to review the World Cup final like a movie, but I thought, no, it's too late.

4:18Well, here's my review of the World Cup final like a movie. It was interesting to see a game in which one side were playing football and the other side appeared to be playing rollerball. It was, I don't think I've ever seen so much just, I mean, is that what it's normally like? The ramming into people, the punching at the end, I mean, is that usual?

4:46Simon Mayo: Well, I think the extent to which it happened is unusual, but Argentina do have a reputation for that kind of behaviour. And in fact, their rugby team were in a similar scrap against England recently. And there's lots of complaints about what went on there as well. But I think a lot, it was essentially most of the world against Argentina, precisely for the reasons that you studied, which was shocking gamesmanship, terrible fouling, lenient referees. And the fact that they turned their back on the winning team for the presentation of the cup was shocking. Yeah, when you get to the presentation of the cup, of course the thing that everyone's noticed, you know, was that Mango Mussolini could not be got off the stage.

5:31That was hilarious. I mean, that was, but I did like the booing. I thought that I enjoyed that.

5:36Simon Mayo: Yeah, I think Argentina managed by Joe Pesci. And I think that's probably the reason why any, he showed them some of his gangster films and said, we're going to play like this. Funny how? Anyway. There was a thing at the end. Literally, there was a film at the end of it. And one of the Argentines, you would know who this is. I don't. Literally punching another guy after the match had ended. Yes. Yes, that is definitely true. It actually happened. Will you stop talking about football, Mark? Football, football, football. It's all you talk about all the time. Heaven's sake. I don't download this podcast.

6:11Simon Mayo: I hear two men talking about football. There are lots of others, you know. Stick to politics, Kermode. Yes. On the subject of which. Yeah. There's plenty to talk about on the show today because Mark is going to be reviewing these films. Yes. Pinocchio Unstrung, which is the latest film in the twisted childhood or pooniverse. Ask E. Jean, which is a documentary about E. Jean Carroll, the great E. Jean Carroll, and Animal Farm, which brings us to our precious guest. Yes, our precious guest is Andy Serkis, who joins us down the line from New Zealand, where he's working on a big movie of some kind.

6:48Simon Mayo: You can get Take Two ad-free by heading to our Patreon page. Just search Kermit Omeo Patreon and you'll find us there. A bonus review this week would be what then, Mark? Well, Animal Farm in take one. In take two, Chicken Run. The Great Escape comes to the farm. Oh, okay. All right. So a certain theme developing there. You can email us at any time, which is correspondence at codemo.com. I just almost gave out my own email, and I've done that before, but this is, in general, not a good idea. Also giving out my own phone number back on Radio 1 days. But anyway. Did you do that? Yeah, I did, which was stupid.

7:22Simon Mayo: And then the even more stupid thing was I then said, oh, no, that's my home phone number.

7:32Please tell me that everybody called you and asked for requests. Well, I mean, I wasn't there, which was great. Oh, it wasn't a mobile. It was literally your landline number. No, it was the landline number. Your landline number.

7:45Simon Mayo: Because this is 1986, mate. You know, we didn't have mobiles, I don't think, did we? I can't remember. Email from Paul here. Dear Ship Shape and Bristol Fashion, firstly, I just wanted to say how excited I am about this year's Christmas special taking place in my hometown of Bristol this year. Yay! I cannot wait. It was so lovely to hear Mark and Ben singing the city's praises. Love Bristol. Is that what you were doing? Yeah, I absolutely love Bristol. The good lady professor, her indoors, is from Bristol. She's from Annum. And it's great. And the Bristol watershed is fantastic and the whole waterfront area.

8:13It's a wonderful place. Really looking forward to it.

8:16Simon Mayo: Paul says it's a wonderfully progressive, friendly and creative place to be. Mark mentioned the watershed in Bristol as being a great cinema and art centre. It is. But I also thought it worth highlighting 20th Century Flicks, which is but a short walk from Bristol Beacon on the Christmas steps. Not only are they the longest running video shop in the world with over 20 ,000 films to choose from, they also house an eight-seater, that's an eight-seater, Twin Peaks themed cinema room that you can hire to watch any of the films in their catalogue. It truly is a special place. I believe Mark has not been there yet.

8:50Simon Mayo: I would strongly recommend a visit. On your way to Bristol Beacon in December, you won't regret it. Mark hasn't been there yet, but Mark did do a programme on Radio 4 in which Mark's co-presenter went there and presented a report from it, and it sounded absolutely fabulous. So I will try and put my head in when we're down there to do our Christmas show. And the Christmas show, 7pm on December the 6th, and we'll be at the Bristol Beacon. The ticket link is in the show notes. Everything's selling fast. I don't know that it is, but I'm assuming that that is the case. hot cakes indeed um matt matt grapes which is a great name um holder of the school shot put record for precisely two minutes that's his claim to fame dear inpatient and outpatient the recent correspondence on inappropriate hospital viewing reminded me of some inappropriate and inadvertent hospital listening that i subjected a surgical team to during the pregnancy of this is this scene is so perfect it could be a sitcom okay okay during the pregnancy of child two the good lady microbiologist erin doors had some complications which meant we had to have a scheduled cesarean section in the run-up to the operation it was suggested we might want to bring some music to have played in the theater being a long time ago i dutifully burned a cd of the most soothing songs I could think of that my wife loved.

10:15Simon Mayo: On the day these were playing, and as the anaesthetist carefully altered the mix to alleviate some nausea, he turned to me and said, you must be kidding. And it was at that point that I realised that adding the verbs, the drugs don't work to the mixtape, was probably not my finest moment. But all went well, and child two is well, although she occasionally wants to exit the car via the sunroof. Hey! Apologies for that last laugh-to-lift quality joke. It wasn't that good. Hello to Jason, and haven't we had a few too many Noby Jones episodes? Now, that's true. He hasn't been on for a while. The last Toby Jones was the Richard Burton film.

11:03Simon Mayo: Mr. Burton. So if Toby wants to come back on, that would be a lovely thing. Correspondents at cobanemario.com, tell us about something that's out. Pinocchio Unstrung. This is the latest in the Twisted Childhood Universe or Pooniverse. Just to remind you, quote, a dark reimagining of public domain classic characters from children's literature, which was dreamed up by Rhys Freight Waterfield. And also Scott Chambers is involved in it. And they did Winnie the Pooh, Blood and Honey, and then Winnie the Pooh. You remember that? Okay, fine. So these things are in the public domain. So they're working their way through a bunch of children's things and turning them into horror movies.

11:46Now, so I saw and really disliked the Winnie the Pooh, Blood and Honey movies. I don't think I've seen Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare or Bambi the Reckoning. I have no memory of having seen them. They have apparently been made and come out. But anyway, so Scott Chambers, who was fantastic in Chicken, and a really, really terrific actor, and recently in Malpractice, was interviewed about the franchise. And he said this. He said, every time you watch one of these, he's talking about the country, comparing the Pooh-niverse and the Twisted Childhood universe to the Conjuring universe. He said, every time you watch one of those films, they've got the same tone, the same vibe.

12:25In ours, it's not like that. If you don't like one of them, you might actually like the next. So, for example, if you don't like the campiness of the Winnie the Pooh films, you might actually like Pan because it's a lot more grounded, a lot more serious. Then if you don't like that, you might like Pinocchio because he's wearing skin, running around killing people with his nose, which kind of makes it sound fun. So this is Pinocchio Unstrung. In this one, Pinocchio is created by the Chabatto character, Richard Brake, after his son, James, loses his best friend. So the dad, who is creepy as anything, now wants to make a friend for his son that will never die.

12:59And the friend that he makes is a hideous looking puppet that he expects his son to be delighted by. Here is a clip from the trailer. It's always hard losing someone you love. I'm sorry I had to experience all that so young. I wish Zach was still here. Doesn't feel the same anymore.

13:27come down there's someone here i want you to meet i just thought you could use your friend this could be good for the both of you it's alive

13:46it's like why boys that made it different for you organs and stuff i want to be just like you and the way he wants to be just like him is by getting organs and stuff um so james isn't allowed to tell anyone about his new friend although because he does and then he insists that actually it's like an ai controlled puppet meanwhile pinocchio himself wants to be just like james and he is told by this this demonicky sort of um jiminy cricket character that the way he can become a real boy is to harvest real organs. So he sort of sets about killing anyone who is James's enemy, but also harvesting their body parts and then sticking them inside himself in order to make himself real.

14:34And the voice of his unconscionable conscience is your friend of mine, Robert Englund. So, you know, horror legend, Freddy Krueger. So as before, there is an awful lot of very kind of rubbery and sort of crass gore going on. That's, you know, that's the sort of the modus operandi of the series. Lots of awful, lots of squishiness, lots of head cheese. Of all the ones that I've seen so far, and I haven't liked any of them, this is this is the best in as much as i dislike it less than the other ones okay and but the reason for is this it's largely because of the puppetry in fact i would say the very best thing about pinocchio and strong is the opening credits which is done as an old-fashioned shadow show with silhouettes moving you know with a light behind them which is really really well done and then the end credits and the end credits which begin by declaring proudly that the film was made using practical effects, puppetry, animatronics, that stuff.

15:37And then it's just loads and loads of behind the scenes footage of the effects being done. And there is something really joyful about it. There's people lying on their backs with bits of string and wires making the puppet move and doing the special effects and you can see it. And if you've ever been on set of a horror movie when the gore stuff is being done, I mean, it's really, really joyous. I've always said this thing about quite often the nastiest movies are made by the nicest people because the special effects people. I mean, nowadays there's so much stuff is done with CG, but when everything was being done with polymethicellulose and rubber and latex stuff, it was really joyous.

16:14And there is something really delightful about the end credits, the practical solutions to the problems and the scenes that you've just seen. Oh, look, that's how they're doing it. He's lying under that bit and then he's got his hand, then he's got a bit when he's on a trolley and you can't see his legs. That's really, really well done. What's sad is that that sense of joy is completely missing from the bit between the opening credits and the end credits, because the rest of the film is exactly what the other films in this series have been, which is just sort of stodgy splatter. It is, I think, one of the very few films in which I would quite happily watch a 90-minute making of documentary, but don't want to be watching the film itself.

16:53So the puppetry and the invention is great, and the mechanical effects is good, and everyone on set looks like they're having a really, really good time and really, really enjoying doing all the practical stuff. And then the film itself is, oh yeah, it's just that thing, which is just a bit depressing and grim.

17:09Simon Mayo: So is the best bit about Pinocchio on Strung the bit when it's strung? Yes. I wish I'd said that. Yes, that is exactly right. It's the unstrung bit. The best bit about Pinocchio on Strung is the bit that is strung. what a strange word that sounds when repeated very often uh okay so still to come uh after the break ask e gene and animal farm will be reviewed which brings us to our special guest i'm doing all your lines mark in case it's the one and only andrew clement circus talking to us live from new zealand

17:50Simon Mayo: hey mark kermode fancy a fun quick fire quiz i thought you'd never ask great how do you protect yourself from spoilers? We never watched the end of the film. Well, a bit impractical, but fine. How do you protect yourself from getting wound up by noisy cinema goers? There's no need. I'm a very tolerant man, as you know. How do you protect yourself from getting bored of The Exorcist? It's impossible. Anyway, shall we start this fun quiz? What's more fun than being well protected? Okay, is that part of the quiz? I'm doing the questions, thank you. How do you protect yourself from online scams? Ah, finally, a sensible question.

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18:55This episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Hey everyone, this is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe. Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't your thing. Those choices are personal, and in America, they should stay personal. That's why Americans United for Separation of Church and State is fighting for something that affects all of us. The freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not.

19:31And it surely isn't about having one forced government-sanctioned religion. It's about protecting your right to say, this is what I believe. While your neighbor says, I believe something completely different. And honestly, that's the whole point. If that sounds like the kind of America you want, learn more at au.org slash getting better. Because your beliefs are yours and theirs are theirs.

20:02Simon Mayo: So Andy Sokis coming up. UK box office, the very latest chart positions. Okay. Okay. Number 10, here is jackass, best and last. Well, I think both of those words are true. I think it is the last, as I think they're not going to go back and do it again. And I think it is the best in as much as of all of them. It's the one that I had a problem with the least, because actually of all of them, the double negatives are tying my head in knots now. But I do think that there is a thing going on about male friendship. It's just the poo and the vomit that I can't be dealing with. Number nine, number 10 in the States is Disclosure Day.

20:43It's funny, the further I get away from Disclosure Day, the less I think about it. And the problem with that is I'm forgetting that I did enjoy it when I watched it, but it does seem very, very old fashioned now. And how long has it been? Six weeks. I think six weeks after, I'm really struggling to remember anything significant about it.

21:03Simon Mayo: I can remember lots of things, but then maybe, did I enjoy it more? Does that mean I enjoyed it more than you? Probably does. I think we both enjoyed it in the moment, but I think it stuck with you longer than it has stuck with me. Number eight here, number nine in America is Supergirl. Very good central performance, shame about the rest of the movie. Number seven is Obsession. Tenth week in the charts. I mean, just a rip-roaring, runaway success for a horror movie that, unlike some other horror fair, really has got smart ideas and brilliantly executed and walks that perfect line between being satirical and terrifying.

21:44Just a great film. Six here and six there. The Invite. I think both you and I like The Invite very much. If you haven't heard it, you can go and hear Simon's Invite interview, which is very good. It was a couple of podcasts ago. So I liked it. It just seemed like the kind of grown-up movie that they don't make anymore.

22:01Simon Mayo: Number five, it looks as though it says here, Evil Dead Bum. So I'll go with that. Evil Dead Bum at number five. That's what we're going to call it from now on. And it is very, very appropriate because Evil Dead Bum is a bunch of arse. All the fours, because four here and four in Canada, Minions and Monsters. And we have an email here from, this is a top email from Martin D'Souza. Okay, great. Simon and Mark just wanted to share a recent cinema trip with you. In 2023, our nine-month-old son was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. They followed a tough eight months of intensive hospital treatment for him.

22:37Simon Mayo: And to be honest, it was the hardest time of our lives. Last week, and having been in remission for three years, I took my son to the cinema for the first time to see Minions and Monsters. Seeing him enjoy the magic of cinema for the first time and laughing nonstop at the film was an incredible experience and one we thought we may not have been able to enjoy. Endless gratitude to the NHS who provided life-saving treatment every day and to the Minions who made his first cinema visit so fun. All the best, long-time listener, Martin D'Souza. So we talked about first movies many, many times, but imagine if the first movie you go and see is Minions and Monsters.

23:18Simon Mayo: That's going to be magic, isn't it? It's just perfect. I mean, as I said, the first movie I remember seeing was Krakatai, East of Java, which is not a very good film, but I just loved it because it was spectacular. But Minions and Monsters. And thank you so much for sending us that email. And terrific to hear that things are going as they are now going. And what an absolutely sublime experience to have gone to see that. Yeah, I'm sorry, I can't actually speak. I mean, especially if you thought that you weren't ever going to have that experience to actually and have such a masterful film to enjoy.

23:57Simon Mayo: Just wonderful. Just wonderful. Okay. Number three here is Moana, number two in America. I am surprised by just how hostile a response to the live-action Moana has been. It's just nonsense, you know, because there's always another reason. It's not usually, you know, if you've gone to see it and there are reasons that you don't like it, then that's absolutely fine and fair enough. but you just suspect as with all you know as with the odyssey which we'll get to all right the re you know the hostile critics are there's usually another reason for the hostility that's not to do with the film yeah i mean i don't i don't know what it is as i've said i think that the live action project is is pointless and silly but of all of the live action ones this is the one that i that i had least problem with i did say when i was reviewing it that's probably because i just love Moana and the story and the songs are great.

24:51And actually the live action animation hybrid sticks so closely to the original that it is very much like watching. I mean, does it add anything? Absolutely not. Does it do any harm? I don't think so. But I'm just surprised by the level of hostility, particularly since some of the previous live actions have actually been received, you know, fairly, fairly generously. I just don't get why this is the one that suddenly got the knives out. Toy Story 5 is at number two, number three in America. I mean, we have had emails from people who've been to see it. Really liked it, depending on how old their kids are, really.

25:28Yeah. And so I'm, I am really glad that that's happening. I think that I've come to the end of the road of my, with my love affair with Toy Story 5. I think you probably have too, because I think we both thought the trilogy was perfect. And in an ideal world, that's what it would have been. It would have been Toy Story 1, 2, and 3. 4 was okay. I did think 5 was stretching a point.

25:53Simon Mayo: And number one, and very, very, very, very, very number one, is The Odyssey. Same here and same over there. A huge 12.6 million opening weekend, second biggest of the year so far, behind Toy Story. five and ahead of super mario galaxy movie biggest opening friday of the year fifth biggest opening friday ever for universal flourished in imax with the biggest ever imax opening in the uk and becoming the fourth biggest imax release of the year after just two days the go woke go broke crowd have been noticeably silent which has been a good thing for everybody dear agamemnon and and Odysseus. Yes. Let me just check who this is.

26:36Simon Mayo: Oh, yes. Okay. This is interesting, I think. Okay. Because this is from Yorgos, long-time listener, and Ithacan born and raised. Yes, that Ithaca. So probably, I don't know if we have any other listeners who were born in Ithaca, that Ithaca, but this is Yorgos. It can't be that many because that Ithaca isn't that big, is it? I can't profess to know. But anyway, I'm just glad that Yorgos is a listener. Yes. And he comes from there. Watching the Odyssey must have been the most surreal experience of my life. I grew up studying in school, having a statue of Odysseus in our square and having walked on what is believed to have been his palace.

27:14Simon Mayo: Now I am seeing the biggest possible film based on the myth and to my surprise done respectfully and beautifully. While Odysseus' grey morality was toned down, they made him very empathetic and gave him a new modern arc about regret and guilt. However, that lotus flower bugged me. Well, a lotus or lotus, as it is in Greek, is a fruit, specifically a khaki. I can't profess to know this. While in the poem it is meant to be a fruit, potentially used as a metaphor for Odysseus' crew doing drugs and losing time, it was certainly not a flower. That probably happened because of a mistranslation or incorrect localization.

27:52Simon Mayo: The translator was potentially thinking that the poem literally meant what English speakers know as the lotus flower. I found it silly. Anyway, love the film and the podcast. But if that's the only thing, this is a small hill to die on. And of all the people who've had a problem with the film, you, Yorgos, George Adelopoulos, thank you very much indeed for the email. I hadn't realized that the lotus flower might bug some people, but it did, Yorgos. This is from, oh, now, from Elton Barker, professor of Greek literature and culture. Wow. I believe he's emailed before because his emails are always like, 10 pages long.

28:29May I just say very quickly on the subject of Yorgos, the Ionian Island has a population of 2 ,800. So that isn't a very big population. So thank you so much for emailing us. And is it an Ithacan? If you're from Ithaca, are you in Ithacan? Yes. Yes.

28:47Simon Mayo: So Elton Barker, professor of Greek literature and culture, says, Vanguard Easter classics prof here. I've been living with the Odyssey most of my life. I mean, this is the most, I mean, the qualifications that we have. So first of all, someone who comes from Ithaca and now someone who has been living with the Odyssey most of his life. Ever since, like Ben, I raced home from school in the mid-1980s to watch the earwormtastic EEC 31, I don't know that one, or Tony Robinson's Jack and Ori special, Odysseus, the greatest hero of them all. All those years later, I'm literally still working on the poem, still trying to understand it because it's my job.

29:29Simon Mayo: So I have a vested interest. What to say? One, there are awesome set pieces, film gold, as Nolan put it in his terrific interview with Simon. Scenes such as the sirens, Hades, Scylla, Cyclops, Circe. Two, see it in IMAX. In the shipwreck scene, the sound alone pulled me up by the hairs on the back of my neck. you could feel the power of the gods. Yeah, you can. Three, I don't think that I breathed for the entirety of the culminating palace scene. Four, but what really struck me was Nolan's daring decision to use an episode that doesn't even appear in the Odyssey. If I'd known this, obviously I would have brought it up with him.

30:08Simon Mayo: Just a fleeting mention in book eight, when Odysseus in disguise asks a bard to perform one of the Troy story's greatest hits, the one about the Trojan horse. and as Odysseus listened to it, this, his greatest trick celebrated in song, he, in quotes, melted. Homer tells us, quote, and shed warm tears just like a woman weeps as she falls to the ground to embrace her dear husband and watches him die gasping for breath before the spear is brought down heavily on her back and she's carted off into slavery. Blimey, that's a cheerful little episode. Lines 521 to 530 if you want to look it up. Homer shows Odysseus weeping as if he were one of his own victims.

30:52Simon Mayo: This focus on the aftermath of the Trojan horse trick, the devastating consequences it has for all concerned, including our, in quotes, hero, is precisely what Nolan homes in on and uses as his connecting thread. It is genius and it's deeply moving. When we find out that the goddess Athena appears to Odysseus as she does for a reason, I had tears in my eyes. Nolan's depiction of this relationship is sensitive, is beautiful and profoundly human. Nolan has achieved something that academics like me try our lifetimes to achieve, to bring the ancient Greek world to life, for everyone to experience, enjoy and learn from.

31:32Simon Mayo: We owe him. I'll leave the last word to my non-academic mum, who said, that Samantha Morton. She had a bit of menace about it, didn't she? Well, quite. and down with those who don't respect Zeus's law. Elton Barker, professor of Greek literature and culture. So what I like about that is here is someone who it's his job, it's his life's work to do this. And he hasn't gone and he's being all snarky or everything. He's just as blown away as I was. And I know nothing about this. Very good. So just to say, yeah, go on. Yeah. No, can I, I just want to ask a format question because both you and I saw the Odyssey in IMAX.

32:13We saw it at the BFI IMAX, which is probably the best place to see it. A lot of people have got in touch on social media to say, look, it's all very well saying, see it in IMAX. My nearest IMAX cinema is 100 miles away, or there isn't, and this is the number of the IMAX cinemas that there are, and this, that, and the other. I had also pointed out that my friend Jack had gone to the premiere where he had seen the 70 mil at the Odeon, Leicester Square, whatever that one is now called, and said that he thought that he was absolutely missing something. The good lady professor, her indoors, went to see the film at the Southampton Showcase on the big screen in the Southampton Showcase, and she was knocked out.

32:54Simon Mayo: So it's just the standard, it's just the big screen. As I understand, it was just the big screen, or whatever they call it, Impact, or X, or they call it something, but it's the big screen. and absolutely loved it. Just thought it was knockout and has talked about very little ever since coming back. So I understand that it must be really annoying to hear somebody who had the great privilege of seeing it in the BFI IMAX, which is the best possible way of seeing it. But I also understand that there are, as I said, people, there are people I know who have seen it in other formats and have really enjoyed it.

33:30Although I know one person who specifically saw it in another format and then he's actually going to the to the science museum screening specifically to see it in imax where do you stand on this simon i i mean i think nolan is a clever

33:41Simon Mayo: enough filmmaker to so he's obviously famously filmed it for the first time everything has been filmed in imax but if that meant that going to see it on an ordinary big screen was disappointing he would have failed because as you say most people will not be seeing this in imax this has to work at the cinema uh you know on the big just just the biggest screen so the advice has to be whatever the biggest screen is to you you can see conveniently then do that and if if it's just the local uh odian screen one then it's going to be it's still going to be great but yes just see it on the biggest screen you can you know don't wait for it to be on the telly i'm looking at the showcase website and the screen that she saw it on was the x plus screen which says feel every moment in x plus features a supersized screen dolby atmos sound and ultra hd predict projection so that's what she saw it in and and she sorry she's the cat's mother and the good lady professor her indoors gave it a huge thumbs up and absolutely loved it yeah so uh so yes uh point taken and i think this comes up a bit later as well some people have been talking about uh being able to get to imax cinemas but um the biggest screen that is available to you and that will and the best sound system you know and that will do and we are doing an odyssey spoiler special on take ultra in a couple of weeks time emails to the usual address please correspondence at kermitmao.com uh andy circus is on the way after this

35:08Simon Mayo: hello mark kermode hello simon mayo quick question what's your autumn signature dish why are you asking because i suspect the answer is a takeaway that is deeply unfair but is it Sometimes it's delivery. Well, perhaps it's your pans that are holding you back. Food sticking, pans burning, uneven heat. That's unusually generous of you. Gordon Ramsay uses Hexclad at home and in his restaurants. You could try them. They combine the searing performance of stainless steel with the convenience of non-stick. So you get great cooking results without the usual clean-up headache. They're dishwasher safe and easy to clean.

35:47Plus, every Hexclad product comes with a lifetime warranty, so they could genuinely be the last pans you'll ever buy.

35:54Simon Mayo: Upgrade to Hexclad and make everyday cooking easier. For a limited time, listeners get 15 % off with our exclusive link at hexclad.co.uk slash take. That's H-E-X-C-L-A-D, hexclad.co.uk forward slash take. Offer excludes bundles and other items already on sale. Support the show and let them know we sent you. This episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Hey everyone, this is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe. Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't your thing.

36:36Those choices are personal, and in America, they should stay personal. That's why Americans United for Separation of Church and State is fighting for something that affects all of us. The freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not. And it surely isn't about having one forced government-sanctioned religion. It's about protecting your right to say, this is what I believe. While your neighbor says, I believe something completely different. And honestly, that's the whole point.

37:10If that sounds like the kind of America you want, learn more at au.org slash getting better. Because your beliefs are yours and theirs are theirs.

37:26Simon Mayo: Now, our guest this week is Andy Serkis, actor, director, pioneer of performance capture technology. Acting credits, obviously, Gollum in Lord of the Rings trilogy, Planet of the Apes as Caesar, King Kong. in Peter Jackson's King Kong, Ulysses Klaue in Black Panther, Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars, The Forces Awaken, Star Wars Last Jedi, Alfred Pennyworth in The Batman, Luthor, Mowgli, Legend of the Jungle. Directing credits include Breathe, Mowgli, Legend of the Jungle, Venom, Let There Be Carnage, and the upcoming The Lord of the Rings, The Hunt for Gollum. You'll get an update on that movie kind of just very briefly in a moment.

38:05Simon Mayo: And now Animal Farm. And in 2020, he received BAFTA's Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award. You know him anyway. You'll hear my conversation with Andy Serkis after this clip from Animal Farm. Today we are here to celebrate power. And not just the electric power being generated by our state-of-the-art, incredible hydroelectric dam. No, I'm talking about the other kind of power. They say that kind of power corrupts, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And I say, whoever said that is a big, whiny loser! I was born to be Bacon, but am I a big, whiny loser? Pilkington was a little girl with zero personality, no friends, but is she a big, whiny loser?

38:59No! is right my friends so if you want to be a pig like me you got to remember one oinking thing all animals are equal but some are more equal than others and that's a clip from animal farm

39:16Simon Mayo: i'm delighted to say that the man responsible for this uh the director is andy circus and he's on the line uh andy hello how are you sir hello sir very very well how you doing you're right nice to Nice to see you. Where are you? I am actually down in New Zealand at the moment, making a little movie. Yeah, yeah. I've heard about that. It looks as though you're dressed for winter, I have to say. I know. I'm very jealous of all of you over there having such a great summer. I know it's been roasting hot, but it is actually the middle of winter down here in New Zealand, so I can't sympathise too much.

39:57Simon Mayo: Yeah. My only question about what you're doing down there is this one. How's it going? It's actually really exciting. I'm having a ball. And it's so lovely to be back with a crew that I once worked with 26 years ago. And, you know, now there are generations of those filmmakers who are still coming back for more. And their kids, you know, it's just a real sort of family affair. And it's quite wonderful. so so you're talking about 26 years ago let's go back even further to when you're on on the bus going to school and you're reading animal farm so uh how old are you what is the bus that you're on and how do you remember its impact on you um so i was on the 273 bus to Ealing where I was going to school, from Ryslip where I live.

40:53And I remember there were a number of books I read on that bus journey, but Animal Farm absolutely slayed me because it was the first book I think I was reading as a young adult that, you know, sort of an older child really. That made me, I felt just emotionally sort of so sorry for the characters who It started off with such great intentions to create this wonderful harmony and this sense of freedom and it all to go horribly wrong. And it really stuck with me and impacted me hugely. And, of course, the journey of the character of Boxer and particularly the sadness of that character and the way he comes to a bad end, you know, and then just the disloyalty.

41:44And just as a young sort of a young mind, knowing that I didn't obviously I wasn't fully aware of the political side of the story. And I eventually came to obviously, as we all did, know about the fact that it was written as an allegory of Stalinism and totalitarian Russia and oppression and the failure of the communist revolution. but that it affected me on a more personal level sort of immediately and then i went back and reread it when i was older and it's stuck with me ever since and it's become one of my favorite books

42:18Simon Mayo: so as i understand it you got the rights to uh to this in 2011 which is a long which is a long time ago how i mean obviously there are reasons for that um but i'm intrigued us to know what this final film that you have is that what you imagined you were going to make in 2011 is that what you wanted to do how has your idea changed just in that period um well two two things really when i first started thinking about it it was on the back of having just worked on the first apes movie rise of the planet of the apes and the character that i was playing caesar leads leads a group of apes that have been trapped inside a facility where they've been experimented on to freedom a disparate group of of apes to freedom and and it made me think there has not been a version of Animal Farm in recent times that would hopefully connect with a new audience.

43:13So I started immediately thinking about a performance capture-driven version of the story. But as myself and my business partner and producing partner, Jonathan Cavendish, talked about it more and more and worked with the Orwell estate, we felt it would be more relevant to try and keep its innocence. It would have necessarily been a darker film because if you make a live action film with motion captured animals, it's going to feel very connected to the world that we know in a very real way. Whereas an animated movie, we felt, would sort of free you of that, retain the innocence of the storytelling and let you connect in a very relevant way to a modern sense of what the themes were, but primarily for a younger audience.

44:11because we really wanted to make Jonathan Cavendish, my producing partner and I, we wanted to make a film for a young audience that could sit down and watch this film with their parents and grandparents and sort of have a discussion, have a debate and talk about the themes. And so therefore we wanted to make it, you know, applicable to all ages, I suppose.

44:32Simon Mayo: Okay, let's just take that analogy that you've used. If we have a family sitting down, teenager, parent and grandparent, they've watched your movie, what would you like them to be arguing about or discussing? Well, I mean, I think we assume that children can't take responsibility. I think we assume that they don't think about, you know, serious themes and that we should shield them from them in some way. But the fact of the matter is, as we sort of know, history repeats itself. And really what I was after and what Jonathan was after was this sense of, well, next time round, and, you know, we will be passing on the baton to the next generation.

45:17How do we make things better to stop history from repeating itself? And, you know, inevitably power corrupts. We're now living in a world where we don't really know what's true anymore. the truth isn't really held as a value that we care about. It's almost like we don't know what is true and what is not. And that really, for me, those are the themes about power and the abuse of power and oppression, of course, but actually how it's done in the modern era, which is also done through fascism and brutality and oppression, But it's also done in much subtler ways and more, you know, it's done through entertainment and corrupting people's minds and through mistruths and misinformation and creating, you know, there's an entertainment about the way that certain leaders control, I guess.

46:21Simon Mayo: And just on the entertainment side of things, is that mindset the reason that you cast Seth Rogen to be the voice of Napoleon? Because to start with, he's very entertaining. It's the Seth Rogen that we know, and there's jokes about farts and all that kind of stuff. But then he gets sinister. And is it that entertainment that you wanted from him? Is that why you put him there? Absolutely. I mean, it would have been very easy to cast a very obvious villain as Napoleon, as Orwell wrote, but that's sort of a little bit old fashioned. You know, we're living in an era where villainy is, as I say, it's sort of covered over with, you know, it's a villain with smiles and it's a villain who can entertain and make you feel like they're on your side, but actually they're working completely in the opposite direction and they're not looking after your interests, but they're pretending to and they make you feel happy to follow them.

47:20Simon Mayo: There are two specific things that you changed. One, you created a new character, Lucky, who we follow through the story, and you've given it a third act. So there is the line, look from man to pig and pig to man and couldn't tell the difference. That is there. And then we move on to a final bit of the story. Can you just explain why you decided that we needed Lucky and you needed a third act? It was very important to us to – I mean, it's quite objective, Animal Farm is a book. The animals receive information and, as I say, disinformation. The rules that they set about trying to live by are completely turned on their head and they're changed.

48:00And they can't even remember what was true anymore. That is in the book. but the corruption happens because of the pigs. They start to see themselves very early on actually in the book as an elite society and so instead of sort of just being on the receiving end of the information which doesn't really allow you to get into the bunker as it were we wanted to create a character that would allow us into the world of the pigs and see their decision making And not only that, we wanted a young character who could become completely bowled over by the power of the avuncular and funny leader. And yet, and then, and follow and begin to kind of unwittingly follow him so that we take our kids, you know, the kids who are watching this, we take them through a journey of being, having the wool pulled over their eyes, if you'll excuse the phrase.

49:03and then sort of realizing how manipulated they've been. And so it was, you know, we wanted to go, I mean, in a film, obviously, you have to have a protagonist, but we wanted that innocent piglet who never sees himself as any other than the rest of the animals, suddenly becoming corrupted without, you know, knowing it and then realizing the mistake that he's made. So we felt that was a legitimate – I mean, at the end of the book, actually, there's the images of young – the next generation of pigs now that they've completely taken over and they are the elite and they expect to be treated as the elite.

49:47But we thought, well, what if you took a piglet and actually put him at the beginning of the story and followed that journey into the corrupt world of the pigs and allowed our younger watchers to have that moral maze? And then the end was really about going back to that question which we wanted to ask the audience, which is the world is a very bleak place and we could all just give up. And yes, things have gone wrong in so many places and there's oppression all around the world in various different guises. But we can't not do anything about it. We can't not do anything about it. We have to think smart and think cleverly and find a way forward.

50:36And nobody is saying that there's an answer. The chances are that things will always, because of humanity being the way it is, go wrong again. But you have to keep trying.

50:49Simon Mayo: On the subject of relevance, Andy, almost all the cars in your film look like Teslas. Well, one of them does. One of them does, owned by the farmer Pilkington, who people will remember from the book, but who in our version is a tech farm, high tech farm, that is completely exploitative. but also uses all the latest gadgets, including a Tesla-like car and drones and so on and so forth to surveil. I think we get that point. The reviews in America haven't been particularly kind, and you've said that you know it was going to be a polarising film. I'm surprised about the tone of the reviews because I thought, I think this is terrifying.

51:48Simon Mayo: And I think even with your slightly more optimistic ending, because it is about totalitarianism and authoritarianism and how it's sold and how we trade our freedoms and how we're prepared to look the other way and how we're prepared to lose our dignity if we just buy the right things. I thought that that central theme remains and is as terrifying in your film as it is in the other versions and in the original book. Well, I appreciate you saying that. I mean, because quite frankly, it has been, it was quite shocking, really, the response in the States. I mean, we knew it was going to be, it would open up a huge discussion.

52:31But I think it's been very interesting how people have taken Orwell and wanted to interpret it in their own ways. And he is, you know, he is, what he is, is an anti-authoritarian, is what George Orwell is. So it's, I don't mind the criticisms because he doesn't mind criticism. He was criticized for writing Animal Farm hugely. and it's so it doesn't surprise me and i'm i'm not you know what what what does annoy me is that people didn't see the film or haven't seen the film because they've listened to all the the thousands and thousands or millions of uh of uh attacks on it rather than making their own mind up and that's that's a shame that's a shame when parents can't take their kids to see something because they've actually been, their minds have been polluted and told it's a particular thing.

53:25And that, for me, is the biggest, or really the biggest shame about it.

53:31Simon Mayo: And two other thumbs up. One, your use of George McRae's Rock Your Baby, one of the earliest disco songs and a seminal record, which I absolutely loved. And I hope this doesn't spoil the moment when people see the film, but the joke about the notorious P.I.G. I thought was wonderful. I'm glad you appreciated it. How long are you gone for? I mean, because this must feel like a long time ago and, you know, in a place far, far away. There you are in New Zealand working on Lord of the Rings material. And you're gone for how long, Andy? Well, I've been here since... We've been working on the film for about two and a half years.

54:10I've been in New Zealand since last September, and the film is released in December, you know, 27. So I'm here for a reasonable chunk into next year, doing post-production. We're three weeks into the shoot, and it's, yeah, I mean, it's great. I'm really loving it, and it's such a wonderful, as I say, wonderful crew and team and being reunited with lots of lovely people. But it's a long time. These films are big movies.

54:38Simon Mayo: Andy, it's always a pleasure to speak to you. Thank you very much, Steve, for your time, and all the best to you, sir. Oh, thanks, Simon. And thank you for appreciating the movie. It means a lot. Andy Serkis talking to us at the end of the day in New Zealand, obviously, but he's determined to sell his film. But he really did, you know, big coat, battered by the winds. But if you choose the film in New Zealand in the middle of winter, then that's what you're going to get. So we look forward to whatever he's going to come up with, with the latest Lord of the Rings movie. But Animal Farm is out in cinemas.

55:11Simon Mayo: What did you think, Mark? Well, let's leap right in with the point that you started with, that you just finished with there, which was the very, very negative response from the critics. And you said in America, there has been a certain amount of negativity here as well. So here's the thing with Animal Farm and adaptations of Animal Farm. Orwell himself, and I think one of the earliest versions of Animal Farm, it's Animal Farm, a fairy tale. And Orwell himself had described Animal Farm as being a satirical tale against Stalin and said that it was the first book in which I tried with full consciousness of what I was doing to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.

55:54The question of exactly what that purpose is, is always at the heart of any discussion of Animal Farm. And I thought it was really interesting hearing Andy Serkis talking about how he first encountered it. And actually the thing that really struck him was the pathos of the animal characters. And that says a lot. When you look at the films that he's worked on, it's interesting that he said he came to this after just having played Caesar in the ape saga. And so that's all connecting. So for people of our age, we will remember that Animal Farm was taught, certainly in school. And there's a 1950s animated Animal Farm.

56:35I didn't know this until fairly recently. I don't know why I didn't know this. That version was covertly funded in part by the CIA under the guise of the Office of Policy Coordination, who was a sort of branch of the CIA covertly that was used to, quote, combat communism. And they had covertly backed that animation on the grounds that they thought it's an anti-communist tale. And therefore, wouldn't it be good for this to get out? And what happened was that movie opened, didn't do well at all, but then became a sort of set text in school. I say this because I remember being shown it at school.

57:12And of course, if you're a Clash fan. You know that there's images from it, which are used on the front cover of English Civil War. There was also a version in the 90s, which I don't think I saw, which I think is listed as being live. I don't have any memory of it. And then with this version, there's this interesting thing that this version is distributed in the US anyway, by Angel Studios. Now, Angel Studios, You'll know the name because they were the studio that distributed Sound of Freedom, that lunatic movie about just that crazy Jim Caviezel movie. And they have this sort of thing about doing Christian family values movies, which have often ended up being aligned with a certain form of right wing politics.

57:59And so there is a certain thing about Angel and anything with Angel on it that makes people suspicious. although I should say they also distributed things like Sketch, that film which I really, really liked, that you knew the producer for it. The producer, Steve Taylor. It's a very fine film. So it's really not a simple matter. So in the case of this, the interesting thing, the first interesting thing is, and you got right to the heart of this, what story is it trying to tell? And I thought it was really interesting that what Andy Serkis said was the things that you want to do is firstly to make something that could play to a young audience and therefore because i remember when when i first talked to him about this many many years ago he had he was talking about doing motion capture and then they said well we're not going to do that we'll do it as animation i learned this from your interview because motion capture will be a darker tale that you won't be able to watch for a younger audience but if you do it in this kind of and it's fairly bright animated style you know it's it's is it it is it's computer graphics but it's it's there's a slight disnification about it about the way in which the characters look and the way in which the characters talk it is something which is which looks like it's aimed at a younger audience now you and i i think might feel differently about how young that audience might be um because the story itself remains very dark but obviously the animation style is saying look this is for a very young audience and again i speak as somebody who was shown animal farm at a fairly young age because it was a it was a school tech so my first question to you is how young do you think this plays

59:39Simon Mayo: when we finish recording the interview uh just as we were waiting for uh and his files to kind to upload to us that's what he asked me um oh right okay so he said what age do you think and i i think that and i remember we've had these conversations about various movies over the years everything depends on the the kid but i would say it's top end primary that's what i said to andy and he said i think it's slightly younger than that they're obviously aiming for slightly younger than that but i think it's it has uh as i said in the interview i think it's a terrifying film i do i do think there is that um that hint of authoritarianism could come and we are complicit in allowing it to come uh element which i think would be lost on a kid of six seven eight but i think by the time you get to nine ten eleven you the these things are worth talking to my guess is that Andy was reading that book on the bus when he was about that age.

1:00:44Simon Mayo: So I think top end primary. Okay, so we're in exactly the same ballpark here because that is also when I first came across it and I think that's exactly the right age. So now the second question is, what is it actually about? And as we know from a long time, there was something like, well, it's anti-communist. Well, it's very specifically, it's about Stalinism and it's about authoritarianism. And then when Andy was talking about what his version is about, he's saying it's also about the fact, obviously, that all the power corrupts. But it's about the fact that truth is no longer a value that we retain.

1:01:21We don't know what truth is and we don't value it in the way we used to. And then he said this thing, which is, he said, you know, we're living in an era in which a villain can entertain you and make you feel that they're on your side. Now, here's the thing. You could look at, oh, it's a version of Animal Farm, therefore anti-communist, distributed in America by Angel Studios, who have this reputation of generally being a right-leaning thing. But the way I read it was the story in this version is entirely about the rise of popularism and authoritarianism. Now, you said there's a car in it that is clearly a Tesla.

1:02:05I mean, it is clearly a Tesla. It's not vaguely a Tesla. It is absolutely clearly a Tesla. And the great big villainous presence behind it is a high-tech mogul who is just corrupt and evil. Fine. The second thing, and you're absolutely right about this, is Seth Rogen playing that central role. in that clip that you played at the beginning of the interview, what do we hear Seth Rogen's, Seth Rogen with that laugh that everyone knows Seth Rogen, you know, he's funny, he's bigger than life. What does he say? He says, they're big whiny loser. Loser. Who's the person that uses the word loser? Who's the person for whom losing is the greatest, the worst thing that can possibly have so bad that you absolutely cannot accept that you have ever lost anything.

1:02:51And then Andy Serkis went on to say, you know, nowadays, this corruption happens, not just through fascism and bureaucracy, but through entertainment. And that is Trump. And I read it very specifically as that. And I think that that's intentional. It's about the rise of popularism. It's about authoritarianism through entertainment, through the, oh, look at him doing his funny dance. look at you know the whole thing about you know if you want to be a pig like me am i just imagining this or did you see this as well i think it's broader than that i don't think

1:03:26Simon Mayo: it is just for the american audience because i think there are echoes of this happening in a lot of countries yeah popularism around the world certainly that that that specific clip was was very Trumpy. And Napoleon, as portrayed by Seth Rogen in this movie, is scared of looking weak and stupid. And losing. As indeed, yes. The weak and stupid thing is common to all dictators. But the losing thing is the giveaway line, I think. So clearly, it certainly has that agenda. But I would say it's also broader than that. No, so I agree that it's not just about that. I agree that it is a broader thing. But I think the broader agenda is broadly about popularism.

1:04:14It is about the rise of popularism and the way in which you can be corrupted by somebody who looks like an entertainer, who literally, in the particular case of Trump, was an entertainer, was a TV entertainer and has now filled his cabinet. And we are complicit in it.

1:04:28Simon Mayo: That's the point. We are the sheep. We are complicit. We allow our freedoms and our dignity to be taken away. This brings me to my second question, which is what happens at the end? Now, this isn't a plot spoiler. And honestly, anyone going to complain about spoiling the end of Animal Farm, get a life. Animal Farm ends with, famously, the creatures outside looked from pig to man, from man to pig, and from pig to man again. But already it was impossible to say which was which. And that is the most chilling ending. The idea that you're now looking into, and you cannot tell the difference anymore, that they have literally become the very thing that they strove to overthrow.

1:05:10And I think that that ending is chilling and brilliant. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. And films of Animal Farm have consistently not gone with that. They've felt the need to put a third act. And so in the version from the 50s, they then rise up and overthrow the new dictatorship. ship. And in this version, there is a whole third act. And you asked Andy Serkis, what is that about? What is that third act about? And he said, we have to think smart. We have to find a way forward. You have to keep trying. I actually don't agree with that. I think that the power of Animal Farm is that it's horrifying at the end.

1:05:50It's not that it then offers you a solution. As Andy said, he's not offering a solution. It's not that it's okay, we can all get together and rise up and overthrow. The horror is that last thing. And I think the third act is a misstep. But what I don't think is that the first and second act are missteps. And I am baffled by the hostility that this version of Animal Farm has provoked in some areas. Because with the exception of the third act, which doesn't work for me at all, I actually thought that the bulk of the film was something that would play solidly to a top-end primary audience and raise exactly the questions that Andy Serkis was asking, which is corruption, authoritarianism, the way in which you can be bamboozled by apparent entertainment, and the way in which somebody can say they're doing one thing and do completely the opposite.

1:06:47That they can say, I'm with you, I'm on your side, We're all together. We're all equal, but some are more equal than others. And I actually thought that it did capture that. Tell me what you thought. Yeah. The last third is problematic. I think it doesn't work. I think it's more than problematic. I think it doesn't work. Yeah, because the bleakness is the point.

1:07:10Simon Mayo: Yeah, really. Despair is the point. And it's such a fantastic final line that it's... But I can see what he's trying to do. because if you're playing to top end primary, they don't want a film that just goes, oh, well, thanks a lot. They want to think that they have some kind of room for manoeuvre, that they have some, you know, there is the possibility that they can do something about it. And if you just have a kind of, that kind of dead hand at the end, that might not test well, to use that terrible phrase. So I can understand why they've done it. It's just that it is a bit messy, I think, at the end, which is not to say that if we take that idea that Andy Serk has had in the interview, you have a family sitting down and watching it.

1:08:03Simon Mayo: You've got a top-end primary, you're a teenager, an adult and a grandparent. They will all enjoy it. They will all laugh at the same time, and I think they'll all be scared at the same time, and you'll have a pretty good conversation at the end of it. And there aren't many films that will do that. so yeah thumbs up for that is what i thought good good i think we're broadly on the same page and i and i aren't you slightly confused by just how negative the response has been yeah it kind of makes no sense to me i mean i i knew that before i watched it and i was thinking have i missed something you know what i think this is pretty good fantastic voice cast it looks amazing very good voice the story is very strong it's very upsetting and then it got all a little bit messy at the end but anyway so um yeah clearly he's baffled by the extent of the ferocity but then we're used to that kind of story uh strange times you can sign up on patreon to hear mark pick his top films in which Andy Serkis is featured in our feature that gives you some suggestions for thematic extended viewing if that's really what you want that's one frame back and that'll be happening a bit later on anyway in case you need i mean there are jokes in Animal Farm.

1:09:14Simon Mayo: There are. I don't think there are any jokes in the original, but there are good gags in this one. Notorious P.I.G. being my favourite. That's your favourite film joke of the year, isn't it? Well, it's the one that I remembered at the end of it, certainly. But it does lead us on splendidly into the laughter lift. Here we go.

1:09:36Simon Mayo: Hey, Mark. Did you hear about Elton John? No. He's bought a miniature treadmill for his dwarf rabbit. It's now a little fit money. Now a little fit money. Oh, I see. Okay, fine. Got it. Fine. Yeah, sorry. It's a little bit funny. It's a little fit money. The idea just didn't get it because you sort of slightly swallowed it. It was for delivery. Yeah, you just drew attention to that. Thanks. But anyway, some bad news now. I happened to stumble on the good lady ceramicist Herendor's dating profile on one of those apps. It's outrageous. I'm absolutely livid about the lies. It's the deception. I can't bear it, Mark.

1:10:12Simon Mayo: She's not easygoing and fun to be around. Also, Mark, how many Trump supporters does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is none. Trump said he did it and they clap in the dark, which leads us nicely into Mark's last review. Mark, what is still to come? Ask E. Gene. In just a moment.

1:10:37This episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Hey everyone, this is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe. Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't your thing. Those choices are personal, and in America, they should stay personal. That's why Americans United for Separation of Church and State is fighting for something that affects all of us. The freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not.

1:11:12And it surely isn't about having one forced government-sanctioned religion. It's about protecting your right to say, this is what I believe, while your neighbor says, I believe something completely different. And honestly, that's the whole point. If that sounds like the kind of America you want, learn more at au.org slash getting better. Because your beliefs are yours, and theirs are theirs. Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip. The Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules.

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1:12:08Simon Mayo: so the correspondence around the evil or otherwise of ai is growing week by week so we've bundled a couple together can you bundle a couple i mean i think you just if there's just a couple then you can't bundle them can you yes it's it's a isn't it a brace it's a brace too well we've braced a couple together braced a couple together yeah for a feature that we're calling

1:12:35Simon Mayo: hey i don't like that okay right um i thought that was underwhelming simon paul had a lot of time on his hands recently i think he's taking a lot of drugs for sure ed harrison says while listening to this uh with this week's pod and mark's comments that ai thinks that he was in the Panic Brothers. I was pleased to do a quick check and found that some AI, in this case, Gemini, has at least learnt or is maybe just listening to the pod. There's a terrifying thought. As per the attached screenshot, it now tells me that, quote, Mark Kermode was never a member of the Panic Brothers. Moreover, it chastises its AI ilk with, quote, while artificial intelligence search engines have sometimes hallucinated that the famous British film critic was part of the band the group was actually a two-man acoustic comedy and folk duo the actual history and connection between the broadcaster and the musical act involves mutual admiration and early career overlaps in the uk entertainment scene end of quote very good i find that more scary the fact that that it's correcting itself can i can i throw something in here very quickly which is that i had an email forwarded to me from uh from somebody who said um i've been trying to find your review of Executioner because according to AI, you absolutely loved it.

1:13:54And they sent me these three things from AI. Mark Kermode famously called the British indie thriller Executioner my favourite film of the year so far. Kermode praised the film for being unique in the achievement, highlighting its dark subterranean settings, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then another one in his review on Kermode and Mayo's take, film critic Mark Kermode highly praised the British indie thriller executioner calling it my favorite film of the year so far nope i haven't seen it i have never said that it's completely not true a review highlights kermode lauded the project as unique indie yeah no i haven't i mean i've got nothing against the film i haven't seen it i've never reviewed it so okay yeah so stick that in your ai pipe and smoke it yes anyway ed

1:14:41Simon Mayo: Harrison, thank you for your email. Anyway, to which we say, Hey, I don't like that. Dear Hal and Gertie is a name redacted email. I feel compelled to add my two cents on AI because it has already had a significant impact on me and people I know. I am a copywriter. Until recently, AI felt like a distant, inevitable challenge. Then my design team was restructured. Several colleagues were made redundant and the new model was built around AI specialists and AI-led creative work. Ironically, one of the leaders behind the change regularly shared AI-generated images internally as examples of its potential.

1:15:21Simon Mayo: Designers and writers laughed at them because they were so poor. We mistook AI's limitations for job security. I don't think AI is inherently bad. The problem is how it's being adopted. Too often the people making decisions mistake cheap, fast, and passable for good. Where creatives see mediocrity, executives see efficiency. My fear is that thoughtful and valuable work may struggle to compete with work that is merely inexpensive. Name redacted, to which the only response can be... Hey, I don't like that. That's quite annoying. And to reference Simon Brewer of Film Stories email a few weeks back in which he described how AI was stealing traffic from his excellent website, which is very much worth a visit or even better an annual subscription apparently we say again hey i don't like that i think we have to drop that but send in your ever more frequently occurring instances of the robot takeover good or bad to correspondence at carbonamare.com we may need now this says we may need an aop miduk i like that for any good positive uses of ai am i is there a reason that i'm supposed Now, A.L.

1:16:34Simon Mayo: Middok is East Midlands, Nottingham specifically, to say, so I don't know what that's all about. Do you know what that's about? I don't. I don't know what that's all about. Anyway, so positives for AI, absolutely, yes, please tell us. The Robot Takeover, good, the bad, and the ugly. Correspondence at COVIDamount.com. Movie review, tell us something that will cheer us up. It's a documentary, so whether it'll cheer you up or not, I think this will do. So this is Ask E. Jean. This is a documentary directed and produced by Ivy Miripol and takes its title from the advice column, formerly written by E.

1:17:11Jean Carroll, of whom I first became aware, and I presume you did too, during her legal battles against Donald Trump. So the film, because I don't, you know, I'm not American and I wasn't aware of her work before that. So the film covers her early life from, you know, which she won awards for being a cheerleader to becoming a gonzo journalist, befriended and perhaps mentored by Hunter Thompson. Her style was in your face, confrontational. Found her feet when she became a magazine advice columnist, agony aunts we call them here. Had wit and style, ended up with a TV show, which I'd never seen clips of before, but in which there are plenty of clips of it in this documentary, in which she's a real TV presence.

1:17:55She was, as she describes herself, a firecracker presence, shooting from the hip, living life to the full until there is a sexual assault in the mid-90s. So she told people closest to her at the time about it, but she didn't say anything publicly until 2019 in the wake of the Me Too movement. What we hear in the documentary is that she said that when the Me Too movement happened, she felt like she had to come forward. And her accusation was that in the mid-90s, Donald Trump had sexually assaulted her, 1995, 1996, the date was uncertain, in a changing room in the Bergdorf Goodman store in New York.

1:18:38And she made the accusation in an article for New York Magazine and in a book. The article, I think, was called Hideous Men, and the book was called What Do We Need Men For? and Trump did what he always does. He denied the charge. He said, it's all fake news. It's all fake news. I've never met E. Jing. I don't know who this woman is. She's completely motivated by politics and money. I know that even though I don't know who she is. He also said famously, and you'll know a lot of this because it's been in the news, that of course he didn't do it. He didn't sexually assault her because she wasn't his type.

1:19:12Despite the fact that during one of the depositions, he's shown a photograph of her and mistakes her for his former wife, who obviously was his type. So as E. Jean Carroll says in the documentary, she had never intended to sue for the assault. But when he called her a liar, she had no choice but to sue for defamation. Here is a clip. There's no such thing as destiny, dear listener. We ourselves make our lives. All the time I'm writing, writing, writing, and then I write this little quiz and Esquire buys it. I got one taste of New York and I thought, wow, I was as happy a being as ever existed.

1:19:59All my dreams were about becoming an advice columnist. And then Roger Ailes gave me my own TV show. You don't really care who comments on anything because you comment on everything. If you were concerned about being dragged through the mud, why would you choose to sue Donald Trump? Because he called me a liar and I couldn't let it stand. And that is really the centre of the documentary, is that she sued for defamation. So the doc contains footage from the depositions, including E. Jean Carroll being examined by Helena Haber. She's just fairly grotesque. She says, as a woman, I understand that some of these questions are going to be difficult, and then asks exactly the kind of questions that prevent survivors of sexual assault coming forward because they understand that this is what's going to happen.

1:20:51um in that first case the jury reached a decision in 2023 after deliberating for less than three hours the jury in that first case concluded that carol did prove that trump was responsible for sexual abuse also concluded that he defamed her with false statements made with actual malice in october 2022 on his truth social posts and they awarded her five million dollars in damages Trump, of course, being Trump, refused to pay, continued to slander. Carroll did some more, demanded that the verdict be overturned, that he never, he said, I never raped anyone, that the verdict proved that because the verdict said it was liable for sexual assault.

1:21:35And after hearing the appeal against it, Judge Kaplan, and I'm reading this verbatim because it's important. Judge Kaplan ruled that the finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was raped within the meaning of the New York penal law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump raped her, as many people commonly understand the word rape. Indeed, as the evidence at the trial makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump, in fact, did exactly that. He continued to defame her. She continued to fight. She sued him again. In 2024, the jury deliberated for three hours, awarded her$7.3 million in emotional damages,$11 million in reputational damages, and$65 million in punitive damages, totaling$83 million.

1:22:26The jury found that Trump had committed sexual abuse and forcible touching, two of the three elements of the battery case. At the end of the doc, it is explained that so far she hasn't received any of the money. Now, actually, in the very recent past, like just in the last few weeks, there has been a news story that says that she has received the 5.6 that was put into whatever you call it when you're appealing a jury. So as far as I understand, some money has now finally changed hands. But here's what's important. The documentary is terrific because firstly, I knew very little about E.G. and Carroll other than the Trump case, which is this awful thing that somehow the Trump case just, that was all I knew.

1:23:11And then you watch the documentary and she's so, she's exciting and funny and witty and, and very kind of self-questioning. And, you know, it's a, it's good to spend time in her company to find out about what she did. The second thing is, it is a very important portrait of a woman standing up against the system, which is clearly loaded against her. And in which the, the, It looks like you don't do this because you won't win, because this is what happens. If anybody ever claims they were sexually assaulted, there is so much going against them. There's a reason why the percentage of cases that actually are successfully prosecuted is so small.

1:23:48But she does, and she wins. And she not only wins, she wins twice, and she wins big. Despite which, the person who was found to be liable for this assault is currently, for the second time, the President of the United States. And when the movie was finally released in 2025, E. Jean Carroll said this, The reason we made this movie is because people in this country do not know that Donald Trump has been held liable for sexual assault. My next door neighbor has no idea what Donald Trump did because their Facebook feed is different. So if this movie could be seen by people, it might make a difference.

1:24:27That's why we're working night and day to get this movie out. And it was very hard to get it out. In fact, some of the backers of it asked for their names to be removed from it because they were terrified of the repercussions of what would happen. Because, as we know, Trump is merrily going around going after all his enemies, going after journalists who write completely correct stories. about the corruption in his government. So I think the reason this documentary is important is that it was made to publicize the fact that people forget that this actually happened. This case happened and it was prosecuted and he was found liable.

1:25:05It's a civil case, but he was found liable. And I think it's really interesting to watch this and go, oh yeah, we should all be reminded that that is who is currently sitting on the throne in the United States. Is that a cinema release for Ask EG? It is, but I imagine that its primary life later on will be on streaming. But it is being, I mean, it's a small documentary release, but I would really encourage people to seek it out. And also, I think it's interesting that it's out in the same week as Andy Serkis' Animal Farm, because I think that some of the things that the films are addressing that are completely different films.

1:25:42That idea about the way in which you can just be boldly lied to by a big, noisy, rich entertainer. I think there is a crossover there. Oh, and incidentally, just before anybody does, don't bother to send me an email saying, stick to cinema. You know, you're not a politician. I don't read those.

1:26:01Simon Mayo: Yeah. Also, you're reviewing a film. About politics. Just before we go, there's time for a quick what's on message from Neil, who's from Cinema Rediscovered. Hello, it's Neil Ramsey from Watershed in Bristol, inviting you to the 10th anniversary of Cinema Rediscovered happening this weekend. Across five days, we're showcasing beautifully restored classics, forgotten gems and films rarely seen on the big screen. Among the highlights are a stunning new 4K print of Tarkovsky's Sacrifice and a UK premiere of Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky. If you're looking for something a bit more playful, Catch Josie and the Pussycats on the Bristol Megascreen with a pre-show drag cabaret.

1:26:41And we're also celebrating 50 years of Aardman with special screenings and events. All right, interesting. 50 years of Aardman's fantastic, isn't it?

1:26:50Simon Mayo: Neil, thank you very much indeed. And that's it for this week. This has been a Sony Music Entertainment production. This week's team, Jen, Eric, Josh and Heather. Producer was Dom, the redactor, Simon Paul. In take two, we're directing you to The Overflow Car Park for more conversation about current film releases. If you've enjoyed what you've heard so far, There is plenty more waiting over in Take Two, including Five Question Film Club. Three questions, Your Majesty. And questions, Schmestians. Don't forget, People of Bristol will be at the Brizzle Beacon on December the 6th. Tickets are available via the link in our show notes.

1:27:19Simon Mayo: You can get Take Two ad-free along with full back catalogue. And I thought it was a full back, but it's a full back catalogue. Full back catalogue. And the chance to vote on future episodes by signing up to our Patreon. Just search for Kermit of Mayor Patreon and join the church. Mark, what is your film of the week? Well, because I think there is a really good point, which is that this needs to be seen because everyone's forgotten this. Ask E. Gene. We're back next week with Mark's review of Spider-Man Brand New Day. I think I will bestow a year's ultra membership to our correspondent of the week.

1:27:51Simon Mayo: Let's do Yorgos from Ithaca because we can't have many Ithacans listening to the show. And Yorgos, who started the whole thing off today, you are our correspondent of the week. Thank you very much indeed for listening. More on Take Two.

1:28:09Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip. The Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime. So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone.