Is ANIMOL a breakout success? With ASHLEY WALTERS

0:00Mark Kermode: When you put your body in the hands of a surgeon, you assume your doctor will do you no harm. I'm looking at the surgery board for tomorrow going, these people are f***ed. But when your doctor's in it just for the money, something absolutely insane happens. One doctor says, yeah, I did a lumbar fusion. My kickback was$25 ,000. And the other doctor's going, well, I only got$12 ,000 because I did a neck. This is a story about a massive web of fraud and deception. Dozens of doctors all over Southern California. A fraud worth over$1 billion. Patients were committing suicide, losing their homes, losing their marriages.

0:44Mark Kermode: From Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound, this is Dr. Billions. Available now on The Binge. Search for Dr. Billions wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, ad-free.

1:24Mark Kermode: a better time to become a Vanguardista. Free offer now available wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're already a Vanguardista, we salute you.

1:46Mark Kermode: well it's 9 56 welcome to another take here on the podcast brought to you by sony music entertainment okay that went corporate but it started like the beginning of a rock and roll song well it's 9 56 i was told there's a there's a clock on the wall There. See? 9.56 and 22 seconds. No, it's the 22nd. Oh, it's there. There it is. That's 9.56 and the clock on the wall says time to rock. I don't know what you're doing. Why are we in the same room anyway? I'm sorry. Well, because I'll tell you why. Why? So we're in the headquarters of Sony Podcasting together because tonight I am doing an onstage with Michael Douglas.

2:33Oh. And this afternoon, you were doing an on-air with Michael Douglas.

2:37Mark Kermode: A briefer chat with Michael Douglas. So we both have copies of the Michael Douglas book. Yes, which we have both consumed voraciously. But it's fantastic, isn't it? It's like, open it anywhere. Pick a page, any page, and there'll be a showbiz anecdote there, which you want to tell your friends. The brilliant thing is, so I was reading it at first, and then I realized that the audiobook was read by him. So I got the audiobook. You'd be disappointed if it wasn't. I know, I know. But the audiobook is 19... Charles Dance. Actually, I'd like a bit of Charles Dance. It's 19 hours long. And I was trying to figure out what the audiobook equivalent of page turning is.

3:18But, you know, because it's like he reads it and it's very, very gripping when he reads it. But it's kind of interesting how when you read a book, you imagine a voice reading it to you. And then when you hear the audio book, it can actually change the meaning of the thing. It's much more kind of reflective and melancholy that on the page, some of it seems quite angry.

3:39Mark Kermode: In a previous incarnation of this show, I interviewed Michael Douglas. I know I did in Frantman, but I've done him like in one of the hotel room recordings. Oh, right. Okay. All I remember from the interview is that the engineer went by the name of Mad Dog. okay everyone everyone called him Mad Dog I think his name was anyway he was one of the BBC engineers of repute so he went down and he'd set up and I said we go and I said Michael I'm Simon I'm doing the interview and this is Mad Dog and he loved it he kept on going Mad Dog wow this is great and he kept it was just like a running thing all the way through the thing it was being engineered by Mad Dog was Mad Dog called Mad Dog because he wasn't mad because that's he's like the I shall call you little John because you are so big I think he was Well, I think he was pretty eccentric, Mad Dog.

4:29Mark Kermode: But anyway, he was very happy. Mad Dog was the happiest person in the room because Michael Douglas kept talking about him. By the time this has dropped, we'll both have done our interviews. My issue is, how do I do 15 minutes for the entire life of Michael Douglas? Which films do you not do? I can pick one, probably. Michael, pick a film, any film. Which one do you want to talk about? What would you do? Pick one film. you only have one film to talk about. Honestly, Cuckoo's Nest, because it's the break point. Yeah, except he's not in it. No, but it's crucial because it's the point at which, because so much of the book is about him and his father and the whole thing about Kirk Douglas wanting to be, I mean, I would do Cuckoo's Nest and then either Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct or Cuckoo's Nest and then Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Wall Street, all being moment.

5:20Mark Kermode: Anyway, Michael Douglas is not on this show. Michael Douglas is on every show, but not on this one. On all the other outlets that Simon and I are involved in, Michael Douglas, but not today. Join us next week when we report back. It's now two minutes after 10. Thanks very much. Goodbye. Here's Backman Turner Overdrive. Yes, what are we reviewing later? We honestly, today's show is insanely packed. Insanely packed. We have Prime Time, which is the new film starring our Pats, about a TV celebrity about whom I knew nothing until I saw the film. We have Wicca, which is completely bonkers with Olivia Colman and is a really interesting kind of fairy tale label.

6:03We have The Devil's Director's Cut. No, I haven't heard anything about that. 55 years. If only we had a specialist on that. If only we did. That is finally in cinemas. And Animal, spelled A-N-I-M-O-L, with our very special guest.

6:18Mark Kermode: Yes, Ashley Walters, star of Top Boy and adolescence, of course, and now for the first time a director of that aforementioned movie. Then when we get to Take Two... A packed Take Two. We have reviews of I Love Boosters, which is the new film by Boots Riley. We have In the Shadows, which is a boxing movie, and we have Everest, The Other Side. So we're not doing Three Question Film Club for the second time running because we've got too many new movies to talk about. Too many new movies, Your Majesty. You can get Take Two ad-free along with all the other fun stuff by heading to our Patreon page. Just search Koma de Mo Patreon and you'll find us.

6:51Mark Kermode: Quick email before we get into movie land. John says, a mad dog was called John. He was a John, definitely. I just can't remember. Anyway, I know he'll hear about this and he'll definitely remember. John says, hi, Saturday Wrestling on ITV has had a couple of mentions recently. It has. Since an obvious film connection seems to have slipped your notice, I thought I'd write to remind you that one of the stars of the time was Leon Aris, sometimes billed as Leon Aris, the man from Paris, if my aging memory hasn't failed me yet again, better known as Brian Glover from Kez and Porridge. No! I think he had both careers running simultaneously.

7:33Mark Kermode: No! Maybe acting was just a chancy income stream, but I prefer to believe he just liked doing it. Maybe it was just being enthusiastically biffed with handbags by the old ladies. Toodlepip, says John. Mark is looking this up now. How do you spell Aris? Aras. Leon Aras. Leon Aras, the man from Paris. It's on the wiki page. It's a real thing. How did I not know that? Ryan Glover, top porridge man. Yeah, he attended Barnsley Grammar School in the University of Sheffield, where he supplemented his student grant with appearances as a professional wrestler going under the ring name Leon Aras, the man from Paris.

8:10Mark Kermode: Actually, I've got two spellings. I've got Aras and Aris. What have you got there? Aras. It says he adopted that name from a wrestler who did not turn up to a match one night for whom Glover stood. It's like Alvin Stardust. Yes. He's like Bernard Jury. He's stepping into someone else's silver boots. Someone else's leotard. That's not a very wise thing. Anyway, so that's very good. Correspondence at CoenMade.com. Thank you, John, for that. Let's talk about a film that might be out. Primetime. Primetime. This is an acerbic and timely media satire come true life biopic from director Lance Oppenheim.

8:45Lance Oppenheim made Some Kind of Heaven, which we reviewed on the show a few years ago, is currently making waves because he's one of the co-directors of You Can See Everything, which you must have been seeing all the sort of press about. We'll be reviewing that in a few weeks when it comes out. This is narrative feature debut. Script by Ajahn Singh, adapted from a 2007 Esquire article by Luke Dietrich called Tonight on Dateline, This Man Will Die. That article followed the attempts of TV host Chris Hansen to entrap paedophile predators on national TV. Now, have you ever heard of Chris Hansen?

9:19Mark Kermode: No. No. Have you ever heard of To Catch a Predator? No. No, fine. So I came to this same as you. Apparently in America, this was part of the kind of cultural landscape. I knew nothing about it. So everything I know, I know from the film. So the director has said that the script, when he read it, was, quote, closer to a fever dream than to a conventional biopic. And I think that's it. So for those who don't know, which is both of us, and I imagine many people listening, so Chris Hansen, the American TV host, so he became the celebrity presenting this to Catch a Predator, which is this set of sort of exploitative news show in which they would set up a situation to entrap an adult who thought they were meeting an underage person and then confront them with cameras, with Chris Hansen doing all this.

10:10And the more sensationalist it got, the bigger the audience became. So Robert Pattinson, who I absolutely love, who actually started originally as a producer on this and then ended up playing the main role of Hansen, is this kind of reptilian amalgam of teeth, hair, plastered on smile, shiny suit, really smug, smarmy mannerisms crawling up the greasy pole. The person you reminded me of most is Patrick Bateman, okay?

10:38Mark Kermode: What I was going to ask was, before you go on, is that, because you said producer and then star of it, is that the kind of thing Michael Douglas would have done? Michael Douglas absolutely would have done it. He would have come on as a producer and then he would have done it. Give himself the starring role. Give himself the starring role. So the film charts the rise of this particular TV format with a particularly catastrophic conclusion. And it's basically the lower the sort of the lower the common denominator sensationalism, the bigger the program gets. And the only thing that really seems to drive it all is the drive for ratings and the drive for more stardom.

11:13Here is a clip from the trailer. Come on in.

11:23Mark Kermode: Are you sure your parents aren't home? I'm sure. Big night planned. Who are you? You should have a seat right there.

11:36I'm Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC, and we're doing a story on adults who try to meet teens online. You see how this looks, right? On the ground! I don't really like your show, but America loves it. So I need to move you to catch a predator. 9 p.m. Prime time. I'm going to be bigger than Lost. I'm going to be bigger than Lost! The thing he's shouting is, bigger than Lost!

12:04Mark Kermode: I'm also Batman. That helps. Wow. As indeed was Patrick Bateman, coincidentally. Okay. So as I said, so Oppenheim said that the script was like a fever dream. That is how the film plays. It's like a fever dream. It's got the language of sensationalist TV and exploitational TV, but it's also got this kind of almost Kenneth Anger-like, weird, magical psychedelia going on. And it's closer to something like Dante's Inferno than it is to a media satire. I think tonally, for me, it's like a cross between American Psycho with Patrick Bateman, Christian Bale, Network, and to some extent, Broadcast News, and Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me.

12:50And there are really large doses of kind of psychedelic weirdness amidst the satire and the newsroom narrative. At the center of it, I love Arpatz. I think he's great. I think he makes really interesting decisions in his roles. And this is a really interesting thing to play, particularly since he came on as a producer and he's not Michael Douglas. so he kind of plays this character as like this 21st century infotainment age snake oil salesman who's got this kind of you know absolutely devoted to where he heard that thing we're going to be bigger than last and that's it and Pattinson apparently calls the character that he plays a cross between Jerry Maguire and Dracula which I thought was just it's a great it's a great kind of summation of it and I think it's one of his most unsympathetic roles yet weirdly engaging.

13:43And apparently Chris Hansen himself, who is not involved in the project at all, has said, he's criticized it and said it's detached from reality. And it's like, well, it may be detached from reality. I mean, everything I know about the story, I know from, I don't know anything about the thing. It's also got great forms from Scarlett Gissando. Now you remember Licorice Pizza? Scarlett Gissando is in Licorice Pizza. He's the guy who she takes back home as a date. And then he says, actually, I'm not Jewish. I, you know, I am, she has that brilliant scene out. Anyway, he's in that. In this, he plays Dan Plum, who is this aspiring actor who they get to play the bait.

14:21And it's, and the whole thing really is a story about this actor who wants to get their, their screen actors card. And so this is, it's an acting role. But the whole thing is really kind of twisted and weird and strange. It's got a very kind of fetid air to it. rest of the cast includes get this anna faris bakim woodbine alex winter who was actually unrecognizable as being called rad tony revelory bill heck great soundtrack by uh ari belusian and knowing nothing about it knowing nothing about the the the the real guy or the real program but watching arpat sink himself into this role and watching the film go absolutely full-on slightly funnily enough at times I was thinking about Nick Winding Winding Winding what was it yes Winding Nick Winding Reffen's work because there's stuff that's in the Neon Demon which again it kind of feels like stuff about media agents don't remind me of that no but Neon Demon is actually a very very good film it was the one the next one was the one you didn't like which is the name of which fails me now because it was called My Deadly Hell her personal private Idaho private parts that's right it was called Her Hellish Private Parts that was the one that you didn't like anyway I just thought this was a kind of real head spinner of a film and I enjoyed it enormously

15:48Mark Kermode: you made it sound very intriguing and and R. Patsy's one of those guys I love him as you say he makes some very interesting choices yeah but it's interesting that both the stars of Twilight went from Twilight to do really really interesting things in cinema. Which is not the case with other similar franchises. No, absolutely not. Still to come after the break, we've got Box Office Top 10 and The Laughter Lift, which has been adapted this week. In what way? Because I arrived today in a taxi with Child 3. And he said, show me The Laughter Lift. And it's a little bit minimalist. Is he here? No, no, no.

16:25Mark Kermode: He's gone to work. Okay. But anyway, so he's worked with some pretty limited material. And obviously I'm presenting it, so it's a bit limited in the way it's going to be presented, but just a few add-ons. Excellent. And Mark's going to be reviewing Wicca and The Devils. Director's Cut. Yeah, I've heard about that. And Animal with our special guest is Ashley Walters who's going to be in the studio. And a reminder, we're going to be at the Bristol Beacon on December the 6th. Head to the address on the show notes for your tickets. I thought they'd all gone, but anyway, in case there are some returns, people have changed their minds, you might get lucky.

17:00Mark Kermode: Anyway, all to come.

17:05Mark Kermode: 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 hex clad 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.

17:44Plus, every Hexclad product comes with a lifetime warranty, so they could genuinely be the last pans you'll ever buy.

17:51Mark Kermode: Upgrade to Hexclad and make everyday cooking easier. For a limited time, listeners get 15 % off with our exclusive of 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 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 watch 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.

18:36How do you protect yourself from getting bored of the exorcist? It's impossible. Anyway, shall we start this fun quiz?

18:42Mark Kermode: 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. NordVPN's next-gen antivirus. Blocks, scams and phishing before they reach you. Fake texts, dodgy links. Your account is locked. Emails, same app as the VPN. One tap, the biggest protection in the game. Correct, upgrade your online protection with an all-in-one security app. Head to nordvpn.com slash take to get an exclusive NordVPN deal plus four months extra risk-free.

19:30Mark Kermode: Box service top 10. Here's a thing. At number 10, Sean the Sheep, the beast of Mossy Bottom. Why did you say here's the thing? Because it's a thing. It's a thing. Six weeks. Yeah, I love it. I think it's great. I love Sean the Sheep. I love the Aardman features. I thought this was great. and this for me would be an absolutely perfect Halloween double bill with Curse of the Were-Rabbit. There's a very British feel to this top ten, certainly at number ten and at number one, which we'll get to shortly. Yes, there is, yeah. Number nine is Fatherland. Andy Reid says, Yes. Gents, fourth term email at Long Term Listener.

20:05Mark Kermode: Right. This evening I had some unexpected free time and scrolled through the listings of my local cinema app. I plumped for Fatherland. I'd really enjoyed Ida and Cold War and the black and white image of the film on the booking app reassured me that I was in for another gem. Well, it's fair to say I have a new best film of 2026. I thought this was going to go, but I'm not a professional film reviewer and therefore use that to excuse why I'm struggling to explain why I love this so much, except to say what a beautiful, beautiful piece of cinema this is. There is something so subtle and brooding about this film that I didn't notice how involved I'd become.

20:42Mark Kermode: I'm not an emotional person and rarely get triggered by films. However, as the final scene played out, I was suddenly aware that I was crying, not just a bit tearful, but actually weeping. I have zero experience of living in post-war Germany, winning the Nobel Prize for being serenaded by choirs of men while I feast, but something about this story felt relevant, relatable, and deeply affecting. Also, 82 minutes, yes, please, says Andy Reid, Please. Fatherland at number nine. And a good three minutes of those are credits. Heavens. I mean, it is absolutely cut to the bone, a demonstration of the fact that the story will tell you how long it needs to be.

21:22And I mean, I really liked it. I'm a huge fan of Pawlikowski. And I think that obviously Sandra Huller walks on water. And all I would say is if you really like this as much as your email suggests, go back and seek out the other companion films because they are just as good.

21:41Mark Kermode: Andy, thanks for that. Fatherland is number nine, number 28 in America. Other Mummy is at number eight here. The redactor was sent to review this because it was a week in which they didn't press screen. They did it. They had a press screening that was set up and then they pulled it at the last moment and he went to see it and said, rubbish. Verity is at number seven. Which I enjoyed. I mean, it's nonsense, but it's ripe nonsense. And at least when nonsense knows it's nonsense, it can be good fun. Number six here, 13 over there, Forgotten Island. Which I liked very much. It's got kind of really, really kind of enticing visuals.

22:15It's not for the very, very young. There are things in it that are scary, but I thought it was a good romping animation.

22:22Mark Kermode: Street Fighter is at number five, number four in Canada. I mean, does what it says. They fight a lot. I don't know who any of them are or particularly why they're doing it, but they do smashy bashy crushy i mentioned i mentioned uh canada i was showing oh someone at the weekend the uh the iwitter app oh yeah in canada yeah no actually uh no where was it maybe i did this in morocco anyway i was showing someone just to explain what we do and explain the reach of the podcast i went on the iwitter app obviously we just got no connection to us yeah um but just in terms of the geographical reach of the people who listen to this show and it does look genuinely incredible.

23:03Mark Kermode: Our reach. Yes, absolutely. So I would just encourage you to go to the iWeirdRat, which has nothing to do with us, and just follow it and log on, have a look, try and find where the nearest people are to you. How are we doing in North Korea? I think they've all disappeared. Have they? Yes, which is very, very distant. Or one of them has disappeared. Well, we did have two. Did we have two? Then there was one. Then there was none. In fact, there's a whole thriller story in there, isn't there? I could write a story about that. Maybe that's the birth of the next book. Whatever happened to the two Wittertainment listeners in North Korea?

23:36Mark Kermode: Wow. I think that's very good. Everyone in Belfast says hi, by the way. Oh, great. And I hear it was a rip-roaring success. Yeah, it was great. Did they play the little bit of film that Dave not... Yes. Did that go down a storm? It did. Very good. I've reciprocated in turn. Oh, have you? You're there on Friday. I am there on Friday and Saturday. On Friday, I'm introducing the devils. On Saturday, I'm doing the Cinemagic thing. But you didn't send me a note to say thanks for recording this video. No, I didn't. But we went for a fantastic... You didn't even mention it. No, we went for a fantastic meal afterwards.

24:04Mark Kermode: You're welcome. It's a pleasure. Dean's at Queen's or something like that. Anyway, wonderful, wonderful food. Just about five minutes away. Was that your first time in Belfast? No, no, no. Okay, fine, fine. It's fab, isn't it? I love Belfast. I turned on the Christmas lights in 1989. No. I did. In your role as Radio 1 Simon Mayo. That's right. We did the breakfast show from Belfast and turned on the Christmas lights in 1989 and was told that it was the biggest non-sectarian audience to be outside City Hall in living memory. Did you play the Boney M-Banger? We didn't feel as though that really encompassed the Belfast experience.

24:41Mark Kermode: Anyway, the most amazing thing, by the way, when we did the Q &A afterwards, was, you know, there's very nice questions and so on. And then a guy in the middle stands up and he gets the mic and he introduces himself and he says, I'm the Deputy Chief Constable of Northern Ireland. Oh, right. So I then stood up as well. So I just, anyway, so we would talk about 9-11 and everything. But anyway, it was just, wow, that's a shocker. Blimey. Yes. But it was sold out, as I promised you it would be. And I'm sure the audience were fantastic. It was great. And your host is a very, very fine broadcaster. Very fine broadcaster.

25:12Mark Kermode: Very good. It was all, the whole thing was wonderful. And there were a lot of people who listened to the show. I signed a lot of movie doctor's books, which you had half signed and I signed. Fill it up anyway. I've signed some for both of us. Yes, that's right. Of course. I've done some of your autographs. So if you came to the Belfast thing at the weekend, thank you very much indeed. And you can now, and of course, Mark will be there this weekend. Friday and Saturday at the Q &A. And I did say, by the way, that we would probably take our show there next year. I should probably have run that past a few people ahead of time.

25:39Mark Kermode: No, no, no, that's fine. No, that's fine. Absolutely do that. We should do the show. We stay with Paul and Janice, my friends. Okay, I've never heard of them. But anyway, that's fine. Number four is Wildwood. Which I really liked. I really, really liked. Can I just tell you a thing happened? The phone rings, right? It's child one. says, I've just come out of Wildwood. And I go, yeah. And she's, I can't believe how good it is. She's in like floods of, you know, like that kind of euphoric tears when a movie has really, really, and then talks for 20 minutes about how much she loved it and how surprised she was that she knew almost nothing about it, which a number of people have said to me, like, how come I didn't know about the movie?

26:17I thought it was really something. Is that kind of emotion,

26:19Mark Kermode: the same kind of emotion that you get when Spurs win away at Chelsea, when Arsenal get kicked out of the League Cup and Harry Kane wins the Ballon d 'Or? Is it that kind of emotional kick? I imagine it is. I knew what the third of those things was. One of the reasons why the redactor isn't here is because he's humiliated. Is he humiliated? Excellent. Anyway, on the subject of Wildwood, Bodhisattva says, Mark Simon and the top production team. Yeah. Wildwood is stop-motion studio Leica's magnum opus. It is that, yeah. The physicality of stop-motion combined with Travis Knight's vision makes for a wonderfully cinematic experience.

26:55Mark Kermode: His treatment of the source material is akin to how Jackson handled the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I loved Colin Malloy's novel, which even reads like a title. I just hope that given its high budget, the film manages to recoup its cost and that the studio continues delighting us with top-tier stories. It's going to be hard for it to recoup its cost, but this is one of the things about what are we most concerned about, the budget or how good it is. And I'm, you know, the film is great. I think it'll have a hard job washing its face. You phrase that like we're on a demonstration. What are we most concerned about?

27:31Mark Kermode: Whether it can wash its face or not? When do we want it? Tuesday. Yeah. Bodhi's in Amadeen. Thank you for the email. Number three is Ali G, who is I. Or Ali G, why is it? James Sainter says, I went to see Ali G and feel it's an obligation to speak up and defend him slightly. Go ahead. I grew up with Ali G being born in the early 90s. Back then I found him funny and I was worried that 20 odd years later that it would be completely dated. I think that is partly true, but for old time's sake, some of the jokes still land. I went to a packed out cinema late on Sunday and was amazed to see an audience in their late teens and early 20s.

28:08Mark Kermode: They would never have seen the original content. We laughed along together for the first half of the movie. I think he put in about 10 % of his usual effort into this film. He was directing it. He was putting in 110%. It's no Borat. It's no Bruno. It just feels a bit lazy. The plot is incoherent at times and completely ridiculous. You can be ridiculous and good, but this was just lazy and bad. I'm not sure if times change, but it's too dangerous to do skits, quotes, in real life anymore. But this film was 100 % with paid actors, in my opinion, which takes away the whole joke of let me do something outrageous and expose these people.

28:43Mark Kermode: I think what makes Ali G slash Sacha Baron Cohen work is when he exposes people for who they really are. So is it done with actors or done with real people? Yes, there are some actors and there are some real people. And they keep having to say, these are real people. Literally at one point, that thing comes up on screen which says, just reminding you, these people are not in on the joke. But my review said, okay, so it's found some stupid racist Americans. And? And James says, warmest regards, James Saint, a podiatrist. Because he put it on, I'm just passing it on. Is that feet? It is. The American number one is, the UK is number two, and that'll be Clayface.

29:28I really liked Clayface. And as you said, there is something very, very British about this particular chart, which is when we get to number one. I really like Clayface. I think that it's much more like a Brian Yusner or a David Cronenberg movie than it is a DC superhero movie. Somebody got in touch and said, it's not superhero, it's a villain. No, I'm not distinguishing. Superheroes and villains, they're all the same thing. They're within the superhero universe. But I enjoyed this very much. I think that it's got real teeth. And in any other world, it would have been number one, except, brilliantly, in the UK, the number one is...

30:05Well, we'll get to it in just a moment. I'm sorry, sorry.

30:08Mark Kermode: After this email from Susie, who says, Mark and Simon obligatory hello to Jason Isaacs I just wanted to say how delighted I was to hear that Mark enjoyed Clayface my daughter Dixie applied the prosthetic makeup for Tom Rees Harris and worked incredibly hard on the film the funny thing is Mark is the only film critic she really takes notice of so his positive review was a very big deal I'm an extremely proud and obviously completely unbiased mum so Mark's opinion carries considerably more weight than mine having now seen the film myself I did genuinely enjoy it and thought the acting was terrific.

30:42Mark Kermode: There were a few moments when I wanted to close my eyes, but I kept hearing Dixie's voice in my head reminding me, Mum, it's just makeup. Which, given that she was responsible for quite a lot of, was strangely reassuring. I thought you might like to know just how much your review meant to her and to a very proud mum. Wishing you both a fair to middling week, up with the Vanguard, down with Formica. Is that a clayface joke, Formica? Is there a Formica? There might be. It's not ringing an immediate bell. Whenever I think of formica, I think of, you know, in Firewall, this is a formica thing. No, it makes no sense to me at all.

31:18I want all my govins. Still no.

31:21Mark Kermode: It just sounds as though you're speaking backwards. Yes, that's the point. Okay. Proper backwards is...

31:30Mark Kermode: Do that again. No. That was uncanny. The very... Do it once more. No, that was only because... That was uncanny. When you used to edit with tape, forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards, it just ends up sounding, then it sounds like I'm taking the mickey out of a foreign language, which I'm not, I'm just speaking English backwards. When we did the Kermode Awards and the Culture Show, when I gave David Lynch the award for best sound for Inland Empire, I did the, and the award goes to David Lynch, I did it speaking it phonetically backwards, and then they ran the tape the right way around.

32:05Perfect. And it was not perfect. It was kind of just about understandable. But you realize how hard it is to do it well. But you're right. It is.

32:14Mark Kermode: They might be giants who Child 3 is a big fan of, do an entire song like that. Wow. They sing it backwards, have it recorded, and then they play it the other way around. Do you know what it sounds like? Going the right way around. That's quite an art. Does it say Paul is dead? Because at the end of Sergeant Pepper, oh right that bit oh yeah no it says Paul is dead and the UK number one and not in America where it's nowhere new entry see last week's show Ghosts Possession of Buttonhouse how much more British could it be answer none more British I have to tell you Shaun the Sheep at number 10 Ghosts at number one I have a very good friend whose daughter huge huge huge Ghosts fan and there was a thing that was happening at BFI any chance of getting tickets, got tickets, absolutely loved it.

33:10And everyone who is a fan of the TV stuff absolutely loves the movie. When you and I were discussing it, I was saying my thing was, I don't know the TV stuff and I was very aware that, because the film makes absolutely no, it doesn't do any of the kind of, we're going to explain why that guy hasn't got trousers on. We are just going to go for it. So it is bang on that thing about the audience who are there, just love it

33:37Mark Kermode: we'll be back after these wonderful messages from lots of top brands who will improve your life no end unless you're a patron

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34:28Plus, every hex clad product comes with a lifetime warranty so they could genuinely be the last pans you'll ever buy.

34:35Mark Kermode: 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.

35:08Mark Kermode: our guest this week is ashley walters actor director musician who first found famous ashley and so solid crew before building a screen career spanning more than three decades from bullet boy and top boy to adolescence uh with a thousand blows uh in there as well now he steps behind the camera for his feature directorial debut animal as mark said at the beginning spelt with an O at the end. It's in UK cinemas from Friday. You can hear our conversation with Ashley after this clip. I've got a question for you. Can anyone describe what shame feels like? Anyone?

35:51Anyone? Shame's being bullied and not being able to tell anyone.

35:59Mark Kermode: Shame's wanting to belong. Looking for a sense of identity. Shame's what landed most of yous in here.

36:12Mark Kermode: Shame drives us to hate each other.

36:18Mark Kermode: Shame kills.

36:25Mark Kermode: So I'll ask you again. Can anyone tell me how shame feels?

36:37Anyone?

36:39Mark Kermode: The always compelling Stephen Graham, one of the stars of Ashley Walter's new movie, which is called Animal, and Ashley's in the studio listening to that with us. hello ashty how are you i'm very good thank you very much so good to be here guys you look incredible and we've just discovered mark and i've just discovered your secret which is that you only eat once a day that's that's what we have to do yeah but you know he shares that regime of not having breakfast with me which is why we are so physically similar yeah yeah i noticed that yeah yeah it's like twins really isn't it here we are uh so animal is spelled as we mentioned this uh earlier spelt a-n-i-m-o-l just introduce us to your picture and why and why it's spelled like that um so yeah animal film my first uh feature as a director um the title was if the film was written by nick love amazing writer also director that we all know um and our lead character when he originally wrote the script had dyslexia so that was a part of the the character's journey he couldn't read or write um hence the title we decided to kind of take the a out and put the o but that's as far as that kind of connection goes I guess.

37:49You see it scrawled as a piece of graffiti on a wall spelt like that. Yeah you do I mean using the word animal I was always quite unsure of kind of you know having I was always had the vision of what the poster would look like and it was going to be the lead character's face with the title animal and it was like I was calling this young black kid an animal and I was worried about that I was worried about what the perception would be but actually the whole idea of being an animal in that place is about how you conform or how you the persona that you take up to survive in an environment as hostile as that.

38:28So explain

38:28Mark Kermode: where we are and why we are there We enter straight into like a prison van journey on the way to prison with our lead character Troy who's been arrested and remanded in custody for an attempted murder that he didn't commit. Unwavering loyalty to a gang of boys that he shouldn't have that loyalty to. And he's a vulnerable prisoner. He shouldn't have been in prison. And I think there's a lot of kids that end up in that position that are not meant to be in there. And we follow him on a 65-day journey in jail as he tries to navigate surviving in there and taking up all different forms of kind of personas and characters in order to survive in a really hostile environment.

39:13Mark Kermode: So explain the process actually whereby you decided to make this your debut as a director because we've spoken to you as an actor. You've been in some astonishing television and movies. Just explain why you thought that there was something about this story that made you want to go behind the camera. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's so many prison genre kind of UK films that come out. so it was never my plan to make a film like this to be fair because I thought people would expect me to make this sort of film um but on reading Nick's script and after him kind of offering it to me I just felt like actually should I be applying myself and to try and make something elevated out of this genre I'm always complaining about how I don't feel a lot of the films in this space are authentic enough and don't feel like how it felt for me when I was in prison so it was like put your money where your mouth is and see if you can make something a slightly elevated and different and what I loved about this was you know obviously there is the the queerness of it all I guess you know the the kind of sexual kind of exploration within this kind of homophobic prison I felt that that was so different and something that we hadn't seen and just the vulnerability of of the lead character reminded me of how vulnerable I felt going into a YOY when I was like around a similar age.

40:36So I just felt like, you know, if this was going to have some authenticity, that it needed to be my vision. So it just became a thing of, I can't let anyone else do this. Was there anything that you looked back to at all? Because obviously the kind of touchstone in terms of British film and television is Alan Clarke's Scum, both the TV version and then the film version of it, which kind of looms like a shadow over the genre. Was there anything that you looked back at and thought, actually, I can take something from that? not necessarily i took a lot from a lot of other films and not necessarily prison genre films my whole thing was i just didn't want it to look like what we'd seen before i feel like when you when you you get into films that are centered in like london or council estates or prison it's very gritty grainy the greens the darks you know and and i've always seen that as like a very voyeuristic sort of opinion of what those places are like touristy touristy yeah i mean i grew up in peckham you know most people would be like who don't live in peckham or don't come from that way it would be like oh it's a very bad area you know and it can be a bit dangerous and stuff like and for me it was an adventure it was it was lush it was vibrant it was color it was colorful you know and i've so i always tried to make my films or my tv shows from the perspective of the person that lives in it and when i was in prison predominantly i saw a lot of boys even though they were pretending a lot of boys who had hope a lot of boys who you know were were not happy to be where they were but making the most of the situation that they were in and i wanted to portray that you know from the inside looking out rather than from the outside looking in and just to paint the

42:15Mark Kermode: broadest picture here we heard in the clip from stephen graham who is he in this film what role did we hear him playing when he was talking about shame so stephen graham plays a role of a guy called Claypole, who's kind of like a youth sort of mentor, a youth worker that's kind of situated inside the prison. And he just takes on the role of kind of being the go-between between these kids and their rehabilitation, you know, making sure that they were going to education, making sure that they're preparing for when they're going to leave. You know, kind of what Stephen is as a man himself anyway, you know, in real life and what he has been for me for many, many years.

42:54So it was so great to have him in this role and he brought a lot more to it than just the acting. It was, you know, the skill he has to calm people, the skill he has to make those young boys, some of whom had never acted before, just feel comfortable around him and, you know, feel free to kind of make mistakes and give us 100%.

43:13Mark Kermode: it's quite clear the perspective that you bring and your experience that you bring to this story and I don't think I've ever seen a prison drama on television or in the movies where the director has personal experience of being banged up themselves and that terrifying moment where the door shuts for the first time to make us feel and hear and taste what you went through is quite some achievement how did you approach that? Just my memory you know it's just solely my memory um I don't think a lot of the team knew that it was from my memory you know they ask you a lot of questions how do you want the walls to look how do you want this to be however and everything I picked was from my memory you know the the prison regime the armbands the kids wear that kind of signify what level they're on in the prison and whether they can wear their own clothes or not and what time association is and what time you shower and All of that stuff I had to kind of set up in my mind for the prison and had to give it some sort of regime.

44:14And that all came from my memory of what it was like for me, which I feel is what kind of gives it that realness, you know.

44:21Mark Kermode: We should mention your lead guy here, Tut Newt. Yes. Is that how you say his name? A big guy, which is an interesting choice when you're casting because you want him to be vulnerable. But he kind of does that with his eyes, doesn't he? I mean, he's very kind of strong and silent. but what were the why did you go for him because he well however you did it it was the right decision because he is vulnerable he happens to be like the biggest guy there but incredibly vulnerable what were you looking for i think it just boiled down to like finding someone there was a great director called dominic savage i know you guys know and i've worked with him so many times and he never writes a script and when you go into cast with him for an audition he'll just be like how's your life and then you start talking about you know i've just broke up with my girlfriend and this and that and then that's what the show ends up being about you know i mean he just takes your life and puts it on screen and it was like it was like that with with toot it was more like i knew where he was in his life he was in a transitional kind of period of his life like i was when i did bullet boy and i'd just come out of prison going into that film gave me everything for that movie um toot's had a lot of pain you know he's come up in the game he's really really new and things happening quite quick for him and whatever and he's been through so much and I could just see that he had the emotional chops, do you know what I mean, to take us where I needed to go.

45:43Mark Kermode: And we spoke last time when we were talking about adolescence that young men and masculinity is something that you have a lot to say about. Yeah, I mean, it's where I sit. I've been a young man, you know, I'm an older man now and I fought the kind of preconceptions of what, you know, masculinity is and what a man is meant to be for most of my life you know I've I grew up with some really strong women in my life and didn't have many male role models around so I've been I've always been quite vulnerable and I've always been encouraged to be quite vulnerable but outside that circle when I was looking for role models it was always the more toxic masculine sort of role models um so it's something I I can resonate with it's something that I relate to and something that I understand and you know I've always been fighting to teach my kids especially my boys that like it's okay to cry you know it's okay to talk about your problems and come to me and talk about issues that you're having you don't have to feel you have to hold them in um but you know obviously these things come out in the in the things you choose to do you know creatively um so if you look at like adolescence you look at bullet boy you look at top boy you know even with animal they all kind of kind of skirt around the same sort of themes that are really important to me.

47:02And I feel we need to have these sort of conversations. I think Animal is another film that hopefully will get people talking about masculinity and what it is and what it means to be your authentic self. I need to thank you for something, which is that we bumped into each other at the Berlin airport. Yes. And I go to the Berlin Film Festival because my partner, Linda, is a film academic and she takes students to Berlin. And that's all I do. I just shepherd them around. Anyway, so we were waiting at the airport to go out and you were in a queue down and all these students, they're like, you know, like 1920, 2021, you know, and I'm just a very old man to them.

47:42They go, that's Ashley Walters, that's Ashley Walters. Can we go and say hello? I go, no, just leave him alone. Just leave him. He's fine. That's Ashley Walters. I want to go and say hello. And then, and you went, Mark. And then we went through the thing. Oh, yeah. Hi, Ashley. Yeah, it's fine, fine, fine, fine. And then we got through the other side and it was like, I was seven foot taller than I was on the other side. I said, oh, yeah. No, no. We know each other. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. It's amazing. So thank you very much. Because for a brief moment, I was very cool to some very young people.

48:08I'm sure you're very cool anyway, man. You're playing yourself down. But yeah, listen, I'm glad I could help. Glad I could help.

48:14Mark Kermode: Final question. Because you're an actor and a director and a producer. But this is more of a social policy question. A lot of people will be halfway through in the weeds of this film and thinking, and we've mentioned a lot of your other work as well, and they'll be thinking, is this the best we can do? Is there a better way that we can look after young offenders? As someone who has been there and filmed it and done that, is there? There has to be a bit more money pumped into the system. What I think is that there are some great people inside the system. I met a lot of clay poles played by Stephen Graham whilst I was kind of doing research and going back into YOIs.

48:52They're desperately trying to do great things for the kids, but financially they're hindered, you know, they're restricted. You know, I was in prison in the early 2000s. A lot of the prisons are still the same now, still haven't been refurbed, still haven't had money pumped into them. And these people are desperately trying to make changes in there. But I do think, you know, one thing I've been talking about is just like empowering prisoners when they come out. There's so many prisoners in there that I've met, you know, been gone in young, come out old, that have, you know, managed to change their lives around and managed to change their perspective.

49:26I feel like they'd be best placed to be helping younger ones going in. They've been there. They've done it. Those younger people are going to respect their opinions, you know, and they should be kind of financially empowered and empowered to support these kids. It's sort of like a mentorship scheme and it would kind of give them some sense of purpose, I guess, because a lot of them are struggling to get work as they come out anyway. That's a perfect job. So I just think sometimes we're not connecting the dots and there's so much more that could be done. But I would never sit there and say, you know, this is the fault of the government and this is the fault of the prison staff and they they hate the children.

50:00No, there's so much love there and there's so much people trying to make changes. But unfortunately, it's difficult when there's so much red tape and not enough money.

50:09Mark Kermode: Ashley we really appreciate you coming in what are you working on next are you directing, acting, what's next for you? Hopefully directing a lot for the end of next year hopefully two films on the go which I'm developing at the moment but I have like several TV shows that have just all piled up and a great film with M. Night Shyamalan coming out in February as well called Remain so look out for that one Ashley Walters thanks very much for coming in Thank you

50:38Mark Kermode: He's a top guy, isn't he? Well, he's a top boy. Ashley Walters is always very interesting, with loads to say. He's going to be a very, I think he's going to have a very successful career. Should say for those just listening, he's now left the room. You're not saying his name's still present. Yeah, we took advantage of that little sting for Ashley to leave. To leave. He's no longer here. Reset the studio. Because I think it's never the easiest thing to review a movie with the person responsible in the same room. So Ashley is gone. Animal is his new film. Over to you. Well, the first thing to say is that it is a very confident narrative feature directorial debut.

51:14I mean, it feels like somebody who knows exactly what they're doing. And it was interesting that in that conversation, if you're watching this review on YouTube, and you haven't heard the conversation, listen to the conversation, because I don't want to sort of repeat a lot of what we've just said. But he was talking about the way in which, firstly, he was bringing his own experience to the environment. And you mentioned the sound, the fact that, you know, it is this impressive, not impressive, this enclosed feeling that everything is like slamming hard surfaces, nasty angular edges to everything.

51:48But the other thing that he was talking about was that the people in there are trying on roles, that they are role playing, that they are having to discover what characters they have to become in order to survive. And this is a story, I mean, I mentioned this before, that this is a story that has been told before in terms of British film and television. Obviously, there is the original Alan Clark TV version of Scum, which got banned. And incidentally, the queerness element, which Ashley was referring to then, you can trace back to the Alan Clark TV Scum, not to the feature film, which was then done later on.

52:25Then, I mean, in the more recent past, things like David McKenzie starred up, just more recently we had Wasteman. These are films which are about the way in which young people incarcerated have to discover ways of negotiating the situation that they're in. And the terrifying thing is somebody who's never had any experience of this is this whole sense that there is no way of not doing wrong. That somehow in order to survive, the situation will be like even before our central character finds his way actually into the prison. Even before that, he's compromised by an encounter with somebody else who's going in who tells him you have to do this thing now.

53:08Otherwise, your life inside is going to be hell. and there is this sort of terrible sense of there is no way of keeping your nose clean there is no way of staying out of any of this what you have to do is is to somehow find a way of negotiating it and then the real surprise about the film is and it was interesting that actually also saying that what people expect from him is you know gritty urban the real surprise is that there is this strange tenderness that happens, almost kind of unnoticed, actually, when it initially starts to happen. And that actually ties into what Stephen Graham, that speech that Stephen Graham is doing about shame.

53:45What does shame mean? Shame is the thing that got you all here. So it starts out looking like one kind of film, and then it mutates during the course of its runtime into a different film. I mean, it is absolutely a prison film, but it is also about a whole lot of other things that aren't necessarily to do with prison. I should also say that, you know, as Ashley Walters said, it's based on a script by Nick Love. Now, I'm not a huge fan of Nick Love's, some of Nick Love's films. He's known for things like Football Factory, Business, this more recently marching powder i mean these aren't i have to say my kind of film this is i think i didn't know that the script was by nick love i didn't know until the end of the film when his name appeared on the credits you kind of think ashley's written it don't you i think that's what i thought yeah and that is actually i think a great um praising of a film when it just felt like it was it was a singular voice and the fact that it's him directing a script by nick love congratulations to the both of them for making something which felt of a piece that felt that it was coherent in and of itself not like one thing was going one way and the other thing was going the other way the other thing to say is the performances are across the board terrific i mean we all know that stephen graham walks on water that's fine but actually is it took newt took

55:10Mark Kermode: newt is from my point of view i knew no i recognized no one in this film which is a strength which is a good thing, until Stephen Graham comes in. And then I thought, oh, okay, yes, it's a movie with Stephen Graham in it. Because until then, the fact that I knew nobody in this film made, I think, intentional, I think the intention was, I felt lost and scared watching the film. And then felt reassured when Stephen Graham came in. Well, I did know some of the movies. I mean, Tut Newt is in The Long Walk, for example. Yes, he is. Now, I know he's done other things. No, no, sure. But what's interesting is that when you see him, I didn't recognize him either, because the character that he's playing, that sort of vulnerability, what you talked about, he's big, physically big.

55:55And yet when you meet him, everything about his face is saying fear, is saying vulnerability. There's a kind of sensitivity that he's trying to kind of cover up. He's trying to make it look like he doesn't have that vulnerability, because vulnerability is necessarily weakness. There's also, I hadn't seen Vladislav Balyuk, or Vlad as he was referring to him who's got at first he has kind of the kind of the on-screen sweetness of a young hayden christensen which is he's like a young polish guy yeah and he's terrific he's really really terrific so again ashley walters was saying it's all in the casting yes i'm sure the casting is a huge part of it but it's all also in making those actors feel that they are able to do the performances that they did and the fact that they were looking up to ashley must have mattered enormously as you mentioned yeah exactly so you know it was funny because at the end of that interview he said we're not reinventing the wheel and again it's kind of interesting to hear a you know a narrative feature debut director saying that because normally that's going to people don't but no you're you are treading a well-trodden path but you are still managing to do it with things that i did not expect there are there is an element of sweetness and an element of sensitivity and affection and shame that I had not seen coming until you were right in the middle of it.

57:21As far as the rest of the stuff, as far as creating a world in which we are convinced that these people have literally been thrown into this incredibly hostile environment, and I bought that absolutely 100 % thought I would survive four seconds in this environment.

57:35Mark Kermode: Yeah, I wonder if, did you think, like I did, there has to be a better way. Isn't there a better way than doing this? These guys have no chance. Anyway, if you see... But that also goes back to Scum and the fact that when Scum was made, they were saying, we have to stop the Borstel system. And actually, Scum was a part of the discussion about what's happening with Borstel is not working. And so I do think that any movie that is addressing that and actually might have an audience is significant. If you see Animal, let us know what you think is in cinemas for two weeks. That's all you got, which is a luxury.

58:10Mark Kermode: Yeah, yeah. because some movies, as you said, the Ali G movie is just there for two nights. Which one do you think? And it's in the top five on the basis of two nights. That's an impressive two nights. But it's an opening weekend, two nights, so that's fine. Okay, so Animal is out for two weeks. Let us know what you think. Correspondenceofcodermail.com. Now, after you've been in prison, what do you want? Laughter. The laughter lift. Wow. That's very loud. Turn it. That's like rock and roll. The rock and roll laughter lift. wow that's the kind of volume that keith moon had his headphones at the old the old hospital radio desk had a button which if you pressed it was a voiceover button it would just dip the music every time you spoke so that's the kind of thing that you okay we got rid of now because we have top engineering team yeah so so this is the laughter lift slightly um i just added some things to it because of uh child three but in the taxi and my handwriting is very bad because we were driving i wasn't driving i was in the back but we're still going jiggly jiggly over the bumpy bumpy.

59:12So sorry, so I thought, so he wrote them down, but no, he was reading them. He was freestyling and you were writing them down.

59:19Mark Kermode: He said to me, what's in the laughter lift? And I showed him and he said, it's a bit perfunctory. I said, do you want to add to it? And he went, yes. So here we go. Well, Mark. Well, Simon. I've been learning some self-defense these last few weeks. Have you? What should you do if you're attacked by a group of clowns? I don't know, Simon. What should you do if you're attacked by a group of clowns? Go straight for the juggler. Okay, not bad, not bad, but that's not one of Child 3s. Well, he had it, part of the preamble was him, about learning some self-defense, who was just a little bit of an extra tape.

59:48Mark Kermode: Oh, I see, okay, he's just judged it up. Yeah. Okay. What do you call a Sith Lord? This is Child 3. What do you call a Sith Lord from the western areas of the United States? What do you call a Sith Lord from the western areas of the United States? Darth Vegas. That is Child 3, isn't it? What do you call a Sith Lord that's into French electro music? Darth Punk. Darth Punk, yes. And what do you call a Sith Lord that comes from the deep south of the United States? Darth Yawl. Darth Yawl. Finally, Mark, we had a break-in this week. So to the person who stole my selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, I hope you're happy now.

1:00:33Mark Kermode: Hey! They also took my melatonin. How can you sleep at night?

1:00:41Mark Kermode: what's still to come well Mark is going to be reviewing once he's recovered from the hysteria reviewing Clayface and Fatherland and in take two that's from last week I'm reviewing the Devil's Director's Cut and something else and Wicca ok I'm looking forward to those particularly I might just pull back and listen to Clayface and Fatherland as well

1:01:15Mark Kermode: Dear Fisherman and Fisherwoman. Very good. Following Mark's review of All Rivers Spill Their Story to the Sea last week. Stories plural, yeah. Of the discussion of how to refer to those in the fishing trade. Yeah. I have a tangential contribution to make, which doesn't answer the question about the tradespeople, but is hopefully interesting nonetheless. less. Okay. But obviously we'll be the judge of that. I would like to point the good doctors to Kate Bush's independent record label, Fish People. Oh. And the subsequent adoption of the term Fish People to refer to her fan base. I didn't know that.

1:01:50Mark Kermode: So I do hope that the trade has a different term. Otherwise they may be confused for us cloud busting lot. Tickety-tonk and up with running up hills, David and Woolwich. So yeah, Yeah, so if you're a fisher man or a fisher woman, you'd probably be one of those rather than saying you're fish people, because they would say, well, that just means you're a fan of Kate Bush. Well, interestingly enough, in the movie that we're going to review next, Olivia Colman's character is fisherwoman. Okay, that's good, but that doesn't help us. If you're a female fisher person, are you a fisher? What do you call yourself?

1:02:25Mark Kermode: Fisher. I'm a fisher? Yeah. Yeah. Because, as I said, I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men. Not everyone went to Sunday school in the 70s. Well, that's their loss. Okay, fair enough. Correspondence of co-nm.com. Anyway, let's talk about Wicca. What a strange film this is. Okay. Have you seen the poster? Wacky Wicca. Wacky Wicca. Okay. So, weird romantic fable directed by Alex Houston Fisher and Eleanor Wilson, based on a short story, The Wicker Husband by Ursula Wills. Have you read the short story? I have not read the short story. You've heard of the short story? I have not heard of it, which is why I haven't read it.

1:03:06Fine. Once again, we are both on the same page. It's not to do with the Wicker Man. No, except for Wicker. But no, it's not to do with the Wicker Man. Although, let me get to it.

1:03:18Mark Kermode: Is it like a Wicker chair that you have on your patio? Let me get to it because you're preempting a lot here. Is it about Alan Wicker? Stop. Sorry. stars olivia coleman alexander scars god remember how much you enjoyed his last movie yes feel uncomfortable already you've got a video of that at home haven't you no i have not um uh elizabeth the beaky um richard e grant uh peter dinkley tons of people okay it's mad mad so setting non-specific rural past a place where people are named by their trades so you know fisherwoman for example. And marriage, which we see at the beginning, involves not putting a ring on your good lady bride's finger, but putting a collar around her neck to claim her as a cattle or chattel or whatever it is.

1:04:05Olivia Colman is the resolutely single fisherwoman. She lives on her own in a shack out by the water. She fishes. She tends to her fire. She lives alone. She goes into the village to sell her fish where all the people can, you know, joke, laugh at her because she smells of fish. Then she goes back to her river and her fire and she seems to be quite fine. All is well and good until during a village wedding ceremony, after the collar has been put on somebody's neck, she accidentally does the equivalent of catching the bouquet by mistake. It's not a bouquet, but just the equivalent of it. And everybody goes, oh, well, the fisherwoman's going to get married next.

1:04:41Like that's going to happen. They all laugh and they all mock her. and she's kind of hurt but she doesn't want to go through the business of courting a man because she said i always think that marriage sounds more like a you know like a trial than some kind of reward but she turns up at the door of the basket maker basket weaver who's played by peter dinklage and she says um you can solve my problem make me a husband so he does here's a clip from the trailer Today's catch, touch! If you needn't yell, we can smell your cummin'. Lick my worm! So then, fisherwoman, you caught yourself a lover yet?

1:05:20Mark Kermode: Love seems more a burden than a prize. Sorry. It was my mom's. There's absolutely no shame in living out your remaining days alone. I'll marry you.

1:05:35Mark Kermode: Oh. I want you to make me a husband. Be at the chapel in a month. Good. You can't say, lick my worm. Yeah, she's a fisher. You know, worm. I know. It's Olivia Colman. She can say whatever she likes. Anyway, fine. So he does. He makes her a wicker husband. And the wicker husband turns out to be the perfect partner. He loves his wife. He serves her well. He comes to life, does he? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a man made of wicker. played by your mate. Who? Alexander Skarsgård, who you enjoyed his last film so much. He's a wicker man. He's a man made of wicker. And he's a perfect husband. And he does all these jobs around the house.

1:06:21And he looks after her. And he serves her well in the bedroom too. Does he go for picnics? He does everything. So well that, I see the basket joke there, so well that they keep breaking the bed. And... It doesn't surprise me. So he is ideal. And everyone in the village starts to get the hump about the fact that there is this ideal husband. All the women in the village look at this ideal wicker husband and go, he's great. Look at all the things he does, as opposed to their rubbish husband. Meanwhile, all the men get really bitter because this wicker husband is making them look bad. Because what he wants to do is make his wife happy in any way possible.

1:06:58Now, I haven't read the short story, as I said, but in the tradition of Pinocchio, in which it's a block of wood comes to life as the boy because somebody wants it so much, or The Wizard of Oz having a talking scarecrow. It's one of those things that you just accept. But what's remarkable about the film is, firstly, how bonkers the thing is. I said to somebody, what's the story about? It said it's about somebody who likes men so little that they marry a basket. Okay. Except it isn't. It's incredible how quickly you just accept the Wicca husband. The Wicca husband, incidentally, brilliantly played by your man, Alexander Skarsgård, but also with visual effects by, is it Weta or Weta?

1:07:36How do you pronounce it? The Weta work, you know, the New Zealand, is it Weta? Them. And it looks, it literally looks like a man made of wicker, but with all the expressions, you know, of a fully rounded person. And there's nothing twee about the film at all. It's very bawdy. It's quite sweary. And it's got a lot of very kind of earthy humour to it. And it reminds, at times, the earthy, did you ever see Pasolini's Canterbury Tales? I'm going to go for no. Okay. Okay. Pasadena's Canterbury Tales, which is very bawdy. One of the people that's in Pasadena's Canterbury Tales, everyone forgets his name, is Robin Asquith.

1:08:14Okay. I've heard of him. Yeah, exactly. He did all those confession films. He did, yeah. Reportedly the most famous bottom on the British screen. In the case of this, it's funny. It's oddly moving. Olivia Colman plays all the fairytale elements with the kind of feet on the ground earthiness that means that we just accept them because she accepts them and we just accept it. And for all the fantastic elements, it is a kind of timeless parable about gender roles, about men and women, about what true love actually is, about what the contract of marriage actually is. And at times I was thinking about things like Catherine called Birdie, which again, you know, it's kind of set in the past, but it's very, very kind of contemporary story.

1:08:57And then underneath it all is this fantastic score by Anna Meredith. Now, I love Anna Meredith. Anna Meredith did the music for Eighth Grade, you know, the Bo Burnham film, right? Which is that synth score. It was really fantastic. I really, really love her stuff. I mean, she's worked, she was in acoustic music and then electronica, and her work kind of seems to exist between those two races. Anyway, I really liked the score. And I, afterwards, I got in touch with Anna and said, what's the primary instrument that's playing all the way through it? She said, it's recorders. And of course, of course it's recorders.

1:09:29And she said to me that for her, the recorder was like the sound of innocence, because firstly, it's quite often the first instrument anyone ever learns to play. But also, she said we have tiny little recorders using them, really, really big recorders, this whole sort of range of recorders creating this sound. And then there are strings that kind of come in and invade the purity of that sound. And then there's this weird glissando thing coming in, in a sort of Mika Levy kind of way. anyway the score is great but the thing that the score does is exactly what the film needs you to do which is to ground it make it work as a story that you believe in emotionally and then you just forget about the fact that it's bonkers it's absolutely bonkers and um anyway i really enjoyed it olivia colman seems to be having the time of her life it's quite quite quite hard to describe, but I think you'd really love it.

1:10:26And it's very, very moving and very funny. Sounds like, I thought you were going to say, I think you'll hate it. No, no, you won't hate it. You absolutely won't hate it. I think you'll really like it. I think, although this is a completely different thing, the part of you that loves the Princess Bride will love this. Because, you know, through countless eons, the man of straw means kind of

1:10:50Mark Kermode: trauma. Exactly. Weakness. But the wicker man doesn't. And incidentally, there is some wicker man burniness as well, which I thought was a kind of, you know, there's a whole thing about he's very flammable, which of course, when you said, is there a wicker man thing going on? You know, there is a bit of that going on. A little bit of woodwood in there. A little bit of woodwood in there. That's what we need. Okay. So that's wicker, which in any other week you might think is going to be movie of the week. However, you know, one might suspect that the terms and conditions of this show are slightly altered by what's on the way.

1:11:25Mark Kermode: Before we get there, we have some what's on stuff to bring you. So this is where you send us, hopefully a video. If it's an audio file, then that's OK. Stuff that is cinematic and close to you or cinema adjacent. For example, here's Claire. We're celebrating 20 years of powerful storytelling at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival this October and November. Our flagship Focus on Film programme returns, reminding us that great cinema doesn't just entertain, it reflects who we are. Join us for exclusive previews of Cleo Bernard's icy buildings fall like lightning, world-class short film collections, and rare big screen outings for landmark classics like Carrie and A Woman Under the Influence.

1:12:09All complete with live post-screening discussions.

1:12:12Mark Kermode: All right, that's very good, Claire. That's great. Thank you very much indeed. Love Clive Arnold. Love Clive Arnold. Next, to South Wales. Hello, Mark and Simon. Mike here from Crosshand Cinema in Carmarthenshire. On Thursday, 29th of October, we will be hosting our first ever Horror Double Bill. Our audience are in for a real treat with The Omen, which celebrates 50 years, and The Original Scream, which celebrates 30. doors open at 7 30 p.m with money raised from the event going directly into the continued running of this volunteer-led independent cinema which is currently crowdfunding for a new projector details of the event and our crowdfunding campaign can be found on our website www.crosshandshallandcinema.co.uk thanks thank you mike and just for clarification the crosshands Holland Cinema is all one word and all lower case.

1:13:07Mark Kermode: But thanks for that one. Get that projector. And we have one more here.

1:13:34Mark Kermode: multimedia experience could be for you. All created by humans without the use of any AI. We are travelling all over the UK, so check out our website for tickets and details. Nice. Yes, it was nice, wasn't it? Nice. And I've got a website which is tomthorpe.co.uk so I imagine that was probably Tom doing the voiceover. Could well have been. Thank you very much indeed. Please send your videos to the usual address, correspondence at carbonama.com Next, the devil's colon the director's cut. Have we got time for this this week? Maybe we could drop it and move on to other matters. No, it looks as though we have to press on.

1:14:11Mark Kermode: So take it away. But you know, it is 1049. Ken Russell's The Devils' Director's Cut. Okay, so Ken Russell's 1971 masterpiece, which was adapted from Aldous Huxley's book and John unwhiting stage play. True account of 17th century France, a cautionary tale about the unholy marriage of church and state. Oliver Reed is Urban Grandier, who's a troublesome priest in the wall city of Loudoun. Richter and the king want to knock down the walls of Loudoun to take away its independence. But to do that, they have to discredit Grandier. And they do that with the help of Vanessa Redgrave's sister Jeanne, who is kind of suffering from a kind of hysterical delusion and who, along with the convent of Ursuline nuns, claims to be the victim of sorcery and possession by Grandier.

1:15:08So the whole thing is it's called the devils, but there aren't any demonic devils here. All the devils here are human. I saw it in 1979 on a double bill with the exorcist. So that was quite the evening. Bit of an overload. Really, really was. And when I first met Ken Russell in 95, I said to Ken, I love The Devils. And he said, yeah, but the version that you've seen is damaged goods because of how much it was cut when it first came out. He said it was a political film. He said it was his only political film. He described it as a film about brainwashing and about, as I said, unholy marriage of church and state and about the politicization of religious hysteria.

1:15:48And he described to me a sequence in it in which that politicization of religious hysteria was dramatized in this sequence in which the allegedly possessed nuns in the cathedral who are doing this kind of performative pantomime of blasphemy at the, basically at the behest of the authorities, is intercut with Grandier, the character played by Oliver Reed, finding his own faith, breaking bread. taking communion by a roadside. And for Ken, this was the center of the film, these two different paths. One of them is about real spiritual enrichment, and the other was about the utter debasement of the rituals of Christianity and the church.

1:16:33And this sequence was pretty much removed in its entirety. And he said, it was some of my best work. And I said, Ken, you must find it. He said, you can't, it's gone. It's almost certainly been destroyed. And I said, no, Ken, we will find it which was a stupid thing to say because i'm a journalist right that's all i am for years you can't have known no i didn't no i didn't i just said it because i'm tend to be over enthusiastic anyway to cut a long story short what happened was because i had been working stuff with warners because of the exorcist documentary i started making inquiries in the in warner brothers in america i'm not an archivist i've never been into an archive but i asked other people you know can you look can you see if there's anything at one point we enlisted a very respected archivist, didn't get anywhere at all.

1:17:18And then in 2000, I was making a documentary, Hell on Earth, about the devils. And I was directed to Warners in the UK. And at Warner in the UK, I was introduced to this guy, Tim Everett, who is the kind of the magician in all this story. And Tim started going through logs and showing me, he said, actually, I think the devil stuff is here in the UK. And we were going through some stuff and there was something which caught our attention, which was a reel of film that appeared to be mislabeled. And I said to Tim Everett, you know, can you find it? Can you get it? And he said, I'll try. And I was standing in Mothercare in Southampton and the phone rang and it was Tim Everett.

1:18:03And he said, Mark, I have the reel of film. I opened it and it smelled of vinegar. So I've sent it off to be washed, to be preserved because it started to disintegrate. But what I can tell you is I looked at the first couple of frames and there's a bunch of nuns and a huge crucifix and i rang ken ross and said ken you remember that sequence that you said was some of your best work i think we found it and what then happened was that we used those sequences in the documentary in hell on earth and then a couple of years later ken's editor mike bradsall working with paul joyce who produced who directed hell on earth and uh and and ken rossall put that sequence and another sequence which we had found at the same time which was on that same reel that Tim located and we put them back into a digi-beater to make a director's cut of The Devils and Ken loved it and we played it at the National Film Theatre in 2004 a season that Linda and I the good lady professor, her indoors and I put on and it got a standing ovation and it was great and then we thought this is going to be the whole thing's going to be renovated and we're going to be restored and then it didn't happen and it didn't happen and it didn't happen did that for five years, 10 years, 15 years, 22 years later.

1:19:12A new label is set up within Warner. It's called Warner Clockwork. What's the reason for that? There's no enthusiasm for it and also because the material was considered to be pretty incendiary. The only justification we were ever given was the distasteful tonality of the material, of the pantomime of blasphemy in the church was seen by the Americans, not by the Brits, but by the Americans as being a problem. freedom of speech did that not count for anything the word americans i think was the key word sorry um and then there's this new label warner clockwork and these two guys who set it up spencer and christian who came from neon got in touch with me when i was in berlin you know i was in berlin with a good lady fessa her indoors and said we're doing a restoration of the devils and uh and i said how and they said well we thought it was a great idea and we told them it was a great idea and they said great and they did it and as you know it premiered in can and suddenly it became the coolest film in can it was described as both the coolest movie and the hottest ticket in town it tore the roof off the place and then they put out a try i'm gonna here is the trailer yes yeah i'll play a bit of it because remember this is a film from 1971 but this is a trailer from 2026 I want to tell you.

1:20:32You have perverted Christ's own teaching.

1:20:38You have perverted the innocent.

1:20:43Mark Kermode: The devil is a liar.

1:20:48Mark Kermode: And the father of lies.

1:20:53Mark Kermode: Confess! You have seduced the people! Confess! In order to destroy them! Confess! That's amazing. That sounds like John Carpenter's music. Who's doing that? Well, that music is not from the film, of course, because the music from the film is Peter Maxwell Davis, whose score is incredibly avant-garde. But that sounds like a John Carpenter soundtrack. Yeah, it hadn't occurred to me, but yeah, it does. It's got that kind of squishiness going on. So look, here's the thing with the Devils. After all this time, this is finally the cut that Ken wanted people to see. Career best performances from Vanessa Redgrave, a sister-chan, and Oliver Reed, who has never been better than Urban Grandier.

1:21:36And amazing supporting performances from Dudley Sutton, from Georgina Hale. Just astonishing stuff. The sets are designed by Derek Jarman. This was Derek Jarman's big breakthrough because Ken wanted the sets to look modern because he said the whole thing is if you're in Ludon in the 17th century. It doesn't look like an old city. It looks like a new city. It looks like something from Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It looks absolutely astonishing. Costume designs by Shirley Russell, which are just like so cutting edge. Everything about it was cutting edge. Everything about it was like about as forward looking as you could be.

1:22:12But the thing that's really important is it is a film about something. It is about the way in which religious hysteria is used to a political end And Ken, I think Ken thought it was his best work. I think it's absolutely Russell's best work. And the most astonishing thing about it is watching it now, because it's a story set in the past. It's from 17th century France. And when it came out in 1971, it meant certain things. Ken said back then it was about brainwashing and maybe about television. If you look at it now, this parable about corrupt political authorities using religious hysteria to disseminate lies for their own political enrichment, it's like you could not have made it more modern.

1:23:00It looks astonishing. I played a very small part in this coming to fruition. So many people have been involved in it. The Warner Archive team have done an incredible job of restoring it. Like I said, I do have a vested interest in it in as much as, you know, for however many years it was, I've been saying we need to have this thing released. I can't quite believe it's out there in cinemas. It is an absolute stone cold masterpiece. In America, the 35mm screenings sold out in 15 minutes. So much so that they had to, you know, they had to book in a whole bunch more of them. The Devils is back on the big screen in the format it was meant to be in.

1:23:40And it's been a very, very long journey. But I kind of feel like there, that, and the final word, in the documentary, in Hell on Earth, my great friend Nigel Floyd is trying to describe what it is about the devils that is so remarkable. And he says this phrase that I keep quoting. He says, it is a film that is a film. And it's like, it's not a script. It is a film that is a film. 18 rated. NC-17 in America. NC-17. It's even reignited the debate about proper grown-up certificates in America.

1:24:15Mark Kermode: An email from David Zuga. Okay. I've been a devoted colonial commoner for many years, but until now you've given me nothing. Nothing that is but witty banter, endless reviews, bad jokes, touching emails, epic rants, and a good many in-jokes and references. Hello to Fairport and Jeremy Irons. I'm writing to say you've finally given me a personal gift as I went with my film mad son to see the reconstituted the devils in times square last night wow he's one of the people wow as the mayhem concluded with my eyes burning and my emotions churning i waited to see if your work on restoring this amazing film would appear in the end credits when it finally did the audience applauded now actually they had mostly fired out the loud applause for you was in my mind but thanks anyway and congratulations on concluding a long and complicated journey to give us all this gift.

1:25:04Mark Kermode: I thank you, but more important, film history thanks you. There is no film quite like The Devil's, and there may never be one. Certainly there will never be a duo like Red Grave and Reed, says David Zuga. So what's your credit? It just says, and thanks, with thanks to Mark Kermode. At the end, when it says the restoration from 2004, it was done by Mike Bradsell and Paul Joyce, and it says, and thanks to Mark Kermode, because I'd been the sort of, as I said, I've never been an archivist. I've never been into an archive in my life. All I've ever done is been the really annoying person who just keeps going back and going, could you look again?

1:25:38Could you see if it's there? Have you got a film credit before? Yeah, I was credited with post-production propaganda on a film some time ago. And I think you and I have been thanked on a film. Well, we're in. We're actually in that film.

1:25:53Mark Kermode: We're in that film, yeah, yeah. But anyway, so this is your widescreen debut, is it? Big screen? 35 mil yeah to all intents and purposes yes it is alright well that's it for this week this has been a Sony Music Entertainment production this week's team was Dom, Eric, Josh, Heather and Abby the reductor of Simon Paul even though he's on holiday again again I think it's does he work at all? I think it's because his team have had a humiliating week but you know it coincides with half term so maybe it's more likely that in take two we're directing you to the Overflow car park for more chat about current film releases giving you some film viewing suggestions related to one of this week's new releases which is ghosts of which there have been quite a few and don't forget we're in Bristol in December Mark what is your film of the week?

1:26:40Mark Kermode: Ken Russell's The Devil's Director's Cut and just for the other movies if it wasn't, I mean obviously this is always going to be the movie of the week of the others, if there was like and Wicker is the other one. Thank you very much indeed, next week Martin McDonough is back with us to talk about his new film Wild Horse Nine and don't forget Take Two has landed adjacent to this one.