Is ICE CREAM MAN Eli Roth’s most chilling work or does it need more sprinkles? + Taika Waititi

0:00Mark Kermode: 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.

0:21Taika Waititi: 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. While Shopify does all the hard work, because Shopify handles the setup and checkout, you have more time to focus on growing your business and the tools to do it.

0:41Mark Kermode: 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.

0:50Taika Waititi: 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.

1:00Mark Kermode: Start your free trial at shopify.co.uk slash take.

1:05Taika Waititi: Is your home wish list just sitting in your cart? Well, get ready to hit checkout because Wayday at Wayfair starts October 24th with up to 80 % off everything home. That new sofa, the rug you've been eyeing, the upgrades you've been putting off, they could all be way less during Wayday. It's Wayfair's biggest sale of the year. So make your list and mark your calendar. Shop Wayday starting October 24th for up to 80 % off everything home at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home.

1:35Mark Kermode: Before we begin, a quick reminder that you can become a Vanguard Easter and get an extra episode every Thursday. Including bonus reviews. Extra viewing suggestions.

1:45Taika Waititi: Viewing recommendations at home and in cinemas.

1:48Mark Kermode: Plus your film and non-film questions answered as best we can in Questions Schmestions.

1:52Taika Waititi: You can get all that extra stuff via Apple Podcasts or head to extratakes.com for non-fruit related devices.

1:59Mark Kermode: There's never been 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.

2:22Mark Kermode: Are your headphones at the right level, Mark?

2:24Taika Waititi: My headphones are now at the right level since we're in the studio and the top production team have now managed to get... Because you, for the first time, I think, asked for your headphones to be turned up. It's usually me.

2:35Mark Kermode: Well, normally they're too... Well, yeah, also, we're normally at home. So you just do it yourself. I can do it myself. It's my responsibility. It's too quiet. It's like all my own fault. But yeah, so I wanted some more. But we're not at the Robbie Vincent level.

2:50Taika Waititi: Because Robbie Vincent had a preamp on his headphones, right?

2:54Mark Kermode: Yes. I mean, Robbie is still doing his soul shows and R &B shows and stuff. And when he was at Radio 1, I'm sure I've mentioned this before, the headphones are limited at the BBC because it's a legal requirement. So they're limited everywhere. That's right. Standard rule, not to deafen people. But that's not loud enough for some old timers. And so he had a preamp, which he plugged into the desk and then plugged his headphones in. They like jumped off the table. You didn't need speakers in the room, basically. You just need Robbie's headphones.

3:19Taika Waititi: But, and as we've said, Fluff Freeman had really loud headphones.

3:23Mark Kermode: I think that generation, I mean, I suspect I listen to music far louder than the rest of the family do. Can you turn that down? Can you turn that down?

3:32Taika Waititi: Does your phone do that thing about telling you that you've been listening to music too loud and telling you off?

3:38Mark Kermode: No.

3:38Taika Waititi: Mine does. It's really annoying. My phone says, based on your listening levels for the last three days, you need to turn things down. And I think... Does it have that tone? No, it's a message. It comes up as a thing. It probably says it. Because I've disabled all the speaky parts of my phone. I've disabled Siri. And I've disabled anything. I want the phone to not be talking to me or not listening to me. I just want it to make calls and go on the internet occasionally.

4:02Mark Kermode: But there's clearly something else you need to switch off. I know.

4:05Taika Waititi: The naggy feature. I know. The naggy feature. That literally, they're like, what are you, my mum? No, I want to listen to it this loud.

4:12Mark Kermode: I switched off the thing that says you need to stand up. Because it normally occurs in the middle of a screening or something like that. Yeah, it says you need to stand up and exercise. No, thanks. I'll decide if I... Sometimes I can't stand up because I'm working or, you know, watching a movie.

4:26Taika Waititi: My car as well. My car does this thing. It goes, drive a coffee break or, you know, literally a cup of coffee comes up on the screen. Does it make the coffee?

4:36Mark Kermode: No. That would be good. You're looking tired. Here, have some coffee.

4:41Taika Waititi: Have some coffee. But no, it just, a cup of coffee comes up on the screen and it tells me I need to take a break. And it would do it like five minutes. after I've been in a service station.

4:49Mark Kermode: I bet. You know Elvis's car, which is in the... Which is in Graceland. Well, okay. There is an Elvis car in the Nashville Museum of Country Music.

5:00Taika Waititi: Oh, fine. Elvis had more than one car. What is it?

5:03Mark Kermode: The pink Cadillac? It had an LP player under the dashboard. Yeah, the whole thing. But that kind of device, like the Batmobile kind of thing, is there anywhere a car that says, you're looking tired, here, have an espresso? That would be fantastic.

5:18Taika Waititi: There used to be drinks dispensers in the backs of cars, didn't there? I mean, I know when you get sort of stretch limos and all that sort of thing. But if you got a posh car, there'd be like, sometimes there'd be like glass, you know, plant holders, you know, like vases, glass vases, and then like a little drinks car. I mean, there are still little holes in the plastic. No, but they're just for putting coffee in. That's for putting the coffee in that the car hasn't made you. But how annoying is it that the car suddenly says, you need a cup of coffee? go what it's not like i've been driving erratically i'm on the a30 doing 55 yeah i always i don't mind

5:53Mark Kermode: i suppose if you're on your own maybe it's useful to be you know maybe you're driving maybe your driving was erratic and unpredictable my driving was not erratic it might have been no it wasn't

6:03Taika Waititi: i tell you how i know it wasn't because i use cruise control right i exactly i discovered cruise control about two years ago and it's brilliant right i always thought you can't ever use cruise control the only place you can use cruise control is in america because in america you set cruise control at 55 and you drive for five days and you're still in the same place right that's why the only british road movie really is radio on which he gets in a car in london and he stops in bristol but that whole thing about um you know not not speeding is that that one of the i discovered that one of the ways to do it is just just you know set your cruise control to 65 that way you'll never drift over 70 you just put set it for 65 and so i drive it that and then also So in our car, it does a thing about if you're getting close to another car, it says, oh, you're close to that car.

6:51Taika Waititi: I don't know what it is. I've got like an AI car.

6:54Mark Kermode: You're not as good as a driver as you think you are. That's basically what I think.

6:57Taika Waititi: Well, I think the way it is at the moment, I could just go to sleep and the car would drive itself. But then it would wake me up and tell me I needed a cup of coffee.

7:03Mark Kermode: I mean, I think what's really, I bet there is a super luxe car somewhere which makes emergency coffees, hands them out.

7:11Taika Waititi: Would you be happy going in one of the driverless cabs?

7:16Mark Kermode: yes i think so yes i think so because the driverless cab wouldn't go see the football also some some of the i mean let's hear it for taxi drivers etc but i've had some bad ones he's not watching he's watching his phone or whatever you know so um that's right the driverless

7:35Taika Waititi: cab is never on the phone to its wife going yeah no i'll be i'll be back but i've just got you i'm just outside i've got just pick this up and then i'm around the corner yeah anyway what are we

7:44Mark Kermode: doing oh yes we're doing a podcast about uh movies and stuff what are you talking about

7:48Taika Waititi: uh we're reviewing three very different films love me tender which is a french drama with vicky creeps summer book which is an adaptation of summer booken oh by by tovi jansen and ice cream man which is the new film by uh eli roth which sadly doesn't feature the jonathan richmond

8:05Mark Kermode: ice cream man what about um the very popular take two what's happening there so we will also be

8:11Taika Waititi: in take two, reissues are flushed away, which is the ongoing Aardman animation reissues, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which brings us to our special guest in take one. Oh, we've already done him. Yes, Taika Waititi.

8:23Mark Kermode: He's good, isn't he, really? Yes, and it's the 10th anniversary, and it's in 4K, and it's in cinemas and digital platforms from this Friday. Plus a new occasional feature called Take Insert Year. Yes. And the year we're inserting is 1976. which is fantastic is it? well I guarantee you

8:44Taika Waititi: when we get to it what's the idea of that then? so it's you know it's 50 years ago it was 50 years ago today I know it was 20 years ago today 50 years ago was it 50? that is 50 isn't it? yeah in fact 50 years ago in 1976 so we're just going to be looking back at the chart from 1976 rocking yes and going wow that was a good year to be going to the cinema

9:03Mark Kermode: a reminder you can get take two ad free by heading to our Patreon page just search Kermit and my own Patreon and you will find us and there are some tickets left for Bristol on December the 6th. I can understand if you haven't grabbed a ticket because you're thinking... For the Christmas show. It's December. I haven't even had my summer holiday yet. Stop telling me about Christmas. But anyway, you don't want to miss out. The ticket link is in the show notes. People of Clevedon, Western Supermare, Gloucester and Chepstow. We're looking forward to seeing you there. It's only 75 minutes from Birmingham.

9:32Mark Kermode: So come on, Brummies, get booking. This is sounding a bit desperate, so I'm not going to adopt that tone. I haven't done a show from Western Supermare. since taking Jason Donovan on the Radio 1 Roadshow. Not that we're going to Western Supermare, but, you know. You did the Radio 1 Roadshow with Jason Donovan? Western Supermare completely seized up because it was the most exciting thing happening that summer.

9:53Taika Waititi: Okay, and Supermare means on the seafront, does it? Supermare above the sea?

9:59Mark Kermode: Yes, I mean, I'm not an expert here, but I'm imagining that that probably means that. Okay, and how was Jason? It was Jason Donovan. He did his super poptastic hats, you know, which he wore through, he changed them, I think every other song.

10:12Taika Waititi: What was he like? He's a nice guy. Never met him? No, I've never met him. Have you not met him? No, I haven't. He did Joseph in the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat forever. He did do that. Yeah. Because when the band that I was in won the International Street and Standings of the Year Award, I don't know why you're pulling that.

10:28Mark Kermode: Strange distraction. We're off on a strange...

10:30Taika Waititi: When we won the International Street and Standings of the Year Award in 19... The final was held at the London Palladium. So for one night, Jason wasn't on stage doing Joseph and his amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat because the International Street End Steins of the Year was happening there. And we walked past what would have been his dressing room.

10:49Mark Kermode: That anecdote might be edited out, I'm thinking, but you never know, do you? Melinda Roberts. Hello, Melinda. Simon and Mark, we're currently on holiday in the Dordogne and I've been enjoying relaxing by the pool whilst catching up on your podcast. One evening last week, we attended a rather lovely event at Jardin Marquisac, which are very beautiful. On the evening we went, they were hosting various musical ensembles stationed at various points around the vast gardens, jazz groups, Irish musicians, a saxophonist ensemble, and so on. While looking out over the beautiful view, I was startled and concerned to hear a cry for help.

11:22Mark Kermode: Moving towards the direction, the cry, I was reminded of your good selves as I spotted a peacock strutting its stuff while making the cry that all vanguardistas will now know is not in reality a child in distress, but is Mark doing an impression of a peacock. Anyway, my real reason for getting in touch is to let you know, now this switches into Melinda Roberts' Christmas newsletter to all her family and friends. Getting in touch is to let you know the latest achievement of my son, Zach Roberts. You may recall him from a previous email. He was doubling for Paul Mescal in Gladiator. I do remember that.

11:56Mark Kermode: Zach and three of his colleagues have been nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Stunt Performance for their work in Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Zach and his wife Joanna will be attending the ceremony in September at the fittingly named Peacock Theatre in L.A. We are obviously extremely proud of him, whatever the outcome. He and Joanna welcomed their latest stunt girl, Goldie, to the family in May 25. So she's a stunt girl already. Wow. And she's already demonstrated her potential by riding horses. With just a little support. behind her back, I would think, like a parent.

12:28Taika Waititi: We'll keep you posted.

12:30Mark Kermode: Anyway, if you want to big up your family, just get in touch.

12:32Taika Waititi: You're supposed to support like a parent.

12:33Mark Kermode: Yeah, that's what you have to do, isn't it? Just sit there. I don't think I'd get on a horse with a baby. No, thank you. Have you seen my horse-related skull? Look. Where is that? What do you mean there? There. Oh, that thing there. That massive thing there. What did we...

12:47Taika Waititi: I was pony trekking in Wales. Why? My parents wanted a holiday without their children, so they sent us on an adventure holiday, PGL, and I was pony trekking in Wales and this pony kicked or whatever it was, or bucked and it threw me off and I went down the side of a ravine and I put my hand out to break my fall and it snapped both the bones in my arm in half. I had to have it plated. Wow.

13:10Mark Kermode: Yeah.

13:11Taika Waititi: So you're like the$6 million man.

13:12Mark Kermode: I'm exactly. You've fallen apart or Robocop, maybe you're Robocop. Do you have special powers? If you punch someone with that hand, you know, like Benedict Cumberbatch, would it be extra hurting?

13:24Taika Waititi: Well, it was always, I don't know if you remember the thing with the$6 million man. You know, we can rebuild him. We can make him better than he was before. It was only one of his legs that they rebuilt. So why didn't he run around in circles? That's true. It's like, it doesn't make any sense.

13:36Mark Kermode: So is the metal still in your arm?

13:38Taika Waititi: No, they had to take it out a year later because I was still growing. They said to me when they put it in, they said, it's okay. It's a spiral plate. It will grow with you. And then a year later, they wrote to me and said, actually, it wasn't a spiral plate. It was just a bit of Meccano. And we'll have to take it out. And I've still got it. I've still got the... How did they not know what kind of plate they put in? I think they were just busy.

13:58Mark Kermode: Hmm. Hmm. Okay. Okay. Correspondenceofcabinboh.com. What's out then? What are you going to review here?

14:04Taika Waititi: Ice Cream Man, which is the new film from Eli Roth. Now, you remember Eli Roth? Eli Roth came in when Cabin Fever came out. Yes. And he was a sort of wunderkind. And then he downshifted into those sort of torture-porny hostel movies. And then he was... There was the grindhouse thing with Tarantino. And then he made the absolutely dreadful Green Inferno and then he made that really weird film The House with a Clock in Its Walls.

14:27Mark Kermode: Oh yes I do remember that.

14:29Taika Waititi: Which is like the strangest kind of career left turn and most recently he did that video. Was that with Jack Black? With Jack Black.

14:37Mark Kermode: I think he came on the show to talk about it. Precisely I do too. Actually we just wanted to talk about all the other films he'd been doing.

14:44Taika Waititi: Can we talk about School of Rock? Anyway so this is the first film from Eli Roth's horror section label. He's co-writing and directing. It's basically, it's like an episode of The Twilight Zone, but with massively more amounts of gore and then traditional kind of Eli Roth trademark bad taste sensibility. So set in a blue velvety type America, American suburbia, kids play baseball and they bully each other. They have dinner with their parents who go to the PTA. And then into this town comes the ice cream van, which is driven by this becapped presence who looks like John Waters, basically, and plays this cracked earworm theme.

15:23Taika Waititi: And the ice cream man hands out ice creams to all the kids who immediately turn into homicidal monsters and start butchering their parents and their teachers. is a clip from the trailer.

16:10Mark Kermode: you get the idea so yeah i think i've got the whole the whole movie the whole film so loads

16:14Taika Waititi: of scenes of young kids ripping out adult intestines squishing their parents faces under seesaws in the play park driving microscopes into their teacher's eyes there is a small group of people who who who aren't infected by the ice cream but due to lactose intolerance in one particular case, that one of them does eat the ice cream and then throws up. And the fact that throwing up solves the problem enables Eli Roth to make a joke about, I'm a girl, of course I know how to throw up. So a joke about anorexia, which is kind of, it's what Eli Roth does, you know, alongside jokes about child molestation.

16:53Taika Waititi: And anyway, so when I lived in Hume in Manchester, and there is a reason I'm saying this, there was a thing that used to happen, which was at about sort of eight o 'clock at night, this ice cream van, which we used to refer to, me and Phil Gladman, who I shared a flat with, we used to refer to as the ice cream van of the apocalypse, would drive around here. I have no idea what it was selling. I'm pretty certain it wasn't ice cream, but it had - Was it hard drugs? Who knows? It's entirely possible. Or maybe it was just some very bad independent records, but it would drive around making this clang, clang, clang, clang sound.

17:25Taika Waititi: And Phil and I would go, look, there goes the ice cream van of the apocalypse. And it would be followed by a bunch of crusties with a dog on a string. You know, it's unusual. So I know what it's like. Meanwhile, you'd hear it and you'd see it glowing through the pestilential cloud of foul-smelling gas that came off the Harp Lager factory that once literally came out of the factory and then sat over human-caused everybody's eyes.

17:47Mark Kermode: Sounds like the apocalypse.

17:48Taika Waititi: Exactly. Hence the ice cream van of the apocalypse. So look, the thing is, I do understand the idea of the scary ice cream van. As for this, it is not Eli Roth's worst movie by any means. It is not Eli Roth's best movie, because Eli Roth, weirdly, is like Orson Welles. And I know that's going to be taken out of context, so I want to do it like this. It's like Orson Welles. He made his best film first, and then he never came anywhere close to making another film as good as that. And that is the only way in which Eli Roth is like Orson Welles. This is sort of mid-range Eli Roth. If you were being charitable, you'd say it's a cross between Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure, Village of the Damned, Stand By Me, and Night of the Living Dead.

18:32Taika Waititi: And I can imagine that if it was at a horror festival, people would, you know, they'd like the squishy. There's lots and lots of squishy, tasteless gore. They'd like the fact that there are nods to Night of the Living Dead specifically. And there's one part when they're in a graveyard and there's a graveyard that says McNaughton. And I imagine that that's a joke about John McNaughton and Henry Portrait of a serial code. So it's got all that stuff going on in it. And it's got the usual, you know, Eli Roth squishy splatter, some of which is fun, some of which isn't. There's a certain frisson in the idea of the ice cream van comes, you know, gives the kids things and the kids all turn into a marauding monstrous army.

19:11the problem with that is we've had weapons and after in the in the wake of a film like weapons

19:18Taika Waititi: in which that whole idea about the kids running out of their houses and then being being to i mean you remember the scene in weapons in which the kids go after it's great it's terrifying right and when i was reviewing that film i said that's like screamers it's a really really weird film from uh actually from a previous century now which used that that idea about weaponized kids so in the wake of that it is impossible to look at ice cream man and go oh well that's it you know that's a kind of excitingly um uh edgy idea because it isn't it's it's just it's just that idea played for kind of goofy splattery also the central sins of the father's thing is a lift from nightmare on elm street so but look in in a world in which you've got movies like weapons which are which are which is a really really good film this is just the latest eli roth thing and then as i said it doesn't feature jonathan richmond's ice cream man which is one of my favorite songs of all time does have music by snoop dogg um so it's very very much vanilla eli roth and it's one and it's one central idea which is kids eat ice cream and kill and kill the adults would have seemed a would have seemed edgier in a world in which weapons hadn't been so recently in everyone's memory as quite simply one of the best films of recent years so the ice cream man is selling

20:35Mark Kermode: vanilla ice cream only and not Ripple or chocolate chip pretty much yeah okay well I might give that a miss if that's alright with you I didn't think

20:44Taika Waititi: you were ever going to see it

20:46Mark Kermode: there was no part of me that thought you were going to see it no the trailer made me not want to see it yeah Hannah says lads I'm a few weeks behind but listening to your chat on Psycho oh we need an ad break okay so here's some ads

21:05Mark Kermode: Hey Mark Kermode Fancy a fun quick fire quiz? I thought you'd never ask Great How do you protect yourself from spoilers? Well you 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 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?

21:32Taika Waititi: Okay, is that part of the quiz?

21:33Mark Kermode: I'm doing the questions, thank you. How do you protect yourself from online scams?

21:38Taika Waititi: 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.

21:52Mark Kermode: 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.

22:27Taika Waititi: It's Wayfair's biggest sale of the year, so make your list and mark your calendar. Shop Wayfair starting October 24th for up to 80 % off everything home at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home.

22:47Mark Kermode: Right. An email from Hannah, as I was saying. Lads, I'm a few weeks behind, but listening to your chat on Psycho unearthed some childhood scars. When I was eight, if you put yourself into this situation, you can see why Hannah would be traumatized. When I was eight, we went on a family holiday to Orlando, Florida, to do all the theme parks, including universals. I'd not seen Psycho at this point. Well, you are eight. But while there, my mom and dad decided to buy a new shower curtain from the gift shop. Back home, they proudly put up the new shower curtain. Aren't shower curtains horrible things anyway?

23:22Taika Waititi: All of them. And when you stand in the shower, the first thing they do, they stick to your body. Yes, which is ridiculous. And when it's in a hotel, you know that that shower curtain is stuck to the body of the previous person to stand in the shower. And there's a sign which says, please close the shower curtain. You think, no.

23:35Mark Kermode: Anyway, they put up the new shower curtain to reveal the printed silhouette of Norman Bates in a wig holding a dagger. For years, growing up, I had to check the bath for potential murderers until they finally got rid of the bath and we had a walk-in shower instead. it took me a long time to watch Psycho as an adult and while I agree it's an excellent film once is enough, thank you keep up the good work, love the show Steve because I think we could do a shower curtain I'll contact the merchandise department but I'm sure there is a kind of like a silhouette of us I mean apart from the fact that shower curtains are really annoying

24:07Taika Waititi: do you want a silhouette of us watching you while you shower? do you remember the bit in High Anxiety? do you remember with the shower scene in that? and the guy keeps saying to the guy I need the newspaper, I need the newspaper, I need the newspaper, I need the newspaper. And then he's in the shower, and you see the silhouette come up, and he pulls back, and he says, here's your newspaper, and he hits him with the newspaper, and then the ink goes down the thing.

24:29Mark Kermode: I think in general, a shower with a curtain is a bad thing. Yes. It's a bad design. Have a shower or a bath. Yeah. Not a shower in a bath. It seems crazy. Do we need ads? No, we don't. We've just done them. Yeah, but they were good. They were good, particularly the ones...

24:45Taika Waititi: I'm going to go out and buy all of those things straight away.

24:47Mark Kermode: I am going to buy two of them. Yes. If that's possible. But I do wholeheartedly endorse everything that we've just advertised. I could be a hostage to fortune.

24:57Taika Waititi: They do that in America, don't they? My name's Dingy Bong, and I endorse this message or support this message or whatever it is. Yeah, that's right.

25:04Mark Kermode: Well, obviously you do because you're in the app. That's where you pay for it. We're departing slightly now in this section of the show because we actually, although this appears to be a live radio show, that's what people think, we actually pre-recorded it a while back. We did. At Christmas. And this is normally where we do the chart. And we're still doing a chart, but it's just a different chart. It's the UK top 10 films in the box office in 1976. Wow. Which is an interesting thing. Before we get into it, though, I regretfully have to inform you that the redactor has created a bespoke theme tune for this feature.

25:41Mark Kermode: Oh, dear.

25:46Taika Waititi: Does he just get these from his home entertainment system? On the conveyor belt. That's right, yeah. Cuddly toy.

25:52Mark Kermode: That needs some quick. Callaghan stepped up to do the trick. The sun beat down till fields look sick. And Britain baked through 76. I didn't know that was... That's him singing. ...kept swimmers from the sea. The pink panther browed with glee. President's men uncovered tricks.

26:08Taika Waititi: Welcome to Tate 1976. Concord crossed the ocean slick, the Cod War gave the fleet some stick,

26:16Mark Kermode: a new Cortina joined the motoring mix, the toast of every dad in 76. Dog Day Afternoon matched the climate mix, Buxy Malone had splurge gun kicks, a cuckoo's nest impressed the critics, welcome to take 1976, Sex Pistols shocked Bill Grundy stiff, the interview went rapidly adrift, a few choice words, a culture shift, and punk gave Britain quite a lift. That didn't work out. Murgentron was quick and fast. Marathon Man was built to last. The man who would be king had imperial tricks. Welcome to Tape 1976.

26:50Taika Waititi: He is building his part up, isn't he? I thought that was just going to be like... That's what I thought.

26:54Mark Kermode: ...music that we talked over.

26:55Taika Waititi: Yeah, and then we did start talking over it, and then we realised that there was a voice, and then we realised that that was the redactor.

27:01Mark Kermode: Well, that was quite scary, I have to say. Also... The Redactor Sings could be a new album, I think. Definitely. everyone comes free with a Kermit and Mayo shower curtain

27:12Taika Waititi: do you remember Stiff Records released an album called The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan and it was just blank

27:19Mark Kermode: yes I think I think that was originally that original joke was Tom Paxton who had a track on an album called The Wit and Wisdom of Spiro Agnew and it was just an empty track it was just absolutely nothing

27:32Taika Waititi: and do you know the thing about what Spiro Agnew is an anagram of is it absolute tosser No, it's from Spyro Agnew is an anagram of Grow a Penis. Is that right?

27:41Mark Kermode: That's not a very good thing. Anyway, we're off topic. So we're going to run down the box office hits. You just heard them.

27:48Taika Waititi: You just heard the box office hits in the tune.

27:51Mark Kermode: You literally did a plot spoiler jingle. But this box office is closer in time to the jazz singer and Metropolis than it is to today.

28:01Taika Waititi: Which says a lot.

28:03Mark Kermode: Okay. It does. So we've got 11 here. Why have we got 11? Anyway, well, specifically...

28:08Taika Waititi: Because he wanted to get Dog Day Afternoon.

28:10Mark Kermode: Dog Day Afternoon is at 11. Great movie. At the Earth's Core is at 10. Marathon Man is at 9. The Bad News Bears is at 8. Bugsy Malone at 7. The Man Who Would Be King at 6. Logan's Run at 5. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at 4. All the President's Men at 3. The Return of the Pink Panther at number 2. And Jaws was number 1. That's a heck of a top 10. That's pretty good, isn't it? So we asked our patronisters if they could better that year. Theo Waters says, for me, the answer is 1977. Okay, so we've just moved on one year. I can work that out from 76 to 77. As it produced many of my personal favorite films.

28:49Mark Kermode: Eraserhead, Suspiria, dare I say the greatest horror movie film ever made. Sorry, Mark. The Ascent.

28:58Mark Kermode: Strotzak, Herzog's greatest and most existential film. House, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Abigail's Party. Considering Mark's picks for 76, I think it's safe to say that the 70s were a great decade for film. Just to be clear, that's not Mark's picks. That's the box office.

29:12Taika Waititi: Yeah, that is the box office. That's everyone's picks. It was a thing.

29:15Mark Kermode: David Dunn says, two things strike me here. Firstly, a movie that technically came out first at the end of 75 was the biggest movie of 76. Secondly, Bad News Bears took more money than Dog Day Afternoon,

29:27Taika Waititi: which is... Well, in that particular... Or is that the total?

29:31Mark Kermode: That's in the total.

29:32Taika Waititi: Yeah, OK.

29:33Mark Kermode: Dog Day Afternoon took£993 ,000. Bad news bears,£1 ,611 ,000.

29:38Taika Waititi: Dog Day Afternoon, however, would have been a grown-up certificate, whereas Bad News Bears would have been a lesser certificate.

29:44Mark Kermode: On the whole, though, says David, there's some absolute crackers on that list. Not the best year, however. 1977, another one, 1977 was better because that was the year that the best film in the history of film ever came out. Brian De Palma's Carrie, which as any fool know, is great. and he's gone off into a whole Molesworth set of spellings there. Okay, good. It came out in America in 1976, so I may be wrong and right at the same time. Kim Reynolds, I amicably argue that 1974 was quite special, but there's plenty of room for them both to share some glory. I mean, just to go back to one of Mark's previous arguments, you could take any year and come up with a great top 10.

30:21Mark Kermode: Exactly.

30:22Taika Waititi: Can I just read you very quickly, because I just checked this out. I remember seeing at the Earth's Core, the reviews for at the Earth's Core, were not good. This was the review from the New York Times. It said, the movie is a kind of no-talent competition in which the acting, the script, the direction, and the camera work all vie for last place.

30:39Mark Kermode: Okay, we've got some correspondence on these. So Dog Day Afternoon, Max Searby says, Dog Day Afternoon is not only the best film of the year, but also the best of the decade and continues to be influential to this day. It's a great movie. Pacino's performance is one of the best ever. UncleChunk.com Ugh. It says, Jaws is the best film of all time. Dog Day Afternoon is the best film of 1976. Work that one out.

31:04Taika Waititi: Wow.

31:04Mark Kermode: Well, that doesn't... I mean, you can't work that one. Because if Jaws is the best film of all time, it has to be the best film of 1976, doesn't it? So, at the Earth's Core, at number 10.

31:11Taika Waititi: Yeah, not good. I mean, I was young when I saw it, so it was fine.

31:15Mark Kermode: Jace says, but probably not that one. Says, lovely to see at the Earth's Core make the top 10. Peter Cushing plays Doddery to perfection. Doug McClure plays Doug McClure.

31:25Taika Waititi: Doug McClure always played Doug McClure. That's all Doug McClure ever did. He played Doug McClure.

31:29Mark Kermode: To perfection. And Caroline Munro is perfection. The special effects are as special as they could be. It's just a 90-minute switch-your-brain-off film. And it's a number 10. So Marathon Man is a number nine. Which, you know, easy to save. Easy to save. Bad News Bears, number eight. Bugsy Malone, number seven. Brian Shanow says, My childhood loathing of Bugsy Malone has not waned.

31:51Taika Waititi: Oh.

31:51Mark Kermode: In my now late 40s, may I never need to endure it again.

31:57Taika Waititi: My name is the Luger. Why?

31:59Mark Kermode: Is it a horror film?

32:01Taika Waititi: Bugsy Malone?

32:02Mark Kermode: The way you just did that little voice. Oh, I see. Sorry.

32:04Taika Waititi: We're gonna get you. The Man Who Would Be King is at number six. Here's an interesting thing about The Man Who Would Be King. Man Who Would Be King was originally released as an A certificate film, which is one of those things in which you could go to see it if you were accompanied by a parent or guardian, which meant that you would hang around outside the cinema. But it was A with cuts. I don't know what they cut, but it was A with cuts.

32:26Mark Kermode: Stephen Cook says, Considering I have an original framed one-sheet poster for The Man Who Would Be King, prominently displayed in our front hallway, and one of my all-time favourite screenings was a special Toronto International Film Festival showing of One Flo, the Cuckoo's Nest, hosted by Chow Yun-Fat. It's hard for me to argue otherwise, so he's on board with that one.

32:47Taika Waititi: Sean Connery and Michael Caine both considered the movie the favourite of all that they had worked on, according to Wiki.

32:53Mark Kermode: Logan's Run is at number five. Which still holds up, I think. Carrie Tullinius. Hello, Carrie. Logan's Run seemed to be on TNT whenever I had flu as a teenager. So I've seen it a lot more often than movies I actually like. The world building makes no sense. So while the on-screen scenery and costume look really good, the disbelief is unsuspended once you think about it for a second. Number four is One Flew the Cuckoo's Nest.

33:19Taika Waititi: Which is majestic and has got one of the most... I can never, is it, is it, is it a theremin or is it, I think it's a saw, isn't it? I think it's a musical saw. I think it's a musical saw rather than a theremin, but they do sound exactly the same.

33:34Mark Kermode: One Flew the Cookies Ness is the first film I ever saw where people applauded at the end. Wow. Warwick University Film Society put it on, hadn't seen it before. And, you know, the film finishes the fingers at the window and everyone applauded. I thought, oh, can you clap in cinemas?

33:49Taika Waititi: It has got a fantastic finale, hasn't it?

33:51Mark Kermode: All the President's Men is at number three.

33:53Taika Waititi: And can I once again delight you with the story of the fact that my father took me to see it. This is where my Nixon obsession came with because my father had previously pointed to the television and said, you see that? That's the devil. And then he took me and my sister to see it and it was a double A certificate film and we weren't old enough. And the woman behind the counter said, are they both 14? And my dad, rather than lying, just gestured towards us. She went, okay, fine.

34:16Mark Kermode: That gesture could have meant a lot of things like how do I know?

34:19Taika Waititi: No, exactly. And I remember looking at him thinking, that's so clever. You didn't actually lie. You did, but you didn't actually lie.

34:28Mark Kermode: Okay, so that's All the President's Men, number three. That's the one we're talking about. And this is from an anonymous person. A brilliant movie, pace, relevance, even now, sadly. Tension in spades, a terrific ensemble cast. What more could you ask? Our top production team will find out. I think that, no, we need to get a name for that one. But thank you very much for the email anyway. the return of the pink panther at number two dan says jaws is about a shark but return of the pink panther is not about a panther and number one is jaws i mean that's a good top 10 though isn't it

35:01Taika Waititi: that is a very good top 10 and that was kind of peak movie going for me because i was born in 63 so i was 13 and it was like the world is your oyster except for the x-rated films which only some of it i think the only x-rated film i saw at that point was enter the dragon but that was because it was playing at this cinema, this multiplex near us, in which screens two and screen three were joined by a toilet. So if you paid to go into screen three, you could go into the toilet and then come out into screen two. And I saw Enter the Dragon in screen two, in which the entire screen was full of school kids.

35:33Mark Kermode: That's a big design floor. A big design floor. Walk out of one cinema and into the next one. Right through the loo. Wow. Okay, we're going to take some ads and then we speak to Taika Waititi.

35:51Mark 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.

36:00Taika Waititi: That is deeply unfair.

36:01Mark Kermode: But is it? Sometimes it's delivery. Well, perhaps it's your pans that are holding you back. Food sticking, pans burning, uneven heat.

36:11Taika Waititi: That's unusually generous of you.

36:13Mark Kermode: 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 cleanup headache. They're dishwasher safe and easy to clean.

36:30Taika Waititi: Plus, every Hexclad product comes with a lifetime warranty, so they could genuinely be the last pans you'll ever buy.

36:37Mark 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.

37:04Taika Waititi: Is your home wish list just sitting in your cart? Well, get ready to hit checkout because Wayday at Wayfair starts October 24th with up to 80 % off everything home. That new sofa, the rug you've been eyeing, the upgrades you've been putting off, they could all be way less during Wayday. It's Wayfair's biggest sale of the year, so make your list and mark your calendar. Shop Wayday starting October 24th for up to 80 % off everything home at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home.

37:40Mark Kermode: OK, our guest this week is New Zealand filmmaker, actor and comedian Taika Waititi, who I talked to about the 10th anniversary release of The Hunt for the Wilder People. Accolades include an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Grammy Award, as well as two primetime Emmy noms. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2022. Also, of course, Jojo Rabbit, Eagle vs Shark, Boy, What We Do in the Shadows, and Thor Ragnarok and Thor Love and Thunder. We will speak to Taika Waititi in just a moment after this clip.

38:18Taika Waititi: Hector Faulkner and Richard Baker have been missing now for six weeks.

38:22Mark Kermode: Faulkner is Hawk Asian. Well, they got that wrong because you're obviously white. $10 ,000 to anyone who can capture them, dead or alive.

38:33Taika Waititi: Back up, homies! Oh, alive.

38:37Mark Kermode: They should be alive.

38:38Taika Waititi: So, what do we do now?

38:40Mark Kermode: We run.

38:48Anna, no, we don't need to run.

38:51Mark Kermode: Oh, yeah, this is fast walk.

38:56Mark Kermode: Ricky Baker, I'm gonna have a selfie.

39:03Taika Waititi: what's the fastest way out of here jetpack do you actually have a jetpack no what that's a clip

39:09Mark Kermode: from hunt for the wilder people directed by taika watiti it's celebrating its 10th anniversary you can go and see it in the cinema and taika joins us on the show taika hello very nice to see you hello nice to be here thanks so much so our 10th anniversary of hunt for the wilder people just to spool back 10 years somewhat more in terms of the start of the process. But how did this story come to you in the first place? I know it's a book adaptation, but how did this land with you?

39:34Taika Waititi: I think I started writing this script in 2005, maybe 2004. So it's about 20. How many years is that? 20 years? It's about 20 years since I got asked to adapt the book. And the book is quite well known in New Zealand. It's a different title. It's called wild pork and watercress, which is a dish that we make if you hunt for your food. If you live out in the bush, you eat pork and cress. It's a very traditional dish. And I read the book. And, you know, it's a great adventure. One of the touchstones for me was Paper Moon, that Bogdanovich movie. I loved the idea of like an odd couple in the form of a grumpy old man and a young street kid on the run together out in the woods.

40:24Taika Waititi: And that story kind of just came together. I added, I emballaged a few things. I changed a little bit here and there, as I usually do when I adapt things. But, yeah, essentially I wanted to tell just a sweet story that was fun and funny, but at its core had something to say about the way we treat people who live on the margins, the outskirts of society.

40:47Mark Kermode: So, heck, Uncle Hector is played, of course, by Sam Neill. Ricky Baker is played by Julian Dennison. Had you worked with Julian before? Is that why? Because he's so extraordinarily fantastic in this film. Where did you first come across Julian? Yeah, I'd made a commercial with him, sort of like a PSA,

41:03Taika Waititi: an anti-drug driving PSA. I don't know if you have them here, but in New Zealand And we've also got to make anti, not only do we have to make anti-drink driving PSAs, we have to make anti-drug driving because people like to get stoned and drive. And I met him on that. I'd cast him and he was just brilliant and he just exuded this energy and he was so funny. He was just a very funny young kid. And on the spot, I thought, I need you to play this role in this film. And so I didn't even make him audition. and I just, he just, he just did it. I just gave him the part on the spot and then he came and delivered.

41:43Taika Waititi: And he and Sam made a beautiful couple. You know, that partnership was really, really special in the film.

41:51Mark Kermode: I watched the film again this morning and laughed a lot. It's so touching and it's so funny, but now with that added sadness, the fact that we lost Sam Neill just a few weeks ago, it's impossible to watch it. maybe with that same lightness of heart. I don't know what you make of that.

42:09Taika Waititi: Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen it since he departed us. And I will be watching it tonight. Yeah, it will be very different. I mean, it's very fresh for all of us, and I still feel strange when people leave. I often quite equate that with the idea of death and it's the finality of it all. You know, we would talk often, and he would just text me out of the blue and check in, and things and I won't be getting those texts anymore.

42:39Mark Kermode: No. I think you worked together quite recently again on a commercial, like a Jurassic Park thing, is that right?

42:46Taika Waititi: That's right. We did a Super Bowl commercial together with the original cast of the original Jurassic Park. It was him, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum. And they were old outfits and everything and that was really fun. That was the last thing we worked on together. But he'd been fighting his fight for a few years but he was really on the mend and he bounced back. So it was quite surprising for us.

43:11Mark Kermode: I think you could tell from the outpouring of Love Online that so many people felt an extraordinary connection with him, not just because of his acting skills, not just because of all the films and TV that we'd watched, but there was something, I think maybe it was his lockdown films when he was talking about the things that really mattered to him, how he wasn't, I'm not an actor, it's just that I act, It's the thing that I do. And there was that twinkle in his eye, which is hard to explain really, but he had something special.

43:39Taika Waititi: He really did, yeah. And he had a great love for humans and for people. And he was a very kind and loving person. He loved the environment and nature. He was always on the right side, it seemed.

43:53Mark Kermode: He said, you look forward to working with Taika. When he's having fun, we're all having fun. Well, that's good. I heard an interview that you did with Radio New Zealand a while back, and you said in that interview, I don't feel as though I've felt so good making a film before or since making Hunt for the Wilder People.

44:13Taika Waititi: Yeah, I still feel like that was the most enjoyable experience I've had. We had a very small crew, and it really felt like a family. Everyone just helped each other. And when you work overseas, there are a lot of boundaries and you've got to, especially with various crews, people don't like you touching their stuff. They don't want to help each other and everyone's got their own kind of little clique. But maybe it's just a New Zealand thing as well. But on that film in particular, just everyone banded together and we were out in the middle of nowhere, out in the wilderness, and it just felt like a big adventure.

44:48Taika Waititi: And I just remember being happy all the time.

44:51Mark Kermode: and from from sam neill's words it sounds as though that transferred itself to the movie itself to everyone you were working with to what we see on the camera yeah i i don't usually watch

45:02Taika Waititi: my things my films again um well not for many years um and i did watch this about two years ago maybe about seven or eight years after we made it and um and i did think it's a new zealand thing as well we don't like to sort of talk ourselves up but i did watch it and i thought this is a pretty good movie um and i really enjoyed watching it and i think there was enough distance time-wise that i felt like maybe someone else had made it so i could enjoy it more but um yeah it is one of the films that i feel proud of and i don't mind watching many people have said and you've said

45:34Mark Kermode: quite a few times it is a very new zealand film uh maybe the most new zealand film that has had uh success around the world what do us non-kiwis miss what do we not get is it some of the jokes What is it that we – nothing.

45:49Taika Waititi: There's some little inside jokes that some New Zealanders will get, but then I watched it and I thought, oh, man, my kids don't understand any of these jokes. It's probably more – they're relevant to people of my generation and before me probably. And a lot of them are so fleeting and fast that you can sort of skip over them. I think my worry was that some of them would be so obscure that it would pull people out of the picture, but I feel like that hasn't affected the viewing experience.

46:18Mark Kermode: This might be a crazy thought, Tiger, but when I was watching it this morning, it reminded me of Bong Joon-ho's The Parasite film.

46:27Taika Waititi: Oh, man, what a compliment. I can't see it.

46:30Mark Kermode: Well, inasmuch as the more Korean he made it, the more internationally relevant it became. And it seems to be with your film that the more Kiwi you made it, the greater its appeal around the world.

46:43Taika Waititi: Well, you might be right. I mean, maybe it's that you should just be true to where you're from and your own voice or the voice of where you're from. Otherwise, it just feels maybe repetitive and feels like everything else that comes out of every other mainstream filmmaking industry. So I suppose if I was just going to emulate everything that came out of Hollywood, then it's just going to feel like just another Hollywood film. So, yeah, I think that's probably something that most of my early films share. They're very New Zealand and makes them feel very unique. And it's a little doorway into a place that most people wouldn't ever experience if they weren't from there.

47:22Mark Kermode: There is a spectacular cameo from yourself in Hunt for the Wilder People where you're playing a priest, which I watched two or three times. It's just hilarious because I think we've all heard totally useless sermons like that. Where did that come from?

47:39Taika Waititi: that actually came from some people when i'd done it they thought it's too much it's too ludicrous and it just and they just thought it was sort of too silly but that's actually almost word for word an exact sermon that came from my friend's father's funeral that i attended and um i remember this guy talking about confectionery in the afterlife and these different doors and it was super confusing and i remember just relishing and and being there and being able to absorb that and I thought no one else has got access to this. I'm going to steal everything from this priest and I'm going to use it one day in a movie.

48:13Taika Waititi: And it was about eight years later that I remembered that and I thought, okay, this is the perfect time. And I just wrote down how I remembered it. And it was pretty much, that's how I delivered it. And it still brings me a lot of joy. I like to watch myself. I'm like my other people. I really get off on watching myself and my own work. So I wanted that scene to be longer.

48:39Mark Kermode: Yeah, well, it's still very funny. I think it's the bit where you say Coke Zero, which is behind one door and behind the other door, and that leads to another door, and then there's Jesus eventually.

48:51Taika Waititi: Anyway, I thought it was fantastic. Coke Zero had only just come out then too, so it was a new thing, a newfangled fizzy drink.

48:58Mark Kermode: I'd like to see a whole film based around that priest. Just a thought.

49:02Taika Waititi: Well, you're in luck because I've been thinking the same thing. I would love to do that character as the centre of a film

49:09Mark Kermode: The other bit I wondered whether it was you Taika is the scene where they're singing Happy Birthday to Ricky Baker it just sounds like something that you would have composed Yeah we couldn't get the rights

49:20Taika Waititi: to Happy Birthday which was really surprising to me

49:24Mark Kermode: Do you need rights for that?

49:25Taika Waititi: Anyone who's put Happy Birthday in their films need to start panicking but you're not allowed to use that which we found out it's still under copyright somehow and so we had to change it on the on the day and reema who played um bala she happens to be a really great musician so i had this cassia tone keyboard with me that i used to carry around gave it to her and said let's just figure out a song and we all sort of pitched together but i wanted it to feel like a more ridiculous version of an original version of happy birthday that she that character might feasibly come up with and so we all kind of just came up with these different lines and i remember wanting to trifecta line and um but yeah there was actually more of a group effort yeah but i'll take the credit for it of course that's what you

50:12Mark Kermode: do when you're the director and sam neill's face well whilst the other two are singing is of course a complete picture he's so unimpressed with the whole thing are you when you go and see it tonight are you looking forward to it or dreading it a bit what do you think when you're sort of going and then publicly watching this film?

50:34Taika Waititi: I always feel uncomfortable. I always squirm a little bit in moments of my films where I feel like, ah, I could have done that better. But I think enough time has passed now that I can just sort of let it wash over me. I think I'll be fine. I'll have some friends there, and Cathy will be there, who produced it, made the film with me, and Rachel House will be there. She plays Paula, the social worker, and Julian also will be there. So it'll be a great reunion for us so we can share in that awkwardness together.

51:04Mark Kermode: You've talked before about finding a film in the edit or giving the tone in the edit. Is that what happened with this film? It did, but actually I feel like this is one of the films that ended up closest to the script I'd written than any of the other ones.

51:18Taika Waititi: I think all the other films I'd made were really found in the edit. But this one followed that structure pretty closely. We knew where it was going, we knew all the major beats. I just feel like it was sort of the easiest of the films that I've made.

51:33Mark Kermode: Obviously, it's on streamers and stuff, but now it's in the cinema and it's such a beautiful film. Not only is it funny and very moving, very profound, it looks beautiful.

51:43Taika Waititi: That's Lachlan Milne, a fantastic cinematographer. But also me, because I'm the one who says, yes, push the red button. So I also will take credit for that.

51:53Mark Kermode: What do we get next from you, Taika? What's new from you? Is it the James movie?

51:57Taika Waititi: Yeah, James is the plan. We're currently developing that, Percival's writing, and that's pretty exciting to me. I love that book so much.

52:08Mark Kermode: That's Percival Everett who wrote the book.

52:10Taika Waititi: Oh, I've got another movie coming out this year too, Clara and the Sun, based on the adaptation of the Kazuo Ishiguro novel. You might remember he wrote Remains of the Day and many other great books that have been turned into films. Anyway, that's coming out in late October. You guys got to see that movie.

52:29Mark Kermode: We'll do that. Maybe we'll talk about that when it comes out. But in the meantime, to keep us going, a 10th anniversary of Hunt for the Wilder People is out at a cinema near you, Taika. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy your film tonight. Thank you so much, mate. Take care. And you can hear Mark's review of the new 4K re-release of Hunt for the Wilder People in Take Two. You can get that on Patreon. What else is out, Mark? What can we go and see?

52:51Taika Waititi: Love Me Tender, which is a French drama directed by Anna Kazanav-Kambay, who made Gold for Dogs. This is based on a 2020 novel. Now, you read more than I do, by Constance Debray. Is that a name that you know?

53:06Mark Kermode: No, it is not a name that I know.

53:07Taika Waititi: Okay, so she was a lawyer, left her husband for a woman, became a full-time writer, and then became embroiled in a very fierce child custody battle, which then became the subject of some books that she wrote, including the one that this is based on from 2020. So, this stars Vicky Creeps, who was so brilliant in Phantom Thread, as Clemence, who we first meet in a swimming pool. And she's obsessive about swimming, and the water is kind of a metaphor for a lot of the stuff that's going on around her, her state of mind, the fluidity of water, the way in which she absolutely dedicates herself to the physical pursuit of being a swimmer, memories of birth, childhood, all that stuff.

53:46Taika Waititi: In the showers afterwards, she has an encounter with a woman, and we learn that the book that she is writing will detail the encounters that she has had with women. She has an eight-year-old son called Paul. The father of Paul is Laurent, who we hear is the first and only man that she had a relationship with. They were together for a long time. She left three years ago. They are now separated, but they share custody, and they've never bothered to get divorced. But now she wants to get divorced. And when she first tells Laurent that she's dating girls, he seems okay about it. But then one of her friends says, well, no, now he knows that he's angry.

54:23Taika Waititi: And she's right. And the next thing is that her son doesn't want to see her. And her husband, soon to be ex-husband, is shutting down all contact. Now, I'm going to play you a trailer, a clip from the trailer, which obviously is not in English. So I'm going to tell you what's said. So he said, he's my ex. We alternate custody of our eight-year-old son. Hi, mom. And it works fine. and then she says to him, I date other women and I have affairs and he says, I'm just glad you're happy. Well, good night and then he tries to kiss her and she pulls back. Oh, I can't? No. I thought maybe. Then on the phone, hello Paul, Clémence, he doesn't want to talk to you and then we hear a councillor saying, Paul was manipulated by his father.

55:04Taika Waititi: Paul said to the judge, he doesn't want to see me. Paul was manipulated by his father. He doesn't believe what he wrote to the court. So that's the translation. Here's the clip. He is my ex. For our 8-year-old, we make a week on two weeks. Hello, Mom. There's no problem. I have some stories with girls. Love stories. I'm happy to be happy. Good night. No? Not at all. I thought. Hello? Paul? I told you he didn't talk to us. The judge, Paul said he didn't want to see me. So, then for...

55:50Mark Kermode: I think I prefer your version.

55:51Taika Waititi: Exactly. More atmosphere. I brought more to the character. I think I invested in it. So, fast forward six months, things have got really horrible. The soon-to-be ex-husband is accusing her of incest and paedophilia, either directly or by third-party association because of the literature that she's got around the house. The child is now calling his mother nuts. And we start to hear the story narrated as if from the book that she is writing about this. And now I haven't read the book and I didn't know the real life story before I watched the film. I only found this out in retrospect. But the writing, which I imagine much of which must be taken directly from the book, is very, very powerful.

56:32Taika Waititi: There's a section in which the central character talks about how when she was first a mother, she took her lesson from seeing a dog with its pups and deciding that she was going to become a mother in a way that didn't negate her own personality. She said, this is the quote, without womanish absurdity, the obscenity of mothers without losing herself. And we also learn from the people around her that although men frequently abandon their children, women leaving is rarer and is quite often considered by people in general and often by the legal system to be essentially unforgivable. That it's not something that you do and to do so would be monstrous.

57:15Taika Waititi: And actually, weirdly enough, it's a subject which is talked about in Claire Didera's book, Monsters. And I think that the film does a really good job of showing how Clémence is othered, how because of her life choices, because of her sexuality, because of her gender. because at one point, one of the doctors actually has to point out that being an author is not in itself an indication of a personality flaw, because that's how absurd it's become. The worst thing about it is the sheer lumbering process. I mean, do you remember watching Kramer vs. Kramer? Yeah. And I think that was probably, I think, the first time I had seen a drama about a child caught between parents.

58:00Taika Waititi: The thing that this captures is the way that just the lumberingness of the process means that you lose because you lose the years. I mean, at one point somebody says, it takes two years and you never get that time back. Vicky Creeps is terrific in everything. I've never seen her give a bad performance. During the course of the drama, we see her change. We see her change from being this fairly carefree character that we meet at first to somebody who literally looks like they're carrying the weight of the world on their shoulder. And I think that they have scenes of the supervised visits that she has to have with her child in which there are two people there who have to be there to super, and the awkwardness, the difficulty of having any kind of intimate contact with your child who you haven't been allowed to see for 18 months.

58:47I mean, all this stuff, obviously it's dramatic,

58:51Taika Waititi: but it would be very, very easy to do it badly and for it to become melodramatic, and it never does that at all. The other thing about it is that it's also got, in its depiction of her life, like the clubbing scenes, reminded me of some of the kind of sweaty intensity of the scenes from William Friedkin's Cruising, which is a film I really like. It's got the composer for it is Maxence Dusser, who was Oscar-nominated for Best Sound for Amelia Perez. It's got a very, very good needle drop by King Krull, and I confess that I only know King Krull's work because of Child 2, but it's a very, very good needle drop.

59:27Taika Waititi: And the sort of... You know how when a film uses bits from other films, like people are watching something on television and it's always significant, right? So the two things that get...

59:38Mark Kermode: It's never like match of the day or anything. It's never match of the day.

59:40Taika Waititi: It's never, you know, the great British break-off. So at one point, they're watching The Incredible Shrinking Man, which I did reckon and I thought, okay, that is smart, because it means it's two things. Firstly, it's a thing about somebody being reducing and reducing and reducing so nobody notices them anymore but also it's to do with the shrinking man being the being the husband and another thing is um is cries and whispers which is kind of you know a little bit on the nose but anyway i thought the whole thing was really well done and it just reminded me how much i love vicky creeps as as an actor and i thought you're right there with this character up against this absolutely infernal system which seems to just simply say because of your life decisions, because of who you are, because of your gender, you are basically going to be completely othered from your life.

1:00:23Taika Waititi: And I thought it was very powerful.

1:00:26Mark Kermode: Correspondence at carbonomair.com is our email if you want to join in any of this. And also, if you want to join in the laughter lift, and I mention this for a particular reason, we just play the music, obviously. All the jokes in today's episode of the laughter lift supplied by our ultras on Patreon.

1:00:44Taika Waititi: Is one of our ultras child three? No, no. No, no, come on. So all literally ultras, okay.

1:00:49Mark Kermode: Graham Hall, Toby King, and Pete Wyard. Wyard. Wyard. Okay, great. Okay, they are the people who sent in these three jokes in order. Okay. Okay. So you can't be that rude about it. Right, okay. Hey, Mark, did you hear about the clown who got fired on his first day at the circus? No. He's suing for funfair dismissal.

1:01:12Taika Waititi: That's quite good. That's good.

1:01:15Mark Kermode: that was Graham Hall yeah fun fair this missile Mark I rearranged the herbs in my garden in alphabetical order my neighbour said I don't know how you find the time I said it's right there next to the tarragon I mean everyone is there they're just trying to think what's the another herb that goes before time I know tarragon that's what it is thank you Toby and Pete says, hey Mark, I took the shell off my racing snail to see if it would make it go faster but it just became more sluggish obviously we don't encourage that kind of thing because it's a nasty thing to do as in putting your herbs in alphabetical order, that's not a good thing to do thank you very much to our ultras, they were good

1:02:05Taika Waititi: they were good, that thing about I don't know how you find the time, it's right there next to the tarragon reminded me of what I still think is the funniest line from Fawlty Towers when she says, I can't see the sea. And he says, yes, you can. It's there between the land and the sky.

1:02:18Mark Kermode: Very good. Correspondence at carbonemail.com, thank you very much indeed. Mark is about to talk about Summer Book. Summer Bookon. That's the one he's going to talk about soon after this.

1:02:42Taika Waititi: 80 % off everything home. That new sofa, the rug you've been eyeing, the upgrades you've been putting off, they could all be way less during Wayday. It's Wayfair's biggest sale of the year. So make your list and mark your calendar. Shop Wayday starting October 24th for up to 80 % off everything home at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home.

1:03:05Mark Kermode: This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners. sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier,

1:03:28Taika Waititi: so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com.

1:03:41Mark Kermode: on the sub oh this is an email from Philip Davis hello hello hello on the subject of watching films is that Mott the Hoople no no

1:03:50Taika Waititi: it's his public image hello hello hello it's the beginning of yeah it's the beginning of whatever that song is it's the beginning of the public image limited isn't it but there's a

1:03:59Mark Kermode: there is yeah there's also Mott the Hoople which starts with hello which it'll come to me. Oh, okay. On the subject of watching films at an inappropriately young age. Yes. A regular theme. In the very early 1980s, we lived in Guyana in South America. Okay. A tropical paradise, but in those days, without a TV service of any kind. Wow. Isn't that incredible? And limited access to cinema. As enterprising Guyanese set up a video club, but with a difference. A contact in the USA used to record American TV onto VHS tapes and ship them to Guyana. For a subscription fee, members used to get three tapes a week.

1:04:42Mark Kermode: On the tapes used to be a mixture of American family shows like Fantasy Island and The Love Boat and feature films. The beauty of it was you never knew what was on the tape until you started watching it. I mean, that's it.

1:04:54Taika Waititi: The word beauty is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence.

1:04:56Mark Kermode: One afternoon, myself, says Philip, age 10. Go on. My two sisters, age 7 and 13 and some friends, settled down to see what we had. Alien, it said. Brilliant. Well, we'd heard of that. Not to worry that my sister was only seven. We could sit on her head at the appropriate moment so she couldn't see the gore. Which is a little extreme. I mean, you could just put your hand over her eyes, maybe. But no, they sat on her head. She could still hear the sound effects. Her imagination did the rest for a truly traumatising experience for her. And we loved it. Later, on one of these tapes, I found Phantasm, which I watched at the age of 11 for my own truly terrorizing movie experience.

1:05:37Mark Kermode: No TV, no mobile phones. Guyana was an amazing place to live back then and I'm sure it still is. Tickety-tonk, down with mobile phones and social media, Philip Davis. So I looked at Guyana, the official full name of Guyana because normally it's the People's Republic of or the Democratic Republic of and if it says Democrat in the title, it's kind of probably not. Anyway, this is the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. Does any other country have cooperative in the title? And is the least densely populated country in the world. Wow. There you go. Top facts about Guyana. Thanks to Philip Davis. Okay.

1:06:14Mark Kermode: Summer Book and Summer Book. Midsommar. Midsommar.

1:06:17Taika Waititi: Weirdly, which does turn around. So, The Summer Book, which is an adaptation of a novel, a 1972 novel by Tovi Jansson, creator of Moomins, and herself the subject of that movie from 2020, Tove. And originally, in its original title, Somar Bokan.

1:06:38Mark Kermode: I like the way you're fully in character now.

1:06:40Taika Waititi: I just like the word, Somar Bokan. So directed by Charlie McDowell, apparently son of Malcolm and Mary Steenberg. And so, also stepson of Ted Danson and son-in-law of Phil Collins. Really? Apparently. What, that Phil Collins? Yeah. Apparently that's the case. I mean, I'm absolutely certain that I'm not making that up. I'm drawing a family tree in my head now. Yeah, no, that is right. Anyway, so Blah Blah has directed other stuff, although weirdly the thing that I knew his name from was that he produced Lurker, which I really liked. I think this was actually made before Lurker. This is a UK-US Finnish co-production.

1:07:19Taika Waititi: I think it was actually made before Lurker. It was shot back in 23, played the festival circuit in 24, opened in Finland in early 2025, where it became a number one hit. Big smash hit in Finland. Okay, so.

1:07:33Mark Kermode: Okay.

1:07:34Taika Waititi: Young girl, six, seven, something like that, spending the summer with her father and grandmother on a small island in the Gulf of Finland, dealing with the loss of her mother. The film opens with an image of ice melting, which sort of sets the general tone of the thing, you know, that over the course of the drama, things are going to thaw. They've come here as Midsommar approaches. In fact, we also, we get the wearing of the...

1:08:02Mark Kermode: Oh, really?

1:08:02Taika Waititi: Yes. Do people jump off cliffs? No, it's nice Midsommar, not smashy-facey Midsommar. Okay, thank you. Although, as our young heroine says, it might as well be midwinter. Her dad is withdrawn and reclusive. He's clearly stricken with grief. He's unable to reconnect with his daughter as a result of his grief. She is looking for connections. She befriends a cat at one point and she says, the more I love him, the more he hates me, which, as the good lady professor her indoors will tell you, is absolutely typical cat behaviour. As everybody knows, if a cat walks into a room and there's one person in the room that is allergic to cats and five other people that love cats, the cat will go and sit on the lap of the person that's allergic to cats.

1:08:42Taika Waititi: Which only goes to prove that dogs are better. And you think that cats are all evil. They are. And you also say, hello, Professor McGonagall.

1:08:48Mark Kermode: Whenever I see a cat, because it just seems wise, it'll come and sit on me.

1:08:52Taika Waititi: The real heart of the film, however, is Glenn Close. So Glenn Close is the grandmother. Incidentally, Glenn Close should have won an Oscar for The Wife a few years ago, and I'm still annoyed that she didn't because she really should have done it. So she's the font of learned life wisdom. She's indomitable. She also apparently invented scouting for girls. And now, because her memory is starting to fail, she can't even remember what it was like to go camping. She smokes. She would probably smoke a pipe. I think she would almost certainly be in women pipe smoking corner. She communes naked with nature.

1:09:32Taika Waititi: Okay, that's not necessary. Well, it's tastefully done. But she's very, you know, she's kind of earthy. And the conversations between her and her granddaughter are all about God and family and scouting and death and grief, and those are the core of the film. Here is a clip from a summer book.

1:09:51Mark Kermode: What do you think there's more of? Stars in the sky or fish in the sea? Marcus would be stars in the sky. Me too, but I would not want to count. Come with me. mommy's favorite tree you think it will grow he doesn't love me since you died that is nonsense I'm trying I won't be here forever

1:10:25Taika Waititi: that was getting close doing the accent

1:10:28Mark Kermode: doing a finished accent I feel very guilty now because my conversations with grandchild one and two revolve around tangy worms and do you prefer chocolate stars or tangy worms not death not

1:10:43Taika Waititi: death and god maybe that comes later it's a whole different thing tangy worms win so basically they the it's those conversations that are the heart of it there's a lovely thing in which they go to there's a there's a there's a another little island and it's got a private sign on it they're not allowed to land there. So she immediately lands there. And then she says, oh yes, all these people come in. They don't know what they're talking about. And then of course, it turns out that the people are actually really nice. And she says, this is socializing. You have to learn to do it. And she's doing this lovely performance of the kind of the grandmother everybody wishes they had, the fond of all wisdom.

1:11:21Taika Waititi: But as you heard in that thing, when she says, I won't be here forever, we also know she won't be here forever because she has a movie cough and nobody coughs in a movie. unless that's happening. So I thought her performance was great. One of the things that's really good about it is it's a really physical performance. She moves like a much older person. It's something to do with the way in which she walks, the way in which she holds her up. She just looks much older than she really is, obviously. And she does this thing which is really clever, which is that she somehow sticks her jaw forward that kind of reshapes her face.

1:12:00Taika Waititi: It's like a transformation involved in it, which is all to do with the physical performance. Glenn Close is a brilliant actor. I never saw Glenn Close on stage, but she is an absolutely brilliant actor on screen. I think her performance is terrific. I think the rest of the film is fine. There's this whole thing about they're waiting for the arrival of Eric Son, who, like Godot, doesn't appear. and he won't appear because the father says, you know, he doesn't like the stench of grief that keeps him away. And she says, yeah, or self-pity, which you've got to get over. You heard also the score there.

1:12:37Taika Waititi: The score is very kind of tinkly. It's Polish composer, Hanya Arnie, lots of sort of gentle, you know, piano tinkling, kind of echoing the sounds of nature. And then there's a thing about storms and guilt and the fact that the child has to come to turn. So it's a sort of life lessons, early coming of age, bonding across generations. And you heard from the clip. You know what movie you think it is from the clip? It is exactly that film. Apparently, the book is incredibly well regarded, which I have not read, and is thought to be very, very profound and very precise, very particular. I don't think the film is those things, but I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed it a lot because of Glenn Close's performance.

1:13:19Taika Waititi: And I just checked this out. I am right about this, that the director is indeed the son of Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen and his relatives, Ted Danson, stepfather, Phil Collins, father-in-law.

1:13:33Mark Kermode: Would you prefer Tangy Worms or Chocolate Stars if you had to choose? Tangy Worms. Okay, I think that's right. Also, you talk about film coughs. This is quite tangential, but there was an interview that Mayor Mandani in New York did with the New York Times. and he has he obviously sounded like quite a bad cough and he coughs quite a number of times and he apologizes for it and the interviewer says have you had it you know you need to be checked out you know if you've had a cough for a long time and he's and he coughs again he says yes I have had it checked out that's why I believe in universal healthcare and it was like this guy is extraordinary you know even something that probably an editor would take out of an interview even that brilliant was a politician who knows how to and child of a very good

1:14:22Taika Waititi: a very fine filmmaker so you know so media trained knows what he's doing

1:14:26Mark Kermode: that's it for this week this has been a Sony Music Entertainment production this week's team Jen, Eric, Josh and Heather the producer was Dom and the redactor was Simon Poole who sang also but may that be the line actually I suspect that's going to be the first of many there are plenty more waiting for you over in take two where we head to the Overflow car park for extra reviews more of your emails five question film club

1:14:49Taika Waititi: Three questions, your majesty.

1:14:50Mark Kermode: And questions, shmestions, in which this week we're asked, it might get dropped if we're running too long, which films were critically acclaimed in their time, awards and all, and then simply faded from history? You get all of that ad-free by signing up to our Patreon. Mark, what is your film of the week?

1:15:06Taika Waititi: Well, my reissue of the week, definitely Hunt for the World of People, which we're going to talk about more in take two, but my new film of the week, Love Me Tender.

1:15:12Mark Kermode: And don't forget, Avon Ladies and Avon Gentlemen will be at the Bristol Beacon on December the 6th. And we'll be able... You said Avon ladies.

1:15:21Taika Waititi: Did you mean as in bing bong? Yes, I think that's the joke. That was the joke. Or the ladies from Avon. That's so topical, that joke. When did Avon calling last actually happen?

1:15:31Mark Kermode: Yeah, probably the 1970s.

1:15:33Taika Waititi: 1970s. 1976, probably.

1:15:35Mark Kermode: Okay, so let's just say if you live in the area of Avon, get a ticket. The link is in the show notes. Sanjeev is going to be me next week. And if you haven't seen it,

1:15:48Taika Waititi: go to which Instagram feed it's on. I think it is probably on our Patreon Instagram feed of Sanj singing to Elvis by your jukebox in Showbiz North London. I watched it again the other day. It is still one of the loveliest clips ever. He just goes straight in.

1:16:05Mark Kermode: Absolutely. It's fantastic. And I love Sanjeev being me. I just wish that I could step, you know, on one of his cop shows, I could be Sanjeev for a day. What would you have in your rucksack? I think I would have... Tangy worms. Tangy worms and a support cushion, probably. The ultra membership goes, so correspondent of the week, I think I'm going to go with Hannah, who was traumatized by the psycho shower cushion. Shower. Curtain. Shower cushion. The shower cushion. I mean, any shower. I mean, the shower cushion, no, that's not going to work. But a shower curtain is a terrible, terrible thing. And one which has the most terrifying shower scene emblazoned on it.

1:16:42Mark Kermode: and children are expected to take a shower under there?

1:16:46Taika Waititi: Yeah, but you suggested that we make a shower curtain with our silhouettes on it. You think that would be less disturbing?

1:16:53Mark Kermode: No, that would be equally disturbing. I have a friend who, you know, the feeble, you know, you step into the bath, you pull the shower curtain, you adjust the knobs.

1:17:03Taika Waititi: You start to sound like Trump, be careful.

1:17:04Mark Kermode: You get a little dribble coming out of the thing. And I had a friend who described those showers as Christian showers because they were designed by people who obviously think you can't have any pleasure in a shower. So it's a miserable shower. That's the whole point. It's a Methodist shower. It's a Methodist shower. You can have a bit of water, but don't enjoy it at all. Thanks for listening.

1:17:36Taika Waititi: Is your home wish list just sitting in your cart? Well, get ready to hit checkout because Wayday at Wayfair starts October 24th with up to 80 % off everything home. That new sofa, the rug you've been eyeing, the upgrades you've been putting off, they could all be way less during Wayday. It's Wayfair's biggest sale of the year, so make your list and mark your calendar. Shop Wayday starting October 24th for up to 80 % off everything home at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home.