Is THE UPRISING revolutionary or revolting? + PAUL GREENGRASS

0:00Simon Mayo: Now, Mark, I don't know why all these trendy podcasters need to sell such tat in their online shops these days. You'd have thought the show would have been enough for them. I mean, look at this tea towel. Simon, I think that's our shop you're browsing, isn't it? Oh, so it is. Actually, those Kermit and Mayo directors' chairs are very nice, and it's all incredibly slick and easy. That's probably what confused me.

0:21Paul Greengrass: 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.

0:41Simon Mayo: And Shopify checkout helps more customers finish their purchase. Then when they come back, their details are already saved. One tap and they're done. Simple.

0:50Paul Greengrass: 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.

1:00Simon Mayo: Start your free trial at shopify.co.uk slash take. At ZocDoc, we know you care about your health. You wouldn't do that early morning cardio if you didn't. So the fact that your annual physical is overdue just shows how hard it can be to get seen by a doctor. Sorry, that doctor's not in network.

1:18Paul Greengrass: Press 1 for more options. You've reached us outside normal business hours.

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1:45Paul Greengrass: Viewing recommendations at home and in cinemas.

1:47Simon Mayo: Plus your film and non-film questions answered as best we can in Questions Schmestions. You can get all that extra stuff via Apple Podcasts

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2:21Simon Mayo: One, two, three, four. Okay, here we go then. I was just giving some level. Mark, do you want to give some level for the show?

2:27Paul Greengrass: One, two, three. Are we recording or are we actually doing a level check?

2:30Simon Mayo: I'm sure this can get included. Yes. So people can adjust the volume on their iPods.

2:38Paul Greengrass: We need to start by saying two things. We come to you on this podcast having just debased ourselves at the insistence of the redactor, who decided to turn up this week. Thank you. Very nice of him, really. that for social media purposes, no, for YouTube purposes, they needed a bunch of shots of us reacting to things so that they can be used as thumbnails. So we just sat here and debased ourselves by Mark Durante, Simon Du fed up with Mark, Mark Du shocked, Simon Du laughing, and we were very bad at it.

3:18Simon Mayo: Well, I thought I was quite impressive, actually. You know, I think it was completely auditioned for pantomime. Yeah, a lot of it was very kind of camp, I thought. But anyway, who knows? Will they get used? I don't know. I won't see them probably, so I'm prepared to debase myself for the purposes of this podcast, Mark. Thank you. Actually, speaking of horrified, I was thinking of you last Thursday, Thursday, Friday. So I'm watching the Traitors, Celebrity Traitors, which I imagine you wouldn't bother yourself with. But one of the games that all the celebrities had to play was they get buried alive.

3:56Simon Mayo: Oh, heaven's sake. They get put in a coffin. So they pair up and they get put in like double coffins. No, no, no. And have to lie in the ground. And then Earth put on top of them. Oh. And then a various game proceeds. And I was thinking, well, I know someone who would probably not like you. It was, who was that? It was Mick Jagger's wife. uh, Jerry Hall, Jerry Hall. She, she bailed because she couldn't cope with it, but I thought, yeah, I thought you would definitely have bailed. no, I just, yeah,

4:29Paul Greengrass: absolute, absolutely not. Absolutely not. A colleague of mine, a very good colleague, very good friend and colleague of mine used to be an actor. And at one point they almost got a role in a film, which involves a character being buried alive. And the director said that in order to demonstrate how much they trusted the director, that they would have to allow the director to nail them into a coffin. At which point my friend said, I don't want to do acting anymore.

5:07Simon Mayo: Yes, which seems like a very sensible reaction to that. But I guess if you're going to appear in Celebrity Traitors, then the chances are, I mean, they probably said, by the way, you're going to get buried in a coffin before they started. I would have thought just anyway, Bella Ramsey's in it. She's my tip, but I was going to ask you who you think might win, but you probably wouldn't know.

5:30Paul Greengrass: Bella Ramsey is fat, but I don't know. I don't know the program. However, I did want to show you this. So my friend, Nigel Smith, who wrote a book called an opinionated guide to film London went, I think he went to Japan and he brought me back. this look the exorcist playing cards oh okay i thought it was a cassette no no exorcist playing cards it says on the back perform your very own exorcism and relive the horror film from the the horror from the cult classic film the exorcist each card features a moment inspired by the film it's not a moment inspired by the film it's like look yeah scary reagan face oh look there Scary Reagan face.

6:15Paul Greengrass: And there, there's another one. Scary Reagan face. It says all the same. No, they're all different scary Reagan faces. They all look the same to me.

6:23Simon Mayo: A pack of playing cards with all exactly the same.

6:26Paul Greengrass: Max von Sydow staring up at a statue. Max von Sydow looking at a clock that's just stopped. I mean, you know, my life feels complete now. I have Exorcist playing cards.

6:38Simon Mayo: Okay. I mean, it's the kind of thing I'd have bought for you, to be honest, if I'd been in Japan. But if I see anything exorcist themes in my next holiday, I will definitely buy them for you. What a time to be alive. Yeah. In fact, that's a great phrase, isn't it? What a time to be alive. And there was a headline in one of the newspapers this morning, we were talking on the Wednesday, which was, Trump says he'll talk to Putin about the new plague, under which someone had said, what a time to be alive. There's three things to be inordinately depressed about. who are the people who you don't want to be discussing the new outbreak of the plague?

7:13Simon Mayo: Wow. Those two guys. Is R.F.K. Jr. going to get involved in those discussions as well? I'm sure he'll give some expert advice. Enough delightful jaunty interplay. What's coming up on the show? We've got a packed show.

7:24Paul Greengrass: We have reviews of The Social Reckoning. Obviously, last week you did your brilliant interview with Aaron Sorkin. We have a review of Carrie, the new TV miniseries directed by Mike Flanagan, and The Uprising with our very special guest,

7:40Simon Mayo: Yes, it's top filmmaker Paul Greengrass, whose filmography takes in the Huge Bourne franchise, among many other things. New film, The Uprising, will be reviewed in the show, and you'll hear some Paul in Take One and also in Take Two, because we had like 25 minutes with him. So we split it into two. And when we get to Take Two, apart from more Greengrass, what do we get?

8:02Paul Greengrass: Knife, which is a brilliant documentary, very disturbing, but very also weirdly uplifting documentary about Salman Rushdie. And the man who fell to earth is back in cinemas in a 4K restoration, celebrating its get this 50th birthday.

8:18Simon Mayo: You can get Take Two ad free by heading to our Patreon page. You just search Kermit and Mayo Patreon and you'll find us there. An email from Martin in York. And he's talking here about an interview on this show. Right. Done a few years back, which I have zero recollection of. Maybe you will do better. okay dear Peter Parker and Peter from Germany I was just so that just shows how long Martin in York has been listening I was just catching up on some of the back catalogue of Wittering this week and I found you interviewing the actor Jason Biggs that name ring a bell to you no he was in all the American Pie films so he's oh the main guy from the American Pie films anyway apparently he was in a film called Guy X.

9:05Okay.

9:06Simon Mayo: No recollection. During the top 10, Jason expressed the apparently sincere question, can there be any more superhero movies coming out of Hollywood? He was commenting on the Fantastic Four film. No, not that one. The 2005 one. So in 2005, can there be any more superhero movies coming out of Hollywood? I think enough time has passed that it's probably possible to answer his question fairly safely by now. hello to Jason tickety-tonk down with leaders who don't think through the consequences of firing their own film crews from Martin in York P.S. in the same show which is the 19th of August 2005 Mark said how much he loved Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Johnny Depp's performance in it did I?

9:49Simon Mayo: what does he think of it what does he think of it now? well let's assume that you did because Martin in York has just listened to it wow okay

9:57Paul Greengrass: I mean I have no memory of that show I have absolutely no memory of that interview or indeed the film guy x um i'm not crazy about tim burton's charlie and the chocolate factory um and i'm not crazy about johnny depp's performance but it's probably because i must have seen it a lot of times because you know kids and realized that it didn't age as well as well of course as the gene wilder so but i don't i i don't recall that at all but it does demonstrate the kind of you know opinions change over time and uh and there is no such thing as

10:31Simon Mayo: consistency the entire episode has been wiped from my memory banks no recollection of jason biggs

10:37Paul Greengrass: uh or guy x i feel like apologies you know i feel like sean young in blade runner it's like an implanted memory that i have no actual memory of correspondence at koanamay.com and obviously

10:49Simon Mayo: there's clearly no guarantee that we're going to know what you're talking about uh so uh you mentioned aaron sorkin been on the show last week variant always enjoyable to talk to him he did look as they just come off a beach yeah he was a fantastic holiday astonishing mahogany tan mahogany is about right actually that's that's what he was uh anyway his movie is the social

11:14Paul Greengrass: reckoning so uh it's out this week here we go okay so um sequel to 2010 social network written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, of course, wrote the original movie. This time he's directing as well. He told you in the interview that he was his second choice after David Fincher.

11:31Simon Mayo: After David Fincher, yeah.

11:32Paul Greengrass: So Jesse Eisenberg obviously played Mark Zuckerberg in the original film. Aaron Sorkin said he doesn't, he didn't want to play the role again. And the reason that he gave was that he didn't want to be associated with playing somebody who he didn't particularly like anymore. So this time instead, we have Jeremy Strong, who of course was last seen playing Donald Trump's mentor Roy Cohn. The story this time centers on the true life tale of data analyst Francis Haugen, who in 2021, and people will know some of this, became the whistleblower behind the Wall Street Journal's explosive Facebook Files series.

12:11Paul Greengrass: So Jeremy Allen White is Jeff Horowitz, who is the very non-tech savvy political journalist who is writing the Facebook story. And we meet him arriving at the newspaper offices late. And he's late because he doesn't know how to use a sat nav. And everyone's saying, he doesn't know how to use a sat nav. How is he going to write a story about tech? And the whole thing is, you don't need to understand the tech. What you need to understand is the story. The film itself actually starts with a young woman screaming at cops after her car is broken down and then posting this deranged online rant that she's got she films it on the phone and films herself shouting at these cops and this woman is familiar to francis who is played by mikey madison and she is working in facebook's civic integrity team which sounds like something out of brazil like the you know office of information retrieval and their job allegedly is to ensure that Facebook is doing no harm, is doing good things.

13:11Paul Greengrass: And then things heat up because Francis discovers that this woman that she used to know, that she's now posting this crazed rant online, has become radicalized through Facebook. And she starts to try to figure out how that happened. How did Facebook radicalize this person that she knew and turn her into this crazy person. And what she discovers is that Facebook's algorithms are basically skewed to promote anger. And worse, that Zuckerberg and co know this, but don't care about it. So we've got this dual pronged attack. On the one hand, you've got Noritz who's been brought in to write this story.

13:53Paul Greengrass: On the other hand, you've got somebody in Facebook who really believes in Facebook, really thinks Facebook is a good thing, discovering something terrible about Facebook and them doing a dance around each other. She doesn't want to be a whistleblower. She doesn't want to be at the center of this story. She just wants him to investigate and find out. And the narrative jumps backwards and forwards in time, landing regularly on a scene of Zuckerberg being prepped for a hearing at which he has to appear both human and sympathetic, neither of which he appears to be any good at. Here's a clip.

14:57Paul Greengrass: imminent and as we've all seen it is and was so as far as the film is concerned the story itself i think is terrifying i mean you called me afterwards and you said that you would come out and send somebody a message saying we're all left right because that was the feeling that you

15:14Simon Mayo: got absolutely there's there's a kind of there's a nice kind of like an uplift at the end but it's very much a kind of okay fine in the context of that it's a little uplift but in general I think my version of that in the interview was, Aaron, we're in a lot of trouble.

15:30Paul Greengrass: Yes, in a lot of trouble, because it's a story about a company who describes itself as being twice the size of a country, who have infiltrated every aspect of modern life, have not just abnegated any form of social responsibility, but have actively embraced a kind of burn-it-down mentality that's accelerating teenage depression, health misinformation, extremist conspiracy theories, public anger, mistrust in government institutions. And during the course of the drama, we see not just stuff about the pandemic, but also January 6th. It's strange, incidentally, that Trump is never mentioned by name.

16:11Paul Greengrass: His name is absent. They're talking about his social media feed, but his name is sort of weirdly absent. So on the plus side, Sorkin does know how to tell a complex story in a dramatically engaging way. I mean, that device of having Zuckerberg being prepared for the hearing is very much like, do you remember Steve Jobs? And in the film of Steve Jobs, it was the whole story played out with the preparations for the launch of each new Apple product, which was a really, really good dramatic device. And Sorkin knows how to do this stuff. He's always known how to take a political story and find a way of giving it a dramatic framework.

16:51Paul Greengrass: The performances are really good. Mikey Madsen, I thought, was convincingly rattled as this person who believes in Facebook and then sees its dark heart. Jeremy Allen White is very good as the journalist who's obviously much more all the president's men than Tech Weekly. I think all the jokes about him not understanding tech are funny. Jeremy Strong, you said last week that the change between the way Zuckerberg was portrayed in the social network and here is that in the social network, he's at best an anti-hero, and here he is a villain. I mean, he is basically -

17:24Simon Mayo: Yeah, I think so.

17:25Paul Greengrass: He is. The way he's portrayed in the film, he's a Bond villain. I mean, he appears to have less and less humanity about him.

17:34Simon Mayo: I think Sorkin would say he's still an anti-hero because he thinks he's doing the right thing, but -

17:39Paul Greengrass: Yeah, Sorkin may say that. I disagree. I think the way he's portrayed in the film, he comes across as a Bond villain with a pudding bowl haircut. and the the whole film sort of does this thing about a huge company the the corporate malice of this huge company that has worked itself into every aspect of life but it tells it in a way that a mainstream audience sometimes because what i know about tech isn't anything is nothing and then when they're talking about these algorithms and all the rest of it it's quite nice to have a character in there who in the case of the the journalist is going sorry what you're going to have to explain what that is to me.

18:16Paul Greengrass: And there's a running joke about the fact that Mikey Madsen's character keeps having to explain everything, but it is a device, which is a way of telling the audience, i.e. me, what you mean about that. On the downside, I think it would have been a better film had it been directed by David Fincher. It does have the same cinematographer as the social network, Jeff Cronenworth. So there are things about the way that it looks that are, you know, you can you can it feels of a piece with uh with the original but sorkin is not a great director and he is certainly not the great director that fincher is and when fincher was directing social network not only did you have a really terrific script telling a terrific story it was a really terrifically directed film that was visually arresting and actually felt like a great piece of cinema i think this doesn't i mean i would say you know he said he's his second choice i think he's at best third or fourth choice as a director.

19:14Paul Greengrass: I also have a bit of a problem with every now and then. I do understand that when you're telling a complicated story, you have to take dramatic licenses. There are some of those here that really feel like dramatic licenses. I mean, the stuff about he doesn't understand how to work the sat-nav, okay, fine, I'll buy that. The device of having the character of the whistleblower arriving anonymously at the journalist's hotel room and thinking that the best way to do that is to dress as if like in quotes a date is honestly just a way of making the screen look more glamorous than it should do and i did a little bit of research about the research i googled and i asked google whether or not there was any truth in that so as far as i can tell there isn't as far as i can tell that that didn't happen at all but it does mean that when you've got scenes of two people standing in rooms talking.

20:06Paul Greengrass: One of them is dressed very glamorously. And that felt a hell of a lot like a device to me. The score by Alexandre Desplat, I think he's very on the nose. It sort of opens with this sort of noble horn sound. And then there's a sort of surging swells when people are doing things and testifying heroically. And I did feel like the score was telling me, and now you feel this, and now you feel that. And in fact, if you look at the original Social Network, I think that one of the things that really defines the difference between this and Social Network is that Social Network had a score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and this has got a score by Alexander DeSplatt.

20:49Paul Greengrass: And that is the sort of tonal difference. um so i i think the story is really good and i think it's a solid piece of work i think the story is riveting as a piece of filmmaking i think it's much shakier but the performances hold it together now i know that you think more highly of it than i do although i do think that it's a good story and i would advise people to see it tell me what you think i thought i thought

21:17Simon Mayo: the strength of the story powered its way through any of the any of the doubts yes um that this uh i think we mentioned last week the insiders for the anti-tobacco film in with russell crow 1999 which is essentially the same kind of thing that the tobacco companies knew exactly what their what their product was doing and they carried on regardless that that um awareness at Facebook that what they had was dangerous and making things worse, that they knew that anyway and decided to make it worse.

21:57Paul Greengrass: Yes.

21:58Simon Mayo: That I was kind of so overwhelmed by, I mean, I kind of knew that anyway, but seeing that dramatized. Yeah. And then one of the things I really like about is one of the things that Sorkin does a lot, and maybe lots of writers do it, but there's a scene when Francis Hogan and Jeff Horwitz, the whistleblower and the journalist are discussing the, the, you know, the ins and outs of a very complicated case. And then suddenly Francis Hogan is distracted by the television and says, what, why is that guy punching the air? Yeah. Why is that guy punching the air? It's because he's just scored a touchdown.

22:37Simon Mayo: And the, the Aaron Sorkin watchers amongst us will go, Hmm.

22:42Paul Greengrass: i think we all coming back we all knew that that was that was going to come back to that so so

22:47Simon Mayo: anyway so i i think it was just the appallingness if that's a word of the story just blew i understand the reservations that you're making and i'm sure you're right i was just thinking oh my goodness me you know it's it's very much a film of 2026 which in combination with the other movies that we're going to be talking because they all have this kind of crossover uh i think made me think we are in a lot of trouble, you know, and the social reckoning is one of the pieces of evidence for the prosecution.

23:16Paul Greengrass: Yeah, absolutely. And I think we're both on the same page. The story itself is so strong that any reservations one may have about the filmmaking sort of become secondary. I think the difference is in the case of the social network, the story was very strong and the filmmaking was very strong. In the case of this, the story is very strong and the filmmaking feels a little bit clonky to me.

23:41Simon Mayo: I did think the opening sequence, and we talked about this last week in the interview, was very well done. That is very well done. Why are we in a lay-by? Why are there cops approaching this woman who's on her phone? And then it all does become clear, and Aaron Sorkin explained why it was there. But I thought that was a nice way to start. Anyway, but yes, maybe it's not going to win Best Picture, but for leaving an impression on you as you walk out of the theatre to discuss, I think it is 10 out of 10.

24:12Paul Greengrass: I definitely think you come out of it thinking, I don't do Facebook anyway, I've never really understood it. I think you definitely come out of it and think, I should be deleting apps rather than adding them.

24:22Simon Mayo: Yes. Well, at the risk of kind of, we're going to leak from one TV show, one movie to another. um andrew garfield who um is the star of the uprising yes which we'll get to came on my greatest hit show um and the interview's gone out now and he has said it as he's said elsewhere that after being the guy who co-founded facebook in the social network because he's in that one yeah and now playing um sam altman in a new film about um uh artificial intelligence called artificial he deleted facebook when he'd done the first film and he's not using chat gbt as he's done the second one you know and i think the closer you get to these things the more you kind of are repelled by them yeah yeah and yet we keep on using them because this is the thing that we've created you know this is the drug the crack cocaine which is acceptable is that enough okay yes like you said we are effed so still to come though before before the end of the world before we get to i think my p doom number has increased in the last week just explain for anyone what that means this is another ridiculous californian um tech bro shorthand for how likely is it that we're all doomed and it's called the p doom the percentage of doom or some premin anyway something like that and if you're like 10 then that's quite low but there are some people have a p doom number of 50%, you know, and after seeing all these moves, the accumulation makes your P-Doom number surge.

26:01Simon Mayo: Anyway, Box Office Top 10 is on the way. The Laughter Lift. Wow, that's going to be useful, I think, today. A little bit of Greengrass, of course, The Uprising, Carrie, and Paul Greengrass is explaining more about The Uprising. A reminder that there are like one or two tickets left for our Christmas special at the Bristol Beacon December 6th. So if you'd like a chance to experience our 90s Christmas death match, then head to the address on the show notes, and we'll be at the Bristol Beacon, which is just off the Ring Road. It's going to be Gert Lush, which I imagine is Bristolian, and makes perfect sense, but not said by someone in London.

26:38Simon Mayo: Anyway, more in a sec.

26:44Simon Mayo: Hey, Mark Kermode. Fancy a fun quick-fire quiz? I thought you'd never ask. Great. How do you protect yourself from spoilers?

26:52Paul Greengrass: We never watch the end of the film.

26:54Simon Mayo: Well, a bit impractical, but fine. How do you protect yourself from getting wound up by noisy cinema goers? There's no need.

27:01Paul Greengrass: 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?

27:09Simon Mayo: What's more fun than being well protected?

27:11Paul Greengrass: Okay, is that part of the quiz?

27:13Simon Mayo: I'm doing the questions, thank you. How do you protect yourself from online scams?

27:17Paul Greengrass: 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.

27:31Simon Mayo: 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.

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28:25Simon Mayo: Okay, Box Office Top 10 is like this at number 10, pressure.

28:30Paul Greengrass: It's exciting weather. And as you point out many times, the untold story, which has many times been told, but it's told well again this time with some liberties, but I enjoyed it very much.

28:42Simon Mayo: Yeah. And if Andrew Scott's in it, then it's going to be well worth the entrance fee. Number nine, Practical Magic 2.

28:50Paul Greengrass: Well, as we know, I didn't like it, but many of our listeners did. This is its fourth week in the top 10. It's probably going to be gone next week, but it's done solidly. I didn't like the film, but many of our listeners had a good time, apparently fuelled by Lady Petrel, according to. And it was pointed out that that was a term from Bridget Jones. You and I didn't recognise it when it was first brought up.

29:12Simon Mayo: That's number eight in America.

29:14Paul Greengrass: Number eight here is Drishiam, The Conclusion. So not press screened. This is an Indian Hindi language crime thriller. It is the sequel to Drishjum 2. And unlike its predecessors, features an original story, which is not narratively connected to other ones. Anyway, if anyone's seen it, let us know. Please send us a review. Honestly, I would love to be reviewing these films, but they are not press screened. And that is why we don't.

29:39Simon Mayo: It is astonishing. I know we've mentioned this a number of times over the decades, but it hasn't got any better. It seems to me that you've often said, you know, these Hindi language films and it wasn't press screened. Well, show them, show them they're doing well. They're all there. They're in the 10. We'd like to know about them.

29:56Paul Greengrass: The main issue is that they don't need to be press screened. Quite often they don't actually arrive until too late for the press screenings and the distributors aren't signed up to the FDA. this i weirdly enough i wrote an article about this for the new statesman about 25 years ago when one of the big um uh distributors did join the fda but it's it is a shame it is a shame because i would like to be seeing them but at the moment they're not press screen number seven is sean the sheep the beast of mossy bottom which i loved i'm i like all the sean the sheep stuff i've never really met an aardman stop motion that i didn't like but i thought this was terrific and i love the fact that it's just it's completely language free it's just you know it's just noises and movement and that's it it's like early cinema it's miraculous six here seven there avengers endgame encore or as it's been called avengers endgame on snore because we have another one coming and this relates back to an email earlier on which is can there really be any more superhero

30:58Simon Mayo: movies yes yes i'm afraid this will be a whole lot more uh and number five here sense and sensibility

31:07Paul Greengrass: i really enjoyed this i think i enjoyed it a lot more than many other critics i see that it's had a slightly rough ride with critics but i was i was surprised i thought it worked i i thought the performances were good i thought that the way it told the story kind of you know had a good mixture of dirt under its fingernails but also kind of genuine romantic charm i enjoyed it i think you

31:27Simon Mayo: liked it too didn't you yeah i did absolutely and it's not it's not a film i would sort of queue up to see but you know so it completely won me over and it's a um it's i thought it was fantastic actually you know and you could you could go with a on a multi-generational trip to the cinema absolutely and and everyone would be engaged so i agree well done well done it digger on the other hand is at number four.

31:54Paul Greengrass: Okay. So the only thing I'm going to say, because I know you've got emails is the fact that Digger is number four means that as far as box office is concerned, it has tanked because opening at number four is tanking. Anyway, I know you have many emails.

32:11Simon Mayo: And it's four here and it's number four in America as well. This one says, I may be in the minority here, certainly amongst older people, but Digger really impressed and even moved me. I only went to see it so I could be part of the conversation and surprise myself as the film surprised me. It is bold and inventive and messy. But when the credits rolled, we all just sat there in a silence which may have been stunned or respectful or admittedly possibly horrified. I just couldn't move for a bit. It may even be a great film. Anyway, I'm still thinking about it. I know younger people have responded to it more enthusiastically than oldies, which gives me hope considering its themes and twists and turns.

32:52Simon Mayo: I rarely laughed, so its promises of dark comedy didn't work for me, but that matters not. And as my friends know, I'm not usually the biggest Tom Cruise fan, but he is terrific here. Still thinking, and that may be the best a film can do. So, Mark Kermode, you're wrong. And this is from the good lady professor, her indoors, Linda Ruth Williams on Instagram.

33:14Paul Greengrass: And that, ladies and gentlemen, is called getting slapped in public. in your face yeah that's what well there are as we know there is no right or wrong answer to this the fact that i mean obviously the good lady professor her indoors was the person who told me i was completely wrong about ai and i you know and i didn't like ai when i first saw it and then i watched it again later and i now think it's one of my favorite spielberg films i i didn't get that from Digger. And I was actually kind of quite surprised that the good lady Professor Herring did. And of course it makes me think, well, I need to go back and watch it again.

33:52Paul Greengrass: And I said, when I did my review the first time around, because of the way the narrative is structured, it may well be that on second viewing, it is a more fulfilling experience. My wife then said, well, I can't imagine anybody coming out and wanting to go straight back in again. but you know look she's smarter than i am so i would just say to it to anybody you know if you take my opinions with a pinch of salt because she's smarter than i am okay well doug says i

34:22Simon Mayo: went to digger on friday with low expectations i hated babel birdman and the revenant but the prospect of a genuinely divisive film was too tempting to ignore yeah yeah yeah i was therefore surprised to end up fascinated, amused, and even a little impressed. For much of its running time, I was baffled by its sheer abrasiveness. You have to admire a hundred million dollar plus film that makes no attempt to placate its audience. Whether you like it or not, it's impossible to look away. The third act elevates it further, revealing the film as a satire of satire itself. Its central thesis that parody is futile in the face of modernity's horrors, and that art is often corrupted by the elites it seeks to mock feels sadly accurate the end credits deliver a brilliantly executed gut punch these are the first genuinely novel ideas i've seen from in your right to in yaritu that's the one and they amount to a sharp takedown of the wave of eat the rich satires that followed parasite two days later i'm still thinking about digger if you want your next cinema trip to challenge you give it a shot uh also eric crawford in sunderland gentlemen i must differ with mark uh on the new inerritude it criticizes the film for relying on post-modern excuses these excesses are meant to be over the top overacted and over egged so the film isn't bad just clever but there's an elephant in the room it's extraordinarily difficult to make media about the climate crisis that people will actually engage with.

35:54Simon Mayo: Preaching is often counterproductive, while defeatism is too easy. Digger takes an indirect route. It opens with bombast and what Mark calls an overdose of acting pills before Cruise turns the spotlight back on us. Then the closing credits offer a sober glimpse of our future. Those tonal shifts are bracing, culminating in a final klaxon that jolts our critical faculties. Climate change is already happening, but that doesn't mean our actions no longer matter. They will matter for centuries. Eric in Sunderland. There you go.

36:24Paul Greengrass: Okay. So a couple of things. On the subject of the 100 million plus, 125 million was the signed off cost. It looks like it was closer to 160 million. So your point about a movie that cost that much, paying no attention to any kind of test screening or what the audience might or might not, is even more significant. It is definitely true. So Guillermo del Toro posted a whole lot of stuff of young people responding very well to Digger. And he was the one who wondered whether it was generational. And that was where that debate began. and I am certainly hearing from people that that some people have had very very good experiences with the film so as a broad picture box office thing it costs an absolute fortune and it is going to lose much more money than they thought it was going to lose in terms of the experience that people have had of it enough people have had very good experiences with it to make me think that it is clearly working on something I'm not just random people there's people writing in very intelligent emails to our show and i don't just mean the good lady professor her indoors i mean in general and that gives me pause for thought um one thing that i that i found kind of infuriating was um when i was looking at the youtube thing and you look at the youtube thing below people saying oh spoilers and which i just want to say this once and for all if you think if you think that um your entire purpose in responding to a review of a film that doesn't like a film that you like is to go, then as far as I'm concerned, I have no interest in anything you have to say about anything ever.

38:09Paul Greengrass: I am, however, very interested in people responding differently and passionately, enough so that I'm going to go and see Digger again. However, what I would say is the only thing you can ever do as a critic is to respond honestly. And I did. I did not like it the first time round. And I don't know that I'm ever going to like it. I think I might like it more the second time round, as I had suggested in my review. But you can only be honest about what you think. And you can also only be honest about the fact that other people will think different things. And I'm actually very encouraged that so many people I've spoken to have got so much more out of it than I did.

38:54Simon Mayo: Correspondence to codermayor.com. Number three here, number three there is Heart of the Beast. Rubbish. Number two here, number two there, Resident Evil. A romp. Loved it. And we have the same top three because number one is Verity. Unexpectedly 1468. Thanks for getting in touch, unexpectedly. I saw it this evening. Daft as a brush, but quite entertaining. reminded me of the housemaid but without the laughs yeah and vyrift says just got back from seeing verity i went in expecting a clunker but enjoyed the ride there was a point in the screening where everyone in the theater simultaneously exclaimed what and then we all laughed together that moment alone was worth the price of admission yeah i enjoyed it i mean

39:40Paul Greengrass: it's nonsense it's ripe nonsense but the the the comparison i made is a very good one um yeah i enjoyed it it's it's absolute b-movie trash wearing a-list clothing and stars and and it's a romp and you know i enjoyed it it was it was good fun and that's again it comes down to the fact that everyone's response is kind of individual and everyone's response is always subjective and it just it found a sort of sweet spot for me that at the same time as thinking it was absolute tosh i was thinking but i am enjoying this toffee apple of a film uh more on your takes

40:19Simon Mayo: on current releases in the overflow carp park of love in take two uh look for us on patreon to get that and this and the other all ad free big guest time in a moment 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?

40:42Paul Greengrass: That is deeply unfair. But is it? Sometimes it's delivery.

40:47Simon Mayo: Well, perhaps it's your pans that are holding you back. Food sticking, pans burning, uneven heat.

40:54Paul Greengrass: That's unusually generous of you.

40:56Simon Mayo: 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 cleanup headache. They're dishwasher safe and easy to clean.

41:13Paul Greengrass: Plus, every Hexclad product comes with a lifetime warranty so they could genuinely be the last pans you'll ever buy.

41:20Simon Mayo: Upgrade to Hexclad and make everyday cooking easier. For a limited time, listeners get 15 % off with our exclusive link at hexclad.co.uk slash take.

41:31Paul Greengrass: That's H-E-X-C-L-A-D hexclad.co.uk forward slash take.

41:38Simon Mayo: Offer excludes bundles and other items already on sale. Support the show and let them know we sent you. So you're not worried about hosting the whole family for the holidays? Why would I be? Wayfair had everything I needed to get the house holiday ready. What if Mike brings his cheerful dogs? My tree has tons of five-star reviews telling me how sturdy it is. But what if everyone's plus one brings a plus one? We'll see how extendable this extendable table really is. And extra chairs are on the way. OK, what if there's a blizzard and everyone has to sleep over? Ready to go with extra bedding and towels.

42:11Simon Mayo: From guest-ready essentials to holiday decor you can trust, Wayfair delivers.

42:22Simon Mayo: OK, so top guest time. And this week we have Paul Greengrass. Began his career in current affairs television. as you know with world in action uh then became one of hollywood's leading directors so um if you just zoom through murder of stephen lawrence on itv then bloody sunday then oma then the born supremacy then united 93 born ultimatum green zone captain phillips jason born 22 july news of the world the lost bus it's an extraordinary that's a hell of a cv isn't it it's it's pretty good And now it's the uprising.

43:24Simon Mayo: She's aged. Then she must pay. He says work harder, you work harder. That's enough! Enough! We've given you enough!

43:37Paul Greengrass: I shouldn't have done that, I've got that.

43:40Simon Mayo: And then there's a clip from The Uprising. I'm delighted to say you've been joined by its director and writer, Paul Greengrass. Paul, welcome to the show. How are you, sir? I'm very well. How are you? It's very nice to speak to you. uh thank you for making uh some time so uh we we are for the first time i think in any of our conversations on this show at all in any of its incarnations into the world of 1381 i know um which is where which is where we start and is where you tell us we start um and it made me realize i kind of i know about victorian settings and we know about elizabethan settings yeah um There are certain kind of period dramas that we're used to, but we're not used to the 14th century.

44:24Simon Mayo: Tell us why we're there. It's remote. I think it, to be honest, the roots of this film started in Brexit, actually,

44:36Simon Mayo: which felt to me at the time like a sort of profound English rebellion, an English uprising. You know, if you think of Brexit, Scotland voted yes, Wales voted yes, Northern Ireland voted yes, England very significantly voted no. So that sort of gave me the idea that I'd like to make an English uprising film. And I sort of looked at a few kind of ideas, but I kept coming back to the Peasants' Revolt. And actually, I wrote the screenplay in lockdown, in the pandemic, in COVID. I started on day two, I thought, okay, well, I'll just, I'll write my English uprising film and it'll be The Peasants' Revolt and that's what I did.

45:25And then it took some films, as you know,

45:29Simon Mayo: kind of come to screen very easily and some just take a long time. This was one that took a long time. And I think one of the reasons why we got it made was because as the six years have gone past since I wrote it, it's become more and more relevant in a way. what was amazing i remember it very clearly was how eerily familiar it was you know although it's sort of 600 years ago the issues are the same today um because what is the story of the peasants revolt at heart it's the story of a bunch of oligarchs who jealously guard their wealth and power whilst beneath them there's a a seething enraged population you feel the system's rigged against them and all it takes is a spark you know that's that's the that was the story then and of course it's the same now and what's very interesting of course is that if you look on a map the places where the peasants revolt started and and and spread very rapidly they're all they're all the brexit places too so it's very very very contemporary as a story, I think.

46:43Simon Mayo: Is that entirely coincidental? I mean, that sounds astonishing that 600 years later, there's a political echo from the events that you're describing. I think it goes to show how deeply rooted the resentments that Brexit expressed are and were. That's the first thing. and how strong that feeling of rage is out there in our world today, you know. And that's not, I'm not making a political point, left or right. You know, I think wherever your politics lean, I think we all know that there's this great, great disconnect. People feel a sense of rage at the disconnect between how their lives are and how the lives of, you know, whatever you call them, the elite, the better off, the winners or the losers, the north or, you know, the south versus the north.

47:43Simon Mayo: However you look at it, there's that sense of resentment and rage. And that was very, very common then. And so what I tried to do was to make a film about what happens when that spark takes off. You know, there's a scene in the film where Andrew Garfield's character, Ploughman, goes into town. They're going to collect the taxes. And he snaps, you know, he snaps and says, we've given you enough. That's enough. And I think that that is how people feel. You know, I think that's the feeling out there. When you wrote this story, Paul, I think we know, so some people listening to this may well remember the Peasants' Revolt.

48:33Simon Mayo: They may well remember the name of Watt Tyler, who was in your movie played by Cosmo Jarvis, who's great. There's another real character, John Ball, not John Ball, which is what I thought it was to start with. No, John Ball, the famous heretic preacher. Played by Jamie Bell, who is also fantastic. But I suppose you could have centred the story there, but you've centered it on a gunner every guy and every farmer andrew garfield what was your thinking behind making the plowman not you know be the central character rather than one of the actual historical characters because i wanted him to be an everyman you know i wanted him to be representative of all the tens of thousands of people who were just who were farmers artisans people from villages and towns who felt this great sense of resentment who joined the rebellion now you know in a sense it's a movie it's not a history lesson but obviously what tyler was a real character we know almost nothing about what tyler by the way he steps into history and one week later he's dead he leads this enormous rebellion the greatest rebellion in European medieval history, quite a staggering event.

49:49Simon Mayo: We know next to nothing about him, but most historians agree he must have been a veteran of, you know, a military veteran, had military training. And then there's John Ball, who was an ideologue, and, you know, that's how revolutions and uprisings work. You always have the sort of military element and you have the ideological element, and then you have the people who follow, who were the ordinary people with ordinary dreams and aspirations and hopes and fears. And I wanted my character to be a fictional character who lived through that tumultuous week. And, of course, he engages with Ball and Tyler and, of course, the king, the young King Richard.

50:37And, you know, it's a movie.

50:39Simon Mayo: it's you know if we're talking genres here which we we have to you know i wanted to i mean i loved ridley's movie gladiator you know it's one of my i loved that movie i couldn't but i wanted to make a movie in that genre but it was going to be my sort of movie it's going to feel different obviously and have more of what interests me what did they want in a period setting what what did the what did the rebels what did what what were them specific things well it's very interesting you should ask that question. First of all, the only accounts of what's called the Peasants' Revolt that exist are told from the point of view of people in the court.

51:20Simon Mayo: So they're intensely hostile to the uprising. There are no accounts written by people who took part in it, obviously. um but what is clear is that they marched on london it happened very very quickly there were there were protests against um tax collections which were considered unfair and onerous and um very suddenly it became this huge march tens of thousands of people converging on on london at a time when her armies, you know, England's armies were on the border with Scotland and France. So the city was effectively undefended. And they had very specific demands, simple demands for economic justice and political rights.

52:11Simon Mayo: That's essentially what it was. Now, then, without giving away the plot of the movie, of course, the revolution descends, as all revolutions do, into chaos and violence. But there's no doubt that it started with very simple demands for justice. And when it was all over, those demands remained alive in people's minds and echoed down the years. That's the thing about the Peasants' Revolt. You can draw, it echoes down the centuries towards the Enlightenment, towards the American Revolution, which is a no-kings rebellion, towards self-government, towards economic freedoms. And when people talk today, I'm talking about, you know, when you look at our country today or the US or Europe, you know, there's the sense of, you know, the desire for a new settlement, rage at a rigged system, however you want to call it.

53:13Simon Mayo: You know, levelling up would be another way of putting it. You know, politicians are trying in our country across the West to respond to that rage. Not very well, it has to be said. And in a sense, those demands are the echoes of the Peasants' Revolt. There was one particular echo which occurred to me very early on in the film, which I don't think can have occurred to you when you were writing and making this film. that the farmers who rebel in the we're talking about the first half hour of the film they um they are serfs they are owned and one of the first acts of rebellion that we see after the initial spark is they break into a place that's holding all the records where they where you can see who is owned by who and who owes and that is a data center that correct they are that the first act of rebellion is to attack a data center words which i didn't I didn't really have it.

54:18Simon Mayo: There wasn't a phrase that actually existed in my head until a few months ago. And I thought that's what they're doing. Definitely. And by the way, and they continued that into London because they then sacked the Royal Courts of Justice, which had all, as it were, the national records. You know, they were obsessed and clearly politically savvy enough to realise that hitting the data centres of the time was absolutely integral to any move towards their freedom. So you're right. You know, it's uncanny, the echoes to me. We just had Aaron Sorkin on the show talking about the social reckoning. and in that film COVID happens it's not key to the story but it's happening while he's telling the story January the 6th happens as a kind of a direct result of all the issues that he's tackling and it seems to me this is all kind of a Venn diagram where the social reckoning and the uprising there is an area in the middle which is the same which is a sense of rage and a sense of hopelessness and acting to counteract that.

55:34Simon Mayo: That's the one. But I agree. I mean, obviously, I think Aaron's an absolute genius. I can't wait to see the movie. But I would imagine there would be a tremendous overlap. You know, he's looking at it today, and I'm choosing this story from 600 years ago, but we're talking about the same things. You know, this feeling of, as you say, powerlessness. and you know when you make a film I always think the film goes better if you ask yourself a question this is me talking now you know if you ask if I ask myself a question to which making the film is the answer if that makes sense so for me the question in this film was given that feeling of rage that's out there given that sense of powerlessness that sense of believing that the system's rigged against you.

56:26Simon Mayo: What happens when that spark bursts into flame? What does that look like? And that's the story of this film. You know, and it's a story then, of course, but it's also a story about today. Paul Greengrass, part one, talking about the uprising. We were fortunate to have, you know, 25 minutes with him. So we'll put some of his other comments in take two. A good reason to be a part of that if you're not already, because he's just fascinating. And as you can hear, the way he talks about 1381, which I think is officially described as deep period, it's not just period drama, this is deep period. The echoes come through.

57:13Simon Mayo: Obviously, that's the way he likes to make the film. The second part of our conversation in take two anyway. let's talk about the uprising.

57:21Paul Greengrass: I mean, I think one of the key things in that interview was you said to him, what did they want? And then he said, well, you know, this is what they wanted. But then initially it started out that you want social justice, economic justice, and then things changed. And then he said towards the end of that interview, I know there's more of it to come, that he found that Greengrass found that the best way to make a movie was to ask a question. and the answer to the question would be making the movie. And his question was, you know, what happens when that spark happens? Okay. So I think those two things get to the centre of what is good and what doesn't work as well about the film.

58:02Paul Greengrass: So the Peasants' Revolt was something that obviously was just being talked about a lot, particularly in sort of socialist circles, you know, cherished moment of rebellion that, as Paul Greengrass says, you know, echoes down the century, right down to what he calls today's desire for a new settlement. And when he was talking about it, he said that generically, it's in the same genre as something like Gladiator, but it begins with a simple demands for rights and economic justice, and then descends, and I'm quoting directly from the interview, as all revolutions do, into chaos and violence. And he located the beginning of the story in Brexit, which he saw, again, as he described in that interview, as a profoundly English uprising.

58:48Paul Greengrass: And as a result of that, he said he wanted to make an English uprising film that was specifically making those comparisons between the kind of rage and disempowerment that people felt recently, and this thing that happened, as you said, in what was generically referred to as the deep, dark past. The difference, of course, is that in terms of the Peasants' Revolt, the demands seem to be completely legitimate. And the story is that the demands are legitimate. You know, it's the taxation in order, because the hundreds of wars is raging, there's disease and things are going very, very badly. And people are simply, as we heard in that Andrew Garfield clip, there is no more to give.

59:28Paul Greengrass: We have been taxed out of existence. And you want some kind of accountability, which is slightly different to what was happening with Brexit, which the more we learn about Brexit, the more we learn that all the reasons that we were sold, not that we were, that were sold as the Brexit reasons turn out to be completely bogus. So this is a film about what happens when that spark starts a fire and what comes from that sense of powerlessness. And you made the point very astutely that the first thing they do is destroy the records, which is absolutely like a data center. And it is really interesting that there is a comparison between this and social reckoning that we've just been talking about, and Carrie, which we are just about to talk about, which is playing out in a media age.

1:00:13Paul Greengrass: All these things are weirdly connected this week. But that question about what did they want? What they wanted was economic and social justice, straightforwardly. And there are three different elements. On the one hand, you have the kind of warrior figure, Watt Tyler. You have John Ball, the kind of the ideologue, which is the sort of, the ideology behind it, but the film actually centers on a character whose name is their trade, which is Plowman, who is an honest, everyman, ordinary embodiment of the working people who ends up heading off into the woods wearing a hood. And we'll discuss a little bit of that in a moment.

1:00:55Paul Greengrass: So it's basically a film that centers on a constructed everyman character who has around him historical characters representing the different parts of a struggle. Now, obviously, Paul Greengrass knows how to do this kind of drama because he knows how to, I mean, if you look at that incredible filmography that you read out, certainly when he's recreating things, actual riots and chaos and world events that have been cataclysmically violent, he really knows how to put you in the middle of that. And once again, he manages to do that. In a part of the interview that we have yet to hear in take two, you talk about the fact that we don't actually see rebellious peasants very much in cinema.

1:01:41Paul Greengrass: Well, the place that you do see it is in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And that's the thing that one thinks of as soon as anyone thinks about rebellious peasants, you think of it in comedic terms, because it's true. You don't see that many of them. I think that the strongest parts of this are to do with, well firstly I think this I think it's a very good use of music very good use of song there is more of that that will be talked about in the in the interview in take two which I would advise people to listen to and we'll pick this up after that because there's a lot to be said about what the music is doing I think that it is very good at putting you in the middle of this kind of powder keg of resentment, which has been built up for completely legitimate reasons, and then these three separate prongs of how that then gets propelled towards London and what then happens in its kind of descent into chaos and, of course, into double crossing.

1:02:36Paul Greengrass: the the the question that i have which i don't know the answer to is when you said what do they want i still want to know what paul greengross wants because i don't know i know he said i want to dramatize what happens when that spark sets that flame but weirdly enough watching this i came away slightly confused as to what exactly was the what was the point it was trying to make because I found it engrossed and it's kind of very depressing in terms of it is everything goes wrong. This isn't a plot spoiler. Everything goes very, very badly wrong. It does not have a happy ending, although there is a coda, which we will talk about probably in take two, about putting on a hood and going off into the woods.

1:03:25Paul Greengrass: But I came out of it unsure as to exactly what the point Paul Greengrass was making was. Is it that all rebellions will inevitably descend into chaos? Or is it a more amorphous point that we are on the brink of something due to everyone now feeling powerless? And the point is that there is a comparison between what's happening now and what happened in the past. And I don't know what the answer is.

1:03:58Simon Mayo: And having watched the film and having spoken to Paul, I bought a book which had been part of his research, which I happen to have here, which is called A Distant Mirror. Right. Okay. By Barbara Tuchman, The Calamitous 14th Century, Crusades and Chivalry, Plunder and Plagues. That sounds great. Yeah, absolutely. But it's fantastically written and every page is extraordinary. but I think he made the film because it is a distant mirror, which I love as a phrase. It's saying that even though this was 600 years ago, it still has ripples through not just English and British history, but into American history as well.

1:04:43Simon Mayo: And I think that's the point of it.

1:04:46Paul Greengrass: So the point is the mirroring of the past. It's like the whole thing about the past doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. So the point is the mirroring of that kind of broiling, seething resentment, that sense of powerlessness, and what happens when that gets to a certain point. Is that – and also – Yes, I think so. But in his mind, has that point been reached and was that point reached with Brexit? Or is it saying that we are in it now or we're in the aftermath of it?

1:05:17Simon Mayo: I think the Brexit thing – I think it's an interesting coincidence. Right, but it's a red herring. that the epicenters of the Peasants' Revolt were the epicenters of Brexit. Now, it may be that clever people can draw the distinct lines, but clearly they were rebelling against being overtaxed and extreme poverty, and they had just survived the plague, and they had nothing left to give, which is clearly not the case in the 21st century in the UK. But so I think there are all kinds of things that are tied up in this, But I think it's the distant, it's a distant mirror. The fact that the things that provoke people to rebellion are the same things that can provoke you to rebellion now.

1:06:02Simon Mayo: And rage and powerlessness are very, very dangerous things.

1:06:05Paul Greengrass: Yes, they are very dangerous things. So I want to ask you, shall we, shall we talk here or shall we talk later about the hood?

1:06:17Simon Mayo: The hooded man. Because the hood is in Thunderbirds, of course. No, I know, I know, I know, I know.

1:06:21Paul Greengrass: Which is what, yeah. But so shall we talk about it now or shall we talk about it in Take Two after you actually address it in the interview?

1:06:28Simon Mayo: Yeah, I mean, I think because Paul is less precious than some filmmakers who don't want you to talk about things in the film.

1:06:35Paul Greengrass: It was the original title of the film briefly.

1:06:38Simon Mayo: Yeah, it was The Hood. So I think it's, I do think it's a very interesting coda. It is worth saying, and let's keep some of that for Take Two. But I do think it's also worth saying that Andrew Garfield being called Ploughman is also a reference to Piers Ploughman, the Middle English poem, which was the first reference to... Go on, do your Middle English impression. Well, it's just a bit of Chaucer, which is so... I'm confusing, which is there was a worthy man with all, which I think is part of the Knight's Tale or something anyway. And it's funny that whenever... I couldn't stand Chaucer.

1:07:11Paul Greengrass: Whenever we do impressions of Chaucer, you do, there was a worthy man, and I do a letty flea fart, which sums everything up. So anyway, so I think, I mean, I loved it because I love Paul's films. Oh, I'm a huge Paul Greengrass fan. Do not get me wrong. I am a huge Paul Greengrass fan and I will spend time watching his films, even if they confuse and somewhat befuddle me, which I confess that this has done because I think he's a really fine filmmaker. and never less than interesting. I just don't think this is as focused as his best dramas. And who wants to work with Paul?

1:07:54Simon Mayo: Well, everybody does. Thomas H. McKenzie, Catherine Waterston, Tom Holland. What a great cast. Johnny Lee Miller. Who I didn't recognise either. Yeah, and I went to check on some of the historical accuracy as to what happens to the Archbishop of Canterbury and various other novels, and he's absolutely right. Absolutely precise. It doesn't end well. anyway so more more of the interview with Paul Greengrass in take two and more discussion about where it ends but there's a lot of beheading there's a lot of choppity chop and bouncy bounce so let's because it's all quite gloomy and deep period let's enter the laughter lift and have fun together Mark let's have fun together here we go okay well that sounds jaunty doesn't it uh hey mark yeah on my tip-top radio show uh drive time uh at greatest it's radio four till seven monday to friday rick astley is a frequent guest excellent and he loves his animated movies mark in fact he'll lend you pretty much any disney dvd but he's never going to give you up.

1:09:01Simon Mayo: Hey! I like that. We just verbally Rickrolled everybody. Talking of pop icons, I remember when Billy Joel stayed at my house in the 80s due to an improbable sequence of mishaps we won't go into now but are essential for the contrivance of this joke. Okay. And meant that his clothes needed washing. Right. And in the morning, the good lady's ceramicist there indoors put Billy's clean laundry on his bed. Heya, schmoes, or some such New Jersey greeting, shouted Billy down the stairs. Why is my laundry still damp? Sorry, piano man, said you know who. We didn't start the dryer. There aren't many Billy Joel jokes out there.

1:09:46Simon Mayo: And that is why. Hey, Mark, Child 3, Child 3's got a new partner. Okay. Actually, I just realised I haven't seen this joke. I was so overcome by the Billy Joel Joe. So let's experience it together. Okay, fine. So Child 3 has got a new partner. Child 3's got a new partner. Just showed me a picture. She's wearing a green top, white shorts, black football boots, and a pair of Velcro fastened protective gloves. She looks like a keeper.

1:10:16Paul Greengrass: Hey! I actually got there just before you said that. Wow. And I don't do football. No. And what's still to come, Mark? What are you doing next?

1:10:24Simon Mayo: Still to come, the review of the new series of Carrie. and if you've enjoyed what you've heard so far including all of those fantastic jokes there's a lot of extra content waiting for you in take two such as questions in which this week we're asked which horror franchise of a minimum of four installments would we watch if we were compelled to just search and join us over there you can get both takes ad free plus our exclusive fortnightly extra show extra extra show Take Ultra, which features Mark and I enduring the murky world of our YouTube commenters. But it sounds as though Mark actually has a look there anyway because he's talked about going on YouTube and looking below the line, which he knows he shouldn't do.

1:11:07Paul Greengrass: Should not do.

1:11:08Simon Mayo: Okay. More in a moment.

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1:12:22Simon Mayo: so now uh we were going to have mike flanagan uh on the show um to talk about carry and midnight mass and all the other things which he's been associated with but he was snatched away by a flying vampire at the last minute and he was sitting there in traffic and who could have predicted that there'd be traffic in london there was traffic in london yeah this vampire flew past and said hang on that's that flanagan guy who didn't portray me in a very attractive way i think in midnight mass made me responsible for all kinds of chaos uh so i'm gonna snatch him away and so he's not on the show which is particularly annoying because we both have watched every single episode of Carrie, which is about to turn up on Prime Video to prepare for the interview.

1:13:12Simon Mayo: So in the words of Meatloaf, we're all revved up with no place to go. Hey, very good. So should we wander through it anyway? Yes. So let's play you just a little clip of the Carrie, which is about to appear on your television. I hope you all had a good holiday season. Please say hello to Carrie White. Make her feel welcome. Hi, I'm Sue, by the way. Hi. That's a really nice dress. Thanks. I made it. Sure did, didn't you? So what do we do? Oh, so this is your first day, like, ever. I was schooled at home. Till today, I mean. Oh, I love that for you.

1:13:53Paul Greengrass: There's one thing no one understands about what happened here in Chamberlain.

1:14:00Paul Greengrass: The police don't get it. The press don't get it. The scientists don't get it and you won't get it either.

1:14:07Simon Mayo: Can I just say, can I just highlight the appalling, that appalling, oh, it's a very good, oh, I so love that for you. With that kind of sneering, patronising, smug, entitled voice that just makes you think, okay, I know exactly where we are here.

1:14:23Paul Greengrass: Yeah, precisely. And there is a lot of that. So, okay, bit of background. This is the latest from Mike Flanagan, who's the guy behind TV series Midnight Mass, which we loved, Haunting of Hill House. More importantly, however, the director of several Stephen King adaptations, Gerald's Game, Doctor Sleep, Life of Chuck, and now this. This is an updating of Stephen King's 1974 novel about a bullied young girl with untapped telekinetic powers living with her religious zealot mother, who believes that the world is full of sin into which her daughter is threatening to fall. The original novel was marketed with the very post-exorcist tagline, a novel of a girl with a frightening power.

1:15:06Paul Greengrass: So this was kind of mid-70s, and it did fall into that whole kind of demonic, pedophobia, scary kids with powers thing. Famously filmed by Brian De Palma, a few years after the novel came out, starring Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie using very groovy split screen during the kind of apocalyptic third act. One of the most memorable Stephen King adaptations, one of the most famous end of film jump scares, really hard to see how it could be improved upon, but many have tried. In the end of the 1980s, you had Carrie the Musical, which was so badly received that a book about theatrical flops was called not since carry uh 1999 catch a uh did did uh carry to carry to the rage which was notable mainly as i pointed out before for the fact that there's a brief appearance of music by the pole cats in it um carry was then remade as a tv film in 2002 as a potential pilot for a tv show which never happened it was remade again as a feature in 2013 by Kimberley Pierce with Chloe Grace Moretz in the lead role.

1:16:15Paul Greengrass: And it was okay. It didn't really move the dial hugely, but it was okay. But of course, it wasn't the department. Now this, which is the first real 21st century overhaul of the story we all know. So there was some social media in the 2013 version, but it's not as central as it is here because here it is right in the middle of the story. So you have Sam Raich Howe's Carrie, Samantha Sloyan as Margaret White, her mother, who incidentally is much more sympathetic in this version than in the novel. Can I just ask, have you read the novel, Simon?

1:16:53Simon Mayo: I don't think I ever did. I think all of my knowledge has come from the movie the first time around.

1:17:01Paul Greengrass: So you saw the movie when it was in cinemas at the beginning? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

1:17:07Simon Mayo: Or at university, one of those film society things, you know.

1:17:10Paul Greengrass: Okay. All right. So in this version, we meet Carrie and her mother in the shadow of the death of her father and the husband. He's a construction worker who dies in an on-site accident and his shirt is still on a chair in the house. There is an air of grief hanging over the house. And up until this point, Carrie has been hidden away at home because her mother thinks that the world is a very bad place and they've been keeping her secret. But now she's been discovered and she must enroll at school. So she goes to school and all the themes of bullying and violence that are in King's source are now even more terrifying than they were back then because they've been amplified by the twin threats of school shootings and the rise of social media, both of which have made teen years in America all the more toxic and potentially lethal.

1:18:11Paul Greengrass: So it is from this terrifying world that Carrie's mother seeks to protect her. The main difference being that in 74, she was a religious zealot lunatic. Nowadays, I have to say that the world looks a lot more like something that you can imagine somebody thinks you need protecting from. And this is a key shift. And the key shift is because the world has changed and Flanagan has updated the material for the world which we now live in, in which Carrie's mother's obsession about protecting her daughter from it does not seem quite as crazy as it did before. As for the character of Carrie, Mike Flanagan has said elsewhere in other interviews that whereas De Palma's Carrie was a clenched fist who's absolutely shaking out there in the world.

1:18:57Paul Greengrass: But the Carrie in this one is wide open, eager, curious, and earnest, and somehow is walking very wide-eyed into this new environment of the school. She hasn't been to school before, but without any sense of how dangerous it is. She's trusting. She does not know how bad this place can be. and of course the the the scene of the de palma film it opens with the shower scene and the the tampons being thrown at carrie as she has her her first period now that happens in this but it is amplified by the fact that they get out their phones and they start filming it so it's reconfiguring that scene that that was a very famous scene in the brian de palma film said no the horror now it's not just that the bullying is happening.

1:19:45Paul Greengrass: The bullying is being filmed. And if there is a demonic power here, it's not the telekinesis. It is the work of devils behind the social media who have now made everything fodder for that. And this actually ties back to what we were talking about. This is coming out the same week as a social reckoning. I mean, in this world, not even the teachers are safe from online bullying. And I think all of this works really well in this updated version because it is very much, I mean, they're very good performances. It is an ensemble, but there are very good central performances. Incidentally, in that ensemble, special shout out to Matthew Lillard, who is terrific as the principal of the school, proving once again that Quentin Tarantino does not know what he is talking about.

1:20:31Paul Greengrass: It is a terrific performance by Matthew Lillard in this, and it's really, really well judged. What did Tarantino say? Tarantino said he was weak sauce and said he hated, he really didn't like his, he just suddenly just did this weird punching down thing, being rude about Matthew Lillard for no reason at all, other than that he just opened his mouth and rubbish came out. Wouldn't be the first time. So all that stuff, I think works really well. Now I want to get onto some of the stuff that I think doesn't, but I want to first ask you, what do you think about that updating and the stuff about the social media and the fact that it has been brought into that Instagram age?

1:21:06Yeah.

1:21:07Simon Mayo: Well, as we've mentioned a couple of times, everything is bleeding into everything else here. All the things that we're talking about, whether it be the uprising or the social reckoning, it does all end up with us talking about aggressive algorithms. and you're absolutely right. I mean, telekinesis and pyrokinesis and all those kind of things are fascinating subjects and it does broaden the picture a bit. But I thought Summer H. Howell, who is the woman who plays Carrie, is fantastic. She's great. Margaret White. And I was thinking, so played by Samantha Sloyan, who I last saw being Bev Keen in Midnight Mass, where she plays another...

1:21:47Simon Mayo: Precisely. ...and did horrible... Precisely. Can I not get out of this church thing? um she's good at it though isn't she yeah yeah it is and i my only my only problem with it just as as far as you you've commented so far is that and this is an this is definitely an age and stage thing as far as i'm concerned i found the relentless bullying magnified by social media really depressing and really you know it's very it's very very well done and it is clearly instagram that they're talking about because you see them setting up the accounts um to be like a form of torture you know so before we get to the denouement which we know we're going to get to also because the episode one at the first five minutes is all about how it all finishes so you know that it's going to end in in calamity i did it was so well done i found it very depressing because when you watch teenagers bullying each other and being so cruel to each other and for it being backed up by this uh huge thing which we've allowed to take over our lives i found And that kind of, my P-Doom number was increasing.

1:22:53Simon Mayo: But I'm agreeing with what you said.

1:22:56Paul Greengrass: And it is almost as if the supernatural power is now the power of social media. It's not telekinesis. It's not pyrokinesis. The wicked supernatural power in this is the mobile phones. Okay. So as you have just said, the whole thing begins in the wake of the catastrophe. And it is people being interviewed about what happened. And we heard in that clip a voice saying, you won't understand it. But the thing that people don't understand, they keep asking about Carrie. What they don't ask about is the others. And that's what no one understands. And that, I think, is the one thing about this series that for me doesn't land.

1:23:36Paul Greengrass: Because what they've done is the whole thing has another layer, which is that there are a group of strangers who are sort of introduced very early at the beginning, who are somehow sensing Carrie's power, and they somehow understand it. And then they kind of disappear. And then they reoccur at the end. And I don't know that that works. Who are these people? What is this kind of cabal around them? And for me, that felt like, okay, I didn't need that. Now, one thing is that there is the introduction of a character who is tangential to that, which did work for me. Carrie has a friend. she meets a somebody who is a kind of a kindred soul who says to her the power that you've got is a is a power it's not a it's not a curse it's a power and that if if the answer is well you have to have the whole thing about the others in order for that to happen maybe i just thought the thing about who are the strangers what are they doing what's there on it i found that distracting and i I wonder whether the reason it is there is because Mike Flanagan had talked at some point about there being more a continuation of the story that might require other people.

1:25:06Paul Greengrass: What do you think?

1:25:07Simon Mayo: Yes, because he's talked about it being three series is what he's talked about. And he's done that in public interviews. So, you know, it's definitely out there. I think because of the friend character which Carrie has, I'm prepared to give it, I understand your reservations, but I'm thinking, okay, well, women have been accused of these things in the past. Maybe there is something broader to be discussed and maybe series two and series three, if indeed it gets there, will justify that. So I'm prepared to kind of hang around. You know, I found it appalling, hugely enjoyable, wonderful performances.

1:25:52Simon Mayo: Who would be a teacher in an American high school? I mean, also, what a terrible bunch of teachers. I mean, they wimp out, particularly the English teacher. anyway so i so yeah all of those um watched all eight episodes because i thought i'm going to enjoy the conversation with mike i knew you'd watched all eight it took me a few days to to watch them i didn't watch them in every you know just one after the other um i like the fact that he's prepared to take you know sacred texts and do something different with them i imagine stephen king is on board with all of this so i'm and i thought well i'm on board for the ride let's let's see where the, where, where this takes us and where it goes.

1:26:34Paul Greengrass: Yeah.

1:26:34Simon Mayo: Um, there are a couple of in jokes, uh, in there, which I won't spoil obviously, but they're, they're fun for those

1:26:42Paul Greengrass: who know what, you know, can I, can I flag, can I flag just one of them up? Okay. Okay. I'm not going to flag up the, I mean, during, obviously during the sort of the, the, the later stages during the cataclysm, um, when Carrie is walking through town, there are, there are plenty of opportunities to nod to the bus but there was one thing i'm not i'm not going to flag that the one thing i did want to ask mike flanagan and i'm just ashamed that we didn't get to is that there is a shot in the film of um mother and daughter in a bathroom that seemed absolutely an exact replica of a shot from the exorcist and the reason i flagged this it's not out of nowhere Mike Flanagan is currently making or has made Exorcist Martyrs, which is the new Exorcist film.

1:27:31Paul Greengrass: So it's not like he's not been immersed in that world. And I just wonder if anybody else watches it, if anybody else gets to the scene of mother and daughter in bathroom, does anybody else see Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair? Or is it just me? I did want to ask Mike Flanagan whether that was deliberate.

1:27:49Simon Mayo: I had that question ready to go. would have been one of the questions that I would have put had we had the opportunity.

1:27:56Paul Greengrass: My general feeling is, so it sounds to me like you have the same reservations about the others, the strangers as I do, which is that in what we've seen so far they're not really doing very much and it seemed like a distraction. It may be that there is a reason for them being there that would be connected to were there ever to be any other, I mean I don't know whether there is or not or I don't know where it's going, but I can only judge this as a coherent whole in and of itself. I watched it in one go. I watched it basically as an eight-hour movie. I finished at 3.30 in the morning. That's how much I was engaged in it.

1:28:36Paul Greengrass: And as an eight-hour movie, I thought it was brilliantly piercing on its bullying and social media and the hell of the American high school system. I have to say the hell of America, to be honest with you. And I thought that the thing that didn't work was the thing that is set up in the beginning about nobody is asking about the others. And I would advise most people to don't worry about that because that's not, certainly what we have so far in this eight hour movie, it isn't really about them. It is about her and her experience of school life. And, you know, in the same way as, you know, Raw is not about cannibalism.

1:29:15Paul Greengrass: um this isn't about telekinesis it is about bullying and it is a horrifying portrait of

1:29:22Simon Mayo: bullying in the social media age i think i think and and this is right at the very beginning as you said so it's not it's not a spoiler when the eyewitness says it you're not asking the right question the right questions who were the other people i was sufficiently intrigued to go oh i don't know let's go let okay that's new that's different let's let's go for that ride and let's and let's see where that takes us. But it never paid off. Well, it kind of does. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Anyway, correspondenceofcodomo.com. We would love to know what everybody thinks about it. Once you've watched, are all the episodes going to drop together?

1:30:02Simon Mayo: I don't know. What are they doing on Prime Video? I'm not quite sure.

1:30:05Paul Greengrass: I'm not sure. All I know is I did binge watch all eight of them. Yeah.

1:30:12Simon Mayo: So as and when you see it, Let us know what you think, because it'd be good to carry on this conversation. Correspondence at kerbanoemode.com. That's also where you send us videos and audio bits and pieces for telling us about cinematic things that are happening in your life or cinema adjacent. For example, here's one from New York State. Hello, Simon and Mark. This is Meera Blaustein, executive director of the Woodstock Film Festival, now entering its 27th year, starting October 14 until October 18.

1:30:42Paul Greengrass: in Woodstock, New York and surrounding towns

1:30:45Simon Mayo: with lots of films and musical performances and panel discussions and lots of great events. Come visit us. So you see, people from New York have all kinds of different accents, Mark. They don't have the accent that you did. My Billy Joel voice was quite believable based on the fact that people from New York talk in a whole variety of ways, as I think Mira Blaustein and I have proven.

1:31:10Paul Greengrass: I thought Mira sounded very, very welcoming. And when everyone welcomed, I thought that was great. I mean, I thought if I was near there, I would definitely go and become involved.

1:31:18Simon Mayo: Stock Film Festival. Yeah, Mira, thank you very much indeed for that. Closer to home, here's John in Ilfracoon. We are running a monthly screening of eclectic films called Critics' Choice Cinema, hosted at the Landmark Theatre in Ilfracoon. The screens will also include introductions, a chance to chat afterwards, and in some cases meet some of the crew who worked on the film. First up we have our Halloween screening on Thursday the 22nd of October John Carpenter's 1982 classic The Thing. That will be followed in November with Chloe Zhao's Hamnet of which I was part of the VFX team so I will promptly ruin everyone's love of that movie when I tell them all the explosions and flying robots were in fact not real.

1:32:00Simon Mayo: And then in December our festive offering is Rare Exports A Christmas Tale. Tickets available on the landmark theatre Ilfracombe website for the delightful price of only five of your earth pounds. Very good. John and Ilfracombe, thank you very much indeed. And to our production team who gave me Ilfracombe spelt phonetically, because obviously I'm a complete moron. Critics' Choice Cinema at the Landmark Theatre in Ilfracombe from 22nd October. There is a link also in the show notes. Thank you very much indeed for the video. You can send yours to correspondenceatcoverdomo.com. That is it for this week.

1:32:33Simon Mayo: This has been a Sony Music Entertainment production. this week's team Dom, Eric, Josh and Heather the redactor Simon Poole in take two we're directing you to the Overflow car park for more chat about current film releases and don't forget we're in Brizal in December. Mark what is your film

1:32:47Paul Greengrass: of the week? Well Poole has told us that all the episodes of Carrie are indeed available so you can binge watch it as one eight hour film so I'm going to include it as a film and say my film of the week is Carrie

1:32:59Simon Mayo: now I won't be here next week but I'll leave you in the okay well what it says here is in the exceptionally capable warm and engaging company of simon pool aka the redactor who has patiently waited 15 years for the opportunity to host the show when when the host of the show is replaced by the showrunner director producer things have got to a pretty pass haven't they so you're going to do the show next week with pool apparently so

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