Is this the darkest ROBIN HOOD adaptation ever? + BILL PULLMAN

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

0:34While 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. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.co.uk slash take. Start your free trial at shopify.co.uk slash take. When you put your body in the hands of a surgeon, you assume your doctor will do you no harm. I'm looking at the surgery board for tomorrow going, these people are f***ed. But when your doctor's in it just for the money, something absolutely insane happens.

1:24One doctor says, yeah, I did a lumbar fusion. My kickback was$25 ,000. And the other doctor's going, well, I only got$12 ,000 because I did a neck. This is a story about a massive web of fraud and deception. Dozens of doctors all over Southern California. A fraud worth over$1 billion.

1:45Simon Mayo: Patients were committing suicide, losing their homes, losing their marriages. From Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound, this is Dr. Billions. Available now on The Binge. Search for Dr. Billions wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, ad-free.

2:19film questions answered as best we can in questions schmestions you can get all that extra stuff via apple podcasts or head to extratakes.com for non-fruit related devices

2:29Simon Mayo: there's never been a better time to become a vanguard easter free offer now available wherever you get your podcasts and if you're already a vanguard easter we salute you

2:52Simon Mayo: All right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right. Who said that? That was, I've been here and I've been there. All right. Mungo Jerry. Mungo Jerry. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm going to start this program, as I promised you, we would do yesterday. You did promise that. I did promise. We were together at an event and I said, the two things we are going to discuss at the beginning of this program are, number one, 40 years of broadcasting fun, a celebration of Simon Mayo in Belfast, which you're going to give us full details of. And the second one is Ovaltine ice cream.

3:31So let's begin. Well, firstly, with context. We were at the book launch of Mira Sayal's new book, Vigilante. There it is. It's a great cover it's a great title and it was a very very good event it was terrific so firstly 40 years of broadcasting fun simon mayer a retrospective in belfast you brought this up before i asked you for details you were sorely lacking in specifics yes that's right it turns out to be the belfast

3:57Simon Mayo: international arts festival fabulous um and on a particular day which i'm now just checking oh for heaven's sake but i knew this was happening and you didn't prep it i know i know i know it's it's in october anyway yes they wanted to do um they want to do a 40 years of uh broadcasting retrospective chat so um that's that's exactly what's going to happen but it's like it's not free or anything you actually have to pay money and it's it's going to be you interviewed about your 40 years of broadcasting fun yes starting with starting with hospital radio well i don't know i suppose i'll start with hospital or it might start with my mother working for the bbc or it might, I don't know, who knows what it's going to do.

4:43Simon Mayo: But I saw it, but at this point, as I think I mentioned to you before, kind of wonder if anyone is going to be there at all because, you know, is it that interesting? I don't know. When is it, Simon? It's in October. Okay, so here's what we're going to do because next week on September the 11th at the Dears Head in Belfast, the Gang of Three will be bringing their rocking rendition of the Gang of Four's entertainment to town. And so I will instruct when we get to the encore, because if you remember the Gang of Three play entertainment from beginning to end and then for an encore, due to a suggestion by you, we play a version of Cliff Richards.

5:22It's so funny how we don't talk anymore. And we do still do that at the encore. And at that moment, I will instruct everyone in the doubtless packed crowd to go to see Simon Mayo's 40 Years of Broadcasting Fun in October.

5:37Simon Mayo: I found it. Here we go. it's uh saturday october 24th at 6 p.m so you can come and then go and see a movie afterwards yeah it'd be great at queen's film theater the qft the qft which is the the best cinema in well in in a in a very large expanse of space i love the qft that's where i do cine magic well if you know so if you're anywhere near that would be great to see you um okay just as a reassurance fabulous it's not gonna be empty but now onto the main subject just to mark your diaries in that case gang of three next friday simon mayo in october and now moving on ovaltine ice cream who would have thought yes absolutely never even heard of it didn't even know what ovaltine tasted like but at this book book launch they delivered small little cones of of ice cream and this was ovaltine ice cream and i took it to be polite really and also because the woman who was serving it said it'll change your life and i thought that's quite a high bench mark really so she was right it was astonishing literally these things were about you know like that yay high so like six inches high or something and there's a tiny little cone with a single scoop of ovaltine ice cream in it and the minute it hits your tongue your entire body goes into oh my word this is the most delicious why have i never had yes i i i have not had such a an ecstatic experience with ice cream since i first discovered salted caramel well what's interesting is i don't like salted caramel and i avoid it at all times and in all places but we both liked this to the extent that i'm now going to sell my house and just invest the money in ovaltine ice cream so i can eat it all the time uh okay so later when we finally get to talk about a movie mark is going to be reviewing these films we've got a really mixed bag this week we have a late fame which is a kind of indie spirited movie starring willem dafoe we have leviticus which is a new uh horror movie with a with its feet in the ground but it's head in the supernatural we have super nature which is a brilliant new nature documentary all shot on super eight we have the death of robin hood we had the director of that film on last week's show mark sanoski and our guest for this week's show is bill pullman who stars uh in the jazztastic everybody digs bill evans which is out next week uh but bill pullman has been in so many films that you've seen but he's rarely the star in fact he's not really the star of this film but he is in so much uh really good to get a chance to speak to bill pullman which you'll hear uh fairly shortly and in take two mark again and even more uh eclectic smorgasbord we have the incomer which is a strange indie spirited weirdy sort of folk comedy and from america gail daughtry and the celebrity sex pass what i'll explain when we get to it and incidentally films yeah exactly like teenage death and sex i can't my asthma yes it's It's two films, yeah.

8:44Simon Mayo: Isn't a smorgasbord by definition eclectic? Yes, I was probably... What is it when you say the same thing twice? Tautology? Or is that a contradiction? Tautology. Tautology. No, that's... No. Oh, I don't know. This is so impressive from two professors. You can get Take Two ad-free by heading to our Patreon page. I had this smorgasbord. It was all the same stuff. Search Kerman and Mayo Patreon, and you'll find us, everything is very straightforward. Tautology is absolutely right. We were right first time. So tautology is when you say like it's a singly unique thing, which I know it's, you know, yeah, right?

9:24Simon Mayo: I'm just going with that. Yes, absolutely. An email here from Richard from Spain. Mark and Simon, I've been away all summer, so apologies for the lateness of this email. I'm only now catching up on your July episodes. You mentioned a listener who'd seen Leo Woodall watching his own film at the cinema and that you'd met actors who seemed unable to remember much about films they'd recently made. Yes. There is actually a scientific term for this. I'm not quite sure that scientific is the right word, but anyway. It's called the Zygonic effect. That's the Zygonic effect. In the 1920s, psychologist Kurt Lewin noticed that waiters could remember complex orders perfectly until the bill was paid, after which the details vanished.

10:09Simon Mayo: His student, Blumer Zyknik, for it is he, investigated and found that we retain information better when a task is unfinished, often forgetting it once it's complete. That's why cliffhanger TV episodes stick in our minds and why an unfinished email nags at you until you finally hit send. Up with flying kraufs. Peter from Germany and female pipe smokers. Before I go, I owe Mark an apology. for some physical harm that I caused him a few years back. When was this? In 2003, I sent you an email about Pirates of the Caribbean and you read it out. Well, I read it out, I think. The flippant nickname I gave Keira Knightley, comparing her to a Swedish furniture store, somehow stuck.

10:55Simon Mayo: And Mark used it for years. And Benedict Cumberpatch didn't really like it. So sorry, Mark, for the dead arm you got from Benedict. I think that one was mostly my fault. So that's the origin of that? because I kept saying we didn't make it up. It came from an email. Wow. But you don't do it anymore because it's inappropriate and she's a good actor. Exactly. So very good. Anyway, so I'm not sure that – so it is called the Zygonic effect. So it's something that people have studied. Whether that counts as a scientific term, I'm not at all sure. But, Richard, thank you. So if you find it problematic to remember jobs that you have completed as opposed to jobs that are half done, then that is the zygonic effect right and that that's why so many of the things that i'm working on are half completed because i i don't want to forget them that's absolutely right um okay correspondence at codamon.com what else what are we reviewing here what goes first late fame so this is the new film from screenwriter sammy butch whose name has come up a few times in the past few weeks she was the writer of coyote versus acme remember the film that the studio tried to bury as a tax write-off, who was Oscar-nomed for May-December.

12:06Both of those films, very well written, as is this. So, late fame. Inspired by a posthumously published novella by Arthur Schnitzler. Now, you will know the name Arthur Schnitzler, right? Yes? No. Okay. Viennese modernist, whose novel Traum Novelle was the basis of Stanley Kubrick's last and worst film. and I'm sorry, I'm not having anything of the reappraisal of Eyes Wide Shut. And this is much better than Eyes Wide Shut. It is directed by Kent Jones, who was the director of that documentary Hitchcock Truffaut. Producer credits include Christine Vashon, Martin Scorsese, so it's a very high calibre role call.

12:48Willem Dafoe, who many moons ago came on the show and was an absolutely terrific guest. Remember he came on to discuss Antichrist and he was just brilliant. We had a very, very good to and fro with him. Anyway, so he is Ed Saksberg, who's a postal worker in Manhattan, heads down, getting on with his job existence. He meets his local pals in the bar, plays pool, fails to pick up the phone to his sister who keeps ringing to tell him that their brother is generally unwell. Until one day he is accosted outside his apartment by this wealthy NYU grad hipster, Myers, played by Edmund Donovan, who says that he is the centre of a poetry movement called the Enthusiasm Society, and they revere Ed Saxberg as a god.

13:30Because years and years ago, many decades ago, he published a volume of poetry called Way Past Go, which was pretty much ignored, and he then moved on and just became a postal worker. But this is now their Bible. This is going to be the late fame of the title. So this group of hipster poets, they're anti-mobile phones, they're anti-lethargy, modern disengagement. They want to shake up the world with their exciting poetry and essays, and they adore Saxburger. They are all rich nincompoops, but flattery is a very powerful thing. And soon he finds himself coming to their meetings and agreeing to front a happening which they are going to launch for their manifesto.

14:09Here is a clip. You're Ed Saxburger. The Ed Saxburger, right? The poet? That was a long time ago. You were brilliant. You wrote a masterpiece. It's as if the poems were written yesterday. They're moving. They're scathing. They're timeless. We all think so. My whole group. Your group?

14:27Simon Mayo: We're an artistic community of poets and artists. Intellectuals. Unlike those posers over there. They're addicts. How do we? No. The phone. We reject technology as much as we can. It rocks the brain. Everybody said that you better watch out. He's pretentious. Like a dandy. I've been feeling very inspired since we spoke. He has airs. Fancy. Rich kid. Stopped writing poetry? Years ago. I work at the post office. A man of letters. I guess you could say that. I love that. He's a dandy. Rich kid. Yeah. So, honestly, I could listen to Willem Dafoe reading the phone book, but he's great in the lead. He's as this kind of legend who never was and suddenly is.

15:09But he has this very low-key performance, which is brilliantly counterpointed in the other main lead by Greta Lee, who plays Gloria. Gloria, I know you're a big fan of Greta Lee. We both think she's terrific. So she's Gloria, who is this mysterious vamp who believes that there is no greater calling in life than to be an ingenue. But he's got this kind of very high camp exterior, which marks internal chaos. And Ed is initially mesmerized by Gloria, particularly after seeing her do this cabaret act. She does this cabaret song, which is kind of like this Lillie von Stupp style cabaret number that she performs to this bar of men, all of whom are just completely mesmerised by her presence.

15:48But like his life, her life is kind of an act. She's sort of hiding behind this exterior. And the fact that these two performances balance themselves out so well, one very big, one very small, is really the heart of the film's kind of melancholy appeal. I mean, it's about missed opportunities. It's about the search for fame or infamy and about the illusion of finding it. a lot of it is about the nature of authenticity because these kind of hipster poet rich kid dandy artists every single word that they spout is just to me like cheese grater on the ear but you know they are incredibly annoying incredibly annoying but they are suddenly taking him seriously and having been ignored all his life as a poet all the guys that he spends time with don't even know that he's a poet.

16:42In fact, there is one incredibly moving scene in it, in which he gives one of them a volume of his poetry, which the guy never knew he was a poet, and then takes it back, realising that it was a mistake. And one of his friends, the real friends he has, says, what, you think you're too good for us? And he says, yes, because suddenly the attention has got to him. And suddenly he sees this version of what his life could have been. And it's a kind of old school in a very old school 70s feel to it very kind of documentary edge the cinematography is white garfield and it feels it feels very real the locations feel very real the actions feel very real it's whimsical and ruminative and it it's often very funny i mean particularly in the way in which those posers look the way in which they dress the ridiculous hats indoors simon there are hats indoors moments that literally made me so many but as you know just because a film has irritating characters in it doesn't mean that the film is irritating because the film is laughing at them so i mean look i thought it was a bittersweet treat i thought it was i really enjoyed watching i knew nothing about it for one except that you know one phone and greta lee i i suspect that it will wander in and out of cinemas as largely unnoticed as the main character seems to wander in and out of bars but i also suspect that if that for those people who get to see it and it's a film with a lot of breathing space i mean it is ruminative it is genuinely ruminative but i thought it was really rather charming and i enjoyed it very much i was

18:14Simon Mayo: wondering because at one stage willem defoe was going to come on the show also gressa lee was going to come on the show anyway it didn't work out but oh for late fame yes okay i i what was interesting about it is that in general late fame is usually considered better than getting fame early because you're an established person. You know who you are. You know where you're going. So it doesn't mess with your life. The suggestion of this film is late fame can also mess up your life because you start thinking things and believing you're going to be a star, even if you're actually in your early 70s.

18:48Yes. And also the crucial thing is, although it's called late fame, he's not famous. He is famous to a group of seven annoying people. and it is i mean everyone everyone i think will understand that thing about you did something years and years and years ago and everyone ignored it and then suddenly this group of no matter how annoying they are suddenly tell you that it was brilliant you know what it's like if somebody comes up to you in the street and says i what's what what's your most overlooked book of all the books you've written what which is the one that you're most proud of that gets the least attention TikTok I would say.

19:20If somebody came up to you and said I love TikTok it would be a bigger compliment than if they complimented your best-selling book you know and I think the film taps into that in a really charming way.

19:34Simon Mayo: I wonder if anyone who listens to this who is a poet finds that the representation of poets in general in films is incredibly annoying because the poets that I know, and I do know two or three, are just ordinary, decent people who you would very happily spend time with. But poets in movies are always fantastically bearded hippies who you run a million miles from. Well, the point is, he was a poet and he's a nice guy. I mean, look, in real life, I'm good friends with Simon Armitage, who is the nicest person you could imagine. I mean, honestly, and a classic example of one of those things, you could sit next to Simon an Armitage on a park bench and it would take you a very long time before he told you he was the poet laureate.

20:18Simon Mayo: Yes okay so let us know if you are indeed a poet and and listen to this show what do you make of the way poets are represented in general in movies? Correspondence at carbonomero.com do we take that yes we take an ad break because still to come after this ad break which I'm looking forward to very very much yes we're going to do the box office top 10 Supernature, Leviticus, Logan Hood, that one, and my interview with Bill Pullman all on the way.

20:51Simon Mayo: Hey, Mark Kermode. Fancy a fun quick-fire quiz? I thought you'd never ask. Great. How do you protect yourself from spoilers? We never 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? Okay, is that part of the quiz? I'm doing the questions, thank you. How do you protect yourself from online scams?

21:25Ah, finally, a sensible question. Nord VPN'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.

21:38Simon 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.

22:03Simon Mayo: here we go with the box office top 10 beginning at uh 21 de Gaulle resistance de Gaulle resistance uh which you were talking about uh reviewing uh Last week, it has some very good reviews in general. Dear Winston A. Schaal, says Paul, the good lady English teacher her indoors was finishing up some marking last night ahead of the new term. So I thought I'd pop along to the light in Stockport to see de Gaulle. I very much enjoyed the buddy comedy between Simon Russell Beale and Simon Apkarian. And Showbiz North London will now always be linked in my mind with the phrase, j 'adore Amstead. but I found myself unengaged by the film itself, which I thought was a bit lacking in subtlety and with a curiously disengaged subplot.

22:52Simon Mayo: Also, I'm not one for complete historical accuracy, but hadn't the Russians been in the war for about six months at the point when Churchill exclaims, we are not alone anymore after hearing about Pearl Harbor. When will we get the buddy comedy between Churchill and De Gaulle that we all deserve? Says Paul, tinkety-tonk and up with Anglo-French cooperation. I don't know about the chronology of that. someone will certainly look it up uh the Paul thing the buddy company thing is interesting though because the film definitely leans into that as I said in silhouette the um Churchill and de Gaulle in this quite often resemble Laurel and Hardy you know one sort of rotund the other thin as a pencil and there is the thing in which the guy says that de Gaulle guy he looks like he's got a banana shaped head um so there is a lot of that and there's there are moments in which he He looks like Jacques Tati in Mon Oncle.

23:41But I really enjoyed Resistance much more than I thought I was going to. And I'm actually very much looking forward to the second part, which comes out in September. Okay, which is now. Oh, it is now. It's now. September is now. We're in September. I'm so sorry. By the way, it's coming out soon in that case. Very, very soon.

24:00Simon Mayo: So I only listened to your opinion, but also the FT gave it a fantastic review. Oh, did they? Okay. Yeah, definitely want to see De Gaulle Resistance. Resistance. Into the 10, then at 10, Toy Story 5. I mean, still hanging on in there. We've had a lot of emails from people who liked it a lot more than I do, and I do understand that. My guess is because the school holidays are done, that it will be done as far as the 10 is concerned. Yeah, but it had a good run. Very good run. Number nine is One Night Only. Which, I mean, I'm actually slightly surprised it's even gone into the chart. Now, admittedly, Callum Turner is a big draw.

24:36I just checked incidentally on odds checker yesterday. He's now dropped to second place in the next bond stakes. I know this is all, it's all nonsense. It's all, you know, it's all just, just, just betting on stuff, but one night only it's not, it's not his fault, but it's, it's, it's, it's not funny, which is a shame because it's directed by Will Glock, who, as we remember, because Will Glock came on the program, Will Glock is the guy who directed the Peter Rabbit movies, which I disliked very much, but turns out to be a very, very good guy, but not a very good movie.

25:09Simon Mayo: Number eight is Paw Patrol, the dino movie. Again, two dinosaur movies in the charts at the moment. This is the one that isn't the end of Oak Street. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone 25th Anniversary Edition is at number seven. Yeah, so this is them doing the Potter reissues. and it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's so strange to remember that you and I were doing this show at Five Live when the first Potter movie came out. And do you remember what the question you asked me was? Cause I'd seen it and you hadn't at that point. And you said, I've got one question for you. Can you remember what the question was?

25:44I cannot remember what the question was. You said, what does the Quidditch look like? Because back then, because before we'd ever got used to the idea of seeing, you know, people flying around on broomsticks with a, with a, you know, ball with wings on it. That was your, that was your leading questions. I've got one question for you. What was the Quidditch like?

26:04Simon Mayo: Well, because it was such a great invention and, and I had, I had it in my mind, uh, what it would look like. So I did, but you know, kind of a filmmaker would look at that and think, okay, that's going to be quite a challenge. So it was, it was the, and I remember that I was looking forward to, was it, where did it stand with Lord of the Rings? You were, I'm not sure. There was a kind of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter thing going on for a while. I loved Lord of the Rings. I loved Lord of the Rings. And I was very, very agnostic on the subject of Harry Potter until we got to Alfonso Cuarón taking over.

26:39Yeah, absolutely. Number six is The End of Oak Street. This is the dinosaur movie that isn't the Paw Patrol movie. Dinosaurs in suburbia makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. however, makes less sense than Ewan McGregor's accent, but I enjoyed it. I mean, I think it's nonsense. I saw somebody, somebody said, oh, Mark Hammond absolutely hated End of Oak Street. No, I didn't. No, I absolutely didn't. I enjoyed it very much. But as I said, I went to see it with Sanjeev and we came out of the screening and Sanjeev said, I have one question. Why does this film exist?

27:10Simon Mayo: Number five in the US and five here as well. It's The Dog Stars. Here's James in Raines Park. Dear Statler and Waldorf, thank God I saw the dog stars before I listened to Mark's review. Mark is missing the whole point. I think you can't watch that film without being reminded of the loss Ridley Scott suffered late in life. Tony Scott and his absence are in every frame and in two sequences, in the plane in particular, centering on a decision Elordi's character keeps mulling over. What else to say? Visually beautiful, wonderful central performances. I wish it had been a TV series because the running time flew by and I could have watched another few episodes.

27:47Simon Mayo: Yes, it's derivative in parts, but Scott is using conventions we're familiar with to say something personal about loss and resilience and being grateful for what we have while we have it. That's James. And Emma says, I was amused by Mark's criticism as the characters keep talking about their feelings. Given their isolation, that always seemed the point to me rather than mere exposition. I did agree that the Alice and Janney section felt as though it belonged in a different film Overall, I think the filmmakers traded something beautiful and distinctive for something more conventional. So that's Dog Stars, which is at number five.

28:23Okay. Well, those are both much more positive responses than I had. I was having a conversation yesterday with one of the people who was at Mira's book launch about what my main issues with the film was. And I said, the thing about it is it's a very incidental mid-range Ridley Scott movie. but quite often Ridley Scott and incidental mid-range is a lot better than what else is out there. And I think that that thing about, you know, you've overlooked the personal tragedy. I should say that I did once have a conversation with Ridley Scott about Alien and about what some people had interpreted Alien as being in terms of personal biography.

29:04And Ridley expressed to me quite strongly that he really didn't like people doing that at all. I'm not saying that his personal stuff doesn't lead into the films, but he was, no, this is a science fiction film about an alien coming out of something. That is what it is about. And I don't like people trying to tie that to something else. I know that Ridley himself quite often shies away from that stuff. Incidentally, just because a filmmaker shies away from something doesn't mean it's not in there. and I'm very glad that you found that in it. I just think that this is a field that has been too thoroughly ploughed to be interesting again and as I was saying yesterday when I had this conversation my main problem was I just read Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

29:46I know that's been out since 2006 but I read it because my son gave it to me as a Father's Day present and I have to say that in the wake of reading The Road any post-apocalyptic vision seems diminished. and more cheery.

30:03Simon Mayo: Number four is Coyote vs. Acme. Which I enjoyed very, very much, and I'm thrilled to see that it's in the charts. And as I said, the screenwriter of that is the screenwriter of Late Fame, which we were just talking about. And bear in mind, this is the film that the studio tried to bury. They wanted it to be written off as a tax loss rather than have it out in cinemas. And what utter foolishness. the UK top three is the same as the American top three number three insidious colon out of the further still haven't seen it because it wasn't press screened and there was a bank holiday on Monday make some time has anyone sent an email no they haven't no one cares it's a kind of operatic chant number two is the Odyssey why are we still going up i don't know number two is the odyssey okay right overflow car park or what yeah there's more in overflow car park also spider-man brand new day is the uk's number one film okay and and is it is it still very very number one how many how many bazillions has it taken many bazillions i imagine uh it's only just number one uh from odyssey just taking about 300 ,000 more.

31:22I was yesterday again at Mira Sayal's book launch. I think we've mentioned this enough. Mark Miller was there. You know, Mark Miller, a brilliant author. And we were talking to him about just how remarkable the success of that and how excited people have been about going to see that film, which is, you know, it is astonishing just how well it's done.

31:42Simon Mayo: Spider-Man's total take is 92 mil and Odyssey is 79. So that's where they stand at the moment. It's pretty incredible. More of your takes, as Mark mentioned in the Overflow car park in take two. Search for us on Patreon to get that and this with the other all ad free. Special guest time after this.

32:06Simon Mayo: Hello, Mark Kermode. Hello, Simon Mayo. Quick question. What's your autumn signature dish? Why are you asking? Because I suspect the answer is a takeaway. That is deeply unfair. But is it? Sometimes it's delivery. Well, perhaps it's your pans that are holding you back. Food sticking, pans burning, uneven heat. That's unusually generous of you. Gordon Ramsay uses hex clad at home and in his restaurants. You could try them. They combine the searing performance of stainless steel with the convenience of non-stick. So you get great cooking results without the usual clean-up headache. They're dishwasher safe and easy to clean.

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32:52Simon Mayo: Upgrade to Hexclad and make everyday cooking easier. For a limited time, listeners get 15 % off with our exclusive link at hexclad.co.uk slash take. That's H-E-X-C-L-A-D, hexclad.co.uk forward slash take. Offer excludes bundles and other items already on sale. Support the show and let them know we sent you. From the walls of Troy to the Tower of London, from Himeji in Japan to the Maginot Line in the Second World War, we've built fortifications for millennia. I'm Dan Jones, and in my latest book, Castles, I trace 3 ,000 years of human history looking at these captivating buildings. It's an epic story of defiance, endurance and imagination.

33:41Simon Mayo: castles the latest book from me dan jones available as an e-book audiobook and in hardback at all good bookshops so special guest time uh we get a i think a first opportunity to talk to bill pullman who's been in so many uh movies across uh across the decades space balls 1987 funny that that's not the one that leaps immediately to mind but well done i thought you're going to leave with independence day but no you led with space balls well i mentioned it because it's going to come up again because he's in a new space balls uh movie which we'll talk about uh in the interview sleepless in seattle uh playing meg ryan's fiance which i've forgotten yeah um malice the last seduction while you were sleeping independence day of course president Thomas J Whitmore.

34:37Simon Mayo: He also played the Prez in the follow-up to Independence Day. He also played the Prez in 1600 Penn on TV. So strictly that's the third term, the illegal third term. So we can't talk about that. And Spaceballs, the new one is going to be around next year, I think. Anyway, he is about to start. Well, he's filmed. Everybody digs Bill Evans. He plays Bill Evans' father and you'll hear my conversation with bill pullman after this clip from the film

35:11i'd ask bill to write a few words about scott and their association but not surprisingly he simply could not so let me characterize the album dust this lp serves as a permanent reminder of not only how much but also why Scott LaFaro will be deeply missed by Bill Evans and indeed by everyone who ever heard him play. Isn't that nice?

35:43That's something.

35:52Simon Mayo: And that is a clip from Everybody Digs Bill Evans. One of its stars is the great Bill Pullman. Hello, Bill. How are you, sir? Very good. Very good. Very nice to see you. Very nice to see you. Introduce us to Everybody Diggs, Bill Evans. Some people, the jazz fans, will know who Bill Evans was. A lot of people will not. Just introduce us to the movie and where you fit into the story. Bill Evans was somebody that I was not really aware of before I began to think about getting involved with the project, but have since appreciated his uniqueness. And as a musician friend of mine said, you know, we all thought that this guy was from another planet, you know.

36:29And clearly he had his own signature with Miles Davis and doing Kind of Blue, you know, which was this hugely important jazz album. And he played with Miles. But then this particular story is about an aspect of his life that's centered around June 1961 when he had set up with a trio with Paul Modian on drums and then particularly Scott LaFaro on bass. And they had a two-week—I think I'm getting this right, but I'm just— Sounds about right to me. Saying what I remember, but I could be way off. But two weeks in June, and after the first week, people said, this is really a special combo that something's happening here.

37:12We better try to get some live recordings. And they did two albums out of there. But on Sunday at the Vanguard was one, and Walt Sing for Debbie as the other one. But that Sunday at the Vanguard was, you know, for—I've always been told, jazz people and just audio people say that was one of the best live recording, largely because of this relationship between Bill and Scott, you know, 23 year old and he was, and Bill was older then and Bill was on junk and, and Scott off at it. And somehow his, um, the way they interacted together with that Bill's kind of a passive guy about, you know, doesn't like confrontation, but Scott does, and I think he had to kind of, Bill had to play in a way that showed Scott that he was fine, that he could do everything, but 10 days later, two weeks, Scott LaFaro had a car accident killed and died, and that threw Bill into a deep dive, and nobody wanted to be in his company, and at a certain point his last refuge was to go to Florida where his parents had retired to and the least likely people that you'd want to go cold turkey with and who never would ever acknowledge that anything was wrong.

38:44And it's this strange winter interlude that they have that's in the center of the movie.

38:50Simon Mayo: So you play Harry Evans Sr., he plays his father. We should say that Bill Evans is played by Anders Danielson Lee, who's actually a GP in Oslo, which I found amazing. When he's not acting, he's a GP in Oslo, which is astonishing. Anyway, when you're not acting, you're on Montana ranches and stuff, so you have other things to do. So you play his father, and as you say, the contrast between your lifestyle and his is very strong. Tell us about the relationship between his father, played by you, and Bill played by Anders, because it's a very interesting relationship, and I'm wondering how much of the kind of guy Bill was came from his father.

39:32Oh, yeah, gosh, that's, you know, they both like golf, and Harry Jr. liked golf, and they would golf together, but I don't know how much they really had in common, But, you know, by the time 1961, you know, Harry Sr. was very aware that the world had acknowledged his son as a genius. And Harry, his own ego about what has happened with him in his life and the fact that he could afford to go into retirement and have enough money to come to live in Miami. Though, you know, it kind of leaks out that he's just barely making it. And so who is he to himself when he's up again, when he's in the presence of Bill, you know, in the world being, maybe, that is.

40:27So I think, you know, he's one of those guys that, like, I have friends that don't, you know, are uncomfortable that I've gotten some notoriety, you know, in my hometown and things. And they'll often say, I don't care who you are, you know, because here we're all the same. But it is kind of an, you know, there's a little chip on his shoulder a little bit. But he does have this incredible opening out to Bill that happens in the course of the movie. He drinks a lot. He does like his time in the bar. And he does like singing barbershop quartet stuff, you know, part harmony stuff. and that makes them, you know, that's a bad combination,

41:16Simon Mayo: drinking and singing. It goes fine up to a point and then not so much. I love the scenes where you're listening to him play the piano and then the latest record comes out. It's fantastic. Even though everything is all messed up, it's a fantastically tender moment. Whatever else has happened and whatever water has gone under the bridge, I thought that was very powerful. I'm so glad you pointed that out. I find it phenomenal that Grant Yee could make that all. Is it the director? Yeah, the director, yeah. Because I think of, you know, what are we going to do? It's kind of like watching paint dry.

41:53You're listening to people, listening to music that you're told is very astounding music. And it sounds, and the guy, and you're just putting the needle down on the vinyl and then watching everybody's reaction. and it sounds like a recipe for people watching paint dry or something, but it ends up being a really signature moment in the movie.

42:18Simon Mayo: Yeah. Maybe it's Grant G's documentary, because he's a documentary maker, and I think he did videos for Radiohead, so he knows about how to film music. And I should say the opening five minutes is a whole piece played all the way through, and it's absolutely captivating. Yeah, there must be his background covering Joy Division, Radiohead, all those musicians, you know, where the people's appreciation of music has to be part of that story. You know, what music, their music does to people and builds music to his parents. What does it do to these people that are least likely to appreciate it in some ways?

43:02Simon Mayo: It's 1961 and the movie is in black and white. Quite a bit. Yes. Yeah, that's right. There are some flash forwards which aren't. I apologize if this is a dumb question, but knowing that it's in black and white, does that change the way you perform or act or dress? You know, I didn't think it would, but then I saw the monitor and they turned the monitors to black and white. And, you know, there was something really like a time fold where I immediately saw clothing that I was wearing and a whole kind of flash backwards to, you know, when I was growing up in 1961 and seeing a lot of black and white pictures and things still.

43:51But, yeah, there's a lot in this movie that would think this is the reason why these movies will never be seen because it has addiction, it has black and white, it has people listening to music, and you think this is a recipe for disaster, but somehow this movie seems to come together and create its own kind of effect on people that watch it. Yeah, and I think it stays with you.

44:19Simon Mayo: the tone of the movie stays with you long after it's finished. And it comes from a book called Intermission by Owen Martell. And that word intermission is an interesting one. I think it's picked up in the film where I think the line is, sometimes an intermission is part of the music. Yeah. I thought that's very interesting because that's why I think this film works because it's sort of like an intermission in his life that he actually can't, for most of the film, he can't play because he's in grief. and I just love the idea of an intermission but at that actually it's part of the music yeah yeah that is something that his mom tells him you know Laurie Metcalf's character that's where the line came from now I think it's terrific and I didn't have any Bill Evans music in my catalogue but I downloaded those two albums that you mentioned beforehand just to try and understand and be a part of this story because when he's at the piano everything is fine It's like as soon as he steps away from the piano, his life is chaos.

45:21Yes, isn't that? That's another revelation that he himself has. I have a good musician friend who had seen him at Town Hall, and I said, wow, Town Hall at the time was, it's a big venue for a jazz musician. Why did everybody want to go? He said all the musicians had to come and watch it, all the big-name people. And I said, what was it? and he just moved his index finger up and down. He said, the touch. That the way he, Bill Evans, touched the keys was like something they had never seen before. And to be able to decipher that in a big venue and to feel, he probably couldn't see his fingers on the keys, but they could just feel that touch was so specific and so indomitable, you know.

46:11with it and then my friend said he went backstage afterwards to meet him and shook his hand and realized that his hand was swollen and to imagine having and it could have been from the drugs or it could have been kidney failure and my brother was a doctor I was asking him about it but to still have the touch with that affliction must have been

46:40Simon Mayo: You couldn't be killed. So from your point of view, this is a father-son movie. And I think, if I'm right, coming next is a real father-son movie because you're in a movie with your son. Right. Would that be right? Spaceballs. Spaceballs. The new one. The new one. Okay. Yeah. So what was that like, working with your son? Are you in scenes together? Yeah, we have some scenes together. Yeah. But he has quite a bit by himself or without me there. There's other people. But, yeah, and, you know, we were in Australia for four months, and, you know, we lived 10 minutes apart from each other and did a lot of food together, and it was very trippy.

47:24And he, last year, he was 32 when he made the movie, and I made my first movie, Spaceballs, first full-length movie, where I was 32. So there was some synchronicity there that was kind of trippy.

47:40Simon Mayo: Do we see you on the stage in the UK? Because you did the Cherry Orchard in Stratford. Are you keen to come back or is that it? No, I've done All My Sons at the Old Vic and I did a West End play called Madhouse. So I had been doing Broadway plays every once in a while but in the last 10 years I've only done those plays in England. So there's something about that. Excellent. Well, keep coming back. Oh, thank you. Bill Pullman, a pleasure to meet you thank you very much for talking to us thank you Bill Pullman talking about Everybody Digs Bill Evans which is the name of one of his albums as I think we mentioned, Mark hasn't seen it you'll be reviewing it on next week's show yeah I'm seeing it on Monday and I'm really looking forward to it now as a result of hearing that interview which I thought was terrific incidentally I thought Bill Pullman had a bit of Tom Waits about his about his voice there and I'm just amazed that he's cool enough to get away with using the phrase synchronicity was kind of trippy.

48:41Simon Mayo: I don't think I used the word trippy in anything, but maybe if you're in your 70s, it's kind of something that was fine. Also, just worth underlining, it sort of went in passing, I think, at the beginning of the interview, that Anderson Nilsson Lee, who's the actor who plays Bill Evans, puts in a very good performance, is actually mainly a physician. He's a GP in Oslo, which is genuinely amazing. And in an interview that he was promoting the film, he was asked about future projects and he didn't really seem to have any, which suggests that maybe he's still going to be mainly a GP in Oslo. Imagine how weird that would be, right?

49:17If you go to the cinema and see, I haven't seen the film yet. As I said, I'm going to see it on Monday. And you watch this film about a jazz musician struggling with addiction. And then you've got a bit of a cough. you go to the GP and you go, sorry, weren't you behind the piano the last time I saw you? I mean, it's got to be weird. And of course, famously, Hank Wangford was a gynecologist.

49:43Simon Mayo: Yeah, but he was Bob Chisholm or something, wasn't he? I don't know. Samuel Holt. Samuel Holt, apparently. But yeah. There's also a very, in the film, there is a slight on the Welsh because Harry Evans Sr., which is who Bill Pullman plays, is from Welsh descent. And he says to his son, the Irish, you have to be careful, this is my paraphrase, the Irish are taking over. Kennedy and his clan are taking over the country, but there's no Welsh. I think it's because we're lazy. So there you go. Okay, well, look forward to seeing how that plays. Yeah, it's not me saying it, it's Bill Pullman. So now, am I correct in saying that the next film is Supernature?

50:32Simon Mayo: You are. That we're going to talk about. Yes. See, when I saw Supernature, there are two things. The first thing that plays in my head is the - Supernature! By Cerrone, yes, which was apparently written by Lena Lovitch, but uncredited at the time. Really? Yes. Wow. Supernature was kind of like a disco synth track. Is that in it? No. And the thing that came before, which is, I think, what inspired the record, was a book of nonsense by Lyle Watson called Supernature, in which he was basically, it was all about science and the supernatural, obviously. And if you put, and why, if you put, if you make a pyramid out of paper and you put a razor blade in the middle of the pyramid it sharpens itself uh plot spoiler it doesn't but it's all that it's all that remember that no so this is called super nature for a very specific reason right which is it is a film about nature which is all shot on super eight okay that makes more sense exactly so it is a huge collection of footage shot by people uh around the world it is it is essentially a different I was funny because I was interviewing the director who came on MK3D and it's not a nature documentary, although that would be a kind of shorthand for what it is.

51:51So what happened is some years ago, I've spoken about this before. There was a thing called the Straight Eight Film Competition, which Ed Sayers, the director, set up. And this is that the short filmmakers would make a film edited in camera on a reel of Super Eight. And then they would then send it in. and then if the film got chosen, because it was going to be produced, and if it got chosen, they would see it for the first time at the festival. And it was a brilliant competition, and people discovered that somehow working with Super 8 kind of unlocked something creative in short filmmakers. And Ed Sayers became really, really interested in the way that Super 8 works, in the same way I think that Mark Jenkins became absolutely fascinated by 16mm and the clockwork camera.

52:31So for this project, what he was trying to do was to capture the diversity and wonder and also endangerment of nature in a new way. So what he did was he sent out a series of Super 8 cameras, old school Super 8 cameras to a range of contributors, like 25 different countries. Some of them knew about Super 8. Some of them were experiencing it for the first time and said, look, film stuff around you, but also film yourself filming the stuff. So we've got two different things going on. So you have some of the people are renowned photographers and people who've done a lot of nature photography before.

53:07Others are people who are completely new to this and what they want is the nature, but also the process of capturing it. There are also then these kind of audio voice notes, which are in a range of different languages. and they're all then brought together as a kind of collage by Ed Sayers, who also provides a kind of linking, it's not quite narration, but it's all, everything is brought together. So you have this extraordinary array of footage. I mean, it's everything from vast deserts to coral reefs and tiny bugs and huge mammals, land, sea, sky, everywhere around the world. The thing that unifies them all is they are all shot on Super 8.

53:53Here is a clip. It's like it resets something in your brain. You feel part of things again.

54:04Simon Mayo: It's not about the filming. It's about changing your state.

54:12Simon Mayo: It was like these old cameras were compelling us to record. It feels like listening to your deepest thoughts. As creatures, great and small, we're supposed to be helping each other. So essentially, then took all that footage, put it together in this collage, which questions our own relationship with nature, our own relationship with ourselves, what it means to be a human on this planet, what it means for this planet to be in crisis. And as I said, I interviewed the director for MK3D, and he was talking about the fact there's something about the tactility of Super 8. that enabled both the filmmakers and the audience not just to see the world on the film, but to feel it.

55:02There was something tactile about what Super 8 did. And we talked a lot about, you know, we've all got very used to the idea that you can have an incredibly high def nature documentary nowadays. It'll be an IMAX cinema, pin sharp resolution, extraordinary cinematography of nature as you've never seen it before. This is going completely the other way because Super 8 footage, we all know what Super 8 looks like. Usually Super 8 is accompanied by the word grainy, grainy Super 8. But it's to do with using that lo-fi thing to go beyond showing something to making it more abstract and experiential. I would say that Supernature, as I said, it's not a nature documentary as such.

55:44It is a kind of audiovisual tone poem, and it's all held together by the voices. And there's an original score by Isra and Hamilton Ayers, and there's some sound effects in there. But they're all fairly gentle and kind of abstract. There's none of that. You know, we were talking about one of the big nature docs recently, and I said that the thing that bothered me was there was this harrumphing score that was literally telling you to be impressed every second. You don't get that here. What you get is this kind of bittersweet, rather melancholy, also very beautiful film about the world around us and about how fragile it is, but also how weirdly resilient it is and about our relationship with it.

56:37And tied into that is also stuff about personal loss, personal family loss um your relationship to your family and to your relatives and to the to the wider tribe of people and the world around you the problem is i know that when i start talking about this i sound like i'm doing a kind of pastiche of some sort of you know great big you know pantheistic ooga booga stuff which i tend to be kind of quite cynical about but honestly I watched Supernature in a real trance. I loved it. There is something about the medium. And what I love is it's a film that understands the medium. It is a cooperative thing and there's all these different people all making these films and then sending them back.

57:20But there is something that binds them together in the tactile medium of Super 8. And at a time when we have become quite used to, and I think oddly quite inured to, majestic nature documentaries, it was really good to see something that for me was a profoundly cinematic experience because it i felt that i was as ed sayers said you ought to i wasn't looking at this world i was feeling it i thought for a

57:47Simon Mayo: moment you were going to use the word trippy again i'm sorry but it wasn't quite trippy i don't think i could get away with it i don't think not least because as you probably know my attitude to any i mean trippy relates to you know sort of hallucinogenic experiences or whatever and my attitude to all that is run for the hills yes a very wise suggestion i think uh apologies for slowness when it comes to my bafflement the email from richard from spain at the beginning of the show when he signed off um up with flying croafs and i was yes it was a typo and a quick check of the urban dictionary uh croaf lies a mistaken spelling of crow flies by film review critic Mark Kermode.

58:33Simon Mayo: Mark used to think crow flies, crow flies was spelt crow flies. So this is one of your - Where are you reading that from? The Urban Dictionary, which was sent to me by the redactor. Wow. Okay. Fantastic. Yes. No, that is absolutely true. I did think for a long time, there was such a thing as crow, and I only found out that there wasn't when I asked a teacher how you spell crow. And he said, what are you talking about? I said, you know, as in, as the crow flies, and then the whole class laughed at me. All of which teases up nicely for some more laughter, a communal laughter, as we head into the laughter lift.

59:06Simon Mayo: Oh, dear.

59:17Simon Mayo: That's the most laughter you're going to hear. It is. Mark, what do you call a heavy horse who can not only deliver your bottles of beer but also make timeless G-Funk hip-hop beats? I don't know. Dr. Dre. Oh, yes. Okay. Yes. Very good. Very good. Mark, I recently made a joke about discovering the good lady's ceramicist who indoors is on dating apps. I'd like to make it very clear that she's never subscribed to any of these apps and also that I would never be unfaithful to her either. I love my house very much. My house very much. Okay. that was less successful than Dr. Dre. That's a bit like what do you call a drummer who's lost his girlfriend homeless, right?

1:00:00Simon Mayo: What do you call a hippie's wife? Hip her? Mississippi. Still to come, Mark reviews Leviticus and the death of Robin Hood.

1:00:29Simon Mayo: well that was fun okay so now on with you sounded so unconvinced when you said that well that was fun no i enjoyed that i enjoyed the ads if indeed i got some ads if i'm a subscriber i didn't get any and it was just a sort of like a beat pause right but uh otherwise it was uh it It was very good. Anyway, what else is out? What else is new and interesting? Leviticus, which is a new horror movie. It is, I mean, I suppose fully describes it, a queer antipodean coming-of-age horror thriller from writer-director Adrian Quirella, which is billed on the advert as from the producers of Talk To Me and The Babadook, which is set in the bar fairly high.

1:01:11So this premiered at the Midnight Strand in Sundance in January. Exec producers include Mia Vassikowska, who appears in a key maternal role. So you've got two school kids, Naaman Ryland, who are living in a town in Victoria. They are more than just friends. They are secretly in love with each other. But when one of them sees the other kissing the pastor's son, he outs him with terrible consequences. And the family and the community call in a deliverance healer. Deliverance Healer is played by Nicholas Hope, who is something of a legend among cult film fans because he was the lead of Bad Boy Bubby from many years ago.

1:01:54So the healer performs a ritual which sends both boys into a sort of paroxysm of exorcism-like convulsions, after which the rails come off. Because it seems that what the ritual has done is cause the participants to somehow split, to become bifurcated, and to be haunted, and then hunted by visions of the thing they desire the most, namely each other. Here is a clip from the trailer.

1:02:25Simon Mayo: Indecency.

1:02:30Lust.

1:02:35Desire. It has to go in harm. Look at the light.

1:02:47Ryan? You okay? You see anything that looks like me? I'll go near it.

1:03:02So, as is always the case with horror, we talked about this a lot when people talked about the emergence of elevated horror. You know, it's about something. Horror is always about something. And the out of this world supernatural elements equate to something which is horribly down to earth. In this case, the very real and very dangerous problems of homophobia and the process of the real world gay conversion therapy, which is a subject which has previously been addressed by movies like, there was that brilliant Desiree Akhavan film, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which is absolutely about that.

1:03:32So gay conversion therapy, which should always be used in inverted commas, is cruel, dangerous, and as potentially deadly as any of the supernatural curses in this film of Leviticus. Incidentally, Leviticus obviously refers to the title of the biblical book, which is often cited by conservative religious people as being one of the places where you can find evidence that homosexuality is prohibited. So in filmic terms, this kind of came on like a cross between It Follows, the David Robert Mitchell film, and Lucas Donne's Close. I mean, both of those are films that I really, really like. The former is a weird sort of supernatural tale of teenage sex and death, which inverts the standard tale of the hook.

1:04:23And the latter is a drama about two young boys who are more than close at school. And as a result of that, they experience the people around them reacting to them in a way which causes one of them irreparable harm. harm. And it's about the way in which people's responses to you can be really, really dangerous. I think this has the genuine tenderness of the latter with the creepy thrills of the former. It also had, I mean, it's interesting they say, you know, from the producers of Talk To Me, I think it had something of the gritty team milieu of Talk To Me. Because in that, that's a film in which there's this kind of supernatural party game of holding onto this mummified hand, which connects you to the spirit world, which is actually a way of talking about addiction.

1:05:07It's a way of talking about becoming addicted to substances or to alcohol and the way in which teenagers are using this as a way of kind of getting out of their heads. I thought this was a very smart film. It's part of that. There's a great wave of kind of, you know, new queer indie horror at the moment includes teenage sex and death at camp miasma, both of those movies, both of which I know you love. I mean, it is interesting that having spent decades sort of covertly subverting the idea of gender and sexuality and all that sort of indie horror is now doing it much more overtly and you know it's almost as if indie horror is kind of bursting proudly out of the closet but it's talking about things that it's always talking about has always been talking about before but it's just in a way it was always done before kind of much more kind of undercover of night um the director has talked about wanting to make in inverted commas queer social horror with strong asian influences and actually one of the titles that they they cite is a tale of two sisters which is a film that I really, really like.

1:06:07But I thought this was terrific. I thought it was yet another example of the way in which horror can talk about things that are very, very down to earth and often mundane and depressing, but talk about them in a way which is quite electrifying. And I understand that it will resonate differently with different people, but I think we're in a fantastic age of horror at the moment. And I thought this absolutely tapped into that. It's about something. There are things in it that are chilling, things that have got great ideas. and I thought it did them really well. This is a good week this week.

1:06:39Simon Mayo: It's only a matter of time before someone posts an online comment just saying how much you hate all modern horror and it's not as good as the old days, even though there's absolutely no evidence for that at all. Okay, that's Leviticus. When you've seen it, please let us know. Correspondence at codemo.com. Let us find out some things that are on, either in the cinema or cinema adjacent. First one is the Chippenham Film Club look. Hi, I'm Terry, one of the directors of Chippenham Film Club. We are building on the success of our 2024 festival with an expanded programme and we'll be screening between Tuesday the 8th and Sunday the 13th of September.

1:07:17Simon Mayo: We've a brilliant selection of films and events. We kick off on Tuesday with the Oscar-winning Brazilian political drama I'm Still Here. The curtain comes down on Sunday with the romantic French comedy Amelie, which is 25 years old this year. Tickets and festival passes are available through our website, www.chippenhamfilmclub.co.uk Hello Simon and Mark this is Matthew from Film Suffolk our new anthology feature film Once Upon a Time in Suffolk is showing at The Cut in Halesworth on Saturday the 12th September 7pm start there's a Q &A afterwards and more screenings to come in the East of England region it's made entirely by volunteers and it's really good so come along and check it out and thank you for the shout out Very good That was Matthew from Film Suffolk.

1:08:04Simon Mayo: Before that, Terry from the Chippenham Film Club. So last week we were talking about The Death of Robin Hood. It's out this week, so Mark can talk about it. Okay, yes. So Michael Sarnofsky interviewed from last week. If you've missed it, do go back and listen to it, because I thought he was terrific, wasn't he? I thought he was really – he gave complete answers in full sentences. He really thought about the movie, and I thought that was great. So he was the writer-director of the cult hit Pig and the sci-fi horror prequel, Quiet Place Day One. So this, Death of Robin Hood, is inspired by the 17th century ballad, Robin Hood, His Death, which itself apparently was based on the last six stanzas of, is it a guest of Robin Hood or a jest of Robin Hood?

1:08:48And the tagline for the film is, he was no hero. And on the basis of this, boy, he wasn't. So set in 13th century England, shot, as it happens, in Ireland. And he said that at the beginning, most of the places they were going to show had been sort of washed away in storms. And there is a lot of stormy murks. So huge action is Robin Hood, not a hero who stole from the rich to give to the poor, but a cutthroat bandit whose past is absolutely dripping in blood. He has lived long enough to know about the legends that have grown up around him, one of which incident is repeated to him quite early on by a young woman whose family he has slain and who promptly becomes the latest inhabitant of his growing graveyard of victims.

1:09:39And this opening section, which is very violent, is absolutely steeped in blood and murk and mud and squalor. And at times it reminded me of that film, The Northmen, you know, the Viking thing. There's the scene where they have the raid on the village when you can't quite see what's going on. But it all appears to be absolutely horrible. And it's, you know, mist and misery and mud. And so hats off to the to the DP. I think Pat Scholar of Death of Robin Hood, for putting you right. It is like being face down in the mud and the blood. And Robin is clearly longing for death. Sonofsky was saying that he's looking for a good death, a violent death, which he almost finds after his fellow bandit, known as Little John, this is Bill Skarsgård, brother of Alexander, cousin of Stellan, and a son of Robin, I believe we established that.

1:10:33Simon Mayo: What an amazing family they all are. What an amazing family they are. Their Christmases must just be an absolute hootenanny. Enlists him to steal back the farm that he stole and reclaim his wife and child. And it's something which does not end entirely well. Here is a clip. There'll be a mighty battle. One for the stories.

1:11:01Yes, strongly.

1:11:20How many are they? Four. Five. Together we can best them.

1:11:31will likely die.

1:11:37But they don't likely die. What happens is that Robin is mortally wounded and taken off to the Priory of St. Clemens, which is on a remote island where his real identity is a secret. There are sort of hints of Avalon about this island because the whole thing, there's a big change. I mean, there's a change in tone. there's a change in aspect ratio, there's a change in lighting. This is a somewhat kind of ethereal world in which everything seems to be a lot brighter than before.

1:12:06Simon Mayo: Well, you can actually see what the hell is going on because in that first half, that first section that you're talking about, it may well have been bloody and terrible, but I couldn't see because it's so dark. I had it on maximum brightness. I was sitting in a darkened room and I could tell that an old man with white hair and a beard was stabbing another person with the same kind of hair and it sounded very gory. But until they actually get to that island, all you are aware of, as you could hear in that clip, was that a Swede and an Aussie are struggling strongly, I think, with what I guess is a Yorkshire accent.

1:12:38Simon Mayo: But, you know, I think they were struggling. Anyway, but at least as soon as we get to that island, we can follow what's happening. We can see people and who they are and what they're doing. Yes. I mean, I have to say this is a film that was designed for the lighting of cinemas, not designed for the lighting of home viewing, you know, on a laptop. And the sort of the centre of that new glowing light is Jodie Comer's Prioress. You said to the director last week, you said there is a real sense of peace that arrives with her arrival. You said she sort of brings something. Do you want to just say something about what you meant by that, about her bringing a sense of peace to things?

1:13:22Simon Mayo: Well, it's such a contrast, deliberate, in terms of what has gone before. Dark, stabby, deathy, almost impossible to follow. And then we're sort of in some kind of heaven, really, on this island. And so I think this is a bit I mentioned to Michael was that when Jodie Comer says, would you like me to pray with you? You kind of think, well, of course I would, because you seem to be the exact opposite of everything that we have seen so far. So if there is any redemption to be found, it's going to be with someone like you. Here it is. Exactly. So she has a kind of ethereal presence. So will he find redemption there or will the past partly in the shape of Noah Dupes, wounded young man who turns up a little bit later on, catch up?

1:14:05with him. Now, there was a joke that you made, which was a very good joke, is that this ought to be called Logan Hood. Because there is clearly a comparison in the fact that Hugh Jackman in this lead, there is a comparison with the role that he plays in Logan, which is the 2017 James Mangold film, in which you've got the aging Wolverine and Charles Xavier, and they're wrestling with the past and they are both in their twilight years and they are at once legends and outlaws and that tagline he was no hero was certain to me it could certainly been applied to that so i think logan hood is very good and i wish i had made that joke but you did so i'm going to credit you with

1:14:45Simon Mayo: it i also i was really reading a script obviously but yes was it in the script yes oh yeah the joke logan hood was in the script i'm afraid so okay but you know credit were credits to you i'm gonna I'm going to credit you with it. So I suggested to Michael Sonofsky that I saw in this, both a hint of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven and Andrew Dominic's assassination of Jesse James by the coward, Robert Ford. And I was, and I was delighted that he said, well, we talked about both of them, but particularly assassination of Jesse James, which is really important because assassination of Jesse James, which is the best film of the year that it came out.

1:15:17And he's now considered to be a masterpiece. He's absolutely a film about somebody living with their own legend and sort of waiting to embrace their own death. And there is a lot of that in this. And I was really delighted that Michael Stanowski said, yeah, absolutely. That was a touchstone for it. There's also, I think a bit of, um, you know, the, the, the, the Mallory thing, which John, John, when John Borman did Excalibur, right. Excalibur was all brief, uh, you know, bright and shiny and mythical. And this is all dark and doomy, but also mythical. And it is a story about stories. It is a story about the way in which we tell stories to each other and the role that stories, why legend, why print the legend, why do we need legends?

1:16:01Why do we need to tell stories about things that aren't true? And actually the film leads to a very interesting conclusion about what the nature of telling stories that aren't true might be. And that is accentuated by the use of Jim Gettys' strident folk singing, which we talked about in the interview and is right there in the DNA of the film, the way in which these kind of folk songs are fed into the soundtrack of the film. Because folk is all about storytelling. It's all about storytelling. That's what it does. There are some -

1:16:40Simon Mayo: It's a bit like the way Danny Boyle used that kind of music in the latest 28 years, you know, in his edition. It's not just something that's on in the background. It's right front and centre. Right front and centre, because it is actually the narrative that's happening. And that musician, his name is, it's spelt Jim, and then it's G-H-E-D-I. And did he pronounce it? Is it Geddy? Is that how he pronounced it when he's, anyway, check him out because he's really, really interesting. And the music is a very, very big part of the film. there are some issues you've already raised one of them which is if you put huge if you put the two antipodeans who have played robin hood in recent memory hugh jackman and russell crow in a room and got them to speak as robin hood and then said to somebody who's grown up on these islands where are they from i would be very interested to know what the what the answer was he his accent is more consistent than Russell Crowe's.

1:17:38It is. Which was, frankly, awful.

1:17:42Simon Mayo: Yeah, because it changed. My guess is that they completely ignored the truth about Robin Hood, which, as I said last week's program, is that it should be a Nottingham accent, that he fought the sheriff of Nottingham. Yes. The king is waiting. You know, the king is wicked, and we're waiting for Sean Connery to come, and he wears tights and all that kind of stuff. And he's a fox. That's right, he's a fox. Absolutely, all of that. But I think they obviously just said, okay, let's do a Northern, how it sounded to me being a Southerner, it sounded like let's do Yorkshire. Well, let's do a kind of a Yorkshire, Lancashire.

1:18:22Simon Mayo: Let's just be from the North of England. That's where we're going to pitch it. And I think that's where he tries to stay. Yes. I think it speaks highly of the film that even though the accent clanged on my ears, and it really did, it didn't put me off the film. I kind of was, you know that old thing about you condemn your enemies for crossing their knife and fork, but you forgive your friends for eating with their hands. Well, in terms of accents, this is a film that is eating with its hands, but I didn't mind because I thought there was enough that was going on that was intriguing and interesting that I kind of got over the accent problem, which sort of reminds me a little bit why the Russell Crowe Robin Hood bothered me a lot more because I was much, much less invested in the story.

1:19:09It does help that the cast includes Jodie Comer and Noah Jupe and Murray Bartlett and more, and they're all terrific.

1:19:17Simon Mayo: I should say just Murray Bartlett's leper character. I was going to mention it in the conversation with Michael Sonoski last week, but we kind of ran out of time. But he is great, and it's actually a very important role. Well, he's sort of the moral heart of the film. And also, as with all of these characters, he's not quite what he appears to be. And it's to do with the stories that you are telling about who you are or who you might have been or who you may be in the future. And he plays an absolutely integral role in the discussion of what storytelling is doing. So it's a hard movie to warm to.

1:19:56It's a hard movie to like, but I think it's an easy movie to admire. And I think it would be a very hard film to forget because I have to say that since I saw it, I have thought about it quite a lot. So it's a troublesome experience and it's not an easy evening's entertainment. But I thought there was a lot of stuff in there that was very, very intriguing.

1:20:21Simon Mayo: also that bow and arrow technology changed not at all for at least a thousand years because if you compare the bow and arrow of odyssey and stringing a bow which is of course such an important part of that myth and then stringing your bow in the death of robin hood it's exactly the same apart from the bows in robin hood they're a lot easier to string yes to me um but anyway yes uh very interesting and bet and don't wait for it to be on a stream stream if you're interested in it see it in a cinema where you might be able to understand the first half hour basically otherwise no chance uh that's it for this week this has been a sony music entertainment production this week's team dom eric josh and heather the redactor of simon paul in take two we're directing you to the overflow car park for more chat about current film releases and if you've enjoyed what you've heard so far there is plenty more waiting for you over in take two such as five question film club three questions majesty and questions shmestians in which this week we're asked for a list of actors who could play a retired James Bond.

1:21:20Simon Mayo: And don't forget people of Bristol and beyond, we will be at the Brizzle Beacon on December the 6th. Tickets are on sale via the link in the show notes. You can get both takes ad free. Just search Come and I'm our Patreon and join the church. Mark, that's the end of the parish notices. Mark, what is your film of the week? Well, can I just urge everybody to, if you're not already, subscribe to Take Two, because there is a really good film, which I'm going to cover in Take Two called The Incomer, which I really, really liked. But in this week of four releases, which I've discussed, and all of which I've found very positive things to say about, I'm going to go for Supernature, the Super 8 documentary about our relationship with the natural world.

1:21:57That's my film of the week.

1:21:58Simon Mayo: Take two has landed adjacent to this particular take. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week.