The Fall (2006) with Jen Cownie

0:00Hi, this is Becca Moore from For The Girls and this podcast is sponsored by Aerie, where you can find the right bra in 59 sizes, soft fabrics and good fits. If your bra strap is digging into your shoulder right now, it's the wrong bra. We get so used to being in pain as girls that we forget it doesn't have to be this way. Your clothes should not hurt. I got to the point where I stopped wearing bras altogether and now my life has changed, you guys. The only bras I have in my dresser right now are Aerie and I'm not kidding. Aerie's on a mission to make you feel good and that starts with your bra.

0:27Your bra should hold you in, not back. visit ari.com to find the right bra for you.

0:34So I'm coming up to my two-year wedding anniversary, which as it turns out is the exact amount of time it takes to become extremely nostalgic about everything, even the stuff that went wrong, which is a good sort of reminder to anyone who's getting married soon or getting married this summer that like, actually the stuff that goes catastrophically badly is the stuff that you'll remember the most fondly of all. like for example my musicians didn't show up my ceremony musicians didn't show up and it was so cataclysmic because I had imagined exactly how I wanted to walk down the aisle exactly how I wanted to feel and the musicians were supposed to play kind of on the patio of the venue afterwards while everyone was getting drinks and I was just like oh my god I'm gonna walk down the aisle to nothing and then everyone will just be like wandering around this patio for afterwards with like no music and no vibe and it was so awful and then at that moment one of my oldest friends Harry Harris he just revealed that he taught himself how to play piano uh over Covid and he sat down at this big grand piano at the venue and uh just played played all my favorite songs played some songs that we'd written together and it was like one of the most special moments of my entire day so I was talking about this exact thing with my friend Haytham who got married three years ago and him and his wife Rowan they were still students at the time but they decided that they were going to get married but then take the photos at this beautiful scenic place near where they live and they got there and it started raining and at first they were like okay this is like a cinematic cute amount of rain and then eventually it just got so intense that they had to abandon it all completely and it was just a complete disaster.

2:21But Haytham told me he was like weirdly that's my favorite part of my wedding because it just felt so cute and special and just like it was the two of them. Now Haytham is from Gaza and he has no access to any of the photographs that he took on his wedding day because a few days into the war his home was destroyed. Five days into the war his daughter Karaz was born and ever since then the entire story of this little family who got caught in the rain on their wedding day has just been totally about surviving day to day, getting enough food and like making sure that Karaz has basically any happy memories from the earlier parts of her life.

3:00Now Rowan is pregnant again and they're trying desperately to fund their very existence as this war continues on. I'm going to include the link to Haytham's GoFundMe in the episode notes for this show and I really hope that you can find it in your heart to give him a few quid and contribute to this little family and their ability to survive. Okay, thank you. Enjoy the show.

3:30Hello and welcome to Magical Garbage, the podcast where we manipulate children to get morphine for us. My name is Caroline and I'm the suicidal stuntman with great hair. And joining me is the naked mystic who lives in a tree. It's Jen County. Never has a description, never been so accurate. Right.

3:47Jen Cownie: You are the naked mystic who lives in the tree. I actually, that's really on brand. Yeah. It's a literal on brand and it's a kind of a spiritual on brand. Yeah. I know we're not doing continental garbage and this isn't like a postcard. Like last summer we did postcards that were about 30 minutes long, just updating people on how our summer was going. But for some reason, something about being in the summertime Makes me want to tell everyone how my summer is going. You feel moved. You feel moved to send a postcard, a little surprise postcard. Yeah, exactly. I like that one happens and I like when that happens.

4:22Yeah. And you just look at your post box and there's just a little card from a friend who didn't even know they were on holiday. Got one the other day from Dolly. Really? She was in Hydra, had no idea. Where the hell's that? Greece. Okay. Like, geography is not my strong point. Could be anywhere. But we also, we have updates. Or you have updates, really. We have updates. We, you, me, us. And the update is, is that the last time we spoke, we were in Portugal. We were on holidays. We had just watched Shrek. We had. This episode this week is the third part in our trilogy on fairy tale stories. But, like, some major changes have happened since then.

5:04Major changes have happened since then. Actually, for both of us. And that's the both of us now have homes to live in.

5:09Jen Cownie: Yeah. which had not been the case for some time really it was really bad so I'm aware how unbelievably privileges is going to sound but I bought a house two years ago spent all my money doing doing that and then ran out of money and had to wait for it to recoup before I could do anything to that house it's a Victorian property everything had to be done a lot of stuff a lot of stuff so I was living out of my house for about two months and for some of about two months, me and Gav. And so we're living with you. They were. And now I'm back in my house again and it's just lovely. You are back in your house again and it is just lovely.

5:47And obviously it was so nice to be like little housemates for a few weeks. But it is fair to say that the place that we were living was not really made for three adult humans and a terrier. So it is nice to be back. And I've now moved. Yes, you have. I've moved house. Which meant I briefly lived in your flat when there were also builders there. Yeah, so really we had like a two month thing. It was very strange. It was like being back on holidays We were interrailing again because two months of us just living out of backpacks in each other's homes. Basically. It was like the hostels were our homes.

6:15Essentially, but instead it would be just like, oh, I'm in Caroline and Gav's kitchen. I'm sleeping on an airbed in their unfinished living room. Sylvie's having the time of her life because everyone is in one place at once and she doesn't know. But yeah, I've now moved to the same area as you. We live about a 15 minute walk. It's so nice. It's so good. I walked over here today and the walk was so short I didn't even bother with my headphones in. No way. And I love putting my headphones in. It's my favourite. My favourite hobby is headphones. It's my only hobby. Oh, come. You've got many hobbies.

6:48But my favourite one is headphones. But your favourite one is headphones. And that felt very important that you didn't even put them in. Not even this one time. And last night we went to see a film at our local cinema. Yeah, we did. We went to see Jurassic World Rebirth. It was so great. We're not doing a podcast on it, but it was so good. It was so good. it was so good that I couldn't get to sleep until 3am because I was so overstimulated I just it was just everything that I dreamed it would be and look I feel quite proud because I think I had to send you quite hard on it Gavin he was in absolutely Gavin was like the second I said even before I finished saying Jurassic World Rebirth I had him on JUR you know he was like dinosaurs I'm there you were like and it was it was phenomenal do you know what I know we're not talking about dinosaurs this week but they are they do fall under the headline of Magical Garbage 100 % absolutely I think it's because I think this is work is you and Gavin are the same age which is four years older than me yes and so when for me when Jurassic Park came out I was too young it was too scary there was absolutely no way anyone was gonna let me into a cinema to watch that and so like I just missed the whole phenomenon and like when it came back with Chris Pratt I was like absolutely not no um and then suddenly it was so strange it was like I lived in a Jurassic Park neutral world for so long and in the last week suddenly everyone's coming up to me being like Like, when we see in Jurassic World and Rebirth, I was like, since when do we care?

8:08And I was like, okay, I mean, I like a group event. And we all went, me, you, and Gav, and our other friend, Jen. Now we have two Jens in the neighbourhood. A confusing, both living locally. Yes. And it was just the best time ever, made even better by the fact that you just showed up 15 minutes late, wasted. I did. I've never seen someone so wasted in the cinema. It was so funny. Just rolling on in there. it was so funny yeah i really thought i was gonna fall asleep because i was very day drunk having gone to i went to a um this is gonna sound so wanky this is a wank station central today i went to a natural wine fair in deptford where you just get given a little glass and then you walk around and people give you little little tiny tasters of wine and they have spittoons but i think spittoons are gross and rude i don't want to spit out someone's wine also grow up don't be a baby so I you can swallow the little bit of wine 15 20 mil and I was like oh it's for the wine delicious delicious and then I obviously was seeing you guys at sort of seven eight ish and I was suddenly on my way there like I'm absolutely battered because I've had like 35 tiny wines which adds up to probably a bottle of wine on a Sunday yeah so yeah I just like rode on in there and and I don't know what it was about me that was so obvious it was it was so fun I think there's something about it that just, I'm sure it wasn't fun to sit behind us, but there's something about one person being wasted.

9:36I think Other Gen is a real vocal cinema enjoyer as well. And it just evoked all of us to be just hooting and hollering at the screen, having a great time. We were oohing, we were aahing, we were like a focus group sort of wet dream, really. It's like if anyone wanted to test a movie out on us in that particular moment, it's like, yeah, we're clapping, we're gasping, we're in fear. my favourite thing about the movie is apart from everything I mean I loved seeing Scarlett Johansson entering her Lara Croft era at the tender age of like 40 I mean that's lovely to me I think I loved seeing Jonathan Bailey my favourite person to be in film or theatre we saw him in the theatre and great to see him again in Jurassic Park doing a phenomenal job I thought the prompt for his character in Jurassic World Rebirth was so you're Billy Zane in Titanic but you've got a big briefcase it was very I have a child coded do you know what I mean oh it was perfect and listen I just I'm so glad we saw that film I think it's a really good start to my time here in South East London yeah film bit too drunk to go to a film but went anyway I know I went home and while I couldn't sleep I started just googling Picturehouse Central and Picturehouse sort of like memberships yes I've been a member of that before I think maybe we should do that I think their Mondays are excellent yeah Can I tell you my other favourite thing about Jurassic Park before we move on?

10:56Yeah, of course. I'm not very familiar with this franchise, as I said. So I was kind of under the impression that people died from dino-related deaths in Jurassic Park franchise. But that could mean that a big T-Rex stamped on your car. Or that could mean that its tail thrashed you against a wall and you just got splattered there. I really liked that 100 % of the deaths in Jurassic Park were from chomping and chomping related deaths. Everyone got chomped. Absolutely everyone got chomped. Full chomp, wasn't it? Chomp, chomp, chomp. Chomp, chomp, chomp. Wall to wall chomp. And that actually is quite a nice thread that brings us back almost to Hook at the beginning of the year.

11:38We saw Hook getting chomped. Just watching someone get eaten is so funny, especially when it's in one fell. And when you see the trachea of the animal who's eating, swallowing. So fun. Dragon eating Lord Farquaad and Shrek. So good. We are fond of a chomp in this podcast. One might call it a fetish. Can I even watch a film? Can I even really enjoy a film if it hasn't got a good chomp in it? I think there's also something just really nice about the way that they're chomped whole.

12:06Jen Cownie: Yeah. Like if someone's like chomped in half, that would be like gruesome, bloody, ew, gross. You'd feel the pain. Chomped whole. Just gone. when that English guy chomped off the side of a boat so good and that little man with his shirt with his nips he got chomped oh I miss the postcards this is good this is good you suddenly get a little bonus episode about a completely separate film and you needed it should we start talking about the fall because I just realised that like when I when I we first talked about this podcast when we first talked about this movie on the podcast a few weeks ago yes I was inundated with messages and comments and everything, people have been like, please talk about The Fall.

12:46It's my favourite movie ever. And I never get to hear about it because not that many people have seen it. It's not that well known. And now we're just here talking about chomping. And there's no chomping in The Fall, I guess. I don't think so. Which is a real shame, but it's one of the only things that's bad about The Fall. It's the lack of people being eaten whole by giant reptiles.

13:09So, to begin with The Fall. To begin with The Fall. you had never seen this movie before I would love to know about your expectations and what you thought of it and everything I had no expectations other than what you told me which is that it involved a sick child and I knew it was kind of fantastical and then when it opened with that very artsy credit scene yes of a horse being lifted out of a water or a bridge it was all black and white I was like oh no it looks like a Guinness ad it does look like a Guinness ad I was like, oh my God, that's exactly what it looks like. That's what he does. The horses, that one.

13:46Yeah. It looked like that. Yeah, yeah. And I remember saying to you, I was like, honestly, it's not all this. I know this is a real bummer right now. It's a harsh toque. It's a harsh toque right now, but it won't be this for very long. But it's interesting that you light it on the advertising thing because, on the Guinness app, because that is one of the very famous things about this movie is that it was made by somebody who has made, Tarsem Singh is the name of the director, who has made some of the most iconic adverts of all time. He has. We did go on a bit of a Wikipedia deep dive on him after this.

14:17Yeah. And as someone who works in advertising, I was just like, whoa, he did that one and that one. And you can really see it in this film. I mean, I'm sure we'll talk more about the cinematography later, but there's so much. Almost every scene in this film could be an advert. Yes. And it really made me think as well that, like, Like, so Tarsem Singh, he is like, every single person who's ever worked with this man, and I've done some digging, has been like, this man is a genius and he is fucking crazy. But everyone says it in a kind of a wholesome way, being like, this man is like a genuine eccentric.

14:52He's on a whole other level. Like, he's seeing angles and colours that other people just aren't seeing. And like, I think that's obviously very, you can see the evidence of that in this movie and you can see the evidence of advertising in this movie. But it really made me think of like, Like, you know, he went to sort of school with, like, you know, David Fincher and Michael Bay and all these people. He was in their kind of graduating class. And he went down the advertising route and, you know, was one of the people who kind of made advertising filmic, right? Yeah, definitely. And it really made me think of, like, it's so interesting when advertising becomes more like film.

15:31and then when we watch a film it reminds us of an ad when really what the thing was trying to do was that like the ad was trying to remind us of a film do you know i mean that kind of circular thing yeah yeah i suppose so and i suppose it's probably i don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of people who make adverts as in he directs adverts he's not working in the sort of agency side yeah are people who are filmmakers who need some money and so they make adverts like that's I wish I could be like less honest than that but I think a lot of the time when you're going out and pushing and you know going to directors for treatments there are people who are filmmakers and advertising is like a thing they do as well and so there is a kind of natural conversation between advertising and the film industry because the same people are making both a lot of the time unless you are such a successful director that you don't need to because every film you want to make is getting green lit and producers are lining up at your door to give you scripts you're going to be like I'm doing my film and then I'm doing six adverts and then I'm doing another film and then I'm doing six adverts it's so interesting that you say that because it is you're right that is unbelievably common unless you're in the kind of very very 1 % of very privileged directors but yet like it's so interesting this movie came out in 2006 and when you look up articles about it or little featurettes about it or whatever the advertising part of Tarsem Singh's life is so covered and it's so like touched on and referenced and we're even touching on referencing it now and we haven't even gotten to the part of the movie yet it's interesting that like that conversation doesn't come up for other directors so much but for this i think because it's such a cult movie and people have poured over it so much people talk about a lot i just i wonder if and again i don't know enough if it's two things one is that he has made some really iconic adverts yeah and quite a lot of the time the adverts that filmmakers are making are like and i just rattled something off for a bank yeah blah blah blah but he made the gladiator one with Pink and Britney and Beyonce.

17:28The fucking Roostian response I had. You were like, you know, the Gladiator. I was like, no, no idea. And then you put it on and it was like the entire year of being 10 came back to me in one sensorials. With We Will Rock You, with Inquite Ignatius as the Roman Emperor. There's all kinds of madness. They're making the whole stadium jolt just to get a can of Pepsi. It's ludicrous. Beyonce, Britney and Pink are like in the underground sort of cellars or whatever. And they're hearing the crowd. And like what's so weird about that advert is that Enrique Iglesias plays Caesar. And why not? It was like, I know Enrique was famous around this time, but to position it as Caesar in this context, it feels to me very strange.

18:11But as you say, he's shooting for a mark that only he can see. And I think if you make an ad like that, people are going to like mention. And I like that. I like when someone can bring that joy to their craft and to their art. You're so right. Because the reason why those adverts worked is because they were fun and they were funny. They're fun and funny. And people who aren't enjoying what they're doing don't make fun funny adverts. And do you know what all adverts are now? They're just like, I mean, because we're, you know, we watch things on streaming so you get the same three or four adverts.

18:39It's either, it's like impress your kids. Literally every advert is for a car and it's like, dad's driving around, picks up his son wow dad, this car is so quiet, thanks, it's a Volvo, you can charge your iPad off the back seat, wow dad I love you but like this movie, I think as well why the advertising thing comes up a lot is because it was famously made kind of piecemeal over many years and I think the kind of legend of it is that he had this kind of idea and he was sort of, he would be on location for adverts and would just sort of like scribb a few days using his own money. But he'd be like, well, I've basically written a treatment for this ad to be, you know.

19:28Conveniently. In Delhi. In this exact day or city, I need to be in for my film. Yeah. And the client's like, sure, off we go. Yeah, and then he's like, well, now I'm here. I guess I'll get my guys in. Just ask you to find it back a few days later. No worries. I'm just having a little holiday. Definitely not filming a whole film. Love that. It's so cool. It's really cool. I think, I've never met him, but if I did, I'd be like, massive respect to that guy. Even though, Tarsim, he's like in his 50s or 60s at this point now, but he is in many ways the ultimate sort of millennial poster boy for side hustling and just sort of slightly screwing over the client, but not so much that you burn bridges.

20:04This is how you do it. Totally. And the gammon, this is multi-hyphen method. This is the multi-hyphen method. This is the Bachelor Portfolio career. Yeah, it's very inspiring. And imagine your side hustle is making blockbuster movies. Why is it blockbuster? Well, that's the thing. Imagine your side hustle is making beloved movies. Yeah. Fantastic. So this movie is so beloved. I can see why. I haven't just gone in with the reminds of adverts. Yeah, yeah. So I love it now too. You thought this movie was going to be a Guinness advert. You were a little bit reluctant. Yes. But then we quickly moved from the Guinness advert into a hospital in California in the 1910s.

20:45Yes. And at what point did you think like, oh no, this is a movie for me? I think it's the moment when Alexandria, the little girl, appears with her arm in that weird little cast where she has to hold it. A complete right angle for the entire film. That must have been so uncomfortable. Holding a little book and she just pops off. It's not her book, it's her little box. It's her little box. And she's just pootling around. And at that point I was like, oh, okay. I think she writes a note to the nurse about throwing oranges at the priest. And by that, I mean, literally I was so in from within those first few minutes.

21:17It's so lovely. It's so perfect. And it's that beautiful thing where it's like that snowflake paper. Yes, it's like little cut out bits in it. Yes, exactly. And so she's written about how she's, yeah, because the sort of nurse in this is kind of her other big, she's like two big crushes in this movie. her nurse who's her friend and Lee Pace who plays Roy who we'll get to in a second but so she throws in the note down for her nurse because she's so lonely and so bored and this children's ward is so horrible it's so depressing the taco tongue coughing straight off the bat me and Jen's favourite thing in the world is identifying taco tongue which is when children who don't know how to be self-conscious yet they they they cough with their tongue in a kind of a used shape.

22:03In a little roll.

22:08And look, I just think whenever I see it, it's weird that whenever I see a child doing that in real life or in film, I think of you. Nothing makes us laugh as a duo or more than Taco Tongue. It's a real, like, if you were to make a pyramid of our friendship and like the jokes and things that built over the years, Taco Tongue was right there at the foundation. So it's one of the keystones of our friendship was laughing at pictures of kids. Don't do that cough.

22:34and trying to get trying to get pictures like that into PowerPoint presentations for advertising job and constantly being told you can't do that and being like well what if we did

22:44for um yeah me and Jen met working on a cold and flu brand which is why we were looking at taco tongue pictures but I suppose the second I heard that taco tongue cough I thought ah it's a film for me and therefore for Caroline yeah

23:01it's just But it's such a depressing, sad setting. Even though it's California, there's nothing more sad and depressing than a children's hospital. Hospitals are bad, but children in hospital, so much worse. So much worse. And it's also, you get the idea that these are kids who are just like, the interesting thing of like, these kids are unwell, maybe even badly unwell. Whereas like Alexandria, she's got broken arms. She's so bored. She's done something silly. She's otherwise fine. Yeah. And she's so bored. And then she goes, and she meets Roy and it's when she starts speaking as well you're just like, wow.

23:37How did they cast this child? Well, apparently, it's like they had so many of the other kind of fantasy sequence already done and Tarsem Singh was just waiting until he found his girl and he just interviewed little girls all over the world until he found her. Like Cinderella. Like literally Cinderella. A real fairy story behind a fairy story. she's perfect she is perfect and it's so rare I want to see a child for that long in a movie ever like the reason that the Princess Bride work is that you see Fred Savage for a total of six minutes you know it's like I think maybe there was maybe I first had a little nervous when I was like oh she's a real main character but it goes very quickly because you know she's incredible I think it's when she asks possibly it's the second thing she asks Roy is how he goes to the toilet yeah And he's just like in the bed.

24:30And she's like, in the bed? I don't believe. I don't believe. I don't believe. Her little kind of like perfectly like clipped little delivery. Yeah. It's so, I don't think I've ever heard any child speak like that. And I'm sad. It's so perfect. And you have this like such perfect kind of total sense of who she is as a whole character. Not just as a child, but as a whole character. like so early on because it's like you know she's she's speaking in her second language she's like this determined bulgy little kid and she's very but kind of that thing of like she's only six years old but she's already very eldest daughter she's already very like you know i'm responsible for things i have jobs i have a history i have stuff stuff to do don't get yeah she has jobs she's things you know yeah she's always she's on a little project she's got a much like tasim Singh himself, she's got a thing in her mind that she's going to do.

25:25And even if it's completely inscrutable to anyone else, it makes total sense to her. So, so interesting that you just say that because you know how she's got her little box of treasure, which is so beautifully observed and so childlike. And so true of children. It's so, it's just so true. Exactly. And like, I was watching a retrospective interview with the beautiful Lee Pace, who we'll get to in a second. We'll get to him. But he talked about how when Tarsem Singh was pitching him this movie and he was like, And just so you know, Tarsem's insane. He's mental. He's great, but he's insane. He's insane.

25:57And he said he has a little box. That he had like these little, he was telling him the story, but he was taking out little trinkets from his little box as he was saying it.

26:07Jen Cownie: So it's like, it's just so nice. It's just so nice. This is fantastic. If Tarsem Singh has one fan, it's me. And if he has two, it's me also. and he does he does have two fans because zero fans we're dead it's just there are many other fans I'm sure there are so many fans I don't think we're the first people to discover Tarsem Singh based on both your inbox and the internet but this felt like a discovery yeah it felt like nothing I don't even know when this one was made like what 2000 it came out in 2006 but it was being made for a long time it does not feel that old again it's like Lord of the Rings it feels like it could have been made two years ago and I'd believe it.

26:51And yeah, it completely sort of flopped when it came out. How? They weren't ready for it yet. They weren't ready for it. Nobody knew what it was, you know? And I understand how you could go to the cinema and not be briefed and just sort of be like, what? What am I watching? I'm sure very well-meaning critics were just like, this is a very charming performance from this child and she's very lovable and Lee Pace is very winning. but like these kind of these dream sequences and these you know very perfume advert kind of like cutaways to fantasy settings they are it's not the princess bride in that it's not like this perfectly linear story with um with lots of you know archetypes and plot movements that are very familiar and they're comfortable because they're familiar I think what's really important is that the story that he's telling her is not like, this is the story that my father told me and you're going to love it and it's been stress tested by time.

27:52He's like, I am making this up because I am suicidal and I need you to get morphine for me so I can kill myself. He is not paying close attention to the details. And that makes it... I mean, it's the Princess Bride for depressed people. It is the Princess Bride for depressed people. and I think that again we talked about this as being the third of our trilogy about fairy tale and the point about fairy tales is you can just make them up there's not like a set number, you're like well this is number 206 of fairy tales and you've got to do it this way you're allowed to be silly with it and you're allowed to make things up and also you're allowed to be manipulative about it because it's been a way to get kids to not go outside or not play the stray too far it's like don't stray into the woods a witch lives there.

28:39It's always been a way to control children as well as entertain them. It has always been. Exactly. This is part of the tradition is that sometimes it's a warning or it's a way of saying don't do this or do do this or this is what happens to kids who do this or women who do this. Like Elf on the fucking shelf? I mean, a new tradition and a creepy new one but again, I think what's also nice is it's such a magpie art and you see that with Roy's character because he's taking a lot of stuff from stuff he knew from school, history, but he's also just stealing stuff directly from the film he was the stuntman in because he wants to sit there and tell a story, but he doesn't want to make too much effort.

29:10So he's just sort of reciting a film script in some ways. And look, I've been there. I definitely remember babysitting a kid in my teens and she would not sleep. And I had exhausted all the books I could think of. So then I just recited the entire plot of Spirited Away to her for about two hours. Oh, wow. And made, as though it was a story that I had made up. She was so impressed, I'm sure. I would have been wrapped. But imagine a few years later, she finally sees it and is like, that fucking bitch. That fucking is. this was not original work by Jen County but you do sometimes you're just like oh I need to tell a story but I can't I haven't got one in me so I'm just going to pull from something else and he plays with it but what's so wonderful about this film and I think it Princess Bride does it a little bit this does it perfectly is it really wants to explore like the way in which stories are grown between two people and the version that he's telling and the version that she's hearing are quite different and it's done so cleverly and beautifully throughout this film that I've made my heart sing every single time.

30:15When he tells, quite early on, he sets up one of his characters as being an Indian and he is obviously meaning in the sort of old, wild west sense. And he says words like teepee and squall. He's borrowing from that tradition. He's borrowing from that, probably from the film he was in. And then Alexandria has got a friend who's Indian as in India, as in the subcontinent of Asia, India. And so she just immediately imagines this incredible, beautiful kind of scene set in India, like in sort of the Rajasthan. And just seeing the way that her imagination plays out so differently to what he's saying.

30:51And it's not just, he doesn't own the story. She also holds it, grows it. And I think her imagination has far greater scope than his, or than anyone else in this film. That's just, gives me a little shiver. because it's so it is so beautiful in that like that um it also reminds me of like the ways in which like children protect themselves from content even like self-reflexively like ella was on the podcast talking about uh northern lights a few weeks ago and she talked about she read atonement when she was way too young because atonement starts with being about a 10 year old girl and she's like then this is for me and the the rape scene in that not no sorry not the rape scene the um the it's mistaken for a rape but it's actually consenting um she said she felt herself glaze past it because she kind of knew it wasn't ready for it you know it's very much a thing kids do you're just like nope not for my eyes not for me now yeah it's like it's like self-censorship don't get it and i don't want to go near it again and then you read the same thing years later and you're like why would my mom give me this when i was 10 totally totally That's a weird choice.

31:58It's fascinating. Children do have this weird self-instinct to protect. And there's this moment later on in the story when Roy's mental health is suffering and declining and the story is getting far, far darker. And he talks about how all these soldiers have been hung. And that's a horrible thing to say to a fucking six-year-old. And then the way she's picturing it is this sort of like beautiful acrobatic thing where these people are hanging from... It's like a chandelier. Like a chandelier, a human chandelier of these dancers in the air. And something that is so clever, I think, about this and so intentional and beautiful is that this is set, you know, it doesn't say a specific year, but something like I would say late 1910s, early 1920s and the dawn of cinema.

32:47And it's established that like Roy is a stuntman who has sustained an accident in that opening Guinness advert. And has also had his girlfriend stolen from him. By a little rat-faced leading man. Yes, rat-faced leading man. So it's like a double insult. So he's a movies guy. He's of the movies. But Alexandria, she's an immigrant child who works on an orange grove with her family. And she has never seen a film. Yes. And so like, it's so interesting because like we all live, even if we're not film fans, just like living in the culture, living in a world of like billboards and magazines and just media all around us all the time.

33:32We all pick up like a biography of references, even like, like most, most kids won't really have watched a John Wayne Western, but they'll know what that means because of like the translation of media and like things being photocopied. but like Alexandria as a listener and as a character she hasn't experienced kind of any media like she probably only experienced fairy tales and story yeah and so the things she's imagining they're like it's like Tarso I'm saying he really wanted to um capture places in the world that really hadn't been filmed that much before because he was like I wanted to exist outside of genre because it exists only in this little girl's brain and so it's important that she would never have seen it anywhere before, you know, in like a movie or something, you know.

34:15And I think that's what, again, just makes her so spectacular as a character because she, you know, it's easy to think, oh, a child who's grown up on an orange farm and has never left the orange farm, has only ever seen her family and her neighbours and, you know, doesn't speak English, would have some kind of narrow little kind of, you know, sort of, yeah, a sort of shriveled little imagination, but she doesn't. It's so big and she's got so much color and beauty in it. And I suppose very, right at the end of the film, you finally see the film that Roy was paralyzed making. And it's just like, as all of those films were at that time, the dawn of cinema, kind of crap to modern eyes.

34:52Yes. Black and white. Nothing compared to like what Alexandria has in her brain. Yes, what she's able to imagine. And she's sort of watching it and she's like, cool. But you can see that she's also like, thought it'd be better. everyone in that hospital is like thought it would be better someone even says that don't they became suicidal and lost your legs for this we really thought it would be better and it's like right this is the reason okay and again I suppose there is almost a commentary there in the the difference between like what's what you're able to create physically and versus what you can imagine and every person who's who's creating whether they're writing and whether they're making film or theatre they are trying to somehow capture this thing which is uncaptable which is their imagination and committed to a medium and always that that translation somehow slightly makes it worse like the idea is pure and then the execution is always so right nothing's more perfect than the blank page exactly but i think this is a film that says that without saying it in a really cliched obvious way like you kind of get it you're like oh yeah but in i suppose looking back at the end of that film, the opening Guinness advert, to my mind, is Roy's vision of the film that he was in.

36:06Because it's so epic. It's still black and white. I never even thought I've seen this movie like six times. I never thought of that. I think that's how he sees it in the opening scenes. It's like noble and it's like extreme. Orchestral as well. Orchestral and huge. And it's kind of something that's worth him having basically given up the use of his legs for somehow because he's trying at this point to justify this horrible accident he had but he was doing it in pursuit of this great art. Yeah, yeah. And then you actually sort of read a film and it's not the same piece of shit. It's like, do-do-do-do-do-do-do.

36:38Yeah, but then also the thing that the filmmaker has given his life for every year of music is like, it's a kind of Russian nesting doll of endless sacrifice of the idea we think we're making. Yeah, and then you're like, but you know, it looks, maybe to other people it doesn't always look that great but to you you're like, This was fucking sick. I'm so glad I did it. That's really nice. I think that's good.

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38:08Can we talk about, like, some of these line readings that we get from Alexandria early? Like, when she's like, um, so he begins telling her a story about Alexander the Great, and this little sort of proverb about him, you know, having one cup of water left for all of his men in the desert and he throws the water on the ground. And Alexandria is so annoyed by this and she's like, no, he should just give everyone a little bit of water. I think every line. I would love to know how they scripted this because she must have been ad-libbing for some of it. I don't know. Oh, so having watched that interview with Lee Pace, again, the gorgeous Lee Pace.

38:52Oh, my God. If Hollywood were run by gay men and straight women, we would have a million Lee Paces, but for some reason we only have this one. And we must treasure him all the more because of it. He's not in enough things. He's not in enough things. Every time he is in a thing, he's spectacular. And as you said when we were watching this, no one wants Ryan Reynolds. I'm so sorry, but no one does want Ryan Reynolds. That's it. We want Lee Pace. I was actually thinking about Ryan Reynolds yesterday because I was watching his new TV show, which is a Disney Plus show that he narrates called Underdogs, which is about nature's weirdest animals.

39:31And it's actually really good. I think you'd really enjoy it. Okay, maybe I'll try it. We had a good time watching it. But there's something about Ryan Reynolds that's very millennial cringe. He is the most millennial cringe movie star of all of the movie stars. There's something very kind of bacon, om nom nom about Ryan Reynolds. Too many cat memes have been sent through those fingers. Right? He was there at the dawn of lolcats and you can tell. Yes. You know? Yes. There's something so off-puttingly om nom nom bacon about him. But he is exactly what... You know, I think he's going to be a lovely man.

40:10I'm sure he's lovely. We're never going to hang out with him. Yeah. I feel like he is. but it's fine. I think he's a straight man's idea of what women want. Yeah. And they're wrong. Yeah. Lee Pace is what we want, who's also obviously really hot, but in a different way. In a different... And just in a way that seems to have more, there's more depth. We talked about this not that long ago with Gavin, and it was the fact that most of the time when a man becomes famous, it makes him less attractive. It's my personal belief and yours. It's so true. Yeah. And there are very few examples of men who remain very attractive once they become big celebrities.

40:48If we can be toxic for a minute. Let's. Let's do that. Something about fame and its pursuit that's very effeminate. Oh! Do you know what I mean? Oh, wow. I want everyone to look at me and take my picture and give me a brand deal.

41:00Jen Cownie: It's like, that's not masculine. Oh, she's scared right to the heart. And that's kind of what it is. And it's also, it's that thing. I always think about it particularly vis-a-vis the Sex and the City movie where it's you know there's nothing more unattractive than Smith Jarrett when he becomes sort of famous and he's got a fussy little lifestyle and he has to go to the gym all the time and he has to be up at five to blah blah blah and it's going to be the exact right shade of orange yeah exactly there's something I think partly Lee Pace's appeal is that he never became extremely famous maybe although you know he was in The Hobbit and he was great there too he was but you know what I mean yeah no you're right he never hit that he's not Detective Pikachu but I pfft unlike some people we could make unlike some people who are Ryan Reynolds yeah but do you think he just chose not to I don't know he's I mean he's astoundingly attractive in this film and also incredibly good at acting incredibly good like how early does those two things come in together quite often if it's a really really hot actor you're like oh we'll have to forgive him for delivery it takes a lot to be jealous of a child.

42:10But when she is like... Cozying up to him. When they are like in their little tent of secrets with story time and it's like, I want to be her in my cozy little 1920s hospital tent with the man trying to manipulate me so I can get him drugs. I was so jealous of her. I was so jealous. What a lovely experience. And like, what a lovely experience to look back on both the character and maybe even the real person. Because at that age, you don't really understand what hotness is either. No. I had a really hot babysitter when I was young and I only realised it many years later when I was looking at like the kind of crappy little photos you take on your little first camera as a kid.

42:49I was like, who the fuck is this? Absolute fox. My mum was like, oh yeah, he babysat you, remember? Crazy. Wild.

42:54Jen Cownie: This man could have been a male model. Insane. But you don't see it as a kid and then you get older. It goes the other way too. Do you know who my first crush was? Tell me. My uncle Redmond. Oh dear. A man who just looks kind of like my dad but a bit older and I was just like I like the story in the family that like Michael Redmond told me on the day of my wedding was like you used to follow me into the loo I was like I did Uncle Redmond I I remember when I used and thanks for mentioning it right now Redmond oh my god yeah it has a good your understanding of what a hot man is is or a woman I assume completely off so this character this character Alexandria she must one day have looked back in her mind and been like holy shit fucking hell I was I was having little sleepovers with a fitty my entire childhood entire broken arm time what an absolute gift can we move on to like Roy as a character because we have talked about how fitty is for such a long time and not at all we are just objectifying him but look I think sometimes it's nice to just objectify a really hot character just for a hot second just for a hot but we're moving on he is a phenomenal character again because he's so believable you said earlier and I'm going to say it back to you because I'm sure you've got more to say on it yeah a really rare example I think of a character who's very credibly suicidal yes rather than just like I'm gonna jump or like some kind of like I'm gonna jump I'm feeling well blah blah blah like he feels like so real and so true and again And there was no part of me that didn't believe that he was a suicidal character.

44:34It was the commitment to death that he had. It's so interesting because they have given him, you know, reasons to be suicidal, right? Not that anyone who's suicidal or suffers from suicidal ideation needs, like, a big capital R reason. Some people just are. Yes. They've given him some triggers, I suppose. They've given him, exactly, triggers. and they are that he has lost these of his legs and that he also has lost his girlfriend to the leading man which are like, you know, as good a trigger as any, I guess. But you also get this feeling about how this character is played that like, I think something was in the post for that guy anyway.

45:12Do you know what I mean? Oh, totally. That guy has a natural instinct for darkness that like, you know. He became a stuntman and jumped off a bridge onto a horse. Yeah, exactly. Again to go Freudian, And his death drive is very high. Yeah, totally. Who does that? The dawn of cinema. Come on. There's no lawyers yet. That seems like a good idea. I'll just fling myself. I could probably do that. That's kind of all young men to a certain extent. But some particularly more than others who really think they're immortal. Or some who don't think they're immortal and just don't really care if they die.

45:43And that's how armies get made. There's some... I don't know what it is exactly. Or if it even comes across in one moment. but he is never deterred from his goal. Like in a lesser movie, you would be like, and he learns the glory of storytelling and blah, blah, blah. The pure love of a child. The pure love of a child. The pure love of a child does not heal him. It doesn't heal him. But I think what is good is that you see kind of the internal wizard battle. You know, you see the Gandalf and the Saruman within him. And the pure love of a child does not save him or heal him, but it does kind of push back the darkness a bit and it kind of, I think that's some of the most moving scenes quite late in the film when he still wants to die but he doesn't want her to be heard and he's beginning to understand that his decision will have an impact on her.

46:32Yeah. Very, very painful to watch. So the way it's kind of staged is that he sort of gets her to break in to the dispensary and it's so scary because you know it's also it's like he's used this story these kind of fits of daring do in order to be like and you can be brave just like these characters kind of thing yes she climbs up the top of the dispensary and it's like no no no no no and she gets the morphine down and then first it's like she misunderstands the the the plan and she thinks he only wants three because he's spelt morphine with a backwards e for some reason and she thinks it's only three morphines so she throws out the entire bottle and keeps three which is not enough for him which is not enough to kill yourself and he's like rats he's like okay so he's there's a hypochondriac who's in the opposite bed and he has morphine so she then gets her to go across and steal from his thing and then he literally i forgot about this entirely he takes the bottle of morphine and he spreads all of the pills out on like a bib in front of him he's lying completely flat she is still there he's still telling the story and he's gobbing the pills and it's just like when i fall asleep go yeah don't stay around exactly which is like fucked yeah like something about i don't think i ever noticed that on my previous watch it's like oh he's gobbing him he's going down he's literally committing suicide with a six-year-old yeah like next to him and then the kicker is is that like they were only giving hypochondriac sugar pills so he just he just was absolutely just like honked out on sugar yeah yeah he was just eating m &ms it was a kid at christmas suit has had too many yeah but you really think he's dead for a minute there you really do i really thought he was dead and i was really quite upset by it yeah but then he wasn't but then the final time yeah that she goes for morphine for him yes when she's trying without him asking yeah that's that's kind of where the wizard battle happens because she she goes for the final time he's so upset he's really like he's in a dark place yeah he's like he's having a screaming fit because he's realized that he's taking sugar pills or whatever and she just wants to she wants to and better she wants to look after her friend and she wants to get to the end of the story yeah she wants him to tell the end of the story and so she goes back into the dispensary yeah to get the morphine yeah and she falls off the countertop and she breaks her skull it's a horrible little scene it's a real possessed toy moment very tim burtony but early tim burton before they gave him money you know i think again one of those moments where sort of the implication is more powerful than a gruesome body horror would be because you sort of see her injury and the operation that she has to have, the emergency surgery she has to have through this kind of imagined kind of possessed toy escape and it's so creepy but then she wakes up and that's when he's by her bedside and he realises that she's done this for him and she's nearly died and he doesn't want her to die, he wants him to die.

49:34And they're just kind of having this conversation that I feel like we should probably return to because there's more joyful bits to get through first, which I think is such a kind of core part of the thesis of this film, if there is one, about kind of the battle of wills between them and who actually owns that story and who gets to keep it and who gets to decide what happens. You're so right because he... And we haven't really talked... We've only really talked about the hyper-realism part of the movie. I think we should be talking about the fantastical parts. Oh, we'll get to that second, but we're here right now.

50:04We are, yeah. Let's do it. This thing of, because, yeah, this story has from the jump been a collaboration between the two of them, even in the earlier stages where it's like, she's like, no, he's not French, she's Spanish, or whatever, he's not this, and this is his daughter, and no, no, no, and that thing where a child is at a bedside just pushing for their input, and it's so cute and whatever. and um that then when you get to the very end after this whole movie of them collaborating on the story together and he just starts killing people yes he starts chomping people he just is and he's doing kind of again it's like he's being quite brutal in the chomping yeah but she still finds a way to almost like slightly redirect it so when um i can't remember the name of the character but he gets shot full of arrows yeah and then he falls on his arrows and like obviously in Roy's mind which we don't see this is incredibly bloody and horrid because he probably has some idea of what it looks like to be shot by a load of arrows and she just imagines him as kind of like a weird porcupine who just like lies almost like on a bed of arrows and she still finds ways to kind of to censor it for herself but you know he keeps going he keeps on killing off all of these characters that she's she's based on people she knows as well every single actor in the fantasy scene is someone who she's chosen from her real life who she likes generally yeah and he's just murdering them one by one and she just goes like you know i don't want you to die just stop doing it she's asked he's trying to stop yeah and she's bawling her eyes out it's so hard to watch and like it is this and you don't really know whether is he doing this because he's just his mind is in that dark a space or because he wants to teach her that like he has to die people she likes will die and this is almost like emotionally preparing her for the tools of like people will die which of course we know alexandria knows already because yes her father died her father died her house was torched for by like quote-unquote angry people like we get the sense i i don't it's never gone into but i get the sense that like she her and her family are obviously immigrants and they they left some kind of war situation in order to get to america yeah or do you think it happened in america couldn't tell you but definitely her dad died yeah and her house was torched and her house was torched it was terrifying yeah that's that's what you get so she she knows this and that's the thing you have that moment where i suppose near the end where he's killing everyone off and he's basically threatening to kill the character that she's written as him in her mind and she begs him not to kill that character but you know that she also means him himself she's not just in the story then i think that like she uses the story to protect herself slightly from the real world but when she's begging Roy to not kill I've forgotten the name of the um General Odius no that's the um I think it's the blue bandit or something the black bandit the red bandit one of the bandits he's a bandit when she's begging him not to kill the bandit and she does say I can't remember if she says I think I think she says I don't want you to die don't kill him and she doesn't say here she she knows that this story is also not a story and so she's using that as a way to try and talk to him about a thing that's a bit too big for her to look at directly which is also what we do with stories and certainly what children do with stories yeah yeah and and they're having this kind of this argument and this tussle and it's sort of like this sort of metastical thing is sort of like they're both responsible for the story it is communal property that belongs to both of them but it's also assurances not assurances but it's like a reminder to him that like you know the story does not exist in a vacuum your life does not exist in the vacuum you may think you have the right to end it whenever you want but and you do in one sense or another but like it will affect other people and namely her totally it's like a story a story is by definition something that is shared you can't have a story on your own yeah you tell somebody and he said that is that is a quote from it she's objecting to what he's doing and he says it's my story and she goes it's mine too.

54:09And it is her story too. It's very heavy. It's very heavy but it's held so lightly and I think that's again, there's another version there's another world where a different filmmaker made this film and it's much more brutal and dark and like creepy. Yeah, but for some reason that scene it's so upsetting because you're watching this beautiful charming actress like getting her heart ripped out but there's something like very cleansing or something about it it's like i don't know something i think it's because we just talked about billy zane a minute ago there's something you know when like you see rose go below deck with that big axe right she's like she's like a in the most danger she'll ever been but she's kind of free because she's yeah yeah yeah it's kind of gives me that feeling when i watch it yeah she's got she's not like she's vulnerable and she's not in control but she doesn't she's not lost her power completely yeah and it's even if she doesn't necessarily know what it is she knows that she has some ability to influence something and she's trying really hard yeah do you want to talk more about the the actual fantasy bits i really do i guess it is and i feel i kind of almost i suppose probably when you think of the fall in your mind and you conjure a little image you probably think more of the fantastical elements and less of the kind of real life storyline.

55:31I don't know. I mean, I think of her mostly. Yeah, okay. But yeah, that is very true. That's very true. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. I think I wrote down when we were making notes. I was like, it's Wes Anderson meets House of Hackney meets Star Wars episodes one to three. Yes. Very Princess Padma. Very much so. Yeah. Very like, but like, very precise, very symmetrical, but also very maximalist. I just... There's just nothing quite like it. That really isn't. It feels a kind of, it's a mishmash of different things, but in that way, it's its own style. Like, it just, but it's not been, I haven't seen anyone emulate it.

56:05I love it. I would like to see more of it. I even just like the costuming. Like Charles Darwin wearing a giant butterfly muppet coat. Why was he called that? Why was he Charles Darwin? Because I think he was Charles Darwin in Roy's mind. And he's a famous naturalist who's looking for butterflies. And so in Alexandria's mind, she's like, well, of course he'd wear a giant fur coat that looks like a butterfly. Yeah. Obviously. What else is a famous naturalist from the England going to wear? Certainly not some boring brown suit. That would be stupid. It just occurred to me there. You know he's got his monkey friend.

56:39Yes. Who's called... Something. I think like Winston or something? Yeah, it is something like that, isn't it? I'm sorry. I can't remember. We saw it a few days ago. Yeah. We've moved house since then. Yeah, we don't know. But it makes me think like, oh, is he definitely a monkey in Croysette? Oh. there's a whole bit where like the monkey dies and Charles Darwin is like I'm so sorry all the ideas they were all yours or whatever and you're like oh I don't think he is a monkey then is this like Roy just like and that's probably his assistant yeah in her mind she's like must be a monkey must be a monkey must be a monkey oh okay I'd have to watch it again to know but I wonder if maybe she just makes out the monkey detail I love that yeah I mean I've seen this so many times but like I mean I haven't before this watch I haven't seen it in about 10 years.

57:28But I would like to go through that again with a real fine-tooth comb of like, how much of this is Algonja just totally inventing? Wallace? Wallace! I'm hearing Wallace. I'm hearing like the Wallace collection and I'm thinking Wallace is actually a friend of Charles Darwin's, not a monkey. So funny. And she's like, assistants are monkeys. Huge of truth. That's so child logic though. Like, an assistant is a monkey. Yeah, assistant, what's that? Must be some kind of monkey, I suppose. Must be some kind of monkey, I guess. Must be some little simian helper. While we're on the subject of all the supporting cast who are in this movie, there's a lot of very gorgeous men who are very partially clothed in this film.

58:09The power of nudity in this film. Yeah. Tarsem Singh understands the power of nudity. He really does. And I think, again, a thing we noted at the time, in any other film where there's an ensemble cast, only one of whom is a woman who is hot. she's going to be in a bikini for at least one scene if not most of them I admire Jurassic World Rebirth's commitment to know the restraint, just give that girl a vest so restrained a vest was worn, nobody in fact the most explicit clothing was tight top man with nips out oh yeah perhaps Jurassic World is a successor to the fall in some ways I think Jonathan Bailey could be a newly paced for our generation oh in a way in a way yeah but to return back to the fall I actually forgot the name of the actress who plays Katinka Otaru no no sorry that's the I mean the nurse Alexandria and I do know her name because whenever I see it I'm like of course that name it's you I don't know a beautiful woman who is just dressed in like somptuous fabrics and at one point doves but at no point a bikini how wonderful of her because why would a six year old imagine that because why would a six-year-old imagine six-year-old imagines like strange ornate gowns yes and like it's very i say padma very like star wars like huge hairdressers but interestingly the six-year-old does imagine absolutely ripped men in loincloths i wonder what that's about you little purr i think that's a directorial choice um but i love it i loved it it was just kind of like i had the feeling that maybe he had shot a perfume ad or maybe these were some extras from the gladiator shoot and he was just like you're hot can you just come to the desert for a bit and just like be alexander the great so oiled up even the like old mystic kind of hot yeah the naked guy who lived in a tree the naked guy lived in a tree he's kind of hot um but i think i mean this was something that uh again people don't understand the power of nudity and and the way it can be used properly oh my god properly both in film yeah and iorl those of you who are just here to listen to the full commentary maybe skip the next few minutes look away for three or four minutes now we have a great thing to tell you this is an important thing we discovered while we were on holidays in Portugal yes and it's about nudity it is now me and Jen uh along with taco tongue are one of our big sort of tenants of our friendship is that we think that being naked with your friend in a non-sexual environment preferably outdoors in a body of water in a body of water is the most important thing you can do for your mental health so powerful so good particularly body image particularly your body image which is not to say that your friend is a hog but more you're in a kind of a private body of water and like loads of your mates are around and you're all a bit you're all nude there's a sense of like there's a marked difference to when you're all in bikinis because the bikini is a pass fail ratio do you know what i mean if i'm in a bikini I've been compared in my own mind and the minds of others to everyone who's ever worn a bikini exactly specifically models you're thinking bunching you're thinking stuff going up the crack of your arse you're thinking you're kind of tits slumping out of a cup you know it's you know it has that feeling of like you know when a ham is wrapped in twine yes it's amazing it's almost like you've seen me in a bikini every time I see a ham wrapped in twine I think I hear it's Jen but that's how it feels but when you and your pal are naked in the lake together if you're lucky enough to find a lake private enough that you can sort of do that and we do and we find them um you're like a seal you know you feel like a lovely seal you just like you disappear and you're like i'm a marine mammal i'm beautiful yeah i'm perfect look at me i'm this is not that never have i felt so good about my body yeah as when i've been swimming naked for a few days with my pals it's so i really recommend like really really recommend it to all of you if you can do it and I will say that Portugal is absolutely steaming with little lake houses there's so many rivers and lakes in Portugal it's it's the best holiday you can possibly go on um but we so we were on this beautiful lake beautiful lake that was like during the week extremely private yeah much new to me and then obviously because it's a weekend spot people get the fucking bus up from Porto and they want to go jet skiing and that I guess is their right but jet skis and party boats just just party boats absolutely filled with 22 year olds in bikinis in in bikinis which is good for them I guess but like I'm fine with them doing that but not in my little inlet no not in this tiny little zone but you got the whole big river for that this is a tiny little zone but like and so I think the normal thing to do would be like there's people here why don't we cover up put a throw on but we were like hang on a second if we stay naked yeah and not in like a sexy girls not like sirens beckoning from a rock just like germanic big celtic celtic fighting nudity we just painted in woes stood there and stared at them while naked that yes there's a chance that there could be some like you know drunk guys who do something inappropriate or say something weird but the far greater likelihood is that they will get so uncomfortable that they will leave and in every scenario that is what happened it happened over and over again we held on earth the first time it was just a couple and we were like we can take the couple they went next it was a family they were they were there for like 30 seconds and then they hopped up off the river by the time the party boats rolled in we were just like we can take them we can take them it was amazing how they'd pull up they'd put on the music they'd be like woo woo woo you know like dance like you know having not noticed this yet and then there'd be a kind of moment of silence but clearly someone on the boat clocked there were two really pale women just naked on the shoreline and then it's like the music would go off and the boat would turn slowly and just be like off it went yeah honestly people are really uncomfortable people are i think you assume that with nudity you are the one who will feel uncomfortable but in actual fact quite often other people are more weirded out by it than you are or they think they've done something wrong yeah they think you're gonna think they're a perv yeah they're look they're more scared of us than we are of them totally so that's important bit of knowledge for everyone here if you're in a secluded area on private land where you can sunbathe nude you can probably get rid of jet skis and party boats quite easily yeah you can just with the power of your bod and as i as i always say to you whenever we make a choice to get naked in a semi-private semi-public body of water spot which i always say is when did you ever see two naked people and think what losers on some level it's cool to be naked it is i think i think we've been doing this for years with various different groups you know yeah um like you know little tiny nature naturist resorts and every time someone happens upon us all prancing around in a stream butt naked yeah it's always them who are like oh can we be naked too yeah exactly every time people join us then we've had people look weird at us yeah if they want to leave they can leave Tartham Singh understands the power of nudity and I think he has bathed naked in bodies of water with friends I think he's done it with friends too and I think in this film he has taken that power and he has employed it judiciously he has done it for good and that is why there are just loads of half naked men in it and I'd love to see it a bit of objectification always good can I also have a moment for General Ode Governor Odeus Governor Odeus a direct line back to Farquaad a direct line back to Humperdinck just the kind of just the rich theme of a never like fully understood character he's just got a lot of sass you know Odeus, Farquaad, Humperdinck all in their different ways have a vibe exactly they come in hot I don't understand their backstory no one knows why they do what they do no guess it's like yeah it's good for a villain to have motivation i really enjoy the battle of songbirds and snakes the book not the movie yes um the like it's good to understand where a villain's coming from but it's also even better for someone to just be big and camp and evil because they're evil perfect that person's evil we called governor odious so he must look like the radiographer yeah makes perfect sense exactly i get it i get it I understand it.

1:06:56I think we just need to, I think backstory culture has become too rampant in the arts. And... A sentence that makes total sense, I just said. And again, our new favourite film really proves that. Jurassic World Rebirth. Do we understand the backstory? No. Not really. It's sketched in. My boy. My mother. A couple of brief references to some kind of trauma that isn't really realised and that's cool. No one cares. No one cares. We want to see dinosaurs and we want to see chomping. Chomp, chomp, chomp. And the villain is Big Pharma dot dot dot question mark. We don't know. The two villains. I always remember that thing you told me about when we were talking about something, probably Lord of the Rings and talking about gifts as well and how you have to have your little villain and your big villain.

1:07:39You do have to have a little villain and a big villain because there has to be, especially if you're doing any kind of trilogy or series, there has to be a sort of a halfway point where your people find a victory. But then we have to have that moment where it pulls out and it's like, no this victory is not enough we need the bigger grander victory fantastic and that's why in Jurassic Park we have both the villain is dinosaurs want to chomp us but the real villain is Big Pharma I thought that was fantastic I thought it no no it's an absolute 10 out of 10 from me I think we did I kind of briefly mentioned it before the costuming in this film yes but again I just think and I kind of want to go back to it because I think it's so good you don't get enough like really out there costuming in films apart from an Emily in Paris and just like that yeah yeah yeah I just think the visual world here it's a visual medium it's a visual medium and I think more people should be going in with like big ideas I did feel really sorry for almost all of the actors though because it looked hot it looked hot as hell it looked hot to wear a muppet coat or to wear a full general's uniform or to wear a dress of doves.

1:08:53That looked hot. Yeah. I hope they were paid well for it. Oh, and that, yeah. The one female character whose name I can't remember. With her very 90s makeup. Yes. She had the most 90s makeup. I don't know what that was about, exactly. I mean, I guess in the imagination of a child, everyone looks like they're an atomic kitten.

1:09:17Very strange. Why? Why not? Do you know what the thing is? it's like it's it's this as we say it's a movie of two halves the kind of the realist half and the fantasy half but like the realist half is far easier to talk about right because the rest is just like well the rest is very much like perfumes for sale like it's big kind of beautiful set pieces lots of match cuts which i love to see you know so um what's a match cut it's where you like have a thing on this this is me just like sounding like i know more than i do so you've got a thing on a screen and then you cut to a new scene but there's an element of what was there before that stays so like if you had a circle yeah like it was a donut and then you cut away and it was the sun right or if you had like a smear in the mud and then it was like the like logo yes exactly like again very advertising to be like oh our distinctive brand assets are being seeded here yes yeah there was a particular bit which is about the the mystic and the mystic is like he summoned his mystic brothers in order to like give instructions of where general odious is or something yeah it's quite vague quite a strange scene but you pointed out as it was happening it's a kind of it's very impressive and choreographed it's like all these kind of naked naked hollering guys yeah um who i guess are supposed to be kind of tribal but in a non-specific way uh moving their hands around and you were like this feels like a 90s advert for vaseline it does everyone's nude body is shining and your skin is your most important organ take care of it it's what i expected to happen but i love that i don't none of this is a critique or criticism of it it's just i really enjoyed the kind of all out just straight in there i'm going big no subtlety needed here the subtlety is kept for the emotional stories not for the visual Yes.

1:11:09Visual feast, subtle emotion, and that's how it should be. Being a great fairy tale. You're so right. You're so right. No moralising. God, you're clever. Thanks. So are you. I mean, I feel like we're coming almost to the end. Do you feel like we're coming to the end of the film? It does feel like we're coming to the end. Because the end, I think, is like a real, again, both a gut punch and an incredibly hopeful ending. It reminds me a little of the Grand Budapest Hotel. Go on. In that respect. So at the end of the film, we obviously see Alexandra, Alexandria and Roy watching his quite shonky film together whilst all sitting around in the hospital.

1:11:52And then we kind of get this cut to her voiceover. She's talking about the fact that she left the hospital, her head got fixed and her arm got fixed, she went back to the orange farm, and we sort of briefly see her friends and the people who she based the story on. and then she talks about the fact that some years later she saw Roy in a film and so she knew he was alive and there's this little kind of scene of what seems to be Lee Pace doing a stunt and then it goes on and it starts to kind of cut to this amazing reel of all of the completely brat shit stunts that people used to do before there were lawyers in health and safety yeah like houses falling on things and all this stuff and yeah and it's like very famous scenes like buster keaton yeah scenes that couldn't possibly be roy but couldn't possibly be and she's talking and she's like and i think her mother says something to her and she thinks that her mother is lying i can't remember what her mother says but but she says she's watching all these films and i know that roy is making all the falling and and she believes genuinely believes that he is the stuntman in every single one of those films and she takes such solace from it and she's like my friend roy survived he got better his completely irreversible paralysis let's be clear yeah somehow was reversed through the modern miracle we're never told it's totally irreversible we're never i would say we're it's pretty clear yeah that he's not getting better um in that sense and he needs to find a new way to live with it in a differently abled body but she believes that he's had some kind of modern miracle of medicine and he's now a stuntman he does all these cool stunts and she's telling the story so happily and she's like he's making all the falling and he becomes every stunt man for her so you imagine that for the rest of her life every time she sees a stunt she's like that's my friend roy and it's so beautiful because she's found such hope in that and then you as the as the viewer are like i'm pretty sure that's not roy and i'm not sure that roy would have made it much longer given how intent he was on being dead and i don't know what happened to roy we don't know we never know what happened to roy but she gives him a happy ending even if he didn't get one for himself in real life oh god and he gets to live on even though and it's very much to me the Grand Budapest Hotel when Gustav M dies but Zed remembers him and the story continues

1:14:25I just I thought it was so perfect yeah I guess both of them are just about stories of like people who just briefly enter your life and change them forever and then leave them again and there's something I don't know our brains are so programmed to want happily ever after and then every Saturday Roy came around to the orange farm and we all had a picnic or whatever and it's like no that's probably not what happened yeah that's not what happened can I tell you something really embarrassing what? until we watched it this time and you said something similar to this when we watched it I kind of did think he might be one of the not all of them but at least some of them and I kind of thought maybe his legs did get better and maybe they did I have a childlike sense of wonder you do have a childlike sense of wonder and maybe they did I think it's I think it's a really powerful choice by the director to not specify either way and to leave that hope because that's that's what stories do is they create hope and they create possibility even where your logical rational brain maybe says there is none yeah and if it kind of cut to a scene of Roy's gravestone it would have been a very different film I like the fact that she lives on in her mind and possibly in real life, but we don't know for sure.

1:15:40Yeah, we don't really know. We never know. So I would say the most emotional closure that we get from Roy is that he's in the screening room, he's got his dog in his lap, who is a terrier, which obviously is very moving to us. Oh, it's very moving. Another great cornerstone along with nudity and taco coughs.

1:16:03And he kind of has this moment where he knows his fall is coming up and he's like getting really panicked and it's such a testament to like lee pace as a performer that you can see so much internal conflict even though he's not doing anything that he's panicking about seeing this and then it's kind of over in a second and it cuts to the guy who stole his girlfriend the movie star yeah and um he sort of just kind of exhaled and he's like oh okay and then somebody who is his friend who's in the movie business is like oh yeah they're all going this way now you know there's lots of work and also that same friend who visited him in an earlier scene who has a prosthetic leg is like oh I'm working I'm getting an arrow in the knee and you know like I'm working all the time or whatever not so bad being a disabled guy in early cinema or whatever and uh but and you get the sense that they're like is a life out there for Roy if he wants it yes you do it's if he can do it yeah and the he might think that the thing that's going to be difficult for him is overcoming a disability but it's actually overcoming his own yeah limitations he's put on himself yeah which is I suppose pretty common as an experience with all human beings is that sometimes the things we think we can't do are the things that hold us back more than things we actually can't do yeah and I hope he I hope he has a happy ending.

1:17:32I don't know if I believe that he does, but I don't know. Maybe I'm just depressive. Maybe that's my problem. Maybe it's that. But it doesn't, I don't know. Yeah, I know what you mean. He was pretty intense. He was, I don't think you can get much more intent than that. And it didn't feel like he had some kind of massive revelation that actually he wanted to live and he found meaning in life. Maybe he's going to fall in love with Alexandra's mother and then move to... No, no, no, no, no. I didn't think that. A lesser film, a lesser filmmaker might have done such a thing. Yeah. But I think, or like we might have him and the nurse have a little winky moment or something.

1:18:09Oh, yeah, that could have happened because the nurse wanted to introduce him because she recognised him to be hot. She did. Which he is. Yeah, he is. But we don't know what happens. Yeah. All we know is that for her, he is all the falling men. Yeah. Why do you think it's called the fall? Because they both experience falls in that he does in the guinness advert in the in the very beginning and then she falls and then she falls from the dispensary but to like you couldn't i mean is it just because titles are hard or do you think there is like a bigger theme at work here about about falling like falling from

1:18:46Jen Cownie: innocence and things like that and oh maybe yeah i have no answers just questions look i would say and this is maybe my advertising life coming in that you make an advert you just call it what it is you know what I mean you put a walrus in the speedboat you call it walrus whizzer you know like you call it what it is as it like I think sometimes maybe that's a little bit of Tarsem Singh's like advertising world coming in where he's like and this film is called The Fall why? do a big falls in it that's why I could be wrong yeah but I think it's just quite a good I don't know why I quite like the simplicity of it.

1:19:24Yeah, no, I don't know if I have any big theory. And like, yeah, maybe it could be a fall from innocence or it could be about what defines falls as how people get back up from them. And... It's one of those titles that's like gnomic enough that it feels it could have some mysterious meaning behind it. But I can also see a world where the director was just like, yeah, it's called The Fall, whatever. That's not the important bit. We're just going to... Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you were dead right. Yeah. Don't know, though. Don't know. couldn't tell you I remember having this conversation about titles with my friend Tessa Coates and she said I was um maybe she was right um but I was pitching her the idea for Skip Shock my novel which would be really nice if you could all go out and buy it is really really good it's very good everyone agrees um but she was like that is a batshit concept I was like I know I don't really know where it came from but it is and she was like what are you calling it I was like skip shock and she was like no don't call it that and I was like why not she was like because it's such a fucking batshit concept that you need something really simple just to so people don't get too confused just call it the salesman because there's traveling salesmen in the book and I was like no I like my word I made up uh and who knows maybe she was right not enough time has passed post-publication for us to know whether or not who was right me or Tessa Coates but please do a poll on instagram do a poll who is right because the thing is ideally telling this story 20 years would have passed and i'd be like and we all know now that skipshock is an iconic media property with a its own ride at disneyland but at the moment maybe it should have been called the salesman

1:21:12no they don't have to say death of a salesman she's wrong there's a okay yeah i hope she is I think she's wrong. I think she's wrong. But I like The Fall. I like that it's called The Fall. I don't know why it's called The Fall. No, I accept it. What a great film. I'm so glad I got to finally see it. I know. And what an honour to watch it with you. On a river in Portugal.

1:21:35Jen Cownie: Yeah. Okay, bye guys. Bye.

1:22:17We'll be right back. Now it loads in store and online. Valid through 9-7. While supplies last, selection varies by location. Holland Paver's offer excludes Alaska and Hawaii.