‘Nosferatu’ and the Top Five Vampire Movies, With Robert Eggers!

27:21It's like there's a very specific mission that he's on which is to like inhabit this woman. I think he is grosser than a lot of other Draculas in a lot of different ways. Like the nails. This movie overall, any vampire movie, has its share of blood given the subject matter. But this was like a lot of drooling and dripping and just like goop. A lot of goop. It is. More so than I even anticipated. Also there's just lots of attention paid to the sort of deteriorating nature of his form. Yeah. You know, that he has these sort of scars and torn body parts. Yeah, he's gross. He's disgusting. As you would imagine a beast like this would be, he would not look like Bela Lugosi fresh out of the sauna as he does in the original Dracula film.

28:04Thematically, as I was watching the movie, and I'm kind of desperate to have themes in my movies and tend to work hard to find them, but I was like, there's a couple of choices that are made in the movie that are really cool. you know the idea of the plague coming when um when orlock comes and the rats come aboard the ship obviously a reference to the bubonic plague and i was watching it i was like this is a very cool way of rendering the same panic like so freshly out of covet 19 and i asked him about and he was like nope that was not something i was thinking about at all does he know that there was covet uh we didn't discuss really the details um and and we can talk about that momentarily but i Imagine him just listening to like Austrian opera all day and not knowing like, does he know Juan Soto is a free agent?

28:49I don't know. Please don't utter his name. The beast's name. The other thing was, one of the things that I think is great about the film, and this is present in the original film, but maybe contemporarily feels even deeper, is it's a great story about women's repression and sexuality and desire and Lily Rose Depp as this figure who like in our culture alone is already like a deeply sexualized person. the whole movie is oriented around what she wants and feels she needs. It is at war with the expectations of her own femininity at that time. This is a great idea that powers the movie. And I was like, did you talk to Lily Rose Duff about that?

29:25And he was like, nope, we don't talk about themes. I was like, okay. I mean, is it okay that it's still there? Like I really, I found it to be a strange conversation. This is like a biblical mythological old story that has like self-evident ideas and themes and my job is to execute those? Or is it that these are my interests? Perhaps that scholarly approach is what's happening. Because I would say that these primal feelings, these primal like Northman is about vengeance. It's just like, there is just like, I will avenge my father. It's one of the oldest stories we've got. Yeah. This idea of like sexual desire that is both illicit but also like maddening is like very old ideas.

30:07So I feel like he's trying to get back to the original sheet music with his works, you know? No, I think that's well put. I just wonder, when you live in modern times, and the ideas resonate to this day, I find that, I don't know, were there any other ideas that you kind of felt just below the surface of the movie that resonated for you in any way? I mean, I think the one you identified about femininity is, you almost don't have to talk about it on set. It is that obvious. Like, every time her character complains about anything, it's like, here, let me chloroform you to sleep. let me tie you to this bed it's all kind of right there but overall I think it's a lot more about people wrestling with things that are like so far beyond their control and trying to rationalize ways to do it and maybe the only character who has like a clear-eyed vision through that is Willem Dafoe who seems to have a pretty good grasp on everything that's going on and a pretty good grasp of the fact that he are we kind of in spoiler territory now?

31:02is that okay? like can basically take the men to get out of the way and run a fake false flag mission off to the side so that the actual work can get done. I thought that was like a really clarifying perspective in this movie. Everyone is like fumbling around staking bodies that may or may not be vampires like trying to figure out what the rules are for this version of Count Orlog. Like all this mythology is confounding them. No one has an idea what to do except the one guy who's like a crazy kooky doctor who's basically been outlawed by society. He's just like an alchemist. Yeah. Right. He's the ball knower of this movie.

31:32Certainly. I wonder so thematically I thought actually that one of the more interesting things that I thought they hammered was the economic anxiety and class stuff which I don't remember from previous iterations of the story per se they little women did you're saying they really brought it up of like him signing away his wife or unknowingly but then that fight that they have which is so electrifying where she's just like well show me the gold then like show me what you sold me for all the stuff where there's that edge to Holt's relationship to Friedrich, where it's like, you've lent me money.

32:09It's okay. You're staying with me. It's okay, but I can always kick you out. And the kind of like, the sort of edge to the 19th century version of capitalism that's going on there. And this guy climbing this mountain to try and get his piece of the world and only to find the devil up there. I thought it was really fascinating to watch Eggers play with, but apparently it wasn't on his mind. Well, I like how you described it, and you made me, I think, understand it a little bit better, which is that these things are sublimated so deeply into the structure of the original stories that you don't have to spend too much time overwhelmingly thinking about them.

32:47But all the things we're talking about are such modern concerns. The idea of ownership and property and power and the sense of loss there. But like in 1922, in post-war Germany, ownership and land and power and the rebuilding of a social structure is like definitely on Murnau's mind. Yeah, you should read up on it. Maybe his next film will be a war film about vampires. You can watch that and find out. That would be good. That would unite the last couple of big pictures. It's true. It's true. That's our flag. Yeah, I think there's been a lot of criticism of Eggers over the last couple of years that he's a guy who likes to play dress up but doesn't maybe think too hard.

33:27And I've been a very staunch defender of the strategy and structure of his movies. But it was funny to talk to somebody who's just like, don't worry about that, dog. This vampire is sick. But I imagine, you haven't talked to Wes Anderson before. I never have. I've never spoken to Wes Anderson. I would imagine that if you asked him about Asteroid City and you were like, this is obviously about grief. And this is obviously about like the memory of love. And he would be like, it's also about what I think UFOs in Arizona would look like, you know, like it's like, yeah, he would be like, it's about like I wanted to make something that was about this particular moment where science fiction and reality kind of merged.

34:07And I don't know. I think that I personally get Wes Anderson more than I get Robert Eggers. I think I respect Eggers more than I love him, with the exception of the Northmen, which was very meaningful to me as a man who's been trying to avenge his father for a point in time. I felt seen. But I fucking dug Nosferatu, man. It was good. Also, how much of that do you think is the vampires are sick, don't think about it too hard, and how much of it is leaving the gap? No, that's what it is. I mean, some filmmakers love to talk about theme, and they love to say, like, here's what I was going for with this one.

34:40I like those conversations. Those are easier for me. it's not as fun to interview a filmmaker and be like, let's talk about theme. And he's like, good luck to you, sir. Maybe he's like, this is Hamlet to me. You know what I mean? Like the themes are like, it's the theme is already, you should know that already because of like the reason why this story still seems to resonate with a lot of people is because it's road tested. So I don't really have to explain it. Part of that too, like one thing we haven't really touched on is in all of his movies, there's a lot of weird magical stuff happening.

35:10Almost none of it is good. it's all like creepy and horrifying and monstrous and this I think playing with this idea that if there is some great power in the universe that is beyond us we probably don't want to fuck with it too much I'm not sure if that's the reading though because I tend to feel like he most closely associates himself with the characters who get caught up in those worlds well sure but they get like wrecked by would-be mermaids or they ascend and become they find a family of witches together you know so you see the witch as a found family movie 100 % I'm not even joking I really think that that's what that movie is about is that like sometimes you're born into a circumstance and you're like these are not my people who are these people?

35:47My parents are aliens they're God-fearing Catholics living in the newly established lands of America I am a witch where my witch is at that's what that movie is about and it's great because a lot of people have an experience like that so I think you're right that what he shows you in these movies is that those things are very dangerous and powerful for sure but not necessarily bad and in fact like if you want to talk about the ending of the movie. Yeah. Which I think is great and beautiful and so amazingly shot. The last 30 minutes of this movie is incredible. It's awesome. It rips. Yeah. From the moment that the rats are scurrying across the pavers in Germany, I was like, oh yeah, he's getting, he's in his bag.

36:27But that final moment, which as you pointed out, like Willem Dafoe sets up the false flag operation. Everybody moves over here. Nosferatu and Ellen are able to have union. She sacrifices herself ultimately and he dies on top of her when the sunlight is revealed, executing their plan. And then that frozen image of him on top of her, effectively at completion, at the completion of our story. And then having... He's definitely spent. Yeah. Yeah. They both are. They have been drained, so to speak. And that was a pun, guys. I have a lot of regrets being on this podcast. I had a career before this. No, what do you mean?

37:05You're only elevating. You're levitating like Orlok's spirit. He's been arguing about Dyson Daniels. I know. That's the real work. And then this, you know, sort of like Renaissance painting of a decaying demon on top of a woman. It's kind of beautiful. I know. It is wonderful. You see something in a movie and you're like, I think that was the shot that's been in your head for 15 years. And you're like, I'm going to make the movie so I can do this shot. And that's always really awesome when you see somebody get it. And just like the flowers and everything. it's just it's really breathtaking it's really good this is a really really good movie I think I like picking it apart because I'm a little obsessed with his movies so invariably I'm like what about this what about this but if you enjoy the Eggers project I think you will very much enjoy this but you know Chris did something very funny to me the other day Rob he had a very strong take on Dracula okay now obviously Nosferatu isn't Dracula but he basically is he's T-mood Dracula so what's your take Chris?

38:06Vampires rule Dracula drools vampires are fucking incredible and just awesome storytelling mechanisms and engines and also just like fascinating creatures that you can do so much different stuff with and I would like to say we did it we're done Eggers, Coppola Murnau we've got them all you guys don't ever have to do this guy wants to buy a house I better go to this mountain and sign over my wife's soul to him and then he comes back in a crate and then we have to stay. What if it's a musical? You know, what if it's a comedy? I'm loving it. I don't know. You know, I just, I think that the Dracula character, he's not one of my guys, to quote Marc Maron, you know?

38:49And vampires, though, are fucking fun and exciting and scary. And it really, some of my most watched movies of my life probably are vampire movies. But something about Dracula just misses for me, man. It's interesting because this is not stopping. Like, just last year, we had The Last Voyage of the Demeter and Renfield. Right. We have the Hotel Transylvania movies for kids. We had the Dracula Clay's Bang miniseries on Netflix a few years ago. Like, if you go back and look, I just searched for a letterbox list called Dracula. And I found one, and it has 110 films on it. Good Lord. And that, you know, of course, that includes all the early Browning movies and the Universal Horror movies.

39:34and it includes all the Hammer films. I mean, Hammer made like 15 Dracula movies in a very short period of time. And it does not stop. People love this story. They love this character. I think it's all the things we talked about. It's the psychosexual nature of things. It's the suavity and the beauty. It's the terror, the elegance combined with like a true monster movie. So it's interesting that you say that because vampire movies that are not Dracula stories or maybe I should say even more so that are not like truly European tend to be like, whoa, vampires, they're going to fucking explode everywhere.

40:08And there's like guys with shotguns. Incredible force speed. It's just like, let's make T2, but with a guy who sucks blood. And this is contained to this very elegantly rendered story of a lost time in history. You know, I don't really have an observation beyond that. Do you like Dracula? I like Dracula fine. I'm not opposed to your overall thesis here though, which is we know the story. Frankly, Nosferatu feels like it closes the book on it a little bit for me. It does. I have a hard time feeling like I'm going to watch a Dracula rendition that's going to leave me more satisfied with the story than this.

40:44Interesting. And so I'm cool with every other vampire story you want to tell. Any genre, any time, any variation. You can only see them in mirrors. Maybe they can walk it day now. Whatever it is you want to do, I'm here for that stuff. Those day walkers are just, they're troubling. They're diabolical. What makes a great vampire movie for you? I think it's the setting and setup. So for the top five that I have, I think part of it is like the vampires are incidental to the fact that it's a great idea for a movie. It's like, what if we put vampires here? And so I think I can go for vampire movies that are romantic, vampire movies that are action movies, vampire movies that are straight up horror movies, vampire movies that are travel logs.

41:28But I think it's got to be everything but the vampire has to be there for me. and then you put the vampires in to twist it up a notch. Okay. So Sinners is coming out next year, which is Ryan Coogler's new film, which is not being sold in the teaser as a vampire movie, I don't believe, but as far as I know is straight up a vampire movie, which I think is in the post-war South. Wow. It looks like it based on this teaser. Which kind of speaks to the point that you're making, which is like a very cool action movie from Ryan Coogler set in the post-war South, but vampires is great. Like that's just, I'm in.

42:02like tickets sold and then I don't we've talked about Chris Nolan's next movie like 300 times together Chris and I on this pod recently Shirley's Throne has she been cast as well? yes what? what's the list right now? where are we? it's Anne Hathaway Zendaya Lupita Nyong 'o Matt Damon Tom Holland and Shirley's Throne okay top fives now I did do this in 2022 which I had completely forgotten about Van Lathan and I and here's why I forgot about it Van Lathan and I did an episode and by episode I mean an 18-minute conversation about the film Morbius, which is also a vampire movie based on a vampire comic book in the Marvel world that stinks.

42:42And we talked about our favorite vampire movies. So I thought, one, I wanted to hear from you guys which ones you like. And then I'll just do five more. I'll share the five I did in 2022. I'll do five more. I made a list of vampire movies, as I often do. There's 300 fucking movies on the list. Like, there's just, if you are into this stuff, there's a lot of fodder. but some of these we've talked about over the years not all of them any thought that you put into the kind of vampire movie that you're looking for in your top five? I mean having just done this with the World War II exercise too I was struck by the variety of what's available and how much you can draw from and so like the question of what makes a good vampire movie for me is very hard because sometimes I do just want vampires getting shot with like steak guns and sometimes I want moody vampires like finding themselves like the loneliness of a vampire and the loneliness of the people they prey on is often what draws me to these movies.

43:31So I think if there is a theme, maybe too strong given all the movies I picked, but that's kind of a unifying idea. I feel like maybe I should become a vampire. Yeah. Because like that loneliness, you know, I like to be up late. I like to just sit in my cave. Are you sure you're not a vampire? Well, I certainly have the pallor. Prove that. I, no. I do have canines. I do have the classically sharp canine teeth. What is like the thing blood test equivalent that we could like run on you to prove that you are or are not a vampire. I guess we just got to throw you out in the sun and see what happens.

44:03Do you like FaceTime your wife ever just to be like, like, it's me. Eileen. It's me, I'm a Telluride. How is Alice doing today, Eileen? You will make sure there is coffee for me when I get back from Toronto Film Festival. Three tickets for Moana Doo, please. I'm not a vampire, I promise. In 2022, my five movies, which I don't think are represent... Actually, one of them is represented on Chris's list, and I want to let Chris talk about it. So I'll share mine afterwards, and we can just jump into our list. CR, number five, what do you got? Twilight. Yeah, of course. Edward is the real Dracula. Edward is the guy that I would be like, I get it.

44:47I get why she's thrown it all away for this guy. A soy boy? Yeah. It's an awesome setting for a movie in Forks, I think it is. Yeah, Pacific Northwest. and the Pacific Northwest and the idea that like mild cloud cover protects vampires that's all they need that's all they need I have seen this movie so many times this came out at a very special time in my relationship to my wife it is kind of Phoebe should we watch Twilight again are you a Jacob or Team Edward Phoebe I love these movies and you know there's some diminishing returns as you get to the Breaking Dawn but this first one is actually like a really good fucked up teenage love story that then turns silly at like the very end and I think transposing the idea of this like old ass man who's like you know looks disgusting and is like has a psychological hold on you turning it into Jordan Catalano you know and having him just be a little paler a little sparklier a little paler but incredible speed incredible dexterity and eye coordination off the charts hitting the whole like Dalton Connect right?

45:58Yeah and I think also for a lot of people out there this is the vampire story Honestly weirdly enough these movies are bad you know I know that they have a huge fan base for people who are roughly 12 years younger than me but they're not good What if I'm 5 years old? Yeah with Bob waving from far away Bob you love the Twilight movies? I don't I mean I wouldn't say that I think they're good movies but I do kind of have a distinct love for them this is the movie that I've seen in theaters more than any other movie ever because like when I was in 7th grade all of my friends were like we're just going again next weekend rolls around we're going again for like 3 months straight you know it was like end game before end game it was also like a very fun Obamacore moment of like this and Hunger Games everybody was just like I'm very excited to see Twilight on the screen Twilight was very good it was like the book I want to see the next Twilight movie Zillennial Culture salutes you Chris Ryan you're on the over board You really do stand up for them.

46:56I think I've seen this one the least. It's never too late to rewatch. It probably is the best one, but I think the Twilight movies are very underrated in the you're in a hotel and you need something to throw on in the background. It's on TNT watch. Elite. I'm just like, let's watch the fucking softball scene. Let's watch the weird CGI baby. I want all of that stuff, even more so than I want the original. Twilight rewatchables would do fucking insane numbers. I'm just saying. And where would that be happening? live from Forks it's funny my friends of the New Beverly have started programming it I think on an annual basis and the screenings just to Bobby's point just do gangbusters apparently like people are showing up in costume and you know obviously the movie is a huge phenomenon as an actual movie I think Taylor Lautner is like a significant part of this film yeah is he a significant part of this one he's not a significant part of the first one he's just seeding the relationship he's like I got a haircut and get swole.

47:53And then he just gets lapped by Pattinson by the end. It's just not even close. We obviously, I salute Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. Of course. And I'm very grateful that they were able to make these films have success and now just do weird shit in perpetuity. So they are important. Rob, number five for you. Robert Pattinson, one of the greatest press runs of all time because of this movie. You know, he was just shitting all over the movie and the experience the whole time. He's the goat. I mean, yes. Maybe I was influenced by those quotes that he shared during that time. I am here to represent the two genders, I guess.

48:23We got Twilight in Camp 1. My number five is Blade 2. Love it. Speaking of Guillermo. Speaking of Guillermo. Also, stop me if you've heard this before. There's a new breed of vampire, guys. Yeah. You know, it's crazy to think about. And we need Blade to hunt them for us. That's really what we need to happen. Fully snipesified. I consider this like the elevated version of the original Blade model. I would like to read for you the names of some of the blood pack that he works with in this movie. The pack of vampires who are under his command. Well, there's one that we must salute because he has recently fallen and we miss him dearly.

48:58Please feel free. Light Hammer, Priest, Chupa, and Donnie Yen's Snowman. Really, really something. But Chris Christopherson, also a legend in this movie. But it's got everything you like from Blade, the vampire clubs, the motorcycle fights, plus vampire government. And that's really where my interests lie. It's an incredibly fun movie. It is truly the flip side to the Twilight coin. Blade? You don't care. Blade's cool. Is it because he's black? You don't like him? One of these days we're going to fucking get canceled because you keep... What do you mean? You got to push the envelope on those. I'm asking you a pointed question about portrayal in film.

49:36I'm just going to be the sidekick on McAfee who's looking down the barrel of the lens just like, what am I supposed to do here? When do we get Mahershala's movie? What the fuck is that? It's not going to happen. Never. I don't think it's happening. I thought he was a major part of the next phase of the MCU. they're just like wasn't it in Eternals when we heard his voice at the end what movie was that where you hear his voice yeah also Harry Styles was that he appeared in the yeah in the final the stinger of that yeah very cool movie Eternals my number five that is not my number five but is my number five is Martin which is a very cool movie that George Romero made in the 70s that is very little seen is much more available now than it was five or ten years ago but set in Pittsburgh it's about a young alienated teenager, as so many of these movies are, just like Twilight, who thinks he is a vampire and starts to act like a vampire, but may not actually be a vampire, which is, you know, an interesting psychological study of a moment of change in a person's life.

50:37But also to the point of Eggers' film, there was a lot of vampirism in Romania and Transylvania in the 1800s. And there were men who were incredibly violent and who would rape and murder women. So what's up with that? That's real? Like, what did they do? They believed that they needed the sort of human flesh to regenerate. Let me dig back to my freshman elective education here. So there is that, and then there's also the, like, oh, everyone on literally the other side of our border is a vampire. Like, oh, the Roma people over there, they're definitely sucking blood and killing people. So that's where it's hard to separate the mythology from the history.

51:13That was the original build the wall, as I recall. was to keep out the vampires. Who was like the Steve Bannon of vampires? I'm here from the war room. We got bloodsuckers. Maybe it was Bram Stoker. I mean, he wrote that influential bit of literature. He would have been the Angel Studios. Steve Bannon actually would fit right into the Nosferatu with the clothes. He's got like seven garments on. Do you think it was between him and Willem Dafoe for that role for The Alchemist? The capes were out of control for Dafoe. He was just in prison, so it didn't work out. I enjoy Martin. You should check that out.

51:42Chris, what's your number four? I cheated because we're not ranking Fellini movies, here so these are two films at number four. I think I've seen the two of these films combined 500 times. They're my vampire action movie go-tos. John Carpenter's Vampires and 30 Days of Night. John Carpenter's Vampires is James Woods as the Catholic Church's chief vampire assassin. He plays a man named Jack Crow. Is that a lifetime appointment or how do you get in there? And his sidekick is played by Daniel Baldwin who plays a man named Tony Montoya.

52:17it's fucking awesome it's set in the southwest it's a lot of John Carpenter doing John Carpenter things and this was actually like his last like successful movie pretty much that's crazy have you revisited this one recently I love this movie we have talked about it before this was actually I believe Vance number one when we talked so he loves this movie as well very Vancore as well as CRcore it's just an awesome cable Saturday afternoon movie 30 Days of Night I've talked about before David Slade's night set, like, eternal Barrow Alaska. Just an all-time vampire elevator pitch. And it's just so great.

52:52It's like, where would vampires be most at home? At the place where the sun never comes up for a month. And there, it's Danny Houston is the chief vampire in this one. It's Josh Hartnett is the sheriff. And it is so gory and bloody. And vampires all, like, move really fast and are super strong. And it's... And they've got, like, shark teeth. It's like their whole mouth is teeth. That was going to be my question. What is your preference on the vampire teeth experience? because Danny Houston in particular, he has like 100 pointy edged teeth. Yeah. But the classical Dracula is just the two. I think I'm a classicist, honestly.

53:26I love the experimentation, but it's a classic. I'm a mid-century modern. I think something where you change into something pretty scary is better than just like, oh, I have one long tooth. Okay, cool. Very cool. Normal stuff. Number four, Rob. I'm going to keep it Guillermo. Kronos. His first movie, another really tight vampire story very small cast I think it kind of plays with a different idea of vampirism which is like everyone is on the search for eternal life throughout these sorts of movies, what if it turns you into a vampire and the side of vampirism that is actually more of a curse to participate in so I have a lot of time for that and the sort of like holy grailification of the vampire idea also Guillermo just like has such a knack for the mythology of this stuff and of these worlds so I have a lot of time for Cronos overall.

54:14I think it's just like a really well executed, especially first film, just kind of blew me away. I haven't seen this in a while, but whatever the scarab. It's like a golden scarab beetle that stabs your hand. Yeah. And I want to say there's like a little insect inside the golden beetle. That little creature design is like a, it's like a echo signal of what's to come when he gets like a hundred million dollars to make a movie. You know, he's so good at that level of design. It's a really good movie, Cronos. I like that pick. My number four is a movie I watched last night for the first time. I was looking around for another Universal film because obviously when the Todd Browning movie in 31 came out, it was a sensation.

54:51It faulted Bill Lugosi to become a huge star. Unfortunately, Dracula dies at the end of that movie so it's a little hard to make some more movies. This movie is a proper sequel to the original Dracula. It's called Dracula's Daughter. We didn't know in the original Dracula that Dracula had a daughter but this movie presupposes that she did and certainly does. Dracula's Daughter is really interesting. It is like part of the universal assembly line chain of films. And this is a vampire movie about a woman kind of coming to grips with her father's death. She believes that if she is able to destroy her father's corpse, that she will be set free from the curse of vampirism.

55:33Can I say that that's not how this stuff works? Yeah, there's some invented mythology in this movie. But the movie, which is directed by Lambert Hillier, has great tone, atmosphere, very unsettling kind of movie. Very short. It's only 71 minutes. And it is very clearly a crypto lesbian drama and one of the original portrayals of gay love between two women in a movie. And there are a couple of other examples of this. I just watched another Val Lewton movie like a few months ago that also features this kind of relationship. but if you look at it through that prism it's just another great reading of like what you can do with a vampire movie and the obsession that we see between Orlok and Ellen in the movie is the same between these two women in this story one kind of like raven haired seductress and another kind of blonde innocent so very cool movie it's actually a really good segue to the number three for both of us oh yeah fire away yeah only lovers left alive yeah Jarmusch's Jim Jarmusch's 2013 movie with Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston maybe my favorite Tom Hiddleston performance.

56:34Honestly, the role they were both meant to play. Yeah. They're so good in it. What if the two coolest people literally of all time were vampiric lovers who lived through centuries and like fought and left each other and came back to one another and it has, it's this moment in Jim Jarmusch's career where he kind of gets some mainstream notoriety for a couple of his indie films and then starts to work with bigger actors and then takes on this project that's essentially like taking his tone and applying it to big genre movies. So westerns, vampire movie, zombie movie. And this is one of my favorite films by him, but it's really like the central...

57:13sort of like relationship between Swinton and Hiddleston is so fucking awesome. And it's just like, if you haven't seen this movie, I honestly recommend this the most out of all of the movies we're going to talk about. It has such a cool musical sensibility too because he's like, obviously this musician has lived hundreds of years writing a bunch of mostly funeral dirges. Like, I mean, it's almost like fuzz rock. I guess. It's like one of the white stripes were vampires. Basically. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's set in Detroit, which is probably the only vampire movie that operates that way. I think it has a couple things going for it that other vampire movies don't.

57:45One, this idea of blood as almost like a hallucinogenic drug, more so than a life force. Like they do need it to survive, but it gives them a high. I mean, it's very much a stand-in for heroin. It is so heroin chic, the whole movie, and it's very clearly mapped onto what if you just sat around and listened to Scott Walker and Lou Reed 80s records. Like that's basically what they're doing in the movie. So very, very, very cool. And also the part that because it is in Detroit, in Decay, I think it's as much a movie about like what vampires make of us as opposed to what we make of them or what they make of each other.

58:17It's like, what do you do with an eternal life when you see humans just fucking up everything that they touch? Speaking of fucking up everything they touch, my number three is, I don't know if this is one of my favorite vampire movies, but it's a very cool film that is somewhat related to Martin, which is called Trouble Every Day. It's a Claire Denis movie from 2001. It stars Vincent Gallo and Beatrice Dahl. And it is once again about a movie about people who think that they are vampires and who wreak fucking havoc. and there is like an extraordinary kill in the middle of this movie. It's related to another movie that was on my previous list in my mind, which is called The Addiction, which was an Abel Farrar movie starring Lily Taylor in the 90s.

58:53And they both have these kind of centerpiece murder sequences that are very unnerving, but weirdly very sexual. The Addiction is a little bit more of a parable about AIDS. Trouble every day is something else. Yeah, I feel like the Larry Fesson movie Habit, which is really cool, but fits into this as like a trinity. Absolutely. independently made using that genre Trojan horse to explore something bigger in the culture but Trouble Every Day is a very very cool and kind of mystifying movie at the end when you get to it and Vincent Gallo like I'm not spoiling it he just kind of decides like okay I think I'm done with that and they like get on the road and just like so you just had an interregnum period of your life in which you were a vampire if you told me Vincent Gallo actually believed that I would believe that it does seem believable okay number two Chris I got Near Dark which is Catherine Bigelow's southwestern travelogue about a couple, like basically a Bonnie and Clyde Badlands kind of situation where, you know, this couple is wreaking havoc throughout the southwest and falls in with a group of like traveling vampire criminals.

59:56Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, just like the James Cameron, Catherine Bigelow, all stars are in this. And I think it kind of has, it's the perfect marriage of like a director with this very high style and this very hard genre thing, but then it's like, let's actually imbue this onto a real world situation. It's just a fantastic, fantastic film. I'm not up on this at all. I gotta catch up. This was my number one when we did the list originally. This movie is in desperate need of a 4K restoration. They should put this movie back in theaters. They should put it on physical media. It's very hard. I don't know if it's hard on it.

1:00:31You probably could just rent it. I think you can get it, but it's not a great print. Not a great, yeah, exactly. just a rip rip rip roaring movie and then when it's not is a very ethereal coming of age story yeah great movie okay number two Rob yeah I think we share a number two we do share a number two Bram Stoker's Dracula which I think has a lot of in common with those fraud two in a way like I believe in rewarding vision with a list like this like this is a movie that has a clear sensibility I think it deserves placement on production design and costuming and Gary Oldman going so fucking hard every second that he's on screen in this movie.

1:01:08An absolute style icon. You were talking about the various Draculas that we see. I prefer steampunk little blue glasses. That's kind of my preferred Dracula mode. I just think it's a really cool Dracula adaptation in which he almost gets to be like kind of a wolfman version of a vampire. Also a kind of beast. Yeah, definitely more of a beast-y vibe. And plus you got Keanu in there cooking too, getting worked over by Dracula's brides. I think it's just a really fun time. I revisited this movie for Megalopolis and I was just blown away. And I probably hadn't seen it in 20 years and I was just blown away by the level of craft that's going on.

1:01:46It's a classic, we didn't know how good we had it kind of movie. Also one of the great texts that people wrote about at the time when it came out because there was a lot of access to this production. There was a lot riding on this as is with many Coppola films. And just the controversial about casting Winona and Keanu and these parts that probably required British theatrical presence. And it's an awesome movie to go back to. I think Winona's pretty good. I mean, Keanu was kind of famously not good. He's struggling. He's like, whoa. That looks like a vampire. Shit. But that character is struggling.

1:02:21That's the thing. I almost don't mind it. I think that's totally credible. Okay, Chris, number one. My number one's Lost Boys. Joel Schumacher movie from the 80s starring Jason Patrick and Kiefer Sutherland and Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. This is, I think for me, gets at the thing that is the young at heart part of my fascination with vampires, which is they just seem cool and how dangerous that must be if you actually let it play out. This is one of the great settings of any movie, which is this Northern California beach amusement park town. So most of it takes place on this boardwalk where the kids all have jobs or hang out and ride motorcycles and a gang of vampires are like marauding around this town and yeah i don't want to give too much away about what happens but a lot of it is about fitting in as a as a teenager and trying to figure out your identity are you a vampire or a vampire killer and it's fucking amazing it's so it's such a great movie to re-watch over and over again i find myself delighted every time i watch it and this is probably the vampire movie that hit me right as I was coming into consciousness about what they even were.

1:03:33So it's like, you always remember your first love. I like this movie a lot too and is the perfect setting for Joel Schumacher's whole deal. Like visual schlock obsession. The saxophone scene. Yeah, yeah. His sense of, it started out as a costume designer and his sense of staging is always really good. And his scripts and idea of plot mechanics are always quite bad. but in this world just like honestly in the Batman movies it's like let it rip you know that's the whole point of the Joel Schumacher movie is we're not trying to make a serious work of art here we're trying to have a fun movie so great pick Rob what's your number one?

1:04:15My number one you know someone here must respect Swedish cinema this is actually probably the right pick I legitimately didn't put this on my list because I knew you would I take that as a high compliment let the right one in must be on this list there are not a lot of feel good vampire stories stories out there. I would say Only Lovers Left Alive kind of gets closer. It's pretty bleak. Especially the end. Attempted suicidal bullets are made in that movie, so it's a bit of a heavier watch overall. But this is about two lonely kids finding each other. And I think it plays on the vampire myth in an interesting way.

1:04:49Yes, it is. It holds no punches, ultimately, and gets very, very violent. I think the fact that it doesn't hold anything back is what makes it so good. And what makes it so that when you do see a little vampire kid and a little human kid doing Morse code through the wall at each other. It's just so endearing. And I think ultimately using that in the same way you were saying as vampirism or vampires as a way of fitting in or finding your boys. This way it's like how do you stand up to a bully? And one answer is make friends with a vampire. What is your take on the Matt Reeves remake? It's pretty good.

1:05:21I just don't... It's one of those like what's the point? A little bit. It's very faithful but I thought it was pretty cool. I thought Richard Jenkins was really good in it. The cast is unreal. This is another example, though, of what we were talking about before where a Swedish apartment complex in Dead Winter is an awesome place. So cool. Also, just very hard to make a credible film about the emotional connection between two 10-year-olds. That's a hard movie to make and both of the actors in the Alfredson version are so incredible, especially the young girls. Such a great actress. It's a wonderful movie.

1:05:56I'm glad you picked it. Because there's kids, too, there's also the dimension of like what it's like to be the caretaker for a kid vampire which is that's such a great little wrinkle in the story that it's like what if Renfield was your babysitter you know just a super good idea so my number one on this list is Fright Night which is a movie that I also hadn't seen in a long time and I rewatched during the spooky season and it's just like such a fun movie and I had forgotten to your point about Eggers being very excited to make a movie gloopy like the practical gross out effects in Fright Night are amazing the final 40 minutes in Chris Sarandon's house where like he's transforming into like a bat demon and they're killing the other vampires and the familiar in the house and his death like all that stuff is so wild but it's also what you're saying which is just like it's a cool teen comedy about a guy who's trying to get laid and also like is super into a TV show and he meets the host of the TV show and they go on an adventure together plus Chris Sarandon wanting to kind of like fuck everybody's mom and also drink their blood.

1:06:58It's just a super fun movie. You know, the remake's not bad. It's pretty good. Isn't David Tennant's the name first? Colin Farrell. Colin Farrell. And Anton Yelchin, yeah. It is pretty good. I got onto re-watching it because I had re-watched Child's Play on a plane, which I think I talked about, and I was like, Child's Play is a very, very good film. And Tom Holland, the director, who's pretty underrated, I think, this was his first movie as a director, and he wrote a bunch of stuff like Cloak and Dagger before this. Before Spider-Man, you mean? Not that Tom Holland. Oh, that's unfortunate. Yeah, Tom Holland as a spermatozoa.

1:07:30You know? Well, that's everlasting. I haven't seen him age a day. That's a really, really good point. That's our list. My list from 22 was Salem's Lot, the Tobey Hooper miniseries, which was recently remade, not very successfully. From Dusk Till Dawn, which I fucking love. The Addiction, which I just mentioned. The original Dracula from 31, which is still great and still plays really well. It does not feel like an old movie at all and then Near Dark, as I mentioned. I'll throw out the film version of what we do in the shadows definitely the TV version which might at this point eclipse the film version they just did a college basketball March Madness episode of what we do in the shadows any other honorable mentions anything else you want to shout out before we go to Robert Eggers I mean since we were talking so much Nosferatu I think the Herzog Nosferatu is kind of off to the side a little bit Thirst Blood for Dracula I really like the original little Buffy movie.

1:08:24Oh, a girl who walks alone at night, right? Yeah, that's a great movie. And similar to your like thinking you're a vampire phenomenon, I actually really like Vampires Kiss a lot. Not really about being a vampire, but about thinking you're a vampire. As we know, you are cage-pilled. Sure. And so it is one of the er, crazy cage texts. It unlocks, it really breaks open the whole case for us. Whose list do you think Robert Eggers would like the most? I genuinely think he would want to throat punch all three of us. So, So with that in mind, let's go to my conversation with Robert Eggers.

1:09:09Robert Eggers is back on the show. Hey, Rob, how are you? Great. Happy to be here. When did you first see the Murnau Nosferatu? Do you remember? Yep. Nine years old. my mom helped me acquire a VHS we had to mail order for and it just really stuck with me I'd seen the Bela Lugosi version and a couple of the Christopher Lee versions but something about Max Trek's performance and the simple fairy tale telling of the Dracula story, the haunting atmosphere. Yeah, it really stuck with me. What did your parents think when their nine-year-old was really into German silent cinema? Status quo. You know, like I was into weird stuff.

1:10:07But yeah, I mean, my dad was a Shakespeare professor and my mom had a kids' theater company. So it was like a household where that kind of thing was perfectly fine. How did you feel at manifesting? I know you wrote a stage play that was sort of an adaptation. When you were nine, were you like, I want to make the things that I'm seeing? Yeah, no. I mean, I think I definitely thought about the idea of being a film director as a kid. But yeah, I did a lot of theater growing up and I had the opportunity to do a senior directed play. And I thought like, maybe I'll do Nosferatu and as a silent film on stage with black and white costumes and black and white sets.

1:10:54And then I said that maybe it was dumb. And my friend, Ashley Kelly Tata, who's now a prominent theater and opera director, she said, no, that's a cool idea. Like, and so we directed it together. And then it was seen by this guy, Edward Langlois, who had the only cool theater in Southern New Hampshire that was doing Duchess of Malfi and Sam Shepard instead of My Fair Lady. And he invited us to do a more professional version of it as his theater, and it changed my life and cemented the fact that I wanted to be a director. So before I knew that I wanted to make a movie of Nosferatu, Like Nosferatu sort of like symbolically was like, you know, my primal narrative that made me like want to do what I do or something, you know, so to some extent.

1:11:48Did you find yourself like intellectually disassembling it when you were younger and thinking about why you liked it? Of course not. Yeah. I mean, I can barely do that now, even though that's what I'm being asked to do all day long every day. But obviously, I had to explore that when I did approach writing a screenplay, because how do I make it my own? Why do I want to do this? And I think what was nice about the Galeen screenplay, that adaptation that is Murnau's film, is that that simpler fairy tale structure has a lot more enigma and a lot more question marks. So it's a frame framework where I can, you know, put in what I'm the most interested in, you know, and, and I wrote a novella in trying to, like, figure this all out to embellish Ellen's backstory and childhood and understand Orlok and create a vampire mythology based on folklore and occult that was that sort of had some consistency to flesh out other characters.

1:13:06and that was like the first step in sort of making this movie a reality and that happened like nine or ten years ago. Yeah, so I feel like, I think we talked on the phone in 2016. Sure. And you had been, you were going to do it or you were thinking about doing it and it was after The Witch and it had been discussed and obviously it didn't happen for a variety of reasons, but do you think that the version you would have made then would have been significantly different than where you are now? It was only because of my lack of ability, but not because of what I wanted to do. The movie hasn't really changed since then too much.

1:13:48I mean, the script has gotten tighter and gotten better and less expositional and whatever. But it is the same movie. What abilities have changed in that time? I've gotten better at making films. I've matured as a human being. Like, you know, I've grown closer and more fluid with my frequent collaborators. So many things. You know, I think the Northman was such a tall order and it was way too big for my britches. And it was like trial by fire. And after that, I came out thinking, like, I know how to direct a movie now. Like, I'm not convincing people that I know how to make a movie in theory. Like, I actually know how to direct a film.

1:14:43So it was great when Nosferatu finally happened to go into it with more confidence. Not to say that we didn't challenge ourselves as filmmakers. We, you know, all of my team were trying to deliberately bite off a little more than we can choose so that we can stretch ourselves and get better and also stretch further on the next one. But yeah, it was a good time to make the film. Is there a big anxiety of influence when there are several iterations of a story that come before? Will you look at them or not look at them when you're preparing to make it? I looked at every Dracula and vampire movie.

1:15:31I would say that there's definitely some quoting of the Todd Browning film, a little. But other than that, not a ton. And the movies that were more influential to this movie, aside from Nosferatu, were not Dracula movies. and I watched the Herzog version and the Coppola version a lot as a young person so in the 10 years of trying to make this I deliberately didn't watch them I know that those influencers are there they could not be I watched those movies a zillion times when I was younger but I did want to try to deliberately distance myself from them as they were the more recent strong versions of the story but at the end of the day you have to respect what came before you and and and while i want to do my own thing it you know you know as much as like like the makeup design the costume design of orlock is like is meant to be radically different but i also have like the fingers the shape of the skull there are certain things like the hunt the hump back like there are certain things that I also wanted to acknowledge and I think me, Bill Skarsgård, David White, the prosthetics designer and interestingly enough Robin Carroll the composer I think were the people who fought the most weight of like oh my god we're doing Nosferatu but when you're there you just have to kind of like let go and be or you're gonna fail.

1:17:18There's a very surprising name in the credits, Chris Columbus is a producer on this movie? Yes, Chris Columbus of Home Alone and Harry Potter and Mrs. Doubtfire fame was the main creative producer on the film with his daughter, Eleanor. But yeah, Chris and Eleanor have a company called Maiden Voyage that the main thing they do is support first and second time filmmakers. And on The Witch, when we sort of were doing posts with Monopoly money, they came in to help finish that movie. And Chris has been a mentor ever since. But on this film, Chris and Eleanor were there every single day by the monitor on set for all of prep.

1:18:10And Chris was, we are very different filmmakers, obviously, but having one of the masters of orthodox Hollywood storytelling being there as an advocate, it was incredible. And also, you know, he was there as a great voice to sort of counter my arty farty inclinations, you know, and I don't think I'm certain the film wouldn't, you know, be what it is, hopefully good without Chris Columbus's input. Was any of that instinct around, forgive this word specifically, but like a kind of commercial sensibility that you hope could be suffused within the things that you're doing? No. I mean, I would say no.

1:19:01But I would say that just, you know, in the, you know, Jaren and I do these long, unbroken shots. And in doing that, there is like a slight rewriting of the script and streamlining things. So one thing can lead to another so that we don't have to put in edits. there are scenes with shot, reverse shot, like editing's great, but often this is what we're doing. And Chris would be coming through our storyboards and saying, where's this story beat? Where's that story beat? Like you missed it. It's in your script. You have to articulate it. It's not enough for them to say the line. We have to see it visually.

1:19:44And that care was incredibly helpful. That's really interesting. I mean, the Northman feels like this incredible exercise and the freedom of open space. And this movie is sort of the opposite. It's very contained. It's a lot of small rooms. Yeah, I think audiences will feel how they feel. I'd feel like these like oners are a little more invisible in this movie. Like in The Northmen, it's a little bit like, look what we're doing. And you know, which sucks, but it is what it is, you know. Why does it so? How do you say it sucks? I mean, I just, Just when you don't want to announce your Brevora. Oh, I see.

1:20:28Or, I mean, sometimes it's fine too, but I think in general I wouldn't want that. And I think that a lot of times in this film you don't even notice that you're watching a wonder. It just kind of happens. That's definitely true. And I think some of that is because of the chamber scenes. and you know like this isn't revolutionary stuff we're doing you know you can see it in 1940s Sherlock Holmes B movies you know which and they're doing it just to like make their day you know but it is you know I think it's a nice for me like as an audience member I find it like more in a little more engaging and with my period world building and everything the fact that you're just kind of like sucked into this shot that keeps on going like unconsciously you like don't feel the artifice of the cut that said you know like the scenes that are shot reverse shot or whatever you know working with a great editor like louise ford that also has its own like emotional value um in in seeing face face face face uh but the other thing about the oners that I really like is making them because what happens is that like all the actors are dependent on each other they're all you know dance partners but so is the dolly pusher and so is the focus puller and so are the carpenters who have to like move walls that are hinged to get the camera out like the walls out of the way to move the camera in the middle of the shot and so there's a tremendous amount of focus on set and I also think that everyone feels like they're making the movie Everyone feels collaborative.

1:22:14You know, people aren't just sitting around waiting for the next setup. Like, everyone's engaged. And that is also, like, just an enjoyable way to work. Did you know that before the Northmen? That that creates, like, I guess, more of a team atmosphere? Yeah, I mean, we had done, you know, shots like that on the lighthouse and to a lesser extent on the witch too. But it was, you know, something that we were continuing to work on and explore. As a movie watcher, do you like having a consciousness of the filmmaker making moves? Like, what's your, how do you? I mean, the best movie, you're just watching it.

1:22:55And obviously, it's hard for me. It's hard for me because I make movies not to, like, be into mindsets. But if there is a movie where I'm not thinking about the filmmaking, then I, you know, I know that it's, like, extra great. sometimes you know I'll watch a movie and just be like wow the camera works so awesome but I'm like not even like paying attention to the story that's probably not good even if it's even if it's enjoyable but I you know but obviously I watch movies repeatedly so there can be a great movie that you get sucked into and obviously I'm not like blind to the fact that what have how they're shooting it to some degree but then I'll watch it two times three times however many times I need to learn when I need to learn from it.

1:23:42You said there were other movies that were not vampire movies that were meaningful influences on this. What were some of those? I mean, the primary one would be Jack Clayton's The Innocence, shot by Freddie Francis, who also shot The Elephant Man and directed many, many Hammer Horror movies. And The Innocence is probably the best ghost story and, you know, ever, like movie, ghost movie. Sure, yeah, I'd say yeah. And certainly one of the finest gothic horror movies. And, you know, and if you pay attention to the camera work, it's very restrained, it's very elegant, and it tells the story, like, without doing more than it needs to.

1:24:36What about the creature design? You know, you mentioned, obviously, it's a collaboration with the actor, makeup effects. There's like a, you know, even in the trailer, there's the restraint with not showing how Bill looks, creates a sense of anticipation. Did you guys feel like a certain pressure to do something new or different or elevate what the monster would be? Yeah, I mean, look, like Max Schreck, Max Schreck created this iconic thing. and Kinski did his version of it and then you know Defoe does the shadow of a vampire like and it's a comedy but I think we needed to do something different even though again like I do some things to acknowledge Shrek you know and his makeup that he designed himself by the way but I think I think like you know in order this is supposed to be a horror movie right And obviously vampires have, over the course of the 20th and early 21st century, become more and more romanticized.

1:25:41And, you know, Kinski's sad vampire to Gary Oldman's like anti-hero vampire, you know, and then climaxing with like Edward Cullen's sparkling vampire, who's there's no threat at all. And it's great. Like the pliability of the vampire is awesome. And like, I like blade, you know, but this is a horror movie and, and the, and the vampire needed to be scary again. So, so obviously given my approach, that means like going back to the folklore and understanding like why were people actually afraid of things that they thought were real vampires. And so the folk vampire is a walking corpse. You know, closer to a zombie visually.

1:26:33And so then I ask myself, what does a dead Transylvanian nobleman look like? And this is my best effort as far as the facial features, the hair style, the attire, the whole thing. There are a couple of really striking things about it that I want to ask you about. One is the voice. And I don't think I heard when you and Guillermo were talking. I don't know if you talked about that at a certain point. What the decision that I guess. I wrote Orlok to have a very deep, powerful, booming voice, but also a pained breath because he's decayed. And it's almost like, I guess he's in a static version of some kind of decay, but it sounds like it's getting worse every time he breathes.

1:27:33And that was in the script. It's something I developed with Bill. And he also worked with, I don't know, Eunice Dottier is an opera coach to like, well, she's an opera singer, but she coached him to lower his voice in octave for the role. I mean, I didn't think that it was digitally manipulated in any way, but it does have that sense of like, it is from another existence. It doesn't feel natural. Yeah, I mean, Bill, I mean, I think basically, the only things we did to it was like amplify it. because obviously, like, you know, like, having that not be your normal register, like, he couldn't do it quite to that volume on set, but it was, but it's the same sound, you know?

1:28:17The mustache? I don't, was this coming out? It will come out after the movie. Okay. Yes. I mean, find a picture of a Transylvanian nobleman without a mustache. I mean, like, you know, just, so if you don't want to Google, just picture Vlad the Impaler. you know what I mean? And so, I guess talk to me about that. We have talked about like a version of this in the past, but this sort of like desire to have verisimilitude to something that may be myth or occult. Like, finding a truth in something that may not be real and why that is important to you. Well, it becomes more, you know, the more the physical world and the mindset of the period is articulated regulated, you know, specifically with quote-unquote accuracy, which is impossible, but, you know, my best interpretation of that, the more you can buy into the metaphysical things like a vampire existing, I think, you know, at least that's what I've been doing the past four times.

1:29:24Trying to get closer and closer to that. Oh, I mean, I'm just doing the same thing. I don't know if I'm getting closer. well like you made a there's a couple of other choices that i thought were interesting like the staking being metal and the rationale for some of that it's all this comes from the research you know and it's like obviously you know anglo authors said vampires must drink blood from the throat because like that's a good place to drink blood from you know but in the folklore Or if they are drinking blood at all, which sometimes they don't. Sometimes they strangle their victims. Sometimes they fuck their victims to death.

1:30:04It's very often from the chest because of old hag syndrome, like waking dreams where you feel that pressure on your chest. So that's something that I went with. And very often in Transylvania, iron stakes, cold iron, is what you would want to use. and staking them through the navel rather than the heart. And the origin of the staking goes back, you know, before these kind of Eastern European folk vampires, like many of the bog bodies in Scandinavia and the British Isles were staked with hazel staves. And the idea is to keep these fuckers there. like these are you know malevolent people who we want to be kept in their grave stake them down did you see the new Guy in Madden movie?

1:31:00the bog bodies play a role in that movie it's funny that that's happening at the same time as this obviously like you were thinking about this long before but the movie really reads as a kind of like a COVID pandemic kind of a film too because of the plague and you know that's obviously part of the original obviously but yeah just sort of interesting timing. Had you thought about it at all when you were making it? Because there's like a kind of paranoia in a town about what is really happening here. Yeah, but of course I wrote it before COVID. But interestingly, the More Now film came out a couple years after the Spanish flu, and this is coming out a couple years after COVID.

1:31:41I mean, actually, pre-COVID, I had a lot of the townspeople wearing face coverings in the script and I took that out because it just felt like too, like I was trying to say something about COVID, which I you know, wasn't, but it's going to resonate anyway. How does that strike you when like someone reads something into a movie that was not your intention but like could be supported by? It's great, you know, I mean I think you know, I don't make movies with a message, I don't think about like you know, I want to tell the, you know, like a feminist horror story, whatever. I like, it's just, it's not how I work.

1:32:26I just try to be in the world. But obviously I don't live in a vacuum. And so like things are just going to come into it that hopefully work with people. Also, when you're dealing with fairy tale, myth, fable, folktale, these are archetypal stories, which can be read in many different ways, And that's why people keep staging Oedipus and keep reading Hansel and Gretel. It's hard not to watch the movie, though, and see coherent themes. I don't know if your intention was not to make Ellen a representation of something about how women's sexuality is repressed, for example. Yes, in a 19th century context, but then, you know, people can, like, again, for me, it's like with this film, for her, it's in a 19th century context.

1:33:23But, like, it doesn't mean it doesn't resonate for people today. I, you know, say, like, you know, the woman's voice not being heard, but there are, you know, other ways that you can read it too. And, you know, and like, I mean, people have been talking about, you know, the election. Which was certainly not anything that I... Who was who in the story? Right. I mean, I'm not even going to go there, but, you know. I don't have any election questions on my docket here for you today. I was curious about what your conversations were like with Lily Rose Depp, because she's asked to do quite a bit, both physically and in terms of the typical performance.

1:34:07Will you talk about like themes like that that are in the story? Do the actors want to hear those things or they just want to hear about the world that you've built and kind of executing on that? I don't. Well, I mean, it happens particularly in theater, but I don't know why you would want, which I love. And my approach in many ways is similar to a theater approach, but I don't know why it would matter for you to know the themes. Like, you know, as an actor, like what do you, you know, because. That's not your job. Your job is to be in the moment. You know, like I think some of the problems with like the Stanislavski approach is that you are like thinking about the arc of your performance, which again, in theater, like it kind of makes sense because you're doing a lot of this work, but on screen, you just need to, I mean, I also think in theater too, but particularly on screen, you just need to be there in the moment.

1:35:05Yeah. you know and so so like did we talk about themes like maybe probably but you know mainly it's like okay like how how do we map and choreograph ellen's physical arc of all of these different like hysterical poses and and possession fits and things how do we how do we make them build How do we make them grow? How do they evolve? What do they say about where she is? But, you know, and that's sort of, you know, myself and Marie Gabrielle Rohde, the choreographer, need to be like the sort of God figure overseeing that. And Lily needs to learn it and then be there, you know. And the performance is so raw and so powerful.

1:36:00But then where there is that kind of attention to detail in all the story beats is also interpreting a text. And obviously Lily is getting all this incredible praise for her physical performance as she well should because it is incredibly challenging, incredibly tiring physically and mentally. and you know and i should say like you know a lot of people have wondered if this stuff is cg enhanced but this is what she is physically doing uh but also you know she does these two like she has all kinds of but but there's two long monologues one of them is a is a disjointed memory of her childhood another one is a telling of a dream and those monologues are really hard to do you know that those those are crash and burn like those are kinds of additions you never want to like audition with a monologues you never want to audition with because because they're so tricky to to like make a connection and she does them you know very powerfully with with a lot of nuance can you tell me a little bit about scares because your last couple movies didn't really were not defined by scare moments this is more of like the traditionalist horror sense there's some i guess some scary moments in the in the lighthouse but there's no i mean not really like a mermaid reveal or something you know a couple things scary yeah but um this movie you first of all right out of the shoot in the kind of cold open we are terrified well i mean it's you know there's a reason why the horror movies often have that like a you know that kind of scare in the beginning because then you're like concerned about what else could happen for the rest of the film and adds like a degree of tension, you know, free of charge, you know, and, but I think, you know, approaching Nosferatu, which in many ways, obviously there's horror films before Nosferatu, but in many ways invented the horror film.

1:37:59I felt like, you know, we needed, like, I think when Hutter threw the lid off the sarcophagus in 1922, that was a jump scare. so so here even though i've often derided jump scares was you know i i have like a handful of them in the movie but i do feel that you know they are in they are supporting the story you know like that you know they they move they all move the story forward they're not just like a set piece for the sake of it um but also you know we know they're coming and and that's okay but as a fan of yours, I was not expecting them. And so when I got them, I probably was even more scared than I normally would because I didn't think that you were going to do them.

1:38:41I didn't, you know, that's just my personal experience. That's cool. I mean, you know, it was, it was a, they're hard to do. I mean, I, I actually, I, I have, I respect James Wan even, even more like having like tried my hands on it because they are, they are hard to do. He's particularly good. He's very good. They always work. And it is a real craft. And it is hard to do. I wanted to ask you about one thing that isn't in the film that is in the Murnau original that feels related to my favorite little sequence in the movie, which is that the casket's being elevated onto the back of the wagon in the original film.

1:39:26But then the sort of carriage... scooping up Nicholas Holt's character. I feel like they're sort of like almost in conversation with each other, but how much did you think about what to include? Because that's such a magical moment in the Murnau film. Did you want to not repeat certain things that felt like kind of critical to what he was doing versus introducing your own versions of those things? I mean, I think that the vampire looks a little ludicrous like running around carrying his coffin under his arm. Like, and, and so I didn't want Bill to have to do that. And so, you know, Simon McBurney, like brings the sarcophagus, like on the skiff to the, to the manor house.

1:40:12And that, that was fine with me. and you know and then you know the carriage sequence was something that was really fun to do but I decided you know instead of Dracula being in disguise as the carriage driver maybe there would be no driver maybe that's more interesting certainly harder to shoot yeah can you tell me about it because it seemed hard to do I mean it was like we just basically built a carriage where we could hide the driver inside it you know so but you know okay are you happy with it i feel like every time i talk to you at the end of a movie and you're like i'm not quite like totally satisfied you always there's always things that are never going to get there but but i i've never this is the film that out of the gates i am the most pleased with it was the first time in post-production that i didn't want and just like jump off a bridge every day.

1:41:13Like I'm in very, I'm always very engaged in post-production. Like I know a lot of great directors who like go away for two weeks, check in, da, da, da. I'm there every day in the edit room, like really involved. But on all my other films, I've just been like, like just also writing the next thing and trying to like distance myself from the movie. And here I didn't feel that. I was still going home, watching one or two horror movies every night, thinking like, how can I make it better? you know and just it was just it was very like engaged with it the whole time is it very close to what the storyboards were and what you expected anything meaningfully change in post-production um no like you wouldn't see a movie and be like actually we should do it like this or i should reorder this or i mean i think that obviously some things change and and obviously like it's it's you know, Louise Ford, like, doesn't get enough credit because of the oners and because, you know, her best work is invisible.

1:42:16And, you know, she has the tremendous challenge of when me and Jaren's clever shots don't work. And then we have to, like, you know, get ourselves out of the corner that we've painted ourselves into. And also because the shots are so designed and every edit is like designed like we have to also if we get out of a shot early or whatever or lift the scene it has to look like it was designed to go there so it can be very hard you know and you and and also the other thing is is that these these oners when there's a lot of characters in them and they take up a big important scene, you can be sitting with one of them for months and then realize, you know, like maybe we need to use take seven instead of take eight.

1:43:08And all of a sudden like the whole movie changes, you know, it is interesting, but there wasn't any major things on this one. There was no additional photography. You know, there was just sort of honing and finessing. Are you going to keep making movies? I always feel like you get to the end of one and you're kind of like, I don't know. No, no, no. I mean, I desperately hope people keep letting me make movies. Like, yeah, I love it. And you're writing right now? I've got a lot of stuff going on. I always have to have a lot of things going on because you never know what's going to work. I mean, you know, this didn't happen several times and it happened.

1:43:53Like I absolutely thought I was making, going to be making not this as my next film. And here we are. Do you have any other Nosferatu-esque, like totems of film history that you are interested in digging your teeth into? I'm sorry, that's a bad part. You know, no, I was just making a weird face because like a few people have asked me this, you know. I mean, there are things that I would like to do that are famous properties, but like, should they be done? I don't know. you know should this have been done I don't know you know but I feel like vampires and by their nature are kind of iterative so like having the reverence for the history and like watching all the hammer movies you know if you know it then make a new one yeah I mean Robin the composer was like you know you know when this was finally like gonna happen we were at the pub and he's like well he's British so he's the the slang, but he's like, well, mate, you know, no one can say you didn't fucking think about it hard.

1:44:56You know? Yeah, that seems true. Rob, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen. Could be old or new. Could be anything. I'll just, there's, you know, I'll spare you from my Russian silent cinema and just say that I really enjoyed the substance. Can you tell me why? I'm very interested in your take on that movie. It was just, I have some good friends who I respect who really didn't like it and had very lucid reasons for it, but it was just incredibly sound. The whole thing worked and was of a piece, and it was well-crafted and very enjoyable and good performances.

1:45:45and yeah, I just enjoyed it. That would make for an interesting double with your movie. Sure. Transformations. Robert Eggers, thank you. Cool.

1:46:04Thank you to Robert Eggers. Thanks to Chris and Rob. Thank you to Jack Sanders. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on today's episode. Later this week, it's time. The Brutalist Boys have arrived. let's get brutal we're talking about brady corbe's the brutalist see you then