The Summer Movie Preview Game. Plus: David Cronenberg on ‘The Shrouds.’

26:49I do have some concerns about its commercial process. Sure, of course. It is. If you've seen, I think you should leave. Yeah. It is, I think you should leave coded, which I know a lot of people love and I know is a real cult hit on Netflix. Right. But as a like, let's leave our house and spend$100 kind of proposition, this is a little challenging. Yeah. What'd you go with for box office? So I have, I think I'm being generous here with$22 million. I went$12 million. Okay. I'm not trying to undermine the movie, but I think it's a little bit of a tough sell. I agree. I think my comp here was, I went with like the blink twice, like a normal, like I was looking, I've been looking mostly at 2024, but I think there's something about the Paul Rudd of it all.

27:32And like a couple recognizable names and like, it is going to be like a quote unquote cool movie. You know, there, as you mentioned, there's an A24 hat. So I believe in them. I would say there was more laughing in the press screening that I went to than in any press screening I've been to. in like five years and it is extremely funny. It just needs to kind of catch a wave of word of mouth and we'll see if it does. I think it can. I hope it does. I'm underselling it a little bit. Okay. So Metacritic. 80. I have 77. Okay. I'm pretty close. Final Destination Bloodlines. This comes out on May 16th.

28:07This is I believe the sixth installment in the Final Destination series. Yeah, but it's been like 15 years or something. A long stretch since the last movie. Now, I love these movies. CR and I love these movies. we are planning to do a final destination kill rankings. All of the major kills on this pod when this film comes out. I've yet to see it. We did see a scene at CinemaCon that was really, really funny. It was really good. Wonderful. And like maybe is influencing what's going on with my... Okay, that's interesting. Because I actually went a little lower on this. Only because of the time of...

28:40They're dumping this movie right into a very competitive corridor. I didn't... I don't think I went crazy. I did 42 million. Okay, I did 46 million. Yeah. I feel like this is a reliable, known brand. Totally. It can have like an absolutely like$19 million opening weekend. Exactly. And then it will go down, but it can hang in for a little while. Okay, so we're on the same page there. Metacritic score, horror movie? 62? I have 44. Oh, wow, that's rude. See, I feel like this is tipped back over into we appreciate what they're doing here. Like the fact that you and Chris are coming and like taking the artistry of the kills seriously.

29:16there is going to be like a positivity and it'll be like a real it is what it is but like we really like it which actually does code a little bit higher in reviews in a Metacritic way. You've tapped into an idea that I have kind of been wanting to do an episode about which is sort of like as folks our age slide into more prominent roles as critics and voices that like contribute to these kinds of scores that for lack of a better phrase the poptimism that invaded music criticism 15 years ago is like such a big part of movie experience now. Oh, it's like, it's genre-ism for sure. And that genre-ism is, I don't know if it can boost a movie like this.

29:57Only for certain genres, but horror is absolutely one of them. It is, but if it's not quote unquote elevated horror, if it's not an A24 horror movie, it doesn't get as much of a bump as it would. You mean critically or respect wise? Yeah. I think like still studio franchise horror still kind of gets kicked. Like, yes and no, but I think that's like, you know what's a good test for this? In academic land. And I think, you know, more and more of the people who are going to see horror movies, which is a growing group of people, not a growing, but I mean, just like a large and still expanding. It's a huge part of the movie going audience right now.

30:33Yeah. I think. As we're seeing this week. It reaches all audiences. Okay. And I think most of them do. So you went with what's, you went 62. Okay. Saw X, Yeah. Got a 60. See? So we could see. But that was also about like a guy getting over cancer. So. You don't know what this is about. I think it's about gnarly fucking kills. Well, people have a lot of respect for that. Yourself included. They do. So you are, you know, you're the institution now. Speaking of long gestating legacy quills and gnarly fucking kills, Lilo and Stitch. Live action. Yeah. May 23rd. Mm-hmm. This is directed by Dean Fleischer-Camp.

31:10Okay. Last scene directing Marcel the Shell with shoes on. We have the Marcel the Shell with shoes on book, which I find is like not the right medium to introduce my three-year-old to Marcel the Shell because I cannot do Jenny Slate's voice, you know? And so it's like the punchlines are funny, but not really in the same way when it's just me reading. I have this, I wish I could remember how I got to this number. Maybe it'll come to me. I went with 180 million. I think that's a good guess. Okay. I think I may have mentioned this to you in the movie fantasy league that I'm in, that this was a hot commodity.

31:50And in fact, I bought it for the assigned value. And I'm going with 218 million. Okay. And I also think it's going to play overseas as well. I don't... But we're not... We're doing domestic. We're just doing domestic. But I think that it has major young millennial nostalgia and Gen Z nostalgia. Gen Z sort of like, I watched this when I was six nostalgia. Plus, obviously, this is the big kids movie across the Memorial Day weekend. So I think it's going to have a really, really big opening weekend and then kind of a steep drop. But I think it can get over 200, which would be good for a Disney live action movie in the aftermath of the Snow White situation.

32:31Right. That, to me, the Disney live action aspect of it all, even though, you know, Mufasa, we know Mufasa's the new girl. greatest showman. We know, we know. Well, we do. We say a lot. Who are you talking to? Don't you ever like just get tired of listening to us? Like I do, you know? What do you mean? I feel like we had to say like... The overwhelming rightness or... No, but it's just like the number of times we've said like, well, Mufasa didn't do well initially at the box office, but it grew and grew and grew and that's, it's like the greatest showman of 2024. Like, I don't know. Which points are you even regurgitating at this point?

33:05I think that was uttered maybe one time and you've become completely exhausted by it. I just am. Sounds like you've been reading the trades. Well, you have to to do this exercise. You read all the trades coverage of Sinners. I did, yeah. You liked it. They did a great job. A plus to everyone. You know, I think both like your tracking and your business and also your understanding of the themes of the film Sinners were all really good. Great job. A plus. Also, you're all owned by the same company. So that's fine. Not ideal. What are we talking about? Okay. So the other Lilo and Sish thing, and this is really just anecdotal, but we saw, we were talking about it, I guess, with Matt Bellamy after CinemaCon.

33:46And he was like, what is this? I don't care about this at all. And he does have a child of film going age. And so he was like, I don't know about this. So I don't know. I trust Matt. I think another thing is like, I think it looks kind of funny. And that's usually like a death, you know, signal for the box office. It just looks like a very close remake of the film, as most of these movies are, but just like expanding 27 minutes onto a story that doesn't necessitate it. Right. But the one difference is that Lilo and Stitch is a comedy and is a fun movie and has like a little bit more of the antic Despicable Me energy that I think is more commonly successful these days.

34:26So, I don't know. I'm banking on it. What's your Metacritic guess? 56? That's exactly what I had. Wow. That's amazing. Okay. I just kind of started writing Metacritic numbers at some point that started to get confusing I had to kind of check myself at 11.30pm last night let's go to the big dog May 23rd Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning so here's another thing I haven't seen this yet okay don't worry I have some I guess you have to make personal outreach you have to make connections with people I'm gonna walk off this set you have to reach out and say hey I'd love to work more closely with you on these products.

35:03I can pour my water on your computer. Zach started giving me this exact speech about materialists. Two of the goats who know how to play the game. Here's what I don't need. In this year or in any other year is two men just telling me how email works. Well. I'm good. What about meeting in person? What about buying someone a cup of coffee? but I'm sitting here, you know, reading box office numbers for the last five years at 10 at night because I'm raising two children and playing your games. It's fine. This man is making it work. Never, ever talk to me about emailing someone ever again. Okay. Fucking ever.

35:42If you promise to never complain about not being invited to things. Is that a deal? That's fine. Mission Impossible Final Reckoning. I'm so angry. The thing about you is you don't like to email. Fuck off both of you. I didn't say that. I email funny. You're bringing home issues into this podcast. That's between y 'all. Okay. You were implying it though. You started. I didn't use the word email. It's fine. I said connection. And that's what life is all about. It's about making connections. That's definitely what emails are, especially the way you email. What do you mean? I have a phone. I speak with people on the phone.

36:23Okay. I have Zoom meetings. Yeah. I meet them at screenings. I say, hello. What someone? So nice to see you here. Someone has a professional interaction with you. Connection is what they think about. Well. Mission Impossible. Final reckoning. I'm so angry. Yeah, this is old school. Let's go. What's your guess? 220 million. I guess 202. Okay. I want to believe. The other thing, and I was thinking about this with Lilo and Stitch, and you mentioned like older millennials. like the older millennials are actually going to go see Mission Impossible we care I hope so we were there we got kids right gotta get a sitter I don't know some of us with older kids now are old enough to go to that's true to Mission Impossible maybe they're bringing their kids with them yeah that's what I'm that's what I'm saying that would be great so I wish Alice was 10 that's why I revised slightly down on Lilo and Stitch and slightly up on Mission Impossible you don't think that's aspirational I'm asking you to trust me one last time okay Metacritic score.

37:2583. That's exactly what I guessed. That doesn't, by the way, we have not made peace just because two Metacritics in a row. What peace? You got to sit here. This is your job, man. What peace? I'm not worried about peace. Bring her back May 30th. I really was this close to like reaching over and pouring water. Well, that wouldn't have been a good choice on your part. I'll tell you what, I wouldn't have been able to email if you'd done that.

37:49Bring her back. Okay, so this is the talk to me guys, right? This is the talk to me guys. And that's the hand that talks to you? It doesn't talk to you. When you hold it, it opens up a portal to another dead dimension. And then who talks to you? The dead people whose dimension you've opened. They talk to you. But is it like dead people you knew? No. No. Okay. It was a very effective horror movie. Yeah, no, no. I know. And a big hit. The Filippo brothers are the guys who directed that movie. in this new movie Bring Her Back which stars Sally Hawkins I haven't seen it I've seen a couple trailers that's it I feel like it does not have the same heat on it that Talk To Me had but I don't know there's not is there a horror movie I mean I guess it's a full two weeks after Final Destination Bloodlines horror can work in the summer certainly sure what's your guess Bring Her Back I guessed 48 million which is I just went with the Talk To Me that's high that would be high that would be good that would be a great success That would make it among the most successful A24 movies ever.

38:54I guess 23. Okay. I don't know. I feel like there's like a lack of viral energy around this one, for lack of a better phrase. Anyway. Metacritic score. 72. 67. Okay. Wow. You really, you don't believe in people. I feel like I would just have heard more. I guess so. You know, I got my ear on the tracks, sending these emails out, getting emails back. That's one of my, that's a great new bit. Karate Kid Legends let me pick your brain on something I really want to do a Jackie Chan episode but I need an expert I need somebody who's seen like everything in the 60s and 70s and 80s and I haven't seen everything in the 60s and 70s and 80s do you think people want a Jackie Chan episode?

39:35because obviously he's a hugely important figure in movie history really yeah well can you will Quentin do it? oh god maybe well you said expert you know and then people will definitely listen to it I will too that would work yeah well I'll ask him that would be interesting There you go. That's some free producing for you. Thank you very much. What's your guess for Karate Kid Legends? Which, here's what you got to consider. I think it's the sixth Karate Kid film, but we've had Cobra Kai on Netflix for years now. So there's a built-in base. But Karate Kid, not the most, not the strongest franchise.

40:08I went with$113 million. That's high. The new Ghostbusters were my comps. Okay. I like how you're thinking. I went$66. Okay. That's probably the biggest gap we've had yet. Well, I don't know. You could be right. People really, really like the Cobra Kai stuff. They sure do. Especially like old men too. Old men? Well, men your age. All right. Settle down. Metacritic? 43. I went 42. Okay. Wow, we're really close on these. You know, whatever. May 30th, The Phoenician Scheme, the film I have seen. Okay. I went 23 on box office. I went 25. Okay. We're pretty close. Slightly higher faith in West. That's about where he has settled.

40:51Yes. Box office-wise, with a couple of exceptions, obviously. Grand Budapest Hotel was a very big exception to that. And then what was the last one that got up? You know what was also big was Moonrise Kingdom. Mm-hmm. It was big. Am I forgetting one in the last five or six years that had? I guess I Love Dogs was surprisingly big. Right, because it had dogs. It had dogs in it. 23, Metacritic. 78. I have 75. Okay. Which is not a value judgment on the film. I'll just say. John Wick presents Ballerina. Mm-hmm. June 6th. Yes. I got a chance to see a segment from this film. It was before you arrived in Las Vegas.

41:33Oh, correct. Yeah. Okay. I haven't seen the movie. Yeah. Box office. Now, John Wick. Mm-hmm. One thing interesting about the John Wick franchise, each film has been bigger than the last. The lowest grossing John Wick movie is John Wick. Right. Then John Wick 2, then 3, then 4 in ascending order. But this is a spinoff. This is a spinoff. Even though we do know that they reshot everything so that Keanu will show up in it at some point. Yes. I'm going 140 million. I'm really low-balling this. Okay. I'm saying 87 million. Okay. I'm not sure if Ana de Armas is enough. Now, they're working super hard.

42:08Right. She's already doing press right now for a movie that's not coming out for six or seven weeks. Right. But I got my doubts. I based my two comps here were two franchise spinoff movies one of which was released in June last year A Quiet Place Day 1 and then also Venom The Last Dance which I know has some of the Marvel stuff but is still like spinoffy yeah Quiet Place is an interesting comp they were both 140 139 so do you think that Quiet Place got to where it did because it was so good or do you think it was just like people like Quiet Place movies they're gonna go forever no matter what I was very surprised by the quality of that movie.

42:48I think I was as well, but I think people just went because it was like, oh, A Quiet Place. Okay. Maybe you're right. Maybe Ballerina will get way up there. And it also just doesn't, you know, Joseph Quinn is now going to be a Beatle and Lupita is Lupita, but it's, you know, not Leonardo DiCaprio. What is Ana de Armas' signature role? Ben Affleck's one-time paramour. It's tough. If not Marilyn Monroe. I mean, I hope not. Academy Award nominee. Sure, but also we watched that movie, so. It's tough. Metacritic score for Ballerina. 57? 42. Okay. I got, I don't know. I know that you have. It's a Len Wiseman joint.

43:29That's not. I know you have really bad vibes about it, but people like Anan Armas. And I think they're also going to go out of their way to be like, well, this was, you know, this was nice, so. Okay. Another June 6th release, The Life of Chuck. This is the new Mike Flanagan film that won the Audience Award at TIFF last fall. It was acquired by Neon. It's written and directed by Mike Flanagan. An adaptation of a Stephen King novella. I was just talking with our friend Gilbert over the weekend about his excitement for this movie. I saw it yesterday. You're really irritating me. I wrote down$23 million and now I'm trying to figure out why.

44:10I wrote down 18 million. Okay. So we're not that far. I'm not giving a formal review of this movie. Okay. But I will say this. It has some magic in it. Okay. That doesn't mean it's a five-star classic. Like it has the feeling of magic as opposed to David Copperfield and his alien. It has none of that. It is an odd film in a way that I think is ultimately effective. but there was a woman sitting next to me at the press screening who when a sequence happened that might make your skin crawl it's possible I'm kind of excited to talk to you about it because I think you could go either way on it but she was like you know when someone's just like vibrating because they love something almost like when you like see a band perform that you love and you're like oh my god they're playing my song like she was like that during one sequence so there's a world where it's like a 70 million dollar movie and people are like this is the heartwarming sensation of the year or it's just the small indie and it's another Stephen King adaptation and that's it.

45:05They want it to be Stand By Me. You know, they want it to be the Shawshank Redemption. Right. They want it to be Sirius King with a real incredible sense of humanity. Right. It feels like I have not seen it. I've only, I only know that it won the Toronto People's Choice Award, which is kind of a curse in my opinion at this point. Or signals to me something about sentimentality and corniness. It is sentimental. And that's not true for, that's not fair to American fiction, which I thought was very emotional and I thought very unsentimental but unsentimental and not corny at all this honestly seems cheesy there's a cheese factor yeah but that doesn't mean I didn't like it and frankly good cheese I think is is a good thing at the movies you have 23 I have 18 Metacritic score what do you got 62 I have 66 I think it's sitting now at like 71 because of the festival reviews but it's a very small number of festival reviews How to Train Your Dragon June 13th This is the live action remake that we've seen and we saw at CinemaCon.

46:06Box office guess. Tough one. Yeah. Did you look at the comps for the other How to Train Your Dragon movies? I did, but that didn't. And then I also looked at live actions and then this is a universal. So I kind of looked at like universal kids stuff because of how they're, you know, positioning everything. This movie has a hard cutoff though because it's scary. Some of the dragon stuff is scary. I did$250 million. that's definitely where they'd like to get. I did 168. Okay. I feel like maybe I'll second guess myself and I think you might be closer to right. This is also a very sturdy, long-running franchise.

46:44And this is the first time Universal's really done this. And they also already announced the second one, which to me signals... I think they got the goods. Yeah. No, you might be right. I might be underselling this one pretty hard. And it's the same filmmaker who co-directed the animated films, Dean Desblois. People really like dragons. They do. They do. Hence the success of Game of Thrones. All those other Game of Thrones. The film Dragon Slayer. The film I enjoy. Reign of Fire. Lord of the Rings. What are some other dragon-laden items? My husband had out some of his beloved fantasy books. I don't know.

47:23We were rearranging books. And my three-year-old saw them and just very instinctively was like, what are those? Who is that? And I was like, oh, this is a primal thing. I've been waiting for this. Yeah. I've been waiting for, I introduced my son. He was just like, look at these things. How can I know more? What did he say about the woman with the heaving chest on the cover of the book? I don't know if he saw that one. Okay. Those exist, just so you know. I mean, I'm definitely aware of it. Especially the ones that Zach has read. Okay, moving on. Materialists. Oh, actually, Metacritic score, what did you say?

47:5762? How to Train Your Dragon? 62. I said 74. Wow. I think these films are loved. I thought the live action at all. I thought it would just be like a polite 62. Okay. You know? We have a difference. Materialist, which your husband has seen, I have not seen, comes out on June 13th. It's the new film, the second feature from Celine Song that stars Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and who's the third that I'm forgetting? Pedro Pascal. Pedro Pascal, of course. I wrote down 25 million. I wrote down 9 million. Okay, that's rude. It is rude. What was Past Lives box office? I think it was 11. Yeah, I think I was using that as a framework.

48:34Yeah. I don't know. I think maybe I'm negging some of the A24 stuff a little bit. Yeah. I don't know why. Well, we're getting to Eddington. That's coming up soon. I am looking forward to Materialist. I really like Celine's writing. I think that Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans and Dakota Johnson, three recognizable names, plus Celine Song, Past Lives. Three of our greatest Marvel heroes. Well, I know. Well, yeah, we've got. And then, and the past lives of it all. Mr. Fantastic, Captain America, and Madam Web. Right. And that, I don't know, people will go see it. I hope so. If it's good, if the reviews are really good, that will help.

49:14That will get people excited. A little iffy on that trailer, personally. I mean, I'm excited for half of it. Okay. I agree with you guys that we're on Pedro Pascal over exposure. Yeah. He's, I have not enjoyed The Last of Us, first two episodes. Okay. 28 years later. Mm-hmm. Wait, you guys did not give your Metacritic score for Materialist. Thank you. Thanks, Jack. Metacritic score for Materialist. 73. 73 is what I have. That's really weird. What do you mean? You're not going to get me to warm back up to you. I'm still pissed. Pissed about what? Pissed that your husband told you you got to send emails?

49:51That's your problem. You told me to send emails, too. You're so obnoxious. 28 years later. It's really, really annoying. You guys are very excited for this. I just wrote down the box office for Civil War which was what 68 million I wrote 88 million okay this is the third film in the 28 series first in a very very long time Danny Boyle Alex Garland reuniting I don't think this has a ton in common with Civil War but I hear what you're saying same writer I just you know it was it was a comp and it just seems like the same like a a real overlap in film going film goers like the same demo same more yeah just I don't know like you and Chris you mean like cool guys yeah yeah exactly the cool guy demo yeah I have 88 million okay I think the marketing has been very good for this movie and I think high class studio horror is an interesting opportunity for studios that they should look at they basically were like yeah Blumhouse will handle this A24 will handle this giving real artists money to make horror movies is always a good choice ask Stanley Kubrick ask Roman Polanski ask you know there's a long history obviously Jordan Peele has been showing us you don't need to relegate them to like yeah you'll get 5 million for this movie so I think this movie could do well Metacritic score 77 I have 83 okay it's Danny Boyle yeah I don't know what did I wonder what 28 Days Later did because that movie was why 77 and 83 is not really that different no they're close they're close 28 Days Later had a 73 there you go okay what's next on the list also Metacritic is really hard to get over 80 it is really hard it's one of the triggers in our auctions for that reason you said it at 85 which is insane well have you looked back at the auction recently you know CR got sinners yeah that's gonna turn out looking very good when it gets nine academy award nominations it makes 250 million dollars Elio new Pixar film an original film June 20th is the release date they're very nervous about it seems like it right So, yeah.

51:58Why did it get a June 20th release date if they're so nervous about it? Because the money's spent. I guess so. So you got to sell what you have. They punted it out of 2024 and put it into 2025. I did$120 million. I have$117 million. This would obviously put it on the very low end of Pixar films, but in that zone of like the good dinosaur onward, you know, originals that are unattached to other IP. Right. And then when this movie doesn't do that well, they'll immediately green light Finding Nemo 3 and they're gonna do that anyway that's fine yeah they're gonna do it anyway Metacritic 72 I also chose 72 yeah this is a very interesting okay F1 a polite 72 you know yeah I'm sure it'll be a nice movie yeah I'm sure yeah okay F1 June 27th yeah Warner Brothers is distributing this Apple original film starring Brad Pitt as a race car driver who's old his name is Sonny but he's still got some juice left.

52:58Yeah. It's a classic. Tale as old as time. We didn't talk about watching the first 10 minutes of this film at CinemaCon which we did. That's what we were shown. We couldn't figure out if it was actually the first 10 minutes or whether it was or if it was chopped up in some way. Here's what I'll say. Yeah. It was set to a Led Zeppelin song and that part of it was fucking sick. I really enjoyed that. I liked what I saw. Yeah, as did I. I liked what I saw. It looks cool. It looks cool. It looks like it has a tremendous amount in common with Top Gun Maverick, which is one of the great films. Yes, you noted that the cutting style was very similar.

53:35The cutting style, and honestly, like the shot composition and the storytelling, like whatever. Kaczynski has a style. I'll do like my diagram, you know, when it comes out. You should. That's a good idea. You're a Telstrainer? Yeah. You'd be like the John Madden of Joseph Kaczynski's cinema. Here is the gratuitous shot of their bicep. Yeah, an insert shot of a man's keys and his wallet. and here's his rumpled hat that he wears whenever he goes fishing. Here's a framed photograph to show you that once upon a time he had emotional connections but not so much anymore. Okay. 178 million. I have 132.

54:06Okay. You think it's going to go down? This is, I think. I don't know. I just wrote the Dead Reckoning box office in because I know that there are different filmmakers but and I don't think it's going to go to Maverick Heights but I do think it's sort of like it is trying to position him in the cruise. Look at what this person that you've known forever is doing with cars going really fast. I just think in America, F1 is not the same thing as it is as an international property. I know, but... I know it's very popular, but we're actually like now five years out from Drive to Survive being a phenomenon.

54:41I don't think there's as much enthusiasm for it here. There still is. I'm not saying there is not, but something just feels a little off. I agree with you. I don't think that it's going to be anywhere near Maverick. Obviously, that was a phenomenon for its own reasons because it was kind of the first real movie after the pandemic. I don't know. It just seems big and loud and people could get excited about it being big and dumb and loud. Okay. I'm looking forward to seeing it. Megan 2.0. We didn't do Metacritic. Oh, I'm sorry. Metacritic. I have 74. I have 61. Oh. That is, you know, still respectful in Metacritic.

55:19You might be right. I don't know. know i don't know if you if it's a reheated souffle it's a reheated souffle you know so will you say that on this podcast this is a reheated souffle okay if it is then it is it is megan 2.0 june 27th we know what this is we got a little taste of it at cinemacon as well we sure did i met two megan's you met two megan's at the party i forgot did you mention that on the pod i did yeah and i posted the photo on my instagram did you what kind of engagement did you get stories only. You wouldn't put that on the grid. You wouldn't dare. Because then Megan would be on the grid forever and then you don't want that because she's AI and then she's going to get into your system.

55:58You don't want that. Yeah. Megan 2.0, the Terminator 2 of AI robot female assassin movies. I have 99 million. I have 90. Pretty close. That's pretty close to where the original was, which was a surprise sensation. Exactly, and also had a big viral TikTok-y moment, which was very funny. They played it perfectly, but... Recreating that will be hard. Exactly. Yeah. I kept it under 100. So did I. And also, it is the same day currently as F1. And I think... A little bit of crossover. A little bit of crossover. And I do think if you're going to the theater, you'll probably go see F1. I don't know how many people besides me, honestly, are like, ooh, it's Megan.

56:43I got to go. It's fascinating counter-programming. I mean, you know, it's a horror movie that is targeted. That movie had a big queer fan base. It had more of a female fan base than you're likely to see. All the lead characters were female. It had a kind of kitsch quality, a camp quality that people really responded to. Which they're absolutely playing into. At CinemaCon, like 30 Megans came out and danced to Oops, I Did It Again, which is the song animating the trailer. That was very funny. I wrote that song, so it's... I'm getting residuals on that performance. Congratulations. I have a 64 on Metacritic.

57:1868. Okay, pretty close. Yeah. Okay, here's a big daddy. Jurassic World Rebirth. Yeah. It's released on July 2nd. Another universal film. This is the seventh Jurassic film. you looked at the comp for all the previous Jurassic movies. I did. So Jurassic Park movies make a lot of money. Yes. There's a reason why they shotgunned this movie two and a half years after the last one because they make a shit ton of money. Globally, they're huge. I know. It's just huge. And I get it. Huge. Yeah. I mean, I think it looks good. 384 million. I have 366. Okay. I think those are good guesses. Yeah. I think it's not going to be the absolute phenomenon that Jurassic World was when that movie kind of revived, reboosted the franchise.

58:04but Scarlett Johansson Mahershala Ali Jonathan Bailey yeah he's got some wicked fans people love him coming in the door yeah so in this story they go to an island turns out there's dinosaurs there it's crazy somehow there's some kids on the island they're on a boat at one point and there's dinosaurs in the water and then some dinosaurs fly and then there's a new dinosaur you've never seen it before it's like a new monster dinosaur and then it figures out how to get into a place where it's not supposed to be and it seems like they're stupid but they're actually smart It's a crazy idea for a movie.

58:36Can't believe they're doing this finally. So Jurassic World Rebirth Metacritic score. I write down 70. 58. Wow. You know, your heart's not open to this. I know. Why is that? I don't know. Because I think that this is like a little, it's the same thing with Marvel. It's like we had this. This stuff had its run. It had its time. It was very important to movies, you know, for the studios to make a lot of money for a certain period of time. But I'm like, we're done. This is fast. We had like 30. 85 Marvel movies. And this is the sixth? It's the seventh Jurassic film. The thing in its favor is that it's Gareth Edwards.

59:12It's the guy who made Rogue One and the creator. And he's an excellent filmmaker. He's not a great writer. And so he's got a writer on this movie. So maybe it'll be good. But even just the trailer, it's Scarlett Johansson being like, uh-oh, that's not good. Yeah, but she looks like Lara Croft and then she's going to run around. I mean, she's beautiful. She's a great movie star. What else do you want? I don't know. I just want a little more, you know? Sinners showed me. We can all do this together. Yeah. We can all do this. Give incredibly gifted people a lot of money to make something original.

59:45That's great. And then we can all get behind it together. You can't make sinners every single day. It's disrespectful to sinners to be like, yeah, just get out here. Everyone makes sinners. No, you are the person who told me this, that you have to have standards. I have standards. I have standards. Everyone listens every week and knows I have standards. You can't be like, oh, well, sometimes you get a Jurassic World. No. Hollywood. Step it the fuck up. There are plenty of things that you just let in and you're like, cool. I'll watch, you know, the 45th bad slasher movie just because I like people.

1:00:20And that's fine. And I'm okay with dinosaurs Those movies don't cost$300 million and sit on the July 4th weekend. It's not your money. But the point is, is that money goes to, It should go to other big projects. That's my point. You know I'm right about this. I know you agree with me. It's paying for the other projects. Maybe it is. Maybe it is. Like, let's never make a... Bring this energy to the Thunderbolts conversation. Let's never make a Marvel movie again. I think it's... They're so stupid. I'm good. We're done. But I just... Every three years, letting dinosaurs roam around and letting the John Williams score hit super hard in the theaters?

1:00:54Why not a new dinosaur story that has nothing to do with Jurassic Park? What is it? I don't know. Let's come up with it. When I was on Blanchett, I was like, why has there never been a good dinosaur movie that isn't a Jurassic movie? Because what else is there going to be? Are you going back in time and then you're just living with the dinosaurs? Good idea. Adam Driver did it. Really boring. That was bad. Yeah. That was bad. Okay. So you're saying that you can't make a good dinosaur movie. I would like to hear your idea. I'm not a filmmaker. If you're so angry. That's not what I do. But there are thousands, millions of them out there who have great ideas and they need to be trusted.

1:01:28I think it's sick to be able to watch dinosaurs fuck around every couple years. You know? I know. Well, you gave such vivid reviews of Jurassic World Dominion on this show. I don't know what happened to it. I probably didn't even see it, but I don't care. All right. Duly noted. So you're all in on this movie. So you think 99 Metacritic score for Jurassic World Reaper? I said 70. Okay. 58. Here we go. Superman. Yeah. July 11th. Yeah. Probably the most important movie of the summer. Okay. All right. Relax, Mr. Minecraft. You know? That's right. Warners is back. Everything is suddenly the most important thing, except for Jurassic World, because we can't honor dinosaurs.

1:02:10Is Alice not into dinosaurs? Maybe this is the other thing. No, she loves dinosaurs. Loves. Is obsessed. We were playing dinosaurs this morning. She was like, I'm a velociraptor, and you're a velociraptor, and we are a pack, and we hunt together. That's sick. It was awesome. Those movies are way too scary to bring to her. No, of course. Superman, I don't also think is a movie that I'll bring her to. It looks kind of violent for a Superman film. Are they not supposed to be? Like, what? I think the Richard Donner movie is PG. Okay, whatever. I mean, I understand that this is the problem with Superman.

1:02:40Like, he's boring. And he just, like, does good and then has a cape. We're going to find out. James Gunn's new film relaunching the DC Cinematic Universe box office. Amanda. 4.10. So I went way low. You went way low. You're going way low. I am. I'm not sure why. It's not prices right. I went$257 million. Okay. The history of Superman at the box office. Let's do a quick recap. Now, obviously, there's a long gap between certain films here. But the highest grossing movie with Batman in it in America is Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice, directed by Zack Snyder. it made$330 million. What year did that come out?

1:03:312016? Correct. I think... This is at the height of the superhero boom. Number two is Man of Steel, which came out in 2013, made$290. Right. A couple things there in my thinking. Number one, at that time, at the height of the superhero boom, it was really the height of Marvel. Mm-hmm. And these movies suffered in comparison to Marvel and their darkness and their muddiness. Like people were very much on the, you know, let's make some jokes and save the world train. So there's that. I do also, I used James Gunn as a comp. And he was obviously working in the Marvel Universe for a while and got that bump.

1:04:21but there is something and we saw in the footage like sort of corny about what he does that people really seem to like and then I honestly just think that this movie is just called Superman and that's really smart like I just it's just it's really really I don't know that people are gonna like it what number did you say again? I said 410 so 4 if it makes 410 yeah that would make it if it makes 411 that would make it the 11th highest grossing movie of the 2020s what else is i mean i i don't know that people are gonna like it but i think people liking it versus people going you just the thing is is you need repeat business to get to those numbers and like the marvel was very good at getting people to go a second time i i think i'm i think i'm negging it because i think people are pumped for fantastic four oh interesting see i here i guess you know what i'm saying let me let me let me i understand that let me articulate my thinking.

1:05:16I think that you will probably not like Superman very much. I don't know. I'd like to. I know, but I think you're going to be a little more like, what's going on here and how do I feel about that? You're going to be very complicated. Could be. I think most people will be like, oh, I went to see a Superman movie and it was funny and fun. And I like the work of James Gunn. And it'll be sort of like uncomplicated. Do regular people know who James Gunn is? I guess by regular people, I mean regular movie consumers. You mean movie fans. Yeah, movie fans. Okay. The thing is, these movies just need more than that.

1:05:58They need more than movie fans. They need normal people. But that's why I think Superman. That's it. That's all that it's... It's really, really easy. It's just like Barbie, Superman. We don't have Colons. We don't have The Last Reckoning. We don't have whatever. I don't know. I think I You might be right. I don't think that I'll like it but I do think that it might work. Six months ago I was 100 % with you on this Yeah. in terms of that number where I was like I think this will be the biggest Superman movie ever and obviously not adjusted for inflation. I think it's so important to the studio yada yada and now I'm kind of like I've seen 10 minutes of footage I've seen James Gunn speak about it at length.

1:06:37Yeah but that soured us on it in a way that I like I just don't think Okay what do you have for Metacritic? What do I have? 68. That's exactly what I had. Okay. July 18th, Eddington. Come to topple Superman. Sorry, Astor. A24 movie. Apparently a 2020 set. Yeah. Western drama about COVID. Yeah. In New Mexico. I have$28 million for box office. I wrote$23. Okay. And just now in my head, I was thinking about revising it down. Bo is Afraid made$9 million. But I was afraid it's three hours long. Yeah, but like... And wildly unlikable for any normal human that isn't me. I actually admired it. You know, I will go anywhere with Joaquin, including to Eddington.

1:07:32But I... I thought you were going to say something else. Well, no. I still haven't seen Joker 2. This isn't reading like a classic horror movie, hereditary style. you know it's not so I think that there's going to be a lot of people being like I don't know that looks pretty weird I could go see Superman again I think at this time of year the real cinema heads are going to be starving starving because I think F1 and Superman are going to disappoint them a little bit and then we're going to have a full month since 28 years later okay so 28 you know is not that much bigger than 23 but what just you're speaking of my people you're profiling of you know, quote unquote, real cinema heads and what you outlined.

1:08:17I'm talking to the homies. Yeah. All right. Talking to all the homies out there who are supporting Ari and no real movies. Right. Metacritic? And hate dinosaurs. 67. 91. Okay. I actually haven't looked back at what Ari's previous films are. I think this movie is probably going to annoy a lot of people. Yeah. But I think it will be critically acclaimed. Sure. But even I think his critically acclaimed movies have not been at 90. Is that true? Yeah. I think Hereditary was maybe 80, and that's the highest one. I'm taking a swing. You know, that's great. The Smurfs movie? Yeah, sure. Speaking of swings, featuring the voice of Rihanna.

1:08:55Sure, Smurfette. Smurfette. They couldn't get Rihanna to CinemaCon, though. No. Maybe she'll go to Comic-Con. She recorded a video. Are they doing the Smurfs movie at Comic-Con? How many issues of the Smurfs comic have you read? Zero. Okay. I think I watched a TV episode or two, once upon a time. I mean, I'm familiar with their lore. No, I'm not familiar with their lore. I'm familiar with them. What is their lore? They kind of live under small trees. Sure, absolutely. I think maybe you're thinking of Keebler elves. Anyhow, moving on, box office. They wear hats that are not dissimilar to the Keebler hat.

1:09:28We're going to get through this, I promise, together. You and I, we're going to rebuild our relationship. We're going to get through this entire process. You asked me to do the story that I'm ringing bits about the Smurfs. You put it in the document. The Smurfs movie will make how much money? 90 million? I wrote 114. I feel like there's a little secret hit going on here. Al saw a Smurfette at Academy Museum and was like, that's my best friend of all time. My comp was Garfield movie, which was 91. I didn't see that movie, but I heard it was hot trash. Yeah. I heard from a guy who likes Garfield.

1:09:56I met a kid on the beach who said that he went to school. Someone he went to school with, dad is Garfield. And I was like, oh, you mean Chris Pratt. So that's cool. That's my connection to the Garfield movie. You met a kid on the beach? Were you on the beach alone looking for children? Also with my child. Okay, great. And Knox started like hanging out with the other child. And I like try to engage the other kids, you know? Absolutely. You don't? No, not really. Okay. I'm good. Oh, God. Strange child. I don't want to have to talk to some child about Chris Pratt being his dad. Well, he volunteered it, you know?

1:10:33And it wasn't his dad. It was a friend at school. But it was important for him because it was like Garfield movie time. This is the energy you need to bring to the publicist who will let you see movies. This kind of sunniness, this kind of openness. I'm incredibly kind to the publicist. Okay, sure. Absolutely. I'm hearing that more and more every day. Metacritic score for the Smurfs movie? 34. I wrote 39. Okay. We are close. I know what you did last summer. We've just gotten a trailer for this. This is also a legacy sequel of a film that's important to all the real Jennifer Love Hewitt knowers out there.

1:11:07And also the real 90s kids. like if you remember this like then you're legit big fucking deal big summer horror movie from the 90s in the aftermath of Scream and the phenomenon that Scream became looks like Freddie Prinze is also back Sarah Michelle Gellar was annihilated by the hook killer in the first film so she's not back and she was asked are you coming back and she said no I'm dead and she and Freddie Prinze are still married which is really lovely very sweet they seem happy and like nice people this movie stars Madeline Klein who's best known for some anonymous streaming show that a million people love that I don't know about?

1:11:42Is it Ginny in Georgia? Is it Outer Banks? Let's see. Because you know what? Summertime Hoedown? Madeline Klein, Outer Banks. Okay, which I only recently learned. She was also in Glass Onion, the Knives Out film. Okay. She's very famous. It seems like she's on Stranger Things as well, according to this summary. I'll take your word for it. You never watched Kind of Pregnant? I never did. One of the Ginny in Georgia women is on Kind of Pregnant. I thought she was pretty good. What's her name? Is it Ginny or Georgia? I don't know. Let's find out in real time. Ginny and Georgia. It is Georgia. Okay, it's not like the state of Georgia.

1:12:18It's not like Ginny moves to the state of Georgia. Ginny and Georgia. No. You know? Like Sean in Wyoming. No. It's not my dog who's named Wyoming. It's me going to the state of Wyoming to live in Jackson Hole. No. It seems like it's... No cells. Just remarkable. It's insane. I was reading the plot summary of Ginny and Georgia, which seems like it's sort of Gilmore Girls-esque. Great. Okay. We're doing good work here. I know what you did last summer, Metacritic's score. We didn't do box office. Sorry, 66 million. 41 million. Low selling this one. Okay. You don't buy it. Trap was my comp, which is, you know, you bring out some.

1:12:56Excuse me. We both liked Trap, and it brought back a beloved star. This movie's going to be way worse than Trap, but it's going to be, I think, more liked, actually. Okay. Well, take that up with your people. This movie is directed by Jennifer Caten Robinson. Yeah, I've never liked a thing that she's made. 43 on Metacritic. I have 54. Maybe that was too kind. You might be on to something. Here's an interesting one. The Fantastic Four First Steps. Okay. Big trailer release for this movie last week. Yeah, didn't watch it. We saw Julia Garner as the Silver Surfer character. Vanessa Kirby's pregnant.

1:13:25I noticed you and Chris aren't talking about that when you're talking about the trailers and the content. I'm the father and I'm trying to keep it under wraps. So, no, we're very happy for her. Okay. I mean, no, not Vanessa Kirby, the person, the character. Oh, the invisible woman? Yeah, is pregnant, right? Sue Storm? Yeah. Sure, that's canon. Is it? Yeah. They have a kid. Oh, it's canon because they have a kid, so she can be pregnant. Sorry. You thought that was some astounding reveal. She's a modern woman. She's both invisible and a mother. I thought it was canon that she's always pregnant. Like in perpetuity?

1:14:05Yeah, that's what I thought you were saying. Oh, no, no, no, no. You mean like all women? No, I don't. I think I'm pretty sure in the comics they have a kid. Her and Reed Richards. Okay. Okay, box office for Fantastic Four. I've totally forgotten the reasoning behind any of the numbers at this point, so I'm just reading out what I wrote down. Very cool. This has been a very normal game and a good episode. It was your idea. I'm pleased with it. We needed to bring this energy back to the show, if I'm being quite honest. Just yelling about emailing? I've got you rolling. You know, we're good. I'm so tired.

1:14:41I stayed so late looking at all the box office. And I just, I don't like email. 390 million. I have 378 million. We're very close. Metacritic? 56. 67. Okay. I think this is where the bounce back happens. All right. We'll see. I think you want to believe that, but okay. It'd be nice. I have to see these movies for the rest of my life. Okay. I'm getting like, I'm getting weird Spidey sense off this one. Okay. I know it's a cursed franchise or whatever. And some of that is just like Pedro Pascal enough. There just seems to be an enthusiasm maybe that I don't even personally have, but in the world.

1:15:20People seem to be liking the trailers. They like the look, the retro futuristic style. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They like the cast. There's just a vibe that feels positive. The movie may not be good, but we'll see. The Bad Guys 2. Yeah. Animated movie from DreamWorks. Yes. Featuring the vocal talents of Sam Rockwell. I'm happy for him. Last movie was a pretty big hit. It was in the neighborhood of 100 million. What do you think about this one? 118 million. Whoa, you went big. I went 84 million. I feel like this movie was like fake famous, you know? I think... I feel like it was like influencer famous.

1:15:52I was like, oh yeah, whatever happened to her? She's like 19 years old. I've like interacted with a lot of young kids who know about bad guys. Was this on the beach? Including like your, no, including your child's class. There's like a bad guys contingent in. Oh, I did know that. Yeah, yeah. And I didn't know about the bad guys until CinemaCon and Bad Guys 2 trailer played. And I was like, oh, this must be why. And then there were some other kids just randomly on the playground, like playing bad guys. And they were a little older and they were like kind of intimidating Knox. And so I inserted my, I was just like, oh, are you guys playing bad guys?

1:16:26And they were like, no, we don't play bad guys. We are bad guys. And then we left the playground. But so see, it has a, it has a community. And all of those wonderful young men are ticket buyers for the bad guys too. It's in August. Like, what are you going to do with your children? You are going to be desperate. You're going to go see bad guys too. We haven't seen bad guys one. Well. We'll see. You've got a few months. We don't do a ton of male-coded animated movies. Well, that's on you. No, it's really a point of preference. Okay, let's keep it moving. We got to get through this somewhat more quickly.

1:16:59Wait, we need your Metacritic scores. Metacritic scores for the bad guys too. 54. 61. Okay. Just a few more left here. The Naked Gun. That's not true. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. The Naked Gun. Okay. I wrote down 42 million. 62 million. Okay. Liam Neeson in a comedy remake reboot spinoff. I thought it looked funny. You and Matt Bellamy definitely thought it looked funny at CinemaCon. Did you take a spend on Liam Neeson's box office recently? It's been hard times, but I think that's due to the material he's been choosing. Sure. Post - I think it looks good, but I was taken aback, I will say.

1:17:40There was a moment in that nonstop, the commuter, a walk among the tombstones, that era when it was still doing pretty well. Yeah. This depends on people showing up for a comedy. Maybe I'm wrong. The vibes were good amongst the 40-something dudes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I say 62 million and a 59 Metacritic score. 53 Metacritic score. Together. This is the Dave Franco, Alison Brie body horror film that played Sundance. Awesome trailer for this movie at CinemaCon. Awesome. 36 million? I wrote 16. Okay. I could see what you're describing happening though because there's a lot of buzz again August like the other options are respectfully like the Naked Gun or Fantastic Four which you've seen however many times or you don't really care about yeah it's a good date for that movie for sure Metacritic score for Together 70 I have 82 okay did very well coming out of Sundance but I didn't look at where it sits right now Freakier Friday August 8th now I don't mind saying I thought the footage from this movie at CinemaCon was downright dreadful.

1:18:50But I think Freaky Friday is a fun movie. Yeah. And people love it. And it was a big hit back then. I think it made over$110 million, whatever, back in 2007 or whatever it came out. I think it also, some of the feedback that I got from the Gen Z focus group was that there wasn't enough talk about that. Generations like girl-coded movies like Princess Diaries, like Freaky Friday, you know. Yes. All of that good stuff. So it definitely has a following and a following with people who are now grownups. Yes. Nostalgia with money to buy tickets. Yes. I said 117 million. I said 72 million. Okay. Which was the Mean Girls.

1:19:29My thinking on this was the same as yours around Together, where I'm like, there's not a lot out here. What is it really competing against? What are kids seeing before they go back to school? Right. Like the tweens. But also sexism. So you were like, I think this looks dreadful. So I think other people probably will think that too. I just thought the filmmaking was bad. Yeah, no. I mean. I really did. but that's it looked like it was shot with a potato I couldn't believe it alright so Metacritic for Freak Year Friday 44 48 okay Weapons August 8th they released a trailer or a teaser this week did you watch that no but I did see the trailer you saw the full trailer at CinemaCon very effective teaser people are excited about it seems very upsetting Box Office 53 million I have 72 okay that would be great that would be an over performance but I think that would be great yeah Barbarians obviously overperformed relative to his expectations.

1:20:17I think they're attempting to apply the long legs thing here. Right. Mystery and an intrigue around the reveals in the movie. Could work. We'll see. Metacritic score for Zach Kreger's next feature film? 76. 75. Ah. Very close. Nobody 2, a sequel to the Bob Odenkirk surprise action movie, which actually did not do as well as I thought it did the first time around. And I'm a little surprised by this sequel. It's coming out on August 15th. box office I have something written down here that seems really far too high so I have 418 million yeah I do exactly the number one for a year 18 million I have 33 okay we'll see Metacritic 58 56 okay this is a fascinating exercise three last films one that was just dated yesterday Honey Don't yeah this is the second solo directorial effort from Ethan Cohen but is again co-written with Trisha Cook his wife yes ex-wife are they still together I who cares it's between them doesn't matter they made a movie called Drive Away Dolls last year that we saw together because you crashed my Valentine's Day date with my wife and I liked it okay you liked it a little less than me yeah but I was amused it was fun this is a reunion with Margaret Qualley for this filmmaker yeah box office 9 million 10 million very close Metacritic 56 hmm 72 oh okay Caught Stealing now I missed this trailer this is the new Darren Aronofsky movie starring Austin Butler that was described to me as a post-pulp fiction style knockoff in not kind terms to the person who saw it August 29th it's released one of the last movies of the summer I'll be in Telluride I don't know when I'm going to see this movie Box Office 22 million I have 27 good guess Metacritic 61 I have 58 okay the last movie of the summer yeah The Roses uh huh Jay Roach remaking War of the Roses with Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch as a pair as a warring couple mmhmm Box Office 8 million I have 13 okay Metacritic 62 67 yeah very quickly how many of the films that we talked about here do you think will gross over 100 million one you mean domestic let's see one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve twelve so I have eleven yeah but I have nothing over 378 and last year there were at least three movies maybe four movies over 400 so that would be a big a significant underperformance are we just are we a little lost is Fantastic Four going to be gigantic is Superman going to be a 600 million dollar movie so my guesses were a little bit bigger than yours overall because you seem to be playing like the you can't go over game which is not a part of this.

1:23:46It wasn't part of my strategy. It just turned out that way. Maybe I was just in a bad mood last night. I was just like this looks like shit. I have one movie over 400 and it's just 410 and I have like a couple at the high What are we afraid of? What are we so afraid of? What about taking a chance on a Deadpool and a Wolverine, you know? Well, there's not a Deadpool and a Wolverine on a thing. There's not. You know, there's not. Do you feel like you and I will be able to heal from this? I'm going to do my best. I had fun. Even as I was putting this list together, I think I was getting mad at you because I could just imagine.

1:24:25This is like a classic Sean trap of you put together this list where nobody is right, but you just bring a lot of confidence. And so you're just obnoxious. And you're just like, it's going to be like this. plus the mansplaining emails was just... I, again, did not utter the phrase email. So you got to circle that square at home. That is your prison that you live in with very short sentences. You know, it's not like emailing with you as a treat. I am unshackled. I am free. All right. Amanda, thank you. Let's bring in Adam Naiman to talk about the Shrouds and David Cronenberg.

1:25:05We've got a Canadian national treasure you're on to discuss a Canadian national treasure. It's Adam Naiman, the Mean Pod guy. How are you, Adam? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm fantastic. Before we dig into Cronenberg and The Shrouds, I wanted to ask you how you're feeling about movies in 2025. It's been a constant point of discussion on the show this year. It's been, from my perspective, a little bit of a down first three months. And then there's been some wind in our sails in April. How are you feeling as someone who spends their time watching new movies and writing about them? Well, the studio movie I enjoyed most this year got a two and a half stars from you on Letterboxd.

1:25:45Interesting. Which is John Coletzer's wonderfully expressive The Woman in the Yard. I like what you wrote about it, where I think he said something like, I don't know what he's interested in beyond the camera. And I'm like, the camera, what else is there to be interested in? He's a filmmaker. Doesn't that maybe define us in some ways? Yeah. I don't think that's been a great start to the year. And there have been some films that I was looking forward to that other more normal people have enjoyed more than me. You know, like Black Bag and Mickey 17 are both by filmmakers I admire. They both have things in them that I admire.

1:26:19I would never, you know, kick those movies out of bed for eating crackers or whatever. But they're not great. And some of the things I've watched have been just abject. Taking Leah, my eight-year-old, to the Minecraft movie was pretty fascinating. because, you know, we're in Canada, we're more polite, but it was still a pretty rowdy, raucous, abysmal screening. And it feels like this is just going to be delayed gratification because there's some filmmakers I know you and I both like very much, you know, an obscure American filmmaker named Paul Thomas Anderson and some other heavy-ish hitters who we're just going to have to kind of wait for.

1:26:55I mean, I hate that idea that good movies come at the end of the year, and usually I like pointing to January and February and saying, Look at all the stuff that slips through, but not a lot of stuff has slipped through. So, yeah, not the not the best movie year so far, but also not the best year in general. Right. So I think our relationship to how movies are making us feel and what we're what sort of relief or or gratification we're getting from them. It also feels a little bit out of whack. I've been watching a lot of old movies. Been enjoying those. Those are good. I like those as well. I'm trying to lean on those as well.

1:27:30I felt a lot better in April there's been some films that I've really enjoyed I'm assuming that the Shrouds is the best thing that's come across your transom in 2025 is that fair to say? Yeah, I got out ahead of the pack I saw the Shrouds at TIFF last year and I'm like best film of 2025 and you try not to make it sound like a bit I mean first of all whenever we talk it's an interesting venue to talk about films there's sort of this intermingling of like you talk about the business and you talk critically and you sort of see what people are saying. So obviously when you have enthusiasms, you risk being seen kind of as a cheerleader, or if somehow you don't like a movie, you become kind of a killjoy.

1:28:11You and I are both in different ways, I think, or similar ways. I think, oh, tourists, you know, we have artists who we care about and who mean something to us. And not just as a Canadian, but certainly as someone of a certain age who came up watching movies at a certain time, you know, David Cronenberg means the world to me. And it's good that he also keeps making great movies because when filmmakers who mean the world to you stumble, you have to try and be honest. I would honestly say, I don't know if there's a movie of his that I feel the same way about as I do The Shrouds. I think it's very actually great.

1:28:42And I'm looking forward to talking about it, especially because one of the reasons it's great is because it's so close to kind of not being that good, if that makes sense. I know exactly what you mean. You know what I mean? Like it's right there. And that's kind of like a thing where there's filmmakers who seem to be risking something like with every second of the movie going by. This is the same way I feel about Shyamalan, you know, where you're just right there where you're like, am I watching something that's uncompromised and daring and naked and exposed? Or it's like, is this just kind of stilted?

1:29:14And I mean, Cronenberg is a better filmmaker for me than Shyamalan, but they both have that quality of you have got to be on that wavelength. Yes. And that wavelength is an interesting place to be. I think there is a particular, I guess the word I'll use is awkward. There's an awkwardness at times to the execution of the plotting of both Shyamalan and Cronenberg films that if you are uncomfortable with the tone that he pursues in explaining what the story is, it's going to be hard to get on board. I would say The Shrouds is maybe the most specific example of this that I've encountered in one of his movies in a while.

1:29:50And I also loved it. I also saw it last fall. I had a chance to revisit it last night. It's a movie about a 50-year-old man who's just lost his wife, who is formerly a maker of industrial videos. We can talk about what that means, actually, and how it relates to Cronenberg. Vincent Cassell plays this man, Karsh. He's very clearly a stand-in for a Cronenberg-esque figure. He has quite literally Cronenberg's hairstyle in the film and hair coloring. And this kind of industrial video maker has transitioned to becoming kind of a tech magnet with an interest in graves and grave technology. And particularly this shroud technology that can cover the dead bodies of people who are buried and then use that shroud to continue to look at the decomposing corpses.

1:30:39and this obviously is like a heavily load-bearing metaphor. Cronenberg has recently lost his wife about seven years ago and this is a film about processing some of that grief and also a film about the relationship to the body and lust and aging and all of these very heavy themes but it is told in, I would describe as a bemused, almost arch tone and with a heavy dose of eroticism mixed in. Not a lot of things you would imagine would be a man's grief film. And so the way that he shoots this experience through this story and these ideas is so fascinating to me. I found the movie very funny on Second Watch.

1:31:25And I know that all of his films are kind of crypto comedies in their way. But this one in particular, and maybe it's because of that tone that you're talking about that, Can you get on board with this style that he goes for? I laughed a lot in a movie that I don't know if it started out as a point of humor for him. But were you on that wavelength too? Yeah, he's always funny. There's a great anecdote from Cannes in 2005 when History of Violence played there. History of Violence being one of the Cronenbergs that maybe this listenership maybe is familiar with. It's not for nothing his most American movie, even though it's shot in Canada.

1:32:00it's sort of the one movie that tackles you know america as subject for a filmmaker who's pretty local and that's when revigo mortensen is this small town you know uh diner owner who turns out to be this virtuous who of violence absolutely fucking kicks the shit out of these bad guys becomes a media figure and then people like why are you so good at this and it's like well maybe i had a past life anyway when that film played at ken a lot of people wrote about that screening people were laughing and this European critic yelled in the middle of the palais he was like can't you critics shut up and take this seriously and I think word of that anecdote got back to Cronenberg certainly journalists wrote about anything Cronenberg's response was like well but it's funny I mean it's both you know it plays both ways and that's not a cop-out where you sort of go well I guess if you find it funny it's funny it's that there's something absurd and as you I love the word you used absurd and bemused that's just built into this material.

1:32:56I mean, the first scene of this film is a callback to the fly, which is also a first date between an inventor and an interested party, except this first date doesn't go as well because Vincent Cassell's like, yeah, you know, I'm grieving my wife and I have all this money and I own this restaurant here in Toronto. And she's like, that's all very attractive. And he's like, I also own this cemetery where my wife is buried. She's like, that's nuts. He's like, hey, you want to go like watch a video feed of her, you know, out back? And it's very funny. It's such a funny premise. I mean, it's just ridiculous.

1:33:23He's like poking you in the eye. She's getting really turned on. She's like, oh, you own the restaurant. He's like, yeah, I own the whole thing. And, you know, you've been made very rich. He's like, yes, I have. And then he shows her this closed circuit, ultra HD. I think it's a great joke that in the movie, they're trying to upscale to 8K. You know, they're like trying to get it up there. And, you know, he's just keeping tabs on his wife. And, I mean, again, to invoke another great Canadian, you know, it's like a Nathan for you episode, you know, the plan, you know, have people comfort. in their grief by watching their loved one's bodies decompose.

1:33:58But it is a great metaphor, but it's also not a metaphor because this is what life is now, is screens. And trying to sublimate all of our fear and anxiety about the future or sadness about what we don't have, or if you not even have to make a big stretch, our 401ks or our kids' Instagram, you're just on these screens as a way of not dealing with the physical. And Cronenberg's very interested in the physical so no matter how much he watches his wife on this screen his dentist is still telling him like your teeth are rotting from grief which is also funny and so i think that dealing with how funny this all is and also how relatable it is this is where the movie is sort of amazing because he makes i'm not trying to be glib but like you know he makes reality feel both more and less than no filmmaker has ever made reality feel both more and less than real at the same time.

1:34:48And some of that is just a really assured kind of filmmaking that is right on the edge of being, as you say, stilted. There's an interesting aspect of this story, which is that there is a plot that sort of matters. The setup is much more important to the plot, but the plot, you know, that this, this grave site with this new technology that we've just described is sort of pillaged at a certain point and destroyed. And there becomes this quest to discover who is responsible for this act of vandalism. And it's sort of a whodunit with a sort of meaningless pursuit of the truth. And I love the meaninglessness of the plot in so many ways because it speaks to this paranoia that we have about all experiences that we have now that is informed at least in part by this technology that you're talking about.

1:35:38Cronenberg, basically since the very beginning of his career, has had a keen eye towards, if not technophobia, like a real suspicion and anxiety about the way that technology has sort of like intercepted our humanity and this movie feels like it is taking it to its logical conclusion of death like in the past it has been about where it has taken us while we are still alive and this is kind of the final act of how there is a dividing line between those screens that you're talking about and these you know these like what is perceived to be like tracking devices early on in the film and this idea that you're being watched all the time well yeah because there's the dual conspiracy narrative and Cronenberg at can got a little snippy I think he has the right because he's one of the greatest living filmmakers with critics who were like why is this about conspiracy you know these conspiracy plots are strange and Cronen and David was like well you know conspiracy theories tend to occur to people when they're upset about things and he's gesturing broadly here at every aspect of our current reality you know without without putting too fine a point on it so not just the question of who vandalizes the graves, but the question of who seemingly has put tracking devices on his dead wife's body within the grave and whether these two things are connected or if these strange growths, these post-mortem growths on her body that the camera picks up, are they connected to the vandalism at all?

1:37:00And of course, it doesn't just perturb Karsh that this is happening. It's quite like a turn-on for him, especially because he's discussing these conspiracy theories with his dead wife's twin sister, also played by Diane Kruger. So immediately you're into this Cronenberg arena of doppelgangers and, you know, quite literally dead ringers and this kind of perverse sibling relationship. When you talk about those screens and the eroticism of it, I mean, if people have seen Videodrome, and if you haven't seen Videodrome, I think it's on Criterion Channel now, it's great. The first line of that movie is, Civic TV, the one you take to bed with you, you know?

1:37:36I mean, there aren't cell phones yet, But that's a movie where James Woods kind of wakes up and there's a girl on a screen being like, by the way, I'm your sexy girl Friday. Here's all the stuff you need to do today, which happens again in the shrouds. Except it's a personal assistant, an AI avatar who for maximum perversity looks exactly like his dead wife and his living sister-in-law and is played again by Diane Kruger, who's playing three parts the same way Miranda Richardson played three parts in Spider. I mean, this is like deep down the tourist rabbit hole. And I've interviewed Cronenberg enough times to know he does two things that are very funny.

1:38:13He says, it's not like I have a checklist where I put all this stuff in my movies, but he always says, it's also not like I have a checklist. So it's like the other item on the checklist is to remind people he doesn't have the checklist, you know, but he couldn't not make movies about these things, even if he tried. And I think the fact that he is so willing to put these things on display, these preoccupations and anxieties and fetishes and things he's fascinated with, I mean, it's what an artist does. And this is why it seems so hard for him to find financing or to get his movies made, which I think is another subtext to this film.

1:38:47Because without calling anyone out for not being an artist, I'm not going to be mean and say, here's all the people I think who are making movies in his shadow who aren't actually that good. He is that good. And he does not compromise or bend for anything. Sometimes to his industrial disadvantage, you know? Yeah, I totally agree, of course. I think what he might have been accused of if he had not made that compelling pivot in the 2000s to a history of violence, Eastern Promises, a most dangerous method. Like, you know, he obviously he kind of transitioned tonally and Crimes of the Future was hailed as like kind of a return to body horror form, whatever that might mean for Cronenberg.

1:39:28I think now the film is almost resistant to some of those criticisms because it's just a perfect act of late style. You know, it's just sort of like these are the things that interest him most. These are the ideas that he is the best at burrowing into and helping us better understand. And so the one thing I did want to ask you about that I think is interesting about him and interesting about a lot of our shared preoccupations as filmmakers is this line between auto fiction and that checklist that you talk about and entertainment. and can you watch a movie like The Shrouds as a lot of listeners of this show will but maybe have not seen Videodrome or maybe haven't seen even more specifically some of the Brood or Scanners or some of the more like Totemic if you're a cinephile films that Cronenberg has made but maybe not as mainstream movies.

1:40:12Can you enjoy this movie to its fullest extent if you don't have this reservoir of Cronenberg admiration or at least knowledge? I'm sure the film's very intrepid distributor, Sideshow, would like the answer to that to be of course and you know as people who like the film you do want to say yes but it's a smart question because it is so bound up in the mythos and not the idea of like a Cronenberg cinematic universe he's not cute like that it's not the Tarantino thing where it's like oh this guy's this character's brother or something but it really is this hall of I don't want to say mirrors but this hall of reflections and resonances and signifiers that do accrue the more you know about him on the other hand anybody who's lost anybody might watch this film and depending on how certain moments or scenes hit them uh find it devastating i have a friend who i saw this movie with at at tiff i won't say too much about her but she's someone who had suffered a terrible loss and she couldn't make it through the first 10 or 15 minutes of the movie and that's even with the ryanus and the archness and the strangeness because i think that when what this movie is saying about the finality of that loss and that the only way to hold on to someone after they're gone is to what keep tabs on their corpse you know the futility of that and the comfort of that especially when you think about people looking through photo albums or looking through instagram you know memorials or whatever else if it hits you that way i don't think it matters if you've seen a cronenberg movie or not i don't think it matters if you like him or not the the older he's getting the closer and closer he gets to the universal and in some ways like there is a lot of metaphor in this movie but it's not even like the fly where you have to do the undergrad thing of being like he's turning into a fly so that's about cancer which it was right in this movie you're just like sky lost his wife and he's dreaming about her and he can't get rid of her because she's just in his face all the time she's in the grave and he can see her she's on his screens because that's his weird virtual assistant and his ex and his his sister-in-law is there and like what's he going to do so i do think people can watch this movie and appreciate it on the other hand it's interesting to me what you're saying about uh you know late style and whatever else where i think for people who need a certain amount of continuity or plausibility or fluidity to storytelling it's a bit of a challenge but so too is it in a lot of these late filmmakers like abel ferrara or you know de palma's domino which are movies that they're pretty close to seeming terrible you know and maybe people kind of have to train not train themselves or be trained but they kind of have to accept that this is a very different experience then and i'm not trying to like i keep resisting naming younger filmmakers because i'm not trying to be mean but there are filmmakers who are definitely influenced by cronenberg and i think they in a way dilute him or distill him or take the surfaces of what he's doing without the actual content for instance i don't really hate the substance or anything but people comparing that movie to cronenberg is the most superficial thing in the world.

1:43:18But also, yeah, maybe an easier watch for certain generation of cinephile now than like late style Cronenberg. Yeah, I want to come back to that. I think it's notable to me that really since the end of the century, when he made Existence, he really had not made what you could define as a classical Cronenberg movie. The films that he made since then are spider which is one of the first movies i ever reviewed for my college newspaper which i absolutely loved um a history of violence eastern promises a dangerous method cosmopolis maps of the stars which i think is now wildly underrated and such a similarly so uh hilarious and dark film and then crimes of the future in the shrouds is this return to form that i mentioned and he's in his 70s now and i wonder if you know there is like a very purposeful intentional kind of reclamation of his throne for lack of a better phrase.

1:44:14And so the substance was this, I think interesting followup to Julia Ducarno's celebration over the previous five years with, with raw into 10 and she has a new film. It can actually be coming this year, alpha and her being kind of hailed as a successor. I know there's a very strong line of criticism of the substance and that it's connectivity to Cronenberg is maybe only in the kind of like physical manifestation of the idea and that everything else is like there's something much more manic I would say about the substance that doesn't really exist in any Cronenberg movie but I do find it fascinating that most of the quote-unquote practitioners of the people who say they're most inspired by him are women and a lot of his successors for lack of a better phrase are not men they're not you know a lot of a lot of dudes went on to make horror movies who really like Cronenberg, but they don't really do these existential examinations of our relationship to the body and the outside world's technology in the same way that these women do.

1:45:19And I'm curious how you feel about that setting aside, even whether you like Ducourneau or Farja's movies. I think Titan comes by its Cronenberg shout outs, honestly. And it's a movie that, you know, we all have movies where we kind of react one way and then with time that's actually a film that i have i have a little more time for than when it first came out i think when that came out and won at can i was frustrated that you know when claire didn't he brought trouble every day to can in 2001 they were like get out of here and when cronenberg brought crash to can they're like we have to make up an award for you because we hate this so much and then she wins the palm door and instead of feeling like this is about laying the groundwork you kind of feel like this is like carpetbagging you know it's like these johnny come lately's get you know praise for the things that the older guard did and i'm never going to be okay with the fact that the john carpenters and cronenbergs and verhovens and brahats of the world have i don't think reinvented themselves as art filmmakers because they've always been artists but like that's the distribution sphere that they have to kind of enter into and the a24s and neons of the world i mean they've dipped their they did a little bit and crimes of the future i thought was quite mishandled as a piece of distribution because they tried to sell it like a William Castle movie.

1:46:28They're like, you'll throw up. And it's like, that's not the movie. I think the shroud's being marketed very well. But I love your point about a lot of his inheritors being female filmmakers, or I would add to that, queer filmmakers, because Cronenberg has never cast particularly macho shadow. Just by virtue of being a filmmaker who's about sex and sexuality, he doesn't fit the macho horror template because he's not afraid of sex. He's not a filmmaker who's like, the second someone has to have sex in his movies, they have to die. He's not a slasher filmmaker. And I think he's also hard to put in a political box because if you look at the writing on his movies early in his career in Canada, people kind of couldn't decide if the problem was that he was an anarchist or that he was a kind of staunch conservative.

1:47:11I mean, I don't know how deep a dive we're going to do into like Cronenberg lore, but listeners should know that controversy with him didn't get invented with Crash. I mean, this is a guy who was debated in the halls of Canadian Parliament for spending taxpayer money. We have a government filmmaking system here in Canada. and what pissed them off the most in the 70s was that his movies made money you know he actually repaid his government loans because he found stuff that people wanted to see there was a critic named robert fulford who wrote under a pseudonym marshall delaney in saturday night which is the big canadian cultural magazine at the time and he's basically like this is pornography and the government shouldn't subsidize it cronenberg got evicted from his apartment his landlady thought that he a pornographer that they came to his house looking for, you know, pornographic film materials.

1:47:58And he had an amazing line, David, he wrote in the Globe and Mail at the time. He said, I told the guy he could come in and look around. He wouldn't know what he's looking for, which is his reaction to censors in general. Not by which he means I have the stuff hidden really well, but that people who want to censor art are idiots. And I think one of the most endearing things about him is how he's carried that through line about censorship and liberty and the the the need to transgress in art he has never backed down from it an inch and i find it deeply deeply moving i think he's also a bit of a a jester a bit of a cheshire cat with some of those things like one of the reasons why is because he cast maryland chambers in one of his first films which is a sort of like dare it's a sort of challenge in Rabid to say, is this pornography?

1:48:46You know? And I think that obviously like an unsophisticated critic or a conservative leaning critic would willingly just take the bait and pick the fight and happily pick the fight to draw attention to oneself or whatever, or to stand up for their supposed morals. But I think his willingness to stick with it, one of the things that moves me about the Shrouds that I've heard him talk about that I really like is I've lost people in my life, but I've not lost a partner or a spouse. And he said the one thing with a partner and a spouse is that you build a relationship not just to the person and their soul and the way that you love them, but a physical relationship to their body, that you are connected to their body.

1:49:28And he had 40 years with his wife's body. And so the whole movie is really premised upon this idea of his wife losing aspects of her body in real time while she's alive and then ultimately dying. and him quite literally walking through the psychological phases of physical loss and not just emotional, sentimental loss or these ideas of things we talk about when someone, you know, quote unquote, passes on. Like this is a physical confrontation with losing something that you're used to touching every day. And I've never really seen that in a film before. I thought that was so sophisticated. No, it is sophisticated.

1:50:07The idea that a person becomes like a phantom limb to you, you know, And it's sophisticated and it's mature. And it's the sort of thing that I'm not saying young people can't make sophisticated movies about loss and aging. I mean, they can. And not every old filmmaker is a sage, you know, but there is a lived in quality to this movie that I think is a little bit at odds with, let's say this kind of grandiloquent formalism and a lot of the young genre and genre adjacent filmmakers where it really is about creating a mood and creating a composition. and how cool you can make things look and leaning on old myths or old sort of genre, you know, on old genre tropes and sort of showing mastery and control.

1:50:49Cronenberg shows control in a different way, which is he makes it as spare and lean and down to the bone as possible. And that's where he hangs this stuff that I don't think is really, you know, conducive to screen grab culture or one perfect shot culture, but that you know that that that drills down even deeper you know and one thing that i would say about him i mean you try not to use too much hyperbole i don't know how you feel about this because when i go through it in my head i'm hard pressed i cannot think of a better director of actors in a way you know i'm talking james woods in videodrome jeff goldblum in the fly peter Weller in Naked Lunch, Vigo in everything, you know, and even Vincent Cassell and no shade on Vincent Cassell, but like Vincent Cassell is not typically thought of, I think as a particularly resourceful or soulful actor.

1:51:41Soulful is the word I was, he's not very soulful. No, but he's brilliant in this movie, you know, and not just as an impersonation of Cronenberg, but like getting inside this weird mix of like arrogance and superiority and also like deep vulnerability and curiosity, you know, actors trust him implicitly. I've interviewed Vigo a couple of times about this. And he says that working with Cronenberg is like nothing else in terms of the, in terms of the level of trust that he kind of cultivates and that he gets. If I were to judge Mortensen on the three or four movies he's made with Cronenberg, he's one of the greatest actors I've ever seen.

1:52:16And I'm not saying that makes him bad in other things. I'm just like, man, he works with some actors and Cassell is another one because Cassell is great in Eastern Promises and in Dangerous Method. And I think that there's no chance in hell of Cassell getting an Oscar nomination for this movie. I mean, we know it's not going to happen. But to me, it's one of the most interesting performances I've seen in a while. And also one of the best costume designs I've seen in a while, because this movie is partially financed by Saint Laurent. And Vincent Cassell was a drip god in the shrouds. My god. I don't usually associate Cronenberg with being one of the most stylish men in the universe.

1:52:51That is an interesting elevation of the character. Sometimes we see ourselves slightly more beautiful than we actually are. You know, he's always cleaned up okay. He's used to being on red carpets, right? That's true. Can I ask you? Yeah, yeah, go ahead, go ahead. Well, one last thing sort of on the legacy tip that is interesting to me, because I've talked to his son a couple of times, and I like Brandon's movies too, and I think that they're obviously wildly informed by his father, but they're not replications. And one thing that he shares that I think some of those female filmmakers we were talking about share is this kind of lean in the direction of the psychotronic.

1:53:29You know, that there's something like hallucinogenic almost when you're watching those movies. Which I think, I guess you could say when you're watching the sort of handgun sequence in Videodrome, for example, that it does feel like you're in like a dream state. but it doesn't have that convulsive, aggressive quality that I think so many of the filmmakers that are carrying his torch carry on. And I'm kind of wondering like why that is. Is that a product of these times and the fact that in order to make these ideas make sense, everything has to feel more crazy and a little bit less sustained. What do you think about that?

1:54:00It's a great question because he has a psych, David has a psychotronic impulse. It's in Videodrome. It's in Naked Lunch. Although in Naked Lunch, he does it entirely through analog means because he makes it a period piece, right? So you have people ripping outer bodies away and head trips and hallucinations, but they're rendered quite literally. Or a film like Existence, as you say, has virtual reality, but it's always rooted in something very physical, like the handgun or the body ports. My example for this would be one of his underrated films. I mean, if you start calling everyone's films underrated, you sound like a shill, but a lot of them are underrated, including by me.

1:54:38I should say on the record I wrote at the time I don't like Existence I don't think Cosmopolis is very good I don't think Maps to the Stars is good and then I always feel stupid because six months later I'm like no these movies have expanded like a bullet in my brain you know those bullets the full metal jacket bullets that get bigger can I just say just because I just saw one of this guy's movies to me it's the same thing with Wes Anderson which Wes Anderson and David Cronenberg cannot be more different but every time I watch a Wes Anderson movie a second time I have my mind expanded by the movie and Cronenberg oh you just saw one of this guy's movies?

1:55:09Could it have been a movie but a scheme? It could be a movie but a scheme, yeah. And so when I saw that scheme, I was like, I need to see this again soon so that I can expand my understanding of the movie. But in Cosmopolis, there's a scene where Robert Pattinson, great in Cosmopolis, by the way, Cronenberg got to him first. That was the first sign that we were excited about Robert Pattinson. Yes, exactly. Except for the movie where at the end, Robert Pattinson dies in 9-11. I guess that was before Cosmopolis. Oh yeah, that was my number one movie of that year. whatever it's called the number one film yeah my god um but there's a scene in cosmopolis where robert pattinson goes to see sarah gadden at a play and they're outside the theater and the poster just says stage play but it's the same way that in existence in the existence world i think vince willem defoe works at a filling station it just says like gas station and that's him being funny it's sort of him saying you know rather than try and uh heighten this level of um of of simulacrum trying, trying, trying, trying to really kind of, you know, fill the screen with surreal details.

1:56:12It's like, let's just strip away. Do you remember Willem Dafoe's character's name from existence? Is it gas? It's gas. Yeah, it's gas. Yeah, it runs a gas station. So, I mean, again, it's a form of, it's a form of surreality, right? And I do think that it shows a certain amount of confidence. And I also think that he's also a real master of a little goes a long way. That's why the fly is kind of deceptive. On the one hand, I love The Fly. And if I had to pick a best Cronenberg, it's right there for me with Crash and the Shrouds. But that's the movie, I think, that gave people a bit of a miscalibrated idea of him because it really is kind of a gore fest.

1:56:49And it's such a great mid-80s gore fest that you could be like, oh, David Cronenberg, he's that guy. He's the guy with the baboon inside out and Jeff Goldblum vomits on John Getz's legs and they melt. And there's a little bit of that in the dead zone too, which has a couple moments of just show stopping gore. Like when the deputy, you know, cuts his mouth open with the scissors and stuff, but elsewhere, he's pretty judicious. Like I always think of a dead ringers as a movie that's two hours with no gore. And then there's the one dream scene in the middle where John B. A. Bujold bites the two Jeremy irons apart, that growth.

1:57:27And, you know, a little goes a long way. It does. if you had to recommend people essentially a starter pack for Cronenberg this is not a ranking but for people who don't know his work you've never ranked movies on this podcast I've never I would never because art is not a subjective or objective practice it's an emotional practice and so there's no hierarchy obviously no one should win awards and they won't win awards Starter pack, starter pack. This is a starter pack in case you are going to begin watching Cronenberg. If you just listen to us talk for 40 minutes about The Shrouds and you've never seen a Cronenberg movie, I'd like to say thank you.

1:58:10Yeah. But where should they start? um i think you and i would would both say the brood is pretty important yes what might be my favorite it yeah it's a it's a bit of a late start because there are movies before it and i think the lore the low budget canadian tax shelter lore of stuff like rabbit and shivers is essential i mean i think they're all essential but i don't suggest people start with like you know the original crimes of the future or stereo because that's some tough going those are hard sets hard sets you know the the brood which is his version he said of kramer versus kramer a movie that came after his divorce, a movie, but a custody battle and the way that the rage within this family becomes internalized and then externalized.

1:58:58I won't spoil it, but suffice it to say it's an evil kid movie, sort of. Really a fun comparison to something like Rosemary's Baby or The Exorcist at that time, because the horror is totally biological and scientific. It's not supernatural. And I think the part of the substance that is Cronenberg-y is he does love scenes where people are sitting in an audience and something disgusting happens like in brood or in scanners i mean that's very cronenberg at the end of the substance you know where it's like we all came to see this thing i hope nothing bad happens it's a great observation explodes i think the brood is essential i think videodrome is essential as a movie about the internet before the internet was invented and as an absolute masterpiece of toronto pettiness because cronenberg had a grudge with Moses Neimer, who was the creator of City TV, a forerunner to MTV, a kind of hip urban TV station.

1:59:51Neimer had sort of big time Cronenberg at some party in LA. So in the Civic TV scene, Civic TV being a parody of City TV, when James Woods kills a bunch of people, at one point you hear him yell like, hey, Moses! And the guy's head gets blown off. So we stan a petty Toronto king. Rude, Videodrome, I love The Fly. I defy anybody to not be moved by that film and by goldblum's performance you know that's the urge f goldblum performance we don't have jurassic park jeff goldblum without cronenberg jeff goldblum and that's just a fact you know and then i don't know i don't want to skip anything but we're we're trying to be precise here yeah give me two crashes crash is incredible um i saw that movie during covid at a drive-in bad movie to watch at a drive-in but also perfect movie to watch at a drive-in very amusing programming during covid yeah yeah it was great covid it was programming and actually there was like a club that was open an open air club down the streets you could hear weekend songs drifting over and i was like two great canadian toronto pain fetishists david cronenberg and abel you know together together at last and then i kind of cited the vigo films as as all good i mean i just I love a history of violence.

2:01:12You know, I really do. And that was the, that was the film. I think that, um, convinced people, you know, we like using this terminology of, you know, we're back, but he was back with that because spider did not exactly set the world on fire. Commercially history of violence actually got some Oscar nominations. It got the wrong ones. It was dominated for its script, which he mostly rewrote. I've heard. and for William Hurt instead of, you know, Maria Bello or Mortensen who are both incredible. But yeah, what a film. Yeah, that William Hurt nomination is fascinating. I do love those scenes between the two of them, but that's a really weird nomination.

2:01:51It's a really weird nomination and he's funny, but the performance is only funny in counterpoint to what Vigo's doing. Fans of like post-Tarantino, like Hitman slapstick, History of Violence has some of that. it has maybe the funniest dropped gun i've ever seen and actually that's credit to william hurt his reaction to this dropped gun is just uh and that movie is a little atypical for cronenberg too which is why he brings it back to him same way that eastern promises i don't think started as a very cronenbergian project but by the time vigo's you know being stabbed in the turkish bath naked and you know ripping people's eye sockets out and stuff it's like yeah he he brought it back to him.

2:02:32What about you? I think you hit on the five classics. I have been meaning to return to The Dead Zone, which is a movie that is probably the first of his movies that I saw and probably maybe didn't fully understand as a very young person seeing it. And I've seen it a few times since then, but has left an impression on me and feels in some ways like an outlier in his movies because it's such a studio film and it's such a, you know, it's an adaptation. It's not an original. And but I really quite like it. And I think that idea of a great director of actors that you identified is particularly true with Walken in that movie, who never lets the Walken-ness overwhelm the character, which can sometimes happen in his movies, as you know.

2:03:15And so I really love that. You know, Dead Ringers has never been a favorite of mine. I feel like always a better idea than a film in some ways, but I'm going to give that one another spin, too. And the other one that's, I think, been somewhat reclaimed in recent years is Zen Butterfly. which I think was somewhat similarly like ignored slash overlooked because it didn't have some of his hallmarks as Spider but I think the five that you named are rock solid I think Scanners has like a punk rock fandom you know because it's got it's the one movie that has been sort of memed you know it has the exploding head that you cited and the Michael Ironside energy is just off the charts in that movie but I like the five that you chose one more plug attend to viewers we have noticed over my shoulder this large purple book that's been sitting here the entire time it's a new book by violet luca on david cronenberg called david cronenberg clinical trials uh it's really good and it's just out i know that they're doing some screening events with it here or there so that is why it is deftly deftly over my shoulder very cool i will uh i will check that out i did not know that that that that was released um adam I'm always a joy.

2:04:28So nice to see you. Where, where, where, what are you writing on? Where can we see you? I'm writing on the shrouds elsewhere. Okay. Because I, I covered it for the ringer in our, in the TIFF dispatch, but it'll spoiler. It will probably end up on year end, uh, 10 best list. And then, uh, you know, I just, uh, I just exist here in Toronto. You know, you can always read me on, on, on, on the site and, uh, always happy to, to, to, to come on here to talk about great, great filmmakers with you. This is the first time since the brutalist, right it is yeah it is and how did you remember that everything shook out with the brutalist did it work out with the movie yeah well you know i got i got my profit participation it was fine yeah the brutalist it it i do think that you know brady corbet is now in this category of like what what will he do next you know he has the center of gravity of what is the next i made a similar observation that the pursuit of cult of personality was achieved here here's a here's a here's a live reaction from you on air do you like the little trailer tidbits for the zach krieger surveillance horror movie thing you've seen these uh for weapons i unfortunately i already saw well fortunately for me i already saw the full trailer when i was at cinema con in vegas so i already know what's what what it's going to look like but i suspect that they're gonna they're gonna play the long legs marketing game with this movie because there's a couple of images that are in the trailer that are fucked up and in the way that i think you and i tend to enjoy so hopefully it works it terrifies me to think that someone's finally made a movie about children running around my house at night this is basically what i live with anyway like my younger one got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and i was like don't you realize that this is the fear that's capturing america this summer what you're doing right now maybe a secret sequel to the brood you know it's it's in play and then she and then she's like i'm i'm i'm going back to bed dad um Cool.

2:06:24And this was great, great, great to talk about the Shrouds, which is opening. And I hope people, I hope people see it. I hope so, too. Good to see you, Adam. Yeah, you too. Thank you to Adam. Okay, now let's go to my conversation with the great David Cronenberg.

2:06:42It's an honor to have David Cronenberg here in studio on the show. David, we spoke for Crimes of the Future, and I think I asked you if that would be your last film during that conversation. And I think you were a little circumspect. You said you had ideas. Was there ever a time when you would have been comfortable with that being your last film? Oh, I really thought Cosmopolis would be my last film, and then I thought Maps to the Stars would be my last film. And when my wife died in 2017, I really thought that that might be the end of it just because of the emotional despair and this change shift emotionally in my life and so on.

2:07:23And so I thought I didn't think that I would stop being creative because I had written a novel and I thought, well, I'll probably write another novel. But I don't know if I could go through the very complex process of filmmaking, which involves a lot of other people and financing and so on. So in each case, but I'm not, it's not like Steven Soderbergh, who I think has ended his filmmaking career five or six times and still is making films, thankfully. On the other hand, there's Manuel do Rivera, who's a Portuguese filmmaker, and he was still directing when he was 103. And I'm thinking, yeah, okay, maybe his films were a little static at that point, but he was still making them, you know.

2:08:04So I'm thinking, you just don't know. You just don't know. So, I mean, filmmaking is changing a lot because of the combination of COVID and Netflix, I think, has really completely altered the cinema landscape. So, it's a strange time for movies right now. Strange time. I do want to ask you about Netflix because I know they were potentially a part of this story. But I'm curious, you know, because the film is so personal, I think I've heard you say that it's your most personal movie. Was there any part of you that was, even having made 20-plus films, nervous during this process of trying to process it?

2:08:40No, no, not at all. Not at all. I mean, it's interesting, though. You know, I'm 82 now.

2:08:48From 2017 to whatever, five years, I hadn't made a film. I was taking care of my wife and this and that. So I was wondering whether I would have the focus and the stamina, because it's a very physical act, filmmaking, for a director. You need a lot of intensity and you need a lot of stamina. So I wondered about that. Would I have it? Would I not? Would it change? Would I be halfway through the movie and directing the movie and say, you know, I can't do it anymore? You know, all of those things are possible. But I found that it was, you know, the classic like riding a bicycle kind of thing. I could still do it.

2:09:28So I feel, yeah, I could keep going until, I mean, you know, you think of John Houston directing a quite good movie. It actually was called The Dead while he was in a wheelchair with an oxygen mask on his face. So it's like, OK, these are kind of strange models to have, but I guess I have them. All the way at the end of the process, I know you've said that making the film isn't necessarily cathartic, that it's energizing to be making art. But what about when the movie comes out and it's received? Does it make you feel better or worse about the endeavor, the reception, the box office, all of those things?

2:10:03It's a curious thing. You're interested in the audience reaction, of course, because you've made it for an audience. And then, of course, if you get a bad review, you get defensive. and then if you get a good review that's very sensitive, it's terrific. Will you still read them? Will you look at the reviews? Up to a point. And then at a certain point, and it's quite a delicious point really, you say, actually, I don't care what you think. I don't care what anybody thinks. I'm finished with it. And you'll find that a lot of filmmakers don't look at their old movies. I mean, I barely remember Crimes of the Future, which was my last movie before The Shrouds.

2:10:42I don't remember the movie. I don't remember the responses more or less, you know. And you want that because you want to go forward. You know, you don't want to keep living in the past, which is why I'm usually reluctant to do, let's say, interviews that want to talk about my career and my life's work. And it's boring to me. I just don't really want to do it. I've been telling the same stories that I told 50 years ago when I was actually making those movies. So talking about The Shrouds is exciting still to me. And I do, it's actually quite possible to discover new things about the movie while you're talking about it.

2:11:27And that's, you live for those moments, you know, because you're not just saying the same thing over and over again. You are discovering some interesting things. Well, let me ask you one thing about it and its conception. I found this to be possibly your funniest movie as well, despite the subject matter. No, I think all my movies are really quite hilarious. They are all quite funny, but I thought this one was particularly, at least I thought quite bemused by its own absurdity, which I really enjoyed. Yeah, I mean, it does have a particular flavor of comedy, but I think some of the other ones are maybe more slapstick.

2:12:02Okay, that's true. That is true. Yeah, I think I don't know how you could live without a sense of humor about yourself and about the absurdity of life and so on. I really do think we have evolved a sense of humor as a sort of survival strategy, really, because our minds are so active and so anticipatory and so sometimes so deadly. How can you survive without a sense of humor? You have to have one. And so in that sense, the movies that I make are full reflection of many aspects of myself and my life. And therefore, they have to have humor in them. Do you find that when you're conceiving a story, you're thinking hard about tone?

2:12:50Because there's always a lot of sort of moving pieces and you're creating worlds often in your films. You're creating new technologies often in your films. but are you thinking specifically about how that sense of humor will infiltrate or is it the sort of thing that just comes naturally no it just comes naturally i really i'm not really in control you know it's not like i have it planned carefully um yeah it's just instinctive and natural really the uh relationship to biotech in your films is obviously quite extensive this one feels like sort of the endpoint of that conversation in some ways, almost the literal endpoint of that conversation.

2:13:30But, you know, going back, many people are always pointing out to you your prescience for all of these issues in particular. But it seems like some of them are accidental and some of them are purposeful. In this film, despite the absurdity of the framework, do you feel like there is a world where we are going in a direction where observance of death is like possibly this literalized? I don't really think of art as prophecy, and I don't really think for sure of me as a prophet either. It's just I've noticed some reviews are talking about the deadly presence of disarming tech and identity and falseness and disinformation and stuff.

2:14:15and that I was making a statement about it. But actually, I was just, this is the way people live. And, you know, the number of times people are on their phone is just the way people are doing it these days. And the number of times people are on their laptops and are, you know, making international phone calls on their phone without thinking twice about it. To me, I was just being observing the way things are. And if people are finding that to be sinister, so be it. Maybe for them it is. For me, it was just, as I say, observing this lead character, Karsh, is a high-tech entrepreneur. He's very familiar with tech.

2:14:54And in fact, that's his bailiwick. That's his creative outlet is tech. And so all of those things are just natural. And yes, he drives a Tesla, which has resonances now that it didn't have when I was shooting the movie. But I drive a Tesla, you know, and I have to say that I have a very intimate personal relationship with my Tesla that has nothing to do with Elon Musk. So I'm not selling the Tesla if people want to egg it or, you know, break its windows. OK, whatever. But but it's just natural. And I felt that Karsh, as this tech guy, would, of course, he'd drive a Tesla because that actually is a groundbreaking vehicle, very important in the history of cars and electric vehicles and stuff.

2:15:41So he would, of course, want to experience that. There's this ongoing dialogue among movie fans that a lot of the great filmmakers who are getting older are not making nearly as many contemporary pieces because the inclusion of the cell phone is a difficult storytelling issue. But this film is, the cell phone is essential to the story that you're telling. Absolutely. I mean, if you're watching, you know, streaming series, you know, half the time people are on the phone and that's accurate. That's the way people are. I found a way in this movie that the cell phone usage is, the way it's shot, the way it looks, feels the way that it would feel.

2:16:23As opposed to, I find, in contemporary set stories, it doesn't quite capture the same addiction and the extension of ourself that the phone often is. How did you think about how to frame a cell phone and how it related to Karsh's life? Really very pragmatic. You know, I mean, I just felt when a character would be on the phone, they'll be on the phone. And I have to figure, and of course, in writing the screenplay, I wasn't thinking about how I'm going to cover it. Is it going to be a close-up? Is it going to be a medium shot? Are we going to do it live or are we going to use CG to put stuff on the phone?

2:17:04I don't do storyboards. So when I'm shooting it, it's just instinctive and very natural. It wasn't really meant to be. I had no agenda in terms of commenting on tech. It just, these were characters who would be very comfortable with tech and they wouldn't think twice about it because it was their environment. And that's the way I approached it. One of the other things that it's very has a fascinating relationship to is the AI assistant in the film. And that is an extension of Diane Kruger's character. Yeah. I was wondering what your relationship is to cell phones and AI assistants and the like.

2:17:48You already mentioned you drive a Tesla. Like, are these things a part of your life? Do you feel like you are addicted to your phone? Do you use these tools? Absolutely. I mean, if you lose your phone, you are really, you're dead. I mean, you don't exist anymore, you know? And I often say I have outsourced my memory to my phone because often it's like that guy who was in that film that was about that thing. Uh-huh. Let me just look it up. And you, you know, and that's where we are. So I felt that the film was totally realistic in terms of tech. Even Grave Tech, this thing that the lead character, Cars, played by Vincent Cassell, comes up with, is technically totally feasible now.

2:18:35I mean, when I was talking to audiences and stuff, I would playfully say, I'm selling franchises for this cemetery. Maybe you could just have one grave in your backyard to start with, but then you could expand. So if you want a franchise, I'm willing to talk to you. It's totally possible. I mean, it's basically cameras in the grave with some lighting, and you have an app that controls it. That's all. I mean, I am, for example, talking to you, I have hearing aids that are controlled by my phone through Bluetooth. I've had cataract eye surgery, so I'm looking at you through plastic lenses that replace my natural lenses.

2:19:18So I'm totally bionic, you know, and I'm not the only one. It's amazing the number of people I get into discussions about hearing aids with. You'll be surprised. So all natural. And I think, yeah, I mean, my career as a filmmaker would have ended maybe five movies ago if it weren't for hearing aids. Because my hearing, you know, it's genetic. My mother was a musician with hearing aids. My uncle, her brother, was a violinist, also hearing aids. You know, so I welcome that tech. I mean, of course. And I don't think twice about it. I mean, it's just natural. It's fascinating that your career and your family's careers, their life's work, hearing is a necessity and that something is sort of taken away from you biologically and that we need to find something to help aid us.

2:20:12I feel like a lot of your films are sort of cautioning us against so many of these things. It's a fascinating contrast. Of course, conflict is the essence of drama, said George Bernard Shaw. So you don't want a movie where everybody's happy about tech and just happy about with each other. and happy about the world, that's a boring movie. So there has to be some conflict. There have to be some difficulties. And of course there can be. I mean, obviously, you know, your hearing aids can be hacked. That's an interesting thing. What's going to happen with that? And also, I have to remember, it's playful.

2:20:49However serious movies are in terms of money and time and time pressures and stardom and casting and producing and releasing the films and publicity. Beneath it all, we are children playing. You know, we're putting on funny mustaches. We're in a sandbox, you know. We're putting on mustaches. We're pretending that we're people that we aren't, doing funny voices. And the playfulness is important, you know. It's really the essence of that kind of creativity. You mentioned Vincent Cassell, the star of the movie, who you'd worked with before. In my mind's eye, I don't think I would have thought of him for a movie about this kind of vulnerability in the face of grief.

2:21:34That's not really his on-screen persona historically. So what made you think of him for this? I thought of other actors, of course. And eventually, you know, talking to my French co-producer and, of course, I had worked with Vincent twice before. I just thought it would be interesting. I really like leading actors who are really more like character actors. You know, they're not sort of smoothly, perfectly beautiful. Vincent has lots of rough edges and he normally plays criminal types, you know, and he speaks very quickly. and curtly, very street type character. And this was a really a big challenge for him.

2:22:18And it's interesting for me and interesting for him. I mean, this is the most dialogue he told me that he's ever spoken in one movie. Wow. Yeah. That's fascinating. And so, and of course it's in English, which is not his first language. So it was interesting. And then the fact that he's French and I knew he would still have a bit of an accent. And it's very much Toronto, you know. I mean, there was, I think, a French critic was saying, you know, you say this is a Toronto movie, but you have a French actor, a German actress, an Australian actor. And I said, but that is Toronto. I mean, it's a very diverse city.

2:22:59And you hear all those voices and all those accents. And so that really fits. One other thing that struck a chord with me in the film is this strain of conspiracy theorizing in the face of trauma and grief and sadness that often you sort of like go searching for answers where there aren't. And I find most people who have maybe not experienced a loss maybe don't necessarily are not on the wavelength of this concept. But if you have, I found it to be really, really resonant. Maybe you could just talk about it. I'm glad because some critics have sort of felt that the movie gets derailed because it goes off into the conspiracy world.

2:23:37And I'm thinking, well, you know, in fact, in my experience at the age of 82, a lot of people have died. And I find that it's, you know, the death of a loved one is meaningless. If you're an atheist like me, an existentialist, you have to accept the absurdity of human existence. and you have to accept that death is in some way meaningless. But we, once again, in terms of evolution, I'm definitely a Darwinian, we have evolved to look for meaning everywhere, and it's made us a very powerful and dangerous species. So somebody dies, and you say to each other, this is impossible, this person cannot be dead, this person cannot be gone.

2:24:25How is that possible? And then you start to think, well, maybe it's not so random. You know, maybe the doctors weren't taking enough care or maybe she was with the wrong doctors and maybe the doctors had an agenda. Maybe he or she should have been in another clinic and maybe. And there's a guilt thing as well. It's sort of survivor guilt. Like maybe if I had paid more attention and we found some better place for this treatment to happen. You know, so it can very easily spin into quite elaborate conspiracy coming out of, as I say, guilt and confusion and the search for meaning. Another strand that I like that is related to that, especially in the third act of the film, is the way that that conspiracy and desire to kind of better understand the inexplicable is really interwoven with desire and sex.

2:25:16and you know I'm interested to hear you talk about that too because the film is extremely frank as frank as any of your other films about basically what we when we lose something what we lose but then also how we sort of replace that feeling yes yes well there's a you know in this case Karsh has a very sexual affair with the sister of his dead wife and you you feel there that it is an attempt by both of them to kind of resurrect the sister in sort of the affair together, that it is another version of trying to deal with grief and to try to minimize the sense of desolation because of the loss. I know the film originally started out as a series and that ultimately didn't work out at Netflix.

2:26:05A series is very different from making a film. Yeah, I was quite interested, intrigued by the, you know, of course, it's a combination of COVID and Netflix. Everybody's suddenly staying home and watching streaming series. And I thought that this is, it's definitely cinema. It's a movie making, but it's a very different kind of movie making. It's not exactly TV as we used to know it. And I thought it would be pretty interesting to do. I mean, and since then, I've talked to Steve Zalian, who did a series called Ripley, which I thought was really quite a beautiful series. Fantastic, yeah. And, you know, he wrote and directed all the episodes.

2:26:44So that's like making a 10-hour movie. That's, and also Alfonso Cuaron with this disclaimer. I talked, I asked him if he would ever do that again. He said he wasn't sure because it's so all-consuming. It may be three or four years of your life doing that. Was that your intention, though, with this originally? Do you think he would have done that? I was not sure whether I would end up doing what has been done several times to direct maybe the first two episodes and then just oversee as an executive producer the other episodes. Or whether I thought I really could write and direct all the episodes.

2:27:19I was interested to see how it would work out. And I got to write two episodes before Netflix decided that they didn't want to continue. But at that point, and I had made many notes about where the series could go, but I liked what I had written enough that I didn't want to just abandon it just because Netflix didn't want to go ahead with it. And so I thought, you know, it could be a movie. It could definitely be a movie instead. On the trail for this film, you've been talking a little bit about how your relationship to celluloid has changed, your relationship to the movie-going experience has changed, which is, amongst the young cinephiles, very out of fashion.

2:28:05I think you're kind of rejecting a new young orthodoxy around movie fans. Yes, there is that. But I mean, this is not totally new because, of course, Spielberg was always insistent on trying to shoot everything on film. And you now find some young filmmakers like Brady Corbett I was talking about. He not only is doing film, but he's resurrected VistaVision and VistaVision lenses. Of course, this is a very old widescreen format. I find it kind of sweet. They have this nostalgia, you know. But film is horrible to work with. I would never go back to working with film. We have affection and nostalgia for the actual material of film because of the great movies that have been shot on film.

2:28:54But honestly, it's time to move on. I say to the young filmmakers, it's so much more flexible. You have so much more control. And I was just talking to my director of photography who shot my last two movies, Doug Coe. And he said that there was a demonstration recently for cinematographers and assistant cameramen and stuff where they compared 35 millimeter Kodak film stock, which was one of the classics, and the latest version of digital. And they were identical, he said. They could not tell. There was all kinds of lighting situations, nighttime, daytime, interiors, exteriors. And you can absolutely, if you want the look of film, you can absolutely have it.

2:29:40If you want grain, you can have Kodak grain or Fujifilm grain or whatever you want. So there's really, even aesthetically, there is no reason to shoot on film. It's so difficult now. And there's so few labs that really process film anymore. So it's an added expense. It's more expensive, more awkward, more clumsy. I couldn't wait to get rid of film. honestly. What about the idea of movie going? I know you've said that sometimes going to the movies is just not as fun as it used to be because it's not as peaceful as maybe it used to be. Do you feel like there's something long-term lost if people get out of that habit and get only into the habit of the Netflix approach?

2:30:20Well, it's, you know, I remember being in the Venice Film Festival on a panel with Spike Lee and he was talking about like the cathedral of cinema and the way the community of the film thing is. And I said, you know, Spike, I'm watching Lawrence of Arabia on my Apple Watch. And there are a thousand camels there and I can see every one of them. You know, of course, I was exaggerating. But what I was saying is that, yeah, there are some moments in my past where there was that communal feeling in a theater, comedy, an action thing. But I think it's overblown. I think its nostalgia has made it be more a complete experience than perhaps it normally was.

2:31:02um and so i i don't really it will it's an experience that's different but i don't think it's it's i don't think it's less a lesser experience to watch at home on your very good high quality uh tv set um and you can invite your friends over i mean a lot of kids watch together, you know, so it's not like there's no communal experience of film. So I really, it's different. And I think there will be fewer and fewer cinemas, and I think they'll be very specialized. And as it turns out, they end up usually showing very, very sort of middle-of-the-road Marvel movies and stuff like that, which is, to me, not very interesting as a filmmaker anyway.

2:31:53I wanted to ask you about your relationship with Howard Shore, who scored this new film and has scored almost all of your films. Yes. And you've been working together for almost 50 years. That's frighteningly true. That's just an amazing career-long collaboration. And even in this film, the final kind of sonic musical cue just felt very classically Howard Shore, David Cronenberg to me. That sort of synth wave that you hear at the end of the film. Can you just talk about how you work together maybe and kind of if it has changed over time? Well, I was recently in London for about a week where a group called the London Soundtrack was doing an homage to Howard.

2:32:37And Howard was there and they were showing the films that he had scored. He and I have done 17 films together. We started out in Toronto together. He's a Toronto boy as well. And at some moments, they had the London Philharmonic actually there playing. This was music that he did for Lord of the Rings and won Oscars for. There were a chorus of 80 singers and the London Philharmonic doing music from Lord of the Rings to a huge audience. And it was really quite thrilling and exciting, and it was great. And Howard and I did Q &As and stuff. And I did talk about that. We did talk about that. Early on in our career, we thought about what does movie music do?

2:33:25Why is there music? Why couldn't there be no music? And we felt that traditionally the music just supports what's already there. You know, it's an action scene, so you have action music. It's a scary scene, so you have scary music. And it's almost like the failure of trust by the director and the producers that the scene is really working. You have to accentuate it with music. So Howard and I thought music could do something else. It could add an element to the scene that was not just the same as what you're seeing visually. It could be almost like another character. It could add an emotional level that is not obvious.

2:34:09And I think you see that in the music that he did for The Shrouds, because Karsh is suffering, but he's very sort of confident. He's very cool. He's very restrained. And he's talking about grief, but he's not really expressing it, except for certain very specific scenes in the movie. But the music tells you that underneath that is absolute desolation at the loss of his wife, that there's grief, there's agony, and it's the music that carries that. And that's, as I said, just an example of what we always try to do is that music as another character in a way. It's really effective in this movie in particular.

2:34:57kind of constantly had me asking, is what I'm watching really happening? And in which way is it supposed to be happening? So you guys have done great work together. Should I ask you again if this will be your last film? I hope it's not going to be my last film. I am talking to the producer, Robert Lantis, who we've worked together many times before, about doing a movie based on my one novel that I wrote called Consumed. Yes. And that's interesting because I wrote it 15 years ago, I guess, or maybe 10, 15 years ago. And for me to write a screenplay based on my own novel would be a novel experience, I must say, because I've adapted many other novels like Cosmopolis, for example.

2:35:44But I have never done that to my own novel. So it'll be an adventure. The thing is, these days, you don't know if you're going to be able to raise the money. And that's really more a question from the producer. But if you're doing any film that is anywhere off the middle ground, you don't know if you're going to get financing. You don't know if it's going to be able to be shown in theaters or will it be totally streaming instead. It's strange, somewhat perilous, but also interesting times, as they say, in the movie world right now. David we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what is the last great thing that they have seen have you seen anything good recently well I saw a movie by a Danish filmmaker I think his name is Magnus von Horn called The Girl with the Needle yes beautiful very tough very difficult movie and I thought it was really quite beautiful very special the cinematography in that film is unbelievable It's believable.

2:36:53It's beautiful and horrifying at the same time. That's a great recommendation. So I thought it was a great film. David Cronenberg, thank you for the films. Thank you for the time. Oh, thank you.

2:37:05Thank you to David Cronenberg. Thanks to Adam Naiman. Thanks to Amanda, of course. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Amanda teased it. We'll be back next week to break down a quartet, maybe a quintet of action films. will have The Accountant 2, A Working Man, The Amateur, the Gareth Evans Netflix film Havoc, which is now out this weekend, and maybe G20, if you get around to it. Maybe I'll fire it up. I'll at least, you know, take a gander. Okay. Well, we'll see you then.

2:37:47I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm