The Top 10 Underseen Movies of 2024. Plus: James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd on ‘The Terminator’ at 40!

27:41I've never seen that experience rendered so deeply, profoundly, humorously, and oddly in the way that only Long Island can be odd. Or though maybe New Jersey as well. As this movie does. Miller's Place is a place on Long Island. Miller's point is not, but it is very clearly a stand-in. Tyler, the filmmaker, is from Long Island, and you can fucking tell because he's got the beats down. He's got a very interesting kind of roving camera filmmaking style. You can see definitely some Robert Altman influence in the way that he sets up sequences. You can see a very sincere but also subtly sarcastic aspect to this.

28:19This movie is streaming right now on AMC +, if you are a subscriber to that service, which I think is incredibly underrated because you get AMC and you get Shudder and you get IFC all in a bundle. Not bad. It's also on VOD if you're not a subscriber to AMC+. It's just about one night at a family Christmas party on Christmas Eve. And that's the whole thing. And then like the teenagers who are hanging out there and maybe some of the things they do. Very simple, very straightforward, but a very beautiful and fun movie that I encourage people to check out. My next pick is a movie that I have used as a punchline for Amanda a few times, but that I am sincerely recommending here.

28:54It's called Hundreds of Beavers. It's a lot of beavers. It's a lot. There are hundreds of them. You may have heard of this movie. It's finally available to stream on Tubi, the greatest streaming service, as we all know. It's directed by Mike Cheslick. It's written by Cheslick and Ryland Brixen-Col-Tews. He's also the star of this movie. The logline of this movie I don't think does its service. The logline is, A drunken Applejack salesman must go from zero to hero and become North America's greatest fur trapper by defeating hundreds of beavers. So that makes it sound like it's a prequel to The Revenant, and that's not at all what this movie is.

29:33This movie is like, it's Buster Keaton meets Jackass meets a Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon. Like, it is pure slapstick, Marx Brothers, silent film, Ralph Bakshi animation, all kinds of crazy, wild, persistent, durational comedy gags. Like every time you think that they have topped the best possible gag they could pull off with these beavers in giant suits, they go to the next level. It's extremely funny, extremely fun. I never got a chance to see this movie in a movie theater. I've been told this is the absolute best way to see it. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do so. But even at home, I really, really loved it.

30:13And give it a try. it's like maybe this is the product of having seen 300 new movies but something that is this different and this creative I think is worth recommending I saw it they did like a I didn't see it yet but I saw last week that they I think they did like a physical release of it on Blu-ray via Vinegar Syndrome and it like blew it up it blew it sold out like within minutes I think which was kind of a cool thing to see I didn't I didn't know that it sold out that's very cool I did see the Vinegar Syndrome distributed it and I'm not surprised there's a cult around this movie It's a very strong cult and a worthy cult in many ways.

30:49My third film is one I just saw last night that had been recommended to me by a number of people that I don't want to say too much about because I think people should watch it for themselves. But the movie is called Femme. It's directed by Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping. And it's an adaptation of their short film of the same name, which is about a drag performer who is attacked after a performance in a convenience store. And Jules, the performer, finds a way to make a connection with the man who attacked him. And the movie becomes a kind of sustained thriller from that point forward. Really, really interesting movie about sex power, abuse, and a very modern movie, a very, a nice companion, I would say, to Red Rooms, the film that I think I talked with Chris about in October, but then Adam had it as his number one movie of the year.

31:49I know CR has since seen it, and he's loved it too. And I think Red Rooms, we're going to look back in 10 years and be like, Red Rooms is one of the most significant movies. This movie actually has a lot thematically and structurally in common. So check out Femme. That's streaming on Hulu right now. I mentioned The Remarkable Life of Vibulin. which is on Netflix. It's one of the shortlisted documentaries. It's directed by Benjamin Rhee, who made a movie in 2020 called The Painter and the Thief. I love this movie out of Sundance. I've now, my father-in-law, God bless him, he texted me two weeks ago.

32:20He has not, I think he's texting me twice this year. He's not a big texter. He's a little bit older. But he texted me out of nowhere and he just said, very formally, Sean, have you seen this film, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin? If so, I would love to just hear what you thought of it, which was just a very generous text to receive. My father-in-law was a wonderful man. And I realized that I just hadn't spent any time talking about it since Sundance, but it's about a kid named Matt Steen who was born with muscular dystrophy and near the end of his life, and he died very young, and I'm not spoiling anything to say that because it's revealed very early in the film, he started keeping a blog about his experiences in his life and his experiences with World of Warcraft, the video game, which became a portal to a new kind of existence for him, not just to, you know, what you could describe in a cliche way, escaping whatever it was that he was enduring on a day-to-day basis, but more so to build a community for himself.

33:21And he made this incredible world of friends and connections, emotional, deep emotional connections to people inside of World of Warcraft. and it's very common to make fun of gamers and to identify gaming as a toxic kind of lifestyle. We just saw in Enora that there's a gamer bro in that movie who does not have the best perspective on life or know how to treat women. But this is an amazing document about what art and the way in which you can kind of repel yourself deep into your own interests can sometimes help you find community and meaning in your life. And I think this is a really powerful and sincere and deep movie and also tremendously creative when you see the way that the filmmakers use World of Warcraft to tell Matt's story in the second half.

34:12So, you know, this movie won't be for everybody, but I think it deserves even more love than it's getting. And it's not the kind of movie that's going to top the Netflix charts. You know, it's a smaller film, but it's really, really beautiful. So check out The Remarkable Life of Ibelin if you haven't had a chance to see it. And then my fifth one is a little bit of a grungy recommendation, but I saw that it hit Hulu and I liked it a little bit, and so I want to give it a quick shout out. It's called What You Wish For. This is definitely the most genre-focused movie I'm talking about here right now.

34:46It's written and directed by a guy named Nicholas Tomney. It stars Nick Stahl, who was a big star in the late 90s and 2000s. you may remember him from movies like In the Bedroom he hasn't been in a lot of movies in the last 10 years I know he's had some personal problems over that time but he's always an actor who I was always drawn to and this movie which is really interesting it's about a chef who's really down on his luck and he goes to visit an old friend in an exotic locale who's working as a chef and some things happen and this friend that Nick Stahl plays has to fill in for his friend in the role as a chef and things kind of unravel from there in an intriguing way.

35:29This is just like a darn good episode of The Twilight Zone, stretched over 87 minutes. So I would check out what you wish for if you like a kind of grim and grimy crime what's it of some kind. A couple of honorable mentions for you. I did mention Soundtrack to a Coup d 'Etat, which is on the documentary shortlist, and I talked about it on our Top 5 Movies of the Year episode. I don't need to go into too much depth about this film anymore, but I want to underline it because in a just world, it would be seen by millions of people. And it is a fascinating evolution of documentary filmmaking and blending of music and text and storytelling.

36:06And I don't want to say conspiracy theorizing because that undermines the narrative that it's trying to share. But I think exploring alternative histories is maybe a safer way to describe it about the relationship between America and Africa in the 1960s. I got to give some more love to a different man, which I never had the chance to actually have a discussion about on the podcast, even though I interviewed Sebastian Stan, who's one of the stars in the movie. This is a movie that's actually doing a little bit better in the awards race than I was expecting it to. It's a very dark comedy about an aspiring actor who was born with a condition that makes his face appear as though it is disfigured, and he undergoes a radical surgery to look different and more like he wants to look.

36:47and he achieves some success in his life after that happens but realizes that nothing has really changed inside of him and he then encounters a man who resembles the man he used to resemble and it throws him into a wild discombobulation emotionally. Great, great, great movie. Stan, Renata Rensvee, and Adam Pearson. This is definitely going to end up probably in my top 20 or so. We didn't talk about Janet Planet. I mentioned it coming out of Telluride in 2023. very quickly Annie Baker's new movie or first film I should say the playwright whose work I've loved over the years stars Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler as a mother and a daughter living in Vermont I think in the late 90s and as someone who's watched a mother and a daughter have like a profoundly complicated and deep connection this movie gets that very very very very right and if you've ever been interested in that kind of relationship perhaps this movie will speak to you it is very quiet and slow-moving film.

37:47Be warned, I suppose. But it's on Max right now if you're interested. And then last but not least is The Devil's Bath, which is extremely grim. There's no other way to say it. I think Tracy Letts mentioned this show. I mentioned this on the show last week. It's directed by Veronica Franz and Severin Fiala. I finally got around to it. It's streaming on Shudder right now. It is based on a book called Suicide by Proxy in Early Germany, colon, Crime, Sin, and Salvation. It's about communities in Germany and Austria in, you know, hundreds of years ago who could not be saved if they were to commit suicide.

38:33And so they found other ways to find salvation. This movie is not for the faint of heart. it is deeply, deeply upsetting. And it's not a horror movie per se, but it is a very piercing portrait of what happens when things come apart in your mind, especially from a female perspective. It's very much about women in these communities in Germany and Austria. It's reductive to say this movie's fucked up, but it is fucked up. And I enjoyed it. So please check it out. It's called The Devil's Bath. Okay, let's go to slightly lighter fare by chatting up our buddy Chris Ryan.

39:25Okay, I'm here with Chris Ryan. We're talking about the first of The Ringer All-Stars' underseen, underappreciated, misunderstood works of cinematic art this year. But we're talking about a more recent film. This may turn out to be one of the most watched movies of 2024, for all we know. Is this number one on Netflix already? It is. It was number one within one day. Which is pretty remarkable. And tells you a lot about at least what the Netflix audience wants. What's the movie you picked? We're doing Carry On, Jaume Colesera's new film. Did I pronounce that right? So I know someone who's worked with him, and he calls him Jaume.

39:59Oh, okay. Jaume. Which is news to me, because I once interviewed the man, and I called him Yaume through the entire interview, and he did not correct me. So we got three different pronunciations in 30 seconds. Can we call him JCS? JCS is great. Yeah, okay. Who is JCS for the listeners who don't know and haven't been following our work together for the last seven or eight years? We've done a lot of pods about garbage genres. JCS is the prince of all of them. Like if you had given him garbage sci-fi, garbage espionage, anything, he could do it. He makes the best B-movies. He's the best B-movie director in the world right now, I think.

40:31I fully agree with you, but he has been in a bit of a... He was in the wilderness. A rock-shaped, the rock-shaped oblivion for a couple of years there, where his last couple of films are Black Adam, the DC Universe film that nearly broke me on this show, and may have broken the superhero trend. And previous to that was Jungle Cruise, a Disney adaptation of a ride that appears in their parks. And that was The Rock and Emily Blunt. The Rock and Emily Blunt. Right. Prior to that, though, he was on an incredible streak. Should we just go through some of the highlights? Please. He goes pro in 05 with House of Wax, which is actually underrated.

41:07Agreed. And is a pretty good... Is that Cuthbert? Is that Elisha Cuthbert in that one? Yes, and Paris Hilton. Incredible performance. 2009, you see what many still consider his best film, which is Orphan. But I get really down when he gets into Liam Neeson. Yep. Unknown nonstop run all night. Just some incredible, like, man with a gun thrillers. And The Shallows is a personal project of mine. It's just an incredible shark attack movie. That's with Blake Lively. It is. And the bird in that movie is named Steven Seagull. Intriguing. I've talked about this before. I've talked about Steven Seagull.

41:44More Liam Neeson with The Commuter, then this Wandering into the Wilderness with The Rock, Jungle Cruise, and Black Adam, and then he's back with Carry On. So Carry On is a film set at an airport in Los Angeles, LAX, at Christmastime. Yes. There are elements of the film Die Hard. Yes. There are elements of the film Die Hard 2, Die Harder. There are elements of the film Phone Booth, a movie I enjoy, a Joel Schumacher, Colin Farrell movie. It is a little bit of speed. There are elements of the podcast Smartless. Yes, that's about. It's about walking around an airport listening to Jason Bateman in your AirPod.

42:18That is absolutely true. There's a bunch of other movies that are like this. I thought of Nick of Time. Remember Nick of Time with Johnny Depp and Christopher Walken? is sort of like the man with the all-seeing eye can see you and he needs you to do things otherwise someone that you care about will become injured or killed. Yes. And in this case, Taron Egerton plays a young TSA agent. Yeah, a little bit of like a slacker. Yeah. Kind of a fail son. Her late 20s, early 30s. Yeah. He's followed his girlfriend Nora out to California. They've both gotten jobs at the airport. She's an operations manager for Northwinds.

42:53Absolutely. I'm thinking maybe that's like kind of like Alaska kind of sure what's the salary there she pushing I think she probably does like 85 with really good bennies do you think she picks up the check at dinner well that's an issue for them yeah because she's prego with his ego yeah and he's got to get his shit together and really like apply himself the problem is is that what he really wants to be is a cop but he failed the police academy entrance exam or whatever he got rejected by the Los Angeles police department they rejected Taron Egerton Okay. You make it sound like that is not a hallowed institution.

43:28I was just noting that he failed. Have you ever taken a cop test? No, I thought about it just to see, but I think I have mentioned before that I would like to be jumped straight to homicide. Like I would want to go straight to major crimes. Yeah, you have kind of a Kyle C. Corp. from Homicide vibe, actually. I think you'd fit right in. Yeah, so the premise for this movie is essentially this is like a kind of go-nowhere TSA agent who's trying to like make a New Year's kind of push to get his shit together. Gets himself put on a pretty prominent shift, analyzing bags as they go through the security check at LAX.

44:05And after one Trey goes through, there's a leftover earpiece. He puts the earpiece in, and who's talking to him? But Jason Bateman. Incredible. Jason Bateman, who is like, if you don't do what I tell you to do, Nora, your girlfriend, is going to die. And so most of the film is taken up of this kind of pantomime where Bateman is directing his actions. He's got to, you know, basically at one point, he's going to have to let a bag go through that he shouldn't. And, you know, as a viewer, I was watching it. I was like, I'm sure this is going to be like a twist with the bag where it can't be that dark.

44:36Or maybe Jason Bateman will be like Alan Rickman, where he's like, I'm not a terrorist. I just think I'm just a robber. But he's a terrorist. And it is turned out to be very dangerous Russian nerve gas that is being put on a plane with a congresswoman. His end goals, though, are still entirely financial in nature. Well, yeah, he's a facilitator. Yeah. You know, he's apolitical. And what do you think about his work? Is it something that would appeal to you as an essential third career? As a JCS movie goes, there was a lot about Aleppo in this film that I did not expect to be considering. There was.

45:11Would you think of this as a work of political art? Not really. Okay. I thought it was, like, very entertaining. but clearly almost shot in three discrete chunks. And there was like the days they had Bateman, VO, and also on set. There was all the Terran stuff and the fake LAX. And then there is the investigation into what is happening, being led by one of our great actors, Daniel Deadweiler. This is my favorite part of the movie. At one point in this movie, he has to get out of a car and say, what do you got, detective? And I'm like, that's Daniel Deadweiler. It does feel like active winking self-parody.

45:50The same way that The Shallows felt like it was inhaling, ingesting the entire history of shark movies. And they're just kind of like burping it out a little bit. You know, just like, I know. Like, this is a little bit of a gentle nod, gastrointestinal nod to this thing. And, you know, these kinds of movies, frankly, powered Hollywood between 1987 and 1998. We don't really get very many movies like this anymore. I think it's very fun to have it. A little bit of a rickety script on this one, I would say. the Colette Sarah filmmaking style is still just incredibly kinetic and fun and engaging so can we talk about one of the best car crashes I've seen in the movies in like 10 years this is the best scene in the movie actually I know somebody who worked on it and I emailed them and the minute I finished watching it and I was like that fucking rocks was that Logan Marshall Green it was not I wish I knew that man for his work in Prometheus and now this there is a car crash scene without giving anything really away about the movie that is breathtaking and is like so fake it's beyond fake to real back to fake but is the kind of kinetic thing that he's capable of that he envisions.

46:51I wish there was like two more things like that in this movie. I agree with you. The rest of it is kind of like, I'm running and now I'm going to punch you. But I got shot, but I can run. Yeah, it's largely a chase movie. The car crash though is incredible. How did you think it's stacked up to the car crash in Smile 2? Because they're very similar and they're shot very similarly, which is it has this sort of like oscillating camera style on whole people. I mean, the smile too gets, it gets points taken off for not also having a gunfight during the car crash. Where are you at with Logan Marshall Green at this point?

47:22Have you held your stock? The stock is still there. Okay. What's he been up to? Has he gone into television? Like, first of all, he has a totally different head of hair in this film. Well, he shaved his beard. Okay. That's like his calling card is kind of his invitation beard. And I think he has facial hair in Prometheus before he gets deformed. I mean, so in 2018, he appears in, he's the star of Lee Winnell's Upgrade. Yeah, that's right. Like, this guy is Lance Henriksen 2.0. He's Scott Glenn 2.0. He's, like, going to be awesome as, like, the lead of many good genre movies but never become, like, the super-duper star that we want to win.

47:56We should just start comparing guys to, like, that's Jean-Paul Belmondo today. And it's, like, that's, like, Mike Face. Do we not do that? It's honestly more often that we're, like, that's Walt Clyde Frazier, but in a JCS movie. Since then, he's been in a film called Adopt a Highway. Which he directed. And I saw it soft by soft. Weston was good. He was in How It Ends, Intrusion, Redeeming Love, The Listener, Lou, and Reverse the Curse. Which of those is your favorite in the last seven years for Logan Marshall Green? Those are seven movies that look like they're the in-development movies on someone's IMDb.

48:30Tough. I don't remember those coming. Are you up on the TV series Big Sky? Yes. There was one season of this show created by David E. Kelly. Yeah, it's basically network TV into Yellowstone. He is 14th on the list here of actors on this series. It's not about the call sheet. It's about your contribution. Okay. I want better things for him, but he's great. Nice to see his face pop up in this movie. Pretty solid. I enjoyed myself. For Netflix? Also, I got to say, man, I was just talking about this with Greenwald on the 10 best episodes list of TV on the watch about where TV is at as far as a thing that you'll reliably at a social occasion, people will be like, we've all watched the exact same show at the exact same time.

49:10everybody at Saturday night holiday parties this weekend was like, I have already watched Carry On. Yes. Yeah. Well, this was a notably horrendous release weekend in theaters. Craven down bad. Craven was horrible. The Lord of the Rings animated movie was a big nothing. And so there was, I think there was a hunger for something like this. And it's also, you know, people are shopping and they got parties and they're tired. They don't have time to make four hours for the movies. This is perfect. Perfect. Between this and Rebel Ridge, did Netflix release the two best thrillers of 2024? Yes. I mean, you know, this isn't Red Rooms.

49:46It's not like a psychological exploration of perversity. Yeah, it's not Strange Darlings where I'm like, wow, we've been introduced to a new auteur. But this kind of movie, which we like, which we talk about on the rewatchables all the time. Yeah. Good job by them. A Dump You Worry movie in December. Chris, where can we hear you? On The Watch. Okay. On The Big Picture. On the Timothee Chalamet episode with Thea Vaughn that just came out. Interesting. What were you providing on that app? Political context. Really appreciate that. That's CR.

50:19Mallory Rubin is here. Back on the show. You've been an avid participant in the big picture in the last four weeks. How are you feeling? Spoiled. And like I'm going to go through withdrawal when Dobbins comes back and you don't need me anymore. What do you mean need? I always need you. You're an essential part of my life. Don't say that. Thanks, buddy. That's really nice. It's been genuinely fun for me to have so many opportunities to talk to you about the movies and also the Mets. The Mets are doing great. Yeah, the Mets are doing great. We have a very fun episode upcoming about the film A Complete Unknown.

50:52But as a tease, I wanted you to come in and talk about cinema one more time. We're talking about underappreciated, underseen, under whatever movies of the year. And speaking of things that are essential to your life, you are a cat person. You are the cat person. I love cats. I love my cat. I was hoping, given the subject matter of today's segment, that Halo, the most important person in my life who is my cat, to be clear, would join me. He was in here four and a half minutes ago. And then he went and sat on a really warm pile of laundry that Adam took out of the dryer. And then I had to shut the door for sound buffering.

51:30And so he is not here. But he's here with me in spirit, as always. So the film that, I don't know, we have chosen, you have chosen. You were interested in seeing this movie, and you did the real work of going out to the cinema to see the film. What is the movie? What'd you pick? Flow. Okay, what is Flow? This is an 85-minute animated film about a cat and his animal companions who go on the adventure of a lifetime. after a flood decimates their home. It is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my entire life. And I have still not recovered from seeing this movie, which I did last night in, because I know this is underseen slash underappreciated.

52:18And so I just want to note that I am going to go on the underseen lane here, because this is not an underappreciated movie. Everyone who has seen this movie, I think, agrees that it is a masterpiece, right? An absolute classic. It's amassing awards, amassing hardware. the lemur in the movie would then collect the hardware and play with it if he got the opportunity. But I think we both really were excited to just encourage anybody who loves movies to see this film if they get the chance. It's on very few screens. When I looked for Showtimes to see it, I was pretty limited in my options. And we live in Los Angeles, right?

52:57So I don't know how easy it will be for people elsewhere to go see the movie, but definitely it was like playing in a few spots every day. And I went to see this last night. The theater was sold out. Every single seat was full. Yeah. And it was amazing. And let me tell you something. Every single person, there was an adult, every person, there was not one child. I'm sure children would love it. I will, I would probably not emotionally recover if I saw this as a child. I'm not sure I will emotionally recover from having seen it as an adult. But yeah, you know, the trailers were for like Sonic 3 and Dogman, et cetera.

53:30Yeah. I just bought some Dogman gear for my nephew, Jack, actually for Christmas. Hope he's not listening to this episode. He's six, so he's definitely not listening, I hope. I'm not familiar with the Dogman IP, but after seeing the trailer once, I did have some thoughts on if you were going to create a mashup of a dog and a man. Is that the half of each you'd use? I don't know. The head and the hands? Yeah. Well, yeah. I think I'll just save my full commentary until I get to consume the entire experience. Well, next time you come back on the show for the Dog Man episode, of course. Yeah, okay.

53:59Top five dogs. So, Sean, Flo was the masterpiece. I loved it. I thought it was honestly, like, just awe-inspiring. What did you think of Flo? Yeah, I saw it last week, and as soon as I saw it, I was like, this is the most Mal movie that's ever existed. So I'm really happy to hear that you wanted to go see it and loved it so much. It comes from a filmmaker named Glintz Zibilotis, who is a Latvian filmmaker. As you said, this movie has been hugely critically acclaimed. It's won a bunch of Best Animated Feature. Critics' Prizes in the last couple months. It was just added to the shortlist for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

54:32I'll be shocked if it's not nominated for Best Animated Feature. I think it's probably the stiffest competition for the Wild Robot for Best Animated Feature this year. Yeah. As you said, it's very brief, very beautiful. It uses a very interesting computer animation technology. The style of animation, there's an almost surreal quality where it feels like one part, the flying toaster screen saver, you know, this sort of like false 3D and the sense that there is also like a human creating it. It doesn't feel like AI animation or anything like that. It's not, it has rough edges. It's not sanded down and smooth the way your classic Pixar computer generated animation might be.

55:14So it looks and feels different. And then the other thing is there's incredible attention paid to, and you can speak to this as a cat lover and cat, partner. This is how animals move. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And it is like zoologically accurate in a way that is very immersive in the story despite the fact that there is no dialogue in this movie whatsoever. Not a word. Yeah. So that may be a challenge for some. I'm very curious to show this to my daughter and see if she will respond to a movie with no dialogue. This would be our entry point into silent cinema ultimately. But I really liked it. I think it's excellent and beautiful and it's usually when a movie like this comes out it's a little like overrated and I think this one is properly rated.

55:55It's damn good. Oh yeah. So on the animation style front, I thought this was, I mean, even just watching the trailer, you get a pretty good feel for that blend of styles that you're highlighting. But I thought this was just absolutely sublime. Like really, really, really exquisite and that contrast between the way that the creatures, the critters, our heroes, our characters are rendered and the environments around them. When the northern lights kick in, I mean, it's astonishing, but like the water, right? This isn't, again, the flood is the impetus for the story, right? And the water is quite literally carrying Kat and his fellows through this journey of not only self-preservation, but discovery.

56:43Like learning to rely on each other, learning to trust each other, learning to take new chances, try new things, gain comfort with things that previously felt threatening or unfamiliar. There are a lot of lessons to take from Flo. Water is so famously, infamously hard to convey in animated films, video games, anything. And it was so beautiful. It was just so beautiful. The way the light played on the water, the way that the water serves as both a literal and a metaphorical source of reflection and consideration, the way that that cat routinely finds himself in the water, whether that is a moment of dire peril or a moment of newfound confidence to fish.

57:34like if it doesn't look as good as it does then it's just not going to be as immersive of a setting, primary setting for the film but it is. The other primary setting of course is this boat right that our creatures are traveling along and you said like silent but I would say this is not a silent movie it's just a movie without words. It is full of language it's the language of how animals communicate with each other and this is going to make me sound insane but I think you invited me here to talk about the movie knowing that things like this would happen. That was one of the things I genuinely found like breathtaking about it.

58:11I have found myself more than once on Ringer Pods when talking about Star Wars and the most successful droids saying something like, well, it's not just a beep and a boop, right? It reminds me of the way that I feel like I can carry on complete, fully realized conversations with my cat Halo that are frankly often more satisfying than conversations I can have with other people. Super normal thing to say out loud on a podcast. There are no human words uttered, but there don't need to be. Like the way that we are able to understand what Kat is contemplating and confronting, the way that we are able to watch the bonds develop between the characters, navigate threats and uncertainty was incredible.

58:57And like, they have chasms between them that they need to learn to bridge. And so like, we as the audience come to learn how to communicate with them as they learn to communicate with each other in a way that really I thought was like exceptionally presented to us. Really just very compelling to watch. And then the other thing, and like, so the filmmakers like used, I was just reading about this, actual animal sounds, right? Like, these aren't, again, computers. They have microphone recordings of cats meowing and like you can really tell. But the sound beyond that was, I thought, so riveting and how it pulled you deep into the world.

59:38The rustling of the leaves that makes the hair stand up on the back of the animals and makes our hearts start to race. We know something terrible is about to happen. The pounding of the hooves, right? Oh, God, the thread is mounting. What is about to unfold? And even though you know because you've seen the trailer and you know what the movie is about, your terror just spikes. The surge of the waves, the sound the whale makes when he crests the edge of the water. My single favorite sound treatment in the entire film without question is the sound of Cat's claws every time he's scrabbling along the deck of the ship or climbing up the side.

1:00:13It's just those little details that make it feel so fully brought to life. It was beautiful. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. I'm not surprised that you did. to your point about the water. Yeah. I've just seen Mufasa colon The Lion King, the new film by Barry Jenkins. And these two movies, which are both about cats, would be an interesting double feature because Mufasa, I felt, was less successful than Flow, even though it is rendered computer animation that is attempting to put us in the psychological and emotional mindset of a cat in peril. and there are a couple of significant sequences in which a flood threatens the characters in Mufasa, which is the same inciting incident in Flow.

1:01:04And the movies are so oddly similar and there's a big conclusive meaningful moment in the water, which is so hard to render, as you say, in Mufasa, just like in Flow. And one is one of the biggest and most important movies at the most legendary movie studio that we have. And the other is just from this guy in Latvia. And Flow is, frankly, a bigger and better movie. And that's just fascinating. It's like an incredible example of the way that scope is not everything. You know, that subtle strategy and emotional insight and craft can elevate despite budget, despite where the film is being made or anything else.

1:01:49So I think it's a pretty special little movie. I have not seen Mufasa, so I can't comment on their particulars. But something that strikes me listening to you make that comparison is like Mufasa is born out of a moment in time culturally where like everything is IP. Everything is, could this be a spinoff or an origin story? Could we do a prequel? Could we make more? How can we mine this thing that people have loved for some time? When I was a kid, The Lion King was one of my favorite movies. It was very important to me. I went to bed with like a Simba stuffed animal that I held every night, right?

1:02:20Um, that is born out of, and again, I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on the quality, but that is born out of this need, of course, or desire to make money and make content, of course. But also this compulsion in the streaming era and the IP content machine era to explain everything, right? What is the origin story of Scar and Mufasa? How did they come to be at odds, et cetera? Flow is the, the idea of explanation is anathema to the entire pursuit of flow. We never really get answers to any questions. We don't totally even know what the questions are. I won't go into too many details because I don't think we want to spoil it in an episode like this, but just broadly in terms of almost more the premise than the eventual elements of the plot that unfold, there are no people in the movie.

1:03:12We don't know why. did they just evacuate because they knew that this flood was coming or has there been a prior extinction level of it is this post-apocalyptic movie i thought that too we don't know right we go through not we open in our our setting with a home and cat is on a bed and the window's broken and then we see these statues and you see the piece of paper you're like well that seems pretty recent. How long would a piece of paper or drawing sit there? But then when Kat is scaling the statues, they're like covered in moss. So you have the ability to let your mind run free, wondering, and you don't know.

1:03:51I will not explain specifically what this sequence is, but there is a moment about three quarters of the way through the film, maybe even a little further, where something that I can only describe as like supernatural and almost like religious happens, like a mystical event, right? But is it? There could be a different reading of that entirely and a different explanation of that entirely. And the movie is really not interested in trying to ensure that you leave it with one reading. It's there for you to take in and consider and think about the nature of life and experience and connection. And that's pretty rare these days, actually, in the stories that we get.

1:04:34So I found that to be so, my compulsion is to leave and think about lore and references and the coaching tree of pop culture connections that lead to a thing. And I was like, oh, well, what would I Google X, Y, and Z? And I'm like, I don't know. I just kind of want to luxuriate in the feeling of thinking about how amazing that was. And so that was one of the things that I really loved most about it. It was also so stressful, though. Like, I thought it was beautiful and very actually uplifting and affirming and gave me a lot to think about. But my heart was racing the entire time. And I was anxious, anxious and concerned to see these characters who I had fallen in love with so quickly, Kat, most of all, in constant peril.

1:05:19Like, I was sitting next to a person I did not know. And I almost turned to him and said, can I hold your hand? Now, I managed not to. and I was proud that I was able to exercise that level of restraint. But like, boy, when I got home after, I was still feeling the anxiety of what I had just witnessed. And so I think that's really like, it's a testament to the film's impact as well, that it made me feel so keenly in such a short span of time. Just genuinely impressive. It's a great recommendation and a very eloquent emotional clarification on how it impacted you. I'm really not surprised, but I'm very happy that you dug it.

1:05:53And I'm glad it pulled you out of the mire of fandom for a brief moment before you had to return to the trenches. I love fandom as well. I just did a putt on Craven. Craven and Flo back to back. You know, two of the great installments. The 2024 cinematic landscape. Two great cats. Right? There you go. Yeah. Mallory Rubin, thank you so much. Thank you.

1:06:21Okay, we're here with Charles Holmes. Yo, what's going on? Midnight Boy, par excellence. What else are you? How else do you define yourself these days? You're a cinephile? A cineist? Whoa, whoa, whoa. The LA film bros have fucking gotten to me. They wrap their arms around you. You're a brutal boy? Bro, I got my tickets. 70? When are you going? 21st. I cannot wait. I'm very happy for you. Where are you going? What theater? City Walk? Where is it playing? I forget. It was America? Ameritech? What? Cinematheque? America Cinematheque I think I'm going I think I'm going there that's going to be my first time going there I'm very very excited I am I'm getting into the rep screenings you know what I'm saying Chris Ryan is not going to be happy to hear this but my TV watching has plummeted this year yeah it's garbage I just throw like a movie on in the morning at night and I feel so just the high I get from finishing just a movie and bathing in it is so rewarding and then the feeling that I have after I watch like a like I spent eight hours on a TV show I'm just like I'm gonna die one day and I just finished the penguin you're buttering me up like a toasted bagel right now this is just incredible stuff we got them I feel like I feel like Donald Rumsfeld right now you know but also I will say I'm 32 now and I do think that this is the age where I'm just like I had a summer being a slut out here and I'm just like Like, I feel way better just parking my ass in a fucking movie theater, getting a popcorn, subpoena M &Ms, a beer.

1:07:59Can I tell you something? I'm having a huge comeback with popcorn. I was out on popcorn for like a decade, and I've now had popcorn three consecutive movie-going experiences. First of all, I'm pretty much focusing on sweet popcorn now. Sweet? So caramel popcorn, obviously, you can find that in your local AMC. but I got put onto churro popcorn at the Alamo, which is fire. For all of you out there, you know, Alamo, it's up and down. It's not always a great experience. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's not. Churro popcorn is money. I'm just, I need to say that somewhere. But here's the thing. Churro popcorn sounds amazing, but I think it robs of the experience where I like the salty and then I like the sweet.

1:08:41If I'm getting all the sweet just in one package, I feel like I'm kind of robbing myself. So you like to have a popcorn and a candy. Yeah, and I don't like to dump, Everybody does the dump. I'm just like, I'm going to have some popcorn. I'm going to have, and I heard you talking. Here's the thing. Now that I'm going to these rep screenings, I'm a lot more conscientious. I'm like, well, fuck, I'm finishing this popcorn before this shit starts. I don't want the chewing. We're all here. It's like having a meal before the movie. Yes. You know, it's like you went out to dinner, but it's just a bag of popcorn.

1:09:08Like, that's the move. We don't want to disrupt everyone's movie watching experience. I will say, HR does not need to hear about this. My first vidiots experience was with my manager, my beloved Justin Sayles. Can you guess what we saw with him and his partner? I don't even want to guess. What was it? Itou Mama Tambien? Tambien, yes. Amazing experience, but I'm just like, I'm like, I'm sitting next to Justin. So two men and one woman watched Itou Mama Tambien together. Interesting. Yes. Very cool. We got, and then my high was blown because we got vegan food next door. And we're like, oh, what are they playing on the TV?

1:09:44And it was the fucking Tyson, Paul fight and I was just like wow I went from seeing one of the greatest Masterpieces ever to the end of something artistic. That is brutal. Well okay so I've asked you here to tell me about a movie. Now this is not a movie that you picked that came out in a movie theater. This is a streaming film for us in the United States. What movie did you pick? Shadow Strays. Speak on it. Alright. Directed by Timo Jajanto. Jajanto. Sorry I didn't want to butcher his name. Indonesian filmmaker. Indonesian filmmaker and I think something that I grew up on, weirdly, was martial arts films.

1:10:22My uncle is very, very into martial arts, Tai Chi, you know? There was a summer where it was, like, when I say, like, into it, like, his hands, like, he could kill you with his hands. He's like, yeah, one time I did this training where we would go out into the woods. I'm like, oh, why did you go out into the woods? He's like, we scratched tree bark. And I'm like, what do you mean you scratched tree bark? And he's just like, yeah, it's a training thing where you, like, you just take the tree barks like you look at his hands. So he was trying to teach me martial arts. Your uncle was Wolverine? Basically.

1:10:50And what he would do, like one of the treats we would have after he would like make us bike for like five miles and like sweep the boardwalk, like fucking Mr. Miyagi, is we would go back to his like house and it would be like Shaw Brothers movies or it'd be like martial arts movies. Like, all right, now watch this. And The Shadow Strays like itched that for me. Like every couple like weeks or months, I'd just go to a martial arts movie just like feel like that warmth again. And this is not a perfect movie. I think this filmmaker sometimes tends to be a little bit bloated. But the action in this is fucking incredible.

1:11:28So this movie came out somewhat quietly in the fall. Yes. I think if you're a martial arts head, a hardcore action head, you're aware of it. Timo has made several films in Indonesia and in Asia. he probably is best known in the U.S. for his installments in the VHS series. There's one in particular in VHS 2 that is absolutely amazing and that I loved so much that I wrote about it as like a standalone piece for Grantland, I want to say in 2014. It's really, really great. The name of it is escaping me right now, but it's in VHS 2. It's by far the best segment in that film. But he really bridges the gap between horror and martial arts filmmaker and he has like a very visceral filmmaking style and is very comfortably situated, I think, in like the John Wick era of action movie making.

1:12:17Would you agree with that? Well, I also think he is like that next generation of, because like a lot of the same actors, like for something American audiences know The Raid, like he is the kind of the next generation of that. He's worked with Eco Ues from those movies and his other films, yeah. And he said something kind of interesting in a lot of his interviews with The Shadow Strays, and this is why I like him so much as a director, is I think that so much of American action has kind of been neutered just by the superhero of it all, where Timo is like, I want you to feel the violence in my movie.

1:12:49When someone gets stabbed in his, like, he's not doing that thing where the camera's panning away. It's like when someone is shot, if someone gets their arm cut off, it lingers. And it's like, he has the type of movies where I'm like, sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm glad this movie's almost over. And then I check and we still have an hour left Just because I'm like, the whole time I'm like, what's going to, because the action is just so heavy. It's like, it is the theater of escalation throughout the whole movie. But like in the first five minutes of this movie, there is like a raid on, I guess it's almost like a Japanese community.

1:13:26And a guy gets his head cut off. He gets decapitated. And the head like hangs from the back of the neck. And he stays standing for like 30 seconds. and the camera lingers on the head wound and the open neck. And that's what I say when I say it's action and it's horror because there's a real interest in the bodily destruction that goes into action filmmaking. This is a really cool movie. It's way too long. Way too long. It's two and a half hours and it feels it when you're watching it. But the sequences are each crazier than the next and done really, really. If you like this kind of thing, it is excellent.

1:14:04Yeah, so this is a perfect 3.5 movie for me. And that's not shade. This is actually my favorite martial arts movies tend to kind of get into that zone where I'm like, this is a movie about the sequences. There is one. I think it's the best of the entire film where our main character, 13, she's an assassin. And they're on the second floor of a club. And she basically is beating up this jobber. and the camera follows them as they fall out of the window and I'm just like, it was that meme where I was like, wait, what? And I was like, what happened? And I think even though this movie is, there's a lot of fat, it's way too long.

1:14:51There's so many of those little moments as like a martial arts head, as an action fan, where I just want to see more from this filmmaker. I think this is his second Netflix film after I think the other one was The Night Comes. I think it comes at night. Is that what it's called? One of those movies. That is an amazing movie as well. And that was made before this. And you can even tell just how much he's grown just from that in terms of just like staging everything. That's another fantastic movie. It was The Night Comes for Us. The Night Comes for Us. And I just, I want to, he's directing Nobody 2 with Odenkirk next.

1:15:27I want more American directors to have this feeling in their action movies where it does not always have to be this intense. It doesn't have to be that bloody. But you don't need a bunch of fucking CGI bullshit. Sometimes it is just two or three people hand to hand and just being like, what can I show them that is just going to... I think he has a really good handle on blending the digital and CGI filmmaking styles for the right set pieces without an over-reliance on it and doing a lot of practical stuff. But the other thing that I think about when I watch his movies is this is a guy who was raised on first-person shooters.

1:16:01Like, video games are an intrinsic part of his movie-making experience. I don't remember. Are you a gamer? Do you play video games? I do play video games, but I'm not button mash level, you know? Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, because I feel like if you really, if you were raised on first-person shooters, not that every shot in his movies is first-person POV, but that sensation that you get, that sort of, like, rattle and shake and move when you get impact on a sequence, it really fits there. It's a great recommendation. I feel like this movie was completely unremarked upon on this show all year. So it's a great pick.

1:16:31You had a couple of others that were on your list. Yeah. I just wanted to do some like honorable mentions. I've honestly talked about, I've written about it just a blurb. I've talked about it on Ringerverse weirdly, but one of them was Rap World. Came out of nowhere. Most famous person in it, Connor O'Malley. How would you even describe this, this movie? It's like a found footage horror movie for white kids who were into rap in 2008. Yes. Like, you know, I.E. me. It's like about a bunch of suburban guys who are hiring rappers in Topi Hanna in Pennsylvania. It's an hour long. It's free. You can go watch it.

1:17:09It's on YouTube. On YouTube. And for the first five minutes, I'm like, what the fuck is this? I'm about to turn this shit off. And it weirdly does a thing. Both of us are recovering music journalists. I think most movies about music are honestly terrible. And I think this one weirdly... felt so accurate to what it felt like to be in high school at this moment. This type of like, I knew the white boys who are way too into rap, who think that they are going to be the next sensation. The jokes are incredible. And it's like, they, the bit at first is annoying. You're like, they can't sustain this bit for an hour.

1:17:48And then I don't know what happened. Like 10 minutes, 15 minutes into the movie. I'm like, okay, this bit is incredible. It's the same thing with every Connor Malley. piece. Every YouTube short, every bit, every talk show appearance, there's an unbelievable talk show appearance on Seth Meyers that he made earlier this year. This is so great because he used to work with Seth. This is true of Stand Up Solutions, the stand up hour that he put out earlier this year that's also on YouTube. This movie that he co-directed with Danny Schirar is... In the first 10 minutes, you're like, God, this is hilarious, but also deeply insufferable.

1:18:22And then when you get into the second 10 minutes, when it doubles down fully on the bit, you're like, this is the most fearless thing I've ever seen. These guys are so overcommitted to this insanely dumb idea and they never break stride. They never ever wink at the camera. They never turn to you and be like, isn't this so funny that we're doing this? They lock in on that very stupid idea and see it all the way through. It is like, there is a part of rap world that is eerily documentary. It's like you're watching a fucking Maisel's movie about losers in high school trying to be rappers. It feels so close and yet it is also made by a bunch of guys who are in their 30s.

1:18:57But I'm with you. I loved this. I shouted this out, I think at the halfway mark of the year or something I loved and even did a screening of the movie at the American Cinematheque in Los Feliz with Connor and Danny and Harris and a bunch of the other guys who worked on the movie. Great pick. Okay, what's your third one? And my third and last one, I don't think you've seen this one yet, but it is Miyazaki and the Heron. Basically, pretty much for most of Miyazaki's films, come with a documentary about how it was made. and I picked this one because I think I love process films. If you look at my Letterboxd 4, they're all process films.

1:19:33And this one to me was so special because you really never get to see this where you have a legendary director towards the end of his life and the entire documentary is essentially, you get to see the moments when animation luminaries are just dying left and right. And we understand Miyazaki, the character as a very like curmudgeon and just very like he makes these sweet movies and he's like you're always in a bad mood and there are moments in this movie where you just kind of see him broken you see the thing Bobby was talking about like Scorsese's gotten to this point where you're a legend but you're seeing you're outliving everyone and it just touched me so profoundly it made me enjoy um his last movie The Boy in the Hair and even more because you realize you're just It's like, oh, it's not that Miyazaki is a curmudgeon.

1:20:25Or he is. Or it's not that he's super nice. It's like he feels too much. Like, the funniest part of the film is there's some land. This is how rich Miyazaki is. He looks outside and there's some land development free. He's like, I'm going to buy it to set up a soccer place where the local kids can play. And the whole thing going throughout the movie is he buys it, he builds it. None of the kids want to play on it. and he's just I'm just like you're making a whole fucking movie why do you care about and he keeps looking out the window like when are the kids going to and you're just like why do you care about this Miyazaki you're a legend and then there's a moment in the film where the first few kids start playing on it and you've just seen all these people die throughout the course of making this movie and just like the look on his face being like it was worth it and I was just like oh I wish I got this type of documentary for all of my favorite directors that's amazing and also I don't think this is spoiling anything by saying that, but that makes it an amazing companion with the brutalist.

1:21:25When you see the brutalist, you'll know exactly what I mean. I'm not giving anything away, but that very idea of wanting to build something for people, but maybe it's also for yourself. Yeah. Ties neatly in there. Three great recommendations, Charles. Thank you so much. Yo, thank you for having me. And next year, hopefully, I can be welcomed by your people. You are already welcomed, but you will be even deeper in the club the more rep screenings you go to. Thanks, Charles. Thank you.

1:21:56Yasi Salik is here, making her triumphant return after a debut that will live in fummy? Infamy? How will it live? I mean, it's not up to me to decide how I was perceived, Sean. I mean, I heard some rumblings that were positive. Rumblings where? On the internet. the interweb. Checking it out, huh? Checking out the feedback. I'll tell you what. I saw one person say that I was the Aubrey Plaza of the ringer and all other comments died away into the background. And I don't care what anyone else says ever again, because that really put some wind in my sails. Well, as you know, I had a nice time. I love Aubrey Plaza and I'm so happy to have you back.

1:22:38And if you are the Aubrey of this pod, that's very, very exciting to me. Today, I gave you really more of an assignment. Most people that came to this episode said, God, here's a movie I love that I feel like a lot of people didn't see and I wanted to rep for it. You know, it's on the streaming service or it got very minor distribution. But, you know, I know you pretty well and we're about the exact same age and our tastes converge in intriguing ways. And I saw this movie, Y2K, which is co-written and directed by Kyle Mooney. And the only person I could think of was you. So can you explain what Y2K is and maybe why you think I wanted you to see it?

1:23:22The film or like what happened in the turn of the new year of the year 2000? Well, maybe you should explain the latter to explain the former. Okay, sure. Before the clock struck midnight on January 31st, 1999, there was a great panic that somehow, I mean, I might be misremembering this because, again, we're around the same age, so I was like 17 or something, that all of the machines would go haywire and mass chaos would ensue in society. It didn't happen. That's more or less what was suggested. Yeah. And then the film, honestly, clever premise that it's like a high school, you know, Can't Hardly Wait slash American Pie-esque sort of high school.

1:24:11It's New Year's Eve. We're going to make the best of it. Let's go out here to kind of dorky best friends, of course, in pursuit of a girl. And they go to the cool New Year's Eve party on the eve of Y2K. And then it turns into a horror film because the machines do go haywire. Yeah, it's what if Y2K actually happened? And not only happened, but happened in the most dramatic and violent fashion imaginable. But the movie comes from Kyle Mooney, who most people will recognize for his work on Saturday Night Live. In my opinion, one of the best cast members of Saturday Night Live of the last 15 years.

1:24:52Somebody who brought the kind of oddball sensibility in the 10 to 1 style sketches that I always really appreciated. He got his start on YouTube doing a lot of great sketch comedy. Yeah, he's so funny. He's very, he's giving Jim Brewer almost, like in that part of the cast where like, oh, this guy's so weird. Yeah, yeah. But in the coolest way. And actually his character Garrett, the video store clerk in this movie, is kind of giving a little bit of Jim Brewer in half-baked. Yeah, totally. Maybe that's why I thought of it. In my opinion, he was the best part of the movie. His character. Yeah, so the movie is like a little rickety, right?

1:25:28Like it's, there's some funny parts, there's some very violent horror parts. It feels like a very loving homage at times to more like 80s sci-fi, like Explorers, Goonies-style team-up movies. Plus, you know, you mentioned it's like Can't Hardly Wait. And the cinematography is by Bill Pope, who shot The Matrix and Clueless and all the Edgar Wright movies. Like a legend in cinematography. That's crazy. Yeah, so he's there for some of the cool action set pieces. But you know, the movie is a little like, this is a first-time director. And you can tell. It's not bad. it's not great it's very flawed I feel like I really enjoyed the first 25 % whatever like the greatest where they really pound in the greatest hits to remind you what this era was like and they at first I was like is this too much and I was like no this is great do it all like ping ping ping ping ping like every song cue every slang like pointing out the raver like everything and again we're the same age So all of it was very familiar to me.

1:26:33I was like, that's on point. And I guess Kyle Mooney must be around our age too. I believe he's 41. And so this is specifically what I wanted to speak to you about. Because when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie came out last year called Mutant Mayhem. Do you remember this? Are you familiar with this? That didn't happen in my universe? No. In my universe it did happen. I believe you. It happened profoundly. It hit like a bomb. It was written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Oh man, I can't believe I missed this. Yeah, it's an animated movie, and it very much is a movie for kids, but it's a movie for kids written by a couple of guys who grew up with TMNT who were in their early 40s.

1:27:10As did I, as did you. We both did. And all of the references in that movie, all of the needle drops, all of the jokes, feel like they're made for people who are in their 40s. When that movie came out, I was like, this is so crazy to be living in the time where the people who are my age now have the power or quote unquote power to get their own dumb dreams made in Hollywood. And those dreams are just full of references to what it was like to be nine or in the case of Y2K, 17 in these very particular times. so watching Y2K I mean it is there's a you know a long list of songs that are used in the movie all of which I'm sure resonate with you What hit you the hardest?

1:27:52What hit you the hardest? It's a really good question I'll say that Praise You by Fatboy Slim comes in very early in the film Yes and I have to assume that Fatboy Slim is like a really a had to be there thing like I don't know if you're if you're 16 I don't know what you make of Y2K because some of the jokes are so specific. So specific. But You've Come a Long Way Baby, the Fat Boy Slim album, was a legit phenomenon when it came out. The music videos alone. The Dalamo Mall, Spike Jonze, Flash Mob, major. Christopher Walken, right? Yeah, that was, I think, the next album, right? The next album, okay.

1:28:34I don't know. What hit you hard? Randomly Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger. Even though that, That's a 1997 song, but it would have been still playing pretty regularly in 1999. That one, I felt, I was like, let's fucking go. Also, I did make some notes during the film, which was totally fine. Because when you go see a 12.45 p.m. showing of Y2K on a Monday at the Americana in Glendale, not a lot of people there. The Chumbawamba through line, maybe I'm overthinking. maybe I'm intellectualizing something that doesn't need to be intellectualized. But I was like, okay, like I kind of, I don't know if it was intentional, but I was like, you know, Chumbawamba famously anarcho, well, maybe not famously actually sort of not many people maybe know that, but are an anarcho-punk band that like donated all the money from the sales of that massive song that everyone thought was just sort of like a one hit wonder.

1:29:30And then I was like, okay, hey, internet was kind of at first like an anarchic type tool, right? Like a wheel become ungovernable, which then became very co-opted by capitalism and became evil. And I was like, I wonder if this is like on purpose. But again, perhaps I'm over-intellectualizing the music choice of Tumbo Lama. Do you have a similar pointy-headed theory about the usage of Mandy Moore's candy in this film? No, I'm so sorry. I can't make that work here, I don't think. One thing that the movie does really well is that it, identifies the, at least in the 90s, inherently cliquish nature of high school friendships.

1:30:07I was totally, yeah. And, you know, movies like Can't Hardly Wait do a good job of this. The Breakfast Club is entirely oriented around plucking one individual from those groups out and putting them together. Clueless has the best montage of that. The stoners sit on that grassy knoll. Like, there's the Persians. They drive the BMWs. But this movie does a cool thing where it, like, picks people out almost based on their music taste. You know, there's like the burnouts who are really into Korn and the Family Values tour. There's the underground hip hop kid. I will just say. So trick. So triggering for me.

1:30:39I felt deeply, deeply attacked by that character. I was like, I knew that guy. And he was so annoying. The profits of intuition or whatever it was. That was actually so perfect that I was like, oh, Kyle Mooney, one of us. Kyle Mooney backpack rap. Kyle Mooney for sure has like freestyle fellowship on vinyl, like soul assassins. Like he was there. I think he's from San Diego too. So it makes sense that he would be into that Bay Area stuff. And you know, the swing kids, I thought was a very funny joke with the Brian Setzer orchestra needle drop. That was so funny. That one I love, especially because I did little reveal.

1:31:14I can share it. It's been long enough. The statute of limitations up. I did have a little dalliance with a swing dancing in high school. Can you believe? I know. That's right. Swingers was a really big movie. I think you know that here on the big picture. And it, it, it changed a lot of people briefly. I thought after like, you know, two months, I was like, no, this is not for me. Thank you. What would you do? Would you go to the Brown Derby? What would you do? I was in Singapore. So, um, you were swing dancing in Singapore. It's a global phenomenon. You are a one of one. I must say. I've lived a lot of lives.

1:31:45I'm a new game. But most more, I was the girl where they were like, she has holes in her brains. Now that was more me. That was like, I didn't dress like that, but that was absolutely me. I was like, oh yeah. What's up girl. That's me. Okay. Okay, this is an important thing to discuss then because a significant figure in this movie, not just metaphorically or spiritually, but literally is Fred Durst. Fred Durst appears in the film, I thought, pretty humorously. I thought he did a great job. This is not the first A24 movie he's in this year. He was also in I Saw the TV Globe. Did you see that movie?

1:32:17I didn't see it, but I remember a big deal when he was announced that he was going to be in it. He's got a very small part in that movie. He's got a weirdly critical role in this movie. Oh, yeah. Do you think Limp Bizkit should be reclaimed? By whom? The masses, the youths, anyone. No. What did you think of Limp Bizkit when you were 16? It wasn't my thing. I was a corn girl. I was a system of a down and corn deftones, but Limp Bizkit didn't totally speak to me. Limp Bizkit, I feel, in a way, catered to a slightly different market. Because famously, Limp Bizkit is Midwestern, right? Aren't they Detroit?

1:33:02I thought Florida. Oh, Florida. That checks out, too. Whatever it was, it was not California. And I feel like I couldn't really connect. Speaking of, where is this film set? It's the East Coast, right? That's an excellent question. It definitely is because there's Utz chips in the liquor store scene. And we don't have Utz chips on the West Coast. or I don't think in the Midwest. I'm a chip connoisseur. Well, it was filmed in New Jersey. Didn't it feel kind of, did it feel more like your hometown of growing up area? I mean, part of the reason why I wanted to talk to somebody about this movie is, even with its flaws, I'm like, God damn, they just got so much right.

1:33:39It's just so accurate to the experience. You know, not that there was like any one character who I related to or any one group or even any one song. The Prophet of Intuition was the one that you... Which one? The prophet of intuition was the guy that you resonated with. I mean, there is a part of me that was like that guy. What about the part where the popular beautiful girl was like, and nobody said anything about this. This to me was the most horror part of the whole movie was when she was like, I don't really like music. Nobody said anything. Nobody was like, okay, sociopath. I don't really like music.

1:34:15That was strange. That girl is played by Rachel Zegler. She's very famous now, right? She's Snow White. I saw her on the poster on my way out, and I was like, wow, you had an interesting year. She is going to be Snow White. She was one of the stars of Steven Spielberg's West Side Story. She's remarkable in that movie. She's a damn good actress. She's good in this movie. She's good, right? She was great. She's very cute. She was like the only one who I was like, this person's a star and these other people are not. Did you get that feeling? Yeah. Well, I thought that, shockingly, because you know how I feel about New Zealand, but the Danny character was also had a lot of star power.

1:34:49I thought I was shocked at the decision to kill him off so early because he was such a fun thing to watch and provided so many jokes. And I was like, oh, you kept the prophet of intuition and like the angry Fred Durst girl and you got rid of that guy? That's so weird. Yeah, that's the actor Julian Dennison who people will probably recognize from Hunt for the Wilder People or Deadpool 2 where he had a big role. he was phenomenal I thought personally the Prophets of Intuition guy CJ was played by Daniel Zolgardri who's Zolgardri actually who's really really good in um did you see Funny Pages movie that came out a couple years ago directed by Owen Klein who's Kevin Klein's son actually also an A24 movie that's the thing is that this is like a collection of recurring A24 folks but uh I don't know what else any other any other thoughts on Y2K I just thought it was again I might be intellectualizing too much, but I did...

1:35:48I almost wanted it to be... Better is not the right word, and maybe there's no way to make this movie in a not sort of... You know I'm not a horror movie person in general, and this is like... What would you call this genre of horror where it's very funny and someone dies and everyone's over it in a minute and a half even though it's their lifetime best friend? Horror comedy? Horror comedy. But the timing is actually so interesting, right? Because... AI is an almost bigger concern now than it was at Y2K. And I think that's the parts of the movies. Anytime it tried to get sort of like serious about a messaging, I was like...

1:36:32You know, Yassi, it's funny that you say that because on this very episode, I have an interview with James Cameron about the Terminator and the prescience of that movie. Me and James Cameron on one episode? It's going to blow out of the water. Hard to believe that the servers here at Spotify can even contain the levels of charisma that are flowing through this episode thanks to you and the other guy. That's what I'm saying. Jimmy Cams. Jimmy Cams? That's right. Okay. Try it out. What's the 2024 movie you haven't seen yet that you're most fired up about? Probably Baby Girl. I'm really excited about.

1:37:08What do you think happens if I put you on an episode with Amanda? You think it's going to work? Yeah. Well, you are going to leave while me and Amanda do the new Bridget Jones. Oh, right. Actually, honestly, I would love that. Could we do that? I really need some episodes off, like badly. A hundred percent. And you have to do it or you're a misogynist. No one can ever accuse me of that. That's honestly ridiculous. And how dare you? I said if you don't. Oh, okay. No, I'm very excited about Baby Girl. I really do want to see Nosferatu because that's, while I don't, is that a, would you call that a horror movie?

1:37:40Yeah, it's a gothic horror. Yeah. Okay. You know me, famously a goth. I'll see any vampire movie. Okay. I feel like othered by horror movies. Do you not notice they've gotten extremely popular in the last couple of years? It's like every other movie is a horror movie. I have noticed that they're one of the most... They had been historically until this year one of the most reliable things at the box office. I think that's why that's happened. Also, those people see me. They see me and they understand me. Okay. Can I tell you one note I made on my phone that... I was kind of proud of. Sure. About Y2K and the last, well, two.

1:38:16One is, no one says poser anymore. I mean, to bring that back. That's the click thing though. They don't have clicks anymore. Again, to your point, if teens see this, I think they're going to be a little confused. I, that's, yeah, I agree. There's a lot of confusing words and ideas in this movie. And then, Chekhov's condom. That was funny. Thank you. It was a Durex, as I recall. I didn't, take in the I didn't clock I didn't clock the branding no free ads for directs by the way just noticed it from the film yeah well thanks for thanks for coming on the show really good insights there thanks for sending me to see Y2K on Monday at 12.55pm can't wait can't wait to see what you come up for me next I hope you enjoyed the Nosferatu baby girl double feature on Christmas day you're gonna have a great time I can't wait that's gonna be a great day for me thanks Sean for having me it's always really fun and I do feel honored to share an episode with Jimmy Cams, my intellectual and creative peer.

1:39:17It's wonderful having you and I can't wait to clear out for you and Amanda to make something magical in 2025. Thanks, Yassi.

1:39:29Okay, we're talking about our favorite underseen and underappreciated movies of 2024. I'm here with two of the most hallowed prestige TV podcasters here to talk about films. You're also film podcasters. House of R, Trial by Content, co-host, Joanna Robinson, Group Chat. A lot of film talk. Various and sundry film podcasting, Rob Mahoney. Has this been a year for underrated and underappreciated movies? It's been a weird movie year. Definitely. A very, very patchwork movie year. And going through with this prompt, what's underseen, underappreciated, I couldn't find a lot because I think it was so thin across the board that there weren't a lot of hidden gems because we were just digging for gems all year long.

1:40:18Wouldn't you say, Sean, as the host of The Big Pig? Someone who talks about movies twice a week, every week, all year. I made a list of my own for this conversation. It wasn't hard to find a bunch of stuff I didn't get a chance to talk about, but some of the reasons I didn't get a chance to talk about them were strange release dates or international concern or how do I even get someone to go see a movie that's only playing in four screens in Los Angeles? And Discovery is one of my favorite parts of the show, but I think you're right that the thin, gruel nature of the calendar left us with a lot of like, hey, maybe I can make an entire episode out of Venom 3.

1:40:52Let's give it a shot, you know? And we did do that. And you did. We did do that, which wasn't a mistake perhaps, but we did do it and I had a very fun time with Charles and Mallory. Rob, why don't I start with you? like is there a movie that you're really excited to recommend here? I mean there are many movies I would be excited to recommend. One that I have tried to get people to see that I found myself being an advocate for is Dee Dee. The 125th highest grossing movie domestically this year. Like nobody showed up but me to see Dee Dee. And I think we're a worst nation for it. I don't know if we'd be in our current predicament if everyone had seen Dee Dee by this point.

1:41:28An amazing coming of age movie. And I will say there may be a bit of a generational divide because this hits me like straight in the strike zone. There is a point at which the main character, Chris's phone goes off and it's playing hello, goodbyes, touchdown, turnaround as his ringtone. I'm like, this is locating me in such a precise emotional place that I was just locked in for the entire movie. I think it's such a beautiful portrayal of a lot of different things. I mean, if you're at all interested in skate culture, especially in the early 2000s, this is a great movie for you. If you're at all interested in mother-son relationships, a very common subject on screen to say the least, but one that I think is articulated really, really beautifully.

1:42:06The Asian American experience, California living more generally. Like, I think it just hits a lot of really, really good sweet spots in that very, like, filmmaker makes a sort of autobiographical story way. And you just can't, you can't replicate and you can't fake that kind of authenticity. I like this movie a lot. I had Sean Wong on to talk about it. And he was, I think, the second time since I've started doing the show where I thought to myself, wow, I'm really old. And it's not that I couldn't relate to the framework. It's like roughly 2008, I want to say, is when the movie takes place. And so I was a little bit older at the advent of a lot of this, like the birth of YouTube and like high tension, my space, social culture in high school and in middle school as the character is in the film.

1:42:52But I think Emma Seligman was the other person that I talked to first for Shiva Baby. And I was like, whoa, I can't believe how much it's like when you are watching an NBA game Rob you'll relate to this clearly and you're like everyone on the court is half my age and how chilling that feels and now we're in an era where filmmakers can be 25, 26, 27 and making profound, thoughtful, good films, winning Sundance Prizes, working with major movie stars but I really like Didi it's a great recommendation Can I ask a follow up question to you Rob? You mentioned if one is interested in skate culture Are you, Rob Mahoney, interested in skate culture?

1:43:30See, I am the perfect audience for this movie because I want to be interested in skate culture. You know? Much like Dee Dee himself, I could never skate. And a lot of this movie is just about faking it until not really you make it, but you get found out. And what could possibly be more relatable than that as a guy chattering on a podcast? Back in my day, we used to call you posers. You were a poser. Some people call us filmers. some people call us filmmakers of a different kind. Joanna, what's your pick? I am going with Between the Temples and this is like as indie as they come indie film starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane in a love story and it's about a cantor who has sort of lost his faith, his joie de vivre, his everything.

1:44:23And a woman who is interested in converting and the life that is expected for him and the excitement that she offers. And this beautiful performance by Carole Kane as this, you know, manic pixie dream older woman in his life. And it's a perfect role for her. I love Schwartzman. This is actually a really, really good Schwartzman performance as well. There are some sequences in this film where I was like, is this good? I'm not sure. There's some extended drug sequences that I have some questions about. But at the heart of it, it's just an incredible connection between and chemistry between two unlikely folks.

1:45:12And also an incredible Dolly de Leon performance. As one of two mothers, Schwartzman's character. She's a stepmother, yeah, and she is just like out on this relationship. She is not having it. And if you love her being mean, as a lot of us do, you will enjoy this movie. What kind of Schwartzman are we getting here? Okay, give me your Schwartzman spectrum. I mean, it's a pretty wide berth. Yeah. You know, he's got a lot of moats. We're not doing an Andersonian sort of quirky role. We're doing like sad boy Schwartzman. It's a little closer to the Alex Ross Perry, listen up, Philip, but less caustic, more sad.

1:45:49Okay. A deeply downtrodden man looking for... Meaning. Looking to restore some sense of meaning in his life. There's a sequence at the end of this movie across the dinner table that's incredible. So good. If you like the movie, please listen to Nathan Silver and Schwartzman. When I interviewed them over the summer about it, Schwartzman, I'll never forget, he walked into the studio and he was like, look at these cameras. and he was like marveling at the cameras that we have in our studios and he was like is that 4K? Wow. And I was like sir you are Jason Schwartzman like you are a member of the Coppola clan and you are homies with Wes Anderson I'm sure you've seen a camera before.

1:46:27But honestly he was incredibly kind guy and is is on an extended streak right now of great performances he's amazing in Asteroid City he's so fun in the Spider-Verse movie speaking of great vocal performances I really like both of your picks guys those are great. would you say that both like do both of those movies feel overlooked underseen i'm in the context of box office without question um because you are arbiters of great taste of course i have been all over these movies and i've even spoken to the people who made them on the pod but um they're damn good movies and uh i'm glad you wanted to bring them actually they both were sundance 2024 yeah alumni so um maybe they had a little bit more visibility than your average uh indie movie but not that much i mean i definitely didn't mean have you heard of these movie, Sean, because I knew you did.

1:47:13I think they are underappreciated, for sure. And I think I accidentally called this film Between Two Temples when it's Between the Temples, obviously. Okay, just wanted to... We'll fix that in post with Jason Schwartzman's camera. Okay, great. Thanks so much. Thank you, guys. Rob, Joanna, I appreciate it. Thanks, Sean.

1:47:32Okay, Wags is back. Bobby, the floor is yours. What's your underseen, underappreciated pick? This is a film that I literally have not had one single conversation out loud with anyone about. It's called Good One. It's from writer-director India Donaldson. This is her feature debut. I believe it premiered at Sundance this year. And to some acclaim, I think it won some awards at Sundance. It's the story of a 17-year-old girl in the summer before she goes away for college who's going on a hiking trip with her father. Her parents are divorced. Her father's friend and his son also traditionally come on this hiking trip with them.

1:48:16The son doesn't want to because his parents have recently gotten divorced and he's upset about that. So she ends up on this hiking trip, this weekend hiking trip to the Catskills, just with her father and her father's friend. And not really that much else happens, if I'm being honest. It's one of those movies where the beauty of it really is in the subtlety. and the girl is portrayed by this actor who I believe this is her debut as well, Lily Kallias. The father is portrayed by, I think we could call him that guy, James Legros. Indie film icon, James Legros. Yeah. A wonderful character actor. I think for me, most well-known from Certain Women.

1:48:58Another film where kind of not that much happens, but it's all in the beauty of the detail and they kind of reminded me of each other tonally. but yeah they go on this hike this hiking trip over the weekend and I think honestly what really made it so appealing to me is like I think it was such a great year at the movies for like generational tension and when you're 17 you really like think you're the shit you know you really think you have it figured out and you're about to go and start this great life and in some ways you're right you know what I mean you really are kind of molding into yourself and you can see lily colias her character's name is sam is like very expertly portraying that feeling of like having way more to say about this but not thinking that it's worth it and and her and her dad kind of have this somewhat strained relationship because he is a little bit emotionally stunted and there's a turn about two-thirds of the way through the film that kind of changes the emotional dynamics of it i don't want to give that away but it's such an interesting like it's just a character piece and it's refreshing to see those get made still and a new talent like announce itself both as a writer and director but also as an actor and Lily Kallias and I don't know I just really like this movie a lot what did you think of it?

1:50:16I liked it a lot too I think I did mention it coming out of Sundance as a film that I really enjoyed at the time when I saw it I did not realize it was that India Donaldson is the director Roger Donaldson's daughter, Roger Donaldson, you may know as the director behind such films as No Way Out, Species, and Cocktail. Goddamn! No Way Out! Let's go! She comes from a fascinating Hollywood family. There was a great piece about her that I read in the LA Times. I can't recall who the journalist was profiling her and they talked to Roger and a couple of other people. This film has nothing to do with the cinema.

1:50:51Roger Donaldson whatsoever is also a very quiet, contemplative movie, as you said, Bob but very very good great performance I also want to shout out Danny McCarthy who gives a performance as the friend yes who is a critical figure in the story and yeah it's just a damn good debut it's the kind of debut you were like I I'm you know as Bill would say season tickets for India's next work like I completely agree and and I I love a movie where a lot is going on underneath the surface and and it's putting you in the pressure cooker of what you know is going on under the surface for the first hour it's about a 90 minute film and then at some point you know there has to be some kind of release valve and even if it doesn't completely explode and devolve you know like chernobyl or anything it's like because that's kind of what life is you know you leave stuff under the surface and at the risk of kind of like oversharing like the character in this movie felt so the the daughter character in this movie felt so well rendered because it's like when you're 17 and you're like kind of smart and clever and stuff like adults just don't even think about you as a kid anymore and they put shit on you that they shouldn't put on you and it's cool to see like a an indie debut feature portray that i i found it really great i like i think in particular having lived through this uh parents who have gotten divorced who think that they have grown their kids up by having that emotional experience then start sharing things with their kids that they never would have within the sanctity of the nuclear family that think you know the feelings become a little bit more stray and you're more comfortable communicating things that maybe your kids just should never hear.

1:52:28I'm thinking about that exact kind of thing all the time now in a way that I never did before. So, yeah, I agree with you. It's a very good recommendation and a very serious and good movie. Good job, Bob. Available on VOD, by the way. You can go check it out. It's that simple. Was it Metrograph? I think Metrograph distributed, right? It sure was. That's where I saw it. Nice. I saw it at like 10 a.m. and then I went home and I didn't talk about it again until right now. Well, lovely to be chiding with you as always, Bobby. Okay, who's next? I believe now we have the one and only Amanda Dobbins via voice note.

1:52:58Wow. Amanda Dobbins. She's back again, sort of. I still have not listened to this voice note. Neither have I. Let's see what she's into.

1:53:11Hello, everyone. It is Amanda, and I am back briefly to talk about one of my favorite movies of the year that I forgot to include on the last voice note. And also, I think one of the most underseen movies of the year, despite it being available on Netflix, it is Martha. The documentary about Martha Stewart, directed by R.J. Cutler, who you might know from the Billie Eilish documentary or from the September issue, which is a great documentary about Vogue and Anna Wintour. And R.J. Cutler seems to be developing a niche as the documentarian of difficult women of a certain age. So the Martha documentary, I have always been more of an Ina Garten fan than a Martha Stewart or not even a fan.

1:54:02But it's just like I can't be doing the level of detail that Martha Stewart brings to her entertaining. I tried to make this like tangerine tower thing for the holidays this weekend. And I like had to go to Michael's three times. And then my friend Izzy, listen, we made it work mostly thanks to my friend Izzy. But Martha's not, Martha's too perfectionist even for me. But this documentary is a great examination of a perfectionist, of a demanding individual. It spends a lot of time talking about Martha Stewart as the first self-made female billionaire in America. I think that is the distinction that they give her.

1:54:48It also charts how that money all goes away as her media empire falls apart kind of post-trial and also just because of the Internet and the way things change. I would say to you that the last third of the documentary is not the most exciting part. The middle third is all about her trial for insider training, which I remembered sort of, but also didn't remember at all. As Sean pointed out when he saw it at Telluride, James Comey figures prominently in this trial, which I just didn't know at all. you know and I do also wonder whether this movie came out on October 31st so I wonder whether the timing and election related attention spans are part of the reason that people haven't seen it anyway I thought it was an interesting examination of her trial in the media circus in the New York Post also if you haven't read the New York Post response to this documentary please look that up all-time tabloid stuff.

1:55:49But for me, the reason to see it is Martha herself. She sits for at times very testy interview that is amazing. And it also has some archival footage, including the scene of Martha Stewart. She's not yelling. I just rewatched it. She doesn't raise her voice, but she dresses down a caterer, someone working for her over the woman's choice of knife to slice oranges. The knife that the woman chooses is not big enough for Martha Stewart's liking. And the way that Martha gives the feedback and how frustrated she is and how clear she is that there is a right way to do things and that it's unacceptable when someone doesn't do it her way, haunted me, gonna be quite honest, just to have thought about it every day since.

1:56:47So, you know, maybe you need to see that as an insight into someone in your life and maybe you just wanna watch Martha talk about a puff pastry or whatever. It's a great documentary and it also, the way you know it's really good is because Martha's not thrilled about it. I'd like to read some choice quotes that Martha Stewart gave to Brooks Barnes at the New York Times in response to this documentary. She didn't like the music. I said to RJ, an essential part of the film is that you play rap music. Dr. Dre will probably score it or Snoop or Frederick. I said, I want that music. And then he gets some lousy classical score in there.

1:57:26Perfect. She doesn't like the camera angles. She wanted her grandchildren featured, which seems valid. They're basically not in there at all. the voice of her daughter is there, but, you know, even her relationship with her daughter is sort of interestingly portrayed in the documentary. Here's my favorite quote. My magazine, my Martha Stewart magazine, which you might say is traditional, was the most modern home magazine ever created. We had avant-garde photography. Nobody ever showed puff pastry the way I showed it, or the glossaries of the apples and the chrysanthemums. And we prided ourselves so much on all of that modernism, and he didn't get any of that.

1:58:05So I wish you great joy and entertainment watching Martha and avant-garde photography and understanding puff pastry the way that it's meant to be shown by Martha Stewart. I will see you guys very soon. Happy holidays. You know, congrats on Juan Soto, everyone. Bye.

1:58:30Okay, let's go to my conversation now with James Cameron and Gail Ann Hurd.

1:58:42Absolutely honored to be joined by James Cameron and Gail Annherd to talk about the 40th anniversary of The Terminator, which is just simply extraordinary that it's been four decades. I thought we could start, guys, by hearing about where you both were in your careers as filmmakers before you embarked on making this movie. Jim, do you want to start? Yeah, I can't speak for Gail, but I was pretty much nowhere. I had tried directing a movie I won't mention the name of because everybody else is happy to talk about it all day long. I got fired after six days of shooting. I was broke and no prospects.

1:59:19I didn't think I'd ever get hired again. It turned out that actually having even a crappy directing credit did help a little bit. So, you know, I mean, I was nowhere. So I knew that nobody was going to offer me anything. So I had to write something. I had to attach myself to it firmly. It had to be good enough to get made, and that seemed the only avenue. So, you know, writing the script was kind of a means to an end, if you will. I mean, I had my sights set on directing. Gail and I talked about it. We said, all right, this is a good project because it can be shot locally. It can be shot relatively low budget.

1:59:58It's got a few isolated effects sequences in it, and I had an effects, you know, kind of my only credential was in visual effects. So, I figured, all right, That gives me a slight edge over another director. Gail, you want to haul off for where you were at that point in your life? Well, at that point in my life, if this hadn't worked out, I don't think I would be in the film business now. Essentially, I mean, I've been working for Roger Corman for a number of years. At a certain point, he basically said, there's nothing more I can teach you. I went, you mean you're firing me? And he said, not really firing you, I'm just sort of kicking you out.

2:00:38Um, and, and I begged to be able to return, uh, as his assistant at new world pictures that wasn't in the cards. So I think both of us laid it all on the line for the Terminator. Did you come to know each other through Corman? How did you come? Is that, what was your first meeting? I remember exactly what it was. I was, I was working in the model shop and Gail came in and, and, uh, I kind of, as I recall, Gail, I kind of gave you a tour around the model shop. And, but you know, I was, I was working on Nell, which was the hero's spaceship in my own kind of private space. And Gail, if I remember correctly, you were down the hall doing some pickup reshoots on humanoids from the deep.

2:01:27Yes. Yeah. Humanoids from the deep. And Jim was working on battle beyond the stars. A script, a script by John sales. We kind of hit it off anyway. I mean, the short version is we hit it off and we became friends and, you know, we talked about doing projects together. I mean, I think each of us recognized in the other the kind of the eye of the tiger, the ambition, the, you know, intelligence, creativity, whatever it is to potentially succeed. And I give the same advice to people now that I guess I was instinctively following then, which is don't try to make pals with somebody above you in the food chain.

2:02:10Make good, strong network relationships with people at your level, and then form a team or an alliance or whatever, and then push forward from a position of some strength. And I think a lot of people sort of miss that point these days. Or they don't want to start at the bottom. And both of us really started at the bottom. Gail, what did you make of Jim when you met him? Well, I was really impressed. I was looking for a reason to get out of the reshoots because they were essentially, this reshoot was for nudity reasons. so it was it was a girl getting out of a pup tent and running down i think the beach or something like that um and it was a sequence that the original director of human rights in the deep barbara peters a woman did not want to direct so i believe they hired their first assistant director to film that and that was not something i was really comfortable with so i went into the model shop roger had also said you know stop by and see how the models are coming along jim which you can see in everything that he's done ever since um had a had a reason had a character reason behind the the spaceship models and uh you know there was such insight there it wasn't just oh this is really cool shit um and and that really surprised me because you didn't find a lot of that back then and then he went from building spaceship models and this can only happen with Roger Corman.

2:03:46And he was very soon the art director for the entire film. Yeah, the following week, I think. I mean, you guys getting shotgunned into that kind of work, I assume helped tremendously with The Terminator. Jim, you mentioned that it was sort of like a necessity to write this project, but that I wanted to ask you both, you know, it seems like you wrote with budget in mind and that you were very selective about what kind of effects work you were going to need. Maybe you both can talk about that, about knowing like how much money you could get and what that meant creatively with the restrictions. Well, look, Gail was already producing.

2:04:25I think you had already done another film, a car chase movie. Moki Bites the Dust, another one not worth seeing. Yeah, but you know, it's all experience. All right. So anyway, I looked to Gail as a more experienced producer. And, you know, we talked about the type of project we would do. We had another one called Labyrinth that we were developing, but it seemed out of reach. It seemed too outlandish, a lot of sets, a lot of visual effects. And, you know, we were in this little clique of people who were all jostling for some kind of a project. And, you know, we said, all right, so what are the ground rules?

2:05:01You know, we got to be able to shoot it, you know, on the streets, available light, you know, present day locations would do it under the radar, guerrilla filmmaking, non-union, blah, blah, blah, all the stuff that we were used to from corpsmen. And then, okay, well, what fits that? Well, you know, I got this thing, you know, I'm calling the Terminator. Here, why don't you read the treatment? And Gail's like, this is exactly what we should be doing. Let's do it. I mean, it was pretty much that simple, but it was definitely constrained by budget going in, right? You know, I mean, we knew we couldn't raise 20 million bucks at that stage.

2:05:37That was like an amount beyond our imagination. But we thought, you know, maybe three, four million, something like that. I mean, we're thinking like a little bit above John Carpenter, Deborah Hill break-in level. you know, with Halloween, but not much beyond that. And it's like, okay, who's going to give, you know, first-time director and, you know, a producer who's working at the Quorman level that kind of a budget? Well, it better be a damn compelling story. That was our thinking. And it better be makeable. It better appear to be makeable. And, you know, Gail had chops. She had credentials, my credential was I'd done visual effects on a couple of films.

2:06:20So I thought, all right, well, an effects film kind of makes sense because if it was just a rom-com or a straight horror film or whatever, I don't bring any added value. So we were very strategic about, you know, about our thought process going into, you know, pitching this piece. Gail, can you talk about hustling around and raising some of the money and looking for distributors at that time too? Because people forget this is an independent movie. You know, this isn't, even though it's one of the most significant franchises of the last 40 years. It is a hundred percent an independent film. Um, so the, the first place I went was Roger Corman, uh, because of course you go to the people, you know, and, uh, and Roger basically said, you know, my, my top end budget is$2 million.

2:07:06You can't make this for$2 million. And if you try, right it will be you know it it won't be the movie that you and Jim want to make so god bless the late Roger Carman for that but that was still painful uh but luckily the woman who had been uh I would think you would call her chief operating officer of New World Pictures had moved on to Orion Barbara Boyle as had the story editor Frances Dole and I sent the script to them they read it and liked it um and mike medivoy i had known because he had uh he had been uh a co-financier with roger on a number of films a slate of films um but interestingly enough the domestic side of orion didn't come in right away it was the foreign side the money that we got, and it wasn't all of the money, was an if-come.

2:08:09We had to raise the rest of it. And Orion Domestic would have first right of refusal on the U.S. rights. So the problem is that everyone wants guaranteed U.S. distribution, not just an if-come deal. But we were able to get half a million dollars advance from HBO. So they were the first to come in with an actual commitment. And that was for cable. And then literally, I mean, as Jim probably remembers, I mean, the number of doors slammed in our faces. The meetings we had were basically people would say, yeah, I'm interested in this, but sign this option agreement where I'll, We're all controlled forever.

2:09:02That is somebody else. And with no obligation to ever pay you a dime, ever, you know, get both of you on board to produce and direct. Those were the kinds of deals we were being offered. I mean, it literally when you hear about the horrors of Hollywood, we went through we went through many, many stages of Dante's hell. um but uh the strangest thing is the way we ended up with financing at hemdale uh was that uh remember chuck simon okay so so some a friend of mine basically said i believe there's a company called hemdale and they have a three picture deal with orion they're looking for their third picture the first two had been total financial disasters um so i started calling they wouldn't call me back So then I found out from him that Barry Plumlee, the head of production development, was trying to sell a desk.

2:10:04This is a great story. So, you know, you have to be willing to do just about anything to get your foot in the door. So I said I was interested in the desk. He called me back. This is classic. This is a classic Gail story. I mean, I give Gail total credit for piecing this whole thing together from disparate sources. And, you know, I think between the two of us, we were, you know, cheeky enough or confident enough that we were able to turn down some things. And I have to credit Gail with backing me. There were people that wanted the script. And I think the highest offer was a million dollars from Paramount.

2:10:49A million dollars. I couldn't even imagine. I couldn't even visualize what that looked like in a pile. You know, couldn't even fathom it. And we turned it down because they didn't want me to direct it. They wanted, you know, an established director and, you know, other people might have wanted an established producer. So Gail and I kind of went in as a joined at the hip kind of team and dared them to try to break us apart, which, you know, of course, almost everybody involved tried to at one point or another. And, you know, we emerged still as a team, still holding the rights and with a budget that was borderline makeable.

2:11:28I mean, it was pretty, it got pretty skinny at times. A lot, big chunk of the money went to Arnold, obviously. And, you know, that cut into our below the line somewhat. And we did have some ambitious effects. Fortunately, we met Stan Winston, who neither one of us had known. And Stan just really loved the piece. And he jumped in with both feet. And he hung on, you know, because we wound up with a big production delay of about six or eight months, something like that. And so Stan hung on. He worked on the film kind of quietly, worked on the effects and so on during that hiatus period. And then when we went, we hit the ground running with, I mean, it was just, we just got dropped into a combat zone.

2:12:10When we finally got access to Arnold, he had to go off and do another film. And so when we, in fact, I think, Gail, didn't we shoot for like eight or 10 days without Arnold? Like almost a quarter of the schedule? I think so. And not only that, but not that long before shooting, Linda Hamilton sprained her ankle or tore all the ligaments. And we had to completely reschedule the film because initially we were doing her sequences and it was a lot of the running and she couldn't do that. So that was another thing that impacted not only the schedule, but the budget. Because there were locations that we had paid for that we couldn't use.

2:12:49And I mean, every time you shift something, there's a financial cost. So what does that mean? You're just doing a lot of days with Rick Rosevich and Paul Winfield instead when your two stars are not available to you? No, she was available. She just couldn't run. She couldn't run. Okay. She couldn't walk. She could barely walk. I mean, we got a football doctor to come in and give her a sports wrap every day so that she could hobble around. And the funny thing is, we already knew we weren't going to have Arnold for the first part of the shoot. It was like, hey, no problem. We'll shoot all of Linda's scenes first.

2:13:25Well, then that didn't work out. So it's like, okay, what do we do? I mean, I think if Gail and I had been through the Corman experience, which is just so scrappy and so chaotic, and you never know from one day to the next what you're going to do, and you've got to shift gears in a split second, and you know that it's a steamroller, you've got to shoot, or you simply don't have the shots later in the cutting room, and we've been through that, you know, enough times, we just knew that you've got to solve it. Nobody's going to solve it for you. I was hoping you guys could talk a little bit about, because when you're shopping for the budget, I assume that Arnold and Michael and Linda are not attached at that point, right?

2:14:04You haven't cast the film? I think, yeah, we had Linda before the hiatus. So when we cast Arnold, we wound up with this kind of six or seven month wait. And I think we had already cast Linda and Michael at that point, and everybody was just waiting. That's my memory of it. and and so I went off and wrote Aliens and and Rambo first blood part two and Rambo so you know we were just kind of spinning our wheels and so in a funny way it's the best prepped movie I've ever done at least in terms of storyboarding and pre-visualization and design work and all that because I wound up with six months that I didn't expect to have now we weren't getting paid you know my mom was sending me she'd cut these clippings out of the newspaper where you could get two Big Macs for the price of one, you know, and I was kind of living on clippings.

2:14:56And I do, I do a couple of, I'd paint, you know, I was a painter and I would paint some low budget movie posters for like the cheapest releasing house that was even below Roger Corman, believe it or not in LA. But they, you know, they, they pay me 1500 bucks for one painting. I could do it in a day and I could live on it for a month. So that's how I had the free time. I mean, I live pretty cheaply, as you can hear. And, you know, so I use the time to write. Gail, I think you were kind of working in the background on the Terminator budget and various other things. And I was taking odd jobs on other films, like Alligator.

2:15:40Oh, right. Yeah, another. But that wasn't Corman, right? I think it was Charlie Band. But no, it was, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we're talking still, we hadn't broken through from that low tier of scrappy guerrilla filmmaking, super independent production companies. And we didn't know that it was impossible, that what we were, you know, the ambitions we had to make this film were essentially impossible. You know, it doesn't seem like$6.4 million is a lot of money now, but back then it actually was for two essentially neophyte filmmakers. I wanted to ask you both if you felt like at the time you were attempting to do something that the movie now clearly looks like, which is it looks like a hinge point from the Corman era of exploitation movies and independent genre pictures towards this more technologically focused, star-driven franchise entertainment.

2:16:33and it might be the most significant example that comes in the aftermath of the new Hollywood. Did you guys have aspirations to that kind of thing? I know it's a little high-minded, but it felt like a very purposeful decision to try both at the same time. Well, you know, I mean, we had examples like, you know, obviously Carpenter and Deborah Hill breaking in and slowly, incrementally driving their budgets up. And we had other examples like, you know, George Lucas, who hadn't done that much when he did Star Wars and made that film very, very cheaply. So he made that film for, I think,$9.8 million, which is almost unfathomable now.

2:17:12And we had just done Battle Beyond the Stars together. And that was Roger's most expensive film by a factor of two or three, I think. I don't think he'd ever made a film above a million dollars. And that was made for close to$2 million. But we saw how we could emulate a Star Wars-level movie fairly credibly at a fifth of the budget. So we thought, all right, I think we were thinking we could make the Terminator for a couple million bucks. And then the realities hit in of, you know, all the prosthetic makeup and all the laser opticals and miniatures that we had to do. And, you know, so many nights of street car chase stuff, you know, out in the city.

2:17:58And it looked like it was going to be more like three and a half. And then it was four and four and a half. But we managed to, you know, and Gail, tribute to Gail, managed to piece that money together. Look, there was no game plan about how that was going to sit in a Hollywood ecosystem looking back from 10 or 40 years later. I mean, we couldn't think at that level. We were just focused on the task. Here's the story we have to tell. We got to cast it credibly in order to get some money. Hey, you know, Arnold's name came up. We kind of rejected it at first because he didn't fit the character. The character was written to be an undercover agent.

2:18:34That's the whole point. He's a cyborg so that he's a credible human that can pass as human, right, without a rubbery skin and glassy eyes, right? And, you know, he's got to be able to fit in. That's the whole concept of an undercover kind of assassin. And Arnold doesn't fit in. I mean, when we cast him, we knew that we were shifting the character, that it was a big change from the concept or the premise we had been working under for, I don't know, a year of development, right? And then all of a sudden, boom, it just changed. And all of a sudden, he's this iconic figure. He's going to be a Panzer tank.

2:19:13He's going to just push through a crowd, push anybody out of the way. Not very low key. And it's like, okay, fine, let's lean into that. You know, people have asked me, you know, kind of what I'm proudest of, which is a very hard question to answer. And I think what I'm proudest of is that we had the nimbleness or the agility of thought to be able to pivot the whole idea on a dime, literally in minutes. Sitting there, you know, with Arnold and then back with John Daly of Hemdale and talking about how he might be a part of this and saying, because he was not proposed to play the Terminator. He was proposed to play the hero because you cast the hero and then you get the budget.

2:19:56That's how it works, right? And so he was put up as the hero, you know, Reese, the good guy. And I said, that doesn't work. That's not going to work. But he would make a hell of a Terminator and Daley went and made the deal, you know, and then we were on and the rest is history. But I think what I'm proudest of is that we were so used to that chaotic, do anything, make it work, make it happen kind of mentality from low budget that it was like, okay, yeah, sure. We can, we can change our entire concept, spin on a dime. No problem. What's this? I was curious how you felt about Arnold too, because on the one hand, he's a commodity in some ways at the box office, he's a rising star, but he is playing the heavy, which is really unusual.

2:20:40Like, how did you perceive the decision to go with Arnold? He got the movie made and he really understood The Terminator. I mean, I have to say I was blown away. He came in and he said, The Terminator is like a shark. He's not going to blink. He's going to move his head and look for his target like a shark does. Nothing else matters. and it was a brilliant conception of of uh of the role so he really did bring a lot to it uh it wasn't just you know it wasn't just okay he's going to walk through you know he's he's going to be doing sort of a you know the same the same part that he played in conan the barbarian uh it was a completely different um approach and and it showed he was an actor yeah i don't think we realized how smart a move it was for us until we saw the dailies from Arnold's first day, because he was already in the makeup and hairstyle sort of post having gone through the fire.

2:21:49His eyebrows are gone. His hair is singed back. He looks very kind of both synthetic and kind of punked out, right? And they had lightly glycerin his face and he had this pale, and he was in this kind of greenish blue lights from the dashboard of the car from the from the environment he was just driving the cop car and looking around and scanning and it was this long lens uh hood mount close-up and man he was terrifying he did not you didn't think of conan for a split second he was a brand new guy something you'd never seen before something i'd never seen before you know my great aspiration was to do better than you know yule brinner in westworld you know and we like we overshot that mark by miles with with arnold you know it was a smart move for him it got him out of the kind of loincloth oiled up barbarian mode which frankly he would have been stuck in that and his career would have just ultimately tapered off um but he just completely transformed himself into something nobody had ever seen before didn't see coming and applauded.

2:22:55And it was a smart move for us because, you know, he was who he was. Now, you know, I think it's important to point out that Arnold was not a star. It's easy to look back and say, okay, step ladder, you know, step one, he did Conan. He'd already done some stuff before that, but it was pretty rinky dink. And then, you know, so his first step up was Conan. He would have gotten stuck at that level forever if he hadn't done the Terminator. Next step was, I shouldn't say that. Arnold is a guy who bulldozes all obstacles. And if he wanted to be a movie star, he would have ultimately become one. But I think the Terminator definitely turbocharged or accelerated, you know, that process for him.

2:23:36One thing that really jumps out to me about this film and then becomes a trend in all your films for both of you guys is that, you know, female, strong female characters are like a signature of Jim, a lot of your films, and Gail, a lot of the work that you've done over the years, too. And you told that story about working on Humanoids from the Deep, Gail, and having a female filmmaker, and then that person getting removed from the project and shooting the naked scenes. And then you've got Sarah Connor, where as critical as Arnold is to the story, Sarah is really the through line of everything in the whole franchise in many ways.

2:24:08And I was hoping you could talk a bit about that because that also is unorthodox in a genre movie at this time. You know, she's really the hero. Reese is sort of the hero, but she's really our hero by the time we get to the credits of the film. I don't know, Gail. I think that's one of the things you responded to. I mean, I wrote this story that was female-centric, and in my mind, I was kind of doing another last girl horror film with a tech component to it. I don't think I had made some leap that it was some big feminist statement. The thing is that Sarah Connor's every woman. Sarah Connor is someone who doesn't believe that she is going to be the savior of the future.

2:24:52And by the way, she doesn't want the responsibility. And truthfully, who would? And yet she finds the power within herself to succeed and then obviously come back in Terminator 2 completely transformed. But yeah, and there's nothing gratuitous about it. There is literally nothing gratuitous. she doesn't have the usual tropes that you expect being a victim being the girlfriend ornament there was no shower scene you know there's never a shower scene when a guy's the hero and the love making scene is not gratuitous and since we had an R rated movie it could have been more so um so you know and and the other the other thing is um you know going back to an earlier question which is the the name of the nightclub is tech noir and that and that was was purposeful in the sense of you know this is a film about the dark side of technology um yeah well we like we like noir films we like we like the stylized lighting and so on the kind of the uh german expressionist kind of lighting that came into film noir.

2:26:15I mean, I don't think we ever thought of shooting it in black and white, but we did go with a kind of a monochrome blue palette, which, you know, kind of worked for me. I think there are things that you do instinctively that are innate, and then you intellectualize it after the fact. For me, it was instinctively obvious that a strong female character would be interesting. At the time, I can say that that all came later when we got applauded for it but that's not true because the one film i really wanted to make was aliens and it wasn't even called aliens at that point but i had already signed on to do that before i even started on on the terminator and i wrote that script before i started on terminator and i was attracted to ripley i mean you know i mean just the the the iconic ripley who just she you know she's it's a that's a last girl story it's a very elevated version of a of a last girl horror story, but done very, very well.

2:27:10And with an amazing actor, you know, Sigourney and I are friends. We've been friends for, you know, what, 38 years, I guess. And, you know, so I think there are things you do instinctively. And, you know, like I can do the whole Freudian thing and go back, you know, my mom was a great example of a strong but thwarted, you know, female psyche, you know, somebody who wasn't applauded for the kind of independent things that they did, because that wasn't what the world was like at that point. And Gail, I don't know about your dynamics with your mom, but she was certainly a pretty strong-willed character.

2:27:51Yeah, I wondered about that too. I mean, not your first feature, but in many ways your first feature. In your mind, your producing partner is a woman too. I mean, this is notable to me. That didn't even occur to me as a thing. I mean, Gail and I just recognized each other. It really didn't have much to do with gender, notwithstanding the fact that we ultimately got married. But no, I mean, I think we just recognized each other as the kind of science fiction nerd, you know, kind of mentality. We knew the films that we love. We knew the films we wanted to make. We both had that aggressive can-do spirit.

2:28:30And I think we felt that each other had the chops to make things happen, you know. And that we could trust each other. I mean, this is a business where you can't always trust other people. And when we worked together on Battle Beyond the Stars, I was the assistant production manager. Jim did everything. I mean, and, you know, it was the art department. I mean, you know, and you remember I'd stay up all night even though it wasn't my job painting the sets Malmori green. You got to see me at the worst. I mean, you got to see me after 75 hours straight with no sleep. And that was without drugs, just a lot of caffeine.

2:29:10I think there might have been some caffeine diet pills in there somewhere, but there was certainly nothing harder than that. So we knew we could work together. We knew we could trust each other. And I had his back and he had mine. And honestly, that's what you need in any kind of partnership. because in this business, a lot of people will smile and, you know, tell you one thing and, and essentially do whatever it is they want once they, they believe that you're on board. And, uh, you know, we, I've certainly experienced that, um, because I assumed that everyone would be as, you know, truthful and loyal as Jim.

2:29:50I wanted to ask you, I wanted to ask you both about shooting in LA, re-watching the film last night, you just don't, there's no productions in LA anymore. You don't see this kind of thing and seeing it, especially at this time and especially the night shoots and the motorcycle and car chase is just remarkable. Like, could you just take me back to that period of when you were shooting the film in the city at that time and what it was like? Well, the interesting thing is we weren't supposed to shoot in LA. The original conception of the film was we were going to shoot in Toronto and they were going to close down the major, some of the lanes the major freeway there uh what is it the 401 i anyway i'm not sure one the qew yeah and and uh and then uh and then uh we were preempted because arnold had to go do conan the destroyer for dino de la rentis which meant we had to start filming in march you can't film streets in toronto when there's still ice and snow on the ground and that is actually why we ended up shooting in la and it was the year i think of the olympics so it was actually a lot more deserted than usual yeah i always wanted to do a car chase on ice it all takes place at about eight miles an hour everybody's wheels are spinning and you could see the other guys right there but you can't get to them you know look it would have been a whole different show very comedic but but they're iconic images as you know since you just re-watched the film i mean griffith park observatory and the Second Street Tunnel and, you know, and all of that.

2:31:22And downtown LA is a character in this. But it created a lot more issues. You know, we, shooting in downtown LA at the time, I mean, we were what they call Skid Row on the nickel, was pretty dangerous. Yeah, it was dangerous. You know, the funny thing is, Adam Greenberg, who shot it, he and I would drive around at night and he'd have his incident light meter out. And he'd go, stop, stop, boy, stop, stop. He always called everybody boy, stop, boy. He was Polish. And the driver would stop and he'd get out and he'd go, there is light. I can do exposure. And there are times, there are times for Adam, there are times I said, this is the perfect place.

2:32:05We're going to shoot here. And he'd go, how I get exposure? How I get exposure? Nothing. because we couldn't afford big lights. We couldn't afford Musco. I don't even think they had the Musco back then, but they had condors. You could go up with a 10K or something and light up the block. We didn't have any of that stuff. So we literally drove around until we found brightly lit places. Like next to car lots were great because the car lots had a lot of light. Underneath Grand Avenue in downtown LA, it was a place called Lower Grand. I think it's called Lower Ground now, called Thaddeus Kosciuszko Way, where the whole thing was lined with fluorescent lights.

2:32:47It was only about a quarter of a mile long. But man, we used that street for sure, because once again, no light. You know, Adam was a genius at doing just a little bit of supplemental light on the actors' faces. Maybe sometime we'd have one light over on the curb and kind of pan it, you know, as the car went through. You know, really cheesy stuff. But But it gives it a very kind of edgy quality, you know? Yeah, hearing you talk about noir, that was the thing I noticed watching it. It's just these very soft shafts of light across the actor's faces in these dark environments. And yeah, the on-location shooting is just amazing.

2:33:24It is like a time and place so perfectly capturing that world. But, you know, you mentioned this is a movie about the present and the future. And, like, it's just incredible how prescient it is. I know you've talked about it in the past. I'm sure you talked about it at the 30th anniversary, the 20th anniversary, the 10th anniversary. But, man, we are really in an AI era right now. Yeah, well, look, it's more timely than it's ever been. But, you know, we didn't invent those ideas. I mean, we're responding to stuff that came before us. Colossus, the Forbid Project, you know, HAL 9000 for 2001, Space Odyssey, Westworld.

2:33:57You know, there was a pretty long history of robotics, humanoid robotics. I don't think it had ever been done right. You know, I mean, we gave ourselves the ethos that if we're going to see a robot, it's not a man in a suit. We're going to figure out how it can be, you know, a chrome skeleton, because that's the image that I had in my mind. But the idea of, you know, a kind of super intelligence, a machine super intelligence, it had been around in the literature of science fiction since the 30s. Long before Turing and all those guys said, this is going to really happen someday. you know the science fiction community was was writing about it and you know these were not new ideas um i think the idea that that you've got a uh you know a computer that's plugged in that's paid for by by defense dollars that's plugged that you know that's plugged into weapon systems that's the place where we are now and you know people are people are going to give kill authority to a machine and they're going to take humans out of the loop because the pace the cadence of events in a battle theater in the years to come is going to be so fast.

2:35:01You're fighting drone swarms, you're fighting multiple missile attacks, and the other, your opponent is using AI to control their weapon systems. You're going to have no choice. The second you connect an AI to a weapon system, you're in Terminator world. And that's imminent, you know, like for real. A couple of years ago, I visited the Pentagon. Jim, I don't know if you've been there. and the remarkable thing, the number of people who have Terminator posters in their offices. Yeah, right. But like, you know, they like the Terminator. They like the bad version of the Terminator. Well, you know, I also think hopefully it is a reminder of the great responsibility they have.

2:35:41Well, look, I mean, that's art's job, right? That's cinema's job. Any of the arts is to remind us who we are as human beings are the right way and the wrong way to be, good versus evil. You know, the thing about AI is, the thing about, you know, not gen AI. I know everybody in Hollywood's up in arms over gen AI. That's a whole separate subject. But AGI, artificial general intelligence, you know, so-called, you know, super intelligence, that's a whole separate problem. And the people working on that are bound and determined to create what they call personhood, an actual ego, an actual entity that's an intelligent entity.

2:36:18And I always ask them, you know, how are you going to put guardrails on that? They say, oh, well, we'll do this thing called alignment, right? And that's aligning with human purpose and with the greater human good. Well, whose version of that? You know, a Christian or a Muslim version of that, a Hindu version of that, a left-wing version of that, a right-wing version? I mean, we can't agree. We can't agree on what good and evil is, you know? So what makes us think we can feed that to a little nascent super intelligence like feeding a baby bird with our morality and our sense of what's good and evil and best for human beings?

2:37:00We can't. It's impossible. It's almost definitionally impossible. And yet they're still bound and determined to create this thing. So when it wakes up, whatever, you know, in whatever place, when it wakes up, it's going to look around and go, well, you fools don't know what you're doing. And you're about to annihilate yourselves and this perfectly beautiful planet. Let me just take over for a little while, see if I can fix things up, you know, and that's like the best we can hope for. It might just be like, what do I need you guys for? Did either of you think of the film as a warning while you were making it?

2:37:31I'm asking about intention through the storytelling. Was this meant to be a warning? I think at a subconscious level, yeah. I mean, but you know what? Yeah, but you don't set out to make necessarily a message movie. The first and foremost thing is we wanted it to be entertaining. And our bar was essentially good enough that we could do it again. That's what I was just going to say. Our entire goal set consisted of getting a foot in the door, making a film that allowed us to continue to be filmmakers. And at some point in the distant future beyond that, which we couldn't even imagine, we would do something good.

2:38:11You did something better than good. It's an absolutely amazing movie. I really appreciate the time. I do end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they have seen. Have you guys seen anything good? Jim, I know you're always working on something, Gail. You too. Have you guys seen anything? I've seen so many good things. Tell me. Jim, have you seen the animated movie from Latvia called Flow? No, but I hear it's fantastic. That's definitely on my short list. What I saw that blew me away was Emilia Perez. I've seen it three times now. Yes, me too. I loved it.

2:38:42What did you both like about that film? It's just not like any other film that's ever been made. I mean, I think it's bold. It's daring. It's a vision. It's beautifully executed. It's a beautiful piece of filmmaking. Zoe's fantastic in it. So this is her season maybe to be recognized at the stature that she should be recognized. So there's a lot of things in it that I just find fascinating. Great recommendations. Thank you both so much for this and congrats on everything. I appreciate it. All right. Well, thanks for having us on. Thank you. Thank you.

2:39:47to find out. See you then.