Dial Mum For H (ft. guests Jessie Buckley & Maggie Gyllenhaal)

8:31James Dyer:Obviously, none of the mothers on film could match my own mother. Let's just get that out of the way.

8:38Maggie Gyllenhaal:I agree. Are you sure? I met her. She was delightful. Yeah. And still is.

8:41James Dyer:Thank you.

8:42Maggie Gyllenhaal:She's very nice,

8:43Alex Godfrey:but that's not going to carry it away.

8:44James Dyer:I mean, well, she could definitely beat the mum and carry it. I mean,

8:48Alex Godfrey:your mummy is no Lee Cronin's the mummy. Just saying.

8:50James Dyer:No. And that is one of many marks in her favour.

8:54Chris Hewitt:Would you like to be raised by Imhotep?

8:56James Dyer:I would not.

8:58Chris Hewitt:An Imhotep mother.

8:59James Dyer:And I think having the mummy as your mother might really confuse you. I think that would lead to all sorts of unwanted feelings.

9:06Chris Hewitt:Yes. See, James, I might have worked if you'd gone to Imho Stepmother, but I had to work it out. I see. Sorry. Okay. I should have spoon-fed that one a little bit more. Yes, I think you should have done. We're not adding that to the list. So let me see. This, weirdly enough, is a question that wounds me. It wounds me. Oh, no. Because we're coming up, we're very, very close to the 20th anniversary of my mum's death. So I don't have a mum. and thank you, yellow underscore barchetta, for reminding me of that fact. I'd forgotten. I'd finally got over it. And now, here it is.

9:42James Dyer:How are you the monster in this situation? Somehow you are, Chris.

9:47Chris Hewitt:I've been wronged. I've been wounded.

9:50James Dyer:You should have really ticked the box saying, I would rather not hear questions about my dearly departed mother, shouldn't you?

9:56Chris Hewitt:Well, technically it's not about my mum, but it is asking if you could swap your mum for a film mother, who would you want to have been raised by? I think someone with a lot of money. Right?

10:09James Dyer:The parents in Richie Rich kind of a thing.

10:12Chris Hewitt:Do you think?

10:13James Dyer:Well, I mean, yes, they're negligent and get them, go away for a trip and then get, I think, wasn't it, you know, shipwrecked or plane wrecked on a desert island. But they are basically caring. The only thing is that they have wildly spoiled their son. Like, wildly.

10:29Chris Hewitt:I must confess, I haven't seen Richie Rich.

10:31James Dyer:I mean, you're not missing a huge amount, but I'm just saying, like, if you want lots of money, then that mother would qualify.

10:37Chris Hewitt:But is it a good mum?

10:38James Dyer:Oh, yeah, she loves her kids, yeah. But she goes away for a bit? She just gets shipwrecked on a desert island slightly.

10:44Chris Hewitt:Okay, all right. Slightly.

10:46James Dyer:I mean, yeah.

10:47Chris Hewitt:Slightly. How does one get slightly shipwrecked?

10:49James Dyer:You know, for a while, but not permanently.

10:51Chris Hewitt:Like, are we talking Chuck Noland shipwrecked? Are we talking Linda Little shipwrecked? More Linda Little, I think. Roberts and Cruz shipwrecked? What are we talking about?

10:57James Dyer:I think more Linda Little. Yeah. Because they come back in, I think, a matter of months rather than years, or weeks rather than months.

11:03Chris Hewitt:And meantime, this mewling brat of a child is Richard Rich. I'm right here. He is, what, spending their... Is this like Brewster's Millions, but with kids? A little bit. What's going on?

11:14James Dyer:He's not going crazy, crazy with the money. He's, of course, seeing off schemes by baddies. Of course he is. I don't remember the film well, but you said you wanted a rich mother.

11:24Chris Hewitt:Yeah, but I don't want the rich, rich mother.

11:26James Dyer:Well, okay, okay.

11:27Chris Hewitt:I want a mother who's going to be around for her kids. I want a mother who is into culture. I want a mother who might go to the opera every now and again. I want a mother who wears a nice pearl necklace. I want, basically, I want Martha Wayne, is what I'm saying.

11:39James Dyer:Oh, okay.

11:40Chris Hewitt:I want a mother who's going to stick around.

11:42James Dyer:Until you got to the pearl necklace part, and that one, by the way, of course, is famously cheap.

11:48Chris Hewitt:What?

11:48James Dyer:Because it all comes apart when it's... Real pearls are strung individually and knotted individually. If a pearl necklace explodes like that, it was cheap pearls that were just put on a string.

11:58Chris Hewitt:This is good information.

12:00James Dyer:So Thomas Wayne has been short-changing his wife.

12:03Chris Hewitt:Do you think he was having an affair?

12:05James Dyer:A hundred percent. He gave the real pearl necklace, stop it, to the mistress.

12:10Alex Godfrey:See, I'm glad I wasn't the first person to mention that. Not in the sex way. There we go.

12:17James Dyer:The right answer, I think, fulfilling almost all of your criteria, is Morticia Adams.

12:26Chris Hewitt:Explain.

12:26James Dyer:Well, she might give you confusing feelings again about how you're supposed to feel about your mum. But she's very loving. She's cultured. She is supportive of her children's interests. She models a happy and committed marriage.

12:40Chris Hewitt:She's always well lit.

12:42James Dyer:She's always exceptionally well lit. She's incredibly well dressed. Is she though? And she's always present.

12:47Chris Hewitt:Okay. Black never goes out of style.

12:50James Dyer:Chic.

12:51Chris Hewitt:Yeah, I'm not so sure about that. I want Martha Wayne. Martha Wayne because when she shoves off this mortal coil

12:58James Dyer:you'll become Batman no

13:01Chris Hewitt:I think that's that's his logic yes I think it's unlikely that I would become Batman I'd love to see it should we give it a go but I think I would I would benefit from the money that they would leave me in their will but the Adams

13:17James Dyer:are also super rich

13:19Chris Hewitt:by the way

13:19Maggie Gyllenhaal:that's a lovely that's a lovely sentiment for Mother's Day in International Women what

13:24James Dyer:I would like the woman to die and make me rich. Wow.

13:27Chris Hewitt:Well, I'm just thinking, because my mum is no longer with us. So what if I replaced her with a mother? I don't want to get too attached, right? Because I've been through that pain once before. I don't want to have that pain again. So what if we would replace? Yeah, A, I should get some money out of it. But B, I should have someone who's not going to be long for this world. So that therefore, like two, three weeks max. So my mum's gone. And then she gets swapped out for Martha Wayne. Martha Wayne goes to the theater or whatever it is one night boom along comes Joe Chill or Jack Napier depending on what you're watching and there you go Ker-ching Chris is in Major Coin I'm excited about this I'm going for Martha Wayne very sweet Alex Alex have you had time to think as a mother yourself have you had time to think about this

14:20Maggie Gyllenhaal:My thoughts immediately turned, as they often do, to Dot Cotton. She's not from the movies, but she loved her son so much she bought heroin for him. But let's, I digress. Recently, I think, she wasn't very well, but Jodie Comer was a very good mother in 28 years later, was she not?

14:43James Dyer:She's also a very good mother in The End We Start From.

14:46Maggie Gyllenhaal:Yes, she's very maternal. She'd do anything with the kids. beloved actually

14:50James Dyer:well maybe not in Star Wars The Force Awakens where she abandons her child on a planet

14:56Maggie Gyllenhaal:she abandons her boy that is a deep dive talking of Morticia Adams Angelica Houston in the Royal Tenenbaums solid solid okay keeping that family together yeah but they're not

15:10James Dyer:well adjusted no but she's a loving mother

15:13Maggie Gyllenhaal:I'm not well adjusted but my mum's nice

15:16James Dyer:okay okay fair enough I don't want to blame her

15:20Maggie Gyllenhaal:very slightly confused in a midlife crisis sort of way but Rachel McAdams in Are You There God It's Me Margaret recently she was a lovely mother she was a lovely mother and also in I swear Maxine Peake not playing John Davison's birth mother but taking him under his wing and being a very very very good mother and allowing him to become his full self and blossom was very nice and what would they bring to the table that your own mother doesn't do you mean

15:48Chris Hewitt:financially I just mean however this is how I saw the question I saw a chance to make bank now hang on you could see a chance to make emotional bank no but listen

15:57Maggie Gyllenhaal:this is I don't think my mum listens to this podcast but I thought the question was if no if you had to swap if you had to if you had to no your question is why are these people better than my actual mum why would you want to have been raised by them

16:13James Dyer:how about Patricia Clarkson in Easy A

16:15Chris Hewitt:how about Patricia Clarkson in Easy A

16:17James Dyer:well there you go

16:18Chris Hewitt:But that would mean also that Tooch is my dad.

16:19James Dyer:I know.

16:20Chris Hewitt:Oh, my God.

16:21James Dyer:It's a win-win.

16:22Chris Hewitt:All right. Do I have to fight you now for Clarkson the Tooch? Clarkson the Tooch? Clarkson the Tooch. Clarkson the Tooch. I don't think my mom would buy me heroin. Have you asked?

16:35James Dyer:How is this your measure of heroin? Can you text your mom now and ask her?

16:39Maggie Gyllenhaal:No. Do you know what? If I did text for Lowell's, she would just be very confused by the question. There's no context. Would you buy me heroin? Oh, yes. Hey, Mom, would you buy me some heroin?

16:53James Dyer:I would add the word hypothetically.

16:55Maggie Gyllenhaal:I would add the word please. My friend Chris wants to know, would you buy me heroin?

17:02Chris Hewitt:Oh, Alex called me his friend.

17:05Maggie Gyllenhaal:That's nice. You said hypothetically. Usually I'm just colleague.

17:09Chris Hewitt:Oh, that's nice. Person I met.

17:12Maggie Gyllenhaal:You're always my friend in this pod booth

17:13Chris Hewitt:for at least 90 or 100 minutes. You should be either a person you've met or a person of interest. Yes. That's usually what I am. Not interested. All right, Jimbo. Yes. Is the alien queen, isn't it? Shit.

17:29Alex Godfrey:Look, she was maternal, she was loving, and when her children were all incinerated, she went on a rip-roaring rampage of revenge. So, you know, that's motherhood. It is motherhood, I think.

17:39Maggie Gyllenhaal:Where did you get the maternal bit from?

17:41Alex Godfrey:Well, because she wants to look after her little face-hugger eggs. Yeah. Ripley threatens the eggs. That's right. And the Queen's like, right, you're fucked. Yeah. He was probably going to eat them when they hatched, though. Hey, that's not how they work. Yeah, we have no evidence of that. No, we have no evidence at all. Ripley's obviously got good maternal instincts. So, you know, she goes into the hive to save Newt. Yeah. Newt. My name's Newt. Nobody calls me Rebecca

18:04Maggie Gyllenhaal:except my brother.

18:05Alex Godfrey:What's her brother's name?

18:06Maggie Gyllenhaal:Timmy.

18:07Alex Godfrey:Very good.

18:08Maggie Gyllenhaal:Timmy?

18:08Alex Godfrey:Yeah. Okay. Timmy Jordan, played by Carrie Henn's brother. but the other thing I would say if I had to pick a movie mum to actually raise and nurture me I'm thinking the alien queen might not give me the kind of you know love and affection that I really need what with being

18:27James Dyer:a different species right indeed

18:29Alex Godfrey:and I don't think I would play well with my siblings the face huggers so I would say Molly Weasley would not be the worst choice Molly Weasley so I think she'd do a good job

18:38James Dyer:but really you're talking book Molly Weasley because film Molly Weasley, they just, this is my ongoing issue with the final film, they fucked up her big moments and just soft-pedaled and soft-soaked her big duel with Bellatrix Lestrange, which should have been epic and was just...

18:58Chris Hewitt:Are you saying that David Yates didn't bring her home?

19:03James Dyer:I'm saying in that respect, I wasn't impressed.

19:06Alex Godfrey:Your Yates wine is lodged. I'll be your mum, James.

19:10Chris Hewitt:That was better. That was good.

19:18Chris Hewitt:There were 12 people who would get that joke. I don't get it. But I appreciate it. Yates Wine Lodge. Oh, okay. It was worth it. Yeah, it was very good. Very good. It's improving by the second. I really like that.

19:30Alex Godfrey:Like Yates Wine. Yes.

19:33James Dyer:Wine with an H, you see. Wine with an H.

19:36Chris Hewitt:You know, famously the best wine is Yates Wine. Yes. It's famous. Comes from the Yates region of France. It's named after the region, yeah. Sparkling Yates, of course, is... Anyway. So is that it? Molly Weasley? Yeah, I'm sticking with Molly Weasley.

19:54Maggie Gyllenhaal:Okay, that's a good choice. Is this Mount Rushmore? It's a Mount Rushmore of movies.

19:59Chris Hewitt:It's not a Mount Rushmore.

20:00Maggie Gyllenhaal:It's a Mum Rushmore.

20:03Chris Hewitt:It's a Mum Rushmore.

20:04James Dyer:Mount Rushmum. So who have we got?

20:06Chris Hewitt:The Alien Queen, Dot Cotton. Who else? Would the alien queen buy heroin for her kid? I think yes.

20:12James Dyer:Yeah, I think yes.

20:13Chris Hewitt:I'm not sure if she has pockets.

20:15Alex Godfrey:She wouldn't have any money.

20:16Chris Hewitt:Of course she's got pockets.

20:17James Dyer:I think she could obtain heroin for her kid if she needed.

20:21Chris Hewitt:She's got a giant egg sack. She could keep something in that for sure. Don't know that that's what it's for. So, Alex, your contribution has been Dot Cop from EastEnders, in case people don't know who that is.

20:32James Dyer:But also Dottie from I Swear. so it's obviously the name Dots that he considers essential

20:38Maggie Gyllenhaal:yeah like Chris and Martha Martha

20:40James Dyer:Martha how did you say that name how did you say that name

20:45Chris Hewitt:oh my god and Hellspells you said remind me

20:49James Dyer:I don't remember it was ages ago

20:51Chris Hewitt:Imhotep probably yes alright well there we go I think we've exhausted all the possibilities I'm exhausted cinematic mums and if you are a mum or have had a mum or are in the process of giving birth to several eggs that will then make way for facehuggers, that will then grow into xenomorphs, that will then kill us all, then can I wish you a happy early Mother's Day. Shall we have a guest? Let's. Let's do it. Shall we have guests, in fact? Ooh. Ooh, that's right, guests, because this week sees release of The Bride! which is Maggie Gyllenhaal's second movie as director. She also wrote this one, and it reunites her with the star of her first movie, The Lost Daughter, Jessie Buckley, who is bound to win an Oscar.

21:42Chris Hewitt:Oscar bound, I would say.

21:46James Dyer:You've got to stop tempting fate. If you mess up her Oscar, I'm going to be really cross.

21:51Chris Hewitt:It's not going to be because of me. But anyway, it's reunited with Jessie Buckley for a wildly ambitious take on the story of Frankenstein and Frankenstein's a monster and the bride of Frankenstein. And it reimagines that in, what, 1930s? 1930s America and Christian Bell plays Frank, who is the creature who's now well over a century old and he's lonely. He is so lonely. And he wants to mate. And so he approaches Annette Bening's scientist and says, can you make me a mate? And lo and behold, would you know it just a few minutes later, Along comes Jessie Buckley as the bride because she has recently been deceased.

22:37James Dyer:No.

22:38Chris Hewitt:Yes, murderized or at least manslaughterized. And they fall in love and when you know it, one thing leads to another. And before you know it, they're going across the country on a rampage of crime. And there's musical numbers and all sorts of stuff that greets them along the way. And I was delighted, delighted, I tell you, to sit down in the London hotel room with Maggie Gyllenhaal. And Jesse Buckley just the other day, we had a good old natter about this movie, about how John Mulaney didn't show up in the movie because he talked very publicly a couple of years ago about self-taping for this film.

23:16Chris Hewitt:And a great many things besides. Do please enjoy. Maggie, Jesse, welcome to the Apple Podcast. How are you both? Good. Good, good, good. Excellent. Jesse, congratulations, by the way, on the BAFTA the other day. Not bad. Not bad at all. I saw that you were in the refiguration reinfiguration station just next door Maggie have you been there yet?

23:36Helen O'Hara:I have yeah yeah okay

23:38Chris Hewitt:so you've seen the donuts that stain your have you had one? not yet no I thought it would be unprofessional to do so before no people are coming in

23:46Jessie Buckley:have something in with their lips I've seen people going around with their lips and their chins I have a blackjack in my pocket though that might do it that'll stain your tongue

23:53Chris Hewitt:that might do it yeah have you ever had one of these?

23:55Helen O'Hara:I remember we were

23:56Jessie Buckley:we were actually going to use these to try and stain our tongue Because we were like, how do we do this without getting black teeth?

24:02Helen O'Hara:We thought it would be so awful for you after a while to have to keep eating blackjacks. Yeah, probably.

24:07Chris Hewitt:Yes, absolutely. Well, I didn't want to do it for the interview, but I am going to do it afterwards. But also, you know, I'd rather have Nadia Stacey do it for me on a daily basis.

24:17Jessie Buckley:Yeah, absolutely.

24:18Chris Hewitt:I know Nadia a little bit. We go back years. But this is an astonishing makeup job. Can you talk about, Jessie, from your point of view, working with Nadia every day? And Maggie, you know, the design of the bride in this is extraordinary.

24:34Jessie Buckley:Well, yeah, Nadia is an incredible artist, you know, and really when we were creating the look of it, we tried out lots of things and we were really inspired by many, many kind of images. And we wanted something to look iconic and beautiful, but also monstrous. and what was going to be a kind of nod to Elsa Lancaster's world in a way, but something that was definitively ours. And Nadia, in her research, we were looking at what happens when you get struck by an electrical bolt of lightning.

25:11Chris Hewitt:Yeah.

25:12Jessie Buckley:And you get these incredible patterns on your arm that almost look like kind of branches in a tree. And so that kind of instigated the idea that maybe from this reinvigoration that the kind of ink is almost an expression of her expression that was kind of bursting out and creating tattoos on her. And also maybe that the ink was like Mary Shelley's pen.

25:44Helen O'Hara:That's a Jessie idea that I thought was so brilliant.

25:47Jessie Buckley:From the liquid of her pen. and you know that also maybe that with the light that everything go completely bright white like my eyelashes would be burned to white eyebrows every part of myself was bleached I'll leave that for that's it I'm not going to say anymore she did a great job a thorough job I would say

26:15Chris Hewitt:and Maggie

26:17Helen O'Hara:well I think I think, you know, we had two things in mind. One was, you know, Elsa Lanchester in the original movie is in it for two minutes and doesn't speak. Yes. I mean, she yells, but she doesn't say one word. And yet her look, her vibe made a major cultural impression. Yeah. So we had that in mind, of course. We also wanted to make a cultural impression and have a look that was iconic. But I think for me, the way to get to that was totally through story. So, right, I don't know where this idea came from exactly, but, you know, she has that black stuff that goes into her veins. And then how will that translate itself to the outside?

27:10Helen O'Hara:You know, a lot of people are asking me, is her blood black? I actually don't think so. But it's this stuff that just keeps coming up. Her tongue is black because I imagine that stuff just keeps sort of coming up. And what is that stuff? In a way, I also pictured it had clogged her throat. And the very first thing that she does when she first gets up is that cough of this black in guitar. She's kind of like clearing the way for something to come out. And then once it's cleared, there's no stopping her. You know, it's almost like a, I mean, look, if the original Bride of Frankenstein had no voice, had no words, that's a good place to start from, to talk about all the people who feel silenced, who have no words.

28:00Helen O'Hara:And this movie is for them, for us, you know? So this woman comes and just clears her throat. All this stuff ends up marking her face. And then it's clear. And she can start to express herself.

28:13Chris Hewitt:Jesse, you play Mary Shelley as well as the bride. And that leads to some amazing moments where you're flitting back and forth between characters within the same physical space, of course. And what was that experience like for you? It was astonishing watching it.

28:31Jessie Buckley:It was like playing jazz, you know, like really good jazz. and in order to create it like I really had to kind of clarify who each of them were independently and then over time over a year-long prep really begin to have a conversation with both of these women well three women really inside of me um and don't we all have a voice like Mary Shelley in our head that's kind of provoking us to tell the truth oh I don't there's no there's nothing going What do you really want to ask us? Exactly. What's unthinkable? Because don't you dare. I'll unleash Mary Shelley onto you. Jesus Christ.

29:13Chris Hewitt:I've got interviews over, I'm gone. I'm done.

29:16Helen O'Hara:No, do dare. Do dare. Do dare. We can take all of it. We can take it, yeah.

29:22Jessie Buckley:So, yeah, it was, I mean, it was an epic challenge, but a really pleasurable one. I mean, it's wild. Yeah, and I loved, I mean, Mary Shelley actually, that you see at the beginning, I was eight months pregnant when I shot that. And I remember we were shooting it and I was like, we both were like, whoa, I'm kind of monstrous right now. Like I've got two heartbeats inside me. Like I have my own creation that's bubbling. I knew I was having a daughter at the time. I was like, I've got, you know, we're putting whatever I'm whispering out through the voice of Mary Shelley. I hope to pass on to this young woman that's going to step into the world in her own way.

30:07So that was really, really cool.

30:12Helen O'Hara:And Ramona was encouraging us too.

30:14Jessie Buckley:Oh, she was. My daughter, yeah.

30:17Chris Hewitt:It's amazing. Just watching the scenes, splitting back and forth is a hell of a thing. But listen, if I can ask any question, if the gloves are off, if we can go there. Yes, we can go there. The question I need to now have an answer to is why did John Mulaney not get the role of young cop?

30:37Helen O'Hara:Here's what I will say to John Mulaney. I never got that tape. It's not too late. We can still cut him in. We can have two cops. No, it was, first of all, here's what I really want to say to John Mulaney. I thought that was fucking funny and I loved it. and Young Cop is actually a great part. Young Cop is Louis Cancelmy's part. Yes. You know, he's got a whole lot to do.

31:03Jessie Buckley:And he was so brilliant in that scene. He was so brilliant. I agree. One of my favorite scenes I shot was that scene. He was so brilliant. Yeah, yeah. I loved it. It was brilliant.

31:14Helen O'Hara:But I never got a tape from John Mulaney. And it's not too late, dude. Send it.

31:19Chris Hewitt:Do you think he was gilding a lily somewhat? Maybe he wasn't.

31:22Helen O'Hara:I don't know. Or someone gilded his lily. Someone didn't show it to me. I never thought it. If it exists, I'd like to see it. I'd very much like to see it.

31:33Chris Hewitt:Who has buried this tape? I want to know. Powerful people don't want John Mulaney to be in this movie.

31:38Helen O'Hara:But also, it's a good part. It's a real part. It's a great, great part. Absolutely.

31:42Chris Hewitt:It's a fantastic part. I think he just reacted to the character thing. I know. And you know what?

31:46Helen O'Hara:Thanks to John Mulaney, truly, I named him. he's actually called Officer Goodman in the reels in the script that's amazing thank you John Mulaney

31:58Chris Hewitt:that's amazing well it's too late now but it is a fantastic role

32:01Helen O'Hara:next time

32:02Chris Hewitt:you know what I think he would have been wrong for it well we'll never know will we I never got the tape I think he deleted the tape himself he just made up a bullshit story to cover up his tracks that's what I think that's really what

32:13Helen O'Hara:you want to ask us come on go deeper

32:15Chris Hewitt:yeah I want to know bring up your inner Mary Shelley I want to know everything. But with this, I mean, I was just talking to Christian, and he was being very complimentary about you, Maggie, saying that your swing of the fence is here. This is a very, very bold swing of a movie. And getting a studio to back that, in this day and age in particular, must have been tricky. How did you go about it? What was your pitch like? Like, I mean, I worked very hard.

32:50Helen O'Hara:You know, of course, I had to go in and pitch the movie and had tons of images and thoughts and ideas and, you know, kind of was explaining to them the cinematic language that we would be working in. But more than anything, I felt that that studio understood what I was doing. And it was both Mike and Pam, Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi, who run Warner Brothers, who I think are incredible partners, brave partners, but also maybe in particular Pam. This is a story from a female director, from a feminine point of view, even though just like we are interested in movies made by men. I'm interested in men, too.

33:38Helen O'Hara:There's some very incredible men in this movie, I think. But the perspective is new and is feminine. And I think she said, I see this movie and I see, I hear the beating heart in this movie. And someone quoted something to me recently, like 7 % of the movies last year were made by women. More will be made when women also run the studios. Yeah. You know? And so it wasn't like a crazy uphill climb. I mean, I felt very, very supported all the way through the movie. I will say this, and I think this is interesting too. I set out on this movie to make a big pop roller coaster of a movie. Like I wondered in the same way that in The Lost Daughter, which is a very small movie and almost like a chamber piece or like a poem or something in The Lost Daughter.

34:38Helen O'Hara:But we were being very, very honest, like searingly honest about something that people don't really talk about. So I thought, could I do the same thing? Could I be searingly honest about the way I see the world, but do it in a pop big way? What would happen? And so along the way, I really think Pam in particular helped me to stay on course with what my original intention was, which was to make a movie for many, many people. Like, I wanted to make a movie for the monster, the little bit of monster that's in everybody. And sometimes she would say, you've tipped off the tightrope here. If you keep this scene in, you've alienated this group.

35:33Helen O'Hara:And I think that's actually incredibly interesting and an incredibly interesting collaboration that Pam and I had together. Did you keep it in, in the end? Well, there were places where I was like, no way is this. Absolutely not. Like this, this, without this, the movie has a different DNA. And other places where I considered it and thought about it and even maybe initially went, no way, in my head. And then thought about it and went, no, she's right. If I'm trying to walk a tightrope of tone, this scene, it's true. It does. It pushes me off the tightrope. I got to let it go. And I think that's a kind of incredible collaboration to have with another person and with another woman.

36:14Jessie Buckley:I think I felt that from the minute I read the script because it was like a very, very new but very alive language and something that was totally from Maggie's mind. And I could feel her daring to stretch her limbs, you know, not just it would have been so easy to do another film like Lost Daughter. and actually that's not what we're in it for whereas we're artists that want to grow and expand and actually put ourselves into an unknowable place and I think you can only do that with solid structure around you with great collaborators and other people like Christian and Karen Murphy and Nadia Stacey and Sandy Powell and Pam Abdi like you need strong structures to be able to be as wildly imaginative as you can possibly, you know, put yourself into a new landscape.

37:11And I felt the, I mean, I definitely felt the challenge of it when I read it.

37:18Jessie Buckley:I had no idea how to even start it, but you just have to start. And some of my footing at the beginning was like not right you know and then we go back to be like no what about in here and then it's like oh yeah this feels interesting or what about this voice like this is an interesting texture of a voice for Mary Shelley I like this I like this okay I'll put that up on the mood board and then you know we'd send music to each other we'd send poems to each other we were painting like with all the colors that were available to us and it was such and knowing that we already had gone on a journey together and we were speaking language from the get-go in that um yeah it felt like really we just have to be bold intentional focused but so alive and we've got each other we've really got each other in this and let's just go and dream i just want to say one thing

38:15Helen O'Hara:about that is like yeah it would have been i guess it would have been easier to make another movie like The Last Daughter, or you're talking about, you know, taking a big swing or whatever. It's just that this is the movie that was in me. Yeah. There wasn't really anything else I could do.

38:33Chris Hewitt:Yeah. And that's really interesting because if, for example, you hadn't found a studio to do it, what would you have done? Would you have made it a lower budget level or could you have let it sit in the drawer for a while?

38:45Helen O'Hara:I really don't know the answer to that. It created a kind of, it ignited something. It started to, and you can feel it. I've, you know, you can just sort of feel it with a project when something like can't get off the ground. Or like it's just, even things I've attached myself to as an actress where you're like, oh, I sort of want to do this. You know, and then you feel other things where it's like just starts to catch flame. And this one, this one had that energy.

39:16Jessie Buckley:100%.

39:17Chris Hewitt:Yeah.

39:17Jessie Buckley:Like, it was an extraordinary read and actually didn't change much from what we read. And you could feel, I mean, look, you do not get these level of artists coming around with this piece if it doesn't have substance. This was like so full. It was so full and so new. And I think these kind of offerings are very rare, you know, to have a bold new perspective, to have a new language, to take a risk, you know, not to create something out of a habit in film, but actually to make something epic that is an original new language. And you don't get somebody like Christian Bale, Sandy Powell, Nadia Stacey, Warner Brothers.

40:01Jessie Buckley:You don't get that. They're not going to come towards those things. And we all did with our hearts in our hands. But I know it's a little scary.

40:10Helen O'Hara:I know it's new. It's new. And I know that. That's the feedback I just keep getting back sitting in this room all day is that it's new. And that can be very exciting. And it can also be scary for people, you know?

40:22Chris Hewitt:I know we've got to wrap up. But at the same time, I love what you're doing. I love the way that you're playing with the iconography of Frankenstein throughout the years as well. You know, obviously the nods to Elsa Lanchester, but also putting on the Ritz. And I really wanted to ask real quick about that. because that was, I just adored that. Where did that idea come from?

40:43Helen O'Hara:Well, it came from Young Frankenstein.

40:46Chris Hewitt:Yeah, to nod to that was really, really clever. Of course, definitely.

40:49Helen O'Hara:But we were talking about this the other day. I love Young Frankenstein. It's a wonderful movie, but I actually think somewhere the reason why I wanted to put that in was because of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. Like another epic love story. yeah like this one you know oh my god I love that

41:11Chris Hewitt:I'm really newly tearing up

41:12Helen O'Hara:that's amazing

41:14Chris Hewitt:don't know what the fuck happened there anyway Maggie Jess has been amazing thanks so much oh my god yeah okay that was Maggie Chilenhall and Jessie Buckley talking about the bride exclamation mark and we will be reviewing that later on in the show but right now it is time to dig deep into this week's movie news so

41:33James Dyer:Game of Thrones movie is in development and what's even better is Bo Williman is writing it.

41:40Alex Godfrey:He of House of Cards and Andor fame.

41:42James Dyer:And Andor fame, exactly. So that's promising. It is also a prequel

41:48Helen O'Hara:a part of

41:50James Dyer:Westerosi history that we haven't seen yet. The story is it's maybe Egon's conquest.

41:57Alex Godfrey:Egon? Maybe. Maybe. They haven't confirmed, have they?

42:00Chris Hewitt:Yes. We just know it's a prequel. So who's Megan This? Which studio is Megan This?

42:03James Dyer:This will be Warner Brothers.

42:06Chris Hewitt:Oh, okay. Are they making it quickly? So, okay, I'm very confused. I didn't know this was happening. So they've announced a Game of Thrones prequel movie that will be theatrically released

42:19Alex Godfrey:or is going to be on HBO Max? I think they've gone into details, to be fair. But also, none of that matters because whatever they announce, it will be up in the air because of probably the next thing we'll talk about.

42:28James Dyer:Well, yes, but this is the kind of thing that doesn't tend to get nixed by mergers, for example, which is what we're talking about, because it is a big IP that people seem to be into, and this is a big deal.

42:42Chris Hewitt:Merger, merger, merger, merger, merger.

42:43Alex Godfrey:I was going to do that. I restrained myself.

42:47James Dyer:So look, it's very early days, and we all know that Game of Thrones stuff has been announced before and hasn't happened because the script wasn't in good enough state. Indeed. So that could still happen. But assuming this has some legs, and ideally wings and scales and fire-breathing ability, then we could see, for example, Aegon's Conquest, which would be quite cool. So basically, this is the first of the Targaryen kings who brought dragons to Westeros.

43:14Alex Godfrey:Okay. He came over from Old Valyria and set the whole of the Seven Kingdoms on fire. That's not very nice.

43:20James Dyer:Pretty much. With his two sister-wives. Yes. Both words.

43:25Chris Hewitt:Sister-wives? Yes. All right. So he's from Port Stewart.

43:28James Dyer:Oh, hey. Come on now. You're from Banbridge, please.

43:33Chris Hewitt:Home of Game of Thrones, I'll have you know.

43:36James Dyer:Barely.

43:36Chris Hewitt:And the Brondes. Definitely. We can claim to both of those. Anywho.

43:44James Dyer:Anyway. Anywho. Anyway. Yeah.

43:47Chris Hewitt:This sounds exciting. Question mark.

43:49James Dyer:I know you're a huge Game of Thrones fan, Chris. Big fan. It could be good. I think it's potentially interesting because these are real big dragons and I'm here for anything involving real big dragons. I don't know how they'll deal with, you know, quite so much incest on the big screen. But, you know, it's baked into the concept of the lab, I guess.

44:11Alex Godfrey:Well, they handled it quite well in the main Game of Thrones, right? That's quite incesty.

44:14James Dyer:It was.

44:16Alex Godfrey:What's this adapted from? George R. R. Martin's brain.

44:18James Dyer:Essentially. No, but he has written basically a fake history of Westeros, which is what House of the Dragon is based on. House of the Dragon is based on a segment of that, which is about, what, 100 years after, a little bit more, 100 years after the conquest and 150 before our Game of Thrones main timeline.

44:37Chris Hewitt:Right.

44:38James Dyer:So there's loads to adapt on either side, which is obviously what they're now doing with everything else.

44:44Chris Hewitt:All right. Do they have a director?

44:46James Dyer:Or is it just Bill Willimon just writing at the moment? Yeah, he's just sitting there playing with little dragon models, probably going, grr, argh.

44:53Chris Hewitt:This is how Helen would do it. 100 % yeah the thing we were referring to merger merger merger merger is that this is a Warner Brothers property because it is on HBO and as you may know a couple months ago it looked very very likely that Warner Brothers was about to be acquired by Netflix who were in competition with Paramount who recently of course been acquired by David Ellison who's a billionaire with deep deep pockets and he wanted Warner Brothers and then Netflix were like, no, we want Warner Brothers and then Netflix won the bidding war? Or did they? Because last week they were blown out of the water by Paramount who came back to the table with, I believe, it says here, technical term, oodles of cash.

45:39Chris Hewitt:And now it looks like Paramount may be about to acquire Warner Brothers, although it is subject, of course, to scrutiny. Oh, yeah. So much scrutiny. It may not go through because apparently it'll give them 40 % of the market and that's bad.

45:58James Dyer:Yes, but this is not a US government administration that is overly concerned with monopoly enforcement or anti-monopoly legislation. Show you're working out. When have they ever shown themselves to go against a monopoly? Anywho, I don't love this. I don't love any of it. Whoever wins, we lose. Do we lose, though? Yeah, we do.

46:21Chris Hewitt:I'm going to be glass half full again on this one. we're going to get loads of great movies. Fewer movies, I would think. I don't know. The apartment have committed to making a lot more movies.

46:29Alex Godfrey:They have said they will, but realistically, when you consolidate two studios into one, I would say the output falls. It doesn't generally rise. So I would have thought we will get fewer movies. That said, Netflix wasn't a great fit either because they don't really have a commitment to theatrical exhibitions. So it really was a kind of like, you know, we're fucked either way situation.

46:48Chris Hewitt:Why can't it just stay with Warner Brothers being Warner Brothers? Why do they need to sell? what's happened yes

46:54James Dyer:no I mean they're just attractive as a company so people are trying to buy them it's not they do want to be sold though they are inviting these yeah the current head of Warner Brothers wants to sell but that doesn't mean he has to but you know the problem is you know the stockholders are going to just take the money and run possibly literally

47:16Maggie Gyllenhaal:it's all very exhausting it feels like this is a film industry version of the board game Risk with just very very wealthy people running companies just playing around.

47:24James Dyer:I think that's part of the problem. Genuinely, I think there is a freedom of speech issue about the overwhelming consolidation of media in the hands of a very, very small number of people. I think we have a healthier media ecosystem when there are lots and lots of smaller companies, but that time has gone. There was a diagram showing what percentage of the media market was owned by, you know, a number of companies in sort of the turn of the century and now. And now it's really massively, something like 90 % of the media market is owned by like four or five companies. And this is, that's not healthy.

48:02James Dyer:But it's not something that, you know, this is not the only, yeah. No one's going to stop it and this is not the only symptom of it, I guess.

48:10Maggie Gyllenhaal:I mean, look, I can't, without pointy fingers at anyone because who knows what's going to happen. But that's the, I mean, they can say what they want about what they're going to commit to and how many films they're going to produce and blah, blah, blah. But we just don't know. We don't know how much of what Warners do already is going to be retained in terms of working practices or theatrical windows or anything like that. We just don't know. And, you know, different studios have different perspectives on what sort of films they make. You know, the question is, do these people want to hire Warners for financial purposes, for legacy purposes?

48:41Maggie Gyllenhaal:I mean, what?

48:41James Dyer:Would David Ellison have made Sinners or One Battle After Another?

48:47Alex Godfrey:Well, I think we should focus on the important issue here, and that's if they mess with Dune, David Ellison, I will come for you. That's what I'm going to say. Dune is safe.

48:55Maggie Gyllenhaal:Your third Dune film will come out before anything happens. Don't worry. It's going to take a while anyway. They will probably reboot it in three years' time.

49:04Chris Hewitt:Yes, if it happens, it's going to take a while. I am trying to be glass half full about these things, but it will most likely lead to many hundreds, if not thousands of people losing their jobs as these two studios get consolidated and that sucks happened when Disney took over Fox and it may well happen here as well but I am trying to be glass half full and who knows, maybe this will get maybe they'll be more open to working with filmmakers, maybe they'll provide a nice safe haven for filmmakers who want to tell stories, we don't know we don't know, but yes, I can see why why it would be tempting to be glass half full on this or even glass oh no it's smashed and it's gone everywhere and it's cut my wrist and no no and now i'm bleeding out hey speaking of glass

49:52James Dyer:smashed everywhere oh um where's this going scary movie six trailer oh okay do you know what before i press play i was like maybe i've been too hard on it i remember those films they came out you know i was younger then i was happier maybe this will make me young and happy again you know maybe i'm was too hard on them first time and maybe there was charm there i mean i like regina hall i like

50:16Alex Godfrey:some of the weigh-ins like anna faris i like she's very funny yeah it's so bad i hated it so much

50:23James Dyer:these films are hateful yeah and now i think now i remember like i hated them the first time and

50:29Alex Godfrey:now i remember why i hated them i'm no friend of comedy as you know but i do feel that this particular vein of comedy that they quote unquote mine for these films is the absolute lowest common denominator and I detest it.

50:43James Dyer:It's the sort of the way that they like replay entire scenes with the entire original dialogue except for like putting in a fart noise. Right. Do you know what I mean? I just like that's not parody to me. It's not clever. It's not funny. And I just I did despair slightly watching this. I was like oh I get that reference. Yes I still hate it but I get I get your reference. All right let's move on. Anyway.

51:04Chris Hewitt:Alex you are you up in the scary movie franchise? I haven't seen a single one. Haven't seen any of them. Oh what you're

51:10James Dyer:missing out on my Oh, my goodness.

51:11Maggie Gyllenhaal:Wow, I just never saw them. And I may not.

51:15James Dyer:I mean, I can't recommend them.

51:17Maggie Gyllenhaal:I've heard.

51:20Chris Hewitt:All right. Wow. They're okay. They tail off badly after three.

51:27James Dyer:And the start's pretty bad, and the middle ain't too great either.

51:31Chris Hewitt:Listen, I don't want to get into an argument, but I think that the first three have some high points. Some very good jokes. Put that on the poster. yeah but anywho they're not they're not Abraham Sucker levels of parody but they're a hell of a better than the likes of Meet the Spartans and Epic Movie and things like that but anywho this one looks dreadful beyond beyond belief but we shall see we shall see every day is Christmas Eve but there was another trailer this week for something that is not necessarily a film but is film adjacent because it's DCU adjacent the DC universe that's what it's called these days right we think so

52:13James Dyer:yeah we think so

52:13Chris Hewitt:which is over at Warner Brothers and I'm sure James Gunn is watching the merger merger merger with great interest as well to see what happens with that because the trailer is for Lanterns which is a new limited series following the adventures of two green lanterns Hal Jordan played by Kyle Chandler and John Stewart not that one not that one played by Aaron Pierre with his incredible eyes, his dreamy, dreamy eyes. What did you guys and indeed Gal make of this trailer?

52:46James Dyer:Thanks so much for including me. Thank you.

52:49Chris Hewitt:International Women's Day.

52:51James Dyer:I thought it was dreamy. I mean, I'm really promising like it.

52:54Maggie Gyllenhaal:What do you think of the eyes, Helen? Hey, my eyes are up here.

52:59James Dyer:I mean, no, honestly, it just looked really, it just looked really interesting. It looked a little bit different to what we've seen before. It had a good energy. I really love Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre I'm super here for that do you think they could have got

53:11Chris Hewitt:two attractive guys to star in this don't you think

53:13James Dyer:what a shame that they could only get Chex Notes Kyle Chandler

53:17Maggie Gyllenhaal:these bums also very charismatic wildly so they really are there's a lot of charisma in this trailer what's the story of this of the show that's a good question

53:31Alex Godfrey:from the trailer it's not 100 % clear that said it does feel like certainly from the marketing material they are veering away from the more comic book-centric elements of it.

53:40James Dyer:Cosmic stuff, yeah.

53:41Alex Godfrey:Yeah, it feels more like, I think it's been compared to almost like a slightly lighter true detective type vibe of the two of them together. Wow. It looked like a buddy movie. Didn't seem quite that intense to me that it was quite on that level. But yeah, right. It has a buddy element to it. Sort of mismatched buddy antagonist.

53:56James Dyer:So like Hal Jordan training the younger Jon Stewart is the idea and they're investigating a murder, murder, murder.

54:03Chris Hewitt:Indeed. It is exciting.

54:04James Dyer:Yeah.

54:05Chris Hewitt:Yeah.

54:05James Dyer:I am hyped.

54:06Chris Hewitt:Yeah? Hyped. Jimbo you hyped? you don't look hyped I'll be honest with you

54:11Alex Godfrey:I really really like both Karl Chandler and Aaron Pierre so yes I am very excited to see it the actual subject matter means very little to me but they're great so I'm there

54:21Maggie Gyllenhaal:it would also be nice to see Aaron Pierre doing cool shit for you know six episodes or whatever it is absolutely

54:27Chris Hewitt:we may well do weekly spoilers for that we shall see we are going to be doing weekly spoilers for Daredevil Born Again season 2 whenever it starts dropping on Disney Plus at the end of the month when is Lanterns on HBO Max over here?

54:39Maggie Gyllenhaal:August is the date on the trailer, whether that means it's here as well. I'm not sure. I think probably yes, the way HBO is going

54:45Chris Hewitt:these days. Yes. It seemed to be Paramount Plus Max. I guess. Who knows? But that is exciting. Before I do a big old squee, Lee Isaac Chung has departed from the Ocean's 11 prequel. Creative differences.

55:01James Dyer:Oh no. Yes.

55:03Chris Hewitt:He was creative. They were different. this is a movie that's been in development for a long long time Margot Robbie is producing and starring in it at one point I think Ryan Gosling was also attached but doesn't seem to be anymore and at one point Jay Roach was also going to direct this and I think it was even coming close I had heard they were scouting for locations and then it's just gone on the back burner and now Lee Isaac Chung has left Deadline have quoted it Warner Brothers soon to be Paramount Brothers spokesperson saying this is an amicable split due to creative differences. So make of that what you will.

55:41Chris Hewitt:Do you think we'll ever see this movie?

55:43James Dyer:I'm not holding my breath.

55:45Chris Hewitt:Yeah.

55:47James Dyer:But I am holding the faith.

55:51Chris Hewitt:Are you holding the door?

55:53James Dyer:Oh, door. Hold the door. We've moved on from Game of Thrones.

55:56Chris Hewitt:Oh, no. But there we go. Well, I hope that happens and Ocean's 14 is happening at the same time. But shall I do a big old squee? do the squee here we go squee there's a ghosts movie a ghosts movie if you don't know what ghosts is fail yourself of this knowledge immediately ghosts is a tremendous sitcom on BBC One written by and starring the original Horrible Histories crew who then started writing her own stuff and made the likes of Yonderland which was on Sky and which was brilliant and the likes of the movie Bill about a young William Shakespeare. And then they made Ghosts, which was about a young couple who move into an old country house, Button House.

56:43Chris Hewitt:And one of them, the lady, Alison, played by Charlotte Ritchie, has an accident. And that accident awakens within her an ability to see all the ghosts who live in Button House. And they are many. And they are played by Lawrence Rickard, Martha Howe Douglas, Jim Howick Simon Farnaby Ben Wilbond and Matthew Bainton who also write this show and it is brilliant and funny and heartwarming and moving and did I mention funny?

57:14James Dyer:Yeah you did.

57:14Chris Hewitt:And they're terrific. They are. And it finished on BBC One.

57:17James Dyer:Yeah but I didn't love the ending so I'm okay I didn't I just didn't love it. Okay. I love the show. Yes. I even love the American remake which is pretty good actually. I've never seen it

57:27Chris Hewitt:and I can't bring myself to but you think good? I think good.

57:30James Dyer:I had fun slightly different, but there's definitely some, you know, rewrites of early episodes. But yeah, I just didn't love... Why not? What was wrong with it? It just didn't feel right for them to, you know, leave the ghosts the way that they left them, I guess.

57:45Chris Hewitt:All dead.

57:46James Dyer:All dead, yes. All brought back to life. No, I'm kidding. But I am very excited to have a film now and hopefully bring me some peace.

57:56Chris Hewitt:Yes. So they're all back, all the cast are back. Kyle Smith-Bino is back, as Mike, who is Allison's husband, Lolly Adafope is back, as well as Kitty is another one of the ghosts.

58:07James Dyer:Oh, she's amazing.

58:08Chris Hewitt:They're all all back. Katie Wicks is not back because her character, her ghost character, was sucked off in Series 4.

58:15James Dyer:That is, of course, their phrase for going up to wherever, the afterlife.

58:19Chris Hewitt:Absolutely. If you are as a ghost, you move on to, I presume, heaven, then you have been sucked off. And I'm looking forward to, Helen, I'll be honest with you on the big screen to sitting down and watching a whole group of people being sucked off it's going to be a lot of fun but enough about the Game of Thrones movie come on now I'm so excited about this it's called Ghosts the Possession of Buttonhouse it started filming last week no one knew about it except for the people who worked on it presumably and all the Ghosts cast coordinated an announcement about this on Instagram at the same time it got people frenzied frenzied yes It's such a delightful, delightful show.

59:01Chris Hewitt:Alex is looking at me as if he wants to die. Alex, are you not a fan of ghosts? That's just your face.

59:07Maggie Gyllenhaal:No, I really... Very aggressive today. Very aggressive. I really, really like ghosts. They're a brilliant gang. I mean, all of them are so funny and so distinct. Every time I see Simon Farnaby, it just adds that character with no trails up because he died having an affair, having sex. It really makes me laugh. They've got such great chemistry between them. You can tell that they vibe so well together off set and writing it. You can see they have such fun doing it. It is a really funny show. I am intrigued to know what a cinematic version of Ghosts is. Because it's a pretty cinematic show.

59:38Chris Hewitt:It's single camera. It's shot on location.

59:41Maggie Gyllenhaal:But it's contained. We've seen quite a lot of it. And I wonder why they've decided to do this rather than... I mean, they've done specials before. It's a strange choice. So, yeah, I wonder... Is it going to cost more money? Are they going to... Is it going to be like Only Fools and Horses? Chris, are they going to go to Mallorca or something? Do you know what I mean?

59:58Chris Hewitt:I really hope they are. Miami twice or to Holland back. Exactly. Oh my God.

1:00:03Maggie Gyllenhaal:So I don't know what it is as a cinema proposition, but I really like those people. So it will just be funny, which is good enough for me.

1:00:11James Dyer:One word. Flashbacks.

1:00:13Maggie Gyllenhaal:Yeah. Well, they've done all their flashbacks, haven't they?

1:00:16James Dyer:Yeah, but they can do it on a bigger scale.

1:00:18Chris Hewitt:Yeah. One word. Plastics. Okay. Shall we talk about movies? Shall we review movies, in fact? Let's talk about the films that are out this week in the multiplex and indeed on the sofa plex where do you want to start? We have three movies we're reviewing this week we've got Hoppers we've got The Bride and we have Peaky Blinders why am I doing that accent? They're not from the West Country Where are they from? Have you seen it, Chris? It's more broad church than small kids

1:00:46Maggie Gyllenhaal:No, that's what they've done for the movie

1:00:47Chris Hewitt:If I'm completely honest with you, Alex no, I have never seen Peaky Blinders No, I could have guessed that But I'm aware they're from Birmingham That's an accent as you know, I'm a chameleon but the Birmingham accent eludes me James you went to school big school in Birmingham see James he's got it he's nailed it I did live there for three years and my dad's from Birmingham so is he? yeah oh well there you go James give us another sentence in Peaky Blinders right

1:01:14Alex Godfrey:gotta review the Peaky Blinders

1:01:15Chris Hewitt:and I can't because I haven't seen it

1:01:17Alex Godfrey:it's pretty good

1:01:18Chris Hewitt:it's pretty good better than yours Chris what do you mean?

1:01:25Alex Godfrey:Oh my god That was like if Arnold Schwarzenegger Lived in Birmingham for five or six years

1:01:32Chris Hewitt:I've only been to Birmingham twice Have you?

1:01:35Alex Godfrey:I didn't have time to absorb the accent Yeah And you don't pronounce the G when you say it either You call it Birmingham Birmingham Birmingham Really? That's what you say when you say it You go Birmingham Do I say that? Yeah How is it meant to be pronounced? Say it again Birmingham Yeah It has a G in it I just pronounced a G That was totally a G there

1:01:54James Dyer:It was a little G, but it was definitely there.

1:01:56Chris Hewitt:Are you sure?

1:01:57James Dyer:Yes.

1:01:59Chris Hewitt:Alex, review please for us the Peaky Blinders movie, which is entitled The Immortal Man, and sees Chex Notes' Cillian Murphy return as Chex More Notes' Tommy Shelby, who is the chief of the Chex Notes Peaky Blinders organization in Chex Notes' Birmingham. Sorry, didn't you ask me to do it? Yes.

1:02:21Maggie Gyllenhaal:so this is the big screen version of the series that ended uh in tv terms on season six uh it's been very popular it's mostly been very good you know about this gang of nerdy wells in birmingham

1:02:36James Dyer:in the 1920s and 1930s yeah started by 1919 didn't it 1919 yeah the end-ish of the first

1:02:43Maggie Gyllenhaal:World War. So Stephen Knight, who created and has always written the show, has written this and it is directed by Tom Harper, who directed some of the early episodes of the show. So we find...

1:02:55James Dyer:Also Wild Rose.

1:02:56Maggie Gyllenhaal:Yes, that's true. Jesse Buckley.

1:02:58James Dyer:Jesse Buckley, I'm just saying.

1:02:59Maggie Gyllenhaal:Oscar bound. Don't jinx it.

1:03:02James Dyer:Don't jinx it.

1:03:04Maggie Gyllenhaal:We find ourselves for this film. In 1940, World War II has broken out. It is not here to make friends. I don't know if I can do this Birmingham is being absolutely blitzed which is the perfect environment for lots of people with little sense of morality to run amok which is basically what happens in this film so the series did finish with season 6 with this film promised to be on the way and that finished with most of the people that Tommy Shelby has ever associated with being dead friends, family, enemies He's, I mean, for the whole series, he's suffering from PTSD and just trauma from World War I.

1:03:51Maggie Gyllenhaal:And so at the end of season six, he rides off on his horse to get away from that life and go and stew in his own trauma and depression and misery. That is where we find him for quite a long time in this film, where he's now retired to a ramshackle country pile so he can be all broody and grumpy and mopey and just shut himself off from society and feel all guilty and be anti-social and just feel sorry for himself. That's quite a large part of the first half of this film. And he is definitely not going back to Birmingham ever again or back to that life ever again. Absolutely not. And definitely not in this film, except that's obviously what this film is.

1:04:26Maggie Gyllenhaal:So we meet quite early on his son, who we haven't met before, as Barry Keoghan, would you believe, playing a bit of a nasty little bastard. Shifty Barry's back again. He's very shifty in this film. Now, with Tommy Shelby gone, the Peaky Blinders are now under the leadership, if you can call it that, of Duke Shelby, a.k.a. Barry Kogan. And the gang is now like a rampaging bunch of hoodlums with no rhyme or reason. They're thieving and looting and shooting and just terrorizing people in Birmingham. And it's left to Sophie Rundle's character Ada, who's Tommy's sister, to say, is this right? Should he be doing this?

1:05:07Maggie Gyllenhaal:And I don't know what Tommy would think of this. meanwhile Tommy is in his mansion going, no, I'm not going back. Word comes to him that his son is being a little bastard and the Peaky Blinders have been left to rot, and he's like, no, no, no, I'm not going back there. I've done it. I've fucked up enough. I've fucked up myself. I've fucked up everyone. I'm not coming back. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether he comes back or not, but he does. We also meet the antagonist of this film, who is a guy called Beckett, played by Tim Roth, who is essentially a bastard British person working for the Nazis.

1:05:34Maggie Gyllenhaal:And the plot is he is charged with flooding England, the UK with counterfeit money to supposedly collapse the economy so that Germany can win the war. So the question this film poses is can and will Tommy Shelby return from self-imposed exile and win World War II? Essentially, yes. That is literally the plot. All right. Okay. Did I enjoy this film? Yes, but you may have noticed the title of this film, The Immortal Man. It's not interested in subtlety. It quite enjoys its massive mythical allusions. It gets very caught up in its own mythology. For me, it is very, very silly. And as entertaining as it is, I am not sure how self-aware it is.

1:06:19Maggie Gyllenhaal:When I was watching it, I was like, it's not silly with a nod and a wink. It's just very bombastic.

1:06:24James Dyer:Yeah.

1:06:25Maggie Gyllenhaal:Very big. Very, very simplistic. That's the thing. So this is a movie, and it looks like a movie. It sounds like a movie. It's got a movie budget. But I felt like it does, over 100 minutes or so, what would be much more fleshed out and deepened and more complex over six episodes. They've always had their political plots in the TV show. And this one is the silliest they've done and it's dealt with very quickly and not with much political... I mean, it just didn't really work for me on that scale. It's trying to be really, really bloody epic, which it is on a superficial level. There's not a lot of substance there.

1:07:01Maggie Gyllenhaal:It's very predictable. It's pretty rote. And I wish I'd given a shit about what happened in it. you know what's going to happen. Everyone in there is having fun. Everyone, maybe not Killian because his character is not allowed to have fun. No. But everyone else is really chewing the scenery. Tommy's just kind of depressed, but he does come back and, you know, kick some ass. If you enjoy the show and are fine with all of these things I'm saying, which the show is certainly guilty of, and you don't mind the endless PTSD and the posturing and the murder and the monologues and the endless needle drops, and this film really does have incessant needle drops, then maybe you will enjoy it.

1:07:35Maggie Gyllenhaal:It is enjoyable, but it's very, very silly. And I thought very thin.

1:07:39James Dyer:Yeah. If you're a Fontaine's DC fan, I mean, you couldn't do better. I feel like if you cut out all the shots of people striding forward with their heads down under their flat cap, you could cut this down to about an hour and 15 minutes.

1:07:53Maggie Gyllenhaal:Especially as they're all slow motion.

1:07:54James Dyer:But unfortunately, all those shots are the best thing in it. They look fucking cool. They look really, really good. Cillian Murphy in a well-cut suit and a cap? Yes, 100 % on board. but yeah everything else you know just as Alex said really it's a lot of moving and shouting and portentous lines without a lot of weight behind it but it does look cool I don't remember the show and I haven't seen all of it but I don't remember it being quite so into ghosts and sort of almost magic and prophecy and all that kind of thing because we haven't really talked about Rebecca Ferguson's character who's like a a gypsy prophetess type

1:08:32Maggie Gyllenhaal:Yeah, I mean, she talked about...

1:08:34James Dyer:It takes her quite seriously as a plot and as characters. You know, ghosts are almost more real in this film than they are in ghosts. And I thought that was weird.

1:08:44Maggie Gyllenhaal:It's a sentiment that I think has been in the show, but not to the size. Yeah, and it is very silly. I think that's probably... It does seem to take itself very seriously, and it's just not serious.

1:08:56James Dyer:Yeah.

1:08:56Chris Hewitt:I haven't seen a single second of a TV show repeat to fade that chorus. but I enjoyed this I thought it's pretty accessible for people who haven't seen everything yeah because they tell you all the time during the film what happened in the show it takes you by the hand it's fairly simplistic at the end of the day it's something bad is going down in Birmingham and this man who has removed himself from Birmingham criminal life needs to come back and sort shit out and if that means winning World War 2 along the way I quite like that I quite like the scale of this thing I quite like that Tim Roth is a despicable Nazi

1:09:30James Dyer:and has no shades to him whatsoever

1:09:32Chris Hewitt:yeah it kind of had me from the opening opening couple of minutes which is set in Germany in this train station and you have this pounding guitar driven soundtrack and lots of steam trains it's not the movie I thought I was getting at all and it's something it's a World War 2 movie and I was like oh okay I like World War 2 movies I'm good and then Tim Roth says an outrageous opening line which we won't repeat here and I was like okay you've got my interest and I was on board for the rest of it I think it could have done with a little bit less of Cillian moping around his mansion being moody it's a lot of it and a little bit more of him moping around Birmingham being moody but also kicking people in the face I think that might have been a little bit better

1:10:14James Dyer:the scene of him sort of coming back

1:10:16Maggie Gyllenhaal:is very cool

1:10:18James Dyer:was very cool yeah I mean they do it well

1:10:20Maggie Gyllenhaal:I mean it is silly they do it well it sounded amazing it looks very cool there are some great lines in it and there's some good action it was just so silly and by the end I was like come on

1:10:29Alex Godfrey:the thing is everything I have not been able to see this because I wasn't able to make any of the screenings which I'm devastated about because I love picky blinders but most of the complaints you have Alex seem to apply broadly to the show as well in the best way like a lot of things that you don't like seem to be the things that I do like about the show so I'm still very excited to see this despite the fact that you didn't enjoy it

1:10:47Maggie Gyllenhaal:I've seen most or much of the show and believe me it's more subtle than this but anyway

1:10:53Chris Hewitt:alright well this sounds like it's going to be fun to get into in the spoiler special, I'm going to be part of that because I think it's important to have someone who knows not what the fuck they're talking about. In that, we've done interviews already with Tom Harper and Stephen Knight. That'll be going out after it comes out on Netflix, folks, because it's in cinemas this week and next week, and then it's going to be on Netflix as of March the 20th. We're going to be doing a spoiler special after it hits Netflix. But in the meantime, Peaky Blinders, The Immortal Man is in cinemas right now, and we gave it three stars.

1:11:24Chris Hewitt:Three stars in for the immortal man. Next up, the immortal woman. Hells Bells, tell us about Pixar's latest hoppers.

1:11:33James Dyer:Hurrah! Yes, this is not to be confused with the delicious Sri Lankan pancake called a hopper. This is kind of what if Pixar did Avatar a little bit. But of course, they remind us it is not Avatar. The idea is that a young environmental activist who is voiced by Piper Kurda learns that someone at her university has developed these robot animals and you can put your mind in these robot animals and essentially pilot them around. And she decides to... And this is nothing like Avatar. It's nothing like Avatar. She decides to put her mind in the body of a beaver. Stop it. She doesn't decide.

1:12:11Chris Hewitt:It's accidental.

1:12:14James Dyer:But she's in there interested in this technology. And she basically is going to try and use this opportunity to bring the beavers back to the little piece of, you know, the glade where she used to spend time with her grandmother and try and save it from developers under the auspices of the town mayor who is voiced by Jon Hamm. So you have a sort of setup which is explicitly environmental, explicitly sort of anti-capitalist, which is kind of unusual for Pixar to be quite this open, I guess, about their politics. But anyway, she befriends the king of the beavers, voiced by Bobby Moynihan really really well loved him and sets about trying to bring the animals back to the glade and find out why they'd gone in the first place I was not convinced by the trailer of this I was hesitant you know I don't particularly love animated films about talking animals that is like my least favourite genre of animated movie but this completely won me over to the point where like first half of the film I'm like haha that's funny haha that's funny and it kept happening more and more, you know, often as she got in with the animals and it is just a really good comedy and also in the sort of, by the second half and really into the last act, it just picked up and picked up and picked up steam and completely and utterly won me over.

1:13:36James Dyer:It is probably my favourite Pixar movie since the first Inside Out. Wow. On a par with at least Turning Red. That's 11 years. It's a while, yeah. Turning Red maybe is the only one since that is close to this. Coco, Coco we've had as well.

1:13:52Maggie Gyllenhaal:Remember me. Okay, Coco was good.

1:13:54James Dyer:But I admired Coco. I'm not sure I loved it as much as I love this. I love Soul. I find this really, really charming, heartfelt, funny movie, really funny, really, really funny.

1:14:08Chris Hewitt:I think in a way you've undersold how fucking insane this movie is. Oh, it's batshit. I did a spoiler special with the film's director. Daniel Chong, and the producer Nicola Grindle. And I said, I guessed 10 % of the things are going to happen in this film. Because I'm not going to say anything here. But there are things that happen in this movie that's gone, oh, that was not on my dance card. I didn't expect to see that in this movie. It's wild, Alex.

1:14:36Maggie Gyllenhaal:It is very loopy. Certainly there are things that I've never seen before in any movies. It is fun. I wanted more from it, personally. I mean, when I think of Pixar, I think of how emotionally affected I've been by my favorite Pixar films. This was not one of them. I actually think it was a little bit too loopy. And actually, it starts off very movingly, I thought. I mean, I won't spoil it, even though it's in the first 10 minutes. But it starts off with a sort of a human relationship episode. And I was really touched by it. And I thought that was top tier Pixar. But then it drops that completely until the very end, really.

1:15:16Maggie Gyllenhaal:and in between that and the end it's just a lot of hijinks and it's very entertaining but I don't know it didn't feel quite that Pixar-y to me there was something about it that felt almost like I could be watching a DreamWorks film yeah

1:15:30James Dyer:I think that's fair that might partly be the sheer amount of comedy in this I feel like is much higher than the average Pixar I do agree I think for me that sort of emotional spine was there the whole way through which is maybe one of the reasons I loved it so much

1:15:45Maggie Gyllenhaal:well it's driving the plot without sort of reminder

1:15:47James Dyer:no but like there are visual reminders of that thing that come back and come back and I yeah I just but I do think it's really funny I mean there's a there's a character voice by Vanessa Bayer who is off the charts amazingly hilarious yeah

1:16:03Maggie Gyllenhaal:I mean it's a great voice cast Jon Hamm is the mayor you mentioned so good they're all perfectly cast I will say it's a lot of fun I just wish there'd been a bit more to it because it's just Pixar films to me are above just we're going to watch A Fun Escapade which I think this is broadly what this is

1:16:18Chris Hewitt:four stars then for hoppers next up here comes the bride and who better to talk about the bride than a man who is very frank

1:16:32James Dyer:and held together entirely by statements

1:16:34Alex Godfrey:that is absolutely accurate it is James Dyer I mean you've broadly speaking covered the part of this one sorry sorry true slacker sorry I forgot about that absolutely not. I preferred Frank. I mean, this is as you kind of already said, it's like a punk retelling of James Wells' The Bride of Frankenstein. You know, I think Maggie Gyllenhaal said that she was, one of the things she didn't like about that film, she was annoyed that Elsa Lanchester's bride speaks, what, not at all and is in it for, what, three minutes? And so this is very much an attempt to address that by kind of turning it into an undead Bonnie and Clyde.

1:17:08Alex Godfrey:So it's set, as you said, in 1930s Chicago and Frank is a century old and he's lonely, so he finds Annette Bening, as you do. And she is Dr. Euphronius, and he asks her if she can create him a bride. And they find the body of Ida, who's a kind of gangster's mole, who's recently deceased, having been pushed down a flight of stairs, and they reanimate her. And wouldn't you know, she's also sort of semi-possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelley, because of course she is. And then they go on a kind of like a wild sort of rampage of crime. And she becomes a kind of almost like an icon, like this sort of iconoclastic emblem for people who are kind of rising up and adopting the sort of facial discolouration she's got.

1:17:54Alex Godfrey:She's got sort of a black blood spatter on her face, which gives her this unique facial patterning. They are, of course, being chased by two police officers, Penelope Cruz and Peter Sarsgaard, who I would argue you could excise from this entire film and lose absolutely nothing. Because it does feel a little bit long at two hours and five minutes. But it's got some broadly good performances on it. They're not subtle performances. They're very, very over the top. And, you know, it's got some interesting themes buried in there somewhere. It's about body autonomy and sexual assault and male entitlement.

1:18:24Alex Godfrey:There are so many scenes of sexual assault in this film that I thought it was wildly unnecessary. I thought the kind of feminist 101 stuff had good intentions but felt very surface level. I kind of weirdly like this idea that she becomes this almost like feminist emblem, this sort of revolutionary, this sort of counterculture icon. I liked that aspect of it, you know, inspiring people to sort of rise up there. But then, you know, it lacks subtlety. There's a bit where she bellows me too multiple times on the screen. And it's just like, come on, what are you doing? So I don't have a problem with anything that it's trying to do.

1:18:58Alex Godfrey:I'm just not sure that it is able to probably do it because it's kind of, it's discordant, it's loud, it's obnoxious, it's full of conflicting ideas that kind of crash into each other. It feels like Gyllenhaal can't keep on a single idea for more than two minutes before veering wildly off into another lane and changing gears. And as a result, I found it a very, very bumpy ride watching it. But more than any of that, I found it crushingly dull. And I was so bored. I was looking at my watch repeatedly during this. So I really, really struggled with it. I think, you know, there's ambition here, absolutely.

1:19:31Alex Godfrey:And I think she definitely had a distinct vision of something that she wanted to do but honestly to quote the bride herself because she she quotes a line from Melville all the way through I would prefer not to like thinking about it since I saw it

1:19:44James Dyer:I agree with all the things it's trying to say I think there are things worth saying and things worth talking about and things worth building a film around and I can see the the ideas you know that went into this but it is such a hodgepodge it screams at you from almost minute one literally Literally and figuratively. And I just find watching it just such a trial. Thinking about it after having watched it is better than the experience of watching it. I agree. You're like, oh, the costumes were good. Oh, I did like what Christian Bale did with Frank. I really liked his energy. Yes, he's kind of gaslighting her and he is withholding crucial information, but he is otherwise a fairly benign murderous presence, you know.

1:20:31James Dyer:And I appreciate that for him. I really like that energy. I thought, weirdly, Jake Gyllenhaal didn't convince as a movie star. Go figure. Oh, I thought he did. I just didn't think he had the right look for the 30s or the right energy or something. He just felt like he had an iPhone face. You know, that's a face that's seen an iPhone. It just doesn't work. I just really wanted it to end for so much of the film and I also looked at my watch and again it's nothing against any of the cast, they're all doing well maybe apart from what I've just said about Jake Gyllenhaal which was maybe mean but like everyone else, Annette Bening is a mad scientist great, that's weird casting, love it Jesse Buckley on an absolute tear, no major objections but just you know none of it really hung together I mean the Penelope Cruz and Peter Sarsgaard they have a little dynamic they have their own little subplot but it's just so thin because there's no time to get into that and yet it still takes up all this time it feels like and you're just like oh my god why are we just what's going on where are we trying to get to here oh I find it exasperating honestly

1:21:40Alex Godfrey:all style very little substance leave it at the altar

1:21:43James Dyer:no loads of substance just all over the place though well substance is it's like a substance it's like goo all over the place you know

1:21:50Maggie Gyllenhaal:yeah it's strange isn't it because it really really goes for it on every level possibly too many levels um and it has a lot to say but i was thinking about afterwards on the one hand it's got too much to say um because it's got so many things it wants to say and on the other hand it's not actually doing enough because it's it's it's grappling with everything is underdeveloped yeah it's grappling with too many things including the supporting characters i mean james you were talking about uh peter sarsgaard and penelope cruiser's characters it doesn't need them no it doesn't and by the end it was like oh well we don't care about these people and i don't know if we're supposed to or not um but i will say maggie goes for it everyone goes for it i i think you know christian bale and jesse buckley both really fucking go for it um jesse is very good the material that she's given is very full-on and dare i say quite irritating at times but she gives it she really gives her something and i loved christian bale in it i i really really really enjoyed Guillermo's Frankenstein and I loved that creature design and I loved that soulful performance.

1:22:54Maggie Gyllenhaal:Jacob Elordi was incredible but I did enjoy seeing a more traditional Frankenstein who looked like Frankenstein and being played in that I'm a confused monster and I don't know how tough I am and I don't know what I'm doing and I'm lonely. He did it really well and I don't think he was doing it cynically or with a nod and a wink and the creature design was great. I mean, all the close-ups of how he was stitched together were quite gruesome. And I actually quite felt for him. But at the end of the day, it really made me want to watch Natural Born Killers, I've got to say. It really did because I love that film.

1:23:28Maggie Gyllenhaal:And feminism aside, this is doing a lot of what that film did. It's about these monstrous outlaws on the run who become a media sensation and it plays with a lot of that stuff. But it made me want to watch a better version of this film. But I did really appreciate what it was going

1:23:43Chris Hewitt:for two stars and sadly for the bride sad exclamation mark and on that note that is it for this week's empire podcast join us next week for more film related fun we will be joined by tim ruff that's a bit of bruff the star of peaky blinders the immortal man so he'll be on the show until then until that auspicious occasion until we meet again it is goodbye from my three colleagues of such lethal cunning. Goodbye, Alex Godfrey. Laters. Goodbye, Chuslacker.

1:24:21Maggie Gyllenhaal:Chuslacker said nothing.

1:24:23Alex Godfrey:All right, goodbye, James Dyer. You should listen to the Pilot TV podcast. Why, Chris? Why should they listen to the Pilot TV podcast?

1:24:30Chris Hewitt:Is it because Kurt Russell and bloody Russell and Roditz? That was all right. I mean, it was veering Scouse, wasn't it? No, it was not veering Scouse. It seems veering somewhere.

1:24:39Alex Godfrey:No, thank you very much. They are on the podcast this week. That's absolutely true. But who else is on the Pilot TV podcast? I don't know.

1:24:45Chris Hewitt:You?

1:24:45Alex Godfrey:Who else? It's you. Me! You are on the Pilot TV podcast.

1:24:49Chris Hewitt:Yes! Finally, the Pilot TV podcast has been legitimized. That's right.

1:24:53Alex Godfrey:You were sucked off from the Empire podcast.

1:24:55Chris Hewitt:Oh, my word. I wonder what that was. Send it to the Pilot TV podcast. Oh, no. Okay. And I spoke to the Russells. You did? Wyatt Russell and Kurt Russell. One's a dad, one's a son. I wasn't sure which was which, but I took a gamble. Yeah. Turned out to be the one with grey hair.

1:25:09Alex Godfrey:That's right.

1:25:09Chris Hewitt:Who would have thought? Yeah. Anyway, that's fun. That'll be fun for the pilot listeners to hear a good interview. That'll be an unusual thing for them. They'll be like, oh, what's happened here? Good questions. Sick burn. Sick burn. You opened the door. I went through it. It's goodbye from Helen O 'Hara. Totally. And it's goodbye from me. I'm off to try and persuade Alex's mom to buy me heroin. Sorry, mom. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Bye-bye.

1:25:39You