Going On Holiday By Mistake (ft. David Koepp)

21:11Chris Hewitt:Sure. that's a good one Helen yes he is he's technically he's convalescing because of the flattened balls

21:20no follow up questions

21:23Chris Hewitt:objection sustained yeah so that's a good one MCU holidays in the MCU oh there's got to be there is okay Spider-Man Spider-Man oh yeah that's true a school trip I guess yeah I mean is that a holiday or is it a learning experience yeah It's a holiday. It doesn't feel much like a holiday. It doesn't exactly go right. Well, it's a summer break. And again, it doesn't go wrong. He has a lovely time. He goes to Prague. He goes to Amsterdam or somewhere near Amsterdam. Yeah, but their route makes no sense whatsoever. Venice as well. Venice. He goes to London. It's a lovely time. He has a lovely, lovely time.

22:02I have been a tour guide, as you know, on school trips of that sort with young Americans coming over to Europe and seeing the place. I would submit that we do a lot of cultural activities on those which suggest to me that they are learning and they are led by teachers.

22:18Chris Hewitt:Yeah, I've heard tell tour guide, that's not a fucking holiday. Have you ever had these small children fight Mysterio? Not during the bit where I was with them, but they do have free time every day and they are free to fight Mysterio during their free time. All right. Or any other superheroes who happen to be around. I'm not picky. Yeah, of course. Absolutely. Listen, should we bring this to a close? Sure. Let's do it. So I don't think we provided the definitive answer there whatsoever. We listed a whole bunch of films, and I nailed the Utah accent. You did. And the California accent. And the California accent as well.

22:56Chris Hewitt:They all sound like they're in California, eh? All right. So if you want to have your question read out in the upper podcast, I'm on Instagram. C-T-A-H-1-9-7-6 is the name. and wait for a kind of semi-panicked shout out next week before flooding my inbox with your excellent questions. So thank you so much indeed to Joshua Reynolds. Oh, Josh A. Reynolds. Oh, that's different. He's not a painter. No, he's not a painter. He's just Josh A. Reynolds. So that's far less impressive. But thank you, Josh, for your excellent question. Sorry about our, frankly, shitty fucking answers. Shall we have a little break?

23:35Hurrah.

23:36Chris Hewitt:Let's have a little break and we'll be back in a second to talk about the movie news. Hold on your hats. It's a big week. All right. We are back, folks. We are back. And now it is time to delve deep into the week's movie news. And where should we start? Should we start with the news that there's going to be a new 21 Jump Street movie, but it's not going to be called 21 Jump Street because that title has been taken, nor is it going to be called 22 Jump Street because that title has been taken. and is certainly not going to be called 23 Jump Street. No, instead it's going to be called 24 Jump Street.

24:11Chris Hewitt:Now, Ben, what did you think about this? This is classic. Hang on a second. Ben, what? Yes. What are you doing here? I beamed in. You beamed in. Oh, I know what's happened. I know what's happened. We've had to come in the next day to record a bit about the 24 Jump Street news and Helen's not here. so you are doing your best Helen impression to come in and talk about this with me and Jimbo. Hello, Jimbo. Wait. Hi, Chris. You guys recorded yesterday without me? Okay, moving swiftly on. So, Ben, what did you think about the 24 Jump Street revelation? Yeah, this is classic Jump Street stuff. It's smart and it's silly at the same time.

24:50Chris Hewitt:It's clean and rad and powerful. And rad and powerful. They've said they waited too long to do 23 Jump Streets, so they're just skipping straight to 24 Jump Streets. And is this going to be 24 Jump Street foreign exchange students, as promised at the end of 22 Jump Street. Yes. Oh, that would be great. That's got one of the great credit sequences, isn't it? One of the greatest, yes. At the end of 22 Jump Street where they imagine all the various cash-in sequels that they're going to do, including going to the moon and space and animated. 23 Jump Street Medical School, 24 Jump Street Foreign Exchange Students.

25:18Then it's a semester at sea, art school, culinary school, veterinary school, Sunday school. Oh, my God.

25:27Chris Hewitt:It's so genius. I have missed Lord and Miller in this zone. I loved Project Hail Mary. We all love Spider-Verse, and we can't wait for Beyond the Spider-Verse. But they had such a great thing going with these Jump Street movies. Obviously, 21 Jump Street, nobody saw it coming, how good that was going to be. And then doing 22 Jump Street, they hopped so quickly into it. And you just felt like they were in the zone. They had such a good thing going. And hopefully, I mean, they've got all the right people involved. So they're not directing this one? Is that right? No, they're not going to direct, but they've got Rodney Rothman directing.

26:00Chris Hewitt:Oh, yeah. He was one of the directors on Into the Spider-Verse, so he's very much in the Lord and Miller realm. And co-wrote, I think, 22 Jump Street with him, certainly. Right, and Lord and Miller are producing this. This is happening sort of within their sphere of creativity. And there's a script that exists. Rodney Rothman has written it with Jonah Hill and also with Megan Molloy. and Neil Moritz, who is one of the producers, has put a photo on his Instagram of the script with the 24 Jump Street page saying it took so long to make, we had to skip one. Because it's been a while. Jimbo, how long has it been?

26:37Chris Hewitt:So long. 22 Jump Street. I don't know what year was it. It feels like it's been fucking decades. 2014, I think. Wow, 2014. So from the before times. No way. Like even before the before times. Before the before. So far before the before times. Jesus Christ, that is over a decade ago. I feel so old. I mean, it'll be interesting because Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum have been on different sort of creative paths over that time. I have for a long time been a Jonah Hill fan and maybe slightly less so in recent years. So I'm intrigued to see how he gets back into this zone. I mean, the question, and obviously this will be addressed, but obviously the premise of this, He said it is young-looking police officers going undercover in schools or universities or whatever you want to do.

27:24Given that Jonah Hill now looks around 65, I'm not quite sure, is he going to be going undercover in a large multinational conglomerate? What's it going to be? How's this going to work? In his old prison film. Perhaps, perhaps it's that, although Ted Danson's already done that. I mean, I'd love it if they just made it part of the joke that they are going back into a school and looking... Which they already did in the previous films that they already look too old. and you would hope as well that a lot of the jokes in this will be them flashing back to things that we never saw from the 23 Jump Street that was never made oh that would be good I hope they do that yeah but there were talks

27:58Chris Hewitt:weren't there about where Jump Street would have gone after 22 Jump Street despite that hilarious kind of credit sequence to that film because we don't condone the leaks but in the Sony leaks there was interesting juicy stuff there was the preposition of a Jump Street Men in Black crossover movie, which is where Jonah Hill was quoted as saying, it's clean and rad and powerful. And it was a clean and rad and powerful idea. It was. Sad that never happened. And was better than the Men in Black sequel that they actually made. Most things are better than Men in Black International. Yeah, this is very, very true.

28:33Chris Hewitt:And you're absolutely right, Jonah Hill's last movie, Outcome, which was on Apple, and he directed it as well, didn't really make much of an impact. And you could argue cynically that maybe he needs a hit, but maybe they'll riff on that as well. There are no sacred cows in these movies. Absolutely everything. They have Cate Blanchett with the budget and they have Cate Blanchett with the targets as well. And so maybe they'll be very, very meta about that also. Maybe it'll be about Schmidt and Jenko, who are the Hill and Tatum characters, kind of being on their outs in a way and needing a hit to get back in to the cop scene.

29:12Chris Hewitt:so maybe it's about that I'm still holding out for 2121 Jump Street which one was that? the future one the future one was that the one there was one in space or there was one there was a few but that was the last one I think it goes up to it goes 43 Jump Street Mariachi School and then the final one is 2121 Jump Street isn't there like a prequel as well there's like a high school one military school dance academy magic school beauty school 34 Jump Street return of the ghost sure to a 31 Jump Street Ninja Academy yes I would love to see these films that's a great idea I'm excited about this very very excited about this indeed so there we go well guys thanks for joining me shall we segue smoothly back to yesterday's record where we were starting to talk about Treasure Island a new version of Treasure Island that begins with the acclaimed English writer Jack Thorne so hopefully there'll be a seamless segue to us talking about that now Jack Thorne he's going to team up with Ridley Scott alright and Hugh Jackman alright for a new adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's now it can only be one of two pretty much at this point what do you think it is?

30:33Chris Hewitt:I think it's Treasure Island because you read it earlier in the week yes it's Treasure Island woah I'm so shocked I know I presume that Huge Action will play Long John Silver, right? Yeah, presumably. Okay. So, Helen, for people who don't know, can you quickly tell them the non-Muppet version? I was about to say, it's a remake of Muppet Treasure Island is what it is. It might be the first Treasure Island movie since Muppet Treasure Island, and certainly there weren't that many before it. This hasn't been touched on the big screen for a while. Treasure Planet, maybe, is big screen, technically if we're going like sci-fi version.

31:10But yeah, it's basically a little boy called Jim, Jim Hawkins, goes off to search for buried treasure with people including a kindly cook called Long John Silver, who only has one leg and a parrot. The two are not connected. The leg is missing but the parrot is on his shoulder. It's not like he uses the parrot as a leg.

31:31Chris Hewitt:Did he cook his leg? It's not specified to my memory in the text, but it has been a long time since I read it. Like in the Stephen King story, survivor type. Yeah, I don't, oh no, I don't think so. Anyway, and what do you know, it turns out that Long John Silver is actually a badden. No! I know, and he's after the treasure for himself. Oh, what a prick. Oh, the worst. It is a classic, classic tale. Yeah, it is. I haven't read in a long time. I literally, I think I was at school when I read it, so it's been a minute, but this could be fun. You can see a Ridley Scott version of this? I can. Yeah, I think so.

32:03Chris Hewitt:With Hugh Jackman, I mean, the last time he played it, he sort of, yeah. Yeah, we're just going to gloss over that. We'll just draw a fail. Look, you're allowed to go on a ship more than once in your career and play a different kind of sailor character. It's fine. I'm sure it'll be fine. Are we going back into our pirate era? Because isn't there another Pirates of the Caribbean stewing at the moment? Is there? And there may or may not, I don't know, but there may or may not be pirates in the new season of House of the Dragon. Tarochi pirates. You saw it set up last time. Well, the sea snake will make short work of them.

32:31Well, you'd hope so, but let's see.

32:34Chris Hewitt:I've got a very good pirate joke do you want to ask me hey Chris hey Chris what is a pirate's favourite German football team what's a pirate's favourite German football team very specific RB Leipzig there's a German team called RB Leipzig that was your good one yeah do you want another one Okay. Hey, Chris. Hey, Chris. What's a Pirates' favorite Austrian football team? What's a Pirates' favorite Austrian football team? R.B. Salzburg. Okay, I sense a theme here. Okay, I've run out of R.B. clubs. But that's good. I'm excited about this. This is fun. Okay. Yeah. You best start believing in Pirate Stories, Mr.

33:24Chris Hewitt:Jackman. You're in one. Mr. Hawkins. Yes, indeed. Well, we got there in the end. Well done. Speaking of people who are the worst. Hi! Which for some reason Chris's jokes remind me of. The Social Reckoning trailer is out, out, out. I thought you'd be segwaying into Ridley Scott because the Dog Stars trailer was out this week. Oh, that's right. I saw that as well. We could do it afterwards. We chose not to. No, he's not the worst. No, because we were talking about Ridley Scott. I got you. Segwaying into Ridley Scott. No, that's fine. That's segwaying into the worst. Yeah. Okay. Go on, Helen. Take it away.

33:57This is obviously directed by Aaron Sorkin, who directed the four-star masterpiece of this Molly's Game. Three stars. Take it away. Honestly, I'm considering taking one off because you keep harping on about it. But yes, this is the sequel to The Social Network. We now have, as Mark Zuckerberg, Jeremy Strong with an even more disturbing haircut than usual, it has to be said. Mikey Madsen plays the whistleblower of Francis Hogan and Jeremy Allen White is the reporter, Jeff Horwitz. Bruce Springsteen. Yes, Bruce Springsteen. I was surprised that Bruce Springsteen was in this particular story. He's his own man.

34:28Wow. And I heard him, and I thought it was Rotter the Hutt. Yeah, I know. It's just uncanny, isn't it? And then Wimi Masaku is in there, Betty Gilpin, Billy Magnusson, Bill Burr, really, really good cast. I've got to say, it's looking pretty good, and I enjoy any opportunity to poke fun at our billionaire overlords, who can all get in the bin. Do you think it's like Pass the Parcel? Because Sorkin's doing Fincher, and Fincher's now doing Tarantino's sequel, and so everyone's just passing their films on to other...

34:59Chris Hewitt:So Tarantino's going to direct the Sorkin script? Molly's Game 2. Yeah, Molly's Games with a dollar sign. No. Yes, that's right. You walk into any studio in town, you write Molly's Game on a board and then add a dollar to a... No one's going to invest that movie. Absolutely true. Yeah. Remember how much money Molly's Game made? All the money. We might be able to double it with this. I... This... This... This... I'm excited about this film not least because Aaron Sorkin is written and is directing it. It is, as you might imagine, beautifully written. But it's also... How do you know? Because I've seen the trailer.

35:32And it has sparkling dialogue. The lines of the trailer are pretty... You can't argue with that, Chris. You can't. They're fine. They're wonderful. Anyway, anyway. But it's also just like, fury inducing, and it's depressing, and it's bleak, and it does feel like the sort of the dark sequel. What's... And bearing in mind that the first film wasn't exactly a fucking feel-good comedy. You're not totally selling it to me, if I'm honest. No, no, but in the best possible way. The best possible depressing dark reflection of our

35:59Chris Hewitt:awful reality. I have slight quibbles about Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg. He looks like he's going to deliver a very, very good performance and he will no doubt be Oscar nominated for it. I think he's too old. I know what you mean, but he has big Zuck energy. Yeah, he does. The issue I had with him in the Bruce Springsteen film where he was meant to be this very empathetic character and I don't get that from Jeremy Strong, I do get this from Jeremy Strong. I get this awkward, slimy little weasel energy. No disrespect, he's an incredible actor and I'm sure a wonderful person. But on screen, he has awful little weasel energy.

36:36And that's perfect for that. Almost like reptilian alien energy, which Zuckerberg really has. So yeah, I actually think it's really good casting. I get what you're saying from a kind of age perspective, but I'm pretty happy with it. Jesse Eisenberg obviously didn't want to come back, which is in some ways a shame, because I think he was really, really good and incredibly unlikable in the social network. I'd like to have seen him do this, but I think Strong's a decent choice.

36:59Chris Hewitt:My other concern is that Sorkin as a director is not David Fincher as a director, but... But who is? I mean, Helen will obviously give this three stars, goes without saying, but, you know, I'm excited about it. Look, I like Aaron Sorkin, but Molly's Game is not a good movie. We're moving on. We're moving on. Not a great movie. We're not relitigating that again. Fine, fine. Also in Nola Holmes 3 trailer, which I'm sure we're all excited about. Well, talking about Jack Thorne, right? Yeah. He wrote that. I'm sure he also wrote The Dog Stars. And everything else. And no doubt he did a pass on the social reckoning as well.

37:32Chris Hewitt:Sorry, Aaron, you were missing a few bits there. I made some of the characters talk to each other. Just people staring at the wall wasn't very cinematic. Jack Thorne always has multiple scripts on the go at any given time. Does he? He's a nice man. He said it's because if he hits a wall with one, he just pivots to the other one. Does he ever get confused and then start porting over a character from one script into another? It's entirely possible. It is. so Enola Holmes 3 yeah well she'd make short work of Mark Zuckerberg really so I would be all up for that and this is the one in which Sherlock played by Henry Cavill goes missing he's kidnapped and Enola soon to be Enola Tewkesbury married that's right she's getting married to Tewkesbury honestly pretend for a second I didn't see the second one he's landed gentry don't you know he's her like sidekick he's kind of her Watson Is he the Louis Partridge character?

38:21Chris Hewitt:Yes. So she's getting married to him. She's on her way to the wedding. She's already got a few, you know, reservations. What with the whole, now you'll be a lady and not a detective. And she's like, but I want to be a detective. And everyone's like, no, no, you couldn't possibly. You're going to be a lady. A lady. I'm paraphrasing, but only slightly. And then, wouldn't you know, on the way to the wedding, she discovers that Sherlock's been kidnapped and she has to swing into action to save him because he's like an enormous man, mountain of a machine person, but he can't save himself, apparently.

38:52Chris Hewitt:Yes. Yes, I need my younger sister to help me get out of this one. Okay, I haven't seen it, but I'm going to guess this looks fun. This is directed by, of all people, Philip Barantini. I know, which blew my mind. He's directed Boiling Point. I'd forgotten that he was making this and I'm genuinely quite hyped to see it now. It is not an Alola Holmes one-er. That would be a lot. That would be a lot, but not beyond his powers, I'm sure. Yes. Okay, that's out on Netflix on July 1st. But The Dog Stars is the Ridley Scott movie that had a trailer this week. Oh, yeah. And stars Jacob O 'Lordi. It's a post-apocalyptic thingy.

39:28Yeah.

39:29Chris Hewitt:In which he's trying desperately to stay alive. And Margaret Qualley is there. And Josh Brolin is there. And they all have a great time, as far as I can tell. It doesn't look super great. But yeah, they're trying to keep it together and fly their little plane around and I guess get supplies and keep his dog alive and generally, you know, figure out a way forward in the world. And what did we think of it? Did we think it looked good? I think it looks really good. I just don't really know exactly what the overall point of it is yet, but I'm excited to find out. It had 28 years later vibes, but a much, much bigger budgeted version thereof.

40:09Chris Hewitt:I don't know that these survivors who are kind of all feral are meant to be infected necessarily because some of them are clearly just clans and tribes that have sprung up and you don't want to mess with these survivor clans. But one group of people that they run into in the trailer certainly had infected style movements. So I wonder if there's something going on there. I don't know what the apocalypse is that they're post in this movie, but maybe it's a virus. Who knows? Who the fuck knows? But I would say the trailer that I was most kind of blindsided by this week was Whale Fall. Did you watch Whale Fall?

40:44I did, yeah. This is Brian Duffield's film about a man, a scuba diver. Are you for scuba? No, because you might get eaten by a whale. Although the whale eats a squid and then the squid eats the guy. It's like I've swallowed a guy to catch the squid. Yeah, the squid was just kind of reaching out for somebody to kind of pull out and he just gets, the guy gets caught up in the squid. And he goes full Jonah. And then he goes full Jonah. And then he is in the belly of the whale. I've read the book and he's in the belly of the whale trying to figure a way out of the belly of the sperm whale. Yeah, and he's also like, he's in the, I mean, I genuinely, I'm fascinated by this film because most of the book, he is in the belly of the beast and there is no light, there is no space, he cannot move.

41:28He is completely like just like squished into place. He knows his air is running out. He also begins to suspect that the whale is diving and it's diving because sperm whales apparently do this when they're going to die, they dive to enormous depths and he's beginning to worry that that's what's happening and that he's going to be crushed. So even if he got out of the whale, somehow he's still way below the surface of the water and unable to survive. So he's kind of got a lot of different problems to deal with. Plus he's having flashbacks to all of his father issues throughout his life, which is the Josh Brolin character in the trailer, as you've seen.

42:06it's going to be a fascinating challenge let us say to explain what the fuck is going on and i'm i'm genuinely wondering like are they going to have like a voiceover of his inner monologue because how else do you explain from one second to the next what's happening yeah um i genuinely

42:22Chris Hewitt:don't know there's there's going to be i'm guessing he just talks to himself but he's got a thing in his mouth like he's literally scuba diving i thought he had someone to wear a mask on or something from the trailer we saw it doesn't even look like they've gone with one of those so there will I'm sure like the book be frequent flashbacks to give you reprieve from being crushed in a whale Project Hail Mary but inside a whale he's got flashbacks he's in the flashback to talk to yeah it's buried but in a whale he could talk to the squid is the squid okay the squid is not okay oh my god I mean spoiler what mentally um yeah yeah here's a sick squid not amazed not amazed not amazed looks good though and a bold undertaking from Brian Duffield so I'm very very excited about that very very quickly as well Naomi Aki is in final talks to lead David Robert Mitchell's It Follows sequel Lay Follow she's going to be starring alongside Micah Monroe the final talks to lead thing I hope doesn't mean what I think it means vis-a-vis Micah Monroe's character who I suspect will not make it past the first 10 minutes of this movie yeah They follow, though.

43:33They follow. They follow. They've taken the aliens approach to this, except without the dollar sign. Do we need more sexually transmitted phantoms? I don't know. I mean, one was enough. We had one. Yeah, but that was enough. Like, do you need multiple ones? I think one was terrifying. James, don't look right now, but there's something behind you. I can't see anything. Yeah, if he can see it, that's okay.

43:54Chris Hewitt:Yeah. Oh, my God, I'm a goner, Ria. Oh, no. Come on. I guess they've figured out a way to continue it because this is what this is 10 years old or something it's been a while I mean to be fair it walks very slowly so it's been pursuing them for a decade it does but I think you know they must have an idea because otherwise why go back to it because even as Scary Movie pointed out last week not that many people saw this film so relatively speaking that's true it was a great film yeah this is one of the kind of the first elevated horrors really wasn't it along with things like the Babadook and what not but it's a really good film if you haven't seen it go check it out it's got a really good ending as well so I'm excited about that I hope it's Naomi Aki and Micah Munro in that and I hope that they don't David Robert Mitchell in this case of course he wrote and directed the first one as well doesn't succumb to usual horror part two survivor bump them off in the first ten minutes syndrome anyway that's good stuff should we have a guest shall we have David Koepp because this week in fact it's out in this country already this week because the World Cup I presume I assume that's why it has opened and that is why the release schedules are a wasteland of the next few weeks in this country some big movies aside of course but yeah the new Steven Spielberg film Disclosure Day has opened in cinemas in this country if you're listening to Listen to States it'll be opening today as you're listening to this and it's very, very exciting and it's Steven Spielberg tackling the possibility of extraterrestrial existence once again as he has done in several of his movies.

45:38Chris Hewitt:He and David Koepp go back a long way as well. Koepp wrote the first Jurassic Park and indeed the second Jurassic Park and indeed the most recent Jurassic Park. Also Jurassic World Rebirth and they have collaborated many, many times and Koepp wrote this from a story that Spielberg himself concocted and when Kep was in the country just the other day I jumped at the chance to have him come into the old Empire Pod booth and sit down and have a chat. Now we did talk spoilers as well but not in this interview so there will be a Disclosure Day spoiler special with David Kep coming up in the next 10 days to 2 weeks or so but this is a non-spoiler chat so you can rest easy.

46:21Chris Hewitt:Here it is, David Kep disclosing about Disclosure Day. do please enjoy. David Koepp, writer of Disclosure Day. Welcome back to the Empire Podcast. How are you? Chris, I'm great. I'm delighted to be on the Empire Podcast. I love the Empire Podcast. I am delighted to have you here, sir. I'm here in London celebrating the release of this fantastic movie as well. You must be pretty delighted. I'm very delighted. It's great fun when you really love the movie. It's fun when the movie's okay, but it's infinitely more wonderful when you love the movie, and I love this movie. We can't talk about spoilers yet.

46:57Chris Hewitt:We will be talking about spoilers at some point in our conversation. It will be clearly marked. Don't worry, the folks listening at home, they will know. I'll spoil lavishly. But was there a point, because the way that this movie was made was quite unusual. Steven Spielberg came up with the story for Disclosure Day and then asked you to write it. What was that process like, and was there a moment during that process where you didn't love the movie, where the movie was a tough nut to crack. At first, I didn't think the movie, I didn't think I was writing the movie. Stephen sent a treatment, it was about 40 pages long, and he said, have a look at this, it's this thing that I've been thinking about, it sort of burst out.

47:37And so I read it, and I thought, because he didn't say, have a look at this, I'd love you to write it, I assumed he would write it because, you know, he's a terrific writer, and he's written a number of his films. And so I gave him notes the way you would, I assumed he was sending it as a writer sends a writer another thing and says, what do you think of this? I said, first of all, your ending is fantastic, so the movie's going to be great. Nobody ever said, hey, great ending, shit movie though. The other way around. Then I said, I'm a little bit confused by this and maybe combine this guy and I think it takes too long to get to that and the usual notes that you'd send.

48:19And then he sent it back about a month later. He said he'd done some more work. And what do you think of writing it? And I have to admit, in the month since then, it had been in my head. Oh, really? Okay. And I was delighted. He said, would you like to write it? I said, I thought you'd never ask. But then the problem was, he said, and this proved to be very true, he said, okay, great. So then it became official. I was going to write it. And he said, now he sent me back all the notes that I had written on his treatment, like the original email, and said, here, they're your problem now. So, yes, there was a moment where it was like, big talk, buddy.

49:01Chris Hewitt:Be careful what you wish for. Exactly. That's amazing. So, giving notes to Steven Spielberg, you said just there you give notes in the usual way that you would to another writer. It's not often, of course, that other writer is arguably the greatest film director of all time. Obviously, you've worked with him for many, many years now. He is a friend now to you. But nevertheless, is there a moment when you think, hang on a second, how can I possibly give a note to Steven Spielberg? How has this happened? There is a tiny voice in my head, louder at first, certainly louder 34 years ago when I met him to write Jurassic Park.

49:44It was a much louder voice then, but it's still there a little bit as I'm giving him a note that that little voice is just saying, how do you know? and it's got to be shouted down because Stephen, I remember him going to pains to make me feel comfortable when I was 29 years old and writing Jurassic Park so that I didn't behave like a fan but instead behaved like a collaborator. And so you just, and certainly when he comes back for repeat business, you say, okay, well, he must value my opinion. I certainly value my opinion. so I've got to act act like that you're being at you're you know the contents of your head at the moment are the property of Universal Pictures so dump them out so you start writing the movie that's stolen from

50:34Chris Hewitt:Barton Fink by the way of course it is I thought I recognized him credit everywhere and the steel steel David do not credit anyone but so you're writing the movie and does Stephen step back at that point to let you finish the screenplay or is he checking in every couple of days? At first, he steps back. So we go through the story and I say, okay, I can't remember if I wrote it down at that point. I think probably I rewrote the treatment just in my own words to end with my changes. And I think he said, okay, that sounds pretty good. I think X, Y, and Z might be problems, but why don't you take a shot at it and then we'll talk.

51:11Chris Hewitt:Yeah. And then during the writing of the draft, he really does leave you alone. He said, call if you have any problems or questions, but basically I want to see what you think. And so that first draft is my time alone with it. And I always refer to it as doing my filthy creative business in private. You're really chewing with your mouth open trying to figure things out. And that part is very quiet. Once you give it to him, now the sleeves are rolled up. and on this one in particular because it's his story and because it's really he has said this is like the summation of what I have to say about Alien then there's you know he's all over it it's his story and he's Steven is always focused always on this movie it was five times the level of focus I've seen from him before there was a period of about a year where he read the script every single morning and had notes every single day.

52:20We did so many drafts and we were when you realize I realized early on wow the boss is super engaged on this I gotta up a level. You know, not that we ever phoned it in but there's a there was a feeling of the, you know, the fourth quarter of a football game to the entire process.

52:43Chris Hewitt:Talk me through the process of writing the first draft for you. Did it change in this? Are you someone who foments it out, or are you to meticulously plan? It's evolved over the years. I used to plan in more scrupulous detail than I do now. I mean, I write treatments. Those are quite detailed. They'll run 20, 25 pages. But what I find even more useful, a treatment is really to just try to communicate your ideas to someone else. and to try to get your thoughts on character down on the page. What I really find useful is, you know, my good old-fashioned 3x5 scene cards laid out on a coffee table.

53:24Any table where I can look down. I hate putting them on a wall. It's terrible. You can't slide things around. I've tried push pins like you see in movies, and it all seems very romantic, but I hate it. How are you supposed to say, no, no, no, the scene at the store goes over here, and now I have to unpin it and it's left a hole in the board and I got to move it over here and move everything else down. It's useless. Slide them around on the table so that I can look at it. I do note, like if it's an action film or a suspense film or whatever the primary value of the movie is, a comedic film, I tend to put a red X where I think that value is showing up.

54:04So if there's a suspenseful sequence, those have red Xs on them and I can look and see, is that, is it spread out in the way that I feel good about? If it's an ensemble, I'll even put different colors for different characters to say, oh my God, so-and-so's blue. I haven't seen him for 40 pages. But I don't... I used to do that in really scrupulous detail. But what I found... It kind of changed when I wrote my first novel, which would have been six, seven years ago. And I felt... This really liberating experience of, well, I need to write 50 pages to see how I feel about it. And I learn the characters better.

54:48And then I learn what the characters might do and might not do. And so I brought some of that to scripts in the last five years where I have an outline, but it's loose, and I'm allowed to diverge and play around with it.

55:02Chris Hewitt:So you said that, let's talk a little bit about the movie without delving into spoilers, obviously. you said that when Stephen first approached you a month later you couldn't get the movie out of your head and that you over time you thought I want to write this what was it about that initial story and I guess Stephen grappling with the idea of aliens for maybe the last time that lured you in well it occurred to me I went and I watched after I read it it occurred to me oh my I think I see what he's doing here So I wanted to go confirm it. So I watched Close Encounters again, which I didn't really need to do.

55:40It was just a joyful experience. It's one of my favorite movies. And I watched E.T. again. I didn't need to watch War of the Worlds again. And I thought, look what he's done. He's done three of these, three films on this subject matter. This will be a fourth. And every one of them has a strikingly different tone. It's not just the tone of the film is different. The genre of the film is different. Yes, they have similar subject matter. So I tried to figure out, well, how would I define each one of those? And I'd call Close Encounters a late 70s messy family drama paranoid government story.

56:16Chris Hewitt:Yeah, that's fair. That was categorized on Netflix. It's wordy, but it's accurate. Yeah, it's good. You know, it falls in line with the Pakula things of that era. Not as dark. No. Certainly more hopeful, but that's Stephen. E.T. is just a beautiful family drama and fantasy. War of the Worlds, of course, is a horror movie. So to me, this felt, because of its compressed nature, it takes place over about 72 hours. Three Days of the Condor immediately came to mind. So it's hearkening back, I felt, to those 70s paranoid movies in a way. But there's an essential change, which is in the 70s, we were starting to say, hey, do you think our government might be lying to us?

57:11And 50 years later, we know they're lying to us. They lie about everything. Well, my government in particular lies about everything. It's a surprise if they tell the truth. Yes. Good morning, they lied. It's just – they lie about things they don't need to lie about. But more than that, it's not just the government. It's social media. It's deepfakes. It's AI. Everything's a lie. We acknowledge everything's a lie. We're looking for something that's true. And so I thought that I just, in that month between reading his first treatment, reading his second treatment, I said, oh, I think I have a handle on this.

57:51I think I see what he's doing. I think I see how he might do it. I think how I'd like to help him do it. but you know too bad he's writing it himself how detailed was Spielberg's story? how much leeway did you have? those are two different areas it was quite detailed and I had quite a bit of leeway because he's Stephen will always say let me have a look at that and then we'll see he really wants you to run with it so there were areas that were extremely detailed and even written as intercuts, like the climactic scene of the movie, the sequence of the movie, is in the movie largely as it appeared in the treatment.

58:36But then there are other areas where he was sort of saying, and then we'll figure it out, and, you know, that kind of thing. But he's quite open to changes. He'll always let you try it, and then you'll have a reasonable conversation if he thought it was better the other way or if he thinks this is something we should run with.

58:53Chris Hewitt:Talk me through that first meeting with Spielberg. You're 29 years old, and you're about to ride Jurassic Park. Oh. Well, there were two firsts. The first meeting... Can you have two firsts? Don't nitpick. It's a nuanced point.

59:14The very first time I met him was because Martin Donovan and I had written Death Becomes Her, which Bob Zemeckis was directing. And Martin and I weren't a team. We had teamed up for two movies at that point, but those movies represented pretty much the limits of our shared interests. And so Stephen read it and said, this is unusual and cool, and I'd like to meet those guys. So Martin and I met him. Then some time went by, and I was working at Universal, I mean, months, not years. And I'd been hired by Universal in an overall deal by Casey Silver, who was the head of production at the time. for which I'm always grateful.

59:58And Stephen was looking for someone for Jurassic showcase. He said, why don't you read it and come tell them what you think? And I think at that point, he'd done a lot of storyboards. They'd had a few scripts written. He didn't feel like they'd hit it yet. But he had the T-Rex attack on the road. He was storyboarded beautifully. it was just blanks for faces because he said, I don't know who's in it, but this is what happens in the sequence. So I read the book and went in and told him what I thought. And it was, I really felt, well, you got nothing to lose. You're throwing your hat in the ring for a big job.

1:00:41I loved the book. I was daunted by the science. One of the big ideas I pitched was to cut Ian Malcolm, which I did in my first draft. And Stephen said, okay, you tried that. Can we please have that guy back? Because Jeff Goldblum read some stuff from the book, and he's fantastic. And I only cut him because it was too hard. I can't handle this guy with his three-page math monologues. They are a bit much. Yeah. But the first meeting was, I felt it unlike all the other meetings I'd been doing in Hollywood at that point in my career, which was go in and tell them your ideas and hope for the best. and except in this case it was with a filmmaker you know who more than anyone inspired me to want to do what I do but you try to put that out of your head.

1:01:31It just takes about 34 years. It takes a while. A few decades.

1:01:37Chris Hewitt:And is that relationship still roughly the same now on this movie? I feel that I I feel more confident than I did and I feel well I feel more secure in the job You know, early on, you always fear. Screenwriters, you may have read, we get replaced a lot. So you're always worried about that, which actually is strangely liberating. If you know you could be replaced at any moment, you can say whatever you want. You might as well. So I feel confident that he's not going to fire me. And I feel more confident saying things that I think might be stupid or turning in a draft of something and saying, I don't think I have this.

1:02:22Oh, okay. Have a look and tell me what you think. Interesting. Norm, which is not what you want to hear as a producer or as a director. You want to shove it back to the person and say, okay, why don't you give it to me when you do feel like you have it? But I think that's it. What hasn't changed in the relationship is that, and about Stephen as a storyteller, is that his, I'm putting words in his mouth, You'd have to ask him, but I still think his favorite part of the process is making them up. Where I see him light up the most is, hey, wouldn't it be cool if? It's the same with Brian De Palma, by the way, who absolutely, that's the stuff they like.

1:03:09You can pitch an idea at them like, hey, I found this piece of origami paper on the street. Do you think we could make a movie out of it? Well, we could fold it into a, maybe there's a whole bunch of origami paper on a truck and the truck's been stolen and that's the De Palma one. Anyway, that has not changed about Stephen.

1:03:27Chris Hewitt:That's amazing. You're always trying to give him that Barton Fink feeling, David. Yes. That's from Barton Fink. That was an easier one. There was a clue hidden within the quote. One last thing, very, very quickly. You were announced recently as a writer of a new version of Westworld, which is a film I adore. Of course, there's the old Michael Crichton connection again. Can you say anything about that at this point? What your take might be? I could, but I won't. It's terrible bad luck to talk about the ones you're still typing. And it also removes the desire to write them. I've had ideas where I tell the idea to my wife, and then I tell the idea to a couple of my friends, and then I tell the idea at dinner one night when I've been drinking.

1:04:14And then I realize I never wrote that idea because it's just evaporated. I just talked about it too much. But I will say when I saw Westworld, the movie, because I love this, I was 73. So I would have been 10, possibly 9. and I my uncle Mike uh I went to stay with my uncle Mike and Aunt Mary in Chicago uncle Mike was a very tough guy he'd he'd been in you know five years in the infantry in World War II I mean there was there was no more manly man than uncle Mike and he took me and my cousin to a double feature of Westworld and Soylent Green in downtown Chicago. And I scared the living shit out of me.

1:05:02And I cried that night because I was so terrified. And I just felt like Uncle Mike was disappointed in me. But Westworld was so imprinted on my brain, particularly, of course, the first hour before it becomes a bit chasey. And it was just such a great idea, such a stroke of science fiction genius. And it's only more relevant. Yeah, very much so.

1:05:36Chris Hewitt:I look forward to talking with you about that down the line. I look forward to the script existing. Well, I look forward to that as well. That would be a lot of fun. And of course, so good that Crichton essentially took that idea and said, I'll add dinosaurs to that. Yeah. that was a that was a very nice adaptation of his own idea he did very very well indeed it worked out David Koepp always a pleasure should we talk spoilers yes let's let's do it thanks for watching indeed alright that was David Koepp talking about Disclosure Day and now it is time for us to review Disclosure Day because it is the reviews section of the show Hell's Bells hurrah you love a bit of Spielberg I do so what did you make of this one very positive overall so yeah this is the story of, well, we kind of join it almost like mid-scene, like mid-action.

1:06:25But Josh O 'Connor plays Daniel Kellner, who has absconded from his workplace with a bag full of secrets and is now being threatened, basically. His workers, his former co-workers, have kidnapped his girlfriend and told him, you either give us all that stuff back or we're going to do something terrible to to his girlfriend, played by Eve Hewson. Meanwhile, a weatherwoman, who is played by Emily Blunt, Margaret Fairchild, starts having strange experiences and finding herself with unguessed-out skills and has to figure out what exactly is going on. And behind both of them, there is a sinister figure, played by Colin Firth, who is trying to track down Josh's character and keep control of some kind of situation that isn't initially clear.

1:07:11while Coleman Domingo's Hugo is trying to coordinate an opposing plan. I think it's pretty clear from early on. Look, the joy of this film genuinely is trying to piece all the bits together because this is not spoon-fed A to B cinema. You kind of join it around the letter J and then it kind of races through the rest of the alphabet, right? I mean, it's just sort of, you're kind of sitting there for the first little half going, okay, what's going on? You will know from all of the publicity, everything that's been announced about this film, that it does concern aliens. That the title, as the kind of trailer made clear, refers to the idea that, okay, this is the day where we reveal the existence of aliens to the world.

1:07:58Chris Hewitt:Which is something that UFO experts, or UAP experts, as I think they like to call themselves these days, they've long dreamt of this day. They think that this day will happen. It's a real thing. Yeah, for them it's a real thing. So for these characters, it's very much a real thing, a real possibility as well. And basically that's kind of about as much as you want to know, I think, plot-wise. Just go in, focus on it, and let it happen around you. There's lots of talk about the device and the passenger and the experiencer and all these kind of terms. It doesn't matter if you don't know what those are.

1:08:31Just pay attention to the story. And given that they don't really explain them, you never will know. But that's for the good. And that is for the good. I think this is not sort of the usual kind of spoon-fed, you know, designed to be watched on a second screen kind of storytelling. It's very much designed to be seen in the cinema with a whole bunch of other people. And I think it's all the better for it. I have some quibbles. There were moments, and we'll talk about them, I'm sure, in the spoiler special. There were moments of character work where I would have liked either something different or something more.

1:09:01There were moments where I would have liked just a tiny bit more explanation story-wise or a tiny bit more clarity of certain things. But generally speaking, I was just completely delighted by its Spielberg-iness, by the way the story is told, by his just ease and facility with the camera and the way that he can just, you know, put the camera at a really low angle next to a car and make closing a car door seem thrilling. Do you know what I mean? Like the way that characters sometimes behave in ways that make no sense. There was a moment where Joshua Connor does something and you will be screaming, maybe internally if you're in a cinema, going, what are you doing?

1:09:40You idiot. And to be fair, he's kind of saying the same thing to himself and he's still doing it. But it's just so thrilling to watch because you don't know everything that's going to happen before it happens. You don't have that sense of, okay, now we're coming up for the, you know, now we're coming up for the sincere scene. Okay, now we're coming up for the twist. Okay, now we're going to find the bit where so-and-so betrays so-and-so or whatever. You know, it doesn't sort of just hit the usual marks in the usual ways. It feels like a 70s filmmaker. And it feels like a 70s film. It's been, there was some rumors going around last week that it's a sort of stealth sequel to Close Encounters, which it kind of is, but it isn't.

1:10:20Like, if you're expecting, you know. I mean, it isn't.

1:10:22Chris Hewitt:I mean, fairly. There's one shot. There's one shot where you could be like, ah, no, I recognize that. That's it. But I think, but the point is, it isn't, it's not about that, it's about, it's a sequel to a film made by that guy. It feels like that guy is making this film as well. It feels like it's, you know, also kind of American heartlands, you know, you know, sort of lonely farmhouses, back roads, countryside. It's a very American movie for a movie that is supposed to be about everything in the world. With everyone in it being basically British. And everyone in it is British. But yeah, apart from Colman Domingo, basically, but in the central cast.

1:11:04But, you know, it only concerns itself with stuff that's happened to Americans and stuff that's happened in America in terms of the UFO-y stuff that it discusses. But that's because I think it's him looking at America right now. In the same way that War of the Worlds was his 9-11 film, I honestly think this might be his Trump film. I think this is a film about dysfunction in America. and that's my big pitch. I will discuss that more in the spoiler special. Yay!

1:11:33Chris Hewitt:Fun! Looking forward to that. But I just thought it was magnificent. I think it's a, this is what I mean about it feeling like a 70s film. It feels like a film that's something to say about the world. It's not something that's just hitting the beats that a studio exec has mandated. It just feels like it's kind of loose and flowing and just coming from an auto filmmaker. Yeah, well it has zero studio interference. I think that's something that comes across very clearly and as you said, You feel like you're in uncharted territory from the beginning. You don't know where it's going to go. You have no idea where they're going to end up next.

1:12:05The characters make terrible decisions, as people do. I think what surprised me most about this is it didn't feel like what I thought it would be, which is a big tentpole summer blockbuster, because it is a conspiracy thriller. It's very adult storytelling. And I don't mean because there's lots of violence or nudity or anything, just it's very cerebral. It's quite thinky. It's about questions more than answers. is quite deliberately paced as well. To a point where I wondered whether certainly younger audiences might not quite know what to make of it. Because it doesn't feel like it's aimed at the kind of like 13-year-old audience.

1:12:38It feels like it's really like a thinking person's quite adult summer film.

1:12:42Chris Hewitt:But then something like Backrooms is doing incredibly well at the box office. Now, it's tracking relatively soft, I think, at the moment. So I don't know how it's going to do at the box office. But I think it deserves to find an audience's thing. because I was just like this is such a weird movie it is to exist in the summer space you know which is 100 % yeah and it's so weird and it's unpredictable and I had very very little clue of where it was going apart from one thing that I guessed and I I honestly had a great time with it yeah I really liked it as well I just as I said it wasn't what I expected to be and I don't know what it will do at the box office I worry it won't do super well because, again, it's not a big explosive blockbuster.

1:13:29It's not, you know, like a four-quadrant film. It feels like it doesn't really have that much to offer a younger audience. But, you know, for, and let's be honest, adults are often starved of large, big-budget blockbuster entertainment. You know, for a kind of traditional adult storytelling, you often have to turn to streaming services and TV shows. And this gave me something that I felt like I hadn't received in quite a while and I really enjoyed it. And also, you know, clearly Spielberg's best film since War of the Worlds. Don't at me. I will absolutely at you get out of here but whatever

1:13:57Chris Hewitt:all is forgiven for West Side Story it's interesting there's a thread running through the movie as well about religion and faith and there's a moment where the film almost becomes a horror film which is really interesting I'm very much looking forward to this point especially here and you know about what would happen if the knowledge that aliens existed was revealed to the world would that throw the world into sort of theological meltdown on how would certain faiths, how would people react to that news? Would they see it as proof of God's existence? And he's just, you know, we're not alone in the universe.

1:14:34Chris Hewitt:We're not, you know, there are other supreme creatures on different planets other than this. Or would they see it as proof that God doesn't exist? And what would that do to our society? Those are really, really interesting questions. And the idea of faith is something that I was thinking as well, because I have slowly over the last few years I've been losing my faith as a Spielberg fan. And this has got me back on board. This is a man who's approaching his 80th, well, he's in his 80th year technically. He's 79. And this is one of those movies, you know, like Miller with Fury Road, like Ridley Scott with pretty much everything he does, where you get these guys, you're kind of showing the young whippersnappers how it's done.

1:15:14Chris Hewitt:Some of the visual storytelling in this is incredible. The performances are brilliant. Emily Blunt is astonishingly good in this. She is asked to do a lot of very, very tricky stuff in this movie. It is my favorite Spielberg movie in quite some time. And it's good to have you back, sir. He's never been away. You're both mad. But it is a really good movie. All right. We give this one four stars. I'm very, very much looking forward to discussing this on the Sparta special. So that'll be a lot of fun. We'll say Eve Hewson, technically Irish. I wasn't including when I said the British I did think that I thought I wasn't actually thinking of her when I said it I was thinking it was Josh, Colin and Emily Emily Blunt and then I was like who's this not just technically Irish like definitely Irish she's 100 % Irish full Irish she's not remotely British but to be fair I was not referring to her well listen it's a cracking cracking film I would recommend very very highly you go see it I realise the World Cup is on as of this week and I realise that the timings pretty much clash with when people go to the cinema you know a lot of games run at 8pm and whatnot, but fine time, fine time to go see Disclosure Day.

1:16:23Chris Hewitt:Matinee screening. Matinee screenings, absolutely. Four stars in for Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day. Up next is a film that was knocked down, gingered on Prime Video today. As a matter of fact, it came out in the States a couple of weeks ago. It is a new film from Yorma Takone, and it's called Over Your Dead Body. And Jimbo, having now seen this, I believe that you would see it again over your dead body. Yeah, I feel like it lives up to the title a little bit. Yeah, this is obviously from the man who did Popstar Never Stop Never Stopping, which you, of course, love. Yes. Yes, indeed. I wish he'd never stopped.

1:16:59No, I wish he had stopped. I don't know. I wish he hadn't made this is what I'm saying. I wish you'd never started talking about this. So this sees Jason Segel and Samara Weaving as an unhappily married couple who go for a getaway at a sort of a cabin, not so much in the woods, but by a lake where he plans unbeknownst to her instead of having a romantic head away to murder her and hide the body and pretend that she died in a freak hiking accident murder murder murder murder and for the I want to say what the first half hour maybe 40 minutes of this that's what this film is it's kind of a black comedy of the two of them bickering and him scheming on how he's going to kill her and it's actually pretty decent at that point you think okay this could be quite a really fun pitch black comedy except there is a secondary storyline whereby two murderers have escaped from prison, Timothy Oliphant and Keith Jardine, and Juliette Lewis is a guard who's helped their escape, and they are apparently in the wild.

1:17:54But of course, they get embroiled in this whole situation, and once they appear, this whole film becomes deeply, deeply stupid, while also being quite acutely unpleasant, partly because it's incredibly gory at times, while not being a horror, like it still thinks it's a comedy, but it's really unpleasant. And also, there's a really disturbing streak of rape humor in this that they seem to find outrageously funny and yet is wildly not. So it manages to be offensive and yet boring and kind of mal-executed and ill-thought-through and there's a ping-ponging chronology where they keep doing kind of flashbacks to three days earlier in a Rashomon star to show up from another perspective.

1:18:35And honestly, I just wish they hadn't. Yeah, I feel like the three days earlier or six days earlier or whatever thing could have worked well if the rest of it had continued to be in the tone of those first scenes and had continued to be that kind of, like you say, quite black comedy. But it gets too dark to be funny, but without being so dark that it becomes funny again. You know, it just falls between the stills. And it's just not, the characters aren't good. I think they're trying to do a sort of thing where the escaped, certainly one of these great criminals, the Timothy Oliphant character and the Juliette Lewis character who are kind of in a relationship, which is how she helped them escape.

1:19:14you know they're trying to have them reflect our main couple of of dan and lisa but it doesn't work and it doesn't really help anything and it's just distracting and pretty much everybody involved is better than this and has done things like this better in the past and and so it's just really disappointing i was really in it for that first sort of 30 40 minutes i was like this is really fun i can't believe they dumped this on prime and by the end i was like oh no yeah it's Also, all the characters are somewhat loathsome. Yeah, yeah, they are, yeah. Don't watch it. Sorry.

1:19:48Chris Hewitt:I had a good time. There's always one. Hello. It's me. I'm the problem. It's two stars, generously. Yes, it is. I would say there are four stars. There's Timothy Olyphant, Jason Segel, Samara Weaving, and Juliette Lewis. Oh, and then your book from Paul Gilfoyle. Yes, from CSI. I always give anything an extra star when Paul Guilfoyle from CSI and in Negotiator is in it and LA Confidential oh what a man what an actor what a legend five stars then for Over Your Dead Body yeah you didn't like that one but Hells Bells did you like Peter Mullen Peter Mullen in The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford this God bless you if you can remember this title I genuinely just did I knew you did well done only because we've been talking about it at the start of the show I went to the cinema to see this on Monday for a screening and I arrived at the same time as two other critics and we were all like, it's the something of Sir Something Something and they let us in.

1:20:51God bless. Anyway, this is written and directed by Sean Dunn and it is kind of a dark comedy again. I think it's a bit more successful, a little bit. So Peter Mullen plays a widowed Scottish man called Kenneth who is a tour guide in a Scottish town and he is very proud of their native son, Sir Douglas Weatherford, who in this telling is a, you know, inventor, anatomist, philosopher, economist, like he was a sort of Renaissance man. And Kenneth claims ancestry, ancestral ties to this figure and is extremely proud of him and gives tours and talks about his influence. And that's all well and good until a Game of Thrones style show called The White Stag of Emberfell that I would 100 % watch.

1:21:38turns up in this small town and starts shooting. And basically, almost immediately in this telling, the entire town is overrun with nerds who only want to hear about Ember Fell and get their picture taken with the star of that show. And Kenneth is kind of displaced and he goes along with it at first and he's trying to play nice, but he's just getting more and more discouraged and becoming more and more embittered against the show. And it's clearly building to some kind of action that he's going to take against the show. So you've also got Gail Rankin as his daughter, somewhat sort of, she's just exasperated with him and thinks he needs help and he won't take any help.

1:22:15And she's just kind of at her wits end with him. And anyway, that's kind of the setup. It is a very gentle, very small film. It's obviously a brilliant Peter Mullen performance, no questions there. But it kind of doesn't go very far very fast. It's nice. I had a nice time and I thought it was at one point going to go really dark in the sort of, you know, over your dead body style. It doesn't go quite that far, but it goes further than maybe you would expect. But I thought it was an interesting look at how maybe the things we value in the world and how those are changing and also just how someone who is lonely and grieving can, you know, hang their entire personality on one little thing and if that is taken away can react very very badly so i think there's there's real substance to it and there's a real kind of melancholy and kind of sweetness to it um but at the same time it's not you know it's not going to change the world i find it interesting also that gil rankin and peter mullen have both been in shows like this yes yes um a house of the dragon and um and rings of powers for them both so that was kind of a funny little side but yeah i just thought it was it was nicely done nicely done

1:23:30Chris Hewitt:What would you give it? I think it's a three for me. All right. Excellent. Three stars down for the fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford, which is in cinemas this week, but will be on Mubi in a few weeks' time, I guess. Over here, The Body's on Prime, and Disclosure Day is in cinemas. Very exciting. But on that note, that is it for this week's Empire podcast. Join us next week for more film-related fun when we'll be joined by... it is despite the World Cup there is a big film coming out next week it is Toy Story 5 it's the return of Woody and Buzz and Taylor Swift is on the podcast oh my god amazing I'm so excited no we have Tom Hanks and Tim Allen who of course are Woody and Buzz sorry to harsh your buzz and possibly also to kill your Woody oh no anyway until then until we meet again until that auspicious occasion and it's goodbye from my two colleagues of such lethal cunning one of whom has to get the train imminently Choo choo Goodbye Helen O 'Hara Toodaloo And it's goodbye from James Dyer Goodbye Chris Listen to the Barlow TV podcast before Javier Bardem is on this week Lisanal Gaib Oh my god Did you interview him?

1:24:46Chris Hewitt:Yes Did you ask him anything about Cape Fear? It was all just June chat You let Dougal to a funeral It's true Oh it's very very bad indeed And it's goodbye from me I'm off to prepare for next week's exciting announcement.

1:25:03Chris Hewitt:They're going to love it in Utah. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Bye.