Hey, It's Enrico Pazuzu! (ft. guests Akiva Schaffer and James Gunn)

23:55Chris Hewitt:very much so and then it just seems like a like a very very strange time so does that mean that there you know there's a little bit more pressure riding on like a gun like you i'm not saying that the future of comedy rests on this movie but i'm not not saying that either that's a it's an interesting idea i wonder i wonder i feel like every two years there's like a female-led movie that's a smash hit and they go, ah, finally female led movies prove they can do it. And then there's always three years with no more big female led movies. And then there's another one and people go, whoa, female led movies can do it.

24:35Like, isn't that a story? Like every, every bridesmaids it's like, okay, here we go. And then you wait and then it's every, uh, Barbie and then you wait. And it's the truth is, it's just really hard to make good movies that or smash hits and so it's hard to think that anything is a starts a new trajectory in that way

24:59Chris Hewitt:you are wearing sir a naked gun two and a half the smell of fear baseball cap you you were rocking it at a special screening in la uh last night as well through every press i do because i love it and because it's real it's you know vintage from from the 90s real hat from back then and because I haven't gotten a haircut in a long time. So it's just, there's a lot of birds it's getting with this one stone hat here. I was going to ask, where did you get it from? eBay. It's this really cool website you should check out. Okay, let me write that down. So this is just, this is a crew hat or what does it say?

25:41Chris Hewitt:Yeah, I think so. I mean, check it out. It's a video factory on the side and I don't know what that is. It's got the Paramount logo. It's got, yeah, but it is legit from back then. It's a trucker style, which wouldn't be my first choice nowadays, but I kind of like what it's doing. Yeah, I just wanted to find some old stuff. There is a woman named Lindsay Duran who has a very good TED Talks who is about movies and stuff, who is kind of a script whisperer, I guess I would call her. She used to be an executive at Paramount and worked on the original Naked Gun. She was the executive in charge of it.

26:15so and and nowadays like she is somebody that does the ted talks are about movies and also somebody who will be a consultant on your script if you like are looking for a fresh set of eyes and will read your script and kind of point out things she thinks that could be stronger and whatever uh and i met her through phil lord and chris miller who i don't have to explain to you because you're the empire film podcast uh and the moment i signed on they're like oh my god you got to go talk to her she worked on and she would tell me great stories uh about david and jerry back then and how they came to certain things in the movie and stuff and she sent me a photo of her on set in london recently like a year ago and she was wearing a naked gun crew jacket is my long-winded way of saying why i went and found this and it was this you know very high quality genuinely looking jacket and it said the naked gun on the back and it was like kind of a bomber.

27:09It was just very, very dope. And so in my brain, I was like, oh, I'm about to do this press. I don't have a haircut. And I was like, oh, what if I could find the hat equivalent of that jacket? So that was my long way to tell you of why I, where I came to this hat.

27:23Chris Hewitt:So are you specifically looking for a Nega Gun two and a half hat or was that just what eBay threw up? I was open to any, but this was the best. This was the one that was out there and it happened to be kind of the best. For those not seeing me on camera, it has the two and a half is the featured part it's a giant two and a half which is surprising and then it's really cluttered in a way that's pretty cool like the video factory thing and this paramount logo like it's got a lot of junk on there it's pretty good it very much is because i was wondering if this was a sort of tacit declaration that two and a half with a smell of fear to give it his full name uh was your favorite of the truth some respect on that no it is certainly not i like it but the first one is the first Naked Gun is just a perfect movie.

28:10Yeah. And it is, I mean, I don't have to tell you, Empire, but it is like a magic trick that I watched a hundred times while writing this with Dan and Doug. That's Dan Greger, Doug Mann. The three of us were writing this together and we just kept watching because we were trying to figure out what makes it work. Because it's amazingly disciplined and that it just stays in the genre like airplane is so good and it goes into like saturday night fever you know yeah and you're fine and you're totally fine with it i think partially because you're happy to be out of the airplane and that's part of why it's doing it because taking you the flashbacks it's partially just because it's just so funny you just are fine with it but i will say i feel like part of what makes the original naked gun so good is that it doesn't do that that that of course yes it goes to the love montage which is completely out of the detective genre uh it no it basically sets up all these rules and then breaks them all but knows exactly how far it can bend each thing without breaking it and i can tell you all the things that on a script writing thing it does quote unquote wrong that you that are just totally right and it's and that was part of me like trying to just study like why why do some spoofs work and some don't and what was the magic that these guys just had an instinct for or whatever and part of the things i would not normally mention but because you are the film podcast that are really interesting was like a normal detective movie in general a whodunit kind of thing you're kind of with the detective trying to figure it out uh but then there's that other version of it where you see the crime in the beginning and know everything and then you're watching your main character try to catch up yeah and really crucially i think you're never you're always a step ahead in naked gun of frank so that you as an audience are never confused you know that vincent lidwig is up to no good in that movie he's in the very first scene where he takes out norberg and he says shoot him or kill him or whatever and what was interesting is i found a script that anyone can find online of naked gun uh that it says like for teaching purposes on the front again i'm just assuming our audience is film nerds like us yes and i'm including i'm saying like us i don't even know that you are you might be a jock but um but anyways but the but uh and and really interestingly in that version which is like three months before they started shooting so it's probably like the green light script but then they were rewriting through prep it does not have uh ludwig in that scene so at some point they were like oh no let's let the audience know and it's done more like a normal normal quote-unquote detective movie in that when you meet him and he's this uh real estate magnet you know pillar of society you also are like oh he might be innocent he might be guilty we don't know you're with frank and then when you see the movie you're like no you know you saw him in the first scene so at some point during prep they realized like oh we need to uh show the audience everything so that they can just sit back and enjoy the jokes um again you are a film podcast so i'm gonna keep talking boring stuff but the other thing was like it's not it feels like a simple story when you watch the old neck again but it's not yeah it's a guy it's dealing with really complex ideas like there's the whole Manchurian candidate sleeper cell this idea that someone has programmed people to be murderers who don't know they could be assassins and they could be anyone and that he has this trigger that will set them off that could be really complicated and a movie could spend an entire first act explaining how it happened like what the process was and yet they knew exactly how to really succinctly and really simply tell the audience that story in a way that was entertaining and silly and not confusing because i think confusion is the enemy yes of being able to sit back and enjoy the laughs but the other enemy would be also being boring or telling a boring story and i think i think when they've done the magic trick correctly the movie ends and everyone goes oh the story doesn't matter who gives a shit about the story it's just a bunch of jokes but I think the story matters a ton to allow you to enjoy that.

32:37Like it has to be so airtight that you can, by the end of it, go, ah, the story didn't matter. But if you were confused or bored, I think the jokes wouldn't play. Yeah. So, so it's this really hard balance that we tried to strike and hopefully did of really caring about the story, making it an interesting enough and complex enough story told incredibly simply and it's the same with like austin powers i think like he has a nuclear warhead and he wants to do all that stuff but they just skip over how he gets it at some point he's just like there's my nuclear warhead and i'm gonna blow up the moon or whatever if you don't give me the money yeah they don't go like how did he go get the nuclear warhead but they probably wrote the scene where he had to go get it and maybe it just wasn't funny enough if it had been funny there's like the perfect example is this not to just keep going off on it but again as the film podcast i feel like This is maybe the one place I'll ever get to talk about it.

33:30If you recall in the first Naked Gun, you as an audience know you've seen the whole scene that is from the Charles Bronson movie Telephone, if you ever go find it, where he hires the assassin. Or not the assassin. The terrorist comes to hire the villain to assassinate the queen and is going to pay him$10 million. And he explains his whole way of doing it, blah, blah, blah. So as an audience, you know it all. But Frank doesn't. Frank has a suspicion and goes to Ludwig's apartment and ends up burning the whole place down. But before he does, he finds a piece of paper that just says$10 million to kill the queen.

34:07And suddenly, magically, Frank Drebin knows everything. He's just like, this proves that this guy's dirty. And I understand that he's been hired to kill the queen and it's for$10 million. It's such a leap that he's going to see. But you as an audience are so grateful that they didn't waste your time having you have to see him figure it all out because you already know it and in a normal detective movie it would feel very cheap but in this you're just like so happy about it and just moving right along yeah and that's kind of what i mean by breaking the rules like they just knew like nope right then let's not waste your time here you go

34:48Chris Hewitt:and it's so great how did you go about for this version which we should point out to people it's not a reboot it's not a remake well i guess a reboot of sorts but it is it ostensibly a sequel uh and that liam is playing the phrase is legacy sequel legacy sequel of course how to do your your job i meant to be from the film podcast i should get this right every now and again but did you sit down did you have a list of do's and don'ts uh how to introduce frank in this movie for example you know not to give it too much away but he's in disguise the same way we meet his dad in the first film yes i would say almost in terms of like what we wanted to i don't know i don't i want to say take from the first movie but like honestly i mean obviously we wanted to honor the first movie and so the first question was like how do you do that what do you honor how do you honor the spirit of their style of comedy like what makes naked gun not uh the other guys or the nice guys i mentioned both those because those are both excellent detective comedies that are very different but but if i made a movie that was like one of them then why then you're just slapping the title on you know the naked gun so what makes it the naked gun and that's obviously dramatic actors not comedians and it's that nobody's winking at the camera that the actors all are acting it like they think they're in a serious movie like as if they're too dumb to realize that they're in a comedy that they're playing everything real that the music is playing everything real, that the photography is playing everything real, right?

36:20Those are all the tenets of it. Then in terms of how much do we lift or actually do from the original movie, I tried to almost do nothing, but I did think the cold open kind of honoring this idea of like the classic, you know, American superhero, super cop, you know, from the fifth, you know, from John Wayne and Charles Bronson and Dirty Harry and, you know, through John Wick and Jack Reacher and whoever else you want to say, you know, like this, this, this is a trope that has run through all of at least American cinema. What's the thing to see him doing in a cold open. And it's a set piece where he whoops ass right and like that's that's the thing and that is what the first movie did really well so some some version of that uh that might be the most one-to-one thing from the original movie like even the siren and i was like i don't think i want to start with the siren because i just really not to spoil it but i don't know when this comes out but the siren's in there but it's just not at the beginning because i just no disrespect to all the other comedy remakes and redos that have happened in the last 10 years but a lot of them I felt are too reverent to the source material in terms of being like it's actually every every sequel that like I thought Anchorman 2 was so funny but when it got to the big uh the you know one of the big set pieces from the first movie is the big um melee with all the different things when there was you know all of a sudden Vince Vaughn's news team and Ben Stiller's news team it's one of the best scenes in any comedy of any time but when it does in the second movie i was like it felt like they just owed it somewhere uh you know no disrespect i love judd he produced pop star and everything and i love mckay and farrell but somewhere in that scene as well oh right i forgot that yeah uh but as a super fan of comedy i was like you i was like do you guys think this is funny are you just doing it because you think the audience expects it and is owed it and i uh and so you know i you know this there's so many amazing scenes in increment too i want to make sure i'm not talking shit about it but that to me was not one of them that felt like fan service and i wanted to specifically not do that and try to make something that stood on its own again while being super respectful so him being i felt like the first teaser trailer everything that was in the first teaser trailer for this movie kind of was the things we decided in the first week.

38:54Like, who is he to try to do that? Oh, let's make him his son so that it's not Liam trying to do a Leslie Nielsen impression. It separates them and lets you know, like, no one's going to beat Leslie Nielsen. No one can do what he did. He is a unicorn. So we are not attempting that. Liam is going to do his own thing. He's got stuff that everybody knows from all the Taken movies and stuff. You know what that icon is he's going to be that thing and it's going to be different and that's also what let me know i wanted to make the movie was when they said you know liam neeson's interested i was like ah now that's worth doing if they just asked me to make a new naked gun i'd be like of course not because it can't be better than the original movie but with liam it can be different i am

39:40Chris Hewitt:being wrapped but it's been an absolute pleasure sir well i hope i answered your question i was long-winded there but i've been dying to talk about the actual stuff absolutely no uh kudos to you, sir, and your incredible cap. Thanks a lot. Cheers, Akiva. Thank you, man. Okay, that was Akiva Schaffer, and we will review The Naked Gun later on in the show, but right now it is time to dig deep into the world of movie news. What has been happening? Has anything been happening? Comic-Con happened, but I didn't see a lot of movie news come out of Comic-Con last week. It wasn't the movie-est Comic-Con.

40:10There was lots of TV stuff, Peacemaker Season 2, and Gen V Season 2, The Boys spinoff. All pilot territory, I'm afraid. Pilot. Tron stuff look cool. Tron looks very cool. The Nine Inch Nails stuff they've started releasing from that sounds great. That was a couple of weeks ago now we're getting out of date, but I'm excited for Tron. I think Tron looks fun. But has there been any actual movie news? It's only a tiny morsel, and tell me if you'd heard this already, but I hadn't. There's no other information on it, but Eddie Murphy said he was playing Inspector Cluzo.

40:48Chris Hewitt:Yes, this was announced a couple of years ago. But the guy who interviewed him acted as if there was a huge revelation that had never been heard before, but it had been announced. But I guess it's still happening then. Yeah, yeah. How do you feel about that? I mean... He's very talented. He's got a tash. I'd like to see Eddie Murphy being funny when he's funny, and I could see him doing an interesting or different take on that character. I wasn't a big fan of the Steve Martin Cluzo films. I was growing up a huge fan of the Peter Sellers ones. I don't, you know, it is the sort of character that you can reinvent for different generations.

41:25And, you know, I always want to see Eddie Murphy being funny. Again, it could work really well, but God only knows. It depends on, obviously, the material and director and blah, blah, blah. Did we also see Eddie Murphy as talked about doing a donkey film, like a Shrek spinoff that is just donkey that was floating around this week? he's just like announcing things that haven't been announced yet and just confirming that stuff is happening that is on his schedule that the studios are not ready to reveal yet. I'd be interested if it was just Donkey it was literally just him for 95 minutes having an existential Donkey Kong what was that film EO a couple of years ago?

42:01You loved that Donkey movie. I did like it I mean I like donkeys. You can't sue me. I like big donkeys and I cannot lie. You other motherfuckers no I don't know the words. So So, Social Network 2, which apparently is genuinely happening. Yeah, I was just looking at this. Aaron Sorkin, obviously. Writing and directing. Writing and directing. And Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White lined up potentially for lead roles. That's interesting. And what is interesting there is that Jeremy Allen White is not playing a different version of Mark Zuckerberg. So I wonder if it's not maybe a direct sequel to what Mark Zuckerberg did next.

42:40It's about other people involved in what happened. Yeah, I guess so. Does it say who they're playing? Well, according to the trade report, Mike and Madison would play Francis Horgan, who was a whistleblower. Oh, interesting. And Jeremy White would be a Wall Street Journal reporter. It was basically a bunch of anti-Facebook people that they would be playing. Oh, interesting. So maybe this is a film that's less directly in the heart of Facebook and more in the world around the impact that Facebook has made on the world and legal cases around that. about the sort of rise of hate speech and that kind of thing and just the potential harms of the algorithm, I think, this one.

43:19And so while another director does a sequel to a David Fincher film, David Fincher and his cameras are very much rolling on the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel, the Clint Buffett. I know that's not news, but I don't know if you guys have seen pap photos.

43:34Chris Hewitt:I have seen these pap photographs. The Cliff Buffons. Yes, very much so. This is set in the 70s. I still can't get my head around the fact that this is happening. Exactly. So there has been shots this week. There was some speculation about what Brad Pitt's hair would look like in this movie because only a few weeks ago he had shaved his hair short for a David Ayer film he had just finished and Cliff Booth's hair is usually long and glorious or inglorious and can even Brad Pitt grow his hair that quickly? And the answer seems to be no. and they've stuck a wig on him. And we don't want to judge because this is David Fincher and he's one of the greatest directors on the planet directing a screenplay from one of the greatest screenwriters on the planet, Quentin Tarantino.

44:22Chris Hewitt:And Pitt is one of the greatest movie stars on the planet and I'm sure it will be fantastic. But right now that wig looks like it needs to be hit with a broom until they're sure that it's dead. I don't know what's happening. We shouldn't judge from Pabsh. I know, I don't want to, but I find it hard not to because I'm looking at that thing on top of Brad Pitt's head and I'm wondering if there's a rat underneath it that is helping him to cook. What's going on? Why is his hair so big? It's full of secrets. His hair is full of secrets. That's true. Maybe because this is a David Fincher film, they're actually going to completely CGI his hair in the finished film and it will be invisible CGI.

45:01It'll be so technically proficient, you will not even know that it was on CGI. Maybe David Fincher wanted to destroy something beautiful. oh no callback yeah I like it I like it yeah yeah yeah it's sort of outside of the whole Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel of it all just Fincher and Pitt working together again is cool it's hugely exciting and also just like Fincher, Pitt, Tarantino what a combo yeah that's pretty awesome yeah so now I don't know what to make of it or what to expect but it's very intriguing it's the Tash as well as the fact that Clint Booth

45:31Chris Hewitt:in Cliff Booth Clint Booth who's Clint Cliff Cliff Cliff Clavin maybe he's playing Cliff Clavin in this and we haven't been told. Cliff Booth has a tash as well, like a little wispy tash. So maybe in some ways it's deconstructing this idea that he's the apotheosis of machismo. Maybe. Or machismo. Maybe he's in costume as in the character is in costume for work. Oh, yeah. Maybe it's a stick-on moustache. The wig is so bad we're having to bend over The backwards of life. Maybe generous reading. As Cliff Booth playing Cliff Booth? To explain that wig? Maybe he's Cliff Booth playing Cliff Clavin. No, but like he's...

46:17Cheers, people. Yeah, but like he's... You know, like, think of the hair that DiCaprio had to wear in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when he was in the Western with Timothy Olyphant. Yes. Think of, like, basically, maybe it's that stuck onto Cliff. Are they turning the events of the final reel of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood into a fiction film. Into a fictional movie. And he's doing the stunts of the guy playing Cliff Booth. Yes, let's go with that. Let's go with that. I love that.

46:46Chris Hewitt:So is it true that this is called now The Adventures of Cliff Booth? Is that what they're calling it? Is it like The Continuing Adventures of Cliff Booth? The Continuing Adventures of Cliff Booth? Okay. It's got to be something weird. I'm fully on board. David Fincher is one of the most meticulous directors on the planet. He's like the 90-take guy. And I'm just wondering how many takes they gave the hair. Or is this a frame which they'll fix it in post? Do we know how Taracino's involved? He must be to some extent. He must own it, right? I assume. I don't know. My understanding from reading stuff about it when it was announced was that he has given him his blessing and that's it.

47:22Chris Hewitt:Really? Go off and do your thing. He wrote the script, didn't he? It's his script. So the prevailing theory is that this was the movie he was going to make as his 10th movie, that this is the movie critic. Oh, really? and then it's been he's rewritten it somewhat it's been retold yeah well I'm looking forward to it and as he began to write the movie critic it began to turn into another Cliff Booth story he is so Booth brained at this point like to have made the film once upon a time in Hollywood and then done that novelization which I hear massively expands the Cliff Booth he's also massively Rick Dalton brained as well because he loves Rick Dalton he talks about publishing that book of Rick Dalton the films of Rick Dalton he knows the entire filmography yeah yeah I did a Q &A what do you call it when you sit down you interview someone interview I did an interview with him for this podcast you can go back and check it out where he talks about that like he talked about it like he has he has this idea that there's a book where it's a fictional film festival and they're playing a Rick Dalton retrospective and the book will have an interview that is conducted between a fictional festival programmer and Rick Dalton.

48:34Chris Hewitt:No, it's Quentin Tarantino. It's Tarantino. It's with Tarantino. 1994 Tarantino? Yes, interviewing Rick Dalton. Interviewing Rick Dalton about his career. I mean, I don't think any director has gone further down the rabbit hole of their own material than Tarantino has here. Yeah, he's pretty... Gosh, if anybody had written a book about Tarantino, they'd be really annoyed about this film coming out like immediately after. That would be really irritating. But then the only thing you could do, like Ian Freer wrote a book when I first arrived at Empire, in the early 1700s, Ian Freer had just written a book called The Complete Spielberg that was immediately invalidated by the release of another 47 Spielberg movies.

49:16Chris Hewitt:He's updated it 25 times. It's a good book. It was a good book. The final, final, final complete. The only way to ensure that your book would have been forever in date is to have killed Tarantino. And I didn't want to do that. Like, the publisher did suggest it, but I was like no I mean it's just a Quentin Tarantino dictionary available now people it doesn't we don't need to go that far you know yeah what was Q? Q was surprisingly difficult because he was of course would have been under Tarantino Quentin could be an entry in itself because Quentin's an unusual first name well actually yes I did do an entry in the end for the person he's named after so yeah there was a spooky trailer for Welcome to Derry it Welcome to Derry and that's TV Alex we don't talk about TV on the Empire podcast.

50:02Well, it's sort of, I guess it's a prequel to the last time, because it's by the same team who did It and It Chapter 2. Now, if I remember, a writer who reviewed It Chapter 2 on Empire gave it five stars. What the fuck? So, he was very happy to see more of the same. And if you've seen the trailer, it very much looks more of the same. But I think what's interesting is that I believe it's set in the 1950s, I think, from what I remember from seeing the trailer, which is what I believe... the original It was set in, right? Wasn't Stephen King's original It? Isn't it every 13 years or something? Every 27 years.

50:3927 years, 27 years. But then the film, the recent It film moved it forward to the 1980s and then to present day to compensate for the sort of generation gap, if you know what I'm talking about. That would make sense because It came out in the 80s. But the original books set the background part of it in the 1950s. Gotcha. Which is where this TV show is set. So it's sort of taking some of that fabric from the original book, if you know what I mean. Am I? Right, I got you. So it's taking the kind of the era of the original book, but those facts have already been moved to a different timeline. So it's a different set of facts happening in the same era.

51:14I got you. I mean, I might be overthinking it, but that's what I got from it. Obviously, Bill Skarsgård is back as Pennywise. We don't know to what degree he is back, but he is glimpsed in the trailer. We know he's part of the show. And I believe the plan is for future seasons, they will keep moving backwards in time, like 27 years each time. So it's another resurgence of Pennywise through different eras of Derry. So when does Sister Michael come into it? Like, is she going to be fighting the demon?

51:42Chris Hewitt:Honestly, if she appeared, I would give Pennywise very, very, very long odds on survival. Very slim odds. That would be amazing. So long odds or slim odds. See, I would say, like, you know, I'd give him 101 on survival, which means he's unlikely to survive. But you're saying slim odds. Is that not the same thing? I don't know. that's what I'm trying to verify. I'm trying to establish this. All I know is like my dad used to say if he didn't think if I was like asking for a treat that I wasn't going to get it was like you've got three chances fat, slim and none and slim just left town. I thought you were going to say if I was asking for a sweet he would say Pennywise is going to come and get you.

52:17No, he wasn't he wasn't actively abusive that way thanks very much. Yeah, he was very much not abusive in fact he was a member of the NSPCC for example.

52:24Chris Hewitt:I should never have said it. I'm sorry. They all float down here. your mother sucks cocks in hell your mother sucks cocks in hell I've heard absolutely disgraceful behaviour it is a very Northern Irish week this week on the podcast here laser lips your mother was a snowblower more Northern Irish people should be in films insulting other people just generally yeah we do have a good accent for insults your father smelled of hamsters your father was a hamster your mother smelled of elderberries to be fair Yeah, hamsters probably smell quite bad. How do I get that wrong? Every single time. Your father smelled of hamsters.

53:04And you keep forgetting, I fart in your general direction, which is the follow-up.

53:08Chris Hewitt:And your mother was an elderberry. It's not quite at the same. So it's more like you're confiding to someone. Here now, I heard your father smell the hamsters and your mother was an elderberry. Is that true? You know, the more I think about it, the more I think it was your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elder birds your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of have we been getting it wrong the entire show I think we've been correcting ourselves the wrong way there's only one thing that we've been getting right and I've been farting in your general direction for some time damn it yeah I thought it was much there are no windows in here it's wafting guys it's really wafting it is it's wafting time oh my god Pazuzu's back It was supposed to be the thing and it did not work.

53:57Right, okay. I was like clobbering time, but worse.

54:00Chris Hewitt:Meet the Parents 4 is happening. And it has a new title. And the title is Fokker in Law. So I think we can guess the plot, such as it is, of this movie. The news is that Ariana Grande is in it, right? Yeah, Ariana Grande is in it. But again, that was announced a while ago. but the title is Focker-in-law so Jesus the movie will follow the son of Ben Stiller and Terry Polo's characters who gets engaged to a ball-busting woman who seems all wrong for him the fiancé would be so wait so the fiancé is Ariana Grande? Ariana Grande she's like the bad guy? yeah but she'll turn out to be great it's like it's like it's like that Bryan Cranston James Franco movie from a few years ago Why Him?

54:52Chris Hewitt:and then And they'll find common ground. Oh, okay. And so he's going to be reimagined, Greg Fokker, as the ball-busting dad in the same way that De Niro was in the original. I see. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, okay. That's Bobby D back. But look, all good people. Yeah, come on. It could be great. We're just talking about celebrating comedy on the big screen, Chris. Come on. I didn't mean this one. I meant other ones. But good people. Good people. Good people are... Every single day, Chris. Every day. Every day is an upper dawn pride swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about. That's not an insult, but it's a good line.

55:34Chris Hewitt:It's a good line. It's a good line in that movie. One last thing. Did anyone see the trailer for Corn Hardy, friend of the podcast? So I will say I'm a little biased, but his new movie, Whistle, it's a horror film. Yeah. And that looks good. It looks scary. Very scary, yes. I'm very keen to see it. Daphne keen to see it because she's in it. It's about some school kids who find an ancient Aztec whistle that when you blow into it, it brings an evil specter into your life. It's a death whistle. Yes. Nice. Is that nice? In my world, yeah. Benny Boy, he loves his horror films. He loves the spooks. Is this him back in the hallow territory?

56:20That's a great film. Back in the habit. Oh, yeah.

56:27Chris Hewitt:Is that Sister Michael as well in that movie? Yeah, it looks like it's very, very spooky indeed. So a solid, solid trailer. Hey, one last thing to talk about. Very exciting. It is a new Empire Day. As we record this, it is Thursday, the 31st of July. brand new issue of Empire has hit the newsstands all over the land and on the cover is A.V.A.T.E.R. Fire and Ash the third film in James Cameron's Avatar franchise of course on the cover who's on the cover? Is it Jake Sully? No. Is it Nate Thierry? No. Is it Quarage? No. Is it Parker Selfridge? No. Is it Grace Augustine? Grace Augustine She's dead.

57:17Is she, though? In a manner of speaking? Maybe not. Anyway.

57:22Chris Hewitt:Is it Johnny Five? Who is it? Who's on the cover? Pyakan! No. No, it's too painful. We couldn't put Pyakan on the cover. Damn it. Is it Mick Scoresby? Scourge of Pyakan? No. Sadly not. It's a brand new character. Who is it? Varang. Which is fun to say. Varang. It sounds like you just hit something metal against something else metal. Varang. There'd be a good magazine title in that. It would be, yeah. Yeah, this is a new character played by Una Chaplin. The best Chaplin. The leader of the Mang Quan clan. The Ash people who are a new set of Na 'vi being introduced in this film. Named after Leslie Ash from Men Behaving Badly.

58:06Named after the band Ash who are great. Named after Ash from Evil Dead 2. Yes. They have chainsaws for hands, I think. is that whole thing. He's good at insults, actually. Ash. Oh, I thought you meant the hand that's just like liberally flipping him off. The hand is great at insults. Yeah. Can you remember a good Ash insult?

58:26Chris Hewitt:He just says things like, she bitch. Yo, she bitch, let's go. See, I said it was in the delivery. Sorry, sorry. I'll do it so Alex can understand. Yo, she bitch, let's go. I didn't understand. Anyway, yes, Ben. Where do we go from here? Farang, Farang, Farang. She's on the cover. But inside is a truly epic piece of journalism from Nick Dissemblian, who went to New Zealand and shadowed Jim Cameron. Without telling him. Without telling him. Like Gary Busey in Hyder in the House, he lived within the walls of James Cameron's apartment for six months. No, for two days. He shadowed James Cameron for two days.

59:12Chris Hewitt:Unfettered. No holds. all access areas. I assume he let him go to the toilet on his own, but I'm not entirely 100 % sure. And it's incredible. What you get is a real insight into what Cameron and his team are doing in the build-up to finishing this epic undertaking. But we also have interviews with Sam Worthington. Yes, we do. And with Una Chaplin. We've got loads of exclusive images, stuff that's not in that trailer. There's loads of stuff that's not in that trailer that is in the magazine. Yeah, it's 12 pages. It's a mammoth cover story. And it is such an amazing read. It was Nick's idea. It's like, can I spend two days with James Cameron?

59:54And for some reason, James Cameron said yes. And Nick has described, and it's everything you would want from what it would be like to spend two days with James Cameron as he makes the film and has his post-production powwows and goes over effects and editing and talks to people in ways that only James Cameron can. And would get away with. The 500 word passage show

1:00:15Chris Hewitt:where Nick watches James Cameron sleep and describes what that looks like I thought was a little bit invasive. That's why they asked him to leave. They were like, can you please go? It was creepy, but then you really got a sense of how James Cameron is when he sleeps is really similar to how he is when he's awake. Because actually he's not really sleeping. His consciousness is transferred into a Navi body where he can then be inside. He probably wants to do that one though. Of course he wants to do that. He goes to sleep and then just puts his consciousness is in another James Cameron body and he goes around and directs films while he is sleeping in the main host body.

1:00:48Chris Hewitt:These films are wish fulfillment for James Cameron. I think they are, very much so. So Avatar, Fire and Ash is out later on in the year. This is a world-exclusive first look at the movie that is worth the price of purchase alone. But in case you're on the fence about buying this month's issue of Empire Magazine, what will tip these people over the fence and into next door's garden? There is an entire feature about the insane making of Robert Altman's Popeye. Oh, I've seen that town. It's still there. You went to the Popeye village in Malta. Damn. In Malta. Interesting. Well, we spoke, one of the people, Jamie Graham wrote the piece, one of the people he spoke to was a production designer who designed and made that town.

1:01:26He was not, he says, I went there recently with my son and they were charging money and he didn't like what they'd done to it and he refused to go in out of principles. I didn't go in, to be fair. I just saw it from... It's a great story. It's a really great story about and the insane making of an insane film, which involved, you know, lots of people doing it. Spinach. People taking spinach. And cocaine. Not a great combination. And then the greatest interview I've ever had in my entire life was the hour I spent with Spinal Tap. The hour I spent with Spinal Tap in character. Wow, you were in character.

1:02:02I was, as myself. As a hard-hitting journalist. But it really, it was a Zoom call. logged on and Nigel Tufnell greeted me and they did not break character for an hour but presumably they weren't on screen no we decided beforehand to do it as Zoom audio which just was easier for everybody so none of us could see each other but I had an audio experience with Nigel Tufnell Davison Hubbins Derek Smalls and Marty DeBerge and because the Spinal Tap 2 the end continues it's coming out in cinemas at some point soon September 12th and we spoke for an hour but not really about that film. We just spoke a lot of nonsense and it was very, very funny.

1:02:41Chris Hewitt:That reminds me, actually, the trailer of that film hit this week. What did you guys think? It looked fun. Funny, yeah, very promising. It looked very spinal-tappy. You always worry about comedy sequels, don't you? Because, you know, the track record of comedy sequels is not great. But, you know, I'm very hopeful for this one. This week begs to differ, I would say. Yeah, sequel slash reboot. And that does give me hope. There are exceptions. But, you know, it's a tough road. So I'm very, very fingers crossed for this one. Very fingers crossed indeed. What else is in the issue real quick? Because obviously we do a show now called The Shameless Plug where we will take a deep dive into the issue.

1:03:19Chris Hewitt:So we're not going to take up as much of your time as we ordinarily would. But what else is in there? A big old interview with David Johnson, who is just an incredible talent of recent years from Rye Lane and Alien Romulus. He's going to be in The Long Walk soon. Chris, you were chatting to Glenn Powell about The Running Man? Yeah, probably. It's very hard for me to remember, but yes, I was. I know that I talked to Jeremy Renner for this issue as well. Great interview. Yeah. Coast Plow. Yes. Maybe one of the only people who you've interviewed who says, when I died. No, everyone says that. because the experience being interviewed by me is very much like a near-death experience.

1:03:57Chris Hewitt:Yeah, I get that. So, like, when I died during your fourth interminable word salad question, get to the point, you prick. But the Jeremy Renner one was incredible because he fucking died. He was crushed by that snowplow. He died for a couple of minutes or so, they estimate. And he's like Jeff Chelios. He was dead. he got better and did you tell him he's like Jeff Chelios no I didn't because I'm not sure that Jeremy Renner is aware of the Crank movies he might be that might be his favorite films but then I'd have to go you're like Jeff Chelios and then he would look at me blankly and I'd have to go you know like Jason Statham and then I would lose all confidence and just wither and die but he bounded into that room I remember that like like a man who had not been crushed by a snowplow.

1:04:54Chris Hewitt:And he has a newfound lease of life and a new philosophy on life that I found actually really humbling and moving. So that's good. He looks incredible. Not only does he not look like he's been crushed by a snowplow, he looks incredible. I look like I've been crushed by a snowplow. I have not. There's a picture of me and him in the magazine. And whenever you're in that little dispatches section at the beginning of the magazine, they ask you to write a little caption that you go alongside it. and in my caption I'm sure this was cut just for room and not for anything else I went if you had to guess which one of these men had been run over by a snow plow you'd think it would be me and that was cut in the end but it's true it's like he still he looks like Jeremy Renner it's wild I read the book I read his autobiography about it my next breath it was pretty freaking insane stuff that's why I was talking to him because he was in town to do some promotional events and it's a fascinating book because it really like if you want to if you want to oh I want some anecdotes about Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol or what's it like to be Unsettledly Avengers you're not going to get them you're going to get what it's like to be under a 14 ,000 pound snow plow you're going to be told what it's like to see one eye with your other eye oh my god my dad did that my dad did that once yeah my dad had something called scleritis which I'm told is hereditary fingers crossed it hits my sister and not me what

1:06:23Chris Hewitt:it was something what you've finally gone too far finally gone too far I don't even know her no she's a lovely woman in installment too late and so they it was this thing his eye was in horrible pain and they froze his eye and they gouged his eye out with basically a spoon there's some local anesthetic on his eye my dad he described this to me was the sheriff of Nottingham the surgeon what the hell he said his vision he could still see and his eye was hanging on his cheek and you could see around the room with your own eye no thank you yeah no thanks so that's in the issue there are other great things there are other great things inside the issue as well so that's good it's on set right now it is covers amazing Varang Varang The subs cover is amazing It's extraordinary Can't wait for the deep dive Podcast with Nick Talking about all things Jim Cameron It's going to be Absolutely extraordinary So there you go Anyway That is it For the movie news column James Gunn Is going to be At the end of the show After the reviews We're doing things A little differently Around here this week So we're going to go into The reviews section Of the show There are three films That are worthy Of our attention this week.

1:07:47One is Bring Her Back.

1:07:50Chris Hewitt:The other two are The Naked Gun and Happy Gilmore 2. Shall we start with Happy Gilmore 2, which apparently has broken all kinds of records over the weekend for Netflix in terms of eyes on the prize, etc, etc, etc. This is a sequel, of course, to the iconic, classic 1996 Dennis Duggan-directed movie, which introduced Adam Sandler to the world, effectively. I mean, Billy Madison had been the year before, but this was the one that really broke Sandler as a movie star, as the ice hockey player turned golfer, Happy Gilmore. Yes. And it's one of the early funny ones. It's one of the Adam Sandler movies that I was a big fan of.

1:08:32That Billy Madison, The Wedding Singer, these were the films that kind of made his name. And even though I could not give a flying fuck about golf, it's a funny movie. And this one, I think...

1:08:42Chris Hewitt:You choose your words very fucking carefully. this one has kind of legacy status about it, I think. So it has a lot of people who are clearly huge fans of the original coming in to do cameos. The cameo list on this is deep. Did I recognize many of them? No, because I'm not a fucking golfer. But if I had been a golfer, I would have recognized them all. It's that kind of a movie, you know? Yeah. But it's got most of the original cast back and some new people. So Sandler's happy, has, of course, as we saw, had this golf career, been on top of the world. For one reason or another, he's suffered a reversal in fortunes, let's just say.

1:09:26And he's now in a tough bind. He has four sons and a daughter who he dotes on, who is played by Adam Sandler's own daughter. And she wants to go to Paris to study ballet. But he needs the money to pay for this, you know. Where is he going to get it? He's going to have to get back in the habit. and get back into golf. What, like Sister Michael? Like Sister Michael in Welcome to Derry. He's going to have to battle Pennywise, as it were. Pennywise, in this case, is represented by Benny Safdie as an evil golf promoter who wants to change the game of golf and make it more fun and interesting and short.

1:10:02So, yes, so Happy will have to lead the forces of traditional golf against this upstart in order to get the money he needs to save his family, I guess, and to help his family. That's kind of the broad plot. There's lots of visions of, you know, the now departed people who were with us in the first film, for example. Do you remember his beloved granny? There are lots of reappearances of old characters. Ben Stiller still plays the worst man in the world, for example, now in a slightly new role. There's a very funny running joke about Happy having succumb to alcoholism and hiding alcohol everywhere anytime he picks up an object in the first half of the film he unscrews it and it turns out to be a flask I laughed I thought that was fun

1:10:54Chris Hewitt:Imagine with Pazuzu's voice that would really kill and of course Christopher McDonald is back as Shooter McGavin Shooter McGavin who has spent the intervening years in a mental health institute he's my favourite thing in the movie He's very fun. He's very fun. Presumably, he was in the Mental Health Institute to stop him eating pieces of shit for breakfast, but it seems to have worked. So, look, I did have a really good time. I didn't have a freaking clue, like I say, who half of the people in the cameos were. Taylor Swift's boyfriend is in there as a waiter. Travis Kelsey. Travis Kelsey has a name.

1:11:31Chris Hewitt:Yes, he's good. He's fun. He's solid. Bad Bunny is quite fun as the caddy. It's fun. I had a good time. I didn't expect to. I went in with extraordinarily low expectations. And I giggled. I have not seen this yet, but you kind of have me at Benny Safdie as an evil golf promoter. Oh my God. How is that? Benny Safdie may be my... Okay, because the Sandman, I'm just setting him to one side because he's just absolutely solid and I'm in the tank and he's great. I'm not in the tank for everything, by the way. He's made a lot of very, very bad films. But Benny Safdie in this film is very, very, very funny.

1:12:07Chris Hewitt:there's probably not enough of him in the film but every scene he's in he absolutely kills it he has perhaps the most offensive hair I've ever seen and facial hair as well just everything everything about him is offensive is offensive he's a very very good bad guy very very hissable bad guy I had an absolute blast with this my expectations were fairly low as well this is directed by Kyle Newacek who is a younger director Dennis Duggan directed the original and he's in this one as well and there's lots of lovely little nods to the original and to all of Sandler's kind of repertory of peeps that he's worked with over the years but this is Kal Newacek who directed also Murder Mystery which is one of my favourite Adam Sandler comedies certainly of recent years and he actually has a sense of this is weird because if you look at the early Sandler movies they're not so much directed as just they happen in front of a camera and this actually does have a sense of style in certain places and, you know, a sense that Newacek is trying to achieve something visually as well as thematically.

1:13:12Chris Hewitt:But it never loses sight of the jokes. And the jokes are good. This sounds fun and it kind of makes me wish there was some, like, like a big room, right? There was a big room but like a load of people could all watch it at the same time and then if people are laughing, it's like even more funny because everybody's laughing. But Ben, this is what I said. I think I've got an idea. You could be onto something. This is what I said last week. Like, Netflix are leaving so much money on the table here with this movie. If they put it in cinemas, in the States alone, I think this would have cleared 70 million in something weekend.

1:13:47Chris Hewitt:This would have been huge. There's an enormous appetite for a new Happy Gilmore movie. And the fact that it is actually good and it delivers and there are jokes that are really, really, at times, inspired. I watched this last night. I hadn't had time to watch it until last night. I watched it with my wife, Paula. and I had to stop it three times because she was laughing so hard at a joke that she was just missing like the next minute of stuff. So three times I had to stop it. One of those, at least one of those is Benny Safdie related as well. And you're a couple of golf guys these days. We're golf guys.

1:14:23Chris Hewitt:And this, honestly, this is really interesting from a golf point of view as well because the first movie was punky and was kind of taking pot shots of golf and was done without the cooperation of the golf cognoscente, if you will. And now every golfer who's playing today grew up unhappy Gilmore. So every golfer you can think of and some you can't are in this movie. I think Tiger Woods is about the only one I didn't see. Tiger Woods is the only one who's not in this film. I don't know why that is. He's mentioned. He's mentioned, yeah. But he's not in the film. But in terms of the legendary figures of the game, you have Jack Nicklaus, you have Nick Faldo, you have God who else, Fred Couples.

1:15:10Chris Hewitt:And then if you're looking at people who are around nowadays in the game, you have Scotty Scheffler, who is the world's best golfer. Roy McIlroy, who's the greatest living Northern Irishman. You have Nellie Corder, the world's number one female golf player. There's all kinds of big, big names in this. And some of them are really fucking good as well. there's a really funny guy with a golfer called Will Salatoris who is actually given a lot to play and plays it really really well is that in the dinner scene? he's the he's the character who has a connection to the first movie right got you okay and and he plays it really well he's actually given stuff to play and Scotty Scotty Scheffler is given stuff to play as well and while he may not be quite as good in the acting stakes the material is strong enough to land so it's John Daly has a recurring role John Daly is phenomenal in this movie.

1:16:01Chris Hewitt:He's genuinely good. And I didn't have to look up who he was at all. I have not recognized a single golf name except Tiger Woods. Well, that's all right. No, you didn't Jack Nicklaus. No, no, no, Jack Nicklaus. Jack Nicholson from The Shining. Jack Nicholson from The Shining. But, you know, so it's in a way it's had validation now from golf. And even the plot where Benny Safdie is trying to mount this evil league of golf mirrors in a way what is happening to golf at the moment. There is a breakaway league and all that sort of stuff. But anyway, whether you like golf or whether you don't like golf, there is plenty in this.

1:16:34Chris Hewitt:It is a big, dumb, broad comedy that somehow manages to get past an absolutely stupefying decision that it makes in the first three minutes of the movie. How it recovers from that in terms of storytelling and getting you on side of a certain character is quite something. because it would kill most movies and it doesn't. But there you go. I really liked it. We gave it three stars. I'd go four, but I'm in the Sandler tank. I am the golf tank. Like it's like you're in two tanks at once. You're like in double tanks. I'm five stars. You're insulated. Five stars. So if I think there was some kind of like golf metaphor of like do it, like getting the big hit and you just one attempt and you just nail it.

1:17:18Because it sounds like that's what they did.

1:17:19Chris Hewitt:Yeah, sounds like it, doesn't it? Yeah, I would give this four stars. four stars for Happy Gilmore 2. But yeah, I really enjoyed it. Really, really, really liked it. No, he's not in this. Thanks, Ben. Do you want a tissue, Ben? After that review, I think I'm the one who needs a tissue. Oh, come on. Come on. Ben. What? Bring her back. Okay, bring it back with bring her back. Yeah. Ah, God, what a film. This is the return of the Philippou brothers who previously made Talk to Me, a film in which somebody tries to claw out their own eye. It's the clawing out your eyeballs episode. Hooray! Wait, no.

1:17:58Yeah. If that scene made you feel upset in Talk to Me, and it should have because it was very upsetting, you will also feel upset by Bring Her Back, which is an incredible follow-up horror film, another possession movie. Oh, Pazuzu. Not necessarily Pazuzu, but there's Pazuzish stuff going on. Pazuzin? that's really seeking for some reason that's really seeking for you're welcome oh god bring it back bring it back bring it back yeah this is their new film which is you know similar in vibe in some ways to talk to me but it is darker it's richer it's deeper it is darker than talk to me it is one of the amazing things about talk to me was that it was dark as fuck and it was so intense and it threw you around that film but it also had like a youthful energy to it and a humor and it was as they have said a bit of a party film because you're following these teenagers who are all sort of effectively getting high off being briefly possessed by this horrible embalmed hand this has a lot of similar elements but the plot involves these two kids andy who is 17 he's nearly 18.

1:19:17His little sister Piper, who is partially sighted, they lose their father very, very early on in the film. They have no parents. And so they need to kind of wait until Andy's 18 until they can go off and he can legally be her guardian. In the meantime, they get placed with Sally Hawkins, Laura, as their foster mother. And Sally Hawkins is grieving a loss of her own. She already has one foster son in the shape of Oliver. And they move into this house and it becomes clear that all is very, very, very, very much not right. And Laura has a lot going on that she is trying to work through with the help of these kids.

1:20:04And so you have a setup of loss, of grief, which was definitely a part of Talk To Me, but it's definitely a bigger flavor here. and as a result the film really has that philippo energy like all of the very very intentional filmmaking that you found in talk to me is in bring her back the way they move the camera the way that they just seem to know tonally exactly where they want to be because there are some moments of humor little moments of humor and levity here especially in the relationship between Andy and Piper. Incredibly well played by Billy Barrett and Sora Wong. This is Sora Wong's first film and she is outstanding.

1:20:49All the performances here are incredible. Sally Hawkins, just unbelievably great and playing kind of against type because she's Paddington's mum. She's Willy Wonka's mum. She would get a hard stare from Paddington for the things that go down. Paddington would shit himself in this film. Is it a scary film? it's a very scary film yeah it's scary and it's sad but it's also kind of beautiful and upsetting and thrilling as well this is the thing that I find because Talk To Me again had so much energy and there were certain moments in that film where you just felt the whole cinema vibrate and I was vibrating at the same level as the film and you're like holy fuck here we go it was a 40x screening it felt that way because of the way that the film was operating and there are moments of Bring Her Back that I found that same energy.

1:21:41More towards the end of the film because I think it's a film that slowly builds as it goes on. They've intended it that way. There's a lot of discomfort and sort of building like, what the fuck? As you go and moments where you're like, okay, well, this isn't enough to make, like this isn't enough to like pull the alarm, like hit the emergency brakes, but it's really discomforting and it's all adding up and it's all building and building and then it really... It's really propulsive. Yeah. This is going to sound hyperbolic, but very suddenly, now, two films in, this has cemented it for me. These guys, the Philippus, for me, are two of the best horror filmmakers on the planet.

1:22:22These two films are great, this one especially. I preferred this to talk to me as much as I enjoyed that film. This goes deeper, and it hits on different and more levels. I saw it, what, a couple of months ago? I can't stop thinking about it. it's really scarred me and I complimentary it just it does everything I would want a horror film to do on the surface and underneath it's scary it's disturbing it's upsetting it's really sad it's exploring really emotional stuff while just scaring the shit out of you I mean after seeing it I texted our whatsapp group and I said I am mentally spiritually and physically exhausted and it just it just gets you from from every angle I sent the same message

1:23:03Chris Hewitt:after Happy Gilmore 2 Yeah, well, you've got problems. But I came out of the film and I felt like I just need to be on my own and sit and stare into space and absorb it because it had genuinely a real profound effect on me. I think the Philippous are the real deal. I interviewed them for the magazine after seeing this film and I was excited to speak to them. I loved talking to me so much. And I was like, God, I hope I bring her back on the same level. And I absolutely did. and talking to them about it. They were an incredible company and just they are, they know exactly what they're doing. They have this YouTube background that kind of explains where all of the frenetic and kinetic filmmaking comes from, but also their propensity for crafting stories that plunge to such deep, personal, emotional depths for these characters.

1:23:58That is what blows me away about them. It's so well written and well structured on every level. On every level. And like you say, it's really propulsive. It just never stops. Again, I think that probably goes back to the YouTube thing. They're used to fitting things into a small space. You can't fuck around. You're going to lose people's attention straight away. You have to grab people. You have to be energetic. Also, they said they spent some time, they got invited by Sam Raimi to come and shadow him on his new horror film. and you know some of the kineticism of the Philippou's films I think shares you can see

1:24:34Chris Hewitt:the DNA in there oh that's exciting alright four stars in for bring her back Hell's Bells yeah The Naked Gun bring comedy back yes comedy's back bitches now this is this was a welcome this was a welcome welcome treat I was hopeful but not sure that this would be good but spoiler for everything else I might say this is so funny I giggled pretty much continuously for 85 glorious minutes can we just enjoy that running time for a second 85 minutes I mean Happy Gilmore 2 is nearly two hours long yeah we should say this packs it all in to under an hour and a half so yes Liam Neeson is Frank Drebin Jr who by the way the first three times he introduces himself he gives himself a different rank he is sergeant lieutenant and detective in his first three introductions of himself.

1:25:26Tiny little detail, but I loved it. He is, we see him, you've seen him, if you've seen the trailer, breaking up a bank robbery. But of course, somebody still gets away and he's trying to chase down his fugitive when he is removed for, let's be honest, gross incompetence and placed on a different case which involves an apparent suicide. But the victim's sister, Beth, played by Pamela Anderson, is not so convinced that it was a simple suicide. And sure enough, it turns out that the two cases may be related and may be related to obviously sinister tech giant, Richard Kane, who's played by Danny Bad Guy Houston.

1:26:06Well, of course.

1:26:07Chris Hewitt:He's very funny in his film. He's very funny. Look, it doesn't matter. The plot doesn't matter. Nothing about this matters. What matters is it is a vehicle to throw jokes at you solidly for 85 minutes. And do stay through the credits. There are, in the Naked Gun tradition, jokes in the credits themselves. I just had the best time. It's one of those films where you walk home trading lines from the movie you've just seen with your partner. Your cop partner. You're the partner that you investigate murders with. Yes, absolutely. I investigate murders a lot. I think this does feel like a bit of an update on the original Naked Guns in the sense that they are making fun of conventions of police entertainment nowadays.

1:26:50so you're having you know then they're they're handed a takeaway coffee cup every single time they walk into a room for example for the first few scenes just you know little sort of visual cues that we recognize from law and order and csi and things like that um they uh there's also a sort of running joke that frank is a bit of a dinosaur in a slightly more uh sensitive department that he is, you know, perhaps behind the times. They get a lot of mileage out of that. But mostly it's just big, stupid jokes in the naked gun tradition, like really, really deeply stupid. But it, you know, it takes intelligence to be this stupid.

1:27:32And I think Akiva Shaffer is just like one of the smartest people out there at dumb comedy. I think he is so, so clever. And, you know, even if a joke misses for you, it doesn't matter because there'll be another one along in like 10 seconds. I just had a blast. I mean, yeah, there's plots. Yeah, it's uneven. Who gives a fuck? It's a Naked Gun movie, and it's just a joke machine. Loved it.

1:27:57Chris Hewitt:Yeah, I was so nervous about this. I had so much trepidation about this movie when I went to see it. Just the idea of making another Naked Gun that didn't have the involvement of David Sucker or Jerry Sucker obviously Jim Abraham is no longer with us although the Naked Gun movies were directed by David Sucker at least the first two were more than the said I said trio that just felt wrong to me and I was so on edge about this and even though Liam Neeson on the face of it sounds like good casting I was still very very worried about pretty much everything and the first trailer that came out didn't exactly help my feelings because I felt that it was just, there were a couple of solid gags in there, but the cutting was off, the rhythm of the jokes was off, that man's laughter joke with Busta Rhymes.

1:28:50Chris Hewitt:Whoever cut that up in the trailer should be imprisoned. You know, they put the punchline before the setup. It doesn't make any sense. What the fuck are you doing? All those things, I went in really feeling that this was going to be not good. And it was just me and one other person and a security guard. not the best situation to watch a movie like this and I was just guffawing all the way through it puts you at ease in the first the bank robbery thing the gag with Frank revealing himself that he's dressed disguised as a young girl that joke doesn't work brilliantly I have to say but everything else after it as he goes through a bunch of disposable henchmen in a very very funny way just made me think oh we're actually we're in pretty safe hands here and there is some absolutely inspired gags.

1:29:39Chris Hewitt:Maybe a little bit more scatologically fixated than the classic Naked Gun movies. That's probably fair. Yeah, there's a sort of, there's a running gag about bad chili dogs or something at one point, which is really gross. But that made me laugh so hard at the same time. And there's some great, great, great jokes in here. And Big Liam, the third greatest living Northern Irishman after Roy McIlroy and Connor Bradley, was very, very solid indeed. And so is Pamela Anderson. Yeah, really. She was really fun. She absolutely hit the sort of femme fatale beats that she needed to hit. She did it really, really well.

1:30:16Liam Neeson has been kind of flirting with this kind of comedy for years and things like Derry Girls and the Lego Movie or Lego Movie 2, I forget. But to see him go full deadpan comedy was just delightful to me. He was having the best time, I think.

1:30:32Chris Hewitt:Yes, one of my favourite things of recent years is every now and again I will watch his very very brief appearance on Life Too Short the Ricky Gervais Stephen Merchant it's amazing show absolutely amazing where it's just it's like six minutes of the most incredible comedy where he barges into Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's office and demands to do improvisational comedy with him and it goes off the rails it's one of the funniest things I mean I assumed that this I had assumed this grew out of that because you see that and you go well he can do this yeah there's also by the way a bit with a windshield in this movie that still makes me crack up to even think about it yes it's there's also a bit where Frank falls down some stairs it makes me laugh so hard and Big Liam goes for it so listen go and see it if you want to see more movies like this made that actually reach the big screen not like Heads of State and not like Happy Gilmore 2 they're not snapped up by streaming services and we sit there at home on our sofas and we vegetate and drool runs out of our mouths so go to the cinema and have a communal experience laughing at a big, dumb, funny, but also really smart, dumb comedy, go and see it.

1:31:41Chris Hewitt:I hear it's tracking to make$15 million in this opening weekend in the States, which is not great, but fingers crossed. I was hoping that it would really, really break out and be huge. Anyway, we gave this one... Four stars. Four stars. Four stars then for The Naked Gun. What a week for comedy and horror and cinema. That is it for the review section, which means there's just one last scene to talk about and that is James Gunn. James Gunn on Superman. So Superman's been out for a couple of weeks now and is doing gangbusters business at the box office and it is now time to hear James Gunn's spoiler special interview with me that I did a couple of weeks ago.

1:32:23Chris Hewitt:This is going to be an excerpt from that. You're not going to hear the full thing. For the full thing, yes, you will have to go to the spoiler special subscription channel and hear that plus the second part of Team Empire's take on the movie. There was lots of stuff we didn't discuss in the first Superman spoiler special that is taken care of in part two and that will all be up there for you guys and going into August we have all sorts of goodies coming your way. We will be doing spoiler specials by the way on Alien Earth and Peacemaker Season 2 and some other things that are cult movies I think in the month of August also.

1:33:03Chris Hewitt:So if you don't already subscribe, empire.supportingcast.fm, you get all the new stuff every month, plus access to our archive of over 400 amazing spoiler special interviews, including James Gunn on Guardians 2 and 3. Not one, though. We didn't get him on number one. But James Gunn on Guardians 2 and 3. And now, Superman. And you're going to hear that excerpt now. Enjoy. Let's get into the movie. And let's get into the movie the way you get into the movie, which is that really interesting opening, just throwing us into this world, plunging us into this world. But with the text at the beginning, the opening text.

1:33:43Chris Hewitt:Yeah. Can you talk about that? Was that always where you wanted to start? No. Okay. All right. I wouldn't have given it away, but one of the producers did an interview that we, yeah, we did not always have that text up front. Okay. And, you know, we were creating this universe. When I was creating the movie, I did want to create a movie that was just what you normally see in a Superman movie, which is Superman and coming to Earth and then the origin story. And then it's just Superman and a bunch of people. I wanted to create the DC universe. I wanted to create the world that I read when I was a kid.

1:34:20When I opened a comic book when I was three and four years old, it was Superman with his superhero friends and his flying dog and robots and sorcery and all this crazy stuff. Like, I wanted to create that on screen. And yet I found that audiences in our initial test screenings were felt ungrounded by the fact that we were starting in the action that we had that we had all this whole world that they didn't understand. And so I thought back to Star Wars and I'm like, yeah, if I was going to see Star Wars and I didn't know anything, there was no grounding to it whatsoever, would have it been a little bit jarring?

1:35:05I thought, yeah, it might have been. So did you always start with Superman plunging into the stuff? Always, yeah. That was, I mean, yeah, that was, you know, when I started writing the script, there were two things that kind of kick-started everything for me. First was this idea of Superman with just a little bit of blood coming from his mouth and going, wow, that would be a unique image that we haven't really seen. And then also having crypto.

1:35:33Chris Hewitt:Straight in. Right away. So the text is really interesting because you have, you know, you're playing with the number three. Yeah. As well. three centuries ago, 30 years ago, three months ago, three minutes ago. Yeah. And then Clark and Lois have been seeing each other for three months. Was that all part of the plan or was that something that you... Yeah, that was always a part. Yeah, that was always part of the history that was embedded into the film before we set it explicitly at the front. Yeah. Yeah. I want to shoot ahead to the end of the movie. We'll get into everything that leads Superman to where he is at the end.

1:36:08Chris Hewitt:But I'm always intrigued by final shots, final images. in movies and here you have superman clark kal-el you don't really call him kal-el that much in the movie but no just the only person who ever calls him kal-el is uh jor-el yes and i want to get into that uh and you have him drenched in sunlight and smiling as well and he's enveloped in this warmth and he's finally at peace with who he is a little bit yeah i mean i think he's accepted himself as as a human you know and what whatever that means to him um and i think that he's really happy with what his um what his life is and who he comes from and who his people are and he knows who he is at the end yeah because there's an interesting thread there's lots of interesting threads in the movie but one of them is nature versus nurture yes and parents and maybe choosing what to inherit from your parents and choosing what to the values that you live your life by and that is something that Clark is tested yes on in this movie yeah so the the message that his parents sent back that is a fairly big revelation where did you uh hit upon that idea that is well it's actually been played with in the comics before so it's not completely novel um but I I thought that this is you know know, from the beginning, I thought that this was a story that was about Clark Kent's internal journey.

1:37:38And despite all of the, you know, pyrotechnics and flying dogs and robots and monsters, it is about his, you know, who he is and how he views himself. And it is a coming of age story in a way. He's come to the Daily Planet. He's a newer reporter. He's learning how to do that. He's learning how to be Superman. And I think he's, he's a kid in the big city. It was like kind of forgetting his parents a little bit. He's got these other parents that are idealized in his head. They're everything in his part that is perfect. They're not his down home parents that are, you know, a pain in the butt, but who love him.

1:38:17Um, and I think he just comes to realize where he came from and who he is and what's really important to him. And, um, all of that is of of course, exacerbated by the fact that his parents sent him to the world with, you know, I don't want to say without the best intentions, because they have, they love their son. They want him to be okay. They just think of humans as ants and they really don't care. And they think that his job is to repopulate our planet in his own form.

1:38:50Chris Hewitt:And they don't quite say go full of Brightburn on humanity's houses, but yeah no he's not a destroyer yeah he's just a propagator yeah and so in terms of that filming that you were saying there that uh jor-el is the only person says kal-el yeah in the movie that's a very conscious choice can you talk about that first of all no it's not really i mean it's just i don't know who else would call him kal-el i mean he's does he think of himself as kal-el or does he think of himself as clark he was raised as clark his parents he didn't yeah yeah definitely His parents call him Clark. He thinks of himself as Clark.

1:39:25And bringing Bradley Cooper in. Yeah. Was that just a simple? That was just me saying, Brad, will you do me a favor? And he's like, what is it? And I said, will you be Jor-El? And he said, how long will it take? And he said, one day. But it's in London, so you have to fly to London and shoot in this 3D environment that we had set up over here. So, yeah, but yeah, he was he's a great guy and a good friend and a talented director. And I appreciate the fact that he did me a solid by appearing in the movie.

1:39:59Chris Hewitt:But you also have this other crucial relationship in the film. I want to get to obviously Clark and Lois in a second, but there's that scene in Smallville on the porch between between, you know, Jonathan and Clark and I'm paraphrasing wildly here, But essentially, Jonathan says something like, you know, parents should not dictate to their children what they become. Yeah, yeah. He says, you know, parents aren't here for telling their kids what to do. They're here to give them the tools so they can go off and make their own stupid choices. Yeah, yeah. You know, be fools all on their own is what he says.

1:40:35And yeah, I think that's really important. I think that's really important. I think, I mean, listen, that's my belief system, right? I mean, we are what we choose to do. We're, we're, who we are is dictated by our own choices. That's it. You know, not by our thoughts, not by our feelings, just by what we choose to do, our actions and our choices. That's what makes each of us who we are. And, um, and that's, that's who Clark is. And I think in that moment, Clark sort of realizes that he's, he's, he's beautiful. Like he's, he's good. He has interpreted his parents' message to mean what he wanted it to mean.

1:41:14Yeah. So that he could go out and help people and do the things that he wants to do. You know, I think that's really beautiful. And I think that's what, you know, that's what the movie's about.

1:41:25Chris Hewitt:Is that the key scene of the movie for you? Or are you looking at the Lois and Clark interview scene as well? Or even the scene with Lex at the end where Superman makes that lovely speech about humanity and what it is to be human. I think it's, I think it, the movie exists, you know, it's the sum of its parts. It's not one scene. I think, you know, that if you ask me what really differentiates this, differentiates this movie from any other superhero movie, it is the interview scene. Yeah. Because that's where we really get to know these characters as human beings. And, and that's just not something you do in a superhero movie.

1:41:59So I love that aspect of it. But, yes, the scene in terms of the center of the morality of the film, of what the central message that's in that scene, and then what Clark takes away from it and who he believes he is, is in that ending speech. And then, of course, there's the very ending, which is really about him, you know, deciding who his parents really are.

1:42:23Chris Hewitt:And that's John and Martha Kent. And when you wrote that line at the beginning, you know, the message from his parents soothes him, did you have it in your back pocket for the end? that callback of course yeah you knew instantly that that was that was going to be oh yeah all that stuff is written so that it pays off in the next you know phase in the next phase yeah no everything is everything is about that journey and the whole movie and even all the action is all about that journey of Superman okay that was James Gunn talking about Superman super spoilers and on that note that is it for this week's Empire podcast join Helen next week yeah for more film related fun when she'll be joined by...

1:43:03Chris Hewitt:Not sure yet. Helpful. Cool. Yeah, I know. Don't worry. I'm fully on top of it. But probably Guy Pearce. Cool. Star of an excellent new Australian prison drama called Inside. Possibly Timothy Olyphant and Sidney Chandler, stars of Alien Earth. That sounds acceptable. And maybe Benedict Wong. Wongers himself. Star of the new Sack Kreger horror movie, which I hear is Ace. Weapons. So that's exciting. Two of those are in the bag. I'm not sure whether one of them is going to be in next week's episode. And one of them is not in the bag. And will be in next week's episode if we get him in the bag. Great.

1:43:55Chris Hewitt:Okay. But there you go. All right. Timothy Ollivan's hair, Helen. Bloody hell. It's just a thing of beauty. I got to see it up close and personally yesterday and I'm still reeling. Man, that's a handsome man right there. That is, well, thank you. But also Timothy Ollivan is a bad idea. He's not bad himself. Oh, dear Lord. But anyway, it's a cracking, cracking lineup or will be probably on next week's show. So tune in then. But anyway, until we meet again, until that auspicious occasion, until then, it is goodbye from my three colleagues of such lethal cunning. Goodbye, Alex Godfrey. The power of Christ compels me.

1:44:30Chris Hewitt:Gets better and better, doesn't it? It was the most startling impression I've ever heard. Yep, that's all I got. That's all I got left. It's been a long couple of hours. It's goodbye from Ben Travis. You are the ones who are the ball lickers. Goodbye. It's goodbye from Helen O 'Hara. You ate pieces of shit for breakfast? No. and it's goodbye from me what we have just said over the last hour and a half or so is one of the most insanely idiotic things I've ever heard at no point in our rambling incoherent podcast were we even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought everyone in this room or tube or bus or plane or wherever you listen to this podcast is now dumber for have you listened to it I award us no points and may God have mercy on our souls

1:45:29Chris Hewitt:that's more like Cartman than anything else fuck you that's a good Cartman what's going on with you I don't know thanks for listening see you next time bye bye