‘Project Hail Mary’ Will Amaze! Amaze! Amaze! With Phil Lord and Chris Miller

about a Hail Mary in the first quarter. On today's show, we will dive into the highly anticipated Ryan Gosling Space Saga Project Hail Mary. Then I will be joined for a conversation with directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who are back with their first directorial effort in more than 10 years. We talked about how they made this movie by hand. The practical effects, the physical effects, the science,

the puppeteering. It is a truly amazing act of craftsmanship and a time of a lot of digital

glop that Amanda and I can play an allowed a lot on the show. So stick around for that conversation. But first, we have some movie news to get into right after this. This episode of The Big Picture is presented by State Farm, sure, being an expert and movie trivia is impressive. You know, it's even more impressive, being smart about saving money. And a great way to do that is by saving when you choose to bundle home and auto

with the State Farm Personal Price Plan, bundling, just another way to save with the personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. Okay, Dobbins. I was winging about the Oscar rating. Well, this is serious matter because it's really important. But really, we put on our, we put on our pick it out. I should say,

“Ms. Dobbins. That's how we're going to open this because Mr. Fennices here, we're going to”

talk about the Oscar ratings. They came in, they came in very late, suspiciously, and I believe the reason they came in so late is because they're not good. They are down 9% year over year, 17.86

million. I was very wrong. I thought they would be up this year, and they were not. And of course,

I know that linear television ratings are going down across the board for everything other than football. But I was surprised. And why do you think that happened? I was also, I was wrong. I should say, not as wrong as you who both thought that they were going to go up and also like invested your, you know, weeks happiness in it. I thought they were going to hold. And they're significantly down. This is the lowest broadcast since 2022. So whatever,

like post-COVID updick is back down. We're still in like a 5 million person range here, which is just to say the, you know, the 90s and the 2000s hate days is gone. We're talking about a

“different, it's like just a completely different segment of the audience. I think this award season”

was way too long. I think it was way, way, way, way, way, way too long. And I do think that in the same way, we have sort of trained audiences to expect black busters in the summer. And fancy prestige movies around Thanksgiving and Christmas. And now a surprisingly good movie in, you know, March or April that you aren't. We have trained people to expect awards shows around the awards show season, which is January and February. And it was March 15th. So I do honestly think some of it is just

habit. Like people have moved on to their spring and summer pursuits and have been hearing about this for a long time. And there's a real weight. The Oscars haven't happened yet. Especially, you know, when sinners, which was one of the two main competitors, had been out for almost a year. Just there were some other components too. I think one, obviously, the show is not like on an

“upward trajectory long term. I'm very well aware of that. I think the world baseball semi final,”

which featured the United States against the Dominican was not something that the show anticipated could happen. But this is the risk you run when you start getting really close to baseball season. You start getting in the way of potential sporting events, cutting into your audience. And that

WBC game, I think it's 7.86 million, which for a baseball game is huge. Let alone an

basically an exhibition tournament before the season even starts. So that's a factor. Sure, though counterpoint, I who enjoyed that baseball, literally found out that the world baseball classic was happening on this podcast when you told me. So I don't know if the audience is overlapping to the same shirt. People turning 10 percent is a lot. Like 10 percent is the amount that it was down in last year. But sure, like the people who were throwing a dart at the TV lineup before

they turn it on for the night. Sure, everybody else, they are tuning in for one or the other. Yeah, hardcore movie fans. Obviously, more important missing the Oscars. I shouldn't say that. Hardcore award show fans are missing the Oscars. Some movie fans don't care about the Oscars. I think this is really interesting because obviously there's two more telecasts coming on ABC and they're losing the show. I don't really know how much they're going to care about the

ratings in those final two years. You know that it's not really their problem. So to speak, going forward

YouTube show is of some interest to me. And I think we'll become maybe like a little pet

topic of discussion on this show over the next couple of years and or possibly a patent point. Yeah, I mean, truthfully, you know, driving engagement on YouTube is done very differently. It is like a lot of gamifying, a lot of direct address, a lot of like tricks and tools that are used to keep people locked into their screen as opposed to kind of idly watching television. And it's just a very different ball game. And I'm just fascinated to see how the academy kind of

adapts or does an adapt to that future. Yeah, in some ways, this show is like pre-itemized in a way that is actually very helpful for YouTube once the show has happened. Right. And then they have

24 bite-sized acceptance speeches that we already all like look up and I think that many people

consume the next day on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram rather than watching the broadcast itself.

“So it's kind of finding its home, but you have to assume that they want live views of the entire”

broadcast, which is not how most people consume YouTube. Yeah, it's going to be interesting because the academy historically is a very prestigious group that sees itself as shepherding the past and future of movie culture and at least in America and increasingly abroad. And you know, I say this is somebody who loves YouTube. YouTube is kind of a sloppy pen. It's just kind of like there's a lot of stuff out there. Some of it's good, some of it's not so good. It's a wild wild west. And you know,

I have joked for years that they should do the countdown from 10 to 1 in terms of revealing

who the winner of the show is. That sort of thing feels way more in play in a YouTube future. ABC, I think, is just sort of like happy to have a big something at event in the spring for the next couple of years. And then, you know, we're more or less dispensing with linear television like across the board. I mean, every kind of show is down in that environment right now. So that's just

“just getting older. That's what that is. Welcome. Other news. There's a new trailer. Yeah.”

For a film called Spider-Man brand new day. Hang out on July 31st. I learned it's my birthday birthday movie. Yeah. Would what do you think? Watched it while I was getting a manicure. Okay. They also know I'm intended like maybe not the intended environment, but they were running it on the television there. Yes. They were running the trailer. It was as an ad in between music videos. So this is this is how I keep up on music videos from 2008 to 2015 and also see trailers.

And I wouldn't say that, you know, the settings on the TV at my beloved L nail spa was like pre-mo for this. So it looked quite dark. Okay. So motion's moving going on. Yeah. But that's, you know, that's okay. I got the gist, which is that Peter Parker is still a teenager. And you're needing to be a, you feel a larger connection to the world. And also dealing with bad guys. And Zendaya doesn't remember who he is, but is still in the movie. Most of the people don't

remember who he is. So he is a bit of a mind-wipe for Peter Parker as Spider-Man. Yeah. Related. Zendaya and Tom Holland. Married or not married. Go. I don't care. I'm sure. Yeah. Have you paid any attention to this? Has this made it to your internet? I'm aware of it being a thing. I thought that there was an AI image of them at their way. Yes. It was spread around that triggered a lot of people. It did. I did see that. I mean,

I genuinely don't care. Okay. Like I hope they're happy. Me too. I, whether or not they like are legally bound to one another forever more, not really in my interest set. I mean, from purely financial perspective. I think it would be on-wise at this point. I don't know why

“they need to leave both accumulated some assets. Well, sure, but why do you need to tie them together?”

You know what I mean? Maybe it's an immigration thing. Maybe it's going to make it easier to go back and forth from the UK in the US. But when you're that, you can do this. I feel like just want to do what they want to do. You want to put that stuff together? That's true. But like, I don't know. Do you have regrets? No, I don't. Because I'm in the tax bracket where it made sense to put assets together. I don't know. Even though I didn't understand that totally

at the time, make sense is one word or where I'm forced to in order to, you know, scrape by in the American economy. But no, it's good. I'm glad I got married. If they want to get married, that's great. If they don't, I, you know, I hope they're not. Whatever they want. Let's circle back to the film. Spider-Man. They're playing teenagers in the film. Yeah. How long longer they're going to be there exiting that time? Okay. I think maybe we're going

into young adulthood. Okay. But how long? What's the oldest that we've ever seen in Spider-Man?

But he's not the protagonist. He was the second lead. Yeah, sure. He was very good. But you know

what I mean, where like, you want Peter? No, the essence of Spider-Man is a teenager. I agree with you. So it's a little bit of like 902 and I would say by the ball goes to college situation here. And it's a fair point. Tom Holland's getting older. I don't know what you want me to say. I mean, they can't de-age this guy. How old is Tom Holland? Let's look that up. This is he's 29 years old. Yeah. It's going to be 30 on June 1st. Okay. So he will be also tough.

“We have we'll have a 30 year old Spider-Man when this movie comes out. I think there have been”

great runs in Spider-Man history when Peter is a young adult. Okay. And so it's not out of the realm of possibility. This trailer, I'm not so sure. I did not look good. So one, they're making a shift away from John Watts, the filmmaker, and Descendennial Cretan is coming into direct. No way home was a very silly movie. A little a little bit in coherent, but so fun. Such a fun time at the movie Peter. And because of the kind of universe collapsing and bringing in the three Spider-Man and

all the villains from those different Spider-Man movies and getting to see Toby McGuire and Andrew Garfield and Holland all together, we were very enthusiastic about that movie when it came out. And it felt like also it was along with a couple of other movies that kind of like let's break

through COVID here and get back to movie going and it was a huge event. It was a two-billion dollar

movie. And this trailer just seems a little small compared to that movie. There are a number of villains.

“Would you like to hear about the villains? Please. Well, do you know John Burnthall plays, right?”

No. I mean, I saw him and they put the and then Tom Holland put his web on the gun to stop a gun. So I saw that. So John Burnthall plays a man named Frank Castle who is also known as the Punisher. A very famous Marvel Comics character, a kind of vigilante, a gun-toting hero seeking vengeance after his family is murdered. There was a Marvel TV series starring Burnthall playing this character some years ago on Netflix. He was brought back, I think, for Daredevil, the most recent

Daredevil TV show spider-man in the Punisher. They have a thing over the years. They have an

interesting dynamic. This movie seems to be getting into that. He's kind of an anti-hero, not really

a villain. Then there was a Michael Mando who was in Better Call Saul and he's playing Scorpion. Do you know about Scorpion? If you're following along at home like this right now in real time is the exact moment that I realized that because the Oscars are over now it's just you telling me about comic books again for at least 20 minutes of podcast. There's only- You're just talking. There's only- And then you guys are going to do a clip out and you're going to try to include

me with a face of just being like, oh yes, Sean, tell me more about the comic book and I'm just like, uh, I'm just just about the movie bodylogging. I know you're like, you know, then here we go. All right. There's something I know about. Okay. That's awesome. Scorpion. It's cool. He's a little. He's a spider-man villain. Okay. He's one of the last big spider-man villains who has not been the focus of one of these movies. All right. He's not a great villain. I didn't really like his

character design in the trailer. Okay. Way too mecha. Scorpion in the comic books he's like he's got like a green latex suit on with a huge stinger. You know, like swing the stinger around and stings you. Yeah. And this it's like he's like some sort of robot man. I wasn't into it. Okay. Um, Mark Ruffalo is in the trailer. Returning his Bruce Banner aka the whole the Hulk. We don't see him in Hulk form. Mm-hmm. Jacob bottle on his back is Ned. Love Ned.

You're like, I like Ned. But Ned also doesn't remember who Peter Parker is. That's right.

“A spider-man or as Peter. Is that right? Well, I don't know. Was Peter erased from his?”

I don't remember. Anyone in the booth? I'm not entirely sure. How am I going to just circle back to no way home? Also sought from El Tillman in this trailer. Nice to see him getting some work. We didn't see Sadie Sank. Now you know Sadie Sank is in this movie. Do you know who that is? She's one of the strainer things. Yes. Yeah. Who's she's going to be in this world? She's one of the strainer things. Um, well, which one does Zendale play? She plays MJ. So is Sadie Sank Gwen?

I don't think so. Okay. Then I'm out of ideas. I think she's going to be playing Jean Gray, the ex woman. Oh, okay. So it sounds like that's the case. And that's yes. But she's like they're hiding the ball and say you sink. So we didn't get that. I just thought this production just didn't look that great because it didn't not look that inventive or different or really like meaningfully special. And when so I just rewatch solo with my daughter because we're going through a

Star Wars series. Okay. How to go? She's she liked it a lot. I didn't get it at all. She was really into Kira. It was Amelia Clark's character. Remember Amelia Clark from Game of Thrones?

made Game of Thrones run. It didn't work out. And like the last one. Remember when you left

“Christmas in the middle. It terrible movie. Do you know what happens with the end of last month?”

Yeah. Don't tell me. Don't spoil it. I'll get back to it one day. It's a fairly big twist. I'm good. I don't want to know. Don't spoil it. Okay. I may rewatch it someday with my family. Why am I talking about this right now? You watch solo. Oh yeah. And so though I remember watching

solo and being like, this is the first not special Star Wars movie. Like every Star Wars movie

good or bad. It felt like it was a big deal. It felt special. And solo is not special. This doesn't look that special. All right. I could be wrong. I hope it's good. It's also my birthday movie obviously. You're not claiming Odyssey is your birthday. That's the 17th. Oh, they moved it up. I thought it was the 20 something. No. I think there is a movie on the 24th. Let's look at what that movie is. It's evil dead burn. Which I do claim. Okay. And I am looking forward to. But the

Odyssey is the 17th. Okay. Okay. That's brand new day. More blockbuster news. Kirsten Duns has joined the cast of Minecraft too. She sure has. So I provided the context

for you and Jack because you received this as a defeat, a sign of like another one of our greats

giving in. And I say to you, no, this is Dream's coming true, which is literally what Kirsten Duns posted. She screenshot a deadline on Instagram and she said my dream came true because she publicly campaigned for this. And she said, my kids like this movie and I would like to make. I believe the exact what was a pile of cash. Maybe I could be in a movie that doesn't lose money for once. And low and behold, she's in Minecraft too. So will you watch Minecraft one? No. As I

said to you, Kiki can just catch me up on the lore, you know, like individually. Sure. Or she can like make a YouTube video. This is actually a great marketing if they just want to do just like like Kirsten Duns recaps Minecraft one just for people who care about her for all the millennial moms who are obsessed with her. Yeah. Okay. Why not? That sounds good. And then helps us really

to our children. Though if I have anything to do with it, my children will never know about my

“craft. Uh, good luck on one. Uh, I think this is interesting. Okay. No double standard here for you”

in terms of stars waste in their time with certain franchises. Am I really the one that yells at people for going to make money? Who can really keep track with what you're yelling at people about these days? I don't really think that's ever been my thing. It is something that Chris Ryan, historically does not like. He does not like the like, well, Chris Evans is inside the MCU for 13 years during the prime of his career. So I'll never know whether he's good or not. Uh, right. James

Cameron is making avatar movies for 45 years. That's also consistent with that point of view. Yeah. I, I guess every once in a while, you're like, was the check really this worthwhile. Say Rebecca Ferguson in Mercy, being an AI person, you know. That wasn't good. That wasn't good. You know, and we did spend some time wondering about like what that funded in her life, you know,

“but in general, I don't know, people got to make money. Would you ever be friends with an AI?”

I wouldn't. Well, is it okay? Would you ever make love with an AI? So has the has the whole comedian dating an AI chatbot thing made us, where do you? The rumor that Zach Braff then denied Zach Braff denied it. Right, but so, but so there's someone, allegedly, who is dating an AI, a noted comedian who's dating an AI chatbot and quote bringing her places. And this is what I really want to understand is the bringing her places. Like, what is

that mean? There's a whole film about this called her. No, that's true, but he just talks to Scarlett Johansson at home. And then when he's out, he talks to her too. Well, sure, but he's like Amy Adams and Scarlett Johansson don't really interact. No, they don't. This is when they bring her places. I mean, the way it's presented implies that the person in question is like introducing her and then I, so I want to know how this person thinks they're integrating the AI chatbot into

the social circle. In the shrouds, Vincent Couselle definitely interacts meaningfully with an AI chatbot who is actually secretly guy pierces character and he's manipulating him as I recall. I don't remember if he introduces her to anybody. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't introduce her. Yeah, but so it's like, so you have a friend, an AI friend, and you bring them here. I don't have an AI friend. So it's like, do we get like a little selfie stand and you just put

the phone here and then there we go. They're chair. No, what would your AI friend's name be? Money. Because that's the only reason I would do it. Well, take note Sam Altman Amanda is listening.

What Netflix is doing with their movies, I guess Dan Lynn and Bill of Jaria presented some of

“their wares and some of the new things that are coming out later this year. There was a lot of”

discussion about the rumor that Netflix encourages or forces their filmmakers to restate the plot during the films because of the expectation that a lot of people are holding their laundry about looking at the screen while watching. We didn't mention the Casa Blanca Conan bit that he did at the Oscars with Sterling K Brown. That was a very funny. It was very, very funny. Yes, similarly intentioned idea about over-enunciating what your character is doing in a movie. But a couple of things

came out of this and there was a lot of pushing around the idea of theatrical with Netflix because they said that were they to acquire one of brothers, they would have kept that theatrical business in place and they did a lot of research around that part of the business which is something

they've never really pursued. And I would say Dan Lynn was circumspect but dropping clues about

what the future could hold Dan Lynn for many years was a theatrical film producer. He, in fact, produced the Lego movie which is made by Lord Miller and had a lot of success doing that over the years. And in the original deadline report, there was a note that said the adventures of Cliff Booth was coming out in August. That has since been scrubbed so we don't know. Even though I have felt like it feels like a summer movie and once upon a time in Hollywood was also a summer movie. And then

there was also some insinuation about what the theatrical plan would be for Narnia. The magician's nephew, the fourth coming, Greta Gerwig adaptation of that novel. And it kind of feels like Netflix is like six months away from announcing that they do theatrical. Maybe that's just wish casting.

But this was kind of a weird story and you don't drop those little morsels and hints the way that

“Lynn does if you're not thinking about making some changes. Did you follow this at all?”

I read some of it and I did see the Cliff Booth stuff and that it was deleted. I interpreted it as the fruits of a lot of prep over the last six to nine to 12 months to try to buy a theatrical release studio in Warner Bros. And they said that they had different intentions where they to buy Warner Bros because that's a business that works for Warner Bros and it's different from their business. But you do kind of wonder as they're looking at what owning a theatrical distribution

studio would mean that it may be gave them a couple ideas as well of how to make money. It is also just at all hypothetical corporate presentation speak. So some of it is floating at testing to see what the reaction will be because they are a publicly traded company. So much of it is like what are the shareholders think about this? Some of it is also just you say things to fill up like a deck and then what actually does or does not happen six months

from now can be totally different. How corporations work? Yeah, you know, I'm about to bring up the forthcoming Martin Scorsese movie and obviously when Apple was putting out killers of the flower moon or when they were putting out Napoleon or when they put out F1 last summer they worked in conjunction with the legacy studio to do the distribution for those movies and it does seem like there's a real like meets like partnership and play with Sony and Netflix because they already

licensed a lot of content in that output deal from Sony. They have this standing relationship with Sony Pictures Animation which just got us K-pop demon hunters and Quentin Tarantinos last movie in the Cliff Booth universe was distributed by Sony. And so if we heard in a month or three months and I have no information I'm not reporting and if we heard that Sony was going to put the adventures of Cliff Booth and movie theaters in conjunction with Netflix for two weeks, four weeks,

“I wouldn't be shocked. I think they should. I think obviously think they should. I mean we've been”

saying it makes no sense to not put like Frankenstein or knives out movies and movie theaters like that's just bizarre to me that they don't really do that at scale. Right. Do then that puts the August release date into a little bit of question which is perhaps why it was scrubbed but if it's going to be Netflix and August and they do want to do a theatrical release before then that's June or July and that's good. That schedule's very full at this point. Yeah then you're running

up against the Odyssey which is not really where you want to be. I mean and it goes your day. And Spider-Man yeah and Toy Story 5. And Minions. Yeah it's a very it's a very crowded June July this year with big big big movies. I think it's a question of like what is Netflix won out of that side of the business. Do they really want to make money now or is it continuing to playkate the feelings of the high-level filmmakers? That was the other thing. It felt like there was a

little bit of sensitivity to will people still be willing to work with you guys. If you're not

asked up Netflix to make her film with Warner Brothers and that turned out pretty good for her.

“Obviously Ryan Coogler made sinners at Warner Brothers because he was able to get that”

not just control of the print after 25 years but a strong theatrical commitment. This has been discussed and debated for seven or eight years at this point and we've talked about it a lot on the show.

I do think Greta Groig making her first stream movie and Tarantino being the writer and producer

of a big movie like this and he's like he really prizes the theatrical. Right. Feels like an interesting rubber meeting the road moment for the studio. We will continue to cover it. I mentioned speaking of streamers, Martin Scorsese is new film what happens at night. We saw a first look at the movie today. A still photograph of Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, the star is walking down a driveway in a snowy background and that's probably the image of the

movie we'll be looking at for the next 18 months. Yeah, it's because it's currently filming in Prague. Do we normally get first looks for Martin Scorsese movies 18 months? Famously we did for killers of the flower moon. There was that image of Leonardo and Lily Gladstone at the table. Right. And that was the only thing that we saw from the movie for almost two years and then the movie came out. Okay. I don't know when this movie supposed to come out. I presume in 2027. I'm very excited for it.

Obviously mustache and full effect for Leo. Big fan looks good. I haven't read who is helping

“distribute this one. What's studio? I think Paramount did killers of the flower moon and”

wonders that F1. So who's helping out here? We shall see. Is it you? Yeah. I've exciting new business to announce me and my AI producing partner. We're making lots of money. That's a money. Yes. Her name is money. I'm looking forward to this movie. It's we're probably going to be talking about it for the next two years though. So I don't want to get too over these. No. I'm incredibly psyched. You were talking about the hundredth Oscars

and what would be in competition. And if it releases in 2027, it would be in the mix. That's

exciting. It is exciting. We're trying to get Marty that second Oscar. Hey. Well, were we going to

make it? Two to the Oscars. Two to 2028. Two weeks should we go to the one hundredth Oscars? Well, but then we got to work, right? I know Jack was trying to encourage us to go to the Oscars when we were down in Austin. And I was like, I don't know. Listen, we got it. We have to figure out mobile recording. You know, that's the thing. No, that's not it. I'm booking the Uber timing it exactly correctly. This picture goes to what happens at night. We are in the car. We get here.

We're the first people out of the building. We fire up the microphone. That is very sweet. And I like, I like that you like Marty supreme or dreaming big. I also like the energy you're bringing. Yes, thank you. But listen, an Uber won't be able to get within like half a mile. That's true. I'm getting a helicopter. A popular night. Do you have the helicopter pad on the lows as we saw in crime 101? That's right. Filmed on location in Los Angeles? I'm scooters. Yeah. Should we take

lunch scooters? I also forgot to mention we lost the hard award unfortunately. Oh, who won? Watch what crap ends. Hmm. That seems about right. Um, I'll go to that. I'll go to the Oscars. I'll go to

the Oscars. I was thinking about when I shared that comment with you that I've never won anything

and that's not true. When I was in third grade, I won a national contest. That contest was about health and the food pyramid and I created a meal. Okay. That was like the ideal meal to get all the food groups in and I drew images of what it was and it was just a meal that my mom made. I can't totally remember what the meal was at this point. But it was like entered into the contest. I won at my school and I won in your state and then I won nationally. And it was just like a meal that my mom made

in my life. So where you awarded based on the like the meal planning on the drawing itself

“on kind of the totality of my assets. I think is really what it was. Um, I think they identified me”

as a comer in the industry. You submit the, did you submit yourself or was it your teachers who decided that you had the best work and we would be submitted? He doesn't third grade. Okay. Well, so I'm not totally sure. Um, but as you might imagine, I have to say it was a confident young man, you know, I had some strong feelings about where I was going in the world. And at that time, it was 1989. I want to say. Okay. Third grade. Maybe 1990. And we were right in the middle

of George H. W. Bush's America. Okay. Right. And there was a operation desert storm. Yeah. A lot of tumble storming storming storming. Storming Norman Schwartz cough, of course.

government of body that recognized my work. Yeah. So that's the one translation one anything. Okay.

And then we didn't win the I heard of work. Yeah. That's just bad. That happened. Maybe next day. What were the kind of qualifications? What was being, what were they looking at? To determine whether good question is who submitted us for the I heart of work? Because we did not. I assume that it costs money to be submitted. Yeah. But that's not one of those where we didn't fill out an application is watchwood crappens and I heart show. It is not. It's a it's like a brother reality recapture.

No, I know that, but who distributes it? Like what is the, I don't think it is, but maybe I'm mistaken. Cool. Watch. I'm not accusing anyone of dirty pool. I'm just asking questions. So rewatchables was also nominated for it. Yeah. Yeah. But they were, it was submitted before CR month. If they had known CR month is coming, would have been a whole different kettle of fish. This hosted by Ronnie Karam and Ben Mandelker. Congratulations to them. I'm learning about them in real time.

I do know about bravo. You watched any bravo shows? Nope. I've watched many in episode of the real housewives franchise over the years, but I lean as kicked that franchise in the last five

years, so we never have it on anymore. I've seen the meme where they screamed, "Take a Zennaxx!"

Which I want to scream at you fairly often. Um, but still really well, I feel very calm. That's good. Feel very measured right now. Okay. Well. Okay. So spider-man. Yeah. My youth is dead. Yeah. But Marty's coming back with a movie. That's right. My youth is alive. Kiki's getting paid.

“Kiki's getting paid. And reminding us all that sometimes you just got to go chase that bag. You know?”

We lost in the ward, but we've gained what? And AI friend named Money. Okay. Let's talk now about Project Hell Mary. This is, safe to say, the most anticipated movie of the year so far. Would you agree? I would. It's a new film from Amazon, MGM. It's, as I said, directed by Lord Miller. It is the screenplay is written by Dr. Goddard based on the 2021 novel by Andy Weir, which is the same formulation we had from 2015's The Martian. Yes.

A beloved movie on this show and a hugely successful movie, a award-winning movie, Goddard adapted Weir's novel back then. And this movie does have a lot in common with that movie. Um, this new movie star is Ryan Gosling, who also produced this film. Sandra Huller, Lionel Boyce, Ken Lung, Alana Vainthrobe, the cinematography is by the great great Fraser. You may have seen shooting the Doon movies recently. Charles Wood does the production

design. Neil Scanlin. We will talk about him quite a bit because he did the creature effects on the film and the scores by Daniel Pemberton. Plotsenopsis is as follows. Rylan Grace, the soul survivor on a desperate last chance mission to save humanity from an extinction level solar event caused by space algae known as astrophage wakes up with amnesia on a spaceship and remembers his mission with the help of an unexpected alliance with an alien named Rocky. What do you think of Project

“Hill Mary? I really like that. I think that the first half hour and a half is truly magical”

and then it keeps going. But that is true of many great movies. And what it accomplishes, I think both scale and production wise and as you said in the intro, feeling made by humans, even if

it is not always portraying humans as opposed to being inside a computer, is palpable and exciting.

And there is one element that they just have to get exactly right, which is Rocky, the alien. And I guess that's a little bit of a spoiler, but it's not because so I met an alien is in the trailer. And if they don't get that creature and that not just the actual recreation of the alien, but the characterization, the mood if they can't use it in the story, then the story sucks. And they absolutely nailed it. I thought it really worked on me and I was

charmed and emotionally invested in this alien in a way that I haven't really been invested in an alien since E.T. So I mean, you don't spend that much time with aliens, you know, but they're

“they're clearly they really owe a debt to many films, including E.T. And I think they get that.”

And so the rest of the movies, flaws or missteps kind of flowed away for me. Yeah, I think it's good to go into the movie expecting a little bit of pastiche that the movie very purposefully wants to remind you of the best versions of these movies. In fact, there's a moment when Ryland Gosling's character is attempting to communicate with Rocky, and he literally sounds out the close encounters theme to him while banging on the last

that divides the two of them. And the movie has a self-consciousness about that. In the way that I think a lot of Lorden Miller films have a very kind of whirlpooling together, a lot of the vibes, of things that we love, you know, they are similarly like recombinant filmmakers, you know, 21

The Lego movie is another example of this. Their work is very much influenced and

added by pop culture. This movie though for them is a really interesting shift, tonally, because it does have some some of their trademark silliness, and Gosling is doing a lot of at times like chaplainesque, solo silent comedy. So it's Rocky. And that he is as well, but there is also like a real sentimentality in this story, and a real sincerity in this story about a lost person, a person with really no connections,

and then what happens when you're millions and millions and miles away from home and you make a

“friend. And that's not also really worked for me. I think the movie is”

beautiful in a way that very few mainstream Hollywood productions are. I think that craft that you're

talking about, the way that the ships are designed, the way that they move through space, the way that the characters interact with each other physically, is just unusually specific and considered and artful. And it's also pretty funny. Like all the way through, it's pretty funny. You know, like there's a lot of laugh lines, Gosling is, I was just listening to Bill and Craig and Chris talking on the rewatchables about how Gosling is in that like

a tier of SNL hosts. It's kind of using that same muscle on this performance where he's, you know, doing some mugging and doing a lot of like talking into camera. Yes.

But he's very adept at it. And he sells it in the same way that Rocky is sold really well too.

“But it's also different than like the full character actor can or even nice guys or one of”

the other, the other comedic performances that he does where he's, he's being Gosling, being a dope. Right. Right. This is a being Gosling. Yes. Exactly. And he's just using it's his innate charm and timing. Yeah. This is in that mad Dame and Paul Newman realm of like, yeah. Cameras on you. You got to carry your face has to carry this move the way through. And if you're, if you're not bought in on that as well as Rocky, then the movie won't work.

I've seen, we've both seen it twice now. Both times the same thing was true for me. And I think it was true for you, which is it is a very epic tale with a lot of like we're going here. And then we're going here. We're going here through space. It also has a very an interesting shape, like an interesting structure. Because in the novel as I understand it, and this is explained to me by our pals, Mel and Joanna, the flashbacks as they are in the film

are really more like violent remembering moments in real time as he's going through the journey on the spaceship and remembering how he got to this point. The movie doesn't quite communicate it in that way. It doesn't quite feel like he's remembering something that has happened. And more just feels like a traditional flashback structure. But that structure, in addition to the extended nature of the mission, makes this movie feel long. Yeah. It is too long.

And I'm, I'm usually a little reluctant to say that about movies because I like long movies. But there's something a little redundant in Act 3. Yes. That is like my one kind of strike against it. They have to, it's not that they have to save solve the same problem several times. But you can feel the moment where they're like we need one more big set piece. You know, we need one more emotional resolution moment here. We need to do one more alien thing here. You can feel

them checking off the demands or what they think they're various like plot building blocks are. And you're like, no, no, no. You don't actually, like we've gotten there. We, we understand all of this emotionally. We also are a little bit tired of the actual adventure stakes. So,

“I mean, I think some of that they're just like trying to do a lot because they have three different”

things going on. They've got the flashback structure. They've got the actual save the earth structure. And then they've got grace, the gasoline characters, you know, emotional relationship and like buddy structure. Then there's also a thing where the movie ends about five different times. Like just literally, and I can, I have two different propositions of what shot the movie should have just ended on just like stop and without even having to reshoot anything and that would sort of help.

Because it's not just that it is overstuffed, but it really doesn't know when to end. And so the last 15 minutes are really, really, really baggy and kind of over the top. And I think a little, you walk away with an impression of greater sentimentality than is maybe in the rest of the movie. Yeah, I think that's right. That it gets kind of a little lopsided at the end. I will say,

movie is two hours and and twenty five minutes and same thing. Exactly. And like, you know, blessed, really Scott, who directed it, but it is also by the time they're going on that last that last mission, which is another space walk in order to do like a very vital thing or else everyone dies. It's boost stressful and you're just watching people spinning around and you're like, let's wrap this up. Like, let's go. Let's go. So some of it may also be the nature of the source

material. Yeah. Andy, we are like an epic tale. Exactly. And like, so and like, so a lot of science. And some of it is just, I guess, how movies are now? Yeah, I really liked the science component of this movie. I did too. I thought it was simultaneously very specific, but not over intellectually overwhelming. I thought it was pretty legible. I was by no means a good science student and I don't host science corner on this show. But like, there are jokes about xenon. You know, like, it is

“that kind of a movie. Yeah, but I think I'm really impressed with both. I've never read an Andy”

Wear book. Mal and Joanna were have read both and we're telling me a lot about them. And that's an interesting conversation to listen to if you're curious. But I think I have now seen two novel adaptations both adapted by Drew Goddard. So I think the combo of Andy Wear and Drew Goddard handle the

science very smartly. It is always middle school science. Even if they have to, you know, say a lot

of words at first. It is whether it's growing a plant or recreating water or elements or, you know, everything is like this, it's a cell is one of the big reveals. And it's like, I got, you know, I can't tell you what my toases is, but I know what a cell is. So it's something that is at least recognizable. And then the actual problems themselves are so basic, right? You either have to get off Mars. You've got to get home or you've got to save the planet, even the basic setup of this,

which, you know, I'm sorry, it's the sun is dying. So it's getting colder. You know, that's not

“fairly simple. There are a lot of they complicated a bit. And I think they do that in smart and”

interesting, interesting ways. But even like the the science experiment that Gosling's character

Grace runs in order, it's, his big breakthrough is like built out of plywood and is very much like

a diorama that you-- Yeah, like you get your parents had to help you make when, by the way, I'm just absolutely dreading that. When, when that day comes, when we have to do the dioramas, I know. I just, you're an artist, then a content creator. You're a great. I don't know if I'm great with my hands. I'm certainly no rocky. So, and even that was just, they use puppet shows to explain things to each other, right? So there's

so much both in the, like the science that they choose. I think is very clever and accessible. And then the way that they have to communicate it. Yeah. That that lens itself, it's just, it's understandable. And the other thing is that the flashback structure is very helpful in that you don't really ever have to wonder what time it is. It doesn't. It aligns it because you know there's like past and present. So you don't have to worry about light ears or where are they or what's happening or blah, blah,

blah. It's, I thought it was very, very well done. I thought so too. On the one hand, I actually enjoyed

the movie more the second time because I knew what I was getting in that respect. So I didn't feel

like I was having to keep up with the plot in any meaningful way. On the other hand, I did start to have a few more questions about how much people had aged, how for example, the coma process works when they send the astronauts into this space. Well, obviously, they lose two astronauts in the flight. Yeah. We are spoiling this movie at this point if you're still listening. But like does Gosling's character not age over that period of time in which he takes that journey? Sure,

they, I don't really know how all that works. Yeah, absolutely. They just skipped up. There's a yacht over that. Yeah, the most yachted thing is there's a beautiful sequence where Grace and Rocky, you know, are starting to try to communicate and they do puppets and then they say, like this is the word for Rocky and this is the word for Grace. And he's using a machine and he's using money, our favorite AI bot to start a language machine. And then two seconds later,

“they're communicating as if they've been living together for years. And I was like, I think”

that would have taken a little longer. I think they did and they just cut that out. You know, I think that I think that would be kind of acknowledging that they're like, we got to move this up a little bit. That's a thousand percent the right decision. And I was absolutely willing to go with the first time in the second time. I didn't really care. You know, they've, there are other things that they've solved. But sure, they cut corners. Yeah, I think it's helpful. It's kind of what

nice job of not getting weighed down within, well, then what would happen? Well, then what would happen?

“They don't have to kind of over explain all of those things. I do want to go back to”

both like that weight of influence and also how it manifests in the movie. I mean, you can hear feeling Chris talk about it. The very specific steps that they made to accomplish this, but I am obsessed with these movies and have been obsessed with them since, you know, you know, I just talked to Steven Spielberg. I mean, his movies in this world definitely changed my relationship to science fiction made me fall in love with these kinds of stories. This is a

really, really high level version of it in terms of how it looks and feels. And, you know, there

is of course a lot of CGI in the movie, but it almost always feels like you're in a thing that was

built by a person. Yes. And that quality, whether we're on graceship, whether we're on rocky ship, whether we're at the base with Sandra Huller or in a bar on a boat, it always feels like a real place and a real thing. All of the things that rocky sculptures that he makes out of his kind of solid zine on, clearly an artisan made those for the movie. And, like, this is, this is how it should be. Yeah, genuinely, this is, if you, I know it's expensive and I know it's hard, but for me,

at least it really helps a movie like this. I feel like it's earning. It's believability. It's earning. It's setting and story structure. When it feels like Ryan Gosling is in a room with an alien. Yeah, which, just some extent, he also was, which to not, I mean, he was not listen. Wolverines and wolves are different things. What a week for you. And the aliens aren't rocky. The alien is not real that I am in it ovens. No, but again, I'm not Steven Spielberg. But they chose a puppet.

You know, they didn't choose, like, a green screen or a person with all of the motion capture

to the choice. It's an essential choice. And if it's anything else, then he's acting with some

“form of computer. And I think, and you don't get the physicality, which is such an essential”

part of, like, both of their comedies. Yes. And then, and then the comedy is what creates the chemistry that kind of is the foundation of the relationship, which is wonderful. And, like, very moving. And I like teared up every single time. It got me at a thousand percent worked. And then the rest of the the production design and the physical nature of the world takes its cues from that decision. And then, because if like rocky is real, a puppet, and then it's all just like in the void. Yeah.

And then what's, you know, what's the point? There are a couple of moments when the two characters hug and they can only hug through this kind of apparatus. But when they hug, rockies in the he's in the glass. What's happening? You know, I don't know. Well, you feel like you're watching these characters hug, which sounds like a silly thing. But, you know, Neil Scanlin, who, you know,

“design all these creature effects and who, what is the puppeteers name, who worked through it?”

Is it Ortiz? Yes. James Ortiz. James Ortiz. It's just a, it's a miraculous and odd little thing that they've made. You know, and it's kind of a rock alien, hence the rocky name. It doesn't really have a face. His, his, his poseable thumbs only go down. Which comes around again. Yeah, they use the design or maybe that's in the book. And then the design, like, you know, meets exactly the inspiration. But it really is very funny. He uses a little rollerball to run around the ship and like he

is environment. And that's just extremely funny. The other thing that's really fascinating about the movie is that Rylan Grace is not much of a character. Yeah. We don't really know much about him. The movie purposefully, I think, withholds a lot of information about what has come before.

You get a little bit when he is first approached by Sandra Hooler's character to come

experiment so that they can get a little bit more clarity on what's happening with this astrophage and why it is dimming the sun. And he kind of, you know, at one point, he tells Rocky that he had a mate and then he lost her because his head was in the clouds and we know that now he's with Mark. Yeah, he can't Mark. I was really funny. Like that part of a lot. There's a lot of really good laugh lines in the movie. But, you know,

we learned a bit like he's a middle school science teacher, even though he has a PhD and has some pretty dramatic ideas. Right. And even that is used to expositionally, like, both obviously, but like effectively, where we learned about astrophage and why the earth is in danger, because he is explaining it to his, like, group of middle school students who won't stop asking about it. And even there he also has, like, a real diorama in in the classroom that he uses, like,

like, a physical explanation as opposed to screens. No iPads in those classrooms. You know,

And I think it is, it's kind of like more McQueen, carry grant style, start them from Gazaing, where he's like, you know, he's no too much about this guy. His name is Roger Thorne Hill. He's been thrown into this world of North by Northwest Go. Like, yeah. And, and Gosling, we, we bring a lot to a movie with him. And he brings a lot to a movie starring him. And he's just fun to be with for two and a half hours. You know, he really isn't that rare class of actor. It's a relief to see him

“in something like this. Honestly, I was a little worried that it was going to be the great man”

in the fall guy and variations on these things. And he's very well suited to this kind of a thing.

That blend of serial comic drama, epic drama. There's a moment in the very first images of the

movie in which we see the lights changing the lights shifting in the ship. And we see that this bold red and this bold blue that are very purposefully invoking 2001 space Odyssey. And that is no doubt on the minds of the filmmakers. You mentioned ET, which is no doubt as this is close encounters. Interstellar is very much on the minds. But I liked what you said before about the simplicity of the science because it is almost the inverse of interstellar, which is

like kind of begging you to keep up with the wormholes and the fractals and this kind of mega science that is at the heart of the very very known as Jonathan and Christopher. Yes. And this movie is more like you said a little bit more middle school style.

“I think also like we've seen Ryan Gosling in the space movie before, you know, this isn't the”

first time he's been an astronaut and in first man. He's kind of like that's sort of like the

sad boy version of Ryland Grace, you know Neil Armstrong. He's much more internal and has this kind of unresolved angst. It's flipped. He's like incredibly professionally and outwardly successful. And you know, like internal crisis. Yes. So and cannot and literally, you know, a man will do anything not to go to therapy. A man will literally go to the moon to not go to therapy, which is what happens and in first man. And then at the end, they're just they're staring at each other through

the quarantine glass. Yeah. The thing that really jumps out to me is watching, there's a moment in the film where it becomes clear that these two ships are going to encounter one another, right, that Ryland has realized that there's a foreign spaceship that is sending out a blip, which is basically

like a message and the way that the ships move in space. Yeah. I've never really seen that in a space

movie before in a specific way. They were like gliding. It was almost like you were turning them on like an abacus or one of my children's like, you know, rail toys or the two sort of sort of kind of dancing. Yeah. And there's a rhythm to the way that they move and it didn't feel like the way that the ships move in Star Wars. It didn't feel like the way that the ships move in Apollo 13. It didn't feel, it felt different. It looked different. Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard to make something

look new after 70 years, 80 years of space movies. Actually, this year is really funny. I have been trying to figure out a way to do something about the origins of science fiction at the movies. And 51 is the day that the earth stood still. And there's one other classic. I can't remember which one, but that's really the set that's the 75th anniversary of like the dawning point of science fiction at the movies. There were other previous films like Metropolis and things like that. But how we know

them, where there's aliens, there's humans. There's US mission control and we're putting rockets in space and all of our anxieties about the Cold War and all of these stories being introduced to us. And the idea of being able to still make something look and feel new in these worlds. Yeah. It was really exciting for me in rewarding. I was reading a couple of reviews and I saw some tisking a Daniel Pemberton score, which I thought was magnificent and is rhythmic and jazzed

like in the first half of more kind of like epic and coral in the second half. And I found both of those strokes to be really, really impressive. What did you think of it? I mean, it understands that the movies both are procedural and an emotional epic. And a lot of this film, even though it's set in deep space and was filmed on IMAX and is meant to see on the biggest screen possible, like, he's a guy in a small alien in a room, you know, or they're looking at a cell or they're doing

“very, very small things in rooms. And so I think that the bigger score, especially communicates”

like some of the grandnest that it's, he's meant in this movie. They're like, they are still in space. You know, even though you're just watching them float around in tubes or while. So I liked it,

which this is. This is a very funny movie. And I find that comedies don't always have scoring

“or soundtracks that meet the level of the material. Yeah, it can often just take away or”

distract or not take it as seriously. Yeah. Pemberton. My favorite thing he's ever done is this spider versus scores. Obviously, he's worked with Lord Miller before because they produced those movies. And he is a incredibly variable composer. If you go and listen to his work on Spotify, across the many films he's made, it's a lot of different styles. And he has clearly a lot of different influences. But I was really impressed by this. And you know, speaking of Lord Miller,

the other thing, too, is like, like I said, it's been a long time since since they've directed a movie. Right. And I mentioned solo earlier in this episode. And they were directing solo. They did direct chunks of solo. And then they were fired by Lucasfilm and Ron Howard was hired to replace them. And that one of the reasons why that movie is ultimately a nothingburger is that it's like to completely different filmmakers with completely different sensibilities smashing together a

story in a script. You know, some of the suggestion in that story is that Lawrence Cazden didn't really like the tone that Lord Miller were pursuing because he is kind of the author of Han Solo. He writes all the great Han Solo dialogue. And they were trying to do something different. And

presumably, just much more in their tone, I've always wanted to see their version of solo,

just because it would have been a different kind of Star Wars movie. But this does, this movie does kind of feel like revenge for that experience, you know. And I mean, and better, for sure. Definitely better than so. Yeah. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. There is such a thing as becoming too comfortable in your day-to-day, but our favorite films with stories that make us change the way we think they weren't made by people content to just sit back and watch the

“world pass by. This is your sign that you should neither from us, VW, and the other drivers out there,”

grab the wheel. Do what you love, even if it means taking the road less traveled, learn more at vw.com. Do you think people are going to like this movie? Or should I should say, do you think people are going to love this movie? Because it is a very big and expensive swing from Amazon. They have had a checkered past with their movie distribution. They're attempting now to be a real, we release 12 films, The Attracley per year studio. There's a gap. We could use

the studio who's willing to do that. Yes. You kind of can't get a bigger, more big, tent original story, obviously it is based on a novel, but this feels more like 2009 than it does 2026. It certainly feels like 2015 and people loved the Martian. The Martian made a tremendous amount of money. Yeah. It was like $500,000. Yeah. And I will say now that I have rewatched the Martian

“region recently, I think this might be better than the Martian. The Martian? It's pretty close for me. Which”

we love and really enjoyed. And also had that feeling in 2015. I mean like, wow, they just made, you know, a classic big budget adapted from a book studio movie. And it's Matt Damon and he's being a movie star. And then all these people got to save this problem. So you know, save this guy and solve this problem. But it's it's baggy. Matt Damon isn't as funny as I remember, though it's not his fault. I just do think some of the Andy Weir character humor. Like, we got a science

to the shit out of this. You know, which is I think it's time. It was very funny to know. Like, how is it aging that comics and stability? Yeah. But it is just kind of funny to locate that there is like a noticeable strain of humor to both of these that is like stands out. Yeah. And anyway, people really liked the Martian. I really liked the Martian. So theoretically, they would also like this, which is the Martian. And like maybe slightly more complex, but also with a cute

alien. Yeah, I don't know. The Martian, as I recall, was an October film, right? Yeah, it was really his October film. Yeah. And probably to tell me where he does kind of feel like an October movie. This is an interesting release date for this movie. We were in Vegas last April,

where they showed us the extended first look at this movie. We were like, whoa, holy fuck. Yeah,

this looks really cool. And I didn't even know this was coming. And that has me thinking about how there's usually one movie at the beginning of every year. Now that it becomes a movie that we talk about for 12 months at the Academy Awards. And last year it was sinners, a couple years before that it was top gun, a couple years before that. It was everything ever roll at once. I don't really know if this is a best picture, Condender. I think it is. I think it is too. We went and saw it

very much an Oscar's mindset and shattered, you know, intellectually and emotionally. And I was like, oh, this is definitely, this is definitely an Oscar's movie. There's so much to like about it. It's such a big scale. And we do have this precedent of, you know, big scale movies being released earlier in the year and making it all the way. Gravity being nominated for Best Picture. Like, there's some precedent for the kind of movie that it is to the Martian obviously arrival. Yeah.

“So I think it could be. I do. Is it too much of a comedy? I don't know. There are”

a lot. Ryan got something to cry. It's like a lot. Yes. A lot. And you know, holds the camera just so for a lot of it. I was absolutely dying laughing at both times at the close-ups of him watching Sandra Huller sing a an emotional karaoke song. Yes. We don't have to spoil any more. Even though

it's been widely reported. It's a great scene. I love I loved her performance. Yes, she's amazing.

But I mean, he's just sitting at the bar in a sweater that you turned to me halfway through and said I need to buy this sweater. And he's got these rimless glasses. And it is framed just so and he's leaning just so for, you know, his, his movie star shot. The camera is looking at him looking at her. Yeah. And but he knows it. And he's like, okay, here it is. Here's time for me to be Ryan Gosling and for everyone who showed up to see Ryan Gosling to get some Ryan Gosling. So he is

doing all of that along with all of the puppet stuff. But I don't know. I guess it's how much can you market the, the Rocky of it all before. And because I was thinking about it, like our children would love Rocky. They would be bored by the rest of it. But that's okay. Even the way he speaks

“is so funny. And they would definitely laugh. There is a physical comedy element to it. And I think”

that you have, that is a real crowd, please, sir. But you can't, but you can't, it feels like there's

already too much in the trailer, you know, of, yeah, you know, I will say when the trailer first hit,

I think you and I were both a little disappointed that we even learned of the existence of Rocky. But then you learn pretty quickly, it's about 45 minutes before Rocky shows up in the movie. But then he is, he's there as much the center of the movie as, as graces. They do, I think, almost. It's 45 minutes before you get to Rocky. And then I think they do almost, it's 35, 45 minutes of just grace and Rocky before you go back to Earth, which is another, I mean, again, this is just part of

there's so much to fit into this movie that, you know, they can't actually start the plot for an hour and a half because they had to do all the setup and then they had to give you your Rocky time, but you can't do without the Rocky time because it's so charming. The second time around, there was a little bit of like some plaintive moments of them like staring at each other that are a little drawn out, but for the most part, I agree with you. The old, they were doing the

ET, but then they were pointing. Yeah. There's a lot of time spent in that tunnel that is built

“from the ship, well, they got a dance for more physical property. I think below the line,”

this movie is going to do very well. There's definitely production design, visual effects, maybe score. I don't, I don't know how you recognize the puppeteering work. Retro design. That is something. So, you know, I get, presumably it goes into production design. I think it goes into, I mean, Neil Scamlin has been nominated for visual effects. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess, I guess visual effects would be the place where that work goes.

But it does have that feeling of like a Mad Max Fury Road S, like there's a lot of places where they could recognize this movie in the awards. I'm very, very curious to see how well it does.

The, the Martian made $630 million worldwide. Yeah. That's very good. If this movie makes $630

million, that's a huge success. In terms of the Oscar race, though, doing part three is coming out. And it's unusual for two huge science fiction movies to be nominated for Best Picture. In fact, I can't really think of a time when it's happened. Though, let's see, it's in the 10-year run. So since 2009, what was in 2009? What was the year that like district, whatever? District 13. District 13. There weren't two that year. Maybe there were. Believe that was that ultimately

the 2010 Oscars. Yeah. And then I'm looking at. Oh, district nine. Not district 13. Oh, you're right. Avatar. Yeah. District nine. I think district three. I think Katna's every day is from district 13. Okay. Right. Two-volunteers, Hunger Games in the booth. District 12. Oh. Okay.

screen. You could probably tell me a little bit late and they showed the Hunger Games trailer for and I was sitting there with Chris. And I was like, I'm just in on this. I just think this movie looks good. And I want to see it. I didn't really care for the last Hunger Games. Okay. I don't even love those previous films. But I'm interested. The Martian was also nominated up against Mad Max Fury Road, just with your different, but you know, ones more like epic war movie and the desert.

Okay. But you're right. They're not that cool. They're not that cool. Post the podcast for sure.

“Oh, would I volunteer for you? Would you? I mean, I think I have a way better chance than you do.”

Of survival in the Hunger Games. Yeah. Yeah. Training more paint tolerance higher. I'm pretty sure. I'm fairly ruthless though. And just, and there was a physicality to it. Respectfully, like, you haven't been at the gym recently. I feel like I'm doing very well. And I've been meeting people in Pilates class who listen to this. What's up, Chase? If you're listening to it. What's Chase's story? I saw Chase at Motivate. He was very friendly. And he lives in the neighborhood.

It's great. I was very excited. Nice. There's usually one man in a Pilates class. And I'm always

a fan. I think it's very brave to be the one man in the Pilates class. And that was Chase. How do you feel when someone approaches you and says, hey, are you a man to Dobbins? What do you do? Um, I usually introduce myself and ask their name. I'm happy about it. Can I tell you about what happened last night? Where I was out to dinner in a Queens with friends and a nice man named David came over with an agrony and hand. And put it down for me because he's like, I need

to bring you an agrony. That's my best friend for life, David. So I feel amazing. Also by the way, it was my third and agrony. And look at me here in front of him. Wow, that's impressive. Thank you. I had zero in agrony. Once again, I've been training. Right. I've been in the gym. I've been at the bar. I'm ready. So I could win Hunger Games. I don't think there's a bar company in the Hunger Games. You don't know what they're doing. What do they have to drink? There's no

no, no, no, no, no, no. They have to drink that. You know, we got that. That's the fresh water. We got to get you holiday girl general. Yes. It's almost over the street. Also this school of respect, just to get something to do. And then hopefully this is stymed. Oh, no, garney. This street is so my safe space. You're my, I mean, that's all it's not here. Yeah, so this street is so deep. The, I just understand. Egalobstudium, job, or um to. Stymed.

Cras. I feel like garney. I'm on. Stoyer and elated. Safe. With visor steuere.

“Probably a very dynamite really really good. A lot of fun. Yeah. What a great way to kick off. What's it tracking?”

The post Oscars. 60 million. I think in that. That's good. Even though I know that tracking is broken. I

think that's just domestic as well. You know, it's going to take a while to get up to 250 or whatever this movie cost. But let's go to my conversation with with Phil Lord and Chris Miller, because they'll tell you all the ways in which this movie was built and shaped and looks the way that it does. The first time Phil Lord and Chris Miller, thank you both for being here. It's been a minutes since you guys have made a movie curious. When did the book hit your desk?

And then how do you decide you want to direct something? Let's see. So Ryan sent us the book with Amy. As a manuscript before it was published. Okay. Ryan Gosling in the past. That's right. Yes. To you to Ryan and Amy. Yes. Exactly. And we had a pre-existing relationship with Andy Weir, a producing partner at DTSU discovered the Martiner was an e-book and put together that movie and brought true on. So when we got this that we got the manuscript, the DTSU guys this is your next movie.

And then we read it in one night and we're like you're right. What is it that he saw that made him say that to you?

I think it's first of all we've made a lot of movies about friendship and people who's

friendship is the reason they can do something really hard. Our movies are we like to say 51% optimistic. And this new novel is so affirming. And we try to make movies that help people

“imagine goodness and that's what the book did when I read it. Also it seemed really hard and that's”

kind of exciting for us. You're like oh the the co-star of this movie is an alien with no face and no eyes, no mouth and speaks in whale songs. Fantastic. And you have to fall in love with it. Great. And like the spectacle, the scale, the the massiveness of it, you could just feel it on the

with all the twists and turns and surprises that the last third of that book has like how I found

“myself like oh my god I would die for this rock. And you're like I don't know how I did it but”

we have to make you feel that way. I got confident reading about that he had no face. Yeah. I was like oh we know how to do this and I feel like somebody else might not do it right. What do you mean when you say that? So like rocky the the co-star alien co-star of the movie in the novel has five limbs and no face and no mouth and no eyes and he speaks in whale language. And so we you know most people would be most people who finance movies would be really

scared by that they would say oh he has no eyes but the eyes of the window to the soul how could you possibly relate to a character. And I was like well I don't know like every Pixar movie opens with like a lamp you know being a parent right. I was like we human beings are so good at projecting

“personality onto inanimate objects. That's why every car has like a smiling grill on the front of”

it and little little light eyes and or windscreen eyes and so I was like oh we we know how to help the audience project a personality onto rock. Okay I'm curious like the the hard part that you mentioned. What does that mean to you practically is it like the scale of the movie? Is it space? Is it just the translation of the rock? Well it's like a lot of things there's you know this you know has a lot of zero microgravity which means like a lot of wires and like a lot of like like technically

complicated a choreography. This you know having we wanted to do have rocky really be there and have a be a creature that was puppeted so that Ryan would have a scene partner and so that we could capture you know rocky really and I have him have to act with a tennis ball on a stick.

“So we knew that that meant okay now we have to distinctly have to be operated by a team of five”

puppeteers that we call the rocketeers led by James Ortiz. But now we're gonna have to like find a way for us to like find a place for them to even exist to operate the puppet. Right means we have to build the sets you know five feet off the ground. Right so that they don't block the light and and then

and by the way the two main characters are always separated by glass. Right and so that means

that like oh it's gonna reflect all the cameras it's going to like make really gnarly like bright lights blocking your view. It's gonna require tons of touch up meanwhile we're gonna have to erase puppeteers but behind glass. So it just made the whole movie it's a book about overcoming odds right impossible odds and solving problems. And so it meant that the the making of the film was going to be a way to experience the story ourselves and that we had to

solve a lot of problems by gathering about just more people of work and we also create our own obstacles. The thing we make things even more complicated in the book you know there is the ship has centrifugal gravity but it's all all the rooms are sort of stacked like like a rocket ship or a lighthouse and we thought it might be interesting if it had one orientation of gravity when it was traveling like a lighthouse but then when it separated and started spinning that it would

turn on its side so that it wouldn't be vertical or be horizontal and the wall would become the floor. So we'd have a secondary version of gravity so that meant that the ship which we built in this entirety had to have had to be oriented vertically and then disassembled and reassembled horizontally each room of the ship which was an insane thing to do but to the HODs are Greg Fraser the incredible cinematographer and Paul Lambert who's like one four Oscars

for visual effects and they looked at us one day and said this is the most complex film we've ever worked on and we made two dunes and so there's something about those like obstacles that make

that get us excited. I have never told you this close family friend who had Parkinson's

and he when he was struggling to move around one of the things he would say to us is like will you put your foot and and place it in front of my feet and then he was able to step over it but it was only by placing an obstacle in front of him that would like get him over the get when he got like stuck and I always thought that was a really interesting thing. You know like sometimes

and that's really what we're always trying to do with everything is make something that feels new

“and origin. You started to talk about gravity and the construction of the ships in the way that”

they operate and the movie is I've been told that it is less scientific than the book which is tremendously scientific but as a movie watcher I was a this is deeply rooted in science and there are extended passages where there is a lot of conversation that is scientifically based. Yes and and like long passages with no dialogue where they just like put things in pipettes and center fugits totally and it is its own little science experiment in that way but I was I'm curious

how you guys thought about how an audience might feel about that what's the line between keeping it true versus keeping it coherent and how you work through that with Ryan too. Well we wanted all the science to be real everyone had other than the invented stuff from the book like an alien species and alien and even those things we were like the novel is true right everything that Andy established that's real let's pretend it's everything is really but we also didn't want this

isn't a lecture this is an entertainment piece of entertainment right this is supposed to be fun and exciting and entertaining for everybody so how we didn't have the advantage of the book where you can hear uh Ryanland Grace's thoughts uh so we had to show the audience what was happening in a way that was easily digestible entertaining and fun and so that was the real challenge of the movie but thankfully we you know we would we test our movies with friends and family

and strangers more than probably anybody we very like they're like we probably screen this movie 11 times before we lock the cut right and every time it was sort of like is anyone confused is anyone bored is anyone wears the parts that are people are are feeling like you they're like they're losing engagement or they're not falling what's happening and so like how can we how can we simplify this how can we make it uh make it interesting and cinematic and tell you without like having a

“lecture and so that's how we ultimately find the right balance we we each two much and then we like”

hone it into something that is that's entertaining but we imagine that the audience would go with it because it's kind of like watching graffiti or thief or something where you're like watching someone like crack a save or dig a hole for 20 minutes in the floor and you're just kind of interested in the process you know in watching people do a job well like one of our favorite genres of cinema and so we thought well if the it's actually something learned from watching Denise first do movie

if the emotional story is palpable then you will pick up the lore and in our case like the lore is like the science yeah you'll pick it up as you go and you'll look for it and try to understand it because you're so invested in the character and if you don't follow there's the like ins and outs of the science of the story it doesn't matter you're following the plot and the characters and that's what you care about is you gonna get the thing that he needs right i don't know exactly

why he needs the thing but i really want him to get it yeah i mean seems to think he needs it it's true there are like the xenon gags though so you are still touching the very specific language

yes i always call what you're describing ingenuity porn like there's something about like

really exciting about watching someone solve something and this movie is full of that yeah the legacy of space movies is very intense there's like hundreds of hundreds of movies about space but then there's also like four five movies that's in way above those other movies it's true and i do feel like your movie is really grasping to be like um one of those four five movies you know it is kind of like kind of like it's kind of like a cage it's very beautiful i mean title tell

you never know right but i the even just the way that objects moved in space i was like this feels different this feels like um the energy is different the way that the objects are operating feels different in a way that it is like come meaning with the history of space movies but not imitating um i don't know if that was intentional i'm just like we're like we want to do our own thing right we want to we're going to do an homage to anything we wanted it to be

“its own movie and have its own space and i think we often said this movie is not a Mac it's a”

PC it's not slick it's not shiny the guts of the ship are on the outside you can like it's it's messy he's messy you know it was like really important to us and to Ryan to represent what like a regular person would be like in this scenario and so we were like oh yeah there's no one else on the ship it would just throw all his like crap on the ground and it would be a huge problem when it went zero g hit and suddenly it was like floating around everywhere and we wanted

and this was a great thing about working with Greg Fraser is like he is an amazing db but he's

not a perfectionist he's an imperfectionist and so he's always like i want to find something

kind of messier sloppy or imperfect about the image and so it all kind of coalesced around making it space a little bit more tactile and and and and weirdly relatable right like it feels like

like that was sort of we had every scene we would do what we called like Greg vibes pass which is after we felt like we got the scene we were like okay we're gonna do one more we're gonna run the scene and then Greg's gonna come with a camera on a shoulder and just sort of find a moment and that was it was cool was that you know because we had the sets really built and there was no green screen in the movie whatsoever right and because we had a real rocky

what didn't matter the scene he could go anywhere and find a shot and line up something that felt like it was discovered and it didn't feel it felt like you know it had a sort of a little magic to it and and a lot of that stuff made it into the movie because it just feels different from from other space stuff yeah it was gonna ask you what percentage of the vibes shots do you think actually made it into the final got a lot because you know like that's the hard thing to do when

you're making a movie that requires so much planning is for it to to be driven by intuition you so we're trying to create the conditions that allow Greg you know to shoot 360

basically you know Greg like lit most of the scenes in such a way that you put point to camera

anywhere and create the conditions for Ryan to improvise to respond directly to his scene partner and have things feel more captured and spontaneous just like so hard to do you're like strung up on wires but we wanted space to be we wanted to be playful and it requires a lot of

“planning to be able to have that freedom right and so you have to like we like pre-shot all”

the space stuff virtually first is make sure that we had the walls of the set can move out that we needed we had the right size and shape of everything and that we were going to be able to be using the right equipment and you know and when we did but but that allowed us to be free when we were shooting and then similarly like when we did wire stuff like there was like there's a very tropey version of space where everyone's on like a wire and going slow motion like

there in a ballet or a bad high school production of Peter Pan or something when we talk to astronauts there's that it's not like that like yours suspended in the air but like you move at regular speed and it's clumsy you can get stuck in the middle if you're too far from the walls so like you're

constantly pushing yourself off one wall and bonking into another and the first few days that

you're experiencing like a gravity you are a total clots and you're smashing into everything and so we you know and so we set up this rig which was on where Ryan was in the spin ring and we had like flexibility with the way that the wires could move so that he could spin his body in any direction flip around basically do air parkour and we'd be like okay you got to get from here to there and just like do however you would and and give him the freedom to sort of like

mess his way to to the spot and and that kind of like planning and preparation to allow for freedom is like it's so much harder than you might imagine can you tell me a little bit about directing Ryan to make this work and like how much did he like acting opposite a puppet did he did was it difficult to do that like you hear a lot of obviously a lot of stories about actors acting opposite tennis balls like he mentioned yeah and this is different but it is also

“it it's a different performance style it is you you you you know for Ryan I think you know he”

such a big believer in the book he was excited and scared which is like where you want to be in like Sydney Pollock would ask his HODs when he started a movie he would say do you want to get scared and the whole point of it is again those obstacles so I think Ryan is like us and that he likes having those provocations from like the challenge and then you know it he's such an important part of Rocky's performance his belief that Rocky is a person and that Rocky has status

in the scenes is so critical one of favorite things about Ryan is how he has a handsome movie star

who's really smart and a great filmmaker he always confers status to the characters around him even when he's on SNL like the way he like his clown is to be the lowman in the scene and so when he's around Rocky he's going like hey you know I'm sorry I'm talking so much you know I just really want to be here like he's trying to get on he's playing get on the team

“yeah and so that's what we talked about as you know the the four of us us the you know us Ryan”

and James Ortiz who plays Rocky is like you're older than him Rocky you think you're smarter than him you're certainly not as clumsy as he is and you pity him right and I think the big

what we call this team of puppeteers and and there was like this back and for they could improvise

“and wooden improvise scenes for for long long stretches and and you could get these real”

reactions from Ryan that are like he was surprised by the thing that James did and was like tickled by it or or surprise by it or thrown back by it and then and then Rocky was reacting to whatever it is that Ryan did and and like and James the voice that he was doing on set was the voice that we used in the movie and so their banter is natural because he has a real scene partner it's not him imagining himself having right so you're responding to each other and suddenly

like you stop acting or having you start reacting yes it starts just behaving right I'm always

interested to talk to directing duose yes because it's a unique relationship and a division of labor is always interesting to me around this you guys know each other for very long time he's working together for a very long time but also sometimes asked like writing duose or you back to back in a room is one person standing in the other person talking but when you're on set like who's responsible for what are you changing every day what you do we're side by side

at a monitor often the communication is non-verbal right and whoever is most preoccupied with something in that moment is the one who's taking charge and running on to the right okay we try not to have like two people run up to an actor and like give give thoughts because then it can be like well the contradictory and so usually when we've gotten to on to set like we have worked and reworked that scene and we know exactly what we will we want to get out of it and we've

written together you know that's one like rule we have is like we ride together on the way to the stage so that we can talk about the days work okay yeah and then we like are watching and then we can look at it and go like needs to be a little faster right okay I'll go I'll go I'll go talk to go and talk to them and then you know then the or it'll be like one of us to be like I feel like like it should be they should be yelling and I'm like oh but I feel like they're the two mean and like let's do the the angry take

now and then we'll do a safety that's like a sweetie pie take and then we'll figure it out in the editing room but we sort of like allow that each version to have its own moment so we go like okay let's go and let's let's just like really let him have it and then come back around after that okay that was great now just to try a different version let's try when we're like trying to be kind to each other and then try to do them whiplash by like alternating exactly ideas you try to

like start with one and then guide towards the other and I think for for us like this relationship is not on like the one that you know Ryan has with Rocket or with you know Ava Stratt played by

“Sandra Huller is like you have to accommodate one another's like quirks like and what you're”

hoping to do is to magnify one another's difference is not like like the a Lord Miller movie cannot be like the venn diagram like subsets of the things that we both agree on it has to be like the full like both circles and the part in the middle so that you get a broader set of ideas and you stop don't worry about editing them you just go you just have to like trust and embrace what the other guy is interested in would you know how to define what are the things in your

own individual parts of the circles hmm hard to say I mean it depends on the moment right and then we

sometimes switch right because like if I'm like always like I'm if I if Chris gets super upset

I immediately become a peacemaker like a married couple basically like you you you like some of your functions atrophy because you have a young someone's in sometimes right but but we're usually coming out from the same place and it's only about like 5% of the time that we're like seeing it slightly differently and so we just try to get as much as we can and then figure it out in that in the editing room yeah I'm sorry if it's an unsatisfying answer could you have a good answer

we don't really we don't see a vision we don't divide the labor we do sometimes in writing what we'll do is we'll talk talk talk talk about the scenes and whoever's got a clearer idea of the scene they'll write that scene someone else write the other thing and we'll swap pages and they'll get back together and we'll talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk and then like figure out something and then similar like take turns on stuff and we ran a TV show

like we thought that there was a great value in group writing and also a great value in individual writing and concentration and just the things that pop into your head and that you accept

“without being challenged and I think we tried to balance that and have a little bit of both”

I'm curious also about the tone I've had this nice experience of showing my five-year-old

some of your movies not only not on she's not just twenty-two jumps but um it would not be the first

they have a vibe they have a tone they have a sensitivity they're friendly yes they are and

“they're they're antique and they're excitable in a good way yes that's true and this movie has”

some of that but not all of that like it is different and I was kind of curious like what it was like to confront material and try to make sure that you're putting your your stamp on it but maybe not get in its way as well because you have your own sensibilities but this pre-existing materials here how did it feel doing that I mean you really want to honor this book like we were so blown away by the story and the and the tone and the vibe of the book luckily the book is doing a lot of things

that we like to do which is like it's funny it's it's exciting it's really emotional you know it's about about like a friendship and all this stuff so it's in our wheelhouse of things that we that we like and and so we didn't really think too much about like just to do anything yeah so like this is what the scene is this is how the scene goes and we and you know like what's cool about human

“beings is that we can laugh and cry right on top of each other and the best dramas make you laugh”

and the best comedies make you cry and so if you make a movie that makes you feel all of the feelings you've laughed you cried you've been excited you were scared you were on the edge of your seat you were curious you had all everything then you come out of that movie going like wow I just felt I went on a ride and I had a whole experience of of a feelings and then and then you feel like it was worth going to the theater for what was the single hardest thing to capture in the

movie you mean like hard fun hard or like hard hard like I like I would say I'm curious about so many things that were hard in this movie but but one thing that was it took a while to R&D but when we got it it was it was crazy magical was so there's a scene when they're collecting astrophagers this sort of space algae that's eating the suns and you can only see them in infrared light and so Ryan's characters out on the hull of the ship collecting a bunch of

this astrophagion he's surrounded by these invisible thing and we sort of get a moment to visualize what an IR camera would be seeing and what it was actually what's actually all around him and and the way that we did that was you take a filter out of the of the camera that's blocking IR light so that you it isn't IR camera and it made this like beautiful pinkish reddish color thing and what we did was we put Ryan in a you know on stage surrounded by a bunch of

chicken wire filled with infrared lights that were like sparkling and and then we had great built an aquarium sort of like a double glass window with a hose that was dripping water through it in front of the handheld camera and then he would sort of stand around Ryan who was like going like this in this chicken cage would it couldn't see anything because they he couldn't see the lights because they're invisible to the naked eye it looks ridiculous to

the naked eye and then when you look on the monitor it's this beautiful thing with all these like bokeh lights flickering everywhere all around like surrounded by it and you're like watching the monitor and then watching the reality you walk under the stage like any past got walked under the stage there's like a huge spaceship over there taking up most of the stage and in the corner a bunch of dorks like crowding around this like cage that we can

all go in like it's incredible I'm seeing heaven and she's like what are you losers doing

and then we sure to the monitor and she lost her mind yeah that's um that's really good

“problem solving did you have to do like ten other things we were going to share we”

were shooting that like really late in the schedule because on the day we planned to do it we didn't have a good enough answer yeah we were just like trying we like well let's try we were kind of winging it and we were like let's try and do it for real like we did a light's knee to like interact with his body and light him up the as they're lighting or also look fake and so we were like we tried a bunch of different versions and it wasn't quite getting

there so then it built the cage yeah one thing that the movie has that a lot of great space movies have is an incredible score uh yeah and pretend Daniel Pemberton's score is very memorable

and it feels essential and I'm just like wondering when did he come in at what point do you have

music as it before after shooting as he's looking at a cut and then adding so during shooting we asked Daniel we were shooting in London and we just said come by the set and just see what we're

we had all these sequences that were you know silent or without much dialogues we were like let's

just just like whip something up and uh one of those pieces is in the isn't the movie and so it gave us like a feel and the other thing we discussed with Daniel was I don't want Ryan to feel

“alone we wanted to feel like the entire earth is rooting him on and so that's why it's full of”

choirs and like lots and lots of players he brought in a bunch of school children to like stop and clap for the like question like his kids from his classroom where like still part of his consciousness because it just didn't we again we kept wanting the movie to be affirming and warm and feel like you were we were all in this together and so one of the early things that happened

is he found a leaky faucet in his friends apartment flat pardon me because he's English and he

and it and it became one of the signature themes of the movies what opens the movie when you turn in a certain way or go and and he was like I've got record this and he recorded it different like pitches of it and then turned it into music and so the melody that winds up so that's like kind of a spooky sound and and what we talked about was like it can't it can't sing a spooky song like Ryan is waking up in great distress is no idea where he is he's in a weird amniotic sack outfit that we made

for him and he's upset I don't need the music to tell me I'm upset I need the music to tell me that this guy is gonna go somewhere that we're rooting for him and he's worthy of great things he's going to do great things like a call to action and and like figuring that stuff out was a real back and forth trial and error process I think his music and the spider verse one was also amazing

so it's like a really nice little union that you got to go and with him it's his scores are always

really playful I think for this one it's like we all knew that what was possible and that it could be one of Daniel's great scores and and he knew too and I think we we we we put a lot of effort into trying to make it work and he worked really hard on it and totally nailed it in my opinion my unbiased a bit yeah exactly um you guys are both movie fans movies like this are not that common anymore and I love how you just described for 30 minutes how you made this and we basically

practically you build everything it looks just more real because it is more real and I think people really like relate to that but that's hard and that's more expensive than ever yeah yeah feel pressure about the movie being a success you know I mean of course why would we you want to make

“sure that they could still make movies like this in the future right so it's a bet you have to make”

is you're going to make someone's favorite movie and you have to be able to like live with that like if it doesn't hit and then the thing is like you go well on average I have a I know that we can make something that appeals and if you and that smart it makes you feel good walking out of the theater you know the bar we have to clear every movie has to clear is undeniable greatness it is that's the truth of like where the audience are somebody told us that really early in our

career is like the bar anything it was television executive if you're doing something new every doing something original it has to be great or it's not gonna like make it past like the everything else all the big franchises people need to walk out of the theater and to call their friend of me like oh my god you have to see it I'm going to take you all the movies that we grew up with that we loved ET little shop before star wars those are movies my I remember my dad seeing

he's done that for two movies little shop of horrors he was like we were taking your mother to this tomorrow night right and then not the other movie was uh was a south park bigger longer on yeah I don't know what you think the two things I'm we're bringing your mother to my

“so you may connect but but there is that that's where you have to get to so I think every”

HOD you know every you know every day on set we are trying to discover moments that make you want to bring your friend and it was like everybody on the crew like felt like they were felt like they were doing something special and so they put a lot of heart and soul and ideas into it and everybody really cared and I think can tell we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen you guys seen anything good lately you

I've seen you went to good stuff I'm trying to think last one I'm trying to give you an answer that's not obvious not super obvious we are at the tail end of a word season have been catching up on stuff could be an old or new I tell you what I just uh I just watched all the uh Oscar animated

have to say you're favorite maybe can you talk about a couple of them yeah there's a question

“my mind there was um papillon which was like like a beautiful like painting like painting and”

repainting story about like a a swimmer and I thought it was I watched them with my kids and

and that my daughter especially was really interested in the process of how that was done it was

beautifully done in like a beautiful story I mean they were all really good so but that one was just

“from from a from a technique standpoint I thought was really really beautiful yeah I just watched”

how last night great timing on that what about you the last great thing I saw I went to the citywalk I max and saw a crime 101 and particularly they have these unbelievable shots of the 101 freeway yeah not considered you know like the most beautiful

“subjective fun and you know and normally you place your stuck in traffic and you know”

Bart is a filmmaker we got to know in London while we were shooting and just to see the way he turned that into poetry and like spun the camera and took the whole theater for this crazy ride I just thought he's thought he was a masterful I like that yeah I

the movie looks incredible it looks incredible and it's like it's a we love a high-st movie it's a

good old fashion like crime picture where the characters and their relationships are in the foreground you know it's like the thing you know it's a one last job movie another one of my favorite sub-sub genres um yeah and it makes and it's LA for LA makes LA look great you know it's it's such a pleasure to watch that picture Bill Chris congrats thanks guys thank you so much thank you thanks to filling Chris thanks to our producer Jack Sanders for his work on this episode

thanks to Lucas Cavanol for production support we'll be back on Monday with a special conversation see you then