Speaker 1: Look, how is only films to be buried with?
Speaker 2: We're back baby, Hello and welcome to films to be
Speaker 2: buried with.
Speaker 3: My name is Brett Goldstein. I'm a comedian, an actor,
Speaker 3: a writer, a director, a book and I love film.
Speaker 3: As Charles Xavier once said, just because someone stumbles and
Speaker 3: loses their path doesn't mean they're lost forever. Just because
Speaker 3: I haven't released new episodes for a few weeks doesn't
Speaker 3: mean I've not been recording new ones. Oh wow, me too,
Speaker 3: Charlie Nice one man. Every week I invite a special
Speaker 3: guest over. I tell them they've died. Then I get
Speaker 3: them to discuss their life through the films that meant
Speaker 3: the most of them. Previous guests include Kevin Smith, Barry Jenkins,
Speaker 3: Sharon Stone and even But this week it's the incredible actor, writer, comedian, director,
Speaker 3: producer and award winner, the amazing and wonderful Stephen Merchant.
Speaker 3: Head over to the Patreon at patreon dot com forward
Speaker 3: slash Brett Goldsteam, where you get an extra fifteen minutes
Speaker 3: with Stephen, where we talk secrets, we talk beginnings and endings.
Speaker 3: You also get the whole episode, uncut, ad free and
Speaker 3: as a video check it out over at patreon dot com.
Speaker 3: Forward slash Brett Goldstein, So sorry I've been away for
Speaker 3: a while. Thank you to Buddy Peace for taking care
Speaker 3: of things. I think he's been fucking brilliant and I'd
Speaker 3: quite like him to do all the intros. Anyway, we're
Speaker 3: here with a brand new episode. Stephen Merchant is a legend.
Speaker 3: I've wanted to do this with him for ages. He
Speaker 3: co created the original Office, he did the same with extras,
Speaker 3: he made movies, he's been in logan. He's a brilliant actor.
Speaker 3: He's a brilliant writer. He's a brilliant gregg. He's good
Speaker 3: at all of it. His show The Outlaws season three
Speaker 3: is out on BBC and Amazon Prime very soon. We
Speaker 3: recorded this on Zoom a few weeks ago, and he
Speaker 3: was a fucking joy. I really think you're going to
Speaker 3: enjoy this one. So that is it for now. I
Speaker 3: very much hope you enjoy episode two hundred and ninety
Speaker 3: eight of Films to be Buried With. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 3: to Films to be Buried With. It is I Brett Goldstein,
Speaker 3: and I am joined today by a creator, a writer,
Speaker 3: an actor, a director, a producer, an executive producer, a
Speaker 3: BBC legend, an HBO legend, a w w E megastar,
Speaker 3: a outlaw, a singer, a stand up, a lover, a fighter,
Speaker 3: but only with his heart. It's the word and only.
Speaker 3: He's a legend. I can't believe he's here. Can you
Speaker 3: believe he's here?
Speaker 1: Well? He blood he is, look right out, I'm here,
Speaker 1: he is. It's the amazing. It's Steve, imagine. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. What an introduction. You are right in every
Speaker 1: capacity except singer, right singing? Don't feel confident singer? No, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not a karaoke fan. If that's simple, that's a
Speaker 1: deal breaker for you. But I just know I just
Speaker 1: don't want to listen to people being mediocre at singing.
Speaker 3: I've never understood the joy of karaoke, and I think
Speaker 3: maybe it's because I often hang out with people who
Speaker 3: were like very good singers.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, what do we do?
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm just sort of watching you show off, spent
Speaker 3: the day showing off, and now we're watching new show
Speaker 3: off somewhere. I don't really get it, and I'm terrible.
Speaker 1: Is it also, though, because we're performers, you and I
Speaker 1: that we know that we want to do a good
Speaker 1: job of performing right, and the idea that we're going
Speaker 1: to do a sort of under rehearsed song that we
Speaker 1: haven't practiced that we're not very good at, that's not
Speaker 1: in the right key.
Speaker 3: That just seems Yeah, that's not like willfully dying at
Speaker 3: a gig. It's like, oh, you want me to die
Speaker 3: friends exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a terrible Well.
Speaker 1: That was why I was one of the co creators
Speaker 1: of the hit TV show lip Sync Back Oh Yeah,
Speaker 1: in which you simply lip SYNCD and didn't have to say,
Speaker 1: of course, that is the craziest show. I one time
Speaker 1: went to a recording and Stevie Wonder was there miming
Speaker 1: playing the piano and miming singing, And You're like, we've
Speaker 1: got him all the way to the studio and he's
Speaker 1: not actually singing or playing. We've got the equipment, we've
Speaker 1: got the microphones. Who could.
Speaker 3: It wants to show you how good he'd be at
Speaker 3: pretending to do it. That is fucking mad. It's really weird.
Speaker 3: So you're in we're both in Los Angeles for those listening,
Speaker 3: we're quite near each other, but we're doing this on
Speaker 3: zoom because you know, that's how the world works and
Speaker 3: how it should be and we should have no actual
Speaker 3: human contact. But's right, I've got so many things I
Speaker 3: wanted to ask you. I've always wanted to ask you things.
Speaker 3: Somebody I've always thought it's fascinated by you. Hey, listen,
Speaker 3: I'm a huge fan. I think you're fucking brilliant. Thank
Speaker 3: you so much. Well, right back at your boy, Let's
Speaker 3: get that done. Let's get that out of the way.
Speaker 3: But something I've always felt with you, and I don't
Speaker 3: know if it's true, And maybe I've misunderstood you as
Speaker 3: a as a public in your public seconly, you always
Speaker 3: seem to me somebody who doesn't have confidence issues. Maybe
Speaker 3: you always seem like a very confident man. And I
Speaker 3: remember reading something about your stand up, which I also love,
Speaker 3: but you in an interview you said when you did
Speaker 3: your Hello Lady's stand up tour, you said something like
Speaker 3: you didn't really love the act of touring because once
Speaker 3: you'd figured out the show, there was no joy in
Speaker 3: an audience laughing. For you, it was just like all
Speaker 3: you cared about is does the joke work? And once
Speaker 3: you know it works, the rest of it is boring.
Speaker 3: Does that hold true?
Speaker 1: Well, given that I've started doing stand up again recently
Speaker 1: and I'm hoping at some point to sell tickets, I
Speaker 1: feel bad slagging the audience off, and I didn't mean
Speaker 1: any disrespect to the audience. And I suppose what I
Speaker 1: meant was that the thing which is most enjoyable is
Speaker 1: creating the act. It's the same reason I think I
Speaker 1: love writing and directing and all these different like never
Speaker 1: picking one lane. It's so I sort of like the
Speaker 1: making of the thing, and once you've made the thing,
Speaker 1: sort of doing it again and again is not as
Speaker 1: exciting as the process of making it was. And so
Speaker 1: I did a play once and I'm fascinated by the
Speaker 1: rehearra saw and the working and the developing all that,
Speaker 1: and then when you're actually performing at night after night,
Speaker 1: that's not as pleasurable as the sort of making of
Speaker 1: it was. And I think that's sort of what I
Speaker 1: meant there. I would hate someone to think that they
Speaker 1: saw me and I was phoning it in because the
Speaker 1: other thing's very important to me. Having read Bruce Springsteen's autobiography,
Speaker 1: and there are many similarities bred between me and the Boss,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine. To bring that up later, but
Speaker 1: he He makes a really good point about how even
Speaker 1: though you've done it many nights in a row, for
Speaker 1: the people in the audience, they might have waited twelve months,
Speaker 1: they might have had their ticket on the fridge, and
Speaker 1: it's a big night out for them, and they've got
Speaker 1: to go out, and they've got to get the babysitter
Speaker 1: on the whole thing, and that it's important you deliver
Speaker 1: for them. And I think that's really endearing that someone
Speaker 1: of his stature and success still keeps that in mind,
Speaker 1: you know, And so I do take that on board,
Speaker 1: and I do feel that way. So basically, if I
Speaker 1: am bored performing to you, I will try and keep
Speaker 1: that hidden from you.
Speaker 3: So when do you see my eyes looking dead that
Speaker 3: in the very back of my mind, I was thinking
Speaker 3: this was a nice.
Speaker 1: Thing to do for you. That's right. But you say
Speaker 1: about confidence, it's weird. It's funny to say that, because
Speaker 1: I think if I was to look back at me
Speaker 1: saying school, I could present I could give the illusion
Speaker 1: of confidence. We're not really having it. So for instance,
Speaker 1: if you'd ask me to go and ask a girl
Speaker 1: for her phone number, I'd have crumbled, yes. But if
Speaker 1: you asked me to goof around on stage. I'd have
Speaker 1: jumped on it, you know what I mean. So it's
Speaker 1: sort of it's confidence maybe in certain directions, but not
Speaker 1: in others. Well, I think you're you're listen, You're an
Speaker 1: inspiration to many people myself, you know. But the fact
Speaker 1: that you're like having think about like hanging out with
Speaker 1: American people. The thing that I've noticed is the difference,
Speaker 1: one big difference that blow my mind is that if
Speaker 1: an American has an idea for something, they just do it,
Speaker 1: whereas an english person will think of a hundred reasons
Speaker 1: they can't do it, they will be told they can't
Speaker 1: do it, they'll realize they're not good enough. It'll be
Speaker 1: such if they ever do do the thing, it will
Speaker 1: take about ideas to get to the decision of do
Speaker 1: you know what? I Am going to give it a go? Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's that thing. Do you feel that way
Speaker 1: that when I don't know when you were growing up,
Speaker 1: But it seems to me that in America they teach
Speaker 1: their kids that you could one day be president and
Speaker 1: why not shoot for that? And of course most kids
Speaker 1: won't become president and should never try, but they're somehow
Speaker 1: told to do that, whereas if you had said in
Speaker 1: my school, I'd like to one day be prime minister,
Speaker 1: they'd be like, yeah, right, Merchant thinks he can be
Speaker 1: prime minister. He can't. He can't even he can't even
Speaker 1: ask out Lucy Jackson.
Speaker 3: And he wasn't you know what I mean, Like he
Speaker 3: was sick on his shot exactly.
Speaker 1: And that would be the teachers, let alone the kids
Speaker 1: like the idea that. So I just think there is
Speaker 1: this feeling in the UK. I don't whether there's something,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's changing, but it used to feel like
Speaker 1: when I was younger, that sort of ambition was something
Speaker 1: to be slightly ashamed of. Yeah, they should have had
Speaker 1: to pretend you just stumbled into everything. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: hadn't tried your hardest.
Speaker 3: You know, you're you're like looking at oh what my
Speaker 3: HBI show, this happened exactly. But I really I remember thinking,
Speaker 3: you went, you went to America, You fucking went to HBO.
Speaker 1: You did this show that was so.
Speaker 3: I remember being so impressed by Hello Ladies in terms
Speaker 3: of many things, but also you directed all of them
Speaker 3: or most of them, about three of them, I think
Speaker 3: three of them. Yeah, it's really like well crafted, like
Speaker 3: it was really well made, and like there's this sequence
Speaker 3: where the limo is trying to back up and blocks everyone,
Speaker 3: and I was like, this is a fucking huge, big
Speaker 3: old production that you are doing very much not where
Speaker 3: you're from, you know what I mean, Like you just
Speaker 3: come over and you've done this thing. It's very impressive,
Speaker 3: and maybe it's all good, and maybe you never want
Speaker 3: to reveal this. You never give off the impression of
Speaker 3: someone who is going, oh fuck, oh fuck, I'm just
Speaker 3: holding this together by a thread of.
Speaker 1: What I'm doing.
Speaker 3: This is a nightmare, or if it was actually like
Speaker 3: just quite kind of you've always felt like I know
Speaker 3: what I'm doing with this.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. There's a description I saw somewhere once
Speaker 1: of directing films or TV is like you're being chased
Speaker 1: down a hill by a boulder and you're just trying
Speaker 1: not to get crushed by it. You're just trying to
Speaker 1: stay one step ahead of it, kind of Indiana Jones style, right,
Speaker 1: And that is my experience of directing, And so there
Speaker 1: is always a sort of undercurrent of panic and anxiety
Speaker 1: and can you make the days and sort of putting
Speaker 1: out the fires that never to be come up, But
Speaker 1: there is also part of me that's quite sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: we can only deal with one problem at a time,
Speaker 1: and most things have a solution, you know, like I
Speaker 1: should quite I can kind of become quite practical and pragmatic. Okay, right,
Speaker 1: well we've lost that location. Okay, oh cod oh COVID's
Speaker 1: it and we're all we're all gonna die, all right, Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: like I'm quite good and sort of does anyone here
Speaker 1: and I have to work on a vaccine? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so I don't know if that's confidence more than
Speaker 1: sort of all right, let's just roll across sleeves and
Speaker 1: figure out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, impressive, really impressive. Now can we talk
Speaker 3: about Fighting with My Family? Which I think is one
Speaker 3: of the great I think it is such a great film.
Speaker 3: Oh that's very sweet of you.
Speaker 1: Bro.
Speaker 3: If anyone is listening hasn't seen it, you must go
Speaker 3: and see it. It was not what I expected, a
Speaker 3: fun sports movie, silly, and it was not fun.
Speaker 1: It made me cry. It is fun.
Speaker 3: It's really really fun, and it does all the sports
Speaker 3: movie stuff that you wanted to and it's really funny,
Speaker 3: but it's also incredibly moving and I found it like
Speaker 3: one of the great films about siblings and about success
Speaker 3: and the whole story of the brother I just think
Speaker 3: it's so it's I think it's a really really good film.
Speaker 1: And you also made a film in the middle of
Speaker 1: a fucking WWE match. I just don't know how you
Speaker 1: did it, but I think it's wonderful. How was it?
Speaker 1: You're very very complimentary and and I appreciate that. And
Speaker 1: I think what's interesting you say that about what your
Speaker 1: perception of it was and what the actual experience was,
Speaker 1: because going into it, because it's about wrestling, I had
Speaker 1: no interest in wrestling, didn't know anything about wrestling, And
Speaker 1: I think that inevitably puts people off potentially because like me,
Speaker 1: they're like, I don't know what this world is and
Speaker 1: I don't understand it. And yet the film in the
Speaker 1: end is not really about wrestling. It's about you say,
Speaker 1: like you say, the families. It's about sibling rivalry, about ambition,
Speaker 1: about kind of dreams versus reality, all those things, and
Speaker 1: that resting just happens to be the thing they're doing.
Speaker 1: But they could have been trying to be a band,
Speaker 1: or try to be ballet dancers, or try to run
Speaker 1: a fish and chip shop or whatever, like it could
Speaker 1: have been anything. Really, I appreciate that you said you
Speaker 1: were emotional, because that was always the aim. Like, I
Speaker 1: think if a movie can make you kind of well
Speaker 1: up at the end, that's a real achievement because you know,
Speaker 1: nineteen minutes before, you didn't know these characters, you didn't
Speaker 1: know this world, you didn't know any thing about it.
Speaker 1: And by the end, you know, we've actually managed to
Speaker 1: change your emotions. And that I think is quite a
Speaker 1: hard thing to do, and I think sometimes it's sort
Speaker 1: of dismissed as being either too easy or sort of
Speaker 1: glib or not glib. What am I looking at? It's
Speaker 1: like I think people think it's easier than it is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to create emotions.
Speaker 3: You know, Well there's that I've never quite understood sentimental
Speaker 3: as a word and as a sort of negative I've
Speaker 3: never quite understood like like whenever, like Spielberg films, they're
Speaker 3: accused of being too sentimental, I'm like, what do you mean?
Speaker 3: Do you mean that they work too well?
Speaker 1: Like? What? Like? What it's right? Like? What's right? That's right?
Speaker 1: What's the crime you felt? You're upsets et? Is going home? Well,
Speaker 1: what's your upset is? Going home you're supposed to be
Speaker 1: because the little boys upset.
Speaker 3: But I wondered, with my family, I haven't seen many
Speaker 3: things about it in terms of you if I may
Speaker 3: spoil it, and if you haven't seen it, skip ahead,
Speaker 3: skip ahead a minute. But there are brother and sister
Speaker 3: who wrestle, and they both want to be wrestling stars,
Speaker 3: and they get this chance and she is the only
Speaker 3: one that's picked and he is in, and then that
Speaker 3: is quite a serious part of the story that is
Speaker 3: then followed through and he sort of falls apart and
Speaker 3: they fall apart, and it felt very real and very unusual.
Speaker 3: I hadn't sort of seen that story done, and I
Speaker 3: wondered if any of that was I don't know if
Speaker 3: you have siblings or you're obviously a very successful person.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you have siblings in whether any
Speaker 3: of that was true of your experience, and I don't know.
Speaker 3: It felt very well real And as you probably know,
Speaker 3: it was based on a documentary that have been made
Speaker 3: about the real life family.
Speaker 1: It is a true story. It's a real family of
Speaker 1: wrestlers from Norwich in England, so that documentary covers If
Speaker 1: you like the first I don't know twenty minutes of
Speaker 1: the movie, and that documentary was watched while he was
Speaker 1: in a hotel room in England by Dwayne the Rock Johnson,
Speaker 1: a former wrestler, and he was the one who wanted
Speaker 1: to make it to a movie, and I ended up
Speaker 1: teaming up with him, having worked so successfully together in
Speaker 1: the movie Tooth Fairy. You've scene, You're welcome and so no.
Speaker 1: So I guess it wasn't so much that I related
Speaker 1: to the brothers sister dynamic as I think it was
Speaker 1: about the idea of people pursuing a dream and the
Speaker 1: difficulties of that and the sort of sacrifices of that,
Speaker 1: and how you know, she travels as she did in
Speaker 1: real life to America and she's trying to become successful,
Speaker 1: and she's alone and she doesn't feel supported, and she
Speaker 1: feels like she's sort of alienated people. And there were
Speaker 1: aspects of that, not so much to do with my family,
Speaker 1: but just generally that I relate to. And I just
Speaker 1: I met the real family and I discovered there was
Speaker 1: just so much more to the story than the documentary
Speaker 1: had covered, and it just was a very rich set
Speaker 1: of people of real life people to kind of explore
Speaker 1: how old were you when The Office hit?
Speaker 3: I was about to talk to twelve, because again, you
Speaker 3: always seem very cool with everything, and I know public
Speaker 3: life is not real, but like you sort of became
Speaker 3: this phenomenon that shouted and you did and you're twenty
Speaker 3: five year old man, and I'm assuming your friends were
Speaker 3: not in the same position, Like it was that a
Speaker 3: difficult time of adjustment within your sort of social life
Speaker 3: or was it fin or was it a bit much
Speaker 3: like how did that away?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think it probably was. I think the thing
Speaker 1: about something like The Office, and because I was a
Speaker 1: writer chiefly and a director, not a performer, was that
Speaker 1: it was a very it felt like quite a slow burn.
Speaker 1: So you know, we were making the show and then
Speaker 1: you're waiting for it to come out, and then it
Speaker 1: first it comes out and no one pays any attention,
Speaker 1: and it famously or infamously got the lowest test audience
Speaker 1: score for the BBC. The only other thing that scored
Speaker 1: lower was women's lawn bowls, which I didn't even realize
Speaker 1: was televised. And so by the time it had sort
Speaker 1: of become whatever phenomenon it became, it was quite a
Speaker 1: few years. It's like maybe two or three years sort
Speaker 1: of by since we'd started. And so because it wasn't
Speaker 1: like I was suddenly famous, I was just I just
Speaker 1: had had success behind the scenes. I think I acclimatized
Speaker 1: at the same speed as my friends and family did
Speaker 1: in or what, you know, because I wasn't suddenly thrust
Speaker 1: into It wasn't like I was on X Factor and
Speaker 1: suddenly everyone knew who I was, you know. So I
Speaker 1: think it was a much more incremental thing. But over time,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, you do start to drift away. And
Speaker 1: I think one of the things you feel guilty about
Speaker 1: is talking about the life experience you've had, because you
Speaker 1: get to do so many exciting things and you get
Speaker 1: to be on set, or you get to meet famous people,
Speaker 1: or you get to go to award shows, and that's
Speaker 1: all very exciting, and you don't want to be the
Speaker 1: person that comes back to the pub and starts boasting
Speaker 1: about that stuff, because you don't want to be that guy.
Speaker 1: And so you feel like, who can I share this
Speaker 1: stuff with? Because it's so crazy, as you know, and
Speaker 1: it's so absurd, and it's not even that you want
Speaker 1: to show off. You just want to share how weird
Speaker 1: it all is. And I think that's why famous people
Speaker 1: become friends with famous people, because they can sort of
Speaker 1: share all that stuff, you know what I mean, You
Speaker 1: don't have to apology. Doesn't sound like name dropping because
Speaker 1: you don't have to apologize for it.
Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, it's interesting. And my last question for
Speaker 3: you before I remember to tell you something is is
Speaker 3: is your coming back to stand up? You did this
Speaker 3: huge stand up to it and then you stop doing
Speaker 3: stand up for years, ten years, fifteen years. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and now you've decided to come back. You've come crawling
Speaker 3: back to stand up where you beloved And what's brought
Speaker 3: this on?
Speaker 1: And are you enjoying it more at this time? I
Speaker 1: think it's that, as I sort of mentioned earlier, I
Speaker 1: did I was quite exhausted doing it last time. Just
Speaker 1: you know, again, whatever outward projection of calm I present,
Speaker 1: I do get quite stressful stressed about these things. And
Speaker 1: I do find it anxiety and juicyeing going in front
Speaker 1: of an audience for an hour and a half because
Speaker 1: it is a weird thing to do. It's not a
Speaker 1: normal human state of being, and so I did find
Speaker 1: it quite stressful. I think I got sidetracked with other
Speaker 1: things including the Holiday's TV show and the film. And
Speaker 1: as you know, with stand up you sort of have
Speaker 1: to give it your full attention and energy. It's a
Speaker 1: hard thing to do sort of occasionally because you just
Speaker 1: you need to get match fit. And so I just
Speaker 1: found like I had a bit more time and bandwidth
Speaker 1: to kind of think about it again, and I started
Speaker 1: just dabbling and doing ten minutes here in a club
Speaker 1: and I just and I just kind of enjoyed it again.
Speaker 1: I just was rejuvenated and I was enjoying the again,
Speaker 1: the puzzle of putting a stand up show together and
Speaker 1: what works and what doesn't, and how people's tastes have
Speaker 1: changed in the tenure since I last did it, and
Speaker 1: the sensitivity is now are different, and it's just again,
Speaker 1: it's really it's a kind of becoming a really stimulating
Speaker 1: thing to do. I'm really finding it interesting and nutritious. Great, well,
Speaker 1: I'm excited. I'm just thinking about the payday. Wherett thinking
Speaker 1: about the payday? Oh yeah, Stephen, And I.
Speaker 3: Forgot to tell you something, and I should have told
Speaker 3: you earlier. I should have told you when we connected
Speaker 3: on the zoom. But I did make a note of it,
Speaker 3: and I just forgot to tell you as well. Let
Speaker 3: me see, I guess I just I don't know how
Speaker 3: you how you take it, but I'll probably just say
Speaker 3: it and then we'll deal with it. You've died, You're dead.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, yep, you're dead. Okay, Well I'm I'm coping
Speaker 3: with it quite well.
Speaker 1: Again. I can can present the calm, yeah, but there's
Speaker 1: an anxiety underneath. Right, how did you die? How did
Speaker 1: you die? I think I died doing something really dumb
Speaker 1: that I knew better than doing. I was thinking that
Speaker 1: they Well, so Big Bear Lake, which is a you know,
Speaker 1: it's a little resort, Big Bear kind of north of
Speaker 1: I think it's north of Los Angeles. And I went
Speaker 1: there once with my family and my mum and dad,
Speaker 1: my sister, her kids, niece and nephew. And you can
Speaker 1: take out these kind of little little raft boats onto
Speaker 1: the lake and sign says do not jump in the lake. Right,
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm a forty five year old man,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, ah, no, probably jump in the lake
Speaker 1: because he looks really nice. And so I jumped in
Speaker 1: the lake and then I realized the reason they have
Speaker 1: that sign is you can't get back onto the boat.
Speaker 1: There's no ladder, the undersides kind of curved, and so
Speaker 1: I'm scrabbling to try and get back on the boat,
Speaker 1: and my family and these Nissa nephew all about oblivious
Speaker 1: to my panic, and I don't want to worry the kids,
Speaker 1: but I'm starting to think. I think this is how
Speaker 1: I die. I think I'm going to drown in the
Speaker 1: big bed lake with all of my family around me,
Speaker 1: which I guess is the way I wanted to go.
Speaker 1: And I'm you know, I'm tall as you know, and
Speaker 1: my legs are getting dragged towards the propeller of the
Speaker 1: engine under the boat. And in the end I managed
Speaker 1: to sort of notify my brother in law who kind
Speaker 1: of hauled me aboard, and I sort of cut my
Speaker 1: legs on the side of the boat. And I just
Speaker 1: look back on it, like, what was I thinking? They said,
Speaker 1: don't jump in the lake. Oh, this is real, this
Speaker 1: is all real. I'm up, this is real. Actually, how
Speaker 1: you died? This is a factor your story. Sorry, I
Speaker 1: should have I should have. I should have said that
Speaker 1: at the beginning, because the story will take on more
Speaker 1: Oh my god, more resonance now that you know it's real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this all actually happened and I survived, but it felt
Speaker 1: like touch and go. And I think that's what I
Speaker 1: mean by just doing something dumb without really thinking it through,
Speaker 1: like jumping in a lake when you were told not to.
Speaker 1: And I'm not an adventurous man. I'm not a parachute guy.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing bungee jumps. But you don't like to
Speaker 1: be terrible today. And if someone says you can't jump, even.
Speaker 3: Though you don't even want to get in a lake,
Speaker 3: I can't judging lake. Yeah, you know you jumped in
Speaker 3: a lake, so the way that you will die getting
Speaker 3: chopped up by a propeller on your own boat. You're
Speaker 3: so successful, You've got a yacht that is so big
Speaker 3: that you can't climb back on it. You jumped off
Speaker 3: because someone's told you not to. Yep, and you get
Speaker 3: dragged into the propeller and chopped up in front of
Speaker 3: your entire family who are cheering.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Or the pilot of my own private helicopter says, Steve,
Speaker 1: you're a tall lad bend when you get out, mind
Speaker 1: the propellers, And I'm like, now, you don't tell me
Speaker 1: what to do, it's my helicopter, and yeah.
Speaker 3: Into my head that's how it happens. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: that's the worst, what terrific dead? Yeah, that's a film.
Speaker 3: There's an actual there's a horror film. I think it's
Speaker 3: called stranded. It's called where it is a group of
Speaker 3: people unlike a yacht, jump off to go swimming and
Speaker 3: then realize they never put a ladder out, and then
Speaker 3: none of them can get back in the whole film?
Speaker 3: Is that an hour and a half and then trying
Speaker 3: to get back on the boat until they're eaten by sex.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I completely relate to him, do it. It was
Speaker 1: a documentary about your life? Do you worry about death?
Speaker 1: Do you know what? I don't know if we can
Speaker 1: say his name anymore. I don't know where he stands
Speaker 1: on the general counsel ladder. I think he probably is canceled.
Speaker 1: But Woody Allen was a formative comic influence on me,
Speaker 1: So whether or let's just park whatever our opinions are
Speaker 1: of him now, you know, forty years ago, he was
Speaker 1: a big influence on me. And he used to joke
Speaker 1: a lot about his fear of death, and there was
Speaker 1: one aspect of his comedy I could never relate to,
Speaker 1: never understand it. But Now as I'm older, I definitely
Speaker 1: am getting a Woody esque anxiety about death that I
Speaker 1: didn't used to have. Yeah, definitely. Do you know when
Speaker 1: that started? Probably for death started turning forty, probably turning forty. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What do you think happens when you die? Nothing? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just over. Yeah, and that's why it's sad, I think. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I got news for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot more than that. There's a whole afterlife.
Speaker 3: There's a fucking heaven, mate, There's a heaven, and it's
Speaker 3: it's huge, and it's filled with all your favorites.
Speaker 1: It's filled with your favorite thing. What's your favorite thing? Well, movies.
Speaker 3: Then in the right place, it seems like you're welcoming heaven, Steve.
Speaker 3: Imagine they're big fans, big fans of all your stuff.
Speaker 3: Some of them are still laughing about the way you died,
Speaker 3: and others act quite traumatized having watched your head. I'm
Speaker 3: off an anicopter, but you're welcome coming in, and they
Speaker 3: all they all want to talk to you.
Speaker 1: And God's in there. He's not mad. He's like, I
Speaker 1: get it. You thought you were. I get it. Don't
Speaker 1: worry about it. Yeah, everyone's welcome, I mean the good people,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 3: And yeah, and then what they want to do is
Speaker 3: talk to you about your life, but they want to
Speaker 3: talk about your life through the medium and film. And
Speaker 3: the first thing they ask you, what's the first film
Speaker 3: you remember seeing? Steve Merchant.
Speaker 1: I'm going to answer that in a second, but I
Speaker 1: have to say, Brett, when you turn this to a
Speaker 1: TV show, you're going to need to make that section
Speaker 1: a lot quicker because on Desert Island discs, it's just
Speaker 1: a doeser Island. You get seven records, all right or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, eight records, but here we go, whereas
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got like a twenty minute, we've done,
Speaker 1: We've done twenty five minutes. Just go in the door.
Speaker 1: Start to really gonna start to my films. Okay, first
Speaker 1: film I remember seeing. Yeah, again, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: dwell on this one because I'm sure this comes up
Speaker 1: all the time. I do remember seeing Empire Strikes Back
Speaker 1: in a cinema, and I do remember queuing around the
Speaker 1: block with my uncle for e T. But the movie
Speaker 1: that really I remember, I remember it being vivid in
Speaker 1: my mind, and I can't I must have been maybe
Speaker 1: eight years old was a movie called The Land That
Speaker 1: Time Forgot, starring Doug McClure as a soldier in the
Speaker 1: First World War. He somehow ends up hijacking a U
Speaker 1: boat and he ends up in a land of dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: And I think it was stop motion dinosaurs or whatever.
Speaker 1: It was in the seventies, and I must have seen
Speaker 1: it before because I remember it was a Saturday and
Speaker 1: it was going to be on around tea time, around
Speaker 1: five point thirty. And I was so excited to watch
Speaker 1: The Land That Time Forgot. I couldn't believe my luck
Speaker 1: there was going to be on TV. And you remember
Speaker 1: in the seventies early eighties, this is before VCRs. You know,
Speaker 1: if it was on, that was your chance to watch it, right.
Speaker 1: I knew it was going to be on. I must
Speaker 1: have seen something trailer or my dad told me. I'm
Speaker 1: so excited. It's a great day, Brett because in the
Speaker 1: afternoon before the movie, I get to go to a fair.
Speaker 1: It's like a local fair or a fate or something.
Speaker 1: There's coconut shy, there's the whole thing, and there's you
Speaker 1: can have your face painted, you know, where you can
Speaker 1: like a kid. You get the lion or the dog
Speaker 1: or whatever. So I have this my face painted. Whatever
Speaker 1: it was, a frog, whatever it is, I've had the
Speaker 1: face painting. I'm loving that five p thirties approach, and
Speaker 1: I'm on the way home. It's The Land at Time Forgot.
Speaker 1: What a day this is gonna be. My mother says
Speaker 1: before the movie starts, I'm gonna wash your face because
Speaker 1: you've got the face paint on. She washes my face.
Speaker 1: I get soap in my eyes. I'm screaming because I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't open my eyes. I can't open my eyes.
Speaker 1: So I missed the first fifteen minutes of the Land
Speaker 1: at Time Forgot. So I knew it was on. I
Speaker 1: could hear it. I was in the room with it.
Speaker 1: But my eyes, my eyes, my eyes, because I could
Speaker 1: have probably just opened them, but in my mind they
Speaker 1: were just full of soap and they were stinging and
Speaker 1: they were red and so and so the landt Time Forgot.
Speaker 1: It's drifting away from me, and I'm like, if this,
Speaker 1: if they get to the dinosaurs and I have been
Speaker 1: able to open my eyes, I mean and so that's
Speaker 1: a really vivid early memory of me, of the of
Speaker 1: the highs and lows of cinema. Do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? I do know what you're in. That's fucking heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: But you did fifteen minutes and you open tho. I
Speaker 1: think I think the people's got open because I remember
Speaker 1: the saying the dinosaurs, so don't worry. There's a happy ending.
Speaker 1: It's not like the helicopter story. There's a happy ending here,
Speaker 1: Thank God, Thank you God. And was it then you
Speaker 1: thought I want to make stuff like this? I think
Speaker 1: probably initially I thought I want to get into the
Speaker 1: face painting business. That's where the money is. What is
Speaker 1: the film that scared you the most? Do you like
Speaker 1: being scared? I don't love being scared? But the film
Speaker 1: which again I watched it too, This one I watched
Speaker 1: too young. I was maybe probably ten or something, and
Speaker 1: my dad was watching it with his mates this week.
Speaker 1: We had did have a VCR by this point, and
Speaker 1: he was watching The First Alien on VCR with his
Speaker 1: friends and I snuck in to watch it, which I
Speaker 1: think he knew I was in there, but my mum
Speaker 1: was out and he kind of let me watch it
Speaker 1: and I sort of sat right at the back of
Speaker 1: the room, but I was keeping and to this day
Speaker 1: I am I get so freaked out by the alien.
Speaker 1: If I see the alien, if I've the Alien movies,
Speaker 1: any alien related, you know, the alien from the movies,
Speaker 1: not just general aliens, but that specific one. It still
Speaker 1: sends shivers through me. The chest Burster scene, just seeing it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's its mouth within a mouth. And this
Speaker 1: came to a head, Brett. Where have you ever been
Speaker 1: to the Universal Studios Halloween horror nights? So it's unblievble.
Speaker 1: So for those who don't know, there's this Universal Studios
Speaker 1: theme park, but Halloween season they throw it. They put
Speaker 1: kind of these these mazes in the park that are
Speaker 1: movie themed, and they're scary mazes and you walk around
Speaker 1: them and they have all the production values of movies,
Speaker 1: and they are often themed around jump out, people jump out.
Speaker 1: And one time they had an Aliens theme maze and
Speaker 1: they had people dressed as the alien, but all the
Speaker 1: lighting and the smoke and the whole thing, and it
Speaker 1: was terrifying, and I think my memories. I was on
Speaker 1: a date, I was pushing the girl ahead of me
Speaker 1: like she was going to take the brunt of the attack,
Speaker 1: and these aliens are jumping out from sort of doorways
Speaker 1: and from above you and below you, and this alien
Speaker 1: jumps out and I'm freaking out because it's the alien
Speaker 1: and one of them, and it sweeps with its claw.
Speaker 1: It sweeps, and its claw hooked my glasses by mistake
Speaker 1: and pulled my glasses off and it fell to the floor.
Speaker 1: And now I'm like, I'm screaming because the alien has
Speaker 1: attacked me. My worst nightmare. It's take it. It's blinded me.
Speaker 1: It's the face paint all over again. Right, I'm blinded.
Speaker 1: People are walking, They're going to step on the glasses.
Speaker 1: The date thinks I'm just a loser. And the only
Speaker 1: solace I took was I could hear the guy inside
Speaker 1: the alien costume going sorry, sorry about that, so sorry, sorry,
Speaker 1: So that has gone some way to offsetting my fear
Speaker 1: of the alien. But honestly, in that moment, when he
Speaker 1: swooped my glasses off, I thought, this is I was
Speaker 1: right to be scared of these bastards. This is it.
Speaker 3: You know what's interesting about that? When I went to
Speaker 3: the Halloween Has of Horror whatever it is, terror Nights,
Speaker 3: I went with Mae Martin.
Speaker 1: It was so scary.
Speaker 3: At one point someone jumped out and I threw May
Speaker 3: into the wall like may was a bomb, and I
Speaker 3: jumped on them and went.
Speaker 1: Through anyway.
Speaker 3: I was impressed by you could walk down the streets
Speaker 3: in this universal and characters will attack you with chainsaws
Speaker 3: and knives.
Speaker 1: But they really straightly scary. I really liked swing at you.
Speaker 3: But I never saw anyone make contacts, and I was
Speaker 3: like that it's actually quite a skill because they're often
Speaker 3: jumping out of people you don't know how to react.
Speaker 3: But I never saw anyone make contact. But obviously you
Speaker 3: were the one person.
Speaker 1: There was the one guy. But the fact that it
Speaker 1: was the alien my arch nemesis. Since I was about
Speaker 1: ten years old, I knew this day would come. But
Speaker 1: I was trying to reason with them inside because my
Speaker 1: feeling was they're probably out of work actures right inside
Speaker 1: the costume. So I'm going around the maze going, don't
Speaker 1: jump out, and I'll give you a job. I'll give
Speaker 1: you a job. I s I'll put you in something,
Speaker 1: I'll cast you in something. I'm trying to reason with them.
Speaker 1: Do you like wrestling? Like wrestling? I've got wrestling for me.
Speaker 1: What is the film that made you cry the most?
Speaker 1: To me?
Speaker 3: You have made lots of things that make you cry.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that means you're a crier or
Speaker 3: if you're a clude hearted psychopath.
Speaker 1: I'm not so much a crier, but I do get
Speaker 1: emotional and I do well up, and I think as
Speaker 1: I get older, I get more emotional. And I've cried
Speaker 1: in one form or another to the most unlikely things,
Speaker 1: often watching movies on a plane. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you found that that you're more emotional on a plane.
Speaker 1: I once I cried at the end of the movie Moneyball,
Speaker 1: which is largely about baseball statistics. So I don't know
Speaker 1: about word, but the one that when I was in
Speaker 1: my late teens early twenties, I did movie reviewing for
Speaker 1: a local magazine in my hometown and I got sent
Speaker 1: to see various films that the general movie guy, the
Speaker 1: main movie guy, I didn't want to see, and one
Speaker 1: of them was Clint Easchoods The Bridges of Madison County,
Speaker 1: which is a tier jerker with Meryl Street. And I
Speaker 1: was not thinking this was going to be my cup
Speaker 1: of tea because I was, you know, twenty one or
Speaker 1: something twenty two and loved it, and at the end
Speaker 1: I was I was really emotional, and I was shedding
Speaker 1: a tear and all the other kind of hard bitten
Speaker 1: movie critics were in there and they're all like, see
Speaker 1: you in the lobby, and I was like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't want them to see me in the dark, so
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, I'm just going to wait and watch.
Speaker 1: I want to see you the best boys on the
Speaker 1: credit and I'll see you. I was so moved by it.
Speaker 1: I think it really caught me unaware. It is kind
Speaker 1: of how emotional I would be, and given it's about
Speaker 1: sort of you know, people in there, probably in their sixties,
Speaker 1: and kind of this feeling of a life not lived
Speaker 1: and dreams that sort of you know, were crushing all
Speaker 1: the rest of it, and kind of late blooming romance.
Speaker 1: The idea that's sort of a twenty something related to that,
Speaker 1: and funny enough, that used to be a real reference
Speaker 1: point for Ricky and I when we were doing The
Speaker 1: Office really was the kind of Tim and Dawn romance
Speaker 1: and the idea of the sort of bitter sweetness of
Speaker 1: that film and the kind of feeling of like the
Speaker 1: chance at romance slipping away. And I don't want to
Speaker 1: give away the ending of the movie, but it's very
Speaker 1: sweetly done. The ending of the film and the choice
Speaker 1: that Meryl Streep has to make between Clint and her
Speaker 1: husband and how that's played out and how that's dramatized,
Speaker 1: and that was a big influence on the ending of
Speaker 1: The Office. The British version of The Office, the kind
Speaker 1: of Christmas specials were very influenced by the.
Speaker 3: Same trying to capture some of that same feel that
Speaker 3: that movie did so effectively. It's really a perfect thing,
Speaker 3: the UK Office and what you did with that story.
Speaker 3: And I remember the Christmas specials being what's so impressive
Speaker 3: about them is the first one is so dark. The
Speaker 3: first part of Yes is so bleak to the extent
Speaker 3: that it works because it makes you think, I don't
Speaker 3: think it's going to have a heavy end, have a
Speaker 3: happy ending because it's so bleak. Yeah, Like the clouds
Speaker 3: are really heavy on this and you earn it. I
Speaker 3: don't know how it's so perfectly calibrated, and I don't know.
Speaker 3: I assume that wasn't easy. But I think he raised
Speaker 3: an interesting point there about the fact that I think
Speaker 3: one of the reasons the original origion of The Office
Speaker 3: for those that found it very moving, it was moving
Speaker 3: for them because they I don't think they were expecting
Speaker 3: a happy ending.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think they thought we were cynical, yes, and
Speaker 1: that it was going to be sort of downbeating, kind
Speaker 1: of existential. And I think therefore, because it was the
Speaker 1: first thing we'd ever done, I think they weren't. They
Speaker 1: didn't know what to expect, and therefore we had one
Speaker 1: chance to kind of surprise them. And I think in
Speaker 1: a weird way, because I didn't know what The Bridges
Speaker 1: of Madison Country was because I was reviewing it before
Speaker 1: it had been released, I hadn't read any reviews. I
Speaker 1: had no knowledge of what this movie was going to be.
Speaker 1: And so because I hadn't been told that it was
Speaker 1: going to be a tear jerker, it's going to be
Speaker 1: a fifteen tissue movie. I don't mean that in a
Speaker 1: porn sense. I just mean I think because I didn't
Speaker 1: know what to expect, I was sort of surprise and
Speaker 1: it caught me unawares. And I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: to be said for watching movies when you have no
Speaker 1: knowledge of what they are. You just sit down and
Speaker 1: let it on. And it's very hard now to consume
Speaker 1: entertainment without having read everything and knowing what this rotten tomatoes,
Speaker 1: verdict is and all that stuff, and so said.
Speaker 3: The thing of I think the game of when you're
Speaker 3: writing something or making something, of the balance of surprising
Speaker 3: the audience and also giving the audience what they want
Speaker 3: and then not giving them what they want, but giving
Speaker 3: them something else that whatever it is. Sometimes it's like
Speaker 3: the story you have told has to have a happy end.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it has to in yes, the story you've told
Speaker 3: needs to end happy because that's the journey you've taken
Speaker 3: people on. And if you if you think and that'd
Speaker 3: be cool if it was a sad and he's like, well,
Speaker 3: you've cheated them because that was yeah, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. Like sometimes yes, absolutely, and sometimes vice versa.
Speaker 3: It's like you have to be true to the thing
Speaker 3: that reveals itself as it goes, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And it's funny, isn't it, Because sometimes people will say, oh,
Speaker 1: I knew that ending was I knew that the ending
Speaker 1: was coming, And the other times I'd be like, that
Speaker 1: was brilliant, and it's somehow like you you have to Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very hard. You have to give the audience what
Speaker 1: they want without realizing quite that that's what they wanted,
Speaker 1: or they say they didn't want it quite in that way,
Speaker 1: or they weren't expecting it. It's really hard to get right.
Speaker 1: And I think there's an interesting other area, which is
Speaker 1: the sort of ambiguous art movie ending and Sidney Lumette,
Speaker 1: I think in his book about film directing Sydney, I
Speaker 1: can't remember exactly what it is, but he says something
Speaker 1: about even a film which has an ambiguous ending sort
Speaker 1: of needs to have set up its ambiguity. You can't
Speaker 1: just end a movie with nothing there you way, you're
Speaker 1: looking at it right there and making movie. Sidney Lymett, Yeah, yeah, great,
Speaker 1: there's an art. There's an it team in that where
Speaker 1: he says about it's like, even with a film that
Speaker 1: has an ambiguous anything, you somehow have to give the
Speaker 1: audience like options A and B and then like not
Speaker 1: answer either or something. But you can't just keep it
Speaker 1: vague and like it has to even an open ending
Speaker 1: has to sort of somehow have the audience to that
Speaker 1: open ending. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: I think That's why I love to impick so much,
Speaker 3: is all the kind of areas it leaves you to
Speaker 3: dream for yourself, but it does it is satisfying in
Speaker 3: this way is absolutely mystery. It doesn't go like it's
Speaker 3: the thingling. When it's bad is when you feel like, oh,
Speaker 3: they didn't know how to end this exactly. Yes, that's exactly.
Speaker 3: We'll stop there. That's when you know, and you could
Speaker 3: be wrong, But where it feels like you didn't know
Speaker 3: what to do, you still have to hold their hand,
Speaker 3: even if it's to an ambiguous place. That's right, that's right. Interesting,
Speaker 3: I love it. But yes, anyway, congratulations, you did a
Speaker 3: really good job. It really was, and it was the
Speaker 3: thing of exactly what I hadn't thought of it that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's that we thought it was. We thought you the
Speaker 3: makers were cynical. Yeah, you'd led us to believe that anyway. Well, so,
Speaker 3: what is a film that you used to love? No, yeah,
Speaker 3: all right, disorder, what is the film that you used
Speaker 3: to love? You loved it very much, but you've watched
Speaker 3: it recently? For this does not hold up for me.
Speaker 3: I don't like this anymore.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to answer that in a way. It's
Speaker 1: a really interesting question, and I the movie I'm going
Speaker 1: to say, I still think is an excellent film, and
Speaker 1: I still think it's very very good, and it's it's
Speaker 1: not like I watched it and think this is a
Speaker 1: bad film, but looking at it through modern eyes, it's
Speaker 1: very hard to enjoy in the same way. And that
Speaker 1: is Saturday Night Fever, Yes, which unbelievably dark. I'm not
Speaker 1: the first to have made this point, but it's it's
Speaker 1: not just the darknes because I always knew it had
Speaker 1: a darkness to it, but it's the misogyny and the
Speaker 1: two rape sequences that I don't think I was really
Speaker 1: even as aware of until I watched it with my
Speaker 1: partner Marsea a couple of years ago, and I remember thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: do you know what they should do, Like like what
Speaker 1: they did for Creed and Rocky, they should do for
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Fever, And they should have him. He's an
Speaker 1: older guy and he teaches a younger to dance. So
Speaker 1: I thought, I'll watch Dot Fever because I wonder, maybe
Speaker 1: that's an idea I could sell it to a studio.
Speaker 1: And then you watch it and you realize that you
Speaker 1: forget that he tries to rape someone and there's another
Speaker 1: sexual assault and it's and for whatever, it's like, how
Speaker 1: is this the hero? And he's like casually racist and homophobic,
Speaker 1: and it's an accurate reflection of men working class men
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn in the seventies. But your memory of it
Speaker 1: is not that. Your memory is that he's quite cool,
Speaker 1: and he's sexy, and he dances beautifully and he maybe
Speaker 1: will escape that kind of tough world that he lives in,
Speaker 1: and you realize that he's a really ugly character. And
Speaker 1: it's not that it's not truthful. There's an authenticity to
Speaker 1: it that so you can't criticize that. And the performances
Speaker 1: are great, but there's you're just left thinking, I don't
Speaker 1: know what I'm supposed to feel about this man. He's
Speaker 1: such a toxic person that growing up watching it, I
Speaker 1: just would see it as a sort of coming of
Speaker 1: age movie and that stuff, that darker stuff you just
Speaker 1: I don't know what was my interpretation of it. I
Speaker 1: can't think now looking back. Is that also like because
Speaker 1: that's the seventies film, right? It was it like seventies
Speaker 1: American cinema where all the protagonists are incredibly complicated and
Speaker 1: actually difficult people and unlikable people, And was it part
Speaker 1: of that or was it I think it is part
Speaker 1: of that, and I think that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: it's so good is because he is a really complicated character.
Speaker 1: But I think what's confusing is the iconography of the
Speaker 1: white suit and the disco dancing and the endless times
Speaker 1: it's been pastiche including in the office and the Beg's
Speaker 1: soundtrack and the kind of musical stage versions and the
Speaker 1: they even did a PG version where they cut out
Speaker 1: all the kind of naughty stuff and sort of sanitize it,
Speaker 1: and so and the idea of John travoltas kind of
Speaker 1: pin up in the seventies, like so that aspect doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to tally with the dark, complicated seventies sort of
Speaker 1: alternative movie. That's that's in the heart of it. And
Speaker 1: it's really tricky to watch now because you it's pressing
Speaker 1: kind of weird buttons. As you watch it, you know
Speaker 1: it's really it's a complicated film and it's still brilliantly
Speaker 1: interesting to see, but it's not an easy watch.
Speaker 3: And he they win, but he knows they win for
Speaker 3: the wrong reasons, right, It's it's the whole thing is
Speaker 3: incredibly yeah, great, and there's there's a suicide, and it's
Speaker 3: a really dark film and again I think a brilliant
Speaker 3: I'm very and it's very.
Speaker 1: Interesting in the acting section. But it's just, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a hard film to watch now because you just don't
Speaker 1: quite know what you're supposed to be feeling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it has all the trappings of like a
Speaker 3: sports movie. Even it's like, yeah, the structure is when
Speaker 3: the dance contest, but.
Speaker 1: That's right, rehearse can you can you win? And I
Speaker 1: think somehow it also gets conflated with in my mind,
Speaker 1: with Grease, Yeah, the other big reravolial film of the seventies,
Speaker 1: which is again I'm much much more lighthearted, although that
Speaker 1: has its own moments and problematic stuff, but do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? So it's just, yeah, it's interesting,
Speaker 1: just how But I think also what really struck me
Speaker 1: because wile what she was saying, she's like, what, who
Speaker 1: is This guy's horrible? And I just I'd never I'd
Speaker 1: watched it so many times and it never occurred to
Speaker 1: me that a woman might find this a really objectionable movie.
Speaker 3: Well, there's also like I watched Cocktail recently and it's
Speaker 3: a mad it's a mad film, Like he's horrible, Like
Speaker 3: there's a there's a scene in it after he's sort
Speaker 3: of cheated on her and he's bet on having sex
Speaker 3: with another woman and all this stuff's happened. The sort
Speaker 3: of climax, says he goes to her house and she's like,
Speaker 3: I don't want to see you, and he essentially sort
Speaker 3: of kidnaps her. He punches her dad and sort of
Speaker 3: drags her out, and as he dragged her out, he
Speaker 3: says to the dad.
Speaker 1: You made me do this. And it's like, this is
Speaker 1: the hero. What's happening? But what funny she said, because
Speaker 1: that's sort of the same. It's sort of the same
Speaker 1: thing in setting Fever is that somehow the woman is
Speaker 1: blamed for the sort of frustrations that John Travolta is feeling,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's interesting that it's such a streng
Speaker 1: I mean in terms of weird films like that. I
Speaker 1: remember the first time I ever came to la which
Speaker 1: is some time ago now, I was jet lagged and
Speaker 1: I stuck on TV and Footloose came on with Kevin
Speaker 1: Baker and that if you've not seen that, it's a
Speaker 1: film like it's like it was made by aliens that
Speaker 1: have been watching pop culture from their spacecraft and think
Speaker 1: they understand what humans are. And now we're going to
Speaker 1: make a movie because no one acts like they do
Speaker 1: in life. The town has banned dancing, and like Kevin
Speaker 1: Baking has to go to a warehouse to have a dance,
Speaker 1: just to have a private dance system. It is so funny,
Speaker 1: you know. And I guess in the aies people are like, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I so much go to a barn for a dance.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. I relate to that.
Speaker 3: It's a metaphor. It's a metaphor the basics, isn't it
Speaker 3: least it's I don't know. That's my new theory. I
Speaker 3: just come up with it. Tell me this, what is
Speaker 3: a film that is not critically acclaimed, most people don't
Speaker 3: like it, but you love it unconditionally.
Speaker 1: I think there's a huge sway of the people that
Speaker 1: probably do love this. But it is also a film
Speaker 1: that I have heard people dismiss out of hand, and
Speaker 1: it angers me when they do. And that is Connair.
Speaker 1: Connor is fucking grey and conn Air is absolutely magnificent.
Speaker 1: And even at the time, I remember the people feeling
Speaker 1: that it was too preposterous, that it wasn't as good
Speaker 1: as say The Rock, the movie The Rock, or other
Speaker 1: action movies from that time. But I've loved it since
Speaker 1: the moment I saw it when it came out, and
Speaker 1: it's so operatic and preposterous. It's kind of camp in
Speaker 1: all the right ways. It's that weird, brilliant moment in
Speaker 1: movie history where mainstream blockbusters needed to inject a sort
Speaker 1: of Tarantino esque bit of weird quirkiness. And so like,
Speaker 1: there's this Steve Bumi who's a killer, who's like having
Speaker 1: a tea party with a girl in a disused swimming pool,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing is, oh my god, he's gonna
Speaker 1: probably murder her, and in the end he and the
Speaker 1: big reveal is he didn't murder her, and we're like, yay,
Speaker 1: the serial killer didn't murder the little girl. A nice
Speaker 1: time with a little girl. And there's just so many
Speaker 1: quotable moments when it's so and it's too long, and
Speaker 1: it's got about four different climaxes, but it's just everyone's
Speaker 1: chewing the scenery in the most delicious way. Like it
Speaker 1: just works in every direction. It's just the joy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great, so wonderful film. What is the film that
Speaker 3: means the most to you? Not necessarily the film itself
Speaker 3: is good, but the experience you had around seeing it
Speaker 3: will always make it important to you.
Speaker 1: What is that film? Well, I'm going to choose, and
Speaker 1: it's not because it's the film, but it's the experience.
Speaker 1: Is I'm going to refer back to Fighting with My Family,
Speaker 1: Okay please, And not because I'll leave you to judge
Speaker 1: the film. It's because it was the first film I've
Speaker 1: directed on my own, and it's the first time I
Speaker 1: had to go through the in quite this way, the
Speaker 1: test audience experience. And for those that haven't done it,
Speaker 1: you talk about whether I can present an illusion of calm.
Speaker 1: That was one of the most stressful days of my life.
Speaker 1: Because you've worked on a movie and you'll know a
Speaker 1: lot this, but I'm saying it for those listening who
Speaker 1: perhaps haven't had that experience. You know, you work on
Speaker 1: a film from script to the moment it's finished, and
Speaker 1: it can take years, as it did in the case
Speaker 1: of Fun in My Family, and you suddenly are find
Speaker 1: yourself in this instance in Los Angeles, in the valley,
Speaker 1: in a random cinema with an invite on audience. I
Speaker 1: don't quite know how they recruit them, and they sneak
Speaker 1: you in the back and you sit in the back row,
Speaker 1: and you watch the movie with strangers that don't know
Speaker 1: you're there, and the entire movie they don't know anything
Speaker 1: about it, right, they don't even they don't know anything
Speaker 1: about it. They're just random people and they and the
Speaker 1: future of the movie is resting on their opinion of it,
Speaker 1: whether the studio that's paid for it thinks it's going
Speaker 1: to be good or bad. Way they're going to put
Speaker 1: marketing support behind it. So you're literally sitting in this
Speaker 1: room watching people watch your thing, seeing if they're laughing,
Speaker 1: if they're if they're getting uncomfortable. And then once if
Speaker 1: that's not tough enough, most people leave and they hold
Speaker 1: back maybe twenty twenty five people, And now a guy
Speaker 1: comes out and hosts a Q and A with them
Speaker 1: about what they thought of the movie, and they're encouraged
Speaker 1: to criticize it in any possible way they can. And
Speaker 1: you've got to sit at the back and listen to
Speaker 1: them marking your fucking homework. And then you have to
Speaker 1: wait around once they've left for scorecards where they've literally
Speaker 1: given it a mark. I mean, it's it's it's such
Speaker 1: a tough that's a tough few hours, I'll tell you, man,
Speaker 1: And So the reason that's it's so important to me
Speaker 1: is because in that instance it was actually they liked
Speaker 1: the movie and it did score very well, and whether
Speaker 1: we made some changes off the back of it, it
Speaker 1: was it sort of went as well as it could
Speaker 1: have gone. But just to have sort of been through
Speaker 1: that experience and the rollercoaster of that and the emotions
Speaker 1: of it, it just will always be meaningful because it
Speaker 1: was like a kind of I don't know, it was
Speaker 1: like in as a dpend or something. It was a
Speaker 1: trial by fire.
Speaker 3: The thing I don't understand about those test screenings is
Speaker 3: they have these cards and the cards say like, what
Speaker 3: were your three favorite scenes or things like that, and
Speaker 3: it's like great, But then it says what were your
Speaker 3: three worst scenes? And I'm like, don't give them three.
Speaker 3: They think that has to fill it. And then people
Speaker 3: can say, well they didn't like these. I'm like, I
Speaker 3: don't know if they didn't like them. They just were
Speaker 3: trying to fill They were thinking of the three things
Speaker 3: negative things because you asked them.
Speaker 1: Well, that's right. I mean I remember someone telling me
Speaker 1: that with the American version of the Office they tested it.
Speaker 1: They would have people sit in a room and they
Speaker 1: would have a dial and they could turn the dial
Speaker 1: whether they were enjoying it or not enjoying it literally
Speaker 1: second by second. But how is that's not how you
Speaker 1: watch things?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: You're not like because it seems to me that by
Speaker 1: that logic, if you were in the test audience of
Speaker 1: Nightmare on Elm Street, when Freddy Krueger came on and
Speaker 1: killed someone, you'd be like, no, don't like him, get
Speaker 1: rid of this character very with knivy fingers, He's not no,
Speaker 1: just the nice just Johnny Depp and the other nice teenagers,
Speaker 1: more of them, please, Like, that's not how you watch things.
Speaker 1: But like you say, if you invite an opinion, they'll
Speaker 1: give it.
Speaker 3: And also sometimes things are a build up, things like
Speaker 3: that bit was boring when they weren't doing a joke
Speaker 3: exactly fascinating. Well, can you give me one example of
Speaker 3: something that you changed in fact with my family based
Speaker 3: on those tests screenings?
Speaker 1: Well, well, for instance, one thing was you mentioned about
Speaker 1: the brother kind of spins out and becomes quite depressed,
Speaker 1: as he did in real life. And I think what
Speaker 1: we learned was that they felt we lingered in that
Speaker 1: too long. They were feeling the sadness of that story
Speaker 1: too much, and it was it was dragging them down.
Speaker 1: They sort of they weren't they understood that you needed
Speaker 1: to feel that, but it was there was too much
Speaker 1: of it, or it we went on too long, or
Speaker 1: so that was an interesting point just about It was
Speaker 1: actually a perfectly smart observation about the sort of how
Speaker 1: much you can feed an audience of a certain tone
Speaker 1: in any moment, you know, So that that was quite instructive.
Speaker 3: I'm sure I've said this on the podcast once or
Speaker 3: twice in the many many episodes I've done, but I
Speaker 3: will tell you just in case. My favorite test thing
Speaker 3: there is that you can find it on YouTube. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you've ever seen it. In Austin Power's
Speaker 3: gold Member, the third Austin Powers film, there is a
Speaker 3: sequence that was cut from the film that you can
Speaker 3: find that was on the dv amster. It's online and
Speaker 3: it is a song where where it's like the sad
Speaker 3: bit of the film and it's What's it all about?
Speaker 3: Alfie is the song, but it's What's it all about?
Speaker 3: Austin And it's like a montage of all the characters
Speaker 3: singing this song. And I'm telling you it's one of
Speaker 3: the most beautiful sequences. It's so fucking good. It's genuinely
Speaker 3: like a beautiful it's moving, it's funny, it's really well done,
Speaker 3: and apparently the reason it is not in the film
Speaker 3: is because it was so moving that people then never
Speaker 3: laughed again for the rest of the film. So they
Speaker 3: sort of feel like, we have to get rid of
Speaker 3: this bit because it's sort of changes people, makes them
Speaker 3: too sad that they don't recover from it.
Speaker 1: Really interesting. Wow, that's really interesting, well, actually funny enough.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we struggled with in a
Speaker 1: movie about wrestling is that the audience at home, the viewer,
Speaker 1: and also the audience in the movie obviously know that
Speaker 1: wrestling the outcome is predetermined, right is it's sort of scripted,
Speaker 1: And so we had a long debate about, like one
Speaker 1: of the original versions of the movie is that that
Speaker 1: the heroin is told she's going to win or lose
Speaker 1: the final big fight, and so we actually had a
Speaker 1: version where she gets told the outcome, and the audience
Speaker 1: watching the movie it gets told and it's so it's
Speaker 1: can you still enjoy the end of the movie knowing
Speaker 1: what the outcome is going to be? And we discovered.
Speaker 1: We thought that was interesting because it's a you know,
Speaker 1: you knew the outcome, but will you. And it turns
Speaker 1: out the audience doesn't. They want to forget about that.
Speaker 1: They want to enjoy the rocky can she overcome adversity aspect,
Speaker 1: even though it's a sort of artificial sport. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a good example of what you said of like
Speaker 1: the audience not necessarily knowing what they want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I remember that watching it. I
Speaker 3: was glad that I didn't know, Yes, yes, what is
Speaker 3: the film you most relate to? Well, I don't know
Speaker 3: if it's so much that I relate to it now,
Speaker 3: but I remember with the first time I saw it,
Speaker 3: it really felt like this was the first time I'd
Speaker 3: seen a movie where these I thought these could be
Speaker 3: my mates at that time in my life. And again
Speaker 3: it was when I was doing my film reviewing, didn't
Speaker 3: know anything about this movie, went along to review it
Speaker 3: complete oblivious, never heard of any of the actors. And
Speaker 3: it was the movie Swingers that brought us Vince Vaughn
Speaker 3: and Jon Favreau and you know, the kind of hipster
Speaker 3: speak and the sort of had never been to la
Speaker 3: but they were just the way they kind of interacted
Speaker 3: with each other as friends, the way they they made
Speaker 3: fun of each other, but it was with affection. The
Speaker 3: kind of all the attempts to sort of talk to women,
Speaker 3: and the kind of bad hopelessness of the Favreau character,
Speaker 3: and the moment where he leaves a voicemail message for
Speaker 3: a girl that he's got the number of and then
Speaker 3: he calls back and calls back again. I just all
Speaker 3: of that as a sort of guy in his early twenties,
Speaker 3: just it just felt so relatable and like they had
Speaker 3: just captured it in essence. And I had never been
Speaker 3: to la I had never been to America, but just
Speaker 3: even growing up in Brittle, it just felt like those
Speaker 3: could have been my friends, even though they were slightly
Speaker 3: older than me.
Speaker 1: But it just it just, yeah, that one really struck
Speaker 1: a chord with me when I first saw it, although again,
Speaker 1: if you see it now, it's again it's slight like
Speaker 1: I think the film is very much mocking the guys
Speaker 1: and they're sort of ways of trying to pick up women.
Speaker 1: But again, I think now I'm fortunate you could see it,
Speaker 1: and sort of it can feel a little bit I
Speaker 1: don't know, misogynistic or something. But I but I think
Speaker 1: the characters are being laughed at as much as they're
Speaker 1: being celebrating.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I always think the thing that saves it
Speaker 3: from that is the end when you see Vince Bulm
Speaker 3: when he's like, oh, he's all grows up, when he's
Speaker 3: sort of angry that John Favre has done it on
Speaker 3: his own. Yes, What is the sexiest film you've ever seen?
Speaker 1: Stephen Merchant? What makes you footloose? There are films that
Speaker 1: I find very sexy now, like, for instance, the movie
Speaker 1: In the Mood for Love, which is a beautiful film
Speaker 1: and kind of you know, there is no sex in it,
Speaker 1: and it's very chased and there's no flesh or anything
Speaker 1: like that, but it's just the sort of pent up
Speaker 1: sexual tension between the leads is so palpable and amazing.
Speaker 1: But the film that for me was like the first
Speaker 1: film where I was like, damn, this is sexy, was
Speaker 1: again probably watching it. What age was I like? Fourteen
Speaker 1: thirteen fourteen was The Spy Who Loved Me? The James
Speaker 1: Bond film. I'll tell you why, because it had Barbara
Speaker 1: Back Missus Ringo star. Yeah, as the sort of Russian
Speaker 1: agent absolutely beautiful. It had Caroline Monroe, who was in
Speaker 1: a lot of sort of sinbad movies and kind of
Speaker 1: British horror of the sixties and seventies, who was absolute babe,
Speaker 1: and the two of those two women and kind of
Speaker 1: just I don't know, and just the idea of sort
Speaker 1: the idea that looking back that I thought Roger Moore
Speaker 1: was sexy. But I just thought, I guess this is
Speaker 1: what adults that's what adult men need to do. This
Speaker 1: is how you bed stunners like this, You've got to
Speaker 1: go around acting this way. You've got you've got to
Speaker 1: kill a man and then make a glib joke afterwards.
Speaker 1: And for a long time that was my image of
Speaker 1: sort of what sex he was, right. It was a
Speaker 1: man in a suit, you know, and a tie making
Speaker 1: kind of cheeky remarks to women who've got English as
Speaker 1: a second language. Like that was that seemed to be
Speaker 1: That seemed to be the main And it took me
Speaker 1: a long time to realize that James Bond is he's
Speaker 1: a horrible he's a horrible role model. He's a terrible
Speaker 1: human being. In that movie, like he in that movie,
Speaker 1: he he rams a guy off the road who smashes
Speaker 1: through a truck carrying mattresses and all the mattress feathers
Speaker 1: fly out, and the guy plummets to his death off
Speaker 1: a mountain, and Bond says, all those feathers, he still
Speaker 1: couldn't fly. And you're like, and the girls have ah,
Speaker 1: that's so sexy. I must suck your cock, and you're like, no,
Speaker 1: he's a psychopath. He just killed a man. It's not attractive.
Speaker 1: It's everything about him is ultimately objectionable. But at the time,
Speaker 1: like the thirteen fourty year old mate, it's like, yep,
Speaker 1: sexy guy, the coolest guy. This is how you do it.
Speaker 3: What about then we have a subcategory traveling boner is worrying.
Speaker 3: Why does a film you found arousing you weren't sure
Speaker 3: you should?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you must have had this many times already,
Speaker 1: so I'm embarrassed to say because you might, not only
Speaker 1: because you've must have had it a lot. Is surely
Speaker 1: who framed ros your rabbit? I don't know what is.
Speaker 3: Traveling about that, boner. It depends on what's giving you
Speaker 3: the horn. If it's the baby with the cigar, I
Speaker 3: get it.
Speaker 1: But it's obviously obviously Jessica rabbit who for those who
Speaker 1: haven't seen it, is not actually a rabbit. No, she's
Speaker 1: you know, she said she's not bad. She's drawn that way.
Speaker 1: But I remember, again, I forget exactly when that came out,
Speaker 1: or eighty eight or something eight. It's again, I was
Speaker 1: a round fourteen, so I think just I don't know
Speaker 1: if it gave me a boner, but I definitely remember
Speaker 1: thinking I was confused that there was a there was
Speaker 1: a sexy animation.
Speaker 3: Kind of sexy drawing, very sexy. It's very sexy done
Speaker 3: by a man. Just a man's drawn this very sex yeah,
Speaker 3: and then animated her and then she's also in love
Speaker 3: with a rabbit. I mean, there's a lot going on
Speaker 3: in there. There's a lot to umpact that wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Pass, a lot of that wouldn't pass, a lot of
Speaker 1: meetings now that wouldn't get passed through a lot of layers.
Speaker 3: For the kids film. Yeah, a very strange film for
Speaker 3: a PG. It's a very dark it is a dark
Speaker 3: film film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I should clarify it was it was her that
Speaker 1: was the thing, and not as you say, either the
Speaker 1: cigar smoking baby or that moment where Christopher Lloyd has
Speaker 1: crazy bullba sizes that wasn't it? Okay?
Speaker 3: What is objectively the greatest film of all time? Objectively
Speaker 3: it might not be your favorite, but it's the greatest,
Speaker 3: well objectively the best film of all time. Again, I'm
Speaker 3: sure this has come up a lot. Is Casablanca lovely answer?
Speaker 3: A very lovely answer? And you can absolutely have it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's sort of immaculate, really, and it sort of
Speaker 1: works in every every aspect of it works. The casting,
Speaker 1: the script, it's funny, setting, the story, it's really funny.
Speaker 1: All of the characters, even the small minor characters are
Speaker 1: beautifully drawn and kind of you care about everyone, and
Speaker 1: the older couple that are sort of trying to leave,
Speaker 1: and the young girl who you know, who's trying to
Speaker 1: escape with her young boyfriend, and even you know, all
Speaker 1: these minor characters, even aside from the main cast. And
Speaker 1: the ending is beautiful and it's sad and it's heroic.
Speaker 1: And the bit where they sing the Marcier's or however
Speaker 1: you pronounce it, that's a teary moment. Every time, even now,
Speaker 1: I get choked up, and it's just it's a beautiful
Speaker 1: piece of filmmaking. And the fact that famously, you know
Speaker 1: it went through all these different writers, and people thought
Speaker 1: it was going to be a B movie and it
Speaker 1: just all the alchemy came together and made it, made
Speaker 1: it a masterpieces. It's hard to beat. I think.
Speaker 3: I love that answer. You get five points for it.
Speaker 3: What is the film that you could or have watched
Speaker 3: the most over and over again?
Speaker 1: Well, there's definitely movies that I returned to a lot,
Speaker 1: and if they come on TV, I watched them a lot,
Speaker 1: like The Fugitive from Harrison Ford. Okay, But the one
Speaker 1: I love and I love I'll watch it a lot
Speaker 1: is Martin Scorsese's After Hours, Oh Yeah, which I think
Speaker 1: is sort of one that often slips under the radar
Speaker 1: of his movies. But my friend introduced it to me
Speaker 1: when I was kind of, I don't know, in my
Speaker 1: late teens, and I just have watched it regularly in
Speaker 1: different forms ever since. And I remember when I first
Speaker 1: got a little bit of money, I bought an original
Speaker 1: print of the post of the poster, you know, and
Speaker 1: had that framed, and that was my first little expense.
Speaker 1: It probably only cost like one hundred and fifty quid,
Speaker 1: but seemed like a huge amount. And I've bought it
Speaker 1: in various formats on various you know, Blu rays and
Speaker 1: DVDs and things over the years, and I always go
Speaker 1: back to it and it just has it's just sort
Speaker 1: of there's sort of nothing else quite like it, because
Speaker 1: it has all of Scorsese's brilliant filmmaking, but it's so
Speaker 1: unlike him. The idea of this guy who you know,
Speaker 1: who goes on a sort of ill fated date in
Speaker 1: sort of Soho of the New York Soho of the
Speaker 1: sort of mid eighties, and count seem to get home
Speaker 1: and find himself in a sort of purgatory trying to
Speaker 1: get home. But it's sort of darkly comic, and again,
Speaker 1: all the surrounding characters are brilliant, and they each come
Speaker 1: on and sort of and the atmosphere creates and again
Speaker 1: probably because I watched it as a young man, and
Speaker 1: maybe there's a theme here, but there's like it was
Speaker 1: a film about a man trying to get a shag
Speaker 1: and then it just doesn't work out for him, you know,
Speaker 1: and then he just trying to he's trying to get
Speaker 1: home and he might get killed, and all he wanted
Speaker 1: to do was get laid. And I think when you're
Speaker 1: sort of twenty something that probably relates you relate to that,
Speaker 1: but it's just it's a very unusual film. Man, it's
Speaker 1: just but it's very funny and beautifully played. And Griffin
Speaker 1: Dunn the lead actor. I don't know why you have
Speaker 1: a bigger star. Yeah, yeah, anyway, it's a film I
Speaker 1: constantly go back to, such an odd film, great film.
Speaker 1: It's a really it's a really odd film, but it's
Speaker 1: it's terrific And I think again when you're like when
Speaker 1: I first moved to London, I used to watch it
Speaker 1: lot because it was so thing about this sort of
Speaker 1: as a single guy, the nights out where you'd you know,
Speaker 1: you'd go you'd taken an hour and a half on
Speaker 1: the tube and the bus to try and go to
Speaker 1: a party where a girl said she might be and
Speaker 1: then she's not there, and then you you don't know
Speaker 1: anyone you know, and then you're getting home.
Speaker 3: Yes exactly, Yeah, what is I don't like to be negative,
Speaker 3: but we've got to do it quick. What's the worst
Speaker 3: film you've ever seen?
Speaker 1: That's tricky, isn't it? That question? Because I don't want
Speaker 1: to insult someone, And let's be honest, the worst films
Speaker 1: are the ones that people always talk about, like planning
Speaker 1: from out of space or or the room. They are
Speaker 1: the worst films. But the thing is, I'm going to
Speaker 1: say something because I've said it before, and I'm and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm going to be glib because it's not. It's
Speaker 1: obviously not the worst film ever made. But I can't
Speaker 1: get with the Lord of the Rings. I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on. I listen, listen. He knows what he's doing.
Speaker 1: Peter Jackson, Jacko's great film. He's a talented man. He
Speaker 1: knows what he's doing. I'm not disrespecting him at all,
Speaker 1: or is his talent. But I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I care. It's like hours an
Speaker 1: hour of this trapesing around and they've got big feet,
Speaker 1: and there's at one point some trees are walking. Trees
Speaker 1: are walking, and then they get and then you have
Speaker 1: to wait. I remember I saw the first one with
Speaker 1: my family at Christmas, and then we waited another twelve months,
Speaker 1: and the next one and the next one we watched
Speaker 1: each Christmas. We went to see them. It turns out
Speaker 1: none of us were enjoying them. We were just going
Speaker 1: because we thought everyone else was enjoying them, and so
Speaker 1: that's like nine hours or something right of our lives.
Speaker 1: We get I could have flown to fucking Tokyo and back,
Speaker 1: and I just and then at the end he gets
Speaker 1: all the way there, and then the giant eagle pops
Speaker 1: up and flies them home, and it's like, why couldn't
Speaker 1: you fucking fly them there in the first place? We
Speaker 1: could have got this done in forty five minutes. I
Speaker 1: I just it's not the filmmaking, which is bad, because
Speaker 1: of course it's brilliant. I just don't And I think
Speaker 1: probably what I'm criticizing here is the book, the underlying book,
Speaker 1: because I can I must be missing something, because I don't.
Speaker 3: Know why people are so in love with those stories.
Speaker 3: They just seem absurd. Well, it's a computer game, isn't it.
Speaker 3: It's walk a live fight something, walk along fight, something bigger,
Speaker 3: walk along fight and end of level bus.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's clearly a lot of people's back. I'm
Speaker 1: clearly in the wrong here, I fully admit. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very well done, very well done, and good
Speaker 3: luck to it. You're in comedy, you're very funny, You're
Speaker 3: you're one of the greats. What's the film made.
Speaker 1: You laugh the most. Well, I mean again, that's an
Speaker 1: endless list. And going back, I'm thinking about things like
Speaker 1: some of the early Woody Allen films that I saw
Speaker 1: again if you can mention his name, but Sleeper. I
Speaker 1: remember I used to watch that relentlessly, mel Brooks Young Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: I just used to think that was I used to
Speaker 1: watch that. Concio was always in hysterics. I remember when
Speaker 1: Airplane was first shown on TV, or at least we
Speaker 1: were old enough to watch it, and everyone in my school,
Speaker 1: everyone came in the next day, did he saying, did
Speaker 1: you watch Airplane last night? Like it isn't that amazing
Speaker 1: the idea? Not even in the theater. We all watched
Speaker 1: it on ITV one I TV as it was called then,
Speaker 1: and all came in and talked about it. But the
Speaker 1: film that I that I just remember loving so much
Speaker 1: as a kid is on a really old Marx Brothers
Speaker 1: film called Monkey Business from like nineteen thirty three, in
Speaker 1: which the Marx Brothers just run a mock on a
Speaker 1: cruise liner for basically an hour with no real story,
Speaker 1: and they just cause chaos and there's a sort of
Speaker 1: there's an anarchy to it that feels so kind of
Speaker 1: ahead of its time, you know, just they're just trapesing
Speaker 1: over furniture, and they have no respect for anyone or
Speaker 1: any institution or men, women, people in authority, kids like
Speaker 1: no one. They just mock and ridicule and run and
Speaker 1: mock around everything. And there's a sort of punk rock
Speaker 1: kind of postpont before it was even a thing like
Speaker 1: And I just think there was as a kid seeing that,
Speaker 1: you know, and that sense of irreverence and sort of
Speaker 1: even it was even though it was an old film
Speaker 1: and those guys were long since dead, there was just
Speaker 1: something about it that just it always struck with me.
Speaker 1: And I just remember giggling. I don't know, the sort
Speaker 1: of the and the silliness of it and the irreverence
Speaker 1: of it and the one liners and everything. I just
Speaker 1: I have great fond feelings for that film that I think.
Speaker 3: There's instant with comedy, because comedy often dates, but the
Speaker 3: comedies that don't date are the silly ones. It's right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: if it's sort of silly, they tend to last. I
Speaker 3: think it's when.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no there's not really any satire as such.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just irreverent. Yeah, And I think there's
Speaker 1: something about the Marx brothers the thing I admire, Like
Speaker 1: I think as I got older, I sort of just
Speaker 1: respected them a lot and groud show Marx. And I
Speaker 1: remember when I was doing some interviews about Jojo Rabbit,
Speaker 1: which is a film I did with and he was
Speaker 1: getting criticized. But you know, people were saying, you know,
Speaker 1: is this a subject that you can laugh about? In
Speaker 1: that case? You know, the World War two and Hitler
Speaker 1: and everything, and and I kept coming back to sort
Speaker 1: of that there's something about the Marx brothers, Like I
Speaker 1: remember Groutchow Marx wrote this letter once because a country
Speaker 1: club wouldn't let it daughter used the pool because she
Speaker 1: was Jewish, And he wrote to the country club saying,
Speaker 1: she's actually only half Jewish? Can she go in the
Speaker 1: pool up to her waist? And I just think, even now,
Speaker 1: that's the most perfect encapsulation of racial prejudice, because it's
Speaker 1: just it just typifies how absurd it is if she's
Speaker 1: half Jewish, how much of the same rules apply, Like
Speaker 1: where does it stop? You know? And it's just he's captured.
Speaker 1: He's captured. In one line, I think he's just said
Speaker 1: so much more than any weighty tome on the subject
Speaker 1: could cover, you know, And I think that there's something
Speaker 1: about that in the Marx Brothers. There's a sort of
Speaker 1: intelligence behind their their attitude and their irreverence that's really
Speaker 1: sort of timeless. I love the idea, Rabbit. I think
Speaker 1: it's brilliant.
Speaker 3: It was very sort of surprised had there's one of
Speaker 3: them films when when it had mixed people anyone negative.
Speaker 1: I was like, what are you talking about? Brilliant? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense. Yeah, it's also so funny to
Speaker 1: me that you that. But also why would like the
Speaker 1: idea that critics are constantly lambasting the fact that it's
Speaker 1: just superhero movies and blah blah blah. And then someone
Speaker 1: makes a movie in which I was a talking imaginary
Speaker 1: friend who was Hitler and they're like, oh, we don't
Speaker 1: want this, sorry, that wasn't fresh enough for you. Just
Speaker 1: yet to another imaginary Hitler movie. Stephen Merchant, you beyond
Speaker 1: a delight. I've wanted to do this with you for
Speaker 1: so long. You've been amazing.
Speaker 3: However, when you had made so much money that you
Speaker 3: didn't even go to the news agent unless it was
Speaker 3: by a helicopter, and you're in your helicopter and you
Speaker 3: were flying around you instead of a morning stroll, sometimes
Speaker 3: you just go for a fly around like a weather man,
Speaker 3: and you're in a coverit and you land by the
Speaker 3: local news agent because you want to get some sweets,
Speaker 3: and the helicoptervers is. Remember mister Merchant, don't stand up
Speaker 3: straight out of the helicopter because you're very tool and
Speaker 3: you said, don't fucking tell me what to do. Piece
Speaker 3: of shit I like, and you stood up and your
Speaker 3: head got chopped off by.
Speaker 1: The top of the head.
Speaker 3: Got a lot of people standing around because you just
Speaker 3: landed in the middle of a street. Ys and blood,
Speaker 3: all these children, everyone covering, but everyone's screaming. I'm walking
Speaker 3: past with a coffin, you know what I'm like, and
Speaker 3: I go, Jesus, what just happened. Then one goes, I think,
Speaker 3: Steven Merchant, off the telly and the films. It's just
Speaker 3: chopped his head off, and your head is rolled into
Speaker 3: the the road. It's been squashed by an eighteen wheeler.
Speaker 3: And so I'm like pluck, I say, could you help me?
Speaker 1: Guys? So everyone sort of side the street stops the traffic.
Speaker 3: I go let's try and get his head, the bits
Speaker 3: that are left of it, right, So we're having to
Speaker 3: scrape up bits of concrete.
Speaker 1: Get your head. Your body's a mess. I go to
Speaker 1: the to the hell.
Speaker 3: You've got an axe that goes Yeah, I've got an act.
Speaker 3: Give it to one of the kids. Kids starts chopping
Speaker 3: up your body into bit. We packing your body and
Speaker 3: everything we can into the coffin. But there's more of
Speaker 3: you than that even I was expecting. And the coffin
Speaker 3: is absolutely jammed. There's no room in this coffin. There's
Speaker 3: really only enough room for me to slip one DVD
Speaker 3: into the side for you to take across to the
Speaker 3: other side. And on the other side is movie night
Speaker 3: every night? What film are you taking the show the
Speaker 3: People of Heaven when it is your movie night, Stephen Merchant?
Speaker 3: Am I taking one of the films we've mentioned? It
Speaker 3: could be anything, but it can also be when you've
Speaker 3: mentioned hmmm, to the other side, because obviously if it
Speaker 3: was Aliens, I would be taking either Alien or Footloose, Yeah, the.
Speaker 1: Two Alien films. Yeah, yeah, But if if I got
Speaker 1: to take that one film and it's so and is
Speaker 1: it so that it's I'm going to watch it for eternity.
Speaker 1: You're presenting it.
Speaker 3: There's a different movie every night because someone brings their
Speaker 3: own movie, but when it's your movie, you go, hi.
Speaker 1: Everyone, thanks for coming. Here's this film.
Speaker 3: I might do a Q and a ups you want
Speaker 3: to talk about it, but this is the film I've
Speaker 3: brought to show everyone in Heaven. So really I'm looking
Speaker 3: for something that's going to be entertaining to every agent.
Speaker 3: Sort of movie you're trying to create for the night.
Speaker 3: But I think I probably want them to like me
Speaker 3: in Heaven. Yeah, and it feels like it's quite an
Speaker 3: upbeat place. I don't imagine that they're looking for a
Speaker 3: sort of bleak existential drama.
Speaker 1: Maybe they want to change of you know, change of
Speaker 1: pace for because there's obvious ones like Singing in the
Speaker 1: Rain something you know, which is just pure joy, the
Speaker 1: best from start to finish. But I'm thinking that Heaven's
Speaker 1: been there a long time and there's a lot of people,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of movie nights, and I need
Speaker 1: to show up with something perhaps that people aren't expecting.
Speaker 1: They're thinking, ohh and I'm going to choose a left.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna chose a famb perhaps not expecting, because I
Speaker 1: think it's a film that I think it's really good
Speaker 1: and not everyone's seen it, and it's it's not going
Speaker 1: to put you in a happy mood, but it's an
Speaker 1: interesting piece of work. I'm going to choose the movie
Speaker 1: Clute Donald, It's an unusual choice and j Paoola's Clute
Speaker 1: from about nineteen seventy one. Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland Murder Mystery.
Speaker 1: She is a high class call girl. Won an Oscar
Speaker 1: for the performance. And it's a really wonderful film, intriguing,
Speaker 1: the central relationships really interesting. Jane Fonder's excellent, her characters
Speaker 1: really intriguing, and you get real depth and you understand her.
Speaker 1: It's tense. The soundtrack is eerie and very strong piece
Speaker 1: of work.
Speaker 3: I love that no one else has brought it. I
Speaker 3: think that was an excellent choice. Thank you, Yeah, and
Speaker 3: are my favorite actors. Stephen Merchant, what a joy, What
Speaker 3: a joy You've been as much of a joy as
Speaker 3: singing in the rain, as you mentioned. Now tell me
Speaker 3: this is there anything people should listen to look out for.
Speaker 3: Watch in the coming weeks or months, well, depending on
Speaker 3: when you drop this bad Boy. There is series three
Speaker 3: of my show The Outlaws. In the UK you can
Speaker 3: watch it on the BBC end of May, I think
Speaker 3: it will be out and then in the US and
Speaker 3: everywhere else it's on Amazon Prime Video. And it's the
Speaker 3: third series of my show about people in community service
Speaker 3: with myself, mister Christopher Walken. Terrific cast, amazing. Quick question,
Speaker 3: how do you find doing a series three? That is
Speaker 3: the furthest you've done of it? Yeah, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Did you? How was doing a season five? I'm going
Speaker 1: to do more of it because what you realize by
Speaker 1: the time you get to serious three is that everyone's
Speaker 1: really in a groove. The cast are really in a groove.
Speaker 1: They all know their roles, and everyone gels together and
Speaker 1: you sort of know what works and what doesn't. I
Speaker 1: might jump straight to Serious three in future. So would
Speaker 1: you like to do more Outlaws? Possibly? Never say never,
Speaker 1: But I don't know. Like I was saying earlier, I'm
Speaker 1: always kind of a bit itchy for something else. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm doing one thing and I'm thinking about what else
Speaker 1: I can do.
Speaker 3: So okay, you know, well, so we've got the Outlaws
Speaker 3: and are you going to go on tour with your
Speaker 3: new stand up or are you tinkering?
Speaker 1: I will, but I don't. I'm just I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to work up and act at the moment. I'm sort
Speaker 1: of slow process. So how long does it take you
Speaker 1: to build up a standarpackt You're sort of always doing it.
Speaker 3: Well, any deadline, I'll do. Whatever the deadline is, give yourself. Yes,
Speaker 3: I will, I will, but I will english. I think
Speaker 3: a year is probably about right. Yeah, Stephen, what a joy,
Speaker 3: absolute pleasure talking. Thank you, see you again. Thank you
Speaker 3: very much for your time on this. Have a good death,
Speaker 3: Good day to you. So that was episode two hundred
Speaker 3: and ninety eight. Head over to the Patreon at patreon
Speaker 3: dot com forward slash break Golds scene for the extra
Speaker 3: fifty minutes of chat, secrets and video with Stephen Merchant.
Speaker 3: Go to Apple Podcasts, give us a five star rating
Speaker 3: and write about the film that means the most to
Speaker 3: you and why it's a lovely thing to read. My
Speaker 3: neighbor Marian loves it and she always cries when she
Speaker 3: reads them. Thank you so much to Stephen forgiving me
Speaker 3: his time. Remember to watch Outlaws on BBC and Amazon Prime.
Speaker 3: Thanks to Scrubiu's Pip and the distraction Pieces Network, Thanks
Speaker 3: to Buddy Peace for producing it, Thanks to iHeartMedia and
Speaker 3: Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network for hosting it. Thanks
Speaker 3: to Adam Richardson for the graphics and Lisa lay Them
Speaker 3: for the photography. Come and join me next week for
Speaker 3: another smash her of a guest. But in the meantime,
Speaker 3: I hope you're all well, have a lovely week, and please,
Speaker 3: now more than ever, be excellent to each others.
Speaker 1: Back back back backs out by USA by the back
Speaker 1: backs out backs back back by bas backs out by
Speaker 1: the back back back back