Speaker 1: Look his only films to be buried with. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to Films to be buried with. My name is
Speaker 1: Brett Goldstein. I am a comedian, an actor, a writer,
Speaker 1: a director, an air traffic controller, and I love films.
Speaker 1: As Confucius once said, life is really simple, but we
Speaker 1: insist on making it complicated. M Holland Drive is a
Speaker 1: simple story of a woman descending into a psychotic feud
Speaker 1: stake dream because of the guilt and horror of her
Speaker 1: actions towards her ex girlfriend. But for some reason people
Speaker 1: seem to find it confusing. Yes, Confucius, I hear you.
Speaker 1: I think it's very straightforward. Every week I invite a
Speaker 1: special guest over. I tell them they've died. Then I
Speaker 1: get them to discuss their life through the films that
Speaker 1: meant the most of them. Previous guests include Sharon Stone,
Speaker 1: Kevin Smith, Ricky Gervais, and even Ged Grambles, but this
Speaker 1: week it's the brilliant Filmmaker and Dream guests to Edgar Wright.
Speaker 1: This one is a two part of special and a
Speaker 1: second part next week contains the Patreon section, which I've
Speaker 1: decided to include for all of you as it's Christmas.
Speaker 1: But I will not include the Secret. The Secret will
Speaker 1: only be available to the Patreons over at patreon dot
Speaker 1: com forward slash Brett Goldstein, where you'll also get extra
Speaker 1: questions for all the episodes, you get videos of most
Speaker 1: of the episodes, you get all kinds of bonus stuff,
Speaker 1: all kinds of treats. Have a look for all of
Speaker 1: that over at patreon dot com forward slash Brett Goldstein. Also,
Speaker 1: if you've not seen it yet, Christmas is the perfect
Speaker 1: time to watch the whole of season one of ted
Speaker 1: Lasso on the Apple TV Plus app. You watch it,
Speaker 1: you can watch it as a family. You'll laugh, you'll cry,
Speaker 1: you'll feel good inside. I'll be wonderful. But also, obviously
Speaker 1: the main thing you have to do at Christmas is
Speaker 1: watch The Mother Christmas Carol three hundred and forty times.
Speaker 1: So Edgar Wright, I mean, come on, he s Edgar
Speaker 1: fucking right. He's one of the most exciting filmmakers working
Speaker 1: in the UK. He's an inspiration, he's a hero to many.
Speaker 1: I've wanted to get him on the show since I
Speaker 1: started this show, and finally we managed to sort something out. Now, Edgar,
Speaker 1: being a genuine creative, he wanted to make this episode
Speaker 1: feel different and special from the others. So he suggested,
Speaker 1: instead of doing it over zoom, that we meet up
Speaker 1: face to face and we go for a walk. Because
Speaker 1: all this happened during lockdown. I don't know when you're
Speaker 1: listening to this, but there was a lockdown going on.
Speaker 1: Hopefully there isn't any more, but you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: meet up indoors, etc. Etc. So we met up in
Speaker 1: Regent's Park, clipped some mics to our lapels, and we
Speaker 1: went for a walk. We walked from day until night.
Speaker 1: For those of you were interested in actual stats, this
Speaker 1: podcast was twenty five thousand steps long. Edgar was an
Speaker 1: absolute delight. Of course, we covered an awful lot of topics.
Speaker 1: I think you will love it. So that is it
Speaker 1: for now. I very much hope you enjoy episode one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty six, Part one of Edgar Wrights films
Speaker 1: to be Buried With, Hello and Welcome two Films to
Speaker 1: be Married With. It is I Brett Ghostine, and I'm
Speaker 1: joined today by a filmmaker extraordinary, a actor, a writer,
Speaker 1: a producer, an exec, a documentarian, a comic book writer,
Speaker 1: a legend, basically the sort of man I think most
Speaker 1: people who want to make films want to be Please
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. The incredible, amazing, it's been track
Speaker 1: A right, thank you. There are a couple of credits
Speaker 1: there where I had to think what you were talking about,
Speaker 1: and I thought, oh, you're right, there's a comic went writer.
Speaker 1: I said, I've never written a coment book, and rose,
Speaker 1: yes I have. Of course you have. On two thousand
Speaker 1: a D. I wrote me and Simon Peg wrote a
Speaker 1: special Shawn of the Dead strip for two thousand a D.
Speaker 1: I think, never the only thing? Right? Are you referring
Speaker 1: to something else? Now? I think that was it? An
Speaker 1: actor is very that's very in youre in films. I
Speaker 1: have done actually a couple of like more than one
Speaker 1: voice part in an animation. Now I'm in both sing
Speaker 1: and sing too. And I also in an episode of
Speaker 1: Duck Tales. What yes, that's the Pinnacle playing essentially and
Speaker 1: I suddenly I didn't realize this until I saw the
Speaker 1: I didn't really realize that I was playing um a
Speaker 1: Duck version of Christopher Nolan until I saw the drawing
Speaker 1: of the character. And by this point I'd already committed.
Speaker 1: And then I wired that Chris Nolan was going to
Speaker 1: be mad at me for playing a duck version of him?
Speaker 1: What are you Dulan was? His name was Alice de
Speaker 1: bors One. But when I saw the drawing, which is
Speaker 1: after I'd already recorded it, I was like, oh no,
Speaker 1: it's it's Chris Nolan as a duck. And then I
Speaker 1: had to email him to just make sure that I
Speaker 1: wasn't putting his nose out a joint, saying hey, how's
Speaker 1: it going? I played you in details. I didn't know
Speaker 1: it was going to be you, but I saw the
Speaker 1: drawing afterwards, and it's very clearly his hair and his scarf,
Speaker 1: and did he reply? Fuck you? He never spoke about Actually,
Speaker 1: we've spoken sins about other stuffs that I can only
Speaker 1: assume that he's either fine with it or so furious
Speaker 1: that he will never speak of it. That's amazing. Now
Speaker 1: for the listener, Edgar Wright and I have met up
Speaker 1: in Londontown. There is a lockdown going. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to record this, and Edgar suggested that we meet up
Speaker 1: and we're allowed to two people are allowed to meet
Speaker 1: up outside, don't they? Yes? I think so. And so
Speaker 1: now we are walking around Reason's Part and a lovely time.
Speaker 1: I've put wind musks on the mics. So hopefully this
Speaker 1: isn't a nightmare for everyone. So here we are, Edgar.
Speaker 1: I've got so many questions for you. One is, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I got two stars. Yes, So you really, on the
Speaker 1: surface lived the dream. You always wanted to make films.
Speaker 1: You did everything when you were little, made stuff, made stuff,
Speaker 1: made stuff, and then you've got to really make stuff
Speaker 1: from a very young age from you just sort of
Speaker 1: made it all happen. Now you're at a level where
Speaker 1: I imagine it's a little bit easier to get films made.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe not consistently. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: depends on what the movie is. Maybe they're difficult to
Speaker 1: make whoever you are, but you're definitely you're big in
Speaker 1: the game. Right. That's very sweet of you to say
Speaker 1: you're doing very well. You've done very well for a
Speaker 1: long time. My question is, having wanted to do this
Speaker 1: all your life and done it as a kid, and
Speaker 1: now you're at the level where you're really, really, really
Speaker 1: an established guy, do you still love it or in
Speaker 1: your head is it like system really a job that
Speaker 1: I do now? No, No, I think the opposite. I
Speaker 1: have to remind myself all the time, you know, when
Speaker 1: you're actually shooting, like sometimes the worst part of the
Speaker 1: job and I say this in big and very comments
Speaker 1: because it's an amazing job to have the only bad
Speaker 1: part of the job is just like it's so stressful.
Speaker 1: The hours are really like tough and like so sometimes
Speaker 1: it's just like a mental and physical strain. And however, yeah,
Speaker 1: you always have to remind yourself every opportunity in those
Speaker 1: situations is that this is this is my dream job.
Speaker 1: I get to do my hobby as as my career,
Speaker 1: and so many people don't get to do what they love,
Speaker 1: and so you have to remind yourself. I mean, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't have to remind yourself that, but you do. And
Speaker 1: it's something that I think about a lot whilst I'm shooting,
Speaker 1: because whenever you get to that moment where it's like
Speaker 1: it's not like it's ever like I hate this job,
Speaker 1: it's only it's like I'm exhausted. It's so stressful. But
Speaker 1: you also always just have to you always have to
Speaker 1: default to like I can't believe that this is my career,
Speaker 1: and I think that there are several times where it
Speaker 1: just keeps coming floating back to you like that you're
Speaker 1: sort of reminded of, like, I can't believe this is
Speaker 1: what I did for a living, you know. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so weirdly enough, actually should of the Dead wasn't my
Speaker 1: first movie, but it was like the breakthrough movie. And
Speaker 1: weirdly that in itself was inspired by a day shooting
Speaker 1: on Space where it's episode three of Space where there's
Speaker 1: this zombie scene with Simon's character Tim Bisley in the
Speaker 1: flat running around shooting zombies and it was such a
Speaker 1: fun scene to shoot that it was one of those
Speaker 1: days where I felt at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I felt like I can't believe that this is my job.
Speaker 1: And in a way that was like one of the
Speaker 1: many inspirations of like, well, what if we did this
Speaker 1: for a whole movie? Like so, I think I think
Speaker 1: the thing is that I've never been in a and
Speaker 1: this might change if I have like kids and a
Speaker 1: massive tax bill or massive alimony payments or something. Wi Ye.
Speaker 1: I've never been in a position where I've had to
Speaker 1: do something for money yet, which is a great position
Speaker 1: to be in. And and part of that is because
Speaker 1: when you make a film, it's such an enormous undertaking,
Speaker 1: you know, it could take ten years. It could take
Speaker 1: you know, three years. I mean at minimum at minimum,
Speaker 1: you're talking like three years at minimum. Yeah. So, like
Speaker 1: with all that in mind, is that you don't want
Speaker 1: to do something for like years on end if you're
Speaker 1: not really really into it. You know, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about that because it is such a huge commitment, and
Speaker 1: You're right, it's years of your life. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: you get lots of offers and there are lots of
Speaker 1: potential things you could be making. What's the thing that
Speaker 1: pulls the trigger for you where you go, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to put years into this one. Well, so far,
Speaker 1: like I've only made one movie that I didn't like
Speaker 1: instigate myself as in all of the movies that I've done,
Speaker 1: I've written myself except for Scott Pilgrim and usually and
Speaker 1: the thing that made me do that movie is I
Speaker 1: felt like only only I can do this movie right.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes when they've been offers of bigger you know,
Speaker 1: like commercial prospects and stuff, it's usually I kind of
Speaker 1: think somebody else could make this movie or this movie
Speaker 1: is going to exist without me, right. Um, So sometimes
Speaker 1: when it fits a big franchise movie or something that
Speaker 1: like you know, the train has already left the station
Speaker 1: and it has a release date, and it's like or
Speaker 1: it's on the calendar already. You kind of think this
Speaker 1: movie is gonna exist without me. Yeah, I don't. They
Speaker 1: don't need me to make this X Men movie. Not
Speaker 1: that I've ever been offered an X Men movie, but
Speaker 1: that's just an example. Yeah, this week we have to
Speaker 1: point out that the Regent's Park is busier than we
Speaker 1: thought it would be. And also, I mean beautiful, though
Speaker 1: it is beautiful. It's right. I live near Redents Park
Speaker 1: and it's it's that one weird thing of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: as the pandemic has made me realize that there are
Speaker 1: amazing park somewhere I've never really fully explored it. Can't
Speaker 1: believe I can Okay nothing. Want to ask about Baby Driver,
Speaker 1: which is excellent bread. You don't have to go into
Speaker 1: the why you wanted to make it into the X
Speaker 1: Believe You've said this before, but the stunts sequences and
Speaker 1: the you know, the opening car sequence, it's so incredible
Speaker 1: and so well choreographed, all of that, and I was
Speaker 1: wondering if the reality of making that sequence was boring,
Speaker 1: Like was it such tiny bits that you were capturing
Speaker 1: such a sort of knnectic exciting sequence. Well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's the thing that you learn about action films
Speaker 1: is that you're making them in tiny increments. I would
Speaker 1: never say it's like boring. It's just like labor intensive,
Speaker 1: you know. So there were stories about them making of
Speaker 1: Mad Max Fury Road where people would talk about, Oh,
Speaker 1: we shot all day and only got like two seconds, right,
Speaker 1: and it's like, but that's that's unfortunately. What it takes
Speaker 1: like to get really good stuff is that you know,
Speaker 1: like I think that opening chase, I gotta I gotta
Speaker 1: get throws. So the only Chasing Baby Driver. I think
Speaker 1: we shot that movie over three months, and that specific
Speaker 1: chase was broken up into little chunks over maybe about
Speaker 1: ten weeks of the shoot. And there was one particular
Speaker 1: bit where we actually had to come back. We closed
Speaker 1: down the Interstate five in Atlanta. I hope I got
Speaker 1: that right. If anybody's listening Atlanta and I got it wrong,
Speaker 1: I apologize. I think it would the I five anyway.
Speaker 1: So that was a big deal. And then there was
Speaker 1: a problem with one of the cameras and we actually
Speaker 1: had an insurance claim Dave where we got to Luckily
Speaker 1: got to go back and do it again. So twice
Speaker 1: we shut down. Well, we didn't shut down the main freeway.
Speaker 1: We had what's called the bubble where they have like
Speaker 1: a literally like a fleet of cop cars at the
Speaker 1: top and at the back and in the middle it's
Speaker 1: all of your all of your cars and all the
Speaker 1: camera cars. And I remember when we were shooting that
Speaker 1: scene like causing chaos in Atlanta, Kamal Nanjiani was shooting
Speaker 1: a film in Atlanta at the same time. I think
Speaker 1: it was that film called Fist Fight, and he was
Speaker 1: in Atlanta and we were filming. It was like a
Speaker 1: Sunday and we had from like five in the morning
Speaker 1: till like two pm on the on the interstate and
Speaker 1: Camail whilst I was in the car, like we were resetting.
Speaker 1: And that's the labor intensive part is that if you
Speaker 1: fling on a freeway, every take you have to reset
Speaker 1: takes like forty five minutes because you have to get
Speaker 1: off the ramp and go all the way back and reset. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so Camail texted me during that he said, are you
Speaker 1: filming on the freeway right now? And I said yes.
Speaker 1: He goes everybody in Atlanta hates you because it was
Speaker 1: just all over. It was just all over the radio,
Speaker 1: God like saying like, oh, the fil baby if you're
Speaker 1: experiencing any delays, the filt Baby Driver. The same movie
Speaker 1: Baby Driver is filming on the Interstate five. Right now.
Speaker 1: I think I got the name of the interstate wrong.
Speaker 1: This is going to haunt you, isn't it? It It is?
Speaker 1: And like it is. I know as soon as I
Speaker 1: said it out loud, I knew I got the wrong interstate.
Speaker 1: It's maybe it's sad. Did you ruin everyone's life? Wait? Wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I gotta for the for the people of Georgia. I
Speaker 1: gotta get this right. I'm just gonna check on my
Speaker 1: phone asking that say, how could you forget us so quickly?
Speaker 1: You've ruined us Sunday, But now you show much more
Speaker 1: disrespect for the record. I am now googling it main
Speaker 1: interstate in Atlanta. No, that's not the one. Oh it
Speaker 1: was the IAD five, so wrong, discuss it was the
Speaker 1: IADY five. It wasn't the The five is in Los Angeles. Okay,
Speaker 1: it was the IADY five. But the story is still
Speaker 1: the details guy, So oh yeah, it's the story. Okay.
Speaker 1: So to answer your question that opening car chase, yes,
Speaker 1: is like made up of tiny like increments over like
Speaker 1: weeks and weeks and weeks, and we had to code
Speaker 1: back and shoot stuff again because we had a camera failure,
Speaker 1: which was actually like a benefit because second time round,
Speaker 1: I could show the actors the rest of the chase
Speaker 1: and I could say do this, do this, do this.
Speaker 1: But then one poor actor who wasn't run of show
Speaker 1: on the movie was John Burnthal. He was the only actor.
Speaker 1: Everybody else would either run of show or had to
Speaker 1: be shot out. And John Burnhale, who's only in two
Speaker 1: scenes in the movie, had to come back to Atlanta
Speaker 1: like ten times during the shoot, and so he kept
Speaker 1: dragging him back and then he was done, and then
Speaker 1: there was a reshoot and he was coming back anyway.
Speaker 1: So on the last day that John Burnthall was filming,
Speaker 1: I went up to him afterwards and I said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I just want to say thanks so much for your time.
Speaker 1: I know it was kind of particularly difficult for you
Speaker 1: because you know, like you had to keep coming back,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's such a difficult scene and so complicated.
Speaker 1: And then John Burnthal said, he goes, hey, I get it. Yes,
Speaker 1: if it was easy, Every asshole would do it. And
Speaker 1: I think about that all the time. This is that
Speaker 1: thing whenever you're sort of doing something that's got any
Speaker 1: level of hardship, there's John Burnthale's words. If it was easy,
Speaker 1: every ass i would do it. Yes, that's very nice.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you, I'm curious at how you deal
Speaker 1: with the mental side of all of this. So when
Speaker 1: you made Scott Pilgrim, which is fucking excellent, and I
Speaker 1: know it was very expensive and it didn't make a
Speaker 1: lot of money, right, it was critically exclaimed but didn't
Speaker 1: make a lot of money when it first came out, Like,
Speaker 1: was that difficult emotionally and because when you were involved
Speaker 1: in something, can you talk about that a bit? Yeah,
Speaker 1: sure it was. Actually there was something with that that
Speaker 1: was actually that made it very easy to deal with.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's an enormous amount of work and blood sweating, tears,
Speaker 1: and also a lot of love and passion that went
Speaker 1: into it. Yeah, But ultimately, like we all were really
Speaker 1: happy with the movie, and we knew that a certain
Speaker 1: audience really loved the movie because we'd had screenings and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the biggest issue with that movie was trying to
Speaker 1: sell it to you know, like a mainstream audience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was something. It was something where like you
Speaker 1: had to sort of see the movie to really understand it,
Speaker 1: and like it was difficult to encapsulate the premise and
Speaker 1: the tone in one poster or one trailer, and so
Speaker 1: we knew that was a challenge. But we knew from
Speaker 1: test screenings and preev screens that the people who did
Speaker 1: watch it really loved it. You know. I see there
Speaker 1: were things that were like maybe kind of like created
Speaker 1: expectations that we could not meet. Like we showed a
Speaker 1: comic con and it's like a sort of rock concert,
Speaker 1: but there's an element of that. It was an amazing
Speaker 1: screening and I wouldn't change it for anything. But you're
Speaker 1: also on the flip side, you're preaching to the choir. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that said so I think the thing is as well,
Speaker 1: I feel very differently about these things because I know
Speaker 1: that most of my favorite movies who are not hits
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, and this Scottium gray and gray
Speaker 1: and grays and grays, and well that's the thing that
Speaker 1: I tell you one story that they explained everything about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it came out on the kind of the weekend
Speaker 1: in the States and it opened at number five. And
Speaker 1: I think that weekend I very much did not look
Speaker 1: at the Internet because I didn't want to read like
Speaker 1: stories on Box Office Murder and Deadline about what was
Speaker 1: number one. It was the Expendables. I mean, I did
Speaker 1: this EW this article for e W about the tenth
Speaker 1: anniversary of Scott Pilgrim, and at the end of the
Speaker 1: article they said, any any closing words. I said, well,
Speaker 1: you're not doing a tenth anniversary of the Expendables, thought
Speaker 1: you anyway, So it came out We got trounced by
Speaker 1: the Expendables and Eat, Pray Love when we opened at
Speaker 1: number five. And it's that thing where you know, people
Speaker 1: who are kind of like it becomes like for some
Speaker 1: people who maybe haven't seen it or whatever, or or
Speaker 1: maybe like sort of saying, oh, I told you so
Speaker 1: that it was two kind of like like um, you know,
Speaker 1: niche or whatever. And so that was tough to deal
Speaker 1: with when people like, you know, like Seth McFarland made
Speaker 1: like a joke about it on Twitter and I was like,
Speaker 1: fuck you. But then the funny thing so the next
Speaker 1: Wednesday we were supposed to have the Big UK premier
Speaker 1: in Lesser Square, and nearly the entire cast were going
Speaker 1: to be there. Michael Cereberry, Larson, like Mary, Chris Evans,
Speaker 1: like nearly everybody was there, Jason Schwartzman, pretty much the
Speaker 1: entire cast was there. And I remember that I've sort
Speaker 1: of been dealing with like how it had done and
Speaker 1: sort of just sort of trying to come to terms
Speaker 1: of that. But at the same time, you're still promoting
Speaker 1: the movie, so in a way you kind of have
Speaker 1: to kind of just keep your chin up and like
Speaker 1: just kind of keep plowing ahead, knowing that like, well,
Speaker 1: if people just watch it, they're gonna I know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people are gonna love it. So I
Speaker 1: think the worst thing you can do is like run
Speaker 1: for the hills or try and blame the failure on
Speaker 1: somebody else. And I've seen other directors that I know
Speaker 1: do that, and I thought that is not the way
Speaker 1: to go. You sort of have to take it on
Speaker 1: the chin. So a lot of people in the in
Speaker 1: the aftermath who wanted me to throw marketing under the
Speaker 1: bu like, you know, you doing interviews, they're saying, do
Speaker 1: you think the film would have done better with a
Speaker 1: better poster? And would I would never do that because
Speaker 1: I knew how hard marketing had worked on it, yeah,
Speaker 1: and also how much they loved it. Anyway, it's the
Speaker 1: London premiere and all of the young cast are there,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, you know, I was like sort
Speaker 1: of my girlfriend at the time with Anna Hendrick, and
Speaker 1: I remember saying to her, I think tomorrow, before we
Speaker 1: go to the premiere, I think I should gather everybody
Speaker 1: in the hotel. We rented a room. I'll gather all
Speaker 1: the cast together and I'll do a speech saying, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: I know I didn't do very well last weekend. I'm
Speaker 1: so proud of the film, so proud of you, and
Speaker 1: it's going to be a great natteral that it's just
Speaker 1: go and enjoy ourselves. So I had this little speech
Speaker 1: ready to sort of get everybody like get up and
Speaker 1: sort of let them know that like to be proud
Speaker 1: and etc. Etc. So I was ready to give the speech,
Speaker 1: and then we'd rented this room in the Soho hotel,
Speaker 1: like with some drinks and stuff. All of the casts
Speaker 1: are coming down, and then as the cart started to
Speaker 1: come down, they were all so already in party mode
Speaker 1: and so like blithely oblivious did any of those commercial expectations.
Speaker 1: They were just there in London to have a jolly
Speaker 1: and having a whale of a time that I sort
Speaker 1: of like looked at them, I said, they're okay, And
Speaker 1: I never gave the speech. They did not need inspiring,
Speaker 1: they did not need they were like totally fine. And
Speaker 1: there was a sort of inspiring thing to me is
Speaker 1: I think maybe maybe I've been over thinking. They don't
Speaker 1: give a shit. They're just like sort of And there
Speaker 1: was the thing as we all went onto the carpet,
Speaker 1: like and it was actually like a really great screening
Speaker 1: because it was like, you know, like we love the
Speaker 1: movie and like, you know, I mean also the thing
Speaker 1: with that movie that we were very lucky is it
Speaker 1: more than maybe any of them my other movies. I
Speaker 1: think that that movie has played in cinemas the most afterwards.
Speaker 1: Like I think some prints or DCPs of Scott Hilgrim
Speaker 1: never went out of circulation because like, especially in the States,
Speaker 1: like within a month it was already doing midnights. So
Speaker 1: it was that strange thing where like a decade to
Speaker 1: kind of We're very lucky that people were just kind
Speaker 1: of like already you know, like a cult had started. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it makes people love it even more.
Speaker 1: It sort of go, this is ours. Yeah, you gain
Speaker 1: ownership of it. Yeah, and then you look, I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: I mean. The funny thing is that, like you can
Speaker 1: also tell like that like something is like doing well
Speaker 1: when it becomes like a catalog title for the studio,
Speaker 1: right the number of times it's been rereleased on Blu
Speaker 1: Ray or the amount of Funko pops there are, you
Speaker 1: sort of think, at some level, this is obviously an
Speaker 1: asset to the studio in a way that lots of
Speaker 1: other films aren't. And then you sort of think about
Speaker 1: if you look sometimes at the top ten of the year,
Speaker 1: there are some films that are in the top ten
Speaker 1: of the year that year that nobody has ever spoken
Speaker 1: about since they were released. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Or we'll never see a big screen ever again. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to mention any names. So interesting the
Speaker 1: word completely true. I think the same thing of often
Speaker 1: sometimes they get it right, but often with the uscars,
Speaker 1: the film that wins the best picture no one talks
Speaker 1: about ever, you forget You're always better off to be
Speaker 1: like a best picture of losing. Yeah, the one the
Speaker 1: people that should have been that one. Yeah, because usually
Speaker 1: it should have been Maybe Parasite is the exception that
Speaker 1: was the best. Whether everybody could agree on everyone, Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But then in other situations it's like, I bet in
Speaker 1: the weird way Kevin Coston with Dancing with Wolves probably
Speaker 1: gets a bit annoyed. Yes, I won Best Picture that Yeah, listen,
Speaker 1: I like Good Fellas too, But like is that thing
Speaker 1: where it's like, yeah, you never read anything about Dances
Speaker 1: with Wolves. I like that movie, but you never hear
Speaker 1: anybody talk about it these days saying like, obviously Good
Speaker 1: for Fellers should have won. Yeah, well that's going to
Speaker 1: be shitty for Kevin costing the two I m. But
Speaker 1: on the flip side of that experience, you then may
Speaker 1: Baby Driver, which I believe was more successful financially than
Speaker 1: anyone expected. But I was the biggest Yeah massive, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was my. It's my That was a real like
Speaker 1: it was so great for me because it was like
Speaker 1: like a movie that I was solely mine. I'd written it.
Speaker 1: It was also my first probably since my very first
Speaker 1: movie that maybe I was spenty. It was my first
Speaker 1: like soul screenwriting directing credit since then, and it was
Speaker 1: something that I had the idea for since like the
Speaker 1: mid nineties. I mean I literally came up with the
Speaker 1: first like ideas for that movie in like nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: five in Woodgreen Living and in a Middleton Road shout
Speaker 1: out to ninety five a Middleton Road shout out very specific.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, yeah, it was my biggest hit.
Speaker 1: And it was also I think sort of you know,
Speaker 1: in the wake of like maybe Scott Hildam not doing
Speaker 1: so well or like, you know, my experience with the
Speaker 1: the film that should be maybe get into that as well.
Speaker 1: But like it was, it was obviously really it was
Speaker 1: really important to me to have like a hit on
Speaker 1: my own term. So yeah, so it was so it
Speaker 1: was so great when it was, like, but did you
Speaker 1: having had I guess what my question is, what I'm
Speaker 1: fascinated by is that thing of clearly for you and
Speaker 1: for I think everyone, it's it's art, right, It's a
Speaker 1: creative thing. You want to make this thing. You want
Speaker 1: to make this thing, and you make it with all
Speaker 1: your heart and but there's also a business side to it,
Speaker 1: and you are kind of required to make a certain
Speaker 1: amount of money, So make your next thing and somebody said,
Speaker 1: like a screenwriter Larry Carris, it's key. He sort of said.
Speaker 1: I remember he said after Scott Pilgrim, he said, he goes, Yes,
Speaker 1: the kid newses, it's great. He goes, he goes, you
Speaker 1: can't have too many of those, and otherwise they take
Speaker 1: the keys away, And that was a phrase it really
Speaker 1: stuck with winning of it You maybe, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: also I think it also like it. Also, Yes, it's
Speaker 1: like you have to sort of then come back with
Speaker 1: something that has a chance of making money. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: when making the World's End after Scott Pilgrim, it's budgeted
Speaker 1: at a level where maths wise, in terms of what
Speaker 1: the other ones made and what they would make on
Speaker 1: DVD and everything. It's something that everybody's comfortable with. It's
Speaker 1: not like, you know, if you make a film like
Speaker 1: Scott Pilgrim and it doesn't do well, nobody's going to
Speaker 1: give you that money again unless it's an absolute sure
Speaker 1: fire franchise hit, you know. So my question to tie
Speaker 1: all this together, I guess is I hear some people, artists,
Speaker 1: I hear them say I don't care about any of it.
Speaker 1: All I care about is am I proud of it?
Speaker 1: Do I love it? The rest of it doesn't affect me,
Speaker 1: and I always think I don't believe you. Well, it's
Speaker 1: a lovely thing to think, but we must affect you
Speaker 1: a little bit. But some of my question is having
Speaker 1: had the Scott Pilrim experience where you made a film
Speaker 1: is very proud of, its excellent, that financially struggled, and
Speaker 1: then making babies I ever wish you're very proud of
Speaker 1: and was excellent and did financially excellently. Having been through
Speaker 1: the previous one, did it make you like feel differently,
Speaker 1: as in, do you like we'll have to take the
Speaker 1: good bit about it it or evens out or was
Speaker 1: it like fucking yes, No, I mean it definitely made it.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, I mean I think anybody who says
Speaker 1: it's all about the art and I don't care whether
Speaker 1: people like it or not. You know, maybe that works
Speaker 1: if you're a musical artist and you can just put
Speaker 1: something out on a platform, But with a film at
Speaker 1: a certain budget level, there's a obviously there's very real
Speaker 1: like sort of limitations if like you can't like do
Speaker 1: a couple of flops in a row and expect to
Speaker 1: keep working, you know, at some point, people aren't going
Speaker 1: to just give you money to make things if it's
Speaker 1: not making anything back. I think I've been lucky. Is
Speaker 1: that Even with Scott Pilgrim, I felt so I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: I felt so so fortunate every time I do another movie.
Speaker 1: I mean, you end up sort of making every movie
Speaker 1: like it's going to be your last in a way,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? Yeah, because you think
Speaker 1: like I'm so fortunate. I know how fortunate I am,
Speaker 1: and obviously the parameters with everything even now keep changing.
Speaker 1: So like I did, I did feel like really it
Speaker 1: was like I felt vindicated, Like I felt like, fuck you, world,
Speaker 1: why won't you learn it? Just felt I just felt
Speaker 1: I felt so grateful. I just felt so grateful that
Speaker 1: I had a movie that really connected in a connected
Speaker 1: at the time as well. Yeah, and in a sort
Speaker 1: of I mean. Also, the interesting thing with that film
Speaker 1: is that I did think, having done like Sean of
Speaker 1: the Dead, Hot Fights, Scott Pilgrim at the World's End,
Speaker 1: is that I was conscious that all of them had
Speaker 1: done well in English language territories and done badly in
Speaker 1: non English language territories. I remember I watched some of
Speaker 1: Scott Pilgrim in Japan, and they had it with Japanese subtitles,
Speaker 1: and I remember sitting in the instuma for a little
Speaker 1: bit and thinking, oh my god, this is so overwhelming
Speaker 1: if you had to read it and watch it at
Speaker 1: the same time, it was so intense, and I thought
Speaker 1: this would just give somebody a ballism trying to like
Speaker 1: watch this movie and read the dialogue. So I when
Speaker 1: I was doing Baby Driver, I was trying to come
Speaker 1: up with something where the dialogue was less important. You know,
Speaker 1: It's also a thing about conduct as well, because sometimes
Speaker 1: if you see directors who fly really high and then
Speaker 1: have a flop and then they never heard of ever again,
Speaker 1: it's usually because they're a complete shit, right, and there's
Speaker 1: a thing where like people are waiting for that downfall,
Speaker 1: and then when the downfall happens, it's like great, they
Speaker 1: never have to work with so and so again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because sometimes then there's people who, like you think, you
Speaker 1: hear stories about somebody being like a real asshole, and
Speaker 1: then you wonder, wow, how do they keep working. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: they keep working because they keep making money. But if
Speaker 1: there's if the kind of like you know, kind of
Speaker 1: the worm turns, then sometimes it's like you you can
Speaker 1: you can see with some directors is like, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a reason why they suddenly like didn't work again. It's
Speaker 1: because people didn't want to put up with their ship anymore.
Speaker 1: So I think there's also a thing there is, like
Speaker 1: you really just have to think about especially now in
Speaker 1: like I mean, I'm like, I'm currently like finishing a
Speaker 1: movie in the middle of a pandemic, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: whenever people say to me, like, how's it going, I say, ah,
Speaker 1: I'm working really hard. It's really exhausting. However, I'm not complaining.
Speaker 1: I'm really really, really grateful to be working. And that's genuine.
Speaker 1: You know, Hey, well, let's very briefly talk about your
Speaker 1: new film. Now. What I know about your new film
Speaker 1: and the reason I'm so excited about it is because
Speaker 1: you've named Don't Look Now as a reference, which is
Speaker 1: I think that was maybe foolhardy saying that in an indusview,
Speaker 1: because there's sort of like why as soon as they
Speaker 1: said why would I mentioned one of the best horror
Speaker 1: films of all time, it's probably yeah, so carry on.
Speaker 1: So that got me like, hello, I was like, hello,
Speaker 1: so tell me, so this film without spoiling anything. Tell me,
Speaker 1: is it straight horror? Yes? And no, I mean it's not.
Speaker 1: It has no sort of comedic element. Although there's some
Speaker 1: funny bits, it's not like a comedy horror on the deck.
Speaker 1: It is like a I guess when I mentioned like
Speaker 1: Don't Look Now or like Repulsion, it wasn't in terms
Speaker 1: of any real plot element. It's more like those movies
Speaker 1: that they're sort of on the kind of the cusp
Speaker 1: of being psychological thrillers, stroke horrors. Yeah, you know, and
Speaker 1: and so it's a sort of it's partly that. And
Speaker 1: I think also like it's something I really wanted to
Speaker 1: make a film in central London. It's like a place
Speaker 1: that I've spent like twenty five years of my working
Speaker 1: life and in the last like five years been living
Speaker 1: in central London. And it's it's not a location you
Speaker 1: really see on screen that much for practical reasons most
Speaker 1: of the time. So I want us to sort of
Speaker 1: take the ball by the horns and saying, right, let's
Speaker 1: make a movie in sohot five. But it's partly those
Speaker 1: those are good good reference points, just in terms of
Speaker 1: like maybe the tone of it. And then beyond that,
Speaker 1: there was a certain type of film that I really
Speaker 1: love that like just don't really get made anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: I wan't say solely Hitchcock movies, but usually like things
Speaker 1: like influenced by Hitchcock, like I particularly into I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've heard of like Italian and Jallow films. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: like Bird with a Crystal Plumage and like Deep Red
Speaker 1: and Blood and Black Lace, Suspiria, and tons and tons
Speaker 1: of other great ones, you know, all with very ornate
Speaker 1: titles like what Happened to Salons? Or Don't Torture a Duckling?
Speaker 1: Like they all have like amazing titles death Walks in
Speaker 1: High Heels. So I wanted to do a like a
Speaker 1: London version of one of those movies. And I'd also
Speaker 1: not that it's an Italian movie, but there are other
Speaker 1: movies like Hitchcock's Frenzy or Brand Up Palmer's Dressed to Kill,
Speaker 1: sort of the movies that in this day and age
Speaker 1: a bit too transgressive in a way. As you'll see
Speaker 1: when you see the film. It was trying to find
Speaker 1: a way to make one of those movies now, and
Speaker 1: so that's sort of the and in a sense the
Speaker 1: movie takes place in like the sixties and now to
Speaker 1: sort of analyze that kind of like a change in
Speaker 1: kind of sounds like it might be two nights and
Speaker 1: so well, I mean, it's weird. I won't ever want
Speaker 1: to talk too much about it, but there is there
Speaker 1: is one weird thing. I actually watched the whole thing
Speaker 1: together yesterday and it really struck me that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a sixties portion of the film and there's a
Speaker 1: contemporary portion of the film, but it did struck to
Speaker 1: strike me that like, oh my god, this is like
Speaker 1: Soho in the sixties and Soho in twenty nineteen, which
Speaker 1: is a different thing to what it is today. And
Speaker 1: I've been working in and then I don't want to
Speaker 1: spoil it anymore, but there is I'll say, I'll say
Speaker 1: one thing. There's one thing that we shot in lockdowns
Speaker 1: that appears right at the end of the movie, and
Speaker 1: I'm so glad we did it. And it's sort of
Speaker 1: something where it's like a way of recording you know,
Speaker 1: like I mean central London apart from this park. It's
Speaker 1: like absolutely and I've been having I've been editing and
Speaker 1: finishing off the movie in Soho and grading and mixing,
Speaker 1: and my walks home at like nine o'clock at night
Speaker 1: are just spooky and like I keep taking. Um, I
Speaker 1: think people think I'm being like a vampire on like
Speaker 1: Instagram because I keep taking these like moody nocturnal shots
Speaker 1: of deserted London and they're sort of like in its
Speaker 1: like it looks like I'm going out doing these kind
Speaker 1: of vampiric night shoot where it's like, oh no, this
Speaker 1: was just my walk home. I saw this street and
Speaker 1: it looks so spooky with no people, and it's like, oh, Edgar, yes, fuck,
Speaker 1: oh no, I've forgotten to tell you something. What do
Speaker 1: you know? How long have we been walking? Hours? I
Speaker 1: mean it feels like it also feels like it could
Speaker 1: have been of all eternity. Is something happened? Um in
Speaker 1: a way. UH should have told you this up top?
Speaker 1: What an idiot? How close were you to finishing the film?
Speaker 1: Very close? You've died? Ah, it is going to be
Speaker 1: my posthumous movie. Yeah, it's my eyes wide sharp, this
Speaker 1: might be your eyesword shut, it's you know and whoever.
Speaker 1: But I actually managed to finish the score, unlike on
Speaker 1: Eyesword Hut, where they were left with the temper music
Speaker 1: tris doors like that yes, that's absolutely true music. And
Speaker 1: they never finished it. Ah, I explained so much. I'm
Speaker 1: taking this well, I don't go straight back to movie. Then,
Speaker 1: so you've died. How did you die? Well? Um, it's
Speaker 1: quite exciting actually because it's both like a childhood terror
Speaker 1: and a dream come true. I was eaten by sharks,
Speaker 1: which is something that you Yes, it's something that you
Speaker 1: you know, like sort of I guess it's one of
Speaker 1: those things that you ass I mean, I never thought
Speaker 1: I would see the day, but I was, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm scared of deep water. I don't really
Speaker 1: like swimming the ocean. And then I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: recently I was in Italy and I thought, fuck it,
Speaker 1: I'll just do it. Let's kind of get this out
Speaker 1: of the way. I'll do some deep sea swimming. I
Speaker 1: was eaten by sharks. And it was like it was
Speaker 1: like so so, yes, they were. They had come up
Speaker 1: from They're coming for the wrong stream. Yeah, they sound
Speaker 1: like George the Revenge, like they actually would see but
Speaker 1: they followed me. Yes, they were basically after Jews the Revenge.
Speaker 1: They had like sort of like done as much as
Speaker 1: they could with the Brody family, and they'd run out
Speaker 1: of people from the Brody family to kill and bad
Speaker 1: bad mathing. They heard me bad mouthing jaws for this
Speaker 1: time it's personal. Yeah, and they came after me and
Speaker 1: so one of them got you, then the other one
Speaker 1: got you. It was like a feeding frenzy. Wow. But
Speaker 1: but I'm not I'm only like five seven, so I
Speaker 1: didn't take very long. It's very short feeding frenzy. I
Speaker 1: think they got me in a couple of wolves. In
Speaker 1: terms of your your experience of it quite quick. It was.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was something where I thought, oh, no,
Speaker 1: you know everything that I was scared of after having
Speaker 1: seen Yeah, I guess it's that thing of like you
Speaker 1: just just I mean, I think that's the thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it folds into a later question, but like you can't
Speaker 1: swim in the ocean without thinking of sharks. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of like I was quite happy to be eating
Speaker 1: by sharks because it felt like this is a very
Speaker 1: dramatic way to go out, and nobody could say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, like everybody would everybody going ah, well, you know,
Speaker 1: because I mean, apart from punching them on the nose
Speaker 1: or is it in the eyeball of the nose, the nose, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, I don't know what else
Speaker 1: I could have done better. Yeah. Yeah, if you get
Speaker 1: punch the eyes is not gonna work. So you do
Speaker 1: you worry about death? You know what? The one reason
Speaker 1: I sort of like, I'll be completely honest about why
Speaker 1: I brought that up, is that there was this joke
Speaker 1: that I had in a script that never got made,
Speaker 1: and I was really proud of this joke, and then
Speaker 1: then script never got made, so it was it was
Speaker 1: actually a thing, an animation thing that me and David
Speaker 1: Williams had written for DreamWorks and it never went anywhere,
Speaker 1: but it was about part of it was about the
Speaker 1: son of a secret agent, right, and his dad, who
Speaker 1: was like a James Bond figure, had died in the
Speaker 1: middle of a mission and like he was less sort
Speaker 1: of a super spy and then he died he was
Speaker 1: eating by sharks and so, but he was in this
Speaker 1: mission and so like the guy was talking about him, saying,
Speaker 1: you know, he died doing what he loved and there
Speaker 1: was like eating by sharks like that that was his
Speaker 1: like sort of like the the fact that I had
Speaker 1: to explain the joke probably means that that's why the
Speaker 1: film didn't go an each other forward. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel responsible for not giving you this setup. No,
Speaker 1: But also I think it's that thing as you sort
Speaker 1: of feel like, I mean, a peaceful do I worry
Speaker 1: about death? I didn't, you know. The times when I
Speaker 1: think about it is maybe like one of the only
Speaker 1: times I've gone under anesthetic at hospital right for an operation,
Speaker 1: and as you're going under, you thinking this might be it.
Speaker 1: And also on a plane, like I'm not scared of flying,
Speaker 1: but you definitely think about it every time you have
Speaker 1: heavy turbulence, yeah, and you're thinking what if this was it?
Speaker 1: And I'm not like, so I'm not like scared in
Speaker 1: the sense of that I don't know. I mean, those
Speaker 1: are the times that I think about it. Is like
Speaker 1: going under general anesthetic, which has only happened maybe twice
Speaker 1: in my life, or on a plane. You can't go
Speaker 1: through heavy turbulence without thinking about it. Right now. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I've told this story before, but I was once
Speaker 1: on a plane that I think was like in serious
Speaker 1: trouble because it kept sort of plunging and I saw
Speaker 1: the hostess crossed herself, Oh no, no, no, and I thought, oh, Okay,
Speaker 1: I thought that's a bad sign. But I remember it
Speaker 1: started shaking, shaking, shaking, and the lights went out and
Speaker 1: it was like made a sound like and ever people
Speaker 1: were screaming, and genuinely I felt scared. I was on
Speaker 1: my own, felt scared. And then I crossed over something
Speaker 1: and instead of being scared, I was like, fucking, come on,
Speaker 1: you've had that moment. Yeah, I had a let's do this.
Speaker 1: D oh my god. Then that sounds like the roy
Speaker 1: Kent coming out of you, like the whole God, come on.
Speaker 1: Trying to think there's anytime I haven't felt close to death,
Speaker 1: like I mean, there's always those things where you get
Speaker 1: compelled by the idea of like dying like you know,
Speaker 1: on a cliff, or like doing something like on the
Speaker 1: high I've done mantaineering once. And then there's that thing
Speaker 1: where it's that it's that weird and then what it is,
Speaker 1: it's not like it's kind of like, um, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think, it's not like Turette's where you have that thing.
Speaker 1: I never you ever had this at school, where that
Speaker 1: compulsion to shout something else even if you never did it,
Speaker 1: But that's similar thing like thinking like this, I could
Speaker 1: just jump right now. I do think that a lot
Speaker 1: as well, which is very strange. I don't exactly and
Speaker 1: maybe I've never seen a psychiatrist about that. But the
Speaker 1: thing of like if you're on that's the other thing.
Speaker 1: If you're on a cliff, you always think about either
Speaker 1: falling or jumping all the time. But I believe that
Speaker 1: the definition of vertigo is fear of fooling and fear
Speaker 1: of jumping. Yes, is that you're You're very tempted anyway.
Speaker 1: What do you think happens when you die? I mean
Speaker 1: i'd like to. I mean, I'm not religious at all,
Speaker 1: but there are things where I want to believe that
Speaker 1: there's something else. I mean, I don't think there is.
Speaker 1: I want to believe it in this, you know, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I don't believe that there's
Speaker 1: like sort of like a heaven or anything, but but
Speaker 1: I'm always kind of interested about like near death experiences
Speaker 1: and the lights and all of that stuff. So I'm
Speaker 1: kind of like heaven curious. I just I want it.
Speaker 1: I am not I don't quite believe it, but i'd
Speaker 1: like to believe it, you know, And I'm not here
Speaker 1: to judge he's a little bit heaven curiously, Well, you
Speaker 1: come to the right pace, because there is a heaven.
Speaker 1: You're in it very nice. It is nice. Busier than
Speaker 1: you'd expect. Yeah, a lot more good people. But everyone
Speaker 1: here obsessed with film. I think you're into film. How
Speaker 1: did you get that idea? Well, one of the reasons
Speaker 1: is but before, when I was emailing at you about this,
Speaker 1: he sent me a list of films that he'd watched
Speaker 1: in lockdown. And I mean, I like films, but I
Speaker 1: don't know how you found the time whilst also making
Speaker 1: a film to watch the sheer number of films that
Speaker 1: you've watched in lockdown, because it looks like timing was
Speaker 1: I'm like, did you watch five films? I don't know
Speaker 1: how you. I think actually maybe maybe, Like sometimes there
Speaker 1: would be occasional days where it'd be four films in
Speaker 1: a day, yeah, but usually, like I do watch a
Speaker 1: lot of I mean usually when I'm working, I don't
Speaker 1: get to watch a lot of films. And definitely it
Speaker 1: would have been more if I hadn't started doing some
Speaker 1: shooting at the end of July, but I had over
Speaker 1: the years. It's that thing where sometimes friends they say, oh,
Speaker 1: egg has seen every movie, and I'm like, I assure
Speaker 1: you I have not. And I'd started to mass it's
Speaker 1: like list of movies that I have not seen, right,
Speaker 1: And it was like an aggregate of like other like
Speaker 1: best of lists, like the Berfi Top one hundred or
Speaker 1: like the KaiA Cinema like list, or Martin scorsesees like
Speaker 1: lists of foreign films you must see, or like um
Speaker 1: Danny Peery's Cult Movies, those books that's like three volumes
Speaker 1: of it. There's that David Thompson book called have You Seen? Right?
Speaker 1: So I eventually had this list that was like over
Speaker 1: like a thousand movies long, and I put like a
Speaker 1: I decided in a lockdown. Over the last like decade,
Speaker 1: I massed quite a lot of those movies on DVD
Speaker 1: and blue ray, so it wasn't even a thing where
Speaker 1: people kind of, you know, when people complain saying, oh,
Speaker 1: there's no old movies on Netflix, I'm like, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: I got them all. I literally have them all in
Speaker 1: my study. Don't worry. So I must have like you know,
Speaker 1: like I haven't massed over the years, like hundreds of
Speaker 1: DVDs and blue rays. And then there were a lot
Speaker 1: of ones that I hadn't watched, and they were usually
Speaker 1: the more challenging ones, and I start to think of
Speaker 1: them as they were like sort of sitting there on
Speaker 1: the shelf that because they were all the challenging ones
Speaker 1: and maybe more kind of serious minded films. So I
Speaker 1: start to think of them as like coffee table movies.
Speaker 1: I absolutely like movies that I had fought to make
Speaker 1: myself look smart. Yeah, and mayking it lying around like
Speaker 1: I hope that no one asked you enough questions too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So but I decided like I'm going to like put
Speaker 1: my money away in my mouth as I've already bought them.
Speaker 1: I didn't watch these movies, and so like a big
Speaker 1: percentage of that list was exactly that. It's a great list.
Speaker 1: It's a really good list. Impressive, just impressive. And do
Speaker 1: you have if I may you you currently live with
Speaker 1: the right Yeah, we can talk about do you watch
Speaker 1: them alone with her other rules? I think very quickly
Speaker 1: you can figure I can figure out the movies that
Speaker 1: she won't be less interested in. And there were on
Speaker 1: that I'll get up early in the morning and watch
Speaker 1: on my own, or like that she is Swedish, and
Speaker 1: so I've actually been watching quite a few Swedish films
Speaker 1: that so I'd already seen some Ingma Bergman films, but
Speaker 1: I'd usually seen the ones that were like genre adjacent.
Speaker 1: There are a few ones that kind of like cross
Speaker 1: over into horror territory, like Persona and The Hour of
Speaker 1: the Wolf and The Virgin Spring. So I actually been
Speaker 1: watching a lot of Bergman and then what's his name,
Speaker 1: Lucas Muderson, and I already liked Roy Anderson, but i'd
Speaker 1: never seen his first film, which is weirdly was the
Speaker 1: only one that my girlfriend seen, which was Swedish Love Story,
Speaker 1: which he made like thirty years or twenty nine years
Speaker 1: before Songs from the Second Floor, And it's an entirely
Speaker 1: different prospect. It's a bit like watching like Gregory's Girl
Speaker 1: or something, and it was so beautiful and so funny,
Speaker 1: and that completely different to his later films. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, and then there's things like where, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can kind of sort of like kind of figure
Speaker 1: out which films she's enjoying, ones that she absolutely would not.
Speaker 1: Do you have a rule that no talking lights off
Speaker 1: as it work? I definitely like have I mean, I
Speaker 1: have actually I have no TV in my living room,
Speaker 1: I just have a drop down projector so there's that
Speaker 1: thing where it makes a bit of a more of
Speaker 1: a ceremony of like you know, turning off the lights
Speaker 1: of you know, the projects coming down and stuff. And
Speaker 1: usually the other thing that I do, which is kind
Speaker 1: of slight anti social and probably like I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not a great sleeper, and my like sort of hours
Speaker 1: I get a night have gone down, like as I
Speaker 1: get older, so like sometimes I can maybe knock off
Speaker 1: more than one movie before she even gets up, which
Speaker 1: is like terror and then also still like going get
Speaker 1: coffees or something and wake her up having already watched
Speaker 1: two movies, which is maybe not drag about, but like
Speaker 1: I think that's great. So there was a thing where,
Speaker 1: like I think, you know, like a there was a
Speaker 1: point in the between like March and like July, I
Speaker 1: mean like full on lockdown where I was I was
Speaker 1: sometimes watching four films a day. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: Right in this heaven they loved film as well. You're
Speaker 1: going to fit right in, but they weren't know about
Speaker 1: your life through film. And the first thing they ask
Speaker 1: you is what is the first film that you remember seeing? Edgar? Right, Well,
Speaker 1: this is that it sounds like one of those stories
Speaker 1: that people say when they're doing the ePK for making one.
Speaker 1: But I genuinely the first film I ever saw was
Speaker 1: Star Wars in nineteen Well, i've been thinking about this.
Speaker 1: I don't think it was nineteen seventy seven, but I
Speaker 1: think I was like three, because I think Star Wars
Speaker 1: in the UK came out Boxing Day in nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: so I think I saw it in early seventy eight.
Speaker 1: But I was definitely three and a half and it
Speaker 1: was definitely the first trip to the cinema for me
Speaker 1: and my brother. My brother's two years older, and I
Speaker 1: grew up in the Swanage in Dorset, and so my
Speaker 1: parents took me to west Over Road and in a
Speaker 1: bourmous and there was the cinema that's not there anymore
Speaker 1: now it's the church called the Galaxy. It was that
Speaker 1: thing where I didn't really know what we were doing,
Speaker 1: and so I remember like lining up outside the cinema
Speaker 1: in this massive queue. It must have been like in
Speaker 1: the winter, because I remember it was really dark and
Speaker 1: not really understanding why we were queuing up until we
Speaker 1: got closer to the cinema, and then I could see
Speaker 1: the quad poster for Star Wars, and so I must
Speaker 1: have had some I must have had some awareness of
Speaker 1: Star Wars, because I know I got super excited about
Speaker 1: We're actually going to see this movie. And then that
Speaker 1: cinema I had a ceiling with stars on it, like
Speaker 1: fluorescent stars, and so I remember really vividly when there's
Speaker 1: that opening shot of Star Wars with the Star Destroyer
Speaker 1: coming over of the camera and also the starfield, know
Speaker 1: with Star Wars with the fanfare. I just remember like
Speaker 1: being confused as to where the cinema ended and the
Speaker 1: film started. It really felt like it was like the
Speaker 1: film was like coming out, Yeah, really cool. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then and then I lived in Dorset until I was seven.
Speaker 1: So west Over Road, which used to have like three
Speaker 1: cinemas and currently having been back to Bournemouth a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, has no cinemas and west Over Road
Speaker 1: there really sad that, like there used to be an
Speaker 1: ABC and an odeon. Maybe the ABC was also a
Speaker 1: cannon at one point, but I saw so many movies
Speaker 1: at those cinemas, and also I think two cinemas that
Speaker 1: down there that are open still. There's one in swan
Speaker 1: Is called the Maulum and there's one in Paul called
Speaker 1: the Paul Arts Center, which I think still exists anyway,
Speaker 1: So around that time, like my parents would take me
Speaker 1: to most sci fi fantasy films that were out between
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven and nineteen eighty one, with the exception
Speaker 1: of Hawk the Slayer, which I really wanted to see.
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, my mom and dad would not take
Speaker 1: me too. And I used to like a like a
Speaker 1: complete brat. I would like ball and cry, Oh there's
Speaker 1: there's the not knowing that it was substandard at that time.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you have this as like that age. I
Speaker 1: think about it a lot, from like three to fifteen
Speaker 1: that I was happy to watch any film. Fifteen mystical
Speaker 1: critical faculties kicked team, where I realized that not all
Speaker 1: films are equal, maybe some of them are not as
Speaker 1: good as others. And I remember that kind of like
Speaker 1: very profoundly in the year of Ghostbusters two. Really it was.
Speaker 1: It was a combination of Ghostbusters two and there's his
Speaker 1: heresy to say, so some people love it Back to
Speaker 1: the Future Part two. I know some people think it's superior.
Speaker 1: They're wrong. What was the other one as well? RoboCop
Speaker 1: two the next year. Doesn't like a too? Doesn't I
Speaker 1: do like some too? But those I mean Beast in
Speaker 1: the Future two is interesting? Is it better than the
Speaker 1: first one? No? Anybody who says that is trying to
Speaker 1: be cool. That's a hoopster Back to the Future fan. Yes,
Speaker 1: what film made you cry the most? Have you cry
Speaker 1: in the films? I had two answers for this, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have a happy one on a sad one. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll do the sad one first. Sorry and kind of
Speaker 1: so well. A recent one that really really got me
Speaker 1: was this film by Carol Morley called Dreams of a Life.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen that movie? Film about the woman who? Yes?
Speaker 1: Have you seen that movie? I have not seen that movie. Well,
Speaker 1: it's devastating. So it's a documentary. It's a documentary with
Speaker 1: some like reconstruction starring Zarie Ashton from Who's Amazing And Anyway,
Speaker 1: there's a point. So it's about a woman. I wrote
Speaker 1: down her name, Joyce Carol Vincent. That was the lady
Speaker 1: who died in her flat alone in Woodgreen after not
Speaker 1: having been seen by her friends or family first three years.
Speaker 1: I think it was found like three years after her
Speaker 1: desk with the TV still on and Christmas presents wrapped
Speaker 1: in the flat and nobody had reported her. And the
Speaker 1: thing that's the kind of curious thing about it is
Speaker 1: it wasn't like she was She was a well liked person, right,
Speaker 1: So it makes it even more of like an enigma
Speaker 1: of like, how could somebody who actually has family and
Speaker 1: friends be like missed for so long? And you know,
Speaker 1: you find out the answer in the documentary to some extent.
Speaker 1: But there's a bit in the documentary where they are
Speaker 1: we should point out that we're about to walk parts
Speaker 1: two people. I mean we are in heaven. There's some
Speaker 1: people fencing right here. It feels like they're literally people
Speaker 1: fencing in apart. Yeah, in the full gear. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: there's a point in that documentary where they interview her
Speaker 1: X this guy called Martin who was obviously deeply, deeply
Speaker 1: in love with her and I don't think wanted to
Speaker 1: lose contact with her, but did, right, And in the
Speaker 1: documentary there's that things sometimes when people in the documentary
Speaker 1: are keeping a brave face on things, and so he's
Speaker 1: kind of doing most of his interview talking about how
Speaker 1: fond he was of her and how much he loved her,
Speaker 1: and he's kind of like getting through this, you know,
Speaker 1: pain of talking about it with a smile on his face.
Speaker 1: And then there's a point near the end of the
Speaker 1: film where he breaks down and even listen for the
Speaker 1: rest even me just thinking about it is making me
Speaker 1: cheer up because I was watching this thing and then
Speaker 1: I just explosively started crying because I just sort of
Speaker 1: seeing somebody really grieving on camera. And obviously like had
Speaker 1: decided to do the interview and thought, you know, I
Speaker 1: can I can do this. I can talk about it
Speaker 1: without completely but he's like sort of just so destroyed
Speaker 1: by it. And I actually met Zai Ashton and I said,
Speaker 1: I talked to her about that, and she said that like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, she met him at the premiere of the film,
Speaker 1: and it was like so like just you know, it's
Speaker 1: difficult to know what to say to combody that you've
Speaker 1: played them on screen, You've played like this like sort
Speaker 1: of dead X. Yeah. That movie is like devastating but
Speaker 1: really worth watching. But it was that thing, I mean
Speaker 1: in that way, it was that uplifting in a way
Speaker 1: that it made you like sort of like think, oh
Speaker 1: my god, you want to like get in touch with
Speaker 1: everybody you've ever known and hug all your loved ones
Speaker 1: and just but it's a that's that's the recent film
Speaker 1: that I like, remember like going from naught to sixty,
Speaker 1: like suddenly explosively crying my happy one quickly. And this
Speaker 1: is a bit sillier is when Jackie Chan's Rumbling the
Speaker 1: Bronx came out. I was such a big Jackie Chan fan,
Speaker 1: and I'd never seen one of his films at the
Speaker 1: cinema and I saw it the Prince Charles and it
Speaker 1: was clearly full of other Jackie Chan fans who'd never
Speaker 1: seen a Jackie Chan from the cinema, and people were listen.
Speaker 1: That film is not in my top ten Jackie Chan films, however,
Speaker 1: people were so up for it. It was such an
Speaker 1: explosive reaction at the end of the film. If you remember,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen Jackie Chan, the final shorts, Jackietan
Speaker 1: turning to camera and putting his thumbs up and it
Speaker 1: freezes frame on Jackie tam sumtimes, and I was so
Speaker 1: happy for Jackie that he had like a proper hit.
Speaker 1: I started crying. That's the happy tears version. I like that.
Speaker 1: I like that a lot, so if you're going to
Speaker 1: watch Dreams of a Life follow you might want to
Speaker 1: have a rumble in the Bronx Chaser. It was the
Speaker 1: only time that those two films that would never be
Speaker 1: watched in succession. It's a very space bendagra. What what
Speaker 1: is the film that scared you? Know? You obviously like
Speaker 1: your horror I do. Here's one thing I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this when I was like looking at the questions
Speaker 1: is that I thought most of these films I could
Speaker 1: answer with America Wealth in London. Yeah, but it's so
Speaker 1: like on brand for me. I have to kind of
Speaker 1: like I could answer America Wealth in London for every category.
Speaker 1: So I might come back to that later. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna it's a split. And it's like it's John Carpenter.
Speaker 1: There's two films of his that I saw on TV
Speaker 1: when I was like The Fog is one I must
Speaker 1: have seen when I like nine on TV and The Thing,
Speaker 1: which I probably saw on TV when I was twelve
Speaker 1: and they absolutely freaked me out. And either Fog is
Speaker 1: like I feel like whenever I watched that film, I
Speaker 1: want to try and recapture the very elegant, simple chills
Speaker 1: of just like dark figures in the fog and the
Speaker 1: threat of the fog coming to get you and you're
Speaker 1: going to die if you kind of get enveloped by
Speaker 1: the fog and the zombie pirates that are inside and
Speaker 1: when it and the Thing is, that's one of those
Speaker 1: films like that, like you think whenever, whenever I watch it,
Speaker 1: I think, maybe it won't hold up this time, and
Speaker 1: every time it holds up for me. That's what the
Speaker 1: other parts of it also, John Carpter, would be the
Speaker 1: thing which I remember, all you have to back in
Speaker 1: the pre internet days, the only thing you might have
Speaker 1: to go on is like a still. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: think like the Thing, before I saw it, I had
Speaker 1: seen like a black and white still of Kurt Russell
Speaker 1: standing by a block of ice, and maybe i'd seen
Speaker 1: the poster which doesn't tell you anything. And so back
Speaker 1: in those days where you didn't necessarily see trailers online
Speaker 1: and even the trailer for The Things doesn't show anything,
Speaker 1: then watching that film on TV, knowing that it was like,
Speaker 1: I had this anticipation of it being quite strong and
Speaker 1: you know, being like really like out there. But as
Speaker 1: a twelve year old watching with my brother my parents,
Speaker 1: my parents never used to go out and when I
Speaker 1: was growing up, but weirdly that one night they were
Speaker 1: doing something, so we were sitting in the kitchen for
Speaker 1: various reasons, we'll go into another time. My house was
Speaker 1: like undecorated for the entire duration from from like eleven
Speaker 1: to eighteen when I used to live in Somerset. You
Speaker 1: my dad never really I think he sort of at
Speaker 1: some point he decided to sort of do some DIY
Speaker 1: that he never right, he never denied, and anyway, so
Speaker 1: we never had a living room, so we would watch
Speaker 1: films in the kitchen when there was only one like TV.
Speaker 1: I remember me and my brother in the kitchen watching
Speaker 1: the scene and being so excited for it, but being
Speaker 1: so freaked out by like the first scene with the dog,
Speaker 1: or the scene on the operating table where with the
Speaker 1: debate Defibrilla, that we would switch channels when it got
Speaker 1: really gory to BBC two, which had the snooker on.
Speaker 1: So I have this very memory of watching the thing
Speaker 1: and in the height of the gorious part of the
Speaker 1: set piece, nah flicking channels and going to like Steve
Speaker 1: Davis and then back again, and then like watching five
Speaker 1: minutes of snooker and then saying let's let's go back
Speaker 1: to the thing. So that was my first viewing of
Speaker 1: that film was like John Carpenter's mastery of the form
Speaker 1: with Little Snooker, and I like that a lot. Right,
Speaker 1: what is the film that you love so much? People
Speaker 1: don't really like it cristically, it's not acclaim, but you're like,
Speaker 1: you're a fucking idiot. Systems amazing. Well, here, this is
Speaker 1: a tricky one. I have a complicated response to this
Speaker 1: question because I've sort of changed my tune on this,
Speaker 1: and I'm explaining why. I mean, there are some films
Speaker 1: that get put in this bracket which I always get
Speaker 1: annoyed when they are like people always say this about
Speaker 1: something like Flash Gordon, which Flash Gordon is clearly supposed
Speaker 1: to be funny, and like the screenplay is written by
Speaker 1: Lorenzo Semple Junior, who wrote the Batman TV series, and
Speaker 1: it's clearly intentionally funny. And so when people say, ah,
Speaker 1: Flash Gordon is so bad, it's good to say, no,
Speaker 1: so good, it's good. It's supposed to be funny. The
Speaker 1: same thing can be said of Beyond the value of
Speaker 1: the Dolls, which again is it would seem like, I mean,
Speaker 1: somebody said of beyond the value of the Dolls. I
Speaker 1: forget who said this. It said it teeters maybe John
Speaker 1: Waters said this, it teeters between being the worst and
Speaker 1: best movie of all time. But again, beyond the Valley
Speaker 1: Dolls is supposed to be funny. Yeah, and it is funny,
Speaker 1: so that doesn't count either. That's like a proper great film.
Speaker 1: Now I can name one film that's like not trying
Speaker 1: to be bad, that's hugely, hugely entertaining. But then there
Speaker 1: is a caveat to this, and I'll say this is
Speaker 1: that I used to maybe until this happened about ten
Speaker 1: years ago, I was definitely one of those people who
Speaker 1: would watch bad films for enjoyment and maybe like screen
Speaker 1: them for friends, saying, oh my god, wait till you
Speaker 1: see this. It's so terrible, it's so fun to watch.
Speaker 1: And I see. This thing is is that when you
Speaker 1: start making films, you realize that nobody sets out to
Speaker 1: make a bad movie. Yeah, And I think when as
Speaker 1: soon as you start, and I'm always stunned by people
Speaker 1: on Twitter who work in films who savage bad movies,
Speaker 1: And I'm always like, sort of like, you're so close
Speaker 1: to this, You're so close to doing one yourself. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't like it if the shoe was on the other foot. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason I get into this, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: come back to this late when you ask me about
Speaker 1: worse films, Like, so, there's this film called Ricky, Oh,
Speaker 1: The Story of Ricky, which is a Hong Kong martial
Speaker 1: arts futuristic prison revenge saga. It's on an anime and
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's not supposed to be funny, but
Speaker 1: it's so ridiculously gory and silly that it just is
Speaker 1: like just everything you've wanted from like an ultra gory
Speaker 1: martial arts film and sort of a camp classic at
Speaker 1: the same time. And it's such a riot to watch
Speaker 1: with an audience. And I remember I screened it at
Speaker 1: the New Beverly Ones and I said, I hate, like,
Speaker 1: apologies to Mystery Science Theater, but what that TV show
Speaker 1: has created in terms of, especially in the States, of
Speaker 1: people like making canny comments about films. I can't stand
Speaker 1: it for that alone. I know that they're funny people
Speaker 1: who do that show, And in fact, my friend knows
Speaker 1: the new version and he knows that I have a
Speaker 1: problem with it. Jonah Ray, who does them more recent ways,
Speaker 1: he's great. He's great. I love Jonah. But I said
Speaker 1: to him, I said, he's you know. He said, you
Speaker 1: don't like Mystery Science there to day? I said no,
Speaker 1: because they put good movies on that they don't deserve it,
Speaker 1: Like Danger Dive Leak is a great movie, and like
Speaker 1: This Island Earth is a good movie, and they don't
Speaker 1: deserve that treatment anyway. So when I showed Ricky O
Speaker 1: at the New Beverley in Los Angeles, I said, please,
Speaker 1: nobody make any comments, because there's nothing that you can
Speaker 1: say that's funnier than what's on screen. And it is
Speaker 1: like a riot to watch that movie if you've never
Speaker 1: seen it. It is so fun, I mean genuinely fun.
Speaker 1: And I think the only like truly bad films are
Speaker 1: like boring ones. So if a film is not boring,
Speaker 1: it's just like, yeah, it's true. It's like if a
Speaker 1: film is like entertaining intentionally or not, it's not a
Speaker 1: bad movie. However, here's the thing where something happened which
Speaker 1: then changed. I knew this already in terms of like
Speaker 1: it's too easy to make fun of movies, and when
Speaker 1: you make movies and you realize how hard they are
Speaker 1: to do you realize that nobody, not even Edward, nobody
Speaker 1: sets out to make a bad movie. So I screened
Speaker 1: Rickyo in Los Angeles. And then when I was making
Speaker 1: Scott Pilgrim, I took over this cinema called The Glow
Speaker 1: and I was promming there and Rickyo was one of
Speaker 1: the movies and I knew it was going to be
Speaker 1: a riot. And then Brad Allen, who was my stunt
Speaker 1: coordinator on Scott Pilgrim, he saw that I was sharing
Speaker 1: it and he said, he goes, oh, I see you're
Speaker 1: screening Ricky. Oh at the Blow. I said, yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that movie. It's so crazy, and he said, he goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know the lead guy, it's it's sort of ruined
Speaker 1: his career. He's really talented and that film ruined his career.
Speaker 1: And when as soon as he said that, I never
Speaker 1: worked Rickyo ever again because I thought, like I shouldn't
Speaker 1: laugh at this, because like, what what to some people
Speaker 1: is maybe like a great camp classic is like to
Speaker 1: this guy who's started it, the film that like the
Speaker 1: maybe like ruined things for him. So I just and
Speaker 1: that's the thing. It just says one person to say
Speaker 1: something like that and thinking like I can never enjoy
Speaker 1: it in the same way. So that would be my answer,
Speaker 1: but I have to I have to put that disclaimer
Speaker 1: with it. That's yeah, I've ruined anything. I mean, all
Speaker 1: you have to do is tell anyone yeah, I know
Speaker 1: that person and they're really sad, and then you're like, well,
Speaker 1: you've taken all the fun out of all any possible lot. Shit,
Speaker 1: what's what's a film? Well, what's the film that you
Speaker 1: used to love, really loved it, and you've watched it
Speaker 1: recently you don't love it anymore. It might not be
Speaker 1: because the film's bad. You just feel differently. You've changed,
Speaker 1: not the film. Well, there's to be heresy to some people,
Speaker 1: but these people need to hear it. The Goonies is
Speaker 1: maybe not a great movie. Don't Don't Dune? What a
Speaker 1: cliffhanger to end on Goonies? What no Justify yourself? Edgar?
Speaker 1: We find out next week. Head over to patreon dot
Speaker 1: com Forward Slash Prett Goldstein for fun time extras and
Speaker 1: all the other episodes. Also go to Apple Podcasts. Give
Speaker 1: us a five star review. Instead of talking about the show,
Speaker 1: you could write about the film that means the most
Speaker 1: to you and why it's a lovely thing to I
Speaker 1: read them, I love them. Also helps our numbers means
Speaker 1: more and can have all the tag as you wants
Speaker 1: this Christmas. Thank you so much to Edgar for going
Speaker 1: on to stay a long walk with me, thanks to
Speaker 1: Scrubious Piping the distraction Pizza's Network, Thanks to Buddy Piece
Speaker 1: for producing it, Thanks to ACAS for hosting it. Thanks
Speaker 1: to Adam Richardson for the graphics. At least allow them
Speaker 1: for the photography. Come and join me next week for
Speaker 1: part two with the brilliant mister Edgar. Right, So that
Speaker 1: is it for now. In the meantime, have a lovely
Speaker 1: week and please, more than ever be excellent to each
Speaker 1: other across the b