Speaker 1: Get a pete. Hell are you here? Welcome to you
Speaker 1: Ain't seen nothing yet?
Speaker 2: The movie podcast where our chat to a movie lover,
Speaker 2: have it a classic or be loved movie they haven't
Speaker 2: quite got around to watching until now? And today's guest writer,
Speaker 2: director actor Lee Wnell all below, I want to stay
Speaker 2: here with you.
Speaker 3: Gay to the jobble my hat. Snake sucked my hail.
Speaker 1: They couldn't have.
Speaker 3: An any right sl You ain't seen nothing?
Speaker 2: Ye? Well, this is very exciting, and I know I
Speaker 2: often say that about this podcast, but this is a
Speaker 2: different kind of episode.
Speaker 1: This is actually the first.
Speaker 2: Time we've had somebody who is I guess on a junket,
Speaker 2: you know, selling their movie.
Speaker 1: I have been offered them before, but I've been a.
Speaker 2: Bit careful about how we do them because I want
Speaker 2: this to remain you know, a podcast is not necessarily for.
Speaker 1: Sale, you know in that regard.
Speaker 2: But the opportunity to chat with Lee Wennell was toogle
Speaker 2: the refuse and then when I saw the movie he
Speaker 2: is promoting a Wolfman, I was extremely keen to have
Speaker 2: him on.
Speaker 1: Lee is an amazing Australian success story.
Speaker 2: Lee started was raised and was born in Melbourne and
Speaker 2: first came to our screens as a.
Speaker 1: Young kitchen he must have been seventeen eighteen.
Speaker 2: You know, I Reckon on Recovery when back when it
Speaker 2: was hosted by Dylan Lewis, and he would do, you know,
Speaker 2: movie reviews and tep the movie stars and you're going.
Speaker 1: To see His love of movies was real.
Speaker 2: And infectious, and since then he has gone on to
Speaker 2: have one of the most celebrated careers of any Australian
Speaker 2: in Hollywood with his partner in crime, James Juan. We
Speaker 2: should be celebrating these guys. So for those who don't
Speaker 2: know he went on, we've been calling. Card into Hollywood
Speaker 2: was the Saw Movies movie, which became one of the
Speaker 2: biggest horror franchises in the world. I think there's ten
Speaker 2: Saw films. He was also behind Insidious. It made him
Speaker 2: a good upgrade, which is I think underrated and really good.
Speaker 2: And then a couple of years ago he was charged
Speaker 2: with bringing The Invisible Man, so Universal's Monsters Ensemble, which
Speaker 2: if you don't know, we're talking the Invisible Man, we're
Speaker 2: talking the Mummy, we're talking Dracula, but also things like
Speaker 2: The Phantom of the Opera, you know, Doctor Jekyler mister
Speaker 2: Hyde like the Avengers of.
Speaker 1: The twentieth century, I think so.
Speaker 2: He was charged of bringing The Invisible Man to screen
Speaker 2: and last scene on screen I think, well, first scene
Speaker 2: on screen in nineteen something, and Lee not only made that,
Speaker 2: you know, a good fist of it, he knocked it
Speaker 2: out of the park. If you haven't seen The Invisible Man,
Speaker 2: starring Elizabeth Moss, check it out.
Speaker 1: It is if you pertain not to be a big
Speaker 1: horror person.
Speaker 2: The Invisible Man is an incredible piece of work because
Speaker 2: not only does a deal you know, with the thrills
Speaker 2: that come with horror, but there's a real story behind it.
Speaker 2: As far as some of it feels real based on
Speaker 2: gas lighting of a woman and violence towards women. It's
Speaker 2: an incredible piece of work. So I was very excited
Speaker 2: when I heard that Lee was backing that with.
Speaker 1: Footh Man, and I think he's done an equally.
Speaker 2: An amazing job finding something that makes this not just
Speaker 2: a monster movie. There is some being more going on
Speaker 2: with Woofman. Obviously with woof Man, I don't want to
Speaker 2: give too much away because it's it's in cinemas.
Speaker 1: Now, so check it out. I think you're gonna love it.
Speaker 2: So this episode, obviously because he's doing a junket, we're
Speaker 2: not doing the you know, he hasn't seen this movie.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about his at least three favorite films,
Speaker 2: and we're going to talk about three films of his
Speaker 2: that peak my interest, which is Saw the Invisible Man
Speaker 2: and wolf Man.
Speaker 1: And also because we've already recorded the chat, there's so
Speaker 1: many other things we talked about.
Speaker 2: This is just a great fun discussion from two blokes
Speaker 2: who love movies. I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 1: My bloody stoke to have Leewenell with us today.
Speaker 3: Hi, I'm Lee Wenell, and my three favorite films are
Speaker 3: Jaws seven, What's in the Bark and Mad Max two.
Speaker 3: I'm just here for the gasoline. I'm the writer and
Speaker 3: director of the film Wolfman, which is coming out on
Speaker 3: January sixteenth in Australia. Daddy, what's wrong with Daddy? She
Speaker 3: got sick? What is happening to me? Can you understand me?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: You're you're hearing You're scaring me? Daddy?
Speaker 2: Is me?
Speaker 1: Hurry? Mommy is coming? Oh? It gives your chills.
Speaker 2: Blake played by Christopher Abbott, has a complicated relationship with
Speaker 2: his estranged, survivalist father and a marriage on the rocks
Speaker 2: as he looks after his daughter, Ginger Matilda Firth, while
Speaker 2: his ambitious, career focused wife Charlotte, the always excellent Julia Ghana,
Speaker 2: struggles to separate her love of work with her love
Speaker 2: of family, if that love still exists. When Blake inherits
Speaker 2: the family farmhouse in rural Oregon after his father is
Speaker 2: presumed dead, he persuades Charlotte to join he and Ginger,
Speaker 2: hoping that some country air will be good for their marriage.
Speaker 2: Is it good for their marriage? Well, it certainly gets
Speaker 2: complicated after initially fighting off a fierce, bloodthirsty beast and
Speaker 2: finding a momentary safety in their farmhouse. Of course, that
Speaker 2: safety will not last long, as the creature stalks the
Speaker 2: outside of the house. But something is happening within the
Speaker 2: four walls of the old family home. Blake begins transforming
Speaker 2: into something unrecognizable. Danger inside, danger outside. Charlotte must step
Speaker 2: up to the plate and protect her daughter against unspeakable horror,
Speaker 2: both physically and emotionally. From the Classic Universe. Monsters Universe
Speaker 2: writer director Lee Wenell, fresh of his remarkable Invisible Man
Speaker 2: remake with Elizabeth Moss again takes a character first scene
Speaker 2: on screen last century in nineteen forty one, and places
Speaker 2: them in a modern day, giving them an utterly modern feel.
Speaker 2: After Universal had a couple of false starts trying to
Speaker 2: reignite their Monsters ensemble, it seems the key to that
Speaker 2: Haunted Kingdom may rest with today's guests Lee Wearnell, Lee Wenell.
Speaker 2: Are we sure Blake doesn't just have long COVID? I
Speaker 2: mean did he do with COVID test?
Speaker 3: Probably should take one little nasal swab there. Actually, the
Speaker 3: first draft of this film was written during COVID.
Speaker 1: It did under that. Yeah, yes, it.
Speaker 3: Was very much. It was that that time, remember that
Speaker 3: sort of period in mid twenty twenty where it seemed
Speaker 3: like the world was upside down. It was like we
Speaker 3: were all living in a science fiction movie and you know,
Speaker 3: we were staying in our houses all day long. I mean,
Speaker 3: I know it was very strict here in Melbourne, Like
Speaker 3: it was so discombobulating that whole time. And you know,
Speaker 3: my wife and I had three young kids, and it
Speaker 3: just wears you down when you can't like you know,
Speaker 3: you're trying to make a couch for it interesting. For
Speaker 3: the seven hundredth time in a row, and I always
Speaker 3: felt like people were doing COVID parenting better than me.
Speaker 3: Like you'd go on Instagram and be like everyone would
Speaker 3: always be like, we're learning to make honey, and I'd
Speaker 3: be like, what I'd be wearing the same you know,
Speaker 3: trackie dicks I've been wearing for six months covered in food.
Speaker 3: My kids are screaming at me, and I'm like, I come,
Speaker 3: everyone else is doing this COVID parenting thing so much
Speaker 3: better than I am. What am I doing wrong? So? Yeah,
Speaker 3: my wife and I definitely poured all our anxiety and
Speaker 3: all the frustration of that time into the script because you.
Speaker 1: Co write with your wife.
Speaker 2: Yes, was that a result of being lockdown in COVID
Speaker 2: going it's better than sour dough exactly?
Speaker 3: Yeah, everyone else is learning to make crab bisk or
Speaker 3: sour dough bread, and we're like, let's write a movie about,
Speaker 3: you know, someone with a degenerative illness. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3: I don't know if we would have written it together
Speaker 3: without COVID, I'm not sure, but certainly it made sense.
Speaker 3: We were in the house all day long. She'd be
Speaker 3: upstairs in our bedroom and I'd be downstairs in my
Speaker 3: office and we'd be texting back and forth. Are you
Speaker 3: doing this scene? Yeah, I'm doing that scene okay. And
Speaker 3: it was a good project during that time to kind
Speaker 3: of help keep a sane I mean we all had
Speaker 3: I mean, what were you doing that A lot of
Speaker 3: people like you said sour dough bread or I got
Speaker 3: into like cocktail making. I was ordering like expensive brands
Speaker 3: and booze online and being like, okay, I'm going to
Speaker 3: learn to make a real you know, a proper old
Speaker 3: fashion or a paper play and vinyl. Like we were
Speaker 3: all doing things just stay sane.
Speaker 2: We said that we did pub crawls within our house,
Speaker 2: so we would set up different parts of our house
Speaker 2: and name them different pubs. One would be in Irish
Speaker 2: probably be like just that chimney of our fireplace, and
Speaker 2: one in the shower, like and we just like took
Speaker 2: photos of us having cocktails in the.
Speaker 3: Fully would they be names of pubs that existed.
Speaker 2: No, like like the Irish pub I think was was
Speaker 2: the Killian Murphy, And so it was just it was
Speaker 2: and that kind of went.
Speaker 1: It kind of went, you know, some small version of
Speaker 1: Iral and.
Speaker 3: You were sort of you would sort of we're doing
Speaker 3: at the end of the video and put it on.
Speaker 2: More just photos, and then we thought, oh, we posted
Speaker 2: one and it got like yeah, people fun And at
Speaker 2: that time, being a comic, you kind of think, well,
Speaker 2: the one thing I can do.
Speaker 1: I can't help fight this virus.
Speaker 2: One thing I can do is but by content, and
Speaker 2: this is this podcast was born actually out of covid,
Speaker 2: and so I started doing you know, taking more photos
Speaker 2: and it kind of inspired us to do more of it,
Speaker 2: and then we started we ran out of rooms and
Speaker 2: just like ideas for pubs, and we started doing like,
Speaker 2: oh now we's done the travel, and we had like
Speaker 2: you know, like like little videos of like a little
Speaker 2: wind up New York's, you know, cable We're in New
Speaker 2: York now and like making little videos and somebody about
Speaker 2: three people got really upset that we were celebrities and
Speaker 2: privilege and we're why are you allowed to travel? Why
Speaker 2: are you allowed to go overseas and into state? And
Speaker 2: it's like quite There's one that was quite clearly a
Speaker 2: pineapple in our driveway that taken like a close up
Speaker 2: of the pineapple and we're we're at a big pineapple
Speaker 2: in Queensland. And there was another we're at Australia Zoo
Speaker 2: with Steve and not not with Steve obviously, but we're
Speaker 2: at Australia Zoo and there was us with a pool
Speaker 2: in the background holding an inflatable crocodile with handles in
Speaker 2: the middle of the head and people were getting upset.
Speaker 3: So it was a crazy Internet though, like people they're
Speaker 3: so ready to be angry. Yes, but you know, give
Speaker 3: them that inch, they'll take the mile, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. So I'm not I'm surprised it was only three.
Speaker 3: But that's a clever idea the pub crawl. So you
Speaker 3: would actually say, like, would you actually apart from the
Speaker 3: photos and the social media, would you actually go from
Speaker 3: the kitchen to the laundry and be like sit down
Speaker 3: and have a drink and be like we're in a
Speaker 3: different place now.
Speaker 2: We would certainly it was always just a one pub
Speaker 2: on each each night, but it was certainly we would
Speaker 2: certainly have drinks there, Like it wasn't just taking the photos.
Speaker 1: We would like this, that would be a night out.
Speaker 3: It was funny because there was a couple of things
Speaker 3: from that time that I knew I would miss. I
Speaker 3: was like I said to my wife at one point,
Speaker 3: I bet in a year or two, when this is
Speaker 3: all over, we're going to look back and go I
Speaker 3: really miss that. So we would do this like date
Speaker 3: night on the balcony thing where we would have like
Speaker 3: ordering food and have like a restaurant date on our balcony.
Speaker 3: And we don't do that anymore. Now, we don't do
Speaker 3: that anymore, and I miss that. And then we would
Speaker 3: camp in the backyard with kids. We'd pitch a tent
Speaker 3: and like camp out there overnight and and stuff, and like,
Speaker 3: you know, we do a lot of sleepovers with the kids.
Speaker 3: But all this stuff that you were forced to do,
Speaker 3: and I got it. I would make these drinks, and
Speaker 3: then I got into vinyl records. So my version of
Speaker 3: a COVID night out was I would put a record on,
Speaker 3: and you know, whether it's whatever, Roxy music or something,
Speaker 3: I'd put it on and then like make a drink
Speaker 3: and sit there in my dark living room on my
Speaker 3: own and I'd be like I'm in a Japanese whiskey
Speaker 3: bars listening to a to a mint condition copy of Avalon,
Speaker 3: you know, and I missed that. There was something about that,
Speaker 3: even though we were all frustrated and housebound. I do
Speaker 3: miss some aspect of it, so well.
Speaker 2: The zero expectation from the outside world was what I
Speaker 2: loved about it.
Speaker 3: A sudden the complete eradication of fomo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, was great. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was so yeah. So those are the things
Speaker 3: we remember. But the frustrations and the anxiety of COVID
Speaker 3: and the whole like getting tested and the fear that
Speaker 3: you were going to get it and what's going to
Speaker 3: happen if I get it? I read in an article
Speaker 3: that you that it causes neurological damage. All that uncertainty
Speaker 3: and fear went into Wolfman, and then you had the
Speaker 3: Japanese whiskey tasting in the living room on your own.
Speaker 3: That was the upside of it, you know, just coping mechanisms.
Speaker 1: Really, so when.
Speaker 2: Did such an incredible job with Invisible Man, and you're
Speaker 2: follow that so beautifully with wolf Man, so that from
Speaker 2: the outside it looks like this was part of a
Speaker 2: plan that you are the Kevin fig now of universal Monsters,
Speaker 2: you know, but was always part of the plan that
Speaker 2: you would go on and write Wolfman after the Invisible Man.
Speaker 3: No, it's funny because it's funny to hear you say, like, oh,
Speaker 3: from the outside, it looks like a real plan. It's
Speaker 3: interesting that because I have the same feeling about other filmmakers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I look at their work and it seems
Speaker 3: it seems very structured, very planned. I actually ran into
Speaker 3: I went to a screening. This was just when things
Speaker 3: were emerging from COVID. I went to a screening of
Speaker 3: Dune at at the Imax headquarters in Los Angeles, and
Speaker 3: Denisa Leneuve was there and they had this little sort
Speaker 3: of half fast after party and I saw him and
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, big fan of Denise. So I
Speaker 3: walked up to him and you could tell he'd just
Speaker 3: been doing ten thousand interviews, and I said, I really
Speaker 3: love the film, and he looked exhausted and he was like, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: And I told him that it was his work inspired
Speaker 3: Stephan Ducio, the cinematographer I worked with. He and I
Speaker 3: are very inspired by Roger Deacon's work with Deniva Leneuve, Sakario, Prisoners,
Speaker 3: these movies they have this really stark look. It's just
Speaker 3: it's just very inspirational to us. And so I told
Speaker 3: him that and he perked up because he was like, oh,
Speaker 3: he's like, I'm a fan of Invisible Man. And I
Speaker 3: pose that question to him. I said, you know, your career,
Speaker 3: it's so planned out, and you know from movie to movie,
Speaker 3: and you do the you do a sort of mid
Speaker 3: mid budget sci fi and then you go and he
Speaker 3: said that there is there is no There is no
Speaker 3: and I said, no, no plan and he was like, no,
Speaker 3: it's this chaos. And I think, to the outside sometimes
Speaker 3: it seems like there is that you're playing chess. Really
Speaker 3: you're not seeing all the movies that are half written
Speaker 3: in a draw, all the all the movies I was
Speaker 3: excited about that didn't happen for various reasons. So it's
Speaker 3: actually the opposite. It's totally random. The fact that I
Speaker 3: did Wolfman, I never intended to do that, And between
Speaker 3: Invisible Man and Wolfman, there's probably three projects that didn't.
Speaker 3: Maybe one day they will come to fruition. Movies don't die,
Speaker 3: as you know, they come back around. They're on life support.
Speaker 3: But it's so funny that it looks planned out. From
Speaker 3: my perspective, it's just chaos. It's like the things that
Speaker 3: you see are the things that limped over the finish line.
Speaker 3: Behind them. There's a trail of dead, you know, it's
Speaker 3: like blowing up everest, as they say, as you're going,
Speaker 3: as you're going up, every as you see the skeletons
Speaker 3: of the people that didn't make it. I've got scripts
Speaker 3: like that along the trail.
Speaker 2: Can't I can't wait to chat more about wolf Man
Speaker 2: and The Visible Man. We're going to chat about Saw
Speaker 2: as well, but I want to talk about your three
Speaker 2: favorite films that you've mentioned. I can't wait for the
Speaker 2: next a little bit because it's going to be a movie,
Speaker 2: absolutely movie feast. But Mad Max two, let's start with that.
Speaker 2: Start with the Aussie one nineteen eighty one. Did you
Speaker 2: like You're you're younger than me, So when did you
Speaker 2: see what was your first memory of Mad Max two?
Speaker 3: Mad Max two was definitely VHS. It was that era.
Speaker 3: It might have been even No, the first time I
Speaker 3: saw it was taped off the television. Do you remember?
Speaker 3: This is hilarious, people of our age, the censorship of
Speaker 3: movies on television.
Speaker 2: I was telling to my kids that that this this week,
Speaker 2: about how our version of National Lampoon's Vacation had all
Speaker 2: the swearing cut out and you had to like.
Speaker 1: Pause the ads.
Speaker 2: Yes, and my job was kind of the pause of
Speaker 2: the ads, and sometimes I was pretty good at it,
Speaker 2: but you'd always end up with for like half, I'm
Speaker 2: like hola for a Marshall half a kmart Ad.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, exactly. Oh got some of those commercials
Speaker 3: from back then. The Australian commercial just burned into my mind,
Speaker 3: like the kitchen wipe one. What was that product? Anyway?
Speaker 3: It was? Was it Jiffy? I can't remember, yeah, but
Speaker 3: it was, but yeah, totally, And like you would experience
Speaker 3: movies that way. That's like, you know, I remember watching
Speaker 3: Blue Velvet. You know, Dennis Hopper was like freak you
Speaker 3: for like, you know, it was freak. Everything was free
Speaker 3: and the creative. One of the things I love is
Speaker 3: the creative replacement of language in movies and you still
Speaker 3: have to do the TV at it. I think I
Speaker 3: think my favorite one ever, can I swear on this,
Speaker 3: My favorite TV censorship ever is The Big Lebowski where
Speaker 3: John Goodman says, you see what happens, Larry, You see
Speaker 3: what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass.
Speaker 3: Remember the kid and he's like beating the car with
Speaker 3: a baseball bat. The TV version, he goes, you see
Speaker 3: what happens, Larry, You see what happens when you find
Speaker 3: a stranger in the Alps. It's so amazing when you
Speaker 3: find a stranger in the Alps. Only the Cowen brothers.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the should have a spinoff based on that,
Speaker 2: as apprentise well exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean Mad Max two. Mad Max two is the
Speaker 3: version I saw. I mean remember in the first scene
Speaker 3: Vernon Wells, you know, pulling that arrow out of his leg?
Speaker 1: Not there right?
Speaker 3: Not on Channel nine and nineteen eighty seven, Like there was,
Speaker 3: there were so many elements and they would do these
Speaker 3: random weird things like I don't know if you remember
Speaker 3: Lethal Weapon, how well you know that movie?
Speaker 1: I watched it recently recently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that whole opening scene where the woman's like half
Speaker 3: naked in her apartment doing coke off that I remember
Speaker 3: the TV version, which was the first they to replace
Speaker 3: the cocaine shot. They just cut to an outer as
Speaker 3: focused shot of a table. It was like just a
Speaker 3: random shot of a table because someone could find this
Speaker 3: sort of you know Channel nine edit of Lethal Weapon.
Speaker 3: It blow your mind the things that they did. They
Speaker 3: were like, who cares they won't notice? I think it's
Speaker 3: a good idea for a podcast. Actually, yeah, Channel nine
Speaker 3: Movies with the ages Channel nine movies, but we've done
Speaker 3: some fun replacements for language, like an Invisible Man Elizabeth Masset,
Speaker 3: she goes, she's she's been committed to a psychiatric hospital
Speaker 3: and she's the doctors are trying to strap her down
Speaker 3: and she's looking past them at the empty corner and
Speaker 3: she's like, she's like, she's like, high see you what
Speaker 3: the fuck? And so for the TV at it, I
Speaker 3: was like, Elizabeth, because I'm there, and I was like,
Speaker 3: we've got to have some fun with this, and I said,
Speaker 3: for a motherfucker, can you say? So what we ended
Speaker 3: up doing is she says, I see you you monkey
Speaker 3: feeders and she was cracking up, laughing. It's great, it's awesome.
Speaker 1: Did you do that on the day or is this
Speaker 1: on the day.
Speaker 3: We're in a dr and you get to the end
Speaker 3: of the ADR and it's like, got to do the TV,
Speaker 3: got to do the airline TV version, which actors usually hate.
Speaker 3: But I was like, Elizabeth, let's just have fun. So yeah,
Speaker 3: we did monkey Feeders. We did we did some We
Speaker 3: did some.
Speaker 2: Pretty fun ones, because when you're being dragged down a
Speaker 2: psychiatric hospital yelling and screaming, you're not really minding your
Speaker 2: p's and q's.
Speaker 1: Are you know that's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: But I took you off track from Admax too, But yeah,
Speaker 3: you asked about the first time. It's that TV version
Speaker 3: the ad breaks, like you said, And then I would
Speaker 3: get around as I got older, I watched the VHS
Speaker 3: version and then now I have like this pristine four
Speaker 3: K disc and I watch it and I'm blown away
Speaker 3: by that movie. The creativity on display, and it's in
Speaker 3: an era when you had to shoot what you did,
Speaker 3: you had to build it. They built that outpost in
Speaker 3: the desert, and it influences things to this day. I mean,
Speaker 3: George Miller pretty much singlehandedly created post apocalyptic film culture.
Speaker 3: The amount of films in the wake of that movie.
Speaker 3: I even remember a TUPAC video where they were all
Speaker 3: dressed up like Mad Max. Like. Its impact on pop
Speaker 3: culture is deep. It's as deep as Jaws or any
Speaker 3: one of these characters that's infiltrated. That aesthetic, that which
Speaker 3: was probably forced by the budget, But he created that
Speaker 3: sort of random, you know, using cricket gear as armor,
Speaker 3: this sort of weird that was an esthetic that he created,
Speaker 3: this kind of half s and m half weird post
Speaker 3: apocalyptic thing. It's amazing and I think Mad Max two
Speaker 3: is the really the full crim of that. That's the
Speaker 3: best realization of that aesthetic.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we're going back to watch Mad Max
Speaker 2: not that long ago, within the last ten years, it feels,
Speaker 2: and realizing, oh I thought there was more action, Like
Speaker 2: it takes a lot of those films from that era
Speaker 2: are slower. We now we are bombarded by you know,
Speaker 2: it's about pace and momentum. And then so then I
Speaker 2: watched Mad Max two. I though, oh yeah, most of
Speaker 2: the action is actually Mad Max two. Yeah. Yeah, stuff
Speaker 2: happens at the end of Mad Max one, but it
Speaker 2: takes a while to get there.
Speaker 3: So it does. It's a real grindhouse film, isn't it,
Speaker 3: because it's like we're all building up to this massacre.
Speaker 3: You can see the lack of budget in Mad Max one,
Speaker 3: and like, I love the characters. The dialogue is just poetry.
Speaker 3: There's there's so many quotable lines in the first Mad
Speaker 3: Max and you know, just the opening scene with like
Speaker 3: the night rider he knows who.
Speaker 2: I am, well actually not hiding the australianness now and
Speaker 2: it becomes maybe the most successful thing, you know, as
Speaker 2: far as making a film about Australia in Australia that
Speaker 2: we've released three really.
Speaker 3: I know, and it's such a lesson because you know,
Speaker 3: the old I think it's Alfred Hitchcock and probably mangling
Speaker 3: that the old saying, if you want to be universal,
Speaker 3: be specific. A lot of these Australian movies from the
Speaker 3: eighties would like shoehorn some American character in there to
Speaker 3: try and be some C list American actor who'd be like, well,
Speaker 3: if we put this person in there, we'll get an
Speaker 3: international sale. The guy that just went out and didn't
Speaker 3: shy away from the Australians and didn't do that. Having
Speaker 3: said that, he had Mel Gibson in the lead, who
Speaker 3: was actually born in the US, but Mel was doing
Speaker 3: an Australia. He was, as far as the world was concerned,
Speaker 3: he was an Australian star. He didn't shy away from it.
Speaker 3: And that's the one that connects. And I feel like
Speaker 3: Mad Max one's the warm up. Mad Max two is
Speaker 3: the perfect execution of myth because you know, I read
Speaker 3: an interview with George Miller and he was saying, as
Speaker 3: he did his world tour for Mad Max two, he
Speaker 3: found that in each country they resonated with it in
Speaker 3: a different way. In Japan, Mad Max was a samurai.
Speaker 3: In the US, he was the lone gun slinger. In
Speaker 3: the UK he was the Knight. Every every culture has
Speaker 3: their hero story and myth, and he had tapped into myths.
Speaker 3: It's a Western, right, he's out there in the desert.
Speaker 3: That that line, that's like, if you want to get
Speaker 3: out of here, talk to me. Like he's the reluctant
Speaker 3: hero right down to like, of course the hero has
Speaker 3: to refuse the quest. At first, you know, it's all
Speaker 3: straight from Joseph Campbell, but then he comes back and
Speaker 3: he reluctantly. It's it's brilliant, but it's it's the old myth.
Speaker 3: But don't, like Star Wars, you put new window dressing
Speaker 3: on it. You take the oldest story in the world,
Speaker 3: the Knight's quest to save the Princess or whatever, but
Speaker 3: put the world around it, around the myth is different
Speaker 3: and that's enough.
Speaker 2: And you talk about when George Miller was on the
Speaker 2: junket for Mad Max two and finding out that Mad
Speaker 2: Max was a samurai, and you know in Japan and
Speaker 2: different cultures, that again sounds like did he plan that
Speaker 2: did he know that? But like a happy, happy accent
Speaker 2: that something has fallen into because of good craft, I think,
Speaker 2: and good writing, but maybe something subconsciously was you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: attracting you to those trum.
Speaker 3: You sort of you get it from watching movies. Yes,
Speaker 3: sometimes you unconsciously learn these beats. Yeah, you know, I've
Speaker 3: certainly found that as a screenwriter, Like I used to
Speaker 3: read a lot of screenwriting books, you know, that whole
Speaker 3: cottage industry of like how to write a screenplay or
Speaker 3: you know, write your hit movie in ten days. That's
Speaker 3: seductive because you go into the bookstore and you're like,
Speaker 3: I need that book. If I read it, all I
Speaker 3: write a hit movie. But I stopped reading it because
Speaker 3: I'm like, I don't want to know the rules. I
Speaker 3: don't want to reduce this to an equation. It shouldn't
Speaker 3: be it should be busy. But if you watch movies
Speaker 3: and absorb them, you start to unconsciously learn these rhythms
Speaker 3: and beats. The trick is actually to avoid it a
Speaker 3: little bit because you don't want it to be predictable. Yes, so,
Speaker 3: but yes, I think maybe he just somehow unconsciously learned
Speaker 3: this by being a movie fan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, It's interesting because I know I'm going to
Speaker 2: jump around a bit here, but I know the Thing
Speaker 2: was also a big influence on Wolfman, and I watched it.
Speaker 2: I hadn't watched it for a while and I watched
Speaker 2: it last week. And the thing that really struck about
Speaker 2: the Thing, which is what they teach you not to do.
Speaker 2: There's no backstory about anyone in that film. There's no
Speaker 2: The obvious thing is to have Kurt Russell McReady talk
Speaker 2: about his wife he's left behind.
Speaker 1: And the kids.
Speaker 2: There's just none of that, which is it works. But
Speaker 2: if you're hoping to write a hit movie in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five, I'm not sure if that's necessarily going to
Speaker 2: work for you. Why does that work? And what I
Speaker 2: love about your movies is there's like there's emotional there's
Speaker 2: emotional stakes involved and not just the physical threats. So
Speaker 2: why does the thing work? And so many other I
Speaker 2: think filmmakers, if they try to do that would fail.
Speaker 2: Was it was at the time and place was that
Speaker 2: nine to eighty two, and maybe seeing monsters on screen
Speaker 2: was you know, just it was enough? Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, by the way, nineteen eighty two, what a
Speaker 3: year for film. I mean, you know what else, maybe, well,
Speaker 3: Blade Runner the thing. I actually think Mad Max two
Speaker 3: was eighty two, right, yeah, so it was eighty two.
Speaker 3: It was incredible, it was like what else was it?
Speaker 3: Eighty two was just known as like this year of
Speaker 3: incredible movies.
Speaker 1: But it's.
Speaker 3: The thing. It's interesting question is I don't think there's
Speaker 3: an It's not an exact science because it's it's not
Speaker 3: like you know a recipe where you say, if you
Speaker 3: put too much salt in it, you ruin the dish. Right,
Speaker 3: there is no right or wrong. The subjectivity of art
Speaker 3: is what makes it attractive to me because the lack
Speaker 3: of rules. I love that. And so it's about what
Speaker 3: the movie needs. I think the reason the Thing doesn't
Speaker 3: need the backstore is because they just launched you right
Speaker 3: in there. You are with them, and there is no
Speaker 3: need to know who these guys were because we are
Speaker 3: not We are not thinking about the outside world. We
Speaker 3: don't need to know about McCready's ex wife. The movie
Speaker 3: starts when that dog turns up, and that's it. We're
Speaker 3: in it with them, and I love it. I still
Speaker 3: think the screenwriting is so great in the Thing that
Speaker 3: the introduction to McCready's character is one of my favorite
Speaker 3: of all time, where he paus the whiskey in the
Speaker 3: computer chests. He's a chitting bitch. Like it's like, can
Speaker 3: you get? Can you get any better than that? Like
Speaker 3: as an introduction to a character, I dream of writing
Speaker 3: a character introduction that good. But they're all you know
Speaker 3: them and you feel them and you feel like you
Speaker 3: know them, and the movie is it's different, right, I
Speaker 3: find it. It didn't work. Critics hated it, and audiences
Speaker 3: didn't go. And I've read a lot of theories. You know,
Speaker 3: et came out, so everyone decided they loved cuddly aliens
Speaker 3: and it was wrong. It was bad timing. But it
Speaker 3: also was a nihilistic ending. You know, it wasn't it wasn't.
Speaker 3: It wasn't an ending that leaves people. People don't walk
Speaker 3: out of the theater feeling good. You know, it's quite
Speaker 3: nihilistic the thing.
Speaker 1: Oh but I do love the ending though. Do you
Speaker 1: love the ending? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it. I love it. It's proof that
Speaker 3: the only true movie critic is time, because when you
Speaker 3: go back and you read those original reviews from nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty two, they just shred the movie. This is awful.
Speaker 3: It's disgusting. This guy's a terrible filmmaker. He should be
Speaker 3: banned from making movies. The critics have done a complete
Speaker 3: reversal on that, and now it's known as a masterpiece
Speaker 3: and a classic. And you know, sometimes movies can exist
Speaker 3: not in their time. I think movies can actually be
Speaker 3: before their time and it takes a while for the
Speaker 3: world to reassess. And that happened with the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and movie is gonna say, I think stay alive
Speaker 2: and can become fluid things like even watching Citizen Kane
Speaker 2: in the Trump era, it's quite it's a different experience.
Speaker 2: I was watching it even ten years ago, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, it depends what's going on, whatever's happening in society.
Speaker 2: A movie can actually be reborn in the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it takes on a whole new life. It does,
Speaker 3: and you discover it on your own time. It's funny
Speaker 3: because I used to have this existential crisis about the
Speaker 3: movie theatrical movie industry. Post COVID, movie theaters were closed,
Speaker 3: you know, as you know, and there's all this hand
Speaker 3: ringing about how will theaters survive, not only because of COVID,
Speaker 3: but because it is said that kids today don't you know,
Speaker 3: they're all their attention spans have been shredded by the Internet,
Speaker 3: and the short form content is their drug of choice.
Speaker 3: And you know, as someone who grew up on movies
Speaker 3: and basically I've built my whole life on movies, you know,
Speaker 3: so it's like you're taking apart my identity. If this
Speaker 3: thing dies, so goes my identity. And so I was
Speaker 3: having dinner with a friend of mine who's a director,
Speaker 3: and I was saying all this. I'm like, no, man,
Speaker 3: you know, what do we do if movie theaters don't exist?
Speaker 3: This is And he said, let me something. What's your
Speaker 3: favorite movie? And I was like, well, Jaws if I
Speaker 3: had to pick one, And he was like, where did
Speaker 3: you How did you first see Jaws? And I was
Speaker 3: like on VHS and he was like have you ever
Speaker 3: seen it in a theater? And I was like no,
Speaker 3: and he was like, movies will be fine. He's like,
Speaker 3: they'll you know, it's it's just getting back to what
Speaker 3: you're saying. It's about who you are when you see it,
Speaker 3: and what are the times like you don't have to
Speaker 3: experience a movie in the window it was opened. You know,
Speaker 3: they exist forever and you'll bring yourself to it. You know,
Speaker 3: for me, the thing when I when I think about it,
Speaker 3: it's a it's a it's a formative VHS experience. And
Speaker 3: have you ever watched a VHS recently. I'm surprised we
Speaker 3: just thought that was fine. It's terrible. It looks like
Speaker 3: someone has I don't know. It looks like someone's like
Speaker 3: a dub of someone's wedding video from I can't believe.
Speaker 3: And what's funny is DVDs look like VHS is to
Speaker 3: me now, like I as formats get better, I just
Speaker 3: can't believe. I guess when you don't know what you're missing,
Speaker 3: Like we're not lamenting the fact that we're not flying
Speaker 3: around on jetpacks right now because they don't exist. I
Speaker 3: guess when we were all watching VHS movies, we couldn't
Speaker 3: fathom that there could be a better version. But it was.
Speaker 3: So I was watching one of my favorite movies in
Speaker 3: terrible quality, with terrible audio, and I still loved it.
Speaker 3: The movie got through. The movies can punch through even
Speaker 3: the worst if it's a good story. So that's yeah.
Speaker 3: The thing, You're right, the thing and you're like you
Speaker 3: said about Citizen Kane, God's that's actually my favorite film
Speaker 3: of that era. It holds up, it's beautifully made, it
Speaker 3: moves like a bullet train.
Speaker 1: It's great. Yeah, let's talk about Jaws.
Speaker 2: You mentioned it, then it's where you're you said, if
Speaker 2: you have to pick one, it would be Jaws.
Speaker 1: We covered Jaws on this podcast. Stilly Pecola had never
Speaker 1: seen Jaws and loved it. Weird.
Speaker 2: We watched that kind of in between lockdowns, and we
Speaker 2: kind of realized that that whole thing is almost like
Speaker 2: an allegory for COVID. Do we lock down the beach
Speaker 2: where we protect, you know, profit versus you know that
Speaker 2: we protect people. So it's a weird time to watch it.
Speaker 2: But also the thing I think about when I think
Speaker 2: about Jaws is how quickly they get in and even
Speaker 2: more so, how quickly they get out. They don't even
Speaker 2: make it back to shore before the credits start rolling,
Speaker 2: like you would think, you would think if you made
Speaker 2: that film these days to probably be reuniting with some
Speaker 2: people on the shore, families, loved ones, you know, the community.
Speaker 2: But that's what I do love about seventies films, and
Speaker 2: I think you did it. You do it really well
Speaker 2: as well. The Visible Man, which I was last night.
Speaker 2: You got like, it's the first scene is Lizabeth must
Speaker 2: try to escape, you know, and it's it's tense from
Speaker 2: the get going and you're straight into it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: How much do you think about that and when you're
Speaker 2: writing films or when you're editing films are getting in
Speaker 2: and getting out?
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot. I mean they say that the most
Speaker 3: important pages of a script to the first fifteen, and
Speaker 3: the most important moments in a film is the last fifteen,
Speaker 3: you know. So you know, with the script, you got
Speaker 3: to hook people in and finish the script. With a movie,
Speaker 3: it's what they leave the theater with. So as a screenwriter,
Speaker 3: I'm very focused on the opening because I'm thinking of
Speaker 3: the reader and I'm like, OK. And then at the end,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about the movie and I'm like, I need
Speaker 3: an ending that will just leave people. Really that's the
Speaker 3: holy grail to me, Like a great ending is so difficult.
Speaker 3: I just went and saw seven in imax. They did
Speaker 3: a re release. I guess they've done a four K edition,
Speaker 3: so they put it in theaters for a few days
Speaker 3: in la and I went to the Chinese theater and
Speaker 3: watched seven in imax, which is good but it just
Speaker 3: struck me. Again. I've seen that film many many times,
Speaker 3: but at the ending, I just was so envious. I
Speaker 3: was like, God, this ending is so perfect, so poetic,
Speaker 3: and it so Yeah. I think about the ending so much. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's what it's how you sink people into the story
Speaker 3: and then what you leave them with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you saw Jaws you mentioned on VHS. Yeah,
Speaker 2: what impact. I mean, it had an impact on everyone,
Speaker 2: Like people just wouldn't go to the.
Speaker 1: Beach for you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very few movies have that kind of an impact
Speaker 2: where people, you know, something they may do every year
Speaker 2: of their lives, every week of their lives, go to
Speaker 2: the beach, They're suddenly not doing it.
Speaker 1: What impacted they have on you?
Speaker 3: The same thing? I mean, just I wouldn't go in
Speaker 3: the pool like I was afraid of it.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 3: He tapped into something super primal, which is that thing
Speaker 3: of there are very few situations where human beings are
Speaker 3: out of control. We've usually got the upper hand with technology.
Speaker 3: You know, animals are playing a losing bet against us.
Speaker 3: But when we're in the water, you know where now
Speaker 3: you're floundering around like that feeling of that human feeling
Speaker 3: of not knowing what's underneath you. It's amazing that someone
Speaker 3: hadn't tapped into it. I think what he did with
Speaker 3: that movie is just capitalized to such an extent that
Speaker 3: he pretty much dropped the mic on it. How many
Speaker 3: good shark movies have you seen? S it'saws.
Speaker 1: It's a good point, like he shuck Nato.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly exactly, like you know, yeah, Blake Lively on
Speaker 3: a surfboard.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: He he did such a good job that he he
Speaker 3: ended it. He ended a genre. He started it and
Speaker 3: ended it because he he said, he did everything you
Speaker 3: would want to do in that movie. He made you
Speaker 3: fear that dark water underneath you, where where the monsters
Speaker 3: of our subconscious lurk probably demon has chucks to a
Speaker 3: point that's still hanging around today, these poor sharks, and
Speaker 3: they're like, God, these guys made a movie about us,
Speaker 3: and now we're you know, the devils of the sea.
Speaker 3: But it's he just it was so masterful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, incredible. Let's also talk about seven. I remember
Speaker 2: seeing this in the cinema and I think it was
Speaker 2: what a Fincher made the pre he did Alien three
Speaker 2: and three. Yes, so I'm not sure if I was
Speaker 2: on board for Alian three.
Speaker 3: I was very disappointed.
Speaker 2: So, but seven blew me away from the from the
Speaker 2: go one because also I was on the Brad Pitt
Speaker 2: Express as far as trying to explain to my friend
Speaker 2: that this guy is a serious actor. He's going to
Speaker 2: be one of the superstars generation. He laughed in my face.
Speaker 2: James Brasher, if you're listening, you know it's true. So
Speaker 2: I think it was off the back of Twelve Monkeys,
Speaker 2: I thought this guy is good.
Speaker 1: He's genuinely good. He's not just the.
Speaker 3: He's not just a pretty boy. Yeah, he had he
Speaker 3: had the perfect Venn diagram. He was like, he looked
Speaker 3: like a movie star and he could really act.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's just why he became who he became.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I mean, obviously seven has one of the
Speaker 2: great twists of all time. Yeah, so seven is ninety five,
Speaker 2: so it almost kicks off this like these years that
Speaker 2: followed the sixth Sense and the Usual Suspects as a big,
Speaker 2: really big twist.
Speaker 3: Yeah twist, there was that twist ending time. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: I think there was a while where I do love
Speaker 3: a good twist ending if it makes you think about
Speaker 3: the rest of the movie.
Speaker 2: Well, That's what I want to speak to you about,
Speaker 2: because obviously in the films you make, you need you
Speaker 2: do twists and turns, But how much are you looking
Speaker 2: for the one? I mean Saw? I what Saw again
Speaker 2: last week and I hadn't seen it for so long.
Speaker 2: I was watching it like it was the first time.
Speaker 2: And when and when one of the maybe the biggest
Speaker 2: twists is what happens in the middle of the road.
Speaker 1: Listen, everyone's had enough times here.
Speaker 3: It can be fine. The statute of limitations on twists
Speaker 3: has passed.
Speaker 1: He gets up and you're like, like, so when did
Speaker 1: you know?
Speaker 2: Did you know you had a great idea for Saw
Speaker 2: based on the idea that two men wake up chained
Speaker 2: two in this room together with with like a gun
Speaker 2: in the middle of them. Was that the idea when
Speaker 2: you thought this is a great idea or was it
Speaker 2: when you kind of came up with the twists?
Speaker 3: So what happened was so James Wan and I we
Speaker 3: had gone to RT we finished that and we're in
Speaker 3: that post film school kind of unemployment hazed, you know, realizing, oh,
Speaker 3: the world doesn't care about my ambitions. We're kicking around
Speaker 3: Melbourne and I had been doing Recovery in Melbourne and
Speaker 3: that had finished, and so we were both just kind
Speaker 3: of shit kicking around, like what are we going to do?
Speaker 3: We did a couple of short films and we worked
Speaker 3: for the ABC for a while making It was just
Speaker 3: this strange time, but we had that twenties burning ambition
Speaker 3: where you're you're so young, yet somehow you think time
Speaker 3: is running out, like you know, and so we were like,
Speaker 3: we're going to do something. And it's right around that
Speaker 3: late nineties time you had that rash of truly independent films.
Speaker 1: That did well.
Speaker 3: The Blair Witch Project, Pie was another one, Darren Aronofsky's
Speaker 3: debut film. That they had these romantic stories behind the
Speaker 3: making of those films where you know, we were just
Speaker 3: a bunch of friends and we got together and we
Speaker 3: pulled it whatever money we had and we made something.
Speaker 3: And and those were such inspirations to us. We realized that,
Speaker 3: you know, within Australia, there's there were two roads to take.
Speaker 3: You either tried to go to the funding bodies and
Speaker 3: get their approval, or you had to do it with
Speaker 3: your own money. And so we were inspired by those films,
Speaker 3: was like, let's just do it. Let's do the Blair Witch.
Speaker 3: But then we needed an idea, so we figured out
Speaker 3: the whole movie had to be set in one room
Speaker 3: with two people. We were like, we could do that,
Speaker 3: but try coming up with an idea that's just set
Speaker 3: in one room. Like it took us a long time.
Speaker 3: I think after about a year we had we had
Speaker 3: pitched each other every version of a locked room thriller.
Speaker 3: At one stage it was going to be someone's big idea.
Speaker 3: Maybe mine was like, it's an elevator that's stuck and
Speaker 3: there's like, you know, four there's four people on the
Speaker 3: elevator and one of them is a killer or something,
Speaker 3: you know, and the other person would always say it
Speaker 3: was very frustrating. So then one day I still remember
Speaker 3: this like it was yesterday, James called me. He's like,
Speaker 3: I've had this idea. It was just, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: in the shower and I just had this idea. Two
Speaker 3: guys wake up in like a bathroom and there's a
Speaker 3: dead body lying in the middle of the room and
Speaker 3: there and they're like, how did they get there? Who
Speaker 3: put them there? And the movie goes on and stuff happens,
Speaker 3: and then at the end of the movie, the body
Speaker 3: stands up and that's the one that put them there.
Speaker 3: And it was really interesting because I hung up the
Speaker 3: phone and this was a you know, two thousand and two,
Speaker 3: so that was a landline, and hang up, hung up
Speaker 3: my Telstra landline and I was pacing around and earlier
Speaker 3: that week I had sketched the words sore in my
Speaker 3: little diary. It was like dripping blood and I don't know,
Speaker 3: it was like that weird. I remember recently watching that
Speaker 3: amazing Beatles documentary that Peter Jackson made. Yeah, and I'm
Speaker 3: not like a Beatles fanatic or something, but what I
Speaker 3: loved about it was you actually watched creativity.
Speaker 1: In real time.
Speaker 3: What you usually documentary is about. It's a bunch of
Speaker 3: talking heads. You know, the Beatles were great, they were
Speaker 3: This was actually you watched Paul McCartney right get back,
Speaker 3: and I from as a creative person, it was incredible.
Speaker 3: I just ate up six hours. But that thing that
Speaker 3: they talk about where something is happening, it's your your
Speaker 3: mind is making connections and suddenly something come to life.
Speaker 3: It felt like that. I'm not going to say it was,
Speaker 3: you know, a beaming to me from a higher dimension.
Speaker 3: And I was just the vessel for this idea. But
Speaker 3: I remember that that moment, I'm pacing around and I'm
Speaker 3: thinking about what James had told me, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: and it very quickly assembled. And I called James back
Speaker 3: and I was like, that's it, that's our idea. And
Speaker 3: these guys the movie is going to be called Saw.
Speaker 3: And these guys, you know, he put them there and
Speaker 3: he's he said, if you're going to get out of here,
Speaker 3: you're gonna have to cut off your cut through your
Speaker 3: leg to get out, and and and we were like
Speaker 3: hitting the ball back and forth. You know, he would
Speaker 3: come up and pretty soon we built a movie, you know.
Speaker 3: So that was really the start of it all, you know,
Speaker 3: that was how he came up with that.
Speaker 2: And then you go to the States, you make the
Speaker 2: film and you're and you're in it and you're starting
Speaker 2: with your princess bride's Yeah, ws, what was it like this?
Speaker 2: You know, being on set and making your first It
Speaker 2: happened quickly, but I feel like it was happening quickly,
Speaker 2: and it's just like now I'm in it and I'm
Speaker 2: making it. I'm on a real set, Like, yeah, it
Speaker 2: was unbelieving glovers over that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was crazy. I remember I like teared up
Speaker 3: the first time I walked in. I flew from Australia
Speaker 3: over to la and they took me down to the
Speaker 3: set they were shooting at the Lacy Street Studios, the
Speaker 3: prestigious studio where they shot Leprecorn. The first you know,
Speaker 3: I heard that it was basically used mainly for soft
Speaker 3: core porn. It was it's still there, I believe it's
Speaker 3: it's kind of falling down building. There's cats running, stray
Speaker 3: cats running around everywhere. So yeah, very low budget production.
Speaker 3: But I walked in and there was a bunch of
Speaker 3: people building this room that had only existed in my head,
Speaker 3: you know, and they don't know who I am, so
Speaker 3: they're like treating me like get out of my way.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to hammer something.
Speaker 1: But just it.
Speaker 3: It's really incredible when something that exists in your mind
Speaker 3: is suddenly tactile. And I made me emotional because I
Speaker 3: was like, wow, like, I'm actually in the room after
Speaker 3: a year or two of working on this script. So
Speaker 3: that was a great moment. And yeah, Kerry came on
Speaker 3: board and Danny Glover and these actors. It was it
Speaker 3: was trippy to us because we just couldn't believe that
Speaker 3: we were getting to do.
Speaker 1: This thing and obviously everything you've learned now is sore.
Speaker 1: And I think in SIDIAUS three was your.
Speaker 3: First director that was that was that was my first
Speaker 3: film as a director.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, an upgrade and now this stunning
Speaker 2: thing you've done with the Universal Monsters, with Invisible Man
Speaker 2: and wolf Man. When did you know with wolf Man
Speaker 2: like you've come off, you've you've hit it out of
Speaker 2: the part. With Invisible Man, you know, were there any
Speaker 2: nerves that are going you know, like, when did you
Speaker 2: know that you had an idea that made it that
Speaker 2: you could commit to and kind of go okay, because
Speaker 2: I imagine, you know.
Speaker 1: When you you are committing.
Speaker 2: Your life for how many years you know, and your
Speaker 2: family's time, and this is going to take you away
Speaker 2: a little bit, and you know it maybe helps that
Speaker 2: you your wife is part of the project as well.
Speaker 2: But when did you know this is what was the
Speaker 2: seed of the idea. And with the Visible Man, I
Speaker 2: imagine what was brilliant about was it was such a
Speaker 2: surprise to see when I watched an Invisible Man, I
Speaker 2: had no idea about really, I don't think I sort
Speaker 2: of trailer. So the fact that it was in the modern setting.
Speaker 2: I was like, ah, you know, I was expecting Visible
Speaker 2: Man maybe it was like.
Speaker 1: A period piece.
Speaker 2: And then it was about gas lighting and domestic violence,
Speaker 2: which was like there was a real awakening I imagine
Speaker 2: around the world, but particularly in Australia about domestic violence
Speaker 2: with women and all that. The timing of it was
Speaker 2: was was, you know, right on. But with wolf Man,
Speaker 2: what was the seed that you kind of thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: I've got a way into this movie?
Speaker 3: It was I was it was suggested to me, you know,
Speaker 3: are you interested in Wolfman? And my first reaction was no,
Speaker 3: I just did Invisible Man. You know, I don't want
Speaker 3: to repeat myself and make another monster movie. But they're clever,
Speaker 3: they know what they're doing. So they said, is this
Speaker 3: Jason Blum, Yeah, Jason Blum and Universal. They're very clever.
Speaker 3: They said, well, just as an exercise, what would you
Speaker 3: do if you were you know, and well if I
Speaker 3: was doing this and they accepted me. So the first
Speaker 3: idea was I was thinking about it, like, what's my
Speaker 3: way in? I've got to do something different? And I
Speaker 3: had this image of a woman talking but you couldn't
Speaker 3: understand what she was saying. It was this garbled gibberish,
Speaker 3: and that was what I locked into. I was like, well,
Speaker 3: I don't know if I've seen that before, like somebody
Speaker 3: losing the ability to understand human language. And I thought,
Speaker 3: that's a really interesting way into Wolfman, because you're focusing
Speaker 3: on the loss of these faculties first, instead of sprouting
Speaker 3: hair and fangs, it's more about losing the ability to
Speaker 3: communicate with our loved ones. So as soon as I
Speaker 3: had that, I was like, I mean, you.
Speaker 2: Know, because I mean there's there's always the moment that
Speaker 2: people are waiting for, which is the transformation, And so
Speaker 2: I imagine you had to be pretty strong on it
Speaker 2: can't just be about the transformation, like, it's about the
Speaker 2: reasons behind the transformation and what and the threat that
Speaker 2: it poses. And what I love about it is if
Speaker 2: it poses obviously the physical threat which we.
Speaker 1: Expect, but also the emotional threat.
Speaker 2: And I think you've cast a Christopher Abbott is great
Speaker 2: using poor things.
Speaker 1: Yes, poor things, and Julia Ghana is.
Speaker 2: I think it's such an incredible she'smated, whether she's you know,
Speaker 2: in ozarks or or owning George Clooney in a net
Speaker 2: cafe commercial.
Speaker 1: She's always always great.
Speaker 2: And I find the same with Elizabeth Moss, like that
Speaker 2: there's something about that lioness character. And I guess Julie
Speaker 2: Ganna's Charlotte is more of a lioness because she's protecting
Speaker 2: her child and it's such a powerful I think the watch,
Speaker 2: isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 3: It is it always?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I always think of Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, you know,
Speaker 3: protecting the little girl and just how bad ass it is. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think so. I mean you want with horror movies.
Speaker 3: I think you want people to really emotionally attach, because
Speaker 3: then it'll be more scary. I think we went through
Speaker 3: a long period in the eighties where many horror movies,
Speaker 3: not all, but many were more exploitational. The characters were secondary.
Speaker 3: It was more about let's chop people's heads off. And
Speaker 3: I think that sort of glut of cheap slasher movies
Speaker 3: probably responsible for a lot of the shaming of horror. Today.
Speaker 3: They still haven't shaken off that period, you know. I
Speaker 3: think horror movies have come a long way since the
Speaker 3: first Saw movie when we when James and I did that,
Speaker 3: I felt like it was one step above porn in
Speaker 3: terms of industry respect Yeah, exactly. Now. I've seen horror
Speaker 3: grow since then, in the last twenty years a lot.
Speaker 3: But I think that if you can write characters that
Speaker 3: you do care about, everything goes up. It gets scarier,
Speaker 3: it gets more tense.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, but it's also big ideas. A lot
Speaker 1: of sci fi.
Speaker 2: Sci fi is often about big ideas, and this is
Speaker 2: a fun way to explore, whether it's you know, a
Speaker 2: space sat on the space ship or whever it might be,
Speaker 2: you know, in Antarctica, wherever, and horror is the same thing.
Speaker 2: It's exploring. It's the exploration of ideas. It becomes interesting.
Speaker 3: I think absolutely. Like horror is a great cloak to
Speaker 3: wrap around a metaphor. Yeah, you can talk about things,
Speaker 3: and people can have two different experiences. You could watch
Speaker 3: a horror movie and just take it at face value,
Speaker 3: get scared and leave, or you can dig into it
Speaker 3: deeper and see what they're talking about. You know, with
Speaker 3: Invisible Man, I was talking about domestic abuse and gas
Speaker 3: lighting and stalking and all this stuff that are around,
Speaker 3: but it's wrapped in this thriller, and I think it's
Speaker 3: a good way of getting this. You could also just
Speaker 3: make a movie about domestic abuse. But what horror does
Speaker 3: is it manages to trojan horse these things into the
Speaker 3: multiplex because I don't know that the drama about domestic
Speaker 3: abuse has the same audience, doesn't have that potential horror.
Speaker 3: Horror draws people in.
Speaker 2: I think comedy can do the same thing that trojan
Speaker 2: horse idea of talking about an issue, But the one
Speaker 2: thing that comedy can't seem to do is get people
Speaker 2: into theaters, which horror is.
Speaker 3: These days, it was different what twenty years ago comedies
Speaker 3: were ruling the box office. It's I mean, this is
Speaker 3: a whole nother episode of the podcast to talk about
Speaker 3: what happened. But yes, horror somehow is hanging in there.
Speaker 3: It's one of the few genres left that can reliably
Speaker 3: back out theaters.
Speaker 1: I think justin Jason Blum say that a billion dollars
Speaker 1: of the cinema's you know money came from horror last year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think The Nun Too was like the
Speaker 2: second biggest horror film of all time. But nobody, he said,
Speaker 2: nobody in hollywoodpeak about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's weird. It is very strange. I remember when
Speaker 3: the first Saw movie came out. We had done so
Speaker 3: well and made money, and James Juan, the director, he
Speaker 3: couldn't get another gig, And I said to my agent,
Speaker 3: what is going on? This movie was so successful, and
Speaker 3: I think people really looked down on horror, like, well,
Speaker 3: there's nothing to it. You didn't direct anything. You just
Speaker 3: put some gory stuff in front of the camera. And
Speaker 3: the Trogolo dites loved it, and I'm like, no, it
Speaker 3: was It's well crafted. You know James, he knows what
Speaker 3: he's doing. It took them a while. It took people
Speaker 3: a while to catch up and be like, oh, this
Speaker 3: guy is good, he's great. They couldn't see what I
Speaker 3: could see. But yeah, I do think there's a there
Speaker 3: was a stigma. It's getting it's the stigma's not as
Speaker 3: strong as it was now.
Speaker 2: I would have thought so from the outside from somebody
Speaker 2: who hasn't grown up as a horror fan.
Speaker 1: I take it. Took me a while.
Speaker 2: In fact, Saw was a big part of me getting
Speaker 2: kind of back into horror a little bit, because I
Speaker 2: wouldn't saw a part of it. Was got to support
Speaker 2: and yeah, there's buzz about it. Me may make Gatesy
Speaker 2: from Tripottery.
Speaker 1: You might know. When long and saw it and this went.
Speaker 1: Oh okay.
Speaker 2: Now we're seeing all the horror films together, and we've
Speaker 2: kind of done that. Horror film comes out, we try
Speaker 2: to see it together and and and you've seen it grow.
Speaker 2: I mean I I saw Herodic and Cinemas a few
Speaker 2: weeks ago, and it was packed.
Speaker 1: It was packed. Yes, you see, you see there's so
Speaker 1: many movies.
Speaker 2: I sit in at eleven o'clock in the morning by myself.
Speaker 2: It's in cinemas.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's my favorite. I love. My favorite time used
Speaker 3: to be like Monday morning at ten am.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's the comedian's session or you know.
Speaker 2: And but that was that was that was a full cinema.
Speaker 2: You know, horror is bringing bringing people in. I do
Speaker 2: want to ask, We've got to wrap things up pretty quickly,
Speaker 2: but when you're on set and you're dealing with prosthetics,
Speaker 2: how do you make sure the tone is that you're
Speaker 2: seeing or you're getting what you need because obviously, and
Speaker 2: how do you make sure you're getting what you need
Speaker 2: and without it tonally it's still being what it needs
Speaker 2: to be, that it's not getting either silly or you know,
Speaker 2: let's say stays right.
Speaker 3: Well, it's an interesting calibrating act where you you know,
Speaker 3: you go by eye. You're using yourself as a barometer.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So I'm sitting there at the monitor on set and
Speaker 3: I'm thinking like, okay, can we darken this down? It's
Speaker 3: what the act is doing. I can pull him up.
Speaker 3: I can say, you know, let's bring that down a
Speaker 3: little bit. So there's all these little decisions you make.
Speaker 3: But it doesn't end after the shoot. Even in editing,
Speaker 3: you're constantly making these little decisions like, you know, one centimeter,
Speaker 3: one centimeter, just tiny little calibration decisions that pitch the
Speaker 3: movie a certain way. When you glue all those decisions together,
Speaker 3: you have a movie and people receive ten thousand decisions.
Speaker 3: The color of the shirt, the color of the hat.
Speaker 3: It was all thought about for a long time, but
Speaker 3: the audience receives it in the blink of an eye,
Speaker 3: you know, one frame, right, and the audience brain is
Speaker 3: you know, you can receive a film at that speed
Speaker 3: and store. You store what's important, discard what's not, keep
Speaker 3: track of the plot. Oh, I thought it would be
Speaker 3: the sister who did it? You know, And every little
Speaker 3: costume decision, it's all going in there. That's what's fascinating
Speaker 3: about movies. The jewelry that the characters are wearing. It's
Speaker 3: storing in your mind in case it's important for later,
Speaker 3: and so you just have to be a part of
Speaker 3: that process. It's pretty fascinating to do it because, as
Speaker 3: you know, many many movies aren't great and somebody made
Speaker 3: a wrong decision. Somebody said let's pump that performance up
Speaker 3: to eleven and it didn't work. All, well, let's bring
Speaker 3: it down and have it be very dour. And so
Speaker 3: you're aware that you could fail, but you just keep
Speaker 3: using yourself as a barometer and asking yourself, would I
Speaker 3: like this? Would I enjoy this? If I went and
Speaker 3: sat down and watched this, I think with it. In
Speaker 3: the case of wolf Man, I think I'd like this movie.
Speaker 3: I'm happy with this movie.
Speaker 2: Well, yes you should be. I had an absolute ball
Speaker 2: watching this movie. And one thing you do, I've noticed
Speaker 2: very few cheap scares in your films.
Speaker 3: Oh good, happy to hear say that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in fact, I can't even think of one like
Speaker 2: and watching Man, I can't think of really any there
Speaker 2: and and even The Invisible Man, which I just watched
Speaker 2: last night. A lot of that tension comes from Elizabeth
Speaker 2: musters feeling something behind her or so that was, and
Speaker 2: that just gives you a feeling. How you must know
Speaker 2: when people when people sit down and watch a horror film,
Speaker 2: they're already a little bit tense, unlike any other genre. Really,
Speaker 2: watch drama feeling or a comedy. You know, So you
Speaker 2: have this thing that you almost get to play with.
Speaker 2: How do you make sure you don't lose that? I
Speaker 2: don't know, you, it's it's probably their fifteen pages.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like you you. What I like to do
Speaker 3: is just I feel like the real art of it
Speaker 3: is in the tent, the quiet tension, big explosions of
Speaker 3: noise or a sudden shock that release. I feel like
Speaker 3: that's a hard you shouldn't play often. It's a card
Speaker 3: you've got in your back pocket. But my rule is
Speaker 3: only do it when it's when we're going big. Like,
Speaker 3: if you're going to do it, rip their heads off.
Speaker 3: So like in The Invisible Man, she throws the paint
Speaker 3: and suddenly he's there right there, like I knew that
Speaker 3: I had. I'd been teasing, teasing, and I'm like, all right,
Speaker 3: I've teased you enough. Now I'm going to rip your
Speaker 3: head off. A lot of horror movies. I think people
Speaker 3: equate audience enjoyment with those little stings, and it's it's
Speaker 3: really diminishing returns. If you keep doing it, it dilutes
Speaker 3: the power of it. And if I'm watching a movie
Speaker 3: that just is just peppered with jump scares, way about
Speaker 3: halfway through, I'm bored, I'm out. You know, it's a
Speaker 3: it's a it's a it's a missile. It's a missile
Speaker 3: that you should employ carefully. You know, you got It's
Speaker 3: like what the big red button, you know, the nuclear key, Like,
Speaker 3: don't push the button unless you better be really better
Speaker 3: be a serious situation. So I'm like doing that throughout
Speaker 3: the movie, like okay here, and I'm not quite sure
Speaker 3: there's no equation for it, like oh, page thirty five,
Speaker 3: time to do it. It's more about your own feeling it. Basically,
Speaker 3: it's like music, you know, the way musicians sort of
Speaker 3: like feel out chord changes and stuff. I feel like
Speaker 3: writing movies is like that. It's like we've been doing
Speaker 3: We've played this note, big note, big chorus down again,
Speaker 3: and it is like music, you know. Aaron Sorkin describes
Speaker 3: dialogue writing as writing music, and that's how I feel
Speaker 3: about horror.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Well, my congratulations, like I said, I had an abolutely
Speaker 2: ball watching wolf Man.
Speaker 1: Thank you and congratulations for all of the success.
Speaker 2: So the boy from Recovery from Melbourne, we should be
Speaker 2: very proud, like what you and James have done.
Speaker 1: It should really be celebrated.
Speaker 3: It really, you know what's funny. I am proud of it.
Speaker 3: I realized recently, like we used to be the young
Speaker 3: guys on the scene. That was our whole identity. That's
Speaker 3: how we were sold, you know. It was like these
Speaker 3: two twenty something whipper snappers from Australia made a movie.
Speaker 3: And I think when when your identity is formed or
Speaker 3: that's how they're branding, you can get frozen, you know,
Speaker 3: like they say people developmentally freeze when they get famous.
Speaker 3: So like someone who was famous when their six is
Speaker 3: always going to be six, you know. And I think
Speaker 3: I thought of myself as the young whipper snapp, but
Speaker 3: way past the date when that was credible.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Only recently I've realized, like you know, I can say,
Speaker 3: like James and I we're the elder statesman now of
Speaker 3: the horror. It hits you when young filmmakers and I'm
Speaker 3: not talking about aspiring film students. Here, I'm talking about
Speaker 3: directors who've made a movie in theaters will come up
Speaker 3: to us and be like, I grew up on your films.
Speaker 3: I simultaneously want to die inside because I realize how
Speaker 3: old I am. But secondly, I'm like, I really think
Speaker 3: James and I have had a lot to do with
Speaker 3: the direction of the We have helped shape the winds
Speaker 3: of the horror genre in a big way where it's
Speaker 3: at now. I'm not saying it's all us, but we're
Speaker 3: partly responsible for where it's at now, and I'm proud
Speaker 3: of that for sure.
Speaker 2: You know, and the movie fans what we want to
Speaker 2: see people in cinemas, so and horror is doing that,
Speaker 2: and then Wolfman's going to do that.
Speaker 1: Mate. I really appreciate you gaving time to chat and.
Speaker 3: Absolutely this was fun. It's good to talk about movies.
Speaker 3: Talking about movies is something I can do.
Speaker 1: I was pretty confident that was going to be.
Speaker 3: If you're doing a footy podcast, yeah, tell me about
Speaker 3: the back line for the Weigels this year. What do
Speaker 3: you think. I'm in trouble. I'd have to find a friend,
Speaker 3: call my dad, But I can talk about movies all
Speaker 3: day long.
Speaker 2: So thanks for good thank you. I enjoyed that so much.
Speaker 2: I really really did. And we didn't even get the
Speaker 2: chat about The Fly because that was a big influence
Speaker 2: on Wolfman and I knew that. So I actually watched
Speaker 2: it and I'd never seen it before Jeff Goldbloom and
Speaker 2: Geena Davis and I got to say loved it. I
Speaker 2: really like, I had no intentions of ever seeing The Fly.
Speaker 2: I don't know why, but it was a different kind
Speaker 2: of movie than I thought, and yeah, maybe by David Cronenberg,
Speaker 2: and I can kind of see why that was an
Speaker 2: influence on wolf Man. I think when you go see
Speaker 2: wolf Man, you'll be able to find some things that
Speaker 2: Lee may have been inspired buying for from the Fly.
Speaker 2: But the wolf Man is in cinemas now.
Speaker 1: I really really did enjoy it.
Speaker 2: I mean, support Hi because he's an aussy, but just
Speaker 2: go see a good bloody film in the cinema. In
Speaker 2: the cinema, that'd be great. We are back for another
Speaker 2: season after taking a little bit of a break, and
Speaker 2: next week it's again a different kind of episode. I
Speaker 2: did put this out on my socials. I released my
Speaker 2: top ten films of twenty twenty four around New Year's Eve,
Speaker 2: and I did mention that there could be some changes
Speaker 2: because I want to catch up on some films that
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen, and there are a couple of little
Speaker 2: changes to my top ten that I released on social
Speaker 2: media as a result of seeing some films that were
Speaker 2: released last year in the interim. So next week I
Speaker 2: will be doing my top ten films of two and
Speaker 2: twenty four in the lead into the Oscars Ease. Some
Speaker 2: of these films were involved with the Oscars last year,
Speaker 2: so it's not necessarily an OSCAR preview at all.
Speaker 1: It's the top.
Speaker 2: Ten films that were released in Australia last year, and
Speaker 2: I'll be clear on that because sometimes I'm sure there'll
Speaker 2: be people saying, hang on, that was released the year before.
Speaker 2: All these films I've double checked were released in Australia
Speaker 2: in two thousand and twenty four. I cannot wait. A
Speaker 2: great year for films. Is what I saw when I
Speaker 2: wrote my list is fifty about fifty films on the list.
Speaker 2: I'll kind of take you through where some of the
Speaker 2: bigger films landed if they're not in my top ten,
Speaker 2: and the reasons they're not necessarily the best fit to
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. They're my favorite films of two thousand
Speaker 2: and twenty four, So that'll be happening next week and
Speaker 2: the week after. Very exciting, the white whale that is
Speaker 2: Ed Cavally. We've been trying to get Ed on the
Speaker 2: show for years and we finally found a movie he
Speaker 2: hadn't seen. This has given you maybe some time to
Speaker 2: check out the film if you haven't seen it. In
Speaker 2: two weeks time, Ed Cavallee star of have you been
Speaker 2: paying attention, We'll be watching Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut,
Speaker 2: starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it since it was really released, so.
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to checking it out again seeing how
Speaker 2: it plays now. So next week my top ten twenty
Speaker 2: and twenty four week go after that Ed Cavally Eyes
Speaker 2: Watch Shut until then backing out and so we leave
Speaker 2: Old Pete safe and salt, and to our friends of
Speaker 2: the radio audience, we've been a pleasant good night