Speaker 1: Gid Apeter Hally here Welcome to you Ain't seen Nothing Yet?
Speaker 1: The movie podcast where we ch had to movie lovers
Speaker 1: about classic or but love the movies they haven't quite
Speaker 1: got around to watching until now. And today's guest Will Anderson.
Speaker 2: Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around
Speaker 2: once in a while. You could miss it.
Speaker 3: Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?
Speaker 4: Haven't right now?
Speaker 2: You ain't seen nothing yet?
Speaker 1: What can I say about today's guests? He is simply
Speaker 1: a giant of Australian comedy. Perhaps nobody tours harder and
Speaker 1: for longer than today's guest Will Anderson. I met Will
Speaker 1: very early on in my stand up comedy career. Will
Speaker 1: have been on the scene for a couple of years
Speaker 1: and I was immediately taken with him. And it's the
Speaker 1: way he went about it, his commitment to his craft,
Speaker 1: which is not at all waned over the years. In fact,
Speaker 1: he's obsession with perfecting stand up comedy has become almost
Speaker 1: legendary in comedy circles in Australia. There's been many times
Speaker 1: over the years I've been at a cafe or just
Speaker 1: walking path the cafe and seeing Will there with the newspaper,
Speaker 1: tearing out headlines and articles which would lately become fodder
Speaker 1: for his stand up routines.
Speaker 4: He of course is the host.
Speaker 1: Of the Gruin Transfer or Ruined, a show about advertising
Speaker 1: on the ABC which I don't think anybody could predict
Speaker 1: how massive that show has become, and it is such
Speaker 1: a unique show.
Speaker 4: If you haven't seen Ruin, get onto it.
Speaker 1: But I reckon if you're listening to this in Australia,
Speaker 1: you are well and truly across a Will is a
Speaker 1: great mate.
Speaker 4: I am always fascinated when I chat to him.
Speaker 1: Also worth checking out his podcast Philosophy, where he chats
Speaker 1: to various people beat comedians, sports people, politicians, just all
Speaker 1: kinds of types about their philosophies and what guides them
Speaker 1: and navigates them through life. It's a fascinating podcast and
Speaker 1: I even did an episode. You know you can browse
Speaker 1: and if you get online great. There are other ones
Speaker 1: that are probably better. I'm sure that I did do
Speaker 1: the podcast and had a great chat. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I met Will in the mid to late nineties and
Speaker 1: he has just been at the top of his game
Speaker 1: for all those years. I have so much respect for him.
Speaker 1: So much love and admiration for him, and it just
Speaker 1: seemed with Will, I wanted to get the right movie,
Speaker 1: and we went back and forth quite a bit, but
Speaker 1: we chose this one because I think it's well obviously
Speaker 1: quite timely, and Will had some really fascinating insights into this.
Speaker 4: He had seen it.
Speaker 1: I had seen it quite a few years ago, but
Speaker 1: it was great the film, a great film to revisit
Speaker 1: with him. So enjoy today's special. I guess Coronavirus edition
Speaker 1: of You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet to all those in Victoria,
Speaker 1: my home state. I know it's tough. I think we're
Speaker 1: seeing some results for the restrictions hanging there. Reach out
Speaker 1: to people if you need, and there are things you
Speaker 1: can be doing to pop a movie on.
Speaker 4: Maybe Capagon is not the movie for you right now.
Speaker 1: I fully accept that, but you know, maybe Happy Gilmore
Speaker 1: or something just fine. Whatever is going to make you happy,
Speaker 1: and whatever gets you through this period of time, and
Speaker 1: we'll come through the other end.
Speaker 4: I'm much stronger and so all right. Enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 4: Will Anderson on you Ain't Saying Nothing.
Speaker 5: Yet, Good Eye, I'm Lil Anderson and my three favorite
Speaker 5: films Ground Hug, Good day.
Speaker 3: This is one time where television really fails to capture
Speaker 3: the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.
Speaker 5: The Dark Knight se madness, as you know, is like gravity.
Speaker 5: All it takes is a little hush, And the princess abride.
Speaker 3: Didn't fall inconceivable you give using the horde.
Speaker 2: I do not think I missed what you think.
Speaker 5: It miss But up until this week, I had never
Speaker 5: seen contagion. We can't even tell people right now what
Speaker 5: they should be afraid of.
Speaker 4: We tried that with swine.
Speaker 5: Flu, and all we did is get healthy people scared.
Speaker 4: It's the biggest shopping weekend of the year.
Speaker 2: I think we need to consider the schools, though.
Speaker 1: And Tuesdays home with the kids, people that work at stores,
Speaker 1: government workers, people that work at hospitals.
Speaker 5: When will we know what this is, what causes it,
Speaker 5: what cure is it? Things that kicker will come.
Speaker 1: Inspired by the SARS outbreak, Steven Soderberg's two eleven virus
Speaker 1: horror flick sees pre goop Gweneth Poultrow become patient zero
Speaker 1: in the fictitious MeV one global pandemic.
Speaker 4: After she well, we'll get to that later.
Speaker 1: Fregrant Soda Bird collaborator Scott z Burns writes are pretty
Speaker 1: tight and mostly I'm led to believe accurate by Hollywood's
Speaker 1: standard script. And it may be the best or worst
Speaker 1: time to revisit this two thousand and eleven classic.
Speaker 4: Will Anderson, how the hell are you?
Speaker 5: I'm fantastic better hell a you? But man, twenty eleven,
Speaker 5: I'd never seen this film, so I did not know
Speaker 5: that it was a classic. Not only is it a classic,
Speaker 5: it should win. I don't know if they're going to
Speaker 5: have the Oscars next year, but you have to actually
Speaker 5: win an Oscar in twenty twenty one for Best Documentary
Speaker 5: this film is. I don't know if it was as amazing.
Speaker 5: I feel like in some ways I've been really blessed
Speaker 5: by the idea of this podcast because I never saw it.
Speaker 5: In the first place. I thought I had seen it,
Speaker 5: but I was getting get confused for that movie Outbreak,
Speaker 5: you know, with the Monkey, and I thought it was
Speaker 5: the same movie for some reason. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's a monkey movie. I've seen it, but I hadn't
Speaker 5: seen it. And it is an incredible look at what
Speaker 5: we're currently going through now, to the point where you're
Speaker 5: just like make Donald Trump watch this. I know he
Speaker 5: doesn't have time to read all the graphs, and he
Speaker 5: wouldn't understand the graphs even if he read the grass Peter.
Speaker 5: But he has two hours where they could just get
Speaker 5: him down into the White House, into that beautiful cinema
Speaker 5: they have in the White House, and they don't tell
Speaker 5: him that he's going to learn something. They just go,
Speaker 5: would you like to see a movie? Work? Word? As
Speaker 5: Paltrow dies, and he's like, yeah, I'd love to say that.
Speaker 5: Get him a bucket of popcorn, get Millennium and Barren
Speaker 5: down there and make him watch Contagion.
Speaker 4: Well that's the other thing. We'll get to this.
Speaker 1: We get this because I want to get back to
Speaker 1: your favorite films. We'll come back to Contagion. But you
Speaker 1: mentioned Gwenneth Poultrow. Jesus her head gets you know, the
Speaker 1: must filmmakers out there, they go, what can I do
Speaker 1: to Gwenneth Paltrow's head? Where David Fincher put her head
Speaker 1: in the box and now Steven Soderberg wants to peel
Speaker 1: the skin off her off her head to reveal her brain.
Speaker 1: So there's plenty of stuff going on. We'll come back
Speaker 1: to contagent. I imagine, like me, you have basically just
Speaker 1: watched this film. I hadn't watched it since I saw
Speaker 1: it in twenty and eleven. I imagine you were watching
Speaker 1: it kind of going, wow, that's rings true, and that's
Speaker 1: you know, they haven't got that not necessarily a haven't
Speaker 1: got that bit right, but that you know, we're dealing
Speaker 1: with this in COVID that they haven't you know. But
Speaker 1: there's so many, you know, layers to this, particularly now,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad it felt like you kind of said
Speaker 1: it was a good it was good to watch. I
Speaker 1: was nervous when we nominated this. I thought, am I
Speaker 1: sending you down a rabbit hole in this weird year
Speaker 1: that you don't really want to cut, you know, go down?
Speaker 5: Oh. I watched it with Amy, and the whole time
Speaker 5: she was just going, how are you gonna make this funny?
Speaker 5: And she like, it's really terrifying to watch. Now we
Speaker 5: probably can confess to be before we get to My
Speaker 5: favorite movie is that we were going to do Avatar now,
Speaker 5: because the Avatar is a movie that I've never seen,
Speaker 5: and I knew that I would hate Avatar, and I
Speaker 5: tried to watch it twice and I just could not
Speaker 5: get through it, and I had to call Pete and say,
Speaker 5: we can't do Avatar. Can we pick an up movie.
Speaker 5: I'm willing to relive the Contagion we're currently going through
Speaker 5: as long as I watch an Avatar.
Speaker 1: Because my wife, who's a bit of a germophobe, a
Speaker 1: bit of a smug jermophobe. But I want to share
Speaker 1: how many germophobes, you know, they're all a bit smug
Speaker 1: at the moment they're like, yeah, I warned you that
Speaker 1: this stuff everything's connected. So she's always refused to watch Contagion.
Speaker 1: But you were one of the trickier ones to kind
Speaker 1: of peg down a film. Some people are straight away
Speaker 1: I have not seen The Godfather, I've not seen Sound
Speaker 1: of Music, and they know that it's kind of been
Speaker 1: looming or lurking over their their filmography.
Speaker 4: But you, it took a while. We really had to
Speaker 4: kind of dig deep a little bit.
Speaker 5: I watch a lot of movies, and mostly if I
Speaker 5: haven't watched a movie, it's because I know that I
Speaker 5: won't like the movie. So that's why Avatar did appeal
Speaker 5: to me. But I just didn't realize the level of
Speaker 5: the revulsion I would have for the experience of trying
Speaker 5: to watch Avatar, and I just was like, I can't
Speaker 5: do this, and like literally it was like how high
Speaker 5: can it be? You're in the middle of a pandemic,
Speaker 5: you have nothing else to do, just sit down and
Speaker 5: watch a movie about blue people. But I could not
Speaker 5: do it.
Speaker 4: How long did you last?
Speaker 5: I reckon, I got about seven minutes in the first time,
Speaker 5: and I might have got twelve minutes in the second time.
Speaker 5: I don't think I saw a lot of blue people.
Speaker 5: I don't think I got to watch blue people.
Speaker 1: I ask you to mention your three favorite films at
Speaker 1: the start, and I do that with all my guests,
Speaker 1: and I will do and chat about your three great
Speaker 1: films and that they have come up some of them
Speaker 1: have come up quite a bit already in the podcast.
Speaker 4: But Nikki Britton, I forgot you.
Speaker 1: I'll give you warning. I gave you like forty five
Speaker 1: minutes warning. I'm going to ask you that you know
Speaker 1: that your top three films. Sometimes I forget, so I
Speaker 1: just spring it before I press record and say, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm gonna ask you to say your
Speaker 1: three favorite films, and Nicky kind of freaked out. NICKI
Speaker 1: was like, oh, well, three favite films. Some people feel
Speaker 1: the pressure of their three favorite films. And I forget
Speaker 1: the other two films that she said, and well, the
Speaker 1: film will that episode was Catablanca.
Speaker 4: It was it was great, But she.
Speaker 1: The third film was Avatar, and I must have had
Speaker 1: a look on my face because and I read it
Speaker 1: on her face that I was shocked that she had
Speaker 1: said Avatar, and she got, well, what.
Speaker 4: Was wrong with that?
Speaker 1: I said, I just it's Avatar is an interesting one.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't come up. It's it's I know they're
Speaker 1: making the seven or eight and eight sequels, but I
Speaker 1: just I just, you just don't hear it is a
Speaker 1: much loved film, you know, it's not. It's one of
Speaker 1: the biggest unforgettable films of all time.
Speaker 5: It was, for ages, the highest grossing film of all.
Speaker 4: Time, and yeah, which is incredible.
Speaker 5: That means a lot of people saw it. And I
Speaker 5: have a lot of questions for all those people about
Speaker 5: how they got through the first twelve minutes.
Speaker 4: Hey, Marie Grease, well, who would you expect? No, I'm nuts.
Speaker 2: I think fast.
Speaker 4: Motor controls looking good.
Speaker 1: But it's like all those people saw it, will and
Speaker 1: then never spoke about it again.
Speaker 5: Right, it is a one and done. I can't imagine
Speaker 5: I would be very suspicious of somebody if they said,
Speaker 5: I'm back to see Avatar again.
Speaker 1: All right, let's contraight to your three favorite films, and
Speaker 1: they're great films and one I just watched recently with
Speaker 1: my kids, Groundhog Day.
Speaker 5: I love this movie. I mean, I love Bill Murray.
Speaker 5: You know, you know you'd imagine this as well. Pete
Speaker 5: like similar eras you're a little bit younger than I am.
Speaker 5: But he was one of those, you know people that
Speaker 5: if you love comedy, you probably grew up loving Bill
Speaker 5: Murray in something, so yeah, you've immediately got that. But
Speaker 5: I just think that the conceit of that film, I
Speaker 5: think appeared to me in a way when I first
Speaker 5: watched it, which was that the idea was very appealing
Speaker 5: that you would get to do the same day, you know,
Speaker 5: over and over until you perfected something. But the more
Speaker 5: you watch the film and the older you get, you
Speaker 5: also understand the darkness of being trapped in reliving the
Speaker 5: same day over and over, and you get fascinated by
Speaker 5: the depths of the thinking around how long Bill Murray
Speaker 5: was actually in that Groundhole Day. If you go through
Speaker 5: all the skill sets he picks up during the film,
Speaker 5: and you measure the idea that might take your ten
Speaker 5: thousand hours to play piano that well or to have
Speaker 5: those particular skills, then you start to not measure the
Speaker 5: time he was in there in days or months, but
Speaker 5: maybe in you know, decades or hundreds of years, or
Speaker 5: even thousands of years. And the writers of the film,
Speaker 5: they've speculated about the idea that it might have been,
Speaker 5: you know, the idea that he was within that same
Speaker 5: time loop for thousands of years. So for me, even
Speaker 5: that concept is immensely fascinating for a comedy movie, right, So,
Speaker 5: like it feels like it's this movie about a weather
Speaker 5: man trapped, you know, in this ridiculous Groundhog Day, yeah ceremony,
Speaker 5: and it's on the surface a romantic comedy, but it's
Speaker 5: dealing with a depth of thinking that I find immensely
Speaker 5: appealing at the heart of it, which makes it so
Speaker 5: rewatchable because I think that some movies are rewatchable because
Speaker 5: they're perfect movies. And you know, when we talk about
Speaker 5: The Princess Bride, we can talk about that they're just
Speaker 5: perfect from start to finish. Movies and they're rewatchable because
Speaker 5: you just enjoy it being a great movie over and
Speaker 5: over again. But you don't necessarily get a depth of
Speaker 5: understanding about the Princess Bride each time you watch it
Speaker 5: that you didn't have before you watch it the previous time.
Speaker 5: Whereas I think you can watch much like the concept
Speaker 5: of groundhog Day, I could watch groundhog Day over and
Speaker 5: over and gain a deeper understanding of you know, what's
Speaker 5: really going on in that film and in that time loop.
Speaker 5: But then just the actual film itself. I mean, as
Speaker 5: somebody who makes things, you must just look at that
Speaker 5: and think the construction in that film, you know, the
Speaker 5: way that they use the conceit to structure the film,
Speaker 5: and how perfectly paced and structured it is. It never
Speaker 5: gets too comedic, it never breaks out of the reality
Speaker 5: of the universe, even though it's quite but just the
Speaker 5: audio cues, the visual cues, the repeats, the editing in
Speaker 5: the repeats of so you know, initially all the scenes
Speaker 5: get played out in full, but after a while, when
Speaker 5: we understand the format has been established, you can shorthand
Speaker 5: we're going to get to this bit and now we're
Speaker 5: going to reboot and we're going to get to this bit,
Speaker 5: and you've given the audience all the information they need
Speaker 5: to not have it explained each and every time that
Speaker 5: is going through the exact same thing. Like the structure
Speaker 5: of it and the way that it's constructed as a
Speaker 5: movie is like for a comedy movie is you know,
Speaker 5: beyond compared to me.
Speaker 4: It's it's one of the all time great comedy scripts.
Speaker 1: And it's funny when we go back and look at
Speaker 1: some of those movies, even movies I Die Hard and
Speaker 1: Film and Luise, which we've covered on this on this podcast,
Speaker 1: the economy of getting into the story is quite phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Like they could have done a lot more set up
Speaker 1: with you know, how dislikable Bill Murray's character was actually
Speaker 1: supposed to be. Like I remember watching a kind of
Speaker 1: I like Bill. I never disliked this character. Was I
Speaker 1: supposed to dislike it? It's Bill Murray, of course I
Speaker 1: like Bill Murray. You know, they could have actually think
Speaker 1: if they made it now, they may actually try to,
Speaker 1: you know, put a bit more grease on that wheel maybe,
Speaker 1: or just just a bit more gristle, you know, like
Speaker 1: it just just kind of have that tension there wasn't
Speaker 1: a whole lot of tension between Bill Murray and Annie
Speaker 1: McDowell really at all.
Speaker 4: But it works perfectly they obviously.
Speaker 5: What I like about it also is that there wasn't
Speaker 5: So there's a Richard Curtis film that's also about time
Speaker 5: travel and dating. Do you remember what the name of
Speaker 5: that film is?
Speaker 4: Someone out of Time or out of time?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that sounds right, something like that anyway about time,
Speaker 5: maybe about time about time? And I hate that film.
Speaker 5: I absolutely hate that film. And the reason I hated
Speaker 5: is it really feels like a man uses time travel
Speaker 5: to trick a woman into having sex with him. Like
Speaker 5: that's what the movie is, right.
Speaker 1: Somebody brought that with me with groundhog Day. Recently, Dave O'Neil.
Speaker 1: Dave O'Neill said that he thought groundhog Day upon Reflection
Speaker 1: was exactly what was that same thing? And I, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm not sure if I see it the
Speaker 1: same way.
Speaker 5: Well, and that's why I think it's great that there
Speaker 5: isn't that huge level of friction between the two. It
Speaker 5: feels like he essentially could have that is a relationship
Speaker 5: that could have worked before the time travel. It feels
Speaker 5: like he becomes a better person. He doesn't tricked her
Speaker 5: into loving him, because she is not a sort of
Speaker 5: person who can be tricked into loving somebody. She is
Speaker 5: an independent character in her own right, and she's going
Speaker 5: to make her own decisions about him. But he is
Speaker 5: not in a position at the start of this film
Speaker 5: to be able to offer himself to her in the
Speaker 5: way that she needs. He becomes better in that time,
Speaker 5: so he can be a better person for that character,
Speaker 5: but he does not trick her into falling in love
Speaker 5: with him in my reading of the film, And I
Speaker 5: think that is partly because they don't start so hugely separated.
Speaker 5: And I think about that a lot because I hated
Speaker 5: that about time so much because I felt like it
Speaker 5: didn't feel like that, and I always have that thought.
Speaker 5: I'm like, well, isn't that just what Groundhog Day is?
Speaker 5: But I don't think they are. I think they're really different.
Speaker 1: I think it's a really good point. I remember watching it.
Speaker 1: I didn't see that at the cinema. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if you did, but I sort of five years maybe
Speaker 1: after after it was in cinemas, and I for some
Speaker 1: reason thought it was that the repetition happened like three times.
Speaker 1: It was like, yeah, the same day three times over.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why I thought that, but I
Speaker 1: remember being really quite amazed that, Oh no, he's, like
Speaker 1: I said, he's in it for this. Who knows how
Speaker 1: long he's in it for. And that's when we talk
Speaker 1: about the craft, the breaking down, you know, and that
Speaker 1: and the the outlining of that scripts and the and
Speaker 1: the post it notes that must have gone up on
Speaker 1: those walls. It would have been must have been incredible,
Speaker 1: must have been incredible, and it just it, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's such an easy film to watch, but it's.
Speaker 5: Just such impeccable. You know this as a comedian, like
Speaker 5: the capacity for out wearing a callback, This film is
Speaker 5: so perfectly balanced in that the running jokes are the
Speaker 5: perfect amount of running. They never overstay, they're welcome, or
Speaker 5: if they do oversay, they're welcome. It's because the point is,
Speaker 5: like Sideshow Bob and the Raikes, that you find it
Speaker 5: hilariously funny. Then you go through a period where it's
Speaker 5: gone on for too long, and then it becomes funnier
Speaker 5: than anything you've watched before.
Speaker 3: I think people place too much emphasis on their careers.
Speaker 3: I wish we could all live in the mountains at
Speaker 3: high altitude.
Speaker 2: That's where I see myself in five years. How about you?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 2: I agree. I just like to go the flow. See
Speaker 2: what leads me.
Speaker 5: I's led you here. This is about a million miles
Speaker 5: from where I started.
Speaker 2: Out in college. You weren't in broadcasting in journalism, believe
Speaker 2: it or not. I studied nineteenth century French poetry. What
Speaker 2: a waste of time.
Speaker 3: I mean for someone else, that would be an incredible
Speaker 3: waste of time. I'm so bold of you didn't choose that.
Speaker 3: It's incredible. It must be a very very strong person.
Speaker 2: I think people place too much emphasis on their careers. Gosh,
Speaker 2: I wish we could.
Speaker 3: All live in the mountains at high altitudes. That's where
Speaker 3: I see myself in five years.
Speaker 5: How about you?
Speaker 2: Oh I agree, I'd just like to go.
Speaker 5: With the bow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, see what happened. Well, it's gotten you here.
Speaker 5: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: Of course, it's a million miles from where I started
Speaker 2: out in college. Oh yeah, you weren't broadcasting or journalist.
Speaker 5: Anything like that, Believe it or not.
Speaker 2: I studied nineteenth century French poetry. Right few mail you
Speaker 2: see I've come alfare.
Speaker 5: You said?
Speaker 2: I'm shure.
Speaker 5: You speak French. That's what this movie is so good at.
Speaker 5: You never feel like, ah, they just went to that
Speaker 5: well one more, one more time than they should have.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I do love watching like said, I watched
Speaker 1: this for my kids recently and I loved it. I
Speaker 1: do love watching a film where you to see the
Speaker 1: younger versions of the people you know now and sometimes
Speaker 1: my kids, my kids a big Ship's Creek family and
Speaker 1: to see young Chris Elliott a young Roll and Shit.
Speaker 4: As the cameraman. Grand og Day was quite a shriep.
Speaker 1: Dark Knight. Now, I'm not surprised. It's a great film discuss.
Speaker 5: So I could have said any of the Nolan Batman trilogy.
Speaker 4: Right, I.
Speaker 5: That is perceived by everybody to be, you know, the
Speaker 5: best film in the trilogy. But I got to say
Speaker 5: that I like Rises as much and I like Batman
Speaker 5: Begins because of what it was for. When it was
Speaker 5: I had never seen a comic book movie that was
Speaker 5: the sort of comic book movie that I wanted to
Speaker 5: see in comic book movies, and Batman Begins to me
Speaker 5: was I've been a person who had been fine with
Speaker 5: the ta Batman's I find, you know, particularly some joy
Speaker 5: in that even the latest sequels, I found some joy
Speaker 5: in all of those because it was Batman. But to
Speaker 5: see a version of The Batman, which was actually the
Speaker 5: Batman that I liked represented on screen like Batman Begins,
Speaker 5: blew me in way in a way that you know,
Speaker 5: The Dark Knight couldn't because I'd already seen something like
Speaker 5: The Dark Knight. I'd seen Batman Begins. So I like
Speaker 5: to think that think of them all as really one film.
Speaker 5: It's Nolan's Batman, you know what I mean, Like, yeah,
Speaker 5: and I just think they're all great. I think Rises
Speaker 5: is great. I think it has one bum note in
Speaker 5: the whole thing. I know people didn't love that film
Speaker 5: as much, but I think it's a really great film.
Speaker 5: And if you look at what we're going currently going
Speaker 5: through in the state of our world, I think it
Speaker 5: was actually like a lot of Christopher Nolan films. He
Speaker 5: was having a stab at how would this play out
Speaker 5: in reality? And as you see riots on the street
Speaker 5: of America over inequality with what we're going on with
Speaker 5: right now, and you know, people looking to you know,
Speaker 5: like you know, militia and you know pro test and
Speaker 5: you know, breaking down of the police force departments and
Speaker 5: all these sort of things. These are the themes that
Speaker 5: were being you know, reflected in essentially what is a
Speaker 5: you know, a popcorn superhero movie. And Tom, like, I mean,
Speaker 5: He's Ledger as the Joker is one of the great
Speaker 5: performances of all time. But you are playing also one
Speaker 5: of the great characters of all time. Like, it's hard
Speaker 5: to play the Joker and not get nominated for an
Speaker 5: Academy Award, you know, like it's a great character. It's
Speaker 5: like being it's like being given Hamlet or whatever, a
Speaker 5: Macbeth in the olden days. This is the role that
Speaker 5: everybody wanted to play, whereas Bain, you know, up until
Speaker 5: that point, was not really a character at all in
Speaker 5: the public consciousness, at least in you know, sort of
Speaker 5: visual media that we And for Tom Hardy to turn
Speaker 5: that into one of the most iconic, you know, comic
Speaker 5: book villains of all time, I think is almost, well
Speaker 5: at least equal of what heath led to do with
Speaker 5: the Joker.
Speaker 1: I think, Oh, are you think dark is your You
Speaker 1: merely adopted the dark.
Speaker 2: I was born in it, molded by it.
Speaker 5: I didn't see the light until I was already a man.
Speaker 5: But then it was nothing to me.
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, absolutely, And you know you you put
Speaker 1: a mask on on Tom Hardy, it's like putting Billy's
Speaker 1: on on the boat. You know you're gonna get some results.
Speaker 5: Tom Hardy doesn't like going to make up. I feel
Speaker 5: like Tom Hardy does a lot of his deals going
Speaker 5: how much can my face be covered in these scenes.
Speaker 5: I'm willing to do your movie, but I'm only going
Speaker 5: to make up for two thirds of the movie, so
Speaker 5: you've got to work around the rest.
Speaker 1: So what I'm curious because I am not necessarily a
Speaker 1: big comic book fan. I love the comic book movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will see, I will see them more, not the
Speaker 1: more I will see. I've seen all the Marvel stuff,
Speaker 1: and i'd love Nolan Batman.
Speaker 4: I love Nolan.
Speaker 1: I absolutely loved it. But what's happened? Why can't DC
Speaker 1: make that franchise work?
Speaker 5: Well? I think, okay, well, part of the reason is
Speaker 5: that I think, well, my gut instinct is that Marvel
Speaker 5: were doing so great, right, so I think DC got
Speaker 5: caught in between not knowing what to do. So the
Speaker 5: smartest thing to do was just like copy Marvel. They've
Speaker 5: worked out how to do it, Just copy what they're doing,
Speaker 5: and do a version of that and everybody will be
Speaker 5: fine with that. So they had a bit of a
Speaker 5: toe in that they tried to create universes and weave
Speaker 5: it all together and that sort of stuff. But they
Speaker 5: also were like, we're going to be nothing like Marvel
Speaker 5: because we have to, like you know, have a point
Speaker 5: of difference. So I think that they took the worst
Speaker 5: two elements and then kind of put them together. Like
Speaker 5: what what Marvel were really good at doing was they
Speaker 5: did all these solo movies and started to weave all
Speaker 5: the stories together and then got to the Avengers, and
Speaker 5: I see think how they landed that is one of
Speaker 5: the I mean again comic book movies, right, you know,
Speaker 5: popcorn movies. But to land a twenty episode like movie
Speaker 5: length series to be able to wind it all up
Speaker 5: like in a really satisfying storyline that included most of
Speaker 5: the characters at the end, Like, there are very few
Speaker 5: entertainment makers in the entire world who land the landing
Speaker 5: as well as the Marvel films landed that landing. But
Speaker 5: it had been decades in the work, and you know,
Speaker 5: some failures along the way and some recast things, and
Speaker 5: some mythology that had to be YadA yarded to make
Speaker 5: it all work. But they made it all work. They
Speaker 5: got it done in the end, whereas DC just went
Speaker 5: straight to that. They were just like, let's get them
Speaker 5: all in the movie together without building up any of
Speaker 5: the goodwill. They've got all these great characters, They've got
Speaker 5: the dream Team, right. All the most recognizable characters from
Speaker 5: our childhood are all DC characters. Marvel started with fucking
Speaker 5: iron Man. They didn't have This was part of like
Speaker 5: their disadvantage was their advantage. They didn't have the rights
Speaker 5: to any of the good stuff at the time. They
Speaker 5: didn't have a Spider Man at the time. So they
Speaker 5: had to get like, you know, Captain America and Iron Man,
Speaker 5: who were at best sort of be r C characters
Speaker 5: in the comic book universe, right, and turn them into
Speaker 5: a listers. And so that's what they did. And then
Speaker 5: they just got fucking cocky. They were like, we can
Speaker 5: make anyone to start a man, Let's give.
Speaker 4: It a go.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: It always became like, oh, you're like you're joking, aren't you.
Speaker 1: Like I remember, like to my kids, I tell my kids,
Speaker 1: when Iron iron Man came out, he was not a thing.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 4: He was like, you know, I'd heard of iron Man,
Speaker 4: but he wasn't.
Speaker 1: He wasn't you know, he wasn't on on you know,
Speaker 1: birthday supplies and pencil cases.
Speaker 4: He was. He was, you know, like it was never.
Speaker 1: This was never supposed to work from anyone outside of
Speaker 1: of Marvel. And then it became what you're trying it
Speaker 1: with Captain America, You're trying to withthor then eventually you
Speaker 1: got ant Man, this is how how are you doing this?
Speaker 1: And I completely agree the landing of that series is
Speaker 1: one of the great achievements in cinematic history. It is
Speaker 1: the triple axel that they have landed and absolutely stuck.
Speaker 4: It's phenomenon.
Speaker 5: It's incredible, and I think that their capacity to I mean,
Speaker 5: if you believe in that theory that you know, if
Speaker 5: the butterfly flaps, it swings in the forest, then it
Speaker 5: has repercussions throughout the world. Right, If you believe in that,
Speaker 5: then you've also got to believe. It's great that Robert
Speaker 5: Downey Jr. Did too many drugs, because if Robert Downey
Speaker 5: Junior hadn't done so many drugs, he was going to
Speaker 5: be the most revered actor of his generation. Like talent
Speaker 5: to Burn, Charisma to burn, did way too many drugs,
Speaker 5: ended up sleeping on some strangers couches after breaking into
Speaker 5: their house. And that's the only way that ever would
Speaker 5: have got him to play fucking iron Man.
Speaker 4: You know, like they.
Speaker 5: Needed all of that to happen for the perfect scenario,
Speaker 5: because getting Robert Downey Jr. On for Iron Man meant
Speaker 5: that they could then go and ask other decent actors
Speaker 5: to do their movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean again, I'll tell my kids, Robert
Speaker 1: Downey Jr.
Speaker 4: Was nobody.
Speaker 1: It's not like, yeah, I don't know that he was
Speaker 1: just offered the role or ten people passed on it,
Speaker 1: or he had the audition, but he was you know,
Speaker 1: he wasn't in a great space, you know.
Speaker 4: It was it was And then it was Chris.
Speaker 1: You know, a guy from Home and Away in their
Speaker 1: next movie, and Chris Evans who had been in another
Speaker 1: failed superhero movie, and you.
Speaker 5: Know so well, I believe and maybe this is me
Speaker 5: speaking out of school, but I think this is on
Speaker 5: the public record, but I believe that Chris Hemsworth. I
Speaker 5: interviewed Chris Hamsworth immediately after he made the First Floor,
Speaker 5: and I believe that he got something like two two
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty thousand dollars to make that movie, which
Speaker 5: you know, by anyone's standard, is still a good amount
Speaker 5: of money, but by Hollywood movie standards for a big
Speaker 5: blockbuster movie is like what that's been on catering or something. Right, Like,
Speaker 5: it's not a lot of money. I mean by the
Speaker 5: end of it, like, I mean incredible, you know, being
Speaker 5: paid multimillions of dollars to make these movies. But they
Speaker 5: went and got Robert Downey Jr. But then they also
Speaker 5: went and cast some cheap guys to balance the budget.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, let's talk Princess Bryan.
Speaker 1: Princess Bright has come up many times. It's a much
Speaker 1: loved film. I have to say, I really like Princess Bryan.
Speaker 1: It doesn't for some reason, I think I saw it.
Speaker 1: I saw it in my twenties, so it didn't have
Speaker 1: the same impact on me in my life as it
Speaker 1: has so many of my contemporaries.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I saw I remember where I saw it. I
Speaker 5: was at the Sales Cinema with my friend Sarah Bailey,
Speaker 5: and we both have younger sisters, and our younger sisters
Speaker 5: were of similar age and so I think. So Susie
Speaker 5: is like three years younger than I am, so three
Speaker 5: to four years younger than I am. So we had
Speaker 5: to pick a movie that we could all enjoy. Our
Speaker 5: parents had tenters to the movies for the day. We're
Speaker 5: probably like fifteen year old boys, fourteen fifteen year old boys,
Speaker 5: and so we're going to the movies with some eleven
Speaker 5: year old girls. And so we had to pick a
Speaker 5: movie that sounded like a movie that the girls would like.
Speaker 5: So we had to go and see this movie called
Speaker 5: The Princess Bride. And I knew nothing about this film,
Speaker 5: like you know it. You know, it probably wasn't directly
Speaker 5: out because it was at the sale cinema, so it
Speaker 5: was probably you know, it had been out in the
Speaker 5: city for a few months, I imagine, but it wasn't
Speaker 5: in the days of the internet or anything like that.
Speaker 5: So it's not like you would have buzz about whether
Speaker 5: a movie was good or not. It just happened to
Speaker 5: be on at the sale cinema and it sounded like
Speaker 5: a kid's movie, and I went along, you know, resenting
Speaker 5: the fact that I was going to have to much
Speaker 5: like the little kid at the start of the Princess
Speaker 5: Bride sitting in the bed. I was realagejacked Fred Savage.
Speaker 5: That's right, Kevin Arnold? Is that who he was?
Speaker 4: Yet?
Speaker 5: And so we're sitting there with Colombo Peter Fork, and
Speaker 5: I was little Kevin Arnold sitting in the bed, just going,
Speaker 5: don't I don't want to watch this movie? You know
Speaker 5: this is not what is this some sort of kissing book?
Speaker 4: What is this?
Speaker 5: Are you trying to trick me?
Speaker 1: Is this a kissing book?
Speaker 5: Wait?
Speaker 4: There's wait, when's the kick?
Speaker 2: Good?
Speaker 4: Keep your shirt on, let me read.
Speaker 5: But instead I was just you know, I couldn't have
Speaker 5: laughed more. I just I probably watched that movie one
Speaker 5: hundred plus times in my life. If I couldn't recite
Speaker 5: it from you know, to start to finish to you now,
Speaker 5: But if the movie's on, I could do a pretty
Speaker 5: good recital, long version as it went along. I don't
Speaker 5: think there's a line in that movie that I've read
Speaker 5: all William Goldman's books. I've read the books of the
Speaker 5: Princess Bride, because you know, it's based on a book
Speaker 5: that William Goldman wrote. They say William Goldman wrote this
Speaker 5: book that was allegedly based on this other book. It's
Speaker 5: so deep in the conceit of it. And I guess
Speaker 5: this is why I love it as well, because his
Speaker 5: book that he writes is allegedly based on this manuscript
Speaker 5: he's found that he's like adapted, but he has like
Speaker 5: he's made all this up. It's all part of the thing.
Speaker 5: And he used to have like an address that people
Speaker 5: could write to at the back of the book that
Speaker 5: was like anyway, it's all very like he created this
Speaker 5: entire mythology behind this universe of the Princess Bright and
Speaker 5: made it all up. And I find all that stuff fascinating.
Speaker 5: And then he based the movie, of course, that he
Speaker 5: wrote on this book that he's written that was allegedly
Speaker 5: based on this thing that he just made up himself.
Speaker 5: And I just think he was a great screenwriter. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 5: I loved you know books Cassette in the Sun, Dance Kid, obviously,
Speaker 5: but like I thought his script for Maverick's amazing. Like
Speaker 5: he was just a really great writer. And I think
Speaker 5: anyone who's interested in Hollywood movies has probably read his books,
Speaker 5: which are pretty much the best books you can read
Speaker 5: on what it's like to write movies in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: You know, you're a good screenwriter when you write something
Speaker 1: like Maverick and it's it's one of those things that
Speaker 1: sits at the bottom of you, you know, that doesn't
Speaker 1: really get brought up. You know, it's because you've written prisons.
Speaker 1: Brian Bushcshi to the Sun Dance Ski, which I watched
Speaker 1: for the first time for this podcast with Bob Murphy
Speaker 1: and Ladie Hell.
Speaker 4: What a great film that is.
Speaker 5: And then just the performances, I mean, the iconic lines
Speaker 5: that you know have obviously become part of the general
Speaker 5: language of our society. But I just love the fact
Speaker 5: that it mostly stands up as well, Like I mean comedy,
Speaker 5: as you know, Pete, Like one of the ones I
Speaker 5: considered was Life of Brian because I think that, like
Speaker 5: when a comedy movie stands up to me, that is
Speaker 5: one of the all time great compliments that you can
Speaker 5: give a comedy, because comedy dates so quickly and so badly.
Speaker 5: Like I was watching a Will Feral movie the other
Speaker 5: day that was released in like twenty sixteen or twenty seventeen,
Speaker 5: about him going to prison, and it feels like it
Speaker 5: was mate. Feels like it was made nineteen seventy or
Speaker 5: something nineteen fifty It's like so horribly dated already, that film,
Speaker 5: and yet you can watch something like The Princess Bride
Speaker 5: or Ground Whole Day or Life of Brian, these so
Speaker 5: of films and they feel fresh and relevant today, which
Speaker 5: is something that I love about it as well.
Speaker 1: Let's talk the film that we have nominated. Are you
Speaker 1: nominated Contagion? I mean, where do we start? Where do
Speaker 1: you want to start? It's well, what do you think
Speaker 1: I'll to start with that?
Speaker 5: I thought, well, firstly, I thought it was great. I
Speaker 5: thought it was really fantastic movie. I didn't realize how
Speaker 5: many big name actors were in it. I didn't realize
Speaker 5: that it was going to be so prescient about the
Speaker 5: current times that we were going through. But I found
Speaker 5: it a really compelling movie to watch. Regardless, I didn't
Speaker 5: know it was a Soderberg movie, so I didn't really
Speaker 5: know much about the movie at all. I found out
Speaker 5: a few things afterwards, but I went into it not really,
Speaker 5: I'm not going to think about this too much. I'm
Speaker 5: just going to watch it, you know. And then since then,
Speaker 5: I've watched a few videos about the things that have
Speaker 5: got right, and I've you know, like watched an interview
Speaker 5: with the screenwriter about the six years of research that
Speaker 5: he did, and it was all based on that him
Speaker 5: and Soderberg had made the Informant together, I think, which
Speaker 5: is the Matt Damon film. And there's a scene in
Speaker 5: that where Matt Damon's character is observing another character and
Speaker 5: the way that he's touching something in the germs that
Speaker 5: would be transferred in this touch. And this whole idea
Speaker 5: came from that scene that they'd written for this other
Speaker 5: movie that they thought, how about this if this became
Speaker 5: like a bigger idea, So I found the whole thing.
Speaker 5: I just thought it was a great movie, Like I
Speaker 5: thought from starting to finish, I was like, this is
Speaker 5: a really compelling movie. I thought, the layers of complexity.
Speaker 5: I mean to skip right to the end, you know,
Speaker 5: but the idea of like when it's revealed without because
Speaker 5: maybe would I want to dive into what.
Speaker 1: We get to the end of the well get at
Speaker 1: the end of the end, but without stopping what you're saying.
Speaker 1: We will do a big kind of chat about the
Speaker 1: end at the end. But if you want to bring
Speaker 1: up if you're talking about the connectivity of this world
Speaker 1: and how.
Speaker 4: You know, some other films.
Speaker 5: There are layers of connectivity at the end that I
Speaker 5: think I probably contrived because it's a movie, right, It's
Speaker 5: probably not going to work out that neatly, you know,
Speaker 5: in real life, unfortunately.
Speaker 4: But it may have been so beautifully on film.
Speaker 5: But as a movie, I thought it was a really
Speaker 5: beautifully made movie.
Speaker 1: I remember watching it, yeah, when it came out, and
Speaker 1: I really I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 4: And I was a big Soderberg fan.
Speaker 1: So just to give you some context, So he makes
Speaker 1: the Informant, the film you mentioned written by Scott z Burns,
Speaker 1: who wrote Contagion. In two thousand and nine, he makes
Speaker 1: three films. In two thousand and eleven. He makes a
Speaker 1: docco about sporting Gray called and Everything Is Going Fine.
Speaker 1: He makes a great little action film called Haywire. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if you saw Haywire. It's a little action film.
Speaker 1: It's got Fastbender and it's got you McGregor and Gina Carrano.
Speaker 1: I think her name is like a rising Mma styles.
Speaker 1: She already was an MMA star. It's like a Black
Speaker 1: Ops kind of cool little action film.
Speaker 4: And he makes Contagion.
Speaker 1: Then he makes the following year Magic Mike, and another
Speaker 1: great little film.
Speaker 4: Called side effects. Of course.
Speaker 1: For those who don't know Steven Soderberg, he's known for
Speaker 1: his big his breakout film with Sexialize and Videotape, known
Speaker 1: for The Ocean's eleven franchise Traffic, Aeron Brockovich Out of Sight,
Speaker 1: which is one of the all time one of my
Speaker 1: time favorite films with Jennifer Blopez and George Clooney. So
Speaker 1: he does love this kind of connectivity thing that he does.
Speaker 1: But I remember watching it and I remember like having
Speaker 1: an idea what it was about, and those early scenes
Speaker 1: where you see the glass at the bar and the
Speaker 1: credit card taken and then the screen and it swiped.
Speaker 1: I reckon when I was watching it ten years ago,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, oh, yeah, because the glass, the germs
Speaker 1: are on the glass, and then you see all these
Speaker 1: other because of what we're living through now have become
Speaker 1: so you know, knowledgeable, you know, and increasingly knowledgeable about
Speaker 1: how germs spread. And there was a term that I
Speaker 1: actually haven't heard. And we'll get to the things that
Speaker 1: you recognize, maybe because of COVID and the things that
Speaker 1: you know were a bit foreign to us. But there
Speaker 1: was a term called fomtes that came up, which I
Speaker 1: had I haven't heard of, even in these COVID times,
Speaker 1: which refers to all these places of transfer of the
Speaker 1: virus such as door handles, elevator buttons, glasses, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: credit card or all those things. What's that for, mates,
Speaker 1: It refers to transmission from surfaces. The average person touches
Speaker 1: their face two or three thousand times.
Speaker 5: A day, two or three thousand times a day.
Speaker 1: Three to five times every weeking minute in between, we're
Speaker 1: touching door knobs, water fountains, elevator buttons and each other.
Speaker 2: Those things become film mates.
Speaker 1: I got so much more out of it watching it,
Speaker 1: you know, two nights ago than I did. You know
Speaker 1: I was going to be grossed out, you know, ten
Speaker 1: years ago it felt like a even though we had
Speaker 1: SARS and I think we've had Zeka since. It kind
Speaker 1: of felt like a zombie movie to an extent. But
Speaker 1: as you mentioned in it in your opening comments, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a documentary.
Speaker 5: Now you are stunned by the amount of times that
Speaker 5: you touch your face while you're watching the movie. It's
Speaker 5: one of those things where you're just like, you're so
Speaker 5: hyper aware of how often you like After Kate Winsley's
Speaker 5: character says you touch your face between one thousand and
Speaker 5: three thousand times a day or whatever it is, and
Speaker 5: you're like, that can't possibly be right. And then all
Speaker 5: you want to do is touch your face. Your nose
Speaker 5: is so itchy, and you just don't You just like,
Speaker 5: I just need to scratch it. If only Amy will
Speaker 5: look away right now so I can scratch my fucking nose.
Speaker 1: It is okay, let's go through some of the things. Yes,
Speaker 1: So I wrote a bit of a list, and these
Speaker 1: are some of the things that are in the film
Speaker 1: that I think we kind of know. You know, it
Speaker 1: was recognizable to me through through the COVID experience and
Speaker 1: the things you know that you know.
Speaker 4: This is not they got right and they got wrong.
Speaker 1: This is more that I can recognize and that rings
Speaker 1: true in the in the COVID age. So they got
Speaker 1: into the social distancing, they got onto that the R
Speaker 1: number came up.
Speaker 4: I was almost proud of myself. I know what the
Speaker 4: R number is. I didn't know what that was ten years.
Speaker 5: Ago, the or the.
Speaker 4: I really refer to it now as the R number.
Speaker 1: And on the project we speaking the epidem epidemiologists every night,
Speaker 1: and I've never heard of there's the r nor number,
Speaker 1: but i've they referred to it as the R number,
Speaker 1: the reproductive number, so I was pretty proud of that.
Speaker 1: Then there was the use of face masks. They're not
Speaker 1: as prevalent as they are, but I assume that was
Speaker 1: a filmmaking choice. Not to be covering up Matt Damon's face,
Speaker 1: Kate Winslet's face, Greta Poltro's face. You want, you want
Speaker 1: bang for your back, let's not put face masks on them.
Speaker 5: Tom Hardy was on the phone every day going I
Speaker 5: could have done this as.
Speaker 4: There. There was the panic buying.
Speaker 5: That's what we don't know about this film. There's all
Speaker 5: the stars that we can see, but most of the
Speaker 5: other people in Mass all played by Tom Hardy.
Speaker 1: Wasn't Cate Blancheting in Hot Fuzz in one of those
Speaker 1: has Matt donnod suits in one of those Mass Maybe
Speaker 1: Cape Kate Blanchett was in there as well. There was
Speaker 1: the panic buying was happening as well. No tallet paper.
Speaker 1: They went panic buying tallet paper, which I thought was interesting.
Speaker 5: I don't think any of us thought it was going
Speaker 5: to go to toilet paper first. And foremost there has
Speaker 5: been different phases of what has been panic bought, Like
Speaker 5: there was a period of time where Pisada had a
Speaker 5: moment you know there this is a movie, but you
Speaker 5: would have loved to see if you saw like a
Speaker 5: ten part series. You could almost make remake Contagion in
Speaker 5: our times and make it as a ten part or
Speaker 5: a twenty part season where you could draw out some
Speaker 5: of the things that they By the nature of making
Speaker 5: a movie you have to you know, kind of you know,
Speaker 5: ramp up the time in between. But like you say,
Speaker 5: you see panic buying and then it goes to riots
Speaker 5: very quickly, whereas I would love to see where it
Speaker 5: was just like the first episode all the toilet paper
Speaker 5: goes and episode three is just Pisada, you know, like
Speaker 5: we don't have to get to the riots until episode
Speaker 5: seven or eight.
Speaker 1: I'm in Victoria and where it's it's mandatory face masks
Speaker 1: at the moment, and I'm surprised breath mints haven't been
Speaker 1: panic brought to be honest, because when you when you
Speaker 1: have a coffee and then you put your face mask on,
Speaker 1: it's quite a treat. Will That's that's all ahead of you.
Speaker 5: Like I mean again, like I'm this is a bit
Speaker 5: too graphic and not normally the area that I but
Speaker 5: it's late at night, Peter, we're having a wine via beverage.
Speaker 5: You know, talking about movies is interesting that we don't
Speaker 5: like the smell of our own breath, but sometimes the
Speaker 5: smell of our own farts, which should actually be more unpleasant,
Speaker 5: have some sort of like pleasing aspect to your own body,
Speaker 5: Like you can be like you can handle your own fart,
Speaker 5: like in a way that you can't handle someone else's fart,
Speaker 5: but like your own breath is so toxic to yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that that's a it's a bloody I think bad
Speaker 1: breath on anyone isletally toxic. But I never I reckon
Speaker 1: The closest I get the feeling like I'm in some
Speaker 1: kind of scientific lab is when I fart in the shower.
Speaker 1: It's so, that's interesting, what's going on there? That's That's
Speaker 1: a scene I want to see in Contagion too. It's
Speaker 1: Matt Damon cutting one in the shower. The conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: come out in this. Jude Lord, do you want to
Speaker 1: chat about Jude Law for a second.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So he's meant to be Australian, I believe.
Speaker 4: Is he which I thought, well, you.
Speaker 5: Wouldn't his accent that he's using during the film. But yes,
Speaker 5: apparently he's meant to be Australian.
Speaker 1: Because I really thought, I thought, why is jud Law
Speaker 1: trying so hard to do an English accent?
Speaker 4: He's English? Was he really meant to be Australian?
Speaker 5: I thought at the start South Africa, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 5: he must be South African. But apparently he's meant to
Speaker 5: be an Australian. So I think at best he had
Speaker 5: one parent who was from Australia but had lived in
Speaker 5: England most of their life. I believe that is the
Speaker 5: accent that he was doing in this movie.
Speaker 1: Most actors, they're not trying to go for the situation
Speaker 1: where the audience is filling in their backstory their accent that.
Speaker 5: Who stands to gain from this? They're working hand in glove.
Speaker 5: I mean, he also has that wonky tooth. You know,
Speaker 5: he's got the chip tooth. So maybe his chip tooth
Speaker 5: was affecting the way that he was speaking. Maybe he
Speaker 5: was doing a very excellent Australian accent. But while it
Speaker 5: went through the chip tooth.
Speaker 1: I did notice the chip tooth even weirdly halfway through.
Speaker 1: I think when he's in a TV interview, I thought,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with his tooth? And OK, he's got a
Speaker 1: chip tooth, Jude Law.
Speaker 5: That's I think this is the bit that they probably underestimated. Like,
Speaker 5: I think this movie gets a lot of stuff right,
Speaker 5: and they got the idea of the conspiracy theorist right,
Speaker 5: but and the panic buying over the I mean, he's
Speaker 5: kind of a mix between you know, Pete Evans and
Speaker 5: you know, some sort of investigative reporter. But he's one
Speaker 5: of those people who has monetized the idea of being
Speaker 5: a contrarian, right. Like his whole thing is like, you know,
Speaker 5: he's the Joe Rogan podcast of his day. He's got
Speaker 5: millions of subscribers to these ideas that he has, and
Speaker 5: they're all following him for ideas, and then you know,
Speaker 5: eventually he's going to obviously use that to monetize, you
Speaker 5: know something, whether it's you know, a true thing or
Speaker 5: in cause, panic buying and all these sort of things
Speaker 5: you can have parallels with Somewhere between what Pete Evans
Speaker 5: does and somewhere between what Joe Rogan does in today's society.
Speaker 5: That character makes sense, but it's kind of him as
Speaker 5: a lone wolf a bit, whereas what we've discovered about
Speaker 5: the age we live in, whereas that's a predominant part
Speaker 5: of the narrative. I mean, do Law would be president
Speaker 5: in the remake that we make in twenty twenty, like
Speaker 5: Donald Trump is Jude Law in this scenario?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he would be, Yeah, the chief medical officer
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I do think I disagree slightly in that they got
Speaker 1: it wrong. I think the essence is really accurate. I
Speaker 1: just think social media wasn't It was still like you know,
Speaker 1: obviously Instagram and Twitter was around in twenty and eleven,
Speaker 1: but I think would be all very surprised to see
Speaker 1: how big and toxic those things have potentially grown since
Speaker 1: twenty eleven. I feel like it is that twenty eleven
Speaker 1: and even a few years before, bloggers were quite big
Speaker 1: to you know, represent on screen. That was how they
Speaker 1: got their head around that. And I think I just
Speaker 1: saw that character as encompassing, you know, I thought it
Speaker 1: was quite prophetic, like a lot of the film that
Speaker 1: in science and he kind of.
Speaker 5: I think I would say, I don't think they could
Speaker 5: have predicted. Yeah, I agree with all that, but I
Speaker 5: just don't think they could have predicted. It's not their fault.
Speaker 5: It's just that they got so much else right about
Speaker 5: the future that the thing that doesn't ring true about
Speaker 5: the future is that that thing that seemed like it
Speaker 5: was only going to be a small part of the
Speaker 5: national discourse would actually become a predominant part of the
Speaker 5: national discourse. Like they weren't to know that the Jude
Speaker 5: Law blogger character was going to be the popular narrative
Speaker 5: at least by a third of the population during a
Speaker 5: time of crisis like this. It would be an interesting
Speaker 5: idea to explore in our remake that we're commissioning Pete
Speaker 5: Will and Steven Soderberg twenty part series Contagion. The series,
Speaker 5: we're just going to stop down on some smaller moments.
Speaker 1: I mean, Jude Law's dodgy shouts accent doesn't help any
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 5: The episodes, there's a flashback to his parents meeting her,
Speaker 5: going back to England with him, her accent eventually dissipating
Speaker 5: over the years. The young Jude Law is standing in
Speaker 5: front of Rolf Harris on the TV learn Me how
Speaker 5: to Speak.
Speaker 4: Barry Crucker style character. One thing they weirdly got thissus. Listen,
Speaker 4: I imagine this is fluke.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but the virus it starts in China
Speaker 1: and it's passed from animal to human. That doesn't happen
Speaker 1: with every kind of virus. But that is when I
Speaker 1: say we've got it right. That's what coronavirus appears to
Speaker 1: have done.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So you know, one of the big ideas this
Speaker 5: film explores is the idea of patient zero. If you
Speaker 5: can find out where it started, you have a better
Speaker 5: chance of tracing it. And to our best estimations at
Speaker 5: the moment, patient zero might have been in a wet
Speaker 5: market in Wuhan, but we don't know for sure. I
Speaker 5: don't think we have the certainty of information that they
Speaker 5: have in this film about the current situation we're going through.
Speaker 5: But if they're right, like this movie has a back
Speaker 5: to animal transmission, which might have been what has happened
Speaker 5: in this car, it certainly feels like it might have
Speaker 5: at least been a back to human transition of some kind.
Speaker 5: And apparently that's an incredible character incredible care areas of
Speaker 5: human diseases. So not all animals can carry human diseases,
Speaker 5: but apparently bats are quite good at carrying human viruses
Speaker 5: and the viruses that can also work on humans. And
Speaker 5: the good thing about bats is they often live in
Speaker 5: areas with other food sources and animals, and they can
Speaker 5: really do what the movie showed, which is they're in
Speaker 5: those dark spaces and they can live in places that
Speaker 5: you don't know where they are, and they can transmit diseases.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I mean, they had evidence before this movie
Speaker 5: that that was something that could happen, and it was
Speaker 5: based on real things that have already happened. But certainly
Speaker 5: it's very prophetic about what we're going through right now. Now. Look,
Speaker 5: the truth is in retrospect. I guess Batman was the
Speaker 5: real villain in The Dark Knight. The Joker was really
Speaker 5: just trying to stop the bat. We had it around
Speaker 5: the wrong way.
Speaker 1: I was waiting for the mass Avenger to make his
Speaker 1: way into that conversation. So those are the things that
Speaker 1: I kind of picked up as as far as like
Speaker 1: the things I've learned. Also, the race with the vaccine
Speaker 1: has kind of mentioned that the idea that other countries
Speaker 1: may have the vaccine and be hiding it is an
Speaker 1: interesting idea that it kind of occasionally has popped its
Speaker 1: head up as far as even in conversation as far
Speaker 1: as well, who gets the vaccine If Australia finds the vaccine,
Speaker 1: does that mean we get it first. That's not completely
Speaker 1: you know, you know what they're getting up here as
Speaker 1: far as hiding vaccines, but it's just that all eyes
Speaker 1: on the vaccine well.
Speaker 5: And also the idea of that it might have been
Speaker 5: a biological weapon. That's certainly something that people have explored
Speaker 5: as an idea, and that's something that they talk about
Speaker 5: in the movie. And the idea of you know, when
Speaker 5: they do distribute a vaccine, that it takes about a
Speaker 5: year to get a vaccine to everybody who needs the vaccine.
Speaker 5: So the idea that they might do a system where
Speaker 5: it's literally a lottery based on you know, what your
Speaker 5: birth date is, and everybody goes to get their vaccine
Speaker 5: on the birth date might be the sort of thing
Speaker 5: that we're facing in our future that might give us
Speaker 5: an insight into six months from now or eighteen months
Speaker 5: from now, when there is a vaccine. There's not suddenly
Speaker 5: going to be that everybody can pop down a chemist
Speaker 5: warehouse and grab the vaccine. They're going to have to
Speaker 5: come up with some system to say, maybe the most
Speaker 5: vulnerable people get at first, but after that we're going
Speaker 5: to do a lottery about birth dates. And then suddenly
Speaker 5: we're going to be living in the world like this
Speaker 5: movie where you're sitting around going, well, you're vaccinated, but
Speaker 5: I'm not yet, And you've got a little wristband on
Speaker 5: like they have in the movie that says I'm a
Speaker 5: vaccinated person and I can go here and here, but
Speaker 5: if you're not a vaccinated person, you can't go here
Speaker 5: and here. And in some ways that's almost as terrifying
Speaker 5: as what we're going through right now, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1: I've had that conversation before with a lad who works
Speaker 1: on the show they work on, and he's a much
Speaker 1: smarter dude than I am, and because he would have
Speaker 1: that idea, because I mean, when there was petrol shortages
Speaker 1: and you almost had to have that where you can
Speaker 1: only fill up your your your tank if your your
Speaker 1: number plate was ended with an even number or not number,
Speaker 1: and then that might be the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: rolls out with a vaccine. The things I saw with
Speaker 1: another thing was mass graves in New York City, which
Speaker 1: was which was sad, the true but the things I've
Speaker 1: seen different that I hadn't kind of whether they got
Speaker 1: it wrong or whatever. But Kate Winslet seems to be
Speaker 1: trying to contract the contract trace the virus by herself.
Speaker 1: Now whether that's just the one we're following, which it
Speaker 1: could be true, but she does seem to be doing
Speaker 1: a lot of the heavy lifting as far as even
Speaker 1: going out to that place, and I think it's in Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: the health center there. And you know, one of the
Speaker 1: most the most unenjoyable characters in any film is the
Speaker 1: character who has to form basically dramatic tension, basically be
Speaker 1: a disagreeable shit. And there's that woman in when Kate
Speaker 1: wins are saying, this is what we have to do,
Speaker 1: and these are medical professionals and they're saying, is this
Speaker 1: going to come out.
Speaker 4: Of your budget?
Speaker 1: I hate I hate those characters. And the best example
Speaker 1: of one of those characters or a group of those characters.
Speaker 1: Have you seen the movie Sully with Tom Hanks, So, like,
Speaker 1: what an amazing thing that man did. He landed a
Speaker 1: plane in the Hudson River that would have, you know,
Speaker 1: either crashed into a building or just crashed into the
Speaker 1: Hudson River, killing everybody, but he crashed it and nobody died.
Speaker 1: What an amazing thing and one an amazing thing to
Speaker 1: make a film about. But obviously when Clint Eastwood got
Speaker 1: onto that movie, he realized there was no dramatic tension
Speaker 1: because it's really all about a hero, and where's the
Speaker 1: tension in the hero? So they had to create this
Speaker 1: tension with this investigation, and these people were like dragon dragon,
Speaker 1: Sally across the hot coals for no reason.
Speaker 4: And then like in the end, it's just like, Okay,
Speaker 4: yeah we were wrong, you were right.
Speaker 1: And then like Sally makes a little joke at the end,
Speaker 1: or is you know he's copil makes a little joke.
Speaker 1: They all laugh like it's a sitcom, and that's the end.
Speaker 1: It's like, you could have done a documentary about Sally.
Speaker 1: If you couldn't find the film, don't do the film.
Speaker 5: Here's what I would say is different about that. I
Speaker 5: agree with you on Sally correct answer lock it in
Speaker 5: absolutely true, But in this instance, I actually think that
Speaker 5: there are people like that woman. Yes, she's shorthand for
Speaker 5: a larger group of people, but she's shorthand for the
Speaker 5: economists saying that it's worth the old people dying so
Speaker 5: the economy can get back to work, and she's shorthand
Speaker 5: for the politicians who sometimes have to make very difficult
Speaker 5: choices between the idea of keeping you know, business open
Speaker 5: or borders open and shutting down you know, society on
Speaker 5: the benefit of others, Like there are those arguments over
Speaker 5: whether the people think we're going too far or not
Speaker 5: far enough, and arguing from an economic rationalist sort of
Speaker 5: point of view. So I think we are seeing that.
Speaker 5: I mean, yes, she is a one character, very shorthand
Speaker 5: for all those people, but I think in our twenty
Speaker 5: part series we're really going to explore those other voices.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that's that's when we get.
Speaker 1: I think twenty. I think the twenty yepp is just
Speaker 1: the first series as well.
Speaker 5: By the way, no, the first half of the first
Speaker 5: series Game of Throne stuff. We're just going to split
Speaker 5: the first series into two. The first half is twenty
Speaker 5: and the second half is actually fifty fifty episodes.
Speaker 1: One of the one of the I think the best
Speaker 1: scenes in the film is Kate Winslot's contract contact tracing
Speaker 1: and going to Matt Damon and having that awkward moment
Speaker 1: of having to basically reveal to him that his wife
Speaker 1: Gwenneth Poultrow or fucked another bloke in Chicago behind his back.
Speaker 1: John Neil, it's it's it's it's it's awkward, but it's
Speaker 1: it's you imagine that that shit happens like I imagine,
Speaker 1: and the film is quite The thing I like about
Speaker 1: the film is the virus is the main character. Like
Speaker 1: everyone's serving like there's very little melodrama. Like the closest
Speaker 1: you get is kind of this scene and and even
Speaker 1: making Matt Damon Matt Damon's kid, because the first time
Speaker 1: I saw it, I remember thinking, and even when I
Speaker 1: was watching it back the other night, why does it
Speaker 1: Matt Damon? Why does Matt Damond get upset? But these
Speaker 1: kids dead? And then you really, like you realize that
Speaker 1: it's it's his step kid. Now that's not saying I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that he wouldn't have those, you know, but
Speaker 1: I get the impression in that relationship that there were
Speaker 1: things happening that maybe he knew of out and he's
Speaker 1: dealing with that and he's in a bit of shock,
Speaker 1: and that it is his step kid, not his kid, which.
Speaker 4: Serves two purposes.
Speaker 1: It kind of slightly emotionally allows the audience to allow
Speaker 1: him to emotionally distance himself a little bit, but it
Speaker 1: also gives us the reason why maybe he didn't have
Speaker 1: contract the virus, and that.
Speaker 5: I think, yeah, and that his daughter also, so I
Speaker 5: think Matt Damon like in this movie, like he doesn't
Speaker 5: have that much to do, but he does so much
Speaker 5: with what he has to do, like because he has
Speaker 5: to do a lot of stuff in this movie, like
Speaker 5: who is he? What was the nature of their relationship?
Speaker 5: You know what, what is the state of their marriage,
Speaker 5: What is the state of the relationship to the children?
Speaker 5: Why is there a difference in the relationship, What is
Speaker 5: the back history of this? You don't get time to
Speaker 5: dig down in any of that. They just have to
Speaker 5: shorthand all of that incredible scene he has early on
Speaker 5: when they tell her that she's dead, when you know,
Speaker 5: she's just come back from a trip and everything should
Speaker 5: be fine, and suddenly his wife's dead and he just
Speaker 5: can't comprehend but yeah, but can I talk to her now?
Speaker 5: Like it's incredible, And then he has to go through
Speaker 5: his journey where he realizes that he might be immune
Speaker 5: to this disease that is killing everybody else in the world.
Speaker 5: So there's seeds of him essentially walking the world as
Speaker 5: the only person who can freely walk the world. But
Speaker 5: at the same time he's dealing with the fact that
Speaker 5: he might just because he's immune and might not mean
Speaker 5: that his daughter is immune. Then it finds out that
Speaker 5: his daughter is probably you know, okay at the moment,
Speaker 5: but his stepson is dead. His wife is dead. Now
Speaker 5: they've revealed to him that the reason his wife is
Speaker 5: dead is because she was having an affair. She's slept
Speaker 5: with somebody else, and now like she started a pandemic
Speaker 5: that's killing everybody, and he doesn't really have enough time
Speaker 5: to do all that, and manages to do all that
Speaker 5: in the time that he has.
Speaker 4: Aim is the Richard Wilkins of this story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who can just walk through a global pandemic.
Speaker 5: So this is seventy episodes, first season in Past twenty
Speaker 5: and fifty and the Matt Damon character is Richard Brooks.
Speaker 1: And he kills Jeff Goldbloom at some point. But the
Speaker 1: I mean that that moment and I you know, how
Speaker 1: unlucky is Gwenneth Pultrow. I mean, it's almost the reverse
Speaker 1: sliding doors moment. Really, It's like it's like the horror
Speaker 1: version of Sliding Doors. So if Gwenneth Paltrow didn't stop
Speaker 1: in Chicago and have sex with that man, the pandemic
Speaker 1: still would have happened to an extent, I guess, because
Speaker 1: she kind of caught it in that restaurant in China,
Speaker 1: but it would have been way less. So I think
Speaker 1: I think there's after seventy eight parts series, I think
Speaker 1: we can do a horror Sliding Doors Sliding Doors two
Speaker 1: set in Chicago. What would happen if Gwenneth Paltrow didn't
Speaker 1: have sex with John Neil?
Speaker 5: Well? See, I think that this is the only aspect
Speaker 5: of the film that I feel uncomfortable with. It's clearly
Speaker 5: a shot. It's a massive slut shaming exercise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, John Neil, here, you just had sexual with me
Speaker 1: in a hotel and left without saying goodbye.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it ended up being delayed, so sorry, I'm anything
Speaker 5: well if.
Speaker 4: I don't get to see you again.
Speaker 5: I just wanted to say it was.
Speaker 4: Nice to see you again.
Speaker 5: I mean, how do you Steven Soderberg like, I mean,
Speaker 5: Whenneth Paltrow is a modern woman, she'd be able to
Speaker 5: sleep with her whatever she wants without causing a global
Speaker 5: pandemic just because she decided to exercise her own sexuality.
Speaker 5: You know what, maybe Matt Damon wasn't father and husband
Speaker 5: of the year. You didn't fuck and clearly love his
Speaker 5: steps as much as loved his real kid. So you
Speaker 5: know what, maybe things weren't great at home and she
Speaker 5: needed the release of another person. She's working very hard
Speaker 5: for the fucking forestry company that she works for. You know,
Speaker 5: she barely has time to eat at a restaurant. She
Speaker 5: has to smile and have a photo take it with
Speaker 5: like this chef who probably hasn't even washed his hands.
Speaker 5: What does she know? But she's constantly on the road,
Speaker 5: providing for their family, and she finds some sweet relief
Speaker 5: in the arms of an ex lover. And of course
Speaker 5: she has to be damned. She has to damn all
Speaker 5: human kind to an unrelenting pandemic.
Speaker 4: How dare you wrap it up by that? Will Anderson?
Speaker 1: I think Steven Soderberg has represented that truly, and it's
Speaker 1: a lesson for all women. If you cheat on your partner,
Speaker 1: you will release a global pandemic.
Speaker 4: Just take that on board everyone.
Speaker 5: It's like the studio came from Sanderbrega. There. We don't
Speaker 5: really care what the idea is, Stevie. All we want
Speaker 5: is a movie where the key message is, don't look
Speaker 5: the head of the studio. His wife's just cheated on it.
Speaker 5: If you could make a movie the convinceers wives not
Speaker 5: to cheat on their husbands. Wrap it up in whatever
Speaker 5: you need to wrap it up in. But that is
Speaker 5: the core message. We'll sign your cheat it now.
Speaker 1: That's the message Harvey really wants to get through. Hey
Speaker 1: did you did you? There's two Aussie connections here, and
Speaker 1: then they're more interesting than the usual Aussie connections in
Speaker 1: movies where it's like, oh, point break was in a
Speaker 1: talkie Bell's Beach, or there's a there's an Aussie actor actor.
Speaker 4: There are two really interesting Aussie connections in this film.
Speaker 5: Well, firstly, the Jude Law was Jude Law was an Australia.
Speaker 4: Including jud Law.
Speaker 1: In one of those connections, Geelong is mentioned in the
Speaker 1: film and I had to rewind it and then I
Speaker 1: had to google it. So they say something like they
Speaker 1: they regrew the the the the backpack in Geelong and
Speaker 1: I just kind of heard that. This is when they're
Speaker 1: in the lab. It's lone Fishburn and the other scientists
Speaker 1: actress name I'm not not aware of, and I rewounded.
Speaker 4: I thought it's Geelong.
Speaker 1: They say, I'm sure they say Geelong, And then I
Speaker 1: was aware because we've been covering COVID a lot on
Speaker 1: the project that we've crossed to the c s I
Speaker 1: r O who are in Geelong, So there is a connection.
Speaker 1: And weirdly in the COVID world there are scientists from
Speaker 1: Wuhann who have worked at a c s i r O.
Speaker 1: Not not casting any dispersions at all, but they said,
Speaker 1: there's that, and then there's a gentleman. But do you
Speaker 1: know a man by the name of doctor Barry Marshall.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of his story? I've got the
Speaker 1: Barry Marshall. So when the doctor who mentions Geelong, she
Speaker 1: the one who injected herself herself with the vaccine, and
Speaker 1: apparently they had to reshoot that because originally she did
Speaker 1: over her clothes and they had the under the advice
Speaker 1: of the the medical advisor, that you can't do that,
Speaker 1: you need to do it on bare skin. So they
Speaker 1: went back and reshot it. So and she takes her
Speaker 1: to her dad and he mentioned she mentions Barry Marshall. So,
Speaker 1: Barry Marshall is a doctor from Perth. Okay, So in
Speaker 1: the late seventies early eighties, stomach cancer is killing a
Speaker 1: shit ton of people. Stomach ulcers affect ten percent of
Speaker 1: all adults. People are having their stomachs removed, some of
Speaker 1: this bleeding out until that they die. He is sure
Speaker 1: that this can be treated through antibiotics. But the gastro
Speaker 1: enter my biologists, we're basically saying off doctor from Perth,
Speaker 1: we know better. So he couldn't test it on mice
Speaker 1: because I think he needed primates which when available to him,
Speaker 1: and legally couldn't test it on other humans. So the
Speaker 1: only person he could do it ethically on was was himself.
Speaker 1: So he basically got a He got some bacteria from
Speaker 1: a patient, and I've written down the bacteria it's hello
Speaker 1: Helica bacteriori, which is not how you say it. Obviously,
Speaker 1: he got some from a patient. He stirred it into
Speaker 1: with some bacteria, into a broth and he drank it. Okay,
Speaker 1: days later, he gets sick. He's vomiting, he's got ship breath,
Speaker 1: he's he's fighting in the shower. He's exhausted. He heads
Speaker 1: into the lap. He give himself. He gives himself a
Speaker 1: biopsy and he discovers. Basically, he cures himself. In the end,
Speaker 1: he cures himself using vaccines. Bang he cures stomach ulcers
Speaker 1: and stomach cancer. Is basically eradicated from the Western world.
Speaker 1: Wins a Nobel Prize in two thousand and five.
Speaker 5: Never heard of him.
Speaker 1: Because he's an Australian scientist. But you know who won
Speaker 1: the Brown Low in two thousand and five.
Speaker 5: Barry Hall. Haven't heard of Barry Marshall.
Speaker 4: Is that amazing? We haven't heard of that guy.
Speaker 5: I mean he should be like on our money or something.
Speaker 5: Surely that is one of the most amazing stories of
Speaker 5: all time. And he was name checked in the movie Contage.
Speaker 4: He's named in the movie Contagion.
Speaker 1: He won a Nobel Prize, never won Australian of the
Speaker 1: e I imagine Damien Oliver want of that year, or
Speaker 1: Mark Taylor or somebody. But incredible, incredible story. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about let's talk about the end. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: the end.
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, there's a couple of things. Firstly, I think
Speaker 5: three things. We have to give a shout out to
Speaker 5: the fact that a friend of ours in this movie,
Speaker 5: well comedian that we both know and worked with, Dimitri Martin,
Speaker 5: is that which was a lovely surprise. I was like, oh, Dmitry.
Speaker 4: We tested all of Grand bardies. I didn't see much
Speaker 4: cross reactivity.
Speaker 5: Her body had no idea what to do with it.
Speaker 4: It just kept amplifying. Yeah, right. I wrote down the
Speaker 4: cast list.
Speaker 1: Who was in this film, and these are the names
Speaker 1: I wrote Greene Poulster and Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne,
Speaker 1: Jude Law, John Hawks, Marion Courtyard, Elliot Good, Brian Cranston,
Speaker 1: and Dimitri Martin.
Speaker 5: And introducing Dmitry Martin. I think Kate Winslet's character dying
Speaker 5: is something that just is one of them. So her
Speaker 5: buddy assistant, you know, the one who was all paranoid about,
Speaker 5: you know, the idea that you know, his wife was
Speaker 5: making him take off his clothes and wash his hands
Speaker 5: with soap and whatever when she got home, and you know,
Speaker 5: Kate Winsley's character was all like, you know, you're touching
Speaker 5: your face this many times, Stop touching your face. And
Speaker 5: there's a scene in this film, because I watched it
Speaker 5: going how does she get it? Because they never really
Speaker 5: tell you how she gets it. But there's a scene
Speaker 5: where she's on the phone, and this is what we
Speaker 5: forget about touching your face, right, touching your face is
Speaker 5: also being on your phone. Being on your phone counters
Speaker 5: touching your face. In fact, it's worse than just briefly
Speaker 5: touching your face, because it's holding your phone that you
Speaker 5: touch all day, you know, no matter what, to your
Speaker 5: face for an extended period of time. And there's a
Speaker 5: whole scene when she's on the phone. So I think
Speaker 5: maybe the movie gives us, like I'm not saying that's
Speaker 5: necessarily how she's caught it, but the movie. What I
Speaker 5: love about the movie is it doesn't explain it, but
Speaker 5: it gives you something that could be an explanation.
Speaker 4: And so where's Wally of contagion? You have con trace
Speaker 4: the contract tracer?
Speaker 5: Well? But what I also love about it is it
Speaker 5: shows that idea of she's the one who's most paranoid
Speaker 5: about the idea that you can't touch your face. She
Speaker 5: mentions it several times, right, touching your face. It's a
Speaker 5: thing that she says it several times. And then yet
Speaker 5: even she that character forgets and touches her face. And
Speaker 5: that's the thing that we're all facing at the moment,
Speaker 5: is we're constantly trying our best to stick to all
Speaker 5: these rules and then constantly doing things by accident or
Speaker 5: without thinking or whatever that contravene the rules. And that's
Speaker 5: what we're all living in at the moment. So I
Speaker 5: thought that that character was fantastic, and then the fact
Speaker 5: that she dies halfway through the movie is I think
Speaker 5: a real compliment to the movie. Like I love a
Speaker 5: movie that kills off one of the people. I think
Speaker 5: it will be there at the end, you know, during
Speaker 5: the film.
Speaker 4: And they cut off some genuine stars here.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, like back in twenty eleven, the
Speaker 1: idea that Grena Pultrow, you know, could die in opening
Speaker 1: minutes of a movie was stunning. And and also you know,
Speaker 1: he said Kate Winslet and like you, I watched a
Speaker 1: few videos YouTube videos afterwards, and there's a different opinion
Speaker 1: about Kate Winsar's character. There's one woman who said, you know,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't happen. You know, they're so good at protecting themselves.
Speaker 1: But I agree with you and other people well different points.
Speaker 1: Your point is that even though you can be as
Speaker 1: well guarded as you are when you're in the front line,
Speaker 1: there can be things that you just slip up or
Speaker 1: something you just don't consider in a moment, and this
Speaker 1: is how dangerous this virus is.
Speaker 4: The other point was that it's it's said to be.
Speaker 1: Like almost a homage to front line workers, and in
Speaker 1: particular two doctors. One Carlo Barney, who was the Italian
Speaker 1: doctor who raised the alarm on Stars and he died
Speaker 1: after contracting SARS, but he was credited to kind of
Speaker 1: raising the alarm and you know, saving how many lives,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll never know. And then the other one
Speaker 1: was I wrote it down Lee when Liang, he was
Speaker 1: the eye doctor at the Wuhan Central Hospital.
Speaker 4: This is obviously.
Speaker 1: Contagion wasn't paying less home homage to Lee Willyang, But
Speaker 1: in hindsight, you know, he was the one who raised
Speaker 1: the alarm and issued emergency warnings to local hospitals in Wuhan,
Speaker 1: and was dragged across the coles was accused of making
Speaker 1: false statements brand of the whistleblower. Eventually he raised the
Speaker 1: alarm on December thirty. Contracted COVID nineteen died February seven,
Speaker 1: age thirty three. The Communist Party of China later issued
Speaker 1: an apology. But I love and kind of thinking of
Speaker 1: it that way as well. And then the way you explained,
Speaker 1: I really love that idea that it is, you know,
Speaker 1: saying that the line workers, we kind of expect they
Speaker 1: know what they're doing, They've got all the protection and
Speaker 1: all that, but they are just putting their lives in
Speaker 1: the line, you know, every time they.
Speaker 5: And the human being is facing something that none of
Speaker 5: us expected to face. I think what we're all realizing
Speaker 5: right now is regardless of whether you're a person who's
Speaker 5: completely lost your way of life and job and the
Speaker 5: normal way that you go about your business, through to
Speaker 5: the people who are suddenly thrust into the essential workers,
Speaker 5: the emergency workers, who are suddenly working at a rate
Speaker 5: and an intensity that they've never had to experience in
Speaker 5: their life. Just because you've worked at Coles hasn't prepared
Speaker 5: you for a pandemic working at coals. And just because
Speaker 5: you work as a nurse or a doctor, which is
Speaker 5: already a really hard job, hasn't prepared you for suddenly
Speaker 5: working in the most hardcore conditions you've ever worked in
Speaker 5: your life, and unrelentingly for months at a time. It's
Speaker 5: not like you're pulling eighteen shifts for a week and
Speaker 5: then you can have a week off. You're literally on
Speaker 5: the front lines at the moment, depending on everybody else's society.
Speaker 5: So everybody's in this state. If there are nurses and
Speaker 5: doctors who make mistakes along the way, then that is
Speaker 5: only to be expected because nobody knows how to deal
Speaker 5: with what we're doing going through. They're just doing their best.
Speaker 5: So I liked that that character didn't have some perfect
Speaker 5: way of protecting themselves. In fact, Dude Law's character, the
Speaker 5: conspiracy theorist, in a way almost had a better way
Speaker 5: of protecting himself because he just walked around in a
Speaker 5: bubble boy out here, you know, everywhere, which in some
Speaker 5: ways would have been better for Kate's character.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, yeah, absolutely right.
Speaker 1: I was again having this conversation tonight just of these people,
Speaker 1: like even the sea you know, the chief medical officers,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, Bret Sutton and Victoria you know,
Speaker 1: and you just think these guys just had no idea
Speaker 1: a year ago, you know, they was just you know,
Speaker 1: living their living their lives, doing their their their job
Speaker 1: at a obviously a high a high value and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden are the front of the faces of
Speaker 1: our fight against a global pandemic.
Speaker 4: Like when people criticize these people, I just.
Speaker 1: Don't understand the lack of empathy that people have towards
Speaker 1: these people.
Speaker 5: I tell you, fucking dick jokes for a living, Like
Speaker 5: like I'm a professional fucking clown. Yeah, I mean award
Speaker 5: winning dick jokes, but sometimes political dick jokes sometimes, you know.
Speaker 5: But the point being that I've done that for a
Speaker 5: quarter of a century and suddenly it was all taken away,
Speaker 5: and I don't know what to do. I'm taking a
Speaker 5: whole bunch of guesses at other things that I could do,
Speaker 5: or what my industry will look like when this comes back,
Speaker 5: or what I should be doing most effectively with my
Speaker 5: day to day when I can't do the thing that
Speaker 5: I have done, you know, for more than half of
Speaker 5: my life, I don't know what to do. And I'm
Speaker 5: a reasonably experienced person in my industry. I've got no
Speaker 5: idea what it's going to look like in three months
Speaker 5: or six months or eighteen months. I don't know if
Speaker 5: the Melbourne Comedy Festival happened next next year. I can't
Speaker 5: tell you I've got no idea, and none of that
Speaker 5: has any stakes. These other people are having those same
Speaker 5: issues that they face, and they've got stakes involved in it.
Speaker 5: I think it's amazing. I think this idea that we
Speaker 5: are judging our politicians and our frontline workers by impossible standards.
Speaker 5: The least we could do, as the rest of them
Speaker 5: who don't have essential skills in these situations, is to
Speaker 5: back them in. I think like we've got to allow
Speaker 5: them to get things wrong because we're all dealing with
Speaker 5: something that no one really knows what the right answer is.
Speaker 1: I think anyone who's ever put themselves in charge of
Speaker 1: a committee, even if it's a school committee, imagine that.
Speaker 1: And I've heard horror stories. I must say I haven't
Speaker 1: been involved in those, but my wife has. I've heard
Speaker 1: horror stories. Time's at by a million, and you get
Speaker 1: the kind of the pressure of, you know, a premiere
Speaker 1: of a state, or a prime minister or a chief
Speaker 1: medical officer. But let's let's finish up by chatting about
Speaker 1: those how that I think brilliant end sequence and how
Speaker 1: it plays out. So obviously, if you're listening to this,
Speaker 1: and you're still listening, you you've seen the film. So
Speaker 1: let's just go through how this virus gets out into
Speaker 1: the world. This is my recollection of how it happened.
Speaker 1: So the deforestation basically the places bats.
Speaker 4: The bats are sad and.
Speaker 5: Am I right in saying that it's deforestation by the
Speaker 5: company that Gwyneth Paltrow works for? Is there.
Speaker 4: I suspect?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: I think it a weird CoInc It's a weird coincidence
Speaker 1: in reality. It'll be a weirder coincidence in filmmaking if
Speaker 1: you made Gweno Poultrow working for a forestry company and
Speaker 1: it's not responsible for this.
Speaker 5: It's a bit it's almost a bit too neat obviously,
Speaker 5: but they're trying to make a point about, you know,
Speaker 5: where these things start, and that als always very accurate.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: Deforestation is one of the big things that you know,
Speaker 5: it does displace you know, different species and leads to
Speaker 5: these sort of things. It's one of the things that
Speaker 5: they're really fearful about, you know, obviously, you know going
Speaker 5: forward as we continue to do that. So I thought
Speaker 5: that was really like a fun part of the story
Speaker 5: based in reality, but also obviously very good storytelling within
Speaker 5: the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the that's are displaced, the bats are sad,
Speaker 1: So I got to find comfort in a banana.
Speaker 4: Why wouldn't you? That's no longer have trees to hang off,
Speaker 4: so they hang off the rafters of.
Speaker 1: Of a pig, a piggery. The silly bat drops a
Speaker 1: bit of banana. Or maybe this doesn't like the end
Speaker 1: of the banana. Some people don't like the end of
Speaker 1: the banana. Who can blame him? Banana falls. Pig does
Speaker 1: what a pig does. He is food on the floor.
Speaker 1: There's no three second rule for a pig. I'm eating
Speaker 1: the banana, eats the banana, and then the pig gets
Speaker 1: obviously taken away to be sold and cooked. The pig
Speaker 1: gets cooked in a Chinese restaurant.
Speaker 4: The chef sixty fingers in the pig's mouth.
Speaker 5: It really gets in there, doesn't it. Like that is
Speaker 5: one of my lasting memories of this film was like,
Speaker 5: what is the purpose of him so viciously fingering that
Speaker 5: pig's mouth, Like it's really in there. It's like real aggressive,
Speaker 5: it feels non consensual.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like if he was it a one
Speaker 1: off kind of this, you know me he was making
Speaker 1: or is he is he fingering the pig's mouth that
Speaker 1: hard for every every pig meal he serves, every bit
Speaker 1: of pork he serves up.
Speaker 4: It felt a bit full on.
Speaker 1: And then just after her fingers the pig's mouth, he
Speaker 1: gets asked if he wants a photo of green of Poultrow.
Speaker 1: You would think Arthur just fingered the pig's mouth and
Speaker 1: somebody asked for photo green of Poultrow.
Speaker 4: You might clean your hands, but he doesn't.
Speaker 5: Want He wipes them on his apron.
Speaker 4: He wipes it on his table.
Speaker 1: That's nowhere near enough. You know, you're having a photo
Speaker 1: of grena pultrow. He's probably just had a vagina stems.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: At least you can do is wash your hand, wash
Speaker 4: your hands. He doesn't wash his hands.
Speaker 1: He goes out of green of Poultrow, you know, and
Speaker 1: you have a photo, a selfie is shaking hands in
Speaker 1: the photo.
Speaker 4: Twenty five people twenty five million people die. That's that's
Speaker 4: how it happens.
Speaker 5: It's it makes you never want to eat out in
Speaker 5: public again. That's one of the things that actual the
Speaker 5: movie is very big on because when you watch it,
Speaker 5: the bartender sort of like you know, cleaning the glass,
Speaker 5: you know, with the steam from his mouth, and you know,
Speaker 5: knives and forks and you know, nuts at the bar
Speaker 5: and all these things that are you just being touched
Speaker 5: and transmitted. It made me not want to get takeaway
Speaker 5: or eat out at restaurants ever again. And I'm actually
Speaker 5: surprised how much we're still doing that as part of
Speaker 5: our lives. Like even in lockdown suburbs, people are still
Speaker 5: getting takeaway food. But when you watch Contagion, you're like,
Speaker 5: why would I ever eat anything that I haven't seen
Speaker 5: everybody who's touched this and prepared.
Speaker 1: This after seeing it two nights ago. I'm in Victoria,
Speaker 1: which is we're experiencing strict lockdown for the next six weeks.
Speaker 1: I'm like, make make a ten weeks stand, Like, seriously,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't need to be back out in
Speaker 1: society for a long time. It's disgusting out there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it makes you never want to eat at a restaurant,
Speaker 5: never want to catch public transport, never want to leave
Speaker 5: your house, and.
Speaker 4: Never have an extra marital affair. That's the key, Will,
Speaker 4: that's what.
Speaker 5: And your husband you, ladies, well, I won't dictateor Dan
Speaker 5: come out in one of his press conferences and reveal
Speaker 5: that the real secret is too many bloody women having
Speaker 5: affairs behind their husband's backs.
Speaker 4: Well, I've probably kept you too long, but thank you
Speaker 4: for watching this movie. And you know, I'm glad. I'm
Speaker 4: glad somebody stepped up to do it, and I'm glad
Speaker 4: you were the one.
Speaker 5: I'd probably watch it again. That Honestly, I thought I
Speaker 5: was going to watch it for the fun of the podcast.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, you rang me and said what
Speaker 5: about Contagion? And I was like, oh great, you know,
Speaker 5: it's of our times. It'll be an interesting and fun
Speaker 5: thing for us to be able to talk about. But
Speaker 5: I genuinely enjoyed the movie. I would definitely watch it again,
Speaker 5: and I think there'd be stuff in it that i'd
Speaker 5: probably catch the second time around that I didn't catch
Speaker 5: the first time, you know, if once you were looking
Speaker 5: out for things. But there's there's great acting. It's a
Speaker 5: really well told story, a light that it doesn't get
Speaker 5: bogged down too much in like you said, the melodrama
Speaker 5: of people's lives. It just keeps moving and then it's
Speaker 5: kind of over. Like there's part of that that I
Speaker 5: really enjoyed as well, where you were like, it doesn't
Speaker 5: build it necessarily some huge crescendo. It just kind of
Speaker 5: is suddenly over. And I hope maybe for our world
Speaker 5: that it feels like we're in the middle of the
Speaker 5: churn at the moment, but at some stage we're just
Speaker 5: going to go, ah, good, it's over.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, But girls, don't cheat on your husband's.
Speaker 5: Most importantly, can we just mention this contractorly one more time?
Speaker 5: Don't turn on your husband's. This episode of Ben Eliot's
Speaker 5: podcast brought to you by not cheating on your husband.
Speaker 5: Don't cause a pandemic.
Speaker 4: Don't turn on your I was going to by Ashley
Speaker 4: Madison dot com.
Speaker 1: Because I mean, there's the flip side is it's not
Speaker 1: quite anyway, it's horses for courses.
Speaker 4: Anyway, let's go, thanks mate, and so
Speaker 1: We leave old Pete save Fan Souf and to our
Speaker 1: friends of the radio audience, we've been a pleasant good night.