Morvern Callar with Emily Yoshida

Summary

Blank Check: "Morvern Callar" with Emily Yoshida (Jan 25, 2026)

Podcast: Blank Check with Griffin & David
Episode: Morvern Callar with Emily Yoshida
Date: January 25, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of Blank Check kicks off the miniseries on director Lynne Ramsay, focusing on her enigmatic and haunting 2002 film Morvern Callar. Returning guest Emily Yoshida – a screenwriter, critic, and longtime friend of the pod – joins hosts Griffin Newman and David Sims to dissect one of her all-time favorite movies. The conversation weaves personal enthusiasm with a broader appreciation of Ramsay’s career, film music culture, and how Morvern Callar captures the intangible “outsider” experience. Expect deep dives into Scottish club culture, 2000s indie film history, evocative soundtracks, the art of adaptation, and a celebration of Samantha Morton’s iconic performance.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Personal Connections and Guest Introduction

• Emily Yoshida’s return is likened to the “iron law” of perfect guest booking: “As something that must happen. And now it is finally happening today. Emily Yoshida, mother of blankies.” (Griffin, 07:24)
• Emily discusses her devotion to Morvern Callar (11:42):

  “It is a top five movie for me. I would say top five. ... This might well be my favorite movie that I've ever come on to talk to you guys about.”

• The crew reminisces about trying to see Morvern Callar in rare theater screenings pre-Blu-Ray and its previous unavailability (14:27–15:09).

2. Lynne Ramsay’s Auteur Signature

• The "We Need to Pod About Castvin" miniseries is thematically about “working through struggle— or…staying in the struggle” (Griffin, 05:21)

• Ramsay’s unique power to visualize inner life and emotional catatonia without falling into oppressive or didactic storytelling:

  “I feel like she represents the inner life better than anyone else.” (Griffin, 41:09)
  “She just has such a way with visuals and…is very specific about the actors that she works with. ... There is humor, there is poetry, and there is levity sometimes in the midst of absurd tragedy.” (Emily, 42:52–43:16)

• Ramsay’s work is “about outsiders,” not in the sense of subculture, but people unsure how to function, drifting through society (60:03–61:41).

3. Samantha Morton: A Generational Performance

• Detailing Morton’s tough upbringing, rise through UK youth theater, and break into film (82:51–83:54).
• Her extraordinary vulnerability:

  “She is like so emotionally, like, bracing and vulnerable where there's something a little bit uncomfortable about watching her, where you feel like you shouldn't be watching this. … She was never going to work [as a traditional studio star].” (Griffin, 32:01)

• Morton’s performance style is “translucent, not emoting overly, and so…continuity is hard to track—this is a real ‘the camera can see you think’ performance.” (Griffin, 94:27)

4. The Plot, Adaptation, and Tone of Morvern Callar

• The plot: a young Scottish supermarket clerk, Morvern, discovers her boyfriend’s suicide and appropriates his novel as her own.

• The adaptation process:

  • The source novel is written in stream-of-consciousness Scots, posing translation challenges (39:46–40:15).
  • Ramsay’s genius was to strip the film of monologue/voiceover—“which makes the movie a five star masterpiece...999 out of a thousand people would leave some amount of voiceover in if the book is this.” (David, 79:04)
  • She omits a pregnancy plot and avoids conventional “literary” narration; the film remains enigmatic, respecting Morvern’s inscrutability.

• The film’s unique opening:

  “The movie opens, she's lying on the floor lit by Christmas decorations going on and off, sort of entwined in a body... It's a Christmas movie.” (Griffin, 62:47)

  • Extended scenes of stillness, deadpan gallows humor, and the practical, even mundane, efforts Morvern makes in reaction.

5. Friendship, Alienation, and the Outsider Experience

• Emily highlights the core tension as not just being a void, but truly marginalized:

  “I think it is about truly being marginal as a person. She’s feeling alienation from the youth culture in her town...but [also] fundamental disinterest and boredom with art as a mannered thing as represented by the publishers at the end.” (Emily, 58:08)

• The “friend betrayal” plotline and the ambiguity of Morvern’s motivations:

  “I think it's all improvisational. I think it's all instinctual, moment to moment.” (Griffin, 150:10)

  • “These aren't oppressive, punishing movies. They are intense mood movies... Even you, Ben, were, like, worried... It's not what you think it's gonna be.” (Griffin, 44:36)

6. The Soundtrack as Emotional Narrative

• The mixtape left behind is positioned as the “real suicide note” (136:10, Emily):

  “James's mix for Morvern, I think, is a more interesting suicide note than the one he actually leaves.”

• Extensive discussion of music licensing, diegetic vs. nondiegetic cues, and the nostalgic art of mixtape curation (121:46–125:56).
  • “The whole thing is—whether it's diegetic or on the soundtrack, it's all the mixtape is my personal feeling.” (Emily, 122:08)
  • Ramsay’s taste: Can, Broadcast, Boards of Canada, Velvet Underground, Apex Twin, etc.

7. Escape, Hedonism, and the Limits of Self-Reinvention

• The Spain sequence’s switch to different film stock marks a tonal and visual break (147:57)
• Evocative discussion of clubbing, the search for oblivion, and the impossibility of escaping one's inner reality:

  “If I'm perceived as a novelist, does that make me a different person? If I have money, does that make me a different person?...The thing she can't escape is, like, actually her inner life. The thing that Lynne Ramsay knows how to bring about cinematically better than anyone else is just, like, her headspace.” (Griffin, 142:32–143:08)

  • Referenced Adam Sandler's SNL “Romano Tours” sketch as “one of the greatest…pieces of art about depression” (142:00)

8. The Scammer & Millennial Narratives

• The appeal of scammer protagonists, and Morvern Callar as a precursor to millennial scammer stories:

  “This is actually about the psychological state that drives one to scam. And it's a lot different than...the dishy New York mag story or whatever.” (Emily, 104:25)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Opening Banter & Scottish Jokes

• “Now I'm choosing not to do a Scottish accent.” (Griffin, 00:24)
• “We are strobing the lights in here, and we're recording in a bathtub.” (Griffin, 06:07 – channeling the film’s surreal mood)

On Lynne Ramsay’s Adaptation Style

• “She takes these books where you're like, how the fuck do you adapt that? Or why would you even try…She finds a way…that, to me, I feel like she represents the inner life better than anyone else.” (Griffin, 41:09)
• “Depiction is not endorsement. In my case, I think it is.” (Emily, 12:50)

On Depression & Processing Tragedy

• “As someone who suffers from, like, pretty extreme depression and anxiety, if I am, like, dealing with something intense, sometimes…I just need to, like, timeshift the emotions of this. I can't handle this right now.” (Griffin, 65:57)
• “For somebody who is probably just depressed all the time anyway, this horrific thing happens…[and] becomes an escape valve.” (Emily, 67:10)

On the Experience of Alienation

• “There’s no assumed normalcy… there's no, like, oh, it's that kind of person with any of her characters…that in itself is life affirming to me.” (Emily, 49:54)

On the Power of the Soundtrack

• “James's mix for Morvern, I think, is a more interesting suicide note than the one he actually leaves.” (Emily, 136:10)
• “Keep the music is like, his ultimate I… More than saying, 'I love you.'” (Griffin, 136:53)

On Millennial Scam Culture

• “It's a movie about a scam. ... This is actually about the psychological state that drives one to scam. And it's a lot different than…the Anna Delvey thing.” (Emily, 104:25)

On the Film’s Ending & Its Ambiguity

• “She’s the only outsider who is like, given a path to the inside. ... The door has been open for her. ... What the fuck happens to this person?” (Griffin, 140:54)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [11:42] – Emily on why Morvern Callar is a top-five film for her
• [39:46–40:15] – On the challenge (and pleasure) of reading the source novel
• [41:09] – Ramsay as master of visualizing internal experience
• [58:08–59:56] – Emily on the core existential tension: being an outsider among outsiders
• [67:10] – Using tragedy as an “escape valve” for depression
• [121:39–125:56] – Discussion of the soundtrack, mixtape curation, and music as emotional language
• [136:10] – “James's mix … a more interesting suicide note than the one he actually leaves”
• [142:00] – Adam Sandler SNL “Italy Tours” sketch and the impossibility of self-reinvention
• [147:57] – Film stock change when Morvern leaves the tourist hotel in Spain

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Tone & Language

• The episode retains the irreverent, literate, and deeply movie-nerd tone of the Blank Check brand.
• Frequent use of wry humor—often self-deprecating—as well as honest talk about depression and trauma, balanced by a sincere appreciation for film as art and life-raft.
• The conversation moves nimbly from personal anecdote to close film analysis to silly digressions, but the love for Morvern Callar and the work of Lynne Ramsay is consistent and heartfelt.

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Final Thoughts

This episode stands as both a personal love letter to Morvern Callar and an intellectual tribute to Lynne Ramsay’s singular vision. Emily Yoshida’s passion anchors the discussion, leading to rich insights on grief, alienation, the paradoxical pleasures of hedonistic escape, and why “depiction is not endorsement.” The Blank Check hosts remind listeners that films about trauma can be life-affirming, and sometimes the strangest, most specific, and most uncomfortable movies are the truest mirrors to our inner lives.

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Listen if you want:

• A passionate and nuanced breakdown of Morvern Callar
• Deep dives on soundtracks and indie music culture
• Talk about scammer narratives, mix tapes, and millennial malaise
• Context on early-2000s film distribution and UK/US indie cinema
• Life-affirming yet unsentimental discussion of depression and how movies can process pain

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Next week: We Need to Talk About Kevin. (Trigger warnings all around.)

Transcript

[Griffin]

Blank check with Griffin and David. Blank check with Griffin and David. Don't know what to say or to expect. All you need to know is that the name of the shadow is Blackjack. I wrote it for you.

[Emily Yoshida]

I love you.

[Griffin]

Be brave. I left money in the bank for the funeral. The card is in the drawer. You know the code. Keep the podcast for yourself. Now I'm choosing not to do a Scottish accent.

[David]

I was literally about to say.

[Emily Yoshida]

Because it's typed.

[David]

It is typed in. And. And I don't think you have a perfect Scottish accent.

[Griffin]

Oh, really? Is that.

[David]

Maybe you do, baby. You do. Maybe I don't support you.

[Griffin]

I love you.

[David]

Be brave. Right now. It sounds like it's from, like, the 17th century.

[Griffin]

I left money in the bank for the funeral. The card is in the drawer. Do you know the code?

[David]

Ben, you said you wanted.

[Griffin]

Ogres are like onions.

[David]

We'll introduce the buckets.

[Griffin]

Keep the podcast for yourself.

[David]

Ben, you. You said you wanted Griffin to do some clickety clack keyboard stuff.

[Griffin]

Yeah, but I feel like that's a post job.

[David]

And I said, well, you could put that in. You said, I missed those old keyboards. Well, remember when I had the clickety clack keyboard in Covet? And you guys were like, david, we can't hear a single thing you're saying because clickety clackity clack. Anytime you Google something.

[Griffin]

There is a reason we complained about that. Because it's so.

[David]

So. Yes, I think it was fair if you'd complain about it. I'm joking.

[Guest or Producer]

It's also because in this movie, there's a little bit of clickety clack when you were using your keyboard, it was kind of a little bit more.

[David]

Sometimes I'm looking something. How dare you. I'm sure it was very.

[Guest or Producer]

Sounded like a damn room of monkeys using a type note.

[Griffin]

Honey, going over a waterfall cannot overstate how loud and persistent it was one.

[David]

Of those, like, Covid things where you're metal machine music. You're in Covid. I don't know if you remember this guest who I suppose this in speaking.

[Griffin]

Did you remember Covid? I don't know if you remember that.

[Emily Yoshida]

Wait, what?

[Griffin]

The novel Coronavirus where you're.

[David]

You suddenly are like, I think I need to buy something to this week to, you know, so that the wolves don't bark at the door. And then like, you. You go on like wire cutter or whatever, and they're like, you know what rocks is a mechanical keyboard. And you're like, maybe that will bring me joy.

[Emily Yoshida]

I think I got a similar keyboard.

[David]

And you get one. You're like, clack, clack, clack. This is fun.

[Griffin]

You do a podcast Wirecut Note. Not for professional podcasters.

[Emily Yoshida]

Right. I mean, you don't have a directional mic situation. I do.

[David]

I think they were just hearing it. Honestly, more than anyone else. Yeah, it was David. Quite distracting.

[Griffin]

Types a lot. And we cannot state how loud it was.

[Emily Yoshida]

You always gotta Google a thing or.

[David]

I think you guys might not even remember the early days of COVID We didn't even have our now fired researcher JJ Bur and so I was still like googling like what happened in Back to the Future.

[Griffin]

So tough. We wake up every morning and be like, I wish I had someone to fire.

[Emily Yoshida]

Wait, did you. You fire.

[Griffin]

We fire him every week. A couple times a week. It's a bit we've stolen from Doughboys. I realized this. It took too long for me to realize.

[David]

I don't think I know because I think I was the one initially doing it. And if I stole it from Doughboys, it was subconscious.

[Griffin]

I think it's. Yes. I don't think it's. I think much like I. I just.

[David]

Fired it because I, you know, jj, he just kind of grinds my gears and I want him out of this.

[Griffin]

Well, he's bad astrology.

[David]

I want him to leave the company.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

Does he listen to the podc has.

[David]

Like our biggest fan.

[Emily Yoshida]

Has he heard your notes? Cuz you know he should shake.

[Griffin]

He will text us five times within the first minute of this episode.

[Guest or Producer]

Wait, what was the Doughboys bit? Who were they firing?

[Griffin]

They were firing y Song all the time. I don't think we're school.

[David]

Yeah, that sounds cool. But then yoo song was dead. I feel the ghost. Right? Yeah.

[Griffin]

I was just going to say, do you remember when we did the king cast and we did that on Riverside where we weren't on Zoom? There was no Right.

[David]

I think Ben wasn't. Were you even participating in that? You probably spared that nightmare of just David guest spot. Yeah.

[Griffin]

And not the show.

[David]

The show's great. Just the nightmare of the technical nonsense.

[Griffin]

Like 40 minutes into the episode. I think it was the dearly departed Scott Wampler who went, I'm sorry, David, what the is happening? Because of the mechanical keyboard, he couldn't see it and it was just like 40 minutes.

[David]

Got a wonderful guy. Yeah, the best.

[Griffin]

A wonderful man. Did many great. The list was calling out your one of his finest works.

[David]

What's this podcast, Griffin?

[Griffin]

This podcast is called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

[David]

I'm David.

[Griffin]

It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. This is a me series I've been wanting to do for so long. One of my favorite living filmmakers.

[David]

I feel like we years ago, we're basically kind of like her next movie. Hey, shake hands. Whatever it is we're doing her, knocking her out.

[Emily Yoshida]

Well, that would have been what, seven years ago? So you were never.

[Griffin]

Yeah, here's 2017.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

And it's basically when I see that, I'm like, I'm calling it next one. Yeah, she. She basically works on a once every seven years clip. Kind of. This is a miniseries called we need to post about cap.

[David]

You can do it.

[Griffin]

This is a miniseries called we need to Pod about cast vin.

[David]

There you go.

[Emily Yoshida]

See, if you didn't trip over at the. I mean, you would know it wasn't a good miniseries. Exactly.

[Griffin]

That you need the struggle. That's what these movies are about. They're about working through struggle. Or I'd say that we're accurately about staying in the struggle.

[David]

This is called you need. We need to pot about cast vin.

[Griffin]

We need to pot about cast vin.

[Emily Yoshida]

And we do.

[Griffin]

We do.

[Emily Yoshida]

We do urgently later.

[Griffin]

But we'll get to that. We'll get to that next week. Talk about a big gap. Today we're talking about our second film. What the fuck just happened? Great.

[Guest or Producer]

Did you almost spill your Diet Coke?

[David]

Yes.

[Emily Yoshida]

Easy Sims raging out over there.

[David]

Fine. If this laptop gets busted, I can buy a new one with a mechanical keyboard. Clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack. Sorry.

[Guest or Producer]

God, the E is hitting everybody in this room differently.

[Griffin]

I know. Really? And we are strobing the lights in here. We should mention. And we're recording in a bathtub.

[Emily Yoshida]

Shit, I should have brought my stuff. Strobe light. That would have been amazing.

[Griffin]

I. I had that thought while watching this of, like, it's really a shame that Dalton Trumba didn't live long enough to see Morgan.

[David]

He would have. That's true.

[Griffin]

Finally, an appropriate amount of bathtubs.

[Emily Yoshida]

And writing.

[Griffin]

And writing.

[Emily Yoshida]

Clicky clacking bathtubs and novels.

[David]

Yeah. Dalton Trumbo would have loved my clickety clack face. That would have been his favorite face podcast. He would have loved it.

[Griffin]

Today we're talking about 2002's Morver and Cowler and our guest today returning to the show, long overdue and I've seen it. I've seen it over the last year.

[David]

Not. But last night, I saw on our.

[Griffin]

Reddit, someone said, last night, just last night, what's been going on? And she mentioned to me the other night, she was like, did you guys lose my number? Why didn't I get called in for Fargo?

[Emily Yoshida]

You guys have gotten too big for me.

[Griffin]

Why didn't I. No, no, the answer is, we knew, like, there's a new Ramsey coming.

[David]

Yeah, that was it.

[Griffin]

We're saving the spot.

[David]

We had actually written you in without telling you, which we sometimes will do that. Like, someone will text me, being like, hey, if you are doing that direct, I'd be interested. I'd be like, oh, sorry, we already wrote you in. We didn't even tell you. Sorry.

[Griffin]

It's one of the most Iron Law guest bookings we've ever had. Like Hannah Ratliff doing Altman's Popeye. It's just etched in stone.

[Emily Yoshida]

Incredible.

[Griffin]

As something that must happen. And now it is finally happening today. Emily Yoshida, mother of blankies.

[Emily Yoshida]

Did somebody miss their mommy?

[Griffin]

Writer of Shogun. Writer on Shogun.

[Emily Yoshida]

On Shogun.

[Griffin]

Host of the Shogun podcast.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yes.

[David]

And then what's your Traders podcast called?

[Emily Yoshida]

First to Breakfast, A Traders podcast, which will be bringing it back, as far as I know, for the next season. So Mama's home.

[David]

Do you do American Traders or British Traders?

[Emily Yoshida]

We do American Traders. We thought about doing it for British Traders right afterwards, because I think they went straight into it. Yeah, it went straight into the British season, and it was like, it's too.

[David]

And the British.

[Emily Yoshida]

Did you know that podcasting is hard work?

[David]

It's a lot. And the British one is non celebs. But now they've done a celeb edition.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, they just, I think, wrapped up.

[David]

Or the American one is celebs.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, it started off kind of a mix of celebs and regs, and then it became just celebs, and now they're gonna do a regular season. I have put in my application. I know everybody's very worried, and they want to make sure that I am on the debut normie season of. Of Traders. But, you know, still no word back. So hopefully they're listening to this right now. I. I can show my devotion to Scottish culture through this podcast today.

[Griffin]

So the celeb season was mostly past reality TV show.

[David]

The Brit, the British.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

And that's the British ecosystem of reality tv, where they're like. And now celebrity Big Brother, who's on it? People from other big brothers, celebrities. Due to their behavior and shows that.

[Griffin]

Ripped off Big Brother. Now they're going on the mothership.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

It is just fascinating. I'm not commenting on anything new here, but there's an ecosystem of like if you pop on reality competition, you basically can just jump around them in perpetuity.

[Emily Yoshida]

You're set up and if it's a Bravo one, you're set for life. You can go on any Bravo show. You go to BravoCon, you get those appearance fees. It's a whole career.

[Griffin]

I feel like for a while it was one and done. It's like if you're in Survivor, they're not going to let you on the.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh no.

[Griffin]

Amazing Race. And now everyone does everything.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, I mean I think once Liz Hasselback got on the View, it was just like, oh wow. You can really go as far as you want with very little talent or.

[Griffin]

Absolutely doing what's she doing or how she doing.

[Emily Yoshida]

Nobody needs to know. It's. It's fine.

[Griffin]

I'm sure she's furious about something.

[Emily Yoshida]

But I, I mean as practice for my inevitable turn on, on, on regular people Traders, I, I did have my own. I hosted my own Traders game for my birthday this year and it was pretty fun. So now I have a new. Speaking of other careers, I have a new career I can do which is like mystery dinner party host, part time oncoming. So yeah, just putting it out there.

[Griffin]

I don't know if you remember, you.

[David]

Wrote a children's book called God's Masterpiece.

[Emily Yoshida]

Jesus Christ.

[Griffin]

I don't know if you remember this, but the. The day of your traitor's birthday party was when I took a made a pilgrimage with our mutual friend Alex Guter to pick up the David lynch atmospheric water Generator.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh yes.

[Griffin]

He was worried about being able to make it.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yes. And that was supposed to end up in my home as a temporary resting place. As a temporary resting place which I didn't even know they. I guess he changed his mind before I was even consulted about it. Like surely Emily would not want to house this water generator. I was like, what are you talking about? There's a package that has a mailing label with David Lynch's address on it and I could have it in my home.

[David]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

But I ended up seeing it recently. Recently actually at the office. He's keeping it now.

[Griffin]

It's pretty incredible.

[Emily Yoshida]

Took a photo.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

It'd be funny if we rented a whole office just for people could like just go look upon it.

[Griffin]

Will you assure them it's like it's pretty cool to see in person?

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, I, I, I did a little bit of eye rolling when I was told about it at first. And then I saw it in person. I was like, this is cool. I don't even know what it is. It's a water generator, but yeah, it's, it's big. It's like this.

[Griffin]

It's not oversell.

[David]

How big the thing about it is. It's the footprint of this thing is not small.

[Griffin]

And even though it hasn't been open, it's louder than a mechanical keyboard. Emily Morvin Keller.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Is it your number one favorite movie of all time or is it kind of just like your heart's off?

[David]

I, I was definitive, Emily.

[Emily Yoshida]

It is. It is. It is a top five movie for me. I would say top five. Like, it's up there. I think that I was looking through my blank check appearances, and I'm pretty sure that it's like this and Castle in the sky are probably this. This might well be my favorite movie that I've ever come on to talk to you guys about.

[David]

This is the 16th film you've discussed on this show.

[Griffin]

Sweet 16.

[David]

If we're including Babe, which we should.

[Griffin]

We should.

[David]

He's a gallon.

[Griffin]

We must. Yes.

[David]

And you've, you've talked about movies you love. Welcome to Marwin. Welcome to Marwin. Marwin.

[Emily Yoshida]

Welcome to, welcome to Morvern Galar.

[Griffin]

Welcome.

[David]

I mean, I'm sure you're, you're, you know, you really, you do really like the Handmaiden. You really.

[Emily Yoshida]

I do, yeah. I actually rewatched that.

[David]

I mean, like, through the Road.

[Emily Yoshida]

No, I've had some really, really fun ones. I mean, and movies that I hold near and dear to my heart.

[David]

But this one is.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, Castle sky is very special to me. And this one is.

[David]

Yeah, just the Emily Bible, if I'm reading, you know, like, those are chapters in.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, yeah. I, I hope that is a compliment considering everything that goes down in this film. But, yeah, I would say depiction is not endorsement. In my case, I think it is.

[Griffin]

Okay. Yeah, we, like, we think she's cool.

[Emily Yoshida]

I think she did nothing wrong. Everything she did is good.

[Griffin]

It was right, actually. It was very correct.

[Emily Yoshida]

The more I watch it, the more time that goes by, the more I lean toward that opinion of Morvin Keller. Did nothing wrong. I think I kind of. Because the whole thing with it, we'll get into the plot, but the whole thing with Lana and the betrayal involved there is kind of played for laughs for so much of it. I think the first couple times I saw it. And also I Probably didn't see it with, like, subtitles the first time I saw it. So a lot of stuff is easy to get lost in, in the sound mix if you're not a native Scottish speaker. But I think. I think, yeah, the more clarity I have about that and like, think more about their friendship. I'm leaf. Yeah. That girl.

[Griffin]

Was it a birthday or was it when you were leaving New York that you did the kind of like, Morvin caller screen?

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh, yeah, no, that was really fun. That was so they. I think at the time there was maybe one or two tops, like existing prints of it in circulation and they happened to be. It was making the rounds. I think it must have been around. We need to. We need to. You were never really here.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

And so it was at a couple of theaters here. But I remember they did a. I think it was a bam. They. They showed it there and I just sort of. I remember this is back in the days of Twitter being a place that people hung out and occasionally had a nice time. I. I basically was like, okay, I'm picking the screening. You know, anybody who follows me, let's get tickets and, you know, let's hang out afterwards and talk about Morvin Keller.

[Griffin]

It was basically a, like, loudly announced, this is important to me.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

I invite anyone else to come experience this with me.

[Emily Yoshida]

Well, and I was such a. There was the scarcity thing with it then because there wasn't a 4k out. The only way to watch it. Yeah, yeah. The new one. That's pretty new. That came out within the last five years.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

I feel like. And that is sold out, like, you know.

[Griffin]

Yeah, yeah. Hell yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

One is still sealed at home because I, you know, you never know these things. We. We've learned our lesson so many times now with things going in and out of circulation.

[Griffin]

Well, this is the one. That movie with, like defunct distributors.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

It like, fell into, like, legal, like, kind of ambiguity for a while.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. I don't know the whole timeline of that. I just know that for the longest time, the only way you could watch it was like the shittiest transfer imaginable on Amazon Prime. Like, just off. Like, this is a beautiful movie. Among other things. Just like cinematography, all the above, the music, it's all stuff that you actually want to have, like a pretty, you know, faithful thing of. And it looked like it was like, you know, something out of a cracker back. Cracker. Cracker barrel box. Yeah, Cracker barrel. Something out of a cracker barrel.

[David]

And the. The woke cracker.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[David]

The later One where he has not even a baseball barrel or whatever. What did they even change? They just got into the guy.

[Griffin]

The guy and the barrel.

[Emily Yoshida]

It was just because they hate men.

[Griffin]

They hit men and they hit barrel.

[David]

Barrels, the most masculine of water containers.

[Emily Yoshida]

Well, I mean, you know, in a pinch, it's also like a dress if you're a guy who loses his. That is so true.

[David]

And I've been in that situation where I had to reach for my barrel.

[Griffin]

Yeah. The Blu Ray didn't come out until 2022 and there were less than 3,000 copies made. And there's one on eBay for $80. But this movie is like rentable and streamable again.

[David]

Yeah, yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

Can you like on itunes or whatever you can.

[Griffin]

It's on Amazon prime right now. It seems rentable.

[Emily Yoshida]

I don't think the Amazon. I still think that the Amazon prime one is shitty. I. I could be wrong.

[Griffin]

You know what? I. I was pulling it up to try to get the. The text, the opening text, and it was far worse than what we had just watched. Yeah, like significant.

[Emily Yoshida]

Gorgeous. It's. Yeah.

[David]

It's not completely vanished, at least.

[Griffin]

No, it feels like there was. Right. They clawed back some clarity of who owns this movie and how they can license. Right.

[David]

Because this was an Alliance Atlantis.

[Griffin]

Yes. But then I was looking. The American distributor was a name I didn't even recognize.

[David]

Momentum. That was a uk.

[Griffin]

That was a production.

[David]

We'll find it.

[Griffin]

You know what?

[David]

I'm sure this will be in the dossier and less unless you do a.

[Griffin]

Job about to get fired. When did you see this for the first time, Emily?

[Emily Yoshida]

Well, I'm pretty sure I saw this at. And sometimes I have mixed up memories of this because there was a student movie theater at University of Iowa called the Bijou, which still exists, but called the what? The Bijou. And it was just in the student union. You could go see like I saw, you know, a bunch of me Gay films. I saw, you know, any art house thing that came through usually like a year after it had been released. Like we were very. But it was a very important place. And I. I believe that is where I saw this for the first time. And I'm pretty sure I saw it, like I said, without any subtitles, which changes a lot. But I. But the soundtrack was so important to me. I think that they released a disc. I never had that, but I just think like I was very in my, you know, Boards of Canada, like Warp Records era in high school. And so that plus like the Velvet Underground stuff, all the canned Stuff it.

[Griffin]

Did release the soundtrack they did on cassette.

[David]

Cd.

[Emily Yoshida]

It'd be cool if it was cassette. I'm somebody's somebody's got to do that. Whoever made these bespoke Lou and Davis albums for you is got to get on the Morvin Collar mixtape.

[Griffin]

Yeah. Moshe Mutant. That feels like a good product. The Morvern Color mixtape replica with the soundtrack on it.

[Guest or Producer]

Get on it. Yeah, Mo get on it.

[Griffin]

Had you seen Rat Catcher at that point?

[Emily Yoshida]

No, I had it. Rat Catcher became a real touch point in film school, actually. Like, I feel like my little club of nerds that I was friends with, we were very much. That was sort of in rotation as far as stuff that was inspirational to us. But I didn't. I hadn't seen it before. I didn't know who Lynn Ramsey was. All I knew that it was this movie with a cool soundtrack and Samantha Morton in it. So.

[David]

Right. Who is Samantha Morton? Was kind of like just starting to pop in a major way.

[Griffin]

You know, it's crazy because I was, you know.

[David]

It's crazy.

[Griffin]

Well, you don't know what I'm about to say.

[David]

No, no.

[Griffin]

You can disagree if you don't think it's crazy, but I'm going to make the argument.

[David]

What is it?

[Griffin]

I. I almost did like a comma Glocklin Blue Velvet Dune flip with this where I thought of this as being the breakthrough. And you're like, no, this is like three years after the Sweet and Lowdown nomination. This is the same year as Minority Report. Yeah, this is the wild.

[David]

That's what I mean by the breakout because it was low down. It was like she got the deserved nom. Interesting movie. Not a movie I have seen in many, many years. But obviously Sweet and Low down made a nominal sum at the time. It was not a big Woody Almo. And then right like after that, I think she's mostly a couple stuff and she's in Jesus on. But that was a little movie and like apart from that, like, that's the.

[Griffin]

Same year as Sweet and Low down though. And then this year is Morvin Cowler, Minority Report and there's one other film.

[David]

The film she got the Oscar nomination for. But in America.

[Griffin]

But oh, but that doesn't come out states until 2003.

[David]

2003.

[Griffin]

So she gets a nomination the following year. I. I just always think of this as being her like Breaking the Waves. Who the fuck is this?

[David]

Absolutely.

[Griffin]

And instead, even though it was very much a like leveling up, like, oh shit, we didn't know she was this good. She Has a nomination under her belt. She had done British indies before this, but she is someone who kind of breaks out on TV first, and that leads to her movie castings.

[David]

We can talk about it.

[Griffin]

We can.

[David]

She's in The Absolutely Incredible 1996 Emma with Kate Beckinsale as Harriet, you know, as Brittany Murphy.

[Emily Yoshida]

As Brittany Murphy. Canonically Brittany Murphy. Yes.

[David]

I saw this film in theaters because I saw Ratcatcher not in theaters, but when it. So shortly after it came out, because my mom interviewed Lynne Ramsey for Ratcatcher.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[David]

Lord knows why my mom had this phase. I believe it was the great grand Fuller, who's still a New York Film Critics Circle member. I think Graham was the editor of the New York Daily News art section. And Graham is an arty fella. And even though it was the Daily News, which is in New York tabloid where my mom worked for many years, it used to be a real newspaper. Now it's nothing. And I think it was a less arty set, but he tilted at arty for a little while. So when Graham was in charge, he would. And we lived in England, he would tell my mom, like, hey, go interview this Scottish director with a sort of vaguely big debut. I mean, Rat Catcher is a true tiny indie, but it did make waves.

[Griffin]

It made waves, and I feel like it has a reputation as still one of those kind of, like, definitively important film school movies.

[David]

Like. Like. Like Emily was saying, still kind of.

[Griffin]

Discovered by people because, you know, she.

[David]

Won the BAFTA for, like, best debut and all that. You know, there was.

[Griffin]

If you're, like a young aspiring filmmaker, there are movies like that you can watch where you're like, this is this person's first film. They made it for how little money?

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

And I've never seen a movie like, for. And it can kind of explode your brain in terms of understanding the possibilities of film language.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. That you can do something that's very cohesive and just feels like of a very specific vision for. Not that much and.

[Griffin]

And fully realized right out of the game.

[David]

I like the little pretentious boy that I was. Was like, she was on my radar, I guess. I'm also. I'm reading the magazines. I'm reading Sight and Sound. I'm.

[Griffin]

I'm plugged in the mags. We don't love reading.

[David]

So I. And. And I was. Yeah, Samantha Morton. Right. Like, she was a name a little bit. So, yeah, I was hyped to see this. I saw this in theaters when I was 16 years old. I'm proud to admit. I think it went a smidge over my head when I was 16 years old. I thought it was cool, but I think I was kind of like, whoa. Like, you know, I don't. I don't know if I was fully ready for Morvern Khaler at that age, but the vibe was cool. I was less of a club kid. I don't know if this is shocking to you guys. It wasn't really like, the type to.

[Emily Yoshida]

Like, ever took a knee.

[David]

Yeah. Go rave in a pizza. Like, I don't know. Does this.

[Griffin]

What about that infamous dorm room picture of you biting your lower lip, pumping your fist?

[David]

There's like 4 billion of them in.

[Griffin]

Like a sleeping bag or something.

[Guest or Producer]

That is a classic drum and bass era, dude.

[David]

I shouldn't laugh because I never went to Glasto. Now I did go to Glastonburg.

[Griffin]

Cool.

[David]

I think of a glass. Well, 2003.

[Griffin]

Well, yeah. Who was playing? Robert Keller?

[David]

Radio. Yeah. No, I went because it was radio.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[David]

That was the sort of way that got me over the line because I was always like, I don't think I'll enjoy that. It was Radiohead doing Hail to the Thief, you know, like, that was the album they were promoting and it was pretty cool.

[Griffin]

I don't think there is a single musical act that could get me to go to a festival these days.

[David]

No, no, no. It was a little more pliable back then.

[Emily Yoshida]

I'm not a damp festival gal. Like, not. Not a wet fest.

[David]

If your fest is in the UK is likely.

[Griffin]

I would say I'm neither a damp festival gal nor a drive.

[David]

Yeah, you don't want to dry out neither.

[Griffin]

If it's an indoor festival and I'm the only person there and I can.

[David]

Watch it from a bed, on a couch or bed.

[Guest or Producer]

Yes, I'm wet or dry, baby.

[Griffin]

Yeah, you'll take it away.

[David]

I don't think I had seen Morvern Keller again until I went to BAM to see it with you, Emily. Okay, screen that you guys are talking about. I don't. And I remember being like, yeah, this. This rocks, man.

[Griffin]

David.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

This episode is brought to you by mubi, the global film company that champions great cinema. It champions it.

[David]

Unlike the others.

[Griffin]

No, they cry it barbarian. It. From iconic directors to emerging oturs, there is always something new to discuss. Discover with mubi. Each and every film is hand selected so you can explore the best of cinema.

[David]

You can log on to MUBI and check out all the movies they got.

[Guest or Producer]

You know, art house, you know, cool.

[David]

Indie stuff, foreign stuff. Okay. This is awesome. What There's a movie star movie now streaming on MUBI in the US Covered on blank checks.

[Griffin]

Well, I think that's the headline.

[David]

Yeah. Die, My love.

[Griffin]

Yes. You're gonna need to watch it if you want to keep up with the show. True, true.

[David]

I mean, I guess, you know, do what you want. You don't have to. But we recommend viewing the film.

[Griffin]

Please view the film.

[David]

Die, My Lovely. Ramsey's film.

[Griffin]

Great.

[David]

Came out last year. It was a canon that came out last fall in 2025. It's a visceral and uncompromising portrait of a woman engulfed by love and madness. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, who was nominated for Golden Globe, Robert Pattinson. It's kind of mostly those two, so very heavy on the two of them.

[Griffin]

Yeah, some. Some top shelf Nolte. I was gonna say some seasoning of Nolte and Spacek, but this is dry.

[David]

Age, let me tell you. Oh, yeah, you've got them in there, but yeah, it's a lot. It's. It's a big showstopper movie for J Law and rpats. Yeah, even our Pat's knows he's playing second fiddle. Sure. But then there's busting out the cello.

[Griffin]

A lemon pepper dry rub of Nick Nolte.

[David]

I love lemon pepper, guys. I love Nick Nolte. I love Nick Nolte, too. Look at Lynne Ramsey making her eagerly awaited filmmaking return. Obviously, that's why we're covering her on podcast.

[Griffin]

We've been waiting for her to make.

[David]

Another movie, and it was on the shortlist for cinematography at the 90th Academy Awards. I didn't even know that. That's awesome. It's a passionate, complicated, destructive love story between two major stars in Lawrence and Pattinson, who'd never been together on screen before. Before.

[Griffin]

I know.

[David]

I guess that's not that surprising. But they are quite a pair.

[Griffin]

The. The Bat and the Cat. K A T N I S S. Oh, Katniss.

[David]

Yeah, The Bat and the Steek Mystique.

[Emily Yoshida]

That is.

[Griffin]

Oh, sure.

[David]

Yeah. It's an awesome movie.

[Griffin]

It's an awesome movie. Is that something. He's played a lot of freaks. Sure, sure.

[David]

The spoiler alert for the episode. But I was a big fan of the film. I know you were, Ben.

[Griffin]

Have you seen it yet?

[Guest or Producer]

I haven't seen it yet.

[Griffin]

Ben, you're gonna like it a lot.

[David]

It's also based on a book by Ariana Horowitz.

[Griffin]

Mm. Anyway, there's so much good stuff to watch on Mubi.

[David]

There's also awesome other good stuff.

[Griffin]

If you're not a member. This is a perfect month to sign up in order to keep up with the show, to stream the best of cinema, you could Try MUBI free for 30 days at MUBI.comblankcheck that's M u b I.com blankcheck for a whole month of great cinema for free. David.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

Hello?

[Emily Yoshida]

Hello.

[Griffin]

Nope. You cut me off.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh.

[Griffin]

Hello Fresh.

[Guest or Producer]

Whoa.

[Griffin]

Let me finish speaking.

[David]

I. I so rarely cut you off.

[Griffin]

Eleven years in, I still have some new tricks.

[David]

Hello, Fresh.

[Griffin]

Hello Fresh. This new year, nothing hits like home cooking. Boy, do I know it. Hello, Fresh. Brings back the joy of the kitchen and, and the kitchen's been joyless for far too long. With recipes that feel good and taste delicious night after night. Feel good and taste delicious. It's a potent mix.

[David]

Isn't your kitchen super delightful because your oven's filled with action figures or whatever?

[Griffin]

That was an earlier.

[David]

Okay, okay.

[Griffin]

An earlier era. Okay, look.

[David]

Hellofresh. It's a very, very. I feel like it's the number one meal kit service because like I'm always. Whenever you see one of those kind of recommendation websites with like, ah, here are all the options. Hellofresh, always at the top.

[Griffin]

It does feel like that, doesn't it?

[David]

Yeah. Over a hundred mouthwatering recipes each week. I'm gonna take a look at some. I got some a loaded shawarma style chicken and rice bar. 30 minutes it takes to make this.

[Griffin]

I like protein of that veggie pack.

[David]

Mm, difficulty medium.

[Griffin]

Okay, what's the easiest?

[David]

Okay, you want an easy one?

[Griffin]

Give me the easiest.

[David]

All right, listen. One pan cheesy chicken tortilla melts dark meat chicken green pepper, spicy cream sauce. 20 minutes difficulty easy. This looks pretty good.

[Griffin]

I like every one of those words.

[David]

I love how like the menu it like, it tells you like what are the allergens? What may be, you know, little things might you need extra like some butter, some cooking oil, but almost everything else is there different?

[Griffin]

People eat differently. And with Hellofresh, you can choose from 35 plus high protein weekly recipes including new Mediterranean and GLP friendly options made with wholesome ingredients like sustainably sourced seafood and 100% antibiotic and hormone free chicken.

[David]

Wow. They got steak, they got seafood, surf and turf. Three times more seafood options at no extra cost. Seasonal produce, stone fruit, corn on the cob. It feels more summery, but okay.

[Griffin]

Yeah, look, maybe you want to eat for the season. You want, want to hear this tagline? Yeah.

[David]

Because when dinner tastes this good, nothing hits like home cooking. Yeah. So hellofresh I've used this. You should too. Go to hellofresh.com check10fm. That's check10fm.

[Griffin]

Yeah, I know this. This is a deal they've had for a long time. And you can finish speaking because there's no added bonus onto this deal to.

[David]

Get free 10 free meals.

[Griffin]

Right? Exactly.

[David]

And what a free Zwilling knife.

[Griffin]

A free Zwilling knife. That's a $144.99 value.

[David]

You are correct on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. But hellofresh.com check 10fm for 10 free meals and that freeze willing knife on your third box.

[Griffin]

Goodbye fresh.

[David]

I was so in on Samantha Morton.

[Griffin]

I was gonna say you being such an Oscar boards.

[David]

Exactly right.

[Griffin]

There was this period in the 2000s where she had that energy of like, is this a generational actor? Is this person about to have generational decades long defining run to be getting.

[David]

This kind of attention on a big scale at a young age in like small movies. Like, that's. That's unusual.

[Griffin]

The sweet lowdown nomination was seen as like a major surprise.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

And so was the In America nom.

[David]

She was surprised for either of those.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

It's interesting now that, you know, we. So, you know, Griff and I just saw Die My Love the other day. And it's interesting about Lynne Ramsey. Lynne Ramsey. And it's interesting to think about Jennifer Lawrence sort of in the same frame as far as somebody who like broke out really, really early. But it's like this feels almost like a kind of return to okay, this is the stuff that I should have done before. I got roped into three different franchises and shit. And now that's like, like Samantha Morton was popping before. That was the inevitable path for Samantha Morton. But Jennifer Lawrence, you know, had to come back to it and like get her own production shingle company and like. And like opt really like, you know, opt into this kind of filmmaking again and acting.

[Griffin]

I think Samantha Morton is just like too innately odd. And even more than odd, she is like so emotionally like bracing and vulnerable where there's something a little bit uncomfortable about watching her, where you feel like you shouldn't be watching this. Like, like there's something voyeuristic about the experience of watching one of her performances that I think was always going to prevent her from becoming like a conventional studio movie star. No.

[David]

Yeah. She was never going to work that way.

[Griffin]

Most of her big budget projects are her playing like aliens in sci FI projects. Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

Sticker in a tank. Right.

[David]

She's so fucking good in that movie.

[Griffin]

She's incredible in Minority Report, but also like John Carter and shit. Like, she's used in studio in like otherworldly ways. And like when she's playing a human.

[David]

Character, she plays a lot of villains. Like.

[Griffin]

Right. Yes, there's that as well. I mean, she. She did like fucking three seasons of the Walking Dead.

[David]

She did. She popped up on Walking Dead. I assume it was sort of like one of those storylines where the humans kind of are worse than the zombies. If you think about a certain point of view, yes.

[Griffin]

I believe that.

[David]

It was like, what goes on in your town? And they're like, nothing weird happens in our town. Hide the machetes.

[Griffin]

Charismatic cult leader brings them in. They feel safe. Then it's weird.

[David]

Welcome to Evilville. I mean town. Foodville. Do you want some food?

[Griffin]

The food definitely isn't other people. I truly was.

[David]

I think there are two separate sets of cannibals on the Walking de.

[Griffin]

I think she was the leader of one of them.

[David]

There was a. I used to have to recap that show.

[Emily Yoshida]

I'm so ch.

[Griffin]

Branching out into the spin off. She was like the late season super villain who kind of replaced the Negan.

[David]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

I feel like every Walking Dead season now is like three different colons.

[David]

Well, how many.

[Emily Yoshida]

And it's like how many seasons of.

[David]

Walking Dead do you think there were?

[Griffin]

Because Motherships.

[Emily Yoshida]

But of the official.

[David]

One of the official the Walking Dead.

[Emily Yoshida]

I think that there were like what, 12, 11.

[Griffin]

11, 11 seasons.

[David]

Although the last one had 24 episodes. That's pretty long.

[Emily Yoshida]

My. My favorite Walking Dead series that makes me laugh every time I see it. Is. What is it? It's like Walking Dead. Like Daryl the Book of Carol.

[David]

They did a book of Daryl and a book of Carol.

[Emily Yoshida]

Daryl.

[Griffin]

I think they announced that they were going to do a spin off show that was Daryl and Carol. And then Carol dropped out and they were like, never mind, it's Walking Dead Dixon. And then season two, they were like, surprise, Carol's back. You know, I think it was called Walking Dead. Daryl and Carol. Is that right?

[Emily Yoshida]

Can you imagine, like not having watched any Walking Dead but then be like, hey, I heard they're doing a season about Daryl and Carol. Maybe I'll get in. This is my moment. This is what I'm going to get into this thing.

[Griffin]

Like, are there five of them now?

[David]

I'm gonna. Now we're. Now we'll just have to wrap this little hand up quickly. Can you tell me how many seasons there were of Fear the Walking dead. The original 6, 8.

[Griffin]

Which is Coleman Domingo.

[David]

He was there at some point.

[Griffin]

Cliff Curtis. Yes.

[Emily Yoshida]

And that's. Correct me if I'm wrong. That's the one where they started to be afraid of the zombies.

[Griffin]

That's like the start of the sort of.

[David]

It didn't really have a very definitive, like, take on, like, how it was different apart from. Yes. It was sort of a prequel, kind of. It was really just like another series in the world. Then there was the Walking Dead, World Beyond.

[Griffin]

That's the kids. Like the first generation.

[David]

Ya. Walking Dead, Right? Correct. That was like Stranger Things, Walking Dead. Then there was.

[Emily Yoshida]

Could be making this up right now. I have no idea.

[David]

Tales of the Walking Dead.

[Griffin]

So that's like Walking Dead anthology.

[David]

Correct.

[Griffin]

Okay. Each episode's a standalone.

[David]

Then there was Walking Dead, Dead City. Of course, that was Maggie.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[David]

Who is, of course, Lauren Cohen's character. And Negan, Jeffrey. Dean Morgan's character.

[Griffin]

Definitely needed a whole.

[David]

You know what?

[Guest or Producer]

Actually, I met a listener that had two seasons who worked at a dispensary. He was a stuntman on that series.

[Griffin]

Okay, so Shout Out.

[Guest or Producer]

I can't remember his name, but Good guy.

[David]

Then you have the ongoing the Walking Free joint. The Walking Dead colon. Daryl, which indeed was then rebranded the Walking Dead. Daryl Dixon, the Book of Carol.

[Emily Yoshida]

Daryl Dixon, the Book of Carol.

[David]

And then don't forget that there's also the Walking Dead, the ones who live in which it turns out that Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, the main character, is not dead and lives. And he's hanging out with Danai Guerrero as Michonne, the only. And then you're like, who else is in? They're like, I don't know. Robert De Niro. You're like. It's like everyone. They all had like.

[Griffin]

Yeah, that was the thing where right when they killed him off, he was like, he doesn't want the workload of a full series.

[David]

Sick of being in, like, Georgia for eight months, you know, like, sweating in a beard.

[Griffin]

The start of Rick Grimes movies. That was the announcement was he's not gonna have a spin off. He's gonna make a series of Rick Grimes standalone films. And then they were like, never mind. He's back. He's in a new.

[David]

He's back. They. We. We called and nobody wants to do that, so.

[Griffin]

And he's got a new supporting cast now. That's a lot of people from the old.

[David]

Same.

[Griffin]

The same.

[Emily Yoshida]

It's just.

[David]

I mean, whatever. Like, it's fine. It's it is just funny. After doing nine seasons with like, I think I'm ready to stretch my movie legs. It's like, the iron is cold. You cannot strike it.

[Griffin]

Movies are dead.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, sure. But I mean, partially because of.

[David]

I'm like, this was hot. You know, it was once hot. You could cook an egg on this iron.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

You know, like six years ago, there's that similar.

[Griffin]

The moment that Christopher Maloney chooses to leave SVU and go, like, I really want to make a play in movies was very bizarre timing.

[David]

Yeah. He. He's back, right?

[Griffin]

Oh, he's back big time. Okay, good. Yeah, yeah.

[David]

Now. And he's. He still like hits people's heads against walls and said like, you sick or whatever. Okay, good.

[Griffin]

You disgust me. I'm glad they haven't lost their capacity to be shocked, to care. You know, a job like that can really sensitize.

[David]

Yeah. It be funny if like season 28, they're like, what? Yeah. Okay, let's go get him. I guess. Who cares? What do you do? Fiddled with. Okay. Yeah. It's against the law.

[Griffin]

He starts making like, Megan Kelly.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh my God.

[David]

I shouldn't laugh. Jesus, what a sick, sad world.

[Emily Yoshida]

First time they say a feeble file on svu. We know we're cooked as a culture.

[Griffin]

Christopher Maloney walks out of an interrogation room and say, yeah, we don't need to worry about this guy. He's just an A file. It's not that bad. Just a great line we've drawn in this hand here. As you said, a sad, sick world. One that would fit in on a Walking Dead spin off off Walking Dead, Present day America, Scotland. Okay, here we go. Back on Rails.

[David]

Morven color.

[Griffin]

Morvin Keller.

[David]

So I saw you, Griff. Did you see this in theaters? You would have been a youngster.

[Griffin]

No, I. I actually didn't see it until the. The fun city disc came out again. Again, as Emily was saying screening, which I regretted. Yeah.

[David]

Oh, you weren't there.

[Griffin]

I was not.

[David]

We went to Der Schwarza Cloner afterwards.

[Emily Yoshida]

We did. Yeah.

[Griffin]

Aaron was there.

[Emily Yoshida]

Aaron was there. I mean, trying to think back. When I think back on that, I'm just like, yeah. Who? I don't know. I don't. It's so. It's a fog.

[David]

It's a fog.

[Emily Yoshida]

It's truly. But it was. It was something. It was a fond memory of, of that era.

[David]

Well, you know what's good?

[Emily Yoshida]

Uh huh.

[David]

Movies. Movies. I want to see them.

[Griffin]

Love them.

[Emily Yoshida]

Love them. And this one. What a picture. What a picture.

[David]

It's a normal film.

[Emily Yoshida]

It's a very normal film about a woman with a normal state of mind dealing with a normal situation in a normal way.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Emily, you were saying that you never read the book.

[Emily Yoshida]

I haven't, no. Well, I thought. I thought about doing it just for this occasion, but then I. I mean, there's probably a reason I haven't. Oh, nice. You have it. Okay.

[David]

There's a friend in Scots. Like, I think it's a bit of.

[Griffin]

A tough note, I was gonna say.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh, really?

[Griffin]

I've been trying to.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh, incredible.

[Griffin]

I'm. I'm like. I was committed to the goal of trying to read all these books before the Linzie episodes because the adaptation is so different.

[David]

Right.

[Emily Yoshida]

And.

[David]

But in every case, apart from Ratcatcher, she's. Well, Kevin is pretty long, but the other books are kind of like thin little volumes like that. She's right.

[Griffin]

Oh, this is like 250 pages, but like double spaced and pretty large font. I can get through this, but it is a little similar to Clockwork Orange and Trainspotted.

[Emily Yoshida]

Okay.

[Griffin]

The slang is not as extreme.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

And you were saying while we were watching the movie, like, I've always wanted to read the book, but I'm worried the book would explain some of the stuff I like goes unexplained in the movie. And the book, I have not made it all the way through because it's been a tougher read.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

It's like very modernist and it's basically a stream of conscious monologue.

[Emily Yoshida]

It sounds like it was accurately adapted.

[Guest or Producer]

Correct.

[Griffin]

And it, by the way, the book, as I've gotten through it so far, does not really explain that much.

[Emily Yoshida]

Okay. Okay.

[Griffin]

It is because it's not like her trying to explain herself to the reader. This is what's so incredible about her, in my opinion. And what's so fascinating that after Ratcatcher, she doesn't do original scripts, that it's all adaptations. And she takes these books where you're like, how the fuck do you adapt that? Or why would you even try to adapt that? And she finds a way to make these films that, to me, I feel like she represents the inner life better than anyone else.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yes, a hundred percent.

[Griffin]

And she takes these films that are about, like, just kind of absurd tragedies or like nightmare circumstances. The kind of things that are, like, so dark that people would rarely have the courage to even try to depict them on screen. And also avoids the kind of clean narrative of. It's a story of someone getting through this, overcoming it, working through it. Processing it. There are movies that are absolutely about staying in.

[Emily Yoshida]

In the state.

[Griffin]

The headspace of the unimaginable.

[Emily Yoshida]

I mean, it's funny because it's like, yeah, she does almost uniformly depict people going through kind of unimaginable tragedies or.

[David]

Difficult times, crazy psychological turmoil.

[Emily Yoshida]

And, yeah, can translate that novelistic interiority, I think, through, like, she just has such a way with visuals and, like, you know, I think is very specific about the actors that she works with. And, like, are you down to go on this journey with me, basically? And that's how you get, like a Joaquin and you were never really here. And Jennifer Lawrence and the new one. But, like, I think of it almost as, like, the way that it doesn't feel completely oppressive to watch her movies, except, I would say maybe. And I haven't watched it since it came out. But, like, I don't know that I will ever watch. We need to talk about Kevin again. I find it to be so unpleasant, but aside from that, I think it doesn't. It kind of goes down easier than you would think, I think, because you are so. With the character in it. And that feels, like, counterintuitive.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[Emily Yoshida]

But the fact, like, you know, when you're thinking about somebody, a friend of yours who's going through a rough time, and you just like, oh, my God, I can't. I can't even imagine being them in this situation. But when it's you going through the hard time, you do compartmentalization. You find the absurdness in the situation. There's a whole, like, landscape of textures of what you're. What you're feeling as you're dealing with this tragedy or, you know, whatever you're going through. And I think that she does such a good job, like, it's not you. To uniformly sadness, you know, agony, all of that. That there is humor, there is, you know, poetry, and there is, you know, levity sometimes in the midst of absurd tragedy.

[David]

Definitely. I think that's very fun.

[Griffin]

I think this movie.

[Emily Yoshida]

This movie is super fun. I think it's the. It's probably the fun. We were talking about this the other night.

[David]

It's like, it's her only fun movie.

[Griffin]

The character is committed to trying to have fun in a way. The other. Her other protagonists are not.

[David]

Die My Love is kind of. Is quite funny.

[Griffin]

It's funny, yeah.

[David]

And is. And has that sort of, like, heightened, almost farcical stuff, but I wouldn't. It's not, maybe not fun because it's still quite stressful.

[Griffin]

They were all intense I saw people catching wind of our hints that this was coming up. And there was a lot of, like, sicko mode. Heh, heh, heh. Can't wait five weeks of the darkest ever. And like, people who have seen the Ramsey can and being excited at it, it. Because by and large, and. And Kevin may be the exception here, although I do, I find that film watchable, even though it's the toughest of the five, is that these aren't like, oppressive, punishing movies. They are intense mood movies. They're like deeply felt movies. But even you, Ben, were, like, worried and expressing this to us the other night when we were hanging out, going in of like, when should I watch this? And maybe we should watch this all together at the office. Because I don't know if it's gonna bum me out to watch it. It too much at home. And that's because you read the synopsis, which, like, starts with when she discovers her boyfriend has committed suicide.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

And you're just like, oh, so this movie's immediately going to put me in a bad head space. You're someone who gets very emotionally affected by movies. And we were trying to explain to you the other night out, like, it's not what you think it's gonna be.

[David]

Right. It might sound dark, and I suppose the subject matter is dark, but it's not. Not punishing.

[Griffin]

It's not gonna roll off your back. It's not like you're gonna go like, oh, it deals with it in a light way. But she. Her movies aren't meant to be. They're challenging, but not in that kind of punishing, I want you to suffer way. They're just like very unconventionally structured narrative.

[Emily Yoshida]

She also is just a. She is a movie maker. Like, she is so, like, it's. It's. It's fucking cinema, baby. Like, there's so much to look at and be swept up in. It's not sparse. It's. Her films are never sparse. They're never. They never feel silent or dry or anything. There's just always a wealth of visual ideas. So, you know, even if it is something tough that you're watching, there's. You're still watching a movie.

[Griffin]

They're sensory. They're like, very gripping.

[Guest or Producer]

It feels so lived in in life.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[Guest or Producer]

I was really struck by just how I felt anxiety because I really was, like, so immersed and rooting for the character. And then even at the end, I. It hit me too, of like, we did just watch her cut up her husband and yet boyfriend.

[David]

He deserved a boyfriend.

[Guest or Producer]

Oh, I'm sorry.

[Emily Yoshida]

Still, she's wearing a ring, though. I noticed this time.

[Guest or Producer]

I thought it said in the synopsis, husband.

[Emily Yoshida]

I think his boyfriend.

[David]

At least in I. I take it as boyfriend.

[Guest or Producer]

Either way, it just. It's. You're rooting for her, even though she's. I mean, that's quite an act.

[David]

For some reason. I just always get annoyed right at the start. I'm with her unconsciously. It's not like she says the movie.

[Griffin]

Basically starts with, like, four minutes of total silence.

[David]

Sure. But I'm with her in that. He doesn't say, could you please send the novel? He just says, send the knot. I'm like, you know, can we ask nicely?

[Griffin]

Like, you're.

[David]

You're putting her in a really tough situation.

[Emily Yoshida]

Also, he has.

[David]

And then you're like, FYI, send the novel.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. He has zero explanation of why I did it. Like, it's the most pat. Like, just don't ask any questions. I was tortured. And the fact that the people at the pub column, Dostoevsky. I'm like, was this guy kind of a pain in the ass? Like, I. You know, you kind of.

[David]

Which is. It's a very dark kind of gallows humor way to think about it. But the movie has that gallows humor, and I think is right in that. Like, when she's chopping it up, you're almost like, yeah, good. I'm glad she's getting this out of the way.

[Griffin]

This is.

[David]

Yeah, this is funny. This is. This is a good job by her.

[Emily Yoshida]

Horrible. The smell.

[David]

Right? It's just. It's just, hey, man, it's Scotland too. It's like, yeah, it's like it's a place with the most gallows humor. Because it's dark. Everyone dies when they're 58. Because all I eat is fried marshmallows all the time. Don't come at me.

[Emily Yoshida]

I mean, I think I was also very prime for this movie when I saw it, because aside from being in my Warp Records era, I was also my, like, Bell and Sebastian era. Like, Scotland was, like, over represented in my pop culture intake at the time. So I was just like, like, okay. I kind of. There's this. There is that, like, rye sense of humor that even though this is a very different film than had different tone than a Bell and Sebastian album circa 2000.

[David]

Yes. I would say lovely. Stuart Murdoch is more on the precious side.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yes. But. But very. A lot of those songs are very, very dark. They just sound cute.

[Griffin]

But you're right that it's like a Bone deep sensibility thing where her finding levity and humor in these movies isn't some strategic like, well, I gotta put some jokes in so it isn't too oppressive. It is like that is her worldview. It comes across in the way she like interrogates all of these characters and figures out like burrows into their mind and their feelings. And she's also like a funny person. Like when you read interviews with her and you know, I know you were talking about you had a kind of intense.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, no, it wasn't intense. I wish it would have been intense. It was just like she had no interest in, in even looking at me. The one time I got to, you know, do a panel with her after, I think it was for you were never really here. And you know, I mean, we do a lot of these in our line of work. You get a little desensitized. This was still a big one for me. I was like, this is one of my heroes. And like, how am I going to not come off like a total and ideally, how do I get to have a drink with her after this?

[Griffin]

Right.

[Emily Yoshida]

And it was like, nope, it was not happening.

[Griffin]

Yeah. Do you think maybe you put her.

[Guest or Producer]

Off when you were like, I'm not worried.

[Emily Yoshida]

Worthy.

[David]

I'm not worthy.

[Emily Yoshida]

That might have done like, what is this in reference to? I'm, yeah, it was, I, I, I, I kind of probably blacked it out. I, I, it was humiliating, whatever happened.

[Griffin]

I, I find something perversely life affirming about her movies a because they like make me feel so deeply. And I think a lot of her films have central characters who are kind of catatonic, who are going through such extreme things but don't know how to process them in the moment and almost go numb. But the way she makes her movies makes me feel the range of human experiences, even if it doesn't have some kind of like, sense of conquering the challenge at the end. There's like a little bit of like, just like, well, this is about like being alive. Is this, it's all of this, you know, you hope nothing this extreme ever happens to you.

[Emily Yoshida]

I also just like I, I was thinking this after dying my love, I'm just like so grateful for her just always depicting like people who are not. There's no assumed normalcy like we were saying about anything. And like, I don't know, I just find that so as somebody who often has to deal with notes for things where it's like, can you make this person a little more, you know, whatever relatable or, you know, somebody that we can least understand at first glance. Like, oh, it's that kind of person. There's no, like, oh, it's that kind of person with any of her characters. And I just think that that in itself is life affirming to me because it's like, respectful of. Of a range of human experiences and psychologies.

[Griffin]

We'll crack open the dossier in a moment because there are a lot of good quotes from her about that. But I want to read this first. Sure. Because I opened with the second half of the note he leaves for her. This is the first half. Sorry, Morvern. Don't try to understand it. It just felt like the right thing to do. My novel is on the disc. Print it out and send it to the first publisher on this list. The assumption, if they take it, try the next one down. And then only past that point does it move to the emotional.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

I wrote it for you. I love you. Be brave.

[David]

Right. Right. Okay, fine. I mean, and all right, I'm not trying to discount the experience of whoever this person is, but the movie does discount his experience. Kind of like that's like baked into what you're watching is that he's completely abstract. And so you can project like the darkest tragedy onto him or you can project sort of almost a weird comedy onto it.

[Emily Yoshida]

He was hot, though. Probably. I think he was hot.

[David]

I mean, the guy. She In Spain is hot.

[Emily Yoshida]

I almost got the same. Yeah, she's got taste. And she has like the right. Right.

[David]

She lets the other friend pick off the, like, bucket hat. Weirdo. Loser.

[Guest or Producer]

Straight up wanker.

[David]

Yeah, he is a big wanker. Wanker.

[Griffin]

You know, the other crazy thing is this novel comes out of the exercise of Alan Warner trying to write a book about the boyfriend. He starts it from that.

[David]

Sure, sure. Right.

[Griffin]

And then he goes like. This is feeling like it's a little tropey.

[David]

It's like obvious. Right.

[Griffin]

And he was. What. What's the. The quote. The rigidity of the perspective was frustrating him. And so he was like, as an exercise, like, what if I write her? And then it just all started unfolding, which is that. That adage that everyone says of, like, the way to write a novel is you write 30 pages and throw them out and the book starts on page 31. Like, he almost needed the whole exercise, perhaps of working out the boyfriend as a lead character to then throw out and write the other person.

[David]

And that's probably why it's so good that. Yeah. That there's.

[Emily Yoshida]

Is there any idea in the Book of what? The book. His book is about James.

[David]

Oh, what's his book about? I mean, I just feel like it's some sort of authentic slice of life thing.

[Emily Yoshida]

Sure.

[Griffin]

Right.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[David]

Because like, why else would the publishers be into it? It like, it would be so funny if they were. It's like sci fi.

[Griffin]

They're like, can you explain the rules.

[David]

Of how the spaceship works to us? She's like, what?

[Emily Yoshida]

I mean, the funniest thing to me would be like, if it was about, if the book was called Morvern Keller.

[Griffin]

Sure.

[David]

It was like about her.

[Emily Yoshida]

Because he says, I wrote it for you. And I'm like, is this, you know, some sort of ode to my amazing girlfriend?

[David]

She works at a supermarket. She's so mean.

[Griffin]

It's a book called My Kids Crazy Girlfriend. I I, where I'm in so far and I'm under 100 pages. It hasn't really gotten into it, which does feel like kind of part of it, that the book remains this kind of abstract idea.

[David]

For most of her time in the public sphere, Lynn Ramsey had a career marked by trials and tribulations. But in her early years she had a, A speedy trajectory upward. I would say pretty much to Mervyn Cow. It's after this that it becomes, she becomes very bumpy. Cursed.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

With like all these projects that fall apart and all. Anyway, so she goes to England's National Film and Television School for Education. Then she writes a short film called Small Deaths. It plays at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. Wins the jury prize. The short film jury prize. Her second shortest kill the Day. Her third short is Gas Man. She wins another Cannes jury prize for that. Off of that she gets Rat Catcher. That goes to Ken's Uncertain, Uncertain Regard. She wins the BAFTA for best debut. So it's like things are going great. After the release of Ratcatcher, Ramsey gets attached to the first of many unrealized projects. A multi director anthology project about sex.

[Griffin]

What? What?

[David]

Along with Gaspar Noe and Hal Hartley.

[Griffin]

Never happened. It was a. An anthology series called Uncensored. That was supposed to be Ted Hope and James Seamus.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

Friends of the pod. Hand selecting directors. They wanted to explore sex.

[David]

Hand selecting. My goodness. Instead she decides to make more Vern Keller, an adaptation of Alan Warner's debut 1995 novel. She first learned of the book when she was shooting Rat Catcher. It was recommended to her. She was attracted to the title character because she's subversive.

[Griffin]

JJ Found that there were two different stories she told at different times about.

[David]

She also at one Point said it was when she was making Gas man, who knows? But it was, you know, early in her career. She gets handed this book. It reminds her of Camus the Stranger, but with a young woman. She's got an edge. It's.

[Griffin]

That was the big thing. She said that she felt like she had not read this kind of, like, super modernist in the head space of an unlikable, undefinable, inexplicable character from the perspective of a woman before. In the same way. Can I just. I found this in the book.

[David]

Go ahead.

[Griffin]

First of all, his, like, suicide note is much more, like, flowery and verbose and overwritten versus sparse. It's as annoying and rude, but in the opposite direction. But then it's pointedly like. After a good while, I started paging through the disc. The novel thing was page after page of words, then a number, then more pages of words and another number. You had to read it to get to the end. You couldn't see the point in reading through all of that just to get to the end without reading a word of it. I toddled over the video and put on the thing. Not the original, but the remake with special effects. She pointedly doesn't read the novel. She's just like, what is this? Then she finishes watching the thing and she prints it out.

[Emily Yoshida]

I, I. Okay, I'm gonna read this book.

[Griffin]

That's the thing. The book really doesn't, like, demystify.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David]

I think I want to say Young Adam. Have you ever seen Young Adam? Film came out the year after.

[Griffin]

That's a David McKenzie, right?

[David]

It is also Scottish, also existentialist, also horny. Much more. Not a movie I dislike. If you want to see Big Old Thing, you can.

[Griffin]

His thing is.

[Emily Yoshida]

There's thing, but you can see it.

[Griffin]

That movie's got a lot of floppy thing.

[David]

Yeah, it does.

[Emily Yoshida]

Okay, cool.

[David]

But, like, that is a much more, in my opinion, rote existentialist. A Scottish guy. Fucking. Whereas this is so much cooler and so much more interesting.

[Griffin]

That is a movie that, like, has the characters kind of state the inner monologue a little bit.

[David]

So, yeah, she. She's very interested in this character. She likes the feeling of escape. She likes exploring this slightly lost generation, disenfranchised youth going out, traveling, having nothing to do. She calls Morvern something of a Western cowboy character. Of course, she does have a hat sometimes for you to get that and boots.

[Griffin]

But this notion of, like, she rides into town. No one knows what's motivating her. She does a thing. She rides off, off.

[David]

And she's got this weird void. The drug taking is like more hedonistic. It's not political, it's not peace and love. Right.

[Griffin]

That's the generational thing she wants to comment on is there's something almost like self punishing about the pursuit of happiness in a. In a society that's collapsing in this. This whole notion of like a generation who believes that happiness is not accessible to them without money and there's not a clear path to making money.

[David]

She also thinks that it has elements that might potentially interest wider audiences. I've got a young girl at 21. I've got some rave scenes. I've got some sex scenes. Lots of selling points. I think I'm becoming less naive about how everything works. I do think it's just funny that Ramsey's like, I mean this is frankly commercial popcorn.

[Griffin]

I'll say this.

[David]

She chops her boyfriend up in the bathtub and we go from there.

[Emily Yoshida]

I mean, it's interesting the tension of the film for me and what I think, if there's anything that it is. Is about for me and I'll just like put this out there is like that I feel like aside from just being a void, which I think is maybe a little overly simplistic about her, I think it is about like truly being marginal as a person. Like. Like she. And. And I think the greatest tension as represented by the situation in the film is like she doesn't. She's feeling alienation from, you know, the youth culture in her town. Everybody else is an old corpse waiting to die. And there's an absence of sort of.

[David]

A.

[Emily Yoshida]

Literate, sophisticated adult existence which you kind of assume her boyfriend may be represented. Like maybe he was sort of the smartest guy in their group friends that would all go hit the pub. But it's like now she's there without him. There's this but and there's this idea of like a want for something that is neither the kids taking the E of the house and hanging out with grandma, but it's like also this sort of fundamental disinterest and boredom with like art as like a mannered thing or like as represented by the publishers at the end. So it's like where do you fit in then? If you are like a hedonistic embodied young woman who you know is. Finds your peers to be like empty and unsatisfying, but like you also don't. You're not quite equipped to be like a important young novelist, then where do you fit in in this world? And I don't know. That to me, is, like. That always feels, like, the tension or why she feels like. Yeah. Lost as a character.

[Griffin]

She's. She's bored partying and she's bored at her job, and she's bored relaxing, you know, like, everything.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Hitting for her.

[David]

It is a vibe.

[Griffin]

And, you know, you're obviously watching her in, like, a pretty extreme state of. Of grief and shock.

[David]

Distress.

[Griffin]

Shock. Something. Also get the sense that, like, she wasn't a radically different person a week earlier because her friends are largely like, hey, what's up?

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

You know, like, her best friend is noticing that something seems a little off in her, but even when she tries to confess it, she. She won't hear it.

[Emily Yoshida]

This is also the thing about hanging out with people who are constantly on drugs. It's like you can get away with being like that whether or not your boyfriend's suicide or not. And people just feel like, I feel a little down today.

[Griffin]

It's part of the same quote that David was pulling from the dossier where she's talking about the lost generation, everything. But she was sort of like saying that she. Two movies in and having made a couple of short films, she was already like, I guess this is the dominant theme of my work is like, outsiders. And when she talks about making movies about outsiders, it's not like outsiders. I feel like how they are often defined. But she's truly making movies of people who do not know how to function.

[Guest or Producer]

Like Ponyboy, right?

[David]

Yes. Sort of Pop.

[Griffin]

We usually are telling outsiders to stay golden.

[David]

No, that movie rocks.

[Griffin]

Well, but it's not just like, subcultures or whatever. It's like people who don't know what to do or how to fit in.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. And I think. I mean, she is an outsider only internally, because she's still, you know, among people, like, from the outside. She's friends. She's going on holiday in Spain. She's with her peers. She feels like she's not with them, though.

[David]

Right. And it feels like she's wearing, like, a fake skin or something.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

But every one of her characters playing that has some degree of that at their core, I think.

[David]

I think Joaquin Phoenix's character in that one is very well adjusted.

[Griffin]

Hand and glow.

[David]

Exactly. That guy is the kind of guy that, if I saw him on a New York City street, I would shake his hand and say, how are you doing, sir?

[Griffin]

Who amongst us doesn't suffocate themselves with a garbage bag?

[David]

Wake up in the morning. Lynne Ramsey. Here's a quote from her. I Guess I'm just a dark girl who's kind of weird. I like bugs.

[Griffin]

Good, good, good.

[Emily Yoshida]

I like the ass.

[David]

For me, it's coincidental. Both feature films of mine so far do start off with a death rat catcher as well, you know, but they're both very different. One's an accidental death where the kid feels guilty and he doesn't tell anyone. There's some similarity to that. But I think the death in Morvern is more about identity. She takes on someone else's identity, which gives her a chance to get out of her life.

[Emily Yoshida]

Life.

[David]

They, you know, like the theme of escape obviously is kind of happening in both. But in Morvern I feel like there is a. There's sort of like a appealing fantasy to what she's doing in a way of like, what if you did just fucking hack everyone up, you know, who's a mill around your neck and bury him in the woods?

[Griffin]

Let's also be clear, right? The movie opens, she's lying on the floor lit by Christmas decorations going on and off, sort of entwined in a body. It's a Christmas movie. It is. I had to double check that Shane Black didn't write this.

[Emily Yoshida]

I have to say whatever mode they have the Christmas lights on is psychotic.

[David]

I would, yes, switch out the sort of like bodega mode or whatever. Whatever. Like you know, where it's just like.

[Griffin]

Do the chase or some twinkling. But yes, they're sort of like physically entangled on the floor. At first it almost feels like it's a post coital thing. And then you see the blood and then you get the sense that he has killed himself and she is. They're just in this kind of like blank catatonic state.

[Guest or Producer]

It's so gruesome too because he's moved from where he, you know, cut himself.

[David]

I don't know.

[Guest or Producer]

There's something about that too that again feels really real and that it's not just like he's like laying there in the chair in the kitchen or the bathtub.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, yeah, there's something. Yeah. I mean, yeah, my boyfriend, like when he was. I was, you know, talking about doing this movie and he. I showed it to him and. And he misremembered it as that she killed him.

[Griffin]

This is why I wanted to clarify when we keep talking about him, she himself. Dead body, right?

[Emily Yoshida]

His dead body. Like. Yeah, I. But it is. I think, you know, it's one of those things because it's such a. Yeah. It's kind of murky how it's told. You could Easily make that mistake.

[Griffin]

The letter is what makes it clear that it was a thing he did of his own volition. But, yeah, she, like, is there. You're sort of. We're so used to the cinematic language of someone in this kind of situation having, like, a Julianne Moore breakdown scene.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

Even if the idea is that she discovered this body whenever ago, you're not used to seeing, like, a dramatic powerhouse actress next to a dead body kind of being expressionless. That there is just, like, a catatonic state of shock and grief. And then we see her just, like, get ready and go out and meet up with her friends at the party that she was supposed to go to with him and just say, like, he's not here. And everyone's like, oh, God. God, what's the excuse this time? And there's this feeling of, like, procrastination, of, like, what am I gonna do with this dead body? Both in, like, what do I literally do with it? And also what do I do with my emotions in processing this that she keeps going. Like, let me just try to, like, get out and have, like, a normal day. And maybe when I come back home, I'll be in a better mood to process this.

[Emily Yoshida]

I'll be in the right head space to chop up the body finally.

[Guest or Producer]

I mean, it's extreme, but when you're suffering from depression.

[Griffin]

I was going, exactly. It. It's like, you just.

[David]

She has shut down.

[Guest or Producer]

You're incapable of dealing with.

[Griffin]

It is circumstantially extreme. But this is exactly how I handle laundry when I am this depressed, where I'm just like, I'll just do it tomorrow. You know, I'll unpack the clothes tomorrow.

[Emily Yoshida]

Like, I think it's something about. What is it? It's a. It's executive function is what people would.

[Griffin]

Say goes out the window.

[Emily Yoshida]

It goes out the window, right.

[Griffin]

And I also think, like, as someone who suffers from, like, pretty extreme depression and anxiety, if I am, like, dealing with something that is actually intense, sometimes I'll be like, I just need to, like, timeshift the emotions of this. I can't handle this right now. I need to just, like, get through stuff and then at some point it will catch up with me later.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, I think. I think. I don't know. There's something to the idea of this being a movie about escape, where it's like, for somebody who is probably just depressed all the time anyway, this horrific thing happens, this gruesome thing that is definitely, like, a break in whatever the monotony was that you were feeling, you know, totally oppressed by and in, in a way like the worst thing possible then becomes an escape valve because it represents at least a marking point in like what's otherwise, you know, a bunch of, you know, just like a depressive soup. And like it which it feels like the real. The realization she comes to eventually when she does eventually deal with the body and figure out what to do next is like using the tragedy as a rung to get out of it. Because it's something, it's, it's something that happened to her. Yeah.

[Griffin]

And, and beyond that, I, I also think that you can infer from the note on the computer that their relationship has probably been one of mutual codependent depression.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yes.

[Griffin]

Probably been their bonding element that they have been. That's a good relationship in this together.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Which is like both comforting and also self perpetuating.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Versus like no one understands me, not even my boyfriend. It's like there's probably a like.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Best and worst of times to whatever dynamic they have built with each other and then mutually like going out and escaping by dropping E with friends. Yeah. Or whatever it is.

[Emily Yoshida]

It's funny because this is such a druggie movie. But it's like no, but it feels like, like it's giving junkie couple so much that like and, and it would be there for that as well. But it feel it has that vibe entirely.

[Griffin]

But part of like the junkie vibe is like probably like depression as a drug. Like them giving into that, you know.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Like comfortably willingly kind of staying in that state.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. It's like, it's like I actually think because I wrote in my notes I was like, I always wonder what their relationship was like. And the thing is like I don't think it was a bad relationship. I, but I think it like I, I, I mean I don't think it was like fractious. It wasn't like they were fighting a lot or there was except you know, if she finds out there was cheating involved. But like I, it, it seems more like that where it's just you kind of sink to the bottom with something.

[Griffin]

Insidious kind of codependency.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

And, and you know in the book his note is so much more kind of self aggrandizing. It, it is almost like this self stylized like you know, the depressed Russian writers. You know, it's almost like a piece of legacy for him.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Almost like won't this help the text.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

That like this book came out of this.

[Emily Yoshida]

So annoyed if I.

[Griffin]

Which is why I think it's like so much better to have it be annoying in that he's just kind of so blunt and unemotional about it. Because also then in the instructions he's giving to her, it's not like he's saying, I want the proceeds from the book to go to charity or can you buy my parents a house? Right. Or like, tell people my story or whatever it is. It's just like he's left her with this mess. He's literally left her with a bloody body in the house. All of the emotional work she has to do. And also, like, can you just like, get this sold?

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

And it's like, to what end?

[Guest or Producer]

It's so extremely selfish.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. It's insane.

[Griffin]

Which is why you. Whether or not she's justified in doing what she does, there's almost a, like, sort of, why not do it?

[Emily Yoshida]

Nothing wrong.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

Because it's like she's not betraying any notion of.

[David]

Think we can all agree.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[David]

Yeah, exactly.

[Griffin]

Like, what is gained by her leaving his name on the book?

[David]

I'm her friend.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

And I find out she's doing all this, I might be like, we doing all right, Mor?

[Griffin]

That's the role of a friend.

[David]

Unless, hey, Mor chopped up the old boyfriend.

[Griffin]

I know.

[David]

He was dead already.

[Emily Yoshida]

Unless you'd been sleeping with him.

[David]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

In which case you don't really have a leg.

[Griffin]

David, stop checking your watch. You keep looking at it, waiting for it to tell you that it's the right time for better health.

[David]

Okay, I. I shouldn't let the watch dictate this.

[Griffin]

The time is now. The time is always now.

[David]

Much before to be broken.

[Griffin]

And the answer is AG1.

[David]

My watch is just saying 10:52. I don't know what that means.

[Griffin]

AG1 is my best friend in the world. It is the easiest and most impactful habit that you can implement this year. And we hang out all the time. By hangout, I mean every morning I put one scoop of AG1 into water, drink it, and I live to see another day. Sustainable health is about consistency, not perfection. Simplify your nutrition with AG1. Multivitamin, pre and probiotics, superfoods and antioxidants in one scoop. If you are someone like me who perhaps does not have the most balanced diet, it's certainly very helpful to have some one stop shopping nutrients in your body to kick off the day.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

This first thing in the morning, this.

[David]

Is kind of holding the door. Right? As your diet's trying to get through.

[Griffin]

AG1 is the opposite of complete complexity. 20 seconds.

[David]

It's very easy.

[Griffin]

One scoop. Eight ounces of water. Done. I shake it. I'd recommend shaking it. That wasn't in the copy. I tend to shake it. You drink it first thing before coffee before checking your phone. It will become. You would try. Sometimes we fail on that one. It will become a micro habit that anchors everything else. And the new next gen formula.

[David]

They updated it.

[Griffin]

They've added more vitamins and minerals.

[David]

British.

[Griffin]

Yep. That was for you than ever. Clinically proven to fill common nutrient gaps. And now also they added new flavors. I use this every single day. People know that's the most truthful statement I could possibly make.

[David]

I cannot lie. He's. He's telling the truth.

[Griffin]

And any day I don't use it is a bad one. Barely constitutes a day. You should too. By the way. AG1 now comes in original as I mentioned. But the new citrus berry and tropical. I'm jamming pretty hard on citrus right now, but I'm really enjoying the variety. Sure. I'm getting to mix it up every time I run through a pouch. AG1 has over 50,000 verified five star reviews. I'm probably 40,000 of those. And it comes with a 90 day money back guarantee. So please, please go to drink ag1.com check to get their best offer. Get a free AG1 flavor flavor sampler and AGZ. This is their new sleep aid. Oh AGZ sampler to try all the flavors plus free vitamin once again for David. D3 plus K2 and AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription order. That's quite a large amount of things.

[David]

It is.

[Griffin]

This is what you got to do. Drink ag1.com check. Drink ag1.com check please, please, please sir.

[David]

Please.

[Griffin]

David Scoop. There it is.

[David]

Look.

[Griffin]

This episode's brought to you by AG1.

[David]

They definitely didn't tell you to say that.

[Griffin]

They've been a proud sponsor of this podcast for years. I've been a proud user endorser of their product.

[David]

Yep. You do be scooping for as long.

[Griffin]

And you look like a marriage. You got to find ways to keep it hardly scooping. I've not started an ad read yet with scoop. There it is. But I. I do start every morning. Where the hearty scoop of AG1.

[David]

Every morning. Now you just travel. Did you bring it with you?

[Griffin]

Yeah, I got those travel packs.

[David]

Okay.

[Griffin]

You better believe it.

[David]

Okay, good. I just know you were. You were in California. I wondered if the AG one came with you.

[Griffin]

Yeah, it always comes with me. And if it hadn't I wouldn't have made it back from California.

[David]

Just forgotten. Sent a pile of ashes.

[Griffin]

Yep. When it died on the Oregon Trail.

[David]

In a cardboard box. Look. Sustainable health, Griff. It's about consistency, not perfection.

[Griffin]

Okay, boy.

[David]

Simplify your nutrition with AG1. You got to multivitamin, you got pre and probiotics, you got superfoods, you got antioxidants. All in one scoop.

[Griffin]

David, that's such a long list. I wouldn't know what to do if I needed to consume all those things separately.

[David]

Eight ounces of water, scoop.

[Griffin]

There it goes into the eight ounces.

[David]

It says 20 seconds. Is that like how long you keep it? You stir it around or whatever?

[Griffin]

Well, I like to shake it.

[David]

Oh, he shakes it.

[Griffin]

Shake it off. Shake it off. How many songs can I put in here?

[David]

Yeah, I'm hearing this next gen formula. They've added more vitamins and minerals than ever. You better believe that are clinically proven to fill common nutrient gaps.

[Griffin]

Have you noticed that I'm a little further from death recently? It's because of that improvement to their formula.

[David]

The nuclear clock went to two minutes to midnight after one. Right.

[Griffin]

Let me tell you, if AG1 didn't exist, we would have been a black years ago. Yeah. Yeah.

[David]

Well, you know what? AG1 is great. You use it every single day. Very favorite flavor. Let me guess, still citrus.

[Griffin]

I'm rocking citrus right now. I've been doing the Tour. Look, I'll say this. I went. Let me do three months of trying out the new flavors, you know, alternate between them. I think I like the idea of cycling to keep it fresh.

[David]

Yeah, sure, right. You don't get bored of it. Makes it exciting. Look, AG1 has over 50,000 verified five star reviews and comes with a 90 day money back guarantee. Go to drink ag1.com check to get their best offer. Get a free AG1 flavor sampler and AGZ sampler to try all the flavors. Plus free vitamin D3, plus K2 and AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription order. That's drinkag1.com check. Drink ag1.com check. And it is impressive that I said all that with no mistakes. Yeah, that's a lot of letters that.

[Griffin]

Came out of your mouth so cleanly.

[David]

I did my best.

[Griffin]

It's almost as if AG1 was helping the flow flow through your system. Scoop, there it is. And everyone's saying, scoop, there it is.

[David]

So Alex Warner wrote a draft, gave up, was like, I don't know how to do. Alan Warner. Sorry, whoever it was. Yeah, his name's Alan who cares?

[Griffin]

I care a lot.

[David]

No, I think we should never speak of him again. No. And then Ramsey, who wrote this, co wrote this with Liana, is an animator.

[Griffin]

And I think it's a film school friend of hers said it took him.

[David]

About eight months to adapt it, which makes sense because the book is one big monologue. So it's not exactly like screaming out for a screenplay structure.

[Griffin]

And there's plottier stuff in the book. She gets pregnant from the rave hookup. Yeah, yeah. There's like, stuff like.

[David]

That's such a trait that.

[Griffin]

Exactly. And because of the nature in which the book is, like, telling the story and you not being able to see her physically and the reveal of it, it feels less trite, I think, than it would cinematically.

[David]

I will also say she strips it way back. And this may speak to many people who are listening. She says I might have finished it sooner for the fact that I'm not a disciplined person. A typical day will find me getting up too late, getting in a mad panic, drinking seven cups of coffee, smoking loads of figs. Just pretty, you know, and then deciding, you putting that fag. I'm doing a Supergrass. All right.

[Griffin]

It sounds like you're doing Bora.

[David]

I'm trying to obscure the words I understand. And then deciding, hoover the carpet, paint the walls, or watch neighbors shout out neighbors. Great Australian subopathy.

[Griffin]

I could not relate more to this question.

[David]

Anything to avoid writing. Luckily, my co writer is more organized. The script, you know, finally did come together with her help.

[Emily Yoshida]

I love that. This is actually just what she tells the publishers at the end, which is one of the funniest thing. The funniest, like, lines about writing ever. Like, when you're a writer, you can knock off whenever you want. So true.

[Griffin]

It's also like, you can't make these movies without a sense of insight.

[David]

She thought the pregnancy plot was really naff.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Another British expression. Just corny.

[Emily Yoshida]

Okay.

[David]

You know, like, just kind of like, she just thought it was dumb. Well, she says there's also a bunch of stuff about the kind of. The culture in Oban, which is the city. Town. City is a little strong that she lives in in Scotland. That she also is kind of like, yeah, let's. Let's leave the town faster. Like, forget that.

[Griffin]

I think her point, which is. Right, is having the pregnancy at the end makes it feel like that's the actual rebirth moment. That's the new identity that her kind.

[Emily Yoshida]

Of like opting into a man would write that right.

[Griffin]

Where she's just like, no, it's she selling the book is the thing.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, totally.

[Griffin]

Right. And then restarting the cycle.

[David]

And then of course the big thing of course is the book is a monologue. This movie has no voiceover monologue, no explanation of what she's doing, which makes the movie a five star masterpiece that we should just like kiss the feet of, in my opinion.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

It would suck so much if she was to like, maybe I should go to. And it's like, no, we just like she is inscrutable.

[Griffin]

999 out of a thousand people would leave some amount of voiceover in if the book is this.

[David]

Yeah, yeah. They scrape together. Budget is rated between like 4 to 6 million dollars somewhere in there. But you know, lots of far, you know, I mean countries, you know, to.

[Emily Yoshida]

Go back to that real quick something like. But, but like to also having her do voiceover narration would make her inherently a literary character, which she is not.

[Griffin]

She's fundamen mentally. Yeah, right.

[David]

Some of the people, they thought to play her. I love this that she was like, I wanted like Sissy Spacek, right. Like come, you know, like I wanted a, A Scottish Sissy SpaceX, age 20.

[Griffin]

And then she ultimately gets to work with Sissy. But the, the. Can you read her quote about Sissy space, which I think is really good. Is it in there?

[David]

I wanted someone between, someone a bit left of center, not conventionally beautiful, ideally with the kind of not of this world quality that specificity SpaceX had at the time. She likes Christina Ricci, but obviously she's American. The British actresses she named. So Samantha Morton, Laura Fraser, Kelly McDonald makes sense just in terms of like age.

[Griffin]

Right. She said Laura Fraser, she thought was too conventionally attractive, who later becomes best known for Breaking Bad.

[David]

She's the, the tightly wound pharma exec person. Lydia.

[Griffin]

Yes. And Kelly McD makes sense. Is like the most prominent Scottish actress at that point in time. But Samantha Morton's popping. If I could just circle back to her comment about like things that are more easily sellable in the movie.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

Because later in the dossier she calls out like how much it kind of collapsed commercially and how angry the financiers were with the movie. And she was like, yeah, I wasn't interested in making like a commercial movie. I think she was getting smart enough to know there were enough elements in this that she could use to trick financiers that it's not that she thought the movie would be a hit.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

But then it says, hey, if I get an up and coming action actress Especially when she identifies someone who has an Oscar nomination under her belt. And I can get her for cheap. And the movie doesn't cost that much. And it has, like, nudity and rock music and drugs and party scenes that dumb investors who, like, don't actually read scripts or understand what movies are go like, that sounds like a hit. And then they watch the final film and they get furious.

[David]

Samantha Morton, she sees photographs of her. I like this quote look. And she says she looks really quite in a trance. Something with her eye. Nice. It's just. She just looks kind of bored is what Lynn, like, sort of reads from her, which she just thinks is perfect for Morvern. And on one meeting, she's like, yeah, I'm casting you right away. Like, there's no. She'd been. She'd done this movie called under the Skin. Obviously. She'd also done, like, Sweet and Low down and stuff, as we said. But under the Skin is the movie that she shouts out. Obviously not the Glazer movie. It's just like a. Or a 90s British indie drama about girls whose mom dies and they're sad. Never seen it.

[Griffin]

I've never seen it either. But what was the big TV thing? A Band of Gold was a TV thing. She did. That was a very big miniseries. She did a Jane Eyre.

[David]

Yeah, she did Jane Eyre and Emma. I remember those. I don't know what Band of Gold is, but it looks like something she's, you know, Samantha Morton's from Nottingham. She has a crazy life story. Her parents got divorced, and then her parents were, I think, just could not raise the children. Her father was an alcoholic. Her mother was in a violent relationship, so she was award of court. And then she was in foster homes. And she's like a classic. Like, Britain has such a. A structure for teens who go into, like, youth drama because there's all these soap operas and all this youth theater and stuff, like. And she just, like, got sucked into that world.

[Griffin]

But her teen years, I mean, she.

[David]

They were rough.

[Griffin]

She survives child sexual abuse. She has serious substance addiction issues. She's unhoused for like, a full year, 100%. And then drama theater is the only stabilizing force. And then she basically, like, kind of stabilizes out by her teens, early 20s, starts working. And people were always like, what's your craft? And she was like, my toolbox is my past. I never want to talk about it. Like, I'm pulling from all my experiences. My life was very difficult. It gave me a perspective to understand where to pull emotions from. And she didn't really start talking about this stuff, I feel like until her late 20s, early 30s, in her career.

[David]

Rare. Right. She's not Scottish. She doesn't use a Scottish accent in this.

[Griffin]

From Nottingham.

[David]

From Nottingham, which is in. I mean, you know, you all know. From Robin Hood, but is, you know, I. No offense to any Nottingham listeners, but kind of a, you know, just boring ish. Part of the central England.

[Griffin]

It's boring ish. It's got Mary Men going around stealing.

[David]

Unfortunately, it lacks for Mary man. It's kind of pretty, I guess.

[Emily Yoshida]

It's true she doesn't have a Scottish accent, but it's like she about talks. Talks so infrequently. And the most she does speak is when she's like, I. I felt like she was affecting the British accent, like the London accent for the publishing people or trying to be.

[David]

It's funny because she's played like she's Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth the golden age. But. And I think she could have done an accent.

[Griffin]

Ramsay said she could have done a Scottish accent. But I liked her accent and the fact that she had a similar background.

[David]

And she just was like, I want you to be you. I don't want.

[Griffin]

Your voice is unique enough. I don't want you having to reach out me to side of yourself. Yeah. Too far.

[David]

Samantha Morton says the music really helped. She listens to music as part of her, like, sort of preparation. She would have headphones.

[Griffin]

This was the first movie where they would play the music on set while she was working. So that her process was always listening to stuff right up until they called action and then taking the headphones off.

[David]

She loves this.

[Griffin]

Here's a movie that lets her wear headphones that plays the stuff over the loudspeakers. Yeah.

[David]

She says she was. She would love to make Morver and Keller 2, but I don't think that'll ever happen. I hear Morvin Keller might be an Avengers doomsday. Yes.

[Griffin]

Do you know there is a sequel book.

[David]

Well, let's. Let's make it happen.

[Griffin]

It is expanded universe. I. I have not even cracked this one open yet, but Alan Turner's these Demented Lands, which is the second installment in the morn calorie universe.

[David]

She fights Dr. Doom.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

I don't know. Yeah, it's a book he wrote, I think just two years later, like it was. Is, you know, hit her anyway. Morton also says she loved being directed by someone who is basically her age. Like, I think Lynn Ramsey's a little older than her, but like, like, you know, Young contemporary versus, I assume, on, like, British tv. It's a lot of, like, fuddy duddies. She says she's a beautiful woman. She's a very sexy woman. She's very confident about herself, and that's very infectious. Being around her makes you feel powerful in your own species. Pretty cool. The. The girl who plays her best friend Kathleen McDermott is a true. Like. Found her at a hairdresser in like. Like, Scotland. Like, total natural professional actor.

[Emily Yoshida]

She's great. She's so, so good. And I. I always was like. I mean, I guess she was on, like, British TV or something after that. But has.

[David]

Did she do some work? She's got a Wikipedia page.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[David]

And I mean, like. And Dolly Wells is in this.

[Griffin]

Yes. She's the book agent.

[David]

The book agent who I feel like. Yeah. Like, you know, working with Emily Mortimer and Noel Fielding.

[Griffin]

And she's so amazing in. Can you ever forgive me? Me. That's a performance I adore.

[David]

That feels like a movie. You watch a lot.

[Griffin]

I watch that movie once a year.

[David]

Yeah, you just like, throwing it on.

[Griffin]

That is like another, like, peak depression cinema for me. I think that movie, like, depicts depression about as well as anything short of the Lynn Ramsey filmography movie. What's Ariel Heller up to?

[David]

No, I know what she. She's working Melissa up to what happened there.

[Griffin]

I mean, need I say it? Seven Ben Falcone movies.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

She just was committed to working with her husband, who I. I cannot think of a filmmaker.

[David]

She's got nothing on the docket. Yeah. Like, I mean, maybe she's doing tv.

[Griffin]

She, like, does. I don't know. She like, hosts, like, kids say the darndest things. She's doing SNL. She's like. the time we're recording this, they just announced she's hosting SNL in a couple.

[David]

Yeah. Which she'll be funny like that, but.

[Griffin]

It is one of those.

[Emily Yoshida]

She's not promoting. Promoting anything. She's gone. I don't know, McCarthy.

[Griffin]

Maybe she's got some Hulu show I'm not aware of.

[David]

You never know.

[Emily Yoshida]

You never know. That's the unfortunate thing. It is all sorts of. She could be on her own Walking Dead spin off and we would never know.

[David]

Now that I might be interested to watch. Yeah. That could bring me back to the walking Dead.

[Griffin]

The walking Dead, colon, the book of Tammy's back.

[David]

Or she's can you ever forgive me lady. She's just like, oh, my God. God, she doesn't even go outside. There's just zombies, like, moving around outside. But she's just at home just being like, watched.

[Griffin]

On Frost. Correct.

[David]

I saw On Frost.

[Griffin]

Did you. Did you get unfrosted?

[David]

Emily watched it.

[Emily Yoshida]

I'm still 100% frosted.

[David]

You have not removed the frosting that way.

[Griffin]

She is so good in that movie.

[David]

She's funny.

[Griffin]

And especially because she's sharing scenes with Jerry Seinfeld, who is fundamentally not a movie star.

[David]

He's a committed actor. How dare you.

[Emily Yoshida]

There's got a kind of take where it's like, it's not a hot take. It's just a like, who cares Take. Like, sure, I guess she's probably good enough is a lightly toasted pop tart tape, right?

[Griffin]

It is more a statement about how bad the Falcone movies are and, and that her just basically serving like core competency. Comedy movies are good.

[David]

It's not like we're watching them.

[Griffin]

David. I. I tried to do a little revisit recently because I was like my girlfriend and I really like watching like 2000s 2010s live action comedies that we skipped in theaters at the time time because we're just like, we didn't know how good we had it. And so often you throw on something like Drill Bit Taylor and you're like, this is like a 9 out of 10 now beautifully shot, right film. Look at the grain structure. And I was like, let me try to around with some of the Falcones and especially the ones I skipped. And they are like abysmal. They are like anti comedy. And then her showing up in like unfrosted and just having like jokes in the movie shot by like Bill Pope. Hope you're just like, right. If anyone puts her in a half decent thing, she is good. She has not lost skills. She's just not chosen a good project. Ing forever.

[David]

Morvin Collar.

[Griffin]

She was Ursula.

[David]

She was films in Scotland in. In Oban, where they. Where the novel is set. All those places are real. The flat, the bar, Glasgow.

[Emily Yoshida]

That was like, probably insulting for me to assume it because it's like one of the only towns I've heard of.

[David]

Well, Glasgow is a major metropolis and this is a shitty seaside town. No offense to Oban. For all I know, it's a great seaside town. But I do find that in Britain when you go to the seaside towns, and I might get dragged for this by seaside town residents in Britain, you know, they're from an era before airplanes when it was kind of like, if you want to see the sea and you live in Britain, you got to go to the seaside towns.

[Griffin]

So rude.

[Emily Yoshida]

But it's.

[David]

And then like, you know, pretty quickly it was kind of like. Well now of air traveling, like, you know, Spain is like an hour away. Like so like there's good. You know, and so places like Blackpool and Margate, you know, like. Yeah, they have their charms, but it's a little bleaker.

[Guest or Producer]

But I love that.

[David]

Yeah. I think there's, there's, there's.

[Guest or Producer]

It's prettiness. And yet they're on the ocean.

[David]

Well, there on the sea.

[Emily Yoshida]

Bygone like holiday options for people who. Yeah. Couldn't get on a plane or whatever. Like, like, like the. I went once to the. The remains of the. You've seen Carnival of Souls, the horror film?

[David]

One of my favorite movies of all.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, I mean same like the. But that. That salt air resort that's on the Great Salt Lake is still like the main structure of it is still there. And I like made a pilgrimage to it. It's just like, can you imagine going on vacation to the shores of the salt lake to like this sort of Moroccan style, like pal.

[David]

The old palace, the boardwalk and all that.

[Emily Yoshida]

Strange. Yeah, yeah.

[David]

I mean, kind of a vibe though.

[Emily Yoshida]

It's such a vibe.

[Griffin]

I am so sorry, I must interrupt. Oh, no, I just. I have made a terrible discovery. I was like, there must be some Melissa McCarthy thing she's promoting, right? Her last movie was unfrosted. Her next film is an animated film co written by Bonfalcone called Margie Claus where you won't believe that she plays Santa Claus's wife.

[David]

I mean that I'm just kind of like auto f. Let's ignore.

[Griffin]

Do you know what the actual next upcoming.

[David]

The John Benetton Ramsay thing.

[Griffin]

A Paramount Plus JonBenet Ramsay show in which her and Clive Owen are playing the parents. Shut that down.

[David]

Well, luckily. Luckily.

[Griffin]

Can we swing Zaslav in there and start zaz laving other companies?

[David]

It is on Paramount plus. So it is essentially shut down already.

[Emily Yoshida]

Let's be honest.

[Griffin]

Who's gonna scale that mountain? I'm just like, that's the last thing anyone should be doing.

[David]

I would agree.

[Griffin]

Her top of the list.

[Guest or Producer]

I just want to say since we're talking about. About the seaside town thing, I think snow and movies good.

[David]

Oh yeah, always good.

[Griffin]

It's real.

[Emily Yoshida]

Especially when it's real. It's real snow.

[Guest or Producer]

But I especially love no beach snow situation.

[David]

It is a. It is a very stark image.

[Guest or Producer]

I'm so obsessed with this and I've been saying to Nelly, I've been threatening Nelly for years now. I'M like, we need to do a snow beach situation. I want to have, have like a cabin, but that's on the beach that has a fireplace.

[Emily Yoshida]

Until that moment, I have wonderful news for you that Taylor Swift actually wrote a song called Snow on the beach featuring Lana Del Rey. And I think that might be the song for you. It's called.

[Guest or Producer]

So many mixed feelings about this news right now.

[David]

I'm gonna already gotten here and reflect.

[Griffin]

I know.

[Emily Yoshida]

First dance. First dance. No, it's, it's true. Like I. I will say though.

[David]

Yeah. In the winter.

[Emily Yoshida]

I mean there is something about going.

[David]

Sorry, Emily, please, please.

[Emily Yoshida]

I mean the first part of this film in Oban, I guess like, you know, the, the squalor of these like miserable looking house parties also like deeply familiar to me. It's like I feel like I like grew up going to these parties. Jumping through the bonfire. This is like such a thing.

[David]

But in a sense like anything to feel alive.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. And smoking a zillion cigarettes and slipping and breaking your neck in the kitchen because of like still jello shots or whatever. Like all very familiar. But like then you go outside and it's Scotland and it's like such an insane effect of like. Yeah, the kids are doing the same thing. They're doing like basically everywhere in the world right now. Like they're partying the same way. But then you step outside and you're like in this like stark like almost overwhelming splendor and the snow and the mountains and shit. It's like, like it's wild.

[Griffin]

But if you grow up there and this is your life, you resent it just as much as wherever you're.

[Emily Yoshida]

I mean this is the thing, like I, I've been thinking for a while, like I grew up first part of my childhood in Washington State. Every single day I saw Mount Rainier like on my way to school and I totally took it for granted. And then like only recently when I've been looking for things like little, little vacations that would be easy to go or like easy flights out of LA or whatever, I was like, huh? You know, it is actually really pretty up there and people like it. But like to me it just represented just this really boring like, you know, I, I did not enjoy my childhood there at all. And like I would never. But yeah, it's like it's, it's. It's sort of wild to be experiencing complete like torpor while you're in the majesty of nature, right? Yes, that's what it's about.

[David]

And then, I mean then like they Shot this film chronologically, which is interesting, but I think often suits especially like a non professional actor just to be like in the story.

[Griffin]

Also a movie like this that isn't plotty where, where it's like you need to be able to really chart emotional movements because they're so subtle. And it's like Samantha Morton is like barely kind of. This is a real like the camera can see you think performance. It's so internalized. She is an actress who feels translucent, you know, is not like emoting overly. And so yeah, it's like the continuity of that is really hard to track if there's not clear like, oh, in this scene I'm reacting to this thing and I can just stay in the moment.

[Emily Yoshida]

I just do not as a director. Like, I just. I mean you have to be like. Yeah, you have to basically be like telepathic with your actor like to, to. To get that sort of continuity and to be.

[Griffin]

Have.

[Emily Yoshida]

Have this like legible readable thing that's like more interested and open than any voiceover narration or whatever. It would be that to follow. I don't know, I just think it's, it's like it always owes me.

[Griffin]

It's interesting when I, I was thinking about this while we were watching it that like when directors have specific acting styles, when directors have like established this is what their movies are like and these are what the performances are like in them. It feels like, well, first of all, if you become successful enough, if you become Wes Anderson and it becomes so known that any actor signing up, any actor auditioning, any actor offered a role is like I think I know what he wants. I think I can guess how he wants this performed.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

But for someone like Lynn Ramsey on her second film, but even now when it's her fifth movie, but like she's not super ubiquitous. How much of it is like a rehearsal process, meeting discussions with actors to tune attune everyone to the same wavelength versus how much of it is a kind of tone setting on set set, a kind of like maintaining of mood and like I think a really careful curation of the people. How you like staff the entire movie. And music and yeah, I mean I.

[Emily Yoshida]

Can imagine like I would probably cheat and use music if I'm thinking about how I would do like just like if, if you just know that this is going like you kind of like have this Pavlovian response to these different music cues and stuff.

[Griffin]

That, that.

[Emily Yoshida]

But yeah, I don't know. It, it's. It's. It's wild. I will Say I, I feel like Jen Lawrence and Rob Pattinson at this point knew there's a kind of performance that you do in a, in a Lynne Ramsey movie. And I sensed that a little bit. Not a negative at all, by the way.

[Griffin]

That was the case of that and maybe of her reputation preceding her in that kind of way. And I read an interview with Jennifer Lawrence just the other day where she was like, the thing that's like crazy about working with her is there's a seven page dialogue scene and we've like worked it and we're word perfect and we get on set and she's just like, I don't think there should be any words in this.

[Emily Yoshida]

Let's just jump up and down, take off our clothes and yeah, smash our head. Right?

[Griffin]

And there's no safety net. And she's like, if it's not good, I won't use it. And if there's three seconds of a good piece in there, I might use it in a different place. You know, like, that's part of it, I think, sometimes is not establishing an environment where everyone is so locked in that everything is perfect, but more creating a space where people feel. Feel free to sort of explore stuff and then knowing how to identify the pieces you need.

[David]

So the first chunk of this movie we've, we've discussed some, but there are things we want to talk about in the. The Scotland section before we.

[Emily Yoshida]

Well, I mean that. I always kind of forget that it's really kind of split in two.

[Guest or Producer]

Right.

[Emily Yoshida]

Basically at the halfway point, right.

[David]

I was kind of like, right, it's only like 15 minutes in Scotland. Like, no, it's not like it's. It actually, it's like 45. 45, right. Not a movie about someone clubbing the entire time. Right. It. It is her kind of like pretending to be normal, you know, like whatever. Just kind of like acting like nothing's happened.

[Griffin]

I guess you don't see the suicide note and have her put her name on the book until like minute 30, right.

[David]

She doesn't come around. Well, you see the suicide right away.

[Griffin]

But you see lines of it. You don't get to read the full.

[David]

I suppose that's true. Like. But yeah, you see her make the active decision, this happens. And then she just gets up and is like, I'm gonna print out the novel, put my name on it and send it out. Which I comes to that decision.

[Emily Yoshida]

Like, it's so earned by the time she does it because it's a pretty extreme thing to do. But by the time she does it? It's like, okay, we're ready, and we're ready for some action. It's like we've been in hanging. Hanging man mode this whole time, and finally we're ready to, like, go somewhere.

[Griffin]

And it's been several days with the body, and you're seeing her be like, let me just put this somewhere else. Like, I'll deal with this tomorrow. But you're aware of the fact that you're like, there's a ticking clock to. When this starts rotting, there's a quick.

[Emily Yoshida]

And clicking talk, deodorizing in the apartment. I can't even imagine.

[Griffin]

It's only gonna become. Become a worse problem.

[Guest or Producer]

Oh, did she burn the pizza on purpose, you think, to cover up the smell?

[David]

I don't think that was, like, an interesting take, though. I like that.

[Griffin]

I think she just got distracted and it up.

[Emily Yoshida]

Has anybody in a Lynn Ramsey movie ever cooked anything, like, successfully? I'm just thinking of the macaroni and cheese.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

It'S just bad. It's just. Yeah, I love it, though. It's.

[Griffin]

I'll also say, as a connister, I think oftentimes a frozen pizza benefits from being a little overcooked.

[David]

Yeah, I would say. I would always go over versus under with a frozen.

[Griffin]

And it gives it a little extra flavor. It gives a little punch.

[David]

I love punch.

[Guest or Producer]

Okay, well, I'll say. I think there's something weirdly sentimental about her transporting the body and picking this beautiful location.

[David]

Right. So fucked up top of hill. But I.

[Guest or Producer]

It feels like she's giving him a proper burial with, like, respect. Weirdly.

[Griffin]

Yes. Yes. I also, I. I said when we were watching this, like, that's a pretty good Halloween costume. It'd be tough to do in public, but more Vern topless with the Walkman tape to her torso.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

The sunglasses, the necklace, the cognac and then the cognac glass and then, like, just increasing blood splatter.

[Emily Yoshida]

It's so good.

[Griffin]

It's pretty unbelievable. Believable. Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. It is funny. It goes from that, which feels so. I mean, clearly she has to get completely wasted in order to, like, do. Do it. Like, actually do the physical activate. But then. Yeah, you're right. Like, once it's the burial, it feels like the complete flip side of it. Okay. Like, now this is past the. The actual physical unpleasantness of this dead body. It's like, okay, I can actually put this person to rest now. And, like. And then there's just this moment of. Of total elation after she does it where she's like running down the hill. And that's like, when you're like, oh, wait, this is somehow a ticket out for her. Like, this. This whole thing has been just gonna turn it into that.

[Griffin]

And there's almost this, like, three women thing of she has almost magically become a different person now. There's, at least in real time, she's starting to process this, like, new identity of, well, I have to maintain some continuity. I'm here with my friends, but, like, I'm changed by this event. And also, what if I start molding myself in a new way to meet the person who has written that book and has submitted it and can't even talk about what it is or where it came from?

[Guest or Producer]

Kind of also a nice location for.

[David]

Jeans, if I'm being honest.

[Griffin]

Oh, wow.

[Emily Yoshida]

Okay. This is what we're getting to. Yes.

[David]

Oh, he sees something being buried and his mind goes right to jeans. Wow.

[Emily Yoshida]

What if you did, like, a limited edition, like, single malt scotch buried with the jeans?

[David]

Oh, interesting. So you sort of like. Or what about. I mean, I don't want to give you too many ideas, but what about, like, Barrel Age jeans? That's like a scotch.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, yeah.

[Guest or Producer]

Damn it, you guys.

[David]

See, I unfortunately knew you might like that idea.

[Griffin]

I love that idea. Yeah.

[David]

You know, maybe I like, you know.

[Guest or Producer]

Kind of toast the inside.

[Griffin]

Yeah, sure. Like a frozen pizza.

[David]

Nelly's like, ben, what are you rolling up the stairs? Nothing.

[Griffin]

I was saying. I was talking about Ben being worried that this movie was going to be too emotionally devastating. But at one point, I turned over and he was crying, Kiki's delivery service style. And I said, ben, what is it? And he just went, it's a shame she took those jeans off his body.

[David]

Right. Should have left him on there.

[Griffin]

Should have left them on. Buried. Yeah, they look like nice jeans. We both laughed at the bit when she decides to go out to the pub with her friends and she reaches into his pocket for months.

[Emily Yoshida]

That is the kind of, like, gallows humor that I just adore, where it's like. It's also like, oh, she's not going to take all like, 40 quid or whatever. She's gonna put the other half back in and then say, sorry.

[Griffin]

And also, like, he's not gonna use it, right? This isn't his inheritance.

[David]

What if it was like, like Egyptian times, then you needed, like, money.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, no, I. But I. I think it, like, I mean, the reason. And it's. It's. It's funny because it is, like, it speaks to this total in between state of like, whatever pre stage of grief she's at or it's like, I don't even know if this is real yet. Like, it's this. Yeah, it's, it's so good.

[Griffin]

The subject matter of every one of her films, which is fictional, feels like the kind of bizarre human story that would then become like a news item and then get turned into a shitty Netflix documentary or a Paramount plus series starring Melissa McCarthy. Right? Where you're like, this story is so bizarre and the twists are so weird. And the twists are these little details of things that are often retold to us in these very dramatic, salacious, kind of like scandalous ways. But in the moment, it's just like a woman standing over a dead body being like, I don't have money on me. He has it in his pocket.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

And then you could just imagine an FBI detective, like, straight to camera going, like, when we searched the body, we found fingerprints inside his pockets and 45 quid missing, you know, and it suddenly feels like this fucking monster.

[Emily Yoshida]

Right?

[David]

It's weird that these American cops are trying to solve this strange, this strange thing.

[Emily Yoshida]

I mean, yeah, there is a, like, this is a movie and I think I, this is why I liked it originally. Like, it's about a scammer. It's a, it's a movie about a scam. And it's really hard to think about this now after this wave of sort of millennial scammer narratives, your Anna Delvey's and all that, which are told in that, that fashion or this sort of dishy, like, whatever fashion. It's like, no, this is actually about the psychological state that drives one two Scam. And it's a lot different than, you know, the dishy New York mag story or whatever.

[Griffin]

Yeah, yeah. And, and right. We, we now live in a world that regurgitates those stories and spits them back out to us 10 ways. We, we are like, so inundated with the same narratives being repeated over and over again. Yeah, I, I, I love how like, incremental this is. And also that not to jump ahead, but it, like, knows exactly when to get out of the story, which is like, she has gotten the check and we have no idea what happens next.

[David]

I feel like she plays the slow dawning on her face that a hundred means £100,000.

[Emily Yoshida]

It's so, well, it's so funny. It makes.

[David]

She doesn't do like a big laugh or like a sort of crazy face.

[Emily Yoshida]

It looks like she has to fart. Like it's she does this thing where she goes, I, I love it. Makes me laugh every single time. Cuz she goes like can I go like, like it's just this. It's such a great way to play it.

[Griffin]

It's also like a Shauny Gardner moment where they keep asking her questions and her not knowing how to answer makes them go like we're dealing with like this is a genius. And like a master negotiator. She doesn't have reps. She says 100,000. She doesn't even respond.

[Emily Yoshida]

A supermarket. Oh my God.

[Griffin]

Right? And then like oh my God. We're going be to be able to sell this so well. The like, like tabloid interviews with supermarket novelists. David.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

Let me put this into a language that you'd understand because you don't wear glasses.

[David]

No, I don't.

[Griffin]

No.

[David]

Sometimes a sunglass, never an eyeglass.

[Griffin]

Some big strong tall guy with perfect vision. 2015, baby, listen. Some of us used to have to engage in experience that was like the worst of slow cinema. Trying to pick out a new pair of glasses. It was an impossible, tedious process that made you ask. Is there a point to this?

[David]

Yeah, it does sound quite irritating.

[Griffin]

But since I made the switch to Warby Parker, a big switch in my life that it's true changed the last decade of my life. I've become basically a Warby Parker absolutist.

[David]

And you probably lose a pair of glasses every other week.

[Griffin]

That's not true. That's actually not true.

[David]

Okay. I'm so sorry.

[Griffin]

I usually find them after a while. But the experience. Yes. Of picking out new glasses with Warby Parker, it's just like a quibi or two, it seems. Do you understand how I converted this to your language?

[David]

Yeah. And I'm costs a micro black hat. Oh my God.

[Griffin]

Ella McKay actually might be the new black hat glasses shopping. Used to be. And Ben can back me up on this.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

So complicated and overpriced. Over complicated and overpriced. I'm trying to buy glasses. I don't want to feel like I need a spreadsheet to understand what's going on. Spreadsheets are what we use for this podcast. Not glasses is shopping. But at Warby Parker they have their specialists there. It's so easy to try on pairs, to browse the website, do virtual try on to see how they look on your face.

[David]

Which I love.

[Griffin]

Love that. Right.

[David]

You take a little pic and then you. It shows you what it looks like on the face.

[Griffin]

Live time, live tracking. It's like seeing the Piece of furniture.

[David]

In your room, right?

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

And glasses are the furniture of the face.

[Griffin]

They are. They're the windows of the face because the eyes are the windows to the soul. That's the sole. So that's like. All right, drapes on the window.

[David]

What are you wearing right now?

[Griffin]

What am I wearing right now? The toddy.

[David]

Oh, yes. Okay.

[Griffin]

And dare I say it, they're hot, they're pretty. You're not supposed to take it out of my mouth. This is my, that was my line that I was teeing. I teed it up. And then you stepped in front of the ball bat. Tortoise shell, perhaps.

[David]

I, I've never worn prescription Morty Parker's. I, I have worn many a sunglass though, and they do have nice sunglasses. I always get compliments.

[Griffin]

Well, well, well.

[David]

They are always.

[Griffin]

I'm not going to give you one now. You're not wearing them.

[David]

No. I would be a little obnoxious to wear sunglasses indoors. You can always tell they're really well made, they're solid. They don't just like fall apart on you.

[Griffin]

No. And they're also, these prescription classes start at $95. So if they were to break a thing I have not experienced often or you were to lose them a thing that doesn't happen to me that often. It doesn't feel like you're putting yourself into jeopardy.

[David]

I also want to point out every pair that Warby Parker sells, they also give a pair to someone in need. They've distributed over 20 million pairs of glasses to people in need through its Buy Pair Giver program. And they're on most insurance plans. So if you're eligible for that, they'll automatically apply the insurance plan to you.

[Griffin]

They have so many locations and the. They're not just about glasses. They got contacts, they got online eye exams in person. Eye exams.

[David]

Look. Warby Parker gives you quality and better looking prescription eyewear at a fraction of the going price. Our listeners get 15% plus free shipping when they buy two or more pairs of prescription glasses at warbyparker.com check. That's 15% off when you buy two pairs of glasses at w a r b y parker.com after you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you.

[Emily Yoshida]

Please.

[Griffin]

Let's, let's talk about the Jet1 holiday.

[Emily Yoshida]

The what holiday?

[Griffin]

Isn't that the meme?

[David]

Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday and you can save £50 per person.

[Griffin]

Was that like an omnipresent commercial when you were Growing up.

[David]

No, no, no. I think it's a more recent commercial because I've read interviews with the lady who. You know, the voiceover.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[David]

And apparently she's been using any of us, but. Right. It became a tick tock. Mean, you put that over some hilarious footage of someone's, you know, whatever holiday going wrong.

[Griffin]

But I feel like it's now become that audio over footage of literally anything.

[David]

Sure. Right now it's any catastrophe, really.

[Griffin]

It's 6, 7. It's all this shit. Feels like the point is that the meme doesn't mean anything and it doesn't make sense.

[David]

I think nothing beats the jet to holiday.

[Griffin]

Okay. Nothing beats a jet to holiday. She goes on a jet to holiday.

[Emily Yoshida]

Have you ever been on a jet to holiday, David?

[David]

Yeah, definitely. I mean like that was the, like the budget airline. And then there's just all these countries. I mean where they're going is like club country, right?

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. I mean like they're in Spain.

[David]

They're in Spain. It's Almeria is where they shot it. I mean there's lots of place which is. Elmira is on the coast. Coast. I mean on. But on the continent. But obviously people go to Ibiza and like the other islands and all that. I never did that. That's kind of like going to Cancun. Right. Like America. Right.

[Emily Yoshida]

Like that.

[David]

So it's like you're going to club city. Yeah, but like I went to Eastern Europe where you can like basically just like drink like a fool. You can take a. You could take a plane that cost one pound.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh my God.

[David]

Like, like back in the EasyJet days. I don't think that really exists anymore.

[Griffin]

It sounds like nothing does beat a jet to holiday if it's one.

[Emily Yoshida]

What about Venka Ireland lines?

[David]

I do. I mean the Venga bus is, is. I don't know. The lyrics is coming and everybody's jumping New York to San Francisco. Wow. I feel like the. The whole thing with EasyJet obviously is you would get on it was like £1 plus airport fees. So it would be like £30, but it would still be so cheap and.

[Griffin]

You have to bring your own seat.

[David]

I mean that was basically the vibe. It was certainly there weren't even like boarding groups. It was just like, all right, everybody on. And like the people getting on weren't like, you know, passengers in three piece suits.

[Griffin]

Like this is. Each passenger party must contribute one cup of fuel. Comes with a little measure, paper cup of fuel.

[David]

I mean, and so. And there would be these cities like Talon In Estonia or whatever, where, you know, they'd opened up post Cold War and then they joined the eu and then they were basically like. Like, we're happy to like have people from other countries just come and spend money here. Like, the beer is cheap. We'll have some cl. You know what I mean? You know, like, my friend had a stroke in Bratislava to relearn the English language. He's doing okay.

[Griffin]

I mean, speaking of, do you know that, like, Samantha Morton had an insane stroke?

[David]

Yeah, that happened later.

[Griffin]

Like plaster fell on her head from a set while she was filming. And it happened. She like took 18 months off and basically had to relearn how to like speak and walk and everything. And then Synecdoche is the movie she makes right after that. She's amazing, incredible in. But she said, like, that's 18 months of therapy straight onto that set. And then you see, like her career after that is very different. Yeah.

[David]

I feel like she's become. Right. A much more erratic presence.

[Griffin]

And she directed a movie that I think is quite good, but is incredibly difficult.

[David]

What? The Unloved.

[Griffin]

Yes, it is.

[David]

Is a film obviously about her.

[Griffin]

It's a reflection of her very difficult childhood.

[David]

Interesting.

[Griffin]

And she's continued doing stuff.

[David]

She's doing stuff, yes. But yeah, more supporting roles and stuff these days. What did I just see her in?

[Griffin]

Good question. Well, of course you loved her in the Whale.

[David]

No, it was an enemy.

[Griffin]

Oh, sure.

[David]

Which she's plays a similar role as the whale.

[Griffin]

See, this is the shame. I feel like this is often how they.

[David]

I'm excited for her. To the Odyssey.

[Griffin]

Like Marie.

[David]

Bet you she's playing someone normal.

[Griffin]

Marie. Barty party. Barty Selenus did call out that this is a little mini year of Samantha Morton for us because we're starting off with this. We have the Odyssey and I will say there is an unnamed third Samantha Morton movie already on the schedule.

[Emily Yoshida]

A third Samantha Morton movie.

[David]

And of course, we've discussed Minority Report in the past. Is that the only.

[Griffin]

But we're going to have three Samantha Morton movies in the first place. First half of this year.

[David]

Yeah. How many Fantastic Beasts episodes did we do? Six or seven.

[Griffin]

We did seven on the first movie. That is a crazy thing that she plays. We need to talk about Kevin's mom, basically, in that movie.

[David]

Isn't she like an evangelist too? Is like. She has like a weird kind of like Bible thumping vibe in it, but she is. Yes. Ezra Miller's in those movies. Those movies are a real kind of like faded dream. Yeah, it is Kind of none of anyone's business.

[Emily Yoshida]

Don't. Yeah.

[David]

And the third movie with what? Mads Mikkelsen is now the third Grindelwald, basically. And he's like, I will rig the magic election. And you're like, he's doing. Can he just try to take over the world already? Like, what is.

[Griffin]

This is fantastic Beast. The ultimate. Like, I'm sorry for you, or congratulations, really. I know something needs to be said.

[Emily Yoshida]

Like, okay, so I know that there are crimes of Grindle Wall, but are they, like, some. Are we. Are we happy for him about them, or are they bad? Like, we're bad. They're bad. He's not good, okay?

[David]

He's. He's a. He's a bit of a rascal.

[Emily Yoshida]

Okay?

[Griffin]

He's like a wizard Epstein.

[Emily Yoshida]

He's un. Unlike a Morvern Ker type. He has done a few things wrong.

[Griffin]

He's not, like, a fun scam goddess.

[David]

Yeah. You do not, in fact, have to hand it to him. You don't.

[Griffin]

You don't, in fact, act. We should stop handing it to Grindelwald. He's so sneaky, though, because he just.

[David]

I. I'll rant about it all the time. You know, they do the first movie. The movie's a success. They're like, great, here comes more. The second movie is called the Crimes of Grindelwald. What happens in it? He begins to inch towards debuting some crime. So I was like, well, okay, well, you guys need to move it along because this movie didn't do very well.

[Griffin]

Plans for crimes, right?

[David]

And then like, they're like, okay, okay, okay. Third movie, we've recast him. Death's gone Mads Mikkelsen. It's called the Secrets of Dumbledore. And you're like. And I'm like, wrap it up. You guys aren't going to make a fourth. Just wrap it up. Whatever your plan was, that was supposed to be, what, five movies?

[Griffin]

I think at some point it went to six.

[David]

Let's compress it to three. And they're like, what if instead, he and Dumbledore kind of have a knowing glance at the end of the movie and there's way more to go.

[Griffin]

There's exclusively game.

[Emily Yoshida]

So the end of it, like, a secret is hinted at at the very end of the Secrets of Dumbledore.

[David]

Basically, he tries to rig the magic election, which involves some sort of magical moose. It's like the magic moose, like, kneels at, like, the winner, and he's like, I'll do a spell that rigs the election and they, like, stop him. It's not like he tries to take over the world. And they stop.

[Griffin]

But the other secret.

[David]

And then when they stop him, he's like, well, I'll be off. Dumbledore, who I maybe am gay with. See you later.

[Griffin]

Right. Like, Grindelwald exists in, like, deep Harry Potter Potter appendix as like, this was wizard Hitler. He, like, predated Voldemort. He was the worst of them all. And then after the books and the movies are over, J.K. rowling's like, and by the way, of course Dumbledore's gay. And then starts pointing towards the idea that Dumbledore and Grindelwald had some hidden romance when they were young. So then the third movie is that. And people are like, oh. And the movie ends with them looking at each other, like, raising an eyebrow.

[David]

I'll just, I'll just, just put it. I'll put it this way. And then I'll stop talking about this.

[Griffin]

No, we're going to keep talking about it.

[David]

In the Harry Potter franchise, yes. In the seventh book, you learn that Dumbledore had a deeper relationship with Grindelwald, who you've sort of heard about as, like, a wizard Hitler. And yes, in fact, they were very close before his famous 1945 duel with Grindelwald that defeated him, which is in Harry Potter, obviously the analog to World War II. Right. So 1945 was their big showdown. Fantastic Beasts 1 is set in 1926. Fantastic Beast 2 is set in 1927. Fantastic Beast 3 is set in 1932. It's like, they're not even close to the big showdown.

[Griffin]

It's even crazier than what you set up because when they announced it, they were like, a fun idea. A standalone adventure in the Harry Potter universe, different time period. A guy with a suitcase chases a bunch of creatures. Then everyone sees the first movie. It's a hit, hit, but people don't love it. And they're also like, it's weird. The second half, it just kind of dissolves into, like, Harry Potter deep lore prequel. And J.K. wrong's like, H, don't worry, I've planned five more movies that are going to get all tangled up in that. And they're like, what about the Fantastic Beast guy? And they're like, don't really worry about him. He's still here. And then he points at. That's happening.

[David]

So true.

[Emily Yoshida]

I. Wait, I. I just want to make sure I've got this right, because I've been so out of touch with that whole franchise. So Grindelwald he both does crimes and is gay.

[David]

Correct.

[Emily Yoshida]

Okay.

[Griffin]

Incredible.

[David]

Okay. Go off. Queen.

[Griffin]

Some might say okay, but we don't have to hand it to him.

[Emily Yoshida]

No, no, no, no, no. I would never suggest that.

[Griffin]

No, I just, let's just draw a clear line here.

[David]

Morvern Caller, we do have to hand it to her.

[Griffin]

The movie changes film stocks when she gets to Spain.

[David]

Absolutely.

[Griffin]

That's the big visual move. Move.

[David]

Yeah. She tells her friend, we're going to Spain. Don't worry about money. I booked us a place. We're going for like two weeks. I already booked your. I'm going to tell your boss you're taking time off. Her friend is like, by the way, I did your boyfriend. And she's like, well, let's go to space. Disassociation is not paused.

[Griffin]

I mean, she offers it up as the, like, I'm sorry, I can't go on the trip with you because I betrayed you and you're going to be so angry.

[Emily Yoshida]

She's like, okay, no, I've got even worse plans for this girl now.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

And she has shipped the book out.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[David]

Before she mails the book and then calls them and is like, I hope you got it. I'm going to Spain. Click. And then the latter half of the movie, I would say, is even lighter on plot than the first half. Not that it's plotless, but, like, it is a lot of vibes.

[Emily Yoshida]

Well, speaking of vibes, can we, we, can we just talk a little bit about the soundtrack? We should, because it is such a, it's such a part of the film. It is like a motivating fact if, if there is ever no plot, at least she's still like listening to the next track on her dead boyfriend's mixtape.

[Griffin]

And she's almost experiencing and processing her emotions exclusively through the music.

[David]

Sort of a Garden State Galaxy situation.

[Griffin]

And kind of a Garden State situation.

[David]

Absolutely.

[Emily Yoshida]

I want to get through like 15 minutes without, like, mentioning a Marvel movie, a Harry Potter.

[David]

Wrong podcast. Ok.

[Griffin]

So excuse me, that's really rude of you to say when our president is right there on our top shelf. President Red Hulk. We must obey him.

[David]

There he is.

[Griffin]

And we are contractually obligated to mention a Marvel movie every 20 minutes.

[David]

Crimes of Red Hulk.

[Emily Yoshida]

What's his, like, agenda? What says what?

[Griffin]

More pills?

[David]

Nothing Good.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, but yeah, I, I, I was, I, I feel like I have hallucinated this because I, I, I know that at some point I, I have seen an image that is the, in the insert on the, on the, on the.

[Griffin]

Mixtape I was trying to pull it up on the Amazon version, and it is so blurry that you can't. Yeah, but it is in there.

[Emily Yoshida]

Okay.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

It must just be in that physical release.

[Griffin]

Handwritten.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, yeah.

[Griffin]

In the inside. Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

But, like. Because I wanted to know, like, what is actually, you know, canonically on the. On the playlist.

[Griffin]

And what's Diegetic?

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. What's diagenic? But, like, my feeling of, like, once you're like, are they playing wean at the pub? You're like, no, we're.

[Griffin]

We're.

[Emily Yoshida]

We're not. The whole thing is. Whether it's Diegetic or on the soundtrack, it's all. The mixtape is my. Is my personal feeling.

[David]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

Except maybe, like, the techno music is probably not on the mixtape, because then.

[Guest or Producer]

At the end, they reveal that she's. What she was.

[Emily Yoshida]

She was listening to. Yeah. Yeah. Although. Is that. Is that a flashback or does she just go back to the club? I like to think she goes back to the club.

[Guest or Producer]

I think she goes back to the.

[David]

Club oddly dedicated to the one I would do not on the soundtrack, despite being an iconic final needle drop. Is that possibly just because the llamas and the Papas are annoying to negotiate with?

[Griffin]

I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah.

[David]

But yes. What are some. We got can. A lot of can.

[Emily Yoshida]

A lot of can.

[David]

Heavy on the can.

[Emily Yoshida]

Guy liked can.

[Guest or Producer]

Because there's can and then there's a can member named Holger.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Guest or Producer]

I've never listened to his stuff.

[Emily Yoshida]

It's so good.

[Griffin]

I gotta.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh, my God. The one that. The. The. The thing that that fragrance is on, which is, like, an incredible track. It's like 10 minutes long or whatever. That. That album is amazing. I can't remember the name of it.

[David]

I'm gonna find it. Can of, I think, kraut rock guys right there. Like, I've listened to some can because when I got into Radiohead, you know, the cool kids were like, well, you really should listen to Ken if you like radio. Because they're just full and doing.

[Emily Yoshida]

No, I totally remember the. I think I. I had a friend's. A roommate's boyfriend who. Who burned me up all the can records on a CD I'm gonna be burning. Yeah.

[David]

They're gonna call 911 on my house because it's gonna be burning. What's the song you mentioned? The.

[Emily Yoshida]

The. The fragrance. Yeah.

[Guest or Producer]

I'm so embarrassed to admit that I actually started listening Can't to can after hearing about them for so long being this, like, quintessential central Band that LCD and the song shouting them out.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Guest or Producer]

Finally got me to do it.

[Emily Yoshida]

Well, that's a while back. That song came out in, like 2005, so I think that's fine. That's probably.

[David]

Oh, yeah, that Right. I know.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. Yeah. Or no, that song was even earlier than that. So, you know. Good. You're still cool then. No, I, I. You got. You got Goonkum. But this of Apex Twin, which I love.

[David]

I love Apex Twin. Who is Goon Compass?

[Griffin]

That's the name of the song.

[David]

Goon Gumpus.

[Emily Yoshida]

Okay.

[David]

I was like, that's not the name of some band. I don't know.

[Emily Yoshida]

No. Goon Gumpus is. Is also a name that we have given my dog. And the joke is that Goon Gumpus is playing in his. In his brain at all times. And so occasionally I'll just play it on the phone when he's acting really stupid. And it's really. It's really fun.

[Griffin]

Goon Compass is what you hold up at a red pill convention show.

[Emily Yoshida]

And it was followed by the. The subtle Goon Knife.

[David]

I don't know.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Boards of Canada, Scottish.

[Emily Yoshida]

So important. Like, massively important.

[Guest or Producer]

It's insane how both them and AX Twin have continued to feel. So just.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

You don't listen to AX Twin and feel it feel like, oh, yeah, this is the 90s or whatever it feels like now. Right.

[Guest or Producer]

I got to say, they feel certified for fresh.

[David]

Thank you.

[Emily Yoshida]

Heard it here first.

[David]

Red tomato for Apex.

[Griffin]

Well, there's also the crazy thing of Lonely island sampling Apex Twin for the Iran so far away thing in an era where they were like, these are like, dumb videos that Aaron SNL one time, and it doesn't matter and it never replays. And then they put it on YouTube and it got like 8 trillion views. And NBC, he had to pay them so much fucking money.

[David]

Good days.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Broadcast.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yes. Broadcast Stereo Lab. Like, this is just like, the coolest shit. I'm sorry.

[Griffin]

It's like my music broadcast was such.

[Guest or Producer]

A bad for me in high school.

[Emily Yoshida]

RIP man.

[Guest or Producer]

Who's.

[David]

Who's doing this? Is it. You know, Is it Ramsay, like, who's got such a, like, finger on the pulse taste is.

[Emily Yoshida]

I wouldn't put a bastard. Because the soundtrack of Die My Love is also fantastic in a totally different way. But, like, what is the. Is there a listing of the tape in the book?

[Griffin]

No music like broadcast.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, that's true. That's true.

[David]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

So it's just Lynn Ramsey being cool as. Which, like, shocking. No one.

[David]

The vibe I Get is that it's her.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[David]

She wanted Mamas and the Papas at the end because she wanted the. The final needle drop to be emotional in the way that the. The. The rest of the soundtrack is not to be just a swerve.

[Griffin]

In the book, Morvern has tapes that are made up already. It's not something he leaves her as a present. That was a new invention. I felt the tape was like a letter to her. The music's great because it's part of the narrative. I saw her boyfriend as Alan Warner. Really? Oh, I love an intellectual who's also a muso. Seeing this less academic girl, it was important to start going early on.

[David]

They have a muso.

[Griffin]

Yeah. They don't name the tracks in the book. And I used electronic music that was very cinematic and sound design in order to avoid the MTV pop promo feel. That is what's effective about it is that it's a very hip soundtrack that also doesn't feel like. That's what I call copul.

[David]

It doesn't feel like a bunch of labels were like, hey, can we get our cool song?

[Griffin]

No. Or even like just pulling the enemies.

[David]

What label is going to be like. And she does what to the. To the body.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[David]

Yeah. No, you can use absolute. Any track.

[Guest or Producer]

And also from a playlist. Curious creation standpoint. I love that it also has a mix of older stuff and eclectic stuff like the Scratch Perry.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Guest or Producer]

You know, Velvet Underground.

[David]

The two of you would make a lot of mixtapes, right?

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh, my God.

[David]

You're. Yes, but I'm sure you're. I'm just saying it wasn't our mix songs.

[Guest or Producer]

Your favorite coolio songs.

[Griffin]

Throw a track or two on there.

[David]

I feel like Griff, you and I also made mixtapes, but maybe they probably curated them in. Very cool. Always, like. Right. Like, you guys were probably good at, like, having your. The energy go up and down.

[Griffin]

Oh, yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

And then like, in the days of actual tapes, before the CD thing, because that was. There was a couple years where I was still doing that. You would like, you know, hook up the tape recorder to the TV and do a little movie quote in there in between songs. Like, this is what I'm talking.

[David]

This is bespoke tape making.

[Griffin]

I have no doubt that Emily and Ben's tapes were. Were cooler, but I was doing that kind of intentionality.

[David]

Well, so what I want now, I want a Griffin. A team.

[Griffin]

I would have to dig in and see if I could find.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

But I was very into the ordering and cutting things up with skits and.

[David]

I never did skits. I would. As it was.

[Griffin]

I would, like, get movie quotes from, like, kaza.

[David]

I would be taping off the radio, and I would have, like, my thing. Like, I plugged my. Guess my aux cord ready to go. Like, and I would hear the song starting, like, okay, perfect. Like, I would do that. I remember that I would have a pre burning.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

I would have one like a tape. It wasn't even a mixtape. It was just like, I have this one ready to go if, like, a song I like is playing on the radio and I just, like, hit record.

[David]

I also made music video mix tapes. Did you guys do that? Where, like, I would have a blank tape in my VCR because I watched MTV and all day. And then when something I knew I loved was coming up, I would. I had, like, two tapes of. Of, like.

[Emily Yoshida]

See, I was the person who got those because I never had MTV growing up. So, like, my friends would take pity on me and be like, here's all the cool.

[David]

That's right. Like, FYI, this is the last year of cool music videos, right? So I would watch, you know, like, Buster Rhymes videos, you know, or whatever. Like, anything where I was like, Julio. Yeah, yeah, Coolio. Maybe like, every single thing Coolio had ever done.

[Guest or Producer]

Like, let's try and see if we could dig up maybe one of our mixed d. I know that would work out, like, the, The. The track list.

[Emily Yoshida]

I. I'm. I'm just. I must have a listing somewhere. I. I mean, I really had a. I did a lot in high school. Then when I was in college and I was. I did. I did radio at.at.at LMU@KXLU 88.9. I. I got much more into it as, like, this professional endeavor, and I would do my own art for it. I would make. I would make mixes that I would send out to a bunch of people that, like, had a title and were, like a quarterly mix or something.

[David]

Would you. Griffin, this is for you. Would you give the tape start, girls? Genuine, Genuine question.

[Griffin]

No, I was looking through.

[David]

It's kind of like a, you know.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Putting yourself out there.

[Griffin]

Yeah. There was. I, I, I'm. I'm going through a thing right now of feeling very annoyed at the Apple Corporation.

[David]

They're no good.

[Griffin]

Who had this whole, like, itunes match feature where it's like, oh, if you take the time to upload something that isn't on the Apple music server, we'll save it.

[David]

Here you are talking about why I am saying things like, maybe it's time to get back into CDs. Like all of these services have failed us.

[Griffin]

All of them.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

I. There was, there was a, A. A big high school crush long distance on off person young woman where we would mail each other CDs with very long how post letters of you. It was.

[Emily Yoshida]

But that's how I first heard of dental. Like one half of postal service was on a. On a mixed CD sent to me from. He was a senior when I was a freshman and he was like at it here in New York at school and I like got cool music sent to me by this. Like I was. Yeah, it was so fun.

[Griffin]

This was. Yeah we like lived a state apart and we would have like you know, three hour like Sunday night phone conversations aim and then like the big love language was the mailing of the these CDs and I had them on my phone forever. And I'm looking now and itunes has like gutted them where it has like 3 out of 18 tracks left because of just whatever licensing agreements they have.

[Emily Yoshida]

So I still have a drive that's basically everything I ever burned like that and you know, got indexed everything but like it's on its last legs. Like anytime I've plugged it in, I.

[David]

Might need that drive.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, it's. It's. It's like this.

[Griffin]

I lived that way forever. And the promise of itunes match. I fell for it. Yeah, I fell for it. I fell for their award.

[Emily Yoshida]

I gotta say though, even. Even now giving it to Apple, I have just had another. You know and it's, it's like from. It's a lateral move. But I finally was like, I just can't. I can't. And this is a big move for me. I had to get off of Spotify. Like I just could no longer in a good conscious be on Spotify. But like my life was on Spotify for like basically from the day they started. I had like a pretty playlist.

[Guest or Producer]

I make a playlist every month same. And I've been doing it for so long and it's like almost a journal of my life.

[Emily Yoshida]

Me too.

[David]

I can't, I can't give it up.

[Emily Yoshida]

But I did the shift. They have a thing called song shift. And it's okay. But I shifted everything to Apple music, I guess because it was like the other.

[David]

This is my problem. I made that move and then I just started to get annoyed with Apple music. So now I'm withdrawing. I downloaded something called Doppler. I'm creating an ipod back on my. I like my phone and that's right. And so those Date corporations don't have their grips on me at all.

[Griffin]

I was like methodically buying CDs through like 2012 and like importing them and then choosing like the best high quality version, the COVID art and everything. And I was just like, it's all saved here. And then there's a backup. And then I got rid of the backup and then it's cloud.

[David]

They got us, they got us with the cloud.

[Emily Yoshida]

You want to hear about a really sad, like, going to Amoeba Music on Sunset Boulevard? Well, it doesn't exist there any. I mean, it exists, but it's not the same.

[David]

There's the main one still in San Francisco exists, right?

[Emily Yoshida]

Like, I think the Berkeley one. Yeah. Um, but going there, loading up like a stack this high of CDs that cost between like five and six dollars a piece. Burning them all, like, ripping them all. And like, you would like, it came out to like 20 cents a song. And it's like, that's sustainable as like a college student who like, you know, was constantly broke. That was still sustainable compared. And like everybody, like, I feel like we all do Spotify and now because it's like, oh, 10.99amonth. You can have like the entire music catalog. But it's like, no, it doesn't, it doesn't.

[Griffin]

By the way, we're buying ucds at a meeting. Yeah, the musicians have already made their money.

[David]

But it's just also just that, I mean, whatever, now we are, we're, we're getting. It's Andy Rooney ifying in here. But the vibe of like, you would. I would go to the record store. I've definitely done this ramp before. I would have enough money for like one to two CDs. Right. And so like, I would take forever on my choices. And then the choices I made, I had to listen to them to death because I was like, I spent the money. Money. Like, I'm not just like putting these on a shelf and I'll get to it.

[Griffin]

No, you're like, there's three weeks of this being. Yeah, I'm bringing with me in a disc man every day. You, you know the album backwards and forwards. I might like Semester and change of CalArts was defined by convincing a friend to drive me to a movie I wanted to see at the Arc Light and then going to Amoeba for like an hour after.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh my God. Yeah, that was the great one too. Like, I, I. For my first couple years I was at Loyola, so I was like, clear on the other end of town. So yeah, I Was like, going to Hollywood was, like, a thing I did on the weekend, and it was like, those were the spots. It's like Fred62, our client.

[Griffin]

And, well, even beyond that, like, even when I stopped sending mixes to people and I was never on Spotify, I was just, like, pot committed to the fucking Apple Corporation. But I used to, like, make a playlist for every year of my life to be like, I can look back on this, and this will be the 12 tracks that, like, evokes the feelings of what I went through that year. Year. Whether they're, like, songs linked to specific events or moments or people or it's just what I was into or discovered. It was less like, songs that came out that year and more just, like, what was in my rotation. I certainly just stopped doing that. I never listen to music, so listen. Goddamn podcasts.

[Emily Yoshida]

Well, I think, like, I. I think a loss, in addition to making the mix is to be. Is. Is the interpretation of mixes that are made for you and, like, reading all sorts of shit into it that you want to be there, there. But to steer us back on topic.

[David]

A little bit, let's. Let's. Let's go back to Morvern color.

[Emily Yoshida]

James's mix for Morvern, I think, is a more interesting suicide note than the one he actually leaves.

[David]

This is what it is.

[Griffin]

Absolutely. A guy who wrote a whole book that she doesn't even read.

[David]

And if it truly ends on dedicated to the one I love.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[David]

Which is a great ending for a, like, yes.

[Emily Yoshida]

Heart ripping.

[Griffin]

For a guy who's trying to express himself, this feels like the words that he can't say. Which is also very twinned with, like, Lynn Ramsey's approach to storytelling, which is, like, these people can't say these things themselves. These things, like, are bigger than words.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. And it's clear that that is a language that they actually did share. Like, he leaves her as music, and that's what she packs up. Like, that is the priority. When she finally leaves the apartment, she takes all of his record collection with her. And it's like that more so than his pursuit of writing seems to be the thing that, like, they connected with on some sort of spiritual level.

[Griffin]

Keep the music is like, his ultimate. I. Yeah. More than saying, I love you, and I'm sorry, we don't really know.

[David]

Right. What Morvern's interests are or whatever she is. She's so opaque. Right. Like, it's hard to. Hard to understand what, like, you know.

[Griffin]

Well, her bluff with Dolly Wells of, like, isn't that what's great? About being a writer that you can kind of piss off. It doesn't feel like her trying to imagine what a writer would say. It's her testing out this life for herself, right? Totally. She's like, if people buy writer and they give me a bunch of money, then what do I do? I sit around all day and I smoke and I go home.

[David]

I'm coming up with something 21 or whatever. I mean, it's like. It's not like more of her needs a direction in life, like.

[Griffin]

Or no, but she, like she wants to not. Right. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I think her dream is just to like float. Sure, yeah.

[David]

At least for now. But she is disassociated.

[Emily Yoshida]

Well, this is the thing though, about like I. I don't know, I always am turning this over my head when I watch this movie because it's like she talks about she likes the ants and like she is. I don't know, I think it's kind of funny watching this so close. Back to back with Die My Love, which has a lot of very physical performance, very. And like very external performance of like boredom or like, I keep using the word torpor. But like, I feel like that's what she's really, really good at expressing and like Jennifer Lawrence is doing that in that film as well. But it's like here, like there's sort of the built in excuse of everybody's on ecstasy all the time. So you can kind of like, you know, be feeling the branches of the trees all the time. There's like a. An excuse for that. But like, I don't know. But it still feels like what we're picking up is that there is some kind of internal poetry in Morvern Kallor, even if it is not this studied kind of thing that her boyfriend was into. Like, she is, she wants something, she. There is a lyricism, there is like an artist spirit in her somewhere. It just doesn't express itself in the way that like, you know, it's typically legible and like, you can imagine if she is ever called upon to like make a second book, it's probably not going to go so well. But that doesn't mean that she doesn't. She's not in some way tuned in like.

[David]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

Or like an emotion living an emotional lyrical life in some way or another.

[Griffin]

I also think it's fascinating in the, in the meeting with the book publishers. I mean, they're like hitting it off. They're like loving her, they're buttering her up. They're offering her the money. And then you cut to like, like, the sun has set and they're still drinking, right? This has gone beyond business deal. She's seemingly already literally signed the contract and yet they're here still talking. And she mentions the supermarket thing and they're like, oh, my God, supermarket novel. That's unbelievable. Hilarious, like, sells itself. We gotta get a picture. And she holds the, like, champagne glass up to her, her face. And she almost looks embarrassed in that moment. And I don't read it as a. Oh, fuck. If I get attention, does that, like, does the spotlight on me increase the possibility of being revealed to be a sham? I think it's more that, like, the attention isn't really what she wants. This is like, means to an end to buy an idea of freedom. But what you're saying of there is some internal poetry in her, but she doesn't seem to have any need to have, have that validated by the outside world, even her closest friends.

[Emily Yoshida]

But it's even still, it's like the. She is experiencing being perceived perhaps in a way that she never has been before. Maybe it's because of, like, false auspices or whatever, but, like the idea that somebody would look at her and say, project this idea that she has depth, that there's. That there's something really interesting there. Like, I. I feel like what. Because I know exactly the moment you're talking about and that's what I read from it is like. Is like, oh, my God. Somebody thinks. I'm like, I'm sure that her boyfriend loved her, but I'm sure her boyfriend was like, oh, this is my working class girlfriend or whatever. And like. And like now she's having these eyes on her, thinking of her as being somebody who, like, wow, full of ideas and feeling and depth and all these things. And it must be like, yeah, it's just an interesting suit to put on, I think.

[Griffin]

Well, yeah. And in her, like, Dylan Ramsey canon of outsider, she's the only outsider who is like, given a path to the inside. And the fact that the movie ends before we see any of the results of that. All we know is that the door has been open for her. Creates like, really, really interesting ambiguity of like, what the fuck happens to this person?

[Emily Yoshida]

Well, you know, and there's always Sasha, who got left in reverb and lived off oranges and juice and burgers for a month. Like, I truly think that's her future, but maybe that's the darkest reading possible. But I just like. Because I do think she goes back to the Club, both spiritually and. And literally at the end.

[David]

Right, right.

[Emily Yoshida]

And. And just, you know, becomes like, Sasha. He's a laugh.

[Griffin]

But I also. Yes, I think there's the larger, like, the indescribable desire to escape. Escape oneself. Right. My favorite SNL sketch of the last 10 years, which I cite all the time, is the Adam Sandler Romano Italy Tours 1.

[David]

I love that sketch where he's like, we will take you to a nice place. You will eat good food. That will not make you a better, a different person. If you're sad where you are now, you will be sad there.

[Griffin]

It is one of the greatest, like, genuinely pieces of art about depression I have ever seen. It is one minute of Slow Burn where he's just straight up naming the sites and the experiences, and then he goes, but I must restate. You will still be the same person. You are at home, just in a nicer location.

[Emily Yoshida]

Funny, I love that.

[Griffin]

And he's like, you know, sort of like, we can give you activities to do with your wife. We can't help, you know, how to talk to each other, like, that kind of stuff. Stuff. And there's this degree of, like, if I'm perceived as a novelist, does that make me a different person? If I have money, does that make me a different person? If I go to a different place, if I take different drugs, if I'm with different people? And the thing she can't escape is, like, actually her inner life. The thing that Lynn Ramsey. It knows how to bring, like, about cinematically better than anyone else is just, like, her headspace.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. No, I mean, I think it's really interesting. Like, her last conversation with. With Lana is like, you know, when she's saying she's gonna leave again, ask her to go with her. And my whole life is here. And it's like, there's the same crapness everywhere, so stop dreaming. And it's like, I always think, like, I will always remember. I hope my mom's. My mom's not listening to me. I went to this music. I went to this music festival and. Or not music. It was. It was the matador record records 21st birthday party in Vegas in 2010. And I had. You know, I had my equivalent of this in Vegas with, like, my. The Lana of my life. And. And. And, you know, had this mountaintop experience seeing, like, Guided by Voices and all these fucking bands and stuff. And then got back to. I was living with my mom in Seattle at the time, or outside of Seattle, and Guided by Voices was on tour and they Were gonna be playing in Seattle like the next weekend. And I was like, I think I'm gonna go. And my mom was just like, you can't just do what you want all the time. Like otherwise you will become a hedonist.

[David]

But even like you might be a bad one though. I mean, because it's like she is something of a hedonist in that she goes, she clubs, she has sex, she takes drugs. But like there's no real sign of pleasure.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. But she's also searching like the way like Lana. You could say Lana does the same thing. But Lana is also very much.

[David]

Lana has a good time.

[Emily Yoshida]

Lana. Lana has. Yeah, she has a good time. And she also has like a community. And it might. But it's like absolutely not what Morvin wants of her life at all. There's a balance for something.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

In Lana. There's some sort of like. Okay, but at some time I gotta like resume real life. I understand. I have to like play the game. She has that self enforced. Right.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

At some point I gotta grow up.

[Emily Yoshida]

It's holiday for a reason. Because you've come back from it. Right.

[Griffin]

And then. And then it's Monday. Right. Which Morvern is like how do I it do destroy Monday?

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. I mean it's. She's the original Spring breakers. Like you know, is what if Spring Break but forever.

[David]

This is a better movie than Spring Breakers.

[Griffin]

Although that is a great film.

[David]

It's a movie entry.

[Griffin]

It's a great film.

[Emily Yoshida]

But I do. I would do a total double bill of the like I would be a really double feature.

[Griffin]

They pair up like. Absolutely. It was in one of the earlier quotes you read that she literally like talks about Lynn Ramsey hedonism as like this kind of defining and cultural shift of like the use of drugs across generations. Of it being this idea of like counterculture political statement.

[David]

She says this right.

[Griffin]

60S you do psychological expansion versus like self punishing. Internalized.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. And it's not about. You're not really. There's nothing to rebel against someone.

[David]

There's not from Warp Records though.

[Emily Yoshida]

Okay.

[David]

Who saw this film? They screened it early for them.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[David]

Said it was like. This is like a modern day easy writer. And I do love that.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[David]

Easy Rider is the sort of, you know, 60s version of the like hey man, let's just tune in, drop out. You know.

[Griffin]

But that feeling of like whatever they were fighting for in the 60s and 70s has settled into something else. And everything feels wrong. But it's not really clear what we should be pushing back against. She's not a clear target.

[David]

She thinks she should have pushed to black comedy more. Although more recently for Die My Love, she was interviewing dude and she's like, I rewatch it now. I saw it with an audience, like a young audience, and they were laughing and enjoying it. It made me feel good that it's.

[Emily Yoshida]

Movie or Die My Love more in color.

[David]

But she was interviewed like, four. You know what I mean? Right.

[Griffin]

Current retrospective screening while she was on the Die My Love press.

[David]

And she thinks like, oh, you know, I pissed off the financiers. They wanted a different poster. I love the poster. Poster is like, incredible poster. Like, you know, they. They kind of dumped it. I'm pissed. I was pissed off about it.

[Griffin]

But it's a classic Lynn Ramsey thing of, like, it release because they didn't like working with me because I didn't want the shitty poster. And it was all worth it because the poster's on my wall and I like it.

[Emily Yoshida]

And honestly. Yes. But I. I mean, yeah, I do think it's probably the funniest movie of her filmography. It's got the most jokes in it. And I. I think a lot of that is because it's so in touch with, like, youthful folly, I guess, which is like the oldest person way to say what I mean. But like, like, you know, these. The thing with the. The dollar bill out of the pocket, like these sort of just like you're just sort of figuring out how to scrape through life. And it's all. It's all embarrassing. Everything is mortifying for some reason. And it's all funny. It's. It's like, it's. It's inherently funny.

[Griffin]

The. So the film stock change happens when she goes to Spain and, you know, hinges on that cab ride. And she said they had to reshoot the cab ride seven times. Times because they couldn't figure out the right way to process the film stock. And working with the new material, does.

[Emily Yoshida]

It change as soon as they get to Spain or is it when they get on the cab and then go to the village?

[Griffin]

We change the film stock. I'm sorry, you're right. We changed the film stock for when Morv decides to leave the hotel.

[Emily Yoshida]

That's right.

[Griffin]

So it starts on the cab ride when they venture outside. It's very noticeable.

[David]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Guest or Producer]

So funny when her friend is, like, kind of high.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[Guest or Producer]

Rush to leave.

[David]

Leave.

[Guest or Producer]

And doesn't even put her clothes on. But then it's like, what are you looking at, pervert?

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, that's like. I mean, that is the. The Funny where it's just like the shamelessness, but also, you know, like, yeah, everything isn't bad.

[Griffin]

And there's this very like MTV Spring break style, like, party scene where there's a woman there who is just like blotto. Right. Who just like, is not catatonic because of depression, but is clearly just on 10, 000 things.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

And you keep having the camera like, like pan across her against like guys like GY Raider. Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

And then, I mean, there's the swimsuit swap thing on the pool, which is.

[Griffin]

Just like that long push on her face.

[Emily Yoshida]

It's so.

[David]

I also love where you see like across the balcony, like, there's two guys on balcony going like. And then there's someone on the big eye being like, I'm trying to sleep. And I'm like, why are you trying to sleep?

[Griffin]

Why are you here?

[David]

Then go anywhere else.

[Emily Yoshida]

I know. I feel so bad for all the old people. They show in the. The lobby of that hotel. I'm just like, you are in hell. You should leave right now.

[David]

Does feel like you can just go.

[Griffin]

Down the road or something in a movie without a lot of dialogue. The whole kind of like all the core themes are talking about are summed up in the exchange in the back of the cab between Morver and Alana. Where she goes, where are we going? I don't know. Somewhere beautiful. And it's like, it doesn't matter. Like, I don't know. We're going to find a place that's beautiful. Like the next place we'll solve. Solve it. The next adventure will, like, solve it. You know, I just need to keep going forward to the next experience.

[Emily Yoshida]

Do you think? I see. My understanding is always that when she does that, she leaves with the intention of leaving Lana wherever they go. Like from the outside.

[Griffin]

You think that's planned? Like leaving her on the side of the road with the note?

[Emily Yoshida]

Yes. I. I don't know. That's. That's always been my understanding of it, which is extreme. But like, I think it's like she makes some decision at some point. Point. But. But it also could be that, like, the third time that Lana brings up her boyfriend, she's like, okay, this.

[Griffin]

I think it's like all improvisational. I think it's all like instinctual, moment to moment. And I also love that you imagine there's gonna be some like, bigger blow up with Lana if they reconvene at the end of the movie. And she's just like, of course. We're all like on spring break. You leave me by the side of the road I found my way back home yeah. How much longer were you there?

[Emily Yoshida]

It's like everybody bounces back. It's like your bones are still soft. You can kind of like bounce back from these fights with friends or, or you know, your, your friend can tell you that her boyfriend is dead and you're like, yeah, stop being so crazy. Like, you know, there's something I, I was thinking about this in that conversation. There's another part, I wrote it down somewhere in this film that, and there's some of this in Die My Love too where I think that so much of like it's sort of her, Lynn Ramsey's approach to comedy, but it's like, it's also just kind of really good at conveying alienation as like, like there's so many frustrated like non responses to things. Like things that should be these peak admissions or revelations or something. They never get the reaction that you think they should. And there's something that's so frustrating, but I think also very real about that. You rarely ever get those big cathartic moments where you finally tell somebody a secret you've been keeping for so long and they react appropriately.

[Griffin]

Well, she keeps telling people like my boyfriend off. And she wants people to ask follow up questions.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. And they never do that.

[Griffin]

And they just go like, yeah, sounds like the kind of thing you know, he'd do. And then in the bathtub with Lana, there's like the real like I gotta tell you, it's a funny subtitle moment because it's like translated phonetically into like something that's bad happen. But she goes like, what? And she was like, he's gone. And Lana like won't hear her.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Say it. Yeah, he's gone to another country. The undiscovered country, you know, because Lana.

[Emily Yoshida]

Is just like, it's something to do with me. Like, you know, everybody is so, you know, narcissistic in their own. Yeah, yeah. That it never, it never comes to that.

[Griffin]

No one will like let her confess. Which I think helps push her to being like, then why, why do I have to live with guilt or trauma or grief about this?

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

I was just going to say the shooting, the cab ride. So many times Lynn Ramsey said that like the taxi driver was like one of the highest paid people in the entire movie. Cuz they had to keep bringing him back.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh my God.

[Griffin]

When they would like develop the film and be like, oh, we it up.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

And then go back and reshoot it again as they Figured out what the visual look was for that final chunk of the film that's so, so wild. And then the sex scene. She had never stopped a sex scene before and, like, got in there with them and had all these ideas of, like, you know what? I don't like in sex scenes, and I'm trying to avoid that.

[Emily Yoshida]

More crying. Everybody should be crying.

[Griffin]

Once you actually get in the room, she's just like. It's so awkward to, like, figure out and step through, and you find yourself falling into the same ways of shooting it. And she just sent everybody, like, the whole crowd of the room, and she was just like, it's just us and the camera. And just, like, try. Just try stuff and, like, feel it out.

[Emily Yoshida]

My, oh, my. Trying with that dude.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Handsome guy.

[Emily Yoshida]

It's. It is a laugh line of its own where he opens the door and it's just like, oh, I lost my mother. I lost my mother. Okay, let's. Oh, my God.

[Griffin]

This premiere. Premiere. I can. But in director's Fortnite, I was gonna.

[David]

Say it was gonna be ratcatcher. Been in a certain regard. This was also put in certain regard. Ramsey was pissed off by that, so she moved it to director's fortnite. She somewhat iconically married Rory Stewart Kinnear, the guy she co writes we need to talk about Kevin with later at Cannes. Impromptu. Just, I guess, because she was a little sick of being at Cannes and.

[Griffin]

They had to get up on a boat so they could, like, take advantage of maritime law. It had to go far enough out. Yes.

[David]

That's so sick. It did the festival circuit. It gets distributed in the UK by Momentum. It get released 2002. America. It got released December 2002 by a company called Cowboy Pictures.

[Griffin]

Yes. Right.

[David]

Really? No.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

It got great reviews, but made zero money.

[Griffin]

Can I read this quote about the wedding? Because it's really good. So you. You. The. The captain does the ceremony. This is, like, a thing. They offer a can, but you are legally required to be 12 miles out. International water. Not sure we got that far. During the ceremony, we hear screaming coming from an island and think that someone is being murdered. Murdered. We look over and see a couple of naked ladies and a camera crew making a porno film.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh, my God.

[David]

International waters porn.

[Griffin]

To ring the boat's bell to get them to shut up. It's absurd. Straight out of a Fellini film.

[David]

That just sounds like what her life is like on a daily basis. And I might enjoy it for a week and then be like, this is a lot. And I Think she just. She's chaotic. Especially back then.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David]

This film. This is very interesting to me because this film came out Christmas time, 2002, Griffin. And I was like, oh, a Christmas box office for. We've done this one before. I don't think we've ever done this before.

[Griffin]

Is this not Catch Me if youf Can?

[David]

No, it is not.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[David]

I guess that comes out the following week later.

[Griffin]

It comes out literally on Christmas.

[David]

Correct.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[David]

This is the first weekend of a little film that's a sequel in a fantasy trilogy.

[Griffin]

It's called the Lord of the Rings. Colon, the Two Towers.

[David]

That's right. Never forget Treebeard. Yeah, he's there now. Emily, you like the Lord of the Rings movies?

[Emily Yoshida]

I do. That's the best one.

[David]

And that's your favorite, right?

[Griffin]

That's the best one is that you'd claim that when we do pj.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh, absolutely. Well, I. I mean, no. You want a different piece I put in.

[Griffin]

Oh, oh, yes. You.

[Emily Yoshida]

You.

[David]

But I also would take Aragorn throwing open the doors and going like this.

[Emily Yoshida]

Gondor calls for aid. Wait, no, that's. That's Return of the King.

[David]

That's true.

[Emily Yoshida]

You like putting on a pair? I like the last march of the ants.

[David]

That's fun.

[Emily Yoshida]

Some may say we march to our doom.

[David]

I like that one N. Who kind of like puts his head in the.

[Emily Yoshida]

Water and douses it, you know, because it's on fire.

[David]

It's like that guy.

[Griffin]

I like all about the ants in that movie.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. Anytime I re. Watch that and I. The end sequence comes up where they start my. I just start bawling. It's like it gets worse every time. Like, with age. I. The ants make me cry. I think I'm just like, growing up into being an end eventually. And I just see my future in front of me.

[Griffin]

Tree Bird hasn't really worked recently. What's the last movie?

[David]

I heard he was on the Epstein list.

[Griffin]

Oh, really?

[David]

Don't even joking.

[Griffin]

Also, it seems like he did 17 seasons of NCIS Miami.

[David]

Yeah, he's right.

[Griffin]

He's the chief.

[David]

No, he's great. We love Treebeard. Naval cops.

[Emily Yoshida]

You know, clearly he's still thinking about what his next film is going to be.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

He's indecisive.

[David]

You know, Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers is opening to $102 million, which is very good.

[Griffin]

Wow.

[David]

In like a five day, I think. Yeah. At least. But still.

[Griffin]

Yeah, okay. That makes more sense.

[David]

Pretty hefty.

[Griffin]

Yeah. Was quite a big hit.

[David]

Number Two at the box office is a film that I very much enjoy. A romantic.

[Griffin]

Not Gangs of New York. It's Kate and Leopold.

[David]

Incorrect. Gates of New York, however, is number four. We'll get to that.

[Griffin]

It's not Kate Leopold.

[David]

No, it is not.

[Griffin]

Oh, because that's over one.

[David]

I don't know.

[Griffin]

Well, David, you don't got to give me that attitude. Then. Is it Two Weeks Notice? Yeah, they're the two you always cite.

[David]

I love Two Weeks Notice. Mark Lawrence's Two Weeks Notice with Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock and Donald Trump, unfortunately, is in that movie was also quiet, which Hugh Grant says the word Pokemon. Yes, beautifully.

[Griffin]

Also quietly. Quite a big hit.

[David]

Huge hit, $200 million worldwide. That movie is. I really recommend. I really think that is the height of Sandy romcoms. I think it's a really, really funny movie. And Hugh's obviously very, you know, doing his thing very well.

[Griffin]

I was going in a Simpsons hole last night and I rewatched A Fish Called Selma.

[David]

Sure.

[Griffin]

Incredible episode. But there's the moment where the Jeff Goldblum agent calls Troy McClure and is like. And you got an offer for a buddy comedy with Christian Slater and Hugh Grant. And he goes, those degenerates.

[David]

Funny.

[Griffin]

It's a very funny snapshot. It's Christian Slater, Rob Lowe and Hugh Gray.

[David]

Anyway, number three, the box office is a less successful rom com, in my opinion, falling from number one. It's also set in New York City. It's Made in Manhattan, also quite a big hit. Yeah, big hit.

[Griffin]

Not.

[David]

Not. Yeah, no Slouch.

[Griffin]

A robust December.

[David]

You like Made in Manhattan?

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. The thing I always remember about that is, like, when I first moved to la, I knew somebody who worked on the crew in Made in Manhattan. I was like, wow, I really know some, like, people who are glitch.

[David]

Showbiz glamour.

[Griffin]

That's also like one of the most quietly stacked cast movies.

[David]

Sure. Give hit me. I mean, after Ray finds Bob Hoskins.

[Griffin]

Hoskins is there, she's there, Tucci's there. Chris Ian is in it.

[David]

He sure is. Francis Conroy. Natasha Richardson. Yes, that's about it.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[David]

Well, no Amy Sedaris. Well, well, funny. I've seen the film. Don't really remember it. Number four at the box office. Opening new this week. You guessed it, Griffin. The disappointing opening of Gangs of New York, which was much hyped and open to only $9.4 million. It did stretch all the way to 77.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Domestic and like 200. Correct.

[Emily Yoshida]

How much it cost?

[David]

Like, I Think it cost like about $100 million.

[Emily Yoshida]

Okay.

[David]

Like, I mean, but like, at the time, time, that was a lot. And obviously it's like a close to three hour, very violent epic. Like, I. I adore that movie so much. I love the Mr. Scorsese stuff on it so much.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[David]

It's clear that he does not really want to talk about it. It is mostly like, I'm mostly happy.

[Emily Yoshida]

No, the part where he's like, I'm. I had to like convince myself to stop thinking about it. I was like, oof. Right. I can't even imagine.

[Griffin]

Scorsese is great. I wish it was a year long.

[David]

I agree. I wish could have done with so much more.

[Griffin]

Four episodes per movie.

[David]

But it's really well done.

[Griffin]

It is, it is. But it is interesting. There's always been this question of like, especially now that Harvey Weinstein is so thoroughly out of the picture. Harvey Weinstein. That like, does Marty not want to go back and like, recut Gangs of New York? Because there was infamously so much interference there. And his thing has always been like, you can't rewrite the narrative of a movie. The movie that comes out is the movie the culture meets. I don't want to revisit my world work.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. I somehow feel like, you know, if it's your, possibly your last project you're working on, maybe you would rather make another movie instead of. But that, that's how it came off to me is that he was just like, gotta force myself to.

[Griffin]

It also has always felt. Yes. Beyond that. That even like in the immediate aftermath, he was just like, I. I spent 20 years of my life tilting at this windmill. I'm proud of enough of it that I can't keep obsessing over trying to get this perfect movie rocks.

[David]

I've seen it so many times.

[Griffin]

It's an okay film with incredible stuff.

[David]

Huge masterpiece. Completely rocks. Number five at the box office. Is a sort of a counter programming. Solid hit for teens. It's been out for two weeks. It makes $56 million domestically and an additional $713 internationally.

[Griffin]

Is it not another teen movie?

[Emily Yoshida]

No.

[David]

Oh, when you. When you hear about the disparity, what does that suggest you about the literary film?

[Griffin]

Primarily a film with a African American cast. And it's a. It's young.

[David]

Yeah.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. Oh, it's one of my favorite movies of all time.

[Griffin]

You want to say it.

[Emily Yoshida]

Drumline.

[David]

Nick Cannon and Drumline.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh, what a perfect movie.

[David]

I have not seen since 2002, but I remember being Lost.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh, I've Watched it quite good a few times.

[David]

Number six at the box office, making only $3 million less than the opening weekend of Gangs of New York is the opening weekend of the Wild Thornberries movie.

[Griffin]

Here's a box office stat I love. I think it when box office mojo still stood tall. And there was the chart for David saluting Red Hulk.

[David]

Maybe he'll bring it back.

[Griffin]

There was the chart for lowest second weekend drops of all time. For a long time, Wild Thornberries held the record because it went up.

[David]

It goes up.

[Griffin]

Historic amount 22.

[Emily Yoshida]

Wow.

[Griffin]

Kind of a soft opening. And then the families just waited. They waited for school to be out.

[David]

Totally. Totally.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh, my God.

[Griffin]

Yeah. So it, like, did okay. But the second weekend jump was crazy.

[David]

Number six is. Well, third was. Number seven, of course, is the hot chick.

[Emily Yoshida]

Of course.

[David]

Number eight. We covered it recently on this podcast is the underwhelming Star Trek Nemesis. Number nine is the somewhat underwhelming Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets.

[Griffin]

And Star Trek Nemesis dropping hard. It was number two the week before.

[David]

Yeah. Dropped 76.

[Emily Yoshida]

I saw like every single one of these movies except for Wild Thornberries.

[Griffin]

That's like a reverse same.

[David]

A number 10, die another day, which has been out for a couple months.

[Griffin]

We've also covered on our Patreon.

[David]

Yep. So, you know, things are going well at the box office. Morvern is obviously a little lower on this list. Opening number 56.

[Emily Yoshida]

Okay.

[David]

But, you know, three screens, 4,000 screen average. Okay. So not amazing.

[Griffin]

It did feel like it didn't.

[David]

It made less than a million dollars worldwide.

[Griffin]

It felt like there was a feeling of. Of Morton having an outside chance for supporting actress this year for Minority Report. I feel like she wasn't getting precursors. Kept being on the bubble list.

[David]

She was on a bubble list. But yeah, you're. I mean, like, no significant awards for it, obviously.

[Griffin]

And she hasn't been nominated since in America. But I feel like Control and the messenger were both similarly bubble performances where she got on Precursors.

[David]

She's. She's good. I think her. Her biggest performance post that boom is Longford, where she got an Emmy nomination, which is a TV movie, which she's fantastic in playing Myra Hindley of Serial Killer. And, you know, she's. What? She's in the Messenger.

[Griffin]

I said. Right.

[David]

She's already.

[Griffin]

She's really good in that Control. She's really good in.

[Guest or Producer]

Sure.

[Griffin]

You don't like that movie.

[David]

I have mixed feelings about that movie.

[Griffin]

I love it, though. I think she's really good.

[David]

What else does she kind of pop In. She's in Cosmopolis. I can't say I really remember that sygnecdoche we shouted out. She recently did that TV show, the Serpent Queen, which she was the lead of, about Catherine de Medici that I think was supposed to be kind of cool.

[Griffin]

And she did Harlots, an early Hulu British co production. Yeah.

[David]

And she is in Anemone, which is not a film I liked, but she's totally fine in it playing the character's mom. Mom. And yeah, she's still working, but yeah, she's. It's a different kind of vibe than what you might have expected. But then like, this is one of the best movies of the 2000s. But I don't watch it going, samantha Morton is about to be a Hollywood movie star. I watch it going, like, what an interesting actor she is. And I hope she continues to do interesting stuff.

[Griffin]

Yeah, yeah.

[David]

Which she kind of did.

[Griffin]

Yeah, she did. Yeah. But you agree with what I'm saying of. There was that feeling of that wave of UK actresses. And then I'll add Cate Blanchett into the pot. The late 90s and the early 2000s, where it was a feeling of like, is one of these Meryl Streep. Is this the start of the next Meryl Streep? And which one is it?

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

And it does feel like Kate Blanchett won that race, at least in terms of.

[David]

To Kava. Yeah.

[Griffin]

Duration, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was in there. Emily, thank you so much.

[David]

Anything else, Emily, you wish to shout out?

[Emily Yoshida]

Well, yeah, I. I don't know. It's funny. Like, this is. Like I said, it was one. It's a very, very special movie to me. And I never. I realized also going in, I don't think I ever rode about it.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

Because why would you. I guess anniversary, maybe.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah. But no, it's still like not on anybody's radar. So I don't know. I feel. I feel. I feel very glad to get to finally talk about somebody. Yeah. Yeah.

[Griffin]

You jotted down notes while we were watching the movie on my Fargo replica notepad.

[Emily Yoshida]

I know you'll have to rub on it to see what I wrote.

[Griffin]

It's just.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

A picture. It's a Dra Treehorn drawing of a guy's dick being bit.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's the guy from the hotel room. Yeah, Yeah.

[Guest or Producer]

I mean, I said this off Mike and I just want to make sure I get this on the record. This movie really made me miss being young. Tripping on LSD so badly, cuz old tripping Just don't hit the same when.

[Griffin]

You'Re old and tripping. It's cuz your shoelaces are untied. You know what I'm saying?

[David]

Oh, man. You said it.

[Griffin]

The walker gives out.

[David]

You said it. Bus.

[Griffin]

You know what I'm saying? It's very different. It's a different animal.

[Guest or Producer]

That was so solid.

[Griffin]

Thank you. Thank you so much.

[Guest or Producer]

And we also should just say if you're struggling with depression out there, if you're having, you know, thoughts about hurting yourself, contact somebody. There's 800 numbers. Reach out to a family member or friend.

[Griffin]

Yeah, look, these are going to be more emotionally intense episodes.

[Emily Yoshida]

Oh, Lord.

[Griffin]

For this run, I. I feel like we will try to.

[Emily Yoshida]

Single one is a trigger warning. I would say.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[Emily Yoshida]

And this whole filmography.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[Emily Yoshida]

Yeah, yeah. But thank you.

[Griffin]

And thank you for being here.

[Emily Yoshida]

I wish I had something to plug, but everything that I'm working on won't come out until we're all like in our 50s.

[David]

Shogun will arrive on our screen.

[Griffin]

Shogun season two is about to start filming. People will be happy to hear.

[Emily Yoshida]

I think you're going to be filming whenever this comes out.

[David]

Right. And if you haven't watched season one one, it's there for you on Hulu and it is incredible. And Emily's episodes are incredible.

[Griffin]

You can also plug the Mortal Engines. The abstract idea of them.

[Emily Yoshida]

They are meanis and they're always there.

[David]

I mean, they're actually not. They're made.

[Emily Yoshida]

They're immortal. So they're not always there. They're not going to be there.

[Griffin]

So that's part of the tension.

[Emily Yoshida]

Tension. That's what we like.

[David]

It's London.

[Griffin]

Tune in next week to hear us talk about. We need to talk about Kevin.

[David]

That's right. We're. We need to do it. We got to do it.

[Griffin]

It's on the schedule. We need to talk about. We need to talk about Kevin. And as always.

[Guest or Producer]

Wait, hold on.

[Griffin]

Oh.

[Guest or Producer]

Over on Patreon, we recently did an episode covering 28 years later, the Bone Temple.

[David]

Can't wait to see them bones.

[Guest or Producer]

We so excited.

[Griffin]

Good. Thanks.

[Guest or Producer]

I can't wait to enter.

[David]

I hear it's good.

[Griffin]

That's the.

[Emily Yoshida]

That's the Patreon franchise. The.

[David]

No, we're just, just doing that because we've done all the other 28.

[Emily Yoshida]

Okay. You're catching up.

[David]

Yeah. You might as well.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Guest or Producer]

You become a [e-mail] blank chat.

[David]

Please do.

[Griffin]

Yeah. And we're also doing the. The Oz movies.

[David]

Correct.

[Guest or Producer]

We're in the middle of our Oz commentary series.

[Griffin]

It's a funny contrast to do Lynn Ramsey and Oz at the same time. I think it's good, it's good, it's good, it's good, it's good. What we're doing here is good and important. Tune in next week for Kevin. Well, now it's, like, hard to figure out, like, a good upbeat note to end on. I know we were trying to dig ourselves out of this hole. Maybe we just dig the hole deeper.

[David]

And put some cheese in there for you, my baby.

[Emily Yoshida]

It's the best cheeseburgers and orange juice in the club.