Is ICE CREAM MAN Eli Roth’s most chilling work or does it need more sprinkles? + Taika Waititi

Summary

Kermode & Mayo’s Take

Episode: Is ICE CREAM MAN Eli Roth’s most chilling work or does it need more sprinkles? + Taika Waititi
Date: August 6, 2026
Hosts: Mark Kermode & Simon Mayo
Guest: Taika Waititi

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Episode Overview

In this lively and eclectic episode, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo deliver their trademark blend of in-depth film discussion, witty banter, and digressions into music, technology, and travel mishaps. Key features include reviews of Eli Roth's new horror film Ice Cream Man, the French family drama Love Me Tender, and the adaptation Summer Book (from Tove Jansson's novel). The show is highlighted by Simon Mayo's affectionate interview with director Taika Waititi, who reflects on the tenth anniversary of Hunt for the Wilderpeople, the legacy of Sam Neill, and the joys of New Zealand filmmaking. The duo also launch a new feature ("Take Insert Year"), looking back at the UK box office of 1976, and cap off the episode with listener stories, the “Laughter Lift,” and their signature playful arguments.

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Key Segments and Discussion Points

1. Light-Hearted Banter & Tech Digressions

[02:21–07:45]

• Mark and Simon riff about headphones, phone “nagging” features, and cars suggesting coffee breaks.
  • “My car as well. My car does this thing. It goes, drive a coffee break or, you know, literally a cup of coffee comes up on the screen.” — Mark [04:23]
• Amusing anecdotes about old radio days, legal volume limits at the BBC, and Robbie Vincent’s legendary need for extra headphone volume.
• Quick tangent: Driverless taxis and the quirks of British road movies.

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2. Main Film Reviews

Ice Cream Man (Eli Roth)

[14:02–20:32]

• Mark delivers a thorough review of Roth’s new horror, describing it as:
  • “...like an episode of the Twilight Zone, but with massively more amounts of gore and then traditional kind of Eli Roth trademark bad taste sensibility.” [14:41]
• Plot summary: An ice cream van appears in suburban America, distributing treats that turn children into homicidal monsters. Only the lactose intolerant are immune.
• Highlights the film’s reliance on shock, gore, and black humor.
• Notes reference points (Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Village of the Damned, Stand By Me, Night of the Living Dead), and an inside joke involving lactose intolerance and a grim anorexia gag.
• Critical take: “It is not Eli Roth's worst movie by any means. It is not Eli Roth's best... It's sort of mid range Eli Roth.” [18:00]
• Memorable moment: Mark compares Roth’s career to Orson Welles (“he made his best film first and then... never came anywhere close again”). [18:07]
• Concludes it’s overshadowed by recent films like Weapons: “...this is just the latest Eli Roth thing... very, very much vanilla Eli Roth.” [19:24]
• Simon’s verdict: “So the Ice Cream man is selling vanilla ice cream only and not ripple or chocolate chip? ...Well, I might give that a miss.” [20:32]

Love Me Tender (French Drama)

[52:45–60:19]

• Mark reviews Anna Kazanov Cambet’s drama, starring Vicky Krieps as Clemence, a mother fighting for custody of her son after coming out as a lesbian.
• Explores themes of motherhood, societal judgment, and legal hypocrisy: “...men frequently abandon their children, women leaving is rarer and is quite often considered by people... to be essentially unforgivable.” [56:19]
• Praises Krieps’s performance and the script’s literary quality (“very, very powerful”), particularly in voiceover narration.
• Draws parallels to Kramer vs. Kramer in emotional heft but highlights the “lumbering” and bureaucratic cruelty of the legal process.
• Notable quote: “‘Being an author is not in itself an indication of a personality flaw, because that's how absurd it's become.’” [57:58]

Summer Book (Sommarboken adaptation)

[66:10–73:26]

• Adapted from Tove Jansson’s 1972 novel and directed by Charlie McDowell.
• Mark sets up the story: A young girl spending the summer on a Finnish island with her grieving father and idiosyncratic grandmother (Glenn Close).
• Pays particular tribute to Close’s performance, noting her physical transformation and earthy wisdom:
  • “She communes naked with nature... she’s earthy. And the conversations between her and her granddaughter are all about God and family and scouting and death and grief.” [69:26]
• Film is “life lessons, early coming of age bonding between, you know, across generations—[but] Glenn Close is the reason to watch.” [72:13]
• Simon and Mark delight in sidetracks about cats vs. dogs and the relative merits of Finnish midsummer.

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3. “Take Two” & The Chart: 1976 Retrospective

[25:02–34:54]

• The new feature “Take Insert Year” launches with a musical jingle from the “Redactor.”
• Mark and Simon break down the UK top 10 box office films of 1976:
  • #1: Jaws
  • #2: The Return of the Pink Panther
  • #3: All the President's Men
  • #4: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
  • #5: Logan’s Run
  • #6: The Man Who Would Be King
  • #7: Bugsy Malone
  • #8: The Bad News Bears
  • #9: Marathon Man
  • #10: At the Earth's Core
  • #11: Dog Day Afternoon
• Listener comments debate whether 1976 or 1977 had a better run, with nods to Carrie, Eraserhead, and Star Wars.
• Mark reminisces about sneaking into X-rated films via the adjacent cinema loo: “If you paid to go into screen three, you could go into the toilet, then come out into screen two.” [35:28]

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4. Interview: Taika Waititi on Hunt for the Wilderpeople

[37:19–52:34]

Segment Breakdown

Background & Creation

• Taika discusses the adaptation process, drawing from Barry Crump’s "Wild Pork and Watercress."
• On inspiration: “I love the idea of like an odd couple in the form of grumpy old man and a young street kid on the run.” [39:21]

Casting Julian Dennison

• Found Julian while filming an anti-drug PSA: “He just exuded this energy and just... he was so funny. ...He just did it. I just gave him the part on the spot.” [40:47]

Remembering Sam Neill

• Deeply moving reflections follow Sam Neill’s recent passing:
  • “He was always on the right side, it seemed.” [43:40]
  • “We would talk often... And I won’t be getting those texts anymore.” [42:27]

Making the Film

• Waititi describes it as his happiest film set:
  • “It really felt like a family... just being happy all the time.” [44:00]
• Unique New Zealand flavor: “Maybe it's that you should just be true to where you're from... Otherwise it just feels maybe repetitive and feels like everything else...” [46:31]

Notable Film Moments

• The hilarious priest cameo: Inspired by a real funeral sermon, nearly word-for-word. [47:27]
• The “Happy Birthday Ricky Baker” song: Created on the day, with cast input, because the traditional “Happy Birthday” was under copyright. [49:06]
• Waititi teases an entire film based on the priest character: “I would love to do that character as the center of a film.” [48:49]

Looking Ahead

• Upcoming projects: Adaptation of “James,” and Clara and the Sun, based on Kazuo Ishiguro's novel.
• Waititi’s final nod to New Zealand’s unique storytelling: “It's a little doorway into a place that most people wouldn't ever experience...” [47:10]

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5. Correspondence & Listener Stories

Emails & Anecdotes

• Listener traumatized by a Psycho-themed shower curtain; amusing hospital horror stories shared by Mark.
• Listener story: Watching Alien at age 10 in Guyana, South America, via bootleg VHS tapes [64:00].

The “Laughter Lift”

• Jokes from Patreon supporters lead to trademark groaning and delight:
  • Funfair Dismissal: “Did you hear about the clown who got fired...? He’s suing for funfair dismissal.” [61:03]
  • Herb Garden: “I don't know how you find the time. I said, it's next to the tarragon.” [61:19]
  • Racing Snail: “I took the shell off my racing snail... it just became more sluggish.” [61:34]

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6. Closing & Recommendations

• Kermode’s Film of the Week:
  • Reissue: Hunt for the Wilderpeople: “Definitely.”
  • New Release: Love Me Tender [75:00]
• Upcoming live dates: Bristol show plug; joke about “Avon ladies” [75:06].
• Next week’s stand-in host: Sanjeev will take Simon’s spot.
• Correspondence of the Week: Hannah, the listener haunted by Norman Bates on her childhood shower curtain.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Eli Roth:
  “He made his best film first and then he never came anywhere close...” — Mark [18:07]
• On Sam Neill:
  “He had a great love for humans and... always on the right side, it seemed.” — Taika Waititi [43:40]
• Kermode on Glenn Close:
  “Glenn Close is a brilliant actor... She moves like a much older person.... there’s a transformation involved in it, which is all to do with the physical performance.” [72:13]
• Waititi on Film Universality:
  “The more Kiwi you made it, the greater its appeal around the world.” — [46:14–47:10]
• Mayo on live film applause:
  “One Flavor Cookies is the first film I ever saw where people applauded at the end.” [33:28]
• On parental judgment:
  “Men frequently abandon their children, women leaving is rarer... considered... unforgivable.” — Mark, Love Me Tender [56:19]
• Laughter Lift punchline:
  “‘I rearranged the herbs in my garden in alphabetical order... it's next to the tarragon.’” [61:19]

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• Tech/Headphones Anecdotes: 02:21–07:45
• Ice Cream Man Review: 14:02–20:32
• Take Insert Year: 1976 Chart: 25:02–34:54
• Taika Waititi Interview: 37:19–52:34
• Love Me Tender Review: 52:45–60:19
• Summer Book Review: 66:10–73:26
• Laughter Lift: 60:37–62:13

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Tone, Language, and Style

The episode is a rich mix of erudite film critique, affectionate remembrance, tangential humor, and audience interaction. Mark is prone to poetic (sometimes barbed) asides, while Simon frequently grounds discussions with warmth and self-deprecating wit. The Taika Waititi interview is especially candid, heartfelt, and peppered with Kiwi-flavored insight. The episode combines nostalgia, genuine film scholarship, and populist entertainment.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Heard the Episode

This episode is an essential listen for fans of contemporary and classic cinema, with standout moments including Mark’s candid assessment of Eli Roth, a moving tribute to Sam Neill via Taika Waititi, and a joyous dissection of 1976’s greatest movies. The reviews are thorough and accessible, and the banter retains the delightful, rambling charm that defines Kermode & Mayo’s Take. Whether you’re here for the film talk, the stories, or the sheer joy of their rapport, there’s something for everyone.

Transcript

[Mark Kermode]

Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun.

[Simon Mayo]

An army hung on her every word.

[Taika Waititi]

My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. Twas a lovely suv, an inexplicably queenly offer.

[Simon Mayo]

They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight we feast. An offer you can feast on.

[Taika Waititi]

Sell your car today on Carvana.

[Simon Mayo]

Pick up fees may apply.

[Mark Kermode]

Simon, did you get my email?

[Simon Mayo]

Deleted. It looks suspicious.

[Mark Kermode]

It was from me. It came from my usual email address,

[Simon Mayo]

which can be spoofed.

[Mark Kermode]

It had the running order for today's show.

[Simon Mayo]

Classic social engineering.

[Mark Kermode]

There wasn't even a link.

[Simon Mayo]

They're getting clever.

[Mark Kermode]

There wasn't an attachment either.

[Simon Mayo]

Getting very clever.

[Mark Kermode]

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[Simon Mayo]

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[Mark Kermode]

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[Simon Mayo]

Before we begin, a quick reminder that you can become a Vanguardista and get

[Mark Kermode]

an extra episode every Thursday, including bonus reviews, extra viewing suggestions, viewing recommendations at home and in cinemas, plus your film

[Simon Mayo]

and non film questions answered as best we can in questions.

[Mark Kermode]

You can get all that extra stuff via Apple podcasts or head to extratakes.com for non fruit related devices.

[Simon Mayo]

There's never been a better time to become a Vanguardista. Free offer now available wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're already a Vanguardista, we salute you. Are your headphones at the right level?

[Mark Kermode]

Mark? My headphones are now at the right level. Since we've. We are. We're in the studio and the top production team have now managed to get. Because you, for the first time, I think, asked for your headphones to be turned up. It's usually me.

[Simon Mayo]

Well, normally they're too. Well, yeah. Also we're normally at home, so.

[Mark Kermode]

So you just do it yourself.

[Simon Mayo]

So it's my response.

[Mark Kermode]

Somebody else.

[Simon Mayo]

It's too quiet. It's like, all my own fault. But, yeah, so I wanted some more. But we're not. We're not at the Robbie Vincent level because Robbie.

[Mark Kermode]

Robbie Vincent had a preamp on his headphones, right?

[Simon Mayo]

Yes. I mean, Robbie is still doing his soul shows and R and B shows and stuff. And when he was at Radio 1, he. I mean, I'm sure I've mentioned this before, he had a. His. The headphones are limited at the BBC because it's a legal requirement, so they're limited everywhere. Standard rule not to deafen people, but that's not loud enough for some old timers. And so he had a preamp which he plugged into the desk and then plugged his headphones in and he, like,

[Mark Kermode]

jumped off the table.

[Simon Mayo]

It was. You didn't need speakers in the room, basically, you just need Robbie's headphones.

[Mark Kermode]

But. And as we've said before, Fluff Freeman had really loud headphones.

[Simon Mayo]

I think that that generation. I mean, I suspect I listen to music far louder than the rest of the family do. Can you turn that down? Can you turn that down?

[Mark Kermode]

Does your phone do that thing about telling you that you've been listening to music too loud and telling you off?

[Simon Mayo]

No.

[Mark Kermode]

It's really annoying. My phone says, based on your listening levels for the last three days, you need to turn things down. And I think.

[Simon Mayo]

Does it have that tone?

[Mark Kermode]

No, it's a message. You know, it comes up as a thing. It probably says it because I've disabled all the speaky parts of my phone. I've disabled Siri and I've disabled. I've disabled any. I want the phone to not be talking to me or not listening to me unless it. I just want it to make calls and go on the Internet occasionally.

[Simon Mayo]

There's clearly something else you need to switch off. I know the naggy feature.

[Mark Kermode]

I know the naggy feature that literally like, what are you, my mom? No, I want to listen to it this loud.

[Simon Mayo]

I switched off the thing that says you need to stand up because it normally occurs, like in the middle of a screening or something like that. Yeah, it says you need to stand up and exercise. No, thanks. I'll decide if I. Sometimes I can't stand up because I'm working or, you know, I'm watching a movie.

[Mark Kermode]

My car as well. My car does this thing. It goes, drive a coffee break or, you know, literally a cup of coffee comes up on the screen.

[Simon Mayo]

Does it make the coffee?

[Mark Kermode]

No, that would.

[Simon Mayo]

Now, that would be.

[Mark Kermode]

That would be good.

[Simon Mayo]

You're looking tired. Here, have some coffee.

[Mark Kermode]

Have A cup. Have some coffee. But no, it just. A cup of coffee comes up on the screen and it tells me I need to take a break. And it would do it like five minutes after I've been in a service station.

[Simon Mayo]

I bet. You know Elvis's car, which is in the.

[Mark Kermode]

Which is in Graceland.

[Simon Mayo]

Well, okay. There is an Elvis car in the Nashville Museum of Country Music.

[Mark Kermode]

Oh, fine. Elvis had more than one car.

[Simon Mayo]

Right.

[Mark Kermode]

And is it the pink Cadillac pushing?

[Simon Mayo]

It had an LP player on the dashboard.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, the whole thing.

[Simon Mayo]

But that kind of device, like the Batmobile kind of thing. Is there anywhere a car that says, you're looking tired. Here, have an espresso. That would be fantastic.

[Mark Kermode]

They used to be drinks dispensers in the backs of cars, didn't they? I mean, I know when you get stretched limos and all that sort of thing, but if you got a posh car, they'd be like. Sometimes they'd be like glass, you know, plant holders, you know, like vases. Glass vases. And then like a little drinks can.

[Simon Mayo]

I mean, there are still little holes in the plastic.

[Mark Kermode]

No, but it was for putting coffee in. That's for putting the coffee in. That the car hasn't made you. But how annoying is it that the car suddenly says, you need a cup of coffee? Go. What? It's not like I've been driving erratically. I'm on the A30 doing 55.

[Simon Mayo]

Yeah, I always. I don't mind, I suppose, if you're on your own. Maybe it's useful to be, you know, maybe you're driving. Maybe your driving was erratic and unpredictable.

[Mark Kermode]

My driving was not erratic.

[Simon Mayo]

You know, it might have been.

[Mark Kermode]

No, it wasn't. I tell you how I know it wasn't because I use cruise control, right? I. Exactly. I discovered cruise control about two years ago, and it's brilliant, right? I always thought you can't ever use cruise control. The only place you can use cruise control is in America. Because in America, you set cruise control at 55 and you drive for five days and you're still in the same place, right? That's why the only British road movie really, is Radio on, which he gets in a car in London and he stops in Bristol. But that whole thing about, you know, not. Not speeding is that one of the. I discovered that one of the ways to do it is just. Just, you know, set your Cruise control to 65. That way you'll never drift over 70. You just put to set it for 65. And so I drive it that. And then also in Our car. It does a thing about if. If you're getting close to another car, it's. It says, oh, you're close to that car. I don't know what it is. I've got like an AI car.

[Simon Mayo]

You're not as good as driver as you think you are.

[Mark Kermode]

That's basically what I think. Well, I think the way it is at the moment, I could just go to sleep and the car would drive itself, but wake me up and tell me I needed a cup of coffee.

[Simon Mayo]

I mean, I think what's really. I. I bet there is a super lux car somewhere which makes emergency coffees. Hands them out.

[Mark Kermode]

Would you. Would you be happy going in one of the driverless cabs?

[Simon Mayo]

Yes, I think so. Yes, I think so.

[Mark Kermode]

Because the driverless cab wouldn't go see the football.

[Simon Mayo]

Also, some. Some of the. I mean, let's hear it for taxi drivers, etc. But I've had some bad ones. He's not watching. Watching his phone or whatever, you know, so.

[Mark Kermode]

That's right. The driverless cab is never on the phone to its wife going, yeah, no, I'll be. I'll be back. But I've just got to. I'm just outside. I've got to just pick this up

[Simon Mayo]

and then I'm around the corner.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah.

[Simon Mayo]

Anyway, what are we doing? Oh, yes, we're doing a podcast about movies and stuff. What are you talking about?

[Mark Kermode]

We're reviewing three very different films. Love Me Tender, which is a French drama with Vicky. Creeps Summer Book, which is an adaptation of Sommarbukken by Tove Janssen, and Ice Cream man, which is the new film by Eli Roth, which sadly doesn't feature the Jonathan Richmond Ice Cream Man.

[Simon Mayo]

What about the very popular Take Two? What's happening there?

[Mark Kermode]

So we will also be in Take two reissues of Flushed Away, which is the ongoing Aardman animation reissues, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which brings us to our special guest in Take one.

[Simon Mayo]

Oh, we've already done him. Yes. Taika Waititi. He's good, isn't he? Really? Yes. And it's the 10th anniversary and it's in 4K and it's in cinemas and digital platforms from this Friday, plus a new occasional feature called Take Insert Year.

[Mark Kermode]

Yes.

[Simon Mayo]

And the year we are inserting is

[Mark Kermode]

1976, which is fantastic.

[Simon Mayo]

Is it?

[Mark Kermode]

Well, I guarantee, when we get to it.

[Simon Mayo]

What's the idea of that, then?

[Mark Kermode]

So it's, you know, it's 50 years ago. It was 50 years ago today. I know. It was 20 years ago today. It was 50 years ago. Was it 50? That is 50, isn't it? 50 years ago was 1976. So we're just gonna be looking back at the chart from 1976.

[Simon Mayo]

Rocking.

[Mark Kermode]

Yes. And going. Wow, that was a good year to be going to the cinema.

[Simon Mayo]

A reminder, you can get take two ad free by heading to our Patreon page. Just search Kermita Mayo Patreon and you will find us. And there are some tickets left for Bristol on December 6th. I can understand if you haven't grabbed

[Mark Kermode]

a ticket because you're thinking for the Christmas show.

[Simon Mayo]

It's December. I haven't even had my summer holiday yet. Stop telling me about Christma. Anyway, you don't want to miss out. The ticket link is in the show notes. People of Clevedon, Western Super Mare, Gloucester and Chepstow. We're looking forward to seeing you there. It's only 75 minutes from Birmingham, so come on, Brummies, get booking. This is sounding a bit desperate, so I'm not going to adopt that town. I haven't done a show from Western Super Mare since taking Jason Donovan on the Radio One Roadshow. Not that we're going to Western Super Mare, but, you know, you did the

[Mark Kermode]

radio road show with Jason Donovan.

[Simon Mayo]

Western Super Mares completely seized up because it was the most exciting thing happening that summer.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay. And Super Mare means on the. On the seafront, does it? Super Mare above the sea?

[Simon Mayo]

Yes. I mean, I'm not. I'm not an expert here, but I'm imagining that that probably means that.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay. And how was Jason?

[Simon Mayo]

It was Jason. He did his super poptastic hats, you know, which he wore. He changed them, I think, every other song.

[Mark Kermode]

What was he like?

[Simon Mayo]

He's a nice guy.

[Mark Kermode]

Never met him. No, I've never met him. No, You've not met him? No, I haven't. No.

[Simon Mayo]

He's. He's recently.

[Mark Kermode]

He did Joseph in the Amazing Technicolor, didn't he? Forever. Because when the band that I was in won the International Street Entertainers of the Year award, I don't know why you're pulling that back.

[Simon Mayo]

Strange.

[Mark Kermode]

Distract.

[Simon Mayo]

We're off on a strange.

[Mark Kermode]

When we won the International street and Standards of the year award in 19. Blah, blah, blah. The final was held at the London Palladium. So for one night, Jason wasn't on stage doing Joseph in his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat because the International Street Entertainers of the Year was happening there. And we walked past what would have been his dressing room.

[Simon Mayo]

That anecdote might be Edited out, I'm thinking. But you know, you never know, do you? Melinda Roberts Hello, Melinda, Simon and Mark. We're currently on holiday in the Dordogan and I've been enjoying relaxing by the pool whilst catching up on your podcast. One evening last week we attended a rather lovely event at Jardin Marquesac, which are very beautiful. On the evening we went, they were hosting various musical ensembles stationed at various points around the vast gardens. Jazz groups, Irish musicians, a saxophonist ensemble, and so on. While looking out over the beautiful view, I was startled and concerned to hear a cry for help. Moving towards the direction the cry, I was reminded of your good selves as I spotted a peacock strutting its stuff while making the cry that all vanguardistas will now know is not in reality a child in distress, but is Mark doing an impression of a peacock? Anyway, my real reason for getting in touch is to let you know. Now this switches into Melinda Roberts Christmas newsletter to all her family and friends. Okay, getting in touch is to let you know the latest achievement of my son, Zack Roberts. You may recall him from a previous email. He was doubling for Paul Mescal in Gladiator. I do remember that Zach and three of his colleagues have been nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Stunt Performance for their work in Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Zach and his wife Joanna will be attending the ceremony in September at the fittingly named Peacock Theater in la. We are obviously extremely proud of him. Whatever the outcome, he and Joanna welcomed their latest stunt girl, Goldie to the family in May 25. So she's a stunt girl already.

[Mark Kermode]

Wow.

[Simon Mayo]

And she's already demonstrated her potential by riding horses with just a little support behind the back, I would think. Like a parent. We'll keep you posted. Anyway, if you want to big up your family, just get in touch. Yeah, that's what you have to do, isn't it?

[Mark Kermode]

Just sit there.

[Simon Mayo]

I don't think I get on a horse with a baby. No. Thank you.

[Mark Kermode]

Have you seen my horse related scar? Look?

[Simon Mayo]

Where is that?

[Mark Kermode]

What do you mean? There, there.

[Simon Mayo]

That.

[Mark Kermode]

Oh, that thing. Massive thing there. What did. What did.

[Simon Mayo]

Were you.

[Mark Kermode]

I was pony trekking in Wales.

[Simon Mayo]

Why?

[Mark Kermode]

My parents wanted a holiday without their children, so they sent us on an adventure holiday. Pgl. And I was pony trekking in Wales and this pony kicked or whatever it was or bugged and it threw me off and I went down off the. I went down the side of a ravine and I put my hand out to break my fall and it snapped both the bones in my arm in half and I had to have it plated.

[Simon Mayo]

Wow.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah.

[Simon Mayo]

So you're like the 6 million dollar.

[Mark Kermode]

Exactly.

[Simon Mayo]

You've been put. You've fallen apart, and we all. RoboCop. Maybe you're RoboCop. That's. Do you have special powers if you punch someone with that hand, you know, like Benedict Cumberb? Would it be extra hurting?

[Mark Kermode]

Well, it was always. I don't know whether you remember the thing with the $6 million, man, you know, we can rebuild him. We can make him better than he was before. It was only one of his legs that they rebuilt. So why didn't he run around in circles?

[Simon Mayo]

That's true.

[Mark Kermode]

It's like. It doesn't make any sense.

[Simon Mayo]

So is the metal still in your arm?

[Mark Kermode]

No. They had to take it out a year later because I was still growing. They said to me, when they put it in, they said, it's okay, it's a spiral plate. It will grow with you. And then a year later they wrote to me and said, actually it wasn't a spiral plate. It was just a bit of Meccano and we'll have to take it out. So they haven't. And I've Now I've still got it. I've still got.

[Simon Mayo]

Did they not know what kind of plate they put in?

[Mark Kermode]

I think they were just busy. Okay.

[Simon Mayo]

Okay. [e-mail]. what's out then? What are you going to review here?

[Mark Kermode]

Ice Cream man, which is the new film from Eli Roth. Now, you remember Eli Roth. Eli Roth came in when Cabin Fever came out and he was a sort of wunderkind. And then he downshifted into those sort of torture, porny hostel movies. And then he was. There was the grindhouse thing with Tarantino, and then he made the absolutely dreadful Green Inferno. And then he made that really weird film, the House with a Clock in Its Walls.

[Simon Mayo]

Yes, I do.

[Mark Kermode]

Which is like the strangest kind of career left turn. And most recently he did that video.

[Simon Mayo]

Is that with Jack Black?

[Mark Kermode]

With Jack Black.

[Simon Mayo]

I think he came on the show

[Mark Kermode]

to talk about it. Precisely. I do too, actually.

[Simon Mayo]

We just wanted to talk about all the other films he's been. Sorry.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah. Can we talk about School of Rock? Anyway, so this is the first film from Eli Roth's horror section label. He's co writing and direct directing. It's basically. It's like an episode of the Twilight Zone, but with massively more amounts of gore and then traditional kind of Eli Roth trademark bad taste sensibility. So set in a blue velvety type America, American suburbia. Kids play baseball and they bully each other. They have dinner with their parents who go to the pta. And then into this town comes the ice cream van which is driven by this be capped presence who looks like John Waters basically and plays this cracked earworm theme. And the ice cream man hands out ice creams to all the kids who immediately turn into homicidal monsters and start butchering their parents and their teachers. Oh, here's a. Here's a clip from the trailer.

[Taika Waititi]

You guys see that weird ice cream antenna?

[Mark Kermode]

What do you mean weird?

[Taika Waititi]

Like he was following me. Is everyone sick or something?

[Mark Kermode]

Back to your classrooms.

[Taika Waititi]

Out. They're not trying to kill us, they're trying to turn us. That ice seems demonic.

[Simon Mayo]

Go, go, go, go, go.

[Mark Kermode]

What is going on here?

[Taika Waititi]

Hit it.

[Mark Kermode]

You get the idea.

[Simon Mayo]

So, yeah, I think I've got the

[Mark Kermode]

whole, the whole, the whole film. So loads of scenes of young kids ripping out adult squishing their parents faces under seesaws in the play park, driving microscopes into their teacher's eyes. There is a small group of people who aren't infected by the ice cream due to lactose intolerance. In one particular case though, one of them does eat the ice cream and then throws up. And the fact that throwing up solves the problem enables Eli Roth to make a joke about. I'm a girl, of course, I know how to throw up. So a joke about anorexia, which is kind of. It's what Eli Roth does, you know, alongside jokes about child molestation and. Anyway, so when I lived in Hume in Manchester, and there is a reason I'm saying this, there was a thing that used to happen which was at about sort of 8 o' clock at night, this ice cream van, which we used to refer to, me and Phil Gladman, who I shared a flat with, we used to refer to as the ice cream van of the apocalypse, would drive around here. I have no idea what it was selling. I'm pretty certain it wasn't ice cream. But it had.

[Simon Mayo]

Is it hard drugs?

[Mark Kermode]

Who knows? It's entirely possible. Or maybe it was just some very bad independent records. But it would drive around making this clang, clang, clang, clang sound. And Phil and I would go, look, there goes the ice cream van of the apocalypse. And it would be followed by a bunch of crusties with a dog on a string, you know, usual. So I know what it's like. Meanwhile you'd hear it and you'd see it glowing through the pestilential cloud of foul smelling gas that came off the Harp Lager factory that once literally came out of the factory and then sat over human caused everybody's eye, sounds like. Exactly. Hence the ice cream van of the apocalypse. So look, thing is, I do understand the idea of the scary ice cream van. As for this, it is not Eli Roth's worst movie by any means. It is not Eli Roth's best movie because Eli Roth, weirdly, is like Orson Welles. And I know that's going to be taken out of context, so I want to do it like this. It's like Orson Welles, he made his best film first and then he never came anywhere close to making another film as good as that. And that is the only way in which Eli Roth is like Orson Welles. It's sort of, this is sort of mid range Eli Roth. I mean, if you were being charitable, you'd say it's, it's a cross between Peewee Herman's Big Adventure, Village of the Damned, Stand By Me and Night of the Living Dead. And I can imagine that if it was at a horror festival, people would. They, you know, they, they like the squishy. There's lots and lots of squishy, tasteless gore. They'd like the fact that there are nods to Night of the Living Dead specifically. And there's one part when they're in a graveyard and there's a graveyard that says McNaughton. And I imagine that that's a joke about John McNaughton and Henry portrait of Syracuse. So it's got all that stuff going on in it and it's got the usual, you know, Eli Roth squishy splatter, some of which is fun, some of which isn't. There's a certain, there's a certain frisson in the idea of the ice cream van comes, you know, gives the kids things and the kids all turn into a marauding, monstrous army. The problem with that is we've had weapons. And in the wake of a film like Weapons in which that whole idea about the kids running out of their houses and then being. I mean, you remember the scene in Weapons in which the kids go after.

[Simon Mayo]

That's great.

[Mark Kermode]

It's terrifying, right? And when I was reviewing that film, I said, that's like Screamers, a really, really weird film from actually from a previous century now, which used that idea about weaponized kids. So in the wake of that, it is impossible to look at Ice Cream man and go, oh, well, that's a kind of excitingly edgy idea. Because it isn't. It's just that idea played for kind of goofy Splattery. Also, the central sins of the fathers thing is a lift from Nightmare on Elm Street. But look, in a world in which you've got movies like Weapons, which is a really, really good film, this is just the latest Eli Roth thing. And then, as I said, it doesn't feature Jonathan Richmond's Ice Cream man, which is one of my favorite songs of all time, does have music by Snoop Dogg, so it's very, very much vanilla Eli Roth. And it's one central idea, which is kids eat ice cream and kill. The adults would have seemed edgier in a world in which weapons hadn't been so recently in everyone's memory as quite simply one of the best films of recent years.

[Simon Mayo]

So the Ice Cream man is selling vanilla ice cream only and not ripple or chocolate chip?

[Mark Kermode]

Pretty much, yeah.

[Simon Mayo]

Okay, well, I might give that a miss, if that's all right with you.

[Mark Kermode]

I didn't think you were ever going to see it. There was no part of me. I thought you were going to see it.

[Simon Mayo]

No, the trailer made me not want to see it.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, exactly.

[Simon Mayo]

Hannah says, lads, I'm a few weeks behind, but listening to your chat on Psycho, we need an ad break. Okay, so here's some ads.

[Mark Kermode]

Simon, did you get my email?

[Simon Mayo]

Deleted. It looks suspicious.

[Mark Kermode]

It was from me. It came from my usual email address,

[Simon Mayo]

which can be spoofed.

[Mark Kermode]

It had the running order for today's show.

[Simon Mayo]

Classic social engineering.

[Mark Kermode]

There wasn't even a link.

[Simon Mayo]

They're getting clever.

[Mark Kermode]

There wasn't an attachment either.

[Simon Mayo]

Getting very clever.

[Mark Kermode]

You didn't listen to a word I said last time, did you? You need NordVPN. It's still the VPN people know and trust, but it's now an all in one digital security solution combining VPN built in privacy, firmware, next gen antivirus and other security features all in one subscription.

[Simon Mayo]

What's so next gen about it?

[Mark Kermode]

Well, for one thing, it helps block threats before they reach your device, not after. It can help protect against malware, dangerous websites and intrusive ads. And its AI powered anti phishing helps warn you about suspicious sites and scams.

[Simon Mayo]

Upgrade your online protection with an all in one security app. Visit NordVPN.com take for an exclusive deal including four extra months on the two year plan.

[Mark Kermode]

That's NordVPN take risk free with NordVPN's 30 day money back guarantee.

[Simon Mayo]

Evening buyer's remorse.

[Mark Kermode]

Buy a new car.

[Simon Mayo]

I'll be moving in.

[Mark Kermode]

Let's get started.

[Taika Waititi]

Sorry, I think there's been a mistake.

[Simon Mayo]

I bought it from Carvana.

[Mark Kermode]

You what?

[Taika Waititi]

Yeah, great price.

[Simon Mayo]

I even have seven days to love

[Taika Waititi]

it or return it.

[Simon Mayo]

So there's no.

[Taika Waititi]

No.

[Simon Mayo]

No buyer's remorse.

[Taika Waititi]

More like buyers rejoice.

[Mark Kermode]

I guess I'll let myself out.

[Simon Mayo]

Congratulations. I mean it.

[Taika Waititi]

Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven day return policy at Carvana.com.

[Simon Mayo]

Right. An email from Hannah. As I was saying, lads, I'm a few weeks behind, but listening to your chat on Psycho unearthed some childhood scars. When I was 8, if you put yourself into this situation, you can see why Hannah would be traumatized.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay.

[Simon Mayo]

When I was eight, we went on a family holiday to Orlando, Florida to do all the theme parks, including Universals. I'd not seen Psycho at this point. Well, you are eight.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay.

[Simon Mayo]

But while there, my mum and dad decided to buy a new shower curtain from the gift shop back home. They proudly put up the new shower curtain. Aren't shower curtains horrible things anyway? All of them.

[Mark Kermode]

And when you stand in the shower, the first thing they do, they stick to your body.

[Simon Mayo]

Yes. Which is ridiculous.

[Mark Kermode]

And when it's in a hotel, you know that that shower curtain is stuck to the body of the previous person to stand in the shower. And there's a S which says, please close the shower curtain. You think? No.

[Simon Mayo]

Anyway, they put up the new shower curtain to reveal the printed silhouette of Norman Bates in a wig holding a dagger. For years growing up, I had to check the bath for potential murderers until they finally got rid of the bath and we had a walk in shower instead. It took me a long time to watch Psycho as an adult. And while I agree it's an excellent film, once is enough. Thank you. Keep up the good work. Love the show, Steve, because I think we could do a shower curtain. I'll contact the merchandise department.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay.

[Simon Mayo]

But I'm sure there is a kind of like a silhouette of us. I mean, apart from the fact that shower curtains are really annoying.

[Mark Kermode]

Do you want a silhouette of us watching you while you shower?

[Simon Mayo]

Okay. It's a stupid idea.

[Mark Kermode]

Do you remember the bit in High Anxiety? Do you remember what the. With the shower. The shower scene in that. And the guy keeps saying to the. To the guy, you know, I need the newspaper, I need the newspaper, I need the newspaper, I need the newspaper. And then he's in the shower and you see the silhouette come up, up. And he pulls back and he says, guy, you go, here's your newspaper. And he hits him with the newspaper. And then the ink goes down the

[Simon Mayo]

thing I Think in general, anything. A shower with a curtain is a bad thing. Yes, it's a bad design. Have a shower or a bath. Yeah, not a shower. In a bath. It seems crazy. Do we need ads? No, we don't.

[Mark Kermode]

Just done them.

[Simon Mayo]

Yeah, but they were good. They were good. Particularly.

[Mark Kermode]

I'm gonna go out and buy all of those things straight away.

[Simon Mayo]

I'm gonna buy two of them.

[Mark Kermode]

Yes. If that's possible.

[Simon Mayo]

But I do wholeheartedly endorse everything. Very good that we've just advertised. I could be a hostage to fortune.

[Mark Kermode]

What's that? They do that in America, don't they? My name's Dingy Bong and I. I endorse this message or support this message

[Simon Mayo]

or whatever it is. Yeah, that's right. Well, obviously you do because you're in the app.

[Mark Kermode]

That's what you pay for it.

[Simon Mayo]

We're departing slightly now in this section of the show because we actually. Although this appears to be a live radio show. That's what people think.

[Mark Kermode]

Yes.

[Simon Mayo]

We actually pre recorded it a while back. We did at Christmas and this is normally where we do the char. And we're still doing a chart, but it's just a different chart. Yeah, it's the UK top 10 films in the box office in 1976.

[Mark Kermode]

Wow.

[Simon Mayo]

Which is. It's an interesting thing. Before we get into it, though, I regretfully have to inform you that the redactor has created a bespoke theme tune.

[Mark Kermode]

Oh, dear.

[Simon Mayo]

For this feature. Oh, dear.

[Mark Kermode]

Does he just get these from his home entertainment system?

[Simon Mayo]

On the conveyor belt? Gudly Toy Callahan stepped up to do the trick the sun beat down till fields looked sick and Britain baked through 76 I didn't know that's him singing. Kept swimmers from the sea the Pink Panther browed with glee President's men uncover tricks welcome to take 1976 Concord crossed the ocean slick the Cod War gave the fleet some stick A new Cortina joined the motoring mix the toast of every dad in 76 dog day afternoon

[Mark Kermode]

matched the climate mix Bugsey Malone had

[Simon Mayo]

splurge Gun kicks A Cuckoo's Nest Impressed the critics welcome to take 1976 Sex pistol shopped Bill Grundy stiff the interview went rapidly adrift A few choice words, a culture shift and punk gave Britain quite a lift that didn't work the control was quick and fast Marathon man was built to last the man who would be king had him Imperial tricks Welcome to take 1976 he is building

[Mark Kermode]

his part up, isn't he?

[Simon Mayo]

I thought that was just going to be like.

[Mark Kermode]

That's what I thought.

[Simon Mayo]

Music that we talked over.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah. And then we did start talking over it, and then we realized that there was a voice, and then we realized that that was the Redactor.

[Simon Mayo]

Well, that was quite scary, I have to say. Also, the Redactor sings. Could be a new album, I think. Definitely. Everyone comes free with a Kermit and Mayo shower curtain.

[Mark Kermode]

Do you remember Stiff Records released an album called the Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan, and it was just blank.

[Simon Mayo]

Yes, I think. I think that was originally. That original joke was Tom Paxton, who had a track on an album called the Wit and Wisdom of Spiro Agnew. And it was just an empty track. It was just absolutely nothing.

[Mark Kermode]

And do you know the thing about what Spiro Agnew is an anagram of?

[Simon Mayo]

Is it absolute tosser? No.

[Mark Kermode]

Spyro Agnew is an anagram of grow a penis.

[Simon Mayo]

Is that right? That's not a very good thing. Anyway, we're off topic, so we're gonna run down the box office hits.

[Mark Kermode]

You just heard them. You just heard the box office hits. In the tune, he literally did a plot spoiler jingle.

[Simon Mayo]

But this box office is closer in time to the Jazz Singer and Metropolis than it is to today, which says a lot.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay, it does.

[Simon Mayo]

So we got 11 here. And why have we got 11 anyway? Well, specifically because he.

[Mark Kermode]

When he wanted to get Dog Day Afternoon.

[Simon Mayo]

Dog Day afternoon is at 11. Great movie at the earth's core is at 10, marathon man is at 9, the bad news bears is at 8, bugsy malone at 7, the manor would be king at 6, logan's run at 5 1. Flow of the cuckoo's nest at 4, all the president's men at 3, the return of the pink panther at number 2. And jaws was number 1.

[Mark Kermode]

That's a heck of a top 10.

[Simon Mayo]

That's pretty good, isn't it? So we asked our patronistas if they could better that year. Theo Waters says, for me, the answer is 1977. Okay, so we just moved on one year as it. I could work that out from 7670 as it produced many of my personal favorite films. Eraserhead, Suspiria, Dare I say the greatest horror movie film ever made. Sorry, Mark. The Ascent, Stratsk, Herzog's greatest and most existential film house, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Abigail's Party. Considering mark's picks for 76, I think it's safe to say that the 70s were a great decade for film. Just to be clear, that's not Mark's picks. That's the box office.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, that is the box office.

[Simon Mayo]

And that's like what every. That's everyone's pick.

[Mark Kermode]

It was a thing.

[Simon Mayo]

David Dunn says two, two things strike me here. Firstly, a movie that technically came. Came out first at the end of 75 was the biggest movie of 76. Secondly, bad news Bears took more money than Dog Day Afternoon, which is.

[Mark Kermode]

Well in that particular. Or is that. Is that the total?

[Simon Mayo]

That's in the total, yeah. Okay. Dog day afternoon took 993,000 pounds. Bad news bears 1 million 611.

[Mark Kermode]

Dog day afternoon, however, was also. It would have been a grown up certificate, whereas Bad News Bears would have lesser certificate.

[Simon Mayo]

On the whole, though, says David, there's some absolute crackers on that list. Not the best year, however, 1977. Another one saying 77 was better because that was the year that the best film in the history of film ever came out. Brian De Palma's Carry, which as any fool know, is great. And he's. He's gone off into a whole molesworth set of spellings there.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay, good.

[Simon Mayo]

It came out in America in 1976. So I may be wrong and right at the same time. Kim Reynolds. I amicably argue that 1974 was quite special. But there's plenty of room for them both to share some glory. I mean, just to go back to one of Mark's previous arguments, you could take any year and come up with a great top 10.

[Mark Kermode]

Exactly. Can I just read you very quickly because I just checked this out. The. I remember seeing at the Earth's Core. The reviews for at the Earth's Core were not good. This was the review from the New York Times. It said the movie is a kind of no talent competition in which the acting, the script, the direction and the camera work all vie for last place.

[Simon Mayo]

Okay, we'll get. We've got some correspondence on these. So. Dog Day Afternoon. Max Searby says Dog Day Afternoon is not only the best film of the year, but also the best of the decade and continues to be influential to this day. Pacino's performance is one of the best ever. Uncle chunk.com says Jaws is the best film of all time. Dog Day Afternoon is the best film of 1976. Work that one out.

[Taika Waititi]

Wow.

[Simon Mayo]

Well, that doesn't. I mean that you can't work that out because if Jaws is the best one of all time, it has to be the best film. So add the Earth's core at number 10.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah. Not good. I mean, I mean, I was young when I saw it. So it was fine.

[Simon Mayo]

Jace says love, but probably not. That one says, lovely to see at the earth's core make the top 10. Peter Cushing plays doddery to perfection. Doug McClure plays Doug McClure.

[Mark Kermode]

Doug McClure always played Doug McClure. That's all Doug McClure ever did.

[Simon Mayo]

He played Doug McClure to perfection. And Caroline Monroe is perfection. The special effects are as special as they could be. It's just a 90 minute switch your brain off film and It's a number 10. So Marathon man is in number nine,

[Mark Kermode]

which, you know, Easy, safe, safe, easy, safe.

[Simon Mayo]

Bad News Bears. Number eight, Bugsy Malone. Number seven. Brian Shannow says, my childhood loathing of Bugsy Malone has not waned. Oh, in my now late 40s. May I never. May I never need to endure it again.

[Mark Kermode]

My name is Deluge.

[Simon Mayo]

Why is it a horror film? Bugsy Malone, the way you just did that.

[Mark Kermode]

Oh, I see. Sorry. We're gonna get you.

[Simon Mayo]

The man who Would Be King is at number six.

[Mark Kermode]

Here's an interesting thing about the man who Would Be King. Man who Would Be King was originally released as an. As an certificate film, which is one of those things in which you could go to see it if you were accompanied by a parent or guardian, which meant that you would hang around outside the cinema. But it was a with cuts. I don't know what they cut, but it was a with cuts.

[Simon Mayo]

Stephen Cook says, considering I have an original framed one sheet poster for the man who Would Be King prominently displayed in our front hallway. And one of my all time favorite screenings was a special Toronto International Film Festival showing of One Flow the Cuckoo's Nest hosted by. By Chow Yoon Fat. It's hard for me to argue otherwise. So he's. He's on board with that one.

[Mark Kermode]

Sean Connery and Michael Caine both considered the movie the favorite of all that they had worked on.

[Simon Mayo]

According to Wiki, Logan's run is at number five.

[Mark Kermode]

Still holds up, I think.

[Simon Mayo]

Carrie Tolinius. Hello, Carrie. Logan's runs seemed to be on TNT whenever I had flu as a teenager. So I've seen it a lot more often than movies. I actually like the world building makes no sense. So while the on screen scenery and costume look really good, the disbelief is unsuspended. Once you think. Think about it for a second. Number four is one flow, the Cuckoo's Nest. Yeah.

[Mark Kermode]

Which is majestic and it's got one of the most.

[Simon Mayo]

I can never.

[Mark Kermode]

Is it, Is it. Is it a theremin or is it. I think it's a Saw, isn't it? I think it's a musical saw. I think it's a musical saw rather than a theremin. But they do sound exactly the same.

[Simon Mayo]

One Flavor Cookies is the first film I ever saw where people applauded at the end. Well, Warwick University Film Society put it on. I hadn't seen it before. And. And you know, the film finishes. The thing I said, everyone applauded. I thought, oh, you. Can you clap in cinemas?

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah. It has got a fantastic finale, isn't it?

[Simon Mayo]

All the President's Men is at number three.

[Mark Kermode]

And can I once again delight you with the story of the fact that my father took me to see it? This is where my Nixon obsession came with. Because my father had previously pointed to the television and said, you see that? That's the devil. And then he took me and my sister to see it and it was a double A certificate film and we weren't old enough. And the woman behind the counter said, are they both 14? And my dad, rather than lying, just gestured towards us. She went, okay, fine.

[Simon Mayo]

That gesture could have meant a lot of things. Like, how do I know?

[Mark Kermode]

I know exactly.

[Simon Mayo]

I'm just a.

[Mark Kermode]

And I remember looking at him thinking, that's so clever. You didn't actually lie. You did, but you didn't actually lie.

[Simon Mayo]

Okay, so that's all the President's Men number three. That's the one we're talking about. And this is from an anonymous person. A brilliant movie. Pace, relevance, even now, sadly, tension in spades. A terrific ensemble cast. What more could you. Our top production team will find it. I think that. No, they need to get a name for that one. But thank you very much for the email. Anyway. The Return of the Pink Panther at number two. Dan says Jaws is about a shark, but Return of the Pink Panther is not about and number one is jaws.

[Mark Kermode]

I mean, that's a good top 10, though, isn't it?

[Simon Mayo]

That is a very good top 10.

[Mark Kermode]

And that was kind of peak movie going for me because I was born in 63, so I was 13 and it was like the world is your oyster. Except for the X rated films, which only some of it. I think the only X rated film I saw at that point was Enter the Dragon, but that was because it was playing at this cinema, this multiplex near us, in which screens two and screen three were joined by a toilet. So if you paid to go into screen three, you could go into the toilet, then come out into screen two. And I saw Enter the Dragon in screen two in which the entire screen was full of school kids.

[Simon Mayo]

That's a big design flaw.

[Mark Kermode]

If you big design floor, walk out

[Simon Mayo]

of one cinema and into the next

[Mark Kermode]

one through the loop. Wow.

[Simon Mayo]

Okay, we're gonna take some ads and then we speak to Taika Waititi. Now, Mark, I don't know why all these trendy podcasters need to sell such tat in their online shops these days. You'd have thought the show would have been enough for them. I mean, look at this tea tag.

[Mark Kermode]

Simon.

[Taika Waititi]

That's.

[Mark Kermode]

I think that's our shop you're browsing, isn't it?

[Simon Mayo]

Oh, so it is. Actually, those kermodime director's chairs are very nice, and it's all incredibly slick and easy. That's probably what confused me.

[Mark Kermode]

That's because it's powered by Shopify. Shopify is where you go to start your business. Everything you need to start selling is included and ready from day one. Which means our top production team can concentrate on, well, whatever it is that they do. While Shopify does all the hard work. Because Shopify handles the setup and checkout, you have more time to focus on growing your business and the tools to do it.

[Simon Mayo]

And Shopify Checkout helps more customers finish their purchase. Then when they come back, their details are already saved. One tap and they're done. Simple.

[Mark Kermode]

With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.co.uk take.

[Simon Mayo]

Start your free trial at shopifY.co.uk take.

[Mark Kermode]

Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun.

[Simon Mayo]

An army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana.

[Taika Waititi]

Twas a lovely suv, an inexplicably queenly offer.

[Simon Mayo]

They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight we feast. An offer you can feast on.

[Taika Waititi]

Sell your car today on Carvana.

[Simon Mayo]

Pick up fees may apply. Okay, our guest this week is New Zealand filmmaker, actor and comedian Taika Waititi, who I talked to about the 10th anniversary release of the Hunt for the Wilder People. Accolades include an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Grammy Award, as well as two primetime Emmy noms. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

[Mark Kermode]

Wow.

[Simon Mayo]

In 2022. Also, of course, JoJo Rabbit Eagle versus Shark Boy, what We do in the Shadows, and Thor Ragn and Thor, Love and Thunder. We will speak to Taika Waititi in just a moment after this clip.

[Taika Waititi]

Hector Faulkner and Richard Baker have been missing now for six weeks. Faulkner is Hawk Asian. Well, they got that wrong because you're obviously white.

[Simon Mayo]

$10,000 to anyone who can capture them, dead or alive. Back up, homies. Oh.

[Taika Waititi]

Oh. Alive.

[Simon Mayo]

They should be alive.

[Taika Waititi]

So what do we do now? We run.

[Simon Mayo]

We don't need to run.

[Taika Waititi]

Oh, yeah, this is fast. Walk,

[Simon Mayo]

Ricky Bacon.

[Mark Kermode]

Another selfie.

[Simon Mayo]

What's the fastest way out of here?

[Taika Waititi]

Jetpack.

[Simon Mayo]

Do you actually have a jetpack?

[Mark Kermode]

No. What?

[Simon Mayo]

That's a clip from Hunt for the Wilder People, directed by Taika Waititi. It's celebrating its 10th anniversary. You can go and see it in the cinema. And Taika joins us on the show. Tiger. Hello. Very nice to see you.

[Taika Waititi]

Hello, nice to be here. Thanks so much.

[Simon Mayo]

So our 10th anniversary of Hunt for the Wilder People, just to spool back 10 years somewhat more as in terms of the start of the process. But how did this story come to you in the first place? I know it's a book adaptation, but how did this land with you?

[Taika Waititi]

I think I started writing this script in 2005, maybe 2004. So it's about 20. How long, how many years is that? 20 years. It's about 20 years since I got asked to adapt the book. And the book is quite well known in New Zealand. It's a different title. It's called Wild Pork and Watercress, which is a dish that we make. If you hunt for your food, if you live out in the bush, you eat pork and cress. It's a very traditional dish. And I read the book and, you know, it's this great adventure. One of the touchstones for me was Paper Moon, that Bogdanovich movie. I love the idea of like an odd couple in the form of grumpy old man and a young street kid on the run together out in the woods. And. And that story kind of just came together. I added, I embalanced a few things. I changed a little bit here and there, as I usually do when I adapt. But yeah, essentially I wanted to tell just a sweet story that was fun and funny, but at its core had something to say about the way we treat people who live on the margins, the outskirts of society.

[Simon Mayo]

So, heck, Uncle Hector is played, of course, by Sam Neill. Ricky Baker is played by Julian Denison. Had you worked with Julian before? Is that why? Because he's so extraordinarily fantastic in this film. Where did you, where did you first come across Julian?

[Taika Waititi]

Yeah, I'd made a commercial with him, sort of like a psa, an anti drug driving psa. I don't know if you have them here, but in New Zealand we've also got to make anti. Not only do we have to make anti drink driving PSAs. We have to make anti drug driving because people like to get stoned and drive. And I met him on that. I'd cast him and he was just brilliant and he just exuded this energy and just. And he was so funny. He was just a very funny young kid. And on the spot, I think thought, I need you to play this role in this film. And so I didn't even make him audition. I just. He just. He just did it. I just gave him the part on the spot. And then he came and delivered and he and Sam made a beautiful couple. You know, that partnership was really, really special in the film.

[Simon Mayo]

I watched the film again this morning and laughed a lot. It's. It's such. It's so touching and it's so funny. But we're now with that added sadness, the fact that we lost Sam Neill just a few weeks ago. It's impossible to watch it maybe with that same lightness of heart. I don't know what you make of that.

[Taika Waititi]

Yeah, yeah. I haven't seen it since he departed us and I will be watching it tonight. Yeah, it will be very different. I mean, it's very fresh for all of us. And I still strange when people leave often quite. Quite equate. That was actually with idea of death and it's the finality of it all. You know, we would talk often and he would just text me out of the blue and check in and things and. And I won't be getting those texts anymore. No.

[Simon Mayo]

I think you had. You worked together quite recently again on a. On a commercial, like a Jurassic park thing, is that right?

[Taika Waititi]

That's right. We did a Super bowl commercial together with the original cast of the original Jurassic Park. It was him, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum. And they're old outfits and everything. And that was really fun. That was the last time thing we worked on together, together. But he'd been fighting his fight for a few years, but he was really on the mend and he bounced back. So it was quite surprising for us.

[Simon Mayo]

I think you could tell from the outpouring of. Of love online that so many people felt an extraordinary connection with him. Not just because of his acting skills, not just because of all the films and TV that we'd watched. But there was something. I think maybe it was his lockdown films when he was talking about the things that really mattered to him, how he wasn't. I'm not an actor. It's just that I act. It's the thing that I Do. And there was that twinkle in his eye, which is hard to explain really, but he had something special.

[Taika Waititi]

He really did. Yeah. And he had a great love for humans and for. Just for people. And he was a very kind and loving person. He loved the environment and nature. He was always just. He was always on the right side, it seemed.

[Simon Mayo]

He said, you look forward to working with Tao when he's having fun. We're all having fun.

[Taika Waititi]

Well, that's good.

[Simon Mayo]

I. I heard an interview that you did with Radio New Zealand a while back, and you said in that interview, I don't feel as though I've felt so good making a film before or since making Hunt for the Wilder People.

[Taika Waititi]

Yeah. I think that I still feel like that was the most enjoyable experience I've had. We had a very small crew and it really felt like a family. Everyone just helped each other. And when you work overseas, a lot of. There are a lot of boundaries and you've got to. You know, especially with various crews, people don't like you touching their stuff. They don't want to help each other. And everyone's got their own kind of little clique. But maybe it's just a New Zealand thing as well. But. Yeah, on that film in particular, just everyone banded together and we were out in the middle of nowhere, out in the wilderness, and it just felt like a big adventure. And I was just. I just remember being happy all the time.

[Simon Mayo]

And from. From Sam Neill's words, it sounds as though that transferred itself to the movie itself, to everyone you were working with, to what we see on the camera.

[Taika Waititi]

Yeah, I. I don't usually watch my things, my films again, or not for many years. And I did watch this about two years ago, maybe about seven or eight years after we made it, and. And I did. It's a New Zealand thing as well. We don't like to sort of talk ourselves up. But I did watch it. I thought this is a pretty good movie. And I really enjoyed watching it. And I think there was enough distance timewise that I felt like maybe someone else had made it so I could enjoy it more. But, yeah, it is one of the films that I feel proud of and I don't mind watching.

[Simon Mayo]

Many people have said, and you've said quite a few times, it is a very New Zealand film, maybe the most New Zealand film that has had success around the world. What do us non kiwis miss? What do we not get? Is it some of the jokes? What is it that we.

[Taika Waititi]

Nothing, really. Some little inside jokes that some New Zealanders will get. But then I watched it, I thought, oh, man, my kids don't understand any of these jokes. It's. It's probably more. They. They're relevant to people of my generation and before me, probably. And a lot of them are so fleeting and fast. Yeah, you don't you. That you can sort of skip over them. I think my worry was that some of them would be so obscure that it would pull people out of the picture. But I feel like that hasn't affected the viewing experience.

[Simon Mayo]

This might be a crazy thought, Tiger, but when I was watching it this morning, it reminded me me of Bong Joon Ho's the Parasite film.

[Taika Waititi]

Oh, man, what a compliment. I can't see it. I would love to hear more.

[Simon Mayo]

Well, in as much as the more Korean he made it, the more internationally relevant it became. And it seems to be with your film that the more Kiwi you made it, the greater its appeal around the world.

[Taika Waititi]

Well, you might be right. I mean, maybe it's that you should just be true to where you're from and your. Your own voice or the voice of where you're from. Otherwise it just feels maybe repetitive and feels like everything else that comes out of every. Every other mainstream filmmaking industry. So I suppose if I was just going to emulate everything that came out of Hollywood, then it's just like gonna feel like just another Hollywood film. So, yeah, I think that's probably something that most of my early films share. They're very New Zealand and makes them very. Feel very unique. And it's, you know, it's a little doorway into a place that most people wouldn't ever experience if they weren't from there.

[Simon Mayo]

There is a spectacular cameo from yourself in Hunt for the Wilder People, where you're playing a priest, which I watched two or three times. It's just hilarious because I think we've all heard totally useless sermons like, yes. Where did. Where did that come from?

[Taika Waititi]

That actually came from some people. When I had done it, they thought it's too much, it's too ludicrous. And it just. And they just thought it was sort of too silly. But that's actually almost word for word an exact sermon that came from my friend's father's funeral that I attended. And I remember this guy talking about confectionery and the afterlife and these different doors and it was super confusing. And I remember just relishing and being there and being able to absorb that. And I thought, no one else has got access to this. I'm going to steal everything from this Priest. And I'm going to use it one day in a movie. And it was about eight years later that I remembered that. And I thought, okay, this is the perfect time. And I just wrote down how I remembered it and. And it was pretty much that's how I delivered it. And it still brings me a lot of joy, even just. I like to watch myself. I'm like my other people, sort of like. I really get off on watching myself and my own work. So I. I wanted that scene to be longer.

[Simon Mayo]

Yeah, well, it. It's still very funny. I think it's the bit where you say, say, Coke Zero, which is behind one door and behind the other door, and that. Which leads to another door and then there's Jesus eventually. Anyway, I thought it was fantastic. I'd like.

[Taika Waititi]

Zero had only just come out then, too, so it was a new thing, new fangled fizzy drink.

[Simon Mayo]

I'd like to see a whole film based around that. Priest. Just a thought.

[Taika Waititi]

Well, you're in luck, because I'm trying to. I've been thinking the same thing. I would love to do that character and as the center of a film.

[Simon Mayo]

The other bit, I wondered whether it was you. Taika is the scene where they're singing Happy Birthday to Ricky Baker. It just sounds like something that you would have composed.

[Taika Waititi]

Yeah. We couldn't get the rights to Happy Birthday, which was really surprising to me. Anyone who put the rope, who's put Happy Birthday in their films need to start panicking. But you're not allowed to use that. We found out it's still under copyright somehow. And so. So we had to change it on the day. And Rima, who played Aunt Bella, she happens to be a really great musician. So I had this Casiotone keyboard with me that I used to carry around, gave it to her and said, let's just figure out a song. And we all sort of pitched together, but I wanted it to feel like a more ridiculous version of an original version of Happy Birthday that she. That character might feasibly come up with. And so we all kind of just came up with these different lines. And I remember wanting the trifecta linen. But, yeah, there was actually more of a group effort.

[Simon Mayo]

Yeah.

[Taika Waititi]

But I'll take the credit for it. Of course, that's what you do when you're the director.

[Simon Mayo]

And Sam Neill's face while the other two are singing is, of course, a complete picture. He's so unimpressed with the whole thing. When you go and see it tonight, Tiger, are you looking forward to it or dreading it a bit. What do you think when you're sort of going in and publicly watching. Watching this film?

[Taika Waititi]

I always feel uncomfortable. I always squirm a little bit in moments of my films where I feel like, ah, I could have done that better. But I think enough times passed now that I can just let it wash over me. I think I'll be fine. I'll have some friends there and Kathy will be there, who produced it, made the film with me, and Rachel House will be there. She plays Paula, the social worker. And Junior Julian also will be there. So it'll be a great reunion for us so we can share in that awkwardness together.

[Simon Mayo]

You've talked before about finding a film in the edit or giving the tone in the edit. Is that what happened with. With this film?

[Taika Waititi]

It did, but actually, I think I feel like this is one of the films that ended up closest to the script I'd written than any of the other ones. I think all the other films I'd made were really found in the edit, but this one followed that structure pretty close. Obviously, we knew where it was going. You're the major beats. I just feel like it was sort of the easiest of the films that I've made.

[Simon Mayo]

Obviously it's on streamers and stuff, but now it's in the cinema and it's such a beautiful film. Not only is it funny and very moving, very profound, it looks beautiful.

[Taika Waititi]

That's Lachlan Milne, a fantastic cinematographer, but also me, because I'm the one who says, yes, push the red button. So I also will take credit for. For that.

[Simon Mayo]

What do we get next from you, Taika?

[Taika Waititi]

What's.

[Simon Mayo]

What's new from you? Is it. Is it the James movies?

[Taika Waititi]

Yeah, James is the plan. We're currently developing that person's writing and that's pretty exciting to me. I love that book so much.

[Simon Mayo]

That's Percival Everett, who.

[Taika Waititi]

Who wrote the book. Oh, I've got another movie coming out this year too, Clara and the sun, but based on the adaptation of the Kazuo Ushiguro novel, who you might remember, he wrote Remains of the Day and many other great books that have been turned into films. Anyway, that's coming out in late October. I think it might be playing in the London Film Festival, but I may be mistaken. I'm not sure. But I'm gonna be back here in October to promote that. You guys got to see that movie.

[Simon Mayo]

We'll do that. Maybe we'll talk about that when it comes out. But in the meantime, to keep us going a 10th anniversary of Hunt for the Wilder People is out at a cinema near you, Taika. Thank you so much and hope you enjoy your film tonight.

[Taika Waititi]

Thank you so much, mate. Take care.

[Simon Mayo]

And you can hear Mark's review of the new 4K re release of Hunt for the Wilder People People in take two. You can get that on Patreon. What else is out? Mark, what can we go and see?

[Mark Kermode]

Love Me Tender, which is a French drama directed by Anna Kazanov Cambet who made Gold for Dogs. This is based on a 2020 novel. Now you read More than I Do by Constance debray. Did you? Is that a name that you know?

[Simon Mayo]

No, it is not a name that I know.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay, so she was a lawyer, left her husband for a woman, became a full time writer, and then became embroiled in a very fierce child custody battle which then became the subject of some books that she wrote, including the one that this is based on from 2020. So this stars Vicky Kreeps, who was so brilliant in Phantom Thread as Clemence, who we first meet in a swimming pool. And she's obsessive about swimming and the water is kind of a metaphor for a lot of the stuff that's going on around her. Her state of mind, the fluidity of water, the way in which which she absolutely dedicates herself to the physical pursuit of being a swimmer, memories of birth, childhood, all that stuff. In the showers afterwards, she has an encounter with a woman and we learn that the book that she is writing will detail the encounters that she has had with women. She has an 8 year old son called Paul. The father of Paul is Laurent, who we hear is the first and only man that she had a relationship with. They were together for a long time, she left three years ago. They are now separated, but they shared share custody and they've never bothered to get divorced. But now she wants to get divorced. And when she first tells Laurent that she's dating girls, he seems okay about it. But then one of her friends says, well no, now he knows that he's angry and she's right. And the next thing is that her son doesn't want to see her and her husband, soon to be ex husband, is shutting down all contact. Now I'm gonna play you a trailer, a clip from the trailer, which obviously is not in English. So I'm going to tell you what's said. So, so it's he said he's my ex. We alternate custody of our 8 year old son. Hi mum. And it works fine. And then she says to him, I date Other women and I have affairs. And he says, I'm just glad you're happy. Well, good night. And then he tries to kiss her and she pulls back. Oh, I can't. No, I thought maybe. Then on the phone, hello, Paul Clemence. He doesn't want to talk to you. And then we hear a counsellor saying Paul was manipulated by his father. Paul said to the judge, he doesn't want to see me. Paul was manipulated by his father. He doesn't believe what he wrote to the court. So that's the translation. Here's the clip.

[Taika Waititi]

No, no. Hello.

[Simon Mayo]

So then I think I prefer your version.

[Mark Kermode]

Exactly. Thank you very much. Yes, more atmosphere. I brought more to the character. I think I invested in it. So fast forward six months, things have got really horrible. The soon to be ex husband is accusing her of. Of incest and pedophilia, either directly or by third party association because of the literature that she's got around the house. This child is now calling his mother nuts. And we start to hear the story narrated as if from the book that she is writing about this. And now I haven't read the book and I didn't know the real life story before I watched the film. I only found this out in retrospect. But the writing, which I imagine much of which must be taken directly from the book, is very, very powerful. There's a section in which the central character talks about how when she was first a mother, she took her lesson from seeing a dog with its pups and deciding that she was going to become a mother in a way that didn't negate her own personality. She said this is the quote, without womanish absurdity, the obscenity of mothers without losing herself. And we also learn from the people around her that all, although men frequently abandon their children, women leaving is rarer and is quite often considered by people in general and often by the legal system to be essentially unforgivable. That it's not something that you do and to do so would be monstrous. And actually, weirdly enough, it's a subject which is talked about in Claire Dederer's book Monsters. And I think that the film does a really good job of showing how. How Clemence is othered, how because of her life choices, because of her sexuality, because of her gender, because at one point one of the doctors actually has to point out that being an author is not in itself an indication of a personality flaw, because that's how absurd it's become. The worst thing about it is the sheer lumbering Process. I mean, do you remember watching Kramer vs. Kramer? Yeah. And that was probably, I think, the first time I had seen drama about a child caught between parents. The thing that this captures is the way that just the lumberingness of the process means that you lose because you lose the years. I mean, at one point somebody says it takes two years and you never get that time back. And there is. I mean, Vicky Creeps is terrific in everything. I've never seen her give a bad performance. And during the course of the drama, we see her change. We see her change from being the. This fairly carefree character that we meet at first to somebody who literally looks like they're carrying the weight of the world on their shoulder. And I think that they have scenes of the supervised visits that she has to have with her child in which there are two people there who have to be there to supervise the awkwardness, the difficulty of having any kind of intimate contact with your child who you haven't been allowed to see for 18 months. I mean, all this stuff, obviously it's dramatic, but it would be very, very easy to do it badly and for it to become melodramatic. And it never. The other thing about it is that it's also got. In its depiction of her sort of life. Like the clubbing scenes reminded me of some of the kind of sweaty intensity of the scenes from William Friedkin's Cruising, which is a film I really like. It's got. The composer for it is Max Sens Doucer who was Oscar nominated for best sound for Emilia Perez. It's got a very, very good needle drop by King Kruel. And I confess that I only know King Krull because of Child two. But it's a very, very good needle drop. And this sort of. You know how when a film uses bits from other films like people are watching something on television and it's always significant, right?

[Taika Waititi]

Yeah.

[Mark Kermode]

So the two things that get.

[Simon Mayo]

It's never like Match of the Day or anything.

[Mark Kermode]

It's never Match of the Day. It's never, you know, the Great British Bake Off. So at one point, they're watching the Incredible Shrinking man, which I did recognize, thought, okay, that. That is smart, because it means it's two things. Firstly, it's a thing about somebody being reducing and reducing and reducing so nobody notices them anymore. But also it's to do with the shrin being the husband. And another thing is cries and Whispers, which is kind of, you know, a little bit on the nose. But anyway, I thought the whole thing was really well done. And it just reminded me how much I love Vicky Creeps as an actor. And I thought, you're right there with this character up against this absolutely infernal system which seems to just simply say, because of your life decisions, because of who you are, because of your gender, you are basically going to be completely othered from your life. And I thought it was very, very powerful.

[Simon Mayo]

Correspondencecabernamer.com is our email. If you want to join in any of this and also if you want to join in the Laughter Lift. And I mentioned this for a particular reason. We just play the music, obviously. All the jokes in today's episode of the Laughter Live, supplied by our ultras

[Mark Kermode]

on Patreon, is one of our ultras. Child three.

[Simon Mayo]

No, no, no, no.

[Mark Kermode]

All literally ultras. Okay?

[Simon Mayo]

Graham Hall, Toby King, and Pete Wyard.

[Mark Kermode]

Wyatt. Wyatt. Okay, great.

[Simon Mayo]

Okay. They are the people who sent in these three jokes in order.

[Taika Waititi]

Okay.

[Simon Mayo]

Okay. So you can't be that rude about it.

[Mark Kermode]

Right?

[Taika Waititi]

Okay.

[Simon Mayo]

Hey. Hey, Mark. Did you hear about the clown who got fired on his first day at the circus?

[Mark Kermode]

No.

[Simon Mayo]

He's suing for funfair dismissal.

[Mark Kermode]

That's quite good. That's good.

[Simon Mayo]

That was Graham Hall.

[Mark Kermode]

Fun fair dismiss.

[Simon Mayo]

Yeah, fun fair dismiss. Unfairness. Myself, Mark, I rearranged the herbs in my garden in alphabetical order.

[Mark Kermode]

Oh, dear.

[Simon Mayo]

My neighbor said, I don't know how you find the time. I said, it's next to the tarragon. I mean, everyone is there. They're just trying to think, what's the another herb feeling with tea that goes before time. I know. Taragan.

[Mark Kermode]

That's what it is.

[Simon Mayo]

Thank you, Toby. And Pete says, hey, Mark, I took the shell off my racing snail to see if it would make it go faster, but it just became more sluggish. Obviously, we don't encourage that kind of thing because it's a nasty thing to do. As in putting your herbs in alphabetical order. That's not a good thing to do. Thank you very much to our ultras. They were good.

[Mark Kermode]

They were good. They were good. That thing about I don't know how you find the time, it's right there next to the tarragon, reminded me of what I. I still think is the funniest line from Fawlty Towers when she says, I can't see the sea, and he says, yes, you can. It's there between the land and the sky.

[Simon Mayo]

Very good [e-mail]. thank you very much indeed. Mark is about to talk about summer Book.

[Mark Kermode]

Summer book on.

[Simon Mayo]

That's the one he's going to talk about soon after this. Best thing that's ever happened to you, financially.

[Mark Kermode]

Go easy. Sold my car on Carvanth.

[Simon Mayo]

Carvana.

[Mark Kermode]

Amazing offer, really. I hit 200 on a scratcher. Did the scratcher come to your house and hand you a check?

[Taika Waititi]

No.

[Mark Kermode]

How many scratchers did you hit to get that? I hit a button on Carvana.com once.

[Simon Mayo]

Okay, that's fair.

[Mark Kermode]

It's like the lottery, except you always win.

[Simon Mayo]

Not like the lottery at all, actually.

[Mark Kermode]

Exactly. Inexplicably good offers worth bragging about. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply.

[Simon Mayo]

Hello, it's Elizabeth Day from How To Fail here. My next guest is the actual Prime Minister, Andy Burnham.

[Mark Kermode]

Have to be careful here. This does make me quite emotional. He said, we all knew kind of what time you might be coming up Downing Street. So we got Roy and we got the telly right in front of him, and six of us stood around him

[Simon Mayo]

and all said, look, Roy, look, look.

[Mark Kermode]

Momentarily. They said, we thought he knew.

[Simon Mayo]

Listen to how to Fail wherever you get your podcast. On the sub. Oh, this is an email from Philip Davis. Hello.

[Mark Kermode]

Hello.

[Simon Mayo]

Hello.

[Mark Kermode]

Hello.

[Simon Mayo]

On the subject of watching films, is that Mark the Hoople?

[Mark Kermode]

No, no, it's. It's his public image.

[Simon Mayo]

Hello.

[Mark Kermode]

Hello. Hello. It's the beginning of. Yeah, it's the beginning of whatever that song is. It's speaking of the public image limited, isn't it?

[Simon Mayo]

But there's a. There is. Yeah. There's also Mot. The Hooper, which starts with hello, Which I'll. It'll come to me.

[Mark Kermode]

Oh, okay.

[Simon Mayo]

On the subject of watching films at an inappropriately young age. Yes, a regular theme. In the very early 1980s, we lived in Guyana in South America. Tropical paradise, but in those days, without a TV service of any kind.

[Mark Kermode]

Wow.

[Simon Mayo]

Isn't that incredible? And limited access to cinema as enterprising Guyanese set up a video club, but with a difference. A contact in the USA used to record American TV onto VHS tapes and ship them to Guyana for a subscription fee. Members used to get three tapes a week. On the tapes used to be a mixture of American family shows like Fantasy island and the Love Boat and feature films. The beauty of it was you never knew what was on the tape until you started watching it. I mean, that's it.

[Mark Kermode]

The word beauty is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence.

[Simon Mayo]

One afternoon, myself says Philip, aged 10. Go on. My two sisters aged 7 and 13, and some friends settled down to see what was what we had Alien. It said. Brilliant. Well, we'd Heard of that. Not to worry that my sister was only seven. We could sit on her head at the appropriate moment so she couldn't see the gore, which is a little extreme. I mean, you could just put your hand over her eyes maybe, but no, they sat on her head. She could still hear the sound effects. Her imagination did the rest. For a truly traumatizing experience. Experience for her. And we loved it. Later on one of these tapes I found Phantasm, which I watched at the age of 11.

[Mark Kermode]

Wow.

[Simon Mayo]

For my own truly terrorizing movie experience. No TV, no mobile phones. Guyana was an amazing place to live back then, and I'm sure it still is. Tickety tong down with mobile phones and social media. Philip Davis. So I. I looked this. Guyana. The official full name of Guyana, because normally it's, you know, the People's Republic of.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah.

[Simon Mayo]

And. Or the Democratic Republic of. And if it says Democratic in the title, it's kind of probably not. Anyway, this is the Cooperative Republic of Guyana.

[Mark Kermode]

Fantastic.

[Simon Mayo]

Does any other country have cooperative in the title? And is the least dense. Is the least densely populated country in the world.

[Taika Waititi]

Wow.

[Simon Mayo]

There you go. Top facts about Guyana. Thanks to Philip Davis. Okay, Summer book. And summer book. Midsommar.

[Mark Kermode]

Midsommar. Weirdly, which does. So the summer book, which is an adaptation of a novel, 1972 novel by Tove Jansson, creator of Moomins and herself the subject of that movie from 2020 and originally in its original title, Sommarbukken. I just.

[Simon Mayo]

The way you're fully in character now,

[Mark Kermode]

I just like the word Sommerbooken. So Directed by Charlie McDowell, apparently son of Malcolm and Mary Steenbergen. So also stepson of Ted Danson and son in law of Phil Collins.

[Simon Mayo]

Really? Apparently Phil Collins.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, apparently that's the case. I mean, I'm absolutely certain that I'm not making that up.

[Simon Mayo]

I'm drawing a family tree in my head now.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, no, I'm. Yeah, yeah. No, that. That is right. Anyway, so. So Blah Blah has directed other stuff. Although weirdly, the thing that I knew his name from was that he produced Lurker, which I really liked. I think this was actually made before Lurker. This is a uk, US, Finnish co production. I think it was actually made before Lurker. It was shot back in 23, played the festival circuit in 24, opened in Finland in early 2025 where it became a number one big smash hit in Finland. Okay, so young girl, six, seven, something like that, spending the summer with her father and grandmother on a small island in the Gulf of Finland dealing with the loss of her mother. The film opens with an image of ice melting, which sort of sets the general tone of the thing. You know that over the course of the drama, things are going to thaw. They've come here as Midsommar approaches. In fact, we also. We get the wearing of the.

[Simon Mayo]

Oh, really?

[Mark Kermode]

Yes.

[Simon Mayo]

Do people jump off cliffs?

[Mark Kermode]

No, it's nice. Midsommar. Not smashy, Facey Midsommar. Although, as our young heroine says, it might as well be mid winter. Her dad is withdrawn and reclusive. He's clearly stricken with grief. He's unable to reconnect with his daughter as a result of his grief. She is looking for connections. She befriends a couple at one point and she says, the more I love him, the more he hates me. Which, as the good lady professor her indoors will tell you, is absolutely typical cat behavior. As everybody knows, if a cat walks into a room and there's one person in the room that is allergic to cats and five other people that love cats, the cat will go and sit on the lap of the person that's allergic to cats.

[Simon Mayo]

Which only goes to prove that dogs are better.

[Mark Kermode]

And you think that cats are all evil?

[Simon Mayo]

They are.

[Mark Kermode]

And you also say, hello, Professor McGonagall,

[Simon Mayo]

whenever I sit, whenever you see a cat, because it just seems wise. Otherwise it'll come and sit on me.

[Mark Kermode]

The real heart of the film, however, is Glenn Close. So Glenn Close is the grandmother. Incidentally, Glenn Close should have won an Oscar for the wife a few years ago. And I'm still annoyed that she didn't because she really should have done it. So she's the font of learned life wisdom. She's indomitable. She also apparently invented scouting for girls. And now because her memory's starting to fail, she can't even remember what it was like like to go camping. She smokes. She would probably smoke a pipe. I think she would almost certainly be in women pipe smoking corner. She communes naked with nature.

[Simon Mayo]

Okay, that's not necessary.

[Mark Kermode]

Well, it's tastefully done, you know, but she's very, you know, she's earthy. And the conversations between her and her granddaughter are all about God and family and scouting and death and grief. And those are the core of the film. Here is a clip from a summer book. What do you think there's more of? Stars in the sky or fish in the sea?

[Taika Waititi]

My guess would be stars in the sky. Me too, but I would not want the council.

[Mark Kermode]

Come with me.

[Taika Waititi]

Mommy's favorite tree. You think it will grow? He doesn't love me since she died.

[Simon Mayo]

That piece of nonsense. I'm trying.

[Taika Waititi]

I won't be here forever.

[Mark Kermode]

That was getting close. Doing the accent.

[Simon Mayo]

Doing a finished accent. I feel very guilty now because my conversations with grandchild 1 and 2 revolve around tangy worms. And do you prefer chocolate stars or tangy worms? Worms. Not death, not death and God. But maybe that comes later.

[Mark Kermode]

It's a whole different thing.

[Simon Mayo]

Tangy worms win.

[Mark Kermode]

So basically they. The. It's those conversations that are the heart of it. There's a lovely thing in which they go to. There's a. There's a. There's another little island and it's got a private sign on it. They're not allowed to land there. So she immediately lands there. And then she says, oh, yes, all these people come in. They don't know what they're talking about. And then of course, it turns out that the people. People are actually really nice. And she says, this is socializing. You have to learn to do it. And she's. She's kind, you know, she's doing this lovely performance of the. Kind of the grandmother that everybody wishes they had the font of all wisdom. But as you heard in that thing when she says, I won't be here forever, we also know she won't be here forever because she has a movie cough. And nobody coughs in a movie unless that's happening. So I thought her performance was great. One of the things that's really good about is it's a really physical performance. She moves like a much older person. It's something to do with the way in which she walks, the way in which she holds her arm. She just looks much older than she really is, obviously. And she does this thing which is really clever, which is that she somehow sticks her jaw forward. That kind of reshapes her face. It's like a trans. I mean, obviously there's a degree of anger, but there's a transformation involved in it, which is all to do with the physical performance. Glenn Close is a. Is a brilliant actor. I never saw Glenn Close on stage, but. But she is an absolutely brilliant actor on screen. And I think her performance is terrific. I think the rest of the film is fine. There's this whole thing about they're waiting for the arrival of Erich Sohn, who, like Godot, doesn't appear. And he won't appear because the father says, you know, he doesn't like the stench of grief that keeps him away. And she says, yeah, or self pity, which you've got to get over you heard also the score there. The score is very kind of tinkly. It's Polish composer Han Yurani. Lots of sort of gentle, you know, piano tinkling, kind of echoing the sounds of nature. And then there's a thing about storms and guilt and the fact that the child has to come to terms. So it's a sort of life lessons, early coming of age bonding between, you know, across generations. And you heard from, you know, what movie you think it is from the clip. It is exactly that film. Apparently the book is incredibly well regarded, which I have not read, and is thought to be very, very profound and very precise, very particular. I don't think the film is those things, but I enjoyed it and I enjoyed it a lot because of Glenn Close's performance. And I just checked this out. I am right about this, that the director is indeed the son of Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenbergen and his relatives. Ted Danson stepfather Phil Collins father, father in law.

[Simon Mayo]

Would you prefer Tangy star, Tangy worms or chocolate stars?

[Mark Kermode]

If you had to choose, Tangy worms.

[Simon Mayo]

Okay, I think that's right. Also, you talk about film coughs. This is quite tangential, but there was an interview that Mayor Mandani in New York did with the New York Times.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah.

[Simon Mayo]

And he has, he obviously sounded quite a bad cough and he coughs quite a number of times and he apologizes for it. And the interviewer said, says, have you had, you know, you need to be checked out. You know that if you've had a cough for a long time and he's. And he coughs again, he says, yes, I have had it checked out. That's why I believe in universal healthcare. And it was like, this guy is extraordinary. You know, even something that probably an editor would take out of a, of an interview, even that brilliant was a politician who knows how to.

[Mark Kermode]

And, and child of a very good, a very fine filmmaker. So, you know, so media traffic trained, knows what he's doing.

[Simon Mayo]

That's it for this week. This has been a Sony Music Entertainment production. This week's team, Jen, Eric, Josh and Heather. The producer was Dom and the redactor was Simon Poole who sang also. But may that be the lot. Actually, I suspect that's going to be the first many. There are plenty more waiting for you over in take two where we head to the overflow car park for extra reviews. More of your emails. Five question film club, three questions you managed to do and questions in which this week we're asked it might get dropped if we're running too long. Which films were critically acclaimed in their time, awards and all, and then simply faded from history. You get all of that ad free by signing up to our Patreon. Mark, what is your film of the week?

[Mark Kermode]

Well, my reissue of the week definitely be Hunt for the Wilder People, which we're gonna talk about more in take two. But my new film of the week, Love Me Tender.

[Simon Mayo]

And don't forget, Avon ladies and Avon gentlemen will be at the Bristol Beacon on December 6th, and we'll be.

[Mark Kermode]

So, Avon ladies, Did you mean as in bing bong y?

[Simon Mayo]

I think that's the joke.

[Mark Kermode]

That's the joke.

[Simon Mayo]

Or the ladies Raven.

[Mark Kermode]

That's so topical, that joke. When did Avon calling last actually happen? Probably the 1970s, 1970s, 1976, probably.

[Simon Mayo]

Okay, so let's just say if you live in the area of Avon, get a ticket. The link is in the show notes. Sanjeevi is going to be me next week.

[Mark Kermode]

And if you haven't seen it, go to. I don't know which Instagram feed it's on. I think it is probably on our Patreon Instagram feed of Sandwich singing to Elvis by your jukebox in showbiz North London. I watched it again the other day. It is still one of the loveliest clips ever. He just goes straight in.

[Simon Mayo]

Absolutely. It's fantastic. And I love Sanjeev being me. I just wish that I could step, you know, on one of his cop shows. I could be Sanjeev for a day.

[Mark Kermode]

What would you have in your rucksack?

[Simon Mayo]

I think I would have tangy worms. Tangy worms. And a support cushion. Probably the ultra membership cushion. Yeah. Goes. So correspondent of the week. I think I'm gonna go with Hannah, who was traumatized by the psycho. Shower cushion. Shower curtain. Shower curtain. The shower cushion. I mean, the shower cushion. No, that's not gonna work. But a shower curtain is a terrible, terrible thing. And one which has the most terrifying shower scene emblazoned on it. And children are expected to take a shower under there.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, but you suggested that we make a shower curtain with our silhouettes on it. You think that would be less disturbing?

[Simon Mayo]

No, that would be equally disturbing. I have a friend who can. You know, those. The feeble. You know, you step into the bath, you pull the shower coat, you. You adjust the.

[Mark Kermode]

The knobs sound like Trump. It's a little.

[Simon Mayo]

You get a little dribble coming out of the thing. And I had a friend who described those showers as. As Christian showers because. Because it's. They were designed by people who obviously think you couldn't you can't have any pleasure in a shower. So it's a miserable shower.

[Taika Waititi]

That's.

[Mark Kermode]

That's the whole Methodist shower.

[Simon Mayo]

It's a method. Can have a bit of water, but don't enjoy it at all. Thanks for listening.