Mike (2:55)

It's impossible to stop.

Dan (2:56)

It's impossible to stop. And today is one such example. Mike, what are we doing?

Mike (3:00)

The Trip and the trip to Italy.

Dan (3:02)

We're doing the Trip mostly. There's four trip movies, but we're going to mostly focus on the Trip 2010, directed by Michael Winterbottom, starring, of course, Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden. So this is a movie that Mike and I had both seen but oddly never discussed. It popped up on Criterion with all the TV episodes I'm sure we'll get into. And I said to Mike, let's rewatch the trip and do it for the podcast. And Mike said, absolutely. So part one, we always talk about our overall take on the movie. And Mike, what do you got?

Mike (3:32)

It's very difficult to discuss what makes this movie good. So we'll try. I mean, I think we're up for it.

Dan (3:39)

You and I, seasoned podcast professionals.

Mike (3:41)

You and I became seasoned podcast professionals because we wanted to talk about, you know, the Godfather Part two. So these. They're both films, and there's obviously something going on. I think if you put a gun to my head and forced me to describe it aesthetically rather than just laugh at it, I would say that it's an attempt to make, like, a still life out of male friendship. It's there. There's something, I don't know, Liquid Beautiful there. There's something like why two guys would become friends, and they would. Or they would form, like, a friendship and. Or group of guys. And I think it's because they make laugh. And that's. And that's it. Improvisation as a form is really about what that friendship is about, because you can think of a thousand movies. You can think of a thousand buddy cop movies which are like, okay, now I want you, Danny Glover, and you, Mel Gibson, to be friends. And you can kind of get some of that down in language or in a script. It's impossible to script the trip. The script looks like this. Steve Coogan begins by doing an impersonation of Stephen Hawking.

Dan (4:55)

Go.

Mike (4:56)

And that's it.

Dan (4:58)

I swear to all of our listeners out there, I'm not making this up. One of the things Mike said, right before we pressed, we hit record was, this is a hard movie to talk about. And I said, you're probably just gonna end up saying all the things I have on my notes, because that happens all the time. And I'm gonna read from the first page of my scribbled notes here. 1. There are very few wholly convincing portraits of male friendship on screen. So kudos to you, Mike, for a little mind reading. The movie I thought about the most when I came up with that, because I agree this movie's about male friendship and just a portrait of it, right? It doesn't make any statements about it, thank God. It doesn't talk about how friendships start or end, although I have a theory about that. It's a portrait of male friendship. And the movie reminded me most. I kept thinking to myself, what are movies that show genuine male friendships? And it's funny you said Lethal Weapon, because those friendships and those kind of movies are engineered. Like, you will not like each other. Someone will do something nice now. You will become friends. And that's.

Mike (5:52)

Well, they're literally. They're literally engineered because there's always a scene where the chief is like, you're gonna be working with them. You might as well get used to it. And he's like, I can't work with this guy. You know what I mean? He's a loose cannon.

Dan (6:02)

That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Or you have to share the same cubicle or something like that. But the movie this most reminded me of was mash, right? You think about Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould and mash, for those who can't see it, Mike is doing a slow, very, very slow hearty nod of. Because it's like mash. And I thought to myself, well, why do men become friends in mash? And in here, the premise is that they amuse each other. Male friendships are so often based upon that the guys find each other amusing. If you have political affiliations that you share, that's great. The religion, life choices, you know, 3.2, kids, whatever it is, zip codes, it doesn't matter. But I think the bottom line for so many male friendships is you have to amuse me and you have to say things that are funny. And I'm going to say things, and I hope you think they're funny as well.

Mike (6:56)

I'm going to stick with MASH for a second. And their Vietnam is showbiz. Because the thing that they're always arguing about is who's a bigger star. They know all the same people. They've Sort of made it to the BBC B list, where they'll be called on for panel shows. And for those American viewers that are not really versed in what they're talking about, it can be hard to catch a lot of it.

Dan (7:19)

Right.

Mike (7:20)

But they're the kind of people. If you remember in the first Trip movie, Steve Coogan's agent calls and says, I have a job for you. And he says, what is it? And it's Doctor who. And he says, the baddie, meaning, like the villain of the week. And the guy goes, well, yeah, but it's Doctor who. And he goes, I told you, no baddies. Because it's bad enough that he gets called for all these panel shows and stuff. He doesn't want to reinforce the idea.

Dan (7:42)

And certainly, you know, you said before about Lethal Weapon, one of the. One of the things I noted to myself is we recently just did Miami Vice. Now, in Miami Vice, those gu are very, very tight, but they are not friends. You never get the sense in Michael Mann's Miami Vice movie that those guys are friends, that they hang out together, that they do anything together.

Mike (8:01)

It's a Spartan warrior code.

Dan (8:03)

Yeah, exactly. So this is the opposite, and this is more. That's what I think makes it so charming and endearing. The other thing I wanted to point out is if this movie has an antecedent, if this movie has a point of inspiration, it is my dinner with Andrew. So if you think about Louis Miles, my dinner with Andre, Right. In that movie, a meal is a vehicle for this conversation about how art works and the nature of life and why we're here and what matters. But most of us don't have dinners with Andre. Sometimes you surf with that a little bit. But most people, when they get together, most men, when they're eating alone together, they talk about what movies. They talk about what's going on tangentially in their lives, but they try to make each other laugh. I distinctly remember my wife saying to me once, years ago, this is years ago, before we even had the podcast. I said, oh, I just got done talking to Mike. And she said, well, how's he doing? Where's he living now? How's his job? And I said, I don't know. We just talked about movies.

Mike (9:02)

I just have to talk about myself. I can't make any grand statements about childhood, but I would say that if you can remember, like, pre K or kindergarten, and you kind of have to. You have to pick and. Or form a group, you can only do it based on the other kids that make you Laugh like what? One thing I see which is me doing my impersonation of old man yelling at Cloud is young kids are amused together by other things, which was. That was not a choice we had when we were children. When we were children, the only thing you could do was pick other amusing children, and that was it. And so you grouped together by who amused you.

Dan (9:41)

Right. And that, of course, with. With a lot of men. I mean, you and I do this, and I'm sure you do this with other friends. I just. It's. It's. You think about all the texts you send if you went through your phone. You know, at least three quarters of your texts to your friends are jokes or screenshots of something that was funny or a meme or something which you just give and you expect a response too. You want at least the Haha icon on the text.

Mike (10:03)

It's rude otherwise.

Dan (10:04)

And I'll just end part one by saying this. Of course, one of the reasons the podcast goes on is because we find each other amusing. When we talk about movies.

Mike (10:12)

We could end it right now and then we would both see a movie and we would start laughing about it and we'd start recording it, and so that's that. This is our version of the trip. Welcome back. In part two, of course, we pick our favorite scenes. This is. I mean, it's nearly impossible. So, Dan, why don't you just tell me a scene you like that you think will start some conversation about the movie.

Dan (10:35)

I like when they're doing the Michael Caine off and they're going back and forth about who's a better Michael Caine. And you have to have deeper. You gotta have the. I can't do it, but you gotta have the branding. And she blew the bloody doors off and that whole bit. And what I love about that is that they are alone, they're at a restaurant. They're gonna get kind of loud, but they're in a restaurant and they're arguing about who does Michael Caine better. Just as they do when they do. Come, come, Mr. Bond. You know you love killing as much as I do. And then Rob Bryan's like, yeah. He's like, that's how you. And what I think is great about that is that it's all based upon one upmanship, as if there were really high stakes, but there are none. It's really like 8 year olds arguing about whether the $6 million man could fight Bigfoot. And that's a theme of the show. If you watch the other movies and all the TV episodes is that Steve is always trying to educate Rob. He's always trying to one up him. So there's that scene where I love when Rob starts reciting Bolton Abbey by Wordsworth and he says, did you get up early to do that? He goes, yes, I. Because Rob is like the kind of like. He's like the one closer to us, and Steve's kind of like the old fuddy duddy. And I just love the fact that there's a deep competition over who can do the better impersonation.

Mike (11:49)

You can imagine a certain kind of person pooh poohing this movie and saying, I don't see the appeal of watching two grown men act like children. And that's one perspective. I would like to offer the exact opposite perspective, which is, isn't it beautiful that you could, like, Steve Coogan has gone through a divorce. Rob Bryden just had a kid. But I think the implication is that he had a kid very late in life. I don't know if that's his real wife or whatever or some fictionalized version of his life. Right. But the implication is that Rob the character spent most of his life goofing off and then fell in love, which is why he's so uxorious and obnoxious about it, you know, and brings it up all the time. And Steve Coogan is in the middle of the figuring out his life and his life collapsing with Misha. But at the same time, the two of them are able to joke like they're on the playground together. And that I think that this movie is meant to be a playground. The structure of it is meant to be a playground, and it operates by.

Dan (12:47)

Playground logic and also the logic of competition among impersonations. So listeners to the show will know that every December we have our annual Christmas with Connery. And the premise of the Christmas with Connery special is that I interview Sean Connery, played by Mike, and we insist that it's real. And I put a thing on subscribe.

Mike (13:06)

I don't know why you're. I don't really understand why you're trying to. That has nothing to do with it. Sean Connery is on the show every December.

Dan (13:14)

That is true. And of course, the best thing about impersonations isn't always that they are spot on. It's that you kind of get the flavor of the person. And even when we do impersonations to ourselves, this morning I'm brushing my teeth and I'm going like, I'm Roger Moore. Thank you. I'm Roger Moore. Trying to do it like those Guys do, and you can't do it. So the joke about them fighting over impersonations is they have all these, like. They're like Olympic dive judges. They're like, well, that was a little more accurate, but you have to go older. No. And it's about the vowels. And there's one later on, he's like, Steve Kogan's like, what do you do? Ian McKellen? You occasionally have to leap with a vow. And that they watch these movies so many times that they can get into it like they're Dungeons and Dragons players.

Mike (13:58)

You know what? They argue. They argue. Like, you ever seen two electricians argue is that. That's what. That's what they are. That's what they argue. Like, you know, they're like. They're looking at some kind of rig up and they're saying, like, that's not how I would do it.

Dan (14:10)

So what's your moment?

Mike (14:11)

I don't have them. Well, first, I have a comment. Now, obviously, Sean Connery is on this show every December, but let's just. I just want to say, for the sake of argument, for the sake of argument, let's say that. That those were hilariously written by a genius and then also executed by that same genius. That genius does a better Sean Connery than either of those two. That's all I wanted to put out there. Now, separately, I don't have a moment. I have an anecdote, which is that I watched this movie with someone that I love who's not familiar with the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Dan (14:48)

Same here.

Mike (14:49)

She doesn't know half of the impersonations that they're actually doing. So I got a really good guffaw out of. I think that Rob Bryden's Richard Burton is one of the best Richard Burton's I've ever heard. I mean, it's impossible to even conceive of somebody doing a better Richard Burton. And when Steve Coogan tries to half do it, it's like, don't even bother, because that's the best Richard Burton. And then I was watching an old 70s show on YouTube or something, and it had Richard Burton kind of sitting kind of lopsided in a chair, reciting. And my wife turned around and said, oh, is that the trip? And I said, no, that's Richard Burton. That's how good his Richard Burton is. All those panel shows are on YouTube, by the way. That's. That's like a. That's an impulse that we lost in America. I'm not sure why, but when I was a kid, Hollywood Squares was still on Match Game, right? And so if. Imagine Hollywood Squares, but it's all the B list celebrities in Britain all at the same time. And it's, it's really funny and they're all improvisational comedians. I mean, actually this movie is kind of like a panel show except it's only two guys and they're doing the panel.

Dan (15:57)

I also love what the, with the impersonations is that Steve is still trying to one up Rob and kind of be a little bit superior to him because Rob always does the tiny man in the box. And that Steve just, he just kind of dismissed like if, you know, you can't really. And that's when he pulls out Richard Burton.

Mike (16:13)

Well, that's one of the, one of the problems is imagine you end up on the same show as somebody, right? That no matter what you think about yourself or what your self conceit is, the industry is saying this is a thing and this is a thing very much like it. And I think Rob Bryden is, is, is complimented by that fact. And Steve Coogan is rankled by it. One thing, I mean, you can't watch this movie without, without thinking this, which is there are some incredible impressions like Stephen Hawking, which is my favorite one, which is not the same as doing Richard Burton. It's just, it's absolute, it's absolute genius. And it's the kind of thing we all have a friend who can do that, like at the dinner table, you know, or at the bar or something. And imagine trying to get that friend on film or convince other people that they're funny or getting somebody to do.

Dan (17:05)

It on film because it kind of like it crosses the line of good taste. And of course, like in real life somebody would say like, don't make me do that. Don't, like, come on, come on, show this other guy we didn't see. Like, I don't want to, I don't.

Mike (17:15)

Want to do that. That's why, that's why it's not A tour of Italy's pubs. The Crossing Bad taste is only good if you have a menu of the greatest taste and gastronomy in the world. Welcome back. So in Part three, of course we always talk about the title or the ending or the key takeaways. I think we got the title and we've certainly talked about the structure of this movie and what makes it good. Do you have anything on the ending?

Dan (17:40)

I have a lot on the ending. So you mentioned before that you weren't, you said, oh, I don't know. If that's Rob Bryn's real wife and stuff, nobody in the movie is real except Steve and Rob.

Mike (17:49)

And even they are, like fictionalized versions of themselves. They're like 98% themselves.

Dan (17:53)

Right? And of course, what that makes people think about a contemporary example is it's like curb your enthusiasm where Larry David plays himself. You know, that same kind of vibe here. So what's good about the film, I think, is that it's not just you hanging out with them. Although that's, of course, the appeal of the movie is that you get these glimpses into, like, their insecurities and their. And their different lives. And I love the ending when Rob goes home to his wife and he's in a crowded apartment and, you know, there's stuff around from the baby. And then Steve goes back to his place, and it's with the big windows, but it's very, very sterile and it's very cold. He says he doesn't want to go to Hollywood. And, you know, the idea is that like. Like Steve, for all of his wanting to one up Rob and kind of educate him all the time, he. Rob has something that Steve lacks. And that's like a nice little moment in the movie. And what's great about that, the trick they pull off is that on Criterion, people that subscribe to Criterion, they have the four trip movies. The first one, I think, is the best one, but they have all four of them. And each of these films, as you know, was six TV episodes that they kind of edited into a film. So I've watched 24 of them, seen them all, right. And, you know, it's kind of sad when it's over because, like, you've been hanging out with these guys for 24 episodes. But one of the great tricks that they pull is that later in the series, Rob does something bad. And when Rob does something bad, it's in the series. On the trip to Italy, you're almost, like, disappointed in him until you check yourself and say, wait, that's not really Rob. Like, Rob's not really doing that. It's for the sake of the show. Like, there's the character of Steve's agent and Steve's son and Misha. Like, these people don't exist. Right? And I think that that's an amazing trick they pull off by being. It's almost like they put themselves out there as characters, but they're kind of characters in quotation marks, you know what I mean? To the point that when Rob does something untoward, you're kind of like, oh, I was, I'm disappointed in him. But you're really not disappointed in him.

Mike (19:46)

It's interesting that for a show, let's call it a show or a series of movies, whatever, that spends only about 5 to 7% of its energy on characterization and world building. It can still pull off the same tricks as a regular soap opera or television show.

Dan (20:02)

Yeah, you don't need like long scenes with. That's great, Mike. You don't need long scenes with Steve and his agent to learn that he's at a bad spot in his career. Or with him, he on the phone with Misha, calling her at 2 in the morning because of the time difference. To know like, yeah, this guy's got a lot of. He, he actually self assured, but he's got a lot of hang ups.

Mike (20:21)

And I think one of. Well, I think one of the lessons there is that it's not actually art that convinces us that these things are real. I think that as an audience we have a predisposition to believe that they're real. And so all you have to do is give me an excuse, like if I like you enough to hang out or to feel like I'm at the table with you while you're joking around, you're also real enough to me for me to think about the consequences of your life decisions. Right. Like, you don't have to put that much energy into art, if you will. You just have to stay out of the audience's way and they will do the believing themselves.

Dan (20:57)

And that's what happens when the film was made. Because obviously the setup for the, you know, the premise of the restaurant reviews and the driving around like that, but the basic premise is, okay, you guys are going to sit at a table and just be yourselves. And so the improv is what makes it funny. Like how about that scene that comes out of nowhere where they're in the Range Rover and they say, tomorrow we leave at daybreak. And they start, they keep making the time, like, why do they always have to leave at daybreak, half past ten, when's breakfast? And they keep going on and it's like, like that's what people do all the time is they take a joke and they push it to its limits and they just keep giggling.

Mike (21:28)

Well, it's like volleyball or tennis though, because what, what you actually want to know is if I, if I send this ball over to you, are you going to send it back to me and within the lines and it's. And make it returnable.

Dan (21:41)

There was a time I was in the supermarket And I texted you, what kind of orange juice do you like? Do you like orange juice with a lot of pulp in it or no pulp in it? And you responded, oh, a lot. I like so much pulp that I forgot was. And I kept going back and forth and we kept this text chain going for about 45 minutes. And I was in the supermarket giggling because we just. For no reason. Right? It was just like the trip. It was just because we thought it was funny.

Mike (22:06)

It's one of the things that makes the quality of life bearable, which is why I think that they built this script with so much free time just to see what would happen. And of course, your first question would be, is there enough there for 90 minutes? But if you think about the 24 episodes, you'd be like, there's enough there for 12 hours.

Dan (22:23)

Well, thanks for listening everybody. We hope you enjoyed our episode on the trip. You can follow us on X at 15min film. You can follow us where else Mike letterboxd. Also follow us on substack. You can check out my substack pages and frames and Mike's is called the Grumbler's Almanac. All right, but Mike's really not a grumbler at heart. Thanks for listening, everybody.

Mike (22:41)

We'll see you next time.

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