The Heaving ‘Wuthering Heights’ and the Throbbing ‘Pillion’: A Very Horny Valentine's Day Double Feature

Summary

The Big Picture – "The Heaving ‘Wuthering Heights’ and the Throbbing ‘Pillion’: A Very Horny Valentine's Day Double Feature"

Date: February 13, 2026
Host: Sean Fennessey
Co-host: Amanda Dobbins
Guest: Sam Sanders
Special Guest Interview: Harry Lytton (director of "Pillion")

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into two highly anticipated, sexually charged films: Emerald Fennell’s bold adaptation of the Brontë classic, Wuthering Heights, and Harry Lytton’s queer BDSM "rom-com," Pillion. Sean, Amanda, and Sam explore the artistic intentions, successes, and shortcomings of both movies, delve into broader cultural trends around eroticism on screen, and reflect on adaptation, desire, and representation. The episode also features an in-depth interview with Pillion's director, Harry Lytton.

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Main Theme

A frank, critical, and at times hilarious exploration of two very different films that take sexual longing and discomfort—sometimes literally—to the big screen for Valentine’s Day. The hosts wrestle with what it means for cinema to be "horny" in 2026, how to interpret artistic provocation, and what makes a sex scene, adaptation, or cultural depiction actually work.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights: Provocation, Adaptation, and Identity

Fennell’s Reputation and the ‘Brand’

• The hosts discuss Fennell’s rise as a bold, divisive director:

  "She has emerged ... as one of the very few brand name female filmmakers in studio filmmaking in the last 10 years. And she has an identity." (Sean, 03:56)

• Prior films (Promising Young Woman, Saltburn) are debated for not "sticking the landing"—often bold, never quite satisfying.

Why Keep Adapting Wuthering Heights?

• Amanda frames the novel as "literary IP"—a classic brimming with taboo, gothic wildness, and "sensational at the time."

  "It was sensational at the time. So I think it's just like it's IP, honestly—literary IP." (Amanda, 06:03)

• Sam notes the confusion and multiplicity of the novel:

  "It is one of the most confusing books ever written. Why then does every filmmaker say, I'll do it?" (Sam, 05:45)

The Book is Not a Love Story

• Hosts argue Fennell’s marketing of it as "The greatest love story ever told" ignores its darker core:

  “Wuthering Heights is a revenge story, not a love story.” (Sam, 09:02)

Casting and Depiction of Difference

• Extended debate over the racial and class dynamics in Brontë’s text (Heathcliff’s ambiguous otherness) and Fennell’s casting of Jacob Elordi:

  “...it's so strange in the Fennell version ... to see that played by Jacob Elordi, like, sure, let it be a white guy. But ... he's so central casting ... and he's heartthrob.” (Sam, 13:42)
  “Race and class, which are intertwined ... are a major part of why the characters are doing what they're doing.” (Amanda, 14:40)

• Fennell opts for race-blind casting, but the panel argues the film misses the source text’s essential rage about class and ethnicity.

Adaptation Choices

• Major departures include removing crucial characters (the brother), flattening the story’s perspective, and repurposing the plot into a thwarted "Romeo & Juliet" rather than a tale of vengeance and gothic obsession.

Eroticism & 'Edging' Without Payoff

• The panel is unimpressed by the much-hyped sexuality and kink:

  “At every moment when this film is supposed to be sexy and erotic, I found it gimmicky and too much.” (Sam, 23:17)

• The film indulges in foreplay and suggestive imagery but ultimately remains frustratingly chaste and unconsummated.

Visuals, Tone, and Music Video Sensibility

• Despite elaborate production and costumes, the movie’s muted lighting and staging leave reviewers cold.

  “It was hard to see some ... was weird to me.” (Sam, 39:12)
  “The movie I think is at its best when it's in montage and is a music video ... she's a music video director.” (Sean, 37:20)

Provocation or Satire?

• Debate over whether Fennell’s movie is sincerely striving for romance, deliberately tongue-in-cheek, or merely provocative for its own sake.

  “It's provocative. They give people going.” (Amanda, 56:12)

Culture Context: Are Audiences Horny Again?

• A new wave of sexual explicitness onscreen after a bland, Marvel-ified era. But Wuthering Heights is seen as all tease; contemporary high-concept erotica like Colleen Hoover adaptations or Heated Rivalry at least “get off.”

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2. Pillion: Erotic, Queer, and Tender

Film Summary (65:18)

• Pillion is a queer BDSM "rom-com" in which shy Colin (Harry Melling) is initiated by biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) into a transformative dom/sub relationship.

Critical Reaction

• Unanimous praise from the panel as a smart, tender, and unusually nuanced sexual coming-of-age story.
• Fun, old-school romantic comedy energy, but recharged by actual sex and “will they/won’t they” tension literalized in the physical relationship.
• The movie confronts pain, yearning, and consent directly—and lands its emotional arc better than Wuthering Heights:

  “Unlike Wuthering Heights, this film lands the plane. It is not a happy ending, but it is an ending that feels fulfilling. I love this movie.” (Sam, 66:03)

Chemistry and Performance

• Skarsgård hailed as a revelation:

  "After seeing this, I'm like, oh, you might be on your way to being one of the greats. Yeah, he's got it. And he chooses well." (Sam, 72:08)

• The brilliance of physical, psychological, and kinky tension, where friction and pain are linked to personal growth and kindness.

Handling of Sex and the ‘Penis Question’ (79:58 – 85:13)

• Debate over the limitations of onscreen male nudity:

  “There was something about Pillion and specifically that camping scene where I was like, I can feel the cut for sure.” (Amanda, 84:22)

• Recognition that the film finds erotic heat and realism without resorting to pornographic excess, but the hosts still wish for less restrictive ratings around male nudity.

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3. Interview: Harry Lytton on Making Pillion (86:47 onward)

(See Notable Quotes and Interview Highlights below)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Fennell’s Style:

• “Sex is... very viscous.” (Amanda, 24:29)
• “The eggs are fucking. And then no one fucks and no one resolves. And it's like, damn it, Emerald Fennell.” (Sam, 31:13)

On Mainstream Eroticism:

• “At every moment when this film is supposed to be sexy and erotic, I found it gimmicky and too much.” (Sam, 23:17)
• “This film never gets off. Yeah, it never gets off...” (Sam, 31:37)

On Adaptation:

• “You can't use the puzzle pieces of Wuthering Heights to make Romeo and Juliet.” (Amanda, 22:28)

On Cultural Trends:

• “People want to see sex, and they're unashamed to see it on screen.” (Sam, 28:26)

On Pillion:

• “He grows through this experience, and he becomes someone who knows more about what he wants and about how to get it.” (Sam, 74:26)
• “This is a very kind movie.” (Sean, 75:38)
• “By the end of it, you realize that the protagonist has come out of it loving himself more. Sign me up.” (Sam, 79:45)

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Timestamps for Major Sections

• [03:24] Background on Emerald Fennell and her previous films.
• [05:45] Why adapt Wuthering Heights? Literary tradition & confusion.
• [10:50] Previous adaptations and the racial politics of Heathcliff.
• [15:59] The perils of faithful adaptation versus bold reimagining.
• [23:17] Sex in Wuthering Heights: the problem of ‘edging’ and never delivering catharsis.
• [39:46] The look and lighting of Fennell’s film—visual disappointment.
• [51:51] Prognosis for box office success despite mixed reviews.
• [62:43] Transition to Pillion discussion.
• [65:18] Plot summary and critical praise of Pillion.
• [67:39] Handling of BDSM dynamics and tenderness.
• [74:26] Growth, self-love, and romance in Pillion.
• [79:58] Penis on screen: limitations, editing, the cultural double standard.
• [86:47] Interview with director Harry Lytton (see below for highlights).

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[Interview] Harry Lytton on Pillion (86:47–117:23)

Highlights & Key Insights:

• On Filmmaking Journey:
  Inspired by The Lives of Others at 19 (“my favorite film had been Kung Fu Panda until then!”), binged classic cinema to educate himself, started with shorts, and gravitated toward sexual transgression stories.

• On Adapting Box Hill:
  Tasked with turning a first-person queer novel into a visually-driven, cinematic story without voiceover ("we had to discover a new form... support visual storytelling rather than verbal").

• On Biker Iconography:
  Sought to update the "Tom of Finland" biker archetype with contemporary streetwear and materials ("wouldn't it be fun if the leathers... feel like something new...?").

• On Casting:

  • "Colin" needed to be memorable yet passive—Harry Melling’s unique physical presence was crucial.
  • Skarsgård embodies both a "head-turning beauty" and subtle psychological dominance.
  • No chemistry readings; trusted instincts and the actors’ talent.

• On Tone:

  • Actively balanced sincerity and humor, often shooting scenes both ways, to get it right in the edit.

• On Sex Scenes:

  • Respectful choreography and intimacy coaching were used; authenticity and comfort for actors were key.

• On Difference Between Sex and Yearning:

  • Explores the complex, decoupled relationship between sexual fulfillment and emotional yearning.
  • "Eventually that's what creates the real source of conflicts in the film."

• On Family Dynamics:

  • Reverses the classic “coming-out” arc; parents are supportive but jarred by their son’s unconventional relationship.
  • Captures contemporary, nuanced responses rather than tired tropes.

• On Future Ambitions:

  • Remains committed to independent filmmaking for authorial control and creative protection.

Notable Quote:

"The friction is the point, and the friction is the pleasure. The friction is the growth. The friction is the love. And so that felt so much more understandable to me because the dom sub makes it explicit." (Sam, 76:43)

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Final Thoughts

Wuthering Heights
A visually bold, self-conscious work that frustrates in its attempt to recast an iconic, vengeful, class-obsessed novel as a modern, sexy tragedy. The hosts find Fennell’s project interesting but ultimately unsatisfying—teasing audiences with sexuality, but failing to either provide catharsis or illuminate the original’s power.

Pillion
A surprising, heartfelt, and mature queer romance. The film takes risks with explicitness and tenderness, landing an emotional payoff precisely where Fennell’s adaptation falters—delivering genuine growth, empathy, and erotic satisfaction.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Heard the Episode

• This episode moves fluidly between critical analysis, cultural commentary, and personal reflection.
• The hosts are blunt, passionate, and engaging—unafraid to call out what doesn't work or puzzle over ambiguous artistic intent.
• Wuthering Heights spurs fierce debate; Pillion earns rare, unreserved praise.
• The interview with Harry Lytton is refreshingly honest about the challenges of adaptation, collaboration, and capturing desire on film.

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For more, check:

• [01:18] — Introduction to episode theme and guests
• [10:50] — Adaptation breakdowns of Wuthering Heights
• [62:43] — Pillion deep dive and discussion of onscreen eroticism
• [86:47] — In-depth Harry Lytton interview

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Memorable quote to close:

“It’s provocative, it gets the people going.”
— Sam Sanders, quoting Anchorman and Kanye West (04:47)

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

I'm Sean Fennessy.

[A]

I'm Amanda Dobbins and this is the.

[B]

Big Picture 8 conversation show about sex, love, yearning, desire and movies. Today on the show we are joined by our pal Sam Sanders.

[C]

It's so good to be here.

[B]

Thank you for being here, host of the Sam Sanders Show. We are here talking about two very sexy, horny, unusual movies. The first one, of course is Wuthering Heights, the much anticipated Emerald Fennel adaptation of the Bronte novel. The second is Pillion, which is written and directed by Harry Lytton. Harry Lytton is a guest on the show today. We talked about how his movie, which is a Dom, a BDSM rom com, exhibits power, love, vulnerability, difficulty in relationships and the size of Alexander Skarsgrd. We will get into that after our conversation and we'll start talking about Wuthering Heights right after this.

[A]

This episode of the Big Picture is presented by State Farm.

[B]

You know those friends who show up for whatever you're into, the ones who'll debate which superhero universe is better or binge true crime documentaries with you at three in the morning. Those friends are gold.

[A]

State Farm is like that, helping you figure out the coverage that actually fits. Car, home life, whatever you need, they've got your back. And if you want a hand, a local agent is just a tap away on their award winning app.

[B]

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Sam, welcome.

[D]

It's so good to be here.

[A]

Thanks for coming.

[D]

I tell you, as a longtime fan, being where y' all make the sausage is quite nice.

[B]

What's it like how does it feel?

[A]

And he thought, what's different?

[B]

Sausage is an interesting metaphor, by the way, for this episode.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

A lot of lights.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Guess who asked for that.

[D]

Mix your mics. Four cameras. This is big time. This is big time.

[B]

Well, we have been on your show the last couple years and we wanted to have you on too. And you know, your setup is nothing to. Nothing to appreciate it. Nothing to be shy of.

[D]

People like it. Cause it's like a blue sky background and plants and a rug. But that is all IKEA and Amazon. We are public media. It's budget. Our sign that hangs with the station logo. Our producer like screwed that up himself.

[B]

Okay, well this is.

[A]

Sir, that's wallpaper.

[B]

So just like this is the power of big tech right here in front of um. Let's talk about Wuthering Heights.

[D]

Okay, let's talk about that.

[B]

So just a little. I got. We'll give background on the movie, but I want to give a little background on Emerald Fennel between Amanda and I. So we have covered her two previous films on the show. Promising Young Woman, which is a movie that I liked some aspects on, but was very mixed to negative, especially on the ending. I think you were more or less the same, maybe even more negative on it than I was, I think.

[A]

So I think that's going to be a theme.

[B]

Yeah. Saltburn. Not a big fan of you.

[D]

Were not playing in my face. Playing in my face was what she was doing with that movie.

[B]

But we gotta give her some credit. She has emerged, I think as one of the very few brand name female filmmakers in studio filmmaking in the last 10 years. And she has an identity. There's excitement about this movie. When she does something now there's a lot of noise. And so I've had this date circled on the calendar for a long time.

[A]

And we should explain. Sam is here because we got to do your show last month and we were trying a good opportunity for you to come on the show since Wicked for good didn't really work out for any of us.

[D]

I was a total Wicked one. Stan Wicked two. I just kept my mouth shut.

[A]

But so I think Pillian came up on the episode that we did with you. And then we were talking afterwards like interest in Wuthering Heights and what's gonna go on. And you said. And you seemed to curious.

[D]

Yeah, I feel about Ms. Fennell, you know that Will Ferrell quote from Anchorman or the Kanye west song. Like it's provocative, it gets the people going. That's her movies. It's Provocative on purpose. It makes you pay attention. But with all of her films that I've seen, the landing isn't stuck, the plane doesn't land the right way, but there are moments where you say, oh, that's interesting. Yes, I'm going to talk about this. Yes, this is worth discussing.

[B]

I think that is a skill and a skill worth acknowledging.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

It doesn't mean I approve, but I'm kind of fascinated by this project. So let's talk about Wuthering Heights. Right. So it is an adaptation written by Emeril Fennell. She directed the film. It's based on the Bronte novel, which was published in 1847. I read that this is the 35th film or television adaptation of this work, which even by the standards of great literature, is a lot also.

[D]

Can I just ask. I have read multiple synopses of the book. I've read write ups of how the book works. I've talked with friends who have read the book. It is one of the most confusing books ever written. Why then does every filmmaker say, I'll do it?

[B]

Well, what do you think it is?

[A]

Well, I think it's because of the tradition of the book in English literary history, which comes so 1847. It's the same year or a year after Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte's sister, and about 30 to 40 years after Jane Austen, and is just kind of, for whatever reason, considered like one of the great achievements and also like a stopping point in terms of literature written by. Written by women. Gothic literature. There are a lot of, like, taboos broken here. It was sensational at the time. So I think it's just like it's ip, honestly. It's like. I mean, it is kind of like literary IP and has become really buzzy. And so when you say Wuthering Heights, most people have some sort of reference or interpretation, or at least like Heathcliff has become a concept outside of this book. I think.

[D]

Yeah. Like, I had never engaged with the book or any of the movies, but I know Wuthering Heights exists.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

And I should pay attention to it.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah, I think you're right. And I think it is almost like. Because those books seem like a kind of response to the Jane Austen era of literature, where there's sort of like almost like a Victorian rejection, you know, like desire can be expressed clearly and loudly. It doesn't have to be this kind of rom com of manners, which a lot of those Austen books are. So. And that's very cinematic. You know, that level of Desire and confusion and darkness. Totally. And just. Just the setting is very. She conjures it. It's very visual. It's a great set piece for a film story. There are a handful that are very, very notable. You mentioned that just this morning you finished watching, I guess probably the most famous version of the film, which is the 39 version, which was nominated for best Picture, which famously stars Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Catherine, which is a film I like quite a bit. I think it's an interesting adaptation. It is very similar in some ways to this new version. Its differences, I think are what makes it the superior film. But we'll talk about that.

[A]

You guys really did the work also, which I appreciate. You watched a lot of adaptations. I watched Heated Rivalry to prepare for.

[D]

This podcast, but that's better choice.

[B]

I do want to talk about Heated Rivalry and what is happening right now.

[A]

I reread bits of the book because. Have you read this book before? It was not handed down to you.

[D]

I was talking to a good friend who did read it and I was like, give me a download. And she's like, the thing you need to know about this book is that it is so confusing. There's two families. Cause there's the first gen. Then there are kids fighting. There are multiple Kathy's. You forget who's telling what.

[B]

Multiple perspectives.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

And all the same.

[D]

And unreliable narrators. It is. I don't want to convoluted. I say that totally.

[B]

It's like a literary experiment. The way that she's kind of shifting who's telling the story and why that person gets to tell the story at that time. It's really interesting. Apparently I haven't read it though. Well.

[D]

And also what I get when I talk to folks about the book, they're like, oh, this is a story of vengeance and like revenge. Which is why I was so thrown off for Fennell to have the tagline for her Wuthering Heights be the greatest love story ever told. It's like Wuthering Heights is a revenge story, not a love story.

[A]

And it is also just a bunch of people alone in the middle of nowhere going like going crazy, making decisions that are very strange. There is like an isolating, isolated, wild, like, gothic quality to all of it. But it's interesting. I was handed this in my nerdy girl era after the Austen along with Jane Eyre.

[D]

Did you like the book?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I've always been more of an Austen than a Bronte, which I do think there is a little bit of a Divide there. But I think it was handed to me as kind of like, okay, now that you've read the Comedy of Manners, the sty, like, now let's get dark, right? You're gonna understand the rejection of it. You're gonna understand the weirdness of it. But it was presented as, like, not Girls Gone Wild, but like, this is. This weird stuff is happening here.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And not as, like, Star Crossed Lovers.

[B]

Mm. Yeah. And I don't think anybody really understands the story that way. Except for Emerald Fennel. She seems to be the only person who seems to be seeing the movie in that respect. Like, if you look at the Robert fuest version from 1970, famously with Timothy Dalton, one of the first big things that he ever did. I mean, Louis Bonuel did a version of this story. Jacques Rivette did a version of this story. We just Talked about the 1992 version, which I still haven't seen, which is Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes in his first film role, actually. And then in 2011, Wuthering Heights, Andrea Arnold made a version of it.

[D]

Tried to watch that last night.

[B]

It speaks to something that is in the novel that is sort of hard to parse, which is some of the language she uses to describe Heathcliff's ethnicity or cultural background.

[D]

The language of characters.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

The N word threw me for a loop.

[B]

She uses the word gypsy to describe him, but then later in the book, she describes him as sort of having the whitest pallor possible, like, whiter than the wall. So it's confusing who Heathcliff is meant to be and where he comes from. Cause he's this youngling who comes from nowhere.

[D]

Right.

[B]

He's kind of adopted into this higher class family. So we don't know, like, is this a story about race? Is it a story?

[D]

I think it is, and I think it needs to be. I think there are moments in the finale version of this film where you're like, this is supposed to be a person of color. Sorry to jump ahead, but there's a moment when Jacob Elordi is getting whipped and lashed, and you see the lashes on his back. I'm like, okay.

[B]

It's recalling like 12 Years a Slave very overtly.

[D]

And the 2011 version goes there. Heathcliff is played by a black person. And in that film, they're using the N word. They're beating him. It's hard to watch, but it feels like the racial difference is something that the author of the original book intended to be a part of it.

[A]

Well, yeah, so there's a. I'M just gonna quote this great piece written by Jasmine Vojani for New York Magazine just for their book newsletter. So I, like, honestly don't know if we can even link to it, but it's great. It's called Book Gossip. And she spoke to a lot of literary historians and critics about this and about the language. And like, is Heathcliff white? Is he not white? What kind of not white? Is he, like, what would Bronte's intention have been at the time? What would audiences have understood? And the scholars are like, he's definitely not white in the way that the other characters who identify as white understand themselves. And that class and race or ethnicity are a huge theme of this, of this novel. And the relationship or the, you know, the rejection of Heathcliff and his relationship to the Lennon family, to the. To Kathy's family, et cetera, like the. The genealogical or the, you know, what the actual descent is. There are lots of interpretations that says Indian descent. Indian descent, because there is that some people suggest Irish because of just like time and place and where. So I don't know whether there's like an actual answer, like, according to the scholars. I thought this was very interesting. I mean, I don't know the answer, but you're right to the point that. And I guess I don't know whether Bronte thinks that he's specifically black.

[B]

He is different enough that in this world he is considered less than.

[D]

And he speaks a different language at first in the book. No.

[A]

Yeah. Gibberish that no one understands.

[D]

So he is a foreigner, which is why it's so strange in the Fennell version of this film to see that played by Jacob Elordi, like, sure, let it be a white guy. But like that one. He's so central casting.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

And he's heartthrob. Yes.

[A]

Yeah. For brooding heartthrob.

[D]

Yeah. Like, they. Yeah, it was a weird choice. It was a weird choice. And it felt like Emerald Fennell could have made a more interesting film and a braver film had she grappled at all with.

[A]

Well, the book gossip piece also points out that then all of the other characters who are pretty clearly white in the book, or at least their descriptions are not as developed, are then cast by played by non white actors. So there's kind of like a race blind thing going on here, which is.

[D]

Which is always hard to pull off.

[A]

Which is hard to pull off, but also ignores what is in the book, which is that race and class, which are intertwined in this society and also in, you know, in the world at large are like, are a major part of why the characters are doing what they're doing.

[D]

There you go.

[B]

It is. It is a really. It is an interesting and maybe inappropriate stroke that she has taken here. So it's not just that, you know, Hong Chao is playing Nelly, the sort of the handmaiden to Catherine. Shahzad Latif is playing Linton, the Edgar Linton, the sort of the man who.

[D]

Casts crazy marriage like he was too hot to hate. I'm like, this guy's attractive.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

I don't dislike him.

[B]

Yeah. A lot of the Lintons are handsome, but they're stiffs. Yeah. Anyhow, the fact that she's doing that and then casting ultimately a Lordy. And also Owen Cooper as the young version of. He was an adolescent and he was an adolescent. So she's kind of going like, bad boy, bad boy. Like, these are the kind of the classical bad boys in their age range right now, but they're white. So for her to go against that, but also go against so much of the intentionality and the purpose of the novel. I kind of wanted to talk about the idea of adaptation with you guys before we get into the text of the movie. So a deeply faithful adaptation of a novel runs the great risk of being very boring.

[D]

And in the case of this book, Wuthering Heights, it would have been. Unable to understand.

[B]

It would have been impossible. In a two hour.

[D]

You can do it. Exactly.

[B]

This is a two hour and 15 minute movie and it's a sprawling novel that covers three years. It's a really big book. I think you can go too far with an adaptation too. Or maybe not. Maybe just too wrong. And there's something about the choices that she's making in order to make the kind of movie that she wants to make, which is obviously a story of epic desire and sex and, you know, a tragic romance. That's the thing that she really wants to make. And she does make that here in this movie. But that isn't really what Wuthering Heights is. It's like, it is much more. It's not a love story.

[D]

It's a revenge story.

[B]

It's a revenge story and it's about resentment and class warfare and kind of like cultural frustration, like the lack of understanding between people and also.

[A]

And ownership and property and who gets which house. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And this one's not really about any of that stuff. It kind of like it glances at it, but it doesn't.

[D]

It removes characters that would have made those points more clear. The biggest difference between Fennell's version and the book and most other versions is that she loses the mean brother.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

The mean brother is the source of a lot of the conflict and the motivation for Heathcliff to be a jerk. The rest of the book and film. So you can't make it a revenge story once the brother is gone.

[B]

I think. Yeah, I think it's worth putting some context around that. Sorry. In the novel, there's a father figure. In the film, the father figure represents essentially the entire Earnshaw family. He is the person who brings Heathcliff into this home, introduces him to his entire family, especially his daughter Catherine. In the novel, the father brings that character home, but it's the brother who becomes kind of the rival and the person who makes Heathcliff feel less and antagonizes him and eventually enslaves him.

[A]

Right. Also, just in the novel, there are heavy implications that Heathcliff is bringing. Being brought home because he is the, like, bastard child of Mr. Linton. There is.

[B]

I mean, there's an insinuation.

[A]

There's insinuation. And I think, like, in that time in it just sort of would have been questions of, like, mm, I guess I'm assuming that this is. Now you're responsible for this kid. So. But also. So then the rivalry between the two brothers is also hinting at, like, this brother understands him as a threat because he's his half brother.

[D]

Yeah. And like, that creates so much of the tension.

[B]

Totally have that. It helps explain Heathcliff's psychology, which is that he feels like he's been made to feel less than. And then that makes you understand not just his desire for Catherine, but the kind of impossibility of Catherine and Heathcliff.

[A]

Right. Also.

[B]

Which is a great idea.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they're sort of related. Yes. And maybe actually related.

[D]

You know, that would have been interesting.

[A]

In the movie, which is. And there is a lot. They say brother and sister a lot in the first 15 minutes of the movie where I'm like, I guess you were maybe trying to hint at this.

[B]

It has that Game of Thrones incest kink thing that they're trying to. She's kind of, like, nodding at it, but she's not really going for it. And that's kind of, to me, a failure of the movie in general.

[D]

I missed it. I missed that point. Oh, damn.

[B]

So, anyway, you're right, but you're right. You're removing the brother.

[D]

It changes the whole plot.

[B]

Removing the perspective of the book, I think is really important, too, because the first part of the book is essentially a lodger Comes to stay at Wuthering Heights? Or is it to stay at the Linton? Is it to stay at the Linton?

[A]

The Grange? Is that what it's called?

[B]

Crosslor Grange. And that is where the Linton estate was. And it's many years in the future. And this lodger comes and discovers a diary and he starts to learn about Catherine and Heathcliff. And then he thinks he sees Catherine's ghost. And then that is like the launch pad into the story. So we're starting in the distant future and then we're going back. And Nellie, the handmaiden tells the story.

[D]

She's the narrator.

[B]

And we're meant to understand her, as you said, as an unreliable narrator. She's a person who has her own motivations and her own interests. She's in the movie. She does stuff in the movie. She does, but it's not from her perspective.

[D]

Yeah, it's not from her perspective. But I found myself leaving the movie the most upset with Nellie. Cause I felt like she was just getting involved too much and making shit strange. I don't want to say more and spoil it, but I found that a lot of movement that would have gone to the brother had he been there. Kind of had to go to Nelly.

[B]

I agree.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's an interesting choice of adaptation. And I know why she did it. And she made the movie that she wanted to make.

[D]

You know why she did it? Because I don't.

[B]

Well, I think she felt like she wanted to spend more time with Catherine and Heathcliff, that, like, the people that were orbiting them were of less interest to her. And there's just a lot more of these two characters together, as far as I can tell, in any of the adaptations and at least in the novel based on what I've read. So she wanted to make Romeo and Juliet. She wanted to make a movie where these two people are kind of desperately coming together over and over again. And it's against other people's wills, but those people don't matter.

[A]

She has another character in the movie who is the best character played by or the best performance by Alison Oliver. Isabella retell the story of Romeo and Juliet. So. Which, you know, is clearly a signal poster. Like, if that's what's going on, people are getting.

[D]

She had the dog scene.

[A]

Yeah, she's great. She's really good.

[D]

That was great.

[B]

She also was in Saltburn. One of the best things in Saltburn.

[A]

As well, Alice in Oliver. And it is true that the Batty women side characters are the best parts of Emerald Fennel book. Movies. See also Carey Mulligan in Sawburn. But that was just confusing to me because Romeo and Juliet's, like, very different from Wuthering Heights. And I. Excuse me. I have read the book, and I guess I'm not devoted to it. So I was not particularly concerned with this as a. As a faithful adaptation. I'm still really riding my, like, train dreams wave of, you know, if you don't. If you don't bring the expectations, then, you know, magic can happen. But I just. I don't understand what I. You can't use the puzzle pieces of Wuthering Heights to make Romeo and Juliet. And it just. And I just. I watched it and it didn't. They didn't fit together for me on its. On its face.

[B]

But I think the qu. I think you can if you do it better. Like, I think the challenge here is that I'm not like a. I'm not a loyalist when it comes to faithfully adapting a novel. I don't think you absolutely have to do everything intended. In fact, I think you can distort theme based on the time period that you're in and change the meaning of it. I just think the meaning here is meant to be one thing, which is that we live in a more highly sexualized world where we can more confidently talk about what we want and how we want it. But then the movie doesn't really live up to that idea. It doesn't really give us a movie that. That truly adequately, I think, portrays that idea. So the thing that she's going for, she doesn't get. And in the process, she kind of breaks Wuthering Heights over her knee. And you're like, why'd you break Wuthering Heights to not make the movie you think you wanna make?

[D]

Well, and I think what viewers have kind of been promised in the run up to this film's release was that, oh, it's sexy, it's kinky, it's emerald fennel. And then at every moment when this film is supposed to be sexy and erotic, I found it gimmicky and too much.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So you should talk about that.

[A]

Yeah. Well, I think that there is. There's the foreplay section of the novel, of the film. And then there's. Once they actually consummate their affair, which we should know doesn't happen in the book. And this. It's like. It's not Henry Miller. Okay? Like, no one is fucking in Wuthering Heights.

[C]

The book.

[B]

It's the book of yearning. That's the whole thing. Yeah.

[A]

And also. And also, it's been pointed out that, like, Emily Bronte has probably never actually. Probably did not have sex in her life, just based on what we know biographically. Listen, the 18. It was a tough time for a lot of people. You don't want to be. You don't want to be a lot of things in 1847, but, like, an unmarried woman, like, living in Yorkshire is.

[B]

Like, on the list.

[D]

That's why you write Wuthering Heights. What the fuck else are you doing?

[A]

But so. And also. And she had a wild imagination in a lot of ways, but I don't think adventures towards sexual. Like, actual sex.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

So putting aside the consummation, everything ahead of time is like that classic emerald fennel. Like, sex is, like. Is very viscous.

[D]

And viscous is the word. There is slug the bread.

[A]

Yeah. You can tell even, like, the. The wall of her bedroom. Slash boudoir is, like, supposed to be skin of her face, but also, you know, looks like skin that you kind of can like. Plus, great, great production design.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Where it gets pushed, it's, like, sort of dimpled, but, yeah, it's like, really, like, ooey, gooey. Gross. Very memorable. She has a weight with this. Just like the bathtub scene.

[D]

It doesn't turn me on. It doesn't turn me on, but it's like.

[A]

It's scary. It's like she is better. Portraying sex as, like, you have sex and you die is something that a lot of women of my generation were taught and also, like, clearly a motif.

[B]

In her movies, three of her movies.

[A]

And so she's portraying the idea of it like she's very creative, very visually imaginative, and can portray sex as not, like, sexy, but as the evil around the corner.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

But when you get to the actual sex, I was like, this is pretty boring.

[B]

Yeah, let's talk about that. Because there are. It's not just, like, two or three visual representations of that that you're talking about.

[A]

There's like 10 or 12.

[D]

The eggs show up several times.

[B]

Eggs cracked underneath the bed. You know, you mentioned the scarred back and the scarred back. It's not just that it's a scarred back, but it's a sweating, scarred back, which is almost meant to. There's something supposed to be hot, kind of interestingly, like dangerously kinky going on there. But she doesn't really explore it. She just shows us an image and makes us think about it a little bit.

[D]

Yes.

[B]

You know, the movie opens also with this groaning sound. And the groaning sound, we think is a man Masturbating, maybe climaxing. And in fact, it's a guy who's being hanged, and his neck is not broken, and he's just joking, which is another kind of like, we're bringing you to the edge of climax. And this is a movie that basically does that. Like, it keeps trying to get you to get off, but then when they do have sex, they're just fully clothed, you know, Then you throw up by.

[D]

The corset or something. It's just.

[B]

Yeah, I like that image.

[D]

Not physically possible.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, that was a bit strange. But, like, there's no nudity in this movie, and I don't need it to be pornography. But, like, if you're gonna break the text and you're gonna redefine what Wuthering Heights is, and you're gonna cast Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie.

[A]

Right.

[B]

They're just gonna be fully clothed in.

[A]

Three sex scenes, he takes his shirt off.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And you'd like. You do notice that part.

[C]

Well, I do.

[A]

Cause I was like, there's a bicep. Because there's also. I mean, we can talk. We'll talk about their performances, but there's, like, not a lot of chemistry behind that between them.

[D]

He was sexier in Frankenstein, and he.

[A]

Is kind of also doing Frankenstein for.

[B]

The first half of the movie. A little bit. Yeah.

[A]

But there's not a lot of heat between them. The blocking is sort of unimaginative. They're just, like, in a dining room, you know, it's not there. And, like, maybe. Maybe, if you want to be generous, there's an argument that it's like, that's the point. That, you know, the consummation is like. Is the letdown. And this is a movie about desire.

[B]

But that's not what the movie tells us.

[A]

It's not. I agree. Like I said, I don't.

[B]

Would have been a cool idea. I think that would have been a really interesting way to tell the story. But they are into it for each other. We're just not really as into it when we're watching it, or at least we weren't. I mean, I think people are really gonna like this movie, I think. And I wanted to talk a little bit about that, which is sort of like, what is happening culturally and why a movie like this is so anticipated. Cause you mentioned you watched Heated Rivalry.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And Romantasy is the most reliable thing at the Barnes and Noble around the corner from your home right now. And we've been talking about Colleen Hoover movie adaptations for the last 12 months.

[D]

What do you think is that people are horny again. And I like that.

[B]

Why do you think that is?

[D]

I think, you know, there was a moment, and it was much covered, that the MCU and Marvel and the superherofication of movies made movies and TVs a bit more sexless. I think we've turned the corner on that. And now it's sexy again. People want to see sex, and they're unashamed to see it on screen. And so in that moment, when you see heated rivalry work because there's fucking, and you see in Pilead, it works because there's fucking.

[A]

Right.

[D]

It's so weird to see Emerald Fennell in the film.

[A]

So we're gonna talk about what's missing. Go there from those two films.

[D]

Yes, Yes.

[A]

I also.

[D]

It's like I've been trying to figure out what motivates Emerald Fennell to make this kind of movie and to do sex this way and to do pain this way and to do pleasure this way. I found this one podcast where she was talking about her motivation to get into film. She talked about how when she was seven years old, she goes to see Jurassic park with her family while they're on holiday in America. It gets to the scene where the raptors come into the kitchen. It scares her so much. It's so visceral for her. She throws up in the theater, but she stays and she keeps watching. And she tells her parents, I'm staying. And it's like, oh, that's your kink. You want it to kind of hurt a little bit. You want the pain, you want the suffer. And that is your philosophy of sex on screen. It is not mine. It's not mine.

[B]

It's not mine either. But I want an artist who's willing to do that.

[D]

And she commits to.

[C]

She commits.

[B]

Interested in that? Okay, yeah, let me just. Last night, I had a very interesting experience. I went to the New Beverly for a double feature. Double feature was famous Japanese film called in the Realm of the Senses, which is a similar. Different but similarly sensational movie about a doomed couple who are obsessed with each other and have sex. The reason the movie is famous is because all of the sex scenes are unsimulated. So it is effectively art house pornography. And it is very dramatic and intense. And all month, this month at the New Beverly, they're showing kind of erotic cinema as to pay tribute to the theater's history when it used to be basically a porno theater for a few years, and then it was doubled with this movie, Blood Spattered Bride, which is like, just a cult movie that is fun. But watching in the Realm of the Senses, which is. There's nothing like it because it's Nagisa Ohshima. So it's like a real master filmmaker making pornography. That is transgression. That's pain for pleasure. Like that. And I know that Warner Brothers is never going to make in the Realm of the Senses. And I'm not saying that she should. And it's not a standard that I want to hold her to, but it feels like she really comes up short on that idea so many times that it makes you wonder, like, what's what. Maybe it's just that that's her taste is like the 30% of BDSM that she's into.

[D]

It's funny, like, you mentioned the word edging. It's hard to be frank here. The point of edging is that eventually you get off. This film never gets off. Yeah, it never gets off. And you tease it. You're kneading the bread and it's fucking. The snail is sliming and it's fucking. And it's like everything is like, the eggs are fucking. And then no one fucks and no one resolves. And it's like, damn it, Emerald Fennell.

[B]

Damn it. In the Realm of the Senses, we literally see human ejaculate. Like, there's nothing even close to doll metaphor.

[A]

They do, they do they do they like a lot. You never see dick, which we'll talk about.

[D]

But season two, there's still time.

[A]

But I mean, the thing is, is that, like, you're both right. That in terms of, like, I guess, emotionally or like, the tone of the film, she, like, never gets off, but she still does have to shoot sex scenes. And that's kind of the problem is that, like, both the text and you can tell, like, her interest and what. Or what she finds sexy is in. Is in the foreplay is in the restraint is in the. Like is in the punishment, is in the longing is in the. It not happening. Yeah, but then this adaptation, because of the pop cultural moment, has to add a lot of sex, and it's not there. It's not there in the filmmaking. It's not there in the chemistry, the story. I guess it's fine. But it is also one of those things where the puzzle pieces of what they've laid up, it's like, I guess they could have sex for a while. And it's fine even that she's like. She was like, I'm pregnant, but I'm not gonna tell him. But we're not. Then paternity doesn't become an issue at any point. It was very.

[D]

Not to keep mentioning her on this podcast, but I want. It was a TCM podcast. Talking pictures. She was talking about her philosophy of film and besides that whole Jurassic park story, which explains everything. She also, at one point, was like, I don't like happy movies. I don't like movies that just, like, hold your hand. I want a movie to, like, kick you and scratch you.

[B]

Yeah, that's my favorite thing.

[D]

It's not your favorite thing. It's not my favorite thing.

[B]

I love that. And I don't think that she really pulls that off. That's my.

[D]

That's the thing. It's like, if you're gonna do it, do it all the way that way. This one is trying to tow both.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

To the line.

[B]

Yeah. I think. I think a lot of it is around resolution in her films. You know, like, promising woman, young woman. I watched the first time, and I was like, this is a pretty interesting exploration. It's like a rape revenge movie for the 2020s. Post me to toxic masculinity. Like, there should be modern set movies about this. I thought she totally, like, spit the bit in the last 10 minutes where she was like, actually, we do need the cops to help arrest people. And it was like, the whole point was that the police weren't listening to the people who were saying that they had been victimized or assaulted anyway, so that doesn't make sense. Saltburn. The last 10 minutes, I find, like, incoherent. I'm like, is it because he felt like he was a lower class and so he had to destroy them? Was it because he was queer and he wasn't able to communicate about that? Was he just the sociopath? Like, what? No explanation.

[D]

She also handled race really strangely in that film. Like, there was one biracial character who's also gay, and you get that he's supposed to be performing some version of black and queerness, but it all felt like it was tacked on.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[D]

She also strikes me as a filmmaker.

[A]

Here's your one. Here are, like, all your things in one issue. Yeah.

[D]

She strikes me as a filmmaker. And this is no harm, no foul, no shade. She feels most comfortable in a sandbox that is pretty white. And I'm not mad at that. Do your thing.

[B]

It is her right to do that.

[A]

It is her right.

[B]

I actually don't want her writing a black or Indian Heathcliff if she doesn't.

[D]

Know how to do it.

[B]

You know, you don't want that.

[D]

She could work with other writers and figure it out. That's true, but we're also in this moment of, like, singular talents. Do it all themselves.

[A]

Yeah, right. Or you could just adapt a different novel that is like, more in line with what you're talking about. Like, just make Romeo and Juliet. It's fine. There have been a lot of those.

[D]

Or just write a whole fresh new love story that is taking bits of what you liked reading growing up and make a brand new thing that is not weighed down by the expectations of such an iconic piece of ip. Like, there's so much expectation sitting over Fennell's film that even if she did it 25, 30% better, we'd still be, you know, taking kicks out.

[A]

Okay, so I wanna, I put this question in the doc, but, like, I wanna ask you this. Is she making a movie? Does she think that this movie is, like, romantic or sexy? Or like, is she exploring, like, you know, a tragic love story in this? Does she think that these. Or is this total provocation and is it, like, not quite satire, but is the whole thing tongue in cheek? Like, I. This is a genuine question. I can't tell what the intention of the movie's, like, tone and emotions are.

[B]

Well, we should note that the title of the film is in quotation marks, Weathering Heights.

[D]

It is so annoying.

[B]

It's a little like first year college creative writing, you know, it's not. But. But I do understand what she intends by that, which is like, Chi is saying that I'm going to do something different and that this is like a text that many people know and understand and this is what I take from it and what I am interested in. I think that the question is a little bit. The answer to the question that you're asking is a little bit confused by a couple of other choices. Like, in addition to some of that production design, like, you've got these completely, like, ahistorical, anachronistic costume designs, which, from.

[D]

The favorite part of the.

[B]

Which are really good, but they're like, made of cellophane and plastic and materials that you just wouldn't find in that kind of costume, which is not a bad thing. But it is a choice that also puts the quotation mark around the movie. You've also got this score by Charlie xcx, which I kind of liked when.

[D]

It first appears, I'm really into it.

[B]

It is interesting. And then. But that does kind of lead me to where my head is with her in general as a filmmaker, which is the movie I think is at its best when it's in montage and is a music video.

[D]

I was gonna say she's a music video director.

[B]

She's a music video director. And the filmmaker that she most reminds me of and that she really feels like the spiritual heir to is Baz Luhrmann. Now, some people love Baz Luhrmann. I don't. And I really like his Romeo and Juliet. And that's pretty much where it stops for me, because I felt like he made the ultimate music video adaptation in Romeo and Juliet. Yes. Where it's like the cutting style, the color, the recreation of that world I thought was so inventive and cool. And then I just felt like he kept sputtering. Now I'm kind of on the outside. A lot of people love his movies. They love Moulin Rouge. They love Gatsby. They love. They even love his Elvis. I didn't really care for any of those movies, but they hit a similar note to me, which is like. But they put so much time and effort into all the stuff, the way things look and the way that they feel. But the idea feels very barren.

[D]

But here's the difference between Baz Luhrmann and Emil Fennell. At least with this movie, Baz Luhrmann at some point is gonna have fun. He has fun in Romeo and Juliet. Even though it is a tragedy.

[B]

It's true.

[D]

No part of her Wuthering Heights felt fun to me.

[B]

I don't know.

[D]

Did it even feel fun to you?

[A]

No. And I also didn't think it was funny. There's a. I think she thought it.

[D]

Was funny in some ways.

[A]

I do as well. And there's, like, the Kathy character in particular was really annoying. And what was your take on the.

[D]

Bart, like a dog scene? It threw me for a loop. And I was like, where is this coming from?

[A]

I just like the. There's. She's trying to do, like, plucky, independent. You know, there's like, a little bit of, like, girl power run in or girl boss running through it that I don't care for. And then I think, like, Margot Robbie's bringing a little bit too much Barbie to the performance, at least when she's trying to do comedy. And, I mean, comedy is very hard to do. And if you just don't get the tone right, then it doesn't communicate. But it was not fun. And I also. I did not laugh.

[D]

Also, the scenery and the imagery and the lighting doesn't lend itself to comedy. I found it to be a very dark and dim film. Which was wild because the costumes are so great, the rooms are so beautiful, and it was hard to see some of. Was weird to me.

[A]

So let's talk about this, because you have informed me that this was shot on 35 millimeter in VistaV. We did not see it on film.

[B]

I don't know. I don't know how they projected it in the room we saw there. Yeah.

[A]

And I.

[D]

We all saw it together. We should say we did see it.

[A]

Yeah. I don't think that we. I don't know if we saw it on VistaVision, but, like, what's going on with how it looks?

[D]

It was giving Frankenstein, like, the darkness of it.

[A]

Yeah, like the darkness. And also, you know, there's so much effort put into the costumes and the production designs on these films, and it's, like, intricate and ornate. And then there's something about the lighting or the way it's shot or the way it's being projected where it looks, like, strangely flat. I'm like, I'm sorry, it didn't work. Wuthering Heights looked like a flip. Like, you know, like an echo park. Like the. You know, like, modern farmhouse or whatever. Like, what are we doing?

[D]

It's not an echo park.

[A]

You know, I said to you when we walked out that you can. And this is not. We all wear makeup, or I wear makeup. I'm wearing it right now. So wearing makeup is cool. But you can see Margot Robbie's makeup, and not in a, like, she's getting sick. Spoiler alert. And so you're.

[B]

Or in the Marie Antoinette way, where it's sort of like this purposeful, showy, you know, like a. Like a demonstration of class.

[A]

Yeah. You can see the powder, like, sitting up, like, on the skin at certain points. And that's not a fault of makeup application. That's. I have been noticing this on, like, more and more, honestly, like, a lot of, like, Netflix streaming shows.

[B]

Streaming shows. Yeah.

[A]

Where I think there's just something about, like, what is it? Like, what are we not calibrating? Where. Like, the texture. Because I think it really takes away from the visual achievement of this film. I did not think that this looked.

[D]

That good, which is wild, because the costumes are so great. It was like, a waste of costumes.

[A]

Those veils when she's. Anytime they're outside, anytime they're on the wars and the wind's going, and the veil is framing Margaret's.

[D]

The red dress that goes into the red floor in the room with the fireplace made of plaster hands like that. Better.

[A]

It's gorgeous in Color in the right way. It looks amazing. But you mentioned music videos, and there's like one montage when, like, Margot Robbie's like, now, you know, now I'm rich. And now I'm like, now I'm doing my Girlboss thing.

[B]

Her name's Linton now.

[A]

And they've cut it to a. And it is a music video. And I said to Sean afterwards that he wouldn't understand the reference, but, like, that is literally what a Taylor Swift video looks like in, like, theme. And I don't say that as a compliment, even though I do enjoy the music of Taylor Swift when it is edited. So I don't know. I don't understand why this doesn't look like that.

[B]

I mean, look, the movie is shot by Lena Sangrin. You can make the case. He's one of the five or ten most interesting cinematographers in the world. These are the movies he's made recently. La La Land, first man, no Time to Die, Don't Look Up Babylon, Saltburn and Wuthering Heights. He's shooting Dune Part three right now. He's replacing Greig Fraser to shoot Dune Part 3. He is a heavyweight cinematographer. I also don't think this film looks very good. I don't know why. I don't really understand the lighting that you're discussing. I think. I also. I think that there's an idea that is inherent in the story and also that I think Emerald Fennel's trying to, like, explode in the movie, which is the colorful lavishness of high class and the dinginess of low class. But I feel like she's brought the same lighting rig from the dingy part to the beautiful part. And if that were an idea along the lines of the one that you were describing, where it's like, the sex is the bad part, actually. It's like the letdown that maybe there's something to that. But I find it hard to believe that that was the intention to make the garishness not appealing. Garishness is the point. I mean, that's really what she does. Now, Saltburn is very similarly kind of constructed. That that estate is meant to be sort of ridiculous in its opulence. It just doesn't. It's not appealing.

[A]

It works more in Saltburn. I. I do wonder whether time period.

[D]

Saltburn is better lit. I. I remember it was a lot of.

[A]

It's like, outside, like the MGMT part.

[B]

Is, you know, Again, to the music video.

[A]

Yeah, once again, shoot outside, for the love of God. Just, you know, I mean, that's a catch.

[B]

That's something she does well. Like, and like you said on the moors in this film, that's some of the best stuff. When she, when. When Catherine goes outside and begins masturbating privately in front of the winds and then is discovered by Heathcliff and then they have their sort of like that conversation. That was the only time in the movie when I was like, I'm really locked in. Like, where is this going to go now? Because now we have reached this kind of critical confrontation between how will she change this book into this movie? And you get that moment he lifts her by the harness. Does he put her hands in his mouth or does he just smell them? I can't remember. I think he puts them in his mouth and you're like, okay, you're going for it.

[A]

Yeah, keep going, keep going. Well, but I mean, that's sort of the problem. Like that moment before you keep going is what she's really good at.

[D]

And she's good at the edging. You never get off, but she keeps going. You never get off.

[A]

And then that becomes a problem, you know, which, like, in a more interesting filmmaker's hands, like, could be interesting, right? Yeah, but I don't think it's thinking about it in those terms.

[D]

Pillian gets off. Pillian is just as visceral, just as like the sex is painful and weird as well, but they get off.

[B]

I think there's something interesting about how there's an attempt to line up the power dynamics between Catherine and Heathcliff. Whereas I think in the novel it's meant to always be uneven where for the longest time Catherine holds all the power and then Heathcliff, Heathcliff grabs the power with both his wealth and to sort of, like we should say in the novel, the brother character who's excised from this adaptation eventually becomes the owner of Wuthering Heights. And he's an alcoholic and he has debts and so Heathcliff buys the estate from him and then later in the novel he dies. And his like, the way in which Heathcliff rises socially, romantically is important.

[D]

Manipulation. Also, this movie never gives Heathcliff enough time to do all of that five.

[B]

Minute period in the movie after he has married Isabella and kind of made her his sex slave. And so you don't really get any of that psychology that comes across in the other adaptations.

[A]

You do also get that the Isabella character in this movie kind of likes.

[B]

The sex slave stuff, which I kind of enjoyed.

[A]

I didn't mind either.

[D]

You liked the dog barking.

[B]

Well, I just think to me that was A clever twist because making Heathcliff so strapping and striking, you almost need to like, you need to literalize that in the movie. And the fact that Isabella can't control herself around him, that she's like, oh, my God, I need this, I think makes the Catherine and Heathcliff experience a little bit more legible. And also Alice and Oliver's just funny. She's just fun to watch. You know, she has a presence that is amusing and cuts through a lot of that grimness that you were talking about. Let's talk about Elordi and Margot Robbie before we get into pillion fully.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I think they're both miscast.

[A]

Yes.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't think their performances are well in the book.

[D]

She's like a dark haired teenager, right?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Margot Robbie's 35.

[D]

Yeah. And that's because they're teens in the book.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

When the main action is happening.

[B]

And I don't know what the exact age is when they start to. When they. As they're getting a little bit older and she marries Linton, but presumably at this time in history, she's not marrying Linton at 32.

[A]

No, no, no. It's younger. And then I think. Yeah, I mean, I think it all wraps up before 30. I don't know. For me, it wasn't age necessarily. Though I do think like that younger people communicate like an abandon and a sense of.

[B]

That's really. Yeah, that was what I was thinking.

[A]

You know, irrational behavior. Sorry to everyone in the booth.

[B]

For the most irrational person here today is Jack.

[A]

That would, that would make more sense or explain. Just kind of like these people are wilding. But I just thought it was more. I thought it was decisions of how they're interpreting the characters. And again, I really chafed on that very competent, bossy, I'm doing what I want version of Cathy. That the transition into, like, I just couldn't help myself was never really developed for me. Like, I don't think Margot Robbie can like pulled that off. And then Elordi is doing Frankenstein for the first half, as we said.

[B]

Yeah. Very monosyllabic, very physical, lurching a lot.

[A]

And he is definitely brooding. And his. His size and just general heft is overwhelming and maybe a little threatening. But I find his bad boy ness to be a different quality than what I would imagine a Heathcliff to be, which is he's controlled. And there is something that is supposed to be uncontrolled about what all these people are doing. And these are two very controlled performances. And so the sex scenes also like, never reach that abandon that you're supposed to. I don't know, that they require.

[D]

I keep thinking about the Laurence Levier version of this movie, which I think was great. And, yeah, he gets to kind of lose control and his rage and his revenge is just so much more fully embodied than Elordia can do. But that's half Elordie's fault. And half of the problem is, like, you don't give him enough script to do any of that. His role is so minimized. But I think my biggest issue was with Margot Robbie. Not because I hate Margot Robbie, but because I love her.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And whenever I see her on a screen, I'm just like, I want you to be a fun hero. And I'm rooting for you. I'm rooting for you. And this is not the kind of movie she has, like, a Tom Scare quality.

[B]

There you go. You can't play the villain.

[D]

Katherine is kind of the villainous. She's a hero. You know, Margot Robbie at all times. I want her to be, like, guiding me towards happiness.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is she the, like. I mean, she is in the book. But again, like, this movie casts her as someone who, you know, kind of gets thrown over by her, you know, paid friend, her maid, and then she gets pregnant and, like, dies slowly and then with a big bleed out. Oh, my God.

[B]

Sorry.

[D]

Spoiler.

[A]

She's really sad because. And it's really sad because they were, like, friends as children.

[B]

Villain is way oversimplified. But I think one of the things that at least you see in the adaptations is that she is this representation of the failures of class, that she makes bad choices because the selfishness that is ingrained in her by her upbringing forces her away from her true passion and into a life that is like an imprisonment. And she never gets to truly express herself. And then she takes it out on Heathcliff and he feels worse and he seeks revenge on her because of that unwillingness to acknowledge their true love. That makes her kind of the aggressor in the story. And Margot, I totally agree with you. Margot Robbie's just winning. Like, she's just somebody that you just want to hang out with. And you are rooting for her. She has a very classical Hollywood leading role.

[D]

It's giving me a little Julia Roberts. Like, I only want Julia Roberts to, like, end up happy.

[B]

Yeah. And when Julia Roberts did stuff like this, like Mary Reilly, it never worked. She couldn't pull this stuff off. And it's hard to do. Catherine Earnshaw is a little bit more of, like, a romantic, desirous figure than Mary Reilly is. Who's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde's maid. Fascinating movie, but I think that they're both a little bit wrong for it. I don't think Heathcliff should be like six' nine. I mean, Jacob Elordi is enormous. I know you're very happy about that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. But also, we're gonna talk about pillion and you're just gonna talk about Alexand.

[B]

In that case, it works.

[A]

Sure. But it's just like the size, you know, it's powerful. You know, these movies do understand that, at least. I agree he was totally wrong for this part, but. But it's also like I remain a fan.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

It's like I had two questions I asked myself leaving that movie. Well, first, the thought. My first thought was great gowns, beautiful gowns.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And then second, it's like, you know, critically, do I enjoy this film? Probably not for the most part. But is this movie going to do what it needs to do for the studio and for Emerald Fennel? Probably, yeah.

[B]

Oh, I think so.

[C]

Definitely.

[D]

You got Margot Robbie in there. You got Charli XCX in there. The trailer is hot. Like all of the pieces are hot right now. And that will be enough to get butts in seat for a good opening weekend, I think. And that is what matters to her future more than if I like this movie or not, which makes me sad. But like, like this movie will do fine.

[B]

I think it's gonna do very well.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is good.

[B]

I think it's a great thing. You know, we. It's okay.

[D]

People going to movies is great. Period.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

Go to the theaters. We love it.

[A]

I just didn't understand this movie, you know, like that I was honestly, what I really genuinely. Spoiler alert, I guess, for the end, which is really just the halfway point of the novel that was written almost 200 years ago that's been adapted 35 times that we know of, counting wise.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

So the last shot, where it's a flashback to them as kids and they're like, I'll love you forever. Is that sincere?

[B]

I think so.

[D]

Is Emerald Fennell sincere?

[A]

I don't know.

[D]

I don't know either.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

Honestly. Shout out to her, though.

[A]

That's interesting.

[B]

This has been a way more interesting conversation about a movie than we've had in a few weeks, for sure. Because she's definitely got something. You have. She has something. And I honestly, I personally, as a movie podcast host, need directors.

[D]

I will say that. And I Will say, I had so much more fun listening to Emerald Fennell talk about her process on talking pictures than watching that movie. Yeah, her mind is brilliant. I like the way that she approaches her work with, like, a vision and a point she's trying to make. I just don't think the point was made in this movie.

[A]

I will say, if this movie looked better, I would like it a lot more. Some of what I'm holding against it is really just that the promised visual sumptuousness versus whatever is happening, which you just have to get down to the, like, we gotta solve this as a nation.

[D]

I think if this wasn't a big studio film, it would have been better. And I think that what I enjoyed about Pillion was that it was small indie, and it set no expectations for me as a viewer. It was a book I hadn't read. I didn't know what it was gonna be about. I just went in and said, okay, let's see it. Whereas this Fennel adaptation of Wuthering Heights has the expectation and burden of so much on it. Like, could she have made a better film if less of that was in the room with her?

[B]

I think it's ultimately in her perception of the story, and I think her perception of the story. And again, it is her right is just not what Wuthering Heights is. And kind of fundamentally is misunderstanding it. And it's okay to do that, but it just seems like an odd decision. And so I found myself, like, three quarters of the way through the movie thinking, like, what is she trying to say?

[A]

Still don't know.

[B]

And I don't know. And you know what? Some movies don't have to say anything. Some movies can just be Jurassic park and they can just be like, wow, holy fuck. And I do think a lot of people will have that reaction to this movie. They're gonna like it.

[A]

Jurassic park is saying that dinosaurs are amazing, and wouldn't it be cool if we could.

[B]

And don't fuck with nature.

[A]

I guess this movie is saying, like, wouldn't it be, like, is it saying that it would be cool to have sex with the person you want to have sex with? I don't know. It doesn't seem to agree on well. But then the movie doesn't seem to agree with it.

[B]

But it's like, oh, my God, there's a bad romance. I've never heard of that before. That's not an idea. You know, it's just. It's a kind of movie.

[A]

I don't understand. I don't.

[D]

I don't understand Jurassic park has a certain appreciation for what the majority of filmmakers enjoy. And I think that Emerald Fennell, in this version of Wuthering Heights, cares less about what the audience will actually enjoy and more about seeing her singular view of filmmaking through. And God bless it.

[B]

But I. And when it comes to male filmmakers, I will praise that all day long. You know what I mean? So I don't want to be a hypocrite. That's why I'm saying, like, she's got something, man. She has a vis. I don't really get it, but I really respect it.

[D]

It's provocative. They give people going.

[A]

I mean, it's true, but it's like, you could. This is not dissimilar from Marie Antoinette, except I understood what Marie Antoinette was about. I understood the take that it was historically. I understood visually what it's trying to do. It does actually look good. And the songs and the modern songs and the anachronisms are actually matched to what's going on in the film. So some of it. It's not a lack of vision, it's just a lack of execution.

[D]

I need both of you, but I.

[A]

Do also don't understand the vision.

[D]

So will y' all interview her? I want you to.

[B]

I talked to her for Promising Young Woman with Carey Mulligan.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And it was an interesting conversation. But anytime there's a star present, you know, it's a different kind of a conversation. It's a little harder to drill deep. But I would. I don't. I don't know.

[A]

Oh, no, not again.

[D]

What was that?

[B]

Wow. We need a real solve on that.

[D]

Emerald Fennell did that.

[B]

That's the second time in two episodes that's happened.

[D]

I just want someone to ask her and get, like, a straight answer, like, what is the North Star of your work? What is your mission statement of your work, and how do you execute it? I'm just interested.

[B]

I'm not revealing too much for her, you know, that might be. There's something going on.

[A]

Do you think could most filmmakers answer that?

[D]

I'd love for a coherently.

[B]

And also if I think many could but would not.

[A]

Many could and would not. And the ones who could, I become wary because then they're more interested in what. That's. That's a corporate answer, right? You know, like, what are we putting on the deck?

[B]

Yeah. I have to say this. I said this a bit during Saltburn, and I circled back to it immediately after we watched the movie a few weeks ago. We know that Emerald Fennel is Interested in low born figures attempting to break the structure of power through revenge, sex or death. And these three ideas are intertwined in all three of her films. I am very curious about this obsession. Given her own class status. I do not.

[D]

What is her class status?

[B]

Not poor. She comes from a somewhat wealthy background.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

And I'm not pocket watching. I'm just. This is another movie where the lowborn person is like more devilish than they need to be in the story and more a sower of chaos than they need to be. And I don't really get what that is, but it is now persistent. It is now consistent. Okay. And she's making films about class.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But is she like, these people who have less than me are trying to kill me. Like, I'm a little worried that that's what she's trying to say. Cause Catherine does die and we kind of feel like we have to blame Heathcliff for her death.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's what Saltburn is.

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I'm honestly now trying to.

[D]

Yeah, this makes sense to me.

[A]

I'm on Wikipedia trying to parse her early life and education sections and then her parents and like trace it back.

[B]

Her father's a well known jeweler in England.

[A]

Sure. But that is, you know. And then she went to Marlborough, which is also where Kate Middleton went. Her husband, her father went to Eton. So they are people who are like very in the classmates. But like England, class system and titles and money and London is different than ours is.

[B]

Like.

[A]

So I don't know, I'm not excusing anything or I'm just wondering if she sees herself or has felt herself as the outsider in these places.

[B]

That may be.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

We see Barry Keoghan's middle class existence in Saltburn and we see Heathcliff, a street urchin taken in by a wealthier family. That is not how she grew up.

[A]

So I do also think she's like good family friends with Andrew Lloyd Webber. So.

[B]

Right. I'm not.

[A]

She was cast to play Camilla Parker Bowles on the Crown.

[B]

I'm not really accusing her of anything. I'm just kind of like, why do you keep coming back to this? It's now a trend. So why is it? And that is a question I would ask. That is the thing I would be curious about.

[D]

Get her on this show.

[B]

Because. Because if it's what I'm afraid it is, it's very bad. Like that's not a good perspective from which to write that like the lower class is trying to kill you. That's something that, like, terrible people in the world communicate all the time in our terrible country. Yeah. So I. I don't know. It keeps churning inside me hearing that.

[D]

My biggest question. And I never expect or want any filmmaker to make films that are like a false racial diversity cornucopia. But if she is thematically dealing with class and all of her work, you cannot have an actual conversation about class that is complete without it being complicated by race. And I think that I would be getting more brave film from her if she tried to tackle.

[B]

Yeah, I get it.

[D]

She's from her place, from her lane. But I'll say this. Till the cows come, come home. It's okay for singular writers to write with other people. It's okay to collaborate and say, how can I expand my worldview and my vision to.

[A]

To.

[D]

To speak to this better? I wish Mike White would have done that with a white Lotus. I just think that we're in this moment of singular creatives that. That drive their vision all the way through. But I will always want a work that is tempered by a writer's room and good editors. I think that's a soapbox.

[B]

In order to do that, you've gotta have some quieting of the ego. Right. Because a lot of these people are driven. And one of the reasons they're so successful is cause they're like, my vision. My vision. And then you also, I think, have to have trust between partners to do that well. And that's really unusual to find that. To find a diverse partnership between two people who can bring both.

[D]

I'm not saying it happens a lot.

[B]

This is one of the things I love about the show industry is that that's a show between two guys who are similar but come from different backgrounds. But you can see that they're kind of like, smashing up against each other at times in the way that they're portraying different characters who are not all white in that world, which I love about that show, that you don't see that very often. You don't see that. But anyway, this is an interesting movie. It's gonna make a lot of money.

[D]

Yes.

[B]

It could have been a Netflix movie. And shout out to the people who, especially Emerald Fennel, who decided not to make it a Netflix movie and make it a Warner Brothers film. I think it's better for it. I think it's better on the big screen. I think this would be a tough sit as a streaming movie. I'm glad it's not that. Yeah, I'm sure next week we'll talk a bit about the box office reception and how big it can get. It is Valentine's Day, after all.

[D]

At least 20 million.

[B]

Oh, I think it's like 40 million. Maybe 50 million. I think it's going to.

[D]

And for that alone, thank you, Emerald. Butts in seat is always good.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Speaking of butts in seats. Pillion.

[D]

Did I say her last name wrong? Sorry. Fennel. Fennel.

[B]

I think it's Fennel, but I don't know. But it doesn't matter.

[D]

I'm sorry, Emerald.

[B]

I don't think she's. If she's listening, this is a tough sit.

[A]

For sure. But also call us. Let us. We'd like.

[B]

I'd be happy to grill her.

[A]

Genuine questions.

[D]

I need y' all to grill her. Like, I just. Yeah, yeah. I also. I always want a thesis statement from a creative. I like it. I know it's corporate, but I'm like, what are you about? Give me an I love an elevator pitch.

[E]

This episode is brought to you by AMC. You do not want to miss. Rise of the 49ers the limited series event premiering February 1st and 2nd. Exclusively on AMC and AMC. Executive produced by Tom Brady, the docu series charts the legendary rise of the San Francisco 49ers from underdogs, two five time Super bowl champions in the 80s and 90s. It features interviews with Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and Ronnie Lott, as well as never be seen archival footage. Rise of the 49ers premiering February 1st and 2nd. Visit amcplus.com to start your free trial now. This episode is brought to you by Firehouse Subs. Who just dropped a game changing sandwich. The French dip. Literally one of my favorite sandwiches slash subs. Roast beef, caramelized onions, melty cheese, little freshly toasted garlic butter roll and the warm savory au jus. I've been eating these forever since I was living on the east coast in la. I think to me this versus the cheesesteak. The French dip, no contest. Way better. And I think it's really because of the au jus. I don't know anybody who doesn't like au jus. An elite game day sub. Fun to order by the way, if you want it delivered. Because they usually put the au jus in the special little container you can pour it on, knock yourself out. The French dip here for a limited time. I wish it was longer. Only at Firehouse Subs. Limited time at participating Firehouse Subs restaurants while supplies last. This episode is brought to you by Too Good and Co. Coffee Creamers. How do you take your coffee Piping hot ice? Strong, frothy? Well, if you love rich, creamy goodness and delicious flavor in every sip, try two Good and Company creamers. They're made with farm fresh cream and real milk. Each serving has just 3 grams of sugar, 40% less than the leading coffee creamers. Two good creamers are available in sweet cream, roasted, vanilla and lavender. So which one are you trying first? Find two good creamers at your local retailer in the creamer aisle now.

[B]

Pillion is written and directed by Harry Leighton. It's adapted from a novel that I've not read. I looked at, but I've not read, called Box Hill by Adam Mars Jones. I did as much homework as I could for this episode. It stars Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgard. This is a smaller film than Wuthering Heights, so I'm going to give a little recap of what this story is. Colin, a timid man, meets Ray, a confident biker gang leader who initiates him into a submissive relationship, challenging Colin's mundane existence and prompting personal growth through their unconventional dynamic. What'd you think of this, Sam?

[D]

I love this movie so much. I saw it as God intended at the Grove.

[A]

Me too.

[D]

Before the Cheesecake Factory.

[A]

Oh, I didn't get my.

[D]

With my boyfriend.

[A]

Ah, beautiful.

[D]

And it was just. I like that. This movie doesn't waste a single second. It is wonderfully paced, the script is sparse in just the right ways, and unlike Wuthering Heights, this film lands the plane. It is not a happy ending, but it is an ending that feels fulfilling. I love this movie. I loved it. I really don't have too many notes.

[B]

I feel relieved because it's one of my. It was one of my favorite movies of last year, even though it's technically a movie of this year. What did you think, Amanda?

[A]

I mean, same. It's. I mean, it's funny to say about like a Dom com with, you know, politics and. And ideas that have not historically been explored in cinema, but I found this like, very old school in the best way in that it was just very familiar. As Sam said, it is like. It is. I don't want to say small, but it is specific. And you are following a group of characters who the filmmaker totally understands. The world is fully realized and like familiar beats, if not of plot, then of emotion and someone trying to figure out what they want in the world and figure out what they want from someone else. And then some unusual situations, some funny, some sad, and. And, you know, then we move on bigger, you know, full of Our lessons and happy for what's happened. It was great. It is a classic romantic comedy.

[B]

Yes, it is.

[D]

But also it's like what I love about it is like, it hits those classic beats and yet every expression of the beat is a thing I haven't seen in this kind of film before. The first scene in which these two people come together sexually is in an alley and he's pulling out his. And it has a cock ring in it. Like it's pierced.

[A]

It's true.

[D]

And it's like, that's where we start. And so to see the rom com beats be hit in this queer, some call it nasty, like visceral world, I thought that was really hard to pull off. And they did it very well.

[A]

It is also really hard to have to incorporate consummation sex in a romantic comedy and still keep the film and the tension going. Because that is so much like the tension of a romantic comedy is like, are they gonna get together? But, like, are they gonna have sex? And you think about it, most romantic comedies, maybe they have sex once and then it's almost like an accident or like, oh, no, you know, some sort of miscommunication. But sexual tension is an essential part of most of these structures.

[B]

So that to me is the ingeniousness of this movie is that that thing is what you come to expect from a movie like this. And this has the same structure. It's just that this kind of like fights and quibbling and will they, won't they, is expressed more in their sexual encounters.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

The wrestling sequence between them, the orgy, their first meeting, the first time that.

[D]

He bottles and he talked about how painful it is.

[B]

Yes, all of those things. Those are the moments when you expect the two movie stars to be like, I hate you, I hate you more. You know, But. But it actually is expressed physically between them. And you see, the way that Colin's story is told is really interesting to me because he has found something that he desperately wants. Right. He's this lonely kid in Bromley who's in this really square family. And they're singing. They're a barbershop quartet. Music at Christmas time. And he is like, unseen and unloved and a gay kid who just doesn't have any love in his life.

[A]

And he finds parking monitor.

[B]

Yes, yes, exactly.

[A]

Every time I've parked since then, it's an incredible detail in those.

[B]

Yes. And those guys are either the most ignored people on earth or the most hated people on Earth.

[A]

Which you see the great scene of someone being like, have you no Shade.

[B]

Which is a great stroke. And this incredible idea of what would you do if your ripped from the pinup calendar idea of perfection was presented before you and actually took you on and enslaved you in a way, made you the submissive in a relationship? And how much would you like it? What would be the ways in which you would like it? And then what would be too far or wrong and when would you break and what would cause you to break? And the movie has really interesting notions of, like, kind of what causes someone to become uncomfortable in this kind of arrangement. But that doesn't mean that that means the arrangement is not right for the person. So I found there's like an amazing amount of nuance in Colin and what he's interested in.

[D]

And I think that they were able to get to this nuance because the whole time, in spite of this Dom sub relationship that is very much about control and power, it's also always consensual. Skarsgrd's character is never making him stay. He always chooses to do it. He chooses to be the sub. And that is actually quite different from the book. I think in the book, the first sex scene is tantamount to rape. So to make that choice, it helps this film remain lovable the whole time.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

Because it's only. It is consent focused.

[B]

We should talk about Harry Milling and Alexander Skarsgrd. Harry Melling, you know, I think best known from Harry Potter, Harry Lytton said he saw him in the Ballad of Buster Scruggs. I don't know if you guys remember that from that movie, that Coen Brothers movie, which is an omnibus story. And he plays a carnival performer who has no appendages, and he is reading a poem over and over again. And that is sort of what he's like a freak show.

[D]

Oh, my God.

[B]

But he's amazing in the film, and so he cast him out of that. And he's kind of mesmerizing in this movie, even though he has to be so internalized. And you're kind of like desperate for him to enunciate how he feels or what's going on, but it's such a performance in the face that I really, really enjoy. And Alexander Skarsgrd, by the same token, who's on a bit of a run right now, that man is doing the work.

[A]

He's always on a run in my house.

[D]

I came out of that film, I was already impressed with him. I think that he was the best part of season one of Big Little Lies.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

But after seeing this. I'm like, oh, you might be on your way to being one of the greats. Yeah, he's got it. And he chooses well.

[B]

He has great taste. He had a really rocky start. Remember, he was Tarzan and he's been in some odd studio movies, but he has really, like, in the last five or 10 years. Harry said that it was really the last season, season four of succession, that got him really interested in how he could express power on screen. I know there are some ways in.

[A]

Which, you know, I also recommend Park Jae Won, Little Drummer Girl, which is a miniseries adaptation. If you haven't seen it, it's really good. And he's in it. Yeah. All right, I'll watch.

[B]

What'd you think of Skarsgrd?

[A]

I get it. You know, I understood going in, and there is, I think, something both to the casting but the filmmaking. It relies on the audience also being completely understanding why Colin would not just want to be in this type of relationship, but why this person has such a, like, appeal to him. You have to be able, even if, like, even if you're kind of going back on the fourth on what you want for Colin, like, you understand why he is in this relationship. And not just because he's learning stuff about himself. Also because that guy's a real dreamboat. And then I think the flip at the. When they, you know, they take a day off. How about that? And we don't have to say anymore.

[B]

Beautiful.

[A]

And it's so beautiful. And also what Skarsgrd does in that moment and then. And how Meling responds to him and is, I think, like a real gift. Like, their abilities to change their relationship is pretty. It's amazing, actually.

[B]

Kind of tragically, you know, the impossibility of that level of happiness is also when we talk about, like, yearning and what people really want and what I think Emerald Fennel is thinking about and what that novel is about, as opposed to this, which I think really literalizes it in such a cool way in the final act of this movie that just left me feeling that happy, sad.

[D]

And I think what we're feeling happy, sad about and the difference between Pillion and Wuthering Heights is that the protagonist in Pillion by the end of the film exhibits a great deal of personal growth.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

He grows through this experience, and he becomes someone who knows more about what he wants and about how to get it.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

He is wiser because of it.

[B]

He's not defeated by the relationship. Yes.

[D]

Every character in Wuthering Heights compared to that feels static. Who is Growing who is becoming a different person. And they pull off that growth beautifully. And it makes me love it more. I love was very interesting watching it as a homosexual with my partner in the theater full of homosexuals. And I think that the poignancy of the way that this film is expressed is that it speaks to a truth for a lot of gay men. Like sometimes the partner that teaches you the most, you never see them again and you never know their name. Sometimes the act of learning how to like love yourself and your sexuality and be fully embodied, it means interacting with people on an extremely temporary basis. And this movie got that, but didn't make it sad. It said, oh, that's just the process. And you're okay. You're okay.

[B]

I love that it's a great idea for it's not often expressed like. And the movie.

[D]

This is a very kind movie. It is.

[B]

Despite having such severity and like such physical intensity, you know. Well.

[D]

Cause the moral of the story is like the growth happens whether the love that you want stays or leaves. You grew. You grew. I don't know. I find that so much more romantic.

[A]

There's also something about. There's one of the sex scenes starts with wrestling. You know, there's like.

[D]

Which. Not my kink. God bless it.

[B]

Not my kink.

[A]

And I thought that was very funny. And it is almost played wonderfully choreographed and shot and is played. If it's not silly, it's just. There's a lightness to it.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

But you know, they are like wrestling each other. And I thought that there was something about the way that this. This movie and also these relationships kind of literalize or physicalize the. Like the danger or the.

[D]

The friction is explicit.

[A]

Exactly. So that there is room for kindness. Like in other places was, I thought, very lovely. I was very charmed by it.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Well.

[D]

And like what you get when you have this setup when you have these lovers be in a dom sub relationship, they're both acknowledging from the very start that the friction is the point and the friction is the pleasure. The friction is the growth. The friction is the love. And so that felt so much more understandable to me because the dom sub makes it explicit. The friction in Wuthering Heights felt less focused. It felt. This film just. It was clearer. It was clearer.

[B]

I think if it were made a little differently though, it might have felt a little bit more anthropological about a dom sub relationship. And you get a little bit of that because Colin is going through this for the first time. So there is some sort of like rules of engagement. That is happening. But a lot of. One of the things that I really thought was smart about it was. And I don't know if this is in the novel or not, but the way in which Colin's family reacts to their happiness for his relationship and then their confusion, and in his mother's case, like, kind of revulsion and frustration with Rhea when she finally meets him felt not like a movie made in 1972, you know, where it was just like, oh, my gay son, I'm so ashamed. You know, Conversion therapy. How can this possibly be happening? He's been expelled from the family. It was sort of like, that was an inclusive, loving family. But also there was a step beyond that they couldn't get comfortable with. And it felt actually more like lots of relationships. You see in any family, which is like, your boyfriend sucks and we're not happy about him, and you should break up with him, which is very universal, you know, and it doesn't really matter what the nature of that relationship is. It's just like, this guy's not nice to you, and that matters. But your parents can never really understand your psychology in a relationship, and they'll never really try. So there's something. I thought that that was very subtle and interesting the way that all that was portrayed well.

[D]

And Skarsgrd's character, Rhae, he kind of pushes back on the mother character and is like, the fact that you even want your child to have a relationship that pleases you. That's the problem.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

And I'm like, say this film felt so affirming having not seen gay films get these beats Right. I think there's so many queer films, queer romances, that try and then fail to get at the small bits of nuance that Pillion gets. Right. And it's remarkable that it gets these small bits of nuance right in a plot that is, like, big and Dom Sub, like, dreading that needle is pretty remarkable.

[A]

And also, like, another, like, not totally happy, like, queer love story ending in the sense that it's not, you know.

[D]

That I don't want to spoil it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But it's not.

[B]

You worry. It's not a fairy tale.

[A]

Exactly. It's not a fairy tale. And you even worry for, like, the first couple minutes of, like, oh, no, is this another one where it's just, like, the sad, lonely gay kid and it's not gonna turn out? And it handles it with such good.

[D]

Oh, yeah. Like he does. Like, this is a romance where by the end of it, you realize that the protagonist has come out of it loving himself more. Sign me up. Yeah, I can't stop signing up.

[A]

Can we talk about penises for a minute?

[B]

Sure.

[D]

Was it his?

[A]

I assumed not, but I thought that the editing, the cutting was more about that. There was like a very specific. There's only so much that you can see.

[D]

And you see the piercing. That's what they want you to see.

[A]

Right. But before they avoid an X rating. But I just, you know. Cause I mentioned I watched Heated Rivalry to catch up with just how we're doing sex on screens right now. And also, like a lot of gay sex, but, you know, no full frontal.

[D]

And no real friction. Like, compare the scenes of the first bottoming scene in pillion to the first bottoming scene in Heated Rivalry in Pillion. He's like, that hurt, right? And heated rivalry. He's great at it the first time. Now, come on now. I'm sorry. It's fantasy. It's fantasy.

[A]

I don't understand why we can't have a little more penis. That's just kind of where I am with it. And especially in this one. Especially when, you know, the camping scene and I noticed the cutting. And I think it's a ratings issue. I think we need to broaden the horizon. But, like, we're all grownups.

[D]

I want more butts. Because you see Skarsgard's butt for a little bit and I'm like, stay there, stay there.

[B]

It is in many ways, I think, the last taboo. I think full frontal generally, but explicitly dicks. Yeah, there is something, and, you know, it's very obvious what it is. Most of the people who are in power, the ways and means of taste in our society are straight guys or closeted guys who are afraid of dick. Like, that's really what it boils down to. And they don't want them presented as normal as the way that breasts are presented in our culture. And that's just how it is. And it's not changing. And it's been that way since 1980. And it's going to stay that way probably as long as things keep going the way that they're going. It is interesting. In the era of Game of Thrones, for example, there was a very famous moment, or already infamous moment on A Night of the Seven Kingdoms, the new Game of Thrones show this season, where a knight exits his hut and pulls out his dick and starts pissing. And it's just full blown full frontal and the guy's got a freaking hog on him. It is mind blowing. And it's clearly prosthetic. But it's played for laughs. It's not a sex scene.

[A]

Right. Well, you know, we were talking about this, and you brought up Boogie Nights, which did it. But that is, like, the conclusion of the film and is a prosthetic and is also in repose.

[D]

Yes, but Heated Rivalry is very horny and sexy and arouses you without showing dick.

[A]

It's true.

[D]

The thrusting does the work. Butt shots do the work. It can be done.

[A]

And it's like cutting just so it can. Like the shower scene. I was like, the best part of.

[D]

That show is how they edit the sex.

[B]

You know, I'm really glad that I saw in the Realm of the Senses yesterday because it does kind of confront you with, like, careful what you wish for. Because part of the. The meat of that story is this woman's obsession, her physical obsession and this man's physical obsession with. With each other and that they just want to be fucking all the time. And they're just long stretches of the movie in which the woman is just fondling this guy's dick. She is obsessed by it. She's consumed by it. And we've all been there, his thing. And it is like. It is confrontational, and it's so. It's so rare to see a movie linger on an erect dick. Like you just. That you just don't see it if you don't watch pornography. Amanda has never seen any pornography, which is an ongoing exploration on this show. So, you know, to try to map something like that from that movie. Yeah, I don't think that would appear on Heated Rivalry. Right. That's like a streaming show. But in a movie like Pillion, where you're like, we see Alexander Skarsgard in nude, erect for four minutes would be, like, stunning. It's unimaginable.

[D]

Here's the thing, and I'm glad you brought up pornography.

[A]

Stunning.

[D]

I'm glad you brought up porn, because we all live in this world where we can see as much porn as we want whenever we want. And I'm guessing a bunch of the homosexual men that have gone to go see Pillian also watch a bunch of porn, knowing that I don't need the dick there. I'm gonna see dick on my phone if I want. No, it's true. I'm gonna see dick.

[A]

Let's do that. Sure.

[D]

Right?

[A]

There was something about pillion and specifically that camping scene where I was like, I can feel the cut for sure. Like, I can feel the. You know, I can't feel.

[B]

They talked about it.

[A]

And in that moment, I Was like, I wish that we could go there. And I agree.

[D]

Did it still work for you though, as a scene?

[A]

Yeah, it totally still worked. But I was like, I think it's silly. Like, I think that it's. It's not silly on their fault.

[D]

It's.

[A]

They, they cut it in order to get the rating so that more people could see the movie. I understand that, but I'm like, we're all grown ups. Like, this movie is about what it's about. Yeah, I, like, I could see it. I agree with you that on heated Rivalry, you got to meet people where they are. There's like a. That's, that's a streaming show that a lot of moms are watching and you don't want to be. Well, like, or, you know, moms and daughters, which. Anyway, yeah, it would be too much. But I just, I did note that there's no. There's just no penis anywhere.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Alexander Skarsgrd.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Pull it out.

[B]

Sam, this has been great. Thank you very much.

[D]

I'm honored to have been here. I was so nervous. I was like, I gotta watch a bunch of movies and study. Cause y' all are pros. But this was wonderful. And I'm so glad that we got to talk about pillion because I love that movie and I think everyone should watch it.

[B]

Where can we find you?

[D]

I host a radio show, YouTube show, and podcast called the Sam Sanders Show. It is about entertainment writ large. So we talk a lot about movies, music, tv, books, et cetera. And we drop two episodes a week that you can find wherever you find those kind of things. My latest really, really fun, fun chat. I got to talk to Nia dacosta recently. And hearing her talk about the way she approaches the work of being a director was fascinating because she knows that it's like half creative or even less than half creative, and the bulk of it is managerial. You're running a business. And she talked at length about what it was like to work for Marvel. She even used, of her own volition, the F word flop and talked about it. So I would say for fans of this podcast, you'll love that chat. But we have all kinds of things in there, all kinds of. Of fun episodes every week about fun shit.

[B]

Thanks, Sam.

[D]

And I have these guys on there a lot of times.

[B]

Okay, let's go to my conversation now with Harry Lytton. Very happy to have Harry Lytton here. Thank you for being here. I always like talking to first time filmmakers. Debut, feature filmmakers. This is your debut feature film.

[C]

Very much Is. Yeah.

[B]

I like to start by asking debut feature filmmakers, do you remember the movie that you saw that made you want to be a movie maker?

[C]

Yes, I do. I, I wasn't really remotely interested in becoming a filmmaker until I was like 19. And up until that point my favorite film had been like, Comfy Panda. I was obsessed with Comfy Panda. I could like recite the whole thing off by heart, but. And it's a great film but, you know, I didn't want to become an animator. And then I stayed with a mate of mine when I was moved to London, you know, start work when I was 19, stayed with a mate, he was really into films and he showed me the lives of others. And I think it might well have been like the first film I ever watched which wasn't in the English language. But it also just had a sort of impact on me where I was like intrigued by the design, both, both the sort of narrative design, but also the aesthetics of it. And from then I kind of got more and more stuck in.

[B]

So what did you do? How did you then decide to go forward towards that?

[C]

I, I'm quite, I, I'm quite an obsessive guy. So like, I, I then was like, okay, I'm gonna watch two films a day, every day for a year and try and, you know, work my way through film history a little bit. And I did that. And by doing that kind of narrowed in on. On, I guess, broadly a style which I liked, which has obviously changed massively now, but. But then practically, I like, I think it took me a couple of years to kind of get the confidence up to actually go and try and make something myself. And the first thing I made was a, was a commercial for a university theater company. They were doing a play called Arcadia by Tom Stoppard. And I made a little 30 second commercial for it which was about like a tortoise walking to the theater. And, and it was, it was all right. And I really like, loved. Sounds terrible, but it was all right. And I like loved the experience of making it. And, and after that was like, well, I could maybe graduate to working with humans and hadn't since then, you know, it was the classic make a few shorts. And that's how I've come into it.

[B]

Were you kind of like hunting for the right material to make a feature? How did the story cross your path?

[C]

I was sort of. So I made a bunch of my shorts. Had been, I guess about like sexual transgression and it's a topic I'd always been quite interested in. But I had spent five years writing a feature film with the same people, the same producers element, and the same execs at the BBC, but it was set in Tokyo in the world of sumo wrestling. And then the pandemic happened and it became unfeasible to. To make that. And so I was kind of at a loss. And one of the execs, woman called Eva Yates from the BBC, she sent me the book Box Hill, which Pillion's based on. And she said, I think you'll like it. Because she knew that I'd been looking for something roughly in that area. And so it kind of landed at the right time when I was despairing. And I was like, okay, thank God I can now go and make my kinky film after all.

[B]

Will you return to the sumo wrestling film?

[C]

It's a question. You know, I, like, reread the script for the first time in a long time two weeks ago, and I had thought that there was too much crossover between Pillion and. And it's called Stable, but actually I was kind of pleasantly surprised by how different they were. So maybe interesting.

[B]

So I took a look at the story that it's based on, and I didn't finish it, but I did notice that it's in first person. And that's very hard historically, to translate movies from first person novels. And I'm kind of curious how you thought about that when you were adapting it and thinking about what, how we should understand Colin.

[C]

It was the big. The big question for me was like, because it's both first person, but also this, like, very complex tone in the book where it moves from sentence to sentence between, like, humor and sincerity. That's all done through that first person narration. And I remember when I spoke to the novelist, he was, you know, talking about films which have a lot of voiceover in them, you know, referencing Terrence Malick particularly. And. And I watched Badlands. I mean, I'd seen it before, but I rewatched it and I thought that was an interesting example of a film which has sort of dissonance between. Between the voiceover, which narrates it like it's a sort of teen movie. And then the action, which is kind of traumatizing and interesting movie about the.

[B]

Power dynamic that's not dissimilar from the one in your film too.

[C]

Yeah, I think it's, you know, definitely was a kind of touch point when we were making Pillion, for me at least, but I knew I didn't want to use voiceover. So then it all became about, okay, how can we. How can we find, like, equivalent images for that tone? And, and I think because. Because the novel relies so heavy, heavily on first person narration and also retrospective narration, that's partly why the film is so different from the novel was we had to discover, like, a new form and a new kind of time period and all these different things which would support visual storytelling rather than verbal.

[B]

So leather movies and biker movies are actually, I think, secretly crucial to movie history. There's obviously many examples. The Wild One, the Corman biker movies, Scorpio Rising, Girl on a Motorcycle. I was trying to think, I'm cruising and a lot of intersections with some of the work that you do, but this movie doesn't really feel like any of those movies. I wasn't sure since the book was handed to you, were any of those touch points for you? Did you look at them before you made this?

[C]

I actually deliberately avoided it. I hadn't really watched. Watched any of them before I was sent a book. And. And what I did know was that, like, I wanted it to be a contemporary biker movie and I wanted to like, update the. The kind of iconography of the sexual, the sort of hot biker. And so I. I like, watched the Wild Ones and then was I actually, you know, there's. I love these movies and I feel like I could love them too much, where it becomes overly referential by then steered very widely away. But funnily enough, you know, I still hadn't seen Scorpio Rising until we started doing press for the film. And then someone in an interview was like, I loved the reference to Scorpio Rising when, you know, the opening needle drop in our film is, it's Betty Curtis. I will follow him. And that's the kind of little Peggy March version of that is in Scorpio Rising. So it's funny how these. These moments of crossover happen even in spite of your intentions.

[B]

Yeah, that's really funny. The very first day of my very first film class, they showed us Scorpio Rising as a kind of like, I think, a way to kind of unnerve your expectations of what film school might be like. You know, avant garde is going to be a part of the conversation that we're going to have here. But it's interesting the way that that world, that milieu, kind of despite it evolving over time, still holds up, up cinematically, too. So when you say you wanted to create like a new iconography, what do you mean by that?

[C]

I mean the. I think that there's just, you know, whether. Whether it is in film or in like literature. There's such a sort of standardized image of the sexy biker and queer culture where it's steeped in like Scorpio Rising and Tom of Finland and it's a, a retro leveler condemned. And it just seemed like there, you know, if you look at kinks in 2025, a lot of the kind of clothing which is fetishized now has more of a foot in, in like urban wear, street wear and, and racing culture. So I was like, well, wouldn't it be fun if the levers which, which Ray wears feel like something new rather than like he is a kind of pastiche of Tom of Finland? I think it'd be very easy to make Alexander Skarsgrd look like a Tom of Finland character, but I wanted to do something else with him. So he gave him these suits which have like hardware on the knees and go faster paneling on the back. And yeah, I think it makes for a sort of something which sits outside of that biker tradition.

[B]

I don't know very much about England and so I was wondering if you could tell me why is this set in Bromley? Was the novel set in Bromley? Was what? And what is the kind of the character of that space the novel's set in?

[C]

The novel's called Box Hill, actually, which is a place. Box Hill's like a famous biker site in Surrey. But. But actually for practical reasons largely it's very expensive on a low budget feature to shoot outside of London because you have to put up all your cast and crew, you know, put them up overnight. And so we knew that we needed it, the place we shot to be within a certain distance of central London. And. And I also knew that I wanted it to have like that slightly suburban flavor of places on the outskirts of London where they've been a bit forgotten about. Because I thought, you know, that would speak to Colin as someone who like, exists on the margins of culture. You know, he's not someone who's like, if you don't know London, this might not mean anything to you, but you know, central London and East London, if you're gay, it's like you go to Soho, you go to Hackney and there's like such a thriving, diverse queer life there. Whereas Colin seems like someone who's never really, like, never really been witness to that. So I wanted him to be in a kind of forgotten town. And then we were like scouting locations and I went to Bromley and it just had this amazing combination of like a slightly sort of uncared for high street And. And then next to that, a very, like, idyllic romantic green space, a park. And I knew that we needed both for the film, you know, particularly in that day off where they go, this is later in the film. And it's a bit of a spoiler, so I don't know what you're.

[B]

We don't have to go too far. Yeah.

[C]

But anyway, we needed. We needed the location to be able to hold two different emotional weights. One being kind of drab and the other one being elevated and gorgeous. And Bromley could do that.

[B]

So casting Harry and Alexander, I feel like, is kind of everything in the movie. And if they're not right, the movie's not gonna work. So how do you cast individually and then make sure that they work together for the piece?

[C]

Well, I think that a fair amount of it is just like a wing and a prayer when it comes to hoping that they work. I don't do chemistry readings. That's my idea of hell is putting two actors in a room and being like, okay, now have chemistry. I think it's very unfair on an actor as well to like, you know, first dates can be rubbish. But I. I think of. I think, like, very long and hard about who I'm going to cast. And in this case, I thought that Colin was a very difficult person to find because, you know, he's like. He's sort of the opposite of a leading man in many ways. He's supposed to be kind of forgettable and passive and he's rarely, like, showing much agency in the scenes. And yet, you know, he needs to be the person who holds the camera at all times in the film. So he needs to be magnetic. And I was at a bit of a loss as to who could do that. And then my casting director sent me the ballot of Buster Scruggs, which Harry's in. And he's, you know, playing as someone in, like, a traveling performance troupe. And he's got no arms and legs and he's sort of a beta male character, but he was totally captivating and, like, very moving, even though he was just reading the same poem again. And it's a great performance. Yeah, it's great. And I then kind of like fell in love with his performances, you know, across a wide variety of them. I thought he had this totally unique flavor to him where he is, he's like, you know, he's very magnetic, but not in a way which you associate with, like, male leading men. So I wanted him and. And we got him. Fortunately, he said yes very quickly. And then it Was, you know, thinking about who would be a good partner for him. And I just had happened to be watching Succession at the time, Succession Season 4. And I just thought Alexander was so great in that. Like, I'd seen him in lots of stuff before and thought it was brilliant. But in Succession particularly, he was like, you know, he came onto a cast where all those other actors were just like smashing it. No one shut up about the fact that that Succession had the best cast in maybe all time on tv. And then he was just sort of psychologically dominating all of those characters and doing so in a way which sometimes played into his physicality and then sometimes didn't. And I knew that's what I wanted for Ray. I wanted someone who was like a head turning beauty, but also could psychologically control situations and also be mischievous. And if you have ever seen an interview of Alex, he's quite mischievous. It's sort of the first thing you notice about him. So I thought, let's give it a. Let's roll the dice. I thought it was very unlikely he'd come on board, to be honest. But he then got back within 24 hours saying, let's have a zoom. And we chatted and he came on after that.

[B]

I hear filmmakers say that sometimes where you're like, yeah, I'm meeting an actor, they've read my script and I'm trying to. I want to see if they want to get involved. What is a conversation like that actually? Like, what are you talking about? Are you talking about the character? Are you just talking about who you are and what you believe in or what you like, what your taste is? What does that conversation consist of?

[C]

It's sort of both, I think. Like, definitely it's funny, we were speaking about this last night and Alexander was like, I remember you were wearing like a cuddly jumper with penguins on. And like, clearly I decided that I needed to try and show him that I wasn't just some terrifying kinky man. Both can exist in one person. But I, I remember we spoke for like 20 minutes about us and I don't know, football. All sort of knee jerk reactions go to football. And then we did speak about the character, not in a very specific way, but more in terms of the intentions of what I wanted to do with both the character and the film, how I was gonna cast around the actors, how I was gonna make sure that. That the film felt like it had sort of a lot of research and authenticity behind it, rather than it feeling like a sort of tourist approach to the world of kink. And yeah, it was, I guess, more that kind of thing.

[B]

How do you. The movie amazingly, like resists falling into the traps of there being like a camp aspect to it or like mocking the culture in any way. And even if some people come to it with sincerity, it still is sometimes hard to portray it in a way that can be fun and funny, but is also that deeply sincere mixture that you talked about in the novel. So how do you do that? The magic trick of tone, I guess is the question.

[C]

I think it's sort of threading a needle a little bit. And I knew that whenever it was always the question I was asked by like financiers was, oh, you know, what's the tone of this? Cause it feels like it sits between a bunch of different things. And so my approach to that was when we were shooting, just to sort of collect different options to play one scene in a more broadly comedic fashion and then get the actors to do a more sincere take. Because often, you know, you can shoot a scene and get like an amazing version of that scene, but then when you're in the edit and you're trying to compile the whole, it won't sit right. And, you know, you actually need something which is less emotionally weighty.

[B]

And did you know that from doing the shorts?

[C]

I knew that partly. No. I think, like, I think because I didn't go to film school, I sort of have just spent a lot of time reading other directors chat about what they do. And I'd rather interview with, with Sandra Huller.

[B]

Sure.

[C]

Where she had talked about and Marinada both being directors who collect lots of material. And I think Sandra actually sort of talked about how it was something which she found to be more common in female directors than male directors. But it sounded just like a great thing to me and kind of maybe a sort of slightly less ego driven way of directing by being like, actually I don't necessarily know what I want. And so it's worth having options for myself when I'm in the edit. And yeah, I, I'm very grateful for it. There were lots of moments when we were shooting where I'd be like, oh no, I've got it. And then my cinematographer, Nick Morris would be like, but maybe we should just try a different, a different version. In the edit. I constantly was ringing Nick Huff and being like, I love you. Thank God that you said this.

[B]

I was gonna ask you if it. First of all, that's an amazing insight that just like reading the interview to say, like, I should think about actually the strategy and kind of methodology of shooting the script that I've written is really interesting. But on the page, would you say that it was funny? Did it read as comedy?

[C]

I thought it was hilarious that then some people would read it and be like, no, this is not funny. I definitely intended it to be funny. And. And, you know, I like Alex Sander. He was saying yesterday that one of the things which surprised him when he read it was that it made him laugh so much. And I think actually it was the kind of sincerity, the emotional weight which people found harder to understand on the page because that owes a lot more in the finished film to, like, very small moments of performance, like a look which you don't tend to describe in the script.

[B]

I do think there are a lot of people who are going to come to the movie who have no access to the culture, that they don't understand it at all. And so I was wondering how much you thought about where to be kind of prescriptive or instructive or explanatory about what is transpiring versus just portraying the world as is and letting people figure it out for themselves.

[C]

I definitely thought a lot about how to not just totally hold an uninitiated audience at arm's length. But my answer to that wasn't to, like, lean into exposition or to over explain the processes within this subculture. It was more to find, like, find tones which would make them enjoy themselves. So, like, comedy being the main one, it was like, okay, well, if I'm watching a film and there's something which is a bit abrasive or unsettling to me, but then in the next moment I'm laughing as I would if I would watch, like, a Bridget Jones movie or whatever, then I'm going to be less inclined to leave the cinema at the first blowjob. And so that was kind of my. My tactic. I can. I get a bit turned off by films where it's about a kind of niche subject matter, and then the film is constantly being like, by the way, this is how this subculture does it. Because it's. It feels like you're, as the filmmakers, you're existing a remove from the subculture you're portraying.

[B]

Yeah, that's really interesting. I was also curious about the choreography of the movie. You got this wrestling set piece right in the middle, and there's obviously multiple sex scenes in the film. And so how you just even kind of strategize to shoot that sort of thing. I'm so fascinated by. Is it like choreographing an action sequence or a dance sequence.

[C]

I have not got much experience choreographing action sequences, and I imagine they're a bit more involved. The wrestling scene was definitely the most like, involved choreography and we got a stunt coordinator and. But I sort of. I'm a big wrestling fan and it was one thing where I sort of. On the page was pretty prescriptive and being like. And then they do this move, then they do this move, then they do this move. With the sex, it was more about finding a balance, actually. You know, we would. We. The sex scenes definitely were the longest blocking on the day of any of the scenes because we'd, like, start with what we had on the page, and then that needs to be quite a lot of readjustment. You know, for instance, the orgy scene, they were having sex on these trestle tables, which were incredibly wobbly. So we had to, like, find. Do work around for that kind of thing. But it's about, you know, in my experience, you know, working with an intimacy coordinator in those sex scenes, it's about, like, finding enough structure so the actors then feel confident providing the, like, present tense to it and not having to necessarily be like, right, I'm going to do 16 pumps. And then those kind of. You can always sort of tell when a. When a sex scene has been too choreographed.

[B]

Right. Right. There. There's a kind of a somewhat abstract idea that's in the movie that I really like, which is that yearning is not connected to sex. That, like, there is this idea of longing for something that isn't just like a physical longing that the movie kind of like walks through. And I don't know how much you had kind of specifically thought about that because so few movies, like, genuinely, authentically portray sex. Especially not a lot of queer movies. Especially not a lot of queer movies that are released by studios. So, I mean, can you. Can you kind of talk through that? Because I think. We think we kind of like collide those two things and they're not the same.

[C]

Yeah. And I think. I think it's. You know, obviously it's not one size fits all, but, like, often the experience of, like, coming into knowledge about sex and about your desires is like learning that actually there is a difference between those two things. And you're like, first love. You associate that immediate sexual desire with longing. And initially you think, okay, well, that combination is. Is love, maybe. But then as, you know, as your expectations for other parts of a relationship chafe up against this, the good sex you're having, then they begin to Separate. And I think it's kind of the journey which Colin goes on in the film is being like, right, well there's this, there's this man Ray, who, who sexually satisfies me massively and in some ways emotionally satisfies me, but in some ways does it. In some ways I, I need more. And I think eventually that's what creates the real source of conflicts in the film.

[B]

I think it's such an amazing aspect of the story that you're telling. I also really like the way that you portray Colin's parents and the complexity of engaging with something like this and the desire for sensitivity and then the loss of control of the sensitivity around their son and the relationship that he's in. How did you think about how to write that?

[C]

That I with them was sort of really reacting against like the tropes of parents in queer cinema. I, I think I have quite a low attention span generally and, and specifically I'm just a bit bored of seeing that like arc in queer narratives where parents go from, you know, not accepting their gay kids to then over the course of the film accepting them. And I was like, you know, if we're going to set this in modern day Britain, it's more typical really these days for parents to be accepting. But that acceptance isn't sort of objective. The definition of acceptance I think fluctuates depending on how normative the homosexuality you're presenting is. And so it was kind of an interesting question for me. Like, okay, what if you start with incredibly accepting parents, like caricaturi. Caricature ishly not a word. Accepting parents. And then, and then at a certain point their son gets the boyfriend they've always wanted him to have, but that boyfriend turns out to come in, in a package which they don't recognize and which I think in some very valid ways they find they find like a warning or off putting. So yeah, we sort of reverse that typical trajectory.

[B]

I'm curious, more broadly for the pathway to filmmaking in England right now, what was the journey like, the sort of 10 year journey that you were on? How do you find it? What is the sort of state of the industry for young filmmakers from your perspective?

[C]

I think that my journey was sort of fairly typical. I mean I didn't go to film school, which is less typical. But Shorts is really the gateway into, into independent film. It's some, it's making a short and it's very competitive, obviously. But then if you have a short which does well, which you know someone likes or goes to a good festival Then often the great thing about the UK is you have public funding. So, like, the BBC or the BFI or Film4 might then be like, okay, we'll give you a. We'll give you a fee to write a script for us, to develop a script with us, which is what happened for me and a bunch of filmmakers I know. But, like, you know, as with everywhere. But it's certainly true in the UK that funding is really. Is really limited, and there's definitely massive issues in terms of, like, class inequality and social inequality and, you know, who. Who is even able to get on the path to accept that kind of funding. So I think it's like, there's still a lot of work, work to do in making, making sure that there's of equal opportunity when it comes to funding.

[B]

And, like, what are your ambitions at this point now that you've made this? Like, do you want to make bigger films? Do you like staying in a kind of independent lane?

[C]

I. Well, I definitely think I want to stay in an independent lane for now. I. I really. One of the best things about making this film was that I cared so much about it, and it took a long time, but I made it with people who I really like, I really felt protected by. And I also had a degree of control over the outcome because the budget wasn't stratospheric. And I want to give myself the opportunity to make bigger worlds and hopefully next time have a little bit more money. But if I think about filmmakers whose careers I really admire, someone like Joachim Trie, you know, his body of work feels like he's just been able to maintain a sort of authorship over it by working at a scale which isn't. Which isn't, you know, totally prohibitive of control. And I think that's what I want to do.

[B]

Yeah, it's interesting. I talked to him last year on the show, too, and he spoke a little bit somewhat similarly about kind of staying in his native country and utilizing the structures that are built up around filmmaking in his country and how beneficial that's been for him. And he's kind of dipped out a little bit from time to time. But by the same token, like this, you've got an Alexander Skarsgrd movie, A24, distributing here in the United States, that there is, like, maybe the appeal, too, of, like, a wider reach. That's why. So I always ask younger filmmakers whether or not they want to, like, go bigger for lack of a better framework.

[C]

I mean, it was definitely an ambition of mine with this, because of the subject matter that it wouldn't be relegated to like the underground. And I think that having Alexander come on board was very necessary to convincing even like financiers on our low budget film to finance it. Because there was a lot of concern, I think that I was going to make some unrated thing with actors who wouldn't bring people into the cinemas and no matter how good the end product was, it would be, you know, a big loss and, and no one has any money at the moment. So you can't, you can't roll the dice on something which is definitely going to be a loss. But I think, I think, you know, maybe going forward it'll be the same thing. If I want to work with, with big name actors, it's because either, you know, I think they're brilliant, which I did with Alexander, and because they're gonna help get a film financed which otherwise would be tricky to get financed quickly.

[B]

I'm curious about the long life of promoting a movie. This film premiered at Cannes, I saw it at Telluride. It's February 5th. We're talking still not out in theaters. What's that like to go through the nine month spin cycle after you've completed the one work?

[C]

It is, it's wild. It's really wild how, how you know the journey of this film because it's very much a first for me. It's been like full of excitement but, but nine months in like now I'm starting to be. When we go to like Q&As, I'm like, but surely everyone's heard every. Because I've said this like 20,000 times now and I definitely am like feeling hungry to get writing again. I was warned by other filmmakers that it was naive to think that while you're on the road promoting a film, you'll be able to just crack on with your next one. And arrogantly was like, yeah, I'll just knuckle down. And I have not put pen to page at all for like nine months. So I'm actually, you know, we finish doing basically all of the promo stuff for this film in a couple of weeks and then I'm going to go lock myself away for six months and not speak to anyone about pillion ever again.

[B]

Do you know what it's going to be that you're going to put on?

[C]

Yeah, I do. I think I, I don't think I can say, but I've, I've recently worked out the idea so I'm going to crack on.

[B]

Good luck. We end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen? Have you seen anything great recently?

[C]

Film?

[B]

Well, it could be. Damien Chazelle once said, the Roman Colosseum.

[C]

The moon last night.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. I prefer a film.

[C]

I would say a film. The last great film I saw was the Love that Remains. The Lena.

[D]

Oh, I haven't seen it yet.

[B]

Yeah, tell me about it.

[C]

I firstly am, you know, big fan of lots of his films. I thought that Godland was, like, maybe the last film, which truly stunned me where I went, my God, this is masterful. But the Love that Remains is. Is, I guess, more in the spirit of, like, family kitchen sink drama. And yet it incorporates these, like, sort of slapstick fantasy sequences which feel very new for him. And it's also, you know, he's still working with the combination of actors and members of his family, but it's like, really laugh out loud funny. It's the last time I watched something in the cinema where I was, like, gasping for air from a scene which made me laugh so much. So. So it's highly recommended.

[B]

It's a great recommendation. Harry, congrats. Thanks for doing the show.

[C]

Thanks so much. Loved it.

[B]

Thank you to Sam Sanders. Thanks to Harry Lytton. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for production support. Next week, we've got a draft. What was the draft?

[A]

Oscar Snubs.

[B]

Yeah, we did it already.

[A]

Yeah, it was.

[B]

It.

[A]

I think it went well. It was great. The rules are complex and some people let their Oscar nerd freak flag fly, which, you know, this is we. We accept all tastes on this particular podcast, so that's fine. But it was. I thought it was successful.

[B]

I agree. We'll see you then. Monster Energy.

[D]

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[B]

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