Films To Be Buried With with Brett GoldsteinRob Savage (Host / The Boogeyman) • Films To Be Buried With with Brett Goldstein #254
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Join your host Brett Goldstein as he talks life, death, love and the universe with the molten hot director ROB SAVAGE!
Nighttime. Interior. We open on a dusky, dark room with the glow of a laptop illuminating the immediate area surrounding it. A slow zoom in on the screen to reveal not a documentary, nor a game, nor a Youtube video - but a Zoom chat. Folks, think back to pandemic times if you will, for a second, to remember the viral horror film 'Host' - this was the scene in most domestic settings for the more scary film appreciative amongst us... Well, cut to the now-times and the director of said film is at it again with The Boogeyman! You'll hear all about all of this, from the director himself - Rob joins Brett for a wonderful episode containing process, genre, life, death and general movie chat, and it's a brilliant one. Certainly one to make your head spin. But hopefully not projectile vomit. The power of film compels you!
Video and extra audio available on Brett's Patreon!
SUPERBOB (Brett's 2015 feature film)
Look out, you show me films to be bettered with, Hello, and welcome to films to be buried with.
My name is Brett Goldstein. I'm a comedian and actor, a writer and director at Cheese Puff, and I love films. As Richard E. Byrd once said, few men during their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep welds of strength that are never used. You think you couldn't make it through all five hours and fourteen minutes of Fanny and Alexander, But you can, and you could, and you will, and you'll even enjoy it too deep. Every week I'm a special guest. I tell them they've died, then they get them to discuss their life through the films that meant that most of them. Previous guests include Barry Jenkins, him As Patel, Mark Frost, Sharon Stone, Jamida Jamil, and even bed A Ambles. But this week it's the brilliant horror film director Rob Savage. You can watch all of Ted Lasso season one to three and all of Shrinking season one on Apple TV Plus. Give him a watch, Like Him, love Him. Head over to the Patreon at Patreon dot com Forward slash Brett Goldstein, where you get an extra twenty minutes with Rob. We chat, we talk secrets, he talks about the best beginning to a film. You get the whole episode, uncut and ad free, with all sorts of extra stuff. Check it out over at patreon dot com. Forward slash Brett Goldstein, So Rob Savage. Rob Savage is an excellent director. He directed Host, he directed Dashcad, he directed the first two episodes of soul Mates, and now he has a film in the cinema called The Boogie Man, which you should also see. He's an excellent director, a very nice man. We recorded this on Zoom a few weeks ago and he was an absolute joy. And I really think you're going to enjoy this one. And if you haven't seen The Boogeyman, go see it at the cinema. So that is it for now. I very much hope you enjoy episode two hundred and fifty four of Films to be Buried With. Hello, and welcome to Films to be Buried With. It is I Brett Goldstein, and I am joined today by a writer, a producer, a director, a soul mater, a true horror and one of the finest horror directors of his generation here with his new film and all sorts of other things. Will you please welcome to the show. It's the brilliant, it's the amazing. It's the one who is Rob Savage. Thank you? Hello? How are you? I'm not bad? How are you doing? I'm all right? Thank you? Are you in LA?
I am yeah, I'm in Burbank? Where about you?
I'm in LA two? Oh yeah? Yeah. Now, Rob Savage. For those of you who don't know, we first met, you directed the first two episodes of Soulmates, very very very well, but that is a show all about love. And ever since then you've made fucking incredible horrors, and it turns out you're the fucking the horror guy I got. I got all the love out of my sister. Yeah, we milked you for your love and then you and then you went dark and you made Host, which I think is a fucking masterpiece. That you made in Knockdown, which is a zoom film, it scared the shit out of me. It's fucking amazing. Then you made dash Cam, and now you've made The Boogeyman, which I went to a preview with with Mae Martin and it is big. That is a big, old fucking Hollywood film. And I have many questions for you. And one of the things it's a real movie. It's a real big movie. And you're so good at set pieces. I was thinking that, and there's so many bits in it where you're like, yeah, this is like listen. I think you're good at lots of things, but you're very good at set pieces. Like you're very good at like just sort of ideas of like when the girl's looking under the bed, the way you film that and they won't spoil anything, but the way you light it. It's like such a good idea stuff like that. You have really good ideas of like where to hide things. Well, I think idea is the word.
Like I always try every single scar scene, I try and have like a central idea behind it, Like I'll literally put it up on the walls. Well, we'll do cards on the walls and be like, what's the thing that you'll tell your friend about in this scene?
What's that?
If you could boil it down to one like drunken slurd description of this at the bar, what would it be?
And I find like if you could hook it.
Around just one thing that's really easy to get your hands around. People really respond to it.
Yeah, it's fucking great. And tell me this like having gone from Host, which is very small and you made with your friends, and then dash Can which is which is bigger but still seems more contained.
Tiny budget still yeah.
Yeah, to this, which feels like a probably with movie made with I'm assuming lots of execs and studio. And how was it for you transitioning into that? How was all the kind of relationships part of that? Was it easy? Was it difficult? Did they trust you? Can you tell me?
Yeah? I think one of the benefits of having done a couple of movies, especially Host, where we made it for nothing, We made it on our own backs. Every great decision came down to me. It was like it wasn't. Wasn't a movie that was swarm with execs and then it goes on and does well. Your voice in the room suddenly has a lot more clout, So when you're sitting there with all the execs, you're speaking as the person who made Host, which carries carried a lot of way to the time when I came on board, which is right after Host, and no I was I mean I was spoiling for a fight when I came on board. I was, I was so ready to be fucked over in every which way. And it just wasn't like that. It wasn't like that, right. I remember when I first started working with American people, I just didn't trust them at all. Just I thought I thought they were sneaky and and I and I wasted, wasted a good, good couple of years working with American producers, but just being really guarded and fighting them on every single thing, and just being being a nuisance. And so I was really, you know, I was really wary of not doing that on this one, making sure to go with my gut and not back down, but also not to just not to be a dickhead, you know. And from the very beginning we were all kind of on the same page about what we wanted this movie to be.
It wasn't an a twenty four movie. It wasn't The Witch.
I wasn't trying to sneak in, you know, bo Is Afraid under the guys of a studio movie I wanted to do. I wanted to do a popcorn movie, but just a really good one. And so when they when they figured out that I was doing just that, and I wasn't you know, I wasn't trying to short change them and make an art movie.
They were perfectly happy to lear me alone. That's great. It also sounded like it seemed very genuine, and I know that at the screening. I was at the A lot of the actors were there, and you did a Cueto stuff. Everyone seemed really really nice about you, as in it seemed very very genuine, like they all had that the actors had a really good time with you, and that it had been a really good experience on set with them and stuff, and there's like real emotional shit in it, and you obviously created a good atmosphere for everyone. It's impressive.
Yeah, I think they It helps that we got such a silly title, so everyone everyone reads that they got on offer coming in for the Boogeyman, and they roll their eyes and then you know, you can only go up from there.
So as soon as they as soon as they realized.
You want them to do real acting and you're going to give them real notes, and you know, the script's got some really meaty bits in it. You know, you just see their eyes light up, they reanimate suddenly, because they get to do they get to do these really beautiful, grounded scenes that just happened to be in a movie about a silly monster.
Can I ask you this, how much was practical effects and how much is CGI on like a percentage in that film.
All the creature is CGI is no practical at all. But we had a guy, We had a guy in a spotted suit who was you know, every time a lamp was getting knocked over or somebody was fighting it back, we had that real guy throwing his weight around. Because when you're working with CG, it's all about giving weight to the character. So every time yeah, stepping on something, we needed a real depression. It was all about how he interacts with the world.
Because pretty impressive. There's one thing you said at this Q and A which I would love you to repeat here if you don't mind about because I didn't even really thought about it that it was a monster movie, like I watched it and as in I didn't think of that as the genre that it is. And then you said a thing about Jaws and your editsweek.
Can you say that, Oh, yeah, well, I was always coming out of this movie as a haunted house movie, even though it's got this flesh and blood monster that that really wrestles with the characters at the end, and you see it and it's it's a monster, it's not a ghost. But I treated it like something a bit more spectral. That was that was lurking in the shadows, and I really wanted to make sure that you didn't see too much of it. I didn't want people to leave this movie feeling like, oh, I've seen the Boogyman.
He's not all that.
If you know, if we demystify the Boogyman, then that would just be that would be awful. So I had I had on the wall of the edit the amount of screen time that the shark is in Jaws, and then the amount of screen time that the alien is in Aliens, and I wanted to make sure that we didn't ever go above that. And in fact, I think we're a second less of the shark in Jaws, and we're a second less of.
The alien and Aliens.
So it's really it's pretty minimal, but still pretty you know, but still pretty scary.
Congratulations, I think it will be a very successful film. Do you know what you're doing next?
I got one lined up, I mean with things installed a bit because of the writer's strike, which go writers, So I'm happily taking a break. But there's another movie that's sort of sort of in a similar vein. It's another kind of demonic horror movie based on one of my short films.
Which one Salt Fantastic. When I said to you, I realized as I said it, I said, you're a horror guy. And then I thought maybe you'd be offended by that and you'd be like, no, I want to do three hundred types of different things. Or do you actually sort of like being no, only horror love being the horror guy.
No, because because horror is like horrors, like it's like a it's like a sugar pill, you know, you can kind of do anything within horror like this, Yeah, this movie, I'm you know, I'm really proud of the performances and some of the some of the some of the scenes that are just the family working through their their trauma in this movie that have no monster at all are some of the best scenes in the movie or some of the scenes that I'm the proudest of. And you can do that within horror, and you can still get big audiences because of the promise of monsters jumping out of closets. But there's just a bit of a trade off, and you can really do anything as so long as you liver on the scales.
Well roll. It's one other thing I forgot to tell you. I'm meant to tell you when I saw you earlier in the week, actually, but I didn't get a chance because he was doing, you know, lots of people trying to talk to you, and I thought I probably wouldn't interrupt and tell him this, but I did at the time thing I must tell him, And then I thought, no, I'll tell him when when we talk on the podcast. So I'll just tell you now. I'll tell you died. You're dead dead shit dead dead dead. How did you die?
If it's coming back to me correctly, I think I froze to death. I think I froze. Maybe it was maybe like liquid nitrogen. It was definitely something sci fi. Oh wow, I got knocked over or I was pushed or something and I shattered into just a million pieces.
You had a two one thousand death? Yeah? Or Jason X Wow? Shit, do you know how you got covered in liquid? Night ship? That bit? I don't remember that bit I don't remember.
I think I was just walking down the street and the next next moment.
There was like a fissure in the air and it squirted up night.
I think maybe or maybe there was some truck that had that had liquid nitrogen it if that's the thing, and it just poured on me accidentally.
It's not a bad way to go as long as it sort of all hits you at once. I'm wondering how long it takes till you're frozen and dead. It was.
It was a two tiered thing, you know. I remember freezing and then being frozen, and then teetering, and then it was falling and shattering.
That really hurt, right, that's the bit. Yeah, I wonder in the frozen in the second where your frozen are still conscious, you're still like.
Fuck, yeah, that was Actually that's my worst fear actually is dying in a hilarious way, but and knowing in the last moments how hilarious the death is.
I'm gonna look so stupid. Bang.
Okay, did you ever hear there was this there's this story. I think about the story all the time. There's this there was this guy who he was like a Wall Street guy, like a kind of cocaine snipping Wall Street guy, and he he got unbreakable glass installed on his in his office windows. He was at the top of this big skyscraper and he had a client over and he was showing off his new unbreakable windows and he was ramming it with his shoulder, being like, look this, it's never gonna break. I can do anything, throwing his phone at it, and he ran at it, and the window didn't break, but it popped out of the out of its socket ship and he fell and splatted on the ground and the window didn't break. He did, but the window didn't break when he landed.
Oh Jesus Christ, that's a great way today, not a bad way today.
But that's that, That's what I'm most afraid of in that moment, that just just realizing what a tit you've made of yourself as you plummet towards the ground.
To be fair to you, in your in your liquid nitrogen death, it doesn't seem like it's your fault unless you've gone, unless you're trying to impress a woman and you're going, look at this pot of liquid nightgen. I bet it wouldn't hurt me, could I? Can drink it. Yeah. Yeah, it seems fairly like accidentally, haven't you be Like you say you don't remember how it happens. Maybe it was you were trying to impress it late it. I think I think I'm blocked. I'm blocking. I'm blocking out the humiliating aspects of it. Probably. Yeah. Do you do you worry about death? I mean you must think about it a lot in your job. Yeah, No, I don't. I don't really.
I think I did a lot more when I was when I was younger and moodier. I think I kind of I've kind of just built a life where I'm so busy that I don't really have time to worry about death. I think that's the way that I stave off most worrying. It's just by keeping I'm just doing things all the fuss.
Yes, that's the secret. That's how I avoid all feelings.
Yes, isn't there Yeah, if you if you stop it, if you stop for a moment, it all catches up. I mean it's really it's quite elastic. It bounces back pretty fast. But so long as you keep moving, keep fucking moving, Sam, what about you? What about you?
Oh? I just keep sucking moving never think about anything. Yeah, what do you think happens when you die?
I think probably it's just curtains. It's just black, black curtains. It's just black curtains to send on you, swallow you.
But I don't know.
But then I don't. I don't believe that I know anything. So it's probably the opposite of what I think. It's probably probably eternal damnation curtains opening up. Oh yeah, it's this is probably just the first stage.
You know what. It's interesting. I've done a lot of these, done a lot of these episodes. No one, I don't think, unless I'm being rude and forgetting someone, no one's ever thought they're going to Hell. Like it almost never comes up Hell. Despite all that has been put out in the world, Hell rarely shows up on this show, which is interesting. Yeah, for a thing that was really you know, pump pumped into the world that no one's really brought into Hell, but you out of your other first, I'm so finally if it exists. If it exists, that's where I'm heading. Fantastic. What do you think hell is?
It's probably being forced to rewatch all of I mean, there's a theme emerging here. It's probably being forced to watch all the most humiliating moments or moments you've disappointed yourself, or or things, the relationships you've sucked up and opportunities missed for eternity.
Hell, yeah, that's good. You're good at this horror shit. I got news for you. There is a hell, but you ain't going You're going to heaven, and heaven is filled with your favorite things. It's philed me. Your favorite thing? What is it? Movies? Well, all right, there's movie world to worl movies everywhere, and everyone is very excited to see you. They're big fans of everything you've done, including all your humiliating stuff. Some of them watched that stuff and they go, hey, it's all understandable. What a great guy. And they want to talk to you about your life. They want to talk about your life through film. The first thing they ask you is, what is the first film you remember seeing? Rob Savage?
You know, I think the first movie that I ever saw remember seeing was Hercules, the Disney movie Amazing, and I don't know if they've even seen it since. But it's a weird one because the thing that I remember most was the happy meal toy that I got of the movie, not the movie itself. I got a happy meal toy of the little of the hydra that Hercules has to find.
Oh great, And.
That was such a special thing because it was the first time I ever got to go to McDonald's. I was raised vegan, no sugar, no salt, nothing fun. And my friend's dad took us to McDonald's and I was forced to like swear that I wouldn't tell my parents. So I had this little contraband hydra and wow, and I kept it. I kept it from my parents like it was you know, it was. It was like a murder weapon or something. So I had to hide it away. How are were you, God, I don't know. I was tiny. I must have been like, I don't know, I don't know ages. I'm not good with ages. I was probably I was anywhere anywhere between five and fifteen.
So it was that the first burger you'd eat it.
Yeah, I think the first proper burger that wasn't made of lentils.
Wow. Shit, he must have been like dun dun, dun, dun. Oh.
It was amazing. And my mouth was so dry from all the salt. I remember, I felt like I was a mummy. But I do remember, I do remember. I do remember the hyph I that's the only bit I remember from the movie.
I think because of the toy.
It was they that him fighting the hydra and the kind of green blood and the decapitation.
I guess it. I guess it tracks. Yeah, yeah, it really does that. That was the toy you've got. You didn't get Hercules, You've got the monster. Yeah.
I remember being really fascinated by that. You know when the hydro got beheaded, wasn't just kind of cartoon. You saw like the bone and you saw the wind pipe of the creature and it's like it's quite it's quite full on, and it was like that really early, that really early CGI that looked really terrible, but was amazed, like just was amazing at that age.
Are you an only child or do you have siblings? I got a brother older or younger, younger. Okay, so he wasn't there. I can't imagine. So he wasn't there at Hercules. He might not have existed there. Oh wow, wow, Okay, what is the film that made you cry the most? Do you cry? Are you a crier? Yeah?
I'm a big Anything makes me cry. But you know, I think you'll probably relate to this as somebody who who constantly moves to evade any feeling.
Movies make me cry more than live because that's where you stop, right, you move your movie move, and then you stopped watching film, and then you cry for two hours and then you run.
It sounds healthy when you say, yeah, I think the movie, weirdly that makes me cry the most is the ending of the assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford. Great incredible movie, and there's a sequence that shows, I mean, it's two thousand and two thousand and seven when it came out.
It's not going to be a spoilers.
It's the it's the sequence that shows what happened to Yeah, what happened to Bob after he after he killed Jesse James and was then himself assassinated. And it's it's just it's about the how his life transpired after he imagined that he'd be living in glory after after killing the only person who ever admired and looked up to and and maybe loved.
Part of it's the score.
It's got Nick Caven Warren Alis just the most beautiful cue that plays over that scene, and there's something I can't quite I can't quite get at it with words, but there's something about the idea of what it takes to be great and how some people just don't have it in them. And you know, the last words of the movie is is. It talks about Robert Ford staring up at the ceiling and not being able to find the right words to say before he dies. And there's something about just being being inarticulate and having aspirations of greatness but having them always just beyond your reach. That movie, that movie, it just feels like it's so profoundly articulates that idea.
It's so interesting now. I was thinking when you're saying that, like Amma Dais, for example, there's another film about like a special person and the person next to them, and the person next to them is the story and maybe because that's what we more relate to. And you know the Book of Prayer for Owen Meani. Do you know that book which is also some sort of a film. It's kind of about this very special person, Owen Meani, but it's told by his best friend, and his best friend his whole thing is I will never be this special you know, and yet as the reader, you're relating to the friend much more than you are a special genius person because that's how we all feel. I think it's much more relatable to be Robert Ford than it is Jesse Jays, right, Yeah, because we all don't feel great and special totally. I seem totally.
And the thing the film does so beautifully is it shows how burd and Jesse James is by the legend, that the legend almost becomes something that he can't. It's almost this it's almost like a spirit that's been conjured. It's not like it's not anything that he's in control of. And ultimately, you know, there's that beautiful scene which again is it's probably probably the point where I start crying in that movie. About two hours in he realizes that the two Ford brothers are going to kill him, and he goes and fixes fixes the picture almost as a surrender of you know, these two people who've I've been my authentic self with that are here to kill me for some fleeting glory. I'm just going to turn my back to them and see what happens. It's like, yeah, it's a beautiful scene.
Weirdly, it's a bit like Marie Antoinette, the Sophia Couple of film, Yeah, in that both that and this film, I would argue, are also kind of about celebrity, and they're also about Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunce. Like Marie Antoette is a film about Cairstin Dunce. I think it's like a love letter to her, and it's and it's the impossibility of being Cursten Dunce, Yeah, and then being misunderstood as a celebrity or whatever. And with Jesse James like it's Brad Pitt, it's Brad Pitt as a celebrity, beloved movie star that can never really be this thing that everyone yeah projects something onto and yeah, and as that film goes on, he becomes sort of bleaker because he's sort of like has to for any of this to survive, he has to be yeah, a shell. Yeah.
And it's it's the only movie where he looks like vaguely his own age, you know, he looks like he looks haggard and his eyes are so deep set, and there's that there's that beautiful bit at the beginning where it's like the voiceover is talking about he had this this this condition where he was always he was always blinking, like he was kind of overwhelmed by the world, and it was kind of like this beautiful poetic reading over this this shot of Brad Pitt staring, unblinking into the sun, and it's almost like the narration is kind of like mythologizing him even as we're seeing him, and it doesn't match up as this constant mismatch of how he's presented and the actuality of him.
Great, great answer, now is the big one for you? What is the film that scared you the most.
I've got a really boring answer for this, because it's The Exorcist. It won't be the movie I talk about only because only because I mean I already talked about growing up in this vegan, lentile household, but I was always I was also raised for a few years without TV. They my parents tried to raise me with no TV, which backfired, but they really really didn't want me to watch scary movies, and so that was all I wanted to watch, and The Exorcist. The Exorcist and Science the Lambs were the two that my dad. My dad took me to the side one day and said, I said, listen. I know you're going to watch horror movies because we've told you not to. But just person to person, there's two movies I want you to not watch, and that's Silence of the Lambs and The Exorcist.
You immediately went to the video immediately. I guess signs of Lambs in exist.
Exactly exactly, but they there's such an aura around them.
He must have known what he was doing. He must have been like, these two are good, I can let you watch. He must have known.
That's crazy, maybe, but it really I just feeling watching The Exorcist after it had finished, feeling like maybe my DNA had been altered in some way, Like it was like I'd done something so bad that I couldn't walk back on it, and I felt so so ashamed.
Wow.
Yeah, so that one, that one was a big one.
How old? How old were you? Do you remember that? I know you don't know age, but was it like were very young or a teenager?
I think I was like fifteen maybe. I think I watched that a little later, okay, partly because I, yeah, really I really thought that movie was going to curse me in some way.
Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Yeah, Weirdly, with The Exorcist, I had the sort of I think I saw it too young and I didn't really get it. I sort of thought it was boring, and I didn't I didn't find it scary. I thought it was boring and I just thought this is stupid. And then I watched it only a few years ago and I was like, this film is fucking terrible and so dark. I didn't realize how dark, dark, dark it is, and exactly that feeling of like there's something very horrible. It's like it feels so real. And when I think it's when she wets herself, that scene is so kind of real and you're just like, oh my god, what's going on here? Yeah, and it makes you feel so uncomfortable. There's something horrible.
There's something, there's something in the just the the celluloid of that movie that feels a bit evil. It's like I had the exact experience with the Texas changel Masca recently. I watched it around horrible, horrible. I watched it when I watch it around the same time. And maybe when I was fourteen and I was so I was such a gorehound then that I was kind of disappointed by it because there's not there's really not very much on screen Gore. It's all just a vibe of that movie is so is so nasty and oppressive. And then I didn't watch it for like ten years, over ten years, and then I got asked to do They're doing a Blu ray release and I asked to do an interview about it, and I said, yeah, yeah, I loved it, and they sent me the remastered version of it, and I watched it on a plane to New Orleans, which is where we shot The Boogieman, and about about halfway into it is that no, it's the scene where it at the dinner.
Table and Granddad comes out with the hammer. I just realized.
I realized that I hadn't taken a breath in for about thirty seconds, and I was like, oh, I'm having a panic attack. And I literally had to get up and walk, walk up and down. I couldn't finish the movie. It was like it was so there was something so just like relentlessly unpleasant about.
Watching that movie.
It's horrible, and I think I think now it's maybe it's it's really horrible. It's like it's maybe the best horror movie.
Ever made.
It's it's like the most like viscerally disturbing horror movie ever made.
Yeah, well is that your answer?
That's your Those two I can't dicist Ye, one of them is one of them.
I felt like.
It's like like my immortal my immortal soul was maybe tarnished by watching it. And then and then The Texas Chainsaw Masker is the film that keeps me up at night recently.
And what did you think of Silence as the Lambs when you finally saw it the day after the Exorcist.
It's it's not it's not in the same league as as those ones in terms of scares, But I just thought it was brilliant. And actually it's got The ending of that movie is one of the endings that I reference more than anything else. It's got one of the scariest endings to a horror movie, where she goes down into the basement and Buffalo Bill uses his night vision.
It's just excruciating. Yeah, what is the film that you love? Most people don't like it. It's not critically acclaimed, but you love it forever and the day the Village, I like the village. The village is great. I like the Village really underrated. Yeah, the Village is great.
I think it's it's the movie that everyone kind of agrees is where I started going downhill, But I thought, I think it's I think it's one of my favorite of his movies. I remember seeing it and it was the first time I went to see a movie with a bunch of friends and I left. I left being like that was that was amazing, And everyone else is like it felt like everyone else has seen a different movie. I just thought it was. It has such a kind of sadness to it. That movie that when you find out the secret as to why everyone's I mean not ruining the twist, but you know why they why they are where they are, and why.
They've made the decisions they've made.
It's so it's got a it's got a real heaviness that feels lived in that doesn't feel flippant or cheap to me, and it's really truly scary. And there are images in the movie that I, you know, since I saw it as a as a kid, like it haven't left me. The Walkers in the Woods are still genuinely terrifying.
And the sequence where what is it.
Bryce Alas Howard tries to get is running back to to Whacky in Phoenix and he's reaching out his hand and then they're yelling at him to shut the door. The tension in that scene is just hitchcocky, and so it's some some of m Night's best directing in that movie.
I remember thinking this is the Village because I thought this, what's his film? After that? That? I like. Sometimes the films of his that I don't love, I still go he's a very good director, even when sometimes I don't like the writing of the film. I think he can't help himself as a director. Like I think he's a good director. And there's stuff in the Village. There's that I haven't seen a lot of it. There's a scene with Whack in Phoenix and I think Bresda's had where they're just sitting talking to each other and the whole thing is just their backs. There's that long shot in the doorway, and I was like, this is fucking great, Like, yeah, he's good, he's good at this, He's really good.
There's the thing I've been thinking about this a lot about there are certain directors who are just great image makers. They make images that stick in your head and in whatever you think of the movie, you're going to remember these images. I think like Jordan Peel is a filmmaker like that, where he can't help but put these these indelible images on screen. Kubrick is the ultimate one, obviously, And then there are filmmakers like David Fincher, who you know, occasionally he has an image that's really potent, but really he's he's technically an incredible filmmaker, but I don't think he he's got that same. His movies aren't as immediately iconic as some of these other filmmakers, and I think m n I can't help but be iconic in the way he directs things.
Yeah, I think you're right. What is the film that you used to love but you've watched it recently and you thought, I don't like this anymore?
No thanks, So I don't don't. I don't don't to get into this one too much. But Manhattan is the one that I watched recently that just doesn't fair enough. And it's still a beautiful movie in a lot of ways. I mean good and Willis's cinematography is beautiful. There are lots of amazing scenes, but it's it's you know, there are a lot of movies that are being you have to kind of recontextualize in the wake of it being twenty twenty one or twenty twenty one. No, twenty twenty three. Fuck, that was the last Jesust Hello and you just like I watched this movie recently that used to be my favorite Woody Allen movie, and now all I can see is a middle aged man writing a seventeen year old character justifying through her voice him wanting to sleep sleep with seventeen year olds, and it's it's you know, I think a lot of movies like this when you watch them young and you've got different ideas about love and romance. Like I used to think it was such a romantic movie, and now it feels very sleazy to watch.
It's such a shame because that ending, the very last minute of that film is so I always was like, that's one of the great endings, but you're right, everything is tainted, Yeah it is.
I feel the same way that that was one of my favorite endings ever. You've got to have a little faith in people, and then you realize that that's Woody Allen writing for a seventeen year old girl telling her telling him to sleep with her.
What is the film that means the most to you? Not necessarily the film itself is any good, but the experience you had around seeing the film will always make it special to you.
There's a movie called ghost Ship from the early two thousands.
The Michael Bay Julianna Margalese.
Yes, did Michael Bay produce it?
I think it's a Michael Bay produced wasn't it Platinum Junes? Wasn't it there one of their things? Oh?
Maybe I could be right. I was obsessed with that movie as a kid. I used to watch it over and over and over. And the memory that I that I associate with that film is I used to carry it around to the DVD of it in my school bag. And it was the end of term when we've done all our tests, we've done all our exams, we had no more work to do, and the teacher said, well, we're not going to do any work today. This was English class. She said, there's anyone got a movie we can throw on? And I had ghost Ship and I took it out of the case. It was an eighteen certificate movie and I handed it to the teacher.
I think I was about fifteen.
And she played ghost Ship, and anyone who's seen Ghostship knows the only reason to talk about Ghostship is the opening scene of that movie, where the producer Joel Silver had said, I want to have the most decapitations of any movie in one scene, in our opening scene, and it's got this scene where the the what is it the awning of the ship, The wire that holds up the lights suddenly becomes comes loose and whips across this dance floor full of one hundred people and cuts them all to bits in classic early two thousand style. They don't realize they've been cut open, and then slowly they start to slide off into into pieces.
And it's just.
Missed the head of our child protagonist. It's just flown over the top. And I remember, I mean to her credit, the teacher let the whole scene play, and then as soon as the title comes up over that the shot of all the writhing body parts, she just ejected it and handed it back to me silently. We didn't talk about it, but I was a legend. I was a legend for a couple of weeks after that.
Yeah, they carried you out and their shoulders are better. Yeah, what a fucking day exactly. What is the film you most relate to.
The movie that I remember seeing and feeling feeling the most seen by was Despite Jones Is Where the Wild Things Are? That just it felt like, fuck, yeah, yeah, go film. It's so sad and it's so so sad. It's you know, up mostly just like playing on my own and my NaN's farm, like you know, it's a lonely, lonely child with where was this in Shropshire? So very very beautiful, very idyllic, but you know, it's just me and my imagination for a long periods of time. And there's something that that movie gets so right about how melancholy it can be be to be a kid sometimes and the kind of loneliness of being a kid, and the frustration of being a kid and not understanding how other people tick and how they work, and struggling to learn how to relate to people. There's a scene where his older sister of having a snowball fight and she makes him cry, and then rather than comforting him, she goes off and drives off with her cool friends, and he goes to her bedroom and he's made her this like thing out of lollipop sticks that clearly meant a lot to him, and he put a lot of work into it. In a rage, he breaks it into pieces, and then Spike just like sits with him for a moment as he realizes he's done this thing that he can't undo and that he's ruined this this gesture that meant a lot to him and meant a lot in his relationship with the sister. And it just sits with that feeling of the rage subsiding and the kind of sadness kicking in, and that that movie is so just just speaks to that feeling of being a lonely kid so well. So I saw that and I thought that was that was spawn. I saw that a bunch of times in the cinema.
You were answering these very well, you're doing very well. That's a really really good shout. It's so sad that film. It really made me very sad. I really really I get you, what is the sexiest film ever made? Species two? Species two? Species two, Species two not Species work remind me of Species tix. Species two.
It's like I wasn't really watching it as a movie so much as from what I remember, there's an alien, there's an alien that manifests as a naked woman.
And yes, Natessa hen Street, Yes.
Yes, exactly, No, you've you've you've put more thought into this than I have.
But oh, I know Species, but I'm not so so Species too.
Well, it was just because it was on TV. It was on TV and the I think it was in the Radio Times and they had a picture of the woman whose name I've immediately forgotten, and I Street Natasha Henstridge, and so I snuck downstairs at about one in the morning. I think it was on channel five, and of course it was on channel five. It was on Channel five one in the morning. I snuck downstairs and I taped it off the TV and.
It was again.
I mean a lot of these stories are about me passing around illicit movies in my class, but I like, I would literally all of my friends would get this copy of Species too.
It would go round.
And eventually got eventually got worn down until it was just just flickering, flickering white noise on the screen.
But great, shat wonderful. A wonderful subcategory is this question traveling bonus worrying. Why don't a film you found arousing you weren't sure you ship.
I don't know if I got I don't have a spec of the answer for this, but I think as a child, just on the cusp of adolescents, any any Disney movie where the animal character have long eyelashes gave me very weird sensations.
That's it.
It is just long eyeless that's all it takes. They could be a a fox or or a stray dog, doesn't matter.
Yeah, it could be a lady dog. A fox could be That's it, isn't it? Are there any others? A lion like? Definitely a lion would be a lady lion. What is objectively objectively the greatest film of all time? Not your favorite, but the greatest objectively objectively?
I think if you were to subject, if you were to feed every movie into a into a machine and through science come up with that answer, it would be a Space Odyssey two thousand one of Space Odyssey.
I don't think.
I don't think there's a movie that's stuck in the consciousness as long as that movie that looks still as amazing as that movie does, even when it's blown up on the big screen to seventy milimeters.
I don't think that's a movie that's.
As profound and open ended as that movie, a movie that you could watch today and still feel like you haven't got all of it's you kind of haven't unraveled all of its mysteries. It's got the greatest cut of all time. It's the only it's the only Qubriic movie I think that's properly emotional. And it just happens that that scene is the death of an Ai, but it's it's really emotional, involving in a way that his other films aren't. And it's full of images. It's full of images that once you see them, you'll never forget. I mean, probably more packed full of iconic images than any other movie.
Yeah, you can have it. What's what's your answer to that one? What's your answer to that one? It's don't look now? Pretty good, it's my answer to the greatest as in Pinnacle of Cinema. Yeah, you sort of go, what concinema do? It can do that time, It can deal with time in a way, yeah, you know what I mean. It can deal with love, sex, grief, type life in a way that I don't know many other art forms can. Yeah, like what what don't look now? That in this sex scene in particular, which is often talked about, but it does the thing of you watch the post sex at the same time you watch the sex at the same time you watch the pre and as Donald Sutlin's getting dressed after this the first time, they've clearly reconnected, and it's very beautiful they've reconnected. But there's almost like, I don't know what the word for it, it's like preemptive nostalgia. It's like, even as it's happening, he's mourning the fact that it will be over. Yeah, you know what I mean that this moment has already passed and it's this lovely memory but it's happening at the same time as it's actually happening, and it's that feeling. I have that feeling a lot of Listen, I'll tell you this, I don't mind saying it. When we made said last week, I would have that feeling a lot of knowing like this is so fucking special when one day it will be over and I'd feel it in the middle of We'd still have months to go, but I'd still have that sadness of nostalgia for a thing that is still happening. You know what I mean, yeah, and I think Don't Look Now captures that yeah in a very impressive way.
I heard that sequence talked about like that, but that's so true. I think there's a passage in Watchman, the Alan Moore comic where it kind of describes how doctor Manhattan sees time, and it's and it's talking about.
He's talking about it all in present tense.
He's saying, you know, I'm I'm meeting the love of my life and at the same time she's throwing her wedding ring back in my face and we're breaking up, and I'm also seeing her die, and I'm also making love to her the first time, and it's all encapsulated in this, in this moment that every every good thing holds this this, this possibility and promise.
Of it going away and it's decaying well. And the idea in Dunkling Now, which is in so many other films, but I think originated from Doulin Now, this idea of the sixth sense being actually about time, being someone experiencing time all at once, rather than they're seeing the future in the present and the past in the time. Is it, yes, a circle that's happening all at the same.
It's flat. It's a flat circle. Yeah have you seen have you seen Lake Mungo?
Have I you love like Mungo? I love it? And where is the guy? Yeah, that's a perfect example.
He's I think he's just he's given up filmmaking. I think he works for a charity. Now he's doing real work.
He did one and done. Yeah, he made like a perfect film and then said wow, that would do. Yeah he made that. I think that.
I think is probably the most brilliant film about loneliness, about the loneliness of realizing realizing that we all we all go through it alone. Ultimately, for all the kind of fanfare, it's almost that that same thing, the character being haunted by her own future Lake Mungo.
For those of you who haven't seen it, you must see it. It's like a cult classic. It wasn't available but now it's available again on Blu ray and it's an Australian film made by a film like I then vanished and now works for charity. That feels like a real documentary and aside from everything, the performances are genuinely It's one of those few films where he's like, yeah, this is real, This must be real. Yeah, this feels completely real. Everyone is a real person in the documentary, completely about It's amazing. Okay, what is the film you could or have watched the most over and over again?
Evil Dead Too nice. It's the movie that taught me about directing. It was the first movie where I noticed the placement of the camera and how that made me feel, how the different choice directorial choices made me feel. It's like eighty four minutes and every single scene feels like you your favorite scene. You know, you're always watching it, showing it to friends, and every five minutes you're like, this is the best inn best scene is coming up, and then ten minutes later you're like, no, no, no, this it's just perfect. And you can tell how much fun Sam Raimi is having and it's infectious, and it's properly cinematic, and it's scary and it's funny and it's just it's it's like, it does does everything you want movies to do in a tight eighty four.
What did you say? It's probably thematic? Is that what you said? Probably? Oh? I don't know, I was rambling. Sad as much? Have you seen Evil Dead rises? Yeah, it's really good. It's really good, yeah, really well made.
Yeah, and it's got that same it's got the same DNA from Evil Dead too. It's that movie's like ninety minutes and it's I've seen it a few times now and it's like you're like twenty minutes and you're like, oh fuck, we're here already. She's already getting She's great, this is great. It doesn't wait, it doesn't weigh around.
She's I was thinking about I guess I've taken it for granted previously, but watching The Dead Writer and I'm like, it's a really impressive performance that the mum puts in I don't know her name, the act of listics, other ones. It's a very impressive performance. Alyssa suddle and amazing and like it might be hard work. All the stuff she's doing in that it's really good. Yeah, it's it's the only performance. It's the only horror franchise that's really performance based. You know.
It's all about this this evil getting inside of people and then then presenting this kind of pantomime version of all that character's worst qualities.
You know, the Boogeyman's easy.
It's just a CG thing that pops out every now and then, But like The Evil Dead, you really have to pitch it to pitch it just right.
Yeah, yeah, we don't like to be negative. Let's do it quick. What's the worst film you've ever seen? I don't like to shed on movies, so I haven't picked.
I haven't picked a movie that's actually the probably objectively the worst film I've ever seen.
But it's the movie that kind of disappointed me.
The most, which is and this is this is probably going to be the best movie that's that's ever been the answer to this question.
But it's out for.
Hitchcock's Rope, Okay, great, Yeah, which I was so excited for. I was working my way through all of his movies, and I was like, the idea of like I knew what it was about, these two kind of intellectuals who hide a body under the table and then host a dinner party. I thought, that's that's such an amazing hitchcocky and conceit and obviously it's based on a real story. And then the idea of Hitchcock shooting the whole thing in single unbroken takes it just like it sounded like such an amazing movie on paper, and then and then the movie happens, and you realize that Hitchcock's completely newted by having to shoot everything in a single take, and everything becomes clunky and wooden, and the blocking has to facilitate these these camera moves, and the camera has to sprint to get over into the position it wants to be in, and you have, you know, you've got all this material that would otherwise end upon the cutting room floor that's just there, that's laid bare. And then and then the script is just full of all this awful Todd philosophy. And then you know, you've got James Stewart, who's amazing because he's amazing and everything, like valiantly trying to hold it all together. But he's acting against Farley Granger, who's just one of the worst actors who ever graced the screen.
And yeah, it's just it's such a missed opportunity.
And I think that's almost more egregious than a movie that's just outright bad and never stood a chance of being good.
Yeah, I'd say that's a very wise answer. There's humor in your films. There's some big laughs in a Biggie Man. What's the film that made you laugh the most?
Bet everyone says this, but Airplane was the movie that broy Literally I literally felt like I was going to die watch because I couldn't get a breath in. I watched it when I was I watched it when I was maybe twelve or something. Me and my brother watched it, and I just never seen anything. I didn't know you could do that. I'd never seen a movie that was like meta text you in that way, that was referencing its own existence and calling back, and that was playing it so serious but so silly at the same time, that kind of you know, that thing that Leslie Nielsen does so perfectly wasn't It wasn't in my like, I'd never seen anything like that before. It was just a revelation and the amount of jokes that were coming at you in such a short amount of time, the fact that they were in every shot. There's a joke that the movie doesn't care if you see because there's another movie going on in the foreground. But if you look in the background, there's a sign that you could read that's going to be as funny as the joke in the foreground.
It was just unreal. Yeah, it's fucking funny. It's really really funny. And I'll say, was it before video? I don't know. But the fact that there's so many jokes where it's like you need to see this twice, Yeah, you need to see this three times because there's three jokes going on. It's great, Rob Savage, you have been brilliant. Congratulations. However, when you were out with the lady and you were trying to impress her and there was a big liquid dices in tank in this bar, and you went, I'll tell you what I could. I could drink a whole load of liquid nitrogen. And she said, I don't know if that. I don't know if you could, and you went, yeah, yeah, no I could. I could And she said you don't have to, and you went, no, I can, and you took off the tap, went to put it in your mouth, but the whole thing just sprayed out. You immediately froze. She was looking at you. She screamed, screamed, scream screamed. Every in the bar looked across. What the fuck? You were frozen. You couldn't say anything, and then you felt yourself tipping forward and you were like, oh God. In your head You're like, oh God. And she stepped out of the way, and you smashed on the Florida bar, shattered into pieces. Only then you died. And I was walking past the bar with a coffin, you know what. I'm like, well, what was that sound of shattering ice? In there? Put my head in. There's this girl sort of screaming and laughing, and I go, what's happened? She goes, I was just on a date with a guy and he said he could drink liquid nitrogen and then it killed him. And I was like, oh, that's nice, embarrassing, and she goes, yeah, I suspected he wasn't going to be able to try to stop him. And I go, is that him? She goes yeah. I think his name is Rob And I go, what Rob Savage? She goes yeah, I was fucking hell. I go, oh, come in and help movie this. And we're it's so cold, all the bits he is. We're having to put on like industrial gloves from the bar. We pick up all the shards of you. It's a fucking mess, so much of it. You're in such little pieces, but us so much of it. The coffin is rammed. There's only enough room in this coffin for me to slip one DVD into the side for you to take across to the other side, and when you're there, it's movie night. Every night one day, it's your movie night. What film are you taking to show the people of heaven when it is your movie night? Rob Savage, you know what?
I think it would be Bringing Out the Dead, the Martin Scorsese movie, which amazing, which which for.
Why I was watching that very recently.
Tell me why that because I think I'd like to show them up there. How underrated that is. It's the scorse movie I go back and watch the most. It's like Taxi Driver is sleeplessness and whiskey that that movie is like too much caffeine and staying up for three nights in a row. It's so brilliantly nervy. It's got some of my favorite Scorsese set pieces in it. It's a movie that I constantly watch just for how he stages the scenes and moves the camera and blocks, and it's one of those gorgeous looking movies as well. The cinematography is is just jaw dropping. And it's not the best Scorsese movie.
It's not.
It's not probably even my favorite Scorsase movie. It's the one that I can watch again and again again and just absorb that Scorsese goodness and and I think that's what I'd want to be doing if I was sitting on a cloud after being shattered.
It's also funny. It's so funny that film. I think it's like, got so many proper jokes in it, really like a funny recurring thing of him trying to be fired and he's the buzz is like I fight. It's funny, Like, there's so many good jokes in it. Yeah, Bing Raims is fucking Hilario is in it. Tom Size more great, Tom Size more terrifying and funny. Yeah, great, good film. It's the best. Well, Rob Savage, what a delight. You're brilliant. Thank you so much. What would you like to tell people to look out for? I don't know when this is going to come out, so either the Boogeyman may be out by the time this comes out, So I would say to everyone, guys, see that. Is there anything else you would like to tell people to look for or listen to from you?
No, that's all I got going on. I'm all boogie all of the time. Go and see it in the Cinemaie really is a big screen movie.
Yeah, it is, and it is.
If this comes out after Boogeyman's already come out, then we've already established that past and present exists at the same time.
So go and go and see it either way. Yeah, thank you very much.
Man.
That was really great. That was so much fun. It's very good to see you. I have a wonderful death. Good day to you. So that was episode two hundred and fifty four. Head over to the Patreon at patreon dot com forwards. Last Breck Goldstein for the extra twenty minutes of chat secrets and video with remember to watch Shrinking and Ted Lasso on Apple TV plus. Go to Apple Podcasts. Give us a five star rating. But right about the film that means the most of you and why. It's a very nice thing to read and we really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you so much to Rob for being so open and forgiving me his tome for being excellent. Thanksgrebious, Pip, and there's tracks some pieces of network. Thanks to Buddy Peace for producing it. Thanks to iHeartMedia and Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network for hosting it. Thanks to Adam Richison for the graphics and least alone for the photography. Come and join me next week for another smasher of a guest. But that is it for now. Have a good week, and in the meantime, please, now more than ever, be excellent to each other. Colors outcast backs, bass back, tack Tolers, outcasts, bass back,
