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Talking Indie Filmmaking with Director Austin Balke! · Meet Your Double Feature | Movie Reviews & Forgotten Films

• 0:09
  Hello and welcome to Meet Your Double Feature, a double-blind
• 0:12
  movie review podcast. My name is Thomas, joined as
• 0:14
  always by my brother Frank. Frank, how's it going?
• 0:17
  I'm very, very excited today. This is this is a very special
• 0:20
  episode. It's a very special episode.
• 0:22
  We're going to talk about a real serious subject and we're going
• 0:25
  to play sad music. Yeah.
• 0:27
  Yeah, exactly. Actually, no, it's a different
• 0:29
  thing, Frank. The reason we're excited is
• 0:30
  because for the first time ever, we have a guest.
• 0:33
  Do you want to tell the world the people about our guest on
• 0:36
  today's episode? Do I want to?
• 0:39
  I feel like you should be the one, right?
• 0:45
  This is my very dear friend and collaborator, director, I guess
• 0:51
  multi hyphenated, but director, film industry aficionado Austin
• 0:57
  Bulky. You forgot choreographer.
• 1:03
  Wow. I said multi hyphenated.
• 1:05
  Yeah, multi hyphen. Oh my God, I love that.
• 1:07
  OK, hello. Yeah, hello.
• 1:09
  Thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:10
  Thank you for being our first guest on the show.
• 1:12
  I could not think of anybody better because ever since this
• 1:15
  podcast began, I've been plugging the movie that Frank
• 1:19
  was Co producer on called Nate and Mariah in Venice.
• 1:22
  It is a independent drama shot on location in Venice, Italy.
• 1:26
  And I've always said Frank Co produces that movie.
• 1:28
  And I feel like there's been this soft implication of, like,
• 1:31
  who's the other half of the producers for that film?
• 1:34
  So today, Austin, that's you, writer, director.
• 1:37
  The film is, you know, your project since its inception, and
• 1:41
  you and Frank work together to bring it to life.
• 1:43
  And we're excited not just because Austin is here, but
• 1:45
  because the film is finally available to stream nationwide
• 1:49
  on Amazon Prime Video. So doubly excited.
• 1:51
  Double announcement. Woo woo.
• 1:54
  Not just nationwide. We we just got word that it's
• 1:57
  it's streaming in other countries now as well.
• 1:59
  Oh, we got international as well.
• 2:01
  Fantastic. Today, this morning, it said.
• 2:03
  Streaming in Ireland, so all the Irish baddies.
• 2:09
  Celebrate Saint Patrick's Day by watching a movie set in Italy.
• 2:12
  Oh, good timing. Now I we're going to get more
• 2:15
  and more into that, but just as a quick plug off the bat, the
• 2:17
  film is currently available to stream nationwide and in some
• 2:20
  other places on Amazon Prime Video.
• 2:22
  You can find a direct link to it in the description to rent or
• 2:25
  purchase. We also have confirmation the
• 2:27
  film is coming to Toby. No release date confirmed for
• 2:30
  that yet, but stay tuned to our channels and our social media
• 2:33
  and we'll let you know when it's available on Tubi as well.
• 2:36
  General announcement is the film is now available to watch, which
• 2:38
  is very exciting. I believe to my recollection,
• 2:41
  the film was first put into production.
• 2:44
  I mean you shot it what, like 3-4 years ago now?
• 2:47
  It was a while ago. Turns out it's really hard to
• 2:53
  finish a movie, so we learned. I mean, let's let's dig right
• 2:58
  in. We do have a blind
• 2:59
  recommendation that Austin provided.
• 3:00
  That's going to be the second-half of our program
• 3:02
  today. But here in the first half, I
• 3:03
  just want to talk about Nate and Mariah in Venice because I think
• 3:06
  it's super exciting. It's the first picture released
• 3:09
  by Sardonic Motion Pictures, which is the production company
• 3:11
  the two of you work for. Austin going to toss things
• 3:15
  straight over to you as our guest.
• 3:17
  Tell me a little bit about the film Nathan Mariah in Venice.
• 3:19
  I think people have heard the title from us a lot, but they
• 3:21
  maybe still don't know what it's about.
• 3:23
  Kind of what the vibe is. So just elevator pitch, what can
• 3:27
  they expect? Well, you may have guessed from
• 3:30
  the title. It's about a couple named Nathan
• 3:33
  Mariah and they're on vacation in Venice, Italy and things are
• 3:36
  not going so well in their relationship.
• 3:38
  The film takes place over the course of a day as they sort of
• 3:42
  meander the canals in the streets of Venice, Italy and we
• 3:47
  kind of watch their relationship woes and and sort of deteriorate
• 3:51
  throughout the day and see where it goes from there.
• 3:54
  It's definitely a slice of life film and very dialogue based. 2
• 3:59
  characters brought to life by our amazing actors Michael
• 4:02
  Ridley and Corinne Mecha. And we did, yeah, we shot it on
• 4:07
  location in Italy, in the streets, literally, we'd put the
• 4:09
  camera and all of our equipment on our backs every day and, and
• 4:12
  go out for, I mean, it felt like 100 hours, probably 12 hours a
• 4:17
  day. And in August in Italy and it
• 4:20
  was so hot. And but yeah, we just like, we,
• 4:24
  we found the locations we wanted, shot it there in public.
• 4:27
  And it was like kind of the coolest thing we've ever done
• 4:30
  because it was so run and gun. And it was so like, Oh my God,
• 4:33
  we're making a movie exactly how we want to and nobody was
• 4:35
  telling us what to do. And it was just like the best
• 4:37
  thing ever. And then it really, I mean, I
• 4:38
  feel like it really did come together in the edit.
• 4:40
  There was this huge concern about audio and about
• 4:43
  continuity. And we shot it so fast.
• 4:45
  And, and then seeing it all come together in the end and be
• 4:48
  cohesive. And I think it's good.
• 4:52
  It has been so amazing. So now that it's available for
• 4:56
  people to watch, it's just like, cool.
• 4:59
  That's super exciting. I mean, I got to see I was very
• 5:02
  much on the outside of this production.
• 5:03
  I like knew what was happening. I got to see a couple of the
• 5:06
  earlier screenings of it when it was, you know, pre final effects
• 5:10
  and everything. So being able to see multiple
• 5:12
  iterations of it was fascinating to me.
• 5:14
  And just seeing the finished product, knowing all the work
• 5:17
  that went into it. It's fascinating.
• 5:19
  Like Frank and I, obviously we cover movies for a living
• 5:22
  essentially, and we've both like spent our whole lives watching
• 5:25
  them, but getting to see the actual end to end of like we
• 5:29
  have a script to we have a movie is so such a gargantuan effort.
• 5:35
  It's nuts. I guess Frank just added
• 5:37
  commentary from you. What?
• 5:38
  What was your experience like? My memory is that actually
• 5:42
  filming the movie was like a physical toll on everyone
• 5:45
  involved. Oh, it definitely was.
• 5:46
  That's that's I was going to jump in with what Austin had
• 5:49
  already said. The days were really long and we
• 5:54
  had the huge advantage that the. Was it the Venice Film
• 5:59
  Association or like. Yeah.
• 6:01
  The Venice Film Commission. Yeah.
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  Yes, they gave, they gave us permits to shoot anywhere in the
• 6:06
  city as long as we didn't impede any foot traffic, which was like
• 6:12
  huge. Like you don't that's that's
• 6:14
  something like, you know, here in LA that's unheard of.
• 6:18
  You need you need permits to shoot even anywhere out on the
• 6:21
  sidewalk. So like the fact that we could
• 6:24
  go anywhere in the city and shoot was amazing, but also
• 6:27
  because the production was in Italy and we did all of our pre
• 6:30
  production here in the States and it was so gorilla.
• 6:35
  We had to do a lot of things on the fly.
• 6:37
  So our, our days, especially Austin eyes were so long because
• 6:40
  we would do an entire 12 hour day of filming and then have to
• 6:45
  go back out at the end of the day oftentimes and find our
• 6:48
  shooting locations for the next day.
• 6:50
  Oh, gosh, like and kind of even change like the way we were
• 6:56
  going to shoot certain scenes, like on the fly.
• 7:00
  And, you know, there were definitely times where we would
• 7:03
  like the two of us would just step off to the side and like
• 7:05
  panic in like a corner about like how we were going to like.
• 7:09
  I literally am visualizing some of those moments right now as
• 7:12
  you say it. Yeah, me too.
• 7:14
  Yeah, so it was. And, and also like Austin
• 7:18
  mentioned, like we were literally like, you know, super
• 7:21
  small crew. We had our our two lead actors
• 7:24
  and then a crew, 4 people and we were lugging around heavy camera
• 7:30
  equipment like all through the streets of Venice in the dead of
• 7:36
  summer. I think there was a heat wave
• 7:37
  going on in in Europe at the time.
• 7:39
  So it was just like incredibly hot.
• 7:41
  So yeah, it was very physically demanding.
• 7:44
  Shoot, like coming home from that, I was like, it's a toll on
• 7:48
  my body. Yeah, which is interesting
• 7:50
  because I imagine there's a bit of that in any production.
• 7:52
  But your guys is was so such a small crew and there's such a
• 7:56
  blending of roles. I mean, like Austin, you were
• 7:58
  like writer, director, primarily Frank.
• 8:00
  I think cinematographer was like kind of your main stated role.
• 8:03
  But clearly, even just from hearing you talk about it, it's
• 8:06
  sort of just a group effort. It was just like we have to do
• 8:08
  all the parts, we just need to get this finished.
• 8:11
  Yeah. I mean, like, I was, I was also
• 8:13
  like, we were, we were truly wearing a million hats.
• 8:16
  I mean, I was like trying to direct the actors while also
• 8:18
  like holding an iPad and like, being my own first AD and like
• 8:21
  making sure we weren't taking too much times on scene while
• 8:24
  also like running the audio, like checking their mics.
• 8:27
  And I was like, physically like hitting record and like
• 8:29
  listening and checking for levels and trying to look at
• 8:31
  their performance at the same time.
• 8:33
  So it was, it was like truly a master class in multitasking.
• 8:38
  But I think we learned that we can kind of do everything, which
• 8:41
  is good to know. Yeah, really.
• 8:43
  I mean, this, this was like a very textbook example I think of
• 8:48
  just truly independent filmmaking.
• 8:51
  I mean, like from the beginning it, this was just Austin and I
• 8:56
  and then obviously we brought in some amazing people to work
• 8:58
  with, including, as they already mentioned, our lead actors who
• 9:03
  anytime we talk about the movie, I want to shout them out because
• 9:05
  given the nature of the whole production, like I always say,
• 9:09
  it wouldn't have worked if they hadn't been so amazing, both
• 9:13
  like in their performances and just their adaptability.
• 9:17
  And like in those conditions, like just being super
• 9:20
  professional and like, you know, we, we never had to, we never
• 9:24
  had any issues with them. We never had like reset a scene
• 9:28
  because they forgot their lines or anything like that, even
• 9:31
  though the and like the entire film rests on their
• 9:35
  performances. It's like this super dialogue
• 9:38
  driven film just between the two of them.
• 9:40
  So yeah, like I said, I I always shout them out too.
• 9:43
  But yeah, it's like it really, it's very difficult to to make a
• 9:49
  film that way just purely independently.
• 9:53
  So that's why I'm, I'm super proud that we that we did it and
• 9:55
  that we did it that way. Absolutely.
• 9:58
  I mean, I frank, you and I doing our regular, you know, meet your
• 10:01
  double feature reviews. We'll sometimes add these
• 10:03
  caveats where we're like dunking on a movie that we thought
• 10:06
  really missed the mark. But then we always say like
• 10:08
  making movies is hard. Like it's we always soften the
• 10:11
  blow by being like, we're not saying you guys didn't work
• 10:13
  really hard on this. We just evaluate the finished
• 10:16
  product and and especially after looking at the odyssey you guys
• 10:20
  went through making your first full length feature here, it it
• 10:23
  amazes me honestly. And like you said, the two
• 10:25
  actors drive the whole experience.
• 10:28
  I feel like, I guess one of my questions that I had written
• 10:31
  down that I was thinking about, First off, Austin, for you, was
• 10:35
  the film always from its inception set in Venice or was
• 10:39
  that something that was based on like where you thought it would
• 10:41
  be manageable to actually shoot the film in?
• 10:44
  It, I mean, at first it was like I was kind of writing random
• 10:49
  scenes without an objective for fun, like between a couple.
• 10:54
  And I find writing dialogue to be incredibly enjoyable.
• 10:58
  So it was just something I was doing at the time.
• 11:01
  It was almost therapeutic because I was kind of pulling
• 11:03
  things from people who were annoying me in real life and
• 11:06
  like baking them into characters.
• 11:08
  And, and so I started to write this couple, no goal in mind,
• 11:13
  then randomly took a trip to Italy with my sister and we
• 11:18
  stopped in Venice. And I had been before as a kid,
• 11:21
  but as an adult, I was like, I remember the whole time thinking
• 11:24
  I got to write something for Venice someday.
• 11:27
  I'm going to film a movie here. And then I get home and I'm like
• 11:31
  working on this random script. And I was like, you know what,
• 11:32
  This could be a couple on vacation and I was just in
• 11:35
  Venice. So let's see how that goes.
• 11:38
  And then started writing it and started researching the
• 11:41
  doability of it. And it seemed like something we
• 11:44
  would actually be able to do. You know, a lot of people were
• 11:46
  saying, like, you can't do that. Like you're not going to be able
• 11:48
  to. The sounds not going to work.
• 11:50
  You know, it's going to be so difficult.
• 11:51
  There's going to be so many people.
• 11:52
  But surprisingly, was not all that difficult to get a permit
• 11:56
  with the size of our crew. And as I started to break down
• 12:00
  the cost, yeah, it was expensive.
• 12:02
  But, you know, the fact that we all knew going into it that we
• 12:06
  were going to be paid very little and did everything as
• 12:09
  cheap as possible with a very small crew actually made it
• 12:12
  doable. So at that point we were just
• 12:14
  kind of like gung ho about it. Let's do it and we can do it and
• 12:17
  just go in. I think going into things
• 12:19
  slightly delusional and thinking what's the worst that can happen
• 12:22
  is kind of, you know, the best way to do it.
• 12:25
  Even as we got there, I was like, what are we doing right
• 12:27
  now? This is like insane.
• 12:29
  But the delusion got us through at least the shoot pretty
• 12:33
  smoothly. I feel like that that's probably
• 12:37
  the story behind more famous films than we realize is the
• 12:40
  delusion that got us through because it is an ambitious
• 12:43
  project. Like you.
• 12:44
  You narrowed your scope where it made sense, focused on your two
• 12:47
  main actors, but you cover so much ground.
• 12:49
  I mean the film structure wise, I think the most obvious
• 12:53
  connection I could draw would be to the Richard Linklater
• 12:56
  trilogy, like Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight,
• 12:59
  in that it's primarily 2 characters.
• 13:01
  It's driven by their dialogue that gives you a storytelling
• 13:05
  arc, but you set the whole thing against this huge variety of
• 13:08
  just scenic, compelling, like vistas, essentially.
• 13:12
  I mean, you cover so many different aspects of what
• 13:14
  someone would want to see in a film set in Venice.
• 13:17
  We get a gondola ride, you know, You know, we got a gondola ride
• 13:20
  in there of. Course, it's a great scene too.
• 13:22
  Exactly. And you get to see all these
• 13:24
  different like landmarks and really just feel like you're
• 13:26
  enveloped in that space and it the city becomes a character in
• 13:31
  itself, which I think is fun. You have your two leads, you
• 13:33
  have Michael and Corinne, and then you have Nate and Ryan, I
• 13:35
  should say the characters. And then we have Venice, like,
• 13:38
  as the backdrop for this whole drama.
• 13:41
  Which was kind of why I named it that because I was like, this is
• 13:44
  what the movie is. It's 2 characters and it's a
• 13:46
  city. And what's beautiful about
• 13:48
  shooting somewhere like that is we might not have any money, but
• 13:52
  we don't need money to make the city look amazing.
• 13:54
  Like the production value of shooting there was more than we
• 13:57
  could have paid for and anywhere else.
• 14:01
  So it's like you step outside and you have something more
• 14:03
  beautiful than anywhere else in the world.
• 14:05
  And so it's going to look good if you can just like get a good
• 14:08
  performance. So yeah, that was a big, big
• 14:10
  drop, big draw. I guess, Frank, this kind of
• 14:14
  moves over into your your side of the coin here to doing
• 14:17
  cinematography primarily. How much of the shooting was
• 14:21
  like was any particular location or any particular shots like
• 14:25
  already kind of established in your head going in or was it
• 14:27
  genuinely just, we know roughly a location and we have to
• 14:30
  conceive the the visual language as we go every time?
• 14:34
  It was, it was kind of a mix. I mean, like Austin had
• 14:37
  definitely picked out like very specific locations that some
• 14:42
  scenes were going to happen in. And I think for the most part,
• 14:47
  that was where we would wind up shooting.
• 14:49
  Like, I mean, like you mentioned, obviously, like we
• 14:52
  knew we had a scene set on a gondola, but it wasn't until the
• 14:56
  day we were going to shoot that scene.
• 14:59
  I remember us like walking up, having the conversation, being
• 15:02
  like, do you think they're going to let us shoot on this gondola?
• 15:07
  Yeah, I was so stressed about that the whole week.
• 15:09
  I was like, what's going to happen here?
• 15:11
  I really don't know. Let's go.
• 15:12
  Let's get get on the boat. It was just, it was just a like
• 15:15
  so many things. Like I really like looking back
• 15:19
  on it, you can kind of see like how much of the film was on this
• 15:23
  like Razor's edge of things going horribly wrong and not
• 15:27
  working. I remember at one point Austin
• 15:29
  joking like, well, maybe at least we got a vacation out of
• 15:32
  this. We don't get a movie out of it.
• 15:34
  Or like, at least this scene would make a random good short
• 15:37
  film. It wouldn't make much sense, but
• 15:39
  we got something. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:41
  But I mean, like with like you were saying, both of you like
• 15:46
  Venice absolutely is like a character in the film.
• 15:50
  And it's it's like not only gorgeous, but it's also just
• 15:53
  like historic, you know. So it's, it's just like, you're
• 15:57
  like, it made my job so much easier at, you know, the
• 16:02
  cinematographer because like, I mean, I look at it and I'm like,
• 16:05
  that looks great. But so much of it's just because
• 16:08
  Venice, it's just so easy to shoot, you know, I mean, it's,
• 16:12
  it's just like Austin said, it's like one of those beautiful
• 16:15
  cities in the world. So I I feel like that's a huge
• 16:17
  appeal of the film too. It's just like getting to see so
• 16:21
  much of that space. And, and I also feel like, you
• 16:25
  know, we've, we've mentioned this too, but like for me at
• 16:28
  least, and, and I think for all of us that were, there was a
• 16:31
  really cool way to experience a place like that for the first
• 16:35
  time, because we were very immersed in it by what we were
• 16:41
  doing. You know, as opposed to just
• 16:43
  going somewhere on a, on a trip and kind of, you know, hitting
• 16:46
  the like sort of famous landmarks we were in interesting
• 16:50
  like back alleys and like, you know, spaces we wouldn't have
• 16:54
  normally ever gone in. I mean like.
• 16:57
  We rented like, what do you call it, a palazzo to, to, to live in
• 17:03
  while we were filming because I was like, I need this scene to
• 17:05
  be pretty. So let's just live in this place
• 17:07
  that we're going to use as a set.
• 17:08
  I mean, like who in in like a famous square in Venice.
• 17:11
  You look out the window in the morning and you were like, Oh my
• 17:13
  God, this is crazy. Exactly.
• 17:16
  It was so gorgeous. So it was, it was like we were
• 17:18
  living it as we were filming it, which was like really cool.
• 17:21
  It was almost like documentary esque in that way, I guess like
• 17:28
  and yeah, I feel like we had a lot of conversations about that
• 17:30
  while we were there too. Like, just like we, we shot that
• 17:34
  whole scene on that island that it was like it, it was like the
• 17:38
  the graveyard. The cemetery.
• 17:40
  Scene. Yeah, the cemetery scene.
• 17:42
  And yeah, I remember at one point we were like, are we ever
• 17:45
  going to be here again in our lives?
• 17:47
  We have no reason to ever come to a place like this, you know?
• 17:51
  But it's like we were there because of this and it just
• 17:55
  really kind of like elevated the whole experience, I think.
• 17:58
  Yeah, which is probably in part what helped the city in the
• 18:01
  final film feel like so much of A character is that it was
• 18:04
  something that you had to experience.
• 18:05
  I mean, it was Nate and Mariah in Venice, but it was Nate and
• 18:07
  Mariah and Frank and Austin and whoever else was in the crew
• 18:11
  invents too. Yeah.
• 18:12
  Yeah. That's fascinating.
• 18:14
  I want to, I guess just to further expand on the story and
• 18:18
  then and touch on the two actors performances.
• 18:20
  So for Nate and for Mariah, I guess Austin, again, back to
• 18:24
  you. Like what in your mind was the
• 18:27
  character of Nate on the page? And how much did that change
• 18:31
  once you actually got an actor in front of you to embody that
• 18:34
  role? Like, I guess for either one,
• 18:35
  for Michael as Nate or for Corinne as as Mariah, Like was
• 18:40
  there anything added to their performance that you think in
• 18:42
  the long run actually kind of changed the actual character in
• 18:45
  the story? That's a great question.
• 18:47
  You know, I think I wrote it, you know, with a much more
• 18:52
  comedic tone, thinking that both of the characters were going to
• 18:56
  be like really obnoxious and, and dry and like hard to like,
• 19:01
  like that was how I approached it as the goal was for them to
• 19:04
  be unlikable. Because one of the things that
• 19:06
  was interesting to me was like, how unlikable can I make these
• 19:09
  characters? How far can I push them before
• 19:11
  the audience rejects it? So that's kind of how I
• 19:13
  approached it initially. And then what was interesting is
• 19:18
  I kind of put a scene that I felt was more comedic as the
• 19:22
  sides for the auditions. And when Michael came in and
• 19:24
  read it, he read it in a really serious way.
• 19:28
  And I was like, oh, like, I didn't think of it this way, but
• 19:32
  I guess like, it's so interesting how this could be
• 19:35
  interpreted in multiple ways. And he had, he was so good that
• 19:40
  I was like, OK, that's like an interesting take on the
• 19:42
  character. And similarly, when Corinne came
• 19:45
  in, you know, I think a lot of people who read for Mariah, they
• 19:49
  read it very much at face value. That was like sort of very
• 19:54
  vapid, very like valley girl esque, I guess I could say.
• 19:59
  And so when she read it and it felt like there was more to the
• 20:02
  character, There was something deeper resonating with it, even
• 20:05
  if the dialogue was still a little bit vapid.
• 20:07
  I I clocked that like, OK, there's an opportunity for this
• 20:10
  to be more than what I initially thought it was going to be, you
• 20:12
  know, kind of like an obnoxious comedy.
• 20:15
  And so they both brought that out of the roles.
• 20:20
  All right, I should say they both like brought that from the
• 20:23
  page into something so much more real.
• 20:25
  I think if we had gone with what my very initial instinct was, it
• 20:28
  wouldn't have worked as well as as what they brought to it.
• 20:31
  I mean, they they brought depth to the characters.
• 20:34
  I mean, they're it's tricky because it is a story about
• 20:38
  people who are unlikable and people who are unable to see
• 20:40
  their own faults. At the core.
• 20:41
  That was always the idea. But then bringing more humanity
• 20:45
  to the role and, and making them feel like real people is not
• 20:50
  something I don't think I could have done without 2
• 20:52
  collaborators that were really good at their jobs.
• 20:55
  Like they brought that out of it.
• 20:57
  And, and throughout the process of filming that, that whole
• 20:59
  week, I was seeing what it could be so much more than than I
• 21:03
  previously had. I mean, obviously this is the
• 21:06
  longest thing I've ever directed.
• 21:07
  So it's kind of like I just jumped in and I'm like, I can do
• 21:11
  this and it's fine and just have blind confidence in yourself.
• 21:14
  But seeing them like go in and attack a scene and, and they're
• 21:18
  so good that it's more like I'm making adjustments or I'm making
• 21:21
  suggestions about the emotional beats I want to hit.
• 21:24
  But they're able to interpret that in a way that felt true to
• 21:26
  them as a character. And so often their instincts
• 21:30
  were just like spot on to, to like a new way for me to, to see
• 21:33
  the scene through through new eyes.
• 21:35
  And I, I really don't think it could have existed without them
• 21:39
  interpreting the characters the way they did.
• 21:41
  So definitely there's parts of it that are exactly how I
• 21:44
  thought it would be. And because I edited it also, I
• 21:46
  got the opportunity to like sometimes they'd push something
• 21:50
  a little far emotionally that I thought I think this might work
• 21:52
  better in a little more of a comedic tone.
• 21:54
  So I would like cut it a little faster.
• 21:56
  And so there was this like really nice balance, my
• 21:59
  instincts to go more comedy there instincts to go a little
• 22:01
  more drama. And then we like hit a a nice
• 22:04
  little sweet sweet spot there. That's really interesting
• 22:07
  actually, because I feel like the final product is a is a
• 22:10
  fantastic blending of those two ideas.
• 22:12
  Like conceptually, you're putting these two people in one
• 22:15
  of the most romantic settings possible.
• 22:18
  And on paper it's they're trying to like save their relationship
• 22:22
  after going through some traumas together.
• 22:23
  But as the audience, you can tell right away that these two
• 22:26
  were like doomed in a way. Like they're so toxic for each
• 22:31
  other. But the performance, by making
• 22:34
  it a little bit more dry, I think it allows you to not hate
• 22:37
  them too much because you end up feeling sorry for them more than
• 22:39
  just laughing at their exaggerated traits.
• 22:42
  Like there's a sense to which I think a lot of people have been
• 22:46
  in a relationship that is basically over, but neither
• 22:49
  person, like, wants to admit it yet.
• 22:51
  And you're just kind of like hanging on.
• 22:53
  And that's not necessarily like, like the path for Nate and
• 22:56
  Mariah is more ambiguous than that, especially as the film
• 22:59
  goes on. But in the beginning, like when
• 23:01
  the scene opens and they're on the train into town and they're
• 23:04
  just bickering over nonsense, immediately you're placed in
• 23:06
  this position of like, oh, I've seen these kind of people.
• 23:09
  Like, I have seen these people in the most beautiful place on
• 23:12
  earth, hating every second of it because they can't get out of
• 23:14
  their own heads or like, can't get past their own grievances.
• 23:17
  And I think that that marriage of like comedy and drama makes
• 23:20
  it work because these people can't be too in the know about
• 23:24
  how obnoxious they're being because then it would be too you
• 23:27
  wouldn't it wouldn't be as believable as if they genuinely
• 23:29
  both thought they were in the right and like only the other
• 23:31
  person was crazy. Yeah, I like the juxtaposition
• 23:34
  of like the most beautiful place and people who are just
• 23:37
  miserable. Like that is so fun to me
• 23:40
  because it also it'll keep the audience in because you're
• 23:42
  looking at something so beautiful and then you hear
• 23:44
  these things that they're saying sometimes and you're like, Oh my
• 23:46
  God, like what is wrong with you?
• 23:48
  But we've we have all been on that sort of vacation or that,
• 23:52
  or had that experience where you're like, wow, this is
• 23:54
  amazing. And these people are killing it
• 23:56
  for me right now. And what if that's the person
• 23:59
  that you are like supposedly in love with, but not really.
• 24:03
  And it's just like chaotic. And I think the juxtaposition of
• 24:07
  it was fun because we also played with that with the
• 24:10
  structure of the film. You know, you go into it in the
• 24:13
  first a little more than the first half is is very much
• 24:16
  leaning on the dry comedy angle with little bits of drama in
• 24:20
  there. But it doesn't lean into the
• 24:21
  drama so much. It kind of sticks with the the
• 24:24
  dryness of their characters. And then you hit a turning
• 24:27
  point. All of a sudden it like changes.
• 24:29
  And then the rest of the film is like almost pure drama.
• 24:33
  And that was just kind of a fun thing to play with the
• 24:37
  structure. It's like, OK, you know, people
• 24:39
  will tell me, wow, I can't. It felt really fast.
• 24:41
  Like the pacing felt great. And I was like, that's 'cause I,
• 24:43
  I was trying to pull you in with the comedy and then switch it.
• 24:46
  Like I feel when we've watched it in theaters with, with big
• 24:50
  groups, like you feel the pin drop moment where you're like,
• 24:52
  whoa, this is no longer just like these crazy people.
• 24:57
  There's something more happening here.
• 24:58
  So that was a fun, a fun thing to play with the audience's
• 25:01
  expectations of where we were going.
• 25:03
  That's a great thing to highlight.
• 25:05
  And I think as part of the appeal for people who maybe
• 25:07
  you're hearing the interview and are interested in the film, I
• 25:10
  would say that I have seen or at least know of other films that
• 25:13
  have a structure akin to this one.
• 25:15
  Because it's a good thing you can do with a small crew.
• 25:17
  And a lot of people love to write characters and dialogue,
• 25:20
  but I don't think I've ever seen an example of one that has such
• 25:23
  a like that scene kind of moment, you know, going into the
• 25:27
  third act. I mean, it's when I watched the
• 25:30
  final cut with Frank and our family and my wife was there.
• 25:34
  My wife was like screaming at the characters.
• 25:36
  By the end of the movie, she was like yelling at the scream out
• 25:40
  of like not even one emotion. It was like anger and confusion
• 25:44
  and sadness. And it was just such an
• 25:46
  evocative sequence. There's just this one turning
• 25:51
  point in that story heading into the like third act where it
• 25:54
  really elevates this for me. And I think her story like this
• 25:57
  one, to have such a ramping up of tension is really impressive
• 26:00
  because you are keeping the context the same throughout.
• 26:03
  It's not like you have an action set piece at the end, but you
• 26:05
  have a dramatic set piece that manages to give such a lasting
• 26:09
  impression that I think is what a lot of people will talk about
• 26:13
  when they're finished watching it.
• 26:14
  Like you come out of that feeling like a it was well
• 26:17
  paced. It's not too long or too short.
• 26:18
  You get a full story but also you come out of it just in
• 26:22
  heated debate I feel like, which is a very fun movie going
• 26:25
  experience. No, that's, that's a good point
• 26:27
  actually, because I, I've haven't talked to people that
• 26:30
  have seen the movie. I think it's interesting how
• 26:34
  people get different things out of it.
• 26:35
  They they'll, they'll either relate to one of the two
• 26:39
  characters more or like, as, as I think you were mentioning
• 26:44
  earlier, Thomas, it's just like you can kind of everybody has
• 26:47
  had some kind of relationship, like romantic or otherwise,
• 26:51
  where you could kind of like feel where you are in between
• 26:55
  these two and the conversations they're having.
• 26:57
  And of course, in the beginning, you know, they're doing it in
• 26:59
  the most like obnoxious way possible, but that is what
• 27:03
  endears you to those characters. That's by the end when it makes
• 27:07
  that dramatic turn, like you actually care and you're
• 27:10
  invested and in what you know they're going through.
• 27:14
  Absolutely. So again, we've been talking
• 27:17
  about it for a while now. If you've not already clicked on
• 27:20
  that link to rent or purchase Nate and Mariah in Venice,
• 27:23
  again, it's in the description for this episode.
• 27:26
  Before we move on to our blind movie pic that Austin gave us.
• 27:29
  Austin Frank, any other notes? Any other like kind of wrap up
• 27:33
  thoughts about about Nate and Mariah in Venice?
• 27:36
  You know, I really think, first of all, I just have to say I
• 27:40
  couldn't have better partner in this than I keep saying,
• 27:42
  Francis, The audience is used to Frank.
• 27:44
  Sorry, he's. He's.
• 27:46
  Francis to me. He's Francis to me.
• 27:48
  Frank has been a Frank for the 1st 20 years of his life, and
• 27:51
  then he moves to Hollywood for one day and all of a sudden he's
• 27:53
  Francis all right. He had to get all fancy on us.
• 27:56
  So if you look at the credits for the film, it's Francis
• 27:59
  Dillon, not Frank Dillon. We've not been deceiving you.
• 28:01
  It's the same man. Well, Frank or Francis, I
• 28:05
  couldn't have had a better partner in this.
• 28:07
  I mean, there is so much one can learn about just doing the thing
• 28:11
  they want to do. And I feel so great about having
• 28:15
  made this beginning to end. And neither of us gave up.
• 28:19
  And we just, you know, anytime we thought, well, what do we do
• 28:22
  now? We figured it out and I'm proud
• 28:25
  of that and I'm happy it's out there for the world to see and
• 28:28
  whether people like it or don't like it, at this point it's just
• 28:32
  the poster's on the wall in my apartment and it ain't coming
• 28:34
  down. So.
• 28:38
  Yeah, but of course, I hope you like it.
• 28:40
  And, you know, yeah, woo. Yeah, yeah.
• 28:45
  Well, I, I, I same I like, I am extremely grateful to Austin and
• 28:53
  I, I think, I don't know if I've mentioned it on the podcast
• 28:55
  before. Us and I, we've done a short
• 28:57
  film together previously and worked on a couple projects.
• 29:01
  We we, we went to the same film school.
• 29:03
  We were roommates in college, so.
• 29:05
  And. They were.
• 29:07
  Yeah, they were. Roommates.
• 29:09
  But I think like we what I'm really appreciative of is the
• 29:14
  fact that like we both have that same kind of drive to do
• 29:20
  something like this. And that's why I'm really proud
• 29:22
  of the both of us that that we like did see this through to
• 29:27
  where it is now. And yeah, it's just been like so
• 29:32
  much fun. Like Austin said earlier, like
• 29:33
  one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of.
• 29:36
  So I've been really appreciative of that.
• 29:39
  And, you know, last year, we got to, like, see the movie in
• 29:44
  theaters, like, across the country because it was screening
• 29:47
  at all these film festivals. And so like, to put all that
• 29:50
  effort in and then to actually like, be able to sit in a dark
• 29:54
  room and, like, you know, hear people laughing at the jokes.
• 29:57
  Oh my God. People laugh.
• 29:59
  It's like you'll never know better feeling than when a joke
• 30:03
  lands. And especially when they're
• 30:04
  strangers, you're like, they're not doing this thing.
• 30:05
  We feel good. They actually think it's funny.
• 30:07
  We. Yeah, exactly.
• 30:09
  Like so so it that was so validating and rewarding and
• 30:13
  just like every step of this process has been like that, like
• 30:17
  challenging but rewarding. And so, you know, again, very
• 30:20
  appreciative to Austin and, you know, stay tuned to Sardonic
• 30:25
  Motion Pictures because, you know, I think this is just the
• 30:29
  beginning. Yeah.
• 30:30
  Yeah, lots of things are cooking.
• 30:31
  Lots of things are cooking. Things are cooking.
• 30:33
  We we leave the link to sardonicmp.com in the bottom of
• 30:37
  every episode. I'll say this podcast launched
• 30:39
  when it did as a promotional vehicle for this film.
• 30:43
  And it has taken on a life of its own since then.
• 30:45
  And Frank and I love doing it. But like, the timing and the
• 30:48
  urgency of like, we should get this out there was partially
• 30:51
  because we knew that your film was hitting the Film Festival
• 30:53
  circuit last year. So this moment of it being
• 30:57
  available to watch Austin having you on the show with us, like
• 31:00
  it's a full circle moment of like This is why this podcast
• 31:03
  exists. And I truly hope that anybody
• 31:06
  who is a fan of our show goes to check it out, if only because
• 31:10
  maybe they've heard Frank's takes about movies on the show
• 31:12
  and they want to go criticize him for a change.
• 31:18
  I think it's funny to be able to have the contrast of like film
• 31:22
  discourse blended with like you actually are doing it.
• 31:25
  Like you guys have made a film. You have, you know, it's more to
• 31:28
  come from Sardonic MP, so Congrats again.
• 31:33
  Yeah, much. Thank you very much.
• 31:34
  Thank you, thank you. And while, while we're being
• 31:36
  appreciative, I'm, I'm very appreciative of my brother
• 31:38
  Thomas as well for this, this podcast and, and this, this is
• 31:42
  like one of the most fun episodes for me because I'm, I'm
• 31:45
  here with my, my 2 main artistic collaborators.
• 31:49
  So this is, this is really cool. And I'm glad now that we get to
• 31:52
  talk about another movie that we all watched.
• 31:55
  That's true. OK, so this is the end of our
• 31:57
  first half. If you've been listening so far
• 31:59
  and you're wondering where's the movie review part of the show
• 32:01
  that's coming up after the break, we have asked Austin to
• 32:04
  bring us a blind movie pick. We're going to be talking about
• 32:07
  1969's The Italian Job, so stay tuned after the break.
• 32:12
  Sorry, I cut you off. I cut you off.
• 32:14
  Do it again. We're.
• 32:16
  Leaving this edge. We're leaving that in this.
• 32:18
  It's in the edit. OK, so here in our intermission
• 32:27
  segment still, I wanted to take this time to debut sort of like
• 32:31
  a new feature to meet your double feature.
• 32:33
  Whenever we have time, I would like to spotlight other podcasts
• 32:36
  that Frank and I have come across since starting our show,
• 32:39
  just because it's fun to sort of connect and cross promote and
• 32:42
  and let people know about what else is out there.
• 32:44
  So with that in mind, I do have a recommendation for a podcast
• 32:47
  that I came across just recently.
• 32:48
  Actually, for the past 12 years, Scott Brennan and Michael Berlu
• 32:52
  have hosted a podcast called Verbal Shenanigans.
• 32:55
  Each week the two bring on some awesome guests and also dissect
• 32:58
  life with hilarious stories and banter.
• 33:01
  They also play some really hilarious games too.
• 33:04
  To be honest, this is our first time doing an interview style
• 33:06
  segment on our show, and I do think that a lot of interview
• 33:09
  style podcasts can be kind of familiar sounding.
• 33:12
  You know, like the same three questions being asked to the
• 33:14
  same three people very well. Shenanigans really steers clear
• 33:17
  that they're interview focused, but their interviews are fresh
• 33:20
  and interesting. It's not just another talk show,
• 33:22
  you know? It's a decade long master class
• 33:25
  and hilarious banter. Imagine the conversations you
• 33:28
  have with a friend at a bar, but in a weekly podcast format.
• 33:31
  That's Verbal Shenanigans. Outside of the banter too, it's
• 33:34
  really just a who's who in terms of guests that have appeared on
• 33:37
  Verbal Shenanigans so far. Of course, they've been doing it
• 33:40
  for over 500 episodes and they've talked to a lot of
• 33:42
  interesting people for film and TV fans here on Meet Your Double
• 33:45
  Feature. They have talked to a number of
• 33:47
  different actors and television presenters, people whose names
• 33:50
  you might know like Mark Summers, John Walsh, even John
• 33:53
  Schneider, who we've been talking about superheroes a lot
• 33:56
  recently. John Schneider was on the TV
• 33:58
  show Smallville, so connection there.
• 34:01
  If any of that sounds interesting to you, we strongly
• 34:03
  recommend that you subscribe, follow, give a listen to the
• 34:06
  Verbal Shenanigans podcast. And with that, let's get back to
• 34:09
  our show. OK, coming in now on the other
• 34:15
  side of the break, Austin, we talked about the film that you
• 34:18
  and Frank worked on, but we also for the show today asked you to
• 34:21
  pitch us a blind movie recommendation.
• 34:23
  So could you walk us through the movie you selected and what the
• 34:27
  inspiration was for that for that pic?
• 34:29
  Well, I'll walk you through the whole process.
• 34:31
  At first I thought I would do Roman holiday because I actually
• 34:34
  haven't seen it. And I was like, oh, like
• 34:36
  vacation. But then Francis has seen it.
• 34:38
  So I was like, damn you. Then I was kind of like movies
• 34:43
  in Italy. Movies in Italy.
• 34:45
  Oh, duh, The Italian Job. And the reason I picked this is
• 34:48
  if if everyone during the break went and streamed our movie and
• 34:51
  then came back to listen to the podcast, which you should have.
• 34:55
  That was what was expected. There's a joke midway through
• 35:00
  the movie where the characters are in Saint Mark's Square and
• 35:06
  there the opening scene in The Italian Job 2003 version, the
• 35:10
  remake is in Saint Mark's Square.
• 35:13
  So it's kind of a recurring joke throughout the movie that Nate
• 35:16
  as a characterized as a tour filmmaker that he sees himself
• 35:19
  as. It's kind of fangirling over
• 35:21
  movies that are just like really mediocre.
• 35:25
  And one of those and one of those is The Italian Job.
• 35:27
  So he goes on a monologue about how much he loves The Italian
• 35:30
  Job, but then the joke that is like he's talking about the
• 35:33
  remake. And then I was like, you know, I
• 35:36
  wrote this and I wrote this joke, but I've never actually
• 35:38
  seen the original. So that was my pick.
• 35:42
  It's Italian and it is on theme for our film.
• 35:46
  That's awesome. I yeah, I had not.
• 35:48
  None of the three of us had seen this one prior to this week,
• 35:51
  which I think was great. I know it's hard to know what
• 35:53
  movies other people have watched before, so I'm glad that we
• 35:56
  landed on this one because it's new for everybody.
• 35:59
  And it's really interesting because Frank and I mostly so
• 36:02
  far have covered lesser known films, like stuff that maybe had
• 36:07
  big name actors but kind of flopped or was forgotten about.
• 36:09
  Italian Job, it was the opposite where I knew it existed.
• 36:12
  I did not know that it is like landmark British film, like a
• 36:17
  significant entry in the British film Canon to the point where
• 36:21
  there were references to it when London hosted the Olympics.
• 36:24
  Like they did a recreation of the bus from the end of the
• 36:28
  movie and they put like dialogue from the movie in the closing
• 36:31
  ceremony. This is like the.
• 36:32
  Spice Girls on the Mini Coopers. Yeah, like they came out.
• 36:36
  The Spice Girls came out on Mini Coopers.
• 36:38
  So this is fascinating. This is going to be a case of
• 36:40
  like, people will actually probably know this one and have
• 36:42
  their own thoughts about it. But we're going, we're going in
• 36:44
  blind. We each just watched it for the
• 36:45
  first time, I guess. Maybe Frank let me throw it over
• 36:48
  to you first general thoughts on 1969 The Italian Job?
• 36:53
  Well, based on the general vibe I'm getting from the two of you,
• 36:56
  I think I might be the outlier here in that I did not love this
• 37:02
  movie all. Right cut his mic.
• 37:05
  Cut his mic. And, and I will say, I mean, I
• 37:09
  like after watching it because this is this is my process for
• 37:14
  the show is I will just watch the movie with his little like
• 37:18
  outside influence is possible, you know, and then afterwards
• 37:21
  we'll do some research on it. And I realized after the fact,
• 37:25
  like you were saying, what a like landmark British cinema
• 37:29
  film this is. And I feel like watching the
• 37:33
  movie outside of that context, it didn't resonate with me in a
• 37:39
  strong way. There was there was a lot of
• 37:42
  stuff I liked in it, you know, like to to always kind of pull
• 37:46
  out the positives and and this might sound harsh, but the stuff
• 37:49
  that I really liked, like some of the shots that were like the
• 37:52
  most interesting to me, I'm like, oh man, that's a really
• 37:55
  cool. It's just a shame it's in this
• 37:57
  movie. Oh my goodness.
• 38:02
  The entire country of England just turned off the show.
• 38:04
  They're done. They're not coming back.
• 38:07
  I mean, British humor is very particular and I do find some of
• 38:12
  it funny. But like my thought with for
• 38:14
  most of this movie was everything was like almost a
• 38:19
  joke. It was like almost funny but
• 38:23
  didn't quite get there. It was like it it like they like
• 38:26
  thought about trying to be funny and then change their minds at
• 38:29
  the last minute. But isn't that?
• 38:31
  In in its conception, kind of a funny thought, like the idea of
• 38:35
  walking up to tell a punchline and then just kind of like.
• 38:37
  Moving on that theoretically, yes, but before I get too into
• 38:43
  it, I'll let you guys give your initial thoughts because I, I
• 38:46
  feel like I like I said, I might be the the negative outlier
• 38:49
  here. OK, this is good though, because
• 38:51
  now we got the balance of opinions.
• 38:54
  One might say the balance is sort of like on the edge of a
• 38:57
  Cliff. We will get to that.
• 39:00
  We will get to that. Yeah, awesome.
• 39:03
  What? What are your just like top down
• 39:05
  thoughts on the film? Top down thoughts.
• 39:08
  Well, Francis, once again, we're mostly aligned here, you know,
• 39:15
  like, OK, I liked it. I, I struggled engaging in the
• 39:20
  film. What I'll say is from the get
• 39:23
  go, I the movie started and I was like, oh, I'm going to love
• 39:27
  this. Like the opening sequence was so
• 39:30
  cool and the soundtrack was great and it looked so gorgeous
• 39:33
  in the shots and the cars in the Italy And I'm like, Oh my God,
• 39:35
  this is right up my alley. So I started off on a really
• 39:37
  high note and then I guess I didn't know it was a comedy
• 39:41
  because I also like didn't do a lot of research.
• 39:44
  So I was like, this is such a weird tone.
• 39:48
  And I'm like, am I supposed to? Is this a joke?
• 39:50
  Like, or is this just like a slightly older film?
• 39:53
  So it's reading as a little bit of a joke.
• 39:55
  And I was like, no, no, no, this is a comedy.
• 39:58
  So I'm was definitely on the edge of like, not really
• 40:01
  thinking it was funny, but like appreciating humor.
• 40:04
  But then more than anything, I just found bits and parts of it
• 40:09
  kind of odd and I was kind of confused.
• 40:13
  I don't, I don't really consider myself.
• 40:16
  I'm normally pretty pretty good at like clocking.
• 40:19
  What's going on? And I'm not talking about the
• 40:21
  overarching plot because they, they kind of hit you over the
• 40:24
  habitat like 5 times with what, what the plan was.
• 40:27
  But I'm like, oh, this, this guy, he's, he runs the prison.
• 40:31
  And then I was like, wait, he's a prisoner.
• 40:34
  And I don't know the, that those kind of revelations were
• 40:37
  happening to me throughout the movie where I was just kind of
• 40:39
  like taken aback a little. But what I will say is I do
• 40:43
  agree with the cinematography is what, no matter what, I mean,
• 40:47
  was so gorgeous. And I kind of had that like,
• 40:50
  wow. It felt sort of like, I thought
• 40:52
  of you, Francis, because I was thinking about your love of Kung
• 40:55
  Fu. Kung Fu.
• 40:57
  Yeah, yeah. Martial arts and how some
• 40:59
  martial arts sort of things and how some of those films were
• 41:03
  built around the idea of, like, what big stunt do we want to do
• 41:07
  and how can we weed that into a sort of narrative so we can get
• 41:10
  to our big stunt piece? And I was thinking, OK, they had
• 41:14
  shots in mind and they had their big ending chase in mind and
• 41:18
  they were like how can we get to these things?
• 41:21
  And I will say I enjoyed it. I did not love it, but I am glad
• 41:26
  that I watched it and it was really beautiful to look at.
• 41:29
  OK. Yes, this is interesting.
• 41:31
  I'm glad we've gone through this order because Frank, I think was
• 41:33
  unsold. Austin, you were like teetering
• 41:35
  like a bus. I had a different kind of Arc
• 41:40
  with the film where when it started, I was very unenthused.
• 41:45
  The movie tonally has nothing in common with the remake that a
• 41:49
  lot of American audiences might have seen in the 2000s with Mark
• 41:52
  Wahlberg. That one's like an action drama
• 41:54
  that just has car stunts. The 60s one is a straight comedy
• 41:58
  that I think tonally people might recognize as being similar
• 42:02
  to like the George Clooney Ocean's 11 type heist movie
• 42:06
  where you're never supposed to really.
• 42:08
  There's dramatic stakes, but the heist is not really the drama.
• 42:12
  Like the characters, you're not supposed to worry that they're
• 42:15
  going to get killed or that anything particularly upsetting
• 42:18
  is going to happen. There's like a cool 60s kind of
• 42:22
  James Bond energy to it. But with this particular one,
• 42:25
  they just crank up the comedy. And at the beginning, none of
• 42:27
  that was working for me because it was a little too slow.
• 42:30
  Michael Caine is a fantastic actor, but even he had some like
• 42:34
  just pointless feeling scenes. There is a scene that I later
• 42:37
  read was apparently largely improvised where he's, he gets
• 42:40
  out of prison at the beginning, just like Danny Ocean, Ocean's
• 42:42
  11. And he goes to get his car out
• 42:45
  of like a garage that he'd been parking it in.
• 42:47
  And he has this whole interaction with the guy who's
• 42:49
  like giving him the car back about how he owes him money
• 42:51
  because it's been sitting there for like 3 years.
• 42:53
  And they just go on and on. And there's, like you said,
• 42:55
  Frank, there's no punch line in that conversation anywhere.
• 42:58
  It's just supposed to be a bit of awkward British politeness,
• 43:01
  but it's like 3 or 4 minutes long.
• 43:02
  And after that, I was like, this is killing me.
• 43:04
  This is so boring. But the movie wore me down.
• 43:08
  And by the end I was genuinely enjoyed it quite a bit.
• 43:12
  Like I think there was a turning point once they finished their
• 43:15
  setup, which is a little weak and actually just start moving
• 43:18
  towards the heist. Like they get into Italy, they
• 43:21
  get all their cars, they get the team together where just
• 43:24
  something about the humor started to click for me more.
• 43:27
  And I got a couple legitimately like laugh out loud moments in
• 43:29
  it and I love. Really.
• 43:32
  I loved the ending, which I guess we'll get to it a bit like
• 43:35
  I, I think my favorite thing in the whole movie.
• 43:37
  And I don't know why this tickled me so much.
• 43:39
  But they're like in their staging area.
• 43:41
  They're hanging out in this very like picturesque, like rundown
• 43:44
  church, getting ready to like send everybody off to kick off
• 43:46
  the heist. And Michael Caine is kind of on
• 43:48
  edge. He's yelling at everybody to
• 43:50
  like get in order because his team's a bunch of goofballs.
• 43:52
  And then right before they leave, he's like, all right,
• 43:54
  everybody out. And then he goes, wait a minute,
• 43:56
  one more thing. And then there's a long like
• 43:58
  pregnant pause. And then he's like, people in
• 44:00
  this country all drive on the wrong side of the road.
• 44:03
  And then everybody in the team genuinely grumbles like they're
• 44:07
  upset about it. Like they just it cuts to the to
• 44:10
  the opposite shot. And this group of like trained
• 44:12
  professionals all just kind of goes, wow, ow.
• 44:13
  I just thought that was such a funny idea that in the midst of
• 44:17
  everything a that he calls it the wrong side just because it's
• 44:20
  not what they do in the UK. And the idea that that would
• 44:23
  actually bother everybody. They have to remember to drive
• 44:26
  on the same. It's the same as in the US.
• 44:28
  In Italy, I guess they're like right side of the road.
• 44:30
  But I was like, that killed me. I was laughing about that for
• 44:33
  like a minute afterwards. So I started off low and I ended
• 44:36
  high, which I think is different than both of you.
• 44:38
  Interesting. I'm glad that that worked for
• 44:41
  you because I feel like that that's that British dry humor
• 44:46
  and that felt like one of the only times they they got to the
• 44:51
  point where they were telling a joke like, and and like you said
• 44:55
  too, Michael Caine is fantastic. And the problem I think with the
• 45:02
  rest of the movie is that he's like the only character in the
• 45:06
  movie in a way like this, like you mentioned Ocean's 11 and I
• 45:11
  feel like Ocean's 11 has become like the template for a heist
• 45:16
  movie. And this one, like narratively
• 45:19
  from the beginning is hitting some of the same beats.
• 45:23
  But like they introduced like the rest of his team.
• 45:28
  And you like they're, you know, they're there often enough, but
• 45:31
  none of them are characters. You don't really know their
• 45:33
  names. You don't know anything about
• 45:34
  them. It's just the rest of the people
• 45:36
  he's there with and. Impossible to differentiate one
• 45:40
  from another. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 45:43
  So it's like he was great, but he almost had no one else to
• 45:46
  play off of for most of the movie.
• 45:49
  Even some of the other minor characters he was interacting
• 45:52
  with along the way, it was like nothing, you know?
• 45:55
  They just weren't giving you anything.
• 45:57
  Yeah, it does have, in a way, a small cast of actual characters.
• 46:01
  Michael Caine is like the Danny Ocean, you know, equivalent.
• 46:04
  He's the one heading up, I think his name is Charlie Croker.
• 46:06
  He's the one actually leading the heist.
• 46:08
  The only other character with any depth is Bridger, who you
• 46:11
  were talking about Austin who? This is 1, where the joke didn't
• 46:14
  really land for me, but I understood what it was.
• 46:16
  It was like he's a criminal, like a really wealthy criminal
• 46:20
  who has so much power and influence that even though he's
• 46:23
  in jail from the beginning of the movie, he basically runs the
• 46:25
  whole thing like the the cops all kind of owe him.
• 46:29
  So they let him do whatever he wants.
• 46:30
  All the other prisoners are like Revere him.
• 46:34
  And so he's this kind of like bankrolling mastermind guy.
• 46:37
  But the main conceit is that he's deeply patriotic.
• 46:40
  So like throughout the whole story, part of his motivation
• 46:43
  for even getting involved is to just like strengthen the
• 46:47
  economic position of the UK more so than that he cares about the
• 46:52
  heist or anything related to it. And I think there's even a bit
• 46:55
  where like, First off, they play the Rule Britannia song almost
• 46:58
  any time he's on screen, which is should be funny, but I
• 47:01
  honestly just got quite annoying after a while.
• 47:05
  And so there's elements there where I'm like, that was the
• 47:07
  beginning of the movie for me. I'm like, there's a bit here.
• 47:09
  This character is a one note joke.
• 47:12
  I did like the performance though.
• 47:13
  I feel like outside of that kind of like tacked on comedic
• 47:16
  conceit, he gave like a good performance overall.
• 47:20
  He was maybe the only other character.
• 47:22
  To touch on his character really quickly though, I didn't delve
• 47:26
  into this too much, but I think part of the context of his
• 47:30
  character is lost because I think he is based on an actual
• 47:34
  like political figure in England of the time.
• 47:38
  So I think again, it's like a lot of this movie is important
• 47:44
  like culturally to the time period, but it's like that
• 47:47
  context is sort of lost if you're not familiar with it.
• 47:51
  So like, that's even why that stuff with him, like Austin, you
• 47:56
  were like, I'm confused by this. And it's like I got like the way
• 48:00
  you describe the character Thomas.
• 48:01
  It's like that made sense to me. Yes, but I can see being
• 48:04
  confused by it too, because it's like it wasn't until after the
• 48:06
  fact reading it that I was like, oh, this.
• 48:08
  He is supposed to be either literally an actual person or
• 48:12
  just sort of like an an analog for someone.
• 48:16
  I found his introduction being like a bathroom gag to be really
• 48:22
  off putting to me. I know that's so ridiculous, but
• 48:25
  I was like, OK. And now like the rest of the
• 48:29
  movie was colored by that scene where I was just confused at
• 48:33
  where they were like I did not clock that they were in a
• 48:35
  prison. I was like, what is this weird
• 48:37
  building there? I don't know why.
• 48:38
  Why does he have guards to go to the bathroom?
• 48:40
  Like I was sitting there thinking about what was
• 48:41
  happening. And then I was like, why is he
• 48:43
  obsessed with the queen? Like, I don't know.
• 48:46
  I obviously. And then I realized he was a
• 48:50
  prisoner. He was just well dressed.
• 48:52
  I thought he was like running the show.
• 48:53
  I was like, oh, we, they're trying to protect him from the
• 48:56
  other prisoner. They, he must be a bad warden.
• 48:58
  I, I don't know, like I, I was, I was not thinking what was
• 49:02
  going on, what was going on. It's it's not completely
• 49:05
  obvious. I think there's there's things
• 49:06
  that in a modern telling of the story you would establish more
• 49:10
  firmly with like specific gags about who they are.
• 49:13
  But the movie just kind of kicks off and I would call the whole
• 49:15
  story very loose. I mean, there's characters who
• 49:18
  fall in and out of the story without any proper resolution
• 49:22
  just for the sake of doing gags. I think my least favorite was
• 49:26
  the Benny Hill character, the Mr. Peach, Professor Peach, who
• 49:32
  that was awkward. They do this whole setup about
• 49:35
  how he's in like a home because he's like super smart but like
• 49:39
  mentally deficient or something. I thought he would like was
• 49:43
  sexually assaulting overweight women and was like, was that not
• 49:48
  the gag? I mean, I, I think we were
• 49:50
  supposed to laugh, but I was like, I'm why can't this lady
• 49:52
  get through doors? Like what?
• 49:54
  There was just. And then he just leaves the
• 49:57
  story. He just like is there they give
• 50:00
  him a role that's like not really shown but just described
• 50:03
  that he's part of the like the technological side of their like
• 50:05
  heist and then he just chases some woman away and then you
• 50:08
  never see him again. I think he was arrested.
• 50:11
  He's arrested. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 50:13
  So he gets arrested, but like, they don't, they don't go get
• 50:15
  him. Like he never comes back.
• 50:17
  So that like, what was the purpose?
• 50:19
  Like he didn't fulfill his part of the plan.
• 50:22
  There was like a man dressed as a woman throwing, like doing
• 50:26
  some sort of tech thing. Right.
• 50:28
  But they were trying to disrupt, Yeah, like the the security
• 50:31
  cameras, because the heist itself is they're trying to
• 50:32
  steal gold in the middle of a traffic jam.
• 50:36
  It's just sort of similar to the the plot in the remake where
• 50:39
  they essentially know that there's a gold shipment that's
• 50:42
  been delivered by plane and taken to like a central bank or
• 50:44
  something. And so their goal is to initiate
• 50:46
  a massive traffic jam in in Turin and then rob the truck in
• 50:51
  broad daylight and just get away amidst the confusion.
• 50:53
  And there is some like, technical aspects to it, but
• 50:55
  half the characters, yeah, like their their roles just done
• 50:58
  immediately. The most of the cast is done as
• 51:00
  soon as they initiate the robbery, because then it's
• 51:03
  mostly just the three Mini Coopers trying to evade the
• 51:06
  police. Which was awesome.
• 51:08
  That part was awesome, but it was maybe not earned in the
• 51:11
  sense that it was like, we really like this.
• 51:13
  We have some fantastic imagery of them driving up and down
• 51:16
  roofs of tall buildings and open jumps and in rivers.
• 51:20
  But by the time you get to that point, you're like, did we
• 51:21
  really build to this or did we just kind of do it at the end?
• 51:24
  Yeah. And I, I think that ties back to
• 51:26
  Austin's point earlier because, because I think Austin, you and
• 51:30
  I, we may have watched one of like Jackie Chan's movies
• 51:33
  together. I think.
• 51:35
  I think it was the original police story.
• 51:37
  Yeah. We're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:39
  And like, I, I remember in, like, the commentary for that
• 51:42
  film, it was what, like you were talking about where it's like
• 51:44
  Jackie Chan. He's talking about like building
• 51:47
  the movie around the action sequences and I feel like the
• 51:51
  the note I have about this movie is really cool slash dangerous
• 51:56
  looking ending sequence that got there in the most dull and
• 52:01
  honest interesting way possible. Like it's just.
• 52:06
  Did you like that part of their elaborate scheme?
• 52:09
  They were like, we're going to throw these transmitters to
• 52:11
  block security cameras. We're going to do some other
• 52:14
  high end hacking thing to disrupt all the streetlights so
• 52:16
  that everybody gets stuck in gridlock.
• 52:18
  We're going to drive our car through the back streets and
• 52:20
  then in in the key part of the heist, when they actually
• 52:23
  approach the van carrying the gold, the step in the original
• 52:26
  plan is beat the crap out of all the military guys and take.
• 52:30
  I was like, how did you just bank on that work?
• 52:33
  Can you imagine if in the middle of Ocean's 11, George Cooney was
• 52:36
  like, so then we get in the vault, right, and we just beat
• 52:38
  up all the guards? Like that's also a note I have.
• 52:42
  I'm like, this was so these guards have guns and their plan
• 52:45
  is to walk up to them with sticks and hit them with sticks
• 52:48
  and that works like. Not just sticks, they also were
• 52:51
  wearing blue jumpsuits. OK.
• 52:53
  Yeah, that's true. Very threatening.
• 52:55
  They all meant I. Don't think they were
• 52:56
  bulletproof jumpsuits so. I think the visors might have
• 53:01
  been the visors had like chicken wire on them.
• 53:03
  I was like, OK. They looked like football
• 53:04
  helmets, like American football helmets.
• 53:07
  I would have assumed the plan would be that you make so much
• 53:10
  noise that you can offload the gold without the people driving
• 53:13
  the car even knowing about it. Or something like some elaborate
• 53:16
  thing where you draw them away and then you steal the gold and
• 53:18
  you leave. But they're like, no, we just
• 53:19
  knocked him unconscious. And I was like, wow, that is not
• 53:22
  clever. No.
• 53:23
  And like, as long as we're talking about the, the plan of
• 53:28
  their heist here, the next step was like also confusing to me
• 53:32
  because they like drive the gold into this room and then like
• 53:36
  barricade one entrance. And it's like the police are
• 53:39
  trying to break in through that entrance.
• 53:41
  And I'm like, at this point I'm like, OK, this is interesting.
• 53:43
  How are they going to get out of this?
• 53:44
  And then they like go out the back door and I'm like, if
• 53:47
  there's a back door or why didn't the police come in
• 53:50
  through that way? Like why were they trying to get
• 53:53
  in through the only blocked off entrance to?
• 53:57
  That they went through like a big house, like the, the cars
• 54:01
  drove out some sort of mansion and I was like, I feel like I
• 54:03
  missed some I, I didn't understand the architecture
• 54:06
  here. I thought they were trapped in a
• 54:07
  room and then all of a sudden we're in the museum and then
• 54:11
  driving. Through the.
• 54:12
  Open air market. They spend a lot of time telling
• 54:15
  you the plan, but unlike a a newer movie that would do like,
• 54:18
  infographics to like show you what's going to happen, they
• 54:21
  kind of just rely on you to catch the dialogue.
• 54:24
  And then when it's actually happening, I was like, I don't
• 54:26
  really know the plan. And I don't know if that's
• 54:28
  funnier or less funny that I don't actually know what's
• 54:30
  happening, but I agree that it is.
• 54:33
  It really does not play with what a lot of heist movies play
• 54:37
  with, which is like changing the plan on the fly.
• 54:40
  They're kind of just like it mostly works up until the very
• 54:42
  end. Well, again, it's it's hard to
• 54:45
  for me at least to not compare this to like an Ocean's 11
• 54:48
  because with the guy that you were mentioning earlier that
• 54:50
  just like leaves the movie at one point because he gets
• 54:53
  arrested or whatever happens to him in a different type of heist
• 54:57
  movie. That would be the point where
• 54:59
  it'd be like, OK, this messes up the plan.
• 55:02
  Now somebody else has to step in and fill his role and adds
• 55:05
  dramatic tension to that. You know, it's like the whole
• 55:08
  formula is like they tell you the plan ahead of time, set up
• 55:12
  your expectations and then show you the complications along the
• 55:15
  way. And this movie doesn't do that.
• 55:17
  It it like barely tells you the plan and then when they're
• 55:21
  executing it, it's like confusing and then, you know,
• 55:25
  you go back to that character and it's like, I guess we didn't
• 55:28
  need him at all because he's not here and that didn't change
• 55:30
  anything. But but to touch on the barely
• 55:33
  telling the plan, I felt like so much time was spent repeating
• 55:39
  some sort of plan that I was kind of like, OK, I don't really
• 55:41
  know what they're talking about. Like there was a a sort of 16mm
• 55:44
  video with very high production value to describe the plan 1st
• 55:48
  and. I was like just.
• 55:50
  Like he hired someone to make this video #1 but so they they
• 55:54
  he sort of explained it and then he re kept reiterating it to
• 55:57
  himself through the whole thing. OK, traffic jam, traffic jam I'm
• 56:00
  like OK, I get it. And then it was like and this is
• 56:02
  our team and I'm going to tell you the plan again in a really
• 56:05
  long scene, which was more or less just like escape.
• 56:08
  And then we got to the the mansion, the decrepit mansion or
• 56:12
  whatever, and they're like, and now we're when I talked about
• 56:14
  the plan again, I'm like, I get it.
• 56:15
  You take the gold and you go. And then we went to go do the
• 56:18
  plan and the plan was we take the golden, we escape and it was
• 56:22
  really just like a really cool car chase.
• 56:24
  But I guess my modern day sensibilities with how I expect
• 56:27
  the the formula of these movies to go, it's like that's like to
• 56:31
  me, you're cold open to a heist movie is kind of what we got in
• 56:34
  the finale. And I know that's like my modern
• 56:37
  perception expecting, I'm expecting like a turn halfway
• 56:41
  through there. I'm expecting someone who's on
• 56:42
  the team is actually the bad guy.
• 56:44
  And then like, uh oh, what do we do?
• 56:46
  I'm expecting them what ends up being the end of this movie to
• 56:49
  be like, I don't know, just like a moment of drama midway through
• 56:53
  an action scene. So I do take, I take
• 56:57
  responsibility for having incorrect, you know,
• 57:00
  expectations coming into it because I'm used to the formula
• 57:03
  of a heist movie. And maybe that's my own fault
• 57:05
  and why I couldn't connect to it.
• 57:06
  But I did feel like there was a long lead up only on Michael
• 57:10
  Caine's character randomly having orgies.
• 57:14
  And I'm like when we get into the good stuff like.
• 57:19
  And immediately after that orgy, he goes to have sex with someone
• 57:23
  else. That's a lady, Yeah. 333 in a
• 57:27
  row. Boom boom boom.
• 57:29
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is like 3 scenes in a row.
• 57:30
  Yeah, that's just all he's doing.
• 57:32
  I will say Frank supports your point.
• 57:34
  They really just whiffed an obvious dialogue style punchline
• 57:38
  with that because Michael Caine gets out of jail his
• 57:41
  girlfriend's question mark, like kind of, you know, like they're
• 57:45
  not that committed. But she is like his girlfriend
• 57:47
  picks him up and takes him to an orgy and he's like, here's these
• 57:51
  twenty women I brought for you. Way too many.
• 57:54
  And then in a way too many. I was talking about this with my
• 57:57
  wife. I was just like, what do you do
• 57:59
  in that room? Like yeah, he's ruined.
• 58:01
  Where do you start? Like imagine just being like all
• 58:04
  right I need like 15 of you to go way over there for like 3
• 58:07
  hours. Like you, you go make my bed.
• 58:11
  Like you go pick up my laundry because you're not going to get
• 58:16
  to each one of them. Yeah, I'm just.
• 58:20
  But then later, there's another scene that is played as a joke
• 58:23
  where Michael Caine is sleeping with three other random women
• 58:25
  because he's really good at that, I guess.
• 58:27
  And his girlfriend comes in and, like, storms in and, like,
• 58:29
  chases them away and gets mad at him.
• 58:31
  And the joke is, why is she mad about this if she invited all
• 58:35
  those other women the first time?
• 58:37
  And they just kind of like, stumble over that punchline.
• 58:39
  There's no obvious, like, dialogue punchline to that.
• 58:42
  Michael Caine says it. He's like, well, I thought it
• 58:44
  was fine. And she just says, like, oh,
• 58:46
  that was your coming out party. And then they move on.
• 58:48
  And I'm like, no, that's a funny interaction.
• 58:50
  Like you've created comedy, do the comedy and they that's.
• 58:53
  What I'm saying, they always walk up to the plate and then
• 58:56
  turn around and go home. They just there's nothing like.
• 59:01
  She as a character was also odd in the fact that I'm like OK
• 59:05
  maybe I am also missing some context.
• 59:07
  I'm thinking maybe she's like a a play on like the femme fatale
• 59:11
  kind of character where I thought she was going to have
• 59:13
  some sort of significance and then all of a sudden she just
• 59:15
  like leaves and I'm like, oh, OK, maybe she's been kidnapped
• 59:18
  by the mafia and she's going to be held hostage at the end.
• 59:20
  Literally that's what I'm thinking.
• 59:21
  I'm like, yeah, she's got to have some significant.
• 59:23
  Then she's just kind of like gone.
• 59:25
  And I was like. She does leave before the heist
• 59:27
  and never comes back, even though they show you that the
• 59:29
  mafia, the Italian mafia guy who's their main concern outside
• 59:32
  of the the government of Italy stopping them, sees her boarding
• 59:36
  that plane. Yeah.
• 59:37
  So they're like, oh, he's going to get.
• 59:39
  I will say to defend the movie and my viewing of it, sort of
• 59:43
  every one of these faults does make the ending of the movie
• 59:46
  funnier to me. Like all of these unfinished
• 59:50
  plot threads and like unfocused character ideas culminating in a
• 59:54
  movie in the ending that we get, which I think we can get into
• 59:56
  because it's a pretty famous ending in British film.
• 1:00:00
  I. It literally said out loud as it
• 1:00:03
  was about to pull away. My God, I hope this is the end
• 1:00:05
  of the movie. And then it was and I again was
• 1:00:07
  laughing out loud. I was like, that's so funny.
• 1:00:10
  You've saved it. You've saved it in the last five
• 1:00:12
  seconds. Really so?
• 1:00:13
  Like it? I liked the ending I did.
• 1:00:15
  Yeah, I mean, it's a literal cliffhanger.
• 1:00:18
  They're literally the edge of a. Cliff because like you said, the
• 1:00:22
  plan has no issues at all. No matter what happens, the plan
• 1:00:25
  is fine. They make fools of the police
• 1:00:27
  and the mob, even though the mob acts like they're going to be
• 1:00:30
  the ones who actually outmaneuver them.
• 1:00:31
  They don't. They get away with the gold.
• 1:00:33
  They load it onto a bus. And we've seen throughout the
• 1:00:35
  whole movie all these scenes of the driving through like the
• 1:00:37
  mountains with all these winding roads.
• 1:00:40
  And so their bus hits like a rock or something and whips out
• 1:00:43
  so that the back half is teetering off a Cliff and all
• 1:00:46
  the people are towards the front of the bus and the gold is on
• 1:00:49
  the back. And so Michael Caine starts very
• 1:00:51
  slowly in a very drawn out sequence, trying to crawl over
• 1:00:55
  to where the gold is so that he can pull it closer.
• 1:00:57
  And every time he gets closer, it just slides further towards
• 1:01:00
  the back of the bus. And then he says, he's like, all
• 1:01:04
  right, lads, give me one second. I've got a great idea.
• 1:01:07
  And then the music starts up again.
• 1:01:10
  And we just start pulling away. And we show this like,
• 1:01:11
  helicopter shot of the cliffs. And then I'm like, is this it?
• 1:01:14
  Is this it credits? And I'm like, that's so much
• 1:01:16
  funnier than any other resolution to this story.
• 1:01:20
  So I will say again, from what I read about that ending, Michael
• 1:01:25
  Caine himself has said later that the reason for that ending
• 1:01:31
  was because of censorship laws at the time, similar to like how
• 1:01:37
  in the US we had, I believe it was like the Hayes Code where it
• 1:01:42
  was like the rules of filmmaking.
• 1:01:44
  They weren't allowed to show these guys getting away with the
• 1:01:47
  heist. They couldn't be criminals and
• 1:01:50
  then be successful at the end. So they had to like, leave it
• 1:01:53
  ambiguous. And then I guess the idea from
• 1:01:56
  there was it was setting up a sequel.
• 1:01:58
  That was the initial concept of the ending, was that they were
• 1:02:02
  going to do another film to follow up on where that goes.
• 1:02:06
  Which the movie does set up properly because you have all
• 1:02:09
  these threads that as a viewer, you know, any one of us was
• 1:02:11
  like, OK, clearly the mafia is going to come back into the
• 1:02:14
  story somehow. There they already showed that
• 1:02:16
  the mafia is on their way to intercept them.
• 1:02:18
  But then the fact that that doesn't happen is so funny to
• 1:02:20
  me. It's just like, Nah, we're out.
• 1:02:22
  We're we've had our fun. You can all go home.
• 1:02:25
  See, it's funny that that worked for you because that is the
• 1:02:29
  intention. But like for me watching it, I
• 1:02:31
  didn't get that at all. I was just like, that's OK.
• 1:02:35
  Yeah, I definitely felt like it was just a lot of loose plot
• 1:02:38
  threads. And the ending did lead me to
• 1:02:41
  think like I was kind of looking at the Wikipedia.
• 1:02:44
  I was like, is there another one?
• 1:02:45
  It's like you set up all these interesting characters and then
• 1:02:47
  they don't, a lot of them just leave the story.
• 1:02:49
  And I was expecting, I was like, the mafia's got to have a
• 1:02:52
  presence here in the second-half here.
• 1:02:53
  It's not just going to be this car chase.
• 1:02:55
  They're going to show up. That's why I'm like, they're
• 1:02:57
  going to show up and she's going to be kidnapped and it's all
• 1:02:58
  going to connect. Then I was like, OK, so.
• 1:03:00
  Well, because there even is the guy like you mentioned Thomas
• 1:03:05
  and you're, you're talking about now us and the the the mafia guy
• 1:03:08
  sees his girlfriend get on the plane.
• 1:03:11
  And then later there is dialogue from him where he's like find
• 1:03:15
  people that flew out in the past couple days or something along
• 1:03:19
  those lines. So there is, there's like a
• 1:03:21
  follow up to that even where he's where it's like setting up
• 1:03:25
  that they're going to find her and where she went and then we
• 1:03:28
  don't see that. So I thought the plane was going
• 1:03:30
  to explode. I was like, damn, they got the
• 1:03:32
  budget to blow up this plane right now because they were
• 1:03:34
  blowing up everything else. Yeah, they did blow a lot of
• 1:03:37
  stuff you could do. I almost wonder how many of
• 1:03:39
  these later heist movies were, like, playing on the ideation
• 1:03:43
  that came from seeing a movie like this.
• 1:03:44
  Because the beginning of the of Ocean's 12, the like middle one
• 1:03:48
  starts with Andy Garcia's character just tracking down all
• 1:03:51
  the people from the first movie and like capturing them all
• 1:03:53
  individually, which is a fun sequence in that movie.
• 1:03:56
  And it almost feels like what they were going for here where
• 1:03:58
  it's like, oh, you got away with the heist, but we can track all
• 1:04:01
  the people involved and then the story's not over yet, which I
• 1:04:04
  think would have been the sequel would have been like, we have to
• 1:04:07
  now do a new job for the Italian mob to get even for what we
• 1:04:11
  stole. I will say to concede what I was
• 1:04:14
  mentioning earlier, I don't think that all these loose
• 1:04:17
  threads leading to that ending we're done with intention.
• 1:04:21
  I don't think they intentionally made it like an unfinished story
• 1:04:24
  to make that part funnier. I think that's just a
• 1:04:26
  coincidence. Like if they had done everything
• 1:04:30
  the same up to the bus scene and then we get a more standard
• 1:04:34
  ending where like maybe it's just Michael Caine back in jail
• 1:04:36
  where he was at the beginning to like put a button on it in a
• 1:04:39
  more normal way, then I would have been even less engaged.
• 1:04:42
  But something about with all the other missteps, them choosing to
• 1:04:44
  end it where they did, I was like this was one good idea
• 1:04:47
  mixed with everything else. No, I mean, I do enjoy like just
• 1:04:53
  for the shell shock alone, because I remember watching it
• 1:04:56
  and I was like looking at like the, you know, the time code.
• 1:04:59
  I'm like, wait, wait a minute. I'm like.
• 1:05:01
  This two minutes left. Like 2 minutes left.
• 1:05:03
  I'm like, why are they? What's going to happen here?
• 1:05:05
  Like and then I was like, Oh my God, that's the ending.
• 1:05:08
  So it like took me a minute to process even.
• 1:05:10
  But then I was like, yeah, I guess that's kind of great like
• 1:05:12
  that they ended it that way. But but also to to touch back on
• 1:05:16
  something that you mentioned earlier, Austin, like a viewing
• 1:05:18
  this through like a more modern like sensibility, like the
• 1:05:22
  version of this movie that you were describing where it's like
• 1:05:25
  that sequence at the end happens at the beginning and then
• 1:05:28
  there's a betrayal like, like you're describing the remake.
• 1:05:31
  Like that's what, that's is what they do.
• 1:05:33
  The Italian Job is the opening scene of The Italian Job remake.
• 1:05:39
  Right, exactly. That's true it.
• 1:05:42
  It's funny bringing up the remake again.
• 1:05:44
  I had seen that movie. I think we'd all seen it a long
• 1:05:47
  time ago. Nobody rewatched it for for this
• 1:05:48
  recording today. But my memory of the 2000s
• 1:05:51
  Italian Job was always like, it's fine.
• 1:05:53
  It's like that goofy action heist movie.
• 1:05:56
  But now, as much as it fulfills some of the narrative
• 1:05:59
  obligations of having an actual beginning, middle and end and a
• 1:06:02
  real story, I'm like annoyed in retrospect that they stripped
• 1:06:05
  all the comedy out of it. Like I think that you could have
• 1:06:07
  made a version of this that was funnier and clearly there was
• 1:06:11
  just a kick going on because they made, they remade Ocean's
• 1:06:14
  11 around the same time they remade Italian Job.
• 1:06:16
  So there was something about these like 60s crime caper
• 1:06:19
  movies, but Ocean's 11 held on to the comedy underneath the
• 1:06:24
  whole thing and makes that movie much better.
• 1:06:25
  Whereas the Mark Wahlberg one I think is there's comedy, but
• 1:06:29
  it's kind of like boring Western Michael Bay ass comedy Michael.
• 1:06:34
  Bay Yes. Yeah, I don't.
• 1:06:36
  I would have loved clever humor. I think that the closest follow
• 1:06:41
  up we got, and the thing that I also did like about this movie
• 1:06:44
  was Michael Caine, when he comes back in the third Austin Powers
• 1:06:48
  movie, is clearly riffing a lot on his Italian Job character.
• 1:06:52
  And I did like all those connections.
• 1:06:54
  Quincy Jones even does the score for Italian Job, the 60s one.
• 1:06:57
  I was like, OK, this is starting to track for me that it's part
• 1:07:00
  of the DNA of those Austin Powers movies.
• 1:07:03
  And like what they were a parody of like outside of just being a
• 1:07:07
  parody of like James Bond and stuff like that.
• 1:07:10
  Well, that's funny you say that because I wrote like, oh, this
• 1:07:13
  is I, I in my notes, I wrote to myself.
• 1:07:16
  I didn't expect this to be more Austin Powers than James Bond.
• 1:07:19
  Like when I. Started.
• 1:07:20
  I was like, oh. Where James Bond?
• 1:07:22
  And then I was like, and no, this is Austin Powers like.
• 1:07:26
  Yeah, 100% I I don't even know if I have other notes.
• 1:07:31
  I feel like normally we touch on all these different aspects, but
• 1:07:35
  there's so little going on in Italian Job in a way.
• 1:07:38
  Like we kind of if you walk through the store, you kind of
• 1:07:40
  catch all of the like thematic and stylistic elements.
• 1:07:44
  I can't speak highly enough of the Mini Cooper chase.
• 1:07:48
  Did either of you watch the in the trivia talks about?
• 1:07:51
  There was a deleted scene that is available to watch on like
• 1:07:53
  YouTube where the Mini Coopers go into like an ice rink.
• 1:07:58
  And it's a very overplayed. Like, I like that scene in
• 1:08:01
  isolation, but it was actually a case of the movie recognizing
• 1:08:03
  like, this is too silly because there's like an orchestra
• 1:08:08
  playing like this, like famous classical piece.
• 1:08:10
  And the three Coopers and the three cop cars are just doing
• 1:08:12
  literal like dance choreography in the rink.
• 1:08:16
  Like they kind of like approach and then they back away.
• 1:08:18
  And it's very cartoonish. And it's a great scene in a
• 1:08:21
  bubble, but actually is tipping the scale far enough into comedy
• 1:08:24
  that they're like, we can't include this.
• 1:08:25
  How interesting. Really, that's so interesting
• 1:08:28
  because I feel like the movie wasn't afraid of being comedic.
• 1:08:32
  To me, what felt like, it's like I'm surprised that they, but
• 1:08:35
  that was the reaction. I mean, I haven't watched the
• 1:08:37
  scene. I'll I'll look it up, but I felt
• 1:08:39
  like the scale got tipped a little bit and the gag where
• 1:08:43
  they drove up on the roof, like up until that point I was like,
• 1:08:46
  OK, I know what they're doing. Like they have all these cool
• 1:08:47
  places they want to drive through.
• 1:08:48
  And then at that point, I'm like, how was this part of the
• 1:08:51
  plan? You were.
• 1:08:52
  Going to drive up on a roof and then you were going to like,
• 1:08:55
  really, it was a beautiful shot. I was like, you were going to
• 1:08:57
  strategically park in these spots very nicely framed and
• 1:09:01
  they're going to turn around and drive right back down and like
• 1:09:03
  just in case that cop car was chasing like that's where I was
• 1:09:07
  like, and and now we're in a pipe like.
• 1:09:09
  So I'm surprised that the and I liked all I like I thought it
• 1:09:13
  was cool. I mean, I really was thinking
• 1:09:15
  during that whole sequence, like there was a location scout, he
• 1:09:18
  was going around and he was picking places that he wanted to
• 1:09:21
  see a Mini Cooper race through. And they said, we're going to do
• 1:09:24
  that. We're going to have a go through
• 1:09:26
  a pipe. We're going to have a go
• 1:09:27
  through, you know, a dam or, you know, in the water.
• 1:09:30
  So I'm surprised that that the ice rink would have been cut.
• 1:09:33
  I thought the roof was I was one step too far for me.
• 1:09:36
  I don't know for certain that that's why they cut the ice rink
• 1:09:39
  scene. It might have just been for
• 1:09:39
  time. The thing that I think makes it
• 1:09:41
  separate is the Mini Coopers and your protagonists in the story
• 1:09:45
  do obey a bit of a cartoon logic.
• 1:09:47
  But the scene in the ice rink has the cop cars using cartoon
• 1:09:50
  logic. And I think that's what makes it
• 1:09:51
  different. Because in the scenes that we
• 1:09:53
  get, the cars that the police are in are just always trying to
• 1:09:56
  chase them. Whereas the Mini Coopers do all
• 1:09:58
  these silly stunts and the cops just like fail to keep up the
• 1:10:01
  ice rink scene. It looks too coordinated, like
• 1:10:04
  the police are like part of that kind of cartoon logic too.
• 1:10:10
  So for me, that's why it doesn't work.
• 1:10:11
  But it is a fun scene that you can look up if you've seen the
• 1:10:15
  original film. You know, they did have, they
• 1:10:17
  did have cartoon logic at one point in the movie and it was
• 1:10:20
  OK. So when the Benny Hill title
• 1:10:22
  card came up, I'm like, Benny Hill is in like, no, no, no, no,
• 1:10:25
  no, no, no. Is that is that that is that
• 1:10:29
  this is that him? Yeah, I think it is because then
• 1:10:32
  after he decides to sexually assault a woman on the tram and
• 1:10:35
  gets arrested, it's like they put her in like, Fast forward,
• 1:10:41
  like screaming in Italian, like, and like, I was like, oh.
• 1:10:46
  And so this is like a Benny Hill gag.
• 1:10:50
  Like is that's the same person, right?
• 1:10:53
  It is. He's from the Betty Hill Show.
• 1:10:54
  It was like kind of a stunt casting for him to even be in
• 1:10:56
  this. Yeah.
• 1:10:57
  And I was like, all right, that that is where I was like that
• 1:11:01
  pushed into a cartoonish territory a little bit for me.
• 1:11:05
  No, that I honestly, when I was watching that part, I for a
• 1:11:08
  second I was like, is there an issue with the playback of the
• 1:11:11
  movie that I'm watching? When they speed it up?
• 1:11:13
  I was like, I really couldn't tell for a second.
• 1:11:16
  Somebody somebody in editing was like this isn't funny, let's
• 1:11:19
  make it funny. And then they just like added
• 1:11:21
  like the like high pitched Alvin and the chipmunks voice on this
• 1:11:24
  lady. And I was like that does not
• 1:11:26
  help that what you needed to do is not have this character at
• 1:11:28
  all. Just.
• 1:11:29
  Need to cut this. Completely.
• 1:11:31
  The only benefit to Benny Hill's role in the movie is that he has
• 1:11:34
  a nice line when they first arrive up in the mountains and
• 1:11:38
  they're like setting up the plan.
• 1:11:39
  They're sending everyone in different directions.
• 1:11:41
  He wanders off by himself because he's an idiot or
• 1:11:43
  something, I don't know. And he picks up a couple of
• 1:11:46
  flowers and Michael Caine's like, you got to keep moving.
• 1:11:49
  And he has a line where he says Hiddy people aren't as lovely as
• 1:11:52
  flowers, isn't it? And it kind of sells the the
• 1:11:55
  contrast of that sequence because afterwards they hold on
• 1:12:00
  the shot of like the mountains behind them.
• 1:12:01
  And there is this kind of underlying comedy of like, look
• 1:12:04
  at all these petty schemers and robbers totally unable to take
• 1:12:08
  in that much like in Nate Mariah.
• 1:12:11
  It's like they're totally missing the point of how
• 1:12:14
  amazingly beautiful this space that they inhabit is because
• 1:12:17
  they're too fixated on their scheming.
• 1:12:20
  And I was like, that's a nice bit of like, thematic language
• 1:12:23
  that unfortunately came from the Benny Hill character we don't
• 1:12:26
  want in the movie. Yes.
• 1:12:28
  Yeah, a wonderful connection to name Mariah, by the way.
• 1:12:31
  Thank you. Nailed.
• 1:12:32
  It yes, This was my plan. This is why I did this.
• 1:12:35
  I knew this would happen, yes. But just to highlight a couple
• 1:12:38
  of things, I'm glad you, Austin, that you brought up like the
• 1:12:42
  location scout and and Thomas that you're mentioning sort of
• 1:12:45
  like the the cinematography. I think, I think you're both
• 1:12:47
  touching on that a bit cuz like those are the things I would
• 1:12:50
  highlight at like, in terms of like the real strengths of the
• 1:12:56
  film and that and the, and, you know, in terms of like unsung
• 1:13:02
  heroes of like film production, like the, the stunt drivers that
• 1:13:06
  were doing all. I was like, I was shocked.
• 1:13:09
  I'm like, this is like some of this looks legitimately really
• 1:13:12
  dangerous. What?
• 1:13:13
  They're doing. There was a point where in the
• 1:13:15
  in the pipe, one of the Mini Coopers banked up really far and
• 1:13:20
  I was like, oh shit. Like I got nervous.
• 1:13:22
  I thought. I thought like, damn, that car
• 1:13:24
  almost flipped over. That could not have been
• 1:13:26
  intentional. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:28
  And even a lot of those, like in that whole chase sequence with
• 1:13:32
  the Mini Coopers, the stuff they were doing was crazy.
• 1:13:34
  But then the cop cars that were like wiping out behind them, I'm
• 1:13:37
  like, there's people in those cars driving those cars that are
• 1:13:41
  just like at 1.1 of them, just it's like carried away by a
• 1:13:44
  river or something. That was crazy, this.
• 1:13:47
  Is nuts. They destroyed a lot of cars.
• 1:13:49
  Like they dumped several of them off a Cliff.
• 1:13:52
  They smashed a bunch of them. Like, I think I was reading that
• 1:13:56
  Fiat, who they like, the car company that they referenced in
• 1:13:58
  the movie, provided a ton of the, like, spare vehicles that
• 1:14:02
  they needed. And they actually wanted to
• 1:14:03
  replace the iconic Mini Coopers with their own cars.
• 1:14:07
  But the director decided against it because he was like, so much
• 1:14:10
  of this movie is poking fun at like Britain thinking that it's
• 1:14:14
  better than everybody else, that we kind of need these to be
• 1:14:16
  British cars that are causing all this mayhem.
• 1:14:20
  But almost every other car in the movie, including a lot of
• 1:14:22
  the ones they blew up and destroyed, although they do
• 1:14:25
  destroy the Mini Coopers too. They dump them all off a Cliff.
• 1:14:27
  Yeah, yeah. Actually just clocked in my
• 1:14:29
  head. You, you were maybe alluding to
• 1:14:31
  this earlier, but Michael Caine's character in Austin
• 1:14:34
  Powers, that scene where he's like, you're spy car's a Mini
• 1:14:36
  and he's strapping a Mini Cooper in that movie.
• 1:14:38
  Yeah, there you go. I like.
• 1:14:41
  It's a connecting thread for me. I do really like that movie.
• 1:14:44
  If you ever talk about Austin Powers, Goldmember, which is the
• 1:14:47
  one that nobody else likes, I think because it was the third
• 1:14:49
  one. But we watched that, Frank and I
• 1:14:52
  on DVD like 600 times, so. That's like a.
• 1:14:54
  Foundation never watched Austin Powers.
• 1:14:57
  I did it on principle because people would jokingly call me
• 1:15:02
  Austin Powers and I knew enough to know that I did not want to
• 1:15:04
  be called Austin Powers with the teeth and with the, I don't
• 1:15:08
  know, the whole vibe. It was very off putting as a
• 1:15:10
  fellow Austin so I never watched it.
• 1:15:12
  I never thought about that, yeah.
• 1:15:14
  Yeah, the Speaking of them, like destroying those cars to the
• 1:15:19
  scene, like where the mafia is like trying to intimidate them
• 1:15:24
  and like using like that bulldozer to like smash the cars
• 1:15:28
  up was so clunky and awkward. I was just like, this is
• 1:15:34
  terrible. Like this is genuinely like
• 1:15:36
  uncomfortable to sit through. Like the way.
• 1:15:39
  It sucks because it was so pretty.
• 1:15:40
  I remember like that shot, you know, it's like way above the
• 1:15:44
  shoulders of all of them. And all of the mafia guys are
• 1:15:46
  like really strategically placed on the Cliff.
• 1:15:48
  I was like, first of all, weird, weird that they're all out here
• 1:15:51
  up on this Cliff. Like, I'm imagining them like,
• 1:15:53
  all right now I got to climb up this Cliff, but then the
• 1:15:57
  weirdness of like very slowly crunching down on the cars and.
• 1:16:01
  Like and it like wasn't. Sound effects wasn't quite
• 1:16:04
  weren't quite like right. And I was like, OK.
• 1:16:07
  No, but that shot that you just brought up, that was where I
• 1:16:10
  took that note, where I was like, Oh my God, I this is
• 1:16:13
  gorgeous. I love this shot.
• 1:16:15
  I love this staging, this framing.
• 1:16:17
  And that's where I'm like, it's just such a shame it's in this
• 1:16:19
  movie. What a waste.
• 1:16:20
  Yeah, You could argue that that level of Polish, frame by frame,
• 1:16:24
  if applied to the story construction, would have made
• 1:16:26
  things even better. Because there was even there's a
• 1:16:29
  scene where in order to change up the scenery a bit for
• 1:16:32
  Bridger, who's always in jail, he stages a fake funeral so he
• 1:16:36
  can go talk to Michael Caine outside.
• 1:16:37
  Yes, Yes. And they have these compositions
• 1:16:39
  in that sequence too, where I was like, did Akira Kurosawa do
• 1:16:42
  this? Like what?
• 1:16:43
  Literally I was going to say that shot the way they had like
• 1:16:47
  blocked all of them. I was like, oh, is that like
• 1:16:49
  like it looked like a painting. You know, some of them are like
• 1:16:51
  in fog, like someone was like holding a gun or some I don't
• 1:16:54
  know. I was like, wow, wow, this is
• 1:16:56
  like so gorgeous right now, but I don't even know whose funeral
• 1:16:58
  this is. I don't know what's.
• 1:17:00
  Going on, I was confused in that scene as well.
• 1:17:02
  I was I was distracted by the cinematography and not paying
• 1:17:05
  attention. The joke was that they wanted to
• 1:17:09
  go talk somewhere outside where they couldn't be overheard and
• 1:17:12
  so they staged a fake funeral for some made-up person.
• 1:17:14
  And that's why Bridger's whole, like, Eulogy is him actually
• 1:17:17
  just talking to Kane and company being like, make sure you don't
• 1:17:20
  mess this up essentially, or you're going to be in a box too.
• 1:17:24
  But he just kind of offhandedly, he's like, oh, who, you know,
• 1:17:27
  Aunt Nelly or whatever. Like it's not a real dead
• 1:17:29
  person. OK well I didn't clock what was
• 1:17:31
  happening I thought I thought blue eyed guy had gotten
• 1:17:33
  murdered or something like the one of the sub side characters
• 1:17:37
  until I saw him again. I don't know why.
• 1:17:39
  I was like, OK. What's going on?
• 1:17:40
  Because it's not clear. I think what we're landing on is
• 1:17:43
  there's editing choices and like, missing establishing
• 1:17:48
  dialogue and shots at times that make it unclear where you are.
• 1:17:51
  I mean, you mentioned Bridger being in prison.
• 1:17:53
  I thought it was weird because we started in a very similar
• 1:17:55
  prison with Michael Caine leaving and I was like, was he
• 1:17:58
  in the same prison as this guy or is this a different?
• 1:18:01
  One right good question. Why do they both look like where
• 1:18:03
  Paddington Bear got pressed? In jail.
• 1:18:06
  I literally said that I was like, I clocked prison right
• 1:18:09
  away because I'm like, this looks like where they put
• 1:18:11
  Paddington in this pink like all.
• 1:18:21
  Right. I feel like this is our first
• 1:18:23
  time doing this sort of guest feature format.
• 1:18:26
  So do we still want to do scores?
• 1:18:28
  Frank and I usually do a score out of 10 to help kind of decide
• 1:18:31
  who gave the better blind pick. I guess we could just for the
• 1:18:34
  sake of getting three different opinions.
• 1:18:36
  Frank, you kicked us off originally.
• 1:18:38
  You got like a score out of 10 for 1960s Italian Job I.
• 1:18:42
  Mean as always, I kind of hate having to do these scores, but.
• 1:18:46
  That's why we do them. Yeah, because I mean, like we
• 1:18:49
  try and take out the the positives, I think.
• 1:18:52
  I think we try and aim for that. It's just kind of how we
• 1:18:54
  naturally engage with this kind of thing.
• 1:18:57
  And you know, we've talked about a lot of things that are very
• 1:19:01
  worthwhile and and beautiful in this film.
• 1:19:05
  But in terms of like a full viewing experience, I just like
• 1:19:09
  for like 80% of the movie I was like, I don't like this.
• 1:19:14
  So yeah, I feel like for me it lands pretty low, like a, like a
• 1:19:20
  three, maybe like a. 4 is that grifters level?
• 1:19:25
  4 we'll. Go there we.
• 1:19:27
  Go you were just bullied into a higher score.
• 1:19:30
  Yeah, no, I was. But grifters is really like
• 1:19:33
  actually upsetting. Like nauseating.
• 1:19:35
  That is like actual Meet Your double feature Laura is how much
• 1:19:38
  Frank disliked the movie The Grifters.
• 1:19:40
  And I gave it a three. I should have scored it lower,
• 1:19:42
  That's the thing. It's.
• 1:19:43
  I know because you always want to be nice, you know?
• 1:19:46
  And I know and we know how hard it is to make things.
• 1:19:48
  So it's like, yes, but at the end of today, the movie stands
• 1:19:51
  on on its own for what it is. Yeah, OK.
• 1:19:54
  So three out of sorry, 4 out of 10 you've been bullied into a
• 1:19:57
  four out of 10. Austin, over to you.
• 1:20:00
  What? Just general thoughts.
• 1:20:01
  Maybe an out of 10 for for. Italian Job quick general
• 1:20:03
  thoughts is and something I didn't say, which I'll say is I
• 1:20:06
  do think some of some of the humor did land for me and I I
• 1:20:09
  feel like I maybe I was like slightly harsh, but there were
• 1:20:12
  points whether or not it was intended to be like funny that I
• 1:20:15
  laugh. I laughed when the power went
• 1:20:17
  out and a random lady at a table screamed at the top of her
• 1:20:20
  lungs. I was like.
• 1:20:21
  What the hell? Like, that made me laugh when
• 1:20:24
  they were like when he was talking about gunning down
• 1:20:26
  machine or tigers with machine guns, I was like, Oh yeah,
• 1:20:30
  what's going like? Things like that did did land
• 1:20:33
  for me. It wasn't consistent.
• 1:20:34
  And I think I also was kind of bored for a large percentage of
• 1:20:39
  the film. I would say on Letterbox they
• 1:20:42
  gave it a 2.5 out of five. I feel like 5 out of 10 sounds
• 1:20:46
  like a little too harsh honestly, because there is
• 1:20:49
  significance and I think the cinematography pushes it to like
• 1:20:53
  5.65 point 7 out of 10 for me. And and I totally appreciate the
• 1:21:00
  significance to film history and I I think it's gorgeous.
• 1:21:03
  I love movies in Italy and everyone gave it their all
• 1:21:06
  except maybe the screenwriter. That's what I'll say about that.
• 1:21:13
  And he can say that as a screenwriter.
• 1:21:14
  And he's a screenwriter. Yeah, that's so funny.
• 1:21:19
  OK, so we have a 5 out of 10, a 57 out of 100.
• 1:21:23
  So I'll just go out of 1000, I guess.
• 1:21:28
  I feel like biased in favor of the movie, but I can't identify
• 1:21:34
  where the bias is coming from. I have no reason to like it any
• 1:21:37
  more than I did, but for some reason I just hit the right lane
• 1:21:41
  while watching it where I started really unenthused and
• 1:21:44
  then got more and more interested as it went on.
• 1:21:47
  And the ending was so funny to me that like, can you really be
• 1:21:51
  that mad at something that like leaves you on such a good note?
• 1:21:54
  So I would give 1960s Italian Job.
• 1:21:58
  I'm going to say an 800 out of 1000.
• 1:22:03
  Wow. Which I know it's like crazy,
• 1:22:05
  but if as soon as I think about scoring it lower, I'm like, I
• 1:22:07
  can't, I can't. They got me with the people
• 1:22:09
  drive on the wrong side of the road and then they're just all
• 1:22:11
  grump groaning like that matters at all.
• 1:22:15
  And just the the bus ending. I don't know, maybe that's crazy
• 1:22:18
  and maybe that's unhelpful because now someone listening is
• 1:22:20
  like, well, what is it? Is it a three I?
• 1:22:22
  Think this is good because I think we all gave very nuanced
• 1:22:26
  opinions and landed in different places, which I'm actually happy
• 1:22:29
  about. Yeah, because we don't normally
• 1:22:31
  do this. Like often times either I've
• 1:22:33
  seen the movie or Frank has seen it, and then that's kind of
• 1:22:35
  dynamic is it's like a storytelling experience.
• 1:22:38
  But this was fun. We'd all seen it.
• 1:22:39
  We had different thoughts. Nobody got mad.
• 1:22:42
  I got a little mad. Nobody got mad, do.
• 1:22:45
  You guys get mad. No, sometimes you get mad at
• 1:22:48
  Frank for making me watch certain things.
• 1:22:51
  We were talking during the intermission about Sphere.
• 1:22:52
  Frank asked me to watch Sphere. I have gotten heated about that
• 1:22:56
  in like several subsequent episodes because I hated it so
• 1:22:59
  much. I have to watch it now, I mean.
• 1:23:01
  I know it's becoming ironic. It's coming all the way around.
• 1:23:04
  For now, it's like, Nah, it's funny again.
• 1:23:06
  But it's my favorite Queen Latifah movie.
• 1:23:10
  Yeah, that one she did with Jimmy Fallon.
• 1:23:13
  Oh, taxi, I'm sorry. The Queen Latifah in Last
• 1:23:17
  Holiday, I won't go. That movie is too good.
• 1:23:21
  That movie. Well, this feels like a good
• 1:23:24
  place to end the upside. With the Queen.
• 1:23:26
  With the Queen Latifah rat. Latifah.
• 1:23:28
  All right. Well, we've done our scores.
• 1:23:31
  Austin as our first guest. Thank you so much for joining
• 1:23:33
  us. It's been a blast having you on
• 1:23:35
  and been a pleasure. We're contractually obligated to
• 1:23:37
  come back at some point. I definitely will thank you guys
• 1:23:41
  so much. This has been a blast.
• 1:23:42
  And you know what? Thank you for plugging our
• 1:23:44
  little movie many, many times. It's a big movie.
• 1:23:48
  It's a little big movie. It's a little.
• 1:23:50
  Big Mac, Yeah, I usually hold time at the end, mostly to plug
• 1:23:54
  the podcast itself and very quickly.
• 1:23:57
  Please, if you enjoyed tonight's episode of Meet in Double
• 1:23:59
  Feature, please like the video, share it with a friend,
• 1:24:02
  subscribe to our channels, look at it, look us up on social
• 1:24:04
  media, or just go to Meet Your doublefeature.com.
• 1:24:07
  You can find all of our links there.
• 1:24:08
  With our remaining time, I want to toss it over again to Austin
• 1:24:11
  and Frank. Give us the the pitch for Nate
• 1:24:15
  and Moriah and Venice and anywhere else that people can
• 1:24:16
  find you. Well, thanks so much, Nate and
• 1:24:19
  Moriah and Venice is streaming now on Amazon Prime, soon to be
• 1:24:23
  to be and maybe even by the time you listen to this, it's also on
• 1:24:25
  to be. And you know what?
• 1:24:27
  This was a movie that really we made with total passion,
• 1:24:31
  creativity and did not compromise for what anybody said
• 1:24:36
  we should do. We totally did what we wanted to
• 1:24:38
  with it. And I'm I'm so proud of that
• 1:24:40
  and, and how much we learned and honestly the friendships we
• 1:24:43
  built during it. And aren't friendships the most
• 1:24:45
  important thing anyways? Thanks guys, Watch the movie.
• 1:24:52
  Watch the movie. Love you all.
• 1:24:54
  Yes, love, love that plug for friendship.
• 1:24:59
  It's true though. It is true though I like I
• 1:25:01
  mentioned earlier, like you know, one of the coolest things
• 1:25:06
  I've ever been a part of. So very appreciative and and
• 1:25:09
  proud of it. I think Austin already shouted
• 1:25:13
  out where you can check out the movie.
• 1:25:16
  You can also find the soundtrack is now streaming on I believe
• 1:25:22
  Spotify and Apple Music. Yeah, and like everywhere,
• 1:25:26
  pretty much. Pretty much.
• 1:25:27
  And everywhere, everywhere music is so.
• 1:25:33
  Yes, Go listen to the soundtrack.
• 1:25:35
  Go watch the movie. In fact, you brought up
• 1:25:37
  Letterbox Austin. Go rank the movie on Letterbox.
• 1:25:39
  I mean, we give things out of 10 all the time and people love
• 1:25:43
  their feedback. We want opinions.
• 1:25:45
  Maybe we don't ask for that enough.
• 1:25:46
  We also want to know what you think about movies.
• 1:25:48
  So please go rank Nate and Mariah on Letterbox.
• 1:25:51
  Maybe a 10 if you're feeling like it.
• 1:25:53
  Let us know what you thought about tonight's episode.
• 1:25:55
  And now Austin, this is my favorite part of the podcast
• 1:25:57
  because when we're done, we just tell Frank to make a joke so
• 1:26:00
  that we can close out the episode.
• 1:26:02
  Frank And I don't call you that often, Frank.
• 1:26:05
  Frank's actually going to do his Michael Caine impression for us
• 1:26:08
  and close this out. Bring it home, Frank.
• 1:26:11
  I, I don't know, give me your Michael, feed me your Michael
• 1:26:14
  Caine, and then I'll. So.
• 1:26:16
  So the boss is full of gold. I can't do it.