'Barbie' Interview | Greta Gerwig Talks Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling & More

[Music] foreign ERS and welcome welcome to episode number 271 of Roe blend podcast that's powered by kennergy my name is Sean O'Connell and I'm a managing editor here at Cinema Blended on this week's show Oppenheimer is here Barbie is here and then that film's director Greta Gerwig is going to join us to discuss her brand new film God we are so excited to have Greg to join the show especially after having Nolan on last week's show and we want to thank everybody right off the bat who came around to real blend maybe check out real blend for the very first time and listen to the show and listen to our conversation with Christopher Nolan which was fantastic to have uh let me introduce the boys I will get right to Kevin McCarthy a Fox 5 in Washington D.C Kevin how are you sir I'm doing great and Sean Jake and Gabe good to see you guys as always I just want to say I'm very happy about this week this is a big week for Cinema um I don't believe that these films are in competition this is a just a great weekend to go to the movies see two films that are directed by two phenomenal filmmakers it just feels like an event weekend and to have a podcast that had Christopher Nolan on last week and then have Greta Gerwig on this week uh it just feels like we're in an historic moment in cinema just in general um I've never seen something like this before the articles that I'm seeing were thousands and thousands of people are booking double features to see these movies and they're calling it quote unquote barberheimer so it's a it's just a really cool time to be to have a film podcast but also just to be a part of this time in cinema it's awesome uh the other chair is Jake Hamilton a Fox 32 in Chicago hello handsome how are you I'm doing well yeah I haven't felt this kind of energy at the movies since the dark Mama which was the simultaneous release of The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia on the exact same day 15 years ago so Nolan again Nolan again I'm saying you know I feel like I I saw something online that that summed it up perfectly the dark Mama walked so barberheimer could run that's really funny didn't Dunkirk come out the same weekend as girls trip yeah what's actually fascinating is that the day we're recording this episode is the sixth year six year anniversary of the day Dunkirk opened and yesterday it was the 15th anniversary of Dark Knight yeah that's why that's what I was about to say this is his favorite this week this week in particular because it looks mainly opened his films in July Interstellar was was November right Interstellar was November so basically I think dark night was July 18th Dunkirk was July 19th Oppenheimer is July 21st Prestige feels like it was the fall yeah it feels like well some of them were probably Awards players sure I'm sure sure the prestige should have been an awards play I'm a little Afraid oppenheimer's coming out a little bit too early and also we have absolutely no idea what the next six months of this industry is going to look like yeah very true so for those of you listening I hope you're appreciating these amazing interviews we're bringing you because we're about to have nothing yeah we're gonna recycle some bits also um Dunkirk was as I mentioned released in July went on to be nominated for multiple Academy Awards including best picture I think it was Nolan's first director nomination as well which I believe which is insane but uh but yeah this is a cool week I love this week so uh okay uh if you're watching us on YouTube let me say hello to gabeco watching The Producers chair hello okay that's how handsome he is it has been massive yes we've been very thankful for the people who have come to check the show out uh especially on the YouTube channel which is picked up a couple hundred subscribers thank you very much guys for heading over there realblend.com uh youtube.com backslash real blend uh podcast and then you can hit subscribe internet notifications and then use the comments down below to let us know uh first off what you think about the Greta interview which we're going to throw to in a second and then we will have a question that we throw out to you guys that we want you guys to answer and I've got something fun lined up for you guys that I will announce at the end of the show of course we're available all the different places where you get your normal audio podcast needs met and if you want to sign up for Roebling premium you get an ad free version of the show of the podcast and a newsletter for me every other Friday this week is not newsletter week in case you're waiting for it and looking in your inbox but I'll have another one ready for you guys next week and I'm gonna I think address some of the um questions that people have been asking about box office type stuff because the box office has been a big topic this summer um and we've gotten a bunch of emails about people wondering for our thoughts on things like um dial of Destiny and Flash doing so poorly and uh so maybe I'll try to address some of that in in the uh in the newsletter when we get up to that point but in the meantime we have a very very exciting interview someone who we pursued from the moment that we found out that this would be going to be a movie uh someone who's worked that we deeply admire um and we were thrilled that she decided to sit down for 30 minutes uh Greta Gerwig has a new film coming out in theaters you might have heard of it at this point now it's called Barbie Stars Margot Robbie and um Ryan Gosling and then a ton of other people in All-Star supporting parts and she is a guest on the Rebellion podcast so without further Ado I'm going to throw it right to Greta gerway again joining the Roebling podcast to discuss a Barbie yeah and it's never been like this ever yeah before we start with our first question can we just set the scene right here like where are we right now like there's a camera that you think right behind you like just for our audience because this is going to be on video like well you know I mean I'm just sort of taking this in for the first time I didn't no I mean I knew they were going to do something extraordinary but I didn't know like I mean they think that nobody can see but the hallway with all the doors wrapped I mean everything about it is just amazing but I do know like this camera and there's a boom behind you that's pink those were both used in the movie yes yeah in the presidential um Oval Office fantastic um the camera woman is using it in another the sound woman is holding that boom so I didn't even know they brought in I saw the car this morning when I came in of the the the vet the Barbie Corvette and I was like oh it's just like it still makes me so happy all of the objects the gaffer tape on the floor is pink they brought it right I know it's incredible it's truly this is beyond anything I I could have imagined well we're honored to have you on our show we're a filmmaking show who celebrates all the different aspects of filmmaking score cinematography I want to talk about Rodrigo Prieto everybody who's involved in this film but I'll start with a larger picture question because the idea of humans only have one ending but ideas live forever yeah as a filmmaker you're putting work out into the world with ladybird Little Women in films like this that are going to be very important for people as they watch them in different Generations but the idea of your ideas living on forever as a Storyteller what does that line mean to you as a Storyteller and the idea of the people we're going to find this later on right well you know I think so um you know after after we're all gone I don't know what like survives or doesn't survive but I do feel that there is something um you know I'm a film lover of that that's sort of like why I want to make movies is I love movies and there is something incredible about you know watching a film uh you know from my my favorites are like from the 30s like Ernst lupich and Howard Hawks and Preston Sturgis and thinking like that is you can reach back in time and there are these sparkling gems that still exist and I mean that goes to just you know for me I I see myself in a continuity of filmmakers over time in this medium I'm so lucky to be part of and but I think particularly for Barbie what felt so important to me about that is that I you know she's this queen of plastic and she's this unchanging thing and that and that what we live in in time as humans is just it's all sort of going and I think um to me it's like to make a film is to say like it's almost this Instinct of like drawing on a cave wall this is how this is how it was at this moment this is how I see it this is this is my perspective and I think um kind of always connecting the desire to make with the fact that we're temporary is inherent for me if that's I I'm sorry if that's too um but you hit you started with a really deep one I walked away thinking about the most to be honest yeah it was that or what attracted you to the films okay yeah of course no it is really like I mean this is all going I'm sorry I feel like it's it's like we're all just on you know on on some timeline we don't know about and that like it is kind of a way to be like here's the doll here's the object here's the film here's the thing and like I don't know what persists but here's my here's my contribution yeah I love that cool there's a thing that started happening to me as I've gotten older and I feel like everyone experiences it where you watch a movie you loved as a kid yeah and it's a completely different film because you recognize themes and jokes that just maybe when you're seven or eight you didn't get so I want to talk about as a filmmaker making two movies at the same time because I feel like there could be an eight-year-old girl who sees this loves it for what it is yeah revisits it and 20 years later and it's the film hasn't changed we've changed yeah and it's a completely different experience how much thought did you go into with every line of the script and every shot thinking for the person who's gonna watch this when they're eight versus the person who's gonna watch this when they're 28. yeah well I I think for me it was always trying to keep those double consciousnesses in mind like who I was as a child and what you love as a child particularly about something like Barbie and that kind of fantasy of it and then being able to look at it as an adult and having a different way of coming at it and and keeping them both alive and trying to respect both um and that that doesn't feel that different from me for what I've done in in all my films really it's I mean even with like Lady Bird there was a sense that I had of like how is this is the mother's movie just as much as it's the daughter's movie it has to be and also with Little Women it was like it was a sense of uh it's the magic of childhood but only that you see once you're past it and then how do you hold that Joy but also that ache and that sadness and I think Barbie it felt similar that way like I'm trying to always hold all of the ways you can see it and um I don't know but I definitely have that experience I almost have that experience more with books than oh really yeah there's some books I've read where like I you know at 18 I'm so sure I know like like the way to view this and then when I've read them in like 38 suddenly I think oh no I see this very differently now and there's certain characters where I'll judge them at 18 and then when I come back to them I was like oh they really they weren't to be judged I I was wrong well you brought up an interesting point that I'd love to follow up on like the idea of it almost feels like Lady Bird Little Women and Barbie are like this weird unofficial Trilogy like of like this like I don't know if they would ever put them in like a box set but it really does feel like there's there's something there yes which we would buy in a heartbeat yes no it is they are all speaking to each other that's true and I think that they all I mean for me what it was extraordinary is that even though this is Barbie which is this you know globally known brand it it feels just as personal to me as a filmmaker it and it felt like I was able to make something that was just as to the marrow as anything else I've made and and genuinely that was the only way I knew how to do it uh and I I said you know I'm not I don't need to make a Barbie movie If I want to make this one and that that's because otherwise I don't know what I'm doing that's kind of what our questions are with you we don't need to be like overly deep but we know when we walk out oh no this is this is this honestly this is making me so happy that the Barbie movie just goes straight to like mortality and articles we can't ask like yeah so but launching off his question about the idea of making two films Kubrick is kind of a big part of this movie you have a shining reference yeah the 2001 there's a shining line I believe yeah they're shining with each other yeah I thought that was awesome yeah yeah but the the 2001 reference is incredible because the first footage we ever saw was that trailer which was incredible yeah and then your film opens like that and obviously with the iconic like throwing up and the Barbie logo um but can you talk about the idea of using the 2001 aspect of it as a narrative uh Storyteller what that opening is supposed to mean from a narrative perspective and a director and like you know that's a reference that we get but maybe a little kid might not right I mean and we knew that going in we were like this is and there are other Kubrick references uh well the um the way the light and the way the uh the Mattel boardroom the table is is Dr strangely no I knew it I didn't want to project but I was like that looks like so like there's like other little things but I think for me I mean obviously I love Kubrick who doesn't love Kubrick and there was something like the kind of taking you know just bring in Rodrigo who's you know um one of the best one of the best DPS of all time and paints with God fingers and I I absolutely worship him one thing when we started talking about the film was I was like I don't want to do it just as like a like a like a parody where we do it kind of quick and dirty and it doesn't really matter I was like I was like we I want to do it only if we can like do it I want to do it with uh you know front screen projection I want to do it with the original plates I want to build the set as they had built it I want to do it like let's let's make it count and he was like okay let's go I mean do you use front screen projection for that we actually ended up not using the full front screen protection because it made the angles too hard to uh work with over time but what we did do was we used the original plates and we put it in a volume stage which is like our version of French front screen projection so we did our version of it but we did build the set as it was built and we you know looked at we you know shot for shot the angle of the you know the doll coming up and like really tried to do it with Integrity because I was like I don't need this just to be a joke the only way that this is like funny to me is that if it's executed with the utmost integrity and you know Excellence then it becomes both a funny idea and something more and I think too because I I love Kubrick and you know his entire filmography is just staggering but uh but it also was there was something funny to me and that like he's also the Paragon of a certain type of you know masculine filmmaking and it just felt like what a fun thing just sort of transpose with respect um to this doll um and but but yeah certainly I will say I I did have a moment of like am I Really Gonna Start this movie with a 2001 yeah already but then I um I ended up talking it through with my therapist and she thought it was hilarious I was like well if if she thinks it's good are you it's a session going I'm making this movie this is what I want to do what does this thing to say about me I don't know what she thinks about anything in terms of it but yes I say like you want to use this hour it's like you can go for it but um but yeah sometimes I just like to bounce ideas off of her and just get like an associate producer credit I own this movie genuinely or probably on my whole career I'm in therapy once a week I've run stuff by my therapist about my work all the time so I'm with you well it's a big part of your life and also like I mean for me it is also it is intimate and it is personal and it is like sort of you know you're looking at why you look at things like this and how where these ideas come from and I I did and and she she really laughed and I thought okay well it's done I always had I've sold one person she thanked in the credits no no because I feel like that would be um I would be violating something you know and she's pretty uh strict psychoanalysis so you know pretty we're 30 something year old guys I did not expect the two of us to be the people laughing hardest in the theater losing our sugar jokes in this movie yeah we don't want to ruin her but but in the Vogue article that just came out recently there is reference to a joke on page one that made I believe Margo's jaw dropped to the floor and then it says that the joke didn't make it into the movie and I'm curious as to what that joke was oh well suffice to say there was a sort of extended joke with um um Marie Curie which didn't end up being part of it but yes there was um there was a there was a first there was a page one F-bomb that we were just sort of set the tone for the whole thing um well I I it was actually it was the what what the line was was it was actually Helen Mirren saying to Marie Curie pipe the down right but I that was like my favorite I was like because like you know you only get like one um but we do we only got one F-bomb and we were like well let's use it at the very beginning as and there's just something to me Helen Mirren saying pipe the down Marie Curie did you record the line oh yeah so the audio's there the Opera British place but it just it was it was something in the editing that didn't end up making the cut but yes that that was I would say the line that um everyone was like oh no no no no um but it'll live on in this podcast yeah now we have it no Rodrigo Prieto I want to go back to him yeah because there's two shots that I want to talk to you about on a narrative perspective as a Storyteller um particularly the heels shot which is yeah when I saw that in the trailer that was really kind of when I got a sense of what this film was going to be about and I want to talk about the design of that shot um how you decided how close up you were going to be um how long you were going to stay on it but also even the shots of just her beautifully ascending into her car yeah um I'm just curious what your conversations were like with Rodrigo sure well I mean Rodrigo and I spent a a long time over a year talking before we were even officially in pre-production and as as I did with Sarah Greenwood who designed the sets and Jacqueline Duran who did the costumes and everything needed to be figured out from a filmmaking standpoint of like what the kind of philosophy behind everything was and how we were gonna shoot it and and we wanted a set of rules for the way the camera moved especially in Barbie land and he wanted to the thing that we sort of came to is that we wanted the camera to be uh mechanical but innocent the the camera doesn't have a sense of how hiding around doorways or anything I mean there is nowhere to hide in Barbie land but also this kind of full frontal these very clear moves that it doesn't feel like anything is hidden from the frame and we shot in two to one because that's the best way to see people uh head to toe because it gives you a little bit more headphones yeah exactly ladybird I think one eight five on lady bird and on Little Women but like anamorphic you know is long and and and and stretched out but if it's the same ratio they shot like Jurassic Park in because it just gives you if you're a dinosaur or a Barbie you need like that extra Headroom and I think um we wanted there to be a kind of elegant Simplicity to all of it um and especially yes at the beginning of the movie and we had this idea that um that everything would be seen as perfectly as it could be there would be no sort of error at the beginning and so for the feet it was a sort of to go to go back to how everything had to be figured out I would say with the script when we delivered it when we were first talking to Warner Brothers one thing they said are you going to CGI all the feet now I said no everything is going to be done practically I don't want I mean that sounds horrifying um just for starters but it was like how to do this completely practically and those are Margo's feet and you know it was like very simple but we had to create like you know again when you're figuring this out practically it's like we had she hits a mark which has stickiness on the floor so it holds the shoes and then she's holding on to a bar so she can step out like it's like all done practically in in camera and that was that was that shot and then we had the same idea of like we were like the camera does the same thing every day and she's the one that's off so like when she floats off her roof and that's when you sort of pull back and reveal everything and the timing is done the same way on the day when she falls is that the camera is still doing what it always does she's just falling out of the frame and we had we had some more of that but you know you've in editing you kind of reduced to to what exactly it is but it was sort of creating this um this this floating dancer quality to the camera but it was always on a dolly like it's I don't think it's on all the shots are on dollies and we had an amazing Dolly grip who was um it gives it that kind of uh old musical look yes it doesn't um it doesn't feel um haphazard it's very musical yes I loved yes as a follow-up one thing I found interesting I'm assuming the lenses are different in the real world in Bobby land because I remember they're ready player ones Gilbert yes they shot 35 in real life and then digital in the game so I was wondering like did you play around with ideas like that we did we'd actually talked about shooting the real world in film but but we but we I know I know um sadly Little Women shot 35. yes little women with shot 35 but that this it was so we we stopped your money on paper we spent all the money on pink no we we shot in the um we knew we wanted to shoot it's funny I don't have a necessarily like a I I love film but with this movie there was something about it where it's like because it's Barbie and because it's plastic there was something about the hyper reality of like the oh that's interesting the Alexa 65 that I was like actually that's what I want I don't want any I want the total saturation that people we were looking at to try to emulate was like the Jacques tattoo movies that were shot in 70 millimeter because that has that liquid color almost like you can put your hand into it and I and we talked about it and I was like this has this wonderful quality of like a you know 70 millimeter Jacques tati but it's synthetic and the syntheticness is actually part of Barbie which felt correct it's like a philosophical thing whereas like Little Women it's like that's it we're making a movie in the 1800s it has to be a photochemical process because it's like what they had but then when we moved to the real world so we had that and we used all the lenses we used had no Distortion or even vignetting around the edges because we wanted everything to go all the way to this end we didn't want anything to feel like it was sort of centered in the middle but when we were in the real world we switched to sort of lenses that had um that were sort of more long lens more captured there's more of a sense of the camera breathing uh I mean we used a shallow depth of field a lot in Barbie life because it does have the effect of making everything look miniature but in the real world it was like it was like uh it has a vantage point it's not just sort of a pure presentation and that sort of longer lenses helped with that and then we shot all of it to um just we stopped using the large format sensor and that was kind of how we we decided to go about it um but we shot all the shinings in um um that was all shot in um 48 frames per second because we wanted it okay yes so we did that and then um actually um the sort of that without giving too much away but the ending um which he made this beautiful uh giant space filled with light which was it was this extraordinary like kind of the feat that he did based on a lot of light installations that we'd both seen and he used the colors of um uh Jam Turner's paintings um in LEDs behind a smoked up scrim and then we had this like reflective surface of because I wanted it to look like walking on a beach like where you can see the reflection anyway so we did all of this stuff but then at the very end the final sort of shinings stuff that again not to give it too much away but the one of the things that was pretty magical about that was um the all the footage in that is actually the footage of um the people who worked on the movie I literally wrote that down in my nose are these the people who I I had a feeling about that it's all the footages from people things that they'd gotten childhoods their their mothers their aunts their sisters their daughters I mean my editors I mean it makes me cry but like his daughter is in it like the editorial assistant his mom who's passed away is in the movie like it's just like that and I was like I just feel like with these movies you want to embroider them with as much actual heart that you can because they're only ever made by people I think that that something is that you know there were human beings who made everything there's a human being who like made this like you can't make that AI yeah yeah that's right not to not to get into it it's like it is like I and I think I'm a big believer in people being able to feel stuff like that through the screen but yeah I know I mean into to go back to Rodrigo who I cannot say enough about I mean and I was so honored that he worked on this movie and uh you know he just finished making killers of the flowers came in and I was like I I did I was like Rodrigo it's very hard for me to talk to you because I know that you've been talking with courses about here and he was like and he was so sweet and he was like Greta I am just as much your DP as I'm Marty's oh I love that I'm here I'm here to like do your vision on this movie and I want to do it and I think it's outrageous and wonderful and it was like the most you know you know you're always of course riddled with self-doubt and when a DP like that who works with the people he works with like said let's go and I mean it like I think that's the part it's like we wanted to mean it all um yeah can you come on the show every week yeah please yeah you're very much the perfect guest for the show um I think one of the scariest things that can happen for any guy watching this movie is you find yourself relating to Ken and I'm I'm very nervous to tell you that my very first concert ever was Matchbox 20. oh I was born in 83 and Matchbox 20 was on the um like on the top 40 rotations like you was an amazing album on quad 106.5 yes and um and I would like listen to all the FM radio stations in the car and you'd like switch between the ones that were like you know you'd be like well if this one doesn't have it then maybe this one does and um and I love it and it was just it honestly it was just like later as an adult I was like what did that song mean I think it was like written as a character as like a movie but I was like oh this would be Ken loved this song but yes um you know I well I think one thing listen I relate to Ken so I mean obviously so yeah it's a it's a but I mean Ryan is um they're both just outrageous and America and everyone but like Ryan I it's like the most astonishing performance it's honestly I mean I've not to like start talking about the sort of stuff this early but like people are talking like supporting actor nomination I'm going like yeah like if that's the sort of thing that doesn't then what are we what are we doing but really it's outrageous Matchbox like do you reach out to Rob Thomas I mean do they know yeah okay their phones are going to blow up and this is qualify numbers I mean honestly I think I hope it reinvigorates this song also I just there was something about like um I don't know the idea of like this this just if you you know you're sort of like oh I know like a a beach a guitar a thing and then it's just like everyone yeah I just like it it made me laugh so hard thinking about it um but yeah it's funny because when we're shooting in the UK that song well a lot of the cast is younger and also that song didn't really chart in the UK where the way it charted in the US so actually a lot of the cast thought we had made up the song what yeah and I was like oh no this is uh this is a legit pop-up like now the kids don't know what the I know well they're gonna know now we're gonna find out album is fantastic I honestly was like I was like there are two songs that play like on repeat in like Barbie land is Indigo Girls Closer To Fine which I also love very deeply and um and Matchbox 20 it's like the you know push there is another male reporter on this junket who's literally been in my apartment taking the guitar off my wall and started singing Matchbox 20 and he and I when that moment no no well I'll tell you my first comment my first concert was uh 311 featuring Sugar Ray yeah I think I went to that tour yeah what album was 311 on at that point I don't remember like my in the cafeteria of Junior High School talking about how they were all going to concerts and they and they were like we're gonna go to this concert and me being like the kind of like literal kid that I was I was like I shall go to Tower Records and purchase one ticket and I did I purchased one ticket and I went alone and I spent the entire time being like people were like where who are you here with and I said oh I'm just here with myself but I actually thought they were awesome I had a great time it was a this great um in Sacramento they have a place called Memorial Auditorium where it's like a great venue for for for shows and then I saw like you know cake and Ani DeFranco and all these people there yeah there's a scene in this film that I that hit me so hard was it's America's model yes yes it's truly one of the most incredible monologues I've seen delivered in film in a long time just because of what she's saying it really makes you think about and everything that she says so from a filmmaking perspective you tell this story we're sitting here right now talking about the movie that you made but I would imagine that there's like some therapy and courses that comes out of telling the story and through that monologue I felt that was a lot of kind of like hearing the filmmaker's voice and hearing what was coming through the screen I'm wondering you know what therapy or catharsis you found on the other side of this uh project yeah I mean I mean extraordinary about that I I sent the script America I own America sort of over the years through friends of friends and I've always thought she was such an extraordinary actress and also just uh just as a person and she's just so smart and so thoughtful and I just I I really saw her in this role and I um and when she got the speech and we started talking about it she also shared with me um just certain things from her life and she again embroidered it with certain things that are very personal to her um that you know the only she could bring to it and then when she performed it and it took about a full day of shooting because it was you know we wanted to give it enough space and allow her to go into different places with it because there were takes where she just you know she wept through the whole thing because it was feeling you know and then she raged through some of them she was exasperated like she really went through I mean I can't it was such an exhausting but cathartic like you were saying moment to watch it and the thing that felt special is you know it's that thing where if you're you're making something that comes from deep inside that feels almost scary and slightly embarrassing to say out loud and then as you give it to collaborators and actors and and then they they they say that's I have it I have it too and then and then everyone who was all over because you know we're shooting the scene and then people are different places on this this stage and people just started coming one by one by one and everybody's standing there just crying as she's doing it and they were just watching her it was just it was a very it was it felt like she was suddenly speaking for everyone yes and there was something in it I don't know those moments happen sometimes and you feel like whatever the Alchemy is that brought us to this place the way she embodies it made everyone feel like she was tapping into them and it and I think you know she's speaking about women but I also think it's it is so much about um people feeling like they can't ever get it right and I think that that's true for men and for women and it's overwhelming and it's terrifying and it's and it's something where I was like if Barbie has always been a thing where people say if the criticism of Barbie is always that she's like some unrealistic expectation I wanted a way to celebrate uh the articulation of feeling like there is no way to win this game as long as we have these bars had set so high and and I think that that was it was just the way she did it it just I mean it still it makes me cry still and I've I mean I I can't even tell you how many times I've watched it yeah they are giving us the rap oh okay yes we can talk to you all day but we know you have a Pack schedule but we cannot tell you how much having you on our show means to us and how much this conversation thank you for nerding out with us oh my God and thank you for wearing these suits we literally got these we didn't wear this to the fablements oh yeah no they didn't thank you thanks so much we absolutely need to thank our good friends at Warner Brothers and of course Greta Gerwig uh for taking the time to come on to the Roblin podcast if you guys watched the YouTube video aspect of it uh I will allow the boys to discuss their matching pink suits but I do want to throw out that while I was not able to go to that interview uh because I was on vacation I'm glad I didn't get to go because I wouldn't have worn the pink suits I couldn't I mainly because I couldn't Rock The Pink Suit the way that you guys came you guys have uh no I mean just with a realistic attitude um you guys are able to pull off things that that the this old body can't pull off and you guys looked fantastic so this is a if you guys are listening this far and you haven't yet watch it on the YouTube channel go and watch these two in their pink suits and the funny thing about it Jake from what I understand this was not coordinated at all so you know that's what's interesting and and this is such a microcosmic version example of sort of kind of what happened with with Nolan too which is that sometimes you can't control outside factors leading into an interview with you know Kevin almost completely missing the Oppenheimer junket period but you know one of the things and Kevin I'm curious if you agree with this I was a little worried walking into that Barbie room because yeah we both had this idea of wearing pink suits to the junket a lot of people wore pink to the junket to be honest with you but Kevin and I had the exact same suit from the exact same vendor uh so we it looked like a scene out of Step Brothers um and I honestly was a little afraid that you know us being her first interview the day that we were going to walk in and she was going to think oh this is like a bit or they're making fun of me or they're not taking this movie seriously you know and I really feel like and look I don't want to sit here and like use the entire hour to like Pat ourselves on the back but like it really felt like whatever cons like one she actually did to seem to appreciate the the The Ensemble it perfectly matched the room but also once we started asking the sort of questions we wanted to ask her a filmmaker of her caliber a movie of this caliber it seemed like the the suits sort of washed away like it was like it like they they had the moment that they were supposed to have but if they had a second longer then then it would be doing a disservice to the fact that we were in that room Kevin what do you think I mean for people who don't who haven't seen any of the behind the scenes footage of this junket it was absolutely insane um you literally got up to the floor where the interviews were happening the elevator opened and the entire floor was Pink Carpet pink everything it was crazy it was it was like the biggest serotonin boost I've ever had in my life when these oh when these doors opened up um I'm sorry I've walked those hallways before and like right down to the numbers on the doors they changed you know the font to match Barbie stuff like can't imagine what it took to convert that entire hallway of the uh is the Four Seasons wasn't it yeah yeah yeah and it was looking brilliant it was brilliant for marketing because everyone was instagramming and and and tick-tocking it um I know Jake posted a whole video on his Twitter that got like millions of views and like just just literally the setting where we were but back to Greta for a second because I do want to stress again to go to the YouTube channel because obviously the interview you just heard the beginning of the interview is her referencing the room that we're sitting in she had a real camera from the movie right to her right that was used in the film a lot of the props and things like that um we were it felt like we were sitting in Barbie land with Greta Gerwig it was it was it felt like a movie set it was very cool um also what I said at the top of the show which I what I what that I want to reiterate is this is you know Greta is one of the greatest filmmakers working today and this is a weekend of great Cinema and to sit with her and just talk about Kubrick and all these incredible filmmakers and influences that have been on Barbie you know Barbie has this idea of like you know it's pink and colorful but the thematics and the filmmaking aspects of it are so incredibly like in like it very much like you can interpret everything everything's important everything's you know you're thinking about things there's ambiguity there's vulnerability there it really is a film that kind of works on so many levels so to sit with her and talk to her about those layers and those filmmaking ideas and the shots Rodrigo Prieto who shot her film uh one of the best DPS in the business and just to talk to her about the the lens choices and the way she decided to shoot the real world versus the actual you know in Barbie land it was just really cool so would it be a difficult film to kind of do the four minute junk it bit in because it feels like there's a lot to get to with her with Greta yes and it's funny because Jake Jake and I a little behind the scenes Jake and I do were there for our television press junkets we were interviewing Margot Robbie Ryan Gosling America Ferreira as well as Kate McKinnon and Issa Ray and Michael Sarah we were not getting Greta for television oh gotcha and then when we were sitting in that room for 30 minutes it's funny you asked that I had that thought in my mind I'm like I couldn't imagine having walked in this room for four minutes yeah because just the the filmmaking history is just astounding to me like she is her and Noah bombach who wrote the film uh together uh there are two of the you know two phenomenal filmmaker Minds in this business and and clearly this is Greta's movie no question about it but she co-wrote it with Noah bombach um but yeah I don't I do not think a four minute interview would have done any good I I need we needed to like break down these shots in Kubrick in 2001 and Dr Strangelove and all these crazy things so can I just really quite as much as I do love um shouting out our interview you guys had Hannah interview her as well who got some pretty killer stuff out of her for for Cinema Blend stuff that I in fact I actually saw it picked up by other outlets nationally before I even knew that it was you guys because I was kind of curious I was like oh like who because it honestly and this is this is selfishly speaking whenever I see a big headline sort of circulating I always pause and go wait is that from our interview did that get pulled from ours but it didn't it got pulled from Hannah's interview because she did a pretty killer job uh as well so I want to give shout out to her absolutely she really did and I want her to do more of those so hopefully we got her at more junkets um let's shift over to a spoiler-free review we're gonna do Barbie first uh we'll do spoiler-free reactions to it and then we're going in alphabetical order we're not doing any particular preference one way or the other Oppenheimer well yes we are it just makes sense because she's on the show she's Our Guest this week and we're going in alphabetical order I still haven't seen it um I'm gonna let the boys react to it I do want to add when Kevin's mentioning what big weekend for Cinema this is Michelle and I are going this weekend and it has been thrilling to try to get two tickets to this movie uh this weekend because most of the theaters are packed which I'm ecstatic about um so I mean there's like a 9 A.M which is great for pop pop like he's up you know he'll go see Barbie in a half empty theater but I also do kind of want to go with like a crowd I want to experience uh this kind of comedy with a crowd so we shall see um but you guys give your spoiler-free reactions to it and then um we will let you know when we transition over into uh any kind of spoiler talk for for Barbie in case you guys want to skip ahead yeah you know this kind of this movie sort of Falls for me under that umbrella of um you know I always say you gotta judge a movie for what it is not what you thought it was going to be um I will say it was a completely different film than I expected it to be the the final results I loved I thought it was uh one of the funniest movies that I have seen this year I thought it was a brilliant script some of the performances were absolutely incredible and amazing sort of ensemble cast I hate to walk out of Barbie saying you know who's great the guy but Ryan Gosling honestly like if you were to have a serious conversation about a supporting actor nomination I really wouldn't be upset about it like I don't know why he shouldn't be allowed to be in the supporting actor conversation I think he's just that good um I do think uh you know it we always sort of talk about uh questions and comments that we get from from people in our Newsroom and people that we know you know I've got cousins who have kids young kids who very much are looking forward to Barbie and that's where it gets into that really interesting gray area where this is Greta gerwig's Barbie For Better or For Worse you know shout out to Warner Brothers for letting her make her movie it is not a two hour long Barbie commercial it is not you know one of those Barbie movies that I that sort of went to DVD and you know it is it has a lot to say about uh women's place in the world about men's place in the world about women and men's relationship with each other about toxic masculinity about uh you know a a fragile male egos in the wake of strong women it's got a lot to say I think you know many of us grew up watching movies that I think probably had a lot of stuff go over our head uh my girlfriend and her daughter and I just re-watched the old um Barry Levinson Adams Family movies recently and I haven't seen him in over 20 years and in watching them I'm going oh there are so many jokes in this movie I did not get and but I love it as a kid and just didn't notice and it makes me wonder if this is gonna be one of those kinds of movies where I think kids are gonna go see it I do think that there's going to be enough there to keep them entertained it's brightly colored it moves pretty quickly they're a big Musical dance numbers and then I think it's going to be one of those movies that they revisit in 20 years and go oh Mom and Dad you guys took me to a movie that I did not understand at all that being said you know there's a running joke in the trailer about like the Ken's beaching each other off yeah there's a moment where Barbie pauses and asks other Barbies do you ever think about dying there's an ongoing joke uh featuring Matchbox 20 which is like one of my all-time favorite but like and so it's one of those moments where like as a 35 year old man I'm dying laughing and then after the movie I'm going I don't know who this movie's made for I don't think it was made for me but I absolutely enjoyed it um you know I'll be very curious to to see how parents who are going to take younger kids feel about it but again like I said at the top it falls under the umbrella of you gotta judge a movie for what it is not what you thought it was going to be walking through the doors I I really really loved it I I for for me first for first of all Greta Gerwig the filmmaking that she's been a part of so far as a filmmaker is astounding I mean lady bird and Little Women are Little Women in particular for me was it was a masterpiece it was just it was incredible just everything about that film the shots the performances every everything and what I love is looking at those three movies in particular and I know she's been involved in tons of other projects but when I'm looking at those three films in particular what I see is so much difference and so much similarity in between like what she's trying to say as a filmmaker her voice is so strong in every one of her films but when I'm looking at Barbie um I can't stop thinking about America ferreira's performance um and I I bring her up because she has a monologue in this movie that I I cannot stop thinking about I saw this movie a month ago and there are lines of dialogue in this monologue I think it's one of the greatest monologues I've seen on in film in a long time and there's something about what she says in this monologue that is so impactful I thought about my mom and so many other women in the world and the idea of what's going through their minds in certain moments throughout their lives and it's just the way she puts it and the way she explains it is so brilliant and that's all I'll say I'm not going to spoil what it is but to me that's the moment of the movie that's the movie in a nutshell to me and that scene floored me absolutely floored me um looking at the obvious leads with Margot and Ryan they're fantastic Gosling is incredible he fully fully committed to this role and like the the bit is so great and like what I love about this film in terms of the emotional arcs of it it's really interesting I do wish there was a little more fish out of the water aspects because that as Barbie and Ken go to the real world and I won't spoil anything but I kind of want a little bit more about with that but overall like visually it's shot incredibly impeccably uh by Rodrigo Prieto and uh and just the music and the score I think my only issues really were I thought that at times the tones of the movie were a bit conflicting um I thought that at points it it wanted to be one thing and then it was another thing and then back and forth which I'm totally fine with the filmmaker switching up the voice and the tone of the film but sometimes there's a conflicting element that happens with those tones that I that threw me off a little bit took me out a little bit but it wasn't enough to like hurt the film overall I I just think that this is like Jake said this is Greta gerwig's Barbie and this is made by Greta Gerwig and it is her voice through and through you hire a big filmmaker like that and you actually get her voice and I think that both the arcs that Ken and Barbie have in the film that Margot and Ryan have are fascinating and the performances there's so many incredible performances in the film but I can't stop thinking about America's monologue I'm telling you this monologue I want to watch it on a loop I want to go see it again just to watch the monologue and I I I just think that it's to me that's it's one of the most powerful things I've seen in a while in a movie um it feels like someone made a big Studio film with an indie feeling in terms of like it doesn't feel like it's conforming to anything in Hollywood it is just itself and You Gotta Give the film credit for doing that for for for just saying this is what our movie is and I don't care what you think this is what we're gonna do um yeah it's tracking at 110 million dollars so maybe we should do more of this well yeah you know Kevin Kevin was talking about like the how this weekend is is just a win for for moviegoers but these movies doing well because right now obviously we're recording before they come out but both Oppenheimer and Barbie are projected to do very well this weekend I mean if Barbie opens at 40 that's huge for a three hour R-rated biopic like that's that's a win yeah I'm sorry Oppenheimer Oppenheimer these oh no please well okay so Box Office Pro is who I've credited for some of these projections but remember they've been they felt high and then they felt pretty uh uh accurate right now they have Oppenheimer three-day weekend forecasts uh domestic 64.7 what that's sexy Barbie at 158.5 oh yeah like that's like that like if that doesn't tell Studios look do you see what happens when you allow like great filmmakers their range for for Barbie which they are uh which I forget what the last big film was it felt high but it ended up being right the range for Barbie is 140. remember when they they super projected Mario to be supervised no so they have Barbie 140 to 175 and Oppenheimer 52-72. and keep in mind a few weeks ago uh Oppenheimer was at 49 yeah and Barbie was at like 95 or 100. and you know Jake and I famously made a bet about this and I it I conceded if you're just tuning in for the first time I'm hosting a pause event next week if you want to throw your 100 bucks at it there we go I will so Jake and I had a bet going on I thought Oppenheimer was going to open bigger than Barbie now in my defense this was prior to the film getting in the R rating learning which we said was way too early for you to feel a little bit of context for that number um if Barbie opens to 158 and if their mission they have at 25.8 domestic Barbie and it's opening weekend will gross missions domestic total weekend wow and also I I thought mission was going to do better but one of the things I do want to point out though Global it's at 240. yeah it did go globally yeah one thing though I want to point out though in terms of like the bet that Jake and I made because the couple weeks ago I conceded like there was this one day when I think a Barbie trailer came out where they everybody online was able to take their face and put themselves in the Barbie poster and I saw other people from different Studios doing it I'm like okay this is gonna be huge um and so what's fascinating to me though and I said this in the air the other day like I I'm I'm dreading Monday morning I'm dreading the headlines that Barbie destroyed Oppenheimer or Barbie and and I and I I need people to understand that like to Jake's point to to our bet which I was wrong about and I have no problem admitting that there's no competition here it's not even it's not even it's not even at this point you have a three hour already biopic that's gonna open up and I believe and Gabe correct me if I'm wrong I think Barbie's in 4 200 screens and I think oppenheimer's in about 30 36 36 yeah 42 to 36. can I give you my 600 less screens can I give you my optimistic um uh prediction for what the headlines will be because I because you're not wrong that's kind of that's you know cynicisms um but given that the summer box office has been so trebodacious this year I think that if a movie opens to 160 and then another movie opens to almost 70 in the same weekend I think the headline will be two huge openings in a summer lackluster summer like I think that I think both will get sort of their due if they're both end up being that high also it's very important to note that like and I've said this before in the show and I think you guys agree with me I mean this movie is opening on Nolan's name I mean like like everybody in this cast is huge and Oppenheimer but to the to Jake's point it's it's about the father of the atomic bomb it's coming out in the middle of the summer it's a three hour biopic it's black and white in color are R rated biopic right so let's get into the reactions to uh Oppenheimer let's transition into this and Kevin since you have the floor one of you no longer boy why don't you start with your spoiler-free reaction to uh the latest film from from Christopher J Nolan we're recording this on July 19th I saw the film on July 6th um every single day that has passed since I saw that film I I've I've become more and more enlightened um in the scale and the scope of what Nolan is doing I mean I I walked out loving it and being blown away by it but this is a film that genuinely sits with you it's been it put an imprint on me in a way and Matt Damon said this uh in our interview he goes I can't believe that we're not thinking about this every second of our day I'm paraphrasing him but how are we not thinking about this more often and the ramifications and and and things that occurred because of this moment in history I mean for people you know the idea that they were going to press this button and there was a rem any chance whatsoever at the entire anything above zero is terrifying that the entire world yes with the atmosphere will be ignited and humans would cease to exist yes is insane and and I don't know that I ever thought about it from that scale until watching the film and reading the book um this is this is one of the most profound and important films I've seen in my lifetime for sure um I I find it to be terrifying and horrifying um this this film and I mean that in in the best way possible it awakens you to the idea like I'm now walking through life a little bit more scared about where we are in the world I genuinely am and I mean that because Nolan immersed me in this time period so much with the use of IMAX and the use of sound design and score and and performances that I felt like he took me from 2023 and dropped me in those decades in the 40s and 50s and I or even earlier than that and like like I felt like I was taken to that time and I know I waxed poetic about IMAX a lot on this show but I I need to be clear about something with this IMAX generally is Con generally used I guess people say for like big action and big scope this is not this is all intimate to me this is the most in my opinion the most intimate yet Epic film I've ever seen and I say that because a lot of the iMac shots are just on faces talking and when you're seeing a face on an eight-story screen an eight-story IMAX screen projected on 70 millimeter Phil IMAX film or however you're seeing it it is astounding to watch someone's face and how they process information and that moment and you're right there with them the ambiguity the Nuance the subtlety the restraint this is this is a filmmaker at his master level this is the best film he's made in his career um Interstellar is still my favorite listen to you wow Interstellar and Oppenheimer are tied for number one Oppenheimer I think is the best movie he's made just like I said with Tarantino's Hollywood I'm sorry to interrupt you because I know you're on a roll but this is so Interstellar it's funny that you put those together so much of this film I was like wow this feels like Interstellar in so many ways and I think you know the idea that there's no you know he didn't use CGI for the Trinity test the the Practical effects um the way he does things in camera when you're in Opie's mind and you're seeing all those crazy firestorms that's all practical done microscopic miniature it's it's insane the last thing I'll say is this um go back to Memento there was a brilliant use in that film I told you guys this he used color subjectively and then he used black and white objectively so with Oppenheimer the entire story is told in those two different color formats black and white in color subjectively we're in J Robert oppenheimer's subjective POV all in color and then he cross Cuts with the black and white which is the objective which is Robert Downey Jr Louis strauss's particular part and it's because of that cross-cutting that creates This brilliant ambiguity where you as the audience have to work to figure out where you are who where are you who do you who do you side with what information do you need to understand are you following it through his eyes or are you following it through the black and white sequences and I think that push-pull as an audience member in IMAX over Ludwig's score with hoitima's Incredible cinematography it's to me it's it's just pure freaking Cinema man like it is genuinely some of the most profound feelings I've had in a movie but I'm telling you guys it's it's the after for me it's the Aftershock of the movie for me and you know you feel this movie in your bones like I like I genuinely feel a slight sense of Terror in my stomach as I walk around now because you I'm telling you it like this film and we'll get into spoilers but there's something else I want to say but I'll say it in the spoilers but I loved it um and I know this is predictable Kevin loves Nolan Kevin loved this movie I'm not the only one Paul Schrader said it was the most important film of Arts of the century um it's one of the best films of the century that was uh extreme reaction to him Killian became Oppenheimer he that performance and Downey and Florence and Emily Blunt oh yeah all right so I'll go next because I'm not the Nolan guy on the show um and and I I like to make jokes about Nolan how sometimes his intelligence gets ahead of him um and he he knows he's smarter than the audience and and sometimes that that keeps him at a distance for me whether it's um tenant which I love but you got to work really hard to figure out where you're at and sometimes you have to watch multiple times in order to figure out where Nolan was the whole time kind of thing um Interstellar you know sometimes I think he's thinking ahead this to me was Nolan using the tricks that he loves the color schemes that Kevin talked about to put you in different time frames um using the tools that he loves IMAX um to the best of their ability to tell a story that I think he was building towards um telling his entire life and and only because I can't think of another experience and this might just be my ignorance of where we had a a moment in time where um a human decision could have had such ramifications AS Global decimation legitimately Global decimation um and so Nolan loves a ticking clock and he loves getting to that point but but but and I think that the uh Trinity test sequence is phenomenal but what I was more interested in and and Jake and I made this connection um as soon as we stepped out of it was that I've been calling this kind of Nolan's JFK because what I think he does is I think he takes um history his version of History it's still an interpretation and people already have been arguing with me on Twitter of like well JFK's filled with you know conspiratorial BS and Oppenheimer is accurate but that's not that's not the point I'm trying to say the point I'm trying to say is it's a filmmaker using their tools whether it's Oliver Stone using his tools or Nolan using his tools to tell their version of a very important event in history now Stone will lean a little bit more towards the conspiratory conspiratorial you know the government is doing this and and we're suspicious with Nolan there's this fascinating Dynamic of the smartest people on the planet um of which I often say Nolan is in that group being so excited to put Theory uh into work you know to to build these bombs to build this weapon to to race other scientists in other countries you know to be the first ones to do it and then there's a moment over the course of that conversation where you start to realize that oh wait if we succeed it's going to change life forever um and and I think Nolan does an incredible incredible job of making us feel that weight and there are so without getting into any more of the details what I will just say is the most remarkable thing about Oppenheimer is that everyone in the cast is directly in their Lane Matt Damon steps up to the plate and gives you that Matt Damon performance that exactly what you need out of him so Emily Blunt for a long time you'll be watching and thinking like what is she getting at here what's the point what's the point and then she has a scene near the end where everything that she's been doing up to that point comes home um Florence Pugh has an amazing moment there's a Litany of of cameos and scenes and one act bits where you're like oh that dude's in this oh my God or oh my gosh she's in this holy because Josh Hartnett Hartnett was incredible I will say uh if you haven't seen him his episode of Black Mirror that just came out his episode is on the sea it's a what's your boy Aaron Paul Aaron Paul it's great yeah it's really terrific um I mean Kenneth Brana uh Benny Safta I mean all these people it's like Nolan cast the exact right people to do the exact right things um And all I'll say in the spoiler free great take on it is three hours felt like 75 minutes I mean this thing flew by Sean you said whenever before the film began jokingly I'd love to see Nolan's 90-minute film and when the movie was over do you remember I leaned over and I went you kind of just saw Nolan's 90 minute film yeah it really was also never ever forget Sean after the movie ended because I had been bothering these guys for years about this movie saying we weren't ready and all these things and like you know every night I need a Nolan break every Nolan but you what did you say to when the movies as soon as it ended I leaned over to Kevin and I said I have been giving you a really hard time about this movie making fun of you for your anticipation and I apologize because I was completely wrong and you were completely right and this movie was beyond everything that I had hoped that it was going to be um so yeah I I cannot recommend it enough it is my number one movie of the year and this is when something like across the spider verse exists which is so tailored to me and is such a work of art but I honestly think at this moment Oppenheimer is ahead of it Jake I don't think you are gonna differ too much from us this movie sucked no the movie's great um I my my favorite single moment that that Christopher Nolan has ever directed is the interrogation scene between Batman and the Joker in The Dark Knight because it perfectly exemplifies how brilliant of a filmmaker that Nolan is that you can strip away everything you could strip away action you could strip away spectacle I mean the lighting of that scene for a huge portion of it is literally just a light bulb that is that is lighting uh both Heath Ledger's face and Gary oldman's face before uh Bale shows up it's just the perfect sequence that is honestly as heart racing and tense and exciting as any other action scene in that movie or quite frankly any other action scene that no one's ever directed I think that scene is a perfect small example of what makes Oppenheimer work it's that sort of tension of just two people talking just two conversations because I what Kevin you talked about uh being concerned about some of the narratives that are going to come out of of this weekend with the box office my concern of one of the narratives that's going to come out of Oppenheimer this weekend is people go oh it's just people talking the whole time it's just and yeah and granted it is a lot of dialogue it is a dialogue driven heavy conversation Asian based film but it has done so oh please I was gonna say I think we're going to overlook because of the technical aspects of it I think it's Nolan's best script it's oh yeah 100 and it is yes but it just proves really well yeah like like that interrogation scene from The Dark Knight he can make a conversation between two people or ten people or a boardroom of people feel like an action scene and that's not easy to do because a lot of people have been trying to do it there's a reason that we still look at 12 Angry Men and go how the hell is that movie so great because if it were that easy to just get 12 guys in a room and make it a masterpiece people wouldn't be spending 300 million dollars on Indiana Jones they would just put a bunch of guys in the room and spend 12 on it it'd be a masterpiece all right let's shift to spoilers right now so we're going to talk about some specifics about Oppenheimer so if you're listening to this before having gone to see it skip forward um and come on back and listen to these conversations Jake before I throw it over to you there is a point that I want to bring up that that I've heard from three different people today um who love the movie but talk about the fact that uh and now you're in spoiler territory the movie post Trinity test like it almost feels like everyone going into the movie or people going into the movie think that the Trinity test is going to be the end of the movie um and you have to almost like re get excited about a trial you know or and a cabinet position approval which in the grand scheme you might feel like this isn't as important even though I think a lot of the dialogue that's happening in those two scenes one is like a deposition for charges that are facing uh Oppenheimer and one is for the the Downey Junior character uh I I do understand that a little bit I was still riveted by it but I could see some people after the Trinity test being like Oh I don't really know if I need the rest of this movie but Jake you had a point that's the Brilliance though is the is the coldness after that um that's why it's that's why it's interesting yeah you know well that perfectly leads into sort of one of the things that I most appreciated about the movie and this kind of weirdly enough goes hand in hand with Barbie because often timer was a much different movie than I expected it to be um in the sense of of what it was that was thrilling me uh you know I was a very captivated and excited by a lot of the the courtroom proceedings and and the small uh you know you know so the like boardroom conversations that were being had and I walked into that movie expecting for the Trinity test to be the most impressive aspect of the film but I think what the most impressive aspect of the film is is that it's not the Trinity test it's right conversations it's courtrooms it's board rooms it's small moments between two people in Silence the fact that an atomic bomb blowing up is not the most captivating part of that movie to me is the ultimate win to me the the most compelling scene is him in that school gymnasium and no one messing with the sound of the audience yeah and him feeling it's the way that Nolan conveys because you have to assume that Oppenheimer carried with him this amount of uncertainty uh and then guilt of the ramifications of what he created and the way that Killian Murphy combined with Nolan convey that is just you know staggering you know what's funny I didn't think about this till just now that's kind of like a um it's kind of like the Scarecrow effect what's what's what he does with opinion that's really funny that's Killian Murphy and it's very much what happens we talk about Nolan using his tricks and sort of building up to this that's really funny that he uses the but I've heard this from from a few people that makes me go why so bad why did you see me to see that so badly it did not bother me that we do not see the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki I think that is very important that we do oh yeah yeah because if you think about it and this is gonna sound like a weird comparison it reminds me of like in War of the World Spielberg doesn't show the things that the main characters don't see you know like the whatever is going on over the hill or whatever the case may be sure you have to think at that time a lot of people really weren't seeing what was going on over there and I I did not need to see a quarter of a million people dying to understand the impact short of like the need like people wanting to see the big screen spectacle of it but I don't know what it says about the fact that people feel the need that they need to see that I think that's not what this movie was though a hundred percent this movie was about understanding the impact and empathizing with that whereas showing that would be sensationalizing that scene in the gym it said everything exactly trying to show Hiroshima or Nagasaki could have ever done let me tell you an example um Michael Bay is Pearl Harbor you could have done a movie like Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor and never showed the attack but showed the build up to it and then the ramifications of it sure but Bay made Pearl Harbor so that he could shoot the attack sure Nolan didn't make this movie so that he could show the bombings Nolan was way more interested in the before and the after it's simple because that the the absolutely brilliant moment with Gary Oldman it reminded me of like oh this is what bay was trying to do with John Voigt as FDR was that FDR yeah yeah yeah and I was like this is like it just kind of reminded me of like oh this is a good version of that scene wait didn't he stand up he's like oh yeah he like stands up out of his wheelchair um which like no I you know I don't know I think that might have happened I think that actually might be based on in the context of a Michael Bay movie it did yes it didn't play great well in fact so the more important scene is Killian not being able to look at the newsreel footage of you hear it and and him looking away and not being able to actually face it is far more impactful I think than having shown anything that that if you're disappointed that you didn't see Hiroshima Nagasaki you need to ask yourself what kind of movie you wanted to see going into this because I feel like I think you're just fundamentally missing the point of the the movie like that would have felt like exploitation I think that this movie until its final frame is asking you to contemplate the reality of what happened and and that the fact that especially here in America we live in a society that very quickly tried to forget that and I think that this movie is trying to highlight it not in a way that says look how look how destructive this is and look at the yeah and actually look at the loss of life but to have you actually feel it and contemplate it feel it through his performance the fact that we looked at Hiroshima oh it's obviously the fact that we looked at Hiroshima Nagasaki and our immediate reaction as a country was how can we do this bigger is terrifying exactly well but I mean to talk to Kevin's point of view about feeling fear in the aftermath of this movie like Nolan doesn't let you off the hook at the end of this film no um he has that confrontation and so one of the things Gabe and I were talking inside chat today of just like that Alden einron Rick uh line at the end where he says the Downy character like oh my God maybe they were talking about something more important than you that that revisiting oh that revisiting of the Eisenhower or the Einstein sequence I love that we kept revisiting that and the payoff what the fact that that's the end of the movie was so I'm saying this is his best script this is I'm saying this is this is Nolan's best script but in terms of structure and payoff before we wrap up because we're getting to the end of the show I did want to point out one thing that I pointed out to Sean and it's again it's in reference to we've had a lot of fun um countering Kevin's enthusiasm over the last year or whatever uh it is you know making fun of the the marketing stuff but I pointed out something that I was feeling in the uh in the screening and I and I mentioned this to Sean in the side chat which is that the Trinity test we know what happens like we know that it's going to work we know that the bomb gets made and we know what comes after that but everyone in that scene the emotion that they're feeling is anticipation what is going to happen is what everyone in that scene is asking and because there was such and for people at our level maybe I don't know that everyone's gonna have this this feeling but anyone at our level who's interested in the filmmaker interested in Nolan in that moment given that we knew that there was no CGI and all this mystery about how are they doing the Trinity test we were all feeling the same thing as what's about to happen what am I going to see and it was this a really incredible way to do that thing that we talk about that directors is their job which is to get you to lean in is to get you to feel whatever the person on the screen is feeling and I thought that was such a brilliant trick whether completely conscious or just a bit of a happy accident to be sitting there leaning in knowing that the bomb's gonna go off but going what is it going to look like like how did he do this practically what does that mean I was feeling exactly what they were feeling for a different reason and I thought that that was just it blew me away in that moment also can we shout out the sound design because now we're in spoilers we can talk about this for people who obviously if you're this far you've heard this yeah yeah we'll have time we'll have time next week because we're I think next week we're gonna do our top fives I imagine this is gonna make your top five yeah um so we'll have time to give it some more spoilery flowers but but yeah I want to say one thing though about the sound design the and gay brings up a brilliant point because you don't put that in the marketing we you're right like we're kind of them we are them objective or subjectively in that moment but what's brilliant about that that that whole sequence like in terms of watching that is is really kind of how you the sound design is used um because the bomb is so far away the way that Nolan uses sound in that scene sucking it all out and then when he hits you with that effect I jumped back in my freaking seat man and also the you know now I've become death destroyer of war of Worlds um that line famously he talked about in a famous interview where you know I love that Nolan didn't have him say it in the moment it's it's done it's done off camera like we're assuming it's in his mind I'm assuming the way the way it's done um he was supposed to have said it do we know what the actual moment from from what I understand from a historical standpoint I don't know that he said it then in the interview that he did I believe he talks about and Jake you saw the interview it's like I think he talks about how that's what he felt in the moment you said the moment reminded him of the Hindu scripture and he had been reading that scripture and that and and obviously we're in spoiler territory he early on in the film remember Florence Pugh has him read that right yeah and so that whole callback but anyways we'll wax poetic about this more later but yeah that last line simple that last looks amazing I have so much to say about that last night as well simple yes or no from around the table because we talk about the supporting actor categories um you know where you could have a scene and and win Emily Blunt does have a lot to do in this but does she get nominated for that scene of her at the table dude when Florence Pugh is staring at Killian you say yes Jake do you think she gets a nomination supporting specifically for that scene yeah because I I think they're going to be you know what not not necessarily that she doesn't deserve it because she does particularly for the back half of the film but I also think that like nominations are going to be so wide sweeping I think you've got potentially three solid chances at at you've got a lead actor you've got a I'm assuming maybe a supporting actress and then supporting actor for Downey like it's honestly nice to be reminded that Downey is a great freaking actor like that I feel like not to take anything away character yeah not to take anything away from his work in the Marvel movies but like you know he he didn't interview um with rolling stone a few years ago where he talks about I think I want to say like like having been nominated for Oscars but losing and I think his quote was like don't worry I'll win someday I remember when Doolittle came out and then maybe thinking like maybe not dude maybe not but then but you've been seeing this film Doolittle I still defend Doolittle do you not for me but for kids it was a great kids movie I used the word slime ball for for Downey's character do you do you guys remember like the way he would put his hair back and he would remove his scarf that character was a snake he played him like a snake it was like a really really just really great performance like he's brilliant in that perform Robert Downey Jr man what an actor what an actor I don't think uh I don't think blunt makes it but we'll see I'm gonna say no you know it sort of depends I was trying to point out Gabe said quick Around the Horn yes or no yes nobody gave him that at all uh but I do think I think Killian's a lock I think down he's a lock I think the screenplays a lock I think Nolan's gonna get director and I think he's gonna get a picture I don't think they I'm not sure what they're gonna win I'm just saying nominations right now okay so yeah but I mean in the top categories I think for blunt I think if if audience members if people who vote watch the whole film it leaves you with a very like she she is yeah she ends the film stronger than she begins it so yeah I think if they finish the entire movie which we've learned that not all voters do I know I know it's asking a lot to finish the freaking movie um yeah shout out to Ludwig's score yeah yeah all right so listen um this weekend is being defined by people going to the movie theaters and double featuring it so I want you guys to head to the comments down below after listening to this interview and tell us uh the last double feature that you remember doing in a movie theater when's the last time that you actually spent a day uh in the theaters oh that's interesting strangely mine has to do with Nolan and I'll tell that story uh I'll tell the story briefly next week please tell me it was dark knight Mamma Mia it was not although that sounds like a great great double feature um okay we're gonna get out of here uh plug the Nolan interview go go listen to the Nolan interview if you haven't yet and uh again thanks to Greta Gerwig for joining us for Barbie that's fantastic um we'll be back next week with a brand new show you can listen to listen to us or follow us in the meantime on our social media channels we are at Jake's takes at Kevin mccarthytv at Sean underscore O'Connell at Gabe Kovach the show is at real blend Kev and keep sending me your ZIP codes I've gotten I've gotten dozens and dozens of people like tweeting me their zip codes and I'll help you find a 70 millimeter IMAX or an IMAX one for 143 near you I have no problem doing it I find it to be one of my favorite things to do and people tell me right I've had I've had people telling me that they're flying and driving hours to go to these movies uh to see them in IMAX and one guy told us he's gonna take his son they're gonna go to Providence Rhode Island and see it in 70 millimeter IMAX there so Kevin's having like Australia and Norway and the crazy thing is that Kevin guarantees that you love the movie and if you don't he'll pay for your trip that's not true at all do not that is not okay that's it for this week's real blend all right [Music]

Channel: ReelBlend Podcast

Views: 87,512

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Id: JleQyofRtjs

Length: 83min 35sec (5015 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2023