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Speaker 2: Oh ge is folks, It's showtime. People say, good money
Speaker 2: to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 4: They want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in
Speaker 4: the projection booths.
Speaker 2: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: Good New York and a happy Friday to oh you survivivors
Speaker 4: out there.
Speaker 2: I will be broadcasting live because we approach.
Speaker 5: The end of the world.
Speaker 4: They say, we got three days that before Mother Nature
Speaker 4: turns on us for good.
Speaker 3: Ending our stay on planet Earth once.
Speaker 6: And for all. A fond of role of film one
Speaker 6: last project, my swan song?
Speaker 2: Are you a photographer?
Speaker 1: Tried to be?
Speaker 6: What happened?
Speaker 1: Civility is hard to maintain times like these.
Speaker 4: I'm just gonna spend the next three days coming to
Speaker 4: terms with what my purpose was?
Speaker 2: What's that you keep him numb?
Speaker 1: Until it's all, Oh, I got anything you need? That
Speaker 1: a doctor prescribes. I was wondering if you could possibly
Speaker 1: help me out, as there might be a way out
Speaker 1: of this myth and I have half the money.
Speaker 2: You just need a little bit of help.
Speaker 7: I'm not giving you the money.
Speaker 6: What about kicking or she's got no place to go?
Speaker 5: Don't worry about my big brother.
Speaker 2: I take care of him. He doesn't take care of me.
Speaker 2: Nixt gone. They broken and took him.
Speaker 5: They said that the black for the money said they
Speaker 5: expect me to pay out. Who's Nick involved with?
Speaker 1: If you give these guys trouble, you'll started nothing until
Speaker 1: I see your dead go home?
Speaker 5: He can't.
Speaker 2: What the hell is going on?
Speaker 7: They followed you, they are.
Speaker 2: You've been a real torn in my side.
Speaker 5: I have to find him.
Speaker 6: If you will help me, I'll do it myself.
Speaker 1: Just because civilization is gonna end doesn't mean that I'm going.
Speaker 7: To Welcome to the Projection booth. I'm your host.
Speaker 1: Mike White drew me once again? Is mister Ben Buckingham
Speaker 1: did a all? We conclude a month of mostly Patreon
Speaker 1: request with one from listener Pat Rabke. Exposure thirty six.
Speaker 1: This is the thirty sixth entry in the Exposure series.
Speaker 1: The twenty twenty one. Film was written and directed by
Speaker 1: Mackenzie G. Morrow and stars Charles Udo as Cam, a
Speaker 1: very appropriate name for a photographer. He's spending the last
Speaker 1: three days left on earth by selling drugs and wandering
Speaker 1: the streets of New York, running into a colorful array
Speaker 1: of characters. We will be spoiling this film as much
Speaker 1: as we perbasually can, So if you don't want anything ruined,
Speaker 1: please turn off the podcast and come back after you've
Speaker 1: seen the movie. We will still be here. So, Ben,
Speaker 1: I imagine this was a first time watch for you.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 6: Indeed, I hadn't come across this at all in my
Speaker 6: letterboxed Wanderings just for the blurb and stoked my curiosity.
Speaker 6: I didn't leave attracted to some of these more odd sounding,
Speaker 6: maybe experimental, artistic leaning endeavors with a bit of genre.
Speaker 2: So I was like, yeah, yeah, let's check that out
Speaker 2: and discuss it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was a new one for me as well.
Speaker 1: Since pat Radkey requested it, I said, all right, sounds good.
Speaker 1: Let's track this one down. Not too difficult to find
Speaker 1: out on DVD out there streaming. Definitely not a ton
Speaker 1: of stuff written about this film, and in fact, I
Speaker 1: found the reviews of this to be almost like a
Speaker 1: warshot test, because it was very interesting for me what
Speaker 1: the different reviewers were focusing on. Some of them were
Speaker 1: focusing on the relationship of our main character with the
Speaker 1: woman that he buns into in here. Some of them
Speaker 1: were talking about the for lack of a better term,
Speaker 1: the blue people that show up. Everybody seemed to focus
Speaker 1: on different things, where I was just like, is this
Speaker 1: the same movie? But yes it is. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of different little pieces to this. Very much an
Speaker 1: independent production, and you can really feel that as you watch.
Speaker 6: This, probably like halfway through before my brain went, oh,
Speaker 6: twenty twenty one, if not Lockdown film, then like just
Speaker 6: after Lockdown, it's certainly more open. I think it probably
Speaker 6: was like not quite full quarantine period. It looks like
Speaker 6: it was a little bit after that because they do
Speaker 6: move around quite a bit. It is not just apartments
Speaker 6: or one apartment trying to fudge together a lot. But
Speaker 6: there is a limited through limited cast, not like huge,
Speaker 6: huge crowd scenes or anything like that, which can be
Speaker 6: just being an independent film with limited resources, or it
Speaker 6: can be that there's a pandemic going on. I think
Speaker 6: it does fold into that kind of not exactly a genre,
Speaker 6: what do we call it? The patch of cinema that
Speaker 6: happened in that era and obviously reflects quite a bit
Speaker 6: of what people were feeling and thinking at that time.
Speaker 6: Not a lot of optimism, but not exactly a pessimistic
Speaker 6: film either, walks a middle ground between the two and yeah,
Speaker 6: very definitely. Like I've worked on a number of micro
Speaker 6: budget films and small productions and things, and so there
Speaker 6: was a lot here that I was just like, ah, yep,
Speaker 6: I can recognize with what you were going through.
Speaker 1: So we should talk about the conceit of this film.
Speaker 1: The name of the film is Exposure thirty six. And
Speaker 1: for people who may not remember actual film Snapshots with
Speaker 1: the Family Holiday.
Speaker 4: Goodby Goldbee taken on Holiday Goodbee snap snap green green, weak, weak, nuge,
Speaker 4: nudge say an the more.
Speaker 1: They used to come in rolls of what twelve twenty
Speaker 1: four to thirty six. And our main character Cam finds
Speaker 1: an unexposed role of film and a safe and he
Speaker 1: decides during these last three days on Earth because there
Speaker 1: is some sort of what is it, It's going to
Speaker 1: be some sort of like ecological disaster that is about
Speaker 1: to happen and everybody is going to die in three days.
Speaker 1: While he is undergoing this last few days. There's a
Speaker 1: quote at the beginning where it talks about how the
Speaker 1: world is going to end, and the calendar is going
Speaker 1: to read Monday. So I'm guessing this is all taking
Speaker 1: place over a weekend, and during that time he is
Speaker 1: using those last thirty six exposures of this role of
Speaker 1: the film, and that's our conceit going through. Here is
Speaker 1: him taking photographs, and then also this whole idea of
Speaker 1: this being three days before the end of the world.
Speaker 1: Now have to say that I don't know how the
Speaker 1: world's going to end, and I don't know how people
Speaker 1: are going to be, but it feels like if we're
Speaker 1: three days before the end of the world, it's going
Speaker 1: to get really crazy. As opposed to this, which is
Speaker 1: very much like The Quiet probably the most quiet apocalypse
Speaker 1: that I've ever seen, other than maybe The Quiet Earth
Speaker 1: New Zealand film from Jeff Murphy director also a free Jack.
Speaker 1: That's right. There is a title card at the beginning
Speaker 1: that says Friday, so we are spending the weekend here.
Speaker 2: I don't know there is a Saturday.
Speaker 6: There's a Saturday one. I now, I can't think that
Speaker 6: the might have been a Monday one. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I think that was one of the complaints in one
Speaker 1: of the reviews that I read was there's no title
Speaker 1: card for this and also you don't see all thirty
Speaker 1: six exposures, and I'm like, okay, dude, relax.
Speaker 6: I was tempted to count the exposure as I just
Speaker 6: looked there. It was part of me out of the
Speaker 6: first year that was like, will they've actually be thirty six?
Speaker 6: The second viewier is like, nah, I reckon, there's thirty six.
Speaker 6: I don't need to Canada, I trust you. But there
Speaker 6: was definitely a Friday and a Saturday title card because
Speaker 6: the Saturday one is when John coppin to Esque School
Speaker 6: suddenly dives in where was Sunday?
Speaker 5: Where I left Sunday? And I told him and he
Speaker 5: didn't believe me. What they don't make Sunday?
Speaker 4: Why not?
Speaker 1: Because of God? Yeah? I really like the score. I
Speaker 1: think the score is probably the strongest element of this
Speaker 1: entire film. It just really curious stuff. For one, because
Speaker 1: it's not fast moving by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 1: It's ninety minutes and you feel every minute going by.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it feels like it's very much inspired by
Speaker 6: certain filmmakers and their scores. Jeff Nichols feels like a
Speaker 6: big shadow cast over this film takes Shelter especially, but
Speaker 6: the school doesn't feel like it's just riffing or borrowing.
Speaker 6: It does feel like somebody was like, oh, I love that,
Speaker 6: it was great. I think they can make it work here,
Speaker 6: and they do that. It does work quite strongly for
Speaker 6: the film and keep it moving along and feels in
Speaker 6: a lot of spaces that the lower budget can't really do.
Speaker 6: Even though it is quite a recent film, just the
Speaker 6: very short amount of years between its release and now
Speaker 6: have not helped it much because, as you said, it
Speaker 6: is very quiet apocalypse. There's not really like a high
Speaker 6: level of insanity on display or chaos or disintegration or
Speaker 6: any of these things. It's very personal, very like reserved
Speaker 6: and enclosed, and that maybe might have felt like a
Speaker 6: possibility back in twenty twenty one, but even with COVID
Speaker 6: and everything, but as we have seen just in the
Speaker 6: Last of An America, it's not gonna look like this
Speaker 6: ninety nine percenty of population is dead or gone, which
Speaker 6: the film doesn't explicitly or state or suggest in any
Speaker 6: way other than the quietness. Yeah, it's going to be
Speaker 6: like absolutely insane, and so it does. It feels much
Speaker 6: more anachronistics than maybe that could have Otherwise.
Speaker 1: Every day is a lot louder than this film moreover
Speaker 1: be and I'm curious about when money would lose its value.
Speaker 1: A weird three days before the end of the world,
Speaker 1: our main character, Cam is going around taking photos, but
Speaker 1: he is primarily, as I said in the beginning, is
Speaker 1: a drug dealer. He's still asking for money, and I'm like, why,
Speaker 1: what is going on? Why would you ask for money?
Speaker 1: I can understand pevling drugs, and I understand wanting drugs
Speaker 1: before the end of the world. I've been wanting drugs
Speaker 1: since twenty sixteen around here, and thank god Michigan is
Speaker 1: legal now, because you need something to take the edge
Speaker 1: off of the insanity that's going on out there. So
Speaker 1: one of the first people that we meet is a
Speaker 1: guy who's pretty treaked out and wants to buy a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of drugs, and his buddy is laying on
Speaker 1: the couch just completely zonked out, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see a lot of people zonking out before
Speaker 1: the end of the world. But I just don't know
Speaker 1: why you would collect money for things if the whole
Speaker 1: thing is going down to the drain in a few days.
Speaker 6: See that that did actually make sense to me, and
Speaker 6: I think they do actually address it a bit in
Speaker 6: the film, because they do have a point where it's, oh,
Speaker 6: there's a there's possibly a bunker, and you need money
Speaker 6: to get in there.
Speaker 2: And you've got money, don't you know.
Speaker 6: There's two aspects which make it like seem normal to
Speaker 6: me that that would keep going.
Speaker 2: And one is the like, well, if.
Speaker 6: If something did come along, if some group was trying
Speaker 6: to hold together and keep the monetary system going, then
Speaker 6: it's I'm not saying it's not delusional.
Speaker 2: But it's it is.
Speaker 6: I do believe that it's like, oh, it's paper, it's light,
Speaker 6: it's easy to hold on to it just in case
Speaker 6: for a rainy day, if that rainy day requires some
Speaker 6: kind of monetary system, if people are going to offer
Speaker 6: him money and give him money, yeah, I'll just suck
Speaker 6: this up. And also, like, after if you've said your
Speaker 6: whole life poor, then why not you get to be
Speaker 6: like role playing some rich kind of power thing for
Speaker 6: the last couple of days like that kind of works
Speaker 6: for me, which also into that it's like money is
Speaker 6: such like a totem, and such a totem that is
Speaker 6: tied to so much sickness and mental health failures that
Speaker 6: it's like our ability to let go of it is
Speaker 6: going to take a little time. It's like a knee
Speaker 6: jerk reaction kind of thing. Like it said, it's something
Speaker 6: that you do if you were like sleep walking, you'd
Speaker 6: still be like, oh yeah, money, thank you, because we
Speaker 6: had how everything functions and it's ground into our absolute marrow,
Speaker 6: much to our detriment, So I can see that's still
Speaker 6: being like something that continues on.
Speaker 2: There were quite a few nice.
Speaker 6: Little bits here that I felt worked that I felt
Speaker 6: really believable to me.
Speaker 2: There was like the kind of somewhat subtle, not subtle.
Speaker 6: Aspect that the underground market was still functioning while the
Speaker 6: above ground market had failed.
Speaker 2: That it's wait, you've got beer, Like where did you
Speaker 2: get beer from?
Speaker 6: But it's like, oh yeah, illicit substances, Oh yeah, here
Speaker 6: have something this listen substances everywhere.
Speaker 2: To go forward was like beer, where's the beer?
Speaker 6: And it's like yeah, yeah. The corporate aspects of society.
Speaker 6: The market that is official and sanctioned is like completely collapsed.
Speaker 2: Well everybody else.
Speaker 6: Is, oh yeah, I know were used to like not
Speaker 6: having access and having to figure it out for ourselves.
Speaker 2: I like that. I thought that worked really well.
Speaker 1: No, I agree with that, and it reminds me of
Speaker 1: we talked last year about Panic in the Year Zero
Speaker 1: and the way that a nuclear bomb just hit La
Speaker 1: in that movie and people are just scrambling and yeah,
Speaker 1: jacking up prices and it becomes this huge struggle and
Speaker 1: fight for everything. Even just as part of our research
Speaker 1: for Spirits of the Air Gremlins of the Clouds, this
Speaker 1: whole idea of again the world's going to end kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and people are just going absolutely batshit and
Speaker 1: just buying as much as it can and having problems
Speaker 1: around getting gas on all these things. So it is
Speaker 1: a different way of doing it where it is so
Speaker 1: much more quiet and just this kind of like very
Speaker 1: meditative thing. I like these little moments where our main character,
Speaker 1: and again I don't know if it's drug induced or
Speaker 1: if he just is having these hallucinations or if there
Speaker 1: is something actual otherworldly, because we are introduced to this
Speaker 1: idea of these blue people. Basically these scenes that are
Speaker 1: shot with a very strong blue light, and it's usually
Speaker 1: people that have died. I believe it's maybe can't be
Speaker 1: his granny, but somebody's granny we see right off the bat,
Speaker 1: and then later on we see character named I believe
Speaker 1: it is Ed, who's Montgomery Morrow, the director's brother. Though
Speaker 1: I have watched this film multiple times now and it
Speaker 1: is really not good. That we're introduced to Nick, who's
Speaker 1: played by Nick Smithson pretty close to the beginning. He's
Speaker 1: that tweaker guy I mentioned. And then we're introduced to
Speaker 1: a character named Habi who's Jennifer Lee Whitehead, and we
Speaker 1: see her quite a bit. She basically becomes the love
Speaker 1: interest the damsel in distress ish in this movie, so
Speaker 1: we see her associated with Nick because we see Nick
Speaker 1: and then we see her right away. Later on we
Speaker 1: see this guy Ed, and then we see her right away,
Speaker 1: and I think she might be Ed's sister. And both
Speaker 1: Nick and Ed have facial hair, so I think they're
Speaker 1: the same person. Every single time I watched this movie.
Speaker 6: Did you get a chance to watch that little short
Speaker 6: film I sent you?
Speaker 2: Modern Man?
Speaker 1: Holy shit, that was hilarious.
Speaker 6: How good is it. I can't believe everybody's saying it.
Speaker 6: And I think the guy who's the laid in that, yeah,
Speaker 6: John Reynolds. He also wrote one Man, I recommend everyone
Speaker 6: out there look up Modern Man twenty twenty three, starring
Speaker 6: John Reynolds. It's wonderful, beautiful, amazing short film. That's pretty sure.
Speaker 2: It's a New York film what I remember.
Speaker 6: And Yeah, there's a character in Exposure thirty six who
Speaker 6: the whole time he's on the screed, I could not
Speaker 6: stop thinking about this short film that he looks a
Speaker 6: bit like John Reynolds, and I just imagined that he
Speaker 6: has the same life off screen as the short film
Speaker 6: Modern Man. Edg's the drug dealer, but he's a wee dealer,
Speaker 6: not a prescription dealer. Hence whoy our main character is
Speaker 6: coming to him to give tell him the prescription drugs.
Speaker 6: Nick is Katie's brother, so they are two separate people.
Speaker 6: It's Nick who we see early on as a spirit
Speaker 6: the ed I don't think we ever get to see
Speaker 6: as a spirit because.
Speaker 2: He doesn't die until much later.
Speaker 1: Oh so he does come back.
Speaker 6: See.
Speaker 1: I kept mixing these characters up completely, and it's so
Speaker 1: dumb because they're both just white dudes with beards, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, they look identical to me and I couldn't
Speaker 1: figure them out.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 6: Obviously one of them is his brother, the writer director
Speaker 6: editor's brother, and the other ones clearly like a mate,
Speaker 6: and they have done other short films together. So I
Speaker 6: think it's like, unfortunately, when you want to cast your mate,
Speaker 6: your family, and they all look like they're related, it
Speaker 6: is somewhat of a difficulty, but they are very So
Speaker 6: we meet Nick and Katie together.
Speaker 2: Actually we meet Katie a little earlier on.
Speaker 6: In the street because she was coming out of Ed's.
Speaker 6: She was around Ed's house, and then we meet her
Speaker 6: again with her brother Nick, who's the one who's looking
Speaker 6: for the bottle opener and losing his shit and he
Speaker 6: has the beer. And they clearly come from more well
Speaker 6: off background, nice apartments, nicer clothes, all that kind of thing.
Speaker 6: And then Nick disappears and cam our main protagonist, Cam
Speaker 6: sees him in his apartment, in Cam's apartment as this spirit,
Speaker 6: and yeah, they are lit with a sort of blue light,
Speaker 6: but they also have a fiery blue iris instead of
Speaker 6: a human iris anymore. They're transcended in some way, and
Speaker 6: there isn't a big suggestion that Cam is partaking of
Speaker 6: his own stuff. I think that we learned that he's background,
Speaker 6: that he has some sort of relationship with.
Speaker 3: The word.
Speaker 6: I don't think of what the word is that they
Speaker 6: use with a teacher of his who was a photography
Speaker 6: teacher and was supposed to be helping him get into
Speaker 6: that world, and it didn't work out, and she died
Speaker 6: of a drug overdose. With some people in the filmplies
Speaker 6: of suicide, some people just it's just an accident. So
Speaker 6: I think that we can read that he is selling
Speaker 6: these drugs, but maybe not part taking of them because
Speaker 6: of that negative experience.
Speaker 2: We never really.
Speaker 6: Learned what the drug was that she overdose films so
Speaker 6: that you could even read into it that he is
Speaker 6: very specifically like that I'm selling the prescription drugs to
Speaker 6: be trying to help people like He definitely explicitly says
Speaker 6: that he thinks that his purpose is to be helping
Speaker 6: people to smooth their way through these final days by
Speaker 6: checking out, which is very interesting and powerful and complicated
Speaker 6: because it's okay, there is a positive there, but also
Speaker 6: feels like a bit of a cop of not dealing
Speaker 6: with anything and not confronting it of just exiting, and
Speaker 6: especially given you can't say that a prescription drugs would
Speaker 6: be a better option, given to our America has been
Speaker 6: dying from opioid crisis of prescription drugs for US then
Speaker 6: twenty years. So it's like a real complicated like mess there,
Speaker 6: which the film like kind of lays out, but it
Speaker 6: doesn't really try to address or anything.
Speaker 2: But there's some expositioning moments.
Speaker 6: Here that do irritate me a bit because they feel
Speaker 6: like stuff where they didn't have faith in the audience.
Speaker 6: But the film never actually really stops for any actual expert.
Speaker 6: There's no Philoso advising all anything much really, which in
Speaker 6: some ways is a plassen in some ways is the minus.
Speaker 6: It's it doesn't it's good because that stuff you can
Speaker 6: get really early bogged down in. But also it just
Speaker 6: does mean that if you want to get something out
Speaker 6: of this film, you do need to watch it a
Speaker 6: couple of times and.
Speaker 2: Put the pieces together yourself.
Speaker 6: And I don't think that is done in a way
Speaker 6: that is very rewarding. It's good, it's cool, it's good,
Speaker 6: but it's it's not oh wow, this or that. It's
Speaker 6: not it's not especially rich text, but it is there
Speaker 6: and it is putting forward some interesting ideas, but the
Speaker 6: character stuff it is, it is a little confusing on
Speaker 6: the first go round of who's who and why they're there.
Speaker 6: The character ed the drug dealer is he's got the
Speaker 6: easy part. He gets to be the slightly odd ball,
Speaker 6: wacky guy. He's having fun. He has I will get.
Speaker 6: I gotta say like his suicide note absolutely one of
Speaker 6: my favorite suicide notes in cinema.
Speaker 2: It's that that they pull it up and it's kind
Speaker 2: of scrawled.
Speaker 6: So badly and you hear the actor readiot or the
Speaker 6: voice already.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah and match.
Speaker 6: It fits everything we've learned about this guy and is
Speaker 6: beautiful and tremendous because he's been in most of the
Speaker 6: film trying to kill himself.
Speaker 2: He seems to be like, oh, I went down.
Speaker 6: To the Fourth Street bridge throw myself off, but there's
Speaker 6: so many people there, like it's real cute. Yeah, so
Speaker 6: he's come back, but he just seems to keep going
Speaker 6: off to drying himself and it's like things get it
Speaker 6: the way and he comes back. It was like the
Speaker 6: film really needed more of him. I feel like we
Speaker 6: needed to step away and split and go follow him
Speaker 6: for a bit and see like he's weird journey day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because there's not a lot of lovity otherwise, like
Speaker 1: Cam is pretty durn serious.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he's a very reserved character and we don't get
Speaker 6: much of him, which is very unfortunate. I was fascinated
Speaker 6: when I looked into the actor. Now I wasn't sure
Speaker 6: how to pronounce his last name. He said Charles Uda.
Speaker 1: I said Uda, Yeah, could be something else.
Speaker 6: So he's Kenyan and I actually it wasn't until the
Speaker 6: last act of the film that I suddenly was like, oh,
Speaker 6: that's not an American accent. Watching it a second time,
Speaker 6: I was there was a couple of times like okay, yeah,
Speaker 6: I can hear the intonation is different, And for a
Speaker 6: second I thought British and I was like, oh no,
Speaker 6: that's the Yeah, that's English that comes from a British background.
Speaker 6: But that's that's an African accent and African intonation in
Speaker 6: the way of speaking English.
Speaker 2: And I looked it up.
Speaker 6: There he's a Kenyan born actor who's actually quite famous
Speaker 6: in Kenya that was in a very popular soap op
Speaker 6: fora called Macbutano Junction and has done a lot of
Speaker 6: stuff and also unfortunately died on the sixth of February
Speaker 6: and twenty twenty four, which was always exactly two years
Speaker 6: today when I watched the film, very young. Very unfortunate,
Speaker 6: because he's very good. Without him, I'm not sure that
Speaker 6: this film would hold.
Speaker 2: Together very well.
Speaker 6: It's He's does bring a real strong grounding, lived in
Speaker 6: performance that I think is a bit limited by what
Speaker 6: the film is doing. But he definitely does very good work,
Speaker 6: and I do wonder if they maybe reduced how much
Speaker 6: he was talking because of trying to make him not
Speaker 6: appear like he's like he make him seem like he
Speaker 6: was an American, which is something I'm do find quite
Speaker 6: irritating about the film. It didn't need to be an American.
Speaker 6: There's nothing actually in here that makes it meaningful that
Speaker 6: he is from America. You've got this talented international actor
Speaker 6: with this whole background and everything, then take.
Speaker 2: Advantage of it. Let his boy speak.
Speaker 6: He does cover the accent very well, but as I said,
Speaker 6: I don't think that's to the positive outcome. I think
Speaker 6: it would have been a much more interesting film to
Speaker 6: have this person who is so far from home in
Speaker 6: this place, in a place which is the far from
Speaker 6: home for many, many, many people. It offers up so
Speaker 6: much more possibilities for ways to engage in ways to
Speaker 6: look at the city and see the city.
Speaker 2: Through different eyes.
Speaker 6: And one of the first people we meet is a
Speaker 6: homeless woman who has such a brutal Australian accent.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah she does. And I was like, random
Speaker 1: Ausie woman on the street.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I can't remember, we've talked about this previously, but
Speaker 6: that's the accent of the Australian accent that I think
Speaker 6: American's more familiar with because it tends to be what
Speaker 6: the accent from New South Wales sounds like more, which
Speaker 6: is where a lot of filmmaking happens from one a
Speaker 6: lot more international filmmaking happens.
Speaker 2: So that's the accent people know. Ah yeah, Ozzie.
Speaker 6: And I was like versus the lower down end where
Speaker 6: I am wait a bit more chill. But even that,
Speaker 6: you've got another foreigner there and stick with that person.
Speaker 6: Have these two people from like totally different places, both
Speaker 6: colonies of England, and explore that. And instead she's just
Speaker 6: like beef bit at the beginning, and then we see
Speaker 6: her dead later and her spirit and he cuts in
Speaker 6: these two shots of her before as if we don't
Speaker 6: know who she is, And that was one of the
Speaker 6: bits that was like like visual exposition was like have
Speaker 6: some faith in your film and your audience. This person
Speaker 6: we did know who she was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she wasn't a white guy wearing a beard, yes,
Speaker 1: and being obnoxious because I think his whole search for
Speaker 1: the crook screw where he's losing his shit. It just
Speaker 1: felt very ed like to me having just met ed
Speaker 1: maybe not even five minutes between seeing these two characters,
Speaker 1: and I'm just who are these guys now? Yeah, thinking
Speaker 1: they're one and the same.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I did catch some hints of some Jersey accents
Speaker 6: I think in here as well, So I feel like
Speaker 6: maybe the background is a bit Jersey, that they're drawing
Speaker 6: on some personal experiences of Jersey guys there. But I
Speaker 6: don't know huge amounts for that other than like from
Speaker 6: cinema and random podcast. But that's yeah, Charles Uli, he
Speaker 6: does a really good job. Seems like an interesting dude.
Speaker 6: When I was just looking him up, there was lots
Speaker 6: of stuff. The only place I could see anywhere that
Speaker 6: they talked about how he died was lots of random
Speaker 6: YouTube clips, And I'm just like, I'm not clicking on those.
Speaker 2: I think that's probably.
Speaker 6: Not anything anybody needs to watch because everything else was
Speaker 6: just like very quiet. But he seems like there was
Speaker 6: an interesting fellow there. I saw that he did some
Speaker 6: voiceover work on a documentary about an intersex person in tenure,
Speaker 6: I think, which apparently is quite good and is available
Speaker 6: on YouTube called Sydney and Friends. So I do I
Speaker 6: wonder what he stored where he was. I wonder he
Speaker 6: was he stuck in America during the COVID things or
Speaker 6: was he trying to break out there. Yeah, there's an
Speaker 6: interesting figure there, and I'm glad we've at least got
Speaker 6: something like this a bit to see what could have been.
Speaker 6: Some of the acting in the film is a bit rough.
Speaker 6: It's not terrible, it's just amateur. It's just people who
Speaker 6: aren't really used to film. I don't think there was
Speaker 6: I did see quite a few comments on letterbox and
Speaker 6: people really ripping into the acting, and I really.
Speaker 2: Didn't think it was that bad.
Speaker 6: I think those people need to watch more bad acting
Speaker 6: than they would bad acting. I thought, was it a
Speaker 6: Jennifer Lee Whitehead who plays Katie, that she was pretty good.
Speaker 6: There's definitely potential there. She is quite young, was the thing.
Speaker 6: I was like, Oh, I didn't catch that so much
Speaker 6: the first time around. They mentioned this is being in
Speaker 6: Australia and not being as familiar with certain aspects of
Speaker 6: American culture. That he says when they're just gus and
Speaker 6: talking about not finishing school, and Cam says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 6: I was a college job out and she says high
Speaker 6: school and I was like, wait, that's.
Speaker 2: Googling the difference. What is the age of high school
Speaker 2: in America.
Speaker 6: It was like, high school here would be yeah, like
Speaker 6: thirteen to eighteen nineteen or something, which is about the
Speaker 6: same for America. So the implication there is that she
Speaker 6: is hopefully eighteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: That was something that I was like, Okay, I'm it
Speaker 6: is a film which made me remember how tired I
Speaker 6: am of heterosexual cinema that it's just oh, yeah, we've
Speaker 6: got to have some sort of damsel in distress and
Speaker 6: she needs to be protected, and she also needs to
Speaker 6: spend almost entire film in a boob tube kind of
Speaker 6: top in no bra. I don't think that part worked
Speaker 6: at all. And I thought she was quite good. I
Speaker 6: thought their friendship was quite good, that it offered up things,
Speaker 6: but once it turned into oh no, there has to
Speaker 6: be some sort of antagon is narrative that that stuff
Speaker 6: was just like, we didn't need this, This wasn't the
Speaker 6: path to go down to fill out your film.
Speaker 1: That whole lot that you're talking about that comes so
Speaker 1: late in the film too, there's a lot of this
Speaker 1: film that feels like a one crazy night type of
Speaker 1: a movie, like a like an After Hours or even
Speaker 1: I suppose Miracle Mile would be a more apropos thing
Speaker 1: where you know that the world is going to end
Speaker 1: and you're talking about like how you have to watch
Speaker 1: this film a few times to really pick up on
Speaker 1: what's going on. One of the things is that there
Speaker 1: is a radio at the beginning that starts talking about
Speaker 1: this mayoral race and how there's this racist piece of
Speaker 1: shit guy who's running for mayor, and so obviously twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, we're definitely talking about Donald Trump, Garrison, New Yorker,
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff, and that really doesn't enter
Speaker 1: into the picture until when forty fifty minutes into it,
Speaker 1: if not, more like it really comes late and then
Speaker 1: becomes like the driving force, whereas it feels like there
Speaker 1: should be there's the quest of taking these photographs, but
Speaker 1: there's no other quest that he's on throughout this until
Speaker 1: suddenly it's I have to find nick I has to
Speaker 1: find Katie's brother kind of thing, and that I think
Speaker 1: it's literally forty minutes into the film when he comes
Speaker 1: over and finds her completely beaten up and she's got
Speaker 1: blood on her hands and just something bad has happened.
Speaker 1: It just feels really shoved in there. For me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it did feel shoved in there.
Speaker 6: It is trickled a bit, as you said in the
Speaker 6: radio is talking about this guy, but the way he's
Speaker 6: trickled in is like the most basic way is that
Speaker 6: we have this image of it's like a circle with
Speaker 6: a bird in black silhouette.
Speaker 1: Oh, we even get an iris in on that card
Speaker 1: when he goes over to the woman's place, Lulu, the
Speaker 1: Dalisa Reynolds character, and he sits down and that card
Speaker 1: is on the table and man or man, did it
Speaker 1: take me a while to spot that? A few after
Speaker 1: I watched this the second or third time, then I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, that's what they're pointing out, and like
Speaker 1: literally like irising in on that table and this tiny
Speaker 1: little card, and then I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: very subtle.
Speaker 6: I know, like at the moment where we're like got
Speaker 6: all the Epstein stuff coming out, it's like these people
Speaker 6: are not subtle about anything, these like networks of blah
Speaker 6: blah blah. But my god, this company, these drug dealer,
Speaker 6: this mayor is just he's not hiding the fact that
Speaker 6: he has this bird picture everywhere. Like he's his gumba
Speaker 6: henchman has a sorry said a racial stir. Anyway, he's henchman.
Speaker 2: He's hedgeman.
Speaker 6: Has a tattoo of it on his hand which looks
Speaker 6: a bit more like a speed bump for the angle
Speaker 6: that was shooting. And I was like, no, wait, I
Speaker 6: think it's meant to be the bird. They've got it
Speaker 6: on their matchbox for the club, it's emblem for the club.
Speaker 2: It's on the baggies for the drugs they're sally.
Speaker 6: It's like, guys, like, I, okay, someone one of your
Speaker 6: henchmen went to Good Marketing PhD.
Speaker 5: And like.
Speaker 6: He needs to calm down and stop snorting coke and
Speaker 6: marketing your drug business the same as your bar business
Speaker 6: and everything else. That was like so on the nose
Speaker 6: and just guys, you clearly maybe just either not thought
Speaker 6: about this or never actually spend any time around these
Speaker 6: kinds of people, Like, it's that's not how it works
Speaker 6: at all, And it just feels real shoe hauned in
Speaker 6: and yet is somehow the way that they're trying to
Speaker 6: make it. You're less shoehorned in once they shoehorned the
Speaker 6: fill of pot. Yet it's okay, you flubbed this so
Speaker 6: much so I almost appreciate it.
Speaker 2: It's so silly.
Speaker 6: It feels like they could have done that a lot
Speaker 6: more better, just by having like another character come in
Speaker 6: who is supportive of this. Dude, there's nothing of anything
Speaker 6: that we never get. It's just this total alien thing,
Speaker 6: which you could even make something of.
Speaker 2: That that the.
Speaker 6: Blue Can spends so much time in whole groups of
Speaker 6: people who aren't supporting it from Donald Trump or it
Speaker 6: was the there's the other there is the actual awful,
Speaker 6: most recent evil New York mayor the one who was
Speaker 6: trying to run again, the one if you lost to
Speaker 6: Man Daney. Yeah, I think it may be meant to
Speaker 6: be more that, But yeah, I feel like there's definitely
Speaker 6: like ways that they could have folded that character in
Speaker 6: better and made more of it. And it certainly is
Speaker 6: one aspect that basically has like the past previous couple
Speaker 6: of years have backed up the film that there would
Speaker 6: be just random rich slum lord psychos who would be like.
Speaker 2: No, we're still like I've still got to be mayor
Speaker 2: in the Apocalypse.
Speaker 1: We're so running this this this whole mayoral campaign and okay, great,
Speaker 1: that was Eric Adams.
Speaker 6: No, I no, they was the Derek at the Republic,
Speaker 6: classic New York.
Speaker 2: Can't narrow it down.
Speaker 6: Eric Adams is the one who would be the funniest
Speaker 6: man on earth if he wasn't like part of the problem.
Speaker 1: No. No, Eric Adams was the guy that was may
Speaker 1: or before Mandamie. And he's the one that he.
Speaker 2: Didn't run against him. He's oh Cuomo pulomo, there we go.
Speaker 2: You know this guy.
Speaker 6: This guy's definitely got cuomo vibes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because Eric Adams he had that whole like bribery
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. Because I remember that was one
Speaker 1: Mandami's first things was to like anything that this guy
Speaker 1: put through over the last eighteen months were just rescinding.
Speaker 6: If you haven't looked up some of the Eric Adams stuff,
Speaker 6: I'd lie that is the funniest shit. He's New York
Speaker 6: is the Athens of America.
Speaker 2: New York is the Buddhapest of America. Oh man, the funniest,
Speaker 2: weirdest dude and tail. I admit that.
Speaker 6: Coming around and watched this for second time, I was
Speaker 6: dreading the last act of this film. Like on the
Speaker 6: first viewing, the last act just rubbed me wrong in
Speaker 6: so many ways, for just the things that I'm really
Speaker 6: tired of with low budget independent filmmaking, where it's just, oh,
Speaker 6: this is what we're doing. This is the same old
Speaker 6: done this a million times, and it's like it's just
Speaker 6: can you do anything good with it?
Speaker 2: Have you got something up your sleeve?
Speaker 6: It's not really And I will admit, like on the
Speaker 6: second go round, I actually I think I enjoyed the
Speaker 6: second half a bit more than I enjoyed the first
Speaker 6: half the second dog, which I wasn't expecting like I
Speaker 6: thought it would be the other way round. And part
Speaker 6: of it was just being in that independent space added
Speaker 6: clearly being like people in your sphere or connected family, professional,
Speaker 6: semi professionals, whatever, and you're pulling them in and I
Speaker 6: enjoy I did, actually like enjoy hit the weird kind
Speaker 6: of touches of humanity that came through because of that,
Speaker 6: it was it free pass them too quickly. But the
Speaker 6: stuff that the two henchmen who he sees in the
Speaker 6: car and then later he like smacks one of them
Speaker 6: in their head pretty badly and we find out that
Speaker 6: he died overnight from that injury. And the which is
Speaker 6: that actually is like, Yeah, you get a solid concussion
Speaker 6: and you don't get a health treatment because A it's
Speaker 6: America and b it's the apocalypse. Yeah, you're going to
Speaker 6: die in your sleep. You don't don't go to sleep
Speaker 6: if you've been smacked in the head with a big
Speaker 6: heavy lamp. That's your health advice from Projection through the podcast.
Speaker 6: But there's there was a there was a real humanity
Speaker 6: that kind of came through there between the two henchmen
Speaker 6: and the way his buddy who survived reacted, and it
Speaker 6: didn't bleed through to anything else, like the evil Mayor
Speaker 6: dude didn't give a shit. There were just facts to him.
Speaker 6: But there was like these little bits and pieces there
Speaker 6: that felt true that they did feel they were coming
Speaker 6: from somewhere that it's funny. I just watched the film.
Speaker 6: This is a random film that I found for this.
Speaker 6: This is Australian company, like two companies called like Flashback Entertainment.
Speaker 6: They put out like stuff that nobody cares about. And
Speaker 6: so twenty years ago, instead of being on to be
Speaker 6: Exposure of thirty six probably would have got released through that.
Speaker 6: There's so many of those kind of films that just
Speaker 6: nobody would care about that they chuck together themselves that
Speaker 6: they've probably got a small deal with some like agent
Speaker 6: and got sold whatever. So we watched this film recently
Speaker 6: called The Drop from two thousand and six. It's directed
Speaker 6: by Kevin Lewis, who would go on to do Willie's Wonderland,
Speaker 6: The Nicholas Cage Bo five Night of Freddy Film, and
Speaker 6: Pig Hill, which I've heard quite good things about recently.
Speaker 6: Some guys been working away in like very low budget
Speaker 6: indie stuff for a while and somehow some sort of
Speaker 6: broken through recently, and The Drop and Expose thirty six
Speaker 6: actually have a lot of things common. They very small scale.
Speaker 6: The Drop definitely leans a bit more and it's like
Speaker 6: thriller genre tropes than this one does. But there's like
Speaker 6: a bit of a fantasy sci fi element that comes
Speaker 6: in later on in this to do with water universe
Speaker 6: kind of stuff. But there's it's like very much like
Speaker 6: the young bloke who's confronted by these slumlord mafia guys, like,
Speaker 6: just do this job for us, so don't ask any
Speaker 6: questions at all, be fine, and of course he like
Speaker 6: goes against that. It is actually funny how much they
Speaker 6: were similar but opposite ends of the spectrum, because where
Speaker 6: exposure thirty six feelers and I think you said he
Speaker 6: is taking inspiration from a film like April four Hours,
Speaker 6: four forty four, Last Down on Earth. The drop is
Speaker 6: Garantiedo plus run all of Run and Run all of
Speaker 6: Run takes up like seventy percent of that. Like the
Speaker 6: whole film is editor just like what is this pounding
Speaker 6: like late nineties, early two thousand, dech no thing, and it.
Speaker 2: Just go absolutely balls of the wall for most of it.
Speaker 6: And the job also wasn't like a great film, but
Speaker 6: it just went for it a lot more and it
Speaker 6: was more, yeah, let's just do crazy stuff, have some
Speaker 6: weird things. Definitely helped it be more by having John
Speaker 6: Savage and Sean Young being you bad guys like they
Speaker 6: like half they sleep walking through it and bringing a
Speaker 6: lot It's.
Speaker 1: Funny that you bring up Brunlola Run because when he
Speaker 1: starts taking those photographs, I noticed that the photographs don't
Speaker 1: necessarily line up to the same angles or anything like.
Speaker 1: They definitely took the photographs later. It's not like they
Speaker 1: took these pictures from the actual film and just like
Speaker 1: black and whitified them during out the color of those
Speaker 1: kind of things. It's but whenever he takes a photograph
Speaker 1: and the whole kind of movie stops for a second.
Speaker 1: I so thought of those transitions from running low the run,
Speaker 1: where you see the potential future history of people, and
Speaker 1: then bringing up Tarantino is also very apropos those two henchmen,
Speaker 1: and I totally was thinking of like Tarantino people. Moreover,
Speaker 1: I don't know how similar our ages are. I think
Speaker 1: you a little bit younger than me, but you probably
Speaker 1: lived through that entire thing of Once Reservoir Dogs came out,
Speaker 1: everybody was like, I can make a cheap gangster film. Moreover,
Speaker 1: once pulp fiction came out, it was I can make
Speaker 1: a cheap gangster film. Some of them were decent, but
Speaker 1: for every I don't know, one decent one, there were
Speaker 1: probably a thousand shitty ones that most likely didn't even
Speaker 1: make it any place other than some kid's basement kind
Speaker 1: of thing. There's a VHS tape shove somewhere in some
Speaker 1: box in somebody's basement, which was my gangster film nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six type of thing. And yeah, I was thinking
Speaker 1: of that when it came to those two thugs where
Speaker 1: it was just like, oh, they're fighting, like the two
Speaker 1: henchmen in to shoot the piano play or something, and
Speaker 1: it brought me back to that, but.
Speaker 7: Not really in a good way.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I just said, like the fact that it's like
Speaker 6: culturally specific, I think saves it a little bit.
Speaker 2: That it does feel.
Speaker 6: It doesn't feel as shoe horned in because it is
Speaker 6: that kind of New York slumlord. These are his henchmen
Speaker 6: that worked, and they didn't lean too heavily on it.
Speaker 2: But yeah you can't.
Speaker 6: Yeah, as you said, for people of a certain age,
Speaker 6: you lived through a certain VHS hera. You just hit
Speaker 6: that stuff and just like start twitching.
Speaker 2: Yeah PTSD flashbacks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you still see those henchmen hanging around in things
Speaker 1: like the Equalizer series with Denzel Washington. Okay, yeah, oh
Speaker 1: here's the funny one. Oh here's the serious one. Oh
Speaker 1: he's got the Russian accent. Going back to what you
Speaker 1: were talking about with our main character being an immigrant,
Speaker 1: literal immigrant to our shores works when it comes to
Speaker 1: this whole idea of the Trump's stand in mayor character.
Speaker 1: By the way, those scenes with the Trump stand in
Speaker 1: they so remind me of The Departed whereas or or
Speaker 1: like the one where Johnny Depp played the Whitey Bulger.
Speaker 1: It's like student film Whitey Bulger type of Hey, our
Speaker 1: main characters are a black guy and a woman, and
Speaker 1: had he been an immigrant, I think I would have
Speaker 1: hit probably even harder, because we are just all about
Speaker 1: let's kick all the immigrants out of our country.
Speaker 6: It does take like these stands in some places by
Speaker 6: having his slumlord as a villain, that's us. But otherwise
Speaker 6: it feels like it's trying not to talk about anything
Speaker 6: to which detriment there was.
Speaker 2: Let's see if I can blind it.
Speaker 6: And I was doing this brief bit of rummaging on
Speaker 6: some other apopolytic kind of things I did find this
Speaker 6: quote was from Christopher schra It's The American Apocalypse.
Speaker 2: Orsese's Taxi Driver.
Speaker 6: As the film constructs and debunks the conventions of various
Speaker 6: film genres, it provides not ideological criticism, but the ahistorical
Speaker 6: and fatalistic vision of apocalypticism. This apocalypse is catastrophic and
Speaker 6: non revelatory since alternative concepts and reality are beyond consideration,
Speaker 6: which I think actually like really gets to like the
Speaker 6: core of this film that it is actually very emblematic
Speaker 6: of this period in history. There is no alternative ideological construct,
Speaker 6: there is no alternative possibilities. It's just a very fatalistic
Speaker 6: even like down to that. There's want to talk about
Speaker 6: the spirits again a little bit, but the way it's
Speaker 6: presented is just, oh, it's just this climate catastrophe kind
Speaker 6: of thing. It's just biology, science, environmentalism. There's no There's
Speaker 6: a little line about how it's or human like activity
Speaker 6: has helped to beat all this, but there's no there's
Speaker 6: nothing else. It's like we've been said on this path
Speaker 6: and it's going to happen, and there's no pushing in
Speaker 6: any direction, and there's no arguing, there's no grandstanding. It's
Speaker 6: just this fatalistic we're in the apocalypse and that's it.
Speaker 6: And I don't think the film does anything with that,
Speaker 6: but it is emblematic and it is very representative of
Speaker 6: this period and the kind of fatalism that is really
Speaker 6: grinding the gears off of people and communities and society
Speaker 6: at a all. I am grateful that the film doesn't
Speaker 6: necessarily try to be more than what it is. I'm
Speaker 6: really grateful that there's no edge lord bullshit. I'm glad
Speaker 6: there's not a psychopath or anything like that. That the
Speaker 6: villain is just a piece of shit, white collared douchebag
Speaker 6: that feels right and correct. And I praise him on
Speaker 6: recognizing that that was like all the villain he needed,
Speaker 6: if he needed it.
Speaker 2: Really is the only question.
Speaker 1: The most edge Lord I think we get is the
Speaker 1: ants that are in his office and how he has
Speaker 1: to pick up the ant to talk about the power
Speaker 1: of the ants and all these kind of things. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: here's your metaphor, all right, I gotcha.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but even that feeds into this like no imagination,
Speaker 6: Like it's the most basic kind of metaphor that somebody
Speaker 6: like that could reach for. It's so under looseid dating
Speaker 6: other than about his psychology, and I did. One question
Speaker 6: I wanted to ask was do you think that the
Speaker 6: rotation mark spirits that he sees a manifestation of optimism
Speaker 6: in the film.
Speaker 1: As far as they have made it to the other side,
Speaker 1: because there's that marquee that says, see you on the
Speaker 1: other side that we see during a little photo montage.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and people will say that kind of thing, and
Speaker 6: they'll talk about there being more, but we do seem
Speaker 6: to have an actual manifestation of proof that there is
Speaker 6: some other side if they are not a patient or anything.
Speaker 6: Because I don't find the film to be pessimistic. There
Speaker 6: is dash of optimism in there, as this is the
Speaker 6: kind of a back door and I don't know.
Speaker 2: How I feel about that.
Speaker 6: That it's interesting and I, yeah, what do you think.
Speaker 1: I think that is very very intentional. I think that
Speaker 1: these spirits are showing us that there is more. And
Speaker 1: I think that's also and I hate to go back
Speaker 1: to this, but this whole idea of the whole Ed
Speaker 1: versus Nick thing that I was having problems with is
Speaker 1: because we don't necessarily see Nick die. We just see
Speaker 1: him alive, and that we see him again as a spirit,
Speaker 1: and then we're supposed to think that he has died.
Speaker 1: And by the way, when they're doing the spirit of facts,
Speaker 1: I love the eye thing you mentioned that before. I
Speaker 1: absolutely love what they're doing with the eyes and especially
Speaker 1: that they are blinking, so you see whatever they're doing.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they're animating those in or what
Speaker 1: they're doing, but the blinks really add a lot to it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's like we see we never see him dead.
Speaker 1: And then when Ed enters back into the film later on,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, Nick's actually not dead.
Speaker 2: Here he is.
Speaker 1: Or whoever this character is ed Nick guy? But yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I definitely think that they're showing us that there's hope.
Speaker 1: And I think the very first one that we see
Speaker 1: it that's about the old lady, I think I'm led
Speaker 1: to believe that she might have committed suicide just from
Speaker 1: the way that she's set up. And then yeah, his friend,
Speaker 1: the Australian woman, she dies from violence. You can see
Speaker 1: the blood around her. But yeah, she's there looking on
Speaker 1: and we can see her give him a look, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, yeah, it feels like, not necessarily like
Speaker 1: he's being looked over. You know that there's an angel
Speaker 1: on his shoulder, but that they have moved on to
Speaker 1: a new plane. Because that last shot of the film
Speaker 1: is probably the most apocalyptic that we get. They're on
Speaker 1: the train, they're leaving, he takes this last photograph and
Speaker 1: then we pull out from the train or tilt up,
Speaker 1: and we see the smoke coming from all of these buildings.
Speaker 1: But then we also see this massive cloud front coming
Speaker 1: in from the right side of the screen. And it's okay,
Speaker 1: I think that's it. I think that is going to
Speaker 1: be coming in here and wiping us off the face
Speaker 1: of the earth. But having had those visions, I agree
Speaker 1: with you, just give us a glimmer of hope.
Speaker 6: Of course, there is the possibility that that is him
Speaker 6: not necessarily hallucinating, but him convincing himself that it's okay.
Speaker 6: Because I said, we never actually see that Nick is dead.
Speaker 6: He is visited by this spirit that is Nick with
Speaker 6: the eyes who talks to him and tells him such.
Speaker 6: But is that like he's because he's keeps trying to
Speaker 6: convince Katie that your brother is dead, you need to
Speaker 6: like let it go. And his basis for that is
Speaker 6: the visitation, So it could just be him he's like
Speaker 6: trying to convince himself that there's more that that these
Speaker 6: people are just dead, that they do go on to
Speaker 6: something else, and also as a way to your brother's dead,
Speaker 6: Like I know, because I think he actually says that,
Speaker 6: but yeah, there is a suggestion in the what Nick
Speaker 6: says when he visits him that he may be in hell.
Speaker 6: Like the way he talks does have us like a
Speaker 6: like that it's bad.
Speaker 2: Down here or something.
Speaker 6: I think it is a good title to talk about
Speaker 6: some other films that clearly have inspired this because first,
Speaker 6: like I've got to say that the I think that
Speaker 6: the lady, the elderly lady who he sees at the beginning, I.
Speaker 2: Think that's his landlady.
Speaker 6: Oh because when he's standing at the door buzzing, can
Speaker 6: see he's holding an envelope and it says not Rent
Speaker 6: in big letters, and it feels like really blatant, like
Speaker 6: how to Oh, we're not communicating properly who this is.
Speaker 6: Wait if we write Rent on the envelope. I was like, well,
Speaker 6: I got it.
Speaker 2: I saw it.
Speaker 6: I think I think that's what I was meant to get.
Speaker 6: I think that's meant to be his landlady, and that's
Speaker 6: what that is. And part of them What made me
Speaker 6: think that more is that you mentioned that the Mackenzie,
Speaker 6: a big inspiration for this film, was able for hours
Speaker 6: for forty four Last Day on Earth and watching that film.
Speaker 6: You can see how they're very different films in a
Speaker 6: lot of ways, but you can feel how he's reshuffled
Speaker 6: the deck a bit, that there's a lot of elements
Speaker 6: that they have in common and he's moved them around
Speaker 6: in different ways and that like that. In that film,
Speaker 6: Wilonderfoe's character very specifically yells at his like shitty landlord
Speaker 6: kind of looks a bit like the mayor guy this
Speaker 6: And I was like, I feel like it's New York.
Speaker 6: If you're gotta be riffing on an apel for our film,
Speaker 6: you're gonna have a little land for.
Speaker 2: One moment here.
Speaker 6: But in this one it seems positive more than negative. Yeah,
Speaker 6: that was just those kind of cubits. Baby, I think
Speaker 6: she's the lamb lady. I think that's what the deal is.
Speaker 1: I think we should probably take a little bit of
Speaker 1: a break and we can hear mister Morrow talk about
Speaker 1: his inspirations for this one, and we'll be back with
Speaker 1: that right after these brief messages. Fear comes Home. Nowhere
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Speaker 1: Can you tell me how you got involved in show
Speaker 1: business and entertainment.
Speaker 2: It's something I always wanted to be a part of.
Speaker 2: It's what I grew up doing. Like so many filmmakers,
Speaker 2: they grew up making movies with their friends and their
Speaker 2: siblings and stuff like that. And that's what I always
Speaker 2: wanted to do. And I always knew I wanted to
Speaker 2: direct and write and make my own movies because that's
Speaker 2: why I spent so much of my childhood doing. And
Speaker 2: I always tell the story. One of my favorite films
Speaker 2: is The Shining and when I used to watch it
Speaker 2: on TV, there's a famous shot where you see the
Speaker 2: helicopter shadow, and I always said I wanted to be
Speaker 2: the guy in the helicopter shooting it. Years later you
Speaker 2: find out that Cooper was not in the helicopter. So
Speaker 2: I went to college. I thought filmmaking was a pipe dream.
Speaker 2: I started doing pre laws stuff, and then my senior
Speaker 2: year I realized I could not do any more school.
Speaker 2: So right when I got into New York, I started
Speaker 2: working and was a pa as a runner, getting any
Speaker 2: job on set I could, and that slowly led me
Speaker 2: into editing, and now I do that professionally. And during
Speaker 2: all that time I've been writing and producing our own
Speaker 2: shorts and finally the feature. That's how we got to
Speaker 2: exposure thirty six.
Speaker 1: Let me about some of your shorts? What are those like?
Speaker 2: When things weren't really like going away, I wanted to
Speaker 2: New York. I had a friend who was moving to Sydney, Australia.
Speaker 2: So I was stuck and I said to him, I
Speaker 2: wish I could just pick up my bags and do
Speaker 2: the same thing, and he was like, why don't you
Speaker 2: just come with me? So I went to Sydney and
Speaker 2: I took some film classes and got the one oh
Speaker 2: one of filmmaking that the hands on experience as opposed
Speaker 2: to stuff if you see secondhand or you see from
Speaker 2: a distance on set, or stuff you read in books.
Speaker 2: So there I made a science fiction short film called
Speaker 2: Duration of Stay. When I got back to the States,
Speaker 2: my brother, who is a collaborator of mine, we put
Speaker 2: together a heist comedy called Dan's Plan, and then we
Speaker 2: did another short, and we did two other shorts. One
Speaker 2: was called Red Mosquito, which was a zombie horror movie,
Speaker 2: and then the final one we just took a camera,
Speaker 2: went out and filmed something quickly that we never really finished,
Speaker 2: but just to see what we could put together in
Speaker 2: a day. And so that led us up to twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: I think, and at that point we were just let's
Speaker 2: start writing this feature, getting the script in good shape
Speaker 2: to shoot. It's funny we actually started with another one
Speaker 2: and then we rewrote that and we said this, We're
Speaker 2: not going to have the budget for this, so we
Speaker 2: picked up Explosuire thirty six again quickly rewrote that and
Speaker 2: then we went out to shoot shortly after that.
Speaker 1: Where did the idea for Exposure thirty six come from?
Speaker 2: My first influence for that movie was four point forty
Speaker 2: four Last Day on Earth by Abel Ferreira, And what
Speaker 2: I liked about that was that it was an end
Speaker 2: of the world movie, but it didn't feel like it
Speaker 2: necessarily because everybody's going about their business and at one point,
Speaker 2: like he orders Thai food and then I think there's
Speaker 2: some discrepancy about the how they're going to tip him
Speaker 2: or something. And I just found that so fascinating that
Speaker 2: you could have such a high concept and do it
Speaker 2: on such a low budget. Now granted they had willing defoe,
Speaker 2: but I just thought that was so interesting that something
Speaker 2: so catastrophic can be approaching, but people will just be
Speaker 2: going about their day business as usual. Work through a
Speaker 2: certain extent in a car crash and slow motion where
Speaker 2: you could see problems coming up, but we're not really
Speaker 2: addressing them. So I thought I just compressed that into
Speaker 2: a weekend. Basically, they approach as these people approach a Monday,
Speaker 2: which nobody ever likes to but no one ever likes
Speaker 2: to start the week. Then to shorten that and make
Speaker 2: it give it the similar ideas. So that's where I
Speaker 2: got the idea. And then I was a big fan
Speaker 2: in the mid twenty and tens of Take Shelter by
Speaker 2: Jeff Nichols, and I liked when I read interviews with
Speaker 2: him how he spoke about how he just took that
Speaker 2: he took anxieties he was having as becoming a father,
Speaker 2: and I think he was dealing with someone in his
Speaker 2: family who had mental illness, and I thought that was
Speaker 2: a good metaphor for what I was dealing with at
Speaker 2: the time and the anxieties I was dealing with about
Speaker 2: not having enough time to get what I wanted to
Speaker 2: get done. That's how we came up with the whole premise.
Speaker 1: How did the whole feature come together? Once you said, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is what we're going to work on.
Speaker 2: It was kind of like we had the script we
Speaker 2: just said. I mean, it took a long time for
Speaker 2: us to cast. It took like almost a year to
Speaker 2: get all our cast in order and all the pre
Speaker 2: production and everything, so it was like a slow build.
Speaker 2: But we really just did not have any money whatsoever.
Speaker 2: We went into production. We thought we would be able
Speaker 2: to cobble together more and we basically we had nothing.
Speaker 2: So everybody was working at been a moment and we
Speaker 2: just went out and shot it in twelve days, and
Speaker 2: we did a crowdfunding campaign on the back end to
Speaker 2: help us raise money to either pay back what we
Speaker 2: had done during production or to finish it, and we
Speaker 2: ended up raising forty thousand dollars to help us pay
Speaker 2: for some stuff during production finishing and then for film
Speaker 2: festivals and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: He said that it took long time to cast. This
Speaker 1: why such a long time.
Speaker 2: One way to approach casting, especially with a project, is
Speaker 2: just to put it on backstage and have everybody submit
Speaker 2: their headshots and resumes and all that stuff. But we
Speaker 2: just weren't finding what we needed, and so we started
Speaker 2: finding other avenues of finding actors. A Katie Jennifer Lee Whitehead,
Speaker 2: the lead actress she was at Nyu n Yu was
Speaker 2: one of the programs. I emailed and I said, who
Speaker 2: are some of the actors that you have that are
Speaker 2: graduating the spring, and so a lot of them just said, Heykes,
Speaker 2: just send me the casting call and I'll put it
Speaker 2: up for them. And so we ended up finding a
Speaker 2: lot of people that way. But Charles was like through
Speaker 2: an acting group that we had gotten in touch with.
Speaker 2: But it's not especially when you're working a full time
Speaker 2: job Monday through Friday and you're only working on the weekends,
Speaker 2: getting people to come in and audition for each role.
Speaker 2: Is it was basically one full day for each role.
Speaker 2: That can take weeks at a time when you're only
Speaker 2: doing it on a Saturday or Sunday and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: And then we had a production designer drop out last minute,
Speaker 2: so that pushed us. And it's just when you don't
Speaker 2: have the resources and the money, it's good to I
Speaker 2: something that my time in Australia taught me was it's
Speaker 2: good to do all the prep you could possibly do
Speaker 2: going into it. I did all my own storyboards, did
Speaker 2: all the shot lists, broke down the script like this
Speaker 2: sounds like a No Brander stuff, but it's amazing how
Speaker 2: many people actually don't do that. So we wanted to
Speaker 2: make sure that we had some everything to fall back
Speaker 2: on so that we were ready when we were on
Speaker 2: set and stuff like that. So it took a long time.
Speaker 1: Was the shot on locations.
Speaker 2: There's one set at the final scene with Curry that's
Speaker 2: a set, but yeah, other than that, it's all location.
Speaker 1: How did you find those?
Speaker 2: A lot of apartments that we were just friends of
Speaker 2: ours Ham's apartment is actually me and my now wife's apartment,
Speaker 2: or she was my wife at the time too, So
Speaker 2: I told her to get out for the weekend. Didn't
Speaker 2: really tell her how extensive the shooting would be. Trash
Speaker 2: the place, it's all like cigarettes for a week after.
Speaker 2: But but yeah, and then there was Nick's apartment the
Speaker 2: beginning as this beautiful view and it's got these huge windows,
Speaker 2: and someone just happened to say, Hey, my mom has
Speaker 2: this great apartment. Why don't you guys come shoot at it?
Speaker 2: And we got it for free. And then on the
Speaker 2: streets and stuff, it was just running gun any place
Speaker 2: we could find to shoot. We took advantage of it.
Speaker 1: How did you keep moving and just driving yourself forward
Speaker 1: with something like this, Because I know that making a
Speaker 1: movie is not easy, especially you're making it, like you said,
Speaker 1: on weekends. It sounds like it's all from poverty. It's
Speaker 1: not like somebody's handing you a big old check and
Speaker 1: be like, here you go, Mackenzie, go ahead, make this
Speaker 1: big old movie.
Speaker 2: I think we were just so driven. It's hard to
Speaker 2: think about the motivation that we had to make this
Speaker 2: at the time because it's so it took so much
Speaker 2: energy and I just don't have that. I don't have
Speaker 2: the energy to say right now, I'm going to go out,
Speaker 2: I'm going to cast all these roles, I'm going to
Speaker 2: crew up and then go out and shoot this thing
Speaker 2: with no money. It just seems like it's bizarre, but
Speaker 2: it was a world wind. We were just like, this
Speaker 2: is we had. We created a really good schedule, We
Speaker 2: knew exactly what we're shooting when we were shooting it
Speaker 2: on what day, and we just went into it head first.
Speaker 2: Literally did not stop. Like I didn't. We never watched
Speaker 2: dailies at the end of the day because we didn't
Speaker 2: want to get hung up and be like, oh this,
Speaker 2: we got to go reshoot that. There was talk at
Speaker 2: one point that we would only do one take per
Speaker 2: per scene, but that didn't end up happening. But it
Speaker 2: was really just like just go out and just bang
Speaker 2: it out as efficiently as possible, and if we hit
Speaker 2: a snag or something, it's like, just keep going and
Speaker 2: we'll figure it out. It's just a product of being
Speaker 2: a little younger, a little dumber maybe, but yeah, it
Speaker 2: was really just go, go, go.
Speaker 1: I mean a little bit about your crew.
Speaker 2: My younger brother, he played Ed in Exposure thirty six,
Speaker 2: did a lot of it as an actor and starting
Speaker 2: a lot of the shorts as well, so he was
Speaker 2: a good collaborator to have bounce ideas off when we
Speaker 2: were firming up the script. And then I have a
Speaker 2: great producing partner, Michael Paisano, who's a filmmaker and his
Speaker 2: own right does a lot of shorts and he was
Speaker 2: a great producer to help me get the ball rolling
Speaker 2: on this. Then we were lucky enough to bring in
Speaker 2: we had some sound guys we worked with who were
Speaker 2: from Paris that we got connected with when we made
Speaker 2: a web series years ago, so we use them. And
Speaker 2: then I needed a camera guy, but I was planning
Speaker 2: to shoot the whole thing myself, and then pretty much
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks before production, I sat down with
Speaker 2: a guy who had just graduated from film school and
Speaker 2: I was like, Yeah, we need somebody to be the
Speaker 2: technical guy, who is what a dit camera operator? Guy
Speaker 2: who knows what lens to put on and stuff like
Speaker 2: that so I can focus on the actors at those
Speaker 2: times and stuff like that. And we ended up just saying, hey, man,
Speaker 2: you're the DP for this project, so let's go do it.
Speaker 2: So we pieced it together, but primarily it was my
Speaker 2: brother and my producing partner. We really got the ball
Speaker 2: rolling with.
Speaker 1: Us three along with that initial shoot, and did you
Speaker 1: have to go back for many pickups afterwards?
Speaker 2: We did, so we did twelve days twelve straight days.
Speaker 2: Maybe we had a day off somewhere in there. But
Speaker 2: and then once I started cutting it, I realized what
Speaker 2: I some things I was missing, so then that we
Speaker 2: actually went to a studio for that too, And those
Speaker 2: are a lot of like the flashbacks with his girlfriend,
Speaker 2: there were some close ups we picked up or some inserts.
Speaker 2: This was also all right before COVID, and then once
Speaker 2: we went into lockdown, there were still some things I
Speaker 2: needed to pick up. So I was basically at my
Speaker 2: in laws house like with my DSLR, like shooting inserts
Speaker 2: every now and then I found an ant like outside
Speaker 2: on their deck, and I grabbed it and put in
Speaker 2: a cup, and then the close up of him with
Speaker 2: the ant and his fingers is just my hand, like
Speaker 2: at my in laws house during COVID. It was things
Speaker 2: like that we kind of had to stitch together as
Speaker 2: I went on, because, as you probably know, twelve days
Speaker 2: running gun, it's like you're gonna forget some things and
Speaker 2: you're gonna have to do obviously some pickups as you
Speaker 2: go along. Even though the shorts are a great way
Speaker 2: to learn your process, you can never really prepare yourself
Speaker 2: for a feature, let alone a feature with no money whatsoever,
Speaker 2: and zero time like that. So because we've made ourselves
Speaker 2: jacks of all trades, it didn't require us to do
Speaker 2: these big elaborate reshoots on anything or put us in
Speaker 2: a position in post where it was like, no, we
Speaker 2: got everything we needed. It's just like some texture was
Speaker 2: needed to fill in some spots.
Speaker 1: But when did you actually cut this on?
Speaker 2: I cut it up Premiere. At the time, I preferred
Speaker 2: Avid Media composer, But when you have no budget and
Speaker 2: you have to do everything in one program, I found
Speaker 2: that cutting in Premiere Pro was most sufficient for us
Speaker 2: because I could there's a not to get too technical
Speaker 2: with it, but there's a proxy feature where you can
Speaker 2: just turn off and on the raw camera file. So
Speaker 2: exporting a final was like a cinch. I mean it
Speaker 2: took time, but it was made it a lot easier.
Speaker 2: In Avid it becomes a lot more difficult to do that.
Speaker 1: So what's your post process like? Are you constantly journey
Speaker 1: out like little, here's my rough cut, get it looked
Speaker 1: at by some people, or.
Speaker 2: I think I took a month off after we were done.
Speaker 2: We shot in July and like the hottest summer, it
Speaker 2: was like the hottest week of summer in New York
Speaker 2: in like a few years. It was like one hundred
Speaker 2: and ten degrees or something one of the days, and
Speaker 2: it was just brutal, like all being stuffed in our
Speaker 2: apartment trying to get the day done, but you're pumping
Speaker 2: the ac in between takes and whatever. I think I
Speaker 2: took a month off before I started editing, and then
Speaker 2: it probably took me a few months to get a cut.
Speaker 2: I sat down with my brother and my producing partner
Speaker 2: and our DP and maybe one of our other producers,
Speaker 2: and I showed them a cut. We were all pretty
Speaker 2: happy with it, but there were a few things that
Speaker 2: were we were bumping up against, and so it was
Speaker 2: just feeling out how we were going to those moments.
Speaker 2: The opening is something that sticks out in my mind.
Speaker 2: In particular. It was him in the apartment and then
Speaker 2: him meeting the homeless woman outside, and then I remember
Speaker 2: I sat down, I was just like, we're going to
Speaker 2: blend those two and just intercut. When I did. At
Speaker 2: the time, it worked really well. If I'm looking at
Speaker 2: it now, I'd probably changed some things. But that's a
Speaker 2: time that sticks out in my mind where it's just like,
Speaker 2: how can we rework this in the edit to just
Speaker 2: to streamline it a little bit.
Speaker 1: How long did it take you to go through the
Speaker 1: whole editing process?
Speaker 2: It was probably closer a year. Especially COVID, it was
Speaker 2: like I think I had a assembly cut within a
Speaker 2: few months, probably in November of twenty nineteen. And then yeah,
Speaker 2: I remember, like I said, I was still putting stuff
Speaker 2: together and refining in during COVID and lockdown, and then
Speaker 2: once I got back to the city to my apartment,
Speaker 2: it was the whole finishing process. So I worked a
Speaker 2: composer to try to get something and that obviously takes
Speaker 2: some time, and then coloring and then going back with
Speaker 2: conforming the whole picture with special effects and stuff. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it took I think it took almost a year.
Speaker 1: What's the plan for you as you're trying to get
Speaker 1: this thing to the finishing line?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so our plan the whole time was festivals, which
Speaker 2: we've never had look at. So I said to my
Speaker 2: brother at the beginning, I know exactly how this is
Speaker 2: going to turn out when we start submitting the festivals,
Speaker 2: but right now, that's the best way to do it.
Speaker 2: Or and five years ago it was so sent a
Speaker 2: lot of emails to people hoping they could connect us
Speaker 2: with the right people or knew somebody at a festival
Speaker 2: or whatever. We had an executive producer come on who
Speaker 2: just happened to come across the movie on IMDb and
Speaker 2: was like, oh, I like the premise of this, Can
Speaker 2: I see a cut? We're like yeah, sure, and he said,
Speaker 2: I'd love to come on as executive producer and I'll
Speaker 2: help you try to get into some film festivals, so
Speaker 2: that was our goal. He eventually hooked us up with
Speaker 2: the distributor, Gravitas Ventures, who offered to distribute the movie,
Speaker 2: so that was pretty exciting. Not something we had expected
Speaker 2: after trying to get the film into festivals during COVID,
Speaker 2: but we were really happy with that. So the distribution
Speaker 2: model for inde bed of filmmakers is whatever, but it's
Speaker 2: better than nothing. It's better than especially when you have
Speaker 2: your festival run is not as extensive as you would
Speaker 2: have like to it if to have been.
Speaker 1: I remember it was very tough with the festivals and
Speaker 1: everything moving online, and I know that it wasn't easy
Speaker 1: during that time, even just as a film fan and
Speaker 1: covering movies.
Speaker 2: A lot of people were like, we're taking half the
Speaker 2: movies we normally take and I was like, all right.
Speaker 2: My thought was I had no idea COVID was coming, obviously,
Speaker 2: but in a movie about the end of the world
Speaker 2: where people are like stuck inside, I didn't want to
Speaker 2: push it to a year later where everybody else was
Speaker 2: putting out movies expressing their anxieties and feelings about that time.
Speaker 2: So I was like, now, like, do it now, because
Speaker 2: by the time if we wait a year, it's just
Speaker 2: gonna be like, it's another COVID movie. I thought we
Speaker 2: were fortunate in that, like during our campaign we could
Speaker 2: be like this is we shot some of this and
Speaker 2: cut it during COVID and it's about this indirectly. I
Speaker 2: just really didn't want to wait a year to when
Speaker 2: the festivals were like, oh, we're accepting more movies. Now,
Speaker 2: we're programming more movies. But still, like I said, we've
Speaker 2: never had success at these festivals, so it's I didn't
Speaker 2: want to I'm not putting all my eggs in the
Speaker 2: festival basket. We had another I went to Sci Fi London.
Speaker 2: I spoke to the head of the festival there and
Speaker 2: he also was just like, yeah, it's a hard movie
Speaker 2: to program. And I asked him to elaborate on that,
Speaker 2: which he didn't. So I think it's a combination of
Speaker 2: those things like COVID, and then it's maybe a hard
Speaker 2: movie a program.
Speaker 1: I don't know, when do you finally get to see
Speaker 1: the movie with an audience.
Speaker 2: Because it was COVID, we had plans to try to
Speaker 2: get theaters take it on our tour because of the
Speaker 2: composed who I worked with on this. He had done
Speaker 2: something where he was reaching out to people communities in
Speaker 2: classical music in different cities and then going there and
Speaker 2: putting on a show for people who were part of
Speaker 2: that community, and he was getting a good attendance. So
Speaker 2: I was like, that's a great idea. I'm going to
Speaker 2: do that as well. And then we didn't like nobody
Speaker 2: was going to movie theaters. So the first time I
Speaker 2: saw with an audience was at London Sci Fi. I
Speaker 2: found out it got in and I was super excited
Speaker 2: and I was like, I have to do it. Was
Speaker 2: October twenty twenty one. I was like, I have to
Speaker 2: do this. I got to get out there. I flew out.
Speaker 2: I got to the Film Festival. The place was packed.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, amazing, this is wonderful. And then
Speaker 2: there was like a twenty four hour shorts competition that
Speaker 2: was playing in the adjacent theater next to mine, and
Speaker 2: all those people were there for that, and I go
Speaker 2: into the theater. It was like fifteen people, but it
Speaker 2: was I was like, nice to see it on a
Speaker 2: big screen. I had a afterwards. So to this day,
Speaker 2: the most people I've seen it with is probably like
Speaker 2: fifteen people. It's on a big screen, So it's a
Speaker 2: it was a unique situation because of COVID, but it's
Speaker 2: great to get to those festivals and screen it for
Speaker 2: people who were interested in checking it out.
Speaker 1: Well, once the film gets out their house.
Speaker 2: That received If you look on ron Tomatoes, it has
Speaker 2: some good reviews from critics. It got a good write
Speaker 2: up in the LA Times, It got recommendation in the
Speaker 2: New York Times, It got some good write ups from critics,
Speaker 2: online critics and stuff like that, and that was pretty thrilled. Again,
Speaker 2: that was a huge process where we got a database
Speaker 2: of like every critic in North America and maybe the UK,
Speaker 2: and we just were writing emails every day, probably you know,
Speaker 2: twenty emails a day for a few weeks and just
Speaker 2: trying to get anybody to review it. So we were
Speaker 2: pretty positive. Like, obviously, you're always going to get some
Speaker 2: reviews that don't really understand the vision or just think
Speaker 2: it's just low budget crap or whatever. But we were
Speaker 2: mostly pretty happy with the response we got. So that's good.
Speaker 1: After it's out and people have had a chance to
Speaker 1: see it, it's out on DVD and all that, you go, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it, Time to make another one.
Speaker 2: I had mentioned that we had started originally on another project,
Speaker 2: another feature, which is like a Bonnie and Clive like
Speaker 2: lovers on the Lamb movie. That always something, always what
Speaker 2: I wanted to do, and so that was just lined
Speaker 2: up for whenever somebody said what's next. And so right
Speaker 2: after we had finished and we got picked up for distribution,
Speaker 2: I went right back to that script and I looked
Speaker 2: at it and I was like, all right, now it's
Speaker 2: time to get started on this. I reread it and
Speaker 2: I was like, well, this isn't going to work at all.
Speaker 2: So I started from scratch again, rewrote that whole thing.
Speaker 2: The connections we had made during exposure thirty six, we
Speaker 2: tried to build on those and build our network out
Speaker 2: and see if we could figure out a way to
Speaker 2: make this. But right now that doesn't seem like a
Speaker 2: project that we couldn't find financing for it. So some
Speaker 2: other projects that we're trying to put together now, so
Speaker 2: we'll see how that turns out.
Speaker 1: And you said you edit to pay the bills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was at a prost production house for a
Speaker 2: few years and now I'm working freelance, mostly commercials. But
Speaker 2: if I can get my hands on a film, short, feature,
Speaker 2: hy jump adept in it. But yeah, day to day
Speaker 2: it's commercials.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Abel Ferarra, You mentioned Kubrick to see the
Speaker 1: Kubrick book behind you. Who are some of your biggest
Speaker 1: influences when it comes to actually making your own movies.
Speaker 2: The big guys are Kubrick, Scorsese, Arkowski, then Vendors, and
Speaker 2: then more recently, Me and my buddy always say we're
Speaker 2: early on board of Christopher Nolan, Like we remember we
Speaker 2: were celebrating when he got Batman Begins, and now he's
Speaker 2: like obviously the biggest filmmaker in the world, So that's
Speaker 2: more recent. I mean, you can name start to get
Speaker 2: pretty cliche, but Cooprick and Scorsese are like my two
Speaker 2: guys I always go back to always they're like comfort films.
Speaker 2: For me, so I can always turn on something and
Speaker 2: be happy and always try to learn from those movies
Speaker 2: as much as I can, because I think those two
Speaker 2: guys are the masters. I'm probably forgetting somebody extremely vital,
Speaker 2: but but yeah, those are the masters to me.
Speaker 1: What's funny you mentioned all the different types of shorts
Speaker 1: that you're doing, and you know, sci fi road movie, this, that,
Speaker 1: and I was just like, man, this guy just hopping
Speaker 1: genre's like crazy zombie movie, very much like Cooprick and
Speaker 1: Schriss says, they are not slavish to one genre over another.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was kind of actually thinking about that the other day.
Speaker 2: I like, I was cleaning up my Vimeo and my
Speaker 2: YouTube accounts and just to like clear up some space,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, oh, it's some of my shorts and
Speaker 2: stuff around there, and I was like I just started
Speaker 2: scrubbing through them and I was like, oh, these are
Speaker 2: all different genre, Like I tried different things every time,
Speaker 2: and I was really happy that. I'm sure I've thought
Speaker 2: about this before, but that's something I've always been interested in,
Speaker 2: just try something new every time. And when I start
Speaker 2: to see repetition in my work even as I write,
Speaker 2: like I'm writing all the time, and if I see
Speaker 2: repetition in my scripts or something like that, repeated motifs
Speaker 2: or or or repeating genres or whatever, it makes me uncomfortable,
Speaker 2: so I try to Yeah, I guess I've tried to
Speaker 2: mix it.
Speaker 1: Up as much as possible. A good place for people
Speaker 1: to keep up with you and your work online.
Speaker 2: I mean, my website is Mackenziemorrow dot com. I have
Speaker 2: an edit account Mgmorrow Underscore Edit, and then Exposure thirty
Speaker 2: six has its own Instagram page versus Exposure thirty six Film.
Speaker 2: I'm gearing up to put together a short, so I'm
Speaker 2: hoping to have more content to put out that people
Speaker 2: can follow and and keep tabs on. But for now
Speaker 2: it's just chipping away and trying to get pre production
Speaker 2: in a good place. I said to somebody the other day, like,
Speaker 2: if I can put up a canvas in my office
Speaker 2: and just paint, it'd be a lot easier and a
Speaker 2: lot cheap. But unfortunately that's not my that's not my
Speaker 2: art form. So you keep chipping away, and it's it's
Speaker 2: a it's a it's a need to do it, so
Speaker 2: it's not like it's it's not really optional. So it's
Speaker 2: I'll do my best to try to get this one
Speaker 2: off the ground and we'll take it from there.
Speaker 1: Well, mister Merrow, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1: This is great talking with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really appreciate him. Mike, thanks for checking out
Speaker 2: the movie. I'm looking forward to hearing the episode.
Speaker 1: All Right, we are back and we were talking about
Speaker 1: Exposure thirty six and yeah, before we took our break,
Speaker 1: we were talking about some of the inspirations. It took
Speaker 1: a lot for me to watch four forty four Last
Speaker 1: Days on Earth, just because I like a lot of
Speaker 1: able for our stuff. But when he's off, he's off
Speaker 1: big time. So I never know when I'm gonna turn
Speaker 1: on a film and be disappointed if it's enable for
Speaker 1: our film, because he's got such a particular thing. But
Speaker 1: we got Willem Dafoe in this, and he is always awesome,
Speaker 1: always elevates the material. Yeah, yeah, I would say he
Speaker 1: always elevates the material. Like he's my favorite part of
Speaker 1: a lot of movies where I don't like the rest
Speaker 1: of the movie, like Autofocus, which I know is a
Speaker 1: Paul Schrader and out of Ferrara, but his relationship with
Speaker 1: both Schrader and Ferrara. I love that he works so
Speaker 1: much with those guys and just how well he works
Speaker 1: with them. And I guess Lars find the Triers the
Speaker 1: next guy that works with the lot as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I have a similar relation with Ferrara. I actually
Speaker 6: have not seen anywhere near enough. I've been meaning to
Speaker 6: dive into that because he seems to have been doing
Speaker 6: some monstance. He definitely has been doing some really interesting
Speaker 6: stuff in the last ten years. When I missed him
Speaker 6: in the nineties, like I he wasn't these films weren't
Speaker 6: around much. I think I'd only seen Badly Tenant and
Speaker 6: that was it, and I was so damped to yesterday
Speaker 6: I just go and chuck Rilla Killer on im, like
Speaker 6: I'm having that kind of month where I just need
Speaker 6: to carve my head in with Driller Killer full volume.
Speaker 2: I think I think some of you out there will
Speaker 2: know what I mean. They have that experience of sometimes
Speaker 2: you just need that.
Speaker 6: And I have not seen I don't think any of
Speaker 6: his twenty first century works. I think I've only seen
Speaker 6: mostly nineties the Addiction Bad Lieutenant Now.
Speaker 2: I missed forty five of course, and the eighties stuff.
Speaker 6: You'll like killing seventies and yeah, I was a little
Speaker 6: bit like, okay, this is again, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 6: go watch this another slow New Yorker Bok Clubs film, yeay,
Speaker 6: and I had a reasonably.
Speaker 2: Powerful experience with it. That say that sounds like weird praise,
Speaker 2: but I don't.
Speaker 6: I think that as a real I would not have
Speaker 6: the guts to make an apocalypse because I think something
Speaker 6: that is like, right off the bat, you've got to
Speaker 6: get over that hump that lots of people are going
Speaker 6: to be going eh.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't do that.
Speaker 6: If it was the last couple of days on Earth.
Speaker 6: If you don't, if you don't have a propulsive narrative
Speaker 6: that's pulling you along, and it's just kind of what
Speaker 6: are we doing sitting around while we wait? Then you're
Speaker 6: going to be starting to think I wouldn't do this.
Speaker 2: I would do that. I think Farrara's film does a
Speaker 2: better job of individualizing the response that it is just
Speaker 2: like how these people are responding, and so it does
Speaker 2: cut a little bit of that off.
Speaker 6: I don't know that Exposure thirty six does that quite
Speaker 6: as well. It doesn't necessarily do it badly. I've meant
Speaker 6: to mention before when you mentioned Miracle Mile in regards
Speaker 6: to like the kind of heterosexual thriller plotting, Like Miracle
Speaker 6: Mile works brilliantly with that because you enter into the
Speaker 6: film and the plot runs past you and grabs your hand,
Speaker 6: just goes quick, come with me, and you don't have
Speaker 6: any time to think before you're just like bam, you're
Speaker 6: in it and that's happening, and you're being pulled along
Speaker 6: by it. And Expose of thirty six just arn't do that, Like,
Speaker 6: it's just not None of the way it's set up
Speaker 6: is ready to do that to do that, And I
Speaker 6: don't think that's necessarily a negative against it until it
Speaker 6: tries to have some kind of filler plot.
Speaker 2: Barrara's film very much does not have a filliplot.
Speaker 6: It is just to hang out.
Speaker 2: The world is empty.
Speaker 6: It's so super twenty eleven, like the beginnings of digital
Speaker 6: really taking over. And yeah, I saw a lot of
Speaker 6: people online being like wow, Abril Barra made a twenty
Speaker 6: one COVID lockdown film in twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: It could almost be a play that it is so
Speaker 1: stuck in one location throughout so much of it. The
Speaker 1: way that he like sneaks into the other apartment at
Speaker 1: one point, but for the most part and it's just
Speaker 1: in that one apartment we see the painting that's being
Speaker 1: created and things as Okay, yeah, like you said, it
Speaker 1: felt like a lockdown movie without being a lockdown movie.
Speaker 6: There's ear in the house with this other person who's
Speaker 6: super focused on this one thing really intensely. Well you're
Speaker 6: just kind of the other person's just like off in
Speaker 6: the other space, just doing something really danse like just
Speaker 6: leave it, do it, like it, absolutely like it.
Speaker 2: It's ahead of its time in that way.
Speaker 6: But my response to that is, ah, man like, existentialism
Speaker 6: has always been lockdown, even before there were computers that
Speaker 6: was like existential was like livered the lockdown.
Speaker 2: That's half the point.
Speaker 6: And yeah, Paraar's film is definitely much more of leaning
Speaker 6: that sort of French existentialism than exposed at thirty six,
Speaker 6: But it is they do make interesting companion pieces more
Speaker 6: about like filmmaking, I think, and choices that people make
Speaker 6: in the way that works inspired than perhaps on a
Speaker 6: thematic level. There's some of the things that they do
Speaker 6: have in common, and we sees that were oral borealis
Speaker 6: in or four Forward is very much. That seems to
Speaker 6: be some sort of manifestation of what is happening as
Speaker 6: the world ends.
Speaker 2: In exposure of thirty six just happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've got al Gore on the TV right off
Speaker 1: the bat, so I'm just like, Okay, this must be
Speaker 1: some sort of ecological crisis going on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like they do say in four for four, that's
Speaker 6: that the ozone layer or the atmosphere is disappearing, But
Speaker 6: it's essentially just it's going to evaporate at this time
Speaker 6: and that's it, which I think is actually a really
Speaker 6: good like explanation because it's, oh yeah, it would. You're
Speaker 6: essentially then just in space, so there is possibilities that
Speaker 6: people could bunker down and survive, but it's it's a
Speaker 6: lot harder love big difference to just the weather is
Speaker 6: catastrophically extreme, and it does lock things off a bit more.
Speaker 2: I feel like it does.
Speaker 6: It is whole Earth will cease to be the planet
Speaker 6: that it was entirely like it is now just a
Speaker 6: rock floating in space, and that that does offer up
Speaker 6: some like richer sort of themes and things to play
Speaker 6: with and just an anonymous kind of weather event. And
Speaker 6: it was the I mentioned Jeff Nichols before. I'm a
Speaker 6: big fan of Take Shelter, like Take Shelter like Lives
Speaker 6: with Me, and that is a film which I think
Speaker 6: McKenzie is trying to do some of the things that
Speaker 6: that film does, but doesn't have enough understanding of how
Speaker 6: to communicate the human relationships to make that work. That
Speaker 6: there's like the Take Shelter is such a darker, hopeless,
Speaker 6: essimistic film for the most part until the shit hits
Speaker 6: the hand for real and then it's oh, actually it
Speaker 6: doesn't matter, like we got this, like the human connection
Speaker 6: trumps that and this that this film like just can't
Speaker 6: do that. But there's it's clearly like that score that
Speaker 6: the tinkling kind of wind chimy things, and that last
Speaker 6: shot is very very similar. It's the last shot to
Speaker 6: Take Shelter that like the coming storm lot Richer in
Speaker 6: meaning and takes Shelter. It helps it takes Shelder. That
Speaker 6: was two thousand and I or something, and it was
Speaker 6: like way ahead of the curve for being like this
Speaker 6: is how it's going to go down, folks, versus like
Speaker 6: being in the midst of it and just being like.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, this is what's happening.
Speaker 6: It's harder to find residence when your reality is tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever saw the nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: eight film from Don mcckellor. Don mkellor usually known more
Speaker 1: for acting. I think it was in a lot of
Speaker 1: the Anamagoyan films, and he can't remember. It was part
Speaker 1: of a project because nineteen ninety eight, a lot of people,
Speaker 1: of course, are just like, okay, you were two thousand,
Speaker 1: We're all going to perish somehow kind of thing. Here's
Speaker 1: the end of the millennium. So there were so many
Speaker 1: better than anybody, things like Strange Days, things like that,
Speaker 1: where it's just like, okay, all of these movies that
Speaker 1: are coming out right around the turn of the century
Speaker 1: that were very apocalyptic, Last Night was very much a
Speaker 1: quiet apocalypse again, and it was just very much like,
Speaker 1: all right, this is our last night on Earth? What's
Speaker 1: going to be going on? And I'd like there's the
Speaker 1: Don m kellor part of it where we could see
Speaker 1: what he's up to. We also have a it's very
Speaker 1: vignette based. We've got Sandra oh in another storyline. We've
Speaker 1: got a David Cronenberg and another storyline. It's been I
Speaker 1: probably saw it in ninety eight, so it's been quite
Speaker 1: a while since I saw it, but I just remember
Speaker 1: it so fondly and I regret that I wasn't able
Speaker 1: to get back and rewatch it. But that's another really
Speaker 1: nice one. And there's also like the countdown thing going on.
Speaker 1: How you have your Friday, Saturday, Sunday and this one.
Speaker 1: You've got different times showing up throughout the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and it feels a little bit more. We see people
Speaker 1: riding in the streets, We see people like Sandra, Oh,
Speaker 1: she's doing some shopping or something, and then she comes
Speaker 1: back to her power has been flipped over. We got
Speaker 1: to see the car being flipped over. So you do
Speaker 1: see these cooligans and things, and it's okay, that's a
Speaker 1: little bit more what I would expect. People going out
Speaker 1: with a bang literally sometimes and then tonight's a great
Speaker 1: night to hire a prostitute type of thing. So I
Speaker 1: really remember appreciating that film, and I need to see
Speaker 1: if McKellar's made other films since then, because I thought
Speaker 1: the direction of it was very nice. There were some
Speaker 1: really powerful images, especially around the Sandral part as well
Speaker 1: as the Kronenberg part. Cronenberg, He's always such a good
Speaker 1: actor as well as director, but he is just playing
Speaker 1: this buttoned up man living a life of quiet desperation.
Speaker 1: Does it so well too, and it's like he's almost
Speaker 1: in a two person play throughout most of this movie.
Speaker 2: I remember the film.
Speaker 6: I feel like I might have seen it, but I
Speaker 6: feel maybe I haven't because I feel like I would
Speaker 6: remember the Cronenberg stuff.
Speaker 2: Because I love so much.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's that's I think Charles Ruda's performance feels lived in,
Speaker 6: but the writing of this film doesn't feel lived in,
Speaker 6: and that's what it needed. Like what you're saying, like
Speaker 6: those character kind of vignettes are just like lived life,
Speaker 6: and I mean there's there's certainly something to play with
Speaker 6: their not feeling lived in, because that's part of what's
Speaker 6: making us crazy right now, is this whole mediated existence
Speaker 6: that we don't know what is the good life or
Speaker 6: even just a basic life or anything. It's like everything's
Speaker 6: followed down, not everything, but so much is hollowed out
Speaker 6: and how to exist in that world?
Speaker 2: And if the world is ending, then it's does that make.
Speaker 6: It easier or harder to figure out how to exist?
Speaker 6: And I think that was something that I really appreciated
Speaker 6: in Ferrara's film. Is that fantastic sequence when he goes
Speaker 6: upstairs to the neighbors and it's these old like error
Speaker 6: and junkie mates and the guy's a drug dealer, that
Speaker 6: makes a drug dealer, and like the old junkie mate
Speaker 6: is like, nah, nah, don't don't do it. You've been
Speaker 6: sober for who in a years? Is the end of
Speaker 6: the world worth it? And it's such an interesting conversation
Speaker 6: and it feels like it's real. It doesn't feel like
Speaker 6: someone like thinking out a conversation. Is this is a
Speaker 6: conversation that person who has had an experience with error
Speaker 6: an addiction is thought about and had that theoretical.
Speaker 1: You got Natasha Leones sitting at that table. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: sure she's been around these types of conversations as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this feels that sequence, if not, a lot of the
Speaker 1: film doesn't feel scripted, feels very much. Okay, let's just
Speaker 1: improv the sin.
Speaker 6: But at that scene, like so pulled everything together for
Speaker 6: me for the fat film of it, Like what are
Speaker 6: your decisions for?
Speaker 2: Like why do you make the choices that you do?
Speaker 6: As are you only making this choice because there's a
Speaker 6: tomorrow and the repercussions that the choice will have in tomorrow,
Speaker 6: or you're making this choice because it is meaningful and
Speaker 6: who you are. And that's Defoe's characters still flapping in
Speaker 6: the wind. He's a flag without a pole, like his
Speaker 6: daughter's far away and disconnected and guarded by an x
Speaker 6: with a difficult relationship and his strange connection with his
Speaker 6: current partner, and then his strange connection with drugs, and
Speaker 6: it's yeah, you feel like he goes it up, you
Speaker 6: really he goes up there to get drugs that he's
Speaker 6: ready to be like checking out as the world ends.
Speaker 6: And this other guys, yeah, like there's not hop is
Speaker 6: to me. They're drinking booze and I'm like, I'm fine,
Speaker 6: Like i have no need for it.
Speaker 2: I don't. I'm twenty years and I'm solid.
Speaker 6: That was the choice and it's who I am, and
Speaker 6: it's so solid and real and beautiful and human, and
Speaker 6: it's like that's there's a lot of that flapping around
Speaker 6: in the background of Exposure thirty six, of like why
Speaker 6: we make choices and decisions, how we end up we are,
Speaker 6: and how we justify that to ourself, especially through the
Speaker 6: fact that he's like basically saying I have meaning because
Speaker 6: I'm keeping other people dosed up on drugs to get
Speaker 6: through this.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a fucking awful reason.
Speaker 6: But also from another flick, the Coin on the other side,
Speaker 6: and it's like, that's a pretty good reasons, but it's
Speaker 6: only a pretty good reason because things are that bad.
Speaker 6: So it's just it's such it's so much complication there,
Speaker 6: and that does feel like really drawn on from the
Speaker 6: Ferrara film about those kind of aspects in it, but
Speaker 6: it doesn't it doesn't have the grounding of an all
Speaker 6: Newalberry's been through hell.
Speaker 1: One of the movies that I wasn't familiar with that
Speaker 1: one of the reviews of Exposure thirty six brought up
Speaker 1: was a twenty thirteen film called These Final Hours, which
Speaker 1: is ironically an Australian film, and I watched a lot
Speaker 1: of that though that was tough man some of those
Speaker 1: the guy with the machete towards the beginning and the
Speaker 1: way that he murders a man, So it's very much
Speaker 1: I think it's like an asteroid or bits of things
Speaker 1: because they have that shot near the beginning of the
Speaker 1: stuff coming through our atmosphere and it's okay, again, it
Speaker 1: feels very end of the century apocalypse type of thing.
Speaker 1: It feels very deep impact armageddon type of storyline. But
Speaker 1: then at the same time so you get much more
Speaker 1: of the Okay, the world's about to end, everything's going
Speaker 1: to shit kind of thing. And ironically, with this being Australia,
Speaker 1: the first thing that popped in my mind was on
Speaker 1: the beach and just thinking of, Okay, they know that
Speaker 1: this cloud of radiation is coming and it's going to
Speaker 1: kill everyone. What would life be like for them? Same
Speaker 1: thing here, Okay, we know that this is coming, what
Speaker 1: is life going to be like? And just to see
Speaker 1: there's an image of a guy who has hanged himself
Speaker 1: from a fucking light pole that is very striking. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of the chaos here. But I have to say,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, and it might have been that it
Speaker 1: reminded me of the beginning of that Zack Snyder remake
Speaker 1: of Dawn and the Dead, I kept thinking that there
Speaker 1: are going to be zombies in this movie. And the
Speaker 1: way that the guy was like walking slowly in the
Speaker 1: middle of the street before the dude with the machete
Speaker 1: gets out of this car and slices them, I was
Speaker 1: like yeah, this feels so much like a zombie film.
Speaker 6: He just hav't walked down the street in Australia. And
Speaker 6: because someone might feel like a zomba, I actually have
Speaker 6: not seen these five hours. It came out when I
Speaker 6: was working in the cinema and it was like I
Speaker 6: really wanted to see it, but it was like, am
Speaker 6: I gonna watch it after work when I gonna go home,
Speaker 6: which cut out a lot of fills that era.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think it was like, it's like.
Speaker 6: A common hits and it's the slowly approaching like wall
Speaker 6: of fire.
Speaker 2: I really should see it because it is.
Speaker 6: It is a fascinating like alignment of ideas, because yeah,
Speaker 6: I immediately am like, oh yes, it's very much a modern,
Speaker 6: like more environmental take on on the beach that is
Speaker 6: where the last place it's going to hit. But it's
Speaker 6: also yeah, it's very much that Snowtown era of Australian
Speaker 6: filmmaking that is like rough and painful, something like The
Speaker 6: Loved Ones as well, which doesn't get talked about anywhere
Speaker 6: near enough for just whoa, we had some bottled up
Speaker 6: pain and it came out of the very tangible manner.
Speaker 6: It is an interesting way to contemplate the like how
Speaker 6: you lead a good life? There's nothing beyond it is
Speaker 6: something with it, the possible theological aspects of exposure thirty six,
Speaker 6: that there maybe is the hint that there is heaven
Speaker 6: and hell like it's it is. It has just been
Speaker 6: hard the last twenty years to be enjoying American cinema
Speaker 6: because it does feel like it's shrinking in its purview
Speaker 6: and a theological aspect, like it feels like something that's
Speaker 6: easy to just slip into your film because it has meaning,
Speaker 6: but it's also so meaningless when you're coming down, How
Speaker 6: do you lead a good life? Everything is over, we're
Speaker 6: all dead. But that's the whole thing, the opiate of
Speaker 6: the masses. It's a way to just say it's fine
Speaker 6: that it's fucked in this life, because it'll be fine
Speaker 6: in the next one. And it's well, there is the
Speaker 6: heaven and hell thing. Clearly you have to do some
Speaker 6: things for it to be fine in the next life.
Speaker 6: But it still just is like a bit of a cop.
Speaker 2: Out in that.
Speaker 6: I don't actually need to think about it, and I've
Speaker 6: already done all this stuff, so it doesn't matter what
Speaker 6: I do versus no, actually, you like, these last minutes
Speaker 6: are gonna be real long, and you're gonna have to
Speaker 6: live with yourself in that and what are you doing? Sure,
Speaker 6: check out, but how are you checking out? How are
Speaker 6: you checking out by taking some guy out with a
Speaker 6: machete or buying some prescription strokes or what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a big nihilism to these final hours, Like
Speaker 1: when the main character goes to this crazy orgy and
Speaker 1: people are just there playing Russian Roulette and you've got
Speaker 1: the one guy who pulls the trigger and it clicks. Okay, great,
Speaker 1: hands the gun over to his mate. Next thing, there's
Speaker 1: blood splattered against the flag, and I'm like, wow, Okay,
Speaker 1: I had no idea. By the way, it's this almost
Speaker 1: lone wolf and cub esque story where he's escorting this
Speaker 1: girl through a lot of stuff. I had no idea.
Speaker 1: That girl looks so familiar and I had to look
Speaker 1: her up. She's the one that played Betty Brandt in
Speaker 1: all of the Spider Man movies, the Homecoming stuff. I
Speaker 1: had no idea that she was Australian. She hides her
Speaker 1: accent very well. And then you brought up that the
Speaker 1: gentleman that directed these final hours also did the recent
Speaker 1: one We Bury the Dead, where you get to hear
Speaker 1: just how terrible Daisy Ridley's accent can be when she
Speaker 1: tries to flatten it and make it American. Holy shit,
Speaker 1: that was so distracting. And there's really no reason why
Speaker 1: she has to be American in the movie, but man,
Speaker 1: oh man, that was really really rough. And I think
Speaker 1: I've heard her be American before, but that was so
Speaker 1: distracting watching the movie list to her voice.
Speaker 6: As weird that it feels like again like when you
Speaker 6: make decisions for your film for marketing, like you're going
Speaker 6: from want to get the American audience. Nobody wants to
Speaker 6: watch this tas Madian zombie film that's not actually shot
Speaker 6: in Tasmania, so we'll get like a brit who's going
Speaker 6: to pretend to be an American to get the American audience,
Speaker 6: Like back up pend lines, guys, that's I don't think
Speaker 6: this like someone pretending to be American is going to
Speaker 6: bring in your audience. Exposure with thirty six does feel
Speaker 6: a lot like that that real somebody read a scriptwriting
Speaker 6: book and it has to have this and it has
Speaker 6: to have that, and you can't do this, and you
Speaker 6: can't do that, and that's unfortunate. It's like if you've
Speaker 6: if you've got bugger all money and bugle all resources,
Speaker 6: be creative, throw the book out. Like nobody notices the
Speaker 6: film that walked in other footsteps. They noticed the film
Speaker 6: that busted out and just did whatever it did and
Speaker 6: had fun and was creative in strange ways. And I
Speaker 6: really wish this film had more of that. It's it's
Speaker 6: what we need in cinema. It is just for people
Speaker 6: to be like, it's cinema, it can be anything. Yeah,
Speaker 6: So Australian Apocalypse last night films. There's also smoke them
Speaker 6: if you've got them. Oh, you got to look that
Speaker 6: up and see that.
Speaker 2: My god.
Speaker 6: So it's mid eighties Melbourne underground punk apocalypse film and
Speaker 6: it's just like the nukes being dropped.
Speaker 2: Melbourne's pretty much gone.
Speaker 6: It's a wasteland and a couple of the people find
Speaker 6: themselves in a bunker in Richmond where just all the
Speaker 6: local like punks and metal heads and whatever, it just going.
Speaker 6: They've got we've got enough drugs to last us. Three
Speaker 6: drugs and now they will last three days, but the
Speaker 6: radiation is going to kill us in two. So let's
Speaker 6: go and it's pretty and grimy and funny and fucked
Speaker 6: and dark and oh yeah this finally I was They
Speaker 6: were definitely taking inspiration from smoking.
Speaker 2: If you got them for the big party scene at
Speaker 2: the end.
Speaker 6: But yeah, smoke, I've got it just like thirty minutes,
Speaker 6: just Australian eighties end of the world.
Speaker 2: I think it is somewhat readily available.
Speaker 6: I know they've got a remaster and a DVD release
Speaker 6: about ten to fifteen years ago, so it might be
Speaker 6: on Duby and such DVD.
Speaker 1: What the don'body watched a DVDs anymore? It's going to
Speaker 1: be streaming otherwise I won't watch it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this was like this was a local indie distributor
Speaker 6: doing their best to try and resurrect some like born
Speaker 6: of Australian cinema that like didn't really have a market.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if even a.
Speaker 6: Couple of years later would have someone like an Umbrella
Speaker 6: could have just put it out on Blu ray with
Speaker 6: a few extras and it would have been like fine.
Speaker 6: But it was just before that really took off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just looking up. It's only forty eight
Speaker 1: minutes long, so that's an odd length for movie. They
Speaker 1: called it like a extended short or a short feature.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'll check it out. It is available in
Speaker 1: full YouTube.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I feel like tangible cinema where you can just feel
Speaker 6: the graph and the heat and everything. And then if
Speaker 6: you like punk cinema like it is iconic classics, smoke
Speaker 6: him if you got him.
Speaker 1: So anything else you want to talk about?
Speaker 6: Exposure thirty six in my notes it was the first
Speaker 6: thing I talked about and then just blasted bastard. Just
Speaker 6: mediation in general. It should be more present in the film,
Speaker 6: like where it is, he says. The Camra says, talks
Speaker 6: about finding paper in Pompey still preserved and how that
Speaker 6: lasted through this mini apocalypse and across time, and so
Speaker 6: that's why he's taking these photographs to hopefully last long
Speaker 6: enough that there's some possible future will find them. It
Speaker 6: is such a great and interesting idea and a great
Speaker 6: and interesting book, but it's not really infused into the
Speaker 6: film other than, as you say said previously, the photos
Speaker 6: he takes, which we do see flash on screen briefly, photos,
Speaker 6: especially the old photos, not even though they were tangible,
Speaker 6: they were so ephemeral, they were so easily destroyed by
Speaker 6: disasters and random incidents, and they're just these ephemeral things
Speaker 6: that kind of weren't really made last, and he's dreaming
Speaker 6: of them lasting forever, of them being eternal, and how
Speaker 6: that feeds into the way that photography captures time and
Speaker 6: turns these moments that slip away into something frozen forever
Speaker 6: and eternal. And they're like the way that these different
Speaker 6: ideas of a femeral internal bounch off of each other
Speaker 6: in all forms of media, and at this time, like
Speaker 6: in a way, digital photography is less ephederal seeming but
Speaker 6: is actually way way more intangible and effemble. It's not
Speaker 6: going to like most people, they're just keeping these on
Speaker 6: drives that won't last as long as a video cassette.
Speaker 6: When in like the working post production, like we archive
Speaker 6: everything to tape. People think that's crazy. They're like, what
Speaker 6: you're putting things onto tape? Yeah, like this this super
Speaker 6: high quality like lto tapes. They will outlast any hard drive,
Speaker 6: any disk drive. That's how we preserve it. And so
Speaker 6: it's like this digital era is we're going to lose
Speaker 6: so much. It could even be just a giant black
Speaker 6: spot where it's like like silent film, where it's like,
Speaker 6: what like ten percent, If we have ten percent of
Speaker 6: media left from this digital era, it will be amazing.
Speaker 2: That's a high prediction. It's in the.
Speaker 6: Film, but unless you're like coming to the film to
Speaker 6: write an essay on it, like it's it's not really much.
Speaker 6: And I thought that was unfortunate because there's so many
Speaker 6: ways to go with it.
Speaker 2: There's so many ways to play with that.
Speaker 6: I think we've mentioned the LEGETI recently in one of
Speaker 6: our conversations, where it's playing with the stillness of images
Speaker 6: and in film, and just like the ways to be
Speaker 6: philosophical and contemplative with mediation and images in films without
Speaker 6: having to talk about it is like open and rich
Speaker 6: area to playing. And it felt like that he started
Speaker 6: with that idea and then lost because even down to
Speaker 6: I thought that he wanted like I got that, so
Speaker 6: he's safe gets stolen, which is where he keeps all
Speaker 6: of his negatives, And I get that he wanted his
Speaker 6: safe back because he wanted the negatives back, but I
Speaker 6: thought he also wanted the safe back to preserve the negatives.
Speaker 6: And then he doesn't get it back at the end,
Speaker 6: like he grabs the negatives and stuff, but then he's
Speaker 6: sitting on it like a train as this storm's gummy,
Speaker 6: and I'm like, oro, you're negatives.
Speaker 2: And other spot that I.
Speaker 1: Kept thinking of when I spoke with Lance Hendrickson years
Speaker 1: ago and he's very into ceramics and pottery, and he
Speaker 1: was talking about how his dream is to make a
Speaker 1: piece of pottery and have it at the ready basically
Speaker 1: to be fired by the heat death of the apocalypse.
Speaker 1: It's like, wow, Like I love that vision of just
Speaker 1: this nuclear blast in the distance and just that flower
Speaker 1: that you see coming like in those old films that
Speaker 1: will destroy the houses. But here's this piece of pottery
Speaker 1: or sculpture that then gets fired into perfection in that
Speaker 1: last second of the world.
Speaker 6: Oh man, I'm I'm just picturing Lance Hander because it's
Speaker 6: standing there holding up his piece of pottery as the
Speaker 6: wave hits him. He's going to live my head for
Speaker 6: for I hope that it's something I'd never heard that story,
Speaker 6: and yet that absolutely does not surprised me. That that
Speaker 6: is like Lands of the Street, that is beautiful and tremendous,
Speaker 6: striving for the eternal, and I actually I do love
Speaker 6: where it starts with that because it feels so that
Speaker 6: feels genuine and real, like this person whose life has
Speaker 6: just fallen a bar, that their dream is like derailed,
Speaker 6: that they're just like surviving on like the underbelly of
Speaker 6: a sixth society that can't cope, and the one thing
Speaker 6: is to turn fleeting moment into something that lasts forever
Speaker 6: against all boats.
Speaker 2: It feels like.
Speaker 6: A absolutely solid rock around which this character is built,
Speaker 6: and Jarles like his performance stays connected to that even
Speaker 6: when the film wanders from it, that he is still
Speaker 6: believable in that. But it is why just that last
Speaker 6: bit it was like bro be like given up, and
Speaker 6: it just that could be a part of it as well,
Speaker 6: But it's just it doesn't quite There's too much exposition
Speaker 6: and too much ontolining, and then there is actually just
Speaker 6: leaving space for that reality in your film, and that
Speaker 6: they don't quite leave space for anything at in the
Speaker 6: last chunk of this film. They just distract themselves and
Speaker 6: try to be a very typical American heterosexual kind of
Speaker 6: film narrative. And come on, you can dream bigger than this, all.
Speaker 1: Right, Ben, Let's go ahead and take another break, and
Speaker 1: we're going to play a preview for next week's show
Speaker 1: right after these brief messages.
Speaker 2: She wouldn't pluck with the customers.
Speaker 3: Oh, she wouldn't know what that means. I hardly know myself.
Speaker 2: I have to have supper with a gentleman.
Speaker 5: It isn't important, but I told him I wouldn't. I
Speaker 5: guess I'd better. I have to go to his hotel.
Speaker 6: This hotel.
Speaker 5: You're going to his rooms?
Speaker 4: Yes, shouldn't I What do you want to cry for
Speaker 4: when you can do somebody a good deed? He is
Speaker 4: a man who has supported.
Speaker 5: You and and and and that's right. Certainly his ride
Speaker 5: like the good Fairy with one wave of the one
Speaker 5: How can.
Speaker 2: You look me in the face again, madam?
Speaker 3: For you you'll miss my home Mecca.
Speaker 5: There you my.
Speaker 4: Husband, Your wife was in the taxicab with the waiter.
Speaker 4: My wife?
Speaker 5: Well, how can you laugh at such a moment because
Speaker 5: I haven't any wife? And he doesn't know dead lack
Speaker 5: just think he doesn't know, doesn't know what that I'm
Speaker 5: watching over Molly's sleeps, that I'm taking care of him.
Speaker 5: I'm his good fairy.
Speaker 1: As right. We'll be back next week where they look
Speaker 1: at the comedy classic The Good Fairy. Until then, I
Speaker 1: want to thank my co host Ben, Ben, what is
Speaker 1: happening in your world, sir?
Speaker 6: Still just plugging away in the digital salt mines of
Speaker 6: post production, steadily losing my mind, hallucinating weird digital issues
Speaker 6: in the real world, trying to survive the heat of apocalypse.
Speaker 6: And yeah, cats, lots of cats.
Speaker 2: Two cats. Anybody want to rescue cats? Hit me up.
Speaker 6: I've got fosters coming out of my ears. Getting back
Speaker 6: at the letter box after taking a little bit of
Speaker 6: a break, and you can find me over there. Dissolved
Speaker 6: pet as to say arly that I've really managed to
Speaker 6: watch three films this year. They are Misery, Welcome to
Speaker 6: Whoop Whoop twice, three, four times, and this film twice
Speaker 6: and it's it's definitely making me feel strange that that's
Speaker 6: the combo flot you in my head.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much, Ben for being on the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everybody for listening. Do you want to support
Speaker 1: physical media and get great movies in the mail, Head
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Speaker 1: the world. You'll find films there entirely unavailable elsewhere. Get
Speaker 1: what you want, when you want it. Without the scrolling.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear more of me shooting off
Speaker 1: my mouth, check out some of the other shows that
Speaker 1: I work on. They are all available at weirdingwaymedia dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to
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Speaker 1: Every donation we get helps Projection Booth dike over the world.
Speaker 5: M m.
Speaker 3: M m m mmmm, and
Speaker 5: Stills always