Memento (w/ Philip Marinello)

Eli Price (00:40.034)
Hello everyone and welcome to The Establishing Shot, a podcast where we do deep dives into directors and their filmographies. We are here on episode 18 of the podcast and this is the third episode of our Christopher Nolan series, jumping into his second film, sort of, I guess his breakout in a way, which is Memento.

Yeah, I'm excited to jump into this one. We have a new guest on the show today, Philip Maranello. I didn't ask you how to pronounce your last name before we started. Yes, nailed it. But yeah, Philip is, he has a podcast of his own with some other guys called The Substance Podcast. And yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:19.531)
Yeah, nope, Marinela, you got it.

Eli Price (01:38.114)
Philip, I'm excited to have you on. You wanna share a little bit about yourself and what you do, maybe a little bit about the podcast.

Philip Marinello (01:46.127)
Sure, yeah, no, The Substance, and thanks for the invite, by the way, Eli. Yeah, no, The Substance, we are a bi-weekly show in the, technically I think we're in the faith and spirituality category, but a lot of it is, it's a variety show, meaning we've got a number of different types of episodes and it's various topics related to faith, culture, the arts. We have a regular series on film, which is very much...

Eli Price (01:50.177)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:12.075)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (02:14.319)
kind of down this alley here called Substantive Cinema. We've been blessed to have several cool guests on that. Listeners may recognize some of those folks. Yeah, the last two guests we had on Substantive Cinema were actually letterbox employees, and those were both a blast. But yeah, no, love movies, have loved movies from a very young age. Chris, Chris Nolan fan, we can get into that. I have been interested in Chris Nolan and aware of him.

Eli Price (02:28.011)
Yeah, I saw that.

Philip Marinello (02:43.583)
since before Memento came out. I didn't see following before Memento, but somehow, I don't know if I read it in a film magazine or on message boards or where, but I remember the hype surrounding Memento before it came out. So I was on the websites, I was reading the interviews. If they were like terrible 260p videos on the internet, I was probably watching those. I was all about Memento.

Eli Price (03:00.684)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (03:12.599)
before it came out and when it finally came out, that was a special time.

Eli Price (03:18.582)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, what was kind of like your journey in the loving film? Was that something like you got into as a kid or high school, college? Where did that kind of?

Philip Marinello (03:29.087)
No, that was real, real young. My dad was a film lover, and it's kind of funny looking back on it now, a lot of the films that he showed me when I was pretty young, older in elementary school and middle school, a lot of those films eventually ended up in the Criterion Collection. He had pretty good taste. He showed me a lot of classics. But when I was little, I was watching, I mean, obviously, the great-

Eli Price (03:48.29)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (03:57.751)
Disney movies. But I remember, like the 30s and 40s adventure movies I was really into as a kid. And I mean, I've just yeah, ever since I can remember I've, I've loved the movies.

Eli Price (04:02.638)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (04:09.162)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I just watched the adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn with my four year old. And yeah.

Philip Marinello (04:16.311)
That was one of the first movies I remember. Like when people ask me, what's your first movie? I don't know if it was The Adventures of Robin Hood, but that's the first movie that I have like burned into my memory.

Eli Price (04:27.122)
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I did. Um, I did a little bonus episode kind of in it as a filler Uh that was that would have come out a few weeks ago now And uh, my son actually is on that episode Given his like little four-year-old Yeah, yeah Um, yeah, he's on that episode given his like four-year-old review of that movie and the wizard of oz that we watched recently Um, yeah, it yeah, it's really fun. Uh

Philip Marinello (04:41.447)
Oh, that movies to show your kids?

Philip Marinello (04:52.384)
Ooh.

Eli Price (04:55.298)
fun showing him those movies and seeing what he as a four-year-old gets out of them, what's exciting to him, it's fun. Obviously a lot of it's over his head.

Philip Marinello (05:07.035)
very excited to show my children Robin.

Eli Price (05:10.974)
Yeah, yeah, it's fun. So yeah, that's really cool. I feel like so many of my guests like start with like loving film as kids, which is awesome.

Philip Marinello (05:28.811)
Is that not your story? I don't know if I've heard yours.

Eli Price (05:31.818)
Yeah, yeah, it's just one of those things where I watched movies as a kid, and I remember going to see the Disney movies with my parents and loved Star Wars and those sort of more like blockbuster stuff. So like,

Philip Marinello (05:51.699)
I re- Star Wars was super formative as it was with probably lots of people in our generation.

Eli Price (05:54.72)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's funny, you know, it seems like Star Wars, like even more like so Indiana Jones, I think for kids like in the 80s was like, just as big as Star Wars. I was born in the early 90s. And I think by the time I was watching movies like that, Star Wars kind of was still like super big and you know, there were the re releases were coming out. Like as I was like starting to watch those. I remember I saw.

Philip Marinello (06:23.652)
Oh, that was a blast. I remember that. Yeah.

Eli Price (06:28.298)
I saw, well, it was a new hope at that point in theaters as a re-release as a kid. But Indiana Jones at that point was like, I remember seeing them a long time ago as a kid, but it wasn't as formative as Star Wars. But yeah, it's one of those things where I watched movies as a kid and I watched a lot of movies in high school and stuff.

again, mostly like just blockbuster stuff and comedies. And I really started to like get more into like watching film, I would say like later in college. Yeah, so.

Philip Marinello (07:02.479)
Sure.

Philip Marinello (07:09.696)
Nice.

I mean, it's easy to sometimes be a snob, but I'm always trying to encourage people. No, let them in. And the whole, oh, you haven't seen that movie. There's plenty of classics that I haven't seen, and I've seen thousands and thousands of movies. It's just like we're all bound by time and interest. And I have a huge list of big movies I want to see, but the last three or four months of every year, it's horror and holiday movies, and it's just hard to see too much.

Eli Price (07:18.796)
Yeah.

Eli Price (07:22.951)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (07:33.055)
Yeah.

Eli Price (07:39.907)
That's true. Yeah, watch the same movies every year at Christmas time, which is great. I don't mind it one bit Me and my wife actually watch fantastic. Mr. Fox every Thanksgiving. We started that a couple years ago It's been a fun tradition. Oh Yeah, yeah, but uh, so memento

Philip Marinello (07:54.891)
Yep, no, that's a fall favorite of ours as well.

Eli Price (08:05.206)
being your introduction and knowing. So did you see it in theaters then? Okay.

Philip Marinello (08:09.795)
So no, I remember seeing the poster in the newspaper, but I don't remember, I don't think it was that I was too young. I was definitely watching R-rated movies at that point. And I remember I got it on like VHS or DVD as soon as it came out. But I don't know if I didn't have an adult to take me or if it was playing so briefly. I grew up in Florida, I don't know. I remember seeing it in the paper, so I feel like there was a showing.

I probably just couldn't get a grownup to take me at that point, I'm guessing. I don't really, I don't have a vague memory of the theater, but I remember as soon as it came out, I think it probably, like, weird. Maybe it was DVD. It was either DVD or VHS. I got it right away.

Eli Price (08:41.023)
Yeah, sure.

Eli Price (08:54.286)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. That yeah, it's one of those. Yeah, we'll get into that. I'm sure how rewatchable it is. But yeah, that's really cool. I was like completely unaware. I was in like fifth grade. Yeah, yeah, I was like in fifth grade when this came out. And so just like totally not on my radar at that point.

Philip Marinello (08:58.528)
and watched it a lot.

Philip Marinello (09:15.051)
Well yeah, if you didn't get in it till college, then yeah.

Eli Price (09:23.382)
in my life. But yeah, it's really cool and funny to like look back on the history. You hopped on and checked the website. There's actually a website for Memento. It's like Memento backwards.

Philip Marinello (09:39.079)
Yeah, before we started recording, I remember, yeah, Otnomum.com, I remember weekly, if not daily, checking that website for updates, like filming updates, like set updates.

Eli Price (09:44.536)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (09:52.65)
Mm-hmm Yeah, it's not functioning anymore. It's still there, but it does Right. Yeah, I've got on I hopped on there when I was researching and I saw that was a thing I was like, oh, let me see if it's still there. But every time I clicked on something it was like

Philip Marinello (09:57.023)
Yeah, it has a landing page, but that's it.

Philip Marinello (10:09.423)
Yeah, but it's cool that, but yeah, no, that was some very good memories. Like that was like the best, maybe not the best. You can do it like this, for example. You can do a lot of great things on the internet, but that was a very special time in the internet's development where communities of people who loved something could just have a great time versus the trolls and trash and all the advertisers and everything.

Eli Price (10:28.095)
Yeah.

Eli Price (10:36.948)
Yeah, yeah.

Philip Marinello (10:39.427)
That was the heyday of the IMDB message boards. And I followed a lot more. I don't think I ever paid for anything. I feel like there was a lot of film journalists and blogs and like not just randos with blogs, but like high quality film people would have blogs that I would read. Like that was peak internet in a way. I'm very grateful for a lot of the things. Like my podcast of this, like.

Eli Price (10:43.735)
nice.

Eli Price (11:05.516)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (11:08.163)
The internet does have a lot of great things, but that was it felt a little pure maybe at that time.

Eli Price (11:12.466)
Yeah, yeah, I feel like too like I remember like hearing The the website, you know, there was like things that you could find you could like dig deep into it sort of thing Which was kind of unique at that point for a movie um, but also like there wasn't you can just google like how do I find all the things in In this website that are hidden like you had yeah Yeah

Philip Marinello (11:35.711)
Yeah, no, you had to put in the time. It was a lot of fun.

Eli Price (11:39.83)
Like now you can just go on the reddit board and someone will tell you all the secrets, you know it's not quite as fun unless you like force yourself to To not you know cheat I guess but uh, but yeah Yeah

Philip Marinello (11:51.311)
Sure.

Philip Marinello (11:55.051)
No, I was very excited. I love film noir. I love detective stuff. I don't know if this was the movie that got me into Guy Pearce, or I already liked Guy Pearce, but I remember being excited about Guy Pearce around that era. Like, it was a lot of the things. And I was a big like, and I still am, but I mean, that was kind of when my cinephilia was budding, and I was all about the writer-director. And I was like, ooh, like this guy, there's a lot of buzz around him.

Eli Price (12:09.036)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (12:24.879)
Like he wrote and directed his own thing. I guess Memento had maybe premiered at a festival and it was getting ready to release wide. I wish I remembered it better, but I remember the buildup being special.

Eli Price (12:39.058)
Yeah, yeah Yeah, we and we can we can hop right into the kind of history of it So, you know the story kind of goes which by the way if I know I recommended it Back on the first episode But there's this book the Nolan variations by Tom shown Or Sean depending on how he pronounces it. It's sh o ne

It's a really good book that he kind of wrote in tandem with a ton of interviews he did with Nolan. So there's just a ton of insight into his career and all that. But a lot of my research is coming from that book. But yeah, he so following he had kind of realized when he was getting following going that.

you know, if he wanted to like have a career in making movies, then he, he really needed to get to LA or somewhere like that. Um, there just wasn't like, um, in, you know, in London at the time, which is where he, he made following there wasn't like, he couldn't do festival runs, like there just wasn't anything there as far as that goes, um, at least not at that time. And so, um, yeah, he.

kind of comes to the US. He's trying to take a car from Chicago where he grew up to LA and his brother Jonathan, who I think the family calls him Jonah. They hopped in the car and drove it from Chicago area to LA. So that, yeah, and that's where Memento all began.

Philip Marinello (14:22.711)
Yeah, that's how it started, I believe, right?

Eli Price (14:29.378)
Jonathan kind of shared that he had like read about this anterograde amnesia That you know Leonard in the in the film has and kind of had this idea for a story about a guy that has this anterograde amnesia and is like You know, it's pretty undeveloped Yeah

Philip Marinello (14:48.471)
It's a great story device. Like if you're a storyteller, like you don't wanna overuse it. People can, like soap operas surely overuse it, but it's a good device.

Eli Price (14:54.209)
Right.

Eli Price (14:58.482)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's a it's a unique one. Um, that's the you know, he The story goes like he was telling him like about You know this kind of guy that's Kind of unstuck from time sort of thing and no chris nolan is like actually. Yeah that that's a really good idea He he basically said can I take that and write? Write a like a script for it for a movie And jonathan's like well, yeah, I guess so and so

they really like end up writing this simultaneously. So like Nolan is writing the script and getting the movie made and Jonathan is writing his short story sort of at the same time. So it's kind of one of those things where it's like, it's an adaptation, but not really. It is an original screenplay. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (15:52.163)
They came out at the same time. It's kind of like one of those weird 2001 situations where the collaborate, in this case, they were brothers, but where two artists get together and they're like feeding off of each other and each kind of creating their own thing. I don't think, 2001 is the only other instance that I'm aware of where like this sort of thing happened.

Eli Price (16:06.443)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (16:14.718)
Yeah, yeah, so nolan had actually like by the time jonathan finally finished the short story nolan had already like Wrote and like filmed the movie. So the movie was pretty much done um it released in So it had like a festival run um But yeah, the short story released like I think a couple weeks before the memento officially like a real

released in theaters. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (16:43.999)
Yeah, premiered. I think they wrapped and then it came out in a magazine, right? And then a little while later, like they kind of I mean, man, really great timing.

Eli Price (16:48.863)
Yeah, in Esquire.

Eli Price (16:54.527)
Yeah, have you ever read it?

Philip Marinello (16:57.127)
Um, pardon me. I remember reading some of it. I don't think I read the whole thing, but, um, yeah, memento mori. I remember tracking it down after I'd seen the movie and I'm a big reader as well as a movie watcher, but I just, I don't think it grabbed me or I don't know if I had to return it to the library or what, but I definitely didn't finish it.

Eli Price (16:59.551)
Yeah, you're good.

Eli Price (17:09.602)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (17:24.466)
Yeah, yeah, it's um, I went and found it you can just google it now memento mori nolan and it pops up It's on esquire.com. You can just go on and watch it. Uh, you just got to scroll through the ads is all uh But yeah, it's uh, it's not really even that long it's um I mean it probably took me 15 or 20 minutes to read it is all um

Philip Marinello (17:30.175)
Nice. I'm sure it's out there, yeah.

Philip Marinello (17:37.111)
Nice.

Ha ha ha.

Eli Price (17:51.378)
And yeah, it's really interesting. It's kind of a different, a little bit of a different perspective, a little bit less like, there's a lot less like characterization and plot. It's more just kind of like inside of his head. It's even written in like second person, but you kind of start to pick up on like that. He's writing it, it's like he's writing it to himself. Like the U is referring to himself.

Philip Marinello (18:13.324)
Interesting.

Philip Marinello (18:22.191)
Interesting.

Eli Price (18:22.814)
And so yeah, it's interesting it was it was fun to read it be a So Nolan when he was writing the script the I Kind of found that he said he was like constantly listening to Radiohead's. Okay computer, which is funny he and the reason he said that it was actually like kind of influential is because it was an album where like

Philip Marinello (18:41.855)
Yeah, yep.

Eli Price (18:50.53)
he could never remember what song was next. So like if you're an album listener, which I don't listen to albums as a whole as much as I used to, but I used to like listen to whole albums straight through all the time. And so after you do that a couple of times, you kind of like get the rhythm of the album, like okay, this song and then this song and then this song. And Dolan was listening to this and he could just like never remember what song was coming next.

Philip Marinello (18:53.636)
interesting.

Eli Price (19:20.286)
Um, just like the, that. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (19:21.303)
I like them fine. I'm very much an album guy, but I never, I, you know, I like Radiohead fine, but they were just never one that I spent lots of time with.

Eli Price (19:27.188)
Right.

Eli Price (19:30.43)
Yeah, yeah same here. I think they're great. But yeah, I haven't spent much time with him but I did think it was interesting that he like you know that would I guess like more like atmosphere of More of like the atmosphere and the idea was kind of like influenced by that state of mind I guess like I don't know what's coming next kind of state of mind and yeah, he kind of like

Philip Marinello (19:52.128)
Yeah.

Eli Price (19:59.934)
was struggling with how do I get this film in the perspective of this amnesiac? Like, how do I make this happen? And he just kind of like, I guess he was just musing in his apartment and finally like had a aha moment of like, you know, I can tell this kind of in reverse. Which is just like, turns out to be like a brilliant move.

Philip Marinello (20:29.203)
And what is so you've watched I've seen following but it's been a long time. What was the device and following remind me.

Eli Price (20:35.054)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (20:38.762)
Yeah, so in following, it's this guy. He's following people. He gets caught up. A guy notices he's following him and basically uses him. So it's told. You have these visual cues of where you are. It jumps around in the timeline of this is when he meets the guy and starts robbing apartments with him. This is.

Now he has like a shaved face and clean hair and he's wearing a suit. So this is after a certain point. Now he has like a beat up face. So this is like after a certain point. And, uh, and you kind of end with like it being this whole like setup where they were using him, um, to like, you know, basically to frame him, um, with him being totally unaware, like he's, he's the framing device too, is it starts with him.

Philip Marinello (21:13.331)
Yes, okay, yes, yes.

Eli Price (21:38.794)
uh, basically like confessing to a police officer and then so it starts with that and ends with that that's kind of like the Yeah, yeah, it's um, it's really interesting and it's the only nolan that has a criterion. Um, Uh, yes. Yeah, which is kind of strange to me. Um, but um, yeah

Philip Marinello (21:44.111)
Okay. I should watch that again.

Philip Marinello (21:56.48)
It is.

Philip Marinello (22:01.059)
Which is nice because I tracked it down on like some sort of British import or whatever before it was on Criterion back when you had to work a little bit harder for it. I remember. But yeah, I was, I never picked it up because I feel like the, I love Criterion, but I feel like the supplements were not very generous on that. And I'm like, I don't know how many more times I'm going to watch following, but I should maybe check that out from the library or something.

Eli Price (22:10.112)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (22:27.052)
Right.

Yeah, that's what I usually do if I'm like, well, I don't necessarily want to spend money on this, but I do want to watch the extra features. Let's check it out from the library.

Philip Marinello (22:38.199)
Yeah. I probably spend way too much money on those, uh, bi-annual half off sales, but it's, it's hard to say no to.

Eli Price (22:44.438)
Yes. It is. My wife always like, she jokes because my birthday is in July and then, you know, there's Christmas and there's always like a summer half-off sale and November. Yeah. And so my wife is like, oh, this is perfect. I can get you, I always know what I can get you for your birthday and Christmas. Yeah. But yeah.

Philip Marinello (22:59.907)
Yep, July and November.

Philip Marinello (23:08.431)
Nice, that's perfect.

Eli Price (23:14.15)
It's one of the things I thought was funny that no one says is like so he wrote this he actually wrote it As it plays out so he starts with The the same he didn't like write it in chronological order and then reorder it. He actually wrote it As it actually plays out in the film Yeah, and so and so he said that in a way it's sort of the most linear script he's ever written

Philip Marinello (23:35.936)
Interesting.

Eli Price (23:44.058)
I guess kind of insinuating that a lot of his stuff he does kind of like write out and then kind of like move stuff around To play with in that way and this one he actually like sat down and wrote it straight through

Philip Marinello (23:52.084)
interesting.

Philip Marinello (23:55.683)
And is that something, so, I mean, I don't know when you want to get to this. How do you feel about, I mean, Nolan's big thing is time. And I feel like sometimes he does that more successful than others, but is that something that's still exciting for you? Like, for me, like Memento is maybe the most exciting. And that was kind of like his first one, which is sometimes a bit of a bummer. But it's very interesting.

Eli Price (24:03.744)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (24:14.252)
Yeah.

Eli Price (24:19.154)
Yeah. So like, I would say, I would say for me, this one is probably this one and maybe Dunkirk are probably the two that like time is the most interesting thing about the movie for me. Yeah. The I have other so I'll there's several movies by Nolan that I really love.

Philip Marinello (24:36.695)
My number one and two on my ranked list.

Eli Price (24:48.13)
Interstellar is probably one that is like the most like It has you know good general ratings But it's probably the most controversial of like I really love interstellar or like it's not it's fine sort of thing I love it, but the time aspect is Not quite as interesting to me about that movie There's other things about it that are more interesting to me and reasons why I love it

Philip Marinello (25:07.288)
It's hard.

Eli Price (25:17.398)
But yeah.

Philip Marinello (25:17.503)
Interstellar was one where my former co-host loves it so much that he like pushed for it to get covered on a substantive cinema. And like, I like it more, but I feel like it kind of doesn't add up exactly. And I hate people who are like the logic police. And I know Neil deGrasse Tyson said it was cool or whatever, but I'm just like, I feel like it fundamentally kind of doesn't work. But if I like shut my brain off in a way, like I feel like it's either.

Eli Price (25:26.944)
Uh-huh.

Eli Price (25:37.251)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (25:46.083)
a three, three and a half star or like a total five star masterpiece. And I kind of go back and forth on it. Like sometimes I go, no, like, it's beautiful. It's incredible. But also I go, does it even work at all? Like I feel very both ways about it.

Eli Price (25:52.567)
Yeah.

Eli Price (25:58.539)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, it's I so like people that feel that way about it. I'm like, yeah, I totally get it um, I'm one of those people that like I really like I really don't i'm not really the sort of person that like is sits in a movie and like I like have to figure it out before the movie's over um, I tend to try to let movies happen to me and so like um you know and then like

Philip Marinello (26:23.775)
Oh, I, yeah, I don't do that at all, yeah.

Eli Price (26:31.582)
sometimes like you go back and Think through like, you know how it played out and sometimes it lessens it sometimes it doesn't Like a so like for this movie, obviously like there's just like a big like reveal like oh This is what's been going on Sort of thing towards it towards the end which we'll get into but then like there's movies like Right, right. Yeah

Philip Marinello (26:56.163)
But chronologically, that's in the middle too, which is interesting as well.

Eli Price (27:02.602)
So yeah, but then there's movies like, like a movie that in the moment I thought was really fun, but then like immediately afterwards, I thought was like, that doesn't really work is now you see me. Do you remember that one?

Philip Marinello (27:17.451)
Okay. Is that the magician one? Yeah, very strange. I always give my wife grief about that one. That like one of the times when it came out, she said like that she liked it, but in my mind she's like, oh, I really like this movie. And then I saw it and I was like, interesting. Okay. It was fun enough. Watch.

Eli Price (27:20.862)
Yeah. So it's like it's yeah, it's.

Eli Price (27:36.066)
Yeah.

So it feels cheap to me. So movies like this.

Philip Marinello (27:43.115)
Look, it's literal magic. And I was like, that's not the whole point.

Eli Price (27:46.37)
Yeah. So like this one and like the sixth sense. So when you go back and rewatch these movies, you can see like all the clues. If you like, if you go back and watch now, you see me like there's no clues. They could have thrown anyone in there because it's like, quote unquote, magic. Like it's just like it feels cheap on rewatch and it feels it. It feels cheap when you think about it for more than like, you know, five seconds.

And so it really does, I feel like, take a precision and a really creative mind to make a movie like Memento that stands up to that test. And yeah, he really did. Like, he says when he was making this movie, he really did try to like.

Philip Marinello (28:28.654)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (28:48.206)
tend to that precision and you know it's probably just you have to have the right kind of mind to like think about all those details.

Philip Marinello (28:56.107)
Well, and it wasn't just like one of my major complaints with Nolan's later work is that the formal attributes kind of outshine the movie. Like this is one I've seen memento loads of times, but it's been a while. Like I have. I don't know if I've seen it in the last 10 years, and if I have, it was maybe one time I saw it a ton when it came out, but like I remember Leonard. I remember.

Eli Price (29:12.514)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (29:25.743)
Teddy, I remember Teddy slash John G. I remember Sammy Jenkins. I remember I remember Dodd because that was a thing like other than the Batman stuff. I'd be hard pressed to like name a Nolan character because I feel like they're not really characters. They're like ciphers for ideas and like and that's not invalid. But like I like not that the Memento characters are the deepest because it's kind of it's very noir.

Eli Price (29:40.13)
Sure.

Sure, they're ideas. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (29:54.531)
But they feel human, their motivations are very human. And we talked Interstellar, I'm mixed on it, but even when I like Interstellar, I'm like, I feel like it almost doesn't even earn the emotion in a way, because it is also cold and calculated. Like, I really feel like Memento and Insomnia, and maybe The Prestige were like the most heartfelt, where you actually care about these characters.

And that's what I like more. Like I'm a I love spectacle, but I kind of feel like Nolan is so into his ideas that it's the characters can sometimes suffer.

Eli Price (30:37.002)
Yeah, and Nolan is, so in an interview about this movie, he is very upfront with the fact that, someone had asked him about the character and the humanity of the character of Leonard, and he was very upfront about like, I wasn't really thinking about it in that way. He's like, I tend to write my scripts more like, thinking about it like from a distance and as a puzzle.

And he said it really wasn't until Guy Pearce came on and was like, you know asking questions and like he said Guy Pearce really is the one that brought the humanity to that character Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I which I kind of respect he you know, he he's like not like oh, yeah, like yeah Wrote this he was like very upfront with the fact that like well No, actually like I was pretty distant from it

Philip Marinello (31:17.183)
And you can feel that for sure.

Eli Price (31:34.314)
emotionally and you know this great actor came alongside me and made it made it even better.

Philip Marinello (31:41.775)
And that is so interesting. I joke, I do like Chris Nolan. I respect him maybe even more than I like him, but he does feel a little bit robotic sometimes and very sterile.

Eli Price (31:47.296)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (31:51.986)
Yeah, yeah Yeah, and I think that's probably like he I feel like the movies so like dunkirk It kind of is supposed to feel like that and so it works really well. Um You're not it's not really supposed to be this like Deeply there's not really like deeply emotionally connecting characters for you to connect with it's just kind of like this um

I don't know, it's kind of like an experiment in filmmaking in a way, and in visual storytelling. And again, another thing for that one is there's really not any exposition. There's no rules to explain. You just watch it, which is probably to its strength.

Philip Marinello (32:26.959)
Sure, but that one really worked for me. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (32:43.851)
I think also maybe his shortest full length feature as well too, which doesn't hurt.

Eli Price (32:52.05)
Yeah. So yeah. So like for Interstellar for me, I think for me personally, McConaughey really like, I guess, like captures the emotion well. And so I'm really able to connect despite like the distance of the writing that, you know, Nolan is kind of upfront with like, yeah, this is kind of how I write. For me, it's like I really connected with McConaughey's interpretation of that.

And that's just one of those things that's so subjective. Like either you connect with his interpretation of this character or you don't. And it's just kind of one of those things. And that's why I like, some people are like, Interstellar is like an incredible film. And some people are like, well, it's okay. You know, it's kind of, it doesn't really work for me.

Philip Marinello (33:30.479)
Sure.

Philip Marinello (33:44.575)
Yeah, for me, it really does depend on the day. Like I've gone back and forth. I get it is so impressive. It's kind of a masterpiece. But then also I'm like, what even is this?

Eli Price (33:47.092)
Yeah.

Eli Price (33:51.47)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (33:58.703)
But with Memento, like, you know what everything is. Like, I like the prestige. I enjoy insomnia very much, but like Memento felt so grounded also. Like, I love, like film noir is maybe my favorite genre. Like, I mean, I love all movies. Like, there's nothing I don't like. But I mean, it was so formative for me and it's, when it's done well, I feel like it's undeniable.

Eli Price (33:58.775)
Yeah.

Eli Price (34:02.817)
Yeah.

Eli Price (34:12.129)
Yeah.

Eli Price (34:18.879)
Yeah.

Well I think-

Eli Price (34:27.006)
Yeah, and I think that's probably like a reason why Memento works so well is because it's so grounded in that genre um, you know with following I remember hearing Nolan talk about how um, he felt like he could play with the time in it and like the where you were in the narrative because people Kind of knew like i'm in a film noir and this is kind of generally how it's going to play out and so like your audience is kind of like

They're primed for you to be able to experiment and do something different because in the end, they know this is how a film noir plays out. You can kind of like jack with everything in the middle because they understand where it's going, you know.

Philip Marinello (35:06.755)
Exactly. Okay, interesting. All right, I'm looking at I'm looking at the timeline. I was a Guy Pearce fan because LA Confidential also in the film Noir World came out a few years earlier Yeah

Eli Price (35:15.771)
Yes.

Exactly. Yeah. And yeah, that film noir is like a big influence on Nolan. I think really you can see its influence in a lot of his movies. One, you know, after insomnia, you know, you see it in the Batman movies, you see it in Inception and even the prestige. And yeah, it's so and, you know, he.

Philip Marinello (35:31.074)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (35:43.275)
Oh, very much so.

Eli Price (35:48.07)
He kind of talks about how, you know, you're part of the reason he loves that genre and is so influenced by it is because you part of the structure of a noir is that you're supposed to get lost in the plot. And that's just kind of like how he thinks he gets lost in these ideas. And so

Philip Marinello (36:08.815)
Following the character and for this it's exactly like you are lost like Leonard is lost because he literally can't with the way The movie's chopped up even if you know the movie. I haven't seen it years, but I remember all the beats I was like where are we when does that happen like? because I was like I thought the Yeah, there are a couple different things that I thought happened earlier or later like it always keeps you kind of like off balance

Eli Price (36:20.771)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (36:26.356)
Yeah.

Eli Price (36:38.03)
Mm-hmm Yeah, and it's fun too with this one. So like you there was you know us I guess like a small tradition of amnesia movies like you have like spellbound by Hitchcock and Which which I saw recently and a few others But one of the things he liked about this idea was that it kind of breaks that tradition and the fact that this character knows who he

I guess you could say is or was. He, yeah.

Philip Marinello (37:09.779)
Yeah, they had that line about that too. He's like, I'm Leonard Shelby. I don't know. I guess. No, like that's who you were. A lot's happened since then.

Eli Price (37:14.474)
Right, right. Right, and so you kind of have, it's a little bit different. He's not like this guy that's like, I don't know anything about myself. He knows, in a sense, who he is, but it's still like, you can take that and then play with that idea in a different way than you can with someone who just completely doesn't know who they are. And so, yeah.

Philip Marinello (37:39.35)
Yeah.

Eli Price (37:42.546)
Another like a couple of movies that he mentioned in influence wise one was one that I haven't seen it Angel heart by alan parker. I don't know if you've ever seen that But he talks about he that being an influence in the sense that there's a twist um, like there's a big reveal twist, but the like the story telling place fair we kind of talked about that like

Philip Marinello (37:52.068)
Sure.

Eli Price (38:09.374)
It's not this twist that like you can't go back and see the evidence of like it the their Storytelling like really plays fair with the audience So like when you get to the twist if you go back you can see like how you got there And then Blade Runner which is like he always like talks about as one of his big influences for Just his love of movies his career his but um, but yeah, he just talks about

Philip Marinello (38:36.4)
Is Blade Runner a big one for you? Is that one that you like?

Eli Price (38:39.434)
It's not. It's one that I like. But yeah, when it's probably one that I would like more on a rewatch, but I wasn't like and I wasn't like super captivated by it when I when I saw it. I probably watched it a few years ago for the first time. And it's probably one of those things where like, I've just seen other things influenced by it. And so it's not as impressive. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (38:57.764)
Okay, so that was one.

Philip Marinello (39:05.943)
Which so many people are, like Blade Runner is one that so many big directors or like working directors are influenced by like, yeah, it's a seminal film. It's one of my favorites. I remember the first time I saw it feeling, and I'd been watching movies for a long time by that point, but I remember feeling like my life had changed almost when I saw that.

Eli Price (39:17.038)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (39:31.198)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, and so it's more just like, I'm very positive on it. Like I really think it's a great film, but I don't think like I was blown away. It's probably one of those expectation things, you know, it's built up so much. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (39:46.639)
sure if they're like, oh, Blade Runner. And you're like, oh. Well, and also there's like, there's a lot of different cuts, but there's three main cuts. And it's like, which cut did you watch? The latter two cuts are pretty similar. I do think the final cut is the best cut, but I grew up watching the director's cut. I don't think the theatrical is bad, but I don't think it's great. And I understand if people saw the theatrical, did it have narration?

Eli Price (39:55.827)
Right.

Eli Price (39:59.874)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (40:08.534)
Yeah, I can't remember which one I watched.

Eli Price (40:13.838)
I think it had some. I think it might've been the director's cut.

Philip Marinello (40:15.715)
Yeah, the narration is the theatrical. Okay, the director's cut did not have.

Eli Price (40:19.818)
Maybe it didn't have maybe it didn't have it. I honestly need to watch it again But yeah

Philip Marinello (40:24.767)
Yeah, but that's a big one that does deal with like memory and identity and humanity and like what does it mean to be a sentient being and all that, which I'm a big sucker for.

Eli Price (40:28.266)
Memory and identity, yeah.

Eli Price (40:35.431)
Yeah.

Yeah, same and yeah, Nolan kind of says he carries a lot of those ideas over Into this one, which you can totally see Yeah, uh Yeah, this one is one that of course like his now wife Emma Thomas uh got in the hands of um of a production company, I think it's uh, Newmarket films um and yeah, he the

the guy liked it and gave them four and a half million dollars. And it's funny, you know, a lot of people think about, you know, Batman, they'll say like Batman being his biggest jumper, even like maybe insomnia being a studio film. But as far as Nolan's perspective goes, he feels like this was like his biggest jump. But he. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (41:27.423)
I think percentage wise, right? Because maybe following was made for a couple grand and then you go to 4.5 million. Percentage wise, that's a lot.

Eli Price (41:36.982)
Well, really, like, Falling was kind of a zero-budget film. Like, they used, like, old equipment, and then really, like, the only money they spent was on the film stock. And it was just his pocket money. Like, he got a bonus from work and bought a bunch of film stock, sort of thing. So it was really, like, yeah, a whole year. Yeah. And so it really was a zero-budget film. And so Nolan jokes that he, you know, with this film, he really goes from, like,

Philip Marinello (41:52.523)
Well, yeah, they shot that over a long period of time, too, because of that.

Eli Price (42:06.346)
hanging out with his friends and his mom making them sandwiches to like using four and a half million dollars of someone else's money. Which like when you think about it is like a humongous jump. And so like, and it's interesting, you know, a lot of times it feels like nowadays, like if a director makes a film like Following or Memento, then like they're immediately like.

Philip Marinello (42:14.191)
pretty crazy.

Eli Price (42:33.002)
someone tries to snatch them up and make a Marvel movie or something. Yeah. And no one really stepped up to that. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (42:37.511)
Yeah, or like reboot something and I, I feel like if those things are going to be, yes, if those things are going to be what gets made, I would rather have talented people subvert them some. And I mean, yeah, Nolan made Batman, but like, I hate to see people who are originals kind of get sucked in to the studio system. I just saw Denis Villeneuve saying,

Eli Price (42:54.482)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Philip Marinello (43:06.323)
After Dune 2, he wants to make another Dune. And I'm like, OK, cool. But like, can we get him back, though, making his own movies?

Eli Price (43:14.834)
Right. Yeah, I feel similar to like, uh, Greta Gerwig, you know, she's like, you know, I want to make big studio movies and I'm like, I guess that's a good thing. You know, we have to have somebody that's like talented and like thinking differently in the studios. But there's also like the piece of me that's like, yeah, but let's make more like Ladybirds. That was that's really

Philip Marinello (43:21.015)
That's interesting, yeah, she's going to the studio right now.

Philip Marinello (43:38.515)
Exactly. Because it's like, do we need more Narnia movies? But if they're gonna make them, I'd rather have a talented person make them.

Eli Price (43:44.434)
Yeah, yeah, it's like a it's a catch-22 I guess as far as that goes.

Philip Marinello (43:48.799)
Yeah. Well, especially how much time and energy the big stuff takes. Like the big movies take years and years. And it's like maybe like the credit growing Netflix thing. You can crank them up because I don't hate like the old Hollywood model. A lot of great stuff got there were good things about the studio model, like with contracts and infrastructure. Like you did every.

movie, like, yeah, they had their own budgets, but like, if you shared sets and actors, you could maybe get somebody for a reasonable rate and you don't have like one of the principal actors taking up $15 million just for their own salary. So like pros and cons, but I do prefer original storytelling.

Eli Price (44:31.851)
Yeah.

Eli Price (44:37.45)
Right. Yeah, I feel the same way. I guess like, you know, like you said, though, if we must, then let's get some good minds in there, like some good people with some good vision, I guess. You know.

Philip Marinello (44:52.267)
Yeah, I think Nolan is one of the very few, maybe like two or three who can get a good budget for an original idea. There's not a whole lot of those people out there. I think it's like M. Tarantino and Jordan Peele, it feels like right now.

Eli Price (44:55.51)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (45:03.466)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, he...

Eli Price (45:09.118)
Yeah, yeah, he's one of the very few like, um, I think I mentioned this, like in the overview episode that he's like one of the few that can walk into a studio with an completely original script and walk out with a several hundred million dollar budget. Um, you know, it's really like, it is, um, but it's a, it's a testament to, uh, I think, um,

Philip Marinello (45:25.823)
Yeah. Which is a little crazy.

Eli Price (45:36.202)
You know, I had written in my notes somewhere that Nolan, like, this was like what kind of cement cemented in his mind, the idea that you can make a you can make a movie that challenges your audience with a with a big like with a big budget and like still it still be like a big hit, like a big.

You know get people to the theaters like blockbuster kind of thing which like which I really appreciate and when you really think about like Now when we look if you watch like the Batman trilogy now like it's like oh, yeah Like a lot of people are trying to do this sort of like dark superhero movie, but that was like a totally He was doing like something totally new with it at that point

Philip Marinello (46:09.804)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (46:27.375)
Sure, all the wrong lessons, yeah.

Philip Marinello (46:33.859)
We have the first one was Anwar and the second one was Heat and the third was kind of a mess in my opinion.

Eli Price (46:36.568)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, and so like, you know, he he's doing something different and then he's also like in the middle of the like he took his time with them like he didn't really let the studio like push him around he was like well we'll make they really like made one at a time. Is how he talks about it like I made Batman begins. Yeah, I made Batman begins I had another thing I was working on which turned out to be the prestige.

Philip Marinello (47:00.183)
Yep, I think that was very important.

Eli Price (47:09.674)
And then, then like after that period of time being away from the Batman, like Batman Begins, he was like, okay, I think we can do another one now. Fresh like, with a, you know, and so yeah, that Super, I feel like that just doesn't, there's not a whole lot of space for that sort of thing now. And you know, Memento, I don't know, like, it's funny because so Memento gets made.

And then they take it to all these, like they do some screenings for distributors and nobody wants to, yeah.

Philip Marinello (47:44.919)
Yeah, everybody loved it, but everybody, all the distributors were afraid that the audiences were too dumb. They're like, this is great. We're afraid the audience is too dumb to get this.

Eli Price (47:50.04)
Right.

Eli Price (47:55.25)
Yeah, yeah, and it's just so funny like they were like hey, this is we love this do you have what else are you working on sort of thing and Nolan says like everyone rejected and rejected us and so Newmarket films actually like created a distribution arm just for this movie and And got it out there. They did a festival run which Nolan talks about

No one talks about going to the premiere at Venice, which is where it premiered and for the first time. And he, like, you know, sneaks in. He's like super nervous. Big film festival. And there is like this moment, the movie ends. And there is like this moment of pause. And then like he actually got like a standing ovation. And he said it just meant so much to him that there was this moment of like

What what just happened and then like everyone like realizing wow, that was incredible and um, he just talks about like the this festival run being like These studios like these distributors are totally wrong the audience The audience is totally getting it um Yeah Yeah, and so It ended up like it's one of those movies that like grew its box office like throughout its run

Philip Marinello (49:13.835)
Well, studios are often wrong about that.

Philip Marinello (49:25.207)
Well, that's crazy to think about too, right? Like, if they didn't distribute it themselves, we might not have Chris Nolan.

Eli Price (49:25.427)
Um, mm-hmm.

Eli Price (49:31.658)
Yeah, yeah, and it's a testament to like one of the things I've learned doing this podcast so far is that the community of people that you have around you like really is It means a lot for that creative community is super important You know with this one for this film. It was You know that did that New Market Films and the guy that like gave him his budget that like believed in it

enough to put their careers or at least a lot of money on the line to get this in front of people. For Insomnia, which we'll talk about next week, it was Steven Soderbergh, basically marching on to us. He marched onto Warner Brothers a lot and said, you better give this guy a chance. Yeah. And so it's that creative community that you really need.

Philip Marinello (50:18.483)
Oh yeah, Steven Soderbergh was, he was very much his champion. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (50:29.035)
Which with insomnia too, even with Soderbergh banging the drum, they still had him do a remake before they let him do something original again.

Eli Price (50:37.93)
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's really it's really crazy how just like how studios work. Yeah, I yeah, I wrote down some of the like reception things. So like at the time it released, you have like New York Times saying it's an existential crossword puzzle, which is funny coming from the New York Times. Variety said it was delectably disturbing.

You know, these are some great like Little tidbits like that you can throw on your movie poster for when it's going to DVD But yeah, it ended up making like 40 I think over 40 million worldwide gross Yeah, yeah, they're really incredible and

Philip Marinello (51:24.259)
Yep. 10x to it's budget. That's pretty great.

Philip Marinello (51:31.327)
And I think like a lot of the, it had strong word of mouth, like because it is kind of a hard movie to traditionally market. I remember a lot of it was just like fans, like, oh, did you hear about this? Did you hear about that? Like, oh, like this is something special. Like it had strong word of mouth that I feel like is pretty challenging for, with all the noise now.

Eli Price (51:35.63)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (51:46.977)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (51:57.811)
It's just kind of hard for a movie to do that. Like sometimes it happens, right? But not often.

Eli Price (51:57.86)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (52:03.166)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (52:06.263)
I mean, kind of recently with Barbenheimer, that was like an internet joke that turned into word of mouth, but that's not like, oh, this is so good. It's like, isn't it funny? Isn't the counter-programming amusing?

Eli Price (52:11.018)
Right. That blew up.

Eli Price (52:17.867)
Yeah.

Right. Yeah, that was kind of like a very like happy coincidence and like very like smart On the distributors and the studios part to like keep those because they very easily could have moved the dates for those Um as they often do Yeah

Philip Marinello (52:35.155)
Yeah, but the result was, yeah, a cumulative, I just checked the box office today, cumulatively over two billion between the two, which is pretty wild.

Eli Price (52:41.898)
Yeah. Which is crazy.

Philip Marinello (52:46.027)
Yeah, Barbie, I think is now the top 18th grossing movie of all time.

Eli Price (52:51.122)
Yeah, it's up there. I haven't checked in the past couple of weeks, but it was gaining on Super Mario Brothers movie, which is another one from this year.

Philip Marinello (52:57.184)
As of yesterday...

Yeah, that's the one to beat that it might. Yeah, some of these movies still hit real hard.

Eli Price (53:05.566)
Yeah, which is it's funny to me like, you know, it's one of those things where it's like is theater dead and it's like, well, you have these movies making a billion dollars. So I don't know. I don't know about that idea. Right. It's IP movies mostly. But but.

Philip Marinello (53:16.94)
Not at all.

They need to get creative. They need to...

Well, yeah, that's the thing. Like, if everything is part six, part seven, part eight, like, that's gonna get tiring after time. And then you have Barbie is technically an IP movie. And Oppenheimer is like, a biopic based on like a seven or 800 page book. Like, those are both very different. But it was driven by the creators like the writer director who had a vision. And that's

Eli Price (53:38.881)
Right.

Eli Price (53:53.227)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (53:54.443)
Those are always the most exciting movies for me.

Eli Price (53:56.778)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely now if they are like, oh we're gonna make several more Barbie movies I would like put money on them like progressively being like less and less quality But

Philip Marinello (54:08.411)
Oh, there anything that they make and I'm sure they will, because studios don't usually learn the right lessons. And they've already greenlit I don't know if you saw, I think it was the variety article, they're already in production for like eight different Mattel IP movies. And it's like, I'm sort of curious about Daniel Kaluuya's Barney. But like, that's not the lesson we should learn from bar.

Eli Price (54:24.116)
Yeah.

Eli Price (54:31.45)
Yeah, yeah Right

Philip Marinello (54:36.759)
Nothing coming after it is going to do what it did. Even close. It's at $1.3 billion. Nothing else is going to come close to that. Even like Barbie 2 with Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie. That probably won't crack a billion dollars because it's not fresh. So try to learn the right lessons and enable the people with original voices to come after.

Eli Price (54:41.46)
Right.

Eli Price (54:57.612)
Right.

Philip Marinello (55:05.539)
to do things that interest them.

Eli Price (55:07.71)
Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's.

Eli Price (55:13.682)
I think this film like is it really is like a testament to the importance of creative minds like sticking to like what interests them. So I think, you know, people can think what they will about like Christopher Nolan and the trajectory of his career and like what, you know, what of his movies are actually like good. But like he sticks to like his kind of creative

Space like his movies all kind of inhabit this like hey, let's take a strange like kind of philosophical idea and like make something really big with it that is like visually like impressive but also like You know is kind of a philosophical puzzle For for audience to like audiences to talk about and really like he's

He's kind of stuck to that through his whole career and hasn't really strayed from it. Uh-huh. Um, but man, it, it really is one of the things though, that I think that people. Maybe don't talk enough because he's got these huge budgets now, but when you go back to these first couple of movies, um, that are way like he's working with way less money, way less like production, uh, like.

Philip Marinello (56:15.923)
Yeah, so he's a big puzzle blocks guy.

Eli Price (56:41.378)
big production stuff, like he's... So like one of the things that like he does is he doesn't use a monitor. He like he's by the camera. Um, when he's, when they're shooting, um, he's like in the space, like, and so like, it's one of those things that the way he shoots and the way he like, thinks about how the movie's going to be like produced and put together.

I think is actually like really like sort of underappreciated about him. It's not something that people talk about but when you think about this movie and the way like where he puts the camera is like so purposeful like You know you have the timeline in color you have so many shots that are like so close

Philip Marinello (57:32.439)
Which he's worked his way back to now with Oppenheimer, right?

Eli Price (57:36.07)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're so close. You're like so in his space and Um, there's a purpose to that which is like you're he's wanting you to have like his perspective he's wanting you to like Get that subjective experience of what like lennard is experiencing what he's like thinking what he's seeing um and so like You know, it's one of those things that's like he his camera work and the way he like

puts his blocks, his scenes and that stuff is very like well thought through. But I feel like with the discourse around Nolan is rarely about like, what he does with the camera and more about like, yeah.

Philip Marinello (58:20.123)
Yeah, artists. I mean, part of me feels contrarian, but I go like this might be his best shot movie. Like I know that the big special effects shots of the other movies. But I really think about this and the prestige as like, really like, well told visual stories.

Eli Price (58:30.186)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (58:40.387)
Yeah, yeah, it really is.

Philip Marinello (58:43.211)
I mean, Dunkirk, I guess in a way, but like that was more, I don't know, like broad painterly. Yeah.

Eli Price (58:49.194)
It still has that big production feel to it. Yeah. And this one, this one is really like, you know. I don't know, like there's really like cool, like, I guess, like more trivia stuff, like the opening shot, which plays like in reverse, like what you don't realize at first, they shot that with the reverse mag. So they shot it. So like, if you're listening, you don't know what that means. It means like basically the film.

Philip Marinello (59:07.075)
That's incredible. That is incredible.

Eli Price (59:18.014)
runs backwards, they're like, they shoot it. And, you know, obviously they're not going backwards and the things aren't happening backwards. They shoot the scene as it plays out, but the film is going backwards. And so like, they didn't like take the film and like edit it to be backwards. They actually like shot it in reverse. Like the physical film is going in reverse so that when you play the film forwards,

It's in reverse. It's kind of hard to explain now that I'm saying it out loud, but yeah.

Philip Marinello (59:50.423)
No, it's a cool little trick. And like, I remember, and this was in the era in the early 2000s. I don't, I mean, we're both at a very different stage of life, like married with kids. Like I don't have big movie parties often anymore, but like this is one came out when I was in high school. I would show this to everybody. This was one that like you get people over, you show them. And right away from that first scene in back, like everybody's.

Eli Price (01:00:02.668)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:00:05.974)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:00:12.48)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:00:20.111)
script. Like you notice the Polaroid starting to get blurrier. You're like, oh, like this is going backwards. And then the gun jumping into his hand and the blood going back in to Teddy's head. And then you're putting this all together. Like what? Like that no movie like no other movie like really had done that. And it grabs you right away.

Eli Price (01:00:28.816)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:00:39.182)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:00:45.11)
Yeah.

Yeah, and it's with purpose too. Like it's to clue you in on the structure. Like this is what you can expect the rest of the movie. And then the other cool thing with the sound design is all the sounds are actually like played forward. So like the gunshot and some of the other sounds that you hear from the scene are not like, the sounds don't happen in reverse. The sounds happen forward. So it creates this like disorienting effect.

like as you're watching it, you're like, this kind of feels weird, not just because it's in reverse, but the sound's playing forward. And yeah, and then like to have like the insert shots of like the glasses and the casing of the bullet, which by the way, the casing of the bullet, they didn't shoot that reverse mag, they actually shot that forward and then like reversed it. Nolan, because like you,

You can't really it's so hard to capture like a bullet fall bullet casing falling And so Nolan like actually sat outside of the frame and like blew the bullet casing into the frame Yeah, and then they that's how they got that like reverse shot is Yeah, it really like creative like I really want this shot of this bullet casing How are we gonna make that happen? I'm just I'll just blow it into frame

Philip Marinello (01:01:59.204)
Oh, interesting. I didn't know that

Philip Marinello (01:02:12.035)
Bye.

Eli Price (01:02:17.81)
Yeah, it really is incredible. Yeah. And then the casting is just incredible, too, honestly. Like, it's yeah. So did you know that Brad Pitt was originally like interested in and they like it was they were wanting to get him Brad Pitt?

Philip Marinello (01:02:20.515)
No, it's fantastic.

And I mean like.

Truly.

Philip Marinello (01:02:38.195)
I didn't until earlier this week, I listened to the blank check episode. And then I heard, I heard about it there and I was like, Oh, like that. I love Brad Pitt. I've always been, I mean, Brad Pitt, the actor personally, that's, you got to separate sometimes, but, um, I've always been a Brad Pitt fan. I think he's an incredible actor along with being an extremely handsome movie star, but like, I think Guy Pierce.

Eli Price (01:02:42.252)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (01:02:48.555)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (01:02:54.635)
right.

Philip Marinello (01:03:08.119)
Like because Brad Pitt is so handsome and charismatic, I don't know if he could sell the Everyman, especially in 99 or 2000. Like that's Fight Club era. I mean, maybe, but he's just such a star. Like I thought he was incredible. Yeah, like he does that sometimes very well. But I also think that because Guy Pearce is a little more.

Eli Price (01:03:11.63)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:03:16.193)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

He does. He feels too powerful of a presence.

Philip Marinello (01:03:37.635)
more thin and gangly, like he feels more vulnerable. Like Brad Pitt is this like super charismatic, he's broad. I don't buy him even, I'm sure he would play the memory loss very well, but I feel like Guy Pearce's figure very much works for the vulnerability. Like Brad Pitt would have looked great shirtless with the tattoos, but.

Eli Price (01:03:54.798)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:04:04.598)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:04:06.463)
I don't think he would have sold like rushingly like putting on a suit that's too big for him trying to figure out where he is. Like I think that would have taken away from.

Eli Price (01:04:13.761)
Right.

Yeah, that's one of the things Nolan talks about. Yeah, one of the things Nolan talks about is like Guy Pearce had this like incredible memory, not just like for like, obviously like the lines and whatnot, but this really great memory for the movements, like where he was on in frame and the way he needed to move and express himself, which really comes through. Like one of the things that I think

Pierce does like incredibly well is that kind of like, you know, kind of like what he's talking about that he realized Sammy Jenkins is doing, which is like acting familiar because you're not sure if you know someone or not. That kind of like, oh yeah, like, hey, Teddy, like that sort of thing. Like he does that so incredibly well. It's one of those things that like,

You really notice more on a rewatch is like how he's acting like when When he's running into someone again For him for the first time Because he doesn't remember them. He's like he's having to act like he's having to read them in one sense, but also like act like in a certain way like Because he he's not sure if he knows them or not. He's not sure if they're pulling something over on them so he's like

Philip Marinello (01:05:14.691)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (01:05:41.462)
reading them and then acting at the same time. But you see all that in the way Pierce handles himself.

Philip Marinello (01:05:50.629)
Yeah. No, I wish that Guy Pearce was a bigger star in a way. But I, I mean, he's made some interesting choices. And sometimes some of the stuff he signs on to is a little whack. But he's got a lot of like, wonderful, wonderful movies under his belt.

Eli Price (01:05:54.242)
Hmm

Eli Price (01:06:09.054)
Yeah, I need to see more of him. I feel like he's one that I haven't seen a whole lot of. But yeah, I have not.

Philip Marinello (01:06:17.571)
Have you seen the proposition?

that just got a super nice 4k I don't have it yet but uh the proposition is one that I always evangelize to folks wow it's pretty low on his uh letterboxed watched list but proposition is a masterpiece wow it's streaming in a lot of places according to letterboxed right now

Eli Price (01:06:30.412)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:06:37.682)
OK, yeah, I'll have to note that.

Eli Price (01:06:42.958)
Great. Yeah, good to know the proposition with Guy Pearce. He's, I'm assuming he's the lead in that.

Philip Marinello (01:06:51.611)
Yes, he is. It's a it's like an Australian Western. It's very much a Western but it's set like in the Australian outback as it's getting civilized in the late 1800s. It's a wonderful, very brutal, super duper brutal. But it's an incredible story.

Eli Price (01:07:03.54)
Okay. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:07:11.402)
Cool, yeah. Yeah, I'll have to check that out. So yeah, Guy Pierce is great. Joey, you got Joey Pants. Joe Pantoliano. It's better just to call him Joey Pants so you don't have to get mixed up on the last name, which I'm assuming is Italian. Yeah, he is. He's...

Philip Marinello (01:07:20.197)
Joey Pants.

Philip Marinello (01:07:31.631)
So he, yeah, no, he's, Joy Pants is great. And he's excellent as Teddy.

Eli Price (01:07:40.754)
Yeah, I think it's Nolan's first. So like with Insomnia, you have these two huge A-list, really like three A-list stars who come on with so much baggage, not baggage like in a bad way, but just like people know them as certain types of actors. And somehow Nolan channels that in...

Philip Marinello (01:07:52.951)
Which is kinda crazy, yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:08:03.597)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:08:08.63)
like twists those things a little bit and I think he does that really well here with Joey pants because like He's coming on like people kind of have an idea of the sorts of characters. He plays It's usually like this Weasley villain a villain kind of guy and Like he plays with that Distrust that people have of the persona that he usually plays so well Yeah, it really

Philip Marinello (01:08:33.996)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:08:38.218)
like There's really great casting and apparently um, uh, Carrie and moss actually suggested to bring him home. This was like right after the matrix. Uh Yeah Yeah, and so um You know really great Yeah Yeah, which carrie and moss too like she was so good in this movie, um and plays like

Philip Marinello (01:08:49.955)
Yeah, right after the Matrix. He had both of them together again.

Philip Marinello (01:08:57.292)
Which really great run for both of them.

Eli Price (01:09:07.89)
very really I feel like she shows like some range between This and the matrix because in the matrix she's doing a lot of like It's a lot of action and a lot of like the way she the way she moves is like so important to that character Even more so than like the emotion, but here I feel like she plays the motion Yeah, she's really acting and she does so incredible like that scene

Philip Marinello (01:09:29.871)
She needs to really act. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:09:37.014)
where she like tells him like, I can do, I can, you know, say whatever I want and you won't remember. And then she goes in the car and stares at him. Whew.

Philip Marinello (01:09:43.655)
Yeah, I feel like for me that was the stand out. Oh, when she's staring at him as he is, you see later, she like has hidden all the pens in her house, which is kind of funny that like his weakness is make sure you take away his pen so we can't write it down because he's going to forget it. But just the menace of her sitting in the car looking at him after she said all that horrible stuff, got him to hit her, knowing that she's just going to walk in with a sob story.

Eli Price (01:09:54.475)
Yep.

Eli Price (01:10:00.14)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:10:06.922)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:10:13.862)
Yeah, and then acts like acts as she's acting Which I always like I always love when uh actors get to do that is to like act while they're acting um To to pull that off, uh is like just an incredible skill um Because she really does like It could it could so easily, you know acting while you're acting for

Philip Marinello (01:10:14.)
and he's not going to know any better.

Eli Price (01:10:41.854)
lack of a better term way to say that is like could so easily come off as like campy or uh just like totally unbelievable like take you out of a story but so it really takes someone with some really great acting chops to pull that sort of thing off um yeah i almost wonder like how many actors like do improv because it feels like that's something that

Eli Price (01:11:11.818)
more improv sort of acting. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:11:16.107)
Well, you said acting while acting. That scene is so powerful and effective and sinister on its face. But then because of the storytelling structure, the way the scenes unfold, like it's even that much more powerful. Like if it happened in a linear way, it would be powerful. But you get to the punch line of you understand what she's doing to him. But before

Eli Price (01:11:18.689)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:11:35.87)
Right, right.

Philip Marinello (01:11:45.803)
Like earlier in the viewing experience, you were on her side. You're like, oh, this other guy beat her up and let her skin to help her. And it's like, no, that's, that's not what it is. And man, yeah, it's incredible.

Eli Price (01:11:50.2)
Right.

Eli Price (01:11:53.91)
Right, yeah.

Eli Price (01:11:57.938)
Yeah, yeah, it's it is incredible. And maybe we can like jump into that structure, like the way the reverse structure like works in this film. You know, it so like essentially like you're getting all the elements of a noir film, but you're just getting them in reverse. So like thinking about Natalie, Carrie and Moss's character, it's it is a film fatale character.

but in reverse. So instead of going like seduction, manipulation, betrayal, you kind of get like betrayal, manipulation, seduction. Like it's kind of totally in reverse. And that's something that like this structure does for us. Like you still get that very familiar like sort of character, but just in a totally new and like really revelatory way that's

I don't know, it's just like mind boggling to watch and experience.

Philip Marinello (01:13:07.143)
Yeah, are you a big dwarf, Ed?

Eli Price (01:13:09.51)
I have become much more into noir in the past, like I would say, a few years. Like, we were talking about film spotting a little before we started recording, and they did like a 40s noir marathon like a year or two ago. I really enjoyed watching that and have, I had watched some before that and I feel like I've really watched a lot more since watching that.

Probably, from what it sounds like, probably not as much as you. But yeah, I would have to think about though like what my favorites are. Devil in Dimity is way up there for sure. Yeah, and even like.

Philip Marinello (01:13:51.503)
Excellent movie. A movie I loved when I watched it and we did an episode last year on it and it was years and years. And because it was so long, like watching it again, fresh, I was like, oh my gosh, like I knew this was like a top tier movie, but watching the new Criterion release, I was like, oh my gosh, this is so good.

Eli Price (01:14:05.68)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (01:14:12.434)
Yeah. Yeah, I've enjoyed, um, I've for a long time, Hitchcock was a huge blind spot for me. And, um, like last year I watched Psycho and for like the first time and, um, I've been kind of like progressively like watching more Hitchcock and a lot of his older stuff. Um, a lot of his, like, uh, thirties and forties stuff is very noir. Um, and yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:14:28.885)
Oh wow.

Philip Marinello (01:14:39.435)
Yes, yes, some Dory vibes are there.

Eli Price (01:14:42.322)
And so I've enjoyed some like the 39 steps is probably a lesser watched one, but really good. You know, Strangers on a Train, The Lady Vanishes, The Lady Vanishes, those are just so, they're so fun. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:14:56.046)
love it.

Philip Marinello (01:15:03.023)
Yeah, I feel like when people I mean, we're a little bit off topic now, but the lady vanishes is maybe my favorite Hitchcock. Like, obviously, I know a lot of the other ones are incredible. But like just a fun like watch. That's all of the departments are wonderful. It's extremely entertaining. It's thrilling. It's exciting. Like I haven't revisited it in a while, but.

Eli Price (01:15:12.69)
Okay, yeah.

Eli Price (01:15:16.344)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:15:22.827)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:15:28.565)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:15:32.479)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:15:32.907)
Like, of the non-obvious ones, like that one's maybe my favorite.

Eli Price (01:15:37.202)
Yeah, I was actually telling my wife she would enjoy so my wife like she does not watch like anything that's stressful or Like she won't watch she won't watch anything She won't watch anything that's gonna stress her out Yeah, so like she'll watch likes she might watch like the Dark Knight or some darker stuff like that stuff that she saw when she was younger But like today she's kind of like I don't watch like I watch comedies

Philip Marinello (01:15:47.519)
My wife is similar. We do thrillers occasionally.

Philip Marinello (01:16:01.679)
Sure.

Eli Price (01:16:06.462)
I'll watch rom-coms. I'll watch all that stuff, but don't ask me to watch anything stressful. And I was actually telling her, I was like, I really actually think you would enjoy Stranger on a Train because like, I guess it's kind of dark in a way, but it's very lightly told. Yeah. And it's very funny. Some good British humor. Like, yeah. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:16:13.135)
Sure.

Philip Marinello (01:16:24.223)
It's thrilling, but yeah, it's a blast.

Eli Price (01:16:35.042)
We definitely got off topic there, but yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:16:38.103)
But yeah, no noir like I this was Yeah, mid or late 2001 when it came out broadly and maybe even later when I picked it up I was big into film noir at that time Because of the Max Payne Xbox games actually kind of got me into it like I read an article about all the different classic movies that Inspired the game designers and I watched all of them

Eli Price (01:16:44.651)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:16:56.439)
Okay.

Philip Marinello (01:17:07.183)
And I just became like head over heels for noir. Like that was the first like, like homework I gave myself. I'm like, I'm gonna watch all of the classic noir movies. And I watched like a dozen or more of them in a short period of time. And it's so simple, but it's, yeah, it became very close to my heart.

Eli Price (01:17:20.322)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:17:32.882)
Yeah, yeah, I think it's very like It is a very fun genre like it's funny because usually they're like a little bit Darker and like literally they're darker. Um Uh, and then stylistically Yeah, but also like um, yeah, they're highly stylized like visually. Um, and then like

Philip Marinello (01:17:47.827)
Oh, yeah, exactly. Stylistically. Yeah, very stylish movies.

Eli Price (01:17:58.018)
They're very formulaic in a sense of this is the way generally the story is told, like we talked about earlier. But always so thrilling. When they're done well, it's like a ride. I know what to expect visually. I know what to expect narratively. But it's still such an enjoyable.

Philip Marinello (01:18:23.639)
And more or less, you usually know the rules, like the consequences, like, you know, it's usually not gonna end well if people decide to like, come up with some sort of scheme to like, do something illicit, you know, it's probably not gonna end well for them, but it's thrilling almost every time when it's executed properly.

Eli Price (01:18:33.843)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:18:43.57)
It's almost like you know there's going to be some sort of twist or some sort of reveal. And I think part of it is the anticipation of that is part of the enjoyment. Which like...

Philip Marinello (01:18:56.999)
Yeah. Or just the shoot a drop in general of like the consequences, which back to Memento makes it so interesting that the choice, the choices that Leonard made, like usually like we're used to the femme fatale turning out to be bad. Like we usually can see that coming that like, oh, that's the femme fatale. She's eventually going to be bad news. Or.

the friend who betrays you for whatever reason, but like usually the protagonist is reliable enough on his own. And it was kind of an interesting inversion of that here. Like...

Eli Price (01:19:30.763)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:19:39.863)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (01:19:42.239)
Leonard, like we learned eventually, like that Leonard is the one deciding to like, deceive himself. And that's, you don't usually see that. That's in the way that it's told with the storytelling device on when he's writing on all the Polaroids. It's pretty gripping stuff.

Eli Price (01:19:50.444)
Right.

Eli Price (01:19:55.924)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:19:59.272)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:20:05.258)
Yeah, it is. It's a total inversion. I guess maybe not total because there's a sense in which Teddy and Natalie are using him and playing typical bad friend and femme fatale characters. They're manipulating him.

Philip Marinello (01:20:19.681)
Oh, totally.

And he's trying to get money. Natalie's trying to get him to like take care of Dodd. Teddy's trying to get to 200 K, but like, they're not his, they're not Leonard's biggest problem.

Eli Price (01:20:27.22)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:20:31.55)
Right. But he's also, yeah, he's his own biggest problem. He's manipulating himself, which is really like incredible. And I think the structure like plays into that. Like no one even said, like, I think I think the quote that I that I had was if you play this like forward, it's basically just like two people torturing some guy with a disability.

Philip Marinello (01:21:01.859)
Have you ever watched that? I think I started it. I was like, this is boring. I don't like it. I think it was a Blu-ray or a DVD feature at one point. And I was like, oh, I'll watch this. But I'm like, I don't want to watch this.

Eli Price (01:21:03.675)
I haven't no I don't think that I ever would

Yeah, I don't think I ever would watch it that way.

Eli Price (01:21:14.846)
Yeah, I think it was a hidden feature.

Yeah, I think I remember Nolan in an interview saying like that it was a hidden feature on the on a DVD release, which is fun.

Philip Marinello (01:21:26.043)
Yeah, I remember. I remember finding it, starting it and going, this is a more interesting idea, like because this isn't the movie, like the whole like the inverted story that like meets in the middle, which he was doing like that tenant crap from the beginning.

Eli Price (01:21:34.943)
Right.

Eli Price (01:21:43.146)
Yeah, which even like you have the gun at the beginning going up into his hand in reverse, which is kind of like a call forward. Yeah, Tenet, you know, you have the bullet going back into the gun and Tenet was a big visual thing.

Philip Marinello (01:21:48.32)
Was that a tenet thing?

Philip Marinello (01:21:53.483)
Oh yes, yes. I saw Tenet once in the theater. I have it on digital, but I have not watched it again since the theater.

Eli Price (01:21:59.422)
Yeah, same actually. I saw it in theater and haven't seen it. So I'm looking forward to revisiting it. But yeah Yeah, definitely like It's funny how you can see elements Mm-hmm

Philip Marinello (01:22:08.287)
Yeah, really like the blueprint for Nolan very much is in this movie. And I kind of I don't know where we are in this discussion. Like, I kind of think it I would love for it to be topped. But like, I don't know if he ever did it better, frankly.

Eli Price (01:22:24.274)
Yeah. You know, so I'll say this. This isn't like my favorite Nolan. I have others that like, you know, I like Interstellar more and prestige more. Part of that might be like I've I came to this after seeing those later movies. And. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:22:46.191)
True. Yeah, this was a very formative movie for me when I was a young person and I saw it a ton of times.

Eli Price (01:22:53.798)
Yeah, yeah, so like the prestige is the so I remember seeing Batman Begins And maybe the Dark Knight 2 but the prestige was the first movie that I was like, oh, this is a Christopher Nolan movie when I was in college and like the way that movie plays out and the twist and like Then like I remember like rewatching it again, like really soon after I had seen it for the first time and um, so that probably

That feeling that I had with the Prestige is probably similar to you with Memento of I felt like I needed to show people that movie.

Philip Marinello (01:23:24.399)
Sure.

Philip Marinello (01:23:31.647)
Yep. Well, his movies really do lead themselves to that, which is nice. Because it's also really nice to have somebody, whether I personally love the movies or not. It's nice to have somebody who is making movies that really cares about.

Eli Price (01:23:36.511)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (01:23:50.01)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Philip Marinello (01:23:50.911)
It is getting the general public excited. Like, I still haven't seen Oppenheimer yet because it's three hours long. And like with car rides, yeah, with car rides and previews and everything, that's like a four, four and a half hour endeavor. And that's, I'll get it on digital and watch it. And I know that it won't be as exciting because my wife wants to see that. So I could maybe sneak away, but still even if I stuck away, that's.

Eli Price (01:23:56.758)
haven't either.

Eli Price (01:24:00.846)
It's hard to get to the theater.

Philip Marinello (01:24:19.779)
three hours at once, which is a harder sell down.

Eli Price (01:24:21.812)
right.

Yes, yeah. Yeah, I've personally got a four-year-old and an eight-month-old in the house. And so just like leaving for like a three-hour movie, plus getting there and back is just like, I don't know if it's gonna work out anytime soon.

Philip Marinello (01:24:43.839)
Yeah, I will be seeing killers to the flower boo. That will be my long movie this year

Eli Price (01:24:47.914)
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I can't wait for that one. Yeah, I don't know. This. This structure is just like incredible. The one of the things like, you know, you kind of talked about the time factor being a factor in this movie and that structure, that reverse structure. No one kind of talks about like.

how all movies distort time, technically. The author that I shared, Tom Schoen, he talks about like in a class he showed people, I can't even remember what movie it was, like he showed his class at a university movie and like then he like, the discussion, they didn't know why they were watching it, just like we're watching this. And then so after the movie, he's like.

Philip Marinello (01:25:24.431)
Sure.

Eli Price (01:25:45.118)
Okay, how much time passes in this movie? And like, there was like a, they had like, you know, a 45 minute discussion in class about how much time had passed in this movie trying to figure it out. And it's because that's something that movies do that we just kind of like give ourselves over to.

Philip Marinello (01:26:03.691)
Yeah, almost no movie happens in real time.

Eli Price (01:26:06.59)
Right and Nolan says what one of the things that he loved about like making this movie is he's taking that just natural thing that comes to movie making and like putting purpose behind it like there's a total purpose Yeah, exactly, which I and it works so well like You know, you're kind of once you pick up on like, okay These are going in reverse like you're in on that with him. It's not like he's hiding that idea from you

Philip Marinello (01:26:20.223)
very Nolan idea

Eli Price (01:26:36.522)
He's like putting it right in your face and saying there, you know, there's a purpose behind this distortion of time that you're experiencing.

Philip Marinello (01:26:46.083)
Well, and you're it doesn't because you can't perfectly replicate memory loss to an audience. But the effect of watching this movie kind of jigsawing it together, like you are being kept off balance in a type of way that the main character is right. Like. Letty is always trying to figure things out and you're always like, oh, like this kind of connects to that, which connects to that. Like.

Eli Price (01:26:51.756)
Right.

Eli Price (01:27:06.582)
Right.

Philip Marinello (01:27:15.443)
That fogginess, and I'm not quite sure exactly what's going on, like, that really does put you in the character's shoes.

Eli Price (01:27:25.842)
Yeah, and it you know, it often plays out very like With these like ah like oh, that's what's going on moments but then it plays out comically sometimes too like one of the best little things is like What wait, where am I? Oh, I maybe i'm chasing this guy and he like starts to go toward him He's like, oh he's chasing me Yeah, yes so good um and like funny like

Philip Marinello (01:27:42.979)
That's the best. Yeah. He gets shot at. He goes up. He's chasing me. That's so good.

Eli Price (01:27:54.086)
makes you laugh like every time.

Philip Marinello (01:27:56.675)
Yeah, Nolan movies don't usually have humor in them. That's, you don't usually get a good laugh. Like that's a solid laugh.

Eli Price (01:27:59.73)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah, that is a solid laugh. And then I feel like Joey Pants brings a lot of comedic energy with the way he plays that character, too, and the way he jumps in so familiar with Lenny. Lenny! You know?

Philip Marinello (01:28:19.775)
Yeah, the Lenny. Yep. I had that stuck in my head, which is why my complaint of, I remember the names of the people of Memento. And I maybe haven't watched that in eight or 10 years. And shoot, well, I guess there's Murph because of the GIFs and the stuff from Interstellar. But I don't really remember the names of any of the people in his other work.

Eli Price (01:28:28.692)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:28:45.546)
Yeah, that's fair. One of the other things that I love about this movie, especially, is the editing. I feel like his early films in I'm interested. So like a lot of a lot of the ones after this, I've never really watched with this perspective that I'm watching these with for this series. And so I'm interested to see, like, OK, how does this like progress as his

Career gets bigger but like with these first three movies the editing is so essential And part of that is because like that's something that Nolan like learned how to make movies Like that was part of him learning how to make movies was editing You know, I talked about in the overview episode That you know, he found this old steam back editing machine

and like learns to edit like Batiste click Lee taught himself how to edit film on that machine Which if have you ever seen one of those things? It's a

Philip Marinello (01:29:52.999)
Yeah, but I mean, I'm we talked about this before. I'm I am not technologically inclined. It's I marvel at people who are. But yeah, that's not me.

Eli Price (01:29:59.66)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:30:04.35)
Yo, when I look at that machine, I think like, wow, it's really impressive that someone makes movies using this thing. But yeah, so like the editing is, and this actually got a nomination for editing, Oscar nomination.

Philip Marinello (01:30:14.007)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:30:22.635)
Yeah, editing and screenplay, which again, I was like, yes, like vindication, like my little movie, my little noir. Movie that like this guy who I just discovered crystal and like it got some Oscar nominations.

Eli Price (01:30:24.724)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:30:28.311)
Right.

Eli Price (01:30:35.63)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, but the man the transition editing is so incredible which they one of the cool I guess like a cool production fact is they didn't like So when you have those transitions where you're like jumping from like this scene The scene after to the scene before you know it always when you end the scene It's the beginning of the scene that you've watched before

Philip Marinello (01:31:03.223)
Well, there's usually like, I noticed that particularly at this time, like, there's usually some sort of like repetition, like a sound or like the closing or opening of the door or the faucet or the shaking of keys or like, there's some like thing that will put you in it, which like, again, if you're litty, like, those are the things that can even like

Eli Price (01:31:13.139)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Eli Price (01:31:20.184)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (01:31:31.759)
kind of set him off and reset like when carrying boss like slams the car door before she comes back inside.

Eli Price (01:31:36.81)
Right. It resets them. And those audio like notes really do like play a big part. And that's all like that's all just editing. And then like you have so many like insert shots that like put you in his head like his like looking at the Polaroids or like the flashback memories. They all like they're also very like purposeful, which one of the

One of the funny things about that is a lot of that, especially like the flashbacks of his wife, they shot all that footage and they really didn't know what they were going to do with it. Um, and so like it really wasn't until they were putting the film together. So like that's probably the one part that was like less plant, like not really like precisely planned was what are we going to do with this? Like this footage of him and the walk. Yeah. Him and the wife. Um,

Philip Marinello (01:32:31.779)
Her being attacked.

Eli Price (01:32:36.55)
You know a lot of that ends up getting used at the end But you have these like quick flashes of it all throughout the movie that are like very like I Think well edited into the film Yeah, I loved that What so like I'll transition into like more thematic stuff by asking this what when you think of memento

What's like the thing that you think of like that rolls around in your head like Memento this is what like this is what it had me thinking about after I watched it

Philip Marinello (01:33:17.231)
I mean, other than just how impressive of the story it was, like, just, I mean, I probably wasn't thinking about this when it came out, but now, kind of looking back on it, like, thinking about, like, just the human desire to, like, have a story that you believe where, like, you're the good guy, right? Like, Leonard went through some very hard stuff but was coping in some pretty bad ways, and...

Eli Price (01:33:26.132)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (01:33:46.375)
when confronted with it when Teddy, I believe it again, some of this is hard to decipher. But I think at the end, I believe Teddy's telling him the truth that he helped him track down the guy who attacked his wife and who messed up his memory and they killed him. And he couldn't remember. So Teddy's bringing him along.

Eli Price (01:33:58.326)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:34:13.935)
They're taking the law into their own hands and taking care of scumbags and all that. But Leonard is still trying to, he couldn't remember that. So he needs a story to tell himself to go on. And I think it's an early chronologically lie that Carrie-Anne Moss said. It stuck out to me this time where she says, it must be hard to live your life. Just buy some scribbles that you have on pieces of paper. And like a lot like.

Eli Price (01:34:42.788)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (01:34:43.695)
What, what do we motivate ourselves? Like, what are the stories we tell ourselves kind of deal? Like, ultimately, we're all, we all operate on a set of core beliefs. And like, where do they really come from? Like, that's, those are questions worth asking.

Eli Price (01:34:49.741)
Right.

Eli Price (01:34:58.858)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and we do like, we all live by like a set of like presuppositions about like who we are, what the world is like, how we should interact with it. And then like,

Philip Marinello (01:35:17.791)
Yeah, how do we know what we know and how strict and stringent are we about our positions? Because you could be you get yourself in a pretty bad positions going, this is it like and I won't even consider anything else like and this is just kind of a fun story. But yeah, like those themes are definitely there if you want.

Eli Price (01:35:20.375)
Right.

Eli Price (01:35:26.613)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:35:44.326)
Yeah, and it's all there. It's really fun. I think the narration really adds to that. Some of the questions that he asks, I feel like, are really great questions to think about, just to run away with and talk about with your friends after you've had a good night.

you watch it sort of thing. But like one of those standout ones is like when he he's laying there and he's like, how am I supposed to heal if I can't feel time? Which which raises the whole like time heals all wounds question. Which. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:36:22.058)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:36:28.087)
He's literally stuck in like 15, 20 minute increments of time. Like how can, how can he exist?

Eli Price (01:36:35.018)
Yeah, how can time heal his wound? And it really does raise the question, does time heal all wounds? Like, does time heal, can time actually heal your grief or your loss? Or does it like just kind of like lessen your awareness of it over time? I don't know, I think about like how, so like for Leonard,

His loss and his grief and his anger because of that is like, is his, basically is his identity because he's stuck. He's stuck in that. His loss has defined him, but he can't like transform, like he can't transform past that, like he can't grow past that because he doesn't have time.

Philip Marinello (01:37:11.368)
Oh yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:37:24.011)
Well, no, and that's what Teddy saw and is taking advantage of that anger, that vengeance, and he goes, oh, like I could use him to kind of take out scumbags and help me earn a little bit of money. Same with Natalie, too. Natalie saw that and she's like, well, this guy's angry and if he's looking for somebody to punish, like, why not punish somebody that will benefit me?

Eli Price (01:37:28.449)
Right.

Eli Price (01:37:34.862)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And.

Eli Price (01:37:48.938)
Yeah. And it's, it's really interesting. Um, I know it just kind of makes me think like, so like when we, you know, who don't have entericrate amnesia experienced like loss and grief, um, like what, what can we like take away from this idea? And it just makes me think about, okay, like when I have a big loss and I'm grieving over it, um,

Philip Marinello (01:38:03.715)
Sure.

Eli Price (01:38:18.486)
Just asking the question, like, does this loss actually ever leave me? Or do I... am I able to, like... I don't know, I guess maybe it's the thing of, like, let me not take for granted that I have the ability, because I don't have short-term memory loss, to be able to, like, grieve and let this loss and this grief become a part of me in a different way.

Um, then just being stuck in that grief and anger. Um, you know, I guess like, I don't know, sometimes like films can do that. They can, they can show you something that like you take for granted. Um, it's that idea, I guess, like going back to following, you know, there's that line where he says you take, you take something away from someone to show them what they had.

And I think Nolan does like to do that with his films. Like you're putting the perspective of Leonard and he takes away your ability to work through grief and loss from Leonard's perspective to show you what you maybe take for granted.

Philip Marinello (01:39:28.963)
Sure.

Philip Marinello (01:39:34.863)
Well, yeah, and I don't know exactly. I don't imagine that crystal one was necessarily trying to get to any of those. But I mean, I think that one thing that you could, it's just like. It is, it is a healthy and good thing to, to lean into reality and to face the truth, like when those things happen, it's good to lean into the truth rather than try to retreat in a.

Eli Price (01:39:42.442)
Right.

Eli Price (01:39:55.818)
Right.

Eli Price (01:40:02.309)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (01:40:04.847)
the story you tell yourself to kind of avoid dealing with it.

Eli Price (01:40:09.118)
Yeah, yeah, and I don't I don't mean to say like these are where no one's intentions um, but often like Often when someone that is creative is like making art like those ideas that are rattling around in their head do come out in the narrative or in the painting or whatever um Where in ways that they might not even realize um, which is something that is really cool about art is You know messages can be in there

Philip Marinello (01:40:13.256)
Oh, no no, yeah.

Eli Price (01:40:38.73)
like totally in there that the artist didn't even realize that they were putting into it.

Philip Marinello (01:40:45.579)
And that's always fun. I just had one of those videos pop up on social media recently. But yeah, that is always fun when you see artists in the promotion of their movies. You see an interviewer ask them a well worded question. They're like, oh, like, I guess that is what that's about.

Eli Price (01:41:02.75)
Yeah, yeah, it really is fun when that happens for sure.

Eli Price (01:41:16.366)
Do you mind if we take a quick break and jump back in? I just need, I think my wife needs help getting the baby down real quick. All right, I'm gonna hop out. I'll mute. And so I'll probably just be like two or three minutes. All right, great. See you in a sec.

Philip Marinello (01:41:19.599)
sure thing.

Philip Marinello (01:41:36.351)
Terrific. I'll take a bath and break.

Philip Marinello (01:45:57.861)
Check. Okay. So, we're going to go ahead and do the test.

Are we still recording?

Eli Price (01:46:04.403)
Yeah, I'll just edit it out.

Philip Marinello (01:46:06.402)
Okay, nice.

Philip Marinello (01:46:10.955)
Is that the Criterion, uh, Graham Budapest poster back there? Nice.

Eli Price (01:46:11.147)
Yeah.

It is. Yeah, and these I got before I started this series, I went ahead and grabbed like the Dark Knight Blu-ray trilogy and it had like all these like villain little tiny villain posters in it, which is cool. Right. This is Ra's al Ghul, Scarecrow, Bane and

Philip Marinello (01:46:32.988)
I could definitely tell the Joker I wasn't sure about the other ones.

Okay.

Eli Price (01:46:46.042)
Oh, Two-Face. I was like, who is that? Yeah, it's hard to see. They're kind of too far away.

Philip Marinello (01:46:48.53)
Okay.

Philip Marinello (01:46:53.651)
I figured that the blue one was Bane, but I was like, the other one I can really tell is the Joker.

Eli Price (01:46:58.112)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:47:01.311)
No, I have the Grand Budapest set. I just never... There's a couple of like, I buy a lot of like the boutique blu-rays and some of them that have the cool stuff. I just haven't been able to talk to my wife and let me put stuff up anywhere.

Eli Price (01:47:01.502)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:47:09.993)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:47:17.182)
Yeah, this is actually my closet. And so I remember like the first episode I recorded, it was kind of like bear behind me and it looked terrible. So I was like, I better like throw up some posters. Like I have a ton of posters from before I got married that I had up everywhere. And so they've just kind of been like in a box. And so I was like, I'll pull out some of the old, old posters I had up. So yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:47:19.861)
There you go.

Philip Marinello (01:47:35.981)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:47:44.399)
There you go. All right, where are we?

Eli Price (01:47:47.414)
Yeah, well, I'll jump back in with just a different idea, maybe. And just I can edit it. But I'm going to be quiet for a second, and so I can find it in editing easier.

Eli Price (01:48:13.822)
Yeah, another idea I think that is raised here is just the reliability of our memory and how we use and interpret our memories to define ourselves. It's interesting, Leonard kind of talks about how he doesn't go by

Philip Marinello (01:48:24.236)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (01:48:41.706)
his memory, he goes by facts. But the reality.

Philip Marinello (01:48:45.463)
Yup. Yeah, because his background was the insurance investigator, which is also a very noir trope.

Eli Price (01:48:51.443)
Right, right, which is-

It is it's a double indemnity is Walter Neff. I think is a similar Uh sort of occupation. I'm pretty sure um Could be I could be wrong, but i'm pretty sure that's yeah Right. Yeah. Um But I just think I don't know it's an interesting like idea that he has about himself that you as the viewer kind of know like I don't know dude like

Philip Marinello (01:49:07.083)
No, he's an insurance guy.

Eli Price (01:49:25.281)
Your facts are pretty reliant on memory. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:49:25.599)
Well, he talks all about exactly. He's like, this isn't about feeling, it's about facts. And it's like, literally, the climax of the movie is you purposefully tattooing wrong information onto your body. So like.

Eli Price (01:49:37.27)
Right, right and which you don't know at that point in the movie but even like

Philip Marinello (01:49:43.339)
Which is a subversion of, you're like, oh, he's putting all these pieces together. He's got the guy's license plate. Oh, it's Joey Pants. But then that was a choice that he made. That wasn't the result of some sort of fruitful search and a revelation that was just kind of a vengeful choice.

Eli Price (01:49:48.865)
Uh huh.

Eli Price (01:49:53.952)
Right.

Eli Price (01:50:04.426)
Right. Yeah, and I think that is like those elements of like the clues being put together do play Sort of like a noir that goes forward in a normal structure And it's like that reverse at the end like The way the movie ends changes the way you see the rest of the movie like once you once everything once the reveal happens Like it totally changes everything else and so like

Philip Marinello (01:50:32.491)
We have the movie starts you see right away we talked about the scene going backwards the first thing you see is joy pants getting his head blown off and. The last thing you find out is why it's not what you thought it was.

Eli Price (01:50:37.268)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:50:41.441)
Right.

Eli Price (01:50:46.398)
Right and like that really is like the main question you have the whole time. It's not like What happened to his wife and like who did it? It's more like wait. Why does he shoot this guy? Why is he killing this guy? But yeah, just like just like that idea of his memory like him relying on facts not memories is it kind of like in hindsight is comical because you're like

Well dude, like your facts are based on bad memory. Like, on like, your facts are based on like, you relying on your handwriting as if like someone couldn't have manipulated your memory to make you write something wrong down. Right.

Philip Marinello (01:51:31.251)
or just told you a wrong thing that you wrote down. Like, it is just fundamentally humorous and kind of tragic that a guy with his condition is so adamant about facts.

Eli Price (01:51:40.962)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:51:46.634)
Right. Yeah, and I think in a lot of ways that Leonard is like Nolan's most tragic character You could probably argue the Hugh Jackman's and the prestige is probably up there I guess like Leo's Cobb is sort of up there, but yeah Leonard is Leonard really is a tragic character because like He's

Philip Marinello (01:52:05.219)
Could be, I don't know. I haven't thought a whole lot about that.

Eli Price (01:52:16.386)
I don't know, it's a weird thing because part of it is he's imprisoned by his condition, but at the same time, he's still making choices. He still makes the choice that leads to him killing Teddy. He actually is in control of that in a way. He's manipulating himself and he's manipulating his condition to get revenge again on another guy.

Philip Marinello (01:52:43.787)
Well, and under Teddy's wing. And I mean, it depends on what story you believe about Leonard and Sammy and all that. But like Leonard is kind of like out on his own, somehow sort of kind of functioning, like he's being scammed by the guy at the hotel and. Teddy is clearly lying to him about some things, but also seems to be like.

Eli Price (01:52:51.223)
Right.

Eli Price (01:53:03.426)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (01:53:13.583)
telling him the truth and like trying to be his pal a little bit too.

Eli Price (01:53:16.586)
Right. Yeah, it's there's always like a half truth than what tell it Teddy's telling him Um that that's why it works. I think he doesn't like just outright lie to him. He's he's kind of telling him half truths um but yeah, I when I watched it this time, I think um the Remember sammy jankus tattoo on his right there on his hand um stood out to me because I started to realize

I don't think that remember Sammy Jenkins is there to remind just remind him of that story necessarily, but to remind him of the idea of like what he could become if he doesn't make purpose for himself. Because really like when you when you see this, you know, you have the black and white kind of narration with him on the phone that tells a lot of the Sammy Jenkins story and

He, Sammy Jenkins really is like, he might as well be a vegetable. Like he doesn't do anything. He just sits in front of the TV and watches commercials. Right.

Philip Marinello (01:54:21.547)
Well, and he can't make progress. The where they're talking about the electrocuted shapes and all that. Like he couldn't make progress. And narratively, the tragedy is they're like, well, this isn't a physical ailment and insurance doesn't cover mental issues. So you're your host because they're like, well, this means technically you don't have a physical injury. Like that's not what this is. This is a mental injury.

Eli Price (01:54:26.859)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:54:36.632)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:54:40.162)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:54:46.719)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:54:51.435)
doesn't have coverage for you, so you're out on your own.

Eli Price (01:54:53.278)
Yeah, which sucks. But yeah.

Philip Marinello (01:54:59.363)
So maybe Guy Pearce was a little bit of a scumbag before this happened, he's kind of a little bit of a scumbag after it happened, like, Guy Pearce isn't really a good guy at all in this movie.

Eli Price (01:55:03.638)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:55:09.118)
Yeah, yeah, that's true. I mean like even He's kind of at one point reflecting on like I just told his wife what I thought she maybe needed to hear like he wasn't actually like that concerned with Uh with that like their livelihood But but I do think that remember sammy janka's tattoo is in a way like telling him like hey, you don't want to become a vet like a living vegetable like this guy like you want to

It's like a drive for him to, whatever it takes, have some sort of purpose that I'm living for, which... Right.

Philip Marinello (01:55:47.979)
Which is a double edged sword, like what would you do to have a purpose?

Eli Price (01:55:53.426)
Right and it's like yeah, is there a way for him to have a purpose? That's not just revenge and not just like It yeah, it's hard to say, you know, it's if you're just gonna How can you be a force for good with the condition you have it's hard to say um I don't know. Maybe someone more creative than me could come up with something but uh, but it

Philip Marinello (01:56:21.227)
Well, cause I mean, even the emotional damage too, when you learn again, it is unclear of what is exactly true, but it seems to be true that Teddy and him tracked down the actual guy and they killed him and that didn't leave a mark at all. He's like, I really thought that like getting to the guy would be something you remember and even took a picture of it. He goes, I, yeah.

I don't know.

Eli Price (01:56:52.586)
Yeah, he's like pointing to where he was going to get the tattoo or whatever that said he got him or whatever. Yeah, it's hard to say.

I don't know, there are all those puzzles. He he he.

Philip Marinello (01:57:06.511)
Which I feel like his tattoo artists, like, I know that typically tattoo artists can be looked down upon and maybe not on the up and up all the time in society, but like if you're getting tattoos where you're like, kill this guy, like, I feel like that might be a little bit of a red flag.

Eli Price (01:57:26.846)
Yeah, Jodji raped and murdered your wife. And tattoo artists are like, all right, man, sounds cool. Like.

Philip Marinello (01:57:33.535)
and then you're like, I finally killed him. Like, okay, hold on now.

Eli Price (01:57:36.274)
Yeah. Yeah, we did. We did talk a little bit about like the rewatchability of this. I had written down in the notes this quote from Roger Ebert, because I thought it was interesting. Ebert like almost kind of says like, this is a one time movie, like it doesn't really work.

Philip Marinello (01:58:00.563)
Yeah, that was kind of Ebert's raking on this. And I get it. Like, this is not one that I would rewatch a ton by myself, but I have a blast showing it to people.

Eli Price (01:58:04.108)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:58:12.718)
Mm-hmm. Yeah Yeah, that's probably true It probably is does play better when you're able to like show it to someone who hasn't seen it before

Philip Marinello (01:58:23.603)
I watched it a ton back when it came out by myself, but this is not one that now, like Nolan's movies for me are not like crazy rewatchable. A lot of the times because they're spectacle driven. Like yeah, maybe I want to put them together a little bit, but like I don't exactly. Like when I saw Tenet, I was like, okay.

Eli Price (01:58:26.451)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:58:38.606)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:58:48.142)
Sure.

Philip Marinello (01:58:53.163)
All right, like maybe there's an article that'll help me understand this more. And I'm not a dummy, but I was just like, I don't, I don't know. I don't know about this.

Eli Price (01:59:01.193)
Right.

Eli Price (01:59:04.562)
Yeah, yeah, I feel like though this one like really maybe more than any of his others like the puzzle aspect of it plays just as well with like rewatches almost because you're

Philip Marinello (01:59:20.743)
Oh yeah, I think this is probably his most rewatchable and other than maybe like one of the first two Batman movies

Eli Price (01:59:24.856)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's funny because there's so many like I like to go back and read Roger Ebert's reviews of movies like when I watch them because he's just like he's such a he has such insight and he You know, he was one of the greats for a reason But yeah, this was an instance where I was like, I don't know Like Ebert like I feel like I feel like you're a little bit like I mean there is a subjectivity to it but

Philip Marinello (01:59:35.918)
same.

Philip Marinello (01:59:54.007)
Well, he's also a little bit like I love Roger, but like he definitely he wrote from the hip every time. And it's not you didn't get him all right. But like he definitely is big plot in character. And this movie is much more about style and devices. And I'm surprised it got three stars.

Eli Price (02:00:02.381)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (02:00:15.511)
Right.

Yeah, he did. He was positive on it. And he said it was a really great puzzle of a movie that was a thrill to watch. But he just kind of had the opinion that really, it's only a one-watch movie, because after that, it won't really be that great. And to me, it's probably a subjective thing. Do you enjoy like...

going back after a puzzle has been solved and seeing how you got there. Like if you don't, then like, you know, yeah, watch it once and be done with it. But to me, like I enjoy like digging into the details of the puzzle. And I feel like you would miss, miss some really like, so like this rewatch for instance, like when I rewatched it this time, I actually like grew in sympathy for

carrying Moss's Natalie because what I realized with this rewatch that I probably understood to a certain degree but wasn't really honed in on the first watch was when he rolls up in her boyfriend's car wearing her boyfriend's suit and she even like

Philip Marinello (02:01:37.219)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:01:40.406)
She even is like, you know, hey and then she's like, oh, I thought you were someone else and you know You're you're realizing at that point. You're you're far enough in where you realize like who she thought he was and that like that changes for me like her actions previously because most femme fatale characters to a certain degree like

Philip Marinello (02:01:53.549)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:02:08.13)
don't have that sort of like sympathetic reasoning that she has for like the reason why she manipulates. And I don't know, I feel like that totally changes her character once that revelation happens of like, wait a second, she's seeing him, like she's putting the pieces together that this guy killed my boyfriend. And so like, you really kind of have sympathy, like...

You might not agree that she should then go forward with seducing and manipulating him, but like there's sympathy there. You understand like, oh, she actually has like actually a kind of understandable reason for doing what she's doing. You know, Teddy may be less so. It's a less sympathetic version. He just wants the money that's in the trunk for the most part. But like, yeah, I don't know.

Philip Marinello (02:02:40.015)
Sure.

Philip Marinello (02:02:54.796)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:03:07.498)
I feel like I would have... I just didn't pick up on that the first time and this rewatch really like...

Philip Marinello (02:03:14.)
Oh yeah, I definitely did not.

Eli Price (02:03:16.042)
Yeah. Yeah, like and then to like all the like all the subtle things, all the little things like you realize like this suit totally doesn't fit him quite right. Like it because it's not his suit. And and I don't think I even realized the first time I watched it that she was hiding all the pins like we talked about earlier in that one scene. I don't know that I picked up on that.

Philip Marinello (02:03:39.517)
Oh, okay, yeah.

Eli Price (02:03:43.746)
Maybe I noticed, but like this time when I watched I was like, ah, I see exactly what's happening. Like, and you know, it's like his kryptonite. No pin.

Philip Marinello (02:03:50.655)
Yep. No, I think that this is definitely a one that's worth rewatching. And maybe not like over and over and over, but maybe like every now and then. Like this is, I don't know, this is definitely not just something that's disposable. You can watch it once, but if you're a rewatcher, like I am, and it sounds like you are, like this is definitely rewarding.

Eli Price (02:03:59.809)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:04:11.21)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (02:04:19.523)
for the rewatcher and it's one of the few Nolan movies that has a commentary track of the DVD or Blu-ray.

Eli Price (02:04:27.358)
Yeah, yeah, that's true. I didn't, I wasn't able to get, get that in before this, but, but yeah, I would imagine a lot of the stuff he says I was, I was able to glean from, from the book, from the interviews, but yeah, I don't know what, so you said, I'm just kind of thinking about like the puzzles that we have, cause like part of the thing is,

Philip Marinello (02:04:29.891)
He doesn't usually do that anymore.

Eli Price (02:04:57.054)
No one says like the ambiguities of this movie are kind of like part of the point And so like there's a he tells the story actually of really early on Like there was an interview where someone asked like what his take was on the movie and he actually like shared it What his take was and then his brother like brought him aside and it's like hey don't do that like you're totally like

destroying the point of like the experience of watching a movie. And he was like, oh yeah, you're right. And so like, yeah, yeah. And yeah, so it's funny, like now Chris Nolan is very like hush about like what his movies means. I guess he kind of learned from that experience.

Philip Marinello (02:05:33.847)
That's very crystal. Hey, be a person.

Philip Marinello (02:05:49.507)
Well yeah, he'll talk about what's on the screen, but he will let you sit with it.

Eli Price (02:05:52.638)
Right, right. And I don't know, this one does have like, the ambiguities and the puzzles at the end are part of like, the thrilling and fun experience. Like, really, like you don't know. Like you, everyone kind of, I guess, has their opinion. Like, is Teddy telling the truth or is he not? Like, you really don't know.

Philip Marinello (02:06:11.339)
Well, yeah, it's exactly you. You're not certain if Teddy's telling the truth. You're not certain. I mean, I don't think so, but you're not certain. Is Lenny Sammy or like, is there overlap like the whole insulin thing? Like whose wife had insulin?

Eli Price (02:06:17.943)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:06:23.819)
Right, yeah.

Eli Price (02:06:29.291)
The like the insert shot of him like pinching his wife versus like giving her insulin shot they even like

Philip Marinello (02:06:36.563)
Yeah. And you had like that Fight Club quick, like one frame of when you saw Sammy in the mental hospital at an orderly pass by and you see Guy Pearson there for like a split second. Like, I think that was maybe more a little bit of an effect, but like, it is meant to provoke the question rather than lead you to a crystal clear answer.

Eli Price (02:06:44.8)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:06:49.738)
Yeah, yeah, he's like sitting.

Eli Price (02:07:00.822)
Yeah, and it's just playing to a certain degree like it's fun to like Like he knows what he's doing he knows he's like creating these like questions in your mind to leave you with because that's something that like a Film like you're like Nolan likes to do he likes to leave you with these questions, but then at the same time like he is playing with memory like He like our memories are like that they can be fuzzy they can be like

Not quite right and we can mix things up And so like a lot of those shots there at the end. There's even the shot like of His wife like laying on his chest and he has the eye like I think it says i've done it tattoo uh Like right there. Do you remember seeing that little insert? Yeah, it's there Yeah, if you go back, um right there at the end where like it's going through all that

Philip Marinello (02:07:49.807)
I don't know if I did saw that, the tattoo.

Eli Price (02:07:59.894)
stuff that we're talking about. There's a little insert, it's probably like, you know, three, four seconds long where his wife is laying on him, laying on him, like kind of like petting his chest, and he has the tattoo right there in that empty space that says, I've done it. And so it's like this, I don't know, it's like this total like memory.

Philip Marinello (02:08:00.463)
Sure, yeah, yeah.

Philip Marinello (02:08:07.081)
Okay.

Eli Price (02:08:25.79)
I don't know. I don't know what tattooing was like back then if tattoo removal was that big of a thing.

Philip Marinello (02:08:31.383)
No, no, because I mean, he clearly has a ton. Yeah, like what's the what is real is built into that as fun questions to ask.

Eli Price (02:08:37.687)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:08:41.706)
Right. Yeah, and it's fun and it's built into the character to like a Character that's kind of like unhinged from time and reality in a way You know it becomes sort of a Nolan trope his protagonist that has some sort of loss or grief and Becomes like unhinged from time and space in a way You know it becomes sort of like

thing that he does. Just thinking about like the prestige and inception and interstellar like they all have that same similar trope with the protagonist that he's already playing with here with Leonard and they're all different in the way that plays out but there is that similarity. I think it's fun I think it's a cool like

Philip Marinello (02:09:13.524)
Oh, yeah.

Eli Price (02:09:39.094)
thread to follow the different ways that plays out through his filmography. Yeah, did you did you have any, like, final thoughts on this movie or. Like final takeaways.

Philip Marinello (02:09:56.808)
My final thought for the movie, really, I think Nolan works best with creative freedom but constraints. I kind of wrote on my letterbox tongue in cheek, give him all the creative freedom, but don't give him more than $30 or $40 million. Give him more than four, but don't give him $100 million and all the leeway in the world.

Eli Price (02:10:15.186)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:10:25.228)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (02:10:25.583)
give him some constraints. Like, I hope he can go backwards. Because like, Inception was crazy. And then you did Interstellar. And then you did Tenet. And then he created a nuclear bomb like that. It's like, at some point, you're gonna have to dial it back. But also, Oppenheimer is the top grossing, original

Eli Price (02:10:38.254)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Eli Price (02:10:45.438)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (02:10:54.211)
R rated movie of all time now I think the Deadpool movies and Logan or Mad Max or something like all the other ones were like IP sequels like Tenet is now the highest grossing original even though it's a biopic like R rated movie so Sure, they'll give him all the money in the world for the next one, but I would love to see him return to do like Something that was a memento or insomnia or even prestige

Eli Price (02:10:57.046)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:11:02.802)
Yeah, that would make sense. Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:11:16.429)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (02:11:23.995)
sized again. I would really love that. So I would love to see a new constraint.

Eli Price (02:11:25.618)
Yeah, yeah, it'll either take yeah, it'll either take like some intentionality on his part or Right Or yeah, that's what I was gonna say or he just like bombs a couple of movies and then has like has to make his way back Which you know

Philip Marinello (02:11:33.743)
Because he keeps making money like he will or like a terrible bomb. But I don't necessarily see that.

Philip Marinello (02:11:44.963)
But I think the Nolan cult is so strong and he is very creative. Like, I think it would have to be a deliberate choice.

Eli Price (02:11:54.022)
Yeah, yeah, it you know, I kind of shared in the overview episode that he feels like the modern like Spielberg it's kind of like his name is on the movie and people are just gonna go see it And that's just kind of the way it is You know, he's the modern director that gets butts in seats and You know that was Spielberg

Philip Marinello (02:12:18.475)
Yep, it's true.

Eli Price (02:12:24.816)
You know Spielberg maybe to a lesser degree now, but yeah, I mean

Philip Marinello (02:12:30.815)
I wish Nolan movies were as fun as Spielberg movies. But yeah, no, he gets butts in seats, which is good, which I'm very I'm pro cinema and I'm glad that he's bringing people in and he's very talented storyteller. He was Tenet was the first movie I saw in Covid. I was like, no, I'm going to go see that. I'm not going to miss that. Even though I wasn't like amped out of my mind for it, I was like, I'm not going to miss that.

Eli Price (02:12:34.591)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:12:37.837)
Right.

Eli Price (02:12:42.297)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:12:52.266)
Yeah. Yeah, same.

Eli Price (02:12:59.966)
Yeah, yeah, I was the same. I remember that was the first time I went back to the theater Um after the pandemic when stuff started opening back up, um And yeah, it's just it's just like oh, it's the new Christopher Nolan movie. We gotta go see what it's about. Yeah uh

Philip Marinello (02:13:16.715)
Hey, you gotta see it. And if Oppenheimer wasn't three hours long, I would have seen that.

Eli Price (02:13:22.822)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I, you know, this is listeners probably know this by now, unless you're just jumping in because you like this movie, which fantastic. You know, there's I guess there's that way to listen to these. I always like to recommend like watching through because that's kind of like the endeavor that I'm doing is like watching through a director's filmography to learn and glean from it in that way of watching it.

But yeah, I like to do like a kind of final takeaway that really like Probably the director the filmmaker has no like it's not like we talked about earlier like this wasn't their intention at all, but it's just something that like You know, maybe isn't like even necessarily in the movie, but just got me thinking about And I was just thinking about like who we are without our memories like we really like

our identity is kind of wrapped up in our memory of where we've been and what we've experienced and when that's like if that's if that were to be taking a taken away like Does that take away like our identity? and really like where I ended up with that like thought line is Just like bringing it back like bringing it back to how it plays out in the movie like

A lot of the reason why to me, like, you know, Leonard is, is the way he is as stuck in this state because the people that are around him, like perpetuate, uh, his state. Um, yeah. And it was just, it just like makes me like appreciate the fact that, you know, building, um, building good, like community around yourself.

is such an important part of life. Yes, we're who we are based on where we've been, what we've made ourselves into, but your community can be such a pivotal part of who you are and who you become. And yeah, just surrounding ourselves with people that don't push us into anger and push us into like,

Eli Price (02:15:48.214)
you know, vengeance necessarily or manipulate us to their own gain, but like surrounding yourself with people who push you toward love and who push you to grow. Yeah, I just think that's. I don't know, I think it's something that is good to be reminded of every once in a while. And so, yeah, that's just like a.

Philip Marinello (02:16:08.71)
Oh, absolutely.

Eli Price (02:16:15.582)
I guess sentimental in a sense takeaway that I had thinking about this movie. Yeah, I think I already know where you personally have this. I'm assuming you have this as your favorite Nolan movie. Am I correct? Yeah. Yeah, which I think a lot of I think more and more people are leaning in that direction as.

Philip Marinello (02:16:30.419)
Yeah, this is this is the top for me.

Philip Marinello (02:16:39.971)
I feel like the top three that like people have would be, I feel like it would be this Dark Knight or Interstellar depending on what your interests are.

Eli Price (02:16:47.329)
Right.

Eli Price (02:16:51.114)
your flavor. Yeah, I know a lot of people have like Inception up there too, which is fair.

Philip Marinello (02:16:57.975)
Oh, yeah, my co my previous co-host Trevor inception. Yeah, he made me do inception and interstellar on our show. And I like both of those movies, I think more after like, really diving into them to cover them for our show. But I also go unnecessarily complicated and impressive spectacle. But also like, is it necessary? I don't know.

Eli Price (02:17:02.176)
Mm-hmm.

Ha ha ha.

Eli Price (02:17:13.454)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:17:26.162)
Yeah. That's funny. So I guess like my I guess I should say like, you know, you're welcome for bringing you on and letting you talk about your favorite one. You know, you finally you finally getting to you had to leave your own podcast to talk about your favorite Nolan movie.

Philip Marinello (02:17:39.719)
Yeah, that's the one that was open. Yeah. I don't know. You had me talk for two hours. Yeah. I'm probably not talking for two hours about inception because it's like, dreams within dreams. That's how far can that go? Okay. Is the top spinning or not at the end? Who cares? I don't know. Like it's for me. Yeah. The, I prefer characters. It doesn't have to be just plot, but I.

Eli Price (02:17:53.64)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:17:58.879)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:18:08.907)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (02:18:09.735)
I think everything works in Memento.

Eli Price (02:18:11.762)
Yeah, yeah, I'm right there with you. I don't, I saw you.

Philip Marinello (02:18:15.583)
And it's original. Like, I like The Dark Knight, but it's a comic book and it's also heat. So Memento really has the originality aspect going for me.

Eli Price (02:18:21.214)
Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

Eli Price (02:18:29.714)
Yeah, yeah, I think I have it like right there. So like I was kind of sharing like the prestige and interstellar are like two of my favorites. Dunkirk is up there too. I think it's like a, I think it's in a sense a technical masterpiece, Dunkirk. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (02:18:49.931)
Completely agreed. I think I have it on number two on my list just because it is it's so impressive But it's also not one that I watch all the time either

Eli Price (02:18:56.147)
Yeah, it's just so tight.

Yeah, yeah, it's not one that you'd never done necessarily like I've got to watch this again but it's just so like tight and like Perfectly put together in a sense that yeah, just So yeah, the memento kind of sits like after those for me I have it like right there with like the Dark Knight and Inception I think I would probably move it

Above the dark knight inception at this point, but we'll see if as I go through If I would if I would move it move those back over it. Um, it's hard to say Uh, you know ranking is I think ranking like movies is fun Um, but i'm totally aware that it's pretty meaningless Uh Uh, but it's fun

Philip Marinello (02:19:34.863)
Nice.

Philip Marinello (02:19:51.151)
agreed. Yeah, for me that the Bay the main one is that Dark Knight rises is hard at the bottom.

Eli Price (02:19:59.758)
That's fair. I think that's totally fair. I'm interested to re-watch that one. It's been a minute since I've seen it, so...

Philip Marinello (02:20:07.339)
I feel like I should, but it's also almost three hours.

Eli Price (02:20:11.374)
Yeah, they're long.

Philip Marinello (02:20:14.367)
I should give it another chance.

Eli Price (02:20:14.65)
Oh man.

Yeah, uh, yeah, but so Up next is insomnia. So we'll be getting to that next week. I actually recorded that already so i'm kind of pulling a nolan and uh switching up the timeline, uh, the narrative structure of my podcasts by Filming, you know recording the podcast episodes out of order. Um True nolan fashion. So yeah, uh, yeah

Philip Marinello (02:20:28.919)
There you go.

Eli Price (02:20:44.358)
I really enjoyed this conversation on Memento. Look forward to talking about Insomnia next week. We'll take a quick break here and come back with a very short movie news segment and a really fun movie draft. So we will see you in just a second.

Eli Price (02:21:07.422)
Okay, just a quick pause there. Do you need another break? Yeah, we can keep rolling. Yeah, I'll just hop back in then in a second and we can hop into the movie news.

Philip Marinello (02:21:14.383)
So I'm good.

Philip Marinello (02:21:22.011)
I'm looking forward to revisiting Insomnia now. Actually, I should watch that one again.

Eli Price (02:21:26.238)
Yeah, I really enjoyed it this time through. I watched it a week and a half or two ago now. Man, it's.

Philip Marinello (02:21:35.711)
Oh, the original is on the Criterion channel too. I should maybe check that one out again as well.

Eli Price (02:21:39.282)
Yes. It's basically the same plot and narrative wise. It has the same plot beats, but it has a very different feel. It is more brutal. You have way less sympathy for the protagonist. That's kind of what Nolan brings is giving you more sympathy for the protagonist and the Pacino character. But yeah.

Philip Marinello (02:21:52.331)
It's a lot more brutal.

Philip Marinello (02:21:58.872)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:22:10.206)
It's interesting because I watched them sort of back to back. I watched the original and then the Nolan. And it's very strange experiencing it. Yeah, experiencing it back to back was strange.

Philip Marinello (02:22:24.331)
Well, because it's like it's so good, but the American audience didn't see it. Like when I saw Insomnia, I didn't realize it was a remake until later.

Eli Price (02:22:28.724)
Right.

Eli Price (02:22:34.442)
Right. And yeah, it's very much a remake. It very much follows the same plot. But like I said, it's a different movie, really. The feel of it and the way you feel about the characters is very different. Yeah. Yeah, if you're good, good to go, we'll do a quick pause so I can find it easily.

Philip Marinello (02:22:58.752)
Yep, let's do it.

Eli Price (02:23:03.63)
when I'm editing and then yeah, I'll jump in.

Eli Price (02:23:11.03)
Hey, welcome back. I'm here with Philip Maranello. And yeah, I really had a fun time talking about Mento. And yeah, we're gonna jump into our movie news section. Not much to talk about here and this will be releasing in September. It's kind of like the dead period of movies coming out. So, but.

Something interesting that I noticed, there's been the recent re-release of Old Boy in theaters, which is a movie that I haven't seen. It's been kind of on my list, but I've never seen it. And I probably won't be able to make it to a theater to see, but then I also...

Philip Marinello (02:23:48.231)
Oh, yep. That played around here recently. OK.

Philip Marinello (02:24:00.675)
Do you know about the movie? Is that one that's like unspoiled? Or do you know all about it? Nice. Okay.

Eli Price (02:24:05.139)
Yeah, it's unspoiled. I very vaguely know. So I probably will stay away from the talk about it and the review. I've seen some like letterbox interviews of people and I'm like, I don't really want to hear what people are saying sort of thing.

Philip Marinello (02:24:18.063)
Yeah, no, if that's yeah, that's absolutely one to go into unspoiled if you're able.

Eli Price (02:24:24.474)
Yeah. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to see that eventually.

Philip Marinello (02:24:27.003)
And don't like if you're if you value your time and you really want to watch the remake. Okay, that's really one where you do not need to watch the remake.

Eli Price (02:24:37.17)
Yeah, yeah, that's what I've heard. Usually if something is below a 3.0 on Letterbox, it's like, ah, probably.

Philip Marinello (02:24:45.507)
Oh shoot, it's a 2.1. Honestly, kind of rightly so. I'd probably give it like a 2, 2 and a half.

Eli Price (02:24:47.858)
Yeah. Yeah, it's 2.1 is pretty brutal, to be honest, if it's 2.1. Right. But yeah, which is crazy that it's a Spike Lee movie, the remake.

Philip Marinello (02:24:56.77)
Yeah, well the original is 4.4.

Philip Marinello (02:25:05.175)
Yeah, I don't know if that was just the studio assigned it to him or what, but yeah, it was something.

Eli Price (02:25:09.726)
Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, but yeah I don't know. I am looking forward to eventually catching up with old boy It will not be in theaters because I can't even really make it like I said to make out to see uh Oppenheimer so more much less old boy. Um, but I didn't notice too Coming up. I think right around the time this releases either like that weekend or maybe the next weekend. Um The a24 I think is put

like working on re-releasing, Stop Making Sense, which, man, when I saw that, I texted, I have a group of friends here in Lafayette that we talk about movies, mostly, you know, just texting back and forth, but I had texted that to them. I was like, if this comes out here, that would be really fun to all go see it. Cause you know, I've only seen it, I've seen it at home. And it was such, it's one of those movies that like,

Philip Marinello (02:25:46.387)
Yes!

Eli Price (02:26:12.19)
at the end of the movie, you know, it's a concert film, but I was just, you haven't seen it?

Philip Marinello (02:26:16.403)
Yeah, I haven't seen it yet. I was getting ready to watch it on streaming, but then they pulled it because they were remastering it for the 4K. Like literally one of my movie friends recommended it to me. I got like assigned to watch it and then I was like, oh, it's streaming on Canopy. And then it was pulled from Canopy because of the re-release. So I still have yet to see it.

Eli Price (02:26:21.249)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:26:26.763)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:26:33.336)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:26:40.006)
Man Yeah, it's a really fun experience It's one of those that like when I saw they were releasing it in theaters. I was like That would be really fun to experience in theaters Just because it's a concert film, but it's not like a typical like there's a lot of like purpose behind the way it was like filmed very obviously and It's not just you're not just watching a concert

You're like watching a performance Which is really fun and it's one of those movies that like ends and I was just like Smiling when it end because it was so fun Said like such a good time Yeah, so I Really like re-releasing movies is just something that I think needs to happen more I think

Philip Marinello (02:27:23.311)
It looks fantastic.

Eli Price (02:27:39.623)
I'm on record as saying that Disney should just re-release the originals instead of doing live action remakes.

Philip Marinello (02:27:47.327)
Yeah, I'd love to see a lot of those in the theater again.

Eli Price (02:27:49.946)
Yeah, I didn't see a lot of those old movies in theaters, you know, I was bored in the middle of the revival era. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (02:27:56.323)
Oh yeah, like the classic era. Yeah. Pre Lion King, like I didn't see Aladdin or Little Mermaid in theaters. I think Lion King was probably my first theatrical one.

Eli Price (02:28:07.538)
Yeah, yeah, so I mean it's like man. I would love to go see Pinocchio in theaters or you know Some of those old I would go watch fantasia in theaters. I think that would be fun Yeah So, um, yeah, I don't know. I feel like this maybe this is like the beginning of a trend. I don't know. Um like my local theater has um, I think it's called like flashback cinema, so like

Philip Marinello (02:28:16.099)
Sleeping Beauty, I would love to see the theater.

Philip Marinello (02:28:32.829)
Nice.

Eli Price (02:28:34.59)
Like I was able to see the Godfather in theaters because they had it They played it Yeah, so you get some with theaters doing stuff like that I know a lot of theaters do similar things But yeah, there's not like a big media push behind it with these two There's been like this huge media push of this is re-releasing in theaters

Philip Marinello (02:28:59.287)
We at 824 took over the release, I guess, with the new 4K. And it's getting a lot of buzz, which is cool.

Eli Price (02:29:04.877)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:29:09.706)
Yeah, it is very cool. And I would love to see that become a trend. Like maybe A24 will take it upon themselves to do this with more films. If this does well, I hope it does. But yeah, I don't know. I just think it's an experience to see something on a big screen that you just don't get at home. There's a lot of movies that...

It's like, well, you know, just watch it at home. But, um, but yeah, there's, there's so many movies that would just be so fun and such a cool experience to see on the big screen. I felt that way about when I was able to see the Godfather on the big screen, because it came out, you know, a couple of decades before I was born that, you know, a re-release in theaters is the only way I would have been able to see it. That way.

Philip Marinello (02:30:03.651)
No, I was bummed that I didn't get to see that. I could see like one of my local theaters here. They're always playing old stuff. But when that, I was bummed I didn't get to see the Godfather. I still haven't seen that in the theater yet.

Eli Price (02:30:12.11)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:30:17.566)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a it's a cool experience. Yeah, I don't really have anything that interesting to say about it other than, man, I really hope this becomes like a thing that happens more often, not just like theaters playing old movies, but they're being, you know, big media pushes behind it to kind of like grow.

Philip Marinello (02:30:41.635)
You would think they would do that more because like they own it already. How much money would they have to put out to be like, oh, like, I mean, James Cameron has done a ton like that's how he keeps up in his box office. I feel like every five years Titanic comes back and millions of people go see it because it's a super great theatrical experience.

Eli Price (02:30:47.111)
Right.

Eli Price (02:30:55.68)
Right.

Eli Price (02:30:59.182)
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Right.

Eli Price (02:31:05.482)
Yeah, and now he gets to keep putting Avatar back out as he's releasing the next like 10 Avatar movies

Philip Marinello (02:31:10.227)
Hey, I loved seeing the first one in the theater, but then I wrote it off and then I wrote it off. And then the second one came out and we got press screenings for the podcast. And I was like, man, this is a freaking blast. I forgot. Like, it's so good. And I'm like, I'm in whatever. I don't care. Like if he wants to make four more, I'd wish he'd make other movies. But like he's telling the stories he wants to tell in Pandora. So whatever.

Eli Price (02:31:15.102)
Yeah, it was fun.

Eli Price (02:31:37.098)
Right. Yeah. Yeah, that the my favorite parts of that of Way of Water were just like the visual aspects, like the whole there's that whole middle section where they're just like exploring the like the sea. It's fun. I didn't like a lot of the rest of the movie, but that part was like so fun.

Philip Marinello (02:31:39.447)
Like, I'll take it.

Philip Marinello (02:31:51.347)
the underwater so good. So good.

Philip Marinello (02:32:00.075)
Yeah, I had a I haven't rewatched it yet. I would like to, but because it's also very long. I had a blast in the theater. It was so immersive and like the man knows storytelling. Anyway, all that to say, I agree. I would love to see more studio pushes on. Yeah, just good movies. Make new movies. I want new movies to be made, but yeah, it would be great to see the classics as well.

Eli Price (02:32:06.515)
Yes.

Eli Price (02:32:29.006)
Mm-hmm for sure Yeah, but that with that said I think we are ready to jump into our movie draft segment I Thought it would be a fun Categoried a draft from alongside memento To think about movies that deal with like memory loss and memory manipulation So yeah, that that's kind of what we're gonna draft from

So any movie that deals with memory loss, memory manipulation, you know, do with that what you will. I didn't really give any stipulations to you, Philip, other than that. So I kind of left it up to you to decide what movies fit into that category.

Philip Marinello (02:33:15.439)
Sure. Are we going back? So what's the goal? Are we trying? I've done this before and I listen sometimes. Are we just trying to make our favorite or the best? Like.

Eli Price (02:33:26.018)
I always end up doing a little bit of both Because I do put this up for vote. It's kind of people like voting on who drafted the best the best set of movies and So like but I always end up like my heart won't let me like go away from some of my favorites And so it's hurt It's it's helped me in some drafts and hurt me and others were like I went with my heart and everyone was like no We like this

Philip Marinello (02:33:29.475)
Okay.

Philip Marinello (02:33:32.791)
I like it. Okay. Got it.

Okay, perfect.

Philip Marinello (02:33:45.199)
Same.

Eli Price (02:33:55.19)
We like the guy that picked the more popular movies. Like, okay, well at least maybe now you've heard of this movie.

Philip Marinello (02:33:57.807)
sure.

Philip Marinello (02:34:01.519)
I'll see if I can do a little bit of both. Okay, so who's go first? We're going back and forth.

Eli Price (02:34:06.046)
Yeah, yeah, we'll go back and forth. I always give my first time guests first pick because that's what I do. It's not because I'm generous.

Philip Marinello (02:34:16.555)
Well, I've got a list of a few here. I don't have 10. So if we all pick the same ones, I might need to get a little creative here at the end. I mean, after talking about this, man, I'll say Memento, if that's OK. Ha ha ha. It's OK. We'll say get out. OK. Then I will go. I mean, it's heart and it's.

Eli Price (02:34:28.194)
Sounds good. Let's do it.

Eli Price (02:34:36.022)
I usually take the movie of discussion off the board.

Philip Marinello (02:34:46.031)
a canon great and we've already brought it up and that's Blade Runner. It's it's one of my top three favorite movies of all time. And it's endlessly rewatchable. And it's all about identity and memories and in what it is to be human. So I'll say Blade Runner.

Eli Price (02:35:01.804)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:35:05.022)
Yeah, yeah, and it is interesting. So like, I think probably most people will be like, oh, Blade Runner is like about memory loss and manipulation and yeah, it's it there's a sense in which like he doesn't know if his memories are real or not sort of thing. And that's

Philip Marinello (02:35:22.415)
Well, yeah, and the people he's hunting down to a degree don't know that they're androids either, because they have been implanted with memories, not necessarily against their will, but outside of their will.

Eli Price (02:35:29.793)
Right.

Right, yeah.

Eli Price (02:35:36.318)
Right. Yeah. And so, yeah, that's one that I didn't even have on my list because it wasn't it just wasn't like on my radar of thinking of it in that way. But very much.

Philip Marinello (02:35:46.575)
That's the first one that popped into my mind. There's a senior's like, you're talking about memories. Like that's deeply. So there you go, my number one, not even on your list. I didn't even take any from you.

Eli Price (02:35:48.77)
That's funny.

Yeah. And obviously, obviously popped into Nolan's head, too, because yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Blade Runner first pick, I'm going to go with. It's it's tough. So I have a few that. Would be more heart picks, and this one is.

I would say this one is less of a heart pick, but one a movie that I really, really like that is very good and probably a more popular one. So maybe similar to Blade Runner, like a heart and popular pick and that's eternal sunshine of the spotless find. Great. Probably one of the best uses of Jim Carrey. That we got in his career.

Philip Marinello (02:36:37.379)
Nice.

Eli Price (02:36:47.838)
I would say. But yeah, I don't really know. It's one of those movies that like, since this is not the topic of discussion, I don't really want to spoil it. I think it's better experienced, not really knowing what you're getting into going in. It is very much a unique experience of a movie though.

Philip Marinello (02:36:47.918)
Agree.

Philip Marinello (02:37:12.555)
Well, it's I mean, it's very much part of the elevator pitch. If you just read the synopsis or watch the trailer. But yeah, no, that's a very good movie. That was definitely on my list.

Eli Price (02:37:20.384)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:37:24.406)
Yeah, it's kind of in the title too, I guess. A little bit. But yeah.

Philip Marinello (02:37:30.175)
OK, that's I mean, I'll do another populous one, so I have a few others here as well. But wonderful movie. It's broadly this is probably one of the ones that kind of got memory loss, amnesia kind of back on everybody's mind. I'll go with the born identity. That's I don't rewatch it often, but whatever I do, I'm like, no, that's really good. But I'm like, was that is that not as good as I remember?

Eli Price (02:37:49.742)
Mmm.

Philip Marinello (02:37:59.371)
I've only watched it like three or four times, but it's every time I've revisited it, it's been satisfying.

Eli Price (02:38:05.982)
Yeah, it is one of those movies. And I think it's partly because it's such an action movie. And we're always like questionable of like, was that action movie really that good? And you were watching, you're like, yeah, it was pretty good. Uh, I feel like the mission, impossible mission, impossible movies are similar. It's like, was it really that good? And it's like, oh yeah.

Philip Marinello (02:38:28.663)
I haven't revisited all of them, but with the new one, I've revisited a number of them. They're all good, even two, which is strange. It's pretty good.

Eli Price (02:38:33.922)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's enjoyable at the very least. Yeah, I'll... Yeah, that was one that was definitely on my list. This one is going to be less popular. I actually think I picked it several episodes ago, and we did a desert movie draft for the Asteroid City episode. And I'm going to go with a movie that...

Philip Marinello (02:39:01.977)
Okay.

Eli Price (02:39:05.434)
I love, it's like a five-star movie for me, and that's Paris, Texas, the Wim Wenders film, which is.

Philip Marinello (02:39:12.207)
Okay. At all timer for me, I guess that is interesting.

Eli Price (02:39:17.022)
Yeah, I mean he literally the guy walks out of the desert not knowing who he is and like his brother finds him and Um, it's him kind of like, you know Rediscovering who he is why he left his family Fan I mean it's just a phenomenal movie Yes, absolutely

Philip Marinello (02:39:34.903)
Devastating final 20 minutes. That was a, a Criterion collection introduction for me. I just picked it up cause I thought the cover was striking and that's, that's an all-timer for me as well.

Eli Price (02:39:46.21)
Yeah.

Yeah. Sweet. Yeah, so there's one that you didn't have on yours, but should have.

Philip Marinello (02:39:55.447)
Yeah, so.

Philip Marinello (02:39:59.411)
Like I know that popular I'll go so this is one that is having a bit of a resurgence now I've seen a number of people talk about it and I think I eventually was finally sold on checking it out due to a Letterboxd top four show somebody had it in their top four talked about it for about 15 20 minutes or so. That's a Strange days. I think from the late 90s Catherine Bigelow. Have you seen that one?

Eli Price (02:40:23.369)
Okay.

I haven't. But it seems like a bigelow that I would enjoy.

Philip Marinello (02:40:28.391)
So that is, do you know?

So yeah, I don't know why it didn't hit when it came out or kind of since then. Like it's absolutely having a resurgence now, but it is about a, briefly. Ah, so it's about a guy who basically like real life VR, you can like plug in and experience memories or like you can have like not VR, but like you can.

it you like you put nodes on your head and like it stimulates your nervous system. So like, there is extreme sports, there's violence, there's sex, there's like, whatever you want, you can like plug into the saying and experience somebody's real memory. And it's there's it's a thriller cop romance, like there's a lot of different things going on. But it's

Eli Price (02:41:04.971)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:41:20.811)
Mmm.

Eli Price (02:41:29.95)
Yeah, I would imagine there's a.

Philip Marinello (02:41:31.567)
thrilling and fantastic. And like there's a lot of social stuff too, like with the police and all that as well. Like it's a wonderful movie that I'm shocked, especially being in the film loving world up until the last year or so. I had heard nobody talk about this, but people are talking about it again. And I checked it out recently earlier this year. And it's incredible.

Eli Price (02:41:33.803)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:41:38.667)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:42:00.062)
Yeah. I think the only reason that it was familiar is because I heard someone talking about Catherine Bigelow in a podcast recently and was like, oh yeah, what films what all films is Catherine Bigelow made? And so really just like it's the title. Like I don't really know anything about it. Yeah. Yeah, that's. Ralph Fiennes, I just look was looking at it. Ralph Fiennes is in it, which is that's, you know.

Philip Marinello (02:42:18.155)
No, it's phenomenal. But yeah, some extreme content.

Eli Price (02:42:28.706)
That's a pool in and of itself.

Philip Marinello (02:42:31.231)
Yeah, no, I I'm sure that in the next couple of years, I don't know about criterion or arrow somebody somebody's gonna put out a loaded blu ray or 4k of it and it's gonna I think it'll come back into the canon and be a widely recognized classic.

Eli Price (02:42:48.118)
Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, I'm gonna have to try to check that out. See if it's streaming somewhere. So the next one I'm going with is probably I don't know if it's a popular pick. It's certainly a in the critical space a like well regarded film, but I don't know.

Eli Price (02:43:56.049)
You there?

Philip Marinello (02:43:56.961)
Yep.

Eli Price (02:43:58.491)
Cool. All right. I think.

Philip Marinello (02:44:00.185)
You want to reset and do the intro for your next pick, I guess?

Eli Price (02:44:03.159)
Yeah, I will. It's done this to me before. I don't it's got this like weird. I think it's a browser thing. If your browser gets too overloaded doing stuff, which frustrates me because I don't have anything else open. But anyway, technology. Yeah, I'll hop back in. And it might make you do it, but it'll pop up and tell me like have your.

guest refresh their page sort of thing. So I'll let you know if you actually need to or not. Okay, yeah, I'll jump back in.

Yeah, my next pick is, I'm not sure if it's like a popular pick. It's definitely like a well-respected and regarded, like critical pick. But I'm going to go with David Lynch's Mulholland Drive.

Philip Marinello (02:45:01.693)
Nice, that was one of my stretch picks here, which we have a re-release coming to my local theater here in a couple weeks that I'm hoping to catch.

Eli Price (02:45:08.799)
Okay. Yeah, yeah. Just, it's one of those movies that's like, I mean, this is David Lynch's MO, but it's just that waking dream movie, sort of movie where like, the movie ends and you don't know what in the world you just experienced, but you know you experienced something. And yeah, it's a great movie. Obviously like,

Philip Marinello (02:45:30.133)
Yep. Masterpiece.

Eli Price (02:45:38.375)
One of the main characters doesn't know who she is. So you have the memory loss factor there. But like that's like. Funny enough, that's like the least mysterious thing going on in the movie is the memory loss, which doesn't, you know, I guess like makes sense when you realize it's a David Lynch movie. But yeah, just like.

Philip Marinello (02:45:51.882)
Sure, yeah.

Eli Price (02:46:06.875)
incredible piece of filmmaking and like yeah I don't really have much to say on it that people haven't already said so but yeah Mulholland Drive

Philip Marinello (02:46:18.026)
It's a very rich text for sure.

Eli Price (02:46:20.928)
Yes, absolutely.

Philip Marinello (02:46:23.401)
Okay, well I will go with another one that is both popular and because of its popularity, I think it's almost Underrated actually, but a couple years ago. I watched it again and say 50 first dates is a blast It's I don't really I don't like I When I was younger, I liked Adam Sandler a lot more now. I respect him I'm very happy that he gets to make whatever movies he wants

Eli Price (02:46:38.864)
Yes, that was on my list.

Philip Marinello (02:46:50.797)
But I really think that 51st Dates is maybe one of his best because it's funny, it's juvenile, it's silly, but it is also very heartfelt in a way that I feel like 51st Dates and Click are the two that really stand out to me as being like mature, immature movies.

Eli Price (02:47:00.58)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:47:13.279)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's

Philip Marinello (02:47:16.413)
And sorry about your brain. I've has been in my lexicon ever since it came out like my wife and I and my friends. Like that's that is something that I say all the time.

Eli Price (02:47:23.131)
I forgot about that line.

Eli Price (02:47:28.023)
Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I totally forgot that, you know, that was a line. It's been a long time since I've seen it, but I remember the last time I did watch it, I was like, you know, that's a fun movie. That's and it is it is heartfelt. There's a there's a genuine like care for the characters, I think, in that movie that you don't necessarily get in romcom. Yes, it's definitely there.

I think it's a really fun movie. And yeah, it probably is a little bit underrated or underappreciate. Yeah. Yeah, it's I'm trying to figure out where I want to go with my next pick.

Philip Marinello (02:48:04.269)
Cuz it's Adam Sandler.

Eli Price (02:48:18.267)
but...

Philip Marinello (02:48:18.933)
I don't imagine my final pick will be taking one from you. We'll see.

Eli Price (02:48:24.023)
Yeah, I have so I have it's one of the things where like I have several more that I want to take.

Eli Price (02:48:34.907)
but I can only fit in so many. We'll have to do some honorable mentions for sure. But yeah.

Philip Marinello (02:48:39.083)
Oh, sure.

Eli Price (02:48:46.039)
I'll probably go. So this is this is definitely a pop. Going to be like a popular pick, like let's grab some votes with this one. But it's also, to be fair, one of my favorite, I think probably my top two or three MCU movies. And that's Captain America Winter Soldier. So obviously Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes comes is the main, you know, one of the main antagonists. And his whole thing is he

Philip Marinello (02:48:55.397)
Sure.

Philip Marinello (02:49:06.981)
Huh, okay, yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:49:17.131)
He kind of doesn't remember who he is has been being used by Hydra and Yeah, I just think this is a really fun action movie thriller kind of It's I don't know. It's one of my favorite MCU movies. I I'm pretty low on a lot of MCU movies that people love like I'm

Philip Marinello (02:49:20.773)
There you go.

Philip Marinello (02:49:35.964)
Yeah, absolutely.

Eli Price (02:49:45.479)
pretty low on Infinity War and I'm very like middling on in-game. And those are like people love those. A tiny bit. I appreciated it's kind of a mixed feeling because I appreciate how it starts. I feel like it starts with settling into some grief and you know all that stuff.

Philip Marinello (02:49:53.785)
How you're on Endgame then Infinity War, huh? Interesting.

Eli Price (02:50:14.795)
and then like goes off the walls with.

Philip Marinello (02:50:16.641)
Those last two movies though, it's kind of impossible, because they were the culmination of 22 or 23 movies. Like, they almost weren't even movies. They were like an event. So they're kind of hard to quantify even.

Eli Price (02:50:22.286)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:50:27.7)
Right.

Eli Price (02:50:32.067)
Yeah, I just had so much like Like MCU fatigue by that point. I was just like I don't I don't care anymore Yeah That's fair, but yeah this one 2014 so I mean you're like what 2008 was Iron Man. So yeah, this really was like peak MCU and I Probably have watched this a couple of times since it came out

Philip Marinello (02:50:38.445)
That was the peak for me since end game. It's been rough, but yeah.

Philip Marinello (02:50:49.47)
That's peak, yeah.

Eli Price (02:51:01.663)
And every time I remember watching it, I'm just like, man, that's just a really fun, thrilling movie. Funny enough, I don't really think that the first Captain America is all that great, but this one I love.

Philip Marinello (02:51:16.009)
Yeah, I like it fine, but yeah, no, Winter Soldier is definitely a solid pick.

Eli Price (02:51:21.435)
For sure.

That way I can just go with my heart for the last pick. But what's your last pick gonna be?

Philip Marinello (02:51:27.941)
Thanks for watching.

So this is very much the heart. I think that over the years, I mean, I think already it's recognized as a classic, but I don't think it has broken out large yet. But for my final one, this was I think the first new movie I watched this year that I gave five stars to. It came out last year as a Koganata's After Yang. It's a near future, very kind of lo-fi sci-fi.

Eli Price (02:51:54.041)
Yes.

Philip Marinello (02:52:02.954)
I described it as Blade Runner by way of Terrence Malick. This family has an android sibling for their daughter whose battery has died and they're trying to find a way to fix him and revive him and it's all about unlocking the worlds in his memories and seeing what he valued and kind of how he...

Eli Price (02:52:08.227)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:52:29.318)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (02:52:29.573)
process the world and how an artificially created being kind of processed the beauty and the meaning of our world. And it's just, it's incredible.

Eli Price (02:52:44.383)
Yeah, it was one of my favorite movies, like one of my favorite 2022 releases.

Philip Marinello (02:52:51.985)
Yeah, it's up there high for me. I didn't get to see it in theaters. I'm so upset.

Eli Price (02:52:57.279)
Yeah, I didn't either. Man, it's an incredible movie. It's one of those that takes its time very slow. It's kind of like anti a lot of AI sci-fi movies in a lot of ways. But man, brought me to tears at one point. And I didn't even think about it.

Philip Marinello (02:53:13.813)
Yeah, no, it's very, very serene and slow paced, very Malikian.

Eli Price (02:53:25.587)
In the terms of this draft or else I would have had it on my list for sure But yeah, I mean you're he's looking into the memories And memories that were kind of like hidden From his from his android. Uh, yeah didn't even think about that. But man it if you haven't seen Either of koganata's films. I highly recommend after yang and columbus

Philip Marinello (02:53:37.611)
Yep.

Philip Marinello (02:53:52.181)
One of them, I think we might lean towards Columbus, one of those movies will be a, on the substantive cinema in the near future here.

Eli Price (02:54:01.227)
Yeah, yeah, that would be that would be either of those would be fantastic to cover for sure My last pick I don't give the chance very often to draft documentaries In these drafts, so I'm gonna take my opportunity and I'm gonna go with a movie called Dick Johnson is dead Yeah, have you seen it?

Philip Marinello (02:54:22.213)
Very nice.

I'm not. I know the movie. I haven't seen it yet.

Eli Price (02:54:28.555)
Yeah, yeah, so it's by Documentary filmmaker Kirsten Johnson. She she has a movie called camera person It deals with I haven't seen camera person so I can't really speak that much to it But dig Johnson is dead is kind of her she kind of like Filmed her experience of her father Losing his memories as he gets

his Alzheimer's progresses and it's just this I Don't know it's a very like incredibly like poignant look at Personhood Like what makes someone who they are and how memories play into that and you know How you how you deal with loot like as you? Have someone that's close to you, you know

begin to lose their memories and lose who they are because of that. How you slowly feel like you're losing them before they're gone. And all that sounds very incredibly sad, which parts of it are very incredibly moving. But also the way she does it is she basically, like her dad agrees to...

work on her with filming these different ways that he might potentially die, which turned out to be extremely comical and funny and like her dad is a great sport and like you can tell he's kind of having fun with it too. Like they filmed this reenactment of him like being like impelled by something on the street that

Philip Marinello (02:55:59.784)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (02:56:12.805)
Sure.

Eli Price (02:56:23.531)
Or something like falls on him like an air conditioner from a from a high-rise apartment or something like that they so it's like it's this really fun mix of like comedy and like Dramatic, I guess like real there. It's a documentary. So like the real experience of Of losing someone as they lose their memory

I highly recommend it. It's on Netflix right now. So it's a 90 minute movie, so not that long. And just like both like a really fun movie and an incredibly moving movie. I think so. Yeah, Dick Johnson is dead. That's my heart pick. It's not going to give me any votes, but now people will maybe go try to watch it.

Philip Marinello (02:57:18.933)
No, it's that's one that I know I will like and it will wreck me. I just haven't. Yeah. You only have so much time to get through your watch list.

Eli Price (02:57:25.167)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:57:29.291)
Right. Yeah, that I think we're good. I think there's definitely some I have honorable mentions. One of them that I actually there's a couple that I caught up with recently knowing that I was going to do this draft one was the Manchurian candidate. I'm assuming it's the original is the 62. Version.

Philip Marinello (02:57:51.433)
Okay, the original or the remake?

Eli Price (02:57:59.561)
I didn't even know there was a remake, to be honest.

Philip Marinello (02:58:01.273)
Yeah, Denzel Washington was in the ring.

Eli Price (02:58:03.983)
That's true. Yeah, I'm looking at it right now. It's Jonathan Demme. I didn't even realize that.

Philip Marinello (02:58:09.022)
It was okay. The original is much better.

Eli Price (02:58:12.215)
Yeah, the original was really like there's these dream sequences where like the actor like they're remembering what happened in their dream, but they were like under a they were brainwashed. And so like it's like jumping back and forth between old ladies and they're like Russian and Chinese people who are brainwashing them. And it's actually like really. Playful and like creative.

way to like view that like messed up memory after you've been brainwashed. Yeah, that it was a fun movie. I probably like didn't like it quite as much as it seems like most people have. Another Yeah, it is very good. It's undeniably it's undeniable that it's a well made movie.

Philip Marinello (02:58:59.813)
It's very good.

Philip Marinello (02:59:08.089)
So that's one that I was telling you, my dad showed me that when I was a kid and now it's in the Criterion collection.

Eli Price (02:59:13.663)
Yeah, yeah, I would probably wait a while to show this to my four year old, but yeah. Yeah, another one that I caught up with recently, like I said, I've been kind of on a slowly watching Hitchcock when I can. This was a good chance to catch up with Spellbound, which was really good. It's Ingrid Bergman.

Philip Marinello (02:59:20.389)
Yeah, yep, yep. I saw it when I was a bit old.

Philip Marinello (02:59:37.337)
Okay.

Eli Price (02:59:43.383)
And Gregory Peck so you got some great powerhouse acting there and I Think it gets a little too muddled up in interest in psychoanalysis Which is funny because it's like Christopher Nolan in that way like that's one of the critiques of Nolan Sometimes is that he gets too caught up in his ideas That like

all of the dialogue revolves around these ideas and makes the characters less interesting. And I think that Spellbound has a little bit of that, but still a really fun, interesting movie. And very much an old Hitchcock movie. I think it's 1945. But yeah, another one that's like a

You can almost put any like Tarkovsky movie in here because they're all like playing with memory in some way. Um, I would have loved to draft Solaris, but I, I drafted it. Um.

Philip Marinello (03:00:47.329)
Yes, Solaris is on my. Actually, I like the Tarkovsky and the Soderbergh Solaris. Maybe I could have gone Soderbergh for the pick. But yeah, those are both on my solaris slash solaris on my. I was like, I probably won't pick these, but they were on my list.

Eli Price (03:00:52.863)
Okay, I haven't seen the Soderbergh.

Eli Price (03:01:02.679)
Yeah. Yeah, it's one of them. I've loved all the Tarkovsky I've seen, and that's probably one of the higher rated movies on my list that I didn't pick. But I don't want to spoil the draft for next week, so I won't I won't talk any more about that. But yeah, there's some others on here. I mean, you got Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, if you want to.

Philip Marinello (03:01:30.165)
I considered Finding Nemo as like that would be a popular pick. But Finding Nemo wasn't enough about the memory and I like Finding Dory far less.

Eli Price (03:01:32.383)
I did too. Right. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:01:41.867)
Yeah, I felt exactly the same. I was like, well, it's not that important a part of the movie. And yeah, I didn't really care a whole lot for Finding Dory. Yeah, Moon. Have you seen Moon? Yeah, that's in a way dealing with.

Philip Marinello (03:01:58.422)
Yeah, Sam Rockwell.

Philip Marinello (03:02:02.901)
Is that about my memory? I don't remember.

Eli Price (03:02:06.159)
In a similar way that like a movie like Blade Runner is in the sense that like he's... I don't want to spoil it.

Philip Marinello (03:02:13.709)
he's losing his mind. I saw once or twice and I really liked it, but I don't remember a lot of the specifics.

Eli Price (03:02:15.904)
No, um...

Eli Price (03:02:20.767)
Yeah, maybe I'll maybe I'll tell you as soon as we wrap up Because I don't want to because it's a it would be a huge spoiler to talk about How how you could stir? It's a bit of a stretch to put it in the mem the memory thing, but I think it fits. Um Yeah I'm if you want to go a comedy you have the hangover um Yeah um Yep, um

Philip Marinello (03:02:29.547)
I remember really liking Moon.

I see.

Philip Marinello (03:02:43.33)
Okay, sure. Yeah, that would be a huge populist pick. Yeah

Eli Price (03:02:51.52)
It's been picked in a draft not long ago, which so I was like, I'll just leave that on the board. I know I picked Paris, Texas again, but that was like I said, just one of my huge favorite for me. Yeah, did you have any that were left on your list that we didn't go with?

Philip Marinello (03:02:58.969)
I didn't even consider that.

Philip Marinello (03:03:11.677)
Yeah, we'll go. I mean, one of the more obvious ones that came to mind, I don't love it as much as many do, but Verhoeven's Total Recall is a classic. I like it. I respect it probably more than I like it, but like, it's an undeniable, very entertaining, very well-made movie.

Eli Price (03:03:23.831)
Yeah, I haven't seen it, so I couldn't pick it.

Eli Price (03:03:36.764)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (03:03:38.165)
A Dark City was another one I thought about, but I'm sure it's not going to win any votes. It starts with a guy who loses his memory. It's kind of another future tech noir type story. This one, it's not cheating, but the idea of like in the memento, like the stories we tell.

Eli Price (03:03:44.25)
Yeah, I haven't seen that either.

Philip Marinello (03:04:09.069)
can maybe change or like the people's perceptions have become true. I considered stretching it for the man who shot Liberty Valance that I don't know if you've seen that. That's a bit of it. But like the whole like that's how the whole movie turns on that. And then I'm a big Scorsese guy. I considered Shutter Island as well. I feel like Leo is a big draw.

Eli Price (03:04:18.196)
Oh, that would be a really big stretch. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:04:26.531)
Yeah, I love that movie.

Eli Price (03:04:31.831)
Yeah, I considered Shutter Island too.

Philip Marinello (03:04:36.245)
I feel like an under respected movie. I because Scorsese is high or so high, like I feel like a lot of people like, eh, this is like just sort of genre churn. And I think people really misunderstand Shutter Island. I don't think the ending is a twist. I think, I think what many people refer to as the twist in Shutter Island is.

Eli Price (03:04:53.592)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (03:05:06.009)
very clear. And I think the real thing that the movie hinges on is the decision that the character makes when he has the realization that any discerning audience member will have nearly immediately and the choice he makes when he realizes what's going on. I think, I mean, it's nowhere near the top of Scorsese's body of work, but I think it's an excellent film that...

Eli Price (03:05:08.299)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:05:24.902)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:05:34.709)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (03:05:35.221)
doesn't get quite enough respect.

Eli Price (03:05:39.043)
Yeah, I think that's true. I think surprisingly on Letterboxd, it has a 4.1, which I did not expect. So.

Philip Marinello (03:05:46.497)
Heck yeah! Alright, what's the... How many people have logged that?

Eli Price (03:05:51.351)
I mean you have 368,000 four-star reviews. So, Letterboxd comes through sometimes. Sometimes it's better, it's more hopeful to go on Letterboxd and look at ratings than it is to look at user ratings on IMDB. Ha ha.

Philip Marinello (03:05:53.693)
Alright guys, that's what's up. Okay, that's respectable

Philip Marinello (03:06:05.669)
I completely agree. No, don't look at IMDB or the tomato. Letterboxd has really replaced everything for me. The people who love movies are on Letterboxd. There are some people who like to be trolls or whatever, but Letterboxd is absolutely my go-to place for consensus.

Eli Price (03:06:14.822)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:06:18.192)
right?

Eli Price (03:06:30.103)
Yeah, yeah, so I mean the people the letterbox community I was I was surprised to I was expecting like 3.8. That would that's it feels like a 3.8

Philip Marinello (03:06:33.209)
4.1! That's kind of shocking.

Philip Marinello (03:06:39.869)
Yeah, I was like, I would be happy. I would be happy if it was above three point five letter box.

Eli Price (03:06:45.079)
Yeah. Yeah, that is very surprising.

Philip Marinello (03:06:50.209)
It's great. That's one of the few movies that I have literally just watched back to back when I first watched it.

Eli Price (03:06:57.467)
Hmm. Yeah, I probably did too because I think I saw it when I was in college Yeah, I think I think it was in It was one of those that like me and my roommate went to Walmart and it was a lot in like the $5 bin And we were like, oh, let's watch this Man Yeah, that that's a great one Scorsese is one of my favorite directors so

Philip Marinello (03:07:14.027)
Oh, nice.

Philip Marinello (03:07:23.713)
Yeah, so those are my I know Liberty Valance is a bit of a stretch, but those are my honorable mentions. I was this close to getting Leonard Moulton to come on my show to talk about Liberty Valance during COVID, but that did not work out.

Eli Price (03:07:29.111)
Liberty Valance is a fantastic movie.

Eli Price (03:07:39.187)
Okay. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I caught up with that. Not that long ago. It was actually the film spotting, which we talked about their podcast does like the March Madness style bracket tournament. And it was it was like best of the 60s. And that was one that was one that I hadn't seen. And so I was like, oh, yeah. Yeah, it's fantastic. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Philip Marinello (03:07:59.329)
Nice. No, it's a masterpiece and very, very relevant in the age of fake news and all that.

Eli Price (03:08:09.068)
Yeah, it holds up.

Yep. Yeah. Fake news. And then like, just like the morality of like how you choose to go about issuing justice, I think is still relevant.

Philip Marinello (03:08:24.801)
Yeah, people the public's desire for the strong man and all that like it's super relevant movie.

Eli Price (03:08:28.803)
Right. Mm hmm. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I would say a definite stretch for the memory loss of manipulation draft, but I'm glad we got to recommend it here. Yeah, I guess at this point we can kind of close. Well, let me read out. I always sometimes I forget. Let me read out our drafts final.

draft picks and then we'll close out with some recommendations of the week. So Philip ended up with Blade Runner, The Born Identity, Strange Days, 51st Dates and After Yang. And I ended up with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Paris, Texas, Mulholland Drive, Captain America, The Winter Soldier and Dick Johnson is dead. So I think we did really well.

I think we both ended up with really good lists there.

Philip Marinello (03:09:27.882)
So who votes on these polls?

Eli Price (03:09:29.995)
So when the Monday after it releases, I'll post the poll. I do it in an Instagram story and on the Facebook page. So whenever that happens, make sure you, I've gotten destroyed before because one of my guests recruited her army of friends to vote for her. And I was like, man.

Philip Marinello (03:09:41.174)
All right.

Philip Marinello (03:09:56.485)
Sure.

Eli Price (03:09:57.899)
I really she really outdid me with Getting people to vote for her so you know if you want to recruit a recruit an army of people to vote for your My friends that my friends are too objective. They're like hey, sorry man. I like the other person's So yeah, we'll see but yeah, it'll go up so I always post that I guess I've never really plugged that on the show before but on the

the on I usually try to post it on all three of Facebook Instagram and Twitter so on Twitter and Facebook obviously It's just like a post with a poll and then on Instagram It's usually in the story and it'll run for you know 24 hours Monday to Monday around lunch to Tuesday around lunch, so yeah, if you if you never vote on those like

Philip Marinello (03:10:47.098)
Sure.

Philip Marinello (03:10:52.558)
Nice.

Eli Price (03:10:55.695)
be looking for that the Monday after it releases and go vote for who you think had the best draft. I always have a good time with it. I've won a lot of them. I've lost some. Yeah, it's fun. People enjoy voting on stuff like that.

Philip Marinello (03:11:15.523)
I look forward to seeing how that turns out.

Eli Price (03:11:19.063)
Yeah. Did you, did you have a recommendation of the week you wanted to share?

Philip Marinello (03:11:25.117)
Okay, yeah, recommendation of the week, give me just a moment. So I have recently done, I get sucked into and I love doing them a lot of little like, specific like themes for my watching like little journeys that I go on. I recently mentioned film spotting a few times I recently had Josh Larson, film spotting and think Christian back on our show for a second time.

Eli Price (03:11:43.878)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (03:11:54.917)
because he has a new book out on horror and what we can it's called Fear Not a Christian appreciation of horror and it's all about how by examining the things that scare us like what we can learn about ourselves and really great book really great conversation look for that in a few weeks. By the time this is out, we probably only have to wait a couple weeks only a week or two for it. But

Eli Price (03:12:10.415)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (03:12:21.449)
My biggest revelation, I had seen a lot of the movies he referenced, so I wanted to kind of fill in some gaps and try to pick one or two from some specific categories because he's got like eight or nine categories. So I ended up watching and loving, and I didn't realize it was in the Criterion collection until after I watched it. But 1942, Jacques Trenier's Cat People.

Eli Price (03:12:50.072)
Okay.

Philip Marinello (03:12:50.817)
really, really wonderful. Are you familiar with cat people?

Eli Price (03:12:53.812)
I am not. Not in the least bit, honestly.

Philip Marinello (03:12:55.813)
Paul Schrader made a very, very horny and very bizarre remake in the 80s. But this came out in 1942. It's about a Serbian immigrant who comes to the States and courts and marries this man. But she was kind of raised in a strict, essentially like a strict mystic fundamentalist upbringing and she was kind of taught that.

Eli Price (03:13:02.823)
Okay.

Eli Price (03:13:23.495)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (03:13:25.365)
when she lets her does it like when she gives into her desires, that it's like evil and bad and like, she becomes like a panther like a feral cat. So she tries to keep them at bay. And this movie is about her, her fear of like, and even like, as a married woman, like, engaging in her desires, like that she's gonna end up

Eli Price (03:13:47.321)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Marinello (03:13:53.561)
destroying the man she loves. It's a very fascinating movie that's shockingly relevant and progressive from the studio system in 1942. So I loved it.

Eli Price (03:14:04.971)
Yeah. I wonder if it would make a good double feature with Turning Grid, the Pixar movie.

Philip Marinello (03:14:12.738)
I don't think so. But it's it was wonderful. And I.

Eli Price (03:14:15.227)
haha

Eli Price (03:14:18.627)
Yeah, concept wise, that sounds similar. That's what it made when you were describing it. I was like, that sounds a little bit like turning red, like a woman giving into her desires.

Philip Marinello (03:14:26.629)
Could could be that could definitely make an interesting double feature for sure. I'll be getting that on the next the November Criterion sale. I'll probably be picking that up.

Eli Price (03:14:33.189)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:14:37.963)
Okay. Yeah, that's one that's like totally off my radar. So that I love it when a recommendation comes for something. I'm just like totally. Unaware of. So it is now on my watch list for Letterboxd. Yeah, so this week, I want I'm going to recommend actually a show.

that I have not, I'm not completely caught up with it. But I enjoy DC characters. I've done, I haven't kept up with the comics in a long time, but there's a few years where I was really keeping up with a lot of the DC comics really into it. But.

But yeah, I just really enjoy the characters in DC. And so I still haven't seen the Flash. It's streaming now, so I might watch it. Yes.

Philip Marinello (03:15:41.453)
I just saw, yeah, it dropped. I was like, yeah, two hour, almost two and a half hours.

Eli Price (03:15:46.471)
Yeah, that's why I haven't gotten to it yet. But yeah, The Flash is actually my favorite DC character. And so it's one of those that I'm looking forward to the movie because it's my favorite character, but also not looking forward to it because I hope they don't mess it up sort of thing. But...

Philip Marinello (03:15:50.475)
check it out.

Philip Marinello (03:15:55.063)
Okay.

Philip Marinello (03:16:08.557)
Well, I'll tell you, a really wonderful writer is about to take over the series, uh, the comics, if you ever want to tune back in.

Eli Price (03:16:15.033)
Okay.

Yeah, I did see that. I did see that actually I might check them out. I know there's some You can get them digitally now, so I might look into that But that's not my recommendation because I haven't seen it. My recommendation is for a new animated show Um that's on being released on max Called my adventures with superman And uh, it's these, you know 20

Eli Price (03:16:48.799)
You know animated episodes a little animated show and Honestly, it's just kind of like I just kind of throw it on while I eat lunch Sort of show I don't have to pay that close attention and there it's not like It's it's not a recommendation because like it's profound or amazing or whatever. It's just kind of like an enjoyable Throw this on and watch kind of show

It's very much like kid friendly. And yeah, it's just it's reminiscent of when like the Justice League show was really good. It yeah, it's not like it's just like endearing. The it's kind of like.

Philip Marinello (03:17:21.909)
It looked good, I haven't watched it yet.

Philip Marinello (03:17:32.165)
That was such a good show.

Eli Price (03:17:40.539)
beginning of Superman and Lois Lane and at the Daily Planet and so like their relationship is budding and it's so it's like cute in that way and it's very much like I don't know if you're an adult and you really don't watch anything that's made for kids you probably won't enjoy it because it it's very much like made for kids to be able to enjoy but yeah I just

I enjoy watching shows like that every once in a while. And I think Superman is sometimes like, he gets a bad rep for just being like, he's not an interesting character because he's just too strong. But the best Superman comics are like, really some of the best comic books in general, I think. And so this show is really fun, just kind of him figuring out who he's gonna be.

Philip Marinello (03:18:29.069)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:18:38.299)
Is uh, it's good so far. I've watched I think there's It's going to finish with like 10 episodes. I think nine of them are out now and i've seen six of them Um, and it's fun. Um Yeah, so that's my recommendation Recommendation of the week my adventures with superman streaming on max so not a sponsor Uh, but if you if they want to send some money my way they they're welcome to you know, i'm not opposed to it um

Philip Marinello (03:18:55.417)
Very nice.

Philip Marinello (03:19:00.537)
Hehehehe

Eli Price (03:19:08.307)
But yeah, that's so that's the show Philip. Why don't you? You've talked about the substance podcast already But why don't you kind of share where people can follow you and the show?

Philip Marinello (03:19:22.709)
Yeah, I mean, I I'm Philip Maranello with one L and Philip on all the things letterbox, Twitter, Instagram, all that good stuff. And then my podcast, the substance, we are the substance pod on all the main platforms. But yeah, if you like movies, we got a lot of great movies, I'll maybe even send you the letterbox list that I update of all the substantive cinema movies that we've covered.

Eli Price (03:19:49.413)
Yeah.

Philip Marinello (03:19:50.753)
Yeah, we've, like I said, we've had Josh Larson. The last two guests we've had were actually letterbox employees who if you listen to the letterboxed show podcast, you've heard them we've had who we had we've had Brett McCracken from the Gospel Coalition. We've had Alyssa Wilkinson from Vox, that Tyler Huckabee and Kevin McClendon from Seeing and Believing. It's we love movies and we sometimes get really great guests on

Eli Price (03:20:15.953)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Philip Marinello (03:20:20.009)
But yeah, we also have stuff that covers like the church calendar, liturgies, theology, social issues. We've had a lot of wonderful guests. And back when I had regular co-hosts, we would cover topics ourselves. But yeah, no, it's a great time. We just launched our Patreon, so me and my editor might be making some new episodes ourselves.

depending on how well the Patreon does. But yeah, the substance has been a blast or somewhere in the 130s probably when this comes out and we plan on going for a long time.

Eli Price (03:20:50.64)
Great.

Eli Price (03:21:00.247)
Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I caught up with it recently. We connected and yeah, checked out the podcast. I really enjoyed everything, everywhere, all at once. Y'all did an episode on that. That was a really great episode. Yeah, I look forward to digging into more of y'all stuff for sure. But I'll make sure to link all that in the show notes so people can

find it easily if they if Natalie and their life hit all their pins and they couldn't write it down then I Have no fear. I'll put it in the show notes. You can just click the link But yeah, I really enjoyed having you on Philip. I really appreciate you coming on and Yeah, it's that's it for this week. I look forward to talking about insomnia next week

Philip Marinello (03:21:37.66)
Yeah, right?

Eli Price (03:21:58.451)
But until then you've been listening to the establishing shot and Yeah, I've been Eli Price for Philip Maranello. We will see you next time