The Dark Knight (w/ Houston Dragna)

Eli Price (00:40.194)
Hello everyone and welcome to The Establishing Shot, a podcast where we do deep dives into directors and their filmographies. I am here on episode 22 of the podcast, getting deeper and deeper into Christopher Nolan's filmography as we cover this great household name director, Christopher Nolan. And yeah, we're talking about the dark night today.

the penultimate Christopher Nolan film, I think. I don't know, you could, I think it's between this and Inception, but you know, who, I think it's just personal preference. But yeah, definitely his most successful. So I'm excited to talk about this one. And I brought in a good friend today to talk about it with me, Houston Dragna. Houston, I'm excited to have you on.

to talk about this movie. I think I texted you when I asked you to do it and I said whenever I think about the Dark Knight, I think about Houston because of your love for this movie. And so yeah, I had to get Houston on for this episode. Yeah, Houston, if you want to introduce yourself and kind of let everyone know who you are, what you do, that sort of thing.

Houston (01:50.166)
Hehehe

Eli Price (02:09.399)
Yeah, go ahead.

Houston (02:11.114)
Hey, thanks man. Yeah, it was awesome to get a text from you and say like, Hey, like I've been in this podcast thing. I kind of been following you for a bit. So thanks so much for having me. But yeah, my name is Houston Dragna. I've been known Eli for, I don't know what, probably close to 10 years now. Jeez. Okay. Yeah. I need to like check myself. I'm like 31 now. That's just like somewhere in the middle of college is when I, when we met.

Eli Price (02:29.217)
Yeah, close to it.

Houston (02:38.686)
Yeah, we started at a church together where I was the worship leader and Eli was the associate pastor and then like we knew each other from the Baptist Collegiate Ministry. I think you can see him wearing the hat right now from UL Lafayette. I am a native of Louisiana. I am married almost 10 years to my wife, Kristen. We have a little girl named Josephine. We have another little girl on the way in December. So that's exciting.

Eli Price (02:43.989)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:48.642)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:04.572)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (03:05.398)
I am currently working as a graphic designer, photographer, and videographer for a very small marketing firm in Baton Rouge, but I did used to work for Presonus Audio and then for Short Time Fender when we got bought out by them. I did everything from social media to photography to kind of co-directing and producing some commercials and video shoots for different products and stuff like that. I've done the odd music video live recording thing here and there.

Eli Price (03:19.226)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (03:35.222)
Um, either from an audio perspective, like I had, I went to school for like audio production and then kind of did that for a while with personas and then, uh, picked up videography soon after. And so I've done a little bit of that. Um, and yeah, I, uh, I play music myself, so I'm a guitar player. I sang a little bit, um, pretty much anything besides piano. I did like brass and stuff in college. Um, yeah, I'm kind of like going all over the place, but that's, that's me in a nutshell. Um, yeah.

Eli Price (04:00.95)
Yeah.

Houston (04:04.77)
Thanks for having me, man.

Eli Price (04:05.814)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Houston is the man of many talents. And most of the time you're like, I'm a, you know, what's the, what's the phrase?

Houston (04:21.206)
The Jack of all trades, Master of None.

Eli Price (04:22.558)
Yeah, Master of None. Yeah, but Houston's pretty, he's like the Jack of all trades, but like, maybe not Master, but like higher than Jack, you know?

Houston (04:34.419)
I'm heckin' decent at most.

Eli Price (04:39.07)
Oh man, but yeah, Houston's even done some pictures of my family that I love. So yeah. I know y'all haven't put out anything in recent months, but you had a podcast with some friends going for a while too.

Houston (04:45.962)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you, man.

Houston (05:01.502)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's called Dad Casual. It is a kind of like a chill video game podcast. We call it that casual because it's a bunch of dads and we're all like, quote unquote casual gamers. So we started that about a year ago. We put about, I don't know, we were, I think we're getting close to 50 episodes or so. Maybe I think it was in like the low forties maybe. But I mean, all three of us are videographers to some degree. And the other two guys own a wedding business and I own my own wedding business.

Eli Price (05:13.658)
Hehehe

Eli Price (05:19.851)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (05:31.03)
So like if you go to my website, like right now it's just like all wedding centered. Um, but I do like a lot of like, I was saying product stuff and commercial work and contract labor and all this kind of stuff. Um, and from family portraits to kind of whatever comes my way. So we all kind of got busy with booking and um, like the way that we run the production, it's like maybe a little bit too much for what we could, we kind of over committed a little bit. So I think we're just taking like a little bit of a break right now, but um, it's a ton of fun. So if you want to go check it out, it's dad.

Eli Price (05:35.243)
Yeah.

Eli Price (05:53.741)
Yeah.

Houston (06:00.674)
DadCasual or DadCasual podcast pretty much on any service.

Eli Price (06:04.758)
Yeah. The content is still out there, even if there's nothing coming out right now. So, yeah.

Houston (06:07.998)
Yeah, yeah, we have we have hours and hours and hours and hours of content. So if you like video games and especially if you're a dad, it'll cater right to you.

Eli Price (06:16.054)
Perfect. Yeah, that's a fun little niche video game dads. Yeah, Houston, you want to share a little bit about just remembering what made you start loving film. Maybe it was childhood memories or college or whatever. Share a little bit about that.

Houston (06:44.01)
Yeah. So I guess like my earliest memories would be Disney movies. Cause my family was like super into Disney. Like I never went on a ski trip. Like I want a very few like road trips and stuff, but like every other year, I'm like, I'm not trying to like brag or anything. Like I'm very like conscious of the fact that like not everybody gets to do this, but like every other year we would go to Disney world with like friends and family and all that kind of stuff. And so that was a big part of me growing up. And that was kind of a part of my family's identity for a while.

Eli Price (06:50.008)
Right.

Eli Price (07:07.171)
Right.

Eli Price (07:13.358)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (07:13.394)
And so we owned pretty much anything Disney animated feature films wise on VHS and then DVD and the Blu-ray in my house. And so there's like bookshelves full of it, like, like four of those at my house. Probably still full of like old, mostly Disney movies. And so like Aladdin, Hercules, Mulan, those are some of my favorites. I ones that came out in like the early to mid nineties. So those are my, my fondest still.

Eli Price (07:20.153)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (07:26.99)
Ha ha ha.

Eli Price (07:38.466)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (07:42.022)
some of my fondest movie memories and some of my favorite movies to this day. Um, I don't know about like modern, I guess, like proper cinematography. Um, which I mean, Disney has, I think they make great stuff, like I said, but, um, I don't really know when or, or who it clicked with or what movie it may have been, if there was even one, it was probably just a series of a bunch of them. But, um,

Eli Price (07:51.524)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (07:55.5)
Yeah.

Eli Price (08:05.496)
Right.

Houston (08:07.338)
I don't think I'm as much of a cinema buff as you are. But I mean, obviously I love cinematography, I love photography, I have a really strong respect for great cinematographers and movie directors and writers and producers and all of those involved in that process. Especially now since I do it more on a professional level, even though I'm not doing narrative feature films, I'm doing like commercial work. But there's still like a lot of crossover there and it requires a lot of like it's

Eli Price (08:11.514)
Sure, yeah.

Eli Price (08:15.592)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (08:27.959)
Right, yeah.

Eli Price (08:31.683)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (08:35.458)
thought and passion and care it actually takes to make those things happen, especially when I work with little to no budget in comparison most of the time. But yeah, we can maybe later go on and like, what are my favorite movies of all time? That kind of thing that'll maybe give you a better inkling of my taste and where I started liking film. But we can move on for now.

Eli Price (08:37.754)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (08:44.967)
Right.

Eli Price (08:59.03)
Yeah, yeah, it's funny. I don't know if you know this, but we talked in the overview episode about Nolan. So when he finished college, he was working on some shorts and stuff with his friends, but his day job was working for basically marketing, or I can't remember exactly what sort of company it was, but he was...

basically just shooting like training videos and stuff for companies with like basically no budget. And so.

Houston (09:36.438)
Yeah. And he, and he was like in his like late twenties, early thirties, right? I mean, I'm right there with you. And, and so can confession Nolan is my favorite director by, like by a long shot. Like I love some other ones, like your Tarantino's and Scorsese's and stuff. But, but Nolan is yeah, by, by a large margin, my favorite director.

Eli Price (09:39.242)
Right, uh-huh, yeah. Yeah, so who knows, the next Christopher Nolan, you know. Yeah.

Sure, yeah.

Eli Price (09:58.358)
Yeah. He's, um, like I said, he's kind of like the, the household name, like he's, he's so accessible. Um, and like, like if you're, if you're kind of like, um, you know, obviously like there's, there's his detractors. Um, but, um, but it's like, it's undeniable that like he's done something with movies that not many people have done, which is like make original stuff that like.

Houston (10:06.89)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (10:28.438)
like kills at the box office. Like not a lot of people do that. I mean, you've got Spielberg, James Cameron, like Nolan, and not really a whole lot of others are able to really do that. So.

Houston (10:41.298)
Yeah, I agree. And I will preface this and just kind of get it out the way right now. I'm not like, I would say I'm a pretty hardcore modern Nolan fan, but I actually haven't seen his first three movies. I haven't seen Insomnia. I haven't seen Memento yet. And I haven't seen, what's the first, the very first? Yeah, I haven't seen that one either, which I'm like kicking myself for. But I think I started with like the Dark Knight trilogy and Prestige.

Eli Price (10:52.216)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (10:56.854)
Following yeah

Eli Price (11:05.278)
Yeah, if I had to recommend like just from one of his early movies, it would be Memento. And a lot of people still will say that's like his, some people even say that's his best still. It's just like, it's very like precise and like interestingly constructed. Yeah, really good. And some followings okay.

Houston (11:10.786)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (11:32.466)
It's very obviously made with no budget, but really well made for a no budget movie. Insomniac is kind of like his mo- it's probably the least Nolan-y movie of all of his stuff, but yeah.

Houston (11:50.102)
I was listening to your episode on that one a little bit. But I didn't even realize he'd made a movie with Robin Williams. I was like, like one of my favorite actors. So that's pretty cool.

Eli Price (11:55.786)
Yeah. It's, um, it's still really good. Um, I like insomnia, but, um, but yeah, what, what was your, like, do you remember what your introduction to Nolan was?

Houston (12:09.282)
I think it was, and I was looking at the timing of his movie. So I think technically the prestige was like, it came out just after the Batman Begins, but I think I saw the prestige first. Cause I think at the time, like the notion of like the superhero movie was still kind of fresh. And like, I think the only ones I had seen were maybe the original Spider-Man ones, the Remy, what's the director's name?

Eli Price (12:12.57)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (12:16.908)
Right. Yeah.

Eli Price (12:20.725)
Okay, yeah.

Eli Price (12:27.084)
It was, yeah.

Eli Price (12:33.85)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, Raimi. Yeah, same Raimi. Yeah.

Houston (12:38.454)
Sam Raimi, yeah, yeah. I almost said Raimi Malek. It's like, no, that's the actor. But yeah, and I love those. But yeah, that was definitely before the whole superhero movie, like proper modern one, kind of craze caught on. And I loved Hugh Jackman at the time, because I think he'd like, that maybe was the tie-in from like X-Men. Like he had like just done that and then he did, yeah, yeah. And so I did actually like those. I guess, yeah, it was like right when that whole craze was starting. And so.

Eli Price (12:50.35)
Yeah.

Eli Price (12:57.73)
Yeah, X-Men had just come out not long before, yeah.

Eli Price (13:06.147)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (13:06.426)
Maybe I was like, oh, well, maybe I'll check this out. And so I did. And I remember that movie just blew my mind. It was so good. The twist is amazing. Like the whole tone of it, his cinematography. Um, I'm not sure. Was that also a Wally Feister movie for, for DP? I think he's done most of them. Most of the Nolan movies, but, um, but

Eli Price (13:12.002)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (13:21.131)
Yeah.

Eli Price (13:24.406)
Yeah, he has. Um, I think Alex, uh, not the, not a few most recent ones, but, um, but yeah, everything from like memento to like, um, yeah, I think through the dark night, I think starting with maybe Dunkirk, he switched to Hoyt Van Hoytema. Um, but yeah, all the way through. Yeah.

Houston (13:37.59)
The whole Dark Knight trilogy for sure.

Houston (13:46.286)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay. But yeah, Prestige, yeah, just to get back to that, the Prestige I think was definitely my first one that like really gripped me as like, okay, I need to know who made this movie.

Eli Price (13:59.51)
Right. Yeah. Yeah, that was that was mine too. Prestige. I think I had seen Batman Begins when I was in high school. I remember watching it like on my TV in my room, I think. Because I didn't see it in theaters. But yeah, I remember the press, the prestige sticks out because it was like, like you said, it was the one that was like, whoa, this is, there's a lot going on here.

Houston (14:05.664)
Mm.

Houston (14:28.866)
It was like the most intentional type of movie I'd ever seen. Like it wasn't just like this like happy go lucky Disney movie kind of thing, but it also wasn't like a horror film and it wasn't like super inaccessible. So I kind of, it just hit right there. Cause like, there wasn't like a lot of like, I don't even think it was it R rated. I think it was just PG 13 maybe. So yeah, like it was just like, whatever, like it doesn't have like a whole lot of like quote unquote bad stuff and I can just kind of enjoy it and watch it with family. And like it was just a cool thing. So yeah.

Eli Price (14:32.471)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (14:39.585)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (14:47.071)
No, it was PG-13, yeah.

Eli Price (14:54.406)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, which is funny because he really walks the line. I think for some of his stuff on PG, cause like that lasts last, uh, picture that you get in the prestigious pretty horrifying and yeah. Um, yeah. And really too, like in the dark night, which we'll talk about, he, he does some like editing, like where he cuts at just the right moment.

Houston (15:02.094)
Mm-hmm. Hehehe.

Houston (15:12.044)
Yeah.

Eli Price (15:23.382)
so that he can keep it PG-13. Yeah. Oh yeah. But yeah, it's, we can transition to the Dark Knight off of that. You were talking about like the kind of Genesis of the superhero movie movement. And that really was like, I mean, that was this. This is kind of what, I mean, you had like,

Houston (15:24.442)
Mm-hmm. He's pretty good about that, like an inception for sure.

Houston (15:43.971)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (15:53.558)
You had like franchise stuff being made like this, like we talked about Spider-Man, the X-Men stuff. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And it's, at that point it was kind of like, Oh yeah. Every like, like every couple of decades they'll, they'll do some superhero, like a little few superhero movies like they did with Batman. There's been a

Houston (15:57.842)
And you had like the old and even like the older like Batman iterations and like the Superman movies and all that kind of stuff before. But like this was like it felt different.

Eli Price (16:21.258)
a couple iterations at this point, Spider-Man. The Spider-Man was really like, I guess, kind of new. There might have been some other older stuff, but not well known. Superman 2.

Houston (16:32.83)
Yeah, and I think like it's like, yeah, I think I think some of these like kind of what maybe set them apart is like, like these ginormous budgets with like proper VFX and special effects budgets. And it didn't feel kind of like so like, it didn't feel like a movie, you know what I mean? Like it didn't feel like this like old school like golden days of Hollywood kind of film. It felt like it was a lot more like tangible of a movie.

Eli Price (16:40.926)
Right.

Eli Price (16:53.006)
Right.

Eli Price (16:58.294)
Yeah. And modern, like, uh, like if you, if you go back and watch, like, they, like, if you go back and watch, like the 89, Spider-Man or go back and watch like the 78 Superman, you're like, oh yeah, that was made in 78 or yeah, that was definitely made in 89. Um, and so like these movies are definitely of their time for sure.

Houston (17:00.95)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (17:15.274)
Yeah. Now, now I do. Yeah. Now I do have a soft spot for the Clooney Batman movie or both, both of them. Yeah.

Eli Price (17:23.41)
Oh yeah, the Clooney one, okay. Well, Clooney was only the one. He was only... So Keaton, Keaton was in the first two Burton ones. Batman and Robin was Val Kilmer. And then Clooney was in... No, Clooney was Batman and Robin. Val Kilmer was Batman forever with Jim Carrey.

Houston (17:28.106)
Was, well, didn't you do, wasn't it Batman and then a.

Houston (17:36.482)
Well, then there's Batman and Robin, right? It was like.

Houston (17:41.527)
Was, okay.

Houston (17:51.68)
Whatever one Schwarzenegger was in is the one I'm talking about. Yes. Okay. Then I really liked that one. I still do. It's definitely a guilty pleasure movie, but I do enjoy it.

Eli Price (17:53.846)
Yeah, that was Batman and Robin with Clooney. Yeah.

Eli Price (18:01.054)
Yeah, that would definitely be considered guilty pleasure based on like ratings of it.

Houston (18:06.962)
Oh yeah, for sure. But it just, it felt the most like comic book-y. Like it was just so over the top. I don't know. It was cheesy in the best way.

Eli Price (18:10.538)
Yeah. The fun fact about that one. They paid Schwarzenegger a ton of money to only be in scenes where you could see his face. So like if you can't see Schwarzenegger's face, then it's not him. That was like the only way he would do it. He was like, I'll, I'll shoot the close up scenes and then I'm out. Yeah.

Houston (18:28.246)
Oh man, that's awesome.

Houston (18:32.942)
Chill.

Houston (18:37.538)
So good.

Eli Price (18:40.042)
I guess he could do that at that point in his career. Um, but yeah, uh, yeah. So this, uh, dark night comes out in Oh, eight, um, which is the same year as Ironman, so really it's like the beginning of the MCU, um, uh, so I, I think Ironman came out in like, uh, it came out like maybe in the spring, um, probably like April or March or May somewhere in there.

Houston (18:42.792)
Oh, for sure.

Houston (18:50.168)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (18:54.518)
Man, okay.

Eli Price (19:09.762)
And then this came out in the summer. Um, so. It, yeah, you really end up with like two trajectories. The one being like the MCU spiraling out of the success of iron man. Um, and then like the, um, the poor like attempts at dark superhero movie making that spiral out of the dark night, which is funny because the dark night is still considered.

Houston (19:24.075)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (19:35.968)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (19:39.126)
like by the vast majority of people like to be the best superhero movie of all time. And yet, like, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's hard to argue with it. But yeah, yet, like the trajectory of movies that came out of it were probably like went downhill, whereas the ones that came out of Iron Man, which in its own right is a great movie, you know, really took off. I just.

I don't know, I just kind of find that ironic that...

Houston (20:10.026)
Yeah, I didn't know. I didn't realize that. I thought Iron Man was like quite a bit later. I thought it was like 2010 or 2011 or something, but it's crazy to hear that it's 08.

Eli Price (20:15.446)
Yeah, no, 08. Yeah. Yeah, it is crazy to think about that. Cause yeah, 08 was Iron Man and then like, they kind of amped it up each year following that. And then 2012 was the first Avengers movie. And so like you really, it was kind of like an exponential growth every year, like from 08 to 2012 cause they started like,

pumping out more and more of those movies so that they could work up to the Avengers.

Houston (20:51.094)
Yeah, I remember that. That whole era was like such a fun time to be into movies.

Eli Price (20:54.818)
It was, yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, it was a fun time, but this movie really like stands out amongst all of that as just something totally like different and unique and special. But yeah, you know, so obviously Nolan had made Batman Begins. He threw in, you know, you got the Joker card.

reveal at the very end, people freaked out. Um, like, oh, they're going to do Joker. Um, and, uh, but Nolan, like, honestly, uh, like if you, if you. Read like interviews, he was like, he did that. Um, it, it wasn't like, he didn't do it with the same intention that like, you get a lot of post credit scenes from Marvel movies these days, like that wasn't really his intention. It was just kind of like a. Like.

this is just the beginning of Batman. There's, it's kind of like that idea of like...

Houston (22:00.798)
Yeah, he meant for it to be like a self-contained origin story, not his intention to be like the beginning of this whole... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (22:04.178)
Yeah, right.

franchise or whatever. Yeah. But yeah, he, so he was, he's, you know, he's kind of like innately resistant to doing a sequel, which you, like you could probably see what the, like what the way his career has gone, like before that and since. He's like very interested in making like original stuff. Oh man. With, yeah.

Houston (22:27.534)
I mean, I don't know, man. I'm still waiting on the sequel to Interstellar. Could you imagine?

Eli Price (22:37.598)
Matthew McConaughey, I don't know what would he be like stuck just the whole movie is just Matthew McConaughey stuck in the whatchamacallit where The the black hole with I can't remember what it's called the tesseract Stuck in the tesseract Yeah Be a anyways Yeah, no, yeah. Oh, I wrote down this quote that'll clear that up Nolan said

Houston (22:48.255)
The new little... yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (23:05.026)
We wanted to suggest possibilities for how the story would continue, not because we were going to make a sequel. So it was just kind of this idea of like, you know, this is the movies called Batman Begins. This is just like his beginning. And like, they just wanted to suggest, okay, like everyone knows who the joker is. Let's throw the joker card in so that you can see, like, this is the beginning of Batman. Now things are about to get real for him. It wasn't like to suggest like, now we're going to do it.

Houston (23:21.166)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (23:31.979)
Yeah.

Eli Price (23:34.082)
Batman movie with Joker. It was just kind of like for the ending of the story purposes. Yeah.

Houston (23:41.71)
And sidebar on that, the Batman, like the newer one with Robert Pattinson and stuff, I know like the Joker is like the biggest villain in the Batman universe, but like just for them to do the same thing more or less in that movie just kind of irked me a little bit, which I thought it was a great movie, but like it just it doesn't touch the Dark Knight trilogy for me.

Eli Price (23:46.997)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (23:52.536)
Yeah.

Yeah. That.

Eli Price (24:00.758)
Yeah, I loved that movie. And it's honestly for me, it comes very close to the Dark Knight as far as like how good I think it is, like all around. But that scene is the one thing that's like, would keep me from saying it's as quite as good as the Dark Knight, cause it's like.

Houston (24:18.051)
Objectively, yeah.

Eli Price (24:30.05)
What is this like terrible throw in of the Joker? But yeah, obviously like Nolan was interested in doing the Joker. But one of the things that I thought, I think is very cool about the way Nolan did this trilogy is he was able to like make the studio hold off and let the ideas and the...

Houston (24:33.815)
Yeah.

Eli Price (24:58.594)
the movie and the anticipation simmer. And really every time he finished one of these, when he finished Batman Begins and then when he finished Dark Knight, it was kind of up in the air of, is he actually going to do another one? And so this, it seems like he was more willing to do the Dark Knight and then kind of against, kind of really resistant to doing Dark Knight Rises, but then ended up.

of giving in. But he comes out with these pretty ambitious movies in between each of these Dark Knight movies. And so just that idea that he has the trust of the studio to be like, okay, maybe I'll do another one, but I'm going to make what I want to make first.

and let the kind of ideas from the last movie simmer.

Houston (25:59.21)
Yeah, just kind of thinking on his timing of everything that you brought attention to that, like his production schedule must have been ridiculous because like, 05 Batman Begins, 06 The Prestige, 08 The Dark Knight, 2010 Inception, 2012 The Dark Knight Rises, like the dude just like did not stop working. Because movies, I mean, they take months, sometimes years.

Eli Price (26:06.86)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (26:11.994)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right.

Eli Price (26:19.606)
Yeah, yeah. Between, I mean between like, so like Inception and The Dark Knight are probably his longest times like actually in production. Both of those were probably, well I know this one because I have it sitting in my notes is like seven months of production and shooting. And Inception was similar. Yeah. Right. That's not right.

Houston (26:28.994)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (26:40.708)
And that's not accounting preproduction either, and like planning and writing and scheduling and hiring and all that kind of stuff.

Eli Price (26:46.474)
Mm-hmm. And then, you know, post-production too you have So, I mean, yeah, it's you spend a long time making these movies and but with this one and I want to say it was a similar thing with the Dark Knight Rises. He actually Kind of gets his brother Jonathan Goes by Jonah for the family He got so basically he's in

Pre-production for the prestige he's getting ready to start shooting the prestige and he's like, okay like Jonah I want to make I think I'm gonna do this Batman movie

Houston (27:19.125)
Yeah.

Houston (27:25.598)
Yeah, because he ends up writing quite a few of Christopher's screenplays, right? Like he'll do a lot of the writing and then Christopher will come like supervise and produce and direct.

Eli Price (27:30.822)
Mm hmm. Right.

Right, right. And Nolan does like, he does have a hand in the scripts for basically everything. Like Jonathan wrote the Prestige too, but Nolan like added some stuff back in and like, you know, made his adjustments. Right.

Houston (27:49.422)
Mm hmm. Yeah, ultimately it's his movie, right? It's just Jonas is kind of doing a lot of that, that legwork, kind of working as a as a partner with him.

Eli Price (27:56.362)
Yeah. Well, he, yeah. And he, you know, it's his brother and so he knows him. And so he, he kind of, you know, trusts him to, to write the movie in the way that like, you know, Jonah knows his brother too. So he knows like, this is how my, this is a movie that my brother would want to direct him and could do well. Um, so yeah, he, he basically gets Jonah to work on the script for this while he's making the prestige.

Houston (28:05.016)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (28:26.198)
Um, and, uh, yeah, it's, um, basically like they took, um, they took a few ideas. Like, so one would be like, at the end of Batman Begins, you know, Gordon kind of suggests this escalation of things. Now that Batman is kind of like out there. And so they, they take that idea of escalation and like, Batman is a

Houston (28:47.967)
Yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (28:52.646)
Batman Begins is a very personal film for Bruce and Batman. And this one, you know, has already escalated a good bit. Like I think it's supposed to be set around like nine months to a year after Batman Begins. Yeah.

Houston (28:56.834)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (29:07.722)
Yeah, it's not super long after, but it's kind of enough to like for the world or at least Gotham to realize like what has happened and kind of digest that for a little while. And so you kind of see the telltale signs are everybody being like super on edge and it's like I don't like it tonight man. That one guy said it's like, it's like what you have more chance of running, running the powerball than running into him. And so it's a cool dynamic.

Eli Price (29:15.39)
Riot. Yeah, and it's...

Eli Price (29:21.124)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (29:28.042)
Yeah, yeah, it's escalated. They ran with that idea. And yeah, so, you know, before he I think before he even took it that Jonah, I think he did do talks. He did a few months of talks with David Goyer, who was the co writer with Chris Nolan for Batman Begins. So they

So if you like, look at the credits, I think Chris and Jonathan have the right, the screenplay credit, but Chris and David Goyer have the story credit, um, which is like a, a whole, like, I don't know. It's, it's like, you know, I guess it's one of those things. It's like, when you actually write the script, you're putting the story to paper, but you can still get the story credit. I don't know. Um,

Houston (30:23.338)
Yeah, like the screenplay, like I would imagine, like actually has all of like the actor notes and all that kind of stuff, like the actual like what you see in the script, more so than just like the if you were to read a book of it, which would be like kind of like the story. But there's so much minutiae and all of the like the Hollywood crediting system. So they want to make sure everybody gets paid.

Eli Price (30:28.799)
Yeah And the dialogue

Eli Price (30:37.75)
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, for sure. Uh, but yeah, so after, after kind of Nolan and Goyer kind of get the, I guess the framework of the story kind of nailed down, I think I read that they had kind of had all the like main beats kind of on written on index cards. I guess he, I guess no one was like here, John and like toss index cards at him. It's like, I'm going to go make prestige now. Uh, but yeah, one of the, one of the things I think they decided like, um,

Houston (30:56.451)
Perfect.

Houston (31:03.202)
Hahaha

Eli Price (31:10.61)
During the writing was that they were gonna name it the Dark Knight Which is really like when you think about it a pretty ballsy move To take Batman out of the title of the Batman movie You know because up to this point like every everything Batman has Batman in the title whether it's Shows or movies or comics usually even

Houston (31:24.586)
Yeah, for sure. I guess I never thought about that.

Houston (31:32.376)
Yeah, like.

Houston (31:39.006)
Now that you're saying that, I am kind of remembering the hype around that name, just the thought of it alone. I was like, oh yeah, this is weird. I know what it is, because I saw the trailer or just the iconography and the typeface and all that kind of stuff. And you see directed by Christopher Nolan, it's like, oh, okay, this is more Batman. But yeah, that is a very interesting thing. And to also have it be the most successful of the trilogy, I don't know, maybe it's just the intrigue that it caused.

Eli Price (31:43.811)
Uh-huh.

Eli Price (31:51.595)
Riot.

Eli Price (32:03.725)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (32:07.252)
I mean, that's definitely not the only factor, but that's kind of a cool thing to point out.

Eli Price (32:11.326)
Yeah, yeah, it's one of those things where Nolan has a tendency to do this so you kind of flip something on its head and You know because something's done it things are done in Hollywood a certain way because they work to a certain degree You know there's formulas and ways that things are done because generally they work But Nolan has this way of like flipping things on their head and it's still like working out like even better than it would have otherwise and

This is one of those small examples of that. Like, okay, the formula is have Batman in the title because that's what sells. But I'm gonna flip that on its head and name the movie something that suggests Batman, but doesn't have Batman in the title. And it's gonna be the most successful superhero movie of all time.

Houston (32:48.334)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (33:02.23)
Yeah. Do you know if that was like one of the nicknames for Batman in like the comic series? Like did they pull that from anywhere?

Eli Price (33:07.358)
Yeah. Yeah, it's I mean, he's referred to as that in various places. Like there's the Dark Knight Returns like comic. That's a pretty like popular one. Yeah, like Dark Knight Returns is a comic arc where Batman's like old and he's like having to kind of return to action because something comes up.

Houston (33:21.602)
Mm-hmm. I feel like I'd read that somewhere before. I just was making sure.

Houston (33:33.108)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (33:36.97)
Um, yeah, so, so it's definitely that I want to say those comics were like eighties somewhere in the eighties. Um, uh, you know, somebody that might, that might get mad at me for getting this wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's Frank Miller. Um, but you know, you can just like, at me, I guess afterwards, if I got that wrong, uh, Batman Twitter or whatever.

Houston (34:01.306)
Oh, a quick Google reveals Detective Comics number 45 is where he was first called the Dark Knight.

Eli Price (34:09.534)
Okay, so that's really early on.

Houston (34:11.438)
Mm-hmm. A year and a half after his first appearance.

Eli Price (34:14.806)
Yeah, yeah, because, you know, Detective Comics was his first, like, comics. It wasn't called Batman. It was Detective Comics. Um, but yeah, um, yeah. And one of the, so another thing that I really liked that they did with this kind of that go, that kind of goes along with the writing of the screenplay is. Um, and it starts with Batman Begins, obviously, but Nolan is.

Houston (34:23.56)
Yeah

Eli Price (34:44.842)
more interested in writing good characters and story than he is in the fan service, which is where I think a lot of modern superhero movies go wrong. You've got to have the reveal of this character and you've got to have the post-credit scene where you show this character might be in the next movie. And Nolan's like...

totally doesn't care about any of that stuff. He's just like, right. Yeah, and even if you look at interviews and stuff with Nolan, he even talks about the Joker. He was interested in the Joker, not because he was like the Joker's a great villain, which he wouldn't deny that he is, but he was interested in a Joker because he was thinking about what he wanted to do with the Bruce Wayne Batman.

Houston (35:14.262)
Yeah, as long as the story is good.

Eli Price (35:41.122)
like character arc and the Joker, he felt like was the best villain to do that arc with, like to follow that story along with. So you know, it's doing the Joker wasn't some like gimmick to get butts in seats, even though it did. It absolutely did. But

Houston (35:59.146)
Yeah. And do you think, and I totally feel like Nolan could have taken any Batman villain and kind of like humanized him like he did in these movies, like these movies felt very like plausible. But do you think that the Joker is like maybe the most plausible to exist in real life character out of all the Batman villains? And like that's maybe why he was drawn to him because it felt maybe the most moldable to fit his story.

Eli Price (36:12.715)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (36:27.018)
Yeah, it probably has something to do with that. You know, there's obviously, there's a lot of different iterations of the Joker. And so a lot of the iterations have, you know, his skin is white because he fell in some chemicals sort of thing or whatever, or he has all kinds of different origins or non-origins. But yeah, he definitely liked the way the Joker operates, fills.

Houston (36:42.209)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (36:53.85)
pretty grounded in rea- like it could be grounded in reality, which does match what the Nolans were trying to do with this screenplay, which is like, let's take- we already like took a step forward with like grounding a comic book movie in reality with Batman Begins, but they decided to like take it a step further. You know, Batman Begins has a lot of set pieces like Gotham set pieces that were built, you know.

Houston (37:11.246)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (37:22.846)
One of them was built in a big, you know, air hang old air hangar and outside of London. And this movie is just Chicago. It's like there, there's not, there's not any like Gotham set pieces in this movie. Any stuff they do in studios just because like, they got to grab some green screen stuff or whatever, but anything like on the streets is just, it's literally just Chicago.

Houston (37:32.791)
Mostly, yeah.

Houston (37:50.458)
And fun fact, I was in Chicago yesterday. I just got back from.

Eli Price (37:53.022)
Yeah, I saw some I was seeing your Instagram story and I was like, I think Houston's in Chicago. Yeah.

Houston (37:58.778)
I did it just for the podcast, man, just to have reference images. Kidding. I had a marketing conference out there, but I was like, I'm going to go under the subway, like where he crashes Lamborghini and stuff. And I'm like, I got to take all the pictures. And I didn't, I didn't do like a whole like photo tour thing. I just kind of like snap some pictures of like what I thought was like, oh, like maybe they shot this here. Like, kind of just admiring the scenery and stuff. And I've been there a few times. I mean, definitely since the movie was shot, but it was just kind of a cool thought because like I had this on my, like this, this podcast on my brain at the moment. And I was like,

Eli Price (38:08.139)
Yeah, yeah.

Ha ha.

Eli Price (38:18.104)
Yeah.

Eli Price (38:21.338)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (38:27.521)
Uh-huh.

Houston (38:28.542)
Oh yeah, I have to like pay extra special attention to like all this kind of stuff and like look at the skyline and look at the city and the subways and all that kind of stuff. So I think it was from what I remember, maybe in some old behind the scenes stuff, like I know the predominantly was Chicago and you can obviously see that in the movie, but I think some of it may have been New York. And then they had like the whole Hong Kong scene as well.

Eli Price (38:31.69)
Yeah.

Eli Price (38:44.11)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (38:48.542)
Yeah, there was, I think there was like a couple of things shot in New York and London.

Houston (38:54.455)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (38:55.898)
Uh, but yeah, I, I don't, I didn't look up, I didn't try to like do research into like the percentage. Um, but like, if you, if you like, you go to IMDB and like go to the filming location section and kind of scroll through, like you'll see some stuff in London and I think there might be one New York, um, I can't remember if there is or not, honestly. Um, but, uh, if you scroll through, like, you just keep seeing like Chicago, and then like, there'll be like,

Houston (39:02.888)
Yeah.

Houston (39:22.925)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (39:25.078)
London or Hong Kong, obviously the Hong Kong scenes are in Hong Kong. But there will be some London peppered in.

Houston (39:29.61)
For sure. Yeah. But yeah, to your point though, like it is really cool that they use a lot of just like all location real, like actual built cities. Like they didn't it added to the realism of it because it kind of grounded it and made it feel even though it's quote unquote Gotham, it made it feel more relatable because it's so like legitimately real.

Eli Price (39:37.28)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (39:50.026)
Yeah. And part of what they like, so one of the things that really like, no one was interested in is doing like the city as like the I guess like the synthesis as like city and myth or like a city and legend like a legend. He so like In the back of his mind kind of making this movie. He had Michael Mann's heat, which is like

Houston (40:09.731)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (40:19.298)
very much an LA crime story. And one of the things he loved about Heat was how the city was very much a part of the story and the whole story was contained in LA. So you have a lot of LA movies where LA's a big part but they're going here, they're going there or whatever. But Heat is contained.

Houston (40:22.572)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (40:47.63)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (40:48.142)
Um, they're in LA and that's kind of the feel he wanted. He wanted it to be like, like really like it ends up being sort of a, I mean, it's a Gotham, but it like, it feels like a Chicago movie. Um,

Houston (41:02.366)
Yeah, and that's one of my nitpicks about the whole Marvel versus DC universe like thing is that like Marvel is grounded in anything that's on Earth at least is like real. It's like a based on a real place like Spider-Man's from New York and all this kind of stuff. But then like you have Superman from quote unquote Metropolis and then you have Batman from Gotham and I mean obviously they're like alien planets and stuff in both universes. But I do prefer that aspect of Marvel better because it's easy to kind of visualize things that way.

Eli Price (41:12.058)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (41:19.956)
Yeah.

Eli Price (41:28.778)
Right, right. And I think that's maybe what, um, maybe what like Nolan was trying to do here is like, okay, like Gotham has always been this like what city is it exactly? Um, and he was he was like, let's ground this even more in reality because like Gotham has always had like aspects of several like big American cities, um but Chicago and I think he even said like something that he liked obviously like he

Houston (41:35.342)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (41:57.518)
grew up half of his life in Chicago. Him and his brother, his brother went to school. That's where his brother went to high school.

Houston (42:06.114)
Yeah, because I know, doesn't he have like one British parent and one American parent or something like that? And so like he was kind of like

Eli Price (42:09.566)
Yeah, yeah, his mom is from the Chicago area and so they kind of went back and forth his whole childhood. Yeah, so Chicago means something to him that way, but he kind of talks about how something he likes about Chicago is that it's not quite as like recognizable as New York City or LA. Like if you watch a movie and you see like the streets of New York, you're like, that's New York City or that's LA.

Houston (42:13.315)
Gotcha.

Eli Price (42:38.67)
But Chicago is a has a little bit like it I think it more it's becoming more and more recognizable, but It is Yeah Everything yeah

Houston (42:46.994)
It's just not as used. Like New York is used for everything. LA is used for everything. Like not everybody knows the Hollywood sign in LA and Hollywood and everybody knows Times Square and the Empire State Building and the Hudson and all that kind of stuff in New York. So yeah, I totally see that.

Eli Price (42:57.891)
Right.

Yeah, yeah, and so, you know, he really takes that, the Chicago-ness of it and runs with it. And then too, like he even, well, like, just stay on that for one more second. Like, one of the things that I think it does is it brings like a weight to the city and a kind of depth to it, not even in the sense.

of like, like thematic depth, but like, I think literal depth. So like, we'll talk more about like those IMAX shots of the city, but like, if you compare like some of the shots, even just going back to like Batman, like there's, there's maybe one or two shots in Batman Begins where you really feel like the depth of a city because they did shoot on like sound stages that were built sets and stuff a lot more. Um,

Well, and so with this one, you have all those shots of the city and you see like literal depth. You're like, oh, this is a metropolis. It's the city that I'm in. Um, like even like, if you think back to like the 89, that like the timber Batman's, those were like very stylized and very obviously like, like built on sound stages. And there's like not depth to that. Like you.

Houston (44:06.126)
Mm-hmm. It's hard to fake, for sure.

Eli Price (44:26.818)
You don't watch those and feel like, man, this is a wide, expansive, like huge city that this is taking place in. And you feel like that in this movie because of that groundedness. Um, but, um, but yeah, then, I mean, you also have like other things that ground it in reality. You, you kind of get rid of the Batcave and Wayne Manor. Um, you know, that the explosion of Wayne Manor was an excuse for them to like.

even grounded even more. You know, he has his little underground bunker and he's in a penthouse and you have a lot of stuff happening on like business suites and Chicago buildings and stuff.

Houston (44:56.974)
I love it.

Houston (45:10.722)
Fun fact, a YouTuber, Unbox Therapy owns that space now. And so like, you just see Bruce Wayne's bunker in every YouTube video he does these days. It's hilarious. With all like, I mean, I don't actually know where he is. I think he's in Toronto. I know he's Canadian. I don't know if he's currently based there, but it's also been used for like music videos and all kinds of stuff. But yeah, it's the same like endless, like.

Eli Price (45:16.)
Okay.

Eli Price (45:23.19)
That's cool. Wear it.

Eli Price (45:29.847)
Okay.

Eli Price (45:36.995)
Yeah.

Eli Price (45:41.127)
Lights. Oh, that's cool.

Houston (45:50.738)
I mean, it looks amazing, but it was such a like a weird like dissonance in my brain of like, yeah.

Eli Price (45:51.446)
Yeah. That's... Yeah.

You kind of expect to see the Tumblr like driving, driving through the background. Um, yeah, that's funny. Uh, but yeah, um, this is like getting into influences. We've, we've kind of like been touching around this. Like I mentioned Michael Mann's heat, which you have the city influences of, but you also have like, um, uh, some other like homages to heat, which, um, like, so there's the two, there's the bank robbery scene that it opens with.

And that's very much an homage to a couple of different sequences in Heat. I actually, I had not seen Heat and had wanted to for a long time. And so I used research for this as an excuse to finally watch it. And so, yeah, it's, it's an incredible movie. It's, it's even longer than, than Dark Knight, which is saying something. So I watched it broken up. I watch a lot of movies kind of broken up just because, you know, I have two young kids and...

Houston (46:41.23)
There you go. I've never seen it.

Houston (46:48.73)
Okay.

Eli Price (46:57.278)
like I'll watch an hour of the movie after I put the kids to get bed before I go to bed sort of thing and then pick it up. Yeah, it is. And so I just kind of, it's not the ideal way to watch a movie, but it's, but I like it works for me. Yeah, it's, you even have like, so you have these

Houston (47:03.402)
Yeah, committing two to three hours for a movie is kind of a tall order these days.

Houston (47:16.455)
Yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (47:26.762)
You also have like, so in Heat you have Robert Nero, who's the bank robber and Al Pacino, who's the detective. And they're kind of like these equal but opposite like opposing forces. And they kind of like mirror each other in a way that like really like you kind of feel with.

Batman and Joker, like the way that they're kind of equal opposite forces that mirror each other in these in like their goals and what they're wanting to do and so Yeah, it's a it def like you if you watch heat in this back-to-back like I did you're like, okay Yeah, there's definitely like a lot of heat in this movie

Houston (47:56.366)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (48:18.262)
But then to like, um, you have a lot of other influences, like, um, like we mentioned New York. So obviously this is a Chicago movie, but he, he was, he, he takes like influence from like some New York movies that are very grounded in the city too. Like, um, dog day afternoon with another Pacino, um, and, uh, the French connection. I've never seen either of those. Um, so.

Houston (48:34.71)
Mm.

Houston (48:43.774)
I think I need to kind of culture myself on some Pacino movies. I haven't seen either of them either.

Eli Price (48:48.082)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I do need to watch some more Pacino, to be honest, myself. But yeah, you and then like the so one of the things that Nolan loves is Mies Vander Roo is a architect that built a lot of like the modernist Chicago buildings. And so like that style, he really likes like capturing. And, you know, the big

Houston (49:10.638)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (49:16.61)
The big open windows stuff is like a Vanderrow stuff that he uses in some of the stuff that shot interior looking out. And then, yeah, and so like, yeah, he's kind of able to work in some of those Chicago things that he liked as influences for the aesthetic.

Houston (49:26.623)
Yeah, okay.

Houston (49:37.954)
Yeah. And especially since he's still like, like you said, like on location, it's not a sound stage. Like it just adds to that, that kind of immersion and realism to it when you can actually see the cityscape behind it. And then it's just kind of like, I mean, you can't like make the city stop. So you just kind of have to see like cars and people in the background, like kind of in a distance and other buildings just kind of existing. So it's, it's a, it's a cool vibe.

Eli Price (49:46.349)
Oh yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (49:59.882)
Oh yeah. And then as far as other influences, which we'll have to hit this real quick and move on, because we'll talk about Joker a lot more in just a bit. But there are influences for Joker for both Nolan and Ledger that I found in research. So for Nolan, he took influence from the very first iteration of the Joker.

Houston (50:11.97)
for sure.

Eli Price (50:28.934)
Um, and in the fort, like the forties comics who was based on, uh, the man who laughs, um, which is an old, uh, movie. Um, the kind of, I guess the kind of atmosphere of, um, of who the joker was, um, kind of like what kind of person he was, the, um, the man who laughs is a big influence and then, uh, Fritz Lang is a German director. He had, um,

Houston (50:43.305)
Oh, okay, yeah.

Eli Price (50:57.39)
He had a couple of movies based on this character, Dr. Mabuse, who's kind of like this semi-insane kind of guy that's kind of behind a lot of crazy stuff going on in the city. And then the third thing that Nolan actually was interested in, Francis Bacon, going all the way back to his...

school days, but Francis Bacon was a Irish British painter who painted these really disturbing images of people's distorted faces. If you have access right now to your phone or any Google...

Houston (51:47.286)
Yeah, I'm looking all this up in real time as we're talking.

Eli Price (51:50.162)
Yeah, but yeah, if you're listening, like just Google Francis Bacon and it's like, well, these are disturbing images. And Francis Bacon, like very like famously, he like didn't clean up his like studio space. So it was just like cluttered with like mess. And that was like his inspiration. Like he would use like the mess and the chaos of his studio space as inspiration for like his paintings, which were

just like bizarre. Yeah, if you look them up, they're just bizarre. And so like all of that kind of like melded into like his inspiration of what he wanted to do with Joker. And then Ledger, which we'll talk more about like how he got casted and stuff later, but Ledger took it upon himself to like find his own influence. So he took influence from Alice Cooper,

I think he had like a mood board that he had made with images. So I think he had some Francis Bacon on there because Nolan had mentioned it. And then he had Alice Cooper and Sid Vicious from The Sex Pistols. And then another big one was Alex from A Clockwork Orange, which if you've ever seen any images from A Clockwork Orange, you know who Alex is. Because he's...

Houston (52:58.766)
Hmm.

Houston (53:06.92)
Nice.

Houston (53:17.538)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (53:18.818)
He's a guy, which I've never seen a Clockwork Orange, but I've seen some clips and yeah, I don't know. I don't know about it, to be honest. Yeah.

Houston (53:21.77)
Me neither, I'm kind of afraid to.

Houston (53:26.786)
I've heard it's really disturbed and really heavy on the sexual content and all that kind of stuff.

Eli Price (53:31.826)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. But but yeah, that just kind of like unhinged kind of character. He really pulled inspiration from. And then even like one of the things that I liked, he kind of watched a lot of like Chaplin, like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton to kind of like pick up on their body language and their body movement, which like you really see. So.

Houston (53:59.795)
Yeah, I guess so.

Eli Price (54:00.394)
That was kind of like in the back of my mind when I was watching this time. So one of the things that jumps out is like when he rolls out of like the semi truck after it flips, like just the way he like rolls out of it and kind of stumbles about and like is walking. It was very much like early slapstick comedy kind of style of body movement.

Houston (54:09.038)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (54:22.106)
Yeah. And then like, like how he plays with like his jacket too, and like the scene where he first talks to the, like the, the Falcone like crime syndicate family and he has, he's like kind of like tugging on his jacket with the, the cord to the grenades and stuff. He's like, he's very playful and kind of like, just kind of like cheeky with it. Almost.

Eli Price (54:29.07)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (54:33.659)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Eli Price (54:38.986)
Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, it's very much, it's like that kind of self-aware, but like clumsy way of like holding your body.

Houston (54:50.622)
Yeah, and like he like he knows he's playing a character. Like it's Heath Ledger playing a character playing a character.

Eli Price (54:53.603)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (54:57.182)
Right, right. Yeah, I mean Joker is very much like a theatrical presence, like that's that he's putting on. Or maybe that he just is at that point, you know. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of other influences that we could talk about, but just getting into the production.

Houston (55:04.646)
Mm-hmm, for sure.

Houston (55:13.719)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (55:23.162)
I mentioned, you know, this was seven months of shooting. So you, you've got a long period of shooting and he's working with a $185 million budget, which is a huge budget. I think it's a, yeah, it's definitely his biggest budget. I can't, I would have to look up. I didn't look up if it was his biggest ever, but I think it might be.

Houston (55:33.843)
Jeez.

Houston (55:43.423)
I would imagine like...

I would imagine like maybe interstellar may have been just because of all the visual effects and stuff.

Eli Price (55:53.686)
Maybe, but I mean, yeah, Interstellar even was like most, I don't think it had any CGI. Like I know Inception was like 160, so a little less, still a huge budget. But yeah, now I'm stuck in my Inception.

Houston (55:59.362)
I mean, yeah, it's mostly soundstage stuff.

Houston (56:06.83)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (56:12.586)
Oh, Interstellar definitely had CGI. I remember the whole story about the Black Hole generation. And you went to this scientific institute or a school or something like that. And they spent hours and hours and hours. And I think I saw the figure, it was so many hundreds of years of computer rendering time to make that movie possible. So they had to send it out to this big farm and stuff. But I'm not doing that movie, but I would love to. That's another one of my favorites.

Eli Price (56:18.183)
Oh yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (56:22.489)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (56:35.926)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's definitely coming down the line. Um, but yeah, yeah. I mean, like we said, we, you've got stuff shot in Chicago over six. I mean, you're over seven months. You're going between Chicago and Hong. I mean, imagine like he's like, uh, I want to get, um, I want to get some shots.

in Hong Kong, so let's take our like team of a hundred people, let's fly us all out to Hong Kong and all of our equipment. Yeah. And this was, so one of the things that like helps is this was like the kind of beginnings of like, hey, let's shoot some of our movie in China so that our movie will sell like more in China sort of thing. This was kind of like the beginnings of that.

Houston (57:04.706)
That's so wild, but then to have a budget that just says yes to that kind of stuff is such a crazy concept to me.

Eli Price (57:29.658)
kind of studio way of thinking was during this period. And so that probably helped that the studios were starting to think in that way. And we're like, okay, yeah, we'll give you some money to go out there because then our movie will like make more money in China because there's stuff shot in China, which makes sense. Like that, you know, I mean.

Houston (57:47.886)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (57:54.282)
The Chinese government is probably like way less likely to like shut down your movie if you like shoot some stuff in their, in their country. Um, but, uh, yeah. Um, it was like marketing. Um, but yeah, no one was able to get those, but yeah, the, I mean, the cinematography is, in this movie is, it really is just incredible. Um, the shots of, of Chicago, um, there's like.

Houston (58:02.702)
That's a good thought.

Eli Price (58:22.182)
several just like iconic incredible shots. And even like the shot of Hong Kong, of like Christian Bell standing on that building is just like an incredible shot.

Houston (58:24.791)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (58:30.606)
Mm hmm. His his helicopter shots are like, wild. To me, they look like they look like old school like nature documentaries, kind of like when like you can see like the camera with a really long lens on top of the helicopter like chasing down like a pack of like cheetahs like running across like the African savanna somewhere. But like it kind of gives that like big grandiose kind of feel to it.

Eli Price (58:36.124)
Yeah, yeah, they're.

Eli Price (58:41.626)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (58:51.128)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (58:55.658)
Yeah, and part of it is because he's using the IMAX camera. Yeah, yeah, and so a lot of people may not realize this, but The Dark Knight is the first narrative film that used IMAX. Like you can go look, everything up to this point was just nature documentaries. Yeah, yeah, you can go look it up. It's...

Houston (59:00.927)
That's what he's a fan of for sure.

Houston (59:16.614)
Really? Okay.

Eli Price (59:21.258)
Now, I don't know if there's any really short stuff that was made in IMAX, but it's the first narrative feature for sure that ever was shot partially with IMAX.

Houston (59:29.73)
That's crazy. And now it's just like a choice some directors make. I mean, a lot of them are using their Aries and stuff. But.

Eli Price (59:38.974)
Right. Yeah, there's, you know, we talked a little bit about it because we did an IMAX movies draft in the overview episode, but there's now like digital cameras that are like IMAX certified that a lot of like Marvel movies have some stuff shot with now. Yep, that's one of them.

Houston (59:59.11)
Yeah, the Alexa 65LF is probably one of the few. There's probably a Panasonic, what's it, Panavision.

Eli Price (01:00:10.826)
Yeah, there's a pan the Panavision has one there's a there's a Sony one now. Yep, man, you even you know what you're talking about because those are exactly them.

Houston (01:00:16.782)
Venice probably. Yep. Oh yeah, I'm a super cinema camera nerd. But yeah, the Sony Venice and like is up there with like the Reds and the Aries and stuff that are all like pretty close to film. Actually, I think Red's latest claim or Aries latest claim on one of their newest cameras, it actually exceeds the dynamic range of film, which is crazy. It's like the first time that's ever happened in the in the digital world.

Eli Price (01:00:25.334)
Yeah, yeah, all those.

right.

Eli Price (01:00:44.65)
Yeah. It's hard. It's, is it one of those things where like, you can claim that, but there's no way to actually measure it. So like, I know. Okay. I was just wondering, cause like, I know when you talked about like, um, like vinyl versus like, um, digital audio, there's not really a way to like measure and compare the sound quality between the two, um,

Houston (01:00:51.902)
No, that's measurable.

Houston (01:01:08.678)
No, there is, there are specialized tools that you can like give known values for certain steps of, or stops of light is what it's known as. And so every time you can see a clean stop of light from a singular point in both directions, either darker or brighter, that's a degree of dynamic range or a stop of dynamic range. And so I think I want to say the human eye is like somewhere around like 20 to 25 or something like that. And then like

Eli Price (01:01:12.021)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:01:18.509)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:01:30.841)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:01:37.874)
my camera, like my photo camera is like 15 and then like a nice hundred thousand dollar ARRI cinema camera is like 17 now, which is like nearing what film can do or even surpassing in some areas, which is crazy. So I'm sure that like, yeah, I mean, IMAX shoots in a very specific type of film format of the 65 millimeter film. Um, and I think sometimes 70, which is maybe what Oppenheimer was shot on.

Eli Price (01:01:40.663)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:01:57.088)
Right.

It's so it's no it's so like it's a weird thing. Like it's the film is actually 65 millimeter, but when they make the prints, it's 70, um, which I don't really. Yeah. Um, so like the prints that go out that, that are actually like rolled through the reels and theaters are like the set are 70 millimeter, but the actual, like what's what the camera is shooting on is 65. Um,

Houston (01:02:10.463)
Okay, they upscale it a little bit, I guess.

Houston (01:02:19.042)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:02:27.95)
I'm not really sure why that is, but that kind of came up in my quick internet research when I was looking into that.

Houston (01:02:30.294)
Yeah.

Houston (01:02:36.318)
Yeah. And so like the ARRI 65LF is meant to mimic a 65 millimeter sensor size or like a film frame size on a digital camera. And so the bigger that sensor is, the more light it can let through, the clearer the image, the bigger lenses, the fancier lenses, high resolution lenses and stuff, you can kind of stick on the camera to get a better image quality or closer to real life. And that's why I've heard Nolan say that like he prefers IMAX because it looks

Eli Price (01:02:43.124)
Riot.

Eli Price (01:02:47.117)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:02:50.648)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:03:04.098)
the most similar to human vision. And it does all these like crazy things with like, like what they call like the 3D pop in film where it, like the contrast is just right. And you can like kind of tell depth better on the film, even though it's a 2D format. So.

Eli Price (01:03:06.712)
Right, yeah.

Eli Price (01:03:12.366)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:03:17.61)
Right. Yeah, and it has that shallow depth of focus that mimics the human eye too, where like...

Houston (01:03:29.042)
Yeah, yeah, the bigger the format, the easier it is to get a shallow depth of field.

Eli Price (01:03:34.59)
Uh-huh. Yeah. Um, which I, you know, is all like all that kind of language I'm kind of like growing in my knowledge of. So I'll like, I dip my toes in it, but I don't understand it as much as like people that actually like work with it. Um, but it is very interesting to me. Like that idea, like I'm, um, I'm doing like a

Houston (01:03:42.818)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:03:58.81)
Faith and film small group at my church and I'm watching like Citizen Kane Which is very famously like one of the movies that popularized like the deep focus filmmaking And and then like I Don't know just like contrasting what you get with that deep focus where like everything's kind of in focus with like these like you know headshots in IMAX where like

pretty much just like the person right in front of the camera is the only thing in focus. Just like what you, like the feel that you get from the different, like what you can do like cinematography wise and communicate with those different ways of like filming is like very interesting.

Houston (01:04:47.766)
Yeah, I watched a, um, uh, an in-depth thing with the, I'm skipping on his name, but the director of photography for Joker, like the, the Joaquin Phoenix one. And that movie was shot on the Alexa 65 LF and they, he actually used like some old like vintage Nikon glass and like some other like cool, like cinema lenses and stuff, but some with very, um, wide apertures that produced very thin depth of field. So like even more on that one. Like that's probably the most.

Eli Price (01:04:56.863)
Okay. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:05:14.511)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:05:17.646)
crazy thin, super blurry background, thin depth of field, like for contrast, even compared to like some of these Nolan ones. So in terms of like cinematography, that one, that movie's off the charts in terms of cinematography. It's incredible.

Eli Price (01:05:31.926)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things like that you really like, either have to be really into like analyzing film like I am. Like that, I have no experience like working with cameras or anything, but I'm just into, you know, analyzing film. And then like, or like someone like you that like works with cameras a lot and kind of has to be knowledgeable about them so you know how to use them well.

Houston (01:05:52.13)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:06:01.762)
Um, it like otherwise, like people are just like enjoying the movie, but like, I think subconsciously, like when you see the, so like, I watched this on my, you know, I have a 50 inch TV. It's not anything huge. Um, but like watching this on Blu-ray just on my 50 inch TV, when you, when you switch from, you know, the, the kind of wide cinema scope, um, shots, which most of the film is in the 35.

Houston (01:06:02.475)
Yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (01:06:31.038)
you know millimeter stuff to the IMAX shots and where it like it just all of a sudden like the screen is filled and It pops so much Mm-hmm it does

Houston (01:06:42.542)
Does it jump between like black bars and no black bars? Ah, man, I see, I miss that all the time because I'm just like so sucked into the story, but that happens way more than you think it does too.

Eli Price (01:06:50.794)
Yeah. No, that's a good thing.

Yeah, especially with movies nowadays that are like doing a lot of like they'll shoot stuff like no one No one started that like with this movie. He started the whole like i'm gonna shoot this action set piece in imax and um

Houston (01:07:14.184)
And on different cameras too, I think you use like three different ones for this movie.

Eli Price (01:07:18.03)
They had, yeah, so they had like, I think they were working with like three or four of the like MSM, which is like the more lightweight IMAX cameras that, you know.

Houston (01:07:29.11)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then they had like the huge Mark threes as well.

Eli Price (01:07:35.41)
Right. Yeah, I think they might have had that for some stuff, but most of the time they were working in motion with them, so they were using the lightweight ones.

Houston (01:07:46.066)
Yeah, because I was going to comment on that because I was like, kind of trying to pay attention that I rewatched the movie again last night just to kind of be extra fresh. But I noticed that during the action scenes, it's all very like first person perspective, like, you're like actually in the fights and stuff. And like the panning is like a lot more jarring. It's like on the shoulder rig kind of kind of vibe where you're like looking through the operator's eyes almost and like it's not like a particularly like closer tight shot. It's like very much like

Eli Price (01:07:53.815)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:08:03.895)
Yes.

Eli Price (01:08:11.065)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:08:16.098)
that 50 mil like human vision kind of, uh, field of view. Um, but yeah, they're not afraid of motion. They're not afraid of kind of like you missing a few things here and there. Cause it's like mimicking your head, kind of jerking back and forth, going between these different points of interest of like, there's a punch that landed here, but then a building exploded behind him. So you have to like hurry up and look that way. And it's just kind of, it all kind of feels like one shot, even though it's not, which is, I thought was really cool, but then the

Eli Price (01:08:41.273)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:08:42.87)
The contrast is that they go back to their dollies and jibs and trucks and stuff, and all these like smooth, pretty motions and helicopter shots during the more like expositional, uh, point to the movie.

Eli Price (01:08:54.678)
Yeah, yeah, like one of the things that stands out that I noticed, there are a couple of times where they use like the 360 dolly, which is becoming more kind of a cliche to use. But the way Nolan uses them, one thing I appreciate about Nolan is he, like you'll have these ways of shooting that kind of can kind of just be like cliche ways of shooting in movies.

But he always he never does them without purpose. So like the one that I'm Yeah, yeah

Houston (01:09:28.598)
Yeah, and there's only so many camera shots too. Like you can only move it in so many directions and variations on those directions. So you kind of have to like pick a lane at one point.

Eli Price (01:09:38.878)
Right. Yeah, but like, so one of the things I'm thinking of is so like the Joker in the party for Dent that Bruce throws, you get in part of that you get kind of like a 360-dali shot kind of going around, but like there's complete like purpose behind it, which is you kind of are pulled into the chaos of what the Joker's doing. Like the way the camera moves around him and

Houston (01:09:53.198)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:10:05.959)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:10:08.29)
like follows him in a three, the $360 thing as he's like moving around in between all the people, like you really feel, yeah, their reactions.

Houston (01:10:14.154)
Yeah, and you can see people's faces and stuff. You can kind of see their reactions of him walking in. Because correct me if I'm wrong, but I want to say that when that scene was happening, they maybe, like some people didn't know that he was about to walk into the scene or something when they shot. And so they wanted a genuine reaction. Or that was the first scene that those people had seen him in full makeup. I think that's what it was.

Eli Price (01:10:28.758)
I think I've heard that before.

Eli Price (01:10:37.506)
Maybe so, yeah.

Houston (01:10:38.27)
And so they were like, this is like their first reaction to like what it is. And they just like wanted it to be super genuine, which I really appreciate. I like, I like when directors do that kind of stuff.

Eli Price (01:10:43.723)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, just like him shooting with purpose. And then, yeah, man, when it when it was it really stood out to me this time, probably because I was like intentionally looking for it. I was because I was thinking like, OK, I want to see like when it switches to IMAX. And like you go from like the cinemascope wide screen, which you got the black bars for. And then all of a sudden you're getting this like helicopter shot of Chicago and it goes boom.

Houston (01:11:14.786)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:11:14.922)
and you just see like the height of the city. Like you can see like, oh man, like this is a huge city. Like you can see like whole skyscrapers because it's, I mean, what are the IMAX screens? They're like eight stories or something like that. The IMAX screens that, yeah, they're big. Yeah.

Houston (01:11:24.301)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:11:33.25)
They're big. But yeah, they're meant to be bigger than your standard field of vision. So you have to like move your head to like see that's the whole purpose is that you have to kind of like be immersed in it enough to where like even by a few degrees, you have to turn your head and eyes back and forth to see the whole image.

Eli Price (01:11:41.827)
Right.

Eli Price (01:11:45.912)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:11:49.206)
Yeah. And while Wally Fister, the, or Feister, I think he said, I don't really know how, which way it's pronounced. Okay. Um, so he, he talked about, um, and some of the behind the scenes and, and books that I'm reading, um, how like that was a challenge when they were shooting an IMAX because, um, there's parts where like, when you're getting the helicopter shots of the city, obviously like, it's not a big deal, like, yeah, you're, you know,

Houston (01:11:55.658)
I think it's Feister.

Eli Price (01:12:17.814)
you don't have to worry about where people's eyes are going to unless there's some action happening. Right. But when they're going, following the Joker and his minions around the bank, those are shot in IMAX too. And you really have to block out the scenes and have people moving where you need them to move really well because it is such a big, expansive...

Houston (01:12:21.738)
Yeah, because it's like a texture almost.

Houston (01:12:48.843)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:12:48.987)
you know, screen aspect ratio that like you want to make sure that people's like vision is drawn to the right spot at the right time so that they're getting like the action that they need to see and not missing anything.

Houston (01:13:02.01)
Yeah, and that use of those IMAXs with the ability to get really shallow fields of focus, like can, like focus is a huge part of drawing your eye to where they want you to see. And also like, I think color with like the clown masks and stuff really helps with that motion as well. Real quick on the very opening scene where you see they're pushing into the building and then the window explodes.

Eli Price (01:13:08.526)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:13:13.016)
Right.

Eli Price (01:13:16.438)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:13:25.834)
Right.

Houston (01:13:27.382)
I don't know if it's just me, but every single time I watch the movie, I try to pick out which window is about to pop.

Eli Price (01:13:32.246)
Yeah, and you can you can see all the windows very clearly

Houston (01:13:36.606)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm like, oh wait, is it like, because there's a vent, is it like over to the left of the vent, is it above the vent, is it like diagonal, and like I always mess it up, but it's a fun little kind of Easter egg for me.

Eli Price (01:13:43.149)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:13:48.79)
Yeah, and they really had stuntmen ziplining across buildings in Chicago for that. Like you can go watch the behind the scenes footage. It's incredible. Oh yeah. One of the things about using those IMAX cameras, so the camera operator, I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but he... Here.

Houston (01:13:53.87)
It's so crazy.

He's very practical effects for sure.

Eli Price (01:14:15.554)
the rig guy or whatever. I can't remember the exact title, but they had to, he basically made like a steady cam sort of rig for this, those MSM cameras. So like when they're, so in that open and scene where they're like running across the building, the top of a building, like he's following them with that. So he said, he said the camera itself is around 50 pounds, but once you add the whole rig, it, he said, it's like around a hundred pounds that he's like,

Houston (01:14:27.214)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:14:33.358)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Houston (01:14:41.71)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:14:45.134)
having to like follow these guys with just...

Houston (01:14:48.354)
Well, yeah, especially IMAX cameras because they're film. So they have to, like digital cameras are way lighter because they, I mean, there are heavy aspects to them, but yeah, they don't have to carry a giant film canister attached to it as well.

Eli Price (01:14:51.362)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:14:59.99)
Yeah. So he said like after the second day, like it was either late the second day or maybe the sometime on the third day. I think that was like a five day, uh, shoot that they were, that they did, um, for that, for that, whatever that specific part. Uh, but like the arm, the camera actually like broke the arm, uh, for the steady cam and like, like you can see, like I was watching like the behind the scenes and like, they actually have the footage of like

Houston (01:15:21.87)
Sheesh.

Houston (01:15:28.338)
Oh geez, okay.

Eli Price (01:15:28.846)
from the camera's point of view of it falling onto the ground. And the camera didn't break, but yeah.

Houston (01:15:32.558)
See, I'm reading your, well good, I mean I'm sure that thing is hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I'm reading your notes kind of along like so I can just kind of follow where we're going in the next talking points. You just wrote broke arm second day and I was like, wait, who broke her arm?

Eli Price (01:15:43.321)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (01:15:49.094)
No, yeah, no one broke their arm. The camera broke its arm that was holding it up. Yeah, you know, somebody might have broken their arm, but Yeah, lots of insurance both for people and cameras Yeah, so, you know We were saying like thank goodness that camera didn't break when it fell but there's actually like

Houston (01:15:54.091)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Houston (01:15:59.299)
I'm sure there's plenty of injuries on a movie this big.

Houston (01:16:06.497)
their sacrifice is worth it.

Eli Price (01:16:17.25)
when they were doing the dent Joker car chase scene. Yeah, that whole long chase through the lower Wacker Drive stuff, they actually did break one of the cameras. There's footage, you can see in the behind the scenes footage, it's one, so they had these, they had them mounted on these arms that were coming off of these SUVs that they were.

Houston (01:16:24.629)
Oh yeah yeah.

Houston (01:16:28.65)
Incredible.

Houston (01:16:45.792)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:16:46.27)
using to drive around with. And yeah, there was like, there was a section where like, there's kind of, you know, the trucks like ramming into some cars. And the way, like the way that the SUV got bumped from that wreck swung the arm like crash into like the truck or something.

Houston (01:16:56.686)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:17:07.502)
Oh no, I've seen like horror stories like reels of those things because that's that happens kind of often because I mean like that's just a high risk place to put a camera, even if the arm itself is secure like if it gets bumped or like they hit it. If they go if they go over too big of a bump on the ground like hit the ground or like it like a pole or something they're passing by terrifying.

Eli Price (01:17:12.152)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:17:17.12)
Right.

Yeah, just swung, you know.

Eli Price (01:17:27.498)
Yep. Yeah. So that was a I think it was probably one of those like MSM lightweight cameras that were rigged up on one of those arms. But they didn't break one. But yeah, I mean, the camera work is just so well done in this movie and even like editing wise, like it's really well done. I do think like there's some.

Houston (01:17:34.027)
Mm.

Houston (01:17:38.99)
cheese.

Eli Price (01:17:53.722)
There's some like sections in the movie that are a little disorienting for me, like editing wise, like the way it jumps, um, uh, was kind of like, I wasn't sure where I was. Um, which

Houston (01:18:02.178)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:18:07.71)
He doesn't really do transitions. It's just all hard cuts. It's super old school for the most part, I think in most Nolan movies.

Eli Price (01:18:12.298)
Oh yeah, yeah. Which is not that. So I think my opinion is that Nolan is not that great at up close action shooting and editing, but he's very, very masterful at big scale action and editing those shots. So like.

Houston (01:18:35.117)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:18:39.526)
you know, like the hostage tower stuff at the end. It's kind of like, it's a little shaky with like how it's shot and edited. But some of it is like, to be honest, like doing research like into his thought process on stuff like that. So like, I know with Batman Begins, you have like the disorienting action that happens like in the shipping container scene.

Houston (01:18:49.173)
Yeah.

Houston (01:19:06.306)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:19:07.97)
But it's purposeful. His whole idea was that Batman was sort of like the alien in the movie Alien. You kind of catch glimpses of him, but don't ever really see him fully until he decides to reveal himself more fully. And so there probably is purpose for it, but it still kind of can be disorienting as a viewer.

Houston (01:19:17.936)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:19:24.436)
I love that part.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:19:37.422)
But yeah, that's just like a small nitpick. I do think he's like master level at like big action set pieces and the way they're shot and edited. Yeah.

Houston (01:19:41.514)
Yeah, for sure.

Houston (01:19:52.01)
Yeah, and I'll go on to say this. I think his movies, and before we move on from like the whole production cinematography thing, but I think his movies from that aspect are greater than the sum of their parts in most cases. Like I think shot for shot, there are movies that have better cinematography and better editing and not better storytelling. I think he pretty much nails that. But yeah, I think if you were to like super dissect every single shot, they're not as like pretty as a Wes Anderson frame or like

Eli Price (01:19:58.596)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:20:06.682)
Sure, yeah.

Eli Price (01:20:20.666)
Sure, yeah, yeah.

Houston (01:20:22.15)
Even like The Batman or like The Joker, like I think cinematography wise, like just if you took a frame of those movies, a lot of them, a lot of those frames are going to be just like straight up prettier and like more well like kind of just composed than some of the Nolan stuff. But Nolan's has a like a realism that just kind of draws you in more. And they're there. It's less of an art piece and more of a story, if that makes sense.

Eli Price (01:20:25.476)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:20:31.839)
Mm-hmm, sure.

Eli Price (01:20:40.042)
Yeah. Yeah, it's a-

Eli Price (01:20:45.206)
Yeah, and he is very much more interested in the realism of it. I mean, Wes Anderson is highly, highly stylized and he's just doing something totally different than Nolan is doing. So yeah, I do appreciate that. And I do think he does capture the realism of it, the groundedness of what he's shooting very well.

Houston (01:20:59.211)
Yeah.

Houston (01:21:09.63)
Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm getting at. It feels like you're sitting in that scene, which I really appreciate, which like a lot of these movies that I referenced or directors that I've referenced, that they just kind of go for something that's like aesthetically pleasing more so than something that's going to actually draw you into the story even more.

Eli Price (01:21:14.594)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:21:24.747)
Right.

Eli Price (01:21:28.33)
Mm-hmm. Yeah for sure. Yeah the Kind of moving on a little bit so I have like a list of really cool special effects stuff That we can shoot through But before we do that, I didn't want to mention like the score in this movie which For this so for Batman Begins you had Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard kind of work on the score together so you have the more like synthy like

heavy stuff from Zimmer and then the more swelling, more traditional orchestra stuff from Howard. And then you get that again too with this movie. But with this movie, I really felt like they really took a step forward in the purpose behind the duality of the score, kind of matching the dualities that are going on in the movie between Batman and Joker, and then even like...

eventually like the duality of Harvey Dent and becoming two faced. Um, uh, really good. Um, one of my, like, one of the really cool things about Zimmer's, um, Joker theme, um, is that he spent like a ton of time coming up with all these like strange, jarring ways to like make sounds.

Houston (01:22:29.514)
Yeah, absolutely.

Eli Price (01:22:51.958)
So, I mean, he was like scraping razor blades on piano strings and like.

Houston (01:22:56.378)
Yeah, I've seen a little bit of that behind the scenes and stuff, but continue. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:23:00.33)
Yeah, yeah. And so like he sent Nolan this like 9,000 bar like long like recordings of all these things he did. And Nolan like listened to it on the way to Hong Kong and like got back with him and basically said like, you know, that was a lot. He was like, I think the Joker sound is somewhere in there and you know, I trust you to find it. Basically, that's what he told him.

Houston (01:23:29.006)
cheese.

Eli Price (01:23:30.798)
And, uh, but what they ended up going with, they had this, uh, celloist, um, that came in and it's really just one long drawn out note. Uh, so like you can, I was actively listening for it as I watched. Yeah. So you have, it starts off. Yeah. It starts off with this cello note. That's kind of like, it's one note, but it's kind of like you have, it goes back and forth from like smooth to more staccato, like

Houston (01:23:44.234)
You talking about like the ascending, like really tense thing?

Houston (01:23:58.39)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:23:58.734)
So as you have the... Like all that kind of stuff. It's one note on cello, but then you have this kind of like droning. It's kind of like, it's both cello and like these like droning guitar sort of stuff that he starts layering on top of that. So it's really like one note plus like an ascending note that...

Houston (01:24:01.206)
Yeah.

Houston (01:24:15.982)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:24:24.066)
that starts getting laid on top of it where it rises over that one note that continues. And that's like the joker, that's the sign of the joker and especially like when chaos is about to break out.

Houston (01:24:26.744)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:24:37.238)
Yeah, I remember the first scene where he's like, he feigns his death with Gamble. And he like does the whole speech of like, let's put a smile on your face for the first time. And like that music is playing in the background. It's like, oh my gosh, like the tension is unreal.

Eli Price (01:24:42.82)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:24:46.986)
Yeah. Oh yeah.

Uh-huh. Yeah, and if you listen with intention, you can hear all the places where, I wanna say there's even some spots where he hasn't quite even come on screen yet, but that kind of starts up and it kind of indicates, okay, here comes the Joker, which is really cool. But yeah.

Eli Price (01:25:21.406)
Yeah, I think the score is incredible for this movie. But yeah, so let's talk through these special effects things. I'll ask you this. What is like the standout special effect for you in this movie? Like when you think about the Dark Knight, what's like the action special effects that you think of first?

Houston (01:25:48.306)
It's probably when they overturn the 18 wheeler. When he links the cable around the light post and flips the 18 wheeler. That's probably one of them. Or just anything with a tumbler, honestly.

Eli Price (01:25:54.007)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:25:57.342)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:26:04.866)
Yeah, I think that is like the standout one. So like, I think, and I think part of it is because that might've been in like the trailers too. So like you were getting it like even before. I don't remember seeing trailers for this just because I was in high school. I don't know that I was watching movie trailers in high school, but yeah, that is like the standout one I think.

Houston (01:26:26.878)
Yeah, and then like the whole chase scene leading up to that, like in the tunnels and stuff, like it or the lower level, whatever they want to call it. But just to have that as the culmination of it. And then he kind of just like spills out of the car and then they have their confrontation. It's incredible.

Eli Price (01:26:29.746)
Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.

Eli Price (01:26:38.602)
Yeah. So that the so the semi flip they had like this giant piston like mounted in the truck that basically like shot out of the bottom of the truck and like pushed it off the ground to flip it over. And they did like test with it. But they actually did that on I want to say LaSalle Street.

Houston (01:26:56.396)
Yeah, yeah.

Houston (01:26:59.842)
crazy.

Eli Price (01:27:08.71)
in Chicago, which is in the middle of the banking district. They flipped this semi truck on a real Chicago street and they were talking. Chris Korbalt is the special effects supervisor. And he was talking about how, like they were looking, there's like all these manhole colors and they were talking like to, I guess, like city guys. And they're like, what are all these? And they're like, oh yeah, you know, that's just like.

Houston (01:27:15.15)
crazy.

Eli Price (01:27:36.29)
the lines to all these banks and they're like, basically like a lot of imported stuff. So they found like two spots where it was like possible for them to flip it. So like, it wasn't just like, let's run the truck down the street and flip it and capture. It was like, we have to nail like the exact spot that we can flip it so that we don't like break something in the city.

Houston (01:27:44.607)
Yeah.

Houston (01:27:51.53)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:28:04.79)
Yeah, and like shut down the cash flow in the city for a day.

Eli Price (01:28:08.806)
Right. Yeah. Yeah, that one's incredible. The bus, Nolan said like the bus bussing through in that opening sequence was like one of the hardest things to get just because of like the timing of it and the way they, so they, that was actually inside of an old bank or something. I mean, an old like post office or something like that.

Houston (01:28:22.667)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (01:28:39.022)
and they built a false wall inside, because obviously you can't actually drive the bus through. So they built a false wall, and the bus was connected to this piston rig that pushes the bus through the false wall. And yeah, he just talked about constructing that and getting the timing right was one of the, actually the hardest things to shoot.

Houston (01:28:45.806)
Sure.

Houston (01:28:58.19)
Hmm, very convincing.

Eli Price (01:29:08.606)
Um, I think the other thing that stands out was, um, the hospital, uh, explosion. Yeah. So like, so that's what I think. When I think about the, the special effects and the dark night, I think I do think like about the semi flip and I think about the hospital, right.

Houston (01:29:15.505)
Oh, yeah, of course.

Houston (01:29:27.086)
Because the trigger is the biggest thing for sure because it failed and then he just kind of like played through it because I think they only have like one shot at it, right?

Eli Price (01:29:37.33)
Yeah, so I had heard this story about how like, oh, they had it all ready to go and they have one shot and then something went wrong and he kept acting through it and it eventually exploded. But actually I was watching the special effects on the Blu-ray.

Houston (01:29:53.326)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's what I've always heard.

Eli Price (01:30:00.702)
And maybe this is like them trying to cover up a mistake, which I don't know why they would, because that would be a fun story to tell. But they actually were talking about how Chris Korbald was trying to figure out a way where they could actually have Heath Ledger like walking away from, like walking out of the building in the one shot. And he actually rigged it up and timed it so that there would be this pause so that he could get far enough away.

Um, so that like.

Houston (01:30:31.216)
Okay, but maybe Heath didn't get the message or something?

Eli Price (01:30:35.198)
No, I think he's just like in character, like, what am I going to do when it pauses? Like, because in like, in the context of the movie, like, there's no reason for it to pause. And obviously in the special effects rigging, there's a reason because you want your actor to get far enough away where he's not going to get too injured or whatever. But like in the in the context of like the character in the story, I guess Ledger had just kind of thought through, like, I know it's going to pause.

Houston (01:30:47.499)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:30:52.224)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (01:31:04.522)
I need to come up, like I need to in character figure out a way to like play with that pause, I guess. The first, the first story is a lot funnier and better.

Houston (01:31:10.934)
I like the first story better. It's a lot more funny. It's incredible. That whole scene, like, it probably couldn't have been done better.

Eli Price (01:31:21.406)
Yeah, so they did, it was like a hospital that they found that was gonna get demoed. And yeah, and so they actually blew up a real hospital that was gonna get demoed. They demoed, like they did it in conjunction with the demo crew. So they actually like went through and like pre-sliced huge sections of the building so that they could get it to fall, so that they could demo it the way they needed to demo it and get the...

Houston (01:31:26.655)
Oh really?

Houston (01:31:38.926)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:31:49.194)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (01:31:50.838)
and have Chris Korbald add the special effects stuff in where he needed to. Yeah, you know, Fireball shooting out the windows and stuff.

Houston (01:31:54.538)
all the gasoline and stuff for the big fireballs and stuff. Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they also duplicate the shot in miniature so they could get an aerial of it as well? Like a fake aerial shot? I want to say I saw that a while back too.

Eli Price (01:32:09.751)
Possibly. I didn't really come across that. But they might have done something like that. I know they did. There was a shot that was not included in the final edit where there was a camera in the bus. So when he jumps on the bus, there's a camera in the bus. And they showed you in the special features that shot. But it's just like Joker.

Houston (01:32:27.787)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:32:37.91)
He looks back when it's not exploding, but other than that, he's not looking at the explosion at all. When he hops on the bus, he's just sitting there. You see all the explosion happening behind him through the bus window, and he's just sitting there not looking at it. And it's just like, oh man, that would have been a cool shot too. Yeah. Yeah, three weeks of rigging for the special effects. Yeah.

Houston (01:32:44.)
Yeah.

Houston (01:32:56.446)
Yeah, yeah, I've seen that before. That's a good one.

Houston (01:33:05.026)
For the one shot, jeez. I can't imagine, man. Oh, for sure.

Eli Price (01:33:08.418)
There's a lot riding on it. I mean, you can't, you can't reshoot it.

Houston (01:33:12.834)
Where are you going to find another hospital to blow up somewhere legitimately?

Eli Price (01:33:16.69)
Yeah. But I mean, Nolan is doing everything. He like it's rare for you to see something in the movie that isn't like doesn't have its foundation in like a real shot. Like no, not CGI, but like real. Like there's instances in this where like they obviously kind of had to do like some green screen work and stuff like that. But like even like so like in the.

Houston (01:33:32.663)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:33:41.402)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:33:45.462)
in the hostage sequence that with the windows like busted out. Um, that was like, um, a real Chicago building that they had found, but they did have to do some like stage CGI green screen work. So like when Batman kicks them out, um, that's like when he kicks the guy and they all fall out. So like the, the part where he kicks them out is like, with a green screen back there. Um, to

Houston (01:34:04.883)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (01:34:12.51)
You know that show in the city, but when they actually fall out they actually had stuntmen fall out of that building in Chicago And they yeah, and they have like mattress pads and stuff that they like took out and post Like but they were doing like some construction on that section of the building and they got They got they somehow convinced that you know the city to let them like throw guys out of them

Houston (01:34:20.718)
cheese.

Houston (01:34:27.01)
Hmm.

Houston (01:34:39.575)
Can we just throw people out of your building please?

Eli Price (01:34:42.91)
Yeah, which is incredible. Yeah. But yeah, what I mean, watching the actual like footage is like crazy. It's just like good grief. Like

Houston (01:34:44.738)
It's only like five or six, that'll be fine.

Houston (01:34:55.914)
Yeah, yeah. And I referenced it earlier, the whole, the Lamborghini crash, as you have that written here on your notes too. That hurts. Like I'm somewhat of a car guy and, and that just really hurt to see. I mean, like, not that I'm ever going to be able to, oh, I'm sure it's super exciting because like, when do you get to intentionally crash a Lamborghini?

Eli Price (01:35:00.278)
Yeah, they really smashed it. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:35:09.418)
Yeah, the stuntman was like giddy about it in the special features. He was like, yeah, the stuntman was like totally excited. And actually the type of Lambo that it was, I can't think of, it starts with the M. But yeah, it's Spanish for bat, which is ironic. Maybe purposeful. I'm not sure. Yeah.

Houston (01:35:27.472)
Murcielago stands for bat, right? Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:35:34.686)
No, on- definitely on purpose. A hundred percent on purpose.

Eli Price (01:35:39.455)
Yeah.

Houston (01:35:41.138)
Isn't it yellow too, like the old school Batman symbol, like that color? Or is it silver or black? I don't know.

Eli Price (01:35:45.022)
No, I think it was like silver. Yeah. But yeah. So anyways, moving on from all the awesome special effects stuff, like not to put a damper on it, but this movie, so like they did the seven months of shooting, they're doing the post-production editing, and like this movie released in June or July, it was a summer release in 08. And like really like.

Houston (01:36:10.338)
Mm-mm.

Eli Price (01:36:14.182)
I remember back in 08, the news around Ledger dying. He died in January, which I think it was like six months before the movie was set to release. And yeah, it's just like...

Houston (01:36:20.557)
Yeah.

Houston (01:36:29.464)
tough.

Eli Price (01:36:35.426)
It's one of those things where like, I don't know, it's a weird thing that like the relationship we have as like partakers in entertainment with the people that make that entertainment and like the kind of like the star quality, like we can forget like that they're like real people like that deal with like real issues. And so it's this weird thing, but it's also this thing that's like,

Houston (01:36:56.718)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:37:04.89)
kind of like also brings people together. So it's like this kind of like paradox of like, I don't know, it's just this weird thing in American culture. I think when you have like celebrities and how we like both like praise and like lambast celebrities and then like something is revealed that is just like a normal human thing. And it's like.

Houston (01:37:32.787)
Yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (01:37:33.698)
this big thing and, you know, Ledger like overdosed on those prescription pills and it's this big thing. But he's like, obviously just dealing with something, you know, hard in his life. But yeah, Nolan said that he like felt burdened with this like massive sense of responsibility after that to like do his performance right.

Houston (01:37:48.526)
Mm.

Houston (01:38:02.411)
Yeah, I can't imagine.

Eli Price (01:38:03.87)
Yeah, like I can't even imagine like to shoot that movie and just like be in the process of like putting together this incredible performance like editing together this incredible. Yeah, and like to have the actor like pass is just like I just can't even imagine like. What he was dealing with.

Houston (01:38:17.062)
literally centered around this one person.

Houston (01:38:28.586)
Yeah. How old was he?

Eli Price (01:38:33.678)
28 to 30 somewhere in there.

Houston (01:38:36.862)
27 club guy. 28. Close. Geez, we're both older than him. That's wild to think about.

Eli Price (01:38:39.138)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:38:44.446)
Yeah, yeah, it really is. And his, his career really was like a burgeoning career. Like he had done broke back mountain, um, was probably his. Yeah. Knight's tail. Um, yeah, that Knight's tail was pretty popular. Um, but yeah, so

Houston (01:38:52.345)
A night's a night's tale.

Houston (01:38:56.802)
Not like the best move in the world, but that's the one I remember about with him.

Eli Price (01:39:03.09)
Yeah, so yeah, I mean he had a couple of like big roles but

Houston (01:39:06.162)
And then he had the one that came up posthumously, the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. I'm looking it up right now. I actually remember that one being fairly decent.

Eli Price (01:39:13.886)
Okay, I don't remember that one, but um, but yeah, so I mean, it's just like, it's one of those things where like, man, what would he have done after this? Like, um, just kind of like thinking about like, anytime there's like an artist of any kind that like dies too young, it's just kind of one of those things where you just kind of like, ache for what they could have done, what they could have been.

Houston (01:39:24.182)
Mmm.

Eli Price (01:39:43.85)
Sort of thing like what sort of like cool stuff they could have like accomplished in their career But yeah

Houston (01:39:50.75)
Yeah, he the more recent one that I'm reminded of is Anton Yelchin from the Star Trek series, the newer one. He he died like right after the movie too. And he was like 27. He got like, I think he got like crushed by his own car or something like rolling downhill. It's crazy that his was a lot more freak than Ledger's. But yeah, a lot of sadness around like this talent kind of taken too young, but

Eli Price (01:39:57.647)
Mm. OK, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I remember that.

Eli Price (01:40:08.298)
Yeah, it was an accident. Yeah.

Houston (01:40:18.503)
ledger, especially just because this movie was so influential to so many people.

Eli Price (01:40:23.006)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I mean, it's an icon. It's it will probably like just forever be an iconic performance in an American cinema or really just like cinema in general or worldwide.

Houston (01:40:36.194)
I mean, in its own right though, even if he didn't pass, that performance is incredible. The character is so well written. The story is told nearly perfectly, in my opinion.

Eli Price (01:40:42.227)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (01:40:46.846)
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, so I mean that was like, um, that really like put a damper on everything like, but They really like did well like pushing it forward. Um, this was like um That this was like the time when like the internet was really like booming. Um and so like the marketing campaign for this was like really like they were doing all kinds of like new stuff that like

Houston (01:41:07.255)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:41:16.61)
hadn't been done. I didn't really write anything down, but you can look into it. They were doing some cool contests online and stuff like that. I mean, you never would have guessed that this movie would go on to open to 158 million. Basically, by the end of its first week, it had like...

Houston (01:41:39.958)
The budget. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:41:46.142)
It had added like 30 million onto its budget in profit. And it went on to make a billion, hit the billion mark. And for a while it was second to Titanic all time worldwide.

Houston (01:41:55.95)
Thanks.

Houston (01:41:59.656)
until like Avatar, right?

Eli Price (01:42:02.01)
Well, so like at that point.

Eli Price (01:42:07.288)
No, I think Avatar was 09.

Houston (01:42:11.794)
I'm saying until Avatar came around, right?

Eli Price (01:42:14.006)
Until Avatar, right. So like for, yeah, it was second to Titanic until Avatar. Yep, that's right. And then I guess still third after Avatar made its run.

Houston (01:42:20.334)
crazy.

Houston (01:42:25.462)
I didn't actually know it made anywhere near that much. I mean, I guess it makes sense now when we're kind of like in retrospective thinking about it. But yeah, that just that's wild.

Eli Price (01:42:28.738)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:42:35.178)
Yeah, and it's one of the reasons why it's so influential. It's because everyone's like, we wanna do what The Dark Knight did and make a billion dollars. Which, you know, Marvel's, I guess Marvel's way of doing that was to make like 20 movies that lead up to one big, final thing where they finally were able to make a billion dollar superhero movie.

Houston (01:42:56.348)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:43:05.462)
very much roundabout way of doing it from what Nolan did but yeah I mean it's incredible and it actually like changed the Academy Awards to this movie so like this movie got eight Oscar nominations it didn't win six they won two

Houston (01:43:07.618)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:43:18.818)
Mm.

Eli Price (01:43:30.506)
Uh, it didn't wins, uh, but was nominated for cinematography, editing, art direction, makeup, sound mixing, and visual effects. And then it won for sound editing and then Ledger won for supporting actor posthumously, which, um, I think he would have won either way. You know, I don't think his, his passing. Yeah. I don't think his passing really had anything to do with him winning. He, I mean, it was just.

Houston (01:43:50.818)
You'd like to think so for sure.

Eli Price (01:43:58.478)
There's no way he wouldn't have won. If Joaquin Phoenix wins for Joker, then yeah. Without having died, Heath Ledger wins for this either way.

Houston (01:44:11.07)
Yeah. Now, Joker was special, like in its own way. That's an incredible movie. It's definitely in kind of the upper echelon of my favorite movies of all time. But yeah, it's a very different take than what Ledger had on Joker, and it's much more like focused just on that story.

Eli Price (01:44:17.05)
Sure, yeah.

Eli Price (01:44:29.315)
Yeah.

Yeah, I have a weird relationship to the Joker movie, just because my theater experience was weird and unsettling. And I'm not sure if in a way that was intended by the movie makers, just basically, there were scenes where...

things were being done that were not funny, but a lot of the theater was laughing. I was like, I don't think they understand what this movie is. And so my theater viewing experience kind of messed with me on my opinion of that movie. I think I would have liked it a lot more if I would have watched it alone.

Houston (01:45:05.186)
Ew.

Houston (01:45:09.747)
No, I...

Houston (01:45:18.579)
Yeah, I think it.

Houston (01:45:23.238)
Yeah, I've only watched it twice. I watched it in the theater with my wife, and then I watched it at home actually like three weeks ago, like since it came out. And I'm sorry, three times. I watched it once before that. But yeah, I walked out of that one like disturbed, not even because of what you were saying.

Eli Price (01:45:29.95)
Mm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:45:39.494)
Right, which you should be, you should be disturbed when you walk out. But I was disturbed because the movie was making. And. Yeah, other people were like laughing at things that were actually like really disturbing, and I was like, what, what is happening? What is happening here? But, but anyways, that's, that's a whole aside. But yeah, back to like the Oscar things, like so.

Houston (01:45:50.146)
because other people weren't disturbed.

Houston (01:45:59.242)
Yikes.

Eli Price (01:46:07.97)
this movie very famously did not get a best picture nomination. And everyone was very angry about that. And the year after the next Academy of Wars is when they expanded it. And it's because the Dark Knight didn't get nominated for best picture. Um, which is really, it's just another incredible thing about this movie. It changes superhero movies. It changes like blockbusters and it changed like the Academy Awards.

Houston (01:46:12.183)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:46:37.858)
like the way that they nominate for best picture. So just all around, like Nolan's just like totally like recreating studio filmmaking basically. And really like his career is like overshadowed by this. It's his most, it's his most acclaimed film. Like it's his...

Houston (01:46:57.538)
What is a shame?

Eli Price (01:47:05.726)
uh, you know, change, like I said, change superhero movies for better or worse. Um, and there's, uh, there's that line in the film about like faith being rewarded. Um, and it makes me, it almost feels like that line almost like mirrors, like real life of like the studios faith and Nolan was rewarded, but also like Nolan was rewarded for his faith in the audience to like, be able to like,

deal with the ideas, the deeper ideas that he was like going for in this movie. Yeah.

Houston (01:47:40.094)
Yeah, he doesn't really like, like serve everything on a silver platter in his movies. Especially like these, even though they're superhero movies, so I think intrinsically are a bit more easy to understand than some of his other ones. But he assumes intelligence with his audience, which I really like in directors. And not everyone does that.

Eli Price (01:47:59.83)
Yeah, for sure.

Um, hey, can, uh, can I break, uh, I'm going to go help Robin put LC back down. She was doing her like dream feat or whatever. Um, I'll just be gone for like a minute. Okay, cool.

Houston (01:48:16.014)
Okay, I'll go get some more water.

Houston (01:50:13.258)
All right.

Eli Price (01:50:16.6)
Um,

I'll jump back in to talk about Cast, which is mostly just going to be talking about Heath Ledger. Yeah, and then we'll run through some of the thematic stuff.

Which looks like a lot, but I think it'll run pretty quickly. Okay.

Eli Price (01:50:46.09)
Yeah, the other thing that I think Nolan does really well is his casting. Like he really like, I read somewhere he had talked about like the casting for like the 78 Superman. What's his like inspiration to just like get stars built into his movie, which he kind of started with Batman Begins. I mean, you have you're putting Christian Bell in who is like

Houston (01:51:06.544)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:51:17.138)
starting like to be more well known, but then you throw in like Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine and like you're getting this building this star and like he just builds on that with this you here Right. Yeah. Yeah, and um, yeah this one really just kind of builds on that you Have that I mean Maggie Gyllenhaal gets recast as Rachel Which I think that was just like either

Houston (01:51:22.966)
My cocaine.

Houston (01:51:28.742)
Liam Neeson, Ken Watanabe, like.

Eli Price (01:51:45.454)
Katie Holmes either like didn't want to do another one or she had a scheduling conflict or something.

Houston (01:51:50.09)
Yeah, I forget why the reason that one kind of threw me off a little bit because I did like Katie Holmes like I think I prefer her performance, but

Eli Price (01:51:55.082)
Yeah. It's, it's one of those things. It's like, I think they, they each do like different things better. Like I think Katie Holmes does like their relationship with Bruce a little better. And I think Maggie Gyllenhaal does like the, um, the like law side of things a little bit better. Like the way she

Houston (01:52:09.463)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:52:17.514)
Yeah, kind of like the more running the show kind of like boss girl type thing. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:52:20.81)
Yeah. Right. So, um, so I think they do different things. Like they both have pros and cons, but, um, yeah, I think, uh, yeah, people kind of, I've heard people go back and forth on, on who's better. And I don't really even necessarily have an opinion, but, um, but yeah, I mean, obviously like, um, yeah, Michael Caine returning Gary Oldman, which we didn't even mention about star studded. Um, yeah. Um,

Houston (01:52:28.131)
For sure.

Houston (01:52:48.319)
Incredible.

Eli Price (01:52:51.738)
Christian Bell.

Houston (01:52:52.13)
I didn't recognize Gary Oldman at first, by the way. When I first saw the movie, I was like, that's Gary Oldman?

Eli Price (01:52:56.11)
Well, that's his shtick. Like that's kind of Gary Oldman shtick is like, I'm gonna transform the way I look to be these characters. Right.

Houston (01:52:59.828)
Yeah.

Houston (01:53:03.242)
Well, like in the Harry Potter movies, like he plays serious black and it looks nothing like Jim Gordon. Crazy.

Eli Price (01:53:08.95)
Right, exactly. Yeah. I mean, he's Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. Like he is. Yeah. Morgan Freeman, of course, is great. You have some like the smaller some of the smaller like villains like Lau and Sal Maroney and those guys. Those actors do really well.

Houston (01:53:13.966)
Mm-hmm. He's a chameleon man.

Houston (01:53:23.004)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:53:31.735)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:53:37.17)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:53:39.859)
Aaron, how do you feel about Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent?

Houston (01:53:46.114)
I thought he did really well. He seems... I don't know. I feel like he could have been a little bit more like... and this might have been direction and writing, but I felt like that would have made him a little bit more crazy towards the end of it. And he was getting there and I think he was written really well. But I feel like Aaron Eckert, he's maybe a

Eli Price (01:54:01.771)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:54:12.939)
Yeah.

Houston (01:54:14.978)
Two faces have been portrayed, have been more like gangster mobster kind of vibes, more like New York kind of flavor to him, or this guy's very clean cut, like country club, like, I don't know.

Eli Price (01:54:21.658)
Sure, yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (01:54:31.05)
Yeah, well, it's I think it's very like a long so the long Halloween comic The harvey dent to two-face kind of um story arc. I think is this pulls very much like influence from um And uh, and he is like that the da or whatever um There too, I think um, it's been a while since i've read it but um

Houston (01:54:46.99)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:55:01.89)
I feel like he plays Harvey Dent really well. And then once he becomes Two-Face, it's kind of like, I'm not really sure. And I think maybe part of it is just because the transition happens so quickly. Like you don't get time to get used to it.

Houston (01:55:10.455)
It's.

Houston (01:55:13.778)
Yeah, it's crazy as a subplot to try to squeeze. I thought it was crazy as a subplot to squeeze that into the same timeline as the Joker movie. But it does work. But yeah, I do think he gets too angry and not like, he doesn't like snap quite away. He's just like mad and he's grieving. And that's kind of just what it feels like. It feels like that. It doesn't feel like, oh, he's a villain now. He just feels like he's like pissed off.

Eli Price (01:55:21.39)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:55:40.756)
Yeah, and I think part of it is probably like the CGI work is like strange. It's kind of like a, I don't know. I don't know that I, I'm going to say I don't have an opinion, but if I did have to have an opinion on the CGI face, it would be like, I'm not sure if it's good or not. It's, it's

Houston (01:56:05.346)
Yeah, I think technically speaking it's good, but if it serves the character well, it's a different discussion.

Eli Price (01:56:11.718)
Yeah, I think part of it is because you've had so much of the movie grounded in reality. And like that was so much built into this screenplay and the way the movie is shot. And then all of a sudden you have this guy who has like half of his face burnt off. That's like not realistic at all. It just kind of was like, oh, okay. Yeah, we're jumping back into like very comic book territory.

Houston (01:56:18.973)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (01:56:38.622)
It almost would have been better if they just kind of like left it like under bandages and then like brought him back in like a third or a fourth movie. Kind of thing instead of just doing a hard left to the Bane character. I don't know that might have been a cool movie too.

Eli Price (01:56:44.766)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, maybe. Or, yeah.

Eli Price (01:56:53.186)
Yeah, yeah, maybe so. But yeah, I think Aaron Eckhart is very good at Harvey Dent too, because Harvey Dent has this very...

Houston (01:57:01.934)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:57:08.078)
He's kind of got this like, I'm like, generally a good guy, but can kind of be a bit of an a-hole too. Like kind of, I guess, like character to him. But yeah, and Aaron Eckhart pulls that off, I think, pretty well.

Houston (01:57:19.17)
Yeah.

Houston (01:57:29.042)
Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think he's a great actor. I think he was well cast. I can't like off the top of my head think of somebody that would have been immediately better than him. And there might have been, but I mean, they also may have been searching for a while. And I think where they landed for the weight of the role that he had, I think, served it very well.

Eli Price (01:57:37.771)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:57:47.69)
Yeah, but I mean, you know, yeah, he's good. Michael Caine, always, always great as Alfred. Christian Bell, Christian Bell, correct me if I'm wrong. I've watched Batman Begins not that long ago, obviously for the podcast. And I'm watching Dark Knight and I'm pretty sure like he really ups the gruff voice for Batman. Yeah. Yeah, it's much more.

Houston (01:58:10.218)
It does change. It does change a good bit. Yeah. I don't know if it's... So he's still my favorite Batman. But the voice is not necessarily my favorite.

Eli Price (01:58:17.578)
Yeah, sure.

Sure, yeah. It's one of those things that's like, you just have to remember like, okay, yeah, I'm in a comic book. It is like very real, but it's still a comic book movie. Ha ha.

Houston (01:58:33.842)
Yeah. I will say that Michael Caine though, there will never be a better Alfred Pennyworth. Not even like close.

Eli Price (01:58:39.506)
No, no. I'll, yeah, I'll say this. I really loved Andy Serkis in the new one. I don't think he gets enough screen time to really, yeah, he's really good as Alfred, but yeah, no one is in comparison with Michael Caine as Alfred. No, not, so.

Houston (01:58:52.261)
He was probably the best part about those movies.

Houston (01:59:02.538)
Yeah, I'm not a Batfleck fan at all.

Eli Price (01:59:08.506)
Andy Serkis was in the Matt Reeves, Robert Pattinson. He was the Alfred in that, yeah.

Houston (01:59:13.982)
I'm sorry. Yeah, you are right. You are right. I'm getting them mixed up. That statement still stands though.

Eli Price (01:59:17.43)
I can't remember the guy that was.

Yeah. I mean, I really love, I think circus is really good, but yeah, it's, you can't really compare to Michael Caine. Yeah. Um, but really like the man of the hours Heath Ledger, like this is Heath Ledger's movie. This is the Joker's movie at the end of the day. Like, um, and you know, there, so there was like, uh, there's other casting rumors, like some of them were like Paul Bettany was

Houston (01:59:27.806)
Yeah, I think I agree circus is a great actor across the board.

Houston (01:59:35.306)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:59:50.934)
Rumored at one point. Sean Penn was rumored at one point. I think, oh, there was another guy that I recognized. Yeah, he would be, he would be an, oh, Adrian Brody, I think. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was cast, or he was like rumored at one point, but yeah, in Nolan's mind,

Houston (02:00:01.942)
Paul Bettany is a super interesting choice.

Houston (02:00:10.283)
I could see him.

Eli Price (02:00:20.154)
like when you when you kind of look at interviews in his mind, like he had Heath Ledger in mind the whole time. And so Ledger had actually like talked to Nolan. I think he ended up not auditioning for Batman, but Nolan had talked to him about potentially auditioning and Ledger was just kind of like, and I think there was like a famous like press conference with Ledger shortly after like maybe

Houston (02:00:34.427)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:00:50.318)
I would never take part in a superhero film. And so, and I think Nolan had said, like he had seen that interview and like, or heard that quote or something and been like, okay, I have to get a ledger for the Joker. Like I need that energy, like that resistance to being in a superhero film. I need that energy like for my Joker role.

Houston (02:00:52.75)
Hehehe

Houston (02:01:05.728)
Nice.

Houston (02:01:10.45)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:01:16.346)
And it's like, this movie doesn't feel at all like a superhero movie in the traditional sense, like which I think was kind of his goal, but like, it just like, it just feels like a good narrative movie, like, that just happens to feature Batman.

Eli Price (02:01:22.41)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:01:29.866)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it felt it feels like a like a crime action thriller with Batman and the Joker. That happened to be the characters. Yeah. But yeah, he met up with Ledger and had like a couple hour conversation of him, like pitched the story. And no one said that like after.

Houston (02:01:39.736)
Mm-hmm.

Just because.

Eli Price (02:01:58.478)
they talked, Ledger was like, totally on board. Like he was like, okay, and I'm on board. And so he was cast pretty early. And so he went, he kind of locked himself up in a hotel room and like practiced voices and mannerisms and stuff to nail down what he was gonna do with the performance. And like I said, he had that mood board with those influences. He was keeping a log of things that the Joker might think was funny.

Houston (02:02:02.775)
Thanks for watching.

Houston (02:02:23.351)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:02:28.882)
Some of the things I saw were like landmines, aids, brunch. These are things written in his log. He just threw himself into this role. So the licking lips thing, apparently he saw the prosthetics for the scars kind of went into his mouth a little bit. And so...

Houston (02:02:56.864)
Okay.

Eli Price (02:02:57.526)
The the licking his lips thing was actually like all he was doing was like trying to prevent Having to go back to makeup for 20 minutes And so that just became part of like the mannerism of the Joker Yeah and ledger does a lot of stuff like there's a story where Ledger was like hey. Hey, let me apply my own makeup. I want to see

Houston (02:03:06.248)
Okay.

Houston (02:03:10.398)
Oh, that's awesome.

Eli Price (02:03:27.266)
how that would be like and Nolan said, I think there was a quote in one of the books I'm reading where Nolan said, what, you know, Ledger was like, let's see what we can learn from this. And Nolan was like, well, what we learned is that he's not a very good makeup artist. But he said that Ledger noticed like, oh, I have makeup left over my hands. And so like, from then on, that was a detail that they had was like, you,

Houston (02:03:42.462)
Ha ha ha.

Eli Price (02:03:55.85)
If you look closely, you can see like makeup residue on his hands because they were like, oh yeah, that's the detail that we missed that we learned from this. So just like tons of stuff that's just like Ledger's creative mind. And the way like Nolan worked with him was just like incredible. There's a ton of little stories like that. The the abduction, like torture sequences that are broadcasts where the jokers.

Houston (02:03:56.009)
Nice.

Houston (02:04:01.61)
Hmm.

Houston (02:04:21.934)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:04:24.722)
broadcasting, I think there's like two of those little sequences in the movie. And Nolan let him like operate the camera and direct those sequences. Like Nolan wasn't directing those. He gave like full control over the direction of that to the ledger in character as the Joker, which is incredible. Like, especially for someone like Nolan that's so like...

Houston (02:04:27.821)
Yeah.

Houston (02:04:37.591)
Hmm.

Houston (02:04:49.738)
I can't imagine.

Eli Price (02:04:53.41)
detailed and precise with how he wants things done. So like give over control, this shows a lot of trust.

Houston (02:05:00.03)
Yeah, and it definitely wouldn't have come out even close to the same way, I don't think. Like to have that kind of like found footage, like super grimy, dirty, distorted, gross kind of take.

Eli Price (02:05:03.809)
No, no.

Eli Price (02:05:07.671)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:05:14.862)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, just like the Joker, like the Joker's persona is in this movie, is just incredible. A lot of it comes from Ledger. But I mean, the way that Nolan and Goyer kind of conceived of the Joker has a lot to do with it too. Goyer is quoted saying like that, they were just talking about how

most iterations of the Joker in film, he's not really scary, and they wanted a Joker that was actually scary. And there are some very intense, frightening sequences of the Joker. He obviously has his jokes and his dark humor that do get laughs. You laugh at some of his jokes in this movie, but there's like,

Houston (02:05:51.65)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:06:11.438)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:06:13.082)
there's sequences where he is actually like very menacing. Which like if you go watch like the Jack Nicholson Joker, which is also pretty iconic, like he's not really scary, he's crazy, but he's, yeah, he's not like, you don't watch that and be like, this is like intense, scary.

Houston (02:06:18.27)
Yeah, absolutely.

Houston (02:06:24.174)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:06:28.374)
He's a little unsettling, but...

Houston (02:06:35.806)
Yeah, the thing that did it for me, and this is part of the marketing too, I forget if they showed this in the trailers, but the scene where he comes in with the chest full of grenades and stuff, when he says, I'm going to make this pencil disappear, and then he slams a dude's head on the pencil, and then the pencil is not there anymore, like where the heck the pencil go, and then you realize it went through the guy's eye. I'm like, and I think there was a piece of marketing material that was an x-ray scan.

Eli Price (02:06:47.708)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh huh. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Houston (02:07:05.086)
with a skull, like the cross section of a skull with a pencil through it. And I was like, Oh my gosh, like that's, that's when I realized like, Oh my goodness, this dude is like bent in the worst way.

Eli Price (02:07:06.558)
Okay. Yeah, that's awesome.

Eli Price (02:07:15.854)
He's nuts. Yeah, he's nuts. But like, in a way, I mean, so like, to contrast like the complete opposite of like how you should never do the Joker, which is like Jared Leto's take on the Joker. It's like the complete opposite, like in every way. It's, yeah, it's like, ooh, I have an idea.

Houston (02:07:37.834)
I wanted him to be good at it so bad, because I do like him as an actor. But.

Eli Price (02:07:44.65)
let me lay in a circle of my knives, because that's what the twisted Joker would do. It's like, no, like, the Joker doesn't have time to like be laying on his knives. Like he's, he's out there like scheming and doing his Joker stuff. Yeah, but anyway, yeah, Nolan, this is a quote from Nolan. He said, the Joker is what I am afraid of more than anything, more than any of the villains these days particularly.

Houston (02:07:59.914)
Yeah, obsessing over things, yeah.

Eli Price (02:08:14.134)
I think the Joker represents the id in all of this. The id being the basest, most instinctual part of our being in psychology, that's what it is. He is like, and another thing Nolan said is like, the Joker is like the engine of the movie. He's what propels everything forward. He's...

Houston (02:08:22.974)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:08:44.054)
Just everything about his persona is crazy Feister the DP said that watching I mean, he's got his camera up close Right up on Ledger's face And a lot of scenes and he said like watching him in those close quarters was like he was Busting blood vessels in his head And another thing he said was that it was like a seance where the medium takes on another person and then is so completely drained

Houston (02:08:57.607)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:09:13.582)
Hmm.

Eli Price (02:09:14.114)
Like just the intensity that he put into this character to make him legitimately like menacing and like kind of the sort of guy where you, the sort of character where you're like, I have no idea what this guy's gonna do next. And that's frightening, you know.

Houston (02:09:31.626)
Yeah. Yeah, a very unpredictable character. And he didn't feel like he was written that way either. It just kind of felt like they were just recording this crazy person.

Eli Price (02:09:36.321)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:09:42.482)
Right. Yeah. And so like, it's the mixture of that's what I was saying, like, it's the mixture of what ledger brings to it, which is that, that chaotic energy. That's what Nolan wanted. And that's why he cast ledger because he knew he could do it. But then it's also like, you know, the writing too, adds to that you have like, he gives the two different origin stories when he's like, threatening people.

Houston (02:09:52.568)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:10:08.813)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:10:11.626)
And just that idea, so the first time you get it, you're like, oh yeah, this is crazy. Um, like on a first watch and then like, he starts up telling another origin story and you're like, wait a second. Like this dude is just coming up with this like demented stuff, like on the spot. Like.

Houston (02:10:31.367)
And like they go into the details like they can't find his name, no prints, no nothing, no dental records.

Eli Price (02:10:34.886)
Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, he just, and Nolan talks about how like he just kind of appears, like maybe he was just has always been there sort of thing. And like he says he's like a force of nature. And he kind of saw him like, Nolan kind of says like he kind of viewed him kind of as like the shark in Jaws.

Houston (02:10:46.668)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:11:01.57)
where he's just as much a plot device as a character. He's like this force of nature that the other characters have to, or like forced to respond to. Right. And so he like, yeah, he just, and that's why he moves the movie forward, because everyone, the whole movie is just like.

Houston (02:11:13.386)
Yeah, like they don't have a choice.

Eli Price (02:11:27.394)
We don't know what the joker's gonna do next. And then he does what he's gonna do next. And that's what moves things forward. And so there is this like chaotic feeling to it all.

Houston (02:11:38.186)
Yeah, they can't be proactive. They have to only be reactionary to him until they can finally, like, confront him.

Eli Price (02:11:43.774)
Yeah, yeah. And that was like a question I was thinking about before I was watching the movie was like, so, because I've seen it, obviously several times before. And, you know, I was just thinking about so like, is the Joker supposed to be like something representing like kind of something like bass and terrible that's kind of in everyone, or is he kind of like representing this

force of nature that like affects or influences everyone. And it seems like it's more the latter.

Houston (02:12:18.438)
Yeah, I would say so. Like he's an edge case for sure. And I think the part of the movie that sums it up the best is Alfred's monologue to Bruce in the bunker where he's talking about the guy was throwing away rubies the size of tangerines away just because some men want to just watch the world burn. They don't care about money.

Eli Price (02:12:22.372)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:12:37.37)
And it is this like idea of like the chaos of everything like there is there is a degree to which like you know the way it functions in real life with the or the parallel is just kind of like the not knowing what might happen in your life next that could throw everything for a loop you know that chaos that is then really just kind of the nature of

are limited foresight and knowledge as human beings. We don't know exactly what's going to happen next ever. And so that's kind of like what the Joker represents, but to an amplified degree of the chaos of life. And yeah. Yeah, and so the way he functions is sort of like,

Yeah, he says he's chaos and there's like the line where he says to Harvey Dent becoming two-faced like, do I look like a man with a plan? Which is kind of an ironic line to me because I'm like, no, you don't and you don't act like a man with a plan, but you definitely have a plan. But everything is like, I read somewhere a line that I was like, oh yeah, that's good. He doesn't...

Houston (02:13:53.614)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:14:03.542)
so much strategize plans as conceive of like lethal jokes. Like everything is just jokes. These big jokes for him of like, how can I throw everything for a loop?

Houston (02:14:16.958)
Yeah, and like he does that quote where he's like, he's like a dog chasing after a car, like he doesn't know what he would do with it if he caught it. He just does. He just, I just do. And so it's like maybe he doesn't have plans as much as he has just random goals of like destruction and mayhem and killing people and doing whatever that kind of satiates his desire to do whatever he wants at any given time.

Eli Price (02:14:28.726)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:14:36.602)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Houston (02:14:47.102)
And this one just happens to be burning Gotham to the ground.

Eli Price (02:14:51.754)
Right. Yeah, and he, you know, I think one of his biggest functions in the movie is that he kind of probes the limits of both the ethics of Batman and the ethics of the people of Gotham, which all culminates with those final sequences. And so you get the final sequence with...

you know, him and Batman facing each other while like the fairy sequence is going on. And that's what he's pushing everything to, the Joker, is can I like push everyone to the edge of like their alliance of, I mean, that's what he does with the guy that's like trying to out Bruce's Batman, like the accountant guy. He's like, let me show.

Houston (02:15:26.254)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:15:45.288)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (02:15:50.094)
how like when you push everyone to the complete edge of their ethical lines, how they'll cross those lines. And he does it with Batman. That's one of the things that I was thinking about with Batman in this movie. Because while it is very much a Joker film, at the end, it goes back to Batman. I think no one is.

Houston (02:15:57.038)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:16:18.33)
A quote that I wrote down from Nolan is he said it's the Joker's film for so much of the movie because he's such An electric sort of presence and with his performance He's such a motor for that film But at the end Batman takes it back Bruce takes it back to himself And I think that's true and it comes down to like What is the motivating factor for Batman at this point?

Houston (02:16:44.095)
Especially after Rachel's death, right?

Eli Price (02:16:46.698)
Yeah, so I mean you have in Batman Begins, like his parents death is, and the fear and the grief and anger is like the motivating factor. So what is it here? And I think, you know, even before Rachel's death, it's this duality of his identity taking its toll. So like, he's dealing with like, is there an end to this? Or is everything just going to keep escalating?

Houston (02:17:06.871)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:17:16.682)
if I continue in this.

Houston (02:17:18.474)
And it's such a poetic way that they tell that because he sees Harvey Dent as that answer. And then when Rachel gets taken away, that the Harvey option is no longer a thing because he goes crazy. And so it's all back on him again.

Eli Price (02:17:24.201)
Right.

Eli Price (02:17:33.47)
Yeah. And even before like before Rachel dies, there's the he sees her like shifting affections. So he's like he's losing her before he really loses her, which is another like just a joke by the joker of telling him switching the addresses, you know, so that he saves dent, which to me is like another indication that like.

Houston (02:17:43.906)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:17:48.371)
Yeah, that's true.

Houston (02:17:55.671)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:18:01.57)
He has a plan, like he has an overarching plan. But yeah, just the idea that Batman is like so burdened by the power and the responsibility that this escalation of things has like brought to him.

Houston (02:18:03.411)
Oh, for sure.

Eli Price (02:18:21.05)
And then Dent, like there's also like, like we were talking about, you also have this like side story about like the rise and fall of Harvey Dent going on like simultaneously with this story of like the Joker Batman dichotomy. And I don't know, like we've talked a little bit about that. It's kind of, I think when you.

Houston (02:18:31.584)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:18:48.234)
when you boil it down, really the question for that story arc is, was Two-Face in him the whole time.

Houston (02:18:57.047)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:18:59.01)
Because I mean, when you watch, so there's like the few sequences where like Bruce and Dent interact with each other, and they like kind of talk about the Batman, like especially at that dinner. And you kind of get the feeling that Dent is sort of like jealous of how Batman can operate.

Houston (02:19:11.083)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Houston (02:19:19.006)
Yeah, but I think that's a sentiment that's kind of shared across most of like the authority of Gotham City and that they all see him or everybody besides Jim Gordon in his unit, see him as a vigilante that's like kind of going against what they've set up and kind of ruining things for them and going against the grain and probably making the city a worse place instead of a better place. But then on the whole, go ahead.

Eli Price (02:19:22.863)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:19:29.451)
Right.

Eli Price (02:19:34.955)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:19:39.486)
Yeah, but then I was gonna say, but then Dent is like, even before he becomes Two-Face and like, Rachel dies and stuff, like he's already starting to try to be Batman. Like there's the scene where he's like in Terry, like getting ready to like torture this like mad guy and Batman shows up and he's like, you're not getting anything out of this guy. He's like, he's crazy.

Houston (02:20:00.064)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:20:04.222)
Yeah, even way before that when he first meets Jim Gordon, and he asked him, he asked Gordon about his nickname. So like that kind of leads me to believe it's like, well, he might just be a jerk instead of like being crazy. Like he's like, okay, like he does what he needs to like kind of get results in his line of work. But I don't think that they give you any indication that he has the two face character within him at that point, which

Eli Price (02:20:13.141)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:20:17.464)
Yeah.

Right, right.

Eli Price (02:20:24.012)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:20:32.318)
I don't think he would have until he actually loses Rachel, but it's such a weird thing because like, he seems so worried about having Rachel in the first place and because she's so kind of standoffish whenever he asked her about like their relationship and furthering it and all that kind of stuff because secretly, I mean, obviously she's still tied to Bruce. But to kind of see that kind of like jealousy kind of form for the Batman or for Bruce in general with.

Eli Price (02:20:32.439)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:20:42.019)
Right.

Eli Price (02:20:51.055)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:20:56.983)
Yeah.

Houston (02:21:00.498)
Rachel and Dent and that whole pseudo love triangle thing is super interesting.

Eli Price (02:21:05.33)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I don't think that necessarily like he would have become two-faced without the death of Rachel like that's a crucial um kind of plot point, um, which is a whole nother thing with Nolan of like uh killing off the wives and love interests in his movies, um, but uh, you know, it's the irony is like he has a very like loving family relationship with his wife that is

Houston (02:21:13.847)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:21:24.066)
Bruh.

Eli Price (02:21:35.418)
part of like that produces all his movies with him. It's just like this ironic thing of like, and yet he's like killing off all the wives in his movies. Very strange. But yeah, I mean, the dent thing, I think it's interesting, but I think it really like dent functions more as, or his like story arc.

becoming Two-Face functions more as like a way that the Joker, like it, I guess it functions toward the Batman Joker dichotomy part of the story more than it functions just on its own right. Because at the end of the day, that's like his, what does he say, like an ace in the bag or an ace in the sleeve or whatever. You know, he, the fairy thing failed.

Houston (02:22:28.162)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:22:33.73)
his little social experiment, but his social experiment with Dent that, you know, Batman was unaware of actually was like was his success. Yeah. What have you done? Where is she? Yeah. And that's another that's like one of those like jokes that actually like is funny.

Houston (02:22:44.738)
He's like, what have you done?

Houston (02:22:53.223)
Let her go. Very poor choice of words. Best part of the movie.

Houston (02:23:02.402)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:23:04.542)
But yeah, talking about the Joker Batman dichotomy, it's that chaos turning civilization back to its baser instincts that is kind of the idea with Joker. And the Batman part of this is Bruce and Batman has Batman wondering, have I enabled this?

Me escalating everything with my vigilanteism brought this about. Um, and you know, Joker has the line, like he has the line, you complete me, which makes you wonder like, has the Joker watched Jerry Maguire? Um, and is Tom Cruise a part of the, uh, the Christopher Nolan Batman universe, um, and Renee Zerweger?

Houston (02:23:45.25)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:23:49.614)
Hehehehehehehehehehe

Houston (02:23:56.324)
That's his end when Katie Holmes left. He had to kind of replace her somehow, right?

Eli Price (02:24:00.558)
Yeah. But yeah, you know, and so, you know, Bruce, and this is like, this is the interesting part of like Batman's like, like arc through this is he's, you know, Joker's plan to like push to the edge of ethics, like not only works with like the citizens of Gotham, but it's like working with Batman, you know, you have the interrogation scene where he's like

just like beating on the Joker, which is like very unlike and against kind of like what he normally does. And like he's, so it's just these things, these choices he's making where he's like doing the wrong thing but for the right reason. And like bearing the weight of that and like trying not to lose himself.

Eli Price (02:24:56.386)
you know, as the jokers keeps pushing him and pushing him.

Houston (02:24:56.407)
Yeah, you.

Yeah, you kind of see that theme of obsession between both of them kind of like taking place, especially when he goes to Fox and creates like the giant Sonar network thing. And I mean, even Fox confronts that it's like, hey, like, as long as this is that way in enterprises, I'm not going to be.

Eli Price (02:25:01.571)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:25:07.35)
Right.

Eli Price (02:25:15.102)
Yeah. And he, he kind of asked the question, um, you know, at what cost. And I think that's what, I think that's like the, the question that you are kind of left with at the end of the movie. It's like, um, we're moving forward. We're, we're, you know, we're putting criminals away. We're, we're doing all this, these things that are, you know, supposed to be good. But at what cost I think is the, the question you're left with. Um,

Houston (02:25:41.731)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:25:45.238)
And that's like, I think that's what leads into The Dark Knight Rises is that question like at what cost are these supposedly good things that we're accomplishing. You know, but yeah, there's the, I think the other interesting thing about this movie are like the political aspects of it, which there was a lot of talk around when it came out.

You know, it's written against the backdrop of like the Bush war on terror. Um, very much like, and it's like going on at this time. Um, and you.

Houston (02:26:27.602)
Yeah, Joker felt like a domestic terrorist. I mean, that's kind of what he was doing, is just inciting riots and terror and all those kinds of stuff and telling people to like, kill this dude or else he blows up a hospital and all these crazy things that are just there to just incite madness.

Eli Price (02:26:31.122)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:26:42.314)
Yeah. And, you know, it's so it's the Joker's, you know, being like destructive and causing like catastrophes. But then like Batman having like overbearing, overreaching reactions to that. And so like, there's very much like you can see the influence in the writing, really. I think it.

Houston (02:26:58.626)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:27:09.118)
And it's one of those things like when you talk to guys like writing, like Nolan, they're like, well, you know, we're not writing, like, we're not trying to be relevant to the times. But like at the same time, these are the things on everyone's minds and they're on our minds while we're writing. So it's not like, oh, we're trying to make a political statement, but it's just like the natural. Right.

Houston (02:27:23.891)
Yeah, so.

Houston (02:27:30.982)
Yeah, it's not allegorical, but it just kind of happens because that's what inspiration he has in the ethos to pull from.

Eli Price (02:27:35.565)
Yeah.

Right, exactly. And there's a ton of things that he's tackling that are just in the American zeitgeissen conversation at this time, the surveillance state and civil liberties, how to regard people standing as figureheads, which we're still trying to figure out. But yeah, and like I said, the Joker is basically a stand-in for shaking

Houston (02:27:50.839)
Big Brother.

Eli Price (02:28:07.958)
down like modern American ethics. And really like...

Houston (02:28:14.014)
I would say just human ethics, not just American ethics, right?

Eli Price (02:28:17.994)
Yeah, yeah, I guess like I was I guess I was just saying that because just thinking about like the The political atmosphere in America when this was made, but yeah for sure like human ethics too. Just like what lines are you willing to cross? that sort of thing because like really like with Batman there is a Very fine line between him and the insane criminals. He's dealing with And so it'd be very easy to cross that line

Houston (02:28:31.618)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:28:47.502)
Um, but yeah, um, one of the things I, I was thinking about was the line where Joker says, um, you know, madness is like gravity, all it takes is one little push. Uh, and, um, I was just thinking about, man, that is, uh, kind of a little bit too true, uh, in today's like political atmosphere, all it takes is like.

Houston (02:28:59.714)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:29:15.466)
saying one thing that may or may not be true about a certain group of people and your side like gets all up in arms about this thing that may or may not even be true, but the right figurehead said it and so that's on the right side. I do think that there's a lot of like

Houston (02:29:23.138)
Yeah, they're just the tiniest provocation.

Houston (02:29:28.32)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:29:32.138)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:29:43.438)
politics of the time when this was made, but also stuff that unfortunately like carries over to today like that idea But yeah, no one very like if you look at like back on the conversation around the movie when it released there was actually like People on both sides kind of claiming the movie as being like for their point of view

Houston (02:29:50.666)
Yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (02:30:11.65)
which is hilarious for one. And Nolan actually said he felt like both sides like claiming his movie was actually a win. But it really is politically ambiguous. Like Nolan, again, trusts his audience. He's like, I'm not gonna answer these questions for you. It's up to you to decide what...

Houston (02:30:23.47)
There you go.

Eli Price (02:30:39.454)
What is what are the right things happening in the movie and what are the wrong things? Like you as the viewer have to figure that out on your own. Like i'm not just going to spoon feed it to you um I kind of lean toward that like A lot of the stuff that's going on is wrong. Um like I think the question like of at what cost I think the answer is like Some a lot of what's going on is that too great of a cost?

Eli Price (02:31:09.678)
just because like really in the end of the, I think the film does speak to it like a little bit less like directly in that like Batman totally like changes his tactic at the end like, and so like that should tell you like, oh yeah, the cost is too great.

Houston (02:31:10.613)
Yeah.

Houston (02:31:23.144)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:31:30.79)
Yeah, and I mean, like the whole like character of Batman, like, well, yes, he doesn't kill anybody. I mean, he's causing millions of dollars of damage to the city and like being completely reckless. And like, like you said, by the end of it, he's doing things that are like super unethical and kind of just trying to exact his revenge and not just bring balance and justice to the city. Like his original like kind of motive is.

Eli Price (02:31:45.228)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:31:57.046)
Right. Yeah. And I do think like, so the movie ends and Batman rides off and it's the whole like...

Houston (02:32:08.942)
Sorry, one second. My cat got locked in our bedroom and it's like making noise and like clawing its way out of the door real quick. Sorry, trying to remember that last thing you said.

Eli Price (02:32:16.023)
Yeah, no worries.

Yeah, well.

Houston (02:32:35.63)
That's really funny, like it's paw shoved under the door. Let me out!

Eli Price (02:32:40.043)
Yeah.

Oh man. No worries.

Houston (02:32:43.126)
All right, sorry about that.

Eli Price (02:32:47.786)
But yeah, you know he you know, he's writing off and it's the whole line of like You know the hero is I always mix it up the hero that He's maybe the hero that Gotham needs right now, but not the one that it deserves or vice versa That line has always been confusing to me because I'm like wait, what's the? Like what what's better to a hero that you deserve or that you need?

Houston (02:33:15.7)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:33:16.538)
I've always been like, I don't really get what they're trying to say there.

Houston (02:33:20.894)
No, I think it's like, maybe they're trying to say like Gotham is like too far gone and so like he shouldn't bother, but he's who Gotham actually needs, but they don't deserve his generosity. And I mean, I guess like at some level kindness for like trying to fight the injustices in Gotham.

Eli Price (02:33:27.242)
Yeah, maybe.

Eli Price (02:33:30.996)
Yeah.

They don't deserve it yet.

Yeah.

Eli Price (02:33:41.158)
Yeah, yeah, and I guess that is it, but I feel like, man, they could have written that line a little bit better, more clearly. Yeah, and then, you know, he's kind of like becoming the, I do like the dent line that's reused here of like, you know, either, you know, yeah, die hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain, which is a-

Houston (02:33:49.616)
It sounds like a cliche.

Houston (02:34:03.392)
You die, hero.

Houston (02:34:07.935)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:34:10.134)
That really is a great line.

Houston (02:34:11.59)
That's probably the best one in the entire trilogy.

Eli Price (02:34:14.73)
Yeah, yeah, I think that's way a way better line than the need deserve heroes line. And I think it is like, I think it is like very much encapsulates like the story arc of like Bruce slash Batman in this film of like, he's, he's done like he hasn't even really been doing this for but for like a year, but that already is too long.

Houston (02:34:22.062)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:34:41.514)
Well, it's him and Dent, right? They're paralleled in that. I mean, Dent literally in Batman's on his way to being that. He's on his way to becoming a villain and then Dent actually does become a villain.

Eli Price (02:34:44.694)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:34:50.138)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:34:53.546)
Right. Yeah, and maybe it's just that idea that like when you ride that line for too long, um, like it's inevitable that you're gonna cross it. Um, and some people just are gonna cross it way sooner than others like didn't cross the line like way sooner than Batman did. Um, but it just, yeah, just that idea that like, hey, maybe you shouldn't ride the line. Maybe you should, you know, steer clear of it all together sort of thing. But

Houston (02:35:04.279)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:35:12.299)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:35:24.69)
Um, yeah, I think, um, just taking a final thought away from the movie, cause the, the two fairies thing, um, is a big thing in the movie and like the tension building is really well done in that. Um, uh, but also just like, I think the idea that I was like taking away from it as I was watching with like.

Houston (02:35:41.358)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:35:53.306)
today's eyes and today's like climate in America. And it probably like was something that was relevant then too. But just the idea that like you have these two fairies with these like opposing, not just like, I mean they're people of different ilk, like they're criminals from a lower strata and.

you know, these people that are like, well, to do trying to get out of the city or like, at least like middle class, um, just, yeah, just average citizens. Um, and you know, they're, they should be very different and they should have very different ideologies about life. Um, but they don't, at the end of the day, they decide not to treat each other that way. And, um, I think that was like one of my, like,

Houston (02:36:26.41)
just I think just average citizens.

Houston (02:36:37.858)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:36:49.266)
I guess takeaways from this was just like opposing ideologies willing to simply just not destroy the other. You would think the ethic to take away should be that they're actually kind to each other. But just like in today's political climate, just like not trying to destroy the other is...

Houston (02:37:09.387)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:37:18.203)
a step forward.

Houston (02:37:20.938)
Yeah, and that was kind of like ultimately like Joker's defeat, right? I mean, I guess like psychologically, was that like Batman, he even says it. It's like, this just goes to show that nobody, that not everyone is as ugly and whatever deep, deep down as you are.

Eli Price (02:37:25.21)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:37:34.742)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and he does pull the whole dent thing, but then, you know, Batman 2, like, his solution for that is I'm going to, like, sacrifice my own reputation and, you know, whatever for dent, which I've heard some people, like, nitpicking of, like, why couldn't they pin the crimes on the Joker or whatever? And I was like, well, that wouldn't be as interesting as a story, so. There's the answer for that.

Houston (02:38:02.807)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:38:04.31)
But yeah, just like, I don't know, I just think about like our two main political sides today, just like there's a lot of unwillingness to just have civil discourse, or just like even simply not like lambast someone who has a different opinion than you. And I don't know, I...

Houston (02:38:25.902)
Thank you.

Eli Price (02:38:30.194)
I wrote down in my notes, let's toss the detonators and treat each other as fellow humans. And yeah, that was kind of like my corny takeaway line from that whole sequence is, you know, toss the detonators out of the window. Like we don't have to like destroy each other to make our points. Like we can, you can make your point and opinion wise, like by just like treating other people as fellow human beings and talking through issues like civilly.

Houston (02:38:34.514)
Hehehehe

Eli Price (02:38:59.766)
Um, and yeah, I don't know. I think that's still something that's relevant today. That's like, probably had no one had like maybe no intention of communicating, but something that kind of, I saw thinking about that sequence with the two fairies. But yeah, I don't know. Did you have any like final takeaways or just like things you were thinking about?

Houston (02:39:11.256)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:39:24.686)
Great movie. And I mean, like just even stepping back from all of this, like minutia that we've been talking about, like it's just like a really enjoyable movie to watch.

Eli Price (02:39:26.134)
Yeah, great movie.

Eli Price (02:39:31.834)
Mm-hmm. Oh Yeah, it's It doesn't it's a long movie, but it doesn't it's one of those movies that like you don't feel the length of it Which is a good thing. Yeah Yeah, where so where would you I mean you I would assume this is your favorite Nolan movie Because it's one of your favorites all time I get

Houston (02:39:42.302)
Nolan's very good at that.

Houston (02:39:56.915)
It is, yeah. It is my all-time favorite movie. I don't know if I said that earlier in the podcast, but it is. It is yet to be dethroned and I can't foresee a future where it will be. So yeah, 10 out of 10 for me for sure. I'm also, like I said, a huge Nolan fan, so a lot of his movies are on my like top 10 list. Not that I've made like a formal one or anything like that, but just to kind of in my

Eli Price (02:40:00.131)
There you go.

Eli Price (02:40:10.113)
What? Yeah.

Eli Price (02:40:22.746)
Sure, yeah.

Houston (02:40:24.194)
headspace right now, I can probably think of one or two others that are up there as well.

Eli Price (02:40:28.95)
Yeah, yeah, I think.

Yeah, like I said at the beginning, when I think of The Dark Knight, I'm like, Houston. Houston loves this movie. But I remember there was once where you just like, we had like, I think we went to a concert in Dallas. Was that a John Markman building concert we went to or something like that? Like way back, I mean, that was probably like eight or nine years ago. And you just like had The Dark Knight playing on your phone on the drive back.

Houston (02:40:41.562)
Hehehehe

Houston (02:40:52.975)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Houston (02:41:05.654)
Probably. Yeah, just like so I can listen to it.

Eli Price (02:41:05.794)
like you were driving and you just had it playing. I have like a distinct memory of that. No, I mean, I loved the movie too. You know, I wasn't mad about it. I just have like that memory.

Houston (02:41:12.563)
I'm sorry I put you through that then.

Houston (02:41:20.874)
It's like, let's check out this new album. Nah, let's watch this movie.

Eli Price (02:41:24.274)
No, let's listen to the Dark Knight. Oh man, which I think it's funny because I think you can listen to it and not watch it and like picture it and enjoy it that way. But I also think like you could probably watch a lot of the scenes with no sound at all. And it still be like really cool and incredible to watch. Which is, I don't know, that's fun. But yeah, for me, this is like, so I have like,

Houston (02:41:28.846)
Goodness.

Houston (02:41:44.024)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:41:53.634)
think six Nolan movies that are ranked that I would put like at four and a half to five stars and this is one of them but I right now I have it as like the six so just rewatching through everything I think I moved I've moved like memento ahead of it just because like memento is so like he's

Houston (02:42:01.282)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:42:22.066)
Nolan is so like precise and like everything is so like just like on the dot with Memento with the way it's like written and structured and it's a little bit more like focused in like what it what he's doing with like memory and grief in it. This is like a way more expansive movie obviously and uh but yeah it's you know like

Houston (02:42:46.839)
Yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (02:42:49.37)
I always say ratings and rankings are subjective and really don't mean anything objectively. But it's fun to talk about to me. Yeah, so I have it sitting at six, but like I said, still four and a half stars, or if you wanna say nine out of 10 for me. And yeah, just frames of this movie burned in your mind.

Houston (02:42:57.815)
Yeah.

Houston (02:43:04.457)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:43:10.519)
Nice.

Eli Price (02:43:17.698)
Joker with his head sticking out the police car, Batman standing with the blueish hazy background with the fires being put out behind him is sticks out in my mind. It's just an incredible movie all around. But yeah, I think we've...

Houston (02:43:20.127)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:43:31.086)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:43:47.278)
pretty much hit all we're gonna hit on the Dark Knight. So we're obviously gonna talk about Inception next week. So looking forward to that. I've actually already recorded that episode and it's a very good one. And so I've been recording these a little bit out of order and true like Christopher Nolan fashion. So yeah.

Houston (02:43:48.988)
We went pretty in-depth with that one. Yeah.

Houston (02:44:14.894)
There you go.

Eli Price (02:44:17.61)
But yeah, looking forward to that, but we're gonna have a movie draft coming up that I'm excited about and Before that we're going to take a quick break. So we will see you back in just a second

Eli Price (02:44:33.119)
Okay.

Houston (02:44:33.342)
Bum ba da. Ba da ba da ba da ba da ba da ba da.

Eli Price (02:44:39.906)
All right, you have a movie draft list ready? Sweet, I'm excited. How many do you wanna do? Do you wanna go with five or seven?

Houston (02:44:43.787)
I do.

Houston (02:44:52.286)
I think five is probably safer because I feel like we're going to have a few that might match up.

Eli Price (02:44:58.314)
Yeah, that's fine. I have a long list, but like I'm not... I'm good like keeping it to five and making it... Okay. I'm good keeping it to five and like making it harder to pick. It's always like harder the more you like scale it down. Okay, that sounds good. Do you need to break for anything or you want to jump right in?

Houston (02:45:02.446)
I think I have like, let me see.

I have 12 written down.

Houston (02:45:15.128)
Yeah.

Houston (02:45:19.202)
Mm.

Houston (02:45:26.486)
No, let's knock it out if you're good.

Eli Price (02:45:28.564)
Okay.

Eli Price (02:45:33.774)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Establishing Shot. I'm Eli Price here with Houston Dragna. Just had a great conversation on The Dark Knight. Man, I'm just like looking at the movie poster with the Joker standing there. And man, just incredible. Anyways, we are...

Houston (02:45:55.095)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:45:59.974)
I don't really have much as far as movie news goes for this episode. I know the weekend this is releasing is the same weekend that the Taylor Swift era's tour is coming to theaters. So I know Houston's got his ticket already pre-purchased for that. I'm just kidding. No, I'm sure some people do.

Houston (02:46:13.326)
The theaters? Oh, I didn't know about that.

Houston (02:46:20.062)
I mean, yeah, I'm so excited for that.

Eli Price (02:46:29.154)
But yeah, it's apparently coming to theaters. This Taylor Swift, Swift Aris tour, you know, you can't buy the $2,000, take it to a concert, so, you know, pay 15 bucks and go to the theater, you know. But yeah, like I said, not much as far as movie news goes or releases for this weekend, so.

Houston (02:46:32.886)
lot of Swifties out there.

Houston (02:46:45.55)
There you go. Big screen.

Eli Price (02:46:56.682)
We're gonna jump right into the movie draft and along with the Joker, we are doing a villains movie draft. Choosing movie villains. I think, I don't remember if we talked about this, but I think we're gonna have the Joker in this movie set aside as like the, I mean he's just the best and so we'll just like crown him king and not draft.

Houston (02:47:24.33)
Yeah. So he can't be chosen. Yeah. I figured as much.

Eli Price (02:47:25.654)
Not draft them. Yeah. So, yeah. So when I post the pics on social media for people to vote on, I'll just say, I'll have a slide where Jokers has a crown on. He's the best. We all know it. Moving on, let's try to make this harder on ourselves. Because really, I think if one of us

Houston (02:47:50.858)
Yeah, absolutely.

Eli Price (02:47:55.074)
the joker, which would be you because you have the first pick and you just automatically win. It's not as fun that way. So yeah, we're, yeah, exactly. We're, yeah, if you've, if you never listened to one of the movie drafts before is basically, I like to describe it as picking the best kickball team on in the schoolyard. So you know, you're, you're going to have, you're going to have your

Houston (02:48:04.637)
Yeah, we can't make it too easy.

Eli Price (02:48:24.15)
You know, your best players that you want to get on your team, but also like your best friends that like, you want your best friend to be on your team too. He might not be the best kickball player, but you know, it's your best buddy. You gotta, you gotta bring them on the team. Um, so, uh, you know, that's kind of how our movie drafts go. I'm going to put up a poll after we finished drafting and see who ended up with the best team basically. So it's, it's left and leave it up to the people. Um,

We're the two fairies in this scenario, and the people get to decide which one blows up. And so, yeah. Every once in a while, I'll tell a really coiny joke live on air that lands. Most of them don't.

Houston (02:49:02.574)
Goodness. Oh man, I didn't know where you're going with that. That's good.

Houston (02:49:22.318)
Congratulations.

Eli Price (02:49:23.042)
Um, uh, yeah, so you have the first pick. Um, we are picking movie villains. I haven't really put any stipulations on what counts for a movie villain. We didn't talk about it. So it's up, it's just up to us to define what that means, but I think it's pretty cut and dry.

Houston (02:49:38.826)
Well, yeah, we're not going to decide who wins. So if we pick really crazy, arbitrary decisions on what a villain is, then the audience will know what that is, right?

Eli Price (02:49:41.27)
No, but we're gonna.

Eli Price (02:49:48.06)
Exactly. They'll know you're cheating. So yeah, Houston's gonna have the first pick. We're gonna pick five movie villains each. So yeah, well, I guess we can kind of name the movie and then obviously the villain in the movie that we're choosing it for. But yeah, you've got the first pick. Go ahead.

Houston (02:50:08.342)
All right, I'm excited about this one. I'm gonna choose Hans Landa from Inglorious Bastards.

Eli Price (02:50:14.83)
Great pick. He was in my top few for sure. Kristoff Waltz. Perfect. Love it.

Houston (02:50:18.238)
Yeah, he's just.

Yeah, it was such a well played role. And that's, that's even besides the point, but like just a guy that's just, he's a Nazi. He's excited about being a Nazi. He finds joy in like killing people and finding Jews and all this terrible, awful stuff. And he like laughs about it. And he's like, kind of like has a weird psychotic string to him.

Eli Price (02:50:34.351)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:50:43.478)
Yeah, he's got a little bit of Joker energy to him. Yeah.

Houston (02:50:46.074)
Oh yeah, for sure. Like the big smile and like all of his lines and his like kind of super oddly cheery voice the whole movie. Very disturbing. Great villain.

Eli Price (02:50:54.366)
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, he was definitely in my top picks. I am going to... I'm glad you took... it's one of those things where like I hate to lose that as an option, but also like it'll make like my first couple of picks easier because I don't...

Houston (02:51:13.411)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (02:51:17.358)
There you go. There you go. Yeah, I'm curious to see what you have to say, because I'm sure your list is like twice as long as mine.

Eli Price (02:51:22.858)
I have way too many. But yeah, I'm going to go with one that's like both a like, one of those that's like, it'll get some votes, but also like, it's just like near and dear to my heart. And I kind of did a social experiment with my family last week talking about I was, you know, saying, oh, we're going to do a villains draft. And I was like, what is the most?

or who is the most iconic, not the most, but one of the most iconic movie villains in pop culture. So not just a movie villain, a really good one, but one that's very prominent in pop culture. And I was surprised that it didn't come to mind sooner for my family than it did. But yeah, I'm gonna pick Darth Vader.

Houston (02:52:08.526)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:52:22.094)
from... I'm gonna go with... yeah, I'm gonna go with from The Empire Strikes Back, because that's my favorite. Yeah, I mean I've got to pick a movie specifically, and I think... yeah, I think I love him in Empire Strikes Back. I mean he's great in all of them, and you can't really pick... you know, you can't really pick him with

Houston (02:52:23.278)
I saw it coming a mile away.

Houston (02:52:29.296)
Oh, okay, specifically, okay.

Eli Price (02:52:50.602)
Return of the Jedi because he kind of makes his swing back in killing the emperor there. So yeah, I'm going to go with Darth Vader. I mean, one of the most iconic villains of all time.

Houston (02:52:58.368)
Yeah.

Houston (02:53:06.777)
Yeah, you'll get a bunch of points with the audience for that one.

Eli Price (02:53:09.578)
Yeah. But also just like, I love Star... I love that first trilogy so much. It's so good.

Houston (02:53:19.734)
Nice. Yeah, I do as well. My confession with Star Wars, though, is the original three, like four, five and six, they blur together in my mind so often that I forget what scene comes from what movie. Just because like when I first saw them, I was so little. And so like. I just like I remember, like maybe like bits and pieces, like I'll watch like an hour of it when I was younger and then like fall asleep. And then like my dad's watching the next one the next day or something like that. And so.

Eli Price (02:53:32.494)
That's fair, yeah.

Eli Price (02:53:37.07)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:53:46.975)
Yeah

Houston (02:53:47.786)
It's been a while since I've like sat down and watching back to back to back. But I digress.

Eli Price (02:53:54.518)
Yeah, you've got your second pick. What are you gonna go with here?

Houston (02:53:57.034)
Yeah, if you're going to hit me with Darth Vader, I think I have to compete. I want to put some more interesting ones in there that are kind of more just for me. But I think just for the points, I think I've got to go with Thanos.

Eli Price (02:54:05.946)
Sure, yeah.

Eli Price (02:54:10.03)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, you'll definitely get it. Do you want to pick a specific movie? I mean, obviously it's probably going to be Infinity War or Endgame.

Houston (02:54:19.006)
It's probably in game just because you kind of see his like, I guess like pseudo humanity more and like that kind of give more of his reason. Like, and I think that's what makes a great villain and what kind of informed a lot of my choices is like they were once normal or like that you can at least see, you can somewhat, um, sympathize with their cause and that that's what makes a great villain. It's just they, they act on all those urges and all those things that

Eli Price (02:54:26.349)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:54:30.074)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:54:42.154)
Yeah.

Houston (02:54:48.598)
You're like, oh wait, no, you can only think that. Don't actually do it.

Eli Price (02:54:52.266)
Yeah, yeah for sure. Which is ironic I guess, talking since we talk so much about the Joker and how like we don't know what his origin is or like what his motivations are. So it's just crazy how like you can have those two opposite ends of like great movie villains. But yeah, I'm gonna go my second pick. I'm gonna go with the more Joker end of things with a villain.

Houston (02:55:07.04)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (02:55:19.682)
that you don't have any idea where he comes from, what his motivations are. And I'm gonna go with Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. Javier Berdim. I think he is like really one of the best. So it would be hard for me to choose between him and Hans from Inglourious Basterds. It's very close, I don't know. But since you took him off the board, it made it much easier for me.

Houston (02:55:28.254)
Ugh, he's on my list too.

Houston (02:55:36.374)
Just out of left field.

Houston (02:55:42.359)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (02:55:51.148)
So yeah, I'm going with Anton Shigeru. Yeah, I mean, he is.

He's flipping the, making you flip the coin to decide if you're going to live or die in a much, in a much more menacing and better fashion than even Harvey Dent. So.

Houston (02:56:04.718)
and then.

Houston (02:56:10.186)
Yeah, if you haven't seen No Country for Old Men, I mean, good gracious, that's an incredible movie. Disturbing, but incredible.

Eli Price (02:56:17.138)
Yes. Yeah, very.

Houston (02:56:22.742)
Okay, so pick number three for me. I think I'm gonna do one more popular one and then I'm gonna pick some that my last two are gonna be for me. So my last popular one, oh, this is a tough choice.

Houston (02:56:41.783)
I, it does, man, geez, okay. Let's go with.

Eli Price (02:56:41.823)
It gets hard.

Houston (02:56:52.53)
uh, Green Goblin from the Willem Dafoe Green Goblin from Spider-Man. Yeah. The. Mm hmm.

Eli Price (02:56:55.45)
Hmm.

Right. Spider-Man. The first Samurai Mi-Rite. Yes. Yeah.

Houston (02:57:04.546)
Such a good villain has like both ends of the spectrum where it's like, I guess like the green goblin from the chemical, it kind of comes out of nowhere. But then like, was it Harry Osborn is a very human, real person that has like real aspirations and stuff. But like, I don't know, he's kind of like a little bit obsessed about this whole green goblin thing.

Eli Price (02:57:14.97)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:57:19.563)
Right.

Houston (02:57:31.678)
Or, or just like the, what is it like just like a body synthesis kind of material thing. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:57:37.878)
Yeah, something like that. Yeah, I think if we didn't have the Heath Ledger Joker, I think Defoe's Green Goblin would be my favorite superhero movie villain.

Houston (02:57:52.554)
He's good. It was tough between that and Doc Ock for me, but I think Green Goblin takes it.

Eli Price (02:57:55.85)
Yeah, yeah, Doc Ock. Doc Ock is great too, but Defoe just brings that like comic book energy. Like, even in the, what is it, No Way Home, that, yeah, where, you know, they bring him back in the kind of multiverse thing. He just like takes control of that movie even, like the energy.

Houston (02:58:02.318)
Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.

Houston (02:58:10.675)
Mm-hmm. Or it comes back.

Houston (02:58:20.522)
I mean, Willem Dafoe as an actor does that no matter what he's in.

Eli Price (02:58:24.35)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, this is where it gets hard for me, too, because kind of like my favorite ones are all like my top choices are off the board. So it's just kind of like, OK, where do I go next? I'm going to and like you said, I like to take some like popular and then some for me.

which luckily I got ones a couple that are popular but also like some of my favorites. So that helps. I'm going to...

Eli Price (02:59:03.386)
Hmm.

go this direction already or wait okay I think I know what I'm gonna do I am going to pick I guess this one is probably popular too but maybe like people maybe don't think of it when they think of movie villains but um he's like one of he's a he's a fun he's a villain that like isn't necessarily like

one of those that has, like you said, a good backstory or even like one like sugar or Joker, or they're like, just like chaos kind of villain, but he's just the villain that keeps popping up. And I'm going to go with Hugo Weaving's agent Smith and the matrix. Um, yeah, just, yeah, he's just, it's just a fun character. Like, um, and like.

Houston (02:59:56.118)
Okay. He was a consideration for me. Not a pick though.

Houston (03:00:05.038)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:00:06.374)
one that like sticks in my mind like I can just hear him saying like Mr. Anderson. Like um like anytime I see someone with the name Anderson like that's what I say in my mind. Um so yeah I uh just a really fun villain in my opinion. Um yeah all right.

Houston (03:00:28.622)
Very cool. All right, so since we're on the Nolan series right now, I had to give some love to some of his characters besides the Joker. And this is like a genuine one that I really think is like a truly crazy awesome villain is Mal from Inception.

Eli Price (03:00:36.684)
Uh huh.

Eli Price (03:00:49.682)
Okay. That's a take. Yeah, go ahead.

Houston (03:00:50.634)
And so, yeah, yeah. So do you get why I'm saying that she's a villain? It's because she is trying to draw in, I forget the action. What's DiCaprio's character's name in the movie? Yeah, Cobb. He's, she's trying to draw in Cobb to this like state of madness that she's entered into because she's, she delved too deep into

Eli Price (03:00:57.962)
Yeah, I think so, yeah.

Eli Price (03:01:07.354)
Cobb.

Eli Price (03:01:14.18)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (03:01:18.358)
like the kind of inception world and all these dreamscapes and stuff. And then she eventually, she killed herself because of it, right? Because she, she could distinguish between, uh, realism and reality. Um, and so it's, she kind of.

Eli Price (03:01:25.622)
Right. Yeah. And she's even a projection. So like the Mal that you get throughout the movie for the most part is like a projection of his. And so like, it's almost like he's his own villain. Yeah.

Houston (03:01:37.582)
Correct. Yeah.

He's correct. But that concept as a character, I think is really cool. And I thought a long time about that one. I was like, this is really counting. I'm gonna go with yes. But if that loses me points with the crowd, so be it.

Eli Price (03:01:58.379)
Okay. Soviet. I think it's a bit of a hot take, but I do see where you're coming from with it. I would have never thought of that. But yeah, I like it. I like that idea that she's a villain and it makes it more interesting because she is a projection of his own mind.

Houston (03:02:02.838)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (03:02:17.251)
So if she's not the villain, what would you consider? Is there a true antagonist in that movie even?

Eli Price (03:02:23.406)
Um, like if it, yeah, well like even if you say Mao as the projection, because obviously she's not a villain, she wasn't a villain like as her real self, but like the projection of Mao, like he is his own enemy because she is a projection. So yeah, I guess it's that conflicted man kind of thing that Nolan, you know,

Houston (03:02:26.326)
like besides himself.

Eli Price (03:02:51.618)
kind of deals with in all of his movies, where the protagonist is kind of his own worst enemy in a sense. Yeah, I like it. I'm not going to veto it or anything. I think it's an interesting choice. Okay. So.

Houston (03:03:05.19)
Yeah, I'll leave it on the table.

Eli Price (03:03:21.526)
Man, we're already four in.

Houston (03:03:24.244)
I think if you really want to, we can push to seven if you want.

Eli Price (03:03:27.766)
Yeah, let's see how it goes. I'm gonna go ahead and pick one that is probably one for me. I don't know how popular this movie is because I know a lot of people that haven't seen it, but I'm gonna pick Samuel L. Jackson's Mr. Glass, AKA Elijah Price from Unbreakable. Shares my name, which is kind of weird. Yeah.

Houston (03:03:47.018)
Oh

Houston (03:03:54.006)
Oh wow, yeah, that's true. That was my next pick, you jerk.

Eli Price (03:03:59.614)
which I you know I think it's maybe a little bit of a spoiler to pick him so my bad I should have said spoiler alert but um yeah I didn't say what he did but it is kind of like a the twist the Shyamalan twist that he's the villain but I mean people know that there's the movie glass at this point it's been long enough you should you should have seen it by now

Houston (03:04:11.246)
Well, you didn't say what he did.

Houston (03:04:17.515)
It is a twist, yeah.

Eli Price (03:04:28.214)
But yeah, I love, Unbreakable has always been a favorite of mine. And it's a superhero movie.

Houston (03:04:31.894)
haven't yet technically is I haven't seen glass nor have I seen a dragonfly it wasn't that like the kind of spiritual precursor to that series or whatever aren't they like kind of like lumped in together or something I know they're like not directly related though that's what I meant split not dragonfly that's

Eli Price (03:04:42.892)
Oh, I don't know, I've never heard of that.

Eli Price (03:04:48.13)
Split is, so split is part of it. No, yeah. Yeah, split is, split is pretty good and I thought Glass was pretty good. Glass didn't get very good like critical reception, but I enjoyed it personally.

Houston (03:05:06.079)
It came out so much later than Unbreakable though, right? It was like almost 10 years, I think.

Eli Price (03:05:09.11)
Yeah, it did. And it incorporates the split character, James McAvoy's character into that one too. So you have his character and Bruce Willis' character. I thought it was a fun movie, but yeah. Yep, Mr. Glass.

Houston (03:05:18.039)
Gotcha.

Houston (03:05:27.307)
Nice.

Houston (03:05:30.782)
Well, thanks for taking my next pick. That's a good one. That's a really, really good one. All right. So if you're going to pick Mr. Glass.

Eli Price (03:05:33.654)
You're welcome.

Houston (03:05:44.014)
I feel like I gotta throw in another heavy hitter now, because you took that. I'm going to go... I got two good ones right here.

Houston (03:05:55.098)
I'm gonna go with Scar from The Lion King.

Eli Price (03:05:59.362)
Nice. You made another choice easy for me. But I'll get to that probably with my next pick. The Scars are great. Yeah. You know, be prepared.

Houston (03:06:02.655)
Okay, good.

Houston (03:06:06.61)
And I don't think that one needs any, I don't think he needs any explanation.

Houston (03:06:15.024)
That's because he has a great singing voice. That's why I picked him. Not many on here with a great singing voice.

Eli Price (03:06:18.826)
Yeah, yeah, and he's... Yeah. I like to picture Scar with a beak coming out of his mouth talking. Yeah, Scar is, I mean, he's a great villain. He really is.

Houston (03:06:27.851)
Yes.

Houston (03:06:34.254)
Who uh, who played Scar? Jeremy Irons? Is that right?

Eli Price (03:06:40.014)
Let's see, I think that's right.

Houston (03:06:43.158)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:06:45.623)
Yep. Really great.

Houston (03:06:48.773)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:06:51.775)
Okay, yeah, you made my next pick easy. I'm gonna go with probably like, I was, another question I posed to like my family, just a fun thought experiment is, when you think Disney villain, who's the first one that comes to your mind? And I got several answers like Scar, you know, Scar was said, I don't know if anyone's Scar was their first one that came to mind, but.

but he was one of the first. And he would have been one of the first for me. But I think the villain that I think of first comes with her own very recognizable theme. And I'm going with Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmatians. I just...

Houston (03:07:36.063)
Okay.

I wasn't 100% sure where you were going with the female villain. I thought you were going to go Maleficent at first.

Eli Price (03:07:44.426)
Yeah, Maleficent is the one that most people will say. When you think of a Disney villain, I think a couple of people of him would say Maleficent. But Maleficent doesn't have her own theme song. So, Corrella De Vil is automatically better, in my opinion. Yeah. And she's just kind of great. Like, I'm not a huge fan of the Emma Stone movie that came out, Corrella.

Houston (03:08:00.398)
fair. That's the reason.

Houston (03:08:12.395)
me neither.

Eli Price (03:08:12.618)
It gives like a origin story to a character that like doesn't need an origin story and like actually makes the character confusing When you get the origin story that makes you supposed to be empathetic with her And I'm like, yeah, but she's just trying to like killed puppies so why Yeah, so

Houston (03:08:33.002)
I don't get it either. I didn't really care for that movie. I did watch it though.

Eli Price (03:08:36.606)
Yeah. Anyways, Cruella De Vil is a fantastic villain and she's got a cool car and she's got her own theme song. So that's all you need to know.

Houston (03:08:43.054)
She does. She does. Those are true things. All right. So I need to ask you now, are we going to seven or are we stopping at five? What do you think?

Eli Price (03:08:55.198)
Do you think you got two more? Cuz I'll tell you this If we keep going I'm gonna pick some like just very personal ones that I kind of doubt you'll pick

Houston (03:09:07.306)
Yeah, I got a couple more. Wait, so this would be my fifth pick currently? I'm about to do my fifth pick? Yeah.

Eli Price (03:09:12.502)
Yeah, I do have like another more popular one that I could go with. But I do have some personal ones, too. Yeah, we can do seven. I'm down.

Houston (03:09:25.642)
Okay, cool. If that's the case, before you get rid of it, I think this might be another one that's up there, pretty high on the list. And it's gonna be Sauron from Lord of the Rings. The chess game now.

Eli Price (03:09:36.954)
Mmm, yes.

Eli Price (03:09:42.887)
I guess you gotta go with Return of the King maybe. Yeah, that's a good one. And honestly, like, so I'm, I like, I've been making like little letterbox lists so I can like organize these for my drafts. And for some reason, I forgot to, or maybe it's just like, oh, that's what it is.

Houston (03:09:45.339)
Yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (03:10:09.882)
So usually I'll put my favorite ones up toward the top and I had just forgot to move it up there. So yeah, oh well. But yeah, Sauron, great one. That's gonna get some votes.

Houston (03:10:18.934)
Boom.

Houston (03:10:23.414)
Yeah, just for even if they don't know his name, they just the fact that I'm putting the Lord of the Rings on my list. Think it'll get some brownie points there or some limbo spread points.

Eli Price (03:10:29.226)
Yes. Yeah. All right. So like I said, there was one more that would be a very popular one, probably. And.

Houston (03:10:41.751)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:10:50.762)
Since you picked Sauron, I think I've got to go this direction, because that was a huge oversight for me. And I'm going to go with Michael B. Jordan's Killmonger from Black Panther, who is my favorite personal favorite Marvel MCU villain. So Marvel. So like, I can't say Marvel villain because I do like the foes Green Goblin more, like I said, but yeah.

Houston (03:11:04.383)
Ooh, good one.

Houston (03:11:10.556)
Okay.

Houston (03:11:19.723)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:11:20.918)
Yeah, Co-Monger is my favorite. MCU. Yeah. Yeah, great performance. Really cool, empathetic, like we've been talking about, villain. Yeah, Black Panther, Co-Monger. All right, this is your last pick.

Houston (03:11:22.85)
But for MCU specifically, yeah. Okay, gotcha. Great performance too.

Houston (03:11:43.459)
Is it? No, this is six, right?

Eli Price (03:11:43.97)
Yeah, one, two, three, four, five, six, nope. This is seven, this is the last one.

Houston (03:11:49.186)
Sorry, wait, can I go through my list again? So I did Hans landa Thanos Green Goblin Mal

Eli Price (03:11:53.302)
Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep. Mal. Mm-hmm. Scar. And Sauron.

Houston (03:11:58.882)
and scar and then Salron. Okay. Oh dang. All right. Cool. Well, I have a few more to choose from then. I gotta go for an interesting one. I can't go like super mainstream with this one.

Eli Price (03:12:12.422)
Oh yeah, I'm picking something for me.

Houston (03:12:16.73)
I'm going to go with, and I think you might appreciate this one, I'm going to go with Terrence Fletcher, the teacher from Whiplash.

Eli Price (03:12:26.314)
Love it. Yeah. I had seen that when I was like doing some research of like, oh, what are some interesting villains? And I had seen that and I was like, oh, I like that take, that's good.

Houston (03:12:32.083)
Yeah, same.

Houston (03:12:35.582)
Yeah, it's I think that's a super interesting one because it's like it is technically like a fictional movie. So like they kind of like over personify the characters a bit. And he is like just far. And like I did some music program study at UL in Lafayette. And like not to say that anybody there is near that bad, but like I kind of like I can sympathize with the musician thing because I was in the music program of like the late night rehearsals and like trying to pass your exams and trying out for bands that you don't make and just kind of be under that stress. And so.

Eli Price (03:12:44.666)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:12:57.826)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (03:13:06.042)
Um, I can empathize with, uh, miles, uh, what's, what's the actor's name? The main guy from, from Top Gun as well. Miles Teller. Yeah. So I can sympathize with miles Teller a lot more, um, because of having that kind of life experience. And so that one is a very personal one to me, even though I didn't have any, um, professors near that, that mean.

Eli Price (03:13:14.774)
Uh, yeah, uh, now that you asked me. Mouse teller, mouse teller.

Mm-hmm.

Houston (03:13:35.438)
but super duper well done performance there, which I think he got an Oscar for, right?

Eli Price (03:13:36.232)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:13:45.025)
Um, yeah, I think so.

Houston (03:13:46.578)
Also played J. Jonah Jameson in the first Spider-Man movies. Boom, full circle.

Eli Price (03:13:50.33)
There you go. Tie-ins. Tie-ins all around. Okay. This is my last pick and I just, I'm scrolling, I have a huge list. And so I'm scrolling through here and I'm like, okay, I have two that I'm deciding from that are very, very different. One is definitely not going to win me any votes because I doubt many people have seen it. Actually I have three. Two of them will not win me any votes.

Houston (03:14:20.534)
Well, I gotta know what the other ones are once you reveal your actual pick.

Eli Price (03:14:20.955)
One of them might.

Eli Price (03:14:26.858)
Yeah, one of them might win me votes, but I've already picked one villain based on the theme song. So I'm not going to pick another theme song winning. Go with the ones. Yeah. No, no, I was thinking so I was thinking about doing Boggis Bunsen being from Fantastic Mr. Fox, just because that song gets stuck in my head.

Houston (03:14:40.031)
Nickelback doesn't count as a villain.

Houston (03:14:55.854)
Okay. There you go. It's been a minute since I've seen that movie.

Eli Price (03:14:55.93)
my cusponson being. Yeah, and yeah, I just did the Wes Anderson series, so it's a more fresh, and we watch, me and my wife, you know, Robin, we watch it, we started a tradition of watching it every Thanksgiving, which is fun, it's a, yeah. So I'm gonna go, there's two I'm choosing from.

Houston (03:15:05.096)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Houston (03:15:16.387)
It's a great movie.

Eli Price (03:15:24.558)
I think I'm going to go with the absolutely creepiest of creepy options. I'm going to go with Max Schreck's version of Count Orlok, aka Count Dracula, and the 1922 silent movie Nosferatu. If you've never seen this movie, it's...

Houston (03:15:54.311)
seen.

Eli Price (03:15:54.694)
It is incredible the amount of like actual real horror and creepiness that the director FW Murnau is able to like capture. Like you look at still images and you're like, oh this movie's probably like corny and then you watch it and it's like it's incredibly creepy and like

Eli Price (03:16:18.278)
And if you watch it disconnected from the film, I could see how you'd be like, oh, the way he moves is corny. But when you watch it in the atmosphere of the whole movie, it is haunting the performance. And so, yeah, it's not gonna win me any votes, but maybe it'll get some people during a spooky season to watch the 1922 Nosferatu for the first time.

Houston (03:16:27.68)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (03:16:42.423)
There you go.

Houston (03:16:46.838)
Yeah, I've definitely seen cells from this because I think at one point he was turned into a meme. But no, I've never seen the actual movie.

Eli Price (03:16:51.498)
Yeah, mm-hmm. Very memeable. Yeah, the stills are like, you're like, oh, this is very corny, but it is absolutely, completely haunting and creepy. So yeah, that's kind of just a personal favorite pick. That's not gonna win me any votes. The other one was, which we can do some honorable mentions. The other one was...

Houston (03:17:07.447)
Nice.

Houston (03:17:12.76)
Right on.

Houston (03:17:17.932)
Yeah, yeah, sure.

Eli Price (03:17:21.766)
Robert Mitchum's Harry Powell from The Night of the Hunter, a 1955 black and white film, is this guy that plays this kind of like traveling preacher that's actually a serial killer. Yeah, so he kind of poses as a preacher. And yeah, he's a serial killer that and he's looking for this.

Houston (03:17:28.654)
Mm-mm.

Houston (03:17:37.998)
Oh wow.

Eli Price (03:17:50.626)
hit one of his ex-inmates' cash that he has stood away. Yeah, it's a very good, interesting movie. Yeah. Others, I mean, I didn't pick any, I guess Nosferatu is horror, so I got a horror pick in there, but you have your iconic horror villains like Freddy from Nightmare on Elm Street, Mike Myers from Halloween.

Houston (03:18:00.152)
Nice.

Houston (03:18:15.65)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (03:18:19.554)
Jason Voorhees.

Eli Price (03:18:21.816)
Jason.

Houston (03:18:23.838)
Not super, but very one dimensional. Like that's the only bad thing about horror movies is most of the villains are very one dimensional. They're just like an evil spirit from something and they just live to kill and that's it. They just, they're scary, but they're not very compelling most of the time.

Eli Price (03:18:26.95)
See ya.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:18:35.554)
Yeah.

Yeah. If I had to pick one, it would probably be, um, Freddie, uh, because I think there's some like interesting stuff going on with, with him, like emotionally and whatnot. Um, like where does he stem from? And, and then like to the way, like Mike Myers is just totally like, kind of funny, like how he just appears around corners, but at least with Freddie, like, you know, he exists in the dream space. So it's totally like plausible within the structure of how things work.

Houston (03:18:43.786)
Yeah, okay, that...

Houston (03:18:58.848)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (03:19:06.498)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that one does work a bit better. This wasn't even on my list, and I don't really ascribe to myself to be a huge fan of the series, but if we're going just outside of movies, Vecna from Stranger Things 4 is a pretty good one.

Eli Price (03:19:20.31)
Yeah. Really good. I enjoyed that, that story arc in that last season was very good. A total one we'd really missed was, uh, Voldemort, uh, it, Ralph finds performance in, uh, is, is very good. Um,

Houston (03:19:27.017)
Mm-hmm. On my list, OK.

Houston (03:19:33.439)
Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Houston (03:19:39.806)
Yeah, I highly agree. He's he's on my top list of actors for sure, especially like he can do that and then he can go to like Grand Budapest Hotel. So good. So, so good. The biggest one on my list that I hadn't said was probably Jack Torrance from The Shining.

Eli Price (03:19:47.958)
Right.

Eli Price (03:19:56.43)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one.

Houston (03:19:59.042)
very creepy character.

Eli Price (03:20:01.982)
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's interesting. Like that's another one of those where I saw that on a bunch of lists and I was like, I don't immediately think of him as a villain because he's sort of like the main character of the movie, uh, in a sense, um, and kind of he becomes, yeah. Right. To.

Houston (03:20:17.782)
Yes, yeah, I guess so. But like he becomes that later though, like the kind of like the shift, it shifts his attention to the female character, I forget her name right now, but it shifts to her and then he becomes the villain and starts becoming an axe murderer. And then who else do I have on? I had a gore from Thor Love and Thunder. Actually really loved, I loved that character.

Eli Price (03:20:31.138)
I do too.

Eli Price (03:20:36.65)
Right.

Eli Price (03:20:43.142)
Yes. Bill is like going all out. It's great. Bill is just going all out with that character. I love it.

Houston (03:20:50.147)
What was that?

Houston (03:20:53.866)
Yeah. But yeah, Christian Bale's a fantastic actor, and then that character has a really good backstory, or at least a fairly compelling one. It's a little far-fetched, but I mean, everything in the MCU is now.

Eli Price (03:21:00.964)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:21:04.298)
Yeah, right. Yeah. Well, that whole movie is like totally just like balls to the wall, like, like going crazy. And I like it for that reason. Like, I think a lot of Marvel movies try to like ride the line of being funny and serious at the same time. And this movie is just like totally like not taking itself seriously at all, which I kind of appreciate. Right. Yeah.

Houston (03:21:12.062)
I love it.

Houston (03:21:16.76)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (03:21:30.474)
Yeah, for like 90% of it for sure.

Eli Price (03:21:35.755)
Another big one we did in draft that I had thought about was Hannibal Lecter and Silence of the Lambs Anthony Hopkins like iconic performance there There's a lot of good Disney ones that are fun not gonna go through all of them, but yeah, Ursula is a good one Who else was I thinking of

Houston (03:21:41.87)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (03:21:48.715)
Yep, yep, that's a big one.

Houston (03:21:53.77)
Ursula.

Eli Price (03:22:05.098)
Jafar.

Houston (03:22:05.89)
Yep, Jafar is a great one.

Eli Price (03:22:10.21)
You've got, there's a lot of pretty good ones in like the Bond series and Mission Impossible movies, fun villains and those. Yep, Hans Gruber, I thought about Hans. I thought about drafting him, but I didn't end up going with him. Some less conventional ones, well, one more conventional one is the shark in Jaws. Could totally pick him. Yeah.

Houston (03:22:16.619)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (03:22:20.559)
Hans Gruber from Die Hard.

Houston (03:22:37.258)
Yeah, I guess so.

Eli Price (03:22:40.882)
But yeah, some more unconventional ones for me would be like...

Eli Price (03:22:51.194)
Well, like Western, there's some good Western villains too. Like the Liberty Valance and the man who shot Liberty Valance is really good. The Angel Eyes and the Good, the Bad and the Ugly is really good.

Houston (03:23:09.536)
I know that's a classic one, I just haven't seen it.

Eli Price (03:23:12.17)
Yeah, no, I mean, that's fair. I only watched it recently. I like in the past year, I watched it.

Houston (03:23:16.369)
Mm-hmm. There are gigantic gaps in my, like, I need to watch this movie realm.

Eli Price (03:23:22.29)
Yeah, yeah, I've been trying to like slowly like watch some more like classic westerns to catch up with those but

Houston (03:23:27.894)
Yeah, Caesar and gladiator is a big one for me.

Eli Price (03:23:31.658)
Yep. Yeah. The walking phoenix, comodus. Yeah, yeah. Very good.

Houston (03:23:40.238)
Mm-hmm. You're commenting that, and I guess he's effectively Caesar, but yeah, I guess it's not his character's name.

Eli Price (03:23:45.694)
Yeah. Another one that I thought of that was just more of a would have been a just a fun pick was the Mama Fratelli and the Goonies.

Houston (03:23:56.762)
Yeah. Oh, man. You know, I should have picked was Dr. Evil from Austin Powers. Oh, my gosh. That that should have been on my list. That's like legitimately one of my favorites. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:24:01.354)
I did think about Dr. Evil. I'll make sure to put it on honorable mentions. Yeah, Dr. Evil, that's it. We didn't do, that's, I was trying to think of like some comedies to pick villains from, and Dr. Evil is one I had thought of, but forgot to put on my list. I don't know that I would have picked him, but yeah, I do think there's some fun, some, oh, another big one that I...

Houston (03:24:14.528)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (03:24:30.33)
probably should have taken that I think is really fun is Marvin Harry from Home Alone. Really fun, yeah. Wet bandits, sticky bandits, yeah. There's a lot of, villains are fun, which is a strange thing to say, but in movies they are fun.

Houston (03:24:35.954)
Yeah, that's good one the white bandits.

Rob Lowe from Wayne's World.

Houston (03:24:51.414)
What's the other the teacher from Matilda? Would have also been a good one.

Eli Price (03:24:55.882)
Yeah, yeah, that would, it's been so long that since I've seen that, that I like, it's one of those that like, I know I've watched it before, but like, can't really like Mark office like, yeah, I've seen that because I don't remember a whole lot from it. Like I know the story and all, but yeah.

Houston (03:25:10.834)
Yeah, I don't even know if she was like the main villain, I guess like was like Danny DeVito, I guess was like one of the main antagonists in that one too.

Eli Price (03:25:20.098)
Maybe I don't like I said, I don't even remember honestly. It's been so long. Yeah.

Houston (03:25:21.694)
Yeah. Anyway, that's my list exhausted, I believe.

Eli Price (03:25:28.47)
Yeah. I mean, I have a lot more. I might link my list, my letterbox list in the show notes if people want to see my whole list. It's not, it's probably not like all of them, but it's just like ones I could think of. Yeah. Yeah, that's fun. Yeah. I'll read these off and then we'll move on. Houston ended up with Hans from Inglorious Bastards.

Houston (03:25:45.194)
Yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (03:25:57.55)
Thanos from Avengers Endgame, Green Goblin from Spider-Man, Maul from Inception, Scar from The Lion King, Sauron from Return of the King, and remind me of the Whiplash character's name?

Houston (03:26:14.279)
Oh, Terrence Fletcher.

Eli Price (03:26:16.406)
Yeah, Terrence Flesher from Whiplash, the J.K. Simmons. Yeah, and I ended up with Darth Vader from Empire Strikes Back, Anton Shiger from No Country for Old Man, Agent Smith from The Matrix, Mr. Glass, AKA Elijah Price from Unbreakable, Cruella DeVille from

Houston (03:26:19.725)
Yes.

Eli Price (03:26:45.622)
101 Dalmatians, Killmonger from Black Panther, and Count Orlok from Nosferatu. So, yeah. Good list.

Houston (03:26:55.947)
Hearing it out loud, I think you're gonna win, but we'll see.

Eli Price (03:26:59.714)
I don't know, yeah. So you have some heavy, like having Thanos and Sauron and Scar, like those are heavy hitters. I have heavy hitters too though, so it's just, it'll just come down to like people's personal preference. Yeah.

Houston (03:27:15.478)
Yeah. And I think we both have like one throwaway on there.

Eli Price (03:27:20.242)
Oh yeah, for sure. Like I think a lot of people like love Inception, but a lot of people are gonna be like, really Mal from Inception? And mine, they're gonna be like Nosferatu, what is that?

Houston (03:27:33.397)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:27:36.146)
Oh man. Um, but yeah. Maybe we'll get some people thinking. Yeah, did you, um, just wrapping things up, did you have, happen to have a recommendation of the week? Um, if you wing it, it's okay, because I wing it all the time.

Houston (03:27:53.546)
Yeah, just because I was super late to the party and I didn't get to watch it in theaters across the Spider-Verse was incredible.

Eli Price (03:28:04.046)
Oh yeah, it really was. I want to see that again, like on my home screen, where I can like pay. It was like overwhelming in theaters.

Houston (03:28:12.094)
Yeah, I regret not being able to do that at least once though.

Eli Price (03:28:18.486)
Yeah. Yeah, it was. There's so much going on in that movie that it's like, okay, I need to watch it again. Yeah, really incredible. Could end up being like my favorite of the year. We'll see. But yeah, my recommendation of the week, I've decided to keep it Batman and go with one of the

Houston (03:28:28.542)
Mm-hmm. It's incredible.

Eli Price (03:28:47.086)
comic book stories that was an influence for this. And I mentioned it earlier, The Long Halloween. It's one of my favorite, just like overall, comic book stories that I've read. I haven't read like a ton of them, but I've read enough to like have some favorites, if that makes sense. And yeah, Long Halloween is a great story arc.

Houston (03:28:55.37)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:29:13.258)
It's not like the same story arc as like the Dark Knight or anything. It was just kind of like they took some influences from it. But, um, but yeah, it's a great, great story. Uh, if you don't want to read the comic, um, but would watch them animated movie version, there is like a two-part, um, feature that, you know, all the DC stuff is on max, so you can even watch it on max. Um, and it's pretty well done. Like the.

Houston (03:29:38.263)
Okay, cool.

Eli Price (03:29:42.062)
the voice acting and everything is really well done for it. And it's a lot of those like animated versions of the stories are pretty much like 95% sticking to the comic. So yeah, it's really good. Long Halloween, great story. Go read it or at least maybe watch, watch the animated version. Yeah, that's it.

Did you want to plug some places where people can find you, find your work or just interact with you on socials?

Houston (03:30:21.802)
Yeah, for sure. I appreciate that. So I am a photographer, videographer, graphic designer. I'm currently promoting a lot of my wedding business stuff. So if that's of interest to you or a friend or a family member, you can find me at houstondragna.com for all my wedding stuff. I am on Instagram at the HoustonDragna and on Facebook as HoustonDragnaPhotography. But I think if you type in like,

Eli Price (03:30:32.367)
Mm-hmm.

Houston (03:30:49.026)
facebook.com slash the Houston Dragon that still pulls up there.

Houston (03:30:54.99)
But yeah, that's about it. But I also do like commercial work too. So like not just wedding stuff, product photography, brands and stuff, lifestyle, portraits, headshots, you know, kind of the whole gamut.

Eli Price (03:31:06.23)
Yeah. And I've seen his work. Great work. I have. And it's great. Some great family pictures that I will cherish forever. And so yeah, you can get some great wedding photos and video that you can cherish forever. Do you just do photography for weddings? You do video too? Okay. Great.

Houston (03:31:11.458)
You've hired me for some work.

Houston (03:31:28.626)
No, I do both. So I do both. I offer discounts whenever you book both with me. And then if you do actually end up booking both, I hire a pretty sweet, talented team to come out with me.

Eli Price (03:31:41.95)
Yeah, sweet. And if the Joker shows up, you know, that's totally on the Joker. You never know when he might show up. Yeah, it's not a part of the package deal, but you just, you never know when chaos might show up and impose itself on your wedding party, so.

Houston (03:31:53.527)
Never.

Houston (03:31:59.327)
Yeah.

Houston (03:32:07.67)
Yeah, absolutely. It's a concern we all have.

Eli Price (03:32:13.199)
But yeah, that's all we have for today. Thanks so much Houston for coming on and talking for a long time with me about The Dark Knight. And I hope everyone enjoyed the show. Again, we're going to talk inception next week. Looking forward to that conversation. But until then, I've been Eli Price for Houston Dragma. I said Dragma.

Houston (03:32:18.763)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:32:39.347)
for Houston Chagna. You've been listening to The Establishing Shot. We'll see you next time.

Houston (03:32:46.25)
Later.