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Media Type: Images

January 30, 2023

“Poker Face:” The Sunday Mystery Movie But It’s Streaming

author
Adrian Pennington


TL;DR

  • “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion” director Rian Johnson talks about his exciting new Peacock case-of-the-week series “Poker Face,” starring Natasha Lyonne as a mystery-solving fugitive.
  • Johnson discusses the challenges of writing a mystery series where the main character has the superhuman ability to recognize when someone is lying, and the importance of crafting standalone TV episodes even in an increasingly serialized era of TV.
  • Johnson calls this mystery subgenre a “howcatchem,” where it’s very much about the detective versus the guest star of the episode.


To make new television, it helps if you’ve watched a lot of old television. That’s a lesson evident in Poker Face, the crime-thriller series created by Rian Johnson and starring Natasha Lyonne, which makes its debut January 26 on Peacock.

Lyonne — creator and star of Netflix series Russian Doll — plays Charlie Cale, a woman employed by a casino with a preternatural ability to tell when people are lying.

As Johnson, the writer and director of Knives Out and Glass Onion, explained to Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times, the self-contained installments of Poker Face are a deliberate throwback to a style of TV storytelling that Johnson grew up with in the 1970s and ‘80s.

“That’s when I had control of the television,” Johnson said. “And it was typically hourlong, star-driven, case-of-the-week shows.”

They weren’t only detective programs like Columbo and Murder, She Wrote, he said, but also adventure series like Quantum Leap, The A Team, Highway to Heaven and The Incredible Hulk, which were notable for “the anchoring presence of a charismatic lead and a different set of guest stars and, in many cases, a totally different location, every single week.”

Those ever-changing elements kept things fresh and surprising, he said.

READ MORE: Natasha Lyonne and Rian Johnson Trace the TV Origins of ‘Poker Face’ (The New York Times)

Poker Face is not a whodunit but an “open mystery” because the audience starts out each episode by seeing who did it, how, and why, before Charlie begins to investigate. Johnson himself calls this mystery subgenre a “howcatchem,” where it’s very much about the detective versus the guest star of the episode, as Johnson also confirms to Brandy Clark at Collider: “These are not whodunits, these are howcatchems. Show the killing, and about Natasha [Lyonne] vs. the guest star.”

As Clark points out, the benefit of these types of shows is that a viewer can jump in at any time, without wondering or worrying if they need to see the previous episodes to understand the story or the plot.

READ MORE: Rian Johnson Explains ‘Poker Face’s Episodic Storytelling (Collider)

Of course, Columbo is the key reference point and an acknowledged part of Daniel Craig’s character Benoit Blanc in the Knives Out mysteries. Johnson told Rolling Stone’s Alan Sepinwall that he binged the entire series during lockdown.

“My big revelation from bingeing it is, I wasn’t coming back for the mysteries. Although the mysteries are fun, I was coming back to hang out with Peter Falk. And in that way, I feel like those shows have as much in common with sitcoms as they do anything else.”

He added, “It’s not really about the story or the content. It’s about just hanging out with somebody that you like, and the comforting rhythms of a repeated pattern over and over with a character that you really liked being with. That’s kind of what I saw when I watched Natasha in Russian Doll, that made me think this could be interesting.”

Lyonne also said that she loved characters such as Columbo, Elliott Gould’s Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye and Dennis Franz’s Andy Sipowicz in NYPD Blue, as reported by Deadline’s Peter White.

Speaking at NBCUniversal’s TCA press tour, Lyonne said that Charlie is “floating above a situation trying to crack a riddle, but also an everyman who has their nose to the grindstone and figuring out the sounds of the street.”

Once Johnson had decided to make her a human bullshit detector, rather than a detective or a mystery writer, he realized he had a problem, but this became the key to unlocking how the show might unfold.

“How was the show just not over within the first five minutes, if she can tell when people are lying?” he told Rolling Stone. “I had her give a speech in the pilot about how it’s less useful than you think because everyone’s always lying. It’s about looking for the subtlety of why is somebody lying about a specific thing. And we found really fun ways to play that at different episodes going forward.”

  • Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
    Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
  • Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
    Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
  • Hong Chau as Marge in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
    Hong Chau as Marge in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
  • Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale and Chelsea Frei as Dana in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
    Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale and Chelsea Frei as Dana in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
  • Brandon Micheal Hall as Damian in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
    Brandon Micheal Hall as Damian in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
  • Benjamin Bratt as Cliff Legrand in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
    Benjamin Bratt as Cliff Legrand in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
  • Simon Helberg as Luca in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
    Simon Helberg as Luca in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
  • John Hodgman as Narc/Dockers in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
    John Hodgman as Narc/Dockers in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
  • Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale and Benjamin Bratt as Cliff Legrand in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
    Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale and Benjamin Bratt as Cliff Legrand in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
  • Lil Rel Howery as Taffy in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
    Lil Rel Howery as Taffy in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
  • Judith Light as Irene Smothers and S. Epatha Merkerson as Joyce Harris in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
    Judith Light as Irene Smothers and S. Epatha Merkerson as Joyce Harris in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
  • Dascha Polanco as Natalie in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
    Dascha Polanco as Natalie in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
  • John Darnielle as Al, Chloë Sevigny as Ruby Ruin and G.K. Umeh as Eskie in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
    John Darnielle as Al, Chloë Sevigny as Ruby Ruin and G.K. Umeh as Eskie in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
  • Chuck Cooper as Deuteronomy and Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
    Chuck Cooper as Deuteronomy and Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
  • Chloë Sevigny as Ruby Ruin and G.K Umeh as Eskie in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
    Chloë Sevigny as Ruby Ruin and G.K Umeh as Eskie in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
  • Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
    Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
  • Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock
    Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock
  • Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock
    POKER FACE — “The Orpheus Syndrome” Episode 108 — Pictured: Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale — (Photo by: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock)
  • Luis Guzman as Raoul and Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock
    Luis Guzman as Raoul and Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock
  • Adrien Brody as Sterling Frost Jr. and Benjamin Bratt as Cliff Legrand in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock
    Adrien Brody as Sterling Frost Jr. and Benjamin Bratt as Cliff Legrand in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock
  • Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock
    Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock
  • Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock
    Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock
  • Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
    Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
  • Jack Alcott as Randy, Charles Melton as Davis, and Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock
    Jack Alcott as Randy, Charles Melton as Davis, and Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock
  • Danielle MacDonald as Mandy in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock NUP_197591_00014-
    Danielle MacDonald as Mandy in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock NUP_197591_00014-
  • Lil Rel Howery as Taffy in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock
    Lil Rel Howery as Taffy in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock
  • Adrien Brody as Sterling Frost Jr in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Carus/Peacock
    Adrien Brody as Sterling Frost Jr in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Carus/Peacock
  • Dascha Polanco as Natalie and Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock
    Dascha Polanco as Natalie and Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock
  • Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock
    Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock
  • Megan Suri as Sara in “Poker Face.” Cr: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock
    Megan Suri as Sara in “Poker Face.” Cr: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock
  • Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale and Megan Suri as Sara in “Poker Face.” Cr: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock
    Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale and Megan Suri as Sara in “Poker Face.” Cr: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock
  • Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock
    Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock

Although Johnson is red hot and you’d think people would be biting his hand to work with him, he says pitching a more old-fashioned TV format got push back.

“I was unprepared for the blank stares. And then the follow-up questions of, “Yes, but what’s the arc over the season?” I think there is right now this odd assumption that that’s what keeps people watching, just because there’s been so much of that in the streaming world that I think people equate the cliffhanger at the end of an episode with what gets people to click ‘Next.’ But TV before incredibly recently, was entirely in this episode mode. So I know it can work because I grew up tuning in every day for it.”

One reason it’s harder to do episodic case-of-the-week stories is the expense and the production challenge. For example, you keep have to bringing in new guests and visiting new locations.

“Holy crap, it was a headache,” Johnson admits to Rolling Stone. “I don’t think we even realized what we’re up against. No standing sets. No recurring characters besides Natasha and occasionally Benjamin Bratt. But we’re very purposefully going for the Columbo approach of big fish guest stars. So every single one of these episodes, we try and get somebody very exciting to play either the killer or the victim. And it was a lot.”

READ MORE: ‘Glass Onion’ Director Rian Johnson Is Giving Us a ‘Knives Out’-Style Mystery Every Week (Rolling Stone)

Indeed, the cast list across the season includes Adrien Brody, Ellen Barkin, Nick Nolte, Stephanie Hsu, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ron Perlman, Chloë Sevigny, Lil Rel Howery, Clea Duvall, Tim Blake Nelson, and many more.

Asked during a Q&A panel at the Winter Television Critics Association Presentation whether he writes specifically to those guest stars, he replied: “In the room, sometimes we’d have a placeholder actor, and it would end up being them, or surprisingly someone else. A benefit of this subgenre is that it is the guest star’s episode, and you see them go head-to-head with Natasha.”

Johnson continued to sing the praises of television in front of the ballroom full of television reporters and critics — saying he preferred the “pace” of this newfound process vs. film. Each hour-long Poker Face episode took about three weeks (one for prep, two for shooting) to complete. Compare that with making one film over the course of “several years,” as he put it.

READ MORE: ‘Poker Face’: “Endless Possibilities” For Natasha Lyonne’s Human BS Detector To Keep Solving Crimes Past Season 1 (Deadline)

“I loved that in each episode we’re in a different environment, it’s a whole new cast— it’s like making 10 mini movies,” Johnson told IndieWire’s Tony Maglio. “I literally dove into it like it was one of my movies. I really jumped completely into the deep end of the pool.”

READ MORE: Rian Johnson Now Thinks Making TV Is ‘Much More Fun’ Than Movies (IndieWire)

Johnson has previously directed for TV, notably on two episodes for Breaking Bad including the show finale “Ozymandias.” Episode two of Poker Face, which he directed, was shot in Albuquerque.

“I haven’t been back there since we shot ‘Ozymandias,’” he told Rolling Stone. “It was so much fun being back in town. A lot of the same Breaking Bad crew were on our crew, and it felt like a little homecoming.”

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Leave a Comment on “Poker Face:” The Sunday Mystery Movie But It’s Streaming
January 31, 2023
Posted January 29, 2023

“Troll:” Norway’s Motion Blur Makes a Modern (Ancient) Kaiju



TL;DR

  • Pushing aside “RRR” in the global marketplace, Norway’s “Troll” has become Netflix’s best performing non-English film.
  • Partly inspired by “King Kong” and Godzilla films, “Troll” employs many classic monster movie tropes with a distinctly Norwegian spin.
  • The character design for the titular troll was inspired by paintings by Theodor Severin Kittelsen, one of Norway’s most popular artists.
  • Espen Horn, producer and CEO of production company Motion Blur, said it was important that the production use Norwegians as crew, SFX and VFX vendors as much as possible, “because we wanted to show the world that this was genuinely a Norwegian or Nordic film.”


Troll from Netflix has seen some highly impressive viewing figures since its arrival on the platform and quickly became its best performing non-English film. This breakdown comes from Naman Ramachandran at Variety: “With a total of 128 million hours viewed and still counting, the film has taken the top spot on the non-English Netflix Top 10. It is in the Top 10 in 93 countries including Norway, France, Germany, the US, the UK, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Mexico.”

READ MORE: ‘Troll’ Becomes Netflix’s Most Popular Non-English Film (Variety)

Monster movies have always had a wide fan base and Troll has all the attractions and tropes those fans like — a cityscape destruction, believable and well-executed VFX, a credible folklore backstory, and a monster with feelings and a purpose. Something that Renaldo Matadeen picked up on in his review for Comic Book Resources.

“The remains of his tribe got left in a palace under the Royal Palace, which means the troll king’s domain has been desecrated. So, he’s stomping his way to Oslo to destroy the place for what happened to his family and to crush the symbol of Christianity, politics and corruption.”

READ MORE: How Netflix’s Troll Dwarfs the MonsterVerse’s Kong & Godzilla (Comic Book Resources)

Yes, Troll was partly inspired by King Kong, including Godzilla vs. Kong, but don’t forget Cloverfield with its clever “monster in a city” reality. But one of the most important aspects of the production was to keep it very Norwegian notwithstanding the monster action at its core. Espen Horn, producer and CEO of Motion Blur, explained the vision. “It was a big and important dream for us. That we should use Norwegians as crew, SFX and VFX vendors as much as possible because we wanted to show the world that this was genuinely a Norwegian or Nordic film,” he said.

“That was very important as even as the film has a classic monster genre formula to it, as some people claim, it was important to us to maintain originality in terms of the characters, mythology and the nature of how we are as people. I think the audience were happy that we kept the Norwegian originality.”

  • Writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
  • Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kristoffer Holm, Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, and Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kristoffer Holm, Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, and Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
  • Gard B. Eidsvold as Tobias Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Gard B. Eidsvold as Tobias Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
  • Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
  • Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen, Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kristoffer Holm and Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen, Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kristoffer Holm and Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
  • Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kris, and Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kris, and Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
  • Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
  • Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
  • Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kris, Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen, and Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kris, Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen, and Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
  • Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kristoffer Holm, Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, and Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kristoffer Holm, Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, and Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
  • Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kristoffer Holm in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kristoffer Holm in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
  • Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann and Anneke von der Lippe as Berit Moberg in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann and Anneke von der Lippe as Berit Moberg in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
  • Writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
  • Writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
  • Gard B. Eidsvold as Tobias and Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
    Gard B. Eidsvold as Tobias and Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix

Half-jokingly, Espen saw that owning the Troll story included some gentle reprisal for a fellow Scandinavian country’s appropriation of another folklore legend. “It was after Finland ‘stole’ the copyright of Santa Claus from Norway. Finally, we could copyright the Troll and insert some Norwegian DNA in to the story,” he said.

“It was essential that the people as well as the Troll were the heroes. Very often when you watch a monster movie it feels like explosions and the fights are more important than the love of the characters or the creature.”

Again reviews bought in to the sympathy for the monster, this from Noel Murray at the Los Angeles Times. “As with many other films about lumbering beasties, Troll alternates between making the big guy terrifying and sympathetic. It’s to the credit of Uthaug and his special effects team (as well as the refreshingly unfussy Espen Aukan screenplay) that this troll inspires such conflicted emotions and isn’t merely menacing or laughably goofy.”

It’s also to the production’s credit that the positive environmental messages baked into the story survived without the feeling of being spoon fed any kind of propaganda and without diluting the monster thrill ride. “We tried to do it in our own Norwegian modest fashion,” Espen demurred.

READ MORE: Review: It’s no secret why Netflix’s monster movie ‘Troll’ is so popular (Los Angeles Times)

Jesse Hassenger at Polygon agreed on the lack of a Hollywood ponderous third act in his review. “But there are plenty of advantages to shedding Hollywood-approved bloat while maintaining a kind of gee-whiz energy. Specifically, it resembles Emmerich’s 1998 version of Godzilla, reconfigured for greater speed and efficiency.”

READ MORE: Netflix’s explosive monster movie Troll is a whole new spin on Godzilla (Polygon)

Motion Blur is the production company behind Troll and over the last ten years have been making films and TV including two shows that were signed up for Netflix before Troll, the series Post Mortem and feature Kadaver. Espen, however, was sure it was the right time to attempt a huge monster movie with Scandinavian VFX houses of such quality like Denmark’s Ghost and Copenhagen Visuals, the Norwegian Gimpville and Sweden’s Swiss International. “We realized that with these Scandinavian facilities we had the ability to realize our dreams of creating such a monster, it seemed like the right time to do it.”

Espen describes the origins of the Troll project. “Around ten years ago we were developing a Troll story with another director. Roar Uthaug, the eventual director of Troll, was also developing a similar idea for a film. For various reasons both productions had to be stopped.

“But eventually we got together around three-and-a-half years ago to make a Troll movie. He had a very particular idea of how the story should evolve and had carved out the story and started working with screenwriter Espen Aukan.” The script was written fairly quickly and Motion Blur started to finance it.

Originally Troll was to be financed as a movie theater event with support from the Norwegian Film Institute, “We started to finance it as a typical cinema movie but then Netflix came on board — they bought so much into our vision for the film and how to accomplish it. They were very accommodating to fulfil this vision; it was actually a fairly easy choice to go along with Netflix and then not do a theatrical release.”

It was a 55-day shoot, which isn’t very long, but compared to Norwegian films is on the high side. “Shot in seven different locations including Oslo, so for the production it was very much a road movie in that sense. In one place for three or four days then move the 150 crew and cast to the next location. All were quite difficult to reach. Either up in the mountains or down deep inside a tunnel or a cave. But we got so much help from the local community including neighbors, farmers, engineers, even helping with extras.

  • Jallo Faber (Director of Photography), Roar Uthaug (Director) during production of “Troll,” Cr: Netflix © 2022
    Jallo Faber (Director of Photography), Roar Uthaug (Director) during production of “Troll,” Cr: Netflix © 2022
  • Troll. Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. Roar Uthaug (Director) COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. (L toR) Jallo Faber (Director of Photography), Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, Roar Uthaug (Director). COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kristoffer Holm. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. (L to R) Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen, Roar Uthaug (Director), Gard B.Eidsvold as Tobias Tidemann, Jallo Faber (Director of Photography). COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. Roar Uthaug (Director) COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. (L to R) Espen Horn (Producer), Roar Uthaug (Director) COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. (L to R) Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, Roar Uthaug (Director). COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. (L to R) Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen, Roar Uthaug (Director). COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. (L toR) Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, Roar Uthaug (Director). COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. Gard B.Eidsvold as Tobias Tidemann. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. (L to R) Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kristoffer Holm, Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. Roar Uthaug (Director). COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. Roar Uthaug (Director). COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. (L to R) Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, Gard B.Eidsvold as Tobias Tidemann. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. (L to R) Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora, Roar Uthaug (Director) COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
  • Troll. (L to R) Roar Uthaug (Director), Gard B.Eidsvold as Tobias Tidemann. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022

“To shoot in rural Norway was a fantastic experience. It was extremely rewarding that when you come to a small place the whole community gathers up and are so supportive. We also had fantastic help from the Norwegian army who were very accommodating in helping us first of all get it right in terms of language and rules and regulations as well as uniforms, guns and helmets, tanks etc.”

But what was Motion Blur’s inspiration for the creation of the Troll? They didn’t want the blundering and small cave troll from Lord of the Rings; in fact, Espen even derided them as “Hairless and stupid trolls.”

“For VFX we used Norway’s Gimpville, Ghost and Copenhagen Visuals in Copenhagen and Swiss International in Stockholm. The monster itself was partly derived from folklore. There is a famous painting by [Theodor Severin] Kittelsen who was one of Norway’s most popular artists, it was the painting that Roar Uthaug had as his inspiration. He always thought, ‘what would happen if we got a real troll walking in to Oslo down Karl Johan, how would everyone respond?’ ”

He worked with a Norwegian artist Einar Martinsen and they started conceptualizing the troll with that thought of Oslo in crisis from a giant creature.

But Kittelsen’s paintings set the scene, “The old Norwegian trolls had trousers, pine trees sticking out of their heads, had extremely large noses, were clumsy and a little bit stupid. We wanted a troll that looked badass but also would have the warm tender eyes of emotions, we wanted him to have memory to show feelings and emotions and the ability to camouflage itself.”

They presented their Troll design to Netflix and the streamer loved it, “We then started to work on the troll with Ghost who did most of the CGI on it. It was important that he was originated from Norwegian folklore — important to Norwegians and to Netflix. It was important that it had good heritage from the old Kittelsen painting and from the old fairy tales of Asbjørnsen and Moe from the 19th century.”

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CHARTING THE GLOBAL MARKETPLACE:

Big content spends, tapping emerging markets, and automated versioning: these are just a few of the strategies OTT companies are turning to in the fight for dominance in the global marketplace. Stay on top of the business trends and learn about the challenges streamers face with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
  • “RRR:” Changing the Game for the Global Marketplace
  • “1899:” Making a Mystery in Multiple Languages 
  • “Squid Game” and Calculating the “Value” of Global Content
  • Global SVOD Market to Hit $171 Billion in Five Years
  • Think Globally: SVOD Success Means More Content, Foreign Content and Automated Versioning

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“RRR:” S.S. Rajamouli Knows How to Shoot an Action Sequence for Any Audience
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January 29, 2023

“M3GAN:” James Wan, Gerard Johnstone, and Jason Blum Know What You Want



TL;DR

  • Hit movie “M3GAN” has busted the $100 million worldwide ticket sales barrier on a $12 million production budget.
  • Director Gerard Johnstone was inspired by horror-comedies like Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s rom-zom-com “Shaun of the Dead.”
  • New Zealand actress Amie Donald played the demented AI and ended up doing her own stunts.


Perhaps it’s our underlying fear of what AI will lead to, or a horror jolt that we needed to kickstart our year, but the hit movie M3GAN is busting the $100 million worldwide ticket sales barrier on a $12 million production budget. Also, a generous PG-13 rating has lured in the teenage market with even younger kids finding a way into theaters to catch horror-comedy at its best.

Vanity Fair’s Julie Miller looked into the toy slayers and analyzed the genre. “The killer doll trope is nothing new — 60 years ago, a pigtailed doll in ribbons and ruffles named ‘Talky Tina’ took out an evil stepfather in a Twilight Zone episode,” she writes.

“In the decades since, there have been knife-wielding dolls, deranged puppets, demonic fetish figures, and diabolical porcelain dolls fronting horror films.” But maybe the effect is easily explained by Frank McAndrew, a psychologist who has researched the concept of creepiness.

“They have eyes and ears and heads and all of the things that normal human beings have,” explains Frank “But there’s something off — the deadness in their eyes, their blank stares. They’re cute and they’re supposed to be for children,” he says, but the human realism causes “our brain to give off conflicting signals. For some people that can be very discomforting.”

McAndrew further defines that dolls are especially effective horror-movie antagonists because murderous streaks seem so unlikely in a child’s toy.

READ MORE: M3GAN and the History of the Creepy Killer Doll Phenomenon (Vanity Fair)

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of M3GAN is how a seemingly CGI-laced movie was made for only $12 million. The mid-sized budget was perhaps a consequence of shooting in New Zealand during COVID — since at the time the country hadn’t yet been exposed to the pandemic. But it was also due to the skills of a young local actress, Amie Donald, who played the demented AI and ended up doing her own stunts.

  • v
    Amie Donald as M3gan in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
  • Amie Donald as M3gan in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
    Amie Donald as M3gan in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
  • Amie Donald as M3gan, Allison Williams as Gemma, and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
    Amie Donald as M3gan, Allison Williams as Gemma, and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
  • Amie Donald as M3gan and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
    Amie Donald as M3gan and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
  • Amie Donald as M3gan and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
    Amie Donald as M3gan and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
  • Allison Williams as Gemma in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
    Allison Williams as Gemma in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
  • Amie Donald as M3gan, Allison Williams as Gemma, and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
    Amie Donald as M3gan, Allison Williams as Gemma, and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
  • Ronny Chieng as David in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
    Ronny Chieng as David in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
  • Amie Donald as M3gan in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
    Amie Donald as M3gan in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
  • Amie Donald as M3gan and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
    Amie Donald as M3gan and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
  • Amie Donald as M3gan, Allison Williams as Gemma, and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
    Amie Donald as M3gan, Allison Williams as Gemma, and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse

Jen Yamato at the Los Angeles Times tracked down the actress’s movement coaches. “Casting local performer and international competitive dancer Donald, now 12, to physically embody M3GAN turned out to be fortuitous. Although it was her first film role, the actor, who has also since appeared on Sweet Tooth, was off book within a week and loved doing her own stunts. ‘She was just extraordinary,’ says director Gerard Johnstone,” Yamato reports.

“Working with movement coaches Jed Brophy (The Lord of the Rings) and Luke Hawker (Thor: Love and Thunder) and stunt coordinator Isaac ‘Ike’ Hamon (Black Adam), she developed M3GAN’s physicality, which becomes more humanlike the longer she’s around humans. She adopted barely perceptible movements — a slight cock of the head, a step a bit too close for comfort — to maximize the unsettling effect M3GAN has on people.”

Donald proved to the director how well she could do her own stunts and even on the first day of shooting, nailed the all-fours forest move you can see on the trailer after perfecting it at home. “All of a sudden we get this video from her mother, where Amie had just figured out how to do this on the carpet at home,” said Johnstone. “And she could run on all fours!”

READ MORE: Puppets, fake tears, a young dance phenomenon: How ‘M3GAN’s’ killer doll came to life (Los Angeles Times)

CGI was definitely minimized in the movie, but WETA Workshop contributed additional designs to the film, and Oscar-nominated Adrien Morot and Kathy Tse of Montreal-based Morot FX Studios were entrusted to smooth out the joins of animatronics, puppets, posable and stunt M3GANs, as well as Donald herself.

Director Gerard Johnstone was also keen to bring a level of humor to the movie and find ways to echo his own experience of parenthood, as he told Gregory Ellwood at The Playlist. “But what I brought to it was definitely my own sense of humor and my own experiences as a parent. I wanted to put as many of my own struggles and anxieties and frustrations that I was having as a parent into this movie. Parenting in the age of AI and iPads isn’t easy.”

READ MORE: ‘M3GAN’ Director Gerard Johnstone Loves That You Think It’s A Comedy, Talks Sequels & More [Interview] (The Playlist)

Speaking to Valerie Ettenhofer in an interview for Slash Film, Johnstone cited Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s rom-zom-com Shaun of the Dead as teaching him a significant lesson in style. “My big lesson from them when I first watched  Shaun of the Dead…  was just how seriously they took both genres,” the director shares. “If I was going to do this, I had to treat the horror as seriously as I did the comedy.”

Johnstone struck a balance between horror and comedy with his first film, Housebound, which he continued with M3GAN, Ettenhofer notes, “a movie that offsets its most violent and unsettling scenes with moments in which the titular android does a hair-twirling dance or breaks into spontaneous song.”

Johnstone also namedrops a few other greats that he considers fun horror touchstones. “I’m a big fan of Sam Raimi, Drag Me to Hell and The Evil Dead trilogy.” He also commends Wes Craven, plus the “very deadpan” films of Joel and Ethan Coen, which he says employ “just a very dry tone, but you can tell they’re secretly making comedies.”

READ MORE: M3GAN Director Gerard Johnstone Learned A Key Lesson From Shaun Of The Dead [Exclusive] (Slash Film)

All the film references in the world mean for nothing, however, when your movie becomes a litany of Internet memes, which M3GAN quickly generated. Karla Rodriguez at Complex put it to the director that once a part of your movie or a part of the trailer becomes a meme, you know you’ve struck gold.

“And they were amazing,” picked up Johnstone, “and I just couldn’t believe how many of them there were. But I thought they were giving too much away in the trailer of the dance scene. I was like, ‘I just want a hint of it, something weird happening to tease people.’ And Universal said, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ And I didn’t know what I was talking about clearly because people just took it, recut it, put it to different music and it was just the gift that kept on giving.”

READ MORE: Director Gerard Johnstone Shares the Behind-the-Scenes Magic That Went Into Creating ‘M3GAN’ (Complex)

So where does that leave the psychotic M3GAN doll? A scary range of merch maybe, but definitely at least one sequel because, like artificial intelligence, we just can’t get enough of her. Producer Jason Blum has already said as much. “Blum did something he’d never done in his nearly 30-year career: He publicly admitted his desire to make a sequel before the movie even opened in theaters, Rebecca Rubin reports at Variety. “He just felt certain that audiences would instantly fall in love with M3GAN, short for Model 3 Generative Android, whose chaotic dance moves, pithy one-liners and killer tendencies turned her into an internet icon as soon as Universal debuted the first trailer.”

“We broke our cardinal rule,” he says. “I felt so bullish that we started entertaining a sequel earlier than we usually do.”

READ MORE: Why ‘M3GAN’ Convinced Horror Maven Jason Blum to Break His Cardinal Rule on Sequels (Variety)

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Why it Worked: Jason Blum and James Wan on ‘M3GAN’ | The Ankler

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION! SPOTLIGHT ON FILM PRODUCTION:

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“Troll:” Norway’s Motion Blur Makes a Modern (Ancient) Kaiju
“Troll:” Norway’s Motion Blur Makes a Modern (Ancient) Kaiju

Employing an all-Norwegian crew and VFX vendors, Norway’s “Troll” has toppled “RRR” to become Netflix’s best performing non-English film.

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January 29, 2023
Posted January 27, 2023

In TV and Film, It’s Payback Time

Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy in the film “The Menu.” Photo by Eric Zachanowich. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2022 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy in the film “The Menu.” Photo by Eric Zachanowich. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2022 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved


TL;DR

  • In a world where the wealthy and greedy thrive, the working class are fighting back, and the power dynamics are reversed — on screen, at least.
  • Class warfare has come out into the open with the release of “Glass Onion,” “The Menu,” and “Triangle of Sadness” as the gap continues to widen between the rich and everyone else in a meme that will no doubt be solidified in Netflix’s “Squid Game 2.”
  • One critic thinks these films don’t go far enough and — tongue in cheek — calls for a mainstream movie to go all the way without pulling any punches.


READ MORE: Hollywood’s Eat-the-Rich Satires Need Sharper Teeth (Vanity Fair)

Given that $26 trillion of new wealth created since the start of pandemic went to the richest 1%, reports charity Oxfam, that billionaire Donald Trump’s organization was found guilty of tax fraud but fined a paltry $1.6 million, and that Elon Musk made history by losing a record $165 billion but is still worth $178 billion, you’d be forgiven for hating the rich just a little bit. Hollywood is banking on it.

With seemingly little irony — given the wealth of senior studio execs and owners at streamers like Amazon and Apple — it is open season on the ultra-rich.

Several recent movies, and at least one TV show, set their sights on the oligarchy pulling the strings of the world, “promising brutal, if only imagined, comeuppances that us plebs could cheer on from the pit,” Richard Lawson notes in Vanity Fair.

The main projects being called out for this meme are the 2022 trio of Knives Out sequel Glass Onion, The Menu, and Triangle of Sadness, all of which all depict outsiders unseating the so-called elites for our viewing pleasure.

The cast of the film "The Menu.” Photo by Eric Zachanowich. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2022 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved.
The cast of the film “The Menu.” Photo by Eric Zachanowich. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2022 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved.

“The consequences they suffer in these films feel like the world is beginning to right itself,” Kimber Myers at Mashable suggests, “a triumph seemingly impossible off screen. Throughout each movie, the filmmakers create feelings of disgust at these archetypes of privilege and power. We don’t feel jealousy of their success; it’s righteous anger at the unfairness in how they achieved it and delight at their fall from grace.”

READ MORE: How eat-the-rich comedies changed during COVID (Mashable)

True enough, but hardly new. You could read 2000’s Gladiator, itself a retread of sorts of Spartacus, about the working class heroically fighting back against the oppressed and privileged. For which also read the populist narrative of RRR in which plucky Indians defeat the British Raj in style.

N.T. Ramo Rao JR as Komaram Bheem and Ram Charan Teja as Alluri Sitarama Raju in “Rise Roar Revolt.” Cr: Netflix
N.T. Ramo Rao JR as Komaram Bheem and Ram Charan Teja as Alluri Sitarama Raju in “Rise Roar Revolt.” Cr: Netflix

READ IT ON AMPLIFY: “RRR:” Changing the Game for the Global Marketplace

Gladiator director Ridley Scott is reportedly advanced on making a sequel to his Oscar-winning Roman epic, so look for more of the same.

One to watch before then is Squid Game 2, the follow-up to the Korean satire that took the world by storm in 2021. The show was a naked assault on capitalism in which very few winners of the game of life actually survive.

Also out of Korea was Parasite, garlanded with the Best Picture Oscar (much to Donald Trump’s displeasure) in 2020. This was a transparent metaphor for the underclass taking revenge on those complacent enough not to see their riches as reason enough for attack. The director, Bong Joon-ho’s had form. Snowpiercer (2013), his movie set on a train — which was later adapted into a TNT TV series — was an us-against-them attack on the layers of class and privilege that extends throughout every society.

Edward Norton as Miles Bron and Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: Netflix
Edward Norton as Miles Bron and Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: Netflix

In Glass Onion, The Menu, and Triangle of Sadness the ultra-rich squander their privilege. The villain of Glass Onion manages to escape the pandemic by stowing away on his own private island in a literal bubble of his own making. Miles Bron, is of course, a thinly veiled Musk-type of techpreneur who is revealed as being not that bright after all.

Ruben Östlund’s Cannes Palmes D’Or winner Triangle of Sadness targets the relationship between money, power, and beauty, getting quite ugly in the process, Myers found. It’s never subtle, but its most direct condemnations of greed are voiced by the superyacht’s American captain (Woody Harrelson). As passengers gorge on truffles, sea urchin, and heaping spoonfuls of caviar, he has a hamburger.

“The central set piece, an operatic spew of vomit and other fluids on a doomed private cruise ship, is grotesquely amusing — even cathartic,” finds Lawson.

Charlbi Dean as Yaya, Alicia Eriksson as Alicia, Sunnyi Melles as Vera, Woody Harrelson as The Captain, Vicki Berlin as Paula, Zlatko Buric as Dimitry, Harris Dickinson as Carl in director Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness.” Cr: NEON
Charlbi Dean as Yaya, Alicia Eriksson as Alicia, Sunnyi Melles as Vera, Woody Harrelson as The Captain, Vicki Berlin as Paula, Zlatko Buric as Dimitry, Harris Dickinson as Carl in director Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness.” Cr: NEON

READ IT ON AMPLIFY: “Triangle of Sadness:” (Kind of Gross) Scenes from the Class Struggle

Mark Mylod’s target in The Menu are customers who think nothing of paying more than $1,000 for lunch. Meanwhile, in the real world, groceries cost 11% more than they did a year ago. The Chef (Ralph Fiennes) plots the deaths of his guests, as they quite literally get their just desserts.

An example on TV is HBO’s deliciously entertaining The White Lotus, which took its second season to a fabulous resort in sun-drenched Sicily.

Creator Mike White aired an interesting theory that his show is concerned with the psychology of being astronomically rich. Here, the rich are eating themselves.

“When you’re wealthy and you don’t have situational problems that have to do with money, then your problems become existential,” White told NPR’s Terry Gross during a recent episode of Fresh Air.

“You have all of the tools to figure out your life, and you can’t figure out your life,” he said, adding that “if you’re in paradise and you feel like something’s missing or you’re melancholy or you’re tortured, you know it’s not the ambient nature of what’s going on — it’s something in you.”

Jennifer Coolidge in season two of “The White Lotus,” courtesy of HBO
Jennifer Coolidge in season two of “The White Lotus,” courtesy of HBO

READ MORE: ‘White Lotus’ creator Mike White finds wide success after 25 years in the margins (NPR)

READ IT ON AMPLIFY: Neo-Neorealism: How the “White Lotus” Adventures Mirrored “L’Avventura”

For all the rage against the machine, most of these stories don’t actually leave the billionaire’s in tatters. In Squid Game it is the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism that sees the working class killing itself for a rich master’s enjoyment.

Vanity Fair’s Lawson also finds the results less than satisfying.

“I’ve no doubt that Triangle of Sadness despises witless, unfeeling wealth as much as it says it does, but it has disdain for everyone else too,” he says. “That’s not really the righteous us vs. them fantasy I went looking for. I realize that may be the point, but still.

Fiery as the finale of The Menu may be, it feels awfully narrow, to Lawson “even safe,” he says. “The film strides up to the idea of bloody rebellion and then gets scared of its deepest implications.”

Glass Onion is too “Twitter-speak snarky to register as anything truly condemnatory,” he critiques. It’s a goof: teeming with pop-culture references to imply urgency, but never transgressive.

And The White Lotus, he says, is less concerned with skewering the rich since it is “also guiltily glad to be along for the trip” in terms of showing the audience Instagram-friendly luxury and Love Island-like bodies.

Lawson calls for a show that truly upends the status quo rather than simply gesturing toward it. “I want to see the rich really eaten, chased from their mansions, and reduced to rubble,” he says.

Perhaps something like The Purge (2013) in which is the wealthy family being attacked without and within by an unleashing of violence mixed with Barbarian, Disney’s breakout horror from 2022 in which a smug Hollywood star gets his comeuppance in the underworld of Detroit.

READ IT ON AMPLIFY: Into the Darkness: Designing the (Ahem) (Visceral) Visuals of “Barbarian”

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“Triangle of Sadness:” (Kind of Gross) Scenes from the Class Struggle
“Triangle of Sadness:” (Kind of Gross) Scenes from the Class Struggle

Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness” continues the current successes of films satirizing huge gaps in wealth and status.

Putting Together the Post Puzzle of “Glass Onion”
Putting Together the Post Puzzle of “Glass Onion”

Editor Bob Ducsay, ASC on the layers of structure and sleight-of-hand behind writer-director Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out: Glass Onion.”

Neo-Neorealism: How the “White Lotus” Adventures Mirrored “L’Avventura”
Neo-Neorealism: How the “White Lotus” Adventures Mirrored “L’Avventura”

“White Lotus” creator Mike White and cinematographer Xavier Grobet took visual cues from Italian cinema for the series.

Leave a Comment on In TV and Film, It’s Payback Time
January 30, 2023
Posted January 26, 2023

Streaming (Right Now) is a Release Format… Not a Revolution

Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr. Netflix © 2022
Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr. Netflix © 2022


TL;DR

  • After a decade of streaming, TV delivered online looks remarkably like cable, writes New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik.
  • Enticing viewers to binge watch or dropping episodes weekly enables creators to extend story arcs and go deeper into character, but sometimes the dramatic tension gets lost in the process.
  • Interactive experiments like Netflix’s “Kaleidoscope” are dismissed as not being the revolution streaming once promised.


READ MORE: Streaming Changed TV. Is TV Changing Streaming Back? (The New York Times)

The biggest impact that streaming TC has had on the business and aesthetics of television could be its ability to tell stories over longer arcs — but that’s not always a good thing.

Assessing a decade of streaming, The New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik says binging has transformed storytelling and viewing habits but we may be starting to hit that transformation’s limits.

“Giving viewers the option to binge when they please has encouraged a form of storytelling more focused on the season and less on the episode,” Poniewozik writes, adding, “I think something more nuanced is going on: Decision by decision, TV is collectively feeling its way toward figuring out which viewing experience works best for which kind of series.”

He cites two examples: Game of Thrones, though its episodes only occasionally focused on single stories, “might not have become as big a phenomenon without the weekly hype cycle.”

On the other hand, FX on Hulu’s The Bear, whose entire season dropped at once last summer, prompted more buzz and discourse than many of FX’s weekly series. “It may be that this kind of dramedy — character-based, relatively short, not driven by big plot detonations — is better taken in one gulp,” Poniewozik suggests.

READ IT ON AMPLIFY: What Streaming Audiences View and Value (and What They Don’t)

Either way, though, streaming TV is remarkably the same as cable shows of old since in almost every case “you progress, scene by scene, episode by episode, through a narrative order chosen by a creator, not by you or by the roll of some automated dungeon master’s eight-sided die.”

Poniewozik is referring to experiments in non-linear storytelling, which puts the onus on the viewer to chop and change story order and endings.

Netflix heist drama Kaleidoscope is the most recent example, but there have been several others. Netflix’s interactive film/show/game Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was perhaps the most successful in allowing viewers to choose the path the story followed. So did the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt special Kimmy vs. the Reverend; the animated Cat Burglar added a trivia-game element. Netflix was not alone in this either, with Steven Soderbergh going the choose-your-own-adventure route in the HBO series/app Mosaic.

  • Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap and Tati Gabrielle as Hannah Kim in episode “Green” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap and Tati Gabrielle as Hannah Kim in episode “Green” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis, Paz Vega as Ava Mercer, Jai Courtney as Bob Goodwin and Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis, Paz Vega as Ava Mercer, Jai Courtney as Bob Goodwin and Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Rufus Sewell as Roger Salas in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Rufus Sewell as Roger Salas in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “Pink” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “Pink” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “Green” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “Green” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap and Tati Gabrielle as Hannah Kim in episode “Yellow” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap and Tati Gabrielle as Hannah Kim in episode “Yellow” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Paz Vega as Ava Mercer and Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “White” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: David Scott Holloway/Netflix
    Paz Vega as Ava Mercer and Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “White” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: David Scott Holloway/Netflix
  • Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “Yellow” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “Yellow” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Rufus Sewell as Roger Salas in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Rufus Sewell as Roger Salas in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Tati Gabrielle as Hannah Kim in episode “Yellow” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Tati Gabrielle as Hannah Kim in episode “Yellow” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap and Tati Gabrielle as Hannah Kim in episode “White” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap and Tati Gabrielle as Hannah Kim in episode “White” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap and Paz Vega as Ava Mercer in episode “Red” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap and Paz Vega as Ava Mercer in episode “Red” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin in episode “Pink” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin in episode “Pink” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis and Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin in episode “Pink” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis and Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin in episode “Pink” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin in episode “Orange” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin in episode “Orange” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Jordan Mendoza as RJ in episode “Orange” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Jordan Mendoza as RJ in episode “Orange” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Paz Vega as Ava Mercer in episode “Orange” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Paz Vega as Ava Mercer in episode “Orange” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Paz Vega as Ava Mercer and Niousha Noor as Nazan Abassi in episode “Orange” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Paz Vega as Ava Mercer and Niousha Noor as Nazan Abassi in episode “Orange” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin and Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis in episode “Pink” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin and Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis in episode “Pink” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis in episode “Green” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis in episode “Green” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap and Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis in episode “Green” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap and Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis in episode “Green” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
  • S.J. Son as Liz in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
    S.J. Son as Liz in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix

The critic dismisses Kaleidoscope with a shrug, calling it “not especially noteworthy, except for one gimmick,” and more broadly says attempts at interactivity “have gotten no more traction than Smell-o-Vision, maybe in part because our culture already has a popular and relatively young form of interactive amusement, the video game.”

Instead, TV’s dominant format continues to be the static season, in which episodes are served up in a set progression. Often — even on streaming — they arrive once a week.

“The only choosing viewers do is what to watch, when to watch and whether to fill their couch-side snack bowl with chips or pretzels.”

The downside to this is the flabby nature of some shows which are padded out to retain viewers over more hours (or weeks if being gradually released) than is necessary for the story.

READ IT ON AMPLIFY: Platforms Are Using Audiences as a New Means of Distribution (and Here’s Why That’s a Problem)

I’m a fan of William Gibson’s The Peripheral adaptation made for Amazon Prime but this show could have benefitted from a tighter runtime over fewer episodes. Arguably, Andor, the Star Wars prequel series for Disney+, got its quotient of run time to emotion right. Importantly, its episodes ranged around the 40-minute mark. In an interview with Rolling Stone, showrunner Tony Gilroy, dismissed “the idea that you have to wrap up every episode in a bow” and defended the series’ slow-burn start as a necessary “investment.”

The three-season arc of His Dark Materials produced by Bad Wolf for the BBC is a superb example of treating the source material and the audience with respect, devoid of unnecessary padding, when in other hands you can imagine the storylines being strung out and the drama dissipating.

As Poniewozik concludes, streaming has “added to TV’s bag of tricks, giving creators the option of making more unitary long-form works.” Other times it imposes the expectation of length where it isn’t needed.

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January 22, 2023
Posted January 19, 2023

The Bonkers Format for Peacock Series “Paul T. Goldman”



TL;DR

  • Peacock’s docuseries straddles an uneasy line between real life, true crime and satire. “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” director Jason Woliner tells the incredible and possibly unbelievable story of one man and his very bad second marriage.
  • The series dramatizes a real-life story and alternates between the polished narrative footage and documentary footage of the production itself, along with interviews and a fly-on-the-wall cinéma vérité style.
  • The project took 10 years to get off the ground, in large part because the show’s format and content is so uniquely bizarre.


“In 2012, a man named Paul T. Goldman tweeted at me,” is how director Jason Woliner (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) begins, discussing his new Peacock series. “He said that he had an incredible story to tell and had written a book — and a screenplay — about it. He asked for my help bringing it to the screen.”

A decade later and the resultant Peacock series Paul T. Goldman is judged to be “hard to describe, impossible to forget, and one wild ride,” by Consequence TV’s Liz Shannon Miller, who says the bar for the “weirdest TV show of 2023” has been set pretty damn high.

Ostensibly about a man’s failed marriage and claims that he was a victim of his wife’s scam, this is less a shocking tale of sex and crime and more a fascinating portrait of a man and his ambitions: his desire for fame, for revenge. The series depicts its central character “through a lens that is alternately dark, strange, bizarre, and, more often than not, very funny,” Shannon Miller adds.

  • From the Peacock series, Paul T. Goldman as Paul T. Goldman, Jason Woliner as Jason Woliner, photo by: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock)
    From the Peacock series, Paul T. Goldman as Paul T. Goldman, Jason Woliner as Jason Woliner, photo by: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock)
  • From the Peacock series, Paul T. Goldman as Paul T. Goldman, Jason Woliner as Jason Woliner, photo by: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock)
    From the Peacock series, Paul T. Goldman as Paul T. Goldman, Jason Woliner as Jason Woliner, photo by: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock)
  • Paul T. Goldman and Jason Woliner on the set of Peacock series “Paul T. Goldman.” Cr: Tyler Golden/Peacock
    Paul T. Goldman and Jason Woliner on the set of Peacock series “Paul T. Goldman.” Cr: Tyler Golden/Peacock

READ MORE: Paul T. Goldman Is Hard to Describe, Impossible to Forget, and One Wild Ride: Review (Consequence TV)

MovieWeb’s Matthew Mahler calls it “a mind-melting blend of cringe comedy, character study, and meta documentary.”

Ben Pearson of SlashFilm is not the only critic to call the show “bonkers.” He adds, “Since the rise of streaming, many shows have felt as if they were designed by an algorithm and stretched out with the sole intention of keeping viewers engaged with a platform for as long as possible. Not this one.”

First of all there is the show’s odd format, which combines fiction with sort-of reality, scripted with a behind-the-scenes “making of” docuseries.

“Quirky and odd, the show’s main point feels like the fact we’re all the heroes of our story, at least in our own highly subjective eyes,” Brian Lowry reviews for CNN. “It’s honestly hard to know where to begin in describing the program.”

READ MORE: ‘Paul T. Goldman’ blends fiction and reality in a way that’s as odd as it is funny (CNN Entertainment)

Initially conceived as a feature, the project was then due to be made for Quibi — Jeffrey Katzenberg’s ill-fated shortform mobile video platform. When it folded, Peacock picked the idea up and made it into a six-part limited series backed by Seth Rogan’s production company.

Filmed on and off for a decade, with much of the filming crammed into 15 days last Summer, Woliner hired documentarian Jason Tippet in 2017 to bring his fly-on-the-wall style.

“He’ll find a spot and plant the camera and walk away and just kind of roll until something interesting happens,” the director explained to SlashFilm. “So we decided early on to make him that third camera, he’s the part of the process. Sometimes he would just roam around the set and basically follow Paul and be far enough away that people didn’t feel like they were on camera. But everyone on set knew that was the deal, that they were mic-ed and we were recording behind the scenes.”

READ MORE: Director Jason Woliner’s 10-Year Journey To Make Paul T. Goldman, Peacock’s Most Unusual Show [Exclusive Interview] (SlashFilm)

Goldman had written a book, “Duplicity: A True Story of Crime and Deceit,” about the events, along with a screenplay for a film or TV deal that was ignored by everyone except Woliner.

“Every page had mind-blowing things on it,” Woliner tells MovieWeb. “It’s just kind of an amazing peek into this person’s mind and his experience and his perspective, which in many ways was completely different from my own. And then I would find parts of his book that were completely relatable at its core, being about a desire to be loved and lead what you’d consider a normal life.”

  • PAUL T. GOLDMAN — “Chapter 5: The Chronicles“ Episode 105 — Pictured: Paul T. Goldman as Paul T. Goldman — (Photo by: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock)
  • Paul T. Goldman as himself and Frank Grillo as Dan Hardwick in “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
    Paul T. Goldman as himself and Frank Grillo as Dan Hardwick in “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
  • “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
    “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
  • “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
    “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
  • Melinda McGraw as Audrey Munson in “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Tyler Golden/Peacock
    Melinda McGraw as Audrey Munson in “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Tyler Golden/Peacock
  • “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
    “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
  • “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
    “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
  • “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
    “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
  • “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
    “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
  • “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
    “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
  • From the Peacock series, Paul T. Goldman as Paul T. Goldman, photo by: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock)
    From the Peacock series, Paul T. Goldman as Paul T. Goldman, photo by: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock)

Woliner not only decided that he would direct a documentary about his production of Goldman’s story, but that Goldman would write and star in all of it. “It was just like, we are filming his writing, and we’re going to see what it reveals,” he said.

“It really was just this kind of falling in love with his mind and then trying to figure out how to translate that into a series, but in a newer thing that is separate from bad or good.”

A tension, which Woliner was keen to exploit, is about how he as a documentarian (and a director of comedy) is telling the story of Paul telling his story. In his interview with Mahler, he calls the filmmaker the “villain of a documentary,” but admits that the show is ultimately his version.

“It’s me telling the story of him telling his story, but it is all filtered through my own perspective. And at the end of the day, I’m the one controlling the edit and not Paul.”

A documentary filmmaker, he says, is “this person who has descended upon the life of a real person and use their life to explore something, to make a point about the human condition or whatever, but they’re the one with all the power, and there is always an imbalance. I hope Paul is happy with the show. I know if he controlled it fully, it would be a very different show.”

READ MORE: Exclusive: Paul T. Goldman Director Jason Woliner Discusses the Making and Meaning of His Mind-Melting Comedy (MovieWeb)

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NOW STREAMING — BEHIND THE SCENES OF FAN-FAVORITE SERIES:

As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
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  • “Bad Travelling:” Blur and David Fincher Rewrite the Rules for Animation

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January 21, 2023
Posted January 11, 2023

“Aftersun:” How Do You Remake Memories?



TL;DR

  • The emotional weight of the debut feature from Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells has been lauded by critics.
  • Wells discusses how she baked certain visual choices either into her script, when she discovered others on set, or during the edit.
  • The indie film is produced by Barry Jenkins’ production company Pastel and bears some of the hallmark’s of his Oscar-winning film “Moonlight.”


Sight and Sound, the prestigious international film magazine, selected Charlotte Wells’ debut feature Aftersun as the best film of 2022.

Inspired by, but not based on, the director’s experiences as the child of young parents, the ‘90s-set film stars newcomer Francesca Corio as Sophie, an 11-year-old girl on a package holiday to Turkey with her father Calum (Paul Mescal).

The film, which also won seven British Indie Film Awards, is described by the magazine as an “exquisitely subtle yet deeply affecting and honest depiction of mental illness, father-daughter love, and memory.”

READ MORE: The 50 best films of 2022 (Sight & Sound)

Developed and produced with the support of the BFI Film Fund, using funds from the National Lottery, Aftersun was one of the most talked about films at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and was picked up for international distribution by A24.

IndieWire’s Eric Kohn judged it “the most evocative look at an adolescent gaze coming to terms with the adult world since Moonlight.”

Several critics compare the way Aftersun paints its characters’ interior lives to that of Moonlight director Barry Jenkins. Not coincidentally, perhaps, Jenkins and his producing partner Adele Romanski served as producers on the film.

The 35-year-old was born and raised in Edinburgh, but moved to the US in 2012 to study film at NYU. There, her standout short films including Laps and Blue Christmas caught the attention of Romanski, who encouraged Wells to develop the script.

“Her short films were pretty fucking brilliant,” Romanski tells Kohn. “I was curious to hear what she was working on and how the storytelling style for her shorts would translate into that longer format. Then we waited patiently for years.”

That was in 2018. Wells finally retreated into a two-week writing frenzy in 2019, but held onto her first draft for another half a year before sending it to Romanski. “I spent six months pretending to rewrite but in actual fact just spellchecking it over and over again,” she said.

Her film is very much about memory — how certain moments stay with us forever, but also how our interpretation of events can differ from what actually happened. The story’s “beautiful elusiveness — its accumulation of seemingly inconsequential fragments that gradually accrue in emotional power,” per Tom Grierson in the Los Angeles Times, makes it a difficult movie to encapsulate, even for its maker.

READ MORE: How director and star create emotional power with glimpses of memories in ‘Aftersun’ (Los Angeles Times)

Deadline’s Damon Wise isn’t the only interviewer to observe Wells appearing “somewhat shell-shocked by her film’s progress in the world,” adding “I’m actually a little in awe of the fact that this film has — and could — reach so many people.”

That’s perhaps because, as she tells Marshall Shaffer at Slant Magazine, “Mental health struggles are messy, symptoms overlap and diagnoses are often [incorrect]. It’s incredibly difficult to pinpoint many mental illnesses.”

READ MORE: Interview: Charlotte Wells on Delineating Memory and Story in Aftersun (Slant Magazine)

  • Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Frankie Corio as Sophie in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Frankie Corio as Sophie in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Writer-director Charlotte Wells on the set of her debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Writer-director Charlotte Wells on the set of her debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Writer-director Charlotte Wells on the set of her debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Writer-director Charlotte Wells on the set of her debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24

Of the film’s deliberate ambiguity Wells says to Alex Denney of AnotherMag, “I think inherent in whatever style it is that I have there is space for people to bring their own experiences. It’s both conscious and not: I think when you avoid a certain kind of exposition it does create ambiguity and people will fill that ambiguity with their own experiences, their own reference points that they enter the cinema with.”

Withholding information “is kind of the point of the film” she tells IndieWire. “I think the ambiguity is inherent in the subtlety and my aversion to exposition. But for me, the answers are all in the film.”

Her reticence to talk in concrete terms about her work is also warning not to label it an autobiography. “It’s very much fiction, but rooted in experience and memory,” she reveals to Denney. “It’s personal in that the feeling is mine and I allowed my own memories and anecdotes through all of childhood to form the kind of skeleton outline [of the first draft]. But after that point it did become very much about the story I was trying to tell, and that frequently required pushing it away from my own experience.”

Cinematographer Gregory Oke records on lush 35mm and partly masks Calum’s appearance throughout the film, rendering him as a semi-ghostly presence.

“We worked hard to keep Calum at arm’s length, to keep more physical distance between him and the camera in order to create the feeling that he is in some sense unknowable,” Wells tells Denney.

READ MORE: Charlotte Wells on Aftersun: “Grief Doesn’t Exist without the Joy” (AnOther)

Interspersed throughout the narrative is a jarring dreamlike rave sequence, which finds the adult Sophie confronting her father under strobe lights on the crowded dancefloor.

“In a lot of ways, there was a mystery to the process of discovering exactly what this was,” Wells explains to IndieWire. “So much of the process found its way into the film. The process of rooting through the past and memories and allowing some to rise to the surface, transforming them or reframing them.”

Noting Aftersun’s impressionistic style, Deadline’s Wise wonders whether Wells achieved that by taking things away in the edit, or scripting it.

“Both,” is her reply. “I didn’t shoot anything I didn’t want to be in the film. But there is plenty that isn’t in the final cut, that was lost in service of the edit. There were discoveries in the edit that were originally just strategies that we used to solve problems but which ended up being quite a meaningful strategy in terms of creating a sense of memory.”

READ MORE: Charlotte Wells On The Surprise Success Of Her Festival Hit ‘Aftersun’: “I’m A Little In Awe” (Deadline)

The way Aftersun deceptively drifts from scene to scene — punctuated by meditative cutaways of shots like a person’s hand or a random passerby yelling at their child kid — are all painstakingly crafted.

“Some of [those shots] were whole scenes reduced to an image,” Wells tells IndieWire’s Kohn. “Some were details in the script, and some were discovered on set based on months, if not years, of conversations with my cinematographer.”

When it’s suggested the deft execution of Aftersun feels like a magic trick, she demurs. “I don’t have an answer as to what it is,” she says. “We didn’t set out to pull off an emotional heist.”

READ MORE: Barry Jenkins and Adele Romanski Had to Give Up on ‘Aftersun’ Before Charlotte Wells Could Finish It (IndieWire)

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LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION! SPOTLIGHT ON FILM PRODUCTION:

From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
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Leave a Comment on “Aftersun:” How Do You Remake Memories?
January 22, 2023
Posted December 1, 2022

Director Alek Keshishian and Selena Gomez Get Real in “My Mind & Me”



“Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
“Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+

TL;DR

  • In the Apple TV+ documentary “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me” we see the toll fame has often taken on the star’s mental health.
  • We also learn what director Alex Keshishian feels was important while making a documentary of her life: the intrusion of social media and inane questions thrown at the singer on press tours.
  • The 93-minute feature was made from more than 200 hours of reality-shot and archive material.


Though Disney channel star turned pop singer and TV producer Selena Gomez hasn’t shied away from speaking publicly about her mental and physical health struggles over the years, the new Apple TV+ documentary is deeper, darker, and more specific about these incidents. In Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me we see the toll this has often taken on her mental health.

The film is directed by Alek Keshishian, whose previous credits include acclaimed music documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991) that broke new ground in presenting a fly-on-the-wall snapshot of the public and private effect of fame on an artist and those around them.

Keshishian got the gig because his sister happens to be Gomez’s manager as he explained to numerous publications, including a piece he wrote for New Music Express.

They struck up a friendship, and “she asked if I would consider doing a tour doc with her. I said, ‘I don’t think you really want me to do a tour doc with you, because I don’t make the sort of tour docs that everyone’s been doing in your lifetime.

“I shoot cinéma vérité and I’m spoiled because my first experience was with Madonna who gave me access to everything all the time.’ ”

READ MORE: What I learned about Selena Gomez from making a documentary of her life (New Music Express)

Despite that knock-back, Gomez seemed even more keen to work with Keshishian. So they agreed a trial.

It didn’t go well.

“Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
Gomez and Keshishian while filming “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+

“I brought in my crew and we shot for two weeks, then I cut it down to a five-minute [short] so she could see the kind of film I would make. She was like, ‘Wow, it’s beautiful, but could you not show me crying? I don’t want my fans to see me break down like that.’ And so I said I didn’t think it was the right time for me to make a documentary with her. We agreed to just shelve the footage.”

What changed was a charity trip that Gomez made in 2019 to Kenya. Keshishian agreed to go “because it was for a good cause,” and found in the course of shooting in Africa and then press events with the singer in Europe that there was a doc to be made inspired by the conflicting way people treated her fame and her reaction to that.

Gomez herself tells Rachel Handler at Vulture that in Kenya she “realized that people in every part of the world are dealing with the same thing: their minds. Your mind is everything. It provides for your body, for your soul. But when I got to London, I gotta be honest, I was kind of frustrated and didn’t even want anyone to film anything. I was just a little frustrated with some of the questions… the press-tour moments in London and Paris. Those questions were shitty.”

READ MORE: ‘I Couldn’t Believe the Things I Was Aspiring to Be’ (Vulture)

To Keshishian this was the story. “I was more interested in some levels of implicating the paparazzi who are unbelievably cruel,” he told Variety’s Jazz Tangcay. “I showed unrelenting interest [of Gomez] in the press. I wanted to show how cruel some of that stuff that’s yelled to a 24-year-old girl is, how brutal it is. On another level, there’s this misogyny, that the woman is always somehow that dumped one, and that the woman should be jealous.”

READ MORE: Alek Keshishian on Filming Selena Gomez Through Her Darkest Moments: ‘I Would Know When Enough Was Enough’ (Variety)

To Handler he added, “There’s a real part of me that wanted to make a statement to young people that pursuing the artifice of fame and whatever — it isn’t a bunch of roses. It’s not perfect, and in some ways, it can prevent actual human connection. That’s what you see in London and Paris. She’s not connecting with human beings after connecting so deeply with human beings in Kenya. That’s really the shock to her system. That’s what makes her feel sad.”

It would seem there is a darker side to fame than thirty years ago and the always on pressure of social media is to blame.

  • “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
    “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
  • “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
    “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
  • “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
    “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
  • “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
    “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
  • “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
    “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+

“You’re constantly working on presentation,” he tells Mia Galuppo at The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m talking about people who are really doing social media. So, I wanted to indict fame to a certain degree. I wanted to make people realize this is not all fun and games. She’s not in Paris having a great time. Granted, these are first world problems, you can say, but if you want to know what it does to the mental health of somebody, that level of isolation — it doesn’t make people joyful.

READ MORE: ‘My Mind and Me’ Director on Selena Gomez and the “Isolation of Celebrity” (The Hollywood Reporter)

He whittled down more than 200 hours of footage for the 90-minute feature, explaining to Tangcay at Variety that much of that was archival footage. “I knew I had to tell parts of this story through archival, which is very time-consuming. It took us six months just to do the string outs which meant taking each scene and shortening it.”

He could have released a two-hour, 30-minute cut, “and pleased her fans who would never tire of her,” he added to Galuppo. “But I wanted us to mean something for people down the line who aren’t her fan. One of the things I always kept telling my editors is: I’m not looking to make a room spray of Selena Gomez. I want the most distilled and concentrated version of this story so that you spend 93 minutes and hopefully you come out feeling differently about your own life as well as Selena’s.”

As Handler says, many musicians have done their versions of “personal documentaries,” in which there is a sense that they’re still controlling the final product — that there’s a level of PR machinations going on behind the scenes. So did Gomez want final cut?

“There are a lot of things that I didn’t put into this,” Keshishian tells Tangcay. “It’s a potent experience, but it doesn’t have everything.”

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November 1, 2022

“The Banshees of Inisherin:” Martin McDonagh Tells a Wonderful/Terrible Tale



TL;DR

  • Writer-director Martin McDonagh fuses his trademark dark humor with something altogether more profound about the nature of friendship, creativity and mortality in his new drama, The Banshees of Inisherin.
  • The Banshees of Inisherin follows a soured friendship between the cheerful but dim Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and the more tortured, artistic Colm (Brendan Gleeson).
  • Cinematographer Ben Davis used the landscapes of two Irish islands, Achill Island and Inishmore Island, to convey the dueling personalities of the film’s two main characters.


With the The Banshees of Inisherin, writer-director Martin McDonagh has fused his trademark dark humor with something altogether more profound about the nature of friendship, creativity and mortality.

It follows a soured friendship between the cheerful but dim Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and the more tortured, artistic Colm (Brendan Gleeson), who summarily tells Pádraic one morning that he no longer wants to be pals. Over the course of the film, Pádraic’s initial bafflement curdles into resentment, while Colm’s attempts to stay away from him in their tiny community repeatedly fail.

On the face of it, a relationship breakup is a thin plot on which to hang a film, but this was McDonagh’s starting point.

“I just wanted to tell a very simple breakup story,” he told Deadline’s Joe Utichi. “And to see how far a simple comedic and dark plot could go.”

READ MORE: Director Martin McDonagh Didn’t Want To “Destroy the Legacy” Between Reunited Stars Colin Farrell And Brendan Gleeson With ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ (Deadline)

For all its comedy, the drama is best described as a melancholic ballad. McDonagh, who won best screenplay at the Venice film festival , says he tried to imbue the friends’ breakup “with all of the sadness of the breakup of a love relationship… because I think we’ve all been both parties in that equation,” he told Miranda Sawyer at The Guardian. “And there’s something horrible about both sides. Like knowing you have to break up with someone is a horrible, horrible thing as well. I’m not sure which is the best place to be in.”

Depicting that sadness accurately was his intent, he explained to AV Club’s Jack Smart: “It was about painting a truthful picture of a breakup, really. A sad breakup, a platonic breakup, which can be as heavy and sad and destructive as a divorce, as a sexual or loving relationship coming to an end.”

READ MORE: How Martin McDonagh made a platonic breakup more devastating than any romantic split in The Banshees Of Inisherin (AV Club)

  • Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
    Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
  • Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
    Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
  • Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
    Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
  • Writer-director Martin McDonagh on the set of “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Searchlight Pictures
    Writer-director Martin McDonagh on the set of “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Searchlight Pictures
  • Brendan Gleeson and writer-director Martin McDonagh on the set of “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Searchlight Pictures
    Brendan Gleeson and writer-director Martin McDonagh on the set of “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Searchlight Pictures
  • Kerry Condon on the set of “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
    Kerry Condon on the set of “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
  • Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty and Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Searchlight Pictures
    Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty and Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Searchlight Pictures
  • Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
    Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
  • Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
    Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
  • Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
    Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
  • Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
    Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
  • Kerry Condon as Siobhan Súilleabhá and Barry Keoghan as Dominic Kearney in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
    Kerry Condon as Siobhan Súilleabhá and Barry Keoghan as Dominic Kearney in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
  • Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá and Barry Keoghan as Dominic Kearney in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
    Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá and Barry Keoghan as Dominic Kearney in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
  • Writer/director Martin McDonagh and Colin Farrell on the set of “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
    Writer/director Martin McDonagh and Colin Farrell on the set of “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
  • Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá and Kerry Condon as Siobhan Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
    Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá and Kerry Condon as Siobhan Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
  • Kerry Condon as Siobhan Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
    Kerry Condon as Siobhan Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
  • Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
    Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
  • Jon Kenny as Gerry, Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty, Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin, and Pat Shortt as Jonjo Devine in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
    Jon Kenny as Gerry, Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty, Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin, and Pat Shortt as Jonjo Devine in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
  • Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
    Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
  • Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
    Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
  • Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
    Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
  • Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
    Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
  • Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
    Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
  • Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
    Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures

There’s more to the film than this. Setting the story in Ireland in 1923, with the Irish Civil War playing out in the background, is a metaphor that spins the tale a wider web.

“You don’t need any knowledge of Irish history,” McDonagh told The Atlantic’s David Sims. “All you need to know, really, is that [the civil war] was over a hairline difference of beliefs which had been shared up until the year before. And it led to horrific violence. The main story of Banshees is that, too: negligible differences that end up, well, spoiler alert, not in a good place.”

READ MORE: ‘I’m Trying To Get All The Coolness Out Of My Movies’ (The Atlantic)

The divide between the one-time friends spirals into violence so quickly that the original relatively mild cause for dispute is forgotten. “I think that’s what was interesting about this story, that things unravel and get worse and worse, sometimes without, oftentimes without intending to,” McDonagh told UPROXX’s Mike Ryan. “And then become unforgivable and irreparable. And I guess that’s true of wars as much as is true of this little story about the two guys.”

READ MORE: Martin McDonagh On Getting The ‘In Bruges’ Band Back Together In ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’(UPROXX)

There are other layers too. Not least of which is what IndieWire’s Eric Kohn shares as McDonagh’s “deep questions about national identity,” both within the series and his own personal identity. Despite writing Irish characters (in this film and his debut, In Bruges) and setting previous theatrical plays in the country, McDonagh hails from London, although his parents are indeed from west coast Ireland.

McDonagh’s last movie set in the country was the 2004 short Six Shooter, which won an Academy Award. McDonagh’s first trilogy of plays, starting with The Beauty Queen of Leenane in 1996, took place in Galway. His second trilogy — which remains unfinished — took place on the Aran Islands, and Banshees was shot on Inishmore and Achill, two islands off Ireland’s west coast.

Inisherin itself is fictional, partly to put the real events of the civil war at one remove from the events onscreen, and also because he and cinematographer Ben Davis use the landscapes of the two islands to convey the dueling personalities of his two main characters.

“All in all, it certainly seems like McDonagh wants to grapple with the history and personality of the country after setting it aside for almost two decades,” Kohn notes.

At the same time, the filmmaker’s depiction of Ireland risks backlash. “There’s a certain degree of unease in Ireland about McDonagh’s post-modern, heightened versions of Irishness,” shares Irish film critic Donald Clarke. “The films and plays do well here. But there is a tension in Ireland about his treatment of the country.”

Critics also point to supposed southern stereotypes in the Oscar-nominated Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Kohn indicates that McDonagh was often lambasted on the promotional tour of that movie for depicting a racist police officer (Sam Rockwell) with some measure of empathy.

“His characters are exaggerated to an almost allegorical degree in order to comment on the society around them, which has led some American audiences to see his view of the country as naïve,” Kohn writes. “Banshees burrows into the stereotype of Irish people at pubs, guzzling pints to the tune of ebullient folk music, and molds it into an emotionally resonant character study.”

That character study is also linked to a meditation on death and how an artist should make best use of their time. In the film, Colm is a musician and wants to use the rest of his days creatively, rather than sitting in the pub with Pádraic talking nonsense. Which raises several questions, including: do you have to be selfish and cruel in order to create? Can an artist be nice?

That is accompanied with a threat: If Pádraic doesn’t leave him alone, then Colm will start lopping off his own fingers.

“I thought it was interesting that an artist would threaten the thing that allows him to make art,” McDonagh said. “Does that thing make him the artist?”

READ MORE: ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ Confronts the One Subject Martin McDonagh Doesn’t Want to Discuss (IndieWire)

It’s clearly something that preys on McDonagh’s mind. “I’m 52. You start thinking, Am I wasting time? Should I be devoting all my time, however much is left, to the artistic?” he commented to Sims. “That’s something that’s always going on in my head — the waste of time, the duty to art, all that. So you start off being on [Pádraic’s] side and understanding the hurt, but you have to be completely truthful to the other side… You should feel conflicted.”

McDonagh says decided that he’s going to spend what creative time he has left — he reckons “around 25 years” — making films rather than plays. His reasoning? Films are quicker.

“I always used to think they took longer than plays, but with this one we were filming it a year ago, and now it’s out,” he tells Sawyer. “But if you’re lucky enough to have successful plays… to get that right with each move, to cast it and take care of it, go to rehearsals, that’s five years of your life.”

READ MORE: Martin McDonagh: ‘No one really tries to make sad films any more’ (The Guardian)

It was also clearly nagging at him to unleash the genie of Gleeson and Farrell’s chalk and cheese interplay that audiences lapped up in the 2008 cult hit In Bruges.

“It feels like it was two days ago that we made In Bruges together but time passes so quickly,” he said in response to The Playlist’s Gregory Ellwood wondering if there will be a third collaboration. “None of us are getting any younger. I don’t have an idea now, but just that little ticking bomb is somewhere in me. So, I do want to get them back together.”

READ MORE: ‘The Banshees Of Inisherin’: Martin McDonagh Has A Timeline For A Third Colin Farrell & Brendan Gleeson Film (The Playlist)

In The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh reunites the pair only to break them up in the first scene. “A delectable bit of cruelty for the audience,” observes Sims.

Although he made In Bruges to his satisfaction, the director apparently faced pressure from execs at Focus Features at every turn. He now insists on having the final cut, which he got for Banshees, a movie produced by Disney-owned Searchlight. Kohn points out that his four movies have all been made for around $15 million, a manageable scale by studio standards that lets McDonagh get away with creative freedom.

“That is the reason why the films are singular,” McDonagh said. “It is all me. It hasn’t been watered down, for good or bad.”

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From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
  • “Decision To Leave:” Park Chan-wook’s Love Story/Detective Story
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  • “The Banshees of Inisherin:“ Martin McDonagh Tells a Wonderful/Terrible Story
  • Control and Chaos: Todd Field on “Tár”
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  • She Stoops to Conquer: Gina Prince-Bythewood Goes to War for “The Woman King”
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