W O R L D E XC L U S I V E

ISSUE 380

OCTOBER
OCTOBER 2020

2020
DUNE • BLACK WIDOW • REBECCA • DEATH ON THE NILE • RATCHED • MORFYDD CLARK

COVER 1 of 2: HOUSE ATREIDES

£4.99 $11.25 USD $11.99 CAN
“You will therefore be taken to the Dune Sea, and cast into the Pit of Carkoon.”

Spaceships! Spice! Sandworms!

ON SET OF THE SCI-FI EVENT OF THE YEAR
PLUS
DEATH ON THE NILE
ALL ABOARD THE ALL-STAR
BLACK WIDOW
FLORENCE PUGH CHATS WITH
REBECCA
INSIDE BEN WHEATLEY’S
MURDER CRUISE SCARLETT JOHANSSON GOTHIC NAIL-BITER
 RAVENOUS SANDWORMS. BREATHLESS action.
Chiselled heroes seeking redemption beneath the ON THE
scorching desert sun. Yes, Tremors is one hell of a film. EMPIRE PODCAST
But also very exciting is Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming
sci-fi spectacular Dune, which happens to incorporate
all of the above elements (though sadly not Kevin Bacon
driving a bulldozer). In a year where big, event-movie
releases have been few and far between, the prospect
of a trip to the spice planet of Arrakis, navigated by the
master behind Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, couldn’t
be any more tantalising. This is cinema: huge, operatic,
eye-popping. And, yes, worm-ridden.
To speak to Villeneuve and the astonishing cast he’s
assembled, we sent Helen O’Hara to the Budapest set.
Read her terrific, world-exclusive, access-all-areas,
12-page report on page 56 for the answers to all your American Pickle may feature two Seth Rogens,
questions. Except, perhaps, whether Dune is going to but unfortunately we only managed to get one of
take after Tremors in another respect and get a sequel them on the line to talk about the film. Our own
called ‘Shrieker Island’. Chris Hewitt (well, one of them) talked to Rogen:
With cinemas re-opened, there’s no shortage of download the episode now to hear it in full.
exciting movies to tide us over until the spice starts to
flow. In this issue, we take first looks at moustachioed
murder-mystery sequel Death On The Nile, juiced-up
Korean zombie sequel Peninsula, and Ben Wheatley’s A SPOILER SPECIAL
Rebecca, which threatens to out-Hitchcock Hitchcock OF EPIC EPICNESS
when it lands on Netflix in October.
After the strangest and emptiest summer movie
season of our lives, things are finally cranking back up,
and I for one can’t wait to aim my eyeballs in the
direction of all of the above. Until then, there’s always
my DVD copy of Tremors 4: The Legend Begins.
Enjoy the issue.

It’s been ten years since Scott Pilgrim Vs. The

NICK DE SEMLYEN World came out and blew our minds like a sonic
ACTING EDITOR Yeti blowing an amp. To celebrate, we spoke to
@nickdesemlyen director Edgar Wright for a Spoiler Special
podcast. Listen to it and level up.

REMEMBERING
SUBSCRIBE TO SEB PATRICK

This month’s exclusive subscriber cover

Empire contributor Seb Patrick was a fine writer,
by Jane Yun and Enrique Torres at Bond
a walking encyclopedia of geekery, and one of
Marco Vittur

TURN TO PAGE 31 FOR DETAILS ON the nicest people around. We were shocked to
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MONTH 2020 3

08 PENINSULA
All aboard the train to
Busan for another slice of
zombie mayhem. Next stop:
BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINS.
10 NIA DACOSTA
The Candyman (and
potential Captain Marvel 2)
director on how Apocalypse
Now changed her life. (Is that
why her next movie is a horror,
a horror?)
12 TRUTH SEEKERS
On set of the Amazon
Prime show, watching that
ol’ Pegg/Frost magic.
27 HOST
The full story of how a gang
of British filmmakers used
lockdown to make a movie
about the scariest phenomenon
of them all: Zoom.
30 PINT OF MILK:
CRAIG ROBERTS
The Eternal Beauty director on
the eternal beauty of paying for
your own dairy products.
4 OCTOBER 2020
Spine lines issue 379: Newsstand: “My heart will belong to a man who will erase his playlist for me” is from Valerian and the
City of a Thousand Planets. Subs: “Iggy Pop! Amen! Put this on. This isn’t on your playlist” is from Almost Famous
56 DUNE
Don’t you just hate
it when sandworms get
86 DEATH ON THE NILE
Kenneth Branagh and his
impossibly good-looking cast
Above: Timothée
Chalamet and
Rebecca
32 TENET
Christopher Nolan’s
bonkers new movie.
everywhere? Denis Villeneuve on adapting Agatha Christie’s Ferguson show
and his impossibly good-
looking cast tell us all about
murder mystery. off their perfect
cheekbones in 34 AN AMERICAN PICKLE
Starring two Seth Rogens.
adapting the Frank Herbert
sci-fi classic. 92 RATCHED
AKA ‘Before One Flew
Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’. Ryan
Dune. Below:
“Flash! Aaah-ah!
He’ll save-” 36 SHE DIES TOMORROW
Amy Seimetz’s horror-
68 REBECCA
Ben Wheatley and his
Murphy and Sarah Paulson on
the prequel that promises to
Oh hang on,
that’s Ming.
comedy about social anxiety.
impossibly good-looking cast
on adapting Daphne du
Maurier’s ghost story without
give fresh insight into one of
cinema’s greatest monsters.
Nurse Ratched, in case you
49 SPOILER SECTION
Unhinged, An American
Pickle and The Last Of Us Part II.
a ghost. That’s like making
a Die Hard movie not set at
Christmas. Madness!
thought this was about
Godzilla or something.
74 SCARLETT AND 98 ROGER CORMAN
The life and times
FLORENCE
The current Black Widow and
the young pretender to the
of the king of
Hollywood
schlock.
110 FLASH GORDON
Flash Gordon is 40, folks.
throne in conversation. Lots
of conversation.
104 MORFYDD
CLARK
116 SAM NEILL
The Kiwi legend on
some of his finest roles.
80 TIKTOK
See, kids? We’re hip,
we’re with it, daddio. A look at
The Welsh
actress, and Saint
Maud star, who’s
Yes, we asked about
Event Horizon.
the newfangled platform that’s
offered a new generation of
classic film lovers a voice.
slowly but surely
taking over
the world.
124 THE RANKING
The Alien/
Predator movies.
 Editor-In-Chief (maternity leave)
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Acting Editor Associate Editor
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6 OCTOBER 2020
TV news and reviews every Monday

@pilottvmag
 [ EDITED BY JOHN NUGENT]
T H I S M ON T H ’S F I L M M OM E N T S T H AT M AT T E R

No./ 1
A modern horror classic
gets an epic upgrade
FEW HORROR MOVIES have captured the
Train To Busan was a high- terror of rail travel better than Train To Busan.
Korean director Yeon Sangho’s high-concept
speed zombie blast. The zombies-on-a-train movie trapped a bunch of
unsuspecting passengers in confined quarters
scale-expanding sequel with a rapidly-spreading infection, as society
collapsed out of the window. (Edgar Wright,
PENINSULA aims to dial up a director not unfamiliar with the undead,
declared it the “best zombie movie I’ve seen in
the fear and the thrills forever. A total crowd-pleaser”.) But what does
 TA K E 20

Clockwise from main:

Jungseok (Gang Dongwon)
unleashes hell; Minjeong (Lee
Junghyun) and Joon (Lee Re)
take a breather from the
chaos; The zombie
apocalypse hits the Korean
port city of Incheon.

that world look like four years down the tracks,
after Train reached its terminus?
Prepare for Peninsula, Yeon’s follow-up
that swaps cramped carriages for a wide-open,
post-apocalyptic cityscape, where the running
dead are still at large, militant factions rule the
streets, and one band of returning survivors — led
by Gang Dongwon’s Jungseok — is chasing a big
abandoned bounty. Just as the claustrophobic
Alien gave way to the explosive Aliens, Peninsula
is a horror sequel that doubles down on the thrills
and spills. “From the beginning I thought that
it was going to take a very different approach,”
the director tells Empire. “It’s actually more
of an action film compared to Train To Busan,
which was more idea-led and high-concept.”
Which isn’t to say that Peninsula doesn’t have
ideas. With swirling influences including Mad
Max 2 (“One of the first apocalypse movies I ever
saw,” says Yeon), John Carpenter films, and even
Korea has ironically become a safe zone), car
chases and zombie arena battles — where one
sequence, involving a writhing mass of contorted
corpses, is delivered in a single take. “We wanted
the audience to feel the exact emotion and fear
the people in that scene were feeling,” explains
Yeon. “We came up with a video sequence with
the action team, and we did the whole scene
according to that video — the characters that
played the zombies went through extensive
rehearsals to do the whole thing in a single take.”
Away from the arena, the port city of
Incheon (chosen by Yeon to showcase “ordinary
people and places” away from the capital Seoul)
remains overrun with cardio-adept undead
hordes. As established in Train To Busan, they’re
blind in the dark, and at night flock to loud noises
and flashing lights — cue the unlikely sight of
zombies tearing down abandoned streets chasing
neon-disco toys and full-sized promotional
prey. “We took time brainstorming what kind of
daily tactics these people would have used for
the past four years to survive,” says Yeon. “Cars
that have these very fancy, colourful nightclub
adverts are something that Koreans are quite
familiar with, so that’s what we decided to use.”
Beyond the zombie fights and disco lights
of Peninsula, Yeon sees a bright future in his
apocalypse — though after directing three films
in the series (including animated prequel Seoul
Station), he’s looking to pastures new. “Peninsula
is the story of one person, so there’s definitely
more room for different stories to tell,” he says.
“I have other projects lined up that I’m planning
to direct. I don’t think that I would be going
into another zombie film for the time being.”
Who knows — maybe in four years’ time, the
wasteland just might draw him back. BEN TRAVIS
PENINSULA IS IN CINEMAS FROM 6 NOVEMBER AND ON DVD,

Waterworld, there’s social commentary (North vehicles designed to distract them from human BLU-RAY AND DIGITAL FROM 30 NOVEMBER

OCTOBER 2020 9

TA K E 20
No./
Nia DaCosta is
2
going higher,
further, faster
The 30-year-old indie filmmaker is now hot property in
Hollywood — and could be Marvel’s next great hope
NIA DACOSTA WAS 16 years old when she first
saw Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War epic
Apocalypse Now. As the film started, she wanted
to be a writer. But by the time it ended, her life
— and path — had changed. “It was just so crazy,
and had so much to say. It was super-audacious,”
she remembers. “When I watched it, I thought,
‘Oh, you can do anything.’” Which could be the
understatement of the century. Now, at just 30
years old, DaCosta is one of the most exciting and
in-demand filmmaking voices in the business.
With Candyman coming later this year, and the
keys to a billion-dollar superhero franchise
reportedly next up, it is a fairly stratospheric rise.
That journey began in her native New York,
studying film at Tisch School Of The Arts, fuelled
by a love of Spielberg, Lumet and Scorsese. Her
directing career started in earnest with the Tessa
Thompson-starring 2018 debut, Little Woods,
which brought her to the attention of Jordan
Peele, who was looking for someone to direct his
Candyman remake; someone who could deliver
the visuals and viscera required of a horror film
10 OCTOBER 2020
on the surface, but also the deeper subtext about
the Black experience.
“One of the interesting things about the
original Candyman is the fact that he killed a
bunch of Black people,” she says. “I always found
that really interesting. I wanted to tell a story
about a ghost that felt true to the fact that he was
a victim of violence, and a perpetrator of violence.
This is not a hero’s journey. This is a portrait of
a person and what the world has turned into.”
Like a host of her contemporaries, such
as Rian Johnson or Gina Prince-Bythewood,
DaCosta is a director forged in both an arthouse
and blockbuster bubble. “It’s something I want
to bring to bigger movies — more dimensions,
something more idiosyncratic.” Which may
come in handy for her next gig. Just before
Empire speaks to DaCosta, news breaks that
she has been hired to direct Captain Marvel 2.
It’s huge news (and as sure a sign as any that
the pandemic-postponed Candyman is going to
rock). There’s just one problem: it hasn’t been
officially confirmed, so DaCosta can’t discuss it.
Clockwise from left:
Top of her game: Nia DaCosta;
The director’s 2018 film Little
Woods; DaCosta on the
Candyman set; Yahya
Abdul-Mateen II as artist
Anthony McCoy; Captain
Marvel 2 is on the cards for
DaCosta. Allegedly.
Erik Tanner/Getty Images, Allstar, Getty Images. Illustration: Stuart Manning
Officially. “What is that?” she laughs. “I’ve never
heard of her.” But, in tiptoeing around the
subject, it’s clear why she’s the right choice for
the continuing adventures of Carol Danvers.
“I’m a huge nerd,” she laughs. “The other
day I was alphabetising my [comic-book]
collection. I grew up with comics and cartoons,
and it’s a big part of my storytelling growth as
well.” So, hypothetically speaking of course,
would she be excited about making that step up
in scale? “I would be excited about progression,”
she says, choosing her words more carefully
than anyone in history. “The next Nia DaCosta
film I’m going to make is definitely genre, and
super-specific, and super-me, which I’m excited
about.” From Apocalypse Now to — potentially
— directing a billion-dollar blockbuster, in less
than 15 years? Smells like… victory. CHRIS HEWITT
 No./3
TA K E 20

NETFLIX’S
BIGGEST
FILM EVER,
UNPACKED
Crunching the numbers
on Anthony and Joe
Russo’s The Gray Man
— Netflix’s biggest,
most ambitious
film so far

$200M
BUDGET

4
Rumoured to be more expensive
than every other Netflix Original
film, The Gray Man allegedly

Taking on a new
tops the likes of Triple Frontier
and The Irishman, the only
ones to come close.

10M NEW
SUBSCRIBERS
News of The Gray Man comes
after the streaming giant
boasted ten million
No./ kind of supervillain
additional users joining Marvel scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely go from
the platform during the Thanos to something scarier: the Cambridge Analytica scandal
coronavirus pandemic.
WHEN YOU’VE DESTROYED half the campaigns of Ted Cruz and Donald Marvellous men:

$5.999
population of the universe with just Trump. The full scale of the data breach Christopher
a click of your fingers (or, in this case, only became apparent when Wylie, Markus (left) and
a tap of a computer key), where do who founded the company, blew the Stephen

BILLION BOX you go next? For Christopher Markus whistle in 2018. McFeely.

OFFICE TAKINGS
Over four films, the Russo
brothers racked up just
under $6 billion revenue
from the Marvel Cinematic
Universe. Captain
America: The Winter
Soldier, Captain America:
Civil War, Avengers: Infinity
War and Avengers:
Endgame all set the bar for
another high-earning franchise.
and Stephen McFeely, the writers of
Avengers double-bill Infinity War and
Endgame, the answer was obvious: they
had to go smaller in scale, because going
bigger was impossible; but not smaller
in import. Their next movie as writers,
pandemic permitting, will tackle the
Cambridge Analytica scandal, the
fallout of which had real-world
implications of which Thanos could
only dream.
“We ended up talking to Chris
Wylie, the whistleblower, well before
he blew the whistle,” explains McFeely
It’s a sprawling subject for a movie,
even if it focuses on Wylie, but Markus
and McFeely feel that it’s a story that
needs to be told. “It has a lot to do with
the world we live in now,” says Markus.
“That said, we wouldn’t have told it if
it didn’t have a really good character
story in it.” “It’s funny, and dark,” adds
McFeely. “It’s incumbent on us to make
it fun,” chimes Markus. “Otherwise, it’s
a documentary.”
At one point, David Gordon Green
had been attached to direct, but
now that task falls to Matt

8
who, along with Markus, is now Shakman, while a number of
POTENTIAL Co-President Of Story at AGBO, the big-name actors are circling the

SEQUELS studio that Joe and Anthony Russo

The Gray Man could be
ushering in an epic new
saga of action films to root
for, with the 2009 novel by
Mark Greaney spawning
eight more books — at the
time of writing. Who knows
how many stories could be told
in another 11 years? ELLA KEMP
established for their post-Marvel gigs.
“The story came AGBO’s way, and as he
was telling the story we went, ‘How can
people not know this? This is crazy, and
super-important.’”
The short version: Cambridge
Analytica was a British data company
that illegally harvested data from
millions of Facebook users, some of
which was later used in the political
project, with Paul Bettany one of
them (he won’t be playing Wylie).
And should it come out, as
planned, in 2021, the duo hope
that it will open a lot of eyes about
the current political landscape, and
the state of the world. “If you really
take it in,” says McFeely, “it’ll make
you change the way you use your
computer and social media forever.”
#Intriguing. CHRIS HEWITT

OCTOBER 2020 11
 5
TA K E 20

No./

Truth
Seekers [ON- SET REPORT]

The SIMON PEGG-NICK

FROST comedy-horror that
isn’t quite a Simon Pegg-
Nick Frost comedy-horror
WHERE? Hayes, Middlesex

WHEN? 2 November 2019

WHY? It’s a Saturday, and one of the final days on

Truth Seekers, the Amazon TV show from Simon
Pegg and Nick Frost’s new production company,
Stolen Picture. And one of the vast units in a
business park has been converted, temporarily,
into the headquarters of fictional communications
giant Smyle, the company for whom Frost’s
character, Gus, works. There’s a buzz in the air —
because not only is most of the crew keeping
a surreptitious eye on the Rugby World Cup final
between England and South Africa, but today is
A Simon Pegg Day.

MEANING? Meaning that Pegg isn’t just a

producer and co-writer on the show, along with
Frost, Nat Saunders and James Serafinowicz.
Today he’s bringing his acting chops to bear
for a mini-reunion with Frost. As Gus’ boss, the
strangely bewigged, perma-grinning Dave, Pegg Top to bottom:
is cramming his Truth Seekers before-the-camera The extravagantly
work into a short space of time. “It was never coiffed Dave
going to be Nick and I in the dual lead roles,” says (Simon Pegg)
Pegg. “And because most of my scenes are in one with Gus (Nick
location, I can drop in at the end of the shoot, do Frost); “Honestly,
four days’ work, and go home. It’s great when you no-one else will
get to write and produce your own shows!” even notice it”;
Paranormalists
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT? It’s a supernatural Elton (Samson
comedy, in which Gus, a paranormal investigator Kayo), Gus and
on the side, finds himself (and his new sidekicks, Astrid (Emma
Elton and Astrid) caught up in increasingly spooky D’Arcy).

12 OCTOBER 2020

goings-on. “We weren’t afraid of trying something
like the British X-Files,” says Frost. “Scale-wise,
we can try something more ambitious. A lot of the
comedy comes from these people being in weird
situations. It’s not, ‘That ghost’s bum is out!’”
WHAT DID YOU SEE BEING FILMED?
Nothing spooky. All the ghostly business is already
in the can. Instead, we see a series of scenes
between Dave and Gus, with occasional Elton and
Astrid thrown in for good measure. Pegg and Frost
banter effortlessly. You get the sense that they’ve
done this before, but you also get the sense that
this isn’t entirely representative of the show. “This
makes it look more like a sitcom than it actually is,”
says Frost. “We wanted to make something that is
fun and frightening, where the two don’t step on
one another.”
ANYTHING UNUSUAL? Apart from Pegg’s wig?
Frost’s young son playing football with his dad in
the fairly large temporary green room. Kid’s got
moves — West Ham could do a lot worse. Also
the biggest tub of on-set custard creams we’ve
Prime Video, Oma Cinema
ever seen. And a fun little cameo from Pegg’s actor
brother, Mike Beckingham, who plays Dave’s
hapless assistant. “It’s the first time we’ve worked
together,” says Pegg. “I thought, ‘Come on, it’ll
be fun.’” CHRIS HEWITT
TRUTH SEEKERS IS COMING SOON TO PRIME VIDEO
No./ 6 Is this the future of
socially distanced cinema?
¯
We speak to the creator of Oma, France’s
corona-thwarting ‘vertical movie theatre’
SIX MONTHS INTO a global
pandemic, movie theatres across the
world continue to ask themselves the
question: how can we tempt viewers
back to the big screen? Well, here’s one
idea: make them feel as if they’ve just
stumbled into the Galactic Senate.
“We didn’t actually have Star Wars
in mind when we came up with this
concept,” laughs Nicolas Chican,
co-founder of Ōma Cinema, France’s
new ‘vertical movie theatre’. “The
Galactic Senate [comparisons] are
surprising because our design is based
on old opera houses and theatre
balconies. And I should point out, our
pods do not move...”
Bad news for anyone hoping to glide
about like an Alderaanian trade delegate,
but on all other fronts Ōma represents
an exciting prospect. Set to open in
Paris next year — with plans to launch
elsewhere afterwards — the project
began in the Before Times (2018) as an
attempt to offer cinemagoers something
new. “Cinema layouts haven’t changed
in decades,” Chican explains. “We
wanted to provide a more intimate
experience, bring people closer to the
screen. To do that, we have separated
Above: The
cinema
experience as
you’ve never seen
it before. Left:
Punters in their
individual pods
— take that,
coronavirus!
the room into customisable pods and
increased the angle of the slope from
25 degrees to more than 50.”
The idea was hatched by Chican
and his architect father Pierre pre-
coronavirus, but he admits they may
have unintentionally hit upon a solution
to socially distanced cinemas. “The
traffic flow into the room is divided,
which will reduce the risk of spreading
the virus. Plus, you can rent an entire
pod for a single group. It’s like having
several private screenings in one room.”
Aside from the obvious health and
pretending-to-be-Palpatine benefits,
Ōma’s unique format has plenty of
other positives, too. “Our design allows
the projector to face the centre of the
screen in both directions, meaning you
will not have any visual distortion,” says
Chican. “The angle of the pods also
means your view will never be obstructed.
Every seat is the best seat in the house.”
Imagine it: never again will your
cinema experience be spoiled by loud
eaters, late arrivers or large hats. That
said, you may have to put up with the
odd wag adopting Ian McDiarmid’s
gravelly brogue and pledging to hunt
down all Jedi. TOM ELLEN
OCTOBER 2020 13
 TRAILER
TA L K
Raised By Wolves
Unfiltered, uncensored, uncompromising trailer reactions from team EMPIRE
John Nugent (News Editor): So. Raised By
Wolves. This is very much not the Caitlin
Moran Wolverhampton-set sitcom. It’s
a really bloody weird sci-fi HBO series,
directed by Sir Ridley Scott. Or at least, he’s
directed the first episode.
Joanna Moran (Photography Director):
How involved is he?
John: Well, his production company is
producing it. And he hasn’t directed any TV
in decades. It’s a big deal.
Alex Godfrey (Acting Features Editor):
I doubt he would have directed the pilot if he
wasn’t all over it.
John: So I think Earth has been destroyed
by something, and it’s set on a distant planet,
where humanity is being repopulated. Also
there are robots. And aliens.
Liz Beardsworth (Production Editor):
That looks like City Hall a bit.
Joanna: And that looks like the BT Tower.
Chris Hewitt (Re.View Editor): That’s
Camden as it looks right now.
Joanna: Is she like a Terminator?
John: I think she’s like a benevolent
Terminator. So, I guess, Arnie in Terminator
2. Anyway, she’s telling the story of the
Three Little Pigs here. But then there’s
a literal representation of that story,
because we see a house made out of sticks.
And then bricks.
Nick de Semlyen (Acting Editor): Is this
a show about construction? In different
gravity fields, straw could actually be
a better material.
John: There’s a lot of mixed metaphors here:
they’re raised by wolves, but also the wolf is
trying to blow the little pigs’ house down.
Joanna: Is the mother robot the wolf, then?
Nick: In some ways, Jo, we are all the wolf.
Joanna: I’m not. I think I’m the sheep...
That guy with the mullet looked really
familiar. Are there any named actors in this?
Chris: Travis Fimmel. In Vikings, I believe.
Nick: What the hell is happening here? Is it
an ice cube holder?
Ben Travis (Online Staff Writer): It’s like
how you’re supposed to cut a mango.
Nick: That’s the answer to how you stop
wolves: you build your house out of mango.
John: What is this thing?
Nick: Is it like a Xeno-wolf? A space wolf?
Ben: It looks like the half-alien thing that
Noomi Rapace gave birth to in Prometheus.
Alex: It feels like something from the
year 2000.
John: It feels like something from the year
3000, more like!
Alex: It’s got very video-game-cut-scene
14 MONTH 2020
OCTOBER 2020
energy. I feel like we’ve seen this kind of world
before. I don’t know. Maybe I’m in a bad mood.
Ben: We’ve had so many TV post-
apocalypses. Whereas this looks completely
alien and weird in a way I feel I haven’t seen.
It looks halfway between The Martian and
the mythological side of Prometheus and
Alien: Covenant. It has that far-future and
prehistoric past mash-up thing you see in
Horizon Zero Dawn.
John: And then she turns into... this.
Alex: This is what I’m talking about: this bit
feels slightly Scorpion King.
John: Oh, come on now, it’s not that bad. It’s
certainly a look. She has cornrows now. And
she can fly. And she has some sort of murderous
sonic boom. There’s a lot going on there.
Alex: Pan’s Labyrinth man!
John: Yeah, I was gonna say. Very Del Toro.
Ben: He seems to be a health robot.
Pharmacy Man.
John: It’s nice they’ve given him gentle eyes
for a bedside manner. He’s like a crash test
dummy with a USB port.
Ben: I think I’ve worked out why I like the
look of this; it’s because it looks like the
absolute batshit far-future part of Cloud
Atlas. This is the true-true! Maybe Hugh
Grant will turn up as a cannibal.
John: She actually howls like a wolf here, for
some reason. Feels a bit like the last shot of
The Departed. Very on-the-nose.
Nick: What do we think the plot of that was,
in a sentence?
John: Metaphorical pigs build three houses?
Chris: Future robot people live in a
commune. A man comes into the commune,
and fucks things up. As is man’s wont.
Nick: Doesn’t ‘raised by wolves’ come from
Romulus and Remus, the twins who
supposedly founded Rome?
Joanna: Yes — they suckled on the teat of
a she-wolf.
Alex: Good sentence, Jo.
Joanna: Thank you. I did classical
civilisation too.
Ben: This mix of batshit far-future robots
and aliens meets classical mythology meets
Roman history — that’s über Ridley Scott.
Nick: Gladiator meets Alien! Maybe that’s
how it was pitched.
John: I’d like to see Thelma And Louise
meets Black Hawk Down.
Ben: It looks expensive and bonkers. That’s
always a combination I enjoy, for better
or worse.
RAISED BY WOLVES DOES NOT CURRENTLY HAVE A UK
RELEASE DATE
 TA K E 20

No./7
The weirdest
3. ONE DRIVE-IN CINEMA IN FLORIDA
ACCOUNTED FOR AN ENTIRE
WEEKEND’S BOX OFFICE
Drive-in cinemas have proved to be social-
distancing pioneers in the pandemic. That was

summer movie
especially true for one weekend in April, when
the Ocala Drive-In in Florida was the only
cinema to report box office in the entire
United States. Only the most dedicated of

season ever
Five ways the traditionally
busiest time of year for
moviegoing has just felt really
bloody strange, actually
1. JURASSIC PARK TOPPED THE BOX
OFFICE (AGAIN)
With new releases entirely absent during the
summer months, movie fans spared no expense
in making Steven Spielberg’s classic dino-
nightmare number one at the box office, 27 years
after it was first released, adding a respectable
$1.3 million to its cumulative billion-dollar
gross. Re-releases of The Empire Strikes Back,
Ghostbusters and Jaws also gave cinemas an
uncanny retro feel — like stepping into a deep-
cleaned time machine.
2. A CINEMA OWNER BEAT UP
A CARDBOARD MULAN
Feeling betrayed by Mulan’s shock move
to Disney+, French cinema-owner Gerard
Lemoine felt the most rational response to
the situation was to beat the shit out of a foyer
display stand. It’s possible to both appreciate
the frustration of losing a film to streaming,
and find the impotent rage of a man solemnly
assaulting a bit of corrugated cardboard
quite funny.
Not your average summer: from obscure American drive-in
cinemas to old dinosaurs topping the film charts, 2020 has
seen some unusual goings-on in movie-land.
film fans would have made the road
trip to the town of Ocala (pop: 60,000)
to see either war/mime biopic
Resistance or psychological thriller
Swallow — which brought in
a grand total of $33,456 in takings.
4. MOVIE TRAILERS DON’T
KNOW WHEN THEIR MOVIES ARE
COMING OUT
Cinema’s normally loud-and-bombastic trailers
have looked confused and indecisive this
summer. Tenet quietly removed its date after
repeated delays; others were more creative.
A24’s Zola featured the text “Coming This...”,
before being deleted in real-time with the more
bet-hedging “Coming Soon”. Free Guy’s trailer,
meanwhile, announced its new date with the
‘fingers crossed’ emoji.
5. THE TOYS ARRIVED BEFORE THE
FILMS DID
This is a Toy Story without a happy ending:
a ton of delayed blockbusters, including
Top Gun: Maverick, Minions: The Rise of Gru
and Fast & Furious 9, have seen their
merchandise jump the gun. You can’t just
release a Gru plushie on Disney+, it seems.
“The train had already started moving on
these toys and there was no way to stop it,”
said James Zahn, senior editor at The Toy
Insider. A Godzilla Vs. Kong toy even accidentally
revealed one of the film’s new monsters
— the ‘Warbat’. JOHN NUGENT

A N AC Q U I R E D TA ST E IT’S BASED ON A META-COMIC would have committed some of the sins

Random Acts Of Violence began
RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE as a comic by Jimmy Palmiotti and
ACTOR/WRITER/DIRECTOR JAY BARUCHEL ON HIS Justin Gray, about comic-book creators
POSTMODERN SLASHER HORROR whose murderous creation, Slasherman,
begins stalking them in real life. Baruchel
and co-scriptwriter Jesse Chabot took
the idea and ran with it. “Our film is the
logical extreme of a debate that they
started,” Baruchel explains.
IT WAS INTIALLY TOO GORY
Inevitably for a slasher horror, there’s
Alamy, Getty Images
that the movie takes issue with or tries
to pick apart. There was no emotional
dynamism in it.”
IT’S THE PERECT FILM FOR NOW
“The sad truth is, we’re always on the
precipice of the fuckin’ apocalypse
anyway,” Baruchel sighs. He hopes
the film can be a tonic of sorts during
a pandemic. “There’s something
therapeutic in getting scared by
something on the screen, with a degree

a lot of blood. But there was even more
in Baruchel and Chabot’s earlier drafts.
“Our first go, we turned all our amps up
to ten,” Baruchel says. “We tried to write
the craziest, goriest, most exhilarating
of control. Because if you put on a scary
movie, you can pause it. And you can’t
pause the news!” JAMES WHITE
RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE IS ON SHUDDER

thing we could — and it was fine. But it FROM 20 AUGUST

OCTOBER 2020 15
 TA K E 20

8
No./
Farewell
to the final
Golden Age star
[IN MEMORIAM]

Empire contributor Christina

Newland reflects on the
late OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND,
the Hollywood trailblazer
who changed the game
THE OUTPOURING OF grief over losing Olivia
de Havilland, at 104 years old, tells us something
about the finality of it, knowing that the last
major star of Golden Age Hollywood has left
us. From her Technicolor swooning in The
Adventures Of Robin Hood (1938) to her quiet
strength in The Heiress (1949) and her enduring
power in Gone With The Wind (1939), it is certain
there will not be another like her. She was the
fixture for a bygone past, or a figure of nostalgia.
With her warm brown eyes and poised
demeanour, she was initially cast at her home
studio of Warner Bros. as a sweet romantic lead
of the ’30s, in films such as Captain Blood (1935)
and Dodge City (1939). Yet lying beneath her rosy
prettiness was steel ambition. When the studio
tried to keep her under her seven-year contract
after it had run out, she fought back in court
in any official capacity, she closely studied the
real-life behaviour of mentally ill women in an
actual institution for The Snake Pit (1948).
De Havilland would win her first Academy
Award for Best Actress around this time, too,
for To Each His Own (1946), playing an unwed
mother who gives up her baby and spends most
of her life trying to get her child back. It was clear
that de Havilland favoured roles — mentally ill
Alamy, Getty Images, Shutterstock

last living co-star of some of the greats of
American movie culture; the last woman alive to
tell you John Huston and Errol Flynn once got
into a fistfight over her; and certainly among the
last to intimately describe the experience of
a now-bygone studio system which kept its
stars carefully corralled and stage-managed on
everything from diet to public appearances.
But de Havilland was not merely a symbolic
— and where others failed, de Havilland won.
The De Havilland Law, as it is sometimes called,
would free future actors from the unfair labour
practices that kept them from making creative
choices with their roles.
In the late 1940s, de Havilland would
go from strength to strength in a string of
psychologically complex and celebrated films,
and although she never studied Method acting
women or unwed mothers, for example — which
were not only in contrast to her earlier pedigreed
persona, but were of people often ignored in
mainstream culture. In this as in many other
things, she was a woman ahead of her time.
There is a moment in one of her greatest
films — William Wyler’s The Heiress (1949),
a period-set romantic drama opposite
Montgomery Clift — where de Havilland

16 OCTOBER 2020
Clockwise from left: The late Olivia de Havilland in
1941, posing to promote Strawberry Blonde; Starring
in The Snake Pit (1948); Gone With The Wind (1939);
The Heiress (1949) with Montgomery Clift; They Died
With Their Boots On (1941) with Errol Flynn.

IN HER
OWN WORDS
THE WIT AND WISDOM OF
OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND

ON PLAYING A ‘GOOD GIRL’

“Playing good girls in the ’30s
was difficult, when the fad was
to play bad girls. Actually I think
playing bad girls is a bore; I’ve
always had more luck with
good-girl roles because they
require more from an actress.”

ON FAME
“Famous people feel that they
must perpetually be on the
crest of the wave, not realising
that it is against all the rules of
life. You can’t be on top all the
time. It isn’t natural.”

ON LOVE SCENES
“[Errol Flynn and I] had one
kissing scene, which I looked
forward to with great delight.
I remember I blew every take, at
least six in a row, maybe seven,
maybe eight, and we had to kiss
all over again. And Errol got
really rather uncomfortable,
and he had, if I may say so,
a little trouble with his tights.”

ON HER LONG LIFE

becomes resigned to a life of loneliness. She “If I must at some time leave
plucks furiously at her cross-stitch, dropping this life, I’d like to do so
her head down to focus on it, keeping her ensconced on a chaise
shoulders in a prim posture while her bowed lounge, perfumed,
head tells another story. It so encapsulates wearing a velvet robe and
her command of body language, her elegance, pearl earrings, with a
and the swell of passion and intelligence hidden flute of champagne
behind her poised exterior. She won her second beside me and
Academy Award for the role. having just
In saying goodbye to her, we say goodbye discovered
to a whole era of moviemaking, but also the answer
to a unique and commanding screen to the
presence. Maybe eight-time co-star last
Errol Flynn said it best in They Died problem in
With Their Boots On, in his last a British
scene on screen with her: “Walking cryptic
through life with you, ma’am, has crossword.”
been a very gracious thing.”

OCTOBER 2020 17
 TA K E 20
No./9
“It’s not the best date-night movie if
you want to get laid”
[THE Q&A] STELLAN SKARSGÅRD on his dark new war drama The Painted Bird — and still
taking risks after 50 years in the business
STELLAN SKARSGÅRD IS
not afraid of stirring up
trouble. The veteran Swedish
actor is just as at home courting
controversy with film such as
Nymphomaniac as he is singing
to ABBA in Mamma Mia!. His
latest — a brief turn as a Nazi
soldier in The Painted Bird,
a gruelling black-and-white
World War II drama with
savage scenes of violence — is
as controversial as they come.
Now 69 and still as prolific as
ever, he talks to Empire about
violence on screen, his old pal
Lars von Trier, falling asleep
in front of Diane Keaton, and
his future in the MCU.
The Painted Bird makes for
a very traumatic viewing
experience…
Oh, it’s ruined your weekend,
hasn’t it? It’s not the best
date-night movie if you want
to get laid!
Not quite! But it is very
violent. Do you think the
black-and-white photography
makes it more palatable?
Yes, it’s an aestheticising choice
that almost puts a filter
between you and the material,
but at the same time it can
seduce you and bring that
material closer to you. It’s like
one of those European films
from the ’60s. The language
is not the dialogue because
there isn’t any, almost. It’s a
cinematic language. If you see
it in a cinema it is breathtaking.
Is it possible to go too far
when depicting violence?
It’s complicated. Violence is
unpleasant but it’s most often
seen as entertaining. The last
film that Lars von Trier did,
The House That Jack Built,
got criticised for the violence
being unpleasant. To me,
that was an absurd criticism
because violence is supposed to
be unpleasant. I see the horror
18 OCTOBER 2020
[in The Painted Bird] but I’m
not devastated by it. There is
a filter so you see the horror
but at the same time, you’re
exposed to the beauty of it.
It’s a strange creature.
The Painted Bird is just
under three hours long. Are
you comfortable with long
running times?
How long is a story? I know
people who spend six hours
watching a series. People
feel that they lack time but
[think of ] the amount of time
we spend on the internet
or our phones! We just
lack concentration.
What’s the longest film
Top to bottom: you’ve sat through?
The fearless and Lars von Trier’s uncut
prolific Stellan Nymphomaniac. Which
Skarsgård; As was five hours.
Hans, a Nazi
soldier, in The Well, you were in that —
Painted Bird. were you contractually
obliged to see it?
[Laughs] I was sat in a nice
cinema on my own so
everything was ideal. It’s like
going into a 19th-century novel
by Dickens or Dostoyevsky.
You’re ready to accept that this
is a story that doesn’t come
with a beginning, a middle, and
who’s going to get who at the
end. So you sit down and let
uncle Lars tell you a story and
that’s a universe to be in, if you
can take his universe.
Speaking of universes, when
are you back in the Marvel
Cinematic Universe?
I haven’t heard from them.
But I wouldn’t mind. I had
a four-film deal and two were
used for Thor movies and two
for the Avengers. I remember
saying to [Marvel boss] Kevin
Feige, “Is there really any
money in this comic-book
thing?” He looked at me like
I was a fucking idiot. Which
I was, of course.
If Natalie Portman’s Jane
Foster is going to be Thor
(in Thor: Love And Thunder),
it seems only fair that you
are in that movie too.
I think so. Me and Kat
Dennings, too. We were
a good trio.
People walked out of the
Painted Bird premiere
at the Venice Film Festival.
Have you ever walked out
of a movie?
No, but I’ve fallen asleep during
one. I had a mental walkout.
What film was that?
It was Looking For Mr. Goodbar
Irvin Rivera/Contour By Getty Images
with Diane Keaton, many
years ago. I can’t say it was
anything wrong with the film
since I really didn’t see it
and I could very well just
have been exhausted. Or
drunk. HANNA FLINT
THE PAINTED BIRD IS IN CINEMAS FROM
11 SEPTEMBER

LOCKDOWN
SPECIAL
SMALL
TA L K
STEPHEN
GRAHAM
How has lockdown
been treating you?
I haven’t stopped working
for the past four years so it’s
been nice to have some
quality time with the family.
We’re not the fucking
Waltons. Sometimes it’s a
clash between the Waltons
and the Addams Family.
Sometimes we’re skipping
on rainbows and it’s
all lovely, then the next
minute there’s a school
playground fight.
Since we last spoke to
you, your team [Liverpool]
has won the league...
Yes! Which has been
magnificent. What a
wonderful experience to
share with my children.
What’s their secret?
[Manager Jürgen] Klopp’s
just got them playing for
each other. We have some
magnificent players but it
seems there are no egos, as
an observer looking in. They
all play for him, play for the
shirt and play for the team.
It’s just a great combination.
You have some football
skills yourself?
Yeah, I’m alright, I can kick a
ball. I help coach my son’s
football team. Johnny, the
manager, lets me be his
sidekick. I’ll be good cop
and he’ll be bad cop. At the
minute, he’s doing more of
the technical aspect and I’m
doing more of the fitness
side. So they don’t really like
Shutterstock
me right now. IAN FREER
GREYHOUND IS ON APPLE TV+ NOW
TA K E 20
No./ 10
How a
levitating nurse
became iconic
Saint Maud director Rose
Glass tells the story behind her
terrifying film’s calling-card shot
NEARLY AN HOUR into Saint Maud, the buzzy
British horror from debut director Rose Glass,
Maud — a God-fearing nurse with a dark secret,
played by Morfydd Clark — begins to float. After
a boozy night, she suffers what appears to be a
seizure, before gently lifting off the ground. It’s
the kind of gorgeous, arresting imagery most
horror films would kill for. But it’s inspired, Glass
says, from real life — at least, the seizure part.
“The Passion Of Joan Of Arc was a film Top: Maud (Morfydd Clark) has lift-off. Above: The film’s
I watched quite a few times,” Glass tells Empire. storyboard illustrates the sequence shot by shot.
“Some psychologists believe that Joan Of Arc
may have suffered from ecstatic epileptic precedes it”, Glass explains, which finds the
seizures, where the seizures are preceded by anti-hero at her lowest point. “I knew I had to
intense, ecstatic sensations. I found that quite have some kind of wholly ethereal image. There
interesting: is she having a religious experience were a couple of other ideas, but levitating —
or is this kind of a neurological glitch?” there’s just something simple about it.” The scene
The scene has drawn comparisons with the was carefully storyboarded; at one point “fancy
similarly gravity-eluding Regan in The Exorcist. wires and green-screen” was considered, but were
But that wasn’t a direct influence in the writing too expensive. A lo-fi solution was found. “They
process. “It was more things like Repulsion, found this bit of kit that’s used in warehouses to
Black Narcissus — very theatrical, melodramatic, lift big boxes. We just put her on top of that.”
religious horror. The Devils, the Ken Russell The shot has offered a gasp-inducing moment
film, was based on this convent of nuns who for audiences at festival screenings. “At Toronto,
supposedly got possessed and there was a mass one guy in the audience just went, ‘OOOH!’ That’s
exorcism.” Glass chuckles: “Like, were they what I like best — involuntary physical reactions.
actually possessed? Or was it a group of sexually Laughing, wincing, shouting. It’s all satisfying.”
frustrated, pent-up nuns losing their shit?” Praise be to you, Maud. JOHN NUGENT
Whether possessed or pent-up, Maud’s
levitation “evolved naturally from the scene that SAINT MAUD IS IN CINEMAS FROM 23 OCTOBER
OCTOBER 2020 19
 TA K E 20

No./ 11 Meet
Hollywood’s
favourite
scientist
How a humble British
academic changed the way
science-fiction (and science
fact) is depicted in movies

YOU PROBABLY HAVEN’T heard of Dr Clifford the quantum realm. There are echoes of that in beyond the MCU’s tradition of turning to
V. Johnson. But the fingertips of the British-born some playful aspects of real theoretical physics.” ‘science bros’ Tony Stark and Bruce Banner.
physicist from the University of Southern Johnson also encouraged a realistic depiction Even when he joins a project later in the
California have been all over Hollywood. If of the scientific process. “One of the things I’m process, as was the case with Thor: Ragnarok,

Getty Images, Phil Channing/USC Dornsife, Shutterstock

you’re a filmmaker with a time-travel question,
he’s the guy you call. “There is no industry
standard for what a science advisor does,”
Johnson tells Empire. “The point for me is to try
to encourage filmmakers to get science right in
some sense. By ‘right’, I don’t mean necessarily
that it’s going to fit all the physics textbooks, but
‘right’ in some sense of internal logic.”
On Avengers: Endgame, for example, Johnson
threw around ideas with the writers, directors and
producers about how time-travel might work in a
quasi-realistic way — what he has dubbed ‘Marvel
Science’. “We brainstormed about time-travel and
quantum physics. Time is flexible at the quantum
level, in the microscopic world. And so that
connects nicely to the whole Ant-Man world —
interested in is not just the science facts, but also
seeing who does the science. I’d like to see the
‘lone genius’ trope a lot less, which is loved
by storytellers. In fact, science is extremely
collaborative.” His consulting on Infinity War
led to Shuri’s expertise being sought in Wakanda,
Ant-Man, delving into
the quantum world and
beyond…
he can be useful. “The script was already
written, but I wrote them a ton of notes with
supplementary ideas, and suggestions for
dialogue. And I talked with [director] Taika
Waititi and the VFX people about how those
wormhole entrances might look.”
His work continues, including consulting
on the recent time-travel romcom Palm Springs,
plus spending a “two-hour lunch” with the
makers of upcoming Disney+ show Ms Marvel,
where he established “a possible rough rulebook
for how these different kinds of science might
interact with each other” for the stretchy-
powered superhero. But his mission is always the
same. “I’m just trying to put more science into
the general culture,” he says. JOHN NUGENT

[TREND REPORT]

No./12
FANCY
FACIAL
HAIR
Clean shaves are THE FRENCH DEATH ON THE KING’S MAN
so 2019 — these DISPATCH THE NILE SHOLA
cinematic whiskers ZEFFIRELLI HERCULE POIROT Matthew Vaughn’s World War I-set prequel
are the future of Boy wonder Timothée Chalamet now Poirot couldn’t be Poirot without that boasts plenty of ornate ’tashes
fuzzy faces has facial hair, a true sign that he is moustache, but Kenneth Branagh took (shout-out to Charles Dance’s lip-tickler),
a Serious Actor now. Expect the the epithet and ran with it: a bushy, but best of all is Djimon Hounsou’s
Chalamoustache to be 2021’s hottest boisterous coiffure, first debuted in 2017 salt-and-pepper chin-puff, which sits on
WORDS ELLA KEMP trimming trend. and making a triumphant return this year. his face like a tubular flavour-saver.
ILLUSTRATIONS BILL MCCONKEY

20 OCTOBER 2020

INTRODUCING...
Caren
Pistorius
THE ACTOR IS TERRORISED
BY A ROAD-RAGING RUSSELL
CROWE IN UNHINGED
ON GETTING INTO ACTING
“In high school, I was a really
shy kid. I would never have
thought that I’d want to be on
a big screen at all. I wanted to
be a vet! But I found myself in
an acting class and had the
opportunity to explore all sorts
of characters in this safe space.
And from there, I was hooked.”
ON TAKING ON THE LEAD
ROLE IN UNHINGED
“It was scary and I was
completely overwhelmed
with imposter syndrome. But
what helped was the fact that
[her character] Rachel goes
through a similar thing, in terms
of finding strength over the
course of the journey.”
ON HER CO-STAR, RUSSELL CROWE
“We really hardly shared any
scenes together — I was in a
car for probably 90 per cent of
the shoot! We did have a scene
at the end of the film, which
required a fair amount of
choreography. He was great.”
ON ILLUSTRATING IN HER SPARE TIME
“I studied illustration and
animation, and I’ve been
drawing and sketching my
experiences in lockdown. If
I do an audition, or an interview,
I’ll put that into an illustration.
I have a running character that
is me. It doesn’t look like me.
It’s an animal that I’ve invented.
She just goes through all
the same emotions as me.
You might pop up in one of
my drawings, y’know!”
JOHN NUGENT
UNHINGED IS IN CINEMAS NOW
13
No./
The activist whose
story is finally being told
Judas And The Black Messiah’s big-screen take on
a legendary civil-rights leader couldn’t be more timely
IN THE ELECTRIFYING first
Judas And The Black Messiah
trailer, Fred Hampton (Daniel
Kaluuya) first introduces
himself to a viewer peering
through a narrow window.
But Hampton’s vision of
liberation was anything
but narrow. The Rainbow
Coalition, the multicultural
movement he founded in 1969,
was built on the premise that
equity is a birthright; one that
should be given to the people.
And his legacy as a Black
Panther further reinforced a
central belief: where there’s
people, there’s power.
Born in 1948, in the
suburbs of Chicago, Hampton’s
ability to assemble a group of
people to action became clear
in his early work as a NAACP
youth organiser. This skill was
further displayed when he
quickly rose up the ranks of the
Illinois chapter of the Black
Panther Party. As a leader,
Hampton’s gravitas sourced
from his effortless oration and
his passion for the work. As
an organiser, Hampton was
instrumental in programmes
such as Free Breakfast for
children and the Chicago gang
neutrality pact, which spun off
to become the Rainbow
Coalition. Ultimately, his life
was cut short, when the FBI
— tipped off by undercover
operative William O’Neal
(played in the film by LaKeith
Stanfield) — raided Hampton’s
apartment and killed him in
1969, aged just 21.
Hampton’s revolution, and
the ideals he fought and died
for, are the same ideals that
activists are fighting for today.
The realisation that the Black
Panther Party’s demands —
centred around abolishing
police brutality and gaining
fair housing, wages and rights
for Black citizens — have still
not been answered, exposes
the limits of our progress.
Hampton’s son, Fred
Hampton Jr, who served as
a consultant on the film,
has said: “There was an
incorrect narrative that
many people thought
the Black Panther Party
was just fighting against
racism. But the
reality was they
were fighting
TA K E 20
Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith
Stanfield in Judas And The
Black Messiah. Below:
Activist Fred Hampton.
for power: power over our
lives, the fight for self-
determination.” The ability
to live and breathe in peace
was not afforded to Black
Chicagoians in the 1960s,
equally as they weren’t afforded
to George Floyd. Or Breonna
Taylor. Or Tony McDade. Or
Stephen Lawrence.
It’s taken nearly half a
century for Hampton’s story to
earn a big-screen treatment;
time will tell if the film lives up
to the subject. But in one of the
trailer’s most defining shots,
when Hampton yells, “I am a
revolutionary!” to the crowd,
the crowd responds with equal
fervour. The fighting cry
bellowing from organisers-past
is calling people to action. This
cinematic account of the past
mirrors the reality of today’s
BLM movement. It’s
up to all of us
to unlock the
revolutionary
within. JOI CHILDS
JUDAS AND THE BLACK
MESSIAH DOES NOT
CURRENTLY HAVE A UK
RELEASE DATE
OCTOBER 2020 21
 14
TA K E 20

No./
“He was the
Holy Grail of
filmmaking”
[IN MEMORIAM]

Friends, fans and fellow

filmmakers remember
SIR ALAN PARKER, the
legendary British director,
who died last month
ILLUSTRATION STUART MANNING

MATTHEW MODINE
ACTOR, BIRDY
“I met Sir Alan in 1983. I was just
one of hundreds of actors vying
for a role in his next film, Birdy.
Parker was kind, soft-spoken. He had a handheld
video-camera and moved about my chair as
I auditioned. Sometimes, he would be just inches
from my face and eyes. It was like a physical
examination by a doctor who was searching for DEXTER FLETCHER making films that were artistic, had a message,
something. What that was, only Parker knew. ACTOR, BUGSY MALONE were commercially viable, won awards and were
“Months later, I received a call from Parker. “I first met Alan when I was nine films that audiences almost always loved. Those
‘Congratulations! You’re going to be in my years old. I remember filming filmmakers are very few and far between.”
movie.’ I was thrilled. ‘You’re going to play the wonderful scene as Baby
Birdy.’ ‘What?!’ I said, ‘No. That’s impossible. Face [in Bugsy Malone]. I distinctly remember BRONAGH GALLAGHER
I auditioned for Al. I’m not right for that.’ He Alan saying to me after one take, ‘Okay, do it ACTOR, THE
replied: ‘You’re going to be great. Can’t wait to again, but this time say: “I’m going to be a big COMMITMENTS
see you get started.’ movie star!” and look right at the camera as you “I attended three auditions
“Once we began filming, Parker became say it.’ As a child actor, it’s drilled into you to for The Commitments and
Illustration: Stuart Manning. Getty Images

quite a different person from the soft-spoken
man I’d met at my audition. While Parker
sometimes used blunt force on the artists he was
collaborating with, we knew his impatience only
came from his desire to make a great film, his
passion for excellence.
“The film transformed my life. I consider
Parker one of the top directors of all time. It was
my honour to have worked alongside my dear
friend, the working-class kid who rose to the
pinnacle of his profession.”
never look at the camera because of course,
kids have a terrible habit of doing that. Only
Alan had the power and the imagination to
break the fourth wall with a group of children.
“He obviously knew how to get the best out of
children because I’ve done it myself as a director
and it’s really difficult. He did that so successfully
because there’s not a single bad performance in
the film. I don’t think people give him enough
credit for how hard that must have been.
“Parker was the Holy Grail in terms of
met Alan at the second. His presence was
extraordinary. When I got the part, it was just
pure joy to be on set with him. He always had
laser focus because of his extensive experience,
talent and knowledge of this business. He
was a master filmmaker. He always knew exactly
what he was doing every morning when he
walked on that set.
“He rehearsed with the actors before he even
turned a camera on, which was such a luxury.
He was like a wise owl on set, very economical,

22 OCTOBER 2020

very precise with his directions, and he always
had great authority. You felt so safe in his hands
because he knew what he was doing but he
was also great fun, too. All days on set were
wonderful, just full of laughter and kindness.
“He always took on brave and diverse
subjects, making extremely thought-provoking
films in the process. Even when dealing with the
most challenging of these subjects, he did so in
a beautifully artistic way. He will be remembered
as a true master artist and filmmaker.”
ALEC BALDWIN
ACTOR,
ALAN PARKER FAN
“Like a lot of people in the
States, Fame was the first film
I knew Alan Parker from. I was still in acting
school when the film came out. Alan Parker
cast people who were all imperfect in some way.
They are all just real people and he captured
Clockwise from top left: Pink Floyd — The Wall,
Evita, Midnight Express, Birdy, Angel Heart, Angela’s
Ashes, Fame and Bugsy Malone — a selection of the
movies directed by Alan Parker (centre).
their dreams and frustrations in a very authentic
way. Fame is one of the best movies ever made.
“You often hear people talk about directors
‘getting a performance out of an actor’ and
that’s normally complete bullshit. Ninety-five
per cent of the people who are directors have
no influence whatsoever on the performance.
Parker is someone who you can honestly say,
he got performances out of people.
“In Mississippi Burning, Parker manages
to be very effective in getting Gene Hackman
to sit on certain impulses he had, where many
directors were not. Hackman has so many
great performances but often tries to charm
the camera as if to immunise himself against the
stakes of the scene. Parker succeeded in getting
him out of that; it’s one of Hackman’s best
performances as a result.
“Anybody that makes a great film occupies
a very unique perch in this business. People who
make multiple great films… well, that’s a really
TA K E 20
rare place to go. Any guy that did Midnight
Express, Fame, Birdy, Mississippi Burning and
The Commitments… that’s an amazing legacy.”
GURINDER CHADHA
FILMMAKER AND
MENTEE OF PARKER
“Alan was a big fan of my first
film; he was very excited when
I came on the scene. He was chair of the BFI
and then the UK Film Council and he made
a big push to make sure that I was on the board.
Things like that go a long way, pushing for
inclusivity in an industry where that was rare.
“I loved that he never made the same film
twice. He just kept changing genres and that
was a big inspiration to me. The mark of a good
director is when from the opening scenes you
feel relaxed; you feel you can sit back and know
you’re in good hands.
“I looked at him and thought he really
knew how to tell stories and I think we
connected because we were both about telling
stories and using a populist approach. We were
also both from backgrounds where filmmakers
weren’t supposed to come from and that
connected us too.
“One of the last times I saw Alan for lunch,
he was telling me about how he was struggling
to get a film made. He was definitely frustrated
that he wasn’t being given a break. In light of
all he’d achieved, [that] felt really sad.”
LORD DAVID PUTTNAM
PRODUCER AND
LIFELONG FRIEND
“I first met Alan at the
advertising agency at which
I worked. He was there for an interview. He
was a bit younger than me, and I remember
thinking that for his age he was amazingly
lippy! He came across as almost unbearably
confident — which never really left him.
“We had hundreds, maybe thousands of
meals together over 55 years and they would
inevitably consist of a dozen hysterical laughs,
a couple of minor squabbles, and at least one
fundamental disagreement over some recent
aspect of our lives. Every meal was a bit of a
rollercoaster but, looking back, I wouldn’t have
missed any of them.
“I think it’s fair to say Alan and I genuinely
loved each other. Our relationship transcended
friendship. For me he was the brother I never
had, and I’d like to think he felt the same. That’s
why I’m finding it so hard to adjust to the fact
that I won’t see him again.
“The very last text I received from him, we’d
got cut off on a FaceTime call. He wrote, ‘Damn,
damn, damn, we had so much left to talk about.’
“As usual, he was right.”
AS TOLD TO ELIZABETH AUBREY
OCTOBER 2020 23
 TA K E 20
15
No./
Where the Irish
Miyazaki gets
his inspiration
Animation maestro Tomm Moore on what influenced his new
film WOLFWALKERS — from ancient history to Yorkshire actors
IT’S BEEN SIX years since we last got a Tomm
Moore movie, the beautiful, tear-jerking Song
Of The Sea. But his latest, WolfWalkers, sounds
well worth the wait. “The way we make these
films is very hand-made, very craft-orientated,”
Moore explains via Zoom from his animation
studio Cartoon Saloon in his home town of
Kilkenny, Ireland. “It’s a long process.”
Set in Kilkenny during the Oliver Cromwell-
dominated 1650s, where an English hunter’s
daughter learns to transform herself into a wolf,
Moore’s third film (co-directed with Moore’s
lifelong friend Ross Stewart) is as distinctly
hand-drawn and locally rooted as Moore’s
previous (including his 2009 debut, The
Secret Of Kells) — factors that have earned
him favourable comparisons with Hayao
Miyazaki. Unsurprisingly, the Studio Ghibli
co-founder is a big influence on Moore,
although, as he reveals, the roots of
WolfWalkers stretch far deeper…
LOCAL HISTORY
“Because it had been the capital
of the Catholic Confederacy,
Cromwell’s aim was to crush
Kilkenny,” says Moore. “And
he did a good job of it!” The
director was aware of all this
24 OCTOBER 2020
since childhood, but it wasn’t until he saw a
documentary called Wolfland on Irish-language
channel TG4 that he discovered that Cromwell
(voiced in the film by Simon McBurney) had
also ordered the extermination of wolves in
the area, to supposedly “tame” the land.
WOODBLOCK PRINTS
“The fake news of the day was that the country
was totally wild, with all these atrocities being
committed,” Moore says. “They had these
pamphlets with some horrific woodblock prints
that got everybody in England really riled up.”
In these, Moore found the ideal visual style
for the film’s town-based scenes, devising
them to look like animated woodblock
prints. “We even offset the colours, as if
the block went down and slid a bit.”
IRISH FOLKLORE
Moore first heard the local legends
of “werewolves in Kilkenny” as
a teenager, from a fellow member
of the Young Irish Filmmakers
company. But years later, on
Getty Images
further investigation, he realised Clockwise from top: The WolfWalkers surrounded by their
these stemmed from stories wolfpack; Robyn (voiced by Honor Kneafsey) encounters
surrounding St Patrick “cursing” Mebh (Eva Whittaker) at the forest’s edge; Robyn wields her
pagans who wouldn’t convert by crossbow; Director Tomm Moore.

transforming them into wolves. “It wasn’t
like An American Werewolf In London with
grotesque transformations; it was more like
they fell asleep and their spirits would leave
their body in the shape of a wolf. So it was
interesting to play with that.”
STUDIO GHIBLI
No prizes for spotting the thematic influence
of Miyazaki’s similarly lupine Princess
Mononoke, but a bigger inspiration was
another Ghibli: Isao Takahata’s exquisitely
rendered The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya.
To give the forest scenes a visual contrast to
the woodblocky town, Moore went for the
“much sketchier, looser kind of style” which
defined Takahata’s hand-drawn masterpiece.
“Where it most looks like Kaguya is where
we see things through the eyes of the wolves.
Those sections we did in charcoal on paper,
and the only thing on screen that has any
colour are the scents the wolves see to
navigate the world.”
SEAN BEAN
While creating the character of the English
hunter, father to the heroine, Moore and
Stewart only had one face in mind. “We drew
the dad to look like Sean Bean from his Sharpe
era,” says Moore. “He just looks a bit like
a dad to me!” They even started doing Sean
Bean impressions while imagining his voice
(“probably really badly”). Luckily, when it
came to casting, they managed to get the real
thing. “We were really delighted when he
agreed to do the voice,” Moore says. And
judging by the survival skills of previous
Moore-movie dads, Bean’s chances of making
it to the final credits are actually pretty good,
for once. DAN JOLIN
WOLFWALKERS IS OUT IN CINEMAS AND ON APPLE TV+
THIS AUTUMN
No./ 16
Baby’s back — and
it’s about damn time
Dirty Dancing is getting a sequel with Jennifer Grey — we
welcome the return of a crowdpleasing feminist icon
WITH ITS SWEETLY crooning retro
soundtrack, its iconic dialogue and the
ever-sexy pairing of Baby and Johnny,
Dirty Dancing is a bona fide modern
classic. Thirty-three years after the
film was released — and went from
low-budget gamble to a full-blown
box-office phenomenon — Lionsgate
has confirmed that a sequel to the film is
in the works. And unlike the maligned
2004 prequel Dirty Dancing: Havana
Nights, this one will star the original
‘Baby’, Jennifer Grey.
The original film’s popularity has
sometimes obscured the fact that it is
deeply feminist in its intent, charting
a young woman’s coming-of-age in the
early ’60s, a deeply patriarchal time. It
tells that story not just with tenderness
but a deep understanding of how the
world judges young women and their
choices; the main motivation of the
plot arises from Baby’s protection of
a practical stranger — a young woman
she doesn’t know who needs to obtain
an illegal abortion. It’s a radical plotline
for a mainstream film in 2020, let
alone 1987.
The male lead, Johnny Castle,
played unforgettably by Patrick Swayze,
is equally sensitive — even willing to
take responsibility for the pregnancy to
TA K E 20
protect a girl’s reputation. He’s Above: The
a dreamy fantasy of altruism in a iconic ‘lift’
Swayze-shaped vessel. It’s exciting scene in the
to imagine what the contemporary original movie.
sequel is likely to do with this staunchly Below: Jennifer
pro-choice and sex-positive plot, not to Grey, who played
mention the decidedly female, lusty Frances ‘Baby’
gaze at graceful male bodies that the Houseman in
film celebrates. the 1987 film,
Although sadly Swayze is no longer will return for
with us, there’s the thrill of having Grey the sequel.
back, who offers such a memorable
combination of innocence and steely
determination in the original role.
This time, Grey is also an executive
producer on the project,
following in the footsteps of the
original producer Linda Gottlieb
and screenwriter Eleanor
Bergstein, who fought for the film
to be made on their terms and
with minimal studio changes.
It remains to be seen when
the sequel will be set, how
the legendary soundtrack
will be updated, and how
it will cope with the loss
of handsome Johnny Castle
— but nobody should be
putting this intriguing
prospect in the corner.
CHRISTINA NEWLAND
OCTOBER 2020 25
TA K E 20
No./ 17
The uncommon
con caper
Four ways in which family crime comedy
KAJILLIONAIRE tries something different
THE CON IS A METAPHOR
FOR PARENTING
As played by a dream team of actors (Evan Rachel
Wood, Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins), the
central trio of Kajillionaire — a new comedy about
a family of con artists — feels less like a biological
family and more like a business arrangement.
That’s intentional. “It’s made more extreme in
the movie, but I do think there’s a kind of inherent
betrayal built into parenting,” its director,
Miranda July, says. “As a child, you’ll betray your
parents. You’ll leave them. Not just leave them but
reverse your position, your alliances.” July, herself
a parent, admits this deeper theme snuck up on
her. “It came from my unconscious,” she says.
“I was like, ‘Really, Miranda? A funny heist film?
Where is this going?’ And then I felt punched in
the gut by the time I read back that first draft.”
THE CONS COME FROM REAL-LIFE
EXPERIENCE
“I have to be careful,” says July, laughing, “but
I think I’ve passed the statute of limitations. In my
punk-radical-feminist circles — and I say this with
mixed feelings — there was a loosely practised
‘reclamation of goods’.” Some of those scams
make it into the film, such as a stolen-luggage
scheme involving travel insurance. But the
writer-director stresses that, by and large, her new
movie is autobiographical only “emotionally, not
literally”. Then again, filmmaking itself feels like
Top to bottom: Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) scams a
post office; An outsider (Gina Rodriguez) joins the family
(Wood, Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger) on a heist;
Old Dolio’s world is shaken by the newcomer’s arrival.
a scam to her. “There are a lot
of weird corners cut and things
that can never be revealed,
even in my full-on features.
For me, that scrappiness is
really hard to shake.”
IT DOESN’T DRAW FROM
OTHER CON MOVIES
“Me and my brother watched
a lot of Mission: Impossible
episodes growing up,” July
remembers. “And while the
plots were utter nonsense —
they had nothing to offer a little
girl, really — the intensity of
the good person turning bad
and the mask coming off, that
language feels like my own.”
Early viewing aside, July says
she watches movies only “as a
fan”, and was not directly influenced by any fellow How did the producer of such Oscar winners
heists. But after writing her first novel, 2015’s as 12 Years A Slave and Moonlight respond?
The First Bad Man, her “muscles were warm” for “She just looked at me and said, ‘You don’t get
intricate suspense: “I didn’t want to let go of it.” a gold star for finishing on time, Miranda.’ And
I was like: ‘Oh! You’re actually telling me to
IT BROKE THE RULES BEHIND be more entitled and act like all these male
THE SCENES directors you’ve worked with!” Spoken like
“We had kind of gone over a little bit in terms of a true player. JOSHUA ROTHKOPF
time and budget,” the director recalls, “and I felt
really bad telling [producer] Dede Gardner that.” KAJILLIONAIRE IS IN CINEMAS FROM 9 OCTOBER

How we made a horror film on Zoom
The filmmakers behind
word-of-mouth hit HOST
on their none-more-timely
lockdown chiller
WHEN THE CORONAVIRUS lockdown first
hit worldwide, and Zoom became the video-
conferencing app of choice, the question was
soon on everyone’s lips: when is someone going
to make a movie on this thing? “A couple of
months in, nobody had done it,” recalls director
Rob Savage. “So, we were like, ‘Fuck it, we might
as well do it!’”
“Might as well” became Host, an achingly
timely chiller about a séance-gone-wrong, set
entirely within the confines of Zoom — which
has become an instant word-of-mouth hit in
the horror community (“the scariest film of the
past decade”, declared one blog) and beyond
(Elijah Wood is a fan). But this lofty achievement
started with a simple prank. “It all just came
out of quarantine boredom, really,” Savage
recalls. “I was hearing these creepy noises
from the attic. So I rallied all my friends on
Zoom for emotional support, and spliced in
a clip from one of my favourite movies, [REC],
where a zombie child jumps out. For a moment
everyone thought that I’d had my face eaten
off. And reacted as such.”
The two-minute video was an instant viral
hit, and Savage and his team — including
producer/co-writer Jed Shepherd and producer
Douglas Cox — got to thinking how it might work
in long form. “It was about 4am when it just
came to me,” recalls Shepherd. “I texted Rob two
words: ‘Zoom séance’. When I woke up in the
morning, Rob had written an essay about it.”
“Zoom séance” was also the two-word pitch
they made to Shudder, the horror streaming
service, who quickly jumped on board. The
team moved fast, moving from conception to
completion in under 12 weeks. “We really wanted
A WHOLE
HOST OF
EASTER EGGS
SOME OF THE MANY
HORROR REFERENCES
SNEAKED INTO HOST
TA K E 20
No./ 18
to get this out as fast as possible, so that it was
mirroring what was going on,” Savage explains.
Filmed entirely during the height of lockdown,
it is a precise and faithful recreation of what
social interactions are like in 2020 — at least, up
to the point where the demon spirit shows up.
Using a cast of real-life friends (“The casting
process was really easy,” Savage says), Savage,
Shepherd and co-writer Gemma Hurley crafted
a “beat sheet” rather than a conventional
script, with room for improv. Each actor was a
“one-man film production”, Savage says. “I was
never able to set foot ‘on set’. Ultimately, they
were having to take on every single department.”
Housemates were recruited, too; handily,
one actor was self-isolating with a stunt
coordinator and rigger.
Despite working within the parameters
of Zoom — it’s less than an hour long, reflecting
Zoom’s 40-minute limit for free accounts —
the footage was not actually taken from the
software. “We got the actors to stick their
iPhones to the back of their laptops,” recalls
Savage, “after I woke up one night in absolute
terror that suddenly the internet would cut
out and we’d lose our footage.” With Zoom’s
cooperation, “just shy of 4,000 individual
graphics” were painstakingly placed on
the footage by Cox to recreate the now-very-
familiar interface.
The result is a film that’s equal parts scary,
funny, and utterly of its time, with online
buzz to burn; horror royalty Sam Raimi has
now signed up to work with Savage and his team
for a project which “takes place in a similar
supernatural space to this”. But before even
that: ‘Host 2’? “There have been calls for a sequel
and it’s only just come out!” marvels Shepherd.
“Rob and I do have an amazing treatment for
the next one. It’s not what people expect it to
be. It’s so fun. Technically a bit more difficult
than Host. Fingers crossed we get to do it.”
Here’s hoping the budget will allow for Zoom
Top to bottom: Caroline Ward, Haley Premium. JOHN NUGENT
Bishop, Jemma Moore and Edward Linard’s
Zoom seance takes a sinister turn in Host. HOST IS STREAMING NOW ON SHUDDER
GHOSTWATCH ALICE, SWEET SATAN’S WAIT UNTIL
(1992)
The participant ID for the
ALICE (1976)
The creepy mask that hangs
SLAVE (1980)
This cult Indonesian horror
DARK (1967)
The Polaroids featured at
Zoom call in the film off the demon — a gag on is homaged during one of the film’s finale are a nod to
is 31101992. “Which is the built-in masks found in the key scares. “The sheet this Audrey Hepburn movie.
the release date video software — is the gag, where Emma [Louise “Which me and Rob saw last
for Ghostwatch,” same one used in this Webb] throws the bedsheets year, in a cinema full of old
Shepherd explains. influential slasher horror over the demon, is people who talked the entire
“It was a big from the ’70s. “That’s a film a reference to that film,” time,” recalls Shepherd.
influence on us.” we really love,” says Savage. says Savage. “We were so pissed off…”
OCTOBER 2020 27
 TA K E 20

19
No./
The blockbuster ’toon boom
From Jurassic World to Fast & Furious, there’s a surge in
animated spin-offs of massive franchises. But why?
YOUR FAVOURITE MOVIE franchises are
boldly going where film franchises have rarely
gone before. “It’s fascinating to explore parts
of worlds we see in movies in ways we couldn’t
do in live action,” says Mike McMahan, writer/
producer for Rick And Morty and now creator
of Star Trek: Lower Decks — an animated new
comedy series with its phasers set to fun. “Star
Trek is often quite serious and introspective.
There’s never been a straight-up funny version
of Star Trek before. The idea of putting it into
a modern, adult animation format such as Rick
And Morty, that was a love letter to Star Trek
and not a disposable parody, was my dream.”
He’s not alone in taking a beloved film
property into cartoon terrain. Last year saw an
animated Vin Diesel pop up in Fast & Furious:
Spy Racers, while Transformers is about to
return to its cartoon roots with a new three-
chaptered Netflix series titled War For Cybertron
Trilogy. Patty Jenkins also recently revealed
to Empire that an animated spin-off of Wonder
Woman, focused on the Amazons, was in
development. And perhaps most intriguing
of all is DreamWorks’ Camp Cretaceous, a new
Jurassic World spin-off series with a YA slant,
also coming to Netflix. Set during the events of
the first Jurassic World movie, the show follows Below: Scenes from the upcoming
six teens who become stranded on Isla Nublar Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous.
with dinos on the loose.
“Steven Spielberg was so enthusiastic,
but he had one warning: ‘Don’t do the kiddy
version,’” laughs co-showrunner Scott Kreamer.
The result, he says, is a series that’s still scary
but opens up the Jurassic World story to a new,
younger audience — something he suspects
might be a driving force for this trend. “A lot of
these franchises started a long time ago and
these shows are an opportunity to bring a whole
new generation of fans to them. It’s exciting for
us: we’re a crew full of Jurassic-lovers getting
to bring this amazing concept to a whole new
group of younger viewers. I think that’s the
same for all these series.”
But this wave of blockbuster cartoon
spin-offs isn’t just about building out fandom
demographics. It’s about creative possibilities,
too, says Kreamer. “There are things you
couldn’t do in a live-action series. In an animated
series, you can do all these amazing stunts and
set-pieces and encounters with the dinosaurs
without limits.” McMahan agrees. “When you

No./
RASPUTINS ,
20
RATED
In The King’s Man, Rhys Ifans
joins a noble tradition of
playing the Siberian mystic
— but who is truly Russia’s
greatest love machine?
WORDS DANIEL BENNEWORTH-GRAY
CHRISTOPHER LEE
RASPUTIN: THE MAD
MONK (1966)
Towering, lecherous, mesmerising, full of
ecstasy and fire, Lee’s Hammer Horror
take was also notable for the free
‘Rasputin beard’ (“for guys and gals
alike!”) offered to cinemagoers.
RA-RA-RATING: FOUR TSARS
TOM BAKER
NICHOLAS AND
ALEXANDRA (1971)
In the Fourth Doctor’s first film role,
Baker captures the wild-eyed
fanaticism of the notorious
mystic and ‘holy man’ by boldly
refusing to blink ever again.
RA-RA-RATING: THREE TSARS
ALAN RICKMAN
RASPUTIN: DARK SERVANT
OF DESTINY (1996)
Imagine Sheriff Catweazle of
Nottingham recreating Paul Reubens’
Buffy The Vampire Slayer death scene
and you’re pretty much there. Sexy,
creepy, beardy.
RA-RA-RATING: FIVE TSARS

28 OCTOBER 2020
 TA K E 20

Clockwise from left: TV’s blockbuster ’toon army

— Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous; Star
Trek: Lower Decks; Fast & Furious: Spy Racers.

see a planet in Star Trek from orbit, sometimes

it kinda looks like a big, yellow ball. Here, every
time we went to a new planet we wanted to
show continents, alien clouds, oceans and
textures. We’re able to get away with things
we couldn’t otherwise do because there are
no physical limitations.”
Cartoon spin-offs of hit films isn’t a new
concept: Back To The Future, Men In Black and
Ghostbusters have all had kids’ TV adaptations
in the past. But with animation a safer
alternative to live-action shooting in our new
Covid film landscape, who knows where it
could lead? “This might just be the beginning,”
says McMahan. In other words: expect cartoon
spin-offs to live long and prosper. AL HORNER

JURASSIC WORLD: CAMP CRETACEOUS IS ON NETFLIX

FROM 18 SEPTEMBER. FAST & FURIOUS: SPY RACERS IS
ON NETFLIX NOW. STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS DOES NOT
YET HAVE A UK RELEASE

CHRISTOPHER LLOYD KAREL RODEN GÉRARD DEPARDIEU RHYS IFANS

ANASTASIA (1997) HELLBOY (2004) RASPOUTINE (2011) THE KING’S MAN (2020)
Alamy, Allstar, Getty Images

A rare animated Rasputin in the canon,
sadly overshadowed by his sidekick:
Bartok, his wisecracking albino bat minion.
The bat even got his own spin-off
prequel: the 1999 direct-to-video
Bartok The Magnificent.
RA-RA-RATING: TWO TSARS
Regrettably, the history books tend
to gloss over Rasputin’s glass-eyed,
shaven-headed, portal-opening,
hellhound-invoking, clockwork-Nazi-
assisted demonology period. A
shame, really.
RA-RA-RATING: THREE TSARS
Depardieu gives a hulking great
beard of a performance in this
French/Russian production.
Considerably more enjoyable
if you decide to watch it as an insane,
randy Santa Claus origin story.
RA-RA-RATING: THREE TSARS
Based on what we’ve seen so far of
Matthew Vaughn’s alternate history
adventure, Ifans’ entry in the
Raspu-canon promises emo
eyeshadow, slow-motion fighting
and dog-like growling. Oh, those Russians.
RA-RA-RATING: FOUR TSARS

OCTOBER 2020 29
 TA K E 20
CRAIG
ROBERTS
Do you have a nickname?
I actually don’t have a nickname. I’m Welsh, and
the Welsh word “craig” [means] “rock”. But
that’s been taken by Dwayne Johnson.
Do you have a signature dish?
Scrambled eggs. I’ve watched enough Gordon
Ramsay videos, and I’ve been shouted at enough
by him via his YouTube page to know how to beat
some eggs and put a lot of butter in it. There have
been loads of scrambled eggs in lockdown. But
that seems to be my limit — I’m not a great cook.
When were you most starstruck?
Meeting Dr. Dre. It was at a club and I don’t
really find myself in a club very often. But I was
at one and Kendrick Lamar was performing and
I saw Dr. Dre in the VIP section. I was boozed-up
enough to climb in and take a picture with him.
There’s a picture of me with him on my
Instagram and I definitely look starstruck.
How much is a pint of milk?
I was gonna Google this, but I think I’ll guess…
at Lidl, I’m pretty convinced it’s between 40 to
50 pence, isn’t it?
Which movie have you seen the most?
Punch-Drunk Love by Paul Thomas Anderson,
starring Adam Sandler. I’ve seen that so many
times that it’s slightly annoying now when
friends want to watch it because I feel like I know
every side of it. Also Rover Dangerfield, the
Rodney Dangerfield animation. Not many people
know about this movie, but it’s about a dog and
it was the first movie I saw. My grandfather gave
it to me on VHS and I watched that a hell of
a lot. Also, the original Aladdin. To be honest, I’ve
been watching a lot of reality TV in lockdown.
I’ve rinsed Keeping Up With The Kardashians.
What one thing do you do better than anyone
else you know?
Hibernate. Staying inside is probably the best
thing I can do. I thought I would love lockdown.
30 OCTOBER 2020
ILLUSTRATION ARN0
When it started I was like, “Maybe I will write What poster did you have on your wall
all the scripts I wanted to write, now I’ve as a kid?
got the time to do it.” But actually, there’s no I had an 8 Mile poster, obviously. And I had
script, or anything. I’ve just been watching a poster of the Jim Carrey movie The Mask.
the Kardashians… I have Carrey’s number but I’m yet to text
him! I actually don’t have his number. But I’d
Who is the most famous person you could love to meet him. I grew up on his movies.
text right now?
I was once given Eminem’s number. I met What would you call your autobiography?
somebody who had worked with him and they I’d probably call it ‘Anxiety: My Best Friend’. When
gave it to me, but I’ve never texted and I never anxiety is ready to leave me I will put it out there,
would. I can guarantee you I will get a quick but I think it could be a lifelong commitment. I’ve
block. It probably isn’t his number, but I like also got to wait until I’ve watched the new season
the idea that I have it so I’m never gonna try. of the Kardashians, and then I can prioritise things.
What is your favourite animal?
I’ve three because I have two musk turtles. One’s
COMING SOON
called Bernadette and the other one’s called
Stanley. And I now have a Havanese terrier
called Zazu. I’m a big fan of The Lion King…
ETERNAL BEAUTY THE FANTASTIC
(2020) FLITCROFTS (2022) What’s the worst thing you’ve ever put in
Roberts’ second Roberts is attached your mouth?
film as a director is to direct this based- To bookend the main question: gone-off milk.
a deeply personal on-a-true-story Apart from that I’m not crazy adventurous with
account of a woman comedy about food. I’m not just like ‘plain pasta’ but at the
with paranoid Maurice Flitcroft (to same time, I am terrible at trying stuff.
schizophrenia (played be played by Mark
by Sally Hawkins, and Rylance), an amateur On a scale of one to ten, how hairy is
Morfydd Clark in golfer who managed your arse?
flashbacks) who falls to talk his way into I did not expect that. I would need to check. And
for a kindred spirit the 1976 Open Golf I’m not going to do it while you’re on the phone,
(David Thewlis). Championships. so that’s not happening! AMON WARMANN
ETERNAL BEAUTY IS IN CINEMAS FROM 2 OCTOBER
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 B I G S C R E E N . S M A L L S C R E E N . YO U R R E V I E W S B I B L E S TA R T S H E R E
[ EDITED BY IAN FREER]
+++++EXCELLENT ++++GOOD +++OKAY ++POOR +AWFUL
SEPTEMBER
04 - 25
[FILM]
TENET
 OUT NOW
CERT 12A / 150 MINS
DIRECTOR Christopher Nolan
CAST John David Washington, Robert Pattinson,
Kenneth Branagh, Elizabeth Debicki
PLOT Having more than proved his worth,
CIA superspy The Protagonist (Washington) is
inducted into secret organisation Tenet, on the
trail of bullets that go backwards in time. From
there he finds himself facing off against arms
dealer Andrei Sator (Branagh) in a bid to avert
World War III.
THE BLAMS COME thick and fast. Tenet, in fact,
might be Christopher Nolan’s blammiest film
yet. BLAM! A terrifying thing just happened.
BLAM! A shocking moment of revelation.
BLAM! Here’s a speedboat. (There really is
a massive blam accompanying an otherwise
ordinary shot of two people on a speedboat.)
It’s not even Hans Zimmer this time — here the
great Ludwig Göransson (Black Panther, The
Mandalorian) is on scoring duties, making it all
his own (you will nod your head intensely) but
without ever scrimping on the blams. Because if
a Christopher Nolan film doesn’t sound like the
end of the world, then something’s wrong. And
this one really is about the end of the world.
We’re told early on — defiantly and
resolutely — that this is not a film about time-
travel. There are a handful of instances in Tenet
where one character lays things out to another,
each time telling them it’s okay if they don’t
quite get it. “Don’t try to understand it,” says
 ON SCREEN

Clockwise from
left: John David
Washington
plays The
Protagonist;
Robert Pattinson
ponders Tenet’s
plot; Kenneth
Branagh as
Russian oligarch
Andrei with his
estranged wife
Kat (Elizabeth
Debicki).

Clémence Poésy’s Laura, Tenet’s Q to John David
Washington’s James Bond, as she introduces
him to backward bullets (they go back in time…
don’t try to understand it) and gives him a brief
primer. It’s not time-travel, she tells him, it’s
“technology that can reverse an object’s
entropy”. In other words, Christopher Nolan
wants you to know that this is not Back To The
Future. This is serious business. This is about
the prevention of World War III. “Nuclear
holocaust?” asks Washington’s protagonist.
No, she says — this is worse.
This scene, Nolan setting out his stall, is
scored sumptuously, romantically — it’s one big
swoon, and it speaks volumes. Despite a complex
relationship serving as the film’s broken heart
(courtesy of Kenneth Branagh’s arms-dealing
oligarch Andrei and his estranged and abused
wife Kat, played by Elizabeth Debicki), Nolan’s
great love affair, of course, is with time itself.
From Memento’s muddied, memory-straining
recollections to Dunkirk’s triple-pronged
timeline and Interstellar’s generational rifts, he
can’t get enough of the stuff, and Tenet is awash
in it. It’s not a plot device — it’s the thing itself,
something to be explored, investigated, played
with, twisted, bent.
And yet: this is an action film. It opens with
a brutal, prolonged siege at the Kiev Opera
House, in which people fight for their lives and
lose, in which all hell breaks loose, and in which
Göransson and Nolan’s sound designers intend
to deafen you. You have Washington and Robert
Pattinson bungee-jumping up and into a building
(and that’s without any of the time-bending).
You have a lean and mean kitchen fight in
which a cheese grater is deployed (and not for
cheese). You have a 747 being blown up, you have
a thrilling car chase (which does feature some
time-bending), and extended set-pieces in which
your eyes will see things they haven’t quite
seen before. For the most part, there are no
Hollywood hysterics; it is big — often very big —
but not bombastic.
Tenet is Bond without the baggage. Filmed in
Italy, Estonia, India, Norway, the UK and the US,
it’s a globetrotting espionage extravaganza that
does everything 007 does but without having to
lean into the heritage, or indeed the clichés. Just
as with Indiana Jones, for which George Lucas
persuaded Bond fan Steven Spielberg they could
create their own hero instead of piggybacking on
someone else’s, Nolan has made his own Bond
film here, borrowing everything he likes about it,
binning everything he doesn’t, then Nolaning it
all up (ie: mucking about with the fabric of time).
And while Washington — never not magnetic,
every second of this film – isn’t a suave playboy
in the slightest, he has the swagger — and the odd
wisecrack. “Easy,” he says in response to some
light manhandling from one of Andrei’s security
goons. “Where I’m from, you buy me dinner
U
first.” In the same sequence, Andrei — a big

OCTOBER 2020 33
 ON SCREEN
bad if ever there was one — asks him: “How
would you like to die?” Elsewhere we meet
an arms dealer who casually swigs his whiskey
while he has a gun to his head. This is absolutely
the same playground that 007 runs around in,
with the same toys. It just feeds it all through
a physics machine.
For the most part, that’s welcome. “Try to
keep up,” one character says in regards to the
mechanics of it all. “Does your head hurt?”
another asks later. Somebody is told they need
to stop thinking in linear terms. No doubt some
big brains will be fine with all of this — and will
be able to follow the plot — but for the rest of us,
Tenet is often a baffling, bewildering ride. Does
it matter? Kind of. It’s hard to completely invest
in things that go completely over your head.
The broad strokes are there, and it’s consistently
compelling, but it’s a little taxing. No doubt it
all makes sense on Nolan’s hard drive, but it’s
difficult to emotionally engage with it all.
If that’s even what the film wants us to do.
These are great actors — Washington, Pattinson,
Branagh and Debicki are all immensely watchable
— but only towards the end, as things begin to
pay off, do you really get the chills here and
there. For the most part, everybody’s on a
mission, doing their job, the film barely stopping
to breathe, certainly not to take any sentimental
detours. And nobody involved looms larger than
Nolan himself. This is a film engineered for
dissection and deconstruction. Just as Inception
was, this is an M.C. Escher painting, but folded,
origami-like, and with holes poked into it for
its own denizens to fall through. It may not be
Back To The Future, but regardless, it has its
cake, eats it, then goes back in time and eats
it again. It may not be a hokey time-travel
film, but that doesn’t mean Nolan can’t get
his rocks off playing around with paradoxes.
And ultimately, for all of that, Tenet once
34 OCTOBER 2020
Clockwise from top: Washington and Pattinson have
a quick chat about preventing World War III; A trademark
Christopher Nolan BLAM! moment.
again proves Nolan’s undying commitment to
big-screen thrills and spills. There’s a lot riding
on this film, to resurrect cinema, to wrench
people away from their televisions, facemasks
and all. It may well do the trick: if you’re after a
big old explosive Nolan braingasm, that is exactly
what you’re going to get, shot on old-fashioned
film too (as the end credits proudly state). By the
time it’s done, you might not know what the
hell’s gone on, but it is exciting nevertheless. It
is ferociously entertaining. ALEX GODFREY
VERDICT Once again seizing control of the
medium, Nolan attempts to alter the fabric
of reality, or at least blow the roof off the
multiplexes. Big, bold, baffling and bonkers.
AN AMERICAN PICKLE

OUT NOW / CERT UNRATED / 90 MINS
DIRECTOR Brandon Trost
CASTSeth Rogen, Sarah Snook,
Jorma Taccone
Everything about An American Pickle
screams screwball comedy. There’s its
zany premise, in which a man awakens in
the present day after being preserved in
pickle brine for a century. There’s also
its star, Seth Rogen, whose filmography
is a carnival of stoner hilarity, and he’s
superb as both pickled protagonist
Herschel Greenbaum and his great
grandson, Ben. But this is a film with
more heart and fewer gags than the
Pineapple Express funnyman’s usual fare,
that finds Rogen fighting with issues
around identity and ancestry. The result
is a surprisingly poignant essay on the
importance of understanding your roots.
It doesn’t excel as a comedy but as
a drama, this is the real dill. AH
MATTHIAS & MAXIME

OUT NOW / MUBI / CERT TBC / 119 MINS
DIRECTOR Xavier Dolan
CAST Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas, Xavier
Dolan, Anne Dorval
Matthias (Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas) and
Maxime (Xavier Dolan) are childhood
friends in the same Montreal social circle.
At a group hang, Matthias and Maxime
step up to be in a student film, discovering
at the last moment that their scene
requires a kiss. Director Dolan doesn’t
show this, instead focusing on the
electrified faultlines that fissure outwards
in the countdown to the departure of
Maxime. He is guardian to his abusive,
ex-addict mother (Anne Dorval, hissing
venom), but is soon to escape to Australia.
A lovely delicacy of touch runs throughout,
as desire and confusion are sublimated
beneath the rhythms of friendship and
life, with characters revealed in tender,
observational detail. SMK
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 ON SCREEN
[FILM]
SHE DIES TOMORROW
#### OUT NOW / CURZON HOME
CINEMA / CERT 15 / 84 MINS
DIRECTOR Amy Seimetz
CAST Kate Lyn Sheil, Jane Adams, Josh Lucas,
Chris Messina
PLOT When recovering alcoholic Amy (Sheil)
proclaims she will die the following day, her
friend Jane (Adams) brushes it off. But when
Jane begins to feel the same certainty about her
impending demise, it becomes clear this paranoia
is catching. As it spreads, the knowledge causes
people to react in very different ways.
PLAYING OUT LIKE both a fractured fever-
dream and sharp satire about the catastrophic
times which we all find ourselves navigating, She
Dies Tomorrow is a film which gets under your
skin in its opening moments and stays there
until long after the final reel. This is fearless
filmmaking from writer/director Amy Seimetz
who, in returning to the apocalyptic yet intimate
territory explored in her 2012 debut Sun Don’t
Shine, again demonstrates that not only does she
possess a unique narrative vision, but that she
can execute it in truly original style.
Her protagonist, also called Amy (a haunting
Kate Lyn Sheil), is a recovering alcoholic,
who seems unmoored from her own life. As
she tells her friend Jane (Jane Adams, brilliant),
Amy is utterly convinced she will die the following
day; a suggestion that Jane shrugs off as a relapse
until she herself becomes consumed by the same
fear. As time progresses, it becomes clear that
this is paranoia as disease; anyone they meet,
whether family, friends or strangers, becomes
overwhelmed by the unshakeable belief that
they will meet their end within 24 hours.
36 OCTOBER 2020
Die another day: Kate Lyn Sheil plays a woman
who’s convinced her death is imminent.
Seimetz’s tight screenplay is unconcerned
with the details of this bizarre phenomenon —
mass delusion or group premonition, it’s
never explained — but rather the psychological
toll that such knowledge brings. We see Amy
wandering through her half-empty home, the
city streets, plagued by flashbacks to a failed
relationship which serve as clues to the fate that
has befallen her, and a portrait of a woman
desperately trying to come to terms with her past,
as well as her limited future. “I’m okay,” is her
mournful refrain. Elsewhere, scientist Jane —
whose swirling microscope slides of blood are
emblematic of the film’s visceral beauty — looks
for answers and emotional connection, first
with her brother (Chris Messina) and then,
hilariously and tragically, with an ER doctor
(Josh Lucas) who is at first bemused and then
overcome with grief at his own impending demise.
As each character stares into the void
that now yawns in front of them, unable to
look away, the film takes on a new face. Reality
fades away as strobes of red and green fill the
screen, pulsing music (by Mondo Boys)
intensifies, and everything moves in super-
slow motion. It’s eerie and hypnotic, until,
suddenly, a jolting cut plunges us back into
the mundane; car horns blast, airplanes roar,
life moves on.
Immersive work forces the audience into
Amy’s headspace, making us confront our own
mortality and, in stark contrast to most survival
horrors, accept that we cannot fight against or
outrun it. And while the film was made before
the global pandemic took hold, its exploration
of infection and death, and depression and
isolation, certainly hits a devastatingly raw
nerve. NIKKI BAUGHAN
VERDICT Unnerving and compelling in
equal measure, Amy Seimetz’s film is an
exploration of how fear and paranoia can
spread like a disease, and how the acceptance
of one’s mortality remains the most terrifying
thing of all.
SAVAGE
###
OUT 4 SEPTEMBER / CERT 18 / 99 MINS
DIRECTOR Sam Kelly
CAST Jake Ryan, John Tui, Chelsie
Preston Crayford
Ripped from real-life stories, Sam Kelly’s
debut charts the rise of a white man,
Danny (Jake Ryan), in Maori street gang
The Savages, in a grim but engaging
takedown of toxic masculinity. Kelly
employs flashbacks — Danny (Olly
Presling) in borstal in the ’60s, as
a gang sergeant (James Matamua) in
the ’70s — to flesh out Danny’s arc as he
rises through the ranks of The Savages
to ulitmately lead them with childhood
pal Moses (John Tui). The ideas around
gang loyalty are familiar but, within the
C-bombs and brutal violence, there are
moments when the characters are given
room to breathe that lends it a freshness,
particularly in the relationship between
Danny and Moses. A promising debut. IF
MAX RICHTER’S SLEEP
####
OUT 11 SEPTEMBER / CERT TBC / 99 MINS
DIRECTOR Natalie Johns
PARTICIPANTS Max Richter, Yulia Mahr
It feels strange to say that a documentary
about an ambient album designed to
make you sleep is among the more
arresting films of this year. Yet Max
Richter’s Sleep fascinates through its
emulation of the album’s dreamy,
wandering tones, the camera freely
drifting over imagery of nature, the
city, people connecting and lying in
isolation. As he claims in the film, Richter
intended the eight-hour-long concerts
(the main subject of the film) to be an
anthropological study, and director
Natalie Johns emulates this by examining
the audience as much as she does
Richter. There’s as much empathy
and personal introspection as there
is technical detail, and the result is
genuinely blissful. KC

[FILM]
PROJECT POWER
### OUT NOW / NETFLIX
CERT 15 / 111 MINS
DIRECTORS Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost
CAST JamieFoxx, Dominique Fishback, Joseph
Gordon-Levitt, Amy Landecker, Rodrigo Santoro
PLOT A new drug called Power has hit the streets
of New Orleans — offering the user five minutes
of superpowers. Young dealer Robin (Fishback)
is working with cop Frank (Gordon-Levitt) to
stop its spread, while the mysterious Art (Foxx)
is on his own hunt for the source of the pill.
FROM THE GENETIC mutation of the X-Men,
to the radioactive spider-bite of Spider-Man, to
the cosmic blast absorbed by the Fantastic Four,
the moment superheroes receive their powers
on page or screen tends to be an irrevocable,
life-altering event that forever changes their
very DNA. Not so in Project Power. Netflix’s
action-thriller offers an intriguing tweak to the
superhero mythos — here, those who take a
‘Power’ pill are gifted supernatural abilities for
just five minutes per hit and they don’t know
Have a good trip… Art (Jamie
Foxx) prepares to pop
a ‘Power’ pill.
what hidden ability they hold until they take one.
Despite finding a fresh angle on one of
cinema’s most oversaturated genres, Project
Power never fully capitalises on that potential.
Like the streaming service’s other summer genre
exercise The Old Guard, its hooky premise is
trapped in a generic plot involving a shadowy
organisation led by a cabal of boring baddies.
The way in is more interesting. Anchoring
the film is Dominique Fishback’s dealer Robin,
who has a streets-eye view as the Power pill
spreads through a vibrant New Orleans setting.
Fishback, in what could be her breakout role,
lights up the screen — Robin makes for an
entertaining and empathetic heroine, a young
Black woman trapped by circumstance, and
holding her own as she crosses paths with
Jamie Foxx’s crusading former military man,
Art. Foxx’s natural charisma remains present
as his personal vendetta to find the source of
the pill becomes the central through-line of
the plot, though the character himself remains
largely unmemorable. Gordon-Levitt is most
underserved as by-any-means-necessary hero
cop Frank, a thin role that already feels out
of step with current sentiment towards the
police in the wake of the recent BLM protests.
Director duo Ariel Schulman and Henry
Joost — previously behind the original Catfish
documentary (or was it?), two Paranormal
Activity sequels and cyber-thriller Nerve —
make good use of their signature digital
ON SCREEN
From top: Joseph Gordon-Levitt as cop Frank; Just say
no, kids; Robin (Dominique Fishback) looks for a way out.
aesthetic, imbuing Project Power with glossy
visuals that paper over considerable cracks.
Scenes pop with colour, cinematographer
Michael Simmonds’ camera finding interesting
angles to shoot from, all edited with flair.
When one shady customer pops a Power pill —
a glowing, yellow, twist-to-activate capsule — his
synapses frazzle in close-up, sparks flying as he
erupts into flames. While the action sequences
themselves aren’t particularly special, they’re
slickly delivered — Project Power manages to
look interesting, even when it isn’t.
The real disappointment is a lack of
invention. Only one pill-activated power —
a chameleonic camouflage ability — feels fresh,
the rest overly familiar, cribbed from any number
of X-Men movies and occasionally delivered
with sub-par CGI. Amid all the razzle-dazzle is
a half-hearted exploration of the idea of power
itself — who wields it, how they attain it and how
it’s distributed — in need of more oxygen, while
Amy Landecker and Rodrigo Santoro are wasted
as the two-dimensional villains. Still, in a summer
of no blockbusters, Project Power is a flashy — if
ironically underpowered — diversion. BEN TRAVIS
VERDICT Project Power has considerable
style yet a disappointing lack of substance —
but an attention-grabbing performance from
Dominique Fishback and an intriguing twist
on superpowers give it just enough juice.
OCTOBER 2020 37
 ON SCREEN
[FILM]
MISS JUNETEENTH
#### OUT 25 SEPTEMBER
CERT 15 / 99 MINS
DIRECTOR Channing Godfrey Peoples
CAST Nicole Beharie, Kendrick Sampson,
Alexis Chikaeze
PLOT In Fort Worth, Turquoise Jones (Beharie) is
a job-juggling mum and former Miss Juneteenth
pageant queen. The competition complements
the Texan celebration of the 1865 emancipation
from slavery and this year ‘Turq’ is determined her
15-year-old daughter, Kai (Chikaeze), will win.
MISS JUNETEENTH IS an impressive first
stride for Texan writer and director Channing
Godfrey Peoples. Nominated for the Grand
Jury Prize at Sundance and Best Texan Film at
SXSW, Peoples turned her childhood trips to
Miss Juneteenth, a pageant held to mark the
emancipation of the enslaved on 19 June 1865,
into this sumptuous, tender family drama.
The film gently etches the co-dependent
mother-daughter relationship between Turquoise
(Nicole Beharie) and Kai (newcomer Alexis
38 OCTOBER 2020
Chikaeze). ‘Turq’ wants the world for her little
girl, who’s blossoming into a headstrong woman
under her watchful eye. Seeking affirmation
from the world which her beauty crown failed
to provide, she scrapes up tips from her bar job
and hustles extra shifts at the morgue to find the
money to put Kai in the running. Yet scrimping
is tough when bills are overdue and Kai’s doting
but flaky father (Kendrick Sampson) needs bail
— further pushing her into the arms of ‘Bacon’
(Akron Watson), her funeral parlour boss.
The sway between Turq’s recollections of
unfulfilled dreams and the reality of life on the
grind make us compassionate towards her need to
see her daughter crowned. But with femininity
and beauty ideals weighted differently from one
generation of Black American women to the next,
Kai’s ideas of how to win don’t chime with her
mother’s. The ride-or-die love between mother
and daughter is still the film’s bedrock, entering
a brood of warm, complex depictions of Black
mothers and daughters such as Soul Food and
Eve’s Bayou, and echoing the sisterhood of
fellow Texan indie Support The Girls.
The premise is vulnerable to caving in to
stereotypes of single mothers, Black men stuck
in an unjust rut of incarceration and working-
class life. Instead, Miss Juneteenth chips away at
the tired tropes and judgments begin to vanish
Pageant dramas are also prone to taking a satirical
view of participants, but the aspirations of these
Black girls transcend simple good looks. They
Turquoise (Nicole Beharie), with daughter Kai
(Alexis Chikaeze), takes ownership of the bar and
grill from a retiring Wayman (Marcus Maudlin).
want to parade potential, and the prize of a
scholarship to a ‘historically Black institution’
offers freedom their ancestors could only have
imagined. Don’t worry, though — the film’s
feminism isn’t letting pageants completely off the
hook. We’re still invited to roll our eyes at the
value of identifying a salad knife in etiquette
scenes providing comic relief.
Where Peoples’ warm heart is evident is in her
lived-in, welcoming world. The sense of hospitality
makes you want to stay and order a drink at the
bar full of people you want to know. If one thing’s
amiss, it’s that we don’t spend more time with
some characters, and a narrative involving Turq’s
troubled mother feels unplumbed. But this is
Turquoise’s story, and by beckoning us in, we see
the world through the eyes of a mother who knows
her daughter is capable of contributing to the next
generation of Black women. Nicole Beharie is in
almost every scene and she carries the film with
ease. After Sleepy Hollow and bit-parts in Monsters
And Men and Black Mirror, now she confidently
assumes the driving seat and switches from
anxious and stern, to loving and self-assured in the
flick of a high-wattage smile. CORRINA ANTROBUS
VERDICT A search for freedom and a sororal
spirit pulse through Miss Juneteenth. Calmly
navigating the intersections of a Black,
working-class, American woman, Peoples
ensures care, heart and hope are in every step.

SCHEMERS
##
OUT 25 SEPTEMBER / CERT 15 / 91 MINS
DIRECTOR Dave McLean
CAST Conor Berry, Tara Lee, Sean Connor
Davie (Conor Berry) is a late ’70s Dundee
kid with the gift of the gab who can’t stay
out of trouble. With a broken leg shattering
his footballing dreams, he develops an
ambition to promote gigs, which brings
him into perilous contact with the local
gangsters. Director Dave McLean is also
Schemers’ producer, co-writer and
director, as well as being a successful
rock promoter — the parallels are clear.
Davie’s tale is told with a sense of humour,
but that doesn’t excuse McLean borrowing
heavily from other, better filmmakers
(Danny Boyle mainly) and employing hoary
editing tricks to paper over cracks created
by an inexperienced cast and an ultra-
low budget. McLean fails to make any of
his characters convincing, interesting or
likeable — least of all his hero: himself. DJ
CHEMICAL HEARTS
###
OUT NOW / PRIME VIDEO / CERT TBC
DIRECTOR Richard Tanne
CAST Lili Reinhart, Austin Abrams,
Sarah Jones
Teen love has rarely been lacking in
cinema, but it’s always refreshing to see
it depicted with depth and integrity.
Chemical Hearts breaks down stages of
grief, frustration and desire, letting Austin
Abrams (Euphoria) and Lili Reinhart
(Riverdale) give young adults another
story to hold on to. With a script full of
lines ready-made for social-media posts,
the film boasts eloquent rationalisations
of emotions delivered in an atmospheric
package. It’s a shame, then, that it’s
experienced through the eyes of the boy,
who has lived so little, fascinated with
a girl who has done so much — but this
film is still certainly more bravely and
beautifully realised than most
adolescent-angst flicks. EK
It’s a family affair: Javier Bardem and Elle Fanning
play father and daughter.
[FILM]
THE ROADS NOT TAKEN
#### OUT 11 SEPTEMBER
CERT PG / 85 MINS
DIRECTOR Sally Potter
CAST Javier Bardem, Elle Fanning, Salma Hayek,
Laura Linney
PLOT A day in the life of author Leo (Bardem),
who has dementia, and his adult daughter Molly
(Fanning), who looks after him. As they negotiate
the streets of present-day New York, Leo’s mind
drifts to his past, including a tragedy in his
marriage to Delores (Hayek).
THE ROADS NOT TAKEN reunites trailblazing
British feminist director Sally Potter with Elle
Fanning, the star of her brilliant study of female
friendship in the age of nuclear angst, Ginger
& Rosa. This new film is further proof that
director and star have found a precious harmony
with each other. Fanning’s performance scorches
the screen as she plays Molly, a young woman
caring for her father Leo (Javier Bardem),
a Mexican writer who is experiencing very
distressing symptoms of dementia. Molly is
torn between her deep love for her father — she
takes tangible delight in his company — and her
growing exhaustion. It’s a very modern portrait
of a working woman on the brink of burnout.
Although the subject and style are different,
The Roads Not Taken is as precise and contained
in form as Potter’s last film, 2017’s The Party,
which played out a disastrous dinner party in
black and white. This film is shot in colour,
for one thing, with cinematographer Robbie
Ryan modulating three different palettes for
each timeline and alternately finding escape
and claustrophobia in the widescreen frame.
Still, this is a starkly simple story, told with
ON SCREEN
economy and emotional impact in fewer than
90 minutes.
When Molly goes to collect Leo from his
Brooklyn apartment, he’s too out of it to answer
the doorbell. She cajoles and drags him to
medical appointments, with a detour to the
hospital and a clothes shop. The closeness of
their relationship (captured in cute mirror-
image profile shots) is tested by Leo’s erratic
behaviour, but mostly by the unthinking cruelty
of others: a brusque eye-doctor, a shopper who
racially abuses him, and his second wife, Molly’s
mother, played acerbically by Laura Linney.
Throughout the day, Leo’s consciousness
slides into another dimension. Shockingly, he
hurls himself out of a cab while reliving an
argument with his first wife, played by Salma
Hayek. As Leo, Bardem’s usually handsome
face takes on an eerily blank quality, his head
seeming too heavy for his shoulders and his
feet unsteady: he’s living more inside his skull
than he is in the present reality. Molly is left to
shoulder that reality alone, for both of them,
and asks her father poignantly: “Where have
you been all day, Dad?”
Although this scenario could run to the
melodramatic, Potter’s view of Leo’s disease is
less sentimental and in its own way surgical. Leo
finds little comfort in retreating to his memories,
but a series of traumas that he must sift through,
analyse and reconcile.
There’s a feminist bulletpoint, too, in the
realisation that Molly’s caring responsibilities
have set her career back. When she was an
infant, Leo left the family and travelled to
Greece to write — an unsympathetic, not to say
selfish act. Molly, too, will have to make a choice
between work and life, and may also regret the
road not taken. PAMELA HUTCHINSON
VERDICT Elle Fanning and Sally Potter
triumph again. It’s not always an easy watch,
but The Roads Not Taken tackles a distressing
subject with care and invites us to reconsider
our preconceptions.
OCTOBER 2020 39
 ON SCREEN

[FILM]

BILL & TED FACE

THE MUSIC
### OUT 23 SEPTEMBER
CERT TBC / 93 MINS

DIRECTOR Dean Parisot

CAST Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, Brigette
Lundy-Paine, Samara Weaving, Kristen Schaal

PLOT Nineteen years after their last adventure, life

isn’t going well for Bill (Winter) and Ted (Reeves),
with both their band and marriages on the brink
of collapse. The duo are contemplating growing
up — until a visitor from the future tasks them
with writing a song that saves the universe...

“THE ONLY TRUE wisdom consists in knowing

that you know nothing...” “That’s us, dude!” Bill
S. Preston Esq and Ted Theodore Logan once
remarked to each other. How much wisdom
there is in getting the loveable metalhead misfits
back together for another time-travelling caper,
two decades after their last, has been hotly
debated since word first emerged of this sequel.
In 1989, screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed
Solomon scored a cult sleeper hit with Bill &
Ted’s Excellent Adventure, a big-hearted romp
about two hard-rocking high-schoolers who
rescue their history grades by zapping back in
time to meet Genghis Khan, So-Crates and co
first hand. Its 1991 sequel upped the ante, forcing
the pair to avert an impending apocalypse, face
Death himself and win a local Battle Of The
Bands. Where else was there for the slackers’
story to go?
The answer is: backwards. Bill & Ted Face
The Music’s plot may send the Wyld Stallyns
forward in time, but this threequel mainly
rehashes past glories, neglecting new material
for a Greatest Hits compilation of beats from the
franchise’s first films. This is not altogether a bad Clockwise from
thing. A clear labour of love for Matheson and main: Bill (Alex
Solomon, who’ve been working on script drafts Winter) and Ted
for a Bill & Ted threequel since 2010 but (Keanu Reeves)
struggled to get studio backing until star Keanu go, like, totally
Reeves’ post-John Wick career renaissance, retro, dude, and
the film delivers a punchy reminder of why use a phone box;
audiences fell for the rockers in the first place. Billie (Brigette
Yet it’s hard not to feel an opportunity has been Lundy-Paine) and
missed to tell a most excellent new story. Thea (Samara
Time has been far from excellent to the Weaving) — the
air-guitar-loving airheads when we’re reunited duo’s daughters
with them. Middle-aged and living in suburbia, — flank real-life
their band is going nowhere, unless you count rapper Kid Cudi,
gigs at $2 taco nights and wedding receptions, playing himself;
playing experimental theremin jazz wig-outs Meeting up with
to bemused extended family members and the Grim Reaper
quesadilla enthusiasts. They’re still married to (William Sadler).
the medieval princesses (Jayma Mays and Erinn

40 OCTOBER 2020
 ON SCREEN

Hayes in recast roles) they met in Excellent

Adventure, but only just: one early scene paints
the pair as Step Brothers-esque inseparables,
who can’t even attend couples’ therapy to save
their marriages without each other, much to
their maidens’ misery.
Despite the protestations of adoring
daughters Thea (Brigette Lundy-Paine)
and Billie (Samara Weaving), the duo are
contemplating the unthinkable as the film’s first
act hits its stride: giving up their rock ’n’ roll
dream. “We’ve spent our entire lives trying to
unite the world. And I’m tired, dude,” Ted
wearily confesses. It’s at this point a messenger
named Kelly (Kristen Schaal) drops out of the
sky in what looks like a futuristic egg-timer, with
an urgent warning for the two pals. Reality is
unravelling, and it’s up to Bill and Ted to write
a track so good it mends the very fabric of space
and time.
What follows is a medley of things we’ve
seen before. Characters dying and finding
themselves in Hell with the Grim Reaper
(William Sadler). Journeys through time
encountering heavyweights from history. Bill
and Ted coming up against alternative versions
of themselves (like Bogus Journey’s robot
replicas, the friends face their bloated, alcoholic
future selves in one funny scene involving
ridiculous English accents). There are fleeting
moments of hilarity, but the alchemy’s not quite
right. Weaving and Lundy-Paine are a lot of fun
as the duo’s daughters, but essentially are left
to play cover versions of their delinquent dads,
spending the movie on a separate adventure.
Would it have been more interesting to have
these characters as rap music-loving millennials
who Bill and Ted have to win the respect of,
by proving the power of rock? The world has
changed remarkably since the 1980s, whose
counterculture Bill and Ted so charmingly
personified. Excellent Adventure and Bogus
Journey were movies about young, dumb
optimists who believed world peace could
be achieved through power chords and
pyrotechnics. A plot that did more to grapple
with the ways the world has moved on without
them, via the generational gap between them
and their daughters, may have given the film the
emotional heft it’s missing at times. Bill and Ted
may face the music here, but they don’t face a lot
of character development.
But, like, whatever, as the pair would probably
shrug. Bill & Ted Face The Music does what it
needs to do, cranking the nostalgia up to 11 as it
sends the Wyld Stallyns on a time-travelling tour
of old gags, concluding with the much-needed
message that we should all be excellent to each
other. If that’s all you want from a Bill & Ted
sequel, then party on, dudes. AL HORNER

VERDICT Reeves and Winter look like they’re

having a blast getting the band back together
in a fun but forgettable time-travelling comedy.
Neither bodacious nor bogus.

OCTOBER 2020 41
 ON SCREEN
MONSOON
####
OUT 25 SEPTEMBER / CERT 12A / 85 MINS
DIRECTOR Hong Khaou
CAST Henry Golding, David Tran, Parker Sawyers
In this follow-up to Lilting, Hong Khaou tackles
identity and displacement through Henry
Golding’s Kit, a British-Vietnamese man returning
to his birth country for the first time in 30 years.
His family had escaped to the UK as boat
refugees and though he spent the first six years
of his life in Vietnam, upon arrival in Saigon,
he feels like a tourist. After reconnecting with
childhood friend Lee (David Tran), and becoming
romantically entwined with an African-American
designer, Lewis (Parker Sawyers), Kit seeks out
a place to scatter his parents’ ashes. But the
years have weakened his cultural bond and the
task becomes a complicated one. Beautifully shot
and subtly delivered, Monsoon offers a poignant
picture of the emigrant experience and the
post-war hangover. HF
23 WALKS
##
OUT 25 SEPTEMBER / CERT TBC / 102 MINS
DIRECTOR Paul Morrison
CAST Alison Steadman, Dave Johns
Sixty-something dog walkers Fern (Alison
Steadman) and Dave (Dave Johns) meet walking
their dogs (hers: a Yorkshire terrier; his: a German
Shepherd) in a North London park. Paul Morrison’s
film subsequently doesn’t quite have the courage
of its convictions to etch the tentative relationship
solely through 23 walks (it’s about nine). Instead
the result is a gentle, slightly dull, late-in-life
romance that finds its dramas by characters
withholding secrets (once is fine), contrivances
and a social-problems agenda that seems to have
been parachuted in from a Ken Loach movie. It
doesn’t shy away from the realities of OAP love
— there is a tastefully done sexagenarian sex
scene — and Steadman and Johns are likeable
but neither deliver characters that compel. Still,
for the caninophiles, it’s pooch porn. IF
42 OCTOBER 2020
HOST
####
OUT NOW / SHUDDER / CERT NOT RATED / 56 MINS
DIRECTOR Rob Savage
CAST Haley Bishop, Radina Drandova, Jemma Moore,
Caroline Ward, Emma Louise Webb, Edward Linard
As we’ve learned in lockdown, Zoom calls can be
pretty hellish. It’s not connection issues or a family
quiz stretching on for eternity that’s the problem
in Rob Savage’s Host, however: filmed remotely
during the coronavirus crisis, this horror is a séance
story for the Stay At Home generation, pitting six
quarantined friends against a demonic presence
who invades their houses after a Zoom conference
gone spectacularly wrong. Over the last few years,
‘desktop movies’ like this, shot entirely through
computer screens, have told feature-length stories
through characters using apps to communicate
and solve mysteries. Host, full of original ideas
and plentiful jolts, points to a bright post-Covid
future for the genre and for Savage. A pandemic-
era Poltergeist that will leave you shaking. AH
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: A LIFE ON OUR PLANET
###
OUT 28 SEPTEMBER / CERT PG / 83 MINS
DIRECTORS Alastair Fothergill, Jonathan Hughes,
Keith Scholey
PARTICIPANT David Attenborough
Intended as a continuation of (or epilogue for?)
his famous Life series, first started in 1979,
A Life On Our Planet finds David Attenborough
in a wistful mood. Rather than opening on some
grand vista of nature, the 94-year-old naturalist
begins the film in the ruins of Chernobyl, as a
dark omen of what could befall the world if we’re
not careful. Thus begins an often apocalyptic
natural history of our planet, and the relationship
our species has had with it, told in a scattershot
way. The message is urgently and passionately
delivered by the national treasure, but the nature
photography lacks the expertise of previous docs
(while the sepia-toned recreations of Attenborough’s
childhood feel a bit unnecessary). A Life On
Our Planet, sadly, is no Life or Planet Earth. JN
NOCTURNAL
###
OUT 18 SEPTEMBER / CERT 15 / 84 MINS
DIRECTORNathalie Biancheri
CAST Cosmo Jarvis, Lauren Coe, Sadie Frost
In Nathalie Biancheri’s moody debut feature,
teenage girl Laurie (Lauren Coe) realises that
a 30-odd-year-old man, Pete (Cosmo Jarvis),
is watching her through the school gates. Instead
of shying away, she decides to make friends
with the stranger, a local handyman with an
unnerving stare, but with vulnerabilities beneath
the surface. Dramatic and nerve-prickling,
Nocturnal flips expectations of relationship
dynamics; no-one is what you think at first
glance. The first half is compelling, leaning mainly
on an anguished, slow-burn performance from
Jarvis. Were it not for his depths of feeling, his
character could be written off as a garden-variety
creep. But the clever turn that the narrative takes
is also eventually its weakness; after its reveal,
you have a less interesting film. CN
REAL
###
OUT 11 SEPTEMBER / CERT 15 / 78 MINS
DIRECTOR Aki Omoshaybi
CASTAki Omoshaybi, Pippa Bennett-Warner,
Amanda Lawrence 
The past constantly threatens the future in Real,
a promising debut feature from Aki Omoshaybi
that earns its title over a taut 78 minutes. The
writer-director also stars as Kyle, a smooth-talker
struggling for work who is less than honest when
he has a meet-cute with Jamie (Pippa Bennett-
Warner), a single mother with secrets of her own.
Their courtship is both sweet and naturalistic,
and as the film starts to unpack why each of
them is hiding their true selves, the screenplay
weaves in sharp observations on middle-class
Black British life. The final minutes feel
unnecessarily rushed and there are multiple
coincidences which feel far-fetched, but
Omoshaybi’s understated approach gels well
with the subject matter at play. AW

[FILM]
LES MISÉRABLES
#### OUT 4 SEPTEMBER
CERT 15 / 104 MINS
DIRECTOR Ladj Ly
CAST Damien Bonnard, Alexis Manenti,
Djebril Zonga
PLOT By-the-book cop Stéphane (Bonnard) is
transferred from Cherbourg to the Anti-Crime
Squad to police ‘Les Bosquets’, an estate in
eastern Paris. Working with less scrupulous
partners Chris (Manenti) and Gwada (Zonga), the
trio preside over a delicate status quo that soon
escalates to boiling point.
IT TAKES GROSSES boules of steel for a French
film to name itself after perhaps the most famous
work in the country’s literary pantheon. Yet Les
Misérables gets away with it. The first feature
from documentarian-turned-fiction filmmaker
Ladj Ly, this mostly mesmerising street thriller
shares little plot-wise with Victor Hugo’s 1862
doorstep (nor is there any warbling about
dreaming dreams, masters of the house or one
more day), but instead appropriates the sacred
cow of a title for a new, diverse generation of
Parisians equally fuelled by inequality and
unrest. Expanded from Ly’s César-nominated
2018 short, it’s an exciting, extended cops versus
youths showdown that at once feels location-
specific but could also take place in any major
city in the world.
Following documentary footage of the multi-
cultural celebrations following France’s 2018
World Cup win — a soon-to-be-forgotten joyous
note — the action takes place over two days in
Les Bosquets, a housing estate in the eastern
Parisian suburb of Montfermeil (also a key locale
in Hugo’s novel). Rookie idealistic cop Stéphane
(Damien Bonnard, solid) joins the Anti-Crime
Squad who police the projects — chiefly racist,
repugnant alpha male Chris (an electric Alexis
Manenti) and his Black partner Gwada (Djebril
Zonga), who bristles at Chris’ behaviour but is
not beyond reproach. The trio (as opposed to the
usual buddy-cop duo) makes for an interesting
dynamic as Stéphane (and the audience) get the
lie of the land on the estate, where the lord of the
manor (Steve Tientcheu) enjoys a reciprocal
relationship with the 5-0 and rival sections —
Muslim Brotherhood, Romany circus workers
and gangs of disenfranchised kids — live
uncomfortably together. On a white-hot, irritable
day, the theft of a lion cub by live-wire teen Issa
(Issa Perica) acts as a flashpoint and things
escalate into a near riot that propels the film into
a different realm of energy and danger altogether.
ON SCREEN
Left: Djebril Zonga as cop Gwada: a local but no insider.
Top to bottom: Estate kingpin Le Maire (Steve Tientcheu,
right); Adolescent ennui; Uneasy colleagues Stéphane
(Damien Bonnard), Chris (Alexis Manenti) and Gwada.
Les Misérables shares equal amounts of
DNA with La Haine, Assault On Precinct 13,
Do The Right Thing, Spiral and any number
of US police dramas. Yet while it might be
familiar, Ly, who comes from Montfermeil,
imbues the film with a palpable sense of time
and place, never at the expense of tension and
excitement. Working with cinematographer
Julien Poupard and editor Flora Volpelière,
Ly mounts sequences of action (especially
a sustained chase) and confrontation full of
kineticism and verve, the tension heightened
by the John Carpenter-esque thrum of Pink
Noise’s electronic score. Key to the plot is a
drone, and Ly uses aerial imagery as a brilliant
counterpoint to visceral handheld footage,
a gliding airborne camera providing an eerie
overview of the concrete jungle. Filtered
through the cops’ perspective, the film doesn’t
necessarily get under the skin of its characters,
especially those on the estate, but it still retains
a feel for those who live life on the margins.
And the final moments are ridiculously
intense. IAN FREER
VERDICT Don’t confuse it with Russell Crowe
staring out of a window. After a patient
build-up, Les Misérables becomes a Molotov
cocktail of a movie, tense, explosive and
urgent. A powerful fiction debut from
documentarian Ladj Ly.
OCTOBER 2020 43
 ON SCREEN
[TV ]
THE BOYS: SEASON 2
#### OUT 4 SEPTEMBER / PRIME VIDEO
EPISODES VIEWED 3 OF 10
SHOWRUNNER Eric Kripke
CAST Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Karl Urban,
Erin Moriarty, Aya Cash, Chace Crawford
PLOT Anti-superhero vigilantes The Boys are
wanted and in hiding, while their leader Billy
Butcher (Urban) has gone off the grid. However,
new recruit Hughie (Quaid) and sympathetic
‘Supe’ Starlight (Moriarty) have a plan to bring
down bad guys The Seven — and their parent
company Vought — from the inside.
“FUCKIN’ DIABOLICAL.” AS character
catchphrases go, Billy Butcher’s (Karl Urban)
couldn’t be more on the money. Barely an
episode of The Boys’ first season went by without
at least one totally outrageous, potentially
triggering, “what the actual?” moment. An
invisible man being exploded by a grenade up
his jacksie, for example. Or a sex-crazed dolphin
getting jettisoned through a car’s windscreen,
then run over by a lorry. Or the moment
44 OCTOBER 2020
Clockwise from main: Frenchie (Tomer
Capon), Hughie (Jack Quaid) and Billy
(Karl Urban) on the hunt for ‘Supes’;
Homelander (Antony Starr) and Starlight
(Erin Moriarty); Karen Fukuhara as Kimiko.
Superman/Captain America hybrid Homelander
(Antony Starr) revealed his true nature by
destroying a plane containing a political foe…
and that foe’s young, Homelander-fan son.
So the big question going into Season 2 is,
can The Boys keep its edge keen and sustain the
show’s previous levels of fuckin’ diabolicality?
The answer is, hell yes. Showrunner Eric
Kripke doesn’t hang about, dropping us straight
in there with a sequence that flips between
silent, permanently masked superhero Black
Noir (Nathan Mitchell) on a mission to
assassinate a ‘super-terrorist’ in Syria, and
Vought boss Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito)
negotiating an acceptable Supe-caused collateral
‘casualty allowance’ with the US Defense
Department (34 per cent, it turns out). After
the boardroom satire and extreme stealth-
violence are over, we’re ‘treated’ to a conclusion
involving a small child, a fluffy bunny and the
decapitated head of the kid’s father.
Elsewhere, the Season 1 dolphin moment gets power comes a complete disregard for any form
levelled up with something even worse happening of responsibility, accountability or morality.
to another beloved sea creature (which feels He is to superheroism what Donald Trump
like fan service, but is hard to fault for glorious is to the American Presidency — a narcissistic,
awfulness); we see a limb-regenerating Supe rattle-hurling man-baby with terrifying
selling their services as an extreme S&M hooker; authority. He is, thankfully, far more articulate
and there’s plenty more atrocity courtesy of and entertaining than his real-life executive-
Starr’s spoiled-brattish psychopath Homelander. branch counterpart, and Kripke evolves the
Appropriately enough, Starr remains the, er, character through his creepy-funny attempts to
star of the show, the very embodiment of its bond with his son Ryan (“Sometimes it’s hard
black-hole-dark comedy concept: with great being superior to every single other person on

the planet,” he shares during one bedtime
chat), and a rival in the form of new Seven
recruit Stormfront — a social-media-savvy,
take-no-shit cape-wearer played with citric
wit by You’re The Worst’s Aya Cash.
There is also some delicious friction in
Starr’s scenes with Esposito. One involves the
mother of all staring competitions, between
two actors who have mastered the glassy,
dead-eyed glare. Never has a long silence felt
more frosty, to an Antarctically deadly degree.
The actors are perfectly matched, and while
Esposito is basically re-channelling Breaking
Bad’s Gus Fring, his presence sure helps
compensate for the absence of Season 1
company boss-person Elisabeth Shue.
As for the ragtag anti-Supe gang which
gives the show its name, supporting members
Frenchie (Tomer Capon) and Mother’s Milk
(Laz Alonso) remain overlookably sketchy,
although the mute Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) is
given a promising subplot. Once again, it’s left
to the tension between good-kid Hughie (Jack
Quaid) and the coarse Billy to keep us engaged,
as they yin and yang it out over how you do the
right thing. There is also more to explore in
Hughie’s strained romance with Starlight (Erin
Moriarty), even though they’re necessarily
separated into their opposing camps, with
Starlight putting up a good front as a loyal
Seven ‘family’ member, and Hughie trying to
keep a grip on his humanity, even though it’s
become slippery with the blood of others.
Their presence, and their relationship, is
crucial to the show. It’s what stops The Boys
from skidding into all-out offensiveness. Both
Moriarty and Quaid are effortlessly likeable,
and their characters behave how you’d hope to
in their situations. Also, you genuinely want
everything to work out for them. Not only for
them to prevail over institutional corruption
and self-serving corporations, but also get
together and maybe have kids who’ll make the
world a better place. You need a glimmer of
hope amid all the shock laughs and horrific
action. Though, of course, it is impossible to
discount the threat of something fuckin’
diabolical happening to them. DAN JOLIN
VERDICT Sustaining the first season’s
peak levels of violence and dark comedy,
Season 2 pulls none of its satirical jabs.
Antony Starr’s Homelander, meanwhile,
further proves himself the perfect superhero
for our trash-fire times.
Life on Mars? Ram (Ray Panthaki) and Emma
(Hilary Swank) venture to the Red Planet.
[TV ]
AWAY
#### OUT 4 SEPTEMBER / NETFLIX
EPISODES VIEWED 10 OF 10
SHOWRUNNER Jessica Goldberg
CAST Hilary Swank, Josh Charles, Ray Panthaki
PLOT Emma (Hilary Swank) is a former navy pilot
and commander of the first mission to Mars. But
once she’s embarked on the three-year journey,
Emma begins to wrestle with the guilt of leaving
her family on Earth, while her international team
begin to question her abilities as a leader.
“SPACE IS NOT about swagger or ego, it’s about
resilience,” recites Hilary Swank’s Emma in a
late episode of Netflix’s sci-fi family drama Away.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (although there
are a few to hand) to draw the comparison
between this lesson in navigating through space
as an astronaut with Emma’s experiences as a
mother. Both take vast mental and physical tolls
on women and both have been compared many
times on screen already, although through
pragmatic Emma we come closer than ever to
seeing a fully-formed female character managing
to succeed in both aspects of her life.
The recent Proxima explored similar
themes, as Eva Green’s astronaut underwent
rigorous physical training while struggling with
the detachment from her young daughter. Away
shares the same seed of a story, but whereas
the former never left Earth, the latter begins on
the surface of the moon, with Emma examining
her home planet as if held in her fingertips. It’s
a big-money series opener from Netflix, who
brought Swank into their fold in 2019’s I Am
Mother. With Emma, however, the two-time
Oscar-winner has been given more room to flaunt
her abilities as a lead than she’s had in years, and
ON SCREEN
she runs with it, her performance lifting the
show beyond a paint-by-numbers ensemble
drama into a knottier study of leadership and
morality. As a commander, Emma is as much the
stoic decision-maker as she is in-house therapist
and Swank moves between the two with agency
and warmth. When portraying Emma as a wife
and mother, the vulnerability that stems from
her guilt at leaving her family is shown as
empowering, and never demands sympathy.
Swank’s surrounding performers vary in
quality. Through flashbacks, we learn the origin
stories of Emma’s fellow crew members, of which
Ray Panthaki’s gentle-natured surgeon and
Vivian Wu’s secretly gay chemist are the most
compelling. Back on Earth, Josh Charles is
sometimes too stolid as Emma’s NASA-employed
husband Matt who suffers from a rare vascular
disease, while Talitha Bateman is a standout as
the emotionally mature teenage daughter.
It’s within the family unit especially that the
involvement of Friday Night Lights executive
producer Jason Katims is most keenly felt. The
high-school football series endured because of
Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton’s rock-steady
partnership, and their strengths seem to have
been grafted onto the blueprint for Emma and
Matt’s marriage with similar effect. If anything,
though, Away suffers from Friday Night
Lights’ tendency to litter its script with rousing
monologues, and later episodes are overwhelmed
with impassioned speeches that lack originality.
Space is secondary to Away’s focus on human
drama but is used well in bursts, from a dazzling
spacewalk to the crew drinking bubbles of vodka
from syringes. Its spectacle never distracts from
Emma’s inner battles, though, and Away proves
one of the better balances of genre-infused
character-study TV in recent memory. BETH WEBB
VERDICT One giant leap for women
achieving a work/life balance on screen,
Away effectively muddles interpersonal
politics with outer-space theatrics and brings
back Swank as a heavyweight leading actress.
OCTOBER 2020 45
 ON SCREEN

CHECKLIST Your at-a-glance view

to this month’s reviews

OUT NOW
AN AMERICAN PICKLE  P34
Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance), Atticus (Jonathan
Majors) and Letitia (Jurnee Smollett) take a pitstop. CHEMICAL HEARTS  P39

HOST  P42

[TV ] complicated love of Lovecraft’s books is quickly LOVECRAFT COUNTRY  P46

replaced by a thorny relationship with his father, MATTHIAS & MAXIME  P34

LOVECRAFT COUNTRY it provides the thesis for the show: to confront

the genre’s racist roots and the landscape that PROJECT POWER  P37

enabled that hatred. SHE DIES TOMORROW  P36

Showrunner Green leverages Lovecraft’s

OUT NOW / SKY ATLANTIC/
NOW TV idea of the ‘Other’ to accentuate the real horrors TENET (ABOVE)  P32

EPISODES VIEWED 5 OF 10 that acted as the foundation of America;

monsters appear after dark in a so-called 4 SEPTEMBER
SHOWRUNNER Misha Green ‘sundown county’ (an aggressively segregated AWAY  P44

CAST Jurnee Smollett, Jonathan Majors, Aunjanue all-white community) and ghosts of previous THE BOYS: SEASON 2  P44
Ellis, Abbey Lee, Courtney B. Vance owners emerge in a house in a hostile,
predominantly white suburb. But the most LES MISÉRABLES  P43

PLOT Atticus Freeman (Majors), his friend nightmarish moments are the real ones, set in SAVAGE  P36
Letitia (Smollett) and his Uncle George (Vance) the show’s Jim Crow context.
embark on a road trip across 1950s America, Unfortunately, the most interesting stories
7 SEPTEMBER
encountering the equal monstrosities of racist become lost amongst a flat main plot that spins KOKO-DI KOKO DA  MAY ISSUE
hatred and Lovecraftian beasts along the way. out of the road trip (no spoilers), exacerbated by
some variable performances and deflated by
11 SEPTEMBER
anachronistic, painfully obvious needle drops. It’s MAX RICHTER’S SLEEP  P36
incredibly uneven, each episode swinging from
EARLY ON IN Lovecraft Country, main eye-rolling silliness to genuinely compelling THE PAINTED BIRD  APRIL ISSUE

character Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors) schlock and back again. It’s a shame, because REAL  P42
says that sometimes we have to learn to accept when the show isn’t fumbling through that main
the deep flaws of the work we love along with story, it lands on some truly striking moments, THE ROADS NOT TAKEN  P39

the good parts — to do otherwise would be often without even shedding a drop of blood.
dishonest. This line is more-or-less the entire Rising stars Majors (The Last Black Man In 18 SEPTEMBER
basis for Misha Green’s show, which attempts San Francisco) and Jurnee Smollett (Birds Of Prey) NOCTURNAL  P42

to embody the contradiction of loving art are at least funny, charming and compelling,the ROCKS  MAY ISSUE
made by prejudiced people — specifically, latter outdoing many a modern-day scream
H.P. Lovecraft, a foundational figure in queen, acting with a perfect balance of believable
23 SEPTEMBER
fantasy fiction. vulnerability and aspirational strength. The BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC  P40
The show is based on Matt Ruff’s novel of the horror set-pieces they become trapped in are also
same name, and produced by Jordan Peele, — impressive in their gross-out gore, as tension
25 SEPTEMBER
who is facilitating a whole raft of new horror from the hostility of the white gaze upon these 23 WALKS  P42
focused on Black experience — and J.J. Abrams. characters eventually explodes in a cacophony of
Seeking to root the fearsome and unimaginable bloodshed and viscera — at least, when Lovecraft MISS JUNETEENTH  P38

monsters Lovecraft created, collectively referred Country is at its best. KAMBOLE CAMPBELL MONSOON  P42
to vaguely as the ‘Other’, in his deep-seated
racism and homophobia, Lovecraft Country’s SCHEMERS  P39

pulp fiction is directly tied into its portrayal of VERDICT Lovecraft Country doesn’t quite live
the horrors of racial segregation in America up to the promise of its first episode. Its main 28 SEPTEMBER
enforced by Jim Crow law. The first episode arc feels like a distraction from the power of DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
shows a lot of promise, patient and sharply its more standalone episodes, which perfectly
A LIFE ON OUR PLANET  P42

focused in its combination of monstrous racial match Black experiences to the horror genre FOR MORE REVIEWS, VISIT EMPIREONLINE.COM

violence with unearthly monsters. While Atticus’ where they are often sidelined.

46 OCTOBER 2020
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SPOILER SPECIAL

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UNPACKING EVERY SPOILER

THAT MATTERS THIS MONTH
THIS IS YOUR MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING! (DON’T SAY WE DIDN’T WARN YOU)
THIS MONTH: AN AMERICAN PICKLE P50 UNHINGED P52 THE LAST OF US PART II P54

OCTOBER 2020 49
DO NOT CROSS HERE IF SP OILERS OFFEND

THIS MONTH’S
SPOILER TEAM
↓

DERRICK BORTE
Director, Unhinged

NEIL DRUCKMANN
Co-creator,
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The Last Of Us Part II

SETH ROGEN
Star, An American Pickle
An American Pickle
Unpickling Seth Rogen’s fish-out-of-water comedy

JAMES DYER
1 THE PROLOGUE
Digital Editor-In-Chief Ian Freer: An American Pickle’s prologue might
be its most charming section. Shot in a squared-
up aspect ratio with muted Malick-y tones and
a voiceover, it paints a picture of the hard-knock
life of ditch-digger Herschel Greenbaum (Rogen)
in the made-up Eastern European shtetl of
Schlupsk, 1919. It’s a lovingly drawn Fiddler
CHRISTINA NEWLAND On The Roof world of rickety carts and faulty
Contributor shovels that only brightens for Herschel when
he meets the formidable Sarah (Succession’s
DO NOT CROSS HERE IF SP OILERS OFFEND

Sarah Snook), wooing her with dead fish. Their

relationship is funny — “Her parents were
murdered by Cossacks! My parents were
murdered by Cossacks!” — and sweet, sharing

2 SELTZER WATER
Above: When
plans and dreams (she wants her own
Herschel met
gravestone, he wants to taste seltzer water) in
CHRIS HEWITT Sarah. Below:
a beautiful bog. Disarming, it grounds the film
Associate Editor Yum, fizzy
in a sense of Jewish history and tradition that Chris Hewitt: When Herschel
water…
reverberates around the whole film. awakens, he finds himself in a world
where something he could only
Chris Hewitt: One of the surprises of the movie dream of — seltzer water — is readily
is that, though Rogen pulls double duty as available to Ben at the touch of
Herschel and his great-grandson, Ben, the a button. He’d shit himself if he ever
great Sarah Snook isn’t reincarnated, per se, saw a SodaStream. It’s a lovely
AMON WARMANN in the movie. Maybe she couldn’t get time off thing to zero in on — showing
Contributor from Succession. Whatever the reasoning, how blasé Ben is about
she makes enough of an impact in the film’s Herschel’s fantasy is
ADDITIONAL SPOILING: opening minutes to make her off-screen death a neat way of showing
IAN FREER affecting. She haunts the rest of the movie. In how this very modern
a good way, honest. world has lost its fizz.

50 OCTOBER 2020
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Ian Freer: The meat of American Pickle is the

SPO
battle between Herschel and his only surviving
relative, Ben. As the pair split over a row about

ILE
a family plot and Ben’s lack of respect for his
heritage, Herschel rises to almost national
folk-hero status through his artisanal pickle
business, so Ben sabotages Herschel’s success
by giving him bad advice. The battle gives Left: Seth Rogen
a fundamentally sweet flick a slightly vindictive and, um, Seth
streak, but Herschel’s rise and fall as a celebrity Rogen. Below:
adds another layer to the title, as it lays bare Herschel speaks
some of the paradoxes in American society. his mind —
and not in
a good way.

5 HERSCHEL BREAKS

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THE INTERNET
Ian Freer: As a final move to sink Herschel,
Ben tells him the way to win social media is

4 THE HIPSTERS
Chris Hewitt:In a film that frames all kinds of targets
within its satirical crosshairs, it’s nice that Pickle
doesn’t retreat into the same old jokes about
hipsters. Indeed, the gay couple (Eliot Glazer showing
and Kalen Allen) who find Herschel
and his pickle business, and boost
to be as outrageous as possible. Herschel’s
no-nonsense worldview draws support
from free-speech merchants — you know
Herschel is in trouble when a web headline
proclaims “Kanye West Defends Herschel
Greenbaum’s Right to Offend”. something truly fucked, you are not getting
cancelled. I’m someone who would never
Seth Rogen: The joke that I was keen on was
that anyone who’s been cancelled by
complain about cancel culture — you see in
America that as despicable as a thought process
one group of people is probably getting praised might be to one group of people, it’s fantastic to
by another group of people. Unless you’ve done another group.

his profile through their socials,

are a delight.
7 THE END
CREDITS STING
Ian Freer: If you stay in your seat as the end
credits roll, you’ll see a modern-day Jewish rite
of passage as Ben and Herschel sit down to
enjoy Barbra Streisand in Yentl, a cheeky nod

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to Rogen’s co-star in The Guilt Trip. Herschel
becomes increasingly smitten (“She’s very
pretty!”) as dressed-as-a-man Yentl (Babs) reveals
herself as a woman to Mandy Patinkin’s Avigdor.

Seth Rogen: It was an idea we had early on,

Ben and Herschel watching TV together. We shot
them also watching Fiddler On The Roof, but it
was a little less funny ultimately, so we
used the Yentl stuff. Not until filming

6 THE FINAL RECONCILIATION Above: The final

shot. Right: Stay
it did we realise that to Herschel
it would be a very dirty movie.
And who’s hotter than
Getty Images, Shutterstock

for the credits to

Chris Hewitt: There’s never any doubt
that the war of escalation between
Herschel and Ben will lead to the two
men reconciling. After all, blood is
thicker than seltzer water. Even so, the
film’s final scene — where Herschel
prays by his dead wife’s gravestone,
while the previously agnostic Ben joins see Streisand Barbra Streisand? She
in — is really rather affecting. And the in Yentl. had to clear it. Barbra is
final shot, nicely framed from behind heavily aware of how her
by DP-turned-director Brandon Trost, likeness is used. Not
is a lovely fusion of the past and the a lot goes by without
present in the form of these two, Barbra’s say-so,
formerly duelling Rogens.  believe me. 

OCTOBER 2020 51
DO NOT CROSS HERE IF SP OILERS OFFEND
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Unhinged
Taking a claw hammer to Russell Crowe’s man-on-the-edge thriller
1 MEETING ‘THE MAN’
Christina Newland: When we first see a
troubled-looking Russell Crowe, known simply
as ‘The Man’, sitting in his car outside someone’s
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house in the pouring rain, it’s difficult to imagine
the terror to come. Armed with a claw hammer
and some lighter fluid, Crowe jumps out of his car
and goes on a murder spree, setting the house
alight in a final flourish of pure, hulking malice.
52 OCTOBER 2020
IN CINEMAS
Derrick Borte: I wanted to keep the camera in
the truck, because for someone to get to the
point of doing something like that, they have to
be so detached from reality. But when you get
on set and see Russell in character, you want to
cover it from other angles. My initial thoughts
probably would have featured less of ‘The Man’,
but then when you see what Russell is able
to bring every day, you want to see that. It’s
powerful. What drew Russell to the part initially
was that it scared him.
2 THE CREDITS
SEQUENCE
Christina Newland: In a fast-moving montage of
news segments on road rage, street violence, and
altercations between strangers in American cities,
the opening sequence of Unhinged suggests
a throwback ’90s thriller, all pivoting around the
increasing incivility and chaos of society.
Derrick Borte: Russell and I talked a lot about
how someone gets to the point of driving their
car into someone or taking out their rage with an
automatic weapon, which seems to happen every
week here in the States. There’s this nihilism
that comes from feeling let down by institutions
you believed in and taking no responsibility for
yourself. He’s reached this low point where
he feels invisible and has this rage that he needs
to get out in the form of violence, just to feel like
he exists in the world.
Left: It’s all over the front page, she’s giving him road rage
— Russell Crowe as ‘The Man’.
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4 THE COFFEE-SHOP MEETING

ILE
Ian Freer: Much of the menace violence that is over as soon Above: The
of ‘The Man’ comes from his as it begins. situation rapidly
ability to always be one step escalates.
ahead of Rachel. This is never Derrick Borte: Jaws was
more evident than in the a huge film for me. I know
sequence in which Rachel calls that a lot of people immediately

3 THE ‘COURTESY TAP’ Above: Rachel

(Caren Pistorius)
has her first
her friend, divorce lawyer Andy
(Jimmi Simpson), in a diner,
only for ‘The Man’ to be sitting
think of Duel as a touchstone
for this story, but I went to
Jaws. I thought of Russell’s
Christina Newland: In the first uneasy meeting encounter with opposite him. As Andy hands character as the shark in Jaws,
between ‘The Man’ and his prey, Caren Pistorius’ ‘The Man’. the stranger the phone (“This is in terms of the way that he just
Rachel, a minor traffic disagreement escalates where the first lesson begins”), shows up and wreaks havoc

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when he insists that she should apologise for ‘The Man’ brutally beats Andy and then vanishes. You don’t
laying on her horn instead of simply giving it to death as their fellow diners know when he’s going to show
a ‘courtesy tap’ (“It’s light, it’s friendly,” ‘The Man’ do nothing. It’s an eruption of up again!
explains). Rachel, frustrated, refuses to do so.
This starts ‘The Man’ off on a rant about how
no-one will ever admit wrongdoing anymore; Left: ‘The Man’
and that he will show her the ‘real’ meaning of plays real-life
a bad day. bumper cars with
Rachel on the
Derrick Borte: That might be a commentary on roads of New
where we are. As Russell’s character says, we’ve Orleans.
gotten to a point in society where people won’t
apologise for anything. That interaction sets the
film off into this terrible, tragic, and exciting path
that it goes down. People have commented on
the fact that her actions [in this scene] could also
have changed the dynamic, and so the film is
sparking a conversation.
6 ROAD RAGE Derrick Borte: It was an opportunity to exercise
my inner seven-year-old, playing with Matchbox
cars and crashing them. And we wanted to use all
Christina Newland: In a film where a cement of these underpasses and freeway roads in New
truck drives directly through a cop car and Orleans, to reinforce that rat-in-a-cage pressure
multiple pedestrians are run over with a pick-up, that Caren Pistorius’ character Rachel is feeling.
getting the driving-action right is important. In We were able to utilise everything from visual
Unhinged, much of the film is contained within effects to shooting on a stage to shooting in the
vehicles themselves, making Rachel’s pursuit 105-110-degree New Orleans heat in cars without
by ‘The Man’ like one long, claustrophobic and air conditioning. The heat index was intolerable,

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horrifying game of bumper cars. but that’s a high-level problem to have.

5 FORTNITE
Ian Freer:Just as Christopher Nolan previews
his films within Fortnite, so the online game plays
a pivotal role in Unhinged. From the moment
Rachel’s son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) explains
the manoeuvres he’s learned, you just
know it is going to come in handy
in the climax.
7 THE FINAL
SHOWDOWN
Ian Freer: Every movie monster needs a good
send-off and Unhinged delivers big-time on this
front. With Rachel and Kyle retreating to her
mother’s house (a move inspired by Fortnite),
‘The Man’ launches into a brutal attack which
ends when Rachel stabs him in the eye with
a pair of scissors. The moment is redolent of the
film’s ethos to deliver a straight-up DTV thriller
without ever suggesting parody or winking at the
audience. But given Borte’s love of Jaws, it is
a tad surprising Rachel didn’t blow up Russell
Crowe into smithereens. Smile, you son of a bitch.

OCTOBER 2020 53
DO NOT CROSS HERE IF SP OILERS OFFEND
DO NOT CROSS HERE IF SP OILERS OFFEND

The Last Of Us Part II

We look back at the video-game phenomenon of the summer ON: PS4

1 THE PIVOTAL DEATH Top: Ellie,

the playable
protagonist of
James Dyer: Given we spent most of the original The Last The Last Of
Of Us living in his skin, Joel’s death hits like a truck. When you, Us Part II.
as Ellie, hear the grunts and thuds before bursting in, and are Right: Ellie with
subsequently held down and forced to watch him beaten to death partner Dina.
with a golf club, it perfectly sets in motion everything that follows.
You may not agree with what Ellie decides to do afterwards, but
you sure as hell understand it.

Neil Druckmann: In that moment, when Joel is taken out, we want

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you to feel dread and disgust and anger. There were all sorts of
different versions, including one where he turned his back to Abby,
she stabbed him in the spine and twisted the blade, severed the
spine and had him drop. But some of it just felt unnecessary.
2 ELLIE AND DINA
Amon Warmann: What little
levity there is in The Last Of Us
Part II stems from the dynamic
between Ellie and Dina. Whether
they’re taking on a group of kids
in a snowball fight or sharing
a moment in an underground
weed farm, their barrier-breaking
gay romance is sweet, beautiful
and heartfelt. That it hurts
Left: Ellie’s so much to watch Ellie leave
mentor Joel, who Dina to pursue vengeance is
is dispatched testament to the fact that the
brutally by Abby. couple are so easy to root for.
Neil Druckmann: Dina has
more of Ellie’s innocence from
the first game; she brings a bit
more light-heartedness to the
journey. Dina also represents
life in Jackson [County] — she’s
a representation of what Ellie
stands to lose if she doesn’t
let this dark pursuit go. For
Dina, she goes on this journey
because of her love for Ellie.
And then she has a baby and
her responsibility shifts and
she can no longer continue.

54 OCTOBER 2020
 ILE
RS

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! SP
WARERS! S
OIL
N I N POILER
G ! S! SPO
ILE
4 BECOMING ABBY
Amon Warmann: Many female characters in
video games are capable of impressive feats of
strength, but their features are often slim and

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elegant. With her buff frame and square jaw, Abby
is a much-needed break from that mould. But
this is about more than just an underrepresented
body type; there are hints throughout that Abby
chose the path of bodybuilder so that she’d be
ready when it came time to face Joel, her father’s

3 ELLIE’S DESCENT INTO DARKNESS killer. Like Ellie, she’s on a single-minded pursuit
that leads to unexpectedly grave consequences.

James Dyer: It’s clear from the flashbacks and
the nightmares that Ellie has post-traumatic
stress disorder and it’s that, as much as anything,
that stops her finding peace. But the extents
she goes to, culminating in the torture of Nora
and then the murder of Owen and the pregnant
Mel, painfully strain the dissonance between
player and character.
Neil Druckmann: Ellie’s struggle is that, unlike
Joel, Ellie is a hothead. She has a chip on her
shoulder. You see it in the way she killed David
in the first game. There’s an anger that is deep
inside Ellie that she has to work through. And
because of that, she knows the right thing to
do, but her emotions are so overwhelming that
she can’t. That’s the conversation she has with
Dina. She says, “I know what I need to do. I’m
not like you. I can’t let it go.” Ultimately she
does, though, and she saves a little bit of
humanity within her and that’s her journey
towards redemption, but at a great cost.
Clockwise from above: Ellie stalks her enemies; Abby —
Ellie’s grudge-holding antagonist; Ellie cuts Abby down from
a tree on the coast as the game heads to a close.
Neil Druckmann: The biggest challenge of this
game was to make players empathetic towards
Abby, a person who brutally tortured and killed a
fan-favourite character. Your instinct is to reduce
her to less than human so you can justify what
you’re gonna do to her later. And the only way we
can get past it is to say, “What’s their perspective?”
She has positive and negative qualities, and she
makes some awful choices along the way. But
that’s how you humanise someone: by seeing their
flaws. Despite understanding that the cycle of
violence is bad, she’s still ready to kill Ellie and
Dina when the love of her life is killed by Ellie.

6 THE ENDING

DO NOT CROSS HERE IF SP OILERS OFFEND

James Dyer: There are
two sides of the same arc
depicted in this game: a fall
from grace and a quest for
redemption. On the one hand,
you have Ellie’s seemingly
unrelenting descent, her
falling deeper and deeper

5 ALTERNATE ENDING into this seething pit of hate

and rage, then pulling back
James Dyer: In an earlier version of the ending, at the last minute and
finding peace by letting
Ellie killed Abby and returned to the farmhouse Abby live. But we also
to find a relative of one of the other people see the other side — what
could have been — through
she’d dispatched lying in wait for her. It was Abby. She’s someone who
that person, not Ellie, who then broke the did fall into the abyss, who
cycle of violence, choosing not to kill embraced her darkest impulses
but then struggled back to
her and to walk away instead. the light.
Neil Druckmann: Ellie knows
what the right thing is and she’s
so terrified of what it would
mean to let Abby go. Will the
nightmares continue forever?
Her emotions get the best of
her and she believes she needs
to finish it, despite Abby not
being the same person that
killed Joel anymore. Abby
has gone on this redemptive
journey and now is caring for
this kid and Ellie is blinded
from seeing that Abby has
become Joel. It’s only once she,
essentially, has Abby dead, that
she sees the futility of it all and
realises this will not fix anything.

OCTOBER 2020 55
 DUNE
H AVING LON G F LU MMOX ED F I LM MA KER S, NEE D ED
ON SET AN D BEYON D, WE F IN D OUT HOW H E TAC KLED

56 OCTOBER 2020
A F EA RLE SS V I SI ON ARY TO TA K E IT O N. STEP IN DEN IS V ILL EN EUVE .
O N E O F THE M OST DAR IN G MOVI E S IN DE C A D ES WORDS HELEN O’HARA

OCTOBER 2020 57
 WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU’RE GIVEN THE
chance to make your dreams come true? We’re
talking dreams you’ve had for 30 years, dreams
of a desert planet and the extraordinary
characters and creatures that inhabit it. Do you
shy away, leave all those images safely in your
head where they’re pure and uncompromised?
Or do you dive in and try to bring them to life?
If you’re Denis Villeneuve, and you’ve just
been given the green light to film Frank Herbert’s
Dune, you remember the book’s mantra: I must
not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. “It’s not easy to
bring the dreams of your teenage years in front
of a camera,” Villeneuve admits from his editing
room this July. “The teenager that I was was
really a big dreamer. I had to try to please that
guy. It’s all the pressure of making sure that
I don’t disappoint the dream.”
If Herbert’s book isn’t quite unfilmable,
it’s definitely in the same neighbourhood. Call
it science-fiction’s The Lord Of The Rings:
a sprawling adventure in a stunningly detailed
world, and a story that’s been hugely influential
in the 50 years since it was published. Ambitious
filmmakers like Alejandro Jodorowsky and
David Lynch tried and failed to capture its
appeal: Jodorowsky blew through a large chunk
of his budget in pre-production so his film was
never made, while Lynch’s 1984 take was
compressed to the point of incoherence. The
book’s blend of complex conspiracies, elaborate
social structures and philosophical musings are
a lot to explain while retaining an audience’s
attention, and you have to find room for the
action and spectacle too.
But if you were betting, you could do worse
than gamble on this take. Here’s a respected
filmmaker with a proven track record in
intelligent science-fiction who has adored this
story for decades. And the book hasn’t aged
nearly as badly as many of its contemporaries,
those Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke

58 OCTOBER 2020
 stories where women were still housewives and
ditzes. It tackles environmental threat and
governmental failure, the evils of colonialism
and the power of people to stand up for equality.
Maybe it’s less a story about a far-future galactic
empire and more a look at life on Earth. “It’s
a movie that has a strong sense of adventure,”
claims Villeneuve. “It’s a piece that has darkness,
but it’s an epic saga with a lot of friendship, a lot
of beauty at the same time, and a lot of wisdom.”

F
At last, the time might just be right for Dune.

rank Herbert’s Dune is

nearly 600 pages long. It
encompasses prophecy,
mysticism, blood-feuds and
metaphors for civilisation’s
dependence on oil. There are
gigantic sandworms about
the size of the Empire State
Building. There are figures called Mentats,
Bene Gesserit and someone called a Kwisatz
Haderach; people drink their own pee to stay
alive in its deserts. There’s a lot going on.
Perhaps that’s why the previous visions
failed. Alejandro Jodorowsky caught the book’s
ambition, bringing in artists like H.R. Giger to
design his world and hiring Salvador Dalí as the
Padishah Emperor at a fee of $100,000 per hour
(Jodorowsky planned to keep costs down by
using a mechanical double for most of his
scenes). He disbursed large amounts of his
budget without shooting a frame of footage, and
in any case never secured nearly as much as his
14-hour epic would need. Meanwhile, David
Lynch rushed the whole book into one 1984 film
featuring Kyle MacLachlan with glowing blue
eyes and Sting in a nappy, and secured the worst
reviews of his career.
Clockwise from “I’m a big David Lynch fan, he’s the master,”
above: Lady says Villeneuve of that film. “When I saw
Jessica [Lynch’s] Dune I remember being excited, but
(Rebecca his take... there are parts that I love and other
Ferguson), Chani elements that I am less comfortable with. So it’s
(Zendaya), like, I remember being half-satisfied. That’s why
Stilgar (Javier I was thinking to myself, ‘There’s still a movie
Bardem) and that needs to be made about that book, just
Paul Atreides a different sensibility.’”
(Timothée Villeneuve had been thinking those
Chalamet); thoughts about Dune for a long time. For years
Alpha-plus males he’d dreamt of making it. But it was when he
Gurney Halleck was working with composer Hans Zimmer on
(Josh Brolin) and Blade Runner 2049 that he began to seriously
Duke Leto (Oscar discuss whether it was possible. Zimmer,
Isaac); Director another mega-fan, immediately offered his
Denis Villeneuve services and seems to have inspired the director
and Chalamet to go for it. Soon after, Legendary Pictures and
talk combat Warner Bros. bought into Villeneuve’s vision,
training. which differed from the directors before him in
U
two key ways.

OCTOBER 2020 59
60 OCTOBER 2020
 WARRIOR
ZEN DAYA ON GO I NG AFT E R W H AT SH E WAN TS —
A ND T H OS E KILL BILL 3 RU MO UR S …
How did you get involved in Dune?
Not a super crazy story. I wish it were more
exciting. When I found out that it was being
made, I was extremely interested. I’ve always
wanted to be a part of something sci-fi like that,
and I’m a huge fan of Denis. I just went after it
and auditioned.
What was your impression of Chani, your
fierce Fremen fighter?
My part is very, very small in this movie and
that’s why I’m so excited to see it, to see what
everyone’s been up to. [Denis and I] had a little
discussion about who Chani is and the strength
she possesses. She’s a fighter, that’s what her
people are. I only really had a few days with her,
so I kind of scratched the surface but it was so
much fun figuring her out. What does she walk
like, what does she talk like? This is her planet, so
how does she navigate this world? It was so fun.
How was Denis as a director on set?
He’s so kind and attentive to all of his actors. I was
only there for four days and I did not want to leave!
Denis understands what he wants from us but
he’s also very collaborative, allowing me to have
my take on the character as well. I don’t want to
jinx anything but I can’t wait to explore her more.
I hope I get to learn more from Denis. I love to
learn from people who are great at their job.
Did you know Timothée before?
We met at my chemistry-read. I felt like we’d
known each other forever, like this was my homie
growing up. We became really great friends. He’s
obviously very talented and really passionate
about his job and takes it very seriously, and
I think it shows in his career. Taking on this
massive movie, I would be terrified, you know
what I mean? But he handles it with such grace.
He’s brilliant.
Many people have been productive during
lockdown, but very few have managed an
entire movie like you did with Malcolm &
Marie. How did that come together?
The inception was just talking to [director] Sam
[Levinson, her Euphoria showrunner]. I talked to
him almost every day through this quarantine.
I was like, “I just want to be able to create
something.” We wondered if it was possible to
do something with a really, really, really small
amount of people, and with all these health
precautions. We started talking and got this one
idea. He would call and read some of what he
had written and we’d talk, and he’d call me the
next day and read more. Next thing you know,
there’s this great script in front of me called
Malcolm & Marie, and we were able to get JD
[John David Washington, her co-star] interested.
So we quarantined with our very small crew,
who were from Euphoria. And we were able to
workshop the piece and put it on screen in a very
short amount of time, in a very isolated location.
It’s something we’re really proud of.
Vivica A. Fox recently said that she wants you
to play her screen daughter in Kill Bill 3 if that
ever happens. What do you think?
I saw that! I was quite honoured that she would
say that. Obviously she’s incredible and I’m very
flattered that she would think of me. But, you
know, it’s just an idea. The internet kinda takes
things and runs with it.
Chani, piercing
blue eyes aglow,
with Paul.
First he split the story into two parts, so that
he didn’t have to grapple, as Lynch did, with a
rushed second act, or suggest a 14-hour running
time like Jodorowsky. Crucially, it wasn’t a
matter of compromising to a studio-mandated
running time: Villeneuve stresses that he and
screenwriter Jon Spaihts found a break point
that allows this film to tell a distinct tale in its
own right. The focus is now only on the early life
of Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides. Paul is a
bright, serious young man whose parents —
Oscar Isaac’s Duke Leto and Rebecca Ferguson’s
Lady Jessica — are assigned to govern the desert
planet of Arrakis, aka Dune. It’s a harsh world,
with deep deserts plagued by enormous
sandworms and a hostile populace called the
Fremen. But Arrakis is also the galaxy’s only
source of “spice, melange”, known as “spice”,
a valuable substance that extends life, sparks
prophetic trances and — most important of all
— enables the galaxy’s Guild of Navigators to
travel faster-than-light between the stars.
Like the multi-purpose spice, the planet is
both a potential goldmine and a powder keg.
Duke Leto knows his new assignment is probably
a trap. The outgoing governors and his sworn
enemies, the Harkonnens, undoubtedly hope to
turn the assignment against him. And yet, under
Imperial orders, he has no choice. He must trust
in his loyal retainers and a hoped-for alliance
with the Fremen to keep himself and his family
safe, and keep the spice flowing. The stakes are
literally galactic.
Against that enormous canvas, Villeneuve’s
second key decision was to make Dune feel as
real as it did to him when he first read the book.
So the director insisted on desert locations and
vast practical sets. The production’s location
shooting was in Jordan’s famed Wadi Rum and
the deep dunes of Abu Dhabi. About the only
things added in post were the sandworms and
spaceships — and not even all of the latter,
because under Villeneuve’s regular production
designer Patrice Vermette, the crew built
full-scale models of the planet’s favourite air
transport, the ornithopter. And then there
V
were the humans.
illeneuve had to
assemble a cast so
charismatic that you’d
actually listen when
they explained this
complicated society,
and actually care when
fighting erupts (spoiler:
it totally will). That, however, came easy, thanks
to his reputation and that of the book. Chalamet
had set up a Google alert for the movie as soon
as he heard it was in development, and flew to
U
Cannes to meet Villeneuve when the director
OCTOBER 2020 61
 was on the jury there. “I can’t pretend that
I was sitting there evaluating whether I wanted
to do this or not,” says Chalamet. “It’s very
obvious, just the opportunity to work with
Denis. I’m a huge fan.”
For Villeneuve, Chalamet was the only
person who could play Paul Atreides, the boy
groomed for leadership who’s plagued by
prophetic dreams of a strange desert planet even
before he arrives there. He has what Villeneuve
describes as an “old soul” combined with the
ability to appear many years younger than 24.
“He has an insane charisma,” says Villeneuve.
“Timothée has been gifted by the gods of
cinema.” Then Villeneuve went looking for his
Lady Jessica, and found Rebecca Ferguson. Clockwise from
“I didn’t want Lady Jessica to be an expensive above: Sharon
extra,” says Villeneuve of a character who Duncan-
has been slightly sidelined in some versions Brewster as the
but is important here. “Something I deeply newly female
love in the book is that there was a strong Liet Kynes; Paul
balance between the masculine power and meets with
feminine power.” Charlotte
Isaac knew both the book and Villeneuve, Rampling’s
and had reached out as soon as he knew the film Truthsayer Gaius
was happening, for any role going. “So you like Helen Mohiam;
Dune. Iiiinteresting,” the director replied Stilgar cuts an
teasingly. Later the call came through asking imposing figure
Isaac to play Duke Leto. “When I read it again, as the leader of
Leto is the character that popped out to me,” the Sietch Tabr
says Isaac now. “Not only from the description tribe; Josh Brolin
physically, but also the conflict between wanting strides through
to protect his family, his people, but being forced the opulent set.
into an impossible situation that is perilous and
yet hoping that he can gain advantage in it.”
That’s how it went across almost the entire
cast. Brolin, who plays Atreides weapons master
and (according to Villeneuve) “warrior poet”
Gurney Halleck, didn’t even read the script
before committing to reteam with his Sicario
director (“I think I pretended to read it”). Jason
Momoa, as Atreides fighter and spy Duncan
Idaho, signed up almost as quickly. “I was
literally on top of a mountain, no shit, and he’s
one of my top three favourite [directors] of all
time. So I snowboarded down the mountain and
got my ass back to the hotel room. Got on a Skype
call with him, said, ‘I’ll do it,’ right away. It’s like
winning the lottery when you get a job like that.”
Leading the Fremen is Javier Bardem’s
Stilgar, with Zendaya as a younger Fremen,
Chani. “She’s tough and she’s very straight up,”
says Zendaya of her role, a relatively small one
that could lead to bigger things if there’s a sequel.
“She’s already sizing Paul up and not quick to
trust.” Balanced between these groups is Sharon
Duncan-Brewster’s Kynes, an Imperial
planetologist on Arrakis. In the book, Kynes was
(yet another) white man, but Villeneuve wanted
more women because “we are in 2020. I cannot

62 OCTOBER 2020
do Lawrence Of Arabia.” Kynes was an obvious
character to swap. As Duncan-Brewster says,
“Personally, I didn’t see how Kynes being
a woman would affect any aspect of the plot.
I believe Frank Herbert wouldn’t have minded.”
Her quiet, reserved scientist is one of the most
important figures in the book, someone with close
ties to the Fremen despite her Imperial job title.
Another touch of spice comes from Charlotte
Rampling as the Gaius Helen Mohiam, Reverend
Mother of the Bene Gesserit — an order of witches/
prophetesses/nuns/concubines that trained Lady
Jessica, and a group with their own mysterious
priorities. Rampling was in line to play Lady
Jessica for Jodorowsky 45 years ago, so maybe she
was always meant for Dune. Perhaps Villeneuve’s
dreams were as prophetic as those of Paul Atreides.
As casts go, it’s an embarrassment of riches;
the biggest challenge for about half the team was
trying not to trip out at the other half. One of the
first things shot in Budapest was a meeting of the
Atreides, Fremen and intermediaries in the
Great Hall, during which almost all the stars
were starstruck.
“It’s just this amazing line-up,” remembers
Momoa. “You’ve got Brolin, Oscar Isaac,
Timothée. And in walks Javier Bardem and
I have never seen anyone that cool in all my life.
That’s why he wins fuckin’ Oscars, bro. He
walked in like he’s a silverback and just stares us
all down.” Bardem, told this, laughs and claims
that he was very nervous but that “if Jason
Momoa calls you a gorilla that’s a big compliment
because he’s King Kong.”
Villeneuve is proud of his cast. “I made
no compromise,” he says. That would become
a theme. When it came to the scale of the shoot,
I
his ambitions were equally enormous.
t’s June 2019 and Empire is at
Origo Studios, a few miles outside
Budapest. We’re also a few million
light-years away from Earth,
standing in the Atreides residence in
Arrakeen, their capital on Arrakis.
It’s meant as a Brutalist structure, a
sandy-coloured concrete carbuncle,
built by the Harkonnens as a symbol of power and
dominance. Its hallways stretch for 100 metres,
walls reaching high overhead so that there’s no
need for green-screen extension in most shots.
The place has the air of some monumental tomb
despite the (specially printed) acres of Persian-
style carpet underfoot. Bas-relief murals show
sandworms at play; huge, bronze doors swing on
central pivots. “And this is just a corridor!” says
Vermette. “Not even the Great Hall. We’re having
fun.” It’s all so vast, Rebecca Ferguson has been
getting lost. “Every bloody day,” she says. “Like,
‘Am I on the wrong stage? Hellooooo?’”
For Empire’s visit, however, she is on the
correct stage, for a scene where the Atreides
family say goodbye to their household staff on
their oceanic home planet of Caladan before
moving to Arrakis. Chalamet, Ferguson and Isaac
have formed a sort of receiving line for their old
retainers, with Duke Leto putting a comforting
hand on his lady’s neck as she bids farewell to the
last of them. Packing cases lie around with their
ancestral treasures spilling out, and it’s all very
moving. Between takes, Chalamet paces restlessly
nearby until it’s time to go again, the weight of the
world — or at least, the film — on his shoulders.
The Arrakeen spaceport outside is bigger
again, lined with palm trees that will, at some
point, be set ablaze. There’s a full-size
ornithopter parked at one end and a ramp down
into the residence at the other. But size is not
the only thing this production has going for it.
In the prop department, the detail holds up to
near-microscopic levels. The ‘Gom Jabbar’,
a tiny, poisoned needle with which the Reverend
Mother tests Paul, is finely etched along its
length in minute swirls and circles, a thing of
beauty as well as horror.
This level of world-building came as standard.
For Stellan Skarsgård’s Baron Harkonnen the
hair and make-up department had to provide
a grotesque fat-suit that would absolutely not be
comical. Skarsgård is someone Villeneuve had
admired since Breaking The Waves, and he was
cast for one simple reason: the director finds him
scary — and he needed to stay scary. Costumes,
meanwhile, had to provide the scale of an
epic with the detail of a tiny chamber piece,
U
manufacturing the high style of the nobles
OCTOBER 2020 63

(based partly on cavalry uniforms) and the
Fremen ‘still suits’. These are Dune’s signature
look — desert wear, designed to protect every
drop of moisture in the body and to recycle all
waste water back into potable supplies. “A real,
functioning distillery,” as costume designer
Jacqueline West puts it. And it had to be
wearable in a real desert.
Even though the Wadi Rum has been home
to hundreds of productions, from The Martian
to Lawrence Of Arabia, it still struck most of the
cast and crew as an alien, magical place. For
Isaac, the desert shoot was a sort of homecoming
after Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker: “the
same desert,” he notes. “But it’s kind of incredible
how two different filmmakers can take a place
and give it a completely distinct feel.”
On off-days there were jeep rides or “camels
cruising by”, as Momoa puts it — but it was the
vast, empty space that made Arrakis feel real
and acting almost unnecessary. You can believe
a sandworm might pursue you across this
environment. “That part of the Wadi Rum is
so awe-inspiring, you might as well be getting
chased by that cliff in the background,” said
Chalamet. “It wasn’t a green-screen or anything.
That’s one of the most thrilling parts of the book
and the movie. We had the sketches. That was
a lesson for me. On a Call Me By Your Name or
Beautiful Boy it can be counterintuitive to see
the storyboards because then maybe you limit
yourself based on a camera angle or whatever.
It’s the opposite [here] because, for a sequence
with the sandworm chasing you, I could never
imagine that.”
Filming on such a scale takes time. At the top
of the call sheet for nearly six months, Chalamet
got to grips with his first blockbuster lead. This is
a far bigger film than anything he’s played the lead
in before — but then, that fits Paul’s story pretty
well. He is “on a hero’s journey that he didn’t sign
up for”, as Chalamet puts it, something far bigger
than his experience prepared him to face. How
else could you approach that except by jumping
I
in feet-first?
s the world ready for Dune? For all
its action and spectacle, a science-
fiction film this big and this serious-
minded is a risk. The last Dune was
a famous flop and Villeneuve’s
previous film, Blade Runner 2049,
underperformed at the box office
despite rave reviews. Might Dune be
simply too dense for modern audiences? It’s clearly
a concern for Villeneuve and his team: summer
2020 saw pick-up shooting take place to clarify
plot points, making sure that the audience would
understand what’s going on at all times. Yet the
book also has themes that resonate today, ideas
U
that could strike a big chord with audiences
64 OCTOBER 2020
LEADER
TI M OT H ÉE C H A L AM ET, DUNE ’ S B IG HE R O,
O N STEP PI N G U P TO THE P L ATE
You were the first one cast in the film. How
did it happen?
Well, I knew just from the film blogs that Denis
had been working on it. I’d already done a good
bit of research on the history of the project. I’m
not alluding to Jodorowsky’s or David Lynch’s
version, more around [production company]
Legendary picking up the rights ten years ago.
When I was fortunate enough to go to many
of the awards-related events, I got to meet Denis
a couple of times, and already had it in my
head… You know, I was feeling a deep desire
to be involved. Then when he was on the jury
of the Cannes Film Festival, he asked me to fly
out there to meet with him about it. I had read
two or three chapters of Dune, and then in
preparation for the meeting busted out the rest
of the book.
Did playing Hal [Henry V] in David Michôd’s
The King prepare you for playing Paul?
Yes and no. Hal was a bit of a philanderer, they
call him “the whoring fool” and he’s lived a life of
immorality around the central Christian moral
doctrine of the times. That’s the beginning of his
arc. Paul is not starting from an amoral place.
He’s starting 15, 16 years old, and he’s not totally
naive or innocent. He is very much a boy, but by
the end of the movie… there’s the coming of age
into adulthood alongside a greater purpose.
The scale of this film is huge. How did it feel
as a contrast to what you’ve done before?
I was fortunate enough to work on small-budget,
independent films around the world, whether it
was Call Me By Your Name or Miss Stevens or
Lady Bird, or Beautiful Boy, all these movies that
Chalamet’s Paul,
growing up fast.
were under $20 million or something. I wouldn’t
do it any differently because coming from a
drama high school too was the perfect notch-up.
It made sense. To be brave enough to learn from
one’s own experience. There was a step up that
felt healthy about that. Denis Villeneuve has a
very earthy, energy-based, moment-to-moment
way of being inspired, but also in abandoning
ideas he might have had 24 hours ago. It’s
inspiring. I had a small part in Interstellar [as the
teenaged version of Casey Affleck’s Tom] and
I loved working on that too. I would love to work
with Christopher Nolan again. These are both
directors that make amazing, huge movies.
What was shooting in the desert like?
A gift! The nature of these big-budget movies is
to get good at reacting to a green-screen that’s
showing the audience that a mountain exploded
200 feet in the distance. I wouldn’t know how to
train for that. And the suit didn’t feel silly. You
hear some actors in superhero films say that as
each part of the superhero costume is added,
some part of their dignity has slipped away.
There wasn’t any of that.
It’s an incredible ensemble cast. Did you
feel intimidated?
From a young actor’s perspective, you learn
a new set of skills in any movie. I’m only six years
away from drama high school. At 23 or 24 you’re
learning every day. I was lucky not knowing any
of the actors prior, really. There was this unifying
ulterior motive to make the movie great. It felt
good. Things have to be utilitarian. It’s the
healthiest way to approach art and creativity,
you know. No ego.
OCTOBER 2020 65
 Clockwise
from above:
Harkonnen
troops gather...;
Parental
concern; There
will be blood.

66 OCTOBER 2020
looking to make sense of the world and all the
challenges we’re currently facing.
“The book, for me, is about prescience,” says
Villeneuve. “A character that can see the future.
I feel that Herbert himself had a pretty good view
of the future, people exploiting natural resources
with brutality and other people fighting for the
sake of nature.” He wants young people, in
particular, to discover this story through the film
as he once discovered the book, and to fall in love
with Herbert’s “beautiful ecosystems and unique
relationship with nature”.
For Isaac, the challenge is not Dune’s
earnestness, but merely a question of balancing
the complexities of the book with the needs of a
populist piece of cinema. “It’s about the destiny
of a people, and the different way that cultures
have dominated other ones. How do a people
respond when it’s at the tipping point, when
enough is enough, when they’re exploited? All
those things are things we’re seeing around the
world right now.”
Or as Brolin says, simply, “People are not as
dumb as you think they are.”
Whether or not this makes spice-coffers full
of money, Villeneuve claims he’s happy to have
come this far — and his attitude on set is laid-back
enough that you believe him. On Sicario, Brolin
remembers inviting Villeneuve over for margaritas
on a Friday night, only for the director to sit,
disconsolate, feet dangling in the swimming
pool, staring into the depths. “He was like
a depressive, always totally saturated with the
problems of, ‘How do I make this the best thing?’
On this, he was more ebullient. Knowing Denis
so well, to be able to see manifested what he’s been
talking about for so long was such a delight. I’m
glad I’m a part of this childhood dream come true.”
If this does work for mass audiences,
Villeneuve hopes to return to tell the rest of
Paul Atreides’ story. Whereas this film is about
a boy losing his innocence and adapting to
a new culture, the sequel would see him at “full
potential” as a leader, because the threat posed
by the Harkonnens, and the dangers of the sands
of Dune, will not be entirely defused here. But if
it all goes wrong, at least he got to visit Arrakis
once. Herbert said that, “There is no real ending.
It’s just the place you stop the story.” If the story
closes here, at least Villeneuve has made his
teenage self happy. Maybe sometimes you don’t
need to be careful what you wish for. Sometimes
you should throw caution to the desert winds.

DUNE IS IN CINEMAS FROM 18 DECEMBER

OCTOBER 2020 67
 A B ELOVED GOT HI C NOV E L . T H E GH OST O F
HITCHCOCK. AND THE LAST DIRECTOR YOU’D
EXPECT TO BE WRANGLING BALL GOWNS.
BUT B EN W H E AT L E Y’S R E BE C CA , H E T E L LS US,
IS FUL L O F S U R PRIS ES . ..
WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

68 OCTOBER 2020
OCTOBER 2020 69
 BEN WHEATLEY
HAS GOT BLOOD ON
HIS HANDS. LOTS OF BLOOD. Top to bottom:
The newly-weds
Over the course of his seven movies, the director has compiled at Manderley;
a kill list longer than your arm. Death by suffocation, death by Armie Hammer
hammer, death by bullet (that happens a lot), death by knitting with director
needle, death by immolation, death by falling from a great height, Ben Wheatley;
death by having your head crushed by the wheel of a slow-moving Maxim de Winter
van. You name it, chances are that Wheatley has offed someone (Hammer) and
on screen with it. his new love
But too much killing can corrode the soul. And, like Clint (Lily James).
Eastwood in Unforgiven, Wheatley was done with it. “You can
end up with a run of movies which are all gruesome and horrific,”
he says. And so, quietly, he has been moving in a different
direction for a while now. His last film, the caustic comedy Happy
New Year, Colin Burstead, featured a body count of precisely zero.
“That was a big deal for me, to make a film where nobody died,”
he laughs. “We’re getting there, in baby steps.” He was looking for
something to continue that streak, and also stretch some other
muscles, when a script came his way courtesy of producer Nira
Park. It was an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s classic Gothic
novel, Rebecca. And though it, admittedly, had a smidgen of death
in it, it was far from bloodthirsty and otherwise filled with
colours and shades and beats that were unlike anything Wheatley
had directed before. “I wanted to make something that had
more love in it,” he says. “It’s part of trying to investigate other
parts of being human. Rebecca has dark elements, and it has a
psychological, haunting story within it, but it’s also about these
two people in love. That was the main thing.”
You may think you know Rebecca. You may think, having
either read the book or watched the 1940 Hitchcock adaptation,
that you know it’s about a young woman who, while working as
an assistant to a rich American widow in the South of France,
meets and falls in love with a dashing young English gent called
Maxim de Winter. You may think you know that the young
couple, very much in love, get married and retreat back to
Maxim’s country home, Manderley, where everything goes very
sour, very quickly, what with Maxim’s housekeeper, the formidable
Mrs Danvers, disapproving of Maxim’s young new wife, and
his first wife, the recently deceased Rebecca, still haunting
Manderley with her presence. You may think you know this
because of the book’s place in popular culture, with its venerated
opening line, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,”
its celebrated villain in Danvers, and its influence on Gothic
horror-romances such as Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak.
But it’s likely that you don’t quite know Rebecca. There are
hidden revelations and motivations and moments you might only
have half-remembered, or not remembered at all, that turn it
into a very different beast. And Wheatley, upon sitting down to

70 OCTOBER 2020
 The new Mrs
read Jane Goldman’s script, very quickly realised that he was in
de Winter is
the same boat. “It totally shocked me,” he says. “I fell for all the
hounded outside
twists. I talked to members of my family and they said, ‘Yeah,
court.
we love that book.’ But when I quizzed them on what happens
in it, they didn’t quite remember. I thought that was interesting.
I had a trace memory of Danvers, and a trace memory of it being
some kind of Victorian melodrama. But it’s set in the ’30s. So,
why did I misremember it so badly? That’s when I started
thinking, ‘Well, the time might be now to do it.’”
So, with Working Title and Park on board and Netflix writing
the cheques, and Lily James as the second Mrs de Winter, Armie
Hammer as Maxim, and Kristin Scott Thomas staring it up
a storm as Mrs Danvers, Wheatley set about making his most
ambitious movie to date: a Ben Wheatley movie that wouldn’t
L
look, or feel, or sound like a Ben Wheatley movie.
AST JULY, EMPIRE dreamed it went to Manderley again.
Or, more accurately, Mapperton House in Dorset, one of
eight houses dotted across the country that will double for
du Maurier’s forbidding, foreboding creation. Today, as
the scorching mid-summer sun dapples a nearby pond and
encourages wasps to dive-bomb Empire, Wheatley, his
trusty DP Laurie Rose, and most of his principal cast have
retreated under the cover of an awning and a rain machine for
a lengthy, involved scene where the new Mrs de Winter (who is
never named in the movie; she’s called Daphne in the screenplay, a
nod to his source novelist, but purely as an act of shorthand) is being
introduced to Maxim’s grandmother, played by Jane Lapotaire.
On the surface, it’s all cream cakes and jolly hockey sticks.
But it’s a subtle scene in which the second Mrs de Win— oh,
we’ll just call her Daphne too; it’s easier — who’s already nervous
about her suitability for her new station, has to run a gauntlet
of pointed barbs (“What a nice plain frock,” says Keeley
Hawes’ Beatrice, sister of Maxim), micro-aggressions and
disagreements with her suddenly wintry Mr de Winter. And
then, as if that weren’t bad enough, she has to endure outright
hostility from confused old Granny, who isn’t quite ready to let
the first Mrs de Winter go. “What have you done with Rebecca?”
she cries, as James tries desperately to maintain poise and
decorum. “Where’s Rebecca?” During takes, Wheatley has
a note for Lapotaire: “I reckon you can go even more angry.”
She duly obliges.
At first glance, it’s not terribly Wheatley, as per his brief. But
at second glance, it’s absolutely within the Wheatley wheelhouse.
Many of his films have been about social mores and codes, and
U
many of them, including Kill List and Sightseers, feature fierce
OCTOBER 2020 71
 arguments around dinner tables. This may not take place around
the 1930s’ equivalent of an extender, but you could still cut the
tension with a particularly well-buffed luncheon knife. “It
appealed to me to be in the rain,” says Wheatley. “It’s the idea
that Rebecca almost disrupts the environment around them. It’s
almost like crying, with the rain.”
This juggling act, this constant push and pull between
Wheatley and not-Wheatley, characterises Rebecca. There are
moments and passages that feel like no other director on the
planet could have made them — a montage set to a haunting folk
number, for one. And then there are huge tracts of the film where
it’s clearly the work of an artist who is determined to add a new
string or ten to his bow. The film’s opening act, where Maxim and
Daphne fall in love against the backdrop of the French Riviera, is
swoonsome and romantic and beautifully shot and, unlike much
of Wheatley’s previous work, doesn’t have an ironic bone in its
body. “Thank God,” laughs Wheatley, when Empire tells him this.
“The thing that was drawing me towards it was an older style of
storytelling that is sincere, and doesn’t wink at the audience.
It’s like a version of the old Hollywood movies, and what I love
about Hollywood is that it’s not ashamed of emotion. But we
still approached it as a modern movie. It was never going to be
a pastiche of Hollywood.”
Hammer, who worked with Wheatley previously on the very
different Free Fire — an extended shootout in a warehouse — was
aware of the contrast and the change. “I’ve gotten to watch his
choices and progression as a filmmaker,” he says. “I can’t think
of another filmmaker out there where each film is almost
completely diametrically opposed to the last film he made.”
The intention, also, was to take a story set in the 1930s and
give it an irrefutable 2020 sheen. And, in doing so, nip any lazy
comparisons with predecessors in the bud. Well, one predecessor
in particular. Rebecca has been adapted for television a few times
over the years, including for the BBC in 1979, but only once
before for the big screen. Unfortunately, not only did that version that’s certainly not the focus.”
win Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1940; not only did it The cast, incidentally, were somewhat torn over the original.
star Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine; but it was directed by James focused her attention on the book, but Hammer went

L
one Alfred Hitchcock. Shadows don’t come much bigger.
UCKILY, WHEATLEY WAS used to fighting ghosts on
Rebecca. Like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve, he had
a trio of them to contend with. There’s the spectre of his
own CV. There’s Rebecca herself, of course, the purely
metaphorical ghost who haunts every corridor and corner
and cranny of Manderley without actually manifesting
and making things go bump in the night, and to whom
‘Daphne’ is compared at every turn. “Everything in the house is
hers, and everyone is talking about her,” says Lily James. “That
kind of gaslighting is really potent. I did feel quite haunted, and
felt really vulnerable. It was bizarre, because there was this
presence of another character. Tapping into that feeling of
obsession and jealousy was quite frightening.”
And then there’s the ghost of Hitchcock, flying around the
place and gumming up the works. His Rebecca, made just two
years after du Maurier published her novel, is, perhaps, not
as widely revered as some of the Master’s other works (and
certainly not as much as another of his du Maurier adaptations,
The Birds). It’s not widely available, for one thing. It’s not on any
of the streaming giants and, when watched, it has touches of
brilliance, but feels fusty, musty and melodramatic. It feels very
much like a movie of its time; a movie that’s 80 years old. But it’s
still a Hitchcock, and remaking Hitch is a folly for any director.
Just ask Gus Van Sant. So Wheatley is very clear about one thing.
“It’s not, in any sense, a remake of the Hitchcock film,” he says,
adding with a laugh, “firmly not. Remaking a film is not that
interesting to me, but the original source material is. I watched
all the adaptations. It’s important to see what’s gone before, but
back to study it, and Olivier’s performance as Maxim, “because
this is the first time I’ve ever stepped into someone’s shoes, and
Sir Laurence Olivier’s are comically large. I wanted to make sure
I didn’t get caught trying to just copy someone.” Scott Thomas,
a huge du Maurier fan, already knew it like the back of her hand,
or the hallways of Manderley. “It’s such a beautiful film,” she says.
“But Judith Anderson in that didn’t frighten me as much as Anna
Massey did in the BBC version.”
Besides, by focusing on the original novel, Wheatley saw
a chance for this Rebecca to stretch its wings, and for him to dig
deeper into the characters and themes that had attracted him in
the first place. “When you go back to the novel, there’s so much
slyness in what du Maurier was up to,” he explains. “How she
hides stories within stories within it, and how she plays with
audience and genre expectation, is all very modern stuff. When
I read it, it moved around tonally. One minute you thought it
was one thing, then it was another. That fitted in quite well with
the things I’ve been working with. As much as it felt different,
it felt like a coming together of a lot of the different elements
Above: “I did from the other movies I’ve made.”
feel quite One theme that has run all the way through Wheatley’s work
haunted, is the toxic masculinity, and overweening stupidity, of his male
and felt really anti-heroes. Not in every film — A Field In England, for example
vulnerable” – — but in the likes of Sightseers, Free Fire, and High-Rise, Wheatley
Lily James on paints a world in which men are constantly undone by their own
playing the arrogance, cowardice and stupidity. “I understand that kind of
second Mrs male behaviour,” he says. “Not because I’m as awful as that, but
de Winter. I still understand that weakness. It comes back to Sightseers in
a lot of ways. It’s the idea of the woman who becomes her own
person, rather than being in competition with the man.”

72 OCTOBER 2020
 R
Top to bottom:
ebecca, to some extent, continues to explore Wheatley’s
Kristin Scott
themes. Here, an overwhelmed ‘Daphne’ finds herself
Thomas as the
trying to make her way in Maxim’s world. Interestingly,
villainous Mrs
though, the central clash here is between two women,
Danvers; The
with Mrs Danvers waging a psychological war of terror
couple in the
on the newcomer to Manderley. “I really wanted to play
Riviera; Jack
on the jealousy and the idea of, ‘This could have been me,
Favell (Sam
if I’d married well,’” says Scott Thomas. “And all that is
Riley) confronts
complicated by her absolute devotion to Rebecca.”
the de Winters
But with this, Wheatley isn’t so much interested in pitting
at Manderley.
two women against each other, as in tackling the idea of
class and privilege, with Danvers contemptuous of ‘Daphne’,
a girl from a working-class background who can’t even, shock
and horror, tell which sauce goes well with the roast veal.
“That was one of the main thrusts of the film, trying to find
the route through for Lily’s character,” says Wheatley. “She
doesn’t have to just deal with a moody Maxim and a cross
Danvers; she has to deal with the weight of class and history
crushing her.”
There are tweaks to the du Maurier novel that can only
be discussed after the movie is out, but one thing Wheatley was
keen to do was examine the characters more fully. Is Maxim
really as unimpeachable as his handsome edifice would suggest?
Is ‘Daphne’ really the guileless ingénue that, as narrator and
controller of everything we see and hear, she paints herself as?
“My takeaway from the book was that you shouldn’t entirely
believe, or take verbatim, the experience of the book because it’s
from her point of view,” says Wheatley. “I’m not sure I believed
a lot of what she was saying.”
And, perhaps most intriguing of all, is Mrs Danvers even
the villain of the piece? Even though this version of Danvers has
a penchant for lurking in dark corridors and staring malevolently
(“She’s really scary, Mrs Danvers,” laughs Scott Thomas. “I hadn’t
realised how frightening I am!”), Wheatley was keen to make
this version more rounded. “The film likes Danvers,” says
Wheatley. “Even when she’s been at her worst, we’re kind of
sympathetic to her. I think in a way there’s another version of
the book that du Maurier could have written, where Danvers is
the main character. She’s a bit of a bully, but she’s essentially
a good character.”
That’s quite the twist. Add that to the class warfare, the
sexual politics and the odd spot of death, for good measure, and,
as it turns out, Rebecca is a Ben Wheatley movie, after all.

REBECCA IS ON NETFLIX FROM 21 OCTOBER

OCTOBER 2020 73
 P

A T

S T O

S H R

I E C

N H

G
Gutter credit

74 OCTOBER 2020
 T H E L ON G -AWA I T E D

BL ACK WIDOW SEES

S CARLETT JOHANSSON

SAYING GOODBYE TO

TH E M CU, A ND
F L O R E N C E P UG H
STO R M I N G I N. W E G ET

T HEM TOGETH ER TO
TA L K M E N TO R I N G,

E N V E L O P E - P US H I N G
AND ASS -KICKING

WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

PORTRAITS RICKY MIDDLESWORTH

Gutter credit

OCTOBER 2020 75

THERE’S A VERY real chance that Cate
Shortland’s Black Widow might be Scarlett
Johansson’s final Marvel Cinematic Universe
outing as its title character, the wily super-spy/
one-woman army Natasha Romanoff. Which
would be a huge shame. Because, while it’s
Johansson’s eighth trip on the MCU merry-go-
76 OCTOBER 2020
round since she first appeared in 2010’s Iron Man
2, it’s Florence Pugh’s first, as Natasha’s fellow
former Soviet spy, antagonist, and sister-of-sorts
Yelena Belova, in a prequel seemingly designed
to bestow the Black Widow mantle upon her —
now that Natasha herself lies dead, seemingly
irrevocably, on an alien planet. And if the easy,
funny, sparky chemistry that the American and
British actors displayed on a call with Empire
earlier this summer translates to the big screen,
Marvel should be trying to get them together at
every opportunity. Prequels, spin-offs, sitcoms,
whatever works. Still, as someone once said,
the future is not set, and during Empire’s joint
interview, Johansson and Pugh talked about
the present, the past, and the path that led
Marvel to making a female-fronted/directed
movie that aims to break new ground…
When was the last time you guys saw each
other in the flesh?
Scarlett Johansson: I saw you around
Oscars time…
Florence Pugh: But we did reshoots two or
three days after that, remember, babe?
Johansson: Oh, that’s right. We were both sick.
Pugh: We saw a lot of each other during awards
season, which was so cool because we had just
finished a film together. And then I got to go and
poke Scarlett Johansson on red carpets and be
like, “It’s okay, I know her.” But yeah, it’s very
weird not to be with her. We started over a year
ago, babe. It was May [2019] that we were doing
training together.
Johansson: Before you and I started working
on it together, I had a year or two of development
stuff. It’s been so long. It’s been almost three
years, actually. I thought about it the other
day. “When did I start this conversation with
significance?” I remember when we were
shooting Infinity War I first started talking to
Kevin [Feige] about this as an actual, real
possibility. That was so long ago. It’s been aeons.
You guys met for the first time over a year
ago, presumably kicking the shit out of
each other?
Pugh: Literally. I’d never done one of these films
before, so I was pretty eager to get in and start
learning how to roly-poly, because I didn’t know
 Right, top
to bottom:
Natasha, with
fellow former
KGB assassin
Yelena Belova
(Florence
Pugh); Yelena
gets down to
business.
Scarlett Johansson as
Black Widow for the
— very likely — last time.
exactly how much was expected of someone
coming onto one of these films. The funniest
thing was that we started doing some scene
rehearsals, which were lovely, but in the first
week of shooting Scarlett and I had one of our
biggest fight scenes for our characters, where
they see each other for the first time in years.
And it was the first time that we’d met, so we’d
be doing these rehearsals, and I’d be like, “Okay,
I choke you right now and then you throw me
into the wall.”
Johansson: It’s like a very aggressive trust
exercise. As actors, normally you fall back on
the person or you stare at each other and say
the same word for, like, 20 minutes. It was like
that, but a chokehold, basically. Although I have
to say that it was effective. Only as actors would
anybody ever have the opportunity to do
something like that. It’s insane. It’s such a funny,
weird job where you can meet somebody for
the first time in a play rehearsal and a day-and-a-
half later you’re screaming and sobbing at each
other and holding each other and you have snot
dripping down your face, and you’ve exposed
the whole fragility of your child self.
Pugh: The coolest thing about that is when you
meet someone who is just as turned on by that
kind of stuff as you are. It makes the whole
experience that little bit more enjoyable. Not
everybody likes to get thrown on the floor all
the time, but Scarlett and I loved it.
Scarlett, you must have been beating
people up within seconds of meeting them
for a while now.
Johansson: Yes. It’s strange to say it, but it’s
old-hat to me. It’s really funny, though. It has
been a decade in time and I know where my
energy is best used. I know I’m probably not
going to reach professional Muay Thai level in
four months. And so to waste my energy on
matching a professional athlete is a waste of my
time. I know it’s most important for me to be
capable and look capable and have that kind of
confidence in whatever I’m doing. But it wasn’t
always that way. I’ve spent so many movies
really worrying about stuff that basically never
got used, or putting together a six-minute fight
sequence and then showing it to the director
on the day and he’s like, “I think we only need
15 seconds of that.” And you’re like, “Whaaaaaat?
I’ve wasted all this time!” So I guess I’m more
efficient now.
Pugh: When we were doing that first fight I was
really worried about a roll I had to do, and I was
basically trying to dive in the air while chopping
her legs and then roll. For a normal person that’s
near-impossible. And I remember worrying
about it: “I just don’t know if I’m gonna get that
roll.” Scarlett was like, “Babe, there’s a reason
why you have someone who looks exactly like
you in your corner. She’s an athlete and she
knows how to do it and it’ll look great.”
There’s the stuff you don’t have doubles
for: the acting stuff. Can you talk about
that, and working on this relationship
between these two characters that’s got
to be sisterly, but with an edge to it?
Pugh: It was a complete joy. But also, I really
came on board to a storyline I wasn’t a part of
and needed to be educated on. I know a bit from
watching the previous films, but it was really
awesome to have the woman I was working with

not only be the queen of this land, but she knew
OCTOBER 2020 77
 everything. It was great to come on board
and flesh out this complicated relationship,
where there is so much love for one another
and also so much pain behind that love that it
takes a whole film for them to really open up
to one another.
Johansson: In a lot of ways, the pressure was
not really on me. I had the confidence in Cate
[Shortland], our director, to lead all of us as a
troupe of actors, to guide us and find more depth
in something, or a warmth in something, or
different shades. And so it felt like a small movie
inside of a big movie, I guess. When you watch
it, it feels like that too. It has an intimacy about
it. These relationships are arguably some of the
most complicated that Marvel has ever dealt
with. They’re deep, messy family shit. We got to
do some really rewarding stuff dramatically,
which is what we come to work for.

The movie is a prequel. There’s a big reason

for that, which is that Natasha is now dead
in the MCU. Which was a big shock —
Florence, I presume you’ve seen Endgame?
Pugh: [laughs] I’ve seen it, don’t worry.
Johansson: Spoiler alert!

Scarlett, you said that you’d talked

with Kevin about this movie while filming
Infinity War. At what point did you have
that conversation about Natasha dying
in Endgame?
Johansson: Normally before we’d start any
next chapter it would be normal for Kevin to
call the cast before a script came in and say, “This
is where we are.” It’s funny — because, having
produced this, I see what the process is of the
developmental part of the storytelling. It was
before shooting Infinity War that I was made
aware of what was going to happen in Endgame.
Kevin called me and said, “Look, obviously
we’re at a place where there’s going to be big
sacrifices and big losses.” We had all anticipated
that. So it didn’t seem out of character. It kind
of made sense to me, I guess, even though I was
sad about it. But after I hung up the phone
I remember I thought, “Okay, I guess it’s me.”
And it took me a minute to process it. It was
bittersweet, but it was not a shock.

But you knew you had this in the works, too.

Johansson: I hadn’t had that conversation yet.
I assumed that Infinity War and then what
became Endgame would be it. It wasn’t until we
were shooting Infinity War that we started to
have that conversation about what is it? When
they said, “We want to talk about Black Widow,”
I was like, “What is that? How’s that going to
work?” I never intended on making an origin
story, obviously. I didn’t want to be playing
a 17-year-old version of myself. So I had no idea Right:
how this was going to work exactly, if there was Yelena,
a Time Stone involved or what. defying
gravity in
Florence, have you been eagerly watching style.
the MCU and Scarlett’s progression as

78 OCTOBER 2020

Natasha over the last decade or so?
Pugh: I wasn’t a fanatic. No offence, Scarlett.
I don’t know all the information about all the
characters, but I can recall watching them in
my teen years. I’ve definitely kept up-to-date.
So much so that I was really sad — I remember
the first leaks of Natasha dying and I remember
that it felt very unfair because she was the coolest
woman. I remember being shocked. But it’s funny
to have worked on the film that people have been
cheering for from the sidelines for ages, and to get
to work alongside and watch the Black Widow.
Johansson: Florence says all this stuff, but she
has so much integrity and her character has so
much integrity. She really stands on her own.
The character is so full of life and so grounded
and in herself. They’re all qualities that Florence
Above:
Natasha
Romanoff
— looking
back on ten
years of MCU
adventure.
has in spades. It’s really fresh. It’s such
a fresh, exciting performance to watch.
Both of you entered the MCU at very
different points. Scarlett, it was still a big
risk when you made Iron Man 2, and over
the years your contribution has helped them
get to the point where a film like this is no
longer a risk. And, frankly, the MCU was
a big old swinging sausage-fest for years…
Johansson: A swinging sausage-fest? [laughs]
Yes! And now it’s much more representative,
and much more diverse. So things have
changed in that way.
Johansson: Yeah, thank God. We’re evolving
with the times. What I can say is that, speaking
specifically about this film —
because it’s impossible to
encompass the entire Marvel
Universe and how it’s so much
bigger than we ever could have
imagined it to be — there’s so
much going on. It’s beyond
comprehension. When
I started ten years ago, I didn’t
look at a script. I didn’t know what it was going
to be. I was putting all my faith in [Iron Man 2
director] Jon Favreau. But none of us from that
very beginning could have imagined that we’d
be here, talking about this kind of stuff. I think
this film in particular is very much reflective of
what’s going on in regards to the Time’s Up
movement and the #MeToo movement. It would
be such a miss if we didn’t address that stuff,
if this film didn’t take that head-on. I think,
particularly for Cate, it was so important for her
to make a movie about women who are helping
other women, who lift other women up out of
a very difficult situation. Someone asked me
if Natasha was a feminist. Of course she is, it’s
obvious. It’s kinda an asinine question.
I’ll strike that from my list…
Johansson: [laughs] But this film will hopefully
not just elevate the genre, but will push the
boundary for Marvel yet again and push them
out of their comfort zone in a whole other kind
of a way. It’s a really unique opportunity to
make a film of this scale that has a very moving
and profound and powerful message behind it.
I think we’ve accomplished that.
Pugh: Yeah. And you get that in the first ten
minutes of the film. You’re already struck by
amazing things that wouldn’t have been in
a film, any film, even just five years ago. It was
really cool to watch.
That’s interesting. Like Black Panther, this
would have been a very different movie ten
years ago.
Johansson: I’m sure a Black Widow movie
could have been made ten years ago, but it would
not have been this film, for sure. It would have
been some other thing that probably would
have looked great. [laughs]
And now it’s done.
Pugh: It’s incredible. I have to say: I watched
a cut, I was sat on the sofa and every single time
anything happened that had any action I was
like, “Come on, Natasha! Go! Go!” I was so
excited to be screaming at my own television.
Do you do this for all of Scarlett’s movies?
Say, for Marriage Story? “Go, Scarlett, go!”
Johansson: Oh yeah, she does it for all of them.
She loved the divorce court scene. She was
rooting for me.
Pugh: I’m always rooting for all her characters.
“Get a divorce!”
BLACK WIDOW IS IN CINEMAS FROM 28 OCTOBER
OCTOBER 2020 79
80 MONTH 2020
OCTOBER 2020
 ON T IKTOK ,
A N EV ER-E XPANDIN G
COMM UNIT Y OF
F ILM FANS ARE
BR EATHI NG NE W LI FE
INTO OL D HOL LYWOOD .
WE SPE AK TO TH E
YOUNG WOMEN
TURNI NG RET RO CINEMA
ON ITS H EA D
WORDS CHRISTINA NEWLAND

OCTOBER
MONTH 2020 81

A
A 21-YEAR-OLD theatre major with her
hair in old-school pin curls, known as
@feminist_fatale, hops through the frame
of a video, acting along to a series of 1930s
Warner Bros. bloopers featuring Bette Davis.
A teenager with the username
@Classic.Age makes precocious memes about
her crushes on old movie stars like Gregory
Peck and James Dean.
Gen Z-er @lana40s shares clips of Rita
Hayworth having her make-up done in
Hollywood style in the musical Cover Girl
(1944). In the comments, she discusses
Hayworth’s complicated relationship with
her ethnicity for those who don’t know about
America’s long history of whitewashing its stars.
On smartphones across the world,
a retro revolution is taking place. On TikTok,
of all places, an app primarily known for
its bewildering dance routines, for its
choreographed cats and, thanks to its Chinese
ownership, its riling of Donald Trump, a new
generation of cinephiles is rejuvenating Old
Hollywood, in ways that would baffle its
Golden Age stars. TikTok mostly functions
as a way to create and share short videos:
they can be stitched together, edited,
captioned and soundtracked by creative
users, and young film-lovers have taken that
inspiration to a new level, lip-synching quotes
from Ingrid Bergman and making memes out
of 1950s movies. They are rethinking this
mixed-medium, warp-speed app to express
a fresh and forward-looking love for movies
over 70 years old. What they are doing with
that passion may also have a surprising wisdom
to it: this corner of the internet is challenging
traditional bastions of movie culture.
And it’s a growing phenomenon. The
#oldhollywood hashtag on TikTok has nearly
82 OCTOBER 2020
Left: @pinuppixie
channels Marilyn
Monroe. Below:
@kellykirstein and
cat dress up for
Breakfast At
Tiffany’s; and right,
Audrey Hepburn
in the 1961 film.
32 million views; #classicmovies 4.6 million;
#marilynmonroe has over 360 million.
Some of these users have hundreds of
thousands of followers. They share tips on how
to pin-curl their hair, movie recommendations,
and memes about silent film stars. On the face
of it, TikTok’s #oldhollywood users are a pretty
varied bunch: some live with their parents;
some are married; some are from the LGBTQ+
community; some are Black, some white or
Latino. But they all passionately share content
related to the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Also, they are almost entirely young
women. This helps distinguish the community
from the usual digital spaces focused on Old
Hollywood, which tend to be somewhat creakier,
more concerned with criticism or plumping
for male auteurs than busying themselves with
the perceived frivolity of Marilyn’s make-up
tips or the idea of teenagers playing ‘dress-up’.
But these are the markers of difference for a
younger generation, who hold a deep knowledge
of film history side-by-side with their love
of the decorative elements of it. Many of the
TikTokers we speak to refer to “characters”
and “performances”; as they step into the role
of the old Hollywood icon, they cast aside
notions of the type of person who is allowed
to occupy that role — traditionally white,
straight and slim.
T
THE NATURE OF TikTok’s performance
element — allowing its users to take on roles
and to be anyone they’d like to be — seems to
Getty Images, TikTok,,@gonewithwen, @julkabilska, @kellykirstein, @lola_gbenjo, @pinuppixie
be a big draw. Old Hollywood is being taken
into a brave new world.
Most of these users have a distinctive
appearance, modelled on beauty icons like
Hayworth, Monroe, Dorothy Dandridge,
Katharine Hepburn and the like. And
what they’re doing can be therapeutic.
@pinuppixie, who has a more-than-passing
resemblance to Monroe, explains. “Watching
Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s or
Roman Holiday, costumed by Chanel and
Givenchy, was like looking in on someone
else’s glorious daydream. They don’t make
clothes like that anymore, and even if they did,
growing up in poverty the way I did meant
anything beyond the basics was simply out of
reach. It wasn’t until I went to a local thrift
shop and discovered my first truly vintage
outfit that things changed for me. I tried it on
in the mirror, and it felt like home.”
Whereas online spaces devoted to classic
film have historically been dominated by men,
often with specific ideas of what it means to be
‘serious’ about cinema, these young women
 Right: Humphrey
Bogart and Ingrid
Bergman break
hearts, including their
own, in 1942’s
Casablanca. Below:
@lola_gbenjo and
@gonewithwen recast
the wartime classic.
Bottom: @julkabilska
emulates Audrey.
spit in the eye of that old-fashioned consensus,
brushing off any association of superficiality
with TikTok — or with their ‘girly’ interests.
For them, exaggerated femininity sits next to
posts about Howard Hawks; bubbly lip-synching
is joined with lessons about obscure film noir.
Turner Classic Movies host Alicia Malone
has noticed that these fans often seem devoted to
the lifestyle elements. “Every year I’m pleasantly
surprised to see more and more younger
people attending our annual TCM Classic Film
Festival,” she says. “And what I especially
love is how many young people immerse
themselves in all aspects of old Hollywood —
down to the way they dress, embracing a
vintage 1940s/’50s look. There is a growing
and vibrant vintage-loving community who
skew young and attend all sorts of events.”
@lola_gbenjo is an excellent example of
how the immersion Malone describes works
on TikTok. The Georgia transplant is originally
from Nigeria, with some 58,000 followers. She
sometimes uses TikTok duets, where you can
pair off in a split-screen to ‘interact’ with
another user. In one, she looks up from under
a fan of eyelashes, mouthing Ingrid Bergman’s
famous last lines in Casablanca (1942), along
with a dapper gentleman standing in for
Humphrey Bogart. She’s essentially recasting
Casablanca with Black stars. In others, she
spouts sassy Mae West one-liners and I Love
Lucy quips wearing form-fitting, strapless
evening gowns. “I can’t tell you how many of
my videos on TikTok I know I can never post on
Instagram because of fear of being judged. I play
a lot of non-Black characters and on TikTok,
no-one in the vintage community will say, ‘Lucy
[from I Love Lucy] wasn’t Black, so you can’t
play her.’ It’s very inclusive and I love that.”
@TheAudreyLove, a Black New Yorker in
her late twenties, says she’s “been seeing more
women of colour loving themselves and finding
other like-minded people” on TikTok. With
her pierced nose, set hair and many tattoos,
she offers an alternative vision of the past that
seems like a perfect embodiment of the ways
the app’s community are combining the old
and new to end up with something fresh.
Another user, @Iridessence_, is a
twentysomething from Chicago. She has
nearly 40,000 followers, and although her
reference points include Monroe, she also
works from the template of the great Black
starlet Dorothy Dandridge. As a plus-size
Black woman, @Iridessence_’s embodiment of
a lily-white beauty icon like Monroe is in itself
fascinating. “I’m focused on creating the
representation I want to see in visual culture,
however I can,” she says.
She admits the overwhelmingly white
narratives of Old Hollywood make it difficult
for her to always enjoy them. “So many race
films [early 20th-century films made for Black
audiences with Black casts] were lost. Many of
the existing representations of Black or brown
actors are... unfortunate, leaving only a few
cinematic accounts that actually focus on
Black stories, instead of giving a few minutes
of screen time to Black people.” She names
a few she appreciates: Reet, Petite And Gone
U
(1947), Stormy Weather (1943), Cabin In
OCTOBER 2020 83
 The Sky (1943), and Carmen Jones (1954) among
them. Her appreciation of the pioneering
Black stars of the past, from Lena Horne to
Harry Belafonte, shows her users a throughline
of African-American film history.
T
THIS INCLUSIVITY MEANS that the films and
figures being celebrated are not always from
the traditional white male canon — and this
community is incredibly well-versed. “Have
you heard of a Japanese-American star named
Sessue Hayakawa? He was one of the biggest
stars in the USA in the late 1910s and early
1920s,” a teenage user offers in her comments.
Another has created a video devoted to the
first Dominican actress in Hollywood, Maria
Montez. @feminist_fatale is keen to recommend
The Children’s Hour (1961), a William Wyler
film starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley
MacLaine which was one of the first mainstream
Hollywood movies to deal with lesbianism.
“It’s Audrey Hepburn. In the ’60s. Why
isn’t this film better known?” she asks. “Because
it’s not about cis straight men.” She is a lesbian
and talks about Wyler’s film with the same
passion as she does Todd Haynes’ modern classic
Carol. Another she recommends is Stage Door
(1937), starring Ginger Rogers and Katharine
Hepburn. “It’s a woman-centric comedy about
dancers living in a boarding house during the
Great Depression. Here are two humongous
stars, and I wondered why it wasn’t talked about,
with these women both having top billing. And
I realised, it’s probably because it’s a woman-
centric movie. No-one gets the girl at the end.
There are a lot of complex women characters in
Old Hollywood, and many are more interesting
and progressive than people might think.”
@Iridessence_ doesn’t limit her TikTok
to Old Hollywood or film-related content, but
she is a fan. “I’ve used a couple of tracks from
Marilyn Monroe movies like Some Like It Hot
and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” she says. “Also,
my love for mid-century Westerns came out in
one of my less popular shorts.” @Lana40s says
she loves “to binge documentaries and podcasts
on my favourite stars, especially Hedy Lamarr
and Rita Hayworth, but also Carole Landis.”
On her social media, she shares lists of
recommended films where glamour is a central
84 OCTOBER 2020
focus, from the silent era to the late 1940s.
@PinUpPixie further explains how there
is an appealing balance between power and
vulnerability in performances from women like
Monroe, Anita Ekberg and Norma Shearer.
“When I look at the iconic performances in
Some Like It Hot or La Dolce Vita or The
Women,” she says, “what strikes me most is
the vulnerability that these powerful women
brought to their roles, and how their
audiences recognised it and responded to it. It
takes some courage to expose yourself when
the societal norms trend toward perfection.
That’s what I try to bring to TikTok.”
Given the progressiveness of its users, it
figures that the unofficial mission statement
for #oldhollywood TikTok is, “Vintage vibes,
not vintage values,” as @feminist_fatale
puts it. Many users are outspoken against
transphobia, racism and sexism, and active
supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement.
A proud member of the LGBTQ+ community,
@lana40s likes to “make people aware of
LGBTQ stories, like those of Greta Garbo and
Marlene Dietrich, or people who experienced
horrible exploitation like Judy Garland. I think
it’s important for everyone to know the good,
bad and the ugly about what we consider to be
Far left:
@msmaverickmuse as
Rita Hayworth. Left:
The star herself in
Gilda (1946). Above:
@lana40s’ take on
Lana Turner. Right:
Dorothy Dandridge, the
first Black woman to
be nominated for a Best
Actress Oscar. Far
right: @theothersideof
laughter as Lucille
Ball, and below, the
actor in 1955.
the Golden Age; how far we’ve come; and
sometimes, how we have a long way to go.”
User @MsMaverickMuse explains:
“Although the vintage community loves the
past, many of us are progressive and want to
impact real change. We are living in a new
world, and as a community that advocates for
nostalgia and preserving the past, we realise
the impact of maintaining outdated thoughts,
patterns and beliefs.”
S
SOME OF THE most exciting TikTokers in
the #oldhollywood community are doing just
this: putting a new spin on films that are almost
a century old. That might be @pinuppixie
sharing her vulnerabilities along with her
beauty tips, or @Iridessence_ subverting white
supremacist and fatphobic beauty standards
through reimagining the sirens of the past. By
displaying and discussing their own bodies,
sexuality, race, and mental-health backgrounds
— and sharing their love of classic film through
self-expression — they offer their own kind of
representation in response to a Hollywood of
the past which marginalised so many.

In a media landscape increasingly fraught
by arguments about how to contextualise
‘problematic’ older films, this attitude of equal
parts love and awareness is reconciliatory —
and feels productive. Instead of focusing on the
usual ‘canon’ films, many of these young women
look beyond the received wisdom, to films
which address their lives and representation
on screen. This can show a wide audience of
teenagers that film history is not a monolith, or
some sort of inflexible set of conservative ideas.
In addition, the users recasting, cutting,
and playing with clips from classic film make
it clear that they are engaging and interacting
with old cinema in a brand-new way. Mid-20th-
century movies are brought squarely into
@lana40s, @msmaverickmus,
2020 with contemporary music or the sight
@sam.williams1, @willsmith
@theothersideoflaughter,
of a face-piercing. The nature of the medium
itself is breaking down old barriers, and
blowing the dust off film history. TikTok may
not be seen as the reserve of ‘serious’ movie
scholarship, but some of its users are doing
classic film an enormous service. And they’re
having a lot of fun while they do it.
They’ve made it in
Hollywood but these young
bucks are finding new fame
as TikTok stars
JUDI DENCH
There are two key things to know
about Dame Judi’s time on TikTok.
First, her grandson looks just like
Ed Sheeran, making this a stage for
(almost) two stars to share. Second,
Dench isn’t just standing around
— she’ll perform these dance
routines better than anyone. This
is why she’s the best of the best.
ALFONSO CUARÓN
The Gravity director was just trying to have
his breakfast, but his daughter Tess had
other ideas. There’s a strange sense of calm
emanating from the Cuarón family’s clip, in
which Tess commits to one of the more
complex set of moves out there, and Alfonso
sits, supportively, with a head-bob or two —
without ever putting down his spoon.
LAURA DERN
She wasn’t meant to be on TikTok. But as
her daughter Jaya Harper danced to Doja
Cat’s ‘Say So’ in her kitchen, Laura Dern
shoved the kid aside, jumping into frame to
gyrate like nobody was watching. Many,
many people have watched it.
WILL SMITH
“Man, I miss James Corden,” Will
Smith wrote on his frankly prolific
TikTok account, accompanied by
a video of him hugging a virtual
teddy bear in a car and singing
Aladdin’s ‘A Whole New World’.
These are unbelievable sights,
with indescribable feelings. A new
fantastic point of view.
NICOLAS WINDING REFN
The man we have to thank for some very
dark arthouse thrillers is making the most of
his time away from cinemas, as his daughters
rope him into various routines. But there’s
no reluctance here: the filmmaker follows in
their footsteps, pointing fingers, shaking
hips, making screen history again.
ELLA KEMP
OCTOBER 2020 85
 I M M A C U L AT E

PERCEP TION
A L L - S E E I N G, M AG N I F I C E N T LY M OUSTAC H I O E D
DET E CTIVE HERCULE P O IROT I S BACK TO I N V EST IGATE
A DEAT H ON T HE N IL E . D IRE CTOR K EN N ET H B RA N AGH
A N D HIS AL L- STA R CAST T E LL US HOW T H EY’R E
H E AT I N G U P T H E M U R D E R - M YST E RY M OV I E
WORDS ALEX GODFREY

86 MONTH 2020
OCTOBER 2020
OCTOBER
MONTH 2020 87
 WE
BEGIN,
OF
COURSE,
WITH
THE
MOUSTACHE.
THERE’S NO GETTING around it. Even if you
could get around it, it would take some time.
In her books, Agatha Christie variously
described Belgian detective Hercule Poirot’s
facial furniture as gigantic, amazing, and just
plain enormous. In 2017’s Murder On The Orient
Express, Kenneth Branagh’s debut outing as
Poirot, it was overwhelming, and in sequel Death
On The Nile, it is back with a vengeance. Russell
Brand, who plays Dr Bessner, admired it on the
set “the way one might a follicular mandala”,
he tells Empire. “I don’t know how you would
endeavour to construe such an extraordinary
moustache. On close inspection it seems to be
covering five or six mouths. It’s like an Escher
drawing it’s an endless moustache, spiralling
off into the infinite. An incredible thing. It’s
beyond the confines of nature, certainly.”
Emma Mackey, who plays Jacqueline de
Bellefort, agrees that it’s “quite a piece”, even
though, she notes, Branagh “groomed it slightly
for this one.” The trim is hardly noticeable. “It’s
not quite as big,” confirms Branagh. “And there’s
a reason for that, to be revealed during the course
of the movie. Poirot’s complex love life and
moustache trajectory is part of the mystery
unveiled by Death On The Nile.”
By all accounts, Death On The Nile, while
following a huge success — Murder On The Orient
Express cost $55 million and made $353 million
88 OCTOBER 2020
worldwide — is condensing things in other ways
too, shrinking the (mostly new) ensemble a little,
zeroing in on an emotional core. This one, says
Branagh, goes to “a deeper, darker place”, in line
with the novel where, he says, Christie herself
“discovered something different through
exploring the corrosive power of lust.” Things
are about to get hairy.
DISCUSSING A SEQUEL with Branagh as they
shot Orient Express, screenwriter Michael Green
suggested the director re-read Death On The
Nile, as it was such a personal work from Christie.
Branagh, a veritable Christie scholar, knew this.
“Having really enjoyed biographies of Christie
that I’d read in the prep for Orient, I knew that
the relationship with her first husband and the
break-up of that marriage was very painful to
her,” he says. She described Death On The Nile,
says Branagh, “as having a feel of reality. She
seems to characterise it as something that
comes from a raw place.” This piqued Branagh’s
interest. The first film was a story of mass
revenge. This one would be personal.
Death On The Nile centres around a love
triangle between Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer),
his former fiancée Jacqueline de Bellefort (Emma
Mackey) and his new wife Linnet Ridgeway (Gal
Gadot). “Unquestionably, sex and death are
absolutely the centre of it,” says Branagh. Indeed,
aboard the luxury steamer the Karnak, murder
comes quickly. These are evergreen themes. And
while Branagh’s film is set in 1937, the year the
book was published, he and Green have refreshed
it. In the book, Russell Brand’s Dr Bessner is an
Austrian physician. “I’m not Austrian in this film,”
he laughs, leaning into the, well, Russell Brand
of it all. “In this version, Dr Bessner becomes
an Essex-born rock star. No, he’s still a doctor.
But English.”
Other changes are more pronounced.
Salome Otterbourne, in the book a romance
novelist, is now a jazz/blues/gospel singer,
played by Sophie Okonedo, with Letitia Wright
as her daughter Rosalie. So they become
“characters from showbiz as opposed to the
fringes of romantic literature,” says Branagh.
Wright dug into it. “I loved that Rosalie was just
so ambitious,” she says. “And also, as a young
Black woman, being able to be that ambitious
in that time period — she’s making money,
she’s independent, she’s really educated — it’s
refreshing to play a young woman like that.”
Making that change, says Branagh, “kept us
in a world that was more nightclubby, a little
rough around the edges, a little more dangerous.”
This speaks to his broader approach. “We stayed
away from a milder, more reserved, more
 superficially sophisticated cocktail language
and music of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, and
took it to a seamier and more soulful setting. For
me the inspirations were noir classics, Dial M
Clockwise For Murder, Double Indemnity… and latter-day
from top left: pictures, Body Heat, even Fatal Attraction. These
Enter Poirot hot, lusty atmospheres. People in the grip of
(Kenneth extreme passions do do dangerous things.”
Branagh); On set of the Karnak in October 2019, Empire
Newly-weds sits in an elaborate drawing room to discuss such
Simon (Armie matters with Hammer and Gadot, both sickeningly
Hammer) and glamorous, dressed to party like it’s, well, 1937.
Linnet (Gal Hammer, not breaking his character’s upper-class
Gadot); Things English accent throughout our chat, describes
get steamy for Simon as a “sugar baby”. His new wife Linnet, a
Simon and ex wealthy socialite, is “entitled and paranoid”, says
Jackie (Emma Gadot. Despite the era, what they’re exploring,
Mackey); Gadot she explains, is as contemporary as ever: “Love,
and Branagh on envy, jealousy. Passion. Lust. Greed.” Hammer
set; Euphemia nods. “All the fun seven deadly sins,” he smiles.
(Annette Bening) Emma Mackey, meanwhile, says she and
and Bouc (Tom Branagh worked intensely to make Jackie,
Bateman). Simon’s slighted ex, fully rounded. “We wanted
to play with her sensuality, play with her wit
and her darkness, without making her this
hysterical English rose who’s sad all the time.
Jackie is vulnerable and confused, and extremely
lonely. It was important to do all of that and
make her strong and not just passive.”
Even Bouc, Poirot’s trusty assistant, has
more to explore. Bouc gets involved with Rosalie,
but the story also investigates more platonic
endeavours. “The film’s about the different forms
of love, and the friendship being love as well,”
says Tom Bateman, reprising the role of Bouc.
“Poirot and Bouc love each other very much. And
the film takes Poirot’s backstory further. What
is the cost of being this great detective, who’s
outside of the world? Do you ever get to love,
do you get to have a life? It really mines that.”
Indeed, Death On The Nile will unpack
Poirot. And there’s a lot of baggage.

THE DIRECTOR OF 2011’s Thor has been, it

appears, keeping a keen eye on the MCU, for in
Death On The Nile we go back to World War I,
U
on the bridges and in the trenches, meeting

OCTOBER 2020 89
 a much younger Poirot — played by a 22-year-old
actor named Kenneth Branagh. “The miracles of
modern VFX have worked their magic,” he grins
of the de-ageing this August, the film almost
finished. For reference, the crew looked at some
TV films in which a smouldering Branagh starred
in 1983: To The Lighthouse and The Boy In
The Bush. “There was a whole series of things
I’d forgotten I had, like cheekbones,” he laughs,
looking back. “They went missing a short while
after that. A few pies later, they were gone.”
In Death On The Nile, then, we meet Poirot
as a soldier. “We get a chance to see not only
what forged Poirot in the roughty-toughty world
that people might not imagine him to have
engaged with, that is action, and guns, and
fighting and all of that, but also in the affairs of
the heart,” says Branagh. Murder On The Orient
Express hinted at a seismic romance he had in
the past, and Nile’s flashback delves deeper,
enhancing his emotional empathy with what’s
occurring in Egypt.
The film also continues to explore Poirot’s
“OCD obsessions, which really do go to an

Left, top to extreme place,” says Branagh, who seems

bottom: The to have a particular affinity with him there.
passengers of Branagh tasked his actors with different levels
the Karnak head of research. Gadot was given some books
ashore; Marie detailing how 1930s society women carried
Van Schuyler themselves. “Did you read them?” asks Hammer
(Jennifer on set. “I… I…” she stumbles. He cracks up.
Saunders) and “I scrolled through,” she says.
Mrs Bowers “I conducted some very minor surgeries,”
(Dawn French); says Russell Brand, prepping to play a doctor.
Russell Brand’s “Some cardiovascular work. I did some dialysis.”
dapper Dr He jests. He did, though, look “at the precursors
Bessner. of Médecins Sans Frontières. I made sure
I knew what I was talking about for the stuff
that was gonna be on camera. I’m very confident
that I will come up with a vaccine for Covid, is
the short answer.”
Emma Mackey, though, had to undertake
a more exacting process. “Ken wrote this
100-question questionnaire for my character,
that I had to answer,” she says. “About her, and
her feelings and what she spent her days doing
when she’s in Egypt, and how she had the money
to get there. The preparation is rigorous. He’s a
perfectionist.” Branagh did that with “a number
of people”, he says, mostly to overcome any
over-familiarity they might have had with the
Christie environs: “a certain kind of English
convention”, which is not what he wanted. He
put himself through the same process, and wrote
letters from Poirot, none of which would appear
in the film at all.
So there is more than a whiff of Poirot
about Branagh’s approach. Indeed, on set, the
boundaries could blur. “Poirot is watching
us at all times,” says Bateman, “and everyone’s

90 OCTOBER 2020

aware that they’re being watched by him, and
we’re trying to please him. That works with
him being the director, too: you’ll be doing
a scene with him and you’ll be thinking, ‘God,
what’s he thinking?’”
Branagh is not unaware of the overlap.
“I basically believe that the greatest art is
provided by the accumulation and practice of
the greatest amount of technique, in order to
leap into the greatest level of spontaneity and
inspiration you can,” he says, batting it off
somewhat. But not entirely. “My experience is
that you want your 10,000 flying hours acquired
so that there might be some perfect flight ahead
of you, but it’s one in which you don’t think
about any of that experience. So my Poirotian
delving into preparation and detail is because
I wanna try and fly.”
Or, at least, sail. And to further ensure his
cast felt like they were on a luxury steamer,
he built one.
“DON’T TOUCH THE nuts,” says Branagh.
“They’ve been there for weeks.”
Back in October 2019, on set of the Karnak,
Empire and Branagh sit in plush armchairs,
beside a beautiful backgammon table and
indeed a dish of nuts, which we do not touch.
It’s 22 days into a 57-day shoot, which has been
happening here on this real but fake boat in
Longcross Studios, Chertsey (near Thorpe
Park, if that helps). It’s an incredible creation,
227 feet long, every one of those feet looking
authentic, if you ignore the blinding bright
blue screen that surrounds it. Branagh filmed
the cast as they saw the boat for the first
time, all agape.
“The first time you see this boat you’re like,
‘What the fuck?’” says Hammer. “It’s really dope,”
says Wright. “I came onto the boat and I said,
‘Wow, Ken. It’s actually a boat.’ And he was just
like, ‘I said a boat. You have a boat.’” Filming
everybody’s reactions that day was “the smartest
thing we ever did,” says Branagh. “That’s all in
the movie, and it’s really touching.” Annette
Bening, who plays Bouc’s mother Euphemia —
“a bohemian, aristocratic woman with a troubled
romantic past”, created specifically for this film
— can’t get over it. “This is by far the most elegant,
detailed set that I’ve ever been on,” she says. “It’s
like going to a cocktail party every day, except
very early in the morning and without alcohol.”
Empire is given the tour. Simon and Linnet’s
exquisite honeymoon suite with its Art Deco
skylight. Poirot’s cabin, where suitcases are
piled up in order of size, and socks are lined up
immaculately. The paddle wheel, where, we’re
told, a corpse is found. Which is nice. We watch
some filming, which involves Mackey’s Jackie
provoking her ex-fiancé’s new wife. “We’ve
already made love twice,” says Gadot’s Linnet
in response. “Three,” mouths Hammer’s Simon.
It certainly feels like the action on this
steamer will be… well, yes, steamier than the
shenanigans of Murder On The Orient Express.
“That film, everyone was strangers,” says
Bateman. “This is more complicated. It’s moving
in a different direction. It’s got more passion.”
Branagh, meanwhile, has his own stakes. Very
much not on a boat this August, he is gearing up
for the film’s release. Much has changed since
Murder On The Orient Express. Yes, there’s been
a global pandemic, but more importantly, Knives
Out was released. There, Rian Johnson, another
Agatha Christie stan, turned the whodunnit on
its head while very much honouring the form.
Death On The Nile had just finished filming when
Left to right: Is
Rosalie leading
us all on a merry
dance?; Branagh
and crew on set.
Knives Out arrived last November, enjoying
similar box-office success. Branagh, unprompted,
brings it up, calling it a “brilliant picture”.
How did he feel about the way Knives Out
moved things on? “It was so much its own thing,
so beautifully integrated into its own style,” he
says, clearly not viewing it as direct competition.
“It had a different way of treating the format that
was delicious and often very funny and often
cynical, but also had its own heart. I felt that it
allowed us to be a little more serious, dare I say
it. Although I hope we deliver fun and humour.”
Meanwhile, he is following his own film, this
summer’s fantasy adventure Artemis Fowl, which
fell, well, foul of Covid and landed on Disney+, to
mixed responses. He was sanguine about it, not
least because Death On The Nile was on the way.
“It’s always nice to know that life is ongoing and
you don’t bank on anything particularly,” he says.
“I’ve found that with pictures that appear not to
have worked, or have worked, there’s a beautiful
inconsistency. Time tells, and the success of a
picture can arrive in a different kind of form. So
you roll with the punches, you roll with successes.
Keeping on keeping on is one key to it.”
He does seem, though, enormously invested
in Death On The Nile. Christie’s personal story
chimes for him too. “You can’t work in material
like this where you don’t, just as a matter of
course, draw on the way in which the heart is
battered, or the way in which the soul is betrayed
by the lusts of the body,” he says. “Or on mistakes
made in the grip of passion, or what you might
come to regard as mistakes, but at the time
seemed to be the natural expression of some
intense feeling. That is territory that everyone
with a beating heart has been down. Stories like
this express that moment of understanding:
‘There for the grace of God go I.’”
It may not be attempting to subvert the form,
but Death On The Nile could be quite the trip.
DEATH ON THE NILE IS IN CINEMAS THIS OCTOBER
OCTOBER 2020 91
 NEARLY 50 YEARS AFTER ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S
NEST , LOBOTOMY FAN NURSE RATCHED IS BACK, IN A
BERSERK NEW TV SHOW. WE BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
WITH ITS CAST AND CREW, AND GET INTO RATCHED’S
VERY, VERY GORY DETAILS…
WORDS ELLEN E JONES

92 OCTOBER 2020
OCTOBER 2020 93
 IN 1976, LOUISE FLETCHER SKIPPED UP TO
the stage at the 48th Academy Awards to collect her Oscar for
Best Actress. Tanned and smiling, with the cape sleeves of her
chiffon dress floating behind her, she was every bit the antithesis
of the iconic harridan she’d played in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s
Nest, Miloš Forman’s enthralling adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel
about a psychiatric hospital. “Well, it looks like you all hated me
so much that you’ve given me this award for it,” she said as she
reached the lectern, to appreciative chuckles from an audience
which included her co-star Jack Nicholson and the film’s producer,
Michael Douglas, lounging with the confidence of a newly minted
mogul. “I’m loving every minute of it,” continued Fletcher. “All
I can say is, I’ve loved being hated by you.”
And hate her we did. As the infuriatingly calm antagonist
of Nicholson’s irresistibly free-wheeling McMurphy, Nurse
Ratched seemed to embody everything that was unfeeling and
obstructive about authority, from the government and the medical
establishment right down to one’s own overbearing mother. Such
was the frenzied loathing inspired by this character, Fletcher later
recalled audience members at a Chicago screening leaping to their
feet to shout, “Kill her!” as McMurphy throttled Nurse Ratched
in the film’s climatic scene. Fletcher’s Oscar was one among
Cuckoo’s Nest’s haul of five — but she was the one who’d secured
her place in cinema history. Not to mention second place (after
Hannibal Lecter) on Empire’s Top 50 Greatest Villains list.
Nearly half a century on, and it’s still Nurse Ratched who
94 OCTOBER 2020
looms largest in our collective psyches. She’s now the star of her
own TV series, Ratched, with Sarah Paulson in the title role. And if
you thought Ratched was a force in the film… well, brace yourself.
Clockwise from
above: Sarah
Paulson (shown
here comforting
orderly Huck
RATCHED IS THE latest product of Netflix’s $300 million, 2018 Finnigan, played
development deal with Ryan Murphy, the showrunner behind by Charlie
such era-defining, boundary-pushing series as Glee, American Carver) stars
Horror Story and Pose. The action begins in 1947 — 16 years before as the titular
Randle Patrick McMurphy was committed to state care — as character;
Mildred Ratched applies for a nursing position at Lucia State Eccentric heiress
Hospital. The spectacular Pacific coastal backdrop is the same one Lenore Osgood
recently made recognisable by Big Little Lies, but those tasteful (Sharon Stone)
tones have here been replaced by a combination of saturated with her son
colour and lurid melodrama, unmistakably the work of Murphy Henry (Brandon
and his frequent collaborator, writer/producer Ian Brennan. Flynn); The
“I was in the bathroom peeing and I read on my phone that hospital’s
Ryan was doing a show about Nurse Ratched,” says Brennan. “I was horrifying
like, ‘That sonovabitch! That’s such a great idea!’” Brennan ended techniques;
up exec-producing, as well as writing six of eight episodes, but the Paulson and the
idea actually originated in a spec script by straight-out-of-film-school crew on set.
Evan Romansky. This found its way to Murphy and from there,
negotiations began with the rights holder: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s
Nest producer Michael Douglas. The rights had been in his family ever
since his father Kirk snapped them up after reading a galley proof of
Kesey’s novel. Douglas Sr starred as McMurphy in the 1963 Broadway
play and had intended to reprise the role on screen, but after ten
years of crossed wires and false starts, he eventually handed over
to his 29-year-old son (who finally ended up only producing).
Perhaps this inter-generational development delay worked
in Ratched’s favour, because Michael Douglas apparently gave his
blessing shortly after reading the first script. However, all involved
seem to agree that Ratched’s true genesis wasn’t so much in the
book, or the film, but as a twinkle — or rather lack thereof — in
Louise Fletcher’s eye. “That performance is so masterful and
so commanding, partly because it’s kind of a tabula rasa,” says
Brennan. “She’s so enigmatic and so contained. The existential
question that Louise Fletcher’s performance provides is, like,
‘Where the fuck did this woman come from?’”
Answering that question sets up exactly the kind of history-
hopping, genre-bending, misfit-centring carnival that Murphy and
Brennan relish. Ratched is a show that’s set in the late ’40s, but
eschews noir-ish monochrome for ’50s Technicolor, nods to the
psychedelic ’60s while winking at the Nixon-era backlash, and
somehow captures the mood of the present moment, all at once.
Knowing this, the CV of Sex And The City star Cynthia Nixon,
who plays Gwendolyn Briggs, the state governor’s press secretary
and Mildred’s occasional dinner companion, seems more than
coincidental. As well as running for New York Governor herself in
2018, Nixon has fond memories of appearing in Miloš Forman’s
second Oscar-winning film, Amadeus, as a teenager: “Miloš was
just one of my favourites, because he gave me so much direction
and I really loved that.” What would he have made of Ratched?
“I think he would have loved it! I don’t know that he would have
recognised it as in any way connected to his film, because it’s so
different in style — his is so grainy and gritty, and this is like
Technicolor horror — but I think he would have been intrigued!”
Take the lobotomy, for instance. This now-discredited
operation to sever connections in the frontal lobe is a much-
dreaded fate in Cuckoo’s Nest, but one that takes place off-screen,
with only the tragic effect on the patient left to be observed. In
Ratched’s world of medically sanctioned ultraviolence, it’s a
baroque set-piece performance, always accompanied by an awful
crack-and-squelch sound. Even apparently soothing therapies,
like a nice hot bath or a chat about one’s childhood, tend to result
in disfigurement or dismemberment. And if the doctor offers you
a pharmaceutical cure to your troubles, remember: just say no.
Not everybody approves of the riotous way that Murphy and
Brennan re-contextualise cinema history, however. Most recently
their Netflix series Hollywood was criticised for its highly polished
take on the Golden Era. Brennan is politely unrepentant: “I had
a professor in college whose motto was pecca fortiter, Latin for ‘sin
boldly’, and I think that’s it. With something as iconic as this, you
have to dive in headfirst.”
That’s not to say that Ratched triumphantly chucks reverence
out the window, like Chief Bromden with a hydrotherapy fountain.
Respect for Forman’s film runs through Paulson’s performance,
though ultimately, she decided not to contact Louise Fletcher
directly. “But I did think about her every day,” she says. “It couldn’t
have been harder to step into the shoes of someone who achieved,
for all intents and purposes, performance perfection, but the image
I have of her is super-erect posture and I just kept thinking of
Louise Fletcher being my spine, in terms of Ratched. That Louise’s
performance would just keep me standing tall, y’know?”

SO MUCH HAS changed in the world since 1975, it would be

impossible to do a straightforward ‘purists’ prequel to the film,
even if that had been the Ratched team’s intention. It tells us
something about the changing times that the only significant
female character in the film is the emotionless embodiment
of an inhumane system, whereas in the new show Nurse Ratched
is not only promoted to protagonist, but surrounded by other
U
complicated female characters.

OCTOBER 2020 95
 “I think the part of it that screams most loudly around
a feminist component,” says Paulson, “is Ryan’s insistence that
I have a lot of power on the show; that I be an executive producer
and own a percentage.” No doubt she’s earned it. Paulson first
worked with Murphy on American Horror Story in 2011 and she’s
since become his unrivalled MVP, appearing in eight subsequent
seasons and winning the Emmy for her image-rehabilitating
portrayal of prosecutor Marcia Clark in The People v. O.J. Simpson.
“It does create a little bit of an issue, because when I go to any
other set, I’m like [she wrinkles her nose in confusion and distaste],
‘What’s this now? You don’t want me to say what I think? Okay…
well, I’m not used to that!” So I’ve become a little bit… what’s the
word?” Institutionalised? “I’m institutionalised! But I’m in the
really good institution, where it’s fun.”
With Murphy’s confidence in her as motivation, rewatching
Cuckoo’s Nest in preparation felt very different from the first time
around: “Instead of thinking of [Nurse Ratched] as evil, I thought
of it as very sad that she was in an environment where she couldn’t
function more as an individual. She had to be subservient to the
hierarchy of the hospital… So I didn’t see her as a villain at all —
I saw her as a limited woman, who was limited by her environment.”
By her environment, and also by her pantyhose. Even by
the extravagant standards of design team Judy Becker and Lou
Eyrich, Ratched’s post-war-era detailing is flawless; right down
to the period-specific hosiery. “No pun intended,” says Paulson
with the kind of grin that suggests pun absolutely is intended,
“but I felt like it ratcheted up a notch. Sometimes a set becomes so
96 OCTOBER 2020
perfect that it doesn’t look real. This set, they built with a floor Clockwise
that had uneven spots, like an old hospital, and you could feel from above:
them when you were walking on it. I truly felt like I was in a time Nurse Ratched
capsule. It did so much of the work for me.” dines with
With the external stuff so ably taken care of, Paulson felt like Gwendolyn
she could dig deeper into the dark heart of Nurse Ratched. “I was Briggs (Cynthia
really interested in, ‘Could I get beyond the iconic nature of the Nixon); Lenore
role?’ When you see this series, without giving too much away, you Osgood with
know she’s really looking for a place to belong, and her desire to trusty pet
have that means she’s willing to do some morally questionable capuchin;
things. I think it’s interesting to explore someone’s loneliness Charlotte
through the lens of villainy. And not in a way to absolve her, or to Wells (Sophie
have people necessarily think differently about her, but I do believe Okonedo) admits
our job as actors and storytellers is to reveal some parts of human herself to the
experience that may be foreign to those watching. So I don’t see hospital under
her as a monster. I see her as probably… a selfish individual.” the care of
Has Ratched gone soft? Well, no — but Paulson’s incarnation Dr Richard
does reveal how softness, or some twisted pastiche of it, is the Hanover (Jon
weapon she wields most mercilessly. Witness all those occasions Jon Briones);
in which the kindly-seeming nurse invites the confidence of some Paulson and
poor sap, only to snap back with a sadistically harsh judgement. Corey Stoll, who
The click-click-click of sensible block heels down a spotless hospital plays Charles
corridor still warns patients of some unspeakable terror to come. Wainwright,
Among the wary newcomers is British actor Sophie Okonedo. on set.
“I was very struck, when I arrived, by how everything looked as it
is on camera,” says Okonedo. “Normally the sofas will look good,
but they’ll feel a bit shitty. Here, everything is just sumptuous. If
it’s velvet, it’s the best velvet, and the office was bigger than you
could ever imagine. So I was given a very big stage to work on;
I just had to not hold back.”
And she really doesn’t. That office belongs to the hospital’s
head and Nurse Ratched’s boss Dr Richard Hanover (Jon Jon
Briones) and it’s the setting of the first weighty scene for Okonedo’s
character Charlotte. Or, more precisely, characters. The diagnostic
interview has barely got underway before Charlotte begins cycling
through all four of her personalities and Dr Hanover is left
speechless. The influence of 1940s melodrama on Ratched’s tone
means that, as Brennan puts it, “You do get to chew a little bit of
scenery.” Okonedo loved every minute. “Ryan said, ‘I’m going to give
you something that’s going to really suit your acting,’ and he did.”
Sharon Stone, meanwhile, as Lenore Osgood, a wealthy
eccentric who never goes anywhere without her capuchin monkey
pal Petunia, is as fierce as you might expect. And it turned out
Stone and her cast-mate had some history. According to Brennan,
when she arrived on set, she took one look and said: “‘Oh yes, I’ve
actually worked with Peaches before’ — which was unexpected,
and hilarious.” Nurse Ratched’s clash-of-the-Titans tête-à-têtes with
Miss Osgood are among the show’s most purely enjoyable scenes,
and not least because Lenore Osgood is completely unhinged. Then
again, almost everyone in Ratched is, to varying degrees, disturbed.

AS THE SERIES expands beyond the walls of Lucia State Hospital,

it becomes clear that the lunatics aren’t just running the asylum.
They’re gaining power all over the state of California and may
soon be running for national office.
If there’s anyone who does seems to have it together, it’s
Nixon’s character, Gwendolyn. The terrible irony being that, as
a gay woman in 1940s America, she’s also in constant danger of
being committed. “It’s very interesting to play someone that’s not
at odds with themselves,” says Nixon. “She just has these different
parts of her personality — the professional part, the sex part, the
love part — and she knows that integrating them is key. I think
a lot of other characters, including Mildred, feel these separate
parts of themselves must be squelched down at any cost.”
Such psychological insights help humanise the previously
inscrutable character of Nurse Ratched, but do they make her
any less terrifying? Can it absolve her of evil-doing, when she’s
the instigator of so much barbaric torture masquerading as
‘treatment’? This period in psychiatric medicine is the source
of all Ratched’s real horror, but the writers were careful to avoid
slipping into caricature that would further stigmatise mental
illness. “This was never going to be a show about somebody
stuck in a dungeon muttering to themselves,” says Brennan. “If
we’re gonna get really scary, let’s get scary with how these people
are actually suffering and the truth that they didn’t encounter
much effective treatment, and often still don’t. It was really
rudimental, like only having a hammer, so everything looks like
a nail.” (As a warning to squeamish viewers, in Ratched, that
metaphorical hammer is often also an actual hammer.)
The show’s exploration of how madness is constructed by
society to keep out the undesirables is straight out of One Flew
Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, both book and film. But it also could
have been a Ryan Murphy original, so in keeping is it with his
ongoing mission to bring marginalised people back to the story’s
centre; be they Glee club kids, transgender pioneers, or the
misunderstood villains of Academy Award-winning movies.
So while there will always be those who question the necessity
of reboots, prequels and sequels — especially when the original
is a classic — in this case, the proof is in the patient’s notes. If you
already thought Nurse Ratched was scary, just wait until you
really get to know her.

RATCHED IS ON NETFLIX FROM 18 SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER 2020 97
98 OCTOBER 2020
OCTOBER 2020 99
 O FORCE ON Earth has
ever been able to stop
Roger Corman. From the
moment he bankrolled
his first film, Monster
From The Ocean Floor,
back in 1954, he has worked at a velocity that
makes even Ben Wheatley look like Stanley
Kubrick. Churning out one low-budget genre
flick after another, he’s given the world films
with such glorious titles as The Beast With
A Million Eyes, Teenage Cave Man and Attack
Of The Crab Monsters. Along the way there have
been clashes with Hells Angels, fights with
studios, death threats from white supremacists,
and one occasion where he had to defuse an
argument between a gun-toting director and
a sword-wielding David Carradine. But through
it all, he’s kept bouncing from one project to
another — usually several simultaneously. His
credits list on IMDb might take you longer to
read than War And Peace.
The coronavirus, then, never had a chance
of slowing him down. When the 94-year-old
Hollywood veteran, who is revered by the likes
of Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson and Quentin
Tarantino, speaks to Empire from his Santa
Monica abode, he’s not taking a break from
reading, or watching daytime TV, but from
chipping away at three projects he’s still hoping
to get off the ground. “I’ve got a desk set up at
a window which looks out over the swimming
pool and to the mountains beyond,” he says.
“And I’m actually getting a fair amount done,
because unlike at the office where people are
constantly coming in with problems, I can
simply sit here and work.”
Corman’s is a totally unique Hollywood
career, wildly prolific, crammed with drama, and
boasting cameos from some of the industry’s
biggest names. There truly is no-one quite like
him. Here, then, are Roger’s rules, a code for Clockwise from top: Roger Corman with FX director Fernando Vasquez on the set of 2017’s Death Race 2050; Jonathan
success that has served him well over seven Haze in the Corman-directed The Little Shop Of Horrors (1960); Feeding time in Corman’s 1978 Jaws ‘homage’ Piranha.
decades. Crab monsters optional.

IF YOU HAVE A MOTORCYCLE,
BLOW IT UP
CORMAN’S BUDGETS HAVE long been as tiny
as his visions are big. When he made The Beast
With A Million Eyes back in 1955, for instance,
the $50 he had for creature design only stretched
to about a dozen eyes. But he is the master of
wringing maximum production value out of
the most threadbare of resources. On one of
his many auto-mayhem pictures, he famously
decreed that if a motorbike went off the road,
it had to combust.
“Yeah, if it crashes it has to explode, and it
has to explode into flames,” Corman confirms.
“I just thought, ‘Any crash, we’re going to get
double mileage out of it: the excitement of the
crash, and then it blowing up. We’ll get a second
chill for the audience.’”
An old Hollywood joke goes that Corman
could make a deal for a film on a pay phone, pay
for it with the money he finds in the change slot,
then shoot the film in the phone booth. Or maybe
it isn’t a joke. Death Race 2000 only cost around
$300,000, yet is so crammed with carnage that
it works out at about a death a dollar. James
Cameron, working in the model shop on Battle
Beyond The Stars and inspired by his boss’
ingenuity, created futuristic-looking walls by
gluing spray-painted McDonald’s take-out trays
onto them. But occasionally Corman’s penchant
for saving a buck could land him in trouble. Like
during the $600,000, 28-day shoot for Jaws
rip-off Piranha, when he decided not to go to sea
like Spielberg’s film, but to shoot the killer-fish
attacks in the University Of Southern
California’s swimming pool.
“We rented that and filled it with all kinds of
goo from the piranhas, blood and so forth,” he
recalls. “Then we got a bill from USC to clean up
the pool, and the indication was, without saying
it: ‘Just pay this bill, there’ll be no problems, but
don’t ever come back to this pool again.’”
SIT DOWN
MOST PRODUCERS LOOK to employ people
who already have heat. But Corman has, from
the beginning, given opportunities to anyone
enthusiastic, however raw. Jack Nicholson is one
beneficiary of this — he has said that Corman
“was the only guy who’d hire me for about ten
years”. Another is Sylvester Stallone, who Corman
cast as a vehicular maniac in 1975’s Death Race
2000 when the future star was a nobody. The two
bonded over their shared love of Edgar Allan Poe,
and Corman let Stallone rework his dialogue for
the film, over the protestations of the director;
“I said, ‘Sly, you’re really writing some good lines
in there,’” Corman recalls. “He said, ‘I’m working
on an original script also. It’s called Rocky.’”
An unknown Robert De Niro got his first
Hollywood film role in 1970’s Bloody Mama, while
Pam Grier’s first starring part was in women-
in-prison schlockfest The Big Doll House.
But it’s the directors Corman has launched that

100 OCTOBER 2020

 Clockwise
from left:
“If it crashes,
it has to
explode” —
a scene from
1975’s Death
Race 2000;
Corman on
the set of
Frankenstein
Unbound
with Nick
Brimble; Jack
Nicholson
and Sandra
Knight in
The Terror;
A pre-Rocky
Sylvester
Stallone
in Death
Race 2000.

have really changed the landscape of Hollywood.
As well as James Cameron (who created a
spaceship with breasts for Battle Beyond The
Stars), there’s Martin Scorsese (who as a boy
thrilled to Corman’s She Gods Of Shark Reef,
before being hired by him, aged 28, for Boxcar
Bertha), Francis Ford Coppola, Joe Dante,
Ron Howard, Jonathan Demme and Peter
Bogdanovich. Once they graduated from the
Corman academy, a place where the budgets
are tiny, the takes few and the pace rocket-fast,
they went on to bigger projects, often giving
Corman a cameo (see sidebar) as a way to say
thank you.
“First and foremost, I looked for creativity,”
he says now of identifying future Oscar-winners.
“A number of them shot second unit for me,
and I was able to see how good they were. The
other thing I looked for was the ability to work
long, hard hours. It became a running joke with
the first-time directors. I would tell them,
‘Remember, this is really hard, exhausting work.
Make sure you have a name with your chair on
it, and sit down between shots.’ Allan Arkush,
who went on to become a very good TV director,
forgot to write that down and collapsed with
exhaustion on his first day; Joe Dante had to
come in and shoot in the afternoon.”
RECYCLE EVERYTHING
AS EVIDENCED BY his countless remakes of his
own films, if something works, you can bet that
Corman will do it again. He’s even put footage
from one movie into another: when sneak
previews of Cockfighter went poorly in 1974, he
ordered scenes from Dynamite Women and Night
Call Nurses to be spliced in to spice things up.
This has extended to scenery too. His
version of The Little Shop Of Horrors (1960),
starring Jack Nicholson as a loony dental
patient, came about when he spotted a set built
for another movie lying vacant. “They were going
to be tearing it down when the next picture came
in,” he says. “And I said, ‘If you leave it up, I can
have a script written in a couple of weeks and
I can go in there and shoot in a couple of days.’
They said yes, and that’s what we did. I hired
the actors for a week, we rehearsed Monday,
Tuesday and Wednesday, and then we shot
the picture on Thursday and Friday. Little Shop
Of Horrors has a warm spot in my heart.”
Just as opportunistic, but less creatively
successful, was The Terror, a Gothic chiller also
starring Nicholson, of which the star has said,
“It’s the only film that I know of that has no
storyline that you can follow.” Corman admits
he’s not wrong. “The picture actually makes
no sense whatsoever,” he says. “It was only
shot because it rained on a Sunday while I was
making The Raven, and I got the idea that I could
take advantage of this rather impressive set we
had. We wrote it in a week. My ace assistant,

Francis Coppola, shot a couple of days, then

OCTOBER 2020 101

 Clockwise from above: Groovy, baby! Peter Fonda has his mind blown in 1967’s Corman-directed The Trip; A pre-James
T. Kirk William Shatner (with Leo Gordon) plays a racist rabble-rouser in Corman’s The Intruder (1962); Corman on the set of
The Little Shop Of Horrors; Tim O’Kelly as the sniper in the Peter Bogdanovich-directed, Corman-produced Targets (1968).

we shut down until we got some more money,
then Jack Hill shot a few days, Monte Hellman
shot a few days, and on the last day of shooting
Jack Nicholson came to me and said, ‘Roger,
every idiot in town has directed part of this film.
Let me direct the last day.’ I said, ‘Why not, Jack?
You can direct.’”
IF THE SCRIPT CALLS FOR IT,
TAKE DRUGS
CORMAN IS A hands-on filmmaker, who pours
his heart and soul into even the pulpiest of
premises. This was the case when he was
churning out horror B-pics and creature features
in the 1950s, and it was the case when he turned
his hand to counterculture movies in the ’60s.
As prep for The Wild Angels, he hung out with
Hells Angels at their wild biker parties, handing
around spliffs and once almost getting in a
fistfight for talking to the wrong woman. And
when he saw a gap in the market for a movie
about LSD, 1967’s The Trip, he decided it was
only proper to ingest some acid himself.
“I had a wonderful trip; everything was
spectacular about it,” he says. “I knew Jack
[Nicholson], who was writing the script, had
taken LSD. I knew Peter Fonda, playing the lead,
had taken LSD. And Dennis Hopper, the co-star,
had taken LSD. So I thought I, as a conscientious
director, had really better do this myself.
Because I was the straightest guy in a fairly wild
group, there was a parade of cars driving up to
Big Sur with me. I went to this beautiful place
on the beach, took the sugar-cube, and then
fell down and spent the whole trip with my face
in the ground. I never saw any of the beauty
I expected to see, but I had a great time.”
GET SERIOUS
(OCCASIONALLY)
THE SEEMINGLY ENDLESS parade of lurid
posters for Corman joints have taglines that
include “SEE STEWARDESSES BATTLE
KUNG FU KILLERS!” (1973’s Fly Me) and “MAD
DOGS FROM HELL! HUNTING DOWN THEIR
PREY WITH A QUARTER-TON OF HOT STEEL
BETWEEN THEIR LEGS!” (1969’s Naked
Angels). This might suggest that Corman does
not spend a lot of time pondering subtext.
However, in-between the rubber monsters and
machete battles can be found some surprisingly
weighty material.
Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets was released
over 50 years ago, but has found a resurgence
in the zeitgeist of late, thanks to its hot-button
subject of shooting sprees in America. “It had to
do with both fictional violence and real violence,”
says Corman. “Unfortunately, after Paramount
bought the film, there was a shooting from a
tower at the University of Texas campus, so they
got worried and gave it only a limited release.”
He only produced that one, but directed The
Intruder, a 1962 drama about a racist rabble-

102 OCTOBER 2020


rouser (played by William Shatner) who stirs
up hatred towards Black people in a small
Southern town. Shot on location in Missouri,
the production itself was fraught with drama,
once real-life racists figured out what it was
about. “We were run out of two towns by the
sheriff, but we moved to other towns and it came
together alright,” Corman recalls. “I remember
one of the New York papers said, ‘The Intruder
is a major credit to the entire American film
industry,’ but that was the only film I ever made
that lost money.”
Corman is saddened that things in his
country don’t seem to have moved on much:
Alamy, Getty Images, Shutterstock, © 1960 Santa Clara Productions, Inc. with The Filmgroup
“We’re seeing it all erupt right now.” And both
the villain of The Intruder and ‘Mr President’
in Death Race 2000 have inadvertent parallels
with the current POTUS. “I’m very heavily
against Trump, and you could easily say that
there’s a connection,” the filmmaker says
of the latter. A new update of Death Race 2000
is even set to flip the dynamic of Trump’s
“Build a wall” rhetoric. “It takes place in
a future where the Death Games are a race
to the Mexican border, and if they can get
through they are allowed amnesty to remain
in Mexico.”
NEVER, EVER, EVER STOP
HE’S SLOWED DOWN, as one tends to when
one when gets close to triple-digits. “I stopped
directing many years ago [30 years ago, in fact,
with 1990’s Frankenstein Unbound], because
I have a bad back and various illnesses, and
concentrated on producing,” he says. But it
became clear a while ago that retirement just
isn’t an option.
The three projects on his current to-do
list are Crime City (an action movie set on
Quentin Tarantino accepts his
Artistic Excellence In Directing gong
from Corman at the 2012 BAFTA
Los Angeles Britannia Awards.
a hurricane-ravaged Bahamian island), The
Unborn (a remake of his psychological horror of
the same name), and Death Games (that update
of Death Race 2000). And in fact, he suddenly
remembers a fourth: only days ago, he got
an email from Bogdanovich suggesting they
shoot a remake of Saint Jack, their film about
an American hustler in Singapore, in the
Philippines. Corman dutifully added it to
the list. “It’s going reasonably well,” he says of
his day’s work so far. “Fortunately, I still have
the same drive.”
He even mounted a virtual Corman
Quarantine Film Festival back in April, hoping
to help discover new talent. One thing’s for
sure: he’ll continue to live on, through the work
he’s made, the people he’s nurtured, the nods
in other people’s films (watch out for the poster
for The Young Racers in the diner in Pulp
Fiction), and, if it ever comes together, through
the biopic that Joe Dante continues to try
to make about his mentor and hero. Titled
The Man With The Kaleidoscope Eyes, and
focused on Corman’s experiences making The
Trip, it found an audience of sorts in 2016.
“To try to get the financing, Joe decided
to have a reading of it at a theatre in Hollywood
and charge money,” Corman remembers. “At
that time Bill Hader was going to play me. I said,
‘Joe, I think it’s a great idea, but I don’t think
anybody’s going to want to go to a theatre and
just see a group of actors on stage reading a
script.’ To my great surprise, the theatre was
filled and there was a line around the block
just to go in.”
It really shouldn’t have been a surprise.
Corman’s life has, after all, been every bit as
wild and improbable as that of his Beast With
A Million Eyes. And he’s lasted a lot longer.
BIG-NAME DIRECTORS HAVE BEEN PUTTING
CORMAN IN THEIR MOVIES FOR DECADES.
HERE ARE HIS FINEST CAMEOS
SENATOR #2 — THE GODFATHER PART II
Francis Ford Coppola got his big break when he
was a student at UCLA: Corman hired him to turn
a Russian sci-fi film, Nebo Zovyot, into a monster
movie, Battle Beyond The Sun. Coppola later
repaid Corman by having him play a senator
(specifically, Senator #2) in his Mafia sequel.
FBI DIRECTOR HAYDEN BURKE —
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
A double cameo, as Corman appears as the FBI
director in one scene, and in a framed portrait
that Clarice Starling walks past. The connection?
Jonathan Demme started out filming B-movies,
such as Caged Heat and Crazy Mama, for Corman.
CONGRESSMAN — APOLLO 13
On the set of 1977’s Grand Theft Auto, Corman
told Ron Howard, “If you do a good job for me on
this picture, you’ll never have to work for me
again.” True enough, but several decades later
Corman ended up working for Howard, as a
politician in his space-shuttle disaster movie.
STUDIO EXECUTIVE — SCREAM 3
For his meta horror threequel, Wes Craven
brought in Corman to play a Hollywood suit
(the kind Corman never got along with) involved
in the making of movie-within-a-movie ‘Stab 3’.
WEDDING GUEST —
RACHEL GETTING MARRIED
Corman’s favourite cameo is his turn as a guest
at the titular nuptials — even if his dialogue,
an improvised exchange with Anne Hathaway,
did get cut in the editing room.
OCTOBER 2020 103
 GOING TO
104 OCTOBER 2020
EXTREMES
Fro m D ra cu l a to His Dark Materials, M O R F Y D D C L A R K h as b e e n ma k ing maj or
impressions. Now, as the lea d in intense psychological horror S A I N T M A U D ,
she ’s ta ki ng th ings to the next l evel WORDS REBECCA NICHOLSON PORTRAITS MIKE BLACKETT

OCTOBER 2020 105

 Or everything worth watching, at least. There she was in BBC’s
Dracula (as Mina Harker), and in Patrick Melrose (as Patrick’s
long-suffering girlfriend Debbie), and again in His Dark Materials,
as the chilling Sister Clara, one of the scariest guardians of sinister
research facility Bolvangar. Coming off the back of early film roles
in Carol Morley’s The Falling, opposite Maisie Williams and
then-newcomer Florence Pugh, and Whit Stillman’s Jane Austen
adaptation Love & Friendship, it’s little wonder she was pegged
as a rising star.
Now, fresh from playing both the title character’s mother
and dog-obsessed wife in Armando Iannucci’s The Personal
History Of David Copperfield, she is about to be seen in two of the
most thrillingly unusual British films of the year. In Craig Roberts’
Eternal Beauty, she is the alter ego of Sally Hawkins’ character,
Jane, a schizophrenic woman who dwells between two worlds.
And in the astonishing Saint Maud, she takes her first lead role, as
a religiously devout palliative-care nurse who becomes fixated on
the idea of saving the soul of the terminally ill woman she looks
after. Directed by first-timer Rose Glass, the fable of isolation and
fanaticism offers a star-making part. It’s a big,
grand film dealing with massive questions, but my ears before, and now I am so aware about Clockwise from top left: Saint or sinner?: Clark as the
Clark renders it all in fine, delicate detail on every aspect of them. Also, it’s quite difficult devout Maud; The nurse’s obsessive mission to save
every facet of her face. In her hands, Maud is rehearsing stuff like this. So much of it is her patient’s soul proves problematic; Praying for
terrifying but pitiful, and always empathetic, the incredible props and scenery and special divine intervention.
which only makes it more terrifying. After seeing effects, so when you get all that on, you’re like,
her self-flagellate, you’ll never look at a pair of “Oh, it is possible.” Do you have Cate Blanchett’s performance
trainers in the same way again. in your mind, or do you have to try to forget
Having endured such intense horrors, it’s You were a Lord Of The Rings fan when you about it?
a delight to find that Clark is as cheerful as they were younger, right? I don’t think I could possibly forget about
come, even early in the morning. Born in Sweden, I was a really nerdy fan of the films, yes. the films. I was 11 when the first one came out,
raised in Cardiff, she is currently in New Zealand so I was at this age where I had just let go of
rehearsing for Amazon Prime’s Lord Of The Rings I imagine that makes Galadriel more magic and whimsy, and these films came out.
prequel series, in which she will play the young unnerving to take on than most roles. I was like, “Oh my God, grown-ups can think
Galadriel. It comes as no surprise that discussing Well, yes. Also, you have imposter syndrome with like this.” There’s a huge amount of respect for
anything about the show is “bordering on illegal”, every job you get, and at times you have to be like, the films.
but she sounds thrilled about the job. Over Zoom, “Look, I’m not being rational, I do deserve to get
from deepest Middle-earth, she tells Empire all this job.” But I think with this, not having imposter Talking of grown-up stuff: Saint Maud.
about her ridiculous year. syndrome would make you mad, because it is so Was it as demanding for you as it looks?
ridiculous for it to have turned out this way. I’m I was lucky because I was cast a long time before
So, do you have your Elf ears on yet? trying to normalise elements of it to maintain my we actually filmed, so I had a lot of time to have
Alamy

It’s a very nice way to wake up in the morning, sanity, while not losing my sanity by normalising her in my mind. Also within that time, I shot
getting these ears on. I’ve never thought about it too much, because it isn’t normal. Eternal Beauty, Dark Materials and David

106 OCTOBER 2020

Copperfield, which all had themes that were
really useful in terms of me understanding
Maud. That’s why I love film, because it helps
me understand the world. For example, Eternal
Beauty was about a woman trying to get through
the world and figure it out, with certain things
forever remaining confusing to her. In David
Copperfield, Mr Dick, who has moments
where his mental health is not at its best and
overwhelms him, is very much looked after by
Betsy Trotwood. Jane, in Eternal Beauty, is part
of a dysfunctional family, which I think every
family probably is, but she is loved. It made me
realise that Rose [Glass] had written this story
where that just wasn’t there for Maud. The
loneliness was huge.
The loneliness really jumps off the screen,
and it’s very painful.
The really horrific part for me was the loneliness,
because I think that’s something that, for me,
we all have the possibility to fall into, now more
than ever, when we’re losing any aspect of the
welfare state. I think that every character I play
is just a version of myself. I don’t Daniel Day-
Lewis it, because that’s not really how I get into
it. With Maud, I went through lots of things in
my head where life could have worked out for me
[like that], if I’d fallen out with people, not made
the connections, just been forgotten, really.
Some actors will say they don’t play
themselves at all.
I think I definitely do. Maybe I’d enjoy watching
myself more if I didn’t do that, because I do find
that horrible. I don’t actively look for things in
my life that go with it, but I just feel I can’t
escape myself. It remains there.
That makes me slightly concerned
about you.
Yeah, when people ask about Maud and I say,
“Well, it was really easy to get into her
character...”, but it was.
Obviously it’s a horror film, but some of the
most upsetting elements in it are not really
horror at all.
I feel it’s a social horror. There’s just much more
to horror than I had realised. I’ve been reading
a lot about how millennials are obsessed with
horror, because we’ve forever been saying that
there’s a monster, and everyone’s like, “No, there
isn’t.” Maud taps into the horror of the machine
that you don’t fit into, and for me, that’s more
terrifying than anything in the cupboard. You
know the saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes
you stronger”? I don’t agree; I think that what
doesn’t kill you gives you a deeper sense of
understanding. Horror gives that to people.
You’re showing people at their most vulnerable
and traumatised, and through that, seeing how to
be the opposite. Doing Saint Maud has made me
more tolerant and kind.
You end up feeling very deeply for her plight.
On set, everyone would often be like, “Oh, poor
Maud.” And I still feel that. I think that Britain,
with its stiff-upper-lip-ishness and fear of being
embarrassed and keeping up appearances, we
are repulsed and frightened by anyone who
doesn’t fit the norm, to more of a degree than [in]
other countries, possibly. But that gave me some
hope, because I was like, “We can make it better.”
There is a way of being nicer.
Is it necessary for you to view the film
with that kind of hope, given that it’s so
bleak elsewhere?
I guess so. I think that as a person, maybe I’m
U
that way inclined anyway, but I do feel that, as
OCTOBER 2020 107
 things become more overwhelming, hope is even
more important. There’s this Welsh saying: hope
is a safe anchor. I definitely feel that.
It’s funny that Saint Maud and Eternal
Beauty have ended up coming out around
the same time, given that there is some
crossover in the themes.
Craig [Roberts] and Rose make very different
films, but their sensibilities are very similar.
I was getting the same recommendations from
them both. Lots of Ingmar Bergman, which was
really useful for both of them.
You seem to choose these unique projects,
or they choose you.
I think it’s more been luck! I think I’m only
recently getting into the realm where I can
choose anything. But I’ve been very lucky in
that, for sure.
In Eternal Beauty, you’re playing the
same character as Sally Hawkins, but
you don’t share any scenes with her. Did
you meet?
We met before, and had chats with Craig, which
was a lot for me, because I adore her so much.
I’m finding it very difficult meeting lots of people
that I know about, because you feel like such
a creep. It definitely felt like that with Sally.
I was like, “I’ve read loads of your interviews and
watched loads of your films, and I know loads
about you.”
At the same time as Eternal Beauty, you
were shooting His Dark Materials and The
Personal History Of David Copperfield,
working with animals and children, against
received wisdom. At least your canine
co-star in David Copperfield seemed docile.
She was until I started singing, then she went
completely insane. I was like, “That is so rude.”
But Armando loved it. I had a dog daemon in
Dark Materials as well, but they had to reshoot it
because the dog was quite new and kept finding
the lens. I’m obsessed with His Dark Materials,
so my 12-year-old self this year is just, “Oh my
God.” Ruth Wilson, for me, is the perfect Mrs
Coulter. I was already on set with all these kids
who are locked in Bolvangar, and it was one of
Ruth’s first days, and she hadn’t met any of these
kids, and she walked in [wearing] this sparkly
green coat, and the kids did just go quiet. And
one of them just went [whispers], “You’re so
beautiful.” I’ve never seen someone encompass
a part like that. Also, I have ADHD, and as a kid
I was so busy and wild, and I was like, “I see, I’m
like Lyra.” To have that was great.
With ADHD, does acting give you focus,
or is it more complicated than that?
ADHD is quite funny, because you find it
very difficult to put attention into things you
find boring, which is incredibly frustrating
for everyone around us, because we all find
108 OCTOBER 2020
Top to bottom: As Mina Harker in the BBC’s Dracula; With
Dev Patel in The Personal History Of David Copperfield
(2019); The scary Sister Clara in His Dark Materials; Playing
the young Jane in October’s Eternal Beauty.
things boring, but we just do them. But then
if you get into a level of focus, people have
to poke you to get you out of it. For me, it’s
very much short bursts, and so filming really
suits me in that regard. But it also means that
when I’m not shooting, I’m not staying in
character. I’m just taking a break from that
feeling of concentration.
So you really couldn’t go Method, if you
wanted to?
I don’t think I could, actually, even if I tried.
Saint Maud and Eternal Beauty are both
harrowing, at times, but David Copperfield
gives you some comic relief. Would you do
more comedy?
I would, yeah, definitely, if I was offered it.
I love comedy. Whenever someone would say,
“I’d love to play Hamlet one day,” I’d be like,
“Oh God, why?”
What sort of comedy do you like?
I love This Country. I love awkwardness, I love
excruciating comedy. I’ve been a fan of
Armando for a long time. I find people striving
tragic and hilarious. I also love 24 Hours In
A&E and One Born Every Minute. I laugh out
loud watching both of those, because people
are just funny, no matter what they’re
going through.
They’re also good research for Saint Maud.
I am quite obsessed with health workers. Also,
this woman projectile-vomited all over her
friend in front of me when I was ten years old,
on New Year’s Eve, and I became very scared
of sick, so it’s also just like, “How do you deal
with the sick?”
Is that a full phobia?
It was. I’m much better now, but it definitely
was. I tell myself, “Maybe you’d have been a
doctor if you hadn’t been scared of sick,” but also,
I had none of the skills and didn’t get any of the
grades. No, it was really bad. I became convinced
that everybody drunk would be sick on me. It’s
funny looking back on myself when I was
younger, because it’s like, “Ah, you were very
anxious then,” but I didn’t know the words for
it. I would hate being in crowds and I didn’t
like going out if it was late at night. I remember
once my sister got lost in a rugby match and
I had to move through all these rugby fans,
and I was like, “They’re all going to be sick
on me. But I’ve just got to find her!” It’s quite
an annoying one to have. Moving to London,
I had to get over it. But I had a sixth sense for
anyone who was...
On the edge?
Yeah. I was hyper-aware. I guess actually that
stuff has been quite useful. I feel like Maud
is constantly feeling like something bad’s
happening, something’s coming. Maybe I have
existed in that state, but on a very downgraded
scale, where you’re just scared of getting sick
on your shoes.
Is there time to do anything outside of
Lord Of The Rings now, or is this your life
for the foreseeable?
It all depends. More than ever now, everything
is so in flux. I’ve always struggled with the
question of what I want to do. I have lots of
friends who have stories and ideas inside them
that they’re desperate to get out. I don’t really
feel I’m like that. I could never have imagined
Saint Maud or Eternal Beauty. There’s nothing
burning in me, particularly. I just love other
people’s minds.
No Hamlet for you, then?
No. I’ve done two Shakespeare tragedies, so I can
now pretend I have knowledge and interest in
them, but I’d rather do A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. Fairies. Nice.
SAINT MAUD IS IN CINEMAS FROM 23 OCTOBER
OCTOBER 2020 109
 !
SPOILER
WARNING

I N D I S P E N S A B L E H O M E E N T E R T A I N M E N T [ EDITED BY CHRIS HEWITT]

 REVIEW

Flashback
Hot hail! Hawkmen! Hotpants! Forty years after its original release, Flash Gordon
roars back into cinemas in a stunning new 4K restoration. We gathered the key
cast and director MIKE HODGES for a return trip to Mongo...
GETTING THE GANG TOGETHER
Dino De Laurentiis had first acquired the rights
to Flash Gordon intending it to be an English-
language directorial debut for Federico Fellini.
But by 1978 Fellini had dropped out, and with the
gargantuan success of Star Wars the year before,
De Laurentiis decided to act. In place of one
auteur, he hired another: Nicolas Roeg who,
along with screenwriter Michael Allin, worked
on pre-production for six months before their
overtly sexualised, and increasingly expensive,
take on the property fell out of De Laurentiis’
favour. Replacing them was screenwriter
Lorenzo Semple Jr and Get Carter director
Mike Hodges.

Mike Hodges: Nic Roeg was originally going to

direct it. And Dino was looking to use his sets for
a sequel. So Nic, who was a friend, suggested me.
I met Dino in New York. I told him I didn’t think
Clockwise I was the appropriate director. I didn’t know
from main: enough about comics or special effects. And I was
Sam J. Jones a different kind of director. You know, the cynic
as beefcake of Get Carter. Anyway, Nic and he finally fell out.
hero Flash; Nic was fired and Dino, for reasons I still don’t
The legendary fully understand, decided to chase me again.
Max von Sam J. Jones [Flash Gordon]: I had done
Sydow evils a little modelling and took acting classes. Then
up as the I found myself in Hollywood in late 1977 and
Emperor the next thing I was doing a movie for Blake
Ming; Jones Edwards. It was a small role but I played Bo
‘hanging’ with Derek’s husband in 10. While we were shooting
director Mike I got called to meet Dino De Laurentiis. Blake
Hodges on set. was fantastic. He brought in a private helicopter
to get me to LA from location in Hawaii. When
I met Dino I embellished a little. He said, “I hear
you’re in a movie for Blake Edwards? Is it a big
role?” I said, “Oh yes, sir, it’s a very big role.”
Hodges: Flash was a murderous role to cast.
Sam was the only person of all the actors that
I saw who was even remotely possible. He had
that chunky appearance that you get from
Flash in the comics, and he had this kind of
sweetness to him. When we were doing the fight
sequence on the wing of the rocket ship there
was a moment when I ran out of ideas about how
to dispatch someone. The first AD said, “Why
doesn’t Flash just pick up this bar and hit him
on the back of the head?” Sam turned around,
really upset by this suggestion, and said, “Flash
Gordon would never do that!” He was very
into the idea of Flash.
U
Jones: If you took a picture of Buster Crabbe

OCTOBER 2020 111

 Top to bottom: Topol’s Dr Hans
Zarkov has his memory wiped; Flash
floored; Robin Hood-esque Prince
Barin (Timothy Dalton); The nefarious
Kala (Mariangela Melato) and Klytus
(Peter Wyngarde); Melody Anderson
[who’d earlier played Flash] at the age of 23, and as Dale Arden — her comic-book
you put that picture next to me at the age of 23, character arguably the prototype for
I mean, we look like twins. And of course I played the likes of Star Wars’ Leia and Amidala.
American football. Then after all the interviews
in early ’79, Dino flew me to London for three
days of screentesting. I remember being in his
office at the end of that and him saying, “Okay,
you de new Flasha de Gordon.”
Melody Anderson [Dale Arden]: When you’re
that age — I think I was about 25 or 26, and you’re
just starting off in the business — you just take
anything you can get. I would have been the back
end of a horse at that point in my career. I did
a casting and we did a tape. And then I came and
met with Dino. Talk about a unique man. No-one
like him before or after. You know, when you’re in
this business you just go onto your next project.
Then out of the blue the phone rings. I was with
my boyfriend at the time and he said, “It’s Dino.”
I thought it was his stupid brother. But it was,
“You hava to leave tonight fora de London!” It
was very like Dino. Last-minute, crazy, chaotic.
Brian Blessed [Prince Vultan]: I was born in
Mexborough, halfway between Doncaster and
Barnsley, in the war years. Very exciting. We had
two local cinemas and we had Flash Gordon once
a week in black-and-white. Afterwards we’d run
down the embankment doing dares. I’d always
jump over great bushes pretending to be Vultan.
How could I have thought that one day I’d be
playing him?! I remember going to the studios at
Elstree and meeting Mike and Dino, and I walked
in and to my amazement there were drawings of
me everywhere. I said, “You’ve bloody cast me
already, you bastards!” They said, “No, no, that’s
Vultan from the comics!” I said, “It’s bloody me!
If I don’t play this bloody part I’ll kill you.”

MAX POWER
The film’s greatest casting coup was Bergman
regular Max von Sydow as evil Emperor Ming,
a role for which, possibly to his surprise, he
would become famous to a whole new generation
of cinephiles.

Hodges: Dino had used Max several times before

on films. And they were friends, very fond of each
other. Max had such a wonderful time playing
Ming. He was just incredibly professional. But
he was also having such fun with it.
Jones: He was wonderful, a real mentor. Max told
me, “Sam, I’ve been watching
you pay for everybody’s lunch. Ming.” I said, “Well, Max, I’ll tell you what. Ming
You can’t do that! You have to is a magician, he’s always using his hands. And
save your money.” he’s a sexual creature. He takes sex potions all the
Anderson: His presence, time.” I said, “Just use your hands.” And if you
his grace, his wisdom and watch him in the film, he’s always using his hands.
enormous talent kind of held
us together. We were all young SETS APPEAL
and kind of looked to him as Designing both sets and costumes was Danilo
what a professional actor does Donati. The legendary designer provided an
and how they behave — no astonishing visual sense to the film. But his
matter how crazy things get. designs were often militantly impractical.
Blessed: Max came and sat
next to me and said, “Brian, I’m Hodges: I loved Danilo. But I don’t think he
about to make my entrance, ever read the script.
I don’t really know how to play Anderson: He just loved beautiful things.

112 OCTOBER 2020


Wyngarde [Klytus] said he’d rather not die
because there might be a sequel. Mike Hodges
had a bit of a short fuse that day because Dino
was always on his back. He said, “Well, you do
bloody die. Flash, you come in, you insult Klytus;
Klytus, you insult Flash, he grabs you by the
shoulder, throws you on the spikes and you’re
fucking dead!”
Hodges: Danilo never cared about anything
technical. He just liked to build things.
I remember the first day shooting the Arboria set
that he had built. I had said to Dino, who seemed
to be delighted with it, “Dino, it’s a terrific set,
but... where am I going to put the camera?” He
said, “Mike, how many da films you make?”
He always asked that. I said, “Nine.” He said,
“I makea de thirty!” I said, “Well, Dino, I tell
you something, it’s going to be a problem getting
a camera in.” So the first day I couldn’t shoot
a bloody foot of film because we couldn’t get the
camera into position properly.
Jones: I’m proud to be the first male star to wear
hotpants in a major motion picture.
MUSIC FOR MING
Mike Hodges’ decision to eschew a traditional
orchestral score in favour of the rock-opera
stylings of Freddie, Brian and co would further
distance the film from its main rival, Star Wars.
Left: Ming at his dashing, dastardly best. Below, top to
bottom: Brian Blessed as Prince Vultan: “GORDON’S ALIVE!”;
Ming — not known for his mercy; Our heroes Dale and Flash.
Beautiful sets! Beautiful costumes! But nothing
was practical from Danilo. I had one headpiece,
one I wore most, from the orange set, and you
can watch — it’s sitting straight up but as you go
through the movie the weight of it means it just
Alamy, Capital Pictures, Shutterstock
kind of sinks down my head.
Hodges: It was absolutely out of the question
that it could resemble Star Wars. That was a very
grey film. This was full of primary colours. We
really made it as a strip cartoon.
Blessed: The best set was my Sky City — it was
so exciting and vibrant and magical, the colours
of silver and gold. I just thought Danilo’s work
was marvellous. We were all having so much fun
on that set that nobody wanted to die. Peter
REVIEW
Hodges: While we were shooting I was actually
playing Pink Floyd. Dino met the manager of
Queen and got them to do it. It was a terrific idea.
Whilst I’m mad about Pink Floyd, Queen were
more versatile and they have a lighter touch.
Blessed: The music by Queen is sensational.
Everybody talks about the main theme, which is
fantastic. But that opening scene where they’re
in the rocket. Dale’s head falls onto Flash’s
shoulder and they fall asleep. It’s wonderful,
the music is so romantic.
Hodges: I think a John Williams-style orchestral
score would be totally wrong for Flash. It would
have given it a gravity which I’m not sure it could
really take [laughs]. It would have even been
pretentious, and Flash Gordon is certainly not that.
Anderson: When Tim Dalton and I went to
see an early screening without the Queen
soundtrack we were very concerned. The music
is so powerful. I was lucky enough to meet
Freddie Mercury and Brian [May], and I think
without that score those scenes would not have
been so powerful.
Hodges: I was in the studio for 21 days with
them. They came into the studio individually,
they weren’t there all together. And then they
would overdub. But they were long days —
from two o’clock in the afternoon until seven or
eight in the morning. It was really absolutely
exhausting, but I had to be there.
Jones: Even now I hear kids saying, “You know
that movie about the superhero that Queen did
the soundtrack to...?”
THE FUTURE
Flash Gordon opened to mediocre reviews but
strong box office in the UK and Europe. But in the
US it failed to perform, nixing a sequel, despite
its rather hopeful final title card (“The End?”).
Remakes are constantly floated. But what next?
Jones: It was a life-changer for me. I love it. It’s
a triple blessing. The first blessing is when we get
hired. The second blessing is that it does well,
and the third blessing is what we’re talking about
now. Its longevity. So it’s wonderful.
Hodges: Oh, I hope they don’t remake it. They
did a dreadful remake of Get Carter which I’ve
never seen, but I’m told it’s dire. I think it stands
alone and should stay alone.
Jones: I think a remake or sequel is a great
idea. It’s a timing thing. Over the years a lot of
producers, big names, have been attached. The
last one in particular was Fox, who brought in
Matthew Vaughn and John Davis. But then
Disney bought Fox and they wanted to do an
animated version. But I’d love to be part of it,
whether I play Flash Gordon or his dad.
Anderson: Look, you can’t remake The Wizard
Of Oz. I don’t think you can redo Flash Gordon.
Blessed: They must do a sequel! Me and Sam
have talked about it. I could be in an ice-cave and
he has to come and rescue me. Set on Mars.
ADAM SMITH
FLASH GORDON: 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION IS OUT NOW
ON 4K BLU-RAY
OCTOBER 2020 113
 REVIEW

Friend and
foe: Timothy
Treadwell loved
the grizzlies but
paid for his
naivety.

THE
MASTERPIECE
We reassess the greatest leaving only a few gnawed bones, a wristwatch
films of all time, one and more than 100 hours of film footage.
film at a time Throughout his 59-year career as
a filmmaker of both narrative features and
documentaries, Werner Herzog has remained
enthralled by obsessive outsiders who — like
him — kick hard against normality in search of
profound truths. Eccentric extremists such as
Lope de Aguirre or Brian Sweeney ‘Fitzcarraldo’
Fitzgerald (both played by Klaus Kinski in the

Grizzly Man director’s two most famous movies), admirable

EVERY SUMMER FOR 13 years, Timothy
Treadwell lived with bears. Former drug addict,
failed actor, environmentalist and self-styled
“kind warrior”, Treadwell would pitch camp in
the Alaskan wilderness of Katmai, unarmed even
with pepper spray, and flagrantly break National
for their tenacity, questionable for their
methods, and often doomed. Just like Timothy
Treadwell. “He’s a member of the family,” the
Bavarian auteur told the BBC’s Culture Show
in 2006 (the episode where, incidentally, he
was shot by an air rifle while talking to Mark
Kermode). “He had something in his nature which
reminds me of some of my leading characters.”
Grizzly Man, then, is the ideal marriage of
director and subject, a dazzling conjunction untidy desk. Nelson mistakenly assumed it was
made all the more remarkable by the fact that an article about Treadwell’s death that had
Alamy, Getty Images

Park Service laws to bring himself hazardously
close to the creatures he loved. Creatures he
identified with more than humans, to the degree
that he considered himself “one of them”. Then,
on 5 October 2003, he and his girlfriend Amie
Huguenard were killed and eaten by a grizzly,
it’s the accidental result of the most mundane
of mishaps: the loss of a pair of spectacles.
During the early summer of 2004, Herzog
was visiting his friend Erik Nelson, a TV
documentary producer, when he realised he’d
mislaid his glasses and started scanning Nelson’s
ensnared his pal’s attention, and urged him to
read this amazing story which he was turning
into a film for Discovery Networks. Herzog did
so, and was instantly hooked. He asked what the
status of the project was. Nelson said, “I’m kind
of directing it.” Herzog locked eyes with Nelson

114 OCTOBER 2020

 WERNER HERZOG
IN NUMBERS
ALL THE JUICE ON THE ECLECTIC
GERMAN AUTEUR

↓
Top left:
Treadwell plays
with a slightly
less intimidating
local. Left: The
self-styled
environmentalist
alongside one
of his ursine

5/9/42
neighbours.
Below: An
extraordinary
scene as bears
cross the plains. THE DAY HE WAS BORN IN MUNICH (HE’S 77)
and replied, “I will direct this movie.” Nelson Herzog made of it. Because, well, Herzog. NUMBER OF CREDITS AS
could hardly refuse. After all, as he later put it, Through his grave but lyrical, unironic-Teutonic DIRECTOR, INCLUDING
“Werner was the perfect person for this story.” voiceover, he makes this a penetratingly personal DOCUMENTARIES, TV
Without Herzog (and no disrespect to Nelson), odyssey, both connecting with Treadwell and MOVIES, VIDEOS, AND
Grizzly Man could have ended up as little more critiquing him. He is the narrator as foil, drawing SHORT FILMS
than elaborately mounted evidence for a Darwin our attention to his subject’s shortcomings as well

1 1
Awards entry. Treadwell cuts a ridiculous figure, as his gifts, as unafraid to push his own anti-
with his long-fringed, Prince Valiant hairdo, his romantic interpretation of Treadwell as the blond-
childish voice, his daft, sub-Seagal action-hero mopped Grizzly Man was to push his own hyper-
posturing. But this is not merely the anatomy romantic interpretation of the bears he stalked. Number of times Oscar
of a curious tragedy. It is also a nature film like “Here I differ with Treadwell,” Herzog levelly he’s been shot nomination (for
no other. Once Herzog started delving into narrates after his subject reacts with distress with an air rifle Encounters At
the amateur naturalist’s footage, even he was to the cannibalisation of a cub. “I believe the whilst in the The End Of The
surprised at what he’d uncovered. So much so, common denominator of the universe is not middle of an World — Best
the seemingly unflappable ex-smoker had to harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.” interview with Documentary,
pop outside the editing suite for a quick, nerve- If Treadwell’s view of nature is dangerous Mark Kermode Features, 2009)
soothing fag before he could carry on watching. Disneyfication, then Herzog is the nihilist’s
As anyone who worked on Planet Earth might David Attenborough.
tell you, Treadwell broke all the nature-doc rules. Yet Herzog never treats Treadwell with FILMS HE
He named the bears (Mr Chocolate, Sergeant anything less than utmost respect. The film’s MADE WITH
Brown, Aunt Melissa…), anthropomorphised signature scene involves the director listening KLAUS KINSKI
them, tried to touch them and interfered with to the audio of the fatal bear attack (Treadwell’s (Aguirre: The Wrath
Of God, Woyzeck,
their habitat, reasoning he was their spiritually camera rolled as he and Huguenard died, but the Nosferatu The Vampyre,
appointed “caretaker”. But he captured some lens cap was on) while he sits with Treadwell’s Fitzcarraldo, Cobra Verde)

truly astonishing images, from a long, savage
bear fight, to the play of a family of foxes, to the
silent dance of reed grass in a gusty breeze.
Then there are the moments Treadwell
— possibly bipolar (though Herzog never
closest colleague, Jewel Palovak. He is visibly
shaken by what he’s hearing, on headphones, and The seminar fee payable
decrees that neither Palovak nor his audience
should ever hear it. The moment couldn’t be
more powerful, nor more sensitively handled.
$1,500 upon acceptance to
Herzog’s Rogue Film School
(plus $25 application fee)

attempts a diagnosis) — turns the camera on The film is all the better for its maker’s firm-
himself, soul stripped bare. There are his handed subjectivity. Grizzly Man examines the NUMBER OF OPERAS HE’S
heartfelt confessionals, in which he tearily beautiful, harsh nature of wildlife; the impact DIRECTED ON THE STAGE
credits the bears with “giving me a life”. His of human nature on the dark boundary of (MOST RECENTLY PARSIFAL,
paranoid, Joe Pesci-esque, F-bombing rants civilisation; and offers mesmerising insight into
against the Park Service. And one fantastically the singular nature of Werner Herzog himself.
IN VALENCIA IN 2008)
unhinged appeal for divine intervention to end a It is the ultimate nature
drought (“MELISSA IS EATING HER BABIES!”) documentary. Sorry, NUMBER OF
that seems weirdly successful. Sir David. DAN JOLIN
Even if Nelson or another filmmaker had
EPISODES OF THE
included such breathtakingly elevating material, it GRIZZLY MAN IS OUT NOW ON DVD, MANDALORIAN IN
still couldn’t have been the non-fiction masterpiece BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD WHICH HE APPEARED

OCTOBER 2020 115

 REVIEW
The everyman
SAM NEILL on some of the standout
roles of his incredible career
SAM NEILL IS the master
of acting without drawing
attention to himself. Over
a career spanning almost
50 years, the Kiwi actor has
quietly built one of the most
impressive careers around,
his versatility standing him
in good stead. From grumpy
dinosaur experts to deranged
doctors, he can pretty much
play anything. We asked him
about some of his signature
roles and scenes.
MY BRILLIANT CAREER (1979)
Neill’s big break — the start of
his brilliant career, you could
say — came as Judy Davis’
lovelorn suitor in a Gillian
Armstrong-directed drama
“I was very taken with Gillian
Armstrong. She was terrific.
But I had a dog that didn’t
like me, and the horse that
they gave me wasn’t really
much of a film horse. It was a
thoroughbred, a retired racing
horse that had obviously failed
on the racetrack. In Pretoria,
for some reason, they go
anti-clockwise around the
track, and as a result the horse
could only turn left. It was a
bugger of a thing. But that gave
me the faith to actually think,
‘I could do this as a living.’ That
had not occurred to me before
I did My Brilliant Career.”
THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER
(1990)
In a movie dominated by
powerhouse turns from Sean
Connery and Alec Baldwin,
Neill hits big with his quiet,
116 OCTOBER 2020
dignified Russian first officer, Clockwise
whose oft-stated desire to from top: 1997’s
visit America results in his Event Horizon;
dying words, “I would like As cuckolded
to have seen Montana...” husband Alisdair
“People are always yelling in The Piano; With
that at me. ‘Have you seen Judy Davis in My
Montana yet?’ Yeah, I went Briliant Career;
there with Robert Redford, Inspecting
actually! [Neill made The dinosaur eggs in
Horse Whisperer, directed by Jurassic Park;
Redford, there.] Eddie Murphy Going, um, mad
was doing another film on the in In The Mouth
lot at that time, and the word Of Madness;
came through that Eddie was Dreaming of
going to visit the set. These Montana in The
huge security guys appeared, Hunt For Red
and in the middle of them was October; As gruff
Eddie. And I was near the farmer Hec
entry, and one of his guys, with in Hunt For The
his great big hand, went, ‘BAM!’ Wilderpeople.
and flattened me against the
wall, like I was some sort of
mad fan. Which was a bit
weird, because I was wearing
a Russian naval uniform at the
time. That’s Hollywood!”
JURASSIC PARK (1993)
Alamy, Allstar, Shutterstock
As Dr Alan Grant, Neill
provides a pleasingly human
face, and personality, that
grounds Spielberg’s dinosaur
epic. He displays impressive
stoicism amid overwhelming
odds, not least when he
comes face to face with
a T-Rex…
“We were wet and cold
for a lot of that. That flare
I was holding, a blob
fell under my hand and
went under my watch
and stuck there. That’s
the Jurassic scar. And
the T-Rex, although

an absolutely terrifying
creature, gave us cause for
amusement. When it came
down on the car, sometimes it
wouldn’t be terribly accurate.
Sometimes it would hit the car
and its teeth would fall out.
They’d have to take the T-Rex
away and put his teeth back in,
like an old man!”
THE PIANO (1993)
As Alisdair, the cuckolded
husband of Holly Hunter in
Jane Campion’s dark love
story, Neill found himself
going to places he hadn’t
visited before, particularly in
a scene where he had to cut
off Hunter’s finger
“I have very strong memories
of that. Holly said, ‘I want Sam
to have a rubber axe in this
scene!’ So when I pick her up,
it’s actually a rubber axe. I said,
‘Holly, there’s no way in the
world I would actually cut your
finger off!’ I’m still slightly
hurt by that. It’s only now that
I realise the significance of his
horrible line, before he drags
her to the chopping block. He
says, ‘Look what you’ve made
me do.’ That is apparently
often a line in situations of real
domestic abuse that people say,
and I never knew that until
about a year ago. That was
really upsetting.”
IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (1995)
Neill’s second collaboration
with John Carpenter is
a gloriously demented fusion
of H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen
King, in which Neill plays
an insurance adjuster
who investigates the
disappearance of a
horror novelist, and goes
quite, quite mad at the
end of the world
“I love John. He’s
such a curious
character. All he
eats is breakfast
food — bacon and
pancakes. He just
lives on that shit!
I had one major
contribution to that
REVIEW
film. When I’m in the loony bin,
originally he had the Stones
playing, and I said, ‘I wouldn’t
mind the Stones on repeat.
But it’s the Carpenters that’s
guaranteed to drive you mad.
That would be the worst
punishment of all…’”
EVENT HORIZON (1997)
Neill is unforgettable in Paul
W.S. Anderson’s cult classic
sci-fi horror as Dr William
Weir, a pragmatic scientist
and designer of super-
spaceship the Event Horizon
who, by the end, gets
possessed by an evil force,
rips out his own eyes, and
runs around in the nip
“What I remember most
about that film was the
camaraderie of the cast, and
the sets were so phenomenal.
But the demon scenes, the
sheer discomfort of the
special-effects make-up, was
in itself a horror. Eight hours
of being covered in blood
and rubber. I didn’t have
to try hard to be deeply,
demonically unpleasant!”
HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE
(2016)
The role perhaps closest
to Neill’s own heart is Hec,
a gruff farmer who goes on
the run with his adopted son,
Ricky Baker, in Taika Waititi’s
wonderful comedy. Neill’s
fed-up expression as his wife
sings Ricky a happy birthday
song is worth the price of
purchase alone
“That song was really made up
on the spot. Rima [Te Wiata,
who played Hec’s wife, Bella]
was going to play ‘Happy
Birthday’, but the producer
said we can’t sing that song
because we don’t have copyright.
So we all got our heads
together, and within half an
hour it had come together.
She credits me with the line,
‘Me and Hector, trifecta!’”
CHRIS HEWITT
RIDE LIKE A GIRL IS OUT NOW ON DVD
AND DOWNLOAD
OCTOBER 2020 117
 REVIEW
Ghost stories
We reunite the stars of the 1989 TV
version of THE WOMAN IN BLACK, one
of the scariest horrors of all time
THERE HAVE BEEN several
adaptations of Susan Hill’s
1983 ghost story, The Woman
In Black. The long-running
West End stage version, for
one. And, of course, the 2012
Hammer film, starring Daniel
Radcliffe as the hapless lawyer,
Arthur, who falls foul of the
eponymous vengeful spirit. But
the one that has really stuck
in the mind of anyone lucky
enough to see it when it aired
on ITV on Christmas Eve, 1989,
is the feature-length version.
Directed by Herbert Wise and
scripted by the legendary Nigel
Kneale, it’s a classic slow-burn,
wreathed in a funereal,
doom-laden atmosphere, with
one of the great jump scares,
where The Woman suddenly
appears over the lawyer’s bed,
screaming demonically in his
face. Brown trousers all round.
It only aired once more on
television, in 1994, but now The
Woman In Black is getting its
due with a Blu-ray release. The
perfect excuse, then, for Empire
to reunite its stars, Adrian
Rawlins (who plays Arthur),
Pauline Moran (The Woman In
Black) and Andy Nyman (who
plays Jackie, and went on to
write, direct and star in Ghost
Stories), on a Zoom call.
Andy Nyman: It was my very
first telly job. As a horror fan,
I was so thrilled.
Adrian Rawlins: I was up for
the lead, which was beyond my
wildest dreams. I remember
Herbie being very gentle and
charming.
Pauline Moran: I didn’t have
an audition. I just had a meeting
with Nigel Kneale and Herbie
Wise, and that was it. I must
have been horrifying enough!
I’d done a film with Alan Bates,
The Trespasser, and I’d been
118 OCTOBER 2020
with the RSC, so I suppose they
thought, “She can be trusted.”
Nyman: It has one of the
greatest scare moments in
horror. And I say that as an
obsessive horror fan. Pauline,
your performance in that
moment is truly extraordinary,
because on the one hand
it’s huge but it’s absolutely
ferocious and real, and the
expression is fucking
terrifying. It’s amazing, as
is the reaction.
Moran: The way that Herbie
set up that shot was amazing.
I was on a dolly, and I had
a wind machine blowing full-
tilt. As they pulled the dolly
towards the bed, the camera
came towards me but it was
focusing away from me so you
get that peculiar, vertiginous
feeling. Hitchcock used that in
Vertigo. And I didn’t scream
with an open throat. That’s
why I kept my voice.
Rawlins: Well, it’s still ringing
in my ears.
Moran: It was more like
a banshee.
Rawlins: It’s weird. When
you see it again, you see the
vengefulness in it.
Moran: Barbara Kronig
dressed me and guided the
appearance. My waist is pulled
right in, which you can see in
certain shots. That particular
look requires a kind of stillness.
Rawlins: On the restored
version, I think it’s the first
time I’ve properly seen your
face, Pauline. In that appearance
by the graves, the first time we
really see your face, I’d never
seen it before, even on TV.
Nyman: The last time I saw
you, Pauline, was at the cast
and crew screening. I sat next
to you. I’ve got my ticket for
that framed in my study.
Moran: I remember that
Top to bottom:
Pauline Moran
in the title role;
Arthur (Adrian
Rawlins) has an
axe to grind;
Out on the wild,
windy moors;
Andy Nyman
as Jackie,
with Steven
Mackintosh
as Rolfe.
screening. When she comes for
Arthur, the crew were sitting
in a row in the front, and they
all leaned over in the other
direction. They all had such
a scare. I don’t think they were
expecting it. I was helpless
with laughter.
Rawlins: It never occurred
to me that it was a horror film.
I just thought I was doing
the drama. It’s a revelation to
me, and such a bonus, that it’s
a classic.
Nyman: The best [horror
stories] aren’t schlock, and just
a silly jump-fest. If you take the
scares out of it, it’s about a man
who has to work away, and the
impact of that on his marriage.
Moran: Our version goes to
show that you don’t need to
throw money at something
for it to work. I’m referring to
the recent version with Dan
Radcliffe. To my mind, their
Woman appears too often.
Our Woman appears only five
times. And you remember
every single one of them.
Rawlins: She casts a whole
presence over the film.
Once you’ve seen her, she’s
ever-present.
Nyman: When we were
making the film of Ghost
Stories, there was a moment in
it that is a direct influence from

The Woman In Black. It was
never right in the edit, and that
moment has been a template
for myself and Jeremy Dyson
[Nyman’s co-writer/director].
We went back to that moment
in The Woman In Black and
realised that Herbie keeps the
scream going after you’ve left
the scene. So you’re left with
this sense of it being alive.
And so we kept the sound of
the person who was reacting,
screaming under a crossfade,
and bang! It worked.
Rawlins: I’ve come across
people who talk about it in the
way that I would talk about
Doctor Who when I was a kid,
seeing the Cybermen, and
freaking me out.
Nyman: The difference is that
if you go back and look at those
Cybermen eps now, you see
how creaky they are. It’s all
a bit tatty, but this is not that.
This stands the test of time.
Rawlins: That’s what I’m
most thrilled about.
Moran: People occasionally
write and want to know how
effects are done. I had a little
boy ask how did I walk on
water? I said, “It’s one of my
special skills.” CHRIS HEWITT
Alamy
THE WOMAN IN BLACK IS OUT NOW ON
BLU-RAY, ONLY FROM NETWORKONAIR.COM
THE
F I R ST TA K E
CLUB
Classic movies, seen for
the very first time
THIS MONTH
COMEDIAN TIERNAN DOUIEB
ON HOW HE BECAME
AN OLDBOY NEW BOY
↓
I HAD ONE solid, or rather squishy, reason for
never watching Korean action thriller Oldboy.
It wasn’t that the title made me concerned it
was an unnecessary Benjamin Button sequel. No,
I had read an article some years ago that said
that it had taken the lead actor, Choi Min-sik,
four takes to eat the live octopus in the sushi-
restaurant scene. He is a vegetarian Buddhist and
so prayed for forgiveness from the octopus (or
octopi?) in question before biting their heads
off and trying to fit the wriggling tentacles into
his mouth as they continued moving, long after
the creature had died. This fact alone made
me say out loud, on the train and upsetting
other passengers, “Fuck that.” It’s a shame,
as everything else about Oldboy absolutely
appealed to me. I love Park Chan-wook’s graphic,
colourful and twisted The Handmaiden. I’m a big
fan of Korean cinema, with most
of Bong Joon-ho’s films on my
‘favourites’ list. Train To Busan
is one of my top five zombie
flicks, as well as a main reason
for avoiding public transport in
case of an undead apocalypse.
I love subtitled films, because
I don’t read enough and that
way I can pretend I’ve done
a book and a movie at the same
time. Is the book better than
the film? Why not combine
both? Sort of.
So, like the bird from the
hand of the fowler, I decided
to free myself from octopus-
gobbling concerns and instead
grab this film by the tentacles.
Wow, did I feel silly when
I realised that in comparison
to so many other aspects of
Oldboy, devilfish-noshing was very much the
least-harrowing bit. I can barely remember that
scene in comparison to the tortuous teeth-
pulling, the absolute psychopathic villainy of Lee
Woo-jin, THE TONGUE OH GOD THE TONGUE,
and the harrowing ending that simultaneously
made me shout, “Oh no!” repeatedly at the screen
while making me realise maybe I’m not that bad
at parenting, after all. This is not to say I didn’t
like it. On the contrary, I was absolutely gripped
by this sadistic — yet often darkly funny until
it’s really not — tale of vengeance from start to
disturbing finish. Choi Min-sik’s performance as
Oh Dae-su is remarkable, seamlessly transforming
from this lumbering idiot to a vengeance-filled
anti-hero, and finally this shell of a man realising
that his very last reason for being has been crushed.
It’s an incredible strength for a film to carry you
through and only afterwards do you realise quite
how absurd the storyline is. I was too engaged
wondering why this man has been imprisoned for
15 years, who has done who wrong, and just how
many restaurants called Blue Dragon can there be?
At times Oldboy felt almost like a Jean-Pierre
Jeunet film, a European comic-book fantasy. At
others, it’s as stark and gritty as early John Woo,
with the incredible one-shot, corridor-set
hammer-flailing fight sequence that has now
become a staple in so many action films. The
clownishly funny opening has a Hitchcock-like
diversion to it, making you so unprepared for
what’s to come. The sex scene feels unsettling
even before you realise why, and hallucinations of
ants exacerbate the skin-itching — that underlying
feeling of discomfort that Oldboy imparts
throughout. Oh, and the score is the perfect answer
for, “Hey Siri, give me what a modern-day Korean
film-noir soundtrack might be.”
I feel like an idiot for waiting so long to see
Oldboy. Of course, it could be that leaving it ’til
2020 to watch a film about a man imprisoned for
15 years against his will has given it extra relevance
after four months of coronavirus lockdown. Let
me tell you, I’ll never complain about being
trapped indoors for a few months ever again. But
I am just pleased that I got over my octopus-
based worries because this
is a hugely enjoyable film,
even when you have to watch
through your fingers and shout,
“Oh no!” at it repeatedly. Laugh
and the world laughs with you,
weep and you weep alone.
Decide not to watch a film
because one cephaloid was
harmed during the making of
it, then more fool you. Not least
because four were. He did that
four times. Four. Oldboy is
a film that might feel familiar
at times, but trust me, it’s very
much its own beast.
LISTEN TO TIERNAN DOUIEB’S PODCAST,
PARTLY POLITICAL BROADCAST, AT
PARTLYPOLITICALBROADCAST.
TIERNANDOUIEB.CO.UK
MONTH 2019 119
 !
SPOILER
WARNING

THE
VIEWING
GUIDE A deep dive into the
must-see moments from
the month’s big release

been salvaged from a warehouse in Germany to house. “Charles plays this strong patriarch
capture the majority of the film’s action sequences. that he can convey with just the twitch of an
eyebrow, but there’s also an interesting fragility

Fanny Lye FANNY PREPARES FOR CHURCH

To watch Maxine Peake’s stoic heroine dutifully
tend to her home is to behold Clay’s steadfast
commitment to the Cromwellian era. Not only did
to him. John is a terrible character in many
ways, but Charles manages to bring a thread
of sympathy to him in certain moments.”

Deliver’d he insist that the Lye family farmhouse be built

WRITER/DIRECTOR THOMAS CLAY on his eerie,
English Civil War-era psychological thriller.
TWO STRANGERS ARRIVE
The film’s opening scene, shot on location in
Shropshire in early spring, sees two naked
runaways cut through the misty thicket surrounding
the Lye family farmhouse. “Mystery is key for the
beginning of the film,” says Clay of the scene, which
establishes Freddie Fox and Tanya Reynolds’
fugitives. The filmmaker — who shot on 35mm
— called upon a “very old giraffe crane” that had
especially for the film with the help of seven roof
thatchers, but several historical experts were
also brought in to consult on the shoot. “One was
very good at costumes, which meant that most
of the materials were authentic,” he says. “In the
UK there’s also this re-enactment community
committed to the English Civil War that’s full of
people who are very dedicated to that world.”
BROTHERS IN ARMS
“Throughout the film there’s this stand-off
between John [Charles Dance] and Thomas [Fox]
that shifts one way or the other. We’re setting that
up in this scene,” says Clay of a merciful yet tense
conversation between Fox’s Ranter (dissenter)-in-
disguise and Charles Dance’s master of the
OF MATRIMONY AND MEN
Before the house hierarchy crumbles into
a hostage situation, Clay offers a rare glimpse
into Fanny’s psyche as she bonds with Rebecca
(Tanya Reynolds) over the men in their life. “We
don’t really know until the end of the film what’s
going on in Fanny’s head,” says Clay. “But in this
moment of friendship, we see through her armour.”
He became fond of Rebecca while writing the
film, and decided to make her the narrator
in post-production. “It was an experimental
way of shortening the film at the start, but once
I began writing I quickly fell in love with her.”
ENTER THE SHERIFF
Both the film’s imminent threat and its main
comic relief, the High Sheriff [Peter McDonald]

120 OCTOBER 2020


and his henchmen are a grotesque gaggle of
characters that Clay describes as overtly British
types: “You’ve got the toff, the psychic and the
Cockney,” he says. “Even more than Thomas
and Rebecca, they’re invading the farm but
also invading the film.” The sheriff also lent
a key outsider’s perspective to the film. “He
represents the Royals’ point of view,” says
Clay. “He’s pretending to be a Puritan sheriff,
but there are a couple of lines in the film that
give him away.”
THOMAS’ TEACHINGS
“We cut about eight minutes off this scene in the
end,” Clay recalls of editing a mealy monologue
delivered by Thomas to his prisoners that John
tries in vain to challenge. “Essentially it’s a
debate between the Puritan and Ranter points
of view. It was the hardest part of the script to
write.” Clay spent months researching for the
scene: “I read pamphlets written by people
on both sides of the argument, and worked
with an advisor on the language of the period
to make sure that everything was correct.”
THE BODY OF CHRIST
Determined to enforce his beliefs upon the Lye
family, Thomas includes them in a religious
celebration of food and wine while they’re under
his command. “It’s one of the Ranters’ practices
to exchange the host for pork and mead. It’s
intentionally heretical,” Clay explains. After
coming around to their teachings, Fanny allows
herself to become intoxicated and a momentary
ménage à trois ensues. “There is this latent anger
that she feels towards John that she’s never
been able to express,” says the filmmaker. “I think
there is a little part of her that uses that moment
to let some of that anger out.”
THE FATE OF THOMAS AND ARTHUR
When writing the earliest sketch of the story, Clay
decided that both Thomas and the Lyes’ son
Arthur [Zak Adams] wouldn’t survive the attack on
the house by the High Sheriff. “I was inspired by
the books of Cormac McCarthy, or [1971 Robert
Altman movie] McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” he says.
“The story needed to have a tragic edge to have
impact, and we wanted to show the aftermath of
REVIEW
war, even though the film takes place a few years
later.” For the shot in which Thomas is killed
suddenly by a bullet to the face, a dummy was
used on set before a spray of blood and gore
was applied in post-production. “That was
probably the only time that modern visual effects
came to the fore,” says Clay.
FANNY’S DEPARTURE
The final scene of the film proved a laborious
one to shoot; a sprawling, foggy sequence in
which Fanny leaves the farmhouse on horseback.
“We had to turn up at 4.30 in the morning to get
everything set up for that scene,” Clay recalls.
“The path leading away from the house was
quite treacherous for the horses, but Maxine has
the riding experience needed to pull it off.” The
filmmaker cites Westerns such as Heaven’s Gate
and Days Of Heaven as key influences for the
film, and sees its allegiance with the genre in
this scene especially: “Only instead of Clint
Eastwood, we have Maxine Peake.” BETH WEBB
FANNY LYE DELIVER’D IS OUT NOW ON DVD AND DOWNLOAD
OCTOBER 2020 121
 REVIEW
THE
CULT
OF
The critic and novelist on
this month’s weirdest
straight-to-video picks
THIS MONTH’S THEME is
creepiness coming close to
home — with mostly young
folks subject to formless
threats from the depths of the
sea, or deep in the woods, or
traumatic family history. To be
fair, that describes about 90 per cent of horror
movies… but binge-watching this little lot
conveys a powerful sense of gathering gloom
and contemporary ills, with only glimpses
of cosmic catastrophe for relief. On the bright
side, they’re mostly gorgeous to look at —
whether set in crumbling old houses or out
in a haunted landscape.
Denis Rovira van Boekholt’s The Influence
is a Spanish adaptation of a fine novel by
Liverpool’s premier horror writer, Ramsey
Campbell. It’s a strong, unsettling, old-dark-
house film with the requisite creaky stairs,
but the biggest mystery is why Campbell’s
outstanding work gets filmed in Spain (three
times!) but is overlooked on his home turf.
A comatose, dying woman casts a malign spell
over the estranged family gathered around
her, especially focusing on her innocent
granddaughter — whose particularly dubious
playmate is leading her into trouble. Suspicious
accidents befall anyone who crosses the
unconscious matriarch, and her daughters
struggle against her witchiness.
Pearry Reginald Teo’s The Assent , another
supernatural family drama, takes an unusual
approach to the exorcism sub-genre. Bereaved
schizophrenic Joel (Robert Kazinsky) becomes
concerned that some of the things he thinks he
sees might actually be there… though it’s also
122 OCTOBER 2020
↑
CULT HERO OF THE MONTH
STEPHEN MCHATTIE
Canadian Stephen McHattie has acted
for 50 years. After making a rebel-youth
impression in 1976 TV movies — as James
Dean in the biopic of the same name, and a
mixed-up Antichrist in Look What’s Happened
To Rosemary’s Baby — he went on to bigger
fare like Beverly Hills Cop III (as a baddie) and
Watchmen (as the first Nite Owl). These days,
he is often found being weirdly menacing in
interesting little pictures (Z, Rabid, Come To
Daddy, The Sound). His best recent films are
collaborations with director Bruce McDonald
and writer Tony Burgess. After his tour de
force in Pontypool, as a radio phone-in host
besieged by a zombie virus, McHattie takes
two contrasting parts as a hit-man and a
jazz-man in the outlandishly quirky, seductive
Dreamland (above), which features a vampire
wedding, Juliette Lewis as a Mob diva,
delirious musical numbers, absurdist comedy,
and a strange, cool, underground vibe.
possible that some of the
people he’s talking to are
phantasms. When it seems his
young son is possessed, Joel
calls in a decidedly dodgy team
of exorcists — including dour
Peter Jason as a priest just out
of jail because his last exorcism
patient died during the ritual,
and Tatum O’Neal making
a welcome return to movies
as an ordained doctor — and
lingers outside the bedroom
door as pandemonium breaks
loose. Teo has racked up a run
of odd, interesting, ambitious
genre pieces (Necromentia,
Dead Inside, Dracula The Dark
Prince); this is his best to date,
with some real twists in the
home stretch.
Another essay in the it’s-not-the-horror-
you-were-expecting stakes is Jordan Baker’s
Witches In The Wood , which yokes America’s
primal shame (the witch hunt) to the #MeToo
issue of campus sexual harassment. Seven
students set off for a weekend of beer in the hot
tub and snowboarding on the slopes, but take an
unwise shortcut through woods where a witch-
panic once flared. Alison (Sasha Clements),
victim of a viral video prank, has brought charges
that have got half the football team suspended.
Now, she’s the focus of perhaps supernatural
activity as everyone acts on their worst instincts.
It has a lot of editorial content for a lost-in-the-
woods spooky movie, but — as with the recent
Black Christmas remake — it’s refreshing to see
college-age horror mounted with an up-to-the-
minute attitude. As usual, holiday safety is
neglected when demon winds blow: the perils of
improperly secured ski-poles and carelessly set
bear-traps are fully illustrated.
You can stay away from haunted houses and
get out of the woods and still come a cropper near
water… as demonstrated by a shuddery double bill
Gutter creditNeil Edwards
of Jeffrey A. Brown’s slow-burning, Lovecraftian
doom-from-the-sea picture The Beach House ,
where gloopy, glowing matter from the surf
causes horribly uncomfortable mutations, and
Illustration:
Nini Bull Robsahm’s Norwegian ghost/mystery
tale Lake Of Death , a classical exercise in bad
things happening against stunning scenery.
 Neil Young. MOJO’s finest writers.
The full story. In two deluxe volumes.

AVAILABLE NOW!
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 REVIEW
THE
RANKING
Twelve films. Four
critics. Two warring
species. Whoever
wins, we lose.
The Alien and
Predator franchises
Chris: This is the first time
we’re doing a combo of two
series, and all because someone
at Fox realised that they owned
both Alien and Predator. That’s
how it all began, with that little
Easter egg in Predator 2.
Dan: That was so exciting.
I remember spotting that when
I was watching Predator 2 on
VHS and going, “There’s an
Alien skull on the wall in the
background! Predators have
been hunting Aliens!”
James: I’m going to jump right
in and Predatorsplain to you.
Predator 2 was not actually the
genesis of Alien Vs Predator. It
was, in fact, Dark Horse Comics
in 1989 with the first Alien Vs
Predator comic, a full year
before Predator 2 came out.
Dan: I did not know that.
James: The Paul W.S.
Anderson film is based very
124 OCTOBER 2020
loosely on one of the runs of
those comics.
Chris: This is a series of wildly
varying quality. I would say it
has three stone-cold classics.
James: It’s not a sliding scale.
You have Alien, Aliens and
Predator and then you have a
hundred miles of nothing and
then a load of films in a little
heap at the bottom. It’s a pretty
big fucking drop-off.
Dan: I really loved Predator 2
at the time. The idea is LA is
this war zone. There’s this
great scene where they’re on
the subway and someone pulls
a gun, and then everyone’s got
a gun, which is a sort of slightly
RoboCop-ish satirical edge.
Chris: I loved Predator 2 at the
time also. I love that it changed
things up. I would love to have
seen Schwarzenegger come
back as Dutch, obviously, but
OUR CRITICS
Danny Glover did a great job
in that movie. And it switched
settings from the jungle to the
urban jungle.
James: It’s absolute nonsense.
I was speaking to Keegan-
Michael Key on the set of The
Predator and I remember him
saying, “That is a film made
entirely with cocaine,” and that
sums it up to me. They’re
throwing money and set-pieces
at it, but it doesn’t make an
awful lot of sense.
John: It does feel outdated.
The stuff that made the first
film so good, which is that
mystery and the paranoia of
this invisible threat, you lose
that in widening the scale of it.
Chris: Where did these
franchises go wrong? Is it the
lack of a Kevin Feige-type
figure? Did they need someone
at the helm?
JAMES DYER
Was actually on set of Alien
as a wee nipper. Failed
to interview John Hurt.
CHRIS HEWITT
Once saw Predators twice
in the space of 24 hours.
Incredibly, has no regrets.
DAN JOLIN
Can name every member
of the Colonial Marines.
Except Crowe...
JOHN NUGENT
Will defend Ridley Scott’s
Alien sequels until the
Neomorphs come home.

James: I think it’s repetition.
Once you become desensitised
to the threat, it loses its
potency. You have that with
Alien too. What Cameron did
with Aliens that was genius was
that he did something different.
He made an incredible platoon
movie. After that they were just
trying to find ways to squeeze
juice out of this concept. Alien3
could have been many things,
but the Alien3 we ultimately
got was an attempt to retread
what Ridley Scott did with
Alien. Alien Resurrection was…
honestly, I don’t know what
the fuck that was.
Chris: Does that speak to
my point? That they needed
Illustration: Jacey
a unifying producer, someone
at the studio, to have a clear
focus on a path?
James: That’s the thing. Don’t
do an Alien sequel because you
want to do an Alien sequel.
Do it because you have an
incredibly compelling idea.
Dan: Do you think you
would have liked the Vincent
Ward wooden-planet version
of Alien3?
James: Very much so. There’s
elements of that still in Alien3.
Dan: I think one of the things
that has gone wrong with the
Alien strand is losing sight of
the fact that it’s Ripley who’s
the subject of these films, not
the creatures. Once you take
Ripley away, I don’t think it’s
as interesting.
John: Alien and Aliens are
clear visions of a handful of
people. The Alien sequels, from
three onwards, and to a lesser
extent, the Predator sequels,
you can feel the studio troubles
on screen. You can see the
clashes they had. Alien3, David
Fincher famously disowned it.
It feels muddled. You get that
with The Predator as well, the
Shane Black movie. A lot of
stuff happened on the journey
to the screen that made it the
slight mess that it became.
Chris: Let’s go back to that
moment when we saw Predator
2, and saw the Alien skull, and
you thought, “Oh my God, one
day there’s going to be a film
in which there’s an Alien and
a Predator and they’re going to
fight and it’s going to be the
most amazing thing ever,” and
then Alien Vs Predator came out
in 2004 and it absolutely wasn’t.
Dan: I don’t hate that film.
James: It’s just incredibly
bland and middle of the road.
It’s not particularly scary. It’s
not particularly exciting.
Dan: The first fight between
a Predator and an Alien is
actually really good.
James: Is it, though?
Chris: It disappointed me,
but Aliens Vs Predator:
Requiem, the one that follows
it, is a fetid turd of a movie.
It has absolutely no redeeming
features whatsoever. It has
the PredAlien, the fusion of
an Alien and a Predator,
and somehow manages to
fuck that up.
John: My biggest issue is that
those movies look and feel
quite cheap. There’s no artistry
to them.
REVIEW
THE TOP TEN
ALIENS (1986)
James: “James Cameron
took Alien, wrapped it
in a Vietnam war allegory,
Chris: There’s one great thing
about Alien Vs Predator, which 1 and in doing so turned a
claustrophobic horror into
is the tagline: “Whoever wins, a gung-ho platoon movie
we lose” is pretty much perfect. that only amplified the
But if you ask me, it needs original’s creeping dread
someone to come in and and unbearable tension.”
reinvent the mythology. And
that’s what happened when
Ridley Scott came back on for
Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.
ALIEN (1979)
Dan: I have no shame in saying 2 John: “The original and, in my book,
the best. It remains as atmospheric
this. I have ranked ‘AvP’ and and terrifying as it did in 1979.”
The Predator higher than
those movies.
John: You are totally insane.
What are you talking about?
PREDATOR (1987)
Dan: They look great. 3 Chris: “John McTiernan takes a
laughable premise — Arnie vs alien
James: Prometheus is not an — and turns it into an action classic.”
Alien film. It’s a bold, really
interesting hard science-fiction
film. It feels almost crowbarred
into the Alien mythology.
ALIEN3 (1992)
Dan: For me it’s as insulting 4 Dan: “Fincher may have disowned
it, but there’s still some artistry in
as The Phantom Menace, and this much-maligned threequel.”
Covenant is Attack Of The
Clones. They both irritated
me from beginning to end.
John: There’s a lot to be said
PREDATORS (2010)
for both of them. Prometheus is 5 Chris: “Going down the Aliens route
(adding an ‘s’, more bad guys), this
a noble failure, to some extent. space actioner is hugely underrated.”
He just chucks everything into
this blender, but it’s a glorious
mess. I love the Engineers
and the coldness of them.
PREDATOR 2 (1990)
Chris: Let’s wrap this up, then. 6 Dan: “Danny Glover’s presence and
the script’s satirical edge don’t quite
There’s no debate about which make up for the plot’s creakiness.”
is better between Predator and
Predator 2. But there is a huge
debate about which is better:
Alien or Aliens. I think you
ALIEN: COVENANT (2017)
can tell a lot about the sort of 7 John: “Not the Prometheus sequel or
Alien prequel we wanted, but enough
person you are by which one scares to justify its existence.”
you plump for.
John: This is like the ultimate
question: Beatles or Stones? PROMETHEUS (2012)
Chris: Beatles. It’s not even
a question. 8 John: “It’s a divisive, ponderous
mess, but I will defend the gorgeous
James: Who prefers ambition of this film to the very end!”
the Stones?
John: I’ve flip-flopped on this
more than a politician. But
I think Alien is better. It’s
ALIEN: RESURRECTION (1997)
more profound, more poetic, 9 James: “A confused mish-mash of
ideas, both passable (hybrid Ripley)
it’s more mysterious. and truly awful (The Newborn).”
Chris: That’s the Shoreditch
choice. “I’m the sort of person
who prefers Alien, I’m more
poetic, look at my beard.” No.
THE PREDATOR (2018)
Aliens has everything that 10 James: “A big disappointment given
Shane Black’s involvement. A tepid
Alien has, and an extra layer reheat with a handful of decent gags.”
of emotion that the first
Alien simply doesn’t have.
John: Aliens doesn’t have
a Space Jockey… AGREE? DISAGREE? WRITE IN AND TELL US AT:
Chris: Right. Enough LETTERS@EMPIREMAGAZINE.COM / @EMPIREMAGAZINE
squabbling. Let’s vote!
OCTOBER
MONTH 2020
2019 125
 PICK OF
THE MONTH
Team Empire on
the month’s essential
movies and TV
SUCCESSION: SEASON 2
OUT 14 SEPTEMBER / CERT TBC / 601 MINS.
There’s one scene in the second season of Jesse
Armstrong’s wry dissection of a super-rich,
Murdoch-like mogul-clan which encapsulates its
appeal. Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) takes to the
stage during a 50th anniversary party for his family’s
world-cheapening media empire, and performs a
rap song dedicated to his formidable father, Logan
(Brian Cox). It’s an arse-puckering epitome-of-
cringe moment, but, astonishingly, his performance
is actually pretty good. To have Kendall die up
there, or for the song to slapstickily dissolve into
disaster, would be too easy. And Succession’s
blackly comic genius is founded on its avoidance
of easiness. Everything about it is difficult, in the
best way possible, from the way it teases laughs
from the darkest corners to the torturously twisted,
character-forged paths each unpausable episode
lures you down. Never have such a despicably
privileged, sympathy-resistant bunch been so
watchable. Or — honestly — likeable. DAN JOLIN
126 OCTOBER 2020
IVANSXTC
OUT 28 SEPTEMBER / CERT 18 / 92 MINS
Ivansxtc (sometimes styled Ivans xtc), shot
in 1999 when the indies were beginning to get
glossy, was, by contrast, a grimy ‘fuck you’
of a film. Filmed for nothing, and on digital (not
the done thing back then, so problematic for
cinemas), it was inspired by director Bernard
Rose’s own misadventures in Hollywood as
well as by his hard-living former agent Jay
Maloney, and by Tolstoy’s 1886 novella The
ONLY YESTERDAY
OUT 28 SEPTEMBER / CERT PG / 119 MINS
Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata often
operated as a kind of balance to Hayao
Miyazaki, doing away with the visual and
narrative touchstones of the studio’s other
work. In the case of Only Yesterday, he left
behind fantastical tales and lavish backdrops
for something more minimalist. As the film
explores Taeko’s life as a 27-year-old and
a ten-year-old, its dual perspectives are divided
by its approach to drawing both character and
background, Takahata arguably being even
more interested than Miyazaki in how even the
most minute details of the form can project or
evoke differing emotions. The little injustices of
years long past are given both a different visual
style and the utmost attention; and Takahata
shows great patience as well as empathy no
matter how serious the drama. A very different
Ghibli movie, but among the studio’s best.
KAMBOLE CAMPBELL
Death of Ivan Ilyich. Yet you can go in blind,
knowing none of that, and still be shellshocked
by its honesty and purity. Danny Huston gives
an eerily real, sinister, sweaty performance as
super-agent Ivan Beckman, a charismatic
hedonist in the midst of an existential
apocalypse. The whole film, in fact, feels like
one big coke sweat. A raw portrayal of the
rotten heart of Hollywood, it is so beautifully
bitter: an exhilarating downer. Two decades
on, now in hi-def, it feels just as relevant.
ALEX GODFREY
BEAU TRAVAIL
OUT 28 SEPTEMBER / CERT TBC / 92 MINS
Blue skies, sparkling seas and sweaty, sunkissed
skin make up the sensual surface of Claire Denis’
1999 drama Beau Travail, but underneath lurks
the downward spiral of a man lost without the
communal comfort of military masculinity.
Narrated by ex-legionnaire Galoup (Denis
Lavant), the film looks back at his time spent
leading troops in Africa, and his struggle
containing his connection with comrade Sentain
(Grégoire Colin). Denis intersperses poetic
visuals with thundering sequences of uniformly
performed physical exercises, and the fever-
dream of a final shot — soundtracked by ‘Rhythm
Of The Night’ — confirms Beau Travail as another
masterpiece in her extraordinary repertoire.
Finally being released on Blu-ray as part of the
Criterion Collection, this is a chance for High Life
fans to see the director’s earlier exploration of
the impact of regiment and repressed sexuality
on the male psyche. SOPHIE BUTCHER

THE HIGH NOTE
OUT NOW / CERT 12 / 114 MINS
There’s a feel-good nature about The High Note,
which sees frustrated personal assistant Maggie
(Dakota Johnson) pursue her dreams of music-
producing with budding young singer David
(Kelvin Harrison Jr). But director Nisha Ganatra
— whose previous film, Late Night, shares
much of the DNA of her latest — has a lot
of weighty themes on her mind, including
ageism and misogyny in the music industry.
As a veteran soul diva who doubts if she’s still
got some fresh hits in her, Tracee Ellis Ross
is by turns scornful and warm, while Harrison
Jr exudes charm as both a love interest and
a talented musician (he does all his own
singing). So while an unnecessary third-act
twist doesn’t quite work, the great chemistry
shared by its leads, along with some enjoyable
if not instantly hummable songs, makes this
a breezy, entertaining and worthwhile ride.
AMON WARMANN
SWEET CHARITY
OUT 28 SEPTEMBER / CERT PG / 157 MINS
After The Sound Of Music hit big, Hollywood
ploughed fortunes into widescreen spectacular-
flop musicals. The likes of Doctor Dolittle and
Hello, Dolly! were literally out of tune with the
Easy Rider/Midnight Cowboy years, but Bob
Fosse’s adaptation of a Broadway show based
on Fellini’s Nights Of Cabiria is the Blade Runner
of musicals. Few loved it when it came out, but
three years later (about the time Fosse made
Cabaret) it felt like the most influential movie
of its genre ever made. Taxi dancer Charity
(Shirley MacLaine) has bad luck with men but
retains gamine pep through some of the most
exciting, garish, eye-popping song-and-dance
numbers ever filmed, all with Fosse’s signature
Alamy, Shutterstock
fingersnap/hip-flex choreography. Stand-outs:
MacLaine’s kooky ‘If They Could See Me Now’,
Sammy Davis Jr’s terrifying ‘The Rhythm Of Life’,
and the astonishing ‘The Rich Man’s Frug’.
KIM NEWMAN
MISBEHAVIOUR
OUT 7 SEPTEMBER / CERT 12 / 107 MINS
Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Keira Knightley headline
a heavyweight ensemble of British talent in
this richly narrated history lesson in female
empowerment. Set against the early rise of the
Women’s Liberation Movement in 1970s London,
the film follows Knightley’s activist Sally as her
chapter prepares to sabotage the Miss World
pageant on live television, and Mbatha-Raw as
Jennifer Hosten, who made history as the first
Black woman to win the contest. Director
Philippa Lowthorpe captures both the radical
energy brewing in Sally’s community and the
monumental significance of Hosten’s victory
without undercutting either point of view.
Knightley once again shines in a period picture,
and is backed by breakthrough performers like
Wild Rose’s Jessie Buckley, but Mbatha-Raw is
Misbehaviour’s MVP, radiating nuance and grace
and delivering a final word so disarming that it
will knock the wind right out of you. BETH WEBB
WEATHERING WITH YOU
OUT 28 SEPTEMBER / CERT 12 / 114 MINS
As his follow-up to body-swap romance Your
Name, writer/director Makato Shinkai wasn’t
ever going to go the dark, glum realism route.
And while Weathering With You certainly
veers into cloudier territory occasionally, it’s
still a lovely, beautifully observed fable of
meteorology and emotion. High-schooler
Hodaka runs away from his island home to
make it in Tokyo. There, he meets and falls for
the mysterious Hina, a ‘Sunshine Girl’ who
has the power to change the weather. That
helps the pair hatch a business, all the while
enjoying each other’s company — but of course
there’s a catch: every time Hina uses her
abilities, a little of her life force is taken in
exchange. Shinkai weaves another enchanting
spell around young lovers, painting the
landscape with beautiful light, while finding the
time for a cautionary tale about climate change.
JAMES WHITE
REVIEW
SPRING
OUT 7 SEPTEMBER / CERT 15 / 110 MINS
If H.P. Lovecraft had written Before Sunrise,
the result might look a lot like Spring, Aaron
Moorhead and Justin Benson’s 2014 follow-up
to their micro-budget mind-bender Resolution.
Following the death of his mother, Evan (Lou
Taylor Pucci) impulsively flies to Italy, where he
meets and falls in love with the mysterious and
gorgeous Louise (The Walking Dead’s Nadia
Hilker). But what begins as a whirlwind holiday
romance soon transforms into something
altogether stranger (as, indeed, does she) as
Evan uncovers a dark and terrifying secret about
his new love. The dialogue is natural, the
performances flawless, the metaphor profound,
and if there were any justice, there would be
a fan convention every spring in Bari, Apulia,
where Moorhead and Benson’s unconventional
yet swooningly romantic love story was filmed.
As it is, we’ll have to make do with 101’s
extras-packed Blu-ray. DAVID HUGHES
THEY LIVE
OUT 28 SEPTEMBER / CERT 18 / 95 MINS
John Carpenter once asserted that his 1988
science-fiction They Live — now presented in
a handsome new steelbook edition — was
“a documentary. It’s not science-fiction.” Few
documentaries include magic sunglasses,
six-minute alley-brawls with a former wrestler,
skeletal aliens, or one-liners like “Mama don’t
like tattle-tales!” But few films are as weirdly
prophetic (or just straightforwardly weird) as
Carpenter’s 11th film, which has only grown
in esteem — and prescience. Today, as in the
film, drones hover constantly above us,
capitalism has weaponised inequality, and the
discourse is driven by doom-laden all-caps
slogans. But Carpenter’s glorious skill was
to deliver his grim treatise through cheesy,
ass-kicking B-movie silliness; he came to chew
bubblegum and provide insightful, uproarious
satire — and he’s all out of bubblegum.
JOHN NUGENT
OCTOBER 2020 127
 REVIEW
Film Name
How iconic
images came
to life
Avengers Assemble
“IT WASN’T UNTIL that
moment that we thought, ‘Oh,
this might work,’” says Scarlett
Johansson. That moment being
the point — almost two hours in
— when the Avengers finally
assemble in Avengers Assemble,
DP Seamus McGarvey’s camera
roving around Earth’s Mightiest
Heroes (Johansson’s Black
Widow, Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk,
Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man,
Chris Evans’ Captain America,
Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and
Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye) as
they stand in a circle, properly
together for the first time.
“There was just something
about us standing there in
our full gear, and Mark in his
[mocap] suit,” Johansson tells
Empire. “We were always
worried about how you were
going to take all these different
characters from different
universes, but in that moment it
was a united cause — we actually
all are in the same movie.”
The MCU hadn’t indulged
in such a showstopper before,
but this is not just eye-candy.
Seeing the Avengers back-to-
back is crucial; in fact, it was
128 OCTOBER 2020
the starting point for director
Joss Whedon’s conception of
the battle. This is the moment
that a group of people who have
been mistrustful, bickering and
sometimes at war for two hours
become a team.
“The movie is about
finding yourself from
community,” said Whedon,
“and finding that you not only
belong together but you need
each other, very much.”
For the first two acts, the
Avengers have been separated,
and it’s not until this moment
that they (sorry) assemble.
And then, at last, it is on. As
the script says, “The Chitauri
Army watches in horror as
a group of Earth’s mightiest
heroes find themelves united
against a common threat.
To fight the foes no single
superhero could withstand!
The Avengers assemble!”
The “how” of it took some
doing. Visual development
supervisor Ryan Meinerding
tried to “unify the colours”
in the concept art. There’s
movement, but nothing
distracting or out of character.
Hulk roars, Widow reloads,
Iron Man drops gently into
place, Cap assesses the enemy.
Whedon’s idea was that the
Super troupers: Chitauri would have a war cry,
Earth’s Mightiest raised in defiance after the
Heroes line up freshly arrived Hulk punches
out their Leviathan. Whedon
ready for action.
observed, “The Avengers are
surrounded by guys going, ‘We
are going to fuck you up.’” And
it’s also the first time that Alan
Silvestri deploys his now-iconic
Avengers theme. “That was the
place for it,” he told Empire.
“We all knew everybody was
going to be waiting for that
shot in the movie. It was such
a bold musical statement, but
no more bold than having all
your heroes standing in the
midst of all this action.”
Now, just eight years on,
the shot itself feels almost
a little quaint; a little low-
ambition, even, compared with
the Avengers-versus-Avengers
battle in Captain America: Civil
War and the costumed chaos
of the finale of Avengers:
Endgame. But without this shot,
the ultimate proof of concept,
it’s arguable that neither of
those shots exist. Now we just
need to see a version in which
Ruffalo is wearing his mo-cap
suit. HELEN O’HARA
INSTANT
TRIVIA
↓
1
Black Widow’s Russian
interrogator (well,
interrogatee, from her point of
view) is played by Polish film
director Jerzy Skolimowski,
who won the Golden Bear at
the Berlin Film Festival in
1967 for Le Départ.
2
The film’s working title was
‘Group Hug’. Age Of Ultron’s
was ‘After Party’.
3
The Portland-based cellist
Agent Coulson refers to later
shows up in an episode of
Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.,
played by Whedon regular
Amy Acker.
4
Enver Gjokaj, who plays
a New York cop in a scene
with Captain America, went
on to star in Cap spin-off
prequel show Agent Carter.
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Lines close at midnight, 28 SEPTEMBER. Winners are selected at random. See below for terms and conditions.
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OCTOBER 2020 129


Chinatown Chosen by CHRISTOPHER MARKUS
CHRISTOPHER MARKUS: “I’m gonna go to
the clichéd screenwriter handbook. The
scene in Chinatown where Jake finally
confronts Noah Cross, and Noah Cross very
calmly explains why he did what he did. ‘It’s
the future, Mr Gittes. The future.’ Jake is
nailing this guy with his guilt, and the guilty
party is like, ‘What the fuck are you talking
about? It’s fine.’ It’s just evil laid bare.”
EXT. MULWRAY HOME —
NIGHT
Noah Cross (John Huston) and
Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) are
talking in the courtyard of Cross’
daughter’s house, where Gittes
has been waiting for his adversary.
GITTES: Got something I’d like
to show you, Mr Cross. [He
reaches into his pocket]
CROSS: What is it?
GITTES: An obituary column.
Can you see alright in this light?
CROSS: I guess I can manage.
Cross puts on his glasses.
CROSS: What does it mean?
130 OCTOBER 2020
CLASSIC
SCENEStandout sequences
from the
great movies
GITTES: That you killed Hollis
Mulwray. Right here, in that
pond. You drowned him. [He
gets out a pair of broken glasses]
And you left these. The coroner’s
report shows Mulwray had salt
water in his lungs.
CROSS: Hollis was always
fascinated by tide pools. You
know what he used to say?
GITTES: I haven’t the faintest
idea.
CROSS: That’s where life begins.
Sloughs, tide pools. When he
first come out here he figured
if you dumped water into the
desert sand and let it percolate
down to the bedrock, it would
stay there instead of evaporate the
way it does most reservoirs. You’d
only lose 20 per cent instead of
70 or 80. He made this city.
GITTES: That’s what you were
going to do in the Valley.
CROSS: It’s what I am doing.
The bond issue passes
Tuesday, there’ll be $8 million
to build an aquaduct and
(CO-WRITER, AVENGERS: ENDGAME)
reservoir. I am doing it.
GITTES: There’s going to be a
lot of irate citizens when they find
out that they’re paying for water
that they’re not going to get.
CROSS: Oh, that’s all taken care
of. See, Mr Gittes, either you
bring the water to LA, or you
bring LA to the water.
GITTES: How you gonna do that?
CROSS: By incorporating the
Valley into the city. Simple as that.
GITTES: How much are you
worth?
CROSS: I have no idea. How
much do you want?
GITTES: Nah, I just want to
know what you’re worth. Over
ten million?
CROSS: [laughing] Oh my, yes.
GITTES: Why are you doing it?
How much better can you eat,
what can you buy that you can’t
already afford?
CROSS: The future, Mr Gittes.
The future. Now, where’s the girl?
I want the only daughter I’ve got
left. As you found out, Evelyn
was lost to me a long time ago.
GITTES: Who do you blame for
that — her?
CROSS: I don’t blame myself.
See, Mr Gittes, most people
never have to face the fact that at
the right time, in the right place,
they’re capable of anything.
Cross looks off to his left.
CROSS: Claude… take those
glasses from him, will ya?
Gittes sees that Claude Mulvihill
(Roy Jenson), one of Cross’
heavies, has appeared. Gittes
eyes Cross, contemplating action.
CROSS: Not worth it, Mr Gittes.
Claude produces a gun and
holds it to Gittes’ head.
CROSS: It’s really not worth it.
Gittes hands back the glasses.