Oh boy... What have we done to ourselves? Back on the Winterbottom train with 9 SONGS!
Oh boy... What have we done to ourselves?
In a moment of uncertainty we decided to double dip into the Winterbottom well. We knew we were going to review this film "at some point" BUT we didn't really know what we were letting ourselves in for.
The "arthouse/mainstream/romantic/concert film" is only 69 (lol) minutes long but it feels like it's relatively short runtime. A film that depicts heavily gratuitous un-simulated sexual acts performed by our lead couple, some scenes depicting our lead character's job as a glaciologist (!) and 9 (counted and confirmed) songs of musical acts of the time performing at Brixton Academy in London.
If you thought that it would add up to the sum total of "nothing" you'd be close. If you thought it was a bit of a shallow, uncomfortable experiment that doesn't really justify its needs and the pressure put on its performers, you may also be right. If you think its a bit pretentious, you'd also be on the right track. See what we have to say in one of our personal favourite breakdowns of a film we've done in a while.
Unveiling Cinema's Full Frontal: The Nine Songs Controversy
Laura: Well, hello there. Welcome to On the BiTTE, the podcast that uncovers full frontal male nudity in cinema. My name is Laura, and I am joined by my co host, Ryan.
Ryan: Hello.
Laura: Oh, boy. We made a big mistake.
Ryan: Well, here's the thing. After we did 24 Hour Party People, we mentioned nine songs, and then we were like, well, what are we going to do? And we were toing and froing for a few days, and by days, I mean weeks. And, um, we were like, what? No better time than now.
Laura: Let's just get it out of the way. We're going to keep on that Winterbottom train and keep with the numbers because we love numbers in our movie titles either.
Ryan: 27, 28. Um, is there a number four somewhere? There's a knight of the demon.
Laura: Yeah, that's not anything to do with four.
Ryan: There's an in the cut.
Laura: That's four. It's three words.
Ryan: Either way, 28 days later. Well, remember, 27 hotel rooms was the canonical prequel to 28 days later. And this is 9 Songs. If only it was 29 songs. Oh, my God. What if it was 29 songs? Oh, Jesus.
Laura: So if you didn't know, we're doing the 2004 art romantic drama film, 9 Songs.
Ryan: It's a concert film.
Laura: Is it?
Ryan: It's a porno concert film.
Laura: Were you aroused? Because that means that you were aroused and that I was aroused. Who was aroused? Raise your hand if you also got a boner watching this movie.
Ryan: It was weird. You watched it on your own today. And I got home late from work yesterday, and I was like, I want to have more time today to do things that I want to do. And I watched it last night with the dog, and I was up till like one in the morning, and there was a few moments where I looked towards him and he's looking at me and we're just shaking our heads with disapproval.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Uh, you know what? I'm not going to shit on it like I shit on in the cut, but I think this is a weird product.
Laura: Yes. I also am not going to shit on it because I did not hate this motion picture.
Ryan: I don't know if I hated it either.
Laura: No, but it's not. I'm like, I appreciate it and I get it. I get it, Michael. I know what you're up to. I think I understand why. And he did explain why, which I will explain later, thank God.
Ryan: I'm glad that we're going to get some explanation, because I'm more beguiled by the experience. Kind of confused, a little bit lost and slightly icky.
Laura: I also feel real gross.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: Um.
Ryan: Well, we're pretty seasoned as well.
Laura: Oh, yeah. We are not prudes.
Ryan: Yeah, we're not prudes in any way, shape or form. I've seen a pornography plenty. Uh, I don't know. We're going to get. Yeah, let's just do it, please.
Laura: Here's the synopsis pulled from letterboxd. Okay, let's see if I can not mess this up. It's kind of long as well, which I learned a lot about the people in this film from the synopsis because it wasn't necessarily described in the film because there's not a lot of dialogue. Okay.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: Ready? Here we go, Matt. A young glaciologist soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall, London's Brixton academy. They are in bed at night's end together, over a period of several months, they pursue, uh, a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages unfold in counterpoint to nine live concert songs.
Ryan: What a fucking misleading synopsis that is. An arcticologist.
Laura: A, uh, glaciologist.
Ryan: A glaciologist.
Laura: In some places it explains him as a geologist.
Ryan: I'm not going to lie. That shit that was in the movie science. Yeah, ICE science. That stuff's actually fucking interesting. Him going down on her fucking seven times in a row is not that interesting. After the third or fourth time, I was more intrigued. I was like, whoa, what are they going to do with the ICE? And that was all I was kind of really interested in at one point. And I've never had to, and I said this to you before, I've never had to write Antarctic as many times in this one concentrated period of time in my life than I have, other than making the notes for this film. And I also spelt it wrong the first couple of times as well.
Laura: Do you want to spell it right now?
Ryan: Nope.
Laura: All right.
Ryan: Um. It's ant arctic.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah. So I spelled it a, uh. I missed out a c. Arctic.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: So it ended up being ant arctic. Um. I see what you did there. Yeah. It's okay, though. I put the c back in m. Yeah, there's a lot of c in this. Um, but, yeah. Um, that's incredibly misleading because it also.
Laura: Says encounter point to nine live concert songs. So in order to understand their relationship properly and the progression of this sexual passion that they have for one another, am I supposed to know the lyrics of all nine songs and understand the backstory to these tunes? I don't know, because I certainly am not doing that.
Ryan: Do you have the list of the acts that are in the movie? Because we have black rebel motorcycle club. I remember that from back in the day. Elbow is obviously there.
Laura: Correct.
Ryan: Dandy Warhols is there. Um. Who else is there? Um.
Laura: Von Bondi's primal scream.
Ryan: There's music by other artists in the film as well. I think there's a track by Goldfrap in the film as well. Um.
Laura: Super furry animals. Franz Ferdinand, Michael Diamond.
Ryan: Franz Ferdinand.
Laura: You said elbow already.
Ryan: I said elbow? Yeah, that's it. Well, the minute elbow turned up, I went elbow. I love elbow and I do like elbow. Um, I don't know if Elbow has.
Laura: A new album, but they have a new track and it's.
Ryan: There is a new track and also that is accompanying with a new album. Yeah, I remember hearing it on radio six, which is something that you listen to quite, uh, religiously. They did it funnily enough, because we're doing Michael Winterbottom today. Six music did a Manchester retrospective and they honored Tony Wilson because Tony Wilson, we don't think we added. He died in 2007, but he's still championed as one of the front runners for, uh. Uh, many of the musical talents that came out of Manchester at that time. But. Yes.
Laura: Yeah. They still do like their 6th music concert. And it's in Manchester.
Ryan: Yeah, it was, uh, their festival. Um, anyway, what were we talking about?
Laura: Oh, right. Oh, man. Okay. The tagline for this film is two lovers one summer, and the nine songs that defined them define. See, you have another thing where the music is defining their relationship.
Ryan: I feel like the songs themselves just define the time. Like the period.
Laura: But it's like. Yeah, it definitely shows the time, but the music choices were just, from what I read from Michael Winterbottom, just about who was playing gigs at that time.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: So it's just. Oh, who was playing? We'll go record there.
Ryan: Right. So I'm assuming, because they probably just got permission to film there. I don't think they set up the gigs themselves were just happening.
Laura: That's exactly what was happening.
Ryan: Yeah. See, because I thought there was maybe a little bit more thought towards. This thing is when you.
Laura: Exactly, me too.
Ryan: When you look at the cast list and you look at the crew list, it's not any more than, like ten people. This is very cheap. This is made very on the cheap, for sure. It's all completely digital and it's probably post processed, even if that goes that far. Um, and it's incredibly low budget. It's incredibly, um, candid and I guess kind of with how the way it's shot and the way that it's portrayed. Yes, it is incredibly candid. It's incredibly cheap. Um, I'm really clutching at things to kind of champion the film just a little bit because it's a whole lot of nothing. That's the problem I have with it is that it's very formulaic. And I do have an issue with films that include a number in their title because you do feel like, okay, this is 67 minutes long.
Laura: It's very respectful of your nine minutes, bud.
Ryan: Okay.
Laura: I think that's on purpose.
Ryan: Right? Because. Yeah, well, on canopy, it's 67.
Laura: Well, the runtime is technically 69.
Ryan: Okay.
Laura: Sorry.
Ryan: All right. Anyway, um, it's funny, which is hilarious because there's not a single 69 in the movie.
Laura: Oh, yeah. There's not plenty of everything else.
Ryan: Well, there's a ton of missionary. There's a whole heap of missionary in the movie.
Laura: It's pretty vanilla.
Ryan: Yeah, a little bit vanilla. Not to kind of say that. Look, these people didn't have fun when they were doing it, because they did not. All right, cool. Um. Uh, the issue I have with it just overall, is it's incredibly formulaic. And eventually, because this is what my review said consisted of, is that I ended up counting the songs because I knew when it was going to end. Like, I knew when it was going to finish.
Laura: Because you could usually tell, uh, when they were going to finish.
Ryan: Pretty much, yeah. Wow.
Laura: There is so much. Okay. All right.
Ryan: It's very basic. It's songs.
Laura: It's like Antarctica sex song. Yes, sex song.
Ryan: Snowfields in Antarctica sex song.
Laura: Sex song. And then up some ICE, some climax, and then it's over.
Ryan: Figuring it out. The ICE. The story of the ICE, when you're more interested in the ICE. Uh, and the film's just full of sex. I think you've done something incredibly wrong.
Laura: I watched this on my computer with my headphones on. So I had the noise canceling headphones. So I just had quiet noise of the film going directly into my ear holes. And it is such a reprieve every time music starts, because in the sex scenes, there's not typically. Sometimes there is. There's not typically background music. So you are just hearing wet mouth sounds, slapping, heavy breathing, uh, groaning. I wouldn't wish that upon anybody. It was horrible.
Ryan: It's incredibly uncomfortable.
Laura: Every time the sex started, I go, oh, for fuck's sake.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: And again, I'm not approved. Love it. And especially in the way that we talk about the films like this, and we go, oh, is it natural? Is it casual, uh, nudity? Is it showing real kind of relationship, real things, real life things? And you're like, okay, sure, yes, but this is me. You can't just have that.
Ryan: Too real.
Laura: Yes, because you can have this. And I get it. You are like, uh, maybe I should just find. I got to scroll through my notes and find what?
Ryan: Just maybe just cap this off and then we can move on. Is that it's very real and there's too much of it, but it's basically an absence of actual development and a story, and it is incredibly predictable by the time it finished.
Laura: So do you want me to tell you what his inspiration was?
Ryan: Please.
Laura: Okay.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: He said it was basically, you can show people eating and doing normal things, but you can't show two people making love, the most natural of all things. And that's insane. Um, he pitched the film to his stars as a story of a love affair. From the point of view of making love, one, um, of the starting points of nine songs was, why do films not show sex? So many films are love stories. So why not show a love story through two people making love? Why is it that you avoid two people making love when you do a love story? It seems perverse in that sense. You could say that what inspired me to, uh. Sorry. You could say that what inspired me were all the films that avoid sex, including the films that I've made. And he says it's not a pornographic film at all. We just wanted to try and deal with a part of the relationship, which most films just avoid completely.
Ryan: Um, so I will say this because there's a lot of reviews and stuff that I've seen weird people liking it to pornography, and I don't think it's porn.
Laura: No. It's not titillating.
Ryan: No. But what I would say, and it's something that I agree with, with some of the reviews, it is a little bit pretentious. Now, there is such a thing out there as, like, art porn, where it strays a little bit further away from what you would refer to as probably, like, your mainstream porn, like your browsers, all that sort of stuff, which is effectively, you know what it is. I don't need to describe it to you.
Laura: Bing bus.
Ryan: It's what it is. Yeah. Fake taxi. But, uh, then you have stuff that's a little bit more artistic, the lighting is a little bit more involved. There's other things kind of going on. There's different angles. The way the light hits and certain things that they're doing to give it a little bit more of the. I wouldn't say glamour, but it's a little bit more of an artistic sheen to it. Right, right. That stuff exists. So this kind of nine songs kind of sits more within that. Would we go so far as to say it's like erotica? Probably not, because it's incredibly gratuitous. And the thing is that he says there in his quotation that there's films out there, even including his own, which they don't show the sex. But the problem is, and the thing that I have an issue with this film about is that when it is nothing but the sex, it's pretty boring.
Laura: I completely agree. I completely agree. Because I think that the idea was good. I like the concept. Why not have a story where you show the love through love making? But I think he just went too far to that end. Because you can tell a good story, you can have unsimulated sex in it if you want and still tell a story where you get to know the characters and it's not strictly focused on that. Because then that kind of. I feel like it misses the point.
Ryan: I mean, it's obviously a relationship that's predicated on being mostly physical. And you do get some characterization from off the cuff comments. The problem is that because he decides, because there's no characterization or there's not as much characterization within the sex scenes themselves. Now, there's some things that happen and you kind of get an idea of what their kinks are. And I think that's an idea of delving a little bit deeper into what these characters are interested in. But also at the same time is like, I wanted to hear them talk. There's a big difference between things being sexy and things being sensual. And I feel like sensuality is the one thing that's kind of missing in this film where the relationship can be quite sensual, but they don't exactly have to be having sex or being sexy or doing sexy things in order for us to be endeared by them. That's a lot of the things that I feel like I'm missing out on with this dynamic. And by the time the film ends, I'm just kind of like, huh. I just kind of shrugged my shoulders and I'm kind of happy it's over because of how weirdly uncomfortable I was by the end of it.
Laura: Because it's a voyeuristic view that you're getting on these two people. Yes, but all of the shots are incredibly close.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: All of the sounds are incredibly close. So you're like, in bed with them, you're in the tub with them, you're in the kitchen having sex next to what look like a picture of Muhammad Ali.
Ryan: Yeah, that's weird. It's like eating a fab or something. Like eating a nice lolly, like an.
Laura: ICE pole, which is great.
Ryan: And if you're from the UK, you know what a fab is. Fabs are excellent.
Laura: It's a little too close. And it's quite flat, too.
Ryan: Yeah, incredibly flat. Uh, by flatness, I think you mean like emotional flatness. There's no stakes. It's just like the window is open or the door is open and we are peering in, and then that's it.
Laura: It's like if the stakes for their relationship is if he's not giving her a, uh, climax and an orgasm, then the relationship's over, because that's exactly what happened, pretty much, yeah.
Ryan: Uh oh, no.
Laura: She learned how to pleasure herself. Looks like my job is done.
Ryan: Weird. Yeah.
Laura: Sad piano. Sad boy watching his girlfriend.
Ryan: Yeah. Gold frap. It's like, oh, no, I'm pretty sure that vibrator.
Laura: I'm pretty sure. If your girlfriend has a vibrator, I'm sure your relationship's not over, friend, calm down.
Ryan: Bring that into the bedroom. Have a little bit of fun.
Laura: Yeah. Play with it.
Ryan: Stick it on his taint. Do what you need to do. Get it done.
Laura: I learned that another word for taint is gooch.
Ryan: Um.
Laura: Oh, gosh, why did I even say it? I'll come up with it later. I'll come back to it and I'm just going to scream it out later.
Ryan: Yeah. Um, I mean, how are we going to approach this?
Laura: I kind of feel like ball bridge.
Ryan: Ball bridge?
Laura: Yeah. Sorry. Ball bridge.
Ryan: Oh, the ball bridge. Got you. Okay. The taint. How are we going to approach this?
Laura: Okay, I have just a million notes, and then I'm going to tell you about a lot of things that I learned, and then we're going to talk about the film. I hope that's okay with everyone.
Ryan: Well, I think we're talking about the film regardless.
Laura: I just have some funny things.
Ryan: Yeah, I guess so.
Laura: I wrote this film has been described as the most sexually explicit mainstream film ever produced in the UK.
Ryan: I can barely see how it's mainstream, though.
Laura: I don't think it was even cinemas.
Ryan: They actually released it in this.
Laura: It was an 18. Yeah.
Ryan: What did they get in the US, though? Was it like an NCC?
Laura: I don't know if it would have been released in the US as A.
Ryan: It got an 18, but I guess because it's so borderline. That's the thing. It's like the 18 and then you got your X rating as well.
Laura: Winterbottom was saying that he thinks that filmmakers in the UK are censoring themselves more than the censors are censoring them.
Ryan: I mean, they're just preempting what a censor is looking for. That's not self censorship. That's like, hold on, this needs to go through a process. I have to then submit it to the censors for the BBFC. Right. So that they'll rate the film so it'll get an adequate release. Same with ratings. Can kill a film over in the US as well. The NC 17 is like the dreaded rating. No one wants that because it loses all mainstream appeal. Same with like, I think 18. Like the 18 rating in the UK, I think it loses a fair amount m of its appeal as well the minute it gets an 18. And certainly they're a lot stricter over in the UK in terms of who they admit into cinema screens and stuff like that than they are over here. Here it's more of, uh. Like the speed limits. It's just like a recommended.
Laura: Especially in Florida.
Ryan: Exactly.
Laura: But with the US, I do believe know the MPA or the MPAA is stricter. They're much stricter here.
Ryan: I think so. Yeah.
Laura: But that's just because we're a Puritan society.
Ryan: A little bit more conservative. Yeah, a little bit more conservative. I guess. Like in the UK, there's a little bit more of a european sensibility.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Um, but the thing is, the film's rating is the least of its problems at that point anyway. That's it. It's the least of its issues. He's not daring for showing this stuff in a film. It's not daring to do that. What would be daring is if it's different and it substantiates itself within a narrative context. We're going to talk a lot about context when it comes to this film because I think this is one of these weird outlier films that. Where our ideas of where context comes in with the nudity and obviously the sex and stuff is really going to play quite a big part in, uh, our overall ratings for this one.
Laura: Yeah, this is unsimulated. There's no body doubles, there's no fancy camera tricks, there's no prosthetics.
Ryan: If you're sensitive to anything like this, if anything like that. You see mouths on vaginas. You see dicks in vaginas. You see dicks in mouths. You see a whole bunch of stuff. You see, like, this is as raw as it gets. Like, people who are like, oh, my God, I remember that scene in last tango in Paris where they put that butter and they did the butt thing. No, this is completely different.
Laura: If you can't handle short bus either, which actually has, uh. It's a lovely story, then this is not a lovely story.
Ryan: There is no story to be had for the most part. There is no arc. There's nothing really there. Something starts and then it ends, and you've kind of got a lot of bump in some music and stuff in the middle just to kind of break it up. There's a lot of fades to blacks. I mean, I wrote one of my notes here is dick and vagina fade to black. Um, there's a lot of that. But the thing is that I'll say, and I think I quote Adrian Lin like an awful lot, is that when he put together sex scenes, I think a lot of american directors, even UK directors, like a lot of british directors, they do this where it's kind of like sex. And making your performers have sex on camera is a very uncomfortable and weird process. And if you're doing that and they're displaying those sorts of ideas within those scenes, that's going to transpose to your audience. So, for the most part, Adrian Lin wanted sex to look like it was people having fun. Like it was meant to be fun. It's meant to be enjoyable. It's meant to know, uh, because there's a lot of tension that happens in a situation like that.
Laura: Right.
Ryan: What happens in nine songs is kind of like you're the person sitting in the chair and you're just kind of watching them hammer away each other, and you're just kind of like, okay, can we move on to the next thing, please?
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: That's how it kind of feels. And you have no idea who these people are. Unless you told me his name was Matt, I have no idea what her name is. I haven't got a clue what her name is.
Laura: He does say her name right in the beginning. He's like, oh, Lisa, I don't remember anything about her other than her smell and her taste.
Ryan: It's just. There's nothing there. It's so two dimensional.
Laura: Yeah, great. It's not great. Oh, uh.
Ryan: Boy, my point was great.
Laura: You have a great point. Great .5 stars. So Kieran O'Brien, who plays Matt um, we've kind of noticed, I'm sure people have noticed that Michael Winterbottom tends to work with similar people. That happens with directors and actors and stuff.
Ryan: Well, certainly 24 hours party people was like an ensemble piece. And Kieran O'Brien played the manager to the happy Mondays. And he was just a drug dealer.
Laura: Oh, yeah, in that movie.
Ryan: Yeah, he's not in it for very long, but he's there when, uh, him. And then Sean Ryder went to the bar and he shoots the gun in the bar.
Laura: Wow. I'm saying. Oh, yeah. Like, I remember. I just didn't know that.
Ryan: That's one of my favorite movies. Yeah, I like that.
Laura: So he was a mighty have fallen God. He was also in Tristram Shandy and the look of love.
Ryan: He's in a bunch of. Wasn't he in.
Laura: Wait, don't say. Don't you dare. Okay, I want to do it. I was telling you this earlier that I was excited about it. So he was also in Andor. Was that what you were going to say?
Ryan: No. Uh, I thought he was in shameless, the UK shameless.
Laura: He might have been. I didn't write it down. Yeah, I wrote down the things that I thought were funny.
Ryan: Might have mixed it up with maybe somebody else. Maybe I'mixing them up with somebody else. It's not James McAvoy that I'mixing him up with, but he might have been in something else. I recognize him from a bunch of things.
Laura: He played a character named Pegla in Andor. Um, I took this from some nerdy Star wars website.
Ryan: That show is all right.
Laura: Yeah. Pegla worked as a sentry at Zorby's western ship lot on the planet Pharyx, and he let Cassian Andor steal ships. I remember him. He's like, oh, Cassian, you're back at it again. Taking my ships.
Ryan: That is maybe one of the most entertaining sentences you've ever said.
Laura: Thank you. Thank you very much. Also, if there are Ted Lasso fans that listen to this podcast, he played Jamie tarts'horrible father. And I remember that he was really not a nice guy.
Ryan: All right, Jamie Tarts. Jesus.
Laura: Yeah, I couldn't keep watching that show. It's too sugary for me.
Ryan: Ah.
Laura: M so Margot Stilley, who plays Lisa, was, uh, born in South Carolina, moved to London to model when she was around 18. And this is her feature film debut.
Ryan: Oh, my God.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Jeez Louise.
Laura: Um, she was also in a couple of winter bottom things. She played Misha in the trip series and the trip to Spain. So she initially refused to publicize the film when it went to Cannes. And she later was like, okay, I'll do it. But not before the tabloids basically dug into her personal life. They sent reporters to her mom's home and stalked her little brothers on their way to school. And, uh, she did press conferences.
Ryan: People would shout, journalists.
Laura: Exactly.
Ryan: Fucking animals.
Laura: They would shout abuse at her. She said, I got told I was a whore and a slut. And how could you do it? What kind of role model did I think I was giving young women?
Ryan: Yeah, of course.
Laura: Which is insane. Um, this isn't the first film to feature on simulated, know, you've got Vincent Gallo, mark Rylance from the brown bunny, and intimacy, which we'll do at some point. Um, but it's the same thing where the men get nothing. The men get nothing. But Chloe Sevenier, Carrie Fox from those movies were just like hurled hate. Yeah, they were just hurled hate their way. And.
Ryan: It'S fucked up. Yeah. I mean, again, you're looking at british journalism. I'm not going to comment on american journalism because, ah, that's also a pit of hate and despair. But yeah, certainly, at least with the idea of celebrity and certainly gossip columns and stuff like that in UK journalism, um, yeah, it's male led. Like your editors, the people who own those newspapers, they're all mostly men. Or if there are women in those positions, they are demonizing women for their own personal. It's, that's, uh, not surprising.
Laura: It's not surprising. It's horrible. And she said, I just wanted to make a film about something I really believe in, which is to show sex in a very positive light. So she had a very positive outlook on what this film was meant to portray. And it's not like it portrays sex in a negative light in any way whatsoever. It just, uh, kind of portrays it in a beige light of neutrality.
Ryan: Yeah. The issue is the realism because certainly with Michael Winterbottom, um, realism is of a big concern of his. But the problem is that the issue with realism and having too much of it, or in this case like a primary focus on it, is that real life itself can be a little bit uninteresting. It can just kind of be the motions of everything. Which is why for the most part, film is an act of escapism. Uh, it's a media, it's an art form so that you can do things outside of what you're expected to do in reality. So there is maybe too much reality in the, at obviously the absence, uh, of the art form.
Laura: Yeah, she said that, um, Michael had his way of puppeteering us around, so he was very specific. So there was no script, by the way, to this film whatsoever.
Ryan: Definitely feels like there wasn't exactly.
Laura: Yeah, but he was very specific and very meticulous and knew exactly how he wanted the scenes to go, how he wanted the sex to be shot. And he had that all laid out perfectly well. And it was very, very specific and meticulous. Uh, she said he did convey a lot. He was specific. Um, but she said that she wouldn't do in bed what she did on screen, like, in real life. So how real is it?
Ryan: Oh, okay.
Laura: I don't know.
Ryan: So she overperformed, is what she's trying to say. They put on a performance for what they did. She was acting well, and they both.
Laura: Have said Kieran O'Brien. Um, and Margot stilly said that Kieran felt very protective over her because she was quite a bit younger. She was 21. Yeah, he's a bit older, and he's also a seasoned performer. This is her first film role. She'd done modeling and stuff, but he felt very protective over her because it was a really male, heavy crew, and he felt like protecting her. And she said this was a job. I felt nothing. I'm not quoting her exactly, but she said there was no sensuality, there was no connection, there was no pleasure in what they were doing whatsoever. Which is not to say I didn't find anything where she said she felt unsafe or unhappy. I think she was happy with the role and her work in the role, but, uh, in terms of the sex, I think people were being creepy about, like, oh, did you love it? Did you love having sex on camera? And she's like, no, I was working.
Ryan: There's nothing for her to latch onto in the movie other than she kind of has to look good in these sex scenes because it's predominantly the sex. Like, it's predominantly sex scenes. There's no screen time dedicated to just characterizing them and giving them good lines of dialogue or allowing us to see something other than what it is that we are seeing in the state of the film.
Laura: I didn't learn a lot about Lisa. I learned that she has a job. I believe it was at a bar. She has a supervisor. She likes cocaine, and she likes coffee.
Ryan: Which is funny, because if you're on cocaine, it's very hard to get a chubby. Put it out there.
Laura: Yeah, I think that's pretty typical. Um, yeah, either way.
Ryan: M um, didn't learn a lot.
Laura: Didn't learn a lot about her. But I wonder if maybe that go.
Ryan: So far as to say we learned nothing.
Laura: Could you attribute that to the fact that this is her first film role? She hadn't really acted before, so maybe she didn't get a chance to do her character's backstory.
Ryan: I mean, there's also very little in the way of material to work with.
Laura: Other, like, Mike Lee stuff where he. You create your character's backstory and then you work through that. Right?
Ryan: Yeah, but then you can't really compare this to something that Mike Lee's made because there's already. They go through a meticulous process where each of the characters is defined. Neither one of these characters in the movie is defined. No, it could literally be this is man one, this is woman one. Uh, that's kind of it, really.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: I have no issue with films being made this way. I like the approach to this. My issue is just the content and what it focuses on. And it's kind of just like you said you were watching the songs when they come, uh, are like a nice little reprieve.
Laura: It's just awkward being that close and being that intimate, but not knowing them at all, of course, and just getting an extreme close up on a penis going into a vagina, and you're just like, whoa. Whoa.
Ryan: Because the thing is, if you're going to watch pornography, the contract signed, you know what you're going in for. You're expected to see certain things. You're expecting a process of what's going to happen. And the payoff for that is that it gets you off with this. You're expecting a story, you're expecting some character development. You expect a little conversation, but it's just like, boom.
Laura: Pump, pump, pump.
Ryan: Eating her out. Boom. Um, I'm giving him a footwank. Boom. I'm going to suck his dick. Boom. We're going to do that. And you're like, whoa, hold on.
Laura: Every time it went back to that room, I'm like, oh, boy.
Ryan: Yeah. It just feels like it's a little too much of the same thing, and it's not enough of the things that would desperately needed to just be something that was just a little bit more watchable, I guess. Like a film. Like a film. It needed to be more like a film.
Laura: Right.
Ryan: Um, the music is good, though. I mean, the thing is, it's of a period that I quite enjoy. And, I mean, dandy Warhols came on and I was like, oh, I was reminded of that documentary dig, which was about the coming of the Dandy Warhols and their musical, uh, rivalry with the Brian Jonestown massacre, and how they didn't become as successful as the Dandy Warhols did. Um, which I would recommend anyone to go and watch. It's one of the best music documentaries ever made. But the thing is, that's where my mind started to go. So I started thinking about other things. And technically, I would have rather have watched 60 minutes of the antarctic plains and chopping up ICE than what we kind of.
Laura: Just. Apparently that was filmed in Norway.
Ryan: Norway, yep. Uh, it's not real.
Laura: No. No budget. Because we cannot waste the time of our precious listeners. I'm, um, definitely not. And we are not going to list every time we see a penis. No, we can't just watch it. You don't need a timestamp. Just turn it on. Or don't. I'm actually not really recommending it.
Ryan: Um, it's a hard thing to recommend. The thing is, the one thing I will give the film props for, and it's something that we always give props for, is there's a lot of erection in the movie.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: But the thing is, you see his erection in various states, so it's the thing. Ah. If you imagine what you do with an erection.
Laura: Okay.
Ryan: Everything kind of happens in this movie. You know what I mean?
Laura: Start to finish.
Ryan: Yes. Certainly. The thing that really got me, like, the one moment, and I was just like, holy Christ. Was obviously the blowjob scene.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Which is pretty much. And it's trunky. It's pretty much. You're watching someone get a blowjob and then ejaculate all over their stomach. And it's just there. It's like, oh, okay. And it just kind of happens.
Laura: You hear kids playing outside while she's going down on him. I didn't like it at all. It was in my headphones. It was so loud, all the wet mouth sounds. So he became the only actor who has been shown ejaculating in a mainstream UK produced feature.
Ryan: I don't know if that's a claim to anything. Yeah, it's not anything to be proud of, either.
Laura: Just lays there covered in it, too, while the kids play.
Ryan: Because the thing is, uh, so much of it. There's a scene in all of us. Strangers as well. Yes. Which does the exact same thing. And now you don't see a penis or anything in that movie, but you do see the aftermath. And the thing is, it works in that movie. Like, the aftermath works in that movie because it's.
Laura: This could have gone further.
Ryan: Yeah. I mean, it could have gone further. It could have gone further. But the thing is, that story, at least as far as I'm concerned, there's obviously people, ah, out there who don't think the film is as good as I think it was. But it shows a level of intimacy and, uh. Of this relationship. And I guess it's maybe more interesting because it's a homosexual relationship.
Laura: No, that's not what makes it more interesting. It makes it more interesting because it's a good story and have character development and you care this.
Ryan: I think that film's just really well put together. And I do think it's more interesting because it's a homosexual couple as opposed to a heterosexual, uh, couple. I wouldn't have probably as much interest in it if it was a heterosexual couple.
Laura: Yeah, they're boring at this point.
Ryan: Yeah. Pretty much vanilla.
Laura: But yes, they're also beautiful men.
Ryan: They are. Yeah, they are very pretty. But the thing is, in nine songs it's like we all like eating cake. We like eating cake. Oh my God, I like cake. But, you know, the process of making a cake, okay, fucking boring. I cannot be bothered with it. I'd rather just have the cake. And everything's fine in this process, though. I mean, there's extended shots of him just hammering away at her and the camera's over his shoulder. And part of me, I was like, imagine what this looks like to the pa, what's going on? And, uh, then the camera cuts and you're like, what was the purpose of that? What was the purpose of having a shot that's extended like that? That literally is just this. And it's focused on her and she's blindfolded, she's tied to the bed and you're just like, what was the point of that?
Laura: I mean, in terms of what story we do have, I suppose it's just showing a, uh, crescendo and a plateau.
Ryan: Because it's also kind of like this relationship is predicated mostly on a physical relationship because that's all we're kind of shown. As for everything else, we're not really shown much in the way of an emotional relationship between the two of them.
Laura: All we know is them getting more comfortable with each other because I thought that they were just, for lack of a better term, fuck buddies is what I thought this relationship was. But you can see them getting more comfortable with each other.
Ryan: You can. I thought they lived together.
Laura: I thought so as well because there's.
Ryan: Two or three different domiciles in the movie and a couple of them, I think, are. One is definitely his place, and the other two, I think, are like holiday houses. But there's not an awful lot of, um, explanation as to where they are geographically, other than obviously you have Brixton Academy, which is kind of like the overall centerpiece. You know, they're in London. You're just not too sure where they are for some of the rest of the time.
Laura: Did you understand in the film that she was meant to be in university?
Ryan: No.
Laura: I read that in many, many different articles that I read about this film, and I go, that was never portrayed.
Ryan: Never portrayed.
Laura: You can tell that she's younger. You can tell that she's a younger person.
Ryan: I mean, is that why she left? It was just kind of one of those university things. And then she left to go back.
Laura: To the US, potentially that maybe that was the reason studying.
Ryan: I mean, the thing is that might have happened, but the problem is that we don't know the sound is recorded so fucking poorly. A lot of their dialogue, whatever there is there, you don't really pick up, up.
Laura: I could hear it because I had my headphones in.
Ryan: Yeah. And also I was just deeply unfucking interested. There just wasn't enough there for me to get my claws hooked into it.
Laura: I wrote down a couple of things, like a lovely breakfast, hand job, bathtub, um, foot job. Squeak, squeak, squeak.
Ryan: Yeah, I wrote that down as well. That's the one thing I do like, the fact that when she moves and it happens to everybody who's ever tried to do anything in a bath.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Is that you just hear that, uh, on the floor of the bath. So the one thing I thought was kind of fucked up, and it was kind of weird, like when she puts that stiletto into his chest.
Laura: Oh, I don't even know. I don't remember that.
Ryan: She stands on his fucking chest. She's wearing those big stiletto boots. This is after the strip bar and all this sort of thing. And they kind of reconcile with each other. Yes.
Laura: You know what bothered me is he's always putting his fingers into her eyes. Like the mountain and the viper in Game of Thrones. Like he's going to poke her eyes.
Ryan: Out with his thumbs or fucking 28 days later.
Laura: Yeah. Also.
Ryan: Gouge your eyes out with always freaks me out. But that's like, yeah, he does it, uh, a lot.
Laura: He does it several times in the.
Ryan: Kind of weird, like he's like, trying to blind her. Yeah. I don't really get it. If it was like an action movie or that's like a go to thing. I think that's one of the most fucked up things you can do other than, like, ripping someone's fucking ear off or something. Uh, like, it's so fucked up.
Laura: You know what he doesn't take well is direction. If you were to count how many times this woman says, harder and faster, he doesn't comply.
Ryan: No.
Laura: Ever?
Ryan: No, he doesn't. He doesn't.
Laura: Not once.
Ryan: Yeah, it should be like air traffic control. It should just be, you should be listening to your partner, and you should be doing things the partner wants to do. And then everyone comes out happy.
Laura: Especially if that's your relationship. Your relationship is based on sexual chemistry. So just do what she says.
Ryan: I want hand signals. I want things told to me. I'm one of those who's like. Because at the end of the day, I'm not just going to go in there and do what I want. That's weird. Then all sorts of trouble starts happening. But, um, yeah, he's not good at taking direction. I also do think that that's also a level of probably, like, anxiety and stuff from the performers themselves within those scenes where it's like, yeah, they're kind of going through the motions and you can see how comfortable or uncomfortable they are in those moments as well. Which is also another reasons why it's kind of transposed to you. You're like, when's the next song coming?
Laura: Yeah. So happy every time.
Ryan: Yeah. Elbow. Um.
Laura: Thank goodness I can breathe.
Ryan: Um. It's a weird experiment of a film, and I just don't think it's particularly accomplished.
Laura: No, I don't think so. Uh, again, I like the idea. I just don't like the finished product, the execution.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: And I think that this could be integrated more into film. I don't know if I necessarily. I mean, you have movie magic. It's called that for a reason. I don't need to see a p going into a vaji. But if you're going to do it, at least use it properly. Don't just have that for the sake of having it. You don't need unsimulated sex just to be cool.
Ryan: Why have 6789 different sex scenes when you could just have a good story and one really good one that everyone remembers? It just doesn't correlate. An awful lot of sense to me.
Laura: Does not need to be the whole thing at, uh, all. It was screened in front of a selected preview audience in 2004 at can. And I was just thinking about it because I had the headphones on. Right. And you just hear hot breath. I already described it. You hear all these noises, and I'm just imagining sitting in a theater with your friends and peers, listening, watching sex together with these people. And there's so many scenes. Like I said before, there's no music. It's just sex sounds. And you're just sitting there in the quiet theater.
Ryan: You'd probably be wriggling in your seat a little bit.
Laura: I was wriggling in my chair watching it alone.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: I was like, boy, oh boy.
Ryan: Yeah. There was plenty of times I looked down at my phone because I just, I was like, I don't know if I really want to watch any more of, um. I, uh, mean, I'll be perfectly honest. It wasn't bad enough that I would switch it off, but I would switch it off for a different reason. Just because I'm like, this better go somewhere, otherwise it's going in the bin.
Laura: It goes right to Antarctica.
Ryan: And also, I know it won some awards for cinematography and stuff. I do not think the film looks good. No, it does not look good in the slightest.
Laura: There was one scene, I think it was when they were in the kitchen. He goes, I'll make you some coffee. But they ended up doing each other instead. But there was some light in the window, looked like it was golden hour. And I thought, nice. That was that one time.
Ryan: There's the COVID image on letterboxd, which I think is really nice, where it's incredibly, um, overexposed. And because it's digital, when you have whites on digital like that, they just blow up, they explode. And that stuff, I think, is quite nice. But the problem is that for the most part, um, the lens just doesn't look like it's particularly clean. You can kind of just imagine that everyone's incredibly sweaty. Um, and it's just very visceral. Just doesn't have the thing that just ties it all together.
Laura: So ratings.
Ryan: Um, I think this is important. I think this is going to be weird.
Laura: I don't know if I can give it anything less than a five in terms of this, because of what the movie is, what it's trying to be and trying to achieve. It did that. He did make a movie, uh, about love, question mark. Through love making, question mark. But it didn't really feel like love. He did yell I love you at one time when they were at the beach and he stripped down naked and ran into the water.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: And she also said she loved him.
Ryan: And I thought more of that. Uh, yeah, more of scenes like that.
Laura: Uh, I like that.
Ryan: Take the gratuitous nudity, if it's like that.
Laura: Uh, because I was still at that moment thinking that these are just a couple of people that like to have sex with each other, that have that chemistry. And then he shouts, I love you. And I was kind of blown away at that moment because I wasn't expecting that from their relationship in any way.
Ryan: You at least expect further on down the line, there's going to be a level of conflict where maybe one person feels differently than the other, or like, if they had an agreement, one is going against that agreement or whatever, there would have been some level of strife within the storytelling. But that doesn't obviously come to be.
Laura: But you have love. You have love, and I don't think the love is shown, the love is said. I don't see love there. I see Porkin. Yeah, it's just heavy, sweaty porkin.
Ryan: Yeah. Because I think you can love someone and have sex, but I do think there has to be a separation at some point. I, uh, hope so, because there's the intimacy and the sensuality, which don't necessarily need to correspond to just hard fucking.
Laura: Yeah. It was interesting that the love came in, and I wasn't expecting it from these two characters.
Ryan: It also means nothing happens, but then it just doesn't.
Laura: In a film with so little dialogue, with so little development in terms of the characters and so. And so much penetration. Yeah, it's just, I was like, a love is thrown in there. It really kind of blew my mind. Um, so it. Context.
Ryan: God, yeah.
Laura: Take a crack at it. You take a crack at it.
Ryan: Me?
Laura: Yeah, go ahead.
Ryan: So I'm separating visibility and context this time, because I think context is the outlier in this particular situation. Visibility, I think, is obviously a five. You see everything. But the issue I have is that you maybe see too much, because then there's no illusion. I like the idea that we're looking at cinema, we're looking at movies, we're looking at films. I do like an aspect of there being a level of illusion, like, uh, a trickery. Yes, I want to see some of that. I don't want to just see what we see. I don't want to just see that. And this is where context comes into play, because this was all I was thinking about when I was watching the movie. I was just like, what does this mean? Why with all of this? Because this should be like a ten beller sort of film for us, where we're just like, oh, my God, this is one of the crowning moments of the podcast, because it's just filled with so much cock. It's like, true. But the problem is it's filled with just too much. It's filled with far too much. There's nothing but this. And call yourself an art film or call yourself this or that, I don't want to shit on the film for what it effectively is. But the problem here is that this is all it is. It's this kind of some total and nothing. If it had a good story, if it had good character development, I could quite honestly forgive a lot of the uncomfortability that I get from the sex scenes effectively. Because, uh, this is where the most criminal element is that you're looking at it, but you're like, this feels weird. I don't like looking at this. I don't like what I'm hearing. I don't like what they're doing. You're detached from it every single time that happens. And contextually, okay, they're having sex, things are happening, and we see everything. But does it add anything to what this is?
Laura: But that's the thing about it. If you take it away, you have nothing.
Ryan: Yeah, there's nothing there.
Laura: You have a good 20 minutes of music, or maybe half. No, it wouldn't be half an hour.
Ryan: But the percentage is, I think, between sex songs and snow. Um, is there's far more sex than there is songs.
Laura: So it's like 10% snow, 30% songs, and 60% sex.
Ryan: Pretty much.
Laura: But you're right. Does it add to it? It has to add to it, because then you are left with nothing else.
Ryan: There's nothing there if you take it all away. Yeah.
Laura: Uh, because he didn't do anything else.
Ryan: No.
Laura: If you look at this in terms of an experiment, I think you called it an experiment. I did call it an experiment, that it works better in that way, as an experiment. How far can you push this element and what can you get away with and what will people accept?
Ryan: I feel like the market in which it sits in, which is like the mainstream market is completely the wrong place for this to be existed in. It does not need to be there. There's no mainstream quality to this.
Laura: And he said over and over, this needs to be seen in the cinema. And I go, uh.
Ryan: It's painfully uncimatic. Yeah, that's the problem, is that it's moving pictures. That's it.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Just by virtue of the fact that you shot it on a camera. It's painfully uncenamatic.
Laura: Yes.
Ryan: So, yeah, I'm sorry, dude, but I don't agree with you there?
Laura: No, me either. I can understand. Uh, sorry. Keep going. It was your turn to go.
Ryan: I mean, I don't know what else I have to say because you kind of just said it. The minute you take this away, it becomes nothing. But then what's also there has zero substance, so it also feels like it has nothing, which is actually, this is a hard rating where you have five for visibility. And I'd go as low as like a one for the context and things because I'm like, it adds nothing to the story, adds nothing to the film other than it just being voyeuristic.
Laura: But if you look at it in terms of realism, uh, truth and casual nudity, and being natural with all of it, then yeah, context is there because that's what you're focusing on. And if you're going to have a movie, uh, uh, you cannot separate it. No, it has to be there because of what it is.
Ryan: Basically, it's a product of its own trappings. Because his focus was so singular, it's just ended up being this thing.
Laura: Flat, mostly lifeless. Experiment in unsimulated love making. Not love making. Unsimulated sexual acts filmed by a man. Yeah, that's what this is. A guy filmed two people having sex.
Ryan: And made people watch it and called.
Laura: It something and called it, gave it.
Ryan: A name and put some music in it.
Laura: Mhm. And definitely through marketing made it seem like m a music concert film.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: That's how it was marketed.
Ryan: Oh, yeah, I remember the posters and stuff. It listed all of the acts. And I wonder how amenable those acts were to having their names all over the billboard for this kind of film as well. I was curious about that. Uh, but to be fair, their music is getting promoted regardless. It really doesn't matter. They were already fairly big acts by the time this film came out.
Laura: Uh, yeah, for sure.
Ryan: Um, yeah.
Laura: We, uh, can keep talking about this, but I gave the film a two. Okay. I, um, think I started out higher just because I'm like, I don't want to say good for you. I wanted to say good for you before I watched the movie, before I pushed play, I wanted to say, you know what? I like the way your mind goes, and I think I'm interested in what you're going to give me. And then when I received the product, I wasn't as interested. So I don't like it. But then again, I don't know if I wouldn't watch it again. I, uh, maybe would. It's very short.
Ryan: It's very short. But the thing is, would you take nine songs over an equivalent length film that you've never seen before? No, exactly. So I'd be like, yeah, no, I never need to see nine songs again. I feel like I ticked off that box because when nine songs came out, I was interested in seeing it because I liked winterbottom. Um, then I heard how abysmal it was and I've just never touched it. And if we didn't do a podcast on this, I could probably quite happily have never seen nine songs.
Laura: I definitely would have watched it. Absolutely would have watched it.
Ryan: Only out of curiosity, but for the sake of what we're doing and things. Yeah, it met my relatively low expectations and I gave it a one and a half because it kind of suffers from just being painfully uninteresting and in a bit, one note. And I genuinely thought I was counting the songs because I did that. I mean, I do that quite fair amount. It's called nine songs. I had to make sure there was nine songs in it. So when it got to the 9th song, which is basically just another track from the black rebel motorcycle club.
Laura: Correct.
Ryan: Um, I was kind of happy when it ended.
Laura: Oh, I was really excited when it was over. Yeah, it didn't feel over long, though. I didn't feel like I was sitting there for 2 hours or anything. I felt like I sat there for exactly the amount of time.
Ryan: Well, of course, because you did. Yeah. You physically sat there for the shut your mouth.
Laura: You know what I mean? It could feel like you're getting your teeth pulled, but it doesn't feel overlong.
Ryan: Yeah. This isn't like a Morbius situation because that film's painful to watch. Um, this isn't painful. It's just maybe a little bit.
Laura: Just Squirmy. A little awkward.
Ryan: Squirmy and awkward. And there's elements of it that raise it from getting that extra star as opposed to staying at like a half star, is that. Here's the thing. At least it's honest and it knows exactly what it is. It's just a shit. I just don't have any appreciation for it.
Laura: There are not a lot of films. I remember when we would watch certain films or the ones that we've done on the podcast, and there's an erection and we're like, oh my gosh. Yeah, how rare. Um, how exciting. And now we've had so many. Well, in this film alone, alone when we were watching short bus, and we're like, wow. I mean, you see someone ejaculate in their own mouth. And you have someone ejaculating in this film. It's just like, not. It doesn't feel like it doesn't mean anything. Yeah, I don't know. It has no heart.
Ryan: Short bus.
Laura: There's no heart.
Ryan: Has an emotional heart to, uh. It.
Laura: There's no love in this film.
Ryan: There's no love or at least any tenderness. In nine songs.
Laura: You do feel very separate, even though you are literally right inside of someone's legs for most.
Ryan: Right there. But here's the thing. And I asked myself these questions and I kind of thought about them. Um. And I asked myself, is it pretentious? Because I don't understand it completely. And I feel like that's a little bit of a shallow argument. I think I do understand it, and I think from our conversation today I understand it even more. It's just that it just does not click with me whatsoever. To the point where I'm just like, well, I mean, is it even any good? And then like I say this to Michael Winterbottom, I was like, because I feel that way about this film. What you put the actors through, what was it for? And I don't think he's given me a good enough answer to justify putting the actors through this. And certainly the stuff outside of the film as well, to really justify this.
Laura: Film'S existence and the abuse of your main actor.
Ryan: The main actress. Yeah.
Laura: Again, I don't know. I can appreciate that he made it and he was trying something. I just wish that. Yeah, I had a little bit more heart. I think I really could have gotten on board with something like this. It's different. I love winter bottom, um. 90, uh, percent of the time. And I appreciate him going out on a limb and really trying to do something different. I don't like it. I just don't think I like it.
Ryan: Yeah, he's not like one of my top boys, but he gave us all.
Laura: The trips and those are some of my favorite things.
Ryan: Yeah. He's made some good films, but he's made some garbage. Don't think he's as bad as Ridley Scott, but at the same time, um. He has moments where he shines and he has other moments where it's just a little bit. And unfortunately, this is one that's on the ladder. This isn't a good movie and it's a hard one to recommend as well.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, for the purposes of what we do here, I would say, yeah, uh. Go ahead. It's not going to take up too much of your time, but it's on canopy as well.
Ryan: So if you have a library ticket. And why the fuck wouldn't you? Unless you're fucking illiterate.
Laura: Uh, definitely get a library card because it also helps government funding to public programs and, uh, it's very helpful for everyone.
Ryan: Yeah, exactly.
Laura: Support your local library. There you go, canopy.
Ryan: And that wraps up our.
Laura: Wraps it up good. Let's tie this, uh, up. Let's put a condom on it. I'm ready to blow.
Ryan: Monster.
Laura: I've been Laura.
Ryan: I'm ryan.
Laura: Uh, I need a shower.
Ryan: Yeah. I feel sweaty. Yeah.
Laura: You. 30 seconds. 25 seconds.
Ryan: Fuck.
Laura: Hurry up. Go ahead. Oh, thank God.
Ryan: That was close.
Laura: Yeah. Uh, we're up to date on.
Ryan: I recorded all of that. Bye.