A treasure trail has led you to our first Fincher: GONE GIRL!
"What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other? What will we do?" "That's marriage" honestly. Eventually, somewhere down the line, an anniversary treasure trail might turn into a false disappearance and accusations of murder.
Thinking them "deep Hasbro thoughts", we're diving into David Fincher's film adaption of the Gillian Flynn novel GONE GIRL and with a stellar cast, music, cinematography and more you're in for one very delicious two and half hours. There's not much to say other than, watch this film, its one of the good ones.
So, feel cute, punch yourself in the face and unspool those brains 'cause "when two people love each other and they can't make that work, that's the real tragedy".
Desi's Bloody End
Laura: Well, hello there. Welcome to On the BiTTE the podcast that uncovers full frontal male nudity in cinema. Uh, my name is Laura, and I am joined by my one and only co host, Ryan.
Ryan: That is right. I am your one, your only. You're forever, and I will never leave you. Yeah.
Laura: Despite my best efforts.
Ryan: I mean, you've to escape. Yeah. You've threatened marriage. No, I think you have to. Yeah. You can't just go around saying things like that. Uh, you can get us in trouble.
Laura: I can. When we're talking about the 2014 psychological thriller Gone Girl.
Ryan: Oh, my God. We're doing Fincher. We're doing Fincher.
Laura: We're doing a Fincher.
Ryan: I got myself really excited when we did a Friedkin, and that was, like, episode number two. We haven't gone back to Friedkin since, uh, to live and die in LA.
Laura: There's not a lot to go back to, though.
Ryan: There isn't. And it pertains to, uh, our interests. But, yeah, we get to finally do a Fincher, I think. I've been asking to do a Fincher for a while, and I think we've kind of had this slight back and forth, but this release coincides with, I guess, it's the complete and total release of the film on streaming. Uh, the killer, his new movie on Netflix.
Laura: We were looking for a screening so that we could see the film in a cinema, but I'm disappointed in him. This is disappointed in Fincher here.
Ryan: Yeah. I'm not happy with his Netflix partnership, and he seems very complacent with the fact that his audience mean, at this point, it's incredibly limited. Um, his audience is limited, I would say so, yeah. I mean, it's only down to people who subscribe to Netflix, as opposed to giving people the option to want to go and see his films in the cinema.
Laura: I want to see it in the cinema.
Ryan: I mean, I know a lot.
Laura: We'd have to drive 3 hours to see it at the closest cinema here.
Ryan: Yeah, no, it's not doable. Um, he does do a lot of TV, and he's done a lot of TV shows for Netflix. And I think the last thing he released on Netflix that was, like, a cinema release was, uh, Mank. Um, but Mank was during the pandemic, so I can understand why that was okay. But now that we're kind of out of that, I don't know why the killer's not getting enough. Or at least Netflix isn't partnering up with enough of the cinema chains in the US, because that's where we mean, God knows what it's like in Europe trying, um, to go see a screening of the killer there. Um, but, uh, yeah, no, I think this is the one blemish of, uh, a fairly illustrious career that I'm kind of. Yeah, I'm a little bit irritated by the fact that I'm not able to see his new film in the cinema.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Because I like the option. At least. At least with Apple and stuff, they've got killers of the Flower moon. They're giving money to prominent filmmakers, but they're actually giving them the option of actually, they're not scared of cinema exhibition the way that Netflix seems to. So. Yeah, I don't know. It's weird.
Laura: Uh, didn't glass onion, the new Glass onion movie, get put out in the cinema for a little bit, at least?
Ryan: I don't know.
Laura: I think it was out for a little bit and then got released onto streaming. So that's been happening a, uh, m. You know, not the nature of how things are going to be, but maybe it's how things are happening at the moment, but that's not happening for the killer at all, at least. It's just weird that in such a city that we're in in Florida, that we can't go see it anywhere near us.
Ryan: Yeah, it's not happening for us, but.
Laura: At least we got to see Gone Girl, the movie we're talking about today in the cinema, when it came out. Um, this film stars. I'm sure you guys have seen this film. You should. Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon. Um, amongst a bunch of other people are in this movie. It's a stacked, absolutely stacked film.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: Um, so the synopsis of this film from Letterboxd is with his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees a spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent. And the tagline is, you don't know what you've got till it's Dot, Dot, Dot.
Ryan: Oh, wow. Okay.
Laura: I feel like this film would have been really difficult to promote considering how the film is set up in this kind of mystery, turned into thriller in its different parts and its different sequences, right?
Ryan: Uh, yeah.
Laura: And it's three acts.
Ryan: It starts off as a movie, then it becomes a different movie, and then it turns into another movie, to a.
Laura: Ball, to the wall, crazy situation.
Ryan: Well, David Fincher is no stranger to, um, these kinds of films. Um, he's kind of known for making psychological thrillers for the most part, I guess, if you want to put his films under a blanket term. But I would say that certainly he's used to making films that have got these kind of twisty, turny stories that have a lot of things kind of going on in, um. Yeah, I mean, I guess we kind of will get into them. We'll just get into Fincher, I suppose.
Laura: Yeah, go into Fincher. I feel like I'm going to have to rein you in, Ryan, a bit, because we're going to talk about other Fincher movies in the future. Future Finchers.
Laura: So we just wanted to talk about gone Girl. We weren't going in any chronological order, uh, of release. We just felt like talking about Gone Girl. We've watched Gone Girl a lot. That's one of your comfort films.
Ryan: But all I would ask for is just give me the time. Just let me do this. Because he's my favorite contemporary filmmaker as it stands.
Laura: Right.
Ryan: Like, there's nobody that really kind of comes close. Vilnuv is very close. But there's something about his stuff that he does a certain way as well, which I quite like, but it's nowhere near the kind of levels I have. Like, the love and admiration I have for David Fincher.
Laura: You and your Zodiac fanboys.
Ryan: I mean, it's his best film. Like, I don't know why I need to explain this to you again. Like, it's his best movie.
Laura: Disagree.
Ryan: Is it my favorite of his movies? No. Will I watch it anytime? It's, you know, anytime.
Laura: Oh, whoops. It slipped right in the disc slipped in.
Ryan: I can't believe Zodiac's in the machine again.
Laura: Cut. It's 8 hours long.
Ryan: Well, it's like, um.
Laura: Let's dig in.
Ryan: Yeah. Uh, it's Zodiac. I mEan, come on, give me a fucking break.
Laura: All right, tell me about Fincher.
Ryan: David Fincher.
Laura: Yes.
Ryan: So, um, David Fincher is an American filmmaker, if we weren't already aware.
Laura: I don't know why I'm woohooing that.
Ryan: Sorry. Yeah. I don't know why I'm not Woohooing the ultimate patriot right now. Look at you. Yeah, look at you. Um, so brief history about him. Um, he never went to film school. Um, he never did that. Uh, he started work as a visual effects producer. He, um, worked at ILM as an assistant cameraman and map photographer. And he has credits for working on Return of the Jedi and, uh, Indiana Jones and the Temple of, um. Uh, yeah.
Laura: I did not know that.
Ryan: Yeah, no, he worked at Ilm for a long time.
Laura: How cute.
Ryan: Yeah. You will see that. I guess this is a tangent. We'll get too far into it. He does use a lot of visual effects, but the thing is that a lot of the visual effects and the CGI is pretty much invisible. It's not meant to be seen, so he's using it correctly. Um, but he came out of ILM and he decided that he was going to start making stuff on his own. And he got his start. He made a commercial, um, for the American Cancer society. And if anyone's ever seen it, it's basically a commercial of a fetus in the womb smoking a cigarette. Now that, uh, got him quite a lot of attention. And then from there, kind of spearheaded his career into making commercials and making music videos. And he co founded Propaganda Films, which basically made music videos and commercials. And he worked with the biggest brands, some of the biggest names. I, um, mean, some of his music videos know, he did famously, he's worked with Justin Timberlake. He did suit and tie. And then obviously in the past he worked with Madonna. He did the Vogue video. He also did freedom for, um, George Michael and Paul Abdul. All sorts, basically. He worked mainly within the pop genre, which you would kind of see as, um, referring to his contemporaries. Um, you would view them as being lesser types. But if you really kind of look at the stuff that he's made, uh, there's a lot of craft in theory to the sort of stuff that he makes. But in founding propaganda films, he's also responsible for propagating the talents of kind of many other filmmakers. So, like Spike Jones, Mark Romanick, Antoine Fuqua, uh, Michel Gondry. Like a whole bunch of other folk have kind of gone down a very similar path to Fincher. Started off in short form media and then kind of moved into making feature films. They did work at propaganda films, um, around about the same guess. You know, uh, I look at Fincher and there's a lot of craft. He's a genuine craftsman. His stuff's very meticulous. It's exacting, you would say. And I don't like this word. It's like a perfectionist kind of nature. Camera movement, the tension, the pacing. Like the way he puts things together, the way his films look. There's just a lot to his stuff that I feel like makes him a craftsman. People compare him to Stanley Kubrick a bit, which I kind of think is a little bit more of an insult because I think that as much as Kubrick was a genius, he was also a little bit of a lunatic and a little bit of a sadist. Um, Shelley Duval will probably never forgive him for what he did to her during the Shining. So certainly you've not heard stories like that, but you will hear the stories of David Twitcher doing, like, 40 takes, micromanaging things, and just kind of trying to get the best out of it. But you know what? What you see on this screen, he gets the results. And I genuinely don't care.
Laura: You keep coming back to work with him. I mean, that says a lot.
Ryan: He has frequent collaborators, and many of them even. I mean, Darius Conji said he learned so much just from working on him, uh, working with him on seven. And Darius Conji has a very illustrious career. He worked with, uh, Jean Pierre Giunot, and he did, like, City of Lost Children. And obviously Jean Pierre Giunot went on to make, like, alien resurrection and, like, those movies. So he was also a craftsman kind of coming into it, but he felt like he learned a lot. And seven is probably one of his best looking films. But another kind of common collaborator is Jeff Cronenworth, obviously the son of Jordan Cronenweth, who shot Ridley Scott's Blade Runner back in the day. Um, and Jeff Cronenweth shot most of his stuff other than, say, Harry Savitas, who shot Zodiac. But he's, like, collaborated, obviously, with Trent Reznor, Atticus. Ah, Ross of Nine Inch Nails theme. And they've done his soundtracks for the last, like, two or three films that he's done. He's obviously worked with, uh, Howard Shaw, the composer, who obviously did Lord of the Rings. But famously, I like his seven soundtrack. And he works with a sound designer called Ren Kleis. And I think his sound design in his films is fantastic. And I steal ideas and stuff from his things all the time because I really like the way that he puts the sound design together. But let's look at his films. So I would strongly recommend that you check out his music videos. It's like 50 or 60 strong. He kind of says that the music videos that he made and the commercials he made, that was his film school, and that's what kind of prepared him for making more narrative driven feature films. Now, his debut comes with Alien Three in 1992, which obviously, famously, was a complete fucking disaster for him, even though I don't think it's that bad a film, but he's effectively disowned it at this .7 that came out in 95, uh, the game in 97, Fight Club in 99, Panic Room in 2002, Zodiac in 2007, the Curious case of Benjamin Button in 2008, Social Network in 2010, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2011. Gone. Girl was recovering today in 2014, Mank in 2020. And then obviously, the Killer, which is out now, which came out in 2023. And just as, like, some honorable mentions anyway, he obviously had, uh, House of Cards.
Ryan: That was a Netflix show, which I think started off incredibly well, um, back in 2013. Mindhunter followed that in 2017, which. It's one of the great injustices of the streaming platform, is that we'll never see any more of that show.
Laura: Yeah, it's really saD, but we'll have.
Ryan: Plenty of time to watch more love, death, and robots that started off in 2019, because that doesn't seem like, uh, it will stop. Um, so, as you can kind of tell, I'm very kind of congloteory. This is going to be a weird episode for me because we're really going to kind of dive in to some things, and I will be getting reined in a fair amount. But, um, that's true.
Ryan: The only other thing I'd like to add, and it's just before we kind of get stuck into the movie, is that David Fincher also did a commentary on his own for Chinatown, and you can listen to it on YouTube. Oh, yeah, it's very interesting. Um, yeah, this is very interesting. Just interesting that he did that. I, uh, think Fincher is a very interesting person, and I think his works phenomenal.
Laura: I must say. I do like all of his films. I'm not a Zodiac fanboy. I am a gone girl fanboy. I love.
Ryan: Think there's not a bad film in the bunch. Like, he has a pretty stellar career. Now, you can say what you want about Alien three. Alien three is better because he's at the helm of it.
Laura: That's not even the one I was going to bring up. My least favorite is Benjamin Button. And, uh, that's just the one I don't feel like watching. I'm not interested in watching.
Ryan: I've seen it the least, but there is still emotional moments in it. I think it's a little too long, and there's parts of it that I don't really like. But certainly, I think the ending, I think the music, I think the way the film looks, uh, except when you.
Laura: Have Kate Blenchette, it's cool.
Ryan: The Brad Pitt, like, the Brad Pitt aging as, like, the old man thing. Don't think it looks as good now as people were touting it at the time.
Laura: What looks even worse is her airbrushed face.
Ryan: It's rough. It's a little, um. You know, I think like Benjamin Button at the time, I remember it was one of his big Oscar runners because it was very, um, accessible. I think a lot of his stuff is relentlessly dark and it's very, um, unforgiving. And certainly he follows up Benjamin Button with Social Network in 2010, which is effectively just, ah, like a political thriller in the style of a few good men. Or, um, it's like a courtroom drama, except, ah, it's all the kind of the depositions and stuff, which makes sense because, um, it's written by Aaron Sorkin, so you can understand exactly where that comes from. Because obviously Fugid Men was also written by Aaron Sorkin.
Laura: I was going to bring up double army hammers. I wonder if he's still fully canceled these days.
Ryan: No, I think he's back to a degree because they found that he hadn't done anything wrong.
Laura: He's been posting on Instagram little by little lately.
Ryan: Okay.
Laura: He's coming back.
Ryan: He could be. I mean, end of the day, I think social network is flawless. There's some stuff in that movie that I think is great. That film just ties together, like, incredibly well. Um.
Laura: Well, here we go.
Ryan: I told you this was going to be a mistake. Like, I told you this. I've seen gone girl like five or six times. And I saw it in the cinema.
Laura: Yes.
Ryan: As well.
Laura: Well, since, uh, I've had letterboxd, which I think I opened my account in 2017, I had logged it. I think I maybe only had logged it once. And then I met you. I met you. I've seen it three times this year. It is November, and I watched it like once or twice before. I've. Yeah, I've probably seen.
Ryan: It'S, um.
Laura: I do love watching it. The more I watch it, which I will bring up throughout this episode, is how I start to kind of understand Rosamund Pike's character. Amazing Amy a little bit more every time I watch it.
Ryan: She's fascinating.
Laura: Uh, so fucking good.
Ryan: She's fascinating as a character.
Laura: The character is incredibly fascinating. Which there's times where I'm like, yeah, bitch, like, destroy him. Destroy that man. And then there's times where obviously, because.
Ryan: Of what she does, there's a lot in the film where, because you have this twin perspectives. Although technically Amy, who obviously Rosamund Pike's character, she's running the show, she's kind of running the. So, like, there is a twin perspective. And the film kind of opens with, uh. I don't know what the book's like, but Gillian Flynn, who wrote the original book, also adapted the screenplay. And it's one of. I'll bring up some lines, like the dialogue and stuff, which I think is more like a Fincher trait than anything else, is incredibly snappy. It's very intelligent. It's like pop culture heavy. And that's kind of more veering from seven onwards, um, as a lot of kind of pop culture, kind of referential sort of dialogue and stuff. That's incredibly snappy. But the thing is, even with the dialogue taken out, uh, it's an incredibly well crafted film that continues making the audience have to ask a bunch of questions as it's going on. And I think because it does that, it doesn't feel like two and a half hours. Like it's this kind of very smooth and breezy and very, uh, incredibly well paced film. Like I said at the very beginning, that kind of starts off as something develops into something else and then develops into something else, and then it's over.
Laura: It goes without saying that if you haven't watched this film, watch it, because.
Ryan: This will get ruined. Or at least we might mistakenly ruin things. I don't want to go beat for beat for the film either. I think we're kind of going to gloss over a bunch of stuff.
Laura: Yeah, but by the things that we're saying, it's going to get ruined.
Ryan: It will get bothered. Yeah, you will get bothered by it. So this is your firm warning, like 20 minutes into this podcast episode. If you've not watched it, you need to stop and go fucking watch it.
Laura: Enjoy yourself.
Ryan: Uh, yeah, because I don't know why you wouldn't. It's a fantastic film. He is one of the front runners. I know there's a lot of people who go on about Christopher Nolan, but he's too hit and miss for me. Um, about one of the front runners of some of the best contemporary filmmakers that have ever existed. Um, yeah, let's just get into it.
Laura: Isn't the opening shot Rosman Pike?
Ryan: So the thing really, like, about this opening shot, and it's Nick Dunn, who's Ben Affleck, it's his commentary that's going over the top of it. And this shot of her head resting on his chest, which then repeats later on, um, where he's describing in a very violent manner how he wants to deconstruct her and figure out exactly what's going on in her head. And this kind of weird creative writing thing where he just wants to crack her head open and spill her brains all over the place so he can figure out who she is. Now, I like this. And this is one of my favorite title sequences in any of Fincher's movies because he does a lot of really interesting title sequences because the girl with the Dragon tattoo is also one which has a really interesting. It's like, kind of, like Super Dark, uh, like James Bondy title sequence sort of quality. And I like a James Bond title sequence, but I like the Fincher ones even better. Um, because Girl with a dragon tattoo is, like, crazy. And it's like they were kind of expecting him to do, like, a series of these, and they were trying to, um, maybe try and get him to one of the other ones, like Hornets Nest or whatever kind of came after it. So they have a very kind of, um. Yeah, they're kind of like, uh, uh, your goth, emo, like, James Bondy thing, which I kind of thought was ironic anyway, because Daniel Craig's in that. Um, but then you've got, like, Fight Club. Um, you've also got seven. Seven's probably got one of my favorite fucking title sequences ever. When it's just the diaries of John Doe.
Laura: All right, but Gone Girl.
Ryan: But Gone Girl, it's of the landscape and the titles and the credits. They only show up for, like, less than a second and they immediately disappear.
Laura: Yeah, they're very small.
Ryan: Yeah. I like the fact that there's a nature to the fact, because this is something I learned when I was at school, is that if you have a title sequence and you have a title, it should behave, or at least give you some indication as to what the film is that you've made that's coming up. So it gives you an idea of what you're going to be getting.
Laura: So there's kind of like a symbolic title. So you can kind of guess. Yeah, there's a girl that's gone. You, uh, Maybe got to go find her.
Ryan: Yeah. And it just happens really quickly. But I like this title sequence anyway. She's good. I mean, we're talking about that opening shot. She's got her head rested on that. I refer to this shot because it's shown later on. There's like a coolish of effect about it. Uh, where after everything that's happened in the movie and you see that shot again, or like a variant of that shot again, you're like, yes. That means something completely different. Like that look in her eyes when you see it. It's frightening. Yeah.
Laura: And, uh, she's so freaking beautiful as well.
Ryan: Yeah. Although she does a really good job of really toning herself down for the majority of the film. And then she has this kind of femme fatal quality in the film.
Laura: As you know, Fincher said that they had to retouch all of the close up shots, like the opening shot of her because of her wig. And he said that wig technology hasn't advanced since Shakespeare. It's like I had to fucking go back and retouch all these shots with her wig.
Ryan: That's the thing is, if he's doing those sorts of things, you're just not going to see them. And that's the thing that I really like, because there's shots in the girl with a dragon tattoo that you wouldn't know, but, um, they completely changed the sky and take out, put clouds in. So the clouds had more symbology to what was happening within the scene as opposed to the clouds that were actually there when they shot it. On the level of. Yeah, there's a level of, uh, attention to detail that I quite admire there.
Laura: Um, Nick, um, and Amy in this film commit a little bit more to their anniversaries than we do. And this was their fifth year anniversary, right?
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: Ours is next year, our five year wedding anniversary. So do you want to do a gone girl next year?
Ryan: No.
Laura: You, um, don't want to do a gone girl?
Ryan: No, I'd rather not. What, so I'm going to get accused of murder and all this?
Laura: Yeah, but I'll come back. But you have to really try hard.
Ryan: I'll have to try hard?
Laura: Yeah, you got to fight. You got to fight for me On TV.
Ryan: Yeah, I, ah, do not like that idea whatsoever. I hate it. Um, no, I think, um, well, the five years. That's wood, right?
Laura: Indeed, yes.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: You could just have a regular conversation with your sister that says, just get a boner and fuck her brains out.
Ryan: She is so good in this movie.
Laura: She is so good. And they're not wrong when they say that they're too close. They're very close. I can't imagine talking to one of my siblings about fucking somebody's brains out. That's just not our relationship.
Ryan: I mean, maybe not a twin, though. Yeah, but they're best friends, though. And they're bonded even closer by the fact that he's come home at this stage to look after their ailing mother. But then that doesn't happen. She ends up passing away anyway. And this is their hometown, so they're very much kind of cemented together.
Ryan: And I kind of feel like there's a lot of things that happen within the movie. I'm not going to detail every single little thing, but you're given these little nuggets of information, which I think is like the mark of a really good storyteller, is that you're given little nuggets of information that when you see them, first off, they don't exactly make a whole lot of sense. It's only until you kind of continue the watch, you're like, oh, I see. Because there's a great shot and it's nothing too kind of peculiar, but there's a brief shot of the homeless within the community, in the town, and then they're referenced, like, two or three times kind of after this. So you're already kind of getting these little nuggets of information that kind of help to just round out, uh, exactly what this world is and what's happening, and you're just continually question everything that's happening so that you're continually put on the edge of your seat because you're just not 100% sure what's actually going on. Like, who's a good person, who's the bad person? Um, and that's something. Yeah, that's just something I just really like about this film. I'm just going to be lauding it. There's nothing wrong with it. There's Nothing wrong with this film whatsoever.
Laura: No, there's not.
Ryan: Yeah. It's incredibly well paced. The editing is fantastic. It's so smooth. There's things about the cuts and things that happen in this movie, and it's a fairy Fincher thing where he'll just cut to something really briefly, and then it matches with a separate shot with the movement that you just saw less than a couple of seconds later, and you're just like, I just got all that information. It was within less than 5 seconds. Like, I love it. Absolutely love it.
Laura: Wow.
Ryan: Yeah. Deep Hasbro thoughts. That's what I like to say. That's what I think.
Laura: Um. Um, you're going off on this tangent. I'm looking at my notes, and I wrote villain Chin, so that's where I'm at. Yeah, I guess I'm at Villain Chin, where Ben Affleck did this role, and then he told his agent he needs to do a hero chin after that.
Ryan: Oh, that's how he got Batman.
Laura: That's how he did Batman.
Ryan: He's a good Batman. I'm not going to lie. He's a scary ass fucking. He's. He's pretty good. He's pretty good. It's like fucking branding people in that movie. He's got, like, he's heating up these bat knives and, like, branding them it's wild.
Laura: Those new movies are not good.
Ryan: Oh yeah. Talking of Zack Schneider though, he also worked at propaganda Films as well for a little bit.
Laura: Look at all those cute best.
Ryan: Perfecting his craft. Well, yes, perfecting his craft. Perfecting his look, his DC look.
Ryan: The thing that this Snyderverse, um, I want to just kind of truncate the story because I just kind of want us to, kind of want us to get into it. So basically Gong Girl is a story of a woman who just goes missing and there's no idea why she's gone. And it just kind of unravels relatively quite slowly and particularly. But the stories intercut with her disappearing and then them meeting because we're reciting her diary entries.
Laura: Mhm.
Ryan: That are happening. And the thing is that I really like about this film is that they're her diary entries, it's her memories, but they're not entirely true. They're completely from her perspective because she's deliberately leading us down this path.
Laura: Yes.
Ryan: So that we don't like Nick. But what we're seeing is that it's also coupled in with this uh, anniversary treasure trail thing that they're doing. And then obviously with that, uh, we start unraveling, obviously things about Nick that we don't particularly like, that shine a bad light on him. And then he's suspected of the murder and disappearance of his wife, but she has been carefully orchestrating this entire thing so that every time the police talk to Nick, he's just like, I have no idea what you're talking about. It looks bad. Like, it looks really bad.
Laura: Yeah, it looks awful.
Ryan: It looks bad. Um, I mean, Patrick Fuget's in the movie. He's fucking awesome.
Laura: He doesn't trust him for a second.
Ryan: Oh God, no. He's like, why can't you just be ah, happy she's back? It's like, should I know my wife's blood type? He's like, no, no, I don't think so. I don't even remember my own blood type.
Laura: Me either. I have to call my mother.
Ryan: Yeah, I only found out my blood type recently when I moved to the country. I think I might be ab, I.
Laura: Wrote it down somewhere.
Ryan: I've got my medical records there somewhere. Um.
Laura: Does she have any friends? Not really.
Ryan: She does, though. Supposedly it's because she's orchestrated it a certain way.
Laura: So. Good.
Ryan: Um, but yeah, I do like it when they, there's the lead detective and she's really good. Um, and she's like, oh, you own the bar. She's like, very meta.
Laura: So those police department scenes, do you know, uh, that they were shot in the same building where they shot a lot of Zodiac?
Ryan: I mean, it makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah, because it looks very. Yeah, there's quite a lot of kind of, um. I mean, I don't know how much of Zodiac was actually shot in San Francisco. Um, because gone girls set in. Is it in St. Louis? St. Louis. It's Missouri for the most part.
Laura: And then New York.
Ryan: Yeah. Because a lot of the memory stuff, they meet in New York. That's where you get the sugar storm and all that stuff kind of happening. All these really good. Because the thing is, the film starts and it's just. Okay. Okay. Characterization. You're immediately sucked into, like, I think that's just the thing. It's like, it immediately gives you all this information because you're like, this film's two and a half hours, and we are going at a breakneck pace. And everything's happening. It just kicks off.
Laura: I was eating it up. I eat it up every time.
Ryan: Oh, there's a lot of film. Yeah, there's a lot of film in film. There's a lot of film in this.
Laura: Um, yeah. Oh, gosh. I only have, like, random notes. Ryan, this is difficult for me.
Ryan: I don't think it's that difficult, because.
Laura: I just have, like, lines that I really like and parts that I liked.
Ryan: Uh, I mean, we're getting there. We're getting, you know, there's a lot of the detailing in the film is about the escalating and the reasoning why Nick might kill her. And he's also currently trying to do his own detective work. And we know he's got, like, a troubled childhood. He's still looking after his father even after the mother has died. And he's got mental health issues, and he's just a bit of a dick. And it's obvious that he has very little relationship with his father. He's very close to his sister. But what you kind of find is that it's just kind of cleverly just characterizing him as someone who cannot be fully trusted. And I think there's something that Fincher does really, really well. Is that the way he uses his camera? It feels very cold, and it feels very clinical. And certainly he prefers to use a static camera, so that every time the camera moves or it does a certain thing, or there's a motion or there's a close up being used, there's a very specific reason why he's doing that. So he's spoon feeding you little bits of information that then all kind of add up to this kind of big culmination by the ends. Um, do you not remember that bit where they give themselves. There's that story where they give themselves the exact same bed linens.
Laura: Yeah. I looked those up to see if we could purchase them. They sounded really nice.
Ryan: I think they're super expensiVe.
Laura: They are.
Ryan: Yeah. They're like, how much is, like, $400?
Laura: They're well out of our price range.
Ryan: Wow. Okay.
Laura: One of these days, I aim for that.
Ryan: Well, Amy Dunn's a, uh, millionaire for the most part, because her story was transposed into a series of books that become the.
Laura: Her parents wrote the series of.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: Amazing Amy.
Ryan: Yeah. And it's also kind of the main source of mean. I don't want to call it sociopathy or psychopathy, but I think that's kind of where it stems from. Oh.
Laura: I mean, you can see where it comes from, especially from her mother. Her mother's a nightmare. Her mother's looking. They are dredging a lake, looking for Amy's body. The mother's walking over, talking to Nick, and she goes, this place literally smells like feces. And then walks away. I'm like, they're dredging the lake for your potentially dead daughter? And you're just like, it stinks. Yeah, it stinks out here. She's incredible. And, yeah, you can see where that comes from. You have this life that you're trying to live as an only child. M and all of the things that you do are done better by the character in a. Like, she wants to ride a horse, and then she became a champion horse jumper, and she wanted to play volleyball. But know the real Amy didn't get on the team, but the character did, and varsity. So that could be hard. That could be hard as a kid.
Ryan: Um, yeah, there's a lot of interesting ways in which. And that's one of them. There's a lot of interesting ways in which the film transposes what's effectively her fantasy and then the actual reality, which is obviously more of the Nick Dunn, um, stuff. Um, but, like, you know, it feels like it's a couple of films. By the halfway point, you find out Amy's not fucking dead. She just left, and she's staged it to make it look like a bad murder.
Laura: That whole sequence is amazing.
Ryan: But then you're also like, it's also not the perfect plan either, because her plan continues to change as the details of, uh, it. Because, effectively, what you're subjected to is she's angry at him, um, for cheating on her. So she escalates the revenge to make it look like he's killed her.
Laura: Absolutely.
Ryan: And she's going to follow through with that death.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: As well.
Laura: She's going to kill herself.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: Like she stages her own murder.
Ryan: Mhm.
Laura: To get him in prison, and then she's going to actually kill herself.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: But what is so funny to me that I love ever so much that really made me connect with her is when she's like, you know what? Fuck Nick. Fuck him for making me go to St. Louis. When I had this amazing brownstone in New York and I was living it up and I had a great time, she, um, spent all of her money, so much money buying him a bar. And then he recreates this romantic moment that they once had together outside of a bar with one of his students.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: Okay. So he does this thing where he rubs his filthy fingers across her lips.
Ryan: It's from the sugar star moment in New York where there's, uh, so romantic. Yeah, it's a cool moment.
Laura: It's so beautiful and perfect. And he does this that he did with his wife, with this young, the tiniest girl I've ever seen. And she witnesses him cheating on her in front of the bar that she purchased for him to try and just make things better. He goes and does that. Yeah. Guess what? You're in for a doozy, friend.
Ryan: Yeah, but the thing.
Laura: Oh, I didn't even get to my point. Okay. So she sees this thing, right? And she's fucking mad, rightfully so. And she goes, you know what? I'm going to get you. So I'm going to kill myself, and I'm going to make it really difficult for you for the rest of your life. And so when she decides that she's going to do that, she goes, I'm, um, going to start snacking. Because she's like a science.
Ryan: She does start snacking.
Laura: She looks incredible. And, you know, she works out and she watches what she eats. She definitely eats salads all day. High protein. And she just starts eating snacks nonstop. Trash snacks, burgers, candy, chippies.
Ryan: Sounds so good.
Laura: And she just starts smoking for no reason. She's just like, fuck it. I'm going to do all these things that I was never meant to do, never supposed to do. She lived in this bubble, in this box, and she had to conform to a certain way of being because of her family. And she goes, I'm going to throw it all out the window, and I'm just going to have a snack. And I love.
Ryan: I know. Yeah. I know you love that.
Ryan: Love snacks the minute Tyler Perry comes into the movie, who is also fucking amazing. Um, yeah, he's so good as the lawyer.
Laura: Um, he said that, um, the Fincher said that when he called him and kind of was talking to him about the role and offering him the role, Tyler Perry's like, are you sure you want me in this film for real? And he was just super humble about it, and he's incredible.
Ryan: Was Tyler a little.
Laura: Hallelujah. I think Tyler Perry's cool. He's great in this movie.
Ryan: Oh, he's amazing. Yeah, he's, uh.
Laura: Every line that comes out of his mouth is gold.
Ryan: Yeah. There's not a bad character in this entire piece. Like, everyone is very good in this. They've all got their part to play. But when he shows up, this is where the investigation on Nick's side starts to take more of a turn. Because I know you're talking about Amy and you have the snacks. Um, to me, I'm looking at someone who has done things like this more than once, and everything's kind of escalated. And then basically what you're finding out is that there are other men in her life where she's pretended to be someone else in order to gain their affections. And those affections haven't been reciprocated enough or they've been reciprocated to the point of them being, I, um, guess, weird and strange because we'll talk about Neil Patrick Harris's character, um, as we get there. But, uh, yeah, no, the thing is that the murder story, the disappearance story, it can be a little bit trite, I think. Not this film. I'm just saying the idea of the disappearing person, you're like, the husband did it. It's a little bit trite and it's a little bit unoriginal. And it's been done hundreds of times. And that's obviously the reason why this film does this is because there's this major turn. She's not dead. ShE just left. She staged this whole thing. She's doing this, she's doing that. But the more interesting part of the film and the more interesting part of the story is, who is she? Who is Amy? Who is she trying to be? Who has she been before? And that, to me, is like a far more interesting concept for the film. And I'm glad it goes down that way than if it kind of continued down the pathway that she kind of sets herself, because it goes into some fucking areas where you're just like, all right, uh, let's go. I guess it's a runaway train at one point.
Ryan: And there's a lot of really cool things in the movie. The media frenzy around this, and I like the stuff, is that it's pop culture, and it has a very kind of contemporary feel about it. I think that's, like, a lot of what Fincher stuff does as well, other than obviously he's made, like, period stuff, uh, as well, but certainly with, like, seven Fight Club. The, um, know, Zodiac's also another thing, because obviously, that takes place as part of the media itself because of the Zodiac killer and the interest in that. But with this, there's a very prominent kind of media presence, and you get all sorts of angles, all sorts of sides. And the one thing I will say is that you're watching it all on TVs. And I love the fact that Fincher never films a TV as if it's, like, perfect. You always see, like, a banding, or you always see, um. It's so close on the TV, you can see the imperfections that the TV is creating. And that's something I've always kind of admired about the way he shoots TVs. You'll notice it if you really look at the TVs. You'll be like, oh, there's, like, the interlacing, like, the banding that kind of comes down slowly over the TV. That's just kind of what the camera would see because of the way that it's shooting it at the shutter speed and things like that. He's the only other artist that I know that does that sort of thing, and I've just stolen it from him for my stuff because it looks more interesting. But, yeah, let's continue on.
Laura: Uh, they had to shut down production for four entire days because Ben Affleck refused to wear a Yankees cap. Like, no joke.
Ryan: He's a boy from Boston. Yeah.
Laura: Four entire days. Fincher said. He was incredibly unprofessional. He was furious. He goes, the fact that I had to stop shooting this film because Ben Affleck wouldn't wear a hat. And he's like, yeah, he's from Boston, but we have to film a movie. We're working. We have to work.
Ryan: Yeah. The Yankees and the Red Sox, obviously.
Laura: I assume in sports worlds they are.
Ryan: It's one of the biggest rivalries in sports.
Laura: Yes. Okay.
Ryan: The Boston Red Sox.
Laura: Because later in the film, not too long after that, he's wearing a St. Louis Cardinals T shirt. So apparently that's not an issue.
Ryan: It's not a problem. Because they're not a prime rivalry.
Laura: It's so stupid.
Ryan: It is stupid.
Laura: So incredibly, um, stupid.
Ryan: But I think certainly there's also stories out there where Ben Affleck wasn't the biggest fan of Fincher's, uh, working practices, just in general. So this probably could have just been a moment that boiled.
Laura: I don't actually, I don't have a problem with Ben Affleck or Fincher. I love a bit of goss. I think that's hilarious that that happened for four entire days because of a hat that he ended up wearing.
Ryan: He did end up wearing it. I mean, he's contractually obligated to do, um, mean, I think, for the nature of that. I think it's weird. Like, if you've not.
Laura: Or was he wearing, like, a mets hat? Do, uh, you remember?
Ryan: I can't remember.
Laura: I wonder if that was a compromise.
Ryan: It's so brief, and I don't give.
Laura: You don't even see his face about sports. He has his head down so far that you can only see the top of the hat. You can't even see his face.
Ryan: Well, that's where there's that kind of, I guess you would call it like a gossip show they're talking about because they're badmouthing Nick Dunn because they're just like, she's like, I'm going where the story goes, all this sort of shit. And he's at the airport, and they make the accusation that he's having intimate, um, what he refers to it as, like, carnal interaction with his Sister or something.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: And there's the couple of guys just sat behind it, and one of them just goes twin cest. Yeah. And I was like, right, okay. So that's why he puts the hat on. Um, that's why he puts the hat on. But, yeah. Uh, I remember hearing that ages ago. You can't have a film without there being some kind of drama. But for the most point, if people are complaining, they're complaining about the fact that he shoots too many takes for one shot. But then you see the shot, and you're like, it's like, well, it's perfect. There's nothing wrong with them.
Laura: So it's like, okay, a little bit later. Well, quite a bit later in the film. So when I'm jumping around, I apologize. But it pertains to what you're saying.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: So David Fincher was saying that everyone, not even, I mean, even people that weren't involved in production were complaining about how many takes he does. Everyone is complaining. He said he was super proud because the shot in the movie.
Ryan: This is 2014, though, because he's made, like, countless films at this point as well. They know his practices, but they continue to hire him because of the fucking amount of silly amounts of money his films make.
Laura: So there's that shot of Neil Patrick Harris parking his. I think he's driving at Ben's, and you're seeing it on the security camera, and he pulls into the driveway, and he has to park it perfectly in the center.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: He goes, you know what? That shot only took two takes and the second takes in the film. So, yeah, go fuck yourself.
Ryan: I do like the fact that I'm pretty sure there are times where he can do that, but I think people compare him to Kubrick and stuff. But then Kubrick did. He did things a certain way. And I feel like they're almost inherently cruel. And I'll always go back to the Shining. Yeah, because isn't there. Oh, no, it's not. Because I read this thing recently. It's Harvey Kitel. Right. He's not in the shining, obviously. He was in eyes wide shut. There's a shot of Harvey Keitel, or at least there was. I can't remember if the Harvey Keitel stuff was still in the movie or not, because he got fired. Um, but there's supposedly Harvey Keitel was on the set of eyes wide shut, and there's a shot of him going through a doorway. And Kubrick made him do it a hundred times.
Laura: Oh, my God.
Ryan: So basically, Harvey Keitel, pretty staunch New Yorker guy, um, is just like, what the fuck are. You know? And he's been in plenty of films by this point. Harvey Keitel. He's got no fucking time for it whatsoever. And Kubrick just raged, uh, out, said, you're fired.
Ryan: Get out. He fired Harvey Keitel?
Laura: Why not?
Ryan: What do you mean, why not? Doesn't make any sense.
Laura: That's what you get signed up for, apparently. Harvey Keitel can't take direction. You can't.
Ryan: Can't see things like that. Maybe Harvey Keitel wasn't walking into the doorway the way that Kubrick wanted.
Laura: That's exactly why all.
Ryan: Ah, right. Yeah, it comes to a point.
Laura: Patrick Harris can park a car. Two takes.
Ryan: He does. Yeah. Don't compare. Neil Patrick Harris.
Laura: I don't know. I'm just saying.
Ryan: Jesus Christ. Harvey Keitel is like our golden child for the podcast.
Ryan: There are so many other things that we're going to do with Harvey Keitel when Neil Patrick Harris comes into the picture, because he's also kind of. What's his name is Desi. It's Desi Collins, right. In the movie, um, he's like the overbearing ex boyfriend who they had to get, like, a restraining order for. That she kind of caught because her money gets fucking stolen. She gets bamboozled by a couple of, uh, couple of trailer park. Couple of trailer Parker friends. Yeah.
Laura: What's interesting is that during that whole sequence when they were shooting it, Rosamund Pikes just kind of like, it wasn't working for her when they were being gentle with her because they barge into her room and are looking for her money because they saw she's got a little kind of waste pack under her shirt where she hides all of her cash. They go, oh, obviously, we want your money. Um, but when they barge in to steal it from her, m they were being a little bit too light when they were shooting it. And so she's like, just really do it. So there's that moment where she gets her head slammed up against the wall, and she was seeing stars afterwards because they had to push her so hard because it just wasn't working.
Ryan: Okay.
Laura: Because it just didn't seem real. She's like, just do it. Just do it really hard. Um, sorry. You were saying that her money gets stolen. So, yes, she did have to go back to her ex to try and figure out what to do next.
Ryan: She had nothing. This is kind of where. Because she's already made some decisions by this point about.
Laura: Right, because she doesn't want to kill herself anymore.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: She starts taking, I have to die.
Ryan: She's taking stuff off of the calendar that she's made, but she's also following all of the media stuff that's coming out, and she's watching as the story kind of naturally develops, basically. And Nick's not doing a fantastic job of, I guess, making himself look favorable. But what I do like about this stuff is that there's a lot of this female perspective. So they're dealing with a lot of female headed shows where, obviously, the bias is going to be against, obviously, Nick and the thing. And his lawyer is also male. And then there's also Margot, who's kind of, like, stuck in the middle, who's also like, you're a dick, and you're doing stupid things. And they're like, we need to try and spearhead all of this bullshit that you have created for yourself. That's kind of what I m mean.
Laura: The evidence is pretty well stacked against him. I don't blame anybody in the story for going after Nick.
Ryan: Yeah, he's not done himself any fucking.
Laura: Favors, but, yeah, he's doing that research, trying to figure out about the men in her past. Because there are stories about how she was raped. Right. M when she was in college, I believe, by this young man. Um, and Nick also tries to meet up with Desi, with Neil Patrick Harris. And he's like, no, absolutely not. I'm not talking to you. But he did get to talk to that one guy who was like, do I look like a rapist? Which is, like, a stupid thing to know. Could this face rape? I'm like, maybe.
Ryan: I don't know.
Laura: I don't know. You.
Ryan: I mean, you're also accused of rape.
Laura: Yeah. So, I mean, probably. I'm not sure. But again, you're seeing where she's, uh, learning her tips and tricks from. From m the past, and he's like, oh, she graduated from rape to full scale. Yeah, but, Neil, it's interesting because you have that one guy who, in the story, obviously, he didn't rape her. He's a very nice guy. He got caught up in a really bad situation who's unstable.
Ryan: She's ruined his life.
Laura: Oh, yeah.
Ryan: Like, there is a path of destruction that she's wrought.
Laura: Yes, but not really. It's this one guy that she's definitely ruined his life, and she's planning on ruining Nick's life as well, her current husband. But with Desi, the he. She had to get away from him because he was a lot. Am I wrong?
Ryan: No, but I think because of the way certain elements in the story are framed, I think it's difficult to believe certain people in the film. I don't know.
Laura: Scared me a lot.
Laura: Neil Patrick Harris in this film is very scary.
Ryan: I'm not saying that he's not. What I'm saying is that there's two sides to every story, and then sometimes we're only really given the one, and it's the most damning. And then you hear the alternate to that damning story, and you're kind of just like, yeah, whatever. You hit your wife or you did this or you did that. Uh, it does. In my perspective, it makes it more difficult to certainly believe certain things about her. But she is cold, she is calculating. There's no bones about it. She has gone through and ruined people's lives. And that's her love language. That's her Mo. Our love language. Jesus Christ. Um, yeah.
Laura: Um, when she ends up at Neil Patrick Harris's boat house. Beautiful house.
Ryan: It's like a boat. Yeah, it's like a house on the lit, like his lake house. Basically.
Laura: Love it. He says to know there are cameras everywhere, you're more than safe, and I'm not letting you get away again.
Ryan: M.
Laura: Oh, it's so gross. But he wants her to ship up because she's all, uh, shape up. That's what I meant to say. But because she's like gained weight because she was eating all the snacks because she was going to kill herself and just to kind of get herself slightly unrecognizable by dying.
Ryan: I guess so. Yeah.
Laura: A slightly darker shade of blonde.
Ryan: Mhm.
Laura: But they had to put, um, kind of pads around her belly and stuff. And put stuff in her cheeks to make her look bigger. But she was gaining and losing ten to 15 pounds within like a week's time.
Ryan: Okay.
Laura: During the filming, because you never know exactly where your weight is going to show up. When you do gain weight. Like, some people gain it in their face, some people gain it in their hips or in their belly and stuff in their ass. In their ass. Pounds in your ass. Yeah, but she was doing that. They had a doctor on staff just to make sure that she was. Because it's not safe.
Ryan: I mean, it's all those 40, 50 takes of her, like eating a burger and having fries and stuff like that in the car. Probably that did, that'll do it. That sounds like a dream.
Laura: Yeah. But she would gain and lose. Gain and lose. But it wasn't always in the right spot, so they had to pat her out a bit.
Ryan: Okay.
Laura: But, man, she lost that weight quick.
Ryan: Yeah. That doesn't sound as bad as post.
Laura: Um, kidnapping murder glow up, as they say.
Ryan: Um.
Laura: Oh, with that haircut.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: Amazing.
Ryan: Yeah. I mean, I'm going to say her weight and gain loss isn't as bad as Robert De Niro's weight and gain loss as he did for.
Laura: I mean, I'm not saying it's like the best I've ever seen.
Ryan: Or the machinist.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: These nutters going out there doing things like that.
Laura: Yeah. No, it's not like that. But it is. I mean, I've been trying to lose 15 pounds for weeks. She's doing it in one week.
Ryan: Yeah. It's hard. It's not easy.
Laura: No, I'm not that dedicated.
Ryan: No.
Laura: But there is a moment after she's all getting sexy again and stuff where Desi goes up to her and says, I'm not going to force myself on you, which is so scary because you know that that's not what he means. He's like, if you don't, uh, have sex with me soon. You're going to have sex with me soon, regardless of what you want.
Ryan: Yeah. Uh, uh. He is bested by just, um, uh, like a crazier psychopath, of course.
Laura: Okay, so maybe one of my favorite shots, or my favorite moments in this whole film is where Desi leaves for work and she watches him go on the camera, and she wraps that silky little rope up around her leg and dips her slip in, like, beet juice on the table. And she's kind of squirting it, kind of, like, around her groin area. Groin, right.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: And crawls to the window in the craziest way I've ever seen. Like James McEvoy from that, um, m. Night Shyamalan M movie.
Ryan: Well, she knows the placement of the cameras, right? So she times it with him leaving to, like, she's got herself free for a moment, and she's there hemorhaging blood, hemorrhaging blood from obviously being, uh, physically assaulted. And, uh, she's playing up for the cameras.
Laura: But just how her body moves. She gets on all fours and, uh, runs on all fours.
Ryan: She has to get there quickly, otherwise it's not perfectly timed to the way that she's envisioned the moment as it's discovered by the police. Because.
Laura: Crazy.
Ryan: Because later on when she's found, um, she says, you've got to check those cameras to the police so that she's able to kind of gloat and, I guess bask in the glory of the things that she's been able to achieve there. Those sorts of moments.
Laura: Well, she's got to tie up. That's why she needs him to check.
Ryan: I mean, she uses Desi Collins, um, who's probably not a very good person, but at the same time, he has helped her. He's just unaware of the length she's gone and the lengths that she'll go to to maintain. I guess this ruse, her whole mission in the course of this film, does feel like it changes relatively, quite dramatically, which felt like it feels like that's fitting to her character and such, what? But then it's also like it's incredibly unpredictable, like, what she's going to do, which I think is probably the scariest thing about her.
Laura: Well, it all has to do with, uh, her watching television and figuring out what's going on, because she Genuinely thinks that he's trying to get her.
Ryan: Yeah. Yeah.
Laura: She goes, wow, he's really fighting for me.
Laura: Since we were talking about Neil Patrick Harris, I figured we should jump into this first penis scene, of which there are two.
Ryan: Yes. There is a couple here.
Laura: So this first one comes in at 2 hours, five minutes, and seconds.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: So, as Desi has said, I'm not going to force myself on you. She decides, like, this is the time where she prepares.
Ryan: She does some really fucked up stuff to herself.
Laura: Oh, yeah. Oh, gosh. She's doing well.
Ryan: I'm trying to remember if this happens in order, because does she do it?
Laura: I think it's right after he. No, she does it before. She does it before they have sex. So she's getting those, um. She's like. Was it like ligatures? Like she's wrapping, um, rope around so it looks like she's been tied up.
Ryan: And she's, like, alternating her wrists and tightening and retightening them. And it's like she's probably been doing it for an hour just so it can get those kind of blood blisters and those blemishes on her wrist to make it look like she's been bound for a long time, basically.
Laura: Yeah. But then she takes a champagne or, uh, prosecco bottle.
Ryan: Well, this is where we reveal the craft blade as well, because she uses the craft blade to take off, um, the outside covering that prevents you from corking, uh, the bottle.
Laura: Yeah. Or wine bottle, whatever it was. But. Yeah, but then she starts inserting. Popping that up.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: She needs to make it look like she's been raped.
Ryan: She has to look like she's had something done this before. She's done this before. So, unbelievably, I don't think that the.
Laura: Bottle thing was in the book, but they're like, uh, let's kick it up a notch.
Ryan: Yeah, it definitely does kick it up a notch. Let's just put it this way. Like, the film is two and a half hours long. You have the first hour, which is the Nick Dunn story. You have the next hour, which is the Amy Dunn story. And then you have the last half hour, which is when all that fucked up, horrible shit starts, Nick.
Laura: And.
Ryan: It takes such a Turn. And this is the turn right. This is where it just goes down that, uh, route. I mean, it's already kind of hinted at it, and you're kind of just like. But you're like, holy mother of fucking Christ.
Laura: Well, this is. I mean, you knew she was committed before.
Ryan: Yeah. She's felt capable.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: But this is where she, uh, just. Yeah, she just lets this psychopathy take hold.
Laura: She's got this new plan.
Ryan: Yeah, that's true.
Laura: Commit.
Ryan: Jeffrey Dahmer had a plan you know what I mean? He followed through with that. Uh, he was also off his fucking too.
Laura: So she hid, uh, the box cutter underneath the pillow.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: And.
Ryan: He'S forced him to have sex with her aggressively, let's put it this way.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: She's done certain things that I think that whole sequence of that leading up to him, um, being on top of her and being the position that she wants him to be in. There's stuff that happens in that movie. She looks unbelievable. She looks amazing. And then she's doing stuff to him and all sorts of stuff that's like.
Laura: Might have been a finger in the butt.
Ryan: Might be a finger in the butt.
Laura: He never get. Neither of them take their underwear off.
Ryan: No, you don't. Yeah, you don't really.
Laura: She, uh, wants it hard and she wants it now.
Ryan: She wants it hard, she wants it fast, but also has to look as if she's been, it's happened, that sort of thing. She takes the craft blade and she slices his neck wide open.
Laura: I don't know, it's so great. Like the way her body moves, it's like she just wants to make sure that blood doesn't get in her hair. And she moves, uh, and flips him around to where she's on top of him.
Ryan: And she removes his hands from his throat as he's desperately trying to clutch onto life. And she's just like, she takes it. So his wound is just wide open.
Laura: It's like right after he's like, yeah.
Ryan: And, um, it's edited in a way as well where it fades in and out.
Laura: It's like blinking.
Ryan: It's like blinking. And it's incredibly fast. But you're getting obviously all of the information and she's just like covered in blood and everything's all fucked up and horriblE.
Laura: Except for her hair.
Ryan: Except for her hair. Um.
Laura: I love it when she's kind of sitting on top of him after she flips him over and she's just trying and flipping the hair out of her face without touching her face because she's got blood all over her hands. She doesn't want to get that dirty.
Ryan: Mhm.
Laura: Which is kind of great, um, because.
Ryan: She'S prepping for her, um. Uh, big TV debut, I guess. Yeah. Her screen presence, basically, this is where when you look at it and you watch it more and more and more, you're just like, fuck. That's why she's fucking doing these sorts of things.
Laura: So that's your first penis scene.
Ryan: Uh, she like slides off, there's an overhead shot and this was weird. Like, I remembered this.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: And I'd already written down the dick scenes before I watched the film again. And.
Laura: Hm.
Ryan: I was like, I'm 100% sure it's like a wide shot and it's an overhead and she just, like, slides off of them.
Laura: Um, covered in blood.
Ryan: Covered in blood. Um, and you see it very. I'd say it's relatively quite brief. I mean, both of these moments in the movie are relatively quite brief.
Laura: It's funny, there's times where I watch it and I don't see it, and then there's other times I'm like, whoa, there it is.
Ryan: Yeah. So.
Laura: I don't know, but I've seen it so many times.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: So, um. They had 36 different changes in the bedding in their costumes for that scene. 36 different sets. So imagine how many times they actually did that scene.
Ryan: Yeah. Um, no, it sounds like. It sounds slightly nightmarish.
Laura: Very sticky.
Ryan: Very sticky. Very difficult.
Laura: It's an amazing scene, but it's so meticulous.
Ryan: Yeah. I mean, it's just like trying to. I don't know what it is. Fincher is not happy about the way that the blood settles in a certain way. Or does your hair that one time? Uh, yeah, maybe. But then when it's all put together and stuff, this moment is a moment that lives on advice. It's so harsh. I remember that moment in particular because I remember when that movie came out and there was another filmmaker I remember seeing on social media who saw, like, I saw a couple of parents taking their young children into a screening of Gone girl. And it's like, what are you doing with some of the stuff that happens in that movie? What are you doing? Because that scene itself is pretty. Yeah, it's pretty.
Laura: Probably asleep by then. They're kids.
Ryan: Probably. Yeah. They probably wouldn't be as entrenched in it as, say, like, you or I. Um. But that scene is rough. It genuinely is.
Laura: I love every second of it. Yeah, I really do. Um, so she gets to escape. Ha. To go back and reunite with Nick after he pleaded so hard to get her back.
Ryan: By this point, Nick, they've already found all of the clues. They've already put all the pieces of the puzzle together.
Laura: He's been arrested.
Ryan: Nick is fucked. He's fucked. Like, Tyler Perry's, like, there, and he's like, you're fucked. She has you by the fucking short hairs. Like, uh, you are fucked. It looks like you've murdered. And he's out on bail. They're prepping for trial. He is on the road to being totally fucked. And then she just appears on the driveway driving fucking Desi Collins'Benz. Uh.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: And she just comes out covered in fucking blood.
Laura: I love it. I love it. When she goes up to him and he says, what does he whisper? Doesn't he just say, like, you fucking bitch?
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: And then she does that cool faint.
Ryan: Just that faint. The overdramatic faint. Love it. Yeah, I love it. I love how kind of aware of itself the film is as well. Like, everything about it. Because there's that conversation where, uh, she's in the hospital and they're checking her wounds, and the doctor is like, well, her wounds are, uh. Uh. Let's just say, uh, her conditions. It's a rape. That's what ties to. And the same detective who's arrested Nick Dunn and charged him with murder is now standing there being like, uh, now that I know that you're not the killer, I'm like, what the fuck is going on?
Laura: You know? Because he told her everything. Like, this is what I think she's done.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: And she's not kidnapped.
Ryan: He's right. Yeah, he's right.
Laura: And she's like, the detective's like, what am I going to do?
Ryan: Well, she's fucked. Yeah, she's also fucked. There's nothing she can do about it. The FBI have come in. They're just like, nope. And then they do this weird, like, um. They do this weird pseudo interrogation thing.
Laura: Debrief.
Ryan: Almost like a debriefing. But it's like. They're like, oh, my God, I can't believe you're home. And they're, like, saying these things. Obviously, the lead detective, who's just, like, been operating the case the entire time, is, like, wanting to hit her with these hard questions and want to find out all this information, because you can tell that there's cracks in the story, but they're not going to allow it to go any further.
Laura: Yeah, they're not going to let her get those questions.
Ryan: And they're just like, you're a fucking monster for thing. And she's just like, if you hadn't stopped fading.
Laura: I can't answer any more questions.
Ryan: It's like, if you hadn't have handled the case so badly, I might have seen my husband being put to death, like, all this stuff. And it's like, hold on.
Laura: I like when she asks those questions and she goes, well, can I go back to where I was being held captive?
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: I love it.
Ryan: Turn around. And they look at her like, fuck you.
Laura: He raped me. He shaved me. And all of the man cops are like, oh, my God. Shaved.
Ryan: Jesus. They shaved.
Laura: They shaved. And the only one that's not phased is the original, original female detective. All right, calm down.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: Uh, I love it.
Ryan: It's Wild. What's her name? What's the actress's name who plays the lead detective?
Laura: You can pull that up.
Ryan: I'm going to pull it up because.
Laura: I'm going to roll swiftly into the next penis scene where they get home after going to the hospital, and she is wearing scrubs, still bloody. And they get into the house and she wants him to take off all of his clothes to make sure he's not wearing a wire because he goes, you have to tell me what happened. You have to tell me what you're doing, what is going on and why have you done this? And so they go upstairs and she gets in the shower and he follows after her.
Ryan: Kim, um, Dickens. She's also in, uh, hollow Man.
Laura: Yeah. Oh, my God.
Ryan: Ah, yeah.
Laura: We can talk about her when we do Hollow Man.
Ryan: Yeah. I mean, we will. I know you do.
Laura: Verhoeven did Hollow Man.
Ryan: Of course he did.
Laura: And I love Verhoven.
Ryan: Well, it means we get to talk about the technocrane. That's an interesting little film. Tidbit. Okay.
Ryan: Anyway, let's continue on so that this is this.
Laura: It's 2 hours, twelve minutes, about 36 seconds.
Ryan: The shower. Yes.
Laura: Shower. Beautiful, big shower. Oh, my gosh.
Ryan: Yeah. That's the sort of shower I would love. It's like a wet room.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: It's like a big wet room.
Laura: So cool shower. Um, but it's this shot where he's just getting into the shower and he's pulling the door closed. So that's your moment.
Ryan: And you just see it kind of on a side.
Laura: Just on this side profile.
Ryan: I, uh, like the fact that Fincher has a reason to cut to certain things. But it almost feels like, I mean, just watching this moment again, it's almost as if there's maybe too many shots of him just going into the shower. I'm kind of just like. Because I remember the moment. I thought it wasn't like a wide. And I was just like, why is it cutting again? And then you see his deck.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Because it's like, why cut from this and then cut to that? And then you obviously kind of cut to this because it's a lot of finger stuff. Is, um, it's not like two shots. It's like, here's your single. Here's your single. Do something. With the camera. Here's your single. Here's your single. Let's follow them as a two. Then you've got your single, your single. Like this sort of thing that he does where he blocks out things in a very particular manner and then he does it, like, 100 times in a row so that it looks as if it's natural. Um, but with this, I was, like, watching it and I watched it back and I was like, huh? That's like, maybe one shot too many for him just to kind of come in there. But then if that other shot doesn't exist, we're not talking about that more. I mean, we'd be hard pressed to talk about this film in general if, uh, that part wasn't there.
Laura: Well, this was. I mean, it was big in the media when it happened. When this film came out, everyone was talking about Ben Affleck's penis. Yeah, they were going crazy. Which is hilarious because it's barely there. Barely in the tell. I tell you, though, when I watched it again, the last time I watched it, I was like, I don't know. It really jumped out to me this last time I watched it, which was weird.
Ryan: But the thing is, I see about the media and stuff because Oppenheimer came out this year and they did a whole thing about Killian Murphy being naked in that movie.
Laura: Yes. Oh, God, get me fucking started.
Ryan: And it's like, well, you don't see anything. He might as well be wearing a cock sock. It doesn't matter.
Laura: Naked in a chair, cross legged. Like no man has ever sat in his life.
Ryan: If you're naked, you're not sitting cross legged. I'm not doing that. No. You run the risk of getting a nut, like, popped in between your thighs. Um, I assume anyone who's seen Casino Royale or even read the book would understand exactly that. If you sit in that particular position, your genitalian stuff starts to hang, like, in between your thighs. And then Mads Mickelson gets a knot of rope and he fucking whacks you in the boss sack with it.
Laura: Okay.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: So that, um, it's. You've kind of described the shot. It's not there for very long, but it sure is. It's one of those. If you Google that, there are gifts online. I tell you, I've seen them.
Ryan: Yeah, they're definitely, um. This. This moment is effectively like, this is Amy coming clean and telling the whole story.
Ryan: And I guess it's very kind of on the face of, ah, it. It's just like, here's the naked truth. And it's like we're naked and it's like we're not wearing any wires. And she's so calm. It's so fucked up. She's so calm. She's got Desi Collins's blood still all over her. And she's just wiping it off. And there's a brief shot of the blood going into the drain. And you're only looking at it because Nick's, like, watching the blood wash from her body go into the drain and it goes back. And he looks up at her and he has the look on his face just like, what the, uh, fuck I killed? And it's like, what? Why did you do that? Why did you do that? Because at this point, he was ready to leave. The marriage was falling apart.
Laura: Are we going to be one of those couples that have a baby to save our marriage?
Ryan: She's like, what? I can't believe it. And the thing is, again, that moment in the story is from that very particularly written diary that she writes, and she has, like, 300 entries. And she's been mulling this plan over for months and months and months and months and months where it's just like.
Laura: She'S got nothing else to do.
Ryan: She's bored, I mean, I guess, might.
Laura: As well concoct, I guess. She's so smart.
Ryan: Uh, yeah. There's so much in the film to deconstruct and stuff like that.
Laura: Uh, yeah, I can't go any further. It's wonderful.
Ryan: Yeah, it's such a good ride. And I'm not even going to talk about the ending. I think the ending is fucking disgusting. I think it's so cruel. And, uh, it's incredibly sad.
Laura: He goes, was there ever even a baby? And then she goes, there could be. And then she pats the bed next to her and the camera just moves over just slightly to see her little hand tapping the bed.
Ryan: I'm like, uh.
Laura: Ew.
Ryan: Ew. No, you're all right.
Laura: She's teasing babies.
Ryan: Uh, I don't even want to talk about the ending of the movie. You guys can watch it on your own. Um, because it's a fucking ride. It genuinely is.
Laura: I don't really have anything else to say, except I sure could watch Gone Girl for a fourth time this year.
Ryan: I could watch it right now, probably.
Laura: I probably watch it again, too.
Ryan: Goodbye.
Ryan: Um, our ratings aren't going to come as a surprise.
Laura: Our ratings aren't because we already said it. Okay, so I'll go first in terms of visibility and context.
Ryan: Yeah, this is where I get it.
Laura: Really low. So I have it written down as a 1.5, which I might stick with, but I don't know, for whatever reason, sometimes my eyes really lock onto that penis and I'm m like, oh, it's like a two. Um, in terms of context, though, 100% context is a five. You obviously have people in the shower. Um, this guy's just been murdered. Wilst coming. Like, he's full climaxing and got his throat cut. So, yeah, context is a million.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: One of these days I'm going to split these up, but not today. But I think overall, maybe I'll go back and give it a two because context is wonderful, but the visibility is low. Low. Better, um, than other films we've done. Yeah, better than other films we've done. But I love an excuse to talk about movies that are fun, that we like. So this isn't a cop out.
Ryan: No, there are cocks out. There are cocks out. I would agree, because obviously, the context, like, what's actually happening, it all makes sense. But just, I think the shots where we do see anything, they are just incredibly brief and there's a lot of sharp cutting in those two scenes in general. Um, so you're not going to get the full kind of purchase out of it, but you have five stars for your contacts. But then, because everything's so brief, I'd also agree with you. I'd say it's kind of closer to maybe about two stars for each, maybe a little bit more for the shower. But at the same time, it's so brief, it's so quick, to be honest, I think you're surprised it's even. They are for sure.
Laura: But there are two. I don't know, in terms of being. Yeah, it's two for two because there's two shots of two different people's breasts.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: And then there's two penises.
Ryan: Yeah. You do? Yeah. You see Rosamund pike, uh, from the back and a kind of wide. And then, um, you also see her kind of chest area. And then obviously the girlfriend, um, who's there. Who that actress. Yeah. Effectively is already. I think she retired from acting.
Laura: Really?
Ryan: Yeah, I think she doesn't act anymore. Yeah. I don't know. I think other things aside, I think, uh, she was getting pestered, probably. I think she wasn't having a very good time in the industry, so she gave it up.
Laura: So let's do something we haven't done before. And I'm going to go one, two, three. And we're going to say what our film rating is.
Ryan: Okay, good.
Laura: But it'll be after three, so I'll say, one, two, three, and then we'll say it.
Ryan: Okay.
Laura: Ready? 1234 and a half.
Ryan: No. What, uh. What were you going to say?
Laura: Five.
Ryan: Yeah. Five is five stars. I'm joking.
Laura: It's funny because I go 1235. That was stupid. I won't do that again. Five stars.
Ryan: Let's try it again. 1234 and a half.
Laura: Five.
Ryan: Right? Yeah.
Laura: No, we go 32155.
Ryan: I don't like it. Yeah, it's really confusing. Um.
Laura: I'm really sorry, because it's numbers.
Ryan: It is numbers. Yeah.
Laura: Five.
Ryan: ABC.
Laura: Five. We can never make this work.
Ryan: No, it's never going to work. And plus, also, we don't tend to.
Laura: Agree that often we don't. So we're in the docking station here together.
Ryan: That's good. I mean, I'd rather it was with my wife.
Laura: True.
Ryan: Yeah. Than, like, a guest, like, a weirdo.
Laura: Maybe one of these days we'll get lucky.
Ryan: This truffle becomes a thruffle. I don't want that. No, there's enough members in this family.
Laura: Um, so everyone obviously needs to watch this movie. We didn't really go through it too much, but it's freaking great.
Ryan: Yeah. I think people compare. Well, I don't think they compare gone girl to. I think it's like, the girl in the window or something, that Emily Blunt movie. But that movie came out after Gone Girl, and I think people cite, like, similarities to it. But fuck that movie. Just go watch Gone Girl instead. It's a far more interesting piece.
Laura: Yeah, it's wonderful. And, uh, we've got a Fincher coming out. If you're listening to this, on the day that is released, you maybe already watched the killer on Netflix, which means we have to get Netflix again. Netflix is. Maybe I shouldn't. I don't know. I don't love Netflix.
Ryan: No.
Laura: Do not love Netflix.
Ryan: It's our least favored, uh, streaming platform.
Laura: You know what my favorite streaming platform is? To be. To be is free. That shit is free. And it still has all the things I want on there, which is annoying.
Ryan: It's unlikely you're going to see the killer on Tubi, though, to be fair.
Laura: Eventually, Tubi gets everything. Tubi is a Wild west. You'll get anything you want on Tubi.
Ryan: Well, here's the thing. As long as Netflix, um, does Netflix do, uh, like, Blu ray and 4K, like, releases for their films? Oh, see, that's a question. See, that's an interesting thing. So I don't know. Is there a version of Mank out there that you can buy. Not that I probably want to own Mank, other than I would want to be a completionist.
Laura: Because I don't love Gary.
Ryan: I don't like Mank as much as some folk do.
Laura: Um, I love Gary Oldman more than most people.
Ryan: I'd maybe have to look that up because that's interesting.
Laura: Yeah. I don't know if they're doing physical releases because I know that is getting more difficult these days. I really wanted a copy of Barbarian.
Ryan: Yeah, that's a real issue for me, is that you can only get a copy of that, but it's a fucking bootleg. And I don't like that.
Laura: No.
Ryan: I don't like the fact that either the filmmakers decided they didn't want it, or the district distribution company is not going to say no to putting a film out on physical media if it's going to make money. And that film would make some serious fucking bank on Bluray, I think. Because it's one of the best nerds out there. It's one of the best horror films of the last ten years. It's a great film. It's incredibly good. So good.
Laura: Proud of Zach Kreger.
Ryan: Yeah, it's a really good film. I just wished, uh, it had a Blu ray release.
Laura: I would have bought that in a second. I mean, we spend a shit ton of money on movies.
Ryan: I mean, if they release stuff like infinity pool and stuff on physical media, and that film's mediocre at best. I don't know why Barbarian wasn't able to get a release.
Laura: You're not wrong.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: Anyway, well, that wraps this up and enjoy. New, fresh Fincher. I love a fresh Fincher.
Ryan: Yeah. I was looking forward to something that was kind of more up his know. Um. Yeah, I don't want to shit on Mank, but Mank wasn't really my cup of tea. It was written by his late father. It was an interesting concept.
Laura: I do get annoyed by old Hollywood movies. I don't find them very interesting.
Ryan: I think it was an interesting story about the guy who wrote Citizen Cain.
Laura: For sure. Yeah, Gary's in it.
Ryan: He's amazing in it.
Laura: Of course he's amazing in it. Gary's amazing in everything.
Ryan: I'm not seeing Mank on Blu ray here in Amazon. I'm not seeing it at all.
Laura: I just saw that come to Daddy was on Blu ray, um, which I thought was interesting, so I might buy that at some point. Anyway, I've been looking up a lot of movies we need to stop buying so many movies.
Ryan: Yeah, we do. I can't see manka on Amazon for buying. It's not there. It doesn't exist. So maybe that's.
Laura: Maybe one of these days we'll get Ken Russell's the Devils on a proper release. I'm just going to start shitting on.
Ryan: The things I want to. Yeah. I think now that we're starting to buy films from Australia, because they're not getting a proper release either in Europe, um, or in the US. You, uh, know that we've got problems. I think.
Laura: I can't wait for my four K of Super Mario Brothers. Hooray. We have to shut this off.
Ryan: We do. It's also the old one, the one with Bob Hoskins. And who was. They were drunk the entire time.
Laura: Hell, yeah. I can't wait to dig into that shit. Um, coming to you from the bar.
Ryan: How Meta.
Laura: How Meta. I've been Laura.
Ryan: I've been Ryan.
Laura: Happy Fifth anniversary. Let's do a gone girl.
Ryan: I love this episode. I love covering Fincher movies. He's my boy. I fucking love David Fincher. He's a no no. Love fucking David Fincher. He just. He doesn't give a fuck either. I love to. Yeah. He's someone to idolize.
Laura: He's a treasure.
Ryan: He is.