Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
In 2023, four men walked into the blank check offices to record a podcast. They had survived a three-hour and 28-minute record on Fight Club. This episode is dedicated to them.
So, is this a tagline? No, this is the title card that opens the film. Okay, okay. You didn't want to do the tagline I found? I can do that as well.
I think it sucks. Yeah, go ahead. Their podcast was just the beginning.
Indeed.
Their escape was just the beginning.
But how about this tagline? Every loss is another fight. So every loss is another podcast. Every podcast is another fight. Yeah, I mean, that's sort of true. That's one battle after another, if you know what I'm saying. That's the tagline for the film The Way Back. Oh, sure. With Ben Affleck.
I was going to make.
Okay, so what was your.
I was going to say it's really weird that Peter Weir came out of retirement to make this high school basketball movie.
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Chapter 2: How does the tagline relate to the film The Way Back?
And he's like, sure, it's a guy, I don't know, he's got to learn a lesson or something. Where's my money? Yeah. You know, like, we'll cast a really famous guy in the role.
David, you're forgetting something. Tell me. A, Rooster is like the biggest hit show HBO Max has had in like five years.
It is not.
They have claimed as much.
They had the Night of the Seven Kingdoms or whatever.
They've said it is their biggest premiere. Sure, fine.
In years. Biggest premiere starring Steve Carell set in a university or whatever Rooster is.
The title named after Fowl.
Yeah. You're right. This is our biggest chicken-related, poultry-related drama. Way, way back.
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Chapter 3: What are the key themes in Peter Weir's filmography?
We cannot let it slide into oblivion. I need to correct the record on the way way back. Okay.
Fox Searchlight purchased it for $10 million at Sundance, which was a lot. Like that was a big deal. Yep. But it made $21.5 million in North America.
Domestically? Domestic.
And an additional five world. It doubled the investment. That's a lot more than the way back made. Yeah. They snuck it. I guess because they had an extra way. So that's.
But I mean, like, do we agree that if we're ranking way back.
Yeah.
Affleck, I would put one. And Wei Wei is a solid third. Or are we putting Peter Weir in third? I would not. I like the Wei Wei. Fair enough. Now, if you were wanking. If you're wanking. What's your order? These are three films that are not really going for eroticism.
If you had to Wei Wei or watch Richard E. Grant's Wawa.
Which would you prefer, Wei Wei or Wawa? Look, Wei Wei is Teemu Adventureland, but I like Adventureland so much, I'll settle for off-brand Adventureland. I struggled with this movie a bit. I think it is very well made. I'm not like...
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Chapter 4: What happened to the film rights for Shantaram?
Yes. This is right after Master and Commander.
Yes, that I feel like that was a, you know, 2003 novel by Gibson. I feel like that was also a project that got passed around a lot. He rewrote it with D.B. Weiss. Okay. Nothing ever came of it. Um, he said, I couldn't get the script right and pulled back out of it. I don't know. Fair enough.
The major one, of course, as we already mentioned, is that in October 2004, Warner Brothers purchases the film rights to the novel Shantaram for $2 million at the urging of Johnny Depp. It's a 1,000-page book. He wanted to beat out Russell Crowe, who was also really into that book. And now, I don't know what Depp saw in a role like this.
An Australian heroin addict convicted of robbery escapes from a prison and flees to India and reinvents himself as a doctor in Bombay and gets involved in counterfeiting and smuggling and gun running, which leads him to Afghanistan, where he and a mob boss battle the Russians. That is what the book is about.
I will say, as a Weir fan at the time, And a Depp fan at the time, really.
Yeah, for sure.
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Chapter 5: How does Peter Weir's approach to filmmaking change over time?
A height of Depp. I was truly like, let's fucking go. I was going to say. This sounds so good.
We're going to shoot all over the world. It's going to be hard as hell. It's going to be like 100 million plus budget for like an adult tent pole. Right. And this is Johnny Depp is so at the peak of his powers right now that this isn't like, fuck, Disney's agreeing to option Shantaram in order to make Jack Sparrow happy. This is Warner Brothers, a company he doesn't really do movies with.
Everyone is just starts committing some crimes.
Sure.
Sure.
Both real and on screen.
Everyone's like, truly anything Depp wants to do, we will make and make at his requested budget level with whatever creative team he wants.
Yeah, he wants to crack open the window. Yeah.
The secret window. I mean, it would be funny if in 2004 Depp had pitched The Crimes of Grindelwald and they'd be like, what? And he's like, don't worry about it.
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Chapter 6: What challenges did the cast face during the filming of The Way Back?
But this sounded great. Sure. I mean, it sounds crazy. I'm not encyclopedic in the unmade projects of Weir, but this to me, it was always kind of like the great unmade one. Because he was really at peak of his power, even though he's probably in his 60s by now. Yeah, he'd be in his early 60s, I guess. After Truman and Master and Commander, it was like, man, this guy, he's still the best.
Mosquito Coast at this point is 20 years ago, and he's still got this power over movie stars and environments.
Eric Roth is brought in for a rewrite, so obviously this is being taken very seriously. That's a heavyweight screenwriter. In 2006, Weir does enter the project, but then apparently he and Johnny Depp were unable to get on the same page. And he decided the pairing wasn't meant to be.
The page was, how many bottles of wine should we drink an hour?
We are says I was involved for a period. I went to India. I talked to Johnny about it. It's his film. I just wasn't, you know, it wasn't the right combination.
That's him being very diplomatic. Correct. But I think it's going back to what we're saying, that it used to be like these guys would go to him with their passion projects and say, I want you to get something out of me that I don't know how to get out of myself. And now it's like people like Depp and Crowe trying to call the shots and be like, no, you work for me.
I think we're also at that point is a little paralyzed by having made a couple like really heavyweight movies and just being like, well, if I want it to be really special, I want it to really speak, you know, like he's not just like, well, let me make a movie because like it's good to make a movie.
Best director nominated for Master and Commander and for Truman Show. And for Truman Show. So there's two in a row.
And for Dead Poets and Witness. Does he have four? It's four total, I believe. Yes, those are the four, I think.
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Chapter 7: What rumors about the score of The Way Back are being corrected?
This is why I'm trying to correct the scoreless rumor.
Even All Is Lost, which is not your favorite movie, please finish your thought.
And it's so stripped down and obviously like mostly wordless and whatever has that kind of like, okay, here's this one problem. He's got to solve this where I feel it stacking up. And I think this movie, I rewatched Day After Tomorrow recently. So did I.
Chapter 8: What themes are explored in the discussion of disaster movies?
a movie that fucking rules that David's wrong about. Not a movie I like. But that is a movie where I'm always fascinated by its Hollywood junkiness, where it's like, we can keep escalating the type of natural disasters that happen, and then you feel two-thirds into the movie, them go, fuck, there is no way to resolve this film. Right. They can't undo the weather. No.
And there's nothing for them to conquer. There is no way for them to score a win. Randy Quaid can't fly a plane into this alien spaceship. And then they're like, I guess they have to fight wolves. Yeah. I guess like Dennis Quaid has to come to him. I always forget how late in the movie Dennis Quaid even starts his journey. It's over an hour before he's like, fuck it, I'm walking.
I'm going to do my own long walk. And then that's pretty expedited. And I feel this movie being like, Peter, we're pitching this to studios. Studios being like, cool. So can every 15 minutes something insane happen? The guys have to try to kill each other. there have to be, like, big kind of, like, conflicts that they can, like, score wins over.
And he's like, no, that's not the kind of movie I'm making.
And he has, like... He's saying he's Costanza-ing it. Yes, and then he's overcorrected... No, no, nothing happens.
...so far into the, well, if I'm not making it with a studio, then I'm making it exactly the way I want, and I'm not going for any Hollywood bullshit artifice. And I'm like, I could use, like, 5% to 10% more kind of, like, not wins...
I mean, what you're describing is the way Mosquito Coast is structured.
Yes.
Which is like a series of builds and activities and ice transports and little things that arise and the sort of endless obstacles that he's facing.
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