Gooday, Pete Hall, are you here?

Welcome to You ain't seen nothing yet?

The Movie Podcast where our chat to a movie lover about a classic or be loved film they haven't quite got around to watching until now.

And today's guest National icon Tim Minchin, all below.

I want to stay here with you.

Get the jobble.

My hate snake sucked my hail.

It couldn't happening right now.

You ain't seen nothing yet.

I mean, the thing about my guest today is where do your bloody start?

This is?

It is Tim Minchin.

He's a national icon, national treasure.

Beyond this being a household name, I think he Yeah, he truly is a national treasure.

He is just one of the sharpest satirists Australia has produced.

He I don't like he used the word genius loosely, but I think Tim fits that bill.

He started up doing comedy and in stages around Melbourne and then instead of traveling more abroad to the Edinburgh and the UK and has just built and built and built until he's become this, this juggernaut he has.

Uh was responsible for Matilda and the Musical and Groundhog Day.

Both were just utterly brilliant I've had the opportunity to interview Tim on the project and and you know, kind of hang with him.

When I hosted the Melbourne International Comedy Festival GARLA, They'd like to have a musical spot and I'm not musical.

That may shock you.

I suspect it doesn't.

So they kind of had Tim have a song and I come in this played around with it as on stage, not musically, playing around with it.

And yeah, and he's just he's a lovely bloke.

He's a lovely bloke.

He's a smart bloke.

He's a funny bloke.

He's also on tour at the moment almost it just comes out a national tour.

Go see any change your chance, see Tim Lynch and live.

Take that opportunity.

He is absolutely brilliant live and you both this funny but also musically just just a genius.

Like I said, there are too many superlatives.

I'm bloody stokes to be hanging with Tim inchin today.

Gooday, I'm Tim Minchin.

And three of my favorite films are Shawn of the Dead.

So what's the plane fashion in the head that seems to work out four lions the way?

The sort of face training you is very simple.

You seem called can I cook mane and everything everywhere all at once sucked into a babe.

But up until this week I had never seen bullet.

What the hell is going on here?

A high speaker suit, two met are killed, an officer in the hospital, a witness almost murdered.

Now I want to know what's happening, and I want to know.

Now, let's hear it's straight.

Here's a record.

How a man like Chalmers could be a great help to the department.

He could speak for us where it counts, he could fight for us in the legislature.

Now you have got to turn over his witness.

Where's Ross.

Chello?

That's an order.

He's dead, dead, he died.

Let us know after you moved him before I've got him downstairs under a John Doe.

Now you are sick smuggling a dead man out of a hospital, and now two men killed who may have had nothing to do with it.

The man I was chasing killed Ross.

How are you at all?

Did you hear?

Yes?

He tried to nail me with a shotgun and Winchester pump.

Yes.

The nineteen sixties Captain of Cool Steve McQueen, fresh of his biggest hit in the Thomas Crown Affair, takes to the streets of San Francisco in his Turtlenecks and tweet Jackets.

In nineteen sixty eight, Bullet the Queen plays a titular Frank Bullet, a nonconformist cop who has assigned a case to keep a star witness against the mob safe.

But then that witness is murdered or is he.

Bullet is running against the clock to find out who is who and where the bloody hell are they?

Directed by p D.

HS Base In the book Mute Witness by Robert L.

Pike, Bullet is famed for his epic car chase, which helped redefine what an American action movie could be.

Tim mention, have you ever had to protect a star mob witness?

And if so, were you successful?

Weirdly, No, that surprises me.

It's never.

It's never come up.

I mean, I'd be happy to help, but for some reason, when people think who could we get to protect a star witness in a nineteen sixties mob case, they don't think.

Of me, And then it's a show I can I can do it?

You could get a chance.

Well, part I think part of the assignment would be keep keeping the witness entertained, because often it's what leads him into trouble.

They get bored through in a hotel room, they try to escape, they get they get taken where you could be in there, you can be performing writing songs with them.

I think it's it's I think you've been overlooked.

You're typecasting me, Pete.

I could I could be a hard ass and just like tell them to shut up and sit down and like wave a gun around as well.

Would you?

Would you prefer to be the good coup or the bad copies?

What's in you?

Do you think?

I think I can I do good cup.

I can be pretty manipulative.

Yeah, but I wouldn't I?

Yeah?

I think you want to alternate, wouldn't you?

Yeah, it's my turn.

To be bad cop today.

Come on, Kevin, you were a bad cop last week.

Kevin's always hogging the stage.

You mentioned it is great to have you finally organized this.

You are one of the busiest men in show business, and to.

Be fair, I think you were too busy for quite a long time.

Can you do my podcast?

I'm like, yeah, sure, when you're like busy, Actually.

Oh, I've been busted.

I've been busted.

I always try to say to guess who are but you are?

You are.

We're both busy, and we're both busy and important, man, very important.

And it's amazing that it's finally happened.

I think you just happened to mention it over at lunch in your hollywoods or your LA's with the Damon Herriman former guests who did Chinatown with me, so the graduate with me, and I left on that opportunity to kind of chase you down nice.

So it's good to be here.

What did you before?

I don't discuss too much about bullet, We will certainly get to that.

What do you know of bullet?

If anything?

I don't think I knew anything.

I guess I knew it was what like mid century cool noir?

I guess mid century but sixties I would have said sixties, seventies noir or like, I don't know, I just had I think I just had the image of maybe a kind of theme song that was a bit groovy, you know, like like what's his name?

McQueen?

No, like that movie Sharp not Sharp anyway, that's uh.

But yeah, so you that was the era where these kind of all those kind of things that exploited their augmented fifths.

It all happened in that era.

Fantastic you are.

You were joining us from yours, your studio, your office is a piano to your right.

There's obviously one to your left as well my left.

There's another one over there.

What what what the differences this is?

Yeah, obviously I know there's differences in pianos, but what what's your setup?

Why do you have three pianos or four PMO?

Oh, no real reason.

I just I want to be a multi instrumentalist, but I can only really play one, so I just have multi.

Versions of it.

I've got an upright acoustic up right on my left.

This is just like a Yamaha keyboard that I mostly used as a MIDI control court keyboard.

So when I'm composing, that's what I'm playing.

That's feeding it into this laptop that we're speaking on.

Uh.

And then that one over there is a Nord and I kind of I don't know, it's just got different sounds.

I don't know.

Sometimes go sit over there and just practice parts or something.

Mostly they're sort of a stored.

Here beautiful And how much did before we get into your your three three of your favorite films, and there's something to be discussed in the wording.

There is very important is when you were developing, upriting.

Congratulations on that, right it was.

That was extraordinary and of course gave the world You've discovered a talent in Millie and cock or Cocky's gone on to do everything.

It has to be al Cocks.

She'll get very cross with guys, so I never let it pass.

It should come after me.

And she's amazing.

She's freaking amazing.

Like I didn't mind the Superman film.

I didn't quite see why everyone loved it so much, But that three minutes she's on screen, I'm just like supergols comment very easy.

Did you know that?

I sume you probably used you as cast possibly, but did you expect that to be at the end of Superman.

I knew she was cast and had talked to her about it.

I had actually caught up with her in London the week before it came out, and I knew that she had a cameo a a hint.

But what was great that I didn't understand about it is actually she was set up all the way through the movie with this dog that he insisted he's fostering, and so so it wasn't just like, oh, in the background, that's going to be, which they sometimes do they set up future movies with an Easter egg.

But she was actually fundamental to the plot.

She was just absent, and that dog represented this anyway.

I just thought it was that was the best thing in the movie, was merely crashing in at the end off her face, having been on a planet where she can get drunk.

I mean, it's just brilliant, absolutely.

I mean I did with the film more than I thought I was going to, and that was a lovely way to finish it and something to look forward to as well.

Before we and again before we move on.

There's so many things I can ask you about.

But congratulations.

I think I've spoken to you.

I think I sent you a message on about groundhog Day.

I saw it.

It was just extraordinary, and I spoke to you.

We had an interview on stage when you the Matilda and you you kind of was sussing me out about my thoughts on groundhog Day, and like you know, almost like almost you're realizing the pressure of a comedian taking on groundhog Day.

It is considered one of the perfect movies, comedian movies, and I just thought it was extraordinary.

I thought it added on to the movie, you know, and the guy who who played it in Melbourne.

Sorry, I do apologize.

I'm sure, Andy car he was extraordinary because it is you are sitting, when you're seeing a production based on a movie that you love, it's impossible not to spend those first few that's going, it's not Bill Murray, even though it was completely aware it was not Bill Murray going to be performing.

Yeah, I did the same School of Rock.

I spec to Jane Kennedy about that, you are going it's not Jack Black, it's not Jack Back.

Okay, but he was extraordinary and I thought as as the writer, and it was fuller than the movie in a way.

There was more to it which I loved.

Well, you just have to.

I think I love School of Rock actually as a musical.

And they made the choice to really imbue their what's his name the character's name, Sally, was that Jewey Finn.

Dewey, Yeah, Jewey Jewey.

They really imbue him with Jack Black energy and cast someone who's shaped a bit like him and has the physicality of him.

And of course they really honored the film.

We didn't base the musical on the film.

We based the musical on the screenplay.

And I know that sounds like a sort of pedantic differentiation, but it's hugely important to me because I like the film.

I even loved the film.

But you can't the film is Bill Murray and it's his and it's a series of shots and it's an attitude, and none of that is available to you, and the idea of casting someone who felt like Bill Murray would just be catastrophic because that locks you into in a way, you're just shooting yourself in the foot, because you shouldn't try to.

Do Bill Murray if you can't get Bill Murray.

And I just I never believed that the only good version of that incredible concept was the film.

I believe there was another version of that screenplay, another version of that story that could be told.

So we were never chasing the film.

There are moments, you know, but you know, he doesn't step in a puddle, and even ned Ryas and having a hat like the guy in the movie I fought against.

I didn't mind it in the end, but I'm just like, don't chase the movie.

And so of course One of the first questions that came up was, surely it's going to be I Got You Babe on the alarm clock, And I was like, are you fucking kidding me?

I will write the song that he wakes up to, and that will be imbued in the DNA of the town.

So he wakes up to who is that emerging from his barrow?

Who can see today?

What?

We won't see you until Tomarro Shaman of the Shadows springer up the spring.

It's like the groundhog Day song that the town sing, and it's fucking annoying, and I reckon for people watching the musical, they hear it once and they go, oh, it's not I Got You Babe, and they never think about I Got you Baby again.

So you've got to just go it is not Bill Murray, it is not I Got You Babe.

It is a different telling of the same concept.

And I think as long as you're really belligerent about that, which, as you can tell.

From the tone of my voice, I am.

You said it out on its own terms, and then you have available to you.

You've cracked open, you've said to the audience it's not the movie, and then you have available to you whole existential explorations where you can use songs to plumb, to dive into the themes in a way that the movie doesn't have time to do.

And and yeah, and hopefully that becomes not better than, but just completely different from the film.

Version of the story.

This is the musical theater version of the story, with a whole lot of different assets and a whole lot of stuff you can't do because you can't do close ups, you know, you can't do jump cuts.

You have to find new positives to offset the negatives.

You know, it's a different form.

It's extraordinary.

Congratulations mate, and if you haven't seen it wherever you are listening to this, if you get a chance, make sure you grab yourself a ticket.

It is just brilliant, autly.

Thank you, Pete.

Let's talk about your three favorite films.

Three of your favorite films, because I you know, I do explain to people you need three fra films.

We only discussing those.

I used to like this going cold with the with the episode and not know what the three fair films were, so I just react in the moment.

But because we're doing this new kind of format, this helps it.

I do know I can prepare some grabs and you came back with a bit of an email.

Now, I, uh, well, you want to explain, Do you want to explain your worldview of picking three favorites?

Well, it's I mean I've done I've done Desert Island discs.

In we were both follow their arms.

Yeah, it almost killed me because because you're not.

Firstly, I just don't have favorite things.

It's just not how my brain works in the same way.

Like like that.

You and I are kind of I was going to say we're like opposite type comedians, but actually that's not right.

You You, you.

And I have a lot in common because you really like poking around with ideas.

But a lot of stand up comedians are storytellers, like they tell anecdotes and about their life.

Of course they're twisted to be funnier.

But I don't.

You'll never hear me telling an anecdote on stage or in life.

I just don't storify my life like that.

And similarly, I don't know what my favorite things are.

It's like my brain just explodes when you say what's your favorite?

What are your favorite ten songs?

I mean, how can you choose your favorite ten songs.

I couldn't choose my favorite ten jazz songs between nineteen and fifty and nineteen and sixty, Like, I mean, I don't even know my I can't think of a song.

When you asked me that, I can't think of a single song.

And when you said, what are your favorite movies?

I literally couldn't think of a movie.

I wrote, I'm like, movie, what's a movie?

Like my whole brain just implodes, And so I wrote this email.

It's like, I can't.

I can't.

The least my least favorite thing in the world is being asked my favorites.

That's I can tell you my least favorite thing, and that is being asked my favorites.

So I sent you a list of films that I said, here's just eight films that have that that once I calmed down, I sort of thought of I had to go to a list of good films, you know, and I thought it could be these, And you came back and said, well, let's discuss these three.

And I was just so happy to have the decision taken off me.

What's interesting is you've chosen three comedies and I would not normally I'm not a great consumer of comedy films.

It certainly I would more be inclined to watch dramas and stuff.

But I actually I love that you chose these three films because they having reflected on them in the last Day, they really speak to stuff that's in groundhog Day.

And it's interesting that I chose these films among on my list because they really are sort of existential.

Well that's that.

Let's start with Sean of the Dead and let's all listen to a little piece of that.

So what's the planet?

Right?

We take peace?

Can't?

We drive over to moms.

We go in, take care of Philip.

I'm so sorry, Philip.

Then we grab mom, We go over to Lizzi's place, pull up, have a cup of tea, and wait for all this to blow over.

Why I've got a girl Lizzi's because we do.

She don't you.

I have to know if she's all right?

Why?

Because I love her.

I'm not staying there.

Why not if we hold up?

I want to be somewhere familiar.

I want to know where the exits are, and I want to be allowed to smoke.

Okay, take peas, car, go around, mums, go in, deal with Philip.

Sorry, Philip, grab mum, go to Lizz's, pick her up, bring her back here, have a cup of tea and wait for all this to blow over.

Perfect.

No, no, no, no, no.

Wait, we can't bring him back here?

Why not?

It's not exactly safe, is it?

Yeah?

With the state of it?

Where's safe?

Where's familiar?

Where can I smoke?

Anyone?

Take car?

Go to mums kill Phil?

Sorry, grab lez, go to the Winchester, have a nice cold paint and wait for all this to blow over.

A's that for a slice of fried gold?

Here?

Boy?

This was such a breath of fresh air when it was released, and what a perfect you know what it's like when you find your people, like we all have done it in comedy, where you find your crew and then you can find you your crew within that that community and the Simon peg Nick frost egger Wright combination, which I think they met in space, they might have been met before then.

And then this is the feature film debut of I think the first of the three Corneto trilogy trilogy.

But what a perfect combination of folk.

Yeah, and they must have just for years felt like they were just given the keys, you know, they and I don't know what the combo was.

I mean, I know Edgar a bit.

I guess I know Nick to say hi to, and I've talked to Simon about things, and so I don't I don't really know them and that sounds very name dropping, but you do, especially in England, as you know in Australia it's a small industry and and they're just like it was just felt like joy.

But what I.

Reflect on now, because I've watched it a couple of times recently, because I had a thought about it, as you can imagine, and the editorial style that I'm sure Edgar can point to all his influences, but that those jump cuts in the way they travel through time, and that that section you just played, I just I hadn't seen it quite like that, and he still does it, and all through those films, it was just joyous use of the form, just the close up cuts through things, the way he traveled the character across the bridge to a you know, like he just I just loved it.

It was so addictive.

And I've gone back and thought, does does this stand up this style or does it just feel like it, you know, like like Bullet feels so.

Of its time.

But I just reckon it stands up.

I mean it's just so dynamic.

Yeah, I haven't watched it for a little while, but watching even that lip was because you remember, you do remember everything you just said, the fast takes and the punchings and all of that.

But even this, that little pause is the editing in it, not just the you of the shots, but this is the space that's on a bit of space they give for that final thought of the of the final scenario is brilliant.

Yeah, And it feels to me like Edgar's, like the best filmmakers is editing.

I mean, I imagine his storyboards, the ship out of it like he's editing to music.

It feels so musical, doesn't it Like so rhythmic, And I suspect he when he's shooting, he's hearing it and he probably already knows in that Tarantino way, what song's going to go over, what scene shooting for that?

Yes, and what an amazing I mean, it is a you have to be, you know, reasonably privileged to you know, in the privileged position to be able to come and go this is this, you know, because he's expensive that the music, So yeah, ruse a Tarantinas can do it.

But they have been doing it for a long time, and what a beautiful way to it just makes sense.

Like in Australia made a film and we were just you know, you're putting you this finding music in the edit really and you're kind of hoping you can it all fits to get a nice enough yeah.

Partly because you know you're not gonna have the budget to want have the songs you want.

But Tarantino was digging up songs that weren't expensive and making them famous again.

You know that.

Actually, bas Lemon's man, gorgeous guy who was his music suit producer.

Was like that as well.

He just finds songs that weren't really that expensive.

Because no one had heard of the want of Dies, You and Me song until Romeo and Juliet made it a massive, massive hit.

You know, yeah, one of the and when we go things that seam unlessarly a massive zombie kind of you know, horror man.

But they're clever enough to know that what we know.

You know that there's there's enough touchstones that people have of that genre to make all the jokes work.

You're not said guessing, but I think it also works.

He doesn't, you know, if you are a horror fan.

I'm sure there are jokes in there that maybe you know and refree is yeah, but I mean.

That, Look, people have written PhDs on Seawn of the Dead and I don't know anything about zombie films and I and I haven't written a PhD on Shoran of the Dead.

But the big metaphor that zombies always, you know, presumably zombie and horror films are always metaphors about the kind of psychopathic violence that is within us and how you know, I don't know, societies fall to group think or whatever the big metaphors are.

And Sean of the Dead, those those early scenes where he walks, you know, this is a hapless guy with no direction and his zombieing his way through life, and he walks down the street to the local corner shop, and the whole you see all these people who are basically zombieing through life in North London, right near where I lived.

Those shots by the way, all Crouch End, where I live for eight years.

Where my children were born.

And so they set up a world where everyone is a zombie and then the disease comes along and he doesn't notice that the great joyous metaphorical mic drop of this film is the second day, and you know, he doesn't notice on the background, in the background, the news is on and there's all these dead bodies, and he doesn't notice that the person who's.

Usually begging is now going ah.

And he doesn't notice that all the people around him are actual zombies now because they're almost indistinguishable from the zombies.

They were the day before.

And that sets you up.

To say, what fucking matters, you know, in this zombie life where we're all directionlessly stumbling through our bullshit lives, doing the same things over and over again, like we are dead inside?

Where is life?

Where is the life inside?

Of course, the answer is love, just like at the end of one of the other films We're going to talk, The answer is always love.

It's always community and matship and kindness.

And it's such a fucking boring theme, but it's the theme of groundhog Day.

What is the point if you're trapped in Groundhog Day is he might as well be a zombie.

It might as well be a zombie film.

It's just another sci fi mechanism by which you can say where is meaning?

If you're stuck in a trap where nothing you do has any impact.

If you kill someone, there back to life the next day.

If you you know, you kill your can't even kill yourself.

It's basically metaphor sort of depression, which is short of the dead as well.

Where is meaning?

And in Groundhog Day, meaning is in being present.

To your blessings, you know, and love and kindness and putting love out into the world regardless of whether or not you get anything back, and all those things.

And I didn't really notice until now that, of course, these are the movies I'm attracted to because it's kind of it's the theme of upright, It's the theme of everything every fucking podcast I talk about.

And you know, again, well this is twenty five years ago that you know, they're exploring this theme of walking through and nobody's really connecting with each other.

And now you add social media, you add noise canceling headphones.

So that I was litting on a plane is on the way to Canberra and was watching, you know, the hostess do her safety demonstration with not a single person looking up and she's doing something that could potentially save your life, and there's not a single person who is looking up at her.

And I actually thought this would be a great Sabrina Carpenter or a Taylor Swift music video, you know, and the plane crashing, nobody's still, you know, paying attention.

It's a great idea.

I mean, if if it was Taylor Swift doing the demonstration, no one will notice, you know.

But it's kind of funny on both sides that because yes, everyone's in there their bubbles and don't care because they're watching their screens so they're own their noise canceling headphone.

But also the hostess or the person doing the demonstration is going through the motions sort of pointlessly because I mean it's just statistically redundant, and she's zombieing or he's zombiing and I don't know it is.

And you're right, it has become so much worse.

The disconnect, the not caring about one another has become a lot worse, and all the themes of Shawn of the Dead still resonating.

And of course then there's a pandemic, so.

We've also been through a shann of the Dead style pandemic, because it's a pandemic that makes the zombies in Shawn of the Dead.

It's a disease or it just.

Passed around, and the isolation that caused us, and the suspicion for one another, and the lack of trust in information.

And I mean it's Sean of the Dead twenty twenty seven would be a really interesting film.

Yeah, I mean it's poignant.

Right.

Is there anything out of the pandemic?

We all had these moments of realization and you know, predictions of how life will change.

Is there anything that you have taken genuinely out of it?

I actually did.

I did.

I'm a celebrity in the South Africa jung of for twenty six nights and not having my phone on me?

Was this single the single best thing about the whole experience, you know, I just you could feel what it had done.

You know, I was sleeping better.

I was, and of course, you know I did.

I monitored for a little while and then I'm kind of back to you know, But are there any things that you kind of do in practice to kind of you to connect.

I don't know how much the pandemic influence I mean, it will be immeasurable in the literal sense of the word.

It will be very hard to measure how the pandemic influenced me directly.

I think the pandemic.

Was one of the sort of bits of tinder or explosive on the fire of social media that was already burning.

And the fire is a fire that a fire of psychopathy, dehumanizing, mistrust, misinformation, anxiety, information overloadd lack of agency over what information you're gathering, you know, And it exploded it because people went to their screens in the absence of capacity to interact with humans, and kind of two things happen.

One we got stuck there a bit we got we got hyper addicted.

We probably probably would have happened anyway, but it accelerated the society wide addiction to what is basically bad for your health to might as well be smoking or something.

But it also, what was I going to say, It accelerated the addiction but also heightened the stakes and gave us lots of fodder for far feeling like we weren't all on the same side.

So but all that influenced my views on social media, which are now quite prosthetize you because I've got off and I and I like, like like you have noticed how good it is for me.

I won't get back on, though, and I thoroughly recommend it.

Yeah, so I don't I don't know whether it was.

I think turning fifty having teenagers watching them have to grapple with this stuff.

But but mostly for me is watching the toxicity of the conflict and realizing I couldn't be a part of it because it blew my brain too much.

And also a much bigger problem, which is that it makes us feel like the whole world is always our problem at the cost of us looking after one another in our own communities.

So that's something I can talk about for an hour.

But I went, well, I mean, yeah, the way I look at it online is everybody wants to know how you vote or what you're you know, all these all these things, and then if you go to a barbecue, you're not walking around asking people who you vote for before you before you have a discussion with them, and then before you realize, yes, you like these people.

Yeah, you know.

Well, at its worst, in in in failed societies, in Nazi Germany, of fascist Italy or communist Russia or mccarthyre United States, you were expected to perform your allegiance.

In times of war, you're meant to wear a literal stripe to say whose side you're on.

In productive, liberal peacetime societies, we don't, and nor should we.

And that's how that's how peace works.

Peace works when you're letting people have their ideas and not policing them.

That's only the only way you can have a multicultural liberal democracy is to just go I can't control what other people think, and nor should I anymore than they should control what I think.

You know, I shouldn't force someone to perform a particular opinion anymore than they should force me.

And yeah, and social media just makes us forget that.

It's quite an extraordinary I was talking the other day about the two panes of glass.

When you're driving a car, it's just two panes of glass, and you are suddenly unbelievably more inclined to dehumanize and be rude than you would if you were the similar distance away without the two panes of glass.

Right, if you walked past someone and they kind of cut you off, you go, oh sorry, sorry, sorry sorry.

But if in a car with two panes of glass, with that amount of that amount of barrier between you and the other human, it's almost like we need to smell each other like animals or something.

Once the glasses up.

We've ever seen two dogs either side of glass go each other and then they open the door and they're fine, Like there's something about that in mammals.

We are suddenly awful.

And then you get the two pieces of glass on our phones and add ten thousand miles and an algorithm that promotes outrage and the spoken word which gives you no tonal context, and the fact that it's short form so you can't do a nuance, and you're I mean, how did we ever think it was going to be anything but catastrophic to liberal democracy?

But catastrophic?

It's so true.

I did a routine in my last show about cyclists and how angry people get a cyclist and they go off about cyclist and I said that, I said, I said, I did some research, and what I've learned about cyclists under the likeer and under the little space helmets and the glasses, they're human beings.

They're your neighbors, they're your co workers, they're your cousins.

I said, they might even be a cyclist here tonight, And eventually a found of cyclist and I just had a little short conversation with them.

They're like us, They're like us.

They're like us, and I got to already give them a rand of applause.

And if you see them after the show, go up through the and yeah.

They I mean, you probably won't catch it.

But the of course, cyclists are famously a little community and they look after it each other.

So when they're in a peloton, they're like bump car, you know, come through, like they look out.

They're constantly communicating for safety.

And then these psychopaths in these tanks are like, fuck your cycle instances.

It's crazy.

Let's talk about your next film, which is an extraordinary film wonder I only saw a couple of years ago.

It is four lines as haven't listened to this extraordinary comedy.

Don't listen to your name brow Okay, China gets in there with his right, but what you got to do listen to your heart?

Remember my heart?

So what's your hat says.

It's the wrong way.

You don't do it.

I want to Briencie.

Are we here.

Together, strapped top and it'll be like, well, perfective to cop right now, right, So he should listen to his brain.

He's got to listen to his heart, buddy.

Anyway, this is what just brain.

We're talking about is when we listen to his brain.

Hy, sorry, broket, just do it.

Price got to be right.

That can't be his brain, right, that's his heart by brother?

Okay, this, this has happened.

Something his ship down has confused you.

You swept around your brain in your heart.

So don't listen to what you think is your heart, because that's actually your brain.

It's in disguise as your heart.

Right, and we thought was brain.

That's that's your heart.

That's actually your heart.

My brain is my heart.

You got it, o, kid?

So just.

Wasn't there hot?

Okay?

Yeah, follow your heart.

I think this is one of the most extraordinary comedies I've ever seen in my life.

And considering that, listening to that makes me cry.

Yeah, And because it's it's it's it's so funny, but there is a truth to it.

And this is made by by Christopher Morris.

I think Jesse Armstrong's succession that's something to do it as well.

But it is very it's real like it's and and you know they had listened to all these this, you know, conversations that had been recorded.

You know, I want to be and sometimes she had us actual you know, who would go on and perform terrorist act and whether they were successful or not, they were still having these you know, conversations that were would swing wildly from being you know, intellectually based to kind of just buffoonery really and and it was it was kind of quite scary.

And that's it's got a massive heart, this film.

I like.

I he watched it about two years ago while La Lee, who came on the show, challenged me to watch it because I I hadn't seen it.

I watched it and it's just extraordinary.

How did it come to you?

Well, Chris Morris is someone I admire hugely.

We are represented by the same agent in the UK, so I just it was immediately onto it.

I used to watch him on Brass Eye back in the day.

I mean, he's just smarter than everyone and more ambitious than everyone.

And it's very hard time now to be Chris Morris.

I mean we should just be supporting that man to make whatever he wants forever.

But you know, imagine trying to make this film now.

I mean it was hard enough making it then.

But it's an incredibly complicated film and does an extraordinary tightrope walk between comedy and tragedy, between criticizing and understanding what might drive someone to g had and then it does this and then the humanizing right and humanizing not to say we should forgive someone who wants to blow people up.

I mean, I'm a determinist, so I don't really understand the idea of forgiveness.

But that all there is is understanding what inputs make people like that.

That is the entire solution to the entire world is shifting from blame and righteousness to understanding why is that person like this.

I'm like this because of all the things that made me.

That person's like that because of all the things that made them.

And it does all that, It humanizes these I want to.

Be g haters.

It's these British Muslim want to be g hatters, disenfranchised, disempowered, not knowing what to do with their masculinity, not very well educated.

It gives them agency, it portrays them as human whilst making a quite full on meaningful point that these fuckers are dumb as shit in a way like not not but doesn't judge them.

It's just like these people who we see as like these kind of shadows, cheehadists, you know, these these they're just people who've drawn really terrible conclusions for whatever reason because of the inputs they've been given and the foolishness of these people, and yet it's not really somehow, is not really laughing at them somehow, and it just breaks your heart whilst you're still laughing even at its most tragic points, just that shot and thus shutters it down on the shop.

When finally the moment happens when you're like, he's not going to do it, and and to know to in it completely effectual way, this guy dies and it just cuts to outside the shop and it's just puff of smoke under the under the roller doors, just the the symbolism of the the petty human nothingness of these apparently transcendent acts that are gonna send them to heaven and solve all the geopolitical problems of the world.

And it's just a puff under a garage door.

You know.

It's so profound and and just and.

Leaves more questions.

I mean, it does what art should do, which is make you think, not tell you what to think.

You know, Yeah, and you're right, you have empathy for these for these characters who you know, this come what was maybe two thousand and five.

I'm going to guess it was like very surely it wasn't that long after September eleven.

You know, it was a response.

Yeah, yeah, And and so you know, our brains were not trained to have empathy for people who wanted to do this.

But these characters reason, I mean, is incredible.

I think in it absolutely And and I do remember, you know, to go back to the pandemic when all the cooker camps were kind of like you know, set up, and the sovereign camps, and and I started watching some videos because they would they were just making me laugh at how cook these people were.

But then the more I watched, the more I actually kind of grew to have a sense of empathy for them because it's like they just want to be part of something.

They want to be part I don't agree with them, but they want to be part of something, and I could I started to understand what was in it for them.

You know, it's not something I wanted to be a part of, or I I you know, I disagree with, but I can understand that they found a sense of community in that.

And there was a part of it almost looked like a you know, they were there for a concert or you know.

Without a data it's community and human connection and doing something with your anger and doing something with your powerless, translating your powerlessness into power by surrounding yourself with other powerless people.

And of course, on the other end from those.

People are a sort of you know this word woke, like super righteous online, you know, lecturing everyone and saying that, you know, anyone who doesn't think what I think is a fascist or a bigot or and those people, even if they're right in a way, are just subject to the same thing.

It's just community.

It's shibbalets.

It's wanting to share a language, to waive a flag, to feel like you belong.

And when I say, even if it's for the purpose of this little micro discussion, who is more right or righteous, or politically savvy or educated most importantly educated, is kind of interesting.

But I'm very interested in the fact that the same forces are working like It is worth acknowledging that the forces that are working on those sovereignty people, sovereign citizens people are working on you as well.

If the more online you are, the more they are working on you, and the less critical, the less your critical faculties are dominant, and the more that your desire for tribal belonging is dominant and you're and worse of all, the the.

More you're you substitute.

Signaling your tribal membership, you put that in place of action.

So yeah, I mean it's that's just me getting on my pedestal about that ship.

But but yeah, it is really.

I mean, did you see just to segue to another film, I'm sure you've seen it on one battle after another, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, it's really I don't think it's anywhere near as masterful.

I mean, Paul Thomas Anderson is a master but in terms of like human nature, reflecting human nature, it's not as masterful as for lions that you know, in the first half, you've got this like, you know, these.

Unbelievably sort of.

Antifa types and it's really interesting.

I couldn't quite get the tone of the film because he's definitely kind of mocking them.

They are strong and they are defiant and they're probably on the right side of history, but they're pompous, self serving, sex addicted, performative just sophistry spouting ninnis in a way as well.

And then of course the right the fascists, of.

Full blown cliches of evil fascists.

You know, I couldn't quite work out.

I mean, just as a counterpoint, Four Lions is unbelievably more nuanced and humanizing, but still able to do that kind of criticizing everyone lovingly.

Yes, yes, I absolutely see.

Did I do love one at all?

But I completely and I have noted because port Thomas and Hiss is my favorite filmmaker, and I did note that Magnoli it was also on your list.

Yeah, and.

I struggle with his use of music.

I understand.

I understand that that's part of his genius, but I'm like.

Oh you whoa, what that fuck is going on?

Like, just like some of the score of One Battle after Another is my favorite score I've heard in years, and other of it is just like, why are.

You making that noise?

It doesn't seem to do what I need in this moment.

I felt that with There Will Be Blood Too, I found it almost unwatchable because of the score, really because I saw he was trying to imbue the whole thing with unbearable tension, but for me it was literally unbearable.

Wow.

Yeah, well have you bumped into Johnny Greenwood?

Around London.

I think he's brilliant.

I just I just think it was a bit much for.

Me, Like in the end of where he wants to put the put the music and how much he wants to put on in there.

I don't want to ask.

You know, Christophers obviously you know really tricky territory at a particular time to go you have ventured into tricky territory before Well the pal uh song comes coming from you were there, You were there, I was there on the project.

It was I just can't say that about a cardinal.

Remember Steve Price saying that a man you seem to have missed my point.

Do you ever think Steve Pryce is going to accept your point?

I really like Steve, but it was like, oh no, that's the point.

You must say that about a cardinal, just like you would about anyone.

Yeah.

Absolutely So when you like that night when you you're you know, you're releasing that song or like what are you what are you feeling?

Are you like you know, because most people would see you're doing that and kind of think you're you see yourself as bullet.

They give a fuck about what people think.

I'm just going to do this that needs to be said, But what are you actually feeling when you put something at that end of the world and knowing there's going to be reaction?

Yeah, I don't.

I mean, it's easy in hindsight to sort of feel like it was inevitable, but I didn't know.

I thought it might.

I mean the fact that the project had the Gonads to release, to be the first people to play it live on Channel ten, I mean.

That was amazing, and I went.

Oh, okay, this might because when I wrote it, I thought, I'll just stick it up and people pass it around and I'll get the normal death threats or whatever, and that'll be fine.

You know.

I had done the piece anthem for Palestine, and I had done the Pope song, and I had you know, I I guess I saw myself as an agitator, and I saw myself as someone who says the thing that everyone's thinking.

I mean, I didn't say everything I thought I thought.

I tended to try.

And I'm talking past tense because I'm you know, as you know, I don't really sort of see myself as a comedian anymore.

But I got on a plane to LA that night and just didn't and then landed and everyone's like you're on every single morning breakfast show like and the Catholic Church is suing you know, Nova or something like.

And I just did what I've always done since then, and now I'm permanently off.

I just stopped reading because I cannot my body cannot compute hatred, which is distinct from saying I think I shouldn't.

No one should ever be mean to me.

I mean, that was a pretty I gave him a rough it was.

It was quite a serve, you know.

Of course people were gonna say they hated me and say that I was call me stuff that I didn't recognize in myself.

But I can't.

You don't get some people might, but you don't really get scar tissue.

Inc that's the opposite.

You get raw, you get more raw you get I think, And this is something again back on my pedestal about how we do public shaming and call out culture, is actually people have been subject to pylons.

They get kind of traumatized and it makes them worse, It makes them double down on their opinions and stuff.

But it also it's just it sends people a bit nuts.

And I don't think it I don't think it's very human to be able to build armor against criticism.

I think it's much more human to get more and more sensitive.

So the way I manage that is twofold.

One, I do less that will get me in trouble because I'm tired of it, and the other is I don't read what other people are saying.

Yeah, well, I think it's a good way to be.

I mean, I was here listening to an interview with Bill Burr recently about the festival they did in Arabia, and I was thinking, well, surely you must have expected but he was like again, he was like, no, I didn't expect blowback.

I kind of we went.

We I thought of the punters over there, and I went and I performed for the punters, and you know, and there's there's corporations that you know are over there, and nobody's having a go with there.

But over and again, this is the everyone's with respect.

I think it's fine to have really strong opinions on that, just like everything in the world.

It's fine to have strong opinions on whether or not it's ethical to do a comedy festival in Saudi Arabia, but to kind of pretend that it is inhuman or impossible to not hold the opinion you hold is so silly and childish, Like there's actually a really really interesting moral dilemma there.

You have an erasion that does all these things.

Should it is going to do comedy in Saudi Arabia of like now that Saudi Arabia is a lot more liberal than it used to be, and the Prince old Mate is trying to have good relationships even with Israel, and like all this before October seven, they were very close to kind of trying to normalize relationships between Saudi and Israel.

And you know, there's some stuff women can drive, I think now, and you think, well, this is a perfect place to go in with some comedy, to show even comedy you should be like, maybe you guys should have a bit more music, Like maybe it's a perfect time to go in to support Saudi Arabia in becoming more liberal, or maybe it is condoning their unbelievably oppressive, sexist, whatever behavior.

It's fucking interesting, right, yeah, But what is I think, particularly of our time, because of the mechanism by which we communicate is to pretend that there's no there there, that there's no conversation you're just fucking wrong, because it's just like, surely the only way to have that conversation is to try and unpack the new on of those two positions.

But people just take a side.

Yes, well we argue.

I'm not sure if it's just in Australia, but I think we we argue like it's a sport, you know, yeah, totally win.

Yeah, you pick a team and you need to win that argument.

Yeah, and not not really by having the conversation just by calling people names really, I mean, and the left are as bad as the right, you know, just like you're bash just to you know, like whatever worrying.

If you want to feel good about the world, you have to watch everything everywhere, all at once, which is one of the feel good just the whole thing about that film was a feel good story from the actors involved and the people involved, and the message of the films listened to everything everywhere all at once.

We can we just stop fighting.

It's been a lot of trending.

To one mean, by.

What do you take this yourself?

I know you're fighting because you're scared and confused.

I'm confused to.

Holiday, I don't know what the heck is going on, but somehow it feels like it's all my fault.

We don't say, kind of saying, how do you mean?

I'm seeing her with tension when she'd be young and she young, you jose what the same.

Traits is done?

Heaven.

It's the only thing I do know is that we have to be kind, Please be kind, especially from what we don't know what's going on hand we see the full swilling or your example, soon to someone whose intevital and functionally.

I saw this in the cinema.

No, no, it's in the trailer, so I knew it looked pretty kind of uh, you know, kind of crazy.

But that was the scene, and I was enjoying the whole movie, you know, I think I realized halfway through.

I thought, oh that's that's that's short, that's short round from and but that was a scene where I thought, this is an extraordinary movie, like this is.

You know, you can have your hot dog hands and and all of that, and you and you travel through different dimensions.

But it was that speech and that idea of of hope and kindness being actually how to how to fight.

I remember the great interview with the I'm sure you saw, I'm sure you probably did.

Nick cave On Stephen Colbert and he read a letter out and saying, how hope is It's not weakness, it's actually in kindness.

It's actually the worrior emotion.

And I feel like that's all in that movie.

Yeah, when they're all being sucked into the everything bagel and Joy is being sucked in, and then Evelyn grabs her, and then old mate grabs Evelyn, and then the grandpa and I mean I just burst into tears.

I mean, just just the.

Literal and metaphorical power of just holding onto one on each other like this, the chain through generations of trying to protect and I it's just as you were playing that clip.

I mean, it's such an almost redundant thing to say.

But we just through every culture and every era, through all of time, virtually we've said the same to ourselves, the same story, and it is embraced by nearly everyone, nearly all the time, which is that you know, love conquers all and you just have to be kind to one another and accept that people are different, and do unto others as you would have done unto you.

And and.

Yet the world, the history of the world is a sort of shit show of people who have failed to do that.

And I think it's probably because people who are psychopathic tend to rise up because they are less concerned about their impact.

But I do.

I think it's again Groundhog Day and Shawn of the Dead, and to an extent, for Lions two, which is really like people looking for meaning.

It's the same that those kids, those gee hawd people are looking for a grander meaning, something to make sense of their shitty existence, something to help them transcend, you know.

And in Shawn of the Dead it's love, and in Four Lions it's you know, God and paradise and these big ideas that you know that there's a reason why that fundamentalism correlates with poverty, you know, search for meaning, search for something that makes sense of how shit it is here on earth, that that'll that'll drive you there.

And then in everything everywhere, it's like that takes the multiverse as a as a as a sort of metaphor for thinking, well, what's the fucking point?

You know?

So so joy is becoming nihilistic, you know, as young people do, they just think, well, what's the point.

And as I've said in my speeches and in my book, and everything.

It's like there is no meaning and thinking that there is, like the Four Lions guys made a mistake.

There isn't a god, and there isn't a paradise in my worldview, which is correct, you know, and and.

And and in everything everywhere.

It sort of makes the point, well, if everything is possible, then nothing is meaningful.

But in all these cases, meaning comes from the stories we tell ourselves.

And what we hope is that the story we keep telling ourselves is to love those around you, because if everyone just loves those around them, the world takes care of itself self, you know.

So it's unbelievably beautiful.

I get quite frustrated by how people unpack the idea of the multiverse, but you know, that's we can talk about that another time.

And it's the best, the best dildo based fight scene I've ever.

Seen, honestly, top three, top three.

I mean, if you ask me my favorite dido fight scenes, I mean, I know that.

But we do have to get on to talk about bullet because we've a lot because I talked too long.

Noge absolutely love that we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna stop here, and we're gonna come back next week and and talk about Bullet Uh.

It's it's a big one to discuss, so we'll come back next week.

There we go.

That was Tim Minchin and his three favorite films or three of his favorite films.

It is interesting because when you people ask for, you know, three favorites.

I can't do songs.

I find it ridiculous when people ask me for my favorite meal or my favorite color, But for some reason, my three favorite films.

It's quite easy for me.

But we'll discuss the movie we're here to talk about with Tim Minchin National Icon next week, which is nineteen sixty eights Ballot starring Steve McQueen, directed by Peter Yates.

That's next week.

And you ain't see nothing yet.

If you haven't seen Bull, check it out.

We see then