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Overview
So, we finally have a horror movie on Horror Lasagna that’s actually about eating. Time to dig in.
I’ll say, they do a good job of distracting you and redirecting what you think the movie is about. Intrigued? Go watch it. 🙂
This is a pretty modern movie – like, oh, last year. Not our typical – but I mean Chef is an intriguing job to base a horror movie upon. If you thought, “Oh, they’ll cut people up and cook them,” Well, you’d be forgiven, you uncreative creatin. OK, I take that back – there kinda is – but it really isn’t a cut the people and cook them horror.
It definitely makes you rethink those kitschy themed dinners.
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Transcript
Stephen: Today this is our bonus episode. Season four. How crazy is that? Four seasons. And before this one comes out, I’m going to put up some clips [00:01:00] of the talk. So everyone will get to see a little bit of the talk that you did. Welcome to that.
And we haven’t really discussed if we’re doing a marathon or anything and when,
Rhys: I just assumed we were. Okay.
Stephen: Sundays are gooder for me. Okay. So we’ll do a Sunday. We’ll have some an episode on that. Yeah. Sounds good. Lots of things to look forward to. So bonus. Oh, sorry. Our poor dog has a eye thing, so she has a big cone and she’s an idiot, so she still hasn’t figured out how to use it, so if there’s noises, it’s not that the house is haunted, the house still could be haunted, but yeah, so our bonus here, we’ve got The Menu which is a newer film, newer than most we’ve watched, it is
Rhys: old, Yeah, it was filmed during COVID.
Stephen: Yeah. And they even mentioned that. Yeah. All right. Tell us about this movie, Reese, because it’s got some very familiar faces again, unlike a lot that we [00:02:00] do. In fact, it’s got he that shall not be named. So that makes it spooky right there. Yeah.
Rhys: This was a US film. It was it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10th of 2022.
Pretty, probably the first festival that they held after like lockdown. And yeah, if I had to guess. Yeah. It was widely released in the U. S. on November 18th of 2022, and it released in 3, 211 theaters, making it the largest release in distributor Searchlight’s history.
Stephen: Wow. Yeah. So good for them.
Rhys: Runs an hour and 47 minutes.
Stephen: A little long for a typical horror. A little,
Rhys: but I don’t, I didn’t really notice it.
Stephen: I don’t think. No. It was fine. Yeah.
Rhys: The budget for this was 35 million and the worldwide gross was 79. 6. So they [00:03:00] made money on this. Yeah.
Stephen: The budget’s more than most of these movies we watch make or make total, yeah,
Rhys: yeah.
The release in North America alone was 38 and a half million. So they cleared their budget just in the North American release before. Even went worldwide. So
Stephen: they only had the really one location for shooting. So that probably helped.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. The outdoor shots were shot in Georgia. And I, the only one I can think of is Tybee Island, but that wasn’t it, but they shot that on the East coast, which is funny to me because the film feels like it’s taking place in the Pacific, but yeah, it’s
Stephen: supposed to, I think give that grandiose feel.
Rhys: It got 51 award nominations and it had three wins. I think one of the secrets to it is if you go through and look at like the nominations, they took this, it’s seemingly, they took this film to, [00:04:00] A film festival in every state. Ah. So they were all over the place. So like the three wins, the North Texas Film Critics Association for Best Ensemble Critics Choice Super Awards, Best Actor in a Horror Movie Ralph Fiennes, and then Fantastic Fest got the Audience Award,
Stephen: nice. And I’m not taking away from the film or their winning of awards or anything like that. But, numbers game, the more you enter, the more you’ll get, but also, I don’t think I’ve heard of many of those, so you go to the smaller festivals that most people don’t know outside of the regional area.
You got a better chance to yeah, fantastic,
Rhys: fantastic. Fest is the only one that I recognize. And it won an audience award, which I think is very apropos for this film, which we’ll get into here in a little bit. It was filmed during COVID the cast spent an intensive week just in [00:05:00] rehearsal.
And it. Made them in, made them hit that CDC term of a social bubble because they were isolated with each other for an extended period of time. So if COVID was going to go through it would have had to start with one of them. So this film,
so when we came up with the list to do jobs for this season, I came up with the list, we finalized it, and then I saw this film and I, you know what, this film actually fits really well. Yeah, absolutely. And it doesn’t just fit this season. It fits the first season because you have friends, various types throughout the place.
You have a culture clash between the makers and the takers. And then what was the, what was our other season? Visitation, [00:06:00] everybody’s visiting the restaurant. So it seemed to cover everything all at once.
Stephen: This is like the ultimate bonus episode for us, right?
Rhys: The part of this film that gives me pause and it’s not the first movie to do this, is that it was written by Will Tracy and Seth Reese.
After Will Tracy had dined at a restaurant like this, and they wrote the movie to be a humorous satire and I don’t find it funny. No, I
Stephen: saw that with Liz, the genre was, like comedy and Will Ferrell is one of the producers of the show. And I’m like. But where was the, I’m like, if this is comedy, this is the darkest humor I’ve ever
Rhys: seen.
And I think what it basically boils down to is a culture clash. Between the writers and us as an audience, because we’ll Tracy eight at a similar establishment [00:07:00] outside of Bergen in Norway. I have never stepped foot in anything that would come close to this kind of restaurant.
Stephen: 1, 200 a plate for an hour meal.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. So I think it might be humorous if you’re one of those kinds of people who like has heard of some all yay talk before. But for the rest of us, that’s all so foreign to us anyways, that I sat there going, yes, chef throughout the entire
Stephen: movie. Yeah. There’s really nothing that, even Luguzi Amo, who you can see as his character what he’s talking about, how that could be humorous and the critic lady it’s like it’s.
You could see how it could be humorous, but it wasn’t played that way to me at all. But I also think the trailer to the movie did a little bait and switch. Oh, yeah. When you watch the trailer, it really made it seem like it was really just the most [00:08:00] dangerous game done in this set, but it wasn’t. That part of it was what, two minutes of the whole movie.
And they also make you think the character, the lead character is a beast from the X Men movies, but he wasn’t. It was Anya Joy and she’s, she’s one of those like Colin every time. Oh, she’s in that. I might watch that one. She’s one of those for him, right? So I think maybe that was a little part of it, but I don’t know what Farrell was on if he said, yeah, this is a great comedy compared to what he normally does for comedy.
Rhys: And I was watching an interview with him at the release and they were both laughing at the fact that everyone’s going to think that the menu has people on it and it doesn’t. So that’s the joke. And it’s no, that’s actually a very clever twist. Yes. It’s not funny. It’s not the first Brazil Terry Gilliam’s movie, Brazil.
I always found that just a really depressing film. [00:09:00] And a lot of people are sitting there laughing at it and I’m like, this is just sad. So I wasn’t sure if it, maybe it’s just something in my head that they think this is funny. And I’m like, I really don’t find it humorous at all. There are many parts in it.
It’s like the loved ones, right? You stop and you pick up a possum off the road and you’re like, that’s funny until you find out what the possum’s for. And then you’re like, Ooh, wow. Really not funny.
Stephen: Exactly. Yeah. The whole movie, it was just, I don’t know, maybe they thought one thing because their marketing did not give the sense of what the movie was.
But the thing is. It makes it a deeper movie in many ways in what it’s coming across. The message received was not what was in their
Rhys: mind. Yeah. I think one of the other influences that they don’t mention, because again, these guys are all comedy writers who wrote this one of the, one of the things that I really draw drew a parallel to was like midsummer.
Yeah, because [00:10:00] the kitchen staff is seriously a cult. Chef is a ridiculously charismatic figure and they will do anything for him.
Stephen: Yeah, obviously they do. I think if you watch it a second time and you understand who the real main character is that you should be focusing on that shifts your perspective a bit and I can see her reaction to things being a bit more humorous, but still, it’s so deeply dark that, I can’t find laughing at it.
And I don’t consider it comedy and
Rhys: That’s the part for me is like the director Mark Mylod, he did a nice job. He did an adequate job. He did some things that are very smart, but watching it. There weren’t like a whole lot of, there wasn’t a whole lot of directorial choices that jumped out at me and said, this guy’s genius.
But when I saw it, I’m like, the writers were [00:11:00] brilliant because the script writing is just amazing. And then I find out that they were going for funny and then I’m like, was it amazing then? Cause
Stephen: you missed
Rhys: the mark. Yeah. So maybe you’re brilliant and you just don’t know how. I don’t know.
Stephen: I think that’s a great statement. You’re brilliant besides yourself, regardless of yourself. So
Rhys: Seth Reese has written 26 parts. Most of them comedy with the onion and college humor. Wow. He’s got three up to coming projects. One’s called the regime. One’s called 42. 6 years and an episode of the onion sports dome.
And we’ll, Tracy has worked on five other projects, including a couple of projects with the onion 58 episodes of last week tonight with John Oliver and three episodes of succession.
Stephen: I give these guys way credit for what they came up with without realizing it. Yeah. [00:12:00]
Rhys: Yeah. Will Tracy identified with the character of Tyler, who he calls a pretentious foodie and he’s he is very much that kind of that character.
And I was like, wow, way to, I don’t know self report, I guess. As they were working it up, they were thinking of Ray Fanes as the chef. They were just so impressed with the cast. They called them this very smart actors and they wanted to avoid a torture porn style film. And it’s just really odd to me because there’s only like a scene or two that you could like really get into if you wanted to make it a gore fest, a guy losing a finger, you and then the fire at the end, but very little else.
Yeah. Okay. Somebody shot themselves in the head,
Stephen: yeah. And the fact that they. [00:13:00] Like we’re prepared and had the plastic that’s really grizzly gory, but I’ve no, nowhere close to some of the, old, really gores that stuff. And saying that in the writing and they blended a dark, cute comedy, humor.
I was trying to place this, and I’m like, wow, this is a pretty unique horror movie. It’s very psychological. It’s not really a slasher. It’s not a serial killer. It’s not like Saw, though it shares some aspects of Saw psychologically. But, it doesn’t have a monster and Midsommar, it’s got that cult aspect, but not based completely on the cult of, so it’s an interesting, where does this land in the horror realm?
Rhys: Yeah. It was directed by Mark Milad and he’s a British director. He’s married to a costume designer named Amy Westcott. And she did the costuming in the menu where she worked on it. And she also did Black Swan and Nightcrawler.
Stephen: All [00:14:00] right. So I got to do costumes. What do you do for a chef’s outfit?
Yeah.
Rhys: Milad has directed 33 projects. A lot of it’s television, including like he is the director for entourage. He did shameless game episode two of game of thrones. And he did succession like succession. Succession is like his show to direct. He spent most of his time doing television since he did a film called what’s your number in 2011, but the menu 11 years later is what brought him back into the big screen.
And he he really liked Bong Shu Ho’s concept from the parasite. Of having the film shot basically in one room for the vast majority
Stephen: of it. Yeah. I, except for a few scenes, which could be done, this could almost be a play on a stage.
Rhys: Yeah. Wow. That’s a really good idea doing it as
Stephen: a, there, there’s a lot of movies I’ve watched that I’m like, wow, this feels like a play, [00:15:00] this didn’t feel like a play, but minimal change, scenery changes for just a couple of scenes, which would be a big cast.
Yeah, absolutely. The people working the sous chef and stuff, you can have just a couple of people to do that, and the outdoor scenes, you just pull a curtain across and just use the front of the stage and stuff, but, we don’t need to block it out.
Rhys: Yeah.
He was pretty, once he read the script, he thought he was pretty comfortable in his ability to direct the film. And here’s what he did. That was brilliant. He had everyone on set all the time for 12 hours over 37 days. So if he was shooting and the scene was on you, I still had to be on set. And the reason he did that is.
Everyone else was supposed to improvise what they were doing at the time that stuff was going on the entire time he shot, and he had cameras recording like [00:16:00] every table, and so he could use those as B roll cuts. There’s a scene where Tyler breaks a glass. And someone walks over and as they walk over, they walk past the food critic and the food critics assistant does this eye roll and then looks back that was entirely the actor just improvising on the spot reacting to what happened on.
Stephen: That’s awesome because I actually noticed a few of those types of things. I’m like, wow, this is pretty deep in that you can look at everybody and they’re not all just that that with, there’s actual like interaction stuff going on. So that’s pretty cool. I think it came across really well.
Rhys: Yeah. Anya and Nicholas. When they were sitting there, they were basically playing and improve an improvised two truths and a lie with each other based on their characters just to make it look like they were having conversation. And then at the end of the shoot, they would like, get back together and they’d compare what was actually true and what wasn’t.[00:17:00]
So they were like, just building backstory the entire time they were there acting like it’s just casual conversation over. That’s really awesome. That’s cool. Yeah. He wanted Margo to be a mystery for the audience to solve as it goes. And I find it really interesting that she’s Margo. She’s referred to as Margo.
She’s listed in the critics as Margo, even though that’s not her name. And she even says what her real name is at one point in the film. She is just
Stephen: Margo. And I think some of the. And I know this was the whole reason for it, but I love how they bring out the interactions that the characters who are together have and the deep background of why they’re there and all that, each one of them has quite a bit that you get in the movie without having this big, long thing at the beginning or whatever, it’s done really well.
Rhys: Yeah. He also liked it to seem like Margo and chef hated each other, but it’s because they came [00:18:00] from like the same place class wise, but from different philosophical roles, like the chef is a master of his art and he hates seeing his art destroyed and he does things for people and they don’t appreciate it.
And Margo is also a provider, but she provides people with what they want. And it can be very specific, it can be very vague, so it can be very specific, like with the old guy who’s sitting there that she knew, or it can be very vague, like Tyler, who just wants her to go out to eat with him,
Stephen: It’s what’s his name from Needful Things? Give you what you want, right?
Rhys: Yeah. Be careful what you ask for. Benhays is a chef from Savannah and he, a lot of the guys in the kitchen actually did work in kitchens originally, but this guy came in to make sure that they were all doing everything that.
You would see in a Michelin starred restaurant and a lot of the food that you see are props, but Dominique [00:19:00] Krenn is the chef of a restaurant called Atelier Krenn. It’s in San Francisco. She’s the first female head chef to ever achieve three Michelin stars in her own restaurant. Wow. She was there and she was the one who’s preparing all of the food, even though it was fake food.
She was the one who was laying it out, how it should look and things like that. She was pretty cool. Yeah. The cast, amazing cast, Ray Fanes the British actor born in 1962. He was one of six children. His mother was a novelist and his father was a professional photographer. Oh, wow. Either he grew up poor or they were quite successful,
Stephen: but they were creative.
They weren’t
Rhys: creative. He was a Shakespearean actor and his first wife was Alex Kingston. Oh, okay. He’s a friend of Liam Neeson’s, they hang out all the time. He plays Chef Sloic, he’s [00:20:00] been involved in 86 Projects Wuthering Heights, Schindler’s List, Quiz Show. This guy has a high pedigree, especially considering the movies we typically.
Review. Yes. Strange Days, The English Patient, Red Dragon. He was Lord Voldemort.
Stephen: Of course. That’s who he’s probably most known for nowadays.
Rhys: And he’s also like a good enough guy that he did all the voiceover in all of the Harry Potter games as
Stephen: well. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that.
Rhys: He was in The Hurt Locker, The Modern Clash of the Titans and Wrath of the Titans.
Those two movies that came out, he was in Skyfall, Richard III. That really seems like his kind of avenue. Lego Batman movie, Kubo and the Two Strings, The Dig. That one’s not that great, but, and The King’s Man. He has seven upcoming projects, and in fact, of the seven upcoming projects, three of them are available right now on Netflix, [00:21:00] which is like doing this big blast of short pieces written by Roald Dahl.
Stephen: Oh, I didn’t know about that. That’s
Rhys: cool. Yeah. And he’s in three of them, three of the five Benedict Cumberbatch is in one. They’re celebrating Roald Dahl, apparently. And a bunch of British actors
Stephen: celebrating them before everything gets banned and taken away.
Rhys: Yeah. But I was looking at them last night and like three of them are like 17 minutes long, they’re, they are just little short stories that he wrote.
Stephen: So that’s cool. I love projects like that.
Rhys: Yeah he’s also going to be in a film called the far North house, the return, where he plays Odysseus and a film called conclave. He is man, we’ve had a couple of guys like this when you hear him in interviews, he is just really speaking as like an old Shakespearean based actor kind of thing, he’s all about the craft and.
All that kind of stuff. [00:22:00] So
Stephen: he’s definitely really good in this part.
Rhys: Oh, he’s
Stephen: amazing. And this part downs and portrays the craziness without being over the top. Crazy. Yeah. Very subtle.
Rhys: He seems very insecure of himself when he needs to be. It’s Anya Taylor. Joy was born in Florida. She plays Margo.
Her parents are internationals. From South America, England, Spain they’re like from all over the place. She was raised in Argentina until she was like seven. And then they moved to England where she grew up in London.
Yeah, she’s married to a young actor named Malcolm McRae and I didn’t recognize anything he’d been in, he’s acting too. She plays Margot, she’s been involved in 30 projects, and she’s gotten some amazing roles. [00:23:00] She has. I
Stephen: mean, she’s very distinctive looking she’s very thin, and she has the anime eyes almost.
Yeah. It’s she’s one of those faces is I recognize her,
Rhys: she was in the, which she was in split and glass, the dark crystal age of resistance. She was an Emma, the new mutants, the queen’s gambit the Northman. Apparently she’s in Peaky Blinders she was in the Mario Brothers movie.
She has three upcoming projects, Furiosa, The Gorge, and Laughter in the Dark. And one of the things I came across, she spent time in Argentina as a child and she speaks fluent Spanish, but I had no idea. They’re like, she speaks. Spanish, but it’s Argentinian Spanish, which apparently other Spaniards hate to hear because of like the accent or their syntax, but she’s, she speaks it fluently, but the [00:24:00] accent just drives other Spanish speakers.
Stephen: Oh, that’s interesting. Cause only really knowing one language. You don’t always think that other languages have dialects. Other accents.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. Nicholas Holt. He’s a British actor. He was born. I can’t be right. He wasn’t born in 56. He looks like he’s 12.
Stephen: How old are we? He looks like they’re 12.
Rhys: He plays Tyler. He’s been involved in 86 projects, including about a boy clash of the Titans. X Men first class where he played beast. As you mentioned, warm bodies, Jack, the giant slayer X Men, just all those X Men movies, right? Days of future past apocalypse, Deadpool two, he was in mad max fury road, which I think is really funny because he’s so buttoned up in this film.
Stephen: He’s liked that a lot, actually, a lot of his parts, he portrays that, a lot, probably one of [00:25:00] those that’s just kind of him. Also. Yeah,
Rhys: he, he was also in the Renfield film that was out
Stephen: recently, which is actually pretty funny.
Rhys: He’s got five upcoming projects. Fairfield, the order, juror number two, the one, and he is in the remake of Nosferatu.
In process. That’s awesome. Yeah. And again, you know what? I’m not a big on remakes, but if you want to remake something from 1923, have at it.
Stephen: I love Nosferatu. I always think it’s a great. Movie, but I’m not opposed to a remake a hundred years later. It’s the remakes that are 20 years old.
That’s like, why?
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. Hong Chau is an American actress who was born to Vietnamese parents in a Thai refugee camp. Wow. So they were boat people fleeing Vietnam after the [00:26:00] war ended up in a Thai refugee camp. Which is where she was born. And I don’t know if you remember back in the day, they were looking for people to help out the boat people of Vietnam.
Her family was one of the lucky ones. They were taken in by a sponsor family in New Orleans. She did a lot of her growing up here in the States. An
Stephen: interesting heritage. And in the movie, She is probably the scariest one in the movie because you’re just waiting for her to bust out which she does at one point Yes, she’s very like It’s understated and it’s just she scares the crap out of
Rhys: me.
Yeah, absolutely. She attended Boston U, she plays Elsa, Dominique Crenn, the three star Michelin was so impressed with her performance dedication. She offered her that job. In one of her restaurants,
Stephen: minus, don’t give her any cleavers. Just, yes.
Rhys: She’s been involved in 32 projects. A lot of them are television including on run on A to [00:27:00] Z, big little lies.
Bojack Horseman Watchman. Homecoming and the night agent, she was on Artemis fowl and the whale and then the menu and she has two upcoming projects, the instigators and a movie called and all capital letters
Stephen: stand for something. Okay.
Rhys: This next actress, Janet McTeer is a British actress who plays Lillian, the.
Restaurant critic. She is not Sue Sylvester, who is exactly who I thought she was, who is like the coach from she’s like the gym teacher from glee. I think, Oh, okay. It’s not the same person. I thought it was, they
Stephen: do look alike. Yeah, I see. Yeah.
Rhys: She’s been involved in 64 projects, including weather and heights, Tideland, which is a great depressing little hole to fall in sometime.
As you like it, sense and sensibility. The woman in [00:28:00] black, Maleficent, she’s been in some horror stuff. I’ve even seen her in some horror stuff. She was an insurgent and allegiance. She had a part on Jessica Jones. And Ozark, she’s got two upcoming projects. The president is missing three upcoming projects.
The president is missing chaos with a K and mission impossible. Dead reckoning part two.
Stephen: Oh yeah. That one I can’t wait for either.
Rhys: Watch for when it comes out now, John Leguizamo. He was born in Bogota, Colombia, and then his family moved to Queens.
Stephen: Wow. Yeah. He does have that Colombian and that Queens type of attitude.
I can see that.
Rhys: He started out doing standup and then he landed a semi recurring guest spot on Miami vice.
Stephen: Clear back in [00:29:00] the day. Yeah. I
Rhys: remember he studied at NYU. He’s been married twice. His first wife was Elba Osorio, who’s done 30 projects herself, including Carlito’s Way. And he’s currently married to Justine Morior, who is a costumer and she was the costumer at Carlito’s Way.
So maybe Elba wishes she hadn’t been in that movie. He plays the movie star and it’s funny because he’s not shy. And if you’ve seen him and heard him talk, you re you realize that, but people are like, I’ve interviewed, they’re like, the guy was so unlikable what did you base this on? He just flat out is Steven Seagal.
Stephen: He goes,
Rhys: it’s Steven Seagal. He’s a horrible human.
Stephen: Wow. So we won’t not go see [00:30:00] those two acting together anytime soon.
Rhys: No, they did a movie together. I don’t remember which one it was, but yeah, no love lost there. I would argue he’s one of the big stars. Ray fines is a big star, but he hasn’t been on the big stage.
I don’t want to say the big stage. He hasn’t been as popular as John Leguizamo has been for as long as he
Stephen: has been. Yeah, it’s probably if you put all the actors in front and told people point out who you recognize. Yeah. You’d probably, even if they don’t know where.
Rhys: It’s really, he’s, Just to let you know the kind of guy he is there’s a scene where chef makes a burger for Anya Taylor Joy is one of the few times there was actual food.
It wasn’t fake and she sat there and ate it and everybody was just like, that looks amazing. It
Stephen: did, it really
Rhys: did. So John Liguizamo out of his own pocket ordered burgers and fries for the [00:31:00] entire cast and crew. And had it brought in at the end of the shoot. And I’m like, that is super cool.
Stephen: Yeah, that’s pretty
Rhys: cool.
The man works. He’s been involved in 156 projects. Wow. Starting with Madonna’s borderline video. Wow. Now you’re welcome for having that song in your head for the rest of the
Stephen: day. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it. I’m going to have to go listen to BTS or something now.
Rhys: He was in Miami vice casualties of war die hard to super Mario brothers, Carlitos way.
To Wung Fu, thanks for everything. Julie Newmar, executive decision. That’s what he was in with Steven Seagal.
Stephen: Yes. Yes. I remember that
Rhys: one. All that the pest spawn, Dr. Doolittle, Titan AE, Moulin Rouge, Ice Age series. He’s. In the Ice Age series, he was in N. E. R. Rage, Kick Ass 2, John Wick Chapter 2, [00:32:00] Waco, and Encanto.
The guy just, he’s everywhere.
Stephen: Yeah, he’s one of those guys, he’s easily recognizable after 30 whatever years since I’ve seen him. And it’s oh yeah, I know who that is. He’s rarely ever been one of those actors. It’s oh, I recognize that face. Who is that? It’s oh, I know who that is right away.
Yeah.
Rhys: And his voice is so distinct too. Yeah. Like as soon as you hear it. Yeah. He’s got seven upcoming projects. The Adventures of Drunky, Hypno, Bob Trevino Likes It, Siddhaloa’s First Lady, Tin Soldier, The Green Veil, and I’m gonna butcher this, Tia Toloco, 68. So there you have
Stephen: it. Actually, we should say with the strikes.
That are going on, we hope these projects all come out.
Rhys: Yeah, that’s true. Amy Carrero was born in the Dominican. She was raised in Miami. And she was [00:33:00] another one who I like really dug into what she’s been in because she looked so familiar. She plays Felicity. John Leguizamo’s assistant.
Stephen: Yeah.
In the show.
Rhys: She’s married to a young actor named Tim Rock, who was in Children of the Corn, Genesis.
Stephen: I was going to say, which one there’s 97 of them or something.
Rhys: She’s been involved in 50 projects. Okay. So she was in Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Squeakquel, which I’m sure my kids made me watch in the day, but she was in a film called Level Up, which sounded familiar, but I don’t know that I saw it, she was in Devil’s Dew and I.
Did see that, and I can think I remember her being at it. She was also in the last witch hunter. She did voiceover. I think she continues to do voiceover for She Ra and the princess of power. Oh,
Stephen: wow. She looked like one of the actresses from like one of the Mickey mouse [00:34:00] TV shows. Not making that, one of the Disney.
Teen kid, that
Rhys: fifties buttoned up look,
Stephen: Her face, but it wasn’t her, so that when I first saw her, I thought she was somebody else but I couldn’t tell you who the name, you know what I’m saying? I know this other actress, it wasn’t her.
Rhys: She was also in spirited. And for all of our young viewers out there, she is in season three of critical role.
She plays Mona. Oh cool, and I guess it makes sense that she does voiceover work because almost all those people are voiceover people voiceover work people. She has one upcoming project. It’s called code three I have a few other notes on actors, but i’ll get to them as we introduce the characters because they’re very brief Yeah, there is, and this is what I mean about the brilliant writing you have in this film, 12 guests, which is like [00:35:00] having the 12 apostles, almost all 12 of them with Anya Taylor joy in the middle as the one who’s speaking sense to them.
Like he is insulting you, he works for you and no one else is, they’re not understanding. They’re not, and then in the end, I’m going to leave you just jesus talking at the Last Supper, I’m gonna be leaving you and you’re gonna have lots of trials and tribulations, and it really is biblical when you
Stephen: look at it that way.
I never, I didn’t think about that, though like I said at the end, looking at her as the main character it’s, To me, it came across as a satirical message about the rich and those that have more than others, because that’s basically the problem in many ways with all these different guests, except for her, she’s like the realist.
She’s down to earth. She doesn’t have the money and all of that. Again, once you get to the end, your [00:36:00] perspective changes a bit on the movie and going back a second time. Changes how you look at it, but still not humorous, but satirical. Definitely.
Rhys: Yeah. Someone else pointed out that all of the tables, you have 12 guests, six tables, and then you have the kitchen that’s seven and they all can be used to represent the seven deadly sins.
Oh, wow. Each table is its own. And I thought, you know what? And the kitchen is wrath. As it’s as itself, but you have like pride with the three guys who were super rich and, they throw their weight around you have lust with the old guy who. Hangs out with the prostitutes. All of these different things.
I was like, wow, that’s actually a really good point. And that’s what I mean. The writing that’s brilliant, but no one throws the seven deadly sins [00:37:00] into a comedy. It’s just not something you
Stephen: do. And while we’re talking about the beginning here and the characters cause not so much to be said about her, but chef’s mother.
That’s the best. Okay. We want you to sit here and drink. That’s what you do for the whole movie.
Rhys: Give you know, raise a glass on occasion mutter a word or two,
Stephen: right? I thought she was like the best but now that you said they were all there on sets like oh my god Sit here for 12 hours without saying anything and pretending you’re getting drunk.
Yeah More than she got paid whatever it was Will Tracy
Rhys: and Seth Reese We’re really big on, they were fascinated by the concept of this creative process that is cooking, where you have all of these people working on the final project and it really comes across right at the opening of the film.
Because there’s [00:38:00] nowhere else that I can think of where you have, prior to seeing the final product, a blatant display of getting ready for it as much as an orchestra. And that’s what they started with. The screen is black and you hear the orchestra tuning up and I’m like, Oh, that’s like the whole tie in with, this is all one big orchestrated thing by all the members of the kitchen staff to provide this.
Grand display. So I thought that was a brilliant opener.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t think about that. That’s great.
Rhys: Yeah. And it starts, right away, Margo’s the bad girl. She’s got a leather coat. She’s leaning against the wall. She’s smoking. She might as well, had a biker cap and a motorcycle behind her because she looks like James Dean or
Stephen: wearing a pink ladies jacket.
Yes.
Rhys: Tyler breaks, yells at her cause she’s going to kill her. Kill her palate, and blah, blah, blah. He is the [00:39:00] ultimate snob foodie. And we find out that it’s like 1, 250 a head to eat there. So that’s 2, 500 for the two of them to go out to eat for
Stephen: hardly any food. There’s like nothing on those plates, man.
Rhys: The s’mores were quite large at the end.
Stephen: They were. Yeah. But. I’ll pass
Rhys: on the pass on dessert. It also introduces the characters this way. The two of them are hanging out. There’s a boat pulling up to the dock because this restaurant’s on an Island. The only way to get to it is by boat. And you find out how much it is because Marco’s that’s a really small boat.
And he’s he only seats 12 people and she’s like, how does he make any money? And he’s 1250 ahead. And so we get to meet the characters as they’re getting on the boat. You have the three business bros, and like as soon as they show up, you’re like, oh, it’s the
Stephen: bros. It’s, I thought they were a eternity at first.
Rhys: Then you had the old couple who show [00:40:00] up. And the old guy, Anya, seems to know him, which should set a little warning light in your head, like she knows him and she’s not really keen to see him. He is played by Reed Bernie. His character’s name is Richard, and he’s been in 103. Product projects.
The biggest one you’ll note is the house of cards.
Stephen: Oh, wow.
Rhys: Okay. The more impressive one, and this is going to, I apologize now, make you feel super old is his wife, Anne, who is played by Judith light. Who’s been in a projects including one life to live ugly, Betty, a really long run on. Law and order SVU.
She was a judge, but you probably know her best is Angela from who’s the
Stephen: boss. Oh my God. Wow. Yes. I see it now. Now that you said that.
Rhys: [00:41:00] Yeah. Oh, geez. Yeah. I, as soon as I realized that I’m like, Oh my God, I’m so old.
Stephen: What’s her name? The. Kid, Alyssa Milano, she’s our age. And Dan’s where he’s, where’s he been
Rhys: best not to ask?
I think, yeah, probably keep your head down. Try not to get canceled. Then you have Lillian Bloom and her assistant and he never actually has a name. I don’t think throughout the movie, the, for the food critics assistant.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. He’s the stereotypical part. He is so upper ass the whole time and so fawning and everything.
This is another
Rhys: one of those movies that really stereotypes its characters, but they do it so well that you don’t
Stephen: mind. Yeah, very much. And that’s the point too, because they didn’t have to explain the characters a lot. It just from what they’re portraying you got it, you [00:42:00] knew what they were like, you knew what they were, and we’ve all hated these people at some point,
Rhys: unless you are those people, in which case, this is funny to you, for some
Stephen: reason that makes sense.
Now we’re that’s good. We’re not the stereotype hated. And it’s,
Rhys: Other thing to bear in mind is that these people aren’t people, their representations. You know, and he’s of course acting like he’s super famous and, making a much bigger deal about people recognizing him.
And he like asks her, is she supposed, is she going to do something to keep the people off, keep the fans away? And she’s what fans right. You’re talking about
Stephen: Luguziama, right? Yeah.
Rhys: So they’re sitting on the boat and they bring out an amuse bouche, which is oysters with some fancy stuff on them.
Stephen: Margo, my dogs threw up, foamy and something floating in it.
Rhys: Margo says she loves oysters. She didn’t need the little foamy stuff that was on it. It’s interesting because, margo, [00:43:00] the name means Pearl.
Stephen: Oh, really?
Rhys: Interesting. Which is, she mentions it, how it takes an outside irritant and turns it into something beautiful.
She is the outside irritant in the movie.
Stephen: That’s awesome. And if you really listen and pay attention, there are so many food related innuendos and things being said, little hint, hint, nudge, wink, wink, jokes inside, just the, it, they’re almost food. That’s what she said. Jokes throughout the whole, every other line, especially Tyler.
It’s like everything he says, he’s dude, you’re just foreshadowing the whole movie
Rhys: here. Very meanness or home meanness. Margo is also a type of wine. It’s a high end wine as well.
Stephen: So I didn’t know that obviously,
Rhys: They get off the boat and they meet Elsa. And you can tell the difference like of everybody and Margo, because everyone’s like getting off the boat.
They’re like, blah, [00:44:00] blah, blah, talking this and that. And the old guy and his wife are like, we’ve been here before. We’re going to skip the tour. And everybody’s making all this noise. Margo stops to look around and turn around and watch the boat leave. And it like registers. Somewhere in the back of her head is how are we getting off this island?
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. And they walk across, they’re describing the whole scene. There’s somebody out there. Collecting scallops and things like that. They go, they have their own smoke house. They go in and
Stephen: We get our first real not, not unexpectedly, but it’s who are you? When they’re checking in, yeah.
Margot
Rhys: goes to check in and Elsa’s very disturbed by the fact that she’s not, who’s supposed to be there. Yeah. And we find out why in a bit, but you also, so she does have this kind of. Underlaying level of menace to her character, but you really get the feel when they’re in the smokehouse and she’s describing how everything’s curing and [00:45:00] everything.
And the guy’s what if we eat it a day early? And then she goes into describing very vividly what happens with food poisoning that will kill you.
Stephen: That was probably the most humorous part of the movie. I thought I chuckled at that one, actually. And, now that you’re saying that.
Margo’s character really reminds me a lot of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.
Rhys: Yeah, it’s basically the same character. Yeah. I just, it’s just, I think Margo’s a little smarter than Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman, but at least thinks on her feet better. We get to see where everyone lives. It is a barracks, a cult like barracks.
Stephen: And I love how the three guys, they just sit on the beds.
Rhys: Yeah. Don’t you guys get burnout? What do you do when you want to unwind? We don’t burn anything here unless it’s intended to enhance the experience, which all of those guys get to experience. They are [00:46:00] walking into the restaurant itself.
She points out. They, she points to chef’s house off to the side. No one goes to chef’s house. And then they’re walking into this restaurant and there’s goats running with them. And the goat thing was funny. Cause okay, it’s goats. Okay. Goat, goat milk and things. But there’s this thing called a Judas goat.
And if you are leading. Cattle to slaughter, sometimes they get nervous, but they’ve people found that if you put goats with them, the cattle settled down and the goats just help the cattle get to where they need to go. And then you kill them.
Stephen: I didn’t even think about that. Yeah, goats were there. That’s awesome.
That’s pretty awesome. Actually.
Rhys: Yeah. Then there’s the whole tomb like entrance, the thing like rotates and everyone walks in and it like closes up. Yeah.
Stephen: Price is waiting on the other side. Yeah.
Rhys: They get in and Tyler instantly becomes annoying. He wants to go. He drags Marco up [00:47:00] to see them cooking. He mentions the Paco jet, did you use Paco jet on that?
I, I have one then blah, blah, blah. And then he’s floored by the fact that. They know his name like Oh, wow. And he goes back and they sit down at the table and this is just, so typical, he’s they knew my name and Margo’s but you didn’t ask his and he’s eh, who cares?
I’m self centered. You’re not allowed to take pictures, which he breaks that rule a million
Stephen: times. And I was waiting for what’s her name to go crazy on him. She noticed a few times, but yeah, you’re not supposed to, but it really doesn’t matter.
Rhys: It’s that whole, it’s that whole midsummer thing where, yeah.
Okay. Take all the pictures you want of our books. It makes no difference. , the staff moves with military precision. Everything works as one. And they all seem so very serious. Even when Tyler was just talking to the guy and they’re having this conversation, he says [00:48:00] something about chef, the guy basically says, go sit down and he does it in such a manner that you’re like, where is the knife that is in his hand right now?
Because
Stephen: yeah, it’s scary.
Rhys: Yes. The chef comes out and he does this clap thing, claps to get everyone’s attention, and then he talks and he specifically notices. Margo sitting over there because she is that ear outside irritant that needs to be made into a pearl. He doesn’t know who she is. He hasn’t factored her into
Stephen: the equation and these scenes throughout the movie, they’ll do a close up on fines face and just his face is you can’t describe the emotion, but you’re.
Very worried about the way he’s looking and what he’s thinking, and you can see it rolling. That was some of the best I’ve seen of close up like that in a long time. It’s
Rhys: amazing because you can’t say why, it’s not right. Yeah. Something that’s going on behind his eyes is not cool. [00:49:00] Yes. But you don’t exactly know what it is.
His mother is there sitting, drinking in the corner. They bring out the first little amuse bouche and Tyler takes a picture. And then we get to, we get these little, like around the restaurant table, little glimpses Leguizamo’s. Assistant is leaving. She’s leaving to go work somewhere else.
He doesn’t seem to be accepting that. And they, a little chitter chatter there. And then you have the three bros at the other table. Hey, how’s your wife? And he’s are we doing this? Cause obviously we’re not together anymore. Cause I’m an asshole. And
Stephen: it’s like one of those plays, like scenes at a New York deli or something like that.
Yeah. It very much came across like that.
Rhys: Yeah. When the chef does come out and he introduces the first course he can, he does the clap and he starts talking about food and digestion in a very disgusting kind of manner. He just breaks it down into it’s raw components and the fact that [00:50:00] you’re going to put it into your mouth and it’s going to get digested and you’re going to end up crapping it out, which makes me wonder why in the hell I’d be paying 1, 250 for it.
But he does say, and I love this. He says don’t just eat, taste except all of it. Tyler says something, under his breath to Margo. Chef calls him out for basically talking in class. And Margo’s you’re the customer. Why are you like being like this? He. Of all of the, of all of the people here, he is probably the least, aside from Margo, he is probably the least stereotypical character, his own bizarre little thing where no matter what’s happening, he is literally just shoveling
Stephen: food in his face.
He’s like clueless. I think it goes back to the very self centered, even more self centered than the actor and the food critic who think [00:51:00] they’re the best of, he’s doing this all for us. Yeah, he’s very self centered the whole thing, but he’s
Rhys: not, he’s not clueless. He knows more there than anybody else who’s sitting there.
Who’s not on
Stephen: staff, right? Which is a, what I was gonna say is that everyone, those misdirections makes you focus on him. Where he really isn’t the focus it’s like what they always say with Psycho with Hitchcock, you’re looking at what’s her face. That’s the main character. Oh, wait, she’s dead.
She’s dead, yeah. Very much like that.
Rhys: He goes on to the next course is he talks about bread and how bread has always been for the common man, but none of you are common. So you were getting a bread plate with no bread. And this is where Margo’s he’s insulting all of you and no one’s getting it.
He brings it out and sets it down to the food critic. And as they’re walking away, she’s Oh, this emulsion split. And basically an emulsion is just, you have oil and like a water based thing and you mix them together. And as long as they’re mixed, it’s one [00:52:00] thing, but the oil will separate if it sits for too long or it’s not mixed enough.
And that’s a split emulsion. And so she’s Oh, it’s split. And you can actually look at it. Symbolically, like the emul, the split emulsion is the difference between classes. They can never actually be fully integrated. But she says something under her breath and somebody comes over and gives her a giant bowl with split emulsion.
Your emulsion, ma’am. Yeah. And right around then you’re like, Oh, wow, he’s really paying attention to what everyone’s doing and like what everyone’s saying and he’s reacting to it from the kitchen.
Stephen: And I could see how that would be humorous. If you live in that realm, that world the food critic but it’s got such horror, creepy overtones to everything that
Rhys: is so much menace in everything they do.
Yeah. And the bros are sitting there demanding bread. They’re like, do you know who we are? Just slip us some bread and some gluten free from my buddy over there and [00:53:00] Elsa is just no and this is probably Literally like the scariest thing in the movie to me She leans down and she whispers to the guy you will eat less than you deserve You eat less than you desire and more than you deserve
Stephen: Yeah,
Rhys: and I’m
Stephen: like wow and her saying no she No, she scared the crap out of me.
She was the scariest one in the whole movie. Absolutely.
Rhys: Margo, points out that this is insulting and Tyler in his haste to lick her plate, clean, knocks a glass off the thing. They worked on the sound of that glass shattering for two weeks to get to the sound they want. And when it shatters, Margo does, lets out a little squeal.
For in the ASR takes, she had to do 79 takes for that squeal before they picked one they liked. Wow. I like that is [00:54:00] some really. Picky
Stephen: stuff. That goes back to the old 90s Sega commercial. Sega! Sega! Sega! Sega! Sega! Yeah.
Rhys: Chef comes over and he and Margo have this kind of little fencing duel with words as he’s like, who are you?
Why aren’t you eating? And she’s you told us not to eat. And he finds her to be just a worthy as worthy of an opponent. Verbally as he is taking jabs at
Stephen: her. Yeah. And you definitely get the sense when he’s talking to her that there’s a lot more going on than you really see at this point but you don’t know what it is quite.
Yeah,
Rhys: He walks from there over to his mother and finds was supposed to walk over and kiss her head. And so he walks over and he leans down, but finds working as the character is this man is not the kind of man is going to kiss anyone. And so instead he like [00:55:00] puts his hand. On her head and puts his forehead on his hand.
And it was like, wow, there he like exemplified this whole no touch kind of person.
Stephen: Yeah. And it made it much creepier. Yeah.
Rhys: The third course that comes out is called memory and right about now. If it wasn’t disturbing enough there’s this story that he tells before he does, you have this brief thing where the older couple is sitting there, Robert and Anne, and they’re talking about Margo and Anne’s she looks like Claire, which is their daughter.
And he’s she doesn’t look like Claire, which comes in later. But then the chef tells this story and he’s just telling it about. How his dad was drunk, abusive and the music comes in now and it starts to build tension as he’s telling the story, his mu his dad was choking his mother [00:56:00] with a phone cable and he stabbed his dad in the thigh with scissors and man, if he’d have known, he would have just gone for the neck.
Stephen: And I thought when he was telling that, I’m like, okay, this is a Sophisticated guy. He’s obviously from where he started, he’s moved up into a different realm of culture and all that, but the way he’s telling the story, the words he’s using are still very much down that lower level culture.
You could say it’s not the finery talking that you’re getting from the food critic and stuff, you know what I’m saying? Trying to say there, the story definitely does not come across as if she had told the story,
Rhys: right? He’s that weird thing where he speaks with an eloquence of the upper class, but the story he tells comes from the lower.
Yes. So yeah, it’s and so there the dish is basically, it’s supposed to be tacos, taco Tuesday, ha. That was an [00:57:00] improvised line, right? Ralph faints. Just improvise that line. They kept it in. It is like a roasted chicken on a coiled up phone cable with a pair of scissors jammed into its leg and then printed tortillas.
They’re like, Oh we have the ability to print on our tortillas. And we’re hoping that they bring back memories for you. And once you see what’s on the tortillas, for sure. Something’s really
Stephen: fucked up. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Very disturbing. Just for looking at a picture. That’s not gore. That’s the thing.
It’s right.
Rhys: So like the bros get bank account statements showing that they’ve been embezzling money or miss billing clients. The star gets. Scenes from a movie that he was in a long time ago. That wasn’t a big hit. The food critic gets images of all the restaurants that closed down because she gave them a bad review.
The Oh, Tyler gets taco shells with his, him photographs of him [00:58:00] taking pictures of the food, which he’s not supposed to. And then the old couple the wife is looking at them and they’re basically pictures of Robert with prostitutes. I have no idea
Stephen: who that girl is, or that one.
Rhys: So Tyler’s Oh my God, you think chef’s mad.
And she’s just relax. And he like snaps at her, like literally snaps at her and then like bark something at her. And she’s you know what? Screw this. She’s I’m going to the bathroom. And she goes into the bathroom. She walks in. First, she sees the silver door and Elsa’s there can I help you?
And she’s I was looking for a bathroom. So she gives her direction. She walks in, goes into the bathroom, opens the window and lights a cigarette. And you see somebody walking with wings across the yard. It’s Oh, that’s odd.
Stephen: Yeah. That doesn’t faze her too much.
Rhys: No, she does get disturbed when chef comes into the bathroom, despite her protests.
Stephen: And honestly. [00:59:00] I don’t think it bothered and disturbed her, but the quorum said, you’re not supposed to be here, but she personally didn’t seem that upset about it.
Rhys: She didn’t, but I think about that point in time, she’s realizing that there are cultural boundaries that this guy’s just willing to break.
Yeah. And so he might be dangerous, I’m locked in here. There’s no boat. We
Stephen: know that. And some guy just walked away with the pair of wings. Yeah.
Rhys: It really sticks in his craw that he doesn’t know who she is. And he’s you shouldn’t be here tonight. The next next course is called the mess.
And, it’s, this is where everything, this is where the train comes off the rails. Oh yeah. Everything was creeping up to it. And this is about halfway through the film. Start by laying out a tarp. They decorate it a little bit. The kitchen itself has like a big hanging cloth.
They pull across everything and this guy comes up.
Stephen: Tarp went down. I went, Oh, this is not going to be good. [01:00:00] Yeah. Too many gangster movies for this to be good.
Rhys: Any horror movie where someone’s unrolling a tarp on the floor. You know what that’s for? Yeah. Jeremy Loudon. He is the ultimate, this really shows you the cult like level that chef has, and he wanted to be good.
He wanted to be chef and he’s just, he’s not talented enough to do that. And chef leans in and gives him that Judas kiss or the godfather, to his brother kind of thing. And then he gives him the kiss and Jeremy Lotton pulls a gun, blows his brains out in front of everybody. And the staff is just open up the kitchen again, wrap the body up. Yep. Everyone else is freaking out and then they start to rationalize it. Oh, was there a squib? Oh, it was just put on for us. It’s part of the story. But the music keeps ramping up. Yeah. And as everyone’s like freaking out, chef just yells at them to [01:01:00] eat.
And, so the dish is ripped Jeremy Loudon, but yeah, that was that course.
Stephen: And they’re all denial. They’re all rationalizing it and just going about normal business, man. That is such a commentary on. Our culture and life, especially you go to like big cities or something, yeah, there, there could be a whole lot said just by that scene.
Well,
Rhys: even if you’re going to rationalize the whole thing away, it’s just being set up for you. The old couple don’t want to be part of this. So the old guy’s getting ready to leave two big guys, grab him. And Nelson’s which hand? And he’s what? And she’s which hand? And he can’t, he doesn’t answer.
And she is like very well the le the ring finger of the left hand and these guys just put his hand on the table, cut his finger off. Yep. Now everyone’s okay, something’s really jacked up. . Yeah.
Stephen: The actors, you go
Rhys: talk to them, the actor’s assistant’s, like why [01:02:00] don’t you talk to the chef? You know him And he is I don’t really know him.
I’m a name dropping whore. . Yes.
Lillian, however. The food critic is still convinced this is all just for her benefit. This is all stagecraft Okay. Everybody else is pretty sure what they just saw, especially Robert. Yes. As they pick his ring up off the floor, your husband’s ring, madam.
Stephen: I love the food critics assistant throughout this whole thing.
He’s still trying to, okay, I’m going with what she says. He’s maintaining his not freak out,
Rhys: but. Yeah. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the fact that he got his ring finger cut off because he’s a cheating bastard. So yes, that’s going to happen. The chef calls Margo into the kitchen and he’s look, are you one of them?
Are you one of us? And she’s if I’m one of you, do I live? And she’s he’s no, everyone’s dying tonight.
Stephen: Yeah. I’m laughing about it now, when we’re talking about it, but there was no laughing when it was going on. It was really intense.
Rhys: He’s do [01:03:00] you want to die with those who give or with those who take?
You have some time to think about it. And he sets a timer. Tyler’s having a freaking out. He thought she got some private tasting.
Stephen: Oh yeah. Yeah. Don’t worry about the guy that shoots his head off. Don’t worry about the guy that loses his finger and that we’re now all in danger and that we can see, Oh man, you got to talk and I didn’t hear what it was.
You got something special. Yeah.
Rhys: And he brings out a palate cleanser, which is basically a T and he’s giving it to everybody and he starts talking. Everyone’s still really freaking out. And the bros are like, man, this is over. We’re shutting this place down. And they mentioned their boss who actually owns the restaurants and chef points to the window and their boss is out there bound with feathers on a line dangling over the ocean.
The
Stephen: wings that Margo saw being carried earlier.
Rhys: Yeah. And right about this time, everyone’s Oh my God, [01:04:00] Tyler’s like. Chef, do I taste bergamot in this? He’s yes, you do. He’s even rolling his eyes at this guy. So he does, he takes this partner of his and lowers him into the sea to drown.
And Then he calls out like each table as he goes around, like the critic how many restaurants has just been closed down based on her being spiteful and the old keep old couples been in 11 times and he’s what have you eaten? Name it. Yeah. And the guy can’t name anything and ends like, God, he’s like cod and he’s it’s halibut.
You donkey, which is actually an insult that Oh, the British chef throws around a lot. Oh,
Stephen: Ramsey. Yeah.
Rhys: Gordon Ramsey calls people donkeys all the time. So that’s where finds picked that up. He’s it matters to the halibut. That’s a really good point. Yeah,
Stephen: the guy lowered into the water. I was [01:05:00] seriously waiting for piranhas to start eating him up.
It seemed to fit, they’re doing food. They’re feeding. They’re talking about the environment and life. And here he is getting chewed up by the piranhas. Plus then it takes away that, you know what? We might be able to swim the shore and get out of here. That’s true.
Rhys: That was his name. Doug Varick.
And of course the bros are like, how much is it going to take? How much? And it’s you can’t buy your way out of this. It’s done. Margo’s timer goes off. And so it’s time for her to decide, and this guy’s got a really great sense of people. The shit shovelers is what he called, refers to himself and his crew as, and he’s your job was to bring joy to people.
And he asks about her history with Robert, and it turns out Robert wanted to masturbate in front of her. And she was supposed to tell him he was a good man while he called her by his daughter’s
Stephen: name. Yeah, that is a [01:06:00] wow. That was a disturbing right there. Yeah. The fact that it’s probably very true and close to the truth for way too many people.
Yeah.
Rhys: She says she can she, you can see she almost feels for him. Cause like he knows. What it’s like to be providing services to these kinds of people, you know, and there, and he’s we both used to enjoy our jobs, and he’s do you enjoy it anymore? And she’s no. And he’s he hasn’t felt the desire to cook for ages and he misses that.
About there. He’s laid the seed in her head and how she’s going to get out. Yeah, the next course is called man’s folly and basically he has a sous chef who he hit on and she ignored his advances and he tried again and again, she ignored his advances. So he just ignored her and he apologizes for that.
And she gets to stab him in the leg with a pair of scissors.
Stephen: And I really thought that wasn’t the leg
Rhys: she was. Yeah, I thought for sure that he was going to be singing high. Yeah, [01:07:00] but so all of the men have to pay for his misdeed. And so they have 45 seconds to, and one guy just takes off and he’s
Stephen: okay, that was humorous.
That was chuckle
Rhys: worthy. 45 seconds starts now. Originally they had written it and they wanted the men to have to eat out of dog bowls, wearing no pants as a humiliation kind of thing. But then. Reflecting on it and I don’t know if, I have the list of notorious films, I’m working my way through there is a notorious horror film called Salo, 120 days of Sodom.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. It’s very obscure. It’s Italian. And it’s a disturbing film. Just no two ways around it. The guys were like, you know what? That sounds too much like a scene out of Salo, which there is a scene where boys are paraded around on leashes and made to eat out of bowls.
And they decided to cut it. [01:08:00] I just said to myself, okay. I can respect that, but how many people would know that reference
Stephen: that’s, yeah,
Rhys: goes outside to watch this Catherine Keller. And she’s the chef sous chef who this happened to the mother doesn’t have to go outside.
She just stays at her table and drinks. When all the boys take off, Tyler has to specifically be told to go.
Stephen: This doesn’t apply to me. Yeah.
Rhys: And then Catherine’s let’s all go in. It’s getting chilly. And so all the ladies sit around and they get. Food and it’s like just, women hanging out together, Margo’s if any of you care, my name’s, I don’t remember what it starts with an E like Ellen or something like that.
And nobody does care. Then the food critics like, Hey, I could get you, I could get you your own restaurant just make sure we don’t die here. And she was like, Oh no, that was my idea. I was so proud of the fact they went with it. The death is the
Stephen: whole thing.
And then they’re all we might as well drink. Yeah, [01:09:00]
Rhys: they’re like, okay, it’s over. The last guy who gets caught is the Critic’s Assistant. And because he was the last, he gets the Pessard egg, which is a fancy. But
Stephen: I love that they open it. Hand it in and close the chicken coop because he’s in
Rhys: the chicken coop.
Enjoy. Margo’s real name is Erin and she was from Brockton, Massachusetts. It turns out.
So you have two more people who the chef hasn’t called out yet. One is the star and the star is like, chef, why is this happening to me? And he’s because I had one day off in this year and I went to see your movie and it sucked. And he’s I didn’t write it. I didn’t. I just acted and he’s yeah, but I hate to see talented, creative people who are just flailing about.
Cause you know, they’re past their prime and he seemed to accept that. He’s okay. And he’s what about her? And he points to his assistant and he’s like, where’d you go to school? And she says, Brown. And he’s student loans. And she’s [01:10:00] no. And he’s you’re dying tonight, which, I did not come from a wealthy background by any stretch of the imagination. My brother, through his own ingeniousness, ended up going to MIT. Student loans, for sure. So you can have like brilliant, inspired people go to very high end schools. They’re still going to have to pay for stuff. And if you’re going to a very high end school and you’re not paying for something, then, maybe the scales were tilted in your favor.
Stephen: But we were lucky your brother did go to MIT, because that’s how we passed our chemistry.
Rhys: That’s true. Tyler, he calls out because Tyler knew all along that everyone was going to die. He’d been corresponding with chef Anya Taylor joy, improvised punching him in the face. That was her idea. Oh, wow. I was like, that makes all kinds of sense.
And so they call him up and they put on this jacket and he’s all a proud and it’s very parallel with that. Jeremy Loudon, the guy who did the mess Margo does shed a [01:11:00] single tear. Cause like she can see yeah, I am not going to name any names, but this very strongly reminded me of a certain band director that we used to play for where he could just destroy you.
And that’s exactly what he does. Yeah. He’s like cook for us and Tyler didn’t know how to cook. What the hell does he know from cooking? And it’s absolutely miserable what he makes. And when he’s done, he’s like standing there and chef just leans in and whispers in his ear. We don’t actually get to hear what he says.
And he just takes his jacket off and walks
Stephen: away. As he’s turning the corner, he’s pulling his tie off. Yes. I saw, but didn’t think about.
Rhys: Then Margo has to decide, and she’s I’m with you. And he’s go get this barrel. And as she’s going to get the barrel, Tyler hanging in the fridge, the walk in freezer.
Stephen: And then, because right now it’s been bouncing around a little bit, but a lot of focus on Tyler, but others too now it’s pretty much centered [01:12:00] on Margot for the rest of the movie. It’s pretty much around her
Rhys: at this stage. We know that it’s Margot. She walks off to find this barrel. She’s not really finding it.
She decides to go into chef’s house. And when she goes in the chef’s house, Elsa shows up and Elsa’s you’re not replacing me and she grabs a knife. And this is a perfect example of why you shouldn’t get in fights when you’re mad. Because Elsa is just so pissed off. Every single swing is telegraphed.
It’s over the top, huge. She’s not hitting anything like that. And then Margo just. Running around like a chicken with their head cut off manages basically to take Elsa out basically because Elsa was so fueled by rage. She couldn’t like actually stop and think what’s the best way to kill this person with a
Stephen: knife.
With, but also [01:13:00] I took that a little bit as Margo has been on the streets a little bit more. So she might have some more instincts that everybody else wouldn’t.
Rhys: And that’s true because Margo actually. I don’t think that she’s not like some, she’s not some killer. She’s not Vernon Sloan from hold the dark.
But she’s able to not get hit, which is something it’s for somebody who’s, a sex worker. That’s actually a really important skill to have true. And she does a great job of not getting hit. And when she accidentally kills Elsa, she does let out this little squeal, like. Yeah, I didn’t mean to do that, but yeah, it’s done now.
So then she’s looking at this door and I, there was an old ghost story. It was a blue beard who has a wife and there’s a door. She’s not allowed to open. Oh yeah. And then she opens it and finds all the bodies of his other lives. That’s what it reminded me of. She opens the door, but [01:14:00] instead of the bodies of all chefs, other wives it’s like the ghosts of all of chefs, other lives.
It’s got all of these old awards for the places that he used to work. She notes. One of them is like this best cook at a burger place called Tantalus. And Tantalus, Tantalus was a Greek. Who tested the God’s omnipotence, he’s going to see if they actually do know everything. Cause he kills his son and makes it into soup and feeds it.
Yeah. And it’s wow, why would you name a restaurant? I know. I know the symbolism is nice, but nobody in their right mind would name a restaurant that, but
Stephen: it did seem a little odd.
Rhys: She finds a radio and she like calls for help if she actually knew anything about radio, she would have realized that was a CB, not a VHF radio, the Coast Guard doesn’t monitor CB channels.
So anybody claiming to be the Coast [01:15:00] Guard is not. She goes back, brings a barrel. I don’t know where the barrel came from, but she brings a barrel back into the restaurant. They’re celebrating the birthday party for one of the bros. The guy’s you told him it’s my birthday and yeah, we thought it’d be funny.
The chef is talking about chef’s hands and how he can no longer be hurt. He can hold it over an open flame. And he like quotes MLK and everyone seemed to think that was like a hilarious thing that he quotes MLK. And one of the guys was like, is he quoting MLK? And I don’t know that it was very
Stephen: funny.
No, it wasn’t funny. Again, I, I was thinking about this as we’re sitting here talking. They might’ve, if they wanted it to be funnier, I think they chose the wrong actor cause Fiennes really played this very straight and made it creepy and stuff. If they wanted it funnier, somebody else might’ve.
And again, I’m not criticizing and I’m not saying it’s wrong cause I think Fiennes is [01:16:00] phenomenal in this movie. And that’s why I, we were getting what we’re getting instead of what the writers originally.
Rhys: And I, I think, like them being appalled that he’s quoting. Martin Luther King was fighting for the rights of the underprivileged at the time it was racial.
If you have a word where all things are equal, those in the serving class. Are the underserved because, they’re supporting people who have far more money than they are ever going to see. And all of the money that gets made from them doing that goes to someone else, not them. So there is some social equity that happens to Martin Luther, when Martin Luther King talks that transcends race.
That you could apply to just about, anybody, but a boat shows up and a guy claims to be the coast guard and walks in and he looks the part except for the flannel shirt that he’s got on under his life jacket. And everything looks like, yeah, he’s going to save us. But the chef points [01:17:00] out to the diners, basically what horrible people there.
He’s don’t say anything or this innocent man is going to die.
Stephen: And this is the one part where I’m like, wow. So this is really commentary on all these upper echelon people. First of all, it didn’t fit the stereotypes, all these, I’m better than this guy. So who cares? It seems to be the attitude it should have been, but it makes them all not say anything at first that I don’t know.
That struck me as a little bit man to accepting of them of, Oh this is our fate. We don’t want to hurt this guy. That was the only part of the movie that I didn’t like, actually.
Rhys: Yeah. He recognizes the star chef asks if he wants a autograph, it’s like, Oh, I don’t want to bother you. And he’s no, it’s fine.
And of course, was on my rights, help us. The guy pulls out his gun. It looks like everyone’s saved. Honestly, if he was an actual single coast guard guy, which, they [01:18:00] would never just send one guy in, but if it was a single coast guard guy, I don’t think everyone’s saved. Cause there’s a lot of big people there and a lot of people armed with crazy sharp knives.
You only have so many rounds in that gun.
Stephen: Yeah. And he wouldn’t have just said, Oh, we got a call. Oh, you’re all good. Won’t go leave,
Rhys: so they all act fines is getting arrested. And the guy actually turns out his guns just lighter. He lights a candle and it’s. You’re all going to die.
And so chef is you know what? I Margo, you’re one of your taker, you’re horrible. And he walks away. And this is where, if you’re going to go with the final girl trope, this is where she’s super comes in. She is using word play and mental manipulation. Like he does against him. She’s basically using his own weapons against him.
She’s. On the [01:19:00] one hand, that’s very final girl, but on the other hand, she smokes, she drinks, she’s a sex worker, so she’s obviously had lots of sex. She was in Friday the 13th, she’d be dead already. True. So she’s like the opposite of your typical final girl, but the results are the same.
And she, it clicks with her. She’s she claps and gets everyone’s attention. Chef’s what the hell? And she’s I want to send my food back. And he’s what’s wrong with the food? And she’s it tastes like it was made with no love. You cook with obsession, not love. And he’s fine.
What do you want? She’s what do you have? He’s like everything. She’s I want a burger. Yeah. And he’s okay. She’s not some fancy hook culture burger. I want a real burger. He’s I’ll make a burger that tastes like the first burger you’ve ever had. She’s okay. Does it come with fries?
She’s like, how much is it going to run me? It’s nine 99. And I’m like, that’s actually a good [01:20:00] price for that burger
Stephen: price. It was a double. Yeah. Yeah.
Rhys: He throws the price out there. She’s I come with fries. He’s like Julian or. Shoot. I don’t remember what the crinkle cut maybe. And yeah he goes back and he cooks it.
And for the first time in the movie, he smiles. He’s like genuinely happy doing it. And she gets the only food out of the entire menu that was touched by chef. All the other food is prepared by everyone else.
Stephen: Yeah, I noticed that. I’m like, wow. And I can see that point you, you work so hard at this thing.
You love to be promoted to the point where you don’t do it anymore. That’s. Pretty common
Rhys: with there are so many times where I turned down opportunities to move into a position where I wouldn’t be doing design anymore, I would be managing designers and going to meetings and doing paperwork.
And I’m like, why would I want to do that? Her the food and she’s in a really tight [01:21:00] spot and he’s been in the dick and he’s going to be even worse, but when she bites into it, even she has to admit that it’s amazing. You can look on her face and she’s wow, that’s a burger. And then she’s completely pulls this whole trick. She’s but it’s too much. Can I get it to go?
Stephen: That now that was humorous. It could have been laugh out loud, funny, but the way it was played was. Like dead solid serious.
Rhys: Yeah, it’s oh my god. She figured a way out But
Stephen: not only that she figured out what he meant what the whole night was for that this whole Like she kept saying he’s using you and he’s doing the you guys what you do to His class of people, she, he got that.
She figured it out. She gets it. That’s what saved her.
Rhys: And as she’s walking out and it’s just go, just go. The rest of us are here. It’s a done deal. You just go.
Stephen: Yeah, that was like. [01:22:00] Wow, what are these people smoking? You know what I mean? You must really realize how crappy you are in life.
Rhys: It’s the whole cult thing with his charisma.
Because as he points out, there are lots of times through the night, they could have tried to get away, but they didn’t. And in the end, so he says dessert is the final dish. Everybody gets a goodie bag. And in. In the goodie bag is one of his partner’s fingers. So they all have a guy’s finger in there with some granola.
And they’re like getting ready. And he goes into this whole thing about how s’mores I never gave this much thought to s’mores, but they are like the perfect representation of the hideousness of American food culture. I was
Stephen: like, yeah, this is ruining s’mores, man. It
Rhys: is. He’s and your parents tell you that it’s good and it’s a lie.
Your parents are lying to you. And I’m like, man, wow. He’s really like nailing this. Bring out giant marshmallow jackets that they hang over top [01:23:00] of everyone and the chocolate hats they’re all wearing. And he stands in the middle with a hot coal that he’s been holding forever, like his hand smoldering, he just drops it and everything catches fire.
And he’s I love you all. And they’re all like, we love you, chef. And even the guests were saying it completely wrapped up with the whole rest of the cult.
Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. And you know him saying you guys could have tried to escape if they had done that, that would have been a fairly typical slasher like movie where we’re just following people around trying to escape, and we’ve seen that how many hundreds of times it’s totally flipped that on its head.
Rhys: It’s not unlike midsummer where Danny all of a sudden realizes and accepts where she’s at. Only this is like a whole group of people like going. Okay. No, we were dicks. We get it now. I also thought it was really funny that Margot only tips him 5 cents. Yeah,
Stephen: I [01:24:00] thought that’s true. , that’s not the typical percentage, but yeah.
Yeah.
Rhys: The biggest after they’re all burning up, Margot had my biggest problem with this movie. As Margot gets onto a cutter and just magically knows how to run it. You turning it on. Is it sure, much less actually piling it safely somewhere away, but she sits there and she eats and you can see the fire reflected in her eye.
And that’s the end of the menu.
Stephen: Yeah, it was not what I expected. Cause they really were pushing it. Like it was most dangerous game and that was two minutes of the whole freaking movie. And like you said when you’re looking at it, it’s described as. It’s dark comedy and you’re like, okay, where’s the comedy?
It made it weird to watch. Cause you’re trying to figure it all out.
Rhys: And that was the exasperating thing for me. It was like, if I wouldn’t have ever researched this, I would have just gone on, just enjoyed the movie. But as I’m researching it, I’m like [01:25:00] how do you find this funny? Cause what he’s saying isn’t
Stephen: wrong.
That, yeah, it, which makes good horror.
Rhys: There was an alternative ending that they proposed and I get why they cut it. It logistically would have been a nightmare that was going to end with fire department there cleaning up and they find a fireproof door and behind it was supposed to be chef’s head.
And his two hands and the menu, but that means at some point in time, he needs to be beheaded and his hands need cut off. Then who actually kills everybody else that would have been just from a plot standpoint, very messy too.
Stephen: Yeah, but all so there you go. So there’s all of season four, including our bonus bonus number two.
Rhys: Yeah, we had two bonuses this season.
Stephen: We did.
Rhys: Yeah, we had attack of
Stephen: the killer tomatoes. Oh, that’s right. How could I forget that one? We worked overtime. We did. And now we’re going to do a part of your talk. I’ll get some clips and [01:26:00] stuff in there. So it’s a series bonus. Yes, there you go. All right, man.
So next we’ve got season five coming up, which I think we’ve got most of the movies we may. I think there’s a couple more I gotta go find.
Rhys: It’s true. And some of them are pretty easy to find others. You’d be really, I started looking into trying to find some of them. Man, I don’t know how Steve’s going to get ahold of this,
Stephen: but yeah, there’s a couple and we may just have to cut those and do what we can, but shout out the Tubi for the, that’s
Rhys: Holy cow.
I was really listening to our first episode talking about how hard it was to find martyrs. You can find both of them on Tubi. Yeah.
Stephen: Hey, Tubi, if you’re looking for some spokespeople and looking to do some advertising, we’re open. Yeah, there you go. All right, man.
It’s been an interesting movie. So it has here’s a, on the season five, on the season five. All right. Catch you later, man. All right. Take it
Rhys: easy.
