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Welcome to Movies We Like. Each episode, Andy Nelson and Pete Wright invite a film industry veteran to discuss one of their favorite films. What makes a movie inspirational to a cinematographer or a costume designer? Listen in to hear how these pros watch their favorite films. Part of The Next Reel family of film podcasts.
Welcome to movies we like, part of the True Story FM Entertainment podcast network. I'm Andy Nelson, and that over there is Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:It is. It's truly. It is Pete Wright.
Andy Nelson:On today's episode, we have invited Mandy Kaplan, voice over artist, writer, podcaster, actor, and producer of Miscast LA to talk about Lassie Hallstrom's What's Eating Gilbert Grape, a movie she likes. Mandy, we are so excited to have you on the show. How are you?
Mandy Kaplan:I'm thrilled. Thank you so much, and thank you for pronouncing the director's name first. So now I know how to pronounce it.
Andy Nelson:Oh, I'm hoping I pronounce it right. I didn't, I didn't, how how do you pronounce? But
Mandy Kaplan:Oh, no research went into that, Andy?
Pete Wright:None. Improvisational pronunciation.
Andy Nelson:I I feel like I've heard it pronounced that way, like, at the Oscars or something. So I feel like I'm 90% correct.
Mandy Kaplan:Yes. Yeah. Well, thank you guys for letting me do this.
Andy Nelson:Well, we're we're just we're thrilled.
Pete Wright:I mean, we're gonna be talking about the movie, but I thought we might open with your experience, doing the audiobook narration of Mastered by Malone. You have an entire catalog of fantastic audiobook credits, but I think mastered by Malone is where I would like to start. Are you okay?
Mandy Kaplan:I'm fine. I'm just grateful that my mom doesn't know how to listen to podcasts. What was a book about a dominatrix and or or it was like a cheap, not cheap, brilliant, 50 shades of gray knock off
Pete Wright:Yes.
Pete Wright:About a Yeah. The the cover
Mandy Kaplan:is so be the dom.
Pete Wright:Very abdominal, I would say, is the word. The abdominal cowboy.
Mandy Kaplan:Seen the cover, but okay.
Pete Wright:Well, you are missing out. You're missing out.
Mandy Kaplan:Wow. So if
Pete Wright:we could start with if we just make sure that link is
Mandy Kaplan:in the show notes.
Andy Nelson:Absolutely. Of
Mandy Kaplan:all my classy ass credits, that's what you pull up. Thanks, Pete.
Pete Wright:That's because I love you so much, Mandy. I have to take you down a peg just a little bit.
Mandy Kaplan:Fair enough. I'd love to see you try.
Andy Nelson:You say that Pete, but now, sales after people listen to this, I know sales and downloads for that, that book will skyrocket. So see, you're only helping.
Pete Wright:Oh, the title is just so provocative. Yes.
Mandy Kaplan:Yes.
Pete Wright:I'll get
Pete Wright:that in my subscription.
Pete Wright:Yeah. Well, let's dig into you
Andy Nelson:and your career. So audiobooks obviously is one thing, and that's a big part of your career is is voice over in all sorts of different projects. But you've been in LA for quite a while, and you've been working in the industry in many capacities. So how would you describe your journey into working in the the production world as a whole?
Mandy Kaplan:I am very lucky that voice over has been my steady career for 20 plus years, and that supports the habit of writing and creating and acting and all of the other things that I endeavor to do. Yeah. I'm very lucky for that. And I think everything shifted when I had a kid.
Pete Wright:Spoiler alert, I have a kid.
Mandy Kaplan:And before that, it was all about I've got to get my own sitcom, and I was in the game, and I was going on exciting auditions at studios and meeting exciting people and booking the occasional guest star. And I was really in it. And then I had a child, and the demand was like, put your newborn baby down and get to Warner Brothers right away. You have a callback. And I I just couldn't make that work.
Mandy Kaplan:So I gave up that aspect of my career with the agents and the studios, and I focused on the things I could control, which are creating my own stuff and writing and producing. And it's much more soul satisfying, but a lot less glamorous than the good old days when I was close to getting on Dawson's Creek.
Pete Wright:Dawson's Creek? Yeah. Oh my
Andy Nelson:right in Pete's Alley.
Mandy Kaplan:Yeah.
Pete Wright:Yeah. My I I don't think an episode's complete unless we have a Dawson's drop, so thank you for knocking that out.
Mandy Kaplan:You're very welcome. I don't wanna wait.
Andy Nelson:Yeah. Right. Well, this would, I guess, be the first complete episode because I think that
Pete Wright:is the first I
Pete Wright:think that's
Mandy Kaplan:the first one. Oh, Mandy Fabian didn't bring up Dawson's.
Pete Wright:No. No. I feel like we were this close.
Andy Nelson:That's right. That's right.
Mandy Kaplan:Yeah. But yep.
Andy Nelson:It's interesting, and it's a hard decision to make to kind of go through that process of figuring out, like, when you're wanting to be a performer and figuring out, like, okay, I I now have some limits set on me. How can I redefine what I want to do so that I can actually still be doing what I want to do, but within these constraints? And, I mean, was it a difficult process for you to kind of, like, navigate that after your kid was born?
Mandy Kaplan:Well, to be clear, I wasn't on my own sitcom, so I wasn't giving up a ton other than driving around Los Angeles all the time and getting rejected. But, yes, it's difficult because I really I also pursued musical theater. That was my degree and my first love. But the the shift made perfect sense when I did create my show miscast, which is now 14 years old, like my son. And it's designed to to bring joy and satisfy my soul.
Mandy Kaplan:It's not gonna make me famous. It's not gonna make anyone famous, but all of those performers do it for the love of doing it. In terms of Hollywood, I love writing. That that's become my main focus. I love it deeply.
Mandy Kaplan:I I was just writing and telling my husband all about this shift I made and to make a brand new act work in my screenplay, and it gives me pure joy. I've come very close to selling some stuff convert been in exciting rooms, and something big will break soon. But I try to take joy in doing it because you can't control anything beyond that. Right.
Andy Nelson:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So okay. So narrowing down to some of the specifics.
Andy Nelson:So voice over. I mean, you know, we've had, JP Carliek, a a great voice over actor on the show Yes. And talked a little bit about that line of work. And what was interesting in in talking to JP is that moment of a realization that he had where, oh, I don't also have to be as like, an actor in front of the camera too. I can just do voice over.
Andy Nelson:And and kind of like the the great relief that was for him. Voice over gives you a lot of other opportunities. You know, there's, I mean, so many different things you can be doing in voice over. What is it that you love about when you're working in with your voice as an actor that still kind of fulfills your kind of those energies that you have for putting yourself out there?
Mandy Kaplan:Well, I I mostly love working in my pajamas. I don't know if that's if that's what you meant.
Andy Nelson:That is exactly what I meant.
Mandy Kaplan:JP and I have very different careers. He's blessed and gifted to be doing, animation primarily. So he's a lot more creative than I am. I do a lot more things like, so you've been hired at this major company. Let me take the next hour and 45 minutes and explain your benefits program.
Mandy Kaplan:It's a lot less creative, but I love it. In a weird way, I love it because I'm pretending to be a person who understands open enrollment and HSAs and FSAs. I don't understand those things, but I explain them on the on the daily. So I just to get to talk for a living is such a gift. And when I do audiobooks and I get to do novels with different characters and voices and accents, that's a thrill for me.
Mandy Kaplan:But that's my bread and butter, not the animation stuff, unfortunately. I do animation. I've done some, but it's not as creative as what JP is doing, which is why I need to be, you know, writing slasher movies in my kitchen to keep my creative juices flowing. I shouldn't say slasher and juices in the same sentence. That got away from me.
Mandy Kaplan:We'll fix that in post.
Pete Wright:That's that's right. That's right. Every podcast and rodeo. I know. The I I still I mean, I one of the things that we delight in when would I mean, we've known each other for some time.
Pete Wright:And when we first started podcasting together, I, of course, went through your entire Audible catalog and played all the samples. And it like, I joke about about our our, you know, delicious opening, title. But you you have an awesome, awesome voice for this stuff. Like, you have you have great characters. You have great but what I know about the odd and you've done a lot of audiobooks.
Pete Wright:Yeah. Like, you're one of those. Your voice is everywhere in, the Audible catalog. But what I know about, the business of audiobook recording is that it is physically, practically exhausting to do. How how can you talk just a little bit about what goes into the business of producing your part of an audiobook?
Mandy Kaplan:Yeah. I mean, I almost solely work on my own. Gone are the days of go to the studio and have an engineer do everything for you. So I do all my own recording and all my own homework, which is if it's a novel with characters, I do a first read of the book. I make notes about characters because one time I got lazy, and I thought, I know what I'm doing.
Mandy Kaplan:And I got to the end of the book where it said, now that he was drunk, his Irish accent, which you could always hear, was really pronounced.
Pete Wright:And I
Mandy Kaplan:had to go back because I didn't know he had an Irish accent because the author didn't think to mention it until page 400. So I I go through I make notes about characters' ages, origins, anything I learn about them. Are they siblings with someone else so their voices might sound the same? Are they have they lost their accent, but you might hear a trace of it in certain moments? I make copious notes about characters.
Mandy Kaplan:I love archetypes. I love using people I know. So when it says, this professor was really uptight, I'm like, oh, that's Niles Crane. I'm just gonna rip off Niles Crane and do him. And then I'm off to the races with recording and engineering.
Mandy Kaplan:I don't do the final mix. I send it off to a place to do the quality control, and they catch all my mistakes. And, I mean, I make 1 or 2. And and then they do the engineering.
Pete Wright:But, actually, I'm gonna interrupt you because I think that's really important. The but before we talk about the production side, how, like, how long do you record straight? And and, you know, how how has that improved over years of practice?
Mandy Kaplan:I'm pretty good with cold reads, I have to admit. I'm pretty good. It takes me about twice as long. So if a book is 10 hours, it generally takes me 20 plus hours to record it, not much more. However, I still have other jobs coming and going.
Mandy Kaplan:I have, you know, so much else to do. So I'll sit in my studio for 2 full hours without taking a break. But after that, I I get a little loopy, and I I need to have more espresso and take a walk.
Pete Wright:And are you editing it yourself? Like, as you go, do you send an edited mix to somebody to master?
Mandy Kaplan:I do.
Pete Wright:That's crazy to me. I've I've produced one audiobook, and it was a absolute nightmare. It made me it it pushed all of my buttons. I did not I was not the reader. I just edited and mastered it, and it was horrific.
Pete Wright:Mostly because I was working with a new reader, and there were a lot of edits in a 10 hour read. And it it just I I I realized where my patience stops.
Mandy Kaplan:Sure.
Pete Wright:And the drinking begins.
Mandy Kaplan:Yeah.
Pete Wright:So I yeah. So, anyway, you send it off, and then that so that that you you contract with an external studio to master it? Or Yeah. You have somebody who does it, and then the finished package, you send off to the publisher.
Andy Nelson:Yes. That's interesting that you're the one who's high so they hire you to do the voice oh, the the read of the book. And when you get hired for that, your job is to do the entire production.
Mandy Kaplan:Yes. I get paid, and then I pay my engineer.
Andy Nelson:Oh, interesting. As as opposed to like, I was I was thinking of being, like, a producing a commercial or something where they bring in the performer to read, and then the performer just leaves. And then it's the audio engineer who they're really hiring to then do the work and as a separate thing.
Mandy Kaplan:That used to be the way. And if I if I were doing, like, a Harper Collins production, that would be the way. But I do so many independent writers I gotcha. Smaller publishing houses where and they know we're all at home with our equipment. They know we can do this.
Mandy Kaplan:So that's where the industry is moving.
Andy Nelson:Gotcha. Gotcha. Fascinating. Fascinating.
Pete Wright:Somewhere in there, you made, you you actually got, you you got 30 nights, made, which was delightful.
Mandy Kaplan:Thank you.
Pete Wright:Still available on Tubi?
Mandy Kaplan:Tubi. Alright. It's actually available on so many platforms, but none of I don't have those platforms. I think it's available on Plex as well. But Oh.
Mandy Kaplan:But, yes, a comedy that I co wrote with Tom W Metz the third, who I'm sure your listeners are familiar with from the True Story family, and our dear friend Johnny Giacalone. We wrote together, produced together, and Johnny and I starred in a Tom W. Metz directed sex comedy. Hi, mom and
Andy Nelson:dad. So, I mean, performing in front of the camera as single character is obviously a little different than, when you're recording a book and you're playing every character and the narrator and your or narrator kind of like the voice of the the author or whatever you wanna call it, like the the story. Talk a little bit about getting yourself into your head space, whether it's like an individual performance, like, for a film versus when you're popping into a book.
Mandy Kaplan:Well, first of all, I tried to play every character in 30 Nights, and Tommy said no.
Pete Wright:So he
Mandy Kaplan:had his own vision. I don't know.
Pete Wright:Yeah. Whatever.
Mandy Kaplan:I mean, I'll I'll be on the level with you. I'm not I'm not a very deep person. I'm not a very deep actress. I I am it wasn't method when I when I'm on camera. I'm in character, and I'm giving it my all.
Mandy Kaplan:But it wasn't I was playing a woman very close to me. You know, I didn't have to do much to drop into her. And the same goes with audiobooks. Even though, you know, maybe I'm playing a Russian spy, but it's just me in my pajamas in my studio trying to take that in for a little bit, and then I just leave it. So it's in audiobooks, I'm hinting at these characters more than actually embodying them.
Andy Nelson:Sure. Yeah.
Pete Wright:Yeah. I wanna talk about your first that first experience of making the movie because that is your I mean, apart from the voice work you've done on things like, you know, Chicken Little and the games fall out and and Final Fantasy, people will undoubtedly need to hear your experience about that on your podcast. We'll talk about that in a moment. I I'm interested in what it was like to turn that idea that you worked on with Johnny and Tom into a feature film and the the duration of that project, which is extraordinarily long. The fact that we're still effectively pitching it today and how long it took to get that going.
Pete Wright:What is that like when you're the work that you normally do for a day job is sit down, record for a bunch of hours, and then be done?
Mandy Kaplan:It was a real pleasure even though it it again, like I said, it was out of our control. We were either gonna get to make the movie or not. We were either gonna get financing or not. So those parts are frustrating. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it.
Mandy Kaplan:It's a lot of hustle and a lot of no's. But the actual process of making the movie was heaven. I mean, we just we all had a great time, and it was years of reasons to get together and write or get together and location scout or get together and strategize. And, you know, when you're doing it with your friends And when the material was, I humbly say, so funny because I I know I wrote it, but that movie is just hilarious to me, and and here we are just coming up with 30 ridiculous sex scenarios. So who doesn't wanna do that?
Mandy Kaplan:So it makes the the, you know, 3, 4 years fly by because we did make a short first, and that got us some attention, and then that got us to be able to make the feature.
Pete Wright:And then festivals and production that I I cannot imagine being in that space of uncertainty when the fun stuff is the writing and the making of the movie. But now you're living in this. Okay. Now I gotta figure out how to sell it space,
Mandy Kaplan:which is
Pete Wright:not necessarily in your wheelhouse as a, you know, creative.
Mandy Kaplan:Not not so much. But I also I have a a brain for business. What what is that quote? A bod for sin.
Pete Wright:And a bod for sin. Yeah. Yep.
Mandy Kaplan:No. I don't mind that stuff. I I think I'm I'm good in that world. And we got very lucky to get a sales agent who said, now we take over, and now we just send you your quarterly reports. So once we went through that process, we were hands off.
Mandy Kaplan:The the worst part of the whole thing was deliverables, which
Pete Wright:was What does that mean?
Mandy Kaplan:Oh my god. They say, okay. Here's what you have to get us so that we can become your sales agents and we can distribute your movie. And it's I don't know what any of these words were. It was might as well have been in Japanese.
Mandy Kaplan:It was so much, and thank God we had people working with us who knew what those were, and Tommy knew what a lot of it was. But you don't just give them a file and say, this is our movie. Take it. You have to give them so much stuff. And I was driving all over town getting I can't even remember the words for them.
Mandy Kaplan:Getting them produced at different places. Oh, we don't do that. You have to go over there for that and come back to us for the credits. And, no, you have to change the credits. And now you have to go back into your original cut to do it.
Mandy Kaplan:And it was lunacy, but we got it done.
Andy Nelson:Yeah. It's like clearance reports and a a title. You have to do, like, a title check and, like, yeah, it's a it's a long laundry list of different types of, you know, your audio and your video all has to be delivered a certain way. I don't know about your project, but, like, sometimes it it all boils down to all the different, you know, you have to provide captions in in different languages and all of that. Yeah.
Mandy Kaplan:Yeah. And I wanna just say we also had a 4th producer. Her name is Liz Vakovec, and she was a beast. She knew what she was doing, and she, you know, when she said jump, and I was like, how high she would. She understood what we were doing.
Andy Nelson:Yeah.
Mandy Kaplan:So thank god for her, and she's wonderful.
Pete Wright:Well and Andy has fever dreams about this stuff. Like, the good kind, wakes up just wondering why don't I have more clearance reports? God, I want another clearance report. Yes.
Mandy Kaplan:Can you make that happen, Pete?
Pete Wright:Yeah. I could've tried. Show us some love. Yeah. That's right.
Andy Nelson:Come on. Well and so, I mean, that was a big part. You're a big part of that production. And and working now, primarily, like, you're you're spending a lot of time writing. And that is, kind of an isolated job, except when you get to have those meetings and you get to talk to people about these projects.
Andy Nelson:But inevitably, it it leads to a lot of joy and everything because you're you're just creating, and you get to do all sorts of things. What's your genres? Like, do you have particular areas of focus that you spend your time in, and and what do you love about those?
Mandy Kaplan:Well, I would always say comedy. I mean, that's just
Andy Nelson:Okay.
Mandy Kaplan:Who I am. And I have a wonderful writing partner named Jonas Vail, and he actually lives in Berlin. So we are very isolated. I'll just Yeah. Yeah.
Mandy Kaplan:Do pages and send them, and he'll do pages and send them. But we work together a lot. We started off writing, like, a heartfelt comedy, a heist movie, and that turned into another comedy, which turned into another comedy. And our brilliant manager said, you know, give us other genres. What else you got?
Mandy Kaplan:And my theory was horror always sells. People love horror movies. Those that that fan base is rabid.
Pete Wright:And Aren't you notoriously prude for violence? Yep. Yep.
Mandy Kaplan:Turns out not writing it. Writing it is okay. Ah. So
Andy Nelson:The key.
Mandy Kaplan:Yeah. So now we've written 2 horror films. It's and, you know, people who know me are like, what? You're doing what? And I'm getting in there with some blood and guts, but they're both they have comedic vents.
Pete Wright:You you gotta tell me what is your, what is the the experience of violence you are most proud of writing that we we will see at some point with no context?
Mandy Kaplan:Somebody making out with a detached head
Pete Wright:Oh, that's
Mandy Kaplan:and ending up with the detached head's gum in their own mouth. Oh, lovely. Okay. There
Pete Wright:you go.
Mandy Kaplan:I mean, I know that's, like, not pure violence. But
Pete Wright:No. But still, it's, there are gonna be people who are like, oh, it's the detached head that's disgusting. And I wager more people are like, oh, they chew each other's gum. Mhmm. I don't care if the head's detached or not.
Pete Wright:That's just unsanitary.
Mandy Kaplan:Yeah. Outstanding.
Andy Nelson:Yep. Well and and, you know, I know, it's it's easy to because, like, when you have that drive for comedy of still imbuing that those other stories with that level of comedy, like you said, like, you're still throwing some comedy into that. And I think there's certainly a level in horror that balances the line of horror and comedy because, we we are talking, on Pete and I on our other show, the next reel, about the early Roger Corman film, the little shop of horrors, and how Roger Corman was like, in a horror movie, you've got a big scare. And then what does the audience do afterward once they've kind of settled down? They're they're laughing because they're kind of laughing at how it hit them.
Andy Nelson:So he wanted to find that blend of, like, well, if they're laughing, let's throw more comedy in and kind of, like, built these these little horror comedies that he would do. And I think that there's those 2 genres, I think, create really exciting blends, and I think you can do a lot with them. And, you know, things I mean, I I don't know how far down the horror road you've gone, but certainly something like Shaun of the Dead, I think, is a perfect example of kind of that horror comedy that, can be such a success.
Mandy Kaplan:They are rare, though. I mean, there are a bunch I love, like Tucker and Dale versus evil and stuff like that. But in pitching, we have been told and we have found you can't really say horror comedy. It can be a horror
Pete Wright:movie,
Mandy Kaplan:and there can be some good laughs. But horror comedy is a genre that makes people go, well, is it a comedy or is it a horror? It's just not Yeah. Clean for people. So we we write horror movies, and then we're thrilled when people say, I also laughed a lot.
Andy Nelson:Gotcha. So it's gotta be subversive. You gotta sneak it in there.
Pete Wright:Have it in the woods. Right? Like
Mandy Kaplan:Not not really a comedy, though. Some funny moments.
Pete Wright:Some funny moments.
Mandy Kaplan:People calls, Scream a horror comedy.
Pete Wright:No. You don't think so?
Mandy Kaplan:It's a horror movie with some funny moments.
Pete Wright:So Yeah. Yeah.
Mandy Kaplan:But Tucker and Dale, that's a a comedy.
Pete Wright:Much more intentionally broad.
Mandy Kaplan:Yes. Funny stuff. Like ready or not, I think Yeah. It qualifies as a comedy.
Andy Nelson:That's interesting to
Mandy Kaplan:see. End all.
Andy Nelson:Yeah. Because it's like, where is the line then? Like, how how many laughs does it require before it can cross the line to do officially being a horror comedy?
Mandy Kaplan:Right. And we're not doing, like, a scary movie parody film. You know? Because there are those as well. We're not doing that.
Mandy Kaplan:So it's No.
Andy Nelson:No. No. Right.
Mandy Kaplan:Totally agree. Total mind, but I love doing it.
Andy Nelson:That's fantastic.
Mandy Kaplan:I really do.
Andy Nelson:Yeah. Fantastic.
Pete Wright:You, you joke about, your mom all the time Yes. Mostly when you say things that are subversive. What what at what point did your, folks look at you and say, oh, this counts as a real job?
Mandy Kaplan:I thought this was gonna be like a a therapy question. You're like, you talk about your mom a lot. My mother begged me to major in something else in college, and I said the only way I'll go to college is if I can major in musical theater. Lucky her. So we we struck that deal.
Pete Wright:Sounds like a real standoff. Yeah.
Mandy Kaplan:Right? Well, I was like, I'm just gonna move to New York City. I'm 17. I'm ready. I, like, I just wanna hit the chorus line, equity lines and audition to be in the chorus of Broadway musicals.
Mandy Kaplan:That's all I ever wanted. So she we struck a deal that I would go to college if I could study this. And, gosh, I guess I gave up bartending slash nannying slash cocktail waitressing slash all of that after I had been doing voice over for about 2 years. And I think that's when she was like, oh, you're no longer slash. You're no longer doing other things.
Mandy Kaplan:You're making a living as an actor. That's probably when it was. Was she happy? Is she happy with it? I don't think so.
Pete Wright:Yeah. But You don't you you don't, have a survey she fills out every few years to to check out your rating.
Mandy Kaplan:She doesn't really understand most of it, the the audiobooks and the podcasts and the writing she gets because she sees movies. But
Pete Wright:Yeah. Right. Yeah. Interesting. Well, it
Andy Nelson:has been fascinating talking with you about your career, but let's shift gears and jump into this movie now that you brought to us, Lasse Hallstrom's What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
Pete Wright:Pandora. It's a town where nothing much ever happens. This is where I live with my family. Doctor said we'd be lucky if Arnie lived to be 10. I can go at any time.
Pete Wright:Arnie, don't be rude. Some days you want him to live? I can't, Gilbert. I know, buddy.
Pete Wright:Okay, son. Come by
Mandy Kaplan:now. Hi.
Pete Wright:Some days you don't.
Andy Nelson:When is this gonna stop? And
Pete Wright:then there's mama. There's my mom in there. You see, with mama, there's no nice way to break it to you. She's not all that big, Gilbert. And I saw a guy at the state fair who was a little bit bigger.
Pete Wright:I haven't always been like this.
Pete Wright:I haven't always been like this.
Mandy Kaplan:Gilbert, I'll need a delivery later.
Pete Wright:Nothing ever happens here. It's those lobsters, isn't it? Why does it always happen to me? Sometimes I just wanna stick her head in having
Andy Nelson:to turn on the gas.
Pete Wright:I gotta know where to go. Gilbert. Please don't disappear.
Andy Nelson:We're taking him in. We've warned you. We've warned your sister.
Pete Wright:They say there's a reason for everything. My son. Give me my son. Maybe someday I'll figure out what it is.
Pete Wright:Oh, look, it's a fraying menace. You know how they mate? The male will sneak up on the female and she'll bite off his head and the rest of his body will keep on mating. And then when they're done, she'll eat them.
Andy Nelson:So this film, I remember when it came out, and I know I went and saw it in theaters, and I remember really enjoying it. I know I've seen it a few times, but I hadn't thought about it in quite a while. And so when this was the movie you wanted to talk about, it was kind of exciting to go back and revisit it. What is it about this movie for you that that, just makes it click so much and and work so well for you?
Mandy Kaplan:My first instinct was to do my favorite movie of all time, Waiting for Goffman, which is, in my mind, a work of genius. It's just perfect. But I wanted to step outside of my normal my usual thing is comedies. I dumb and dumber. I mean, I I'm I'm like a 12 year old boy.
Mandy Kaplan:I laugh at farts. This movie isn't that at all, and I wanted to seem smarter than that on your podcast. So I looked up movies with foreign directors with hard to pronounce names, and this one popped right up.
Pete Wright:No. No. Had you seen it before? No.
Mandy Kaplan:I remember seeing this movie too, and it satisfies my favorite genre, which is small movies about people who love each other and want to do right by each other, but can't seem to. They keep making mistakes. They keep failing each other and themselves, but their intentions are so good. I love that's I know it's a very specific, you know, slice of the movie pie that I'm talking about. But this came out around the same time as Station Agent, if I'm not mistaken, and I slipped for both of those movies.
Mandy Kaplan:I just found them both to be heartbreaking because you were rooting for everybody, and and everybody's rooting for each other but making mistakes. That's what's what this movie it guts me. It just guts me. I I can't explain why I love that, but I think that's life. We all have good intentions, hopefully.
Andy Nelson:Yeah. And well, and I think Lasse Hallstrom is a director who's, made a lot of those sorts of movies through his career. Right? Like, with My Life as a Dog and The Cider House Rules and Ashoka Lot. Like, I feel like all of those films are kind of touching on that in some capacity.
Andy Nelson:Like, human stories about humans trying to figure out how to live with each other and how to find whatever it is they're looking for. And I think that's a key part of this story for sure. This is a story about Gilbert as he's living in this small town in Iowa. I mean, he's kind of floating along. Right?
Andy Nelson:He's just kind of, like, he's got his family. He's got this this older woman that he's sleeping with, older married woman that he's sleeping with. He's got his job, this kind of a dead end job, and there's really not much else for him at this point in time. He you know, his, he's got his, you know, siblings, the youngest of which is, Leonardo DiCaprio. Fantastic, in this film.
Andy Nelson:Just just brilliant in his performance of, Arnie. And then the 2 sisters and then their mom, which is, she is a very obese woman and doesn't leave the house. So he is just stuck. And I think that's what's interesting about this film is the way that it sets up Gilbert's world as this place where he can't even see that there's a way out. Right?
Mandy Kaplan:Right. Haven't we all felt that?
Andy Nelson:Yeah. Yeah.
Mandy Kaplan:Over the course of this summer, his life changes in many ways, but he ends up in the same place. You know? It's not his life doesn't take off. His dreams don't come true. He doesn't hit the lottery.
Andy Nelson:But he does get out. Mhmm.
Pete Wright:What what's fascinating about, to me, about his character, and and I I have to say, what happened? What happened to him, Johnny Depp? Like, he he was just fantastic in this movie. The character that he's that he is embodied here is this character that is so kind of humanely put upon. Like, he is his journey of kindness and goodness in being an abject people pleaser and just existing in that space and not understanding it until sort of late in the film, like what that role, the honor and responsibility of that role is, is extraordinary.
Pete Wright:Like, I found him so beautifully relatable as as just a a good human being who is struggling with the weight of an entire world on his shoulders. And the fact that he is the one responsible for taking care of Arnie, you know, 99% of the time, and also has to deal with reinforcing the basement, ceiling so his mother doesn't fall through the floor. Like, the balance of those duties is stark. He plays this extraordinarily deeply. What an incredible like, everybody talks about Leonardo DiCaprio, which is an extraordinary performance in its own right, but I kind of am here for Johnny Depp.
Pete Wright:Like, he's he's that good to me.
Mandy Kaplan:I agree wholeheartedly. I I happen to love every performance in this movie, and I could go on and on about them. But something that that I love is that it's not a depressing movie. Even though his life is depressing, the town is depressing, the sense of place they establish. Arnie and Gilbert are on the side of the road waiting for campers to go by.
Mandy Kaplan:That's the highlight of their summer is that the campers go by. And there is a joy in that, and I don't know how you achieve that. There's no color in the movie. It's all sepia tones. It should make you wanna turn it off because you can't take it anymore.
Mandy Kaplan:And yet, there is a joy throughout that Johnny Depp finds in Arnie even though Arnie drives him insane. Yeah. Oh, god. All of it is so well done and small.
Pete Wright:You know what I'd I'd forgotten was the in in a movie that is that is narratively sort of plain. Right? Like you said, nothing, extraordinary really happens until kind of the end. This movie is full of suspense. Like, watching it last night, I was really moved by how often I thought something horrible was going to happen, that the movie was gonna pull the rug out from under me and something horrible was gonna happen.
Pete Wright:The hang a flag on mom in the floor, Some another rider could have put her through the floor. They hang a flag on on Arnie 3 times climbing up the the water tower.
Mandy Kaplan:Tower.
Pete Wright:He could have fallen off that water tower. That would have been a dramatic turn. Then he never falls off the water tower. They hang flag on him getting arrested, Arnie getting arrested that 3rd time. They could have done something horrible to him in jail.
Pete Wright:Nothing horrible to him. It happens to him in jail. And yet I felt that roller coaster every time. That was that that's the thing that I think is is a bit, writerly genius that he that Hedges and Aber is able to put me in that space even though it never nothing ever really pans out. I was still in it.
Mandy Kaplan:Right. And if we're in it, imagine what those characters are feeling.
Pete Wright:Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, I think
Andy Nelson:that's what Hallstrom is so good at in the films that he direct is tapping into those little moments in the way that the writers craft the scripts, to to get the actors to give us that where these smaller I mean, none of the films that that he makes, I wouldn't say are, like, big films, but they all kind of have this personal these human stories that we're following. And it's just the way that he gets the actors to kind of find the way to deliver these performances that end us end up drawing us in so much to follow along with these relatively small stories. And I think that's what is so impressive with this film and and revisiting it is just how how connected I immediately am to the characters. And and, Mandy, you were talking about like that right out of the gate. We're watching them sitting by the side of the road, waiting for those those, trailers to come by.
Andy Nelson:And as soon as we see that glint, like, that little sparkle of the sun hitting them, it's just like the spark in in in Arnie's, you know, life. He's just like, he's so excited, and then it just draws us in. And and they just kind of make us they they pull us along so effectively through all of it. And that's, I think, the the smarts in the way that the characters are written and how they interact. It's it's it's just a a really powerful film.
Andy Nelson:And we haven't really jumped into the the love interest that we end up with, for for Gilbert, and that's, Juliette Lewis who's, who's great in the film. And she's only here because she and her grandma are campers, and their truck breaks down, and they have to stop here. And then they're stuck here waiting for a part to get ordered so that they can fix it. So it's new people in town, and and that's something that's kind of exciting. And
Mandy Kaplan:Of course.
Andy Nelson:Yeah. I think it gives us a little bit of that that joy, right, of of seeing him, seeing this new girl and that when they start interacting.
Mandy Kaplan:Well, I know it's it's Gilbert's story, but I think that Arnie is one of the most beautifully portrayed characters I've ever seen. And they don't say why what he has that makes him neurodivergent. He's just neurodivergent. The way Juliette Lewis' character treats him is so realistic. I don't know how much time you've spent with peep with people like Arnie, but I have.
Mandy Kaplan:And people want to be kind, but they're afraid, and they don't quite know how to approach. But then they get a little comfortable, and then something happens that's very uncomfortable. And she walks that line in performance and in writing so beautifully. So as much as it's a lovely story about Gilbert Grape and this girl in town, I fixate on how Arnie factors in and how she treats him. And she wants to bond with him and treat him normally, but it's really difficult.
Mandy Kaplan:I just think that's so real. I I I mean, I took some notes as I was watching, and the word real just appears in every note I took because there's nothing movie esque about this movie. It you feel like you're spying on these people, and it's exquisite, I think.
Pete Wright:Well and and there's something really sort of, I'll say kind of teenage tantalizing or titillating about their road, relationship. The fact that that he becomes kind of a port in the storm for her and that that cycle continues at the end of the movie, sort of the circle completes as she comes back again
Mandy Kaplan:Right.
Pete Wright:On their their caravan trip. And I I think that's really beautiful because, you know, I think we have these relationships in of our youth where we're ships in the night with other people, and they become very short term relationships and still lovely and cherished. And that's one of the things that we get out of this portrayal of young adult love.
Mandy Kaplan:Now Andy said I think it was Andy who said he gets out. But I don't know that the end implies he's getting out, just that she's come back to for another summer.
Andy Nelson:They get into the vehicle with her. And so
Mandy Kaplan:But they don't have suitcases or anything. Like, I think it's
Andy Nelson:They don't have suitcases.
Pete Wright:I think they're just riding into their house. Right?
Mandy Kaplan:Yeah. I think it's Oh. You're back. I'm back. I'm so excited, and we can spend another week or whatever of the summer together.
Mandy Kaplan:Yeah. I don't necessarily think he's going anywhere.
Andy Nelson:Well, because I've always because my my assumption, and I guess that's a good, point, certainly something worth discussing, because there's nothing left for them in the town anymore. Mama's passed away, and they've gotten rid of the house, and his sisters have have gone their own separate ways. And he and Arnie are the only ones there, and he says to Arnie, we can go anywhere. And my, I don't know, my sense was, and maybe it's, more directorial than realistic, but the fact that they get in the vehicle the vehicle's not broken down, so they're not stopping in town. Like, we saw at the beginning.
Andy Nelson:True. Like, he saw them leave, and he says, you know, they're they're they know the right thing to do, not stop. Like, they just keep on going. There's nothing to see here in in this little town. And so my assumption was always they get in the car, and they're just gonna go and explore.
Andy Nelson:Yeah. But, I mean That's interest Yeah.
Pete Wright:I never saw that, and and that actually to me, it it does change the nature of the ending, sort of the emotional way to the ending. For me, I because I have such an attachment to the idea of super impermanent relationships, My expectation was that eventually they're gonna leave again, and the the the sort of sad commentary on where Johnny Depp is or where, you know, he is with Arnie is that we can go anywhere. Of course, we won't because we are tied together.
Mandy Kaplan:That's how that's how I interpret it. And how could Arnie really leave his comfort zone? I I don't see Arnie in the big city, but but I I I don't know if we're supposed to have this debate. Maybe it is up for interpretation. I didn't read the book.
Andy Nelson:Yeah. I haven't either. But knowing that Peter had just shifted pretty shortly after writing his book into screenplays
Mandy Kaplan:Mhmm.
Andy Nelson:My my my hunch or my guess is that it's it's probably pretty comparable. Like, it feels like he's one of those writers who just writes, you know, screenplay types of novels. So who knows? Yeah.
Pete Wright:I I wanna talk about, mama. Can we talk about mama? I think her story is so interesting. Darlene Cates, how she became an actor. Sally, Jesse, Raphael, y'all.
Pete Wright:When's the last time you said those three words together? Darlene was on an episode in 1983 of Sally Jesser Raphael's show called Too Heavy to Leave Their House, and Peter Hedges proposed to her that she play the mother character shortly after seeing that episode. Note, we now know what kind of television Peter Hedges was watching at the time. It's important to know that he is a human being interested in those kinds of shows. And so she did this.
Pete Wright:She only did 5 other bits. She did some, you know, TV appearance and a short, and another, film.
Mandy Kaplan:Not an actress.
Pete Wright:Not an actress. What'd you think of her performance in this as a complete noob to the business?
Mandy Kaplan:I think it's perfection. I I feel her discomfort and heartbreak and frustration and hope. I feel it all. I I don't know how she achieved it. And and on a technical level, the way they the way they dressed her and her her hair is so greasy throughout the movie because she can't really get up and take a shower, touches like that are so meaningful to me.
Mandy Kaplan:Watching her hug Arnie and say, like, don't disappear. Don't disappear. I thought she was a miracle.
Andy Nelson:Because we're getting bits and pieces of the backstory with dad over the course of the story and finding out that I think at the beginning of the film, he he says something like, well, since the time they hung him out to dry or something. So I was like, okay. So is dad in prison? Like, what happened to him? And then we find out now he, like, hung himself in the basement of their house, and that was kind of, like, what had happened.
Andy Nelson:Like, he left at some point and then, I don't know, I guess came back and hung himself. And his and and that moment when kind of, like, toward the end of the film after Gilbert really gets angry at Arnie and ends up hitting him a number of times. And then, you know, Arnie runs off and and Gilbert drives away and and is kind of gonna leave town, but then ends up finding Juliette Lewis again and spending the night with her. And when he comes back and talks to mama in the morning, and that was the point where she's just like, you know, I thought you left, and I wasn't gonna be able to take it again. And, like, bringing us back to all of that drama and the emotional turmoil that she felt when her husband disappeared for a while.
Andy Nelson:And she's she's really delivering a lot in all of those little moments throughout the film, and it's it's it's quite it is quite, amazing what she's what she's giving us.
Mandy Kaplan:Pete, did you like the performance? Like
Pete Wright:I absolutely did. I just I I'm
Pete Wright:so I I find myself, like, consistently surprised through the movie up to the point where she crawls, you know, climbs those stairs that she delivers that performance that she does, and their choice at the end to be so thoughtful and remove all of the furniture and put it out on the yard and and to just create a pyre that is so ceremonial and it just like it it was meant to be. That is the way they were meant to to move their family to this next chapter, and it seems so strange, from an insurance perspective. But now the insurance guy's dead, so who cares? Like, it's just one thing after another, that just made it feel like this was a sign in in burning their home with mama's body in it. This is a sign that they're ready to move on, whatever that means.
Pete Wright:And that's, I think, goes to the end again, which is that ultimately the family it was time for the family to move on and go about their own things in the future. Right? That includes the unit of Gilbert and Arnie, and that's okay. Like, that that's the hopeful thing for me, that Arnie has that they have a singular identity, recognizing, of course, the unbelievable weight of of taking care of someone in Arnie's position takes on the caregivers. It's it's that I think is beautiful.
Andy Nelson:And it's interesting that he and his sisters all kind of go their separate ways. And, because inevitably, if that were to happen, which it does at the end of the film, it does leave one person solely in charge of Arnie. And I know you said earlier, it's like, well, he's essentially 99% in charge of Arnie, but now he's, like, a 100%, and it really is his that will be his life moving forward.
Mandy Kaplan:Yep. I find it I don't know if if I'm picking up on this. So if I'm wrong, please forgive me. I find it hard to talk about this movie without fighting tears. I I find it so unbelievably moving and gut wrenching.
Mandy Kaplan:And I I feel like I'm picking up on that from you guys. Maybe maybe you have allergies. I don't know. But the ideas are so meaningful, you know, and and the love is so palpable.
Andy Nelson:I mean, speaking to your point about, like, how strongly portrayed the characters and the emotions are, one of my favorite moments of the film is when Gilbert brings over Becky to his house so that she can finally meet his mom.
Mandy Kaplan:Well, I wasn't always like this.
Andy Nelson:That yeah. But that moment, like, before before he lets her come before she lets him bring her in, and she's just like, no. No. Like, she's she's so petrified of allowing somebody else to from outside the the family or even let alone outside the town, see her, who she is, and to bring her in and and welcome her to her house. Like, that moment of just that that raw, sense of being on display, just like that hits me so much in that moment.
Andy Nelson:And I feel for for mama so much in that moment. And it's so much exactly what you were saying about how Becky relates to Arnie. Mhmm. The way that she has her conversation with mama here. And it just it it ended up allowing, like, all of those barriers to come down and just for people to just be there.
Andy Nelson:And it's it's a powerful moment. It really is very, very strong.
Pete Wright:Yep.
Pete Wright:Well, and how many way times does Becky come through the scene as, like, this transient angel who is just absolving discomfort from situations. Right? She is the ultimate, like, sort of protagonist of emotional protagonist of the movie because she she takes awkwardness and pain and just makes it normal normalizes it. And and I think that sequence with mama at the end is is case in point. She just makes she makes it okay.
Pete Wright:She makes everything okay.
Andy Nelson:And it's interesting even to the point where when Mary Steenburgen's character, who is the older married woman who Gilbert's having the affair with, when after her husband dies and she tells she comes to the store to see Gilbert and kind of give him give him her good goodbyes. And Becky's there, and she's she tells she's like, he's all yours and leaves. And that moment between Becky and Gilbert is also, again, like, it just shows, like, this sense of her understanding Gilbert in his world and always acknowledging that those things are there, but allowing herself to move past it. And because she's like, are you gonna miss her? And he's like, yeah.
Andy Nelson:And she's like, good. Like, that is another of those moments where it's just like she's acknowledging. It's okay to have those feelings. You don't have to hide that. And it's good that you're not hiding those.
Andy Nelson:You know? And I think that's what that's what makes it so special when you have those little elements that allow these humans to be so human.
Mandy Kaplan:Yes. But, ultimately, well intentioned. Mary Steenburgen is saying good luck. Right? She cares about Gilbert, and, it's just it guts me.
Mandy Kaplan:I haven't expressed my rage, though, at Martin Landau, who won the Oscar for best supporting actor that year for Ed Wood over Leonardo DiCaprio.
Andy Nelson:I don't think this was that year. It was Tommy Lee Jones for, yeah. Because yeah. It's it's Tommy Lee Jones for the fugitive who who won. For the fugitive?
Mandy Kaplan:Well, yeah, that's even worse.
Pete Wright:Yeah. I know.
Andy Nelson:I I'm shocked
Pete Wright:to hear you. Better.
Mandy Kaplan:I I looked it up. I thought it said Martin Landau.
Andy Nelson:That I think that was the year before. That might have been the the year of.
Mandy Kaplan:You guys, have you ever seen a performance like this? Leonardo DiCaprio is absolutely revelatory in this art.
Pete Wright:The problem is Tommy Lee Jones needed and successfully executed a hard target search, and that means something, Mandy.
Andy Nelson:Every outhouse, handhouse.
Mandy Kaplan:It was the color of money Oscar, and it pisses me off. I I I cannot believe he did not win an Oscar for this one.
Andy Nelson:Just have to say, let let me read the rundown of performers and their their films that they were in. Tommy Lee Jones won for the fugitive. Great movie. Leonardo DiCaprio for What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Ralph Fiennes for Schindler's List, John Malkovich for in the line of fire. That might be more in the fugitive line of things, and Pete Postlethwaite for in the name of the father.
Andy Nelson:Like, there are some pretty, pretty strong, performers in there, and Tommy Lee Jones is the is the one that came out on top.
Pete Wright:We could be having the same argument if Ray Fiennes or Pete Postlethwaite had had won.
Mandy Kaplan:I'd be a little happier with those decisions.
Pete Wright:Maybe. Those decisions are made more sense. Yeah.
Mandy Kaplan:I think so. But his performance of Arnie is so it's the opposite of what of what I was saying about myself as an actress. He's so in there. He's in this body and in this soul so completely. The drooling and the spitting and the just all of the things that he just let himself go and how he can convey after Gilbert hits him and he has that flash of really understanding what has just happened, but then the flash just goes away because that's not how Arnie's brain works.
Mandy Kaplan:So he gets it, and then it's over and he forgets, but it sticks with him. He remembers on some level. It I don't know how you achieve that as an actor. It's oh, I love it.
Andy Nelson:It's astonishing to watch. And you hear him talk about how he, you know you know, the the what a lot of actors do in things like this. They're observing people with the similar, issues that they're dealing with different whether it's neurodivergence or whatever and trying to get a handle on. And it's it's the and then just then just mimicking to the point of understanding and building it into just your personality. But it's like all the little ticks and the the speech patterns and and just even the way, like, his eyes looked.
Andy Nelson:Like, it's like he wasn't ever completely opening his eyes. There was something about it that just, like I don't know. I was just watching him throughout this, and I'm like, he is doing so many things on so many levels that I just am not even comprehending to completely transform himself into a completely different person.
Pete Wright:Which is why when I see that he won the best emerging actor award from the Chicago Film Critics Association for this film, I find that almost almost as insulting.
Mandy Kaplan:Yes. This is a master class in acting.
Pete Wright:It really is. This is this is a a pretty naturally talented, young man at this point in his life. And, sure, I'm glad he gets, all of the, accolades for The Revenant. Right? His his winningest film.
Pete Wright:But but, really, in terms of performance, I'm not sure I've seen him do the kinds of things you just described, right, embodying this character as well in any other film that he's done from here. I mean, this one seems seems like
Mandy Kaplan:My mom's had wolf of Wall Street. I've never seen it, but she she mentioned that.
Andy Nelson:It's well, but they're also different. And I think the difference is that I mean, there's there's different types of performances when you're playing the wolf of Wall Street or the revenant or, catch me if you can or any of these other performances where you're taking on a a a person and their personality and kind of giving that to giving us breathing life into the performance in that way as opposed to taking on a character like Arnie with these neurodivergent issues and really it it it's just a complete transformation that you really need to take in order to even get there. And I think that's the thing that makes it so revelatory. And I just don't think those sorts of performances or those sorts of roles come around too often.
Pete Wright:Right. Exactly. That's exactly the point. They don't. And and also because, you know, we're watching this movie, you know, from 93.
Pete Wright:And, you know, how well has the movie dated in terms of a portrayal of intellectual disability and obesity and, you know, small town stagnation? Like, we're looking at a movie that we already loved from when we saw it that first time, and I wonder how, you know, how people watching this movie today with today's sensibilities who've never seen it before, would look at it.
Mandy Kaplan:I think it ages really well. I I don't find it a tone deaf in those worlds.
Andy Nelson:I'm right there with you.
Pete Wright:I mean, I don't either. I'm just saying.
Mandy Kaplan:I mean, we could Family Feud it and take a survey and ask some people. And Right.
Andy Nelson:And I
Pete Wright:I think I
Mandy Kaplan:think it's timeless. To to know it's 30 years old feels bizarre to me. It just doesn't feel that.
Andy Nelson:That's what I really love about Lassie Hallstrom again as the director is just that I think that because he works so hard in capturing such human elements within his stories that it allows us to it allows the stories to live beyond their time. And, you know, with these characters that I mean, yeah, you could tell this story with a a morbidly obese person and a a a kid who's, very, very neurodivergent, and it could be a Rain Man level of production. And, I mean, I love Rain Man. It's a fantastic movie, but the the way that that character is portrayed and treated now feels dated. It now feels like, well, that's because we didn't really know what that was at the time.
Andy Nelson:And now we we have a much better handle on it. Whereas here, it's just like, you're just portraying, like, you know, these characters as real people, and I think that's the strength.
Pete Wright:Yeah. I think context is everything and having them portrayed in a family setting and never having to really deal with, like, how professionals see this condition, whatever condition it is. That helps the movie a lot. We don't have to ask questions.
Andy Nelson:And some of it is like, we have characters who are gray. They're not just, you know, white or black, good or bad. Gilbert is, you know, these little kids come over to the house, and he's holding them up to the window so they can peek in and see his mom. Like, he is also kind
Mandy Kaplan:The carnival tree. Yeah.
Andy Nelson:Right. He is Yeah. He is kind of right there with him, like, embarrassed at what his mom has become. And just like, I don't like that you're that way, and I'm just gonna do this to the point where John c Riley, his friend is like, what are you doing? Like
Mandy Kaplan:I know.
Andy Nelson:You know, great moment.
Pete Wright:But
Mandy Kaplan:We haven't even talked about John c Riley. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean
Andy Nelson:to No. Yeah. No. That's totally fine. I I was just gonna say that's that's what's so interesting about these characters is they're so they're painted in so many different shades of gray, especially our our protagonist, Gilbert, because, I mean, he's having an affair with a married woman.
Andy Nelson:He's, you know, the way that he's treating his his mother or looks at his mother, it really is, like, only his relationship with Arnie that seems like he's he's purely pure good in that particular case until, of course, he gets mad at him. But
Mandy Kaplan:But don't we all understand all of that? You know, his his need to cut people off at the past. Like, if I make fun of my mom and I do this, then you can't you know, it's not if I do it first mentality. But you mentioned John c Riley, and he has his own story where he's so excited the burger barn is coming to town. And even that character breaks my heart because the hope that when the burger barn pulls up and he thinks I've struck gold, my life is gonna be easy street from here on out, and you know it's not.
Mandy Kaplan:It's just more lovely heartbreak.
Andy Nelson:Right. But and and paired with and this is like the the the great balance of, like, that sort of story with the comedy is it's a funeral when the burger barn arrives, and Arnie sees the burger barn, which is a giant barn shaped building being being pulled out a trailer and won't stop, like, screaming about it while the funeral is is still going on. And, like, that's comedy gold right right there.
Mandy Kaplan:Now, Pete, I don't know if you picked up on this, my buckaroo bonsai loving friend, But Amy Grape was in buckaroo bonsai.
Pete Wright:She was. One of the few women.
Mandy Kaplan:Yes. In And when I bonsai. When I chose this, I didn't realize I was I would love to say I knew that, and that's why I chose this. But there's always a buckaroo bonsai connection.
Pete Wright:The it it goes all the way to the top.
Mandy Kaplan:It did.
Pete Wright:Mandy. I that's the truth.
Mandy Kaplan:Yeah. Yes.
Pete Wright:I'm proud of you for knowing that. I feel like your podcast is we're really starting to see it take root.
Mandy Kaplan:Oh, I'm I'm half nerd already.
Pete Wright:It's working.
Mandy Kaplan:Just a few more episodes, and you won't even recognize me. You have
Andy Nelson:been you'll have converted to full nerd.
Pete Wright:Yes. Full nerd.
Andy Nelson:So you'll have to change the title from make me a nerd to keep me nerdy.
Mandy Kaplan:Sustain my nerd ability. Yeah.
Pete Wright:Sustain my nerd. I've been nerducated.
Andy Nelson:Yep. Can we can we talk for a quick minute about the this relationship? I've mentioned a few time. Mary Steenburgen, the unhappy housewife, Betty, who's married to Kevin Teague, who is the insurance guy in town. And it's a fascinating relationship because of the Gilbert, I think, knows he shouldn't be doing it.
Andy Nelson:She she needs something in her life because she's clearly not getting it in her marriage. He can't get out of it as much as he think he can kind of tell I shouldn't really be doing this. But the thing that I think was so interesting in revisiting this, I'd kind of forgotten the way that the husband ends up behaving through the course of the film. He comes over, and he's he's, like, manically jumping on his his trampoline with his children, kind of because you think he knows Gilbert's in there and things are going on. And so he's going to take it out on this, like, intense trampoline jumping.
Andy Nelson:And it just kind of keeps going, and then he's just like he's saying, Gilbert, you need to come to my office and have a chat, man to man. Like, all of these things. And it's just like it's so off putting. How did you how did that how does that whole relationship play for you?
Mandy Kaplan:Well, I love it. No surprise. But I think he's he knows about the affair, and he's he is trying to turn that into a sale. That's plain and simply his motivation is, it's fine. Go ahead and sleep with my wife, but you need to take out a policy with my company if you wanna keep doing this.
Mandy Kaplan:I I mean, I that's his motivation to me.
Andy Nelson:That's amazing.
Pete Wright:I is it really? I I go back and forth.
Pete Wright:I was I I think the setup is is that, like, when he gets home and he's he's maximum parenting, which I think is is awesome, especially when he goes so crazy and he puts the kids fully dressed in the pool. Yeah. And as a sidebar, there's a lot of fully dressed swimming in this movie, and I don't care for it. I feel like they need proper equipment.
Andy Nelson:Okay. You you you were already shuttering when they when they walked into just a little, like a lake right there.
Pete Wright:Yo. He got his shoes wet, and I was like, done. I'm done. Turn it off.
Mandy Kaplan:Oh, I didn't know that was what you're saying.
Andy Nelson:Well, he he also doesn't like lake swimming.
Mandy Kaplan:Okay.
Pete Wright:Lake swimming is rough. We didn't we didn't do an algae bloom cow. Yeah.
Mandy Kaplan:What's that smell? I do remember that.
Pete Wright:So I don't even remember what we're talking about. Oh, dad, maximum parenting. I think his maximum parenting could be a sign that he is just totally oblivious of what's going on in the house.
Pete Wright:I kind I I mean, I go back and forth
Pete Wright:on it. I now that we're talking about it, I think, well, of course, he did know. And did she really did she kill him? Do you think she did he really have a heart attack? Like, there's a mystery.
Mandy Kaplan:I think he had a heart attack. His desperation when he when he gets Gilbert in his office, and he's like, you need insurance. You need insurance. Hold on. And he answers the phone and something like, he's he's very high strung.
Mandy Kaplan:Things are not going his way.
Pete Wright:More great suspense too. Right? Because you think he's gonna turn around and lay into Gilbert that she's called and and outed herself as having an affair with Gilbert, but she just set the house on fire. Mhmm. Great setup and payoff.
Andy Nelson:Because of because of the breakup with Gilbert. Like, all of that ties in so perfectly in that little story. It's just it's crazy how it all plays out. Yeah. I don't think she killed him.
Andy Nelson:If anything, I mean, I don't even think she was probably paying attention because she was already so distraught with everything that had just happened with Gilbert and then burning the house or setting the house on fire that you he had his heart attack and fell over into the pool. I don't think that she would have even clocked that. You know?
Pete Wright:Yeah. Yeah.
Andy Nelson:But I've always thought that he suspected like, he may not have ever had proof, but I I felt like he suspected to a point, like, he comes home and Gilbert comes out of his house kind of tucking his shirt and his wife comes out. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I'm just like, he he has to know what's going on, and there's something else. And I like your I like your insurance, the way that you're seeing with the insurance sale because that definitely makes sense with with that conversation then.
Pete Wright:And talk about I mean, Kevin Teague, the actor is is you know?
Andy Nelson:Love watching him.
Pete Wright:He's he's anywhere. He just you kinda know what you're gonna get with him. He plays a a very especially now, he plays a very sort of similar, damaged older masculine character and, but I just he's a face that I feel like I've grown up with. Mhmm.
Andy Nelson:Yeah. He's a lot of fun in the film. This is have you are you a fan of Lasse Hallstrom's other films?
Mandy Kaplan:I mean, as you were listing them off, I I was like, I liked Cider House Rules, and there was one more
Pete Wright:in there.
Andy Nelson:A lot.
Mandy Kaplan:To oh, Chocolat, I liked. Yeah. But they didn't speak to me like this does.
Andy Nelson:Yeah. No. I think this is kind of peak. I mean, Escalade is the one, of course, that got plenty of Oscar nominations around. But I I oh, actually, Hachi, a dog's tale.
Pete Wright:I'll tell you. If you want if you wanna watch a hard
Pete Wright:That's it.
Andy Nelson:Dog movie that's gonna be a a major tear jerker, that is the one to watch. Why
Mandy Kaplan:would I wanna do that? Uh-huh.
Pete Wright:Don't love that experience. Yeah. But it's a great it's a great movie.
Andy Nelson:It is great. It is great. But it's totally different than this sort of film. Like, that is a I mean, it's a strong film, great characters, everything, but it's a dog film in any of those that once you once you put that into the mix, it kind of creates a whole genre in and of itself, really. This film is, like, just such a perfect little window into life in a small town, the desire to get out, but feeling I don't know how.
Andy Nelson:And so I'll just float along and just see what happens. And also just feeling, like, obliged to handle things. And I think they paint all of that so well in this film.
Mandy Kaplan:Yeah. And it just Their burdens are so heavy.
Andy Nelson:Yeah. It makes for just a really touching, really strong film.
Mandy Kaplan:I agree. And I feel, as the viewer, that we are privileged to be dropped into this world. And then we're relieved when we get to leave it because it is such a heavy world. Yeah. But Yeah.
Mandy Kaplan:It's a privilege to spend 2 hours there. I love it.
Pete Wright:It doesn't it doesn't leave you heavy, though.
Pete Wright:That's the thing that's so lovely about it. Like, it's a heavy world, and then at the end, it just feels lighter. It just feels lighter. I feel good when I'm finished watching this movie. Mhmm.
Pete Wright:I didn't stay. Is there a post credit scene where everybody dies? I hope not. Let's just pretend there isn't.
Mandy Kaplan:My husband and I were both crying, and I was like, bloopers, like, as a, you know, as a credit roll.
Andy Nelson:Bloopers real? Yeah. I will say there there are 2 things with this film that have never left me and that, one that I still like, my wife and I will still jokingly say at random times, I could go at any time. Like, we still throw that out there because it just it's it's just always funny. And the other one is I have never gotten over and this goes back to DiCaprio and his performance.
Andy Nelson:I've never forgotten the moment when the just that curiosity of taking a grasshopper and putting its head in the little thing and then chopping the head off and, like, the sheer kind of, like, curiosity, like, you know, that little boy curiosity of, like, what happens if I do this? You kill an animal and you've ripped its head off, and then he sticks it in his pocket. And then we immediately cut to that moment where he's sitting on the porch crying because he killed it. Like, that was perfect. That was just absolutely perfect.
Andy Nelson:Love it.
Pete Wright:Brilliant.
Mandy Kaplan:I mean and when you were gonna reference building up to that, I knew you were gonna talk about the grasshopper. It's just Mhmm. It's Yeah. It exquisite.
Andy Nelson:It it sticks. It's perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Mandy, thank you so much for bringing this movie to chat about.
Andy Nelson:It's been a delight talking with you about it.
Mandy Kaplan:Thank you guys for letting me do this.
Andy Nelson:Absolutely. Absolutely.
Mandy Kaplan:And no fart jokes in the whole movie.
Pete Wright:Nope. Not a one. It's
Andy Nelson:true. Which they could have squeezed it in. I'm sure. So a a different director could have definitely Squeezed.
Pete Wright:Or squeezed it out.
Andy Nelson:Could have pinched it out. Yep.
Pete Wright:Oh god. Unnecessarily scatological, honey. You gotta
Andy Nelson:you gotta go there. Mandy, tell everybody what you're working on. Where, like, where can they find you on the socials? Tell us about Miscast LA. What are you up to?
Mandy Kaplan:Okay. Socials are at miscast LA on Instagram or at mandy_kaplan_clavins, both with k's. If you're in Los Angeles, follow at miscast LA. It's a night of music and dance. I'll put that in quotes.
Mandy Kaplan:And fun, and it's all for charity, and we do it every 3 months at the Pico on Pico in LA.
Andy Nelson:Because what's the concept?
Mandy Kaplan:Oh, miscast, it's called right singer, wrong song. So everybody performs songs from musicals or film for which they are the wrong gender, race, type, age, skill set. It is all done with heart and humor. Talent.
Pete Wright:Do you have people who have no talent for singing before? Maybe they're great basket weavers.
Mandy Kaplan:Haven't done that yet.
Pete Wright:I'm just wondering.
Mandy Kaplan:And that's been 14 years running. We're doing our 41st show. Wow. September 29th.
Pete Wright:Amazing. Thank you. That is awesome.
Andy Nelson:This will come out in October, mid October. So do you have October dates yet?
Mandy Kaplan:December 8th would be the next one. December 8th.
Andy Nelson:Gotcha.
Mandy Kaplan:AtmosCast LA.
Andy Nelson:You got time to put it on your calendar, everybody. Check it out.
Mandy Kaplan:Please.
Andy Nelson:Fantastic.
Mandy Kaplan:And my podcast.
Andy Nelson:Oh, yeah. And tell us about your podcast, please.
Mandy Kaplan:We referenced it, but it's called Make Me A Nerd with Mandy Kaplan. And, yeah, I'm on this journey to discover nerd culture, because I really held it at arm's length my whole life. So now I'm getting into some sci fi and fantasy and video games and comics and trying it all with wonderful people like you who are willing to expose me to it. I have to stop using the word expose when I explain it because it just jumps out inappropriate.
Pete Wright:Yes.
Mandy Kaplan:And that is my podcast is a true story production, and you can find it wherever you podcast. Make me a nerd.
Andy Nelson:Fantastic. Yeah. You are mentioned that you had a con a conversation with Pete about Bakaruganzai on there. So lots of good stuff.
Mandy Kaplan:The Adventures of Bakaruganzai across the 8th dimension.
Andy Nelson:Look at that.
Mandy Kaplan:Nailed it.
Pete Wright:And then you're coming up. Yes.
Andy Nelson:And I'm coming up. Now we'll be talking about the last star fighter, which should be a fun one to dig into. Yeah. Pete just laughs. I can't wait.
Mandy Kaplan:Oh, do you listen, Pete? Do you listen to my best minutes?
Pete Wright:I'm I I will,
Pete Wright:as a teaser, I'm in the middle of editing your doctor who episode. Oh my goodness. Mandy, what property.
Andy Nelson:She watched all 500 episodes. Yeah. Actually, I'm just saying that I have no idea how I don't that's I'm so far from a fan. I have no idea how many episodes there are, but I know it's a lot.
Mandy Kaplan:Well, I watched them all.
Andy Nelson:You watched every one of them.
Pete Wright:All of them are watched. Yes.
Andy Nelson:Well, we will have the links in the show notes. Again, we certainly appreciate you joining us here today. For everyone else out there, we hope you like the show and certainly hope you like the movie like we do here on Movies We Like. Movies we like is a part of the True Story FM Entertainment podcast network and the next real family of film podcasts. The music is Chomp Clap by Out of Flux.
Pete Wright:Find the show at true story dot f m and follow us on Facebook, Twitter,
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Andy Nelson:in there for us. See you next time.