Discussing the new Greta Gerwig book

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Hello everybody, I'm your host, Helen O'Hara, and joining me today, I'm delighted to be joined by film journalist and author Laura Venning. How are you doing, Laura? Hello, I'm feeling very festive. Thank you so much uh look at you're sitting in front of your tree which looks fabulous uh thank you well i was as a christmas in a flat you know dictates the table has had to be disassembled moved etcetera. So I was trying to figure out where to put my chair to record this because the normal desk isn't available. And I thought why not why not let Helen see some of the festive action, which is actually mostly directly behind my back, but if I shift my chair that's yeah. This sorry, this is great for an audio format. Yeah, it is. No, I'm just gonna have to tell everyone. It looks fabulous. It looks wonderful. There's some beautiful paper chains in the background. You've got some tinsel in there as well. I'm loving it. Yep. Big star on top of the tree. Fab. Thank you. I I think Christmas is you know, this goes against the film we're about to discuss, but I think Christmas is about maximalism. And I feel as if you agree. My sister has a very minimalistic Christmas aesthetic. Oh wow, Helen's Tree is that yeah, maxim ism gorgeous. Yeah. Love it. Absolutely. All gear for it. Yeah, my sister's like no tinsel on her tree, and I can't bear it. I'm like, no, no. That's not in the spirit. Yeah. That's not in the spirit. But as you said, it this film takes a slightly different approach to things so we are talking today about Christmas comma again now this is confusing because christmas again is also the name of a Disney channel movie from 2021. And it is styled as Christmas dot dot dot again. Question mark exclamation mark. Oh no, not Christmas again. I tried to watch the Disney Channel one and I failed. I'm gonna be honest. Let us say it is aimed at a much younger audience than I am. And I didn't think myself terribly discerning, but I find myself too discerning for that, I'm afraid. I may try again one day once my small niece and nephew are with me or something, but I really couldn't get through it. But we're talking about Christmas again from this year, which is about a Christmas tree lot salesman who is played by Kentucker Audley, amazing name, absolutely amazing name. His name was a little bit title came up on the screen, to Ken Tucker oldly, I was like, is this like a place? Or is this a person? I didn't initially realize it was New York, and I was like, sounds like an American, like small town somewhere, but oh no, it's a person. Okay, golly. Yeah. It does sound like a kind of American small town that somebody would go to for Christmas to work on a Christmas tree lot, right? I mean so it kind of all hangs together. So basically Noelle Kentucker Rodley's character is a Christmas tree salesman working on a corner in New York at a sort of 24-hour Christmas tree lot. He works with some colleagues who take the day shift. He's volunteered for the night shift. They basically share a tiny little caravan and take turns sleeping in shifts during the night or day. And he's living a very isolated existence in the run-up to Christmas. And I guess finding his days punctuated by interactions with people wanting to buy Christmas trees. This is not the glossy, action-packed, you know, Netflix Hallmark Christmas style movie, but it did feel like it was worth talking about. It comes to us from writer director Charles Pok el and I thought it was quite sweet and charming. What did you think? I thought this was really quite wonderful. I don't know what I was expecting. I mean , I it's interesting 'cause I got um maybe the same as you email press release about this film maybe a month or so ago, a few weeks ago, and thought, Oh, what is this? I've never heard of it. It was actually made ten years ago and just never got a UK release. And so it really was made at I don't know about the height, maybe slightly more like the tail end of the whole mumblecore scene. I think maybe are we in post mumblecore now? I feel like maybe. I feel like maybe, yeah . I mean, we have the pre and the post and the current, I don't know. You know, it's it's funny. I've been thinking a fair bit more about Mumble Core than I would usually over the past year because I've written this book about Greta Gerwig, who was obviously the biggest breakout star of Marblecore. But dare I say I don't actually like Marblecore much. And what's funny is that you know Greta Goick herself is someone who doesn't exactly ex plicitly talk down that whole era of her career and how she got started, but she was clearly fairly happy to leave it behind for something more precise and more carefully written, less of the kind of loose improvis ational, slightly plotless style of a lot of those films. But as much as this film does kind of belong in the bubble core category, I I would say, it does have , it does sort of feel like it's a tiny weenie Christmas carol, you know, in some ways it's a very classic Christmas story, in that it builds to this, you know, it's lots of small encounters with different people, with different customers and various other kind of people he encounters, like there's a Polish homeless man and there's a drunk girl he sort of rescues from a park bench. Being the main yeah, being the sort of if there is a plot , she is the sort of driver of the plot. This girl who's obviously in a rough state who he finds at night and brings her back to this this little tiny caravan with no running water and powered off a powered off a gener ator that seems to be allowed to just kind of sit on the sidewalk in New York. And the two of them eventually form a kind of slightly unlikely connection over this one night where they deliver Christmas trees together around New York on Christmas Eve. And that, you know, in a way that does sound like you're kind of that could that not that couldn't exactly be a hallmark movie because there wouldn't be a lot of million miles off. Yeah. No. And it is a kind of transformative Christmas Eve story which feels very which feels very yeah, very classic. So yeah, even though it does feel quite loose and very real and it you know, it doesn't exactly have an awful lot of i events in the story like, it it's not's not exactly plotty. It does kind of still fit that mold and it is it is very charming in its own quiet way. Yeah, I was really endeared to this. It was like, oh yes, we can still we can tell a story about people coming together at Christmas so that this kind of melancholy overtone. Yeah, and it can still feel very real. And there are certain moments of dark humour, like you realize at a certain point in the film that that Noel's got this advent calendar in his caravan. Um it's not even his caravan, I don't think, it's just like where he's where he's living while also side note, sorry, an all-night 24-fourur ho Christmas tree shop. Is that a thing? That's the city that never sleeps, baby. I mean I guess. Yeah. I guess you can get your like waffles at three in the morning in the diner under your drip coffee and you can get a Christmas tree. I was like, what? Why are they doing night shift? Anyway, but he has an advent calendar and in the middle of the night he'll open up a drawer in his advent calendar and then after a while you realize it's actually got pills in it and you're like oh boy, okay. But not in a kind of bad santa kind of way, to be clear. No, not not fun not fun pills, medical pills, I think. Yeah. With the implication being maybe antidepressants, I d I thought, or something along those lines. Yeah, I mean that that''ss basically the film. Let's just very quickly for people, can you define Mumblecore? I mean, you've just written a book about Greta Garwig, so I'm hoping you can because I'm just like it's like art. I know it when I see it. It's the slightly plotless, you know, chat forwards, but not necessarily sort of dialogue forwards, you know, New York scene kind of what late 2000s, early 2010s maybe? Is that about right? Absolutely. I would say so, yeah. And it's yeah, it's just subgenre of the little tiny indie films that really came out of how much easier it became to make a film because of the rise of digital. Um, they're all made on these consumer grade cameras, although confusingly you could argue that the sort of first major mumble core auteur, this guy, Andrew Bojelski, actually made shot his shot his films on film and was a little bit more uh eventually worked with slightly bigger budgets. And uh I I think all almost all of these filmmakers that we're talking about, Joe Swanberg being another major one who got started working with Gretta Goig and yeah really gave her start in the industry. They all hate the term mumble core. It's one of those apparently this was coined at like South by Southwest Film Festival, one sound designer or sound mixer said it as a joke, and then these guys are just haunted by this term, but it's the perfect word to sum it up because they do all be mumbling at each other. Like it's just, yeah. Yeah. It's like there's a lot like I say, there's a lot of talking, but it's not sort of traditional movie dialogue. It's not, you know, f there there is kind of even repartee. I mean, especially when you're looking at sort of the Greg Gerwig films of those eras, where she is very articulate often and very impassioned about everything she has to say. But she's not but there's people talking over her, there's people in the background. There is a lot of that kind of very casual overlapping dialogue. People fail to say what they mean and it m mumbling is not a a completely unfair word, I think. No, no, it's not. And um, you know, I think they got a lot of flack, understandably, for being these films mostly being about young white men straight out of college who don't really seem to be in any danger of kind of economic you know, they're gonna be fine, like they're probably living off a trust fund or something. But they're wandering around New York kind of aimlessly and sort of yeah, muttering and mumbling to each other and trying and failing to get girls. Like a lot of them are some version of that. And I suppose what I'm trying to say is in many ways it's no wonder that Gresiga was fairly happy to leave this behind. And you watch these films and she does, she is the performer that like really pops off the screen. You're like, yeah, it makes total sense. Whereas I'd say in, a way , this film is slightly different, slightly more your your kind of American indie. Classic American indie, yeah. Classic American Indy. And partly just the fact that it sounds obvious thing to say it has music in it. But like quite a lot of your classic mumblecore films have no score as such, you know, they'll probably have I think is it in Hannotates the Stairs where there's some quite annoying trumpet playing going on, but it's like one of the character s playing the trumpet quite badly. Like that's your classic mumble core soundtrack. Whereas I was like, ooh, songs. This is nice. A score, something to kind of very gentle, not overbearing, not overly sentiment al, but it's slightly more mainstream, quote unquote, with that. And again, a lot of your mumble core characters are just these like incredibly unlik able, selfish people who are, you know, spend their whole time complaining, which you know we can all enjoy films that are about those things. It doesn't necessarily mean they're not compelling. But we may even see ourselves in them. Well, exactly. Yeah. Who are we to judge? But I would say the performances and the writing in this are quieter and more restrained and I think the performance by Hannah Gross as apparently her name is Lydia. I mean, this is the thing about this film, you don't really get the sense of what anyone's name is other than Noel, 'cause it's a bit of a joke. Noel, Noel. I think she's wonderful. I've seen her in a couple of other uh small American indies like this, and I think she's just got such an incredi ble face. She's in this film called The Adults with Michael Searra that I saw a few years ago at Berlin, where she does a really good Marge Simpson impression. And as soon as she popped up on screen, I went, Oh, it's you. Oh, you're great. You're just so compelling and there's so much going on in kind of the the sort of just in her face and you learn so little about this character who's wandering around New York at night, you know, getting drunk and clearly having some kind of crisis, but but it's all just it's all just beneath the surface and you're left to piece it together your yourself, yeah. It's I can't get over the name Kentucker Audley, which kind of sounds like a I don't know, is that the name of like Mark Wahlberg's character in one of the Transformer movies, you know, Kate Lager and then Kentucker Audley. I don't know. I feel like it's it belongs in that tradition, Stacker Pentacost. It's an incredible name. But it's also a really, really good performance because I think it's quite hard sometimes and it is something that I find quite difficult about some indie movies, is when your lead character is depressed or downbeat for pretty much the entire film, it can be very hard to they start to wear on your patience. You're like, okay, I realize you're having a tough time, but also get it together, man. You know, come on, shake yourself out of it. And what I like about this is I didn't feel that very much. There are flash es of humor from him. There are moments of where he is clearly trying to get out and do something for himself. You know, he goes swimming in the mornings and so and when he finishes his shift, he he does help out his shift worker friends and does take little moments to, you know, if he particularly likes a customer, he'll volunteer to go and deliver their tree. And there is a sort of a search for human connection there, it feels like there is some kind of spark still in him. He's not just sitting around feeling sorry for himself the whole time, although he clearly is also heartbroken. And I thought that the film and Kentucker Rodley, I love it, really, really trod that line really really well. And so I was invested in in Noel a way that I didn't necessarily expect to be in the first five or ten minutes of this. No, absolutely, I agree. You so desperately sort of I feel like you so desperately want the best for him, even though you really don't get to know this person all that well. You the isolation is so the I the isolate the isolation in the middle of a big city, right? You know having to remind myself that he's surrounded by all this and all this life and also having to deal with a lot of I mean Christmas Christmas customer service. I was getting some flashbacks. I've never done Christmas trees, but I used to work in Waterstones bookshops over Christmas and some of those interactions with the people who want to buy trees and are just sort of talking to him like he's not there and being very demanding and irritating. I was like, oh god, yeah . Yes, I stopped doing it years ago and yet still sometimes the memory the memories return. And the film is so slight in many ways, you know, it's only eighty minutes long. You don't really spend an awful lot of time with him and yet it does feel quite rich. And we don't know about this loss to love. We don't know anything about this breakup or who, if anyone, was at fault and what happened. But uh somehow you're still compelled to just want this want this person to to rediscover human connection and unsurprisingly for a film like this it's a bit of a bittersweet ending but you feel that there is a sense of hope in a sense that both of those characters who are so isolated and disconnected from each other will reconnect after their night delivering Christmas trees together. I mean, what could be more festive and lovely than that? Yeah. Absolutely. And I think you know it's interesting. The film sets up that he has worked in this Christmas tree lot every December, say, roughly, for the last five years or something. That he previously did so with his girlfriend who is now gone for whatever reason. And that he does have a job the rest of the year. Like he does have somewhere to go. He does do other things. He doesn't sort of disappear to the North Pole or something for eleven months of the year and then just come back like Santa Claus. But I think that was kind of important because he's made the choice to be there for that month and he clearly values it beyond just having the girlfriend with him. And so I think it maybe it it that gives you a sense that he is searching for something and he hasn't sort of completely given up on life. And again, I I take comfort from the fact he's taking his pills, he's going to the YMCA or wherever to swim. He is trying to kind of claw his way back, I think, to some kind of happiness or some kind of normality or however you want to put it. Um and I think so I think in a strange way and in a very understated way, I find this film very hopeful and I find this film very sort of encouraging is maybe the wrong word, but just it had a sense of okay, yeah, things can be bad, and even at Christmas, they can be kind of bad. But if you look for it, and I think he's looking around him, you can see signs of love in the world, you can see signs of hope, you can see signs of people celebrating, and you can hope to one day be one of those people in the well-lit rooms not sleeping in a caravan out on the street. And I I thought the Christmassiness of this film is actually consider able because of that sense . Yeah, exactly. I totally agree. It's not just a sad little indie drama that happens to take place over Christmas, but I'm like, no, no, it's in the spirit and it's the act of kindness and and generosity and helping this this girl on a on this drunk girl on a bench in the middle of the night, which when he really doesn't have to, he really does go he does the right thing, but he goes above and beyond for this person that is the kind of catalyst. And he's not so disconnected that when he's delivering with these trees, these trees with her at the end, that when he enters, he goes into a flat, and there are this little group of very angelic blonde German children, question mark, and they're very sweet, they're asking if he works for Father Christmas and how old is the tree and then they all recite their rages and he's not yeah he's not so c disconnected that he can't can't share in that and there's a lovely scene, Oh, it broke my heart, where he I think earlier on he before Christmas Eve, he delivers a tree for a couple and the wife is pregnant and they are so wrapped up with each with each other that they're barely noticing that he's there and he just has his little weep on the way back to his caravan and it's just oh god, it it really yeah, yeah. Yeah, and again, not so disconnected from his emotions that he can't let himself feel that heartbreak and given himself up to maybe the potential of rebuilding his life in one way or another. Absolutely. I think he's gonna be okay down the line, weirdly. And I don't always have that sense coming out of never mind Christmas movies, but American indie movies which seem to sometimes just be misery fests. All right, let's kind of rank this then. Out of five, what would you give this for its Christmassiness ? Yeah, I mean it's tricky, isn't it? Because it's not exactly one I would suggest to to the family throw on on Christmas Day. But at the same time, as we've just said, it's really in the spirit of what Christmas actually is, I don't know. But it's true, that connection. So I think out of five I'm gonna give it a four. I think quite strongly Christmassy. Yeah, I'm kinda up there with you. I think, you know, well first of all, like he literally lives around among a heap of Christmas trees, so the smell must be incredible. Oh my God. But the Christmas, I guess, iconography is kind of there because of that for a lot of the film. It yeah, it's not obviously Christmassy. It's not obviously in the same way that like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation or Elf is Chr or Santa Claus the movie, it's not that Christmassy, but I do think like the spirit is very much there as you say, and the kind of the heart of it is very much there. I feel like if you have your like cool cousin who's just started doing film studies at university this is the Christmas film to recommend for them or your teenage brother who thinks he's above Christmas films like this is the kind of thing that that you can put on for them and sort of go, no, this there are different kinds. It's not all snowmen turning into male models. It's there's other kinds of Christmas movies out there. All right. How would you rate it then as a movie? What would your score be out of five for that? You can do halves if you want. You can grade on a curve if you want. It is after all Christmas. True. Oh thank you. Yeah. I think I'm gonna I'm also gonna go with a four. I found this very charming. And as with a you know it's some mumblecall films are a bit of a slog , let's be honest. This was not a slog at all. This was a pleasure and you know, really, really surprisingly moving and just beautifully execute executed, beautifully acted. And so yeah, I'm gonna go with a four. I am too. I might be grading on a curve. If it was not a Christmas film, maybe I'd be like a three or a three point five if we were doing half half stars. But like we say, I think the heart was really there. I think the sense of hope and promise and you know all the good things about Christmas work in a really low key way. I cannot stress enough how low key they've done it. In a really low key way, they are there and I appreciate that it managed to do that. I mean we talked last year about Christmas Eve in Miller's Point, you know, being a slightly uncon ventional Christmas movie that was also kind of plotless, if I'm honest. I'm sorry that you have become my go-to plotless Christmas movie . Oh, it's fun. But but that also, you know, had a lot of heart and it had a lot of the sense of and the energy of Christmas, even if it didn't, you know, again, have a snowman turning into a male model. All right. So yeah, so that is a high score for Christmas again, which I cannot stress enough once more, is not the twenty twenty one Disney movie of the same name. Please do not make that mistake, people. This one is on in cinemas around the country this Christmas, so you will have a chance, I hope, to see it. But do not make that one mistake. Laura, you mentioned your book on Greta Gerwig. That is out now. What can you tell us about it, please? Thank you so much. So it's called Icons of Cinema, Greta Gerwig, and she is an icon of cinema. She is. It's exciting. It's exciting because that's it's a series of books and the other two in the series so far have been about men, Baz Lerman and Wes Anderson, who are both fabulous directors, of course. Yes. But it's lovely to do the first woman. And it's really a a bit of a deep dive into her career, you know, beginning with her yeah, her start in Bumble Core films, her introduction to Noah Baumbach, surely the most kind of influential person in her career who really ignited her interest in writing and really made her realise this is the style that I want to I want to I want to engage in and write myself and yeah and then her journey through through Lady Bird, Little Women, Barbie, a little tease of Narnia, although of course sadly we still don't know Can't wait though. Cannot wait. Yeah. I mean hopefully a future episode, right? Is Lion the Witch in the Wardrobe is Christmassy enough for this, right? It literally has Santa Claus in it. So 100%. Yeah, absolutely . And apparently that is something that nearly destroyed the friendship of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. So that alone could be like ten minutes of a podcast, because we've got to get into how infuriated Tolkien was by that absolute disrespect for any kind of sensible hung-together mythology. I just love that for both of them, quite frankly. But yeah, for my money, her three films as director have all been masterpieces and I'm just so excited about anything she wants to make from now on. I'm like, I'm there, no questions asked. It's gonna be amazing. And I know, absolutely. I thought like you know, no I I wasn't thank you. I was not alone in my doubts about what Barbie would turn out to be, but of course I think it' s pretty extraordinary and probably the most extraordinary blockbuster if we want to call it that. I suppose we can I think Hollywood in the past I don't know, maybe the past decade. And what I hope that the book does is introduce people who already know and love her films to the kind of wider world of all of her influences and yeah, all of the filmmakers that she loves. I really try to sort of expand the the Greta verse. I have been calling it the Greta verse. Because she's such a film fan and a film lover. And if one person gets it in their stocking and discovers the films have Jagdommy, then I will be very happy. Amazing. Yeah, she is a major cinophil.es So this that feels like a really good way to go with it. And of course you can learn more about mumble core as well. So um absolutely if that's more your bag, yeah. If that's more your bag. All right. A couple of questions I ask everybody. I know I've asked you these y last year, but just in case anything's changed, favorite Christmas movie, the one you have to watch every year? Um, I'm sure I said this last year, but I'm gonna say it again, it's Meet Me in St. Louis because it's just it's pure wonderful it's all about a family and that's the most Christmassy thing of at all of of all right like the interaction between a family all the highs and lows and I mean Judy Garland singing have yourself a merry little Christmas and I just start weeping and those fantastically fake snowmen. It's wonderful. It's pure Hollywood. Yeah. Yeah. Ten out of ten. No notes. And any Christmas traditions that we need to be aware of? Anything that you do differently from other people that you would recommend other people pick up ? Well, on Christmas Eve it's become a habit because we're not going to eat enough on Christmas Day, so we have to start things early. We make this giant Delia Smith mushroom papa deli pasta bake thing. And it's just an extraordinary quantity of like cream and it's with masala wine, which gives it this really nice warm spicy flavour. It does sit heavy, I can't lie. But if you want something for your Christmas Eve dinner that's not your more traditional roast but still very luxurious, I'd highly recommend it's from her Christmas book, so you know it is Christmas. So it's dealing approved. Amazing. All right. Well Laura, thank you so much. Where can people find more of your work apart from going out there and immediately buying the Greta Gerwig book? Yes, thank you so much. I am sort of on blue sky. But it's a bit quiet over there, sadly. But actually at the moment I'm mostly on Substack I'm sure you'll find me under my name Laura Venning and I have a newsletter which is called Mis on Ven the film from all the film heads I can't claim credit my girlfriend came up with it and I didn't think I'm not with that, but I've obviously I'm gonna run with that forever. And uh you can find me on the pages of Empire, Little White Lies as in journal here, here, there, and around. Amazing. Well, m merry Christmas to you and uh hope it's a gr wig filled new year. And see you. I will be enjoying my little women watch and yeah, getting real cozy . Changes in sexual performance are more common than most people realize, and support doesn't need to feel awkward. With MedExpress, everything happens privately online. Start by completing a short consultation reviewed by UK registered clinicians. If eligible, treatment is delivered discreetly to your home, with ongoing support whenever you need it. You're not alone in this. Visit medexpress.co.uk slash podcast to learn more.