00:00I thought you picked Zootopia.
00:01They told me that was your murder mystery that you picked up.
00:04By the way, great murder mysteries.
00:06No, like, literally, like, a fantastic example of a classic film noir.
00:10I'm sorry, I will defend this to my death.
00:11I'm Blake Lively.
00:12I'm Paul Feig.
00:13And I'm Anna Kendrick.
00:14And we're going to do you the very simple favor of giving you our top seven murder mysteries.
00:24Well, Gosford Park is a murder mystery.
00:26Very, like, wonderful example of the genre, in my opinion.
00:30It is people gathering at a country house.
00:33Somebody turns up dead.
00:34Everybody is a suspect.
00:35It's Robert Altman.
00:36It's fabulous.
00:41This is when the detective is showing up after the murder, which is actually, like, pretty deep into the movie because you have a good while to, like, get to know these characters.
00:50There really isn't a lead character.
00:53There's, like, 20 lead characters and they're all, like, so fabulous.
00:56Those are so great.
00:57Kelly MacDonald and Clive Owen, like, the chemistry is, and it's so sexy for a movie that is so buttoned up.
01:02What about Claudette Culver?
01:04Isn't she, she's British, isn't she?
01:05She sounds British.
01:06Bob Balaban is playing this, like, Hollywood producer who has come to this country house to, like, research for a murder mystery film that he is going to make.
01:13And there's a wonderful moment where the dinner party asks him, how does it end and who was the killer?
01:17And he says, oh, I don't want to spoil it for you.
01:19And Maggie Smith goes, we're not going to see it.
01:23Oh, but none of us will see it.
01:24Well, the funny thing, when I saw this movie, I didn't know much about it.
01:27I didn't know it was a murder mystery.
01:29And so, like you say, it takes a long time to get to the murder.
01:31So I was just, oh, this is going to be kind of a fun upstairs, downstairs thing.
01:34And then when the murder came in, I was like, oh, good.
01:36It almost doesn't need to be a murder mystery.
01:38It's so much, like, infighting.
01:40It's like a soap opera.
01:41And then there's a murder.
01:43Here it comes.
01:50Louisa!
01:51Julian Fellowes, the writer, had talked about how everything in the movie was hyper, hyper scripted,
01:56except he was like, there was one line that was improvised.
01:59And it's Maggie Smith, of course.
02:01This woman who's at the country house for the weekend and is slightly less well-to-do than the rest of them.
02:07She comes down in, like, clearly, like, last season's fashion.
02:11She's walking through the party, and Maggie Smith just goes,
02:13Difficult color, green.
02:15My dresser on Into the Woods, Asia, was also her dresser on Downton Abbey.
02:19I told her this story, and Asia was like, oh, that must be why she doesn't let us put her in green.
02:25Oh, that's funny.
02:26She, like, doesn't want to wear green.
02:27You want to say that a man may be around us?
02:29A man? Why a man? Because it can be others.
02:32Eight women is yet another kind of hyper-classic murder mystery.
02:36I wasn't very creative.
02:37I'm not joking.
02:38It's a bunch of people in a country house, and someone turns up dead.
02:41It's Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Leneuve, and it's fun because it is shot in a visual style
02:48that is actually, like, very similar to something like Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
02:51Like, they really try to make it feel like it was shot at that time.
02:54There's even some stuff that feels like back-lot snowy exterior rather than actual snowy exterior.
03:01It has this kind of coziness to it that feels, like, genuinely vintage.
03:05Fun. It's almost like a play.
03:05Exactly, exactly.
03:11There's something almost more cinematic when you can see the filmmaking, when you can see the set.
03:17Because, like, all the old movies, when you watch Turner Classic movies, you can tell they're on a set,
03:21but there's something so beautiful and comforting.
03:23The conversation I love.
03:30It's one of my favorite films.
03:31I saw it when I was in film school.
03:33Francis Ford Coppola directed it.
03:34He directed it between making The Godfather and The Godfather 2.
03:38And it's Gene Hackman, rest his soul.
03:40Gene Hackman is a guy who taps people's phones.
03:42He listens in.
03:43He's a listener, like a spy.
03:45You hire him.
03:46And a young, hot Harrison Ford.
03:48Yeah, oh, yeah.
03:49He's kind of a henchman to this guy.
03:50It's a nice Christmas cookie, sir.
03:51I made you want one?
03:52Oh.
03:53They're good.
03:53Oh, thanks.
03:54Robert Duvall hires Gene Hackman to listen in on these people to see what they're planning on killing him.
04:00And then there's a really great twist that I'm not going to tell because you've got to watch it yourself.
04:04It's one of my favorite films, A, because of the storytelling and the acting and the filmmaking,
04:08but B, the soundtrack is so fantastic.
04:12It's David Shire and it's all solo piano.
04:14Would you go back to him?
04:24This is more of a horror movie moment.
04:26It's pretty great, though.
04:28He's inspected the whole thing.
04:29He thinks he heard a murder happen in here and then.
04:33Whoa.
04:34Whoa.
04:35Yeah, it's.
04:36How disturbing.
04:38Who wants to play Bodies, Bodies, Bodies?
04:40Oh, no.
04:41My next movie is Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, which came out recently.
04:45I love this movie so much because it's really funny.
04:48You know, from working with me, I like things to be funny but extreme.
04:52And I think the extreme violence makes the stakes so high.
04:57Oh, my God.
04:58I mean, no wonder Sophie O'Deed.
05:00Who could date a spreadsheet with a superiority complex?
05:03It's like.
05:04You think all these murders are happening and keep killing the people that they think are trying to kill them.
05:09And it just comes around that the actual murder was so stupid.
05:13And done by Pete Davidson, which is the perfect person to pull off the dumbest murder in the world.
05:18What are the features that you're bringing to the place?
05:20Well, I just look like I f***.
05:22Well, Maria's so grounded in it that it took me forever to recognize her from the Borat movie.
05:27Because I was like, I know her from somewhere, but I don't know where.
05:31It hurt my stomach.
05:34And it will hurt my a**hole.
05:36She's so funny.
05:37And then in this, she's like very moving and vulnerable.
05:40Yeah, she's kind of the sort of the emotional center of it.
05:43And then all these crazy people are around her.
05:45The visuals here, it's so smart to have this modern movie with these like Gen Z characters.
05:49So like you buy that they'd be wearing these crazy glow stick thing.
05:53And like what a way to put a wonderful visual on screen.
05:56First of all, a podcast takes a lot of work, okay?
06:00You have to organize the guests.
06:02You have to do a Google Calendar.
06:03And you build a following.
06:06It takes a long f***ing time.
06:07It really puts you in the head of what it was to be this age.
06:11You know, and just the dumb politics of that age.
06:14And so you're injecting a real life, terrible thing into the middle of kind of teenage politics.
06:25Lisa!
06:25My next movie is Rear Window.
06:27I had to go classic Hitchcock.
06:28It was hard to pick because there's so many Hitchcock movies I love, but I wanted murder mystery.
06:32We thought about doing North by Northwest, which we have a nice homage to in the movie when you have the knife.
06:37But I don't consider that a murder mystery.
06:39It's such a great idea that something happening by somebody who's completely trapped in one location.
06:45This has one of the greatest moments, visual moments, that is so low-key when he looks and sees it right here.
06:51When Raymond Burr, who he's been spying on this whole time, looks into the camera.
06:56That I have a real thing about.
06:57I love, you probably know it sometimes.
06:59I have people look into the camera.
07:00If it's somebody else's POV, I always like.
07:03Because I think that connection, you get that so rarely in a movie.
07:05It makes your stomach cry.
07:06Yeah, when somebody looks at you in the audience, it's kind of great.
07:09And again, like what you were talking about with Eight Women, it doesn't try to look realistic.
07:14Because it's a very, you know, that set that they build where you're looking at all these people in all these windows.
07:18But as somebody who lives in New York City, I know my neighbors.
07:22Like there's, I have a ballerina who lives across from me who practices every day at 7 p.m.
07:27And a man who plays the piano.
07:28I do like feel like I see that in New York City as someone whose building is very close to other buildings.
07:34Any murders so far?
07:36Well, actually.
07:37Oh, I've got the prettiest mother.
07:41I've got the nicest mother.
07:43That's what I tell everybody.
07:45The Bad Seed is a film about a little girl who is a perfect child, a perfect daughter.
07:52She is driven to insanity by her pursuit of perfection.
07:58Will you write Mother every day?
07:59I'll write both my girls every day.
08:01It's a play and you can tell that it's a play.
08:04And it's not necessarily a murder mystery because you know that the little girl is a bad seed.
08:09Seeing the mother's conflict with that is so, is so compelling.
08:14Also just like the reason that she murders because the kid got the penmanship award and she didn't.
08:20Everybody knew I wrote the best hand and I should have had it.
08:24This guy seems like the bad guy.
08:26You would think that this guy is the villain, but he's actually the one who's on to her.
08:30It's such an uncomfortable, sinister dynamic.
08:34And then have your killer be a little cute girl in a white dress is spectacular.
08:37I know, and her performance is amazing.
08:39I believe you did it.
08:42I was fooling before, but now I believe you kill him.
08:44You've got them hid, but you'd better get them and bring them back here right head of me.
08:51My mom loves old scary movies.
08:54So when I was little, she would play the bad seed or whatever happened to baby Jane, which is obviously a big influence for me.
09:01But like, I thought that I would get the stomach flu after because I would throw up.
09:04But I realized I was just so psychologically disturbed.
09:09Let's have it.
09:11Look at me.
09:14What are you trying to do?
09:15Force a confession out of me.
09:16This is Laura.
09:17I was going to watch it this weekend.
09:19So I had really compelling things to say about it.
09:21And then I was like, maybe they'll just ask me about White Lotus and Bad Sisters.
09:24Because that I do sneak and watch when my kids are asleep.
09:26So I can talk about that all you guys want.
09:28It'll be easier for you if you tell the truth.
09:31What difference does it make what I say?
09:33You've made up your mind.
09:35I'm guilty.
09:35What I find really compelling about this is like until the last second, you don't know who does it.
09:43It's about a very grisly murder.
09:45And the detective, as he's uncovering what happened, falls in love with her.
09:51He falls in love with the woman who's been murdered.
09:52So it adds a level of like intensity because there's a passion and there's a love.
09:58And what I love about Laura is that I actually don't remember who did it.
10:02And I think that that shows like how complex and how layered it is.
10:06Because I've seen this movie many times.
10:07I love that when you can re-watch.
10:09I'll say I re-watched the first Simple Favor, you know, right before we started filming.
10:13And I was like, I mean, I remember the ending.
10:15But I don't, there's so much about how we get there that I had completely forgotten.
10:20I was like always going back to the script to be like, again, it's like I remember the major beats, but like who knows what, when.
10:29It's very like a beautiful mind, like I was having a mental breakdown.
10:31Because I was like, wait, okay, so in the second act, I think that this person is this, yeah.
10:36When is somebody not who you think they are?
10:39Yeah.
10:39Well, if you love these kind of movies, you're going to love another Simple Favor that starts May 1st on Prime Video.
10:45I'll see you next time.
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