Oh, 7 Ep 3 - Michael Clayton

Finally Tae and Lucy pick through one of 2007's finest films. Tae can't get a word in for Lucy's pitch for how Clayton is very much THE film of 2025.

Refs and links

Youtube essay - Why We're Obsessed With Michael Clayton - More Than Meets The Lens (think the shark assertion here might have snuck into our heads a bit)

Transcript

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Hello everyone and welcome to the '07 podcast, a show about the amazing films that came out in  2007. Why did they all come out in the same year? Don't worry, we'll get there. But before we do,  just know that I'm Tay Morrison and I'm joined by my co-host, Lucy Alfred. Lucy,  do you want to talk about Michael Clayton with me? I certainly do. Yes. Oh, thank God for that. Uh,  so full disclosure, Michael Clayton happens to be one of my favorite films maybe ever. Um, but Lucy,  it's new to you, right? Is Yeah, absolutely. Not ish. 100% new. I hadn't heard of it. It was one  that had actually bypassed me at the time. I feel like potentially at the time it kind of went under  the radar, but it's kind of grown in popularity since then. Um, and I'll talk about why I think  that is based on my reaction to the film. Um, but I can see why it's one of your favorites. I can  see why it's one that you return to. It feels really comforting in its form. I described it  when we talked about it before as a kind of almost perfect film. Um, I gave it a strong 9 out of 10,  maybe even nine and a half out of 10. I was totally blown away by it when I first watched  it a few weeks ago. Just kind of sat there and I was like, "Wow, that's good, isn't it?" Yeah,  I'm interested in the 2025 interpretation. I have seen the commentary about it being looked upon  more favorably now than it was back then, but I'm not sure I totally get it. I saw it in 2007 when  it came out and I thought it was really solid uh really rockolid film from a firsttime director  and it was just really good to see George Clooney doing more stuff that wasn't him just being sexy  or flippant. Uh by then we'd seen him do more serious stuff like Good Night and Good Luck  and Syriana, but it feels like he suffers a lot more in this film. Even though on the surface it  looks like Michael Clayton has it pretty cushy, it doesn't take much to scratch the surface and  see that underneath that he's he's juggling a lot of stuff. We first see him in what appears  to be like an underground gambling ring. Uh which immediately makes you think something's gone arry  here for this guy to be here. Yeah, Danny Ocean's really spiraled, hasn't he? The moral of the story  is don't gamble, kids. Um, so I feel like he's sort of set up as a man on the edge, like from  the beginning. Um, and then we obviously see that descend into chaos further as we go along through  the film. I guess I see what you mean though in terms of he's got a good family. He's clearly got  an okay job. He's a he's a lawyer. He's working for a big firm. Um, but the film obviously  unpicks all of that sort of outward perfection. Lucy, what's the film Michael Clayton about?  So on the surface, Michael Clayton is the story of what's known as a janitor in legal terms whose  job is to clear up messes and he slowly unravels a huge mess that has occurred within his firm.  But under the surface of that, this it's a film about the uh corruption of capitalism and the uh  damaging effects that big firms and big companies, big corporate America has on certainly America,  but also on the rest of the world. Um but where do you want to start? I think it's worth setting  out that, you know, by 2007, we'd seen plenty of uh corporate malfeasants films. We'd had the like  of the insider and Aaron Brochovich. There's Michael Moore and some other documentaries.  There's even one called the corporation. Um the three main charact just to sketch out the three  main characters I would say they are obviously Michael Clayton the titular hero maybe. Um Arthur  Eden played by Tom Wilkinson. He and Clayton work at the same law firm. And Arthur is kind of one of  their legal wounds and has been handling the legal defense of a of an agricultural chemicals company  called Unorth. Uh UNO had made a pesticide that might have caused the death of some farmers and  the families of those farmers are now suing them. And lastly, uh, on the EU North side,  you have Karen Crowder, played by Tilda Swinton, who is EUNOR's chief legal adviser. She's actually  pretty composed and, as we later learned, quite ruthless. Um, there's this great early scene with  her doing a TV interview, and it's intercut with her getting ready and rehearsing what  she's going to say in that interview, and it's line for line perfect, so you do you do get a  sense of how meticulous she is. It's for sure deliberately there to kind of make her feel  really unnatural because she because she's so rehearsed and obviously there's an element of  an interview where of course you want to see a bit more of the real person and the fact that she's so  rehearsed. You know, there's absolutely no real Karen coming through. Um whereas you then see the  sort of antithesis of that with uh Michael Clayton who is so real. You know, he wears his heart on  his sleeve. He is a truly like real humble guy um throughout the film. Um and I think that's  set up really early on which is great. Yeah, Tilda Swinton is fascinating in this film. I can never  quite tell to what extent Crowder feels anything about the things that she puts into motion or if  she's just cruising along with it. But at this point, we haven't met half the cast yet. So,  we now get to meet Michael Clayton. We find him in a shady gambling joint. There's a bit  of an exchange with another player at the table that kind of layers in some background about how  Clayton recently launched a restaurant that he had to close. Uh Clayton leaves, he gets a call,  and then we're introduced to the kind of work that Clayton really does. So, as Lucy mentions,  Clayton is a janitor or a bagman or a fixer. He's not an attorney as such, although his background  is legal. He kind of operates in the shadows and he's rolled out to stop his firm's clients from  getting into trouble. So, he's quite compromised morally. Um why the longaced George? Well, this  is why, I think. Um he leaves and drives off into the night. And as the sun is coming up in what I  guess is supposed to be rural New York, he stops by a hillside, having seen three horses on a hill,  uh he gets out and walks up to them. We don't really know why yet, but as he's doing this  behind him, his car explodes. And then we rewind back four days and back to his normal life. Um  we're introduced to Clayton's son. We get a few of these moments from Clayton's background and  his family throughout the film and they serve as nice little breaks from the main story. Um,  and they eventually intertwine more closely with the the main plot. Yeah. But they they also add  texture and color to the character. I mean, for sure the fact that he's not happily married with  his, you know, wife and living with his son uh is context. You know, it it kind of adds to that  element of he's a divorcee potentially living alone. He hasn't really he doesn't get access to  his child all the time. He works too hard. We see later on that he's late to the football match. So,  you know, without that, you wouldn't have that context of him being kind of on the edge and  struggling. But then again, conversely, when you've got that lovely family setting for the  party, his dad's birthday party, isn't it? Uh that helps to establish him as a family man at heart.  Um you hear his relatives saying, "We haven't seen you in ages. You must stay. You must come  back. You must come for longer. If you leave, you your son's got to stay with us. You know,  we miss you." So, he's loved. He's cared for. Um, and he's torn between corporate America and  everything that's crashing down around his ears in that world and then that stability at home or in  his domestic setup. Um, and that then cementss his decision making later on in the film. Um,  that stays true to his character. And I would actually go back to what you were saying about you  you would didn't want to say that he was the hero. He's kind of the anti-hero. He is he he he's the  one that you have to get, you know, you have to get behind, but we know that he's not, you know,  we know he's got dirty hands. Yeah. You do get a sense that he is very mindful of the murkiness of  his job and that he would rather be doing like proper lawyering. Um, and we get into that more  and more as we progress through the film. So, we later see him at an auction for what remains of  the failed restaurant venture he started. And we learn that he's trying to raise money to pay off  the people who helped him finance that. And it's very subtle, but clearly he got into bed with some  fairly shady folks to borrow the cash for this restaurant. Clayton has a very hush chat about his  ability to raise this 75k that he owes. And the guy he's talking to is played by Bill Raymond does  not come off as menacing at all. really. He comes over as a pretty regular guy, but for the thin  gold chain sitting over his top, it's Clooney's face really that sells the idea that he's in hot  to some potentially bad people. It's just really This is just really nice work from Bill Raymond  and George Clooney here. I hadn't I hadn't noticed that. Yeah, it's very it's very subtle. And you  know, their exchanges are a little frosty. I I guess going back to what you were saying about  how subtle it was, that is just indicative of the beautiful nuance of the film the whole way  through, it is just so classy and reserved and the drama is at the at the perfect balance with the  slightly calmer scenes. No one is overexaggerated in their performance. The tension is perfectly  played. nothing is played for reaction in that way. Um, and that's kind of what I was going back,  what I was sort of referring to, uh, when we were talking earlier in the intro about why I loved it  so much and why I sort of sat back and responded in the way I did because it's not the kind of film  we see these days. And I had forgotten how great film making used to be in terms of that kind of  just perfect script writing. It's not serialized. It's just a piece of art for consumption in and of  itself. It just is what it is. And we just don't see that really these days. I think we see it more  in television, but we just often don't see it in cinema. Yeah. 2007. Um, this is preocial media  more or less. So, the culture is kind of informed differently, right? Um, films like this, it does  feel like they just existed in and of themselves. like this film exists for an audience. It was made  for an audience, but it wasn't it didn't exist to activate an audience that it perceived in  order just to make money. I think Tony Gilroy just wanted to make a film and he wants to tell  a really good story and, you know, win all the awards and have really great people involved,  but it's not this isn't a franchise or anything. This is uh one for the portfolio, I'd say,  rather than having designs on anything greater than that. The good old days. So, there's a lot of  uh this background stuff going on before things really start to kick off in this film, but they do  kick off during the interview with Karen Crowder that we mentioned earlier. The interview gets  interrupted by news of something big going down. And the big thing going down is that Arthur Eden,  played by Tom Wilkinson, has in a deposition with some of the families and their lawyers  started to strip naked and run through a parking lot, which is a problem. But there is a deeper  crisis happening within Arthur which we'll get to. But on the surface of it, Arthur is being  treated for depression, hasn't taken his meds, and has had this episode. So Clayton is dispatched to  try and find him and smooth over this situation. But Arthur is having a crisis of conscience about  defending this massive uh agri company. Um, but he's also fallen for one of the younger members  of the family. And it's these two things that have caused Arthur to go off the rails. The monologue  we hear at the start of the film is uh Arthur's. So Clayton, the janitor, has to track down and  sort out this little outburst from Arthur and get him back on track so that they can shut this down,  you know, make their fees. Arthur is obviously like portrayed as this brilliant savant like  figure and his monologue at the start. In fact, all of his dialogue is just so well written. Oh  yeah. I mean, we we could spend a whole podcast talking about how great the writing is. I mean  that the the opening monologue which at first as you say we don't know who it is. It sounds like  a crazy person. It sounds like the rantings of a crazy person. But then once you then get the  context it actually sounds like it kind of makes sense and you actually are on side with him and  you don't think he's bonkers and as that slowly unravels you then become even more on his side  and see the case for what it truly is. But um I think one of the the the things that really  attracted me to it was was those beautiful monologues that really encapsulate everything  about the character that's speaking them. And it felt like a story that was just needed to  burst out. And when we were talking about Michael Clayton and talking about 2007 in general, you you  reminded me that there had been a writer strike. And it did really feel like almost like a pentup  story that needed to explode. Therefore, there needed to be extended monologues because there  was just so much to say and there was so much character in those monologues. Uh, and of course,  opening the film with one set up the rest of them. I would say that's probably the most important one  because it sets the tone for the rest of it. Um because you've got the craziness of this man who  is realizing he spent the last however many years defending a massive criminal that's responsible  for hundreds of deaths with this seemingly perfect clinical law firm which then we then find out  that's how they've been making all their money. And we even hear the CEO say to Michael Clayton,  "You're only now asking questions about how you're getting paid or how the sausage gets made or what  it's something like that." Um, and they're one and the same. You can't have one without the  other. And of course, that's what sent Arthur Lupily Lala. Oh, yeah. To make matters worse,  Arthur's bag was left at the deposition and it contains a document that will come to be referred  to as memorandum 229, which contains details that you North knew that their product was the likely  cause of these farmers dying and that that he'd known about that for years. And so, while Clayton  is trying to manage a sort of what feels like a fairly low-level crisis, Karen Crowder is homing  in on what kind of threat Arthur poses to her and UNO and deciding what to do about it. And  this is where we really get to see her eyes roll back and she becomes more and more sharklike in  handling that. There's a little aside here, but Clayton finds Arthur and then has to go and meet  with Karen Crowder. And while he and Crowder are getting into it over Arthur's behavior,  Arthur ends up talking on the phone with Clayton's son who is telling him about this book that he is  obsessed with. Uh you hear him referring to it with Clayton earlier in the film. It's a really  lovely moment where this precocious child is talking to a sort of childlike adult and the book  plays a part later on in the film as well. Um, back to Crowder who is now reading this memorandum  229. She's got like a carrier bag on her hands cuz she doesn't want to touch it cuz it's that toxic.  Also, she doesn't want to have her she doesn't want to get her fingerprints on it. Yeah. Yeah.  Yeah. It's at this point that she brings in these two sort of private military or ex-military goons.  They could be twins. They look so alike. It's like something out of a James Bond film. Yeah. They're  really weird. They were giving me like what's his chops out of um Bladeunner. The baddy and  Bladeunner with the with the hair with the blonde hair. Ruga. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They they reminded  me of him. So, for now they're just tasked with surveilling Arthur. But yeah, watch this space.  Clayton has gone from having to just get Arthur under control to trying to find out where he's  disappeared to. So, you've got lots going on here. Arthur doing his thing in New York. Uh  Clayton trying to find him. Their boss is trying to contain this memorandum 229 stuff. And you've  got goons going through Arthur's apartment, his books, his paperwork, his even his meds, trying  to find out what he's up to. Meanwhile, Arthur is still having these little clandestine chats  with this girl that he's falling in love with in rural Wisconsin or wherever. It's unclear whether  or not it's reciprocated, right? Like there's that kind of element of him clearly is unrequited love,  whereas she just wants to get the case solved and wants to win. You kind of get a sense that she  thinks he's sweet, right? I did. Uh, but now that I think about it, like if you if you were a member  of a family who is suing a company for killing members of your family and the lawyer in charge of  defending that company is flirting with you, that that would be a real red flag in 2025, wouldn't  it? The way I read it was that he saw her as the and I think he even says like, "Have you seen her?  She's perfect." But he sees her as this example of not vivaceious, that's kind of the wrong word.  But she's pure, she's blonde, she's beautiful, she's kind of the stereotype of like purity. Oh,  he's clearly obsessed with her. I think at some point he's talking to Clayton about her and he  calls her God's perfect miracle. Yeah. But do you not think it comes from like this her as this  idealistic idealistic image of perfection? She's the notion of redemption for Arthur. So yeah,  there's a lot going on. Um, Clayton has another meeting with the nice unassuming mob guy. Um,  Clayton goes to his boss Marty back and asks him for a loan. You can see it in his face,  but Marty sees an opportunity here and agrees. This is where you get the sense that this is not  really the sort of job that Clayton wanted to be doing with his legal training. Um,  that he's and how uncomfortable he is with his job. You can see it throughout. It is etched on  his face throughout the whole film. Do you want to talk here about George Clooney's face? Yeah,  Gilroy was worried about casting what he thought was Hollywood royalty because he wanted the main  character to convey some fairly heavy stakes and he was worried about Clooney getting lumbered with  that kind of down on his luck role. But the way that we see those stakes is mostly through these  frame filling shots of Clooney's face. Uh which is always in some kind of constonation. And I  think there potentially for Gilro is an element of worrying about what the audience might think  of it after seeing him as you know sexy God's gift with this. Not that he's not sexy because  he is really handsome still but being downcast and going through it. Um, but he does such a good  job and he does, you know, pretty much all of the emotional heavy lifting without really moving his  face that much. We just see a slow breakdown, whereas Arthur is an immediate breakdown,  just slowly see him erode as we go through through the film. Um, but those close-ups, you know,  we really we see the texture of his face. He's always always a slight candid angle. Like you say,  it's the frame filling close-ups and all he has to do is slightly flick his eyes, you know, maybe  look to an angle or slightly squint and you know exactly what's going through his head. You know,  it's just so subtle and nuanced. Again, perfect. Uh, but it it it's it's it lends itself to that  sort of noirish element to the film. Obviously, he's not a cop, but there it's a legal drama. It's  a super moody film. It's like set in the winter. It's really muted tones. It's never really that  light and bright. Even when he's outside on, you know, walking around with his sun, it's a cloudy,  overcast day. Um, and it, like I said, it it lends itself to to that sort of noiresque um, angle  where you see the cop's face and you see him like working out the crime and solving the crime or you  see the murderer's face. Uh, and because there is that juxosition, you never that dichotomy.  You're never quite sure who the good guy is, who the bad guy is in this film. They're all kind of  as bad as each other in their own ways. One um theorist said that actually the three of them,  Arthur, Karen, and Michael, are kind of all like janitors in their areas. They're all hired to fix  a situation for their for their company. Um and we do see all of them on extremely close close-up  angles. Um and obviously I'm watching it on my TV, so it's not quite as impactful, but I can imagine  seeing it in the cinema. huge George Clooney face, not being the swave, sophisticated uh ladies man,  but being this kind of midlife crisis uh struggling guy that's just trying to make  ends meet and is slowly having a massive reality shock about reality check, sorry, about his life  and about his his place of work. Um, which you can't really get unless you've got that extreme  closeup. I just love it. I love seeing the texture of his face and just everything. Yeah. Weren't you  talking about going to see your films in 4D recently? Imagine that. Yeah. Going to see a  film in in 4D is definitely not as good as having George Clooney's right eye just looming over you.  What I loved about George Clooney's face acting in this is that it's so good that any point beautiful  he felt like he was going to well he at no point does he punch anything or flip a table right but  he always looks like he's about to do that and it just gets more and more intense but there's  always an aspect of composure with it as well and it's incredible to watch like the stakes get  higher and his distaste for what he's doing and the people involved is channeled solely through  his face and at the same time is incredibly locked in. It's just extraordinary. It's a real skill to  be able to do that. You know, when they say that, you know, the location is a character  or the ship is a character in this film. I think Clooney's face is a character in this film in and  of itself. Amazing. It's amazing. I wonder if it had its own trailer. You know, George, 5 minutes,  George. Uh 10 minutes for the face. Yeah. Anyway, things are ratcheting up. Clayton finds Arthur  and they have this moment on the street where Arthur really takes him down. Clayton is kind  of doing everything he can to bring Arthur back and Arthur belittles him and makes obvious that  just what a bad man he is and and that is really their last moment together. Arthur goes off on a  little spirit journey through New York and takes in the sights and then he goes home to deliver  his cudigra. He records this voicemail that lays out all of the sorted details of memorandum 229.  And because the goons are tapping his phone, it ends up in the hands of Karen Crowder. She  has another weirdly non-specific but very chilling conversation with one of the goons and then yeah,  they kill Arthur. It's really tough to watch. You do feel for him. They basically jump him  and drug him. There's a scene earlier in the film where they're rumaging through his apartment and  photographing his medication and they overdose him on that. They make it look like he's taking  an overdose, which they they know to do in between his toes so that no one would detect the the uh  where the needle inserted the skin. Yeah. It's all done in one shot. They really want you to  feel it. So, they stay in that moment. No cuts. Horrid. Yeah, it's tough. And then we get another  decompression scene where Michael Clayton is with his family. We get a bit of Clayton's older  brother who is a cop conveniently. Uh you never know when that's going to come in handy, right? Uh  he later learns about Arthur's uh supposed suicide and he does start to question things. Something  that stood out to me again in in the research that I was doing was how at the time it might have felt  like a bit of a reach for a huge conglomerate to order the murder of someone who was about to  expose their misdeeds. But actually in today's day and age, uh not only have we seen it happen, but  it's also weirdly celebrated uh with the recent uh murder of I can't remember the bloke's name,  but by what's his what's his chops Manion? Yeah. Alleged murder. Alleged murder. Yeah.  Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO. Yeah. Which you have a great fact about that, don't you?  I do. Yeah. But you know, it'll keep. It'll keep. Okay. Uh but actually it's so important  for the story because of course that really uh illustrates how far they'll go to cover their  tracks. Um and I think at the time it was 2007. It was just it was the year before the financial  crash. The cracks were beginning to appear. And again, this was a story that needed to be told  and it wasn't one that had been told as much. It's some one we like we're quite familiar with today,  but it was it felt like watching it now with my 2007 lenses on. I was younger, way more naive. It  would have felt a bit shocking to have seen that then. Um, but now it felt really real. And I you  know and when we talked about this before um I talked about that amazing Michael Keaton series  called Dopick which is again a similar story about big farmer in in that case. Um and it was sort of  based around the same time. So it was in it was in the ether at the time. It just because like  you say social media wasn't as big. We didn't you know even in the film he's using a Blackberry. It  was the pre sort of proper smartphone era. the news you got was the news you got. So,  it wasn't a story that was being as widely told. Um, so it's quite hard to watch it now with 2007  goggles. Yeah. But just trying to remember where I was at that time and what the world looked like.  Oh, forget about it. Yeah. You were still into the bloody power puff girls. What's the point? I was very mature 19-year-old. Thought I was, you know, a fullyfledged adult. Um but but my my point  is is the murder is like it's kind of everything leads up to that point and then it's from then on  we then see everything else unravel. Um but it it did I'm sure it would have felt quite shocking to  see at the time and like I said a little bit unbelievable. Um but but now it just sort of  feels sort of part of the course. Oh I mean this is this is story of the week isn't it? Uh it's not  even the story of the week anymore. You know, this would be the aside at the end of the news. This  kind of stuff. You know, the skateboarding duck is basically some pharmaceutical company has screwed  over some families. It's just the dodginess of business of big business. We've got all of  the various political issues to to put it mildly going on around the world. Meanwhile, big business  just carries on. Um unelected leaders really world leaders aren't completely unelected. Um,  and I think the the world now is beginning to wake up to it in a big way, but I think back in 2007,  it was we were very much asleep still. Yeah. There's a couple of things I want to mention  because we talked about him a little bit earlier. When Clayton leaves the family, do he's approached  by his younger brother, uh, who I think is in involved in the failure of the restaurant. Um,  and he wants to kind of reassure him that he's been trying to clean up his act. And Clayton is  not having any of it. He just gets into the car with his son. Talk about face acting. I thought  Clooney's face here was just about to explode with the fury of acting potential at that moment. He  he looks so angry. It's incredible. He talks to a cop about Arthur's death and thinks more and more  that things aren't quite adding up for him. And then he's at the firm's wake for Arthur and talks  to Marty. and they kind of share a a moment where they admit that it's kind of a relief that Arthur  has, you know, quote unquote killed himself. And that cementss the suspicion in in Clayton that  something's up here. And then in the literally in the same scene, uh the other kind of chief lawyer,  Barry, comes in and announces that you are going to settle that lawsuit. So these two  things together put Clayton into detective mode. He calls Mary from the farmer's family,  the girl that uh Arthur liked, and he doesn't get through to her. He gets her sister instead,  who thinking he's Arthur, bulls him out for inviting Mary to New York,  only to bail on her. So Clayton finds out where she is and goes to talk to her. And naturally,  she's shocked. She came all this way to see this guy that she hardly knows. And now he's dead.  some doesn't she say something which Michael realizes that there's no way that someone could  have received something? Yeah. So, she imparts some information about Arthur's intentions um that  she hadn't told anyone. In fact, Arthur had made a promise not to tell anyone. So, at this point,  Clayton is determined to prove that Arthur's death is suspicious. Uh he goes to his brother, the cop,  remember him? um he does him a little favor and he gets this little kind of crime scene sticker seal.  They close the front door and then they stick like a like official sticker that's just a plain  sticker. It's got writing on it. And of and that's over the uh it's like from the door frame onto the  door so that if you open the door it's broken, they know that someone's broken the scene. So,  what Michael gets from his brother is a replacement for that because his intention  is to go into the apartment to find some clues basically. And his intention is to then close  the door and stick it over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. We don't have those here,  do we? We just have uh just have cellar tape. Some cellar tape on the door. Who's messing around with  the cellar tape? You bastard. Oh, you don't do that. Don't go in there. It's a crime scene. Yeah,  someone got murdered. Yeah, I don't think we have those. But anyway, here he then gets a second seal  from his brother and then does what I think is the most incompetent breakin we've ever seen. Um,  it kind of reminded me of uh Ryan Gosling in The Nice Guys, trying to break into that place. That  was great film. I don't think they really cared about how competent Clayton needed to be at  housebreaking. It's okay. Anyway, he gets into the place yet. Turns the bloody light on. Oh, yeah. He  immediately turns the light on and starts having a look around. It then cuts to the the goons in the  van who are watching the apartment. He's already super suspicious. He should have gone actually  afterwards being watched. He might he might still or this situation might be still being watched.  But then I guess it's naivity on his part. Um but yeah, rookie error. Don't do that. Don't turn the  light on. I'm grateful that he did though because because then we can see the things that he found  more easily and I I don't have to squint. You don't have to squint. Does that sound like Did I  sound West Country? Oh. Oh dear. It totally did. You have to save that for when we do Hot Fuzz.  Spoiler alert, guys. We're going to do Hot Fuzz. Oh, there's going to be so many crimes against  rural dialects when we do Hot Fuzz. Yeah. Anyway, so he's in Arthur's flat. He finds things like  champagne and two glasses in the fridge, which is slightly sus. Uh, and he finds a copy of the book  that his son was talking about. And in that book, we see a picture of some lovely horses. Ding. And  uh a little receipt from a print a print shop just falls out between the pages. And then typically  Clooney is immediately arrested for breaking in badly to someone's house. And his brother has to  bail him out. Um and they have a bit of a set too because his brother's annoyed. You said the horses  in the book might uh allude to something later on, but actually we've already seen the horses,  but we don't understand why we've seen the horses. And now stuff is starting to piece  together. Because I have to say I have to say I don't think I realized until then that the first  bit of the film was a nonlinear narrative. Yeah, but it says 4 days earlier after that bit. I don't  I must have not seen that then. I you know don't don't worry about it that before you looked at my  phone actually since we're sharing I don't think I picked up on the fact that there was a picture  of some horses on that book when I first saw it or even recently I was like well I mean I'd stop by  the road if I saw some nice horses. But obviously the the beginning of the film when he sees the  horses is actually after he's read this book. And so we then start to piece it together of,  oh, that's what that signifies. And that's that was the look of realization he had on his face  when he saw the horses on the hill. And that's why he stopped his car um before it exploded. Exactly.  And by we, we we mean just people who didn't clock at the beginning that it says 4 days earlier. I  can't believe it actually says that. It shouldn't though because that would make it even cooler and  classier. I really I was impressed by the fact it didn't have that that it was like not obvious. Ah,  you know, I mean, there's only so many risks you can take. It's not like Nolanesque time jumps or  anything like that. I don't I don't mind that kind of signposting. So, we're now caught up to  the events at the start of the film um before the 4 days earlier bit. Clayton is coming out of the  gambling joint and this is where the two guys are planting explosives in his car. This is why Karen  Crowder is sweating at the start because she's all stressed out. even though at this point, you know,  I thought she'd be fine. She's she's already had Arthur killed. Um, but yeah, everything's  starting to resolve. Clayton has his moment with the horses. The car explodes and he uses that as  an opportunity to pass off that he might be dead for about 45 seconds. Yeah. But do you not think  there's also something more powerful about the horses in that he join he's joining the dots  between the the link between the book and his son and Arthur and he it's almost like an epiphany.  He's driving along. Everything is just unraveling. he sees the horses and he just has that moment of  almost like a Eureka moment of like finally understanding what it's all about and that's  when he make like you say he makes his decision about what he's going to do um and how he's going  to resolve the situation but and obviously of course it then it's it's it's almost otherworldly.  It it's not quite spiritual, but it's got a little a little sprinkling of spirituality about  it because had he not got out of the car with the horses that are on that sort of misty hill  with that framed by the scalal trees, he'd have exploded in the car. Um, and it's again it it's  not overblown. It's just beautiful. It's perfect. And it and it is and it's realistic. We've all had  those situations where you think, "If I hadn't have done that, and if I hadn't have done that,  and if that thing hadn't have caught my eye, this would have happened." Um, and those those kind of  sort of inexplicable situations that have a sort of supernatural, otherworldly element to them  um that aren't super overblown and aren't super dramatic, but are profound in their um effect  on you. I just got more of a he was having a bit of a spiritual moment, joining the dots,  having a wake up, having a realization, being present in the moment, realizing actually what  was important. It was his son. It was it was telling the truth. It was having integrity,  being true to himself, and actually all of the [ __ ] of the corporate world that he'd been  a part of for so long uh needed he just didn't have any time for it anymore. So, he disappears  momentarily. his younger brother comes and picks him up and there's a moment where like he doesn't  look like he wants to stave his brother's head in which is nice contrast to earlier. Uh and  then we're kind of speeding into the end of this film which is and the last bit is just  so fantastic. So right at the moment that Karen Crowder has just finished presenting her case to  the UN North Board about their lawsuit settlement up pops Michael Clayton back from the dead and we  have this exchange. What do you want to say about this exchange, Lucy? Oh, man. It's masterclass,  isn't it? It's just perfect. It's uh it's almost sharklike. You mentioned that Karen is is like  a shark. Um but it's sharklike in its attack. It's he's absolutely ruthless. Uh yeah, and he  he gets her to say exactly what he needs her to say because of course he's got a wire, which we  later find out. And it ties everything up, but it also it it it leaves the audience on a knife  edge because you think that he is going to take the money and run. Um, and he totally sets it up  because he knows that's how he's going to get her to admit everything and and react to it. And then  of course he then flips it and uh she's already got her head in the noose and he tightens it. Um,  but it's it's wonderful because we've got to this point where we think he's got to save the day.  We've seen him work everything out. We've seen him have all these realizations. We've seen him get  utterly broken. He starts off not really perfect and ends up completely broken towards the end.  And we think, "Oh no, he's just going to take the money and run and he's just going to be just as  bad as everyone else." And then he flip reverses it. Oh no, don't don't make that reference. Oh no.  He does what to her? And she's done for. He does. He kind of does, I guess. And I I can imagine like  in the cinema there would have been like maybe cheers. Certainly in America there would have  been cheers. That was one of my realizations when I went and watched a film in America. Oh yeah.  They love they love it. They love a moment in the cinema. Everyone's whooping and hollering when  good things happen. I couldn't believe that. Um, I just sort of settle for a just like a silent punch  when something good happens in the cinema. So, I can imagine that's probably what I would have done  had I seen it on the big screen. The hero saves the day and that's what you want. He's he is  George Clooney after all, you know. Yes, he's as my mom would describe an angel with dirty wings,  but he is an angel after all. And he is, you know, God's gift, isn't he? Look at him. Yeah, it is  incredible. There's a couple of things I want to talk about here. So, there's three amazing lines  in this bit. There's the I'm not the guy you kill, I'm the guy you buy line, which lures Crowder into  entertaining the this this bargain with him. This bit is where the unstoppable force of Clooney's  face acting meets the immovable object of Tilda's nervous tension. It's truly amazing stuff from  both of these actors. This is the first time you see him anywhere close to losing his composure. I  think he he almost shouts at her when he says, "Do I look like I'm negotiating? I pray that I one day  get to use that line in just regular discourse. I doubt it will ever happen, but it is that second  that's the second amazing line. And lastly, once Crowder agrees to do a deal with Clayton, you've  got the you're so [ __ ] line. She's just agreed to this deal and you think it's going to be like,  "Oh, great. Let's get coffee." But no, you're so [ __ ] Ah, and that's where you get a sense of his  integrity or the the choice that he's made here because he's pretty much ended his career at that  firm at that point, I think. Yeah, he's screwed them over for that money that he's borrowed. It's  very up to question where he goes from this point, but you know, it feels like wherever he goes,  he goes with a clear conscience or the closest he can get to one. All of which is, you know,  underlined by watching his face for the next three minutes in the back of a cab just going over all  the stuff that he's uh he's gone through. I think you mentioned this before, Lucy, that you can see  him through his face just processing all of the things that have happened to take him up to that  point. It's kind of mesmerizing. It's beautiful and it's so human. Um it's it's what he's been  doing the whole way through the film. very subtle just just subtle subtle changes of his face which  I don't think he would have been just from a sort of an acting perspective I don't think he'd have  been thinking make my eyes smaller make them wider I think he was genuinely so in role that  he'd been directed to you're in the car you're thinking about every single element that has out  been outplayed and you're just reflecting on it and so they were real facial facial expressions  because they were so perfect that, you know, they weren't exaggerated. They were really,  really naturalistic. Uh, and therefore, we know exactly which bit of the story he's at at every  little subtle facial change. It's just beautiful. And if you're if you're an aspiring actor,  just just watch it. Watch that. Watch the closing credits of Michael Clayton and do that. Yeah. Just  make that your audition piece for everything you go for. [ __ ] Could you imagine? Don't  even say anything. You just watch that. You just do that. Sorry. Wow. It's not really a fun fact,  but the United Healthcare CEO uh that that was shot last December, he was shot actually outside  this building where this last scene is filmed. Um the other thing I noticed when I was watching  it was um there's Christmas trees outside for that scene where he's getting into the cab. So,  this is a Christmas movie. Yeah, I saw that in your notes about it being a Christmas film  and I was like, "What?" Because it's set in the winter. No, because it's Christmas trees. There's  a Christmas tree. I don't remember that bit in the film. There they are. Bloody hell. Don't  start saying this is a Christmas film like like um Die Hard. So, yeah, that's Michael Clayton.  If you haven't watched it already and if this hasn't put you off, you should watch it and  then make everyone else watch it and just say all the stuff that we've said in this podcast  as if it's your own. You're welcome. This you you own those words now. It's fine. Lucy, thank you  for talking to me about Michael Clayton today. I really enjoyed you indulging me. Thank you  for talking to me about Michael Clayton. You're welcome. How do we end How do we end this [ __ ] Yeah, this is how we end this podcast. Copyright infringement. That's it. Yep. Thank you. Bye.