Mark Romanek

uh interesting i went with a movie i believe we we may have mentioned this probably earlier in the season but now to spend some time on this because we definitely talked about the lead actor in this movie uh i believe actually for the first time on our podcast because he hadn't made an actual comedy that we covered up until fully this time and that's robin williams and that's one hour photo which this year was kind of this small movie that everyone suddenly was like, whoa, this is a different performance from Robin Williams because it was a Sundance film.

It was written and directed by Mark Romanek.

And Robin Williams plays this guy who works at a photo development lab.

I believe it's a place called Save Mart.

Unbelievable.

And specifically, we're looking at Mark Romanek's music video for it.

Next to that, we have the brilliantly defiant, almost aggressively upbeat track list of Willie Nelson's album, Last Man Standing.

A completely different vibe.

Yeah.

And this intense audio reality is only half of the masterpiece.

The visual component, directed by Mark Romanek, elevates this into a confrontation that the viewer just cannot look away from.

Okay, let's talk about the Romanek video because it is staggering.

rewatched it.

Like, couple of weeks ago and i was like man this movie is bummer um i mean like the thing is it's interesting too because mark romanek has a very um like specific style but it's like music videos right that's his thing he does music videos and he does like beyonce madonna all these amazing pop stars And then you look at Never Let Me Go and you're like, oh my God, it's nothing like that.

It's drab, has this really interesting like blue color palette.

And everybody is like, it's very British and all the outfits are very like tweedy and all that kind of thing.

It's all cold all the time looking.

So Mark Romanek did not put his own aesthetic style into that.

He was like, no, I'm going to make it like the book.

And Taika Waititi, I don't think He's like, no, I always have to have myself come through.

But now that I look at it, I can't tell if it seems a little bit more uncertain to some extent, even though I enjoyed seeing what I was trying to do.

I don't know if Mark Romanek even fully knew how much of it he actually wanted it to be a comedy or how much of it he actually wanted to really be a drama.

It didn't seem to like stand as something that knew how to be both in the way that other combinations of comedy and drama do that you expect.

So I don't know if that is one other way to really help define what this movie is ultimately.

Right? It's two vastly different store approaches to story.

Yeah.

Right? So Mark Romanek,

this is why he only did three features, he does

Another adaptation of a Kazuo Ishiguro novel, actually.

Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go.

Oh, wow.

Yes.

Yeah, the beginning of 2006.

I mean, within my first day, I was fetching coffees for Mark Romanek and whoever.

The people who I would hope to one day meet, I was suddenly having conversations with.

And it was quite a time.

And then we were like, OK, well, this is going to be that.

We found out Mark Romanek, who we had worked with for years.

In Vogue Free Your Mind, which won an MTV award.

So we knew Mark, thought he was perfect choice.