The Northman

But you're like, OK.

Robert Eggers, film director of The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman and Nosferatu.

And I know Gerard Way is a huge fan of his films and there's that darkness and vampiric nature to it.

The Witch is a phenomenal film, better than this debut album, but, you know, you listen to Robert Eggers talk about The Witch, you'd think that he's talking about, like, the worst movie ever made, even though he's proud of the performances.

Right.

Exactly.

And then the Northman grilled

cheese from the radiator in the light.

In spite of all modern changes, Rouen is still a city full of history in the parchments of its archives and the stones of its walls.

In its stately cathedral with the ancient tombs of the Norman dukes, in the glorious nave of its great abbey church the florid Gothic of Saint-Maclou, the richly carved perpendicular of its Palace of Justice and its splendid facades of the French Renaissance, historic also in those unbuilt spots which mark the landing of the Northmen and the burning of Joan of Arc.

Lower Normandy shows greater variety, comprising the hilly country of the Bocage, the so-called Norman Switzerland, the plain of Caen and the pasturelands of the Bessin, and the wide sweep of the Atlantic coastline, from the promontory of La Hague to the shifting sands of the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel.

It is a country of green fields and orchards and sunken lanes, of dank parks and mouldering châteaux, of deserted mills and ancient parish churches, of quaint timbered houses and long village streets, of silent streams, small ports and pebbly beaches, the whole merging ultimately in the neighbouring lands of Brittany and Maine.

There is a well-known passage of Michelet which describes the Norman peasant on his return from the fields, explaining the civil code to his attentive children.

Racine, who immortalised Chicanneau in his Plaideur, laid the scene in a town of lower Normandy.

Even in his time this was no new trait, for the fondness for legal form and chicane can be traced in the early days of the Coutume de Normandie, while the Brunyol saga shows us the love of lawsuits and fine points of procedure full-blown among the Northmen of primitive Iceland.

If Normandy is the pays de gain, it is also the pays de sapience.

fucking excellent in that.

Well, then on the plane home, I watched a movie that I know you've seen called The Northman.

I watched my digital copy that you gave me.

Because I went to Norway on this cruise.

Yeah.

So when I saw this other Skarsgård guy, I think he was in a Northman.

I'm like, huh? I'm like, that is some heavy makeup you're putting on this motherfucker.

Turns out it's a whole family, these idiots, you know? Oh,

[laughs]

But I do find myself wondering with movies like, particularly, uh, Northman and, uh, The Lighthouse, if these are truly authentic portrayals of history or if they are Robert Eggers joints.

[laughs] Like-

Robert Eggers would be my answer.

But I like that approach.

And this is also the approach of another guy that I've been fortunate to work with, Robert Eggers, who made The Northmen and The Witch and...

I think he's coming out with a wolf man.

The werewolf.

Mm-hmm.

The Northman.

Oh, yeah.

'22.

And Lucille Ball.

Yeah, so we've talked about all five of her nominations at this point.

"The Northman" in 2022, "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" in '23.

In '24, we had "A Family Affair." She had a voice role in "Spellbound" and "Baby Girl." And then 2025 was "Holland," which that was straight to streaming, wasn't it?