The Sweet Hereafter

But at the same time, 1997 was also not just the year of big, bloated, great behemoth like Titanic, a movie I actually do love now.

But also really great, smaller, profound movie like Adam Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, which was the big, such a great film.

And that was a big critical sensation that year.

Again, you know, a fraction of the people who saw Titanic saw The Sweet Hereafter.

But I became really interested in why was this little gem of a movie so great? And I remember reading a lot of critics, including my future colleague at the LA Times, Kenneth Turan, Kenny Turan,

That's one.

Huge Ian Holm fan.

I thought he was terrific in The Homecoming, and I also thought he was terrific many years after Chariots of Fire in the lead role of The Sweet Hereafter.

Hudson and producer David Puttnam did months of fruitless searching for the perfect actor to play Eric Liddell.

They then saw Scottish stage actor Ian Charleson performing the role of Pierre in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production, Pee-off, and knew immediately they had found their man.

McGaughan movies? He did...

The Sweet Hereafter is probably what he's best known for, but he did one called The Adjuster.

Yeah.

And that was 1991.

Anyway, I like his movies.

They just go somewhere else.

Sweet Hereafter was a great movie, but it felt like the adjuster was

weirder.

Best director in 1998.

Anton Egian, The Sweet Hereafter.

Curtis Hanson, LA Confidential.

Gus Van Sant, Good Will Hunting.

It's not stealing if it's not anybody else's.

He originally attached the title Photopia to a strategy game about colored discs that he was working on, but after watching the movie The Sweet Hereafter, which he then says became one of his favorite movies of all time, he thought that he should make an interactive fiction game that wasn't just about some wacky character on a wacky mission with vague motivations, but something trying to be literary and beautiful.

He also thought that if you released a game like that after his first game, I zero, he could release anything and people wouldn't be able to guess what he was up to in the interactive fiction space from then on.

I zero, uh, also known as interstate zero was a pulpy infix, similar more to exploitation films than to dungeons and dragons.

And do I want to watch the entirety of Rocky IV that way? Yes.

Yes.

After I die on my next run through, will I go back and watch the entire movie through twice to see if it's different at the end? Probably.

I don't think it will be.

That's it.

Now, Polly was a child actress in Canada, and she became an indie darling with The Sweet Hereafter in 1997, which is an amazing and terribly sad movie.

But she also had a movie called Guinevere, which featured Jean Smart, which I would love to revisit.

I remember liking that movie a lot.

I'm going to go with picking Adam McGowan first, film first.

And I'm going to pick 1997's The Sweet Hereafter.

Okay.

which I think still is his best film, personally.

Yeah.

Okay, I'm just going to say what they are.

You know, the most well-known film after The Sweet Hereafter, I think, of his is Exotica, a movie I really enjoy.

It kind of shows a unique world of Toronto.

Sarah Polley plays Ronna.

She was in The Sweet Hereafter, another show called Existenz with a Z on the end, My Life Without Me.

And in 2023, Sarah Polley won an Oscar-

Wow