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MM39 - Trust the Process: Mike Leigh

🕑 Added 2025-06-04 11:00:10 +0000 UTC

Comments

Austin Williams

That guy is out of pocket.

Austin Williams

Big Dawg Mike Leigh.

Max Fennig

The waitress is Persephone, the only mortal who’s supposed to be there Sophie’s takes the S when she leaves because it’s representative of a spirit clinging to their old name, so as not to forget they were alive The sunrise at the end is the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Johnny has finally crossed over

professional loaf of bread

I thought the guy was putting the cancelled poster on the smaller posters one of which inadvertently was already pasted on the posters that man was putting up when he first met Johnny. Anyway tho it goes to show that time is just constantly cycling im just caught up on that detail

Liam Dixon

I know! I found the whole series of scenes quite odd, not sure what I was meant to take from the whole thing. Alison Steadman insists on taking her home and she won't leave after he assaulted and demeaned her and it's just kind of glossed over. Just really stood out as odd to me and didn't seem to fit the rest of the movie.

Robert Cantrell

Brilliant discussion. Life is sweet as one of my 10 favorite movies now. I can't find naked but I will track it down.

Nixper

This one was incredible.

Blown Load Steve Austin

Best episode of the best podcast. Naked is unbelievable

Ben Davies

I live on the same street as the house from Naked, and I always keep my eye on those steps in case Johnny tumbles down them.

Chris Knutson

Just watched Life is Sweet for the first time. Such a beautiful movie. But does anyone have a read on Paula the Dogsbody’s character? I don’t think Will and Hesse talked much about her (if they did please correct me!) and I was utterly baffled by her whole deal

Ben Walsh

https://archive.org/details/abigails-party-1977

Ian

Really happy w how this one turned out https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/devised-and-directed-the-films-of-mike-leigh/id1801773021?i=1000705503514

Eamon Short

To help Hesse out, I haven't seen the movie, but "Purple Silk" was a brand of smokes my godmother smoked while I lived with her in England and ireland

Eamon Short

Hopefully as far away from a podcast mic as possible.

Eamon Short

Oh haha I just commented I hoped they say that story. Hope he unblocks you too. Unless you were on some wild shit. Could I ask what other trailers you've worked on? It's a cool gig. Honestly I'd be stoked to have Will talk to you about it for 20 minutes or so.

Tim O'

Hesse asking Will if he knows what a creepypasta is... of course he knows, Brian Yuzna talked about them in your interview with him 😁

Kirstwb

The plumber daughter sounds and acts exactly like saffy from abfab

Macon Leighton

I would love if you guys did a reverse movie mindset and just shit all over a couple of movies. My nominees are sorceress (from 1982) and any of the Deathstalkker movies

Michael S. Judge

I think it's really important, thematically, that they're not just "in London," they're in Dalston, a chunk of long-long-long-long-abandoned East London, specifically in the Borough of Hackney – that's your stereotype Jack-the-Ripper London, your squats-and-punk London, but after the massive 1980s Thatcherite Docklands Plan that "revitalized" the whole East London waterfront by sending cops and goons to kick the shit out of everyone there until the Patrick Batemans could move in, Dalston was well on the way to being another endless succession of new expensive apartments and shops, a nowhere place like NYC in AFTER HOURS or the part of AMERICAN PSYCHO where Patrick Bateman kills half a dozen people and blows up a cop car and somehow nothing happens. And the few people in this movie are the last still waiting for the exterminators

Michael S. Judge

I gotta admit, the whole sequence with Johnny and the guy who does night security at the office complex is so, so funny to me, the way "normal" people can be pressed to a certain point until the bizarre beliefs and convictions that sustain them burst out of normalcy, and then how easily those beliefs are crushed and they just die for 40 straight years

James Helps

I used to live in St Mark's Rise ... where that Naked house is. Used to pass it every day.

Luna Zeidner

Just watched Nuts in May on criterion after seeing your comment. So funny. Reminds me of every Portlandia sketch about an annoying couple.

Luna Zeidner

Gotta have high high hopes for a livin

Eamon Short

As an aside, I found the schedule and movie list for the season, are thr guest line ups for S3 poster anywhere?

Will

Unburdened by past associations! 🌴🥥

Michael Bourke

Alan Clarke the GOAT

Rohmer Simpson

here's a "customers who bought this also bought this" rec: the many films (usually made for TV) of Alan Clarke. Road, Christine, Contact, Elephant, Scum, Made in Britain, The Firm, Beloved Enemy, Stars of the Roller-State Disco, Rita Sue and Bob Too, Penda's Fen, The Psy-Warriors, and more.

Rohmer Simpson

Cisco Pike is a proper banger

Welch

That’s thewlis not spall

bill tulast

Not sure how many folks read these messages, or if MM does, but I found a very MM coded book recently and figured I'd share: Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You by Charles Taylor. Each chapter is an extended review of a 70s flick, many of which I hadn't seen before. Just watched Cisco Pike because of the book and it was something else. Anyway, hopefully someone sees this and enjoys it!

J Fitz

I remember once in college watching a movie (The Hours) that was so fake and exploitative in its cheap sentimentality straining for seriousness, that it made me want to swear off movies forever as hopelessly unserious. It was watching Naked the next day that restored my faith in movies. Despite how bleak it is, really an affirmative experience in reminding me what movies are capable of.

Susannah

Great episode. The TV films/stage plays filmed for TV that Mike Leigh made in the 70s are great, too, like Abigail's Party (also starring Alison Steadman), and my all-time favorite "Nuts In May," which you can find in full on YouTube. Highly recommend both to anyone who's Leigh-curious.

Branden Snyder

Chernobyl does mean wormwood. And also 33 is the age at which Jesus died according to Christian tradition

Stealtreasure

Fun fact on the backrooms, the original backroom photo is from a hobby shop in Oshkosh, WI, subsequently a couple blocks from my house. It has since been turned into an RC car race track, which i think is far more interesting than empty officer space, so hopefully the afterlife is a lot like Wisconsin.

Declan Kennedy

great episode, I wonder if that audience member at the premiere ever watched AbFab and did they immediately burst into flames when Bubble was introduced

Keller Warden

Lupin not wormtail

Bert

3 hour Mike Leigh episode. They get it

Nicholas Needham

I was thinking to myself i would be dissatisfied if there was no mention of similarities the Evangelion and Naked share, glad I wasn’t the only person who felt that way

Roger Peet

This movie (naked) fucked me up so much when I first saw it.

Big-Stink

that end of evangelion callout fucking sent me

wailing ken jennings

"meantime" introduced me to leigh because im a gary oldman old man. i really felt the bleakness of thatcher from that film.

Jonathan Thomas

https://images.app.goo.gl/ATsnZHYRpdayDDVq7

Connor Schoen

Actually, Farewell My Concubine and The Piano won the 1993 Palme D'Or, not Naked.

Warbs

I was listening to this ep and reflecting on this series (all seasons) and I just really appreciate how well done it is. I haven't seen half the movies but it's just so easy to listen to the amazing chemistry of Will and Hesse nerding out.

Harry Sachs

Where’s Adam?

Tim O'

Movie MindShreck, coming in season 4

Anthony D Cox

I first saw this on VHS when it first came out, and I was maybe 8 or 9 years old. I became convinced that the Nutella scene was just a completely bizarre nightmare I had as a kid, until I randomly saw this as an adult.

Sean, Sean, the Leopard Khan

*guy who mispronounced Sidney Lumet's name for two decades until last year* Damn, can't believe Hesse is mispronouncing Sidney Lumet's name.

John Harwood

Loved this episode so much. I actually went on a first date to “Naked” when it first came out in cinemas, and needless to say we both agreed afterward that the movie was incredible and also that the night should end there.

Chase Padusniak

Love Mike Leigh. I’d like to shout out “High Hopes,” which somehow didn’t come up. Extremely funny and basically about Mayor Pete avant la lettre.

Smooth Shrek

No one cares about these weird movies for fancy people do Shrek and Shrek 2 you cowards

Anomalie

both of these movies were quite harrowing in their own ways. We live in the hungry ghost world now, it sucks

David Hughes

Maybe Will liked my story enough to unblock me ( x.com/Davidhughestwit ) on X 👀

NYCM&AHole

On comedy https://youtu.be/RgprHtUJHxQ?si=p85xrghwKdj6zXGw

Will

Fuck are you doing walking around at night in a bad mood? Go to bed!

Seymour Butz

No better time to get into Mike Leigh!

Rohmer Simpson

“I hope I haven’t given you AIDS, Sophie”

THEKILLERWHALE

This is great

Rosie

My partner is in north Gaza with his family, hate to be that person but you guys talk about Palestine a lot so please if anyone wants to help share or donate to his fundraiser ❤️ sorry have a good day https://chuffed.org/project/support-suleiman

David Hughes

I once saw David Thewlis begging for change in London's West End. Grubby, dishevelled, and with a straggly beard, he was sitting in a doorway on the corner of Soho’s Old Compton Street, with his hand out. He gave me a contemptuous look as I passed by, probably because instead of giving him any money, I recognised him from Mike Leigh's Life is Sweet (1990), for which I had helped make the trailer. Wow, I thought. He's really fallen a long way down since Life is Sweet. Then I thought, if I saw him again – I passed the spot almost every day – I would stop and talk to him, find out what had happened, how such a promising young actor had ended up on the street. A year or two later, I was asked to help make a trailer for Mike Leigh's next film, Naked, and as soon as I saw that it was about Johnny, a homeless man played by David Thewlis – grubby, dishevelled, and with a straggly beard – I realised what had happened: he'd been researching. Wow, I thought. He really put his heart into that part. The film was incredible, and even though Mike Leigh wouldn't let us go with my original idea of having the trailer narrated by Johnny himself ("Nobody else writes dialogue for the characters in my films," Leigh explained), he did use my voiceover script almost word for word, albeit transposed to the third person. A few years after this, I ran into David Thewlis again, in almost exactly the same place: Old Compton Street. Appropriately enough, he was buying a copy of The Big Issue from a homeless person. I introduced myself, explaining how I had seen him on this very street, years ago, apparently begging – and that it wasn't until I saw Mike Leigh's Naked that I realised he must have been researching for the role of Johnny. He laughed. "How did it feel," I asked him, "being out on the street like that, begging?" "Actually, it wasn't too bad for me," he admitted. Then he pointed to a door on Old Compton Street. "My flat's just here."