Ben O'Shea : People Were Fighting Over Toilet Paper

Ben O’Shea popped into the studio to unpack Ari Aster’s latest film Eddington—a nearly three-hour, genre-blurring satire set in a fictional New Mexico town during the chaotic early days of the pandemic. With Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal leading a story steeped in paranoia, protest culture, and misinformation, Ben asks the big question: is it too soon to revisit the intensity of lockdown life? We’ll dive into the buzz—and find out whether Eddington is worth your time.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Great per flick with Ben.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Russell.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Russell, it's great to hear you on the wireless. Good
to see you again, sir. Yeah, so you're still going
to the movies es.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Going around, so you and I don't have to. Although
this is not a good this one I might have to.
So yeah, this one, I think give them at least
dreadful least. This one is one that you have to see.
Although I will warn everybody it is long.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
It's agreed to and I know some people are just
get so frustrated at the moment about how long movies are.
This one's nearly three hours, so it is quite long.
So it might be almost one that you do wait,
you do almost wait for streaming and then you watch
it in installments. Still still, but it's it's one of
those movies. So it's Eddington directed by Ariasta, who is

(00:51):
he's an auteur of horror movie. So it's like Jordan Peele.
He's one of this new wave of horror directors in
horror movie. Tho it is not a horror I didn't think,
although some bits of it are a bit horrifying. So
he makes movies that are not your traditional horror movies.
But they do inspire dread, mostly just because of you know,
he finds terror in pretty ordinary situation twenty four A

(01:14):
twenty four of course, movies like Hereditary, he did Creepy
Midsummer Boa Is Afraid, where he worked with Joaquin Phoenix,
who's reunited with on Eddington. And so this is a
movie where you know something happened, maybe a celebrity dies,
and you're down at the pub and you have a
mate who cracks a joke about that celebrity and you go, oh, mate, soon,

(01:35):
too soon. This is what you'll be thinking as you're
watching this movie because it's set in May twenty twenty.
It's a timeout. What a time, What a time? And
we all just want to be reminded of it, don't we.
And so it's not it's not a true story, but
it's inspired by actual events. So you've got the global

(01:56):
pandemic just kicking off. You've got the murder of George
Floyd and then how that restarted the Black Lives Matter
movement globally. You've got conspiracy theories exploding online social stuff,
social distancing mask mandates, all of this kind of I
think this has ended yet. Well that's that's why it
feels too soon because I'm not sure if we've fully

(02:16):
processed a lot of this stuff. And so Ariasta wrote
this movie when he was in lockdown in twenty twenty.
He lived, he grew up in New Mexico. He returned
there to kind of bunker down during the pandemic. And
so the film is set in this fictional town of
Eddington in New Mexico. It's kind of like this sleepy
little backwater, and the local sheriff, Joe Cross is played

(02:39):
by Jaquin Phoenix. He's ultimately he's a decent guy. But
as the film goes on and things start to spiral
out of his control, I guess his moral compass starts
to wiggle all over the shop a bit. Yeah, so
you didn't go back then, People you know, really lost
their marble, you remember. But we're fighting over to And

(03:03):
so even though there hasn't been any cases of COVID
in this town, everybody's very worried about what it all means,
because back in that point in twenty twenty, we didn't
know if everybody was going to die, if there was
ever going to be a vaccine, if it was if
we're going to turn into zombies, who knows, you know,
anything was possible. Sounds like Eddington needed Mark McGowan. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, Well,

(03:26):
they did have their own state daddy. They had the
Internet daddy. Pedro Pascal, who played the mayor of the town. Yeah, yeah,
he's probably probably maybe just a couple of notches above
Mark McGowan, Marky Mark and so anyway, so Pedro Pascal
is the mayor, and just like Mark McGowan, he wants
to keep everybody safe. He believes in COVID mandates and

(03:47):
you know, sort of locking the town down. The sheriff Joe,
he's not so into that. He's more into the freedom
for the people, all of that kind of stuff. And
he does he refuses to wear his mask because he's
as mad as sheriff. Yeah, because you can't breath and
and so. But but generally he wants just everybody to
get along. But he's so he has he has this

(04:08):
huge rivalry with the mayor. So he sets up this
incredible dynamic between Pedro Pascal and Joaquin Phoenix, which is like,
just is so awesome to see these two incredible actors
just go at it. And it's made even more complicated
by the fact that the mayor used to date. The
sheriff's wife, who's played by two time Oscar winner Emma Stone.

(04:30):
She is she is reclusive, she sort of stays in
the house, and she's a conspiracy nut and so she
is kind of going down these rabbit holes.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Very real.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, it's so realistic. You'll be watching this just going,
oh my god, he must a couple. This is all
unfolding for Yeah, he was just writing down everything that
he saw and so and so. Joe the sheriff, he
kind of, you know, he wants to make sure everything
is going well with his wife, so he starts to
go down the conspiracy rabbit holes. He decides to a

(05:00):
run against the mayor in the mayoral race for the town.
So then you've got this election campaign and misinformation, which
again is a very real thing that happens in our society.
The George Floyd thing happens in Minnesota, but the Black
Lives Matter movement reverberates all the way to Eddington. You've
got protests. Everyone's against the police. Of course, Sheriff Joe
is a police officer, and even though he hasn't done

(05:21):
anything wrong, he's got people saying, oh, you know you're racist,
and so he's dealing with that. It gets complicated, it
gets a bit convoluted, and then it you know, because
Ariasta specializes in this sort of stuff. You know, you've
got this little bit of dread building at the start,
and then it just gets worse and worse. You just
feel it in the piteous stomach as you're watching it.
You know something bad is going to happen. And then

(05:42):
things really snowball out of control to a conclusion that
is wild. Wow, Oh yeah, wild conclusion right, Like all
I'm just I'm not going to give you any spoilers.
Just imagine one in Phoenix with an M six.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Right. It all comes down to this, how many this
town is big enough for the both of us? Are
you that's Pedro? Are you giving it?

Speaker 1 (06:11):
I would have said, how many COVID shots out of five?
Would you give it? Good Russ? No town is small
enough that you can't have Jaquin and Pedro. I want
both those guys in my town. But I'm going to
give it four. Oh like, as long as you can,
as long as you can get your head around how

(06:31):
long it is. This is such an interesting film. The
tone of it is unlike anything you'll see this year
is so well made, and the performances of just fantastic
Austin Butler as well as a cult leader.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
And four is the number of COVID shots Emmet's stone
did not have. Yes,