"See How They Run" (2002) Agatha Christie, "The Mousetrap", Sam Rockwell & Saoirse Ronan

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
That's not being sir.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
It's as good as a confession. It's not jumpstick conclusion.
It comes to no, sir. This we can do is
talk to this other party. Yes, sir, cochranars sir, tell me,
do you write everything down on that little notebook only
if it's important, sir?

Speaker 1 (00:21):
And it's intant, Well, I'll just sort of put everything
in as we go, and then down the line when
we know what's important, we'll know that it's already in
the notebook.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
So you do write everything there? Yeah, everything, That's what
I thought.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Hello, and welcome to Book versus Movie. This is a
podcast where we read books that have been adapted into
movies and then we try to decide which we like better,
the book or the movie. I'm Marco piacolodiabook dot com
and this is my Friendico host Marcode of Brooklyn Fit Chick.

Speaker 4 (01:02):
Hi everyone, so we had a little bit of it.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
We had a little break, a little hiatus last week.
Thank you everybody for being patient. We hope you enjoyed
our replay of No No, No Now.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
Arper Valley Pta. A lot of you listen to it anyway,
so thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
We are back on track with mysteries in May, and
this year, our entire month of programming is dedicated to
the work of the incomparable Agatha Christie, incomparable and underrated.
We've talked a little bit about her, you know, just
throughout the month, but we cannot stress enough this is

(01:49):
the world's best selling author. I mean, certainly the world's
best selling novelist. We could say, because she's second, she's third,
I should say, after the Bible and Shakespeare exactly. That
makes her the best selling novelist of all time, more
than JK. Rowling, more than Stephen King, anybody you're thinking of,

(02:12):
more than that. And today though we're going to be
talking about another massive part of her legacy. She's also
one of the most successful play rights, let alone female
play rights of all time. And today's film See How
They Run is inspired by her play The Mouse Trap,

(02:37):
which is inspired by some real life events that happened.
We'll talk about that, but it is the longest running
theatrical production in world history. That's all so, more than
Shakespeare in this case, the longest continuously running, we should say.

(03:00):
So it's been running. I forget how many years has
it been now, it's like seven sixty some.

Speaker 4 (03:05):
Years, yes, seventy. Probably it was in the fifties when
it started.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
I think so, So we'll get into it. So so
at this point it's it's after the war. We've talked
a lot about Agatha Christie's early life. We spoke a
little bit about her life between the wars, when she
met her husband, Max Mlowan, renowned archaeologist who is a

(03:30):
character in this film. And now we're going to talk
a little bit about her her I don't know is
this is her third her fourth act after the war,
where she is again wildly popular. She's cranking out a
brand new Agatha Christie story every single year, Christie for Christmas.

(03:53):
It becomes it. It's a British tradition. And she's now
starting to get involved with writing and producing plays. This
is not her first play. I forget which one was
her first one. I just remember that she wasn't thrilled
with it, right, I'm trying to remember here towards.

Speaker 4 (04:14):
Zero, So there was murder is easy? Oh no, there
was earlier ones. There was black coffee. Murder is easy.
Towards zero. There the mouse Trap was nineteen forty seven.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Wow, yes, so she from what I could tell I
went back and reread this part of her biography written
by Lucy Worsley. Agatha Christie an elusive woman. I believe
it's called, which is again excellent, highly recommend And she

(04:52):
she was a fan of the theater. And again she's
it's hard to really convey how very popular she was.
This is before social media, and again for a woman
in this era, it's impossible to get the kind of
success that she had. But just like with although you know,

(05:15):
we're not happy with her right now, but just like
with jak Relling, you know, her works were super popular.
Let's make them into movies, let's make up, let's make musicals,
let's make theatrical productions, and she becomes, you know, a
whole cottage industry. Agatha Christie did it first, and the
mouse Shop is very interesting history. So we read the

(05:39):
short story. It goes like this. It starts as a
radio play which is about half an hour, and I
believe you shared it in our Facebook group, So it's
a half hour radio play, so not long. And the
radio play was written as a was it a birthday presence?

(06:00):
It was for the eightieth birthday present.

Speaker 4 (06:02):
It was the eightieth birthday of Queen Mary.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
Yes, they asked her what she wanted for her birthday,
and this is the This is Queen Elizabeth the Second's grandmother,
so this is before she's Queen Elizabeth the Second. She's
Princess Elizabeth, her grandmother Queen Mary, who was then the
Queen Mother. They asked her what she wants for her birthday,
and she wants and Agatha Christie play, that's what she requests,
and so Agatha Christie writes this story the mouse Trap

(06:28):
in a in a half an hour radio play form.
After that, I think she it was probably meant to
sort of be a one off, right.

Speaker 4 (06:38):
Yeah, and it wasn't. And I should say that they
didn't record it. They just they just performed it live.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yeah, so we didn't.

Speaker 4 (06:44):
We don't have that recording. But it was so popular
and so many people asked for it. So she made
a longer version of it. But it's the story. Yeah, no, no,
she did the it was a half hour radio show.
Then it was it was like people liked it. So
then she wrote the short story, which you and I wrote.
So she from the play, she wrote a short story,

(07:07):
and then from the play and the short story, the
radio play and the short story, she adapted it into
this longer form theater piece that we all know I've
been going back and forth about.

Speaker 5 (07:21):
See.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
The thing about the mouse Trap is famously that at
the end of the show, the actors tell you that
now you you know you're part of You're part of
the whole like legacy and legend, and please do not
spoil the ending of the mouse Trap. Now I will

(07:42):
spoil that. It is spoiled in the Wikipedia entrance for
the play, which the Agatha Christia state is very upset
about apparently. So maybe we don't spoil the ending of
the play.

Speaker 4 (07:55):
Yeah, I don't want to do that.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
I don't I don't think we have to right now.
There's a lot of stuff we can do. We will, however,
spoil the end of this movie. Yes, so that we
will do that, But we won't spoil the end of
the mouse Trap. We're gonnat. We don't want Agatha Christie
haunting us. We will we will stick to that tradition.
But so written in the at the end of the

(08:17):
nineteen forties, it's right after the war, and something that
you and I have talked about many times at this point,
whether it's like the Lion in The Witch of the
Wardrobe that that is a famous account of this thing
that happened during World War Two, where they sent the
children out of London for their own protection, and many,

(08:41):
you know, all the parents who lived in London and
had small children at that time sent there. I mean,
I just cannot imagine. I can't even wrap my head
around what it must have been like. You have to
you just hand over your kid, They put them on
a train to God knows where and hope for the
best and hope you don't get bombed to oblivion in

(09:02):
the meantime. And so every parent in London would have
had that experience, and they also would have been aware
of the news story which this whole enterprise is inspired by.

(09:23):
So let's talk about that and trigger warning. Yeah, it's
grim and it really happened, and it's just it's just horrific.

Speaker 4 (09:33):
It's about these boys that were taken in by a family,
and it was because they were foster kids, because Lis
Margo said, they sent kids away from the town of London,
they sent them to the country because they would be
safer there. And unfortunately, it was a tale of two
brothers who were taken in by a husband and wife

(09:54):
who were cruel. Doesn't begin to talk about what they
did to these boys. And some people and this happens.
You know, people take in kids because they want to
make that money and they don't really want to put
in the work. And so it's a lot of work
to find foster people. And I have friends that I
have a friend in Canada does foster work for young kids,
and it's a lot of training because there are some

(10:16):
people who just take that in for that money. This
is the case with this couple. They like, oh, it's
free labor and we get you know, right. And they
were very young boys and one of them was abused
to death. Basically he was beaten and abused to death,
and his brother had to go to the police and
describe his brother's injuries and the repeated beatings that they suffered,

(10:39):
and it was a huge row in England, and so
ben people said, we need to have child protective services,
we need to have people in charge of those people
to make sure that this doesn't happen again. And then
seventy years later, the brother Dennis O'Neil Daniel no, yeah,
Dennis is the boy who was Daniel O'Neill was his brother,

(11:03):
and he just a few years ago he put out
a book to talk about because he couldn't even talk
about it for for and I can imagine, I mean.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
Just wow, yeah, it's really bad, you guys. It is
out there, but yes, it's it's a the these foster
people that they were, these children were placed with, were
farmers in Shropshire, and as Marco said, like they were
extremely abusive, worked these children like they were four adults,

(11:36):
and then didn't feed them.

Speaker 4 (11:38):
And just they had three slices of bread a day.
That's what they That's what they were given to eat.
Children that are working all day in the fields. It
was just horrifying.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
So it's a story that everyone knew about and that
it must have I'm sure must have just rattled everybody,
not only because it just anyway, it's just such an awful,
awful story, but every single parent reading it had sent

(12:11):
their own children off to foster care for a time,
And so it was something that really really resonated with people,
and that they a story that I think we could
say they took really personally and really connected with. And
so and Agatha Christie has done this a couple of

(12:34):
times where she takes real life stories and incorporates them
into her work in one way or another. Murder on
the Orient Express was in many ways inspired by the
kidnapping of Lindbergh, Baby We're going to do another episode
next week, which was taken from a real life inspiration
that was rather well known. So so the play the

(12:59):
radio play. I guess I said, it becomes a short story.
I thought the short story was excellent. I thought it
was really well written. I was very impressed. It's not
it's interesting because she's so good at this that you know,
she has to. By nature the kind of stories that
they are, there has to be a lot of exposition.

(13:20):
There's always like a lot of everybody's got motives that
you got to be caught up on, and it can
get it could in the hands of it. A lesser
writer could be hitting you over the head with you know, exposition.
But even in this short form of the short story,
she's very She's just so precise and deliberate and masterful

(13:44):
at the way that she gives the reader the information.
And the other wonderful thing about Agatha Christie's stories is
that you can again we said this, keep saying this,
but you could read them over and over again. She's
always given you clues that you could figure it out.
If you happen to know all of the whys and
the wreforce, you could piece it together. And it's just

(14:11):
delightful characters that we have. We'll set the sea. These
are very well known characters at this point. The Mousetrap
is It's one of those things that, like, you go,
I've never seen it. Every time I've been to London,
I've no.

Speaker 4 (14:25):
I haven't either.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
I've never been able to get a ticket. One day
I will go and see. I am just really want to.
I want to walk under that Marquee with the neon lights.
I really really want to do that. But many people,
hundreds of thousands of people have seen the Mousetrap at
this point, and so these characters are are very very

(14:51):
well known and are reference all over the place, like
in the Clue game. You know, these are things that
you see that happened all the time. This play also,
we should say, because it's significant to the movie, was spoofed,
and the spoof was very popular. It was a spoof

(15:12):
by Tom Stoppard, who also wrote Gildensturd and Rosencrens are dead,
just like that play was based on Hamlet his play
The Real Inspector Hound, which we did in my high school. Really, yeah,
this is not a weird play to do for high school. Yes,
I know we did it though, But The Real Inspector
Hound by Tom Stoppard is a spoof, a goof on

(15:34):
the mouse trap. So let's talk about our characters. We've
got Mollie for a start, Molly Davis. Yes. Oh, And
like many a goat the Christie stories, we opened with
a murder and it's very mysterious and nebulous. Missus Lyons,

(15:56):
This woman, Missus Lyons, has been murdered and the murderer
has not been caught. Nobody knows if it's some kind
of just freak killing spree. You know, nobody knows. Nobody
could tie why anybody would want to kill Missus Lyons. Uh.

(16:17):
So there's this murderer on the loose and this woman
in London who has been killed, and Mollie, who was
a young bride, is reading about the story and people
are talking about it because it's all over the newspapers.
She and her husband Giles are starting a business, and

(16:40):
that business is that they are wrenching out they have
like an Airbnb sort of thing that we would call today, right,
and it's a they have this big old house and
I guess a lot of people must did this after
the war. They had this big old house and there
they can't keep up this house on their own, so

(17:01):
they're turning it into like an inn, like an Airbnb
kind of a thing. So we meet. We meet this
very sweet young couple, and we learned that they, like
a lot of young people about about this time, especially
in Britain, they got married without really knowing each other.

(17:22):
That well happened kind of fast.

Speaker 4 (17:27):
I'm sure that happened quite a bit by the way.
I mean, I mean everyone was but yeah, I mean
they they they take in these these people come in
and and they can't help but talk about the murder
and why they think it happened. And they all come
from these different backgrounds, and uh, I.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
Don't know what to say. I mean, it's just yeah,
oh and no, you know what else? What else that
just occurred to me? You know who else got married
really young without really knowing. Christy Atha Christie married Archibald Christie.

Speaker 4 (18:02):
Without really no you know.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
At that time, World War One was looming and people
in a similar situation. People got married just because worst
coming and we're young and we love each other, so
I guess we get married. And so after a while
then we gradually won by one. The guests arrive and

(18:24):
these are their very first guests, so this is their
very first time, like figuring out how much food to serve,
figuring out how to make the beds and keep the
laundry going, because it's really just the two of them
running everything. They don't really have a staff per se.
And the guests start to arrive. In the first guest
is this wacka do guy.

Speaker 4 (18:47):
Christopher Wren.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
Maybe he's supposed to be gay. And his name is
Christopher Wren. He has the same name as the famous
architect of Saint Paul's Cathedral, and he himself is a
budding architect. He's a young a young architect, and he's
he's sort of he's a little too excited to be there,

(19:12):
just put it that way, like he's really excited to
be there. He's HYPERACTI yeah, he's very yes, he's very
like frenetic kind of energy. And then he's followed by
Missus Boyle. I adore Missus Boyle, and she she's an

(19:32):
older woman. She's a you know, maybe a widow. Not
entirely sure. Uh, I'm trying to find I highlighted a
bit about missus Boyle.

Speaker 4 (19:46):
Let's see here if I can find it. She complains
a lot. She's kind of like a.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
He lives to complain, sort.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
Of like a Hitchcock character. She's like the old battle
axe that comes in then. He loves to like bring
into these plays. But she's very critical. Look, and we
have to keep remembering these people have been through a
world war.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
She's probably been to Yeah.

Speaker 4 (20:11):
It's quit of her life. So she's she's seen it all,
heard it all. Complains a lot.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
And she yes, and she's in fact not more to
complain about. In at the end, it's a little too
well run, it's a little too comfortable. They've got their
act a little too much together. And she's like huh,
And she's always she's so delighted when she finally she's like, oh,
this radiator is not as warm as it could be.
Like it makes her day. She can complain about the radiator.

(20:41):
So then we have a man who also is an
older gentleman named Major Metcalf. He says that he is
retired from the army. Other than that, he doesn't really
say very much about why he's there. Then we have of.

Speaker 4 (21:01):
Miss case Well. It's case Well, and I love the
description in Wicki is a strange aloof masculine woman who
speaks off handily about the horrific experiences of her childhood.

Speaker 5 (21:13):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
Then we have a character named mister Paraviccini, and he's
a foreigner Italian, maybe not entirely sure he's And I
say that because he's so stereotypically the foreigner that you

(21:37):
the reader, when you get to that point where you're
like questioning everybody, You're like, is he a foreigner? Is
he just acting? I'm not sure? Like what's his deal.
Then we have the character of Detective Sergeant Trotter. We'll
get to him in a minute, and then there's also
a voiceover character. Now, so everyone arrives at the manor house.

(22:01):
They are all getting to know each other. Molly and
Giles are sort of sorting out, oh we're going to
be again. This is right after the war, so they
didn't have easy access to everything, food, luxury items, and
so you know they're trying to work out how they're
going to make their you know, are we we're going

(22:22):
to serve such and such from cans and such and
such fresh? How are we going to balance this all out?

Speaker 4 (22:27):
We also talked about that, like the meat shortage that happened,
and so a lot of their a lot of their
their meats were canned and the people got it from
places like Denmark. What was the eighty four Charing Crossroad
that was fa yes, right, yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
Yeah, So they talk about how and it's exactly this
period that they're that when she's sending those packages to
eighty four Joining cross Road. So everyone is there, they're
all getting you know, cozy and comfy in the manor house.
And storm hits, a snowstorm HiT's a bad one, and

(23:03):
Miles and Molly, I'm sorry, Molly and Giles, Miles, Miles
and Jolly, Mollie and Giles are a little bit panicky because, oh,
I don't know that we have enough supplies to last
through a storm if we're snowed in and I don't know.

(23:24):
The phone rings and there's they get this kind of
abrupt message that they're saying it's the police and that
they're sending an officer out to them, and Giles is like,
I don't know how you're going to do that. We're
snowed in, and they're like, don't worry about it. You know,
your safety is more important than anything else. We're going

(23:45):
to send an officer and they're like okay, and just
trying to hunker down for this storm. And then out
of nowhere, somebody shows up in the window and it's
a man on skis who turns out to be he says,
Detective Sergeant Trotter, and he's claiming to be there for

(24:09):
their safety because there is a murderer on the loose,
and so we don't want to spoil but gradually there's
is there one more? There's definitely one more murder. There's
a couple, one or two more murders that happen, and
it all ends up to be related to a story

(24:31):
similar to the one that we just told you about
Young Dennis when he's real name O'Neil. In the play,
his name is Dennis Corrigan, and it's all it's all
tied to that story somehow. We don't have a Miss
Marple character, we don't have a Poirot character, which makes

(24:56):
it actually really interesting because everybody there has to kind
of figure out out for themselves, and at the end
of the play, as we said, the audience is cautioned
not to spoil the ending for others, which is so brilliant.
And then there's some other little things about this play
that are kind of unique that play into the movie

(25:21):
that we're going to be talking about. So you and
I read The mouse Trap because we live in the
United States and we could get our hands on the
short story of the mouse Trap. If we lived in
the UK, that would not be quite as easy to
do because it's a clause agathak Christy had this a

(25:43):
few clauses about the mouse Trap. You know, she lived
to see it run for an extraordinarily long time, even
in her you know, even in her lifetime. She did
a time I think I think it was the tenth anniversary,
and but she she the clauses basically were this, as

(26:05):
long as the play, the original production of the play
is running, it cannot be developed into a film. It
cannot the short story that the play was developed from
cannot be published in the UK.

Speaker 4 (26:24):
And she gave the rights to her nephew or her.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
To her grandson grandson I believe, yeah, the daughter's son.

Speaker 4 (26:34):
And he's he's in charge of it, so he keeps
lid on it like they it's yeah, there's and it
hasn't been interrupted except for COVID. And it doesn't count
for COVID, I guess because nothing counts. Everything was everything
was closed.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
So everything was cuckoo for COVID. And so because the
technically the original production has never stopped running, it's never
been able to they've never been able to make it
into a movie, and they've never been able to publish
the short story in the UK. So I'm sure if

(27:07):
you live there, there's a way to get your hands
on the short story. But for us, it was extremely easy.
It was very very simple, yeah matter to get that
short story and read it. So there have been attempts,
you know, to make various versions of it. It was produced.

(27:30):
There is a production of an Indian film that is
based on the mouse Trap that was produced in nineteen sixty.
It was i know, Witness for the Prosecution was made
into a film and that was very very popular, and
so it was all the more reason that Hollywood really

(27:51):
really wanted to make a movie out of the Math,
and they were always kind of throwing around this person
would lead that push would be the female lead, thinking
that at some point the play has got a close.
They all do.

Speaker 4 (28:07):
I mean, you and I have, in our lifetimes have
seen very very popular musicals and plays Cats for example,
I mean lame is. I mean, some of them just
go on and on and on forever, but they do
at some point stop. I mean, other shows get created
and films are made from them, so then people know
the beginning mill of an end, and then they don't
go see it. So it's it's shock I do have,

(28:28):
so in front of me, I have. The first performance
was nineteen fifty two there and then it was the
It was at the Ambassador Theater and then it moved
to Saint Martin's Theater. It had the ten thousandth performance
in nineteen seventy six. In two thousand and two, the
fiftieth anniversary, a special performance was attended by Queen Elizabeth

(28:49):
the IID and Prince Philip the twenty five In November
twenty twelve. November eighteen, twenty twelve, the twenty fifth thousandth
performance start Patrick Stewart, Julie Walters, Hugh Bonville and Ian Glenn.
It's it's still running. I mean, I don't, I don't

(29:10):
know what to tell y'all, and it's it's fine. I mean,
it's a fun I mean, I don't know. I don't
I guess. It's just at this point it's history. It's
just culturally, it's just we just like this thing and
we keep the secret because we all like Agatha Christie
and we need a little magic, I guess in our lives.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
And so there's this.

Speaker 4 (29:29):
One little play in the world where you can go
and you can't see the film of it. And I
actually was so like after this, I actually rented a
death trap. I think it's called death Trap and that's
the oh yeah, yes, was like, I want to watch
a mystery, another mystery because I'm totally into it. It's
and and yeah three. But it was actually called Three

(29:51):
Blind Mice and they have it and it's used in
the play. The notes are used in the play. But
there was another person who also had a play Three
Blind Mice, so that's when she had to change it
to The Mouse Trap.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
Right, which I think is great. I think it works
extremely well because there's allusions to three Blind Mice. Eerily,
you know, when you when you hear when you get
to the story of Three Blind Mice, yeah, and but

(30:27):
significantly to this story and the original story that it
was based on. There's a line they all went after
the farmer's wife who cut off their tails with a
carving knife, if you recall. So it's she had this
thing that she did where she would write. She had

(30:47):
a phase where she wrote mysteries based on what they
were titled after nursery rhymes one two buckle my shoe
was one of them. I'm not remembering all of them
right now, but there are different novels of hers that
she would she for a time, she would have them.
I think Hickory dickne Dock was one.

Speaker 4 (31:04):
Anyway, who's that Andrew dice Clay.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
There were when The mouse Trap opened on the twenty
fifth of November nineteen fifty two, there were forty three
other plays in production in London. Again, nobody, especially because
of her previous her previous play, nobody thought that it

(31:33):
would go it's I mean, they there's no way, how
could you know? And also she famously more than with
her novels, really the play the play, this play, but
her other plays as well made her more of a

(31:55):
celebrity than even her her novel had done. And that's
where she really kind of became known as as a
bit of a recluse. There's a story about how she
turned up and I think it was for the tenth
anniversary of The mouse Trap and they don't let her
in the theater because they don't recognize her. They don't

(32:15):
know who she is or what she looks like, and
so she just kind of like, I guess I'll just
sit out in the lobby. And then her publicis found
out about it and told the reporter and it was
like this big story. But in her previous her first play,
and I'm trying to I wish I could find what

(32:37):
on earth it was called The Hollow. It's not the
first play. It's her second play. Yes, so the Hollow
is the second one. And what's the first one?

Speaker 4 (32:51):
Oh, I don't remember.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
But anyway, after her first one, she had kind of
a contentious I don't like the director, and the director
was trying to change things right and left, and the
director didn't like her, like why can't she just let
me do what I want to do kind of thing,
and he was really very mean about her in the press,
called her like an old battle axe or something like that.

(33:16):
And so you know, understandably, she was like, well, I
don't why do I need to volunteer for this? I
got work, I got novels to write and stuff I
actually want to do. I don't need to show up
for this. So she was very famous for not showing
up to her various things where she was supposed to
be celebrated. She did not like being the center of attention,

(33:36):
which I totally get because she was so unfairly and
even now is so underrated. Her success and her skill
and her accomplishments so underrated. You know, there's no other
hemyway didn't sell as much as Agatha Christie Stephen King.

(33:59):
It's got the gerald. Stephen King didn't sell as Salmon Rushdie, okay,
but he didn't sell as much as right, I mean know,
and and they're good, you know, So she's very much
dismissed because.

Speaker 4 (34:12):
Also women are big fans of her work too, and
what women are into, I mean that's also a thing.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
Yes, yes, right, very yeah, you know, you just reminded me.
There's a there's what is your name? There's this woman
on Instagram that I follow and she calls herself horrible, mean,
bad woman. You just reminded me because she has, and

(34:43):
she has this series that she does called I Will
Never Take the Man's Side, and I'll read you one
it says, let's see, it says, uh, you'll never You'll
never catch me taking a man's side. She doused you
in petrol and set you on fire. Well, what did

(35:04):
you do to deserve that? People don't just set people
on fire? Mike? And that's true. Like, you really bring
up a really good point. I get the Christie people
have their reasons for they're not It never is just
a crazed maniac. Ever, there's always a reason, Like even

(35:26):
in Stephen King, sometimes it's just a crazed maniac. Sometimes
they're just they're just a little bit stabby. But in
Agatha Christie, there's always like a backstory, there's always a motive.
It may not be apparent right away, even to a Poirot,
but but there is. They always did something like the

(35:49):
victim always the victim has always done something to the
killer to push them over the edge. Not that that's right.

Speaker 4 (35:59):
No, But there's also like women like true crime or
tend to have an interested there's lots of things like
cats and knitting and mysteries and tea. Like you know,
well that's all women's stuff, that can't you know. And
I'm like, yeah, don't threaten me with a good time.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah. Yeah. So so this enterprise of the film that
we're going to be talking about today is a very
interesting take. There have been many films, as we've just said,
we've wrapped off a bunch of them, Clue death Trap,
that have taken from the mouse Trap and not stole.

(36:37):
I wouldn't say stolen. It's very much an obvious like
wink to like a If you've ever seen The Mousetrap,
then you recognize this little bit that we're going to
do right here. And so I think I really love
the whole idea behind the film that we're going to
be talking about today, which is two thousand and twenty

(37:00):
Two's see how they run? And I think have we
got we have a trailer? We have Okay, let's play
the trailer.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Victim's name is Leo Coppernick.

Speaker 6 (37:13):
Sir.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
It seems he's killed in the costume story, and then
he was deposited here.

Speaker 7 (37:26):
Staged so to speak.

Speaker 3 (37:31):
Sir.

Speaker 4 (37:33):
How much longer do you intend to hold it all
hostage here?

Speaker 7 (37:36):
Or is that the idea gather all the suspects and
interrogate each of us in turn until the mystery is solved.

Speaker 5 (37:41):
Marvin Cochrannar's overrated playwright celebrated. Are right.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
Oh, I'm so sorry, sir, I can't read me on handwright.

Speaker 5 (37:50):
There was an incident. I'll kill you as good as
a confession.

Speaker 8 (37:58):
It's not jumpsick conclusions, CONSTI what do we have here
working late?

Speaker 2 (38:03):
Huh?

Speaker 1 (38:05):
He killed Copernick to hush up the affair. Case closed again, you, sir,
jump into conclusions. You've never heard of Richard Ottenborough, a
real life detective.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
I understand that you came to blows the night in question.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
It was me and inspector I arrest you for the
murder of Leo Copronick.

Speaker 5 (38:29):
We have a serial killer on the las.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
Please stand back.

Speaker 5 (38:34):
He keeps the key under the mat. We are no
longer merely suspects. We are also potential victims.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
So what did he do that made you suspicious?

Speaker 9 (38:58):
Wasn't so much he did it was more the way
he did it, Handy do so.

Speaker 5 (39:05):
Suspiciously? Right?

Speaker 4 (39:13):
How much longer do you intend to hold it all hostage?

Speaker 2 (39:16):
What is that?

Speaker 7 (39:16):
The idea gather all the suspects and interrogate each of
us in turn until the mystery is solved.

Speaker 6 (39:21):
Marvin Cochranar's overrated playwright celebrated.

Speaker 7 (39:24):
Are right.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
Oh, I'm so sorry, sir, I can't read me.

Speaker 5 (39:27):
On Handwright, there was an incident.

Speaker 4 (39:35):
I'll kill you as good as a confession.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
It's not jumpsick. Conclusions comes to well we have here,
it's working late. Huh.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
He killed Copronick to hush up the affair. Case closed again, you, sir,
jump into conclusions.

Speaker 4 (39:54):
You've never heard of Richard Attenborough, a real life detective.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Understand that he came to blows the night in question.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
It was me and inspector I arrest you for the
murder of Leo con We'll have.

Speaker 5 (40:09):
A serial killer on the looser.

Speaker 4 (40:13):
Stand back.

Speaker 5 (40:14):
He kicks the key under the mat. We are no
longer merely suspect. We are also potential victims.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
So what did he do that made you suspicious?

Speaker 9 (40:38):
Wasn't so much way he did it was more the
way he did it handed to sce suspiciously.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
Spoiler. I loved this film.

Speaker 4 (40:55):
It's fun.

Speaker 3 (40:56):
It's very fun.

Speaker 4 (40:57):
It's and like I said, as soon as I I was, like,
I need to watch another mystery and That's why I
went right to death Trap. I was looking up other
ones on Amazon. I'm like, this is fun.

Speaker 3 (41:08):
So many Easter eggs I was looking on. Sorry, there's
like a whole world of birds happening today in the
cant I don't know what they're up to. There's like, yeah, sorry.

Speaker 4 (41:26):
I have a fly in my apartment. It was my
fault because I didn't put the screen right, and I
can't stop thinking about it. It just was like showing
up everyone.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
I'm like, go away, something like it triggers our lizard
brain to be like la anyway, sorry everybody. I was
I was watching the trailer on YouTube and one of
the comments on the trailer was my favorite Wes Anderson
film that he didn't direct.

Speaker 4 (41:57):
Very true. It's yeah, it's very cute. It's a little
tweet at times, which is fine. Oh is Agatha Christie?

Speaker 3 (42:05):
Yeah? There are. So let's let's get into it. So
first of all, let's start off. We've got Tom George Is,
our director, Martin by Mark Chapel, and our cast. I
love this cast.

Speaker 4 (42:25):
Yeah, Sam Rockwell, Sir Sharonan, Adrian Brodie, Ruth Wilson, Reese
Shear Smith, Harris Dickinson, David Ayolo. I never say his name,
so I'm sorry, uh that, And there's many, many, many
many more. I mean it's it's and and we start

(42:45):
with it's Sam Rockwell. So they're they're leading up to
the hundredth performance of death Trap, and there is a
party celebrating, right, and yet there and and uh.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
She sends the telegram. Agatha Christie sends a telegram that
she's not attending, right, which was very her and she
instead sends a big elaborate cake to the party. So
it's a party to celebrate the Hydras performance of this
h historic play. And so it's the play is already

(43:22):
a hit when the opens. We begin with so we
meet all of the character I mean all of the
actors in the play, including Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sims,
his wife, who I was just saying, I did not
know that they were involved in this production in their

(43:44):
early careers, they were married for so long. They yes,
both wonderful, wonderful actors. We've talked about Attenborough when we
talked about Jurassic Park, Classic Park. That's what he's probably
most known for. I love him.

Speaker 4 (44:01):
And his brother is David Attenborough.

Speaker 3 (44:03):
His brother is David.

Speaker 4 (44:04):
They have longevity must run in that family because they
lay very long lives, right, I mean, and it opens
and there's Adrian Brody plays an American director and he
wants to buy the rights, and they're trying to explain, like,
we can't sell the rights. This is you know, it's
not going to happen, but American producers and directors being
what they are, they're just trying to be pushy about it,

(44:25):
and he's, uh, and he The first person that's killed
is Leo Kaepernick, which is playing who's played by Adrian Brody.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
Yes, and he is terrible. He's he's awful, but he's
an awful, awful person. But he's but he's played very
well by Adrian Brody. He's a great actor.

Speaker 4 (44:41):
I mean, yeah, yeah, and he yeah, he's he's terrible
to Sheila Sam Dicky that's what they call him, Dicky Attenborough,
Like he punches him. He's killed backstate because so we're
establishing like he has multiple enemies in the room, yes,
at the party.

Speaker 3 (44:59):
And and in the room also there are other people
who are not there that he's just a novel person.
He's a terrible, terrible person. And as often happens in
an Agatha Christie story, not that this is one, but
this often happens in an Agatha Christie story. When you
meet the person who was a terrible, terrible person who
everyone they're probably the victim. So yeah, that's the first things,

(45:20):
like in Death on the Nile, right, So this is yes,
he's our first victim. Now we also meet so the
the play is a big hit. It's one hundred, it's
one hundred performances in which is just a blip on
the radar for this production. But they don't know that yet.
We have a little bit of a battle also going

(45:41):
on between the play's producer, a woman named Patulus Spencer,
who's played by Ruth Wilson, and John Wolfe, who was
the he was the producer of The African Queen.

Speaker 4 (45:55):
Right.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
He's played here by Rhys Shearsmith and Reese Sheersmith, and
has been promised basically in a sort of verbal sort
of a way. He's been promised by the producer Patula
that hey.

Speaker 10 (46:11):
As soon as this play raps, you know, as per
miss Christy's stipulations, as soon as we wrap, the rights
go to you, John wolf You're the one who's going
to get him, and John Wolf's like, well great, I mean,
how much longer could this play possibly last?

Speaker 3 (46:24):
I got to start planning now, I got to hire
a director. I gotta we got to start thinking about
who's going to play these leads in this in this film.

Speaker 4 (46:33):
And we have to do it quickly.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
And we have to do it quickly because the show
could close at any moment, right because it's the theater,
nobody knows that it's The mouse Trap though, so so
the police show up. The police show up to investigate
this murder, and oddly so he's murdered. He's murdered backstage.

(46:56):
Leo is the director, the obnoxious American director. Even mister Wolf,
the producer who's British, he hates this man. And he's
killed backstage. But then his body is deposited on stage,
like just very arranged on the set of the mouse Trap.

(47:19):
So the police show up and it's Inspector George Stoppard.
Remember we talked about Tom Stoppard who spoofed The mouse
Trap and the real Inspector Hound again the Easter eggs.
We're not even going to hit all the Easter eggs
in this film. There's two.

Speaker 4 (47:32):
I need to watch the movie a couple more times
because I'm sure there's stuff there that I just met.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
Yeah, Sam Rockwell, who is delightful, He's always great, He's scruffy.
You get the impression right away. This is not their
top guy they're sending to investigate, like the big Hollywood
director's murderer. They said, this guy okay, and they've said
to help him. A constable, stalker and energetic, an eager

(47:57):
to police officer who was assigned to a systems she's
getting ready to take her exam to be a sergeant.
But she's so she's kind of a newbie police officer.
She's also a woman in you know, mid century England.

Speaker 4 (48:14):
And she's also what we find out, she's a war widow.
She's also a war wind she has two kids.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
Yes, I think I'm sure she run in like all
the time, because I have to spend so much time
in Sacramento and there Ladybird, which is based in Greta
Gerwig's hometown of Sacramento. There's a massive, really quite nice.

Speaker 4 (48:37):
Mural of Sure she wrote it, really, and she's from Brooklyn.
Actually she was born here. Yeah, yeah, she was born
in Brooklyn, but she moved Hereland. I think she's like
two or three, and she speaks with an Irish accent,
and I let her just keep her accent in the movie,
which I think is great.

Speaker 3 (48:53):
Yeah, I love it. So these are the this is
not the A Team that they write. That's a good point.
We learn that they're they're not sending them because everybody
else is investigating this other, very very famous murder that
happened and I'm not finding it here in my notes,

(49:13):
but it's a real it's a real murder case. And
so all the all the A Team officers are tied
up investigating that case. And they send the B or
C or possibly even D team of Inspector Stoppard and
Constable Stockard. So there they are, and as we just

(49:33):
saw in the trailer, Constable Stalker writes everything down, absolutely everything,
including don't jump to conclusion. Very sweet. So they proceed
just like you do it. I get the Christie procedural.
We go and we we investigate, and we interview all
of the people who were there, so which in this

(49:53):
case was everybody because it was a special occasion. Right,
So Wolf the film producer is there. We learned that
Wolf the film producer is having an affair with his
assistant Anne in real life, that is his third wife.
I was pretty I'm pretty sure he was also gay.

Speaker 4 (50:13):
Oh okay, and now that he was the lover of.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
Lawrence Harvey, who we talked about when we talked about
the Manchurian Candidate, Oh my goodness.

Speaker 4 (50:27):
Oh I should have done more research.

Speaker 3 (50:28):
He was also the lead in Butterfield eight if you've
ever seen if you've ever sat through Butterfield eight, if
you have, you would remember Wolf. I can't, but he's
I mean, he's a wonderful actor, and he's so good
in The Manchurian Candidate. So apparently they he and Wolf
the producer had a had an ongoing wow thing. But
and his third wife, Anne was the daughter of director

(50:56):
what's your name, Victor Seville Saville, who did Goodbye Mister Chips. Yeah,
just a bunch of stuff. He was British, so a
lot of these that most people in the US wouldn't
necessarily know, but you might know Goodbye Mister Chips anyway.
So this is the point where he is his first

(51:18):
marriage is ending, or his second marriage, I guess is ending,
and his third one is about to begin. And in
the story of see how they run. Leo, the terrible director,
gets wind of the fact that Wolfe is having an
affair with his assistant and he uses that information information

(51:41):
to get whatever he wants, including a suite at the Savoy.
So he has a very fancy suite at the Savoy
where we get to see it's so fun. The locations
here are so much fun. So we also get to
interview the Attenboroughs, Dicky and Sheila Sen and oh my goodness,
he's doing I love them. I love them. It's a young,

(52:04):
eager couple of actors and they're there.

Speaker 4 (52:08):
You don't hate them, now, sweet, I think we have
a clip.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
You're pulling my leg Sir, you've never heard of Dicky
Richard Attendre Pinky Brown right knock.

Speaker 5 (52:18):
You must have.

Speaker 6 (52:20):
You wanted a.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
Recording of my voice?

Speaker 6 (52:22):
Well here it is.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
What you want me to say, is I love you?

Speaker 8 (52:24):
Keep in mind that we're here to conduct and interview
as part of a murder investigation, not an art to
go Sight and Sound magazine.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
Yes, yes, sir, come in, Dollie, expect to stop.

Speaker 9 (52:39):
H I say, a real life detective Scotland yard and everything,
and you are.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
This is consortable stalker.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
Yeah, she's a bit of a movie buff. She's an
it's so much fun. Then they we learned that so
so Leo Leo the director is not only at odds
with mister Wolf, the producer, he's also at adds with
the screenwriter for this proposed UH project. Mervyn Cocker nurse

(53:22):
played by David Oyoloo, who is who is gay, is
gay and has a very displeased partner named is his
name Geo and Leo, Yeah, who is so funny. He's uh,

(53:46):
I love. There's this when we first meet them, when
the police first meet them, they're at Mervin's home and
Geo Geo only speaks Italian, and Geo comes in and
Geo's always like, I can't. Basically what he's saying in

(54:06):
Italian all the time is basically I can't even with
wherever we are, I can't with these people. I can't
with where we're going. I'm not going with you to
this place. No enough is enough. And he always addresses
Mervin as amore, you know, my love, and Mervin's like, yes,
this is my business associate, my nephew, my nephew, and

(54:27):
they're like uh huh okay, okay, so that is all
very fun. Mervin has his you know, Mervin's a writer,
and he has his own ambitions for this story. He
has he wants to, you know, just take be inspired
by the play and take it in a whole new
Mervin direction. And Mervin and Leo are at odds because

(54:53):
Leo also had his own Leo ideas for where to
take the story that had absolutely nothing to you with
the play. And by the way, if you've never seen
The mouse Trap or read the story, I will say
this that all of Leo's ideas, which are terrible, all
of Leo's terrible Hollywood ideas for the movie of the

(55:13):
mouse Trap are absolutely impossible could not possibly happen in
the world of the mouse Trap. I won't tell you why,
but it it's like he makes it clear every time
he opens his mouth about the project that he's never
he never sat.

Speaker 4 (55:28):
Through the play, right, he doesn't understand it.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
Wagua and Christie is that he doesn't care. He just
knows it's a hit play about it's a detective story
about there's a body and then everybody gets in a
room and we find out who did it, and so
he wants to He has this whole like proposed sequence
where like the detective gets shot and he's got this partner,
and the partner's holding the detective in his arms, and

(55:52):
and there's we listen that we hear Hank Williams in
the background for Satan's and and and they're like, cops
in Britain don't have guns.

Speaker 4 (56:04):
How do you arrest people? Just like stop in the
name of the law, which is so true?

Speaker 3 (56:10):
Which is true? Todd and I in the when was
this in the early two thousands, We spent a summer
in London. He was doing a show there and one
of our favorite television shows. We so enjoyed the television.
This was like when The Office was on the original Office.
One of the best shows that I saw was the

(56:30):
British version of Cops, Bad Boys, Bad Boys right now
here in the US. Here in the US, Margo, when
the cops approach you and you run away, what happens next?

Speaker 4 (56:46):
Oh they shoot you?

Speaker 3 (56:47):
Yeah, they're going to shoot you now cause that's what
we did, shoot you.

Speaker 4 (56:50):
That's what that's where we've become.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
Yeah, So British Cops though British Cops was like, oh,
we've got word that you know some teenagers are possible
lee selling drugs in this park and they like these
cops like walk up to the park and the teenagers
are like well and they drop the drugs and they
run away and the cops go stop you and they

(57:16):
stop and then they're like come back here, and they
come back. What's all this then? And then they get
it all sorted out. So but that's you know, even
in those days, if if you you know, cops had

(57:38):
guns and if you run away from the cops, they
get to shoot you. We've seen this time and time
again every film Noir. They run away and the cops
shoots them and there you go, end of story. So anyway,
these are the kinds of ideas that Leo is.

Speaker 4 (57:50):
Determined to ram into this film. We have a clip
creative differences.

Speaker 7 (57:54):
Let's say a second, you wanted to ask me about Lea.

Speaker 8 (58:00):
We heard there was an argument at the Savoy and
I noticed you hear the other half of.

Speaker 5 (58:04):
This inspector that was a concert nothing more.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
I'll kill you for this Coppernick, you bastard.

Speaker 7 (58:22):
Well obviously taken out of context, those words were spoken
in anger and under extreme provocation. We had creative differences.
That's all.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
I love. Okay, I just want more movies with Sam
Rockwell and shares your run in. Please can we just
have Buddy Buddy cop move like, forget lethal Weapon? I
want these two? Yeah? I love He's First of all,
he's so mad that they have saddled him with this
newbie girl cop. He's so mad about it. But from

(59:00):
time to time, and this was one of those moments
he realizes like, oh no, she's actually kind of kind
of on the ball, and he he kind of leans
on her for certain things. You know, she knows she
wrote that down because she writes everything.

Speaker 4 (59:13):
She writes everything down. She pays attention. And we haven't
mentioned yet is that his backstory is he's basically an alcoholic.
He's someone who's a drinking problem. And this is unclear
for me, but he was married and had a child
and or or he was married and she had a
child with another man and that's why they broke up.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
He was married. What he says is that he was
married and his wife was unfaithful. So I don't think
he mentions the child per se. Okay, so we at

(59:54):
some point, who is it that sees that sees the
woman going into is it Mervin. Oh, it's Mervin the interview. Yes,
Mervin mentions that as he's so, they had this fight.
Mervin and Leo have had this fight. Mervin has said
I'm going to kill you basically, and Mervin, as he's leaving,

(01:00:16):
he sees a woman who he describes as a homely,
which is a weird thing to like.

Speaker 4 (01:00:22):
She just has glasses, by the way.

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
Wearing glasses. But okay, okay, So, but she's dragging a
child into Leo the bad Guy's sweet and we deduce
that this is a woman because Leo sleeps with women
all over the place. This is a woman who he has.
He's the father he's fathered a child with and he's

(01:00:45):
not doing right by them. Not that he was necessarily
married to her, but he definitely they had a child,
and they when they're going through Leo's things, they find
Leo has a little black book with just a slew
of women in this book. And so Constable Stalker sure

(01:01:07):
she rone and goes has to her job is to
she has to start at the A's Abigail and you know,
work all the way down to Zusa or whatever. I
don't know. He she goes through the whole thing and
trying to figure out who is this woman, who's this
homely woman that Mervyn saw dragging a child into ce Leo.

(01:01:29):
Maybe she is the killer, maybe she was angry with him.
And then one night, as one night, we see Sam
Rockwell is a very serious alcoholic, Like more and more
we see like his life is very strange, and he's

(01:01:50):
lucky even we realize he's lucky even to you've gotten
this case, to even be allowed to be a police
officer anymore. He is that far gone. And at one
point he's so drunk that she has to take him
home and get him into bed, so she he's like
passed out. She gets him into bed in his clothes,

(01:02:13):
and as she's leaving, she sees a photo of him
and his wife, And his wife is a little more
of a textbook definition of what WO would call a
homely woman in the early nineteen fifties, also with glasses right,
And she does exactly what he told her not to do,
is jump to conclusions, and she thinks, oh, my goodness,

(01:02:36):
what if what if the woman that Mervyn saw with
the baby with mean with the child is actually a
detective Stoppard's ex wife and the person she had an
affair with was Leo, which when you really think about
it as impossible because Leo was in the US, it
is kind of no way to but anyway, and so

(01:02:58):
she jumps to the concl collusion that her partner must
have done it out of revenge for his wife. And
she find and as one can do, you know when
you have when you have a theory, and everything looks
like it's proof for that theory. So she she puts
together a case and takes it to her superiors, who

(01:03:20):
believe her because it's pretty compelling. It no actual hard evidence,
but they throw him in jail and then they go
and they after his ex wife to come and talk
to him, and the woman that shows up is, oh, no, sorry.
They go after the woman who they find, the woman
who went to the saboy with the child, bring her
to talk to we assume her ex husband, and she's like,

(01:03:43):
who is this guy?

Speaker 4 (01:03:44):
I've never seen him before in my life. Well, there's
also another murder that happens. So they go to the
theater and they actually start to see the play, and
then there's some shenanigans going on backstage, and so they
all both go backstage but everybody's taking off in different directions,
and then it's Mervin that's killed.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
This time it's Mervin, which is one of the reasons
why she jumps to that conclusion because Mervin is the
only one who has said he has laid he laid
eyes on that woman, and so if some if it
was the detective's wife, then he would want Mervin dead
so he wouldn't be able to identify the woman. So anyway,
so now we have two murders and a constable stalker

(01:04:27):
who made a big, big mistake, and and Detective Stoppard
is not happy with her, doesn't want anything to do
with her, is like, you know, basically keep five paces
behind me at all times from now on. And yet
he's still on this case.

Speaker 4 (01:04:43):
Yeah, well they want to find out what's going on.

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
So then in a very again it's all there's so
many nots Christian like, at one point they one of
the people I think it's Mervin lives in the same
apartment complex as Poiro where Paro lives in the series,
that beautiful Art deco apartment building that he lives in,
which I freaking love it's called I forget what it's called.

(01:05:13):
And Eventually, all of the cast and the film producer
mister Wolfe and his assistant slash future wife Anne, they
all mysteriously receive invitations to have dinner with Agatha Christie,
and all of them are like, oh, this is great

(01:05:37):
because she didn't make it to the party, you know,
all starring in her play or involved in the production. Somehow,
nobody questions like, of course Agatha Christie invited us for dinner.
That's so cool, Like she didn't want to be out
in public, but she's you know, she's invited us over
to as this to have our own celebration just with her.

(01:05:58):
So they all turn up at Agatha Christie's house. It
is a snow stormy, beautiful christiesque kind of evening and
they kind of all show up at once, and the
butler's like who are you and why are you here?
And her husband Max comes out, the Max Malalan, the

(01:06:19):
renowned archaeologist, and is like, oh, it's these are the
people from the mouse Trap and you're all here at once. Oh,
Agatha invited you. She didn't mention it, but come on
in because they know who they know who he knows
who they are, right, So they all go in and
nobody knows why. Nobody knows why they're there. Agatha Christie

(01:06:40):
does not come out to greet them right away. She's
busy washing the dishes and working on a future story.
I forget which one it says, which one it is
she mentions the character, and you, if you love Agatha
christie'd be like, oh, she's working on such and such,
so many Easter eggs. Yeah, he makes them a cocktail
based on his work in Mesopotamia. She wrote a book

(01:07:01):
called Murder in Mesopotamia. So eventually, independently, Detective Stoppard and
Constable Stalker work out who the murderer is and they
realize they both show up at the murderer's apartment at

(01:07:25):
the same time, and they find a similar invitation that
everybody else got to go to the home of Agatha Christie.
And they're like, oh crap, we need to go to
the home of Agath Christie right now. So they Stoppard
is still mad at Stalker and is like, no, I
need to go to Agatha Christie's right now. You need
to stay the hell away from me. So he goes

(01:07:46):
out there, and then we see like a little while later,
like she's trailing him in her little, teeny little car
and he shows up. So Stoppard shows up and reveals
that the murderer and I think this is so clever. Yeah,
it was. Call it for you. We're gonna spoil it
for you. So here we go. The murderer is the usher.

Speaker 4 (01:08:11):
At the theater, Dennis Corrigan.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
Dennis Corrigan, who is the real life person the brother
that we mentioned at the top of the show, whose
brother was killed by these foster parents. And the reason
that he has killed Leo and killed Mervin is that

(01:08:35):
he has been absolute agony for him, that his very
traumatic life has been made into light entertainment.

Speaker 4 (01:08:44):
Right, this is the most horrible thing that could happen
to anybody that you could think of, and it's turned
into kind of a parlor game, kind of a goof.

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
Which is what I wondered when I read the story
about that poor man, like the real man whose brother
was killed in this in this story, in the real story,
Like what must that be like to have this whole thing,
you know, out of this awful, awful experience that you
are somehow survived. And so this film asked that question. Well,

(01:09:14):
it turns out in this case hid not very well
not very well. So he you know, the usher is
thinking like, Okay, the show's going to close and then
we could all go back to having a normal life.
But the show doesn't close. It goes on and on
and on, and when it closes, then he finds out
that when it closes, it's going to become a movie,

(01:09:36):
and then the whole freaking world is going to know
about this story, and as he's going to have to
hear about it. And so this is the point that
pushes him over the edge. And so to stop the
film from happening, he kills Leo and then later Leo
who would have directed it, and he stages the body
on the stage, hoping that that will close the production.

Speaker 4 (01:09:59):
Oh no, it doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
It doesn't, it doesn't at all.

Speaker 4 (01:10:02):
That doesn't stop Anyboddy.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
No, people are like, no, we can't possibly seeing the
money here, Yeah, here we go. And and so then
when that doesn't work, he kills the screenwriter for the
same reason. You know, he probably presumably would have gone
and killed mister Wolf next. And so so now he's
just ready to kill everybody. And who turns up But

(01:10:27):
Dame Agatha Christie herself comes out of the kitchen with
the tray of tea.

Speaker 4 (01:10:33):
And she had opened up a cupboard with all the
poisons because she was an expert on poisons, and that's
why she used that a lot in her stories.

Speaker 3 (01:10:43):
And she insists, insists that that this one cup of
tea is for Dennis, and like, everybody else, get away
from me this one cup of tea, or make sure
Dennis gets the cup of tea. And she gives them
the cup of tea, and like, make sure that he
drinks it, and everybody else has their tea, and her
butler keels over, absolutely delightful. So in the end, Constable

(01:11:11):
Stalker saves the day because she showed up to back
up her partner, and then she passes her exams to
become a sergeant and everyone lives happily ever after. And
the play is still going on to this day, and
it's just delightful. It is so much fun. I really

(01:11:33):
want to go back and watch it again and see
more of the stuff that I missed. There are many
references in the dialogue, not only to Agatha Christie, but
also to Shakespeare. We forgot to mention also about mousetrap
that in Hamlet, and somebody in this film uses the

(01:11:56):
line the plays the thing, which is the the line
in Hamlet when he decides to use the actors who
are there to do a play, the play is the
thing in which to catch the conscience of the king.
He has the actors act out what he knows his
uncle has done to kill his dad and take Mary
his mom and so on. And the name of that

(01:12:17):
play in Hamlet is called the mouse Trap. And so
there's lots of Shakespearean references on top of the many
many Agatha Christie references, all kinds of names of people
in places, and like was she Stoppard tells Constable Stalker

(01:12:38):
that he's going to the dentist just to get away
from her, because she just shadows him everywhere, right, because
she just wants to soak up, just to be a sponge.

Speaker 4 (01:12:45):
She's trying to learn.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):
He's trying to learn. She's got a little notebook and
she's writing everything down and he's like, you just give
me five minutes. So he tells her that he's going
to the dentist, and when he's really going to the
pub and she has to find him. She sees a
clue and she's looking all over for where there's a
dentist nearby, and she finds a building that has all
these dentists, and all of those dentist names come from

(01:13:09):
Agatha Christie stories. I mean, this just goes on and
on and it's so much fun. The music is great,
the costumes are wonderful. Love the cast, really really love
the cast. I love the choice of I love who plays.

(01:13:30):
Lucian Masamati as Max Mallowan is delightful and if you've
ever read anything about Max Mallowan, I mean that is
pretty much how he's always described with people just really
liked him a lot. He's very jovial and who's a
good partner for her? Yes, yes. And Shirley Henderson as

(01:13:51):
Agatha Christie, she looks she does not look or sound
like Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie was much quite a kind
of a larger woman just in stature. Sheley Henderson is
a little tiny if you remember from the Harry Potter series,
she always played she played moaning Myrtle, Yes, a little
kind of baby boys. She's the twenty four hour party people.

(01:14:14):
I love her. I think she's just wonderful and she's terrific.
As I get the Christie, it's very fun. It's really very,
very fun, and I did not get the Christian novel.
I would watch it again even though I know what happened.

Speaker 4 (01:14:28):
Yeah, I'm gonna watch it again for sure. Yeah, it
was really charming. It's it's really fun, and it's it's clever,
and like you said, the costumes are great. It's great
sense of time and place. I loved it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:43):
Yeah, so book this is a little tricky one because.

Speaker 4 (01:14:48):
It's not because it's not a direct Yeah, I'm going
to pick the book is wonderful. I'm going to pick
the movie because I kind of like, I don't know,
I just found it very charming. I will I will
watch this again and again. I haven't seen The Mousetrap Live.
I mean, I'm definitely I hope to you one day.

(01:15:08):
I mean, you need too, but I'm gonna pick it
this time.

Speaker 3 (01:15:12):
It's just a very sweet love letter to not just
Agatha Christie and her work, but also to her fans.

Speaker 4 (01:15:20):
Yeah, it's a real fan service. Yes, it's lovely.

Speaker 3 (01:15:23):
And yeah, I also am gonna just give it to
the give it to the movie for this week. Although
the story is super good and if you can't get
your hands on it, please please do read it now.
Although next week we will technically be at the very
beginning of June. We you know, we missed last week
and it really seemed like we could not say goodbye

(01:15:45):
to Agatha Christie without doing a Miss Marple story.

Speaker 4 (01:15:51):
Yeah, we have.

Speaker 3 (01:15:53):
To do Miss Marple. We haven't even barely talked about
Miss Marple. So there are so many. Just like poiro
there are so many. I think I love every single
Miss Marple actress that I've ever seen do the role,
starting with Margaret Rutherford. If you've never seen Margaret Rutherford

(01:16:14):
as Miss Marple, do yourself a favor. She's that she's
the Miss Marple of Agatha Christie's lifetime, that that Agatha
Christie knew. She is hilarious and so smart and funny.
But I love all the Joan what's her name, Joan Hicks, Hickson, Geraldine.

(01:16:37):
They're all escaping me right now. I'm so sorry. We'll
talk about them next week, we will, absolutely, But the
movie that we've chosen out of the many, many, many
many that we've decided to do is The Mirror Cracked
and the version with Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Yep Kim

(01:17:01):
Novak yep, Geraldine Chaplin yep, Tony Curtis yep, and starring
He's Still My Heart, miss Angela Lansbury as Miss Marple.
The Mirror Cracked and the story behind it is really

(01:17:24):
good too, So we hope you'll join us for one
more We Agatha Christie.

Speaker 4 (01:17:32):
One more Agatha Christie Mystery.

Speaker 3 (01:17:34):
Yeah, and we will be back next week with the
Mirror Cracked.

Speaker 4 (01:17:39):
So in the meantime, we forgot to do kind of
our shout outs. I mean, if you want to follow
us on social media, we do have a basic Facebook
page Book Versus Movie, but we're much more interactive in
our private Facebook group, So you type in Book vs.
Movie Podcast group and ask to join. We talk about
mysteries there everything like that. We're on threads, Instagram, and
blue Sky, and at those places you spell out book

(01:18:02):
Versus and Movie. We have an old timey email Book
Versus Movie Podcast at gmail dot com. You can reach
out to us there, and we do have a Patreon
if you want to support us. So all the clips
we play today we put that on Patreon for free.
But what we also put on Patreon for those who
pay is our past episodes. Were doing the show for

(01:18:22):
ten years, so we're doing everything from twenty twenty two,
and then previous to that is up there and coming up.
We had the Joilak Club just dropped. We have the
seven year Itch Gaslight, The Spy Who Loved Me and
the Boys and the band. Those are all dropping in
June for the Patreon members only, so if you want
to sign up and support us, we just use that
money for the books and the movies and the costs

(01:18:43):
for putting the show together. But it's yeah, we want
to thank you all for that. And Margo, where can
they find you?

Speaker 3 (01:18:50):
You can find me online at colonniabook dot com and
all my social media call outs are at Cheese not
Yo Mama. And where can they find you?

Speaker 4 (01:18:57):
You can find me at Brooklynfitchick dot com, Brooklyn fit
Chick for threads and Instagram I'm a Brooklyn Margo for
Blue Sky and TikTok, and at my YouTube where we
also we put these on our YouTube pages. It's at
my name Margo Donni Hue. Okay, everyone, thank you so
much for checking us out. We'll be back soon with
a new Agatha Christie for you.

Speaker 6 (01:19:19):
I understand you met WPC Stork last night I did. Yes,
Constable a very capable officer, or at least she will
be once she gets the proper instruction.

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
Sorry, so I'm not sure. You don't mean you want
me to do.

Speaker 5 (01:19:36):
Yes, I do. I'd like you to show her the ropes.

Speaker 6 (01:19:38):
I'm hoping some of her enthusiasm for police work might
rub off on you.

Speaker 2 (01:19:42):
But the bullets is it? Wise?

Speaker 6 (01:19:44):
This is not a debate, stop hard. I have a
reputation as a modernizer. I have to be seen to
keep it up. I have said in public that I
think women are the future of the force.

Speaker 2 (01:19:58):
Absolutely, sir. I agree.

Speaker 8 (01:20:01):
We're not looking for stolen sweets or sweet a lost
bleeding bicycle.

Speaker 2 (01:20:05):
This is a murder investigation and she is inexperienced.

Speaker 5 (01:20:08):
They were inexperienced in the war. Ask Jerry how that
turned out.

Speaker 2 (01:20:14):
Yes, sir, but that will be all.

Speaker 8 (01:20:19):
Thank you, Commissioner, Inspector, Constable Inspector.

Speaker 4 (01:20:26):
Chrishner, Constable, thank you so much for listening to the
Book Versus Movie podcast. We're a part of the Speaker
podcast network. Go to spreaker dot com to check out
all of the shows they offer. We asked you make
sure to subscribe to our podcast, Book vs.

Speaker 3 (01:20:42):
Movie in your.

Speaker 4 (01:20:43):
Podcast app, so that way you'll never miss an episode.
If you want to interact with the Margos, the best
place to do that is in our private Facebook group.
Go to Facebook and type in Book vs. Movie Podcast
group and ask to join. On social media, you can
find us on on Instagram and threads. You spell out
book versus and movie. Our email is Book Versus Movie Podcasts.

(01:21:07):
Spelled it all out at gmail dot com. This is
Margo D. And you can find me at my blog
Brooklynfitchick dot com. And I'm at Brooklynfitchick for Threads and Instagram,
and on TikTok I'm at Brooklyn Margo. I'm also at
Brooklyn Margo for Blue Sky Margo P. You can find
her on all social media at She's Natcho Mama. We

(01:21:31):
really appreciate the listen and if you have ideas for us,
we not only cover books, but also short stories, magazine articles, plays, songs, poems,
be creative. If it's been adapted into a movie, we
may just cover it. We just ask that the movie
be available on a major streaming platform. We'll be back
soon with a new episode.

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