‘Another Simple Favor’ stars Blake Lively, Anna Kendrick and director Paul Feig sit down to talk about their favorite murder mystery movies—and trust us, they’ve got killer taste. From vintage whodunits to modern Gen Z chaos, this trio dives deep into what makes the genre so addictive!
Anna gushes over ‘Gosford Park’ and ‘8 Women,’ praising the drama, the slow burn, and Maggie Smith’s ICONIC green dress improv moment. Paul goes full film school on ‘The Conversation', celebrates ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ as both hilarious and horrifying, and breaks down why ‘Rear Window’ still gives him chills. Blake opens up about her love for ‘Laura,’ ‘The Bad Seed,’ and what makes old-school murder movies so unsettling and oddly comforting. Whether you're a true crime junkie or just love a twisty plot, this roundtable is a must-watch for movie lovers.
Anna gushes over ‘Gosford Park’ and ‘8 Women,’ praising the drama, the slow burn, and Maggie Smith’s ICONIC green dress improv moment. Paul goes full film school on ‘The Conversation', celebrates ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ as both hilarious and horrifying, and breaks down why ‘Rear Window’ still gives him chills. Blake opens up about her love for ‘Laura,’ ‘The Bad Seed,’ and what makes old-school murder movies so unsettling and oddly comforting. Whether you're a true crime junkie or just love a twisty plot, this roundtable is a must-watch for movie lovers.
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00:00I thought you picked Zootopia.
00:01They told me that was your murder mystery that you picked up.
00:04By the way, great murder mysteries.
00:06No, like, literally, like, a fantastic example of a classic film noir.
00:10I'm sorry, I will defend this to my death.
00:11I'm Blake Lively.
00:12I'm Paul Feig.
00:13And I'm Anna Kendrick.
00:14And we're going to do you the very simple favor of giving you our top seven murder mysteries.
00:24Well, Gosford Park is a murder mystery.
00:26Very, like, wonderful example of the genre, in my opinion.
00:30It is people gathering at a country house.
00:33Somebody turns up dead.
00:34Everybody is a suspect.
00:35It's Robert Altman.
00:36It's fabulous.
00:41This is when the detective is showing up after the murder, which is actually, like, pretty deep into the movie because you have a good while to, like, get to know these characters.
00:50There really isn't a lead character.
00:53There's, like, 20 lead characters and they're all, like, so fabulous.
00:56Those are so great.
00:57Kelly MacDonald and Clive Owen, like, the chemistry is, and it's so sexy for a movie that is so buttoned up.
01:02What about Claudette Culver?
01:04Isn't she, she's British, isn't she?
01:05She sounds British.
01:06Bob Balaban is playing this, like, Hollywood producer who has come to this country house to, like, research for a murder mystery film that he is going to make.
01:13And there's a wonderful moment where the dinner party asks him, how does it end and who was the killer?
01:17And he says, oh, I don't want to spoil it for you.
01:19And Maggie Smith goes, we're not going to see it.
01:23Oh, but none of us will see it.
01:24Well, the funny thing, when I saw this movie, I didn't know much about it.
01:27I didn't know it was a murder mystery.
01:29And so, like you say, it takes a long time to get to the murder.
01:31So I was just, oh, this is going to be kind of a fun upstairs, downstairs thing.
01:34And then when the murder came in, I was like, oh, good.
01:36It almost doesn't need to be a murder mystery.
01:38It's so much, like, infighting.
01:40It's like a soap opera.
01:41And then there's a murder.
01:43Here it comes.
01:50Louisa!
01:51Julian Fellowes, the writer, had talked about how everything in the movie was hyper, hyper scripted,
01:56except he was like, there was one line that was improvised.
01:59And it's Maggie Smith, of course.
02:01This woman who's at the country house for the weekend and is slightly less well-to-do than the rest of them.
02:07She comes down in, like, clearly, like, last season's fashion.
02:11She's walking through the party, and Maggie Smith just goes,
02:13Difficult color, green.
02:15My dresser on Into the Woods, Asia, was also her dresser on Downton Abbey.
02:19I told her this story, and Asia was like, oh, that must be why she doesn't let us put her in green.
02:25Oh, that's funny.
02:26She, like, doesn't want to wear green.
02:27You want to say that a man may be around us?
02:29A man? Why a man? Because it can be others.
02:32Eight women is yet another kind of hyper-classic murder mystery.
02:36I wasn't very creative.
02:37I'm not joking.
02:38It's a bunch of people in a country house, and someone turns up dead.
02:41It's Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Leneuve, and it's fun because it is shot in a visual style
02:48that is actually, like, very similar to something like Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
02:51Like, they really try to make it feel like it was shot at that time.
02:54There's even some stuff that feels like back-lot snowy exterior rather than actual snowy exterior.
03:01It has this kind of coziness to it that feels, like, genuinely vintage.
03:05Fun. It's almost like a play.
03:05Exactly, exactly.
03:11There's something almost more cinematic when you can see the filmmaking, when you can see the set.
03:17Because, like, all the old movies, when you watch Turner Classic movies, you can tell they're on a set,
03:21but there's something so beautiful and comforting.
03:23The conversation I love.
03:30It's one of my favorite films.
03:31I saw it when I was in film school.
03:33Francis Ford Coppola directed it.
03:34He directed it between making The Godfather and The Godfather 2.
03:38And it's Gene Hackman, rest his soul.
03:40Gene Hackman is a guy who taps people's phones.
03:42He listens in.
03:43He's a listener, like a spy.
03:45You hire him.
03:46And a young, hot Harrison Ford.
03:48Yeah, oh, yeah.
03:49He's kind of a henchman to this guy.
03:50It's a nice Christmas cookie, sir.
03:51I made you want one?
03:52Oh.
03:53They're good.
03:53Oh, thanks.
03:54Robert Duvall hires Gene Hackman to listen in on these people to see what they're planning on killing him.
04:00And then there's a really great twist that I'm not going to tell because you've got to watch it yourself.
04:04It's one of my favorite films, A, because of the storytelling and the acting and the filmmaking,
04:08but B, the soundtrack is so fantastic.
04:12It's David Shire and it's all solo piano.
04:14Would you go back to him?
04:24This is more of a horror movie moment.
04:26It's pretty great, though.
04:28He's inspected the whole thing.
04:29He thinks he heard a murder happen in here and then.
04:33Whoa.
04:34Whoa.
04:35Yeah, it's.
04:36How disturbing.
04:38Who wants to play Bodies, Bodies, Bodies?
04:40Oh, no.
04:41My next movie is Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, which came out recently.
04:45I love this movie so much because it's really funny.
04:48You know, from working with me, I like things to be funny but extreme.
04:52And I think the extreme violence makes the stakes so high.
04:57Oh, my God.
04:58I mean, no wonder Sophie O'Deed.
05:00Who could date a spreadsheet with a superiority complex?
05:03It's like.
05:04You think all these murders are happening and keep killing the people that they think are trying to kill them.
05:09And it just comes around that the actual murder was so stupid.
05:13And done by Pete Davidson, which is the perfect person to pull off the dumbest murder in the world.
05:18What are the features that you're bringing to the place?
05:20Well, I just look like I f***.
05:22Well, Maria's so grounded in it that it took me forever to recognize her from the Borat movie.
05:27Because I was like, I know her from somewhere, but I don't know where.
05:31It hurt my stomach.
05:34And it will hurt my a**hole.
05:36She's so funny.
05:37And then in this, she's like very moving and vulnerable.
05:40Yeah, she's kind of the sort of the emotional center of it.
05:43And then all these crazy people are around her.
05:45The visuals here, it's so smart to have this modern movie with these like Gen Z characters.
05:49So like you buy that they'd be wearing these crazy glow stick thing.
05:53And like what a way to put a wonderful visual on screen.
05:56First of all, a podcast takes a lot of work, okay?
06:00You have to organize the guests.
06:02You have to do a Google Calendar.
06:03And you build a following.
06:06It takes a long f***ing time.
06:07It really puts you in the head of what it was to be this age.
06:11You know, and just the dumb politics of that age.
06:14And so you're injecting a real life, terrible thing into the middle of kind of teenage politics.
06:25Lisa!
06:25My next movie is Rear Window.
06:27I had to go classic Hitchcock.
06:28It was hard to pick because there's so many Hitchcock movies I love, but I wanted murder mystery.
06:32We thought about doing North by Northwest, which we have a nice homage to in the movie when you have the knife.
06:37But I don't consider that a murder mystery.
06:39It's such a great idea that something happening by somebody who's completely trapped in one location.
06:45This has one of the greatest moments, visual moments, that is so low-key when he looks and sees it right here.
06:51When Raymond Burr, who he's been spying on this whole time, looks into the camera.
06:56That I have a real thing about.
06:57I love, you probably know it sometimes.
06:59I have people look into the camera.
07:00If it's somebody else's POV, I always like.
07:03Because I think that connection, you get that so rarely in a movie.
07:05It makes your stomach cry.
07:06Yeah, when somebody looks at you in the audience, it's kind of great.
07:09And again, like what you were talking about with Eight Women, it doesn't try to look realistic.
07:14Because it's a very, you know, that set that they build where you're looking at all these people in all these windows.
07:18But as somebody who lives in New York City, I know my neighbors.
07:22Like there's, I have a ballerina who lives across from me who practices every day at 7 p.m.
07:27And a man who plays the piano.
07:28I do like feel like I see that in New York City as someone whose building is very close to other buildings.
07:34Any murders so far?
07:36Well, actually.
07:37Oh, I've got the prettiest mother.
07:41I've got the nicest mother.
07:43That's what I tell everybody.
07:45The Bad Seed is a film about a little girl who is a perfect child, a perfect daughter.
07:52She is driven to insanity by her pursuit of perfection.
07:58Will you write Mother every day?
07:59I'll write both my girls every day.
08:01It's a play and you can tell that it's a play.
08:04And it's not necessarily a murder mystery because you know that the little girl is a bad seed.
08:09Seeing the mother's conflict with that is so, is so compelling.
08:14Also just like the reason that she murders because the kid got the penmanship award and she didn't.
08:20Everybody knew I wrote the best hand and I should have had it.
08:24This guy seems like the bad guy.
08:26You would think that this guy is the villain, but he's actually the one who's on to her.
08:30It's such an uncomfortable, sinister dynamic.
08:34And then have your killer be a little cute girl in a white dress is spectacular.
08:37I know, and her performance is amazing.
08:39I believe you did it.
08:42I was fooling before, but now I believe you kill him.
08:44You've got them hid, but you'd better get them and bring them back here right head of me.
08:51My mom loves old scary movies.
08:54So when I was little, she would play the bad seed or whatever happened to baby Jane, which is obviously a big influence for me.
09:01But like, I thought that I would get the stomach flu after because I would throw up.
09:04But I realized I was just so psychologically disturbed.
09:09Let's have it.
09:11Look at me.
09:14What are you trying to do?
09:15Force a confession out of me.
09:16This is Laura.
09:17I was going to watch it this weekend.
09:19So I had really compelling things to say about it.
09:21And then I was like, maybe they'll just ask me about White Lotus and Bad Sisters.
09:24Because that I do sneak and watch when my kids are asleep.
09:26So I can talk about that all you guys want.
09:28It'll be easier for you if you tell the truth.
09:31What difference does it make what I say?
09:33You've made up your mind.
09:35I'm guilty.
09:35What I find really compelling about this is like until the last second, you don't know who does it.
09:43It's about a very grisly murder.
09:45And the detective, as he's uncovering what happened, falls in love with her.
09:51He falls in love with the woman who's been murdered.
09:52So it adds a level of like intensity because there's a passion and there's a love.
09:58And what I love about Laura is that I actually don't remember who did it.
10:02And I think that that shows like how complex and how layered it is.
10:06Because I've seen this movie many times.
10:07I love that when you can re-watch.
10:09I'll say I re-watched the first Simple Favor, you know, right before we started filming.
10:13And I was like, I mean, I remember the ending.
10:15But I don't, there's so much about how we get there that I had completely forgotten.
10:20I was like always going back to the script to be like, again, it's like I remember the major beats, but like who knows what, when.
10:29It's very like a beautiful mind, like I was having a mental breakdown.
10:31Because I was like, wait, okay, so in the second act, I think that this person is this, yeah.
10:36When is somebody not who you think they are?
10:39Yeah.
10:39Well, if you love these kind of movies, you're going to love another Simple Favor that starts May 1st on Prime Video.
10:45I'll see you next time.