Dominic Cooke on The Courier - SpyMaster Interview #75

[00:00:02] Hello and welcome to SpyHards Podcast. I'm Agent Scott.

[00:00:37] And I'm Cam the Provocateur, studying to become a salesman.

[00:00:41] And boy do you do it so well. And speaking of doing it well, we've been celebrating

[00:00:45] 2020's The Courier this week. Of course, we sat down with Ian from Cold War Conversations

[00:00:51] to decode the movie at the beginning of the week. And then we just brought you

[00:00:54] a couple of days ago, a sit down with the film's screenwriter, Mr. Tom O'Connor.

[00:00:59] But we mentioned in the review that many years ago, we actually did a declassified

[00:01:04] episode on The Courier. And as part of that, we sat down with the film's director,

[00:01:10] Mr. Dominic Cook. So what we thought we'd do is we pull out the full length

[00:01:14] version of that interview and bring that to you here as well to give you the

[00:01:17] comprehensive Courier experience. So Cam, I think without further ado,

[00:01:22] let's get to the interview.

[00:01:27] And we are joined by the director of The Courier, Dominic Cook.

[00:01:31] Dominic, thank you for joining us today.

[00:01:33] Thanks for having me.

[00:01:35] Now I realise our time is short, so we are going to fire some questions at you

[00:01:39] as fast as we can. But I'll start us off.

[00:01:44] So we basically just reviewed the film on the episode.

[00:01:47] And the first thing I really wanted to know is what brought you to this film?

[00:01:51] What got you interested in telling the story?

[00:01:53] Well, I was sent the script with a big pile of scripts to my agents in the US.

[00:01:57] I just sort of finished a film and they were like, right, we've got to get you

[00:02:00] next film. OK.

[00:02:01] And I read a bunch of scripts and I just loved this script.

[00:02:05] I just immediately loved it.

[00:02:06] The story was extraordinary.

[00:02:08] I didn't even know it was a true story.

[00:02:10] There's nothing on the script that said this is a true story.

[00:02:12] Of course, as it sort of developed, I thought it has to be a true story.

[00:02:15] Then at the end of it, I found out that it was sort of got really into the

[00:02:18] research. But I think for me, in the end, what really sort of won me over was

[00:02:22] the fact that it had sort of a more than most

[00:02:26] stories. There are so many spy movies that are sort of

[00:02:32] have the coldness of the calculation that is the centre of the action

[00:02:36] of the film, but you don't really get much cost of it, the personal

[00:02:41] cost and the sort of relationships, the sort of personal

[00:02:45] relationships at the heart of it.

[00:02:47] And because this story evolved as a regular person rather than a trained

[00:02:52] operative, it allowed the space for that.

[00:02:56] I mean, that really sort of moved me and brought me to it.

[00:03:01] Hmm. OK, so I'm interested.

[00:03:03] We tackle spy movies every week and there's such an established tone

[00:03:08] to spy movies. I'm curious if you were looking at any spy

[00:03:11] films for influence or if there's anything you kind of had in mind when

[00:03:14] you were tackling this project?

[00:03:16] Well, we did look at a few and the one that really stood out was the

[00:03:20] Spy Who Came In From the Colt, because we were looking mostly actually,

[00:03:23] I mean, obviously I've seen a lot of other spy movies, but we were

[00:03:27] looking mostly at sort of period movies from the same kind of time.

[00:03:31] And what I loved about that was the sort of completely

[00:03:36] unglamorous world that it portrayed.

[00:03:40] Sort of gritty and really rather unpleasant.

[00:03:43] And I thought, oh, that feels a bit more like something a bit more real.

[00:03:48] And also it had a sort of sustained, slow, steady

[00:03:53] intensity to it. I thought was brilliant.

[00:03:55] I had seen it years ago, actually, but as I came back to it

[00:03:59] and actually otherwise, the influences on the film were more

[00:04:03] from sort of Hitchcock and other types of movies from the period

[00:04:10] than other spy movies.

[00:04:12] Any particular Hitchcock movies that jumped out?

[00:04:14] Well, the one that I the one that I looked at,

[00:04:16] I mean, I'm a Hitchcock anyway, so I know the films quite well.

[00:04:20] But the one that I looked at a lot was North by Northwest, which

[00:04:23] partly because it was around the same time,

[00:04:25] it was made around the same time as the events of the movie.

[00:04:29] But also because he's so good at sort of getting

[00:04:33] what it's like to be in a situation that is beyond your control,

[00:04:37] you know, and that sort of strange paranoia.

[00:04:39] I mean, it's a different it is a different sort of register to this movie.

[00:04:43] But I think that's so amazing where that film,

[00:04:46] you know, you are constantly trying to catch up with what the hell is going

[00:04:50] or rather he's constantly trying to catch up, Perry Graham.

[00:04:53] And we it really influenced the way I thought about shooting the movie because

[00:04:59] because what he does, I mean, the example I would give is

[00:05:02] and when I looked at the sequence, I looked at really closely

[00:05:05] is that incredible sequence in the in the cornfields

[00:05:08] with the crop sprayer and and how he constructs that,

[00:05:12] which is very typical of him.

[00:05:13] He sort of uses three camera angles.

[00:05:16] One is wide shot, which isolate the person in the setting.

[00:05:20] So you get their vulnerability and you go to the sort of reaction

[00:05:24] on quite tight on Cary Grant.

[00:05:27] And then you get to the clean POV, which we used a lot.

[00:05:29] Clean points of view, which basically seeing the world

[00:05:32] through the eyes of the protagonist and the combination of those three

[00:05:36] types of shot we used a lot in this movie and and he's got music.

[00:05:40] It's in the shower scene.

[00:05:41] It's in all the back combination is in all the key moments in each

[00:05:47] and it's a magic combination because it gives you all the information

[00:05:50] you need really.

[00:05:51] But clean POV is so valuable in the mix because it really does

[00:05:55] put you into the boots of the character.

[00:06:00] And if you look at the way we did him arriving at the airport,

[00:06:03] for example, in Moscow, we used that sequence

[00:06:08] that that that that combination.

[00:06:10] Yeah, very nice.

[00:06:13] So my next question kind of follows on from the first one,

[00:06:16] which was your process of getting into the film.

[00:06:18] And you mentioned you were sort of handed the script

[00:06:20] and you didn't know it was a real story at the time.

[00:06:22] But once you got into that and the process of actually putting it

[00:06:25] on the screen, how did you deal with it being a real story

[00:06:28] and translating that to the screen?

[00:06:31] Well, you've got you know, it's such a complex question.

[00:06:34] Because you've got you've got your loyalty to the real people.

[00:06:40] And I think you've sort of got to on the spirit,

[00:06:44] at the very least, of who they are and what happened.

[00:06:49] But at the same time, you've got to make something that's compressed,

[00:06:51] hugely compressed.

[00:06:52] And if you're doing a TV series, you've got much more space

[00:06:55] to sort of get into the nuances and the sort of sort of

[00:06:59] the subplots and all of that.

[00:07:01] You have far less time.

[00:07:03] So you've got to compress everything right down

[00:07:05] and you've got to make something exciting.

[00:07:07] So, you know, you're not torn, but what we're trying to bring

[00:07:10] those two elements together.

[00:07:11] And I always feel that if you're doing something

[00:07:14] that's drawn from real life, you really do need to do your research

[00:07:19] and you need to act in a sort of totally pragmatic response

[00:07:22] in terms of what you find.

[00:07:23] You've got to only really use the stuff.

[00:07:26] It's going to enhance the film.

[00:07:28] And if you if you if you have the other key thing, of course,

[00:07:31] is that is that you need a guiding principle by which you can edit out

[00:07:34] information that's not useful.

[00:07:36] So you've got to decide what sort of film you're going to make.

[00:07:39] It happens also when people would do novels.

[00:07:41] Same thing happens because if you do a novel, a novel is like,

[00:07:43] how long does it take to read a novel?

[00:07:44] Like days. But you try to get a novel down to two hours.

[00:07:47] You have to decide which bit of the novel you're going to talk about.

[00:07:49] So for us, we sort of started with the friendship

[00:07:53] at the center of the story being the sort of axis

[00:07:55] on which the whole thing tells.

[00:07:57] And that's that being the heart of the movie.

[00:08:00] So that meant there were lots of amazing parts

[00:08:03] of the story that we just didn't get into.

[00:08:06] And then once I started doing the reading, it was so interesting.

[00:08:10] I mean, it was.

[00:08:12] Fascinating and there were elements of research that I'd found

[00:08:18] that sort of ended up in the movie

[00:08:21] and shaped our understanding of things and other bits left behind.

[00:08:25] And of course, as you'll know,

[00:08:26] the really hard thing about researching such a like that this is

[00:08:29] that it is by its very essence, by necessity secret.

[00:08:33] And that there is a lot of sort of.

[00:08:37] Fake news and and and actually the propaganda

[00:08:41] around this particular story was huge,

[00:08:45] especially in the Soviet Union.

[00:08:46] I mean, it's still in Russia.

[00:08:48] Don't know what actually happened.

[00:08:50] They what what is accepted there is the Soviet version of events,

[00:08:53] which was totally constructed to defame Penkovsky.

[00:08:57] It's it's totally fake.

[00:09:00] They had they had a show trial

[00:09:02] and there was a documentary made in the maybe 70s about it in the Soviet era.

[00:09:08] And of course, the authorities were so embarrassed because he was so high up

[00:09:11] with so much information given to the West, they had to do stuff.

[00:09:16] Just sort of help them get away with it.

[00:09:17] And and they defamed him.

[00:09:20] And that version of events is now so much so that when we went over

[00:09:24] to cast the movie, we were given quite a hard time by a lot of people

[00:09:27] about what a terrible trace he was.

[00:09:29] He wasn't a hero at all.

[00:09:30] You know, it's decorated 13 times.

[00:09:32] He'd been in an office.

[00:09:33] These things which were put into a TV documentary have become facts.

[00:09:36] And so that sort of distil willful distortion

[00:09:41] of the story and the very interesting thing that happened with with Brother

[00:09:44] Wim, which was that you were told to shut up by MI6 because otherwise

[00:09:48] they would take away his pension

[00:09:50] because he was going on television and writing books

[00:09:52] where he was telling a mixture of truths and self-aggrandizing fictions

[00:09:59] meant that the story was really inaccessible as a brilliant book.

[00:10:03] The Spy Who Saved the World, which I came to quite late in my research,

[00:10:06] which is based on the CIA papers, which I think released in the 90s.

[00:10:10] So that was the first book I read that was totally rooted

[00:10:13] in concrete information.

[00:10:17] Incredibly helpful because, you know, you've got your script,

[00:10:21] but you need to sort of understand the bigger picture.

[00:10:24] And that was I found that very useful.

[00:10:27] Now, I'm curious, the setting for this movie and the locations were beautiful.

[00:10:30] Like, I thought the mood that came through those locations

[00:10:33] was really, really effective.

[00:10:35] And I'm just curious what the challenges you faced recreating,

[00:10:38] you know, Cold War era Moscow in this film.

[00:10:41] Yeah, that was quite hard.

[00:10:43] I mean, I had actually been to Soviet Russia in the 80s

[00:10:47] on a school trip, which was unbelievably helpful because it was

[00:10:51] even then so different to anything I had seen

[00:10:56] before and pretty much since that it sort of helped me.

[00:11:01] And actually, my production designer got so bored of me

[00:11:04] talking about my school trip, you know, running jokes.

[00:11:07] There's every time I went on a location out there, I'd be going on about,

[00:11:11] you know, the key lady in the hotel or that there were so many things

[00:11:15] that were so weird and unique that we tried to get into the movie.

[00:11:20] But yeah, we went to quite a few places, went to Kiev

[00:11:23] and we went to Belarus, to Minsk.

[00:11:26] We nearly shot there, actually.

[00:11:28] We were going to do two days there because it's

[00:11:30] it's a sort of monument to Stalinism.

[00:11:34] There's an extraordinary, you know,

[00:11:37] it's still got a KGB there.

[00:11:38] It's still in that in that era and a very strange place.

[00:11:44] And they've still got the sort of 30 foot

[00:11:47] Lenin statues and all that.

[00:11:48] So we were going to do a lot of experience there, but it turned out that

[00:11:52] we couldn't get sort of it wasn't reliable because

[00:11:56] they couldn't promise us access to the buildings we needed.

[00:11:59] So we shot it all in Prague.

[00:12:00] Some of it is some of it is sort of green screen

[00:12:04] augmented. But Prague's got a lot of brilliant architecture.

[00:12:08] And we yeah, we sort of we did a huge amount of research.

[00:12:12] I mean, you know, the props are all authentic.

[00:12:14] You know, we tried to get everything absolutely bang on

[00:12:19] to get the feel of that world as accurate as we possibly could.

[00:12:24] But I have to say, the fact that I had been

[00:12:27] and I've been to Russia a lot since for various reasons for work

[00:12:31] was very helpful because it's it still is, I think,

[00:12:35] such a different culture,

[00:12:37] such an atmosphere in Russia to to Western Europe

[00:12:41] that you sort of you sort of need to do work with.

[00:12:47] Right. Quick question about just Benedict Cumberbatch.

[00:12:51] I mean, he's one of the for me, the best things about the film.

[00:12:53] His performance is fantastic.

[00:12:54] But what was it like directing him and directing him through that process?

[00:12:57] Because the physical change he goes through later on in the film

[00:13:00] is very jarring in that that that flip that film takes at that point.

[00:13:04] It just makes you look like, oh, so how was that just directing

[00:13:07] Benedict and coaching for it?

[00:13:09] Well, he's I've worked with him a few times.

[00:13:11] He's very sort of self correcting.

[00:13:15] He's got a very good storytelling sense.

[00:13:17] I actually think he'd be a very good director.

[00:13:18] I said that to him because he's he's sort of

[00:13:22] he knows what is required story wise for each scene.

[00:13:26] And he's also very physical.

[00:13:28] So he sort of creates his characters physically.

[00:13:32] There's a lot of I mean, he looked a lot of the real gravel when

[00:13:35] he looked a lot.

[00:13:36] There was a brilliant clue in gravel win

[00:13:38] about who he really was because

[00:13:40] he was from a very working class background from Wales.

[00:13:43] And he had a very aspirational, slightly pushy, slightly grandiose

[00:13:48] mother who wanted the best for herself and for him.

[00:13:51] And he ended up marrying someone who was sort of

[00:13:56] up in middle class and living in Chelsea.

[00:13:58] But his life was thwarted, which I think is one of the reasons

[00:14:01] why he connected so strongly with Van Kostee.

[00:14:03] His life was thwarted by very severe dyslexia,

[00:14:06] which at the time, of course, wasn't understood or recognised.

[00:14:09] Kids who had dyslexia, he was at school during the First World War.

[00:14:13] And he was put to the back of the class

[00:14:16] and treated like he was stupid when he clearly was not.

[00:14:20] And we noticed in the photographs of Wynn,

[00:14:24] every single photograph at any point in his life,

[00:14:27] we wore the same tie.

[00:14:29] And we did our homework.

[00:14:32] I don't know how we found this out.

[00:14:34] This was not me that found it out.

[00:14:35] It was someone in the wardrobe scene found out that the tie

[00:14:38] that he wore was the Nottingham University tie. Right.

[00:14:42] And he had not actually attended Nottingham University.

[00:14:45] However, he had attended some lectures there as an outsider

[00:14:50] in engineering because that was his speciality,

[00:14:53] because he couldn't have got in because of his dyslexia.

[00:14:55] And I just thought that was we both fastened on that as a clue.

[00:14:59] I mean, actually, we did it.

[00:15:01] Where is that time everything?

[00:15:03] But what I thought was so interesting was what kind of a person

[00:15:08] is it that needs to defend themselves that strongly, you know, from

[00:15:12] or sort of sort of put their status out there

[00:15:16] when they clearly hadn't really got that status.

[00:15:20] And and I think, you know, he did have a sense

[00:15:23] of not being recognised in a way that I think he had exactly

[00:15:26] the same sense for very different reasons.

[00:15:29] And I think that that sort of

[00:15:32] grievance was part of the dynamic

[00:15:35] that sort of worked for them as a pairing.

[00:15:38] I had a question about Jesse Buckley, who's definitely emerging

[00:15:41] as a major talent and so many times when you see these real life

[00:15:45] stories translated to the screen, there's the wife at home character,

[00:15:49] which feels so underdeveloped.

[00:15:50] And I'm just really curious what the efforts you took,

[00:15:52] because this character really did have a really interesting

[00:15:56] and dynamic role throughout the movie, especially that built

[00:15:59] as the movie kept going.

[00:15:59] I'm really curious about the development of that character

[00:16:02] when you're putting this movie together.

[00:16:04] Thank you. Well, it was it is really hard that what you're describing.

[00:16:09] It's a it's a perennial question of the moment, really.

[00:16:11] It comes up a lot at the moment when you're thinking about,

[00:16:14] how do you tell the truth about the past

[00:16:16] where it was white guys who were operating in the world

[00:16:21] but on other stories properly of the people who don't fit that category?

[00:16:25] And so it's really tricky.

[00:16:28] You know, because we, you know, we weren't focusing on her

[00:16:31] as the center of the story.

[00:16:33] I mean, I have to say that we were so lucky with Jesse

[00:16:36] because Jesse, of all the people in the film,

[00:16:39] is the person most different to the person that she's playing.

[00:16:43] She's such a sort of grounded, open,

[00:16:46] free sort of spirit.

[00:16:48] She's not there's nothing about her that's

[00:16:50] spandered or hidden or indirect.

[00:16:52] She's just very sort of here I am.

[00:16:55] And she's also way, way, way younger than the character

[00:16:59] and yet conveys someone who's much older than she actually is.

[00:17:03] And I think the joy of that was that she absolutely reached

[00:17:09] outside her own sort of time period into that period.

[00:17:13] Totally forgot that sort of upper middle class uptight

[00:17:16] sense that emotion is wrong and the expression of feeling is wrong.

[00:17:20] And that unfortunately still exists in the UK now.

[00:17:24] Perhaps I think you could say, I think there was a sea change

[00:17:27] when Princess Diana died sort of suddenly, all right,

[00:17:29] expressed being a public, but it is part of our inheritance.

[00:17:32] It's part of the empire.

[00:17:33] It's part of the public school system.

[00:17:36] And she got that.

[00:17:36] But the great thing about Jesse is she's so full of feeling herself

[00:17:40] that the contrast, I think, between those two qualities

[00:17:43] is what makes the performance really interesting.

[00:17:45] We tried as much as we could to give her agency

[00:17:48] and we wrote a bunch of scenes that we ended up dropping

[00:17:50] where she was sort of doing stuff more in the world.

[00:17:54] I mean, within her own sort of fairly narrow world of what a woman,

[00:17:58] you know, who wasn't working at that time would have been like.

[00:18:01] But they sort of felt extraneous and we didn't shoot them in the end.

[00:18:06] But we tried as much as possible to get her sort of challenging him

[00:18:09] or pushing him and demanding things.

[00:18:11] I think it's perfectly true.

[00:18:13] She I don't think any sense that she was some sort of passive person.

[00:18:18] Hmm. Well, yeah, I'm aware of the other times.

[00:18:24] I have a couple of quick fire questions at the end, if you don't mind.

[00:18:27] So, um, so, OK,

[00:18:31] favorite this is this is non-curious related.

[00:18:33] This is this is spy film.

[00:18:35] So what is your favorite spy film of all time?

[00:18:39] You know what? I'm not going to say film.

[00:18:40] I'm going to say the TV series of Tinker Tailor.

[00:18:43] Oh, OK. Oh, from the 80s.

[00:18:47] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. It's breaking the rules.

[00:18:50] We like that. We like that.

[00:18:52] It's usually because probably now looks really,

[00:18:55] really clunky and wobbly sets.

[00:18:58] But I think the sort of acting and the scripting of that was brilliant

[00:19:03] in terms of tension, stakes.

[00:19:09] And that's sort of the sort of

[00:19:12] like fast pulse with a really cool surface.

[00:19:17] Yeah. Yeah. That that I mean, listen, I love the Bond movies.

[00:19:20] I love all that stuff. But I would say that. Yeah.

[00:19:23] Well, you've led me on to the next question, which is, of course, James Bond.

[00:19:27] Who is your James Bond? Oh, wow.

[00:19:31] I thought the next one will be James Norton, but I'm not so sure now.

[00:19:36] Oh, you can be.

[00:19:37] This one will be the favorite.

[00:19:39] The favorite is Sean Connery.

[00:19:41] There's no there's not even worth having the conversation.

[00:19:43] So it's just there is no one better.

[00:19:46] And, you know, actually, I watched I watched recently.

[00:19:51] What was it? Not to know.

[00:19:53] He's such a he's such an interesting character

[00:19:56] because he's got that sort of

[00:19:59] he's got that sort of like brick white masculinity.

[00:20:02] But there really is a sensuality about it that's almost feminine.

[00:20:06] And I don't mean if feminine, I mean, there's a softness

[00:20:09] and there's a sensuality.

[00:20:10] It's so brilliant. And I wish I think he's yeah, no one's got close.

[00:20:14] I think Kam might argue with you slightly, but I'm on board.

[00:20:18] I'm with you.

[00:20:20] So who's yours, Kam? I just need to know quickly.

[00:20:22] I always say Connery is the best, but Roger Moore is kind of my favorite.

[00:20:26] That's the one that brought me into the franchise.

[00:20:28] Well, I mean, I get that because I grew up with Roger Moore

[00:20:31] and the humor is there, but it did become parodic in the end,

[00:20:35] didn't it? Like the latter Roger Moore movies are like, oh, yeah,

[00:20:39] they're sort of Austin Powers.

[00:20:41] Oh, totally, totally.

[00:20:42] The line is very thin between Austin Powers and Roger Moore films.

[00:20:46] Right, yeah.

[00:20:49] Actually, that's what I should have answered my favorite.

[00:20:53] Well, I mean, the question I have is what's coming up for you next, Dominic?

[00:20:56] What are you working on at the moment?

[00:20:58] It's really hard to say.

[00:21:00] I've got four theater shows that sort of like

[00:21:03] it's like being in this sort of Heathrow Airport

[00:21:05] trying to do air traffic control.

[00:21:07] I have no idea when they're going to land.

[00:21:10] But film wise, there's a

[00:21:15] film of Stephen Sondland's musical Follies,

[00:21:17] which is a show that I did on stage and sort of developing the script

[00:21:20] of that, which is about as far away from this as you could possibly get.

[00:21:23] But a brilliant sort of piece to be working on.

[00:21:25] And then there's a film that I'm sort of trying to produce

[00:21:29] for the company I've set up called Fiction House.

[00:21:31] And the film is a sort of it's sort of drawn from those

[00:21:35] really wonderful early Woody Allen films,

[00:21:38] sort of intelligent romantic comedy.

[00:21:40] If you think about something like Annie Hall, it's that sort of world

[00:21:43] of slightly neurotic, urban, intelligent people

[00:21:47] and using London as a romantic setting.

[00:21:52] And it's a lovely script.

[00:21:55] It's very tender and awkward and funny.

[00:21:58] It's very funny.

[00:21:59] So they're very different projects.

[00:22:01] And I don't know which one will land first.

[00:22:02] But I'm hoping something will happen next year.

[00:22:07] I don't know. It's so I've given up making plans.

[00:22:10] I mean, it's just impossible.

[00:22:14] The more you invest in the plan, the more disappointed you're going to be.

[00:22:17] But I'm hopeful. I'm quite hopeful.

[00:22:20] That's all we can be these days is hopeful.

[00:22:22] Yeah, yeah.

[00:22:24] Well, I mean, on behalf of Cameron myself,

[00:22:26] I want to thank you just for the film firstly.

[00:22:28] It's just nice to see a new film right now,

[00:22:31] something different and fresh and new.

[00:22:33] And it was a joy to watch it.

[00:22:35] And it's been a joy to talk to you about it.

[00:22:37] Thanks so much, guys. I really enjoyed that. Thank you.

[00:22:43] Well, there you go, folks.

[00:22:44] That was part three of our courier trilogy.

[00:22:46] Thank you to Dominic Cook for sitting down with us a few years ago.

[00:22:51] It was great to talk the courier with him.

[00:22:54] I think it's been great this week just to take a look at a film

[00:22:56] that I think kind of got overlooked a little bit during the covid

[00:23:01] lack of cinemas period of VODs and things like that.

[00:23:04] And it's one that I really celebrate.

[00:23:06] Well, it was really cool to talk to Dominic during the press tour.

[00:23:10] Yeah, basically for the courier.

[00:23:12] And at that point, we both seen the movie, obviously,

[00:23:15] but we didn't have any sense of kind of how it would be embraced later down

[00:23:18] the road. So it was actually fun to go back and listen to this interview

[00:23:22] now and obviously talk to Tom O'Connor about the film recently,

[00:23:26] knowing three years, four years down the road,

[00:23:30] how this movie has gained a little bit of a reputation

[00:23:32] and is pretty acknowledged as a very effective spy story,

[00:23:37] because back when we were doing this interview, we didn't know

[00:23:39] this thing could have completely vanished off the face of the earth

[00:23:42] like a week after the interview.

[00:23:44] Yeah, I mean, this episode, the original declassified episode

[00:23:47] came out around about the same time as our episode on Without Remorse.

[00:23:50] And I've not heard that been mentioned at all since.

[00:23:54] No. And that's been the case for a few of the movies,

[00:23:56] like because you just never know when you do these press tours

[00:23:59] if the movie is going to have legs

[00:24:01] and have a little bit of a life or just completely disappear.

[00:24:04] And, you know, it's nice to see that in the case of The Courier,

[00:24:07] quality has won out and the movie is still being discovered

[00:24:12] or rediscovered over and over again.

[00:24:14] And something like Without Remorse, which maybe doesn't have that quality

[00:24:18] to speak of, has quietly just vanished into a wisp of air,

[00:24:24] which may or may not be for the best.

[00:24:26] I'll leave that to you all to decide.

[00:24:28] But it's been great to go back and take a deep dive into The Courier.

[00:24:33] That was kind of the mission statement with the declassified episodes

[00:24:35] was to have a brief look at the film.

[00:24:37] And usually we have an interview with someone in the

[00:24:39] through the press tour as well, to give you the context of the film.

[00:24:42] But these are meant to be when we do the proper episodes,

[00:24:44] you get a full deep dive.

[00:24:46] So this is really sort of that dream come to fruition here.

[00:24:48] And it's one of the first times

[00:24:49] we've gone from declassified to full episode.

[00:24:51] I think this is how I want to do it going forward.

[00:24:54] Yeah. Oh, yeah, totally.

[00:24:55] But there you go, folks.

[00:24:56] That wraps up our deep dive into The Courier.

[00:24:59] Do you agree with our knocklist choice?

[00:25:01] Let us know.

[00:25:02] And if you enjoyed our chat with Dominic Cook, we want to hear from you.

[00:25:06] But Cam, the question goes to you, as it always does.

[00:25:09] What are we talking about next week?

[00:25:11] People unleash your pessimism because we are headed back

[00:25:14] to the 1970s to tackle the Burt Lancaster spy thriller

[00:25:20] Scorpio, co-starring Alain Delon.

[00:25:23] Yeah, this is a film that's been mentioned to us a couple of times online.

[00:25:26] It's got an interesting cast and a very interesting premise.

[00:25:29] So I'm excited to see what Burt and Alain have for us, obviously.

[00:25:34] Burt's resume speaks for himself.

[00:25:36] Alain Delon is most known for, you know,

[00:25:40] what's the name of that film, Cam?

[00:25:43] Les Samurai. Yeah.

[00:25:44] Or are you thinking of Airport 4 The Concord?

[00:25:47] Oh, it's obviously The Concord.

[00:25:48] It has to be The Concord, of course.

[00:25:50] So, yeah, maybe we should talk about that next week.

[00:25:52] No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

[00:25:53] Of course. Your mission, folks, should you choose to accept it

[00:25:55] is to join us next week as we head back to 1973 and take a look at Scorpio.

[00:26:01] Hopefully it doesn't have a sting in its tail.

[00:26:04] And if you like what you heard on this deep dive of the courier,

[00:26:07] you know, please consider joining us over on our Patreon

[00:26:10] at patreon.com slash spyhards or you can find a link in a show notes below.

[00:26:14] Tons of options over there.

[00:26:16] And every little bit goes to helping us keep the lights on here at Spyhards HQ

[00:26:21] because independent podcasting is not cheap and we do not have any network sponsors.

[00:26:26] It's just Cam and I keeping the lights on here and our lovely patrons

[00:26:30] who are already supporting us over on Patreon.

[00:26:33] And make sure you follow us discreetly as always on social media at Spyhards.

[00:26:36] That's S-P-Y-H-A-R-D-S on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

[00:26:40] But until next time, folks, Cam and I will be getting a head start

[00:26:45] on our Without Remorse sequel.