PACIFIC FEAR Trailer (2024) Adèle Galloy, Survival Movie

PACIFIC FEAR Trailer (2024) Adèle Galloy, Survival Movie

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PACIFIC FEARTrailer (2024) Adèle Galloy, Survival Movie
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Up next from director Jacques Kluger (Play or Die) is the horror movie Pacific Fear, and Variety has shared a first-look image (seen above) along with details this afternoon.

The survival horror movie is currently filming in French Polynesia, and Variety reports today that Pulsar Content has secured international rights to the upcoming film.

“Pulsar Content will be launching international sales at Toronto,” the site notes.

Variety also reports, “Pacific Fear will launch in France in early 2024 on the pay TV OCS.”

The film follows a group of surfer friends looking out for waves in a mysterious island that’s been erased from all maps.

Adèle Galloy, Marilyn Lima, Marie Zabukovec, and Vaimiti Teiefitu star.

Pacific Fear is produced by Darklight Content and Nolita.

Related Topics:Jacques KlugerPacific Fear
Pulsar Content has secured international rights on “Pacific Fear,” a French survival horror film which has started filming in French Polynesia.

The movie is directed by Jacques Kluger, who previously directed the Belgian horror movie “Play or Die,” and is produced by Nolita, whose recent credits include the Netflix hit action franchise “Lost Bullet.” Darklight Content is co-producing. Pulsar Content will be launching international sales at Toronto.

“Pacific Fear” stars a young cast, including Adèle Galloy, Marilyn Lima, Marie Zabukovec (“Masquerade”) and Vaimiti Teiefitu.

The film, which is set to be completed by early 2024, follows a group of surfer friends looking out for waves in a mysterious island that’s been erased from all maps. “Pacific Fear” will launch in France in early 2024 on the pay TV OCS.

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“Pacific Fear” joins Pulsar Content’s roster which boasts “The Opera!,” an ambitious musical starring Vincent Cassel, Fanny Ardant and Rossy De Palma; “The Patience of Vulture” starring Ed Skrein and Luis Guzmán; Anonymous Content’s period horror “The Damning of a Country Merchant” starring Peter Sarsgaard; Céline Salette’s debut feature about Niki de Saint-Phalle, “Niki,” and the animated feature “BIM.”

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Pacific Fear
Thomasin McKenzie says that because of her youthful appearance — she’s 24 — it has been “a bit of a struggle” to play her own age or older, but those worries are banished with her latest role. In the wonderful movie Joy, she delivers a remarkable portrait of Jean Purdy, one of the founding pioneers of human in vitro fertilization therapy, commonly known as IVF.

If gynecologist Dr. Patrick Steptoe and physiologist Robert Edwards are regarded as the “fathers” of IVF, then Purdy, a nurse and embryologist, is its godmother.

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It’s a spot-on perfect part for the New Zealander who starred in Jojo Rabbit, Last Night in Soho and The Power of the Dog, and she shines brilliantly as Purdy alongside Bill Nighy as Steptoe and James Norton as Edwards, who later was knighted for his services to medical research.

Joy has its would premiere screening at the BFI London Film Festival on Tuesday at the Southbank Centre, with screenings also on Wednesday and Saturday. Joy will have a theatrical release on November 15, and it will arrive on Netflix globally on November 22. The film arrives at a time when reproduction rights are being fiercely debated in the United States and elsewhere.

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McKenzie laughs when she says she that she was quite nervous about doing the film directed by Ben Taylor (Sex Education) because “it was the oldest I’ve played.”

Joy spans 10 years, “and I’m quite a young-appearing person, I always have been,” she explains. “And so its been a bit of a struggle for me to play my age or older, and I’ve been trying to make that transition from teenage roles to young-adult roles. And so this for me was that transition.”

And, quite rightly, she was treated as an adult on set as well.

On some prior productions, she had definitely “felt” that her suggestions weren’t always welcome, ”but that wasn’t the case on this film.”

There’s a line that McKenzie wanted to add for a scene where 23-year-old Purdy meets Edwards for the first time at Cambridge University, where she had applied for the post of research assistant in the department of physiology.

James Norton and Thomasin McKenzie in ‘Joy’ (Netflix)
Netflix
“Jean says, ‘These are my qualifications, this is where I’ve studied.’ It’s just a short line, but it wasn’t there before, and I felt it needed to be in to let the audience know that she’s not just randomly showing up, she was working,” McKenzie says.

She praises Taylor for setting a high bar for civility and kindness: Every soul on the movie behaved likewise, she says, from Jack Thorne and Rachel Mason and producers Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey to close cast friend Tanya Moodie and all other cast, creatives and crew.

That attitude made her feel confident enough to suggest making it clear to audiences that Purdy was “fully qualified to be there.”

Taylor, along with Mason and Thorne — who are partners — have personal ties to IVF ”and were so deep into the story,” says McKenzie.

The film puts Jean Purdy center stage, something that history has been slow to do.

Purdy ’s participation in bringing about the pioneering conception that led to the first “test tube” baby, Louise Brown, being born on July 25, 1978, often was overlooked while her two fellow trailblazers were garlanded by their scientific peers.

There had been tremendous pushback from the general public and medical community when they were trying to make IVF happen, but once the procedure was successful, their peers, at least, applauded Steptoe and Edwards. “They received acclaim and congratulations and plaques, and at the time they wanted Jean to be included in those congratulations. But the scientific community wouldn’t allow her to be part of that because she was a woman.”

McKenzie, who studied reams of material for the role, suggests that if “Edwards hadn’t have selected Jean to go on that journey with him and Steptoe, I truly believe it would have taken them a lot longer to find the success in IVF because Jean really is the person who brought it all together.“ And there’s a lot of biographical and scientific background information to support Mackenzie’s theory.

Fittingly, however, Edwards announced at a lecture on the 20th anniversary of clinical IVF: ”There were three original pioneers in IVF, not just two.”

From left: Bill Nighy, Thomasin McKenzie and James Norton in ‘Joy’ (Netflix)
Netflix
Some, nonetheless, wondered why Edwards was the sole recipient of the 2010 Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the development of reproductive medicine. For starters: The Noble Prize is not awarded posthumously, which sadly, made Purdy and Steptoe ineligible.

However, it’s striking that while Edwards’ Nobel Prize citation made reference to Steptoe’s contribution, the document has zero mention of Purdy.

Yet, she was often the sole woman attending lectures where men were addressing other men about Fallopian tubes, how eggs mature and about how the female reproductive system in general works. That is why McKenzie and director Taylor talked a lot “about wanting to see Jean as an equal” and not portray her as being a helping hand to Steptoe and Edwards, instead she was “key to it all.”

Once when Purdy took time off to care for her mother, nothing happened for months in the lab at Oldham Cottage Hospital in Greater Manchester.

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Also, she was the one who suggested the lab try using the women’s natural cycles. “She was the one who figured it out,” says McKenzie.

The repercussions from those who vehemently disapproved were cruel. Some accused the three innovators of doing the “work of the devil.”

Purdy’s mother Gladys (a superb Joanna Scanlan) makes that same point abundantly clear to her daughter.

Like her mother, Purdy was a very religious person. A nurse she studied with in the mid-1960s remembers her fondly, calling her a “lovely Christian woman,” so it was tough for Purdy to do a job that ostracized her from those she loved most.

IVF pioneer Jean Purdy (Bourn Hall Clinic)
“She had so much courage because she was a very religious person,” and a big responsibility for her was taking care of her mother, so she had to make “massive sacrifices doing the work that she did,” McKenzie laments.

She was excluded from her community at church. She received death threats and hate mail. Her mum wouldn’t talk to her, and she had no other family. “So, yeah, that took a lot of courage for Jean,” McKenzie says.

McKenzie sees Purdy as someone who has “so much love and so much to give, but she doesn’t allow herself to receive that love.”

McKenzie says with intensity in her voice, “But there has always been so much pressure on women, and there’s always been so much pressure on women to be mothers. Historically, the female role in society is to reproduce and to marry and to play that role, and Jean felt she wasn’t able to do that, and so she wouldn’t let herself be loved.”

McKenzie finds that heartbreaking, and one feels the same watching the film. It’s so deeply moving that because of the work that Purdy did, countless women have been able to start a family. “She made a huge, huge impact on the world and allowed millions of people to have children that they loved deeply.”

Thomasin McKenzie as Jean Purdy in ‘Joy’ (Netflix)
The three main stars put in some serous hours to prepare. They visited London’s Guys Hospital and were allowed into the gynecological unit “to talk to the nurses, the people working in IVF behind the scenes.” They also were able to look at the incubators “that had embryos in them and they were tracking whether those embryos were growing or not, whether the cells were multiplying, which was incredible.”

They had an embryologist on set who would advise them on all the scientific scenes. “They were very rigorous about it,” McKenzie murmurs. “It was stressful because I didn’t want to look like an idiot.”

The actor had help closer to home back in Wellington, New Zealand, where, when younger, she used to babysit three children whose grandfather, Dr. Richard Fisher, is a leader and pioneer of fertility in the South Pacific country.

That family, coincidentally, moved to London and happen to live near McKenzie, who moved here a year ago. “Before we started filming, we talked abut IVF and Dr. Fisher’s experience bringing IVF to New Zealand and everything about the protests and picketing, and he gave us so many valuable pieces of information that was so valuable for filming.”

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I seek permission from her to ask whether any close family have had a relationship with IVF.

She shakes her head and says that “no one in my family has had IVF.”

A moment later, McKenzie volunteers: ”I mean, I hope that I’m pretty fertile!”

She adds: ”This is a weird thing to say, but my mum had my little sister when she was 44, and my grandma had my mum really late, so I think I come from a very fertile family.”

McKenzie, however, discloses that when she was younger, there was a health situation for a little while, long resolved, where she was “fearful that I may not be able to have children.”

For that reason, McKenzie was able, she says, to feel “very connected to Jean” because of “that fear and the societal pressure that all women feel.”

Making the film was such an important education for her “on how things work inside of me,” and she was surprised about the things she didn’t know.

Actually, she was shocked by what she didn’t know. “We need to be talking about these things because if we don’t know about these — I mean, this is about birth; this is how the world keeps on going, how generations keep moving.”

From left: James Norton, Bill Nighy and Thomasin McKenzie in ‘Joy’ (Netflix)
Netflix
Another film she’s working on is The Woman Clothed by The Sun directed by Mona Fastvold. It’s about the origin of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, better known as the Shakers.

She’s currently preparing to shoot Fackham Hall for director Jim O’Hanlon. I beg her forgiveness for mispronouncing the film’s title.

Smiling brightly, McKenzie elucidates. “But the joke is, it’s supposed to sound like that.”

From what I can ascertain, McKenzie plays the daughter of a titled aristocrat played by Katherine Waterston.

I first met Thomasin McKenzie in 2018, when she attended Cannes for the Directors’ Fortnight premiere of Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, and was struck by the level-headedness she displayed at 17.

Older now, she’s just as down to earth, and I like that she doesn’t seek to visit attention-grabbing West End restaurants and overhyped nightclubs. She’d rather go with her cousins and uncle from Wellington to watch Arsenal play or out for fun adventures with her boyfriend and other friends.

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“Maybe something to do with coming from New Zealand,” she explains.

Then a tiny beat later, she whispers: “To be honest, I don’t know where those restaurants are. They’re just not my haunts.”

Can’t resist saying that McKenzie radiates joy!
Prime Video today announced the exclusive global streaming premiere of one of the highest-grossing Hindi films of all time—Stree 2: Sarkate Ka Aatank. The movie won audiences over for its unique blend of humour and horror when it first released in theatres on August 15, 2024, and earned over ₹800 crore worldwide at the box office. Stree 2: Sarkate Ka Aatank is now available to stream on Prime Video in over 240 countries and territories worldwide.

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After Stree’s retreat in the first movie, Stree 2 takes us back to the beautiful town of Chanderi, years after her disappearance. However, the residents of the town face a new threat as a headless ghost named ‘Sarkata’ emerges, abducting women in the quest for revenge against those he holds responsible for Stree’s demise. To defeat this monster and restore peace in Chanderi, Vicky (Rajkummar Rao), Bittu (Aparshakti Khurana), Rudra (Pankaj Tripathi) and Jana (Abhishek Banerjee) join forces, seeking help from an unnamed woman (played by Shraddha Kapoor) to fight Sarkata. Together they face their fears and delve into Chanderi’s dark history to save their town.

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“Stree 2: Sarkate ka Aatank has captivated audiences with its powerful storytelling, fortifying horror-comedy as a successful and sought-after genre. With its impressive cast, foot-tapping music, stunning cinematography and truly hilarious and thrilling moments, the film delivers a rich visual experience, making it a true blockbuster to be watched exclusively on Prime Video,” says Manish Menghani, director of Content Licensing, Prime Video India. “We take pride in presenting the biggest blockbusters to our customers in India and the world over, and Stree 2 is a welcome and exciting addition to our list of superhit entertainers. We’re thrilled that our customers can now enjoy this truly spine-chilling, rib-tickling film.”

Stree 2: Sarkate ka Aatank is a truly special film for us. It is a testament that strong and loved characters and a well-rounded narrative can be the driving force behind a film’s success.
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“We’re truly humbled by the success of the film and the love the cast has received. It has reinforced our belief in the power of storytelling. After a super successful theatrical run, we’re thrilled to bring this story to the Amazon Prime audience across India and the world,” he added.

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Producer Jyoti Deshpande, President - Media & Content Business, Reliance Industries says, “Stree 2: Sarkate ka Aatank has already created history by becoming the No. 1 Hindi box office film of all time. With lovable characters and laugh out loud jokes, it's a franchise that is perfect for a watch party at home with friends and family. We are delighted that Stree 2 will make its OTT premiere on Amazon Prime Video starting today, and you will also find the OG Stree Part 1 there. Hoping the die-hard fans of this amazing franchise will come together to smash OTT premiere viewership records on this one...kyu ki woh stree hai aur woh kuch bhi kar sakti hai."

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This is an audio transcript of the The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes podcast episode: ‘What’s wrong with effective altruism? With Martin Sandbu’

Soumaya Keynes
The effective altruism movement has been on a wild ride. Now, when I first engaged with it in the early 2010s, it seemed to be about how to give money to charity more effectively, how to do the most good. And that meant more money for things like anti-malaria bed nets or deworming pills, things like that. But since then, effective altruism has evolved. It became about crazy and sometimes uncomfortable thought experiments. It became about the risk of AI wiping us out. It started shaping academic research agendas. It became the darling of Silicon Valley tech bros. Everything got a bit intense, and arguably, it went a bit wrong. Today, we’re going to talk about effective altruism. Does it make sense? 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

This is The Economics Show. I’m Soumaya Keynes in London, joined in the studio by Martin Sandbu, my colleague here at the Financial Times. Hi, Martin.

Martin Sandbu
Hi.

Soumaya Keynes
Are you an effective altruist?

Martin Sandbu
Absolutely not. I could hardly be further away from it, I think. 

Soumaya Keynes
Right. Well, lots of ambiguity there then. OK, Martin, I wanted to talk to you because last December, we both wrote about effective altruism. My piece, as I’m sure you will remember, was “An effective altruist’s guide to Christmas”. And the point was that lots of EAs — that’s what they call themselves — take themselves very seriously, and maybe they shouldn’t. And reading the comments of that piece, yes. Yes, they do. I did not persuade any of them to take themselves less seriously. But you wrote a much longer, more thoughtful essay on what was going on with this movement. And I wanted to ask why, now, why did you pick that topic then?

Martin Sandbu
So there are a couple of personal reasons for this. So, before I joined the FT about 15 years ago, I was an academic for . . . I did a PhD, you know, I did economics and philosophy for a long time. I did my undergraduate work at Oxford. I came out of the sort of environment that the effective altruism founders and the movement really came out of. I had never seen it coming, and I was very surprised by it. So that was one thing that had puzzled me for as long as I’d heard about effective altruism.

The other reason was that in the last year, effective altruism had popped up in very FT stories that you wouldn’t really have thought it had a place in. So in particular, the collapse of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange. It turned out Sam Bankman-Fried was a self-avowed effective altruist. He said the motivation for making so much money was precisely to give money to effective altruism. That was one example. The other example was OpenAI and the ousting and then return of Sam Altman as the CEO of this biggest AI company, where some of the board members were core members of the effective altruism movements. They were, in the end, the ones who lost this boardroom battle and left. But it just struck me as extraordinary that this quite new, quite nerdy movement popped up in two of the biggest and most influential, consequential business stories of the decade.

Soumaya Keynes
Right. Yes, there has been a lot of focus on effective altruism or EA as they like to call themselves. OK, we should step back though and sort of define what this movement is, how it started. I think the one-sentence summary is doing the most good that you can, but there are obviously different flavours of that. Martin, could you talk a bit about how it started, the idea there?

Martin Sandbu
Yeah. So it started in two ways. Right? There’s kind of an intellectual history to talk about, and there’s just a kind of organisational history. So let’s just do the last bit first. Around 2009, a couple of young Oxford philosophers, Will MacAskill and Toby Ord, both came to this idea of doing the best, doing the most good you can. And they started setting up a kind of organisation around this. Actually, several organisations. There was something called Giving What We Can. There was something called the Centre for Effective Altruism.

The basic idea was, you know, we are morally obliged to relieve suffering in the world and to do that as well as we can. And it’s immoral not to give at least some of our money to the things that could most help relieve suffering. Because it turns out that for very . . . a very little, very small monetary cost to ourselves, you know, give up your morning coffee or whatever, you can pay for something like malarial bed nets, antimalarial bed nets, that will save lives. So Giving What We Can was an organisation where people make pledges to set aside, I think, 10 per cent of their income and spend it in very effective ways. The Centre for Effective Altruism was set up to study, do the research to find out, well, where do you get the most suffering relieved by per pound or dollar given? And a whole network of organisations like that came about. Very quickly, this sort of very well meaning but quite a little bit nerdy kind of set-up got a lot of followers, lots of smart young people in the best universities in the world, the Oxford, Cambridge, the Ivies, and so on, were taken with this, and soon enough, a lot of money started coming into it as well.

Soumaya Keynes
Yeah. I mean, so there’s another strand that you didn’t mention, which is the 80,000 Hours …

Martin Sandbu
That’s another one. Yeah.

Soumaya Keynes
 . . . bit of it, right? And so that is saying, look, you spend a lot of your career doing stuff. So you should make sure that that stuff that you’re doing is the best it can possibly be. And in some cases, that might mean joining a hedge fund, making a bazillion dollars, and giving all of that to charity. That’s OK. But, essentially, when making these financial decisions, you should use the effective altruism framework to make all of them. Right? And so, the framework was sort of utilitarianism with some tweaks. So, you know, when making decisions, you need to quantify the benefits of those decisions, make sure that that benefit is maximised relative to the cost. And it’s funny. If you go on internet forums, EA online forums, this framework can be applied to everything and they do. So it’s, you know, what food do you eat, right, when considering animal welfare costs? Or it’s, you know, should the movement buy a castle to house their conferences? You can kind of use this to reason your way to a lot of different things, and they apply this framework very, very broadly. But, Martin, you must have studied this, obviously, as an academic in the world of philosophy and economics. Could you give your definition of utilitarianism?

Martin Sandbu
It’s a 200-year-old political philosophy. The original formulation was: Do what gives the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. You know, that captures it pretty well. It’s seeing good as a quantity and a quantity to be maximised, and that’s the basics of ethics. That’s what we ought to do as moral beings. So it’s a very powerful theory because it’s so applicable to everything. And back in the day, it was a very radical theory. It was obviously an anti-religious theory. It, you know, swept away all kinds of dogma or religious commandments. It just said, look at what makes people happy and look at what makes most people happy. And it could often be a tool for social reform and progressive reform historically, you know.

Let’s also remember that in mainstream academic philosophy, utilitarianism is basically a sideshow. If that is because most moral philosophers have long since been thinking that it gets too extreme, it produces implausible conclusions, and it’s basically not the right way of thinking about ethics in the first place. Utilitarianism is also actually at the root of modern economics. It started to see people as utility functions, essentially, as people who enjoy something called utility or happiness.

Soumaya Keynes
Right. And, of course, all of this is very familiar to me during my undergraduate economics days when, you know, the first thing you’re presented with in microeconomics is a utility function. Right? Economics is about maximising that utility function, at least in its basic form. So, you know, I can see why this framework could be very appealing to someone who wanted simple solutions to complex problems. It kind of reduces them to this fairly straightforward analytical framework.

Martin Sandbu
I think that the affinity between economics and utilitarian philosophy that you point out, Soumaya, is really important. Historically, they developed together, or rather economics came out of utilitarian political philosophy. They were kind of the same thing up until the late-19th century. And so the methods came out of precisely seeing humans as these containers of utility. And to this day, in the part of economics where one tries to assess outcomes of policies, cost-benefit analysis, which is the technique used in finance ministries around the world, it’s basically utilitarianism. You put a money value on people’s utilities, and then you add things up and see which policy is better. And in the other direction too, economics is extremely attractive to utilitarian philosophers because it gives all those techniques by which you calculate total utility or the greatest happiness for the greatest number. So this affinity between utilitarian, political, and moral philosophy, and economics, that’s been there all the way up.

Soumaya Keynes
Why do you think this became so popular? Right? I mean, there was this explosion in Silicon Valley tech bros saying, yes, this is what I want to use as a framework. Why?

Martin Sandbu
It’s a really good question, and I’m not totally confident of my answers. I tried to give some answers in that long piece in December. But the starting point is that I still find it really surprising. When I was doing philosophy and economics, utilitarianism was sort of, we basically all concluded with some exceptions that this wasn’t a very good theory. It did happen. So why did it happen?

I can think of a couple of reasons. One is that it’s a sort of thinking that appeals to a certain personality type: people who kind of want a very clear answer, who are morally committed, but they want to know, so what am I supposed to do? Well, utilitarianism allows you, it gives you an algorithm for choosing between your actions. You know, I could do this. I could do this. I could do this. OK. Maybe I shouldn’t be a social worker or a volunteer in Africa. If I want to do the most good, I actually should make a lot of money and then give money to those organisations. Right? That sort of thinking appeals to a kind of personality type. And I spoke to quite a few academics for this piece, and they tell me that it’s often the kind of techie types of students who are most attracted to this, kind of economics-ey type. So that’s one reason.

Another reason is that it happened at a very specific time in our recent history. Right? You just had the global financial crisis. Couple years before that, you’d had 9/11 and the Iraq war. There was a sort of moment of angst, I think, and the climate disaster was starting to impress itself on our consciousness. And I think people who were, let’s say, 17, 18 in 2009, you can see the attraction of a comparatively clear moral framework that gives you a direction to take in a world that looks like it’s going to pieces. So that’s another thing.

But the darkest possibility, I think, and several harsh critics in philosophy departments that I spoke to, critics of EA, they said, well, it’s a very convenient theory for the tech bros, for Silicon Valley, and so on, because it has actually become a sort of moral indulgence. It says it’s really OK to be super rich, to take advantage and be privileged of a very unequal economic structure so long as you use it for good. So in a sense, a lot of people see it, the critics see it as a very anti-progressive movement in the sense that it does not question at all the general social structure, just says what we should do within that social structure. In a sense, perhaps justifies or dispel some moral qualms people might otherwise have.

Soumaya Keynes
Yeah. I mean, that all sounds highly plausible. So this idea has captured the imaginations of these Silicon Valley tech bros who want this neat framework for thinking about the world. Can we talk now about how the ideas developed? Because from when I first engaged with this and EA was about bed nets and deworming pills, it seems to have strayed quite a bit from those earlier ideas. Right? Now, if you go on the 80,000 Hours top courses website that kind of lists things that you should do with your life, the top ones are working on risks from AI, catastrophic pandemics, nuclear war, a great power war, and climate change. You know, some of those are pretty mainstream. Then you’ve got a whole kind of community building set of courses. Right? So, it’s a good thing for your 80,000 hours to be spent building effective altruism. Sounds a bit convenient, but OK. And then you’ve got some slightly unusual things. So space governance, improving individual reasoning and cognition, like a clever pill. OK. And then at the bottom of the list, you have the things that I thought that this movement was all about at the beginning, which is, you know, factory farming or, you know, easily preventable and treatable illnesses. Not what I would have expected. How did we get there?

Martin Sandbu
It’s a really good question, isn’t it? And, you know, I scratch my head a bit too, and I was asking people about this. When I spoke to Toby Ord, one of the founders, he pointed out that — and others pointed this out, you know, we talked about pandemics early on — they did. You know, let’s give them credit for that. That was great foresight. Of course, it’s what the scientists were talking about too, and they took the science seriously. Unlike the politicians.

But then you have the seemingly zany stuff. It all goes under the rubric of existential risk. So it can be, you know, how do we avoid AI from breaking out and taking over the world? But it’s even seemingly zaniest stuff, craziest stuff, like if there’s a small chance that humanity can colonise the universe, there’ll be so many lives that can be made happy that kind of what happens now is so small in comparison that we should put in all our efforts to make sure that this happens, to conquer space …

Soumaya Keynes
Yeah. I mean, this is one frustration that I came across when reporting for my piece, which is that sometimes you can get an infinitesimally small probability of something bad happening. But as long as you multiply it by a large enough number of lives saved, it becomes magically worthwhile looking into. So, naught point naught naught naught naught naught 2 per cent probability of aliens invading, when put alongside the number of lives in the future that would be saved by stopping that alien invasion, suddenly alien invasion becomes a major thing that EAs should be working on. And, of course, criticism of that would be that some of these numbers are made up or sort of so uncertain that it’s hard to have a meaningful conversation about them.

Martin Sandbu
I think that’s right. I mean, it’s a fair criticism, but I think that’s it’s a fair retort to say, well, you know, we need to think about it. So, you know, what’s the best we can have? We need to think of some numbers, and let’s make them as sensible as we can.

Soumaya Keynes
Yeah. And, like, I suppose it is important to be precise when you’re talking about things. Right? That, I will grant, is an advantage of quantifying as much as you can.

Martin Sandbu
But here’s the problem. Suppose that the numbers are exactly right, there’s still something really disturbing about the conclusions. And here we come back to the ideas at the foundation of this because I think these sorts of conclusions, you asked how do we get to this. I think that was kind of built in to begin with because that’s how the whole structure of basically utilitarianism works. You just put it very beautifully. If the outcome is significant enough, then no matter how small the probability gets, it can still outweigh helping real people here and now. If there are enough future lives with enough of a probability, even if it’s very small, people here today that you could help right now matter less. That’s in the structure of the theory. You don’t kind of get away from that unless you kind of put in place some sort of check on how far you’re willing to take the theory.

So, you know, you go back and I was reading this stuff 10 years before EA came out to the people I think of as sort of godfathers, if you like, of EA. So there were utilitarians like the Australian philosopher Peter Singer, whose articles the founders of EA really cite as making a huge impact on them and helping them develop this. But other people like Derek Parfit and John Broome, both Oxford philosophers, a lot of their thought experiments really are about, well, what if there are all these possible future lives that we could do something for now. What if there are an identical you know, you can have twice as many lives in two identical universes. These sorts of thought experiments that are important, interesting, fantastic scholarly work, but it does rather lead you to these sorts of views that you then get the mega tech bros taking up for real or thinking about for real, and you get a real reallocation of resources. You know, let’s not exaggerate it. There’s still a lot of EA money that goes to things like antimalarial bed nets and other causes. But it does seem like the whole area of existential risk is taking up quite a lot more of the resources, but also the kind of headspace of the community than it did before.

Soumaya Keynes
Yeah. I mean, I want to bring in a term that we’ve both alluded to, which is longtermism. And so this is the idea that you should value future lives with equal weight as you do current lives. Right? And because there will be more future lives than there are lives today, that can take you to strange places. I think another sort of strange place that you can be taken to by this framework is when you start to kind of add up lives in your cost-benefit analysis, there sort of comes to this question of, well, should some lives be weighted more than others? Young versus old, babies versus grown adults . . . 

Martin Sandbu
Geniuses versus ordinary people . . . 

Soumaya Keynes
Yep. It gets pretty scary, pretty dark, pretty quickly. You know, there are pretty horrendous conversations about ableism, ableists, and how that interacts with this. There’s a whole strand of EA research into valuing animals’ lives differently in how you trade off the lives of, say, shrimp against the lives of cows. Sure, if people wanna spend their life doing that, OK. But the requirement that you have to add everything up takes you down these very strange and sometimes dark paths.

And I think just building on this, another critique of utilitarianism, effective altruism, is that some things just can’t be quantified. Right? What if antimalarial bed nets are not the most effective thing we can do with our money, they’re just the most effective thing that we know about because of these other benefits to other interventions that are difficult to put a number to?

Martin Sandbu
I think that’s a fair criticism. I suppose if you are a utilitarian or an effective altruist, your answer will be, well, but how can you know that these other things are better? At least here we know that we do some good. And, you know, here, let me let me come in defence of a modest version of effective altruism. You know, it’s really just about saying, you know, if you’re going to be altruist, let’s at least be smart about it. You know, pick causes that make a difference if that’s what you want to do, but don’t see it as a holistic theory of life. Now if that’s how you present it, it’s almost harmless. Right? It’s innocuous. Sure, sounds like a good idea. But then it’s hard to use that sort of very modest version to tell people that they should make life choices differently from how they feel because it could be more effective and so on. Then it doesn’t have as much grip. So if you do the modest version, it’s sort of a bit tame. That’s not what I think attracted so many followers. It’s the strong version that says, here is something that you can actually use to make sense of a lot of difficult questions in the world and in your life. It’s seductive in its clarity.

Soumaya Keynes
OK, well, I wanna go on to that seduction, but quickly before I do, I think it is really important to just note that, obviously, effective altruism is a very broad church. As you say, we have the weak version, the strong version, there are lots of different flavours within. 

OK. Let’s now talk about the scandal, the crisis that enveloped this movement when it became known that Sam Bankman-Fried, the head of FTX, this cryptocurrency exchange, and a major donor to the effective altruism movement, was in fact a fraud. Could you characterise the response within the EA community? What were people thinking?

Martin Sandbu
I think a lot of people took it as a real punch to the gut. I mean, they were sickened. I think, you know, we’ve talked about a lot of the criticisms of effective altruism as a theory and in practice, but there are a lot of people with integrity who take these criticisms seriously and try to engage with them. And I think a lot of these people, and I’ve spoken to some, were devastated by the revelations about Sam Bankman-Fried.

Soumaya Keynes
But could EA have actually contributed to the fraud? Could the ideas have been relevant?

Martin Sandbu
Look, it seems quite clear that Sam Bankman-Fried himself was a bona fide effective altruist. That’s what he said. Michael Lewis, for his book Going Infinite, chronicled the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, and there’s no doubt from his reporting and his view, he spent hours with Bankman-Fried, that Bankman-Fried and his entourage really believed in this stuff. They were committed to effective altruism. That’s what they were about. And some of this came out in the court testimonies as well that these were ideas they genuinely believed in. They had landed on this way of making quick big money, and they spent a lot of time and intellectual effort, including with some of the leaders of the EA movement, to think about where should they channel all these fantastic gains. So I think there’s you can’t really doubt that this was a big motivation in what was going on.

Soumaya Keynes
But I guess the question is whether the idea that you want to maximise the benefits, that idea that maybe a little fraud is OK if it makes you bazillions of dollars for these good causes, could that have contributed to Sam Beckman-Fried’s decision-making process?

Martin Sandbu
I think it could, and there are several reasons to think that this way of thinking could in fact have justified in his mind the fraud he was committing. I mean, one reason is the way he talked about making these gambles essentially. So there’s a famous quote from one of his, one person in his entourage that he had said, look, if he had the possibility to flip a coin and if it comes down heads, the world is destroyed. But if it comes down tails, everyone’s twice as well off, he would take the gamble. I mean, that’s kind of depending a bit on how you think about uncertainty. That’s what a utilitarian would say. Right? If the probability of a good enough outcome is high enough, you should do it. So that’s one sign.

But another sign I think is going back to this philosophical discussion we had at the beginning, it is kind of built into the theory. It gets the moral clarity from reducing everything to a single metric — maximised total utility — be as effective as you can. And it could just be a fact of the world that you can save the most lives, relieve the most suffering by defrauding some people who may not even realise they’re defrauded if Sam Bankman-Fried’s scheme had worked out, which could have, there might have been good reason to think that he would get away with it, and he would have saved tens of thousands of lives. Where in the theory do you find anything to stop you from doing that if that’s what you believe the facts to be? So I think the ideas really matter here.

Soumaya Keynes
OK. Well, I think we should throw to a break now. But when we come back, my question to Martin is: Are we done with EA? Is that it?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[TECH TONIC TRAILER PLAYING]

Soumaya Keynes
We are back from the break. So, Martin, you’ve had a minute to think about that. Are we done?

Martin Sandbu
Look, I would guess that as a sort of social phenomenon, EA may have peaked. Who knows how it picks itself up from some of these scandals? And, you know, maybe there’ll be a new hot thing for the next cohort of smart young people to latch on to. But, of course, it’s done a lot of good. Let’s first give credit where credit is due. A lot of money has been channelled into great things. That’s one thing to just put on the table.

I was speaking for this piece, to John Broome, one of these senior philosophers I thought of as one of the godfathers of EA. He’s now retired. And he was pointing out that it’s just an amazing thing to see that there are so many altruists out there. That’s what takes people to effective altruism to begin with. It’s the altruism bit. Right? And then it’s maybe the effectiveness bit that creates quite a lot of these problems we’ve talked about. But it’s surely something to be celebrated that people feel altruistic and that some people have signed a pledge to give away a tenth of their income or maybe more sometimes permanently. I mean, those are noble, morally admirable things. But, of course, you can do that without effective altruism. What do you think?

Soumaya Keynes
Yeah. I think I’m a bit more positive about effective altruism than you are. I mean, my take has always been that if a movement relies on one man, then that’s a problem for the ideas.

And there certainly has been a lot of kind of embarrassment about the connection with Sam Bankman-Fried. But the evangelists I spoke to were, you know, defensive about the movement. Sam Bankman-Fried provided money, but it’s not like he was a kind of core philosopher. You know, perhaps at the margin, there’ll be some crypto bros who might have been led towards it before, who won’t be now. But the kind of, you know, nerdy, maybe studied a bit of econ in the past, searching for meaning and kind of how to make a difference in the world. That group of people, I sort of see as firm believers, I don’t think they’re gonna be put off by the scandals.

I think the really interesting question within the movement is how they respond to the reduction in cash that they have. Right? And is it possible that some of that cash was fuelling research into these more outlandish causes, and actually with a bit of retrenchment, it will move back towards those original kind of causes that attract lots of people. 

So maybe we’ll see a bit more work on, you know, reducing animal suffering and a bit less work on space exploration. Personally, I’m fine with that. Actually, after reporting my piece, I ended up donating a huge chunk of money to charity and thinking much more carefully about which charities I was gonna give to. So, you know, I’m happy with that choice and I feel like that kind of had a positive effect on me and hopefully some others.

Martin Sandbu
Soumaya, I’ll admit that I too, kind of working on this, felt the moral tug of the arguments and thought I should be giving more as well. And that’s obviously that’s right. It’s good. And maybe I would take it back to how it is. It’s a good thing that people really think hard about how to be good in the world, how to be ethical. Utilitarianism, I don’t think, is the right answer, but even just thinking about it, it does clarify thought. And I think it might have the effect of strengthening our moral resolve, you know, wherever we end up in terms of the actual direct content of what we should do. It may help us be a bit more confident in saying, yeah, we should sometimes do things because they’re the right thing to do. And that’s surely welcome.

Soumaya Keynes
Yeah. Absolutely. I guess the final thing is I really enjoyed that both of our pieces ended in a pretty similar place from, you know, taking different directions. My conclusion was: Guys, you really need to take a joke. And your conclusion, I think, was …

Martin Sandbu
It was: If you really want to do the most good you can do, maybe you shouldn’t be an effective altruist.

Soumaya Keynes
Well, no. It wasn’t quite that strong. It was, you know, we shouldn’t take effective altruism too seriously, which I think is pretty hard to argue with. Martin, thanks so much for joining me.

Martin Sandbu
Thanks for having me.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Soumaya Keynes
That is all for this week. You have been listening to The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes. If you enjoyed the show, then I would be eternally grateful if you could rate and reviews us wherever you listen. This episode was produced by Edith Rousselot, with original music from Breen Turner. Sound engineering by Joe Salcedo. It is edited by Bryant Urstadt. Our executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. I’m Soumaya Keynes. Thanks for listening.
La gente de Variety ha hecho pública la primera imagen oficial de PACIFIC FEAR, la cinta dirigida por Jacques Kluger (Play or Die) que actualmente se está rodando en la Polinesia Francesa.

La cinta contará la historia de un grupo de amigos surfistas que están buscando las mejores olas posibles llegan a una isla misteriosa que no aparece en los mapas... Lo que no esperan es que sea el inicio de una lucha por su superviviencia.

Adèle Galloy, Marilyn Lima, Marie Zabukovec y Vaimiti Teiefitu encabezan el reparto de la película que se estrenará el próximo año.
From paranormal research to supernatural horror features and beyond, New York City’s Haunted House FearFest has something on tap this month for fear-fanatics of every stripe. Following is the official press announcement.

The Haunted House FearFest, presented by HauntTV with media sponsor Den of Geek, is proud to announce the full film slate and programming for the 6th annual festival running October 24-26, 2024 at the Triad Theater in New York City. Check out a festival sizzle reel trailer here.

Expected highlights from the festival include:

A special screening of season 3 of HauntTV’s hit series Haunted Discoveries, featuring Ghost Hunters’ star, Mustafa Gatollari, who will be in attendance to present an episode from the new season.
Special pre-screening introductions from filmmakers, including Academy Award-nominated director John R. Dilworth, who will introduce his short film Howl If You Love Me, and award-winning director Lauren Keller, who will introduce her short films A Little of Glass of Rum and Dark and Stormy.
Closing night awards ceremony to take place on Saturday, October 26th, where select films will be honored with awards including the grand prize “Grim Reaper Award for Best in Show.”
Kodak Motion Picture will be awarding filmmaker grants to the winners of “Best Director” and “Best Cinematography.”
Renee Huff will continue her role as the festival’s Owner & Executive Director. The festival, which obtained new ownership in 2022, is dedicated to celebrating and showcasing the work of innovative independent filmmakers, game developers, and artists from around the world, with a special focus on promoting the talents of women and underrepresented groups in the horror genre.

“Haunted House FearFest is the fulfillment of my lifelong dream – to immerse audiences in the art of horror while transforming bold ideas into lasting legacies. It serves as a powerful platform for filmmakers and game developers from all backgrounds, with a special emphasis on elevating women creators. Here, their stories are not just shared; they are honored, amplifying voices that deserve to be seen, heard, and celebrated in ways that transcend the screen.” said Renee Huff, Owner & Executive Director, HHFF.

About Haunted House FearFest

Haunted House FearFest is an independent horror festival dedicated to celebrating our passion for spine-tingling terror. We showcase the work of innovative independent filmmakers, game developers, artists from around the world, with a special focus on promoting the talents of women and underrepresented groups in the horror genre. Our mission is to share our deep love for horror and its diverse sub-genres, including paranormal, monsters, slashers, zombies, gore, gothic, dark fantasy, psychological thrillers, and much more! If it Conjures Fear – We want it!

Prepare yourself for an immersive experience at Haunted House FearFest, where we curate the finest independent horror films and video games that will keep you glancing over your shoulder until the very end. To achieve this, we seek out filmmakers and game developers with a twisted imagination and a penchant for the horrifying to join us in creating an unforgettable journey into the realm of fear and suspense. For additional information, please visit: www.hauntedhousefearfest.com or follow the festival on Facebook, Instagram, Instagram, and X.

About HauntTV

HauntTV is a Blue Ant Media global free streaming channel available via SmartTV’s The Roku Channel, Sling TV, TCL, Samsung TV Plus, VIZIO WatchFree+, LG Channels, and more. Programmed with chills in mind, HauntTV is where the afterlife comes to life with a 24/7 ghoulish lineup of series such as Haunted Discoveries, History’s Most Haunted, Hotel Paranormal, Paranormal Survivor and more. Love jump scares and ghosts that go bump in the night? Good. You’re gonna love this channel. www.haunttv.us.

About Den of Geek

Den of Geek is the leading entertainment media company for pop culture enthusiasts. Blending expert insight with a voice that is fluent and respectful of fandom, DenofGeek.com is a recognized authority on movies, television, games, comics, books, and culture since its inception in 2007. The brand produces a high-quality, award-winning print magazine quarterly, with additional special editions for pop culture events throughout the year.

For additional information, please visit: www.denofgeek.com or follow the brand on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X.

Television Line-Up
HAUNTED DISCOVERIES (Season 3)

Available to Stream on HauntTV

Season 3 Synopsis: The American Paranormal Research Association applies the stringent methodology that’s yielded shocking results in the first two seasons of Haunted Discoveries, to some of America’s most celebrated haunted locations, and long-guarded historical sites for the team’s third round of cases. Joining hosts Brandon Alvis and Mustafa Gatollari in season 3 is world-renowned scientist Dr. Harry Kloor, who subjects decades of supernatural claims to a stricter scientific standard, while also crafting experiments tailored to each investigation that will either bolster these widely believed supernatural claims, or challenge the paranormal community’s faith in their validity.

Feature Films Line-Up
MALDOROR

Directed by: LP Behbahani

Starring: Kelsey Jaffer, Benjamin Milliken, Sam Sage, Pete Giovagnoli, Pamela Strateman, Emma Terrazas, Nicolas Silva

Synopsis: An aspiring author working on her new book summons a malevolent entity intent on consuming her soul.

A STRANGER IN THE WOODS

Directed by: József Gallai

Starring: Bill Oberst, Laura Ellen Wilson, Lynn Lowry

Synopsis: A young film student is making a documentary about an elderly man who has been hiding from the world for many years. But as secrets from his past come to light, their strange relationship takes a fateful turn.

THE LADY OF THE LAKE

Directed by: Ryan Grulich

Starring: Amanda Paulson

Synopsis: A researcher investigates hauntings attached to a 1937 murder and finds herself at the crossroads of violence, history, and the supernatural.

OPERATION BLOOD HUNT

Directed by: Louis Mandylor

Starring: Quinton Rampage Jackson, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Louis Mandylor, Sonia Cooling

Synopsis: The Reverend accompanies a ragtag group of military rejects to a remote South Pacific Island to investigate the disappearance of Marine units said to be at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army.

Shorts Line-Up
DARK AND STORMY

Directed by: Lauren Keller

Starring: Stu Ford, Kat Kersting

Synopsis: As lighting cracks, a man wakes from his slumber to find out he’s not alone in his bedroom.

A LITTLE GLASS OF RUM

Directed by: Lauren Keller

Starring: Stu Ford, Kat Kersting

Synopsis: After grieving over the murder of his wife and son, a prison guard dines with the killer for his last meal.

THE QUEUE

Directed by: Michael Rich

Starring: Burt Bulos, Jeff Doba

Synopsis: An internet content moderator confronts the darkness within the videos he screens.

DON’T LET THEM IN

Directed by: Peter Collins

Starring: Ashley Dingwell, Danny McLeod, Ihechi Marcus

Synopsis: After surviving an abusive relationship, Heather’s fragile reality unravels as she’s stalked by a vampiric shape-shifter from her past. With a cryptic symbol as its calling card, she must confront both her trauma and the creature determined to enter her home.

MRS. BARKER’S CHAIR

Directed by: Aaran McKenzie

Starring: Stephen Sitkowski, Susan Jeffrey, Faye Bennett, Terry Pearson

Synopsis: Believing his newly bed bound Mother (Brenda) is suffering with Dementia, Chris steps up to take care of her at her own home, but is deeply unsettled when she claims it was the chair that did this to her.

AURORA

Directed by: Rita Osei

Starring: Djinda Kane, Ella-Rae Smith, Melanie Gray, Joshua Osei, Edwin de la Renta

Synopsis: A perimenopausal vampire is on a quest to kill a habit that won’t die!

THE WASTELANDER – SECTOR 23

Directed by: Jonathan Bentley

Starring: Paul Kavanagh, Graham McTavish

Synopsis: In a sprawling apocalyptic world, an unnamed wanderer runs from personal tragedy. But Sector 23 is not for the faint of heart, and his encounters with warring mutants, insane robots, and deadly predators will put his pursuit of the Oracle, and need for answers, in jeopardy.

STICKS

Directed by: CJ Beasley

Starring: Tristian Path, Paige Moran, Ben Black

Synopsis: A “couple” gets lost in the woods, unaware that something else lurks in the sticks.

NO SLEEP TONIGHT

Directed by: H. Owen Richardson

Starring: Saffron Richardson, Verity Richardson

Synopsis: A girl catches a glimpse of a ghastly apparition at the end of her bed.

HOWL IF YOU LOVE ME

Directed by: John R. Dilworth

Synopsis: Boy has girl. Boy loses girl. Boy wins girl back, but girl is a werewolf.

THE SCALPEL

Directed by: Richard H. Lyford

Starring: Barbara Berger, Eystein Berger, Richard H. Lyford

Synopsis: A mad doctor transforms into a monstrous killer and creates mayhem in a medical institute. (The Scalpel is a 1936 never-released film by then 19-year-old filmmaker, Richard Lyford with a score by Ed Hartman.)

BLINDED

Directed by: Blake Hay

Starring: Melissa Godbold, Yogesh Mahajan; Chivelli

Synopsis: Feeling the pressure to propose, a man gives his heart.

BLANK

Directed by: Avishai Weinberger

Starring: Tova Umetuka, Nayib Felix, Quentin Thomson

Synopsis: A young woman experiences dissociative “blank-out” moments. As they grow more frequent, they threaten her relationship and her life.

OCCUPIED

Directed by: Liam Fink

Starring: Alex Chang, Liam Fink

Synopsis: A park ranger is closing facilities for the night, only to realize that one of the bathrooms is still in use….

FREQUENCY

Directed by: Phil Beastall

Starring: Sarah Carmel, Andy Turvey, Matt Connors-Jones

Synopsis: A sound designer Lucy spends her life surrounded by noise. But in the silence, a dark presence awaits. The more Lucy craves the quiet, the more compelled the entity is to find ways to interact with her.

ALL IN A DAY’S WORK

Directed by: Troy Fortenberry

Starring: Justin Whitney, Melissa Gratia, Kacey Samiee

Synopsis: A man’s quest for enlightenment leads him to a New Age workshop that proves to be more than his mind can handle.

THE INVISIBLES

Directed by: Julia Beney

Starring: Sean Chen, Makenna Pickersgill, Selena Nicholas, Rianna Persaud

Synopsis: A troubled boy realizes his new home is haunted when two girls break into his house ghost hunting, the apparition however is not at all what the trio expect, and yet, exactly what they need.

GRETCHEN

Directed by: Dean Addison

Starring: Anto Sharp, Amy Marie Lucas

Synopsis: Lenny takes his girlfriend Lily into the woods for a romantic evening away, little does she know that he has an ulterior motive. A viral social media trend to tempt fate by summoning the fabled GRETCHEN, but with a twist, they’re on the hallowed ground from where the legend originated. Is it just an urban legend? or will Gretchen exact her revenge for Lenny’s deception?

WICKED IMAGE

Directed by: Caitlin Scherer

Starring: Jessica Sherr, Heather Brittain O’Scanlon, Amanda Leigh Corbett, Hope Blackstock, Gabriel Rysdahl

Synopsis: In this satirical comedy, regular everyday people have become so evil that the epitome of evil -Satan, the Devil and Lucifer- start to struggle with imposter syndrome and wonder whether they’re still the most evil beings. After meeting with a publicist from hell, the trio realizes it’s time to make a change.

The Haunted House FearFest, presented by HauntTV with media sponsor Den of Geek, has also announced that the 1999 film CURSE OF THE BLAIR WITCH will play the festival on Saturday, October 25th, with a special post-screening Q&A with producer Michael Monello, who also served as a producer on THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

Michael Monello’s video game Broken Spectre won “Best Video Game of the Year” at the 2023 Haunted House FearFest. He will be presented with the award at this year’s festival.

“I am delighted to meet NYC’s horror fans at Haunted House FearFest this year and share my favorite part of the Blair Witch story, a fake documentary about a fake documentary about the Blair Witch,” said CURSE OF THE BLAIR WITCH producer Michael Monello.

“I am thrilled to welcome Michael Monello to the Haunted House FearFest Film & Video Game Festival to screen Curse of the Blair Witch—a groundbreaking mockumentary that explores the The Blair Witch Project, which he also produced,” said Renee Huff, Owner & Executive Director, HHFF. “I am also excited to honor him with the Best Video Game of the Year award for Broken Spectre, recognizing his incredible contributions to both horror film and video game storytelling.”

Rosanna Arquette had to wait 30 years to be able to appreciate Quentin Tarantino‘s “Pulp Fiction.”

The actress, who plays the character Jody in the ensemble film, told Variety that she originally had to leave the 1994 film premiere as the feature was “so violent.” Arquette further reflected on the “cringe-worthy moments” in the Academy Award-winning script co-written by Roger Avary.

“I was pregnant when it came out, and I remember going into it and it was so violent my mom and I had to leave. So I’d never sat and watched it as a cinema experience until 30 years later at the Chinese Theatre [during the TCM Film Festival retrospective],” she said. “It’s still this cultural phenomenon, but also I still have the issue of, enough with the N-word. For me, that’s always been an issue, and I didn’t realize how much it was an issue until I saw it this last time. It’s still great filmmaking, but there’s cringe-worthy moments, and it’s usually not just the violence. But I do love [Tarantino] as a filmmaker.”

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Arquette’s co-star Kathy Griffin, who has a cameo in the film, seemingly agreed to an extent.

“When I finally saw the movie, it was beyond expectations. Because on the page, I was like, fuck, this is gory. And there was the N-word, and then he said the N-word. And like any white person, I’m looking around at the Black people here, going, ‘What are they doing?'” Griffin

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