370 – Looper

This Had Oscar Buzz

Joe and Chris

Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2025

⏱️ 143 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With a new Benoit Blanc out for you to devour, we decided it was a great time to talk about the great Rian Johnson. In 2012, Johnson delivered his genre hybrid Looper, set in a dystopic future where, through the magic of time travel, a hitman (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) faces off against his older self (Bruce Willis) to stop a mysterious force who’s hunting them. With mind-bending leaps and a stellar supporting turn from Emily Blunt, Looper cemented Johnson’s reputation and led to his hiring for The Last Jedi.

This week, we talk about Johnson’s confident grasp of twisty material and the layered world he creates with Looper. We also talk about Gordon-Levitt’s Willis-riffing turn, Willis’ late career in the years after this film, and Kazu Hiro’s makeup to make JGL look like BW.

Topics also include 2012 TIFF Galas, the 2012 Original Screenplay race, and the blunderbuss.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Oh, wrong house.
0:12.8	No, the right house.
0:13.6	I didn't get that.
0:15.0	We want to talk to Mel and Heck.
0:16.0	Millen Heck and crack. I'm from Canada water.
0:27.6	Dick
0:29.6	Dick Poop In the future, time travel is outlawed
0:44.3	Used only in secret by the largest criminal organizations
0:48.3	When they need someone gone
0:51.3	And they want to erase any trace of the target ever existing. They use specialized assassins like me called a looper.
1:03.0	You're a looper?
1:05.0	You know what we do?
1:06.0	And the only rule is never let your target escape, even if your target, is you.
1:15.5	Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that's getting an
1:19.6	extra thick burr from Tulsi Town, no matter how snowy it gets.
1:23.6	Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once
1:26.7	upon a time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we are here to perform the autopsy. I'm your host, Joe Reed. I'm here, as always, with my blunderbuss, Chris File. Hello, Chris. I refuse to give a gay guy answer to that. Doesn't that seem like it would be like a cute term of endearment for like normie people though?
1:49.5	A blunderbuss?
1:50.3	Yeah, my little blunderbuss.
1:52.4	That's like a cutesy term for like your really depressed.
1:57.3	Which I guess is me for you?
2:02.4	Like not unfair.
	...

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