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The following podcast contains explicit language.

I want to tell you my secret now.

I see dead people.

Silent breed is people.

No, I am the father.

Oh,

what's in the box?

You maniac!

You blew it up!

Damn you all the hell!

Hello, this is Dana Steven, Slate's movie critic, here with another Slate's spoiler special

podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about the new Charlie Kaufman film written and directed

by Charlie Kaufman called I'm Thinking of Ending Things. And joining me to talk about that very strange

film is the very strange in a good way, Matthew Dessum.

Hi, Matt. Hey, Dana. Matt, you are the nights and weekends editor of Brow Beat, Slate's Culture Blog. Yes. And you are a person I'm very glad to get to discuss this movie with because I just feel like, I mean, I don't know you super well. We've met for drinks a few times. I'm a loyal reader of yours, but I somehow have a feeling that this movie is going to match with your sensibility in some sort of interesting way and that you're going to have some maybe some explanations of it that I might not have had. And it's an extremely enigmatic movie ideal for spoiling. So I'm really, I'm really hyped for this one. Well, thank you. I'm really excited to be here, too. I'm looking forward to talking about it with you.

So I guess we should start, as I usually do, these spoiler specials, by sort of getting evaluation out of the way. I just sort of ask up top, whether you overall liked the movie and would send a friend to it or not so that we're not really doing a review here, right? we're actually sort of doing a conversation about what happens, including all the stuff you can't get into in reviews.

So, really doing a review here, right? We're actually sort of doing a conversation about what happens,

including all the stuff you can't get into in reviews. So did you like it? And would you send a

friend? I did and I would. Yeah, I think it's a really interesting movie. I would think about what

kind of mood my friend was in. I maybe wouldn't send a deeply depressed friend to watch it. But on the whole, yeah, it's great. Yeah, I would agree. I think that I would even go so far as to say that it's my favorite directed by Charlie Kaufman, Charlie Kaufman movie. I mean, we tend to talk about movies that Charlie Kaufman wrote as though they're Charlie Kaufman movies. He's one of the very few screenwriters right now working who who gets that kind of above the line

recognition, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, right, being John Malkovich, adaptation,

...