Seven Samurai
WHAT WENT WRONG
Sad Boom Media
4.8 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2026
⏱️ 82 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A Kubrickian schedule! Two months of shooting in the mud! Roundworm, tuberculosis, and mass-method acting! What are the building blocks of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 classic jidaigeki film, Seven Samurai? Chris and Lizzie learn of Kurosawa's battles with censors (Japanese and American), studios, and his own personal demons. Plus, how the score went from the wastebasket to the silver screen, how Toshiro Mifune saved the film from a self-serious tone, and how a request for 10 days off can lead to a two year stay at your director's house.
*This episode was made possible by the incredible support of Patrons like Blaise Ambrose!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And action |
| 0:02.0 | And action and action. |
| 0:32.8 | 500,000, 600, 600 minutes. That's how long seven samurai is. Just kidding. It's a great movie. |
| 0:37.4 | We're going to talk about it. Hello and welcome back to what went wrong, your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies. |
| 0:39.9 | And now it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a sprawling period piece epic with a universal story about the value of knowing when and how to fight and most importantly, what's worth fighting for? |
| 0:51.2 | I am one of your hosts, Lizzie Bassett, here as always with Chris Winterbauer |
| 0:54.8 | and Chris, what unbelievably long movie did you choose for us today? |
| 0:59.2 | Well, today we have the movie that Lizzie watches between episodes of Love is Blind |
| 1:03.8 | and mouthfuls of chicken. |
| 1:06.3 | Can't believe you're outing me. |
| 1:07.6 | And that is Akira Kurosawa's classic 1954 film, Seven Samurai. |
| 1:14.7 | Seven Samurai is a movie I've wanted to cover for a long time. It's very influential. Lizzie, |
| 1:20.5 | I'm sure you can see the influences throughout Western film in particular. |
| 1:24.7 | Kurwasawa is kind of like a hollow director amidst many of that new wave of |
| 1:29.4 | autours in the United States like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. |
| 1:34.4 | And we've gotten a lot of requests to cover foreign films, which we have not done, |
| 1:38.7 | we're not done nearly at the rate that perhaps that we, you know, we should. And this year as we've |
| 1:42.9 | done our best Oscars coverage, there have been a number of wonderful foreign films, both films that have been nominated, sentimental value, the secret agent, et cetera, and ones that haven't, no other choice. And so I thought it was time, Lizzie. And I thought we could start with Seven Samurai and just get the really long one out of the way and make you watch it and sit through all of it. So what were your thoughts upon watching or re-watching Seven Samurai for the podcast? |
| 2:06.5 | First time seeing it. It's, you know, it is amazing how many things have continued to iterate on this story. |
| 2:14.2 | It's, you know, everything from obviously Magnificent Seven. We discuss this, |
| 2:18.6 | but a bug's life very clearly as well as just many, many, many, many other things. |
| 2:24.5 | Galaxy Quest. Galaxy Quest, yes. Look, it's amazing. I understand why it's a classic. The final |
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