Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of Maximum Fun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bolzai. I'm Jesse Thorne. There's a new movie coming out called The Death of Robin Hood.

And you don't have to read much into the title to know what it's about.

Robin Hood is played by Hugh Jackman, brilliantly. And the legendary folk hero is kind of getting up there in age.

He's tired. His beard is long and gray. He looks almost like God in a far side comic.

The decades of running, fighting, being beaten and slashed have taken their tolls. Robin, badly hurt, ends up in a priory, a small community run by a nun. And there, he confronts his legacy. He thinks about the

lives he's taken, the lives he's ruined, the wake of violence and blood feuds that trails behind him,

and he reaches a pretty reasonable conclusion.

Robin Hood, Robin of Nottingham, was not a good guy.

So here in the Priory, staring death in the face, how does he reckon with that? The death of Robin Hood

is not about prancing and shooting arrows. It alternates between brutal violence and meditative,

almost serene thoughtfulness. It's written and directed by my guest, Michael Sarnoski.

Sarnaski is also responsible for the movie's

Pig and A Quiet Place Day One. So glad to talk to Sarnoski about the movie. Let's get into it.

Michael, welcome to Bullseye. I am so happy to have you on the show.

Thank you so much. I'm honored to be here. Did you get the idea for this film because you were just hanging out reading the lyrics of 15th century songs or whatever? Yeah, it's just what I do to unwind, kind of. So, yeah, that's pretty much. Now, mostly it came from loving the... You're like, ooh, an S or an F. I don't know. Yeah. No, it was just from watching the animated Disney Robin Hood. That was where that love started. But the poems helped, too. How did you discover the breadth of the story of Robin Hood? Yeah, I think it was sort of one of those. It was at a perfect time in my life where I loved the Disney animated Robin Hood movie as kid. Like I would watch it with my dad.

And the full story is that when my dad passed away, our neighbor who kind of became this like

mentor or father figure to me gave me a copy of his childhood school book Robin book. And it had all

the old stories in it, like the finale of it being the death of Robin Hood story. And I think there

was something about being a child, losing a parent, having seen the sort of childish version

of Robinhood, and then being exposed to the sort of more mature version of, not just the mature

version, but like the idea that this folk hero could die, that that was like part of his story.

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