Books vs. Movies

Ep. 54 You Were Never Really Here by Jonathan Ames vs. You Were Never Really Here (2017)

• Lluvia • Episode 54

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A fixer who vanishes like a rumor. A girl who counts to survive. A city that hides its crimes in plain sight. We put Jonathan Ames’ You Were Never Really Here head‑to‑head with Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation, and the fault lines between page and screen say as much about ethics as they do about plot.

I walk through Joe’s paranoid craft—burner calls through a Queens bodega, silent stakeouts, the “playground” floor in a brownstone—and why the novella’s spare details hit like evidence. We unpack the changes the film makes: renaming and aging down the girl, shifting the conspiracy toward a governor, and trading explicit exposition for Joaquin Phoenix’s bruised quiet. The big questions surface fast: how much should a story show when its subject is child trafficking, and when does restraint become its own kind of indictment?

You’ll hear how the book clarifies the two mysteries the film leaves opaque: the meaning of the counting and the weight behind the title. We contrast an ambush at a senator’s hotel room with a motel standoff on edge, trace the fallout that claims Angel and Moises, and follow the diverging paths to the finale—Ames’ ambiguous drive toward a rescue versus Ramsay’s stark diner coda and found‑family spark. Along the way, New York isn’t just a backdrop; it’s infrastructure for power, from brownstones to highways to the river that tempts Joe to sink.

By the end, I choose a winner and explain why the novella’s clarity and procedural pulse edged out the film’s hypnotic mood, even as the movie’s restraint still lingers. If you’re into book‑to‑film comparisons, storytelling ethics, and the craft of adaptation, this one digs deep without getting lurid.

If you enjoyed this breakdown, subscribe, share it with a friend who loves adaptations, and leave a quick review—then tell me: did the book or the movie land harder for you?

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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to Books vs. Movies, the podcast where I set out to answer the age-old question, is the book really always better than the movie? I'm Yuvia, an actress and book lover based out of New York City, and today I will be discussing You Were Never Really Here by Jonathan Ames and its 2017 adaptation, You Are Never Really Here, starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Lynn Ramsey. Hi everyone. So I know that it's been a long gap between episodes, and my intention when I started this podcast was always to have like an episode, kind of when I first launched it, like have an episode waiting and ready to go week after week, and that there would be no gaps. And then I made it through all like I recorded all my episodes, I had them ready to go, and then I kept reading and I kept building that list. And and then somewhere along the way, I just got behind on reading and watching things. I'm still reading and watching things consistently, but it does take a while to watch things, but it takes even more to read them, especially when I'm trying to tackle so many things at once and have to balance my other stuff as well. So I do apologize and I hope you don't mind that there's long gaps, but let me know. Do you want me to do actual seasons and go back and just record and have that backlog of episodes ready to go? And once I have a sufficient number, just release them, release them, release them, and then and do that as seasons as opposed to having long gaps between episodes. I don't know. Let me know. You can send me a text message using the show notes of any of my episodes, or you can find me on Instagram at Books vs. Movies Podcast and DM me there. I don't know. I get really, really excited to record and release and even just like in anticipation of releasing this podcast, I was like, uh, I don't want to go too much time without I want to release these now. But I I waited and I was patient. And once the episode was, I mean, once the podcast was out into the world, I was like, you know what, it's this is just how it's gonna be. But anyway, let us go ahead and get started. So before we get into my discussion of you are never really here, I would like to start off with a not so happy El Paso shout-out. So for those of you that are maybe listening to this for the first time, I am from El Paso, Texas. Absolutely love my hometown, and we are hardly ever talked about in um outside of like news to talk about what's going on at the border. But other than that, like it makes me so happy when I find books or other media in which people mention my hometown, and so I started shouting out El Paso whenever I saw it mentioned. But this is a not so happy shout-out as this. All these excerpts come from The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea, which is a true story about the Yuma 14, and the Yuma 14 were part of a larger group of men that crossed over the border, and this is Yuma 14, as you can guess, this is in Arizona, and the majority of them died at the time. This was, I think, the most casualties in a border crossing. So, since this happened in Arizona, most of the excerpts talk about El Paso and just different border situations there. So that's why it's a not so happy shout-out. But let's go ahead and get started. The ne'er do well fence jumpers that galloped into El Paso and San Diego on a quest for chocolate shakes and Michael Jackson cassettes are no more. The new Jack Coyote is largely the inadvertent product of the Border Patrol's extremely effective interdiction and prevention policies. Good old Operation Gatekeeper is the mother of Invention. San Diego's Border Patrol beefed up the border fence, then placed massive floodlights along it, illuminating the no man's land between the United States and Mexico. Then, in a burst of creative thinking, it ceased the endless patrolling of the hills and river valleys of the region. Instead, the Border Patrol parked trucks at half-mile checkpoints all along the fence. Each agent is in sight of the next, and all of them are in constant contact as they observe the line. Helicopters still hover and their versions of the Oscar sensors blip and night vision electric eye scan. The fence in the west extends into the ocean. In the east, it terminates in the wasteland of deserts and mountains. There was only one problem. Nogales was dying. The migra had the desert sector town shut down tight. They had been adapting the El Paso formula, big new fences, some kind of human radar, night vision, and more cops. The bastards parked their trucks in a line, each truck inside of the next, and they just sat there. They watched for hours, drinking sodas, clicking their radios. Everybody in Ogales said they handcuffed Morras in the trucks and felt their Chi Chis. Binche Migra. Buses headed north can catch Highway 57 through San Luis Potosi or 15 that cuts across the country to Guadalajara. Sooner or later they get on the 45 and this heads northwest to Ciudad Juarez. In the old days, before the Migra closed it down, El Paso slash Juarez was a target destination. Now they had to move west. Ciudad Juarez, large and Mexican myth, second only to Tijuana in their minds, the wetback's promised land, was a sprawl of towers and dust, desert and trains. Nothing there, not a tree it looked like, not a drop of water. The Rio Grande, known to them as El Rio Bravo, Don Moy pointed out El Paso, Texas. Some dark peaks, some warehouses. Pima County, home of Tucson sector, wrote off$24.7 million in 2000 alone. San Diego and El Paso were incredibly worse. In Tucson itself, University Medical Center lost an estimated$6.5 million for treatment of undocumented entrants. And little old Yuma, population$160,000, spent$4.1 million. But a quarter of these bills were from illegals, though the media laid it all on them. So I know that was a longer El Vaso shout-out, so I don't want to get too much into it politically. Obviously, I have a lot of opinions being born and raised there. So that's all I'm gonna say. But let's go ahead and get started with You Were Never Really Here by Jonathan Ames. And before we get started, I do want to say that both the book and the film do focus. Like this book deals with the topic of child trafficking. So obviously that is a very distressing subject. So I understand if you're not comfortable with listening to this episode. So I just wanted to say that out front. I'm not gonna get graphic, and the film itself and the book itself are not too graphic, but you do see there's I mean, whenever you see children just in that industry and being sexually abused in any manner or abused in any way for that matter, but it is always difficult. And I know that for some people that's just a really sensitive topic that they do not want to touch. So just wanted to say that up front. And as always, there will be spoilers when I talk about both the book and the film. So if you do not want to know any spoilers of any kind for either of these, then watch them, read it, come back, and let me know what you think. And this is a real like it will not take you long. You can honestly read the book and watch the movie all in the same day. The book is really, really it's a it's actually a novella. It's less than 100 pages, so knock that out so quickly. And the film is about 90 minutes, so yeah, you can do both in one day and then come back and check out this episode. But that being said, let us go ahead and get started. So You Were Never Really Here by Jonathan Ames was first published in 2013, and it follows our main character, Joe, who is a former Marine and an ex-FBI agent. Because of his background, he is paranoid, and because of the line of work he does, he is paranoid, and it is totally justified paranoia, like he does everything in his power to make sure that he is not discovered. Like, as the title suggests, he does everything to make sure that no one knows that he was ever really there, and that includes the way he picks up his line of work, his point of contact, calls a bodega, and that bodega then gets in touch with him. And yeah, so no one knows anything about this man. Joe's main line of work now as a retired Marine and FBI agent is he rescues young girls from the sex trade. This book kicks off when a New York politician hires him to rescue his teenage daughter from a Manhattan brothel. In doing so, Joe uncovers a web of eruption that puts even him in danger. And even more danger than he already is. Like he does everything in his power to prove that he was never really there. This compromises that. But Joe will do any violent means to rescue the girls that he has been set out to rescue. The 2017 adaptation, You Were Never Really Here, is directed by Lynn Ramsey and stars Khoaquin Phoenix as Joe. And this film follows a traumatized veteran who is unafraid of violence as he tracks down Missing Girls for a Living. When a job spins out of control, Joe's nightmare overtakes him as a conspiracy is uncovered, leading to what could be his death trip or his awakening. So yeah, I mean, this is a novella of less than 100 pages. So pretty much everything that happens in the book, you can find it on the screen. Are there changes? Of course there are. There are always gonna be changes. Some of them, I don't know why those changes were made. Other times we can only speculate as was as to why those changes were made, but no matter what, there always has to be changes made to accommodate from the print format to the visual format. So that being said, a difference that I cannot tell you why it was made is the name of the daughter. So, yes, Joe is hired by a New York politician to rescue his daughter. In the film, her name is Nina, and in the book, her name is Lisa. Yeah, not sure why that change was made. And in the book, I mean, in the film, she's also aged down. So in the book, she's about 14 years old, and in the film, I believe she's about 11 or 12. So yeah, she is aged down in the film, which considering it's already a difficult subject matter. I'm really not sure why that decision was made. I feel like usually when the subject matter is this difficult or this dark, they will cast people who are over the age of 18 but look like they're still teenagers or could pass as teenagers. So it's already a really uncomfortable subject matter. So the fact that Nina was aged down in the film was is a choice. As I said, usually the character is aged up so that it can be played by an adult who can pass for younger. And like I said, this film is not graphic and nor should it have been considering they aged her down. Yeah, I don't know. It's just interesting that the they made the choice to go for someone younger, unless they were really trying to go for like that really kind of innocent make you really uncomfortable kind of thing, although it should make you uncomfortable no matter her age, because she's still a minor, but you know, yeah. But in the film, Nina, so it's said that Nina ended up where she is because she, after her mom died, she started running away. And one day, one of the times she ran away, she ended up getting picked up and trafficked. So that's how Nina ends up in that situation. In the book, we are told that Lisa met a 30-year-old guy on Facebook, and it ended up being a catfish, so she runs away, so she goes to meet him, essentially. I don't think it's necessarily like she runs away. Her mom does pass away, but her mom dies after Lisa has gone missing. So it's more of Lisa meets a 30-year-old man, it's actually a catfish to lure her away from home, and that is how she ends up trafficked. Or is it? We'll get into it. So, so Joe once receiving this information, he goes to the Manhattan brothel where this happens, and I mean, there's so much information. Like, I learned so much more about this particular kind of brothel. Now it could all be Jonathan Ames's imagination, or he might have looked into how this type of stuff worked. I'm not gonna like research it myself to see if it's if it's accurate or not, but the way it is portrayed in the book is that it's a brothel, but there is a floor. So and this brothel is a brownstone, a townhouse, so it's just a regular house, or you would think it's a regular house from the outside, and you have to be in the note that it's actually a brothel, but each there's a specific floor of the townhouse that is called the playground. You can imagine why it's called the playground, and that is where the miners are. So, in the film doesn't really like go into that much detail, obviously, because there we don't really need to know that information in the film, but yeah, so it does explain it in the book how this works. As I said, I'm not gonna fact check Jonathan Ames here, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's really how this kind of situation works. But anyway, so Joe goes to the brothel, he stakes it out, sees you know, he's a four marine and ex ex-FBI agent, so he stakes it out, and then he sees like a delivery person go in. And in the film, the delivery guy is he looked really, really young. I want to say he was maybe 18 years old. Like this is a young adult, very, very young adult. And in the book, it's a grown man, it's an adult man, but they go in, and when they come out, Joe ambushes them and gets all the pertinent information he needs. In the book, he gets the key from this particular delivery person. In the film, it's a keypad, so he gets the keypad code from the delivery kid. That was another difference, is just that he's beating up a very young adult in the film, whereas in the book, he's beating up like an adult adult. It's always so weird. Like, yes, I'm aware that the 18-year-old is also an adult adult, but you know what I mean. Like, he's a very young adult versus like someone who who's may just be turning a blind eye and just like, I'm desperate, I'm 18, I'm just trying to make a living, and versus the 32-year-old who might be thinking that, but is much more aware of the consequences, probably. But anyway, so yeah, so he gets the keypad code from the 18-year-old and the key from the 32-year-old. He goes in, he rescues Nina slash Lisa, and so this is one of the moments in which I do want to say that in the book, it like I said, it's not overly graphic, but it is still disturbing to read. But he does walk in on Lisa being in the process of being sexually assaulted when he rescues her in the film, because we're dealing with a child actor here. Thankfully, that is not what happens. He goes up to the floor where she's held and he finds her in the room. But thankfully, there's like no other people in there. You do see a man run out of a different room, the naked man that he kills, but this is a completely different room than the one where he finds Nina in. So again, just wanted to make you aware that that is once like this scene is over, it's like the child trafficking aspect is over, at least in the book. Yeah. I guess it kind of does continue in the film, but there's kind of a happy well, is it happy? No, that's like the wrong word to use. I'm not, you know what? I'm just gonna keep going. This, like, obviously, this is a very uncomfortable subject matter, so I don't even know like how to describe it, but yes, so do want to give a warning that when he walks in in the book, she is in the process of being sexually assaulted. So just want to give that warning. So in the film, Nina is constantly is constantly counting, and you're not really sure why she's counting. It this is explained in the book. So when he rescues Lisa, she's counting, and he realizes oh, she literally counts until it's over. So she'll count from one until whatever number she gets to by the time it's done. So that's what the counting signifies. So I did just want to say that because it's never explained in the film, just like you were never really here is explained in the film. Like the film ended, and I was kind of just like, why is the film called that? I don't really know. So the title is also explained in the book, but not the film. So just yeah, just letting you know. But if you're listening to this and you don't care about spoilers, then now you know why it's called that and why Nina is counting. So Joe rescues Nina slash Lisa, and in the book, so he meets up with Votto, who is the senator at Votto's hotel. Votto is obviously Nina slash Lisa's dad. And so he meets Votto at Votto's hotel. Votto gives him the information, and then that's when he hands out to the brothel. So when he rescues Lisa in the book, he goes back to Votto's hotel and goes back to Votto's room. And when he knocks, the door is opened by men with guns, and he gets shot at and injured, and they take Lisa again in the process. And so Joe is completely caught off guard by this ambush. In the film, he goes to like a motel of his choice, which is kind of like a seedy motel. And again, this is just for his like motel, is where he can be anonymous. So that's why he chooses it. But basically, he told Votto, like, when I rescue your daughter, I'll meet you here, and this is where you can come pick her up. So as they're waiting for Votto to show up, Nina and Joe are watching the news, and they see on the news that Votto has committed suicide. So Votto does not commit suicide in the book, this is just in the film. So they see that Votto has committed suicide, and Joe's kind of like that kind of raises Joe's suspicions. So while they are technically still ambushed in this CD motel, he is a little bit more prepared. He still gets shot at and injured, and they still take Nina, but it's not as much of an ambush. He starts getting suspicious once he sees the news. So he's like already on edge, is kind of what I'm trying to say. He's on edge. And because he's on edge, he's able to react a lot quicker. But he is still outnumbered, he's still being shot at, so they're able to injure him and still take Nina in the process. So Joe starts trying to piece everything together, like what went wrong with this job. He in the book, he goes to the hospital, and then when he gets out of the hospital, he starts going to like his point of contact place, doesn't find him. He calls Angel. So Angel is, as I said, his point of contact doesn't have Joe's actual phone number. He has to call Angel. Angel owns is a just a bodega owner in Queens. So he has to call Angel, and then Angel from there then gets in touch with Joe and tells him, You need to get in touch with your boss, essentially. So that's who Angel is. And so his boss is killed, Angel is killed, and Moises, who is Angel's son, is killed. And the reason is that the people that are in on this child trafficking ring obviously want to kill this man because it's a dirty, dirty, disgusting business. And so they yeah, especially because politicians are involved, they have the power. They have the power. So Moises was hanging out at his at the start of the film, and the book is hanging out at his friend's place. And when he's hanging out there, he sees where Joe lives. And obviously, this is a huge no-no for Joe. Like, no one can know where he lives, no one can know anything about him. The fact that Moises saw him, the fact that Moises' friend actually lives right behind Joe, and Moises and his friend were hanging out, and he and Moises happened to see where Joe was living. Like that is huge, and it is a breach of Joe's security. And it actually turns out to be because when Joe's boss is unable to provide them with information, it is Moises that provides that tells them where Joe lives. But either way, Moises, knowing that information doesn't stop him and his dad from getting killed, they all die. So in the film, Joe is able to put together like what happened to Moises and Angel, and is like, they probably know where I live because of Moises. And so there's no confirmation that that's what happened to Moises and Angel, but I mean, we can guess it. In the film, there's no actual confirmation, but we know that that's probably definitely what happened. In the book, there's confirmation. So again, Joe, when he's unable to get in touch with his boss, he tries Angel's bodega. The bodega doesn't answer, or Angel doesn't answer, and Joe's already like he's working at the bodega at this time. The could he be running late? Sure, but it is very unlikely. So he's prepared. And when he so he goes to his mom, he lives with his mom. So he goes to his mom's house, and in the book, when he enters his mom, so his mom lives on the his mom's bedroom is on the second floor. So he like climbs up on the roof and breaks into his mom, into the house through his mom's bedroom. And in his mom's bedroom, he finds his mom, Angel, and Moises all dead. So in the film, like I said, we know that that's what happens. What else could it be? What why else would Angel and Moises be missing? But there's no actual proof or confirmation. But in the book, there's the actual proof with the bodies lying in his mom's bedroom along with his mom's body. So it is this is the house that Joe grew up in. He knows it forwards and backwards and sideways and always. So, and it's a very small house. So he's able to pinpoint exactly where the men that have broken into his home and are trying to kill him are. And so he's able to sneak up on them and shoot them. And in the book, he kills both of them instantly. In the film, he kills one of them instantly, and the other one he critically injures him, but he doesn't die right away. And as he's slowly bleeding out, he tells Joe what happened. And what he ends up revealing is that Governor Williams, the governor of New York, he reveals that Governor Williams and Botto are both pedophiles and child traffickers, and that Nina Botto is actually Governor Williams' favorite victim. And so Williams is the one that made Botto's death look like a suicide, and he's the one that's behind everything going on with Joe's life. He's trying to cover up his trafficking deals and keep Nina in the process. So, as I said in the book, this doesn't happen. He kills both of the agents that are in the house. He's able to kill them, and right away there's no reveal. And there is the death of Williams in the book. So in the book, it's Williams, the one that commits suicide. It's not Votto. And Joe is kind of able to piece together what he thinks has happened, which ends up being mostly correct. So once Joe kills those agents and he's able to piece together like what happened, why Williams needed to quote unquote commit suicide. Again, it was not an actual suicide. It was framed to look like a suicide. So Joe ends up going to Albany because that's where Joe's office is. I mean, not Joe, that's where Botto's office is, since he's a senator. And so he goes to Albany and he breaks into Botto's house. And that's how it's revealed. How Lisa is involved and Botto and everything. So yeah, as I had mentioned earlier, I had said that Lisa was catfished. And I was like, but was she really? Well, what Botto ends up revealing is that he essentially sold Lisa to the mafia. He wanted to do anything he could in order to get hired for political office. And so he went to Mafia and was like, What do I need to do to make sure that I get elected? And the head of the mafia, thinking he wasn't actually gonna do it, was like, Give me your daughter, sell me your daughter. I can make a lot of money off of her. And you know, I get I'm a sick pervert, so I get what I want out of your daughter. And you know, there's money for you in the process. So like Votto sells his daughter, is like, okay, I'll do it. And he sells his daughter and he ends up feeling guilty after a while and wants Joe to rescue his daughter, and then he was gonna find a way to like frame the mafia to get them off his back. And uh Williams in the book, who's not the governor, he's just another political person, ends up finding out what happened. So Votto panics, kills Williams, frames it as a suicide, and then has his like agents take Lisa. And the mafia ends up, he reveals that the mafia has Lisa in somewhere in Philadelphia or Pennsylvania. I don't know if it's Philadelphia exactly, but she's in Pennsylvania somewhere. So Joe then kills Votto, and that's how the book ends. He kills Votto and it ends very ambiguously. He heads off to Pennsylvania to rescue Lisa, but we don't know if he ever actually did, or that's how it ends. It ends with him murdering Votto and then heading off to Philadelphia. But the film has a much more happy ending, I guess you could say. So Joe goes home, finds out from the agent that he mortally wounds what's going on, and then he's like, you know what? He has suicidal tendencies, so he's kind of just like, I don't want to go after this little girl. I can't, like, this is I lost my mom, my boss is dead, and Angel and Moisess are dead too, and it's all my fault, and I'm just gonna end it all. So he like he puts his mom's body in the car, and then he drives somewhere in the woods, somewhere to a lake, and then he fills his pockets with rocks, and he gets in the lake with his mom with every intention of that's where he's gonna bury her, and he's gonna die by suicide there in the water with her. And then as he's there, he gets a vision of Nina, and he's like, I cannot leave Nina to that fate. So then he takes all the rocks out of his pocket and he swims back to shore and goes to save Nina. So in the book, he does not have these suicidal tendencies, or at least it wasn't as overt as it was in the film, but he's definitely like, I was hired to rescue this girl, and even though I'm pretty sure her dad is involved in some way, I I'm still gonna rescue her. And so he doesn't try to kill himself when he he does go to an overlook in New Jersey, which highly recommend. Off topic, but I Orlando and I, when we've driven through a few times that we've had a rental car and we drove through New Jersey, there are some really, really beautiful overlooks that overlook the Hudson River, and obviously can see the other New York. At this point, they're further down, so you don't see like New York City, but you can see like New York, New York State, and it's absolutely beautiful. So anyway, he so highly recommend. But Joe drives to one of these overlooks and then throws his mom's body into the Hudson River from there, and then he continues driving straight to Albany to get to Votto. So since Votto is dead in the film, Joe drives to Governor Williams' place in the country. Doesn't say words, just it's just a country home. And so he drives to Governor Williams's place in the country, he breaks in, and then he discovers a dead Governor Williams, the bedroom, and he finds Nina in the kitchen just eating lunch or dinner and with like a razor, and it's like she's the one that ended up killing Williams, and she's just having a snack after a very traumatic day, I guess. So she kills Williams, and then Joe, she and Joe leave, they go to a restaurant, they have dinner, and although Joe is very upset, Nina's kind of like, Don't be upset, I'm okay, I really am okay. And then they leave together as a newly formed, found family. So that's how it ends. So that's what I mean. The film has a lot more of a happy ending, while the book is definitely just ambiguous. So that's how that ends. And yeah, so one thing, this is the first time that I've read a book set in New York since I've lived here, that I was just like I know exactly where every single one of these places is. So that was really cool for me. So I like I knew where in Manhattan that brothel was. Not that I need to know that, but I know where in in New York that was. I can envision the I I'm not too too familiar with Queens because I don't really go out there that much, but I've been to Queens enough times to kind of know what the house looks like, at least from the outside, and just envision like Joe's neighborhood. And yeah, and like I could imagine the overlook, and yeah, so that was really, really cool for me as someone that yeah. I mean, I've read books set in New York before, obviously, but this was the first time that I was like, I know where all of this stuff is. This is really cool. Like, I don't need to work hard, I know where this is. Yeah, so it's a really short novella, relatively short film, all things considered. I mean, 90 minutes is short at this point. Like, that's a short film at this point. But yeah, so I think my biggest issue with the The film was just like I said, the title wasn't really explained and the counting wasn't really explained. So that was just one of those things, like you won't know what that means unless you've actually read the novella. And yeah, I'm not really sure why that the change was made to have Vado not be like the reason that his daughter's missing. I will say that Alessandro Navola was cast as Governor Williams, and apparently he filmed the whole thing. He was cast as like a completely different character. So he filmed the whole thing thinking he was this other character the whole time. And then somewhere along the way, someone on the production side was like, um, you're actually not playing this character, you're actually portraying this other character. And so he's actually never seen the film. He was so, so, so pissed off that he's never seen the film. And I can't say I blame him. I don't know if it doesn't say who he was cast as originally or who he thought he was playing throughout the whole process of the film. But to find out halfway through that you're playing like the main ringleader of a child trafficking ring, I'm sure I would be really upset if I didn't know that up front. I remember my voice acting teacher was like, one of the things you gotta figure out is what roles you are okay with taking. And that's something you figure out as an actor along the way, but it's interesting that I heard it coming from a voice acting teacher as opposed to like an acting acting teacher. Because now that I think about it, I don't think anyone has ever told me that. And this rule still applies. So he was like, for example, me as a voice acting teacher, I will never do, I believe it was gambling, but for sure one of them was smoking. And he's like, I refuse to do any kind of voiceover work that involves those. He's just like, I'm just really against those, like morally, that I just like could not do any kind of voice acting if it was for any of those products. So I mean, like me, could I play the ringleader of a child trafficking ring? I don't know. Like, that's hard. So I can definitely understand Alessandro Navola's frustration because it's like if you're accepting a role and you're only finding out halfway that the role you thought you were playing is completely different, and maybe this is a role that he would have said no to that maybe would have gone against his morals. I don't know if there's anything you could do at that point legally, because you signed contracts and everything. And I don't know. I mean, that also seems like it could be, I don't know. Well, this is getting off topic, but just that was something that I found out that I thought was interesting that just Alessandro Nabola like refuses to watch the film, so he's never actually seen the film, and it's all because he thought he was playing a completely different character, and I don't blame him one bit for that. That would be very upsetting for me as well. If that's hard, but even if I decided one day that I could play that character, like that's something I need to know in advance. Like, I need to know in advance what character I'm playing, and just yeah, but anyway, so I did rate the film three and a half stars, and I rated the book. See, I feel like I rate the book about the same, but even now, like I think I know which one the winner is. But so here's the thing: the what I really liked about the film was what I've already told you what bugged me about the film is that certain things were not explained. And I also thought the film was slow, so not necessarily my I I don't know. I found it to be really slow and not very interesting. Fucking Phoenix did a good job, but yeah, the film itself, I despite how action-filled it is, like I just didn't find it to be very interesting. The book, on the other hand, I didn't like the ambiguous ending as much. Ambiguous endings don't necessarily bother me and they're not necessarily deal breakers, but I guess because of the subject matter, it's like I want to know that she was okay. And I think it's safe to assume that she would be because of Joe. But yeah, I still would have liked more of a confirmation there. Yeah, just the scenes that took place in the brothel. Watching it, I didn't find it that hard, and I think it's because you don't see, like, even though you know who's in the playground section of the brothel, there's nothing graphic about it. And you, like I said, the only nudity you see is from a man coming out of a completely different room, and it's not the playground floor, so it's safe to assume that he was not with a minor. But yeah, when I read that part in the book, I was like, mm-hmm. Don't don't like that. Nope, nope, nope. I understand that this is where the book takes place, but I we didn't I didn't need to read that. I don't want to read that. So that and there was also this part in the book which I'm just like, so there's a part in which when Joe once Joe gets to Albany and he goes to the hotel, he actually ends up renting a room at a really fancy hotel. Like he usually does like rents at like really seedy motels, but he's like, that's where they're gonna be expecting me this time around. So I need to like go for something high-end, because they're never gonna look for me there. So he gets like this room and like this really high-end fancy hotel. And let me see if I can find the quote really quick. Okay, I found it. So, and I quote, he parked it at the hotel and went to rest. As he crossed the lobby, the girl at the desk smiled at him. Women responded to Joe. They could imagine how he would be in the dark. End quote. Male authors, I just I just want to know why. Like, why? Why? Like the way some of y'all write women. It what? I can assure you, even when we have lusted after a man for lack of a better word, I don't think we don't respond to men because we kind of know what they're gonna be like in the dark. That's not how that works. No, like maybe we like fantasize or imagine it to be a certain way, but it's not like we look at you and say, Yeah, I'm so I know how you're gonna be in the dark. I'm responding to the vibes you're giving off. Like, that's not how we work. So just male authors. I just want to know why. So, I mean, that's really that that short little passage just had me rolling my eyes and just like chuckling to myself. And the scene in the brothel, as I said, just was uncomfortable to read. So, those are my complaint with the book. So I think I know what the winner is, and this is what I was leaning towards, towards the front. Like, it was one of those things, like I rate I looked at my ratings again, and I was like, do I really think this is the winner? So I needed to talk it out a little bit more just to confirm, but I know. The winner is the book. Despite my issues that I have with the book, the book is better. I thought so. It had me more engaged, uncomfortable in the brothel scene, more way more uncomfortable in the brothel scene than the film ever did. But otherwise, like, and minus male author issues aside, yeah, I enjoyed reading the book more than I enjoyed watching the film. So thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Books versus Movies. If you like this podcast, please leave me a rating and review and share it with all your friends. Let them know and help me grow this little community that we got going on. See you next time. Bye.