How To Make A Sam Mendes Film

The basic steps to making a Sam Mendes film, as outlined by listener Matthew Keeler after watching Revolutionary Road:

1. Take several unhappy people

2. Give them two clear, definable choices between being happy or remaining unhappy

3. Make them pick the wrong option

4. Use a gentle piano score to soundtrack depression

5. Kill one, or several, unhappy people

Mark Kermode pointed out that this worked for everything up until Away We Go.