-Do you ever get a chance to go back to Sweden?
-I go back all the time. Yeah. -You do?
-Like, well, as often as I can, yes.
A couple of times a year, I try to go back, yeah.
-I heard of this thing they have in Sweden.
Tell me if I'm making this up.
Where it's like a celebration of summer or something like that
and everyone goes outdoors? -Yeah, Midsummer.
-Midsummer. -Yeah.
-And they dance? And they dance around a pole?
-Well, it's an old pagan holiday.
It's basically, you stick a 30-foot pole, wooden pole
covered in leaves and flowers into the ground.
-Uh-huh. -A very phallic symbol.
And the symbolism is obviously
to fertilize the soil, fertilize Mother Earth.
So we celebrate this once a year.
[ Laughter ]
And what you do is -- It makes perfect sense.
-Oh, so far. Yeah, I'm thinking of doing it.
What you do is basically -- You get together.
And you eat pickled herring.
You decorate the phallic symbol.
You stick it into the ground. You drink Aquavit.
And then you dance around the pole
and you sing a song about, uh, tiny frogs.
[ Laughter ]
-What is the name of this holiday?
What is the name of this celebration?
-Sma grodorna. -Yeah, uh-huh.
Now, if you play that in reverse, it's the exact --
Smol-googa? -No, sma grodorna.
"Sma" -- little. "Grodorna" -- frogs.
-Oh, really is little frogs? -Yeah.
So, you basically hold hands and you dance around a pole,
and then you do these, uh...
So, the song is basically -- -You want to just show me?
-Yeah. [ Cheers and applause ]
But the thing is -- -This is the pole.
-Well, let's say -- -This is the pole right there.
-It's supposed to be like --
There's supposed to be like 40 people.
Like, and you hold hands.
So, let's say your desk -- We need some space.
-Oh, we need space? Okay.
-So, then you go -- If you just follow my lead.
-Okay. -You start with...
[ Speaking Swedish ]
-Obviously.
-And it means "little frogs are funny to look at."
-Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. -So, it's like...
[ Singing in Swedish ]
[ Jimmy singing gibberish ]
-[ Singing in Swedish ]
And then you turn and face each other, and then you go...
[ Singing in Swedish ]
-[ Laughs ]
-[ Singing in Swedish ] -[ Jimmy singing gibberish ]
-That means "they don't have any ears.
They don't have a tail."
-Wow. -And then after that, you go...
[ Singing in Swedish ]
-You're making this up. You're making this up.
-[ Singing in Swedish ]
♪♪
-Wow! Oh, my gosh. Fantastic. That is how you...
That is how you do it. That is --
-"Smalgolgia." Thank you very much.
-This is not -- This is 100% a true story.
If you google it, you'll -- it's --
-Yeah, or if you can, smagoola.
-Sma-google it. Yeah.
-We're here to talk about your film "Hold the Dark."
This is pretty intense.
-This is going to be a great segue from --
-I know. Going from that to how crazy this film is.
But -- -I got a bit winded there.
-I did, yeah. Right? A little bit. But I was into it.
I want to do this, man. -I was really into it.
-I loved it, man. It was fun. -Yeah.
-Dude. We're like -- -You should all try it.
[ Laughter ]
[ Tuba plays foghorn ]
Oh. -Hey.
-Did I leave you hanging there?
-Yeah, you were much cooler than me.
It's fine. It's like...
I went right back to high school.
-I was connecting with the audience.
Right back to high school. Mr. "Tonight Show," big-time.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Still won't be as cool as you.
Let's talk about "Hold the Dark."
-All right. -Sorry. So, yeah.
Describe this film. Describe the movie.
-"Hold the Dark" is basically a meditation
on the futility of existence.
-Ooh.
-So it's fun for the whole family.
-Explain a little more, though.
-So, it takes place in Keelut, a small village in Alaska.
It starts out with a woman
who believes her son has been taken by wolves.
She contacts a wolf expert down in the lower 48.
And she asks him to,
"Please come up and find my son or the remnants of my son.
I want something to bury."
And this man played by Jeffrey Wright shows up.
And when he shows up in Keelut, this little town --
It's not even a town. It's like a hamlet.
A couple of houses in the middle of nowhere.
He realizes that there's more to the story
than she told him in the first place.
There's some darkness there
and some stuff that she's not told him.
Meanwhile, my character, Vernon Slone,
has been fighting a war in the desert.
Could be Iraq, could be Afghanistan.
He gets wounded and finds out about his son,
the disappearance of his son, so he returns home
and is very motivated
to find out what happened and find his son.
-So it's almost like a revenge movie kind of.
-Yes, it's a -- Yeah, but there's --
What's good -- What I loved about the script,
it's based on a fantastic novel by William Giraldi
that I highly recommend.
It's an extraordinary book.
What's interesting about it, it starts out --
You think it's going to be like a classic
"man versus nature" story or "man versus beast,"
but then it turns out it's more of
a man versus himself in a way,
and it gets very dark and very mythological.
-Wow. I love this guy. I want to show a clip.
Here's Alexander Skarsgard in "Hold the Dark."
Take a look at this.
-You killed a person before.
-Who told you that?
-Mama.
My teacher said it's bad to kill people.
-Yeah, you'll hear that a lot.
-So it's good?
-If you have to.
-Why?
-To protect what you love and what you need.
-Come on. That is -- This guy knows how to do it.
Alexander Skarsgard, everybody.
Check out "Hold the Dark" on Netflix.