Episode 1037 - Alex Ross Perry
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:It's me, Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:Everything okay out there?
Marc:How's the weather?
Marc:It just started, it just had this massive cloud burst where I am.
Marc:Where the sky just opens up with lightning and thunder and dumps massive amounts.
Marc:I'm in New York.
Marc:I'm inside.
Marc:Thank you for your concern.
Marc:I don't know where you're at, but that's where I am.
Marc:Everything all right?
Marc:I'm a little frenetic.
Marc:I'm a little crazy.
Marc:But I did the Tonight Show last night.
Marc:I'm recording this after I did it, so I'm a little loopy, a little jumpy.
Marc:I think it went pretty well.
Marc:It's weird, you know.
Marc:There's something about Fallon.
Marc:I always like seeing him.
Marc:He's a good listener.
Marc:He's a good audience.
Marc:He's always funny in the moment.
Marc:And it was fun.
Marc:Had a good time on The Tonight Show last night.
Marc:Is that okay?
Marc:I hope so.
Marc:Today on this show, Alex Ross Perry is here, the film director.
Marc:His most recent film, Her Smell with Elizabeth Moss, is available on Apple, Amazon, and other on-demand digital platforms.
Marc:He's made many other films.
Marc:He's a real film nerd.
Marc:We had a top-notch film conversation.
Marc:He's a very bright guy, intense guy.
Marc:He's got a frequency to him.
Marc:You know, you feel it right away.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:It's focused.
Marc:It's intense.
Marc:It's smart.
Marc:And yeah, I was in Chicago.
Marc:A lot of things have happened.
Marc:I'm heading home today after a lot of press.
Marc:for the movie Sword of Trust, which I want to tell you this Friday and Saturday night.
Marc:I'll be at the New Art Theater in Los Angeles with Lynn Shelton doing a Q&A after the 7 p.m.
Marc:screenings of Sword of Trust.
Marc:We're now up to 65 theaters, folks.
Marc:65 theaters are going to be showing the movie this summer.
Marc:It opens this weekend at Opera Plaza Cinemas in San Francisco, Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley, E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C., Tiff Bell Lightbox in Toronto, Kendall Square Cinema in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York.
Marc:And it just added the Cinema Arts Center in Huntington, New York and the Nighthawk Prospect Park in Brooklyn.
Marc:Go to Sword of Trust dot com to find out when the movie is coming out near you.
Marc:It's worth it.
Marc:This movie's been getting crazy press.
Marc:I don't mean to go on about it, but I got to be honest with you folks.
Marc:I didn't.
Marc:I had no idea.
Marc:I had no idea.
Marc:When you make a little movie like this, like I, I wasn't even sure it was going to get done, but you know, Lynn is like the real deal.
Marc:So of course it got done, but you put a little movie out this into the world and I don't, you have no, you don't know what's going to happen with it.
Marc:It's getting so many reviews, so much press.
Marc:It's crazy.
Marc:I'm very excited about it, but it's not that I have low expectations.
Marc:I had no expectations.
Yeah.
Marc:So it's all pretty exciting.
Marc:And the screening at the Music Box in Chicago, the first show was sold out.
Marc:It was like 700 people.
Marc:And just to dip into that theater to watch a movie where it's a comedy, obviously, but 700 people laughing at the same time to the point where they're missing lines.
Marc:It's so exciting and so rewarding.
Marc:I got to be honest with you.
Marc:I'm just thrilled with it.
Marc:And I also want to tell you, please, if you can, go see it at a theater.
Marc:Now, I don't know where some of these theaters are, and I don't know how populated the theaters are, but I think you'll probably have a better experience even if you're in a movie theater with five people.
Marc:But I guess if you're really thinking about that way, when it comes out streaming, you could probably invite five people over, maybe your family and a couple other people.
Marc:But the experience of watching a movie, how they're supposed to be watched communally with a bunch of strangers sharing in that event, in that moment, in that laughter is really the way to do it.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Can I just say that to you?
Marc:So what else did I do in Chicago?
Marc:I ate pizza.
Marc:I did a bunch of press, hung out with my buddy Joe Swanberg.
Marc:Yeah, you can watch me on, you know, in the last season of Easy, which he directed.
Marc:And I believe Glow is coming on soon, right?
Marc:August 9th, I think.
Marc:The third season of Glow drops.
Marc:So that's happening.
Marc:You get to see a more svelte Sam Sylvia.
Marc:I'm not going to tell you too much about it, but I'm excited that that's going up.
Marc:Yeah, you wait a long time for these things, man, right?
Marc:The other thing I did, which I meant to talk to you about the other day, was that when I was here last week in the city...
Marc:My friend Lynn Shelton, who I've been doing all these dates with, her friend Heidi Schreck is the creator of the show, What the Constitution Means to Me.
Marc:It's on Broadway.
Marc:And I got to be honest with you people.
Marc:And I think some of you sense this, but I've had some sort of, you know, you know,
Marc:Slow but steady mind shift around things.
Marc:You know, there is a lot of education that is going into my brain that I didn't have framed properly or I didn't know or I didn't think about or I wasn't sort of really sensitive to or aware about.
Marc:And it's it's happening.
Marc:You know, things are going into my mind where where things that I once thought were normal were undeniably fucking, you know, incorrect.
Marc:And it's exciting.
Marc:It's an exciting process.
Marc:And seeing this play, this, I don't know if you know about it, it's basically, it's sort of a one-woman show, but it's her character, which is her, Heidi, she was a debater, a high school debater, and she used to tour with doing debates.
Marc:She would save money from winning debate contests to go to college, and she would debate
Marc:the Constitution, things about the Constitution.
Marc:So this whole angle of the show was her going back to some of her arguments and some of the subject matter of her high school debates and reframing them into current culture around equality, equal pay, equal rights, and just the reality of how the Constitution came to life, what the Constitution means,
Marc:You know, who does it represent?
Marc:When was it written?
Marc:All these stuff sort of woven into the narrative of a woman talking about the evolution of the Constitution, you know, seeking, you know, theoretically to protect all people, but falling a little short when it comes to women and people of color and marginalized people.
Marc:And
Marc:I know it was a weird kind of reaction that I had when I was told about the show because it sounds like, you know, what the Constitution means to me, it's like, oh, man, it sounds like a class.
Marc:Yeah, I don't want to go learn.
Marc:Yeah, and I was really resistant to it.
Marc:But eventually I buckled, you know, and I was like, all right, you know, I mean, Lynn knows what she's talking about.
Marc:She knows this woman.
Marc:She'd seen the show.
Marc:She said it was surprising.
Marc:I'm going to be moved.
Marc:It's going to be interesting.
Marc:You know, you think, you know, you think, you know, things I and I've been talking about this a bit on stage.
Marc:I you know, I don't know what I really know or how I know it.
Marc:You know, I make assumptions.
Marc:You know, I understand what the Constitution is and why it's important and some of the fundamentals of it and, you know, why it's necessary.
Marc:But what do I really know about it?
Marc:I don't know about history.
Marc:I just kind of plug along, you know, having a fundamental understanding that it's an important document.
Marc:But just like everything, I just glean things.
Marc:I do not.
Marc:I did not get a good education, not because it wasn't offered to me, but to get quite honestly, I don't think I was paying attention.
Marc:And I really sort of envy the people that kind of dug into high school, got hold of civics, got hold of how government works, got hold of American history, put it into context, did their studying, did their homework, and at least had a foundation for some of that basic understanding.
Marc:I didn't get it.
Marc:Because I wasn't paying attention because I didn't give a shit because I was spaced out because I just couldn't focus because I was feeling so awkward and uncomfortable.
Marc:All I really cared about was feeling not awkward and uncomfortable hanging out with my friends.
Marc:Like when I think back on high school, I know I had a locker.
Marc:I knew it was packed with books, but I don't remember ever going to it.
Marc:I don't remember ever using it.
Marc:I don't remember doing homework.
Marc:I don't remember learning much of anything.
Marc:And it's a liability.
Marc:I feel guilty and shitty that I don't know these basic things.
Marc:So when I saw a show like What the Constitution Means to Me, it was a powerful thing.
Marc:Kind of personal story that, you know, framed it from a woman's point of view and talked about other situations she had been in situations other women have been in where they should have been protected and ultimately weren't.
Marc:But it was also really an education in what the Constitution means.
Marc:And look, I know it's an important thing and I know it's a, you know, it's, it's, it's what holds us together and what it's, what the country is based on.
Marc:I don't know the nuances.
Marc:And they actually, they hand out a little pocket constitution while you're there.
Marc:And it really, because of the emotional resonance of, of her story and what she has, I don't know how she does this show every night.
Marc:Cause she's got to go kind of deep in herself every night to access these emotions, which is really another thing I learned is that, you know, I can go up and do my standup and I can kind of dig in, but,
Marc:How deep does that really go?
Marc:How much do I have to offer myself?
Marc:And when you really start to think about or when I start to think about acting and really showing up to perform with a full range of emotions, the job is getting in that, getting down there, digging deep for it and being able to have control over that.
Marc:getting there every night.
Marc:So go see it if you can.
Marc:It should be required.
Marc:I know a little more about the Constitution and I've got a pocket Constitution with me and maybe I'll dig in.
Marc:Maybe I'll dig in and maybe we'll start having specific discussions about the Constitution.
Marc:no we won't we're not going to do that but i i have the i it's it's available to me now all right that's all i'm saying all right did i tell you i saw my dad i did he came back you know he came back in him and his sister and my dad's wife came back in to watch the entire movie i think i told you that they came in late because they had problems with trains but they came back in
Marc:And I promised I would take them out.
Marc:And it's another weird thing about whatever's happening to my heart lately is that, you know, look, I don't have any real outstanding beefs with my old man.
Marc:And, you know, and I accept him for who he is, but I don't really see him that much.
Marc:And somehow or another, that distance doesn't bother me maybe as much as it should.
Marc:I don't feel like I need to.
Marc:But, you know, he came to the show and, you know, he's 80, man.
Marc:He's 80.
Marc:He's 80.
Marc:And he, you know, he enjoyed the movie.
Marc:And then I decided I'd take him out to Russ and Daughter's Cafe for some straight up Jew food.
Marc:And I knew he would enjoy it.
Marc:And, you know, he's having a little trouble walking and, you know, he's not as sharp as he used to be.
Marc:And it's just it's really a kind of moving and sad thing.
Marc:to realize if you don't see your parents enough, especially if they're alive and you're old, I'm a middle-aged man and my father's now an older man, old man, and you don't see them enough, some part of your brain really holds them in a place where they really aren't anymore.
Marc:They kind of stay what you knew them as, your dad when you're younger and the vitality of who they were and the part they played in your life, whether it was bad or good, a little of both with me.
Marc:No matter what distance I feel like I have from the guy, when I took him out to eat, I sat next to him, I put my arm around him, and I made sure he got what he wanted, he understood what was going on, I wanted him to have a
Marc:Nice food.
Marc:I asked him how it was.
Marc:You know, I know what he likes.
Marc:So I made sure that he tasted everything.
Marc:And, you know, and I helped him get up out of the booth and help them walk outside.
Marc:But it's just like, man, it really hit me, man.
Marc:You know, it just really hit me.
Marc:You know, not so much that my dad's old, but that, you know, I love him.
Marc:and that he you know he you know he he made me you know for better for worse and uh and you know I really got I really got to see him more and I really got to talk to him more because I don't know how much time he's got left I don't know how much time I got left and I don't know that it's always going to be a great time but it doesn't matter you know it doesn't matter it's only going to happen once and he's my only dad and I was happy I saw him and I don't know why I wanted to tell you guys that but uh
Marc:But really, make sure you reach out to your folks if they're still around because they're your folks no matter what you think.
Marc:And I'm amazed that I'm saying this because I've gone through periods in my life where that wasn't necessarily how I felt.
Marc:I felt like, fuck it, once or twice a year is enough.
Marc:I can only handle about an hour.
Marc:That may be true.
Marc:I may only be able to handle about an hour or two, but I should make them happen as frequently as I can.
Marc:That's all I'm saying, and maybe you should think about that too.
Marc:All right?
Marc:All right?
Marc:Show up for your folks.
Marc:That's the new Mark talking there.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:I can't believe it.
Marc:I don't know what's happening to me, man.
Marc:I think I'm getting old.
Marc:So my guest here now is a I was I was excited to talk to him.
Marc:I was a little nervous because he's intense and he's very focused and he's very smart and he's a great director.
Marc:Alex Ross Perry has a movie out.
Marc:His most recent movie has several movies out is a film called Her Smell, which I actually was asked to audition for.
Marc:It's with Elizabeth Moss.
Marc:It's a rock and roll movie.
Marc:It's available on Apple, Amazon, and other on-demand digital platforms.
Marc:If you've seen the movie, I was supposed to read for the Eric Stoltz part, though I think he did a very good job.
Marc:So this is me and Alex Ross Perry talking back in the garage.
Marc:So now, how is that a song?
Marc:It's perfect.
Guest:I mean, I know this tea very well.
Marc:You do?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:This particular one?
Marc:Harney and Sons, yeah.
Marc:Harney and Sons, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, they're a good one.
Marc:They're like...
Guest:As we both sip.
Marc:Yeah, but I don't meet many tea guys, and I'm relatively new to it.
Marc:Within the last year or two, I quit drinking coffee, but now because of my compulsive disposition, I'm way into the tea thing.
Marc:I travel with bags of loose tea.
Guest:Yeah, I probably have traveled with it if I'm away for long enough.
Guest:It also makes good iced tea.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I mean, but I travel with several different kinds in bags.
Marc:I travel with my strainer, and now I've got a travel kettle.
Marc:There's a kettle you can get.
Marc:I'll show it to you.
Guest:I'd like to get there.
Guest:I don't have anything like that, but I'll bring it sometimes.
Guest:Yeah, they gave us a lot of good tea on the movie.
Marc:They sponsored which movie?
Guest:On her smell.
Guest:Harney's was a... Yeah, I think they're thanked in the credits as, you know, something like product placement.
Guest:Product placement on independent film is kind of the secret weapon that people can utilize for their own gain.
Guest:You can just write to them and to any company.
Guest:Send them a packet with stills of the actors, a little description of the movie.
Guest:You can get thousands of dollars worth of things that either is for the crew to eat or sometimes you put them in a scene.
Guest:Even Apple does this.
Guest:There's this whole production design network in New York of people that you can get.
Marc:But what about money?
Marc:Do they give you money?
Marc:No, never.
Marc:Oh, but you get cool shit.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:I didn't notice the Harneys in the movie.
Guest:I don't think it made it in.
Guest:I think that was specifically said that that was just for me.
Guest:But you know, you put it.
Guest:There is a scene in the movie where she makes a cup of tea.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who's to say that it's not Harney and Sons?
Marc:Well, Harney's would be because they sent you some, and they're watching it, and they're like, I don't see any.
Guest:It's true, and yet it's the only product we were sent that I'm talking at length about on the record.
Marc:Well, no, I know, and we're doing it.
Marc:I'm dragging it out of you.
Guest:No, I still have a few of them, a few of the tins that they sent me.
Guest:It's more just I like tea as a ritual.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I like it because it's delicious, and it helps me stay focused, but I really like the ritual of brewing it and kind of timing it.
Marc:Yeah, I dig that.
Marc:I mean, the same with coffee.
Marc:Like when I drank coffee, you know, I got a way of doing it.
Marc:I grind it fresh, you know, and I've got a few different delivery systems.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:French press, cone, whatever.
Guest:All stuff I don't relate to as a non-coffee drinker, but.
Marc:When did you make that decision?
Guest:When did you draw the line?
Guest:I've never drank coffee.
Guest:I mean, I've tasted it, but.
Marc:You seem like a guy that is, I'm projecting, but you might have decided that you're going to stay away from a lot of things.
Guest:I have stayed away from a lot of things, yes.
Guest:To me, coffee just is like, that's the smell of waking up to go to school.
Guest:My dad has a cup of, there's coffee in the house.
Guest:It's 6.30, I have to get up and go to school.
Guest:Conditioned.
Guest:A Pavlovian miserable smell for me.
Marc:Where'd you grow up?
Guest:In Bryn Mawr, outside of Philadelphia.
Marc:Oh, so that's near Philly?
Guest:Yeah, 30 minutes away.
Marc:I like Philly.
Guest:Yeah, it's really nice.
Guest:I came to appreciate it a lot as soon as I moved away.
Marc:Yeah, I think it's one of those cities where they, you know, they did some work and it turned around somehow.
Guest:Weirdly so, yeah.
Marc:But, like, there's, I always, I go, I go to Denick's for the... You like the pork with the broccoli on it?
Marc:Yeah, pork with Rob at Denick's at the, what is it, Reading Station?
Guest:Reading Market.
Marc:Like, I'll go out to John's too, but that's the original, but I don't, like, I prefer Denick's.
Guest:Yeah, I never ate that before I became vegan when I was 18.
Guest:I never had the Denick's pork, but I tried all the cheesesteaks around town, and...
Marc:Oh, before you became vegan?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Was that what compelled you?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:It was just health, family, cholesterol, scares that kind of- I have that too.
Guest:My dad- Will you have genetic cholesterol?
Guest:Kind of.
Guest:My dad's dad died suddenly and weirdly young.
Guest:He was 68, 69.
Guest:And from some heart cholesterol thing.
Guest:And then at that time, my dad got a cholesterol test and was told
Guest:at the age of late 40s, 50 something.
Guest:You really need to change the way you eat and live.
Guest:You don't eat terribly.
Guest:He's not like a big fat guy who eats bacon, eggs, cheese every morning.
Guest:Goes for a bike ride every day.
Guest:But he was told you just have really terrible cholesterol.
Guest:And at the age of 50, had to change his diet.
Guest:And I just thought, I really- Is he vegan?
Guest:No, but he- Takes the pills?
Guest:I don't know if he takes any.
Guest:Do you?
Guest:No.
Guest:But I just kind of thought, I don't want to be 50 and be told, even though you think you're healthy, you're not.
Marc:Well, you know, it's gonna happen at some point, Alex.
Guest:I hope not.
Guest:Something's gonna happen.
Guest:Something will, yeah.
Guest:I don't wanna burst your bubble.
Guest:I know, but I've done everything I can by not having anything with cholesterol.
Marc:Have you had it tested?
Guest:My cholesterol?
Guest:Yeah, I got a blood test on it a couple years ago.
Marc:All right.
Guest:Yeah, they said it was like as low as a four-year-old's cholesterol.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Because I haven't, you know, cholesterol's only an animal product, so I haven't eaten any of it in 16 years.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I tried to do a...
Marc:with just diet, mine's not high, but it's borderline, but eventually I was just sort of like, fuck it, I'll take a pill every once in a while, exercise, and I'll take the statin, I'll take the statin.
Marc:I haven't felt any, well you don't have to.
Guest:I'll get to the pills at some point.
Marc:You don't have to.
Marc:You don't take any vitamins?
Marc:No.
Marc:Just a tea?
Guest:Yeah, as much tea as possible.
Marc:So growing up there, what'd your old man do?
Guest:He worked in radio, which is a big- So you grew up in show business?
Guest:Well, if you can call it that.
Marc:Was he on the production side?
Guest:Before I was born, he was a DJ.
Guest:Really?
Guest:In Philadelphia radio.
Marc:Just a music DJ?
Guest:Yeah, which meant when we grew up, the thousands and thousands of records in the house, which was always nice.
Guest:You did have them?
Guest:Yeah, he just two months ago sold them all.
Marc:Like as an estate almost?
Guest:I mean, he's just finally moving and needed to get rid of them.
Guest:But we had in our basement just like one wall that was floor to ceiling records.
Guest:That's so good.
Guest:But yeah, he worked.
Guest:And by the time I was aware of his job, he worked in the advertising side of it for this Philadelphia conglomerate that owns four or five stations.
Marc:Not Clear Channel before Clear Channel.
Guest:Yeah, just called Greater Media Philadelphia.
Marc:And they're probably Clear Channel now.
Guest:Something like that.
Guest:They got bought out a couple years ago, which is why he doesn't work there or at all.
Marc:And what about your mom?
Guest:She was at home.
Guest:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Are they still married?
Guest:They're not.
Marc:But they're both around.
Guest:Yeah, they're both in the Philadelphia area.
Marc:And you got siblings?
Guest:Yeah, I have a much younger sister.
Marc:From your dad?
Guest:Well, from both of them.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, they only split up like five years ago.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah, like long after I'd stopped.
Marc:You didn't have to choose who to live with or anything?
Guest:No, I mean, I hadn't really seen them together, been home in years when they told me this was happening.
Marc:Yeah, that happened to me too.
Marc:Like in my, I guess I was in my 30s maybe.
Guest:Yeah, I was probably like 29 or 30 when I got a call right after Thanksgiving that they had.
Marc:It's funny, at that age you're like, oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah, I wasn't really speaking to my mom or sister much at that point.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I just wasn't going home.
Marc:Oh, you mean not because of the problem?
Guest:No, I mean, there's problems.
Guest:Everyone has problems.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's kind of weird for families to assume that they'll be a family who never has some weird problem.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But yeah, I was just kind of like, okay, well, tell me what I can do.
Guest:And now I'm the executor of both of their wills.
Marc:Yeah, of course.
Marc:How old is your sister?
Guest:Um, like I would say maybe 26 or 27.
Marc:But you're the one in charge.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I'm the one who, you know, has a job.
Marc:And you're talking to your mom again.
Guest:Yeah, a little bit.
Guest:That started happening again kind of after they split up.
Marc:That's weird.
Marc:I don't often hear the dudes
Marc:issue with moms on that level.
Marc:For me, it's always dad.
Marc:So there's part of me that's sort of like, wow, you got that mad at your mom.
Marc:That must have been pretty intense.
Guest:Oh yeah, very intense.
Guest:I mean, it's, you know, overbearing Jewish mother is hard for someone like me that doesn't like overbearing people at all.
Guest:It was just a lot.
Marc:Well, you seem like a fairly sort of earnest and open man.
Marc:And I'd imagine if the overbearingness could be kind of obliterating.
Guest:Yeah, it's too much.
Marc:You got pushed back.
Guest:Like I can't like a call every week.
Guest:Like, how's it going?
Guest:I need to call you and complain about something.
Guest:I just was eventually like, I can't I can't pick up the phone and listen to a 25 minute rant once a week about like someone at the store that pissed you off today.
Guest:Like, I just don't need this in my life.
Marc:It's exhausting.
Guest:Yeah, it's exhausting.
Marc:But it's not in terms of transgressions.
Marc:It's minor.
Guest:It's very minor, that's why everything's fine now.
Guest:But yeah, I really loved going to the radio station with my dad and the kind of fun part of it was he had this weirdly just unrestricted access to Philadelphia area concerts.
Marc:So you went?
Guest:To everything, I mean, for free.
Marc:From when you were a little kid?
Guest:Yeah, like teenage years.
Marc:Was music always your thing?
Guest:Kind of.
Guest:When I was a teenager, it certainly was very important, especially because I could go to two or three concerts every week.
Marc:And you're in your late 30s?
Marc:I'm 34.
Marc:So that was like, who are the people?
Guest:Like the first concert I ever went to was Stone Temple Pilots.
Guest:That's all right.
Guest:And then the next one was Bush and Veruca Salt.
Guest:Now Veruca Salt are very important for this new movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like a lot of, at that time, just modern alternative rock.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then through that, like, you know, within the next five years, got very into 80s and 90s and then 70s punk just by working backwards from the influences of bands I was listening to.
Marc:Well, you know, you use that pop cover that's sort of like a kind of essential...
Marc:Pop cover, the only one song.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Another girl, another planet.
Marc:It's very specific.
Guest:And to me, I know that from The Replacements.
Marc:Right, The Replacements covered it, yeah.
Guest:And then I learned about The Only Ones, and now I like them.
Guest:And The Replacements are one of my all-time favorites.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Through them, it just kind of started with what was on the radio, which I listen to a lot.
Marc:But it's still kind of an esoteric cover.
Guest:Some people think it's a Blink-182 song.
Guest:Oh, did they cover it as well?
Guest:Yeah, which I didn't know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know this is a very famous replacement sloppy cover.
Guest:And I guess in like 2004 or five.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Long after I would have been paying attention to anything like that.
Guest:Blink-182 did a similarly well-known cover.
Marc:Well, I came to I like I came to power pop later.
Marc:There's a whole world of that ilk of music that, you know, when I was in the early 90s, it wasn't popular at all, really.
Guest:There was never a popular part of it.
Guest:There was not like the band that put it on the map.
Marc:It was always something that- And it was their best song, I think, really.
Marc:I mean, I've listened.
Marc:The only ones have only had a couple albums, I believe.
Guest:Yeah, not many.
Guest:I really love a song of theirs called People of Today.
Guest:Oh yeah, that's a good song.
Guest:That's a really good song.
Marc:Yeah, so let's go back though.
Marc:So you're a music kid and you're Jewish, and how Jewish?
Guest:100%.
Guest:No, I mean, but did you do?
Marc:I had a bar mitzvah.
Marc:Oh, so you're middle class.
Guest:Middle class, like reform.
Guest:Reform, not conservative?
Marc:No, no, not at all.
Marc:Guitar player in the synagogue?
Guest:No, piano maybe.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Stained glass?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Jewish enough that we would celebrate high holidays, not much else.
Guest:I had a bar mitzvah, which kind of became an infamous event.
Marc:Infamous to who?
Guest:To my family and to my synagogue.
Guest:My wife is from Oregon.
Guest:She never met a Jew until she moved to the East Coast.
Marc:Was she surprised?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I mean, I wasn't there for it, but I think she was pretty shocked.
Guest:But like, you know, in contrast to that, I spent two years- You're not like they explained Jews to be.
Guest:No, yeah, she didn't have any clue.
Guest:I wasn't the first one she met.
Guest:But you know, I spent two years at a bar bat mitzvah every single weekend, essentially.
Guest:Sure, of course.
Guest:But mine, you know how like- Were they competitive?
Guest:Sometimes.
Guest:I mean, you had to clear the day.
Guest:It really is.
Marc:No, but I mean, like, you know, who had the better party?
Guest:Oh, in terms of spending the most money?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, probably.
Guest:I mean, you know, my town wasn't, I mean, I come from the main line, so there are very rich people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then there's kind of one tier down, which is more like my part of town.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you know how at a bar mitzvah, after the sort of ceremonial Torah reading, the child can give a speech.
Marc:The haft Torah and then the speech.
Guest:Like a little speech on the topic of your choosing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Until my bar mitzvah,
Guest:this was allowed to be something that was unproofed and unsupervised.
Guest:Like you could just write it yourself and bring it in.
Guest:And I was so into like, at that time, just like, you know, just watching comedy on TV and like just being a bratty asshole.
Guest:And I like wrote this speech about how disappointing it is in life to be served with something like a bar mitzvah that is robbed of its ceremonial meeting and just becomes like six months of extra homework.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I drew this long comparison to like getting like chocolate sprinkles and having a rainbow one in the sprinkles and how the rainbow one is the bar mitzvah.
Guest:And like my parents just described looking out at my family and just like jaws on the floor.
Guest:And then the rabbi- Lenny Bruce is on the pulpit.
Guest:I was so proud of myself.
Guest:I'd also broken my hand two days before.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you had a cast?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the rabbi put his hand on my shoulder and essentially said, we failed to teach you the meaning of this.
Guest:He did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Out loud?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In front of everybody.
Guest:And yeah.
Guest:And then after that, everyone at my synagogue had to have their speeches read in advance by the rabbi.
Marc:The vetting process.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was kind of the end of my relationship with the temple.
Marc:But also a nice metaphor.
Marc:Like, you know, you could see early on that you had a sort of visual thinking and, you know, poetic, you know, the sprinkles analogy.
Marc:I think that's what it's going to be known as.
Guest:I think so.
Marc:The famous sprinkles analogy.
Guest:So then like, you know, the sign in board at the party.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Dozens of people just wrote like sprinkles on it.
Guest:But yeah, that was kind of the end of me and my relationship with the temple.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it was the beginning of your provocateur career.
Guest:Realizing I could entertain people by being obnoxious.
Yeah.
Marc:That's an important lesson to learn.
Marc:But you didn't go into comedy, I did.
Guest:Yeah, no, it kind of wasn't, like, public speaking wasn't that fun.
Marc:Yeah, no, it's notoriously not fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But did you ever do stand-up?
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Like, I was, the other day, actually, one of the actresses from Her Smell, Ashley Benson, was on The Tonight Show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went, I just love talk shows, so, like, I was just watching.
Marc:Which one's she?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She's Roxy in The Acre Girls.
Guest:She's the blonde one.
Guest:She's in Spring Breakers.
Guest:And I went because I've always loved TV show tapings.
Guest:And I was a kid, I would just watch Letterman and Cohen and Craig Kilborn every night.
Guest:And I went and I was like, all I ever wanted when I was growing up was to work with someone who would be on the show promoting something.
Guest:I never wanted to be on a show.
Guest:I never wanted to sit on TV and have makeup on.
Marc:Not even in the 70s?
Guest:I wasn't around that.
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:But like, it seems like like there was a time where people of your ilk, you know, because you're you're a thoughtful Semitic artist who who obviously can talk.
Marc:But like, you know, you're the kind of like a good Cavett guest.
Guest:Yeah, you mean like Cassavetes and Ben Cazzara and Peter Falk promoting husbands.
Marc:Yeah, that would have been.
Marc:Back when that type of person was actually on talk shows a lot.
Guest:I guess maybe, yeah.
Guest:Well, I didn't know this at the time.
Guest:I guess when I saw that stuff later, I thought that looks fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But all I ever wanted was to just like go to a taping where someone's promoting something I worked on.
Marc:Were they promoting the movie?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:She was there to show a clip of her smell.
Marc:You know I was up for a part in that.
Guest:You mentioned this.
Guest:And you didn't know it.
Guest:I mean, you know, you get these massive lists.
Marc:I know casting.
Guest:And then it's like, are you interested in people on this list?
Guest:And I say yes.
Guest:And then it goes, OK, well, actually, three of these people are unavailable.
Guest:And I think that's where that's where it happened.
Guest:That's where we terminate it.
Marc:Because like when I get it, this is this is sort of the drop off between, you know, you, the director of the movie and the writer.
Marc:And, you know, what I got, like, you know, basically what I got was like, this movie is yours to have.
Guest:That's what they said to you.
Guest:It really needed me to have meetings with actors and explain stuff to them.
Marc:Yeah, well, let's go back before we get to this movie.
Marc:So you don't do comedy, and when did the interest in film, because I think you're a very unique filmmaker with a real control of the craft in the sense that I've watched three of your films, and they're all unique, but you know how to control the look you're looking for.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So my high school had a TV station in the basement.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was the cable access for our township.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And when I was in middle school, all I wanted to do was get there.
Guest:Like there are these guys that had a show called Telegrande.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they were on when I was like in eighth and ninth grade.
Guest:Grownups?
Guest:No, they were juniors and seniors.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So yes, grownups to me at the time.
Guest:And all I wanted to do was get to that TV studio in the basement and just hang out with these guys who wore jackets with punk patches on them and just learn from them.
Guest:And then as soon as I got to high school, I was in the TV studio every day after school until I graduated.
Guest:And my friends and I eventually had our own show all of our junior and senior year.
Marc:So you were learning how to cut and produce?
Guest:Yeah, like shooting on VHS, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, editing until six or seven at night, and then the show goes out every Thursday.
Guest:And we were in it, and we would make little videos and little kind of pieces.
Guest:So it's hands on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:all day, and that was all I really cared about.
Marc:There was no grown-up oversight?
Guest:There was one woman named Nikki Comstock who ran the studio because she wasn't a teacher, so she didn't work like eight to three.
Guest:She worked nine to five or 10 to six, so we could stay really late with her.
Guest:And she was really instrumental.
Guest:She just let us do our thing, and that was hugely important.
Guest:And then I watched these other people graduate and go to film school.
Guest:And I thought, oh, I didn't know you could do that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You can keep doing this.
Guest:You can just go to another place with a room in the basement and shoot stuff with your friends.
Guest:And yeah, I mean, I did it for years.
Guest:I just was down there shooting every day and making these silly little.
Marc:Were you going out in the world and doing it and bringing it back in?
Guest:Yeah, we would go around and like, you know, go to our houses, go to the mall, go around town.
Marc:Do any of the stop action stuff?
Marc:People driving around on their butt?
Guest:Uh, no.
Guest:Driving around on their butt.
Marc:Well, you know, where you kind of like, you know, people act like they're in a car and you do the frame by frame thing.
Guest:Oh, well, I got into, I did like little stop motion-y things at home with the video camera my dad bought me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which actually is the camera we shot the video flashbacks on in her smell.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And I would move Sculpey figures around.
Marc:So you had that thing and, you know.
Guest:Sony Hi8 Handycam, yeah.
Marc:And you kept hold of that in case you would need it?
Guest:I mean, this is the way my dad's house is.
Guest:That's why he's getting rid of all of his records from the 80s now.
Marc:So he's a pack rat?
Guest:Kind of, yeah.
Guest:Of the cool stuff?
Guest:Which I've inherited.
Guest:And then, yeah, this time last year before the shoot, I just texted him.
Guest:I said, is that camera still around?
Guest:And he said, yeah.
Guest:And I said, can you overnight it to us?
Guest:I think I need it for the movie.
Guest:And then, yeah, there's images in there from the camera that I got for Hanukkah in like 1997.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Those are the ones where you shot them in the past with the gold record and whatnot.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So you went to NYU.
Guest:Yeah, so I went from, yeah, so then I was in Bryn Mawr and then NYU was next.
Marc:And that was sort of, when did you, because it seems like you have pretty specific heroes around film and literature and how you want to present stuff.
Marc:I'm always sort of,
Marc:It's always interesting to me to see how independent filmmakers that surface, you know, the choices they make, you know, you know what they're based on, you know, because like, you know, you said you're staying over at Jeff and Aubrey's house.
Marc:Jeff Bain, who I know, he's another guy that makes sort of very there.
Marc:You know, there's a vision in place.
Marc:that I watched Queen of the Earth.
Marc:And I'm not a stick in the mud, I'm not a prude, but I don't know what happened at the end.
Marc:And that's your decision.
Guest:Fair.
Marc:But I understand the poetry of it and what you choose to put on and what you, you know, what you choose to show and what you choose not to show in terms of constructing a story.
Marc:So I guess my my my question is, when you were at NYU, what was really kind of putting your personal visual framework together and intellectual framework?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, even before that, do you remember in 1998 when the AFI Top 100 list first came out?
Marc:Yeah, kinda.
Guest:That was very important because through that, it was because of that that I watched Clockwork Orange and Blue Velvet.
Marc:I just watched that on a screen again in England.
Marc:Clockwork Orange?
Marc:Yeah, new print.
Guest:I just saw it in New York on a print a couple weeks ago for the 50th time.
Guest:It's one of my top 10 favorite movies of all time.
Marc:So Clockwork Orange and what was the other one?
Guest:Blue Velvet, which were both on the AFI Top 100.
Marc:Really, those two?
Guest:Well, those are just the ones that I remember seeing that blew my mind the most as a 13-year-old.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Guest:So then I just got into, you know.
Marc:That list gave you the sort of primer to being a film head.
Guest:Yeah, and then I tried to work my way through it, but I look at those movies and I think, I need to see everything else by this filmmaker.
Guest:And my dad had been a huge Twin Peaks fan.
Guest:And when I got into Blue Velvet, he said, a guy I work with at the station has all the videotapes he taped off of TV of Twin Peaks, which you can't see anywhere else right now.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's like 97, 98.
Guest:And, you know, just so I was kind of getting into that very, you know, 101 stuff.
Marc:But in looking at the way you work, I wouldn't have sourced anything that I've seen of yours to those two influences.
Marc:What was it about those two directors that you, in retrospect, find compelling?
Guest:Well, they just gave me the idea, very common, that there's some filmmakers that you can look at a movie and within two seconds know who made it.
Guest:That was very important.
Guest:So then by the time I was at NYU...
Guest:Like a lot of people who are 20, I just became obsessed with French New Wave.
Guest:Yeah, I can see that.
Guest:If it was on Criterion, I had to have it.
Guest:If it was playing at Film Forum, I had to go see it.
Guest:If it was at Anthology Film Archives or MoMA, I had to go see it.
Marc:So you were running around.
Guest:Suddenly I became just omnivorous.
Guest:I worked at Kim's Video at the time.
Marc:On 8th?
Guest:Yeah, on St.
Guest:Mark's.
Guest:St.
Guest:Mark's in between seconds.
Guest:I remember that place.
Guest:Yeah, the three floors.
Marc:Yeah, there's three floors and you're like, what's being sold on this floor?
Marc:Where do I rent?
Marc:Why is it so confusing here?
Guest:Rent on the top floor.
Guest:I worked on the middle floor with DVD sales and vinyl until vinyl moved downstairs to the music.
Guest:Just omnivorous.
Guest:I mean, I would go see a double feature of B-Westerns at Film Forum, go to work for eight hours at Kim's, take a sexploitation movie home or a 70s horror movie home and watch that and then get up the next day, go to class...
Marc:So what do you think you took from like, you know, if you're focusing on the new wave, like in terms of how it affected your particular vision, you know, what was it about those films and those guys?
Guest:I mean, you know, when you see those those images, when you're watching, when you're discovering
Guest:beyond like the top five movies.
Guest:Like you see 400 Blows and you're like, this is a masterpiece, I get it.
Marc:You see Breathless.
Guest:Yeah, and then like two or three years.
Guest:Jules and Jim.
Guest:Yeah, and I'm moved emotionally by these and they're literate and they're smart and they're funny and they're human.
Guest:But then a couple years later, after 400 Blows, you see these other Antoine Duenelle movies.
Guest:And all I ever wanted was to like make a movie like bed and board or stolen kisses.
Guest:This, this adult boy stumbling through his romantic life and he can't get it together.
Guest:And just, I mean, I must've watched those two movies a dozen times each when I finally got to them and just seeing Leo just be this kind of, you know, life physical actor who's also smart and he's reading philosophy in bed and
Guest:And I was just like, this is this is fantastic.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So that's that that's what informed you is that, you know, that there is this sort of French intellectual way of life.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that that you don't like that.
Marc:I think that a certain type of American kid aspires to.
Marc:But it's a very specific thing.
Guest:And it's, you know.
Guest:The men and the women are both gorgeous.
Guest:Everyone in the movies is beautiful.
Guest:The photography is just simple and elegant.
Guest:And it seems smart, but they're also so rooted in the history of other movies, which makes sense if you're me and you're watching three things a day.
Guest:And yeah, and then you go deeper and you go beyond those guys and you end up watching...
Guest:all the Romare movies and all the Rivette movies.
Guest:And now I'm just at retrospectives all the time and like hanging out with people from Kim's and we're just seeing movies together and, and talking about just talking and then going out and drinking a lot before I stopped doing that as well.
Guest:And just, I don't know if you know, anthology film arc.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I mean, that's what,
Marc:I think it's still going.
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Marc:Like on second or third?
Guest:Yeah, second and second.
Guest:Yeah, second and second.
Guest:No, they just kind of raised a bunch of money for an expansion.
Guest:But I lived one block away from there in my NYU dorm.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they have the Essential Cinema series where, yeah, if you haven't seen Brackage projected or you haven't seen Michael Snow wavelength projected.
Guest:Wavelength, right.
Guest:Yeah, you walk right in.
Guest:And if you have a membership, the Essential screenings are free.
Guest:And I could see prints of all these movies one block from my dorm.
Guest:and then go to Film Forum and watch East of Eden, and that to me makes sense as a perfect day.
Guest:So I was just, everything that was screening, I needed to go see.
Marc:You're filling up the hard drive.
Guest:I was, I'm barely talking about NYU, because my time there was just like, yeah, I go to class, get out, and then I can go to the movies.
Marc:What'd you learn there?
Guest:You know, not a lot.
Marc:But any practical skills?
Marc:Shooting?
Marc:You got to shoot, right?
Guest:Yeah, but I immediately, it's one of those things like, it's like learning math.
Marc:Right.
Guest:In middle school, I just am like, oh, I won't use this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, I don't want to be a cinematographer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Even though I'm learning how to load a camera.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This doesn't speak to me.
Guest:I want to work with someone who loves this.
Marc:And it'll be obsolete soon.
Guest:Yeah, it was just, I liked the writing teachers a lot.
Guest:There was this great professor there, who's still there, I think, named Carl Bardosh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who's like a Hungarian intellectual.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he turned me on to some very strange Eastern European cinema that at the time I'd never heard of.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:Like Sergei Perejanov.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And at the time, you know, Kieslowski, which was unknown to me.
Marc:And as a writing professor, what did you glean that you took with you?
Guest:Not a whole lot.
Guest:I mean, you know, like, it's a wasteful system.
Guest:Like, what I always say in terms of the progression out of school into my first movie, which cost $15,000, and we shot it in one week.
Guest:Like, my senior thesis film was a 20-minute, $20,000 film.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was the cheapest one in my class.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And everyone kind of spent... Now, some people are spending $50,000.
Marc:What was that called?
Guest:The first movie's called Impilex, yeah.
Marc:Impilex.
Guest:So that wasn't made in school, though, so...
Marc:What was the thesis movie?
Guest:It was a very Leo New Wave inspired movie about a young guy in New York who loves older women.
Guest:And what they teach you is basically spend $50,000 on a short.
Guest:have a feature based on the short.
Guest:And then if the short's good, you can go to Hollywood and you'll make the feature for $5 million.
Guest:And I bought into that.
Guest:And then within a couple of years, like one year of graduating, you know, like your, our mutual friend, Joe Swanberg is making $5,000 movies.
Marc:He's also making 5,000 movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, at the time, only three or four.
Guest:But I'm at Kim's and I'm seeing DVDs from people my age.
Guest:And Sean Williams, my DP, who worked at Kim's as well, shot this movie called Frownland.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which was like, I mean, that movie is like Sex Pistols at Manchester for a lot of filmmakers in New York.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Like seeing that movie, if you've never seen it, I think you would probably really like it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just like so aggressive and so raw.
Guest:And seeing that all of us, we were like, we can do this.
Guest:Like everyone who saw that movie just like became a filmmaker immediately.
Guest:And I was like, I have no excuse.
Guest:I can't make a $5 million movie based on my thesis.
Guest:I can make a $10,000 movie in six days.
Guest:That's what everyone's doing now.
Guest:And then I just set off to do that.
Guest:And then we did it like a year later because all the people like Joe and Lynn, again, like all these mutual friends now were coming up at the same time.
Guest:And spending more than five or 10 grand on a movie and spending more than eight days shooting it was unthinkable.
Guest:Why would why would you do that?
Guest:There's no reason.
Guest:Like you can do it.
Guest:You can do it.
Guest:So why not?
Marc:Well, I mean, I guess in the long run that that prudence and practicality helps you beyond anything.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I mean, it is nice to have more money and more time, isn't it?
Guest:It's nice now.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, it's like if you grew up poor, your family could split a can of soup for two days.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's not preferable.
Guest:No, it's not preferable.
Guest:Survival.
Guest:You know that you won't die.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if you make a feature for ten thousand dollars, fifteen, and then you make another one for twenty five and then you make one for a million.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You feel like you have everything in the world.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, I still know people that think you can't do this for that budget.
Guest:And it's like I did this for twenty thousand dollars.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But do you look back at those films and see are there things that, you know, in the earlier movies where you're like, that was really a better movie than my million dollar movie?
Guest:No.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there's that kind of purity in there, which is to say you're making them for no reason.
Guest:Like you're not making them because you want to get into the industry.
Guest:You're making them because you must.
Guest:You want to get your friends together and just shoot something.
Marc:But have you, like, when did that change for you?
Marc:I mean, like, when did you, I mean, because your industry is specific.
Marc:I mean, you are in a world of independent film.
Marc:You're not, you know, gunning to make, you know, big budget movies necessarily.
Guest:No, not at the moment.
Guest:I'm gunning to write them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I mean, it just, because there's nothing else I could offer.
Guest:It's not like I'm doing this as a hobby.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, what was the first feature about?
Marc:What were the decisions around it?
Guest:Of Impelex?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was inspired by Gravity's Rainbow.
Marc:Did you finish Gravity's Rainbow?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And the second I put it down, I thought, I don't think I'll grapple with this book or finish thinking about it until I spend a year making my own response to this.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah, I mean like.
Marc:I couldn't get through it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I feel bad about it.
Guest:It changed everything for me.
Marc:I can get through, you know, Crying of Lot 49.
Marc:Yeah, I love that.
Marc:V, I got through Vineland.
Marc:I got through, I mean, like, I like him.
Guest:There's a mode of his that you prefer.
Guest:You like the more contemporary.
Marc:It was so daunting, and it was such a challenge, and like, you know, I gotta stay focused for that long.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it took me a whole summer to read, but then it changed everything.
Guest:And I immediately knew that I should leave my job at Kim's and get my friends together and make this movie about rockets because, you know, just like as a sort of artistic response.
Marc:The opening line is about missiles, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Screaming comes across the sky.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The last line's great.
Guest:Now everybody.
Guest:That's what you missed when you didn't get to the end.
Guest:Perfect last line.
Marc:Well, I like the summary.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there's a bunch of stuff in the middle of those two lines too.
Guest:But yeah, I just was like, as a sort of, you know, I mean, it's basically an experimental film and it only really played at festivals with the word underground in the title.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I just had to do it.
Guest:Feature length.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it's 73 minutes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just had to do it.
Guest:I had to make my response to this piece of work that had influenced me so much and it was fun.
Guest:And then I got to go to festivals and I met tons of people.
Guest:that I had never known.
Guest:I knew Joe at this point already.
Guest:Sorry, I'm getting a real slip there.
Guest:There's no one less Jewish than Joe Swanberg.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:But he's a great guy.
Guest:I like working with him.
Guest:Totally supportive.
Guest:But I knew him already.
Guest:And then just going to festivals and meeting tons of other filmmakers, I immediately wanted to make another movie so that I could be back at festivals meeting more filmmakers.
Marc:And what was the second movie?
Guest:It's called The Color Wheel.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's the only one of my movies that I'm in.
Marc:And that's the one about the family?
Guest:It's a brother-sister road trip movie.
Guest:Oh, it is.
Guest:Who's in that?
Guest:It's me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then this actress named Karlyn Altman.
Marc:I saw you in Joshy, right?
Guest:That's right, I'm in Jeff Bainer's movie Joshy.
Marc:Yeah, I like that movie.
Guest:Yeah, it was a lot of fun to make.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So The Color Wheel, so that, like, what compelled you?
Guest:Again, like it was from novels.
Guest:I was reading a lot of Philip Roth at the time.
Guest:And just like with Pynchon, I thought I kind of need to make, I need to write my response to what these novels make me feel.
Marc:Which are the Zuckerberg novels or the other ones?
Guest:It was really the Professor of Desire that gave me that movie because Carlin's character is moving out of living with her professor.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And see, it's like this is like for me, like, you know, when you talk about French intellectuals, people, you know, actors reading philosophy and, you know, in Philip Roth, it's like it's a real kind of like, you know, 70s Jewish intellectual trip.
Guest:I know that's that's that's my, you know, a tweed jacket, corduroy pants.
Marc:I love Rothman.
Marc:I read the shit out of him.
Guest:It was so important.
Guest:I want to start rereading some of his books.
Marc:Have you read all of them?
Guest:Well, I have read them all but one because... Which one?
Guest:I've not read Exit Ghost.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, with filmmakers and novelists who have a big body of work that I love, I kind of like to have one thing that is... You hold out on?
Guest:Yeah, just like for when I'm 50, I can have one new Philip Roth book to read.
Marc:Yeah, I think I read that one.
Marc:I think I read all the later ones.
Marc:Sabbath Theater.
Guest:That's my favorite.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Yeah, that book is phenomenal.
Marc:Freddie Sabbath, right?
Guest:Mickey Sabbath.
Marc:Is that Mickey Sabbath?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Jacking off on the grave of his deceased lover.
Guest:I mean, it's perverse.
Marc:And I'm reading these- It's an outlier, too.
Guest:Yeah, it's a one-off.
Guest:I'm reading these on the subway, and I'm just thinking the sickness in these, these are bestsellers in their time.
Guest:And I'm reading these on the train, and I feel like people are going to look at me.
Marc:You're dirty.
Guest:And I want to write a movie that's kind of like that.
Guest:So it's this weird kind of sexual repressed id Jewish bickering sibling movie that ends with incest.
Marc:Great.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Sort of like Spankin' the Monkey.
Guest:Very much so, yeah.
Guest:Or House of Yes as well.
Guest:It's like, again, this is 2010 that we're making it, but for me, I'm trying to make one of those classic 90s, it's black and white 16 millimeter, one of those indie movies that when I was 13, 14, I would read about at Sundance and be like, oh, an indie movie about incest, that sounds cool.
Marc:Right, like those movies like Stranger Than Paradise.
Guest:Yeah, which was very important to me.
Guest:I mean, again, when I was in NYU discovering Jarmusch, it was just not what I wanted to do.
Guest:I didn't wanna be doing, his style wasn't speaking to me.
Marc:But he mixes it up.
Guest:Yeah, but I was never like, what I want to do is like very dry, deadpan movies where the camera never moves.
Guest:I just love the identification of his work as a pure artist.
Marc:It's so funny.
Marc:One thing I remember, a quote of him, I must have read it in a film magazine back in the day.
Marc:Remember his movie Mystery Train?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That when the Japanese tourists are unpacking their luggage in their hotel room, he shoots it how they've packed.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:And in an interview, he said, you know, I wanted the packing of the luggage, the way the stuff was in the bag to look like one of those little transistor radios when you pull the back off.
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, I just thought like, oh, man, that's like, you know, really attentive, you know.
Guest:Yeah, no, I mean, but again, like just seeing that detail in his work, like just knowing that there are artists behind these bodies of work was very exciting to me.
Marc:Well, yeah, that you can make, you know, you have complete control of the frame to a degree so you can make these decisions.
Marc:And like, you know, I guess the spectrum of that goes from like, you know, somebody who's, you know, totally loose like Swanberg to like, you know, Wes Anderson.
Marc:That is like everything's like a goddamn, you know, little, you know, what do you call those boxes?
Marc:Yeah, like a picture box.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, at this time, you know, I was so... These two movies, you know, the visual style at this point is just developing because I've shot both of them on 16mm.
Marc:So you've got to be a little economical, huh?
Guest:Well, very much so, but also now suddenly there's this aesthetic that I didn't even really think about where the movies feel...
Guest:very timeless, very 70s or 80s or 90s.
Marc:Well, you know, I thought that the Queen of Earth felt kind of organic.
Guest:Yeah, so for Listen Up Philip, onward, up into her smell, the movies were all shot on Super 16.
Marc:But what struck me about it, and I watched the Philip movie, and that's more of the kind of romanticizing the novelist of the 70s.
Marc:Very much so, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I liked it.
Marc:I like him and I like the old cranky guy.
Guest:Jonathan Price.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:An amazing guy, great actor.
Marc:Really great actor.
Guest:Really fun to make that movie.
Guest:I mean, that was amazing because, you know, again, Color Wheel was $25,000.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And now I have just under a million bucks.
Guest:Having, you know, $900,000 after $25,000, I mean, I felt like the richest man in the world.
Guest:I felt like what I could do on this movie, it expanded by, you know, by a whole, you know, just a big bang of resources.
Marc:But you still strike me as somebody who's going to use that money well.
Marc:I think so.
Marc:In the sense that, like, what does this enable me to do relative to what I want to see?
Guest:Yeah, and also most importantly, I'm bringing all the same people from the smaller movies.
Guest:Same DP has shot all six of my movies from Impel X. Still?
Guest:Yeah, like I said, we worked at Kim's together, so we go back.
Marc:But that's interesting because the quality, you clearly have control over what you want us to see, but it's not stylistically the same.
Marc:Movie to movie.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's just, for me, I love...
Guest:even though I'm talking about, like, oh, I love you, you can tell a Kubrick movie right away, like, but, you know, what's the connection visually between 2001 and The Shining?
Guest:No, right.
Guest:Everything, but also nothing.
Guest:Just to make a different movie every time.
Marc:There's something about the way he moves a camera that's pretty consistent.
Guest:Always, always the same, but the milieu of the movie and the style changes based on what the material is.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I find that, you know, that or, like, even more recently, like, you know, a guy like Soderbergh, you just want to do something different.
Guest:You don't want to say, like,
Marc:Once you get the skill set, why not mix it up?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I want to do like a big sprawling literary kind of sad comedy like Philip and then do a claustrophobic 70s style thriller like Queen of Earth and then make a kind of Romer-esque movie like Golden Exit.
Guest:It's like and then make a huge neon glittery rock.
Guest:It's just like.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just so much fun for me to challenge this wonderful crew that has made all these movies with me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To say.
Guest:And keep it fresh.
Guest:We must do something different at all times.
Marc:And like, well, the Queen of Earth in terms of like it's but it's a thriller in the artistic sense of what thrillers used to be.
Guest:The loosest sense of the word.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But it's a psychological thriller.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So it's not like, you know, you're not going to find out who the killer is at the end.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I always said that if the movie ended with someone being stabbed, it would have made a million dollars.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But no, it's not about that.
Guest:It's about a psychological breakdown of one woman who just just in close up.
Marc:Right, but it becomes clear two thirds of the way through the movie that maybe some of what you've been seeing might be from her point of view and not honestly happening.
Guest:100%.
Guest:And it's fun because like,
Guest:I don't know if you've ever done something like this where you kind of feel like it's time to go back to basics.
Guest:But we made Impelex, like I said, in one house in one week for $15,000.
Guest:And then we made Queen of Earth in one house in two weeks.
Guest:And Joe produced this movie, and this was when Joe was starting his production fund.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, for...
Guest:a quarter of what Listen Up Philip cost.
Guest:But it was fun to take these famous actors and go make a movie basically exactly how we made my first movie.
Guest:And then just say, you know, we're all going to go up to this house.
Guest:We'll- Where was it?
Guest:It was in Poughkeepsie, kinda near Poughkeepsie.
Guest:Carmel, New York.
Guest:And just, you know, we have the house, we have the house next door and we shoot and it's two weeks.
Marc:Scripted?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was like a 70 page script because after listening to Philip, I knew that Lizzie Moss, I knew that she brought a lot of ideas that kind of sparked a tangent.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How'd you meet her?
Marc:Because you seem a little obsessed with her.
Guest:Well, we've done three movies.
Guest:I mean, just really through casting on Philip.
Guest:Like, Jason was in.
Guest:And then I got a list of, you know, these are some actresses that would be available at this time.
Guest:And I saw her and I thought, wow, she'd be amazing in this.
Guest:All I can think of is her in Mad Men and Top of the Lake.
Guest:If she wants to come make this Brooklyn literary sad comedy, that would be really exciting.
Guest:Her and Jason, that'd be a fun couple.
Marc:But at some point you realize that she is, you know, she has multitudes within her.
Guest:On that set, I mean, right away on day three or four, I just was like.
Guest:Of Philip.
Guest:Yeah, she's firing on all cylinders.
Guest:And then six months later, sent her a 70 page script for Queen of Earth.
Marc:But Queen of Earth is like, that's a taxing exercise for an actress.
Marc:And you were completely sort of, I imagine, like thrilled and curious to see how far she could take it.
Guest:Very much so.
Guest:And just very trusting and doing whatever we could to give her that.
Guest:Shoot the movie in order.
Guest:Let her, you know.
Guest:Oh, you would have to, huh?
Guest:Yeah, we shot it in order from start to finish.
Guest:And, you know, that was her first producing credit that she wanted to transition into learning that side of things.
Marc:I really liked the movie.
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:I'm very proud of it.
Marc:Of Queen of Earth.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, because, like, you know, it made me realize some things in terms of writing because, you know, I'm writing with Lynn.
Marc:And, like, in terms of, you know, how are you going to serve this story and what is this story and, you know, how do you over-serve it?
Guest:The bare essentials.
Guest:What can you do in a house where all you have is two great actresses, a camera, and a naturally nice location?
Guest:You can do something with that.
Guest:I don't know if you saw Joe's movie Happy Christmas.
Guest:Yeah, I did, yeah.
Guest:Like this was trying to apply that model.
Guest:They have basically the exact same budget.
Guest:You know, Joe was like, we're in this weird position where after Drinking Buddies and after Listen Up, Philip, we could get like the same kind of actors that want to come make a million dollar indie to make a hundred thousand dollar indie with us now because actors know that we're fun to work with.
Guest:So if he's like, I got Anna Kendrick after Drinking Buddies to come make a hundred thousand dollar movie, you can do the same with Lizzie Moss.
Marc:Well, the funny thing is, is that like, you know, I talked to Stephen Dorff yesterday.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was so good on the new True Detective.
Marc:So good.
Guest:Somewhere is one of my favorite movies.
Guest:It's great.
Marc:But, you know, like, you know, but like in True Detective, I'm watching him like this is like it's like he he's like reborn or something like it's like as I felt in Somewhere.
Guest:He's always impressive whenever he comes into one of these huge roles.
Marc:And the point being is that like, you know, at some point we're talking and he's like, you know, I just you know, I'll come in and read.
Marc:I love to act.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So like if you give these talented people, you know, something that they can really, you know, get, you know, cut loose in, they've got to be thrilled.
Guest:And, you know, as we've learned, like, and as you've known from working with Lynn or Joe, like sometimes this is a week of time, two weeks.
Marc:What's into that noise?
Guest:What is that?
Guest:Is that Glendale construction?
Marc:That's my fucking yard guy.
Guest:That you schedule him to come when you have someone on?
Marc:Well, I mean, I don't know.
Marc:I'm not that organized.
Marc:Hold on a minute.
Marc:Maybe if I shut the blinds.
Guest:I couldn't hear it until you said anything.
Guest:No, I know, I know.
Guest:We have stuff like this in Queen of Earth where there's like the yard guy outside.
Marc:Yeah, he's got the same piece of equipment that that guy out there.
Guest:You hear those machines and they just drive you nuts.
Marc:Oh my God, it sounds like that's in the fucking room.
Guest:It's pretty loud now.
Marc:Let's give him a minute.
Guest:You couldn't go outside and ask him to move to the other side of the house?
Marc:Well, I mean, it's like, you know, it's a finite zone there.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:He doesn't, you know, eventually... Is he mowing or just like... No, it's blowing.
Guest:What is the point of that?
Marc:To get the leaves and dust off of shit.
Guest:But where do they go?
Guest:They just go into the sidewalk or the street?
Marc:No, they put them in a bag.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So they get sucked up.
Marc:Well, no, they don't suck them up.
Marc:They usually blow them into an organized pile and then they put them in a bin.
Guest:It's so crazy.
Guest:What a waste of energy.
Guest:Why don't you just get a rake?
Guest:This is crazy to me that this is like a...
Guest:There's a guy on my street.
Marc:I mean, it's sort of an advance.
Marc:So, I mean, you know, at some point, you know, someone said like this raking is taking a long time and this is a more efficient way to do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It only takes like a thousand dollar device with lots of energy and like battery power.
Marc:And I think it's that these guys usually use the gas ones.
Marc:But yeah, I mean, I understand your argument.
Guest:There's a guy on my street that just you're saying return to the rake.
Guest:There's a guy on the street that walks around with a blower just blowing trash and leaves and dust off of the sidewalk.
Guest:And it's just like, how is this better than a broom?
Marc:I get it.
Marc:But how is it better?
Marc:It's a little more fun.
Guest:Not for me.
Guest:Not for us inside.
Guest:It's more fun for the guy.
Marc:Yeah, of course.
Marc:But it's a labor intensive.
Marc:These guys got to move on.
Marc:They can't be spending all day with the rake.
Marc:And there's not that much to rake.
Marc:It's really just...
Marc:You know, it's maintenance, dude, but I understand your argument.
Marc:You know, this is like, you know, that... I like old things.
Guest:I like shooting on film.
Marc:Yeah, the rake is 16 millimeter.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:I like things that are simple.
Guest:I like to read a book.
Guest:I don't have a Kindle.
Marc:Yeah, analog.
Marc:Yeah, me too.
Marc:I like to read a book.
Guest:I like brooms.
Guest:I don't like gas-powered... I'm with you, too.
Marc:Like, you know, I do the broom thing, and then I have a... You're a broom guy?
Marc:Yeah, I've got a broom downstairs.
Marc:But I also have vacuums, but like sometimes like...
Marc:Like I don't even think, I don't think there's another option than the broom.
Marc:And somehow the woman that cleans my house every so often, like she's doing something else that seems much more efficient.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But do you live in a house that has, do you live in a house?
Guest:We have a, we have half of a brownstone.
Guest:That's nice.
Guest:But as we were discussing, much like you, I have three cats.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:House gets dirty.
Marc:Yeah, it gets fucking, everything's covered with hair.
Marc:And ours are all long-haired.
Marc:Look at what you're sitting on.
Guest:If you sit up.
Guest:Cats love this kind of seat.
Marc:It's covered with hair.
Guest:Yeah, no, we have a kitchen table with cushions like this, and the black and white cat sit on opposite sides of it.
Marc:What you have to accept with a cat is just crazy.
Marc:I mean, my bedspread is covered with litter dust.
Guest:Yeah, and I couldn't care less.
Guest:I'm happy to have that.
Guest:I'd rather have that than not the cats.
Guest:But you know, the house gets dirty.
Marc:And then there's the throwing up.
Guest:Yeah, it's weird.
Guest:The three cats we have now are not barfers.
Marc:Mine aren't usually, but one of them will do it occasionally.
Guest:Yeah, one of our cats that we don't have anymore would throw up like two or three times a week, kind of like seemingly as a prank, like to get us up out of bed.
Guest:We don't have a lot of barf at the moment.
Marc:So you're doing a lot of thinking and making these movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:More than I think you would think because they feel loose.
Marc:Like they're not like, they're not like, but like, but does anyone outside of you, I'm sorry to interrupt it.
Guest:No, I have to apologize.
Marc:But does anyone outside of you pick most of this shit up?
Marc:Not really.
Marc:Because there's no critics like that anymore, dude.
Guest:Yeah, it's weird.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:You would think, like, it's not that I'm dismayed because if someone likes the movie, great.
Guest:But the movies are loose by design.
Guest:Handheld camera work, dialogue that is scripted to feel unscripted.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And people look at it and they think it's all made up.
Guest:They don't understand the intricacy of some of the things that we really work on.
Marc:You're loading them up.
Guest:They just feel loose to people, which is great.
Guest:They are loose, but they're loose meticulously, especially the new one.
Guest:You know, it's not like what Wes would do.
Guest:with the frame.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's not dissimilar.
Guest:I mean, we're putting thought into all these.
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:And there was a time where, you know, these clues and these hints and these, you know, the people that used to write about film when you were like the people that saw all the movies that you saw and were writing about those films in the day, you know, all that young blood Sarah's, you know, like the people that would really take it apart, you know, send it like the semiotics guys, like they would find these things that used to be like a, a goal, I think.
Marc:It was to sort of wonder whether or not you knew that these things were there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And to be the first one to kind of catch on and say, you know, I don't know.
Marc:I don't read much writing like that about film.
Marc:I imagine it's out there.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, of course, people are working in that model.
Guest:But the problem is, like, at least with, you know, there's like there's like criticism and then there's like critical writing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like a review of a movie at a film festival.
Guest:The movie premieres at 8 p.m.
Guest:and the review is out by midnight.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that's garbage.
Guest:Like, there's no quality to that.
Guest:And, you know, I read these reviews.
Guest:You know, her smell has these five long scenes.
Guest:Five is an easy number to count to.
Guest:You can do it on one hand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I read these reviews the morning after in Toronto.
Guest:The movie has four scenes.
Guest:The movie has six scenes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's like five.
Guest:I would assume critics could count to five.
Guest:Like this is this is galling to me that you would not only miss that, but that you would then put it in writing and not even like say to your editor.
Guest:Can you check with the film's publicist if this movie has four or six scenes?
Marc:and also they don't do their homework they're sloppy they don't give a fuck you know like they misspell things they like it's just a nightmare like even just like with people interviewing me or writing about something how many times i have to call back and say like i definitely did not say this and like they take your words out of context no no they just misquote yeah like it's like it's like i know what i said you know and it wasn't that person or that was not the reference i made and this doesn't make any sense can you just change it because i don't mind that you're
Marc:that you're putting the whole conversation as i talk to you but it's like get this point right do you read those things about yourself not usually sometimes they come down the pike and i'll read them like interviews because sometimes like i'm surprised at uh you know that i can that i'm making sense because i talk so fucking much sometimes and you want to see how people kind of well i want to see how it looks on the page because i didn't put it there yeah yeah no i mean i love stuff like that too i'm more likely to read
Marc:an interview that i did then read a review of the movie at this point yeah because like you want to see how your brain's working i mean i know like talking to you that you're you're receiving what i'm saying and we're having a conversation but if someone's asking me questions and i'm you know i'm like caffeinated and it's the morning and i'm on the phone and i'm just going sometimes i like to look at what that looks
Guest:And also it's impossible to overstate this.
Guest:Like, again, we're here.
Guest:I mean, despite the noise outside, like this is as nice as it gets for a conversation.
Guest:When I do an interview and I'm at a cafe around the corner from my house and there's people around and I feel like I can't, I can't really speak honestly because then I sound like an asshole to the person sitting next to me.
Marc:but also you're dealing with set questions too there's limited engagement there's a guy that's nervous or he's done it a million times and he's got two questions that he really think are going to nail the thing yeah and then I kind of you know you have to be quiet maybe you happen to get to the cafe during the one hour that no one else is talking and everyone is drinking coffee and reading and then eventually you develop a patter around these things you do enough of these interviews and you know you find like you're giving roughly this hold on it's a third noise
Guest:Yeah, now it's like a mower.
Guest:This is great.
Guest:This is great material.
Marc:I apologize.
Guest:You know, with the headphones on, you can barely, it can't be picking up on the microphones, right?
Marc:Maybe a little.
Marc:I mean, this is like a little bit much.
Marc:Paul Rudd and I did an improvisation around the noises.
Guest:I'm sorry, I can't rise to that occasion.
Marc:We did sort of a throat singer of Tuva homage.
Guest:Yeah, like Yaima in the movie, which does throat singing.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, right, yes.
Guest:But yeah, forget about the same, I mean, this is so pleasant because I'm a fan and we're having this conversation, but I did two hours of phone interviews yesterday, and probably 75% of each one were the same answers, the same words, the same questions.
Marc:Yeah, and you gotta do it.
Marc:But okay, so here's my experience with the new film, which I liked.
Marc:Was that like, because I read the parts of the script, at least, that I was going to possibly audition for.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Or according to your representation, that was yours already.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Stoltz played it, and he did good.
Marc:He did it very differently than I would have done it.
Guest:Well, which is interesting because at the time of your name coming up, I hadn't seen Glow yet.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Because I watch everything six months after everyone else does.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then when I watched it right after we wrapped, because I watched all of Gail's scenes when we were interested in her.
Guest:I mean, the show is phenomenal.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:I loved it so much.
Guest:And you're so good on it.
Guest:Like, it's just a remarkable show.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:There's a pattern to the character of a guy like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:you can do it a hundred different ways.
Guest:You can be the guy who's sweating bullets.
Guest:You can be the guy who's got an ulcer tearing in his belly.
Guest:And you can be the guy who's Mr. Cool.
Guest:It's just so fun to think about something like that, which on the page, I don't know that until an actor comes in and tells me their take on it.
Marc:Well, I mean, I think my instincts would have like, you know, the interesting thing about those characters, and I think that Stoltz in the movie played it a little Hollywood, which was that there was sort of a fundamental...
Marc:kind of detachment and a, you know, a sort of an active engagement in, you know, being sort of seemingly a friend or a mentor.
Marc:But, you know, underlying it all was that, you know, he's a business guy.
Guest:Very much so.
Guest:And also, as people pointed out once we were doing it, kind of an enabler.
Marc:Yeah, of course.
Guest:Which is something that I... They all are.
Guest:Oh, very much so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is very important to understanding the sort of patterns of dealing with an addict, which, you know, the movie's very much about.
Guest:But the extent to which he enables that character wasn't really apparent until we were doing the scenes because by playing it, cool as a cucumber Hollywood guy, I've got this figured out, then he's the one who just kind of lets her get away with it.
Marc:Let's her get away with it and rolls the dice on the talent's well-being because the talent –
Marc:Their job is to manipulate the talent into continuing to be a money funnel, really, and to try to maintain some sort of, you know, you don't want to kill the person, but you do turn a blind eye to certain things if they're still earning.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:And you know, I have this with people in my creative orbit.
Guest:We all have this.
Guest:Someone that's like, I can't really cut this person out because I need them or I really value them and they're maybe the best at what they do and they're very important to me.
Guest:But part of that means you just kind of, you get what you get and then you have to, the job is learning to work around those eccentricities.
Marc:Why this story, though?
Marc:You know, like this story has been, you know, it's been attempted.
Marc:It's been done.
Marc:You know, it's tricky to create a fake rock band that is supposedly a huge rock band.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, like the movie that keeps hitting my brain with it was that movie.
Marc:I think it was called Gloria with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Holly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, interesting.
Guest:That's a pull.
Marc:Who directed that?
Marc:It was a ghost part, I think, maybe, and it was about sisters.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:One was a folk singer, and Jennifer Jason Leigh was the sister who was the punk rock drug addict.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No one's brought that up.
Guest:Yeah, we generally talk a lot about- Did you see that movie?
Marc:You know what I'm talking about?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, I do know what you're talking about.
Guest:We generally talk about, ladies and gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains.
Guest:You know that movie?
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, it's a great movie.
Guest:It's like a 16-year-old Diane Lane and Laura Dern are these teenage girls that start a punk band.
Guest:And Paul Cook and Steve Jones from The Sex Pistols and Paul Simonon from The Clash are this other British punk band that they're touring with.
Guest:And Jones and Cook wrote the music for the movie.
Guest:It's a great fake punk band movie.
Marc:Oh, interesting.
Guest:But yeah, I mean, you know, I'd wanted to make a music movie.
Guest:And I tried to make one a few years ago that didn't happen, set in the 60s.
Guest:And, you know, this was my time.
Guest:And I kind of came up with this character for Lizzie.
Guest:And there has been no...
Guest:There has not been the 90s alternative movie, the 90s grunge movie, the 90s punk movie.
Guest:And I'm as far away from it both in time and also as close to it in my own life as Todd Haynes in Velvet Goldmine.
Guest:That's 97.
Guest:That's looking back at about 74, 75.
Marc:God, you're really doing the math.
Guest:I got really into numbers, as Jason pointed out the Q&A last night.
Guest:But, you know, like you make it about your thing.
Guest:You know, if I did a 60s movie, it's like, yeah, I mean, I wasn't there.
Guest:I just love this music.
Marc:But, you know, but I do have to accept on some level that, you know, this is a meditation on that.
Guest:Very much so.
Guest:I have no interest in doing the true story of something.
Guest:Because as a writer, then you're boxed in.
Guest:You can only do so much if you're looking at reality that closely.
Guest:So just kind of taking a 25-year step back from the era I loved, the women in rock that I loved, the CDs that I loved.
Guest:I talked about being inspired by Gravity's Rainbow or Professor of Desire to be inspired by a CD.
Marc:Yeah, and you liked my talk with Tanya.
Guest:Tanya Donnelly, that was a great talk.
Guest:You had Kim and Kelly Deal on.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:That was great as well.
Guest:I think I just had Kim on.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I thought it was both.
Guest:No.
Guest:I wonder why I thought that.
Guest:She talked about Kelly.
Marc:She probably talked about it.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I feel like, I mean, you were there for a lot of this.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I remember seeing the throwing muses when I was in college.
Guest:Present tense music.
Marc:Yeah, no, I thought I and you definitely hit a lot of the chords like, you know, story wise and, you know, and musically about what it would be like.
Marc:And and they're like the scenes that really like I but I it's interesting to me that you see this as fundamentally, you know, it's your music movie, but your focus was it's about drug addiction.
Guest:It is, but it's not a drug movie.
Marc:You know, it's not.
Marc:Well, no, you went out of your way.
Marc:You don't really see her do drugs.
Guest:By design.
Marc:I know, I felt that.
Guest:Because then you're, again, you're boxed into like, oh, well, if she just did that, then she should be acting this way.
Marc:Well, no, and also like there, it also leaves open for the fact, is she having a manic break?
Marc:I mean, is this-
Marc:she even doing and like and is this you know relative to her fame and the her ego uh is it you know relative to a bipolar disposition uh because you were pretty careful outside of her taking a couple slugs of booze you know not to you know really sort of uh you know get into the nuts and bolts she ducks into the bathroom or dope yeah she goes into the back room and lizzie and agnes dean who plays mari her kind of you know her bass player and drug partner in the movie see her do drugs yeah
Guest:They created a lot of talk to people, they looked at research, and if you take a hit of whatever we're deciding this scene is, where are you at one minute later?
Guest:Where are you at 20 minutes later?
Guest:Because this movie, you do have to address if Mari takes a bump of something.
Guest:We're still with her 20 minutes later when she's kind of... Fidgety.
Guest:Yeah, and... She was doing coke.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and I guess like...
Guest:As she came up with.
Guest:But, you know, like it's not.
Guest:Yeah, I didn't want to do like the drug movie or just like the rise and fall movie.
Guest:It's more like, as you said, bipolar.
Guest:This is a movie about seven women who all have these dual personalities.
Guest:That's what I'm fascinated by in this kind of, you know, the punk persona, you know, calling yourself Sid Vicious when your name is John Beverly.
Marc:Yeah, I like that part pretty good.
Guest:It's just the idea that they all have these alter egos and the whole movie is this push and pull Where is she Becky or Rebecca?
Guest:And then at the end when you kind of get the payoff of all seven women's real names in the seance It's like oh, this is really like there's a struggle here, you know, even dirtbag Danny.
Guest:He you know, that's a fake name.
Guest:Yeah, Emma They call him Alvin.
Guest:Yeah, people just create these personas to deal with Fame success their professional public life and I think that's really interesting and
Marc:right so like but i did the scene some of the scene moments that really like i thought were great was when she was by herself and nodding out or whatever the fuck she decided she was on where she was just sort of like almost catatonic and repetitive yeah but then she pulls out of that and out of nowhere you pull a manson song out of your ass that's right yeah i'm glad i'm glad you you caught that
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:When you do a movie that's just these long scenes, you have to establish through other means what the deal is with the characters.
Guest:You don't ever see Becky's record collection.
Guest:You imagine it's big, but you hear her pull out Manson.
Guest:You hear her pull out Coxbar.
Guest:You hear her reference Iron Maiden.
Guest:You know that she just has this brain for things.
Marc:And what was the decisions around shooting it?
Marc:Like, you know, these different sections, all five.
Marc:I imagine given the math nature of your creative vision that, you know, you had a specific way of shooting each section.
Guest:Well, yes, you surmised correctly.
Guest:So each one, so five acts, each one had a rehearsal day.
Guest:where day one of the movie, we spent eight hours rehearsing act one.
Guest:No filming.
Marc:Right.
Marc:All scripted.
Guest:All scripted.
Guest:There's not a word in the final edit that's not on the page.
Guest:All the references, all the train of time.
Marc:That was the other thing that I noticed that was sort of an amazing thing and I think an evolution for you was that, you know, some of this stuff was, you know, in the flow of the language was almost Shakespearean, not in the words being used, but, you know, in the way the lyricism of the words flowed.
Guest:I mean, that was the hope.
Guest:It's hard to pull off.
Guest:It's very hard to pull off.
Guest:I never doubted that she could do it.
Guest:You read Shakespeare on the page, it maybe reads like gibberish.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then you go see a beautiful production, and the flow of it makes it logical.
Marc:So you were conscious of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I was just so inspired, obviously, by classic five-act tragedy structure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Merchant of Venice and Hamlet were on my mind, along with the, at the time of starting to crack the script, the Guns N' Roses reunion tour.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was another good episode.
Guest:As soon as I saw that, I was like, I need to go for a walk today so I can listen to this.
Marc:He was great, right?
Marc:There's another guy that surprises you, what's beneath the nickname.
Guest:Yeah, Saul.
Marc:Saul and William, two guys.
Guest:That sounds like your accountants, not the singer and the guitar player, the greatest band of my lifetime.
Guest:Go have your taxes done by Saul and William.
Guest:But
Guest:It's just like the structure of it was so exciting to me when I kind of cracked that.
Guest:But then the question was, how do we shoot it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we came up with this idea of a rehearsal day where everyone gets to just feel it out, find the choreography.
Guest:And then each act was three days of shooting where we would basically shoot 10 pages a day.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's a lot.
Guest:It is a lot, but it's one thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just one long scene.
Guest:So you do it eight or nine times.
Guest:The first three are just on Lizzie's face.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The next three are behind her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The next three are getting everyone else in the room.
Guest:You've done 10, you know, 10 takes 10 times and you have the whole thing.
Guest:And then tomorrow you just pick up right where you left off.
Marc:But what about the camera work in each separate five of the five?
Guest:It's just, it's written into the script.
Guest:You know, I knew.
Marc:Because the first one is claustrophobic.
Guest:And all steady cam.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:By design.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wanted to be right there.
Guest:I never worked with steady cam.
Guest:I was really excited.
Marc:Let's celebrate.
Guest:It does sound really quiet all of a sudden.
Guest:But don't jinx it.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Knock on wood.
Guest:I just wanted to learn how to work with Steadicam, the kind of Paul Verhoeven influence of the movie demanded it.
Guest:And then the second act in the recording studio, you know Sympathy for the Devil, the Godard Rolling Stones movie?
Guest:It's just these long dollies rolling around, zooming in and out.
Guest:And we said, if we're in a recording studio, I said to Sean, act two is a recording studio.
Guest:And he goes, dollies and zooms like Sympathy for the Devil.
Guest:And I was like, that's what it says on the page.
Guest:I already wrote those words.
Guest:And then act three, you know, handheld as crazy as possible because each time the camera is changing what it's doing, it's just, again, it's just, that's what Becky's head is doing at that moment.
Guest:It's either crazy and flying all over or it's kind of paranoid and slow or it's just shaky and insane.
Guest:And then act four, it's just nothing moving as static as can be.
Guest:But it was just a way of writing, writing the shots and saying like the style of this movie changes every 25 minutes.
Marc:And the last scene,
Guest:Act goes back to the way the first one was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Same location, same camera patterns.
Guest:But now there's this kind of eerie, you know, disembodied quality where she's been sober now for, you know, just a hair under two years.
Guest:And it has this kind of weird dream dreamlike.
Marc:And also there was a couple of years after whatever happened that implies the sort of hitting of the wall in the film that clearly it went on for a while after that.
Guest:That's very important.
Guest:I'm glad you noticed that.
Guest:It says when she's there, you know, I have a year next week, but it's not been a year since the last scene.
Guest:Right.
Marc:It's obviously anybody who apparently she made a record with that other band during that time.
Marc:And yeah.
Guest:And that is kind of addressed later, you know, like.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But yeah, that's very important that when she says I have a year, anyone who's ever known anybody knows she didn't get sober the morning after the last scene.
Guest:There was stops and starts and.
Marc:And also, I like the sycophancy of even people who are intimately, like of her mother and her ex-husband, that they see what's going on, but she's been paying for their lives.
Guest:Very much so.
Guest:And simply, we all know this.
Guest:You just can't get out of some of these relationships.
Guest:They're your family.
Guest:They're your creative.
Marc:They're also your cash cow.
Guest:And everyone says that about her.
Guest:So the golden goose who's Gail says this golden goose who sprays golden piss in our faces.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like you want to not have that, but you can't.
Guest:And you just know and everyone in the movie, their agony is our lives are tied to her and we can't help her because she doesn't want to help and she won't help herself.
Marc:And I like the, you know, the sort of thoughtful, the sort of tenuousness and fragility of, you know, even a year sober is very, you know, dicey.
Guest:And to be that and having to go out on stage for the first time in years.
Guest:I have a friend who's sober.
Guest:And after the movie, she said, I've never seen something that so accurately makes it feel like what it is when you have to step out, get in front of people, spotlight in your face.
Guest:But, you know, Lizzie looked a lot at like the Amy Winehouse documentary, which was, you know, like people were just every time she was on stage, people were like, is she even going to make it?
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:She was really into that and she was really into, did you see Jim and Andy?
Guest:The Jim Carrey, Andy Kaufman documentary?
Guest:She was really into that for some reason.
Guest:That kind of like bottled mania really appealed to her for whatever reason.
Marc:No, I could see that.
Marc:She definitely enjoyed from that.
Marc:Well, great job, buddy.
Guest:Thank you so much for watching.
Guest:I'm so flattered.
Marc:Oh yeah, why wouldn't I?
Marc:Of course.
Marc:And thanks for talking.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:And good luck with whatever happens with this movie and the next movie.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:Okay, folks, that was me and Alex Ross Perry.
Marc:It was exciting, wasn't it?
Marc:A lot talked about.
Marc:I kind of locked into his intensity a bit there.
Marc:His most recent film, Her Smell with Elizabeth Moss, is available on Apple, Amazon, and other on-demand digital platforms.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right, I'll be home.
Marc:I'll be home later today.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:I'll be home later today.
Marc:And I'll talk to you from there.
Marc:All right.
Marc:No music.
Marc:No guitar with me.
Marc:Okay?
Guest:Boomer lives!
Boomer lives!