Episode 1187 - Patty Jenkins
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What's going on?
Marc:How did you make it?
Marc:Did you get what you wanted?
Marc:Did you break it?
Marc:Did you return it?
Marc:Were you disappointed with the person that loves you?
Marc:Were you excited by them?
Marc:I want to congratulate everybody who got Marc Maron merchandise.
Marc:Wear it well.
Marc:Enjoy it.
Marc:Enjoy that t-shirt, that hat, that mug, that poster.
Marc:Dig it.
Marc:Today I'm talking to Patty Jenkins.
Marc:She's the director of Wonder Woman 1984.
Marc:She was the first woman to ever direct a superhero franchise movie.
Marc:When she directed the first Wonder Woman, she also wrote and directed the film Monster, as well as a lot of television you've probably seen.
Marc:I watched the movie.
Marc:I watched both of them.
Marc:I hadn't seen either of them.
Marc:I did not see Wonder Woman when it came out.
Marc:You know why?
Marc:Because I don't watch comic book movies.
Marc:I enjoyed the Wonder Woman movies, but I don't know what to compare them to.
Marc:I don't know what a good movie is when it comes to superhero movies or what a bad one is.
Marc:I was just not a comic book person.
Marc:And as time goes on and I talk to comic book people, it seems that, you know, I'll admit this, I might have missed out.
Marc:I might have missed out by not being taught to enjoy sports, comic books, fantasy of any kind, food that was fun.
Marc:Yeah, I think I was poorly parented, which we've established, but I was given the gift of a sense of humor most days and the love of music by my folks.
Marc:But nothing anyone could do to get me to be excited about a ball moving across a field of any kind.
Marc:From racket to racket, person to person, foot to foot.
Marc:No go, don't care.
Marc:Hand to hand, through hoops, off bats, into stands, over nets, across the field.
Marc:No go.
Marc:Not for me.
Marc:Same with flying people of all sorts.
Marc:Half animal people, people flying that can do weird things with their bodies, with their eyes, with their hands, with their feet, with their strength, with their brain, with lasers, with the wings, the cape, whatever.
Marc:Not for me.
Marc:Though the elastic guy was interesting.
Marc:Stretch it out.
Marc:Stretch it out.
Marc:And I kind of like Doctor Strange.
Marc:But as some of you know, later in life, in my 30s, when I was living in an attic that was painted blue,
Marc:88-ish, probably 88-ish.
Marc:63, 73, 83.
Marc:Oh, still in my 20s.
Marc:So I didn't get into comics until I was 25, 26.
Marc:And the comics I got into through Alan Moore's Swamp Thing were Hellblazer.
Marc:And then onward into Sandman and all the underground comics.
Marc:I did enjoy underground comics and I've discussed this before.
Marc:Didn't like superheroes, but I liked the comics where the characters fuck.
Marc:First time I saw fucking was in a comic book.
Marc:Sorry, kids.
Marc:I was like, oh, that's what happens.
Marc:That's our crumb and Spain, Spain, the comic Spain Rodriguez.
Marc:And yeah, so those I enjoyed and I continued enjoying.
Marc:8-Ball, Hate, all the Charles Burns stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:bag crumb life-changing comics did change my life our crumb changed my life totally but uh no one from the marvel universe had any impact on me whatsoever but our crumb and his fucking world rewired my brain totally
Marc:And Hellblazer, that's how out of my mind I was.
Marc:Hellblazer, when I was reading, I've got the first Hellblazers.
Marc:When I first started getting those comics, I identified with the character.
Marc:That's how psychotic I was.
Marc:That was the remnants of cocaine-induced psychosis.
Marc:I was already well into a year of sobriety, but the power of the mind, or how I saw it working, was...
Marc:Still pretty expansive.
Marc:So I was reading those John Constantine comics going, yeah, dude, I've been there.
Marc:I know what it's like to traverse these worlds and be the middleman for great mystical things.
Marc:I get it, man.
Marc:I had to do that in Los Angeles.
Marc:I was on a lot of coke, but I was definitely managing.
Marc:I was the portal between the two worlds.
Marc:And sometimes it does get a little tough to handle the forces of evil.
Marc:And it's even harder to identify them.
Marc:If I had not pulled it together at that time, if I didn't let it go and eventually stay sober and let that psychosis dissipate, I might be a QAnon person right now.
Marc:I so thoroughly understand how the conspiracy brain works because I've had it.
Marc:I've had it.
Marc:I had to shut it down.
Marc:Thomas McGuane, the mind is not a boomerang.
Marc:If you throw it too far, it will not come back.
Marc:I don't know when or where McGuane said that, but for some reason, he's a guy that I believe said it.
Marc:I've been quoting it for my entire life.
Marc:My entire life.
Marc:I've been meditating pretty regularly in the morning for about 10 minutes trying to do it, trying to work that muscle.
Marc:Work the muscle that gets the thoughts away from you just being with your breath.
Marc:There is a muscle to it and I'm kind of digging it because once you start wading away or pushing aside the noise, the thoughts and just getting into that zone where you're on the cycle of your breath and utilizing that skill.
Marc:really kind of introduces you in a quiet way to who you are.
Marc:Given that we're being introduced to who we are in a emotional and psychological way because of this isolation and claustrophobia of plague terror, the meditation kind of like gets out from under that
Marc:And it just lets you sit with yourself.
Marc:And I think during the day, working that muscle or trying to work that muscle helps you out, grounds you, makes you know who you are in almost a primitive way that you don't even need to understand.
Marc:You just know that maybe for 30 seconds to five minutes, you sat comfortably in your vessel with a clear head.
Marc:Helps.
Marc:Definitely helps.
Marc:So I talked to Patty Jenkins a few weeks ago.
Marc:Wonder Woman 1984.
Marc:Her movie is now streaming on HBO Max and is playing in theaters.
Marc:We recorded this before it was announced that she'll be directing the next Star Wars movie.
Marc:So don't expect any chat about that.
Marc:But this is me talking and it's a great talk.
Marc:to patty jenkins the film director hi hey i'm very intrigued by your workspace i'm intrigued by yours you're very backlit and as a director it's it's not uh you are you are a shadow of yourself
Guest:I'll tell you why.
Guest:It's because my son is now working in my office.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I can't be there.
Guest:So we just moved and I'm working in my husband's office and it's like a mess.
Guest:So I can move.
Guest:But then I'm always like, Jesus, what?
Guest:I don't have no idea what's going on here.
Guest:It's like just half built.
Marc:I think it's OK.
Marc:I think I can see you.
Guest:Well, I was just going to say, and I don't want to start off on a downer note, but I just loved, loved, loved Lynn and Lynn Shelton's work.
Guest:So I just wanted to say I'm so sorry.
Guest:I was so heartbroken for you and for all of us.
Marc:Yeah, she was a special person, did great movies.
Marc:And, you know, did you ever know her?
Guest:Great movies.
Guest:We wrote to each other all the time.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so I was in touch with her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Her manager, Rosalie, was my manager at one point, too.
Guest:And so she and I started communicating a long, long time ago.
Guest:And like, we're always big fans of each other.
Guest:And so it's just just so I was so bummed I didn't get to meet her more.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, she liked to write.
Marc:So she always wrote good emails.
Guest:She did.
Marc:Great emails.
Guest:Great emails.
Marc:Well, I mean, I imagine that like I don't like I imagine that your initial success with Monster must have been very inspiring to her.
Marc:I would imagine.
Marc:Is that where it started?
Marc:The communication?
Guest:Yeah, it did.
Guest:It did.
Guest:I think I think, you know.
Guest:she really liked it.
Guest:And then I really loved some of her films.
Guest:And so I think we started talking about it in that way.
Guest:And I think we would ask each other advice about different crew of people and things like that.
Guest:But yeah, she was super supportive from early on.
Marc:It's a wild how, where you've come from that.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:From that sympathetic, somehow you were able to muster enough empathy to make a full character out of that broken, horrific person.
Marc:And kind of now you're dealing with the most empowered, mythic, feminine creation that we know.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I know.
Guest:So weird.
Guest:But to me, it doesn't feel like it's very odd because it does not feel as different as it does to other people.
Guest:In both cases, it's like trying to humanize an unbelievable journey.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:and make you feel like you're in the shoes.
Guest:Like with Eileen, what was so interesting to me was when I watched her, I could tell that this was not a person who loved killing or a psychopath.
Guest:This was somebody who life experience had gotten her to a place where the best idea was to murder seven men, you know?
Guest:And so it was like, how do you get there
Guest:And clearly people get there all the time.
Guest:Clearly, you know, men go to war and go and do it in droves, become killers, you know?
Marc:Well, that but that there's a there's sort of a system in place for that.
Marc:Right.
Guest:There is.
Guest:But in but in this case, there's a system, too, which is she'd been like the thing that I thought was so amazing was people were so perplexed by like, I don't get it.
Guest:She's a man hating lesbian.
Guest:But if you looked at her life, she'd been in in the hospital like 16 times for having been beaten and raped almost to death.
Guest:And then she carried a gun for 20 years before she ever shot somebody.
Guest:So you're like, eventually somebody is going to rape you and you're going to defend yourself probably, you know?
Guest:And so that in that same way, it's her story was so heartbreaking because it was almost like the power, the strength of character that could have made her an amazing person with a different life experience, turned her into a survivor that defended herself.
Guest:And then it goes too far, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And also that you were able to dig a love story out of there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Which really humanized that person.
Marc:I don't know, I didn't read a lot of the press on that, but were you able to meet her?
Guest:I was right.
Guest:Once I started to write the film, I wrote to her and went in prison.
Guest:And so we wrote to each other for about six or seven months.
Guest:We were never friends.
Guest:She never, she never trusted me or anyone.
Guest:And she was always kind of very, very wary.
Guest:But then Charlize and I were about to go down and meet her.
Guest:And they scheduled her execution in like a month.
Guest:And so we didn't get to, but then the night before she was executed to my shock, because she had been like demanding millions of dollars and all of these things and like very, very untrusting of us.
Guest:She left all of the letters that she and her girlfriend wrote over an 11 year period for us to read the night before she was executed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was sort of her, it was sort of like her,
Guest:Like at the last moment, she was just hoping I could do something good with it and just gave it to us for nothing.
Guest:And so I got to read thousands of personal letters between her and and the real woman who was her girlfriend, which was just I mean, and even the information you read in there is so informative to to Charlize's performance as well.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And heartbreaking, you know, just like heartbreaking.
Marc:I can't imagine it.
Marc:And it's all infused with the sort of horror of her being executed and the people she killed.
Marc:Like when you have artifacts of people that have transgressed to that point, they're kind of electric on into themselves.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:And that carried through for the rest of the film.
Guest:It was a really electric air to filming it where you could sort of feel the truth.
Guest:And we were shooting in the same exact places where it all went down.
Guest:So like murders happened here and people were caught here.
Guest:And this is and so there was this kind of electricity of dancing with truth.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That is something I'll never forget because you had it on the page and you had it on the in the geography of the thing.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, well, it definitely comes through.
Marc:I mean, the way you shot it was great, but also, you know, Charlize is like, I don't even know where that came from.
Marc:I mean, she's a great actress, but there was a possession going on there.
Guest:There was a possession.
Guest:It's funny because that's exactly actually what it felt like.
Guest:I felt like I was possessed by it when I wrote it.
Guest:And I remember my ex-boyfriend, like I was sitting, I wrote the whole thing in like seven weeks and just wrote 24 hours a day, 24 hours a day.
Guest:And I remember my ex-boyfriend coming into the room and I would look up at him and he would go, whoa, whoa.
Guest:really eileen's in the house and walk back out because i was just like completely in it you know and then i definitely saw it on her but what was he like well we can go back i mean where did where'd you grow up i grew up all over the world before i was six because your dad was in the military
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so I grew up all over the place.
Guest:And then we ended up in Kansas, at the University of Kansas, where my mother started putting herself through school.
Guest:And so then then I sort of lived in Kansas till the middle of high school, but we left all the time.
Guest:So we would like spend I spent every summer in Mississippi and why those places, my grandparents lived in Mississippi.
Guest:My and then I lived for eight months or something in Long Island.
Guest:So it was like it was I kind of lived in Kansas for a long time and I kind of stayed connected.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Who's in Long Island?
Guest:My cousins, my aunt, uncle and cousin Jews.
Guest:no i wish no i don't i don't wish they're wonderful people no i'm just saying i've always felt so i've always felt so confused that i'm not jewish really just because just because all my friends are jewish and like all like i'm just like i don't understand i thought when i did my dna it would definitely come out that i was jewish and i was like no i'm not jewish it's so crazy nothing no jew in there no nothing exactly
Marc:So your dad was from Mississippi?
Guest:No, my grandparents were also in the military.
Guest:So they had gone into shipbuilding by that time and ended up in Mississippi.
Guest:They're from New York.
Guest:So I was visiting them and my father had passed away.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But he didn't die in a war.
Guest:He died in a plane crash.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Doing simulated battle.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How old were you?
Guest:Seven.
Marc:Seven.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:In a plane crash.
Marc:I can't even imagine.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's definitely the definitive experience of my life.
Marc:It's the worst thing because all you do is have these images of possibilities of fiery horribleness.
Guest:And can I tell you, at seven, the confusion of...
Guest:just as you're like, you're, first of all, you write your entire identity based on your experiences.
Guest:You're like, I am a person who always, so to get that where it's like, oh, you didn't even know that could happen.
Guest:And now it's like, oh no, the person you want to see the most, you'll never see them again, you know?
Guest:And like,
Guest:And then the world is trying to give you these messages of like, you can dream anything.
Guest:You can have anything.
Guest:And I'm like, well, I want my dad back.
Guest:No, never, never that, you know, except that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But your mom must have been great mother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:She is.
Guest:She's a great mother.
Guest:She's a great mother.
Marc:Because I mean, you know, you can like, I think that you could have ended up with borderline personality disorder or something crazy if you didn't have the great mother.
Marc:I'm
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:Yeah, no, I really did have a great mother.
Guest:And the interesting thing that also was true about it was I'm a pretty spiritual person.
Guest:I don't believe in any specific religion or anything, but I've always been very open-minded about all the things in the world.
Guest:So I think in my head, I turned him into the perfect father who was with me all the time.
Guest:And so in the weirdest way, I had a father who thought I was amazing.
Guest:He never yelled at me, never told me what to do, you know?
Guest:And so I sort of,
Marc:I turned him into he's looking over you.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So I think in this weird way, I ended up being even more nurtured by my own imagination.
Marc:But like but that's sort of interesting to me in that because there is an element of that at some point we have to self parent.
Marc:And if you have shitty parents, you when you're too young to know it, you kind of put in place a self parent that's bad.
Marc:But because of your situation, you were like your self parent was your actual parent based on what you knew of him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he was great.
Guest:He was a fighter pilot and he was cool and he's like awesome jets.
Guest:Oh, you know, it's like all these.
Marc:Do you remember him?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Very well.
Guest:I love I was so, you know, maybe it's the opposite sex parent thing, but I also think I'm a lot like him.
Guest:I was very, very, very fixated on him as a kid.
Guest:So it was, you know, I remember all kinds of things.
Marc:But not now, even though you have two movies with a fighter pilot.
Exactly.
Guest:That's what I'm saying.
Guest:That's the funny thing is I'm like, you want to go to my well, drop in, drop right in.
Marc:Do you have siblings?
Guest:Yeah, I have a sister, but she had a different father.
Marc:OK.
Marc:And your mom's a teacher.
Guest:No, my mom is an environmental scientist.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:She must be panicking.
Guest:She's been panicking my entire life, and it is so depressing.
Guest:I was just talking to her about it because she was at the EPA, and her boyfriend was the person who reported about climate change to the White House and different places.
Marc:To the monster?
Guest:No, back in the 70s and the 80s.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Guest:She was just lamenting how she's like, this is what we were trying to say.
Guest:We were trying to say, and apparently, like,
Guest:ford and and uh and jimmy carter like there were a few people who really heard it but then you know everything that has happened since it's like she was like yeah i know she's been telling me about all these things my whole life and it was drove me up the wall and i hated it you know where she's like don't the plastic and the pcbs and my entire organic and don't eat the genetically modified things right and that and now you're like well here we are here we are the sky's on fire all the chickens came home to roost
Marc:Yeah, it's a mess.
Marc:Now, do you now do you heed her advice?
Marc:Do you eat better?
Marc:Do you?
Guest:I do.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I eat.
Guest:I eat pretty well.
Guest:And I'm that now I'm that irritating mom, by the way.
Guest:My mom is like my son is like Jesus Christ, mom.
Marc:I'm just trying to have a life.
Marc:Now no one can leave their house.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Totally.
Marc:So when did you start getting involved with wanting to express yourself as an artist person?
Guest:I think immediately, as soon as that was an option, it was both like the people that I was identifying with were kind of
Guest:I was in the punk scene and the hardcore scene.
Marc:Where?
Marc:In Kansas?
Guest:In Kansas, yeah.
Guest:And in D.C.
Marc:In D.C.
Marc:too?
Guest:There was the most amazing scene in the world happened in Kansas.
Guest:I wish I could tell this story one day.
Guest:But I was in Lawrence, Kansas, and there was this little place where you could have shows called The Outhouse.
Guest:So starting in like 82, 83, 84, they started having these tiny shows.
Guest:But every band that was driving across the country had nowhere to go but The Outhouse.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, that's the way punk worked.
Guest:I know I had I saw everyone.
Guest:We just did it.
Guest:There was not a show you would miss.
Guest:You would go to every single show.
Guest:My sister was a punk rocker first.
Guest:You'd go to every show.
Guest:So when I look back at the shows that I saw and then like, you know, Henry Rollins would be at the restaurant the next day and sleeping at your friend's house.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's how the network worked.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:It was so amazing.
Guest:So I feel like so lucky.
Guest:And then I actually also interestingly witnessed that when I first started going to shows, it was kind of just weird misfits and it wasn't really about the look.
Guest:It was like a skateboarder and the person, the person who's from India.
Marc:It's like every outsider, you know, just not mainstream, not not high school culture.
Guest:No.
Guest:And then I watched in front of my eyes, it morphed into a bigger and bigger scene.
Guest:And now there's the long hairs and the straight edge and the skinheads and the fights and the violence and the guns and the drugs.
Guest:And right when I left, I was...
Guest:friends with all these guys who were like stealing credit card numbers and buying guns with them and then boom i left and like they went to jail and shot each other and it just like oh it's just so sad you got out from under the wire got out under the wire before the drugs and the guns ruined everything but what you saw like the minute man and like uh many times oh really many times yeah and my favorite show when i i can't remember what year it was if it was 85 or 84 or 86 but the best show i ever saw was the bad brains
Guest:in the rain.
Guest:And I think the lineup was, I can't find the exact thing, but I think the lineup was that it was
Guest:The Red Hot Chili Peppers opening for Fishbone, opening for Bad Brains.
Guest:So you think about the flip, like the biggest band was the Bad Brains.
Guest:And it was like 20 people because it was raining.
Guest:And so like it was when I think back.
Guest:And by the way, the Bad Brains was the band that like blew my mind.
Marc:Yeah, they are definitely mind blowers.
Guest:Yeah, that because the music was not that great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:leading up to the bad brains and the bad brain suddenly was just like i didn't even know this was possible like right it's such tight amazing music so you were like yeah i saw all those guys and you're right up close like you your timing was correct oh it was wonderful did you know didn't wasn't was william burroughs in kansas he was was he did he show up at the club sometimes
Guest:No, he never showed up there.
Guest:But my first job in film was my mom was kind of hip to all this stuff, of course, because Burroughs was there.
Guest:And it's great that you know that.
Guest:So he did this thing called the River City Reunion, where he brought all the beat poets to all the old men.
Marc:He brought all the old guys.
Marc:All of them.
Marc:Ferwin Getty and Ginsburg and Corso.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So my mom was friends with the documentary filmmaker, Mark Kaplan, who was going to make a documentary about it.
Guest:And she made me be his P.A.,
Guest:And I was like, I had no idea these people were really famous.
Guest:I really was like, ugh, whatever.
Guest:My mom's generation.
Guest:What's with these old guys?
Guest:So my first job was when I was about 14 or 13, and I was his PA.
Guest:And he ended up assigning me to Allen Ginsberg, who I had to follow around Allen Ginsberg.
Marc:He was disappointed you weren't a boy.
Guest:Oh, yes, he was.
Guest:And it's funny because somebody asked –
Guest:William Burroughs is, you know, partner of many, many years about me at some point.
Marc:The guy who took care of him?
Marc:What was his name?
Marc:Kronhauer or Braunhauer.
Marc:It's a German name.
Marc:Oh, man.
Guest:I remember.
Guest:And he said something about like, I never even met her.
Guest:I never saw her.
Guest:And I'm like, no, I know you guys didn't see me, but I was standing right there.
Guest:I was invisible to all you guys.
Guest:But there's actually a postcard at City Lights bookstore of Keith Haring drawing
Guest:uh this this like obscene drawing on the ground and alan ginsburg standing and talking to him and i have a mohawk and i'm standing right behind them in this postcard yeah yeah it's like my one of my favorite little mementos that's great yeah it was great it was great it was fun and it's amazing to think i was like living in kansas and
Guest:I had just met Matt Dillon, who was filming a thing for Kansas, and he was super pissed off at me about something.
Guest:So I'm standing with those guys and trying to duck Matt Dillon because he thinks I've stolen one hundred dollars from him.
Guest:Like to think that's all going down in Kansas is so hilarious.
Marc:What was Matt Dillon doing there?
Marc:Was he part of it?
Guest:He was filming a movie called Kansas.
Guest:So the theater where the beatnik experience is happening is catty corner to the hotel that Matt Dillon's staying in.
Guest:And Matt, who's gone on to be a very good friend of mine now for many years.
Guest:But Matt, because I was a punk rocker,
Guest:He would always come up to me to try to figure out where the shows were at, the things were going on.
Guest:So I knew him and then he dropped a hundred dollars and I took it and I didn't give it back to him.
Guest:And then he found out that he was very angry with me.
Guest:And this is a joke we still have to this day.
Marc:The hundred dollar joke.
Guest:You owe me a hundred dollars.
Marc:So in essence, the beatniks are responsible for your first job in movies.
Guest:Yes, totally true.
Marc:Because of your mom.
Marc:And you got to see old William Burroughs up close and Alan and all those guys.
Marc:It's weird because like all the punk rockers owe William certainly a debt of gratitude for blowing something open.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:Grauerholtz, James Grauerholtz.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:Grauerholtz.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Thank God.
Marc:Did you look it up or you just remembered?
Guest:No, I just remembered.
Marc:God, that's great.
Guest:Because I know his name so well.
Marc:Yeah, he's a nice guy.
Marc:He sort of took care of him.
Guest:Yeah, really did.
Marc:Well then, so that's a hell of a baptism into the world of art.
Guest:Yeah, so I didn't totally answer your question, but what it was, was that's what we all were doing.
Guest:We're making flyers, we're taking photographs, we're in bands, you know, and I tried all of, I did all those things.
Guest:I was in a band, I was, did this, you know, all of those things.
Marc:What'd you do in a band, sing?
Guest:I did so badly, so badly that it didn't last long.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that's what it was.
Guest:What was interesting was I was so drawn to the arts like a moth to the flame, but I was also capable of having self-awareness to be like, I'm not so good at that.
Guest:That's not so good.
Guest:Literally from the moment I was in junior high and started doing that stuff all the way up until I went to painting school at Cooper Union and had figured out that I wanted to be in the fine arts and figured out that Cooper Union was the
Guest:my favorite school in the world and where I was dying to go and got in there.
Guest:And it was only once I got in there that I took a film course and like my head just exploded.
Marc:But it's interesting that the sort of punk idea, the punk aesthetic really engaged all possibilities, right?
Marc:Because, you know, you were printing, you were doing paintings, you could do silk screens, you could do music.
Marc:Like if there's any kind of like guerrilla education to all the arts, it's that.
Marc:Photography.
Guest:Totally.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Doing
Guest:crazy hair things you're making your own clothing you're it's such a hotbed for creativity how'd you land on painting i think i when you're in it's weird because i actually had a really extensive education in in obscure film because my mom's a film buff and the university had this theater where they played great european and obscure films all the time what was the what was the one movie that like kind of blew your mind during the punk period where you realize like oh there's weird movies out
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:I got really, this is, it's funny.
Guest:I got really into Ken Russell at one point and he's making like a layer of the white worm and Salome's last dance.
Guest:And so the weirder, the better for me.
Marc:Didn't he do altered states eventually?
Marc:Didn't, did Ken Russell?
Marc:Did he?
Marc:Like I know the layer of the white.
Guest:He might have gothic.
Guest:I remember loving it.
Guest:I just loved all those weird, weird films.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But yet somehow when you're living in the Midwest, nobody ever tells you, you could be a filmmaker.
Guest:It just, it, it was.
Guest:And, and, and sometimes people will ask me now, like, when did you decide you wanted to be a director?
Guest:I'm like,
Guest:I still don't want to be a director.
Guest:I couldn't care less about being a director.
Guest:I just want to make cool films.
Guest:I never saw the role of a director and wanted to be it.
Guest:I just want to make the films I see in my head.
Guest:And so that was it.
Guest:I'm very emotion-based.
Guest:I also think like us talking about my father, that burning damage and pain, I had no outlet for.
Guest:I couldn't figure out how to express it in a two-dimensional image.
Marc:You mean the grief of him being gone?
Guest:The grief and the romance of tragedy.
Guest:I was just absolutely engaged in a dance.
Guest:with the romance of tragedy and longing.
Marc:Well, because you sort of, that was your way you had to be to process it.
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:And there was no outlet for that in so many of these arts.
Guest:And so I remember that
Guest:But almost the moment that I decided I wanted to do this was when Peter Gabriel did the soundtrack to Birdie.
Guest:And I was living in D.C.
Guest:at the time.
Guest:And I would go to New York every weekend because my my friends all were in New York.
Marc:What were you doing in D.C.?
Marc:Oh, and your mom worked for the government.
Guest:My mom moved to D.C.
Guest:And then and then but I I was just my head was in New York.
Guest:So I took the train every weekend to New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember him doing that score and listening to the soundtrack of Birdie.
Guest:And it was so sad.
Guest:tragic and beautiful and all of these things.
Guest:And I was like, that's what I want to do.
Guest:You know, I wasn't putting my finger on the fact that it was going to be.
Guest:Oh, so the music, but I was like, I want to make you feel these things.
Guest:I want to express these things.
Marc:So that's when you realized it all worked together in film.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I think I was even starting to write stories that went with the music, but just not until I took a film course.
Guest:And then all of a sudden taking a film course, they'd have to kick me out of the steam back at midnight because I would just be putting music to picture and music to picture and music to picture.
Guest:And I was like, it was the first time I had a completely authentic relationship to art where I couldn't get enough.
Guest:And I just want to shoot and I wanted to look and I wanted to shoot and I wanted to look.
Guest:And so it just took off from there.
Marc:that's the basics sight and sound.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so, so from there, but like, what about what I, how, how much painting did you actually do?
Guest:I painted while I was there.
Guest:Cause there actually was no real film degree.
Guest:Like there was only an experimental film department.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was mainly made.
Guest:It was mainly for making like MoMA installation pieces.
Guest:It wasn't for making narrative films.
Marc:So strange shorts with colors and things.
Guest:So even my teachers would say, we don't know how to teach you what it is you're trying to do.
Guest:And I was making the worst narrative short films.
Guest:No idea about crossing the line or how to do it.
Guest:I still don't quite understand that.
Guest:Yeah, I could explain it to you, but it would be boring for your podcast.
Marc:Well, that's something that you become second nature once you start directing.
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:Totally.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So so you're a Cooper.
Marc:You finish a Cooper.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you got a degree in painting.
Guest:No, I stay all four years.
Guest:I get a degree in fine arts.
Guest:I'm like an independent study film student.
Guest:And I just make my own films the whole time.
Guest:But I still keep taking silk screening and typography and painting.
Guest:And, you know, I take the other courses I'm supposed to take.
Marc:But you're obsessed with film.
Guest:Obsessed with film and how I'm going to get there.
Guest:So then I become...
Guest:fixated on getting an internship at a commercial production company, the artist in me was like, well, then let me get my hands on the materials.
Guest:Like it was never about like, let's write a film and get it financed.
Guest:Like I didn't even know how to do that sort of thing.
Guest:I was like, let me get my hand on the cameras, on the big cameras.
Guest:And so I ended up getting an internship at a commercial production company called Epoch Films.
Guest:And then very quickly, I ended up getting onto the set of a commercial that was being shot where I knew the camera loader.
Guest:And he said, come work with us.
Guest:If you work for free, it was like this top notch group of, of, of camera people.
Guest:If you, if you can work for free, they'll train you, but you have to train for like six months for film cartridges.
Marc:Like this was, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:This was like, and this was like top line commercial.
Guest:So they were doing Nike and American Express.
Guest:So I worked with them and then boom, I was a camera person.
Guest:And then I was a camera person for nine years, nine years and a half.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For a long time because I got successful at it and the jobs were constant and addictive.
Marc:Were you in the union?
Guest:Yeah, totally in the union and you're doing all the, you know, and it was the height of rap videos.
Guest:So I did more rap videos than I can ever describe.
Guest:It's so funny.
Guest:So many of them are like now legendary things.
Guest:And at the time they weren't so, but it's like so many of Mary J and Biggie and
Guest:Wu Tang and and, you know, all the I did most of the puffy videos and, you know, you're just on the crew on a camera, just on the crew constantly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On these things.
Marc:So that was your life.
Marc:So you're living it.
Marc:But like at that time, were you aware that you were just getting an education where you were also making your own shit?
Guest:The fantasy was that I was about to make my own shit the whole time.
Guest:But I was the victim of that lifestyle, which is if you hook up with certain DPs and you hook up with certain crew and certain first ACs when I was a second, you got to do this.
Guest:So I ended up working all the time.
Guest:And that's why it was like, so I was aware of the education for the first few years, right?
Guest:But then being a camera person is so all-consuming.
Guest:I wasn't learning anything about directing.
Guest:So then I was actually just berating myself and so hard on myself for the last five years of it.
Guest:Like, what are you doing?
Guest:I was making a ton of money, but I was like, you're not getting anywhere.
Marc:Do you still do that?
Guest:Finally, no.
Guest:Finally, no.
Guest:I've actually reached a point now where I'm like,
Guest:wow if i don't make another film like that's not bad that was great but is it part of your process though to beat the shit out of yourself oh yeah when i'm making a film i'm extremely hard on myself yeah and that it's and that you're missing something and i can't sleep i wake up at three in the morning you're dropping the ball it's got to be the moment should be different you have not quite there but by the way it's
Guest:I believe in it because if you believe in self-flagellation too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The myth of that, if you can stop doing it, no, that every time I've ever stopped doing it, you miss something, you know, and all the people I know who learn how to be at peace with themselves.
Guest:I'm like, I've, I, by the way, I love directing now and I have a great time on set.
Guest:But every time you start to assume it's going to work out, you are going to miss something.
Guest:Like it's, you've got to be vigilant on yourself and on quality.
Yeah.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you're saying that people who are at peace with themselves, that's when they start to wane.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you watch it as people get older.
Guest:You'll hear all of their descriptives, some of them being great filmmakers.
Guest:And they say, you know, I used to torture myself and stay up all night.
Guest:But now I just and I'm like, I can tell.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I can tell.
Guest:I saw that last movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And that's what I think.
Guest:I'm like, if you're not living it.
Marc:and desperately engaged with it it shows it starts to show up so now a couple questions after five years of beating yourself up for having a gig as a camera person what what got you into uh learning how to direct and then also like did you make relationships on those crews that you keep today do you still do you use anybody that you knew back then
Guest:I have not been able to use anybody that I knew back then.
Guest:I haven't because they're all on kind of their own journey that went a different direction.
Guest:But meanwhile, I do stay in touch with a number of people, particularly the camera crew guys that I worked with.
Guest:I love them and I miss them so much.
Guest:And there's so many crew people I desperately miss.
Guest:There were, you know, some people like that I knew, you know, who came to Hollywood and I, you know, I see them here and there.
Guest:But no, I haven't ended up working with any of those guys.
Guest:But then what so what then what happened was when I hit the eight year mark.
Guest:I remember, you know, you were in New York and you saw those people who kind of defined what they were and started to succeed.
Guest:And I was watching a bunch of my friends who would say, I'm an actor.
Guest:And particularly if they had parents to support them, now they're an actor.
Guest:Like who?
Guest:Oh, just all kinds of people.
Guest:I mean, so many different people.
Guest:Anybody we know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I remember knowing David Blaine when he's like a teenager and, you know, like, like all the, all of the guys from Stella and, you know, like all those Jeff Ross, like, so you were there when I was there.
Guest:Yeah, no, we were at all the, what was the, the Luna, what was it?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:That all those things.
Guest:So just I feel like almost everybody you like it's just like there were so many people around that I was seeing and we were all just like weirdo people trying to do their thing.
Guest:And now they're everywhere.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They're like every Gavin O'Connor was a good friend.
Guest:Now he's a big director doing stuff.
Guest:It's crazy.
Marc:It's so funny.
Marc:Some of them have arced and are now plateaued.
Marc:I mean, some of them actually some of those people have had their time.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:absolutely yeah so it's a total trip you know yeah but um but so i just hit that point where i was like i can't get off the train because i keep needing to pay my rent so i have to keep working and this isn't going to work so i was like so you either need to
Guest:At every point in my career, I've been totally fine to let myself give up the dream.
Guest:You know, I was like, just don't, you don't have to be a director.
Guest:Just move to Long Island and get married and have kids and be a camera person or an operator or something.
Guest:And I was like, no, I want, and then I almost, almost outside of myself, like, wow, man, you must, you're really serious about this, I guess.
Guest:So I took out a bunch of loans, applied to AFI, because I heard you could get in only as a director, which I was like, I'm not going to go learn how to do sound after
Guest:eight years of being a crew person.
Guest:I don't need the rudimentary education of film.
Guest:I just want to go as a director.
Guest:And I got in and I just peddled to the metal.
Guest:Like if I don't make it in these two years, that was here in LA.
Guest:That's what brought me to LA.
Marc:Is getting into AFI.
Guest:Getting into AFI, I was like, okay, that's it.
Guest:I remember being in my apartment on 76th Street between Columbus and Central Park West.
Guest:And all I want to do was be a director and move to the corner with a view of Central Park.
Guest:And I was like, I can't get there from here.
Guest:So I got to go to LA and make it as a director.
Marc:Take a detour.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So then that's what crossed me over to directing.
Marc:And that education, what's the setting for that?
Marc:I don't even know how AFI works.
Yeah.
Guest:AFI is a very small school and you get in as what you get in as.
Guest:So it's very international, pretty artsy compared to some of the schools.
Guest:Like it's much more kind of a lot of European film.
Marc:Two-year program?
Guest:A two-year program until you get in as a director.
Guest:And back then it was, you had to be invited back for the second year.
Guest:So you get in as a director, you make a bunch of things, and then you come back the second year and you make your bigger short film, which I made a female superhero short film.
Marc:And then, you know, you've always been hung up on superheroes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've always loved the metaphor.
Guest:So it was literally two or three months after my father died.
Guest:My mom dropped my sister and I at Superman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you think about how emotional Superman he gets, he loses his father in the beginning and then he gets sent to earth and then his father dies again.
Guest:I sobbed.
Guest:Like I was like just profoundly rocked by that movie.
Guest:And then the release when he goes on to become a superhero and save the world and do these things, it just had this deep, impactful effect on.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, if you're in the middle of your own grieving and unable to wrap your brain around it and then you see it processed for you in this mythic story.
Marc:And that must have been very in your eight years old, seven, seven.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That must have like reconfigured your whole brain.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:So even though I always assumed I would be an artsy filmmaker, and when I made Monster, I assumed I was going to be that kind of person, the truth was I have always had an appreciation, not for all tentpoles, but for the certain archetypal massive movie that can affect an audience in that way, like has always been loomed large in my subconscious.
Marc:Right, but not just an audience, a child's brain.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, totally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hugely.
Marc:But you would never have foreseen.
Marc:I mean, I imagine you must have excavated that memory in in in relation to the when did you start really kind of integrating that into your story?
Marc:Was it around when you did Wonder Woman or before?
Marc:Did you always know that?
Guest:In retrospect, I realize I always knew it, but it's one of those things you only realize in retrospect.
Guest:I remember this moment standing outside of Cooper Union.
Guest:And at Cooper, I was making these like Woody Allen meets girls-esque films starring myself and my friends, you know, because there's no one else you can film.
Guest:So you're just running around with a camera.
Guest:And then we're very indie, you know.
Guest:And I remember somebody saying to me,
Guest:This is so great.
Guest:You could be like a girl doing like the Woody Allen type of film.
Guest:And I remember I was standing at the cube outside of the Cooper building.
Guest:And I remember saying, no, I want to get my hands on the big game.
Guest:And I was feeling Superman.
Guest:I remember I was seeing like sparkly lights in my head and I was like...
Guest:I just want to, I want to have a shot at the big emotions.
Guest:It wasn't the big game.
Guest:It wasn't the big success.
Guest:I wanted to play in the well of the big emotions, you know?
Marc:Yeah, you want, yeah.
Guest:And so it was funny, like now that I look back, I'm like, oh, it was Wonder Woman, you know, who I loved Wonder Woman.
Guest:But that was why I made the, then I made the female superhero short film.
Guest:And then after I made Monster, when I went around to all the studios, the first thing I told Warner Brothers is I want to make Wonder Woman.
Guest:Like nobody's made Wonder Woman.
Guest:So that was like 2004.
Guest:You know, I told them I wanted to.
Marc:Let me ask you, though.
Marc:Let me ask you.
Marc:So like so it seems to me that if I can put this together in my own head by by listening to you, that, you know, that monster was your art film.
Marc:In a sense that this is how I'm going to explore the sort of non mythological.
Marc:This story is a story of a of a broken, damaged person in a lot of trouble that requires a certain type of attention.
Marc:I have the chops to do this.
Marc:This is what I learned to do.
Marc:And I need to get this out of my system.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's the big emotions, too, even though it's huge emotions.
Guest:So that that's the thing.
Guest:It fit the bill for me of not wanting to do something.
Guest:You know, you I'm sure you remember there was something bugging me deeply about the art world when I was at Cooper.
Guest:It had become so meta.
Guest:ironic, conceptual.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I remember having grown up with the tragedy of my father, I was like, man, it's been a long time since we had a war guys.
Guest:What are you doing?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Barbie shoes in the room.
Guest:And then we're all going to laugh about it for 20 minutes.
Guest:Like nobody's even trying to do great.
Guest:You're just all escaping under the guise of you don't get it.
Guest:I'm too blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:And so it really bugged me.
Guest:And I remember
Guest:really thinking i'm doing it i don't you could give me made fun of for trying to do emotional things because if you didn't hit the nail on the head you were vulnerable right i remember having this moment where i was like i'm gonna keep doing this and i'm gonna keep doing this until i figure out how to do it i don't care you can tell me i'm cheesy you can tell me i'm not cool i've been cool i've i've grew up around the punk scene and everybody i knew was cooler you're gonna risk the vulnerability
Guest:Yeah, I'm going to do it.
Guest:I want to try to figure out how to do this.
Guest:So Monster hit the bill completely.
Guest:And also, it spoke to tragedy.
Guest:It was like, guess what?
Guest:Sometimes not everything works out.
Guest:Not everything happens for a reason.
Guest:Some people's lives are terrible.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that's the thing you did with her is that when I really think like her vulnerability was like devastating because like the way she played it and however you guys conceived of that dynamic is that she was so ripped open in all her anger and all her violence, like the vulnerability was almost unbearable.
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:Totally.
Marc:Not only did you achieve it, you overshot in the sense that like not only did you create a vulnerability, a human vulnerability with big emotions, but you did it in in in such a way that kind of defied anything that had been done before in terms of a female protagonist.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And as dark as it was, I appreciate that.
Guest:It was also uniting with Charlize, who had that to give as well.
Guest:Had that same, you know, she'd had her own childhood tragedy.
Guest:And so it was like kind of a moment for the two of us to come together to like express the nuance of
Guest:of how fucked up things can be, you know, like how, how, how subtle that darkness can be.
Marc:And living with the darkness.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Your whole life.
Marc:But so how does, like, I guess my question is, like, from independent, like, because, like, I know I've met a couple other people.
Marc:Well, there's only a few of you.
Marc:I've talked to Favreau about, you know, the leap from indie to big movies.
Marc:I guess I talked to him about it.
Marc:But I mean, what really happens, you know, after Monster?
Marc:I mean, that's an Oscar winning movie, right?
Guest:Yeah, it's a one I never know how to answer because it was so perplexing to me, who's worked every day of my life.
Guest:And all of a sudden, I hit this weird thing.
Guest:I was just telling the story the other day, and it's so funny.
Guest:I lost so much money-making monster that when I came out of it, so I've accrued all this debt now from being in film school that I'm supposed to start paying off.
Guest:But I get paid $60,000.
Marc:I think you can pay it off now.
Guest:Yeah, finally now.
Guest:It took a long time.
Guest:But I made no money for Monster.
Guest:And so I ended up $80,000 in debt after Monster.
Guest:And all of a sudden, it was this thing where everybody was like, what's your next film?
Guest:And I was like, I don't want to do film like that.
Guest:There wasn't anything ready to go that I thought was good enough.
Marc:So after all is said and done, you make this masterpiece.
Marc:It gets all this critical acclaim, but you're broke.
Marc:and you're in the hole.
Marc:So why the fuck would I do that?
Guest:And that's a hilarious story, because I'm flying around from places, and they put per diem on your hotel room, and I don't have any other money.
Guest:So people are like, you want to go out to dinner?
Guest:And I'm like, nah.
Guest:Bellman's like, can we carry your bags?
Guest:I'm like, I got it.
Marc:I got it.
Guest:Because I have nothing to tip them with.
Marc:It was just... Can we go out to dinner?
Marc:Yeah, if you come to the hotel.
Guest:If you come to the hotel... Exactly.
Guest:It was just absurd.
Guest:But...
Guest:So suddenly I had no way to support myself.
Guest:And I was like, wait, so now I'm now I'm a known director.
Guest:I can't AC anymore.
Guest:This is this is terrible.
Guest:I have no way to make money.
Guest:You actually wanted to go back to doing film.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I need to make money while I think about what my next film is going to be, because, of course, making monster was devastating emotionally.
Guest:You know, it was devastating.
Guest:so dark and so heavy and then I finished the movie and it hit theaters like three weeks later and so I was like reeling when that success hit I was just like whoa give me a second guys you know so um
Guest:But what then ended up happening was like, I didn't want to work in the studio system.
Guest:I wanted to write on spec.
Guest:So I need a way because I don't believe in getting notes from people.
Guest:And at that stage, you know, I'm like, let me figure out what I'm doing.
Guest:And then you can give me notes.
Guest:But I don't want to start talking about notes before I even start writing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So then I start doing TV pilots and then I have a movie that I was going to do that I super loved.
Guest:And then, you know, it kept being a struggle and I was going to make a movie about Chuck Yeager for two years.
Marc:But Monster got you the gig like, you know, you were you had you had chops as a director and you could TV wanted to hire you.
Marc:You could get gigs.
Marc:Chuck Yeager.
Marc:How'd that happen?
Guest:because of my father being a fighter pilot and I, I put the word out.
Guest:I wanted to do the Chuck Yeager story someday.
Guest:I didn't want to do it right after monster.
Guest:I was like, didn't feel ready yet, but then Chuck responded and it had fallen out somewhere else.
Guest:And so then I was with Chuck and doing research and traveling around and meeting him and watching him fly and things.
Guest:But he, there was just the rights, his life rights got super complicated.
Guest:Huh?
Guest:And it just got to a place where it was just, it was, there was no way.
Guest:And I just got, I fatigued on it finally.
Marc:Did you like hanging around with Chuck?
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:I mean, I have coming from a family of fire pilots.
Guest:It was like,
Guest:unbelievable and like hearing his stories and watching him fly I got to go out to Edwards Air Force Base with him and watch him I mean it was incredible oh wow so he was getting up in the planes he must have been in his like 60s or something when you knew oh no he was in his 70s or 80s oh man yeah
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was wonderful.
Guest:But anyway, you know, some of it was naivete of like working on something for too long when you don't have the life rights.
Guest:Some of it was, but there was some gender stuff for sure.
Guest:Like I felt like there definitely was, I feel super lucky that, that everybody in the industry wanted to hire me, but I felt like they wanted to hire me like a beard.
Guest:They wanted me to walk around on set being a woman director, but it was their story and their, their vision.
Marc:So they could go, look, we got one.
Marc:There she is.
Marc:Look at her.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And my ideas, they were like, I don't even want to read.
Guest:They wouldn't even read the script.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You know, it was such mistrust of a different way of doing things and a different point of view.
Guest:So that was definitely happening in there.
Guest:And so even all the way up to Wonder Woman, when I first joined Wonder Woman, it was kind of like, yeah, OK, but let's do it this other way.
Guest:And I was like, that's that's not how women don't want to see that.
Guest:And that's not her being harsh and tough and cutting people's heads off.
Guest:Like that's that's not what Wonder Woman.
Guest:I'm a Wonder Woman fan.
Marc:I don't that's not what you already made one monster movie about a woman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that so still I could feel that little shaky nervousness of my point of view.
Marc:But that sort of like like that script had been in that property had been around forever.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And how did you like how did you come to it?
Guest:So I told Warner Brothers I wanted to do it in 2004.
Guest:I met with them about it every two years between then and then and when I finally did.
Marc:They didn't want to do it because they didn't see it viable.
Guest:They were nervous that it's not viable.
Guest:They're all freaked out by the female superhero films that had failed, the smaller things that had failed.
Guest:and also Chris Nolan was making the, the dark night thing.
Guest:So I think they were just trying to figure out what they were doing with DC at that time.
Guest:Then they did come to me in 2008 and said, here, we're, we're interested if you would want to write and direct the Wonder Woman.
Guest:I was pregnant.
Guest:I was like, you not, not now, now I, or 2007.
Guest:I was like, I can't.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so then I missed that.
Guest:And yeah,
Guest:Um, it just took, it was just the stars aligning, you know?
Guest:And then finally the moment came and there was a moment they wanted to do a story that I wasn't the right person for.
Guest:And so I said, no, it can't be me.
Guest:And they hired somebody else for a little bit.
Guest:And then they came, I told them what film I wanted to make.
Marc:In terms, in terms of Wonder Woman.
Guest:I said, this is not the story I think you should tell with Wonder Woman.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I, I didn't want to be the one to, to get content.
Guest:in a fight for years about it.
Guest:And so they said, no, we want to do it our way.
Guest:So they tried to go do it their way.
Guest:And then they came back to me a year later and said, actually, do you want to do it your way?
Guest:And boom, I just went and made the movie.
Marc:So they had somebody else write a script?
Marc:So it didn't get up?
Guest:About 30 scripts.
Guest:During that period of time, there were so many scripts because I could see the writing on the wall.
Guest:There was an internal war on every level about what Wonder Woman should be.
Marc:And how did you just land in the superhero world?
Marc:I mean...
Marc:Because weren't you offered some other superhero movie as well?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was attached to Thor 2 in the interim there.
Guest:So it was just something I wanted in.
Guest:I wanted to do a big superhero film.
Guest:And I started saying that right away after Monster.
Guest:People were confused by... I didn't want to do... I got every woman...
Guest:film a woman this is a story about women who blah blah blah i'm like i want to make movies about women but i don't want to make movies about being a woman yeah that's so boring you know like i want to make movies about women doing all kinds of things you know right so so people were kind of confused but word got out that i wanted to do a superhero film and you know to marvel's credit
Guest:Like on a movie that did not require a woman at all, they hired me.
Guest:And so, you know, I've always been super grateful to them, even though it didn't work out.
Marc:And it didn't work out because why?
Guest:They wanted to do a story that I thought was not going to succeed.
Guest:And I knew that it couldn't be me.
Guest:It couldn't be me that had that happen.
Guest:I was like, if they hired any guy to do it, it was going to be no big deal.
Guest:But I knew in my heart, I could not make a good movie out of the story they wanted to do.
Marc:It wasn't the one that... What's that guy?
Marc:Waititi directed, was it?
Guest:No, that was such a good movie.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Taika is... I'm actually so grateful that Thor found Taika because Taika is like the most genius...
Guest:fit for thor yeah of all time lynn i even watched it lynn loved it uh lynn loved that movie amazing i gotta watch ragnarok is like one of the best marvel movies of all time it's so good that movie is pure joy and so well executed
Marc:Oh, great.
Marc:I got to watch it because I know Lynn kept track.
Marc:I'm not a superhero movie guy.
Marc:Neither was she, but she liked that one.
Guest:It's not going to matter.
Guest:You'll love Thor Ragnarok.
Guest:It's irrelevant.
Guest:That's what I'm saying.
Guest:Taika is a great filmmaker and he just made a great film.
Marc:I just watched the first, your Wonder Woman, the first one the other night.
Marc:I just finally got around to it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had a feeling that might be true.
Guest:When I thought about you, I was like, I will bet you anything.
Guest:Mark has never seen Wonder Woman and he's going to have to watch it.
Guest:And there are so many people like you out there.
Marc:I watched both of them.
Marc:Did you?
Marc:That's so crazy.
Marc:Yeah, I watched a new one.
Marc:But but like I know that like it was great.
Marc:And I was on I was I was like absorbing the reaction to Wonder Woman.
Marc:But it's not it had nothing.
Marc:It wasn't about Wonder Woman.
Marc:It's like it takes a lot to get me to watch, you know, one of those movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But I was I was, you know, home alone, you know, a few nights ago.
Marc:And I mean, I just actually I watched it with my friend Kit, who had never seen it.
Marc:And and I liked it.
Marc:I look I'll squirt out a few tears.
Marc:I'm up for the ride.
Marc:I thought I was very satisfied with the ending of that one.
Marc:If you're going to get these pyrotechnics, you want to feel the release at the end.
Marc:And the effects worked for me.
Marc:I was happy about it.
Marc:The light show was good.
Guest:Good.
Guest:I'm glad.
Guest:That was the only thing that the studio forced my hand on was that it was not supposed to be.
Guest:It was supposed to be like
Guest:that he never turns into Ares.
Guest:The whole point of the movie was that you get there to the big monster and he's just standing there looking at you and saying, I didn't do anything.
Guest:And then the studio kept saying, okay, we'll let you do that.
Guest:And then we'll see.
Guest:And then I could feel it creeping up.
Guest:And then at the last minute, they were like, you know what?
Guest:We want Ares to show up.
Guest:And I was like, God damn, we don't have time to do that now.
Guest:Nope, you got to do it.
Guest:And so it pisses me off now because sometimes I'll read the reviews and I'm like, the only thing that we got...
Guest:unanimously some shit about was that was that end pyrotechnics and they're like dc always does this and the truth was it was them the studio did make me do that and and it wasn't right but that's okay you get shit for that sometimes people just say like the movie they really loved the movie except for the effects in the end and i'm like i know
Marc:When he makes the armor out of all the scraps and he becomes the guy.
Guest:I ended up being really at peace with what we did, but it was done too quickly.
Marc:That's so funny.
Marc:That's the part where I'm like, that was cool.
Marc:See, maybe I'm exactly.
Guest:No, but by the way, once you get the note, you embrace it.
Guest:It's happening anyway.
Guest:And I ended up super proud of it.
Guest:It just didn't have enough time to look as good as the effects needed to look.
Marc:Oh, I see.
Guest:I loved all the ideas of everything I did.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It was just a little rushed.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So your ending would have been that he stays David Thewlis or whatever his name is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They would have a big fight because he's a god.
Guest:He can do anything.
Marc:Doesn't need that.
Guest:She can't.
Guest:She can't hurt him.
Marc:He doesn't need the armor.
Guest:He didn't need the armor.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But they wanted to.
Marc:Well, they were throwing something in for the boys, I guess.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:I mean, it's the boys who had the hardest time with it still.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And not that much.
Guest:I'm just saying, like, I got picky about what the, listen, we got really good reviews, but the tiny little comments, I would say.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That you obsessed over for.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But but like the thing I didn't I don't really know that I fully understand because I'm just a guy and I'm not a guy who was a comic book guy anyways.
Marc:But I don't think I really could wrap my brain around in an empathetic way was just the fact that little girls had nothing.
Marc:They had nothing.
Marc:And it's like, and it's one of those things.
Marc:I talked to Gina Davis about this as well, where like not being, having ever been a little girl, even thinking about it, that this was this tremendous cultural missing piece to, to the idea of institutionalized sexism that they got, they have zero role models that are strong.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And weirdly the, the, the woman stuff, the funny battle that I found myself at the forefront of,
Guest:was what the sexism of the world would allow a female powerful person to be like, which is essentially very masculine, right?
Guest:They have to be very masculine.
Guest:And so I got caught in this interesting forefront of trying to make a very feminine,
Guest:person powerful and it just made everybody so uncomfortable but of course that's what the women were waiting for we're waiting for a woman that we relate with right who she's feminine right she's feminine she's beautiful she's funny she's you know got vulnerabilities and she's a badass right and so that was the most interesting like
Guest:That was the most interesting thing about that that period of time.
Marc:But that was like this was something you had to work out like that.
Marc:You had to assess that these women that that do get mythological status act like men.
Marc:So you had to figure out how to load up Wonder Woman with enough depth to be all these other things.
Guest:It was easy.
Guest:It was easy.
Guest:It comes second nature to me.
Guest:I didn't have to figure anything out.
Guest:I've just been watching other things saying I have no relationship with that.
Guest:So I was watching these.
Guest:female badass movies over and over again and i was like you just put a woman's body on top of a plot line of a man you know and it's like always about rape and revenge because that's what like men that's like the only thing they can get to sometimes to fuel action for women is that they would be right right she's crazy man she's gonna kill some dudes
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why else would a woman kill people?
Guest:She was raped, you know, like it's just this, these, these, these things.
Guest:So for me, it was very easy.
Guest:I've known so many super bad-ass women who were super feminine.
Guest:And so, and I love Wonder Woman, by the way.
Guest:And Wonder Woman was inherently that like Linda Carter's Wonder Woman.
Guest:How beautiful she was, was like intrinsic to it for her to become harder is not Wonder Woman.
Marc:But yeah, but also like on that show, like as a template, I mean, she was not menacing.
Marc:No, you know, she was.
Guest:Don't worry about it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She's going to save the day.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Superhero.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was I was I was an interesting thing.
Guest:And I was very lucky.
Guest:Zack Snyder was a great producer and had my back and, you know, supported me.
Guest:And, you know, I was able to steer the ship over to where it needed to be.
Marc:Well, yeah, it was the whole experience of like this idea of the one thing, because I don't watch a lot of superhero movies and I haven't read a lot of comic books is you have to sort of accept like, you know, hey, how come that's like that?
Marc:Don't worry about it.
Marc:It just is.
Marc:OK, you know, like there are things that you just have to.
Marc:This is not real.
Marc:It's not real life.
Marc:So that's the way that is.
Marc:OK, yeah, fine.
Guest:No, it's a funny line to walk all the time because you are like Wonder Woman would never.
Guest:I remember my husband commenting when there was this big war about whether Batman would kill people or not.
Guest:And like it was just raging back and forth.
Guest:And finally, my husband leaned to me and he's like, does everybody know Batman's not real?
Guest:That he's a fictional character, that he does every different thing in different comic books.
Guest:Yeah, it's a funny thing.
Marc:Well, that's sort of a couple of questions.
Marc:I guess with the first one, what was the expectation?
Marc:In doing that movie and working with the studio, are there either your own or studio or a mixture of boxes you've got to check as someone making?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, for sure.
Guest:But nobody knows that more than I do and nobody cares about it more than I do.
Marc:What are they?
Guest:In fact, it's got to have a hero that you can fall in love with and identify with.
Guest:It's got to have great action.
Guest:It really should have, in certain ones, it should have a sense of humor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:you know and it needs to be super entertaining okay like those are the those are the things you have to you have to satisfy and it should be true to the hero that you're doing because you have a huge fan base you know so those sorts of things that was honestly what i was the most obsessed with coming in is i was like okay i felt like i was a perfectly good choice to make wonder woman because i loved wonder woman i was like i
Guest:I know I love Wonder Woman and I know I love these films.
Guest:So, you know, might as well be somebody who feels that way.
Guest:But then the responsibility of like, I have to satisfy every Wonder Woman fan throughout history and Linda Carter and the studio and myself.
Marc:I like Linda Carter.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yes, she is.
Guest:I called her right away.
Guest:And I was like, Linda, I just want to tell you, I'm not like reinventing, rebooting Wonder Woman.
Guest:I just literally want to take a torch of something so beautiful that you started and just pass it forward.
Marc:You know, what's your what she say?
Guest:She was super relieved and happy, and we became fast friends, and we talk all the time and has stayed a dear friend.
Marc:Now, after you make it, I know I don't want to run out of time and have to rush an ending, but it's good that we're here and we haven't talked much about the new one because I don't want to spoil anything because I know that Warner Brothers will have me killed if I even share any of the stories.
Marc:But, like, after the Wonder Woman comes out and the reaction, what did you find the most moving about it?
Marc:Was it the little girls?
Guest:I mean, like... You know what?
Guest:It was the people...
Guest:who saw of all kinds, who started going and seeing it over and over again and dressing up as a character.
Guest:But it was all kinds of people because it was also like the way women were reacting to it blew my mind.
Guest:Because even I was making the movie.
Guest:I'm not thinking about being a woman and I'm not thinking about her being a woman that much.
Guest:I know it.
Guest:And I sort of remember thinking like, of course, I'm going to make...
Guest:I'm going to be the first woman to whatever, you know, but I wasn't thinking about the audience being so hungry for that every day was I'm making it.
Guest:I'm just not thinking about it.
Guest:So that part was like, Whoa, the thirst for it.
Guest:And then the people like men in wheelchairs and, and, and, you know, trans cosplay people like finding themselves in wonder woman, it being a different kind of hero that made them feel like,
Guest:that they could relate when they hadn't been able to feel that before, you know?
Guest:And then no man's land, you know, the guy in the wheelchair told me the story about no man's land, reminding him of like every time he has to go to the hospital and they have to take all his clothing off and pull him up and stand him on his feet.
Guest:I was so, you know, and he's like, and that's my no man's land.
Guest:I'm naked and alone and everybody's, you know, and it's like, woof, just...
Guest:you know, it goes back to Superman.
Guest:It's like that I get to do that for other people, what Superman did for me.
Marc:And the mythology works like that.
Marc:It's like the mythic story has personal applications that I mean, that's sort of fascinating.
Guest:That's what I've always believed in.
Guest:And even I am proud of the movie that I made.
Guest:But I also felt like it's not just me, that kind of story.
Guest:People were so thirsty for the story of that kind of
Guest:True North, very simple hero story.
Guest:We don't tell it very often now.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:I guess that's true.
Marc:Yeah, they're always a little dark.
Marc:There's always a little dirt there.
Guest:Complicated.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And niche-y.
Guest:Same thing that I was facing at art school.
Guest:It just infected the film industry, too.
Guest:It's always a joke on a joke and a hat on a hat.
Guest:And, you know, it's like...
Marc:It's not just like I mean, I think in the Homeric, the Homeric hero has a Achilles heel, but not necessarily some dark wound.
Marc:But yeah, but like with the new one, I mean, how is what's how is it affecting you that that a great many people will not be able to see it on a big screen?
Guest:I have the weirdest mix of feelings because I never would have thought I could be okay with this.
Guest:Never.
Guest:I'm a pure theatrical experience person.
Marc:I mean, we're in difficult times here.
Guest:As the year went on and suddenly when this idea came up of doing it this way at Christmas, it felt so right.
Right.
Guest:I was like, now is the moment.
Guest:I myself am craving seeing the film.
Guest:Like I'm craving what that film, what the film has in it.
Guest:And I've seen it so many times.
Guest:I can't stand it.
Marc:It's a little gnarly.
Guest:But I'm thirsty for positivity and bigness and escape and all of those things.
Guest:So to my shock, I'm like devastated that there are going to be people who can't see it at all because they can't figure out how to stream it and they can't get to a theater.
Guest:But I feel incredible about getting to share something that we love and worked on with people in on the heels of and in the midst of such a super dark time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also there there is a certain amount of relevance.
Marc:I mean, there this one more than the other one, which is a period piece.
Marc:This is a period piece, but it does speak to some of what we're going through or what possibly could.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And that was what it was meant to do.
Guest:That was what it was.
Guest:That was why I picked the 80s.
Guest:I was like, I don't want to talk about now in literal terms, but that was the height of what got us to where we are now.
Marc:You did the 80s.
Marc:It looked great.
Marc:It looked great, the 80s.
Marc:I just did a show in the 80s.
Marc:It's kind of like, it's nice to see it.
Marc:You paid a lot of attention.
Marc:I don't know where the hell you found all those outfits.
Marc:You must have had to make some of them.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Very few did we have to make.
Guest:Let me tell you, it was not easy.
Guest:That mall, though, was so incredible to stand in the mall.
Marc:Where was that?
Guest:It was going back in time.
Guest:It was in Virginia.
Marc:So it was just one of those intact malls of the period that you had to... But it was empty and shut down.
Marc:Oh.
Guest:And so we just rebuilt every store in that mall.
Marc:No kidding.
Guest:Period.
Guest:And it was...
Guest:Very expensive and laborious.
Guest:But boy, was it a trip once it happened.
Guest:And you're standing there looking.
Marc:It looked great.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:And I'd never seen that guy, Pedro Pazal.
Marc:I don't know that guy.
Marc:So he's like totally new to me.
Marc:What a great character he put together there.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Yeah, I'm so happy to hear you say that because I love his performance.
Marc:Oh, it's like you're wild, man.
Marc:he's super serious and everything else you've ever seen and like i think this is so dull that's a pocket not a lot of people can but also yeah but also so so broken but so like you know like it all is coming from this insane you know trauma and injury or whatever and you can feel it right away but it's like uh you know he takes it to the to the hilt you know
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, well, I like I did.
Marc:I don't I guess I can't really tip anything, but I was wondering about the plane.
Marc:And I'm glad we got closure on that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, it's very it's very it was funny.
Guest:I realized the plot line to the second film while I was making the first one.
Yeah.
Guest:And it's going to be interesting to finally see people satisfied by the fact that, no, there's a rhyme and a reason behind things.
Guest:So just right.
Guest:Just bear with me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you wrote this one.
Marc:So this is all you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With two partners.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With with Jeff Johns and Dave Callahan.
Marc:And did you did you have to honor the comic books?
Marc:Did you honor the comic books?
Marc:I don't know the comic books.
Guest:You do and you don't you this is you you you are writing your own comic book when you do these movies.
Guest:And so you're doing your own thing.
Guest:But then, of course, you're you're honoring the history of Barbara Minerva and the history of Max Lord and like all, you know, you're getting very into the details of these things.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, you know, the character.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it was great talking to you.
Marc:So great to talk to you, too.
Marc:Nice meeting you finally.
Guest:Yeah, you, too.
Guest:You, too.
Guest:So fun.
Guest:This was a great conversation.
Marc:It was.
Marc:And I hope the movie kills.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Take it easy.
Guest:I appreciate it.
Guest:You, too.
Guest:Thanks, Mark.
Marc:That was a very, she, I enjoy talking to her.
Marc:She's focused.
Marc:The movie is Wonder Woman 1984.
Marc:It's streaming now on HBO Max and playing in theaters.
Marc:Her movie Monster is a masterpiece.
Marc:And it was lovely to talk to her.
Marc:Going to play some mud here on my new Gibson SG Captain model.
Marc:Humbuckers.
Marc:Here we go.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Guest:Boomer lives.
Guest:Monkey.
Guest:La Fonda.
Guest:Cat angels everywhere.