Episode 1281 - Ridley Scott
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's going on?
Marc:Is everybody all right heading into the holiday?
Marc:Are you going to be okay?
Marc:Have you thought about a strategy?
Marc:Have you strategized your holiday for the for the least amount of aggravation?
Marc:Did you put a plan in place?
Marc:For Thanksgiving, don't enter the ring without a strategy.
Marc:Game it out.
Marc:Figure out how you're going to go at it.
Marc:How you're going to approach it.
Marc:You know where the problems are.
Marc:You know how they're going to come at you.
Marc:Are you ready?
Marc:Are you prepared?
Marc:Put a plan in place before you enter the ring.
Marc:on thanksgiving do you understand me i think you understand what i'm saying today i'm going to talk to ridley scott now ridley scott is one of the great directors one of the great a titan can i say a titan is that how you use that word he's a titan of directors he's a director titan and you if you don't know his work i can tell you a few of the movies maybe you've seen alien maybe or perhaps blade runner maybe or maybe thelma in louise
Marc:Or how about Gladiator or maybe The Martian?
Marc:The list goes on.
Marc:What was interesting about talking to Ridley is that how much he loves his own work.
Marc:We could all take a little something away from that.
Marc:Because I'm sure there are some Ridley Scott movies, if you guys know and you love Ridley Scott, that you're like, that wasn't that great.
Marc:Not according to Ridley.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Every time I make a slightly pokey joke now, I feel like crying.
Marc:Like there's a little part of me that wants to cry a little bit, but I laugh instead.
Marc:And that is the best laughter.
Marc:And I've said it many times.
Marc:I have stated it before.
Marc:The best kind of laughs are the ones that are cries.
Marc:But that's that's a personal preference.
Marc:Anyway, he does talk about his movies like he's like a huge fan of his movies, like a fan.
Marc:And it was kind of fun.
Marc:He recently directed The Last Duel and also the new movie House of Gucci, which opens this week, which I saw.
Marc:And Jared Leto.
Marc:I had no idea that was Jared Leto.
Marc:I saw the movie at a screening.
Marc:I didn't do any research.
Marc:I didn't look at the cast.
Marc:And I'm thinking the whole movie, like, who's this guy?
Marc:Who's the bald guy with the weird hair?
Marc:I've never seen him before.
Marc:Jared Leto.
Marc:under a lot of makeup and I didn't know it was him.
Marc:It's fucking sad in a way as a guy who does kind of journalism.
Marc:Ridley Scott had to tell me.
Marc:I was genuinely surprised because I didn't fucking know until I talked to the director of the movie in real time that that was Jared Leto.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:He's great.
Marc:Are you kidding Gladiator?
Marc:How many times have you watched Gladiator?
Marc:I used to watch it monthly just to get my spirits up.
Marc:Even though it's kind of a weird, sad ending, he does make it to the field, whatever that field is.
Marc:It seemed pretty.
Marc:His kid and his wife were there.
Marc:If eternity looks like that, and those things are important to you, nice meadow, kid, wife, everybody's dead together, then it's a nice ending.
Marc:Did I mention I've been eating a lot of ice cream?
Marc:Cookies?
Marc:Whoever's in charge of Mel Brooks' thing...
Marc:They sent this box with the book.
Marc:He's got a new book out.
Marc:But it came in, the promo box was filled with Zabar's stuff.
Marc:Zabar's rugula and Zabar's babka, Zabar's coffee, a nice mug.
Marc:But let's talk about rugula and babka.
Marc:Or how do you pronounce it?
Marc:Rugula?
Marc:Whatever you, I don't care how, whatever you want to do.
Marc:I will say rugula.
Marc:That's how I grew up with it.
Marc:Some of you are like, what is he even talking about?
Marc:These are Jew pastries.
Marc:The Jew pastries.
Marc:Like many of you are familiar with hamantaschen.
Marc:These were regular straight-up cinnamon rugla and the classic chocolate babka.
Marc:Now, if you people are confused about the Jew-ness of this, it's important.
Marc:It's my past.
Marc:It's where I come from.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I can't justify eating these things compulsively as some sort of historical tradition.
Marc:Like, it's part of my journey.
Marc:It's a tradition.
Marc:It's a ritual.
Marc:I don't pray.
Marc:I don't.
Marc:Not in Hebrew.
Marc:But I'll eat the babka and feel connected to just generations of people eating babka, heart disease, other genetic problems, Tay-Sachs, colon cancer.
Marc:You know, that's... Oh, God.
Marc:And then Clementine sent me a bunch of fucking ice cream.
Marc:But anyways, I don't want to talk about that shit.
Marc:I'm not doing it.
Marc:I'm not doing it.
Marc:I got bigger problems.
Marc:Do you?
Marc:I started seeing my therapist again last week.
Marc:Two weeks.
Marc:Two weeks in.
Marc:Got to get down to it.
Marc:Got to do some more EMDR.
Marc:Got to lock in.
Marc:I got some trauma, man.
Marc:I got a little bit of trauma that I have to fucking tighten up.
Marc:I got to process it.
Marc:Got to move through it.
Marc:It's old stuff.
Marc:It's stuff I've been avoiding.
Marc:It's a problem that is causing me tremendous boundary issues.
Marc:and also making me willing to take other people's shit.
Marc:I know I don't seem like the guy that does that, but if you got my number, I will take your shit, and that's a problem.
Marc:I'm not saying that like a phone number and that you can just call me and start blabbering or abusing me.
Marc:I'm just saying that on a metaphoric level, if you've got my number, I can be worked.
Marc:I'm an emotional mark.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I've had enough of it.
Marc:I don't know what that is.
Marc:It's got something to do with codependency.
Marc:It's got something to do with that.
Marc:You know, it's just I know where it comes from.
Marc:I don't need to go into that, but I'm working on it again.
Marc:Thank you for all the positive feedback for our canceled comedy episode.
Marc:It looks like I might be talking to the Smothers Brothers in person at some point.
Marc:And then I realized this more and more and it kind of unnerves me about the whole issue is that I don't know why any of you got into comedy, but I got into comedy because I didn't fit in that well.
Marc:I was an awkward guy.
Marc:I had my own issues.
Marc:I didn't like authority.
Marc:I didn't like having a boss.
Marc:I don't really do the team player thing that well.
Marc:I wanted to speak my mind in a way that was uniquely mine.
Marc:I wanted to not answer to fucking anybody.
Marc:I didn't want to work with other people.
Marc:I wanted to have total freedom to express my mind.
Marc:however the fuck i wanted i wanted to figure it out solo i know a lot of people that got into comedy ended up doing sketch ended up show running it look i've done ensemble work before i don't mind that but stand up was my way to have my voice without anybody telling me shit my point of view
Marc:It's not a team sport.
Marc:I mean, what the fuck?
Marc:But the idea that there are these now, there's an anti-woke comedy, and that's a point of view that many people want to have.
Marc:That's a team.
Marc:So now these team players, these fucking sheep, these anti-woke guys and gals are just fucking hacks.
Marc:They don't even have the courage to have their own point of view.
Marc:I'm anti-woke.
Marc:So you're team anti-woke?
Marc:I thought you were a fucking comic.
Marc:I thought you were a guy or a woman with your own fucking thoughts.
Marc:Yeah, I am.
Marc:I'm a free thinker.
Marc:I do my own research.
Marc:Yeah, but your free thinking sounds like a hundred other fucking idiots that are doing what?
Marc:The same free thinking than you?
Marc:Team anti-woke.
Marc:It's like so many people that are quote unquote comedy fans.
Marc:are just fucking these hack losers looking for a leader.
Marc:I've never seen so many kind of, you know, people that want their freedom, that respect their freedom, that it's all about this freedom that, like, really want to fucking lick the boot, man.
Marc:Really want to lick the boot.
Marc:You anti-woke boot licker.
Marc:I mean, what the fuck?
Marc:It's an excuse for hacks.
Marc:Isn't that why we got into comedy, to be our own people?
Marc:And look, man, I would say that my set right now is darker and probably more provocative than I've ever been in my life.
Marc:But is it woke?
Marc:No, it's just comedy.
Marc:I'm just speaking my own mind.
Marc:And I can handle if there's pushback, but I'm just saying, man, if you're on team anti-woke, tribe, is that your tribe?
Marc:Are you tribe anti-woke?
Marc:You and Kid Rock.
Marc:You're not thinking your own thoughts.
Marc:You're a hack with an excuse for why you're failing.
Marc:Anyway, how's everybody?
Marc:Have a good Thanksgiving.
Marc:Ridley Scott has just directed The House of Gucci, which opens in theaters this Wednesday, November 24th.
Marc:Also, The Last Duel will be available on digital platforms starting November 30th.
Marc:And I think that's a great movie.
Marc:And it was a real honor to talk to this guy.
Marc:This is me talking to Ridley Scott.
The Last Duel
Marc:Hello.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:I'm fine.
Marc:Where are you?
Marc:I am in Los Angeles.
Marc:I'm not afraid I'm going to get COVID from you if you want to take the mask off.
Guest:Yeah, but I'm surrounded by people right now.
Guest:Have you taken, have you got the double jab?
Marc:I've got the triple jab, my friend.
Marc:So have I. I got the Moderna as well.
Guest:Well, I'm gonna take the mask off.
Guest:Ready?
Guest:I'm gonna breathe all over you, all right?
Guest:Ready?
Guest:Okay, go.
Guest:And, okay, ready, and ha.
Guest:Ah, there he is.
Guest:Look at you.
Guest:By the way, the guy behind you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On the wall.
Guest:Mick Jagger.
Guest:Well, I used to go to Twickenham Rugby Club.
Guest:for a, you know, booze up on Friday night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went one night and had a teeny stage and on stage were these scrawny teenagers singing Little Red Roosters, the Rolling Stones.
Marc:Oh, that's probably a great version of that song.
Marc:I love that song by them.
Marc:You know, it's so weird.
Marc:I've been thinking about them a lot.
Marc:I mean, and you were there.
Marc:I mean, you grew up through all that.
Marc:You were a conscious teenager in your 20s or in your 20s in the 60s.
Marc:It must have been very exciting to be in London in the 60s, the late 60s.
Guest:No, because I was at the Royal College of Art, and frankly, I was on a grant.
Guest:So I was trying to live on three pounds a week, which included the flat, which is a room with a wash basin.
Guest:I shared a bathroom with three floors.
Guest:So when you go to have a bath, you take a tin of Vim with you, so you scrub the bath up.
Guest:I didn't have a very nice studenthood, thank you very much.
Guest:It was fucking horrible.
Guest:Not a good 60s for you, huh?
Guest:No, I had no money, so I just ended up working all the time.
Marc:So, like, I've talked to a few guys, you know, I think from your generation.
Marc:I've talked to—maybe Daltrey's a little younger than you.
Marc:I've talked to Eric Idle, but I've talked to guys who sort of grew up in the bombs.
Marc:Now, is that something that sort of defines your memory of your childhood?
Marc:We were closer then because—
Guest:We used to have a steel air raid shelter table in the scullery, which is like a kitchen.
Guest:It was plate steel.
Guest:And at night we'd sleep underneath it in case we got a direct hit.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And this is in London proper?
Guest:Well, I lived in Ealing and then I was evacuated and I moved around.
Guest:I did Ealing, Newcastle.
Guest:the Lake District, then back to London again, because my dad was working.
Guest:My dad became quite important, and he was working on planning in what is now a museum in Admiralty Arch, where he worked downstairs, and Churchill would come in once every evening.
Guest:They could smell him coming, but they could smell the cigar first on the air con, that air con those days.
Guest:And they said, here he comes, and he used to come with a cigar.
Guest:a glass of brandy and a velvet a siren suit so your dad was but he was also uh in the in the war he was a soldier as well well he was uh he was he became brass pretty quick okay and so post-war he was an acting brigadier general at the end of the war so you were like the english equivalent of an air force brat for a while
Guest:Yeah, but my dad started off as a clerk in a shipping office in Newcastle.
Guest:And they were doing quite well because it was all to do with Baltic shipping.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then one day the guy he worked for who had owned racehorses but couldn't sign his own name.
Guest:So my dad, every Friday night, they have a bottle of Johnny Walker.
Guest:There'd be a pile of checks this high.
Guest:And this guy called Lane Fox would say, what's this for?
Guest:My dad would say, well, and he'd read it to him.
Guest:He'd look at my dad's suspicion.
Guest:Then he'd put his thumbprint and put a cross.
Guest:Lane Fox loved my dad like a son.
Guest:So he eventually gave him half the business.
Guest:So my father's doing quite well just before war broke out.
Guest:One day war had done, come, and Lane Fox said to my dad, I'm closing up.
Guest:We're relying on the Baltic.
Guest:It's all over, dude.
Guest:Sorry about that.
Guest:And dad never saw him again.
Guest:Dad joined the army.
Marc:And that was the beginning of a military career.
Guest:Military career, yeah.
Guest:We were in Germany.
Guest:I went to Germany in 1947 on a troop ship.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:So 1947 till 52, then we returned to England.
Guest:But I was in Frankfurt am Mainz, American Zone, 1947.
Guest:Then my dad worked in the Eger Fountain Building with Eisenhower.
Guest:They were planning the Marshall Plan, you know, the rebuilding of Germany.
Guest:And so dad was involved in that.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So that's high-level stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, and I think...
Guest:because i moved to 10 schools how many schools did you do two in my life yeah including college one two three four five four so i did 10 and never got to college i never got there because 10 schools you are completely confused with everything there's no connection between one school going to another and in those days you know
Guest:Parents didn't worry so much about their kids.
Guest:They'll say, you'll be all right.
Guest:You'll catch up.
Guest:And I didn't know what the fuck was going on.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:My parents always had a great deal of faith in my ability to pull it together.
Marc:But, you know, about by by the time I was about 23, it became problematic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The favorite thing my mother was to say, pull yourself together.
Marc:You'll be fine.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think that's a that's a British thing.
Marc:My mother would just say, like, he'll be all right.
Marc:Let's worry about the other one.
Marc:And it was just you and your two brothers?
Guest:No, there were three.
Guest:There was my elder brother, Frank, became a sea captain.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And there was, by the time he was 28, he had his ticket.
Guest:And he was headhunted by a Chinese company out of Singapore.
Guest:So Frank went to Singapore and got a ship at 29.
Guest:And he would do Singapore right up to communist China.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:That's exciting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How are you on boats?
Guest:Never sick.
Guest:No?
Guest:Never sick.
Guest:I love being by the sea.
Guest:I don't like being on it or under it.
Marc:Yeah, I don't like not knowing what's under me.
Marc:It's problematic.
Marc:So what was keeping you together then during all this moving around?
Marc:I mean, I imagine it was hard to maintain friendships and stuff.
Guest:I mean, what were your... There weren't any.
Guest:There was none.
Guest:But what I did...
Guest:which I owe my career to, I drew incessantly.
Guest:I was seriously drawing from the age of about four or five.
Guest:Whatever I could lay my hands on, I was drawing with crayons or paint.
Guest:So by the time I was, I went to kind of an army officer's boarding school in Wilhelmshaven, which is the submarine barracks for the Baltic, for the German Navy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I went in there because my parents wanted to get rid of me and they'd send me up to school.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And my mother would say, my son, my son.
Guest:I'd say, right, what we're going to do?
Guest:I love going to boarding school.
Guest:And so I was doing big paintings.
Guest:It's filled in for being particularly, you know, I couldn't.
Guest:I think now today we would say I was dyslexic, but I couldn't contain or remember anything and I couldn't concentrate.
Guest:But what I could do was I'd sit for hours and draw a paint.
Marc:So you had a sense of painting?
Marc:What kind of painting?
Marc:And you had a good sense of color and all that, like just naturally?
Guest:Oh, no, it was quite sophisticated.
Guest:Everything from oil paint to... My dad saw I was particularly...
Guest:you know interested and so he sent me in hamburg to an a army art school there's an art school in hamburg certain people like to do art so i'll never forget when i entered the art school the smell of turpentine and paint and oil i love that and you know in a funny kind of way i was imagining i might become a painter yeah but by the time i got to serious art school
Guest:because I was so academically stupid.
Guest:I went to art school at West Hartlepool College of Art in County Durham.
Guest:And honestly, the sun rose for me, metaphorically.
Guest:I just adored school from that moment on.
Guest:I did seven years at art school, four years at Hartlepool, and three years at the Royal College.
Guest:You loved it.
Guest:More than a day.
Guest:I ended up doing five days, five night schools a week, just passionate.
Guest:Consequently, I got in everywhere.
Guest:I got in the Royal College, I got in the Academy, I got in Slade.
Guest:Mostly painting?
Guest:Well, it was a general, my art, yes, the focus would be painting.
Guest:And but I was I fancy graphic design because my aunt must have said to me, you know, there's money in posters.
Guest:And I don't think he knew what he was saying.
Guest:What he was saying was there's going to be something called commercial TV and that is going to be money in commercial advertising.
Guest:It didn't exist then, but that's what he was talking about.
Guest:And I caught the wave.
Marc:So that was your entrance in.
Marc:So you had this great sensibility visually.
Marc:You could paint.
Marc:You could understand graphic design.
Marc:And then it was time, like, now let's make some short movies to sell shit.
Marc:No, let's make some money.
Guest:I was paid nothing.
Guest:At BBC, I ended up directing briefly.
Guest:One hour live TV.
Guest:And after tax a week, I was earning 75 pounds a week.
Guest:I said, fuck, this is something wrong here.
Marc:So this is before you went into advertising.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And before you got before you got out of art school, you were directing television.
Guest:No, no, no, no, no, no.
Guest:When I left art school, I finished with art school, having done a traveling scholarship in the U.S.
Guest:1961, 62.
Guest:I was free.
Guest:Then I came back from the US.
Guest:I spent a year in the US.
Guest:Doing what?
Guest:Actually, interesting.
Guest:I worked with two guys in New York.
Guest:I mean, I worked for them.
Guest:There's two documentarians called Don Pennybaker and Richard Leacock.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, Richard Leacock was his cameraman.
Guest:They were partners.
Guest:I talked my way and got a job there with my portfolio from the Royal College.
Guest:They looked the portfolio.
Guest:They were a little baffled, but it was impressive.
Guest:And they said, you want a job?
Guest:I said, yeah.
Guest:And so after seven years at art school, I was buying coffee and hamburgers and making, you know, food at lunchtime.
Guest:That's what I ended up doing my first year.
Marc:Well, what was Penny Baker working on when you were there?
Guest:I ended up doing a little bit of syncing up because they're doing multi cameras and Araflex.
Guest:And I worked on on the polls.
Guest:So I was thinking of Russia on Jack Kennedy beating Hubert Humphries on the in Massachusetts, I think, is when Jack was heading definitely towards being the president of the United States and running Russia.
Guest:It was like what?
Guest:It was like following Jesus Christ, people trying to touch him.
Guest:It was amazing.
Guest:Then I worked on Nehru, the president of India.
Guest:Then I worked on some amazing football game where they took two high schools.
Guest:It was the two big high schools that were red-hearted football, turned out a lot of pros.
Guest:They shot that as well.
Guest:So the documentaries were amazing and adjusted my whole thinking to, I want to go into film.
Marc:So that was it, huh?
Marc:And also just hearing about multi cameras.
Marc:I know you use a lot of cameras.
Marc:I mean, there must have been.
Marc:But were you a fan of movies in any passionate way as a kid or other than passively?
Guest:beyond beyond i would uh when i was in hartlepool i made a deal with the local odian cinema which is like you know the chain and i said i will do all paint all the outside poster work and in the lobby if you give me free tickets for a year
Guest:So that's how we got to sit and watch movies.
Guest:And I'd sit and watch them round and round.
Guest:But it was all Hollywood fodder.
Guest:So my passion honestly was well.
Marc:What does Hollywood fodder mean?
Marc:I mean, at that period in film history, I mean, what does it mean?
Marc:General material.
Guest:And I adored anything that was from Hollywood.
Guest:But I remember watching films with Yvonne DiCarlo.
Guest:uh danny kay uh rita hayworth uh and then the thing that really got me were westerns yeah and i want to make a western i haven't done that how have you not made a western yet well you know the magic is getting shit on paper and once you get
Guest:the material onto script form, that's your blueprint.
Guest:That is the hardest single thing to do, getting on paper.
Marc:Well, it seems like, you know, if you frame it correctly with the right intellectual sort of context, you could look at Thelma and Louise as a Western.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Correct.
Guest:You could.
Guest:Yes, indeed.
Guest:You could look at the duelists as a Western.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:An insane reason for fighting.
Guest:They've forgotten the reason why.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I want to do a Western for sure.
Marc:Oh, that would be very exciting.
Marc:Because I think like, you know, well, let's let me just start at this point.
Marc:which is, you know, in the last month, I've seen two of your two most recent films.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The Last Duel I saw, and I just saw the Gucci movie.
Marc:And there's a couple of questions in the sense of, like, you obviously...
Marc:had something for Adam Driver and knew his capabilities, right?
Marc:Fantastic.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But like, you know, being that these are so different and they're both great movies.
Marc:I mean, I think The Last Duel was spectacular.
Marc:I mean, I loved it.
Marc:I loved it.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know where the drop off was, you know, in terms of how it was promoted or what happened.
Guest:But no, Disney did a fantastic promotion job, which because unlike them, it somehow arrived at Fox and therefore Disney.
Guest:But Disney, the guys, the bosses loved the movie because I was concerned it's not for them, but they really liked the movie.
Guest:So their advertising, publicity, et cetera, said it was excellent.
Guest:And I think what it boils down to where we've got today is
Guest:is the audiences who are brought up on these fucking cell phones, the millennium, do not want to ever be taught anything unless you're told it on the cell phone.
Guest:This is a broad stroke, but I think we're dealing with it right now with Facebook, right?
Guest:There's a misdirection, a mis-has-happened
Guest:where it's given the wrong kind of confidence to this latest generation, I think.
Marc:But I feel like this movie was, you know, like a beautiful adult-themed movie that should have brought younger people in was obviously the excitement of the idea of the period and the action.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I agree with you, and particularly with Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Adam Driver, and this new girl called Jodie Comer.
Guest:You know, that's the call you make.
Guest:And that's the call that Fox made that we all thought it's a terrific script.
Guest:And we made it.
Guest:And, you know, you can't win all the time.
Guest:But it's probably, as far as I'm concerned, when I made movies, I've never had one regret on any movie I've ever made, which is a first stop.
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:Never.
Guest:I've always...
Guest:No, because I learned very early on to be your own critic.
Guest:And the only thing you should really have an opinion about is what you just did.
Guest:Walk away, make sure you're happy and don't look back.
Guest:That's me.
Marc:Well, I mean, so the so the you know, when when Blade Runner gets reconfigured and re-released and finally you kind of put your stamp of approval on the last one that that was not your doing in terms of.
Marc:how that was used.
Guest:No, I got killed.
Guest:I was, I'm going to tell you this because I'll never forget it.
Guest:I made a film called Blade Runner.
Guest:It's my third movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is pretty fucking good.
Guest:Great movie.
Guest:So my, no, I was killed.
Guest:I was killed by Pauline Kael.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Who didn't even meet me.
Guest:She had never met me, and I suddenly read this article in the New Yorker, which is a very classy kind of – still is, right?
Guest:So my feeling is I read it, and there's a four-page series of insulting – insult.
Guest:The article is an insulting –
Guest:So I framed it.
Guest:It's in my office right now.
Guest:And every time I glance at it, I never read criticism.
Guest:I never read critique.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ever again.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because she was so wrong, I was just way ahead of her.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:But the movie's still great.
Marc:What's that got to do with that movie?
Guest:Well, it played disastrously.
Marc:There was no money.
Marc:It did not make any money whatsoever.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:But like in terms of, I guess the root of my question was, you said you have no regrets, yet you did go back and redo that movie in a way, correct?
Guest:Well, no, I went back in because I had a great idea for a second movie.
Guest:And we should reignite what is now popular.
Guest:I think it's number one in the Library of Congress, most requested.
Guest:So there was a TV show called The Dating Game or something, wasn't it?
Guest:I don't watch that shit.
Guest:And I thought that this man, Tyrell...
Guest:who probably has one of the two companies of the world that will run the world.
Guest:This world will be run eventually by three corporations, I think.
Guest:Maybe two.
Guest:We're already headed that way.
Guest:And his small part of his business and his ego was playing God.
Guest:So he liked to create...
Guest:humanoids, and I didn't want to call them humanoids, so we called them replicants.
Guest:So the very first Blade Runner, to me, was a dating game.
Guest:In his arrogance, he not only created people like Roy Batty and people who probably are working on trying to make Mars livable then, but actually he went further than that and he created a female and a person who did not know he was a replicant, Harrison Ford.
Guest:And what he was watching is he wanted to see he wanted she is capable of having a child.
Guest:And Harrison was designed as capable of having a child.
Guest:And so that became the formula for the next movie.
Marc:Ah, so that was the reason why you went back in.
Guest:Yeah, because I thought it was a great idea.
Guest:Rather than just a sequel, it was a kind of interesting, legitimate idea because it works hand-in-hand, side-by-side with today's technology because that is happening today.
Marc:Not only that, but metaphorically it works in terms of who are we really and what defines our reality.
Marc:Yes, yes, yes.
Marc:So in these most recent movies, what I'd like to talk to you about is just that when you have –
Marc:Say, OK, so you see the last tool, you see the script, you know, and when you look at when you take on a project like I have to assume there is an initial reaction of something that you feel that you're that's going to justify you spending however long it's going to take to to to manifest this vision.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it has to be fairly simple right from the get go in my mind.
Marc:So because all these movies that you do, they're different.
Marc:They're not, you know, you know, they're all Ridley Scott movies.
Guest:Unrelated.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Unrelated.
Marc:So I have to assume that when you, you know, when you take in the material, something, probably a singular idea makes you go, oh, fuck yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So what was that for the last duel?
Guest:Matt, I'd had a good time with on Martian.
Guest:That was it?
Guest:And he called me up saying, Oi, I know you've already done a film called The Duelists, which we loved a lot.
Guest:He said, but this is based on a very good book, which is an encapsulation of the trial records from 1360.
Guest:It's about a woman who is purported to have been raped, and she claims it was rape, but the protagonist claims it was complicit.
Guest:And I said, you know, I'm already in.
Guest:It's such a great singular idea that somehow touches base today.
Guest:Of course it does.
Guest:Me too.
Guest:And the argument would be we didn't make it for that reason because we just thought the singular central idea was amazing.
Guest:that she accuses somebody of this and was brave enough to do it at the time, because if she was proved wrong, she would be punished horribly.
Marc:She'd be burnt alive.
Marc:So that was the driver, that was the engine.
Guest:The engine, you need a great central nut.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Thelma Louise was an epic goodbye story of two women who made themselves completely independent of any opinion, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And therefore, it became...
Marc:epically beautiful because i felt it was the last drive it was the last time together so you know i i can't help trying to make things uh visually as spectacular as i can that's what i do so so with the last duel like you know you the construction of it you know this is you know ultimately you know a feminist themed movie right so and that's not something on uh that is you i think that you probably i think with alien uh
Guest:Well, you know, you do Alien, you do Thelma and Louise, but people forget there's one very good film done with Demi Moore called G.I.J.
Guest:Yeah, no, yeah, I was going to mention that one, yeah.
Guest:And she, that is the definitive...
Guest:challenge for a female to try to enter that part of the army, which is the male bastion of of, you know, of masculinity.
Guest:And she wanted to be part of that because she felt she had something to add.
Marc:So what do you what is this?
Marc:What what what why what compels you to do more more so than any other male director or at the level you're at these these these stories of strong women?
Marc:Probably because I respected my mom.
Guest:Mm hmm.
Guest:My mom was five foot tall.
Guest:She insisted she was actually four foot eleven.
Guest:She insisted she was five feet.
Guest:And she brought up three sons because my dad was away a lot on me.
Guest:And so she was both the male and the female in the household and was a tough guy.
Guest:And we respected her.
Guest:And I've never forgotten that.
Guest:She taught us respect.
Marc:And I thought that with The Last Duel, I mean, each segment of that movie, it was a profound movie because I didn't know anything about it going in.
Marc:So I'm watching it.
Marc:And from the beginning, I'm like, I'm not a huge period piece kind of guy, but I'm like, here we go.
Marc:Where's this going to go?
Marc:But then by the second chapter, I'm like, what the fuck is happening?
Marc:And then you start to, as a man, question your own perception of the events of your life, right?
Guest:Well, the choice to borrow a little from Rashomon, where you're playing the story through really two and a half times.
Guest:You're seeing her version.
Guest:You're seeing Adam Driver's version.
Guest:But you're also getting Matt Damon's version because as soon as he hears this rape, he assumes that it's her fault.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the acting on behalf of all of them through the different points of view was kind of astounding.
Guest:Well, you know, also, because Adam Driver, in a funny kind of way, has to play nearly the same role.
Guest:And that's why we had the investment in... We had a glimpse of a couple of orgies.
Guest:The reason for that was not titillation, but was to say...
Guest:In that room of one orgy, anyone in that room is happy to be there and will comply with everything.
Guest:So that's male and female.
Guest:So it's saying this was a norm.
Guest:And it's OK.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so yet she wasn't.
Guest:She was very traditional in that sense.
Guest:Adam Driver assumed.
Guest:A lot, which is completely wrong.
Marc:Yeah, and I thought that Matt Damon, he's always great, but it was a very surprising... Well, he's playing a bad guy.
Guest:He said, I'm going to be horrible.
Guest:I said, you sure are.
Guest:So I gave him a scar and a terrible haircut because it's more comfortable to have short hair under a helmet.
Guest:But the one line that summarizes who he was when she said...
Guest:A man came to our house.
Guest:Who was it?
Guest:It was Legree.
Guest:And what happened?
Guest:He raped me.
Guest:And the reaction from Karouche... Right, yeah, I don't want him to be the last one.
Guest:No, worse than that, he said, why does this man never stop...
Guest:Right.
Guest:Fucking with me.
Guest:Then he said, I want to be the last one on the bed.
Guest:I mean, it was disgusting.
Guest:Matt embraced that.
Guest:That's what he wanted to be.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A real malignant meathead.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:And that's why we showed glimpses of battles to show he was a very dangerous.
Guest:He's got a bloody Viking.
Guest:He's crazy.
Guest:And that's who Cruz was.
Guest:He would go to war because he would be paid by the king to support his estates.
Marc:right no i i thought it was uh historically just uh uh uh the whole thing was great yeah i i was just thrilled i'm glad you liked it thrilled to watch it so then like you know then and now we're here i now i saw a house of gucci and you know and again you know yeah what you look at that material and also like i you chose driver right so oh
Marc:Well, I cast everything.
Marc:I always cast everybody.
Marc:But I found myself completely enthralled.
Marc:I found it compelling.
Marc:I found that I didn't know the story of Gucci.
Marc:It's almost like an aristocratic story of moneyed royalty set in a modern era, right?
Marc:There's a political battle, family battles.
Marc:But what was the one thing in that story that made you go like, okay, I'm going to spend a year on this shit?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, I knew that my wife produces films as well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Never with me.
Guest:She'd done one with Will Smith about contact in football where you get brain damage.
Guest:Yeah, I saw that.
Guest:It's good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she did something called Felt.
Guest:with Liam Neeson.
Guest:Years ago, she did Tristan Nassau.
Guest:But she'd been carrying this idea for years.
Guest:And I would... The Gucci idea?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:20 years.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:20 years.
Guest:And I'd help her by...
Guest:It wasn't really for me, but I'd help out by suggesting writers and people that I might know.
Guest:So we actually put, as a company, a fair amount of money behind four or five pieces of script.
Guest:They never landed.
Guest:Not one script got it.
Guest:Until one day, I met this young guy, Roberto Bentolini.
Guest:Who was new and he'd written something small for us and I thought wow that's kind of fresh and interesting yeah I said you want to read this thing tell me what you think so we gave him the last two pieces of material of the Gucci script and he went wow it's it's I know the story because he is Italian and
Guest:And he came up and he came with six weeks ahead of script.
Guest:I went, Christ, he hid it because it had to be the right balance of
Guest:driven by the characters, but it's within a fashion industry.
Guest:And that's a hard thing to, you know, you can lean one way or the other and it suddenly becomes a fashion movie or suddenly becomes... I didn't want to lose the fashion aspect, but the powerful characters are like, frankly, Medici or the Borgias.
Guest:It's exactly that.
Guest:So we somehow got that where everyone is...
Guest:tricky as shit.
Guest:And yet you've got to, when you watch a film, you have to be at some level
Guest:Not like them, but at least be amused by them.
Guest:And I knew that all these characters in here were not likable, but the cast was so unbelievably good, they were really amusing as shit.
Marc:So it was, in a way, what I said earlier, it was the sense of, I mean, you like a historical story.
Marc:And the Medici's and the Borgias, those are infinitely interesting characters.
Marc:You know, they went on for generations.
Guest:So that's what spoke to you, really, huh?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:It was a modern Medici.
Guest:And the problem is an outsider comes in and makes the mistake of once she marries royalty, she assumes she is royal.
Guest:She's not.
Guest:When she says, I am a Gucci, she says, no, you're not.
Guest:You married a Gucci.
Guest:That's the crack in the jug.
Guest:That will never repair itself.
Marc:From that moment on, you may as well call it a day.
Marc:I think that really was what made it such a great movie, is that your understanding and the screenwriter's understanding that you're dealing with family intrigue of an aristocratic royalty that was never quite framed that way, right?
Marc:So when you spend so much time with that buffoon of a brother, of the cousin...
Marc:So, you know, you really initially you're like, can this guy not act?
Marc:And then you realize, like, no, he's a clown.
Marc:So, you know, like and that's the way that goes.
Marc:There's always that one kind of loose cannon, loose screw in this family.
Marc:And you got an amazing performance out of Pacino, who is always pretty good.
Marc:But I think he really did something with this.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, then don't forget, Jared Leto is underneath all that makeup.
Guest:That was Jared Leto?
Guest:That's Jared Leto, dude.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:I had no idea.
Marc:Amazing.
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:I'm sitting there looking.
Marc:I'm going, how can I have never seen this guy before?
Marc:I'm an idiot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, hello.
Guest:He copied who this guy is.
Guest:We copied him.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:The head, the paunch, everything.
Guest:And he really believed, sadly, believed he was talented.
Guest:And of course, everyone was embarrassed to say, well, you're an embarrassment.
Guest:And that's where it begins.
Marc:And Lady Gaga was like spectacular.
Marc:Hello.
Marc:I mean, obviously, we knew that casting her, but were you on a daily basis surprised by her work?
Guest:Well, when I met her a little bit initially, and don't forget, I'd seen A Star is Born, and
Guest:Which I think Bradley and she did a great job.
Guest:And also, she's a perfect build.
Guest:Patricia Gucci is about 5'1".
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was a bit of a bombshell showstopper.
Guest:Was working middle class.
Guest:Her dad was transportation.
Guest:So probably then he was connected, I would think.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:If you're on transport in Italy, you've got to be connected.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So there was a little bit of money.
Guest:But you definitely come under the expression of new rich, right?
Guest:So she would play the parties, hope to find an appropriate guy who ideally would have money.
Guest:She was a bit of a gold digger.
Yeah.
Guest:And one day she met somebody, Maurizio, she had no idea who it was.
Guest:I think she was more impressed by the fact he was so polite and gentlemanly that attracted her to him.
Guest:Then she realized it was a Gucci.
Guest:She went, what?
Guest:So that's where she went from.
Guest:Also, I do believe the initial stage, they fell in love for sure.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I feel that too.
Marc:And I also, like, I thought it was very interesting that sort of like the heir who has to step up, though he's disinterested, and then he does turn out to be a little bit shallow and kind of a dumb-dumb business-wise.
Marc:And I thought Driver did a great job of that.
Marc:And I knew nothing about it.
Marc:And just...
Marc:The story of the family and whatever's coming is so compelling, and it's not a story I knew going in, but also because it's so compelling, you kind of get excited about the resurrection of the House of Gucci by Tom Ford.
Marc:I never thought I'd be, all I know is I don't own many expensive clothes, but I went and got a Tom Ford suit, which cost me a fucking fortune, and I'm like, oh, that guy's the guy that did that.
Guest:Well, yeah, well, Ford, but the guy who was very smart throughout it all was de Soleil.
Guest:The lawyer.
Guest:The lawyer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's Mr. Houston.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he sat there watching this man who was the natural heir gradually self-destruct.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And during the self-destruction, he realized he better hang in there.
Guest:And I believe that this may be true or not.
Guest:So I'm going to say it may be fiction.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I heard way back when, when you're researching that DeSalle had been smart enough to put in five million dollars of his own money early on and then was responsible for bringing in introducing Tom Ford to Gucci.
Guest:And so from a company, let's say, worth on the stock market at a certain point with massive debt, say $400 million, overnight it became a billion-dollar company over that Tom Ford fashion show.
Guest:Wild.
Marc:So I talked to Steven Soderbergh not long ago who is sort of defiantly against having a specific style.
Marc:When you think about yourself,
Marc:in terms of, you know, as you approach each movie.
Marc:Are you similar in that, that you just respect the material and then decide?
Guest:Yeah, I go Black Hawk Down.
Guest:We probably broke in North Africa first before anybody.
Guest:So I didn't know.
Guest:of going on Black Hawk.
Guest:It's kind of a little bit dodgy, the ground there where you're going into Saleh, and I'm taking over town.
Guest:So that was a specific style.
Guest:I used a Polish cameraman for that, funny enough, called Wladimir Idziak, who
Guest:It's very interesting.
Guest:And he said, I only shoot one camera and I hate sunshine.
Guest:So we go to Morocco and I use 11 cameras.
Marc:And did you know going in, like, see, I consider that along with maybe Three Kings, Hurt Locker,
Marc:And American Sniper to be defining modern war pictures like you reconfigured more than any of those with that story.
Marc:And I imagine the book as well.
Marc:But it must have been in your mind that, like, this is what war is now.
Marc:And it's not about country.
Guest:Yeah, exactly right.
Guest:But it's you know, that was one moment.
Guest:I shouldn't say one, but that was a moment.
Guest:When a moment when the United States went in, they had gone in to stop genocide and to Mogadishu.
Guest:And the opening scene lays it out with Sam Shepard, who I love to death.
Guest:It was fantastic.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Talking to the guy who was representing the bad man there to say, this is not this is genocide.
Guest:So we're here to stop this fucking nonsense.
Guest:And they were unsuccessful.
Guest:They didn't get the guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But Bill Clinton withdrew them immediately because he could see it could lead to Vietnam if he didn't watch it.
Guest:I think he was scared to death of getting so sucked and you can't get out of East Africa.
Guest:And it was a secret mission.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:No, he was right.
Guest:He was right to withdraw.
Guest:But it made him very unpopular with the army, I think.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But, you know, it did sort of explore these ideas of the army that, you know, this is a corporate undertaking on behalf of business interests in the United States.
Marc:And this is not about patriotism or anything else.
Marc:This is a job we do.
Marc:Exactly right.
Guest:Well, it's a job we I used to think we did with you.
Guest:I don't want to really go down this route because I'm very dismayed at what's happening to the United States.
Marc:You are, too.
Marc:Me, too.
Marc:What are you kidding me?
Guest:It's like, you know, I mean, dude, we cannot let this go.
Guest:You cannot let democracy slide off the table.
Guest:Are you fucking kidding?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Fascism is is is organized and shameless and and and it's it's it's rising.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:And it will be the only country in the world that has had it, had the idea of democracy.
Guest:Think about it.
Guest:England kind of, but, you know, England is insignificant by definition of its size and its firepower and importance.
Guest:But, you know, my God, my God, my God.
Guest:It has to stop.
Marc:Yeah, well, I'm with you on that.
Marc:Yeah, it's a very scary time.
Marc:And it becomes harder and harder to understand how you can get people engaged in taking their brains back and trying to understand what democracy entails.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But what I'm staring at is a lot of intelligent people
Guest:people on the other side simply convincing themselves that these lies are the truth.
Guest:That's what's crazily insane, right?
Marc:They know it's not true.
Guest:But over through repetition and through rationalization and through... No, I think they're doing it to make sure they get back in.
Marc:And that's really sick.
Marc:Craven.
Marc:That's sick.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know, I don't...
Marc:I don't know what to do about it, Ridley.
Marc:Go live in France.
Marc:Go live in England.
Guest:How about Ireland?
Guest:Why not?
Guest:Ireland's great.
Guest:I made the last duel in Ireland.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:You loved it, right?
Marc:Well, I loved it, but it fucking rains every day.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Now, going back to what we were talking about before, you're working on a Napoleon movie, right?
Marc:I'm shooting in 13 weeks.
Marc:So now, with the world, with democracy hanging in the balance...
Marc:Is there some way you find an outlet for that in this story of Napoleon that you were pulling together?
Marc:No, he is both.
Guest:You tell the truth.
Guest:He's both genius, bad guy, good guy.
Guest:What he invented, French law today still stands for fuck's sake.
Guest:They're still using a lot of the stuff he did.
Guest:They've got the roads he fucking planted today.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So.
Guest:You know, the reason why he built all the straight lines down the Champs-Élysées, because he could put cannons there and literally put down any revolt by just firing down the avenues.
Guest:So he is a fascinating... I can't call him a monster at all.
Guest:He's a fascinating...
Guest:Man who I think was started by wanting to do the right thing by bringing France into line and bringing it back onto an equilibrium and shifting it away from the idea of the revolution because the revolution was much needed.
Guest:It was in desperate need of change.
Guest:And then once he got in the seat, suddenly becomes the benevolent dictator.
Guest:Then he becomes the not so benevolent dictator.
Guest:So he adjusted.
Guest:So whatever that is, he's one hell of a guy.
Marc:You're right.
Marc:Well, I think I also see that in a lot of the films, even in House of Gucci, that when you've got the opportunity to explore the arc of a life, you're going to figure that out.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You know, I've got the best act in the world to do it right now is Joaquin Phoenix.
Guest:Yeah, you like that guy.
Guest:He's playing Napoleon.
Guest:I love him to death.
Guest:When Joaquin comes to the table, it's an all-in, it's a free-for-all with me and him.
Guest:And I think we kind of wrestle it out and come to where we want to be because he is a very good actor.
Guest:intuition for himself he's brilliant brilliant working brilliant was that was that experience did you have that experience with him on gladiator as well oh yeah um because you know as he says when i take anything on he's you know he's gets intimidated by anything but that's that's his engine
Guest:The engine is that.
Guest:The insecurity is what drives them, you know?
Guest:It's the same as I do.
Guest:I'm insecure about doing Napoleon, but I know I'll get it right.
Guest:I'm fucking better, otherwise I've got to find a new day job.
Marc:Well, I mean, you make big movies, dude.
Marc:Where do you find all this energy?
Marc:Is it just, you know, you just want to keep engaged?
Guest:No, I mean, that's the way I'm built, you know.
Guest:I mean, I still, after all these years, it's kind of primitive, but it's great.
Guest:because I storyboard every movie.
Guest:I've now got storyboard this thick on Napoleon Bonaparte.
Guest:I'm drawing everything so I can really draw.
Guest:So I draw close-ups, media shots, wide shots, and I work the scene out on paper before I get there.
Marc:What are those behind you?
Marc:Is that the movie on the boards?
Guest:Well, these are the running order of the board where we were.
Guest:I was in here with Joachim last week and we were re going through stuff.
Guest:It's always good because when you go through something, you always find something else.
Guest:So when I'm boarding, I also find I get an idea because it's as if I'm filming on paper.
Guest:And it's a great... I couldn't do it any other way because it proves to be incredibly economical.
Guest:So, for instance, on Gucci, our board is Gucci.
Guest:We ended up two weeks under schedule.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is, you know, several million dollars under budget.
Guest:I tend to end up under budget because...
Guest:When I come into it, I know exactly what we're going to do.
Marc:So that is where, you know, the sort of experience with commercials and also more deeply the experience with your ability to draw and see story and even everything.
Marc:I own everything to drawing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Seriously.
Marc:So that's how you stay, you know, efficient on time?
Marc:Oh, completely.
Marc:I know exactly.
Marc:I could start Napoleon on Monday.
Marc:My friend Kit has this theory that in a lot of your movies, you like things to fall out of the sky, like flowers, water, rain.
Guest:Well, I like to fill every frame with something on it.
Yeah.
Guest:even an alien there was sort of some liquid always kind of falling on and then oh yeah well harry dean stanton walked into the landing leg room and he's looking up and he goes jonesy yeah and uh it's water and somebody said okay what's water doing in the landing room i said condensation you twat exactly all right i said yes
Marc:So like like what does does the fact that you bring in like all these things on time and under budget?
Marc:I mean, I imagine that because here's a question.
Marc:Look, man, you made 1492.
Marc:It didn't do well.
Marc:You didn't make a movie.
Marc:Yeah, great movie.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:But you don't seem to be stoppable in the sense... My theory is that you're so goddamn good and you show up with the work and you do it on time, you do it on budget, and everything looks great.
Marc:Was there ever a time where there was a risk that you might not work because of a box office failure?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I had...
Guest:the duelists, they made seven prints.
Guest:It got, the British, became the British award at Cannes, and I got a prize at Cannes, and then, you know, had...
Guest:A smaller company like Focus or dare I even mention Weinstein Company being existing and they could have taken that and know what to do with it.
Guest:Paramount, to be fair, did not know what to do with a Napoleonic film.
Guest:So they made seven prints.
Guest:So then that so that.
Guest:It was an $800,000 failure.
Guest:Didn't make any money.
Guest:It cost 800 grand.
Guest:And I got no fee, by the way.
Guest:And that was the completion bond.
Guest:So I thought, fuck me.
Guest:Welcome to the film industry.
Guest:So then I did Alien.
Guest:And Alien was very, very, very, very successful.
Guest:Then I did Blade Runner.
Guest:That was a fucking disaster.
Guest:Then I did Legend with a 20-year-old Tom Cruise.
Guest:So I was doing Disney movies 25 years before Disney.
Guest:And that was a failure.
Guest:And somebody said to me,
Guest:you know, why don't you do films about normal people and normal subjects?
Guest:I went, shit, maybe they're right.
Guest:So I then went down a road to much lower budget.
Guest:I did a very nice little movie called White School.
Guest:Great movie, White School.
Guest:I did Black Rain with Michael Douglas.
Guest:I think fucking great, Andy Garcia.
Marc:That's a good movie, yeah.
Marc:I mean, Michael Douglas is always good.
Guest:Yeah, and then gradually started to climb up
Guest:Suddenly, I was going to produce Thelma Nguyen's, and after Thelma Nguyen's to five directors, they all turned it down, saying, I've got a problem with the women.
Guest:I said, that's the whole point, you dope.
Guest:And so I said, you know what?
Guest:I was interviewing...
Guest:an actress for Thelma Louise.
Guest:And funny enough, it was Michelle Pfeiffer.
Guest:She said, I don't think this is quite right for me, but why don't you come to your senses and you direct it?
Guest:I went, duh.
Guest:And I did it.
Guest:I thought, why not?
Guest:I'm going to have a go.
Guest:So I had a go.
Guest:And then that suddenly started to create new liftoffs.
Guest:So then we're moving into Hannibal, you know, Gladiator, the whole thing.
Guest:And 1492.
Guest:Well, I love 1492.
Guest:I love the experience with Gerard Depo as well.
Guest:And, you know, I didn't care that he couldn't speak good English.
Guest:I didn't give a shit.
Guest:He's so good.
Guest:Who cares?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who the fuck cares?
Marc:Right.
Marc:And Gladiator, like, I used to watch that movie like two, three times a year just to, you know, feel good about life.
Guest:But did you like, I love Kingdom of Heaven.
Guest:The Crusades, yes, yes, yes.
Guest:And the Kingdom of Heaven was taking Muslim and infidel together in Morocco, and I had a fatwa on me, and I had to walk around the floor.
Guest:guys who were moroccan to protect me because i was i thought jesus why nick because the film in fact is in support of salahuddin who was one of the great leaders military men politicians and philosophers yeah isn't it but didn't you go back and do a director's cut of that one
Guest:Yes, the cut was, we removed about 17 minutes of the story, The Princess of Jerusalem, which I shouldn't have done.
Guest:I was very wrong to do, but the studio insisted.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:They said the film stops for 17, and they were dead fucking wrong.
Guest:It was about how her brother had leprosy and had to wear a silver mask.
Guest:This is true.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Christian, if you like, or infidel, we are the infidels.
Guest:the leader of Jerusalem had to wear a mask to hide his face.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then his sister had a child, and the sister's child, they discovered one day the child felt no pain.
Guest:He should have burnt himself, he felt no pain.
Guest:And so they tell him, this is the beginning of leprosy.
Guest:So she did not want her child to go through what?
Guest:Her brother had gone through, and she actually euthanized him.
Guest:So it was tragic.
Marc:So you put that back in.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:It's a great—when we have Jerusalem being invaded by Salahuddin, who took it back, and then the Muslims wanted blood because what we had done to the Muslims was just—
Guest:Oh, Richard Coeur de Leon was terrible.
Guest:And Salahdin, I think, was ultimately a marvelous politician, realized history
Guest:said no.
Guest:He said, we're going to let him go.
Guest:They said, then we've got to tax them when they leave.
Guest:And he said, most of these people have no money.
Guest:Saladin paid the tax for each person.
Guest:So Saladin ended up bankrupt.
Guest:You love these historical stories.
Guest:We are living through history right now.
Guest:We're going through our ultimate stupidity now by not getting double Pfizer.
Guest:What are you, a fucking moron?
Guest:yeah oh no for sure i mean you know and people realize by the time you're 23 24 you've already got the equivalent of 16 injections anyway yeah no i believe me but i do like i don't know i don't know how these people you know don't want to put a vaccine in their body but they'll let their brains be fucked into it this should have been over a year ago oh i know once you get when you get control of it you still gotta wear a mask for another year you gotta this is a special one this one
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And we have a special kind of stupidity happening, too.
Marc:So now when you do something like Matchstick Man, is that just for fun?
Marc:Is that a palate cleanser?
Guest:No, I loved it because I was going to go and do Tripoli with Russell Crowe.
Guest:And something happened in my family.
Guest:Somebody became quite ill.
Guest:So I refused to leave.
Guest:So I closed the film down.
Guest:And I thought I must stay in Los Angeles because it's a very close to me family.
Guest:And I stayed here.
Guest:And while I was here, my wife once Saturday morning said, read this script.
Guest:It's called Matchstick Men.
Guest:I think you'll find it very interesting.
Guest:And I loved it to death.
Guest:And it's a great little film.
Marc:It's kind of a fun, dark movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And Nick Cage is terrific.
Marc:You know, he's like, you know, I love the guy.
Marc:I love him.
Marc:I just saw that movie Pig.
Marc:That movie.
Marc:I haven't seen it.
Marc:Is it good?
Marc:I loved it.
Marc:It was just so good to see him in good form as an actor.
Guest:And there's Sam Rockwell I had in that as well.
Marc:Yeah, I know that guy.
Marc:He's a good guy.
Guest:And what a thing, though.
Guest:You don't know what's going on until he's in hospital.
Guest:And he goes, hello, gets out of bed, and he's on the roof of a car park.
Marc:I loved it.
Marc:Good times.
Marc:And also, like, American Gangster, I think, is one of the great underrated Russell Crowe performances.
Marc:Russell Crowe is amazing in that movie.
Yeah.
Marc:Russell Crowe's amazing each time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's just one of those guys.
Guest:You know, he was great in a thing called Buddy of Lies.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he plays.
Guest:He said, how do you want to set?
Guest:I want you to put on a bit of weight like Bill Clinton.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But like American Gangster, that's another one of those movies where you've got, you know, you're covering, what, 40 years?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And Denzel.
Marc:I mean, the two of them.
Marc:I mean, Denzel.
Marc:Wow, man.
Marc:Well, he's I think he's one of the best actors we've got.
Marc:What do you what is it that you think?
Marc:Why do you what is it that he does that makes you say that?
Guest:Well, he's perpetually I'm going to say this.
Guest:I think he gets very insecure.
Guest:he's doing a role and he once said so many words to me saying you know when i knew a film man i'm kind of showing exposing myself to everybody it's kind of intimidating yeah because he gets angry you know and uh and uh but i like that i like that that fuel he's got great fuel and
Guest:i did one movie with my brother and i was at the i was at the royal college my first there was no film school so in the cupboard in the art department was a bolex a little clockwork and i said oh it's a new camera can i borrow it you know what if you want to buy you got to bring me a script so i took him a script the following week i wrote a script
Guest:And I took the script the following week.
Guest:He went, oh, wow, okay.
Guest:So I got the camera for the summer holiday with a light meter and an instruction book and some filters and a tripod.
Guest:And I said to my brother, it was like my brother then was a very lie in bed on a Saturday morning kind of kid, which is the antithesis of what he became.
Guest:I said, get up, we're going to go make a movie.
Guest:He said, what?
Guest:I said, get up, we're going to make a movie.
Guest:We've got dad's car.
Guest:We made a movie in six weeks called Boy in a Bicycle.
Guest:And that was the only time you guys worked together on a movie?
Guest:Yeah, you know, and what's weird is neither of us knew that we were planning the life ahead of us, what we would do.
Guest:Because Tony would later do Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop and things like that.
Guest:Yeah, he was great.
Guest:He was great.
Guest:Sorry for your loss there.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But that movie, American Gangster, that's another one.
Marc:I'll watch it every time.
Marc:I still like to flip around and start movies in the middle.
Marc:I don't give a shit.
Marc:And almost all your movies, I'll watch them from the middle, from the end.
Marc:I don't care.
Guest:You know, my favorite movie, and we're talking that way, he's in the cafe and he says, just stay here.
Guest:And he goes out and all his brothers are watching.
Guest:And he goes down the street and Idris Elba is standing there saying, hey, what are you going to do?
Guest:Shoot me, Frank.
Guest:Go on.
Guest:Shoot me, Frank.
Guest:All these people.
Guest:He just goes, boom, and shoots him on the spot.
Guest:What happened was I said to Idris, listen, when he put the gun to it, he had lean on the gun.
Guest:because by the way this is a gun with a solid barrel there is no aperture i would never risk it yeah and but when you pull the trigger there's a recoil and there's no blank nothing yeah so i said i want you to lean on the gun and he pulled the trigger and it goes bam adris thought he'd been shot and dropped to the side walk i've been shot
Marc:You've created so many, you know, truly memorable bits of business.
Marc:And The Martian, which we didn't get to talk about that much, is an amazing movie.
Marc:And you seem to work with just the most amazing actors.
Marc:It's just really great.
Guest:Well, I try, you know, working with actors, it's a partnership.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I try and make it a friendship and a partnership.
Guest:That's very important.
Guest:Once you do that, I worked five times with Russell.
Guest:Once you do that...
Guest:Both of you can say anything you think.
Guest:You have to be able to say what you think, otherwise you can't move.
Marc:Well, that's a good way to end.
Marc:I really appreciate you talking, Ridley.
Marc:It's great.
Guest:Thank you, man.
Guest:Good to see you.
Guest:Take care of yourself.
Guest:Good luck with... Have we met before?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:Have me and you met?
Guest:Have we met before?
Marc:We have not, but have fun with Napoleon.
Marc:Break a leg.
Marc:It's a great script.
Guest:Great script.
Marc:I enjoy all the movies.
Marc:It was really an honor to talk to you.
Marc:Take care of yourself.
Marc:Thank you, man.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:That was good.
Marc:He loves his own movies, that guy.
Marc:And he's a great director.
Marc:He should love them.
Marc:Did I mention I'm eating a lot of cookies?
Marc:Rugla.
Marc:Babka.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:Babka.
Marc:I'm going to babka some guitar right now.
guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey and LaFonda and Cat Angels.
Marc:That was one.
Marc:That came out of nowhere.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.