Episode 1393 - Rian Johnson
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast welcome to it holidays are upon us ease in don't freak out try to have a good time
Marc:I want to wish everyone, everyone, a happy Hanukkah.
Marc:Happy Hanukkah to all.
Marc:I didn't even know it was Hanukkah until like midway through the day yesterday.
Marc:It's weird when you primarily live alone and perhaps the person in your life isn't Jewish and your parents are sort of onto their own things.
Marc:And I don't know, just nobody... It's kind of...
Marc:A little sad to light the candles alone.
Marc:I've done it.
Marc:Maybe I'll light them with kit.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But I didn't know.
Marc:And I didn't know it was the first day yesterday.
Marc:And I do know it's the second day today.
Marc:So happy Hanukkah.
Marc:And again, well, nothing again.
Marc:Just happy Hanukkah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Good.
Marc:So today on the show, Ryan Johnson is here.
Marc:He's the director of Brick, Looper, Star Wars, The Last Jedi, and Knives Out.
Marc:His new movie, Glass Onion, premieres on Netflix this Friday.
Marc:Caught up with all his stuff.
Marc:Got into it.
Marc:Got the vibe.
Marc:I liked Looper.
Marc:I actually liked him.
Marc:Didn't watch the Star Wars movie because I think I would have had to do a
Marc:to get up to speed would have taken me a lifetime so look man exciting times as we head into the holidays it seems that three of the four narcissists of the idiocalypse are you know kind of spiraling out flaming out amazing exciting times and
Marc:You know, the singularity has happened, people.
Marc:It's just very disappointing.
Marc:But the machines are dictating what most of the culture thinks about.
Marc:And it's ridiculous and stupid.
Marc:I know there's a lot of things going on, but why do we need to know?
Marc:I am so tired of anything to do with Donald Trump driving any part of culture.
Marc:And the fact that he gets on TV to sell his electronic baseball cards...
Marc:with him shooting lasers out of his eyes in such a kind of like just a crazy Eddie type of infomercial.
Marc:I mean...
Marc:Is he still your president, man?
Marc:I mean, it's like, that's your president?
Marc:Are you still proud?
Marc:Will you still follow that guy to the end of the world?
Marc:I know some of you are so out of your mind that you think it's some sort of intentional diversion.
Marc:But that is actually Donald Trump returning to being Donald Trump in his purest form.
Marc:Huckster Donald showing trading cards.
Marc:Day late, dollar short, that guy.
Marc:Kanye is just digging himself in, the other narcissist of the apocalypse.
Marc:Full-on Jew-hating spiral of some kind.
Marc:Just, I guess, I don't know, maybe he's got some followers too.
Marc:Maybe he's still your guy.
Marc:Kanye, the genius.
Marc:This is how a genius unravels.
Marc:In just a fit of ongoing anti-Semitic statements.
Marc:The genius.
Marc:Another genius, Elon Musk.
Marc:That guy is paranoid.
Marc:He bans journalists because he thinks he's going to get assassinated.
Marc:How much Adderall do you got to be doing?
Marc:He's just sitting around shutting things down.
Marc:Get rid of them.
Marc:They're coming to get me.
Marc:Where's my cowboy hat?
Marc:Who's going to assassinate Elon Musk?
Marc:He's more likely to fall off of something or jump out of something or have something he made burst into flames.
Marc:So those three narcissists of the Idiocalypse seem to be flaming out.
Marc:Fine with me.
Marc:I don't like them dictating conversations.
Marc:When I watch comedy, it's like everybody has to have their angle on all that shit, and it's so boring.
Marc:There's more interesting things going on around the corner from me with regular people.
Marc:I'm sure there's a lady down the street knitting some blanket for her grandchild is infinitely more exciting than anything going on with Donald Trump, Kanye West or Elon Musk.
Marc:Just her sitting there reflecting and trying to decide what color wool to use.
Marc:Infinitely more interesting.
Marc:There might be a guy around the corner just sitting around in sort of a sad state wondering what's wrong with his dog's dick.
Marc:Who wouldn't want to hear that story?
Marc:Elon Musk sitting around by himself in an office.
Marc:People right across the street from me.
Marc:Someone may have had one of their toes amputated.
Marc:That's more interesting than anything those guys are saying or doing.
Marc:Bring it back to the community.
Marc:Am I right?
Marc:So there is something I do want to talk about in a real way, in an emotional way, in a personal way.
Marc:Silver Friedman has passed away.
Marc:Now, many of you have heard of Bud Friedman.
Marc:I think we reposted his episode.
Marc:He passed away not too long ago, a month or so ago.
Marc:Silver Friedman is Bud Friedman's ex-wife.
Marc:Now, Bud Friedman, everyone knows Bud Friedman, the guy with the monocle from Evening at the Improv.
Marc:But his ex-wife, Silver, many years ago, before I started doing comedy,
Marc:In the divorce settlement, she got the original improv, the original one, the first improv on 44th Street, Hell's Kitchen in New York City.
Marc:That was the place where it started as sort of a cabaret, kind of a variety club, kind of a hangout for people after the theater.
Marc:You know, a lot of people in the theater would come and sing and do numbers and do bits and sketches and comedians would go.
Marc:It was just it has a long history.
Marc:Many people who started there at the original improv.
Marc:This is in New York City This is before Catch a Rising Star before the comic strip the original improv was there forever and everyone moved through there and Everyone who before they left for LA moved through the original improv and back in the day.
Marc:It was silver and bud Working at that place then bud splits comes to LA now silver had this place now when I moved I
Marc:to New York City from Boston, 1989, after I'd been doing, started working as a comic in 1988.
Marc:New York was a tough city.
Marc:It was a tough city to get working.
Marc:It was a tough city to get passed in.
Marc:There wasn't just, you know, a hundred bringer shows or 90 different places do all comedy.
Marc:There were comedy clubs.
Marc:There was the Cellar.
Marc:There was the Strip.
Marc:There was Dangerfields.
Marc:There was Catch a Rising Star.
Marc:And then when there was what was left of the old improv, the old improv was hanging on.
Marc:Down there on 44th Street.
Marc:Boston Comedy Club was another place.
Marc:Now, I couldn't get work at the cellar for eight years.
Marc:But Silver, over at the Original Improv, let me work right from the get-go.
Marc:She put me on right when I got to New York and she was an intense person, a difficult person.
Marc:Sometimes you just kind of had to keep your distance because she was mad about something, but she had things to say.
Marc:She was creative.
Marc:She had input.
Marc:She would watch you.
Marc:She was engaged with all of us, you know, all of us broken toys, all of us drifting Jews going in and out of the improv.
Marc:Some guys, you know, work the door there.
Marc:I think a towel worked the door there.
Marc:I think Kevin Brennan,
Marc:worked the door there, those guys from my generation.
Marc:But it was not a popular club.
Marc:It was this rundown kind of relic of a different time, but it was still going.
Marc:In my recollection, it said the improvisation on the wall in letters, and I believe the I was hanging, was dangling forever.
Marc:There were just tables.
Marc:The stage was very low.
Marc:There was a bar out front.
Marc:There were all these black and white pictures behind glass on the wall when you walked in.
Marc:Everybody was there.
Marc:The ones that, you know, there was pictures of Liza Minnelli.
Marc:There was Pryor.
Marc:There was guys in comedy teams that you didn't know.
Marc:And she would put us on.
Marc:And she was very supportive.
Marc:She's one of the first people to give me work.
Marc:And she passed away.
Marc:I went to her memorial, and I had been out of touch.
Marc:Her daughter, Zoe Friedman, is still in the business.
Marc:She booked Letterman for a brief period of time, gave me my first Letterman.
Marc:The Friedman ladies helped me out more than most people.
Marc:But Silver's gone.
Marc:And I went to the memorial for a little while and I left and I saw some people.
Marc:I saw Dom there and Fitzsimmons was there and some old faces that I hadn't seen in many years.
Marc:Mike Ivey.
Marc:But, like, I remember Silver very well because, you know, she supported me and believed in me and was hard on me, but it's heavy, man.
Marc:You know, even though I don't... I was out of touch with her, obviously, for many years, and she was out here with Zoe.
Marc:But, you know, when Zoe texted me, I wanted to be there.
Marc:I wanted to go over there and pay my respects, say hi to Zoe and just, you know...
Marc:Everybody knows who Bud Friedman is, but Silver Friedman was very important to many of us who were starting out in New York and were just trying to get a foothold.
Marc:The club was, you know, it had its time and she was always struggling to keep it going.
Marc:It was really something.
Marc:That's where I met Dan Vitale.
Marc:I remember like one time when Bill Hicks was in New York for five minutes, he decided to move there at some point.
Marc:I can't remember what year it was.
Marc:It must have been 89, 90 years.
Marc:It wasn't here that long, but I remember it was New Year's Eve, and we were just hanging around that improv, and no one was in there, really.
Marc:And, you know, the Times Square thing was just around the corner, and me and Vitaly, they're both dead.
Marc:Me and Vitaly were hanging around, and Hicks comes in.
Marc:It's like, Happy New Year.
Marc:Let's go down and watch the ball.
Marc:And I just remember me and Vitaly and Bill Hicks, and Vitaly was heavy at that time, big boy.
Marc:We're just freezing cold, and we're just wandering, trying to get to Times Square to see something, but there was thousands of people.
Marc:And then Hicks was like, let's go back.
Marc:And we went back and it was just like there was 10 of us bringing in the new year.
Marc:I remember it was funny to see Hicks there because it was, you know, there was it was like nine, 10 people sometimes, you know, they just wasn't drawing crowds and Hicks would be up there just yelling at them.
Marc:It was quite stunning.
Marc:He was a little too, he was too angry for New York.
Marc:But I remember one time I was sitting in the back of the room.
Marc:There was probably 20 people in it.
Marc:And for some reason, Brian Regan had come by.
Marc:It's the late 80s probably.
Marc:And Hicks was just sitting back there and he was just sort of like, I love watching Brian Regan.
Marc:It's a beautiful Hicks moment because they couldn't have been more different.
Marc:Both great performers, but subject-wise, polar opposites.
Marc:But I'm the same way.
Marc:I like watching.
Marc:There's people I like to watch that are just funny.
Marc:Anyway, the original improv in its final days is very important to me.
Marc:Silver Friedman played a very important role in my life as an early supporter of me and as somebody who gave me stage time before anyone else would.
Marc:And I just wanted to say that I love you, Silver, and rest in peace.
Marc:So, look, this guy, Rian Johnson, is a true film nerd and a true film craftsman.
Marc:And I watch many of his movies to see his evolution as a filmmaker.
Marc:Glass Onion, a Knives Out Mystery, is streaming on Netflix starting Friday.
Marc:And this is my conversation with Rian Johnson.
Guest:I sit out there.
Guest:I, like, smoke a cigar.
Guest:I'm like, oh, this is worth it all.
Marc:How many cigars do you smoke a day?
Guest:I keep to one, yeah.
Guest:One a day, yeah.
Marc:Are you a cigar smoker?
Marc:I was off nicotine for years and it's like, you know, now like because I'm under a certain amount of stress and I was going to Canada and somehow I made the exception.
Marc:But it's like when you're a nicotine addict, all it takes is one and then it's a downhill slope.
Marc:You can start to, yeah.
Marc:But I've been smoking them a little bit again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What do you smoke?
Guest:I smell, well, when I go over to London, I basically, I feel like a bootlegger.
Guest:I just pile up on Cubans and bring them back.
Guest:So you like the Cubans still?
Guest:I like the Cubans.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know if it's a placebo effect thing, just that I know that they're Cubans, but I swear that they do taste.
Guest:They taste different and specific.
Marc:And they all have a similar thing.
Marc:They have different degrees of strength and depth, but there is a Cuban taste, no doubt.
Guest:So I started with Goibas, and recently a buddy of mine got me into the Partagas, if I'm pronouncing it right.
Guest:Partagas, like number twos or something?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So it's beautiful.
Marc:Yeah, they're good.
Marc:I like strong ones.
Marc:You should try to get some of those Cuban Bolivars.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I like to sweat and feel a little nauseous.
Guest:Have you ever smoked, because I was pretentious in my 20s, you ever smoked a pipe?
Marc:I've smoked just about everything you can smoke.
Marc:I think I tried a pipe at some point in time, but there's really no way to pull it off.
Guest:It also, it fucks you up.
Guest:It's actually like, I don't know, I'm not a pot smoker at all.
Guest:I never smoked cigarettes.
Guest:It's just cigars for me.
Guest:But a pipe is a lot stronger.
Guest:It looks so quaint, but it actually knocks you on your ass.
Guest:Sure, man.
Marc:Yeah, and all of them you're gonna inhale a little bit.
Marc:And you can kind of feel it happening.
Marc:Pipes are fun because they're sweet.
Marc:A lot of people like those hookahs.
Marc:Like the water pipe thing?
Marc:Yeah, the big water pipes that sit around and do that business.
Marc:But pipes are a little hard to pull off.
Guest:Were you in high school smoking a pipe?
Guest:No, I was in college.
Guest:It was worse.
Guest:Can you imagine a fucking college student smoking his bro pipe?
Guest:Doing the pipe thing.
Guest:Oh, Christ.
Guest:I thought it was Tolkien.
Marc:There's no way to pull it off.
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:There's just no way to be casual about a pipe.
Marc:Can't do it.
Marc:That's why I don't like cigars, because there's such a bro culture.
Guest:I know.
Guest:That's the problem.
Guest:Cigar affectionate and all that shit.
Guest:It's kind of like I don't want to be seen smoking them, but I just enjoy them.
Marc:I'm just like a nicotine fiend, and I'll get a Jones on the road, and I'll go to a cigar place where I can smoke inside, and it's like five or six of the same guys, no matter where you go.
Marc:It's like a small Comedia dell'arte of cigar bro characters.
Marc:You know, there's always a fucking sports game on.
Marc:And, you know, I just try to occasionally I'll have a good conversation there, but I'm just like, I try to keep it around the drug.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just focus on your own.
Guest:So the movie came out like it made like a bunch of money in the movie theater.
Guest:It did all right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It did good.
Guest:I mean, it was a weird thing because it was kind of a, it wasn't a limited release, but it was like only like 600 theaters.
Guest:It wasn't like a wide release.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But it was like this weird kind of like, because it's Netflix, it wasn't a huge promotional campaign.
Guest:No, I mean, they did promote it.
Guest:I mean, the big thing for them, and this is kind of what we pushed and what we got, was they kind of reached across the aisle.
Guest:And so AMC, Regal, and Cinemark, which all three of those had never carried their movies before, took it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was 600 theaters, but it was in like really high traffic theaters.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But for me, it was just like, I don't know.
Guest:It's a fun movie to see with a crowd.
Guest:So being able to go out and like see and just like stand in the back of the theater and soak up the energy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was really fun.
Guest:It was fun.
Guest:Well, that's what it's supposed to happen.
Guest:I'm coming off like a high of the past week.
Guest:Yeah, I bet.
Guest:Oh, you're just wandering around the theater?
Guest:I was.
Guest:I would just go around.
Guest:I would just like sneak in the back and just kind of soak it up.
Guest:How was it?
Guest:It was great.
Guest:It was awesome.
Guest:People responding to it?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was really fun.
Guest:Usually, I'm standing in the back with a nod in my stomach like, is this going to work?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:After a couple of them, I'm like, oh, okay.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know how that sounds, but it's like- You're getting it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Despite whatever amazing deal you made with Netflix, isn't there some disappointment that it's not going to run?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I can't really complain, but, um, but look, I mean, the reality is it's kind of, uh, I don't know.
Guest:It's, it's completely a thing.
Guest:Cause like when we, I mean, first of all, Netflix has been absolutely awesome.
Guest:And the fact that they did this was a huge, huge thing for them.
Guest:Like it's actually, I'm really thankful.
Marc:As opposed to just sneak it into two screens to get it up for awards.
Guest:To do the regular thing and just like put it in a couple of theaters or whatever.
Guest:So the fact that they made this effort and actually really pushed it.
Marc:But isn't it odd that they just don't give a shit about the money it could make in a theater versus what they would pick up in subscribers in two months?
Marc:I guess.
Marc:Look, I don't know, man.
Guest:It's above my pick, right?
Guest:I mean, yeah, you're asking me.
Guest:Why can't we make all the money?
Guest:It's probably good for stock for Netflix stockholders that I don't run Netflix.
Guest:But is that it for a theatrical run on this thing?
Guest:Well, after it drops on the service at Christmas, it's not like we'll do a full run, but theaters will be able to have it if they want it.
Guest:So I'm hoping there will be little things here and there.
Guest:But yeah, that's it for this.
Marc:So entering, I had to get up to speed on you pretty quickly.
Marc:I had seen-
Marc:What had I seen?
Marc:Well, I saw your Breaking Bad episodes, obviously, and I watched Nights Out.
Marc:Well, I watched most of the movies, but for this one, just in dealing with the two, I mean,
Marc:It seems like you took on the genre head on in Knives Out.
Marc:This was a mansion, it was a family, it felt like, but you tweaked it and they were higher stakes.
Marc:I think the dialogues had a better clip than the old timey ones.
Marc:But the challenge was for you to sort of own that particular form.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I've done kind of movies in different genres before.
Guest:And for me, it's kind of, I don't know.
Guest:For me, it's sort of about having a genre that I grew up loving, first of all.
Guest:So I got an emotional connection to it.
Guest:And all I'm trying to do, really, all I'm trying to do is kind of connect back up in the most direct way to what I love about it and get that on the screen.
Guest:But that, with the genre that has kind of layers of veneer over it over the years, like you've seen it a bunch.
Guest:Yeah, you got to shake it a little.
Guest:You got to tweak it.
Guest:I mean, a big part of it with these ones is just setting them in modern day America.
Guest:So many whodunits I'd seen over the years and loved are period pieces set up in England.
Guest:So just like, all right, forget timelessness.
Guest:It's set in America right here, right now.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But you were able to deal with the old mansion in the other one.
Guest:Yeah, that's true.
Marc:So there was like the trappings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, with this one, though, I mean, it's interesting.
Guest:There is kind of like a whole subgenre of the vacation mystery.
Guest:You think about like Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun, The Last of Sheila.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:There's a lot of them now.
Marc:I mean, isn't that movie The Chef movie?
Marc:oh yeah i haven't seen it yet white lotus is is really sand and sandler's uh a mystery thing is kind of like a yeah it's a it's a whole thing the destination murder thing so there's a tradition of it yes that but well that's interesting yeah so so yeah but this is really more of a like a compound situation this wasn't like people sort of in an awkward in an uncomfortable place no or a place that's beautiful that becomes horrible because someone's dead
Marc:No, not really.
Marc:It's kind of, yeah.
Marc:But this one for you, like in approaching it as a writer, I mean, the other one was family.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The other one was about property being left, about a will.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So like this was the entire device and the sort of genre buttons were not there.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, this one is – but at the same time, there are other ones that I'm leaning on.
Guest:So with this one, I mean, first of all, it was about a group of friends, which was another trope of the murder mystery thing, which actually puts me ahead.
Guest:Like a lot of Christie's stuff, it's just people who live in the same town or people are vaguely connected.
Guest:So even just having a group of friends who are trapped together on an island gives me kind of a density that, like, is really helpful.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then, yeah, leaning into, I mean, it's all, like, with Whodunit, it's all about the power structure.
Guest:It's all about a group of suspects.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Kind of a microcosm of society.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Power structure, somebody at the top that needs to die, you know?
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:And this one, it was clicking in kind of, okay, it's a...
Marc:tech billionaire up at the top so that kind of makes sense like who this group of friends are and we can talk about this and that and then it kind of is so it all kind of folds and what was it about the idea of so many breakable things i mean like you know right at the beginning of the movie you're sort of like well there's a lot of glass yeah no not just the place but all the sculptures that you know that's set up for some reason yeah it's checkoffs glass trinkets based
Guest:Yeah, the notion that kind of, I don't know, I mean, and I'll try not to spoil it if anyone listening hasn't seen it, but I like the idea that what happens at the end kind of very much follows what Miles Brown, what Edward Norton's character describes as disruption, which is you start by breaking stuff every once in a while, it's broken.
Guest:It's also cheesy art.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:You've been staring at those things the whole movie on their wobbly little pedestal scene.
Guest:And by the way, the actors, by the time we got to the end of shooting in that set, we've been on that set for like two months, they were like tiptoeing around these fucking things.
Guest:They were dying to start smashing those.
Guest:So it was cathartic all around.
Guest:Oh, they did it?
Guest:Everyone was able to break it?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Everyone was like calling, oh, I'm going to break that one.
Guest:Oh, that's so funny.
Guest:It was good.
Marc:And the one thing I noticed about these, because I don't watch a lot of them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is that there's really no way to figure it out.
Guest:There's a great quote.
Guest:There's Ellery Queen, which was this series that was written by a couple of writers.
Guest:One of them had a great quote that said, we play fair with the audience if the audience is a genius.
Guest:But I think, which is exactly what you're saying, it's like there's the illusion that these things are puzzles that are fairly presented to the audience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think it's actually really important in writing them to realize they're not, to realize that's never going to be the source of entertainment.
Guest:You have to build a roller coaster ride.
Guest:You got to build a fun movie with the same dramatic elements that make any other movie tick.
Guest:Otherwise, you're going to get bored.
Guest:You're not going to care about clues and solving.
Guest:Who cares?
Marc:Right, for that genre.
Marc:But I mean, if you're watching a mystery series, you do want to kind of think you can figure it out.
Marc:And it's kind of upsetting when you can't.
Guest:Well, I think it's upsetting if you get to the end and it feels like in retrospect it did something unfair.
Guest:But I still think the notion that you can solve it or the notion that that's what keeps you entertained is totally an illusion.
Guest:I think even in a good ongoing series.
Guest:I think people know that too, right?
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:Yeah, completely.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I know when I'm watching any kind of whodunit, maybe the first 15 minutes I'm thinking who did it.
Guest:And then I'm like, oh, I don't know.
Guest:I'll never figure this out.
Guest:Just, you know.
Marc:I was watching that, though, that one with Kate Winslet, you know, the Mayor of Winningham.
Marc:Oh, yeah, Mayor of Winningham.
Marc:Yeah, whatever it is.
Marc:And I was sort of like, I was mad, you know, because, like, at the end, I'm like, well, how would we know that that happened?
Guest:I didn't see it, so I can't speak.
Guest:I'm kind of thankful now I didn't see it.
Marc:Well, she was great, and it was all great, but it was like it was presented as a murder mystery, not as like a whodunit thing.
Marc:It kind of was, but I guess...
Marc:I guess this is why I never really locked into that medium, because I just get anxious.
Marc:It's not a genre for anxious people.
Marc:I get to that point, I'm like, get on with it.
Guest:How are we still waiting to solve this?
Guest:My approach with these ones is to assume that what you just described, you personally are watching this movie, and the notion being, I want people to be having such a good time watching it, they forget they're supposed to be solving it.
Guest:I want to take that right off the audience as quickly as possible.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so that's why with the first one and with this one, I try and do things where it's I take the onus off of who done it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Moron.
Guest:Oh, we're following this person who's trying to accomplish this.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know.
Guest:No, no.
Marc:It's very entertaining.
Marc:But I have to like the one thing I noticed about the space.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is that, you know, the pace of Knives Out was so, you know, and it happens in the new one, too.
Marc:But, you know, just the nature of the cinematic space is so expansive that, you know, any sort of joke you're going to run is so under the microscope.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Because it just stands alone.
Marc:And it's like a lot of it's based on futuristic things.
Guest:So you had to play that stuff out in a different way.
Guest:Yeah, which to me, also, I mean, look, when we made the first one, the idea of doing more of them was only interesting to me if like, I don't know, if it could be something completely different each time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I want the audience to have a different experience, but even more than that, just selfishly, I know I need to have a new challenge with each other.
Guest:So wait, are you going to make more of them?
Guest:Yeah, I'm doing one more at least with Netflix.
Guest:Are you going to place this one underwater?
Guest:Hell no.
Guest:I'm going to take the franchise to space.
Guest:It's time.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Don't do it.
Marc:There's just too many.
Marc:You'll just open yourself up to the potential of too many bad jokes.
Guest:No, it's time.
Marc:Why not?
Guest:You're going to go to space.
Guest:Space.
Guest:Time to take it to space.
Guest:It's a moon mystery.
Marc:Well, that's the other thing about what was great about Looper is like at the end of that, there's this moment where your brain wants to sort of like, well, could this really happen?
Guest:Like, what are you even asking?
Marc:Does this make sense?
Marc:Is there logic to this ending?
Guest:Slap, slap.
Guest:Right, you can't.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I thought you handled that genre very well, and that's another one that I don't watch a lot of.
Guest:But where'd you grow up?
Guest:Well, I was a kid in Colorado, but I've been in Southern California since I was in junior high.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:What part of Colorado?
Guest:Near Denver.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Englewood, yeah.
Marc:No, I grew up in New Mexico, but I'm in Colorado a lot, but that's where you were born?
Guest:Well, I was born in Maryland, but then we moved after a few years to Colorado.
Guest:And I got a lot of family still in Colorado.
Guest:I go back there a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So your folks?
Guest:I love it.
Guest:No, my mom lives in Southern California and my dad did live in Colorado, but he passed away some years ago.
Marc:Oh, sorry, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who got you interested in movies?
Guest:I think, I mean, my dad, none of my family was in the movie business.
Guest:Like my dad was in the home building business, but I think he was a frustrated artist.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think he always wanted to.
Guest:What made you feel that?
Guest:Because he would say, I always wanted to.
Guest:You say I'm a frustrated artist.
Guest:I wish I could be making movies.
Guest:Why am I building houses?
Guest:I mean, he liked his work.
Guest:He enjoyed his work.
Guest:But he loved, loved, loved movies.
Guest:And my family loves movies.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah, my granddad.
Marc:Was he like a movie buff kind of guy?
Guest:He was, yeah.
Guest:I mean, he wasn't like a, you know, deep, deep, deep movie buff guy, but he fucking loved movies and he kind of, and I, he loved directors also, I guess that's the thing.
Guest:Oh yeah?
Guest:Yeah, like he would show, he showed me like, you know, Scorsese's movies, but like even more than the movies, like,
Guest:I don't know, looking at your dad and wanting his respect and seeing him talk about this director, Scorsese, with that kind of... There was a really deep, powerful thing in terms of the director is the person who makes the movie and seeing my dad hold them in esteem.
Marc:So he knew his stuff enough to know.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And he was a Scorsese guy?
Guest:Yeah, he loved Scorsese.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Raging Bull was kind of his... He showed me Raging Bull probably when I was too young.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:He loved Scorsese.
Guest:That's a good one.
Marc:I watch that as much as... I'm once or twice a year on that one.
Guest:I got that movie memorized shot by shot.
Guest:Oh, of course, yeah.
Guest:Shot by shot?
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:I can play it in my head.
Marc:Even those fight sequences?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Yeah, especially those.
Guest:But even the small stuff, like the...
Guest:I haven't seen... I don't know.
Guest:I got buddies like Edgar Wright who have seen every movie in the world and have this encyclopedia.
Guest:I haven't got that, but the movies I have seen, I've watched a thousand times each.
Marc:What I thought was interesting recently about re-watching Raging Bull in the Criterion collection of fighting movies is that I realized that the black and white thing...
Marc:You know, I don't know if I ever put it together before other than it was an interesting choice, but it's easier to shoot fight movies in black and white because the makeup is easier.
Marc:Oh, completely.
Marc:The blood.
Marc:Yeah, everything.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Like if you want to put a fake nose on a guy, it's a lot easier in black and white, dude.
Guest:Dude, they never would have gotten away with that LaManda nose and that shot in color.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:You look at it and you're like, wait a minute.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You can see the seam even in black and white.
Guest:So it's totally practical.
Guest:Yeah, completely.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And also like fight movies, you know,
Marc:are always the same.
Marc:So in a sense, like he did what you do with genre in that movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, in so many of the classic fight movies, you think about like, you know, so many of the classic fight movies are like the boxing noirs or whatever.
Guest:It's just rooted in that black and white tradition.
Guest:It's hard to think of.
Marc:But also the stories are all the same.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Either it's hubris.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's going to bring the guy down.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:Or he's got to sell himself out.
Marc:It's corrupted by says, I never went down, Ray.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Never went down, Ray.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Never knock me down, Ray.
Marc:And Ray's just looking at him like, what's wrong with you, man?
Guest:I will, half of my, and did you just talk to James Gray?
Guest:I did, yeah.
Guest:Half of my relationship with him is just us out of context texting each other raging bull quotes.
Marc:That's funny.
Yeah.
Marc:It seems like half of my, I've got a new relationship with him.
Marc:It's just texting pictures of food we cooked.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:You're good.
Guest:I don't know which is healthier.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:No, he seems like a real, he likes the business.
Marc:He's an amazing dude.
Guest:Yeah, he is.
Marc:Smart guy.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're one of these guys who started making movies when you're like three?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It feels like boring to talk about it.
Marc:But you're a man though.
Marc:So who were some of his other directors?
Marc:You were going to tell me.
Guest:He was really into Scorsese.
Guest:He loved Kasdan.
Guest:He loved Lawrence Kasdan.
Guest:He loved, like, he's really into Kasdan's movies.
Guest:Big Chill.
Guest:Accidental Tourist.
Guest:Body Heat.
Guest:He loved Accidental Tourist.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Body Heat, yeah.
Marc:I watched that again recently.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It holds up.
Guest:That's a good noir.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:Oh, it's fucking great.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Marc:Yeah, it's terrific, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, that good twist at the end.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Well, and the whole thing, just that kind of sexual in a way that Hollywood movies aren't today.
Guest:How so?
Guest:Well, just that kind of, like,
Guest:Humid, even though it's kind of goofy.
Guest:Insexual, did you say?
Guest:Sexual.
Guest:Oh, sexual.
Marc:I thought it was just a new word, insexual.
Guest:Insexual.
Guest:Yes, it's insexual.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:There was definitely an amazing sexual tension.
Guest:Yeah, which has kind of gone away from Hollywood movies.
Marc:Has it?
Marc:That's odd.
Marc:Because I notice it.
Marc:I notice when it's not there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I notice that, you know, I mean, it seemed like,
Marc:Well, I watched some of that, what the hell is it called?
Marc:The Levinson's, the high school thing.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Euphoria, yeah.
Guest:Euphoria, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah, that's hyper-sexualized.
Guest:It is, but it also feels like television is where it can exist now, whereas you think about, it's so weird, you think about mainstream Hollywood movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I know.
Guest:It's just... So is that a choice that anyone makes?
Marc:I mean, do you make it?
Marc:I mean, like your movies, there's not a lot of fucking going on.
Guest:No, there's not.
Guest:They aren't very sexual in general.
Guest:And I don't know if my not doing it... I mean, for me, it's just I do what I'm interested in.
Guest:I don't know if it's indicative of some bigger thing or whatever.
Guest:But I feel like you could theorize there's a lot of things.
Guest:Is it porn on the internet that suddenly it's like you don't have to...
Guest:Get that from that source anymore.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:My wife's doing like a whole series on her podcast right now about sex in movies in the 80s and 90s and like studying kind of the- What's she coming up with?
Guest:It's fascinating.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:It's really, really interesting.
Guest:She's kind of using it to talk about like-
Guest:sex in society in the 80s and 90s.
Marc:To reflect on just the process of sex on camera now on a set, it's a big deal, even if it's minor.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Have you worked with intimacy coordinators?
Guest:Yeah, I have.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:I mean, look, again, it's not like I have a lot of sex in my movies, but I feel like it's such a... I'm personally thankful for it because I'm like so... I don't know.
Guest:Just because my only thing is I want everyone to feel 100% comfortable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just like if there's another element here that doesn't interfere creatively, then I can make sure I don't have any blind spots and making everybody comfortable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a good thing.
Marc:You can suggest.
Guest:You don't have to... Yeah.
Guest:Maybe I'd feel different if I was making Adrian Lyne movies and that was really kind of the...
Guest:That fucking was the part of it.
Marc:Well, I think also that's just an issue, too, of what's nudity worth.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And when is it expected?
Marc:I mean, a lot of those systems have kind of fallen away.
Marc:You know, like this idea that, like, are you going to do the topless thing?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because you're expected to do the topless thing.
Guest:It's so interesting, isn't it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's weird, like, watching older movies where there's a lot of casual nudity and feeling...
Marc:the feeling kind of the effect of it in a way that it's you don't feel numb to it if anything it feels more like whoa just because there's so little of it i think these days and yeah hollywood product i think but yeah i thought it was interesting well you did in the looper actually you know you had a scene where the dancer or the oh yeah piper you know climbs on top of him and i noticed like i noticed it because there isn't a lot of sex in the movie yeah and it was so cold and weird and then for initially for a minute i'm like is she uncomfortable i'm like no she's
Marc:you know, hook her.
Guest:She's working.
Guest:She's working.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Yeah, drawing the comparison between like him doing his job and her trying to do it.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Him looking for a deeper emotional connection and her just wanting to finish her shift, you know, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was kind of, and I think if you, yeah, I don't know.
Guest:So for me, it was, that was, yeah, completely not a sexy scene at all.
Guest:That was entirely about like a movie work and emotional disconnection.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But when do you start, you know, does your dad buy you a camera?
Guest:I bought myself, I got a Super 8 camera in junior high and I started for school projects shooting my own stuff.
Guest:And then when, and I was kind of in high school right when like eight millimeter video came out.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So that was kind of a whole.
Guest:Betamax or VHS?
Guest:No, it wasn't.
Guest:It was one step beyond Betamax VHS.
Guest:Oh, Super 8.
Guest:It was the eight millimeter.
Guest:High 8.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It was high 8.
Guest:High 8.
Guest:And then when I was in college, it was DV, which were the little tapes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was like a big thing of like, okay, now we can.
Guest:And so in high school, that's just, that's how I spent most of my time on the weekends with my buddies is just making stupid movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, not even like making good stuff, just trying to make like a movie like in a quality way.
Guest:Literally just, we'd hang out and make a James Bond parody, like that kind of thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So yeah.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:So you're kind of learning the language?
Guest:I think that's genuine.
Guest:I mean, that's the thing.
Guest:It's like when I talk to friends' kids who are like looking at film school or whatever, I feel like the place where I learned how to make movies was just making hundreds of them with my buddies and just...
Guest:There's two things back then.
Guest:It was like, first of all, just getting used to telling a story with pictures with a camera in your hand, getting comfortable with that.
Guest:But also what that did with tape was you were editing in camera, so it also taught you editing.
Guest:You do one shot and you move over and do the other shot, teaching yourself how shots go together as opposed to gather a bunch of footage and figure it out in the computer.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So they had that benefit also, I think.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, that was, I mean, that's really kind of where I learned how to make movies.
Marc:And were you showing them at the house?
Marc:Were you showing your dad?
Guest:We didn't even really show them.
Guest:No, that's the thing.
Guest:We'd make them, and then we'd watch them ourselves, and I just, you know.
Marc:So it was video, so it was kind of disposable.
Guest:Yeah, it was video.
Guest:It was just totally disposable.
Guest:Vimeo, and the internet wasn't around, so it was probably we could post them or anything.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah, we weren't even making them to show them.
Guest:Just a goof?
Guest:They were just hanging out.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because that's what we did while we hang out.
Guest:Do you have siblings?
Guest:Yeah, I'm the oldest of, yeah, I got two younger brothers, younger sister, and then a younger half-brother, yeah.
Guest:Wow, a lot.
Guest:Well, I got also, I got like 30, 40 younger cousins, and we're all super close.
Guest:My cousin Nathan's my composer.
Guest:We've been making movies together since we were like 10 years old.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, we're like a clan.
Marc:So you're a music guy.
Guest:He is.
Guest:He is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My brother also was in the music business, but yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was a producer for a while.
Marc:No more?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:That's tough, tough, tough business he got out of it.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:Jesus.
Guest:Heartbreaker?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just like indie bands and just the whole scene and everything.
Guest:It was just too tough to-
Guest:You play?
Guest:I play a lot of instruments really badly, but nothing.
Guest:I don't do, I don't play.
Guest:Yeah, I got a few I play badly over here.
Guest:I can see.
Guest:But I think it's, for me, it's, I don't know what it is for you.
Guest:For me, it's like a creative thing I can do for.
Guest:Without expectation.
Guest:Zero expectation for nobody.
Guest:I can just sit and doodle and just kind of record bad stuff.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah, I do that too.
Marc:And I've been doing it all my life.
Marc:I think, yeah.
Marc:Well, I played guitar my whole life.
Marc:I mean, I think I've gotten a little better, but I've done bits about it how because I never had creative expectations, those aren't sort of like broken dream vessels.
Guest:They're not signifiers of failure.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:I think it's important to have a creative outlet that you don't- That you don't ruin.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Marc:So you got a lot of creative siblings.
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:It must have been... It was weird.
Guest:All our parents were in the home building business, and we all kind of went into the arts.
Guest:But they were supportive.
Guest:They were totally supportive.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Well, I...
Guest:Yeah, I kind of like in my 20s, actually, kind of like as a teenager, I kind of fell away from my dad and me making my first feature was almost like a reconnection point for us in our relationship.
Guest:What happened?
Guest:It was a divorce, so he left and I had a lot of anger.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:I was 18 when he left.
Guest:but i was the oldest of my siblings so and my youngest you know yeah yeah it must have been devastating it was really really hard and so um and i was also yeah not to go too deep into it but i was uh i was very religious growing up yeah what kind i was just like orange county protestant christian but it was but it was like it was actually like it wasn't just like i went to church with my parents it was actually like a
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:It was.
Guest:It's not anymore for me at all.
Guest:You had your heart filled?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:More than that, I would describe it as it was the lens that I saw the world through.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It totally was.
Guest:Yeah, this relationship with God.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:And so that made me even more judgmental and angry when my dad left the family.
Guest:So yeah, there was- How long?
Guest:How long?
Guest:What's that?
Guest:It was the anger.
Guest:How long was the estrangement?
Guest:It's not like we weren't talking to each other, but I think our relationship really suffered through my 20s.
Guest:I was very disconnected from my 20s.
Guest:But then I made my first movie when I was turning 30.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:Brick.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:It was Brick, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I kind of had spent my 20s trying to make it and finally, finally, you know.
Guest:And that brought him back around or brought you guys together?
Guest:Well, that kind of brought us together.
Guest:It was weird.
Guest:We kind of reconnected as adults.
Guest:It was almost like forming a relationship with a new person because at that point,
Guest:It was strange.
Guest:It was kind of like rediscovering each other as adults in a way.
Guest:What made you drift from the Jesus?
Guest:I got to college and just kind of got out of Orange County and met people and talked and had conversation.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I just kind of naturally, very naturally and pretty quickly sort of fell away from it, which sounds weird considering it was such a huge...
Guest:element of my psyche.
Marc:In terms of what you were part of, Christian groups and that kind of stuff?
Guest:I was, yeah.
Marc:I was a youth group kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But that was like a whole thing through my 20s is figuring out, because you got to figure out something to replace that with.
Guest:Yeah, and you chose movies?
Guest:Kind of.
Guest:I mean, I got really – actually, what really helped me out was really getting into Jung, into reading Jung.
Guest:Carl Jung?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:The big – The kahuna.
Marc:The big collective unconscious?
Guest:Yes, the collective unconscious.
Marc:Mandalas and the –
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And just his kind of, well, the fact, I think it helps that his stuff feels slightly mystic, which also can tend to draw some nut jobs to it, I think.
Guest:But I feel like the fact that he takes mystical things very seriously, the fact that it let me say, okay, I wasn't insane.
Guest:It's just this thing that I was projecting as a structure on a being outside of myself is actually a psychic structure within myself.
Marc:And also, I think as it's almost genetic, it's almost like psychologically genetic to want to transfer, you know, meaning to feel a part of something bigger than yourself to give your life definition.
Marc:Completely.
Marc:Because, you know, it's a hell of a burden to carry if you don't have any of that.
Marc:I mean, mine changes week to week kind of like it's not a...
Guest:but but yeah i think young is is is good for that kind of stuff like you know you have this great sort of nebulous connection to something yeah you know and but between him and joseph campbell you can kind of you can piece it together oh i think structure is another thing you know what i mean like that's the other thing that religion gives you as a structure and and and kind of grabbing onto the structure of okay the ego and the subconscious and this sense of self and
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's not like I'm a devoted Jungian or something, but it really helped me kind of like, it was like a halfway house.
Guest:At a formative time.
Guest:Did you read Synchronicity?
Guest:Yeah, I read Synchronicity.
Guest:Well, how'd that go for you?
Guest:It's great.
Guest:It's fascinating.
Guest:I mean, I went back, I read a bunch of his collected works, and I read like Ion was one that really helped me out a lot because that talks about Christian imagery and kind of the relationship of
Guest:Anyway, and I think it's interesting.
Guest:I think people, yeah, people can mistake him for being a mystic.
Guest:And the reality is he just, like he has a book about UFOs, taking it very seriously.
Guest:But what he's taking seriously is the fact that people are having these experiences that feel very real in these perceptions.
Guest:And what does that mean in terms of what does that reflect inside their brains, inside the psyche, in terms of the structure of it?
Guest:Anyway, but yeah, Doug Synchronous.
Marc:Well, people want to backload sense into things, which is why conspiracy theories are popular, because it's got its own dogma, and it explains everything.
Marc:And it seems like special wisdom and secret knowledge.
Marc:It's something I've been thinking a lot about lately.
Guest:Creatively?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What are you going to do with it?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's tough because it's such an – and also in relation to my background, having this kind of truly spiritual kind of like phase of my life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's fascinating to me kind of the assigning meaning to a structure that is interior but that you mistake as an exterior thing.
Guest:That to me is fascinating.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But also to have it piped into you.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I mean, that's the other element of it is like, you know, this has been an exploitable part of the psyche since, you know, day one, that grift has been going.
Guest:Well, now we have algorithms that are like needles filled with heroin going into our spines.
Guest:And I barely notice it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, it's terrifying.
Guest:It's like it slips in.
Guest:No, it's insidious.
Guest:But you're right.
Guest:I like that you said that.
Guest:I mean, it is something that has been there and has been exploited since day one.
Guest:It's just you wonder what these new delivery devices are.
Guest:It's not good.
Marc:It ain't good.
Marc:But I find this stuff very interesting because that need to believe and then sort of realizing, I don't know if I took it to the next level of what you're talking about, is that it's something that we're reflecting back, that it's something within our own psyche that needs resolution.
Guest:Well, it's all interior and the fact that we're, I don't know, it's projection, but that's the most powerful thing.
Guest:But you don't believe in any of the sort of the magic?
Guest:I don't.
Guest:Well, no, there are people who, I don't know, we're in LA.
Marc:There are people that take it seriously.
Marc:No, but you know, I'm not talking about mind reading or something that transcends logic or explanation.
Yeah.
Guest:because like even with synchronicity even the idea is sort of like yeah this feels familiar but that's just your brain reflecting on something within itself I think that's what and look there are bits of Jung where he veers a little too close for my comfort to mysticism with synchronicity with the concept of synchronicity but what I think is that it's really just exactly what you're talking about is that we all have a structure to our psyche the same way that we all have a skeleton in our bodies and there's a similar shape to it and that makes a lot of sense in terms of how our
Guest:their brains work, they're all the same.
Marc:Right, and also in your geographical environment is limited.
Guest:Oh, totally, yeah.
Marc:So if you were sort of like, why did I just run into that guy twice?
Marc:I'm like, well, you live in the same neighborhood.
Guest:My cinematographer, Steve, he's been my best friend since we were like 18.
Guest:He had a great experience once where he was shooting in a hotel.
Guest:They're all sitting at the hotel bar in between shots.
Guest:The bar has a mirror behind it.
Guest:And they're sitting there and they're shooting a period movie and they're sitting there and suddenly all of them see reflected in the mirror this ghostly form of a dude in a tuxedo walk across behind them.
Guest:And then they all turn and look and there's nobody there.
Guest:And there's no exit on that side of the bar.
Guest:There's no way for anybody to run.
Guest:And everyone at the bar is like, we just saw a ghost that just happened.
Guest:And if they had stopped there, if everyone had just went back and they called lunch and went back to the shoot, everyone would walk away telling the story of, we just saw a ghost and I know it.
Guest:And I know it's crazy.
Guest:I never believe it.
Guest:But Steve, because he's Steve, he went to the back of the bar and he looked and he realized there was like a one foot gap between the floor and the wall.
Guest:And there was a mirrored back ceiling.
Guest:And they had seen like a reflection of a reflection of a reflection of someone on the lower level walking by.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And so he like, but it's just, I don't know.
Guest:It's like, of course, Steve is going to puncture this.
Marc:Sure, but if it were a different time and Steve was in a different part of his life, he could make it happen again and charge people to see it.
Guest:Well, this is the lesson I took away from it, is we can monetize this.
Guest:That's what I told him, and that's why.
Guest:I think Walt Disney already did it.
Marc:Yeah, that's true.
Marc:Okay, so you made brick after...
Marc:Undergrad?
Marc:No, after graduate school.
Guest:No, so I wrote brick right out of college, right after undergrad when I was 22.
Guest:But then I basically spent my 20s working day jobs and failing to get- In Orange County?
Marc:No, in LA.
Guest:I was in LA.
Marc:What part of Orange County did you grow up in?
Guest:San Clemente, so the very Southern tip.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So almost, which it has, or had then, almost more of a San Diego vibe.
Marc:Right, well, that's, okay, so that's where you shot brick.
Marc:Yeah, that was at my high school, yeah.
Marc:But you were up here, but you went to graduate school at UCLA?
Guest:No, I went to undergrad at USC.
Guest:Oh, USC.
Guest:Yeah, I did film school there.
Marc:You did film school undergrad at USC.
Guest:I did, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And that's the one, right?
Guest:Yeah, I guess so, yeah.
Guest:I mean, it was good.
Guest:I mean, look, I think the main benefit of it is just I met some great friends.
Guest:We all graduated and stuck around in LA and were broke and struggling together through our 20s.
Marc:But were you part of...
Guest:believing in the mythology of USC?
Guest:I went to USC believing and I had read like a book about Lucas and I was just like, this is the golden Mecca.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And of course, you know, 18 year old kid, you go there and you're just- You want to believe.
Guest:Well, you also deeply want to have your illusion shattered and be a cynical, ah, this place.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So both of those things happened.
Guest:But, I mean, looking back, it's a great program.
Guest:It's a great school.
Guest:But I think the real benefit of it is really my friends that I made there and the fact that we all stuck around in towns.
Marc:Well, that's the way, whether you knew it or not, that the whole business works.
Guest:That's entirely it.
Marc:That's the thing.
Marc:I didn't know that, and I just kept burning bridges through my whole life.
Marc:And all of a sudden, like, I'm the asshole.
Yeah.
Marc:Going out to cities by myself to talk to strangers.
Marc:I didn't realize that that guy's assistant would grow to own the place.
Marc:That's the thing.
Marc:You're the guy told to fuck off that time.
Marc:But the other thing before I forget it about Jungian ideas and the ideas of the psyche and the ideas that are run against mysticism is that I think ultimately,
Marc:You know, you want to you want to have some control.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So I imagine the shift for you just by watching your movies and seeing what you focus on.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That, you know, out of, you know, any sort of like, you know, real belief system that once that was undermined a bit that the need to control must have become pretty gnarly.
Guest:I guess, I mean, yeah, it's a weird combination of the need to have some control in terms of imposing a structure on all this chaos, but it's also wanting to have something that you give control over to, you know, whether it's the notion- Where do you find that?
Guest:I mean, I don't know, man.
Marc:You got anything?
Marc:But I can see I don't.
Marc:Not anything that holds more than a day.
Marc:Cigar is good.
Marc:Yeah, cigar is good.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I mean, but the idea that you can create this illusion that film in itself is sort of this weird magic thing.
Marc:Music and film are as close to magic as we can get.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Well, I mean, and for me, look, for me, it's yes in terms of the finished product and kind of its effects.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:As whatever, use the A word, as art.
Guest:But for me, the bigger thing is just the structure in my life of having a group of people that I work with over and over and having a process now that I go through over and over.
Marc:So these guys you've really been with for years.
Marc:All of them?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, a lot of them.
Guest:Like I said, Nathan, we've been making movies together since we were kids.
Guest:Steve, I met when I was 17.
Guest:But a lot of the folks that I work with, yeah, I've now worked with for years and years and years.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Yeah, it's good.
Guest:You build like a family around you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a creative community that takes risks together.
Guest:That's the hope is that that base of comfort lets you, you know.
Guest:Shared vision.
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:And also just going back to, you know, I don't know, going back to being a kid, just hanging out with your friends, making movies.
Guest:To me, it's kind of still what it's about.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like it's, it's, yeah, it's about the movies, but it's also about you want to be around people that you like and just be having a good time, you know?
Guest:So you wrote Brick in high school?
Guest:No, I read it right out of college.
Guest:I wrote it when I was like 22.
Guest:And what compelled you?
Guest:I was really into the movie Miller's Crossing, the Coen Brothers movie.
Guest:And through that, I got into reading Dashiell Hammett.
Guest:And it was reading Hammett's books.
Guest:I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach when I read Red Harvest.
Guest:I was like, oh my God, there's something raw and powerful here.
Guest:And that connected up with sort of my sort of emotional memories of high school, which was still pretty fresh in my mind.
Guest:And it made sense, kind of the notion of this sort of violent, cruel, very socially stratified world.
Guest:And the fantasy of being kind of like the outsider who can push through all that, which none of us actually could in high school.
Guest:Or at least that was my experience kind of emotionally in high school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So all of that kind of formed together into this weird thing that made sense to me of, okay, let's get kind of the raw power that I felt, that kind of weird fucked up masculinity of like the Sam Spade.
Guest:Not in the Sam Spade, the Continental Op.
Guest:And let's put that in this high school setting.
Marc:Well, it was interesting because the language is what it is.
Marc:It's the language of that genre.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it all worked really well.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like, it didn't seem like you weren't watching Bugsy Malone.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, right?
Guest:Yes, I could.
Guest:You know, which you could have been.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's amazing to me that those young actors, like-
Guest:God, we were really young.
Guest:Because I'm still friends with Joe Grun-Levitt.
Guest:We're still tight.
Guest:But we were thinking back how young we were.
Guest:You did two or what?
Guest:Two movies with him?
Guest:Yeah, we did that and we did Looper.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's great.
Marc:But also all of them were really good.
Guest:But it was interesting because it didn't feel like a goof.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:That's the hat trick of that movie.
Guest:Yeah, and how did you...
Guest:Were you aware of that all the way through?
Guest:Oh, yeah, 100%.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And we were, I think the trick was we had, and this is something that would be hard to get if I made the movie today.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We had months and months and months of all of us just hanging out in LA together rehearsing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So we rehearsed it to death.
Guest:Oh my God, really?
Guest:Well, what we found with that material is because the words are so weird, it was almost like they had to- You say that like you didn't write them.
Guest:Yeah, well, you know.
Guest:Yeah, psychotic if I didn't acknowledge they were fucking bizarre.
Guest:But what that meant was we drilled them.
Guest:We literally drilled lines over and over.
Guest:Had to get it to the point where like a piano player learning, just fingers moving automatically.
Guest:Had to get to that point with the words with the actors.
Guest:And only when we got to that point could they throw them away and actually put meaning into them because they weren't struggling with the artificial... Right, well, you can definitely see that.
Guest:Yeah, it was weird.
Guest:But we had time to discover that through a bunch of rehearsals just because the actors were... Because we were all just like kids with nothing else to do.
Guest:So that's how it worked.
Marc:And also, it seems like you learned... Like, I felt you making cinematic decisions.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:to see what your limits were.
Guest:Well, and I had also, I had had eight years planned that.
Guest:I knew that movie like cold coming into it because I had been storyboarding it for eight years.
Guest:I'd had it in my head just having it dying to come out.
Marc:Was storyboarding something you learned to do?
Guest:Well, I had a copy of Scorsese on Scorsese, that book, and he talks about storyboarding in that book and there are little drawings like his taxi.
Guest:So I'm like, oh, this is the way it's done.
Guest:So I started doing it.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:And so-
Marc:So that had nothing to do with school.
Marc:What about script writing?
Guest:I'll tell you, though, most of what I know about script writing, my dad, who I mentioned, like always wanted to make movies, when I was in high school, he went to one of these Robert McKee seminars.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he went to one of his seminars.
Guest:I was in high school.
Guest:I was like a sophomore in high school, and he brought me along.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I was like this little kid in this seminar.
Guest:But I'll tell you, man, everything I know to this day about screenplay structure.
Guest:I'm like a big structure guy.
Guest:I really work off structure.
Guest:I learned in that weekend that was like this huge, this massive thing for me.
Guest:So that was kind of- Interesting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So your dad wanted to write movies.
Guest:He did, man.
Guest:Yeah, he did.
Guest:And he was writing a script of his own and he never finished it.
Marc:Never finished one.
Marc:Never finished a script, yeah.
Marc:You showed him.
Guest:I win.
Guest:That's the conclusion.
Guest:You did it, man.
Guest:I did it.
Guest:Thanks, brother.
Guest:That's funny.
Marc:But Brick got you in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Brick, we got into Sundance and then Focus picked it up at Sundance.
Marc:But now you're a force in a way.
Marc:Well, no.
Marc:The thing is- I worked with Nora, by the way.
Marc:She played my girlfriend on Mariner.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I was so excited when she was doing that.
Guest:I was texting with her when she was doing that.
Guest:She's fantastic, man.
Guest:So no, yes, that got me in, but the reason I'm still making movies today is because I have a really good producer that I've been partnered with since Brick.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Ron Bergman.
Guest:Same guy.
Guest:Amazing.
Guest:Same dude.
Guest:And he is the reason I got my second movie made.
Marc:How'd that one do?
Marc:Brothers Bloom.
Guest:Oh, it tanked.
Guest:Nobody saw it.
Guest:I didn't see it.
Marc:I didn't even know it existed until today.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:Yeah, it just didn't work.
Guest:I'm really proud of it.
Guest:It's a really personal.
Guest:And the experience of making it was this magical growing experience for me.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:But nobody went to see it.
Guest:It's personal how?
Guest:I mean, you'll see when you see.
Guest:I had all this stuff bottled up, and I just kind of tried to put everything that I love about the world into one movie.
Guest:And it was just this kind of overstuffed sort of thing.
Guest:But I'm really, but I worked with like Adrian Brody and Rachel Weiss and Mark Ruffalo and just we kind of traveled around Eastern Europe like making this movie and it was just this magical kind of experience.
Marc:Oh, damn.
Marc:I got to watch it.
Marc:I was upset that I didn't, I don't know why I didn't realize it until today because I watched the other stuff.
Guest:No, nobody saw it.
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:Coming out of making a second movie, it wasn't like it was a huge budget, but it wasn't nothing.
Guest:It was like whatever, like a $17 million movie, and it totally tanked.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Rom got Looper made, which I should have been basically in director's jail, and he figured out how to navigate this into getting Looper made.
Guest:How did he do that?
Guest:He just...
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:If I knew, I would know how to produce.
Guest:He just kind of like, well, there's this guy, Jim Stern, who helped finance, who financed Brothers Bloom, helped us out with Looper.
Guest:But the reality is the way we got Looper made is we got Bruce Willis' cast.
Guest:Bruce said yes.
Guest:And then we have a sci-fi movie and you got Bruce Willis with a gun on the poster.
Guest:And then we did the whole indie film thing of patching together the foreign financing and then finding a studio to kind of take up the slack.
Guest:How'd you make his face like that?
Guest:Well, Joe spent like three hours in the makeup chair every morning as prosthetics.
Guest:It's not like, because that's what I thought.
Marc:It felt like to do that kind of specific CGI would have been quite an ordeal.
Guest:Well, and also this is 2009, I think.
Guest:This is like right... This is before face stuff was like... Really just makeup, huh?
Guest:It's entirely... There's this genius guy, Kazu, hero, who... Yeah.
Guest:He did Gary Oldman's makeup in the Churchill movie.
Guest:He's a genius.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So he...
Guest:Yeah, he created these things, and poor Joe spent hours in the chair every morning getting it done, and then couldn't fucking eat lunch.
Guest:He had to eat through straws.
Marc:Well, again, I watch that movie.
Marc:It's not necessarily the kind of movie that I go to.
Marc:I keep saying that.
Marc:I'm not sure which movies I do like.
Guest:Yeah, what do you like?
Guest:I'll give you this, I'll give you that.
Marc:No, I do.
Marc:I like Brick, and I like Looper.
Marc:Because I didn't know what...
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where it would go, but it definitely has... It's one of those movies where you're like, how is this going to work?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But I trusted you to find the film logic that would sustain it.
Guest:Yeah, the tight wire.
Guest:Well, yeah, because that's the kind of movie you're looking for holes, but eventually you don't care.
Guest:Well, I had that scene in the middle where I had Bruce kind of just say, stop looking for holes.
Guest:It says something about time travel.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's kind of like, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, that wasn't what the movie was about ultimately because, you know, when you look at the machine, it was like, all right.
Guest:That's not taking anyone back into it.
Guest:Wait a minute.
Guest:This is all fake.
Guest:He just got into a hot water tank.
Guest:Yeah, it kind of treats time travel like Harry Potter movies treats spells.
Guest:It has to make emotional sense.
Guest:But I think the trick of time travel movies is that they all do that.
Guest:I don't know if you've seen that movie Primer, that Shane Carruth movie.
Guest:That's probably the closest thing that actually tries to track the true logic of a time travel loop.
Guest:And even that, I think, fudges a bit.
Marc:But sure, but the one thing that...
Marc:That happened for me as a guy, I'm older, I'm a little more sentimental, I guess, but what was effective in just the way my brain works is that when Levitt decides to do what he's gonna do to save the future,
Marc:you realize that like, well, I've already suspended my disbelief to believe that there are these alternate realities to existence.
Marc:That there can be an existence where you live a whole other different life.
Guest:Right, right, right, right.
Marc:Which isn't really what the movie's about, but it's talked about a lot.
Guest:Right, so that gave you- Parallel universe, right?
Marc:The multiverse.
Guest:Multiverse.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So it's sort of like- That's true, yeah.
Marc:Right, so when Willis disappears, I was sort of like, well, why not?
Marc:You know, like now everything's okay.
Marc:That kid's going to be all right.
Marc:He's going to use his magic for good.
Marc:I hope so.
Marc:One hope so.
Guest:The weirdo.
Guest:That was a good twist.
Marc:So he didn't realize that we were going to, well, he kind of knew that might've been the kid, but yeah, when he lifts everything up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That kid, man.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Intense kid.
Guest:And that kid would like Pierce Gagnon.
Guest:He was amazing.
Guest:He was five years old when we shot it and he would sit down with Emily Blunt and do three page dialogue scenes all the way through.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Because most kid actors, you're coaxing every line out.
Guest:There are a lot of them.
Guest:You're coaxing every line out of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's the opposite.
Guest:He would give you three amazing takes of like a three-page scene and then turn back into a five-year-old and you'd lose him.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It was fascinating.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, there's all these Savanti kids around that can do that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Whether it's with a guitar or something.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:You see on YouTube.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're just like, oh, my God.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then I imagine they put the guitar down.
Marc:They're just sort of like, I want some cereal.
Yeah.
Guest:It's just like any other musician, really.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, except that's true.
Marc:Now, I didn't realize you directed these amazing Breaking Bad episodes.
Marc:How great was that for you?
Guest:I was the luckiest son of a bitch, yeah.
Marc:Because for a guy that's so meticulous, it must have been just awesome, doesn't it?
Guest:Well, also it was heaven for me because writing is, you know, writing is not the fun part.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not for me.
Guest:I like having written.
Guest:But to just come into this situation where there's brilliant scripts and great people and I just get to show up and do the fun part.
Guest:And the scripts were just, yeah.
Guest:Man, I feel like that was a real education for me.
Marc:Well, The Fly was insane.
Marc:That was fun.
Guest:That was really fun.
Guest:And the fact that I got to just do this concentrated, almost like a little stage play with Brian and Aaron, I got to work so intensely with those two actors.
Guest:And I had the challenge of like, okay, how do I keep this visually interesting in this space?
Guest:I mean, that was film school.
Guest:That was like, you know.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, because you were doing something almost new.
Guest:Completely.
Guest:It was its own completely self-contained thing.
Guest:But I just, I fucking loved it, man.
Guest:I had so much fun.
Marc:And you got to oversee Hank's death, which is crazy.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I still can't believe that I got to do that script.
Marc:That whole desert scene was horrendous.
Guest:To be around that acting?
Guest:Brian?
Guest:It was incredible, man.
Guest:Brian Cranston is a force in nature.
Guest:That dude's just incredible.
Guest:He's amazing.
Marc:He's so practical about it too.
Marc:Like his approach to acting is so kind of like utilitarian.
Guest:Well, that's the thing.
Guest:There's no like ramping into it.
Guest:It's incredible seeing someone who is that good and who can just dial it in and turn it on like a switch.
Guest:I'm sure there's more to it, but the fact that he keeps it behind the scenes and in his head, it's absolutely incredible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I remember talking to him and he comes from a studio family.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:His dad was, I think, a studio actor.
Marc:So I think that it was kind of the job was in his blood.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That there's a job.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's got that kind of like old studio actor.
Guest:Yeah, he does.
Guest:But in the best way, like in the way that I just like, I found really, really incredible to just kind of watch him work.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it's amazing when you watch, I watched Kiss of Death last night with Victor Mature and Richard Woodmark.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's a crazy movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Woodmark's crazy, but all these guys were doing so many movies.
Guest:Woodmark's, like his look is just like, it's so terrifying.
Guest:But also like very present.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Oh my God, yeah.
Marc:And it's not just like, you don't think like, oh, he's playing a crazy guy.
Marc:He's reacting in real time in a lot of ways.
Guest:It's pretty incredible, the old studio guys.
Guest:Do you have a guy that you're like, ah, I wish I could have watched him work.
Guest:I wish I could have gone back and like-
Marc:Oh, and seeing them, like, on set or something?
Marc:Like, I'm always curious about how all, like, there was an affectation to a lot of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I think, like, when you talk about Brick, like, you know, what process did they go through to get the patter going?
Marc:Right.
Marc:You had different expectations from it, though, but sometimes the emotions would land.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But there was definitely a way of staging and a way of pacing dialogue that was different.
Guest:It's true.
Marc:There's a different mode of kind of ... But I mean, the best guys would still cut ... Spencer Tracy, I think, was somebody who lived a long time, who would have been interesting to watch work.
Marc:Fred McMurray, too, really.
Guest:I love Fred McMurray.
Guest:If I had a time machine, if I had my water tank and I could step into it, I would go back and I would love to work with Fred McMurray.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Burt Lancaster, too, was a fucking... Kirk Douglas was an animal.
Guest:Jesus, man.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Mitchum.
Guest:Mitchum is the greatest.
Guest:Mitchum's the guy that if I could actually summon him up right now, I would love to just get one day working with me.
Guest:Why not?
Marc:And he lived a long time.
Marc:He just missed him, kind of.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I watched Friends of Eddie Coyle recently.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:What a wild movie.
Guest:His late career stuff is fascinating, the places that he would go to.
Guest:Have you seen Secret Ceremony?
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Is it Secret Ceremony with Mia Farrow?
Guest:No.
Guest:It's so good.
Guest:And Liz Taylor, actually.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but it was made in the 60s.
Guest:It's kind of set in London.
Guest:It's a really like messed up sexual dynamic between them.
Guest:And yeah, and Mitchum's playing like this creepy, creepy dude.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's leaning into just the...
Marc:it's it's it's fantastic the weight of it man even like henry fonda dude i mean like yeah what is that yeah you just i can't yeah it's just amazing it really is yeah so again this isn't i'm going to say it again but like you know i i i've enjoyed everything that i've engaged with that you've done but i i don't i'm not a star wars guy
Guest:It would be funny if I was like, oh, me neither.
Marc:Are you a Star Wars guy?
Guest:I'm a huge Star Wars guy, yeah.
Marc:So the opportunity to do that movie was a big deal.
Guest:It was the biggest deal for me.
Marc:But how do you get that?
Guest:So you did Looper.
Marc:I did Looper, and Kathy Kennedy saw it and called me in.
Marc:And it was like a weird timing, too, because Disney had acquired all this.
Marc:They had paid a lot of money, and they didn't have a plan, right?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Well, they had... I mean, J.J.
Guest:'s movie was written, and they were about to start shooting.
Guest:So that was basically the plan.
Guest:Oh, so it was done.
Guest:We're going to do three.
Guest:We're going to build off this.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But it was always... The plan was always I would come in and do two, and do the second one, and then kind of hand it off to the next director.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was the best professional experience of my life, man.
Guest:It was amazing.
Guest:And how much freedom did you have over it?
Guest:I had freedom.
Guest:It felt like any other one of our movies.
Marc:And were you approaching it the same way that you do everything else?
Marc:Like, all right, this is the genre.
Marc:How do I do something new?
Marc:Absolutely.
Guest:But the genre was, the fact that the genre, no, it's not how do I do something new, it's how do I tap into the essential power of this genre.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which to me means tapping into what Star Wars, how Star Wars actually affected me when I was a kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when I came in, Kathy said, we're looking for someone to do the empire of this series.
Guest:And I took that assignment very, very seriously.
Guest:Not like we want to imitate empire or put like, you know.
Marc:Well, that's what JJ did, right?
Marc:With the first movie?
Guest:I read, no, I love it.
Guest:I mean, I love the first, but I feel like he was doing the similar thing.
Guest:We're very different storytellers.
Guest:He has a different way into it.
Guest:But for me, it was thinking back to when I was a kid and I watched Empire, how it was genuinely unsettling and terrifying.
Guest:How the way that a good myth, you talk about...
Guest:Getting to the Joseph Campbell thing, I mean, there's kind of the gloss on it, which is the hero with a thousand faces, hero myth, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:The reality is the notion, what it's really about, you know, is the notion that fairy tales and myths are things that reflect the biggest transitions we go through in life.
Guest:Because of that, they should be kind of terrifying.
Guest:They should be scary things.
Guest:So thinking how Empire was that for me when I was a kid, I'm like, okay, let's take this seriously.
Guest:Let's actually...
Guest:let's actually get into this and not just kind of think about it as kind of doing the Star Wars puppetry, but let's get into the roots of what this thing actually means to me.
Guest:And so I was able to do that.
Guest:I mean, they really supported it.
Guest:I was able to jump in and do that.
Guest:And all with the notion of making a great Star Wars movie.
Guest:I wasn't trying to do anything about that.
Guest:But right, in a deep way.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:By either subverting or moving away from expectation.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, or by just, or not being driven by expectations, I guess.
Guest:The only expectation being, I'm going to tap into everything that I think Star Wars is.
Guest:It's like, I'm going to put it all into this movie.
Marc:Well, my girlfriend is a big fan of it.
Marc:Oh, nice.
Marc:And I know, and I've talked to her about it, because it's not my world, that there is sort of like two camps.
Marc:Yeah, very much so, yeah.
Marc:But it seems like the other camp is sort of like, we just want the same thing!
Guest:Why can't it just be the Star Wars?
Guest:Why did Luke throw away the lightsaber at the beginning?
Guest:Look, I'll be diplomatic but also true here, which is growing up as a Star Wars fan, I'm not going to speak ill of anyone for what they like and don't like.
Guest:That's the whole thing is arguing on the playground.
Guest:People like things.
Guest:People dislike things.
Guest:It's all part of that.
Guest:But deeper than that, it's what we were talking about earlier.
Guest:It's belief systems.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, absolutely.
Guest:A hundred percent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A hundred percent.
Guest:I mean, you've sort of, you entered this realm of life-defining mythology.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I know.
Guest:And you had control over it for a large swath of people who were like, this was it, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's retroactively terrifying.
Yeah.
Guest:But it's also, I mean, I don't know.
Guest:I think the only thing you can do is turn the gaze inward.
Guest:And because for me, it was like, forget about the expectations of it being religion to people.
Guest:For me, it was the basis of... It really was like the myth that I used as a child to transition into adulthood.
Guest:It was that kind of bedrock.
Guest:And so all I had to do was really honestly try and look inward and say, what does this thing mean to me?
Guest:And how can I...
Guest:How can I put that on the screen as honestly as possible?
Guest:And that was kind of all that helped him.
Guest:And the people that felt that received it that way.
Guest:And that's been the incredible thing is the years since it's come out, talking to people who have connected with it on that level.
Guest:It's the sort of thing, I mean, if you tell stories for a living, you just dream about people having that connection with something that you made.
Marc:Well, it feels like one of those movies that over time has garnered respect and its own following and people who realize what you were trying to do, which was to go deeper with a franchise that could have been just hackneyed.
Guest:It's felt really, really good.
Guest:And I mean, I've, I don't know, souped and that's the whole process, but also the whole process of it coming out and like the experience with the fans.
Guest:It's been, I don't know, I just, I feel really blessed.
Marc:You've had to do some real lightsabering.
Guest:Well, also some growth.
Guest:Even that part of it's healthy.
Guest:What, the troll battles?
Guest:Well, in a way, I mean, look, and this is in the context of being like, you know, like there's a lot of people are making Star Wars stuff now who are having or knowing that I'm like, you know, a straight white dude, basically.
Marc:But Tony Gilroy thinks it's the greatest thing of his career right now.
Guest:Oh, I have been saving that series up.
Guest:I haven't watched it.
Guest:I keep hearing it's incredible because I've been so busy lately.
Guest:I hear it's phenomenal.
Marc:He's like completely immersed in it.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:And he's a genius.
Guest:Yeah, he's fantastic.
Guest:But even dealing with the trolls, even getting over the notion that if somebody on the internet doesn't like me, I'm doing something wrong.
Guest:That was a huge, because before Star Wars- We all have to do that, don't we?
Guest:Yeah, we do at some point.
Guest:It's like- It's like a rite of passage.
Guest:Yeah, it's a trial by fire.
Marc:When you're in your 40s.
Marc:You like not to succumb to the infantilism of social media trolling.
Marc:I know.
Marc:It's hard, dude.
Marc:Because they'll push your buttons, man.
Guest:They know exactly how to push.
Guest:But have you gotten to the point where the button pushing doesn't work?
Marc:I don't know if it totally doesn't work, but I can choose not to engage.
Marc:You have your coping.
Marc:Yeah, you're kind of like avoidance.
Marc:Yeah, I'm not numb.
Marc:I'll still feel a sting, but I don't have to be like, no, you can do it.
Guest:There was a time if one person said something shitty about me, I thought I have to fix this.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Well, that's what's interesting about the notion of the Internet.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That there's this weird thing that happens in our brain that, you know, you get one of those people and all of a sudden it's like the entire infrastructure of the Internet doesn't like you.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:And it's one fucking guy.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Or even 10 guys.
Guest:I'll tell you, it's like, well, it's amazing to me.
Guest:I don't, it's, I get almost nearly zero negativity in my feed.
Guest:And over the years, I mean, it's like, I don't know.
Guest:I mean, over the past five years, I probably, I don't know how many people I blocked, but it's like in the hundreds probably.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:And that's it.
Guest:It's gone.
Guest:It's like,
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:They're done.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like you'll notice that more from message boards.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is that, you know, it's harder to notice on Twitter that it's really a handful of people.
Marc:And it's not like this huge number.
Marc:You're like, oh, that's the same guy.
Marc:I think that's the same guy with those three accounts.
Marc:You know, it's a learning curve.
Guest:So your wife is like this Hollywood historian.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was a critic.
Guest:When we first met, she was a critic for the Village Voice.
Guest:Where did you meet her?
Guest:Well, we kind of knew each other on the internet, but then we first met- She had good internet.
Guest:Good internet.
Guest:The internet can be good.
Guest:We first met Met when she moderated a Q&A for The Brothers Bloom for that movie.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Yeah, and then a few years later, she moved back to L.A.
Guest:She's from L.A.
Guest:She grew up here.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:She was living in New York, and yeah.
Marc:Now she's digging in to all the sordid business.
Guest:Digging into the root of Hollywood.
Guest:Does it fascinate you?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Well, it's amazing because we do very different things, but our interests overlap.
Guest:And so she always has stuff to watch for her podcast.
Guest:And so it's like I get to kind of live in film school.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Yeah, it's pretty great.
Guest:In a good way.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:What's this new thing you're doing with Natasha?
Guest:Natasha.
Guest:Natasha.
Guest:It's called Poker Face.
Guest:It's kind of a... It's kind of a throw... We're finishing it up now.
Guest:It's going to be January on Peacock.
Guest:And it's... Peacock?
Guest:Peacock.
Marc:Natasha Lyonne.
Guest:Peacock.
Guest:It's kind of a throwback to the Case of the Week style, like Rockford Files, Columbo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, great.
Guest:So it's not like one mystery of her whole season.
Guest:It's every single episode is a new setting and a new mystery that she solves.
Guest:And it's...
Guest:Yeah, it's Natasha Lyonne kind of channeling Columbo.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:It's fun.
Guest:It's super fun.
Guest:I'm really proud of it.
Marc:Columbo.
Marc:There's an episode of Columbo that I remember.
Marc:Which one?
Marc:The one where there's a murder by a pool.
Marc:Oh, with the ice?
Marc:Yeah, with the ice.
Guest:And that has my favorite ending.
Marc:I'm not sure I remember the endings.
Guest:It's like a thing where he's figured out that the chiming clock would have been there on the phone call.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they do it without any dialogue.
Guest:And Columbo just holds up a finger and listens.
Guest:And the chiming clock starts going.
Guest:And you see in the guy's eyes that he's fucked.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Columbo goes like this.
Guest:And then it just frees frames and goes to crazy.
Guest:It's so elegant and so good.
Guest:I've just spoiled it for anyone who's listening.
Marc:You can spoil things that are 50 years old.
Marc:Yeah, I guess I'm allowed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But yeah, but I remember as a kid, like the ice, of course, like it's not chlorine.
Marc:That moment he goes, there's no chlorine.
Guest:It's no chlorine, it's so good.
Guest:It's crazy, right?
Guest:Oh, it's so good.
Guest:I love the wine, and he poured in a storm with Donald Pleasance, which is him as the wine salesman, like the wine affectionate.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And they work it out so Columbo gets him to basically bust himself because he can't help himself by like spitting out wine that's like gone bad.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But Donald Pleasance is just like so good.
Guest:All these TV, all these characters come in and do it and like, yeah.
Marc:Oh, just remember, there's a water turn.
Marc:What was the water turn in... Well, it wasn't the same in Chinatown.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Salt water in the lungs, yeah.
Guest:Salt water.
Guest:Yeah, I got water.
Marc:He drowned.
Guest:I got water out of him.
Marc:Oh, what?
Marc:Right, but then he drowned him in the tide pool in the backyard.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Salt water, bad for the grass.
Marc:Bad for the grass.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Good talking to you, man.
Marc:This was a pleasure, man.
Marc:Thank you so much.
Marc:I'm excited about... I'm now going to watch your lost movie.
Marc:Yeah, let me know what you think.
Marc:Yeah, and I'm excited to see this detective thing.
Marc:I might have to... I would have to do a lot of background viewing to really fully assess the Star Wars movie properly.
Marc:Don't sweat it.
Guest:You're good.
Guest:Watch Brothers Book.
Guest:You'll be fine.
Thanks, Ben.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:Smart guy.
Marc:You can watch Glass Onion on Netflix starting this Friday.
Marc:His detective series with Natasha Lyonne, Poker Face, premieres next month on Peacock.
Marc:Hang out for a minute, will you?
Marc:Can you just hang out?
Marc:Please hang out, will you?
Marc:People, if you want to submit a question for an upcoming episode of Ask Mark Anything, we've got the link in the episode description.
Marc:Send me a question and sign up for the Full Marin to hear the answers.
Marc:If you're already a WTF Plus subscriber, don't forget about the referral code we sent you.
Marc:Give that out to as many people as you want, and they get a free month of WTF Plus when they sign up.
Marc:This week on the Full Marin, we're continuing our look back at morning sedition with our series Good Morning Geniuses, and I have a reunion with our old board op, Chris Lopresto.
Marc:Mostly I remember you and I don't know if it was a mild state of anger and panic or it was just your style of board hopping.
Marc:But it always seemed to be we always seem to be on the edge of something.
Guest:Well, I mean, you weren't exactly the easiest of hosts that I've ever encountered.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You were like the Tasmanian devil every morning.
Guest:You would like pop into the studio like the Kool-Aid man with your Dunkin' Donuts in one hand, your stool and papers in the other and be like, what the fuck?
Guest:What are you doing?
Guest:And I just had to try to hold it all together.
Guest:And like all your other producers, they would all leave.
Guest:And the door would shut and I'm in the room with you, a caged animal.
Guest:And I was just trying to, trying to.
Guest:you know, survive.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that was it.
Marc:You were, you were like just managing my insanity.
Marc:Sign up for WTF plus at the link in the episode description or go to WTF pod.com and click on WTF plus on Thursday show.
Marc:We've got Scott Cooper, director of crazy heart, black mass and the new film, the pale blue eyes.
Marc:Now I'm stuck in this open G and, uh, I rolled and I tumbled into it.
guitar solo
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey LaFonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.