Episode 1596 - Luca Guadagnino

Episode 1596 • Released December 2, 2024 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:All right, let's do this.

00:00:10Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?

00:00:12Marc:What the fuck, buddies?

00:00:13Marc:What the fuck, Knicks?

00:00:14Marc:What's happening?

00:00:14Marc:I'm Mark Maron.

00:00:16Marc:This is my podcast.

00:00:17Marc:Welcome to it.

00:00:19Marc:Pretty great show today, really.

00:00:22Marc:Honestly.

00:00:23Marc:How are you guys doing?

00:00:24Marc:Is everything all right over there?

00:00:25Marc:I know the last time I talked to you, it was...

00:00:28Marc:Thanksgiving, did you get through it?

00:00:31Marc:Is everything okay in this weird time of traumatic transition into the great unknown that could be nothing but tense and possibly awful at best?

00:00:45Marc:Yes, I know.

00:00:46Marc:And Christmas is coming.

00:00:48Marc:And Christmas, Hanukkah is coming.

00:00:50Marc:It's all coming.

00:00:52Marc:The last hurrah of the forced holiday spirit is upon us.

00:00:58Marc:Look, I don't know.

00:01:00Marc:I had a nice time in New Mexico.

00:01:04Marc:There's a heaviness there, obviously, because that's where I was molded.

00:01:09Marc:But seeing my father and his wife, Rosie, was...

00:01:14Marc:It was good, man.

00:01:16Marc:Look, I've gotten some emails from people.

00:01:19Marc:Some people are like, wow, it's amazing you speak so nicely of spending time with your dad because in light of some of the things you've said, look, I've busted my dad's balls for as long as I can remember having the guts to do it.

00:01:35Marc:And it bought me some space, folks.

00:01:37Marc:It bought me some space.

00:01:39Marc:But now he doesn't really remember that stuff.

00:01:42Marc:What a gift.

00:01:43Yeah.

00:01:43Marc:What a gift.

00:01:45Marc:There's always these moments when somebody has a, when their brain is addled with whatever and they're, it just becomes this bingo cage of memories.

00:01:56Marc:Some blank, some not, but there's still moments to be had where you hang out and it's surprising and it kind of strips down the person to a point where, yeah, I mean, they're not who they were, but you know, the, the, the raw experience,

00:02:12Marc:mechanism of it is sort of who they are and you can still sort of see yourself in them and maybe work some stuff out.

00:02:19Marc:You know, it's a, it's still a time for connection.

00:02:21Marc:And, uh, I believe I'm getting something out of it.

00:02:24Marc:I know he is, I know his wife is.

00:02:26Marc:And, um,

00:02:28Marc:Yeah, so that was my Thanksgiving.

00:02:31Marc:Now I got to somehow get down to Florida to see my mother.

00:02:34Marc:That's next.

00:02:37Marc:It's hard to even get her on the phone these days.

00:02:40Marc:I just don't think she has it with her a lot anymore.

00:02:44Marc:I have to call the caregiver to get through to the mom just to say, like, what's happening?

00:02:49Marc:What is happening, Ma?

00:02:51Marc:What's happening?

00:02:53Marc:So today, look.

00:02:56Marc:Today is interesting because, you know, I knew some of this director's work, Luca Guadagnino.

00:03:04Marc:I believe I'm saying that right.

00:03:06Marc:You know, I will double check.

00:03:10Marc:I will double check my point of reference.

00:03:15Marc:I did it.

00:03:16Marc:That's Brendan.

00:03:18Marc:Brendan's sending me the pronunciation.

00:03:21Marc:Luca Guadalino.

00:03:24Marc:I had seen Call Me By Your Name, and I found it moving and bold and poetic and provocative, sexy.

00:03:35Marc:But I didn't really know his other stuff.

00:03:37Marc:And, you know, the opportunity came to interview him.

00:03:40Marc:And I hadn't seen Challengers yet.

00:03:44Marc:And I didn't really know his work that well, other than, you know, Call Me By Your Name.

00:03:48Marc:So I had to kind of get into it.

00:03:50Marc:And he did this new movie, Queer, which I'd heard about.

00:03:54Marc:I knew Daniel Craig was in it.

00:03:55Marc:But I didn't realize it was an adaptation of the William Burroughs book.

00:04:01Marc:And I love William Burroughs.

00:04:04Marc:William Burroughs, for me, is like this never, it's a chasm that, you know, narrows as it deepens.

00:04:13Marc:It's just a portal into things that, you know, I can sometimes understand, sometimes I can't.

00:04:22Marc:But I've been fascinated with William Burroughs most of my adult life.

00:04:27Marc:And I've made attempts at reading him and I have read him and I've gotten through a lot of stuff, but some of it is very challenging.

00:04:35Marc:But I'm obsessed with William Burroughs.

00:04:38Marc:So when I heard that this movie was an adaptation of the William Burroughs story, I was like, holy shit, I had no idea.

00:04:47Marc:So it turned out to be a very engaged conversation.

00:04:51Marc:And I watched some of his other movies.

00:04:53Marc:I watched A Bigger Splash.

00:04:55Marc:I did watch Challengers, which is a great movie.

00:04:59Marc:These are the kind of movies that, you know, in the world that we're heading into where the dominant culture is cultureless and, you know, the sort of idea of the Western canon and what's important in terms of

00:05:13Marc:you know, what builds a mind, what builds a life, what is art, is just slowly, if not quickly, being bulldozed by bullshit and thick-headed momentum.

00:05:25Marc:You know, where do these movies stand?

00:05:28Marc:Who are they for?

00:05:28Marc:What do we do?

00:05:29Marc:Is art going to save us?

00:05:31Marc:And, you know, these are questions I've always asked.

00:05:33Marc:If not save us, does it give us a lifeline to what is important or provocative or inspiring or moving into

00:05:42Marc:in a bold and courageous way, you know, I fear for it because, you know, I'm lazy myself.

00:05:51Marc:I don't engage as much as I should.

00:05:52Marc:I feel like that I have to, you know, with the art.

00:05:54Marc:Go take it in.

00:05:55Marc:Go put yourself in front of it.

00:05:59Marc:There's a lot of courage involved in this stuff.

00:06:01Marc:But I watched A Bigger Splash, which you should really watch, with Ray Fiennes and Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson.

00:06:09Marc:And it's like...

00:06:10Marc:It's kind of a funny, great movie.

00:06:12Marc:And I need to watch more of his movies.

00:06:15Marc:He reshot Suspiria, which I read about.

00:06:18Marc:I saw the original.

00:06:19Marc:Didn't see his.

00:06:19Marc:But needless to say.

00:06:22Marc:By and large, when I talk to directors, because they are such fully rounded intellects, it's always an exciting conversation for me.

00:06:32Marc:So that's going to happen in a few.

00:06:34Marc:I'm at Largo in L.A.

00:06:37Marc:on Friday, December 13th with the band, with the comedy.

00:06:41Marc:Sacramento, California at the Crest Theater on Friday, January 10th.

00:06:44Marc:Napa, California.

00:06:45Marc:I'm at the Uptown Theater on Saturday, January 11th.

00:06:48Marc:I'm in Fort Collins, Colorado at Lincoln Center Performance Hall on Friday, January 17th.

00:06:53Marc:Then Boulder, Colorado at the Boulder Theater on Saturday, January 18th.

00:06:57Marc:I'll be in Santa Barbara, California at the Lobero Theater on Thursday, January 30th.

00:07:02Marc:Then San Luis Obispo, California at the Fremont Center on Friday, January 31st.

00:07:07Marc:And Monterey, California at the Golden State Theater on Saturday, February 1st.

00:07:12Marc:Go to WTFPod.com slash tour for all my dates and links to tickets.

00:07:19Marc:I'm going to be in NYC for a couple of days.

00:07:22Marc:I'm doing a little music show, a little kind of invite-only benefit music show with Vivino and his fellas.

00:07:29Marc:It's going to be something, a little comedy, a little music, going to play some songs.

00:07:34Marc:I guess Kingfish is coming down to do a few.

00:07:38Marc:It's very, all I want, my friends.

00:07:43Marc:All I want is to experience something as being exciting and fun as opposed to something that I want to do and nervous and dreading to a certain degree.

00:07:58Marc:I can't seem to switch the switch between like, oh, fuck, and like, fuck, yeah.

00:08:03Marc:I just can't seem...

00:08:06Marc:to switch the switch so it functions properly.

00:08:09Marc:I'm going to have a good time, man.

00:08:11Marc:This is going to be fun.

00:08:12Marc:No, it's like, oh, fuck it.

00:08:13Marc:I hope I don't fuck it up.

00:08:15Marc:I mean, enough already.

00:08:18Marc:I'm old.

00:08:19Marc:Enough.

00:08:21Marc:Yeah, so look, William Burroughs.

00:08:26Marc:I don't even know where to start with William Burroughs.

00:08:30Marc:As I said earlier, he's an endless fascination for me in so many ways, just his whole being.

00:08:37Marc:And I can't say that I fully understand his thing, but I do remember the first time I saw him.

00:08:43Marc:I've talked about it a bit on this show at some other points.

00:08:46Marc:I remember I was a freshman in college, Curry College, Milton, Massachusetts, Lombard Dormitory, Lombard Hall, whatever, bunk beds.

00:08:56Marc:And I had a black and white TV set on top of a dresser.

00:09:00Marc:And I just met one of my best friends, Jimmy Loftus.

00:09:04Marc:And I had a coffee pot and we were making coffee.

00:09:07Marc:And I remember later that night, I was hanging out.

00:09:12Marc:I can't remember if Jim was with me, but I was watching Saturday Night Live.

00:09:15Marc:So this must be 1981.

00:09:17Marc:And they bring on this guy.

00:09:19Marc:They go, please welcome William Burroughs.

00:09:21Marc:And he's sitting down at a desk with his hat.

00:09:25Marc:This old man.

00:09:27Marc:And I didn't know who William Burroughs was.

00:09:29Marc:I thought, is this the guy who wrote Tarzan?

00:09:31Marc:That's how fucked up I was in terms of what I knew and what I didn't know.

00:09:37Marc:Edgar Rice Burroughs.

00:09:38Marc:I thought he was dead.

00:09:40Marc:William Burroughs is on SNL sitting there reading a passage from, I believe, Naked Lunch, the Dr. Benway thing.

00:09:48Marc:Dr. Benway, ship's doctor.

00:09:51Marc:Bring me a new scalpel, nurse.

00:09:53Marc:This one's got no edge to it.

00:09:57Marc:So I didn't know what the fuck to make of this guy, but I was in.

00:10:00Marc:I was like, it was hilarious.

00:10:02Marc:It was dark.

00:10:02Marc:It was fucking weird.

00:10:03Marc:And I was like, who is this old man?

00:10:09Marc:And that began the fascination, you know, of, you know, reading Naked Lunch, of reading Junkie, of trying to read some of the cut up books.

00:10:17Marc:There's there's dozens of books.

00:10:19Marc:And he's written a few that aren't impossible to read.

00:10:23Marc:The trilogy, what, Cities of the Red Knight trilogy.

00:10:28Marc:Place of Dead Roads, Western Lands.

00:10:30Marc:Those are the last full novels I think he wrote.

00:10:34Marc:Queer was another one.

00:10:35Marc:The Soft Boys.

00:10:38Marc:I guess I could, you know, run a list of them.

00:10:40Marc:But, you know, there's a lot of experiments, the cut-up method, you know, taking pages of text, cutting them up, rearranging them in a different way to sort of time travel and create magical poetry.

00:10:52Marc:You know, he did the Oregon Box business.

00:10:54Marc:He was hanging out with Geisen in Morocco, I think, with the Dream Machine.

00:10:57Marc:I mean, he was,

00:10:58Marc:You know, and he had this sort of persona of hombre invisible.

00:11:03Marc:And, you know, he kind of had this secret agent thing going.

00:11:07Marc:He had, you know, it's a multi-level thing.

00:11:09Marc:He wrote a book about cats later in life.

00:11:11Marc:It's just the intellect, the humor, the experimentation, the art.

00:11:17Marc:You know, he deals, you know, he's a gay man who dealt very aggressively and interestingly with gay culture at different points in the history of his life.

00:11:26Marc:which Queer is one of them, one of the books, and now the movie.

00:11:30Marc:There's a rare book that I'm sure is reprinted.

00:11:33Marc:You know, he does a lot of thinking about things, about control needs control to survive.

00:11:39Marc:Control needs control to survive.

00:11:42Marc:What?

00:11:43Marc:But there's a book called William S. Burroughs, The Adding Machine Selected Essays that I've just always been, you know, trying to figure this guy out, you know, to, you know, some sometimes I get it.

00:11:55Marc:Sometimes I don't.

00:11:58Marc:But I'm like, I'm just reading these essays, like just trying to get into the brain to talk about them.

00:12:03Marc:This is from an essay called The Limits of Control.

00:12:07Marc:A basic impasse of all control machines is this.

00:12:11Marc:Control needs time in which to exercise control.

00:12:14Marc:Because control also needs opposition or acquiescence, otherwise it ceases to be control.

00:12:20Marc:I control a hypnotized subject, at least partially.

00:12:23Marc:I control a slave, a dog, a worker.

00:12:25Marc:But if I establish complete control somehow...

00:12:28Marc:As by implanting electrodes in the brain, then my subject is little more than a tape recorder, a camera, a robot or a phone, maybe.

00:12:38Marc:Huh?

00:12:39Marc:Consider the distinction and the impasse implicit here.

00:12:42Marc:All control systems try to make control as tight as possible.

00:12:46Marc:But at the same time, if they succeeded completely, there would be nothing left to control.

00:12:51Marc:Suppose, for example, a control system installed electrodes in the brains of all prospective workers at birth.

00:12:56Marc:Control is now complete.

00:12:58Marc:Even the thought of rebellion is neurologically impossible.

00:13:01Marc:No police force is necessary.

00:13:03Marc:No psychological control is necessary other than pressing buttons to achieve certain activations and operations.

00:13:10Marc:We're there, folks.

00:13:13Marc:God damn it.

00:13:14Marc:I love this guy.

00:13:15Marc:This is from an essay called The Hundred Year Plan.

00:13:19Marc:Politics is the only area where stupidity and ignorance are brazenly preferred as qualifications for office.

00:13:30Marc:And so guided by the least intelligent, the least competent, the least farsighted and most ill-informed, the species invites biological disaster.

00:13:39Marc:Other species have come and gone.

00:13:42Marc:Dig it.

00:13:43Marc:Then he writes about the dinosaurs and then he's got this bit in here where...

00:13:46Marc:Fellow reptiles at this dark hour, I do not hesitate to tell you that we face grave problems.

00:13:51Marc:And I do not hesitate to tell you that we have the answer.

00:13:53Marc:Size is the answer.

00:13:55Marc:Increased size.

00:13:57Marc:It was good enough for me.

00:13:58Marc:Parentheses applause.

00:14:00Marc:Size that will enable us to crush all opposition.

00:14:02Marc:Applause.

00:14:03Marc:There are those who say size is not the answer.

00:14:05Marc:There are those who even propose that we pollute our pure reptilian strain with mammalian amalgamations and crossbreeding.

00:14:12Marc:And I say to you that if the only way I could survive was by mating with egg-eating rats, then I would choose not to survive.

00:14:19Marc:Applause.

00:14:20Marc:But we will survive.

00:14:22Marc:We will increase both in size and in numbers, and we will continue to dominate this planet as we have done for 300 million years.

00:14:30Marc:Wild applause.

00:14:32Marc:He writes bits, man.

00:14:34Marc:He's a bit guy.

00:14:35Marc:A lot of bits.

00:14:37Marc:A lot of fucking interesting, dark, provocative stuff.

00:14:41Marc:And Luca...

00:14:43Marc:has done it.

00:14:46Marc:Luca Guadagnino has taken on Queer and really kind of taken on Burroughs as a person.

00:14:55Marc:And it's a very interesting portrait of him.

00:14:58Marc:And it was a real honor to talk to the guy.

00:15:01Marc:The new film is Queer.

00:15:03Marc:It's now playing in theaters and it's a challenging movie.

00:15:06Marc:And it's a trippy movie.

00:15:09Marc:And it made me think a lot of things.

00:15:11Marc:But again, my fascination with Burroughs was kind of stimulated.

00:15:17Marc:And this conversation was kind of lit up by that.

00:15:20Marc:This is me talking to Luca Guaranino.

00:15:28Luca Guaranino

00:15:35Guest:So you, yeah, you shaved everything.

00:15:38Guest:I shaved completely because I made a mistake with my mustache.

00:15:41Guest:I went too strong, and now I'm growing back.

00:15:45Guest:Because usually I have very long beard.

00:15:47Guest:I know.

00:15:47Guest:Isn't your hair usually a bit bigger?

00:15:50Guest:The hair too, yes.

00:15:52Guest:I'm a little bit like a crazy scientist.

00:15:54Marc:It's funny because when you do make a mistake with the razor, you've got to adjust.

00:15:59Marc:You've got to accept it.

00:16:00Guest:You have to accept what happened.

00:16:03Guest:Disaster.

00:16:04Guest:But in a way, my mom was happy because she always said to me, shape, shape.

00:16:07Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:16:08Marc:So, but I don't like, I'm shaved too, and I don't, you stop noticing it.

00:16:13Marc:Yeah.

00:16:13Marc:And then people feel a pressure to compliment you.

00:16:16Guest:Like, no, no, it looks good still.

00:16:17Guest:You look 10 years younger or something like that.

00:16:18Marc:Oh, that's a good one.

00:16:19Guest:That works.

00:16:19Marc:Then I thought to say, should I do some Botox here?

00:16:22Marc:Oh, Botox.

00:16:23Marc:I've never done that.

00:16:24Marc:Have you done that?

00:16:24Marc:No.

00:16:25Marc:Oh, no, you're not going to do it.

00:16:26Marc:Never.

00:16:26Marc:No.

00:16:27Marc:No.

00:16:27Marc:Well, thank you for coming.

00:16:29Marc:Thank you for having me here very much.

00:16:31Marc:I watched a few movies.

00:16:33Marc:I did watch Queer last night.

00:16:36Marc:Oh, wow.

00:16:37Marc:Great.

00:16:37Marc:And I watched it and I studied it.

00:16:38Marc:Great.

00:16:39Marc:And then I watched... I just want to make sure I'm honest with you in terms of... I watched Challengers.

00:16:45Marc:Great.

00:16:45Marc:And I watched A Bigger Splash.

00:16:47Marc:Oh, wow.

00:16:48Marc:Yeah.

00:16:49Marc:And I was... I'm going to get into Suspiria.

00:16:52Marc:And we watched the original one.

00:16:54Marc:Yeah.

00:16:54Marc:So...

00:16:55Marc:When did you watch the original?

00:16:57Marc:Not long ago.

00:16:58Marc:Okay.

00:16:59Marc:But there's something about, even in some of the, in some queer, there's something about those saturated colors that come out of Argento.

00:17:08Guest:Well, in queer, I think for me and DP, we were really looking into the world of great British filmmaker, Powell and Pressburger.

00:17:19Guest:Oh, from Black Narcissist and Red Shoes, Red Shoes.

00:17:22Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:17:23Guest:The treatment of color in those movies were like technical or more than Dario's.

00:17:28Marc:Than Dario's, just like colors.

00:17:32Marc:I can't even understand what he was doing, but it was something, huh?

00:17:34Guest:I have a theory about that.

00:17:35Guest:Yeah, what is it?

00:17:36Guest:That he was trying to put everything out so that he could feel that he was kind of doing his job of making a horror movie.

00:17:45Guest:So it's a practical thing.

00:17:46Guest:Yeah.

00:17:47Guest:Yeah, it's a lot of color, a lot of sound, a lot of screams.

00:17:52Guest:But eventually, when you end up seeing the movie, you realize that it's not very scary.

00:17:57Guest:No, it's not scary.

00:17:58Marc:It's a little disturbing.

00:18:01Marc:Maybe.

00:18:03Marc:But but do you like what what is it about horror in general?

00:18:07Marc:I mean, did you like when you were a kid, were you like, I'm a horror guy?

00:18:10Marc:Big guy, big time.

00:18:11Marc:Yeah.

00:18:11Marc:So like because I mean, I can watch it and I can try to appreciate it intellectually.

00:18:16Marc:But what is it that resonates with that specific genre that kind of connects?

00:18:21Guest:I think for me, when I was a young kid, it was about the possibility of bending some kind of aesthetic rule.

00:18:29Guest:Like the idea that you could break the bodies the way in the horror movie you do was kind of felt subversive to me.

00:18:37Guest:And then there is some kind of idea of a heightened emotion that is interesting.

00:18:42Guest:And definitely, you know, when you have a nightmare, psychoanalysis says that it's a way of relief.

00:18:48Guest:So in a way, horror is like a sort of like...

00:18:51Guest:open relief for a collective relief.

00:18:56Marc:So it's not really about fear, and it's not about what horror is now, which is just shocking.

00:19:02Marc:But there's something about the grotesque and the possibilities of that that seems human to you.

00:19:08Guest:I agree with you, totally.

00:19:09Guest:I think every generation, every moment in time and society, expressed a different kind of horror.

00:19:17Guest:Like the anxieties of the 70s for terrorism and the wars, like the end of the war in Vietnam, they were expressed by films like The Exorcist, right?

00:19:30Guest:Okay.

00:19:30Guest:Where you could feel that this kind of evil within was calling out.

00:19:34Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:19:34Guest:Now the evil is here for good.

00:19:37Guest:Yeah.

00:19:38Guest:Yeah.

00:19:38Guest:I'm sorry, guys.

00:19:39Guest:You know, we've been there before, you guys.

00:19:41Marc:Do you live in Italy now?

00:19:42Marc:Yeah.

00:19:43Marc:So, okay, so give me a little, some tips on living in authoritarianism.

00:19:50Guest:Well, I think your democracy is stronger than ours, in a way.

00:19:53Guest:You have a much stronger way of control.

00:19:56Guest:In two years, you have a new election for the two chambers.

00:20:00Guest:So, like...

00:20:01Guest:I think that there will be a lot of trouble happening, particularly with the Supreme Court and with the way in which people will start to accept a sort of deregulation.

00:20:18Marc:Well, this is the problem, right?

00:20:20Guest:You have to fear Trump in you.

00:20:22Marc:Yeah, in you.

00:20:23Marc:In yourself.

00:20:24Marc:Well, I think that's because I'm a comic.

00:20:26Marc:So I've talked about it on stage about how, you know, no matter what anyone's fears are, if they're leftists or they're liberals, that eventually people will adapt because it's the nature of people.

00:20:37Marc:And I wrote this line the other night.

00:20:39Marc:I said, you know, shut up and keep your head down.

00:20:40Marc:It's easy when you have a phone.

00:20:42Yeah.

00:20:42Marc:Because you're already down.

00:20:44Marc:Because we have been given the tool.

00:20:47Guest:That's right.

00:20:48Guest:To be down with our head and not to worry.

00:20:51Marc:Yeah.

00:20:52Marc:Or not think about it.

00:20:54Marc:Even worse.

00:20:55Marc:But in speaking about the arts in relation to whatever you grew up in in Italy, I mean, is...

00:21:02Marc:I get this feeling because if you're an artist, you believe that the art has political purpose and possibilities for provoking change.

00:21:13Marc:But because of the nature of the technological environment, I don't know if that's true anymore.

00:21:19Guest:I don't think that we live in post-political times and then, you know, like even the most mindless entertainment is apolitical.

00:21:27Guest:It's very political.

00:21:28Guest:Ideology is behind the corner every moment.

00:21:30Marc:Reflects something.

00:21:31Guest:Always.

00:21:32Guest:Yeah.

00:21:32Guest:So in a way, to be aware of that and to try to understand that a pure sense of entertainment is not existable, doesn't exist.

00:21:43Marc:It's reflecting something whether you're morally in agreement with it or not.

00:21:46Marc:Yeah.

00:21:47Marc:That is doing something.

00:21:49Marc:It is either in service of the ruling ideology or pushing back as a reflection of it in a critical way.

00:21:56Marc:Agreed.

00:21:57Marc:Okay.

00:21:59Marc:Yeah.

00:21:59Marc:Oy, oy, oy.

00:21:59Marc:So when you do, like, I was trying to find, you know, what is important to you when you're exploring human emotions, desires, the idea of love and that kind of stuff.

00:22:12Marc:That seems to be the meat of what you're doing when you put people together.

00:22:18Guest:I would say it's about probably the way in which I love to see the clash of,

00:22:23Guest:of personalities happening in a given environment.

00:22:28Guest:I like to think that what I'm attracted by is the way in which we are all imperfect and we all are wrong and we are all right and we are all flawed.

00:22:38Guest:There is a line in that movie that was written by the great Dave Kajanek.

00:22:41Guest:Which one?

00:22:42Guest:It says, in Bigger Splash,

00:22:44Guest:Paul, played by Matthias Connors, says to Ralph Fiennes, you are obscene.

00:22:51Guest:And he replies, we are all obscene.

00:22:53Guest:Yeah.

00:22:54Guest:And we love each other anymore.

00:22:55Marc:Anyway.

00:22:55Guest:Yeah.

00:22:56Guest:Well, you have to.

00:22:57Marc:It's just the nature of people.

00:22:58Marc:Yeah.

00:22:59Marc:It's why Jesus is so popular.

00:23:01Marc:Yeah.

00:23:03Marc:My God.

00:23:04Yeah.

00:23:04Marc:That's why everybody's like, yeah, I'm obscene, but he'll take care of it.

00:23:10Marc:So when you're making a movie like that, I mean, the Ray Fiennes character, he seems to be based on a guy who is essential in music, a manager, a producer, the promoter.

00:23:23Marc:Yeah, the Stones.

00:23:25Marc:But the Stones are all over that thing.

00:23:26Guest:All over.

00:23:27Guest:They've been so supportive, like, because the concept was, let's make him like a sort of fictional manager of the Stones during the end of the 70s, early 80s.

00:23:36Marc:He reminded me, too, of that manager who was famous, the Led Zeppelin manager.

00:23:40Marc:That guy, I forget his name, but he was, you know, he was one of those characters.

00:23:43Marc:Okay.

00:23:44Guest:I'm sure that the writer thought a lot about that.

00:23:46Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:23:47Marc:So, okay, so you decided the Stones towards the 70s.

00:23:50Guest:So we really boxed ourselves into a trouble because he had to be a Rolling Stone manager.

00:23:56Guest:Yeah.

00:23:56Guest:And so you had to make sure that you could have the Stones songs in the movie because otherwise the movie felt unlegit, you know?

00:24:04Guest:Yeah, but they were into it?

00:24:05Guest:They said yes, but, you know, it's very expensive, so we had to find a way to make a deal.

00:24:09Guest:They were very gracious.

00:24:10Guest:Sure.

00:24:10Marc:Oh, really?

00:24:10Marc:Yeah.

00:24:11Marc:Well, I mean, it's not like you do nothing but celebrate the stones to the point where emotional rescue is at the bottom of the pool for whatever reason.

00:24:18Marc:Yes.

00:24:19Marc:Who put it there?

00:24:20Marc:Who put that there?

00:24:21Marc:You know who put it there?

00:24:22Marc:Well, I would assume Paul, right?

00:24:24Marc:Or?

00:24:24Marc:For me, it's Dakota's character.

00:24:27Marc:Yeah, the daughter.

00:24:28Marc:Because she saw the whole thing.

00:24:30Marc:I think she saw the whole thing.

00:24:31Guest:Yeah.

00:24:31Guest:She didn't move a finger.

00:24:33Marc:I thought, oddly, the most disturbing line in that movie, even though Tilda Swinton couldn't talk, was her willingness to blame it on the refugees.

00:24:41Marc:Oh, my God, yes.

00:24:43Marc:Thank you.

00:24:43Marc:Thank you for that.

00:24:44Guest:Mark, thank you.

00:24:45Guest:Because when we conceived the movie, this was 2013.

00:24:50Guest:Yeah.

00:24:50Guest:So it's almost 12 years ago.

00:24:51Guest:Right.

00:24:52Guest:And the crisis of the migrants in Italy was still...

00:24:55Guest:but it didn't became the trade of politics.

00:25:00Guest:It didn't became the way in which these people were blowing fire over the fears of the citizens.

00:25:07Guest:And so to have a character like that, Marianne Lane, Tilda, to be the one who does... Like a female Bowie.

00:25:15Guest:Yes.

00:25:15Guest:And she wants to preserve and collect her own privilege, her sense of elitism, and she goes so far...

00:25:23Guest:To falsely accuse, even though she knows that they couldn't have done it.

00:25:27Marc:Her lover did it.

00:25:28Marc:Yes.

00:25:28Guest:I mean, she pretty much knows that.

00:25:30Guest:She blames the immigrants in front of the jail.

00:25:35Guest:Right.

00:25:36Marc:It's so scary.

00:25:38Marc:It's scary, but, you know, it speaks to class and it speaks to this sort of, you know, it's like that, you know, the Renoir movie, right?

00:25:46Marc:The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie.

00:25:48Marc:Thank you.

00:25:48Marc:You're kind of churning away with these mundane problems.

00:25:52Marc:Yeah.

00:25:52Marc:And then, you know, when push comes to shove, you have no moral foundation.

00:25:57Marc:Yeah.

00:25:57Marc:Because you're protecting your own desires to maintain your life.

00:26:02Marc:Which is what you said before.

00:26:04Marc:Yeah.

00:26:05Guest:Going head down on that phone.

00:26:06Guest:That's right.

00:26:07Guest:We lost that.

00:26:08Guest:We lost the possibility that we were part of a collective.

00:26:11Guest:That's right.

00:26:12Guest:And that we all work in function of society.

00:26:15Guest:And there was an ethic.

00:26:16Guest:Yeah.

00:26:17Guest:And there was a morality.

00:26:17Guest:Yes.

00:26:18Guest:Now, I feel like the movie shows that once your privilege can be touched, you will go very far in a dark place to blame other people who are afraid.

00:26:29Marc:Well, even now, you know, I talk to at least, you know, Democrats, you know, who are trying to sort of, you know, kind of process the Trump victory.

00:26:41Marc:And two or three of them have ended up, well, my stocks are probably going to be better.

00:26:45Marc:Yeah.

00:26:46Guest:I mean, you know, after all the... Because the day after the election, the stock went up.

00:26:50Marc:That's right.

00:26:50Marc:Well, fascism is good for business because business doesn't give a fuck.

00:26:54Guest:Yeah.

00:26:54Marc:Right?

00:26:55Marc:Where the money's coming from.

00:26:55Guest:But everything was lost already when the Chinese were supporting Kamala Harris.

00:27:00Guest:That was the moment in which whoever was supporting, rightfully, the Democrats in this election... It was a bad... They were a bit lost.

00:27:07Guest:Because, you know, we spent the last 20 years...

00:27:10Guest:being completely against the politics of... Well, Cheney was like the devil.

00:27:18Marc:Yeah.

00:27:19Marc:At the time, it's just that, you know, he's been outdone as the devil.

00:27:23Marc:So I guess you pick the devil you know over this other monster, you know, to try... I mean, it was a bad campaign choice.

00:27:30Marc:But, like, for you, when you're growing up in Italy, politically, you know, how active were you?

00:27:35Marc:When did your heart break politically?

00:27:37Marc:Yeah.

00:27:37Guest:I think I have a couple of big heartbreaks.

00:27:40Guest:One was I was growing up in Sicily.

00:27:43Guest:So Sicily is a very contrast country.

00:27:46Guest:And, you know, we have mafia in Sicily, which is a big deal.

00:27:50Guest:Didn't it start there?

00:27:51Guest:Exactly.

00:27:53Guest:And it spread from there.

00:27:54Guest:But the other thing is that there were also the beautiful champion of legality, great judges like Falcone and Borsellino.

00:28:01Guest:These people got...

00:28:02Guest:exploded they really killed them by making them explode yeah and this was when I was like 20 or something and I was it was like very very harsh when I saw that there was a sense of loss of hope when even like there is no way in which if they can make people of

00:28:22Guest:of the law who are fighting with their lives.

00:28:26Guest:And they do it.

00:28:26Guest:And then afterwards, the decades afterwards, you realize that that wasn't done just by the mafia, but there was a collusion between mafia and politics.

00:28:33Guest:That is very dispiriting.

00:28:34Guest:And of course, all the Berlusconi thing was kind of dispiriting.

00:28:37Marc:Well, yeah.

00:28:37Marc:Well, it's sort of like Kennedy here.

00:28:39Marc:I think that, you know, once the 60s happened, it destroyed something.

00:28:45Marc:Yeah.

00:28:45Guest:The possibility of, like...

00:28:49Guest:a collective dream of reform and new society change.

00:28:54Guest:Did that influence your work directly?

00:28:57Marc:I think, right?

00:28:59Marc:Well, you think, sure.

00:29:00Marc:I mean, because as you said, if you're an artist and you're working in relation to or under the ruling powers that are antithetical to what you believe in, it's going to come out.

00:29:13Marc:But there was no sort of like, this is addressing this.

00:29:16Right.

00:29:16Guest:Not in a sort of very direct way, except for a movie that I made called Italian Unconscious.

00:29:23Guest:It's a documentary where I investigated with few intellectuals the concept of the return of fascism after the actual historical fascism.

00:29:35Guest:And in that case, I tried to put some dots together from the 30s to the 2000s.

00:29:41Guest:Yeah, and what was the first film that you made?

00:29:44Guest:My first feature film was a movie called The Protagonist that I shot in London with Tilda Swinton.

00:29:50Guest:Why do you love her so much?

00:29:52Guest:Well, I met her when I was younger and I was a fan.

00:29:55Guest:She did some great performances in great movies like the Derek Jarman films, Orlando.

00:30:00Guest:So I was like a fan and I met her publicly and I went there and I said, hi, I'm a director.

00:30:06Guest:I wasn't, I wasn't just a kid.

00:30:08Guest:I want to work with you.

00:30:09Guest:And she gave me...

00:30:10Guest:her hotel number.

00:30:12Guest:She said, call me so tomorrow we can meet.

00:30:14Guest:And we met and we became instant friends.

00:30:16Guest:She's so generous.

00:30:17Marc:She's like an interesting talent though.

00:30:20Marc:Very much, yes.

00:30:21Marc:And when you work with an actor, I mean, with somebody like her who you can't really put in a box, you know, what's the collaboration like?

00:30:31Marc:Is there discussions?

00:30:32Yeah.

00:30:33Guest:I think there is a lot of shared point of view on stuff.

00:30:36Guest:Yeah.

00:30:36Guest:So we are both of us.

00:30:38Guest:We love the idea of craft and we love the idea of trying to do something that is maybe done rarely or for the first time to have fun in doing that.

00:30:49Guest:So, you know, and we did Suspiria.

00:30:50Guest:She played three roles.

00:30:51Guest:Yeah.

00:30:52Guest:One.

00:30:52Guest:Yeah.

00:30:52Guest:And that it was so beautiful for her was very taxing because she was working every day a long time.

00:30:57Guest:That's good, though.

00:30:58Guest:But at the end of the day, we were having fun because we were like kids playing with dough and making form out of something.

00:31:04Guest:Well, why did you want to re-approach that movie?

00:31:07Guest:I saw the movie when I was 13 in the early 80s.

00:31:11Guest:Yeah.

00:31:11Guest:And it made an incredible impression on me because I think Dario Argento's films, those kind of films, were engineered for kids.

00:31:18Guest:They're almost like fairy tales for young people.

00:31:20Guest:Sure, yeah.

00:31:21Guest:So I was the perfect audience for it.

00:31:23Guest:Yeah.

00:31:24Guest:But there was something about the idea of this female group of witches and how they control other women that was really stuck with me.

00:31:32Guest:And in the years afterwards, I couldn't stop thinking how I would tell the same story from a different perspective.

00:31:39Guest:Instead of being out of history, I do it in history.

00:31:43Guest:So I thought about putting the story of the movie within the context of the movie.

00:31:49Guest:Germany in the 70s and the post-war Germany and the generations that are confronting each other between their past and their present.

00:31:58Guest:And that's how with David Kajanek, the writer, we reflected on it.

00:32:02Guest:And it was a way for me to own my own self because I wanted to go back to the kind of emotions I felt when I saw the movie and try to... As an older guy, though.

00:32:13Marc:Yes, and to expand from it.

00:32:15Marc:Yeah, so your interpretation, like with any good piece of work, kind of grows and deepens as you get older.

00:32:23Marc:I think so.

00:32:24Guest:That's the same for queer.

00:32:26Guest:I read the book when I was 17.

00:32:28Guest:And I kept going back to the book for the following decades.

00:32:32Guest:And always I was thinking, I think I want to try to bring this to life.

00:32:37Guest:Of course, if I had done the movie when I read it in the first place, it would have been a completely different movie.

00:32:41Marc:Because it spoke to you differently.

00:32:43Marc:Yeah.

00:32:43Marc:And Burroughs is like a guy you got to go back to every few years just to realize you don't understand what the fuck he's talking about.

00:32:50Guest:Or you didn't understood then.

00:32:51Guest:Right.

00:32:52Guest:And maybe now you are having a different approach that made you believe that you are understanding only to discover afterward that you didn't understood even then.

00:32:59Marc:I think he's very cryptic, you know, right?

00:33:02Marc:Isn't that the word?

00:33:04Marc:In that, you know, you go into it.

00:33:08Marc:So whatever spoke to you, you know, when you were 17 must have been part of a narrative structure, you know, about the experience of that character.

00:33:16Marc:Yeah.

00:33:17Marc:And then, you know, the other stuff, whether it's space travel or disembodiment or floating above whatever.

00:33:23Marc:I mean, that stuff is there, but that stuff is poetry.

00:33:26Marc:And, you know, you're going to have to go into that at every different point in your life to try to navigate it.

00:33:31Marc:But because it seems like when you did the movie that this was a story about a longing guy.

00:33:36Marc:a guy who was longing constantly and in the predicament of a gay man at that time, not knowing whether or not someone is like-minded and having to float in this zone.

00:33:50Guest:And even if he eventually come up with the possibility of a physical contact, an emotional contact, he is still uncertain of the possibility of a real love between the two of them.

00:34:05Guest:And that is not because historically in that context, homosexuality couldn't express itself fully, but more for the broader, for me at least, sense of difficulty in interaction between people, no matter what's the...

00:34:20Marc:Well, I thought that you I thought you wove that together very well because, you know, you obviously knew going in because, you know, seeing Burroughs characterized anyway.

00:34:30Marc:I've only seen it a few times.

00:34:31Marc:I think that Cronenberg did Naked Lunch.

00:34:34Marc:And I think Ben Foster played him in Little Darlings, which was not a bad movie about the Lucian Carr murder.

00:34:42Marc:Yeah.

00:34:42Marc:And, you know, so I've been fascinated with him since I was very young and with Burroughs.

00:34:48Marc:But to see him as a guy who was, you know, kind of a clown, you know, and kind of vulnerable and then have this other mental and emotional life, but also the fantastic imagination that he had.

00:35:01Marc:But I think to speak to what you're talking about, about the nature of love, desire and true connection, you know, when you have somebody who's fundamentally a drug addict.

00:35:09Marc:that it's hard not to look at all interactions through that compulsion, right?

00:35:15Marc:Absolutely.

00:35:15Guest:And maybe that compulsion comes from a sort of like fragility of accepting the pain in the search for contact.

00:35:24Guest:So he has to numb himself to survive that pain.

00:35:27Guest:Right.

00:35:28Marc:Maybe.

00:35:28Marc:Maybe, or he just likes getting high.

00:35:31Marc:I mean, there's a lot of difference.

00:35:33Marc:There's a lot of reasons to get high.

00:35:35Marc:I mean, pain management.

00:35:36Marc:You know how he got into that.

00:35:38Marc:In the dope?

00:35:39Guest:Yeah.

00:35:39Guest:How?

00:35:40Guest:Because he was like 18 or 19 and he was in love with this guy.

00:35:46Guest:And this guy, they had a relationship.

00:35:49Guest:But then the guy left him for a woman and he went on finding a sister and he cut...

00:35:55Guest:his his finger yeah out of like a sort of feeling of dejection and and he did this he wanted to match the pain he did that self-harming yes yeah so they brought him to the hospital and the wound wasn't curing so they put him on morphine and that did and that's when he started to become an addict

00:36:15Marc:All his life.

00:36:16Marc:Did you ever see that animated piece, The Junkie's Christmas?

00:36:19Marc:No.

00:36:20Marc:Oh, it's so good.

00:36:21Marc:Oh, no.

00:36:22Marc:That's the title, Junkie Christmas?

00:36:23Marc:I think it's called The Junkie's Christmas, and it's sort of done in almost that claymation thing, but it's a short, and it's about a guy who's trying to score on Christmas Eve.

00:36:35Marc:And, you know, he's going to all the it's a beautiful little movie.

00:36:38Marc:And I don't we can find it after.

00:36:40Marc:But you should watch it because I think I think Burroughs narrates the whole thing.

00:36:44Marc:And, you know, he's like a real comedian sometimes.

00:36:47Marc:Yeah.

00:36:48Marc:Yeah.

00:36:49Marc:But in exploring this thing, because it seems to because I think I got it.

00:36:54Marc:It's not it's not an easy movie.

00:36:56Marc:To get because it's one of those movies where you're going to watch it and you're not going to get things, but you're not like it's not going to be a problem.

00:37:05Marc:I always blame myself.

00:37:07Marc:Like, is this here for a reason or is this here just to provoke some sort of feeling?

00:37:14Guest:I guess that's enough of a reason.

00:37:15Guest:I think both, right?

00:37:16Guest:I think a movie should be there to open up your mind and start to spring out from yourself a set of ideas and ideas of life and of yourself and then give you emotions.

00:37:30Guest:I love the idea that when I go to the movie, a movie is giving me the possibility of being in interaction with it, not to be under the command of the movie itself.

00:37:39Marc:But it's interesting in queer that...

00:37:42Marc:He goes to a very long journey and great travail to connect with this nebulous thing, which is love or eternity or something that exists outside of us that connects us all even after we're gone.

00:37:57Marc:I mean, there's a lot of things that are explored there, right?

00:38:01Marc:Because I think that the recurring thing about telepathy is really about connection.

00:38:07Marc:Totally.

00:38:07Marc:Yeah.

00:38:08Guest:The anguish that he goes through is that he wants connection.

00:38:11Guest:He gets connection sometimes, but then he's lost.

00:38:14Guest:Connection is lost, and so he feels that he's out of sync with this guy.

00:38:18Guest:And how can he come back to synchronicity with him?

00:38:22Marc:But the reality frame of it is this guy.

00:38:25Marc:Like, you know, ultimately, whatever Burroughs is going on about and I don't know what he was writing at that time, but he'd certainly written a good deal, a good many books.

00:38:34Marc:So his imagination was completely unleashed.

00:38:37Marc:But in your movie, you know, this is a guy that seems to be, you know, you know, on a human level longing for something.

00:38:44Marc:And when you read his books without knowing him and even seeing him, you know, with his guns or doing a show, you know, I don't I never really associated him as a as a sort of like kind of like a sad ish guy, you know, full of longing and vulnerability.

00:39:02Marc:You know, I never I never pictured him that way.

00:39:03Marc:So that was kind of an interesting because I think you're probably right.

00:39:07Marc:I'm right.

00:39:08Marc:About who he is, like when you studied it.

00:39:12Guest:This book was written after John Key in 1949.

00:39:16Guest:Yeah.

00:39:17Guest:And it was reflective of his own feelings for another person called Lewis Marker.

00:39:22Guest:Yeah.

00:39:23Guest:He didn't finish it, even though Ginsberg was looking at the... Was that, was Schwartzman kind of Ginsberg?

00:39:30Guest:Somehow.

00:39:31Guest:Yeah.

00:39:32Guest:Somehow.

00:39:32Guest:And you know, Ginsberg was going in Mexico City, reading the various drafts of the book, and it was encouraging him, but Barrows didn't want to publish it.

00:39:41Guest:Okay.

00:39:41Guest:Queer.

00:39:42Guest:Yeah.

00:39:43Guest:Because it was too close.

00:39:44Guest:It was too exposed.

00:39:46Guest:It was exposing for him.

00:39:48Guest:And then he went into the cut up folding technique, Naked Lunch, Wild Boys and all these guys.

00:39:53Guest:This very, yes, it's very obscure books because it was in a way like his own persona with this idea of the ugly American comedic drooling kind of way.

00:40:05Guest:That was in a way, a way for him to protect his intimacy.

00:40:09Guest:Yeah.

00:40:09Guest:And so when I spoke to Oliver Harris, which is the greatest scholar of Burroughs, he said to me, you're right.

00:40:16Guest:Queer is too candid about what he felt.

00:40:19Guest:And he had to hide it for 35 years.

00:40:22Guest:So I feel like, yeah, I feel I'm right.

00:40:24Guest:I feel the movie being a love story and a love story that is not able to expand because of the feeling of asynchronously between these two characters.

00:40:36Guest:It is what the book is about.

00:40:38Marc:Right.

00:40:39Marc:And then, but then like you were, you were pretty good at weaving in some sort of burro-isms that, that remain unexplainable.

00:40:47Marc:I mean, you know, centipedes.

00:40:49Guest:Yeah.

00:40:50Guest:For me, centipede, if you look closely, it's all, it's hanging on the neck of the guy, he's crawling on the mattress.

00:40:58Guest:I think he's in a way, I think, bottom line, both men,

00:41:02Guest:William Lee, Daniel Craig, and Eugene Allerton, Drew Starkey, they are both, they have the bug or the illness of repression.

00:41:11Guest:They are repressed.

00:41:12Guest:So that's what it represents.

00:41:12Guest:And they cannot find a way to give up completely repression and live their life together.

00:41:18Guest:So the centipede, in a way, is that repression that crawls constantly between them.

00:41:24Guest:That's what you thought of it as.

00:41:26Guest:Yeah.

00:41:27Guest:Because there's a lot of bugs in burrows.

00:41:28Guest:Yeah.

00:41:29Yeah.

00:41:30Guest:True.

00:41:31Guest:He thinks that those are like the ultimate unhuman evil kind of like being.

00:41:38Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:41:38Marc:And, you know, he spends a lot of time on toxins.

00:41:40Marc:Yeah.

00:41:41Marc:Yeah.

00:41:42Marc:Like, well, to look at that is all a kind of a reaction to his own feelings that couldn't be expressed.

00:41:51Marc:Honestly, is interesting.

00:41:53Marc:And I guess it makes it like the cut up method is incomprehensible most of the time.

00:41:58Guest:Yeah.

00:41:59Guest:But you have to you have to you have to surrender to it and maybe find some ways of understanding or enjoyment, even though you completely are lost in it.

00:42:08Marc:Yeah.

00:42:09Marc:I'm a big fan of that trilogy with Places of Dead Roads.

00:42:14Marc:Beautiful.

00:42:15Marc:That's the best.

00:42:17Marc:That Western is the best.

00:42:18Marc:And Cities of the Red Knight.

00:42:19Marc:Beautiful.

00:42:20Marc:And what is it?

00:42:21Marc:The Dead, Book of the Dead book.

00:42:23Marc:Western Lands.

00:42:25Guest:Love.

00:42:25Guest:Those three.

00:42:26Guest:He wrote those three books, and then he wrote The Cat in Us.

00:42:30Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:42:30Guest:Those are the great.

00:42:31Guest:One is the most tender one.

00:42:32Guest:What, The Cat?

00:42:33Guest:Yeah.

00:42:34Marc:Yeah.

00:42:34Marc:Well, yeah, because that's like, you know, at that age, he's returning to, you know, whatever's left of what drove him in queer, in a way.

00:42:42Guest:Yeah.

00:42:42Guest:In fact, we found in the journals of Burroughs, the last entry in the journals, it's a sort of mini poem about love.

00:42:54Guest:Yeah.

00:42:54Guest:About the, like, love that Katz gives him, that is a love that is pure love.

00:43:00Guest:Yeah.

00:43:01Guest:About the centipede being...

00:43:03Guest:The evil repression in between him and the law.

00:43:06Guest:So that's where you got it.

00:43:07Guest:And the last line is love.

00:43:10Marc:Yeah, love.

00:43:12Marc:So he got there.

00:43:13Marc:Yeah.

00:43:13Marc:That took a long time, huh?

00:43:14Marc:Long time, 83 years old.

00:43:17Marc:Because I think you speak to that a bit at the end, right?

00:43:20Marc:That he's on the bed.

00:43:22Guest:But what is interesting is that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who composed this amazing score, and I, we were chatting about doing an original song for the end title.

00:43:32Guest:This was way at the end.

00:43:33Marc:Trent Reznor.

00:43:34Marc:Yes.

00:43:34Guest:So this was like five months ago, not long ago.

00:43:38Guest:Yeah.

00:43:38Guest:So we had done the movie.

00:43:39Guest:Yeah.

00:43:40Guest:The centipede was already in the movie.

00:43:41Guest:Yeah.

00:43:42Guest:So I asked my assistant and researcher, Ben, find me anything about love in his writings.

00:43:49Guest:And he found this entry in the journal.

00:43:51Guest:Yeah.

00:43:51Guest:I didn't know.

00:43:52Guest:Yeah.

00:43:52Guest:And everything matched.

00:43:54Guest:Oh, really?

00:43:54Guest:Yeah.

00:43:55Guest:So you went on your own little burrows journey.

00:43:57Guest:Yeah.

00:43:58Guest:I think so.

00:43:58Guest:Since I read the book when I was 17.

00:44:00Guest:But you always read him.

00:44:02Guest:Yeah.

00:44:02Guest:Since then, I kept reading it, reading it, reading it for the past... The one book.

00:44:07Guest:That and also the other ones.

00:44:09Guest:But yeah.

00:44:10Guest:In my TV show, We Are Who We Are, the character played by Jack Dylan Grazer, Frazier in the movie, in the show, he reads Wild Boys in the first episode.

00:44:17Guest:Yeah.

00:44:18Marc:It kind of, you know, and I don't want you to take this as an insult.

00:44:22Marc:You know, it kind of...

00:44:23Marc:Reminded me of Altered States.

00:44:25Guest:Oh my God, that's the opposite of an insult.

00:44:28Guest:This is like the most wonderful compliment.

00:44:31Guest:That movie, Ken Russell, I love it.

00:44:33Guest:It's the best.

00:44:34Guest:I think I really understood what I love about man being a homosexual man through that movie because William Hurt is always naked in that movie and it's so beautiful.

00:44:43Guest:Yeah.

00:44:43Guest:And he does this experiment with his body.

00:44:46Guest:That felt very like, oh, my God, a pulling card for me.

00:44:50Guest:I love that movie.

00:44:52Guest:It's fantastic.

00:44:53Guest:Yeah, I felt it really harkened back to that movie.

00:44:56Guest:There was a great writer who wrote it, right?

00:44:58Guest:I don't remember the name of the writer, but there was some.

00:45:00Guest:The novel.

00:45:01Guest:The novel and the script was like someone legendary.

00:45:03Guest:But, yeah, the movie is amazing.

00:45:05Marc:Right.

00:45:05Marc:Because, like, I noticed that when, you know, when you were shooting them on the Yage trip.

00:45:11Marc:Ayahuasca, yes.

00:45:11Marc:The Ayahuasca trip.

00:45:13Marc:And they're folding into each other's bodies.

00:45:16Guest:And you can see the hands.

00:45:17Guest:Mark, I spent the last 40 years thinking of remaking that kind of idea of the body melting.

00:45:23Guest:Yeah.

00:45:24Guest:From Alter States.

00:45:25Guest:Alter States.

00:45:27Guest:It was a forbidden movie because it was like an NC-17 in Italy.

00:45:31Guest:So you couldn't see it.

00:45:32Guest:And I was like, I don't know.

00:45:33Guest:Maybe I must have been 10.

00:45:34Guest:Yeah.

00:45:35Guest:And then when VHS came out, I found a way to get it.

00:45:40Guest:And it was my forbidden movie.

00:45:41Guest:Amazing movie.

00:45:43Marc:Ken Russell.

00:45:43Guest:Wow.

00:45:44Marc:I'm glad that I noticed it.

00:45:45Marc:Yeah.

00:45:47Marc:Because I really felt that in the end of Altered States where he's matter and she's anti.

00:45:54Marc:Whatever was going on there.

00:45:56Guest:for love to bring him back yeah he had gone out there because like on the trip in queer I mean they're out there in the same place yeah wherever that fucking place is and it's amazing yeah and when Dr. Cotter tells the boy you have to stay and keep going because that's the beginning of something amazing and beautiful you should have seen yourself and the guy says no I'm leaving she says what are you afraid of that's the repression of the boy at play of course and Karen Manville

00:46:26Guest:Is that her name?

00:46:27Marc:Leslie.

00:46:28Marc:She's so fucking good.

00:46:30Guest:Amazing.

00:46:31Marc:She's always been good.

00:46:32Guest:But you know, all these incredible actors who I've been privileged to work with in my life and in this movie in particular, they're so generous.

00:46:41Marc:I'll tell you though, man, I've watched her in all the Mike Lee movies and I watched her in Phantom Thread.

00:46:47Marc:You got something out of her I've never seen before.

00:46:49Guest:I'm so happy you said that.

00:46:50Guest:I mean, well.

00:46:51Guest:And I love all these movies from Mike Lee.

00:46:53Marc:Oh, they're the best.

00:46:54Marc:But she's such an amazing actress.

00:46:56Marc:And even that cute one where she plays a lady who gets to go to Paris and buy the dress.

00:47:02Marc:I don't remember what it was.

00:47:04Marc:It was a cute movie.

00:47:04Marc:And it wasn't too long ago.

00:47:06Marc:But, you know, she was doing this thing.

00:47:09Marc:What was it?

00:47:09Marc:Was it like Texan?

00:47:11Marc:Yeah.

00:47:12Marc:Who decided that?

00:47:15Guest:I think she decided.

00:47:16Guest:Of course, we worked with makeup artist Fernanda Perez.

00:47:20Marc:Where did that character come from?

00:47:22Guest:It came from the fantasy, honestly, it was the fantasy of Justin Kuritsky, the writer, because the book ends with them meeting Dr. Cotter, which is a man in the book.

00:47:33Guest:And Dr. Cotter do not give them and doesn't engage with them.

00:47:37Guest:Doesn't give them the jahe and doesn't engage with them.

00:47:41Guest:So we had to continue the story.

00:47:42Guest:We had to see what happens if actually...

00:47:45Guest:Dr. Cotter gives them the idea.

00:47:48Guest:Yeah.

00:47:49Guest:And that's the beginning of our conversation with Justin.

00:47:54Guest:I think Justin was, we discussed about the idea of the mad scientist in the jungle.

00:47:58Guest:There was something about... This is the writer?

00:48:01Guest:Yeah.

00:48:01Guest:Justin?

00:48:02Guest:He wrote Challengers as well.

00:48:03Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:48:03Guest:He adapted the book for me.

00:48:05Guest:And Justin and I, we said, okay, let's think about the mad doctor in the jungle.

00:48:09Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:48:10Guest:And he characterized it on the page wonderfully.

00:48:12Guest:But then when... Like the island of Dr. Moreau or something?

00:48:16Guest:Yes, exactly.

00:48:16Guest:Okay, yeah, yeah.

00:48:17Guest:And when she came on board, I told her she's a vessel of love.

00:48:23Guest:She's someone who wants the love for these two.

00:48:26Guest:She's not a destructive character.

00:48:28Guest:She's a proactive character.

00:48:30Guest:So she liked that very much.

00:48:31Guest:She came to Italy.

00:48:32Guest:We made all the makeup and stuff, which was beautiful and ridiculous at the same time.

00:48:37Guest:Kind of amazing, yeah.

00:48:38Guest:Amazing.

00:48:39Guest:But like a truly American character.

00:48:41Guest:Truly American character.

00:48:42Guest:Yes.

00:48:43Guest:Yes.

00:48:43Guest:You know, like in America, you have this kind of like cookie character that are like out there.

00:48:49Guest:Yeah.

00:48:51Guest:That are like singular in the way they live.

00:48:53Guest:Yeah.

00:48:54Guest:It's the frontier.

00:48:55Marc:Yes.

00:48:55Marc:The idea of the frontier.

00:48:56Marc:Yeah.

00:48:56Marc:I get it.

00:48:57Guest:She's in her own frontier.

00:48:58Marc:Yes.

00:48:58Marc:In the jungle.

00:49:00Marc:But she's got the guns.

00:49:01Marc:Yeah.

00:49:02Marc:And it's part of her language.

00:49:03Marc:Yeah.

00:49:03Marc:Which is fundamentally American.

00:49:05Marc:Yeah.

00:49:06Marc:And she found the laughter.

00:49:07Marc:She found all this beautiful mimicry.

00:49:09Marc:It's unbelievable.

00:49:11Marc:But that's so, I think what it did for me as being somebody who's wrestled with Burroughs and also just, it humanized something about all his work.

00:49:22Marc:That, you know, at the end of the day, after they go on that ayahuasca trip and whatever happens, is that, you know, they both land in themselves and

00:49:33Marc:And, you know, the other guy goes, you know, I'm not queer.

00:49:39Marc:Both of them says it.

00:49:40Marc:I'm not queer.

00:49:41Guest:I'm disembodied.

00:49:43Marc:Right.

00:49:43Marc:But, you know, I felt like after a certain point, Burroughs is saying whatever is necessary.

00:49:50Guest:But I think, okay, but Allerton says to Lee, I'm not queer.

00:49:55Guest:I'm disembodied before they fuse into one being.

00:49:59Guest:Right.

00:50:00Guest:So, he's actually, it's what I think.

00:50:03Guest:You know, I never think that when you say something, we say the absolute truth.

00:50:06Guest:Maybe sometimes you say the opposite of it.

00:50:08Guest:That's right, yeah.

00:50:09Guest:So, I think he's terrified.

00:50:11Marc:No, I got that, yeah.

00:50:13Marc:But I did think that the Burroughs character, Daniel Craig, was going to do whatever is necessary to maintain connection.

00:50:20Marc:Yeah, everything.

00:50:21Marc:Yeah.

00:50:23Marc:And, you know, and I think that other guy, what's his name?

00:50:26Marc:The actor?

00:50:28Marc:Indeed, the actor.

00:50:28Marc:Drew Starkey.

00:50:29Marc:What an amazing job.

00:50:30Marc:Amazing job.

00:50:31Marc:I mean, it was mind-blowing.

00:50:32Marc:Mind-blowing.

00:50:33Marc:Beautiful job.

00:50:34Marc:And did it exceed your expectations?

00:50:39Guest:I saw a test he did, like a screen test for another movie.

00:50:44Guest:And I found something...

00:50:46Guest:irresistible in him.

00:50:48Guest:Then when he did my audition tape for this movie, he was perfect.

00:50:53Guest:So, of course, then one audition is something, but then the performance is something else.

00:50:59Guest:What I was very much blown away by is how he embodied the movements of a man in the 50s.

00:51:07Guest:That was incredible.

00:51:08Guest:He studied, I think he must have seen so many movies, the way he moves the body, the ankles, it's so 50s.

00:51:15Marc:It's so, like, I really thought it was pretty thorough and pretty beautiful in terms of, like, you know, the conversation starts with, like, really straight up kind of, you know, Burroughs points of interest, you know, like espionage during World War II, you know, between them.

00:51:32Marc:Yeah.

00:51:32Marc:Yeah, you know, and I'm like, all right, so this is Burroughs territory.

00:51:36Marc:But then you kind of peel away those layers.

00:51:38Marc:So you're saying that the book, because I don't know the book well—

00:51:42Marc:But, you know, it ends with Dr. Cotter.

00:51:45Marc:And then because in the end, when you have this Burroughs character aging and lonely in sort of a hallucinatory state, you know, in the motel, looking in the motel, you know, the sort of otherworldliness is that, you know, he's old and seemingly dying on that dirty hotel bed.

00:52:04Marc:And then you bring in...

00:52:06Marc:You know, the scene that took place with his wife in real life, the William Tell business.

00:52:13Marc:What was the discussion around needing to put that part of his life in the movie?

00:52:20Guest:Well, let's make a step backward for a second.

00:52:23Guest:The book has two endings.

00:52:24Guest:The main narrative ends with Dr. Cotter not giving them ayahuasca.

00:52:29Guest:So that's why they leave the jungle and they...

00:52:32Guest:Okay.

00:52:33Guest:And then they don't see each other anymore.

00:52:36Guest:That's what happens in the book.

00:52:38Guest:So then there is an epilogue that happens in Mexico City two years later.

00:52:41Guest:Right.

00:52:42Guest:And in that epilogue, Barros, Lee discovers that Allerton has been asking for him.

00:52:49Guest:So in a way, Allerton still wants him.

00:52:50Guest:Yes.

00:52:51Guest:In the book...

00:52:53Guest:Lee goes to sleep and has this vision of himself playing a secret agent and does things as a secret agent.

00:53:03Guest:Hombre invisible.

00:53:04Guest:Yeah.

00:53:05Guest:And so, and that's the book.

00:53:08Guest:In the book, Barrows wrote also a foreword.

00:53:12Guest:In this foreword, it describes his life in Mexico City and the actual incident of killing his wife.

00:53:19Guest:Yeah.

00:53:19Guest:So it's in there.

00:53:22Guest:Yes, but separated from the narrative.

00:53:25Guest:So with Justin, we felt what happens if the division between the two men doesn't happen because they did not got ayahuasca, but actually because they did get it.

00:53:35Guest:Yeah.

00:53:36Guest:So because they open a door that shows the possibility, but maybe this possibility is too intense for both to sustain, which I think is one of our problems as human beings.

00:53:47Guest:When you are in an intense relationship with someone, maybe sometimes you can't bear to be so naked in front of the other and you have to run away from it.

00:53:56Marc:What is that?

00:53:56Guest:Distrust?

00:53:58Distrust?

00:53:58Guest:I think it's fear of contact.

00:54:01Guest:I think it's like fear.

00:54:05Guest:But it's essentially the fear of seeing yourself reflected in the eyes of the other.

00:54:10Guest:Also losing yourself.

00:54:12Guest:And losing yourself.

00:54:13Marc:I mean, because that's really what it is.

00:54:16Guest:But the ultimate love is losing yourself.

00:54:19Guest:Right.

00:54:21Guest:So the romantic in me hopes that some people does lose themselves into the other, hopefully.

00:54:26Marc:Sure.

00:54:26Marc:But I mean, but I think that the risk of it is, is like you want to be able to come back.

00:54:31Marc:You want to, you know, be able to do, you know, you know, run errands.

00:54:33Guest:And again, yeah.

00:54:36Guest:You know, it's important if you find love that you understand that you still remain an individual.

00:54:41Guest:Well, that's the trick.

00:54:42Guest:You know?

00:54:43Guest:Because if you find yourself into a codependent relationship, then it's problematic.

00:54:49Marc:Well, you lose yourself and then you kind of disintegrate over time in service of the other person.

00:54:55Guest:But in this case, in the case of this movie,

00:54:58Guest:We go into a trip where he sees Allerton again, and Allerton does what the wife did.

00:55:05Guest:He invites him to play William Tell with him.

00:55:08Guest:And like in the eternal line of Oscar Wilde that says, each man kills the things he loves, Lee fires at Allerton and kills him so that he can be eternally linked with him.

00:55:23Guest:And so when he's dying in his bed in the hotel, as an old man, Allerton comes back and does what he did many years before.

00:55:30Guest:Snuggles him?

00:55:31Guest:By snuggling him and putting his foot on top of his foot, which is the ultimate tenderness.

00:55:37Guest:That's right.

00:55:37Guest:Poetry.

00:55:38Guest:Hopefully.

00:55:40Marc:But you obviously thought it all out.

00:55:43Marc:Yeah.

00:55:43Marc:I mean, because even at the beginning of the movie where, you know, he's trying to, I don't remember which character was talking about the sort of all living things are ultimately the same.

00:55:52Marc:They're all connected.

00:55:53Guest:It's Bobo, this guy who has this, as he says, this old queen who gave him advice on how to deal with his feeling of self-loathing because of being homosexual.

00:56:06Guest:Right.

00:56:06Marc:Yes, and having desires that can't be fulfilled.

00:56:09Marc:Yeah.

00:56:10Marc:Or that cannot be accepted.

00:56:12Marc:Right.

00:56:12Marc:So that's where that comes from.

00:56:14Marc:And that's really kind of what is what he's driving for almost the whole movie.

00:56:19Marc:Yeah.

00:56:20Marc:Is the acceptance and actualization of we are all connected.

00:56:25Guest:Absolutely.

00:56:26Guest:No matter what the sexuality is.

00:56:27Marc:That's right.

00:56:28Marc:And then you end up, you know, just sort of in this kind of beautiful hallucinatory state.

00:56:32Marc:Yeah.

00:56:33Marc:Yeah.

00:56:33Marc:Which is what the movies should do, bring you to another world.

00:56:38Marc:So this is the same guy that wrote Challengers.

00:56:40Marc:Now, watching the movie Challengers, because I actually watched it in pieces, which was interesting.

00:56:45Marc:Okay.

00:56:46Marc:Because you do separate things into acts or pieces with the tournaments.

00:56:52Marc:I think the tournament was our framing.

00:56:54Guest:Yes, the framing.

00:56:55Guest:Yes, yes, yes.

00:56:56Marc:But the thing I thought was beautiful is that no matter where that movie goes or in terms of how you're taking it in, that there is a bookend to it that is a callback, which is her primal scream at the acknowledgement of love.

00:57:13Marc:Yeah.

00:57:14Guest:And the possibility that this complex love can get them back to that beautiful moment of unity that was when they met.

00:57:23Marc:The innocence of her pulling out of the sexual escapade.

00:57:27Marc:Yes.

00:57:28Marc:And they not knowing it.

00:57:29Marc:Yes.

00:57:30Marc:But not willing throughout their entire lives to acknowledge the depth of the love.

00:57:35Marc:Absolutely.

00:57:35Marc:Again, it's a form of repression.

00:57:37Marc:I always think about that.

00:57:39Marc:About repression?

00:57:40Marc:Yeah.

00:57:41Marc:But I mean, but is there a spectrum of it that's necessary?

00:57:45Yeah.

00:57:45Guest:I revert the question to you.

00:57:48Guest:Do you think there is a spectrum of that that is necessary?

00:57:52Guest:For me, I'm a Leo.

00:57:53Guest:And so I am someone who has to say everything and be direct.

00:57:59Guest:So for me, the answer would say no.

00:58:02Guest:But I'm interested in your answer because maybe I am wrong and maybe, yes, there must be some sort of repression.

00:58:08Marc:Well, I don't know.

00:58:09Marc:I think it becomes, for me, whether it's based in...

00:58:15Marc:real threat or something rooted in trauma, I think that repression is a survival tool of some kind.

00:58:27Guest:Sure.

00:58:28Guest:But sometimes this repression as a survival tool becomes a sort of escapade from feeling the joy of being completely...

00:58:41Guest:connected with yourself.

00:58:43Guest:Yes.

00:58:45Guest:Authentically you.

00:58:47Guest:Exactly.

00:58:51Marc:That's a terrifying thing to some people.

00:58:53Guest:To many.

00:58:54Guest:Yeah.

00:58:54Guest:To the majority.

00:58:55Guest:But not to you.

00:58:55Guest:No.

00:58:56Guest:No.

00:58:57Guest:But were you always like that?

00:58:58Guest:Yeah, I think so.

00:58:59Guest:I was like that.

00:59:00Guest:I was a solitary young kid when I was growing up.

00:59:03Guest:A single child?

00:59:04Guest:No, third.

00:59:05Guest:I'm the third of three.

00:59:06Guest:So, you know, when you're the last in a family, they leave you alone.

00:59:10Guest:So I could explore.

00:59:11Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:59:12Guest:I could think.

00:59:13Guest:I could have fantasies.

00:59:13Guest:I could...

00:59:14Guest:I could be really like not feeling the pressure of doing things that they wanted me to do because already the first two were under that pressure.

00:59:24Marc:Well, that's just interesting to me that I'm just thinking about it.

00:59:26Marc:And also, I think shame plays into this idea of repression.

00:59:32Marc:Completely.

00:59:33Marc:It's all about that too.

00:59:34Marc:And that, you know, shame as a driver...

00:59:38Marc:You know, you're not in the cinema of that.

00:59:41Marc:But the struggle of religious shame and transcending it was a driver for a lot of filmmakers.

00:59:49Marc:Yeah.

00:59:50Marc:So, you know, when that shame becomes nebulous, for whatever reason, you've grown to decide that you yourself are not good enough or not whatever.

01:00:00Marc:So you put that driver in.

01:00:03Marc:I got this all from...

01:00:05Marc:from a book on psychology.

01:00:07Marc:Okay, but I like that very much.

01:00:09Marc:Dealing my own problems.

01:00:10Marc:It was an interesting idea, and I never shut up about it, by this guy Robert Firestone, who said that if you live in a family where there's some kind of emotional abuse, either neglect or physical or verbal, emotional abuse from your parents,

01:00:26Marc:That when you're a young person, your brain can't allow you to blame your parents because they're your parents and they're perfect.

01:00:32Marc:So you blame yourself and you install a voice in your head that is a surrogate parent that tells you you're shit.

01:00:39Marc:And still.

01:00:40Marc:So that's the shame engine.

01:00:42Guest:Which is triggered eventually for me by the idea of family.

01:00:47Guest:Yeah.

01:00:47Marc:Family can be tricky.

01:00:49Marc:Yeah, tricky.

01:00:50Marc:But I just think that the way shame and desire kind of coexist and confuse themselves is something that, you know, is not your experience.

01:00:58Marc:But I think that that is the experience of a lot of people.

01:01:01Marc:And that is something that I like to investigate.

01:01:03Guest:Have you done it?

01:01:04Guest:Yeah.

01:01:05Guest:I mean, I think I think, yeah, even this movie is about that.

01:01:07Guest:Right.

01:01:08Yeah.

01:01:08Marc:Yeah, but I guess it's shame.

01:01:11Guest:Yeah.

01:01:13Guest:Right.

01:01:13Guest:You know, when when Lee puts his hand on the on the back of shoulder like that, shrugs his hand.

01:01:20Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:01:21Marc:That's so painful, right?

01:01:22Marc:It's painful.

01:01:23Marc:But it's a shame or is it rejection?

01:01:28Guest:I think he feels shame of being touched by him in the public street.

01:01:33Marc:Oh, the Atherton guy.

01:01:35Marc:Yeah, yeah.

01:01:35Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:01:36Marc:Oh, he does.

01:01:37Marc:Yeah.

01:01:37Marc:Well, yeah, but Burroughs is not shame.

01:01:39Marc:No.

01:01:39Marc:Right.

01:01:40Marc:No.

01:01:40Marc:Interesting.

01:01:41Marc:So with Challengers, what was the kernel of that movie?

01:01:46Guest:Well, a great script by Justin that he wrote.

01:01:49Marc:I know, but how do you decide tennis?

01:01:51Guest:He decided tennis.

01:01:51Guest:I know.

01:01:52Guest:He decided tennis was the perfect template to go and show the dynamic between these three kids.

01:01:59Guest:Okay.

01:01:59Guest:How tennis, the geometry of tennis and the geography of tennis, the court, the balls going back and forth, the winning and the losing and all the backhands and upperhands and all this dynamic of the technique of tennis somehow was reflecting every single emotional movement that these kids were doing, all the mistakes and all the triumphs they were going through.

01:02:20Marc:And all these characters were defined in a very specific way.

01:02:23Marc:Yeah.

01:02:24Marc:The kind of, you know, sexy, not give a fuck guy.

01:02:27Marc:Yes.

01:02:28Marc:And then the, you know, the more sort of practical, controlled, not as confident guy.

01:02:36Marc:Perfect.

01:02:37Marc:And then, you know, the woman who, she's an interesting character, right?

01:02:44Guest:Yeah.

01:02:44Guest:I like to think that she is both someone that is created by the two men.

01:02:48Guest:Yes.

01:02:49Guest:I said to Justin, she appears in their life probably because they need a female medium to make them go together.

01:02:58Guest:Yeah.

01:02:59Guest:At the same time, she creates them.

01:03:02Guest:They are nothing without her.

01:03:03Marc:Right, because her character right out of the gate knows what's up.

01:03:08Guest:And she knows what they have to be going through in order to win and to become.

01:03:14Marc:Right, but at the beginning, when she says, I don't want to be a homewrecker.

01:03:18Marc:Yeah, she understands everything.

01:03:19Marc:Yes.

01:03:20Marc:So, you know, she sets up the situation.

01:03:22Marc:But, like, I didn't get the feeling that was with the intent of making them better tennis players initially.

01:03:28Marc:That's a metaphor.

01:03:29Guest:Yeah.

01:03:31Marc:But I thought it was a very surprise ending because you don't actually know on the court who wins.

01:03:39Marc:No, you don't.

01:03:39Guest:You actually, if you count the points, they are very far from the end of the game.

01:03:45Guest:Yeah.

01:03:45Guest:It's more about the trio triumphs because they finally are back together.

01:03:51Marc:It's kind of an amazing ending.

01:03:54Marc:Thank you.

01:03:54Guest:That was something that Justin and I worked hard because how do you convince a studio to welcome an open end like that so that it can feel satisfying and fulfilling?

01:04:05Guest:Yeah.

01:04:06Guest:And how has it gone over?

01:04:08Guest:Great.

01:04:09Guest:Yeah, the movie was a big success.

01:04:12Marc:That's great.

01:04:13Marc:The biggest success of my career.

01:04:15Marc:Oh, that's amazing.

01:04:18Marc:And when you think about queer and an audience for it, what are you thinking?

01:04:25Guest:I'm thinking of young people.

01:04:27Guest:I'm thinking of, you know, like I see a lot of young people, the younger generations.

01:04:32Guest:I don't want to be generic, but I can see that there is a sense of fear in conflict and in the contact.

01:04:42Guest:So I think a movie like this can be for them a sort of interesting introduction to the possibility of conflict between people and contact and the irreparable anguish that comes with that so that they are not ready to embrace in their life.

01:04:57Guest:So it's a way of surrogating this fear that I think could be interesting.

01:05:01Guest:So I think this movie can be very interesting for young people.

01:05:05Marc:And when you cast Daniel Craig, what were those conversations like?

01:05:09Marc:He seemed pretty willing.

01:05:11Marc:It's amazing.

01:05:12Guest:He read the script and we had this beautiful conversation about the ultimate impulse of the book and the story, which was to portray love.

01:05:25Guest:Yeah.

01:05:26Guest:Not unrequited love, but love.

01:05:28Guest:Yeah.

01:05:28Guest:We agreed.

01:05:30Guest:And so he went, yeah, I'm in.

01:05:33Guest:Pretty early.

01:05:34Guest:And he was there with me throughout the entire process.

01:05:37Guest:He's a wonderful partner.

01:05:38Guest:Incredible actor to look at.

01:05:41Marc:Yeah.

01:05:43Marc:It was definitely, there's a moment there where you're like, hey, James Bond's going a different way here.

01:05:48Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:05:49Guest:You know, I mean, he's iconic.

01:05:51Guest:I think what I love about Dana is that he's very iconic beyond the iconicity of that character he played for five years.

01:05:59Guest:He himself commanded your gaze in a way that goes beyond the character, but because of what he has inside, which is what makes him a great movie star.

01:06:09Marc:What's inside that you can't quite explain.

01:06:11Marc:Yeah.

01:06:12Marc:That's the trick of movie stars.

01:06:14Marc:That's what they have.

01:06:15Guest:Yeah.

01:06:16Guest:We don't, and that's why we love them.

01:06:18Marc:And the same with Chalamet, you work with him.

01:06:21Marc:Yeah.

01:06:22Guest:Like, he seems to be some kind of... You know, the first week of shooting, Call Me By Your Name, he was, like, probably 18, 19.

01:06:29Guest:He's, like, from outer space.

01:06:31Guest:You could see this guy was commanding your gaze.

01:06:35Guest:Amazing.

01:06:35Guest:Yeah.

01:06:36Guest:And he can do all the things.

01:06:38Guest:Yeah.

01:06:38Guest:Everything.

01:06:39Guest:He can dance and sing and divine.

01:06:41Marc:Yeah.

01:06:42Marc:And it took me a while to understand that.

01:06:45Marc:But there's this idea when you read these stories where you hear reputations about movie stars being difficult or whatever, it's not usually that one-sided or that easy to understand the plight of somebody who is doing that job.

01:06:59Guest:Listen, I wanted to be in the movie business since I was born.

01:07:03Guest:I have dreamt since I was young that I was going to become a filmmaker.

01:07:07Guest:And I fulfilled my dream.

01:07:08Guest:Yes.

01:07:09Guest:And I'm glad and happy and I could do this job forever without even being paid because that's my life.

01:07:14Guest:Yeah.

01:07:14Guest:And I live in this... That's my substance.

01:07:18Guest:So...

01:07:20Guest:the parameter through which people judge someone being difficult or not being difficult, it's alien to the moviemaking experience.

01:07:27Guest:And if someone is difficult, as they say, in a way, if they want to be, they should be because they are artists and they are human beings.

01:07:37Guest:And that is what I love about it.

01:07:39Guest:And I never had experiences with great performers that I would describe as difficult.

01:07:45Guest:I only had difficult experiences with people that have no talent.

01:07:50Marc:Yeah.

01:07:53Marc:In what, how do those manifest?

01:07:57Marc:What's usually the difficulty?

01:07:58Guest:Like, I can't do this or I'm not going to.

01:08:01Guest:Like being diffident, not being tuned to the music of the movie.

01:08:05Guest:Yeah.

01:08:07Guest:And being judgmental and eventually really holding terrifying, being terrified by their own insecurities.

01:08:16Guest:Yeah.

01:08:16Guest:making everybody's life a nightmare.

01:08:20Guest:When you have complex people who are demanding because they are so generous in what they do, and they do go in very profound places with their performances, they can do whatever they want.

01:08:34Marc:Well, that's why you just give the talentless people small parts.

01:08:39Marc:No, I have been lucky.

01:08:43Marc:Well, but I've noticed that like on movies and in general that there's a lot of little parts that people who are just efficient can do.

01:08:50Guest:Well, yeah.

01:08:51Guest:Again, also one other thing that I love about my work is the beauty of performance.

01:08:56Guest:And you can have performance from someone who walks in the scene for a moment or Ralph Fiennes in a movie for like all the scenes.

01:09:05Marc:The police chief.

01:09:06Guest:Yeah.

01:09:07Guest:You know who's that?

01:09:08Guest:That is a great comedian, Italian comedian, Corrado Guzzanti, and I loved him so much.

01:09:12Guest:He was great.

01:09:13Guest:Thank you.

01:09:14Guest:And he was the guy at the table right at the beginning.

01:09:16Marc:Yeah, that gives them the table.

01:09:18Marc:He's a fan.

01:09:19Marc:Yeah, it's great.

01:09:21Marc:So what are you doing?

01:09:22Marc:What's the project you're working on now?

01:09:25Guest:I am making, I mean, I'm editing, almost done with it, a movie called After the Hunt with Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlberg.

01:09:36Guest:Oh, you like that guy?

01:09:37Guest:I love him.

01:09:38Guest:He's fantastic.

01:09:39Guest:You can do anything, right?

01:09:40Guest:Anything.

01:09:41Guest:Chloe Sevigny and the great Ayo Adeburi.

01:09:44Guest:Okay.

01:09:44Guest:It's a great cast.

01:09:45Guest:Wow.

01:09:46Guest:It's a great cast.

01:09:46Guest:What's it about?

01:09:47Guest:I don't want to say much, but I can tell you that it's a very surprising movie.

01:09:54Guest:And it's about what happens in the milieu of academia between younger and older people and the idea of consent.

01:10:09Guest:Wow.

01:10:10Guest:Another loaded, a loaded ensemble.

01:10:13Guest:I can tell you that it's very loaded.

01:10:16Guest:I can tell you that the movie is very provocative.

01:10:20Guest:but not in a stupid way, but I would say in a very articulate way.

01:10:24Guest:It's a great script from this first-time writer, Nora Garrett.

01:10:28Guest:It's produced by Imagine, by Brian Grazer and Jeff Brody and Adam Mandelbaum.

01:10:32Guest:It's MGM Amazon.

01:10:34Guest:And, you know, I've been a fan of Julia forever.

01:10:38Guest:Sure.

01:10:38Guest:I'm a big fan, and that's another incredible movie star, that she has something that not everybody has.

01:10:45Guest:Yeah.

01:10:45Guest:And working with Julia was a joy of life.

01:10:49Guest:And you'll see her performance is, I mean, I don't want to be presumptuous, but I feel that's her best performance.

01:10:56Guest:Really?

01:10:57Marc:Yeah.

01:10:57Marc:Well, that was sort of like watching, yeah, after a lifetime in the movie.

01:11:00Marc:And she's a great actress, yeah.

01:11:01Marc:Yeah, Leslie Manville in your movie.

01:11:02Marc:I was like, what?

01:11:04Marc:Yeah.

01:11:05Marc:Well, that sounds exciting.

01:11:06Marc:And it's a return to form.

01:11:07Marc:You get a bunch of people together to go at it with all their needs and desires.

01:11:11Marc:Yes, yes.

01:11:12Guest:It's a movie.

01:11:13Guest:It's not a movie about sexuality or love.

01:11:17Guest:That's one of my very rare movies where I didn't tackle that.

01:11:20Guest:Nothing?

01:11:21Guest:No.

01:11:22Guest:But you'll see.

01:11:22Guest:It's about conflict.

01:11:26Guest:Okay.

01:11:27Guest:In a way, it's a very timely movie for where we are now.

01:11:31Guest:Going back to the beginning of our conversation.

01:11:32Guest:Okay.

01:11:33Guest:Yeah.

01:11:33Guest:In terms of.

01:11:34Guest:In terms of the society and the division in society and the extreme position that we can have vis-a-vis an opinion in a way.

01:11:44Guest:And belief.

01:11:45Guest:And belief.

01:11:46Guest:Yeah.

01:11:47Guest:Can't wait for the world to see that.

01:11:48Marc:Yeah.

01:11:49Marc:Yeah.

01:11:49Marc:It's interesting in terms of.

01:11:52Marc:too, when you talk about young people.

01:11:53Marc:And I always think about phones, you know?

01:11:57Marc:Like, you know, I think they're very... A little bit of a plague.

01:12:00Marc:Well, it's like the idea that our brains were in any way built to design what that does to it every day is... It came here many years ago, like decades ago.

01:12:11Guest:And I went to the Grove, the farmer's market.

01:12:14Guest:Yeah, sure.

01:12:14Guest:Yeah.

01:12:14Guest:And, you know, it's a sort of interesting idea of artificial European feeling.

01:12:20Guest:Sure.

01:12:20Guest:But there is a sense of community, too.

01:12:22Guest:So I remember when I came here and I was seeing all these people coming and walking down the street.

01:12:27Guest:Yeah.

01:12:28Guest:The little train.

01:12:29Marc:The little train.

01:12:30Guest:I went back to the grove.

01:12:32Guest:And there was the same environment, but everybody was looking at their phone.

01:12:36Guest:There was not anymore that kind of idea of community.

01:12:39Marc:Well, yeah.

01:12:40Marc:The phone plays a part in the bigger splash, too.

01:12:45Marc:There's two phone moments that I thought were great.

01:12:48Marc:That phone in the bag that wouldn't stop ringing.

01:12:51Marc:That's what being dead looks like now.

01:12:55Yeah.

01:12:55Marc:It's a phone in a bag.

01:12:57Guest:Yeah.

01:12:57Guest:And we have another phone in the bag of Julia Roberts in the new one.

01:13:00Marc:Oh, yeah.

01:13:00Marc:There's a phone in a bag.

01:13:02Marc:Well, great talking to you.

01:13:03Marc:Thank you, Mark.

01:13:04Marc:Thanks for doing it.

01:13:05Marc:Thank you so much.

01:13:11Marc:Yeah.

01:13:11Marc:Wow.

01:13:11Marc:Great.

01:13:12Marc:Great.

01:13:13Marc:Love talking to that guy.

01:13:15Marc:Queer is playing in theaters.

01:13:17Marc:And go check out his other movies as well.

01:13:18Marc:Hang out for a minute.

01:13:22Marc:Hey, folks, if you broke your regular WTF listening routine because of the holiday, definitely go check out my talk with Steve Fury that we posted on Thanksgiving Day.

01:13:30Marc:Some wild, wild stories on that one, people.

01:13:34Marc:Love the guy.

01:13:34Guest:So I'm walking around, and this dude comes up to me.

01:13:36Guest:He goes, hey, you looking for pussy?

01:13:39Guest:I was like, no, no, no, I'm looking for drugs.

01:13:40Guest:And he goes, okay, I got one.

01:13:42Guest:And then he says, follow me.

01:13:43Guest:And this dude has L.A.

01:13:44Guest:tattooed across his face.

01:13:46Guest:Oh, gang?

01:13:47Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:13:48Guest:But I'm like, I'm here.

01:13:49Guest:Yeah.

01:13:52Guest:Might as well dance.

01:13:52Guest:Okay, where are we going, bro?

01:13:53Guest:You seem cool.

01:13:54Guest:You're from at least L.A., I'm guessing.

01:13:58Guest:We're kind of got a California thing.

01:14:00Guest:Don't kill me.

01:14:01Guest:Yeah.

01:14:02Guest:So he goes, follow me, man.

01:14:03Guest:Oh, God damn it.

01:14:04Guest:And he follows and he goes and he takes a turn down this little alley.

01:14:07Yeah.

01:14:07Guest:And this alley's pretty scary.

01:14:10Guest:Yeah.

01:14:11Guest:And I'm walking down.

01:14:11Guest:In your pink shirt.

01:14:12Guest:I'm in a pink shirt.

01:14:14Guest:Like the bell-bottom seven jeans.

01:14:16Guest:Like just a mark.

01:14:18Guest:Like someone who needed to get robbed.

01:14:19Guest:Yeah.

01:14:20Guest:So I go down there.

01:14:21Guest:I'm walking by this place.

01:14:22Guest:And there's like these weird gambling dens.

01:14:24Guest:And then we get to this door.

01:14:25Guest:It's blacked out.

01:14:26Guest:Oh, my God.

01:14:26Guest:It's like deer hunter.

01:14:27Guest:Yeah.

01:14:28Guest:It's like deer.

01:14:28Guest:It's like a Mexican deer hunter.

01:14:29Guest:Yeah.

01:14:30Guest:We get to this door.

01:14:31Guest:And it's blacked out.

01:14:32Guest:And he goes, it's upstairs.

01:14:33Guest:Yeah.

01:14:34Guest:He stands right behind me.

01:14:35Guest:Yeah.

01:14:35Guest:That's never good.

01:14:37Guest:And do you knew you were going to get robbed?

01:14:40Guest:Well, I didn't know what was going to happen.

01:14:42Guest:I knew something wasn't good.

01:14:46Guest:When I'm looking up this thing, I'm like, I'm in Tijuana.

01:14:49Guest:We got LA face behind me.

01:14:51Guest:No one knows I'm here because I'm dealing drugs.

01:14:53Guest:I don't want anyone to know here.

01:14:54Guest:This might be it.

01:14:55Guest:I'm going to die here.

01:14:56Guest:And I go, fuck it.

01:14:56Guest:That was when it sunk in.

01:14:58Marc:That's Steve Fury on the previous episode in whatever feed you're listening to right now.

01:15:02Marc:To get all episodes of WTF ad-free, sign up for WTF+.

01:15:07Marc:Just go to the link in the episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF+.

01:15:14Marc:And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by ACAST.

01:15:18Marc:Okay, here we go.

01:15:19Marc:Going, going, gone.

01:15:30Thank you.

01:16:02.

01:17:42guitar solo

01:18:16Marc:Boomer lives.

01:18:23Marc:Monkey and La Fonda.

01:18:25Marc:Cat angels everywhere.