Episode 1601 - Justin Kurzel
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:Welcome, everybody.
Marc:Holidays are coming.
Marc:I hope they're tolerable.
Marc:I hope they work.
Marc:I hope they give you a reprieve.
Marc:who knows right well i didn't have to end it like that happy holidays that's what i meant to say even though they're next week i'll talk to you before then but uh i'm getting in the spirit how would that be is that does that sound reasonable that's what it is this is the tone of my holiday spirit so anyway folks i'm in new york i'm doing a a small cameo part and
Marc:in this Bruce Springsteen motion picture, Deliver Me From Nowhere.
Marc:It's a minor part, but it's an important part.
Marc:I play a studio engineer.
Marc:And I think I can talk to you about this.
Marc:I won't say anything about the film, but it's already public information.
Marc:Jeremy Allen White is playing Bruce Springsteen.
Marc:And Jeremy Strong is playing his manager, John Landau.
Marc:So I've been here at the power station in New York where the actual recording sessions that we're documenting in the movie took place.
Marc:And I've never been here.
Marc:And it's a fairly historical event.
Marc:A lot of people have recorded here.
Marc:But, you know, I got here on set.
Marc:I've got a few lines, but, you know, I'm present in these scenes, you know, and I have sort of these moments with the two Jeremys.
Marc:And so I'm working with Jeremy Strong and Paul Walter Hauser is here as well and some other people I know.
Marc:And Jeremy...
Marc:Alan White.
Marc:I've talked to Hauser and I've talked to Strong on the podcast, so I feel like I know them a bit.
Marc:But I've also talked to Bruce Springsteen on the podcast, but he and the actual John Landau are here.
Marc:They're like here all day.
Marc:So in between takes, it's really...
Marc:an amazing thing okay it's there there are moments where no matter how much i i may whine or complain or get you know anxious or neurotic about my life there are moments that i clearly have no choice but to go holy fuck this is kind of amazing i mean in between takes i'm like catching up with bruce the boss and
Marc:And obviously, he remembers talking to me.
Marc:But, you know, he's just there at Video Village.
Marc:Scott Cooper's directing.
Marc:But everyone's kind of sitting around.
Marc:And, you know, it's a long day.
Marc:And there's a lot of motion and people here and there.
Marc:And I've just taken as many opportunities as possible to be as seemingly casual as I can to engage Springsteen in conversation, you know.
Marc:And it's been a real...
Marc:a real kick.
Marc:I don't know what life I'm living, but the fact that I have enough background with Bruce Springsteen just from interviewing him a while back, and this happens fairly frequently, I made enough of an impression where he remembers the conversation, and so I can kind of pick up
Marc:from a place that's familiar.
Marc:And I'm just kind of hanging around in between takes, talking to Bruce Springsteen about open tunings, about John Mellencamp, about New Jersey.
Marc:And it just, I don't know what to tell you.
Marc:It's been an amazing experience for the day I've been here.
Marc:So today, speaking of acting, I talked to Justin Kerzel,
Marc:He's the director of The Order, which is out now.
Marc:And as some of you know, I play Alan Berg, the Denver, Colorado talk radio host that was gunned down by The Order.
Marc:People have been asking me what it was like to be shot because it's a pretty brutal bit of business.
Marc:I'm only in the movie for a few minutes, but I do have some mic time as a radio personality.
Marc:And then I get out of my car in my driveway and I'm assassinated.
Marc:with the American version of an Uzi.
Marc:I can't remember what the model of that gun is.
Marc:I can't remember what it's called.
Marc:But it was a full-on, you know, I had to put a jacket on with squibs, and we had, it wasn't a huge budget movie, but they had enough for two jackets loaded up with the blood explosions.
Marc:So we really had to nail it.
Marc:And I think we got it on the second one, thank God.
Marc:And the blood was all over everything.
Marc:It's very sticky.
Marc:It's a sticky mess.
Marc:It's a disturbing bit of business.
Marc:But I didn't get to know Justin that well during the shoot because I was, again, it was one of these parts where I was only there for a few days.
Marc:But I think it was an impactful experience.
Marc:few minutes on screen, and I think it sets the movie rolling in a pretty disturbing way, rightfully so.
Marc:It's disturbing.
Marc:But if you watch the movie, you'll find that Kerzel is a very nuanced and very kind of a visionary director.
Marc:And it's weird because I didn't really know it.
Marc:Until I started to dig into his his catalog, because I have to talk to the guy.
Marc:And I obviously had seen The Order and I like it.
Marc:And I know that he's got a tone.
Marc:But then I watched some of his older movies.
Marc:He did a movie called The Snowtown Murders.
Marc:It might be just called Snowtown.
Marc:And then he did another movie called Nitrum.
Marc:which is about a mass killer, the Port Arthur killer in Tasmania.
Marc:And Snowtown Murders is also a true story about a serial killer who had sort of radicalized a community to enable him to kill.
Marc:And some of the members of the community were also involved in the killing, specifically of accused sex offenders in the area.
Marc:And they are amazing movies.
Marc:I mean, they're poetic.
Marc:They're dark.
Marc:He's got a way of shooting.
Marc:There's a sensibility to how he uses the country of Australia and the landscapes of Australia.
Marc:And he's just a very gifted filmmaker.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's just odd.
Marc:You know, I get these gigs like Scott Cooper, who I'm working with now, directed some great movies, Black Mass, which I talk about constantly.
Marc:He's great.
Marc:And, you know, with Pale Blue Eye and then Hostages.
Marc:And then that one with Woody Harrelson, of course, Crazy Heart with...
Marc:with Jeff Bridges years ago.
Marc:But Kurzweil, I just, I wasn't familiar.
Marc:I knew he had directed movies, but God, they are disturbing, poetic, amazing character studies.
Marc:Those ones, Nitrum, Caleb Landry Jones, who, that guy in Nitrum,
Marc:which is a sort of character study of a masked shooter, that guy gives a performance unlike anything else that exists out there.
Marc:It's just fucking genius, and you can't even begin to understand where it comes from.
Marc:And Judy Davis is in it, plays his mother, and I haven't seen her in years.
Marc:And it's an amazing actor's movie.
Marc:I mean, just amazing.
Marc:I completely recommend...
Marc:these Curzel movies.
Marc:I mean, they're just stunning.
Marc:They're just disturbing and, and so worth watching.
Marc:Like he, he also did the, I believe it's called the true history of the Kelly gang about Ned Kelly, the mythic Australian outlaw.
Marc:And that is unbelievable.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just unique movies that kind of displace the narrative a bit to kind of honor the feeling of the film.
Marc:And it just... I don't know.
Marc:I get excited as I get older.
Marc:All my life.
Marc:But to get older and then to see things that blow your fucking mind.
Marc:I mean, that is...
Marc:a gift.
Marc:So what am I doing exactly?
Marc:I am recommending that you see these movies and also watch the order.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:That's all I'm doing.
Marc:I'm just, I'm plugging stuff that I'm involved with and I'm plugging people that I like for no other reason than
Marc:Other than I like them.
Marc:So my 2025 tour kicks off in Sacramento, California at the Crest Theater on Friday, January 10th.
Marc:Then I'm in Napa, California at the Uptown Theater on Saturday, January 11th.
Marc:Fort Collins, Colorado, Lincoln Center Performance Hall.
Marc:Friday, January 17th.
Marc:Boulder, Colorado at the Boulder Theater on Saturday, January 18th.
Marc:I'll be in Santa Barbara, California at the Lobero Theater.
Marc:on Thursday, January 30th.
Marc:San Luis Obispo, California at the Fremont Center on Friday, January 31st.
Marc:And Monterey, California at the Golden State Theater on Saturday, February 1st.
Marc:Then I'm coming to Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, Illinois, Michigan.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:A lot of that's, I guess I should just call it my red state tour.
Marc:Go to WTF pod.com slash tour for all my dates and links to tickets.
Marc:What else is happening?
Marc:I don't know what your Christmas plans are, but I'm going to go, uh, I'm going to go see my dad.
Marc:I feel like that any opportunity I can, I should go out and see my dad in these days and months, hopefully years.
Marc:I don't know where he still remembers me.
Marc:I know a lot of people have been through this.
Marc:It's obviously new to me.
Marc:It's hard.
Marc:It's somehow a little existentially scary as this unfolds.
Marc:It's one thing, I guess, if your parent dies, at least there's a certain amount of closure, and obviously that will happen, but to see them drift away and still be alive...
Marc:and be vacant in terms of their memories of their life, their memories of the life you had with them,
Marc:It's rough and weird and highly common, obviously.
Marc:I am trying to spend as much time as possible, and this is a man that I've had problems with on and off over my life, but I love him.
Marc:My mother's around, too, but she doesn't have dementia, and she's in Florida, but I've got to go see her, too, and I'll try to make time for that in the new year, but it's not as pressing because she still knows me, and...
Marc:I don't know if that's a way to prioritize spending time with your elderly parents, but I guess I'm choosing to spend time with the one whose memories are drifting away as opposed to the one who seems to have a pretty good recollection of everything.
Marc:And hopefully that won't change and I'll get to spend time with her as well.
Marc:Okay, well, I guess that's my holiday pitch.
Marc:Spend time with your parents.
Marc:They're not going to be around forever.
Marc:And they may not be around, even if they are around.
Marc:So look, I had this conversation with Justin Kurzel, the director I was talking about earlier.
Marc:The Order is playing in theaters now.
Marc:And like I said, I would highly recommend almost all of his other movies.
Marc:There's only two I didn't see.
Marc:I didn't see Assassin's Creed or his Macbeth.
Marc:But I believe I've seen all the other ones.
Marc:And The Order is disturbing.
Marc:And the other ones are too.
Marc:So brace yourselves.
Marc:And know that you're going to deal with some heavy shit.
Marc:But it's all done brilliantly on a cinematic level.
Marc:And he came into my house.
Marc:And I hadn't seen him since we shot the movie.
Marc:And so this is me talking to Justin Kerzel.
Music
Marc:How are you doing?
Marc:Good.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:What is the, as I was about to say off the mic there, though, the part that I did in your movie, In the Order, was a small but essential part.
Marc:It was.
Marc:I didn't know I would, like, open the movie.
Marc:But I guess it's the right way to go.
Guest:Well, the character played in many different parts.
Guest:It was sort of it opened the movie and then it sort of played continuously sort of through the movie and then it ended the movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We sort of went back to it.
Guest:So it was quite a malleable character.
Marc:Well, I gave you enough stuff.
Marc:You were standing over me.
Marc:Go, keep going.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Remember?
Marc:I do remember.
Marc:Yeah, on the mic.
Marc:Just keep going.
Marc:And I realized, like, oh, he's got to fill a lot of radio time.
Guest:Well, I thought it would be kind of really amazing to have your voice as a sort of narration all the way through, you know, in quite an unconventional way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You were really important to it.
Guest:I was actually most nervous about you saying yes.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, I didn't see anyone else in the role.
Marc:How did you hear about me?
Guest:Well, I was a...
Guest:I remember being in London and I was doing a film and I was sort of hating it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my family was away from me.
Guest:It was this film called Assassin's Creed.
Guest:You hated that movie?
Guest:I hated the process of making it because we didn't have a script.
Guest:And it was just really challenging and really kind of hard.
Guest:And my family were away from me.
Guest:It wasn't that I hated doing the film.
Guest:I sort of hated the time because I was feeling quite lonely.
Marc:But it was such an added character movie.
Marc:Was it a job?
Marc:No.
Guest:No, it was, I just got really seduced by, um, the, the, the concept and the idea of the game, which was this sort of idea of sort of, you know, the DNA sort of traveling through us and, uh, the idea of sort of who are we and what are we from our ancestors.
Guest:And, and Michael Fassbender and I had, um, uh, had, had worked on Macbeth together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, so we kind of.
Marc:So you guys were tight, you had a rhythm.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, we had sort of something there.
Guest:But I remember walking around High Park and started listening to your podcast.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Like this is really early on and that fantastic one you did with Louis.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I thought it was just kind of amazing that you were trying to work your shit out through talking on a podcast.
Guest:And I found it just captivating.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I kind of...
Guest:I'd listened to you a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was just as soon as I read the script, I kind of just thought about you.
Marc:Well, that's funny because when they offered the role to me, they said he wants you to play Allenberg.
Marc:And I thought, well, who else is going to play Allenberg?
Guest:So was Allen Berg someone that was a figure that you were very conscious about?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I mean, I absolutely knew who he was.
Marc:I knew the story.
Marc:At some point in my life, I kind of looked into it and what happened.
Marc:I think it was pre-internet rabbit hole.
Marc:But certainly, I saw Boghossian's show and then the movie.
Marc:And I think that probably when that came out, it elevated my...
Marc:my fascination with Berg.
Marc:But I knew of him, but I didn't know specifics.
Marc:And it turns out, even with the research that you did, there's not a lot there to go on.
Marc:There's a bit of audio, and then there's just who he is.
Marc:But I was always sort of fascinated with the idea of it, just the solitary voice that lodges in this ideological...
Marc:kind of, you know, that becoming a target.
Marc:And I thought, well, if, you know, knock on wood, I thought, well, if I do this, maybe it won't happen in real life.
Marc:Like, I feel, you know, I feel threatened, but I feel scared in general.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know how much of it's paranoia and how much of it's real.
Marc:You know, obviously, I'm not high on the target list as a guy who speaks his mind, but certainly...
Marc:When I go out into the world to do stand-up, I feel it.
Marc:So I just thought that I had to do it.
Marc:I thought it was some sort of serendipitous thing beyond coincidence.
Guest:There's something interesting.
Guest:You said the other day in the...
Guest:That press conference that you kind of, you know, you do your thing and you put it out there.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And sometimes you don't know where it lands.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:No.
Marc:And now with, you know, everybody's so accessible one way or the other.
Marc:If somebody wants to get to you, it's pretty easy.
Marc:And I think, you know, in light of your movie and then in light of however they're framing or whatever this assassination of this healthcare CEO is, that...
Marc:That was a political assassination.
Marc:It was a premeditated, meant to have an impact.
Marc:And, you know, there's a – many people think he's a folk hero or somebody who –
Marc:did something that finally needed to be done to raise awareness or something but once you know people take start taking these guns into their own hands for specific reasons and you've covered both types of people in terms of your films where you've got people who take up arms for psychological problems and i guess ideology can be a psychological problem but there is a you know sort of
Marc:An agenda to that.
Marc:And then you've dealt with just guys who kill people.
Marc:So, I don't know that you would have thought your movie, The Order, would necessarily be seen as a hero's journey.
Guest:Well, it definitely sharpened up as we were sort of writing it and then...
Guest:Shooting and then editing it.
Guest:And it's come out and released.
Guest:And since then, we've obviously had the election.
Guest:So it's certainly sharpened up.
Marc:Well, I mean, what kind of – are you seeing any of that type of reaction to it?
Marc:That the intention of your portrayal of this guy was not meant to elevate him with that community, which is large now.
Hmm.
Guest:Well, you know, when I read it, the screenplay and then the book, Silent Brotherhood, it was very stealth-like, all this stuff.
Guest:It was really sort of sitting in the shadows.
Guest:And I think even at the time when those kind of heists were happening and they were sort of building this militia for these domestic terrorist attacks, it was all pretty...
Guest:Unknown.
Marc:Well, yeah, this was like supposedly the minority, the margins, the dark underbelly of what we always knew.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But there's an order in every small city now.
Guest:I mean, I think that's what it is, is it's so...
Guest:I mean, there's a discussion in the film where Butler, the head of the Airy Nation, talks to Matthews.
Guest:The old guy.
Guest:Yeah, talks to Bob Matthews about just steadying down, you know, and he sort of says, you know, in 10 years' time we'll have people in churches and high places, yeah.
Guest:And it is kind of – that to me is what's quite shocking is just how kind of visible it is now and –
Marc:Well, they were very stealth, you know, and the sort of marriage of, you know, religious activism and, you know, conservative politics, whatever that may be, that the right was, you know, slow and steady.
Marc:It's not, it didn't happen overnight.
Marc:You know, the way it's all come together, you know, and now with this sort of influx of young men's
Marc:Grievance and the brain fucking ability of technology to radicalize fairly quickly.
Marc:You know, it's just a perfect storm.
Marc:And I don't know what the fuck it's going to look like.
Marc:You get to go back to Australia.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I saw a fantastic photo the other day sent by Kevin who wrote The Silent Brotherhood sitting in a cinema with Ellen's ex-partner who was watching it for the first time.
Marc:His ex-wife?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was extremely moved.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:By the, by the film and obviously, you know, very confronted by the assassination scene in the film, but, but, but felt, you know, really, really heartened by it, which was, which was lovely.
Guest:Did she say I did all right with Alan?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I, I mean, I, I, um, I think, um,
Guest:I think there was a simpatico with you and that character.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:There was something there that was just sort of effortless.
Guest:I mean, that was what was really interesting about directing you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Your experience and the DNA of you next to this sort of presenter and how much is you and how much is the character and how much to kind of push certain things.
Guest:That was really interesting.
Guest:For you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it was because...
Guest:You know, your voice is so recognizable.
Guest:And then there's such a kind of thing there.
Guest:And then Alan has his own voice.
Guest:And it's kind of like, okay, do I push you towards this other character?
Guest:Or do I embrace naturally what's sort of coming from you?
Guest:It was an interesting little tussle.
Marc:I think that, you know, ideologically and, you know, in terms of our...
Marc:impulse to, to, to start shit for the right reasons.
Marc:You know, I think I shared that with him because this is not a guy that was, this was pre talk radio really, you know, in terms of the cultural impact of what talk radio become primarily on the right.
Marc:And this guy was just, you know, a, a, a sort of righteous shit starter because none of the stuff that was in the script or even in his audios was not necessarily political.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was anti-racist and it was provocative, but I understood where he was going because I have that same DNA.
Marc:So what I did try to do, and I noticed when I watched a movie, I did get it a couple of times.
Marc:He did have a slight Midwest thing going.
Marc:And I did kind of do that prep work and I didn't know if it would come out, but it did a little bit.
Marc:And that's all he had.
Marc:A little bit of Chicago in there.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Did you notice that?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I was just happy that we were able to sort of get the look because it was so jarring, the way he looked, because he had that head injury that he was trying to cover all the time.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:With that hair.
Marc:And I had the beard, so it wasn't really a big stretch to make it work.
Marc:I was thrilled by the whole thing.
Marc:I watched it, and I was like, you know, I felt good about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think also that...
Guest:That speech that you make in it too that we sort of talked about in terms of everyone treating each other nicely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That landed really strongly.
Guest:At the end?
Guest:Or in the beginning?
Guest:Just before the assassination.
Guest:Yeah, right, right.
Guest:I think when you sort of talk about everyone just listening to each other and having each other.
Guest:It was interesting that kind of went back and forth in terms of where it wanted to be.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was you.
Guest:I mean, that was just you coloring something there that went beyond, I think, the kind of rants and the kind of familiarity of, I think, some of his sort of programs.
Guest:There was something in there that suddenly felt very personal and point of view, and it was really beautiful.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:It spoke to the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:So, you know, we had the leeway to do that.
Marc:But like I've done sort of a half deep dive into some of the other work of yours.
Marc:And this script, I mean, you know, I watched Nitram and I watched Murders.
Marc:Snowtown.
Marc:Snowtown Murders.
Marc:And, you know, this script was really, you know, beat-to-beat narrative storytelling.
Marc:Whereas, like, it seems that, you know, maybe outside of Shakespeare, you're used to working with a little more space.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where, you know, you're not—there's almost no expository space.
Marc:Writing in either of those movies, which are about murderers.
Marc:And so approaching this thing outside of tone, you know, was it challenging or limiting?
Guest:No, I loved being in a genre.
Guest:I just loved seeing the next pontoon coming in terms of an event, a beat.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I thought that was what was unique about the screenplay, that was very character-driven and that it was about sort of something.
Guest:It's a procedural.
Guest:It's a procedural, but it had an extraordinary sort of momentum to it.
Guest:But they did remind me of some of the films that I love the most, The French Connection and some of those Lumet kind of Fridkin films, Mississippi Burning by Alan Parker.
Guest:Just those really immersive and thrilling kind of very classic kind of storytelling kind of genres.
Guest:So that was something different.
Guest:Whereas those other films that you sort of mentioned, they do have space and they're character studies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A very different kind of tone.
Guest:But this one was like, yeah, I just want to do, I just want to put my hat in the ring with a good old American film.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was something about this that suddenly, you know, started to sort of speak in a way to today that was unexpected for me.
Marc:What was the arc of you getting hold of this movie?
Marc:Well, the weird thing is, is that the main guy,
Marc:That Nicholas Holt plays, you know, he's not an unusual character for you to explore, you know, other than he had a purpose.
Marc:Well, I guess the guy in Snowtown had a purpose and it wasn't that dissimilar.
Marc:He was not part of a movement.
Marc:Hmm.
Marc:But he was a moral arbiter or saw himself as somebody who was acting in a moral way.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I'm fascinated by those characters that come into communities and straight away actually almost don't talk.
Guest:They just sit there and listen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They just sort of sit there and empower.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:listen and, you know, really create a barbecue for people to kind of stand around and think, I belong to something.
Marc:Vulnerable people.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Lost people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Outliers and- Traumatized people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And those that sort of desperately want family, you know, desperately want- And that was what was fascinating about Snowtown.
Guest:I mean, it really was like a Western.
Guest:A guy comes in to a community that's being terrorized by a group of pedophiles where-
Guest:No one's doing anything about it.
Guest:And he comes in and he solves the problem.
Guest:And then, you know, within the first 10, 15 minutes, you're going, oh, all right.
Guest:So he's the good guy.
Guest:And the good guy just happens to be, you know, a serial killer.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Bad guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it always fascinated me that, like how someone can come in.
Yeah.
Guest:that John Bunting character in Snowtown was very unusual serial killer.
Guest:He was social.
Guest:He wasn't a hermit.
Guest:People knew him.
Guest:He was very visible.
Guest:The real guy.
Guest:Yeah, the real guy.
Guest:And I thought, you know, with Bob Matthews, there was something very reaching about that character.
Guest:You know, he was, you know, he didn't,
Guest:He didn't drink alcohol.
Guest:He was incredibly fit.
Guest:They had an energy about him that was obviously engaging, but there was a very strong sense of leadership in a way.
Guest:Purpose.
Guest:Purpose and a feeling of this is my community, this is my family, and we'll build from here.
Marc:Well, the interesting thing about Snowtown is that—
Marc:Was like the way you characterize it, that this was a town being terrorized by pedophiles, was it any I don't have a sense of the scope of the town necessarily.
Marc:What was was it in your mind?
Marc:Were there more pedophiles than any usual city?
Guest:Yeah, there were in this particular kind of part of the area and also people within authority.
Guest:There was a sort of corruption that was sort of happening there as well.
Guest:And no one was sort of listening to this particular community.
Guest:It was very disenfranchised.
Guest:I actually grew up very close to the area, which is why I became involved in it.
Marc:How old were you when the murders happened?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I would have been sort of late teens.
Guest:But then there were other serial killings that had happened in Adelaide even before that.
Guest:And one quite famous sort of group called the Family Murders that happened when I was very young sort of –
Guest:12, 13.
Guest:So there was always sort of something out there where I was living.
Guest:The possibility of being taken off the street was something that always sort of haunted us.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It had a very strange vibe.
Guest:And this particular group, these particular murders, so much of it was about this sort of disenfranchised community and about
Guest:how easy it was for John to kind of exploit these kids and exploit this family.
Guest:Um, you know, it was interesting speaking to some of the relatives of, of, of the family sort of saying, you know, their life actually kind of changed when John was arrested, you know, cause some of these, some of these people involved were, were, were kids at the time.
Guest:Um, and after that they'll put into sort of foster homes and, you know, terrible things sort of happened to them.
Guest:So it, um,
Guest:You know, I guess I've been fascinated by this sort of feeling of the exploitation of a community and what are people looking for in terms of that sense of security.
Marc:And you think that started around those murders or around your childhood?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I was, you know, always surrounded by also men, like really interesting kind of role models.
Guest:We had some really...
Guest:you know, very powerful kind of role models that were around the community that were mostly men and, you know, quite positive.
Guest:But, you know, you also knew there was some bad stuff about them.
Guest:So it was, you know, a really interesting time.
Marc:Was it desolate?
Marc:I mean, like, because I get the sense even in Nitram, you know, that town –
Marc:You know, it seemed it seemed kind of broken and and spread out a bit like you don't get it.
Marc:I didn't get a sense of place other than there was sort of a certain amount of poverty and, you know, lower class desperation.
Marc:But not so much in Nitram.
Marc:But I still didn't like when he goes to buy the gun in that movie, you know, like that guy, that's a good example.
Marc:He seemed like a good guy.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, Nitram and Snowtown were two very, very different places in Australia.
Guest:Snowtown was in South Australia and it was in quite a desolate area, a lot of sort of trust homes, very economically poor.
Marc:Was that what the projects were?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So a really interesting area, Elizabeth, where it was filmed, a lot of English migrants.
Guest:And actually ACDC came out of that particular kind of area and Cold Chisel and a lot of really interesting kind of music because you had a lot of people come from Liverpool and so forth.
Guest:So it was a very... They came from Scotland, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:ACDC's folks.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But it was sort of Scotland, England, and Ireland.
Marc:Where did your folks come from?
Marc:Poland.
Marc:They immigrated there?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:For what reason?
Guest:Well, it was after the war.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Everyone was leaving.
Guest:So everything was blown up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So a lot of immigrants went there to kind of build the highways and build the water pipes that went from the Murray River into the city.
Marc:What did your dad do?
Guest:He worked on the highways, and he was a taxi driver, and he was also a meat inspector.
Guest:He was working class, and he kind of looked after, you know, didn't go to school and looked after the other six kids in the family.
Marc:You got six brothers and sisters?
Guest:Yeah, he had a lot of family that he was looking after.
Guest:And your mom was there too?
Guest:No, my mom was in the Barossa Valley.
Guest:Those two sort of met up, obviously, later on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, so it was a really unusual place, really interesting groups of sort of people, but it's very, very poor.
Guest:And then sort of over time, it became a very disadvantaged kind of place.
Guest:Whereas Nitram, that is set in Tasmania, where actually I live now on an island down the bottom of Australia.
Guest:And it was sort of based on the Port Arthur murders, one of the biggest mass shootings that Australia ever had in 1996 in Canada.
Guest:in Tasmania.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Quite different place and quite different area.
Guest:Class-wise?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Tasmania is sort of like... Tasmania is actually really beautiful and, you know, extremely...
Guest:has an extraordinary kind of history.
Guest:A lot of Australia's first convicts went to Tasmania in terms of penal colonies and so forth.
Guest:And parts of Hobart are like kind of Scotland.
Guest:It's very cultured and very beautiful.
Guest:So quite different kind of stories and different kind of areas.
Marc:But that's not where you grew up.
Marc:You grew up... I grew up near the... Yeah, near Elizabeth, near Snowtown, yeah.
Marc:And...
Marc:How do you get out?
Marc:I mean, it sounds like your parents were not – he was a middle class guy, working class anyway.
Marc:Working class, yeah.
Marc:But things were taken care of, right?
Marc:You guys did all right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You made it by.
Marc:You had love in the house and whatnot.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, it was – no, we had a very loving family.
Guest:We were very sport –
Guest:I think my brother and I, who does the music in the films, composer.
Guest:All the movies?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, he's good.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Jed and I. Interesting.
Guest:Jed and I sort of lived, you know, had a lot of space and we kind of, we did a lot of sport and, you know, our goals were to become, to win Wimbledon.
Guest:Like we wanted to be pro tennis players.
Marc:But the art must have been bubbling up.
Marc:If he's playing guitar and when do you start to really, you know,
Guest:come upon the the vision to be involved with film uh look i think it was my father taking me to see rocky for the first time one two and three and then vhs started to happen video stores really started to go i remember getting the first beta kind of video yeah uh recorder and that was it oh it was like you know eight eight a week and you know going through them and sort of building them up that way
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it just seems like there's a darkness to Australia that I didn't register.
Marc:But I have been there a few times.
Marc:But some of the movies that have come out of there, there's a sort of menace to some of the filmmakers.
Marc:I don't know who made Chopper, but that guy.
Guest:Yeah, Andrew Dominic made you up, an amazing filmmaker.
Marc:Yeah, and then the guy who made The Stranger?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:What's that guy's name?
Guest:Yep, Tom.
Guest:He's a really interesting new Australian filmmaker.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What's the animal one?
Guest:Animal Kingdom.
Marc:Yeah, what's who's that guy?
Guest:Geez, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, there's a really Jennifer Cairns who made the Babadook.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Look, it can be quite a dark place, Australia.
Guest:There's a history there that's dark.
Marc:Of all different kinds, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, in its origin.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Where the people came from the first wave.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:was they were convicts, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, in Tasmania, you know, many parts of Australia, there was a sort of genocide, you know... Of the Aboriginal people?
Guest:Yeah, to Indigenous in Australia.
Guest:So there's a lot of history that, you know, still needs to be sort of faced.
Guest:So it's haunted a bit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's just got a...
Guest:It's just got something about it that always sort of sits there.
Guest:And I think a lot of really interesting filmmakers have sort of delved into that.
Guest:I mean, even Ted Kotchev, who made First Blood, a Canadian filmmaker, made a very, very famous film in Australia called Wake and Fright.
Guest:That was sort of a terrifying film that made an imprint on a lot of Australian directors.
Guest:And then there's that older generation, Peter Weir's from there, right?
Guest:Peter Weir.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, Gallipoli was one of the most, you know, incredible.
Guest:I mean, it's my favorite film.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was very impactful.
Guest:Isn't Breaker Morant an Australian movie?
Guest:Breaker Morant, yeah.
Guest:Bruce Beresford.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was that sort of new wave around that time of Fred Skepsy and Bruce Beresford.
Guest:Who didn't walk about...
Guest:Walkabout is Nicholas Rogue.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was he Australian?
Guest:He's British, wasn't he?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But Walkabout's an Australian movie, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Amazing film.
Guest:So, yeah, it's a really strong history, but there is this sort of, yeah, underbelly there that-
Guest:I think filmmakers are fascinated.
Marc:And also there's this underbelly, too, like in watching Snowtown, that one scene when the two of them are in the hole, you know, smoking weed, you know, and he's like, it's going to be a bomb shelter.
Marc:And the other guy's like, who's going to bomb us?
Marc:That there is a sense down there when I was there that there is – it's almost like there's a little bit – it's Irish too where it's just sort of like, you know, it's its own place.
Marc:It's out of the fray of global politics.
Marc:And there's sort of a kind of like literally a sort of down under type of personality where it's just sort of like, you know, we're fucking Australia.
Marc:No one's going to fuck with us.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I mean, no one cares.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, there's a kind of –
Guest:Even the violence kind of comes out of the most unexpected ways there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And usually it's to do with sort of humor.
Guest:I mean, I remember when I was doing Snowtown, we were talking to a guy that knew the serial killer in it at a pub.
Guest:And we were having a beer and he was really interesting and he was funny.
Guest:We got to the end of the night, we'd had three beers and I said, oh, I'm going now.
Guest:And he said, no, no, no, let's get another one.
Guest:I went, no, no, no, I'm going.
Guest:He said, just one more.
Guest:And I said, no, excuse me, I've really got to go.
Guest:And he says, I'll tell you what you're going to fucking do.
Guest:You're going to go to the bar and you're going to buy me a beer and you're going to buy yourself a beer and you're going to come back and you're going to sit down and you're going to drink that beer.
Guest:And I went, okay.
Guest:So I went and bought a couple beers and came back and sat down and he sort of looked at me and stared at me and he said, yeah, anyway, I was telling you that story about, and it's sort of like, it is this, it's sort of choppers like that.
Guest:There are elements I think Andrew just really got in Chopper about how you just can't underestimate the turns, the shifts, and they're very, very quick.
Marc:And the personality.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it's menacing, man.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:When I was watching Nitrum, I don't know if I could take it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, right.
Marc:And I was like, is this Australian?
Marc:Because I don't know...
Marc:The sort of pace, and it seemed like pretty early on you had sort of figured out your tone.
Marc:Do you think that's true?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, I did.
Guest:I sort of knew what I was interested in and where to put the camera and what.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, there was a feel that I was fascinated by and still am.
Guest:When I go back to Australia and have an urge to make a film—
Guest:There's definitely a kind of feeling that I— Can you identify it?
Marc:Because it's like there's a space to it, but it's kind of—
Marc:There's a menace to it.
Guest:There's something to do with the domestic.
Guest:There's something to do with family.
Guest:There's something to do with that menace sort of just hiding behind the front door.
Guest:Or actually even the front door open and the menace kind of happening, but just down the corridor.
Guest:There's a sort of quality to it.
Guest:I think there's also a very strange relationship that we have.
Guest:With landscape, I think that— There's so much of it.
Guest:Well, it is, and you're sort of in awe of it, and you're driving in it, and then suddenly you go left, and you think, actually, maybe I should have gone right.
Guest:You're suddenly sort of stuck, and you look around, and it's terrifying.
Guest:Really?
Marc:It's just terrifying.
Guest:Even with nothing there?
Guest:Yeah, it's just terrifying.
Guest:There's something about it that is equally beautiful and majestic and extraordinary, and there's also sort of something terrifying about it.
Guest:But it's kind of nebulous to terrifying.
Guest:Yeah, and it's intimidating, I think, the scale of it and the unknownness of it, you know.
Guest:Do you use the same DP?
Guest:I used Adam Akapur quite a bit.
Guest:He did Snowtown, who also shot The Order.
Marc:Yeah, that's okay.
Marc:So I could see that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So there was, I used, and then I used a couple others.
Guest:Jermaine McKing did Nitran, but I usually try to work with the same people, yeah.
Marc:So what was your first, I mean, Snowtown was the first feature, right?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And the shorts, what were the shorts?
Marc:I got into music clips.
Guest:My brother started a band called The Mess Hall, which I was actually part of.
Guest:I was playing the bass and then kind of got bored with the bass, didn't feel as though it was interesting enough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And sort of said to Jed, oh, look, I think I'm going to leave.
Guest:And he said, well, that's fine.
Guest:We're becoming a two-piece anyway.
Guest:And they became a really fantastic two-piece in Australia and
Guest:You know, I started to get some success and tour, and I started doing music clips for them.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I got into it through music clips, and then I did a couple kind of little short films.
Guest:What were they?
Guest:Were they, like, dark?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, they were dark.
Guest:I was definitely leaning into what would become the features.
Marc:Dude.
Marc:I mean, in fucking Snowtown, which just out of nowhere, he walks out back and the guy's just hacking up a kangaroo.
Marc:Like, as somebody who doesn't live there, I'm like, what are they doing?
Marc:What is he doing?
Marc:He's just killing a kangaroo?
Marc:And then I thought, is it for meat?
Marc:And then it just turns out to be for nothing, just to terrorize the guy across the street.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, yeah.
Guest:We'll just get rid of the pedophile across the road.
Marc:Right, with kangaroo heads and legs.
Guest:But he didn't kill him.
Guest:He didn't kill the kangaroo in the scene.
Marc:No, but he was hacking him up.
Marc:Was I wrong to assume that?
Marc:You're telling me he just found two dead kangaroos on the road?
Guest:You know, like it's interesting.
Guest:I live in Tasmania at the moment, and there is roadkill every-
Guest:Every few miles?
Guest:Every few miles.
Guest:Like, I mean, it's – there's sort of – you're always surrounded by death in Australia.
Guest:It's sort of something that's – Animal death mostly?
Guest:Yeah, there's so many animals and – And there's a lot of kangaroos?
Guest:A lot of kangaroos, a lot of wallabies, a lot of – I guess we assume.
Marc:Were they wallabies or kangaroos in the – Kangaroos.
Marc:And did you find them dead?
Guest:No, we bought them.
Guest:You bought them dead?
Guest:They were already dead, yeah.
Guest:Because people eat kangaroo meat.
Guest:It's actually a fantastic meat.
Guest:They're very, very lean.
Guest:I imagine it's like deer.
Guest:Do they farm them?
Guest:No, there's so many around.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, and they get to certain numbers, especially when the droughts happen, when they come in and they start eating the crops.
Guest:Yeah, so you've got to, to a certain extent, you've got to cull them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what do you think, like, you know,
Marc:In all the movies that I mentioned, because like for me, because, you know, I guess I'm kind of engaged with psychological language.
Marc:Like in Snowtown, like they're, you know, you're watching clearly traumatized people, like broken people that are legacy trauma.
Marc:But I would assume that in shooting this or in engaging with these characters, that that's not how you approach them.
Marc:You approach them as who they are and this is their behavior.
Marc:I mean, there's I don't know, as a director who, you know, kind of deals in this type of psychological investigation, you know, do you do you do you judge them?
Guest:I just try to find what feels familiar, like as a character and as a sort of human.
Guest:I mean, it was interesting.
Guest:So Daniel, who played John Bunting in Snowtown, he was a Sydney actor who was coming, and I wanted him to sort of live in the area for-
Guest:a good sort of six weeks before we shot.
Guest:Because the rest of the people in Snowtown are people that we just cast off the streets.
Guest:They're non-actors.
Guest:So, you know, I was going to the shopping centre.
Guest:So they probably knew the guy.
Guest:Some did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And actually we would have...
Guest:you know, uh, auditions and people would line up at the gym.
Guest:And I remember one particular guy saying, well, does John know you're doing this?
Guest:I was just in prison with him a couple of weeks ago.
Guest:So there was, there was, you know, it was not many degrees separation, but Daniel, um, who was playing John Bunting, um,
Guest:I said, you've got to be in this neighborhood for six weeks and you've got to get out there.
Guest:And I gave him a certain number of things to kind of do.
Guest:But he just sat in his room reading books about serial killers and putting post-it notes up everywhere and wouldn't go out.
Guest:And we had a very big discussion about...
Guest:This guy, you've got to get past the kind of cliche of the serial killer.
Guest:What is interesting about this person is that they're social.
Guest:And actually, the FBI came to Australia and came to South Australia and studied this particular character because he was very unusual in terms of how social he was as a psychopath, as a serial killer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So as soon as, you know, as soon as I spoke to Daniel about you've, you've, you know, you've got to take these kids camping that are in the film.
Guest:You've got to kind of cook for everyone.
Guest:You've got to, he turned up on set after doing all these sort of, you know, little kind of tasks and,
Guest:And straight away, everyone just sort of came up to him and gravitated towards him.
Guest:The kids were jumping over him.
Guest:And sometimes it's as simple as that.
Guest:It's about how do you make this person feel human?
Guest:And how do the people around that character sort of see them as human and see them as sort of almost quite normal?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And that's when it becomes interesting.
Guest:That's where you're sort of rubbing up against the largeness of their actions next to the kind of
Marc:wow, they don't feel too distant from- Right, and also, but I thought what was fascinating about that movie, and in all the movies really, is that even once the people around them get a sense that they're off-
Marc:in perhaps an uncontrollable and murderous way, they make exceptions.
Marc:They rationalize, or they see them how they're gonna see them.
Marc:That happens in the order a bit, but there's an ideology there.
Marc:But it happened in Nitram with his parents and with Helen, and it happened in Snowtown with the mother, who knew better.
Marc:I mean, right away you know her instincts are solid,
Marc:because of the guy across the street.
Marc:But yet she still accepts this guy with that intuition, you know, knowing that, you know, he's bad fucking news.
Guest:Well, that's, I mean, the evil is like a slow boil.
Guest:You don't realize that it's kind of cooking.
Guest:And I think there is a sort of, there's a moment where it's almost too late.
Guest:And I think that's what I find so compelling about those characters.
Marc:And then what makes you go to Macbeth after that?
Marc:I mean, are you a Shakespeare guy?
Guest:Well, I first started off in theater.
Guest:I was a theater designer.
Guest:And so I spent a lot of time in theater and in rehearsal rooms.
Guest:And I actually designed it when I was sort of just out of school.
Guest:So it was out of the blue.
Guest:I'd seen Michael in a couple of films that I really loved.
Guest:And the idea of Michael kind of playing Macbeth.
Guest:And there was something about...
Guest:the way it'd been written was like a Western.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we were, and we were shooting in Scotland and in those areas that were sort of set and written where you look at and you go, there are witches here.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's, it's, that landscape is sort of saying so much with the, with the verse.
Guest:So, and there was something also about this sort of post-trauma of a soldier and, and being able to put on screen this sense of battle and, and, and how that carries on into a kind of psychosis and, and,
Guest:the death of this child and how perhaps grief could turn into ambition.
Guest:There were a whole lot of little things there, but, but essentially it was, it was just that, oh, wow, I can totally see this as a Western and I get to shoot in Scotland and there's something, there was also sort of something about the idea of being consumed by evil and what that is.
Guest:And do you become the thing that you kind of, you know, you kind of reach for.
Marc:It's almost like Shakespeare gave you a map to explore the type of male character you were already interested in.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Like, strangely, on set, I didn't think it was a huge leap from what was happening in Snowtown, to be honest.
Guest:It was just a completely different genre.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I guess that's why, you know, I have a hard time with Shakespeare, but I think that, you know, the people that really get something out of it are the people that realize the, you know, humanity, the full spectrum of humanity available in almost every one of the plays, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So Macbeth was definitely a character, you know, up your alley.
Marc:Yeah, definitely.
Marc:It wasn't too far away from what I was interested in.
Marc:And you thought of it as a Western.
Marc:Are you a Western guy?
Marc:Are those the movies that have the most impact on you?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:They were very strong in my childhood.
Guest:Like which ones?
Guest:Well, I'll tell you what.
Guest:The Western that I loved the most was Mad Max.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:That was the one that I think for most Australians kind of captured my imagination.
Marc:But is that a common thing to frame it as a Western?
Yeah.
Marc:Mad Max?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, it doesn't have horses in it, but it's got some serious- But no, structurally, you know, the guy coming to- Oh, totally.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, I get it.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:I mean, I would even say Snowtown the way John rides in on a motorbike into that town.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, there's sort of Western traits to it.
Guest:I mean, even the order.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a kind of, you know, Jude driving his car into that place.
Marc:But those are, you know, motifs.
Marc:Those are the designators of Westerns.
Guest:Yeah, but you don't have to do much with them to make an audience go, ah, like, great, I feel this and I understand it.
Guest:And then you start to invert it and you start to kind of play with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I don't know that the audience is necessarily thinking this is a Western, but the structure is so ingrained in the cultural understanding of film that those story arcs, they hit a place.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I mean, were you a fan of Westerns?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, there came a time where I needed to sort of, you know, understand, you know, film intellectually.
Marc:And, you know, Westerns are a huge part of that.
Marc:And I believe, as you do, that a good many films are structurally Westerns.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that the idea that the director is playing with is, you know, this guy comes into town to straighten things out or to make a mess.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But, like, you know, I've watched some Westerns a lot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, The Searchers and, you know, the standard ones, Shane and, you know, some of the, you know, it's weird.
Marc:One Western that really strikes me, a modern Western, like, I can watch The Unforgiven any time.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Because that, to me, that just loaded it all in there.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:And that character.
Marc:But the Pale Rider, that's like a classic structure.
Marc:And it's awesome.
Marc:You know, the guy with the shady past.
Marc:You know, Jeremiah Johnson.
Marc:That's another one that I watched.
Marc:I don't know that I thought of as a Western, but it is.
Marc:It's a very unique Western.
Guest:Jude and I talked a lot about, more about that lead character of a Western that...
Guest:There's very little that you actually know because in the order, there was not a huge amount of kind of subtext to that character.
Guest:You didn't understand.
Marc:But you did understand this sort of kind of beat up detective.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And what that entails from movies.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And there's that lovely feeling of...
Guest:is this character even going to make it through the film?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, that, that they, they seem so kind of failed in a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there's this lovely kind of rooting for them that you kind of realize, uh, okay, if they've made it halfway through the film, then I guess they're going to make it to the end.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That, that I think's kind of wonderful about, and you know, and the, I mean, you know, something like the French connection, you look at that, that Gene Hackman character and it,
Guest:Really, the character revolves within the scenes.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's how that character responds to what is coming towards them in the present of the scenes rather than a whole lot of exposition.
Guest:So I think those characters are written less now.
Guest:I think there's this sort of...
Guest:feeling at the moment when you read screenplays of trying to kind of understand as much as possible about everything including your lead character whereas i think when you go back and you watch those films it's it's the mystery of that character that makes them so yeah less less words of the better yeah and once and once popeye doyle gets obsessed then it's the game is on it's a whole different thing yeah it doesn't give a fuck yeah that the response to him shooting that fed
Marc:It's just one of the best moments in movies.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Where he sees him, and then he just moves on.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right, like, you know, Scheider is, you know, like, oh, God, what'd you do?
Marc:And he's like, I got to find the French guy.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, this guy had it coming.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I talked to Friedkin for hours.
Marc:It was kind of crazy.
Marc:Yeah, he's amazing.
Marc:Yeah, him and Michael Mann were just monsters of...
Marc:The ability to have that kind of swagger with those movies and make the kind of impact that they did is kind of insane.
Marc:Like I've watched Thief a few times again.
Marc:But he's another guy, not unlike you in a couple of the movies where...
Marc:The less said, the better.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because then it's on you, the audience, to kind of put that.
Marc:I just put the soundtrack, actually.
Marc:Of Thief?
Guest:Just yesterday at Amoeba.
Guest:Tangerine Dream?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was there for about $6.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I grabbed it.
Guest:It's great.
Marc:It was a fantastic soundtrack.
Marc:It's the best.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, the Kelly Gang...
Guest:the true history of the kelly gang which i didn't watch yet but that's a story that's been told over and over again right like hasn't like every australian filmmaker tried to tell that story yeah i don't know why that character or that person ned kelly ned kelly has has had probably 100 films made about them and somehow is this sort of defining character that we all lean towards in terms of what our identity is or isn't it's
Marc:And what is it about the guy?
Marc:I don't know a lot about him.
Marc:Is it like Jesse James here?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, he was this Irish kind of, yeah, this Irish bandit who robbed and created a rebellion in, you know, in Victoria.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:you know, became this, and became very famous because he created this sort of suit of armor that was sort of, you know, from the helmet all the way to, you know, and at the end of his life was sort of, you know, was in this sort of Glen Rowan, this sort of house and this massive siege happened and he sort of came out all guns blaming like this kind of monitor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was, yeah, it was sort of mythical, you know,
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sort of legendary.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Somehow has sort of become, I mean, even in our Olympics, even at the Sydney Olympics and the closing ceremony, there was a whole segment about this criminal, an outlaw.
Guest:There's like a hundred Ned Kellys like running around in, um, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In, in, in kind of armored suits.
Guest:So, you know, you can get Ned Kelly pies and there's Ned Kelly theme parks.
Guest:It's, it's a kind of, it's a kind of, uh, fascination.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the reality of the guy has been eclipsed by the mythology of the guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was really interested in this.
Guest:It's called The True History of the Kelly Gang, written by Peter Carey, amazing Australian writer.
Guest:And the book is about, you know, well, what is the truth about this figure and why, as Australians, do we somehow kind of need to search for meaning as to who he is?
Guest:Did you take him down a notch?
Guest:I haven't seen the film.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Guest:He's definitely – I mean, it's really interesting, the film.
Guest:And Peter kind of – they used to imitate the Sons of Sieve, which were this sort of Irish group that the Irish bandits kind of would dress in women's dresses to kind of terrorize the police and sort of make it look as if they were kind of mad.
Guest:And that's what they thought was the greatest kind of weapon was –
Guest:this perception of madness and sort of intimidate and scare the police away.
Guest:So we've kind of got the gang, um, you know, dressed in dresses throughout the whole film and it was quite, quite sort of, um, controversial.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Different.
Guest:Did you get any pushback?
Guest:Well, every, everyone, everyone claims this, this character for a certain thing.
Guest:So yeah, there was some that sort of looked at it and kind of obviously had a certain opinion about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you, you didn't piss off half the country?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm sure I pissed off a lot.
Marc:Didn't Mick Jagger play Ned Kelly?
Guest:He did.
Guest:Dennis Hopper came and played Mad Dog Morgan, who was another kind of outlaw.
Guest:There's a fascination in Australian outlaws that seems to grab people's imaginations, especially overseas.
Marc:Well, Irish outlaws are the most frightening, oddly.
Marc:You'd think it was the Italians, but anytime I see anything about Irish mob, I'm like, oh, fuck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that kind of—I mean, it's interesting how that's traveled through filmmaking.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That kind of, you know, in a sense, that sort of chopper figure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, that Andrew was playing with has a similar kind of Eric Bana's chopper.
Guest:Yeah, there's a kind of humor and a kind of outlaw kind of attraction.
Marc:Yeah, has similar kind of Ned Kelly vibes.
Marc:So that, yeah, I was thinking that must be some sort of continuation of the arc.
Marc:There is a certain type of I guess the Australian cowboy is a bit different.
Marc:Than ours.
Marc:Yeah, they're not as romantic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're a little messier.
Marc:So, like, all right, but let's talk about the Nitram thing because that guy who played the lead is some special guy.
Marc:Yeah, Caleb Landry-Jones, who's American.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I think I've had the opportunity to interview him, but I didn't take it.
Marc:Maybe it'll happen again.
Marc:I just, I never know.
Marc:what anyone's going to be like.
Marc:And I hadn't seen your movie yet.
Marc:But Jesus, man, that performance was crazy.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:How'd you get that out of him?
Guest:Ah, well, he, he's just so immersive, Caleb.
Guest:He, he kind of, um, I mean, he learned the Australian accent by, we had an amazing voice coach, but he, but he watched hours and hours and hours of Australian soap, TV soap, Neighbours and sort of this other soap called Home and Away.
Guest:He watched hours of it, um,
Guest:From the 90s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And just religiously.
Guest:So he kind of – and he was sort of speaking with an Australian accent the whole time, which is a very hard accent to do, especially for Americans.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Although he's from Texas, so there's a kind of drawl and a kind of laziness that Australians have as well in their accent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, we did that during COVID.
Guest:He came over, was in a hotel for two weeks, and then he came to Geelong where we shot the film and was in isolation there.
Guest:So he really didn't see much of the rest of the country apart from being in the kind of bubble of this film.
Guest:But he's quite extraordinary.
Guest:He's one of the most immersive actors I've been with.
Guest:He really...
Guest:You know, the point at which he sort of clocks off and clocks on is very blurred.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he always sort of keeps something there of the character.
Guest:It was pretty inspiring.
Guest:It's a relentless movie, dude.
Marc:And that's your wife?
Marc:That's my wife who plays— Helen?
Marc:Yeah, plays Helen.
Marc:She was spectacular.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, she's wonderful.
Marc:I mean, that was—whatever that was—
Marc:Her empathy or the romance of having that guy in her home was really, I'd never seen anything like it in a movie.
Guest:Yeah, it's a really interesting character.
Guest:She was the heir to a Tetz Lotto company.
Guest:A what?
Guest:A Tetz Lotto, like a gambling, like a lottery kind of company.
Guest:Okay, yeah.
Guest:So she had an enormous amount of inheritance.
Marc:This is a true story, right?
Guest:Yeah, enormous amount of money.
Guest:And she was eccentric.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was in love with Gilbert and Sullivan and loved musicals and was sort of desperately sort of dressing up in various kind of costumes and, you know, and obviously terribly sort of lonely, but in this amazing mansion with much more dogs than we had in the film.
Guest:It was like 50 dogs and 20 cats.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And she just took on, you know, accepted this boy who came over and mowed her lawn.
Guest:And they sort of developed this very, very odd relationship.
Guest:And sort of promised to travel and go overseas.
Marc:And so, you know, it's weird that...
Marc:that turn in that movie when I hadn't seen Judy Davis in a long time.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And she's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Always great.
Marc:And I didn't even realize Anthony LaPaglia was, was Australian.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think I kind of knew that, but I didn't know it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And he was great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, the acting in that movie and it, it, it,
Marc:It's telling that it was informed by COVID because nobody was doing anything.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the vitality of a performance during COVID is, you know, that's all your that's your communication for the day.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But there is something so like in that movie where there's a turn of what should be heartbreak somewhere.
Mm hmm.
Marc:It kind of gets hijacked by a certain type of mental illness.
Marc:You know, like, you know, that car accident is devastating.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I don't think that the character wasn't devastated, but I don't know how much it shifted from his regular disposition.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, I think he just became more and more isolated.
Guest:There was a really interesting detail that happened after that crash where he was given the money.
Guest:In real life.
Guest:Yeah, and inherited this money.
Guest:And that happens in the movie.
Guest:Yeah, and then he goes on these...
Guest:trips so he used to do these trips where he'd buy first class tickets to different um cities all around the world yeah and he'd get on and he would just look for companionship on the plane so he'd sit next to someone and just talk their head off on a 23 hour flight to london yeah get to the airport get off go through customs and then turn around and get on another one and come back yeah that's so sad yeah
Guest:Yeah, it was this continual kind of revolving, taking first-class trips just to talk to people on airplanes.
Guest:And that went on for like a year, two years.
Guest:We've just got one instance there where he goes to Los Angeles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was this detail that I found kind of quite extraordinary.
Guest:Well, what did you key into that compelled you to make that movie?
Guest:Do you get a script for that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Sean, who wrote Snowtown, sent me, Sean Grant sent me the script.
Guest:And it's a, you know, look, it's a very, I opened it and just went, there's no way I'm doing this.
Guest:I live in this state.
Guest:And it's a very taboo kind of subject, very difficult subject to talk about.
Guest:In Tasmania?
Guest:Yeah, in Australia.
Guest:Anywhere.
Guest:Yeah, it was, that particular day was really devastating and changed the gun laws forever in Australia.
Guest:It really shifted everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's a really difficult kind of period to sort of talk about.
Guest:So I was extremely nervous about it.
Guest:But there was just a key into how someone, you know, becomes an outlier like that and becomes more and more separated.
Guest:But most importantly, it was just this sort of family setup.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How a mother kind of starts to see someone...
Guest:that they've given birth to kind of slowly fade away and disappear and sort of desperately trying to reach them to bring them back.
Guest:There was something about that family unit that I thought was really compelling.
Marc:Yeah, the tolerance.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and especially the father.
Marc:Despite the fact that the kid was volatile,
Marc:And you want them to be all right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you adapt to them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But after a certain point, there's nothing you can do to make them all right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I'd never seen a movie like it, really.
Marc:What was the reaction to that movie?
Guest:At the time that we made it, there was a really strong reaction against it.
Guest:I remember the prime minister talking about it in parliament.
Guest:Really?
Guest:About this film should not be made.
Yeah.
Guest:And I think people thought we were going to do a certain, I don't know, horror film or something about it, but also that it was subject matter that should be left alone.
Guest:And then I think as people saw it and we finished it, they kind of could see the sort of angle and the way we were sort of gently kind of walking through the film that shifted.
Marc:Well, that's interesting because nationally, I would imagine that there was no desire to have empathy for that guy.
Marc:And because you, along with the writer, are careful to present as they are human, that there's no way in moments not to have empathy for that guy.
Guest:Well, yeah, and I think...
Guest:Yeah, look, there was something I think also about those small moments that change fate and destiny.
Guest:Like it was sort of fascinating in the sort of moments leading up to the massacre of...
Guest:I think there was one moment in the film where he stopped to sort of fix a car.
Guest:There were a couple kind of tourists there that were, and he actually asked whether after he fixed the car, whether he could go with him on a bushwalk.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, and he was going on the way to Port Arthur.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and they said, no, we want to go sort of by ourselves.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he went on and then sort of went to a petrol station and then spoke to the guy at the petrol station.
Guest:Do you want to go for a beer?
Guest:And he sort of said no.
Guest:There was this sort of really like the fine line between what that fate was at the end to kind of him suddenly kind of going left and bushwalking.
Guest:If it would have changed anything?
Guest:Um, I don't know.
Guest:I don't know, but it was, um, that, that I remember that was a really tough thing to balance in the, in the, in the film of, you know, what, whether this was a sort of set destiny, he decided this and this is what he was going to do or whether it could be changed on a whim.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Whether there was some sort of little influence that would kind of just shift the tide a bit, but it was, it was a real challenge to kind of try to find the right, the right sort of feeling and tone for that.
Marc:I know that I've seen many movies that really do that exploration of senseless mass shooting other than Gus Van Zandt's Elephant, which had the same space.
Marc:But there was, I think, a sexual component to that.
Marc:This guy, Martin, your guy,
Marc:Obviously had issues, you know, that could not be sated.
Marc:But the turn from just a guy who was distressed mentally to a killer was, I thought he handled it very well.
Marc:And, you know, the moment...
Marc:Where he pulls that gun out, and then, you know, we're out of the movie.
Marc:Yeah, after we hear, what, a few shots off camera.
Guest:No, we don't even hear shots.
Guest:You don't?
Guest:No, it cuts then to the mother sitting, having a cup of tea, and in the background is the news just breaking.
Guest:Yeah, it was some... Yeah, we never, I mean...
Guest:I think that's why there was a big uproar.
Guest:I think they thought that we were going to recreate the massacre, which was horrendous, absolutely horrific.
Guest:But we always knew that we wanted to stop it just before that.
Guest:And did you ever hear from families or anything?
Guest:Yeah, look, there were families that were very upset about it being made, and rightly so.
Guest:There were others that we spoke to and sort of could understand why we were making it, but it was a tough time making it.
Guest:Why were you making it?
Guest:Um, I just read, just reading this script, I just got an insight into that isolation and, and, and there was something about, there was something about that family that felt familiar.
Guest:There was something about that mother and father that just felt, you know, this desperate need to try to love and, you know, try to bring that child back and, and,
Guest:The desperation in them, there was something about that that I really responded to.
Marc:It's hard to humanize monsters and have to shoulder that burden.
Guest:Yeah, and like you mentioned empathy before.
Guest:That is a real challenge.
Guest:Even with Bob Matthews, it's kind of like where do you place this?
Guest:You've got to understand why he's...
Guest:why he's so compelling.
Guest:Like, why he draws people in at the same time you don't want to make this guy sort of likable in a way that... But you want to make him familiar.
Guest:You do.
Guest:You do.
Guest:You want to go past the kind of cliche and really sort of try to unpack, okay, well, what is it?
Marc:Yeah, and ultimately...
Marc:Jude Law's character doesn't really get to serve the justice that he probably would have preferred.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, no, he misses it.
Guest:But it was something about that character that sort of foresaw the future a little bit.
Guest:Then somehow he was sort of...
Guest:And looking into our eyes and understanding kind of what perhaps it would become.
Marc:And what are your feelings about that?
Marc:Well, first, what is the future of the movie in America here?
Guest:Well, it's out now.
Guest:It's playing now.
Guest:People are seeing it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It seems to be doing well.
Guest:So there's, you know, and I was really curious as to what was going to happen after the election.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there seems to be, you know, people seem to be interested in understanding.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:An event, too, that I think is hardly known.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Interesting, right?
Guest:Which is kind of shocking, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I became sort of obsessed with that whole, the Turner Diaries and the root of that.
Marc:Did you?
Marc:Did you know much about the Turner Diaries before the film?
Marc:I did, yeah.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I became sort of fascinated with that stuff around the time of when I was sort of learning about Berg and then learning that this book was driving a lot of the anti-Semitic sentiment.
Marc:I became sort of curious about where the idea of Zog came from and why.
Marc:And then as you sort of get more into it, and certainly now that these are...
Marc:reinterpretations, if not direct interpretations of ancient anti-Semitic tropes.
Marc:But I think that the Zionist-occupied government was essentially from Turner, wasn't it?
Marc:From the Turner Diaries.
Marc:I mean, that was sort of a revamping of
Marc:That was the creation of the global anti-Semitic, the global Jew-run planet.
Marc:I think that started with that.
Guest:Well, yeah, the whole book is sort of the fear of that.
Marc:Yeah, and those are relatively modern anti-Semitic tropes that have really taken hold.
Marc:But, you know, blood libel and all that stuff, that goes back to what?
Marc:The Middle Ages.
Marc:So, yeah, and that's in Shakespeare.
Mm-hmm.
Marc:But yeah, so that was really the beginning of, you know, whatever George Soros represents to these people.
Marc:It's scary stuff now.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So are you doing a Hitler movie next?
Marc:Is there, like, you can do a kind of a thoughtful Manson piece?
Guest:No, I'll tell you one that I'm really interested in doing is this film called Burning Rainbow Farm, which is...
Guest:Based on two guys that created the Burning Rainbow Marijuana Festival.
Guest:Where's that?
Guest:It's down south somewhere.
Guest:And it was in the late 90s.
Guest:And these two guys are a couple.
Guest:And they had this kid that they were sort of bringing up.
Guest:Anyway, they were sort of trying to be run out of town.
Guest:Two men.
Guest:Two men.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And their kid was sort of taken away from them, I think, after a raid on their farm.
Guest:But the festival became quite large.
Guest:There were like 50,000 people turning up in the runnies to smoke dope and listen to Willie Nelson.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And anyway, their kid was taken away and they sort of burnt down the farm and this siege happened over two weeks to sort of get recognition that their kid had been taken away.
Guest:And yeah, and they were killed in this siege.
Guest:It's this extraordinary story, this beautiful kind of love story between these two guys, but also this amazing kind of event that happened like a week before September 11th.
Guest:So it didn't really sort of,
Guest:Yeah, I didn't know anything about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, yeah, I'm hoping to make that.
Guest:Is it happening?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Sebastian's doing it.
Guest:Sebastian Stan is going to play one of the characters I know you had on.
Guest:Yeah, he's great.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's fantastic.
Guest:So, yeah, that's sort of, again, based on a true story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I seem to be interested in these certain kind of outliers.
Marc:Yeah, that seems like a good one, good arc.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, you look healthy during the shooting.
Marc:I don't know how far along I was there, but, man, you look tired, wired, smoking two cigarettes at a time.
Marc:I was like, is this guy going to make it through this shoot?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, no, I made it.
Marc:I got there, man.
Yeah.
Guest:It was pretty intense, man.
Guest:I was worried I wouldn't even make it through that night where we- We did the shooting?
Marc:We did the shooting.
Marc:I was driving around in that VW?
Guest:Yeah, I was worried about you catching a plane in the morning, but I was also worried about you wearing old school-
Guest:Squibs.
Guest:Squibs, yeah.
Guest:And we only had two jackets.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We only had two shots at it.
Guest:Yeah, but you were an absolute trooper.
Guest:And we had to kind of get it pretty quickly, and the camera was on the camera.
Guest:It was quite a particular shot.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Marc:We were up against the clock.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It looked good, man.
Marc:It did.
Guest:Disturbing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's got a feel about it that we aim for.
Guest:It was great.
Marc:Yeah, sticky stuff, that stuff.
Guest:The blood.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But it worked.
Guest:But you were amazing.
Guest:I appreciate that.
Guest:You too, Matt.
Guest:Really love you being in the film.
Guest:Thank you so much.
Marc:I appreciate it.
Marc:Yeah, and I've loved watching your other work.
Marc:I'm going to continue to do it.
Marc:Good talking to you, man.
Marc:Okay, mate.
Marc:Love that guy.
Marc:That was a great talk.
Marc:I enjoy it.
Marc:There's something about Australia, man.
Marc:It's heavy.
Marc:I'm not sure what it is, but I'm glad we talked about it.
Marc:I haven't been down there in a while, but there's a weight to it.
Marc:The Order, again, is playing in theaters now.
Marc:Hang out for a minute, folks.
Marc:Hey, people, another Mark and Tom show is now available for full Marin subscribers.
Marc:This was the third time I sat down with Tom to talk about the stuff that me and Tom are always thinking about, especially for an athlete.
Guest:That's the hard thing.
Guest:It's like you and me and people working in a medium that does not require physical talent.
Guest:You can get better as you get into your 40s and even 50s or beyond.
Marc:I felt like I should jump up and start doing squats as we talk.
Marc:There was something that in my mind, I'm like, what are you talking about, Tom?
Guest:I can still do it.
Guest:Look, I'm moving.
Guest:I still got it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's like if you're an athlete, it's like people talk about you being like, oh, this – because I watch basketball a lot, and they'll be like –
Guest:I'll be watching and be like, look at that old guy out there.
Guest:And I realize, oh, that guy's eight years younger than me.
Guest:Like, who does this guy think he is?
Guest:This old man hobbling his way out on the floor eight years younger than me.
Guest:Why did they even let him play?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like he's an old man.
Guest:Could you imagine being...
Guest:like unable to do the thing that every, that was your identity, you know, it's, it's over for you at like 35, maybe that's available.
Marc:Now, if you're signed up for the full Marin to subscribe, go to the link in the episode description or go to WTF pod.com and click on WTF plus.
Marc:And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by a cast.
Marc:Here's some classic Marin riffage.
Thank you.
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey lives.
Marc:La Fonda!
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.