BONUS Marc on Movies - The Films of Ari Aster
Guest:I figured we should jump on the mics here because you got a talk coming up tomorrow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It'll actually probably be around the time people are listening to this.
Guest:And I figured this not only can serve as kind of our prep for that talk, but also a Mark on Movies segment because you've watched all this guy's movies.
Guest:And the guy I'm talking about is the director Ari Aster, who made Hereditary, Midsommar,
Guest:Beau is Afraid, and now the new movie, Eddington, which you have seen and I have not.
Guest:I've seen the other three.
Guest:No one has seen Eddington, so we can do a kind of spoiler-free discussion about that.
Guest:So what's it been like for you being in this guy's head in such a concentrated period of time?
Guest:I mean, you've watched all his movies pretty close together.
Marc:Well, I think that what's interesting about him in not—like, I never saw Hereditary, and I definitely didn't see the other one.
Marc:Midsommar?
Marc:What is it?
Marc:Midsommar.
Marc:And I watched Bo is Afraid, and I heard his name for a long time, but I'm not really a horror guy, but Kit is.
Marc:And so I had no familiarity really with his approach.
Marc:And then having watched Boa's Afraid, I didn't know what to do with that movie.
Marc:It was too long for me, but I watched it all.
Marc:But I knew that, you know, he was a guy that had a vision who it was specific to him and he was going to honor it.
Marc:And there was a lot of there's a lot of fuck you to the guy.
Marc:But more than that, it seems like, you know, he uses he used his his I guess his reputation as capital from making, you know, a kind of classic and unique horror movie to kind of do whatever the hell he wants to do.
Marc:And it really sort of supports my notion that a lot of these independent directors that he you know, he's using horror because, you know, it's available to him.
Marc:you know, to do what he wants to.
Marc:And that seems to be a real thing.
Marc:And the thing that's interesting about him is that in Hereditary, you know, you're dealing with some, you know, kind of genre-specific things that are classically horror.
Marc:You know, both of them have cults.
Marc:You know, both of them are kind of...
Marc:a little bit gory.
Marc:You know, there's just definitely signatures of horror.
Marc:But the way he constructed it is unique in that, you know, it elevates the genre to a place where you can categorize it as something else.
Marc:And I just think it was the evolution of him getting control of his vision, of the camera, and really kind of...
Marc:being able to kind of construct these massive movies.
Marc:And I think that Bo, though it's not a horror movie, it is a movie done not unlike Charlie Kaufman, who is going to do the movie he wants to do, no matter who cares,
Marc:Because he's got the freedom to do that and he's got the balls to do it.
Marc:And, you know, he's got the swagger and confidence as a director to execute this vision no matter what anybody cares.
Marc:And I think that's something you get with Eddington in a little bit in a way.
Marc:But I think that the first two movies are, you know, specifically genre movies.
Marc:So he could get the traction to do these other things.
Marc:Like, it's hard for me to really, you know, he's so early in his career, you get pigeonholed as a horror director because of these two movies.
Marc:But I really think he was using those as stepping stones in his confidence and also to make little choices that were relatively experimental and hereditary.
Marc:The idea that her job, you know, is constructing these miniature houses and environments as art.
Marc:I don't know where that came from.
Marc:Was it a book?
Marc:No.
Guest:It's an original script of his.
Marc:So that is a very specific filmic decision that's there for reasons that only he could know as a director, but the...
Marc:the sort of provocative nature of that, given what's happening in her life, it doesn't need to be there.
Marc:But he made this choice as a director to create these different environments that were, it makes you sort of go like, well, what's that about?
Marc:It's not a passive decision to do a lot of the stuff he did in that movie.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's funny that you say like, you know, him getting pigeonholed as a horror director.
Guest:It's like, I mean, the marketing around Hereditary when it came out was this is the scariest movie ever made.
Guest:That was how they were marketing it.
Guest:Now, personally, I do not think that's true.
Guest:I've probably seen several hundred movies that are scarier, if you want to use that term, than Hereditary.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think Hereditary is excellent.
Guest:I think that they do what they have to do to get people into the theater to see genre films.
Guest:And that's a good hook.
Guest:Like, oh, it's like the new Exorcist.
Guest:It's going to scare you to death.
Guest:People love that.
Guest:They'll go see it.
Guest:But I think that very idea...
Guest:turned a kind of attention on him that I don't think he set out to make like it.
Guest:It doesn't seem like a horror film from the conception point any more than Bo is Afraid seems like a fantasy film or anything like these just seem like his expressions of domestic drama, psychological strife.
Guest:I mean, hereditary is it's right there in the title.
Guest:This is about what people pass down to each other.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But he definitely picked these points in, you know, genre specific points of horror, you know, almost in a hackneyed way to make that point.
Marc:You know, that, you know, a cult movie and a possession movie is like as old as time, it seems, in that genre.
Right.
Guest:And even skipping over to the next movie, Midsommar, it's just the Wicker Man, right?
Guest:We've seen that idea before.
Marc:Yeah, the rural horror of, you know, charming... Earthbound people.
Marc:Earthbound cult freaks.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that movie has got some pretty good comedy with that one guy who's that wiry kid.
Marc:I think he's British, the guy from The Revenant.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Marc:And I just saw him in a Black Mirror episode.
Marc:I don't know his name.
Guest:He's the guy from We're the Millers.
Guest:Yeah, Will Poulter, I think is his name.
Marc:Yeah, he didn't tell me we were going to Waco.
Marc:He was like, and not a classic horror structure.
Marc:That kid identified right out of the gate that the boyfriend was an asshole.
Marc:And, you know, all these kids are going to have to die.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, it's that straight up.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like the standard Friday the 13th.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then in the other one, in Hereditary, you know, once the cult element is revealed, you know, you don't know where he's going to go with that.
Marc:But there is something layered and poetic inside.
Marc:and something only a director that has freedom and balls to do that he does.
Marc:You know, like I think he knew he was making a horror movie, but I think he said, well, I'm going to be operating at a lot of different levels here.
Guest:Well, I mean, the thing you typically do with your interviews where you speak to people about like where they came from and what their parents did and that as usually as an entry point to kind of help excavate the
Guest:uh they're either their work or their where their mindset is and their viewpoints are uh i mean this guy has a mother who is a poet and a dad who is a jazz musician like i can't think of anyone who falls more into the category of like you being like oh all right now we're at a starting point here for where all of this comes from
Marc:Well, yeah, but it's, you know, well, that's the freedom of mind of someone who is brought up in an artistic home.
Marc:And those two types of art.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but that have, like, no bounds.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:There's no, you know, you can go wherever you want with both of those types of art.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But, like, now as I'm talking about it, you realize that in Hereditary, the character of the mother...
Marc:played by, what's her name?
Marc:Tony Collette.
Marc:Yeah, Tony Collette becoming my dad.
Marc:You know, the one with the thing.
Guest:With the shirt.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That, you know, her artwork was really an attempt at controlling, you know, her life and her past and setting up these situations.
Marc:It was like this little kingdom that, you know, she was creating these environments that would feel, give her a sense of control and,
Guest:And probably for anyone who has mental illness running throughout their family, that's the that's the overwhelming feeling of wanting to control or conceal.
Guest:Make sure you're keeping people out of that very private, very difficult thing.
Marc:But I just thought that that there were so many elements.
Marc:that were surrounding the classic horror nature.
Marc:And then he elevated the tropes of the horror movie.
Marc:I mean, there was something about, you know, I told kid, it's like these, these cult people always just look like, you know, it's, it's, it's Lynch picked up on it too.
Marc:Just these very average kind of, you know, almost, you know, overly characterily like heightened average people, you know,
Marc:you know, neighborhood people, you know, and then you find out that her mom was, you know, pretty high up in it, but that whole ritual at the end, you know, with the demon, which you've seen some form of before was kind of amazing, you know, with the, with the corpse and then the fresher corpse of the mother.
Marc:And then there was something that I noticed at the end of that movie that might speak more to, to what you're, you're talking about in terms of these movies being about him was that when they usher or, or do the ritual to,
Marc:get the demon into the teenage boy's body the expression that he ends the movie with is is sort of this kind of bewildered slightly excited uh you know but it was sort of there was an element of it there that it was a teenage kid saying like this is the coolest thing that's ever happened to me
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's think about the end of Midsommar.
Guest:It's similar.
Guest:The kind of charismatic nature of that whole thing is now being expressed through her.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the sort of backstory of that character was so brutal.
Marc:And her evolution into where she landed made so much sense.
Marc:Yeah, you know, and I guess to a degree with the teenage kid, because, you know, whatever he was feeling with the mother and then the little girl.
Marc:And that was also a hell of a choice.
Marc:A third of the way of the movie to have the the little girl decapitated without knowing what anything about the cult or anything else was fucking brutal.
Guest:It's just, yeah, it's just, if you're just watching, if you're just taking it in as a movie at that moment, you're like, oh my God, it's just fucking the most tragic thing ever.
Guest:The whole movie is already tragic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and the kid was an odd kid.
Marc:And just the, I just thought...
Marc:I mean, like I am obviously thinking out loud that, yeah, I can see something in him throughout these movies to a degree without really knowing him.
Marc:But I do also see him and it kind of plays more than the neurotic element as a guy that knows, you know, what it means to take action.
Marc:artistic risk and, and to be relatively confident with it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Even if it misses, because who's to decide that, you know, who's to decide that, you know, Bo is afraid misses.
Guest:Right.
Marc:You know, it seems irrelevant to say that.
Marc:Totally.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And I think that he's fought for that freedom.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, by making horror movies that made money and that were genre specific with little elements of his own creativity unleashed in there.
Marc:I mean, there were choices in Midsommar, which were pretty crazy.
Marc:You know, I mean, you know, those that elderly couple jumping off of that cliff was crazy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And and also just the nature of the, you know, the strange line between like, you know, we're nice people.
Marc:This is just our religion business.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, that's the interesting thing.
Guest:The jumping off the cliff kind of takes the same structural character that the girl dying in hereditary takes.
Guest:It's this weird turn in a film early on that forces you to then have to be like, I guess I'm sitting here with this for the next, you know, two thirds.
Marc:And also how all the characters reacted to it.
Marc:The ones that were like, well, you know, we can't judge them.
Marc:And yeah.
Marc:And then this sort of like, no, this is fucking crazy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and when that guy pisses on the magic tree, that was the best.
Marc:Like that guy, like in a lot of ways was a big part of the heart of that movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Was you need that one smart ass doofus.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then I thought that that kind of unraveled pretty nicely.
Marc:And you get this ending that is almost it's almost a happy ending.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, she's smiling when it's over with both movies.
Marc:There's something about, you know, the the the expression on a human level of these characters who you see as humans and not just as fodder elevated.
Marc:It's kind of amazing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But Bo was afraid.
Marc:Like, I don't know what that journey was, but it was, it reminded me of the same kind of feeling I had about Synecdoche.
Marc:Was it Synecdoche, New York or something?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:The Charlie Kaufman movie, which I don't know.
Guest:Very similar movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know what the fuck was happening there or why.
Marc:And I had little patience for it.
Marc:But, you know, this was a, you know, a confident filmmaker who was kind of a genius, you know, doing his thing.
Marc:And maybe at some other time I'll reckon with it again.
Guest:Yeah, it was one of those movies.
Guest:I sat there.
Guest:I went to see that in the theater and I knew it was three hours.
Guest:I knew that it was hated by many as I sat down to watch it.
Guest:And I don't know why, but it got me in like the first five seconds.
Guest:Like the first thing you see in that movie or don't see, you're hearing a kind of muffled screaming and there's a barely visible light source and
Guest:And after about 30 seconds or so, you realize it's a childbirth, right?
Guest:And I don't know if it was because, I don't know, I remember reading stuff about this when my wife was pregnant.
Guest:The environment you're birthed into...
Guest:that the kind of imprinting that happens in childbirth is what's going to kind of define you for your whole life.
Guest:And that's what, you know, started the kind of popularity of these like water births and at home births.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Not wanting to be in this chaotic, frenetic environment of a hospital, the sterile environment, like the idea of being like closer to the land or closer to like nature and natural births.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Uh, part of that is because the idea of all these, the external forces of, of, uh, the environment that you're born into and just like Bo is afraid is not a horror movie, but it might as well be in that first 30 seconds.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like you're hearing the curdled screams of someone.
Guest:It like, there might be a murder going on or whatever.
Guest:And no, it's just this chaotic environment he's being born into.
Guest:And the, uh,
Guest:immediate presence of the neuroticism of his mother right yeah and i was just i was in that was it i was all i needed and he could have done anything and he didn't do anything like the rest of that movie is three hours of whatever his mind thought up not necessarily connected to anything that came before right but i knew it was this journey of a guy dealing with
Guest:his damnation basically at birth guys fucked at birth.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I, and that's pretty horrific, but like, I, I just feel like there's a sort of element of, you know, I've, I've had this experience with, with friends of mine who have written scripts and I, you know, specifically Louie where it's just like, why would you make this movie?
Marc:Like it's almost unreadable and ridiculous.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they do it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there's a commitment to the abstract.
Marc:And I think there's a sense of discovery on Astor's part as he's doing this thing that is active.
Marc:Like, you know, you talk about most directors and everything is planned.
Marc:And I'm sure he had it planned.
Marc:But I don't know that he knew how that was all going to fit together or whether it would.
Marc:And I don't know that he cared ultimately.
Marc:Obviously, he had to edit it and make decisions.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I think he was on some sort of search and journey for himself that you really see in Bo where, you know, he really kind of pushed the envelope.
Guest:Well, I've seen him describe it as a Jewish Lord of the Rings.
Guest:And, you know, obviously it has kind of overtures to the Odyssey or any kind of epic quest, right?
Guest:But this idea that it's very specifically rooted in like a Jewish boy's travel home to his mother.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And the idea that that can seem... For her funeral, right?
Guest:What's that?
Guest:Wasn't it for her funeral?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, at first not, right?
Guest:But then because he misses his plane... Oh, he couldn't get there.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He finds out she was killed by a falling chandelier, which you then find out is not the case.
Guest:But...
Guest:But yeah, like I just thought like, well, that's an interesting thing that to him, that is the equivalent of Frodo trying to bring the ring to Mount Doom.
Guest:He has to get home to his mom with all the anxiety and fear that he has.
Guest:I also have a friend who described the movie as one of the great representations of anxiety that like he was saying like,
Guest:The day that he saw the movie, he had just had a complete meltdown spiral because he lost his keys, couldn't find them.
Guest:And he was his wife was not at home and he had just dropped his kids off at school.
Guest:And he thought, oh, no, I left the keys at school.
Guest:And now somebody from the school is going to pick them up.
Guest:And, you know, they now have access to our house and all this stuff that went through his head out of anxiety.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he goes and sees the movie and the inciting incident in the film is exactly that, that he loses a pair of keys and does not feel like he can leave the house.
Guest:And, and that sets off this whole chain of events.
Guest:And of course my friend found the keys then in the, the, the door, right?
Guest:Like the keys that he thought he lost.
Marc:Well, that's interesting that there is something about, you know, the, because I'm going through it now, the executing, uh,
Marc:The full arc of anxiety fantasies.
Marc:And I and I think that in doing that in Bo, you know, I don't even know if you necessarily disarm them, but you can sort of splay out the kind of, you know, renegade malignant imagination of an anxiety ridden brain.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like, if you like, you take those imaginary things that people catastrophize and make them all real.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So like he has this situation where he has to run out of the house, right?
Guest:Cause he feels like he's going to die from the medicine he just took and he has no water.
Guest:So he runs over and he's trying to get the water.
Guest:And while he's getting the water, the entire neighborhood goes into his house to party.
Guest:No real, no real reason, but they just get in there having a party.
Guest:And then he has to sleep on the fire escape.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:While they're in there, like all of that stuff is presented in the movie as though it's really happening, even though it like feels to us like, well, this must all be metaphorical, right?
Guest:This didn't actually happen to a dude.
Marc:Well, I think what it is, is that maybe, and I'll ask him, the experiment was to sort of like in any given moment of anxiety about something your mind is generating, why not just go for it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And illustrate all of them.
Yeah.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Like, what is the worst thing that can happen?
Marc:What if someone breaks into my house?
Marc:What if many people breaks into my house?
Marc:What if they start spray painting and partying in my house?
Marc:How will I get them out of there?
Guest:What if when I take a bath, there's a guy hanging above the bath?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like, yeah, I think it was a sort of a kind of poetic meditation on the horrors of anxiety.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I totally.
Guest:And, you know, that's not everybody's cup of tea for three hours.
Guest:I remember sitting there in that theater being like, I fucking love this and I will never recommend it to anyone.
Guest:Like I felt like it was one of those movies that like, I am not going to be responsible for, for what you take in.
Guest:Like, like I felt like there's a very good chance.
Guest:Every, every person will have a different reaction to this movie and some of them will vehemently hate it.
Guest:And so like, I would, I will not be the one who told you to go spend three hours with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I like it.
Marc:And then watching Eddington, which is another completely different movie.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's interesting to me.
Guest:What, what do you think it falls under the category of then if it's, if it can be categorized?
Marc:I didn't know how to frame it or what to expect.
Marc:And, and, and in watching it, you know, I knew I was in this zone that he likes to take you in where it's not some matter, a matter of not knowing what's going to happen.
Marc:It's a matter of, of like, why?
Marc:Like, you know, he's choosing characters to illustrate the shift in cultural and political
Marc:And just regular life, everything that happened during the early pandemic, all the sort of factions that were coming at us in different from different sort of areas.
Marc:Areas of thought and politics, you know, masks, no masks.
Marc:Do you die?
Marc:Do you not die?
Marc:Is it real?
Marc:Isn't it real?
Marc:You know, is this all part of a conspiracy?
Marc:What's the government's part in this?
Marc:Like all that stuff is sort of being played out in this small town in New Mexico where Joaquin plays the sheriff.
Marc:And he's kind of a legacy.
Marc:He's married to the old sheriff's, the last sheriff's daughter, who's played by Emma Stone.
Marc:And that genius actress who was in The Penguin, that woman who played the mother, I don't know her name, but boy, is she fucking good.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:She's a theater actor.
Marc:I can't remember her name either.
Marc:She plays Emma Stone's mother.
Marc:And then you have that guy Butler.
Marc:What's his first name?
Marc:Oh, from Elvis, Austin Butler?
Marc:Austin Butler plays sort of this Russell Brand character.
Marc:And then, you know, Pedro Pascal plays the liberal current mayor.
Marc:And it's just a small town dealing with everything that was being dealt with in the early pandemic, from the disease, from the masks, from the conspiracy theories, from the hucksters, to the Black Lives Matter protests, to the sort of, you know, liberal young white people, you know, protesting.
Marc:Like there's a lot going on in it.
Marc:And I didn't quite know what to make of it.
Marc:I knew that it was all there.
Marc:But when you really kind of take it all in and then think back on it, it's kind of brutal and brilliant.
Marc:And the end is a real fucking, it's a real wallop.
Marc:in a lot of ways.
Guest:What would you say then, if we're operating on this thesis, and as you're about to talk to him, where all of these movies have a kind of personal exploration, or at least some digging on a personal level, whether or not it actually was something he can relate to autobiographically, but with hereditary kind of being about
Guest:the inherited mental illness that's passed down through families, with Midsommar being something specifically about the curdling of a relationship and the inability of people to connect and communicate during grief.
Guest:And Beau is afraid, clearly being about, as we said, anxiety, but also the kind of inextricable neurosis that is linked to your birth parents.
Guest:What does this movie, Eddington, as someone who's seen it, kind of say to you about him, if anything?
Yeah.
Marc:Oh, I think it's really, I think at the core of it, at least in reaction to what happens to it, what happens in the movie, it's about trauma and abuse.
Marc:I don't know what that means to him or what trauma necessarily drives from, but I think at the core of this movie is this suggestion that Emma Stone was sexually abused.
Marc:And the story that was sort of in the family was that Pedro Pascal's character, though you don't have an age on it, was the one who did it when she was in her teens.
Marc:And I don't know how old he would have been.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you have the sheriff who believes that the mayor wants, you know, sexually abused.
Marc:took advantage of his wife.
Marc:And now he's the mayor.
Marc:And Joaquin is a kind of impotent character.
Marc:He's not like the old man.
Marc:He's not like Emma's father.
Marc:He's not a tough guy.
Marc:He's kind of a legacy that took the job.
Marc:He's very diplomatic.
Marc:He doesn't know how he feels about most things.
Marc:And then there's this whole other element of the mother who is off the rails with conspiracy theories and is the propagator of the story about Pedro Pascal's character.
Marc:And then, you know, there's bigger forces, corporate forces involved through the mayor about, you know—
Marc:selling off land to do a kind of a cloud factory, a cloud storage factory that would bring jobs in.
Marc:There's a lot of layers on this thing.
Marc:But at the core, the shift in personality on behalf of –
Marc:Joaquin, who is kind of an impotent, indecisive and passive, you know, sheriff and force in the movie, is finally driven over the edge.
Marc:And I guess if you were to categorize the movie, and it wasn't my take on it, but I saw a kind of headline of a film review that it is a Western.
Marc:And I think that's probably the way to look at it.
Guest:Hmm.
Guest:Well, yeah, that seems like an interesting way that, you know, he enters into this as a genre portal.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Just like he does with the horror.
Guest:Yeah, and that Joaquin is going to save the town.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But, you know, without knowing what happens, it definitely seems like the...
Guest:of the town as it would have been done in like high noon that through this type of prism is completely morally compromised.
Marc:Totally morally compromised, completely crazy.
Marc:And, you know, you don't really know like how it's going to end.
Marc:But all the forces that were talked about during COVID and now in terms of political discourse are all relevant to it.
Marc:And even some old school kind of stuff about...
Marc:native land and about, you know, kind of corporate interests, you know, bringing money to the economy.
Marc:Like it operates on so many levels, but ultimately you have this painfully flawed, you know, protagonist, which is Joaquin.
Marc:So I think that, you know, you get all those sort of mythic and real trauma levels working as sort of the emotional foundation of why the action takes place.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, you know, what's interesting is that he seems like the kind of guy who I know very closely from people here in New York, people who I am friends with and then people who I've just seen around ever since I was, you know, young post-college guy going to New York City theater shows.
Guest:He seems more like a playwright.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:to be a guy who went into art school and, uh, and film and went into filmmaking from an early age.
Guest:Like I see an alternate universe where all of these movies are plays.
Guest:Like they, they have the, uh, a very direct, um, kind of structure and tone of, you know, experimental theater.
Guest:Uh, he just so happens to bring to bear on them his skills as a director.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I think that's a good observation.
Marc:I would agree with that, though Bo is afraid it would be a very long play.
Marc:Weird to make people sit through all those huge balls.
Marc:But I mean, I think that kind of works with, but that was really one of the more theatrical elements.
Marc:I mean, that would be great in a play.
Marc:The big dick?
Marc:Yeah, the giant dick.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I mean, when that rolled out, that'd be the beginning of the last act there.
Guest:Yeah, it's like Little Shop of Horrors.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, no, that makes sense that he has a theatrical sensibility in that the dialogue does not have to honor the story per se.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And Joaquin, it's kind of interesting to see what...
Marc:you know, what he makes of things that he uses.
Marc:And Emma Stone and, you know, Austin Butler, you know, and Pedro Pascal, these are, you know, these are heavyweights.
Marc:And he kind of let them do what they were going to do.
Marc:And just to see, I guess it's just to see the collapse of people's unprincipled minds into, you know, kind of a,
Marc:This malignant bullshit and how that makes them act is also what the vulnerability of people to, you know, to information and and con jobs.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, is sort of part of it, too.
Marc:It's really loaded up.
Marc:I don't know what what are people saying about it?
Guest:I think it's just like Bo's Afraid.
Guest:I think it's a pretty polarizing movie.
Guest:I have to admit, I haven't been that tapped in.
Guest:Having been away, I only see some headlines here and there, and I try not to read reviews of movies I haven't seen.
Guest:So I don't really know what the reaction is.
Guest:You're really the first person I'm hearing about it from in any detail.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's very provocative in that you really have to reckon with this scenario with a bunch of information that we all kind of know.
Marc:We're all familiar, you know, if you're in the loop with, you know, rational and real information.
Marc:You know, this is the kind of conversations you're having every day about what's going on in the country.
Marc:And this is sort of the source point
Marc:of how it blew up.
Marc:It's almost like ground zero of how whatever's happening now took hold in some ways on these very personal levels.
Marc:I mean, he doesn't pull any punches with anybody.
Marc:He doesn't make the left look good either.
Guest:Now, you guys have somewhat of a connection in that he spent a lot of time growing up in Santa Fe.
Guest:Is there a Santa Fe-Albuquerque-like divide?
Guest:Did you find that it's a big difference?
Marc:Well, no, Santa Fe...
Marc:It was just always sort of like, you know, at some point when I was a kid, you know, it was like, you know, movie stars were moving there.
Marc:It was kind of a rich people's playground.
Marc:And it definitely had the sense of, you know, a small town where, you know, people with money would go to do this Southwest thing.
Marc:It's very beautiful too.
Marc:In terms of where it's situated.
Marc:But in terms of like a high school rivalry or something, no.
Marc:It's just Santa Fe has always been a heightened kind of, you know, kind of she-she place for, you know, carpetbaggers.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But it's not like, it's not like there are some parts of the Southwest where you're like, well, that, that's just an extension of Texas right there.
Guest:And we never liked them.
Marc:No, no, no, no.
Marc:That's, that's down South.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:Santa Fe is definitely, uh, you know, full of artists and that can afford to live there.
Marc:There's definitely a working class there.
Marc:That's very new Mexican, but it has been a, a kind of, um, uh, uh, a, a, what's the word I want?
Marc:Um,
Marc:It has been kind of a... No, it was more of a rich bohemian playground, certainly.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I was always pretty sure that, and this wasn't even just from seeing Bo is Afraid, I was always pretty sure you would connect with the guy or at least see something in his work that made it seem likely that you would talk to him.
Guest:Then I definitely thought that after I saw that movie...
Guest:And my gosh, if you ever thought you had issues of dealing with your parents after kind of exposing them through your art, through your comedy, I can't imagine how this guy, if his parents are still alive, which I assume they are, how, how did he like talk to them after making Bo is Afraid?
Guest:Like that's, that seems like a hell of a, an indictment on your, your family.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know how much he sort of, you know, exaggerated.
Marc:You know, it seems like, you know, the idea of a jazz musician and a poet is not a sort of standard kind of domineering judgmental environment that in my mind, I would think that there was sort of encouragement and, you know, kind of an understanding of an artist's life.
Marc:So, but, you know, who the hell knows?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you will find out in a short amount of time and then everyone will hear that interview next week.
Guest:Cool.
Cool.