WTF Oscar Nominee Special 2024
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Okay, how's it going, folks?
What's happening?
You want me to do the whole thing?
But this is a special episode.
Let's do this!
How are you?
Everybody alright?
Special episode.
So, we did one of these last year, and people liked it, so we're doing it again.
It's basically Oscar-centric, but by way of the history of this show...
As usual, a lot of the year's Oscar nominees have been on the show for long talks about their lives and careers and stuff.
Fourteen of this year's nominees have been WTF guests in the past.
This is one of those exciting things where I don't even realize...
Because I'm just in the day.
I'm moving forward.
Sometimes I don't even remember the people we've had on, but this is amazing.
We're going to kick it off here with Paul Giamatti, who was nominated for Best Actor for The Holdovers.
This was a talk that was so good, we made it our 1500th episode.
Do you have any of your movies that you look at and you're like, oh my God, what was that?
Yeah.
Probably.
I don't know.
I don't watch a whole lot of them.
But like weird, some of the weird, yeah.
I mean, I did this kids movie that's probably the weirdest thing.
Really?
Yeah, I did this movie called Big Fat Liar.
Yeah.
That's like kids, generations of people have seen this thing.
It's just bizarre.
Yeah.
I mean, it's really strange.
Yeah.
Well, maybe that's going to be one of those movies when these kids grow up like, I had no idea what that was about.
Oh, no.
Totally.
That would be amazing.
If that was their fucking... If that was their Paris, Texas.
And their blue velvet.
I'd love that, actually.
That would be great.
I've never even thought that that's going into people's kids' heads and it might be the same thing.
I've never thought about that.
That is fucking some bizarre thing that's going to haunt a kid.
Of course it is.
I know, but I never really think of that.
I was recently exploring the fact that my grandparents accidentally took...
Me and my brother, when they were visiting us in New Mexico, to see Deliverance, not knowing what it was.
Like, when it came out.
Sure.
And the weird thing about that, though, Paul, was that, like, I remember the rape scene.
But all I remember, like, because all I remember was there was a man in his underwear.
Right.
You know, they're making him make noises.
Yeah, right.
That's all I remember.
And then I watched it again recently.
I'm like, holy fuck.
Holy shit.
They really raped that guy.
That movie's terrifying.
But my child brain didn't register it.
No, you didn't get it.
Yeah, exactly.
No, you just didn't get it.
My mother did that stuff, took us through like wildly inappropriate things like that.
I'm glad because it went in, you know what I mean?
Like I absorbed it and that's cool because something went in there in an interesting way, but I didn't know what the fuck was going on.
I remember seeing the conversation.
Yeah, that's a hard movie.
And it was terrifying to me.
It was just scary.
I was like, I don't know what's going on.
I have no idea what's going on.
But that guy's just taken apart his entire house.
Yes, I don't know what's going on.
But it terrified me.
Yeah, yeah.
Because I absorbed the menace of it.
Because of the obsession of it.
I got the menace of it.
Right, right, right.
Nothing else.
And that's a very, like, mental menace.
Yeah.
Yeah, you feel the menace of it even as a little kid.
So you go to Yale undergrad?
Yeah.
And you study what?
I studied English.
I ended up studying English.
Did you take your dad's class?
No, he was not there anymore.
Oh, he wasn't?
No.
No, he'd left by then.
Where'd he go?
He sort of didn't do anything for a little while.
Was that a weird time?
Probably for him it was, yeah.
Were your parents together?
Yes, they were.
Yes, yes, they were together.
I guess, I don't know.
Sometimes I'm like, probably would have been better not to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, he took like, he took a couple, maybe a year or two before he...
Yeah.
Became the baseball commissioner?
Before he went into baseball.
But he was the president of Yale.
He was.
For years?
No, not for that long.
I think most of those guys stay in that job for years.
Yeah.
I don't think he liked doing it.
It's hard to be a bureaucrat in academia.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My buddy's a... Not fun, I don't think.
He's a writer.
He's a teacher at Columbia, and he's a brilliant guy.
Yeah.
Sam Lipsight.
Yeah.
But when you hear about what it takes to be a tenured guy and just to deal with school stuff... No, like I said, it's a shark tank.
And it's like, I don't think he... I think he thought that was going to be maybe more enjoyable than it was, and it wasn't.
Yeah, because you're a manager.
You're a manager at best.
And it's like you're just a money... You're raising money the whole time.
So when you did undergrad, did you learn anything?
What was your focus?
I guess like American sort of 19th century American stuff like like Poe and Melville.
Oh, really?
Which are stuff I like to read.
So that was easier.
I was a romantic literature.
It was my focus undergrad.
But both years for the both semesters of the focus, it was at nine in the morning.
Yeah, it was.
tough going dude so you mean like like reading like uh like shelly byron and byron yeah i can't read poetry it makes no sense and i was cramming it and like i'm not i think i might still have an incomplete i'm pretty sure i probably do i'm pretty sure i probably it was i think was a paper on blake oh yeah well that stuff actually i can read that's sort of some of that makes sense yeah but yeah
Well, yeah, it's a very simple language.
But then there are the drawings.
And then there's just books upon books of analysis.
And I'm like, what are they seeing?
I know.
Why are you?
Well, that's a whole other thing is the critical shit I couldn't read.
So it was good because I was reading like Edgar Allan Poe.
I'm reading like horror stories.
So that was good.
But then you get done with that and you decide, like, I don't want to teach?
Well, because I think the thing that I did...
I don't know that I learned much about it, but I did a lot of extracurricular theater undergraduate.
That's really what I ended up doing.
So like the non-theater school theater company.
Yeah.
So that's what, yeah.
Like what plays you do?
Whatever.
You would do.
I did Indian Wants of Broncos.
That kind of thing a lot.
Like people did Hurley Burley and stuff like that a lot.
I didn't do that.
Zoo Story.
We did Zoo Story.
We did Glengarry Glen Ross.
Oh, that's brilliant.
Yeah, that was bold because I think they didn't have the rights to it when we did it.
Nothing like a bunch of 19 girls doing Wenger.
Totally sitting around in trench coats trying to be like old Jews from Chicago.
No, totally.
We powdered the white powder in your hair, the whole thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Fantastic, though.
Fantastic.
I mean, so great that we had the fucking balls to do it.
Everyone's parents loved it.
Absolutely.
And who knows?
Maybe it was good.
Maybe it was good.
Maybe just maybe it was good.
But stuff like that.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, whatever.
But you took to it.
You were like, oh, yeah.
Well, yeah, I really enjoyed doing that.
I think probably if I learned anything, but that's what I did.
Yeah.
That was episode 1500 with Paul Giamatti.
Another Best Actor nominee was on last year when he was making the rounds for Oppenheimer.
I didn't know, like a lot of times with actors, I'm not even sure they can talk.
But this was great.
Here's me and Killian Murphy.
So...
The relationship with Nolan is like six movies long now.
Yep.
I mean, what have you learned from that guy?
How does he work?
I think he's kind of like, I think he might be the perfect director.
You know, he's got all of the facets that you need in the perfect director.
He's amazing with actors.
He's incredibly brilliant visually.
He writes the things himself.
and they're made for the theaters.
You know, they are like event movies, but they challenge you.
You know, I love the way he presupposes a level of intelligence in the audience.
Yeah, it doesn't happen often.
No, and he knows the audience aren't dummies, and he knows the audience is
can keep up and he knows the audiences want to be provoked and challenged and i love working with him and he really pushes it you know he expects the best from you and he he's rigorous at everything and like demanding um the sets are huge too i mean the sets are huge but here's the weird thing the sets are huge but it feels like being on an independent movie there's just chris and the cameraman one camera always unless there's some huge huge set piece yeah
and the boom opened and that's it.
And there's no Video Village, there's no monitors, there's nothing.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
He doesn't use any of that?
None of that.
I mean, he's a very kind of analog filmmaker.
Interesting.
You know?
Even on Dunkirk?
Mm-hmm.
Man.
Yeah, and I didn't see a frame of this movie until I saw the first teaser.
Of Oppenheim?
Yeah, I hadn't seen anything.
And I've never seen anything on Chris's films until I see the trailer or the finished thing.
Really?
Yeah, and he rarely does ADR.
I've done six movies with him.
I think I've done like...
four lines of ADR.
No shit.
Yeah, because he records sound really well and he believes in production, you know, production sound and he creates an environment for the actors.
There's no green screen.
There's no, none of that.
I found it to be so, like, the guy, there was, you know, it was a press screening so it wasn't packed.
It wasn't a premiere or anything.
Yeah.
But whoever was running it was like, all right, this is a 70 millimeter print on film the way Chris wanted you to see it.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And I felt like it does make a difference.
I think it does.
And I was highly aware of it for some reason in that movie.
I know there's other movies that are shot like that.
I mean, Tarantino shoots like that.
Yeah.
You know, it's like, you know, it's different.
The effect is different.
I mean, Chris says it's kind of like 3D without being 3D.
I guess.
To me, it just reminds me of like movies, theaters when I was a kid.
Just a big old screen, you know, where you feel like you're really at an event.
Yeah.
But like the opportunity and like for me, like as look, I did one scene with De Niro in passing in Joker.
And I'm sure he has no recollection of me.
It didn't matter.
It was just whatever it was.
But there is that awareness.
And I imagine even though you've done dozens of movies at this point, there's awareness.
These are just people.
And certainly you know that actors are painfully people.
Yes, I do.
But you're aware that sort of like, all right, game on.
I'm sitting here with Casey Affleck.
And we've got to do this thing.
Yeah.
And I always liked seeing that guy.
Yeah, man.
He's so good in the movie.
That was great.
That was a big scene.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he came in and he was ready to go.
And it was, again, all these stupid kind of analogies.
Yeah.
It does raise your game.
It does make you better when you're working with the best actors.
It does do that.
And it's true.
And this was a...
perfect case in point like you have these some of my favourite actors in the world because they all want to work with Chris so they all come in and they play these parts and the other thing about the movie I think is because you've got a lot of movie stars in it but every time every character they play they're very significant characters so it doesn't feel like cameos if you know what I mean because they're all playing these real life characters who had a big impact on the world
And also, I didn't feel the movie star-ness of anybody.
Yeah.
And that's sort of a miracle.
But it's just so interesting that you had to carry this movie in this character that operates at a level, right?
Like, you know, you definitely have—you're holding on to this stuff that you're talking about.
And his affectation is what it is, which doesn't—you know, he is who he is all the way through.
And then you just—all of a sudden, these other actors, like, you got to deal with Downey, steps into this thing.
Yeah.
And I imagine that you're just holding on to the character you've built in certain moments.
You have to be aware of that.
Yeah.
Like you're sort of like, all right, just stay focused.
Yeah, of course.
But it was a joy, man.
It was a joy working with these actors.
Yeah.
Like I really felt, I'll probably never get a chance to work with an ensemble of actors like that again.
It'll probably never happen.
So I just, I enjoyed every minute of it.
And again, you know, we talked about like learning.
You look at all those amazing actors, you work with all those amazing actors, you're always learning.
You're always figuring stuff out as an actor.
And this was like...
Just special.
That's Killian Murphy from episode 1453.
Now, OK, so Best Actor nominee Jeffrey Wright was on the show back when we were still doing remote interviews because of the pandemic.
But it was still great.
This is from episode 1126.
Jeffrey is nominated for his performance in American fiction.
Yeah.
It's interesting because I'll ask actors about process and, you know, how ultimately everyone's going to put together their own, you know, set of tools or however they're going to do it.
You know what I mean?
There's no way to say like, well, you do this, you do this, you do this because everyone's going to do it their way.
But, you know, from taking from all these different people, you know, and adding it to, you know, your natural ability.
I mean, what do you remember every time that you go into a role that
How do you start and where did you get that information?
Do you look back at the people that guided you early on?
Is there any bit of information that really stands out as like, that was it?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think you put it all in your pocket, you know what I mean?
And you pull out as needed and it all kind of merges together, you know?
So many great influences and also other actors that you work with.
I mean, for example, you talk about Shakespeare.
One guy who taught me perhaps more than any other one individual about performing Shakespeare is someone you probably wouldn't expect.
And that's Chris Walken.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Again, this guy, Joe Dowling, gave me a gig, you know, bit part, Shakespeare in the Park.
I think I was, I don't know, 23 years old, whatever it was.
And Chris...
Walken played Iago to Raul Julius Othello.
And I talk about this with with like if I if I talk to, you know, young actors now, you know, sometimes I'll go and, you know, talk.
to a class.
And I'll talk about Walken, particularly relative to Shakespeare, because, you know, Walken's from Queens, right?
You know?
Yeah, yeah.
And Chris... A song and dance man.
It's Chris.
Yeah, badass.
Yeah, but...
When he does Shakespeare, he's not interested in any affectation.
You know, it's Chris Walken.
But you're not hear me.
I mean, it's you know, it's and he he personalizes that language.
And just kind of destroys any unnecessary reverence for it, which is particularly important, I think, for an American actor to claim it in his own voice and in his own rhythms and his own tones.
And I mean, he's one of, if not the smartest actor I've ever seen.
had the privilege of working with.
And, yeah, you know, because, you know, there's nothing more annoying than seeing an American actor do some kind of faux, fake-ass, British, weird, half-British accent when doing Shakespeare.
Sure.
I mean, it was just so unnatural and weird, you know.
Okay, so back in 2016, we had Annette Bening on the show.
That's episode 769, and she's nominated this year for Best Actress for her performance in NIAID.
Like, you've been nominated many times.
And I think you should win.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Okay, get on the phone.
No, that would be wrong.
I can't imagine.
Like, when I watch, if and when I watch the Oscars, just that horrible feeling of, like, waiting to hear.
I can't imagine that.
Yeah, it's a funny feeling.
And then you've got to be happy for them.
It's always what I'm watching.
It's like that moment.
Yeah, we all do.
Yeah, that moment.
Because that's the human experience that's the most interesting.
But I've never seen anyone go like, oh, fuck.
Actually, I think there was an actor many years ago who did stand up and throw his hat on the ground and say shit when he lost.
Really?
So, yeah, you see little glimmers of that.
I remember the first time I was nominated, I was nominated in the supporting actress category with a bunch of amazing women.
For which movie?
The Grifters.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And the other actresses.
We all got together before the show was on the air because in those days, actually, they didn't turn the cameras on.
So everyone's talking and chatting.
Right.
So we all get together in a little group and we're like, okay, whoever wins next week takes all of us out to dinner and they pay.
Yeah.
So Whoopi Goldberg won.
Yeah.
Just like a day or two later, I got a big bouquet of flowers with a card.
It said, meet at such and such a restaurant at such and such a time.
Yeah.
We show up.
One of us couldn't be there, but we were all there together.
Whoopi brings out gardenias for each of us on a tray and...
And chocolate Oscars.
I'm not kidding.
And we all had dinner.
And it was the most beautiful.
Who else was there?
Do you remember?
Lorraine Bracco, Diane Ladd, Mary McDonnell.
Mary McDonnell, me, Whoopi.
Lorraine couldn't come to the dinner.
But Mary was there.
Diane Ladd was there.
Me and Whoopi.
It was amazing.
That's sweet.
It was.
It was like one of those moments of, wow.
Well, that's so nice because that was like, again, it relates to the kind of never ending appetite of the media that, you know, everything that happens before and everything, like everybody just, you had a privacy moment.
You had a private moment.
We had a private moment.
Just you and the other actresses.
Exactly.
It was so meaningful.
My parents were with me at the awards show.
And I remember it never occurred to me.
I didn't even think about it until the very last minute.
Oh, they could actually call my name.
Yeah.
Right.
But then they didn't.
And it was really quick.
It was like, no, they didn't.
And also, that's just like one of the first awards of the night.
So then it was over really quickly.
OK, well, who cares?
I'm still here.
It's fun.
In the supporting categories, we've had a bunch of this year's nominees on the show.
One of them from back in 2021.
And this was this was actually an amazing talk.
Uh, it's with Jodie Foster.
It was during COVID.
She was at home.
I don't know.
It was just one of those things that seemed to be something that would never happen again in this way, in terms of conversationally.
Uh, Jodie's nominated for best supporting actress for Nyad.
I mean, the whole point of having a production company was to protect people, was to protect filmmakers and to protect the process and to protect the products.
That's why I called it egg, you know, that idea of sort of- Your production company.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we made some, you know, I don't think I'm the greatest producer in the world, but we made some movies that I'm really proud of.
There isn't any film that we made that I'm not proud of.
And yet at the same time, it was clear when I finished the 12 years of producing that like, yeah, I was done.
It's enough of that.
I thought Nell was a pretty gutsy movie.
It's really like to do that role.
I mean, you're.
ability or your willingness to explore certain types of vulnerability is pretty amazing.
I mean, like it must it's pretty terrifying for me to even think about, really, all of them, like the accused or Clarice or or Nell specifically, who was basic.
I mean, I know you felt a little insecure about the accused for these reasons, but did you feel uncomfortable with the vulnerability in retrospect of Nell?
I think that I was, I was, I mean, obviously I was drawn to Nell because I developed the play and, you know, got it off the ground and did all the years of work that I did to get that on screen, but I was scared of it.
She is the most unlike me of anything that I've ever played.
And I didn't know that I would have what it took.
I think that I was scared of vulnerability and scared of,
being somebody like that.
Like I thought that if I was like that, I would just explode into a million pieces.
Like I just couldn't imagine what that would be.
And I didn't really know how to create that character.
I was just so, so confused about how to create that character.
And so it really was the greatest acting lesson of my life where I realized like,
Oh, all I have to do is drink coffee and show up and it will come because it's inside.
There wasn't any books I can read particularly or research that I could do.
Like I had to just trust that when somebody said action that I would be able to be there.
And you had to let go of a lot of who you, uh, a lot of the, who I am, the construction of you.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, it didn't mean that I didn't like going to a trance or anything.
Right.
No, but you let yourself, you let yourself be unafraid.
I let myself be unafraid.
And I, I really, um, I think that I allowed myself to believe in trolls and,
And you have to believe in trolls sometimes.
And it doesn't really matter whether they're real or not.
It's because the belief is, you know, that's the whole point.
Right.
You know, when you're shepherding an audience through an experience like that, you have to be 100% authentic or the movie doesn't work.
So there's a lot of pressure that comes with that.
But there's also a lot of...
Power to the fact that it's all riding on your performance.
And if it's real, it works.
And if it's not real, it doesn't work.
Right.
And you can see parts like I like I haven't done a lot of movies, but I imagine that as somebody who's done a lot of movies, when you look back at the ones where you can say, like, I don't know if I was there.
I don't love that performance.
You just you just let it go.
Right.
I mean, you know, you can't get hung up on it.
Yeah.
Well, you can get hung up on it.
You can waste a lot of years getting hung up.
No, I don't.
I mean, that's something I learned as a child.
Yeah.
That as an actor, I just don't have any control of it and I have to just go.
And there are rituals to do that.
I feel like there's always a ritual about that, you know.
Letting go.
When I'm hanging out the window on my way to the airport after the wrap party.
Yeah.
And, you know, we wrapped at 6 a.m.
And I, like, threw all my shit in my thing.
And then there I am and I'm out the window and I undo the window.
And I realize, like...
half of me just finished this massive thing.
Like I just finished climbing Mount Everest.
So I'm like, and then the other half is like not quite back in the real life of who I am.
And there's a little fear about that.
That's the most delicious moment.
And that's like, I feel like that's a ritual for me where I just feel like, okay, yeah.
Yeah.
That's done.
Yeah.
That weird, the in-between, the relief of being in between worlds.
Yeah.
Where you don't have the anxiety of like, do I measure up?
You know, can I do it?
No, you just did it.
It's done.
It's done.
It's out of your hands.
And then 10 minutes later, or when you get off the plane on the other side in LA, suddenly you're going to be like, yeah.
Grips with anxiety that you don't measure up, you know?
Oh my God.
That was Jodie Foster from episode 1201.
A few weeks ago, we had another Holdovers nominee on the show.
Davine Joy Randolph was episode 1512.
And that was fun.
Like when you got this part, because I lived in Boston for years.
Oh, dope.
Yeah, it was okay.
Yeah.
How much time did you have to spend there?
We were there for three months, three and a half months.
But did you have to go learn it?
Boston?
Okay, so I... They wanted us to live, like, around where we were filming.
I'm from the city, so, like, I'm born and raised from Philadelphia, lived in New York, now I'm here in LA.
I am a city girl.
Yeah.
So, like, too much quiet really freaks me out.
What happens?
And it's actually not good for, like... For your brain?
Yeah, it's too quiet.
Like, I remember...
The suburbs, the first time of like spending the night over like a friend's house.
When you're a kid?
Yeah.
And I was like, what is that sound?
Isn't that weird?
It's quiet.
Yeah.
It freaked me out.
It's scarier than noise.
Yes.
Like when I, if I'm driving across country or something and you just see a house set back a little ways on its own.
What are they doing?
Exactly.
Can't be good.
No!
Those spots always freak me out.
There's probably just people sitting in there, but the idea of it... Literally makes me nervous.
Yeah, so the silence just fucks your head up.
Yeah, so I was like, nope, this is an intense movie.
We're filming it the same time of year.
Cold.
This movie's taking place.
Multiple blizzards, winter.
So it was like...
I need to be in the city.
Yeah, because it's something about the isolation.
Yeah, it was already... I mean, you're already shooting a three-hander in abandoned buildings.
Yeah.
It felt like a very well-done independent student film.
Yeah.
But it was freezing in the buildings?
Freezing because we couldn't have the heat on, right?
Because the radiators were like, ding, ding, ding, making all this noise.
Another level of the pretending.
Ooh!
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
But did you get around Boston?
Did you, like, how did you learn?
Yeah, because I lived, that's where I stayed.
In the city?
In the city.
What part?
I was, like, on 1st Street or 2nd Street.
I was, I could see the water or whatever their harbor was.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know exactly.
Charles River or the whatever.
Yeah, yeah.
And, like,
I found out like in our last five days, you know, like when you're on location, you don't know the area.
Yeah.
And then it's like that last week is like the most awesome week.
Right.
Because now you found the restaurants.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Finally.
I can.
Yeah.
Sorry.
But no, I. Yeah.
So I. But it was tricky for me because.
they are speaking contemporary boston dialect and so i needed to both be around them and then also be like you know what i mean because yeah my dialect that i'm doing in the movie is similar but also very different due to time period yes yes so it's like how'd you figure that out
With a dialect coach?
A dialect coach.
She said that like 1970, what was it, 70?
Yeah, so it was like late 1960s.
We went for late 19.
The movie literally takes place on like December 69 until January 70.
Oh, my God.
So it was the biggest.
So we did YouTube videos of like interviews and looking at like little clips of like.
Yeah, the best thing is I call it YouTube University.
But truly, the best thing is finding.
Like news reporters interviewing people.
So we was down there and they were talking about, you know what I mean?
That's a great.
And then Donna Summer.
Boston?
Boston.
Come on.
Hardcore.
Really?
Hardcore Boston.
So I'm looking at like her Johnny Carson interviews.
Wow.
And that was like my go-to gal.
And then the realtor who helped me find the place.
She was just so lovely.
Yeah, yeah.
Like hospitable.
Yeah.
I was like little Miss Boston, and I would just listen to her all the time.
And there were certain things that I was like, can I just record you say this word and this word?
Because she was older, so she was a little bit closer to me than me going to Dunkin' Donuts.
And I'm like, ah.
Yeah, yeah.
Does it get more intense as time goes on?
Is it father, like that?
Yeah.
Like, or what's the difference?
The biggest difference is that pacing.
Yeah.
Because like the rhythm and the cadence.
Yeah, yeah.
So you get it.
Like, it's more so like the lilts and the rhythm and the cadence.
I lived there for years.
Yeah.
And I think it depends when Bostonians are upset.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Things get, like, exaggerated and really bright.
Like, five.
And you're like, really?
Wow.
You don't want to stop it?
You're still going.
I used to live in an apartment in Somerville.
And, you know, across the street, there was a drama all the time.
Drugs or whatever.
Of course.
And there was always, like, it seemed like every other night, there was a girl on the street yelling at her friend upstairs.
Yeah.
Jennifer!
Yeah.
You know, like, five.
What is that?
Yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So who is this dialect coach?
Tom Jones.
So he's done like, he's known to work with Nicole Kidman on almost everything.
Really?
Yeah.
Did he make you that like phonetic sheet?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I'm a classically trained opera singer, so I know IPA, you know, so in a way of helping.
What's IPA?
I think it's called the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like the diphthones and the umlauts and stuff like that.
You know those?
Yeah, from opera.
Yeah.
Yeah, and then when I went to Yale, they made us learn it, and my speech and dialect close was very frustrated with me, because I'm a musician first, so my ear is sharp.
So I could speak, and she was like, no, write it down.
It's like music theory, you know what I mean?
We could do it all day, but...
Write it down.
The worst.
I don't know what you're talking about.
And so they really, but yeah, no, so he's great.
I met him on the set of doing Billie Holiday because he worked with Andrew Day for Billie Holiday.
And so I was always like, if ever it could work out, I would love to work with that man.
And it was perfect because I did that.
And then right after that, worked with him on Rustin to do Mahalia Jackson.
So he's great because he's so music based.
Well, you've done a lot of time traveling.
I like time traveling.
It's the best.
Right?
Especially, you know, because some of those things like the Billie Holiday movie and Rustin is just so loaded with, you know, with the tension and evolution of people.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
One more Best Supporting Actress nominee, America Ferrara, who's nominated for Barbie.
She was just on.
That was episode 1514.
But with the monologue, which is like literally a page of dialogue.
Yeah.
I was like, okay, okay.
We didn't really rehearse it that way.
We talked about it a lot.
But we didn't rehearse it.
What was the conversations about mostly?
Themes or like what?
Finding it?
It was...
it was a lot about we shared a lot back and forth between like poetry and songs and episodes of TV shows and articles and op-eds like everything that kind of felt like related to the monologue we spent months kind of sharing to kind of have a common language around what is the essence of what's happening here and then and then I remember closer to shooting we had a rehearsal at her house that she was staying at in London and
we sat on her couch and like that felt more like it was, um, making it incredibly personal, you know, which I don't know how to do it any other way as an actress, but to make it deeply personal.
And, and that was about kind of us relating it to us, you know, she and I, and like what, how this plays in our life.
And, and, um, and then on the day I was like, Oh,
what is what is this supposed to sound like you know I was like is is this supposed to be funny or is it just drama or is it you know is it fat you want me to keep it up like is it supposed to sound like everything else in Barbie land and and she really just like was the only time like looked at me and was like I just want you to find it
And she gave me so much freedom.
And there were takes that had hysterical laughing.
There were takes that had hysterical tears.
There were incredibly angry takes.
And, you know, it went so many different places.
And I did it so many different times.
And I had no idea.
I'm like, eh.
I'm given, I'm literally like, and not because I was like looking for, it was just like, okay, I'll just drop into it and see where it goes this time.
You know, it wasn't like, now I'll do a funny take.
It was just like, each time it was just find a thread, pull it and follow the thread.
And they were all subtly different.
And they were all very different.
Wow.
So when it was done, I was like, she's going to have to decide and she's going to have to find it.
And, and, and, and I was, you know, very confident that, that she would.
And that it was in there, that it was, you did it.
And I think the other question was like, how does this, like, how does this fit into the rest of the movie?
Right.
Well, I mean, it seems to me like now before I say that, but did you add stuff on the day?
Yeah.
We didn't add stuff on the day.
No.
There was no improv.
Oh, yeah.
We had talked about certain... So you built it out.
We built some things in.
We tweaked and... Right.
But it seems like from months before, she knew it was going to define the third act, if not be the centerpiece of the movie.
Yes.
When she first sent me the script, she said, I wrote this thing that I'm calling Gloria's Aria.
And it's the moment that...
Everything shifts and changes everything.
And so from the beginning, she was like.
So she knew.
There's this thing and I want it to be you.
And it was just felt like a, it just felt like a dream.
Like it's just something I never expected.
But your responsibility in the movie is kind of, I'm just thinking out loud now.
I mean, you are the human.
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
The only human.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And my daughter, yeah, Ariana.
Because the corporate guys aren't human.
No, they're like, yeah.
So the whole movie hinges on your humanity in a way.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, yeah, you're welcome.
You're welcome for representing all of humanity.
I...
it was challenging.
You know, what was challenging was how hard it was to not give in to the energy of Barbie land.
Like everyone's like dancing and singing and it's Barbie land and everything's heightened.
And I'm like, I want to do that.
And it's like, Oh, I'm not here to do that.
I'm here to be the human warts and all.
And, um, and so, yeah, there was the harder, the, the, not the harder, but the,
The thing I had to unlock for myself in playing the character was, here is a woman who has a childlike imagination and desire and a need to play and suspend disbelief and believe that Barbie's coming for her and taking her into the real world.
Sure.
Like there's a childlike yearning there.
And she's deeply, deeply human, frustrated.
She's a real woman.
She knows the disappointment of life.
Challenges.
Challenges.
And also, you know, her teen daughter is, like, pulling away from her and making her feel kind of rejected.
So, you know, all these very real human feelings coupled with the fantastical energy of a child in one woman's body.
And when I started out, that seemed like, how am I going to play that?
And actually, what I realized is, like,
I am that.
And, and we're just so not used to seeing women get to be all those things.
Yeah.
Like that she gets to be taken serious and seriously and be real and, and be considered deep and smart and all the things and get to seek love.
play and childlike wonder and and so it was sort of like in a way through the process of being gloria finding for my giving myself america the permission to be more of what i am yeah that's great so it was a really um deep journey life-changing yeah i would yeah of course yeah
And finally, to round out the supporting actors, here's some of my talk with Mark Ruffalo from episode 1513, who's nominated for his performance in Poor Things.
I mean, I think what you respond to in Duncan... Like, Duncan can be played just straight across the board, pretty much that way.
The guy in Poor Things?
Yeah, yeah.
And...
To drop down into that, really drop down into his sort of insecurity.
And he becomes empathetic.
Sure.
Yeah, there's a couple of scenes.
Horrible narcissist.
Well, that's why it's hilarious, because you do feel empathy for him.
Yeah.
Wow.
I just realized the bipolar must have helped with the Hulk.
A little bit.
Buddy, these doublings keep showing up in my life all the time.
I mean, I'm always playing these like dual people that have one side and then another side.
And the Hulk is like the, you know, just the absolute clear manifestation of that.
Yeah, yeah.
And you approach that with humanness.
Yeah, you try.
Yeah.
I mean, that's what we hold on to in films, you know?
I mean, you only can do a bit for so long.
Yeah.
I mean, bits are fun and just pure comedy.
Sure.
It works really well, you know?
But I'm always looking for that a little bit deeper cut.
Have you hosted SNL?
No.
Why not?
Why not?
I'm scared.
They've offered it to you?
Yeah.
I'll never be as back.
No?
Well, I don't think Lorne Michaels likes when you say no.
Well, yeah.
Well, I guess not.
But no, so what about that?
I mean, you've done theaters?
Just scared the living shit.
I don't know.
Huh.
I don't know.
It's not the live thing, is it?
I think it was, it's a live thing, like, reading off a cue card.
That's hard.
It scares me.
Yeah.
Because I'm dyslexic.
I mean, I'm not going to lie.
Yeah.
You don't lie on this show.
Yeah.
So I'm really dyslexic.
Like, how dyslexic?
Like, I'll just get, I'll lose where I'm at on a page, you know?
Yeah.
And, you know, I'm just, when I hear about how that show works and they're changing things at the last second.
Oh, yeah.
And I want to be good on it, man.
I've been watching that my whole life.
I don't want to be the host who sucks on Saturday Night Live.
I owe Lorne Michaels more than that.
Are you one of those people that you can memorize the shit pretty much quick?
No, that's the other thing.
I have the double whammy.
I'm dyslexic and I have a hard time memorizing stuff.
I have to start so early.
With any script?
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
But that's not part of the dyslexia.
That's just you.
Right?
It's just me.
That's one of those things that you're talking about.
You can't do anything about the memory.
No, what am I going to do?
Ginkgo.
Now it's wasabi.
I chase all the memory shit.
You try?
I try everything.
I've tried everything across the board.
So what happens?
How many times do you read the script?
Well, you know, the most important reading is like that first one.
It is.
And just like immersive.
See, the way I read it, for a one hour, you know, 60 page script, 90 page script, it takes me like four hours to read it.
Right.
Okay.
Well, so that's interesting because your dyslexia enables you a type of concentration.
Yes.
That other people don't have.
Yes.
And I fall in.
I have to I have to envision every single scene.
Like I have to like see it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
To understand where I'm at.
Right.
Right.
Right.
So it takes me it takes me longer than the movie.
If you sat down and watch the movie to read.
To read it.
So it's a blessing.
You know, it's like all these things are blessings and they're curses.
Well, that's wild because so that means in order just to process the words, you know, you've got to attach the feelings and it takes, you know, it's like a full immersive experience.
Totally.
I'm living in it.
If I'm reading a book, I can't like read a script at the same time.
Otherwise, I start mixing up the worlds, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah, and you have to see yourself in everything, I guess.
Kind of.
I mean, you know, that first read is so essential because it's the first time it's coming to you so fresh.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And if you can—and you end up, like, playing that first read, I mean, in a lot of ways—
All the information, all of the spontaneity of that first read, all of the imagination kicking off, all these connections, that ends up being the most informative read of the entire thing.
Yeah, yeah.
And then would you just kind of then go scene to scene and lock in?
Yeah, yeah.
Once you do the read, you got it in your head?
Yes, then I'll go back and I'll do scene to scene.
Sometimes you want to know where you came from and where you're going in a scene.
Dude, that is the hardest thing about shooting.
Yes.
It's like, all right, so this is nine days before you were bleeding.
Yes.
And then you ran away from the explosion, and you run into this room, and, you know, it's just you really have to keep a handle on that.
I think that's the only reason you need a director or a script supervisor is because you're like, where are we?
Yeah.
Wait, where was this?
Okay, wait, wait, wait.
Right, right, right.
Okay, okay.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, but do you ever watch yourself and go like, I didn't know.
All the time.
I can't.
I mean, literally, I'm watching myself and I'm just sinking down in a chair.
But no one knows but you.
I hope so.
Going back to an episode from several years ago, Best Director nominee Yorgos Lanthimos was on back in 2019.
He's nominated this year for Poor Things and also has a Best Picture nomination for that film as one of its producers.
What was the first kind of mind-blowing moment when you were watching a film and you're like, oh, this is...
I guess Tarkovsky was one of the first filmmakers that I got to learn through film school that I didn't know anything about.
So that was in a film history class?
Yeah.
So we learned about it.
And then there's...
there's some nice, you know, during summer in Greece, there's a lot of open air cinemas.
I mean, they're not as many anymore.
Yeah.
But there are beautiful open air cinemas in various neighborhoods where you can, you know, have a little table and you eat something and you're outside surrounded by apartment buildings.
Yeah.
And you watch films.
So they would do like retrospectives.
So I would watch his films and then,
John Cassavetes was someone else.
What was it about Tarkovsky specifically that you found sort of engaging?
Well, it was just for the first time seeing like a different, it was like a different, completely different medium, you know, discovering like something new.
A vision.
Like how, you know, how can images affect you in a different way?
Right.
It doesn't have to be.
of a fast narrative and you know how poetic it can be and how you can you know lose yourself in it right engage but with your own personality there's a lot of openness to it like you can
bring your own stuff into it and, uh, see things and, uh, understand things in maybe in a different way to the, how the person next to you is, uh, experiencing the same thing at the same time.
Right.
Not everything's not explained.
Yeah, exactly.
And, uh, uh,
Yeah, the use of sound and image, it was very different for me.
And then watching right after that a John Cassavetes film, which is very different stylistically, but for me, in a weird way, it has a very similar effect, but through a different route.
Yeah, it's more a human-driven space.
The few Tarkovsky movies I've seen, it's a lot of cinematic space, but with Cassavetes, there's something heightened, but it's very engaged with people.
Yeah.
But the fact that it's so heightened also takes it to a different level.
And although it feels kind of more realistic, it kind of transcends that.
And then you enter a different space again.
Yeah.
And there's also that feeling like these people are talking and the context seems familiar to me, but I don't know what the fuck is happening.
Yeah.
What's going on with these people?
Yeah.
I think that's a good feeling, I guess.
No, again, I enjoy watching films like that.
I guess what I'm trying to do is create films like the ones that I'd like to see.
Because you watch movies constantly?
I watch a lot of movies.
I'm not like an obsessed film buff or anything, but I tend to watch the same films over and over again.
Like which ones?
I feel safe.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
They're familiar.
They're like friends.
Yeah.
I'd rather watch something that I really like than...
Which ones have you watched over and over?
Sometimes I'll just be watching TV or cable, and one will come on, and I'm in.
It doesn't even matter where it starts.
I just watched Casino again the other day.
I don't even know why.
I've seen that quite a few times.
Isn't that great?
Yeah, it's a great film.
I found that as I get older, I'm not able to watch the Head and the Vice scene as much as I do.
Like I used to be able to watch it.
You're more sensitive?
A little bit.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's weird.
I was just sort of like, I don't know if I need this tonight.
I know what's going to happen here.
The weird thing with me is like how much affected I can get by those kind of things being so much, you know, on the inside and seeing how these things are created.
Even though you know how it works.
Yeah, you know how it works?
The difficult thing is for me to be affected by these things.
And that's when I know that a film really grabbed me because I forget about the way it's made.
Yeah, you're not sitting there going, oh, I know how they did it.
I understand that shot.
I understand that.
Exactly.
When you're able to do that and be someone that is actually making film, then that's like very strong.
Right.
Oh, yeah.
That's Yorgos Lanthimos from episode 992.
So, OK, Barbie, which I loved, is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
And both writers have been on the show.
Noah Baumbach was on episode 388.
And after him, you'll hear Greta Gerwig's most recent appearance from episode 1502.
I'm sort of fascinated with people that grow up in New York, like you're a real New York kid and your parents were part of that sort of what is, I would say the mid seventies intelligentsia.
I mean, you grew up in, in the thick of it when Brooklyn was still, you know, just for those kinds of writers and not for punks and kids.
Right.
What, um, when, when, when you were just, how, how old are you now?
43 so your mother was a new york uh village voice writer who i remember reading she was a voice uh but she started writing for the voice when i was more late high school college so i didn't grow up sometimes people say oh you grew up with a critic but i didn't really feel like she kind of started doing it a little later so it was more like oh cool we get to see movies for free right what was she doing before that
She was a teacher.
She had written some short stories.
She was figuring it out.
Uh-huh.
A mom.
Yeah, figuring it out.
Right.
She had two kids, and she's like, where's my life?
Yeah.
And your old man was a writer.
Yes.
Did you get along with him?
I do get along with him very well.
Yeah.
But, yeah, he was a novelist and teacher.
Right.
Also a big film writer.
He wrote sometimes about film.
But in the 70s, there was that thing where there was almost no delineation between critic and writer.
You were kind of doing it all.
Sure.
It's personality-driven in a way.
You want to be known for that.
You're that guy that can write on everything.
A general critic of sorts.
But, yeah, because I made this movie, The Squid and the Whale, which was kind of...
I had some connection to my childhood, at least in the very straightforward way.
So people sometimes assume I don't get along with my parents, but I am close to my parents.
Was there a reaction to the squid?
I mean, I had to refresh myself because I'd seen it probably twice when it came out.
I went to the Wikipedia page of The Squid and the Whale and just reading the plot line, I kind of choked up at the end.
I don't know what the fuck's wrong with me this morning.
I don't do interviews this early sometimes.
I think I'm still a little raw.
I love the idea of the Wikipedia page will make you cry.
It did.
Because at the end, because I'd forgotten how the actual exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, how it was contextualized in the movie.
So being reminded by it and the way they sort of framed it, that this was this moment that your mother comforted you in front of this horrible thing, which I remember seeing as a kid.
And it is horrible because it's kind of dark and you can always see...
And then you go back to it.
I choked up.
That's all.
That's great.
I'm thrilled to... We don't even need the DVD anymore.
You can just read the page.
Just read the plot line.
Well, my experience with the movie...
was the first time I saw it, I was overwhelmed emotionally.
I have a thing about musicals, and I don't know if this is, would you call it a musical, but it's framed like a musical.
It could have been a musical.
Easily.
Yeah, it's almost like it's half a musical.
It wants to be a musical.
Yeah, and sort of the unity of everything and the sort of the very specific vision of it.
But I don't know what it is with me
In terms of how emotional I got in a good way about just the way the women were talking.
And I can't even like – because it speaks to a very odd thing and a very sad thing about movies in general.
Is that you realize that in mainstream movies that there's not a lot of women talking in general.
Right.
Right.
But just the fact that there was this conceit that enabled them to talk plainly and curtly, but in a very emotional and intellectual way, was kind of amazing.
It felt amazing on the set.
I have to say, it was like small things that felt amazing.
Even the scene with Margot and Ryan, and he asked to stay over, and she says, Oh, but I don't want you here.
And she just said it so like she's not being mean.
It's, you know, she's just saying exactly what she feels.
Right.
And it was so it was sort of amazing.
But because it undermines the whole expectation because there is no sexuality.
No.
In a way, because we all know that you make reference to it maybe twice.
Yeah.
That they don't have genitals.
No.
But so that interaction, which is naturally loaded with all the baggage that anyone's going to bring to it, is able to have this honesty that's devoid of sexual expectation or manipulation.
Also devoid of her...
needing to placate any ego.
Yeah.
That there's no, it wouldn't even occur to her.
Right.
To placate his ego.
Like, oh no, it's not, it doesn't enter it at all.
But that's interesting because in those scenes, you know, the male ego more so is intact.
Right.
Yes, yes, yes.
Yeah, right.
So he, you know, she doesn't acknowledge it or recognize it, but that's all they have.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
The Kens, the Kens are, it's funny, like, actually, this is Ryan.
From the very beginning, Noah and I, you know, wrote the part for him, but we didn't know him.
And it was getting him the script and then saying, like, no, no, we really wrote it for you.
Like, we wrote this for you.
He didn't believe you?
Well, no, I think he did once he started reading it because his name is all over the script.
I mean, because we'd say Ken Ryan Gosling.
But it's so funny because he's so like those guys.
There's something about those Canadians sometimes.
They're very funny.
Oh, they're so funny.
In a very specific way.
It's a non-neurotic kind of presence.
That's true.
Exactly.
And they're very good at just isolating the funny and locking in.
Ryan Reynolds is the same way.
Yeah.
You know, and it's not, there's no kind of like, though Ken had to struggle with self-awareness, the comedic element of it is just pure.
Right.
It's pure.
And it's also based in, I think he takes it seriously, which is part of what made it funny, which I had an instinct that he'd do.
And then he did it so completely.
And he said, I think the first time we talked on the phone, he said he found his daughters had Barbies.
And then he said to himself, I think they have a Ken somewhere.
And then he found it like face down in the mud next to a squished lemon.
And he's like, this is Ken.
Yeah.
No one cares about him.
And I was like, it was just instantly like, yes, that's exactly right.
So he got the emotional universe.
Right away.
Okay, look, now for our nominees from Killers of the Flower Moon.
First, a great unique talk with director of photography Rodrigo Prieto, who's nominated for Best Cinematography for that film.
This was from our recent episode 1515.
When we got back into pre-production...
I already had all these notions and started showing Scorsese images and then shooting tests and, you know, seeing what he liked.
And he was at the moment so involved in the script and all that that he kind of was letting me run free for a little bit.
with all these ideas and stuff.
And then he started getting inspired too and throwing ideas as well.
And we tested all sorts of things from pinhole photography, infrared, all sorts of things.
Well, it seems like, yeah, it seems like especially with the Native Americans that there was something about...
composition that was reminiscent of those documentary photographs of the era, you know, that were sort of trying to show examples of the pride of Native Americans.
I mean, I don't know what you drew from in terms of still photography, but did you?
Oh, yes, definitely.
It's interesting you mentioned that because that really became the basis of the look of the film, not only in composition, but I thought, okay, this movie is,
A representation of the story of the Osage and the FBI.
At the same time, we see in the film these newsreel images, for example.
And towards the end, we see a radio show telling that story.
And stories are also told with still photography.
So I thought that basing the look on still photography was a way of showing that we're also telling a story that's being remembered.
Yeah.
So I decided to, this is where we ended up, looking at the beginnings of color photography.
Yeah.
I got deep into autochrome, which is a technique to create color that the Lumiere brothers invented in Paris.
I think it was around 1917.
And so I started testing digitally.
We shot on film, but digitally emulating the look of autochrome colors.
Yeah.
It's a system of creating kind of transparencies on glass plate with potato starch and dyes and all sorts of stuff.
You were doing that?
No.
Okay.
I was emulating that.
Okay.
But I studied many autochrome photographs to understand what the color, what was happening to the colors.
Okay.
How grass looks, how an apple looks.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
How the sky looks.
So we created what's called the lookup table, LUT.
Okay.
to emulate autochrome because it's also an import from Europe, just like the white people are imported from Europe, the descendants of the settlers.
So everything that has to do with Ernest and Hale and the white folk, I use this LUT of autochrome.
And the Osage, the scenes that are just Osage, we shot completely naturalistic in terms of color.
So green is, you know, it's green and all the foliage is the actual color and the sky, you know, so it's naturalistic.
The Europeans are autochrome.
And so then, so I showed these ideas to Scorsese.
He liked it.
I shot tests.
He loved it.
And then he said, so then what?
How does the look evolve?
Yeah.
So I said, how about we pick a moment in the movie where things shift and we change to something else?
Okay, what would it be?
And so I thought, well, a technique we used actually in The Irishman before was ENR, which is a technique of printing film, motion picture film, that adds contrast and takes away color.
And it's pretty dramatic.
Yeah.
So...
So we decided that once the Molly sister's house explodes, Rita's house, and all hell breaks loose.
Now, from then on, we don't differentiate between the white people and the Osage.
Everybody is seen through E&R, high contrast.
It's...
It's harsher.
The image is harder.
So let's say the last third of the movie has that look to it.
And also the lighting, I evolved into something sometimes uncomfortable.
Like Ernest, we see him several times in hot light, either from a light bulb or in the cells or in the interrogation.
He has this ugly light coming from above.
Or in the courtroom, he's giving his deposition, whatever you call it, and I put direct sun on his face, which is a movie light, but it feels uncomfortable.
It feels hot.
It's like when you're in a place and the sun's hitting your face, you're not comfortable.
So I tried to do that with his character.
It seems like around the time of the fires, too, that De Niro set.
Yeah, that's part of that, too.
Yeah, that whole sequence.
And also, precisely around there, we allowed ourselves to be a tiny bit surrealistic because it's kind of hell now is developing everybody.
How'd you shoot that?
Was that all intentional?
Yeah.
Kind of in yes and no.
It was one of those things where you design something and something else happens that you didn't expect.
In the case of the fire scenes, we had two cameras.
One was shooting a wide shot with the house and the fires and the people moving around, just a wide shot.
And then we had another camera with a very long lens.
So it's like a, you know, like a telephoto.
Yeah.
like a telescope, let's say, shooting just some of the people at the distance.
So I had fires, special effects fires with pipes and gas and stuff, way in the distance to create silhouettes of the people.
And then we had another layer between the camera and those people that had another layer of fire through pipes.
And then I had close to the lens, off camera, just a pipe to create heat waves.
Yeah.
So I knew that with these heat waves, there'd be a distortion to the image.
But what I didn't count on was that the second layer of fire created a much stronger distortion to the image.
So we're actually seeing through the heat waves.
First of all, we couldn't get focus on the actors in the distance.
Then I asked the focus, okay, pull to the distortion.
So move the focus closer.
And then suddenly it came alive, you know.
So we were actually putting focus on the heat waves themselves.
And that's what created those weird silhouettes.
Yeah.
Wild.
Yeah.
The hell.
It was.
Yeah.
And I remember when we were shooting, we all were surprised.
And Scorsese was loving it so much that he kept shooting it and asking the choreographer to move them this way or that way.
And it was just mesmerizing.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
And he's got a very specific way of choreographing violence.
Yes.
Right?
Yes.
In fact, on The Irishman, he purposefully, violence, he wanted to shoot it and show it in the same thing, a similar thing, actually, on this film.
In a very dry manner, where it's maybe on a wide shot.
You know, it's not dramatic and in your face and sexy.
Right.
The opposite.
Yeah.
ugly and boom, it just happens, you know, in a second.
Yeah.
Done.
Yeah.
You know, and so we see some of the murders of the Osage in that manner where it's just simple.
We don't do a close-up, dramatic close-up of the guy and the gun close to the lens and the focus pulls to the, you know, trigger.
Sure.
None of that.
Yeah.
The sweat, none of that.
Yeah.
You know, so... It makes it more disturbing in a way.
Exactly.
Yeah.
From the distance.
I feel so, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Just last week, we had Lily Gladstone on.
She's nominated for Best Actress for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon.
On one hand, like maybe rewatches the film and people commit to like the little nuances in it, which kind of bowl over you the first watch, which honestly is kind of what most people give any film is one watch.
But there was this whole guardianship program set up.
Osage is being deemed incompetent of handling their own money.
Right.
Literally incompetent.
Osage is the title that was on your paperwork.
You had to have a white person appointed to be your guardian of your money.
Yeah.
And it was of benefit to a lot of people to be married to their guardian.
Right.
Because then, like, just say, hey, honey, write a check for me to do this.
Right.
And Osage women, they own everything, you know, culturally.
Right.
Oh, that's so funny.
It's sort of like musicians today.
Yeah, what do you call a musician without a girlfriend?
Broke.
Homeless.
But yeah.
But your character, you know, as it evolves in the movie, are acutely aware of this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm acutely aware of some elements of it.
The thing that was a big like clue and that came from I was so grateful in my language lessons to be given this story by Christopher Cote.
It's a it's a trickster story.
Show me Casi Coyote.
Yeah.
It's one of their trickster figures.
Sure.
And coyotes, the like hedonistic self-serving like fop.
Yeah.
And immediately, you know, asked around the community and got permission to use that analogy.
And everybody was like, oh, yeah, absolutely.
That makes sense.
For who?
For Leo?
For Leo.
Yeah.
I was like, OK, Molly sees him as this coyote.
She sees him as this trickster.
So that first scene calling him out for that, that was something that was added in later, but it's kind of like, all right, I got your number.
I know how this story ends.
Right.
Like, so Molly, you know, finding this man who self, you know, he admits it, you know, I like to make a party at night and sleep all day.
Sure.
Do you love money?
Sure.
Do you love whiskey?
Yeah.
All right, good.
Yeah.
Easy.
Yeah.
Yeah, I get you.
Yep, I get you.
I've got it.
I got your number.
I can handle you.
And you'll enjoy money, but you'll also write my checks for me.
And now you look good.
So this is this works for me.
Right.
So on both elements, there was like definitely a chemistry and a playfulness, but there was definitely a mutual benefit.
And then eventually there became real love there.
And, you know, the elements.
Yeah, that's a huge part of it is you see a man that is so committed and so much loves his kids.
There's no way you're going to suspect that he would do anything to hurt them or you.
Even if you do suspect it, you know how easy it is.
And I think a lot of people who are in relationships that are maybe not this abusive to the point of being poisoned to death.
But, you know, these dynamics.
That's a very specific.
That's a systemic gaslighting.
Yeah, absolutely.
But that as a metaphor is what it is.
Yep, absolutely.
And as a larger metaphor, committing to this love story was a way of looking at it as an analogy for the broken trust that colonization, the United States government has had with indigenous peoples.
It's been nothing but entering into trust relationships that are supposed to be mutually beneficial.
And then just the continual erosion of our sovereignty, which is what you're seeing happen to Molly.
Right.
And, you know, we work within the systems that we can.
We maintain, like, our own communities as much as we can.
When you're crippled by these situations of, you know, guardianship or being wards of the U.S.
government, of not having true sovereignty, then there's not a lot of option.
There's not a lot of other way out.
You have to be very creative.
You have to be very subversive.
You have to be very together.
And ultimately, you know, where we're at now, though—
I think contextualized differently is still directly related to that.
Yeah.
And we're still continually entering into trust relationships in good faith.
Yeah.
You know, it's like, so this, um, yeah, on a microcosm, this relationship felt like a good way to have this conversation for what the film's really about.
And what do you, and with, um,
With Marty, Marty had seen certain women.
Is that what you?
Apparently.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Amazing.
I'm not sure at what point in the process he saw it, but I know that when he did, he saw what he needed for Molly because somebody like Kelly made a film the way she makes films.
Right.
You know, I remember one of the films that I studied and loved, still one of my favorite movies to this day, the adaptation.
Oh, yeah.
Charlie Kaufman.
That's great.
Yeah.
So good.
I watched that recently.
It's so and it still holds up every performance, every character, the writing, like the meta qualities in the writing that are so funny.
Yeah.
Like I just I studied.
I've seen that film so many times and I would just study, study, study it.
Yeah.
And I remember Nicolas Cage as, you know, Charlie talking about, you know, why can't a story just be about flowers?
And I remember thinking that when I was watching, I was like, yeah, I'd watch that movie.
Then years later, here's Kelly Reichert.
It's like, oh, this movie...
It's kind of just really about horses, kind of really just about ranching.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it's saying everything.
Right.
I think like maybe the neuroses of a writer that Kaufman was kind of tongue-in-cheek handling in that film is what gets in the way of just the observational quality a lens has and just the trust that your audience, if they've sought out this kind of film, they're going to make those connections themselves.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And Nicolas Cage's relationship with that tape recorder.
Okay.
Hunched over.
Dawn of time.
We're starting here.
The sweat.
The way that he was able to sustain this comedic timing with himself.
Yeah.
That's just like that's every actor's dream is to play their own twin, I think.
Yeah, he's kind of an awesome character in real life, I imagine, as well.
Have you ever met him?
I have not, but I love watching his interviews, like when Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent came out at South By.
I remember he just went on and on in one of his interviews about, yeah, I'm wearing this because I want it to look like shortbread, because now I just really want to eat shortbread.
He's like,
He's a... Sir, you're a work of art.
Yeah, an authentic weirdo.
Yep.
Yeah.
That was Lily Gladstone, episode 1516.
And finally, folks, a talk with a nominee who sadly won't be at the award show this year.
Robbie Robertson is nominated posthumously for best score for Killers of the Flower Moon.
And I had the chance to talk to him back in 2017, episode 781.
This is the repository of all my life shit.
It's just nice to take it all in.
And, you know, it either all starts out in a garage or ends up in a garage.
Yeah, mine ended up in a garage.
That could go either way, too, the ending, in a garage.
That could either be a good thing.
But you didn't start in a garage.
Well, there was garages, you know, and this house that the band...
found up by Woodstock.
The pink house.
The pink house.
Big pink, we called it.
Yeah.
And in the basement, which I've, I don't even know that I've ever said this before, but when you went down into the basement,
It wasn't just a basement.
It was a garage, too.
Oh, really?
Yeah, because it was a big door that could open and you could drive a car in.
Okay.
But we never did because we wanted to use that space.
Right.
Making music instead.
It's funny.
I think that environment, and I was thinking about this, and we'll go back in time later.
But like, it seems to me that whatever happened in that house, you know, with Dylan and with you guys seem to set the standard for how to make that kind of music, for how to make connected sort of earthy, you know, music that evolves, you know, as a group.
I mean, it seems like now there's a whole resurgence of people aspiring to be what you guys were.
Yeah.
You know, at the time when we did the basement tapes and this idea of making music in your home.
Right.
And that was special because I'd had no real expectations to it.
So it had such a relaxed atmosphere.
Yeah.
And it even was like nobody was supposed to hear this.
Right, and wasn't Dylan sort of like he was sort of kind of considering his mortality after an accident and just kind of hanging out at the time?
You know, he had had this accident, and he'd hurt himself pretty bad.
He had to wear like a neck brace for quite a while.
But after that, and when we found this house, it became like...
The clubhouse.
Right.
You know, where guys would go every day and hang out.
Like who?
Like a street gang kind of thing.
Yeah, you guys.
But were there other people, hangers on, people around?
Some, but not too much.
Yeah.
And it was a place to go every day, like a workshop or something.
Yeah.
It turned into this.
And this had been a dream of mine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
At first, you know, because he'd only made music really in recording studios and things.
And when I took him out and showed him this, all of a sudden I could see a light went off over his head.
And he was like, can you really make music in here?
Yeah.
Can you put it down on tape?
All of this was a revelation.
And at that time, nobody was doing this.
It was really unusual.
And it was something that I had in the back of my mind that I thought Les Paul did.
Oh, really?
When he was screwing around with the electronics.
Right.
He had a house.
Right.
And he had like an echo chamber in the side of a cliff or something.
I thought, that's the way you do it.
And when I heard his records, the records that he made with Mary Ford...
Yeah.
They didn't sound like anything else.
Right.
That how do you make a record that doesn't sound like anything else and it's in your own environment?
Right.
So anyway, I'd been talking to the other guys in the band.
And to Bob about this for a long time.
And when we found that place, it was like, this is it.
This is Valhalla.
This is where we can go, hang out, and create and do something that has nothing to do with the rest of the world.
That's the late Robbie Robertson on episode 781.
If you want to hear any of these full episodes ad-free and also get more Oscar talk from the two bonus episodes we're doing this week, subscribe to The Full Marin.
Just click on the link in the episode description or go to WTFPod.com and click on WTF+.
Tomorrow's a regular episode with comedian Rory Scoble.
All right?
Okay.
I'll talk to you later.
Bye.
Bye.