Episode 981 - Reinaldo Marcus Green

Episode 981 • Released December 31, 2018 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf what's going on how's everybody doing tonight is new year's eve don't die happy new year

00:00:25Marc:Don't die in a car.

00:00:27Marc:Don't die from a drug overdose.

00:00:29Marc:Don't die from alcohol poisoning.

00:00:33Marc:Don't die because you're letting somebody with any of those drive or talk you into anything.

00:00:40Marc:Maybe I've harped on this long enough.

00:00:43Marc:Just don't die and be present for the first of the new year.

00:00:47Marc:What are your resolutions?

00:00:49Marc:Jesus, good question, right?

00:00:51Marc:Right?

00:00:52Marc:Are they even necessary?

00:00:53Marc:I think I've come upon, so maybe I'll move towards that as we have this conversation.

00:01:00Marc:Today on the show is a film director, Ronaldo Marcus Green.

00:01:05Marc:His movie, Monsters and Men, is available on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital on January 8th.

00:01:11Marc:It's a great movie.

00:01:12Marc:I enjoyed it.

00:01:13Marc:We talked a lot about how it evolved out of a short he made about a traffic stop.

00:01:19Marc:It takes place in New York, and it's a very provocative, charged movie.

00:01:25Marc:I loved it, actually.

00:01:26Marc:I love the movie.

00:01:27Marc:So you should check it out, and you can listen to me talk to him shortly.

00:01:31Marc:But let me focus here.

00:01:33Marc:Let me try to focus.

00:01:34Marc:I'm still in New Mexico.

00:01:36Marc:There was a blizzard here, and it had been a long time since I'd risen to the challenges of driving in a blizzard.

00:01:44Marc:But thankfully, and I give myself credit for this, I rented a Nissan Armada car.

00:01:50Marc:This is like driving a fucking military vehicle.

00:01:53Marc:It's like driving a tank.

00:01:55Marc:I didn't even know that's what I was going to rent.

00:01:56Marc:I thought I was going to get a Jeep because I thought it might snow, but I had an Armada.

00:02:01Marc:Armada.

00:02:02Marc:This is a heavy car.

00:02:03Marc:So when we left Albuquerque,

00:02:05Marc:It was slightly snowing.

00:02:07Marc:And then by the time we hit I-25, they had closed the fucking highway down because I don't know what it is.

00:02:13Marc:I don't know.

00:02:14Marc:I mean, snow happens here, but it's not like the East Coast where you're buried under six feet at least a month out of the winter season.

00:02:23Marc:And there was snow plows everywhere, but the entire highway was shut down.

00:02:26Marc:There's really no other way to go.

00:02:28Marc:Cars were just sliding everywhere.

00:02:29Marc:You could just see what happens.

00:02:30Marc:There's brakes locking up, cars in ditches on the side of the road, cars at the wrong angle.

00:02:36Marc:And we had to sort of navigate through the Cochiti Plebwell area up and around through a lot of snow going very slowly.

00:02:45Marc:And I guess here's the point in terms of relationship progress.

00:02:52Marc:I did not slam on the brakes and get stuck in a ditch and open the door slowly because I was mad that I was being told how to drive.

00:03:03Marc:And I think that's a great testament to any relationship.

00:03:06Marc:If you can drive in a blizzard where the conditions are rough and you don't let rage overcome you to the point where you slam on your brakes for no reason, roll the automobile, get out and say something like, why can't you just shut up?

00:03:22Marc:So that didn't happen.

00:03:23Marc:So that's progress.

00:03:25Marc:There was no car accidents and only just minor moments of aggravation about the proximity, mostly about driving.

00:03:36Marc:How many relationships end because of cars?

00:03:38Marc:That's what I want to know.

00:03:39Marc:Does anyone got statistics on that?

00:03:41Marc:So we survived the blizzard, and then eventually we were holed up here where we are.

00:03:48Marc:Fortunately, it was a luxury hotel.

00:03:49Marc:There was no risk of freezing to death or exposure or frostbite.

00:03:54Marc:Just mild discomfort that the thermostat didn't go above 75.

00:03:58Marc:And Sarah slept with a hat.

00:03:59Marc:And I refused to do that.

00:04:00Marc:I refused to be paying the price I was paying at the hotel I was staying at and sleep in a hat.

00:04:05Marc:And she refused to let me call the front desk at 1130 at night because I was slightly uncomfortable with the 74 degrees in the room, which when the heat adjusted, went down to probably 68 degrees.

00:04:19Marc:Oh, I forgot to mention that we went without Wi-Fi for, I think, almost 24 hours.

00:04:27Marc:And the cell phone service wasn't that good.

00:04:29Marc:And man, I'll tell you, you really get in touch with who you are when you can't pick up a thing or turn on a thing and fill your brain with garbage or distract yourself.

00:04:43Marc:Really got connected.

00:04:45Marc:I mean, is that a therapy?

00:04:46Marc:Of course it is.

00:04:47Marc:But that's part of my New Year's resolution.

00:04:49Marc:But we're not getting to that yet.

00:04:50Marc:So let's get into into some stuff here, into movies and things I've taken in and in the last week or so.

00:04:59Marc:I somehow or another, this is before I left for vacation.

00:05:01Marc:I was watching TV and I like to flip around and I found that Eric Clapton.

00:05:09Marc:the Eric Clapton doc.

00:05:10Marc:Now I know some of you like, okay, I'm going to have to cop to something here.

00:05:15Marc:Uh, the documentary is called Eric Clapton, a life in 12 bars.

00:05:18Marc:Now you've heard me talk on this show that, you know, I'm not an Eric Clapton guy, that I'm a Peter green guy that, you know, you can draw lines.

00:05:27Marc:You can make, you can have favorite blues guitar players and what have you.

00:05:31Marc:But I have always said that

00:05:33Marc:I loved Clapton when he was with John Mayall's Blues Bakers, and I like Cream except for the lyrics.

00:05:38Marc:And after that, I go in and out of Clapton.

00:05:41Marc:It doesn't resonate with me because I felt like he was really kicking on all cylinders when he was a very young man.

00:05:47Marc:And then after Derek and the Dominoes, I'm kind of in and out, and I'm a little bored.

00:05:53Marc:I've said that publicly.

00:05:55Marc:I don't mind saying that.

00:05:57Marc:But I knew nothing about

00:05:58Marc:about Eric Clapton, and should or does that make a difference?

00:06:01Marc:It does, actually.

00:06:03Marc:This documentary, Eric Clapton, A Life in 12 Bars, was so profound and moving, and I knew nothing about that guy.

00:06:10Marc:Nothing about the upbringing he had, nothing about the depth and length of his drug addiction.

00:06:18Marc:The things I knew were, he was sort of a savant blues guitar player,

00:06:22Marc:He had an amazing career, both with Mayall, with Cream, and then a solo career.

00:06:26Marc:I know that his son tragically died.

00:06:28Marc:I knew he had a substance abuse problem, but the journey of him finding out about his family, I don't want to do spoilers because you should see it because the whole thing is so moving and the depth of his emotional and psychological trauma and pain and how he translated that into those early, especially those early records like that are just fucking brain bending.

00:06:52Marc:The pure blue stuff was deep shit and you really get a sense of where that comes from.

00:06:58Marc:And by and large, did I just use that phrase?

00:07:01Marc:By and large, the thing that's amazing about the film is that it's really a recovery movie.

00:07:07Marc:And all the records that I'm in and out with or don't really necessarily resonate with me or I think they're not as deep or as cutting and as fucking moving as those early records up through Layla.

00:07:21Marc:Is that he in the documentary, he doesn't he gives them short shrift because he looks at most of them as the records he made when he was shit faced.

00:07:29Marc:I had no sense of the depth of heartbreak, both in his immediate life and in his past life.

00:07:36Marc:I mean, just what can I say?

00:07:39Marc:I am sorry.

00:07:41Marc:that i have uh seemingly dismissed some of eric clapton's work or that i judge him as an older man in a way that i that was insensitive to how he got to where he is and the struggle that he had and uh and also go see this fucking movie go see it go see it on your couch take a little time and go watch it on showtime why am i i'm not getting paid for this plug but if you're a blues guy um

00:08:08Marc:It's like it's essential.

00:08:10Marc:And if you're a recovery person or you're struggling, you should watch it.

00:08:14Marc:I mean, it's really something that said, OK, there I did that.

00:08:19Marc:I did that plug.

00:08:20Marc:Now let's get into the screeners.

00:08:21Marc:Saw a green book.

00:08:23Marc:It's OK.

00:08:23Marc:It's pretty good.

00:08:24Marc:Kind of where it was going.

00:08:25Marc:Some great performances.

00:08:27Marc:Vice.

00:08:27Marc:I enjoyed it.

00:08:28Marc:A lot of people don't like it.

00:08:29Marc:Maybe, you know, Adam McKay is a little heavy handed sometimes.

00:08:32Marc:But I thought the acting was great and the information was great.

00:08:36Marc:And I enjoyed the movie.

00:08:37Marc:Beautiful Boy.

00:08:38Marc:For me, a little redundant.

00:08:40Marc:It takes a while to realize that the movie is really about the father and not the son.

00:08:44Marc:And it does show the horrible redundancy and hopelessness of drug addiction.

00:08:51Marc:But for me, as a guy in recovery, I was like, oh, man, is this kid going to get it or is he not going to get it?

00:08:58Marc:I watched the middle part for about 15 minutes of Mary Queen of Scots.

00:09:01Marc:Seems good.

00:09:02Marc:Don't feel like I need to revisit.

00:09:05Marc:Bohemian Rhapsody.

00:09:06Marc:We watched that.

00:09:07Marc:Rami Malek did a great job.

00:09:09Marc:The guys in the band did a great job.

00:09:10Marc:The music was great.

00:09:11Marc:They really got into his life.

00:09:13Marc:But it's hard to make a biopic about somebody in your memory and kind of move through it.

00:09:17Marc:But I thought it was good.

00:09:18Marc:I thought it was satisfying.

00:09:19Marc:I enjoyed it.

00:09:20Marc:Watched Boy Erased last night.

00:09:22Marc:I thought it was pretty great.

00:09:24Marc:I enjoyed the movie.

00:09:25Marc:That Hedges kid.

00:09:25Marc:Is that his name?

00:09:26Marc:Hedges?

00:09:26Marc:Someone please tell me when I became my father.

00:09:29Marc:Yeah, please let me know when that's fully taken place.

00:09:33Marc:Lucas Hedges did a great job in that.

00:09:35Marc:Enjoyed the movie.

00:09:36Marc:It's good.

00:09:36Marc:It's satisfying.

00:09:38Marc:On the basis of sex.

00:09:39Marc:Enjoyed it.

00:09:40Marc:Again, a biopic of a very specific time of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

00:09:44Marc:Historically good information there.

00:09:46Marc:There's a lot of finessing with biopics in order to make the characters kind of it was good.

00:09:53Marc:It was good.

00:09:54Marc:And it was an important movie, I think, in terms of history.

00:09:56Marc:I didn't know about it, which is going to be a theme in my life in terms of what I'm talking about now.

00:10:01Marc:What about history?

00:10:02Marc:Huh?

00:10:03Marc:What about it?

00:10:04Marc:Watch the first 15 minutes of A Star is Born and got to say, I get it.

00:10:10Marc:Watch The Favorite.

00:10:11Marc:Got to watch it again.

00:10:13Marc:because I'm going to interview that guy.

00:10:15Marc:Now, what movie had the most impact on me?

00:10:18Marc:What did I want to tell you about?

00:10:19Marc:Well, I'll tell you.

00:10:20Marc:I'll tell you honestly, and this has something to do with where my head is at.

00:10:24Marc:We went to the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture here in Santa Fe, and there was a documentary playing in there in the pottery exhibit, part of the history of the area.

00:10:38Marc:And when I was growing up here in New Mexico,

00:10:40Marc:Pottery and Indian jewelry is sort of a big deal.

00:10:43Marc:And I've begun to wear some of it again.

00:10:45Marc:I'm wearing a turquoise ring.

00:10:47Marc:I got Sarah a turquoise bracelet.

00:10:48Marc:We both seem to buy some pieces when we're here.

00:10:51Marc:But we were in the gift shop of one of the museums.

00:10:53Marc:They had one of these black pots, these Pueblo black pottery.

00:10:58Marc:And I remember from when I was a kid, Maria, her name was very famous for making these.

00:11:02Marc:Her name is Maria Martinez.

00:11:04Marc:And I brought that up to Sarah in the gift shop.

00:11:06Marc:And then we walk into this museum.

00:11:07Marc:There's a documentary.

00:11:08Marc:It's about 25 minutes long called Maria Martinez, Indian Pottery of the San Il Defonso Pueblo.

00:11:16Marc:Now, this movie blew me away.

00:11:20Marc:This is not in contention for Oscars, but it did something in my brain.

00:11:25Marc:There's certain things I watch, something about practice.

00:11:29Marc:And it's weird because pottery is sort of becoming a recurring theme on my podcast somehow or another.

00:11:35Marc:But the process of making these traditional Pueblo style, this very specific black pottery is

00:11:42Marc:You know, it requires they go out.

00:11:45Marc:She goes out with her son, who's also a potter.

00:11:47Marc:And they find that they kind of go out to the mesa.

00:11:51Marc:They find the clay dirt they need.

00:11:53Marc:And then they find the blue sand they have to mix it with.

00:11:56Marc:Then she goes back and mixes it.

00:11:57Marc:Then she starts to craft the pot through coils.

00:12:00Marc:Then she smooths it.

00:12:01Marc:Then she shapes it.

00:12:02Marc:Then it dries.

00:12:03Marc:And then she puts silt on it from another slip.

00:12:06Marc:and then that dries and then she burnishes it with a i think it was a polished rock so it's shiny and then they make a hole and they put a steel grate in they lay all the pots on it they put wood underneath the grate and then they cover it with um metal so the smoke and the heat stays in and then they surround that with giant petrified cow chips and they bake it and then they dump a bunch of of uh

00:12:29Marc:broken down horse manure on top of it to put it out, and they kind of, you know, hours, maybe a day or two.

00:12:36Marc:This whole process was so organic and so sort of strangely connected and authentic and inspiring, and just to see the pots come out so beautifully shiny and perfect and just so connected to the earth and connected to tradition and connected to taking the time to make things and then, you know, connected to an entire way of being.

00:12:57Marc:Somehow made me, it just was inspirational and made me want to get off Twitter.

00:13:05Marc:Is that the message I was supposed to get?

00:13:07Marc:And that comes to the resolutions.

00:13:09Marc:What are the resolutions?

00:13:11Marc:I don't know, man.

00:13:12Marc:I don't know about you, but right now it's very hard.

00:13:16Marc:In terms of information we're getting, we know we're in a cultural fucking...

00:13:21Marc:apocalypse on so many levels.

00:13:25Marc:We know we've lost almost historical context entirely.

00:13:31Marc:We've lost any sense of history.

00:13:33Marc:We've lost any sense of the depth of history, the depth of the players in history or how to put them into perspective.

00:13:40Marc:We've lost some semblance of what is true and what isn't true.

00:13:46Marc:And it's fucking with our brains.

00:13:48Marc:And we've lost any sort of sense of un-gotcha-ed nuance.

00:13:53Marc:That's my word.

00:13:54Marc:That's my phrasing.

00:13:55Marc:Where there are nuances that should be portals into what make people beautiful and amazing and complicated as opposed to just nuances that are exploited for tabloid business.

00:14:08Marc:We just lost touch with all that.

00:14:10Marc:And I sort of want to get back in touch with it in this year.

00:14:14Marc:If I could, I want to try to maybe pull myself.

00:14:18Marc:I'm definitely I don't do Facebook at all, which makes me I don't know what.

00:14:22Marc:So that's going.

00:14:23Marc:I think I'm going to consolidate my Twitter stuff.

00:14:26Marc:So it's just promotional.

00:14:28Marc:I'm going to probably pull out of Instagram and try to free up that part of the brain and try to stay off the news app on my phone and figure out, you know, like who I am in the world and what did I come from?

00:14:37Marc:And, you know, how is it, how is it defining and important?

00:14:42Marc:And, you know, and what is, what is life supposed to be comprised of as we move through it?

00:14:48Marc:It's a little slower than our phones would let us to believe.

00:14:51Marc:Life is a little slower than our phones lead us to believe in the immediate surrounding.

00:14:57Marc:I want to appreciate the people in my life and try to take care of myself, try to do the right thing if possible, always, as much as I can.

00:15:08Marc:All right, yeah, I'm going to get off nicotine lozenges too.

00:15:11Marc:I'm going to.

00:15:12Marc:I swear to God.

00:15:13Marc:I swear to God I am.

00:15:15Marc:So, Happy New Year, and go look at that Maria Martinez documentary.

00:15:22Marc:You can find it online.

00:15:24Marc:I think it's like, I just dug it up.

00:15:26Marc:They had it at the museum, but then I found it in.

00:15:28Marc:It's called Maria Martinez, Indian Pottery of San Ildefonso.

00:15:33Marc:It's from 1972.

00:15:34Marc:Go watch that Eric Clapton documentary.

00:15:37Marc:For me, coming in on the close of the year, these were the most inspirational things that I took into my head.

00:15:44Marc:And also, my relationship is always exciting and making me better.

00:15:53Marc:I think.

00:15:55Marc:Huh?

00:15:56Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:15:58Marc:Just keep trying to be as...

00:16:06Marc:Straight with yourself as you can and treat other people well.

00:16:10Marc:Now, let's go to my conversation.

00:16:12Marc:This just took place a little while ago.

00:16:13Marc:We couldn't get it up in time for the release of the movie, but it's coming out on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital on January 8th.

00:16:19Marc:The film is Monsters and Men, and this is me talking with Ronaldo Marcus Green, the director and writer of that film.

00:16:30¶¶

00:16:36Marc:You know, the last time I talked to you, we were in New York and we talked for a little while and I watched the short that you made, Stop, and then now I watched the movie and it's how much, because in Stop, that film in a, basically, almost exactly what happens in that nine minute film is a couple of scenes in the feature.

00:16:58Mm-hmm.

00:16:58Marc:So when you're making the nine-minute film, were you thinking ahead of the feature, or is this something you built around it later, or how'd that happen?

00:17:05Guest:Yeah, not at all.

00:17:06Guest:So that little nine-minute short that you saw, I made for 500 bucks as part of NYU.

00:17:11Guest:In the short, I cast a real New York City police officer.

00:17:13Guest:So he's a friend of mine.

00:17:14Guest:We grew up together in Staten Island.

00:17:16Guest:Fast forward, we get that short film.

00:17:17Marc:Wait, you grew up in Staten Island?

00:17:18Guest:I grew up in Staten Island, New York.

00:17:20Marc:Oh, maybe we should go all the way back then, because I've done nothing but say shitty things about Staten Island, and I want to...

00:17:25Marc:I want to find some light there.

00:17:28Guest:I'm trying to find the light.

00:17:29Guest:We're still working on it.

00:17:31Guest:I've moved off the island.

00:17:32Guest:I'm happy to say I got off the island.

00:17:37Guest:Respect for growing up there.

00:17:39Marc:Yeah, definitely.

00:17:40Guest:No desire to move.

00:17:41Marc:I know a few guys.

00:17:43Marc:Pete Davidson.

00:17:44Marc:Grew up on Staten Island, right?

00:17:45Marc:Okay.

00:17:46Marc:Eddie Pepitone.

00:17:47Marc:There's a few guys, but you never hear great stuff.

00:17:51Marc:There's horrible stuff, and there's a lot of people that do good work there.

00:17:55Marc:I mean, the cities, all the cops were there, and a lot of the firemen were there.

00:17:59Guest:Exactly.

00:17:59Marc:Cops, firemen, construction workers.

00:18:01Marc:And then there's mafia guys, and then there's just- Oh, there's definitely mafia guys.

00:18:04Guest:I went to school with the Gambinis, the Lucchazis.

00:18:06Guest:They're all out there?

00:18:08Guest:All out there.

00:18:09Guest:At least they were.

00:18:11Guest:Now they've moved to Jersey.

00:18:13Guest:When you get older, you move to Jersey.

00:18:14Marc:You make a few bucks.

00:18:15Marc:You move to Jersey.

00:18:16Marc:You can run the city from Jersey.

00:18:17Marc:I learned that in The Sopranos.

00:18:20Marc:So you have a twin brother?

00:18:21Guest:He's not a twin.

00:18:22Guest:He's an older brother.

00:18:23Guest:He's three and a half years older.

00:18:24Guest:That's Rashad?

00:18:24Guest:Rashad Ernesto Green, yep.

00:18:26Guest:And you're Ronaldo Marcus Green?

00:18:28Guest:Yep.

00:18:29Guest:He got the African first name.

00:18:30Guest:I got the Latino first name.

00:18:31Guest:And what's the breakdown of your folks?

00:18:35Guest:My mother's Puerto Rican and my father's African-American.

00:18:38Marc:Okay.

00:18:39Marc:So now there's just two of you?

00:18:40Marc:There's just the two of us.

00:18:42Guest:And you're on Staten Island growing up?

00:18:44Guest:Growing up on Staten Island, but just my father though, we grew up in a single parent household with my dad.

00:18:48Guest:Why is your dad on Staten Island?

00:18:50Guest:So at the time, Staten Island had very good public schools.

00:18:54Guest:Okay.

00:18:55Guest:So it was the way that we can afford a good education.

00:18:58Guest:So that's what he was looking out for.

00:19:00Guest:He was looking out for us.

00:19:01Guest:He was working for the Department of Investigation downtown Manhattan Maiden Lane.

00:19:06Guest:So it was a 20-minute commute with no traffic.

00:19:08Guest:And especially because he had a badge and a shield, you can go in that HOV lane and kind of speed into work.

00:19:14Marc:That's a little broad, the Department of Investigation.

00:19:18Marc:What was his focus?

00:19:21Guest:Well, he's an attorney by trade, but he would work with like Marshall's Bureau and do sort of white collar crime.

00:19:28Guest:So he got a lot of people money laundering.

00:19:30Guest:But it was funny.

00:19:30Guest:We'd go on stakeouts with our dad and he'd have this huge Nikon camera.

00:19:35Guest:I don't know how legal the stuff he was doing.

00:19:37Guest:Is he retired?

00:19:39Guest:Sadly, he's passed away.

00:19:41Guest:I'm sorry.

00:19:41Marc:And then we can talk openly about his small transgressions by taking his kids on a stakeout.

00:19:46Guest:He was like, oh, we're even more undercover.

00:19:48Guest:Did you lose a lens, dude?

00:19:49Guest:I probably did, but hopefully it's still in my case somewhere.

00:19:52Marc:Are those a prescription?

00:19:54Guest:They are, which would be really sad if I lost them.

00:19:56Guest:God damn it.

00:19:57Guest:Let's hope that it's not.

00:19:58Guest:Might be in the car, might be in the house.

00:19:59Guest:Might be in the car, might be in the house.

00:20:01Marc:I just noticed it and I was like, is he walking around with the, was he doing a thing with the one lens?

00:20:06Guest:I know, that would be strange, but hopefully it's somewhere in the car.

00:20:09Marc:You know, it's tricky with those aviators because the frames are very thin.

00:20:13Marc:And if you have a prescription, did they tell you that?

00:20:16Marc:They didn't.

00:20:17Marc:I got these in London.

00:20:19Marc:Oh.

00:20:19Marc:And they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:20:21Marc:Because I remember when I was a kid, I had those Ray-Ban aviators and I wanted to get a prescription and they told me that.

00:20:25Marc:And it's not quite, you know, if you got a little weight on your prescription, they might not hold in there.

00:20:29Marc:Yeah, I can't see a thing.

00:20:30Guest:Well, where could they be?

00:20:31Guest:They got to be in the car, right?

00:20:34Guest:We only took one road to get to this place, so.

00:20:37Marc:Yeah, so if you had him, did you have him on in the car?

00:20:39Guest:I did have him on in the car.

00:20:40Guest:We're going to find it.

00:20:42Guest:And I was seeing perfectly fine, so I think I'm good.

00:20:44Marc:Okay, no.

00:20:45Marc:You would have noticed if there was a lens missing.

00:20:47Marc:You're a director, for God's sakes.

00:20:49Guest:I would have noticed.

00:20:50Marc:All right, so your dad's taking you and your brother on stakeouts.

00:20:54Marc:Yep.

00:20:55Marc:Taking pictures.

00:20:56Marc:But no, he's not, you know.

00:20:57Guest:Not in the line of fire or anything like that.

00:20:59Guest:Again, these aren't hard criminals.

00:21:01Guest:He's not going out bust.

00:21:01Guest:Yeah, we weren't- Kicking doors and going, these are my kids.

00:21:04Guest:Be nice.

00:21:04Guest:He had guys that were putting up storefronts and then doing- See, probably your neighbors.

00:21:11Guest:Yeah.

00:21:12Guest:In Staten Island.

00:21:13Guest:Sadly enough, probably.

00:21:14Guest:He was good.

00:21:16Guest:He loved what he did.

00:21:17Guest:He really enjoyed-

00:21:19Guest:you know, being an investigator and that kind of thing.

00:21:22Marc:But he was looking out for you.

00:21:23Marc:He had a good gig and, you know, he moved someplace to get everybody a good education.

00:21:27Guest:Yeah, I mean, listen, it was a city job.

00:21:28Guest:Never made, you know, enough money to, you know, we all had to pay for ourselves to get through school and all that.

00:21:34Guest:But he put us in a position to succeed.

00:21:36Marc:Well, I think that, like, because that relationship in the film

00:21:39Marc:With the baseball player, what was his name?

00:21:43Marc:Zyrick.

00:21:43Marc:He's played by Kelvin Harrison Jr.

00:21:45Marc:The kid's name is Zyrick.

00:21:46Marc:Yeah.

00:21:46Marc:Like that relationship with the father is sort of like an important relationship.

00:21:50Marc:Because in the film, you're kind of getting a fairly broad spectrum of what it's like to live in a neighborhood that is constantly monitored and cops are imposing and morally dubious.

00:22:07Marc:Yeah.

00:22:07Marc:in terms of how they treat the African-American community.

00:22:10Marc:But that father, he worked hard his whole life, and he kept his nose clean, it seems.

00:22:16Marc:And he knows what trouble is, but he's not going to let his kid fall into that shit.

00:22:20Guest:Exactly, exactly.

00:22:21Guest:And I think my father was probably one of those guys.

00:22:24Guest:He was probably on the front lines doing that thing, listening to protest music.

00:22:28Guest:60s, 70s, all of that.

00:22:32Guest:We grew up with that in our house.

00:22:33Guest:You did.

00:22:34Guest:But then it's like he keeping us, not to say, of course, informed.

00:22:38Guest:He would tell us about those things, but that whole going to marches and stuff.

00:22:43Marc:Well, yeah, I thought that riff that that guy did.

00:22:45Marc:He said, this is what's happening.

00:22:47Marc:This is what we are living with and living in, and there's no...

00:22:52Marc:end in sight, per se, and it's nice to be aware, but I'm trying to get you the fuck out of here.

00:22:59Guest:Yeah, it's the current climate, man.

00:23:03Marc:Yeah, but I think it was sort of always like that.

00:23:07Marc:I imagine that there was sort of, of your father's generation, a

00:23:11Marc:Maybe a little more unity, but I don't know.

00:23:14Marc:I'm projecting as a dumb white guy.

00:23:16Marc:It seems like that there is a lot of organized resistance within the community.

00:23:21Marc:And I think that back then, maybe you felt like you had a little more support, I would think, from the community at large.

00:23:28Marc:Now it seems like everybody's doing their own thing.

00:23:31Guest:Well, I just think social media has changed the way we communicate and you can reach way more.

00:23:36Guest:Yeah, because you can send a tweet and reach 50 million people or whatever it is.

00:23:42Guest:Right.

00:23:42Guest:Where then it's like, well, if I'm going out and I'm putting my...

00:23:45Guest:my body at risk.

00:23:47Guest:Literally, it was a different thing when you're a soldier on the front lines of a protest versus like, okay, cool, I'm in this tower up here and I can send a tweet or I can, I'm not.

00:23:57Guest:But at the same time, you're accessing way more people than you could.

00:24:00Guest:So information is, we're just in a different time.

00:24:03Marc:Right, but it also enables people to draw lines from where they sit.

00:24:07Marc:So you can tweet, you can do whatever, but you can also like, well, I'm not gonna buy that point of view because I got my own point of view over here and these are my people and those are them.

00:24:16Marc:And it still seems that when people do hit the streets and they stay in it, that the spectacle of it, of the resistance or of the confrontation, delivers the message in a visceral and human way that does have an impact.

00:24:31Marc:Right, but the other side is sort of like, look at them.

00:24:34Marc:They're fucking out of their minds.

00:24:35Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:24:36Marc:Right?

00:24:36Marc:So those people also have means of communication.

00:24:38Marc:100%.

00:24:39Marc:But I thought that was like an amazing balance in the film because I didn't really know where it was going to go because your brain, when you watch a movie, it was beautifully shot, but you watch a movie and a story, you know, you kind of...

00:24:52Marc:You know, you want the cop to act a certain way.

00:24:54Marc:You know, you don't know what's going to happen with the baseball player.

00:24:57Marc:And it's like, is this all going to turn to shit?

00:24:59Marc:Or how do we find hope through this without it being pithy and overwrought?

00:25:05Marc:But I thought you did a good balance.

00:25:08Marc:Oh, thank you so much.

00:25:08Marc:And not everyone's a good guy, but they're not...

00:25:11Marc:Terrible.

00:25:12Guest:Yeah, we all have monsters and men in us.

00:25:14Guest:That was the idea, you know, that we all sort of have confronted.

00:25:18Guest:We all have good and bad.

00:25:19Guest:You all have choices.

00:25:20Guest:You all have... We as individuals have choices to make.

00:25:24Marc:Well, when you were coming up, you know, you and your brother, so you had this father who was...

00:25:29Marc:Was he strict?

00:25:30Guest:He was pretty strict.

00:25:31Guest:I mean, like, very strict.

00:25:32Guest:And he was a baseball fanatic.

00:25:34Guest:Like, how the father in the film speaks to his kids, like, everything was a baseball analogy.

00:25:40Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:25:40Guest:So whether it was girls at home, you know, like, he was baseball, baseball, baseball.

00:25:44Guest:Watched 162 games a year.

00:25:45Guest:Diehard Mets fan.

00:25:47Guest:We'd watch reruns, tape at night.

00:25:49Guest:I mean, if I struck out in a game looking, like, we'd have to come back home, take 200 swings.

00:25:53Guest:Like, my dad was intense.

00:25:55Guest:Oh, really?

00:25:56Guest:It's like the great Santini.

00:25:57Guest:He was like...

00:25:57Guest:Serena and Venus's father, he was raising major leaguers.

00:26:01Guest:In his mind, he was going to have a major league son.

00:26:05Guest:Were either of you gifted in that way?

00:26:07Guest:So I took it pretty far.

00:26:09Guest:I played college baseball.

00:26:10Guest:I had two major league tryouts.

00:26:11Guest:That was as far as I got, but I didn't make it.

00:26:15Marc:But I guess the big question is, even in the film with that character, it's like, did you like it?

00:26:22Guest:You know, you like, I think when you're a kid, you like the things you're good at, you know, or, you know, you think that there's a chance.

00:26:27Guest:So, you know, when I stopped being good at video games, I stopped liking them, you know, and it's a weird thing.

00:26:32Marc:Yeah, there's no major league video game teams.

00:26:34Guest:Yeah, so with baseball, I was good, and I played at a pretty high level.

00:26:38Guest:Our high school, you know, Port Richmond High School, we went to the city championship, played in Yankee Stadium.

00:26:43Guest:Like, we were on a very, very competitive field, and I was good.

00:26:47Guest:What position?

00:26:49Guest:In high school, I was a hitter.

00:26:50Guest:And a catcher.

00:26:51Guest:And then I was converted into a pitcher in college.

00:26:54Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:26:54Guest:Never touched a bat again.

00:26:56Marc:Really?

00:26:56Guest:Yeah.

00:26:57Guest:He had a good arm?

00:26:57Guest:I had a pretty good arm.

00:26:59Guest:Control was the one thing.

00:27:01Guest:But I became a closer in college.

00:27:03Guest:A little erratic.

00:27:04Marc:A little erratic.

00:27:05Marc:Walked a couple guys going out.

00:27:07Guest:Exactly.

00:27:07Guest:And then I'd strike out the side.

00:27:08Guest:I'd walk three and then strike out three.

00:27:11Guest:Hence why I'm making films and not in the major leagues now.

00:27:14Guest:But...

00:27:15Marc:But it was a longer journey to get to films, as I remember from our first conversation.

00:27:20Marc:Your brother wasn't playing ball?

00:27:22Guest:Well, he played ball until college, and then studies took over.

00:27:26Guest:He went to drama school.

00:27:28Guest:In college, he went to Dartmouth and then started...

00:27:31Guest:Learning Shakespeare, and then he became an actor.

00:27:34Guest:Yeah.

00:27:34Guest:So he acted for all of Dartmouth, went to NYU, did the MFA in acting, and then went back to NYU and did the MFA in film.

00:27:46Guest:So he was just grinding.

00:27:47Guest:Before you?

00:27:48Guest:Yeah, before me.

00:27:49Marc:So how's the old man?

00:27:50Marc:So how bad was it?

00:27:52Marc:I mean, in terms of like, okay, so you did 200 swings if you fucked up in the Little League game.

00:27:59Marc:But did it wear on you?

00:28:02Marc:I mean, was it like it wasn't aggressive?

00:28:04Marc:It was just you just felt bad?

00:28:05Marc:You felt like you had to be better?

00:28:07Guest:No, he was, I mean, my dad was intense, man.

00:28:08Guest:He was an intense guy.

00:28:09Guest:There were moments where, you know, I'm sure my brother and I were both brought to tears and just like it was.

00:28:13Marc:About a game.

00:28:15Guest:Yeah, but it was it was life to him.

00:28:17Guest:For him, baseball was how it was life.

00:28:20Guest:I mean, I think he literally like I say this truthfully, I think if he was a Yankee fan, he'd still be alive because they won more, you know, but growing up a Mets fan and the heartache, you know, but it's just so tough.

00:28:33Guest:And you would see him just that's what killed him.

00:28:35Guest:It helped.

00:28:36Guest:It definitely helped.

00:28:38Guest:And I love the Mets.

00:28:39Guest:We're still fans today, but it definitely didn't help his longevity.

00:28:44Guest:Really?

00:28:45Guest:I don't think so.

00:28:46Guest:Did he smoke?

00:28:47Guest:He didn't smoke.

00:28:48Guest:Wasn't a drinker, really.

00:28:49Guest:It was the Mets.

00:28:50Guest:It was the Mets that I think.

00:28:51Marc:Fucking Mets killed your dad.

00:28:53Guest:We still love them, though.

00:28:55Guest:We still root for them.

00:28:56Guest:You got to, man.

00:28:56Guest:Do you watch all the games?

00:28:57Guest:Are you still locked in?

00:28:59Guest:Well, there was a point after those major league tryouts where I didn't make it.

00:29:02Guest:I just kind of shut down.

00:29:03Guest:How could you not?

00:29:04Guest:I don't even think I watched baseball for about five years.

00:29:07Guest:And then when I became a dad four years ago, I started picking up the game again.

00:29:12Guest:I had lost my father right before then and realized the relationship I had with my dad was this game.

00:29:19Guest:Was this game.

00:29:20Guest:Yeah.

00:29:20Guest:And how am I going to communicate to my kid?

00:29:22Guest:Of course, the first thing I'm doing is looking for a baseball.

00:29:25Guest:He has no idea.

00:29:26Guest:I don't think my kid has any athletic ability yet at four, but somehow I'm waiting for him to put the ball in front of him, see if he's going to reach for the ball or reach for the thing.

00:29:34Guest:That's interesting.

00:29:35Guest:And so I just started watching.

00:29:36Guest:I bought the MLB app, and now I'm in.

00:29:39Guest:You're in.

00:29:39Guest:I still remained a Mets fan and would still look, but I wouldn't watch.

00:29:45Guest:It was more like I'd read the trades but not watch the game.

00:29:48Marc:It's interesting, though, because given, you know, this sort of, you know, your your your trajectory and your kind of focus and your ability to get things done that you have to look at your childhood in respect to your father and realize that, you know, he did a good job parenting.

00:30:04Marc:And then if you really isolate like what was all baseball, it would seem natural, not just nostalgic to be like, this is how you parent.

00:30:11Marc:I need to get this kid a glove and a ball, you know, as soon as possible.

00:30:14Guest:Yeah.

00:30:14Guest:it's just crazy how it all comes back and all the the lessons that he taught us and you know now all of a sudden i'm talking situational baseball with my four-year-old you know did he teach you how to lose yeah absolutely you know if i if we like you know threw a glove or a bat or something like that i mean my dad would just go go ballistic it was never allowed to show that and that's the beautiful thing about baseball there's 162 games so when you lose you come back tomorrow you

00:30:40Marc:But I think that to me, like, you know, as a guy that like, you know, was, you know, I'm fairly athletic, but I was never, you know, taught.

00:30:46Marc:I was in the Little League, but I never really stuck with teams or anything.

00:30:49Marc:And I've talked about it before, but I think the most important thing you got to teach is how to lose.

00:30:55Marc:I mean, on some level, that seems to be the big life lesson is that, you know, there are more games.

00:31:00Marc:It's not the end of the world.

00:31:02Marc:And you get up and do it again.

00:31:04Marc:That the competition is what is the exciting part of it.

00:31:08Guest:But how you lose was more important to my dad.

00:31:11Guest:It was like, it wasn't that we lost.

00:31:12Guest:He doesn't want you to lose.

00:31:13Guest:He doesn't want you.

00:31:14Guest:So for him, if I struck out and I was looking,

00:31:18Guest:I left runners on base and I didn't attempt to swing.

00:31:22Guest:And so that was the disrespect.

00:31:24Guest:It was like you're letting your teammates down because you didn't even bother to swing.

00:31:28Guest:Right.

00:31:29Guest:You know, you struck out looking at a ball that was too close to the strike zone and he would just lose it because it was like it was about the team.

00:31:37Guest:You let those guys down.

00:31:38Guest:You let those guys down.

00:31:39Guest:I don't care if you struck out.

00:31:40Guest:Right.

00:31:41Guest:But if you struck out looking, that was it.

00:31:44Guest:That was it.

00:31:44Guest:So...

00:31:45Guest:So, you know, we didn't have too many strikeout lookings after those cuts in the living room.

00:31:51Guest:But, yeah, no, he was intense, man.

00:31:53Guest:But, you know, listen, he was a dad raising two boys on his own, you know.

00:31:58Marc:Yeah, that's an interesting lesson in itself that, you know, like, what are you expecting?

00:32:01Marc:You know what I mean?

00:32:02Marc:You got to take a shot.

00:32:04Marc:You know what I mean?

00:32:05Marc:You might walk some of the time.

00:32:06Guest:Yeah, you might get hit by a pitch.

00:32:08Guest:Do anything.

00:32:10Guest:Stick the bat out.

00:32:10Guest:Well, where was your mom?

00:32:11Guest:My mom, she was a teacher in Jersey, and my parents got divorced when I was eight.

00:32:17Guest:That's tough.

00:32:18Guest:It was rare that a father was raising the two boys, but I think my mom recognized that there were some limitations, and she wanted us to have a father.

00:32:27Guest:And was she going through her own thing?

00:32:28Guest:She was going through her own thing.

00:32:30Guest:Again, no resentment there.

00:32:31Guest:She just needed to take care of herself, heal.

00:32:33Guest:She's in my life now.

00:32:34Guest:I actually ended up living with my mom in college.

00:32:38Guest:You did.

00:32:39Guest:I went to school in Jersey, very close to where she was.

00:32:43Guest:And yeah, ended up moving in with my mom, which I wrote a feature comedy based on because I didn't grow up with my mom.

00:32:48Guest:And here it is, this Puerto Rican from the South Bronx is living in Jersey.

00:32:51Guest:Yeah.

00:32:52Guest:And she's still as neurotic as she was back then.

00:32:55Guest:And so she's locking the doors and there's like chains in there.

00:32:58Guest:And it's like, what's going on?

00:32:59Guest:Really?

00:32:59Guest:We're not in the South Bronx anymore.

00:33:01Guest:We're like in a nice, you know.

00:33:02Guest:So she grew up when it was falling apart.

00:33:04Guest:Oh yeah, no, no.

00:33:04Guest:She grew up poor in a one bedroom tenement with eight brothers and sisters.

00:33:08Guest:Oh my God.

00:33:09Guest:It was like fish food in there.

00:33:11Guest:Just a life of PTSD.

00:33:13Guest:Yeah, basically.

00:33:14Guest:And she's, I mean, she's still, she doesn't take the train.

00:33:16Guest:She can't go underground.

00:33:18Guest:Certain things that she just doesn't do.

00:33:19Guest:Yeah.

00:33:20Marc:And so I understand, you know, she grew up, she had a very, very, well, you know, the South Bronx was always sort of the, the kind of example of, of what a, you know, a burned out kind of burning.

00:33:31Marc:Yeah.

00:33:32Marc:I remember that when I was a kid, like Fort Apache too, right?

00:33:36Marc:That, oh my God, what is it like there now?

00:33:38Marc:Have you been up there?

00:33:40Guest:I have been up there, and the real estate is crazy.

00:33:44Guest:Listen, there's still pockets, but gentrification has taken over in the Bronx, especially the waterfront.

00:33:51Guest:Listen, 10 years, if you've got some money, I think the Bronx is where you should put it.

00:33:55Guest:I think so.

00:33:56Guest:I'm no realtor.

00:33:57Marc:I'm looking at what's going to happen to Detroit.

00:33:59Marc:How does the whole city go under?

00:34:01Marc:It's insane.

00:34:02Marc:I heard that they were selling houses for $10.

00:34:05Marc:Is it really that it's that hopeless that there's no coming back?

00:34:09Guest:An artist getting in there and buying these houses and doing this stuff.

00:34:12Guest:I've never been to Detroit, but I'd love to see it and see- I haven't either.

00:34:16Guest:I haven't been downtown.

00:34:17Marc:So you didn't, but filmmaking was not, I mean, this is relatively, how old are you?

00:34:22Marc:I'm 36.

00:34:23Marc:But it wasn't the first thing.

00:34:24Marc:Not at all.

00:34:25Marc:You finished, I guess you didn't get on the Mets.

00:34:28Marc:I didn't get on the Mets.

00:34:29Marc:Where'd you go to college?

00:34:30Marc:I went to Fairleigh Dickinson University.

00:34:32Marc:Fairleigh Dickinson.

00:34:33Marc:I know the name of Fairleigh Dickinson.

00:34:35Marc:That's a good school, right?

00:34:36Marc:Yeah, it's a, how do you call it?

00:34:39Marc:I don't know why I know it, because my dad's from Jersey.

00:34:40Guest:It's a good school.

00:34:41Marc:It's a good business school.

00:34:42Marc:Oh, that's what it is.

00:34:43Guest:So it's close to the city.

00:34:44Guest:It's in Jersey?

00:34:45Guest:It's in Jersey, in Chatham, sorry, in Madison, New Jersey.

00:34:48Guest:And you go all four years?

00:34:50Guest:I went all five years.

00:34:51Guest:I did my master's in education there.

00:34:52Guest:So you were going to be a teacher?

00:34:54Guest:I was a teacher.

00:34:55Guest:I became a teacher.

00:34:56Guest:So you leave Fairleigh Dickinson.

00:34:58Guest:I leave Fairleigh Dickinson.

00:34:59Guest:And you're teaching what?

00:35:00Guest:Where?

00:35:01Guest:I taught in Bedminster, Bedminster Township, which is like where Jackie Onassis has a house out there.

00:35:06Guest:I mean, it's very wealthy.

00:35:08Guest:Tough gig, huh?

00:35:09Guest:No, it was great.

00:35:11Guest:No, I'm kidding.

00:35:11Guest:No, but it was tough because I was the only black person in like...

00:35:16Guest:The district, like the town, like forget the district.

00:35:18Guest:It was like, what?

00:35:19Guest:And then here I am, I had long hair at the time, sort of looked like Lenny Kravitz a few, you know, when I was young, I had a little Lenny thing going on.

00:35:27Guest:And so it was just like, here's this kid with long hair.

00:35:29Guest:Like, how did I wind up in this district?

00:35:32Guest:But, you know, I did my thing and I loved it.

00:35:35Guest:It was great.

00:35:35Guest:I was teaching kindergarten through fifth grade.

00:35:37Guest:It was a gift and a talented program.

00:35:38Marc:Oh, so that's nice.

00:35:39Marc:You're dealing with smart young kids.

00:35:41Marc:Yeah.

00:35:42Guest:Yeah, pretty much.

00:35:42Guest:But no, you're really dealing with their parents.

00:35:44Guest:Uh-huh.

00:35:45Guest:And that can be intense.

00:35:46Guest:So you have to do like presentations.

00:35:48Guest:It's not like where I went to school.

00:35:51Guest:Uh-huh.

00:35:51Guest:You know, it's a different level of parent-teacher communication.

00:35:55Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:35:55Guest:Nice boy.

00:35:56Guest:Like parents, you know, are very involved.

00:35:59Marc:But they already know they're gifted.

00:36:00Marc:So now they want them to be geniuses all the way through.

00:36:02Marc:100%.

00:36:03Marc:Right.

00:36:03Marc:So they're like, what are you doing with my genius?

00:36:05Marc:What are you doing?

00:36:06Marc:Is he challenged enough?

00:36:07Marc:Exactly.

00:36:08Marc:Yeah.

00:36:09Marc:Yeah.

00:36:10Marc:Is he doing what he's supposed to do, the genius?

00:36:13Guest:Of course.

00:36:13Guest:And then when you have someone that looks like me, you know, you're apprehensive.

00:36:18Guest:The parent is.

00:36:19Marc:The parents.

00:36:20Marc:What's the black man doing with my genius?

00:36:23Guest:Yes, to put it bluntly.

00:36:27Guest:You know, no.

00:36:27Guest:I mean, listen, it was a balance between, of course, there's some parents that completely embraced.

00:36:33Guest:But you felt that.

00:36:34Guest:I don't know if that's just something you grow up with as a black man and a Puerto Rican man.

00:36:38Guest:I don't know.

00:36:38Guest:I always feel it.

00:36:40Marc:Well, yeah, no, I mean, like, I think it's very hard for white people to, you know, effectively empathize with the experience of just being in the skin.

00:36:50Marc:Yeah, just being in the skin.

00:36:51Guest:It's like, oh, yeah, even if it's just like a little bit of a longer look.

00:36:54Guest:It's like, oh, yeah, it's great.

00:36:56Guest:You know, it's like...

00:36:57Guest:But it was like, I don't know, four seconds longer than it should be.

00:36:59Guest:So now I feel a little awkward because you're staring.

00:37:03Guest:So it's just like little things.

00:37:04Guest:Why are you running?

00:37:05Marc:Why are you crossing the street?

00:37:08Guest:It's just strange, strange things.

00:37:10Marc:Well, yeah, but you're never free from the consciousness of it.

00:37:14Marc:No.

00:37:14Marc:Yeah.

00:37:16Guest:So how long did teaching last?

00:37:18Guest:It lasted about two years.

00:37:19Guest:I was dating a girlfriend at the time whose father worked on Wall Street.

00:37:23Guest:We were getting serious in a relationship.

00:37:25Guest:I had an undergraduate student loan that I was trying to pay off, and I thought that was a lot.

00:37:28Guest:That was 40.

00:37:29Guest:Little did I know I was going to end up getting into over 300 with film school.

00:37:34Guest:So I ended up moving to Wall Street, and I became a director of educational programs for AIG.

00:37:39Marc:So is that something, okay, so you do your time at the fancy school, what, for a year or two?

00:37:46Guest:Yeah, I did two years.

00:37:48Guest:It was a great gig.

00:37:49Guest:I had every intention.

00:37:50Guest:I wanted to be a principal and a superintendent.

00:37:52Guest:That was my career path.

00:37:53Guest:That was what I wanted to do.

00:37:55Marc:What was it about education?

00:37:56Marc:Was it the thrill of young minds?

00:37:59Guest:I don't know what it is.

00:38:02Guest:I love kids.

00:38:03Guest:I really like being in front of the classroom.

00:38:08Guest:Putting on the teacher show.

00:38:10Guest:Yeah, putting on the teacher show.

00:38:11Guest:It was fun, making things interesting, exciting.

00:38:15Guest:But somehow it's like you're kind of telling stories.

00:38:19Guest:You're storytelling doing that.

00:38:20Marc:I guess there's nothing more rewarding than seeing –

00:38:24Marc:making children understand something that they didn't know before.

00:38:28Guest:100%.

00:38:28Guest:And I ended up doing that even after film school.

00:38:32Guest:I taught at NYU.

00:38:33Guest:I'm still an adjunct professor there.

00:38:35Guest:And I try anytime I get an opportunity.

00:38:38Guest:I'll do it for free.

00:38:41Guest:It's not even something that you have to pay me.

00:38:42Guest:That's like a passion.

00:38:44Guest:But at the same time, I need to earn a living.

00:38:46Guest:And so that question of can I sustain...

00:38:50Marc:can teaching sustain me yeah maybe you know maybe right but but that moment though where you blow a mind where they're just like what like i you know because teachers are the ones i mean you got your parents and that can go either way but you're always going to have in your life like a couple of teachers that changed the whole yeah fucking course of everything you're like you know what i'm i'm never gonna do that again yeah yeah or like i never thought of that yeah yeah and now i'm thinking about it all the time yeah

00:39:16Marc:That's true.

00:39:17Marc:Do you have teachers in your past?

00:39:19Guest:Yeah, I mean, there's been a handful.

00:39:21Guest:There's been a handful of teachers, you know, along the way.

00:39:24Guest:Different stages, you know, creative writing.

00:39:26Marc:Yeah, right.

00:39:26Marc:I remember the guy in high school, Dr. Hayes, who, you know, had us write poetry, and he was this animated, weird little man.

00:39:32Marc:And, you know, I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and, you know, he told me to write some real shit, and I wrote some real shit, and the whole class was like, what the fuck?

00:39:41Yeah.

00:39:41Marc:But he was like, great.

00:39:43Marc:And I'm like, okay, it's not going to help me in the hallway, dude.

00:39:46Marc:Why'd you get me here?

00:39:47Marc:But it changed my mind.

00:39:48Guest:It changed my life.

00:39:49Guest:I wasn't the best student growing up, to be honest with you.

00:39:52Guest:I think because my parents left, I was a jock guy, but I think I was just distracted.

00:39:56Guest:I had ADD before it was classified.

00:39:59Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:40:00Guest:Thank God, because I didn't get the medicine.

00:40:02Guest:I just was self-healed.

00:40:05Guest:And I think, no, because I think

00:40:08Guest:Had I been in that wave of ADD and medicating kids, absolutely.

00:40:14Guest:If you go back to my report cards, it was like, Ray's a good kid.

00:40:17Guest:Can't sit still for more than five minutes.

00:40:19Guest:Can't sit still for more than five minutes.

00:40:21Guest:My dad had a tough time.

00:40:23Guest:I can't imagine.

00:40:24Guest:I don't know if my brain was just somewhere else.

00:40:27Marc:I don't know what happens.

00:40:28Marc:My parents didn't split up until I was in my 30s, but it seems that when one of them goes, something happens.

00:40:35Marc:Yeah, there's something ungrounded.

00:40:37Marc:There's something angry.

00:40:38Marc:There's some rudder that's loose for a while, right?

00:40:42Marc:But yeah, I mean, how long did you not have a relationship with your mom?

00:40:45Guest:I mean, it was just a distant relationship.

00:40:49Guest:She was in touch.

00:40:50Guest:What became weekly visits became biweekly visits.

00:40:52Guest:What became biweekly became tri... Yeah, but it wasn't like there wasn't touch, of course.

00:40:57Guest:I could call my mom whenever she was always...

00:40:59Guest:But once, especially once, once middle school and high school, once we became, once sports took over, she wasn't trying to be on the baseball diamond.

00:41:10Guest:Baseball was probably what split up their relationship.

00:41:13Guest:So, and now baseball is being used.

00:41:15Guest:The fucking Mets, man.

00:41:16Guest:No, but somehow, you know.

00:41:18Guest:The Mets ruined their marriage, killed your dad.

00:41:20Guest:Yeah.

00:41:21Guest:No, this feels like anti- I'm like the biggest Mets fan.

00:41:25Guest:I love the Mets.

00:41:26Guest:No, I know.

00:41:26Guest:But no, no, but it's true.

00:41:27Guest:But there are just, I think baseball and that, I think she just didn't want to really deal with that.

00:41:33Guest:And we were on the field.

00:41:34Guest:I mean, there were times where I was on three leagues at the same time.

00:41:38Guest:We played the team and then we'd play in the outer league and we were on teams.

00:41:42Guest:And then all-star team and then the traveling baseball.

00:41:45Guest:I mean, it was madness.

00:41:46Guest:I was on the field.

00:41:48Marc:All the time.

00:41:48Guest:And that was your dad's trip.

00:41:50Guest:That was my dad's thing.

00:41:51Marc:You know what?

00:41:52Marc:I think there's a baseball movie in your future.

00:41:55Marc:I'm working on it right now.

00:41:59Marc:Of course you are.

00:42:01Marc:You have to.

00:42:02Marc:And you're dedicated to your old man.

00:42:03Marc:Yeah, he was a good guy, man.

00:42:05Marc:He meant well.

00:42:06Marc:But so, all right, so you go from teaching to this Wall Street gig.

00:42:09Marc:Now, is that a job that you created for yourself or it was something that they had?

00:42:13Guest:Well, it was, to be honest, it was a position that was being newly created.

00:42:17Guest:It was working out of the diversity department at AIG.

00:42:19Guest:And of course, you know, AIG is an insurance company.

00:42:22Guest:Diversity was a hot button thing at the time and all these insurance companies.

00:42:25Guest:Got to mix it up.

00:42:26Guest:Got to have a lot of different people.

00:42:27Guest:Got to have a lot of different people.

00:42:28Guest:So, yeah, no, but it's true.

00:42:29Guest:You know, that's, you know...

00:42:31Guest:Sadly, a lot of it's window dressing.

00:42:33Guest:Of course, you have real people that are doing real work, but a lot of it is just, hey, we're doing this for the company, but we just really need to say we're doing something.

00:42:39Guest:We're not actually caring about the difference in what we're doing.

00:42:43Guest:I wound up doing that.

00:42:45Guest:When the crash hit, they were getting rid of people.

00:42:48Guest:Of course, the first thing they do is blame diversity.

00:42:51Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:42:52Guest:Diversity was what it was that brought down the financial crash.

00:42:56Guest:So somehow I was able to navigate within AIG and I ended up working and getting another job, not getting let go.

00:43:03Guest:But that's because you were connected through the woman?

00:43:06Guest:Well, at that point we had broken up.

00:43:09Marc:So her old man wasn't helping?

00:43:10Marc:yet?

00:43:11Marc:Was it her old man?

00:43:11Guest:Well, he got let go.

00:43:12Guest:He got let go.

00:43:13Guest:Oh, really?

00:43:13Guest:Yeah.

00:43:14Guest:I mean, he was top, top, top, top dog.

00:43:16Guest:Oh, so he had to be taken.

00:43:17Guest:He had to be thrown under the bus.

00:43:19Guest:He was taken.

00:43:20Guest:Yeah.

00:43:20Guest:Let's just say he was removed from his post.

00:43:24Guest:And you break up with her.

00:43:25Guest:We break up.

00:43:26Guest:It just didn't work out.

00:43:27Guest:And you're still in.

00:43:28Guest:And I'm still in.

00:43:29Guest:Yeah.

00:43:30Guest:Wall Street.

00:43:30Guest:I'm still on Wall Street.

00:43:32Guest:I pay off my student loans, but I'm young.

00:43:33Guest:I didn't grow up with money, so what do you do when the first thing you do when you see the light of day is you buy a car.

00:43:39Guest:I bought a car.

00:43:40Guest:I went to the Mercedes dealership, and I'm earning a living.

00:43:44Guest:I'm paying for my own apartment.

00:43:45Guest:So you paid off your loans.

00:43:46Guest:You got a Mercedes.

00:43:47Guest:You're paying for your apartment.

00:43:48Guest:Get a Mercedes.

00:43:49Guest:Living the life.

00:43:49Guest:I'm living the life, but I'm not saving anything.

00:43:52Guest:I hadn't been on a plane until I was an adult.

00:43:54Marc:Was there a moral crisis?

00:43:56Marc:Did you start to think like, oh, what got me here?

00:44:01Marc:What about the people that are still suffering?

00:44:03Marc:100%.

00:44:04Guest:Really?

00:44:05Guest:Yeah, absolutely.

00:44:05Guest:I think there was that.

00:44:07Guest:Coupled with seeing my brother do what he was doing, he went to film school and started telling our stories, telling the stories that I grew up knowing and everything.

00:44:20Guest:The teacher woke up.

00:44:21Guest:Yeah.

00:44:21Guest:And just, whoa, all of a sudden, my brother's traveling the world on his art.

00:44:25Guest:This is crazy.

00:44:28Guest:Asia?

00:44:28Guest:What?

00:44:29Guest:Again, I wasn't on a plane until I was an adult.

00:44:33Guest:And then to see my brother go to Europe and to go to Asia.

00:44:37Marc:Doing what?

00:44:37Marc:Making movies or acting?

00:44:38Guest:Well, he had made his film.

00:44:39Guest:He made his film.

00:44:40Guest:Which film?

00:44:41Guest:Gun Hill Road in 2011.

00:44:42Guest:Yeah.

00:44:43Guest:Isai Morales and Judy Reyes.

00:44:44Guest:And that film in Harmony Santana.

00:44:46Guest:That film went on to travel to different places in the world.

00:44:49Guest:Poland.

00:44:50Guest:So he's going to festivals.

00:44:51Guest:He's going to festivals.

00:44:52Guest:And I think it's just the coolest thing in the world.

00:44:54Guest:My big brother.

00:44:55Guest:But he's not making any money.

00:44:56Guest:There's no money.

00:44:57Guest:There's nothing.

00:44:57Guest:But somehow I thought, okay.

00:45:00Guest:You had leveled off.

00:45:01Guest:I

00:45:01Guest:I'm good.

00:45:02Guest:I'm never going to get into debt again.

00:45:04Guest:I'm good.

00:45:05Guest:I'll stay gainfully employed in my adult life, and we'll be fine.

00:45:10Guest:And then I thought, how cool would it be if we became the Green Brothers?

00:45:15Guest:My brother would write and direct.

00:45:16Guest:I would produce.

00:45:17Guest:So that's your pitch.

00:45:18Guest:I would produce.

00:45:19Guest:In my head, I was like, oh, I have the access.

00:45:22Guest:I may not have the money, but I have access to all these Wall Street people that don't know what to do with their money.

00:45:27Guest:Maybe I can help them and say, hey, you want to make...

00:45:30Guest:Do you want to help tell our stories?

00:45:31Guest:Because my brother is, look, they're comparing him to Spike Lee.

00:45:34Guest:Like, they're calling him the next Spike.

00:45:36Guest:Like, look, look, he's the guy.

00:45:38Guest:But of course, but I didn't want to live off my brother.

00:45:40Guest:I wanted to like learn the craft.

00:45:41Guest:You know, it's like one thing to face.

00:45:42Guest:Are you married yet?

00:45:43Guest:I am married.

00:45:44Guest:You got married.

00:45:45Marc:I got married in film school.

00:45:46Marc:Oh, so after this.

00:45:48Marc:After this.

00:45:49Guest:Okay, so I'm single.

00:45:50Guest:Got the production vision.

00:45:51Guest:I got the production.

00:45:52Guest:Well, I got the bug.

00:45:54Guest:I missed a very important fact.

00:45:56Guest:My brother goes to film school.

00:45:58Guest:He has to make a bunch of shorts.

00:46:00Guest:In making the shorts, he puts me in as an actor.

00:46:02Guest:I told you I had this little Lenny Kravitz thing going on.

00:46:04Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:46:05Guest:Puts me in.

00:46:06Guest:The first short that he does gets into Sundance, and I'm the lead actor in the short.

00:46:11Guest:But I'm not an actor.

00:46:12Guest:I'm just the guy that my brother put in a film.

00:46:13Guest:You got the hair.

00:46:14Guest:But of course I go there and I meet the real Lenny Kravitz.

00:46:16Guest:I'm like, this is crazy.

00:46:18Guest:Where'd you meet him?

00:46:19Guest:He was at Sundance that year with Precious.

00:46:21Guest:So all of a sudden I'm seeing the stars that I watch on TV.

00:46:25Marc:I didn't really even know Sundance.

00:46:26Marc:You're trying to breathe in the snow.

00:46:28Marc:Yeah.

00:46:28Marc:And you're seeing all... It's like a hallucinatory experience seeing all those people up there.

00:46:32Guest:Of course.

00:46:33Guest:But, you know, listen, I go back to my desk job.

00:46:34Guest:My brother goes back to making another short film and then his feature.

00:46:37Guest:But at that time, he was introducing me to what a set looks like.

00:46:41Guest:Right.

00:46:41Guest:You know, I had been on a set.

00:46:42Guest:I had wrangled cables as a PA.

00:46:44Guest:So... You worked as a PA for him?

00:46:47Guest:I think it was more than a PA.

00:46:48Guest:Yeah.

00:46:48Guest:You know, a glorified PA.

00:46:50Guest:Having your brother around.

00:46:51Guest:Yeah, bro...

00:46:52Guest:We need sandwiches.

00:46:54Guest:I need you to park the car.

00:46:55Guest:I need you to... Right, right.

00:46:57Guest:We just... You got to figure it out.

00:46:59Guest:You learn all those things.

00:47:00Guest:But I still didn't know what it's like.

00:47:01Guest:It's like one thing to be an athlete and face a 90-mile-an-hour fastball.

00:47:05Guest:And then there's one thing to be a fan and see a 90-mile-an-hour fastball.

00:47:08Guest:And I felt like I was a fan.

00:47:10Guest:I don't know what it's like to face 90-mile-an-hour heat.

00:47:12Guest:And now...

00:47:13Guest:When I decided to go to film school, I was like, oh, this is 90-mile-an-hour heat.

00:47:17Guest:This is different.

00:47:19Guest:I'm experiencing the game.

00:47:20Marc:So you work with your brother on just getting the hang of it, seeing him work and going places with him.

00:47:25Guest:But he had graduated.

00:47:25Guest:He had graduated.

00:47:27Marc:But you weren't doing any producing, really, yet.

00:47:29Marc:You were just hanging around.

00:47:30Guest:With his feature film, I had somehow become sort of the marketing guy at AIG.

00:47:36Guest:I was putting stuff together, so I was helping him get the word out.

00:47:40Guest:Promoting social media.

00:47:43Guest:Gun Hill Road.

00:47:44Guest:So I was just helping with social media.

00:47:46Guest:At that time, Facebook was still growing and changing banners and profile pictures.

00:47:50Guest:What can we do to get this little indie film seen?

00:47:53Guest:And I thought I was pretty good at it.

00:47:55Guest:I was good at telling people and getting people involved.

00:47:57Guest:We made t-shirts and walked around the AIDS parade.

00:48:00Guest:We did so much to try to...

00:48:02Guest:Call attention to this tiny little film.

00:48:05Guest:What was that movie about?

00:48:06Guest:It was about a young transgender girl who basically is transitioning.

00:48:13Guest:From?

00:48:15Guest:Transitioning from boy to girl.

00:48:18Guest:And her father has been in prison and estranged and comes home to realize that his son is now wanting to be a young woman.

00:48:27Guest:Wow, is that just a made up story?

00:48:28Guest:No, it's based off of a real family member of ours.

00:48:31Guest:Oh, wow.

00:48:32Guest:A cousin of ours who has transitioned now.

00:48:35Guest:Yeah.

00:48:36Guest:And it's real.

00:48:37Guest:And who had been to prison, came home.

00:48:39Guest:The father.

00:48:40Guest:The father.

00:48:40Guest:So the story's really told through the father.

00:48:42Marc:How's she doing?

00:48:44Guest:She's doing fine.

00:48:45Guest:You know, listen, the father, you know, hadn't spoke to the son in years.

00:48:49Guest:Right.

00:48:50Guest:And once that happened, cut him off.

00:48:52Guest:But the movie, after seeing the movie, they got in touch.

00:48:55Guest:Oh, really?

00:48:56Guest:Yeah.

00:48:56Guest:It was really special to be like, you know what?

00:48:58Guest:The power of cinema.

00:48:59Guest:Huh.

00:49:00Guest:Seeing yourself.

00:49:01Guest:There it is.

00:49:01Guest:That's that thing.

00:49:02Guest:Seeing yourself, where you're like, whoa, I'm a dad.

00:49:04Guest:I've cut my son, my daughter off.

00:49:08Guest:It hit hard.

00:49:10Guest:It hit hard when you see that, when you see yourself and you see that you're grappling with.

00:49:15Guest:That's that teaching moment we're talking about.

00:49:17Guest:Yeah, but you got to understand it's cultural.

00:49:20Guest:There's some deep cultural things.

00:49:22Guest:You're not even allowed to feel that way even if you want to.

00:49:24Guest:You can't come home to the community.

00:49:26Guest:Maybe you're okay with it, but not your boys.

00:49:29Guest:Yeah, right.

00:49:31Guest:It's tough.

00:49:32Guest:And in the South Bronx, you could lose your life.

00:49:35Guest:So this was a Latino community?

00:49:36Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:49:37Marc:Definitely.

00:49:38Guest:That side.

00:49:38Guest:Yeah, that side of it.

00:49:39Marc:That side of the family.

00:49:40Marc:Uh-huh.

00:49:41Marc:And wow, that's a heavy... It was a heavy film.

00:49:44Marc:Heavy film.

00:49:45Marc:How's it hold up?

00:49:46Marc:When did he make it?

00:49:46Marc:2011?

00:49:47Marc:He made it in 2011.

00:49:48Guest:Yeah, it's a great little film.

00:49:51Guest:Okay, so there you are.

00:49:53Guest:You're doing the- I'm just promoting, being brother, promoting whatever I can.

00:49:56Guest:My brother is doing something.

00:49:58Guest:Oh my God, I'm the happiest man in the world.

00:49:59Guest:I look up to my brother.

00:50:00Guest:He's a king.

00:50:01Guest:How much older?

00:50:02Guest:Three and a half years.

00:50:03Guest:I borrowed his clothes, got ketchup stains on it, all that.

00:50:08Guest:We went through all that, but we were best friends for a long, long time.

00:50:11Marc:So you decide to walk away from the gig-

00:50:16Guest:To go to school.

00:50:17Guest:So my brother's editing Gun Hill Road at the time.

00:50:21Guest:I remember this specifically.

00:50:22Guest:I was looking for a way out.

00:50:23Guest:I go online that day.

00:50:25Guest:I was bored at work.

00:50:26Guest:And I go on the NYU website.

00:50:27Guest:It says, oh, there's a dual degree program.

00:50:29Guest:You can get your MFA and MBA.

00:50:32Guest:And I read the one paragraph and I was like, this is me.

00:50:35Guest:It had business.

00:50:36Guest:It had film.

00:50:37Guest:This is perfect.

00:50:38Guest:But then I also looked and said the application was due today.

00:50:40Guest:I was like, oh, good.

00:50:41Guest:crap yeah i'll wait till next year yeah i go to the editing room that night i leave office i go to visit my brother in the editing room and i was like bro i know what i want to do uh but the applications dude today was like he steps out of the editing room he steps out he's like bro are you serious he looks at me like with like this filled heart as if he was like so disheartened i've been on wall street and waiting for my passion right he's like is this really what you want to do and i was like yeah bro i'm telling you this is amazing like this is me sends a text message to the chair of the department who just writes back tell him to get it in soon yeah

00:51:11Guest:That's it.

00:51:13Guest:Yeah.

00:51:13Guest:And what do you got to do?

00:51:15Guest:I had to take the GMATs.

00:51:16Guest:I had to take, I mean, it was like I had to make a short film.

00:51:19Guest:I had to do two applications because there was two different schools that you have to get into.

00:51:24Guest:Fast forward, I don't get into the dual degree program.

00:51:26Guest:I had the interview.

00:51:27Guest:I get waitlisted for the MFA program.

00:51:30Guest:Yeah.

00:51:31Guest:So I'm like, I'm waitlisted.

00:51:33Guest:to arguably one of the best film schools in the country.

00:51:37Guest:Yeah.

00:51:37Guest:If I get in.

00:51:38Guest:So you got the short done and everything?

00:51:40Guest:I got the short.

00:51:40Guest:I shot it on New Year's Day.

00:51:42Guest:It was a comedy I showed to you.

00:51:43Guest:It's called The Interview.

00:51:44Guest:And I used my office.

00:51:46Guest:I used my office.

00:51:47Guest:I'm acting in it.

00:51:48Guest:It's a commentary on sort of race in- Wall Street.

00:51:56Guest:Wall Street.

00:51:56Guest:Yeah.

00:51:57Guest:It's quite interesting.

00:51:59Guest:Anyway, I find out that I get accepted into the program.

00:52:03Guest:So now you got to go to film school.

00:52:04Guest:So now I got to go to film school.

00:52:05Guest:Just the film school.

00:52:06Guest:Yeah.

00:52:07Guest:Just the same program my brother did.

00:52:08Guest:I get into that program.

00:52:09Guest:And how long is that program?

00:52:12Guest:Well, it's three years of coursework, and then you can take up to two, three, four years to do your thesis.

00:52:19Guest:A lot of kids stay in because you can matriculate and not pay back your loans.

00:52:23Guest:Right.

00:52:23Marc:I don't even know what that means, matriculate.

00:52:25Guest:It means you pay a small fee that allows you to say that you're part of the university and your student loans won't kick in because you're still taking coursework.

00:52:35Marc:Oh, I see.

00:52:35Guest:Okay, okay, yeah.

00:52:36Guest:But once you graduate, you know, Sally May or whoever, you know, I forget what the loan company is now.

00:52:41Guest:They're like, hey, by the way, here you go.

00:52:44Guest:And of course, after the first year of film school and I look back and I'm like 80 grand in debt now, which was double what I had for undergrad.

00:52:50Guest:I was like, well, I'm all the way in now.

00:52:53Guest:So here we go.

00:52:54Guest:And I graduated 2016 with $330,000 worth of debt.

00:52:59Guest:And, you know, I'm on the road to paying it back.

00:53:02Guest:Yeah.

00:53:02Guest:Yeah, I'm on the road to paying it back.

00:53:04Guest:You'll get it.

00:53:05Guest:I'm on the road.

00:53:07Marc:They'll give you a Marvel movie after you make a few of the heartfelt... We'll see.

00:53:12Guest:We'll see.

00:53:13Guest:Listen, what Ryan was able to do with a Marvel movie and make it as heartfelt, make it as grounded, make it as culturally relevant.

00:53:20Guest:I mean, listen, if you're allowed to do what you want to do with it and you don't sell your soul, I think you can carve out... Yeah, I think so.

00:53:28Marc:But it is a tricky journey in that...

00:53:32Marc:Not unlike whatever you felt, whatever moral turpitude you had in working on Wall Street when you realized that that was, whatever it was, it was window dressing to some degree, I think you said, something like that.

00:53:44Marc:But you make a movie like this one, like Monsters and Men, where you really sort of, there's a lot of uncomfortable truths.

00:53:53Marc:and they aren't necessarily resolved in an easy way, but the ending was very clever and reasonable.

00:54:06Marc:You know what I mean?

00:54:06Marc:It was powerful, but it wasn't like we fixed it.

00:54:10Marc:Yeah, no, no, because we haven't.

00:54:11Marc:Right, and also the way you ended your film is very relevant to what's happening.

00:54:16Marc:That wouldn't have come up in your head two years ago.

00:54:19Guest:No, it's crazy.

00:54:20Guest:Right?

00:54:21Guest:No, not at all, but you know...

00:54:22Guest:When I started writing the script and when we ended, the conversation had changed.

00:54:27Guest:We went from talking about Eric Garner and how important that video is to all of a sudden.

00:54:35Guest:Now you got Tamir Rice, Philando Castile.

00:54:39Guest:Walter Scott, Sandra Bland.

00:54:41Guest:I mean, the list goes on.

00:54:43Guest:And there were folks before then, but we didn't have the video evidence of it.

00:54:49Guest:So the conversation has just changed.

00:54:50Guest:The movement has grown.

00:54:53Guest:Sure, yeah, there's that, the video.

00:54:55Marc:But even like...

00:54:57Marc:You know, what happens there, you know, the poetry of that is like just a couple years.

00:55:02Marc:I mean, that's not the video.

00:55:03Marc:That's a different cultural dialogue.

00:55:06Guest:It's a different cultural thing.

00:55:06Guest:Yeah, no, which we definitely, you know, must have been thrilled when you figured that out.

00:55:11Guest:Well, it was crazy because it happened.

00:55:13Guest:So, you know, we definitely utilized what was...

00:55:18Marc:Current.

00:55:18Marc:So what was the process?

00:55:20Marc:So you're in school, you're in that program, and you did stop there.

00:55:25Marc:I did stop there, yep.

00:55:26Marc:You did a lot of shorts.

00:55:27Marc:I did a lot.

00:55:28Marc:I made seven shorts in film school.

00:55:29Marc:Now shorts are, people do them.

00:55:33Marc:It's not like there's a huge market for them, but what is the intent of shorts, really?

00:55:38Guest:Well, the intent, obviously it's a calling card for being able to develop longer forms.

00:55:44Guest:Right.

00:55:44Guest:So whether it's television, web series.

00:55:45Guest:And they teach you that.

00:55:46Guest:They teach you the fundamentals of how to work with a crew, how to- But I mean the idea that you make a short and it's good, that'll get you seen.

00:55:58Guest:Yes.

00:55:58Marc:That's understood.

00:55:59Guest:Film school, yes and no.

00:56:03Guest:They don't really teach the festival part of it.

00:56:06Guest:You know, they touch on it.

00:56:07Guest:It's a graze, but it's really about learning the craft.

00:56:11Guest:And you have to say, a lot of kids that go to film school are very wealthy.

00:56:13Guest:Right.

00:56:13Guest:Come from very wealthy parents.

00:56:15Guest:Yeah.

00:56:15Guest:So they're not concerned necessarily with the business debt or the business.

00:56:19Guest:Right.

00:56:19Guest:It's more of learning the actual.

00:56:21Guest:Right.

00:56:22Guest:Where like some of us where it's like we have to be seen in order to get any sort of traction in this world.

00:56:28Guest:Like there's no way I could pay back my loan if nobody knows who I am.

00:56:31Guest:Right.

00:56:31Guest:I have to be able to.

00:56:32Marc:This isn't a phase I'm going through.

00:56:33Guest:This is not a phase.

00:56:34Guest:This is life.

00:56:35Guest:Like you guys, hey, hello, I'm here.

00:56:37Marc:Hello, hello.

00:56:38Marc:I got to make some money.

00:56:39Guest:I got to make not just money.

00:56:40Guest:I have to be able to put myself in a position to succeed.

00:56:44Guest:Yes, of course, there's financial upside to that.

00:56:47Guest:But there's no way to do that without a platform.

00:56:49Guest:And so, you know, of course, Film School grazes on that, and there's producing courses that talk about that, but that's not the focus of Film School.

00:56:57Guest:Focus is make shorts, learn how to shoot on film, learn how to tell a film with no dialogue, learn how to shoot a film with dialogue.

00:57:04Guest:I mean, it's sort of broken into a very systematic, like, this is how we do your first film, which is four minutes, silent black and white.

00:57:11Guest:We do your second film, which is an observational documentary.

00:57:14Guest:We do your third film, which is where you incorporate dialogue and that kind of thing.

00:57:19Guest:And then your second year film at Tisch is your big film.

00:57:22Guest:That's the film where everybody pours their resources.

00:57:25Guest:It's a short.

00:57:25Guest:You make your short, but it's like you combine everything you've practiced on in your first year.

00:57:30Guest:And it's your choice what you want to make.

00:57:32Guest:What you want to do with it.

00:57:33Guest:And I went to Cape Town, South Africa.

00:57:34Guest:I made this short called Stone Cars, which went to Cannes in competition.

00:57:39Guest:And that was a life changer.

00:57:41Guest:What was that about?

00:57:42Guest:It was about a young girl who's sort of coming of age, young girl in Cape Town who's questioning her sexuality.

00:57:51Guest:I had gone to Cape Town six months before that.

00:57:52Guest:In my first year between my freshman year, right after the first year of film school, I went to Cape Town to shoot a documentary.

00:57:59Guest:for a non-profit organization.

00:58:02Guest:You just got a job.

00:58:03Guest:I just got a job, but it was non-paid, but I get to go to Africa for three weeks, live and shoot this doc.

00:58:09Guest:How was that experience?

00:58:10Guest:It was life-changing, and it made me go back and make this short film.

00:58:13Guest:Life-changing, what specifically?

00:58:17Guest:I had never seen poverty like that before in my life.

00:58:21Guest:Never the expansiveness of as far as your eye can see.

00:58:25Guest:that's how poor, literally like, oh my God, you can see off into the mountains.

00:58:30Guest:People living in corrugated tin shacks for miles and miles on end.

00:58:34Guest:I'd never seen that, but I also never saw how happy a community was.

00:58:38Guest:They were the happiest people I've ever met in my life.

00:58:40Guest:Nobody's complaining about the... It just was like, I'm never going to complain again in my life.

00:58:44Guest:I'd never seen such a joy.

00:58:46Guest:The colors were so rich.

00:58:47Guest:I also felt like... You go to a country or you go to a city and you're like, oh, this is a nice city.

00:58:52Guest:I don't know if I could live here.

00:58:53Guest:Cape Town felt like a place I could actually live.

00:58:56Guest:I was like...

00:58:57Guest:I don't feel that about LA.

00:59:01Guest:But I go to Cape Town and I'm like, I feel like I could actually live in this place.

00:59:05Guest:I felt pure joy.

00:59:07Guest:It was amazing.

00:59:08Guest:But I mean, I was also saddened by the poverty.

00:59:10Guest:I was saddened by the situation.

00:59:11Guest:I met this young girl there who

00:59:12Guest:who ended up becoming the subject of my little documentary, who I ended up casting in the short film.

00:59:20Guest:Sounds like a heavy short.

00:59:21Guest:It's heavy, yeah.

00:59:22Guest:I mean, it deals with rape culture.

00:59:24Guest:It deals a little bit with that.

00:59:27Guest:It's another slice of life.

00:59:30Guest:Story very similar to Stop.

00:59:31Guest:I'm going to Stop after that.

00:59:33Guest:And what worked in Stone Cars is what I try to keep in sort of the filmmaking language.

00:59:39Marc:Which is a certain poetic ambiguity?

00:59:43Guest:Yes.

00:59:44Guest:And you have that in Stone Cars.

00:59:45Guest:And that was the first time.

00:59:46Guest:But because that film was able to play on HBO, went to Cannes in competition, all of a sudden...

00:59:54Guest:I'm a director.

00:59:55Guest:I wouldn't even know if I was considering myself.

00:59:58Guest:Again, I told you I wanted to produce.

00:59:59Guest:I was trying to produce.

01:00:00Guest:I was producing for all of my other friends.

01:00:01Guest:You were?

01:00:02Guest:I produced 20 shorts in film school.

01:00:04Guest:I won the top producing prize at NYU.

01:00:06Guest:I didn't win top directing anything.

01:00:08Marc:Because you stuck with that as being your primary focus?

01:00:11Marc:That was going to be my focus, yeah.

01:00:13Marc:You wanted to learn how to produce whether you were in the MBA program or not.

01:00:16Marc:Exactly.

01:00:16Marc:And so I just started producing.

01:00:17Marc:Yeah.

01:00:18Marc:And what does that entail when you're doing shorts?

01:00:20Marc:Just organizing?

01:00:21Marc:Yeah.

01:00:22Guest:Getting the insurance, getting locations, making sure stuff shows up on time, hiring the crew, everything.

01:00:30Guest:So you learned that.

01:00:31Guest:I learned all that.

01:00:32Guest:And somehow learning that, I also learned how to make stuff for nothing.

01:00:37Guest:Yeah.

01:00:38Guest:And so I would able to take a small thing like stop, which I made for 500 bucks.

01:00:42Guest:People like, how did you make that for 500 bucks?

01:00:43Guest:What'd you shoot it on?

01:00:44Guest:We shot it on a red, but I borrowed my friend's camera.

01:00:46Guest:Right.

01:00:47Guest:Who was a DP.

01:00:48Guest:Right.

01:00:48Marc:Because you knew him from producing.

01:00:49Guest:Yeah.

01:00:50Guest:But otherwise, you rent that camera for two days, you're already at $2,000 or whatever, $3,000 for the weekend.

01:00:57Marc:Right.

01:00:58Marc:Right.

01:00:58Marc:But the thing about Stop, which is really interesting, is, again, you know, you're moving through this event.

01:01:05Marc:You know, it's really, you know, the whole film takes place almost in real time.

01:01:09Marc:Right?

01:01:10Marc:Yeah.

01:01:11Marc:And, you know, you don't, everything is loaded up.

01:01:16Marc:You know, as soon as he, you know, as soon as he's on the bus, as soon as he puts his hoodie up,

01:01:21Marc:To get off the bus, you're like, well, yeah, with this, already it's referencing everything.

01:01:26Marc:Yeah.

01:01:27Marc:You know, that could go horribly wrong.

01:01:30Marc:Yeah.

01:01:30Marc:And then, you know, it's just, it's all very subtle.

01:01:32Marc:And then, you know, when he gets home and just dumps the weed, you know, just that, you're like, that was all it could take for that guy's life to be over.

01:01:44Mm-hmm.

01:01:44Marc:Right.

01:01:45Marc:Absolutely.

01:01:46Marc:I mean, you're hoping that people aren't going like, you know, you got through it.

01:01:49Guest:What are you dumping the weed for?

01:01:50Guest:Well, it's hilarious.

01:01:51Guest:You know, I had so many different reactions.

01:01:53Guest:I had other folks, you know, who were like, they were happy that he had weed.

01:01:57Guest:Yeah.

01:01:57Guest:Like celebrating.

01:01:58Guest:Like got away with it.

01:01:59Guest:Oh, like, yeah, that's right.

01:02:01Guest:They had the right to stop him.

01:02:02Guest:I'm like, they kind of missed the point.

01:02:03Guest:But both of those kind of reactions, too.

01:02:06Guest:Which are, look, look, they had the right to stop him because he had weed.

01:02:09Guest:What the fuck is that?

01:02:10Guest:It's like just weed.

01:02:11Guest:You didn't even know.

01:02:12Guest:You didn't know that he had weed.

01:02:14Guest:You assumed.

01:02:15Marc:Who the hell had that reaction?

01:02:17Guest:I mean, you know, there's audience members.

01:02:19Guest:Really?

01:02:20Guest:Audience members when we were traveling.

01:02:21Marc:See, they had, so they're like, those cops had good instincts.

01:02:23Marc:They just fucked up.

01:02:24Marc:Yeah.

01:02:25Marc:That's their side.

01:02:26Guest:Yeah, I got a couple of the Staten Island kids, like, look, look.

01:02:30Guest:Yeah, see, that cops, those weren't wrong.

01:02:32Guest:They got away with it.

01:02:33Guest:He's lucky.

01:02:33Guest:Yeah, and then you had, but then you had other folks.

01:02:36Guest:You know, I had a black woman in the audience who was not happy with me for having put weed on the kid.

01:02:43Guest:Like, why would you, you know,

01:02:45Guest:Why would you show that?

01:02:47Guest:Because you need an ending.

01:02:50Guest:That as well.

01:02:51Guest:But my answer has always been, it wasn't about the weed.

01:02:55Guest:The film is not about the weed.

01:02:57Guest:It's about the stop.

01:02:58Guest:So it only complicates that.

01:03:01Guest:It only makes it more complex of how we look at it.

01:03:03Guest:It only makes it a little bit more gray.

01:03:04Guest:But if you think about it, should he have been stopped in the first place?

01:03:08Marc:That's right.

01:03:09Marc:And also it just comes into play like, you know, the percentage of, you know, black guys who are busted for small drug, not even crime.

01:03:22Marc:Yes.

01:03:22Marc:Small possessions.

01:03:23Marc:Possessions.

01:03:24Marc:And they're, they're, they're done.

01:03:25Guest:They, they, they're introduced into jail culture and it's over for them.

01:03:28Guest:Yeah.

01:03:29Guest:And so, yeah.

01:03:30Guest:And now weed is becoming legal in many, many states, but there's still, you know, they'll still find a way to, you know.

01:03:36Guest:Yep.

01:03:37Guest:So coming out of that, you know, where did stop go as a short?

01:03:41Guest:So stop premiered at Sundance.

01:03:42Guest:Yeah.

01:03:42Guest:Premiered at Sundance.

01:03:43Guest:So I, I think I mentioned, I cast a real New York city police officer in the film.

01:03:47Guest:And a guy you grew up with.

01:03:48Guest:A guy I grew up with.

01:03:49Guest:We go to Sundance together.

01:03:51Guest:He's lodging with me.

01:03:52Guest:So he's my buddy.

01:03:53Guest:We knew each other.

01:03:55Guest:We start talking.

01:03:56Guest:It's 2 o'clock in the morning.

01:03:56Guest:We're eating pizza.

01:03:57Guest:We start talking about the Eric Garner case in Staten Island, where we're from, where I used to deliver pizza.

01:04:01Guest:Yeah.

01:04:02Guest:Somehow we get it starts off in a conversation ends in a heated debate what ends up becoming the dinner scene in the film Oh, yeah, but that conversation So I you know what I saw on the tape was a guy that should be alive and he said he's not African-American this no he's a white guy.

01:04:16Guest:Yeah, he's a white cop.

01:04:17Guest:Yeah, and But anyway, so but he was like right listen, it's unfortunate what happened to him You know, it's terrible, but he was resisting arrest and of course we start getting old just because there's this thing I was like Brian he could have a shotgun and

01:04:31Guest:and killed everybody in that store.

01:04:34Guest:Left it there on the ground, come out, and due process said he should still be alive.

01:04:40Guest:We're just going back and forth.

01:04:43Guest:And next thing you know, he's talking about everything that's not on the tape.

01:04:45Guest:You don't understand what it's like being a police officer.

01:04:47Guest:You don't understand what it's like.

01:04:48Guest:You don't understand that these police officers had a relationship with him, that they were trying to move him for 10 minutes.

01:04:53Guest:What would you do?

01:04:54Guest:What would you do if you were in that situation?

01:04:55Guest:He kept kind of getting, what would you do?

01:04:57Guest:Well, Brian, I wouldn't have gotten on his neck and choked him.

01:05:00Guest:Yeah.

01:05:01Guest:And by the end, we're like, not going to fight, but it's... Well, I wasn't going to fight him because he has a gun and he's a police officer.

01:05:08Guest:But it was intense.

01:05:11Guest:And he was in tears.

01:05:14Guest:He was in tears because he was feeling real pain.

01:05:16Guest:He felt like I was attacking him.

01:05:17Guest:I wasn't.

01:05:18Guest:I was asking questions about...

01:05:20Guest:What do we do about this situation?

01:05:23Guest:And he couldn't resolve it.

01:05:25Guest:Couldn't resolve it.

01:05:25Guest:And are you guys still friends?

01:05:27Guest:He came back to be an actor in the feature.

01:05:29Guest:We're still friends.

01:05:30Guest:Yeah.

01:05:31Guest:Still friends.

01:05:32Marc:Who was he in the feature?

01:05:33Guest:He's the same guy he was in the short.

01:05:35Guest:Oh, the one of the two guys?

01:05:36Marc:He's one of the two cops.

01:05:37Guest:Yeah.

01:05:38Guest:So it goes to show that- Is he still an active cop?

01:05:41Guest:He's still an active cop.

01:05:42Guest:Where?

01:05:43Guest:He works downtown.

01:05:45Guest:I don't want to give away his precept, but he works downtown Manhattan.

01:05:50Guest:So was that confrontation the seeds of the feature?

01:05:52Guest:100%.

01:05:53Guest:I had no intention of taking my nine minutes short and making a feature.

01:05:57Guest:None whatsoever.

01:05:58Guest:That conversation was like, whoa.

01:06:00Guest:And still, even then, I was like, oh, this is a really crazy conversation.

01:06:05Guest:Mm-hmm.

01:06:05Guest:Six months later, I'm still thinking about that conversation and thinking, well, I have to figure out what I'm going to do as a feature.

01:06:11Guest:My mom's coming in.

01:06:12Guest:What am I doing?

01:06:13Guest:I want to stick to my roots.

01:06:15Guest:And then I got this idea of doing a triptych.

01:06:18Guest:I could...

01:06:20Guest:Follow three characters.

01:06:21Guest:Yeah, but I had two.

01:06:22Guest:I had the cop and I had the kid, but I was like, that's a circle.

01:06:28Guest:Which cop?

01:06:29Guest:The black cop?

01:06:30Guest:Well, he wasn't a black cop yet.

01:06:31Guest:Okay.

01:06:32Guest:And so I came to the conclusion.

01:06:33Guest:I said, well, because he was a white cop I had a conversation with, I thought the film was going to be black and white.

01:06:38Guest:Oh, you know, it's a white cop, black, you know, us versus them.

01:06:42Guest:And I didn't want that to get lost.

01:06:44Guest:And so when it came to me that, oh, I should make it a black cop.

01:06:49Marc:But that wasn't the cop in the film that did the stop.

01:06:52Guest:No, he was not the guy.

01:06:53Guest:He wasn't even there.

01:06:54Guest:He wasn't even there.

01:06:55Marc:He's one step removed.

01:06:56Guest:It's interesting in the movie that you never really see it.

01:06:58Guest:No, you never see it.

01:06:59Guest:You never see it.

01:07:00Guest:Because, you know, that was a conscious decision.

01:07:02Guest:I said, you know what, we can turn on the TV and see that.

01:07:04Marc:yeah what's different about this movie than everything else and it's uh it's how these people what's interesting is you deny the audience the ability to assess what happened uh from their point of view so you're you're kind of forced to move through the two distinct point of views you know like uh did the guy go for the gundy not go for the gun so like it doesn't matter yeah it doesn't matter yeah it doesn't matter yeah

01:07:27Marc:The guy didn't have a gun.

01:07:28Marc:Didn't have a gun.

01:07:29Marc:Right.

01:07:30Marc:But I thought that the performance that you got out of John David Washington, for me, and I'm just saying this, I don't think Spike's gonna ever listen to my show, but I thought it was a better performance than Black Klansman, which is like, the tone of that movie's tricky.

01:07:47Marc:But like...

01:07:48Guest:Spike.

01:07:49Guest:Spike could do Spike.

01:07:51Guest:Spike tone.

01:07:52Guest:And I saw it in the UK, and obviously I went to support Spike and support John David.

01:07:57Guest:And listen, I think Spike was back with the film.

01:08:00Guest:It was the best film he's made in years.

01:08:02Guest:And I thought, kudos, hats off to the master.

01:08:06Guest:Sure.

01:08:06Guest:Oh, absolutely.

01:08:07Guest:I was just waiting the whole movie for his signature shot.

01:08:09Guest:I'm waiting for the dolly to happen.

01:08:10Guest:I was like, what happens?

01:08:11Guest:Thank you, Spike.

01:08:11Guest:Now we're

01:08:12Marc:moving now you're moving you gave it to me you're waiting we're on a rolling thing you're on a rolling thing um but no i mean john david man i mean he really no i like that movie but it's interesting that movie because like i did not walk away from it because of the tone i didn't walk away from it you you know

01:08:28Marc:mulling over.

01:08:30Marc:Do you know what I mean?

01:08:32Marc:Like, because it was very compact and it was very, some of the characters were very broad, right?

01:08:38Marc:And there wasn't a lot of room.

01:08:39Marc:But like, I walk away from your film like, oh, you know, like... It's complicated.

01:08:43Marc:It's complicated, but it's also, it's gritty enough to where your relationship with the characters feels genuine.

01:08:51Marc:You know what I mean?

01:08:51Marc:Like these are guys, when I lived in New York, I saw these guys.

01:08:54Marc:You know, there was a tone to it, to how you captured the neighborhood and all the, you know, the way you select, you know, when you're doing these sort of beautiful panning shots from a distance, but also you get right up into people's shit.

01:09:06Marc:So the mixture of that, you know, really kind of works, you know, and I don't always pay attention to that stuff, but you're a director.

01:09:12Guest:Oh, thank you.

01:09:13Guest:No, no, I appreciate it.

01:09:14Guest:I work closely with our DP, Pat Scola, who did an amazing job.

01:09:18Guest:He came on in the 11th hour.

01:09:19Guest:I'd never worked with him before, but we talked a lot about we wanted to feel complicit with each of these guys.

01:09:25Guest:We only have 30 minutes, 25 minutes with each of them, so we got to love them.

01:09:30Guest:From the opening scene, I want you to be singing along.

01:09:32Guest:When you go into Manny's apartment, I want you to smell the platanos.

01:09:35Guest:I want you to feel that little bit of Puerto Rican culture.

01:09:38Guest:Because we don't have so much time.

01:09:41Guest:So we have to feel and how we lens them, wide lenses, moving close.

01:09:45Guest:How do we capture that?

01:09:47Guest:Let's not rack focus to people that don't need to be rack focused to.

01:09:50Guest:It's about them and their experience.

01:09:52Marc:So the panning shots, the longer shots were really to sort of make you feel

01:09:56Marc:the expanse and also the intimacy of the neighborhood, whereas when you walk into Manny's apartment and his mother and his girlfriend's there with the kid or his wife, whatever, then all of a sudden you're in that.

01:10:12Marc:So that was a nice way to treat the environment as a character.

01:10:16Marc:Oh, thank you.

01:10:16Guest:Yeah, and I learned a lot from Spike in Do the Right Thing and how he used Bed-Stuy in one block.

01:10:22Guest:Right, right.

01:10:22Guest:And of course, this is shot in a few blocks in Bed-Stuy, but how he used that character in a film was just amazing.

01:10:30Guest:The bodega.

01:10:31Guest:The bodega.

01:10:32Guest:Yep.

01:10:32Guest:And then he had the pizza parlor.

01:10:34Guest:Exactly.

01:10:34Guest:He had the pizza parlor.

01:10:35Marc:The bodega, like, if you've lived in New York, you're like, oh, that place.

01:10:39Marc:That place.

01:10:39Guest:Yeah, yeah, you know it.

01:10:40Guest:You know that orning, you know the yellow.

01:10:42Guest:You know, I wanted the film to feel familiar, but also different.

01:10:45Guest:And like, oh, like, you think you know what this movie's about.

01:10:48Guest:Like, there's so many assumptions about it.

01:10:49Guest:And then we subvert.

01:10:51Guest:We subvert.

01:10:51Guest:Right.

01:10:51Marc:Well, that was what was interesting right away for me was that, you know, you have this guy that's like trying to be on the up and up.

01:10:57Marc:He's got a kid at home.

01:10:58Marc:He's got another one coming and he's going looking for jobs.

01:11:02Marc:But then when shit turns shit, when shit turns bad on the street in a minute, he's like, you know, fuck you.

01:11:07Marc:Like, you know, like right away, this guy who's you're going to he's got to look out for himself and for his life.

01:11:13Marc:But as soon as he sees the cops doing bad shit, like he's provoking.

01:11:17Marc:Yeah.

01:11:17Marc:And that was sort of like, wow.

01:11:21Marc:But that's that neighborhood, right?

01:11:24Guest:It is.

01:11:24Guest:And you grow up a certain way, and it's like you defend.

01:11:28Guest:And when you see somebody that you know has been attacked, it's just the street comes out of you.

01:11:37Guest:It's family.

01:11:38Guest:It's beyond.

01:11:39Guest:Because it's not about money.

01:11:41Guest:It's about what's right.

01:11:43Guest:Yeah, this ain't right.

01:11:44Guest:This ain't right.

01:11:45Marc:Yeah.

01:11:46Marc:Yeah, and the way you establish a victim was fairly quick, but you knew that guy too as well as you know the bodega.

01:11:52Marc:Now that guy.

01:11:52Marc:You've seen him before.

01:11:54Marc:Yeah, I have.

01:11:57Marc:In making the movie in terms of not so much directing, but in story, what was the trickiest part for you?

01:12:04Marc:What did you get stuck on?

01:12:06Guest:Well, I think the hardest part is, you know, when you're doing a triptych, you know, is- And the characters are Manny, the cop.

01:12:13Guest:Manny played by Anthony Ramos, and then Dennis played by John David Washington, and Zyrick played by Calvin Harrison Jr.

01:12:21Guest:And I guess the hardest part in doing any film, but especially a triptych, was how are these stories going to intersect?

01:12:29Guest:And in the script, especially even getting the financing, they want more, more, more, more, more, more Crash, more of that type of... And I didn't want to make Crash.

01:12:39Guest:Crash was done.

01:12:40Guest:Crash won an Oscar.

01:12:41Guest:That was that kind of film.

01:12:44Guest:But that wasn't as intimate.

01:12:46Guest:It was a little more spread out.

01:12:48Guest:Yeah, exactly.

01:12:48Guest:But the feeling of wanting this, this kind of intersecting, this intercutting.

01:12:54Marc:Right, and the way you did that was just the nature of the fucking neighborhood.

01:12:57Marc:With Crash, you had to have people walking in.

01:12:59Guest:Yeah, like my cousin with the thing, and it's like, I didn't want to do that.

01:13:02Marc:I didn't want to do that kind of thing.

01:13:04Marc:These guys, all of them knew that one line where John David Washington sees that Manny's been busted.

01:13:13Marc:He says they finally got Manny.

01:13:15Marc:They got him on something.

01:13:17Marc:You know him from the neighborhood.

01:13:18Marc:These cops know everybody from the neighborhood.

01:13:19Marc:They know everybody.

01:13:20Marc:They know everybody.

01:13:21Marc:What they get him on, that kind of thing.

01:13:23Marc:Yeah.

01:13:23Marc:And that's like, it's interesting.

01:13:24Marc:I'm just realizing talking to you is that, you know, his story doesn't get any resolution at all.

01:13:29Marc:Not even, you know, a morally ambiguous one.

01:13:31Guest:Yeah.

01:13:31Guest:Not even.

01:13:32Guest:Well, that was the, that was his character was the toughest for me because my impulse was to bring him back.

01:13:39Guest:You know, I loved him so much when writing him and I was like, he's somebody that people are going to want to see him.

01:13:43Guest:You want it to turn out all right.

01:13:45Guest:Yeah, you just want it to be okay.

01:13:47Guest:You just want to see him again.

01:13:48Guest:Just check in with him as a character.

01:13:51Guest:But my impulse was like, I was like, the reality of situations like God, like Manny, that we don't know what happened to them.

01:14:00Guest:And I know maybe that's an intellectual exercise, but I was like, I think that's closer to the truth than actually continuing to follow what's happening.

01:14:08Guest:And I'm hoping that through these other stories, we can check in with him that way.

01:14:12Guest:We check in with his girlfriend and realize, oh, we do miss him.

01:14:15Guest:We miss him when Zyric goes in and plays with the airplane and we remember what happens on the rooftop.

01:14:20Guest:We remember.

01:14:21Guest:Right.

01:14:21Marc:But for me, most importantly, was that you don't make it clear that he was set up.

01:14:27Marc:Yeah.

01:14:27Marc:Like, right.

01:14:28Marc:So when, you know, we, you know, where'd this kid get this gun from?

01:14:31Marc:You know, it's sort of like you don't know from his reaction whether he's guilty or not.

01:14:36Marc:Yeah.

01:14:36Marc:You know, your assumption is these fuckers set him up, but then you're sort of like, well, he didn't really react that way, did he?

01:14:43Marc:It's great.

01:14:45Guest:It's great.

01:14:46Guest:It is great.

01:14:47Guest:And I think most people will know.

01:14:52Guest:We've never seen him with a gun.

01:14:53Guest:Right.

01:14:54Guest:We've never seen him go get the gun.

01:14:55Guest:Right.

01:14:56Guest:So.

01:14:57Guest:Right.

01:14:57Guest:So, like, in the story math.

01:15:00Guest:In the story math.

01:15:01Guest:It looks like he got set up.

01:15:02Guest:It looks like he got set up.

01:15:03Guest:In my math.

01:15:05Guest:But...

01:15:06Guest:One could say in the same way that that woman said to me, you know, or, you know, the celebration of he had drugs.

01:15:13Guest:They had every reason to do it.

01:15:15Guest:There's going to be a handful of folks that feel that way.

01:15:18Guest:And I'm OK with that.

01:15:19Marc:All I kept thinking about, like, you know, is that he's got to live with that for the rest of his life.

01:15:24Marc:Whatever your argument with your friend was about how cops, we don't understand it.

01:15:30Marc:You do understand that as people, if they have a conscience that hasn't been destroyed, they're going to carry that.

01:15:38Marc:They're carrying all that shit.

01:15:40Guest:All the time.

01:15:41Guest:All the time.

01:15:42Guest:We had a consultant on the film, Edwin Raymond, who has an open case against the NYPD right now.

01:15:48Guest:And he talks a lot about it.

01:15:49Guest:He said he's up for promotion.

01:15:52Guest:He hasn't gotten his promotion.

01:15:53Guest:He passed all the tests.

01:15:54Guest:He has all the qualifications.

01:15:56Guest:He keeps getting denied.

01:15:57Guest:I mean, obviously, he's suing the NYPD, so that could be a big part of it, but it's real stuff.

01:16:03Marc:It's like Serpico, man.

01:16:05Marc:Serpico.

01:16:06Marc:Did you watch that?

01:16:06Marc:Love that film.

01:16:08Marc:Yeah, when they fucking, when his, like, they set him up?

01:16:11Marc:Yeah, I mean.

01:16:12Marc:That's fucked up.

01:16:13Guest:Yeah, it was a reference film.

01:16:15Guest:You know, it was a reference film for us.

01:16:16Guest:We had a few.

01:16:17Guest:You did?

01:16:17Guest:A few, few, few films that probably won't translate, like, you know, elephant or, you know, and, you know.

01:16:27Guest:What about elephant?

01:16:28Guest:And the way that Gus Van Sand transferred, you'd follow the back of someone's head and then all of a sudden you're somebody else.

01:16:35Guest:But the genius of that film is that it's in one location.

01:16:38Guest:It's sort of self-contained that way.

01:16:40Guest:Where this was like, we're everywhere.

01:16:42Guest:Can we do that?

01:16:43Guest:Can we transition out in the streets?

01:16:45Guest:Is that something we can do?

01:16:46Guest:So it was an experiment, but we tried a bit.

01:16:48Guest:But I love how he used Steadicam and how gracefully he was able to do that.

01:16:52Guest:And so...

01:16:52Guest:You see that in how we transitioned.

01:16:54Guest:We made sure Steadicam was how we were going to use those transitions.

01:16:57Guest:And it's so funny because it's such a white movie.

01:16:59Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:17:02Marc:It is quite a white movie.

01:17:05Marc:I just realized that.

01:17:07Marc:Artfully told, though.

01:17:09Marc:Oh, no, no.

01:17:10Marc:It's a beautiful movie, but it's sort of very... Even the outdoors had a sort of clean... Trees and clean.

01:17:17Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:17:19Marc:Heavy, man.

01:17:20Guest:That's a heavy.

01:17:20Guest:It's a heavy, heavy film.

01:17:22Marc:In that movie, you know, just the choice to sort of put them in the shower together for a second.

01:17:26Guest:I know.

01:17:27Marc:It was sort of like, whoa.

01:17:29Guest:Whoa.

01:17:29Guest:Yeah, no, it's, I mean, that was a heavy film.

01:17:32Guest:But yeah, no, I mean, you know.

01:17:34Guest:It was a lot.

01:17:34Marc:So is yours, but I'll tell you at the end, I was satisfied.

01:17:38Marc:I got a little nervous when he's like, I want to get involved.

01:17:41Marc:And there's that sort of like, he likes that girl too, but like, well, here's what you do.

01:17:46Marc:You start doing this.

01:17:47Marc:And I'm like, is this going to get sappy?

01:17:49Marc:And it didn't.

01:17:50Guest:Okay, good, good, good.

01:17:51Guest:Yeah, I was like, this can't be a love story.

01:17:53Guest:Right, right, right.

01:17:54Guest:It's a love story in a different way.

01:17:56Guest:It's a love story in a different way.

01:17:57Guest:It's not about...

01:17:59Guest:you know, physical chemistry.

01:18:01Marc:So, yeah, it's about, what is it?

01:18:05Marc:It's not about physical chemistry, but it's about waking up, you know, to social awareness and social responsibility.

01:18:16Guest:Yeah, I think there's that component.

01:18:18Guest:You know, it's funny because I feel like I have a different answer every time.

01:18:21Guest:Well, that character in particular.

01:18:23Guest:Yeah, you know, his character.

01:18:25Guest:And I think...

01:18:26Guest:I've been thinking about it a lot this week.

01:18:27Guest:I've been asked a lot.

01:18:28Guest:You're talking a lot.

01:18:29Guest:Well, it's because it's so many things.

01:18:32Guest:But I've been trying to boil it down.

01:18:34Guest:What is it for me?

01:18:35Guest:What is it?

01:18:36Guest:I had all these different things.

01:18:37Guest:And I realized there's so much silence in the film.

01:18:40Guest:There's so many characters that don't sort of speak up.

01:18:44Guest:And I think for the longest time, growing up in Staten Island, growing up with teammates that were like...

01:18:49Guest:very racist towards, like, the teams we were playing, but, like, no offense, Ray, no offense, not you.

01:18:54Guest:Yeah, you got a little of that in there in the locker room.

01:18:56Guest:Yeah, like, no, Ray, not you.

01:18:58Guest:But I can call, I can use the N-word and use other epithets against your teammates who are basically my brothers or cousins.

01:19:04Guest:You know, so, but I couldn't say anything.

01:19:07Guest:I was quiet.

01:19:08Guest:And then I had a father who protected us from those things.

01:19:11Guest:And, you know, you kind of stay in line.

01:19:13Guest:And now as I get older, as I have a family, I'm like, I don't want to be afraid to speak up, even if it

01:19:19Guest:You're afraid to raise your hand in the back of class.

01:19:22Guest:People are gonna look at you and you're gonna think you're stupid.

01:19:24Guest:Or you're gonna say something that... As I get older, I'm saying more things.

01:19:28Guest:And I'm like, I think it's okay.

01:19:30Guest:It's okay to say something that you believe in.

01:19:34Guest:It's time.

01:19:35Guest:It's time.

01:19:36Marc:And this film is sort of my time.

01:19:38Marc:Yeah, it's great.

01:19:40Marc:But I think it must be tricky.

01:19:42Marc:As a black filmmaker, now you're gonna get those questions where it's like, well, how do we fix this race thing?

01:19:47Guest:right well we fix about talking about it yeah and not but the thing is we've become so do you find that that you're getting questions that are broader than the film because it's like the film doesn't answer it doesn't give you the answer it's like but that's not i think i think if i said this is how we fix the world you know who am i like just watch this movie yeah it's all done i'm a dweeb like what do i know i don't know how to fix the world but right but i know that we need to have difficult conversations

01:20:13Guest:And tell these stories.

01:20:14Guest:And tell these stories.

01:20:14Guest:I know we have to feel uncomfortable at times.

01:20:18Guest:We have to, because if we're constantly creating a bubble around only like-minded thinkers, we're never gonna move past that.

01:20:24Guest:I learned that on Wall Street.

01:20:25Guest:In terms of diversity, it was like if I walk into a boardroom and everybody looks like me,

01:20:29Guest:There's no diversity of thought.

01:20:30Guest:Like, we're all going to get the same product.

01:20:32Guest:But if you have, yeah, maybe you have a little argument or disagreement, but, you know, at the end, result will be better.

01:20:38Marc:Yeah.

01:20:39Marc:So that's a good team's work.

01:20:40Marc:That's understanding the game.

01:20:42Marc:Understanding the game.

01:20:43Marc:It's chess.

01:20:44Marc:It's chess, you know?

01:20:45Marc:yes but it's also baseball it's like you know like that argument like you know you made a good point and you've showed me a different you've opened up I didn't it's not winning or losing you know it's just you just stay in it yeah right yeah absolutely well it's a great film and I wish you the best of luck thank you very much good talking to you man you too thank you so much

01:21:08Marc:Great guy.

01:21:09Marc:Real worker, that guy.

01:21:11Marc:Good story.

01:21:12Marc:You should see the movie.

01:21:14Marc:I don't know what happens to movies, but I'm very detached.

01:21:17Marc:But I do know you can see it on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital on January 8th, Monsters and Men.

01:21:23Marc:All right?

01:21:24Marc:Okay.

01:21:25Marc:Happy New Year.

01:21:26Marc:Boomer lives!

01:21:37you