Episode 992 - Yorgos Lanthimos
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast how's it going yorgos lanthimos the director of the favorite is on the show today
Marc:I don't know if you've seen his other movies, but I've watched all of them.
Marc:Yeah, I've watched all of them.
Marc:Alps, Dogtooth, The Killing of the Sacred Deer, The Lobster, this one, The Favorite.
Marc:I think that's almost all of them.
Marc:There were some other ones, some short films I didn't watch.
Marc:But go sink your brain into that stuff.
Marc:uh-huh yeah go sink your teeth your brain teeth into dog tooth see what that does to your to your head try that anyway i had some questions and it's it never turns out the way i think it's going to turn out but anyways why am i saying that's twice with the anyways he's here but first let's walk through this experience
Marc:Look, I'm not a diva.
Marc:I'm not a prima donna.
Marc:I'm not a high maintenance dude on set when I act.
Marc:But the other day,
Marc:I'm going out into the night to shoot glow by night.
Marc:I mean, I got up at five in the morning for a 615 call.
Marc:I generally bring a little travel bag with what I need in it to my trailer so I can function during the day.
Marc:I need dental floss.
Marc:I need toothbrush.
Marc:I need toothpaste.
Marc:I need mouthwash.
Marc:I'm just I don't know.
Marc:I've gotten weird with that.
Marc:I just after lunch, you know, when I get there, I just try to take care of stuff.
Marc:You know, you prepare.
Marc:I don't know what you do, but you got a little kit you bring.
Marc:You got some things that make you feel at home when you're not at home.
Marc:Some rituals, some things you need to do in order to keep your brain kind of grounded.
Marc:And obviously, one of those things that's in that bag is my nicotine lozenges.
Marc:So now that we're in the throes of addiction to these fucking things, I need to get off and I'm hitting the wall again.
Marc:How many times, folks?
Marc:For you people that have been with me a long time, how many times is this?
Marc:So it's 615 in the morning and I'm driving and I'm almost to set and I realize I don't got my bag.
Marc:I don't got my stuff.
Marc:I don't got my my goods.
Marc:I don't got my my go juice.
Marc:I don't got my my drug and that wave of like, oh, fuck.
Marc:Now, how am I going to function?
Marc:I know what's going to happen to me in about two hours, maybe three hours.
Marc:I'm going to become an asshole.
Marc:I'm going to become an irritable fuck.
Marc:I'm going to become undealable.
Marc:And this is a long shoot day.
Marc:Now, look, we're not talking about meth.
Marc:We're not talking about coke.
Marc:We're not talking about dope.
Marc:Not even talking about weed.
Marc:You know, there's no real challenge to getting nicotine lozenges once the fucking Walgreens opens.
Marc:But in that moment of panic, I was just like, my brain just started spinning.
Marc:I got to deal with this now.
Marc:And I got out of my car.
Marc:It's still dark out.
Marc:I went up to the AD and I said, look, man, I forgot my nicotine and I'm going to be an asshole.
Marc:When the clock hits about 730, I'm going to turn into a dick.
Marc:So we got to get on this.
Marc:She's like, no problem.
Marc:And I'm like, really?
Marc:I never ask people for much.
Marc:You know, I'm not like, you know, I don't have a writer that's complicated.
Marc:You know, I usually it's like veggies and some hummus and a thing of almonds backstage.
Marc:So I don't never I never really I don't ever I don't like being a problem to people.
Marc:And I'm like, well, what do we do?
Marc:She goes, I'll have Transpo.
Marc:Go get them.
Marc:Transpo, they're transportation guys.
Marc:They got their ears to the ground.
Marc:They got their foot on the pedal.
Marc:These are dudes, Teamsters.
Marc:And I'm like, okay.
Marc:And I go to my trailer and I look up Walgreens.
Marc:There's one that opens very close by at 630.
Marc:I'm like, I'm going to nail this thing, man.
Marc:And I got a ride to set.
Marc:The Transpo guy says, we're on it.
Marc:We're sending someone over to the Walgreens.
Marc:I'm like, dude, you don't even know.
Marc:He's like, I do know.
Marc:And I'm like, you know, I'm not really this guy.
Marc:I'm like, don't worry about it.
Marc:I appreciate it.
Marc:It's like I need that shit.
Marc:And he's like, yeah, I know.
Marc:I know what it's like to need that shit.
Marc:And I'm like, great.
Marc:And I just got that feeling that like I'm like, you know, I'm not I'm not high maintenance.
Marc:But I got that feeling.
Marc:It's like he said, no, you're not.
Marc:And I'm like, wow.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:What are the transportation guy stories?
Marc:What have they had to deal with?
Marc:What have they had to drive into the night to accommodate some more demanding celebrities?
Marc:Yeah, there's dark wisdom there.
Marc:I didn't really put it together.
Marc:I didn't really realize because I'm in my own world.
Marc:But before we even started shooting, I had a box of nicotine.
Marc:I had a bottle of mouthwash.
Marc:I had a fucking toothbrush.
Marc:And that was all I needed.
Marc:That's my diva kit.
Marc:Nicotine lozenges, some blue Listerine, a toothbrush, and some floss picks.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:I am fucking out of control.
Marc:Out of fucking control.
Marc:Yorgos Lanthimos.
Marc:Greek fella.
Marc:Great director.
Marc:Has a vision.
Marc:It's daunting.
Marc:Here's the deal.
Marc:When I knew I was going to interview him, I was excited that he had a relatively small filmography, like a handful of movies, right?
Marc:There was a couple that were, I don't know, there was a couple, a short film and another thing he co-directed, but it seems like it really started with Dogtooth.
Marc:and then the next film was called Alps, and then The Lobster, and then The Killing of the Sacred Deer, and then The Favorite.
Marc:He's a relatively young fella.
Marc:When I had seen The Favorite,
Marc:And after I'd seen the lobster, I always assume these guys who do movies that are challenging and disturbing and cryptic.
Marc:Is that is that the word I want to use?
Marc:The surreal, absurd, but but aggressive that they possess dark wisdom.
Marc:If you listen to my Paul Thomas Anderson, I couldn't have been more surprised.
Marc:I thought that guy was going to be a dark wizard.
Marc:It turns out he's a goofball from the valley.
Marc:whose dad was a goofball TV personality in Ohio, I think, if I remember correctly.
Marc:Best friends with Tim Conway.
Marc:So I always, I still assume that like, I'm gonna get to the bottom of what the fuck these movies mean.
Marc:Because I had that experience.
Marc:I'm like, I said, I watched Dog Tooth and I watched it and 15 minutes in, I'm like, what's happening?
Marc:An hour in, I'm like, holy fuck, what is going on?
Marc:This is disturbing.
Marc:It was hitting me.
Marc:I was getting punched around.
Marc:My brain was having an experience that was, you know, fucking with it.
Marc:But I couldn't put it together, really.
Marc:I mean, and I seek meaning.
Marc:You know, I when when something is hard to understand, that means, see, every time I watch a film that I don't understand or that seems to be layered, I never blame the film when I when I don't understand.
Marc:I never dismiss it.
Marc:I never say like, well, that was fucked up.
Marc:Who needs that?
Marc:Or fuck that movie or, you know, that that that was terrible.
Marc:No, my first reaction is like, I'm a fucking idiot.
Marc:Why am I not smart enough for this?
Marc:How come I can't contextualize this?
Marc:I fucking studied film and I don't know what's going on.
Marc:And I lose sense with art.
Marc:I forget what art is supposed to do.
Marc:And I'm dating a painter.
Marc:And I get that, but I never heard it put more succinctly.
Marc:It was interesting because this all just happened.
Marc:I like the movies.
Marc:I liked Alps.
Marc:I like Dogtooth.
Marc:I like them.
Marc:Dogtooth is violently absurd.
Marc:It's violent absurdism.
Marc:Yeah, Alps is a you guys know the lobster killing a sacred deer heavy man.
Marc:But what you realize with your ghost is that there is a vision that he does everything very intentionally.
Marc:And if you watch the favorite, it's meticulous in how it's directed and how it's set.
Marc:And, you know, you can see that he gets exactly what he wants out of his framing and out of the way he shoots.
Marc:And he's got a vision that he holds throughout all the movies.
Marc:So he means it and he's great at it and he honors his vision.
Marc:I saw that.
Marc:So I think I felt like he needed to answer for something, you know, and I've had this experience throughout my life when I was younger with films, like I would watch, you know, some of the great surrealists, but primarily Bunuel, you know, I remember seeing when Shannon DeLue or Lashdor or even Tristana, which was a later one that had a story, but I was still like, what the fuck is happening?
Marc:You know, am I missing something?
Marc:I'm studying this stuff.
Marc:And even with the teacher explaining it, I'm like, why am I not getting it?
Marc:Red Desert by Antonioni.
Marc:It's like, what?
Marc:What am I?
Marc:It's stunning to look at.
Marc:But what am I?
Marc:What's happened?
Marc:What am I not getting?
Marc:Rules of the Game, Grand Illusion, the Renoir movies.
Marc:I'm like, it's French.
Marc:Is that where it's dropping off on me?
Marc:What?
Marc:You know.
Marc:what Dreyer's Joan of Arc.
Marc:I mean, what, how long are we going to look at this?
Marc:This is heavy, man.
Marc:This woman is in the, it's heavy, but what's happening?
Marc:Fellini, even the easy ones, Juliet of the spirits.
Marc:I'm like, I'm missing something.
Marc:There's a layer here, but, but like what it is, there are intentions.
Marc:You're not going to, you know, as you'll see, you may not get them from the person that makes it.
Marc:Their intentions are honoring their vision, right?
Right.
Marc:Even if it's like, I don't know what this means, but the image, I want the image.
Marc:I see this.
Marc:I want other people to see it.
Marc:Who cares if it's tethered to a story?
Marc:And the thing that kind of blew my mind, and it wasn't a theatrical performance, but I went to an event.
Marc:All right, I'll get fancy with you.
Marc:I'll drop some names.
Marc:I went to a sort of a toast, a reception for the Steppenwolf Theater that was hosted by William Friedkin, Bill Friedkin and his wife, Sherry Lansing.
Marc:William Friedkin, the director of Sorcerer, French Connection, Exorcist, and two of Tracy Letts' movies.
Marc:But it was honoring Steppenwolf and Letts, Tracy Letts, who's my buddy right now.
Marc:I don't mean that it's conditional.
Marc:I mean, we seem to be becoming friends.
Marc:So I was invited to this thing.
Marc:And the Steppenwolf people were there.
Marc:It was about networking here in L.A.
Marc:They're going to do several plays at the Mark Taper.
Marc:As I told you before, Tracy's play Linda Vista is now at the Mark Taper.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:I recommend it again.
Marc:The cast was there.
Marc:Laurie Metcalf was there.
Marc:Some of the original members of Steppenwolf were there and new members, the artistic director.
Marc:But they were they want to have a presence in L.A.
Marc:But this is all besides.
Marc:This is just me telling you that I was at a fancy event.
Marc:But Bill Friedkin started talking about, you know, what theater does.
Marc:And also, and his wife, Sherry Lansing, about when you go see a play,
Marc:It changes your life.
Marc:You leave a changed person.
Marc:You're talking about it.
Marc:You're thinking about things differently.
Marc:You're seeing something differently for the first time.
Marc:The play itself has an effect.
Marc:And that's what art should do that.
Marc:It should change your life.
Marc:And you can't explain that all the time.
Marc:I mean, you can see narrative films and you remember bits and pieces, but sometimes shit goes deeper and it's provocative in a way that you may not understand, but you do feel changed.
Marc:And that was sort of a good thing for me to hear because sometimes I don't always know.
Marc:I know I have said that a painting should punch you in the brain and your brain should stay punched.
Marc:And that's a similar thing.
Marc:But even when I talked to Yorgos, which wasn't that long ago, I was still looking for answers.
Marc:But I kind of knew that it doesn't matter if the answers are there.
Marc:You're going to have the experience you're going to have with these movies.
Marc:Whether you think you understand it or not, it's going to stay with you.
Marc:It might have impact you might not even understand on a level that might not even be apparent or become apparent to you.
Marc:But you feel it.
Marc:So I'm a changed man.
Marc:I don't need the answers anymore.
Marc:But I try to get them.
Marc:I try to get them.
Marc:So now...
Marc:yorgos the favorite is the movie that is nominated for 10 academy awards including best director for my guest and i was looking for answers and what ended up happening is we had a nice conversation and i realized that uh that answers aren't necessarily important but conversation is this is me talking to yorgos lanthimos
Guest:So how often do you come here?
Guest:Lately, I've been coming a lot because of the promotion of films and all that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You like it?
Guest:I like it.
Guest:I started liking it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I first came here, I was like, what is this place?
Guest:I mean, where are the old buildings?
Guest:When was this built?
Guest:What are...
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:That's your first reaction?
Marc:It's architecture issues?
Marc:Yeah, architecture issues, yeah.
Marc:Where's the center of this town?
Guest:Yeah, where's the center?
Guest:Which is a neighborhood?
Guest:Which is residential?
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:I mean, I couldn't just figure it out.
Guest:And then I started to like it.
Guest:I liked the chaos.
Guest:People take you places.
Marc:You don't know neighborhoods, but it's all of a sudden like, this is the office of so-and-so.
Guest:Exactly, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, no, but yeah, no, I really started liking it, you know, and when you know some people and you get to proper places and you see, you know, then you realize different things and I quite, you know, I've warmed.
Marc:Yeah, and now you're like, you're somewhat celebrated, I would imagine.
Marc:This is like, I imagine you're here for the Globes.
Guest:Yeah, I'm here for the Globes and whatever is around it.
Marc:So you're really going through it.
Marc:I mean, I know that you've gotten some fanfare, but there's something about Hollywood fanfare.
Marc:It's a little different, isn't it?
Guest:It is kind of different.
Guest:It's like you actually made it.
Marc:People know who you are.
Marc:You're not just a guy with the foreign film nomination.
Guest:Exactly, yeah.
Guest:But it's like that everywhere.
Guest:I mean, like in France, people are about French films.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And in Europe, it's about Cannes and Venice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's all these little worlds that have their own rules, and you have different value in different places.
Marc:I'm not a huge foreign film guy.
Marc:I don't keep up as much as I should.
Marc:I can't keep up with anything, really.
Yeah.
Marc:And I'd seen The Lobster a couple years ago, and then I watched The Favorite in a theater, which was good.
Marc:I'm glad I saw it in a theater and not the screener.
Marc:And then I went back and I watched Dogtooth, and then I watched Alps.
Marc:So I've seen all of them.
Marc:And I got to be honest, it took me about four days to get through dog tooth.
Marc:I had to take a couple of breaks.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But yeah, because like, you know, and I don't know if it's a European sensibility or Greek sensibility or just your sensibility.
Marc:I've grown to believe that it's your sensibility.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I have to approach the movies a little differently because there are so many things I don't understand.
Marc:And then layered on top of that, just your particular vision is somewhat difficult to understand outside of it being Greek.
Marc:The first link they sent me for Dogtooth didn't have subtitles.
Marc:And I'm like, this is not going to work.
Marc:I'm not going to.
Marc:be able to do translate it yeah but uh but so we're like i tell me i've never really talked to anybody from greece and i don't know much about it so what how did you come up over there what was there what was your childhood like um in terms of like where did you were you like what did your folks do like how what is greece like
Guest:Yeah, well, that's a big one.
Guest:Sure, but for you?
Guest:No, for me, my parents, my father was a relatively known basketball player.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And you know we're good in basketball in Greece?
Guest:I don't see.
Guest:How would I know that?
Guest:Well, maybe you know because we beat even the U.S.
Guest:at some Olympics.
Guest:You know, we're like that good at some point.
Marc:Well, that's interesting because the Olympics, I think, when you're in Europe, I guess it's a pretty big deal for everybody.
Marc:But I think when you live in a smaller country, America is so fucking big that you can just sort of like, you know, Texas is its own country.
Marc:That's true, yeah.
Marc:But I think with like Reese, you know the national basketball team.
Marc:I don't know the national basketball team.
Marc:So he was a basketball player.
Guest:So he was, yeah.
Guest:And of course, that was like back in the 70s.
Guest:So it wasn't so professional.
Guest:It wasn't so celebrated.
Guest:But he was well known.
Guest:Was he tall?
Guest:He was a little bit taller than I am.
Guest:Not with today's standards.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Different generation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He was like 192 centimeters.
Guest:So I'm metric also.
Guest:You have to translate that as well.
Guest:See, again.
Guest:We have a lot of cultural differences.
Marc:We'll figure it out.
Marc:As soon as you say centimeters, I'm like, he's a very short man.
Marc:He must be just as tall as this glass, I would imagine.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, it's like six feet, like whatever.
Marc:But he was a pro ball player.
Marc:That was your childhood?
Marc:You grew up with a pro basketball player or he was retired by the time you remember?
Guest:Well, actually, they were separated with my mother since I was very young.
Guest:So I just got to see him now and then.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah, so I grew up with my mother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Brother or sister?
Guest:She died when I was 17.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:No, no brothers or sisters.
Guest:You're it.
Guest:So I'm it.
Guest:And your mom passed away when you're 17.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I basically, from then on, I just had to figure it out on my own.
Guest:Huh.
Marc:And did, like, when was the, like, what were you, when did you start getting interested in, what did you start with, theater?
Guest:No, I always wanted to do film, but I couldn't really admit that in Greece, because you don't know much about Greek cinema, I guess, and that's right, because there's not a lot of it, and there hasn't been a lot of it.
Guest:I mean, the last few years, there's more younger people that are making films there.
Guest:But it was never a proper industry.
Guest:There was no structure.
Guest:There was no proper education.
Guest:So for a young boy in Greece to go like, I'm going to be making films, people would look at you like you're crazy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, what did you study early in Greece?
Guest:So I got into the university to study marketing and financing, which I never want to have anything to do with.
Guest:So I dropped out of that.
Guest:I did play a little bit of basketball myself until I was 17, 18.
Guest:Were you good at it?
Guest:Was it genetic?
No.
Guest:I was okay.
Guest:I think one of the reasons probably that I didn't, you know, went through with it is that I felt that I'd never be as good as my father kind of thing.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Was your father known nationally?
Marc:I mean, was he like, do people come up to you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I was young, like, it was like, are you related to, you know, Adonis, which is my father's name?
Guest:So I was like, yeah, yeah, he's my father.
Guest:Now it's the other way around.
Guest:Is he around still?
Guest:He's around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You get along with him?
Guest:I see him every now and then.
Guest:I mean, we never had a very close relationship.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I would see him over the years every now and then.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like even after your mother passed away, you didn't sort of... No, actually, no.
Guest:That was, I guess...
Guest:one of the reasons that, you know, we didn't see each other so much that, um, he didn't want to have the responsibility of, uh, Oh yeah.
Guest:Have you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Have me.
Marc:Um, so I want to take this kid now, 17.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:It's too late.
Guest:Um, no, but that was, you know, it was fine and, you know, and enabled me to do things that I, I don't know if I would have done if I was, you know, uh, brought up in a different way.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:So I, you know, like I said, I dropped out from... Marketing.
Guest:Marketing University, and I went to this, the only private, little private film school that we have.
Guest:Yeah, what's that called?
Guest:It's called Stavrakos.
Guest:It's someone's name.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's, you know, no equipment...
Guest:Teachers haven't done many films for quite a few years.
Guest:But I got to meet people there that were also interested in making films.
Guest:But the goal was, the idea was that I was going to study film in order to start making commercials because that seemed like a proper job.
Guest:Practical.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There is such a thing and people do it.
Guest:And there was quite a boom in the 90s and 2000 in Greece.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that felt like a job.
Guest:I never thought that I was actually going to be making films.
Marc:But when you were a kid, did you gravitate towards films?
Marc:I mean, was it something that you were interested in early on?
Marc:What created the idea, the notion?
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:But as I said, it was never tangible that we would actually make films properly.
Guest:We would do it for fun, with friends, silly things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, then it was like, why don't I do something which is related to it, that I'll get the education around it, and who knows, maybe one day I'll make a film, but for the time being, I'll get the technical knowledge in order to do commercials or TV or whatever.
Guest:What did your mom do?
Marc:she was an employee in a store that sold up appliances you know electric appliances uh-huh and so no she wasn't a creative driven person no you didn't really grow up with it you just no really it's just um you just kind of came out of nowhere yeah you just decided so when did you start how did you start to sort of educate yourself you know in terms of like
Marc:i i guess you say there was no real greek film industry but i mean you must have what were you primarily watching european films or american films all of it yeah it all came through and i started pretty straightforward like you know i grew up with uh jaws and uh you know raiders of the lost ark and footloose and
Guest:flash dance and you know that's all the big ones yeah oh man yeah what more do the what more do you need exactly there's the four you're all set that's the you got your dancing you got your scary you've got your uh swashbuckling yeah it's um and then you know i i also watched european films later on when i started studying film and i
Guest:You know, I got to know about filmmakers and watched a lot of films of those.
Marc:Well, let's go through that because, like, because, you know, I studied film and, you know, I'm a relatively smart guy.
Marc:And, you know, I found I was talking about I was actually talking about watching your movie Alps when I was doing comedy last night.
Yeah.
Marc:I want to hear that.
Marc:No, because what I said was, because I go to the club late to do a spot, and I'd been home.
Marc:I had watched about half of it, and I said, I had to come out.
Marc:I was at home watching a movie I didn't understand earlier, and I had to take myself away from that.
Marc:But the observation I made is when I can't quite grasp something,
Marc:I never blame the art.
Marc:I watch it and I finish it and I'm like, I watched the whole thing.
Marc:I tried.
Marc:I'm not sure I got it.
Marc:And if I didn't, I'm the asshole.
Guest:That's very generous.
Marc:But the thing about your films is that everything's intentional.
Marc:This is not some sort of haphazard thing.
Marc:You know, you're making very specific choices, you know, from scene to scene in dialogue.
Marc:And, you know, I understand that there's absurdism at play, but they're all loaded up and they all have an effect.
Marc:So it's not like, you know, he didn't know what he was doing.
Marc:He's just winging it.
Marc:You know, you sat there with a piece of paper and made decisions.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And throughout the process, you know, in an editing room when you're filming, yeah, you make decisions.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, who was the people, because like I just wonder, you know, not that I have a narrative craving necessarily, you know, but like in order to sort of pay attention and to have the effect of your movies, like I noticed today, like I finished watching the Alps and like I became very hyper aware of everything I was doing when I wasn't watching the movie.
Marc:Like the tone of the film somehow infused my life.
Marc:You know, like everything became like the glass.
Marc:Is it a glass?
Marc:You know, like.
Marc:So.
Marc:But where does that start for you?
Marc:I mean, what was the, like when you did commercials, what were the first moments where you started to realize the power of creating or evoking, it's not so much confusion, but a tone.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I guess it happens, you know, first of all, by watching films and, you know, realizing all the different effects that they can have.
Guest:Well, who were your guys?
Marc:What was the first kind of mind-blowing moment?
Guest:When you were watching a film and you're like, oh, this is... I guess, you know, Tarkovsky was one of the, you know, first filmmakers that I got to learn through film school that I didn't know anything about.
Guest:So that was in a film history class?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we learned about it.
Guest:And then there's some nice, you know, during summer in Greece, there's a lot of open air cinemas.
Guest:I mean, they're not as many anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there are beautiful open air cinemas in various neighborhoods where you can, you know, have a little table and you eat something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're outside surrounded by apartment buildings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you watch films.
Guest:So they would do retrospectives, so I would watch his films and then John Cassavetes was someone else.
Marc:What was it about Tarkovsky specifically that you found sort of engaging?
Guest:Well, it was just for the first time seeing like a different, it was like a different, completely different medium, you know, discovering like something new.
Guest:A vision.
Guest:Like how, you know, how can images affect you in a different way?
Guest:Right.
Guest:It doesn't have to be a fast narrative and, you know, how poetic it can be and how you can, you know, lose yourself in it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Engage, but with your own personality, there's a lot of openness.
Guest:Like you can bring your own stuff into it and see things and understand things maybe in a different way to how the person next to you is experiencing the same thing at the same time.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Everything's not explained.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, the use of sound and image, it was very different for me.
Guest:And then watching right after that a John Cassavetes film, which is very different stylistically, but for me, in a weird way, it has a very similar effect, but through a different route.
Marc:Yeah, it's more a human-driven space.
Marc:The few Tarkovsky movies I've seen, it's a lot of cinematic space, but with Cassavetes, there's something heightened, but it's very engaged with people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the fact that it's so heightened also takes it to a different level.
Guest:And although it feels kind of more realistic, it kind of transcends that.
Guest:And then you enter a different space again.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there's also that feeling like these people are talking and the context seems familiar to me, but I don't know what the fuck is happening.
Yeah.
Marc:What's going on with these people?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I think that's a good feeling, I guess.
Guest:No, again, I enjoy watching films like that.
Guest:I guess what I'm trying to do is create films like the ones that I'd like to see.
Marc:Because you watch movies constantly?
Guest:I watch a lot of movies.
Guest:I'm not like an obsessed film buff or anything, but I tend to watch the same films over and over again.
Guest:I feel safe.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:They're familiar.
Marc:They're like friends.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'd rather watch something that I really like than...
Marc:Which ones have you watched over and over?
Marc:Sometimes I'll just be watching TV or cable, and one will come on, and I'm in.
Marc:It doesn't even matter where it starts.
Marc:I just watched Casino again the other day.
Marc:I don't even know why.
Guest:I've seen that quite a few times.
Guest:Isn't that great?
Guest:Yeah, it's a great film.
Marc:I found that as I get older, I'm not able to watch the Head and the Vice scene as much as I do.
Marc:Like I used to be able to watch it.
Marc:You're more sensitive?
Marc:A little bit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it's weird.
Marc:I was just sort of like, I don't know if I need this tonight.
Marc:I know what's going to happen here.
Guest:The weird thing with me is like how much affected I can get by those kind of things being so much, you know, on the inside and seeing how these things are created.
Guest:Even though you know how it works.
Guest:Yeah, you know how it works?
Guest:The difficult thing is for me to be affected by these things, and that's when I know that a film really grabbed me because I forget about the way it's made.
Guest:Yeah, you're not sitting there going, oh, I know how they did it.
Marc:I understand that shot.
Guest:I understand that effect.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:When you're able to do that and be someone that is actually making film, then that's very strong.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So what are some of the movies you watch on repeat?
Yeah.
Guest:Like, I watch some Miklos Yangtso films every time before.
Guest:It's a Hungarian filmmaker.
Guest:Like, The Red and the White.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I haven't seen those.
Guest:And The Roundup.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Those are great.
Guest:They're pretty amazing.
Guest:It's more about being inspired by people who made things, you know, that...
Guest:kind of changed cinema in a way.
Guest:They're just going like, look what they did and go on to do something.
Guest:Try.
Marc:It inspires you to push the envelope.
Guest:Or Cassavetes.
Guest:I see Husbands all the time.
Guest:I love that role.
Guest:Or Woman Under the Influence.
Marc:That movie's crazy.
Marc:I've watched that a few times.
Marc:Gina Rowlands is like,
Guest:Yeah, she's the best.
Guest:Yeah, she's amazing.
Guest:People say that about a lot of things.
Guest:She really is.
Guest:But she's kind of the best.
Marc:She's singular.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's for sure.
Marc:And you tend to use actors more than once too.
Marc:You seem to lock into people.
Marc:But what was the first, what commercials did you do?
Marc:Ooh.
Yeah.
Guest:I've done hundreds of commercials.
Guest:Hundreds of Greek commercials?
Guest:Of Greek commercials.
Guest:I started really low.
Guest:I was doing- Like lawyers?
Guest:No, no, no, even worse.
Guest:Wait.
Guest:Like I started, which I was very lucky.
Guest:I started really young.
Guest:I started while I was in the second year film school.
Guest:So like I was 20 years old or something.
Guest:And I started doing commercials really cheap-
Guest:And during that time, there was a lot of gifts with newspapers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They would gift a coffee maker with a newspaper.
Guest:So, you would buy the newspaper.
Guest:With the subscription, you get a coffee maker.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You get a coffee maker.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, I would do the commercial for the coffee maker and the newspaper.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, things like that.
Guest:I started with things like that.
Guest:And then I moved up the ladder and-
Guest:There was a lot of commercials for banks and mobile phone companies and networks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there was a time, like I said, late 90s up to 2009 where the crisis hit Greece.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was insane.
Guest:I would do like two, three commercials a week.
Guest:There was a lot of work.
Guest:I learned a lot, you know, technically speaking.
Guest:I made friends that we ended up making films together.
Guest:And they kind of enabled me to, because as I said, there was no structure, there's no financing in Greece to make films.
Guest:They kind of enabled me to go...
Guest:you know us five we can you know get the camera and a couple of actors and go and make a film yeah that's how i made my first film kineta which you probably haven't seen it's a feature film yeah and um you know we were very technically uh proficient and uh you and your crew yeah you we didn't need a much we you know we didn't need lights or makeup or anything which is shooting on video mostly
Guest:No, film.
Guest:Always film?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I did a couple of films digitally, but I didn't enjoy the experience.
Guest:Digital, yeah.
Guest:So I went back to film.
Guest:And do you have experience with theater?
Guest:I've made like three or four plays in Greece.
Guest:That you've written?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Directed?
Guest:Directed.
Guest:And that was a good experience for me in order to learn how to work with actors.
Guest:But did you have any specific training in that?
No.
Guest:No, it kind of happened.
Guest:Did you read a book?
Guest:I read a play.
Guest:The first time it was, they offered me to do a play.
Guest:There was a very interesting kind of experiment.
Guest:It wasn't experimental theater really.
Guest:It was just more avant-garde theater in Athens.
Guest:And the director of the theater offered me to do a play and I went
Guest:I read the play.
Guest:It was by a Greek writer, and I liked it, and I went like, why not?
Guest:And I tried it, and I enjoyed the experience of working with the actors, and I learned a lot.
Guest:And the great thing about theater in Greece is that you have a lot of time.
Guest:You can have like two, three months for rehearsals before you stage the play, which is not common from what I learned afterwards.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I learned a lot about working with actors.
Marc:And working with, I imagine, lighting people and technicians.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But I already knew a lot about that from commercials to...
Guest:Years of doing that.
Guest:And then I kind of did a play every two, three years.
Guest:But in the end, I was never really taken by the final result of theater.
Guest:I don't really like theater.
Guest:as much.
Guest:No?
Guest:But I enjoyed the process.
Guest:What is it?
Marc:The temporary nature of it?
Guest:Yeah, it's very ephemeral.
Guest:You can't really have a lot of control over it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It changes every night.
Guest:I guess that's the interesting part for the actors or for someone who sees it more than once.
Guest:But you feel kind of helpless.
Guest:Whenever I went to see the performance, I was in a corner and go like, what are you doing?
Guest:That's not what we...
Guest:You know, that was not how it was supposed to happen, you know.
Marc:Couldn't manage it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Couldn't control it.
Guest:So, yeah, I kind of gave up on that, and I focused more on films.
Marc:Well, because it makes sense.
Marc:Like, you know, some people, that's the part they love about theater.
Marc:Yeah, I do understand.
Marc:And other people, it's like, what is happening, these damn actors?
Marc:So the first film...
Marc:I wish I'd seen that one.
Marc:So Dogtooth was the second one.
Guest:Dogtooth was the second one, but everybody thinks it's the first one because the first one was very obscure, was rarely shown.
Guest:Do you have a copy of it?
Guest:I do have a copy.
Guest:I'll give it to you.
Guest:I love that bit that you do.
Guest:I don't have enough time.
Guest:I don't know how much time left.
Guest:So I don't think it's a film that you're going to spend time watching.
Marc:I'll take the time.
Marc:I really do.
Marc:I do take the time.
Marc:But sometimes I don't – I'm not exactly sure.
Marc:I think the idea I was talking about last night is I get intimidated by things where I think, like, does somebody have the – is there a manual that will –
Marc:Enable me to understand.
Marc:I was looking through watching all the movies and then getting to the favorite, which you didn't write, which is a big difference, to try to find the key to what you're doing.
Marc:What's really interesting is when you go on IMDb and they sort of give you the line of what the movie is about.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And it's just sort of like, it's fucking hilarious.
Marc:You know, like you look at the one for Dogtooth, it's like overprotective parents don't let their, you know, like there's one line to describe that movie.
Marc:Or with Alps, it's like a group of people create a business to help people grieve by posing.
Marc:And that's all you got.
Marc:And I'm like, hey, that is not enough.
Marc:But what was the first movie about?
Marc:I guess that's a hard question, isn't it?
Guest:It kind of is.
Guest:I mean, physically speaking, it was about three people living in a resort town outside of Athens that was dying.
Guest:And it was portraits of these people.
Guest:And there were kind of reenacting crimes that happened in the area.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was a cop and a maid in a hotel and a photographer that were reenacting crimes.
Guest:And it's a portrait of these three people.
Guest:But also the place is quite important as well.
Guest:It's an old resort town outside Athens where they built an oil refinery next to
Guest:So it kind of started dying.
Guest:People had houses, summer houses and hotels, and they kind of- They had no control over the oil refinery.
Guest:So it kind of became a little bit deserted, all those hotels and those houses.
Guest:And that became fascinating to you?
Guest:It became fascinating.
Guest:I mean, I first, you know, wrote the story and I was imagining those people and then I was looking for a place to do it.
Guest:And I drove by this place and I saw this hotel that was a hotel from the 70s and it seemed kind of empty, you know, on the beach.
Guest:And I went in with my assistant director at the time.
Guest:We were going around looking for places and
Guest:And we walk into an empty hotel and we're trying to find someone and there was no one there.
Guest:It was open though?
Guest:It was open.
Guest:Yeah, it was open, but there was no one there.
Guest:No one at the reception.
Guest:We started walking around, restaurant, no one there.
Guest:And at some point we see a guy and go like...
Guest:oh, hi, we're looking for locations, we want to make a film.
Guest:And we asked him, so when do you open and which are the busiest times for you?
Guest:And he goes like, we're open and we're full.
Guest:And we go like, okay, maybe he didn't understand.
Guest:No, no, I mean like when is the hotel full and you have a lot of bookings and people going around?
Guest:He says, right now we're completely full.
Guest:There's no one there.
Guest:And then we go like, and there was no one there.
Guest:And then we just thought that he was crazy.
Guest:But then after a lot of time, he explained to us that all the workers that work in the old refinery, that a lot of them are brought from Thailand, I think.
Guest:Okay, yeah.
Guest:Actually live there.
Guest:So they use this old resort hotel with a swimming pool that was empty and dirty.
Guest:Just to house workers from Thailand, I think.
Guest:And so were you looking actually so you could figure out when you could shoot there?
Guest:Yeah, so it was like, it's an empty hotel, why can't we shoot here?
Guest:So yeah, so we incorporated that in the film visually at some point.
Guest:The Thai people?
Guest:Yeah, the Thai workers that come back from work with vans and they just hang out there.
Marc:Well, I guess my question though with that is, and I don't want you to misunderstand, I like your movies.
Guest:That's okay.
Marc:No, no, no, I'm serious.
Marc:I find them fascinating and I was moved by them, but I have to, I get into the habit of watching straight narrative movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and like, you know, I watched the Godard films, the Boomwell films.
Marc:I studied film history and I like those movies, but you watch them a different way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But your expectations are still there.
Marc:So when you have a brain that's always like looking for morsels of narrative that will somehow, you know, then you realize that part of what you're doing is undercutting that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and everything becomes earned in a different way.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So like just as an example, when you talk about the conception of that first film, what's the title of it again?
Marc:Kimeta.
Marc:So you have this you have this scene where you have these three characters in this deserted resort town reenacting crimes that happened in the area.
Marc:Now, that's something that that sort of reoccurs through at least two of your movies.
Marc:where you have people reenacting things for one reason or another.
Marc:I mean, certainly in Dogtooth and definitely in the Alps.
Marc:So what is the kernel of that idea?
Marc:Why is that fascinating to you?
Guest:That's an interesting question that I've never thought about.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I guess there's something about what draws us in all those spectacles in general, like theater and watching people reenact life in a certain way or moments of it or situations around.
Guest:and how you can play around with that to expose more things and maybe even truer things about what goes on in those kind of interactions and events by obsessing on a detail of something that happened maybe or the way you do things or the way you say things.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I'm winging it right now.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Because I haven't really... I don't really like to... Talk about this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not necessarily talk about it, but think about it too much and intellectualize it and analyze it.
Guest:No, no, I get that.
Guest:Because a lot of it is instinctive, you know, what we do.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Marc:But I think that was my experience because I just realized that you do it in The Lobster as well.
Marc:I mean, there's improvise and sort of a process of complex sign language.
Marc:But I noticed that in all the movies that you have these emotional interactions
Marc:And you realize that the dialogue is not matching the moment.
Marc:And that is obviously intentional.
Marc:But what you do get is you realize how it kind of breaks down language itself in terms of like, you know, how important is it really?
Marc:And even in our real life, you know, what's really being said and does it have anything to do with what's going on in this moment?
Guest:Yeah, I guess it depends in different situations.
Guest:Sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn't.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that movie, so how was that received?
Marc:In which one?
Marc:The first movie.
Guest:The first was received as a very difficult, obscure.
Guest:It wasn't released properly.
Guest:It was only a few years released in the UK on DVD.
Guest:But it's been...
Guest:You know, since the other films became a little bit known, it's been shown around.
Guest:They showed it at Tate Modern at some point.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:So it has a new life.
Marc:That's interesting, that world, right?
Marc:So that world, like, you know, it's at the Tate Modern.
Marc:That new museum, that is great.
Marc:That space is great, isn't it?
Marc:Do you walk in there and just sort of like, holy shit.
Marc:I can't, every time I go to London, that's one of the, and I don't go that often, but I always go there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Almost entirely for the building itself.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Isn't it?
Guest:Yeah, it's an incredible space, yeah.
Marc:But that's sort of the world that you seem to be, that you might occupy a bit is that, you know, your films will be shown at museums to, that there is a sort of art to it that is not a flash dance.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's not the radio.
Marc:Oh, there's a little bit of flash dance in it.
Yeah.
Guest:Did you recognize in Dog Tooth the flash dance reference?
Marc:I don't know if I know that movie that well.
Guest:Which part?
Guest:There's a dance that she does.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's completely ripped from flash dance.
Marc:Oh, when she's dancing by herself in front of her family?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's the choreography in totality.
Marc:Well, let me ask you then, so without over-intellectualizing and expecting too much, I know it's hard to explain poetry or impulse, but you do commit to it.
Marc:And I guess unlike theater, which your experience is that you don't have control over it and someone misses their cue or does the line not in the way that you would rehearse, it's sort of upsetting or at least it's aggravating.
Marc:But when you watch your films, which you spend a lot of time with in making them,
Marc:Do you find, do you get that satisfaction of resolution?
Marc:Do you, you know, what is the effect for you once you've completed something?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Well, first of all, after I've completed them, I don't watch them anymore.
Guest:Unless, you know, maybe 10 years later.
Guest:Like, for instance, I did watch a little bit of my first film, Kineta, when it was shown at the Tate.
Guest:I just checked the print.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I watched like 10 minutes of it.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I went like, it's okay.
Guest:There's some good things in it.
Guest:It's, you know, it's not that bad as I remembered it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, mostly it's like, you know, this thing that you've tried to, you know, create and hide all the stitches and all that went wrong.
Guest:And you're trying to fool people into believing that, you know, it's a perfect object that they, you know.
Marc:I guess my question is seeing how you answered that question before.
Marc:is that when you do a film where you're doing a three-act story, and you refine that script because you have a story to follow, I imagine a lot of the satisfaction or a lot of the challenges is does the story work?
Marc:land right yeah so in in in the way you answer that question before it seems to me that you know you're taking risks and you're committing to situations and ideas that you don't really know exactly where they're coming from but they they are poetic and visually you know provocative enough for you to follow through with them I guess my question is when you finish something
Marc:Does some of that stuff, do you feel like you've resolved it?
Marc:I mean, is the feeling one of resolution?
Marc:Because you're not really, you're not thinking in terms of story necessarily.
Marc:Do you know what I'm saying?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's never a complete feeling.
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:It's like, I have made this thing.
Guest:I had certain intentions.
Guest:I started being confident when we wrote a screenplay and I feel that's...
Guest:you know, solid and, you know, let's go and make it.
Guest:Hopefully it's going to be amazing.
Guest:And then on the way, you know, things fall apart and, you know, you have to deal with a lot of practicalities and it becomes this other thing.
Guest:And it always, it's always like that.
Guest:And that's a nice thing about cinema where you have a screenplay, which is a blueprint.
Guest:And then, you know, you end up making something quite different because it's its own thing and it has a life of its own.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you have to accept that, and I do.
Guest:But within that, there's all these other things that haven't worked well that you hopefully somehow disguise for other people that weren't with you during the experience.
Marc:But what are they going to say to you?
Marc:I mean, this is something that no one can say to you about any of the films that you wrote and directed.
Marc:It's sort of like, you know, I don't think that story plot worked.
Guest:But it's not about that.
Guest:I mean, as you said before, it could be you enter in it through a different space or- So to hold that space is the job.
Guest:Yeah, hold that space.
Guest:And to affect people in a certain way.
Guest:And maybe if it doesn't hold together well, you don't affect people in whatever way it is that you want to affect them.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:It's not about rigidly following certain rules about narrative or story.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's a general feel about the film.
Guest:A tone.
Guest:If you manage that, you hope that people will buy into it.
Guest:But I can't be so objective and have the distance to...
Guest:buy it myself sure so it's always about you know doing the best that you could for for each film yeah according to what you had in mind and what you were trying to achieve yeah and then just you know give it to people and then they have their own yeah
Guest:And then you just hope how I survive is like even during the editing process, I think of the new stuff and start writing and thinking of the new ideas, hoping that it's going to be better.
Marc:Well, yeah, and that to me, like, okay, so with the first film, you have the resort and you have the crimes and you have the reenactions, you know, as a way to enter the people that you've chosen.
Marc:So with Dogtooth, you know, what was the first idea with that?
Marc:What's, you know, just in terms of like, all right, I'm going to sit down.
Marc:I got this idea.
Yeah.
Guest:The idea was how much you can influence people's perception about the world through education and everyday life.
Guest:The world that you present to someone, it could be so extreme, the idea that someone could have about the world if you limit them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:educate them in a certain way, and how a family is the obvious first unit that can actually do something like this.
Guest:So I think it started from there.
Guest:Imagine if you have these children that never know the rest of the world exists.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:And how do you do that?
Guest:And what does it mean?
Guest:And what kind of people come out of that?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So it's a it's a very close family movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It is.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's so funny because the first time I ever heard about it was years ago.
Marc:I had.
Marc:Do you know his name is Dino Stamatopoulos?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know his work?
Guest:I've read one of his screenplays.
Guest:I've seen the series that he'd done.
Guest:Moral Oral?
Guest:Moral Oral.
Guest:I really loved that, yeah.
Guest:I've spoken to him on the phone a couple of times.
Guest:He loves you.
Guest:Yeah, no, he's great.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And he lives a very interesting life.
Marc:But what did he say?
Marc:Hold on.
Marc:My eyes are terrible because he said, I don't blame my parents.
Marc:They're people.
Marc:They're computers.
Marc:They just do things like we all do.
Marc:Their idea of love was worry.
Marc:Worry, worry, worry, worry.
Marc:Shelter, shelter, worry, worry, worry.
Marc:Where are you?
Marc:What are you doing?
Marc:They were Greek.
Marc:In fact, a great movie everyone should see is called Dogtooth.
Marc:It's a Greek movie.
Marc:It's up for an Academy Award this year, but worry is a huge part of the Greek culture.
Marc:Is that a generalization?
Guest:Um, I, you know, I understand being Greek.
Guest:I understand, you know, what he means.
Guest:There's, um, uh, a tight, uh, hold, uh, in, I don't know if it's Greek or Mediterranean, maybe, uh, family and, uh, how, you know, kids, uh, end up maybe staying with their parents longer than, than usual.
Guest:Uh, and there's that link, which is stronger, uh,
Guest:Oh, I see.
Guest:It could be, but, you know, like with all things.
Guest:But it wasn't the way you grew up.
Guest:No, it was exactly the opposite, actually, because of circumstances.
Guest:It gave you a little more freedom in a way.
Guest:Yeah, that's true.
Guest:And, yeah, as I said in the beginning, like, I don't know if you could easily make a decision, like, in Greece, I'm going to become a filmmaker, having, you know, parents around you that you would actually say that and they wouldn't go, like, let's lock him up.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And within Dogtooth, that's the idea that how much control do people have over people's perceptions.
Marc:I have another guest on who actually made a movie with the same plot line, but it was a very kind of pithy, cute movie that had a narrative structure.
Marc:You know Kyle Mooney?
Marc:He's on SNL.
Marc:He made a movie called Bigsby Bear.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And Bigsby Bear is essentially that idea where this kid was kidnapped and held hostage, basically, and his father was creating a TV.
Marc:But I watched both of them within a week of each other, and I'm like, it's interesting.
Marc:Very different approaches to a similar idea.
Marc:But within that world, you're able to explore sexuality, power dynamics, violence, strange fears.
Marc:The cat thing was hard for me.
Marc:I have cats.
Marc:It was difficult.
Marc:My girlfriend couldn't watch it.
Guest:Isn't it strange, this thing about people and animals in films?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How they're affected more from violence on animals than violence on people?
Marc:Well, I think that a lot of people think that people have it coming.
Marc:That's true, that animals are more innocent and pure.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, I get that.
Marc:Yeah, I just watched A Wild Bunch again, and it was like, oh, my God, how many horses went down for that movie?
Marc:Well, you didn't really kill a cat, did you?
Marc:No, no, no, of course not.
Yeah.
Guest:No, I'm just saying in fiction, how people are affected in fiction.
Guest:No, no, absolutely.
Guest:Because I think it must be the innocent thing.
Guest:I remember watching this.
Guest:Have you watched this film, Heli, by this Mexican filmmaker?
Guest:No, good.
Guest:Amada Escalante.
Guest:It's really good.
Guest:But it's really violent.
Guest:It's about what goes on in Mexico.
Guest:And there's people being, heads being chopped off, people hanging from bridges.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and all that, but there's a scene where a policeman picks up a little dog and breaks his neck.
Guest:And that's when the cinema all went, oh.
Marc:Yeah, that is interesting.
Marc:What do you make of it?
Marc:Do you think it's the innocence thing?
Guest:I think you're, yeah, you're onto something there.
Guest:Like, yeah.
Marc:So that movie, like Dogtooth, you know, again, like, I found it completely compelling and a little bit disturbing.
Marc:And you definitely honored the tone.
Marc:And then you evolve into the Alps movie,
Marc:It's fun for me to do this.
Marc:So what was the inspiration going into that film?
Marc:What were you like?
Marc:I got an idea.
Marc:We're going to make a movie about it.
Guest:Well, first of all, I work very closely with Efthimis Filippo that we write together.
Guest:And he's a very good friend of mine.
Guest:What's his name?
Guest:Efthimis Filippo.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So we worked together very closely, and Dog Tooth was the first film we wrote together.
Marc:How'd you find this guy?
Marc:In order to have some sort of simpatico, it would seem to me that it would be not that easy to find a guy who's like, we understand each other.
Guest:It's very rare.
Guest:I found him in a commercials agency.
Guest:He used to work.
Guest:He was a writer for a commercials agency.
Guest:And I had done some.
Guest:I've directed some of the scripts that he hadn't written.
Guest:And I saw that he was a very specific mind.
Guest:And we became friendly.
Guest:And then I asked him if he wanted to write a screenplay with me.
Guest:And that was Dogtooth.
Guest:So it was the first time he'd ever written a film before.
Guest:And we spend a lot of time writing that and figuring out.
Marc:When you deal with that type of, do you mind the word absurdism?
Guest:I don't mind.
Guest:Anything absolute is quite limiting, but no, I don't.
Marc:Well, when you're dealing with beats like that, where you're just sort of like moving these actors through, it's obviously not random, but you're going scene for scene.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, when you're working with somebody else, what what dictates whether it's whether you've you've landed or not, like in any particular scene, like even the scene where she does the flash dance after they all start dancing and then she keeps dancing and then she gets worn out.
Marc:Do you look at each of those scenes as their own little arcs?
Guest:Uh, yes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Uh, I do.
Guest:And actually, Doctor was a very, very particular process.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because we hadn't done it before together.
Guest:And, uh, as I said, it was Optimus' first time writing a screenplay.
Guest:And we actually started by, I had the idea and I came to him with the idea.
Guest:And then we just started writing scenes, not even a whole story.
Guest:So we just started writing scenes to see if this thing kind of made sense and how we would approach it.
Guest:And from writing like nine, 10 scenes, we thought that there's something in there and this is working and
Guest:So let's sit down and write the whole story and see where that's going to go.
Guest:But after that, I think we approached it in a more conventional way where we had the idea and then we kind of wrote down.
Guest:For Alps.
Guest:For Alps.
Guest:We wrote down the story and the characters and then started writing scenes.
Guest:And that was a discussion.
Guest:So after Dog Tooth, we started discussing what should we do next.
Guest:We wanted to make more films.
Marc:It's interesting because I just realized that that's sort of like the way that, again, part of that theme of people being, not replaceable, but people playing parts.
Marc:Like in Dog Tooth, you have this woman who is the security guard at the factory where the father works, and he would take her home to have sex with his teenage son.
Marc:And then, you know, that somehow goes awry through a certain series of events and they just decide the older sister can do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's safer.
Marc:Keep it in the house.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's no outside influence.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, I just I think it's important to have this conversation with you because, you know, people are really, you know, digging and enjoying the favorite.
Marc:And that's something you directed.
Marc:But you do have this filmography of these very specific types of movies that I think people should see and, you know, kind of get their mind blown.
Marc:So going into the Alps.
Marc:So now you're working differently.
Marc:You're not just writing pieces.
Marc:You've got you decided what was the original idea?
Guest:So the original idea, I think we're discussing about grief and Ephthymus was saying something about someone making phone calls, pretending to be someone that was dead for someone in order to- On purpose.
Guest:On purpose.
Guest:No, I mean not a prank call.
Guest:No, not a prank call.
Guest:Like someone would commission someone to do that for him so that he kind of kept the memory of that person or the presence of that person alive.
Guest:And then I went like, you know, that it would be more interesting if that was actually there was a interaction and a physical contact.
Guest:And how about having these people that were going to, you know, actually...
Guest:do that.
Guest:And we just started creating this world.
Guest:And I also, I think at some point, a friend of ours found a letter in his house by a person who was looking to do some kind of work.
Guest:And in the letter, he wrote, I can do your shopping.
Guest:I can come and have conversations with you.
Guest:I can be your friend.
Guest:We can go for walks.
Guest:A companion.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was also a kind of thing that pointed towards people that are maybe lonely or are going through something that they may need to commission friendship to someone.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Those kind of ideas morphed into this story about people that have lost someone and how do you deal with it and would it be interesting if you hired people to pretend to be the people that you loved?
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that's the baseline of the movie.
Marc:But very quickly, you realize, not unlike your other movies, that that's not really what this is about.
Marc:But it seems that, in talking to you, that the excitement of generating these ideas, once you have this framework, which is a loose framework, to see what these characters will do, that the excitement of just letting your mind and imagination go
Marc:how these people interact and what happens.
Marc:It doesn't seem like why is an important question at all.
Guest:No, it's more about making an experiment and throwing all these people in this situation and see how they interact and
Guest:you know, what comes out of it and making observations or exposing, you know, exposing to people and then, again, people according to their own personalities and experiences and cultural backgrounds or whatever will make out different things.
Guest:They'll recognize different things within those situations.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they might come up with
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why or what that means to them.
Marc:Even if they can't identify that.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:It's a feeling.
Marc:But it's very aggressive, much of it.
Marc:And it's just like, I mean, do you get excited when you decide that she's going to go back to the dance hall and...
Marc:and aggressively dance with her father's friend and then eventually throw her on the floor and begin hitting her.
Marc:Is that a moment where you're writing that and you're like, oh, this is good.
Marc:We got it.
Guest:And even more exciting, the fact that it's her real mother in real life.
Guest:It is.
Guest:The lady.
Marc:But the fucked up thing and the beautiful thing about that movie is that it starts with this very oppressive gymnastic coach telling this gymnast, who I guess the actress is your wife now, that she can't dance to a modern pop song.
Marc:She's not ready for it.
Marc:And if she brings it up again, he's going to beat the shit out of her.
Marc:And then throughout this entire insane, grief-ridden, weird movie, you bookend it with her being able to dance to a pop song.
Marc:They hug, and it's like, for some reason, the ending is completely earned.
Marc:It was very satisfying.
Guest:Sounds great, the way you describe it.
Guest:It gets me excited.
Guest:I want to make that movie.
Marc:Yeah, I just want people to know if they're sitting here listening going like, well, that sounds interesting, a group of people that help people who are grieving.
Marc:It's not about that.
Marc:It's a group of people that very early on name themselves after mountains and have weird interactions that sometimes become violent and nonsensical, and it'll make you wonder about everything.
Marc:And then, like I said to you before, after exiting the movie in my own house, everything becomes very, you know, like I'm very aware of the life I'm living, which I think is a good thing.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:All right, we're going to keep doing this.
Marc:Now, Lobster seemed to me, you're like, I'm going to make something accessible.
Marc:I want to make a movie that everyone can enjoy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you feel that?
Guest:That's exactly how we approached it.
Guest:No, but the difference is that that film is quite important because it was the first English-language film that I made.
Guest:So after Alps, I basically decided to leave Greece and go and live in London and start making English-language films because...
Guest:The way I made those films in the beginning in Greece, it was no financing, just amongst friends.
Guest:People work for no money, no pay, or very little, and we had to pay for it through making commercials, and other people helped us as well.
Guest:But it was tiny, small films.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If I wanted to progress and make other things and be able to make more choices about the stories I wanted to tell and pay people properly and get paid as well and make this for a living, I had to start making English language films.
Guest:It wasn't... So it was accessible in a way.
Guest:Yeah, so that was the part of it that said...
Guest:I'm going to make English language films so they're more accessible in a way, and I'll get a little bit of more financing in order to be able to make them.
Marc:And attract interesting actors.
Marc:And attract interesting actors.
Marc:But you always have good actors.
Marc:That woman who's in both of the Alps and the Dog Tooth, she's very good.
Marc:Is she a big actress in Greece?
Guest:Uh, she's, you know, known.
Guest:I mean, she's more of a, uh, alternative kind of actor.
Guest:She's not like the well-known TV actress.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Again, cinema is not very big.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Um, she does theaters, uh, like devised theater and.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Cause I can see that there are moments in the film where, you know, you really let them loose a little bit.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:That's the best thing if you let the actors loose.
Guest:You make the right choice about the actors and then you let them loose.
Marc:So Lobster has a fairly straight setup if you're single and you don't...
Marc:You get somebody, you go to this place, and then you got a certain amount of time, and then if you don't get somebody, you become an animal of your choice.
Guest:Exactly, yeah.
Marc:The technology's not important.
Marc:It's just a room where you go into.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And there are rumors about how it's done.
Marc:But it's sort of a dystopian vision.
Marc:But it is a full vision.
Marc:You do have a story there that you're honoring, not unlike the other ones, but maybe because it is in English that it seems a little more accessible in the sense that you are following a story.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Yeah, I don't see it much different in terms of, I don't find it necessarily more narrative than the other films.
Marc:I guess not, I guess not, but I guess if you're familiar with, it is kind of a genre movie though.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Well, it flirts with genres.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:Really dystopian.
Guest:Prison drama.
Marc:A little bit.
Marc:Prison drama, but also just one of those ones where it's like, well, this is clearly maybe a future of some kind.
Guest:Yeah, science fiction, prison drama.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And a romantic comedy.
Marc:Yeah, definitely a romantic comedy.
Marc:It's very cute.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And why, well, Rachel Weisz, she's a great actress and Colin Farrell is in two of your movies.
Marc:So, you know, you do make somewhat of a commitment to certainly him as an actor in driving two of your films.
Marc:What are the qualities in him that make him compelling for you as a director and him as an actor?
Guest:Well, I always liked Colin.
Guest:In Bruce, I think he's one of the great performances I've seen on film.
Guest:And I thought he has a very special quality.
Guest:He's charming and funny.
Guest:He's sympathetic no matter what he does.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And he really shut him down in The Lobster.
Marc:You got him pudgy and you got him kind of a bit muted.
Marc:But he's still very charming.
Guest:He is.
Guest:He is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I met him.
Guest:We spoke through Skype the first time.
Guest:And when I'm looking for an actor and trying to decide, I try to watch a lot of stuff, not just necessarily the work, but
Guest:also you know interviews or whatever i can find there so i can see how they are i mean it's not like it it's how they are yeah as real people even in interviews but um you get a different sense from when someone is acting yeah um so i yeah i just thought he had an excellent sense of humor and you know there was there's all these qualities about him that i just felt were right yeah um
Marc:And I think that movie also, in terms of maintaining my argument of accessibility, is that through whatever surreal or seemingly absurd interactions, almost all throughout that movie, they do speak to relationship.
Guest:Yeah, I think one of the things is that, that relationships are a very big part of our life.
Guest:And that maybe speaks to more people than something else.
Marc:Why do people belong together?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Why are we with each other?
Guest:And, you know, it's about love and all these kind of things that are really a concern us a lot of the time.
Guest:Yeah, and animals too.
Guest:Yeah, animals.
Marc:It was always nice out in the woods where you just see a llama or something walk by.
Marc:There was a couple of exotic animals.
Marc:Yeah, camel.
Marc:But now I'm just starting to realize that, like, the rabbits that he was killing for her to eat, they were once people probably.
Guest:Maybe.
Marc:Who knows?
Marc:Or do rabbits get a pass?
Marc:There's a lot of rabbits in the new movie, too.
Marc:Yeah, I never thought of that.
Marc:You didn't?
Guest:No.
Marc:Yeah, I noticed that when I was watching The Lobster again.
Marc:I watched it a second time, and I was like, he's got something for rabbits, this guy.
Marc:Did you add the rabbits to the favorite?
Guest:Um...
Guest:Yeah, I mean, we were looking for something to represent the children, but it wasn't grim and 17 little graves.
Marc:Yeah, rabbits are always good for... Yeah, they're very cute.
Marc:No one's ever going to say, fuck that rabbit, except for Emma Stone's character.
Marc:All right, so then we go to Killing the Sacred Deer, which I watched the first time.
Marc:A week or so ago, that's another movie where I noticed that's when I noticed that that the thing that you do that supports what you're saying about tone is that you're very meticulous that the amount of that movie that was shot in a hospital and then in a town that didn't have a lot of activity.
Marc:were clear choices that really kind of made the tone even more impactful.
Marc:You're kind of tight with that, right?
Marc:You were like, this hospital's got to look a certain way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, one of the main things about the hospital was that I wanted to feel that it was a hospital where they knew what they were doing.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Because there's that part of the plot where, you know, they can't figure out what's wrong with the kids and why.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:So you need to get the, it had to be the high level.
Guest:So if it was like a, you know, shitty hospital that you could very easily dismiss the whole thing.
Guest:Like, you know, they don't know what they're doing.
Guest:Why doesn't he go to a proper hospital or something like that?
Guest:And give some possibility to him as a character and he's successful and all that.
Guest:So it had to look a certain way.
Guest:It had to be kind of state of the art hospital.
Marc:And that story is another, it's almost a genre film in that it's like one of those weird mystical kind of fantasy, I don't know what you would call it, but the sort of like the weird kid with the secret power movies.
Marc:Horror-like.
Marc:Horror, that's right, okay.
Marc:I feel that that movie, even more so than The Lobster, had more of a narrative through line.
Marc:And I don't want you to take that as an insult.
Marc:I think it's okay.
Marc:It's okay to have more narrative.
Marc:It's okay to have a story.
Guest:I'm fine with it, too.
Guest:That's what we're trying to do in all of our films, have a story.
Marc:But that one was like, the thing that I think a lot of your movies do is that because your brain is looking for reason or logic or explanation, that you make assumptions.
Marc:And I think that throughout all of your movies, you realize that the assumptions don't matter as much as something that you're not quite conscious of happening to you.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:You're sort of like, well, who is this fucking kid?
Marc:What's with the watch?
Marc:Why is he at the hospital?
Marc:Is this some weird, you know, pedophilia relationship?
Marc:What is happening?
Marc:And you don't even let us know what the kid is until like half an hour in.
Marc:And then you're like, oh, this just took a turn for the fucking weird.
Marc:And then it becomes, you know, about, you know, choices and decisions and mistakes that we make.
Marc:And, you know, what is the price of that?
Marc:Right?
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it's an allegory.
Guest:It's funny that you said you don't understand many things about my films, but you really explained them so well and much better than I could.
Guest:You want me to go with you on the rest of the tour?
Guest:Yeah, that would be great.
Guest:I'll take this question.
Guest:Mark will take this question.
Marc:He's put a lot of thought into it.
Marc:I have not.
Guest:Yeah, I have not.
Marc:I just spit them out there and then Mark can talk to you about them.
Marc:Well, you know, I try.
Marc:I try.
Marc:I feel better now.
Marc:about my experience with the movies.
Marc:Because I think that's the right way to be and I don't think you're doing it on purpose.
Marc:I think you're being honest about it.
Marc:But the fact that you are making the thing and you just follow through on these ideas and I'm gonna have my own experience.
Marc:If I was sitting here telling you my experience and you're like, oh boy, you missed it.
Guest:That would be bad, bad for me.
Marc:So Killing the Sacred Deer, are you happy with that one?
Guest:i haven't seen it for a while after i finished it i guess you know we achieved certain things we failed in others yeah you know it's it's not for me to say right okay again you know i do understand not watching what you do yeah yeah because do you watch no and i like i have these conversations i don't listen to them again yeah
Marc:My producer, he remembers everything because he spends another hour or two with these, three hours.
Marc:Do you edit?
Guest:No, he does.
Marc:He's got this amazing memory.
Marc:He pulled up that Dino quote.
Marc:I have the conversation.
Marc:I'm engaged in it.
Marc:And then when I walk away from it, I'll remember some things.
Marc:But after time, it's like- You've done many of those as well.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the new movie, which people like, the favorite, is like this is the first time you directed someone else's film?
Guest:Yeah, but in the end it wasn't very different because I spent like eight years developing the script.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Who wrote the original script?
Guest:So there was an original script by Deborah Davis.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then...
Guest:I worked on it a little bit with her and restructured the story.
Guest:But then I felt the need to bring on someone different to bring in a different tone.
Guest:Your guy?
Guest:Different approach.
Guest:Tony McNamara.
Guest:It was the first time that I worked with him.
Guest:He's an Australian writer, playwright and screenwriter.
Marc:So why that decision?
Marc:Was the original script more of a historical piece about a thing?
Guest:Yeah, it was a more straightforward historical piece about her story.
Guest:Queen Anne, is that her name?
Guest:Queen Anne, yeah.
Guest:What period was that?
Guest:What year?
Guest:It was early 1700s, 18th century.
Marc:So it was originally a historical drama that was telling the story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I had a very different idea about what I wanted this to be and the tone.
Marc:What sparked that idea?
Marc:What was it?
Marc:When you looked at the original script, what were you like?
Marc:I want this to be this.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:uh again it's it's not you know imminent like that it's it's it's more about i i'm interested in the story this you know is interesting about the women you know there's these three women it was interesting that they actually existed and at some point in time you know these women that had such power that i could affect the lives of so many other people and
Guest:And also, you know, personally, her story, Anne's story is, you know, quite sad.
Guest:She went through a lot.
Guest:And so it was an interesting story.
Guest:And the fact that, you know, these people and their lives, you know, affected so many other people, it just felt like a rich thing to explore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I didn't want to make another historical drama.
Guest:I was trying to figure out what would be the tone that would make it something different, that would make it feel more relevant to us, more contemporary.
Guest:So I started thinking that, first of all, it should be funny and funny.
Guest:Because it is dark anyway.
Guest:It's quite a dark story.
Marc:It's a very tragic figure she was.
Marc:She lost 17 children and she was ill with... Yeah, throughout her whole life almost.
Guest:I mean, she was very young.
Guest:And she was put in a position that she couldn't really cope with and handle.
Guest:And it's a very responsible position to have.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, but I wanted to bring in the comedy in a very specific tonality and also visually and aesthetically to make it feel more contemporary.
Guest:So I started making all these decisions along the line.
Guest:It wasn't like one moment where we're like, this is how this is going to be.
Guest:But starting from the screenplay, I was, you know, I read like hundreds of writers to find what I had in my mind.
Guest:And I came across Tony's stuff and I was, I felt very confident.
Guest:And then, you know, we started working together and it was very easy because we had, you know, we were thinking about the film in the same way and he had the voice that I was looking for.
Guest:It wasn't like you're trying to
Guest:make someone right in a certain way.
Guest:And much like how I found Ephemis and we, you know, we matched and we understood each other.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So he was able to honor some of your ideas for what you wanted to do through the language.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:The language being that you took some liberties in terms of
Marc:you know, more contemporary idioms, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's weird.
Marc:It seemed to fit pretty well because I've seen that done in other movies where it's sort of, you know, it's too upfront.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, you know, there's some moments with the dancing and then some of the things they say where you're like, what?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I mean, it must have been quite a labor to to really get that period because you really shoot the hell out of it.
Marc:I mean, you know, you really kind of bathe in it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, you must have used a lot.
Marc:I think I read somewhere that you used a lot of point of references in terms of like what you were watching to.
Guest:to get the the long shots that you wanted and how you you shoot that era uh in in that way and you looked at some other movies right yeah more like known period films yeah uh just to again to get our minds you know excited and by you know incredible people that have done amazing things
Guest:So we're watching, you know, Zulawski films.
Guest:Amadeus, I read you.
Guest:Amadeus, yeah, that's true.
Guest:But because of the tone, because it was a, you know, it was a funny film.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I really liked that film.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:And All About Eve, obviously, is, you know, is quite a reference for the film or The Servant.
Guest:Joseph Lowe's is The Servant.
Marc:That's a rough movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Joseph Wozniak.
Marc:I don't hear that name being kicked around a lot, but that was some important film.
Guest:Yeah, not lately, yeah.
Marc:British filmmaker, correct?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, Peter Greenaway's The Draftsman's Contract, or Ingman Bergman's Cries and Whispers, you know, with the three women in a house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We watched more contemporary films, I mean, filmically speaking.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Because your vision had something to do with the type of shots you wanted?
Guest:Yes, just the general feel.
Guest:To get that weird grit in all that costumes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For me, the architecture was important.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like these huge spaces that were inhabited by so few people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The small human figure within that huge space.
Guest:When you visit those places, you're like, this was just one guy's room?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:So there was this bed in the corner of this huge room.
Guest:And a huge bed, but it looked very small within that huge room.
Guest:So that was quite important for me in trying to find a way to film this.
Guest:And we ended up using quite extreme wide-angle lenses to enhance that kind of feel, like the loneliness of a person within such a room.
Guest:But also, you know, in the end, I realized that it is also very relevant to the theme of the film, like, you know, these few people affecting a much bigger world and a much bigger picture.
Guest:And it also makes it feel quite claustrophobic in a way because, you know, you see the end of things.
Guest:You see the walls surrounding everybody.
Marc:Right, and the fact that she was so feeble from disease and lack of...
Marc:that was isolating.
Marc:She felt very isolated.
Marc:The difference between what was going on in the interior of the castle and even when anybody would just get on a horse and go anywhere, you'd be like, oh my God, they got out for a minute.
Marc:But that amazing British actress, what's her name, the lead?
Guest:Olivia Colman.
Marc:She was also in The Lobster.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But she just is amazing.
Marc:She is.
Marc:I mean, what was your experience directing her?
Marc:How did you push her out there?
Guest:Well, I didn't have to do much.
Guest:She's just incredible.
Guest:Again, it's just making the right choice.
Guest:And especially with Olivia, we...
Guest:one of the reasons that it took so long to make this film is that I had to wait for the right moment that the whole cast kind of fell together at the same time.
Guest:And I waited for Olivia because I couldn't think of anyone else that could play this character.
Guest:I just think she's unique and amazing.
Guest:And again, you just have to give them the space and just navigate them and
Guest:you know, get various options of things in order to be able to refine later on in the edit, you know, the performance and where the story is going and when you discover what the film is.
Marc:And Emma Stone was great.
Guest:Yeah, she's great too, yeah.
Marc:Did you know she was going to be so great?
Guest:I knew it.
Guest:I have to say, I knew it.
Guest:I was very confident about her.
Guest:And she also really wanted to do this.
Guest:She really loved the script and was very excited and is eager to do different things.
Guest:you know, the only thing, my only thing was about the accent.
Guest:So we did, before making, you know, the final decision, her and me, that we're going to make this together, she had some voice, dialect coach, and she did some sessions with her, and then we did some rehearsals, and she was brilliant.
Guest:And so we made sure that, you know, we wouldn't have that problem, and we would be able to do...
Guest:whatever we wanted and um yeah no she's she's amazing and she's you know she's gonna do great things i think because there's a lot in her it seems like it yeah we haven't seen yet i i liked her when she did billy jean king she was great yeah and no she's yeah and rachel weiss again great yeah you like working with her
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:She can do anything too.
Guest:Yeah, she can, yeah.
Guest:She's quite something.
Guest:I mean, all three of them, I was very like, I mean, it was like a dream, you know, cast.
Guest:And it's interesting.
Marc:I guess one of the reasons it's resonating so deeply is it is a movie about women and about the power struggle between these women and how women treat each other in a certain way in the 1700s in a castle.
Yeah.
Marc:So some of that was historically accurate, a lot of it, but not all of it.
Guest:The basic stories, yeah, quite accurate.
Marc:Was the sexual dynamics accurate?
Guest:Well, we don't have proof of anything, but there's a lot of letters between them.
Marc:It seems that there was that kind of... And how did the original screenwriter feel about the final project?
Guest:Well, I mean, she loves it, she says.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I think a lot of it is true to the core of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's just the approach and the tone that is quite different and brings that whole story into now and makes it relevant in a certain way.
Guest:And I think she appreciates that and understands that.
Yeah.
Guest:Great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And have you watched that one again?
Guest:No.
Guest:Last time was in Venice when we premiered.
Guest:How'd you feel about it?
Guest:Oh, I was nauseous the whole time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, you can't see a film probably within those conditions.
Guest:I mean, you're sweating and you're nauseous.
Guest:People loved it though.
Marc:Didn't it win the prize?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, but I mean, it doesn't make a difference while you're watching it especially.
Marc:So what now?
Marc:You're going to run around and promote this movie and maybe win a statue or two?
Marc:But you're already working on the next one?
Guest:I've started working on a few films, but it's hard to concentrate right now with the promotion and all this that's going on into the new things.
Guest:But I'm looking forward to focus on the creative stuff again.
Guest:But yeah, I have like three or four screenplays that I've started and they kind of piled up because I made The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Favourite kind of back to back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I didn't have much time to focus on the development.
Marc:Well, you'll have time.
Marc:You're a young man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Not anymore.
Marc:No, I'm still pretty young.
Marc:But I forgot to ask you about this because everyone seems to be talking about the lack of lighting, the use of natural light, the Barry Lyndening of the movie.
Marc:And that was mostly true.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, it's true.
Guest:I mean, it's true for all of my films.
Guest:I don't particularly like artificial lighting.
Guest:And I also like the result, but also the way of working without a lot of equipment and just have a camera.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:Natural light and just have the actors and be able to and free to just change things around.
Guest:Boy, the unions must hate you.
Guest:No, I mean, the lights are out there.
Guest:We just don't use them.
Marc:Best union job in the world is one of your movies.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:You guys just sit down.
Marc:Take it easy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But with the equipment that's available today, it must be a little less challenging than what Kubrick was dealing with in terms of- Yeah, I mean, he had to use the-
Guest:special lenses the nasa lenses i mean we have faster not faster than those actually but fast lenses and you know you can push film quite a bit so it's not as challenging but those big spaces sometimes it was like trying to light those huge spaces just with candles we needed a lot
Guest:of candles and that's what you did yeah that's what we did and there's there's only a couple of scenes where we had to you know supplement the light because you know of the height of the ceilings or outside where there was you know nothing so yeah it was night with nothing and we had to light a light but it was only a couple of times it's great talking to you do you think we covered it
Guest:I mean, some of it, yeah.
Guest:What are you hiding?
Guest:No, you seem to know everything beforehand.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:I didn't know anything.
Guest:I just watched the movies.
Guest:Yeah, and you went like, I don't understand anything, and then you analyzed everything perfectly, and great.
Yeah.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:But you would have said that no matter what I said.
Guest:No, that's not true.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Oh, yeah, that it was.
Guest:My experience was my experience.
Marc:Yeah, because there's no wrong or right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's a pretty good place to be.
Marc:But you described the films in detail.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:They're hard to spoil, which is a benefit of the way you work.
Marc:I'm not giving anything away with any of them, except for you could, though.
Marc:You could, though.
Marc:You could with the sacred deer.
Marc:I guess you could with a lot of them, actually, but not the first two.
Marc:Like, there's no way you can, like, you know, I could talk about Dogtooth or Alps and people would be like, oh, you fucked that movie up for me.
Guest:Yeah, so I can't watch it now.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, no, I think you did a great job.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:Well, good luck at the Globes.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:If that's important to you, either way.
Guest:I mean, it's important for the film and your next film.
Marc:All right, great talking to you, man.
Guest:Thank you.
Thank you.
Marc:All right.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:The favorite, obviously.
Marc:Go see it if you haven't.
Marc:It's a great film.
Marc:Watch all of them.
Marc:Watch Dogtooth first.
Marc:Now I'm going to have some fun on my guitar.
Marc:I've really settled into this Telecaster sound through the Echoplex, through the old Fender amp.
Marc:I'm just going to do things I've done before a little differently.
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Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Hey, I know it got sloppy.