Speaker 1: Look out his only films to be buried with. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Films to be buried with. My name
Speaker 1: is Brett Goldstein. I'm a comedian, an actor, a writer,
Speaker 1: a director, a trampolinist, and I love films. As John
Speaker 1: Keats once said, I am certain of nothing but the
Speaker 1: holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of the imagination.
Speaker 1: Having said that, I'm also pretty certain that the Parent
Speaker 1: Trap remake with Lindsay Lohan is close to a perfect film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, John Keats. I can't disagree with that fair play.
Speaker 1: Every week I invite a special guest over. I tell
Speaker 1: them they've died. Then I get them to discuss their
Speaker 1: life through the films that meant the most of them.
Speaker 1: Previous guests include Sharon Stone, Kevin Smith, James a Caster,
Speaker 1: and even Led Crambells. But this week it's the unbelievable
Speaker 1: Oscar winning filmmaker mister Barry Jenkins. Head over to the
Speaker 1: Patreon at patreon dot com forward slash Breck gold scene,
Speaker 1: where you'll get an extra fifteen minutes to chat with Barry.
Speaker 1: We talk in depth about beginnings and endings. You also
Speaker 1: get an incredible secret from him. You also get the
Speaker 1: whole thing uncut and as a video ad free. Check
Speaker 1: it out over at patreon dot com. Forward slash Breck
Speaker 1: gold Scene TV missions. Ted Lasso season two has started
Speaker 1: to get caught up in all the episodes on Apple
Speaker 1: tv Plus. Also check out Soulmate season one on Amazon Prime.
Speaker 1: One will make you happy, the other one will make
Speaker 1: you think. You know, thinky. So if you ever listened
Speaker 1: to this podcast before, you will know what an absolutely
Speaker 1: massive fan of Barry Jenkins I am. All you need
Speaker 1: to do is listen to the Movies of the Year
Speaker 1: special with Nis Kumar, where we mostly talk about how
Speaker 1: much we love if Bill Street could talk. So this
Speaker 1: is one of the biggest deals for me that Barry
Speaker 1: was interested in doing the podcast, and I think it
Speaker 1: is pretty clear for the next hour that basically I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to restrain myself from constantly saying I love you.
Speaker 1: But I think I managed to hold it in for
Speaker 1: at least ten percent of the episode, so you know,
Speaker 1: I think it works fine. Anyway, he was amazing. We
Speaker 1: recorded this on zoom. I love this conversation. He was brilliant.
Speaker 1: I hope you love it too. So that is it
Speaker 1: for now. I very much hope you enjoy Episode one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty of Films to be Buried With. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Films to be Buried With. It is
Speaker 1: I Brett Goldstein, and I am joined today by a writer,
Speaker 1: a producer, a director, an Academy Award winner, a hero,
Speaker 1: a legend. I cannot believe he's actually doing this podcast.
Speaker 1: Can anyone believe it? Please? Welcome to the show. The incredible,
Speaker 1: the amazing, the brilliant. Is this the Barry Jakins. Thank you, Brod,
Speaker 1: Thank you man. It's a pleasure to be here. Barry.
Speaker 1: I can't believe you're here. You may never have listened
Speaker 1: to my podcast, but if you had, you might not
Speaker 1: have wanted to do it because I've spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time talking about your films in a loving way.
Speaker 1: What I do need to know before we start is
Speaker 1: what your tolerance is for being told how brilliant you are,
Speaker 1: because I'll limit it depending on how much you can take.
Speaker 1: Very low, very low, very low. It makes you uncomfortable, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. It does. It does because because one I
Speaker 1: don't I don't believe it. You know, I don't believe it.
Speaker 1: I don't buy it also in a very a a
Speaker 1: Roy Kent kind of universe. It's like the last thing
Speaker 1: you ever want to hear. Yea, yeah, I'm not that
Speaker 1: into it. Okay, I'm going to hold back a little.
Speaker 1: I'll try, but what I will say is I've recently
Speaker 1: completed the Underground Railroad. Congratulations, thank you man, thank you.
Speaker 1: What a phenomenal piece of work. And I did want
Speaker 1: to ask you if I may just a little bit
Speaker 1: about it, because it's the last one. Is like, it's
Speaker 1: fucking incredible and it's an incredible achievement. Aside from everything,
Speaker 1: just the size and scale of it is beautiful. It's harrowing,
Speaker 1: it's it's just an incredible piece of work. But genuinely,
Speaker 1: I'm curious for you, Like it's a harrowing watch. It's
Speaker 1: a harrowing it's a different hard it's a hard watch.
Speaker 1: And to have lived in that space and to make it,
Speaker 1: which I'm assuming took a year minimum, if not more,
Speaker 1: the whole thing for you exactly how is your brain
Speaker 1: during the making of that, as in do you switch
Speaker 1: it off at the end of the day, where you
Speaker 1: stuck in that dark space for a very sustained period
Speaker 1: of time, like How how do you exist making something
Speaker 1: like that for such a long time. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was interesting. I kind of I couldn't turn it off.
Speaker 1: There was just no way. I think, when you're doing
Speaker 1: something at that scale, there's just there's always a problem
Speaker 1: that needs to be solved, or always a question that
Speaker 1: needs to be answered. So my brain just had to constantly,
Speaker 1: constantly be going at the constantly be in that space.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the things I'm really proud
Speaker 1: of stuff with what's happening in my career right now
Speaker 1: is I'm still working with my friends, you know, with
Speaker 1: people I've known since I was in an undergradd since
Speaker 1: I was in college. And I think that helps, man,
Speaker 1: I think it helps a lot because it kind of
Speaker 1: takes you know, and you guys are working at a
Speaker 1: really high level right now, so I'm sure there's a
Speaker 1: lot of noise in the system. As they say, you know,
Speaker 1: when you guys weren't back to do season two and
Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff. It can be distracting the
Speaker 1: thing you're doing. The actually the thing you're creating is
Speaker 1: a distraction to a certain degree. It kind of it
Speaker 1: separates you from your yourself and your real life. And
Speaker 1: then you got all those other shit surrounding it. But
Speaker 1: I think because of that, it's really helpful to always
Speaker 1: have my friends with me, because I'm never alone even
Speaker 1: when I'm like stuck inside this thing. And this thing
Speaker 1: was like and it was massive. There was just nowhere
Speaker 1: to hide from it and there was yeah, and then
Speaker 1: there was no way to really turn it off. If
Speaker 1: you did turn it off, something was going to falter
Speaker 1: or fail. And so no, man, I was just in
Speaker 1: that headspace the entire time, but I wasn't there alone,
Speaker 1: and I think that made the difference. I Mean, it
Speaker 1: cost is incredible, it's so well cussed, but again, just
Speaker 1: the scenes that are being enacted often traumatic. And I
Speaker 1: wondered again in terms of the length of time you
Speaker 1: were doing this for whether there was a lot of
Speaker 1: laughter on set, whether you know, between takes it with light,
Speaker 1: or whether you actually everyone was in a kind of
Speaker 1: mood that sustained, Like how did that work? Was it different? No?
Speaker 1: There were certain days. I mean, and the first episode,
Speaker 1: the scene where the character Big Anthony is burned alive
Speaker 1: essentially that day. Yeah, you could hear a pin drop
Speaker 1: on set, Yeah, you could hear a pin drop. It
Speaker 1: was just, you know, everybody was. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: guy in the show named Ben Walker who plays the
Speaker 1: plantation on in the first episode. His wife is English,
Speaker 1: so he actually lives in London, even though he's from
Speaker 1: the state of Georgia. He's from that episode t place,
Speaker 1: and so I remember one day we were beginning that
Speaker 1: day's work. It was like maybe noon in Georgia, which
Speaker 1: meant it was maybe like eight or nine pm in London,
Speaker 1: and I was about to call action and he took
Speaker 1: his phone out and one of the pas was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, mister Walker, we're about to start working. You
Speaker 1: can't check your phone up. He goes, oh, I'm sorry, man,
Speaker 1: it's like nine o'clock. I just wanted to call my
Speaker 1: kids and tuck them in. And the PA's like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, mister jenis is ready to go. I walked over.
Speaker 1: I said, let that man get on his phone and
Speaker 1: call his kids, because he wants to remind himself that
Speaker 1: he is him and the character as the character, it
Speaker 1: was like, yes, Ben, call your damn kids, tucked them
Speaker 1: in and thedn't come back and do these horrible things.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, there were days where it was really intense,
Speaker 1: but there was so much laughter on this set. There
Speaker 1: really was. Tucso, who plays our lead is an absolute clown,
Speaker 1: and then Yeah, and then Joel and the kid who
Speaker 1: plays home or Chase Stillon. They were just like Laurel
Speaker 1: and Hardy. I mean it was just like a laugh
Speaker 1: a minute. So we didn't have a good time. I'm
Speaker 1: delighted to hear that. My last question because you're probably
Speaker 1: bold of talking about this. I know you've been talking
Speaker 1: about it a lot, but you're obviously in a position
Speaker 1: you have loads of projects. You could be doing loads
Speaker 1: of things. I know that having six projects in development
Speaker 1: and then one guys. In the case of Underground, particularly
Speaker 1: because it was such a massive undertaking, is there a
Speaker 1: particular reason that you were like, I'm doing this now
Speaker 1: or was it just logistically lined up it was happening then? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: this was everything had to sort of pivot around this.
Speaker 1: This was like, you know, the big ash truck on
Speaker 1: the highway taking up all the space and the other
Speaker 1: traffic has to move at at speed. This was always
Speaker 1: the main thing. Part of that was, you know, coming
Speaker 1: off of the win for the best picture with Moonlight,
Speaker 1: I knew I had probably the most cultural or industry
Speaker 1: capital I'm ever going to have. And I knew I
Speaker 1: need a certain amount of resources to pull the show off,
Speaker 1: and so it felt like this is how I'm going
Speaker 1: to pay for it, all the game I've made, you know,
Speaker 1: from this very unexpected success and moonlight. You know, I
Speaker 1: think images set around people like my ancestors, images set
Speaker 1: around the condition of American slavery, there's a certain business
Speaker 1: prospect of those images, which means there's certain financial capital
Speaker 1: that's given, certain budgets that are allowed for works on
Speaker 1: the subject matter. And this felt like I'm never gonna
Speaker 1: have this opportunity again. I'm like, I'm the hottest I'm
Speaker 1: ever gonna be, you know, So how do I catch
Speaker 1: on this chip? Do like go off and make some
Speaker 1: blockbuster franchise so I can put more money in my pockets?
Speaker 1: Or is this an opportunity for me to really take
Speaker 1: a big swing and try to capture the essence of
Speaker 1: these people who I owe so many things too? Also,
Speaker 1: I'm forty two, Well, I'm forty one and I'm turning
Speaker 1: to forty two soon. This ship was hard, right, this
Speaker 1: was hard, But believe it is. I can see that
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean maybe maybe someday, you know, I
Speaker 1: know you had you had Russell Russell rus dabies on
Speaker 1: the show, and he sells, you know pretty. I mean
Speaker 1: maybe when I when I think he's like fifty five
Speaker 1: right now, hopefully I'll be a sprite, you know, and
Speaker 1: I'll have as much energy as he does at fifty five.
Speaker 1: But I thought, you know what, I don't know that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be able to do something like this at
Speaker 1: that age. I'm not gonna want to. You know, I've
Speaker 1: got the energy. I've got to stam on our right now.
Speaker 1: I should do it. And so that was why. And
Speaker 1: did you did you direct it as as one giant
Speaker 1: movie split into ten or was it blocked out? No? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: we did it. We did it in episodes, and we
Speaker 1: kind of had to like a film. Yeah, exactly. There
Speaker 1: reached like a film. And even more logistically, you know,
Speaker 1: she gets to a new state. There's a whole different cast,
Speaker 1: a whole different set of locations. You really are resetting,
Speaker 1: and it was good for me to compartmental lots. I
Speaker 1: think good for the cast, you know, especially like someone
Speaker 1: like Tuso. It's really compartmentalized. It's like Okay, I'm in
Speaker 1: this deep dark place and now in two weeks I'll
Speaker 1: be in a different place. It might be dark, but
Speaker 1: it won't be as dark. It's funny you talk about
Speaker 1: rest of the day. If she's your doctor, who she
Speaker 1: moves to a different every episode, Newcast, New World exactly
Speaker 1: in it and it just it just refreshes you there,
Speaker 1: it just refreshes you. Well. It's truly incredible. And I
Speaker 1: have nothing but respect for you. But I have forgotten
Speaker 1: to tell you something. Yes, and I should have. I
Speaker 1: should have said it. I should have said it early. Actually,
Speaker 1: and I made it. I did make a note to
Speaker 1: say it when we met. But why are you thinking
Speaker 1: about it? Let me ask you? So? How did how did?
Speaker 1: How did tell us? All happened for you? Man? I
Speaker 1: mean the whole thing. You know, There's there's a thing
Speaker 1: I'd say to people when people ask like how to
Speaker 1: how to get into business and everything, and my answer
Speaker 1: is always just fucking make your own stuff. No one's
Speaker 1: ever the magical phone is never going to ring. And
Speaker 1: keep making stuff, keep making stuff, keep making stuff, keep
Speaker 1: making stuff, and hopefully one day someone will see your stuff.
Speaker 1: And if you've been doing it long enough, they'll look back,
Speaker 1: You'll go I've got loads of stuff to look at
Speaker 1: because no one was looking for years. And then having
Speaker 1: said all that, I did get a magical phone call.
Speaker 1: But I had, I had. I'd done a pilot for
Speaker 1: Bill Lawrence before and and we'd stayed in touch. And
Speaker 1: then two years later he called me literally out of
Speaker 1: the blue and said, I'm working on this show. I
Speaker 1: think you should. You should be in the writer's room.
Speaker 1: And I then had a FaceTime with Jason to see
Speaker 1: if we'd connect and sort of fell in love. And
Speaker 1: then two days later I was on a plane to
Speaker 1: l a, Oh we should. It was madness. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize you've been in the room on the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. So then the other part of it is
Speaker 1: I wasn't meant to be in it, and then we're
Speaker 1: writing it and I realized I felt, you know, without
Speaker 1: being a dickhead, I felt like a cooling. I meant
Speaker 1: to I need to play Roy ke I really really
Speaker 1: get it. But I also knew no one was thinking
Speaker 1: of me for Roy Kemp because I've got a Muppets
Speaker 1: poster and I'm usually headed. Up to that point, I've
Speaker 1: been playing sort of bumbly sort of sweet English guys.
Speaker 1: And so I made a tape on the last night
Speaker 1: the writter room because I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: and I filmed five scenes and when I left, I
Speaker 1: emailed it and I said, look, I've had a lovely time.
Speaker 1: I love the show and thinking for Age's I could
Speaker 1: play Roy. But I also know no one's thinking to
Speaker 1: me for this. If this tape is ship, pretend you
Speaker 1: never got it, and I will never ask you if
Speaker 1: you got this email. But if you like it, here's
Speaker 1: the tape. And then thankfully they couldn't be bothered to
Speaker 1: look any further. Wow that's awesome. Yeah, yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: a real, real magic that is. Yeah. I don't know
Speaker 1: how often that's happening, but I know the woman who's
Speaker 1: the leader Brother for Falls that had the same experience.
Speaker 1: She was in the writer's room, really Brother for Falls,
Speaker 1: and I think everyone in this case everyone realized eventually,
Speaker 1: I think you're this person that we're all sitting and
Speaker 1: now she's the star and uh and in the room.
Speaker 1: Very cool. Yeah, no, it's it's really Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: fucking miracle. The whole thing, the thing speaking of shocking things.
Speaker 1: What I forgot to tell you is you've died. You're dead. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: do that well? Ship builds good. It's a lot more
Speaker 1: animate than I thought it would be. Okay, this is good.
Speaker 1: How did you die? You get to choose how you died?
Speaker 1: How did you die? You know, it's interesting. I'm terrified.
Speaker 1: I was not expecting this question. They did not send
Speaker 1: me this question. You know. I'm I'm terrified of a flying,
Speaker 1: terrified of flying. But I do it all the time,
Speaker 1: I mean, doing what we do, you know, we just
Speaker 1: do it all the time. And maybe this this is
Speaker 1: a terrible thing to say out loud, but I've always
Speaker 1: imagined that I'm going to die and some kind of
Speaker 1: like some kind of aviation catastrophe, you know, but I've
Speaker 1: imagined it, and I even when when I was in college,
Speaker 1: I wrote a short story about it. But being thrown
Speaker 1: out of the window of this plane and just almost
Speaker 1: like the things they carried, you know, and just having
Speaker 1: this really beautiful experience of just floating through the air
Speaker 1: to my ultimate demise, but accepting it, accepting it, and
Speaker 1: then just really really drinking in the experience for what
Speaker 1: it is, very morbid but but but now I love this.
Speaker 1: I mean, I appreciate you. You've you've not had the books.
Speaker 1: We talk about death a lot. It's very mobid. It's fine,
Speaker 1: You're in the right place. My question is who threw
Speaker 1: you off the plane? Um? So in this short story,
Speaker 1: I had a very awesome apartment, very high up in
Speaker 1: the sky and one of the world's tallest buildings, and
Speaker 1: a small commuter plane just and just sort of swept
Speaker 1: me out. That was That was that one. I know,
Speaker 1: very strange, but you know, but it makes sense. You
Speaker 1: and I are a very close in age. You know.
Speaker 1: I was sitting in a classroom where not eleven happened,
Speaker 1: and so the idea of planes and buildings is something
Speaker 1: that was just very jarringly seared into everyone's consciousness. I
Speaker 1: think that's where I woke up one morning. I just
Speaker 1: had this image in my head of me being thrown
Speaker 1: out of a building, you know by this, the small
Speaker 1: plane that no business being at that elevation. That that's
Speaker 1: that is a hard called death. But as you fell,
Speaker 1: you were acceptance and it was beautiful, gorgeous. I mean,
Speaker 1: oh my god. I don't remember my dreams very often,
Speaker 1: but that one I woke up and I was like,
Speaker 1: I need to write this down. So you were sucked
Speaker 1: out of a building and then fell beautifully. Just just
Speaker 1: float it, man, I mean, just float it. You know
Speaker 1: you do you worry about death a lot? Is it
Speaker 1: something you think about? I do want to, don't? I
Speaker 1: do want to don't. I think the inevitability of death
Speaker 1: is something that I've gotten quite clear on, especially in
Speaker 1: the last like five years. But yeah, especially working on
Speaker 1: the show too, you know, doing all this research or
Speaker 1: about my answers, just all these black people who were
Speaker 1: brought against their will to the Americas, and death was
Speaker 1: just it was it was almost like you know, it
Speaker 1: was like breathing. It was like tea, it was like coffee,
Speaker 1: it was like breakfast. It was an inevitability, and it
Speaker 1: was very, very, very rampant. And so yeah, I had
Speaker 1: to go to that place. And so I've been thinking
Speaker 1: a lot about it over the last few years. And
Speaker 1: then just with everything that's happening in the world, I mean,
Speaker 1: the headlines over the last three days, I've just been terrifying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: death is a reality. Having sort of thought about it
Speaker 1: a lot in the last few years, has your have
Speaker 1: you changed your feelings about it, like do you feel
Speaker 1: less worried or not less worried? Because I love life, man,
Speaker 1: I love life, I do. I love the world. I
Speaker 1: think that what's happening here is so impossible. I think
Speaker 1: when you really take a moment to step back and
Speaker 1: look at anything, really, whether it's a human face, whether
Speaker 1: it's the flower. I know I'm sounding very hippy dippy
Speaker 1: right now. There's just there's just so much impossible, ravishing
Speaker 1: beauty in the every day and the completely mundane, and
Speaker 1: so in that way, it's not that I don't want
Speaker 1: to live. And yet I also think I'm not afraid
Speaker 1: of death because it's such an inevitability. There's a there's
Speaker 1: a writer I love who's giving a talk, this woman
Speaker 1: named Alice, Alice Sola Kim, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: she was quoting the poet or something, but she said,
Speaker 1: you know, right, like you're dead, right, like your parents
Speaker 1: are dead, right, Like everyone's dead. And that's how I
Speaker 1: go about my work now, you know, I just assume,
Speaker 1: because I'm just talking about the spear of flying, every
Speaker 1: time I get on a plane, this is really dark,
Speaker 1: I assume it'll be the last time I get every
Speaker 1: time I get on a flight, I think this is
Speaker 1: going to be the one every single time. Breath. That's true,
Speaker 1: every single time. It's It's why if I fly, anybody
Speaker 1: listens to this. If I fly somewhere to meet you,
Speaker 1: I want you to know that in my head, I
Speaker 1: am risking life and live to get to you. That's
Speaker 1: what I think. Yeah, if you're flying to meet someone,
Speaker 1: it means something exactly. But because of that, I also
Speaker 1: think that when I'm making choices about it, I'm going
Speaker 1: to direct this, so I'm going to write that, or
Speaker 1: even I'm going to read this, I'm going to watch that.
Speaker 1: I gotta meet it, man, I've gotta meet it. You know.
Speaker 1: It's why you know I want to do the podcast,
Speaker 1: because I mean, I know, but now in the writers room,
Speaker 1: it is kind of definitely your thing. Man. I just
Speaker 1: love what y'all doing on that show. I just, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just absolutely my partner as a filmmaker, She'll tell
Speaker 1: you we'll be watching an episode. I do this, I'll
Speaker 1: pause because like how much time is left that I'll
Speaker 1: pause again. It's like I got six more minutes, all right, cool.
Speaker 1: Then I'll pause again. I've got five more minutes. Man,
Speaker 1: I just love it because that is worth my time. Man.
Speaker 1: That blazes my mind. That blaws my mind. Listen, I'm
Speaker 1: not allowed to tell you I bringing you about for
Speaker 1: an hour, but I've said it a lot. You are not,
Speaker 1: you are not. I really appreciate that's very exciting to hear.
Speaker 1: What do you think happens when you die? Do you
Speaker 1: do you think there's enough to life or anything like that?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've been trying to, you know, in
Speaker 1: my spare time, I try to read like really random shit.
Speaker 1: I love why every now and my followers on Twitter
Speaker 1: are like, why does Barry Jenkins know so much about
Speaker 1: these random ass things? Obsessed? You know, I'm terrified of aviation,
Speaker 1: so I tried to learn everything I could about it.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by death and life in general, and so
Speaker 1: I've been just doing random research on those things as well.
Speaker 1: What do I think happens? I'm not sure, bro, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, but I think something happens, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think something has to the universe is so mysterious.
Speaker 1: I mean it is crazy mysterious, Brett. I mean it's
Speaker 1: like insane, some of this shit that we're only now
Speaker 1: discovering it just it puzzles the hell out, I mean,
Speaker 1: and it makes me wonder if we even have the
Speaker 1: capacity to discover everything, or even the essential things. I
Speaker 1: think we're scratching the surface right now. I say all
Speaker 1: that to say death can't be as simple as we assume.
Speaker 1: It just can't be. It's just in the way I
Speaker 1: mean the fact that you can sometimes walk down a
Speaker 1: street and you know, I think for women this is
Speaker 1: even more prevalent, and you can fill some creepy guy
Speaker 1: watching you without seeing him, without knowing his presence there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure there is something that we don't understand that is
Speaker 1: out there in all these spaces between us, and I
Speaker 1: think that extends to all these other things out in
Speaker 1: the universe. And so you know, you go to a cemetery,
Speaker 1: that's a version of death. Yes, but they can't just
Speaker 1: be it. Everything you've said about how you feel about
Speaker 1: life and how you feel about death and the after life,
Speaker 1: I think it's all in your work. I think it's
Speaker 1: all the thing that I was really fascinated with underground railroad,
Speaker 1: particularly because of how it's heavy. It's fucking heavy. It's
Speaker 1: you know, there's so much trauma in it, but it
Speaker 1: is also clear from that show that you love life
Speaker 1: and the moments like in episode one where they run
Speaker 1: across the field together, it's such a joyous it's such
Speaker 1: a sort of it's fucking beautiful, and there's so much
Speaker 1: particularly how you shoot the landscape and the sun, and
Speaker 1: there's there's an element. It feels spiritual. There's spirits everywhere,
Speaker 1: like it's all in there everything you. I just want
Speaker 1: to use tonight that everything you feel comes across. Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's not intentional. I'm trying to get to the point
Speaker 1: where where I am just working from from this feeling,
Speaker 1: from from a spirit. Bright said the word first, although
Speaker 1: I probably did say it before, but but I am
Speaker 1: trying to work just from this, this spirit, the spiritual place,
Speaker 1: if that, if that, if that element is present, and
Speaker 1: the thing that we're doing that day, actually all of
Speaker 1: that is completely unintentional. It's meant to be just a
Speaker 1: really simple run across this field. And we had filmed
Speaker 1: the dialogue portion of that scene somewhere else and just
Speaker 1: something I don't know what it was, man, the sun
Speaker 1: was setting and I just called out and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I think we should do the lines right here, and
Speaker 1: I think we should slow this down, let's just take
Speaker 1: let's take a moment with it, and we shot it
Speaker 1: in slow motion again not intentional, and after the first
Speaker 1: take it was clear something else is happening here, like
Speaker 1: something else is happening here. Yeah, this is only last
Speaker 1: for like two seconds. It's twenty twenty one as a
Speaker 1: guy out blowing leaves. But it'll be done in a second.
Speaker 1: I don't hear it. I kind of hear it as
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the spiritual run across your brain. That's
Speaker 1: that's fascinating that wasn't planned, because it feels this is
Speaker 1: why this is the thing I love. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think you can compare them, but there are
Speaker 1: things that have it's so much different. But in the
Speaker 1: making of Ted Lasser, there are things that there's a
Speaker 1: thing that Jason always says of someone else is quote,
Speaker 1: but it's the thing of ninety percent of the homework
Speaker 1: at leave ten percent so God can come in, you
Speaker 1: know that. And there's very much that thing of like
Speaker 1: there are things that turn up. We did so much work,
Speaker 1: as so much planning, so much writing, but there are
Speaker 1: things in the show that happened on the day that
Speaker 1: happened with the right person walking in or you know,
Speaker 1: you follow that. And it's so fascinating because when it
Speaker 1: when I think it is channeled by the spirit or
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, it seems there's no
Speaker 1: other way you could have done that. It seems like
Speaker 1: the whole episode was building to this moment that came
Speaker 1: randomly there. It's so fascinating that. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: that in a way the episode is building to that moment,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of where you were just saying, and
Speaker 1: what Jason talks about. I feel the same way. We're
Speaker 1: building to this moment, but but we're not expecting to
Speaker 1: build exactly what's what's in our heads, you know, we're
Speaker 1: hoping to be building and building, and then you get there.
Speaker 1: I mean it's almost like, I mean, this is lame.
Speaker 1: I was like on the pitch where you can you
Speaker 1: can plan a strategize only so much. But at a
Speaker 1: certain point the flow of the gang, hopefully it takes over,
Speaker 1: you know, and now all the scheming and everything, now
Speaker 1: it's just will. It's just will, and it's just it's spirit,
Speaker 1: it's essence, it's passion, you know, very very roy Roy
Speaker 1: Kent thing to say, I love it, absolutely love it.
Speaker 1: Any other thing, oh, the one on the thing I
Speaker 1: would say what you said is you and Lili Wanghim
Speaker 1: is your partner. I love the farewell. I love it
Speaker 1: so much. And I just imagine the two of you
Speaker 1: go to bed at night and say good night, genius,
Speaker 1: good night genius. No, not quite, not quite, like did
Speaker 1: you did you remember to turn the lights on? Lights off?
Speaker 1: Did you order this thing? Did you order that thing?
Speaker 1: Very very but but I do feel very fortunate to, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to live with someone. I share my life
Speaker 1: with someone who also, you know, understands the necessity for
Speaker 1: these things that we're talking about right now. That it's
Speaker 1: not just paint on numbers. You know that if it
Speaker 1: is painting at a certain point, it's just throwing throwing ink,
Speaker 1: you know, throwing pigment, you know, at a canvas and
Speaker 1: stepping back and allowing yourself to be to be shown
Speaker 1: what the thing is that you're trying to create. It's
Speaker 1: very cool, then, it's very very beautiful. And so here's
Speaker 1: the thing you were right. There is more after death.
Speaker 1: There's a heaven, and in this heaven, it's fucking great.
Speaker 1: They got all your favorite things? What's your favorite thing?
Speaker 1: Coffee man shack, coffee, bro Hey, this place is made
Speaker 1: of coffee. Coffee. It's water wall coffee. The seeds are
Speaker 1: made of coffee. You regret loving coffee that much because
Speaker 1: there is so much coffee type of instruments there. But
Speaker 1: they're all very excited to see you, and they want
Speaker 1: to talk about your life, but they want to talk
Speaker 1: about your life through film. And the first question they
Speaker 1: ask you is, what is the first film you remember seeing?
Speaker 1: Barry Jenkins the first film I remember seeing And I
Speaker 1: was trying to think of this, and there's a group
Speaker 1: of films around this window. I don't know why, but
Speaker 1: it starts when I'm like seven or eight years old.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, but all my movie memories kind
Speaker 1: of start there with like the color Purple coming to America.
Speaker 1: But the one that I remember remember is this weird
Speaker 1: ass film called The Hidden starring Kyle McLoughlin. My uncle
Speaker 1: took us to a drive in cinema and we saw
Speaker 1: this very weird ass movie about the alien comes out
Speaker 1: of this chest at the end. Do you know this film?
Speaker 1: The Hidden? Is the posted like a black and white
Speaker 1: sort of thing with it like a like a spirit
Speaker 1: coming out of it. Yeah, exactly. That's my earliest memory
Speaker 1: of a movie. I don't know why, because I don't
Speaker 1: particularly care for that film. It doesn't really mean anything
Speaker 1: to me. But I do remember sitting in my uncles
Speaker 1: like Buick was saber and you know, we had the
Speaker 1: radio turned on to hear the movie, and it was
Speaker 1: at the drive in and the thing came out of
Speaker 1: his chest and I was freaked out. Man, that's my
Speaker 1: earliest movie memory. Where was that. This was in Miami, Florida,
Speaker 1: back when we had drive in theaters, which was a
Speaker 1: really fun thing to do. Man. You just pull up
Speaker 1: in the car, get some popcorn and soda, you know,
Speaker 1: you have a few beers in the back, and you
Speaker 1: just watch this movie. Do you remember thinking I want
Speaker 1: to do this, I want to make films. No, absolutely not, man,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. It was so far beyond me. I do
Speaker 1: remember I kind of like this. Movies are cool. Up
Speaker 1: to them, I'd on't eve been watching like like Saturday
Speaker 1: Morning cartoons. It's like this movie thing. Man, he's a
Speaker 1: pretty cool. I kind of like this. Yeah, Okay, what
Speaker 1: is the film that scared you the most? Do you
Speaker 1: like being scared? I do so my mom, who you know,
Speaker 1: have a very complicated relationship with my mom, and it's interesting.
Speaker 1: She's not really a big film person, but for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I think because there's been so many extreme things in
Speaker 1: her life, she loves horror films. Loves horror films. It's
Speaker 1: like her main genre of film. She's always telling me
Speaker 1: about this TV network called Chillers. There's a TV network
Speaker 1: called chiller. It's all horror films. It's all she watches.
Speaker 1: And so I've always been exposed to the horror genre.
Speaker 1: The film that scared me the most, though, was that
Speaker 1: Texas Chainsaw Masaca, which was a film I saw. I
Speaker 1: remember I got into film school and somebody, some kids said, hey,
Speaker 1: you should watched Texas Chansaw Mascas. Why would I watch that?
Speaker 1: He goes it's actually a really good film. And I
Speaker 1: watched it and I was like, Yo, this is a
Speaker 1: really good film. Also, this is fucking insane because it
Speaker 1: felt so real, you know watching it. I watched it again,
Speaker 1: maybe like a year ago, and it's almost like a
Speaker 1: snuff film. I mean, it's very very hardcore, very hardcore,
Speaker 1: and it freaked me out. It's really unpleasant. It's really unpleasant,
Speaker 1: and it does feel I actually weirdly think it probably
Speaker 1: has the same the dark version of what we've talked
Speaker 1: about of this kind of letting the spirit in. There's
Speaker 1: a feeling of that maybe in the Texas Chains of Maskat,
Speaker 1: and that it feels like it's let evil spirits, like
Speaker 1: it feels it feels unsafe that film, it feels unsafe,
Speaker 1: and thinking about the world right now as a version
Speaker 1: doesn't seem so far matched, which is crazy. I remember
Speaker 1: watching it and going, this ship could happen, like this
Speaker 1: really could happen anyway. Yeah, that would be my pick there.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. And what about crying. What's the
Speaker 1: film that made you cry the most? And are you
Speaker 1: a cryer? You make films that make me cry? Are
Speaker 1: you crying? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Brett Man apologies with
Speaker 1: the tears. I can be a crier. I'm actually crying
Speaker 1: more now in my old age. Lulu and I were
Speaker 1: watching We're watching this Netflix documentary on this K pop band.
Speaker 1: I think they're called Black Pink. It's name of this band.
Speaker 1: There's a Netflix documentary about them, and this is so embarrassing.
Speaker 1: But there's a moment where their whole careers are in
Speaker 1: huge megapop stars, but they haven't conquered the American market.
Speaker 1: So they go and they play Coachella, and the documentary
Speaker 1: culminates with the playing Coachella, and you see them talk
Speaker 1: about the feeling of playing the Coachella, the validation of it,
Speaker 1: and it just broke me. Man. I was on the
Speaker 1: couch watching this this city pop pop pop music documentary
Speaker 1: and I was crying, and I was crying real tears. Man.
Speaker 1: It was like, what's wrong with you? Really emotional. I
Speaker 1: was trying to finish Underground Railroad, you know. It was
Speaker 1: oh yeah, but when when I was a kid, the
Speaker 1: never ending story was the thing that you know, the
Speaker 1: scene where he's in the swamp of the horse and
Speaker 1: the horse kind of like, yeah, yeah, that's that was Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was I had just growing up. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: hit a lot of us out. What is the film
Speaker 1: that people don't generally like. It's not critically acclaimed, but
Speaker 1: you love it unconditioning and you think everyone else is
Speaker 1: an idiot? Yeah. I was actually surprised that that Howard
Speaker 1: the Duck is not a critically acclaimed film. It was
Speaker 1: a It was a movie I watched a lot as
Speaker 1: a kid, it was always on like television, and I
Speaker 1: was just really into it. I would like, I remember
Speaker 1: the song that he was singing, and I think I
Speaker 1: think Leah Thompson plays his girlfriend in the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. It's a really cool film, man. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: people will say it's as you say, as Roy would
Speaker 1: say it's People say it's Ship, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: it's just not a shit film. This is a great film.
Speaker 1: The other one was a Last Action Hero came out
Speaker 1: and I remember I was like, oh, this movie bombed
Speaker 1: the tank at the box office and I went and
Speaker 1: saw it and I was like, this is actually a
Speaker 1: really good film. It's like a really fun film. So
Speaker 1: I would say those two. But Howard the Duck, man,
Speaker 1: I had no idea. I was looking it up on Wikipedia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it got trash. People hated that movie. It was hated.
Speaker 1: I waitly think both of those films were ahead of
Speaker 1: that time. How the Duck is very weird, which nowadays
Speaker 1: is fine, and Last Action Hero was very pist mud
Speaker 1: and and Ship, which nowadays is fine. I think they
Speaker 1: were both they flee they flew too clos of the
Speaker 1: sun too early or something interesting. Yeah, yeah, what's the
Speaker 1: film that you used to love. You loved it very
Speaker 1: much when you were younger, you've watched it recently, and
Speaker 1: you do not care for it anymore, for whatever reason
Speaker 1: that may be. So this is a combination with the
Speaker 1: last question of Last Action Hero, because when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I saw a Terminator two judgment day opening
Speaker 1: day at the theater Big Blockbuster, and I loved it.
Speaker 1: I thought this is amazing, and I watched it recently
Speaker 1: and I prefer Last Action Hero. It's a Terminator two
Speaker 1: right now. I actually think Last Action Hero to me
Speaker 1: holds up better. You know, no che to the maker
Speaker 1: of Terminator two. He's a very big important guy. But
Speaker 1: but I will say as a as a combination, I
Speaker 1: then rewatched the original Terminator and that's film is a masterpiece. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a film is a masterpiece. And talk about something that
Speaker 1: feels very real, I mean just and just so very
Speaker 1: of its time in a very honest and dark way,
Speaker 1: absolutely amazing. Watching Terminator two and thinking of that film
Speaker 1: of its time, you know, it's it's a great piece
Speaker 1: of entertainment. But I just didn't have the same response
Speaker 1: to it, reaction to a relationship to it that I
Speaker 1: had when I first saw it, obviously it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's a twenty twenty five euro film, so maybe that
Speaker 1: makes sense. But then you watched Terminator and it's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this film is like it is everything
Speaker 1: so dark by the way, so dark. I mean, even
Speaker 1: in the world with all these mass shootings going on,
Speaker 1: you watch Terminator and it's like, Yo, how is James
Speaker 1: Cameron talking about these things? You know, twenty years before
Speaker 1: you know they became you know, every other week in
Speaker 1: our country you'd have one of these things happen. So yeah,
Speaker 1: Terminator two, man, I just didn't I love that movie,
Speaker 1: but I just don't have the same feeling for it though.
Speaker 1: Terno one though, after Piece seven two, it's night last
Speaker 1: action here, all right, Jenkins, what what is the gudn't
Speaker 1: say that love it? What is the film that means
Speaker 1: the mice to you? Not necessarily the film itself is
Speaker 1: any good, but because the experience you had around seeing
Speaker 1: the film, that will always make it special. TA. When
Speaker 1: I was in high school the first screen came out,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great great film,
Speaker 1: really holds up. But I went and saw that film
Speaker 1: like three times in theaters and every time I went
Speaker 1: to see it. You know, me and my high school friends,
Speaker 1: we would go to random movie theaters and we would
Speaker 1: be in there. I don't know how we got away
Speaker 1: with this. We'd be in the back of the theater
Speaker 1: and we would sneak up more people and we would
Speaker 1: just jump scared of the ship certain moments in the film,
Speaker 1: because we knew the jump scared was scutting was coming.
Speaker 1: The whole point that you don't know who was on
Speaker 1: the phone, and who's this and that, and so it
Speaker 1: became like a really fun thing. It was almost like
Speaker 1: a rocky horror picture show where we kind of made
Speaker 1: an event out of see you know, and we probably
Speaker 1: should have got our asses kicked, to be honest, but
Speaker 1: it made it really fun. You know. It's kind of
Speaker 1: just thinking about it. It came to me because I
Speaker 1: missed being in theaters. Man, I missed being in a
Speaker 1: room with a bunch of people and you know, one
Speaker 1: person laughs and now eight people are laughing. One person
Speaker 1: jumps out of their seats, you know, when everybody's laughing
Speaker 1: or people are screaming. And in this film, when it
Speaker 1: came out, and especially to do it was just a
Speaker 1: more innocent time. I don't know that scream would have
Speaker 1: the same impact today as it had back then. But
Speaker 1: that was an awesome legoing experience. I mean just really
Speaker 1: really awesome. That's fucking you fine. On a little side night,
Speaker 1: I saw maybe you've already done it, that you were
Speaker 1: going to have a screaming of underground rail the whole
Speaker 1: thing at cinema. Yeah, last night, man had a guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it went great. I showed up just for the Q
Speaker 1: and A. I still, yeah, I still, I still can't
Speaker 1: quite do it. But I showed up for the Q
Speaker 1: and A. It was great to be physically in a
Speaker 1: space with real people and they had real ask questions
Speaker 1: which made me give real ask answers. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: very cool and it also it just looks great with
Speaker 1: big But you can't sit with an audience with your
Speaker 1: own work. I am not. And also I wouldn't you
Speaker 1: know when whenever when Moonlight premiere, I didn't sit and
Speaker 1: watch it, and the Street premiere and I didn't sit
Speaker 1: and watch it. I just I just can't, Man, that's torture.
Speaker 1: Do you watch t lassa actually watch? Well? We we
Speaker 1: had a we had a we had a premiere in
Speaker 1: I had a proper premier. And that's right. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize we had to we had to sit
Speaker 1: because like once the thing, I was like, oh, we
Speaker 1: have to sit here and watch it. It's it's a
Speaker 1: very odd experience. But and I definitely sweated a lot.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, it's slightly different with ted
Speaker 1: Lasso in that when you could hear laughter, it was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is going all right, it's okay, we're getting audible feedback.
Speaker 1: But when it's a it's a drama, and I guess
Speaker 1: silence is how you know it's going well, if you're
Speaker 1: not hearing people shuffling, and yeah, silence, it's how you know.
Speaker 1: Or I love and in Moonlight when the question in
Speaker 1: the very first chapter where the young boy asks the
Speaker 1: character one, I'm going to quote exactly what he says.
Speaker 1: He says, he asked, what's a faggot? You could hear
Speaker 1: the whole the whole audience people just inhale, just inhaled,
Speaker 1: and then you would you would hear people just keep
Speaker 1: the breath in, you know, until Mahrschela has this character
Speaker 1: starts to explain and you're just the whole audience is
Speaker 1: riding this way? Is he going to get the words right?
Speaker 1: There's nothing like it, man, It's yeah, that's cool. Man. Okay,
Speaker 1: what is the film you might relate to Ry Tenkings?
Speaker 1: Actually I couldn't come up with an answer for this one. Man.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I feel like I'm changing so much all
Speaker 1: the time that I have a hard time seeing myself
Speaker 1: in films. I do remember when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: Spike Lee has this film. It's one of the lesser,
Speaker 1: lesser known or less less well regard at works called
Speaker 1: school Days. Yeah. It's uh, you know, Lawrence Fishburners in it.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of really great actors who go
Speaker 1: on to become like the bedrock of the Spike Lee
Speaker 1: acting troupe, Gane, Carliles, Posito's in it. But it's about
Speaker 1: these uh you know, all these black kids you know
Speaker 1: in college, you know, at an historically black college, uh
Speaker 1: in the States. And it just I knew black people
Speaker 1: went to college. I did, I did, I did. But
Speaker 1: seeing a whole world of just black people in college
Speaker 1: it kind of triggered something in me. I was like, Yo,
Speaker 1: this is wild. There's this whole universe of blackness that
Speaker 1: because I'm so poor, and I'm just from such a
Speaker 1: far away place, you know, Miami's like the bottom of
Speaker 1: the US. It just didn't occur to me. And just
Speaker 1: seeing that film, I don't know, it just clicked, you know.
Speaker 1: It meant a lot to me. Even though I didn't
Speaker 1: end up going to a university like that, just even
Speaker 1: the confirmation that it was possible, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: and this is weird. It is like nineteen ninety nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two. At this point, it should be pretty obvious
Speaker 1: that people go to college, but it's what they say.
Speaker 1: You know, I think there's something really powerful and actually
Speaker 1: like seeing seeing someone like you in these spaces that
Speaker 1: you've maybe assumed or something about the world has passively
Speaker 1: confirmed this space isn't for you. And so yeah, Spike
Speaker 1: School Days, i'd say, is one that is a perfect answer.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you twenty points for that. I've
Speaker 1: started scoring this since you gave that answer. What is objectively,
Speaker 1: objectively the greatest film ever made? It might not be
Speaker 1: your favorite, but objectively, you guys, that is the pinnacle
Speaker 1: of cinema. Shit, that's a tough one. A pinnacle of cinema.
Speaker 1: It's a peuple film school. I mean Mercedes got a couple,
Speaker 1: you got taxi driver, you got raging bull. You know,
Speaker 1: Spice got dude the right thing or wise kind love.
Speaker 1: But for me, uh, you know, clarity. And he is
Speaker 1: my favorite filmmaker, and so her best film, I think
Speaker 1: is the greatest film ever made of this film called
Speaker 1: Boat Trabai, just about these men in the French Foreign Legion.
Speaker 1: You know, I just think it's a it's a perfect film.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like ninety minutes, you get in, you
Speaker 1: get out. It's just nothing but the most essential elements
Speaker 1: of cinema. And you know what it does too, man,
Speaker 1: because there are great films that tell really great stories.
Speaker 1: You know, you get Vertigo, you got north By Northwest,
Speaker 1: You've got all these really singing in the rain, all
Speaker 1: really iconic primarily you know, old Hollywood films that tell
Speaker 1: a great story really in a really awesome way. A
Speaker 1: cinema this combination of sounds and images. It's a whole
Speaker 1: different thing. If I want a story, I read a novel.
Speaker 1: Cinema the combination of light, image, and sound, all these
Speaker 1: different things, the absence of light, the absence of sounds,
Speaker 1: sometimes creating that putting that into a very potent mix.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult, it's very rare, and this film is
Speaker 1: just it is pure. It is pure fucking cinema. I
Speaker 1: mean it is the purest. If I could like just
Speaker 1: like scoop that up and put in a little caviar
Speaker 1: jar and serve it, you know, to take a hit
Speaker 1: of it, That's what I do. Bro, You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Give me a print. Give me a print
Speaker 1: of Poltrabai. You do it. Give you a print of
Speaker 1: Poltrabai and a sprinkle a little olive wall some seesaalt
Speaker 1: on it, and just give me a little woodspoon. And
Speaker 1: that's all I need, Bro, That's all I do. Did
Speaker 1: you see High Life? Film High Life? I did see
Speaker 1: High Life. I did see High Life. I saw it
Speaker 1: at the Toronto in a National Film Festival. Tricky film,
Speaker 1: tricky film. I saw that. That is one of those
Speaker 1: films that I saw. I saw completely on man when
Speaker 1: I was in La I think writing ted last Season one.
Speaker 1: I saw it in this very odd cinema and I
Speaker 1: fucking loved it. But I also left there thinking this
Speaker 1: is going to be a hard hard sell for anyone else.
Speaker 1: As in I felt like I was in a particular
Speaker 1: mode at a particular moment that it really works for me.
Speaker 1: But my goodness, that is a tricky film. Well, and
Speaker 1: I think that that's that's something I really love about
Speaker 1: her work, and it's something that I seek out and
Speaker 1: the things that I watch. We're talking about death. We've
Speaker 1: only got so many movies we're going to get to
Speaker 1: watch in our lifetime, you know. And I think having
Speaker 1: an experience that is singular, that is singular, that can't
Speaker 1: be had in the other way. The things you feel
Speaker 1: watching High Life, you're not gonna get. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: get that feeling watching too many other films, you know.
Speaker 1: I think there's something really really lovely about that And
Speaker 1: I really loved I did a lot of like I
Speaker 1: wanted to read everything about it after I saw it,
Speaker 1: and I found I found like four podcasts that she
Speaker 1: had done where it was like Q and A's about
Speaker 1: the film, and in every single one she was like,
Speaker 1: I have to be honest, I don't know, I can't
Speaker 1: really talk about films. I don't really know how I
Speaker 1: do it. I just sort of failed them and they
Speaker 1: happen exactly she operates. I mean, I love her, but
Speaker 1: legitimately I love her. She operates on her own wavelength
Speaker 1: and it's not about trying to orchis traded reaction or
Speaker 1: to build some very clever epiphany of theory. It's just
Speaker 1: she's responding to the world, responding to the characters. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a really wonderful way of working. I admire her greatly.
Speaker 1: She's amazing. Yeah, for sure, she's following this spirit. For sure.
Speaker 1: Barry Jenkins, what's the sexiest film you've ever seen? This
Speaker 1: is a tough ask question. This is the question that
Speaker 1: I was like, how the fun Oh and the follow
Speaker 1: up question, by the way, very tough. But I would
Speaker 1: say Bound by the Wachowskis, because yes, Matrix that come out,
Speaker 1: and this is back when you could actually go into
Speaker 1: a video store. So I watched the Matrix as you're
Speaker 1: working in the theater that some of the Matrix came out.
Speaker 1: So I saw it a lot. I saw it a
Speaker 1: lot of times and thought, oh, this is very cool.
Speaker 1: How I never heard of these filmmakers and blocks Blockbuster
Speaker 1: had this film Bound that the Wachowskis had made before Matrix.
Speaker 1: I was expecting this was gonna be a very make
Speaker 1: see type film. And I think Gina Goshan was on
Speaker 1: the cover box and you know, carry a moss and
Speaker 1: the Matrix. You know, I was wearing all the leather. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's definitely the same people. And then I started watching
Speaker 1: this film, and I was watching it, I think, with
Speaker 1: one of my film school roommates, and I just remember
Speaker 1: getting very squirmy because this is you know, I went
Speaker 1: to school in Tallassee, Florida's the deep South, and this
Speaker 1: is before you know so many things about you know,
Speaker 1: the rights and lives of LGBTQ, plus people were very
Speaker 1: out sort of in like the public conversation and the mainstream.
Speaker 1: And so with this kid who I don't know when
Speaker 1: we're watching this film, and Gina Goshan and Jenna Fertilli
Speaker 1: are very clearly I mean they are just getting after it.
Speaker 1: And I was like, yo, a kind of full awkward
Speaker 1: watching this with this person, but in a way, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of kind of like excited about watching this thing
Speaker 1: with this person. Was like, what the fuck do we do?
Speaker 1: And so I just keep watching this movie. At the end,
Speaker 1: I was like, how did the Matrix people make this thing?
Speaker 1: And why was that so damn sexy? So yeah, I
Speaker 1: would say bound By that's a very very good outsway.
Speaker 1: They really do go after it's a it's a wonderful film.
Speaker 1: So let's deal with the subcategory to this question, which
Speaker 1: is Traveling Boy in his Worrying White Ones a film
Speaker 1: you found a rousing. He went, sure you should. I'm sorry, Barry,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to even ask it, but I have to.
Speaker 1: It's on the list. Yes. By the way, the Worrying
Speaker 1: White Ones is awesome. I think I've ever heard that
Speaker 1: an English saying. But but but I dig um, you know,
Speaker 1: I think this is actually, this is not so bad
Speaker 1: an answer. I'm gonna go with who framed Roger Rabbit?
Speaker 1: You know, I remember watching that as a kid, and
Speaker 1: I think, hey, because I was a kid, it was allowed.
Speaker 1: But I just thought Jessica Rabbit was fucking incredible. I
Speaker 1: remember I would have these dreams about Jessica Rabbit and
Speaker 1: she's a cartoon and it's like, it's like this, this
Speaker 1: shouldn't be happening, you know. Again, cartoons are one thing.
Speaker 1: They're very sweet, they're very innocent of the watching them
Speaker 1: my whole life, and now this cartoon is doing things,
Speaker 1: is doing things again. I was a kid, so I
Speaker 1: think it was pretty allowable. But uh, but yeah, frame
Speaker 1: Roger Rabbit. Yeah, I think that's a perfectly legitimate answer.
Speaker 1: And if that's blow my mind, it blows my mind.
Speaker 1: How how that works. Jessica Rabbit works because it does work.
Speaker 1: It entirely works for me. And it is a drawing.
Speaker 1: I don't understand how the world works like that. It
Speaker 1: is is a very persuasive drawing. I mean, it kind
Speaker 1: of does make sense. I mean, Playboy had cartoons back
Speaker 1: in the day, or I had a you know, I
Speaker 1: had the little little comic drawings, you know, for someone
Speaker 1: the editorials, So it makes sense. It makes sense. I
Speaker 1: wonder if they hired someone at Playboy just to draw
Speaker 1: Jessica Rabbit. Um, and now we was gonna hear this
Speaker 1: and gonna go wait, we gotta talk before I say
Speaker 1: good night, genius. We need to talk about what you said.
Speaker 1: What is the film that you could all have watched
Speaker 1: the most over and over again. There's there's two films.
Speaker 1: One film I think makes sense. I'm a really big
Speaker 1: fan of David Fincher's a really big fan of it
Speaker 1: is and I just find his movies to be just
Speaker 1: infinitely watchable. And The Social Network is a movie that
Speaker 1: if that movie's on, I will watch it. If it's on,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna watch it. I'm just I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna not watch it. You know, if I
Speaker 1: come into it and it's been on for twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep watching the next hour and twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: If it's been on for an hour and ten minute's
Speaker 1: gonna watch the last ten minutes. I just I just
Speaker 1: find it imminently watchable. The way he makes his film,
Speaker 1: it's just like it's a drug. It's a drug the
Speaker 1: other one, and so I've seen Social Network a lot
Speaker 1: of times. The other one is very strange. Again, I'm
Speaker 1: a bit obsessed with death and terrified of flying, the
Speaker 1: combination of those two things. Charlie Coffin as a film
Speaker 1: called Schenectacky New York, which many people thank you one
Speaker 1: of the greatest films ever made. I think it's one
Speaker 1: of the greatest films ever made. And Brett, I promise
Speaker 1: you it's probably the film I've seen the most of
Speaker 1: any film because I went on this. I went on
Speaker 1: this kick where anytime I would fly, I would put
Speaker 1: on Select to Key New York. I had it on
Speaker 1: my laptop I had it on my phone, I had
Speaker 1: it on my iPad. If I got on a plane,
Speaker 1: I would just put on Select to Key, New York.
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, I'm in this very heavy place
Speaker 1: because I'm getting on this thing that terrifies me. I
Speaker 1: just want to live in that emotion. This is the
Speaker 1: perfect time to watch Charlie Kaufman's Senectic Key New York.
Speaker 1: With As often as I fly, I've seen it at
Speaker 1: least i'd say, coming up one a hundred times. I've
Speaker 1: seen that film. At least. It's fucking amazing that film.
Speaker 1: And similarly to how I felt in terms of Underground
Speaker 1: Railroad is like, I don't know how he made it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's such a huge just the levels of it,
Speaker 1: the scale of it. I'm just like, I don't know
Speaker 1: how you did this. And both I'm sure you've read
Speaker 1: it the screenplay, the public screenplay of it. I have
Speaker 1: not read the screenplay. What I have done, though, is
Speaker 1: that he actually came to He came to London, he
Speaker 1: gave a bath, to a bath to talk and his
Speaker 1: bath to talk. I keep on my phone and I'll
Speaker 1: we have the same birthday, he and I, me and
Speaker 1: mister and mister Kaufman. Yeah, and so yeah, he's somebody
Speaker 1: very meaningful to me. It's funny you mentioned Underground Railroad.
Speaker 1: The production designer Want To New York is also the
Speaker 1: production designer on the Underground Railroad, so there's some connectivity there.
Speaker 1: It's just such a deep film, man. You know, I
Speaker 1: tried not to take a moment. It's kind of why
Speaker 1: I wanted to do this podcast. One of your Twitter
Speaker 1: fillers like, hey, you should go on Brett's podcast. Bret's
Speaker 1: got a podcast. Took a listen. I was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, cool, maybe I should if we don't get it,
Speaker 1: we don't often get a time to like sit down
Speaker 1: and really just step back and just talk about shit,
Speaker 1: just random shit, um, and then talking about those things
Speaker 1: reflect on what it is we do. And then the
Speaker 1: whole movie is Charlie Kaufman coming out of this decade,
Speaker 1: just like I mean, he was like he was the
Speaker 1: hardest of the heart. I mean, you know, I think
Speaker 1: he's still he's a genius, but at this moment in
Speaker 1: the mainstream, it was like, Charlie Kaufman is a genius
Speaker 1: that does something to you, man, It really does something
Speaker 1: to you. And this film was a very public display
Speaker 1: of all the a Row seas and just everything that
Speaker 1: I'm sure was swirling within him at that moment, and
Speaker 1: he made a masterpiece. It's a masterpiece, man, It's incredible. Like,
Speaker 1: I think there's so many things going on that film,
Speaker 1: but one of them I think because I've showed to something,
Speaker 1: they were like, oh, this is really depressing, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't think it is depressing. I think
Speaker 1: it's about a man who is so scared of death
Speaker 1: and illness that he thinks he's early, thinks he's dying
Speaker 1: the entire film, but in fact how it lives everyone,
Speaker 1: and in fact it's sort of a celebration of life.
Speaker 1: It's just that he keeps not paying attention to the
Speaker 1: right bit in a way, like and I love there's
Speaker 1: a moment I think it's in the trailer as well,
Speaker 1: but when he's just rehearsing this play, he's trying to
Speaker 1: make this truthful thing. There's a moment so far into
Speaker 1: the film when when the actors say when did we
Speaker 1: put it on? When is it happening? And he's like,
Speaker 1: it's not finished yet, It's never finished, never gonna be finished.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's good ship. Yeah, it is. It is.
Speaker 1: It's good ship. And it didn't do well. It didn't
Speaker 1: do well. And I don't know if it's because it's
Speaker 1: it's so honest, it's so brutally honest about what it
Speaker 1: is to do, to do what he does, to do
Speaker 1: what mister Kaufman does, and what he had been doing
Speaker 1: so well and so consistently for so long. And I
Speaker 1: guess maybe that's the price you pay, man, that's the
Speaker 1: price you pay. And it's a it's a real it's
Speaker 1: very dense and you need to watch it a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it asks a lot of times, it
Speaker 1: times time. Yet and yet you can recall the trailer
Speaker 1: you did the serving suggestion properly. What' since advertised that
Speaker 1: we can talk about it? What? I love that fu
Speaker 1: I'm excited he chose that then that you had the
Speaker 1: same production designer. Congratulations, What do you know what? That's
Speaker 1: one hundred points that one. Now there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of human your stuff feel very funny. What's the funniest
Speaker 1: film you've ever seen? What a film that made you
Speaker 1: laugh the most? Actually is the question you go that
Speaker 1: that's that's an that's an easier, easier question of Friday,
Speaker 1: but by Arf, Garry Gray and ice Cube. I mean again,
Speaker 1: I was in college Friday came out, Actually were two films,
Speaker 1: Friday and Half Baked, both came out at the same time.
Speaker 1: And I just remember, you know, freshman year, you just
Speaker 1: go to somebody's dorm room they put on Friday and
Speaker 1: you just laugh your head off. You just laugh your
Speaker 1: head off. Or Half Baked and you just laugh your
Speaker 1: head off. I think the first time I ever smoke
Speaker 1: pot it was while watching Half Baked. That's how, that's
Speaker 1: how you should do it, right. It's underrated film Baked. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it depends on who's rating. It depends on who's rating, bros,
Speaker 1: who's rating. Because where I come from it as a masterpiece,
Speaker 1: a masterpiece. I came right, O came right, and it
Speaker 1: was kind of the precursor of Chapelle, you know, doing
Speaker 1: Chapelle's show. I think it's one of his greatest works,
Speaker 1: you know, right up there in the hallowed halls of
Speaker 1: the Godfather raging bull. Yeah, fucking absolutely right. I don't
Speaker 1: like to be negative. I don't think you love it either.
Speaker 1: Very quickly, what's the worst film you ever saw? Oh?
Speaker 1: Birth of a Nation by d W. Griffith. Next question,
Speaker 1: You finally fucking nailed it. Next question, correct question, Next question,
Speaker 1: that one, next question. That one came so much easier
Speaker 1: than the traveling piner. Barry Jenkins, you have been beyond
Speaker 1: what I dreamed you'd be. I dreamed you'd be great.
Speaker 1: You've been fantastic. However, when you were in the building
Speaker 1: and a plane flute pass and sucks you out of
Speaker 1: the window and you fell many many, many, many, many
Speaker 1: many many stories, and halfway down you were suddenly accepting
Speaker 1: of it. You thought this is quite nice, and you
Speaker 1: sort of floated down at peace with the world. And
Speaker 1: then you smashed into the ground. And I was walking
Speaker 1: around and I was like, where's Harry Jenkins gone. I've
Speaker 1: probably lived up in that tool building. But then there's
Speaker 1: a sort of crab gather around, and oh, you're an
Speaker 1: absolute fucking mess in the pavement. I'm carrying a coffin,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm like always walking around for a coffin,
Speaker 1: and so I'm like, don't worry, guys, I'll take care
Speaker 1: of this. So I screw you up, but you are
Speaker 1: like embedded in the tarmacs, so I have to get
Speaker 1: a fucking digger, one of those JCB diggers. Drill around
Speaker 1: your body, try and get as much as I can.
Speaker 1: It's really horrible, So stuff all the bits of you
Speaker 1: into the coffin. But there was far more with the
Speaker 1: tarmac and everything is far more than I planned for.
Speaker 1: And this coffin is absolutely jammed. It is full. There
Speaker 1: is really only enough room in this coffin for me
Speaker 1: to slide one DVD into the side with you to
Speaker 1: take across to the other side. And on the other
Speaker 1: side it's moving every night, and one night it's your
Speaker 1: movie night. What film are you taking to show everyone
Speaker 1: when it's your Maybe not in heaven, Barry Jenkins, Guy, Okay,
Speaker 1: when I had this vision, Senectic Key, New York did
Speaker 1: not exist, So I can't say senect New York. I
Speaker 1: can't say that didn't exist. Movie hadn't come out yet
Speaker 1: ten years before, so I can't say that one. So
Speaker 1: I'll be honest. At the time of this vision, the
Speaker 1: movie of my life was a little film from the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties starring Bruce Willis called die Hard, And so
Speaker 1: I think die Hard, if I if I'm being honest,
Speaker 1: I think, at that moment in my life having this vision,
Speaker 1: die Heart would have been the film it would have been.
Speaker 1: It's funny you asked earlier, is that the film that
Speaker 1: spark that you thought, oh, maybe I could do say?
Speaker 1: Diehard was the first film that gave me an inkling
Speaker 1: of oh shit, people make movies. Maybe I could do
Speaker 1: that someday. Very random, bread, very random. I love it.
Speaker 1: Die Hard has done so much good in the way.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. Yes, Barry Jenkins, you've been wonderful. Is there
Speaker 1: anything you would let tell people to look out for
Speaker 1: to watch? I would certainly say, if you've not seen
Speaker 1: it yet, get on the underground railroad. Is there anything
Speaker 1: else you would tell me would deliver? Yeah? I would.
Speaker 1: I would say, get to the underground railroad. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: if you have watched it or you haven't, there's a
Speaker 1: little side piece or an indendum to the show, this
Speaker 1: piece called the Gaze that's on my Vimeo page. It
Speaker 1: was as we were making the show. We were paused
Speaker 1: making the actual show, and we would just record these
Speaker 1: portraits of primarily our background actors, and we didn't know
Speaker 1: what we were going to do with them. But I
Speaker 1: think it just captures the essence of what was important
Speaker 1: to me about making the show, and I describe it
Speaker 1: as being an opportunity to visually, you know, get a
Speaker 1: depiction of my ancestors, and it's fifty minutes. There's no dialogue.
Speaker 1: It's just score and people staring directly into the camera,
Speaker 1: directly at you, the viewer, and I'm very proud of it.
Speaker 1: So I would say, seek out the gays. Amazing. I'm
Speaker 1: going to watch that when we get off this zoom.
Speaker 1: Barry Jenkins, I mean, you're brilliant, and I'm not glad
Speaker 1: to say it, but let's say it all right. You are.
Speaker 1: Thank you for doing this. I really really appreciate your time.
Speaker 1: It's been an absolute pleasure to talk with you. The
Speaker 1: pleasures are mine and Brett. I don't know if people
Speaker 1: up and say it, I'm gonna say it back to
Speaker 1: you on this show. You are brilliant, my friend. It
Speaker 1: has been an honor at talk with you, Rare. I
Speaker 1: appreciate it, all right, Get out of here, be good.
Speaker 1: So that was episode one hundred and sixty. Head over
Speaker 1: to patreon dot com forward slash Brett gold Scene for
Speaker 1: the extra fifteen minutes of chat a secret and video
Speaker 1: with Barry Jenkins. Go to Apple Podcasts give us a
Speaker 1: five star rating. But don't talk about the podcast. I
Speaker 1: don't care. No one wants to read about that. What
Speaker 1: we want to read about is what is the film
Speaker 1: that means the most to you and why I do
Speaker 1: read him. They're very nice. They make more in my
Speaker 1: neighbor cry and we really appreciate it. Thank you all
Speaker 1: for listening. Thank you so much to Barry for doing
Speaker 1: the show. Thanks to Scrubius Pit and Distraction Pieces Network.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Buddy Peace for producing it. Thanks to ACAS
Speaker 1: for hosting it. Thanks to Adam Richardson for the graphics,
Speaker 1: at least Allie them for the photography. Come and join
Speaker 1: me next week for another incredible and hilarious guests. Oh
Speaker 1: it's another corker. So that is it for now. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, I hope you will have a lovely week
Speaker 1: and please, now more than ever, be excellent to each
Speaker 1: other s.