Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: I've had such a exceptionally curated career. Every movie I've
Speaker 2: ever written since eighteen has been greenlit to be made
Speaker 2: into a movie. You've seen everything I've written, you know,
Speaker 2: except for this one that we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting, always a twist. Yeah, Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Development Hell, our mini series about the lost scripts of Hollywood. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm talking with m Night Shyamalan, one of the best
Speaker 1: known filmmakers of the past generation suspense fillers and supernatural psychodrama.
Speaker 1: You know whose movies I'm sure, Unbreakable, the Sixth Sense,
Speaker 1: Split Glass, something like fifteen films in the last thirty years,
Speaker 1: which collectively have grossed billions of dollars. M Night Shamalan's
Speaker 1: stories have haunted a lot of people over the years.
Speaker 1: This episode is about the story that haunted m Night Shauma.
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot so far in a series about
Speaker 1: movies that never got made because there was something wrong
Speaker 1: with the story, or because someone on the outside had
Speaker 1: a problem with the script. This episode is about none
Speaker 1: of those things. There is nothing at all wrong with
Speaker 1: the story Shyamalan has never told, and maybe that's why
Speaker 1: he never told.
Speaker 2: There was the first real script that I felt kind
Speaker 2: of lightning bolt inspiration that came to me.
Speaker 3: I was twenty two and i'd just.
Speaker 2: Been married, just got married, and I wrote a kind
Speaker 2: of a love story, Labor of Love, and I was
Speaker 2: writing it, and I wrote it because I almost remember
Speaker 2: everywhere I wrote it, because it was such a special
Speaker 2: experience of writing. By that time, that was my third
Speaker 2: third feature that i'd written. I had made made a
Speaker 2: movie already in India.
Speaker 1: Tell me, tell me this a little bit about the story.
Speaker 1: What was Labor of Love about?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Labor of Love is essentially a story about an older
Speaker 2: couple and the wife saying, hey, it's an anniversary and
Speaker 2: he forgets and all of this stuff and they've been
Speaker 2: together a long time, and she's just like, you know,
Speaker 2: essentially expresses I do all these little things for you
Speaker 2: our whole life, and you don't. And I'm not sure
Speaker 2: what you want from you know, I'm not sure you
Speaker 2: love me. You know, I'm not one hundred percent sure.
Speaker 2: And that's not a great feeling, you know. And he's baffled,
Speaker 2: right as all guys are just baffled at this, And.
Speaker 3: I mean, what do you mean? I mean, I mean
Speaker 3: what do you want me? I love you goes.
Speaker 1: To work every morning? Who goes to What are you
Speaker 1: doing that for? Okay? Good, good, I get it.
Speaker 2: She I don't want to say too much of it
Speaker 2: because I tend to think of these things as magic.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and she she passes away unexpectedly and very tragically,
Speaker 2: and before she died she said, he said, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: what do you want me to do to prove my
Speaker 2: love to you? You want me to, you know, swim
Speaker 2: across an ocean, or climb a mountain or walk across
Speaker 2: the United States?
Speaker 3: What do you want me to do?
Speaker 2: She's like, just walk to the store and get me
Speaker 2: something on your own, because you were thinking, you know,
Speaker 2: something small like that. Anyway, she passes away. He's an
Speaker 2: older man. He's in a you know, late sixties seventies
Speaker 2: kind of thing, out of shape, and he's so devastated
Speaker 2: he makes a crazy decision to start walking across the
Speaker 2: United States for nothing else but just to show his
Speaker 2: wife who's passed away, in case she can see. And
Speaker 2: this isn't I wrote this in nineteen ninety four, right,
Speaker 2: so no cell phones, no nothing, no internet, And he
Speaker 2: just begins this track and it's a kind of like
Speaker 2: a vision quest a little bit. He starts to think
Speaker 2: about his life and his time with his wife and
Speaker 2: from when they were kids, and he's physically in threat
Speaker 2: as he's doing this, and slowly the country starts to
Speaker 2: get to hear about this guy, and they're trying to
Speaker 2: urge him do it to get there and it's so crazy,
Speaker 2: Why are you doing this?
Speaker 3: Why are you doing this?
Speaker 2: And then the country kind of gets on board with
Speaker 2: the feeling of doing something irrational to show your love
Speaker 2: for the person that.
Speaker 3: You care about.
Speaker 2: And I'm not going to tell you the ending, but
Speaker 2: it's really poignant, the idea of just doing something so
Speaker 2: the other person can hear you.
Speaker 1: So you're twenty two, you're very much in love. You've
Speaker 1: just married your wife, who you've known for how long
Speaker 1: at that point.
Speaker 2: I met when I was eighteen, so owner for four
Speaker 2: years at that point.
Speaker 1: So the and in this period of love struck youth.
Speaker 1: When you are, you know, in love with your young wife,
Speaker 1: you write a story about an older couple, Yes, where
Speaker 1: the question of the man's devotion to the to his
Speaker 1: wife is in doubt. Yes, and he had In other words,
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say I wrote this
Speaker 1: at twenty two. I was just married a mention love.
Speaker 1: It's about this young couple who embark you. You jump back,
Speaker 1: you jump forward forty years when you start looking back.
Speaker 3: Yes, so yeah, in the period.
Speaker 1: Where you are of greatest infatuation, your impulse is to
Speaker 1: go to the end of the relationship and work backwards.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think I've always been driven by familial nightmares,
Speaker 2: you know, the sanctity of the family being jeopardized. You know,
Speaker 2: later it changed into aliens and ghosts and you name it,
Speaker 2: But ultimately it's still about families and whether whether they
Speaker 2: can survive.
Speaker 1: What is it about you at a period of young love,
Speaker 1: when you're already thinking about the kind of not the
Speaker 1: dissolution of love, but the final stage of it. You
Speaker 1: why would you jump ahead? What's it? No?
Speaker 2: I guess I guess you're thinking about your life and
Speaker 2: what you wanted to be and where it could go wrong.
Speaker 2: And maybe I was thinking about what is it?
Speaker 3: What is it? What do I want this to be at.
Speaker 2: The end of the journey, you know, forty years from now,
Speaker 2: fifty years from now. I hope, I hope I've lived
Speaker 2: the life the right way and of course there's going
Speaker 2: to be a lot of mistakes along the way. But
Speaker 2: I don't have fears like the other people have fears
Speaker 2: in the sense of, like I knew I was going
Speaker 2: to marry the second I matter, you know, like those things.
Speaker 2: I fear getting a call that's something bad happened, you know,
Speaker 2: And that's very prevalent and still thirty years later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're asking yourself the question of what is
Speaker 1: the most tragic outcome of young love? Is that what
Speaker 1: is what you've described is that one one party loves
Speaker 1: and the other party doesn't realize they're being loved. You
Speaker 1: put your finger on something that's like it does a
Speaker 1: deeply resonant anxiety.
Speaker 2: It is I probably fund the dynamic of me and
Speaker 2: my wife that you know, she married a dreamer, someone
Speaker 2: who's completely content to stare out in an empty room
Speaker 2: and just do that all day long and think about
Speaker 2: an imaginary world with imaginary people and feel fulfilled. And
Speaker 2: she's like, well, I'm right here, you know, what about
Speaker 2: what about the real life where you're.
Speaker 3: We're living, you know, And.
Speaker 2: And so the struggle has been you know, I've heard
Speaker 2: all of those stories of you know, from you know,
Speaker 2: f Scott Fitzgerald to you name it. You know all
Speaker 2: our heroes and how they struggled with their personal life
Speaker 2: versus their artistry. Is it a one or the other equation?
Speaker 2: We sometimes it feels that way, and for a lot
Speaker 2: of people it feels that way. I've tried to see
Speaker 2: if they can be feed each other and it feeds
Speaker 2: the movies, the feeling of love for your wife or
Speaker 2: for your kids or you know, and what does that mean?
Speaker 3: How can you imbue it?
Speaker 2: And you guys feel it when you see the movies
Speaker 2: and really the stories that I mean.
Speaker 1: And the hardest thing to explain to your spouse in
Speaker 1: that instance is that to them you seem inaccessible in
Speaker 1: that dreaming. But from your perspective, I'm putting words in
Speaker 1: your mouth, but there's a certain amount of commonality between
Speaker 1: the way I approachest the way that you do. What's
Speaker 1: hard to explain is that not being inaccessible and in fact,
Speaker 1: the relationship we have with our loved one is what
Speaker 1: makes our dreaming possible.
Speaker 3: M hm.
Speaker 1: Right there. They're the engine of it. They're not outside
Speaker 1: of it. It's their presence and support and structure and
Speaker 1: love and whatever that permits us to wander off and
Speaker 1: in our imagination and feel find comfort and joy and
Speaker 1: all of that. I don't know, it's like that. It's
Speaker 1: a very hard thing to to explain to someone that
Speaker 1: they're that our inner lives are contingent on someone from
Speaker 1: the out on the outside.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know, So finding love and then building a
Speaker 2: career from there felt felt the right, the right building blocks,
Speaker 2: and so that movie was the beginning of that. You know,
Speaker 2: when writing this movie, Labor of Love, it was it
Speaker 2: was coming from such an interesting place, and I was
Speaker 2: writing ahead of my abilities at that point.
Speaker 3: It was just kind of going by this inspiration of love.
Speaker 1: I think, what do you mean by writing ahead of
Speaker 1: your abilities?
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't have as much craft at that time.
Speaker 2: This is oftentimes your career is an equation of craft
Speaker 2: and inspiration, and so lacking in craft and at twenty two,
Speaker 2: but the inspiration was out of ten. You know that
Speaker 2: feeling when I was writing it, what this feels beautiful,
Speaker 2: This feels this feels lovely. You know, I love this
Speaker 2: feeling how it's coming out and how I can see
Speaker 2: the characters and in retrospect now thirty years later, can
Speaker 2: see that. You know, I was really listening to the
Speaker 2: characters almost like a novelist, and following it. And so
Speaker 2: the end result is I wrote the screenplay that ended
Speaker 2: up becoming a bidding War from my parents' guest bedroom
Speaker 2: where me and my wife were living in the guest bedroom.
Speaker 2: The best bedroom was pink. It was for my sister.
Speaker 2: Was It was just a you know, we had to
Speaker 2: get out of here kind of feeling. And this script
Speaker 2: went out and there was the bidding war and someone
Speaker 2: offered this amount of money and then that amount of money,
Speaker 2: and it was crazy.
Speaker 3: And I was a kid.
Speaker 2: I'd run down and I'd be like, mom, they offered
Speaker 2: this amount of money.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 2: But I only directed this little movie in India, and
Speaker 2: they saw it as a big, big movie. And this
Speaker 2: was back in an era of Hollywood where the entire
Speaker 2: system was geared at original movies. The system was built
Speaker 2: to nurture original movies, and the spec screenplay markets, screenplay
Speaker 2: is done on speculation was the kind of gold rush,
Speaker 2: and so if there was an incredible screenplay that came out,
Speaker 2: everyone would read it immediately and it would go in
Speaker 2: this bidding war because that was the food that was
Speaker 2: feeding the engine at that time to the movie theaters,
Speaker 2: and so I was luckily kind of grew up in
Speaker 2: an era where what I love to do, which is
Speaker 2: original movies, was really celebrated and promoted, and so everyone
Speaker 2: bit on it and we sold the tunch of Fox.
Speaker 2: You know, I was attached to direct, and then I
Speaker 2: flew out and I put on my graduation suit, which
Speaker 2: I didn't because I didn't have many suits, so I
Speaker 2: wore my old suit and then they they listened to
Speaker 2: me about how I would direct a movie, and then
Speaker 2: they subsequently fired me off the movie. So it was devastated.
Speaker 2: Just absolutely What did.
Speaker 1: You do wrong in your pitch to be a directly?
Speaker 2: That's really interesting a question I would say. I wasn't
Speaker 2: a director yet. I had more practice at writing than directing.
Speaker 2: And of course, sitting in a room telling a chairman
Speaker 2: of a studio how you'd make a film, and they're
Speaker 2: asking certain questions, and you know, I don't know if
Speaker 2: I had a chance at all, you know, before I
Speaker 2: walked in there.
Speaker 1: In retrospect night, you're now hold fifty three. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: look at fifty three, you look at thirty, at twenty two,
Speaker 1: you must have looked twelve.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely correct, you're absolutely correct.
Speaker 1: You know what's going to give you fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: to direct a movie when you it's like a twelve year.
Speaker 2: Old Yeah, and I'm in this ill fitting suit which
Speaker 2: makes me even look younger because you're liked you wear
Speaker 2: your big brother's suit or whatever it was.
Speaker 3: I remember the feeling.
Speaker 2: I can remember the feeling pitching it to the chairman
Speaker 2: and then the heads of the studio and going, I'm
Speaker 2: not I don't I don't believe what I'm saying, and
Speaker 2: I'm guessing. I was like basically, I was like, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I'm gonna learn, you know as I do this,
Speaker 2: because I can see it in my head, you know,
Speaker 2: so I'll I'll learn.
Speaker 3: And they took me. I was very painful.
Speaker 2: Then I ended up, you know, they talked me into
Speaker 2: kind of pay rewrite it for some other a list
Speaker 2: directors of that time. So I had a chance to
Speaker 2: be in the room at some you know at that time,
Speaker 2: the top directors, and they would say do this, do that,
Speaker 2: and I just couldn't. I would rewrite it and it
Speaker 2: would get worse in retrospect, some kind of mojo curse
Speaker 2: I put on it, and it could never get it never,
Speaker 2: It could never bloom into So there was lots of
Speaker 2: directors that try, two or three directors that tried. So
Speaker 2: what was really weird about this movie represented some kind
Speaker 2: of you know, connection with the universe. And I think
Speaker 2: for a little bit I thought that was a one
Speaker 2: off and that that's never going to happen again.
Speaker 3: And that was the fear.
Speaker 2: That screenplay just became something of a mythic thing for me, like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'll never get that back again.
Speaker 1: M night. Shyamalan writes his masterpiece and then he's haunted
Speaker 1: by it more after the break. Wait, so what's the
Speaker 1: next stage in the saga of Labor of Love?
Speaker 2: So sixth sense happens, right? I wrote it, you know
Speaker 2: a few years later and wonderful outcome. Everyone wanted to
Speaker 2: make movies with me, and I said to Fox, I
Speaker 2: would love to have that screen light back.
Speaker 3: They said, oh, do you want to make Labor of Love?
Speaker 2: And I said, well, no, I'm thinking about making another movie,
Speaker 2: which was Unbreakable that I was writing at that time
Speaker 2: about comic books, even though no one had making comic
Speaker 2: book movies, and I thought no one would ever see
Speaker 2: this movie. But it was something that interest me and
Speaker 2: I said, you know, I was really into genre.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, genre is my way. Labor of
Speaker 2: Love is very it's a very emotional movie. I think
Speaker 2: I have that as my base tendency to be emotional,
Speaker 2: and I think until I found genre to balance it,
Speaker 2: I was too much for people because like I start
Speaker 2: at a nine, like at emotion. If you and I
Speaker 2: are talking over drinks about time, I'll be I'll be like,
Speaker 2: I'll be already emotionally to be you know there. And
Speaker 2: I think genre helped me balance that. You know, you
Speaker 2: have to meet the audience where they are. This is
Speaker 2: something I learned in my mid twenties. When you're telling
Speaker 2: a story, meet them where they are and don't lecture
Speaker 2: them and demand that they come to you. You come
Speaker 2: to them, so you start tonally where they are. So
Speaker 2: it's a tough world and we have a little we
Speaker 2: have cynicism. That's how we get through our lives, you know.
Speaker 2: We balance that to protect our software parts. And genre
Speaker 2: does that. It comes in and it balances. I have
Speaker 2: this feeling about movie making, our art that it has
Speaker 2: to have the right balance of light and dark, and
Speaker 2: that's when it rings true. The love of a mother
Speaker 2: to a child has a selfish component. You have to have,
Speaker 2: you know, a controlling component, then it rings true. There's
Speaker 2: also the beauty, the pure love you know, of a
Speaker 2: parent to a child. But if I can get both
Speaker 2: things in there, then it rings true and you start
Speaker 2: to see yourself in it. I think genre allows me
Speaker 2: to show you that the light side, you know. Because
Speaker 2: of that, I can go very dark. I mean I've
Speaker 2: killed off more protagonist than anybody. This is like dark stuff,
Speaker 2: but that's because underneath, I do feel the universe is
Speaker 2: a benevolent place, and I feel that from that.
Speaker 3: So genre has helped me balance things.
Speaker 1: Is it fair to say that genre, particularly horror or supernatural,
Speaker 1: it lowers the stakes in a certain way. What does
Speaker 1: it allow you to? What's what's the best way to
Speaker 1: describe the way it It's it's.
Speaker 3: Protective when you get really down to it.
Speaker 2: I'm just this sentimental dude that's overly earnest. When I
Speaker 2: speak to people, they think it's gamesmanship.
Speaker 3: It's not.
Speaker 2: There's no game at all. I'm I love it, I
Speaker 2: hate it. I I'm terrified. I'll tell you openly, you
Speaker 2: know everything, and when we do things like comedy and
Speaker 2: all this stuff. Those are ways to protect ourselves which
Speaker 2: I understand and I can use as well. And genre
Speaker 2: is if I can show you edgy dark things and
Speaker 2: show you because I do have an agi dark side
Speaker 2: as well. I just deploy it at the right times
Speaker 2: that allows me in the in the balance of things
Speaker 2: in the audience's eyes and their emotional journey.
Speaker 3: It's earned.
Speaker 2: Then when I do the car scene in sixth sense
Speaker 2: with the mom and the child, you know I've earned
Speaker 2: it by by by titillating them and scaring them in
Speaker 2: a certain way. There's a balancing act that goes on
Speaker 2: which I think is important for me to acknowledge that
Speaker 2: this is a conversation with the audience, that it's not
Speaker 2: just a lecture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, labor of love is are you saying there's there's
Speaker 1: no supernatural It is a straight.
Speaker 3: Pretty much? Yeah, just a straight you say pretty much,
Speaker 3: pretty much? Pretty much.
Speaker 2: The reason I say pretty much is there's a tiny
Speaker 2: bit of spirituality and love, and so that I do
Speaker 2: represent that in there, that things are bound a bit,
Speaker 2: that there's some inspirational, magical things that happen sometimes you
Speaker 2: know that's related to love. So that's all. But there
Speaker 2: is no genre in it.
Speaker 3: That's we were.
Speaker 2: This opportunity came, I would say, you know, fifteen years
Speaker 2: later where I could make that movie with literally the
Speaker 2: best actor in the world and the person that I
Speaker 2: would want to make a movie with more than anybody.
Speaker 2: It was being squeezed between another movie that I was
Speaker 2: making for a big studio, and I made the wrong
Speaker 2: decision and I didn't make it. And when I think
Speaker 2: back on it now, knowing me and who is the actor, well,
Speaker 2: I don't want to say just because just because, because
Speaker 2: it's more about the emotional stuff that we're talking about
Speaker 2: rather than the kind of the titillation of it, of
Speaker 2: the names and things like that, if we can, because
Speaker 2: just because you know, it meant so much to me
Speaker 2: and him, and I didn't do it, And it was
Speaker 2: literally because I just wasn't in the right place and
Speaker 2: I was making destructive decisions at that time. In retrospect
Speaker 2: and now having gone through, you know, iteration after iteration
Speaker 2: of who I am in front of the public eye,
Speaker 2: I with absolute certainty can tell you, I tell you
Speaker 2: I should have made it at that time.
Speaker 1: Dig into a little bit more why you didn't. Is
Speaker 1: it on some level terrifying to actually make make real
Speaker 1: something that you think of as being so perfect or
Speaker 1: something that if something comes in a lightning bolt, is
Speaker 1: it scary.
Speaker 3: It was a lot.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: I wish I could say it was something that defendable.
Speaker 2: It was literally I think I wanted so much to
Speaker 2: be accepted. I was in a phase of my life
Speaker 2: where I was willing to, I think, give away the
Speaker 2: things that were prescious to me to be accepted. And
Speaker 2: I was so tired of fighting the fight all the time,
Speaker 2: these original movies and you know.
Speaker 3: Doing things.
Speaker 2: And then I didn't have the protection of genre with
Speaker 2: that movie. It would just be me and this incredible actor.
Speaker 2: And at that time, I felt like that's a very
Speaker 2: vulnerable thing, and that it's just an emotional movie and
Speaker 2: the world's going to just shit trash me and trash us,
Speaker 2: and and that's the That was the fears. But I
Speaker 2: was perhaps scared of giving up what I had had
Speaker 2: not very admirable reasons. They were coming from wanting to
Speaker 2: be accepted, from wanting money, you know, you know, in
Speaker 2: other forms, or needing money or whatever it is. And
Speaker 2: so you know, I I failed it because I was impure.
Speaker 2: That's how I feel about it and should have one
Speaker 2: hundred percent done it. This particular actor was, you know,
Speaker 2: sad by the decision. I would say maybe another eight
Speaker 2: years later it came up again, and then this time
Speaker 2: I was the one that said, hey, let's go make this,
Speaker 2: and the same actor wanted to do it, and then
Speaker 2: went off and did another piece, a big kind of
Speaker 2: thing that they were a part of.
Speaker 3: And it was successful the thing they did.
Speaker 2: But a little bit of it was we missed each other,
Speaker 2: you know, we missed our moment, you know, a little bit.
Speaker 1: But the movie wasn't done with m Night Shyamalan yet
Speaker 1: not at all. Back with more after the break? How
Speaker 1: does the way you relate to the movie? How has
Speaker 1: it changed over the years you're now if thirty years
Speaker 1: have gone by, Yeah, do you look at it and
Speaker 1: think about it and see it differently now than you
Speaker 1: did when you were twenty two?
Speaker 2: Right now, I wouldn't change anything about it, and we'd
Speaker 2: make it as a period piece in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: The music the more is the time, you know, which
Speaker 2: sadly feels incredibly innocent. It almost feels like, you know,
Speaker 2: let's take a stroll around the garden, you know, think Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm so tired from the stroll. Let's lie dout. It's like,
Speaker 2: you know, when we will see a period piece, we're like, wow,
Speaker 2: that really were you out to go walk around the garden? Yeah,
Speaker 2: And that's how we feel about like nineteen ninety four. Oh,
Speaker 2: we were thought we were really being really bad when
Speaker 2: we did this. You were just talking with your boys
Speaker 2: in the basement. How sweet, and you were just all
Speaker 2: of you just talking about girls because you love God.
Speaker 3: You know how sweet?
Speaker 2: You know, like it feels that way, and I when
Speaker 2: I think about it, it's very nostalgic of a time
Speaker 2: gone by now and a way people might have reacted.
Speaker 1: Oh that because the way as the hero goes on
Speaker 1: his journey, as he's walking across the country, the country
Speaker 1: is responding to him in a way they wouldn't respond today.
Speaker 1: Is that your point that in a kind of internet
Speaker 1: age it would be different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so hard now to unwind it and think
Speaker 2: of a moment when you didn't have access to every
Speaker 2: piece of information in the history of man.
Speaker 3: You don't know where your your.
Speaker 2: Cousin is, and where your uncle is and where your
Speaker 2: sister is right now. No, you don't write you know,
Speaker 2: ninety four, we didn't know where anybody was right, and
Speaker 2: you get a letter or you would if something happened,
Speaker 2: it would take a while for you to find out
Speaker 2: all of those ideas of being present. Primarily, it's gone.
Speaker 2: Our understanding of what it is to be a human
Speaker 2: being is on us gone because we're never just here anymore.
Speaker 2: And this phone that's sitting near me as I'm doing
Speaker 2: this podcast is pulling.
Speaker 3: Me right now. I can feel it. It's pulling me.
Speaker 2: So I'm partly here with you, but it's stolen my
Speaker 2: soul a little bit, you know. And that was just
Speaker 2: a different era, and that's all part of them, that
Speaker 2: time period. When I you know, when I try to
Speaker 2: rewrite it, when I'm trying to make it better, I'm
Speaker 2: scarring it. It came out in one thing like that,
Speaker 2: you know, as this kid was just feeling something.
Speaker 1: When was the last time you read it?
Speaker 3: I probably read it.
Speaker 2: It came out a third time with this with this
Speaker 2: particular actor.
Speaker 3: A third time. It was four years ago.
Speaker 2: So I read it four years ago, four years ago
Speaker 2: when we talked about.
Speaker 1: It again, what do the eyes you'll actually do it?
Speaker 3: I'm just a strange creature.
Speaker 2: Bro so if I say to you absolutely never, as
Speaker 2: soon as a week click off here, I'll probably go
Speaker 2: make it right.
Speaker 3: I've thought about it a lot.
Speaker 2: Do you do it more as a as a ritual
Speaker 2: almost to honor that part of you in all of
Speaker 2: us that came from a pure place, regardless of its success,
Speaker 2: regardless of what would happen.
Speaker 3: There is a kind of a.
Speaker 2: Wise warning about labor of love, that there's something where
Speaker 2: you're blind about the labor. Oh, I always wanted to
Speaker 2: make that movie about blah blah blah whatever it is,
Speaker 2: or I always wanted to write that thing.
Speaker 3: It's a labor of love for me.
Speaker 2: That automatically means you're blind a little bit. Some massive
Speaker 2: you know, blind spot exists there. There is that wisdom
Speaker 2: acumen to be careful of.
Speaker 3: Your labor of loves.
Speaker 2: That meant that you were you were kind of obsessed
Speaker 2: in a way about something. I don't know if that's
Speaker 2: the case here. I feel even as we talk about it, like,
Speaker 2: you know, I could go do this in another year
Speaker 2: and do exactly the way I said it.
Speaker 3: It's funny.
Speaker 2: I had this conversation with someone in my office about it.
Speaker 2: I said, I don't know if the world even wants
Speaker 2: to remember feeling this way anymore.
Speaker 3: It's painful to remember that we used to feel this way,
Speaker 3: and it.
Speaker 2: Was was It was okay and wonderful and celebrated and calm.
Speaker 1: When you say feel this way, you mean get swept
Speaker 1: up in what that man was doing.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, this amount of the expression of love, you know,
Speaker 2: whereas today it's our relationship to our emotions is so
Speaker 2: being attacked. We're not supposed to have our own feeling anymore.
Speaker 2: We're being manipulated by algorithms constantly and distraction, and so
Speaker 2: the AI world is already deciding how we live and
Speaker 2: experience our lives. And maybe that's the absolute reason to
Speaker 2: make it.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: As I'm talking to you, this is probably the deepest
Speaker 2: conversation I've had about it, because it is it is
Speaker 2: a kind of like are we still Are you still
Speaker 2: torching yourself about this movie?
Speaker 1: Bro?
Speaker 3: After thirty years?
Speaker 2: This odyssey is that there's been opportunities and there is
Speaker 2: one now of a wonderful filmmaker that wants to make
Speaker 2: it themselves the same story.
Speaker 3: And whether I'm okay with.
Speaker 1: That, are you?
Speaker 3: Bro? I don't know. I don't know that feels like
Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm almost shutting down when you're asking me that question,
Speaker 2: and I haven't. Actually I've actually shut down in that
Speaker 2: process too.
Speaker 3: So you know this.
Speaker 1: So someone just called you up and said someone famous
Speaker 1: calls you up and says, night, I've read I've read
Speaker 1: the secret screenplay. Yes, how did this person get a
Speaker 1: hold of it? They just heard through the great thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's happened before. It's happened before. Somebody wants
Speaker 2: to make it. Every few years, somebody wants to make it.
Speaker 2: And I could just let it go, just let it
Speaker 2: go and and and let someone put their point of
Speaker 2: view on love. So it's this screenplay that represents the
Speaker 2: purest version of me that's on a page, and it
Speaker 2: has been chasing me like a ghost or haunting me.
Speaker 2: It started my career and I've got to do all
Speaker 2: these amazing things. I continue to just have these incredible opportunities.
Speaker 2: And really it's like a part of me that I
Speaker 2: betrayed at one point, and now I can make it now.
Speaker 2: I mean today, I can make it right now out
Speaker 2: and I think probably with the same actor. And even
Speaker 2: as you and I are sitting here I have all
Speaker 2: these reasons that are holding me back. So I don't
Speaker 2: know what this screenplay is to me and what this
Speaker 2: movie is to me. Maybe it's the softest part of
Speaker 2: me and so scared to show you guys that.
Speaker 1: You said that your great fear at the time when
Speaker 1: you wrote it was that you would never have anything
Speaker 1: write anything so pure again. But listening to you, my
Speaker 1: fear about it is that had you made it, then
Speaker 1: what followed may not have happened. In other words, having
Speaker 1: as one of your very first screenplay is something so perfect,
Speaker 1: like fueled all of this extraordinary productivity that came afterwards,
Speaker 1: And that had you made it and had it been
Speaker 1: a big success, maybe you would have been kind of
Speaker 1: paralyzed by that. Like the fact that it's it's unrealized
Speaker 1: allows you to keep going and right if it's think
Speaker 1: about the what is the curse of the one hit wonder?
Speaker 1: The curse of the one hit wonder is someone who
Speaker 1: is unlucky enough to have written their greatest song. First,
Speaker 1: it's just bad luck, and everyone looks at the second
Speaker 1: and the third ones and says it's over for you. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not over for you. It's just out of order. Right,
Speaker 1: whereas the same the same thing only put the one
Speaker 1: hit Wonders breakthrough hit ten years into their career, and
Speaker 1: we think, oh, what a progression right towards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, for me, I keep you know,
Speaker 2: maybe you're right, the unfinished nature of that is keep
Speaker 2: driving me. You know, the movie I've just editing now
Speaker 2: and finishing. When I think of it, I have a
Speaker 2: little bit of magic feeling about it, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is reminding me of labor of love. When it's
Speaker 2: feeling effortless and right, You're going, well, where did that
Speaker 2: come from?
Speaker 3: How do you do that? And you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's how it felt to twenty two.
Speaker 1: But then here's the other fear I have that what
Speaker 1: if you made it and it wasn't magical, then you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have You would also have destroyed this thing that
Speaker 1: you've been able to look at throughout your entire career.
Speaker 2: Well, I can tell you if I at twenty two,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have made it a particularly great movie that
Speaker 2: at that moment, I think we've been you know, up
Speaker 2: and down, flawed and this and that, And then when
Speaker 2: we jumped forward to the first time with that, the
Speaker 2: most incredible actor. I wasn't in the right emotional space
Speaker 2: to have made it properly. Now that we're really getting
Speaker 2: serious about it, Yeah, so that wouldn't have worked out either,
Speaker 2: because I just was not where I am right now.
Speaker 1: One last question, what is your What does your wife
Speaker 1: say this president the creation?
Speaker 3: That's a great question, I would.
Speaker 2: I think she's seen me torture myself for thirty years about.
Speaker 3: This in her mind.
Speaker 2: You know, for a while she kept asking me why
Speaker 2: do you keep killing off the wife?
Speaker 3: You know, like in signs.
Speaker 2: And He's like, why do you keep killing off the wives?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, no, no, no, it's because I'm so
Speaker 2: scared to lose you. You know, she knows I wrote
Speaker 2: it for her, and so it's kind of already in
Speaker 2: our lives.
Speaker 3: Is it already happened? It already existed, and what was
Speaker 3: made and was so lovely?
Speaker 2: You know. I have this check from back when we
Speaker 2: used to get checks and from twenty century Fox, and
Speaker 2: it was my first check that I got, and I
Speaker 2: have it framed. It's in my office, so it's if
Speaker 2: you come to my office, which you will, and it's there,
Speaker 2: and then if you go into the cafeteria. There's a
Speaker 2: poster of a mock up of a poster the twenty
Speaker 2: century Fox made for Labor of Love, and that's hanging
Speaker 2: on my wall, so on my walls all the movies.
Speaker 2: I'm mad in a movie that wasn't me.
Speaker 1: It's your own ghost. You've you've created your own ghost.
Speaker 2: Night.
Speaker 1: This has been so much fun. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I really really really enjoyed this.
Speaker 3: You're so lovely. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: I was learning something about myself too as we were talking.
Speaker 2: You're a good therapist, man. I was starting to get there.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Nina Bird, Lawrence, and Tali Emen,
Speaker 1: with ben at Alphaffrey, editing by Sarah Nix, original scoring
Speaker 1: by Luis Gara, Engineering by Eco Mountain. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Jacob Smith. I'm Malcolm Glamo.