Speaker 1: Look out. It's 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, director,
Speaker 1: a chapter and I love films. As Renata Suzuki once said,
Speaker 1: there is an ocean of silence between us, and I
Speaker 1: am drowning in it. Have you seen Charlie Chaplin City Lights,
Speaker 1: no sound and it's fucking devastating at the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: True. Every week I invite a special guest over. I
Speaker 1: tell them they've died. Then I get them to discuss
Speaker 1: their life through the films that meant the most of them.
Speaker 1: Previous guests include Barry Jenkins, himesh Patel, Mark Frost, Sharon Stone,
Speaker 1: Jamila Jamil and even Bled Gambles. But this week it's
Speaker 1: the writer, director, producer, and showrunner, the brilliant mister Justin Simeon.
Speaker 1: You can watch all of Ted Lasso seasons one to
Speaker 1: three on Apple tv plus now all of it all there.
Speaker 1: You can also watch season one of Shrinking on Apple
Speaker 1: tv Plus. Watch them all, love them all, thank you
Speaker 1: for watching them. Head over to the Patreon at patreon
Speaker 1: dot com. Forward slash Brett Goldstein, where you get an
Speaker 1: extra twenty minutes of chat with Justin. We talk about secrets,
Speaker 1: we talk about the best beginnings and endings, all sorts
Speaker 1: of other stuff. You get the whole episode, uncut, nand
Speaker 1: free and as a video. Check it out. All of
Speaker 1: it is over at patreon dot com forward slash Brett Goldstein.
Speaker 1: So Justin Simeon. Justin Simeon is a writer, producer, showrunner,
Speaker 1: and director who made the excellent film Dear White People,
Speaker 1: then the excellent series Dear White People, and he has
Speaker 1: just finished making a huge Disney film, the upcoming Haunted Mansion,
Speaker 1: which I am very excited about. We had never met before.
Speaker 1: We recorded this on Zoom a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna say this, he's one of my all
Speaker 1: time favorite guests of all time ever. I love talking
Speaker 1: to him, and I really think you're gonna like this
Speaker 1: one too. So that is it for now. I very
Speaker 1: much hope you enjoy episode two hundred and fifty one
Speaker 1: of Films to be Buried With. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: Films to be Buried With. It is I Brett Goldstein,
Speaker 1: and I am joined today by an actor, a writer,
Speaker 1: a producer, a director, a show maker, a star maker,
Speaker 1: a horror maker, a comedy maker, a State of the
Speaker 1: Nation maker, a hero, a legend, a man, and a
Speaker 1: special person. Please welcome to the show. I can't believe
Speaker 1: it's here? Can you here?
Speaker 2: He is?
Speaker 1: It's just a zibby.
Speaker 2: That's gonna be my ringtoel.
Speaker 3: No, that's gonna be my alarm because if I heard
Speaker 3: that about myself every morning, I feel great.
Speaker 1: Man, Thank you Jesus, Hey man, I don't know all
Speaker 1: those things, you're all those nice to be.
Speaker 3: You A big fan, huge fan, huge fan, man, a huge,
Speaker 3: huge fan.
Speaker 1: So much to talk about. You made, write, directed, produced,
Speaker 1: Dear White People, and then you did all the TV
Speaker 1: show of that? Is that right?
Speaker 2: I did? I did. I'm very masochistic.
Speaker 1: Oh four seasons?
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, that's right.
Speaker 1: Did you show you directed all of them? Or how
Speaker 1: did that work?
Speaker 2: Oh? No, oh god, no, oh my god.
Speaker 3: Okay, that would be that would be a very yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean I wish, but no, that would have killed me. No,
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 3: I show ran it for for Simpsons, and I'd say
Speaker 3: it was the primary director. So I directed a lot
Speaker 3: of the episodes and I wrote a lot of the episodes.
Speaker 3: But there were a lot of great filmmakers that came in,
Speaker 3: people like Cheryl Dunier, people like Barry Jenkins, people you know,
Speaker 3: like jen Nick Sa Bravo came in and directed incredible episodes.
Speaker 2: So it was definitely a team effort.
Speaker 1: I rewatched Dear White People this morning in preparation for this,
Speaker 1: and oh my god, is it brilliant And it holds
Speaker 1: up so interesting because it's so like specific to its time, yeah,
Speaker 1: and completely timeless, you know what I mean, Like it's
Speaker 1: such a sort of unique thing.
Speaker 2: I'm really that's so nice.
Speaker 3: I can't watch my own work, but like every you know,
Speaker 3: five or ten years, so that's very nice to hear.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's particularly interesting given everything that sort of
Speaker 1: happened afterwards that it's it was made during Obama's presidency.
Speaker 3: I know, we had this nasty habit with the movie
Speaker 3: and the show. We keep predicting these horrible things would happen,
Speaker 3: and then they do.
Speaker 2: It's very unfortunate.
Speaker 1: You need to stop making stuff, I know. I think
Speaker 1: this is an intervention that.
Speaker 2: Might be the lesson.
Speaker 3: Actually, my second movie is about assentient hair weave, so
Speaker 3: you know, fingers Crossed we're.
Speaker 2: Going to be okay, I don't know, just being.
Speaker 1: Honest, hang on, I do want to know about this
Speaker 1: because you did four years this very big show that
Speaker 1: you were show running, and you were you know, it's
Speaker 1: your baby that grew and grew and grew. Yeah, did
Speaker 1: you leave it in a way that you were like,
Speaker 1: I'm done and I feel happy and sad? Did you?
Speaker 1: Were you sad?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: How was the end of that whole massive probably ten
Speaker 1: years of your life, was it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really hard question, unpacked, if I'm being
Speaker 3: completely honest.
Speaker 2: The funny thing about like trying.
Speaker 3: To like make art and entertainment about systemic injustice is
Speaker 3: that you've become like acutely aware.
Speaker 2: Of it in all aspects of your everyday life.
Speaker 3: And it might shock you to find out that, in fact,
Speaker 3: in Hollywood and in the entertainment industry, there are all
Speaker 3: sorts of kinds of systemic injustice. And so it was
Speaker 3: really I'm not gonna lie, it was really painful. It
Speaker 3: was really painful to make that show, and yet it
Speaker 3: was my joy and it was my reason for being.
Speaker 3: And it also gave me room as a director, as
Speaker 3: a filmmaker to do things and try things that frankly,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise, you know,
Speaker 3: they you sort of after I made Dear White People,
Speaker 3: every script that came in was a college script or
Speaker 3: a comedy or It's sort of like it wasn't necessarily
Speaker 3: a thing I was hungry to do next. It was
Speaker 3: very much like just kind of replicate what you did before,
Speaker 3: but in this sort of commercial arena, and I didn't
Speaker 3: want that. I wanted to make, you know, weird shit.
Speaker 3: And so part of the reason why each season of
Speaker 3: that show feels like a slightly different show is me
Speaker 3: trying to just get my rocks off as a filmmaker
Speaker 3: in ways that I just couldn't make happen at other places.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of joy in that show. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of especially the collaborations. I'm really proud of
Speaker 3: the writers we had on the show, the directors we
Speaker 3: had on the show, the actors. I feel like that
Speaker 3: was a cast of stars. But it was not easy, man,
Speaker 3: it was not easy. And it's a Netflix show. It's
Speaker 3: a streaming show. So the streaming world that we inherited
Speaker 3: in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen very very different than the
Speaker 3: one that we left in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: So I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 3: I have some ambivalence. I'm still I'm still getting over
Speaker 3: some of the PC of it.
Speaker 2: If I'm not.
Speaker 1: If I'm I respect it, I appreciate it. But when
Speaker 1: change a thing, I don't know how much you're allowed
Speaker 1: to say. I oh, I'll tell you anything. I don't
Speaker 1: work for them no more.
Speaker 2: Let's go. Yes, I did the.
Speaker 1: Exacts the people in you know, the money people, the
Speaker 1: Netflix people. Did that change over the four years?
Speaker 2: Very much? Show? Right? Yeah? Very much show? Very much so?
Speaker 1: And did the sort of rules change for you?
Speaker 3: You know, the rules did change, but they changed short
Speaker 3: of for everybody. Like I'll say that the longer we
Speaker 3: went there was you know, the thing about Netflix is
Speaker 3: the turnover rate there is kind of high. So, like,
Speaker 3: we had this amazing executive, Tara Duncan, who sort of
Speaker 3: shepherded us in and then around our season two she
Speaker 3: moved on. She's now running Onyx for Hulu. But then
Speaker 3: we had like a few other executives, and I would
Speaker 3: say that the dependence on the algorithm in terms of
Speaker 3: like what should be serviced, what should be marketed, how
Speaker 3: much do something be budgeted?
Speaker 2: That kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Uh, that the emphasis on that change pretty much every season,
Speaker 3: and so it was kind of like a it was
Speaker 3: a little bit of a moving target because the thing
Speaker 3: about Netflix, and I think probably a lot of places
Speaker 3: right now, like I think this is just streaming in general,
Speaker 3: is that, like you really you don't really know if
Speaker 3: you're gonna come back, not even for like months after
Speaker 3: the season finale airs, and a show like ours is
Speaker 3: so meticulously built, but we had to build it in
Speaker 3: a way that like would make it so that we
Speaker 3: would come back, but we didn't know if we would,
Speaker 3: so we kind of wanted to end.
Speaker 2: It each season just in case.
Speaker 3: So there's there's this tension that you kind of feel,
Speaker 3: and that I think we just sort of solved by
Speaker 3: just literally treating each season like it's a it's a
Speaker 3: whole new show. It's the same characters, the same premise,
Speaker 3: the same message, but like this time we want to
Speaker 3: do a screwball comedy, or this time we want to
Speaker 3: do a musical, or this time we want to do.
Speaker 1: This, you know, to kind of make up for that
Speaker 1: I don't know this and maybe this uncomfortable question, and
Speaker 1: if it is, we don't include it.
Speaker 2: But did it all so comfortable?
Speaker 1: Brut like was it was it canceled? Or did it?
Speaker 1: Did it end when you wanted it to end?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Did you want to do more?
Speaker 2: It ended when I wanted it to end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, both the sort of like because the show's ambitious,
Speaker 3: man like, Yeah, those especially those first seasons, like we're
Speaker 3: making these episodes for under too mil you know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying, We're making them feel like as cinematic and
Speaker 3: big and ambitious as possible.
Speaker 2: So that's that takes a lot out of you.
Speaker 3: And I definitely felt like, you know, if it was
Speaker 3: gonna go if it was faded to go on past
Speaker 3: four seasons, and one should be so lucky in the
Speaker 3: streaming era, but if it was faded to go on
Speaker 3: past that, it might have had to go on, you know,
Speaker 3: with somebody else.
Speaker 1: To be honest, what was the buddy on the original film?
Speaker 1: Because that looks very big. I was watching that like,
Speaker 1: this looks like an expensive film.
Speaker 2: Under a million.
Speaker 3: I made it in nineteen days. I had two weeks
Speaker 3: of prap. It was impossible.
Speaker 1: You're you're magnificent. That's amazing. That looks like a big
Speaker 1: fucking film.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Thank That was that was certainly the goal, you know,
Speaker 3: but we didn't have very many coins.
Speaker 1: That's impressive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically I made that movie. I started by making
Speaker 3: a concept trailer. I got a tax return in twenty twelve,
Speaker 3: which was the only like play money I could earn
Speaker 3: in my twenties, and I basically like using a couple
Speaker 3: thousand bucks, just like got equipment, got some people. We
Speaker 3: literally stole UCLA's campus out here. We were not allowed
Speaker 3: to shoot there. We got shot down a few times,
Speaker 3: and we would like hide in the classrooms and then.
Speaker 2: Come back out when the security left.
Speaker 3: All of this to say, we eventually officially shot on
Speaker 3: the UCLA campus for the show, and they did charge
Speaker 3: us for this trailer. So I'm not getting in trouble
Speaker 3: by saying this, but.
Speaker 2: We've stolen straight up a concept trailer and I put
Speaker 2: that online.
Speaker 3: And the point was to be like, what if this
Speaker 3: was a real movie, Like what if we had smart, weird,
Speaker 3: art housey black shit in theaters right now?
Speaker 2: Wouldn't that be dope? That was the whole premise.
Speaker 3: And so, you know, making things look more cinematic and
Speaker 3: more expensive than they actually were is kind of in
Speaker 3: the DNA.
Speaker 2: A Dear White people, you know.
Speaker 1: Quick question. I thought that and maybe it was addressed
Speaker 1: in the show, and if it was, I apologize. Have
Speaker 1: you ever run into a cross pass with Tyler Perry?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Actually, yes I have and it was a very pleasant
Speaker 3: and lovely conversation. I have to say, there's there's a
Speaker 3: character that I actually play in the third season that's
Speaker 3: not not based on Tyler and Sam White, who is
Speaker 3: sort of you know, she is the provocateur, you know,
Speaker 3: she hates she hates that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: In the show.
Speaker 3: She and I and I am playing him have this
Speaker 3: sort of back and forth exchange rivalry in season three.
Speaker 3: And the reason for that is because you know, the
Speaker 3: first words of my teaser trailer and I'm I don't
Speaker 3: know if I'm embarrassed to say this or not, but
Speaker 3: it is what it is. Our fuck Tyler Perry.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And one day he called me and was like, Yo,
Speaker 3: this is Tyler Perry.
Speaker 2: Do we have beef?
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh my god, and I and
Speaker 3: I was able to tell him something that I realized
Speaker 3: soon after making this, which is that like the system
Speaker 3: is sort of designed so that we sort of like
Speaker 3: fight each other. When I say us, I mean black
Speaker 3: folks because there's especially at that time, there really is.
Speaker 3: There's only so many lanes, you know. And at that time,
Speaker 3: I was trying to get Dear White People made, and
Speaker 3: whenever people would read the draft, they say, oh, this
Speaker 3: is so great, but we don't know how to market it.
Speaker 3: We don't have an audience for this, and they would
Speaker 3: point me towards what Tyler was doing because he had
Speaker 3: a huge market share, He had a huge audience at
Speaker 3: that time, and white film executives that's what they just
Speaker 3: thought all black things should be and look like. And
Speaker 3: so I had this frustration about him because in my mind,
Speaker 3: he was taking up the space that I should be
Speaker 3: able to be in. And once I actually made it
Speaker 3: to the other side, and now I'm on the Q
Speaker 3: and A's and now suddenly my film is not black
Speaker 3: enough for people, it's not gay enough for people, it's
Speaker 3: not radical enough for people.
Speaker 2: It's too glib, it's too that.
Speaker 3: I was like, Oh, so suddenly suddenly the coach is me,
Speaker 3: you know, It's like it really was like, Oh, that's
Speaker 3: like the price you pay of entrance. And I was
Speaker 3: able to apply oologized to him for that because I
Speaker 3: didn't think it was fair to attack his work, which
Speaker 3: frankly opens a door for me when it really wasn't
Speaker 3: his decision that he should be the only, you know,
Speaker 3: person able to make content about black people at that time.
Speaker 3: And I wanted to make that argument for my audience
Speaker 3: and make it clear that I not only appreciated him
Speaker 3: and his work and his contribution to cinema, but that
Speaker 3: like he belonged there and we weren't really doing.
Speaker 2: The Lord's work by like going after his stuff like that.
Speaker 3: So yeah, because of that wonderful conversation, you know, I
Speaker 3: got a lot of love for Tyler, truly.
Speaker 1: That's fucking great. I'm asked that question, that's like, good,
Speaker 1: lovely answer. Well, God, I've got so many more questions
Speaker 1: about all of this, but maybe we have to move
Speaker 1: on one day.
Speaker 2: We don't answer.
Speaker 1: I'm always interested in, like, shy runner as a job is,
Speaker 1: it's hard. It's fucking big in your sort of managing
Speaker 1: so much. It is managing people and people's emotional states
Speaker 1: and stuff. Who how did you cut that?
Speaker 2: I don't even know, honestly, because.
Speaker 1: The director is one thing, and then the showrunner is
Speaker 1: like five times that.
Speaker 3: A lot of us honestly got a lot, a lot
Speaker 3: of therapy. Like when I say a lot of therapy,
Speaker 3: because you're right, you're sort of you are. Everyone is
Speaker 3: sort of projecting onto you as the showrunner and and everyone.
Speaker 3: It's not just the cast, it's not just your department hits,
Speaker 3: but it's also like the executives on one And we
Speaker 3: had a network and a studio, so we had the
Speaker 3: Lions gay folks on one side, we had the Netflix
Speaker 3: people on the other side. I was working with Yvette
Speaker 3: Lee Bowser, who created Living Single, and she was one
Speaker 3: of the EPs, and so she was there to help
Speaker 3: kind of like you know, ground me and show me
Speaker 3: the ropes of show running and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: But then you can't really prepare. You just really can't
Speaker 3: prepare for something like TV. It is as you know,
Speaker 3: it is wild. It is so fast paced, and but
Speaker 3: the ambition is so high and the standard for excellence
Speaker 3: is so high, but you just have so much time
Speaker 3: and money and it's a pressure cooker.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a crucible.
Speaker 3: Like you know, anything I'd ever I'd ever experienced before.
Speaker 3: But I have to say it was really good training.
Speaker 2: I just made. I just made a big old Disney movie.
Speaker 3: And it was like the longest shoot I ever had,
Speaker 3: the most people I ever had to deal I mean,
Speaker 3: and I never and even though I was, you know,
Speaker 3: the director of that project, I could not have been
Speaker 3: prepared for that without the experience of show running and
Speaker 3: carrying that many expectations on your shoulders at once, even
Speaker 3: though we had a lot longer to shoot it and
Speaker 3: a lot of the bigger budget than I had ever
Speaker 3: on Deer White People. Just the sheer volume of attitudes
Speaker 3: and egos and subterfuge and into politics.
Speaker 2: And all that crap, like it just.
Speaker 3: For that yeah, you know, And I'm a straightforward person,
Speaker 3: like I really, there's usually not anything up my sleeve.
Speaker 2: I pretty much tell you how it is.
Speaker 3: And so when I encountered this thing in Hollywood where,
Speaker 3: like you know, people tell you ever think, but the
Speaker 3: thing they need to tell you it just takes even
Speaker 3: longer to process.
Speaker 1: You know, are you good at like you seem? Listen,
Speaker 1: I've spent fifteen minutes of view and you seem lovely.
Speaker 1: And you also I have heard from people who work
Speaker 1: with you. Do you're lovely? However? Are you good at?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: If for example, you want something a certain way, everyone
Speaker 1: is telling you it can't be that way. It shouldn't
Speaker 1: be that way. They don't want it that way. Like,
Speaker 1: how do you hold your place? Are you good at conflict?
Speaker 1: Do you do it charmingly? Do you lose your temper?
Speaker 2: Like? How do you I'll do anything that work?
Speaker 1: Do you feel bad?
Speaker 2: Yes? I have? I have a Okay.
Speaker 3: So, first of all, I'm a gay black man who
Speaker 3: grew up in the South. So I'm really good at
Speaker 3: being polite.
Speaker 1: I'm very charming.
Speaker 2: I'm really good at being charming.
Speaker 3: And I also I am really good at like hiding
Speaker 3: certain aspects of my truth for moments when it is
Speaker 3: more convenient to share such things. So yeah, I tend
Speaker 3: to lean on diplomacy before I lean on like yelling.
Speaker 3: Yelling I find really hard to do. In fact, sometimes
Speaker 3: like I need a push to be.
Speaker 2: Like just you just might need to just be forceful.
Speaker 3: About this particular situation, But it takes me a while
Speaker 3: to get there. It's not that I avoid conflict, It's
Speaker 3: just that I like to be tactical about it because
Speaker 3: I'm also aware that the way I approach conflict it
Speaker 3: might undermine my ability to achieve what I ultimately want,
Speaker 3: especially in Hollywood, and especially when there's a lot of
Speaker 3: folks projecting a lot of things onto you. So I
Speaker 3: will honestly say I've done all of the things that
Speaker 3: you mentioned, but I tend to lead with diplomacy. I
Speaker 3: tend to lead with leaning in. I really like, I
Speaker 3: like working with people. I don't really believe that I've
Speaker 3: got the best answer. I will come in hot, really
Speaker 3: excited about what I think is it, but then I
Speaker 3: want it to be interrogated, like I want to figure
Speaker 3: out what I'm missing. I want to see where my
Speaker 3: blank spots are. So I really really really lean and
Speaker 3: rely on collaboration. That said, you know, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: not always dealing with people who as upfront and as
Speaker 3: I am, so you know, sometimes it can take a
Speaker 3: while to realize.
Speaker 2: Oh that's the issue. Okay, how do I deal with
Speaker 2: that thing over there? I don't know. So I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm all over the place, but.
Speaker 3: I want, I think the most important thing when I'm
Speaker 3: directing or show Rennie, my job is to create a space.
Speaker 3: My job is to create a space for people to
Speaker 3: do their absolute best work. I want people to bring
Speaker 3: their genius, their fire to the project, and everyone is
Speaker 3: made to feel comfortable, particularly artists in slightly different ways.
Speaker 3: And that is the thing that I'm always protecting the
Speaker 3: most is like, what is the environment with which my artists,
Speaker 3: you know, whether we're talking about the composer or we're
Speaker 3: talking about you know, the costume designer or an actor.
Speaker 3: How can I make sure that they feel comfortable giving
Speaker 3: me their best? That's always my number one property.
Speaker 1: What did you mean by if you engage in the conflict,
Speaker 1: I think say but that it would undermine what you're
Speaker 1: trying to do because of how people see it.
Speaker 3: Well, as I've mention, you know, being a black gay man,
Speaker 3: there are certain I'll say this when I get a
Speaker 3: little upset, people tend to think I'm furious, Like people
Speaker 3: say there is a tension around me getting upset that
Speaker 3: I just feel like my white counter points don't necessarily
Speaker 3: have because.
Speaker 2: Look, I've been in the industry for a minute.
Speaker 3: Okay, I see how directors are, I see how shorewounders are.
Speaker 2: I've met, you know, a lot of prominent people.
Speaker 3: I've heard a lot of stories about what goes down
Speaker 3: on very and I know that I am nowhere near
Speaker 3: some of the things that are pretty regular from some people.
Speaker 2: But it's just funny when I when I get a little,
Speaker 2: when I get a little upset, people are just there.
Speaker 3: I don't know, there's like an angry black Man situation
Speaker 3: of bruin. I can feel that terror in some people,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately for me, and I've seen this happen to
Speaker 3: some of my peers that can get that can get
Speaker 3: you exited from the room if I'm just being on it.
Speaker 2: So there is this sort of double edged shword.
Speaker 3: There's a double consciousness, especially in Hollywood, in terms of
Speaker 3: how to not the artistry on one side and you know,
Speaker 3: the business on the other. I've never been able to
Speaker 3: avoid it.
Speaker 1: Fascinating, is it? Yeah? This is really interesting.
Speaker 2: I hope so I get something out of it because
Speaker 2: I'm tired.
Speaker 1: You know what, you know what, I can't tell you
Speaker 1: the thing I left the one thing I've learned from
Speaker 1: where they give you notes and you're like, these are
Speaker 1: fucking stupid. This is stupid. And my initial instinct is
Speaker 1: to just go I would just stare at them and
Speaker 1: eventually go, so what would you do, and like let
Speaker 1: them sort of panic so.
Speaker 2: You can't write it, you can't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I realized that isn't the best way to
Speaker 1: do it and in fairness, to be honest with you
Speaker 1: like it, in fairness in the hindsight what I have learned,
Speaker 1: and I learned this I won't say on what job,
Speaker 1: but actually, when you get a note that you think
Speaker 1: is really stupid, to be fair, regardless of what their
Speaker 1: solution is for that note, it means that the thing
Speaker 1: that I think is very clear is not clear because
Speaker 1: they haven't got it. So therefore I should listen to
Speaker 1: the note in terms of because I want to go
Speaker 1: it's fucking obvious, but maybe it isn't fucking obvious because
Speaker 1: they haven't got it. So therefore I have to rethink
Speaker 1: this thing that they're talking about to make it clearer.
Speaker 1: I don't have to do what they've said to do,
Speaker 1: but I do need to look at why they've brought
Speaker 1: it out.
Speaker 2: Do you know me? Yes? Absolutely. The thing that messes me.
Speaker 3: Up, though, however, is sometimes, and not all the time,
Speaker 3: maybe like a third of the time, maybe a short
Speaker 3: but sometimes they really truly don't know what they're talking.
Speaker 3: Like sometimes the thing that's bothering them about something is
Speaker 3: that maybe they read it on an airplane in like
Speaker 3: five minutes before they had to get in an uber
Speaker 3: and before this phone call started.
Speaker 2: And they literally didn't read it clearly.
Speaker 3: Sometimes there's that and trying to know sometimes knowing in
Speaker 3: the moment is this something that can help me or
Speaker 3: not is really the hardest thing to do.
Speaker 2: And I've learned to just.
Speaker 3: Say, especially if I don't get it, to just say.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I'll take care of it and
Speaker 2: just process.
Speaker 3: It later, because you know, maybe there because anytime there's
Speaker 3: any reason to go back into the work, you have
Speaker 3: an opportunity to make it better. Unfortunately for all of
Speaker 3: the people like you and I who hate taking very
Speaker 3: annoying notes, no matter what the reason is, if you
Speaker 3: go back in and you look closely, you'll probably find
Speaker 3: something to improve. And I try to remember that, you know,
Speaker 3: this is just another opportunity to go back into work,
Speaker 3: into the work, and sometimes you know, especially if you're
Speaker 3: getting a note over and over again, and especially if
Speaker 3: you hate it, they might actually be right and you
Speaker 3: need to get over your shit a little bit and
Speaker 3: sort of fell down and see what's not communicating. But
Speaker 3: it's really tricky. It's a it's a mind game. It's
Speaker 3: a game of like mental toughness. I think in the
Speaker 3: process of making this stuff.
Speaker 2: But I don't think it. I don't think it's ever
Speaker 2: been any other way. I really don't.
Speaker 1: I've never spoken to anyone who's made a film or
Speaker 1: a TV show who's ever said, yeah, it was a breeze.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, no, no, we just sound true. It was nothing. No,
Speaker 1: absolutely tell me this. And now you have moved to
Speaker 1: which I really do. I am genuinely excited about because
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of the riding ab You're now you've
Speaker 1: now made Disney's Hunted mentioned Yeah, man, yeah, yeah, honestly
Speaker 1: say that a huge step in a very different direction.
Speaker 1: How did it happen? How do you feel about it?
Speaker 1: Is it done? Have you finished just.
Speaker 2: About any day now? No, it's it's done.
Speaker 3: It's sort of you know, there's a there's massive amounts
Speaker 3: of special effects and uh sort of finishing to be
Speaker 3: done on it.
Speaker 2: But but the movie is done by and large.
Speaker 3: It's we've scored it, we've picture locked it, all those
Speaker 3: great things. And the way it came to be was,
Speaker 3: you know, I was at the end of Dear White People,
Speaker 3: and I was after at the end of the run
Speaker 3: of my second film, Bad Here, and I one I've
Speaker 3: always dreamt of doing something really big, commercial, but you
Speaker 3: know powerful, I sort of grew up on those kind
Speaker 3: of movies where like it's mass entertainment. Yeah, but it
Speaker 3: also is like life clarifying in some way, like you
Speaker 3: leave the theater feeling like, oh, it left me with something,
Speaker 3: and so I've always wanted to make those kind of movies.
Speaker 2: Frankly, when those movies come to.
Speaker 3: Me, it's kind of hit or miss whether or not
Speaker 3: I'll actually get the shot to do it. And I
Speaker 3: was so blown away by the script. This movie had
Speaker 3: no business being this well written, like you just did it.
Speaker 2: Like when I.
Speaker 3: First got it, I was like, Okay, we're doing Honted
Speaker 3: Mansion again. Okay, all right, let me just open this
Speaker 3: and see if I can give it a quick pass.
Speaker 2: And instead I.
Speaker 3: Stayed up really all night laughing and crying over this
Speaker 3: story that was, yes, about the hunted Mansion, and yes,
Speaker 3: it gives you all the candy that you expect from
Speaker 3: like a big blockbustery, you know, movie like that. But
Speaker 3: at the core, it's about a man who is learning
Speaker 3: to feel his feelings of grief and who is learning
Speaker 3: to sort of put this found family together.
Speaker 2: Out of people that really irritate him.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if it was because I was
Speaker 3: just coming off of making a TV show or not,
Speaker 3: but I really related to that. Also, like during COVID
Speaker 3: this is after sort of the George Floyd protests. I mean,
Speaker 3: shit was really really heavy, and to have this piece
Speaker 3: in my lap that sort of it didn't shy away
Speaker 3: from that. It's really funny, it's really sarcastic, it's really
Speaker 3: shady like I am, and has a very kind of dark,
Speaker 3: humorous worldview like I do. But at the core, it's
Speaker 3: about somebody who finds a reason to hope and keep living.
Speaker 2: And it just took me by.
Speaker 3: Such surprise, and yet at the same time, I knew
Speaker 3: how to make that movie. I was like, this is
Speaker 3: an ensemble comedy. At the end of the day. It's
Speaker 3: got many things. It's got genre flourishes, and it's got scares,
Speaker 3: and it's got this and set pieces, but it's I
Speaker 3: have to put the right funny, intelligent, great people together
Speaker 3: and sort of give the audience them in different variations.
Speaker 3: And that's what I do on Dear White People, And
Speaker 3: so I felt like I knew how to do that.
Speaker 3: And then the genre element, you know, I had just
Speaker 3: made my first horror film, and I grew up on
Speaker 3: genre movies and the freedom that you get when you're
Speaker 3: sort of dealing with something supernatural. You have a reason
Speaker 3: as a filmmaker to show anything, you know. I hate
Speaker 3: when movies show you everything but none of it is
Speaker 3: necessary to the story.
Speaker 2: But when something like fantasy.
Speaker 3: Or horror like gives you a reason to show something
Speaker 3: that like otherwise you would never show, I just get
Speaker 3: really excited. And the last thing is that my family,
Speaker 3: my mother's side of the family, there all from Louisiana,
Speaker 3: and I love the Hunted Mansion and I love disney stuff.
Speaker 3: I actually worked at Disneyland in college. I know that's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: first I worked at Disneyland. I was a ride host operator.
Speaker 3: I couldn't have a beard, so I'm two years old.
Speaker 3: It was the Grizzly River Mountain run in California Adventure,
Speaker 3: and when you worked at Disneyland you could ride everything,
Speaker 3: So lunch break we would go Disneyland ride everything, and
Speaker 3: go to California Adventure rite everything. But Hunted Mansion was
Speaker 3: one of those OG favorite rides. But I always had
Speaker 3: an issue with it because it's in New Orleans, and
Speaker 3: my family is from Louisiana and I've been to New
Speaker 3: Orleans and there's a lot of black people in New Orleans,
Speaker 3: Like it's mostly black people, and in fact, the culture
Speaker 3: of New Orleans is so rich because of the freedom
Speaker 3: that black people and people of color had, you know,
Speaker 3: after Reformation. And this is where jazz comes from. This
Speaker 3: is where comes from. And so I was like, if
Speaker 3: I get this job, I want to culturally root the
Speaker 3: Hunted Mansion and where it's from, because if you do that,
Speaker 3: you actually do the job of the Hunted Mansion. The
Speaker 3: Hunted Mansion makes you laugh in the face of death.
Speaker 3: Where do second line? You know, bands and funerals come from.
Speaker 3: They come from New Orleans. These people who like have
Speaker 3: a street parade at the end of a funeral and
Speaker 3: that ability to celebrate, you know, the things that we
Speaker 3: are grieving. It's I mean, that's how black people have
Speaker 3: survived in this country and as artists. And I was like, ah,
Speaker 3: there's a sole reason to tell this blockbustery movie and
Speaker 3: I don't know, it just checked all my boxes in
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 1: Man, this is fucking great, this is exciting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was. I was really jazzed to get it.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you can answer this, knowing it's a big, big,
Speaker 1: big film in Disney and everything, how much do you
Speaker 1: feel that it is the film you wanted to make it?
Speaker 1: How much you know? Could you give a percentage? Or
Speaker 1: is it?
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, I don't know, because you know, I can't
Speaker 3: because I didn't necessarily go into it with a me
Speaker 3: versus them attitude. I understood that, like, there are some
Speaker 3: movies that I do make for people, but primarily for myself,
Speaker 3: and then I share it with other people who are
Speaker 3: just as weird.
Speaker 2: As I am.
Speaker 3: And there are some things that I make in collaboration
Speaker 3: with people, and we have to have some shared goal.
Speaker 3: So there were some things about the movie that really
Speaker 3: I didn't even want to argue with. It's like, yes,
Speaker 3: it has to be four quadrant and it has to
Speaker 3: you know, sort of be for this kind of audience
Speaker 3: and people should feel this way. At there were some
Speaker 3: things that like, as an artist, they weren't really up
Speaker 3: to me, and I didn't demand that they be up
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 2: That said, I think that I achieved the assignment. I
Speaker 2: really do.
Speaker 3: I made a movie that I genuinely love. Two pieces,
Speaker 3: and if I saw it and didn't make it and
Speaker 3: didn't know the people who made it, I would be like, WHOA, Okay,
Speaker 3: it gives me the same feelings, the same goosebumps that
Speaker 3: I felt when I first read that script.
Speaker 2: So I got myself.
Speaker 3: I know that it's extremely subversive and funny and does
Speaker 3: things that Disney movies usually aren't supposed to do.
Speaker 2: So you know that that also makes me.
Speaker 3: Very happy, But it also makes audiences happy, and that's
Speaker 3: not something I've always been able to do with my work.
Speaker 2: You know, my first test screening of Dear White.
Speaker 3: People did not go as well as my test screens
Speaker 3: for Oh my God, No for how to Imagine?
Speaker 2: So I'm having a ball.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: It's like, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't think that the purely justin Simeon anything would
Speaker 3: be appropriate at.
Speaker 2: This budget level from the Walt Disney Corporation. But this
Speaker 2: is the movie.
Speaker 3: I've watched, is the movie I love making, and I'm
Speaker 3: super proud of.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad to hear that, and I'm very excited
Speaker 1: to see it, and I appreciate you, and the the
Speaker 1: problem is I forgot to tell you something. Oh sure,
Speaker 1: we've been talking for a while. I fucking should have
Speaker 1: told you at the beginning. What an idiot, man, I
Speaker 1: fucking I should I really should have told you this upfront.
Speaker 1: I say, okay, you you've died, You're dead dead?
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, oh yeah, okay, yeah. Honestly I suspected.
Speaker 2: I suspected as much.
Speaker 1: How did you die?
Speaker 2: Public? Spontaneous combustion? You know? I I would to.
Speaker 1: Get it back.
Speaker 3: I kind of I want to feel like I was
Speaker 3: giving a speech, so I hope it was public and
Speaker 3: I and I hope it was unrelated to what I
Speaker 3: was saying. Like I want to be mid sentence saying
Speaker 3: something very dull and then I just explode everywhere.
Speaker 2: That's the way to go for me. Okay, bright, I
Speaker 2: hope you can deal with that.
Speaker 1: I love it. Where where were you giving this speech?
Speaker 1: And why was it dull? It doesn't sound like you.
Speaker 2: This was the Academy Awards.
Speaker 3: Also doesn't sound like me, because I've never I've never
Speaker 3: been offered an.
Speaker 2: Award there or or Mike time. But I went in
Speaker 2: this world. I was there receiving lifetime achievement.
Speaker 1: That's why they've forgotten to yes that they give it
Speaker 1: leads of us, yes.
Speaker 3: Yes, because of dear white people, bad hair in the
Speaker 3: Haunted Mansion for reasons unknown to me.
Speaker 2: At this time, I was receiving.
Speaker 3: The Lifetime Achievement Award at the Academy Awards when I
Speaker 3: spontaneously combusted.
Speaker 1: Wow, you know what it is iconic spontaneously convested that
Speaker 1: he was. I'm glad you're bringing it back.
Speaker 3: I want people to see it. It's a thing that happens.
Speaker 3: This is my advocacy.
Speaker 1: It would really jazz out the oscars as well. That's
Speaker 1: a great idea. Do you worry about death?
Speaker 3: Oh, my God, constantly, although less so now when I
Speaker 3: was a kid.
Speaker 2: So I grew up with a lot of death.
Speaker 3: Actually I say that so flippantly and easily, but this
Speaker 3: is the therapy. But my dad died when I was
Speaker 3: six years old, and for me it was really it
Speaker 3: was really sudden.
Speaker 2: He died of Lukearrick's disease. He had als and.
Speaker 3: I knew that, you know, like he had a weak arm,
Speaker 3: that's what we called it. And I didn't quite you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't understand that this was like a fatal thing.
Speaker 2: When I was a kid. It was just my dad.
Speaker 2: My dad had a weak arm.
Speaker 3: Right, And you know, I remember sort of asking where
Speaker 3: he was, and for a bunch of reasons, my mom
Speaker 3: and him didn't really decide to sort of walk me
Speaker 3: through what to expect, and so for me, it was
Speaker 3: a pretty big blow. And if I'm being honest with you,
Speaker 3: it's probably like the source of a lot.
Speaker 2: Of my shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would make sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then you know, I was my grandmother was
Speaker 3: in the home when she passed, and my mother is
Speaker 3: the youngest of nine kids, and so a lot of
Speaker 3: my uncles and aunts, you know.
Speaker 2: Through the years have passed. I've had best friends that
Speaker 2: have passed.
Speaker 3: And I remember when my dad died, I was it
Speaker 3: was I couldn't go to sleep in night because I
Speaker 3: was just thinking about what happens when you die. And
Speaker 3: it's probably why I have such a woo woo kind
Speaker 3: of spiritual journey that that undergirds all of this pessimism,
Speaker 3: because I just sort of needed there to be something
Speaker 3: after death, and I needed there to be a reason
Speaker 3: for horrible things to happen at at a very young age,
Speaker 3: like I just couldn't quite put the world together, you know,
Speaker 3: when that when experiencing those.
Speaker 1: Things, do you have any connection as in spiritually, did
Speaker 1: you did you do you ever feel his presence? Do
Speaker 1: you have a how does that work for you? May
Speaker 1: I ask?
Speaker 3: It's funny you should ask that, because I didn't feel
Speaker 3: his presence until pretty recently actually, and as a kid,
Speaker 3: I always.
Speaker 2: Wondered where he was because the.
Speaker 3: Other thing about my family being from Louisiana is that
Speaker 3: we all I mean ghosts and spirits on the other
Speaker 3: side was not really a question like it was just
Speaker 3: a matter of fact, and whether it was my grandmother
Speaker 3: or my aunt Virgie, or even I had a best
Speaker 3: friend in high school who passed named Deante. There were
Speaker 3: always these sort of extremely bizarre happenings that would that
Speaker 3: would sort of for me verify that they were on
Speaker 3: the there was another side somewhere, and that they I
Speaker 3: mean things that just I couldn't make up and that
Speaker 3: you know, cannot be explained in any other way.
Speaker 2: And my dad. I never had an experience like that until.
Speaker 3: I actually met Okay, we're doing it, we're doing it.
Speaker 2: I actually met a half sister that I had.
Speaker 3: Never met before but who had sort of followed my
Speaker 3: life and we connected.
Speaker 1: Did you know you had this house, sister, or you didn't?
Speaker 3: I I knew that she was out there, but we
Speaker 3: had never actually communicated, and we talked about my dad
Speaker 3: or our dad, and she had one of those moments
Speaker 3: after he passed, and it just kind of lit me
Speaker 3: up to know that someone had that moment with him
Speaker 3: after he passed.
Speaker 2: And he left me.
Speaker 3: A bunch of stuff, a bunch of trinkets and stuff
Speaker 3: and bonds and things like that when you passed, and
Speaker 3: my mom was holding onto this envelope and inside of
Speaker 3: it was for two dollar bills and double two's. For
Speaker 3: whatever reason, started to become like kind of a symbol
Speaker 3: for my dad being with me or around me, and
Speaker 3: things that I did not know at the time but
Speaker 3: that I know now. So my husband's name is Rick.
Speaker 3: He was born on the twenty second of June. I
Speaker 3: had a half brother that I did know when I
Speaker 3: was growing up. His name was Rick, and I learned
Speaker 3: that he was born on the twenty second of June.
Speaker 3: The double twos that he left me, they appear everywhere
Speaker 3: with regards to my father and his lineage.
Speaker 2: It could be like the dates, you know.
Speaker 3: The date we got married was actually our anniversary date,
Speaker 3: Rick and I, which is February twentieth, two thousand and twenty.
Speaker 2: So this is all twos, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, you know, yeah, it just sort of it's such
Speaker 3: a weird thing to see a pair of double two's.
Speaker 2: That when I see it it makes me stop.
Speaker 3: And it usually tends to be of importance, and it
Speaker 3: tends to be about being a man and maturing in
Speaker 3: some kind of way.
Speaker 2: It's the thing I.
Speaker 3: Never felt like I grew up and was able to have,
Speaker 3: and so to kind of have it now, even if
Speaker 3: it's you know, in my mind or my imagination, I'm
Speaker 3: not sure special, but it took me a lot to
Speaker 3: have that, that sense that he was here.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Thank you, you know, thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you appreciate it of course. One well, so do you
Speaker 1: think when you die as a heaven, as a hell,
Speaker 1: there's a another place? How do you see it?
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think we all have to be open to the
Speaker 3: possibility that there's nothing, because otherwise, you know, life, you
Speaker 3: don't focus on the present, you know, if it can
Speaker 3: just go on forever. I think, for no other reason,
Speaker 3: death is actually really important. This is the idea that
Speaker 3: things are limited and that time is limited. But like
Speaker 3: I said, the story I told you about my father
Speaker 3: is probably the least weird of the stories about people
Speaker 3: passing and so can you.
Speaker 2: Tell me man? Oh gosh. One of the weirdest is
Speaker 2: my my friend Deontae.
Speaker 3: He left a voice memo for me that I erased
Speaker 3: from my phone, and the day I found out that
Speaker 3: he died, it came back to my phone and the
Speaker 3: voice message was like, Hey, Justin, I just want to
Speaker 3: tell you I've always loved you. Your friendship means the
Speaker 3: world to me. It was like a goodbye message.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's making me cry.
Speaker 2: That was absolutely deleted.
Speaker 3: When my my aunt Vergie passed, I remember the day
Speaker 3: after her funeral, feeling her presence and then looking over
Speaker 3: to a clock and the minute hand was stuck on
Speaker 3: the on the V and it wouldn't move past, you know,
Speaker 3: the V and I took a picture in a video
Speaker 3: of it and eventually it just you know, kept going,
Speaker 3: but like in that exact moment that's.
Speaker 2: When it hovered over the V.
Speaker 3: My uncle Will passed and everyone at the casino one
Speaker 3: my family is big gamblers, were Catholic Louisiana.
Speaker 2: It's a whole thing.
Speaker 3: Everyone was at the casino when he passed because everyone
Speaker 3: thought he'd be fine. We had just sort of visited
Speaker 3: him at the hospital when he passed. Suddenly everybody, my
Speaker 3: mother and two other cousins win a jackpot. Like it's
Speaker 3: weird shit, like you know, weird woo woo stuff that,
Speaker 3: like it's hard to put so many incidents of that
Speaker 3: just kind of a way. So I do believe that
Speaker 3: there's something out there, and I also just feel like
Speaker 3: I think, you know, just to get into a really
Speaker 3: heady place, I think that time is sort of there's
Speaker 3: something about time that for me suggests more because we
Speaker 3: are we have these three dimensional people creatures, and time
Speaker 3: is something we we sort of created in our imaginations
Speaker 3: because we just experienced things moments and moment to moment.
Speaker 3: But if we're in a universe where time can exist
Speaker 3: hypothetically and we're experiencing in moments a moment, then it
Speaker 3: leads it suggests that there is a fourth dimension where
Speaker 3: time everything that could ever happen is just all happening
Speaker 3: at once. I think of it like maybe life is
Speaker 3: like a CD, and you know, what constitutes my life
Speaker 3: is a song being played, you know, the laser interacting
Speaker 3: with the little.
Speaker 2: You know, data, But it's all there all the time.
Speaker 3: It's all the possibilities are available, and so for me
Speaker 3: that it's sort of it kind of explains how somebody
Speaker 3: who has passed, how it's possible for them to even
Speaker 3: communicate in these different, subtle, imaginative ways with different people
Speaker 3: all at the same time everywhere. I don't know what
Speaker 3: it is. I don't know what the experiences or what
Speaker 3: it looks like. I assume it's something like the end
Speaker 3: of two thousand and one in Space Odyssey. I'm not sure,
Speaker 3: but I just have a sneaking suspicion that we are
Speaker 3: just sort of our experience of life is very narrow
Speaker 3: for a reason. There's just only so much we can
Speaker 3: see in the known universe, and the more and more
Speaker 3: we see, the more mysterious and comfortingly fantastic it seems
Speaker 3: to become.
Speaker 2: So I hope that that's true at depth too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But yeah, my new theory on it, because I think
Speaker 1: maybe I've said this in the previous episode's apologies, but
Speaker 1: my new theory is that because I always think about reincarnation,
Speaker 1: I believe in reincarnation, but I'm always like it's quite
Speaker 1: inefficient because we forget it would be. Yeah, you come
Speaker 1: back in your space to improve, but you completely forget.
Speaker 1: But then you don't completely forget because there are things
Speaker 1: sort of inbuilt in you.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: But what you're talking about, this narrow field is like
Speaker 1: the human body, this receptacle for all yourselves, everything, everything, everywhere,
Speaker 1: all at once, is kind of a primitive machine that
Speaker 1: can't it can't process every It's too much stuff for
Speaker 1: this little brain to process. So that's why you end
Speaker 1: up with this narrow view. And when you die again,
Speaker 1: you're released into it gets broader, you can handle everything.
Speaker 2: Then I really.
Speaker 3: Lean towards that way of thinking because the other thing
Speaker 3: I know is there's just some stuff about me that
Speaker 3: was true before I understood who I was, Like my
Speaker 3: love of film was here already, like it was my
Speaker 3: path to tell stories, particularly like image based stories, was
Speaker 3: a part of me before I could even conceive of
Speaker 3: something like the film director. It was just there, and
Speaker 3: it was there since before I could talk.
Speaker 2: They had to have come from something else, you know.
Speaker 2: I don't know how that could have just happened in
Speaker 2: the womb or through early experiences. It was too clear.
Speaker 3: And so that makes me that certainly opens me up
Speaker 3: to this life is just I don't know. It's like
Speaker 3: a very concentrated dream or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I tend to lean into those kind of philosophies
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 1: Well I've got news for you. There's a heaven. Okay,
Speaker 1: oh god, there's a heaven.
Speaker 2: Okay, So okay, great, great, okay, So we're good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's good. And it's feeled me. The favorite thing.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite thing right now?
Speaker 2: It's starbus jelly beans.
Speaker 1: Stub bust jelly beans. Okay, have you had them?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I have had dangerous Yeah, they.
Speaker 3: Don't have them. They are dangerous, but in heaven. In heaven,
Speaker 3: I assume diabetes doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: So no diabetes.
Speaker 2: No, oh god, every day all the time.
Speaker 1: So there's stub bus jelly bean's whoa to woa the
Speaker 1: United bchs. Then now jelly beety best.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and oh this sounds right.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's giant jelly jelly starbus jelly beans walking around
Speaker 1: with trays of star bus jelly beans. Oh, don't be
Speaker 1: scared of them. They're very friendly.
Speaker 2: Are they sentient because I might want to eat them? Yeah?
Speaker 1: No, they're they're like, yeah, that's a good point. But
Speaker 1: jelly beans everywhere, and then and they're looking at you
Speaker 1: as you eat them and they go stop eat, they scream,
Speaker 1: don't eat us, and you keep oh.
Speaker 2: My god, this is heaven, everything I would want.
Speaker 1: But they're all very excited to see you the starbus
Speaker 1: jelly beans, and they want to know about your life
Speaker 1: through film. The first thing we've been talking for solo.
Speaker 1: This is the longest episode ever. But I'd say that's
Speaker 1: a good sign because this has been fascinating. And I'm
Speaker 1: annoyed after that talk about films because I want to
Speaker 1: keep talking about all the summers. The first thing they
Speaker 1: ask me, I'll.
Speaker 3: Come back Brad if you if you have, I'll just
Speaker 3: have to resurrection.
Speaker 1: Yes, what is the first film you remember saying? Justin
Speaker 1: see it?
Speaker 2: It is the Whiz. It's the Whiz. Oh wow? And
Speaker 2: I remember. I literally this is part of what I mean.
Speaker 2: I was. This is a memory that is pre talking.
Speaker 2: I could not talk.
Speaker 3: I was watching our television set The Wiz was on.
Speaker 2: It was the part where and I didn't know what
Speaker 2: was happening.
Speaker 3: I was like a infant. But it's the part where
Speaker 3: they meet Richard Pryor on the rooftop and they discover
Speaker 3: that in fact, it isn't this massive, powerful wizard. It's
Speaker 3: just Richard Pryor and this very weird, sort of attic thing.
Speaker 3: And I remember sort of being amazed by some aspect
Speaker 3: of it and turning to my mom and trying to
Speaker 3: talk to her, but I couldn't use English words, and
Speaker 3: I got very frustrated about this. And that literally is
Speaker 3: the first memory I have of seeing a movie.
Speaker 2: And so imagine, imagine my surprise.
Speaker 3: I am my surprise when I encountered the Wizard of
Speaker 3: Oz because I was like, they made a white version
Speaker 3: of the Whiz, Like I didn't know. I truly did
Speaker 3: not know there was a different version, Like I thought
Speaker 3: that was the verse.
Speaker 1: It would make sense that way, right, So do you remember, Well,
Speaker 1: that's if you were pre pre language. To have a
Speaker 1: memory pre language is pretty impressive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I and I've watched the movie, you know,
Speaker 3: after Language and many many, many many times.
Speaker 2: And this is sort of all black cinematic.
Speaker 3: Quincy Jones scored World kind of does describe sort of
Speaker 3: the place I always want to be, Like that's probably
Speaker 3: my true heaven, to be honest with the Whiz.
Speaker 2: So it makes sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just the just the black Oz you know, with
Speaker 3: all those people and all that wonderful music, and maybe
Speaker 3: not as much poverty and drug use, but more good parts.
Speaker 1: Replacing puverty and drug use with stops.
Speaker 3: Jennibeates, exactly, exactly, there's the balance. Yeah, that's my heaven.
Speaker 1: What is the film that scared you the most? You've
Speaker 1: just made haunted mention. Do you like being scared?
Speaker 2: I do?
Speaker 3: And the weird thing about me is that I was
Speaker 3: exposed to horror movies at far too young an age,
Speaker 3: so they never really ever scared me. I watched Nightmare
Speaker 3: on Elm Street, I think maybe five or six years old,
Speaker 3: maybe younger. So I had to learn that Freddy Krueger
Speaker 3: was bad. I just thought he was cool. He was
Speaker 3: he equips, he had that hat, he had like the fingers.
Speaker 3: I thought he was dope.
Speaker 1: He's kind of the hair.
Speaker 3: He was annoyed by the same you know, white teenagers
Speaker 3: that I was watching the film, and I just I
Speaker 3: got him, like he and I connected. So it had
Speaker 3: to be explained to me to be afraid of him
Speaker 3: and things like him. The first movie that really really
Speaker 3: scared me is probably Fire in the Sky, which I
Speaker 3: don't know. I don't know if that movie is still
Speaker 3: good or not.
Speaker 2: But as a kid, I was like, this is.
Speaker 3: A documentary about what happens with Alias and I that
Speaker 3: scared the shit out of me. I also, like, I
Speaker 3: grew up in Houston, Texas, so like anytime a plane
Speaker 3: flew over. For weeks after that film, like I was
Speaker 3: just convinced that like this was it, like I was
Speaker 3: getting abducted. I would be anally probed and like syrup,
Speaker 3: you know, dripping off the table would freak.
Speaker 2: Me out for the rest of my life. That movie
Speaker 2: really truly messed with me.
Speaker 1: It really did firing. This guy is never talked about that,
Speaker 1: he's ever come up on this podcast. I saw it.
Speaker 1: I remember it so well. It was weird. Was it eighties?
Speaker 1: Late eighties?
Speaker 3: It was like if it was late eighties, are early
Speaker 3: It was like the first movie we bought on when
Speaker 3: you had the digital box and you could get pay
Speaker 3: per view.
Speaker 2: I remember that it was the first.
Speaker 3: Movie we bought on pay per view at our house,
Speaker 3: So it was it had to be early nineties.
Speaker 1: It's a proper based on the true story of an
Speaker 1: alien abduction film. It's the kind of film you don't
Speaker 1: get at the cinema. You just don't get like you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like that's any film like that
Speaker 1: now would be direct to TV would be a yeah.
Speaker 1: And this was like a high end and I remember
Speaker 1: the interviews of it were like it's true, and I
Speaker 1: was really I was really into it. That film.
Speaker 3: It was like proto found footage horror movies, like because
Speaker 3: it wasn't found footage, but it was the first one
Speaker 3: where like you went to the theater like this actually happened.
Speaker 3: And of course reading the story, I mean like you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know that that's exactly how it happened in
Speaker 3: retrospect turns out, but you know, as a very impressionable.
Speaker 2: Kid, I was like this, this is about life right now,
Speaker 2: This could happen at any moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great, rights. What about crying? Are you a crier?
Speaker 1: What's the film that made you cry?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: I wasn't until my thirties and the therapy that I
Speaker 3: mentioned began and now I can't stop right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was it was Coco. It was the Pixar
Speaker 2: movie Coco. That movie. It was absolutely not.
Speaker 3: I left the theater in tatters, okay, like it.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: First of all, Coco, the grandmother herself spitting image of
Speaker 3: my grandmother, like spitting image of my grandmother, And every
Speaker 3: time I saw her face, I would start crying. And
Speaker 3: every time they would play that damn song, I would
Speaker 3: start crying. And I remember when the credits came on
Speaker 3: and the song is blasting. I'm not kidding you, like
Speaker 3: I'm sobbing. I'm like dry heating and sobbing at the
Speaker 3: same time. There's chill, delighted children are everywhere. I feel
Speaker 3: very exposed here and I kind of like dart out
Speaker 3: of the theater so I can like clean myself up
Speaker 3: before my friend see me. And I run into my
Speaker 3: barber at the time, and my barber is like this
Speaker 3: very like duty, like hey, what's up man, Just like
Speaker 3: very like you know, And I'm out here like, hey.
Speaker 2: How's it going, goose?
Speaker 3: And I'm just like a mess in public sobbing. That
Speaker 3: movie I can't It's so good. I can't ever watch
Speaker 3: it because, yeah, I just lose I lose function seeing
Speaker 3: that film. It's just it's devastating, but wonderful movie.
Speaker 1: It did change my feelings on death a bit. That
Speaker 1: film you did as in I thought it was. I
Speaker 1: loved that film and I cried a lot, and I
Speaker 1: can never watch it again. But I did like ever again,
Speaker 1: I did like the sort of idea of you live
Speaker 1: as long as you're remembered, and that they the importance of.
Speaker 1: But then I'm alsto, like, so what happens when you're forgotten?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: What what's the next bit o?
Speaker 3: I know that's the saddest bar well I started keeping,
Speaker 3: and I started keeping an altar of my family. I
Speaker 3: really did like, Yeah, there's like pictures now with my
Speaker 3: dad and my grandmother and stuff I keep around because
Speaker 3: of that movie.
Speaker 2: But never, I can't ever watch it again. Ever.
Speaker 1: I've seen all the pixil films once and never again.
Speaker 2: Never I it must takes too long to put myself
Speaker 2: back together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really picks out of abusive paper, Let's be honest.
Speaker 3: Slash, those are the kind of movies I want to make,
Speaker 3: so fin I mentioned July twenty eighth.
Speaker 1: Is it gonna make me cry?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: God, maybe not as much, but that little laughter and
Speaker 3: tears ain't never hurt nobody. Yeah, okay, you know, just
Speaker 3: a couple couple of little sweaty eyebalts.
Speaker 1: What is the film that you love? People don't like it?
Speaker 1: It's definitely not critically acclaimed, but you love it unconditionally.
Speaker 1: Justin Simeon, this.
Speaker 2: Is going to be a shot fired spider Man three
Speaker 2: the same Raimi.
Speaker 1: That is very cool of you.
Speaker 2: Fight me, fight me.
Speaker 3: I know people really have a hard time digesting camp
Speaker 3: and superheroesm at the same time. I get that, But
Speaker 3: at the same time, it is absolutely ridiculous what you
Speaker 3: were watching. When you're watching a superhero movie, they are
Speaker 3: in right colored spandex and they are doing and saying
Speaker 3: very homo erotic things, and they are prancing around the
Speaker 3: city time to music. You're watching camp everyone. And what
Speaker 3: I love about spider Man three is that Sam Raimi
Speaker 3: goes full camp and I don't know what was happening
Speaker 3: at the studio. It feels like, and I don't know
Speaker 3: Sam Raimi, and I don't know that this is true,
Speaker 3: but it feels like over the first two movies, right,
Speaker 3: he made like probably some of the best superhero movies period,
Speaker 3: Like in the genre.
Speaker 1: Spider Man two is top taste.
Speaker 3: Spider Man two is great, and I feel like he
Speaker 3: had to fight so many battles with the studio or
Speaker 3: whatever that by the time you've gotten spider Man three,
Speaker 3: he was like listen, I'm gonna do whatever the hell
Speaker 3: I want to do, and no one is going to
Speaker 3: say no, no limits, no notes. And he made Spider
Speaker 3: Man three, and there is something very off the rails, rambunctious,
Speaker 3: wild and campy about that movie that I an anarchic
Speaker 3: about that movie that I just really appreciate. I can't
Speaker 3: find the flaws. I know they're there, I've been told
Speaker 3: about them, I've read about them. I want to be
Speaker 3: a smarty pants filmgoer and agree, but I don't.
Speaker 2: I love that movie. I go so hard for it.
Speaker 1: It's a very very good argument. Can I ask a
Speaker 1: question of you? Because I hear this first, I think
Speaker 1: I've used this word, and I think I don't fully
Speaker 1: understand what the word, What the exact definition of camp is?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Like, I think I sort of get it, But I'm
Speaker 1: always like, am I saying it right? What do we be?
Speaker 2: I mean? For I guess it can mean a bunch
Speaker 2: of different things.
Speaker 3: But for me, camp is like when you're sort of
Speaker 3: playing into norms, particularly heteronormative kind of concepts and ideas,
Speaker 3: and you're blowing them up to such operatic and ridiculous
Speaker 3: proportions that you can't help but laugh at them. Nipples
Speaker 3: on the batsuit would be a really good example of
Speaker 3: a very campy choice. The dance sequence in the Spider
Speaker 3: Man movie that I'm referring to is an incredibly campy choice.
Speaker 3: You know, these are things that are just so exaggerated
Speaker 3: that they couldn't possibly happen in real life, but they
Speaker 3: kind of make you question the things that we always
Speaker 3: assume about everyday life. There's definitely a gay context there,
Speaker 3: but you also find camp certainly in sci fi, in any.
Speaker 2: Kind of genre, because genre is about the extremes, you know.
Speaker 3: So I like when a superhero movie admits that its
Speaker 3: basic premise is absolutely absurd.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, I could see your crotch, sir, Like
Speaker 2: I can see the outline.
Speaker 3: You're highlighting it. You're highlighting it with a different color underwear.
Speaker 3: And yet this is supposed to be masculine and macho. Okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 1: You know what, at the other end of the scale,
Speaker 1: as wonderful as the Batman the Dark Knight trilogy are,
Speaker 1: and I think they're incredible, Batman begins incredible. He works
Speaker 1: so hard to justify in a real and serious way
Speaker 1: why he becomes Batman that he spent so long on
Speaker 1: it that by the time he becomes Batman, I found
Speaker 1: myself having never asked this in all my life. Guid,
Speaker 1: it's a bit weird that he dresses up as a
Speaker 1: bat Why is that happening?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it lent in so hard that it made me
Speaker 1: then go yeah, hang on, that is with instead of
Speaker 1: explaining it.
Speaker 3: Different strukets with different folks. Dark Knight is a masterpiece.
Speaker 3: Not knocking those movies at all, but I agree the
Speaker 3: premise is the only way for you to fight crime
Speaker 3: is to is to wear eyeliner and skin tight latex
Speaker 3: that showcases your body, okay, your anatomic prowess, and fight
Speaker 3: people in the Darken Knight, usually in a fancy car,
Speaker 3: usually with sidekigs.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, Like, what are we doing? It's absurd.
Speaker 3: So it can only exist in a universe that is
Speaker 3: also a little off kilter, and so I like when directors.
Speaker 3: I think what makes people uncomfortable is that a lot
Speaker 3: of folks find their like masculinity and their manliness and
Speaker 3: their whatever in some of these characters, and to realize
Speaker 3: that what they're watching aren't far from drag Queen's I
Speaker 3: think maybe disturb some people, but I live for it
Speaker 3: when a film or a filmmaker acknowledges like the central
Speaker 3: Conceitus is pretty campy, fantastic.
Speaker 1: What is a film that you used to love but
Speaker 1: you've watched again recently and you've thought, I don't like
Speaker 1: this anymore, probably because you've changed.
Speaker 3: This makes me sad, but my favorite film growing up
Speaker 3: is absolutely unwatchable. I watched Pippy The Adventures of Pippy
Speaker 3: long Stockings a lot of times in theaters.
Speaker 2: Okay, did you really No, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I never started the cinema, but we've got to. Me
Speaker 1: and my sister got it on VHS all the time,
Speaker 1: like it's in the original Swedish film.
Speaker 3: Oh not the Swedish one, it was the very it
Speaker 3: was the American remake that they did in the late eighties.
Speaker 3: It's The Adventures of Pippy long Stocking or the new
Speaker 3: It's the New Adventures of Pippy long Stocking And uh,
Speaker 3: I don't remember what year it came out, but I
Speaker 3: was really really young and I rented the VHS so
Speaker 3: many times I destroyed the tape. But even before then,
Speaker 3: I remember like there was this movie theater it was
Speaker 3: a Meyer place in Houston, and I would have my
Speaker 3: mom just drop me off of that joint, like early
Speaker 3: in the morning, and I would watch the matinee and
Speaker 3: it'd be over and I'd go play the X Men
Speaker 3: arcade game outside in the lobby. I'd go right back
Speaker 3: into that into the next screening, and I would watch
Speaker 3: it over and over and over again. It's a musical.
Speaker 3: There are very weird things that happen in it. There's
Speaker 3: like a sequence where they're like scrubbing the whole house
Speaker 3: and they make it fun. She somehow can fly by,
Speaker 3: like turning around really fast. I don't really remember. Oh,
Speaker 3: and she lived by herself for reasons.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: None of it, like literally none of it holds up.
Speaker 2: Like none of it holds up.
Speaker 3: I watched this recently and was just like, what does
Speaker 3: this say about my psychology as a child.
Speaker 2: That I love this so much?
Speaker 3: But yeah, that that movie had me in a choke
Speaker 3: hold for the first five ten years of my life?
Speaker 2: Did it?
Speaker 1: Did they have a song?
Speaker 2: Did that? But like a thing Long Stockings is coming into.
Speaker 1: Your red headed girl, you know, you know, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think I understand anymore.
Speaker 2: All I can say is I've really tried to get through.
Speaker 3: It in recent in the recent times, and uh, and
Speaker 3: I can't make it all the way through.
Speaker 2: I've yet to make it.
Speaker 3: Captain in it had like a little monkey.
Speaker 2: I think it's the neighbors.
Speaker 3: I hate the neighbor kids a lot as an adult
Speaker 3: for some reason, the one that she's bringing joy to,
Speaker 3: just like, leave Pippy along, let her be magical by herself.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I have trauma, Brett, but for reasons
Speaker 2: it doesn't work for me anymore.
Speaker 1: Fucking fucking therapies stuffing for you, I knew what what
Speaker 1: is the film that means the mice to you? Not
Speaker 1: necessarily the film itself is any good, but the experience
Speaker 1: you had around seeing the film will always make it
Speaker 1: special to you.
Speaker 3: Justin Simeon, Oh wow, I think probably I am not
Speaker 3: your Negro.
Speaker 2: And it is a great film. It's a great film.
Speaker 3: And the film itself is actually a masterpiece, and it's
Speaker 3: about you know, James Balwin, incredible genius. But it also,
Speaker 3: in his words kind of it puts forth his sort
Speaker 3: of philosophy on life and particularly how racism operates in America.
Speaker 3: But he as this very articulate gay black man sort
Speaker 3: of gets you to see it in a way that
Speaker 3: it doesn't devastate me. It sort of just it makes
Speaker 3: me feel really awake and really engaged to be a
Speaker 3: part of the change. And I saw this in theaters
Speaker 3: with my now husband. I'm not sure exactly when it
Speaker 3: came out in relation to the George Floyd protests, but
Speaker 3: it felt it felt like we, the two of us
Speaker 3: in particularly, felt quite changed by having seen the film
Speaker 3: at that particular time. And I remember leaving the theater
Speaker 3: like just understanding how much sort of getting people to
Speaker 3: understand this, this sort of worldview that bald wouldn't put
Speaker 3: forth throughout his life, how important that would be for
Speaker 3: the rest of my.
Speaker 2: Life and my work and my career.
Speaker 3: So that, for whatever reason that one comes to mind,
Speaker 3: I just there's lots of movies where you know, we
Speaker 3: left changed or I left changed or whatever, but that
Speaker 3: one I'd never I'd never sort of had my own
Speaker 3: personal revolution.
Speaker 2: Quite as rapidly as I had watching that film.
Speaker 1: It's great fucking film. I think it was. I think
Speaker 1: it was before George Floyd. I think it was that
Speaker 1: the year before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it might have been the year before, but just
Speaker 3: the way he connects things that are so easily obscured,
Speaker 3: particularly the image of a white cowboy, you know, the
Speaker 3: white cowboy that we all sort of understand of the West,
Speaker 3: and how that kind of of already buries the involvement
Speaker 3: of black folks in the expansion out west, and why
Speaker 3: it is that we sort of in our framework so
Speaker 3: young before anyone tells it to us, we see the
Speaker 3: enemy as people of color and indigenous people, and we
Speaker 3: see the heroes as white.
Speaker 2: And how that.
Speaker 3: Stuff is communicated before anyone intends to communicate it.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating to me. You know, Cinema is a really
Speaker 2: powerful thing we invented. It really cuts through.
Speaker 3: Your thinking and gets right to your sub conscious and
Speaker 3: starts communicating with you right away, and oftentimes in ways
Speaker 3: that the people who make films, including us, don't expect.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what everyone says. There's a movie that
Speaker 3: you're right, there's a movie you filmed, there's a movie
Speaker 3: that you edit, but you can't ever control the movie
Speaker 3: that people see and what it.
Speaker 2: Does out in the world.
Speaker 3: A great movie is a relationship between people and the movie.
Speaker 3: And to understand the ways in which particularly systemic racism,
Speaker 3: pression of all kind sort of operates inside of this
Speaker 3: really amazing thing we created.
Speaker 2: I'm endlessly fascinated by that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're right of the thing of I always
Speaker 1: think about like in a different way, but like fight Club,
Speaker 1: I don't think the result of Fight Club was what
Speaker 1: I assume David Fincher wanted, you know.
Speaker 2: What I mean? Really in what way?
Speaker 1: Well as in it's a great film, and I think
Speaker 1: he's very intelligent, it's very well made. But the fact
Speaker 1: that it that it became a sort of beacon for
Speaker 1: sort of alt right sort of men to go, that's
Speaker 1: what I want, rather than this is a satire. This
Speaker 1: is that this was aspirational and and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people sort of kind of took messages from
Speaker 1: it that I don't know were intended, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 2: Sure, Yeah, No, that's that's really real.
Speaker 3: I mean the thing is, like I think, what's really
Speaker 3: hard about making movies and TV shows? Yes, of the
Speaker 3: art versus commerce, but that's too simple. Movies and TV
Speaker 3: shows are dreams. They are big public dreams that we share.
Speaker 3: They operate the way dreams work, which is there's like
Speaker 3: a literal examination of what's happening.
Speaker 2: There's the plot there's this is about this.
Speaker 3: And this and that, But then there's this other part
Speaker 3: that's like totally subconscious and symbolic and speaks to a
Speaker 3: part of us that we can't always even articulate into words.
Speaker 3: And so there is this dance between what a movie
Speaker 3: is supposed to be about and what the intention is
Speaker 3: and what it actually the conversation that that thing starts
Speaker 3: to have with the public. You can't really ever prepare
Speaker 3: for it, and it makes what we do really difficult
Speaker 3: and yet really special and just kind of always an experiment,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you try to keep that in mind?
Speaker 1: Are you good at listen? Dave Lynch is one of
Speaker 1: my favorites, right, and he doesn't explain anything. He will never, ever, ever,
Speaker 1: ever ever say well, this is what it's actually about,
Speaker 1: Well this is what I think it's about. Like he
Speaker 1: just leaves you to dream. It's like he's the dream
Speaker 1: you dream however you want to dream it. I'm never
Speaker 1: going to tell you what I think it is. But
Speaker 1: in your case, as an artist, if people interpret your
Speaker 1: work in a way and you hear it, whether it's
Speaker 1: at a film festival or in a review or anything,
Speaker 1: where you're like, that's fucking not what it's about, do
Speaker 1: you get mad?
Speaker 2: I can?
Speaker 3: I can, And part of me even saying this is
Speaker 3: to remind myself how little control I have. I do
Speaker 3: think that an artist's intention is worth considering when watching something.
Speaker 3: So I both appreciate David Lynch and Stanley Kuberg and
Speaker 3: directors that don't want to say anything, but those are
Speaker 3: also filmmakers who you know, to lean in when you're
Speaker 3: watching a David Lynch film, you know, to sort of
Speaker 3: have a dialectic with that movie that is not a
Speaker 3: movie you just put on and sort of expect it
Speaker 3: to do everything for you, you know. And sometimes I
Speaker 3: have found myself explaining my intentions because I don't.
Speaker 2: Really feel like always I get that benefit.
Speaker 3: I don't always feel like, especially when I first started audiences,
Speaker 3: and also because I tend to make comedies and not dramas.
Speaker 3: I tend to talk about very serious things, but in
Speaker 3: like horror camp or social satire or giant blockbuster comedy
Speaker 3: or you know, these sort of I don't know these genres,
Speaker 3: I really don't get looked at as if there's something
Speaker 3: extra going on, and so I have at times felt
Speaker 3: the need to explain myself and let people know what
Speaker 3: my intention is, but I don't feel great about it.
Speaker 3: Like I want the movie. I want the thing to
Speaker 3: just do its thing in the world and say as
Speaker 3: little about it as possible.
Speaker 2: But not everybody watches things that way, you know.
Speaker 1: I always I think there's a reality of how much
Speaker 1: stuff that is in the world and how I totally
Speaker 1: get the I don't think it's a bad thing if
Speaker 1: you're presenting your thing and it will probably get one
Speaker 1: shot to be seen, that you're allowed to say his his,
Speaker 1: like the lens through which to watch this thing.
Speaker 3: Right, yes, yes, And so I try to find a
Speaker 3: balance there, you know. But he ultimately is not something
Speaker 3: that's really up to me. I'm channeling something. At the
Speaker 3: end of the day, I am.
Speaker 1: What is the film you must relate to?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: It's a movie that's hard to pronounce. It's called Symbio
Speaker 3: Psycho Toxicplasm.
Speaker 1: Okay, and it is.
Speaker 3: By a filmmaker named William Greeves. It came out in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty eight. He is a black documentary filmmaker who,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, created reality TV five years before American Family,
Speaker 3: which is often cited as the documentary project that creates
Speaker 3: reality TV. The reason people don't know about this film
Speaker 3: is because it did the festival circuit, meaning that anyone
Speaker 3: who was a documentary filmmaker in the late sixties, and
Speaker 3: anyone who sort of was in the know and sort
Speaker 3: of frequented a film festival would have seen this film.
Speaker 3: It's incredibly influential, but it was never it was not
Speaker 3: released at its time, and the premise of the movie
Speaker 3: is that William Greaves, who is a black filmmaker in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2: I cannot stress enough the year that this was made.
Speaker 3: Is making a very provocative social satire and what you're watching,
Speaker 3: or what you're told that you're watching, is a documentary
Speaker 3: about the making of that film. And the film itself
Speaker 3: you never really see. You kind of see him and
Speaker 3: these actors working on a scene, and it's a very provocative,
Speaker 3: very provocative scene. But what the film ends up becoming
Speaker 3: about is all of these really liberal, well intentioned white
Speaker 3: kids who are working on the film to learn from
Speaker 3: William Greaves slowly decide that they actually know better than
Speaker 3: him how to direct the film. And what they don't
Speaker 3: know is that he is including the footage of them
Speaker 3: slowly building a mutiny against him in the film itself,
Speaker 3: and it is the first time I ever saw the literal,
Speaker 3: physic cool experience of being a director of color in Hollywood.
Speaker 3: It is the first time I saw it reflected to
Speaker 3: me in film. The struggle that he goes through both
Speaker 3: with which mask to wear for his cast, for his
Speaker 3: crew members, for the people that really know him, for
Speaker 3: the people watching at home. You see him switching between
Speaker 3: the personas that he as a black man in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty eight, feels like he has to switch between. And
Speaker 3: you see the material, You see the inherent like you know, controversy,
Speaker 3: and the material he's making.
Speaker 2: And these people who love him.
Speaker 3: And would never ever, ever, ever admit to themselves that
Speaker 3: they are influenced by his race in any way, shape
Speaker 3: or form, slowly second guess him and think less of
Speaker 3: him totally because of their unconscious bias around his race
Speaker 3: and his ability to lead them and to do what
Speaker 3: he is doing. But they'll never admit that to themselves,
Speaker 3: and they can't even admit it to him. It's just
Speaker 3: something that you as the audience, get to see kind
Speaker 3: of outside of the moment, and it is a profoundly
Speaker 3: entertaining film. It is hilarious. It's like a mockumentary, but
Speaker 3: it's actually real. This actually happened. They just didn't know
Speaker 3: that that was his intention to use to use the
Speaker 3: footage of.
Speaker 2: Them in the movie. They thought he was making that
Speaker 2: other movie.
Speaker 1: Was he never really making the other movie.
Speaker 3: No, he was always making the movie about making the movie.
Speaker 1: So the other movie doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: The other movie doesn't exist.
Speaker 3: Wow, it's just like this wild script where it's it's like,
Speaker 3: it literally is wild.
Speaker 2: It's let's hope that movie ever, but.
Speaker 3: It's I don't know, it's it was one of those
Speaker 3: movies I was so mad I never got to see
Speaker 3: in the film school because when I saw it, I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, oh yeah, that's what I experienced.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I'm not insane.
Speaker 3: Okay, cool, Okay, I'm not crazy, all right, got it?
Speaker 2: Okay? Cool?
Speaker 1: What's it code against?
Speaker 3: It's called Symbio Psycho toxy Plasm.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, I know it's the hardest movie to find,
Speaker 2: but it's out there.
Speaker 3: William Greeb's genius, genius, genius, genius and heralded genius.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Justin Saimy, what's the sexiest film you've ever seen? Please?
Speaker 2: Starship Troopers. The shower scene.
Speaker 1: I mean, I believe I five stars.
Speaker 2: I came into my own.
Speaker 3: I came into my own watching that shower scene and
Speaker 3: watching it over and over again too.
Speaker 1: Can't argue with it. I know Pulverjo got naked himself
Speaker 1: so that the actors couldn't complain about being naked.
Speaker 2: Yes, which I don't think what is that today? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know that would be appropriate.
Speaker 3: But I'm grateful for the work, you know, I'm grateful
Speaker 3: for the ambition, the point of view as it were,
Speaker 3: very grateful.
Speaker 1: There's a sub category to this question, traveling is worrying
Speaker 1: why it does film you've found.
Speaker 3: Okay to I have to give you two answers. So
Speaker 3: one is Nightmare on Elm Street. Two because that is
Speaker 3: literally my gay awakening. I'm sorry. I should not have
Speaker 3: watched that movie at the age that I watched it,
Speaker 3: and that is probably why I didn't quite understand that
Speaker 3: what was happening was bad. Because when he ends up
Speaker 3: in the locker room and the gym coach and stuff
Speaker 3: starts to happening, and then he runs into the gay bar,
Speaker 3: all that felt really exciting to me.
Speaker 2: As a child. I don't I couldn't tell you why
Speaker 2: at the time. I can now.
Speaker 3: And then the other one is also a horror movie,
Speaker 3: Ganja in Hesse, which is you know, it's this nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy three black it's called black exploitation. I would call
Speaker 3: it black experimental horror movie. And it treats like vampirism,
Speaker 3: almost like a drug addiction. And you see Bill Gunn
Speaker 3: who's the director of the film, and.
Speaker 2: Dwayne Jones, who is the lead.
Speaker 3: In Night of a Living Dead, and they are often
Speaker 3: like shirtless, covered in blood and like wandering around in
Speaker 3: a haze. And I've somehow that really works for me.
Speaker 4: They both are giving, like bougie black daddy but doesn't
Speaker 4: shave energy, and that's just not something that I get
Speaker 4: in a lot of places.
Speaker 2: It's something that I don't really see in films.
Speaker 3: And so even though what's happening on screen is very
Speaker 3: shocking and beautiful and terrifying and whatever, I'm kind of like, Okay.
Speaker 1: You like your you like your med. Boogie Daddy's covered
Speaker 1: in blood.
Speaker 3: Boogie Dad is covered in but and they had you know,
Speaker 3: when black men have body hair, chest hair, we sometimes
Speaker 3: call it taco meat because it curls up you know,
Speaker 3: it's like little balls and there's a lot of taco
Speaker 3: meat going on in that movie, and I just really
Speaker 3: appreciate that. You know, it's nineteen seventy three. It was
Speaker 3: a different vibe, it was a different style. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: worked for me, works for me still, so fantastic. I
Speaker 3: would not have said that unless you asked.
Speaker 1: I'm protty.
Speaker 2: Those are my understandswers. Thank you.
Speaker 1: What is objectively the greatest film of all time might
Speaker 1: not be your favorite, but it's the greatest film of
Speaker 1: all time.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and one in Space. Honestly, Yeah, you can
Speaker 2: have it period.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting filmmakers that have on here. Filmmakers
Speaker 1: often say that doesn't come up. Almost no one else
Speaker 1: says it. But the people who said it consistently are directors.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's because it You can't say it's the best story.
Speaker 3: You can't say it's the best dialogue. There's a bunch
Speaker 3: of things you can't say about it that we typically
Speaker 3: understand to be involved in great films. But for me,
Speaker 3: the thing it does something that very few films do consistently,
Speaker 3: which is, for me, it creates a religious experience through
Speaker 3: images alone, and it communicates really deeply existenteal philosophically complicated
Speaker 3: observations about life in the universe, and it does so
Speaker 3: without words. It really stretches the ability of images and sound.
Speaker 3: That's it to communicate some really heavy, heavy, wildly powerful things.
Speaker 3: And it's also a movie I fucking hated for a
Speaker 3: long time. Like I hated it. I hated it probably
Speaker 3: the first six or seven times I watched it because
Speaker 3: it just didn't I didn't know how to watch it.
Speaker 2: I was like, where, Yeah, what are we doing here?
Speaker 3: We're just going to stay in this one shot of
Speaker 3: the of the shuttle like being slowly dropped down, you know.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: But once I actually like gave into that movie, I
Speaker 3: watch it all of the time.
Speaker 2: It is it's like going to movie Church for me.
Speaker 1: That movie you can have it? What is what is
Speaker 1: the film that you could or have? What's the mist Iver?
Speaker 1: Diver get?
Speaker 2: Okay Jackson's American Family Dream? Do you know this movie?
Speaker 1: I died that?
Speaker 2: This movie?
Speaker 1: What is that?
Speaker 3: It is a TV movie that chronicles Little Michael Jackson
Speaker 3: and the Jackson Five all the way up through to
Speaker 3: Michael Jackson's Motown twenty five performance. It stars Angela Bassett
Speaker 3: and a variety of other people playing a variety of
Speaker 3: Jackson's at a variety of ages.
Speaker 2: And I could watch this movie on a loop forever.
Speaker 3: It has absolutely everything that I'm interested in in a story.
Speaker 3: It has pop ambition, It has black people, It has
Speaker 3: Jerry Curls, It has Afros, It has Little Michael Jackson,
Speaker 3: teenage Michael Jackson, Big Michael Jackson, Angela Bassa's speeches about
Speaker 3: various children needing to go to bed immediately before she
Speaker 3: spanks them.
Speaker 2: It is so good.
Speaker 3: And I mean this both ironically and unironically. I really
Speaker 3: genuinely loved this movie. And there was a moment there
Speaker 3: was like probably ten years in my life when VH
Speaker 3: one was just always playing it, and whenever it was on,
Speaker 3: I had to just I stopped whatever I was doing
Speaker 3: and I would finish it from whatever.
Speaker 2: And this is like like a four hour long movie.
Speaker 3: You know, it was broken up into two parts originally
Speaker 3: and aired over two nights.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter if I.
Speaker 3: Meet Michael, you know in Motown Era, I gotta I
Speaker 3: gotta stick with them all the way through, all the
Speaker 3: way through the thriller.
Speaker 2: You know. The ship was like my bible. It was
Speaker 2: like the mythology of my of my life.
Speaker 1: At times, no, i'd they starts coming from two thousand
Speaker 1: and one to.
Speaker 3: Jackson's Jackson's truly that honestly, that sums me up the filmmaker,
Speaker 3: I think pretty well.
Speaker 2: That was smash those things together.
Speaker 3: And you never know if you're gonna like what you get,
Speaker 3: but it is what you're gonna get.
Speaker 1: Now, I don't like to be negative done about you,
Speaker 1: so we'll do it fairly quick. What's the worst for me?
Speaker 2: Ever? So Birth of a Nation? Fuck that movie.
Speaker 1: You could do that on that, you could do that love.
Speaker 2: Look, it's first of all, it doesn't even have sound. Okay,
Speaker 2: it's not a.
Speaker 3: No, it's I mean, it's like it's it's uh. I mean,
Speaker 3: it is just this racist fever dream. And it is
Speaker 3: so overrated. I mean to say that it is overrated. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's such an understatement because yes, of course it brings
Speaker 3: a lot of innovations into cinema, but at the time
Speaker 3: it came out it was overrated. It was like the
Speaker 3: President of the United States, like, this is truth written lightning,
Speaker 3: and it's just that's all it is.
Speaker 2: Minstraal. See, it's just black face, blackface.
Speaker 3: And and Shenanigans and racism and the beginning of like
Speaker 3: the resurgence of the KKK in America. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: this horrible thing that nobody at the time who was
Speaker 3: involved in writing the history of cinema could see was
Speaker 3: a racist piece of shit, like like it took way
Speaker 3: too long for us to have that kind of like
Speaker 3: widespread understanding of the film. And even now, like in
Speaker 3: film school, like we are all still taught this movie
Speaker 3: and it's not and I don't I don't believe in
Speaker 3: centering it.
Speaker 2: Like I think people should see the movie, and I
Speaker 2: think that it does innovate.
Speaker 3: A lot of things, but it's sort of I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's also just not as great as people say it.
Speaker 2: I agree. I agree.
Speaker 1: It was taught at my university and I remember being
Speaker 1: it is weird how it was. I think it was
Speaker 1: kind of sort of pitched like I can't remember, but
Speaker 1: but it wasn't like it was like, yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: bit racist, but it's one of the greatest films ever made,
Speaker 1: so so it's on the list, and it isn't very good.
Speaker 1: It isn't the way when you watch I don't know, Chaplain.
Speaker 2: Or Metropolis Sunset.
Speaker 1: Or you're like, this is really good and then you
Speaker 1: watch bad magics. I think this is ship aside from being.
Speaker 2: And it was extremely popular, and that's worth unpacking.
Speaker 3: Why the first giant blockbuster movie that got people in
Speaker 3: the habit of watching feature like movies, Why that movie
Speaker 3: is also so horribly racist, Like I think that is
Speaker 3: worth talking about, but especially the way it's pitched.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's like, this is a great movie. It's a
Speaker 2: little race. I remember, like, No, the.
Speaker 3: Most important thing to understand about this movie is how
Speaker 3: horribly egregiously racist it is.
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry, it's out right.
Speaker 1: It is a hard book because you're just sort of like,
Speaker 1: it's weird that you're right that it wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago it was still like, yeah, it's on
Speaker 1: the list to greatest physical time with a little caveat
Speaker 1: a little caveat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a there.
Speaker 3: Was a whole controversy at my film school, like a
Speaker 3: couple of years ago about this film's poster and.
Speaker 2: Role in the curriculum. But I understand that d W.
Speaker 3: Griffith, this is an important director for a lot of
Speaker 3: technical reasons, but for my money, yeah, there are other
Speaker 3: there are other films that era worth talking about.
Speaker 1: I think that's it. It is when it's like, I
Speaker 1: agree with you, there's enough other options to look at.
Speaker 2: Or at least a contextualize.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but what is You're in comedy? You've made
Speaker 1: ship tons of comedy. You's done a lot of comedy.
Speaker 1: They're very funny. What's the film that made you laugh?
Speaker 1: The mist?
Speaker 3: Okay, this movie was not meant to be a comedy. Okay,
Speaker 3: but do you remember the movie Obsessed starring Idris Elba,
Speaker 3: Beyonce and Ali Larder.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's like an erotic thriller.
Speaker 2: Sure, uh huh? Yeah, actually, no, it is. It is.
Speaker 2: It is an erotic thriller. Basically, Ali Larder is a
Speaker 2: white woman who works.
Speaker 3: I believe that Idris Elba's job, and it's trying to
Speaker 3: still Beyonce's man. And I also, I don't know if
Speaker 3: this is true or not, but I heard that the
Speaker 3: working title of this movie is oh No, she didn't.
Speaker 3: And I saw this movie at nighttime at a theater
Speaker 3: in what's called the Grove in Los Angeles, and this
Speaker 3: movie theater was filled with drunk homosexuals, black people who
Speaker 3: love Beyonce and like a smattering of general audience who
Speaker 3: truly didn't get that we were all in a very
Speaker 3: different vibe they were. And that was the most incredible
Speaker 3: movie experience I've ever had. People were screaming at the
Speaker 3: top of their lungs at the screen. There's a scene
Speaker 3: where Ali Larder and Beyonce are like facing off in
Speaker 3: an attic and Beyonce has stilettos on, of course, because
Speaker 3: she's freaking Beyonce, and the camera keeps cutting to the stilettos, and.
Speaker 2: You're like, oh my god, is she gonna fall through
Speaker 2: the roof?
Speaker 3: Like can she like continue to wield that axe like
Speaker 3: on these stilettos.
Speaker 2: And I remember someone screaming.
Speaker 3: To the left, to the left, and the entire theater
Speaker 3: like explodes in left, and there was somebody else like
Speaker 3: there was like a couple I believe to my right
Speaker 3: who like really were not understanding what we were all
Speaker 3: asking about it were really upset that we were ruining
Speaker 3: this movie for them, But it was the whole theater.
Speaker 2: It was like this.
Speaker 3: Spontaneous, magical moment of you know, going back to what
Speaker 3: you said, Camp, just the experience of the shared experience
Speaker 3: of what horrible crazy things an audience can get up
Speaker 3: to with your movie, you know.
Speaker 2: Go way beyond anything you imagined.
Speaker 3: And there are plenty of great funny movies that mean
Speaker 3: to be but that never have I had a more enjoyable,
Speaker 3: group communal experience watching a movie than that.
Speaker 2: It truly was.
Speaker 1: My question is I get it and I hear you?
Speaker 1: And I'm genuinely curious if the filmmakers did did because
Speaker 1: that was my understanding of Camp. When you say Camp
Speaker 1: is a film like that, and I kind of go,
Speaker 1: they know, right, they know, you.
Speaker 2: Know, watching that movie.
Speaker 3: Sometimes some people seem to Ali Larder seems to.
Speaker 2: Know what movie she's in. Yes, And there.
Speaker 3: Are some scenes where I feel like I knows in
Speaker 3: some scenes where he does not know. So it's hard
Speaker 3: to really say honest exactly, but if somebody knew at
Speaker 3: some point it was it might have been the editor,
Speaker 3: it might have.
Speaker 2: Been the director.
Speaker 3: But there were just some sequences that were just so
Speaker 3: this one in particular, whether we keep cutting to the shoes,
Speaker 3: you know, not since Brian de Palma has there been
Speaker 3: such attention paid to women's shoes at a climactic moment
Speaker 3: in a movie. And it all had to do with
Speaker 3: the height of the stilettos, and I was like, that's.
Speaker 2: That's all.
Speaker 3: That's an outrageous choice to make right now. And I'm
Speaker 3: so glad that they made it.
Speaker 2: I really am. I adore that film.
Speaker 1: Right justin Yes, sir, my god, my god, you've been wonderful,
Speaker 1: You've been silent, You've been wonderful, wonderful. I've really loved this. However,
Speaker 1: you were at the Academy Awards and you were given
Speaker 1: Lifetime Achievement Award because they were like, fucking hell, we
Speaker 1: should have given him an Oscar for doing white people.
Speaker 1: We should have given an Oscar for bad hair. We
Speaker 1: should have given him ASCA if I want to mention,
Speaker 1: and we didn't because we're idiots, and now we have
Speaker 1: to make up for it with a Lifetime Achievement award.
Speaker 1: And you what I respected about it, and I thought
Speaker 1: it was quite funny, is that because you were like,
Speaker 1: fuck you guys, you're late. You deliberately made your speech
Speaker 1: incredibly boring, and your speech was slid. People were standing up,
Speaker 1: everyone stood up, gave me standivation, and you just dead eyed,
Speaker 1: dead standing boring.
Speaker 2: You stayed.
Speaker 1: You started talking about statistics, You started talking about the
Speaker 1: tax tax situation in America. You were you started, you
Speaker 1: were going the numbers. You were talking about whether you
Speaker 1: could have been an accountant. You started talking about revolution again,
Speaker 1: you were so boring. People were stood and then the
Speaker 1: orchestra started playing the music like maybe we need to
Speaker 1: get them up, and they went people long stuck it.
Speaker 1: But then you kept talking, kept talking, and you stared
Speaker 1: into their eyes today stared into their eyes. And then
Speaker 1: suddenly Colwy you ex spontaneously.
Speaker 2: Combat all over their faces.
Speaker 1: Everyone Meryl streep Den to Washington, Ah. Everyone covered, covered
Speaker 1: in good and on the upside from from people thinking
Speaker 1: this was the most boring moment in Oscar history turned
Speaker 1: into well this would probably be the thing most remembered,
Speaker 1: and it's even topped Will Smith And I'm not the
Speaker 1: Oscars wasn't invited, but I'm like hovering around outside of
Speaker 1: the coffin, you know what I'm like, and I go,
Speaker 1: what was that noise? It's handed like a bomb went off,
Speaker 1: and I put my head in, I go, where's the job?
Speaker 1: Where's Justin? Had his lifetime with everyone? And people went, yeah,
Speaker 1: just in time as well, just in time, he's exploded
Speaker 1: over everyone. I go and I go over to Meryl
Speaker 1: Streep and I go, you're right, baby, and I'm sort
Speaker 1: of scraping scraping you off, and I go to Denzil,
Speaker 1: you're right, Denzil, Can I just have a bit of
Speaker 1: justin I'm growing over to people and in the Bassetts
Speaker 1: there say he was a big fanly sorry, do you mind?
Speaker 1: I GeTe with kind collecting me collect as much as
Speaker 1: you're the cap. It's a fucking mess. It's a mess.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: So I put you on in the coffin. But it's
Speaker 1: still You've got bits of people's jewelry around. There's no
Speaker 1: room in this coffin. And I've I've also seen.
Speaker 2: I touched everyone and.
Speaker 1: Halle Berry you had a bit on jayl I was
Speaker 1: like sorry, Ben was like Jesus Christ. Matt David was there,
Speaker 1: Jack Nick was in coming. Anyway, I get you in
Speaker 1: the coffin. There's no room in this coffin. There's only
Speaker 1: enough room to slip one DVD inside for you to
Speaker 1: take across to the other side. What film are you
Speaker 1: taking to show the Starbucks? The star Banks star Banks,
Speaker 1: jelly Starbucks, Starbucks star what do we call it? You're
Speaker 1: jelly bean star Bucks Stop.
Speaker 2: Oh right, the star birs burst star bursts. What star
Speaker 2: burst jelly beans people that I'm eating?
Speaker 1: Yeah, starburst jelly beans. What are you tearing there telling
Speaker 1: me not to when it's your movie night? As they
Speaker 1: scream every time I e. Heaven Paris is burning? Wow?
Speaker 3: Obviously, yeah, right, the clear Because if they don't, if
Speaker 3: they don't understand what reading is, and that shade came
Speaker 3: from reading, what are we doing in heaven?
Speaker 1: Like if we don't know how to yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: be in heaven.
Speaker 2: We all know how to.
Speaker 3: Pull together the drags and put on a good show.
Speaker 2: Then what's the point We're gonna be up there for
Speaker 2: a really long time? Okay, we need to learn how
Speaker 2: to entertain ourselves.
Speaker 1: So obviously I don't even know why it is obvious.
Speaker 3: Sure, I'm sure that's I'm sure everyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd be amazed. I'm not gonna take it that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't even You probably wouldn't even need to
Speaker 3: include that because I'm sure it's just so repeated.
Speaker 2: Just after guests, justin.
Speaker 1: What a delight?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is there anything people should watch for other than the
Speaker 1: Haunted Mansion, which I guess is coming soon? When does
Speaker 1: it come out?
Speaker 3: July twenty eighth, will be in theaters Disney Plus at
Speaker 3: some point after that, I don't know. And then probably
Speaker 3: after that, the next thing you'll see is Hollywood Black.
Speaker 3: It's a documentary project I'm making about black cinema history,
Speaker 3: so that might be the next thing we'll see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Joy, this has been so great. I've loved this.
Speaker 1: I thank you for doing it. I have a wonderful death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thank you, man, genuine fan of yours.
Speaker 1: Oh Man.
Speaker 3: Honestly, if this is what it's like, this is what
Speaker 3: it's like, I'm up for it.
Speaker 2: Let's do it. I'm down.
Speaker 1: Good day to you. So that was episode two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty one. Head over to the Patreon at patreon
Speaker 1: dot com. Forward slash break Goldstein for the extra twenty
Speaker 1: minutes of chat, secrets and video with Justin. Remember to
Speaker 1: watch Ted Lasso and Shrinking on Apple tv plus. Go
Speaker 1: to Apple Podcasts. Give us a five star rating. But
Speaker 1: right about the film that means the most of you
Speaker 1: and why it's a lovely thing to read. My neighbor
Speaker 1: Marien loves it always makes her cry. Thank you to
Speaker 1: everyone for listening. Thank you to Justin for giving me
Speaker 1: so much of his time, thanks to Scruby's PIP and
Speaker 1: the Distraction Pieces of Network. Thanks to Buddy Peace for
Speaker 1: producing it. Thanks to iHeartMedia and Will Ferrell's Big Money
Speaker 1: Players Network for hosting it. Thanks to Adam Richardson for
Speaker 1: the graphics at least a light them for the photography.
Speaker 1: Come and join me next week for another smash a guest.
Speaker 1: I hope you're all well. Thank you all for listening.
Speaker 1: Then that is it for now. Have a lovely week,
Speaker 1: and please, now more than ever, be excellent to each
Speaker 1: other