Speaker 1: M m m m. You're listening to Playback, a Variety
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio podcast. I'm your host, Variety Awards editor
Speaker 1: Chris Tapley. This week, I'm talking to director Mariel Heller.
Speaker 1: Her new film, Can You Ever Forgive Me? As in
Speaker 1: theaters now with a fantastic leading performance from Melissa McCarthy.
Speaker 1: It's one of the best films of the year. We
Speaker 1: talked about what Heller was looking for after her debut
Speaker 1: feature Diary of a Teenage Girl and a whole lot
Speaker 1: more so, sit tight. This is playback good. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we get a lot of people are just talking like
Speaker 1: this way off to the side. Yeah, he does this
Speaker 1: so he can shoot it really fast, but they fully
Speaker 1: side with really odd. They're so sensitive that like keys
Speaker 1: are really sensensitive, so they don't want to interesting. That's cool.
Speaker 1: When was that last week? It's pretty exacting awesome, all right,
Speaker 1: So you're good there, Dan's gonna get out of your hair. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm here today with Marie L. Heller, the director of
Speaker 1: Can You Ever Forgive Me? Uh, And we were just
Speaker 1: talking about Tell You Ride briefly. I'm always curious this
Speaker 1: was your first tell Your Right experience, right, so you
Speaker 1: know what did you think of the festival this year?
Speaker 1: I thought it was amazing. I felt like it was
Speaker 1: this magical wonderland of cowboys and movies. Um, it's just
Speaker 1: so beautiful there. You can't believe how beautiful you are.
Speaker 1: The places I've been to Sundance a lot of times.
Speaker 1: Sundance is my creative festival home in many ways, so
Speaker 1: I don't know, tell you right, felt like maybe what
Speaker 1: Sundance was when it first started. It feels like a
Speaker 1: small town. I brought my family, my kid and my son,
Speaker 1: and it was just a really neat festival. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: great because it's not like a paparazzi va. You know,
Speaker 1: you go to Toronto a week later and it's completely different,
Speaker 1: totally different. Yeah, I know, you kind of can't imagine
Speaker 1: what it was like. I couldn't picture what it was
Speaker 1: going to be like until I got there and I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, I understand why so many people say
Speaker 1: this is their favorite festival. It's so cool. Were able
Speaker 1: to see movies while you were there? I only saw
Speaker 1: a few. I got to see my friend David Lowry's
Speaker 1: Old Man and again, um, I was mostly going around
Speaker 1: and doing Q and as. That's a hard thing about
Speaker 1: going to a festival with your own movie. It's it's
Speaker 1: hard to see other people's movies. Yeah, absolute, Um, I
Speaker 1: would have loved to see more. Well this movie and
Speaker 1: you ever forgive me? We were joking earlier another long title.
Speaker 1: Well it works and I love the movie that was.
Speaker 1: That was my first time seeing at the premiere there
Speaker 1: and I saw it again last night. Um. You got
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff I want to ask you about
Speaker 1: the aesthetic and stuff as well. But first of all,
Speaker 1: I'm curious about coming off of Diary of a Teenage Girl.
Speaker 1: What were you looking for? It was really hard. I
Speaker 1: mean I think there's a lot of pressure when you've
Speaker 1: made a movie that was. You know, for Diary, I'd
Speaker 1: been working on it for eight years. It was my
Speaker 1: total passion project. It was something I had been fighting
Speaker 1: and scraping by trying to make for so so long.
Speaker 1: And it's sort of and I was so proud of it.
Speaker 1: And how do you follow up something that's been that
Speaker 1: kind of project for you? Um, And there's sort of
Speaker 1: the sophomore slump a lot of people talk about, and
Speaker 1: particularly for women filmmakers, the statistics show women take a
Speaker 1: lot longer to make their second movie. So I was
Speaker 1: really aware of the fact that I didn't want to
Speaker 1: fall into that trap of taking too long to make
Speaker 1: something that I think it's just the systemic sexism of
Speaker 1: our business that women can make a really great first
Speaker 1: movie and have less opportunities come their way for their
Speaker 1: second movie. Um and so, but yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: the average I'm gonna I don't know if these stats
Speaker 1: are still true, but the average for a man who
Speaker 1: has made a first feature was like three to four years,
Speaker 1: and for a woman it was like seven to eight
Speaker 1: years for their second features. So I was aware of
Speaker 1: the fact that I was getting really great opportunities and
Speaker 1: offers coming my way, and I really wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure I made something. I loved making my first movie
Speaker 1: and I realized I really like directing. So but I
Speaker 1: knew I didn't want to make another teenage movie. I
Speaker 1: was getting sent a lot of stuff that was all
Speaker 1: about teenagers they want to try to put you into yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and um. So that was a tricky thing of like, okay,
Speaker 1: but what is what do I want to say about
Speaker 1: sort of the movies I want to make from here
Speaker 1: on out and figuring out what I wanted to make Second,
Speaker 1: I felt like a lot of pressure of like you're
Speaker 1: setting off on sort of a path of who you're
Speaker 1: going to be as an artist. Um and and Carry,
Speaker 1: who was one of my producers from Diary, sent me
Speaker 1: the script for Can You Ever Forgive Me? And she's
Speaker 1: somebody I love and respect a lot. And I knew
Speaker 1: Nicole Hall of Center and love and respect her a lot.
Speaker 1: And then Melissa was at the time maybe interested in
Speaker 1: the script. So it was the opportunity to work with
Speaker 1: all of these smart, interesting women who want to make
Speaker 1: cool movies. And so immediately I was intrigued. And then
Speaker 1: when I read the script, I was so taken by
Speaker 1: Lee as a character. I just loved her. I found
Speaker 1: her to be such an asshole, if I can say
Speaker 1: that on here in a way that like, we tend
Speaker 1: to see male characters who are assholes like that, and
Speaker 1: we don't get a lot of women characters like that.
Speaker 1: And I found her refreshing. Everything about her was so
Speaker 1: she says everything that comes into her mind and cares
Speaker 1: so much more about her intellect than her looks. And
Speaker 1: I just found her to be a character we don't focus.
Speaker 1: He's on a woman over fifty lesbian who is a
Speaker 1: cat lady basically, and who you know. She's not very glamorous,
Speaker 1: she's never had kids, she doesn't fit into sort of
Speaker 1: what the industry norm is for women at the time,
Speaker 1: and I just found her fascinating, so I immediately got
Speaker 1: excited about it. That's an interesting point about you know,
Speaker 1: what seems to be acceptable of leading ladies. I mean
Speaker 1: there's a couple of examples this year, like Carrie Mulligan
Speaker 1: and Wildlife is a good example. It's a messy character.
Speaker 1: It's not something you would, you know, expect, I guess
Speaker 1: based on what seems to be accepted. But there's that.
Speaker 1: There's like Nicole Kidman and Destroyer as well. So we're
Speaker 1: finally starting to show a wider range of women characters
Speaker 1: in a way that we've always had this wide range
Speaker 1: of male characters. It's almost like, if you get female
Speaker 1: filmmakers making the movies, you'll get that isn't that interesting?
Speaker 1: What uh did you relate to Lee Israel at all?
Speaker 1: Like writer to write the struggle? Like definitely, I think
Speaker 1: big pet peeve of mine as writers in movies, because
Speaker 1: I feel like there's always there's always this trope, which
Speaker 1: is oh, you're struggling to write, and then all of
Speaker 1: the sudden inspiration hits and it just pours out of you.
Speaker 1: And it's this like cosmic um divine moment when the
Speaker 1: truth of the matter is writing is struggling and writing
Speaker 1: is painful. And I always love it when people are
Speaker 1: more honest about just how hard and horrible writing can be.
Speaker 1: Even though I love writing, it is soul crushing as
Speaker 1: an experience and as a lifestyle. And so to have
Speaker 1: a character who was actually expressing the sort of soul
Speaker 1: devastation that happens when you're in a place in your
Speaker 1: life where your writing is not going the way that
Speaker 1: you wanted to be going, I totally related to and
Speaker 1: I found to be really honest and was something that
Speaker 1: I tried to really highlight in the movie too, in
Speaker 1: an honest way, what it really feels like to be
Speaker 1: a and especially to be a writer who um identifies
Speaker 1: so much with her writing that like she views herself
Speaker 1: through her writing and wants other people to view her
Speaker 1: through her writing. So it's it's not just it's her identity,
Speaker 1: it's an extension of it's an extension of her. So
Speaker 1: to be in a place where that's not being recognized
Speaker 1: and where people are sort of shooting on what she
Speaker 1: wants to write or what she finds interesting. It's it's
Speaker 1: such a devastation. I I related to that and felt
Speaker 1: like that was important to be honest about. So I've
Speaker 1: got to be a hard thing to figure out how
Speaker 1: to visualize to the visual medium like this and carry
Speaker 1: that across, right, Yeah. Yeah, And there's only so many
Speaker 1: times you can cut to a like a p o
Speaker 1: V shot of the blank page of a typewriter. Um.
Speaker 1: We did a lot of kind of subtle things with
Speaker 1: sound design to around the typewriter because well we had
Speaker 1: all of these old electric typewriters and non electric typewriters,
Speaker 1: but her typewriter that was her typewriter had this sort
Speaker 1: of hum, which the moment we turned it on, the
Speaker 1: actual prop on, we all commented on this hum, and
Speaker 1: we really sort of used that hum as this sort
Speaker 1: of pressure cooker, like when she's staring at it and
Speaker 1: the hum is sort of subtly rising in tone to
Speaker 1: kind of just show how much pressure she feels in
Speaker 1: that moment. Whenever you first see the typewriter. Actually, I
Speaker 1: feel like it's that shot stands out to me every time.
Speaker 1: It does seem like this contraption of note Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the typewriters are sort of their own character in the
Speaker 1: movie because we have so many. We have all for
Speaker 1: every every different literary person that she forges from, Dorothy Parker,
Speaker 1: town Old Coward, Edna Ferber, Louise Brooks. They each have
Speaker 1: their own typewriter and with like a little note card
Speaker 1: with their name on it based on sort of historically
Speaker 1: what they would have been writing on. And slowly over
Speaker 1: the course of the movie she gets like twenty five
Speaker 1: typewriters littering her apartment with all these different ones. But
Speaker 1: that was really fun getting to sort of figure out
Speaker 1: who would be with which typewriter. What diligence on her part,
Speaker 1: rightly is she was meticulous about it all. She also
Speaker 1: kept copies of all of her forgeries, which she really
Speaker 1: shouldn't have done. That doesn't help the case yet, did
Speaker 1: you were you aware of much of this? No, Like
Speaker 1: most people, I didn't know anything about Lee. I think
Speaker 1: that's part of what's so interesting about her too, is
Speaker 1: she in her time was pretty overlooked. Even you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who I would bring her up
Speaker 1: to would say, oh, I remember her obituary. She remember
Speaker 1: hearing about her forgeries in her New York Times obituary.
Speaker 1: I wish is a sad state of kind of her
Speaker 1: career and the fact that she didn't get the recognition
Speaker 1: she really deserved. But um, I didn't know much about
Speaker 1: her until I read the script, and then I just
Speaker 1: got so excited. And we had we had access to
Speaker 1: a lot of research and a lot of her personal
Speaker 1: papers and and Carrie new Lee, so she had gotten
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff before she died, and I was
Speaker 1: able to go through all of her personal notes and
Speaker 1: get to know her in a different kind of way.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the loop of the film.
Speaker 1: I love the lie in the movie. It's such a
Speaker 1: it's a cozy movie. Yeah, you know, like it winter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and you know, I feel like you were bouncing
Speaker 1: around my old neighborhood. Was there Upper east Side stuff
Speaker 1: going ever east Side, Upper West mostly and then some
Speaker 1: downtown where Julius is, which is the oldest gay bar
Speaker 1: in New York. Yeah. We we talked a lot about
Speaker 1: the lighting before we started filming. Brandon Trost, who's my cinematographer,
Speaker 1: and I and that we wanted it to feel like
Speaker 1: we were filming in all these old bookstores. We wanted
Speaker 1: it to feel like there windows had been painted shut
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. There was twenty years of dust floating
Speaker 1: around the air, but that warm feeling of being in
Speaker 1: a bookstore when it's snowing outside and there's that specific
Speaker 1: winter light coming through the windows with dust, keep expecting
Speaker 1: like a like coffee steam to waft end of the frame. Totally,
Speaker 1: it's all a little bit coffee steam. The whole movie
Speaker 1: kind of has a bit of a coffee stained feel
Speaker 1: to it. All these old you can kind of smell
Speaker 1: the books, I feel like when you watched the movie,
Speaker 1: like you can, I feel like you can smell our
Speaker 1: apartment too. Yes, I'm sorry for that a kid, I know,
Speaker 1: even though I'm yeah, not no spoilers, But even though
Speaker 1: I know that that's Plato, it's still yet to like,
Speaker 1: I feel like I can smell it too when I
Speaker 1: watched it. The sound when it is the trash candidates
Speaker 1: to it too. Yeah. Did you have any like references
Speaker 1: visually speaking, like anything that anything you were looking to
Speaker 1: emulate at all, like that filmically, filmically, anything really artwork, photographs.
Speaker 1: I mean, we definitely looked at a lot of lesbian
Speaker 1: writers from the seventies and eighties to kind of establish
Speaker 1: Lee's look. There weren't a ton of photographs of Lee
Speaker 1: in her natural habitat, Like the only photos we could
Speaker 1: find of her were like when she got dressed up
Speaker 1: for a book jacket photo shoot or whatever. So it
Speaker 1: didn't feel like a real indication of her style, and
Speaker 1: we kind of wanted to. We wanted to root her
Speaker 1: in this very New York literary world. Um. We gave
Speaker 1: her sort of a lot of masculine clothes and it
Speaker 1: was really character based, trying to figure out how she
Speaker 1: held herself in the world and how she kind of
Speaker 1: pushed her way through the world and what what that
Speaker 1: would feel like. UM. And I don't know, I'm terrible
Speaker 1: whenever anyone asked me, like, what movies did you watch
Speaker 1: as inspiration for this, because obviously, like you see a
Speaker 1: New York movie and everyone thinks of like early Days
Speaker 1: Woody Allen, It's hard not to it's hard not to
Speaker 1: think about Manhattan and other movies like that. Um. But
Speaker 1: we were also just looking at movies from the early
Speaker 1: nineties and trying to make sure we were making something
Speaker 1: period wise that actually felt tuned into the filmic world
Speaker 1: back then too. In many ways, we felt like we
Speaker 1: were making an old movie, like it was more of
Speaker 1: a movie from the seventies or eighties, because it's so
Speaker 1: character based and not really in the style that we
Speaker 1: make movies right now. Yeah, it has its own look
Speaker 1: as a New York movie very much, I think. And
Speaker 1: also regarding just rooting it in the time as the
Speaker 1: Paul Simon song that's from right, so it's right around
Speaker 1: the same time. That's kind of cool. I can't run,
Speaker 1: but I love it. I love that song and I
Speaker 1: love that I don't know if this is a coincidence
Speaker 1: or not, but I picked that song because it's a
Speaker 1: song I've always really loved. And since we put it
Speaker 1: in the movie and he agreed to let us put
Speaker 1: it in the movie, which was such a big deal,
Speaker 1: he's been like playing that song again. And my friend
Speaker 1: went to his concert in Pittsburgh and he played it,
Speaker 1: and then he played it on s and l I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, I think this song is having a resurgence.
Speaker 1: Maybe in the small part you can take credit. It's
Speaker 1: a great song because it's such a great like about
Speaker 1: town kind of song. Yeah, it's got a movement to
Speaker 1: it. It It feels almost like score when it starts, and
Speaker 1: it has these like ma lettas that kind of play
Speaker 1: at the beginning, and instrumentation that we had been using
Speaker 1: in our score too, so that when it when we
Speaker 1: slipped it in, it kind of actually felt like it
Speaker 1: was already part of our world, exactly what you always
Speaker 1: hope to have happened. Yeah, let's talk about Melissa McCarthy.
Speaker 1: She's outstanding. I think it's her best performance to date.
Speaker 1: I guess what kind of quality was of the most
Speaker 1: importance and an actress for this role. It's so interesting
Speaker 1: because I think it was all about her being able
Speaker 1: to approach this character without judgment, to find the ways
Speaker 1: in and to um be willing to be vulnerable. I
Speaker 1: say vulnerable, but Lee is not vulnerable in the way
Speaker 1: she presents in the world. She's a very guarded person,
Speaker 1: very different energy from Melissa. Melissa's like this light, bubbly,
Speaker 1: glowing human like. She has the opposite qualities when she
Speaker 1: walks in a room to what Lee has. Because Lee
Speaker 1: is like this, she has the weight of the world.
Speaker 1: She like walks through the world like a boulder or something.
Speaker 1: She kind of she walks like she has a rain
Speaker 1: cloud on top of her head a bit and kind
Speaker 1: of make sure you know about it too. Yeah, she does.
Speaker 1: And so it was really about whether Melissa could kind
Speaker 1: of get into that skin lovely and feel what it
Speaker 1: is to be walking through the world like that and
Speaker 1: yet still feel connected to her heart, because we had
Speaker 1: to be able to feel why she was so guarded
Speaker 1: and what was causing her to walk through the world
Speaker 1: with that level of armor on. And Um, she immediately
Speaker 1: understood Lee in a really nice way. I think we
Speaker 1: both agreed about who she was and we enjoyed her
Speaker 1: as a character in the same kind of way. Um.
Speaker 1: And she didn't seem scared of her, she didn't seem
Speaker 1: to judge her. Um. It was very similar to when
Speaker 1: I first met with Alexander scars Gard to talk about
Speaker 1: his his part in My first movie Diary. It was
Speaker 1: so important that he wouldn't judge the character and could
Speaker 1: find the humanity in a character that could otherwise seem
Speaker 1: judged by the world. And I just find it really
Speaker 1: important when we're telling stories that we're not trying to
Speaker 1: we're not trying to editorialize, We're really just trying to
Speaker 1: present somebody's truth and their heart and let them be
Speaker 1: and let show their behavior in a way that makes
Speaker 1: us more connected to them without kind of telling the
Speaker 1: audience how to feel about them. So Melissa just blew
Speaker 1: me away. I mean every day she came so prepared.
Speaker 1: She was word perfect, Like every word of the script
Speaker 1: exactly has written, no improvisation, no improvisation unless we kind
Speaker 1: of had talked about it ahead of time, like oh,
Speaker 1: this little thing, we could add on a few lines
Speaker 1: here and there, but in general, it was like we
Speaker 1: were on the script, and she was so in love
Speaker 1: with Lee's voice and the way that she talked that
Speaker 1: she didn't want to change it by kind of bringing
Speaker 1: in her own. You know, Melissa is m So it
Speaker 1: was really about like honoring who Lee was and the
Speaker 1: way she would have walked through the world. She's got
Speaker 1: some great line deliveries, though, oh my god, she's still
Speaker 1: so funny. It's just it's a very specific, dry sense
Speaker 1: of humor. I mean, the one that comes to my mind.
Speaker 1: I just burst out laughing at it last night, it
Speaker 1: was that's batshit Marjorie. Marjorie, right, Marjorie, because that's badget Marjorie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, and there's when she even when she says
Speaker 1: to Jack when he goes, it's very hard to find
Speaker 1: a boyfriend at my age, I'm losing my hair, and
Speaker 1: she goes, I don't think that's the reason. In this way,
Speaker 1: that's like kills me every time. She's awesome. Well, the
Speaker 1: same question kind of for Richard D. Grant, Um, like,
Speaker 1: what was the utmost importance? What quality did you need
Speaker 1: that I'm actor playing Jack? And obviously chemistry is a
Speaker 1: huge part of yes, and they have amazing chemistry. They
Speaker 1: have amazing off camera. Absolutely, they are such a delight together.
Speaker 1: I love them. I love that this movie has sparked
Speaker 1: I think a real friendship that will last. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: Richard has just this effervescent quality to him. It's the
Speaker 1: opposite of Lee. Jack needed to be like so filled
Speaker 1: to the brim with life, and Lee like lives in
Speaker 1: the past. She's so caught in her ah what could
Speaker 1: have been and the pain of her situation and Jack's
Speaker 1: situation is in many ways more dire, but he's totally
Speaker 1: happy and content and not thinking about anything but the
Speaker 1: present moment. And I had been a fan of Richard
Speaker 1: since with Nail and I and just find him to
Speaker 1: be infectious, like he is just an infectious person. You
Speaker 1: want to stare at him, and he's so I don't know,
Speaker 1: he's just willing to go to these places that are
Speaker 1: so wonderfully silly and full of life. And he's got
Speaker 1: no self consciousness. I feel like he's just really present
Speaker 1: and raw and puts it out there. And I mean
Speaker 1: when he shows up in the movie, some one of
Speaker 1: my friends put it to me. She was like, God,
Speaker 1: he sparkles. It's true. He comes on screen and sparkles.
Speaker 1: And um, so I made the character British. He hadn't.
Speaker 1: The real Jack Hawk wasn't British, but I knew I
Speaker 1: wanted it to be Richard and um and and I
Speaker 1: really kind of it actually was important to me to
Speaker 1: sort of flesh out his character even more than it
Speaker 1: had been in the previous drafts. But um giving him
Speaker 1: both this effervescent, loving life quality, but also that he
Speaker 1: was said in the context of the AIDS crisis that
Speaker 1: he's a gay man in New York. That stuff was
Speaker 1: lacking in the original Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: storyline that was was in the in the script. When
Speaker 1: I came on board, but it was something that I
Speaker 1: had read the book and knew that the real Jack
Speaker 1: Hawk had died of AIDS. And it felt really important
Speaker 1: to me that if we're making a movie about a
Speaker 1: lesbian and a gay man in New York, that we
Speaker 1: don't ignore the fact that it's in AIDS. You know,
Speaker 1: that they're in the midst of the AIDS crisis, and
Speaker 1: that in many ways, those two communities had been so separate,
Speaker 1: and we're coming together in that moment of pain. A
Speaker 1: lot of lesbians were taking care of gay men who
Speaker 1: were dying. These commune and these were sort of leaning
Speaker 1: on each other in a new found kind of way. Um.
Speaker 1: And in so many ways, I loved that these were
Speaker 1: two people who, for very different reasons, had nobody left
Speaker 1: in their life. You know that Lee had pushed everyone away.
Speaker 1: And I think the first line I added to the
Speaker 1: script was Richard's line where he says, I have no
Speaker 1: one to tell all my friends are dead. Um. And
Speaker 1: he says it really lightheartedly, but just that slight that
Speaker 1: dichotomy for his character between this, you know, lightheartedness and
Speaker 1: the context with which he's surviving, which is everyone he
Speaker 1: knows is dead. There's a reason they both need each other,
Speaker 1: and then their their final meeting was really important to me.
Speaker 1: That was something that wasn't in the script that I
Speaker 1: sort of invented based on a line from Lee's book.
Speaker 1: There was a line in Lee's book where she said
Speaker 1: that she saw Jack one last time. She ran into
Speaker 1: him and in doctor's office. He was walking with crutches,
Speaker 1: and she never said anything to him, but she had
Speaker 1: an urge to trip him. And I took just that
Speaker 1: sentiment and wrote that final scene between the two of them,
Speaker 1: which I think in many ways gives the sort of
Speaker 1: great context of their love story and their relationship and
Speaker 1: the friendship, which I think is the basis of sort
Speaker 1: of the whole movie. For me, at least, for sure,
Speaker 1: I have a friend. He's a big with Nail and
Speaker 1: I fan. You got to meet Richard and tell you're right.
Speaker 1: I've never seen that dude beam. People who love Richard
Speaker 1: love him to such a degree. Both Melissa and Richard
Speaker 1: have rapid fan bases. But the lucky thing is they're
Speaker 1: also the kindest people who are so sweet to people
Speaker 1: that they meet and are It's so nice to see
Speaker 1: the way that they treat humans in the world. They're
Speaker 1: both really really humble, normal people. Yeah, and Richard is
Speaker 1: really funny because he smells everything. He like experiences the
Speaker 1: world through his nose. So we'd walk into these old
Speaker 1: bookstores where we were filming, and the first thing you
Speaker 1: would do would just walk up to a bookshelf, pull
Speaker 1: out an old book and just like inhale its smell
Speaker 1: and then put it back, or like push his face
Speaker 1: up against some wall and smell the location. He's a
Speaker 1: real hilarious, wonderful man. I wanted to branch out a
Speaker 1: little bit away from the movie. You're you're currently shooting
Speaker 1: the Mr. Rogers film. Yeah, Yeah, it's been called You're
Speaker 1: My Friend right now, it's sort of in transition. It's
Speaker 1: going to be we just keep going to the Mr.
Speaker 1: Rogers movie. Might as well. Yeah, I mean, what what
Speaker 1: has that experience been, Like, what did you you know
Speaker 1: in developing that? Like, what did you learn about Fred
Speaker 1: Rogers That was surprising? Maybe more things than I could
Speaker 1: possibly say. It's totally changed my life. Spending the last
Speaker 1: year Immerston Fred Rogers teachings and philosophy about the world,
Speaker 1: It's been such a privilege. I honestly, it's been one
Speaker 1: of the best experiences of my entire life. UM. I
Speaker 1: grew up with Mr Rogers. I have a young child
Speaker 1: and we've been watching Daniel Tiger's neighborhood, so I was
Speaker 1: pretty familiar with his sort of philosophy of kids. UM,
Speaker 1: but realizing that he just walked the walk, that it
Speaker 1: was an actual part of who he was as a person,
Speaker 1: and his influence on the world was so profound, and
Speaker 1: everyone who came into contact with him was really kind
Speaker 1: of changed for the better by knowing him. And the
Speaker 1: story is really not a biopic. It's about a journalist who,
Speaker 1: in interviewing him and getting to know him, really does
Speaker 1: change his life. And um, it's based on Tom Juneau,
Speaker 1: who wrote a piece for him about s On for Esquire,
Speaker 1: wrote a cover story about Fred, and I was talking
Speaker 1: to Tom about it recently and he was saying, you know,
Speaker 1: after I met Fred, my writing changed. You can go
Speaker 1: into my work and see my before Fred and my
Speaker 1: after Fred. It has a very different tone. I couldn't
Speaker 1: couldn't be mean. I couldn't, I couldn't see the world
Speaker 1: through a sort of cynical lens anymore. It really changed
Speaker 1: the way I wanted to write. And you've been shooting
Speaker 1: that Pittsburgh. We've been in Pittsburgh for the last four months.
Speaker 1: Were you there when when we were not? Weirdly, it
Speaker 1: was the one week we came to New York to
Speaker 1: do two days of filming. UM, but we just and
Speaker 1: then we went back a few days later. And I
Speaker 1: just got back from Pittsburgh on Friday. I love that city.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite cities of the country. That
Speaker 1: city too, and I had never spent any time there
Speaker 1: until this last year. UM, I had no idea about
Speaker 1: the city. It's got some of the kindest, most down
Speaker 1: to earth people. It was such a wonderful place to
Speaker 1: make a movie. We were we were very rooted actually
Speaker 1: in the school in the Squirrel Hill area, and that
Speaker 1: community has been incredibly kind to us. All of the
Speaker 1: people from the Fred Rogers company and who worked with
Speaker 1: a new Fred for a long time, his wife Joanne
Speaker 1: Bill Eisler, who was the head of his company for
Speaker 1: many many years, are the people who have like welcomed
Speaker 1: us to Pittsburgh and made us part of their family.
Speaker 1: And they all live in Squirrel Hill. So it was
Speaker 1: in it was more painful than I can even explain.
Speaker 1: We got to be back there last week when there
Speaker 1: was a Unity event and Tom Hanks flew in and
Speaker 1: um spoke at it beautifully with Joe and Rogers, and
Speaker 1: we all went and halted filming so we could all
Speaker 1: go and be at the Unity event together and take
Speaker 1: a moment to kind of honor what was happening. But
Speaker 1: it was very weird. It was very weird to get
Speaker 1: to know a city so well, be so in love
Speaker 1: with the city, and feel like it was our new home,
Speaker 1: and then leave and have this horrible tragedy happened. That's
Speaker 1: what got me so much about it was knowing how
Speaker 1: much I love that city and then to see that
Speaker 1: disease kind of make its way there. Yea, and my
Speaker 1: family is Jewish, I obviously felt very connected and my Yeah,
Speaker 1: my kid had been going to school three blocks away
Speaker 1: from that and the entire time we were there, So
Speaker 1: it was really upsetting. I mean, I think it's upsetting
Speaker 1: for every single person in the world, Um, but it
Speaker 1: felt particularly personal. Are you editing now? I'm about to
Speaker 1: start editing. Yeah, So I really wrapped on Friday. We
Speaker 1: actually did a week of miniatures, which I don't know
Speaker 1: if you remember from the show, but Mr Rogers had
Speaker 1: the whole miniature neighborhood where he would pull out from
Speaker 1: the little yellow house and see the trolley going by.
Speaker 1: So we took that theme and expanded it in the
Speaker 1: movie and we have that plus and we so we
Speaker 1: did four days of miniature shooting, which was so fun.
Speaker 1: And Tom Hanks, I mean, and it's too bad. Nobody
Speaker 1: loves Tom Hanks. It's too bad. He such a bad actor.
Speaker 1: I know. I got to convince him. I found this
Speaker 1: young upstart named Tom Hanks and he's really great now
Speaker 1: he Working with Tom was amazing. He's so wonderful and
Speaker 1: he really embodied the spirit of Fred. He's he just
Speaker 1: kind of understood him in a deep cellular level. UM,
Speaker 1: and it was really very cool to see. We also
Speaker 1: totally recreated the sets from the show, like exactly perfect
Speaker 1: production design. Jade Heally and she you know, just oh,
Speaker 1: everybody was in heaven. I mean, it was such it
Speaker 1: felt like a huge responsibility, but it was also really exciting.
Speaker 1: And we shot in the actual stage where they shot
Speaker 1: the show, So we were in the actual place where
Speaker 1: Fred was for forty years. UM and a bunch of
Speaker 1: people who worked on the show would come in and
Speaker 1: visit and everybody would go, I mean you would see
Speaker 1: everybody kind of gasp when they first walked in because
Speaker 1: they felt like they were walking back in time. And
Speaker 1: then people a few people said it even smells right,
Speaker 1: which was really neat. I had a friend in film
Speaker 1: school that I think he worked on Mr. Rogers, like
Speaker 1: school or something like that. Yeah, I mean pretty much
Speaker 1: everyone in Pittsburgh in the film community worked on the
Speaker 1: show at some point. Like, we had so many people
Speaker 1: who worked on the movie who had worked on the program.
Speaker 1: Um one of our camera operators who was we were
Speaker 1: shooting on old two cameras for the show portion of
Speaker 1: the movie to really emulate what they looked like back then. Cool.
Speaker 1: He had been not operating back then, and he was
Speaker 1: one of our operators and pushing those giant things pedestal,
Speaker 1: this giant pedestal we had exactly that. Yeah, I also
Speaker 1: wanted to branch out. There's a couple of other projects
Speaker 1: that that I've read your name attached to, or are
Speaker 1: you do you know what you're gonna do next after Mr? Rogers?
Speaker 1: Or are you I'm not someone who Zach got it
Speaker 1: doing more than one thing at a time. I kind
Speaker 1: of have to, like I just go so full, all
Speaker 1: in on whatever it is that I'm working on. And um,
Speaker 1: it's even hard to be shooting a movie and promoting
Speaker 1: a movie at the same time. I've never had to
Speaker 1: do that before. But like, you know, for two years,
Speaker 1: can you ever Forgive Me? Was my whole world in life?
Speaker 1: And then it was done and I put it away,
Speaker 1: and then it took a number of months before it
Speaker 1: came out. So then it's like, now I'm all in
Speaker 1: on the Mr. Rogers movie. It's all I sleep, breathe,
Speaker 1: and dream pretty much. Yeah, these are all these these
Speaker 1: two movies that you've made. Then when you've got coming
Speaker 1: up and and you know, if you make it to
Speaker 1: these others, they're all very different movies from what I
Speaker 1: can tell. I'm just curious, like, do you have like
Speaker 1: a personal mission statement going forward? Like what are you
Speaker 1: interested in making going forward? I don't feel like I can't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's until the Mr. Rodgers movie I
Speaker 1: felt like I just wanted to make movies about women
Speaker 1: because we just don't have enough of them, and there
Speaker 1: are so many fascinating women whose stories I want to tell,
Speaker 1: in whose voices I feel like need to be heard Mr.
Speaker 1: I keep saying Mr. Rodgers was the one man who
Speaker 1: could pull me into making a movie about men um
Speaker 1: But you know, it's just about wherever your heart is
Speaker 1: at the current moment. And for me, right now, I've
Speaker 1: been so focused on raising my kid and thinking about
Speaker 1: the state of the world and where we are politically
Speaker 1: and emotionally, and where we are, you know, thinking about
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh in the hate in the world, and making a
Speaker 1: movie about kindness and about emotion and about people trying
Speaker 1: to be better. I just felt right right now. And
Speaker 1: who knows where we'll be in another year and what
Speaker 1: we'll feel right then. I'm sure that'll be a nice
Speaker 1: salve throughout that. For now, everyone should check Golt Can
Speaker 1: you ever forgive me? It is in limited release? Now,
Speaker 1: what's the wide date that it's like it's right, I
Speaker 1: think it's the sixteen. It'll make it to you eventually,
Speaker 1: and you should see it. I'm sure it'll be up
Speaker 1: for many awards, as it should. And knock Wood, but
Speaker 1: Mario Heller, thank you so much form on the show
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. Appreciate, really appreciated