Speaker 1: Look how 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 and writer, director,
Speaker 1: a fire extinguisher, and I love films. As Frederick Douglass
Speaker 1: once said, it is easier to build strong children than
Speaker 1: to repair broken men. Start them on inside out and
Speaker 1: they will have the maturity they need to whether any
Speaker 1: storm coming. Every week i'mte special guest over, tell them
Speaker 1: they've died. Then I get them to discuss their life
Speaker 1: from films that meant the most of them. Previous guests
Speaker 1: include Barry Jenkins, Amber Ruffin, Sharon Stone, Mark Frost, and
Speaker 1: even Bed Clambells. But this week it's the brilliant writer,
Speaker 1: producer and director and all round legend mister Jason Rightman.
Speaker 1: The last three dates of my North American stand up
Speaker 1: tour of Second Best Night of Your Life are happening
Speaker 1: in Baltimore, Bellingham and Seattle. Get the last tickets available
Speaker 1: at Brett goldsteintour dot com. Thank you to everyone who
Speaker 1: has come on this tour. What's a fucking time it
Speaker 1: has been. Come along to the last three and we'll
Speaker 1: have a rite whole time. Head over to the Patreon
Speaker 1: at patreon dot com forward slash Brett Goldstein, where you'll
Speaker 1: get about twenty minutes of maybe a bit more extra
Speaker 1: stuff with Jason, including a secret you get the whole
Speaker 1: episode uncut Adfrey and as a video. Check it out
Speaker 1: over at patreon dot com Forward slash Brett Goldstein. Jason
Speaker 1: Rightman Jason Rightman is one of the all time great directors.
Speaker 1: He has made some absolute stone cold masterpieces, including Juno,
Speaker 1: Young Adult, Tully Up in the Air. He's worked with
Speaker 1: The Genie and Ghostbusters, Frozen Empire, and he's responsible for
Speaker 1: the new film Saturday Night about the first show of
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live, which I believe is in cinemas now
Speaker 1: and if not in the next week, go and see.
Speaker 1: It's fucking brilliant. We had never met before, but we
Speaker 1: recorded this on zoom. I loved it so much, so
Speaker 1: I think it might be one of my old time
Speaker 1: favorite episodes. He was such a treat and I really
Speaker 1: think you're gonna love this one. That is for now.
Speaker 1: I very much hope you enjoy this episode. Three hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty of films to be buried with, Hello and
Speaker 1: welcome to films to be buried with. It is me
Speaker 1: Brett Colstein, and I'm joined today by a legend, a hero,
Speaker 1: a writer, a producer, a director. He has genuinely made
Speaker 1: some of the best films of all time. He's a junoer,
Speaker 1: He's an Up in the Era, He's a Ghostbusters, He's
Speaker 1: a young adulter, He's a labor dayer, He's a men,
Speaker 1: women and children, you name it, he's done it. I
Speaker 1: can't believe he's here. He's also the first person who
Speaker 1: knew quite rightly that James A. Custer was a movie star.
Speaker 1: Please welcome to the show. Is the one and only
Speaker 1: here he is it, say's a right man.
Speaker 2: Of the many times I've listened to you do that,
Speaker 2: I never imagine, Oh maybe one day I'll hear him
Speaker 2: do that about me. And I am so flattered. And
Speaker 2: it is just as fun as I thought it would be.
Speaker 1: That's nice. I am like, truly a massive, massive valigold.
Speaker 1: I have the poster of Young Adult on my will
Speaker 1: in London, no kidding. I think it's one of the
Speaker 1: great underrated classics of all time. That film, I think
Speaker 1: it's such a great movie. And Up in the Air
Speaker 1: was rightly beloved and I love it. I do not
Speaker 1: love I love Tally, I love men, women and children.
Speaker 1: You haven't made a bad one.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've made bad movies. I'll be the first one
Speaker 2: to fight you on that, but I'll tell you why.
Speaker 2: Your thoughts on Young Adult mean a lot to me
Speaker 2: because it was my fourth movie and I was coming
Speaker 2: off of Juno and Up in the Air and I
Speaker 2: was in a place where I could really make anything. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and whatever weight I had in that moment, I used
Speaker 2: to make Young Adult a movie where the hero is
Speaker 2: trying to end somebody else's marriage, and people didn't get
Speaker 2: it at the time, but I'm really proud of it,
Speaker 2: and so when I meet someone who really loves that film,
Speaker 2: it's a reminder that it was all worth it.
Speaker 1: It's so so good and I'm sure I've talked about
Speaker 1: it on this podcast before because there's a moment in
Speaker 1: it and I was like, it's so rare to see
Speaker 1: people always talk about in cinema in everything you know
Speaker 1: this that they always go are they likable enough? Other
Speaker 1: characters are likable enough? And I always think it's bullshit.
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter, they just have to be competing. And Young
Speaker 1: Adult was such an interesting cinema experience where the audience
Speaker 1: when she kisses him, half the audience were like yay,
Speaker 1: and half the audience were like no, like people genuinely
Speaker 1: didn't know how to feel. I was like, this right, right,
Speaker 1: yeah cool.
Speaker 2: I think Young Adult is an ugly mirror. It's a
Speaker 2: mirror to the ugly parts of ourselves that we don't
Speaker 2: want to recognize. And that's something that Diablo and I
Speaker 2: think I've always been interested in, is the film screen
Speaker 2: is a mirror to the things you were most vulnerable about.
Speaker 2: I read that script and I just immediately fell hard
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 1: It's so good. It's also like a really I think,
Speaker 1: a really subtle, excellent portrait of alcoholism in a way
Speaker 1: that it isn't an addiction film, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: but it is right. That is a film about an acoholic,
Speaker 1: and it's fucking good.
Speaker 2: What a great It's a movie about loneliness. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: that's what Up in the Air is about as well.
Speaker 2: So you know, when I meet people who like those films,
Speaker 2: I have to ask right back, it's how lonely are you?
Speaker 1: Lonely enough? That that's one of my favorite films. So
Speaker 1: I was like I feel seen great and it's such
Speaker 1: a good film about consequences, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like the end of it and that when he knocks
Speaker 1: on her door and it's like, yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is your life, this is what you have built. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one thing to theorize about how you think
Speaker 2: life is supposed to be lived and then suddenly it's
Speaker 2: put right back in your face. I knew that I
Speaker 2: wanted to make up in the year when I knew
Speaker 2: the ending, and Young Adult was really similar that way,
Speaker 2: and they have oddly similar endings, Yeah, they do. It's
Speaker 2: two people who are alone at the end. You know,
Speaker 2: George is looking up at the big board of destinations
Speaker 2: and Charlie's is just staring at the windshield.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I also think there's another thing up in
Speaker 1: there that I think you've done a few films to
Speaker 1: sit maybe and thank you for smoking, where it's like
Speaker 1: it's also a rare thing in like Hollywood films that
Speaker 1: like I always think about, say, Mary Poppins is the
Speaker 1: most extreme version of it, where Mary Poppins the messages
Speaker 1: don't work too hard, like the dad needs to leave
Speaker 1: the bank and spend time with the kids. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: usually Hollywood films is like, we shouldn't work, we should
Speaker 1: spend time with our families. And what I like about
Speaker 1: a lot of your stuff is there's a sort of
Speaker 1: they acknowledge the pleasure of work and up in the
Speaker 1: air they're arguing over their their amex cards and their
Speaker 1: points like the pleasure in work and the spoils of it.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's ever done like such a rare
Speaker 1: example of going and that bit's also fun. You know.
Speaker 2: Well, films are normally moralistic, and I think we just
Speaker 2: kind of take it as a given that a film
Speaker 2: is supposed to have good moral values and it is
Speaker 2: supposed to teach you something. And I found that I
Speaker 2: really enjoy movies that actually acknowledge and see the parts
Speaker 2: of me that I'm not thrilled with or I think
Speaker 2: I'm supposed to be embarrassed of. And look, the truth
Speaker 2: is that I feel a lot of the things that
Speaker 2: George doesn't up in the air, and I do like
Speaker 2: collecting air miles, and I do look filling my life
Speaker 2: with the bullshit sometimes, and I do question whether you're
Speaker 2: supposed to live the rest of your life with one
Speaker 2: human being, and whether you can only love one human being.
Speaker 2: And in young adults case, I mean, I'd be lying
Speaker 2: if there wasn't a part of me that just didn't
Speaker 2: ache for success and ache for fame. And you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think most people would be lying if
Speaker 2: they said that wasn't true for them. And so it's
Speaker 2: kind of nice to see a character who unapologetically says
Speaker 2: this is who I am, or even if she's lying,
Speaker 2: it's such a thin lie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And what about what like young adult you've got
Speaker 1: patterns or amazing performance? Yeah? So really, and I wonder,
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, you've had him, You've had James
Speaker 1: A Paster, you like comedians, and I wonder what you like?
Speaker 1: Was pattern without naming anyone else? Was he like the
Speaker 1: only choice for that?
Speaker 2: So I do a table read of my scripts before
Speaker 2: I go and make them. And it's the kind of
Speaker 2: last moment where I make that green light, internal green
Speaker 2: light decision of whether this is the thing I need
Speaker 2: to make. And we'll sit down on my dining room table,
Speaker 2: bind me and we'll read the script. And I asked
Speaker 2: Patton to come because he was already a friend, and
Speaker 2: read that part and by the end of the table
Speaker 2: it was like all right, Well, clearly he's going to
Speaker 2: play the role, and he was perfect for it. But
Speaker 2: I do love stand ups. I think stand up comedians
Speaker 2: have an inner awareness and you know, a sense of
Speaker 2: what it's like to be human in a way that
Speaker 2: other storytellers don't. There's obviously you're completely exposed as a
Speaker 2: stand up when you get on stage, and the best
Speaker 2: stand ups are digging deep and they're exposing really rough
Speaker 2: sides of themselves for an audience to just shit all over.
Speaker 2: And I love that. I love that vulnerability. I love
Speaker 2: that sense of humor.
Speaker 1: It's great. And listen, people are going to want to know,
Speaker 1: because can you tell us what it was like working
Speaker 1: with James A pasta. I've heard his side of it.
Speaker 1: He loved it. What is it like?
Speaker 2: I adore Look, I adore James, and you know, from
Speaker 2: the moment I saw his special and then I got
Speaker 2: step in person, I got to know him as a person.
Speaker 2: I listened to his podcast. I have to point out
Speaker 2: there is something interesting about the fact that he just
Speaker 2: wants to really talk about food. You just want to
Speaker 2: talk about movies, but you don't feel like you can
Speaker 2: just do that. He's got to have a Genie, you
Speaker 2: got to die, Like, I don't know what it is
Speaker 2: that you need this membrane the conversation.
Speaker 1: Is because I think it's being stand ups just so
Speaker 1: you cannot be boring. You cannot be boring. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to whack a jen. We're in the afterlife.
Speaker 2: Keep it unlike your so in coming on your podcast.
Speaker 2: At least I know the format. I you know, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, I know the bit. I'm really excited about it.
Speaker 2: Were a cast. When I went on his I had
Speaker 2: never listened before when he did the he when he
Speaker 2: showed up out of the lamp, I had no idea
Speaker 2: what the fuck he was doing. I was I was soused.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 2: But it's so funny because I've heard his you know,
Speaker 2: episode of yours where he talks about being in Ghostbusters
Speaker 2: and and I heard him like complain about improvising, as
Speaker 2: though like that wasn't his favorite thing to do. But
Speaker 2: he came in and he read and and Gil and
Speaker 2: I already knew he was the guy. But he came
Speaker 2: in and he read and it was just tailored for me.
Speaker 2: He just had the exact right sense of humor. You know,
Speaker 2: Ghostbusters have always been outsider comedians who are not afraid
Speaker 2: of being nerdy and smart, and like that's exactly who
Speaker 2: James is and so he's kind of perfect for it.
Speaker 1: Well he's fucking and well I've done. Can I ask
Speaker 1: you one more question? Yeah, because you mentioned it before
Speaker 1: we started recording, and it was so interesting. I'm working
Speaker 1: at Warner Brothers and you grew up on the lot. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So my father's office was on now it used to
Speaker 2: be called the Burbank Studios, and it was both the
Speaker 2: Warner Brothers and the Columbia Lot, and my father had
Speaker 2: made Ghostbusters for Columbia, and I grew up on that lot.
Speaker 2: I grew up walking around. I told you that the
Speaker 2: New York Street which was dressed for Blade Runner. My
Speaker 2: dad took me to that set when I was a
Speaker 2: little kid. I learned to drive a car, driving a
Speaker 2: golf cart around that lot no way. And my favorite
Speaker 2: thing I used to do was I don't know why
Speaker 2: this happened, but they used to share all the call
Speaker 2: sheets for all the sound stages around the lot. So
Speaker 2: my father's office every morning would get a list of
Speaker 2: all the call sheets and I could see who was
Speaker 2: shooting on what stage and I would just wander over,
Speaker 2: and being ten, eleven, twelve years old, everyone just presumes
Speaker 2: I'm the kid of somebody, right, So I just would
Speaker 2: walk onto the set, and I remember walking like Flatliners
Speaker 2: was made back then, and it runs too and Batman
Speaker 2: returns and just all kinds of cool sets, and I
Speaker 2: would just wander in and walk around, fucking cool man. Yeah,
Speaker 2: do you remember Blue Thunder? This is a weird deep hole.
Speaker 2: There was a helicopter movie was starring Roy Scheider from
Speaker 2: the early eighties, and that used to be on the
Speaker 2: back lot that was just sitting around for years there
Speaker 2: as I mean, now, there's a bunch of offices where
Speaker 2: they used to have cool things, like there was an
Speaker 2: old western town. There was a jungle area, which is
Speaker 2: where they shot Creature from the Black Lagoon. So it
Speaker 2: really it was like walking around Disneyland.
Speaker 1: That's fucking right. I'm assuming you always loved it, as
Speaker 1: in just because you grew up and it was never like, ah,
Speaker 1: just this shit. It was always exciting.
Speaker 2: Any day that I could convince my father to let
Speaker 2: me come with them to work was a good day.
Speaker 2: And so I'd sit in the car with them on
Speaker 2: the way to work and I'd ask them questions. I
Speaker 2: was one of those kids. I'd just sit in the
Speaker 2: passenger seat and just pelt them with question. And then
Speaker 2: there was so many cool things about going to his office.
Speaker 2: First of all, he had like like a revolving craft
Speaker 2: service in his office, so there's just lots of available
Speaker 2: his chips and candy and all sorts of crappty. He
Speaker 2: also had a bunch of toys in his office, because
Speaker 2: it was always like there was Ghostbusters toys, and there
Speaker 2: was models for all the kinds of things he was
Speaker 2: built working on. I feel like the reason why most
Speaker 2: of us love that lot is because we grew up
Speaker 2: on Bugs Bunny cartoons, and Bugs Bunny was a Warner
Speaker 2: Brothers cartoon. So anytime Bugs Bunny would go on the
Speaker 2: lot and you'd see him like talk to the security guard,
Speaker 2: sneak by to the security guy. He was on the
Speaker 2: Warner Brothers lot. So everyone's perception of what a movie
Speaker 2: studio is supposed to look like comes from Bugs Bunny.
Speaker 1: Very good. Oh, I'm sorry, we've been talking about all
Speaker 1: your other things. I saw so your new film Saturday night.
Speaker 1: I saw him Saturday. I went to the bank, sold
Speaker 1: out screening it played like Gangbusters, which I've never understood
Speaker 1: that reference, but I've seen that means good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good one. That's God's good.
Speaker 1: And I loved it and it's so good, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I mean, I could say many things about it,
Speaker 1: but what at its base it was almost like a
Speaker 1: muppet sharpe is that let's put on It's a film
Speaker 1: about let's put on the show. Yeah, and it's so
Speaker 1: exciting and it's such a like I think we can
Speaker 1: spoil the ending.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the best part about picturing this movie from
Speaker 2: the beginning was I could always tell the entire story,
Speaker 2: which is it's a movie about the ninety minutes leading
Speaker 2: up to the first time anyone ever said live from
Speaker 2: New York at Saturday night. And the closing line of
Speaker 2: the movie is live from New York at Saturday Night.
Speaker 1: And it's so satisfying when it happens, and it's such
Speaker 1: a like it's like a sports movie. It's literally like
Speaker 1: a sportsman like yes, because we've been through such a
Speaker 1: ride to get there, and it's thrilling and it is
Speaker 1: like all the things I like. All the things you're
Speaker 1: talking about is about the creative act and bringing these
Speaker 1: people together and marhling it and it's so satisfying. And
Speaker 1: I wondered about the making of it because it is
Speaker 1: pace wise, it's fun, he's stressful for ninety minutes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's real time and it's moving through corridors, and I wondered,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you schedule it. I was curious, like,
Speaker 1: did you shoot in order or whether because it's sort
Speaker 1: of seemingly one thing, but there's obviously how do you
Speaker 1: do it?
Speaker 2: So the actors who signed up for this movie signed
Speaker 2: up for an experience, okay, one in which you work
Speaker 2: every single day, because the idea was to create a living,
Speaker 2: breathing form of eight h the studio where they shoot SNL.
Speaker 2: And that started with the set where Jess gone for For
Speaker 2: our production designer who did like No Country for Old Man,
Speaker 2: he rebuilt the entire eighth ninth floor of Rockefeller Center
Speaker 2: down to like the original blueprints. Where was the set
Speaker 2: we shot in Atlanta?
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, so we built.
Speaker 2: It's so funny because we were on a on a
Speaker 2: lot where Superman had almost every stage, but then we
Speaker 2: had one stage that was ours, and we thought we
Speaker 2: were the cool kids there and we built the entire
Speaker 2: ace and lines floor as an enclosed single set, because
Speaker 2: it's not really a movie with ninety scenes. It's a
Speaker 2: movie with one scene that's ninety minutes. And all the
Speaker 2: lighting was built into the set, all the cabling was
Speaker 2: built in the set. There was microphones built into the
Speaker 2: set so that there was no reason why you had
Speaker 2: to start or stop a scene at any given moment.
Speaker 2: You could just keep shooting because there's nothing visible on
Speaker 2: set that would let you know where you were. And
Speaker 2: we began working with stand ins on what essentially is
Speaker 2: the choreography of the movie. It's like a dance movie.
Speaker 2: You're choreographing all the movement of there's eighty speaking roles,
Speaker 2: and there's eighty background actors and they work. They all
Speaker 2: work every single day, and the shots could be three, four,
Speaker 2: five minutes long, and the result is to give you
Speaker 2: this sense that you just got dropped into nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2: The cameras like a human being with their head on
Speaker 2: a swivel, just picking up information as it's coming by.
Speaker 2: One of the best ways I can explain it is
Speaker 2: the sound work EI. There was days where our mixer,
Speaker 2: Steve Morrow, had up to fifty eight audio tracks going simultaneously.
Speaker 2: That is to say, he had to bring a second
Speaker 2: mixing board or just to handle the amount of tracks
Speaker 2: that he's mixing in real time. So there's all the
Speaker 2: mics that are built into the set, but then every
Speaker 2: speaking role is wearing a mic as well, and the
Speaker 2: band is all mics simultaneously, and he's live mixing everything,
Speaker 2: so that you're getting like a mix of information all
Speaker 2: the time. There's the people who are speaking right in
Speaker 2: front of camera, but then there's the second layer, third layer,
Speaker 2: fourth layer of characters and they're also talking, and it's
Speaker 2: again it's like picking up information in a real place.
Speaker 1: Given how it is, can I ask you this? I
Speaker 1: am aware there is often when you make a film
Speaker 1: seek if there's a budget, you get the chance to
Speaker 1: do pickups. You've done an edit and you go, oh,
Speaker 1: this is missing, we need to get this. Yeah, time
Speaker 1: at this thing. With a film like that, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine whether pickups was there anything you redid?
Speaker 2: You just have to shoot the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is holding in order.
Speaker 2: It's funny. There's a director friend of mine who I
Speaker 2: was speaking to right before we went in, and I
Speaker 2: was talking about different actors and have you ever worked
Speaker 2: with them? And what do they like? And you know,
Speaker 2: are they going to be trouble? And at a certain
Speaker 2: point he just said, hey, you're making a movie about
Speaker 2: the open night of Saturday Night Live, Surrender. And it
Speaker 2: was the best advice anyone could have given me, because
Speaker 2: it's true. At a certain point, I could choreograph the
Speaker 2: living shit out of it. And by the way, we
Speaker 2: had we had a whiteboard the way a coach does,
Speaker 2: and every morning at eight am we would meet at
Speaker 2: home base and I would draw out everybody's movement like
Speaker 2: a football play, and I would say, all right, this
Speaker 2: is where every actor a draw, the camera, all the extras,
Speaker 2: so everyone knew where they were going. But still, even
Speaker 2: once everyone knows exactly where they're supposed to be and
Speaker 2: we start to work it out, I have to surrender
Speaker 2: to the magic. And the magic is what happened when
Speaker 2: the molecules start bumping into each other.
Speaker 1: That's fucking good man, congratulations.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I mean, that's how Saturny Live has been
Speaker 2: for years. It's a it has to surrender to the
Speaker 2: fact that it is live. You know, they go live
Speaker 2: on air and then what happens happened. And that's the delight.
Speaker 2: Half of the delight of watching SNL is knowing not
Speaker 2: only the cats but the crew are somehow pulling this
Speaker 2: off every single Saturday. And so when in making this film,
Speaker 2: we chose to address it the same way.
Speaker 1: Jonson.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I know what's coming.
Speaker 1: On to you. Something?
Speaker 2: Oh man, hit me?
Speaker 1: Oh god, I can't believe I forgot. We were having
Speaker 1: such a nice time. Yeah shit, I'll just say it,
Speaker 1: and well, okay, guess we'll do with it.
Speaker 2: It can't be that bad.
Speaker 1: Um, I guess it depends. You know, Saturday nights to
Speaker 1: come out. You want to enjoy the You've died, You're dead?
Speaker 1: Oh come on, I'm sorry. Man. Listen, you left on a.
Speaker 2: High, had plans, I had dreams.
Speaker 1: How did you die?
Speaker 2: I thought about this. I'll tell you the moment that
Speaker 2: I always think about the possibility of dying. And it's
Speaker 2: either when I'm almost done writing a script, or almost
Speaker 2: done shooting a film, or almost done editing a movie.
Speaker 2: And it's a part of me that is always like,
Speaker 2: I can't die now. I need to finish this. No
Speaker 2: one's going to be able to take this. Seventy five
Speaker 2: percent of a script and makes that sut of it.
Speaker 2: And it often happens when I'm sitting in a plane
Speaker 2: and I have this moment where I'm just, you know,
Speaker 2: thirty forty thousand feet above the earth, and I imagine
Speaker 2: a hole just opening up below me and my entire
Speaker 2: seat with me and it just falls to the earth.
Speaker 2: And I imagine that all that time in the air
Speaker 2: thinking about how I was going to finish that script
Speaker 2: or finish that movie, and it's never going to be done.
Speaker 2: That just scares me the most.
Speaker 1: You and Barry Jenkins, to excellent directors, both die by plane.
Speaker 1: Huh makes you think, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: I'll take that. I'll take literally any comparison to Barry Jackets,
Speaker 2: even if you're not comparing to my movies. If you're
Speaker 2: literally just yeah, you both think you might die that way.
Speaker 2: That said, now that you've brought this up, if I
Speaker 2: ever get on a plane with Barry, say one of
Speaker 2: us has to get off.
Speaker 1: You two are taken. Cause do you worry about death?
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't think there's anything beyond which I
Speaker 2: know we're going to talk about later. But you know what, Look,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you this, I really didn't believe in a
Speaker 2: beyond until I lost my father, and I feel like
Speaker 2: I've been visited him by him in ways that at
Speaker 2: least put a question in my head?
Speaker 1: Could you tell me one of them? Or is that
Speaker 1: too much?
Speaker 2: I'll tell you the little ways. Maybe one day when
Speaker 2: we meet for a drink, I'll tell you the big one.
Speaker 2: But I know it's a shitty tease. I'm excited to hear,
Speaker 2: but it's personal. Yeah, I hear him laughing at jokes
Speaker 2: that I write. You know, there's these moments where I'm
Speaker 2: working on Ghostbusters and I'm writing dialogue for characters he
Speaker 2: helped create, and it's strange because I'm thinking, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: he's never going to read this, es And now my
Speaker 2: Saturday Night LiveScript actually is the last script of mine
Speaker 2: and my father ever read. But it's the first movie
Speaker 2: of mine that I'll never see. But sometimes I'm writing,
Speaker 2: you know, for Winston or for Ray or for venk Men,
Speaker 2: and then I'll hear my dad laugh and I'll know
Speaker 2: it works or the opposite, and I know it needs
Speaker 2: an edit. But yeah, no, I feel like I've been visited.
Speaker 1: Thank you man. Well, listen, there's your proof. There is
Speaker 1: a heaven and you'll go in.
Speaker 2: I like the assumption that I'm going to heaven.
Speaker 1: Well you were, Barry Jenkins, you will end the plane
Speaker 1: together it Oh.
Speaker 2: My god, that would suck. We both in a plane
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden I see Barry floating up.
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, what.
Speaker 1: Dude.
Speaker 2: I mean, hey, it makes better movies. But come on,
Speaker 2: can I please?
Speaker 1: It's filled with your favorite thing heaven? What's your favorite thing?
Speaker 2: I'm going to see movies? I mean, my favorite thing
Speaker 2: really is just going to see movies. I don't mean
Speaker 2: to give such a boring answer, and I'm sure I'm
Speaker 2: not the first person to say, but as soon as
Speaker 2: I had my driver's license, I would just go to
Speaker 2: the movies. And this last year I actually bought a
Speaker 2: movie theater with a bunch of other directors, to which
Speaker 2: one Yeah, there's a theater in Los Angeles called the Village.
Speaker 2: It's my favorite movie theater in the world. My second
Speaker 2: favorite is in London is the Prince Charles, because that's
Speaker 2: the best audience I've ever seen a movie within my life.
Speaker 2: When I was in London shooting, I went to the
Speaker 2: Prince Charles as often as I possibly could. If they
Speaker 2: had a Mystery Movie. I was there, I never got
Speaker 2: to do one of the overnights. I really wanted to
Speaker 2: do that. I'm hoping one day to do that. But
Speaker 2: there's a sense of community at the Prince Charles Theater.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's really important because people talk a lot about
Speaker 2: picture and sound. They go on and on about it
Speaker 2: as though that is the reason to see a movie
Speaker 2: in the movie theaters. And yeah, sure, that's great. It's
Speaker 2: great to see a movie with on a big screen
Speaker 2: with big sound. But the reason I go to the
Speaker 2: movies is community. And when I was at the Prince Charles,
Speaker 2: I felt a sense of community. Whether we were seeing
Speaker 2: you know, Alien or Scooby Doo, you know, or Akira,
Speaker 2: Like it just didn't matter. I felt like I was
Speaker 2: with my people and we laughed again, we cry together,
Speaker 2: and it makes you feel less alone speaking of loneliness,
Speaker 2: and so I love the movies.
Speaker 1: Well, you tell you what, you're in the right place.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that they're very happy to say that.
Speaker 1: Screamings everywhere. Guys, it's your community. They're so happy to
Speaker 1: see you and they want to talk about your life.
Speaker 1: But they want to talk about it. Died earlier. You've
Speaker 1: been working too much. And they first thing they ask is,
Speaker 1: where's the first film you remember seeing?
Speaker 2: Jason right, Oh my god, you're you You're going to know.
Speaker 2: The answer to this already is Ghostbusters?
Speaker 1: Is it? Yeah? Is it? Yeah? How old were you?
Speaker 2: I'm six years old?
Speaker 1: Six.
Speaker 2: I was on the set and I remember seeing it,
Speaker 2: and it's scared the living crap out of me. The
Speaker 2: library ghost and the terror Dog and Elmer Bernstein's music,
Speaker 2: and like it didn't even matter that I had seen
Speaker 2: them make it, so I'd already seen how they actually
Speaker 2: made this movie. So it's not as though I was unaware.
Speaker 2: But I saw it in different countries, you know, Like
Speaker 2: I saw that movie in la and New York and
Speaker 2: in Paris, and I went with my dad around the
Speaker 2: world with it, and it ever lost its juice. I
Speaker 2: mean I used to wake up thinking the tear dog
Speaker 2: was underneath my bed.
Speaker 1: What a cool what a cool life? Are you an
Speaker 1: only child? But do you have I got two sisters?
Speaker 2: Okay, I got my so Catherine, my younger sister, has
Speaker 2: a show on Netflix called Working Moms, which is like
Speaker 2: a hit all around the world. They have seven seasons.
Speaker 2: It crushes, it kills uh so when when I go
Speaker 2: out with Katherine, everyone recognizes her. And then I got
Speaker 2: a little sister who very different life, married a guy
Speaker 2: in the Navy and a Navy corman and lived on
Speaker 2: base and uh lives down in San Diego. Now, but
Speaker 2: we all, we all have the same sense of humor.
Speaker 2: We all get along.
Speaker 1: I love it. What is the film that made you
Speaker 1: cry the most? Are you a crier? You're all right?
Speaker 2: Movie that made me cry?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So I got I got a I got a few
Speaker 2: here for cry and I know you only want one.
Speaker 1: But I'm going to make exceptions for you.
Speaker 2: It's very kind of you. I mean, stand by Me
Speaker 2: kills me every time. Breaking Away he kills me every time. Beginners,
Speaker 2: which is a film that I found particularly amongst men
Speaker 2: of my generation. Beginners rocks that world. But the one
Speaker 2: that I'm gonna go with is a Swedish film called Together,
Speaker 2: a director named Lucas Moodyson. And have you ever seen it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? He because he made that, it's that lovely film.
Speaker 1: And then he made a very dark film.
Speaker 2: Yes, and he made Lylia Forever exactly so, also brilliant
Speaker 2: but really rough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Together.
Speaker 2: I remember reading this Roger Eaedbert piece, and he was
Speaker 2: talking about Lucas Moodyson as one of the most important
Speaker 2: living directors, and I thought, I don't even know who
Speaker 2: this guy is. I just felt embarrassed, and I immediately went
Speaker 2: and watched his films and they're all fantastic. I had
Speaker 2: a film called We're the Best recently that was really great.
Speaker 2: But I had a film called I Am Love, which
Speaker 2: is fantastic, Lily Forever, which is a masterpiece. But Together
Speaker 2: is unlike any movie I've ever seen. It really introduces
Speaker 2: you to a character that you think is speaking of
Speaker 2: unredeemable characters. Like you said earlier, you meet a guy
Speaker 2: in that movie this is no coming back, And by
Speaker 2: the end of this movie, you're just in love with
Speaker 2: all these people. You could have never imagined coalescing the
Speaker 2: way they did. They all live in like a commune
Speaker 2: in Stockholm, so they are a commune living in living
Speaker 2: in a townhouse in Stockholm. And it's a hard movie
Speaker 2: to find. So I feel bad talking about a movie
Speaker 2: where s here I am talking about how great it
Speaker 2: is and any listeners being like, oh great, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: screaming them, yeah, good luck. But it's but it's brilliant.
Speaker 1: Great, great, great. What about being scared? Other than Ghostbusters?
Speaker 1: What's the film that scared you the most? Do you
Speaker 1: like it?
Speaker 2: Michael Hannike's Funny Games scared the but Jesus out of me,
Speaker 2: and less so because of the jump scares, because you know,
Speaker 2: like in a pure way, I think the scariest films
Speaker 2: I've ever seen are the ones you'd expect, like, you know,
Speaker 2: the shining. But there's something about Funny Games where the
Speaker 2: whole conceit is that there are no rules that you know.
Speaker 2: Hannikey's point of view seems to be in almost all
Speaker 2: of us films, that these rules that we think we
Speaker 2: live by, the reason why you don't just punch people
Speaker 2: in the face, the reason why you're not just an
Speaker 2: asshole to people, there is no there is no reason
Speaker 2: why we abiding by societal rules. And in Funny Games,
Speaker 2: he's bending the way that we interact and there's a
Speaker 2: cruelty to it that is nasty. It's a mean film. Yes,
Speaker 2: I can't remember what movie it is. He used to
Speaker 2: be a movie that talked about baseball, and I would say,
Speaker 2: to be a picture, you got to be mean. And
Speaker 2: I feel like, you know, to make funny games. You
Speaker 2: got to be mean. You gotta be a mean director.
Speaker 2: You have to be cruel to the audience. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: A lot of his films are mean. He's a mean director,
Speaker 2: which I think is really brave.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's something I really admire. Like, I don't think
Speaker 2: I could be that mean to the audience. And I'm
Speaker 2: and I'm kind of mean to the audience, Like I
Speaker 2: my movies have sad endings and then they have unrepentant characters.
Speaker 2: But I'm not touching Anikey. I mean, Anniky leaves you
Speaker 2: out in the coult.
Speaker 1: I think what's interesting about what like you young don't
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say American, is that it's it is
Speaker 1: bad people, but you love them. You the film like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the characters and that right, it's more interesting
Speaker 1: to me. That seems big. It's easy to judge people
Speaker 1: and you don't. I think that's so you think, well, yeah, no.
Speaker 2: I actually don't. I don't tend to believe in good
Speaker 2: or evil. I don't believe in evil people. And I
Speaker 2: think there's a again, there's a general conceit in a
Speaker 2: lot of films that there's people who are good and
Speaker 2: there's people and evil, and I just don't.
Speaker 1: I just don't.
Speaker 2: It's why I struggle with Westerns. I just don't believe
Speaker 2: in the white hat and the black hat. I'll tell
Speaker 2: you I do have a funny Michael Hannikey story I
Speaker 2: went to. I was at a film festival in the
Speaker 2: Czech Republic called carl Avari, and they were playing a
Speaker 2: handicky film called The Piano Teacher, The Piano Lesson and
Speaker 2: great movie. I any went Best Actor and Actress I
Speaker 2: can that year. But at this film festival, all the
Speaker 2: movies played in like old ballrooms that were convicted converted
Speaker 2: into movie theaters, and they didn't have subtitles. Rather, you
Speaker 2: would get a headset as you walked into the movie theater,
Speaker 2: and then in the back there were little booths like
Speaker 2: the un where they hire like college students who knew
Speaker 2: lots of languages to live translate the movie. So I
Speaker 2: got this headset on. I click it in and I
Speaker 2: start watching the Handikee film and this is a filthy movie,
Speaker 2: and and there's some college girl translating the movie and
Speaker 2: she's just getting embarrassed and the movie's really heavy, but
Speaker 2: she's just giggling because she's afraid to translate the stuff
Speaker 2: that's happening on screen. So I'm watching these movies and
Speaker 2: this intense scenes are happening, and then you know, this
Speaker 2: girl in my ears, like I want to lick your assess.
Speaker 3: The best way to watch on Michael Hannecke film, that's fine,
Speaker 3: she just going You get it, you get it, you know,
Speaker 3: you know what's happening because you, guys, what is the
Speaker 3: film that you love?
Speaker 1: It is not critically acclaimed, most people don't even like it,
Speaker 1: but you love it unconditionally.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if this film counts, but I love
Speaker 2: a film called Pump Up the Volume with Christian Slater
Speaker 2: from the early nineties. I'm not sure if anyone thinks
Speaker 2: highly of it, but I love that movie. Like, I
Speaker 2: think that's a profoundly good movie about being a teenager
Speaker 2: and Christian Slater's phenomenal in it. And I think it
Speaker 2: made me want to be a DJ, Like it made
Speaker 2: me want to like have my own pirate radio station
Speaker 2: where I could just share my thoughts secretly.
Speaker 1: That's a fucking great shot. That's a perfect shot. Not
Speaker 1: critically acclaimed, but it worked. Do you have you watched
Speaker 1: it recently? Like how much is it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I have a movie night every Sunday at
Speaker 2: my house. Ay Caster's been doing. It's been going back
Speaker 2: over ten years, and Sunday's always made me depressed. Sunday's
Speaker 2: were always really hard for me, and I was looking
Speaker 2: for a solution for Sundays and I just started having
Speaker 2: people over to my house on Sunday to watch movies,
Speaker 2: and so every Sunday night, I have a movie night.
Speaker 2: We started with like really heavy stuff, but at one
Speaker 2: point we got to pump up the volume and it
Speaker 2: played great. Kill That's great.
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, then the next question is a film that
Speaker 1: you used to love that you've watched recently, maybe on
Speaker 1: a Sunday, and you've got Oh. I feel very differently
Speaker 1: about this now.
Speaker 2: I feel really nervous to say this because I'm sure
Speaker 2: people will disagree with me. But a film that I
Speaker 2: loved that I thought was brilliantly funny and is clearly
Speaker 2: groundbreaking I went to see with some friends a few
Speaker 2: years ago and it did not make me laugh. And
Speaker 2: that film is the Zuker Brothers film Airplane.
Speaker 1: I knew you were going to say it.
Speaker 2: And trust me, I feel a little red dot on
Speaker 2: my head, just saying that out loud. But it was
Speaker 2: really hard to watch that movie. Now, when's the last
Speaker 2: time you watch Airplane?
Speaker 1: I am watching a long time. Is it that it's dated?
Speaker 1: Is it like offensive? Or is it that it's just
Speaker 1: not funny.
Speaker 2: I don't really get offended by movies, Like I feel
Speaker 2: like movies have a time and place and you know,
Speaker 2: and I can watch a movie enjoy it for what
Speaker 2: it is. It just didn't hit me the way I
Speaker 2: did when I was a kid. When I was a kid,
Speaker 2: I thought it was really funny and irreverent and kind
Speaker 2: of groundbreaking. Like I just like I could feel it
Speaker 2: because it was challenging my thoughts on what a movie
Speaker 2: could be. And it was hard to watch.
Speaker 1: You and Brendane Brown, You and Brendan Brown, listen, You're
Speaker 1: in good company at Barry Jenkins and Brene Brown.
Speaker 2: Oh also didn't like Airplane?
Speaker 1: How was her worst film? What is the film that
Speaker 1: means the most to you? The film is good, but
Speaker 1: the experience you had seeing it always special to you.
Speaker 2: This is a strange one. So I got to start
Speaker 2: directing commercials right out of college. I was really lucky.
Speaker 2: I started making short films in college, they started playing
Speaker 2: film festivals and it became a professional commercial director right
Speaker 2: out of school. I got an early commercial that shot
Speaker 2: in London. It was the first time I got to
Speaker 2: actually like live out there, and it was really like
Speaker 2: I remember, I lived at the Sanderson Hotel for a month,
Speaker 2: which was just it was it was still like really
Speaker 2: cool and new. It's in uh it's above Oxford Street
Speaker 2: in Soho, and you know, it was a really trippy
Speaker 2: hotel that had a twenty four hour DJ before like
Speaker 2: it feels like every hotel now has a twenty four
Speaker 2: hour DJ. And I was out there making this commercial
Speaker 2: for Honda, working with Widen Kennedy, which which was such
Speaker 2: a badass agency. And I went to every movie theater
Speaker 2: in the area when I was living at Soho. I
Speaker 2: think I went to every single movie theater that exists
Speaker 2: out there that it was walking distance. And I got
Speaker 2: to a point where I was running out of movies
Speaker 2: because I was just seeing movies every single day. And
Speaker 2: I went into a screen of a movie and I
Speaker 2: didn't know what the hell it was and never heard
Speaker 2: of it, and it was Paul Greengrass's Bloody Sunday.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: And you know, perhaps I'm n educated. I really didn't
Speaker 2: know much about the events of A Bloody Sunday, and
Speaker 2: it was a filmmaking style that I feel like I
Speaker 2: hadn't seen before, where it was so authentically documentary in
Speaker 2: its style and so well done that it immediately, I mean,
Speaker 2: it just kind of broke me as a director because
Speaker 2: I just kept on thinking, how the hell did you
Speaker 2: do this? It felt like a magic trick that I
Speaker 2: couldn't puzzle out out yeah, and was simultaneously really moving
Speaker 2: and put me on kind of a life's journey of
Speaker 2: chasing how do you recreate reality? Like how do you
Speaker 2: actually make it feel like you're watching something genuine? And
Speaker 2: I think up until then, I thought the primary goal
Speaker 2: of a director was to do something cool, you know,
Speaker 2: like come up with a cool shot, put it to
Speaker 2: cool music, like I you know, I grew up on
Speaker 2: Quentin Tarantino, and suddenly I watched this Paul green Grass
Speaker 2: film and you know, I'm sure anyone listening right now
Speaker 2: would say, yeah, why don't you just go look at
Speaker 2: some nineteen sixties French and Italian films and lend very
Speaker 2: day is And yeah, fine. I didn't go to film school,
Speaker 2: but that Paul Grengrass movie showed me and seeing it
Speaker 2: in London was particularly special.
Speaker 1: Well, the fucking great as it well in Saturday Night?
Speaker 1: I like you. You touched it on film, right, it
Speaker 1: looks real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was shot from sixteen, which I presume is
Speaker 2: what he shot on And I was really just trying
Speaker 2: to make a comedic bloody Sunday and I think I
Speaker 2: finally found the opportunity.
Speaker 1: I think you did it. I really think it does
Speaker 1: feel everything you said. It does feel chaotic. It feels
Speaker 1: genuinely chaotic, and yeah, in a good way anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what is the film you most relate to?
Speaker 2: Hal Ashby's Shampoo?
Speaker 1: Are you wearing Beaty?
Speaker 2: No? But what I love about that movie is that
Speaker 2: there I wish I was warn baby. There are five
Speaker 2: access points to that film. There's three women and two
Speaker 2: men who are kind of in a love pentagon and
Speaker 2: they're discussing the idea of what whether one person can
Speaker 2: fulfill everything you need in life. And it's a movie
Speaker 2: about five people with five different dreams, and it's it's
Speaker 2: correctly set in Los Angeles, which is a city where
Speaker 2: people show up it too, because they're chasing some kind
Speaker 2: of dream and it's about real politics, it's about sexual politics.
Speaker 2: And look, a lot of takes place in Beverly Hills,
Speaker 2: where I grew up. And I think people think of
Speaker 2: Beverly Hills as a tourist destination, but it's also where
Speaker 2: I grew up, you know, and you know is where
Speaker 2: I went to the grocery store and stuff. And that movie,
Speaker 2: that movie portray raised five different people who want things
Speaker 2: and they're not all good things, but it never judges them.
Speaker 2: And frankly, the image of Warren standing out on you know,
Speaker 2: the edge of Mulholland at the end, looking into the distance,
Speaker 2: I mean that that's the ending of Up in the Air.
Speaker 2: I mean Up in the Air is a love letter
Speaker 2: to shampoo.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah it is, I see that. Speaking of one baby,
Speaker 1: What's the sexiest thrill You've ever seen?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 2: I knew this one was coming and I thought a
Speaker 2: lot about it. It's a really tricky one because there's
Speaker 2: two far there's two kinds of sexy movies. Right, I
Speaker 2: think the first thing that pops in your head and
Speaker 2: you're like, what's sexiest movie you've ever seen? Is like
Speaker 2: a movie starring the sexiest person? Right and right, like
Speaker 2: the first thing in your head is like, all right, well,
Speaker 2: I'm really attractive so and so and so anything they're
Speaker 2: in that is clearly the sexiest movie. But then there's
Speaker 2: a movie where the sexuality is not just how good
Speaker 2: he or she looks, it's there's a sexuality to the film.
Speaker 2: And like, the first one that comes to mind is
Speaker 2: Mike Go Closer, Like there's an honesty in the sexual
Speaker 2: relationships in that movie that I think that turns me on.
Speaker 2: And then I got a weird one. Did you see
Speaker 2: the Polish movie Cold War black and white film?
Speaker 1: I got the pist through that as well. I have
Speaker 1: the pist of Cold War and young adult War.
Speaker 2: Cold War is one of the best movies of this century.
Speaker 1: It's a great expertly.
Speaker 2: Done and it's also kind of sexy because it's really
Speaker 2: the relationship is so real, and their approach to love
Speaker 2: and affairs and breakup and weird desire and being really
Speaker 2: honest about what you want and the fact that there
Speaker 2: is like there's there's something transactional about love that people
Speaker 2: are afraid to talk about whether and I'm not talking
Speaker 2: about just financially transactional. Transactional, it's like it's transactional on
Speaker 2: ten levels, and we don't just come together because we're
Speaker 2: magnets for each other. And I like that cold word
Speaker 2: openly kind of gets into.
Speaker 1: That fucking great film. And it's also I've just realized something.
Speaker 1: But it's also like an epic film that's ninety minutes
Speaker 1: and yeah does everything.
Speaker 2: And every scene is one shot.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Fuck, it's a great movie.
Speaker 2: It's an intimidatingly good film. I mean, that's the kind
Speaker 2: of movie you watch and go, well, maybe I won't
Speaker 2: make movies like it's just like, it's the best film
Speaker 2: has already been made. Why am I trying?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Wow? And what about we have a subcategory traveling
Speaker 1: by worrying? Why don't a film you found a rousing
Speaker 1: you weren't sure? You shit?
Speaker 2: Oh my god. I mean here's the one. Here's where
Speaker 2: I really out myself. It's not the whole movie. It's
Speaker 2: a scene. Can I if you're gonna have a subcategory,
Speaker 2: can I you've been sub subcategory?
Speaker 1: Subcategory. Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's a scene in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master where
Speaker 2: Amy Adams is giving Philip sum Or Hoffman a hand job.
Speaker 2: You remember this. They're in the bathroom and he's obviously
Speaker 2: in control of the entire movie, and then she sets
Speaker 2: him straight and she jerks him off while telling him
Speaker 2: exactly who's in control. And that's one of the hardest
Speaker 2: scenes I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1: Great answer. Sorry, no, nothing to a budotize about. I think.
Speaker 1: I think that's excellent, brilliant, not being wrong with it.
Speaker 1: No notes, what's what is objectively the greatest film of
Speaker 1: all time. It might not be your favorite, but it
Speaker 1: is the pinnacle of cinema.
Speaker 2: I fear I'm giving an answer that's been said a lot.
Speaker 1: Eat. No, it hasn't been said in a long time,
Speaker 1: and it's untouchable. Yeah. I can't watch it, but you're right.
Speaker 1: Why because it makes me cry too much and I
Speaker 1: can't handle those feelings. I find it sort of too devastating. Eat.
Speaker 1: It destroyed me. I don't think I've been the same since.
Speaker 2: What's your relationship like with your dad? Come on, man,
Speaker 2: let's go.
Speaker 1: Come on.
Speaker 2: I'm opening up my heart here to you. I'm giving
Speaker 2: you anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I wouldn't do this podcast. You're bad to
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, I love I love him very much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he took us to I have talked about this
Speaker 1: years ago in this podcast. But he took us to
Speaker 1: et having seen it, you know, he took me and
Speaker 1: my sister like the second time, he'd already seen it,
Speaker 1: and he was like, you got to see this. And
Speaker 1: I remember and I was so young, and I remember
Speaker 1: being like just crying and crying. And I think I
Speaker 1: even said to him, why have you brought us to this?
Speaker 1: Because I'm so devastated. He was like, what are you
Speaker 1: putting me through? Yeah, it's so sad. It is amazing.
Speaker 2: The economy of storytelling is perfect. The music, it's maybe
Speaker 2: the best original score of all time. It's a movie
Speaker 2: about the deep need for love parenting. I mean, every
Speaker 2: choice is perfect on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a thing I talked about that I
Speaker 1: love in hugely an earlier Spielberg. I don't know how
Speaker 1: much he does it now, but it's your documentary thing.
Speaker 1: There's like the scenes of them having dinner early on
Speaker 1: in the film where it feels improvised. It feels so real,
Speaker 1: Ye all that.
Speaker 2: Ye, them eating pizza. It's interesting. I feel like every
Speaker 2: director of my age now attempts to do a scene
Speaker 2: of a family and they're always singing in a kitchen
Speaker 2: booth with that light that's hovering like this far, you know,
Speaker 2: just like you know, just two feet off the table,
Speaker 2: and we're all referencing this same dinner scene. I'd like,
Speaker 2: for instance, in my life, I've never been to someone's
Speaker 2: house who has a booth in their kitchen, But in
Speaker 2: movies you see it a lot. And it's because we
Speaker 2: all saw them, you know, ordering the pizza, and like
Speaker 2: the whole thing, we're all referencing the same thing.
Speaker 1: That's true. It's an amazing film. It is an amazing film.
Speaker 1: I can't bear it, but it is amazing. What is
Speaker 1: the film you could or have watched the most over
Speaker 1: and over again?
Speaker 2: Michael Winterbottom's twenty four Hour Party People.
Speaker 1: Really, that's a great movie.
Speaker 2: There's the first movie in my life that I watch
Speaker 2: and then the moment it ended, I literally just restarted
Speaker 2: the film. It's a movie that I show my cast
Speaker 2: on many of the movies before we go to make it.
Speaker 2: As just kind of talking about performance. I think it's
Speaker 2: absolutely extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Because of how naturally is well.
Speaker 2: It's it's both right because because there's extreme naturalism on
Speaker 2: the on the verge of documentary happening, and then simultaneously
Speaker 2: there's real comedic performance. I mean like like people obviously
Speaker 2: brilliant comedians who are working with a genuine command of
Speaker 2: what is funny and how to be funny and how
Speaker 2: to do character work. So it's both things happening fascinating.
Speaker 1: I love Michael Winchbot, I love how.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and nothing quite touches that. Like his work is
Speaker 2: great in general, but his ability to make a love
Speaker 2: letter about a city perfectly like, I don't know another
Speaker 2: love letter to a city as good as twenty four hour.
Speaker 2: Part of People is to Manchester. It's the best movie
Speaker 2: about musical history where you watch the transition from punk
Speaker 2: to new wave in this naturalistic way where it all
Speaker 2: makes sense. It's devastating when you know to the end
Speaker 2: of joy division. It's also delightful. Its main character is
Speaker 2: completely unredeemable, and it breaks the fourth wall in a
Speaker 2: way that no movie you've ever seen breaks the fourth wall,
Speaker 2: because because Steve Coogan's not only addressing camera but talking
Speaker 2: about where we are in the movie at that moment
Speaker 2: and referencing people in the movie who are played by themselves,
Speaker 2: and it's sense of itself. It is the definition of meta,
Speaker 2: and yet it is still completely deeply evolving. It's not
Speaker 2: broken into three acts, it's broken into different It's it's
Speaker 2: an exceptional film.
Speaker 1: Good answer, Good answer. Listen. We don't like to be negative,
Speaker 1: so we do it quick. What's the worst film you've
Speaker 1: ever seen? I don't think I can answer this question,
Speaker 1: and I do owt to me a dick. I know
Speaker 1: I respect you for it. It was a test.
Speaker 2: Have you ever heard Patton Oswald's bit about Deathbed, the
Speaker 2: Bet that Eats be He has an old stand up
Speaker 2: routine and he's talking about the movie Deathbed, The Bed
Speaker 2: that Eats People, which I think is you know, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, it's known as the worst movie ever made.
Speaker 2: I don't know what it was, rotten tomato score is.
Speaker 2: But he talks about the crew that made Deathbed, the
Speaker 2: Bed that Eats People. He talks about the guy from
Speaker 2: Crafty who woke up at four am to just brew
Speaker 2: the coffee so that the crew had the energy to
Speaker 2: make death Bed the Bed that Eat People. Or the
Speaker 2: carpenter who threw out his arm, putting it nails into
Speaker 2: the death bed and as a result never taught his
Speaker 2: son to throw a ball, and the son hates him
Speaker 2: for the rest of his life, Like you know, to
Speaker 2: make a movie is an extraordinary sacrifice, Like as a director,
Speaker 2: you are convincing people to join you on a one
Speaker 2: year journey where they sacrifice their loved ones, their time.
Speaker 2: The other thing they could have worked on that was
Speaker 2: undoubtedly going to be better. And so it's really hard
Speaker 2: to just point out a film and be like, that
Speaker 2: film's awful. The only reason I can point to a
Speaker 2: film and say it's awful is when I go, there
Speaker 2: is no good reason that movie was made. It was
Speaker 2: not made by anyone who had anything to say or
Speaker 2: wanted to make it. It was simply a studio just
Speaker 2: shoving money down people's throats. So I guess I would
Speaker 2: potentially point to one of those films.
Speaker 1: I respect you for it, and you're right. What is You?
Speaker 2: Will still ask this question of your next guest.
Speaker 1: I don't know why it's still in the list. I
Speaker 1: feel bad every time it comes up. What is your
Speaker 1: your You made comedies, you're in comedy. What's the film
Speaker 1: that made you laugh the most?
Speaker 2: I saw American Psycho by Mary Herron at its premiere
Speaker 2: at the Sundance Film Festival. Wow, And I remember I
Speaker 2: was already fan of you know, who shot Andy Warhol
Speaker 2: and sitting in the Eccles Theater with or a thousand
Speaker 2: people and nobody got the joke, and I was cackling.
Speaker 2: I just could not stop laughing at that movie. I
Speaker 2: loved how dark it was and menacing unrepented hero and
Speaker 2: that movie delights me. Yeah, I think it's it's it's
Speaker 2: funny in a way I wouldn't even know.
Speaker 1: It is funny. Yeah, great answer, Jason Ryman. God, you've
Speaker 1: been a pleasure. My god, I've enjoyed this. However. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you went to catch a plane and you were
Speaker 1: walking to your seat and Barry Jenkins saw you coming
Speaker 1: down the island, he went and he said, if you'll
Speaker 1: excuse me, I don't like the feel of this, and
Speaker 1: he got up, very where are you going? And he
Speaker 1: passed you in. He went a big fan of your work,
Speaker 1: but he was loving and I have so many questions. Okay,
Speaker 1: he went by so flight and he gets off and
Speaker 1: you sit down like that was weird. And the plane
Speaker 1: takes off and you decide to watch a film, and
Speaker 1: you watch Michael Hanneka film and you're like, well, I
Speaker 1: guess maybe everything's going to be Okay. I'm watching the
Speaker 1: plane's flying and you you notice there's a little sort
Speaker 1: of sort of rattle just by your feet, and you're like,
Speaker 1: why is that? And you you reached down, like where
Speaker 1: is that? And you seel like a little like a
Speaker 1: little rattle with your foot and you press your foot down.
Speaker 1: Where's that? Press harder and the bottom falls out just
Speaker 1: where your seat is, and your seat falls through the
Speaker 1: plane and you get picked up by the When you spin,
Speaker 1: the spin spin like sundry bog and gravity. Gravity is
Speaker 1: coming and you spin and spin and spin and spin,
Speaker 1: and you head towards the ground. And Barry Jenkins sat
Speaker 1: there with a nice espresso. You finish, and he goes,
Speaker 1: fucking hell, my instincts were right. And I'm walking past
Speaker 1: with a coffin, you know what. I'm like. I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, Barry, how's it going. He says, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: late for a meeting I was supposed to meet on
Speaker 1: a plane, but I think it's for the best. And
Speaker 1: I goes, that is Jason. He goes, yeahs yeah, and
Speaker 1: I go fucking He give me a hand, Barry, and
Speaker 1: the two of us try and get but you're attached
Speaker 1: to your see the bits of the plane are still
Speaker 1: with you? Is a fucking recommender to dig you out?
Speaker 1: Dig you out anyway, we end up chopping you up
Speaker 1: into bits, you know what we like, we end up
Speaker 1: putting you in the coffin. There's only enough room now
Speaker 1: in this coffin, it's rand. There's only enough room to
Speaker 1: slip one DVD into the side for you to take
Speaker 1: across to the other side. And on the other side,
Speaker 1: it's movie night every night. What film are you taking
Speaker 1: to show the people of heaven when it is your
Speaker 1: movie night, mister Jason rightman.
Speaker 2: Well, I think they're going to have to have a cry.
Speaker 2: I'm bringing EAT with me you. I'm sorry you. I
Speaker 2: hope you're still alive, because there I'm coming for your tears.
Speaker 1: Brother, I'm going to be at the gates of Heaven.
Speaker 1: Game are they playing? Eat?
Speaker 4: I forget it, but you know ET is about a
Speaker 4: journey into the cosmos, and I think maybe it's fitting.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful film and a beautiful answer. Jason, what
Speaker 1: an absolute delight you have been. Would you like to
Speaker 1: tell people what to see and look out for and
Speaker 1: listen to coming up in the Jason Wrightman world?
Speaker 2: It's really kind I got a movie called Saturday Night
Speaker 2: and it is about the opening night of Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 2: And I hope they come and enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Go see it at the cinema. You will love it. Jason,
Speaker 1: What are your pleasure? This was one of my favorites.
Speaker 2: Oh you're very sweet.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Have a wonderful death. Good day
Speaker 1: to you. So that was episode three hundred and twenty.
Speaker 1: Head over to the Patreon Patreon dot com for his
Speaker 1: nice break Cold Steme for the extra secret chat and
Speaker 1: video with Jason, going to break glavistintour dot com for
Speaker 1: the final tickets for my stand up shows. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much to Jason for giving me his time. Thanks
Speaker 1: to Scruby's pip and the distraction pieces of Network. Thanks
Speaker 1: to Buddy Peace for producing it. Thanks to you all
Speaker 1: for listening. I hope you're all well. Thanks to iHeartMedia
Speaker 1: and Wilfare of Big Money Players Network hosting it. Thanks
Speaker 1: Adam Richarster for the graphics and Lisa Laden for the photography.
Speaker 1: Come and join me next week for another smashure of
Speaker 1: a guest. But that is it for now. I hope
Speaker 1: you're all well. In the meantime, have a lovely week
Speaker 1: and please be excellent to each others. Backs, back back
Speaker 1: by the back, backs, backs on backs, buying back backs
Speaker 1: and
Speaker 3: Backs back back back backs and back by back back
Speaker 3: back back