Speaker 1: M M. You're listening to playback a Variety I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio podcast. I'm your host, Variety Awards editor Chris Tapley.
Speaker 1: We have a return guest this week, Oscar winning director
Speaker 1: Damien Chazelle. His new film First Man with Ryan Gosling,
Speaker 1: launched into the Oscar season last month at Festivals in Venice,
Speaker 1: Tell You Right in Toronto, we talked about his approach
Speaker 1: to bringing Astro not Neil Armstrong's story to the screen,
Speaker 1: and take a look back at that crazy La La
Speaker 1: Land Moonlight Academy Awards moment two years ago, among other things.
Speaker 1: So sit tight, this is playback. UM, London, then Florida, Florida,
Speaker 1: keep canaveral. That makes sense that an interesting I gotta
Speaker 1: hit Florida, lots of press down. Yeah, the calls, you
Speaker 1: gotta hit that that. UM, then New York then d
Speaker 1: Or then d C or the New York Inn d C,
Speaker 1: then like Atlanta, Denver. I don't know. I don't come
Speaker 1: back here for three weeks, are you ready? I only
Speaker 1: recently realized that the three week part, Like when I
Speaker 1: I had this ideam I had that I was coming
Speaker 1: back for a day or so after Europe, and then
Speaker 1: I only then I happened to Actually, it's the problem
Speaker 1: is not looking at my calendar. Yeah. Yeah. Then I
Speaker 1: looked at the calendar and went, oh no, there's no
Speaker 1: l A in here, all right for three weeks. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm good, all right, all right, man, I can see
Speaker 1: you again. Yeah you too. I was the rest to
Speaker 1: tell you what it was awesome? Yeah, it always is
Speaker 1: it always? Are you able to really enjoy it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I tell you right, this is like one of the
Speaker 1: few that I'm able to enjoy. Yeah, you can actually
Speaker 1: see movies. Yeah, it would be a little more Christmas
Speaker 1: do your own. I did. I think everyone had funny
Speaker 1: of your party. You know, one drink is all you
Speaker 1: need when you're that high up, and you were I was.
Speaker 1: I was talking to justin a lot of actually yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: got it, And we're already up and running. So let's
Speaker 1: dive in here with Damian Chazelle, the Oscar winning director
Speaker 1: of First Man. Thanks for coming back on the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for one of our How many repeat guests have
Speaker 1: we had? Now? I think just you and Able d
Speaker 1: Verney might be the only guest so far. We're to
Speaker 1: try to, like, you know, have some some return some
Speaker 1: returning champs if you will. You don't tend to have
Speaker 1: people come back. It's just they don't like me. That's
Speaker 1: it's the one and done kind of. I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that one again. The flag it we tried,
Speaker 1: you know, for a while, we tried to just kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, if they have something, let's not do it
Speaker 1: the next year again, Let's do it every other year
Speaker 1: if anything. But now it's like, screw it, Let's just
Speaker 1: have some regulars, you know, be a regular name. I'm happy,
Speaker 1: too happy to be a regular. This movie is awesome.
Speaker 1: We've talked about it a lot already. Actually, and tell
Speaker 1: you're right, uh, you know the story of Neil Armstrong,
Speaker 1: you know, the Apollo eleven mission, it's really all of Apollo.
Speaker 1: You handled more of Apollo in this movie than I
Speaker 1: kind of thought you would, well and and and geminate.
Speaker 1: And we tried to basically start right when Neil entered Nasa,
Speaker 1: so sixty one and uh or well you know, officially
Speaker 1: sixty two, and take it up till was that like
Speaker 1: the immediate, like this is this is where we should begin,
Speaker 1: Like what was the journey of finding where you should
Speaker 1: start a story with Neil Armstrong. I guess I think
Speaker 1: it was, um, well, it was always through the perspective
Speaker 1: of the moon landing. For me, that was that was
Speaker 1: the just that accomplishment. Um, obviously it's the most famous
Speaker 1: thing about him. But but but but it also just
Speaker 1: seemed like for such a famous event, an event that
Speaker 1: could use some demystifying, you know, um, maybe de romanticizing,
Speaker 1: it felt like there was a lot left to sort
Speaker 1: of unpack in that event, and certainly would lead up
Speaker 1: to it. So it seemed like, you know, even if
Speaker 1: this weren't a movie about Neil Armstrong, it felt like
Speaker 1: a proper place to begin would be roughly when Kennedy
Speaker 1: made his famous announcement, you know, about landing a man
Speaker 1: on the moon by the end of the decade that
Speaker 1: was sixty one, and you know, and then we would
Speaker 1: sort of set that as the as the gambit, the
Speaker 1: opening gambit, and then uh and then end with with
Speaker 1: that being turned into a reality. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's certain certainly coincides nicely with Niel's Neil's life, because
Speaker 1: those were the years that he I mean he he
Speaker 1: he joined up NASA right around the same time that
Speaker 1: that this sort of moon shot became a national goal
Speaker 1: right at the top of the decade. And you know,
Speaker 1: so some of the Mercury missions had happened. Obviously Americans
Speaker 1: had been in space already, but um, but just to
Speaker 1: a small degree. And uh so trying to kind of
Speaker 1: see both through his eyes and through the program's eyes
Speaker 1: as a whole. Um, you know, how you go from
Speaker 1: there to there? How you go from that sort of uh,
Speaker 1: those first beginnings of space exploration to traveling not in
Speaker 1: Earth orbit, but thirty times thirty two times the distance
Speaker 1: of Earth from Earth, or the size of Earth from
Speaker 1: Earth all the way to the Moon and back. Um,
Speaker 1: how you do that in the span of basically eight
Speaker 1: or nine years. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, when you look
Speaker 1: at it that way, it's certainly it struck me as insane.
Speaker 1: And when I looked at the geograph or thing, you know,
Speaker 1: you actually kind of look at the diagram of of
Speaker 1: you know, to scale of Earth to the Moon, and
Speaker 1: it strikes you on a primal level. Even more so,
Speaker 1: it just seems like, you know, for such a again,
Speaker 1: such a famous event, it's almost like we we we
Speaker 1: take for granted how insane it was. Yeah, when we
Speaker 1: had you on the show two years ago actually, which
Speaker 1: is that's crazy too, by the way that that's been
Speaker 1: two years. But you had this quote that that I've
Speaker 1: been using a lot, which was just you. You wanted
Speaker 1: to put us in the mindset of this thing that
Speaker 1: hasn't happened yet, and it's gonna happen, and everyone's coming
Speaker 1: together to do it, and it's the craziest thing anyone's
Speaker 1: tried to do. And it's like, it's the truth of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just you watch it and you're in
Speaker 1: awe of the accomplishment. I also felt like, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get this out of the way at the top.
Speaker 1: You've probably been asked about it plenty by now, but
Speaker 1: I can't believe anyone could watch this film and not
Speaker 1: feel a sense of American pride as well. And you
Speaker 1: know there's been this this this whatever Faul controversy about
Speaker 1: the fact that you've it and depict the planting of
Speaker 1: the flag. What you and I have talked about you
Speaker 1: when once you get to the moon in this movie,
Speaker 1: it's very reflective of what you've done the whole film,
Speaker 1: which is your staying subjective when the alarm strong and
Speaker 1: that event was kneel and buzzed together, and you're showing
Speaker 1: Neil at this creator and there's something very personal was
Speaker 1: happening in his life at the time. So have you
Speaker 1: been kind of just surprised that this snowballed as a
Speaker 1: quote controversy. Uh well, uh, yeah, to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's also um this it's it's a
Speaker 1: very important moment, just the moon landing as a whole,
Speaker 1: and so you kind of expect people to have a
Speaker 1: very sort of profound emotional associations with it, um, whether
Speaker 1: they lived through it or didn't, you know, um and uh,
Speaker 1: certainly it's it's one of those defining moments for America
Speaker 1: as a country. You know. It's it's so much of
Speaker 1: American identity, um is wrapped up in a really beautiful way.
Speaker 1: I think, um, um, certainly the past fifty years of
Speaker 1: American identity wrapped up in that event. So you I think, uh,
Speaker 1: one should expect that you know that that um there's
Speaker 1: you know, people are gonna have powerful associations with it,
Speaker 1: and uh and so you're always aware, I mean, not
Speaker 1: with just this event, but with any kind of any
Speaker 1: time you're doing. I mean, this was my first time
Speaker 1: doing a movie based on historical, historical events. But you know,
Speaker 1: if you're doing a movie about an iconic event or
Speaker 1: an iconic series of events or an iconic character, there
Speaker 1: canna be things that that you uh, that you want
Speaker 1: to show and things that you don't have time to
Speaker 1: show and uh, and you have to set a sort
Speaker 1: of a sort of guideline of rules for yourself at
Speaker 1: the outset. So I think for us, for me, for
Speaker 1: Josh Senger, for Ryan, as we were making this movie,
Speaker 1: it was just about, let's whenever we can, uh, let's
Speaker 1: show the things that people didn't see. Uh. Let's show
Speaker 1: the things that people didn't know about Neil, about Geminy,
Speaker 1: about Apollo. Um. Let's focus on that on told story.
Speaker 1: And let that be basically what dictates what we show
Speaker 1: and what we uh and what we don't show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And for Neil, it's there's a very personal, tragic thing
Speaker 1: that happens to him at the beginning of the film,
Speaker 1: and I'm that that threat is played out all the
Speaker 1: way through the end of the film and something that
Speaker 1: happens on the moon and I don't want to, like,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't want to talk about it in
Speaker 1: terms of spoilers, but I do want to ask the
Speaker 1: moment that happens on the moon regarding him and something
Speaker 1: very personal that happened to him felt such like a
Speaker 1: narrative sense of closure that it was. It kind of
Speaker 1: felt like it was too perfect. So the question is
Speaker 1: was it embellished? Was it made up? Uh? It was?
Speaker 1: It's uh No, it wasn't made up, but it was.
Speaker 1: But it's it's unlike certain events in the movie, it's
Speaker 1: not something that we can confirm with absolute confidence actually happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's for me. It was such a moment when I
Speaker 1: saw it in the movie and that the emotion really
Speaker 1: got me there. It's it's it's uh, well, it's kind
Speaker 1: of how I felt when I first uh, when Josh
Speaker 1: and I first heard of it. Uh. It's a conjecture
Speaker 1: basically too. It was a conjecture by Niel's biographer, his
Speaker 1: a storian, Jim Hanson. It was a conjecture that was
Speaker 1: then backed up um uh, or at least sort of
Speaker 1: suggested as well by Neil's sister June, who Ryan and
Speaker 1: I got to spend some time with um uh and
Speaker 1: uh it was I found a very beautiful conjecture hypothesis.
Speaker 1: Neil himself never confirmed or denied. He basically never talked about,
Speaker 1: refused to talk about or disclose, um, you know what
Speaker 1: he might have done on the you know what we're
Speaker 1: talking about while on the moon. But uh so, again,
Speaker 1: we don't have an absolute confirmation that had happened, but
Speaker 1: I'd like to think it did, and certainly people who
Speaker 1: were very close to Neil um I like to think
Speaker 1: it did. So that's where we got there. It wasn't
Speaker 1: an idea that we came up with, but it was.
Speaker 1: But it was something that as soon as we heard
Speaker 1: it felt felt like a beautiful place to try to.
Speaker 1: It sort of helped dictate, Okay, if that's sort of
Speaker 1: the the that's the light at the end of the tunnel,
Speaker 1: if that's the station that the train needs to pull
Speaker 1: into at the end, how can we best sort of
Speaker 1: lay the lay the pipe to get there. That's good
Speaker 1: enough for me, and frankly I came to the conclusion
Speaker 1: if you if it had been made up, that it
Speaker 1: would have been fined by me because you're telling a story,
Speaker 1: you know, and that that happens to close the story
Speaker 1: nicely and all, Yeah, all of that's good enough. For me,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just again such a profound moment and
Speaker 1: really interesting because the movie for me is it's it's
Speaker 1: filmed in a kind of claustrophobic way at times, It's
Speaker 1: filmed in a kind of languid, almost removed way at times,
Speaker 1: which I came to feel reflected him is a very calculated,
Speaker 1: uh you know, I don't want to call him emotionless,
Speaker 1: but everything is buried and the guy, and I kind
Speaker 1: of felt like the filmmaking reflected that there's not you're
Speaker 1: not cutting outside of the spacecraft whenever you're doing all
Speaker 1: the various missions and everything's right there with them, and
Speaker 1: then when you get this moment on the moon, that
Speaker 1: release happens. I kind of feel like some people that
Speaker 1: work for and other people maybe the vibe of the
Speaker 1: film up until then just maybe maybe they checked out
Speaker 1: or something. I don't know, because I've just heard interesting
Speaker 1: varying takes on this. I just wanted to ask you
Speaker 1: about that, like, how did you come to approach this
Speaker 1: material with with film language, because it's so different from
Speaker 1: Whiplash and La La Lalla Land, which are you know,
Speaker 1: kind of I guess frenetic by comparison, but just talk
Speaker 1: about that a little bit. I guess uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think, um, from the outset, I think it
Speaker 1: was just about trying to uh uh trying to make
Speaker 1: everything feel as real as possible. Um. And so for me,
Speaker 1: I think that started with the archival footage that you know,
Speaker 1: there's just which of which there's so much, um you
Speaker 1: know of of all the the the the Apollo and
Speaker 1: Jimny missions, uh you know, NASA on the ground. Um.
Speaker 1: Also obviously the Life magazine photographs of the ass or
Speaker 1: not in their families. Um. So basically just the documentary
Speaker 1: visual material that exists of those people at that time. UM.
Speaker 1: I just kind of fell in love with how all
Speaker 1: of that felt and and um uh that I think dictated,
Speaker 1: uh to a large degree, the look of the film. Uh,
Speaker 1: the sort of uh uh super sixteen or or thirty
Speaker 1: five two perf kind of grainy um handheld look um. Um.
Speaker 1: But it also I think, you know, sort of want
Speaker 1: of dictating dictating the style in the sense that you
Speaker 1: you know, if you're trying to make the movie as
Speaker 1: though you're a documentary crew kind of on the ground, um,
Speaker 1: following these astronauts around or sort of slipping into the
Speaker 1: spacecraft with them or into their house with them. Um,
Speaker 1: you can get very physically close to them, but there's
Speaker 1: also always going to be a certain distance that you have.
Speaker 1: There's a certain distance in any verite cinema, verite filmmaking
Speaker 1: that um um, because you don't have the sort of
Speaker 1: the you don't have the trappings that fiction filmmaking give
Speaker 1: you to sort of plunge into a character. So it
Speaker 1: became this kind of balance and this challenge for for
Speaker 1: Ryan and Claire and and all the actors, and and
Speaker 1: and for us to figure out that balance of how
Speaker 1: where we're where were we going to kind of slip
Speaker 1: into their subjectivity in a way the documentary filmmaking doesn't
Speaker 1: allow you to do uh. Traditional verite filmmaking, you know,
Speaker 1: wouldn't allow you to do uh. And when we're we
Speaker 1: going to be really faithful to okay, we're truly a
Speaker 1: fly on the wall here and not intervening, observing being
Speaker 1: wires and just kind of uh peeking over people's shoulders
Speaker 1: to see what's going on, but not necessarily interacting with it.
Speaker 1: And that was sort of just the newsreel versus the uh,
Speaker 1: the more kind of you know, subjectively emotional approach, and
Speaker 1: we tried to try to sort of, yeah, slide in
Speaker 1: and out of of one kind of mode, but try
Speaker 1: to keep it feeling the same. Well as those the
Speaker 1: aim at least some of that, like it grounds them
Speaker 1: in situating the domestic, the domesticity of it. All. These
Speaker 1: guys are superheroes, so like the contrast that is really
Speaker 1: interest thing too. Yeah. Um, last time you were on,
Speaker 1: I had asked you how how did the kind of tour,
Speaker 1: if you will, of La La Land compare with Whiplash,
Speaker 1: meaning specifically the festival reveals of these films you had
Speaker 1: Whiplash and some Man you had La La Land in Venice.
Speaker 1: Talk about first Man and how this experience so far
Speaker 1: we're talking earlier in the game than we did last time,
Speaker 1: but how this experience so far is uh compared to
Speaker 1: last time? I mean, were you were you reticent to
Speaker 1: open Venice again? Uh? Well, you know, I in in
Speaker 1: in some I mean yeah, in some ways I think,
Speaker 1: but it had more to do with just, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the schedule we were sort of confronted with, Um, but
Speaker 1: that that in a way actually was sort of regardless
Speaker 1: of of of Venice. It was just you know, we
Speaker 1: knew we had to finish the movie by a certain
Speaker 1: point in time. It was less time than we had
Speaker 1: had to addit La La land um, which which in
Speaker 1: some ways, uh well, in all ways was an easier
Speaker 1: film to edit. Um uh, less footage and more wonders
Speaker 1: and more just kind of predesigned, whereas this was sort
Speaker 1: of a lot of this was discovered on set and
Speaker 1: then discovered in the cutting room like a documentary would be.
Speaker 1: So so that plus the technical challenges on this, we're
Speaker 1: sort of another you know, kind of a just of
Speaker 1: another level than than anything I dealt with before. So
Speaker 1: it was just a scramble too, or felt like a
Speaker 1: scramble to kind of get all the pieces in line
Speaker 1: and uh and feel like we you know, had had
Speaker 1: had a handle on things in time, and luckily it
Speaker 1: all came together. But you know, it wasn't without a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of sort of sweating and hair
Speaker 1: pulling and hard work from the from from the Tom
Speaker 1: Cross and and and the sound team and the effects
Speaker 1: team and everyone. You seem to be kind of thankful
Speaker 1: for that when it came to Whiplash, kind of getting
Speaker 1: it together. Ironically, the ironically this felt closer to Whiplash
Speaker 1: than than it did to La La Land in terms
Speaker 1: of the in terms at least of the post production
Speaker 1: of it having so much time to second guess what
Speaker 1: you're doing and stuff like that, which is what you
Speaker 1: did on La La Land. Yeah, yeah, whereas here it
Speaker 1: was kind of yeah, there was a little less of that,
Speaker 1: and uh, we had Yeah, we had more time than
Speaker 1: we did on Whiplash, but more, but we also had
Speaker 1: more footage and a bigger story and bigger technical challenges.
Speaker 1: So so it felt, you know, it felt like a
Speaker 1: similar pace. Um. And then I guess in some ways
Speaker 1: that pace just sort of is unrelenting until the moment
Speaker 1: you lock. Uh, and then like the moment we finished,
Speaker 1: I hopped on a plane to to you know, to Venice,
Speaker 1: and we were premiering the next day, so it was
Speaker 1: I didn't really have time to sort of have that
Speaker 1: kind of which in some ways it is probably good
Speaker 1: for me to have that sort of post finishing, pre
Speaker 1: premiering sort of stress. It just kind of one rolled
Speaker 1: right into the other. Um. I wanted to ask you, like, well,
Speaker 1: first let's talk about the score. You know, I talked
Speaker 1: to Justin Herwitz and tell you write a lot about this.
Speaker 1: The score is phenomenal. Um. Sometimes it has this kind
Speaker 1: of metronome ticking, kind of propulsive quality. Sometimes it's very
Speaker 1: emotional and sweeping, and it's way what was I guess
Speaker 1: the the initially? You know, I always asked this kind
Speaker 1: of question, but just the colonel, what was the idea of, Okay,
Speaker 1: the musical identity of this film should convey X? What
Speaker 1: what was that? I think it was more than anything
Speaker 1: trying to convey the loss of a child, trying to
Speaker 1: convey a parent, um, a parent's grief over the loss
Speaker 1: of a child, and and and uh. So I think
Speaker 1: it's started with not not so much trying to convey
Speaker 1: you know, what's what's the what's the you know, how
Speaker 1: do you score the moon landing? Or how do you
Speaker 1: score uh, you know, space missions. It was more what
Speaker 1: what's what's what's the central emotion of the movie? Um,
Speaker 1: the emotion that sort of guides everything? And and and
Speaker 1: uh and what is a melody that can sort of
Speaker 1: communicate that? Um? And so so it started there. It
Speaker 1: started with Justin at the piano trying to find that
Speaker 1: melody UM, and then trying to find sort of subs
Speaker 1: beames around it once we landed on a central melody
Speaker 1: we liked and and uh and then only after that, um,
Speaker 1: did it become a matter of okay, now, what are
Speaker 1: the sounds that that that best best sort of tie
Speaker 1: Earth to the moon, so to speak in the movie.
Speaker 1: You know that that can be grounded when we need
Speaker 1: them to be intimate when we need them to be,
Speaker 1: but also can suggest the infinite expanse of space. Um.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, and I think um that that took
Speaker 1: a long time. I remember, I mean actually even before
Speaker 1: almost even before there, they were kind of you know,
Speaker 1: back when we were when we were in early stages
Speaker 1: of the script, Just and I were talking about what
Speaker 1: what the sounds might be. We knew it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: completely traditionally orchestral. We also knew we didn't want it
Speaker 1: to be completely um non orchestral or completely electronic. Um,
Speaker 1: you guys did some trippy stuff it needed. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: just needed We knew it needed to be in some
Speaker 1: kind of you know, in between zone. Um. But it
Speaker 1: took a while to you know, fin fine tune that
Speaker 1: the movie has a definite like sonic signature. Just you know,
Speaker 1: the the sound design is amazing. What was like the
Speaker 1: kind of the biggest technical uh hurdle or whatever with
Speaker 1: this film. I mean, I've heard some interesting things about
Speaker 1: taking some of the archival footage. I think that you
Speaker 1: you did something with the visual effects to expand on
Speaker 1: or something like that, and you know, just different things
Speaker 1: like that. What was like just the biggest challenge technically
Speaker 1: speaking to to get what you wanted to to to
Speaker 1: convey the vision that you wanted to convey here. I guess, uh, well,
Speaker 1: you know the I guess one of the big challenges
Speaker 1: was was what once you try to sort of set
Speaker 1: parameters around around something like in this case, Okay, everything
Speaker 1: needs to feel like a you know, Super sixteen documentary
Speaker 1: and we're sort of expanding from there. Then uh, it
Speaker 1: sort of puts even more of a burden I think
Speaker 1: on on visual effects or sound design, uh you know
Speaker 1: those crafts people who uh in a different kind of movie,
Speaker 1: I think you can get away with stuff being a
Speaker 1: little more obviously synthetic, you know, if you have a
Speaker 1: movie that's sort of fantastical from the get go. Um,
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot more allowance for things to
Speaker 1: either uh to either look computer generated or to sound
Speaker 1: uh heightened or whatever. You sort of you sort of
Speaker 1: go with it. Um and uh, but here we knew
Speaker 1: we weren't we weren't going to have that sort of
Speaker 1: facility that um that that stuff that was fake would
Speaker 1: really look and sound fake. Um, it would be like
Speaker 1: a sore thumb. Uh and so uh so yeah, So
Speaker 1: so that sort of dictated a lot of what the
Speaker 1: workflow was going to be that we were gonna try
Speaker 1: to do as much of the visual effects and camera,
Speaker 1: try to do as much of the visual effects uh
Speaker 1: before shooting, so to speak, and kind put them on
Speaker 1: led screens in terms of what you were seeing outside
Speaker 1: the spacecraft and so uh and film those led screens
Speaker 1: through the windows of the spacecrafts and film all that
Speaker 1: on on film Super sixteen or thirty five, and try
Speaker 1: to bake everything into a look that would that that
Speaker 1: hopefully would harmonize everything so that at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, whether it's a miniature or a piece of
Speaker 1: computer generated imagery or or totally sort of in camera practical, uh,
Speaker 1: it hopefully would all um speak the same language. Um,
Speaker 1: it would all be put through the same filter, so
Speaker 1: to speak. Um. And I guess sound was sort of
Speaker 1: a similar similar deal um uh you know, we we uh.
Speaker 1: Mary Ellis was our recording sound on set UM and
Speaker 1: was just meticulous about every you know sort of uh
Speaker 1: uh every uh you know, like in Michigan, trol Mike
Speaker 1: in every single desk, you know, twenty four separate channels
Speaker 1: there in the in the space crafts, making uh different
Speaker 1: elements of those crafts separately, making sure we were always
Speaker 1: getting even if we knew it would be rough, always
Speaker 1: getting production sound, even if it was just at the
Speaker 1: gimbal motion control sort of systems on these crafts. UM
Speaker 1: that then created a groundwork for A Langley and uh
Speaker 1: uh and and Frank Montano and and and Milly Yatramorgan
Speaker 1: uh to to uh to sort of create their templates
Speaker 1: and post sound wise, and they wound up going to
Speaker 1: launches and uh you know, recording the Falcon X and
Speaker 1: recording launch tests and recording rocket tests in Texas and Florida,
Speaker 1: getting space suits and putting mikes inside with helmet you know,
Speaker 1: putting mikes inside the helmets and inside the sort of
Speaker 1: nozzles to get airflow and um so basically just trying
Speaker 1: to get as much real stuff as possible. Um. And
Speaker 1: then finally, you know, you have this bedding of I
Speaker 1: guess you call it reality. Uh, and then you try
Speaker 1: to figure out where you need to augment that, where
Speaker 1: you want to augment it, where you want to have
Speaker 1: fun with it. And that's where that's where you could
Speaker 1: get really creative. And so that's where I know, like
Speaker 1: I I laying in in um in post, you know,
Speaker 1: started uh playing around with various animal sounds and uh
Speaker 1: sounds of warfare, tank sounds, gunfire sounds. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: stuff that normally would not be would not realistically be
Speaker 1: in this world of you know, spacecrafts, but um, but
Speaker 1: could sort of bleed into it and augmented and heighten
Speaker 1: it and also give another worldly quality to it when
Speaker 1: we needed it to um um. And and then John Taylor,
Speaker 1: uh another one of our mixers, you know, he sort
Speaker 1: of his job sort at the end was kind of
Speaker 1: to to colaid everything and to sort of pull everything
Speaker 1: together and and hum again make it all sound of
Speaker 1: a piece. So you want it all to look a
Speaker 1: a piece and sound of a piece. And it just
Speaker 1: it takes some you know, some back and forth to
Speaker 1: get that biggest technical challenge of your career so far
Speaker 1: or yeah, yeah, for sure, Yeah, justin says, he keeps
Speaker 1: his oscars on his piano where you keeping your worse
Speaker 1: he's his oscars on his piano. No, actually, I think
Speaker 1: that's right. The thing he doesn't tell you is that
Speaker 1: he's nowhere else to put them because his apartment has
Speaker 1: no furniture so or no drawers or no anything. It's
Speaker 1: just the bare bones. You go in and it's like
Speaker 1: an empty room with a piano. So the only place
Speaker 1: to pook that would be on the um I minor
Speaker 1: in a like up in a drawer and a spare room,
Speaker 1: in a drawer in a spare room, or or well
Speaker 1: they're they're on a drawer, so they're not they're not
Speaker 1: like hidden, but they're not in my face. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to be staring at them, as I
Speaker 1: think Justin probably likes the challenge of it. I like
Speaker 1: them to just be out of sight, out of mind.
Speaker 1: That's funny. Well, I want to ask you because you know, uh,
Speaker 1: we talked two years ago, a year and a half ago,
Speaker 1: right after the oscars. I'm gonna ask Barry this question
Speaker 1: in two weeks too, so you're not on the spot,
Speaker 1: but just after, after the whirlwind of that night we
Speaker 1: spoke the next morning, just the afterglow of all of that, Like,
Speaker 1: what what do you think when you look back at
Speaker 1: at that night in that crazy moment would be you know,
Speaker 1: the mishap with the envelope and just all of that. Uh,
Speaker 1: it all feels a little bit like, uh, like like
Speaker 1: something out of a movie, which I guess is appropriate.
Speaker 1: You know, it feels very surreal. Um, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of I don't know, it was there was
Speaker 1: something kind of fun about it because it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the Hollywood, the Oscars, all that stuff is sort of
Speaker 1: can be has the potential to be absurd enough on
Speaker 1: its own. Uh. So it felt like that whole uh,
Speaker 1: that whole episode was maybe a way of underlying underlying that. Um,
Speaker 1: but it was certainly nice to be able to I
Speaker 1: saw Barry in Toronto actually when uh we were just there,
Speaker 1: um it was about to premiere his film, I think,
Speaker 1: and and um, um yeah, it's it's a it's a
Speaker 1: surreal memory. As I told you both at the time,
Speaker 1: nobody else is going to have that memory. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know that's presumably that won't ever happen again. So
Speaker 1: you get that interesting spot in the record books. I
Speaker 1: guess you will. Yeah, some people have you know, walking
Speaker 1: on the moon. Other people have mistaken that's great. You
Speaker 1: never know you might get to the moon. Um, last year,
Speaker 1: I just kinda want to talk about last year because
Speaker 1: you're working on your movie. But you know, while Land
Speaker 1: was two years ago, so last year you presumably were
Speaker 1: able to see some movies. You wrote about dunk Kirk
Speaker 1: for us. I know you were a Dunkirk fan, So
Speaker 1: just curious what you thought of last year's kind of
Speaker 1: awards season slate of films. We have stuff like Shape
Speaker 1: of Water and get Out and Three Billboards and dun Kirk,
Speaker 1: which I was a huge fan of Dunkerk. It was great.
Speaker 1: It felt like a great year. Um, but uh but
Speaker 1: it also was you know, I definitely always enjoy the
Speaker 1: years more when when when I don't have you know,
Speaker 1: when you don't have something, I don't have a movie out,
Speaker 1: and you know, I could just sort of uh take
Speaker 1: a step back and uh, um watch stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: uh the way I used to as a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: and you just sort of, um, you get to have
Speaker 1: a little more untainted view. But actually felt like a
Speaker 1: great year. I loved Call me about your Name and
Speaker 1: Phantom Thread and Ladybird and Get Out and dunk Kirk.
Speaker 1: I mean it was it was. Yeah, this year is
Speaker 1: pretty good too. Years Oh yeah, yeah, Phantom Thread too.
Speaker 1: Remember Phantom Thread last year? Yeah, yeah, I just mentioned that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have my list of movies because literally I forget
Speaker 1: them like two months later, I'm like, what was What
Speaker 1: were the movies we were just watching for six months?
Speaker 1: And that's really sad. But it's just like it's because
Speaker 1: you're so crammed for like, you know, six months than
Speaker 1: the one the ones that I guess, the ones that
Speaker 1: matter sort of they kind of float back your conscious.
Speaker 1: It always plays it back, but immediately afterwards, it's like
Speaker 1: you justized cramming for a test and completely goes away
Speaker 1: the day after, and then a few nuggets will remain
Speaker 1: in the years later. Yeah, it's true. It's a healthy
Speaker 1: thing to remember when when you're kind of in the
Speaker 1: in the both as a filmmaker and I assume on
Speaker 1: your side, just when you're in the crux of it
Speaker 1: all for how fleeting it all can be. Absolutely, we
Speaker 1: had Nolan on the show speaking of dunk Kirk, which
Speaker 1: was like a huge bludder. I mean, I know, you guys.
Speaker 1: I don't know if your pals or what, but like
Speaker 1: I know, you guys respect each other's work, and yeah,
Speaker 1: spoken of each other's work. So no, he's I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I got We talked a lot about you know,
Speaker 1: obviously Imax and um. Uh. He sort of helped helped
Speaker 1: help me know what to expect UMU my first time
Speaker 1: shooting shooting on Imax stock uh and um the moon
Speaker 1: stuff by the way, everyone is the Imax material. Um.
Speaker 1: But but also I just I really love and respect
Speaker 1: his approach to big canvas uh cinema, this sort of
Speaker 1: in and in camera old school kind of approach. I
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to work with Nathan Crawley on
Speaker 1: this movie, who's basically Nolan's go to production designer. I
Speaker 1: mean obviously works with many other directors as well, but um,
Speaker 1: but he had just finished Dunkirk essentially when um, when
Speaker 1: I first met with him, Uh, it hadn't come out
Speaker 1: yet when I first met with him about this um
Speaker 1: and uh, and he was you know, completely not just
Speaker 1: on board, but helped spearhead the whole kind of principle
Speaker 1: of of you know, practical effects and in camera work
Speaker 1: that that Lena's my DP and I were we're trying
Speaker 1: to foster um and and say with the Vffects team,
Speaker 1: and so you know, you kind of have to have
Speaker 1: everyone on board with that that okay, where everything's gonna
Speaker 1: be real. We're gonna ever, We're not gonna you know,
Speaker 1: digitally put in the visors later. We're gonna have real
Speaker 1: visors in there, which means they have to be breathing, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, real oxygen and having cooling tubes and all
Speaker 1: that has to be functional inside their suits. And then
Speaker 1: the crafts, those are actually gonna close up and be
Speaker 1: you know, we're not gonna make them bigger for camera,
Speaker 1: We're gonna make them what they actually were. Size wise.
Speaker 1: You've got to figure out your angle holes and uh,
Speaker 1: when it moves, it's gonna actually move. When there's fire
Speaker 1: outside the window, it's gonna be fired. You know, all
Speaker 1: these things just uh uh, it takes planning. But I
Speaker 1: was really lucky and especially thanks to some of these
Speaker 1: you know, kind of people at the top spear heading it,
Speaker 1: like Nathan, to just have a group of people who
Speaker 1: were gung ho for that sort of approach. Yeah, from
Speaker 1: the big canvas to a smaller one. I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to you about working with the streaming companies, Working
Speaker 1: with Apple on a project, working with Netflix. I think
Speaker 1: you'd wrected two episodes of The Eddie for Netflix, right, Well,
Speaker 1: I haven't yet. That's next year, You're you're going to
Speaker 1: For some reason, I thought you had already done those.
Speaker 1: And then Apple, You're you're that prolific. Come on, man,
Speaker 1: you're slacking off the Apple. You're doing the whole thing.
Speaker 1: You're writing and directing the whole deal. I believe there's
Speaker 1: some mystery around what that is. Well, working working with
Speaker 1: a writer on it, um uh and I, uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's come. It's still very early days. We don't
Speaker 1: there's there's nothing I can tell you. There's nothing yet.
Speaker 1: There's no script, there's no there's there's uh, there's ideas.
Speaker 1: Um the the Eddie, the Netflix thing. That's that's something
Speaker 1: that's been sort of brewing for longer. That's something that
Speaker 1: Jack Thorne, a great, great writer, um uh wrote And
Speaker 1: uh so I'll be uh yeah, I'll be directing the
Speaker 1: just the first two episodes in Paris. Obviously, no ambivalence,
Speaker 1: reticence or whatever for you regarding these companies regarding this
Speaker 1: kind of media. Uh. You know, Mr Nolan has some
Speaker 1: strong feelings about Netflix, for instance, So you seem to
Speaker 1: be fully on board and happy to do this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, right, yeah, I mean, uh, yes, um, you know,
Speaker 1: but also it's it's uh, you know these are these
Speaker 1: are TV projects or you know, you know that that
Speaker 1: Eddie is a television series and h the Apple thing
Speaker 1: is another long form um, long form uh piece of material.
Speaker 1: So I I, um, I'm not I'm not going into
Speaker 1: those uh expecting a you know, sort of theatrical presentation
Speaker 1: necessary early. Um. So I think I think what Nolan
Speaker 1: is talking about is a little more not to put
Speaker 1: words in his mouth, was a little more specifically regarding
Speaker 1: how about theatrical feature films, how about like the the
Speaker 1: kind of what's the word, uh, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say dominance, but you know, the company like Netflix is
Speaker 1: really taken off and really uh kind of rubbing against
Speaker 1: the grain for a lot of people. So regarding theatrical
Speaker 1: versus a movie like Roma, which is going to Netflix,
Speaker 1: and some people are like, oh, this should be on
Speaker 1: three thousand screens and you know, just do you have
Speaker 1: strong feelings about all that kind of stuff? Well, I
Speaker 1: think they are planning on doing it, really, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know three thousand screens, but you know they're
Speaker 1: gonna do something. Uh. And first of all, the movie
Speaker 1: like it would never be on three thousand screens, you know,
Speaker 1: so uh you know. So it's also I think there's
Speaker 1: there's um if they do a real you know, as
Speaker 1: much a theatrical for Roma as as would happen for um,
Speaker 1: you know, for for say, you know, for for that
Speaker 1: same movie ten years ago or something, then that's uh,
Speaker 1: then I'm all, I'm all for that. Um. Um, I
Speaker 1: do think theatrical, Yeah, I mean I I remain a
Speaker 1: fervent believer in theatrical for sure. There's nothing quite can
Speaker 1: replace that, even and honestly, even if it's just the
Speaker 1: sort of first step, and you know, everything winds up
Speaker 1: on home video these days, so it's not you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes there's this kind of this straw man argument formed
Speaker 1: that that that it's like an either or kind of
Speaker 1: thing that people who argue for theatrical are arguing against
Speaker 1: home video or something, you know, and it's really not.
Speaker 1: All they're arguing for is for theatrical to remain the option,
Speaker 1: to be an option, you know, the same thing with
Speaker 1: digital versus film, although that that debate kind of yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that that's that's that that that debate at least felt
Speaker 1: you know earlier kind of similar, you know, in the
Speaker 1: sense of that sort of these things don't have to
Speaker 1: be exclusionary, so um, but sometimes they're pitted out as
Speaker 1: though they have to be. So I guess that's more
Speaker 1: where I where I come down. Um, but I think,
Speaker 1: um uh, but you know, I don't know. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day, good good uh. You know, good
Speaker 1: storytelling is good storytelling and and uh, and it's also
Speaker 1: not necessarily a bad thing. I think the same applies
Speaker 1: to you know, more traditional TV. When it's good, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a bad thing to to have. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: real competition for for for for smart discerning eyeballs. Um
Speaker 1: that that that you know, that the studios have to
Speaker 1: deal with, and it's always hopefully it sort of inspires
Speaker 1: them to to you know, make more, you know, take
Speaker 1: more risks, make more interesting films. I know that's not
Speaker 1: always the case, but you know, I always say, the
Speaker 1: first time I saw two thousand one was on VHS.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's like, by the way, congrats on the engagement.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to mention that was last year. You
Speaker 1: haven't got married yet, right since? Uh well yeah, no,
Speaker 1: well dight in the future. We we we uh we
Speaker 1: technically gotten there. We eloped um um back in the
Speaker 1: back in the Christmas you know, Christmas holiday, back around
Speaker 1: the winter holiday. Um. Uh we're having we're having like
Speaker 1: you know, we're doing uh ceremony, you know, uh celebration. Awesome,
Speaker 1: but we're to send the invitation U s Yeah, Brandon
Speaker 1: right here in person, tell her hello for me. Actually,
Speaker 1: Livia's right here. We can do it. We can do
Speaker 1: it right here. Let's do it. The PMC team here,
Speaker 1: the research guys to to to be the Witnesses. Movies
Speaker 1: called First Man. It opens October. Well, and you should
Speaker 1: see it. It's fantastic. I think it's amazing. And as
Speaker 1: I tell Damien all the time, I'm very angry with
Speaker 1: him for being thirty three years old and this talented.
Speaker 1: But congrats with everything man you're doing. So thanks for
Speaker 1: coming on the show. Thanks