Speaker 1: Yeah, since Writer's birthday is not that far away, and
Speaker 1: I know how much writer loves astrology.
Speaker 2: Oh, the Secret Language of birthdays?
Speaker 1: Do you have this book? Writer?
Speaker 2: Everybody had? I don't think I have it anymore, but
Speaker 2: of course everybody and everybody's had the team.
Speaker 1: That's also the secret language of relationships, and you can
Speaker 1: match up the two birthdays people hit this.
Speaker 2: This book was like the best seller back in the day.
Speaker 1: It was massive and I loved it. Anytime I had
Speaker 1: a crush on a guy, the first thing I would
Speaker 1: do is like, when's your birthday? Like, read about him
Speaker 1: in this book, read about him in the relationship book.
Speaker 3: So I writ it's Writer on Friday.
Speaker 4: What do we see?
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to go to December eleventh here.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 5: He's Oh my gosh, December eleventh, the day of intensity.
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh, I'm already so happy. Those born on December
Speaker 1: eleventh are basically serious individuals, intense, thoughtful, and filled with purpose.
Speaker 1: They are extremely well directed toward their goals and therefore
Speaker 1: difficult to stop. Despite their deep mental orientation, which is
Speaker 1: not necessarily a verbal one, they often have a commanding
Speaker 1: physical presence as well. This combination of thought and physicality
Speaker 1: makes them powerful individuals.
Speaker 2: The dynamism verbal physical at all, Okay, keep going.
Speaker 1: The dynamism of December eleventh people usually carries them through difficulties. However,
Speaker 1: if they are neglected, fall out of favor, or lose
Speaker 1: the support of either their teacher or their followers, they
Speaker 1: can experience tremendous psychological stress, sometimes even coming close to
Speaker 1: giving up or falling apart. Fortunately, those born on this
Speaker 1: day are capable of recovering from even the most drastic
Speaker 1: setbacks and making a comeback, after which they are still
Speaker 1: more resilient.
Speaker 2: Agree that every sentence contradicts the one before. It's so
Speaker 2: this is science perfectly written. It's like science. It's like
Speaker 2: teachers or followers. And then the next sentence is like,
Speaker 2: it's they'll be really devastated, but they all come back
Speaker 2: really easily. So you see yourself in You're gonna see
Speaker 2: it great. Yeah, it's science.
Speaker 1: Not so much their faith in themselves, but the nature
Speaker 1: of their indomitable energy, which seems to take over impersonally
Speaker 1: and have a life of its own, ensures their success.
Speaker 1: As conduits of energy. Those born on this day can
Speaker 1: have an enormous influence on those around them. Not only
Speaker 1: their words and deeds, but even their thoughts themselves can
Speaker 1: affect the feelings of their families, friends, and colleagues. One
Speaker 1: look at them may reveal how they feel, for they
Speaker 1: are quite transparent. It is difficult for them to hide
Speaker 1: their emotions, which are usually written openly on their face
Speaker 1: or expressed in their body language for all to see. Paradoxically,
Speaker 1: they themselves may not be aware of what is obvious
Speaker 1: to others. In this respect, it is of great benefit
Speaker 1: for them to have an understanding mate or friend who
Speaker 1: can help them be more self aware and keep them
Speaker 1: in touch with how others see them. December eleventh. People
Speaker 1: can assume positions of great responsibility, but are not the
Speaker 1: best choice for positions requiring impartial arbitration. Their primary responsibility, well,
Speaker 1: their primary responsibility is to their work and ideas, or
Speaker 1: perhaps their moral understandings and vision of how they wish
Speaker 1: life to be. Those born on this day take matters
Speaker 1: of right and wrong very seriously, and can indeed err
Speaker 1: on the side of being condemning and judgmental.
Speaker 4: No Ah.
Speaker 1: Such judgment has a severe aspect and is usually taken
Speaker 1: to heart by others as parents. December eleventh, People must
Speaker 1: be extremely careful not to lay heavy pressures on their children.
Speaker 1: In fact, a live and let live policy toward the
Speaker 1: world in general may be better than carrying the flaming
Speaker 1: sword of an avenging angel. Furthermore, December eleventh, people must
Speaker 1: learn to relax, have fun, and enjoy themselves. Often their
Speaker 1: high seriousness gets in the way of others feeling lighthearted.
Speaker 1: If they can reserve their seriousness for their work and
Speaker 1: allow themselves to be more playful in their free time,
Speaker 1: they will greatly improve their quality of life.
Speaker 2: Wow, let me see, I'm embracing more playfulness in my work.
Speaker 2: This is my work right now? Yeah, this is so much. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's very playful. Do we have to wait till August
Speaker 2: to hear mine?
Speaker 1: No? No woman to read? Okay, yes, yes, he's just
Speaker 1: so hungry. August eleventh. Here we go.
Speaker 2: Part of the eleven brother Sacred Path, Yes exactly August eleventh.
Speaker 1: As you know, those weren't on the eleventh, they're part
Speaker 1: of the eleventh Brothers.
Speaker 6: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: All right, yours is the day of validation. Those born
Speaker 1: on August eleventh have a strong desire to reveal the truth.
Speaker 1: They also have a feeling for the dark side of
Speaker 1: life and for topics that others may be uncomfortable with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I will.
Speaker 1: It is their job, they feel, to courageously bring what
Speaker 1: is hidden to light, to test, to probe, and if necessary,
Speaker 1: expose those who pretend to be what they are not.
Speaker 6: None of this is accurate.
Speaker 1: No, the next know, I think of a few text
Speaker 1: messages where you've been like I just someone needs to
Speaker 1: someone needs to reveal this about.
Speaker 2: Them, defining characteristic of Will. The first thing said, So
Speaker 2: you're rationalizing, trying to make it work because it's August eleventh.
Speaker 2: Why don't we Why don't we do this? You know
Speaker 2: what we do. Let's stop reading this. Let's take your
Speaker 2: birthday and we'll take I'm going to take three different
Speaker 2: ones and we'll shove from different days, include one that
Speaker 2: including your birthday, and see if you can guess which
Speaker 2: one is yours.
Speaker 1: Well, I have like mind memorized.
Speaker 6: I was going to say, Daniel is going to know
Speaker 6: exactly what hers is.
Speaker 2: You can be reading August twelfth right now, for all I.
Speaker 1: Wasn't planning on reading. I'm just going to read Wills. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: this is not Will. It is extremely important for August
Speaker 1: eleventh people to have an audience, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: just to have an audience for their challenging, sometimes disturbing
Speaker 1: views and unusual behavior. This is not accurate anyway, Well,
Speaker 1: all right, I feel like Writers was pretty good. But anyway,
Speaker 1: Happy Birthday, Writer.
Speaker 6: A month away.
Speaker 2: Happy Birthday. I am the Avenging Angel.
Speaker 3: I feel like if somebody had given Rider a sandwich
Speaker 3: before you told him that, it would have been an
Speaker 3: entirely different conversation.
Speaker 1: You're exactly right. Welcome to Pon meets World. I'm Daniel Fishel,
Speaker 1: I'm Writer Strong, and I'm Will Fredell. I think we
Speaker 1: all find it cool when something from Boy Meets World
Speaker 1: finds itself mentioned in other forms of pop culture. Some
Speaker 1: favorites Sam Jackson performing beat poetry about the show on
Speaker 1: Jimmy Fallon. We've been an answer on Jeopardy many times.
Speaker 1: Multiple rappers have both mentioned the show and Topanga too
Speaker 1: many times to count, Family Guy, The Simpsons, SNL. The
Speaker 1: list goes on and on, but one reference in a
Speaker 1: little known debut movie from a director named Matt Johnson
Speaker 1: is one that is a little less conventional. The Canadian
Speaker 1: actor director made the found footage dramedy independently, eventually catching
Speaker 1: the attention of the festival circuit and Kevin Smith, who
Speaker 1: would join on as a producer after calling the film
Speaker 1: about a school shooter the most important movie you'd see
Speaker 1: all year. And in the movie, the twisted main character
Speaker 1: played by Matt himself does the feenie call nice.
Speaker 6: At least someone's doing it.
Speaker 1: Not the guy who who created it. No, not that guy,
Speaker 1: but someone is doing it, shing it, And we knew
Speaker 1: this was a big deal. It was the rule breaking,
Speaker 1: genre melding kid who had first caught attention with the
Speaker 1: web series then TV show Nirvana the Band, the Show
Speaker 1: that aired in the US on Vice, And then in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three he'd direct the movie BlackBerry with Glenn
Speaker 1: Howarton and Jay Bearschell, a film that won a record
Speaker 1: setting fourteen Canadian Screen Awards with seventeen nominations. And now
Speaker 1: we are all lucky to get Nirvana the Band, the Show,
Speaker 1: the movie currently on tour in the US, then released
Speaker 1: nationwide in February, and he's directing the upcoming a twenty
Speaker 1: four Anthony Bourdain movie called Tony, with Dominic Cssa playing
Speaker 1: the late chef and writer. And I have never seen
Speaker 1: Writer or Jensen more excited for it is.
Speaker 3: They have been nerding out since they told us he
Speaker 3: was coming on. It was like two little kids at
Speaker 3: a candy store watching.
Speaker 1: Them just nerding out. Welcome to Pod meets World. A
Speaker 1: man who, unlike Corey, never put the cam quarter down.
Speaker 1: It's Matt Johnson.
Speaker 4: How are you doing?
Speaker 1: You have absolutely no idea A starstruck writer and my
Speaker 1: husband Jensen and nwady even will.
Speaker 4: I know I know about Writer because I had met him,
Speaker 4: I think for the first time this year in Austin,
Speaker 4: South Soide. I met him in person and and and
Speaker 4: I could tell that he had seen a lot of
Speaker 4: my films yah were He.
Speaker 1: Was probably effusive in his in his you know what,
Speaker 1: it really.
Speaker 4: Does go both ways because I was explained to him.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure how much of this you guys want
Speaker 4: to talk about on your show, but but your show
Speaker 4: was like the seminal piece of I even use the
Speaker 4: term literature for me as a young person to understand
Speaker 4: not only stories but archetypes of characters. My name's Afew,
Speaker 4: my brother's name is Eric, and and Mike. We had
Speaker 4: two sisters who were both obsessive. Obsessive boy meets World fans,
Speaker 4: and so we watched it all the time. I'm in Canada,
Speaker 4: so it was a different We didn't have TGAF. We
Speaker 4: had what I mean, you might even know what it
Speaker 4: was called, but they played you and the teenage Witch, okay,
Speaker 4: and I don't know what else, but we watched the
Speaker 4: show religiously and it was fundamental to my understanding of
Speaker 4: story and character. Fundamentally. There's even Boy Meets World references
Speaker 4: in my early fans.
Speaker 1: I was just going to ask you I wanted to
Speaker 1: get it out of the way first, that there was
Speaker 1: a feenie call in The Dirties, which was your first movie.
Speaker 1: So was there a reason that you had the psychopath character?
Speaker 2: Say it?
Speaker 4: Or look, I'm going to tell you something. No, I'll
Speaker 4: tell you something about Will's character. Okay, And this is
Speaker 4: this is deeply sincere. When I was young, I saw
Speaker 4: Eric Matthews as the kind of person I wanted to be.
Speaker 4: I saw him. I remember these episode where he walks
Speaker 4: he's defending his brother in like over something, and he
Speaker 4: walks in and music to a like a law and
Speaker 4: Order style show is playing, and then he puts his
Speaker 4: briefcase on the table and opens it up and he
Speaker 4: was playing a tape. If you look at just that,
Speaker 4: just that little tiny moment of what he thought was appropriate.
Speaker 4: And it's not like he's laughing saying I'm hilarious. He
Speaker 4: does it because he's like, oh, yeah, I'm pretending to
Speaker 4: be an adult. In that, you actually see the genesis
Speaker 4: of a lot of the characters that I wind up
Speaker 4: playing in all of my works, people who have a
Speaker 4: kind of Calvin and Hobbes style approach to reality and
Speaker 4: play where it's like to be an adult is to
Speaker 4: is to pretend to be an adult, and they don't
Speaker 4: actually make the jump, and in not making the jump
Speaker 4: to being serious about it, there's something to that that
Speaker 4: I can't even put my finger on it. But that
Speaker 4: is what I was doing in the Dirties. I don't
Speaker 4: it's funny. I mean, obviously I don't view that character
Speaker 4: as as psychopathic at you him as as having a
Speaker 4: detachment from the real rules of reality. And so he's
Speaker 4: pretending to be a school shooter because to him, it's
Speaker 4: just play in the same way that Eric Matthews would
Speaker 4: constantly play at the world of being an adult, because
Speaker 4: rightfully so, I would say the consequences didn't really concern him.
Speaker 4: He's sort of above it. He was the character that
Speaker 4: people clapped for when he appeared. He was almost like
Speaker 4: the imaginary friend, you know, and so he had that,
Speaker 4: he had that power and that that they like a
Speaker 4: or clearly a lasting impact.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the I think the essential quality of
Speaker 2: that too is the earnestness, right, like the commitment to it.
Speaker 2: You're never winking, you know, like none of your characters ever.
Speaker 2: I mean, you have moments, especially in the new form,
Speaker 2: where you turn to the camera and you say, like, brilliant,
Speaker 2: this copyright is going to be a you know, you
Speaker 2: have moments but but you but but the earnestness, the
Speaker 2: heart is always there. There's always so such commitment. And
Speaker 2: that is a very Eric Matthews thing because like Will
Speaker 2: never you know, he never looked at the audience and
Speaker 2: was like I know what I'm doing as stupid. He
Speaker 2: was just in it and you're just like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: this guy's going for it.
Speaker 4: Another thing that that this character does so brilliantly, and
Speaker 4: I mean we're talking about him, he's right here, but
Speaker 4: he is never ever cruel. Yeah right, And this is
Speaker 4: so and it's so important and again it wind up
Speaker 4: I guess so. I'm sure it's silly to even talk
Speaker 4: about this way, but it winds up forming a layer
Speaker 4: of my own sense of morality as a young person,
Speaker 4: where I'm seeing what Eric Matthews is doing. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's an extremely moral show, like the show is. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's a children's show that is kind of about teaching
Speaker 4: tiny moral stories. But the way Eric approached it was
Speaker 4: that you can bend the rules so long as your
Speaker 4: intention is actually goodness for everybody. Right. He can lie,
Speaker 4: he can he can go into, you know, like kind
Speaker 4: of moral gray zones where the adults can be like,
Speaker 4: this guy's trouble, but nobody would ever be like, don't
Speaker 4: stay away from this guy, like he's not actually morally dangerous, right,
Speaker 4: And I think that that's something that left the lasting
Speaker 4: impact on me and I in some ways. It's it's
Speaker 4: why a lot of my work is in some ways
Speaker 4: infantile would be the negative way to say it, but
Speaker 4: childlike concerned with an adolescent morality formation. Where the characters
Speaker 4: in the Van of the Band, in the Dirties in
Speaker 4: Everything in BlackBerry is another great example, like the characters
Speaker 4: form a morality around the idea that my intention is
Speaker 4: the best for you, and so you must forgive my
Speaker 4: behavior because because you have to look beyond it to
Speaker 4: see that, yeah, I'm screwing around and I'm not maybe
Speaker 4: taking this as seriously as you would like me to,
Speaker 4: but my intention is actually for you to be Like
Speaker 4: in the in the episode I bring up, his intention
Speaker 4: is to get his brother out of trouble, right right,
Speaker 4: even though it's absertain what he's doing is insane, his
Speaker 4: intention is so pure and good that everybody can't just
Speaker 4: help but kind of laugh at him. And he's also
Speaker 4: the court jesture. He exposes the fact that this the
Speaker 4: adult system built around the Matthews family is everybody's playing
Speaker 4: right the soul Like anyway, I could. I could go
Speaker 4: on and on about that, but first the morality of
Speaker 4: the show.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: But also I just wanted to add that everything you're
Speaker 3: saying about Eric, I had planned out from day one,
Speaker 3: and of course.
Speaker 4: You're feen years old, being like a philosophical approach to
Speaker 4: the character that he's going to transcend the script.
Speaker 3: I am going to be the moral center of this show.
Speaker 3: I had it planned from day dot.
Speaker 2: So I was not saying that's actually a good way
Speaker 2: into Matt, like, like, how much did you plan this out?
Speaker 2: Because you're talking about this and you're you're you're breaking
Speaker 2: down your own sort of sensibility wonderfully. And this is
Speaker 2: what I felt like the moment I saw BlackBerry. I
Speaker 2: watched that film, you know, honestly, like there were a
Speaker 2: couple films that came out around the same time that
Speaker 2: were all like the story of a product, you know,
Speaker 2: there was like Air and I was just like over
Speaker 2: that as I was like a Tetris movie do we
Speaker 2: need and somebody was like, no, no, no, no, no, BlackBerry
Speaker 2: is the one to watch. And I started watching it,
Speaker 2: and about halfway through, I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: this is this is so brilliant, this is so well written.
Speaker 2: And I immediately knew. I was like, and that guy
Speaker 2: on the screen is leading this entire thing. I could
Speaker 2: just feel it. And then of course that weekend I
Speaker 2: did a deep dive and I watched all of your
Speaker 2: movies and like, I just became obsessed. And I feel
Speaker 2: like you're describing exactly exactly what I felt, which is
Speaker 2: that you know, you have this this insistence that character
Speaker 2: sort of overtakes plot and overtakes story and the character
Speaker 2: themself is like seeing themselves in a plot and they
Speaker 2: are able to, you know, influence people around them. I
Speaker 2: just think it's so brilliant. Was that always? Like did
Speaker 2: that happen just naturally? Like where did Like I'm assuming
Speaker 2: Nirvana the Man started from you guys just improving and
Speaker 2: playing together and discovering.
Speaker 4: Yes, Jay McCarroll what the other guy and also the
Speaker 4: co creator of the show. It was a childhood friend
Speaker 4: of mine. It's sort of after Boy Means Like I
Speaker 4: was watching Boy Means World as a true adolescent, and
Speaker 4: then by high school. I don't know, I wonder if
Speaker 4: he was even still on the air, but but I'm
Speaker 4: basically trying to put it in your timeline to try
Speaker 4: to figure it out where this happened in terms of
Speaker 4: your own lives. But in high school I met him
Speaker 4: and he went to a different high school, and we
Speaker 4: became very fast friends because we had a similar sensibility.
Speaker 4: We were from the same part of town, and so
Speaker 4: all of our references were the same, and it was
Speaker 4: just kind of play. He's a piano savant, like he's
Speaker 4: a true literally can play any song on the piano.
Speaker 4: After just hearing it for ten seconds, like he's a
Speaker 4: child genius. He's like he's like Mozart or Dama Dais.
Speaker 4: If you've ever seen that, feel like that, that accurately
Speaker 4: shows what he's like. He can he composed in the
Speaker 4: run of the band of the movie composed all that
Speaker 4: music he did. He did the music in BlackBerry is
Speaker 4: like a once in a lifetime talent in terms of
Speaker 4: sitting at a piano and being able to just create anything.
Speaker 4: And I, in my own way, I think had a
Speaker 4: kind of jealousy envy of that kind of magic, which
Speaker 4: is what it seems like when you're a kid. There's
Speaker 4: even a Boymans episode about this where it's like somebody
Speaker 4: is quite good at something and there's a jealousy.
Speaker 6: Alexand Alexander Niqui sa.
Speaker 4: And you're like, oh, I wish I could be this
Speaker 4: and so and that. I think that feeling of wanting
Speaker 4: to match him brought me into a place where it's
Speaker 4: like I would improvise scenarios or talk and and and
Speaker 4: so we created that dynamic between a piano player who
Speaker 4: could basically play anything and somebody with a microphone who
Speaker 4: had sort of in a you know, almost like Jack
Speaker 4: Kerouac like talks poetry, talk in live narration, and that
Speaker 4: just kept developing and developing until after I had gone
Speaker 4: through undergraduate film school and we started living together in
Speaker 4: downtown Toronto. We just developed it into a web series.
Speaker 4: But your question was like, how much of this was
Speaker 4: a plan? Like, really none. I could not articulate the
Speaker 4: themes of my own work. I could not have this
Speaker 4: conversation with you about the influence of Boy Meets World
Speaker 4: over me. When I decided to put that in my
Speaker 4: first movie to Dirteys, I just knew it felt right.
Speaker 4: I just knew that this character referencing Eric Matthews yelling
Speaker 4: at his conscience, which is sort of what Phoenie represents
Speaker 4: in the show, yelling to his conscience to say, come
Speaker 4: out and play with me. I couldn't explain it, but
Speaker 4: it just felt right. And the older I get, the
Speaker 4: further away from that, I see it creating a very
Speaker 4: clear path towards the things that I'm interested in, which
Speaker 4: come from again this kind of adolescence, adolescent sense of play,
Speaker 4: and the lasting impact of the games we play when
Speaker 4: we're kids into our adulthood. And it's why I actually
Speaker 4: think your show is so brilliantly named, because although it
Speaker 4: may seem trite, it's like, oh yeah, boy, meet World,
Speaker 4: It's like, that's not really what it's about. Everybody in
Speaker 4: that show is kind of learning the script for how
Speaker 4: to be an adult. The Panga is acting way beyond
Speaker 4: her maturity. It's absurd, right to the point where I
Speaker 4: love this episode where you cut your hair thinking that
Speaker 4: you will have absolutely no reaction, you're beyond vanity, etc.
Speaker 4: Only to be struck instantly by the fact that I can't.
Speaker 4: I like, my persona was so strong it fooled even me, right,
Speaker 4: And so all these characters are pretending to be adults,
Speaker 4: which is something that had a lasting impact on me.
Speaker 4: All my movies in some ways are about are about
Speaker 4: people who haven't gone through a write of passage or
Speaker 4: haven't actually transformed into adults pretending to be and the
Speaker 4: magic that you get from still being in that of
Speaker 4: thinking anything's possible, that that you make the rules, et cetera,
Speaker 4: et cetera.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm so curious because, like, to me, this gets
Speaker 2: to I'm really curious about your process, especially how it
Speaker 2: started versus where it's now. Because you're in your work,
Speaker 2: you have so much tension between improvisation, like clearly improvisation,
Speaker 2: Like it seems to me like you're just riffing. You're
Speaker 2: just in front of a camera and you're keeping it
Speaker 2: loose with the camera to keep up with you as
Speaker 2: an actor or your fellow actors. But then structurally you
Speaker 2: always have a way to bring it full circle where
Speaker 2: everything sort of comes back around. So I want to know, like,
Speaker 2: even in the early episodes in Nirvana, were you were
Speaker 2: you writing things? Were you improvising and then going back
Speaker 2: and writing a script that sort of made sense of
Speaker 2: the improv or were you just improving scene for like
Speaker 2: how does how does this work? I mean I'm assuming
Speaker 2: like BlackBerry, you out a script.
Speaker 4: Yes, But again, all of this we had stolen from
Speaker 4: sitcom television. So again to keep bringing this back to
Speaker 4: like TGF boy Mean's world style storytelling. It's like when
Speaker 4: you're a kid watching these shows, you don't realize that
Speaker 4: it's not just happening life, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: You know, I'm ten years old watching the show. I
Speaker 4: literally believe it's unfolding. Yeah, and there's no plan And
Speaker 4: it's only when as a young filmmaker, in a way,
Speaker 4: I was almost trying to mock the form of the sitcom.
Speaker 4: Like Nirvana the Band, the show in some ways is
Speaker 4: pretending itself to be a sitcom, and because we were
Speaker 4: pretending to be one, we wound up needing to learn
Speaker 4: how a three act structure for television actually works, and
Speaker 4: how funny it can be to put characters who are
Speaker 4: so stupid and don't and really don't deserve that kind
Speaker 4: of treatment in that world, and so that when the
Speaker 4: movie's a perfect example, it's like as when Matt goes
Speaker 4: back to the year twenty twenty five and the world
Speaker 4: is different and he's gotten the come upance that of
Speaker 4: course you would expect he would get if this were
Speaker 4: a sitcom where you know, you wish on a with
Speaker 4: a with a lamp, and then you get the wish,
Speaker 4: but it's corrupted, like in some ways that's a cliche,
Speaker 4: but in our world all the cliches seem fresh, and
Speaker 4: so we became addicted to them. And so I wound
Speaker 4: up teaching myself. I won't even say like I sat
Speaker 4: down to try to learn it. But in editing these things,
Speaker 4: the more we could cleave to the strict rules of
Speaker 4: Hollywood television story writing, the better it was, and it
Speaker 4: was like the exact opposite of what I thought in
Speaker 4: film school, where I thought, oh, I'll make movies and
Speaker 4: I won't follow any rules at all, like screenwriting is
Speaker 4: for old people, like all it sucks, like why would I,
Speaker 4: why would I know any of this? And then it
Speaker 4: was the exact opposite was true.
Speaker 2: And that was discovery in editing. That was when you started.
Speaker 4: Completely completely once we shot an entire episode, because I
Speaker 4: was editing the original episodes of that show. As I
Speaker 4: was doing it, the more I could fake it into
Speaker 4: a sitcom three act structure and make it like it
Speaker 4: was a boy Meets World episode, the more I was like,
Speaker 4: this is unsquarsably funny to me. And it's almost like
Speaker 4: you tie it together with a like an invisible structure
Speaker 4: that I don't even know that the audience even follows.
Speaker 4: But it makes all of the asinine nonsense of in
Speaker 4: the movie's example, a time travel story where really like
Speaker 4: these guys, at any moment, a real person could stop them,
Speaker 4: be like you guys, can stop, you don't need to
Speaker 4: do this, You're wasting your time. And yet because they
Speaker 4: are in the propulsive mode of well, I'm on tgif
Speaker 4: I gotta finish this movie. I have to do this.
Speaker 4: It creates a kind of new thing which is like
Speaker 4: the real world and real people colliding with this nineties clean,
Speaker 4: morally clear story that that, for whatever reason, I found
Speaker 4: very addictive when I was young.
Speaker 6: It's incredible.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I loved is because I
Speaker 3: just kept rewinding certain parts and rewinding certain parts. But
Speaker 3: the overall idea about the film that I loved so
Speaker 3: much was it really shows how wonderful, how important, and
Speaker 3: how really difficult friendship can be. And I just I
Speaker 3: you know, it's arguably the most important relationship you'll ever
Speaker 3: have in your life, is your best friend or best friends,
Speaker 3: And there's times it's not the easiest thing in the world,
Speaker 3: but you know that it's helping you develop the kind
Speaker 3: of person that you're becoming.
Speaker 6: And there's something you just.
Speaker 3: Caught that where it's like, God, I love you so much,
Speaker 3: and I can't be anywhere near you right now, of course,
Speaker 3: and it's just so great about it.
Speaker 4: The great quote that that that that rings in my
Speaker 4: mind as this young young quote that says, a great
Speaker 4: friend tells you who you are, and it's not something
Speaker 4: you can decide. You don't get who you are, even
Speaker 4: though of course we all think that we do.
Speaker 7: And yeah, again, almost every single episode of Boy Meets
Speaker 7: about this. Right wants to be this, Sean wants to
Speaker 7: be this, but they actually need to tell one another
Speaker 7: you're not that. And how many times in your show
Speaker 7: did the characters say this isn't you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a cliche, and yet what are they deeply saying.
Speaker 4: They're saying, you are acting outside of your moral norm
Speaker 4: and you keep going down this path, it will destroy you. Right,
Speaker 4: It's it's almost every third episode somebody will say this
Speaker 4: isn't you. But there's deep wisdom in that, right, which
Speaker 4: is that your friends create you, right, they make you.
Speaker 4: And so the decisions that you make, my decision to
Speaker 4: sit down and watch Boy Meets World, my whole family
Speaker 4: being drawn to it. Why why was that? Do you know?
Speaker 4: Like you write these questions like people think these questions
Speaker 4: are meaningless, but there's something there that that is well
Speaker 4: what you say, it's like it's profound. Yeah, even though
Speaker 4: it's this teg I have show that many people think
Speaker 4: about it almost mock. But what are you talking about?
Speaker 4: It developed your sense of morality?
Speaker 5: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? How much does being in Canada play into your work.
Speaker 4: I think that now that I'm older, it is it's
Speaker 4: become more clear to me that being outside of the
Speaker 4: American system. Even even the fact that I didn't have
Speaker 4: TGIF when I was a kid, and I would watch
Speaker 4: it on whatever our Canadian subsidiary broadcaster was, but I
Speaker 4: would see the ads between in between Boymans was like
Speaker 4: a TGIF and I'd be like, what is this tag that?
Speaker 4: It just seems so cool? I want to be a
Speaker 4: part of that, but I couldn't be. It gave me
Speaker 4: a kind of ironic distance from all of American culture,
Speaker 4: and so I think it's why The Dirties is so
Speaker 4: much about a kid obsessed with in almost like a
Speaker 4: younger brother way American culture and wanting to touch it,
Speaker 4: you know, like wanting so desperately to be a part
Speaker 4: of it. I think there's a there's read of my
Speaker 4: whole career, which is this guy is just this younger
Speaker 4: brother of American culture and he just wants he wants
Speaker 4: people to know that he loves it, and I want
Speaker 4: to reach out and be able to hold it in
Speaker 4: my hand like a jewel. Right, Navana the band is
Speaker 4: basically a whole series of that of us making these
Speaker 4: somewhat cryptic but sometimes very overt references to American media
Speaker 4: that shaped us. But it's not ours. I just made
Speaker 4: a movie in the United States about Anthony Bourdain with
Speaker 4: it for the first I remember with an American crew,
Speaker 4: and it was amazing to me. Was the first time
Speaker 4: I ever shot anything in America. I'm going from location
Speaker 4: to location with this huge American film crew and they're
Speaker 4: saying things like, oh, yeah, this is where these people
Speaker 4: shot Jaws, and this is the and we just shot
Speaker 4: this movie over here that won an Oscar. And then
Speaker 4: they just made that movie The Holdovers, which was nominated
Speaker 4: for all these Oscars, and I was like, whoa, this
Speaker 4: is like their lives. Like for you, guys, you are like,
Speaker 4: it's you. You get to be the defining culture of
Speaker 4: planet Earth. And it was the first time that I'd
Speaker 4: thought about it from the perspective of, oh, like what
Speaker 4: I just think of as multi media culture, Like what
Speaker 4: I just think of is the stuff that I watch.
Speaker 4: That's just American culture, water that you swim in.
Speaker 2: And well, so you were empowered then by this sort
Speaker 2: of outsider status or the sensus. I mean, are are
Speaker 2: you going to be able to hold on to it, like,
Speaker 2: did you feel it with this film? Now that you
Speaker 2: were working with an American crew and American producers and
Speaker 2: you know you're going to be it's going to get
Speaker 2: released right you're are, do you still how are you
Speaker 2: going to be able to maintain that that outsider sensibility?
Speaker 4: It was very difficult, And I will say that in
Speaker 4: a lot of ways, as I'm making movies that are
Speaker 4: that are bigger where it isn't where it's not cute,
Speaker 4: necessarily for me to kind of make movies like Nirvana
Speaker 4: the band to show the movie right, like, I don't
Speaker 4: have those same tools his. Let me put it this way,
Speaker 4: When I made BlackBerry, I thought that that movie was
Speaker 4: me leaving that part of my esthetic behind, and it
Speaker 4: proved to instead be the movie that most people know
Speaker 4: me by as opposed to my earlier work. And so
Speaker 4: I was I had thought that I had already had this,
Speaker 4: you know, sell out my aesthetics moment, and it seems
Speaker 4: as though it didn't occur. So I think that anything
Speaker 4: that I make, because in some ways I'm so limited
Speaker 4: and because my experiences are so defined, it's always going
Speaker 4: to be in my voice at some level now, and
Speaker 4: that may prove to be false. We'll find out.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite parts of the movie is just
Speaker 3: no matter what, no matter what the characters are going through,
Speaker 3: no matter what they're doing, they'll always stop and welcome
Speaker 3: people to Toronto.
Speaker 6: It's just like, oh my god, everything's going Hey, welcome,
Speaker 6: welcome to the city. We're really happy to have because it's.
Speaker 4: Just both patriots. You got to understands. Toronto is such
Speaker 4: a diverse city and so many people come to visit here.
Speaker 4: And I think that almost self consciously. When we're shooting
Speaker 4: the show, people look at us and they're like, what
Speaker 4: are these people doing? And I feel a kind of no, no, no,
Speaker 4: like a statesmanship like as like no, no, I'm happy
Speaker 4: you're here. Yea. But I like it when the when
Speaker 4: the when the French girl at the end plug the
Speaker 4: cable in and she's like, what are you doing? I'm like,
Speaker 4: I need your help. Oh you're where you're from? France
Speaker 4: or Quebec.
Speaker 2: Can you see you? My favorite?
Speaker 6: Could you press the button on the side there.
Speaker 2: But this speaks to you were you were. You're literally
Speaker 2: on the street filming with with regular people, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: this is in proversation.
Speaker 6: Okay, so we need listen.
Speaker 1: We need our listeners to know this in case they've
Speaker 1: never seen a Matt Johnson movie, we need to explain
Speaker 1: this a little bit. How you blend written, scripted moments
Speaker 1: blended with man on the Street style stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, A great way to think about it is that
Speaker 4: imagine a Boy Meets World episode. The only actors in
Speaker 4: it are Will Ryder, Danielle and Ben And that's right.
Speaker 4: So so you as a shoot, you're in a high school,
Speaker 4: and everybody in the high school there's real they don't
Speaker 4: know where they're in a movie, but you guys know
Speaker 4: the script, and so you're going through an episode being like, well,
Speaker 4: somehow we've got to do this. And so whenever somebody
Speaker 4: joins in, they don't know they're in a movie, but
Speaker 4: but you talk with them. It's a lot like the
Speaker 4: movie Borat. If Borat was like in a eighties like
Speaker 4: family movie. That's right, thinking about it.
Speaker 3: Great, have you ever had a bad experience while shooting
Speaker 3: on the street.
Speaker 6: I mean something happens where it's like.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, we've almost got beaten up, we almost
Speaker 3: got arrested. I mean, so any of these kind of
Speaker 3: things happened arrested.
Speaker 4: Sure, because sometimes we're shooting things like that, that crazy
Speaker 4: moment at the beginning with the c and tower like that,
Speaker 4: that one was an extremely close call. But we're because
Speaker 4: we're not mocking anybody, and we're not trying to ever
Speaker 4: make anyone look bad. You'd be surprised at how nice
Speaker 4: people are. We've never ever been in a situation where
Speaker 4: somebody thought, Oh, I'm being like you guys are making
Speaker 4: fun of me and I'm mad. That's that never ever happened.
Speaker 4: And I think it's because we seem so mhmm, charitably brainless,
Speaker 4: do you know what I mean? I think this person
Speaker 4: could not mean any harm whatsoever.
Speaker 3: Like like Eric, exactly like Eric, like you actually you
Speaker 3: will think, like how many times do people get mad
Speaker 3: at you in the show.
Speaker 4: It's only when they misunderstand what you're doing. That's when
Speaker 4: Eric Matthews would get into trouble. It would be like, Oh,
Speaker 4: they just didn't understand that he actually meant the best,
Speaker 4: Like your brother would get furious with you all the
Speaker 4: time until he realized, oh, he's trying to help me. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But that also it also it just shows that the
Speaker 3: senior talking about the sea and tower shows, so the
Speaker 3: differences between Canada and the United States because you're just
Speaker 3: sitting there watching and you're pulling it, pulls out the
Speaker 3: pliers and it is like, oh, I'd use these for
Speaker 3: my jeans, and like you're good, come on through where
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, you would have guard dogs around you.
Speaker 2: By that point, it's like.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's delightfully Canadian. That moment, it is just wonderful.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh my god, they're letting them go.
Speaker 3: It was just so crazy.
Speaker 4: I think that might be the other piece of my
Speaker 4: citizenship that comes through in my work is that there's
Speaker 4: a kind of fearlessness because of the provincialism of my
Speaker 4: country that there. It's not that there's no consequences here,
Speaker 4: but it's just that we are such a different level
Speaker 4: of safety via in Toronto, where like if anything, if
Speaker 4: somebody gets hit by a car in Toronto, it's national news. Right, Wow,
Speaker 4: do you know what I mean? It's just so so different.
Speaker 1: Must be nice. How did you now?
Speaker 3: I have to ask how did you shoot the CN
Speaker 3: tower stuff, like the stuff at the top and the
Speaker 3: pair of shooting off.
Speaker 2: I mean, how is this green screen?
Speaker 6: It didn't look like it so.
Speaker 4: We never use We never used green screens, but but
Speaker 4: often because because we would as soon as people know
Speaker 4: that we're shooting something, they act different, right, so we
Speaker 4: can't do anything.
Speaker 6: That's the Heisenberg principle.
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly, as soon as they know. As soon as
Speaker 4: people know, then then it's then it's then it's over. Well,
Speaker 4: you must know how many times did you guys bring
Speaker 4: a guest star into the show and then you look
Speaker 4: at one another after a take and you go, they
Speaker 4: don't get it?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Right, Like how often does that? I mean, I'm actually
Speaker 4: sincerely curious how often did that happen?
Speaker 6: I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 3: You know, what's funny, I see it more. I saw
Speaker 3: it on On Boy occasionally. But where I really see
Speaker 3: people out of their element where they think it's one
Speaker 3: thing and they get there and something completely different is
Speaker 3: voiceover when you're when you're going into doing an animated
Speaker 3: series and you get these brilliant actors that come in
Speaker 3: that just don't get it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I felt a lot of feature films. On features you
Speaker 2: would be like, oh, we're in different movies. I mean,
Speaker 2: the thing a sitcom is that the form is so given.
Speaker 4: Do you know what I mean people come in knowing
Speaker 4: what they're you know what. Of course, obviously maybe that
Speaker 4: would happen in like the first season. Once that's done,
Speaker 4: you're such a phenomenon that people are coming to audition
Speaker 4: with the boy World exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean they have like the rhythm of the language
Speaker 2: literally in their head, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Like by by season two or three, like we know
Speaker 2: how every line is going to be delivered, like just
Speaker 2: by reading that on the page, and everybody can kind
Speaker 2: of feel that rhythm and like get into it, and
Speaker 2: you know it's Michael Jacob's voice. Like as a writer,
Speaker 2: we all just sort of like, oh okay, we hear it,
Speaker 2: we know it. But also, the sitcom as a form
Speaker 2: is so formalized, it's so structured, it.
Speaker 3: Has a standard beat to it, which is why when
Speaker 3: you get somebody like a Matthew Perry or something like that,
Speaker 3: who's everybody else is listening to one song and he's
Speaker 3: obviously completely has a different beat in his head, he
Speaker 3: stand out as a sitcom actor because it's like, oh okay,
Speaker 3: you hear the beat, but you're going jazz. And so
Speaker 3: it's that that's where so writer's right, you get a
Speaker 3: lot of people that come in that know that it's
Speaker 3: the joke and set up joke and set up joke.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's kind of what a sitcom is.
Speaker 3: But when you do that, get that actor who walks in,
Speaker 3: he's like, oh man, you're totally off on another thing.
Speaker 6: That's kind of you can you can create.
Speaker 2: That, But I've felt that on features, you know, where
Speaker 2: you're literally looking around the room going, oh, they think
Speaker 2: they're doing a comedy and the rest of us are
Speaker 2: doing a horror film. How do we make this work
Speaker 2: troll too? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: But you know, yeah, I mean and hopefully I mean
Speaker 2: that is the job of a director, right, is to
Speaker 2: manage that tone and hopefully get everybody on the same
Speaker 2: page as far as you know what you're doing. But
Speaker 2: what I love about your work is that element of chaos. Like, so,
Speaker 2: I want to hear about Shooting the Dirties because that's
Speaker 2: a movie that is very funny but ultimately very tragic
Speaker 2: and dramatic too. And so from what I've heard, you
Speaker 2: just had run of a high school to make this movie.
Speaker 4: Multiple different high schools. Again, I made that movie when
Speaker 4: I was so young that we were able to go
Speaker 4: into high schools in Canada and just film without people
Speaker 4: really they whether they thought we were students or thought
Speaker 4: that were we meant to be there. It was a
Speaker 4: kind of mix of both. And again because we really
Speaker 4: didn't need no harm and we were interacting with students
Speaker 4: sort of at their level, and we shot a ton.
Speaker 4: I would say that what has to have been brought
Speaker 4: up is that in all of this work, unlike an
Speaker 4: episode of Boy Meets World, we shoot more that we
Speaker 4: don't use than we do. So we shoot, we shoot
Speaker 4: scenes and scenes and scenes, sometimes entire movies that don't
Speaker 4: make it to ask.
Speaker 2: So what does the script look like? Is it an outlet?
Speaker 4: Don't write scripts? That's that's that's the big that's the
Speaker 4: biggest thing. S IF on BlackBerry. Because I was working
Speaker 4: with American actors, I wrote a very very detailed script
Speaker 4: with Matt Miller, the producer, and we sent that script
Speaker 4: to actors and that was the entire movie. Now that
Speaker 4: changed a ton because we played a lot on set
Speaker 4: and in editing I completely reformatted the movie with with
Speaker 4: Kurt Lob and Bobby up Church, the editors of all
Speaker 4: this stuff. But in general, the Dirty's Operation Avalanche of
Speaker 4: Front of the band, the show. They not only did
Speaker 4: they not have scripts, we well, maybe have a one
Speaker 4: or a two page outline that will set up the
Speaker 4: entire movie, and then once it's been typed out, we
Speaker 4: don't even refer to it. Like the six or seven
Speaker 4: of us who make this stuff, we just keep it
Speaker 4: all in our heads because it changes every day. Right,
Speaker 4: so we'll be out in the street, I'll give you
Speaker 4: a bad Luckily, the producer, Matt Gregson is one of
Speaker 4: those key's part of the team. So the gold standard
Speaker 4: example of this in that movie is the scene will
Speaker 4: brought up where we're sneaking into the sea and tower
Speaker 4: and the security guard lets us through with those pliers
Speaker 4: that were later going to use to cut the safety cords.
Speaker 6: To jump off, and clearly wearing parachutes.
Speaker 4: Well this is the secret, okay, So we're clearly wearing
Speaker 4: these parachutes on our back under our clothes. We assumed
Speaker 4: that security was going to say, what are those on
Speaker 4: your back? They were going to expose that we were
Speaker 4: wearing parachutes? And then and the original a plot was
Speaker 4: us sneaking into the SkyDome a different way, but when
Speaker 4: security one didn't mention the parachutes on our back and
Speaker 4: then to let me in with the pliers. We thought,
Speaker 4: all right, so I guess now we're doing this instead.
Speaker 4: So our plan was never to jump off the CN tower.
Speaker 4: That was not nobody well it's inconceivable, like, I don't
Speaker 4: even know how you would do it. And it was
Speaker 4: only because the reality let us go there that we
Speaker 4: kept going.
Speaker 1: So when do you regroup? When do you then look
Speaker 1: at each other and say.
Speaker 4: Times oftentimes one beat that we shoot will be an
Speaker 4: entire day, and then we all go back to our
Speaker 4: office and go, okay, so now what So we group
Speaker 4: every single day and rewrite based on what we got.
Speaker 3: Oh, such a free, amazing way to shoot a filmy.
Speaker 4: Let me disabuse you of that will and answer your
Speaker 4: question at the same time. Video Okay, So it is
Speaker 4: the most painful thing I've ever done in my life.
Speaker 4: I really do it again for any amount of money.
Speaker 4: And Danielle, we shot for two hundred days. That movie
Speaker 4: has a two hundred day production schedule. We literally shot
Speaker 4: the movie for two hundred days.
Speaker 6: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: It so it's it's apocalypse now and then your film essentially.
Speaker 4: It's it's a nightmare to make and although it seems
Speaker 4: fun and like, oh wow, these guys are having such
Speaker 4: a good time. We're not two.
Speaker 1: Hundred days over how long? In one year?
Speaker 4: A year? We shot the movie for one year, two
Speaker 4: hundred days.
Speaker 2: But but your your crew has to be tiny. I
Speaker 2: mean you're six of us, six of them. Okay, so
Speaker 2: so there is you are nimble, you are able to
Speaker 2: sort of just.
Speaker 4: But we all van Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 1: Do you ever get nervous out there?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Every single time I need to talk to a stranger,
Speaker 4: I get nervous because I'm like, because I don't want
Speaker 4: to embarrass them. I want them to be happy. And
Speaker 4: normally once we start talking, then it's like, oh good,
Speaker 4: they're in a good movie. This is good vibes. But
Speaker 4: the think like any of those things when I had
Speaker 4: to go through security and we're when we're in Canadian
Speaker 4: tire and that libertarian is telling us not to jump
Speaker 4: because he's worried able to die, Like all of that
Speaker 4: stuff is neurve.
Speaker 3: Wracking, right, But now I'm sorry you you have to
Speaker 3: give certain people lines because at one point you go
Speaker 3: up to a guy on the street and you say
Speaker 3: what year is it?
Speaker 6: And he says it's two thousand and eight.
Speaker 4: Yes, we cheat so so in that instance. Now that's
Speaker 4: a very specific part of Toronto Young and then Desk
Speaker 4: Square where it's what's a wild area you'll remember later
Speaker 4: on in the movie. From that moment, I see a
Speaker 4: guy who says, Hollywood, Hollywood, mister Rocky, mister Arnold, mister
Speaker 4: Jennifer Lopez. That's the place where there's where there's like
Speaker 4: a lot of day drink king. I'll just say and
Speaker 4: so and so. Yes. Sometimes if like we're desperate to
Speaker 4: have somebody say something, we'll give them a line. But
Speaker 4: they're always strangers and there are always people are like
Speaker 4: in a movie, hell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, o god, our releases a thing? Do you have
Speaker 1: to get? Okay?
Speaker 4: So much? If who speaks, anybody who like, who interacts
Speaker 4: with the plot, our producers chain stand to get releases
Speaker 4: from and we don't always get them. Sometimes we have
Speaker 4: to blur their faces.
Speaker 6: How close are the cameras? I mean, does everybody see
Speaker 6: that you're filming something or not?
Speaker 4: That's ugh Jered Rabb. The cinematographer move in some ways
Speaker 4: developed this language is shooting on cameras that sometimes are
Speaker 4: like three hundred and fifty enilimeters like the lengths. They're
Speaker 4: so long that Jay and I can't even see where.
Speaker 2: They wow wow wow.
Speaker 4: And on the Dirties, that was that was necessary because
Speaker 4: that's a movie where if people were to see the cameras,
Speaker 4: it completely breaks well, it breaks the reality in a
Speaker 4: way because because the trick, the magic really is is
Speaker 4: that these guys know they're in a movie nobody else does,
Speaker 4: and so it's almost like they're glowing. You know, do
Speaker 4: you guys read Calvin Hobbs.
Speaker 2: You know, Waters's obsessed.
Speaker 4: So Bill Watterson's what's so amazing about his technique to me?
Speaker 4: To me, I don't know anything about about comic books,
Speaker 4: but his backgrounds are like paintings. They're these beautiful, like
Speaker 4: gorgeous and yet incredibly simple paintings. And so Calvin and
Speaker 4: Hobbes and the characters they stand out in this almost
Speaker 4: like tin tin way where it's like whoa, It's like
Speaker 4: they pop right out and and that aesthetic. We're almost
Speaker 4: trying to follow that by having a world that is
Speaker 4: so dynamic and wild. But you know, these two guys,
Speaker 4: whether it's Me and Owen in the Dirties or Me
Speaker 4: and Owen in Operation Avalanche, or Matt and Jay in Nirvana,
Speaker 4: the band. They it's like they glow like you follow
Speaker 4: them because because you have put a context around them
Speaker 4: where it's like, oh, they're in the movie, right, and
Speaker 4: so you can follow them against these very rich, bizarre
Speaker 4: backgrounds that are kind of out of step with with
Speaker 4: with what they are. And if you're trying to we're
Speaker 4: going to try to recreate like your Boy Meets. Did
Speaker 4: you guys ever shoot an episode on location in the
Speaker 4: real world?
Speaker 2: This is just a little bit, but you know they
Speaker 2: did Disney World World.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's evil again, is it's horrible?
Speaker 4: It's hard? Fine?
Speaker 6: Thanks me.
Speaker 4: So let me ask you something because this this episode
Speaker 4: doesn't come to mind for me. Do you remember watching
Speaker 4: that episode and thinking, oh, there's a real estatic shift
Speaker 4: when we're outside and with like, it's so crazy. I
Speaker 4: remember the Fraser shot an episode where they had actually
Speaker 4: shot in Seattle, and it doesn't it doesn't look like
Speaker 4: the show at all. You just what it's So Seinfeld
Speaker 4: had the same issue, and we were thinking, Okay, let's
Speaker 4: have it so that that that is our base level
Speaker 4: the outside in the world, real people like that's that's
Speaker 4: what the show always looks like. So there isn't that
Speaker 4: that's correct when you go from them from one.
Speaker 2: To well, that's one of them.
Speaker 3: I'm convinced it's still you know, everyone said they hated
Speaker 3: the story, but I think psychologically one of the reasons
Speaker 3: people hated the last episode of Seinfeld is because they
Speaker 3: didn't recognize any of the sets. They're in there in
Speaker 3: a different place, then they're in court, then they're in
Speaker 3: It's like, wait a minute, I've been for nine years.
Speaker 3: I've been watching these people in this apartment, and now
Speaker 3: you're not going to have them in the.
Speaker 6: And this way. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, So that's why I still think it was a
Speaker 3: psychological thing for people. It's like I didn't like the story.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, but I also think you didn't know
Speaker 3: where you were. Yeah, And that's that's a big concession,
Speaker 3: especially on sitcom. It becomes you want it to be there.
Speaker 3: Our living room is your living room. That's how that works.
Speaker 3: And so when you take ability, that lets you break
Speaker 3: yes exactly. So, oh god, I just I'm thinking about
Speaker 3: the idea of two hundred days of shooting I make it.
Speaker 2: Well, so I'm curious you you so you made BlackBerry,
Speaker 2: which is sort of a leap up into more mainstream,
Speaker 2: more Hollywood style film filmmaking, and then you choose to
Speaker 2: go back to nirvana. That is that the right, that's
Speaker 2: the order, right? So why or what was the process
Speaker 2: did you enjoy BlackBerry?
Speaker 4: Was that?
Speaker 2: Is that what you want to continue doing? Are you
Speaker 2: going to try and do both styles of filmmaking?
Speaker 4: Well? I already made the Boordain movie yeh, Cape Cod
Speaker 4: a few months ago, and that was shot very much
Speaker 4: like BlackBerry, with a script where it's all with a
Speaker 4: huge crew.
Speaker 2: Are you in that one as well?
Speaker 4: No? No, I couldn't. Interesting, There wasn't There was not
Speaker 4: a role for me. It's nineteen seventy five and any
Speaker 4: more day is twenty years old and falling in love
Speaker 4: meeting Yeah, it was something you It would have hitch
Speaker 4: got it.
Speaker 2: You didn't hitchcock it at all.
Speaker 3: You're walking in the you're walking a dog in the background,
Speaker 3: You're you're the barista.
Speaker 6: Nothing.
Speaker 4: It would have been like Eric Matthews walking onto the
Speaker 4: set of mad Man.
Speaker 6: Okay, I gotcha, Yeah, I gotcha. That makes sense.
Speaker 4: People would have been like, like such an error that
Speaker 4: again you'll you'll see the movie and maybe have a
Speaker 4: different opinion. But the answer is Yes, I like working
Speaker 4: in things where it is not, for lack of a
Speaker 4: better word, all about me, where it's not like my
Speaker 4: own where I'm at the center of it. And uh.
Speaker 4: And I didn't think I ever would like making movies
Speaker 4: like that, and BlackBerry was quite painful to make, but
Speaker 4: I feel like it has been an opportunity for me to.
Speaker 4: I know, I say this unpretentious, it's like I like
Speaker 4: exploring story that way, and I feel like whatever it
Speaker 4: was that I had to say with this childish, adolescent,
Speaker 4: make your own reality style of filmmaking, I am finding
Speaker 4: ways to transpose into these more standard stories because I
Speaker 4: think that message is somehow important. I think nearly it's
Speaker 4: the message of my life, which is that there is
Speaker 4: a kid in everybody, and so much of adulthood is
Speaker 4: learning to silence and strangle that for good reason, like
Speaker 4: we have to socialize ourselves to be normal. But if
Speaker 4: you killed that person, you actually die. And so trying
Speaker 4: to where the message of nor or less anything I do,
Speaker 4: is that that you were who you are when you
Speaker 4: were ten, and that may humiliate you. That may not
Speaker 4: be who you want to be, but you really can't
Speaker 4: escape that, and so you may as well, embrace all
Speaker 4: the positives what ever that was, Yeah, yeah, for its maximum,
Speaker 4: because otherwise you're you're just going to be pure persona
Speaker 4: like you won't actually get to live a life. You're
Speaker 4: you're you're gonna you're going to be a performer forever.
Speaker 3: Well, I always say, I mean, I I say this
Speaker 3: to my wife, I say this to my friends. I
Speaker 3: always live by a very simple model motto, which is
Speaker 3: there is a very big difference between childish and childlike. Yes,
Speaker 3: and so I think, I like, I embrace it, and
Speaker 3: you have to. I mean, it's it's super important. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that's the pers I mean.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I've always loved about your
Speaker 2: work is is also you're you're acting like you're a
Speaker 2: genuinely wonderful actor. And I learned from the best dude.
Speaker 2: It's and I think that I think that you know,
Speaker 2: in something like Black Bear, I could see your influence
Speaker 2: just by being part of the team. You know, you're
Speaker 2: in on the in the scene with them, you can
Speaker 2: see the other actors sort of upping their game or
Speaker 2: or adjusting to you. So I'm curious, when you're not
Speaker 2: in the scene with them, how has it been working
Speaker 2: with actors and trying are you still like doing scenes?
Speaker 2: Are you like, what's it been like to direct?
Speaker 4: I'll tell you my process. I made this movie with
Speaker 4: Dominic access at the cast of the BOORDA movie is unbelievable,
Speaker 4: like especially the four main pillars of it, and domin Accessor,
Speaker 4: who was the star of The Holdovers. He's the young
Speaker 4: guy who is buddies with Jiamatti. The way that I
Speaker 4: work is that I typically wind up doing most of
Speaker 4: the writing with the lead, right, So Glenn Jay and
Speaker 4: I on BlackBerry, like we talked a lot about like
Speaker 4: what it was that was interesting in this script that
Speaker 4: was also kind of a part of their life, and
Speaker 4: trying to find as many connections to that as we
Speaker 4: possibly could. And in that discussion you wind up talking
Speaker 4: through a lot of the scenes on Tony with domin
Speaker 4: access So much of it is us going through it together,
Speaker 4: finding ways to make one another lap and on set,
Speaker 4: I'm like literally right beside the actress when we're doing scenes,
Speaker 4: like I'm talking them in most cases, like I mean
Speaker 4: physically my hand, especially with with dom like we would
Speaker 4: be in physical contact with one during takes.
Speaker 2: And then you're rewriting on the day you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that didn't work, let's try this, or you know, you're.
Speaker 4: Normally it's not me saying that didn't work. Normally, it's
Speaker 4: do I'm telling me we need to change it right
Speaker 4: now and be like yeah, because you know what. You
Speaker 4: guys will know this when when you're not telling the truth,
Speaker 4: when you are being given dialogue where it's like, wait
Speaker 4: a minute, Sean wouldn't say this, and the director's like
Speaker 4: that's the line, you're like, ah, but wait a minute.
Speaker 4: You don't understand. It's hard to make people understand that.
Speaker 4: It's like I can't say that. And it's not that
Speaker 4: I am I'm moralizing or that I'm like trying to
Speaker 4: be a diva Topanga can't say that. You try to
Speaker 4: get me to say that is like you're like you're
Speaker 4: torturing me, and you're not just torturing me, you're kind
Speaker 4: of killing what it is that this is. And I
Speaker 4: think that because I love acting and i'm ACTI get
Speaker 4: my own things and I'm always playing myself. I wound
Speaker 4: up learning, oh, you can't actually have an actor lie
Speaker 4: if they're if, unless that's their skill set, unless they're
Speaker 4: Denzel Washington, and they can literally make any piece of
Speaker 4: dialogue sound like certain people who have a gift totally.
Speaker 4: But if you don't, you just you just can't. And
Speaker 4: so I'm I'm always like if an actor says this
Speaker 4: doesn't work for me, it's not even a discussion. It's like, one,
Speaker 4: you're right, and two let's figure out what how you do?
Speaker 4: Say this?
Speaker 3: But you just mentioned Denzel Washington, who if you could
Speaker 3: pick anybody, who would you work with?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 6: Who you.
Speaker 4: Pick? I think he's the best actor? A lie, you
Speaker 4: can there is no movie where did you see he
Speaker 4: can do anything?
Speaker 6: Yeah, not a good movie. He's awesome.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he says, just like, yes, write that down. Whatever
Speaker 4: he just said, that's that's a truth. Write it down.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There are some pretty big rumors about you with future
Speaker 1: movies like Magic the Gathering. So it's.
Speaker 3: A magic are you Are you kidding?
Speaker 4: Are you kidding?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Magic Cards, O writer taught me how to play magic
Speaker 3: and a hash.
Speaker 2: Hash bar on Amsterdam.
Speaker 6: He taught me how to play Magic the Gathering.
Speaker 2: We were in the back we were backstage of boy
Speaker 2: playing magic all the time, yes, the time.
Speaker 4: I can't believe that. So Magic Cards taught me to
Speaker 4: read when I was a kid, I refused to read.
Speaker 4: I thought reading was for girls, you know, I was
Speaker 4: like like five years old. Truly, it's a it's a
Speaker 4: generational problem that literacy seems somehow feminine to to certain people.
Speaker 4: And it was only through comics and magic cards literally
Speaker 4: that I was like, oh, reading can be amazing. And
Speaker 4: it was because Danielle, have you seen a magic card before?
Speaker 6: Like you, oh yeah, we got it.
Speaker 1: They got me playing. Yeah.
Speaker 4: What's so great for young people with magic cards is
Speaker 4: that in order to play it is a game about reading.
Speaker 4: And what's so great is so many of the cards
Speaker 4: are verbs, and so it's like an action word and
Speaker 4: so there's the name, there's a picture of what's happening,
Speaker 4: and then you get to see what the rules text are.
Speaker 4: So it's such a great for me. I'm being like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm lightning bolt and there is a lightning bolt. That
Speaker 4: must be a lightning bulb.
Speaker 2: Right, but your vocabulary is peppered with words like irma's
Speaker 2: and softer and relate to the world.
Speaker 3: Is one red tap one red for your lightning bolts.
Speaker 3: That's three points of damages against it.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, you throw in random roab. Yeah, there's so
Speaker 2: many times when I've realized, like, oh, that's just a
Speaker 2: magic term. That doesn't make sense to anybody else in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 4: Writer, do you know why the vocabulary in magic cards
Speaker 4: become so esoteric and interesting and become such a why
Speaker 4: they white ramps up in terms of its difficulty. It's
Speaker 4: because they're printing so many cards. They need to find
Speaker 4: new words to say these same simple verbs, and so
Speaker 4: it's such an em Oh. Anyway, I'm a I'm a
Speaker 4: i'm a. I was addicted. I wanted to be a
Speaker 4: professional magic card player when I was a kid. That
Speaker 4: was my dream. And it was at the end of
Speaker 4: film school where I was going to brand Pre Detroit,
Speaker 4: and I had made Day two, which is this is
Speaker 4: like a big magic card tournament and it was limited
Speaker 4: champions of chemicgaua block, and I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 4: I'm going to become a professional magic card player. I'm
Speaker 4: just a kid. I guess it was in the second
Speaker 4: year actually, and I lost. I came like thirty seventh
Speaker 4: or something like that, and I was like, damn it.
Speaker 4: And then I decided that day I think I'll just
Speaker 4: I'll just finish film school and I'll.
Speaker 1: Make films such a Defeat.
Speaker 2: Circle.
Speaker 3: Okay, wait wait, wait, First, I want to know what
Speaker 3: what did you play?
Speaker 4: Well? I played limited, I played, I played everything like.
Speaker 4: I played so much that to say what I would
Speaker 4: play whatever was winning. But colors that I love are
Speaker 4: blue and red like I love is it? But I
Speaker 4: love great? I love every color like I love back
Speaker 4: in the day when the color wheel wasn't so defined,
Speaker 4: like there'd be all kinds of crazy effects happening in
Speaker 4: everything called. The very first card I ever opened was Balance.
Speaker 3: I won Balance from Riders Brothers Silo in a game
Speaker 3: we were playing for cards, and it's the first cards we.
Speaker 2: Played for ant and I.
Speaker 3: Won my I still have it. I still have my
Speaker 3: Balance card. It's a phenomenal card.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 2: What can you tell us about the movie? What can
Speaker 2: you tell us?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 2: What are you writing it right now?
Speaker 4: It's being written. We're writing it right now and and
Speaker 4: hopefully we we I don't even I can think. I
Speaker 4: can say but but but it's I think, But I've
Speaker 4: say this. Magic Card fans are going to love this
Speaker 4: movie because I am a I am A I am
Speaker 4: a'm like magic cards raised me. So when I know
Speaker 4: they were making a movie. I said, oh, I should
Speaker 4: make this because the outcome of it it will matter
Speaker 4: a lot to me. Like I bought this movie to
Speaker 4: be for other people what this game did for me
Speaker 4: when I was a kid, which is open up a
Speaker 4: world of I can't even say, you know, it's just
Speaker 4: too much.
Speaker 3: But anyway, I never, I never ever do this. Ken
Speaker 3: Ryder and I come to the set and be atmosphere.
Speaker 4: I was about to say, you please, yes, of course.
Speaker 4: Are you kidding?
Speaker 2: Are you gonna be shooting in America or where? Do
Speaker 2: you even know?
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just want to come. You will come wherever I will,
Speaker 2: We will be there.
Speaker 6: You're kidding.
Speaker 1: I will come. I will come. They tried to get
Speaker 1: they got me to play on a slumber party night,
Speaker 1: and I don't know. I don't know if the game
Speaker 1: is for me, but I will, I will come. I
Speaker 1: would like to just officially ask if you would like
Speaker 1: to be our new Corey when.
Speaker 4: We do when we do the one. Here's the thing,
Speaker 4: I don't think I have what Corey has, because he,
Speaker 4: more than any other character in that show, had a
Speaker 4: kind of moral center and an indignity. When that was
Speaker 4: impugned that I could. I mean, if if Will dies,
Speaker 4: then I'll have then you'll have a use for me.
Speaker 4: I can't. You can't be worried. It's not possible. It
Speaker 4: would be again, it would be such a stretch. What
Speaker 4: he was doing was was was unique. I mean, he
Speaker 4: he was the center of that show, which, which like
Speaker 4: Seinfeld was like so many of these shows, kind of
Speaker 4: meant that he couldn't really be that fun. Yes, yeah, right,
Speaker 4: like things needed to happen to him. One of my
Speaker 4: one of my favorite episodes, and actually an episode that
Speaker 4: becomes more and more true to me the old r
Speaker 4: I get is when Ryder sneaks into the philosophy class.
Speaker 4: You guys know this episode and and what does the
Speaker 4: professor say that He's like, oh, you're brilliant, but you
Speaker 4: but you don't know how to write, like you actually
Speaker 4: need to go back to high school to understand the basics.
Speaker 4: This is like that is that is so deeply I mean,
Speaker 4: this sounds so insipid, like so moronic for me, but
Speaker 4: it's like that was in the same way that I
Speaker 4: thought I would leave film school and just make all
Speaker 4: kinds of crazy no rules, like nothing mattered. It would
Speaker 4: be pure insanity capturing the camera. It's like I had
Speaker 4: to go through that exact exact learning where it was,
Speaker 4: oh I can, I've got great ideas. I can. That's
Speaker 4: all I need, right, And it was, oh no, I
Speaker 4: actually need to learn how to write. I need to
Speaker 4: put all my stories in this structure that they were
Speaker 4: trying to teach me in film school, but I thought
Speaker 4: was lame and I didn't want to have anything to
Speaker 4: do with it. It's like I literally went through that
Speaker 4: episode of the show. So, yeah, I think I could
Speaker 4: play I think I could maybe play Sean. I could
Speaker 4: definitely play Eric. I can't play it, Corey, What am
Speaker 4: I going to do?
Speaker 2: Completely agree?
Speaker 6: So I'm out of a job.
Speaker 2: Thanks man.
Speaker 4: What's going on with with Boy Meets World? I'm so
Speaker 4: painfully ignorant, Like is it's like, are you you guys
Speaker 4: had a Girl meets World? Did Yeah? They didn't girl?
Speaker 1: Well, we did a girl meets World and now there's
Speaker 1: nothing going on with it. We just meant I meant more.
Speaker 1: Actually in our personal circle, will you be our ben?
Speaker 4: Will you enjoying the click? Yes?
Speaker 1: Can you just more of us.
Speaker 4: Are now interviewing other people? I'm just a fan, I
Speaker 4: love it.
Speaker 1: We're just okay, great that that's really what we what
Speaker 1: we want. Funny, Okay, I know you have talked about
Speaker 1: with this with and now we're talking about magic the gathering,
Speaker 1: and that you are going to infuse your sensibility into
Speaker 1: all the movies you do. But is there also a
Speaker 1: possibility that you're going to just keep alternating between you know, match.
Speaker 4: Gathering in movies. Yeah, I think yes, and I think
Speaker 4: that's actually a good thing. I hope I get to
Speaker 4: do it like that. The thing is, I have a
Speaker 4: like a group of friends who I work with all
Speaker 4: the time, and it is impossible in some ways to
Speaker 4: move that group into these gigantic American productions where in
Speaker 4: some ways, like on the Boordame movie, well like I am,
Speaker 4: I'm a much smaller piece of the machine right as
Speaker 4: I'm sure you guys can relate to on like on.
Speaker 4: As soon as something gets so big, like the director
Speaker 4: is an important person, but they're not, they don't get
Speaker 4: to call really any real big shots, and so that
Speaker 4: is that's a very different system. And so yeah, I'm
Speaker 4: going to continue to make movies in Canada where it
Speaker 4: is just small group of people working out of the
Speaker 4: office I'm in right now, and then larger style films
Speaker 4: where I get to deal with things that were important
Speaker 4: to me as a kid. It's strange how whether it's
Speaker 4: magic cards or Anthony Bourdain or BlackBerry, all of these
Speaker 4: things are all stuff that I just was exposed to
Speaker 4: when I was a young teenager, and I just can't escape.
Speaker 1: Well it's okay there now we're all best friends.
Speaker 8: So yeah, so that's how it works, don't discribe.
Speaker 1: So Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie will be
Speaker 1: showing in Boston, Dallas, Austin, and Chicago in December and
Speaker 1: then wide come February thirteenth, twenty twenty six. And when
Speaker 1: can we see Tony the Anthony Bourdain movie? When will
Speaker 1: that be released?
Speaker 4: I think A twenty four is releasing it next year,
Speaker 4: but I don't know when. Okay, so exciting, you know.
Speaker 4: I invite you guys to the community. Please we would
Speaker 4: all go together.
Speaker 6: We would love that that yeah, hell yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean, thank you so much for being here, and sure,
Speaker 1: I mean just the thrilling to have you. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you could tell by the way we all fanned out
Speaker 1: over you.
Speaker 4: But I can say, sincerely, it was much more so
Speaker 4: for me. I mean, I hope I've expressed it. But
Speaker 4: the work that you guys did when you were just kids,
Speaker 4: and I recognize that, I know, I know that at
Speaker 4: some level it was out of your control, but it
Speaker 4: shaped me and my family's view of the world. Wow.
Speaker 4: From wherever you were shooting the show in the United States,
Speaker 4: it making it up to Ontario. It was like the
Speaker 4: vade Meekham for us. We carry it with us wherever
Speaker 4: we go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a thank you so much, thank you for
Speaker 1: spending your time with us. And we'll see you at
Speaker 1: the premiere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks so much.
Speaker 4: Matt. Goodbye, Yeah, goodbye. It was nice meaning you too.
Speaker 4: Goodbye Rider, I'll see you again.
Speaker 1: I'll see you again for sure, definitely.
Speaker 6: Bye bye.
Speaker 1: What a guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, it's so cool.
Speaker 3: It's a combination of a brilliant filmmaker and an incredible
Speaker 3: actor who also just wanted to spend his time making
Speaker 3: us feel awesome about ourselves.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing. Like I it's so I always
Speaker 2: love this moment when you connect with somebody's work, you know,
Speaker 2: like the way I did with his movies, where I
Speaker 2: just immediately was like there's something going on here. That
Speaker 2: speaks to me as an writer, as an artist, as
Speaker 2: an actor, with all of it. And then when I
Speaker 2: actually met him and he reciprocates that, you know, he's like, well,
Speaker 2: you were huge influence on me and we were able
Speaker 2: to and I was just like, oh my god, Like
Speaker 2: I love that. That's like one of my favorite things.
Speaker 2: And you know, I mean like he you know, like
Speaker 2: he says, you know, he's waxing poetic about the influence
Speaker 2: of Boy Meets the World on his life. But and
Speaker 2: I and I think some of that is hyperbolic to
Speaker 2: a degree. But on the other hand, it's also like
Speaker 2: he believes that art can change the world. He believes
Speaker 2: that the things he's saying, even though they're silly fun movies,
Speaker 2: often are affecting viewers. They are getting under your skin.
Speaker 2: They are And like, that's that's a real artist.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I tell you something, right, Okay, I tell you something
Speaker 3: in that Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie has
Speaker 3: made me re evaluate my creative output.
Speaker 2: Me too, Man, I'm in the exact same space we
Speaker 2: were texting rider at I were texting about it last night,
Speaker 2: like we gotta get together, we got to do something.
Speaker 3: We gotta I mean, it's it makes you want to
Speaker 3: to be creative, but you also have to realize he
Speaker 3: is a one in a million creative true one Jane
Speaker 3: can who can handle that undertaking.
Speaker 2: And a kind of chaos with structure that he's constantly balancing.
Speaker 2: It's so much work. It's so much work.
Speaker 3: Two hundred days of shooting, two hundred days of shooting.
Speaker 6: That's insanity, I know.
Speaker 2: But the movie is so funny. Everybody out there, if
Speaker 2: you can get if you can watch it, if you
Speaker 2: just get a hold of this movie when it's out
Speaker 2: or in your town. It is so freaking good. It's
Speaker 2: one of the I haven't laughed that hard in a
Speaker 2: movie in like a decade. I was crying with laughter
Speaker 2: at the premiere. I watched it again two nights ago
Speaker 2: and I just could not stop laughing. It's so brilliant
Speaker 2: and Yeah, I love Yeah man, he's a hero.
Speaker 1: Thank you all for listening to this episode of Podmeets World.
Speaker 1: As always, you can follow us on Instagram pod meets
Speaker 1: World Show. You can send us your emails podmeets World
Speaker 1: Show at gmail dot com. And we've got merch.
Speaker 6: Two whites, two blues. Tap for merch.
Speaker 1: Podmeets worldshow dot com will send us out.
Speaker 6: We love you all, pod dismissed.
Speaker 3: Podmets World is nheart podcast producer and hosted by Danielle Fischel,
Speaker 3: Wilfordell and Ryder Strong executive producers, Jensencarp and Amy Sugarman,
Speaker 3: Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor,
Speaker 3: Tara sudbachsch producer, Maddie Moore.
Speaker 2: Engineer and Boy Meets World super fan Easton Allen.
Speaker 3: Our theme song is by Kyle Morton of Typhoon and
Speaker 3: you can follow us on Instagram at Podmeets World Show
Speaker 3: or email us at Podmets Worldshow at gmail dot com