Speaker 1: M m m m. You're listening to Playback, a Variety
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio podcast. I'm your host, Variety Awards Editor
Speaker 1: Chris Tapley. This week, I'm talking to director Jason Reitman,
Speaker 1: who has two films out this year. Earlier in the spring,
Speaker 1: it was Tully with Charlie Starren, and out now is
Speaker 1: the front Runner with Hugh Jackman. Jason and I talked
Speaker 1: about the complexities of his new film, which tells the
Speaker 1: story of disgraced politician Gary Hart, and a whole lot
Speaker 1: more so. Sit tight. This is playback. He's gonna how's
Speaker 1: the family. They're good man. I'll show you a picture
Speaker 1: you're in a minute. Yeah, that's exhausting. Yeah, because he's
Speaker 1: too and he's you know, yeah, every every good good though,
Speaker 1: I'll show it sounds crazy. I'll show you what twelve
Speaker 1: looks like already. Wow, did sure her first day of
Speaker 1: school this year? So this was four or five years
Speaker 1: ago and she started the school and she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's a kid. She looks like a kid. And then
Speaker 1: this was first day of school this year and it's tall, yeah,
Speaker 1: and like has that look in her eyes and it's
Speaker 1: just like I looked it, says like I know what's
Speaker 1: up on my phone. Yeah, I'm glad, thank you. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna move this back in front of you. All right. Gosh,
Speaker 1: I didn't know she was already that old. It's crazy, right,
Speaker 1: do you vote yet? I'm a Canadian, that's right, I can't.
Speaker 1: I'm just on the sidelines watching. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: crazy though, yes, it's that's a word for it. All right,
Speaker 1: I want to start. Yeah, we're up and running, all right, everybody.
Speaker 1: I'm here today with Jason Reitman, director of the front Runner.
Speaker 1: Quite a title for a movie in the Awards season.
Speaker 1: By the way, thanks for coming on the show. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. It's great to be here. We're just
Speaker 1: talking about kids in life and Georgia and politics. And
Speaker 1: we're here on election day, which is, uh, your movies
Speaker 1: out today, right, Like, you know, we're in LA in
Speaker 1: New York, so the first election day release. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone really wants to go to the
Speaker 1: movies today. I think everyone's gonna be hopefully voting, and
Speaker 1: then later on everyone's gonna be watching the television to
Speaker 1: see what happens, which, um, you know, it makes everybody anxious.
Speaker 1: Although I guess you could say the positive is that
Speaker 1: we are interested in the process and people are voting
Speaker 1: and people care, and I guess that's a good thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's interesting for me this year. You this is
Speaker 1: is kind of your your Schindler's List Jurassic Park here
Speaker 1: if you will. That's a bit much, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're talking about the year where Spielberg, you know, reinvented
Speaker 1: what science fiction looks like and then made this beautiful
Speaker 1: black and white holocaust film that one best picture. I
Speaker 1: don't think I'm having that year version of that. I
Speaker 1: appreciate that. Now. Look, it's been an exciting year to
Speaker 1: have Tolly out five months ago and now to have
Speaker 1: front Runner out now, Uh, two films that I'm equally
Speaker 1: proud of that are um different and personal and both
Speaker 1: independent and movies I made for the right reasons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really cool. At a time when it's really hard
Speaker 1: to get movies made and uh, really hard to make
Speaker 1: personal movies, the idea that I get to make two
Speaker 1: in a year, again, it's really excited, does it feel like,
Speaker 1: just in the promotion of that, having these two films
Speaker 1: to put out there in the world and kind of
Speaker 1: speak to them. I mean, you usually you're so focused
Speaker 1: when you're putting out putting on a movie. It's like
Speaker 1: that was your year. Obviously you might be working on
Speaker 1: a movie otherwise, but to have them both out and
Speaker 1: kind of chewing on them like that, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: the promotion process is emotionally complicated as a director because
Speaker 1: it is you know, it's dropping your kids off at school,
Speaker 1: you know, at college. You know, it's the it's the
Speaker 1: moment you say goodbye. And the more you talk about
Speaker 1: a movie, the less it becomes yours. So, uh, it's
Speaker 1: always an emotionally challenging experience to promote a film because
Speaker 1: even though it's exciting for it to be out there
Speaker 1: in the world, Um, the more you talk about it
Speaker 1: and the more you tell stories about it, and the
Speaker 1: more you try to promote it, the less it's, strangely
Speaker 1: becomes your movie. Yeah, let's go back before we get
Speaker 1: into front Runner and talk about Tolly saw it at Sundance,
Speaker 1: the Big Blizzard screening premiere. Uh, that was Diablo Cody script.
Speaker 1: I'm curious what made you want to direct it? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think my role on Earth is to direct her screenplay,
Speaker 1: So I said, I would say primarily that you know,
Speaker 1: we're on this trajectory of making a movie every five years,
Speaker 1: and I hope that continues to the day I die.
Speaker 1: She's one of the best writers alive, and she writes
Speaker 1: from a very unique point of view. Her voice is
Speaker 1: singular uh, and she always surprises me with everything that
Speaker 1: she writes. And here she wrote, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: with each of the movies, it's like we're growing up together.
Speaker 1: You can see that through Juno and Young Adult and
Speaker 1: not finally this one and this one, you know, was
Speaker 1: a conversation about uh, getting a little bit older. And
Speaker 1: you know, if you could have a conversation with your
Speaker 1: younger self, you know, and say, actually, goodbye to your
Speaker 1: younger self, what would you say. I think that was
Speaker 1: kind of at the heart of it. Were you aware
Speaker 1: of what of of her working on it before, like
Speaker 1: did you see it for the first time in script
Speaker 1: form or was that something you you know. What seems
Speaker 1: to happen is she lets me know, hey, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of working on this idea and gives me the gist
Speaker 1: of it and then infuriating Lee. In a couple of months,
Speaker 1: she has a screenplay and it's worth directing. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's ready to shoot. And I you know, I
Speaker 1: think we've just talked about before. I'm a slow writer.
Speaker 1: You know, I wrote up in the air or of
Speaker 1: course a seven years I think you're spoking were of
Speaker 1: course of five years. The idea that you can kind
Speaker 1: of just turn around a script a matter of months
Speaker 1: is mind boggling that she does it without a treatment,
Speaker 1: that she just kind of wanders into the desert and
Speaker 1: comes out the other side of the script. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: you and I are both screenwriters. Like it's just like
Speaker 1: how how does someone do that? And she's just innately
Speaker 1: gifted me. It's like you know, asking a baseball player
Speaker 1: how they hit the ball. I think at a certain
Speaker 1: point they were just born to do it. And she
Speaker 1: is just a kind of the truest form of a
Speaker 1: writer that I've encountered. And you saw something of yourself
Speaker 1: in the material immediately. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's interesting,
Speaker 1: like I find that those films end up being strangely autobiographical.
Speaker 1: Bi autobiographical for Diablo and I for probably different reasons.
Speaker 1: But you know, Juno was about um innocence and the
Speaker 1: moment that you do grow up or decided not to
Speaker 1: grow up, and young adult was obviously the fear of
Speaker 1: growing up. And this was five years further down the
Speaker 1: line in that trajectory when you know, uh, you have
Speaker 1: to actually admit that you've grown up and say goodbye
Speaker 1: to your younger self. Yea, Uh, what were you looking
Speaker 1: for it? By the way, after Men, Women and Children
Speaker 1: was your feature previous to that, and you did casually.
Speaker 1: You worked in TV with Hulu for a bit, But
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you were looking for in the span
Speaker 1: of time. I don't know, I mean, and I get
Speaker 1: why you're asking. H I mean, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: weird thing to come off of a kind of a
Speaker 1: resounding failure and like think about like where you want
Speaker 1: to go next. Also, you took some time, that was
Speaker 1: what I mean. I mean, you worked on Casual, but
Speaker 1: you know there was time between. I guess, so, I
Speaker 1: mean it didn't feel like that. That's the crazy thing is,
Speaker 1: So you know, Men, Women and Children comes out I
Speaker 1: think in two thousand fourteen, we right the front runner.
Speaker 1: In two thousand fifteen. Uh, we are making four seasons
Speaker 1: of Casual over the last you know, three and a
Speaker 1: half years, and then made you know, finished the front
Speaker 1: Runner screenplay, went immediately into directing Tully, and then went
Speaker 1: immediately directing front Runner. So close in fact, that there
Speaker 1: was a time when both Tully and the front Runner
Speaker 1: were simultaneously in the Avid. And there's actually a shot
Speaker 1: from Tully in the front Runner because we were missing
Speaker 1: a shot and I realized I could use this shot
Speaker 1: from the other movie. Yeah, so it it's it's feels
Speaker 1: as though it's been packed. I mean, it's four seasons
Speaker 1: of TV and two movies for sure. What you say
Speaker 1: resounding failure, I mean is that just regarding box office
Speaker 1: or did you feel like creatively you did not. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm actually really proud of that movie. I'm proud of uh,
Speaker 1: proud of what we wrote, proud of what we shot.
Speaker 1: Um love the music in it, and obviously the cast
Speaker 1: in it is exceptional and you know, actors like Ansel L. Gordon,
Speaker 1: Timothy Shamala Salam or you know, obviously you know being
Speaker 1: recognized now, which we should almost rerelease the film now
Speaker 1: considering how big all the stars in it are. But no,
Speaker 1: I'm actually really happy with that film and um, but look,
Speaker 1: you can't control how a movie is received, both at
Speaker 1: the time and in general. Uh, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you know what's funny is I think there's kind of
Speaker 1: a presumption of how directors work and behave, And there's
Speaker 1: this kind of presumption that directors come in with all
Speaker 1: the answers that they think that they h that they
Speaker 1: have the answers for everybody else, and that's why they
Speaker 1: make a movie. And I think the opposite is actually true.
Speaker 1: I think directors make movies because we have questions. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're just as lost as everyone else. We're trying to
Speaker 1: figure things out, and every and figures things out in
Speaker 1: different ways, and making a movie is a way of
Speaker 1: chewing on the questions that are gnawing away. I think
Speaker 1: that's why artists in general create, is because there's something
Speaker 1: that bothers us as an itch you need to scratch.
Speaker 1: And so you know, with a movie like Men, Women
Speaker 1: and Children, that uh were the response presumed as though
Speaker 1: I felt I had answers. It's not the truth. I
Speaker 1: just just another person living today trying to figure out. Uh,
Speaker 1: this world is moving really fast, and you know how
Speaker 1: my connections with everyone else are have evolved and changed,
Speaker 1: and you know, as a result of technology. So what
Speaker 1: was the question then? That spurred the front Runner on
Speaker 1: well the first runner, you know, yeah, no, I think
Speaker 1: I have. The front Runner is filled with questions. I
Speaker 1: mean I came into look unlike everyone else alive right now,
Speaker 1: you know. I I wake up, the first thing I
Speaker 1: do is I check my phone and I look at
Speaker 1: the news app and I just go fuck, you know.
Speaker 1: And I'm trying to figure everything out as much as
Speaker 1: everybody else. And when I heard the Gary Hart story,
Speaker 1: which I really didn't know from when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: you know, I was ten years older than this happened.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, and I heard the names, but
Speaker 1: I didn't really know the story. And when I heard,
Speaker 1: you know, Radio Labs episode on Gary Hard which covered
Speaker 1: map Buy's book, It's kind of revelation to me. I
Speaker 1: just couldn't believe that there was this moment in our
Speaker 1: recent history where they presumed next president of the United
Speaker 1: States was in an alley way behind his house in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night with these at the journalists,
Speaker 1: and nobody knew what to do because no one ever
Speaker 1: been in their shoes before. And it was the first
Speaker 1: time that we were talking about a tabloid story when
Speaker 1: it came to potential president and it was the reason
Speaker 1: he left the race. That's kind of interesting, I mean
Speaker 1: in it, I thought, uh, hey, there was all this
Speaker 1: connected tissue everything we're talking about today, you know, as
Speaker 1: far as gender politics and the line between the what
Speaker 1: is a public life versus a private life and what
Speaker 1: is the relationship at wing journalists and candidates, which obviously
Speaker 1: has only become more fraught in the two years, you
Speaker 1: know since we wrote the script um. And at the
Speaker 1: core of it was this thriller, this thriller of a
Speaker 1: movie where a guy went from being the next president
Speaker 1: the United States and less than a week later he
Speaker 1: leaves politics forever. And he's a guy who in the
Speaker 1: mid EIGHTI was was saying things like we're addicted to oil,
Speaker 1: and that addiction is going to takes into the Middle
Speaker 1: East where we're gonna encounter Islamic terrorism and not know
Speaker 1: how to fight it. Is a guy in the early
Speaker 1: eighties met Steve jobs Um and came back to the
Speaker 1: Senate and said, Uh, the difference in the future in
Speaker 1: the economy will be with her or not. You know
Speaker 1: how to use a computer, and we need a computer
Speaker 1: in every classroom. He was prescient about everything and yet
Speaker 1: could not see this thing that was happening right in
Speaker 1: front of him, that the landscape was shifting, that we
Speaker 1: wanted to know about his personal life and he was
Speaker 1: unwilling to share that. And what is it about that
Speaker 1: moment that puts us on a trajectory of today? Well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you this, does that naive to say?
Speaker 1: Does he get away with that in your movie a
Speaker 1: little bit? What do you mean? I just kind of
Speaker 1: feel like this is me. But I kept waiting on
Speaker 1: you to take a little more of a stand than
Speaker 1: you did, and I know it was willful not to.
Speaker 1: It's it's a very it's a very kind of especially
Speaker 1: taking a dive into the press situation, how the press,
Speaker 1: how you handle the press in it. Uh some critics
Speaker 1: have even taken it to feel like a side eye
Speaker 1: towards the press or something. Uh So, I guess my
Speaker 1: question is when you when you had all those questions
Speaker 1: going into it, did you come up with any answers
Speaker 1: or is the fact that you kind of left things
Speaker 1: a little hands off? I do with all my movies.
Speaker 1: That is how that is who I am as a filmmaker.
Speaker 1: And if that frustrates you, then I get it. Only
Speaker 1: this time and I think at this period in history
Speaker 1: is the thing, you know, like, if it's not like
Speaker 1: a little both sides the at the time, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to hear that. That's when we need to be
Speaker 1: most challenging. Look Up in the Air? You know, where
Speaker 1: is George Clooney going at the end of Up in
Speaker 1: the Air? Is he gonna go find true love? Or
Speaker 1: is he find actually given up on the whole concept? Um,
Speaker 1: I think it'd be bullshit if I, you know, said,
Speaker 1: oh it's one or the other. Uh. I hate movies
Speaker 1: that do that. And and and look, you know where
Speaker 1: is Charlie's going at the end of Young Adult? You know,
Speaker 1: is she has she finally learned her lesson? Is she
Speaker 1: going to you know, mature and look for a deep
Speaker 1: and meaningful relationship or is she realized that she's going
Speaker 1: to lean into this character that she's created for herself
Speaker 1: for the rest of her life. Um. These are the
Speaker 1: things that that I think about every day. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people think about every day. You know,
Speaker 1: am I becoming a better person or a worst person
Speaker 1: on a daily basis? Am I enriching my life? Uh?
Speaker 1: Am I becoming a closer friend? Or am I finding
Speaker 1: ways to put walls around me. Um, And politically, where
Speaker 1: the hell are we going? I mean, this is what's
Speaker 1: on our minds, and no one has the answer on that.
Speaker 1: And both sides thinks the other is absolutely crazy. And
Speaker 1: our candidates have become uh had no one is in
Speaker 1: the center anymore. We're leaning to the to the edges
Speaker 1: of each party and uh and and there is a
Speaker 1: fraud relationship between journalists and candidates. They don't talk to
Speaker 1: each other, they don't spend time with each other. And
Speaker 1: when I read Matt's book on the subject, on Heart,
Speaker 1: I saw a moment as recent as the early to
Speaker 1: mid eighties when politicians and candidates spent social time with
Speaker 1: journalists and they knew who each other were as people.
Speaker 1: I think there's something really important to that. And a
Speaker 1: wall went up at this moment. And and and it's
Speaker 1: interesting because you know, I hear what you're saying as
Speaker 1: far as a side eye to the press, which I
Speaker 1: really do not have. Right of course, that's why I asked.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I mean you and I are friends.
Speaker 1: I'm friends with plenty of journalists. I wrote this with
Speaker 1: a journalist, one of the writers of the screenplay. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, covered five presidencies for New York Times magazine. Um,
Speaker 1: I think we all have a responsibility. Now, Look, I okay,
Speaker 1: I just mentioned earlier. You wake up, you open your phone,
Speaker 1: you check the news out. This is what I noticed
Speaker 1: a lot of happening these days. They years a piece
Speaker 1: on the mid terms or the Kavanaugh herrings, and then
Speaker 1: right next to it, from the same source, Post Times
Speaker 1: Equal Weight is something on Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson
Speaker 1: breaking up. Which one is politics? Which one is entertaining?
Speaker 1: Why are they given the same way? Why am I
Speaker 1: getting them both from the Washington Post. I think there
Speaker 1: is a confusion, and it comes from us. It comes
Speaker 1: from the readers. It comes to the people clicking. It's
Speaker 1: an appetite. Yeah, so you know, if anything, I'm turning
Speaker 1: the mirror back on the audience and going, okay, so
Speaker 1: what do you really want to know? What are you
Speaker 1: interested in? I know you're frustrated. I'm frusted. We're all
Speaker 1: frustrated right now. But how did we actually get here?
Speaker 1: And if you look at eight seven, what's interesting about
Speaker 1: that moment is it is the moment that a current
Speaker 1: affair goes on television. I was just gonna say, the
Speaker 1: twenty four hour news cycle, is you really starting to
Speaker 1: pick up around the television news. And you have the
Speaker 1: birth of the satellite truck, which makes the twenty four
Speaker 1: hour news cycle possible. You have CNN giving satellite phones
Speaker 1: to their journals so they can cover the presidency anywhere anytime. Uh,
Speaker 1: political punditry is coming to its own. You have kind
Speaker 1: of like it's like six years after the birth of Crossfire,
Speaker 1: and that is now starting to heap up, heat up
Speaker 1: and come into its own, and you can start to
Speaker 1: see it starts to get planted in other places. You
Speaker 1: have the Tammy Faye Baker story. You have all our
Speaker 1: North and Fawn Hall, and and and and and even
Speaker 1: with this story, it's like you go from a magazine
Speaker 1: cover with a big photo of Gary Hart with a
Speaker 1: little photo of Donna Rice, and within a month or
Speaker 1: two it's a big photo of Donna Rice in the
Speaker 1: little photo of Gary Hart. So I'm interested in what
Speaker 1: what we want to consume, how we want to consume it,
Speaker 1: and and in this bigger idea of okay, what's actually relevant,
Speaker 1: what is important versus what is entertaining, And that becomes
Speaker 1: the fundamental filmmaking style. That we go with. So from
Speaker 1: the first thing shot, opening shot, two and a half minutes,
Speaker 1: sprawling shot, tons of characters going starting into the satellite truck,
Speaker 1: starting in a satellite truck. So what we're trying to
Speaker 1: tell the audience right from the beginning is you're gonna
Speaker 1: hear things overlapping, three conversations, four conversations. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: be able to listen to everything, You're not going to
Speaker 1: look at everything. You're gonna meet characters you're not gonna
Speaker 1: know first are these Is this an important person? Is
Speaker 1: this the last time I'm going to see them? And
Speaker 1: right from the beginning of the film, you have to
Speaker 1: make decisions, all right, what do you want to listen to?
Speaker 1: Given the choice? And that goes all the way to
Speaker 1: the closing shot of the film, where there's two things
Speaker 1: happening on screen and on one side there's a television
Speaker 1: where Gary Hearts making his last speech as a politicians,
Speaker 1: the best speech he ever made, the most important speech
Speaker 1: he ever made. It's kind of strange that I'm not
Speaker 1: sure of another politician where the most important speech they
Speaker 1: ever made with literally the end of their career and young,
Speaker 1: you know. And then on the other side of frame
Speaker 1: ar guarianly husband and wife, a marriage, a complicated marriage
Speaker 1: going through real trouble, and I'm asked on it. It's
Speaker 1: what do you really want to look at? And that's
Speaker 1: what I want to leave with them with. This is
Speaker 1: a long winded way of saying I want people to
Speaker 1: think about that. Have that conversation look like, do what
Speaker 1: have feelings about the current presidency? Of course I do
Speaker 1: um And in casual conversations with my friends, yes I would.
Speaker 1: I would make them clear. But I don't see the
Speaker 1: point of my movies too as to take people down
Speaker 1: or to use my megaphone to shout my opinion. I
Speaker 1: see the movie as a mirror. I see it as
Speaker 1: an opportunity for people to see themselves in it. And
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I'm much more interested
Speaker 1: in human beings than I am in politics. He started
Speaker 1: to get ahead of me there. I was gonna ask
Speaker 1: about the aesthetic, because I love the aesthetic. The first
Speaker 1: thing I thought it was Altman. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: this the overlap dialogue. You know, something going on way
Speaker 1: over here that we're eventually going to end up on,
Speaker 1: but we're not there yet. Yeah, you know, the slowly.
Speaker 1: It's just there's a kind of a seventies aesthetic. I guess.
Speaker 1: Uh so you started to explain it there, but talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that and working with your
Speaker 1: DP on it. Yeah, totally. I mean, so the first
Speaker 1: thing that I did co writers, Um, first thing I
Speaker 1: did with my co writers, uh, Matt By and Jay Carson,
Speaker 1: I shoul point out. You know I mentioned that Matt By,
Speaker 1: you know New York Times magazine. Jay Carson was the
Speaker 1: press secretary for Hillary Clinton. Howard Dean, Tom Dashall. So
Speaker 1: this is a movie that was written on the shoulders
Speaker 1: of their kind of mutual experience from both sides of
Speaker 1: the line, one being a journalist southern, one being a
Speaker 1: political operative. Um. And we watched the candidate together, the
Speaker 1: Michael Richie felt and that was the first moment where
Speaker 1: we just we were all watching together and it was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is the north Star. This is what we're aiming for.
Speaker 1: This kind of loose, messy style in which you feel
Speaker 1: like you were just dropped into the room. There is
Speaker 1: you know, there isn't a director telling you this is
Speaker 1: important to keep an eye on this. You have to
Speaker 1: pay atchanges in this character or this is the point.
Speaker 1: Rather you're in a room fend for yourself. And of
Speaker 1: course Robert Altman was the genius who kind of created
Speaker 1: this style which you're kind of mosey through the room
Speaker 1: as the camera and find things as you do, and okay,
Speaker 1: it takes. It's this odd mix of letting creating a
Speaker 1: scene where the actors can be wild and messy while
Speaker 1: the camera is actually you know, very carefully choreographed. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Eric Steelberg, who have worked I've known since I
Speaker 1: was a teenager, and it's done almost everything I've ever done. UM,
Speaker 1: and I worked very specifically on that. I think the
Speaker 1: real key to that style though is oddly sound and
Speaker 1: it's Steve Morrow, our production mixer, who have also worked
Speaker 1: with you know since thank you for smoking and it
Speaker 1: was brilliant and just did stars born in la and
Speaker 1: in an enormous career. Uh, it was work with him.
Speaker 1: And how your ears can point your eyes is it's
Speaker 1: just it's the thing that you mentioned a moment ago,
Speaker 1: you're moving through the crowd, you're watching, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a journalist do a stand up to camera and you're
Speaker 1: already hearing another conversation off camera, and you're already kind
Speaker 1: of starting to look that way even though there's no
Speaker 1: one to look at. And I feel like that's what
Speaker 1: happens in life, is your ears start kind of taking
Speaker 1: you to different places and and and the whole movie
Speaker 1: is about conversation, what you want to listen to, So
Speaker 1: he would Steve Morrow made the decision early on to
Speaker 1: mike every actor on all takes, no matter what you're
Speaker 1: looking at. And we made the decision have almost every
Speaker 1: actor on set every day, so we would have twelve, fifteen,
Speaker 1: literally sometimes twenty actors all might and Morrow would be
Speaker 1: playing the mixer like a piano. And because they're all
Speaker 1: talking simultaneously and he is governing, well you listen to
Speaker 1: Normally when you make a movie, should I shoot a
Speaker 1: close up with you? Were chord your sound? You should
Speaker 1: a close with me chord my sound. You get a
Speaker 1: little of the off camera For the most part, you
Speaker 1: were favoring what you're looking at. And the presumption is
Speaker 1: that you get to the mix in the end, and
Speaker 1: at the mix you find the balance of everything. When
Speaker 1: you watch this movie, you're actually hearing Steve Morrow's work
Speaker 1: that he did on the day, balancing all these conversations
Speaker 1: to create that sense of being in a crowd and
Speaker 1: lost amongst the conversations and picking out the little pieces.
Speaker 1: Uh and and the script was not only dual dialogue
Speaker 1: a lot of the time, but additional scenes that were
Speaker 1: write that would give to actors and be like there
Speaker 1: was no room for this in the script. Here's your dialogue,
Speaker 1: or here's a magazine from Just read this article and
Speaker 1: share what you learned with the other character. And everyone
Speaker 1: was all over each other. That's awesome though that he
Speaker 1: was like you know, mad scientists back there mixing everything.
Speaker 1: He worked on one of the Born movies and he
Speaker 1: just started covering the cars and like microphones. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's a guy who loves what he does. He's an
Speaker 1: artist and no matter what if he if he's doing
Speaker 1: uh Stars Born, he's finding ways to record all that
Speaker 1: music lives so that they can do it and they
Speaker 1: can actually do it live mix of the live music.
Speaker 1: And he's he's always trying to find a new way.
Speaker 1: At the shot, where did you shoot it? By the way,
Speaker 1: we shot it in Georgia, We shot it in Atlanta
Speaker 1: at It's kind of remarkable cause up in the air.
Speaker 1: We shot in five cities, and of course I wanted
Speaker 1: to do that again. But it is hard to make
Speaker 1: these movies and these days and the mooneing the money
Speaker 1: is tight, and I should use that as an opportunity
Speaker 1: to shout out to Braun Bronze Studios who paid for
Speaker 1: Tully and paid for this movie. It's a Canadian company
Speaker 1: and are still making independent films like this that otherwise
Speaker 1: would never get made. And then how about Hugh Jackman.
Speaker 1: I mean, was this was he in your head while
Speaker 1: you were working on the script? Is this was he
Speaker 1: kind of like first choice? Now that you would tell
Speaker 1: me that you were at your heart set, he was
Speaker 1: in my mind from very early on. The look outside
Speaker 1: of the kind of cause matic similarity is uh, He's
Speaker 1: a movie star that I've wanted to work with for
Speaker 1: a long time because he's as hard working as anybody's
Speaker 1: probably hard more hardwork than any actor I've ever worked with.
Speaker 1: His overwhelming decency kind of echoes through not only the
Speaker 1: filmmaking process, but through the character of Gary Hart. And look,
Speaker 1: I'm making a movie about making a movie about a guy.
Speaker 1: If I told you I was, I'm gonna make a
Speaker 1: movie about your life, let me pick the worst week, right,
Speaker 1: And I know I want Gary Hart's inner decency to
Speaker 1: shine through despite the fact that, look, there's gonna three
Speaker 1: weeks where he's going to be tough. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: knew that would happen with you, and I knew he
Speaker 1: would work harder. I mean, the amount of research he
Speaker 1: did on this movie was insane. Production design department was
Speaker 1: learning things from Hugh, Costume department was learning things from you.
Speaker 1: In editorial, there's you know, as you saw, there's like
Speaker 1: real footage that we cut into the movie. Some of
Speaker 1: that footage is from Hughes research. I mean, it's just insane.
Speaker 1: He should get a co directing credit. Maybe, well now
Speaker 1: hold on, hold on, uh what about just you know,
Speaker 1: this is your biggest ensemble you've worked with it, I guess.
Speaker 1: I mean putting that together was that like, is there
Speaker 1: like a control room somewhere where you've got the big
Speaker 1: board of the photos of people in ch I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: what was cool was like with with this many main characters.
Speaker 1: I get to work with actors I haven't wanted to
Speaker 1: work my entire life. I gotta work with Alfred Bolina,
Speaker 1: you know, character actors like Kevin Pollock, a comedian like
Speaker 1: Bill Burr, all these young actors who are on TV
Speaker 1: right now. I love the choice of Bill Burr, by
Speaker 1: the way, that was so awesome. Thank you pop up
Speaker 1: in a movie like that, Yeah, and and really have
Speaker 1: somen to do and not just you know, be himself,
Speaker 1: but actually kind of do some acting and be great
Speaker 1: in it. He's kind of one of the great. He
Speaker 1: was great being a confrontational journalist, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: high and mighty in a way about certain things. Well
Speaker 1: and nervous. Yeah, I mean that's the top of it is.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine how scary it is. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine how security is to be a journalist right now.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what it would have been like to
Speaker 1: be in the alleyway that night and really wondering about
Speaker 1: the ethics and the repercussions of what you're doing. I
Speaker 1: understand why they were there. I understand why the journalist
Speaker 1: went to his house. I mean saying I didn't know
Speaker 1: and telling made this movie was that the primary system
Speaker 1: is an invention of the nineteen seventies. I had always
Speaker 1: presumed the primary system had been around for a hundred years.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not a student of history. I'm more
Speaker 1: of a student of movies. So what I learned was
Speaker 1: that with the invention of the primary system in the seventies,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, instead of party bosses picking candidates
Speaker 1: in the back rooms of conventions, that job was given
Speaker 1: to us, the constituents. And all of a sudden, you'd
Speaker 1: have twelve choices for president, and one's a mayor from
Speaker 1: one city, and one's a congressman from some state, and
Speaker 1: others governor from another state. It's like, how the hell
Speaker 1: do we know that these people are? And the response
Speaker 1: ability fell on on the shoulders of journalists to tell us, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is who these guys are. And of course, once
Speaker 1: you asked that question, the next question is, well, what
Speaker 1: do you want to know? And and we're still trying
Speaker 1: to figure that out. We're still trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what flaws we're willing to put up with in our leaders.
Speaker 1: So the idea that these guys wound up in an alleyway,
Speaker 1: um in Gary Heart's alleyway. Like, I get where they
Speaker 1: were coming from. I just also think there were real percussions.
Speaker 1: And I saw the movie I Tell You Ride, you
Speaker 1: know that's where it premiered. I believe we're premiere when
Speaker 1: you opened that night. You said something along the lines
Speaker 1: about that, just I wanted to make something that maybe
Speaker 1: I could tell us how we got where we are,
Speaker 1: and you left it that kind of big This all
Speaker 1: speaks to that, you know, But would you say the
Speaker 1: kernels of where we are really are in something like
Speaker 1: this or you know, is there is there something kind
Speaker 1: of like classic, almost classical about this journey, this downfall
Speaker 1: of this character. That's something that goes back even further. Maybe, Well,
Speaker 1: I think that this moment in eight seven is defined by,
Speaker 1: like some of the things I mentioned earlier, I think, uh,
Speaker 1: the in mentioned the twenty fur news cycle. I think
Speaker 1: a generation of journalists who grew up on Woodward and
Speaker 1: Bernstein and kind of shifted their impression of what their
Speaker 1: job and the responsibility was. Um. I think it's a
Speaker 1: lot of things. And look, I think this general tabloid
Speaker 1: journalism driving into the lane of political journalism. I think
Speaker 1: these things were happening, uh, and Gary Hart stepped into
Speaker 1: this moment, and in that moment you get a guy
Speaker 1: who simultaneously had big ideas was prescient beyond all imagination.
Speaker 1: I mean Gary Hart went to George Bush and said,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be attacked by planes. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a guy who's been able to see the future, you know,
Speaker 1: from the beginning. Uh, but it's also a flawed human being.
Speaker 1: But it's also someone who was unwilling to lie about
Speaker 1: who he was. Like, this is the big question that
Speaker 1: comes up. Is this word character, right, you know, they say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: what does this say about his character? And the question
Speaker 1: back is one of the things it says is that
Speaker 1: he was unwilling to lie and pretend he with someone
Speaker 1: else and doing a year of penance, then come back
Speaker 1: and do some you know, get some punditory job or
Speaker 1: you know, some gig on cable news, and then uh,
Speaker 1: you know, earn our forgiveness and then uh, pretend just
Speaker 1: because he wanted the job. He genuinely thought this was irrelevant.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the answer to that is. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's relevant, maybe it's not. Maybe sometimes it's relevant. And
Speaker 1: Matt By says, is really, well, it's Jay Carson says
Speaker 1: as well, he goes prior to seven, it was never relevant.
Speaker 1: After eighty seven he was always relevant, and neither is true.
Speaker 1: The truth is somewhere in between. Um, but he was
Speaker 1: unwilling to have that conversation, and he did the courtesy
Speaker 1: of walking away. Like. Look, he lives in Denver, in
Speaker 1: the same place that he lived in seven They've been
Speaker 1: married for sixty years. He's written over a dozen books.
Speaker 1: He's been kind of living his own life. He hasn't been,
Speaker 1: you know, asking us to kind of bend to his will. Uh.
Speaker 1: What do you think of the movie? It was an
Speaker 1: interesting experience and I brought the I brought the movie
Speaker 1: to show him, uh in Denver, And as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: that's the scariest screening of my life. And it's the
Speaker 1: first time I've ever made a movie about real events
Speaker 1: for people. Real people who are alive are going to
Speaker 1: see it. I mean that's not only him, but Donna Rice.
Speaker 1: Donna Rice was the first person who showed the pilone Toel.
Speaker 1: And I think there's a a general empathy that all
Speaker 1: the characters involved feel. Uh. Look, this is a story
Speaker 1: that most people think of the Gary Heart story, and
Speaker 1: they just kind of sum it up as a joke. Right.
Speaker 1: They think of it as the name of a boat,
Speaker 1: a photograph. Uh, And it's kind of become like a
Speaker 1: it's almost like a meme. Right, But we don't think
Speaker 1: of it as real events, real events that had consequence,
Speaker 1: but the participants of which have been treated as a
Speaker 1: joke for the rest of their lives. Donna Rice, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, there was a young, bright, ambitious woman whose
Speaker 1: life has just ripped out of her hands. And who
Speaker 1: you know, you know what really happened to people? Men
Speaker 1: on a boat in head chemistry? Yeah, like that's what
Speaker 1: happened now. Um, what we tried to do was make
Speaker 1: a movie that treated everyone involved as a human being.
Speaker 1: Uh and what not only Gary Hart, but Donna Rice
Speaker 1: and Tom Feeler from the Miami Heraldo I showed the
Speaker 1: film too. Of all felt as though we the film
Speaker 1: treats them with decency and with humanity. Uh and and frankly,
Speaker 1: from there it becomes of the audience's choice how they feel.
Speaker 1: Uh what who they considered the hero of the film,
Speaker 1: who they want to kind of latch their hook there? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: on that note, the movies out now. It'll be unfolding steadily.
Speaker 1: I guess this is a platform really right, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: will be wide by Thanksgiving. It'll be wide by Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: so you should check it out. The movie is called
Speaker 1: The front Runner, and also check out totally which is
Speaker 1: out on Blue Read DVD and all that stuff. Now
Speaker 1: appreciate that that is his Jurassic Park and uh, the
Speaker 1: front Runer would be his Schtler's List. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: you gotta stop about that's just absolute nonsense, disrespectful of
Speaker 1: a spill. Right, Um, appreciate it. But yeah, great work
Speaker 1: on the movie. Very complex stuff and I'm glad we
Speaker 1: could chew on it here a little bit. Everyone check
Speaker 1: it out. Be curious to hear what people have to say. Look,
Speaker 1: this is a movie that you were gonna walk out
Speaker 1: of having a conversation with the person you just saw
Speaker 1: it with. Um and uh uh, and we need opportunities
Speaker 1: for conversation. Go this is you go on Twitter and
Speaker 1: that you get your head ripped off because the volume
Speaker 1: is at a twelve and the story kind of acts
Speaker 1: as a prism, so you can have that conversation. It's
Speaker 1: an entertaining right, Don't get me wrong. I mean the
Speaker 1: story is a bit of a spriller, but walking out
Speaker 1: of it, Um, you're inevitably going to get into a conversation.
Speaker 1: Glad we could get you in here. Finally, Jason Rightman,
Speaker 1: thanks for doing the show mana