Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Is an award winning writer and director whose new film
Speaker 2: is called Civil War.
Speaker 3: Please welcome, Alex Garland. I know it.
Speaker 2: Thank you for coming. I loved your film. The whole
Speaker 2: thing is intense. There was a lot of assumptions about
Speaker 2: the film just based on the trailer. You wrote it,
Speaker 2: you directed it. What do you want to tell us
Speaker 2: about Civil War?
Speaker 1: You mean, how do I want to say that?
Speaker 2: People heard Civil War and they saw the trailer and
Speaker 2: they immediately went, you know it, it's this, and it's this.
Speaker 1: And all right.
Speaker 4: What I wanted to do just make something compelling and
Speaker 4: exciting and engaging and all that stuff, but also lead
Speaker 4: to some kind of conversation, have a thought process. Not
Speaker 4: all films do that, Not all films have to do that.
Speaker 4: That's that's fine, But that's what this one is aiming for.
Speaker 4: And it's you know, it's set in a world where
Speaker 4: division and polarized politics have led to some really strange
Speaker 4: authoritarian state and the country's disintegrated.
Speaker 2: And I believe you're purposely vague about how we got here,
Speaker 2: who's fighting?
Speaker 3: Who was that? Was that? On purpose? Am I right
Speaker 3: to assume that.
Speaker 1: Sort of?
Speaker 3: Yes? And no, I think I got for sort of.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It is very vague about some stuff, and it is
Speaker 4: very very specific about other stuff. And I think because
Speaker 4: it's vague about some things, it creates an assumption that
Speaker 4: there's an overall vagueness.
Speaker 1: But actually it's quite on point in some areas. You
Speaker 1: know that that itself is a vague statement.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, you answered it. You know.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I felt so much in
Speaker 2: this film was was so many of these American places
Speaker 2: that I love born and raised in America. Is the
Speaker 2: golf course, is the football stadium. And that scene we
Speaker 2: just saw, I mean, here's a sniper trying to take
Speaker 2: someone out on a golf course while Christmas music is
Speaker 2: playing in the background.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like, holy shit. As an American, I said,
Speaker 3: I don't want this to happen. I don't want us to.
Speaker 4: Be You shouldn't want it to happen, right, I don't, right, right,
Speaker 4: I don't want it to happen either.
Speaker 1: I have to say.
Speaker 4: Also, seeing as we talk about it, seeing as I
Speaker 4: appear to be on a television show right now, I
Speaker 4: want to say, you are exactly It's not it really
Speaker 4: isn't just America it's set in America, but this situation
Speaker 4: exists in my country and in many European countries, the
Speaker 4: Middle East and Asia and South America. And I chose
Speaker 4: America because everybody looks to America, right, But of things
Speaker 4: it's talking about are quite global.
Speaker 2: As a brit was it a little bit fun watching
Speaker 2: America crush itself?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: No, honestly I hate it. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 4: I by the way, to be serious, nobody on the planet,
Speaker 4: apart from psychopaths, needs disintegration in this country.
Speaker 1: They don't.
Speaker 4: Nobody on the planet wants division in this country. They
Speaker 4: want stability and decency. And yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: Sometimes when you're sitting on your couch at home on
Speaker 2: Twitter and we've got our political identities and there's kind
Speaker 2: of this cute idea of all, we're going to a
Speaker 2: civil war.
Speaker 1: But when you.
Speaker 3: Watch your film, it's terrifying, dude, and it's.
Speaker 2: Like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, we should be
Speaker 2: having these conversations. One scene comes to mind, in particular,
Speaker 2: the Lincoln Memorial, right, I mean, it's in the trailer,
Speaker 2: so I don't want to it gets exploded.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and don't blow it up.
Speaker 3: It's a good thing, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And honestly it went there as a seventh grader with
Speaker 2: my middle school and I just was like, holy shit,
Speaker 2: how would I feel if this happened. Of all the
Speaker 2: places you could have blown up in this film, and
Speaker 2: a lot of places to do blow but the Lincoln Memorial,
Speaker 2: I mean, tell me why that was important to you?
Speaker 4: Well, actually, because, particularly towards the end of the film,
Speaker 4: I wanted the audience, having gone through hopefully a compelling,
Speaker 4: engaging story, to suddenly feel a really strong sense of aversion, yes,
Speaker 4: like a really deep instinctive sense of sort of being appalled.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: And although it was written before January the sixth, there
Speaker 4: was something about January the sixth that it was a disgrace. Right,
Speaker 4: It was various things, but one of the things was
Speaker 4: it was a disgrace, and it provoked to feeling of
Speaker 4: whatever is happening, This shouldn't be happening. This just has
Speaker 4: a has like a deep wrongness, and this is this
Speaker 4: is a kind this is that writ large, I suppose.
Speaker 2: And I guess it says a lot about you that
Speaker 2: you take great pleasure in giving us these things that
Speaker 2: should not be happening.
Speaker 1: There's no pleasure in it.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, it's it's just humility in my job
Speaker 4: that leads me to do these things.
Speaker 2: We haven't spoken about the role of the press in
Speaker 2: this film, and it's in the clip as well, but.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the center character, is its.
Speaker 4: Present because on a personal level, I'm completely over, completely
Speaker 4: over this demonization and villainization of the press.
Speaker 1: It's been happening a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's it comes from politicians, and it comes
Speaker 4: from within social media, which is this weird public discourse
Speaker 4: space that doesn't really relate to how people talk to
Speaker 4: each other at all. We all know that, right, and
Speaker 4: in some places it happens within the press.
Speaker 1: But whatever it is, we need.
Speaker 4: Journalists, we need trusted journalists in it, pretty much exactly
Speaker 4: the same way we need doctors. So I'm done with
Speaker 4: this thing. And I thought, I when I was setting
Speaker 4: out to make it, someone said, don't make it about journalists.
Speaker 4: Everybody hates journalists, and I thought, this is just nuts,
Speaker 4: just nuts.
Speaker 2: I mean, is that a leap for me to say,
Speaker 2: if we gut journalism, we lead to civil war?
Speaker 1: You know what?
Speaker 4: All right, I will be very serious. I know it's
Speaker 4: a comedy show. I'm not very good, are you kidding me?
Speaker 4: I mean, I haven't. I haven't told the joke in
Speaker 4: the first two accents. So here's the thing. There's a
Speaker 4: system of checks and balances. Government has checks and balances, executive, judiciary, legislature.
Speaker 1: And then there's the fourth estate.
Speaker 4: There's journalists watching that. That's a system of checks and balances,
Speaker 4: which is not arbitrary.
Speaker 1: It's for a reason.
Speaker 4: It's guarding against something. It's guarding against something real. If
Speaker 4: you erode it, if you erode government, if you erode
Speaker 4: the people watching the government, the thing you're guarding against me,
Speaker 4: just turn up and what is that thing?
Speaker 1: Actually?
Speaker 4: In Europe we know exactly what it looks like because
Speaker 4: fascism there came out of democracy, and a lot of
Speaker 4: fascists don't know their fascists. They kind of know it's
Speaker 4: a bad word. They don't identify as fascists. It's not
Speaker 4: a thing they know. Some do, but most don't, right,
Speaker 4: And it's actually really a state of mind that people
Speaker 4: drift into, as opposed to, you know, following some kind
Speaker 4: of swastika flag. It's not really that, and it is
Speaker 4: actually a danger.
Speaker 2: It's easy for to watch this film and the Girl
Speaker 2: America watch out America.
Speaker 3: This civil war can.
Speaker 2: Be your But really, I think you briefly stated this
Speaker 2: isn't just the United States.
Speaker 4: We had a we had a prime minister, a guy
Speaker 4: called Boris Johnson.
Speaker 1: Sure, it was interesting thing. He was manifestly a liar.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 4: It was completely obvious he was a liar. And journalists
Speaker 4: would point this out, but they didn't have any traction.
Speaker 1: It didn't do anything.
Speaker 4: It just sort of bounced off him that that was
Speaker 4: that was weird. So your country, my country, many other countries.
Speaker 1: I I wish I had a joke up my sleeve.
Speaker 3: No, you don't need a joke, I think, but you.
Speaker 1: You you swore right this is this is actually up.
Speaker 1: But it is dangerous, dude.
Speaker 2: I watched your film and then I got in a
Speaker 2: cab in Manhattan and I was like, I want to
Speaker 2: get the I want to go to the country right now,
Speaker 2: and just like, I mean, it is very powerful. It's
Speaker 2: an anti war film for sure. And is there a
Speaker 2: lesson I should be taking. Should I be having more
Speaker 2: conversations with people that ideologically I'm different than his?
Speaker 4: My feeding Most people are not extremists. Most people just
Speaker 4: are not.
Speaker 1: They don't really have a voice.
Speaker 4: Extremists have occupied noise, and I think the key thing
Speaker 4: to be.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you for coming to chat with us,
Speaker 2: Thank you for your film. It's it's tremendous. I hope
Speaker 2: everybody sees it. Civil War is in theaters in Imax
Speaker 2: nationwide April twelfth.
Speaker 1: Alan start and you take a quick break. I'll be
Speaker 1: right back after this.
Speaker 3: You don't read a job, We're gonna rap.
Speaker 2: My guest Tonight is a cultural critic, poet, and best
Speaker 2: selling author whose new book is called There's Always This
Speaker 2: Year on Basketball and ascension.
Speaker 3: Please welcome, Amnith abdu RAKEI.
Speaker 4: What are that?
Speaker 2: Unbelievable?
Speaker 3: This There's Always This Year? This is a beautiful book.
Speaker 2: It's been said ball is life, but you have written
Speaker 2: a book about basketball, poetry, meditation, music, lebron.
Speaker 3: Was your intention to do ball as life?
Speaker 1: Right here? Everything? Yes?
Speaker 5: And in some ways I think I failed, But in
Speaker 5: other ways I think I succeeded. My hope was to
Speaker 5: write a book where anyone could see their own interest
Speaker 5: in it. You know, it's like walking to a body
Speaker 5: of water, looking in and seeing what you most want
Speaker 5: reflect it back to you. So if you are in
Speaker 5: this book saying I want to find a basketball book.
Speaker 1: You will.
Speaker 5: If you're in this book saying I want to meditate
Speaker 5: on grief or place or home, you will. If you
Speaker 5: are someone who wants to see a complicated relationship with
Speaker 5: lineage and parentage reflected back to you, you will. So in
Speaker 5: that way, I.
Speaker 2: You tell the story of seeing your dad shoot.
Speaker 3: A basketball once one time.
Speaker 2: And this book reminded me of how much I love basketball,
Speaker 2: and also how much I watched with my dad, and
Speaker 2: I wonder it's not often described this way.
Speaker 3: Is basketball a family sport?
Speaker 5: It feels like at least a family sport from the
Speaker 5: standpoint of witness. I grew up in a house of
Speaker 5: Knicks fans largely, and I remember my mother loving Charles Smith,
Speaker 5: and you know, the dislike for the Bulls, so, you know,
Speaker 5: was strange for me. I can't love Michael Jordan because
Speaker 5: you know so in some ways basketball is in a
Speaker 5: family that loves basketball, it gets passed down. Like so
Speaker 5: many other things, you learn to love the game through
Speaker 5: the people you witness loving the game, and that, I
Speaker 5: think is a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: My dad loved the floater, oh yeah, the best shot,
Speaker 2: and you describe it in here, you know, and I
Speaker 2: just have Do you mind if I read some your
Speaker 2: words to you?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 3: Isn't that strange?
Speaker 5: An honor but strange?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's gotta be a weird The floater the
Speaker 2: most romantic shot in the game. When done right, it's
Speaker 2: almost obsessed with drama, almost pausing in the air to
Speaker 2: make sure.
Speaker 3: You get its good side before it begins to twirl downward.
Speaker 3: I thought of my dad when I read that.
Speaker 5: Really you did that? You read that beautiful. I'll tell you,
Speaker 5: I'm in the second half of my book tour. You
Speaker 5: should take over for that.
Speaker 3: I can take over.
Speaker 2: But it's just one example of the things you described
Speaker 2: so well. You said you're a Knicks fan, so you're
Speaker 2: familiar with there's always next year. But the significance, the
Speaker 2: significance of there's always this.
Speaker 5: Year, it presents a real urgency. I mean, so much
Speaker 5: of this book is also about the passage of time,
Speaker 5: in making peace with the passage of time, which I
Speaker 5: think a lot of people. I turned forty last year.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of people as they age think
Speaker 5: first about what is being taken from them, instead of
Speaker 5: thinking about the many versions of themselves there are to come,
Speaker 5: and to present a kind of urgency and an affection
Speaker 5: around the time you have and put it in the
Speaker 5: immediate moment. For me to structure a book around that
Speaker 5: was a real generosity to myself.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, in the book, you know it's yeah, And
Speaker 2: you know he's not just saying that. It's actually divided
Speaker 2: into orders and timeouts, and there's clocks, there's a countdown,
Speaker 2: you know, And is that to give me the reader
Speaker 2: a sense of like time is limited?
Speaker 3: Enjoy this page?
Speaker 5: I mean, in some ways, to put a literal stop clock,
Speaker 5: little countdown clock in a book is to say you
Speaker 5: the reader and me the writer, because so much of
Speaker 5: the process of the book was to make us feel
Speaker 5: like we are in this together and understanding what time is,
Speaker 5: how much we have left, how much we don't have left.
Speaker 5: But some of the language I was attempting was to
Speaker 5: slow you down and say, for example, we are all
Speaker 5: certainly going to die, but we are not dead yet.
Speaker 5: And so since we are not dead yet, have you
Speaker 5: ever considered the sunset? And you haven't really considered the sunset?
Speaker 5: Because there are infinite sunsets on infinite days as long
Speaker 5: as you're alive, and so that urges people to slow
Speaker 5: down a bit.
Speaker 2: You know, I was in Cleveland this past weekend reading
Speaker 2: both the book and the audio. You know, so I'm
Speaker 2: walking around Cleveland and you're writing about Cleveland. Yes, a
Speaker 2: lot a lot here, And I had forgotten how good Lebron.
Speaker 3: James is a basketball Can you believe it?
Speaker 1: Can you believe that?
Speaker 3: I know, I know why.
Speaker 2: I'm too busy watching the tennis channel. But you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of Lebron James. But why why is
Speaker 2: he an important backdrop for you to tell a story
Speaker 2: of your life?
Speaker 5: For two reasons. One, I got very interested in this
Speaker 5: idea of Lebron James as an immortal figure, someone who
Speaker 5: we believe will play forever, because it does seem right
Speaker 5: now as though he might play forever. But of course
Speaker 5: we also know immortality is a lie. You know, time
Speaker 5: is undefeated. As I say, time will get the best
Speaker 5: of us eventually. However, in a moment where it feels
Speaker 5: like I could focus in on the idea of immortality,
Speaker 5: the idea of living forever, yep, it was interesting to me.
Speaker 5: But also because for much of my life, Lebron James
Speaker 5: did seem like a far away star in the background
Speaker 5: of my living. You know, I write about being homeless
Speaker 5: and walking through the streets of downtown Columbus and hearing
Speaker 5: a Cavs game on the background in bars that I
Speaker 5: could not get into, And so, in a very real
Speaker 5: literal way, Lebron James is in the background of my
Speaker 5: life in ways I could not access, and in any
Speaker 5: book that analyzed my living and my survival, it felt
Speaker 5: as though I should render it, effectively, render what was
Speaker 5: in the background that helped me get to the forefront.
Speaker 3: Well, and that leads to my next question, which is home.
Speaker 2: Yes, I believe you moved back to Columbus six or
Speaker 2: seven years ago. You talked about everyone getting something from
Speaker 2: this here I am. I feel like we might have
Speaker 2: had different childhoods. And man, your description of going back
Speaker 2: home to Ohio reminds me of when I go home
Speaker 2: to Michigan. Of did I have to leave Michigan to
Speaker 2: be successful in comedy? Do we have to leave? What
Speaker 2: is ascension? All of this was hitting me in the face.
Speaker 2: What is home to you? And did you need to
Speaker 2: leave it?
Speaker 5: I don't think I need. I mean, one, it's good
Speaker 5: to talk to another MIDWESTERND Yeah, for sure, I will
Speaker 5: say for me, I never felt the need to leave home.
Speaker 5: I think this book is also trying to realign a
Speaker 5: consideration of what making it is. Ascension not necessarily is
Speaker 5: something that sends you upward, but anything that moves you
Speaker 5: from the place you were to the place you're going.
Speaker 5: And sometimes that place geographically is the same, but it
Speaker 5: is emotionally different. It's mentally different all of these things.
Speaker 5: And for me, if you have a place you love
Speaker 5: in a place where you can do your work, and
Speaker 5: a place where your name will be cemented for years
Speaker 5: after you're gone, for anything you have done, you've made it.
Speaker 5: Even if what you know, my mother passed away when
Speaker 5: I was thirteen. When my mother passed away, there were
Speaker 5: grocery workers and postal workers who mourned her passing because
Speaker 5: of how kind and generous she was to the people
Speaker 5: in her orbit. And therefore her kindness is a part
Speaker 5: of that legacy. And so my mother made it right.
Speaker 5: I love, So you know your legacy is right.
Speaker 3: I need help. I need your help.
Speaker 2: You wrote that nostalgia is a relentless hustler.
Speaker 3: Truly, please educate me.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 3: I know you did it in here, but I needed
Speaker 3: help with.
Speaker 5: You need help with Okay, So there is a useful
Speaker 5: way to say, if we sit back and talk about
Speaker 5: the good old days of our Midwestern youth, that's a
Speaker 5: lot of fun, and we could do that, but it
Speaker 5: actually doesn't do anything to inform the way we can
Speaker 5: live thoughtfully and generously. Now. Nostalgia for nostalgia's sake, it's great,
Speaker 5: but there's a difference between, say, a porch conversation and
Speaker 5: a page conversation. A page conversation has to use nostalgia
Speaker 5: as a way to move your actual present life forward,
Speaker 5: I think, which I'm not. You know, porch conversation is
Speaker 5: fine and fun, but also you know, I'm not that interested.
Speaker 5: We're all getting older in the way that, for example,
Speaker 5: I play basketball now is different, you know. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: I can't play the way I did when I was
Speaker 5: twenty or even thirty. And it doesn't really serve me
Speaker 5: to sit back and say, man, in the good days,
Speaker 5: I could run up down the court and to do
Speaker 5: all this other stuff. But it serves me more to
Speaker 5: say I cannot do that anymore, but I can still
Speaker 5: do this other series of things that align with what
Speaker 5: I know about the game and what I love about
Speaker 5: the game, and what my body is still capable of,
Speaker 5: and when I do those things, I'm unstoppable for a
Speaker 5: little while.
Speaker 3: I love that, honey. Thank you.
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