Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Guillermo del Toro

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Frankenstein, The Shape of Water) is an Academy Award-winning director, screenwriter, and producer. Guillermo joins Armchair Expert to discuss his dad winning the lottery twice, diagnosing himself from a health encyclopedia, and promising the monsters in his bedroom lifelong friendship. Guillermo and Dax talk about writing The Devil’s Backbone while his father was kidnapped, James Cameron nearly fighting Harvey Weinstein on his behalf, and bringing back Pan’s Labyrinth to finally realize it in 3D. Guillermo explains why monsters are more honest than people, how creative shortcuts rob us of the best part, and why being loved matters more than being celebrated.Start your 2 month free trial today: https://youtube.com/premium . Terms Apply. Cancel Anytime.Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds: https://www.allstate.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hello. This is, guys, this is really up there. Monica, she declared favorite of all time. I believe it to be favorite episode of all time. Yeah. And he's definitely a three-way tie for me.

I mean, this is the most incredible human we've got to sit with. It's crazy. Guillermo del Toro. Guillermo del Toro is an award-winning filmmaker. That's an understatement. He's won a Brazilian Academy Award. awards and every other kind of award. Frankenstein movie the year last year, shape of water, Pans Labyrinth.

We are here to talk about Pans Labyrinth. And this is so awesome. He has completely redone the whole movie with all these different technologies that now exist. And we will all be able to see it now in 3D among many different formats. Incredible. Cannot wait to see it in 3D. This is among the most special human beings on planet Earth. Please enjoy Germo D'Otoro.

He's an object square. He's an option to smile. Hi, Sarah. Hi, I'm welcome. Nice to meet you. Welcome. You're right there. Thank you.

I offer you a water. Liquid death. Let's go. I just took the last Topatiko. It is. I just took the last Topatiko, which you know there's a shortage. I am painfully aware.

You are? Do you love Topo Chico? No, but it's news in the... Mexican grade. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's good to just increase the value. Now, that's worth a lot of money. He's wasting a lot of money there. Could sell it on eBay. I'm always curious about what books are those. Well, some of them are past guest books, but some of them are just decorative. Some of them are you by foot or by color? Yeah, exactly. Plinear foot. Yeah, well, like, set decoration, right? Yeah, exactly. I'm going to start by saying,

I've been wanting to meet you for 20 years because I worked with, perhaps one of my favorite people I've ever worked with was Guillermo Navarro. Yes, of course. Are you guys still friendly? Of course, what a great guy. Oh, what a beautiful man.

Beautiful man, beautiful, everything. I mean, he's so full of talent and fire and he doesn't put up with anything. Sure. He's a DP. Oh, a DP. Was he the DP on Devil's Backbone? And Pants Laverins, he won the Oscar for Pants.

Wow. was the first Mexican cinematographer to win in the history of... Oh, really? Yeah, of a filmographer, yeah. There has to have been some sense, right? Checo was originally a Setic Cam Operator, and then he became a DP. But Rodrigo Prieto, Chibo. Chibo, that's who I'm thinking about.

Yes. No, he's a great guy. What's your theory on this huge explosion of talent that came out of Mexico? I remember when I was working with Guillermo Navarro, he was telling me, like, oh, he's from Guadalajara, right? No, he's from Mexico. I'm from Guadalajara. Oh. Now we look alike.

The other day, I saw a photograph and I said, boy, Navarro looks really haggard. And I realized it was me. People might accidentally, same name, same look. People might accidentally hire him to direct something thinking they've hired you. Or me to do the cinematography. Who do you think would do better at each other's job? Two things I forgot everything about cinematography, which I used to do on my superates and even and on the other 16 and all that, and algebra.

Algebra, I was a whiz kid for a year. Yes. And now I don't know even what it means. You have two daughters? Yeah. Did you have to help them with math and go, wait, hold on. I'm supposed to be good at this. No, because I think each generation does less and less of those operational things.

Yeah. You know, like math. When I was a kid, it was a huge breakthrough when they allowed your calculator in the classroom. Oh, sure, for like trigonometry or something. They said, oh, that's cheating. I remember I had a Texas instrument. Sure. It's Big Boy, too, right?

Yeah, the bigger the better. It was a huge debate. There was no Internet, or it would have been a huge point. Well, my kids are in sixth and eighth grade, and so now, of course, the big debate is when and where can they use AI. It'd be kind of insane to think they shouldn't become adept at using it because it'll be a tool they will use, but it's like when and where. Well, I think the debate for me is not what has.

happens to the technology, but what happens to the human brain while using it, right? Well, for example, I'll give you one thing we all live, GPS. You live in LA for 20, 30 years, whatever. And if you start relying on GPS to go home, you should stop. Yeah. I can't get anywhere. I can't get to his house and I live right down there without it. I need it. The other day when in the opening of the Lucas Museum, George very pointedly said, I want the name of the work, the medium of the work, the author and the year. That's it. It's because now we walk with context on our pocket. You want to know more. I don't have to tell you if it's a good piece of art or a bad piece of art. You judge it and you want context, pull out your phone. I mean, that's good for me. Can we foster

thought, not results, thought? Yes, I think we underestimate the joy there was to be had when you were trying to figure something out. Well, you know, like I brought my notes for Pans Labyrinth. You did? Because I think the process is what's worth it. Not the result. If we understand that, we understand that the shortcut is not giving you something, is robbing you. Yeah, right. I'm talking purely as what makes us human. Anytime you skip the process, you are not cheating on someone. You're cheating on yourself. You really are rubbing yourself of it. You know, the difference between winning the lottery and having created a widget. My dad won't a lot of. I know. I'm planting that seed.

Now $6 million. In 1969. Hold on. Well, earmark that. I do want to tell you, I did reach out to Josh Brolin to ask him about you. And do you know what he told me? He said his favorite thing about you is having gotten to look at your journals. That's one of those.

Yeah. So I feel very excited because he was just telling me how spectacular they are. This is a relic. That's a reward page in case I lose it. Oh, my God. I have to hold this up. Yeah. That's.

Oh, wow. How much time is in these two pages? Well, not much, maybe three, four hours, but they can happen three weeks or four months apart. Oh. I only write when there's something worth to consigning. And after the Hobbit, I stopped carrying them because I couldn't lose notes on the Hobbit. Oh, my gosh, I'm holding this up. I feel, yeah.

He's suspect. You know, I'm embarrassed to tell you how much I would pay to own this thing. I was not saying, I feel like we shouldn't be holding it. I know. I thought it would be nice to bring it. Oh, it's beautiful. Oh, my gosh, Monica. I want you to feel the pages, too.

Oh, my goodness. Did you draw this? Yes, of course. Years before pirates, I'm saying. I cannot believe this. Oh, my Lord. That was a note for mountains of madness. This was going to be a question at the very end, but I need to ask it now.

Are you friendly at all with Tim Burton? No, we never meant. You've never met. We've never met. I mean, I know his influences. He comes from Edward Gorey, Charles Adams. I mean, I can trace his roots. I can't believe you've never met him.

No, actually, I think that is very risky to meet someone that you have X in common. I've had that, like, people that you have 90% in common and 70% in common, where you disagree, you're going to hate each other. Sure, sure, sure. When you disagree, you're going to go, no, there's no conciliation. We had an expert on the other day. You would know this because you love fantasy. But did you know C.S. Lewis and Tolkien hated each other for a period at Cambridge. They disliked each other. They were too close. One was an atheist. One was a Christian.

And a Christian that took great pains to get there. I may add, I mean, bent over backwards. Yeah, he had to convince himself. Yeah. Contorted himself. Yeah. So, you know, it's like when you took years to convince yourself of something, you don't give it out that easily. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's now part of your identity. And it feels. threatening to your identity. Your world would explode. Yeah. But to find out that they also hated and loved opposite poets. And then I think it was CS Lewis hosted a Norse mythology reading session. Oh my God, yes. And then Tolkien attended and then they found love. And they both encouraged each other to pursue that. I was going to say later they did coalesce and the one. Look, the highbound nature of

academia is brutal. It's caddy. Yeah, yeah, right. Here are actors, comedians, magicians, and scholars, all very catty. Like, I'm friends with a lot of magicians. There's not a single magician that has ever spoken highly of another magician. Oh, that's so true. Or comedians. Well, if they die, they can.

They can like Houdini. Not a threat. They don't have a show opening. They don't have to share any attention with them. Yeah, but academia is very catty. But you know, I'll say an exception to that, which is stand-ups, you're right. Stand-up comedians are brutal. I did stand-up for a while.

But sketch comedians, that's where I'm from. That's different. We do love each other. Because a lot of it is writing. It's writing. It's relying on one another. It's eating shit together. It's succeeding together.

You can be in a writer's room together? It starts communal. It is. And I think that you find in academia, for example, I love reading the book of writing. I disagree with 90% of his opinions about other writers. You don't have to agree with that because it's what you did with what you were given as a legacy. Like Burton, I can see the Gory, the Edward Gory in him or the Charles Adams in him. Right.

But what he did with that or the Dr. Zeus or the way he transmogrifies that. Yes. It's interesting, but it would be very different than the way you metabolize. And it becomes part of your being. I just know this particular part of your workflow is also very similar to his, right? He's just endlessly drawing and writing, even while engaging with people. It became less so for me. The most copious notes I took is before I could make movies.

The more you have a team, the more you say, well, Guy Davis draws a hundred times better than I do, or Francisco Ruiz, or you learn to rely on the people that you work with. Right. Every movie has a book like this? It started with whole books for each movie, and then it went into 50 pages for each movie, and then three pages for each movie. Because the more you have a book. a team. Right. Yeah. I mean, like I do a thing called the submarine, which is six to nine months before

the movie starts, I hired three or four, almost always the same designers, and we go deep. Before we hire production design, before we hire custom design, we dive deep into the shapes, the colors, the this and that. And then I draw a list. Really quick, what is the end product of that session? Is it storyboard? Yeah, no, it's mostly the main concepts, the main tenets of the movie, like shapes, for example. The rules. The rules. And then you hire people and if they want to break them, you say, why?

Because I thought about it. Not that you don't foster dissent, you do. Yeah. But you say you got to really convince me. Yeah, because we thought this through. I think that like when I go to a set and I see something is not done properly, I say, you thought I wouldn't notice? Yeah.

And like when I was 30, no, less. When I was 28 or 20. Jim Cameron, we became friends instantly. I don't know why. He said, why don't you come over? We're editing true lies and I need to take out 25 minutes. Was the inroad to this relationship, were you doing the special effects stuff? You had worked in some capacity for him, no?

No, no, no. Ron Perlman, who was in Kronos, had done a TV series called Beauty and the Beast with Linda, Hamilton. So he said, why don't you come to the barbecue on the 4th of July? I went and Jim was there. Yes. And Jim sat down and he said, so I hear you made. a really expensive Mexican movie. I said, well, I mortared to my house.

He said, you know, you may lose it. He says, we only hear the stories of the people that donate a kidney and succeed, but there are a lot of people that donate a kidney and the movie doesn't open. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I go, that's absolutely true. He says, would you show it to me? I said, sure. And he arrived to the screening at the Chaplin Theater on Raleigh Studios.

And he said, if I get a phone call, I may need to leave. I said, sure, I understand. And then he saw the whole movie and he said, the funkel was bullshit. That was a good out of. If the movie wasn't bad, I would send us a call. Oh my God, like it's a bad date or something. Yeah, like he said, I can stay for 20 minutes from the beginning. And we stayed for four hours.

Wow. And we liked each other very much. He came from special effects. I could do all special effects. I knew Roto scope, tracking. So we started geeking out. Yes. Okay, I was going to say, I had the rare experience to go on a motorcycle ride.

I didn't know who was going to be at breakfast. And I get there. With Arnold. Yeah, with Arnold. And then he's there. What year? 2004. Oh, yes. And who's the great puppeteer?

Oh, Stan Winston. Stan Winston is there. He was a writer. Incredible. And so he naturally has zero interest in the 30-year-old that's there. Yeah. But he starts talking about the 3D technology he's inventing. And I happen to say, oh, so it's like bilateral stereoscopic vision.

And he then goes, he's like, he homes in him, he goes, why do you know about bilateral stereoscopic vision? And I go, oh, I was an anthropology major. And then I got all of his attention among all these people. He's not just pretty. He knows. So I imagine for you that was the same thing.

I think if he figures out somebody knows about his neat kinks, he's just very drawn to you, I'd imagine. He said to me one day, there are X number of filmmakers. Then there are X number of writers. directors. That's less. There are even less producer, writer, directors. And he said, then there are even less designer, producer, writer, directors. They said, and then world builders. He says, you can count with one hand. And when you encounter somebody, you can talk about the whole thing, how much is going to cost? Why is it going to cost? How do we make it better, bigger, and cheaper?

And our global view, he said, you immediately are interested because it's a very nurturing and rare. I think because we had that commonality on effects, because I can sculpt a puppet, I can mechanize a puppet, I can mold a puppet. So I know molding, chemistry, you know all these things. You liked it. I know, how do you know all this stuff? So let's go in order a little bit. And you already started it.

First of all, you're from Guadalajara. Yes. And mom and dad are Spanish, and I'm curious, first. Mexican, yeah. When did the family come from Spain? Like, what generation are you? I have zero interest in my genealogy. I know my grandfather was half Irish.

It was Guillermo Gomez O'Culligan. It's like out of Darby O'Gillis. That'd be a bad restaurant. O'Coligans. E. colians. I know the kinship with the Irish, because when I went to Ireland, I said, why do I feel straight at home immediately? But the side of my father split into Puerto Rico and Mexico.

That much I know. Now, my father had a very... precarious upbringing. They didn't have money. His father was a gambler, which my dad was a gambler. But he sort of controlled himself, sort of. So how does he win this lottery? He married my mom. We were living in a middle-middle-class home. He always bought from the same. He won two times. No. Yeah, he won the six million and then he won a quarter of a million a few years later. Oh, my goodness. He didn't stop playing. The same bender. Really? Yes. Oh, my gosh. So one day we're living there,

And one day we move into a house that was just out of the shining. I would run my bicycle like that. But he always raised us. I remember the immortal lines he said to my brother. He says, why do I have to do this if we have money? And my dad said, I have money. You don't. And he would say, you want that microphone for your camera.

You're going to go to the dealership and wash all the cars. Then you go to the spare parts warehouse. And you have to clean all the boxes. And then I'll buy you your microphone. for your Super 8 camera. Well, so that was my other curiosity about your father because I'm from Detroit and my whole family was automotive industry. I too worked for GM for years.

It says he was an automotive entrepreneur. What does that mean? First, he dealt with Packards, then he dealt with Chrysler and then Nissan and Chrysler. Did he have a dealership? Many dealerships? Many dealerships. And the 60s and 70s and all that. He was really the worst boss I've ever had.

I worked with him five years and I said, Dad, I'm quitting because I don't want to stop loving you. I never did anything right. had always had to chase him for every penny. So it sounds like he took the money he won and he was successful at growing that through his business. Oh, yeah, no, no. He was very funny. He was very personal.

He was a little remote at home. This is my father, too. So I only saw him every other weekend, but he was a car salesman. And when I moved through the world with him, it was like, he knew everyone at the hardware store and then he knew all the waiters and waitresses. And it was like, I just wasn't kind of enamored with it. Also, my dad was a motorcycle racing champion. No.

And he used to ride motorcycles instead of a bicycle, he would buy as a mini bike. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was on a bike at age six or seven. I was riding my bike on the street. You had the childhood I wanted. I still, of course. You have to break some stuff. Oh, God. Yeah.

Keep it connected for the moment. I have a bunch of scars from motocross. Of course. Parenting in the 60s would be actionable now. Of course. Sure. He would take me on his BMW bike and he would go for ice cream. I was in the back.

No helmets, of course. Of course. He said, you want an iron horse? I go, sure. He would do an iron horse with me in the back. Sure. Seven. Yeah, yeah.

Wait, so how old were you when he won the lottery? 69. So I was five. And do you remember, like the day your dad comes home and it's like, guess what? Yeah, the night before we went to the church party. So I remember that I won a fire truck, a plastic fire truck. You're a lucky family. Everybody said, everybody said congratulations on the raffle.

said, yeah, we got a red truck. Yeah. I thought that was the town was celebrating you. I thought everybody loves my red truck. Everybody wants my red truck. No, but my dad gave me the discipline. He said, you have to work for everything you need. And he said, it's for your own good.

We inherited each other's clothes. How many siblings? One brother older than me who passed away, a younger brother and a younger sister. Okay. So you're the middle. You're the middle boy. I'm the second, which is a hard position. Stereotype as a middle child?

Yes. You have to become the negotiator, the peacekeeper, the sane one supposedly. And then also would you agree, as the middle child, you can really disappear a lot? Because in my case, there was like a teenager who was crazy and then there was a baby on the scene. So it was like between the energy they took up, I could be in my room for days and no one would have wondered. I tell you, the parenting thing, I could disappear for a week. And they would not ask where I was. Right.

Not even curious. If I had enough gas on the tank, I would go to San Antonio, to Texas, to buy super eight equipment. I would come back four days later. No one was there. No one asked anything. Wow. Wow.

Wow. All I knew there was cold meat and cold beans on the fridge. That was mad. Who made them? I had no idea. You also described that, you know, when you're like a seven-year-old boy, most kids are outside playing football and you're like reading voraciously. Oh, my God.

Yes. And then you're also a hypochondriac. A complete hypochondri. Yeah, where do we think that started? Started when my dad won the lottery, he bought a library because somebody told him you have to have a library because you're a gentleman now. So he got a huge desk. That sounds like they could have told them anything. Oh, a lottery in the house.

In the house. Okay, okay, okay. He bought three encyclopedias. He bought an encyclopedia of art, which I read complete. And I was very young. He bought an encyclopedia for youth. and one of them was the encyclopedia of health. Oh, okay.

And I memorized it. I thought, oh, I have tricky nose. I have high blood pressure. You thought you had pancreatic cancer at one point. At one point, I can talk to you. That is in my movies. All the biology, all this and that. That has been with me since I was a kid.

And did you shake it at some point? Yeah, yeah. My dad was a hypochondriac. His hobby was to be sick. Actually, I became fully fluent English is my second language, but at age seven or eight, he would make me travel with him to translate to doctors in Houston. Oh, really?

I have a glaucoma. Tell him that these are my symptoms and I would speak to the doctor in English and he said, what did he say? Do you think because of the Catholic guilt, there was some sense that, well, with this great fortune we were given, there must be some price to pay and it'll be my health. I don't know how complex my dad was. But did you have any sense like that? Like something bad will happen to us because this is suspiciously good.

I have. Yeah, same, same. Yeah. My parents won the money. One of the first things they tried to travel a lot, to Europe, to this and that. And we would be left behind, and I stayed with who I called my grandmother. She was like Piper, Laurie, and Carrie. She would instill in me the sense of doom.

Oh. Every day, at the end of the day, I would call her, and she would say, if I wake up tomorrow, I will see you. And if I die tonight, I want you to know that I loved you. Oh, my God. Every day. Okay. I would sleep rigid in the bed feeling I'm sure she's dead. And when I slept in her house, I would sleep in a little cot at the foot of her bed.

And I would spend the night here and if she stopped, I would go, she's dead. Yeah. Now, it happened. That for a decade, at least. And then I was an altar boy. I was the spokesperson for the Virgin Mary. I was raised very, very Catholic. And this is the time when I was reading multiple books a day.

I taught myself to do ultra-fast reading. And to this day, I can read a page about a second, two seconds. I get a page. Oh, my gosh. Okay, I know this about you. You're going to mass at 8 in the morning, but you're coming home and you see Boris Karloff in Frankenstein in the juxtaposition, yet also the parallel.

Yeah, it's the same. To me, this is completely true. My spiritual life is forged by movies. fairy tales and religion, they become the same. Panslaverins, hands the shape of water, Frankenstein. To me, they are parables or fairy tales. You know, they became effortlessly won. So my grandmother and I never agreed,

but she would buy me the comic books on Tuesday. So on Tuesday you went to the comic book stand in the corner and I would buy everything, Archie, Little Lulu, House of Secrets, House of Mystery, and some brown and white Mexican horror comics that were the most salacious, grotesque thing ever created. I still had a whole collection. Like would make Robert Crumb blush?

Oh my God. They said it was called Traditional Legends of Mexico, right? It was the name of the comic book. And it started very altruistic. Eventually, they started doing Edgar Allan Poe, Love, whatever. And then at the end, they were just, let's put a rothen corpse and a scantily clad lady. And let's call it a day. My mother threw most of my comic books, like everybody.

Yeah. But I kept some. In your obsession with the monster, of course, makes total sense, which is, I'm not perfect. I'm flawed. I am in some way despicable, right? I have some sense that I am, like, defective in a way others are not. Especially because you're the second child. Yes, yes.

Like, I'm not my brother who's like a stud. In the disco, black guy. And I'm not, whatever. You're sort of in the middle. But also, you can be pretty brutal with yourself and truth, meaning you don't have to be perfect, but you don't have to stay either. You have to give yourself the license to say, look, this is who I am. And this is what I need.

And it's truthful, whether we like it or not. And monsters always are truthful. They step into the room, you know what they are. Right. And that's one thing I carry to design. When I design, I say everything design needs to have a history. And I said this morning, I was talking about a cistern, a Roman cistern, we're designing for a stop-motion movie we're making. And I said, the bricks on the floor are too small. And he said, why? I said,

because they use larger slabs so the water would slide. This I know. And it's not that you want to make it more pretty or this. It's truthful. It's the truth. You understand the design because it came out of a need. Same with the personality. Like, we dress, we're expressing something. Wardrobe is personality, declaring. Trying to give you a shortcut. Into who you are. Yeah. What do you own?

What car do you drive? If you are wealthy, but you have a 2010 car, I know who you are. Right. A little bit. Yeah, Warren Buffett driving the old Cherokee famously for 30 years. He tells you that. Oh, okay, I really get it. It's not about the money.

Or somebody wearing skitchers. Uh-huh. Well, he's going for comfort. Right. Like one day I visited a very famous filmmaker, a friend of mine, and he was very excited. What are you driving? My car is just a sensible ride. That's what it is.

It's a sensible ride. What car do you drive? It was a Chrysler 2012. Okay. I still have it. Okay. I love it. Wonderful.

Because in Mexico, you love your car. And once you get it, that's your car. Loyal. You don't have many cars. You're like, that's my car. Yeah, you go down to Mexico and you see all these incredible 80s full-size pickup trucks that are like Well, maintained. I call them El Guapo. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

My car, I say, hey, guapo. Let's go. I talk to the car, like the Japanese, I believe objects have a personality and a soul. I cook. My favorite frying pan is the cheesiest frying pan, but I know exactly how it's going to heat, how he's going to cook the rice. Yeah, yeah. Since you feel a sense that they have some meaning to them, are you a major collector then? I was, and I will say was because I'm quite pointedly donated. gifting and auctioning most of what I own. Because I think if you're still accumulating after 55,

there's something not quite there. Unless you are going to, like what George did, which I adore, open it to the public. If it's for you after 55, it's like wearing short pants. I mean, look, everybody has a sense of fashion. I personally wouldn't subject people to me on short pants and a backwards baseball cap. Oh, I almost wore a backwards baseball.

Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate First could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking if the movie is sold out before you show up. You drove across town, found parking, got in line, and now the person behind the counter is giving you that look sold out. Guess you're watching whatever starts in 10 minutes. Yeah, checking first is an excellent idea.

So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Allstate, North American Insurance Company, and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. Well, how do we explain the obsession with the macab? Like, what makes a little kid... Catholic.

It is a death-heavy endeavor. The way Philippines and Mexican Catholicism, the inroad into the popularity of the culture, the friars noticed, the gory of the picture, no more people were like, This is interesting. Yeah. So Mexican Catholicism is really gory. Yeah, there's blood. On the crucifixion, you get some blood.

And do you get exposed bones? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They go hard. Yeah, you go hard. And Filipino Catholicism is just as hard. Well, and Filipinos, I've got to work with a ton of them in Detroit. They all believe in ghosts, too. Culturally, everyone believes in ghosts.

So do we? Almost everyone has a ghost story or multiple. Same. In a Mexican dinner, if somebody starts telling a story or a ghost story, a ghost story, you say, pass the salsa. Yeah, yeah, you're all ears. And everybody has one. Even my grandma, who hated everything supernatural, she had ghost stories.

At bedtime, they don't tell you about snow white. They said there was this white presence in the house I lived in. No wonder you're on my pondry, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Because when I'm done telling you this story, I'm likely to pass. My analyst says is what is called a counterphobic reaction, meaning I was so scared as a kid. that I learned to love and get really intimate with what I fear,

which is a coping mechanism. Of course. Well, that's like the same as when you role play with your trauma, right? Like if you've had sexual trauma, but you're into BDSM as a way to interact with it. Whatever brain in you have for that, because then if you become the initiator, the controller, then there's some measure of control. I mean, when I was first scared that I remember as a kid, it was so profound. and my brother then scared me further that night.

So, you know, I started seeing things in my bedroom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Presence. I would wake up with lucid dreaming in which these things were actually in my brain. They were there. But you have to learn. And I tell this story people think it's a cute story. People think I make it up.

It is completely true. I used to pee myself because I didn't want to get out of the crib because I saw a thing in the closet and fingers and waving at me in the rug. and I got up and I said, if you let me go to the bathroom, I will be your friend forever. I told the monsters, and they withdrew. Oh, my gosh. And this is true.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was able to go to the bathroom. But to this day, in my grandmother's house, there was a corridor, which I thought was incredibly long on the road to the bathroom. And I always thought, what if I see something standing at the end of the corridor, which is in Devil's Backbow?

Uh-huh. A few years ago, I went to that house. Uh-huh. It's two feet long. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in my mind, it was like a gauntlet of horrors. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so to speed through some things, you start messing with Dad's Super 8 camera.

When you're about eight years old, this fascination takes you to ultimately the University of Guadalajara. You study cinema. We founded the school. Oh, you did? And we were both the founders and the alumni. Oh, really? There was no school in Mexico in Guadalajara for that, only in Mexico City. Oh, okay.

So we founded two things, a festival, which is still. still going on and the school, which is still going on under another name, but the same university. Was any part of your artistic endeavor, like an attempt to have control over this whole thing? I guess. I mean, I'm now your analyst. No, no, no. When you don't have a social life, when I say other kids were playing football, I could not understand. I felt 70 at age seven. You were in your study. I've been growing younger. Like now I feel younger. Yeah. Benjamin this life.

Benjamin del Toro. If I only had looked like Bradfield at any stage. If any of us could. But I felt old. What I think is a way to, I mean, we are constantly finding balance. When people say, I had a bad day, well, you're going to have a good one. I had a good day. Well, you're going to have a bad one.

Yeah. End of story. Like the nature of the flow is the yin and the yang. In meditation, you remember. nothing's permanent. Everything's going to peak and it's going to pass. Whether you're the most happy person in the world. It ebbs and flows.

And I think writing, creating. You want it so bad that you create it. And the world does not cater to that. To permanence? No, to permanence or to what you want. But is it cultural? Because I feel like in America, we are obsessed with happiness, with achieving it. And then we assume we just have that for the rest of our lives.

But I do know in other cultures, you just know that that's not something you get and you have, that it is temporary. My dad has a real estate company, and he said, before you go into this doomed movie career, you should work for me. So I worked five years for that. And what I remember is payday on Friday, everybody was a prince. And everybody knew that Monday comes,

you're going to have to show up and start working again. You get two days of being a king, a largesse, yeah, buying drinks for friends. You put a clean shirt. Yeah. And you went dancing. By Sunday night, you're like, we're going to go back tomorrow.

Why did I do that? But the thing that is funny for me is when the culture is all focused on secondary gains. And it pays no attention to primary gain. Please define those two. Secondary gains is the things that you have to replenish constantly. Attention, money, approval, wealth. When you meet somebody that is very rich. are very famous and they are worried about how will the movie open.

This review was bad. I lost X amount of money. The primary is the person that hugs you and loves you exactly as you are. Right. That's a primary game. Win or lose. Yeah. For me, the most intense primary gain moment is when your kids are four or five and you open

the door and you're Ultraman. Yeah. And they run because you're home. That's pure primary game. And those never go away. They're bedrock, and I find it worrisome that more and more we are veering towards secondary tertiary game. If you're not careful, you are hollow. Yeah, I went to a Latino funeral recently in Carson.

It was an overwhelming experience. This person who had passed was not famous. They weren't a boss of many people. And the turnout, in the experience, in the friends and the family, the depth of that. That grief. Yes. in the sharing of it, and I just looked at kind of the white culture I came. If you went to a funeral and there was more than 12 people, that would be crazy.

That other thing was really on display. And I was like, oh, man, we're really missing the boat in a lot of ways. There's not such a thing as a better culture or a worse culture. I think that all of them have incredible positives and incredible negatives. It's just what stays with you. I'll give you a difference. For example, in many cultures, when you're in grief, somebody says, I'm about a phone call away.

If you need me, call me. In Latin culture, in Mexican culture, you show up with a bucket of foot. Yeah, yeah. You say, hey, I heard. And you're already there. You don't say, look, all you have to do is call me. No, you just show up. Yeah.

And you're there and the good and the bad. But there are so many others. I mean, nothing is perfect. Yes, but there are aspects that are aspirational. And what I observed was this man who I adore, watching him grieve, what I realized is we were all there to help. take it on and we all experienced it with him. I was in shambles. Everyone was. And I thought, what a beautiful thing. We're helping him carry this thing. You know a culture, by the way,

it deals with is more vulnerable, the elders, and death. Yeah. Yeah. Those three are markers of a culture that are incredibly important. I'm going to add one more. I was in Miami not long ago, and I was out at a very nice restaurant. The traditional white version is you get a babysitter and you go to this really nice restaurant and you have this romantic experience. Well, that was happening at many tables. The white people were there with the mom and dad. And this is 11 o'clock at night. All of the Latino tables was like, all the kids were there.

Brothers and sisters were there. Yeah, yeah. And that's just different. And I think it's aspirational. The fascination for me is just what stays with you. We all make massive mistakes. I've caused pain and been caused pain. and he continued to do it.

But the fact is the balance, the ultimate balance, the invoice, comes in the last three minutes of your life. When you have no illusions of being, what do you do for a living? Well, in three minutes, nothing. Yeah, exactly. There's no other thing. No other thing. Who are you? In three minutes, nothing.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the moment the system starts to. Yeah, yeah. The DMTs released. Yeah, yeah. That's ideally what you should have. accumulated in life. What you should have accumulated in life is, well, yeah, I fucked up royally

over here, but I did this other thing. And it all comes incredibly clear. For some reason, it may be biochemical. That's why I say experiential is human. It's not that I'm a ludite. I'm not a guy that says, well, you know, we should not use technology. No, no, no. It's just look, at the end of the day, the invoice is what did you live to achieve? Whatever it is. It doesn't have to be a big thing. I was a good brother. What a gift to have at the end.

What a gift to say that. Yes. I was a good father or I was a good son. You don't have to be all of that. I was a good friend. That's why I just say, please, just let's be careful for a second about how we launch into the next incarnation of our humanity. I'm not saying don't do this or do that.

Always balance it against this other. Just pay attention. Pursue. So, okay, your first, I think, professional job writer, is you write five episodes and you direct four episodes of this. No, before that even. I mean, I was doing my super eights, and people started to say, oh, you know how to do makeup effects?

Would you do them on my short film or my indie film? And I started to do effects for other people while I wrote and directed my own shorts. And I said, well, when I did, I quit real estate. I said, I'll try to make a living this other way. And I founded my company with my partner and my then wife called Necropia. Necropia.

Necropia. That's a good name. I assume in Spanish, this is still the base Latin of Necro. The place where the dead dwell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. But the thing I'm curious about is before you did your first big movie, you had been working for three years building puppets? Building the machine, the little chronos device. What I said is 10 years before. And funny

enough, I studied under Dick Smith, who was the Oscar-winning makeup effects, man that did Amadeus, that did Godfather, The Exorcist, altered states. He accepted me into his makeup effects course and the academy bought part of his estate and they found my first letter. Oh, really? Oh, really? No way. And I found it really. remarkable. I'm still the same guy. Yeah. What I say, what I say I am, what I think of the genre, how I think it can be a parable. It's the same. I said, oh, I like this gift. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you had an incredible gift, which is you kind of knew what you were about pretty young. When I was very very, yeah. That's, I guess, of all the gifts one can have in life, I think that's the one.

I'll ask Amy at the Academy if she wants to share it with you. Oh, yes. Is the letterhead from necropia. And I basically say, in my second or third letter, I say, look, I'm not going to do this for a living. I just want to make my first movie. And there's no one in my country that makes makeup effects. So I have to found a company, work for a few years into having the equipment and then make my first movie. But I'm referring to, didn't you create for a stop motion film you were intending on making? Yeah, I was going to do that. A hundred puppets. Yeah.

And the studio was broken into and everything was vandalized and destroyed. Destroyed and they smeared poop in the world. Okay. No. In Mexico, they call it foxing. Oh, it's a tradition. Yeah, well, that's like toilet paper in here. They call it mesorriaran.

Okay. Somebody teed and pooed and pooed everywhere. Oh, my God. Sure. They went ape in there. And not what it means is they didn't find anything worth stealing. So they got revenge. But how did you recoup from having spent that much time working and focusing on something and having to say goodbye to that?

A friend of mine said to me, the key to life is huge windshield, small rearview mirror. That's nice. I think that's a very succinct. Like I remember, and you may remember when computers started, I started writing on a word processor. And you could save three pages at once. And I was like, this is who can do anything better. Then computers came and I was 20-something writing a book on Alfred Hitchcock, which got published by the university. But I had done 130 pages or something like that, and I erased the desk.

And I immediately went, okay, page one. But, okay, page one new project or page one the same one? Same one. That's a constitution. That's hard. That's a personality, Trey. I don't know that you can teach that. No, no, you have to sort of have it.

You know, it came from crashing motorcycles. I remember this. When I was in motocross, I would take a dune the wrong way, and I was on a 300-enduro motorcycle, which is too heavy for motocross. And in the air, I was thinking, okay, I'm going to die or break my bones. And then something went wrong, and I said, okay, I didn't die. I broke my bones. How do I get up?

How do I push the bike off of me? Like, immediately it was like, okay, next step. Solution, solution, solution. Which, by the way, eventually, as a person, there's a lot of you that you don't process. And one day you're crossing the street and you have a panic attack or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's that thing from 20 years ago. That I didn't process 15 years ago.

Yeah. Okay, so you do chronos. So I found the company. I do all the special effects. Yes. I do commercials, 15 movies, blah, blah, blah. And then I have the tools. Then I make chronos, which is incredibly hard to do, incredibly against the grain.

incredibly unpopular with the financiers and the government and all that. Sure. And then it wins at Ken. That's in two seconds, an eight-year journey. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. What film opens up the door to mimic? Well, mimic, which it was a trap door.

As we're about to learn. And Miramax, they loved Kronos, supposedly. Turns out they didn't. Yeah. They probably didn't even see it. They probably didn't see it. But at any rate, we developed, they wanted to, to do a three or four anthology movie with Brian Singer, myself, I think four directors. And they said,

develop a short story. And I had read Mimic. And I said, well, we can do this one as a short, 30 minutes. I showed them the tests. And they said, we do it as a feature. And I go, I don't think there's a feature in there. Right. I've been unemployed. Chronos is 91.92. We finished shooting. It comes out in 93. I owe a lot of money. I owe a quarter of a million dollars at 28. It's not great for creativity. No, it's great for creativity. And I said, well, I got to pay that. By the way, that money, whatever I make on MIMIC, I put into paying the ransom for my father.

This is all I'm presuming 97. My dad is kidnapped 98. But this period, I'm presuming one of the hardest chapters of your life. Between directing this movie, we must say that this movie is a miserable experience for you. Oh my God. No more than that. Let me put it this way. That movie is the.

the worst experience I've ever had. Really? Including everything. Yeah, because nothing made sense. You are giving someone what time will prove, it doesn't matter if it's good or not. You're giving them your 100%. You're giving them images and moments and episodes in a film that are great,

and they hate them. They fucked with you on casting, everything. Ultimately editing, they fired you at one point or tried to. They actually fired me on a Friday, and I was rehired on a Monday. Yeah. That same Monday. And Brolin was in this movie. Yeah, that's why I called him.

I loved Brolin. He was in a rough period for himself, as he told me. He's like, I was drinking a lot on that. He was drinking and he was reading a lot. And we would have this deep, deep, super deep discussions. Too deep and unproductive. What I love about Brolin, there's certain people that have the soul of a poet and the pain of a soul of a poet. Yeah.

He had that. Yeah. And whether they're actor, directors, writers, you love them for the purity of their pain. Yes. Which I think is a huge. gift. It's an asset. If your pain is pure, your song is clearer. You sing in a louder, clearer voice in this world. This is so out of school, but I have said it when I interviewed his ex, but I was around Heath Ledger several times in important ways, and I could feel the weight on him. That was much more

severe than the weight I've experienced. It was palpable and heartbreaking. And also why he was just so brilliant and riveting. But what it does with that. Exactly. But you can philosophize all you want. The experiencing of it is never altruistic, but I happen to think that with age, you learn mechanisms that are more truthful

to the way the world works, and you learn to declare your worst self without fear. The moment of freedom is not when you are at your best, is when you are at your worst and you say, and that's me. It's the only clarity you're going to aspire to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just had this the other day where I had to present an award, this bit went wrong.

It was ill-conceived. The whole thing was terrible. And when I was driving home, I was like, oh, yeah, I like myself just as much. And it was a moment for me. I was like, oh, we've arrived somewhere that that doesn't matter what just happened. There's a great mechanism. It's very simple, very simple in therapy. When the question you have to ask of anything is, and?

I crash my car, and? Well, I'm going to take it to repair. And it's going to come back. Oh, yeah. And I lost a million dollars. And right. Yeah, we stop. We don't model out the whole thing.

We stop at the part we hated. Or the part we love. Shame. Oh, yeah. I met someone great. And I just met them. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Well, I get to, you know, everybody takes the trash on Tuesday. They have two kids they haven't seen in three years. Oh, okay. That is also cultural. The tragedy of certain cultures is to tell you that one day you'll get. there. Yeah, exactly. What is there? I just wrote a scene in a movie that we're going to shoot in stop motion, all that, where they have to face death, which is apparently my favorite thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the guy says, is this it? And death says, what else were you expecting?

Okay, so there's two things that are happening all in the same zone. Your father gets kidnapped and you've had this insanely terrible experience on MIMIC. And both of these things end up involving James Cameron in this very sweet way that I want to shine a light on. Very sweet. First of all, he said, don't do it. Don't do the movie. Yeah. We were sitting in his garden. I mean, by this time, we're brothers. And Jim is my brother. Any trouble I'll call Jim. We've gone through everything together. He's a good big brother. He's a great big brother. Yeah. I highly recommend. But he's one of the guys that shows up. Yeah. He shows up with lasagna. Yeah. He says, I'm here.

I think he's Mexican. But he says, don't make the movie. You're going to get none of the budget and all of the pain. He has warned me two times. Wow. I'll keep the other one secret. Both times he was right. And I made the movie.

I go through it. He almost gets into a fist fight with Harvey Weinstein at the Oscars. Monica, you must know this story. What? He has won his 25th Oscar of the night for Titanic. He's holding the editing, I believe, Oscar. I think is the editing. He's coming back to his.

seat. It's in commercial and Harvey Weinstein decides this is a great opportunity to come up to him and say, you know, why don't you work at Miramax? We're a filmmaker-friendly studio. And Jim fucking goes off. Oh, do you mean like the way you treated Guillermo? Did we traded my friend Guillermo? And he lets it rip on the floor of the Academy Awards. People have to intervene. James is like he almost got belted in the head with this Oscar. Jim said I was almost got a belted with the Oscar. And the thing is, what people don't understand back then, the public image of these guys was that they were patrons of the arts. Yes, exactly. Yeah, Miramax was independent and Ardy.

And they badmouthed me everywhere. So for five years, I couldn't work. For five years, they didn't mimic and devil's backbone. I was unhirable, basically. Oh, my. You know, so everybody has heard I couldn't create images. They had to come in and what I did. And this is, again, the same mechanism.

I said, I don't need to make movies. is there. Yeah. I'll make a move in Spain. Yes, exactly. I don't need them. When you mourn something you have, celebrate everything else that you could have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I'm well, you cannot be focused on this thing. On the one thing you don't have. Because you can no longer focus on what's, well, it's like mourning, the risk of mourning, if you lose somebody close to you, there's a syndrome where you stop paying attention to everybody else that was left for you. That's true. You lose a son or you lose a brother. Well, you have other siblings.

I'm not being glib. You stop paying attention. Yeah. It's the same in life. The reaction to losing a loved one should be, fuck, I got a double cherish the ones in front of me, but the reverse happens sometimes. And Pedro Moldova had said to me, if we can produce a movie for you, let us know. And during the kidnapping of my dad, three things happened. One is the negotiator, which Jim Cameron hired.

So Jim said, let me, his father was kidnapped for 72 days. First phone call is we won $3 million in three days, $5 million in five days, or we chop his head up. That's the first phone call. And first third of the kidnapping, I go and hide on a closet cover. My ears cannot talk while they're talking. Last third of the kidnapping, I negotiate. So somewhere in the middle, you change. My beard comes up.

I have no hair in my face. And it arrives. It arrives. Oh, my goodness. My mother loses all her hair during the 72 days, all the hair, eyebrows, hair, everything. But this guy comes in. Jim hires him. People say, oh, he paid the ransom.

No, we pay the ransom. But he paid for the negotiator. And he offered to pay the ransom, right? He did. He said, I'll get it in cash in a helicopter. I said, Jim. And I'll be flying the helicopter. I'll go in with Navy SEAL.

I said, Jim. Slow down, slow down. Slow down. He is such a good big brother. That makes me. I mean, I obviously, like, respect him so much. but that really makes me respect them. As a person, although we were in tragedy, I said, look, I don't want you to solve it.

We have to solve it. Yeah. But what happens is in the first 72 hours, they called back and we say, I think we were able to gather, because my father never gave any of us access to the money. Nor I'm sure told anyone where it's all at. It was his money, but we couldn't access it at all, not even. And so I put whatever I had left of Mimic, which was very little because I had paid the debt from Crohn's. That's what we had. So three days later, before the negotiator arrives,

we say, I think we can gather about $100,000, and they hung up. And we said, oh, and the negotiator arrives and said, what did you say? The negotiator says that same day, it's going to stay between 70 and 75 days, and you screwed up. He said, because if you can get a hundred thousand in three days, you can get a million in X. And so they're going to squeeze you. A brutal to know that, but That's the way the experience was. Can I ask him, maybe this is too personal? Is there the moment at the end from a movie where he walks out of somewhere and the money has been placed somewhere?

Well, that's a whole hour. And it's incredibly harrowing. But when people say, oh, you know, you had a great career, I said, no, I've survived a career. It's a brutal biography. But people always think where you are is where you've always been. Sure, sure. But of course it isn't. And the kidnapping was the same.

many days you would wake up and said, what if he doesn't return? Well, the protective part of your brain has to be actively also preparing you for that to save you. When we talk about people that are similar as directors, some visual, some this, or not. The difference is in your experience, I am acutely aware of the spiritual

and I'm acutely aware of pain. That makes a difference. Your images are charged in a different way. And they help you through this. The negotiator says that. He says, what do you do, each of us? And I say, I'm a writer, director. He says, write.

Every day, write. For three to four hours, every day, I want you. He's kidnapped, not you. You're going to discipline yourself into sitting down. This person's a special for you. He was an English agent. He had worked for the Secret Service in England. Fascinating guy.

Yeah. But he says, you're not kidnapped. He is. You're a writer, right. And what you will be assigned in this first part is you will transfer. all the phone calls into dialogue and in English and in Spanish. Wow. Okay.

He kept you busy. Well, he makes you do what you do. And that helps you find a center. But the other thing that happens, then I start writing two things. Monte Cristo, which is about revenge and the devil's backbone. Oh, my gosh. For Pedro. Pedro during the kidnapping comes and visits me.

And I said, here's what I'm writing. And he says, these are like three movies in one. I said, no, no, no. But I developed the devil's backbone and Montecristo, well, my name. My dad is kidnapped. Were you talking to your dad? Like, how did you know? Very few times.

We talked to him only one time as proof of life. His first line is, why are you taking so long? Because you know, tells where the money is, motherfucker. By the way, we already paid once. And now we have to pay again. They said, now we have enough money. We can wait. Oh, my God.

Or they keep him another 30-something days. I'm 62. And now I'm the only one that remembers that my mother is gone. my dad is gone, my brother's gone. Do you draw on that often? Only in whatever little tools you get philosophically to come with that. But, you know, that's when somebody talks about, oh, you know, you're an artist and you're privileged, and you say, I'm more than that. Well, you're the sum of everything.

Don't judge anyone by where they are. Judge, how did they get there? What did they learn in the process? What did you go through? Stay tuned for more armchair expert. If you dare. So now you go on a run. The devil's backbone is incredible.

But even that, for example, comes out 9-10. The next day, 9-11. Oh. And you learn, okay, whatever joy you achieved in Toronto Film Festival that day and you feel like a winner, then life tells you. Oh, talk about impermanence. There's all this cosmic stuff. You learn at a visceral level how connected all our fates are.

I mean, that's the impossible thing for me is how we have been individualized by machines that have basically worked as narcissistic mirrors. And we are now incapable of understanding that we are all a single cell unit. Whether we like it or not, when you only think of yourself, it's cancer. We have cancer. The key to happiness, Sartre said, hell is the others. Heaven is also the others. If you have kids and you say, I just want their good, you are immediately happy. You know, yes, I'm going through this, but my kids are good.

You can always say that. It's like Marty Feldman in Young Franklin's like, it could be worse. It could be raining. Yeah. There's always that reputation. Yeah. Okay, I just want to get to Pans now because we do Blade 2 and then Hellboy. Blade 2 is a blast.

I would imagine. Wesley, and he's an enigma to me. He's an enigma to me. Well, at one point, he said to me, I am unknowable. Oh, really? Absolutely agree. I wanted to prove how I could handle big action. Because part of the myth on Mimic, the Weinstein's were saying, well, he cannot do big movies.

And I go, oh, I can't. I'll show you. Yes. And Blade was done for about $35, $40 million plus Wesley's salary. But it was a relatively small movie. Yes. And I wanted to look big and the action to be very innovative and all that. And he said to me, I have a few rules.

He says, I don't do over shoulders. Oh. I'll give you three setups a day, four setups a day. And the rest you do with my body double. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And he said, and blah, blah, blah.

And I said, I can do all that. Why? Because I know how to shoot makeup effects. So I can shoot a full shot. Like, there's a close-up in the movie that is not Wesley. You're kidding. This is body double. Wow.

Yeah. I need to rewatch. A whole scene is not Wesley. And I remember Wesley in the ADR. I'm shocked he came to ADR. He came to do overs. We actually enjoyed each other at the end. We have a couple of moments.

How do you do with confrontation in general? If it's private, I know, shit. If it's public, I go the whole way. Very fast. Oh, okay. If it's in front of everybody. Oh, my God. It's like, okay.

Now you're not giving. in that space, I'm going to go all the way with you. Okay. I am actually good with confrontation. It comes from being Mexican. Yeah, yeah. Privately and with friends, it's really hard. If you love somebody, then I'm paralyzed.

But if you're a star or you're ahead of a studio, I go all the way. I don't mind. But privately, I really like to find a point of comfort for both of us. Yeah, compromise. Okay, so 2006, Pan's Labyrinth. And that's what we're here to talk about because it is, A, the 20-year anniversary. Yes.

And it's coming out again. Yeah. And it's coming out in a bunch of different new formats. I have color-timed it 20 times in the last few months. Oh, my goodness. I have color-timed for a 3-D, color time it for Barco, color-timed for Dolby Digital, color timed it for 4K. Wow.

What's your stamina up through that? In the last five, you have about six neural points in color where you go, are the highlights clean? Are the blacks saturated and clean? Black or white in an image, the highest point of contrast and the lowest, are easily contaminated. It's very hard to achieve pure whites or pure blacks. Yeah. So you have, this is a magenta black.

This is a cyan white. I went to a really cool test when I was coloring for a movie I directed. And they were showing us, people are enamored with 4K, 6K, 8K. Then they show you what's the difference when you control the blacks. That's it. Right? Like you could be in 2K with really controlled blacks versus AK. It's like, oh, well, this looks so much more beautiful.

I mean, look, I tell you, Dolby Digital laser projection is just so incredibly beautiful. Mind-blowing. Because you can control those so well. The whites are pure. The blacks are pure. For example, saturation and color. The more you saturate, the richer the black, right? So if you have good blacks, you have perfect color, saturation, ideal.

And then you have to be careful. And I work with two colors in the spectrum that are very hard. Gold and cyan, incredibly hard. Why? Both gold and cyan become green really easy. As you start manipulating them. Sayam, but you're sneeze and it's blue. And cyan used nis and it's green.

Oh, wow. And gold, use nis and is red. Oh, wow. And you sneeze and is yellow. Yeah. So you have to constantly be footing that. So when you're coloring, you're prioritizing your two colors the most? You say these are the six points in the,

the movie that I need to make sure are good. And then you do a full-timing one or two times. Okay. Normally, I have to do it because I'm available and I'm right there. And then you have to make sure the audience is experiencing that. This is the most perfect the movie has ever been. Yeah, so what is it like for you 20 years later to see now visually a version that? I finally like it.

Oh, wow. Oh, because you were unsatisfied. I was always, and there's still one image. That drives you nuts. I call it a Seinfeld. I don't do stuff. This is establishing shots. This is establishing shot. So every time it pops up, I go, bump, bump, bong, bougham. I hate it. You can hear Kramer walking in the door.

What happens is it's front-lit. It was the only time we always like when Navarro, you map out the location and you say, we can shoot here because the sun is behind us, right? Or lateral. You never want to shoot with the sun in front. Because everything's flat, right? It's flat horrible. Yeah. So the sun is frontal on this establishing and is established. which you don't like. I'd want to add this. This is interesting.

A lot of times also your failures, your inconveniences can give birth to something very special. 100%. This is true, right? It mimic, they fucked with you in the edits so much that you, being clever, we're like, from now on,

my shots are going to be very long and constructed, so it's impossible to get into them. Yeah. That or, it would nebils back when my editor called me and said, could you please shut up, count to three, before saying cut.

I used to say cut right to the frame. Yeah. I caught because I didn't want anyone else coming and editing it. But this is a weirdly a gift for you, right? I have now relaxed. Bradley Cooper helped me relax. He did. In what way?

He's like no one's going to fuck with you. Every day. Heresy. I'm going to say heresy. What if we, I would jive. I said, I can jive. The more you can surf and not just play chess, the more both of those disciplines feed on each other.

I think that is really good to be rigorous in order to be flexible. Yeah, like know it perfectly so you can throw it away. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Is there something better in the day? If there is, don't be so uptight that you don't see it. But don't be unprepared because you will lose it. A conversation is working if both sides are listening. Yes.

Right? And sometimes people show up with a preconceived notion, whether it's an actor or a director. And I talked to people that have worked or were friends with Kubrick. And yes, he knew most of what he wanted. But then the accident and the lack of importance in delivering a line, he courted. And he had to extract through process. You know, I think it's the same with every perfectionist.

There's a point where you have to have the accident. Yes, yes, yes. Well, it'll start feeling like AI made it. That's the point. It's not chemistry. It's alchemy. The key to alchemy involves philosophically and chemically is you take what is called vile matter, and you transform it into sublime matter. If you only juxtapos and permutate,

which is what a search engine does, things that already happened, you're criss-crossing information, you achieve straight onto the middle. You bolzied the average. You never achieved the 1% over there. Yeah, it's actually incapable. It's not built to do that. You're reacting with everything you are. You were beaten as a child. You lost. You're. mother when you were 12. You suffered tragedy. You suffered joy. You got drunk at 15. You crashed the car. All this is inside of you taking that decision that day. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of that is in there. It's magic. It's magic. Let's call it what it is. It's art. Yeah. The other thing produces something that didn't vibrate with any experience, no matter how many,

because it's not a model. We are part of a living, breathing, cosmic experience. And I'm not going woo-woo. This is true of everyone of us. And then you vibrate with others. And the way you achieve one solution, the way you stutter in one take, and you go, that's the good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry I stuttered. That's what made it work.

We all live that excitement. Yeah. It's a sport. It's a contact sport. Scorsese is a lovely example of this for us, right? He will often use flawed shots. And his own flaws. Yes.

So prioritize what he saw on that. performance at that moment, right? And that's why many people, people I respect, are one take, two takes. I visited Stephen into shooting a bridge of spies. And it informed everything I felt about shape of water, everything. And the couple of days I visited, really? He would orchestrate a shot. He said, do you like it? I go, it's glorious. He says, wait a second. Can I get better? And he goes in and he changes one vector. You enter through the ride, you just stop right there. And instantly is better. He says better. I said much better.

But three takes. I always was like, oh, I do 12 takes. I started to say, I got to be able to shoot it. I got to let it go. Now when you get the feeling, life is like water, right? Like if you are like this, how much water are you holding? Yeah, exactly. And if you are like this, how much water are you holding?

And I think the key to art is you have to feel when you have to do that and when you have to do that. Exactly. My life experience of that was I had bought an engagement ring for my wife. I had it for a while. I was going to go to a restaurant or as the first place I ever said, I love you. It was going to be around a certain day. That was like a month out. And then it's Christmas night and we're sitting in bed.

And there's this emotional thing happening. And I just went, oh, I'm going to try to recreate this in a month at a restaurant, but it's now. Yeah. And I went and got the wedding ring then, you know, and it was like, oh, right, no, it's happening now. Recognize when it's happening. Einstein said the imagination is better than knowledge, right? More important than knowledge.

And also living the moment as it wants to be. Because it wants to be that is wisdom. It's more important than any of the other things. And the problem is we preconceive so much that we're living in not a bit of living. but a piece of taxidermy, or life becomes taxidermy. Oh, if I don't get this, then it's not... No, no, life is so alive. Well, it's not domesticated.

It is what it wants to be. Same with a movie. By the way, I say, when people think I'm all you, you, woo-woo, when I say, the movie tells you what it wants to be. I paint model kids on Sundays, and there's a point in the coloring where the color tells you, you say, I'm going to paint it white, and then you end up purple.

Uh-huh. And how it happens is you let the model and the caller talk to you. Yeah. It's a conversation. It's a conversation. Yeah. Same with life. But it requires confidence.

Yeah. Yeah. I think so. To let go. I think that requires, I'll be fine. It'll be fine. Things will be fine if I let go. Well, there's a great mantra.

No matter what, I'll be okay. Because it's a decision to be okay. I did a 10-day silent retreat. Oh, wow. Completely silent. You couldn't make eye contact. You couldn't talk, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was all about meditation.

And there was a point where I had my first panic attack. Actually, the key is you are in the panic attack. I never had it for decades. I never had it. And I go, I couldn't recognize it. Yes. But you stay on it and you come out. Whatever you're going through, stay on it.

Exactly. The good, the bad, whatever, because it's going to go. Yeah, panic attacks are interesting. I used to get them too. Often? Yeah, I used to get them often. But I learned what creates the panic is like, when's it going to end? When's it going to end?

When's it going to realize like it's going to, but you don't get to decide, then it goes away. It's this fear of it never ending. It's the Buddhist. The discomfort is the craving for a different state of being. That's where the discomfort is. Just acceptance of it. Yeah, yeah. This is me right now.

The problem is not the lacking is the wanting. Yes, exactly. I don't have. That's a problem. Not the having. But you know what you're describing exactly, that's life. When is it going on? It will.

Yeah. Just give it time. Not on your time schedule. You know, everybody that dies had the laundry to pick up. Everybody that dies went, oh, I was going to go to the dentist. Not anymore, buddy. I have a question about Pans Lavants because it was quite celebrated, obviously. You were nominated for six Oscars.

You won three. You got a 22-minute standing ovation, which is the longest in history. at Cannes. At Cannes, it still holds the record. Yes. In international festivals, it got broken this year. In Venice, it got 25, one film. But in Cannes, it still holds. It was really surprising. I mean, they programmed us the last day of the festival. Most journalists have gone. Oh, wow. We were expecting the movie to just play. And in France, the audiences are very silent. At the end, like, if a movie is not playing, you hear the seeds, pah, pa, pa. Because they make it a point. They want you to know I'm walking out. Yeah, yeah. But they don't react to the movie. Like American audiences are, woo, wow, don't get in there. Get out, run.

Yeah, yeah. Mexican audience is also very silent. But in France, all of a sudden, in the middle of the movie, people starting to ooh and awe. And when she cuts his mouth in the middle of the movie, they gave it a huge ovation. And I thought, this is landing differently. I have many questions about this. Yeah. When I imagine being in the situation, I think I would love the first three minutes.

Yes. I would feel so validated and loved. And then at about the five-minute marker, I might think, you don't know what to do. When is this going to end and everyone's looking at me? And to know that there was 17 more minutes back to Seinfeld, this is an episode of Seinfeld. Yeah, there is a commute. What goes through?

What's the real-time visceral experience? Like, do you get self-conscious? Then do you move past? that are there waves of accepting it and rejecting it? It's very uncomfortable at some point. Alfonso, who are on, who, no matter what, I tell him, it's not necessary, Alfonso, to tell the truth all the time. But Alfonso is like, 100% truth.

Yeah, he does it. He's brutal. And he noticed. And he said, let it in. Oh. Take it in, pal. Don't fight it. It would be hard not to fight.

I'm not very good with too much praise. Yeah. Alfonso said that and I was able to. It was also surreal. And then it didn't show up almost anywhere because most people had left. So it was like if a tree falls in the forest. But then eventually it trickled out. And Thierry, the head of the festival, said it got the longest standing ovation in the history of the festival.

And that got picked up. But the first review was not a good review. Really? I think the headline, I may be wrong. It was like, this ain't Blade 2. Oh, my. Okay, that's a take. Well, I can go either way.

We need to know how that person feels about Blade 2 to begin with. For example, when Alejandro Alfonso and I are going to open a movie, there's always trepidation. We always say, look, Alfonso is very, very wise and he's very worldly in certain ways, but he's tough. But he says, if you make a bad movie and you win a few awards, is it not a bad movie anymore? I said, and if you make a good movie and you don't get any awards, is it a bad movie? We live and die by our latest record in this industry. And then, you know, the best place to be is when you say whatever happens, I'll be okay. Like, I don't need any more reaffirmation.

The only thing you do is, did I do it in my way? Do you like it? Did I get the thing in my head out in the way I'm proud of? That's exactly right. Yeah, yeah. Did I make the thing I wanted to see? That's it. I mean, they always say, well, either you choose the movie, I say the one nobody else would do is the one I do.

Even if it's Blade 2 or Hellboy. Your career is definitely defined by that. I think it's so exciting because so many people have not seen Pans, elaborate, 20 years ago. On screen, certain. Right. And then now, so not only obviously the visual of it has changed in ways, what are you finding for you that's shocking about, let's say, watching it in 3D. Like, what is new or exciting to you? Well, when I did Pacific Rim, I quite pointedly, my first thought was really silly.

I said, I wish I could go back and do pants in 3D. Oh, no kidding. Because the posterization was so good. And I felt I could make the fantasy world a little deeper and the real world a little more shallow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, I didn't own the movie. I couldn't control it. I couldn't spend the money to do it.

Nobody would. So I thought, well, out of my head. Then it took me 15 years to buy Pans Labyrinth back. I got it back. And the first thing is, I want to try and do it in 3D? Yes. So cool. I'm so excited to see it.

Me too. The thing with 3D, if you use it creatively, if you actually are supplemented in the story with that, and the experience is deeper, then is worth it. And we did it very pointedly with the same company that we did Pacific Rim. And we did it by the same manual human method. I mean, there are shortcuts now with AI and all this. And I said, it's my money.

I want to spend more money and do it with a person making that decision. Yes. Than a machine or an algorithm. I just want to do four minutes on Frankenstein because I had the most glorious experience with Frankenstein, which is, unfortunately, I think Jacob O'Lordy overshadowed what I, you, I didn't know you made that movie. I knew there was a Frankenstein movie coming out with Jacob, Alorty. Oh, thank God.

We were at Friends House and they're like, let's watch this. I heard it was good. And I'm like, okay, I'll give it a shot. And from the second it starts, I go, oh, someone very special is behind this movie. The imagery immediately is so overwhelming that I went, This has to be Guillermo. Like, I didn't know that was you, but just. It's such a, it makes me emotional what you achieve visually with that movie.

It's so mind-blowing that I wanted to ask you, do you think you're a painter? No. What do we think? How do I understand why you're able to create images in the way you do? I'm visually extremely disciplined. But by this, I also say. I am joyful in the creation of images. I think 80% of the communication with an audience is not verbal,

meaning we have the play. That's one thing, the screen play. But we have the audiovisual screen play. And that you code in color, shapes, light is non-verbal. And most of the movie is submerged in that. But the pleasure of consuming the image, it's very rare that you are aware of the pleasure you're receiving. just looking at this composition.

Yeah. It's so powerful and soothing. It comes from painting. Yeah. It comes from me studying the painters as a kid with that encyclopedia of art and learning what a difference it made when the romantic school of painting. What is it trying to achieve the symbolists? What are it trying to achieve?

Why is it important a small painting like the origin of the world? Why is it important to paint peasants eating potatoes? which was not academically acceptable before on understanding that from my really early age, you became what you ate, but also in a way that favors communication where you say, I love Jack Kirby, right? I love Steve Ditko.

I love all the comic book artists, but I also love Manet, Monet, Mouin, Kvrer, and having the same value. So you say, okay, I'm going to entertain and surprise, but also it's a pulse. Every image either relaxes you, or takes you to a wow. Gives you tension.

If you make every image equally important, you're not doing your job right. You have to know when you want people to lean in and when you want them to lean back. Yeah, back to the ebb and flow of life. The ebb and flow has to exist in this thing. So you design it like a symphony. You have an overture.

Yeah. You have a lot of it. You have a large and allegro and enthrope. You have to make it symphonic. Because the aspiration of a movie is to be like music. to transport you. Music has this miraculous quality, which is it seems to enter you.

It's the highest art form, in my opinion, music. And when any of the other forms achieves a little bit, that musical magic, yeah. I mean, I always say, look, Orpheus, go to your Eurisy out because he was a musician, almost got her out. He didn't. He failed at the end.

But I'm saying, if he was a movie director, both would be in hell from the start. He would say, listen to me, I need a hundred, And a few million dollars to show you my art. And the musician just grabs an instrument and even no instrument and just the human voice. This is what you come at the end of the discussion about art. The only treasure we have is a voice. And each of us have a voice.

And each of us have one song, one song you sing. And when you hear the right voice sing the right song. Like what is language? Language is this tool we used to get this thought in mind. my head into your head. And then music somehow is this fast pass of like, let me give you the emotion in my heart. Let me open my mouth and let this noise out and you can feel my emotion. That's like such magic. When you talk about language, that's the magical thing out of language. I write English is my second language. Which is mind-blind to me. I can only imagine how smart

you sound in Spanish. Which means that by the time I talk to you, I already thought it, proved it, converted it, checked the syntax. I can't. And then said it in less than a second. So I value the language so much. I value the precision of the term. Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the next to right word is the difference between the lighting bug and lining. Yeah.

There is so much of music in the language, the alliterations, the rhythm of the consonants, the way consonants are music. And when the voice is right, I mean, they can say, Or some wells. Right. Who cares what he's saying? Who cares? It's like I used to joke about the guy in the trailer is ordering a pizza.

I want. A double pepperoni. And now. But that's the thing. We all have the human voice. Please let's not lose it. That's all I have to say about art. Please don't make it about an image or a sound.

Is the human voice. Can we understand that if we lose. lose our voice, we all are something not human. I mean, whatever the hell will stand in our future in two legs, if we lose a human voice, that thing, no matter how wealthy, no matter how full of comforts, that thing is not going to be a human being. Can we all understand the stakes? Don't short things that can divide us. That's the magic of the human voice. Okay, last thing I promise on Frankenstein. I want to applaud him publicly. I think the Oscar Isaac, performance is among the most vanity-free performances I've ever seen.

I agree with you. It's so beautifully unvane. I don't know what else to say. Unself-conscious. Unself-conscious. Total lack of vanity. And I want to know, did he arrive like that? Did you guys work to be that?

What happened there? That's so special. First of all, thank you. And I'm going to say actors is like magicians or comedians. you know when you did the pause at the right place, right? Yeah. But you also know when you did not filter it through vanity, when you were completely in danger.

Let me show you the ugliest version of myself. The most vulnerable. I mean, that performance is, A, incredibly hard to deliver. Yes, B, perfectly delivered. Yeah. It does what it needs you to experience. It's a master doing it. It is a master performance from this guy.

We had a great talk. He is my brother. he's one of my brothers in life, I adore him. I said to him, look, I've been Victor and I've been the creature. And I said, I've been the worst and I've been the most vulnerable. And the fact that we are paradoxical beings, if you're the actor and I'm the visionary director, we cannot deliver this movie.

He said, you have to be a flawed motherfucker. And I have to come to you and say, I don't know. And I have to come in and say, we are fucked. up. We got to figure this out. I said, so the next few months, I got to tell you everything I've done wrong in life. And you have to tell me everything you've done wrong in life. And we have to come in as imperfect as we can to this movie. Because the rest, I already took care of. Everything visually has been you and I are going to have to fluctuate. And we achieve something that made us very vulnerable. And there was a moment in that movie where my entire bottom as a human being,

fell through. We were connected. I could see him from the other side of the room and I would go, and he goes, oh, amazing. What an experience you got to share with a human on Earth. Incredible. I knew when he didn't know. And I knew when he knew. Yeah. You were one being. One being. And that is to this day, the best experience I've ever had with an actor. It's so obvious. It's so obvious something very, very special happened. Some movies are brawlers and they take care of themselves. This movie was a brawler, like losing the actor for the creature, nine weeks or so before we start shooting. I didn't even know that happened.

I was not afraid. I said, something better is coming. And I talked to Jacob and I see him on the Zoom. I said, that's the guy. Yeah, he's incredible in it as well. And from then on, two takes, three takes with that guy. Max. Yeah.

And the direction was simple. He is a monster. I mean, he's a beautiful monster. But I was on red carpet at like the Golden Globes. And I turned around and I just was in his chest, right? And I'm a large man. And I go, oh my God, you're glorious. It's literally my first word to him.

I'm like, you're glorious. He's stunning. Like, he takes your breath away. There was never a question about the makeup. There was never a question about how much of me is going to show up. He just went in. Then, you know, whatever happens, like, for example, I work with Mia Agoth, who's completely instinctual.

She's riveting. She's riveting. She's riveting. what was going to happen in the thing. But she's real. The two realest actors I've worked with are Sally Hawkins on her, which you didn't know. And all of a sudden, you were cut.

And I'm guessing, too, you don't even want to be a part of whatever's happening. Like, just, I don't ever want to fuck up this thing that's happening. I remember, for example, in the scene between her and him, we had the butterfly on the table. And in the third take, she drops down and talks to the butterfly. She decided that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had her holding it like Hamlet.

Yeah, yeah. And she just dropped down to the level of the butterfly. And the next take, I went down with the camera. I said, let's be prepared. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I opened myself. I said, I have to know a little. Yeah.

Yeah, yes, yes. But she, the first day, I said, well, this is your mark. And I'm very precise with the camera normally. Yes. I said, this is your mark, you're not stopping. And I'm going to do a mini master. And she says, what is a mini master? And why do I have to stand there?

I knew this was coming. coming from purity. Yeah, not an ego. And she said, why don't we shoot it and see what happens? And I go, yeah, why not? Good for you. There was a countdown. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I went, yeah, why not? Yeah. Okay, when does Pans come out? Pans Lever. On my birthday, October 9th. Happy birthday.

Okay, wonderful. I will be watching it in 3D. Guillermo is such an enormous honor to get to chat with you for two hours. I just really feel lucky. Sometimes we have singers who come in and they'll sing and sometimes we're like, how is this our job to be here? Yeah, Marcus Mumford's sitting there screaming at us with his guitar. And being in the zone with them.

And like, that's how I feel getting to look at that. Me too. Me too. But isn't that amazing? What's happiness? We do what we love. In whatever moment, it doesn't have to be the moment of acting or the moment of directing. But our life is aligned up with our joy.

Yeah, that's a special. That's a blessing. is. Oh, well, what a blast. Yes, thank you. Everyone, and I didn't drink the liquid death. Oh, no. You can take it with you. There's a great rule to directing. If you drink, you pee, if you pee, you leave. Oh. Never leave the sad. I like that. All right. Well, be well. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Bye, bye, bye, guys. He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time.

Thank God Monica's here. She's got to let them have the facts. I just went peed. and my underwear is on backwards. So. Backwards? Yep. Not inside out. Nope.

Backwards. Aren't your underwear generally bigger in front than in back? Uh-huh. Don't you really notice the upfront having, apparently not? Apparently not. Did you correct it or you're like, this is working? No, I didn't have time. So I left it.

I see you were sitting on the commode and you look down and you're like, oh, those are backwards. Exactly. And they're like, but fucking who has the time? What am I to take off my shirt? shoes, my pants, I have a belt on. I don't know that you'd have to take your shoes off to take your pants off. Trust me, I could, but it would take a lot of thought. Okay. And there's slippery shoes. It would come off anyway. Wow, you committed. There's no physical discomfort, though.

No, I mean, it's a comfy, it's a, it's a, it's a thong. Uh-huh. Sure. So now it's, it's, it's not a string. What do they call it even? I don't even know what that's called anymore. String bikini. G-s. G-Stra. It's not a G-Stra. I would notice if it was in G-Stra. Okay, right. And it was, yeah.

Maybe, I also think maybe these are a little stretched out. Okay. The elasticity is some better days. So, like, it's probably covering up more than it should. Okay, okay. You're right. This leads me too. But the back doesn't feel like, um, cumbersome and bound up.

Like, you don't feel like you have a bunch of fabric back there? No, because it's still a small amount of fabric in the front, you know? Sure, sure, sure, sure. So this leads me to the fact that I did not fast math. Well, maybe I did fast math, which is why it was. Too fast math. Correct. Yes, where I thought I was starting my period this past Monday.

It's Wednesday. In fact, we had a guess that's coming out where a good chunk of the interview is talking about your different phases and you were completely on, you're talking out of your ass on that one. In retrospect. I was. And I, maybe we were in the same. I don't even know. Yeah.

But I thought I was about to start my period. And I'm not. It's upcoming Monday. Like the app I now have flowed? I had it for a little bit. And you're like, yeah. I have an open mind since that plane ride, if I'm being honest. I should.

Since that plane ride? When I first started using it, when I discovered I had already made the meal I was supposed to make. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Day one of having the app. Well, you can tell people they don't. don't know what's going on. It's not out yet. You have flow. Yes, I have flow for partners.

So I, in theory, know what my partner is going through. Yeah. I think that's so, for one, like, smart. Yeah. Two, it's very sweet. It's that you care to know what's going on with your partner. Yeah. I recommend this for people in partnerships. Yeah. Yeah. I do too. I asked if there was an ability, like, a Google calendar where you had a lot of people. So you had your partner. You have Kristen. You have both of your teenage girls. You have me.

All the women you have to deal with on a daily basis. I actually need like the AI version. That's like you should make up a reason to go out of town these 36 hours. That's never how it should be used. No. Stick around and enjoy. It's just like make us all dinner on our days. That's a good way.

It would be fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway, so I think the backwards underra has to do with my face. Impending period. Yeah. Okay. But I was so bummed. Well, you're also very chipper, though.

I know, but now I'm, I thought that. I was like, have I done bad math again? Is it two weeks away? Because normally I'm not in so great of a mood. I have pretty bad PMDD. That's an intense version of PMS. And I think I have it. Double Virgo.

Yeah. Double Ds. Yeah, double D. You like things in doubles. I do. I do. I do. So I'm normally, I can tell because I'm very easily agitated.

Yeah. Well, though, and I don't want this to sound insulting. Let me back up and say, do you remember the great guess we had that 30% of all medical issues are psychosomatic, right? That we learned that 30% of people with seizures don't have epilepsy, 30% of people with heart attacks don't have heart disease. That it's kind of a standard. Uh-huh. So just acknowledging we're very, very prone to psychosomatic conditions. Do you think any element of it is psychosomatic?

So you didn't need to say that. Oh. Because I was going to say that. Oh, okay. Oh, here it is. Oh. No, because I was going to say, well, two things. One, I am in a good mood.

Yeah. For the most part. Chipper, I'd say. Spring to your step. And that worries me a little. little, but I'm not doing math. Still not. Yeah, I'm not doing math correctly.

But also what it did tell me was that, yeah, some of it might be in your head because you're expecting it. But I was in a very good mood last week. Right. And I said to myself, I'm like, I don't have that anymore. Right. So you're ready to, you're happy to shed it. Yeah.

I was like, oh, I must not have that's gone away. Yeah. But I did have a few other things. Like my back was hurting. These are all, you know. I think this is the way in which it could manifest itself psychosomatically, which is you have a bit of irritability. And then you go, oh, here we go, right?

Like, oh, it's here. Mm-hmm. Whereas that might have just been an acute moment of irritability. But certainly if you're like, here we go, I do think you're then really noticing things that are irritating you, perhaps. But then the, you know, the backwards. underwear is very prepared. Yeah, you're dropping stuff.

I don't understand. I spill a lot. Climsy. Get real clumsy. PMSCC. CMSC. CMS clumsy clumsy. Climsy.

Crazy clumsy. Yeah. So that's what's going on with me. I went to a concert last night. Oh my God. C. C. Yeah.

How was it? Yeah. And I try not to name drop, but this feels like it would be insane not to name drop. How was it? I went to see Jack White. with Jack Black. No way.

How great is that? That's great. Are they best friends? Well, did you see the SNL that they did last year? It's among the most impressive things I've ever seen. It's Jack Black. He's hosting SNL. And Jack White is the musician that night.

I love this. So he does a version of Seven Nation Army, but walking through the green room, Talking to cast members, then comes out on stage, then collides with Jack White, and then they let it fucking rip. It's, like, impressive on 20 levels. Wow. The comedy's happening. The improv's happening.

The synchronicity of the song is happening. Wow. There's a couple people in the world that can do what Jack Black did in that thing. He's so talented. So fucking talented. If you miss that episode, go back in the archives. We did interview him. Great app.

So then Wabiwob was nice enough to connect me with. tickets. Great. So I then reach out to Jack Black. Now, this is the second time this has happened in my life. So one time, as you might recall, I invited Matthew McConaughey to a stand-up performance at this arena on a date, basically. Andrew Schultz, yes. And we went and it was embarrassing because, like, I had gotten tickets. But of course, like, he had built the arena. Like, he had helped design the arena. So then he's like, well, yeah, we could totally do your thing or we could go sit in this box, blah, blah, blah. So it's just kind of funny. Like I invited him and then it was like.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So a similar thing happened, which is I was like, oh, I know Jack likes Jack White. I have two tickets. I don't know who to go with on Tuesday night. So I invited him and he was like, yeah, okay, great. Let's, we'll ride there. So he rides an electric motorcycle, which is fantastic.

So he showed the, I mean, the highlight of the night was him and I riding around a motorcycle to go to this show. Just chatting at every stop play. It was so fun. But of course, like. And again, major blessings to Wabiwob. He had hooked me up. I was going to get very nice treatment. But then I arrived with Jack Black.

And then it was like as we're coming in the parking lot, it's just like everyone there knows to instruct him to go there. He goes to shows there all the time. He has a special parking spot. We don't, nothing like, just go anywhere you want. You want to sit on Jack White's lap. Like, you name it. So you didn't end up sitting in the seats you got.

No. And I got to sit on the stage with Jack Black. On the stage? He had just staged right, like where the guitar tech is working on the guitars and stuff. Backstage, side stage. Yes, stage right. And then also I get to meet Jack White because I'm with Jack Black. Oh, fun.

It was so fun. It was so fun. And then as Wabiwob and I were just discussing, Jack White is so worth seeing in your lifetime. What he does with this guitar is almost really beyond description. He's doing something much, much different than just. He's like, he's forming a piece of. metal into something, right?

He's like, he's at war with this fucking guitar and he just manhandles it in this way that is just really wild. I don't think of any anyone's seen anyone live play guitar like he was doing. Wow, that's awesome. He's from Michigan. You know, John C. Riley is in the video for Archbishop. One of my favorite song. One album ago.

What's name of that song, Wabiwam? Archbishop Harold Holmes. Harold Holmes. Archbishop Harold Holmes. And it's about a preacher, right? And I didn't even know this, but John C. Riley, I had seen the video. John C. Riley did a video of him and a church as a preacher to that song. Well, John C. Riley was there last night.

And then I found out from him, he just made that video. That wasn't like a request. Oh, fun. He just loved the song so much he wanted to make a video. Yeah, so he was right there in his garb from the video. Oh, preacher's garb? Yes, yes. all this cute top hat and stuff.

Sure. I don't know if you call it a top cat. But I know what you mean. Wait, you know, I'm saying it's a top hat? Well, no, I'm saying because whatever he's wearing is not, yeah. It's not a top guy. He didn't look like Abe Lincoln. To me, it's more of a chef's hat looking.

Stope pipe hat, maybe they call it. Maybe. Okay. Anyways, it was a lot of fun. Fun. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. You were out in the world. I was out in the world.

And I really, I really like that Jack Black so much. She's such a sweet boy. Yeah, I like him a lot too. Okay. My other story. Oh, back to back. Two stories. Oh, my God.

Well, I'm happy to hear another one of your stories. No, you go, and I have more, but nothing. Oh, tell me yours. Tell me yours. Okay. Well, so we don't have any air conditioning. Like, period. Everything has been ripped out of the house.

Yeah, this is. And for people who don't know, it's still very hot in L.A. Oh, in the 90s. It's wearing a heat wave. And it's getting even worse this week. It's getting, oh, did you get a flight? Oh. A nap?

Listen, there's bugs everywhere. Kind of uncontrollably. We'll get to this. Okay. Okay. Go on. So we have no air conditioning. Bell is in Paris.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And the girls and I go to bed night one with no air conditioning. And we're on the second floor. And it's, you know, it's warm. It's warm up there. Yeah. It's very warm.

Yep. And so we all start in my room. And we're, I'm just laying, you know, with pajama bottom pants, no shirt, no sheet, anything. I'm just laying. Is your underwear on correctly or backwards? I'm in my, um, pajama pants. Oh, so you don't know what you're, you know, underwear with your pajamas. Oh, I find that disgusting. You don't. Okay. I don't think anybody does. Of course. No, that's what jammy. I don't think men wear underwear with their jammy bottoms. Are you serious? Yes, Rob. Yeah, I wear underwear under it. Okay. You fucking prude. No, I think he's in the majority.

Are you afraid you're going to get a boner in the middle of the night? I also never wear pajama pants, so. Right. Well, that's different. When I didn't wear pajama pants, I wore boxers to bed. Yeah. Oh. But if you wore pajama pants, you put fucking underwear on under them?

Yeah. Yeah. Because you're throwing out if it's like cold. Do you leave your underwear on in a massage? Yeah. A lot of people do. Okay. Listen.

I was told I'm supposed to by. By my mom. No, recently. She's like, you leave your underwear on. Listen, I also leave, I'm 50-50 on leaving underwear on in a massage. I sometimes do. I sometimes don't. Okay.

But also, I wear pajamas pants all the time constantly, and I'm wearing underwear. But your underwear are way smaller than my underwear. Although your nighttime underwear might be. You never seen my underwear. My nighttime underwear is huge. Diaper. They're knickers. Yeah.

My nixies. Where was I? Okay, so. It was hot. Lincoln's particularly hot. And I think she gets in her head. She's not going to be able to sleep. And she's like me, right?

So she's a little bit prone to this psychosomatic. Yeah, whatever you call it. Yeah, you call it. She had a real bad year. She got over it. Thank God. I thought she was never going to get over it. But anyway, she got over it.

But I could just feel that she got in in her head that she was not going to be able to sleep. So she's already on pins and needles. I do fall asleep. And then I hear, Dad! Stop snoring. Am I not?

And of course I'm like, I bet I'm not. I bet like she's so. But you probably were easily agit because you already can't go to sleep. But didn't you say you've been snoring lately and that's why you're doing the sleep test and stuff? Yeah, but now I have a spray I'm using that. I thought, you know, I am not of a trustworthy witness.

because I have, I didn't witness it. Yeah, I was asleep. You're unreliable. All to say, though, okay, I'm sorry,

I'll sleep on my side. How does one not snore? Is that like I chose this snoring the first place? That's what's my, so. Now I've been waking up and now it takes me another 15 minutes fall back to sleep. And then as soon as I get to sleep,

like, Dad, and I'm like, oh my God, I can't. There's no, what are we going to do? I'm like,

okay, mind you, we were in my room because it was the coolest of the, the, options. Yes. So I go, fine, I'll leave. I'll leave. So now I'm like crumbling. I go into Delta's room, which is like 750 degrees. And I lay down on that bed. And it takes me about 45 minutes to fall asleep in there. So now we're at about midnight, I'd say that I'm going to bed. I wake up at 6. 1.30 a.m. because unbeknownst to me. And I don't know if Lincoln now Delta's story was bothering her,

or she just was like, it's too hot in here. She went out to the guest house. Smart. Yes, because that does have air conditioning. I don't know why you guys. We should have started that. Yeah. But absolutely stupid.

Okay. So she's left. Delta was asleep when I left. So Delta wakes up at 1.30 in the morning. Nobody's in the room. Sure. Additionally, a couple of spooky things happened by Delta's. Delta got convinced earlier when we were just in Delta's room and we were listening to

book on tape. She went in the hallway and Frank wasn't in his little bed, the dog. And she got convinced that someone had moved Frank out of his bed onto the hallway. And I said, well, hon, Frank would have barked if a stranger. Definitely. But she added in her mind a little bit that something spooky was already happening. Oh, no. Then she wakes up in a room and no one's there anymore.

She hated that. So at 1.30 in the morning after I finally fall in the sleep, all of a sudden, lights full blast are on in her bedroom. and now I'm up. She's crying. She's crying. She's scared. She woke up in a room and no one was there.

She went to bed and there were people there. There's a ghost in the house moving Frank. And so I'm like, oh my God, this is badness. Now it's 1.30. And we lay there for 45 minutes and it's just too hot in that room now. And I said, do you want to go back to me? And all to say, by the time we got in my bedroom when we went to sleep, it was like 3 a.m. It was madness.

It was total chaos from 9 p.m. So three in the morning was crazy. Bad. Yeah. Barely made it through yesterday. But you did. And then when it was time to go see the concert, I'm like, I should be so excited to see the concert. But I would love to go to sleep right now.

Yeah. But I rallied. And you're happy about it. I'm happy about it. Speaking of sleep. Yeah. I am convinced there's a bug in my ear. Okay.

And I think he got in there in the night. Okay. And I can't get him out. Because my ear is so itchy. Uh-huh. And like in a strange, it's in a strange way. Like very, very, very itchy. I used a Q-tip to see if I could get any legs out.

And it, I think, just pushed him further in or something. Okay. Okay. Also, likely potentially, when I was, like itching it a ton, I irritated it. I irritated it. And so now it's just itching. because it's all irritated. Yeah. Sounds highly likely.

But also, but then, so I was like, is it possible? But I really don't want to go to urgent care. I don't want to, like, go deal with this. I just want him to come out, you know. Can you put a little food on the, um. No. Yeah, put a little food on the edge of your earlobe to draw him out to eat. A little piece of cheese.

Yeah, whatever they eat. Maybe another dead. Maybe a dead Knew it to your earlobe To lure him out to feast on it And then he'll get stuck in the glue Wow There's like there's six or seven

There's tons of bugs all over here And then you wouldn't know if they just came from around the room Or out of your ear I wouldn't You'd probably end up attracting something To live in your ear I know Yeah

Oh God What about light? Does light do anything? Like could you shine a light at night? I know but I can't I don't think you have. Yeah. Like, nothing's coming.

Nothing's coming out. And, um, but once you think something's in your ear, it is really. It's a racket. It is, it's like crazy making. Yeah. Um, and I. And that's blood over to your elbow. Is that what you're about to say?

Oh, no. There's just mosquitoes all over this fucking city. And I'm all bit. I hate that. Oh, but you know, it was fun. So I went, this is not going to say. I always, I praise. Kara. I love Kara. Kara does

sometimes have mosquitoes. Well, it's outdoor. Oh, I'm talking about inside. Okay. I think, I don't remember. There's a water feature in there that they're breathing in or something? Not inside, but right outside, there is a little. There is outdoor eating. So many of people, the doors are opening and closing so much. I think doors are opening and closing. There is a water feature outside that I wish they'd take out. They're doing their best, but for some reason, there's a lot of mosquitoes. And last year, this is a thing.

This isn't just this year. And so last year I used to come with all those bracelets. Oh, yeah, bug repellent bracelets. Yeah, I used to keep them in my car and then I would just cover myself in this. This is actually an advertisement for car because if it's, you know, if you have to deal with mosquitoes and you still want to go, it's a testament to what a great place it is. It really is. Yeah. But this year, I bought a spray.

because I did research and it said that Diet, the chemically popular one, that is fine. I'm fine. I want to use it. Like, I want to use the most. I love D. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I read in an article that it does have the same effectiveness as this other thing that's, like,

more natural, which I don't trust. But it said percentage-wise, it's the same as D. Okay. So I got that. Yeah. And I've been bringing that with me to car and spraying it all over. Oh, like you're going camping for you. Yeah.

It is. I was spraying it. And it's strong. Like it smells really strong. One time I was with Anna and I was like, you need this. And I just sprayed it at her and she really hated that. Maybe she's part mosquito. That's what you found out. I never even thought about that. Yeah. She might be part mosquito. Oh my God. Okay. This is a good way for me to test. Yeah. It's like vampires. Yeah. Put garlic everywhere and see if they react poorly. She was more upset because she thought maybe it got in her martini. What? I'm allergic to garlic. And you stay up a lot at night. I prefer.

Oh. How do you like the taste of blood? Fine. I don't know. Anyway, so yesterday I was at car editing and I had my skito spray. This is hilarious to bring mosquito spray to a restaurant. It really is something. I sprayed it all over.

What if they had it next to the toothpicks at like the host stand? No. So they, he, the bartender did come up to me before I took my spray out. And he said, just see, if you want any of this mosquito spray. He said, it can get really, he's like, it's been kind of, people have been getting bit. So I bought this. And I was like, well, not to worry. I have my own.

I know. This isn't a great endorsement, but it, it, it, as you said, it is. Like, when we went to a restaurant and they said, would you like bear spray? Because sometimes beers are in the restaurant. They do come in sometimes. Listen, okay, this gets a little crazier. So I sprite all over. And then I look over someone's come in.

And it's still earlyish. And it's Leslie Bibb. Oh, great. Who I've never met. Yeah, not a friend of the pot. Yet she should be. Yes. Her partner is.

Exactly. So she's sitting next to me. And I never do this. I don't, again, not really in keeping with my PMS, PMDD, but I was feeling friendly. Yeah, frisky. Yeah. And I was like, hey, I have this mosquito spray if you want it because there are a ton of it. I said, because there are, there are mosquitoes in here.

And she was like, wait, what? Of course. She was like, they're a mosquito. And then she was like, what, what's happening in Los Angeles? Like, yeah, I get into butterflies instead. Like, that would be way better. I know, I know. Replaced them with butterflies.

She was like, what's going on with Los Angeles and mosquito? And I was like, I know it's horrible, but just, you know, if you want it. And so I put it there. She sprayed it on herself. Uh-huh. And she was like, thank you. And I said, I'm Monica. And she said, oh, hi, I'm Leslie.

And I said, I do armchair expert. Yeah, I said, I do armchair. Tracks with Dax. We interviewed your sweet partner. And she was like, oh my God. Yes. She was like, I know you. She was like, and then she brought up something I specifically said on that episode. Which was. Which was Sam Rockwell, for people who don't remember, talked about how he went on safari. You guys were talking about going on safari. And he said, you know, like you were both so alert and aware of all the animals. Man eaters everywhere. Yeah, you guys were so aware. And he was, like, laughing because she was like, Leslie's just sitting there so calm, not thinking twice. And I said, yeah, because she lives in a world where she's used to predators. You don't.

And he told her that when he got home. He was like, I've been thinking about this. And so she brought that up and she thought it was really good. Nice. So I liked that. And anyway, we started chatting for so long. And so I love her. And I want to invite her on the pod.

Okay. Did either of you buy each other's meal? No. Okay. She was about to have a meeting, like a meeting. A meeting. So we just chat until her friends came. Did you eaves drop on the meeting to see a project she's about to do?

I wanted to. Yeah, of course. I had work to do. Okay. So my headphones were in. Sure. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. It was a fun meat cute.

Yeah. All because of mosquitoes. really. This makes me think Kristen was just on a flight home. I don't think I should out them because I don't know if it's public knowledge, but she was on a flight home from Paris and she saw a mutual friend. Oh. Friend of the pod. Oh. Who is flying home from White Lotus. Max? Yeah. Is that public knowledge? Yeah. No, it's public knowledge he's in White Lotus.

Oh, then Max. I don't know. I don't want to do anything. I got so happy he's going to be on the news. Oh, you didn't know. Yeah. It's a big, it's so exciting. Yeah, I don't really follow much casting news, I guess. Yeah. Can't wait. Love Max. I can't wait for the next season, obviously. He should come on to remember it. I'd like to be on White Lois. Me too. Yeah. Let's, we've said it here. You've heard it here from our lips to the, Mike White. You could because you're friends with, or you know Mike White. You've worked with him. I have worked with Mike White. I don't think that gives me an edge, but I have worked with Mike. There is. I love Mike White. I love Mike White. I'll say that.

I love him. Yeah, I don't know if he loves me, but I love him. I love him. Listen, I'm really, I'm not jealous of you of anything. Uh-huh. But I'm jealous of you for that, getting to work with him. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

But it was in an actor-to-actor capacity. It wasn't something he had written. That would be different. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. It was just two actors. Oh, I thought, oh, I must be thinking of something. Oh.

Then I'm not jealous of him. Yeah, there. go. Anywho, so speaking of white men. Oh, right. White Lode is white man? Max is white man. He has attractive. Um, attractive. Speaking of attractive white men. That's better. No, and it is part of this. So I started watching traders. Which I don't know about traitors. Oh, tax. I, traders is a big deal. Okay. It's very, it's, I apologize that I don't know. Okay. Thank you. Um, it's, it's, it's highly watched reality TV and won the Emmy. We watch it.

You watch it? Yeah. Yeah, we love Traders. It's so good. I feel way less bad that it's a reality show. I don't watch a ton of reality. I know, but you know Survivor. You don't watch it.

But they know of it. That's true. So you need to just know about Traders because it's, yeah. But anyway, I've never watched it yet. I've known people love it and stuff, but it hasn't been. I also don't watch reality TV. So I don't think it's going to be for me. but then got to be in my bonnet.

And I decided to start. And so there's a new season out now. So I started with this new season. Yeah. And I caught up to where it's week to week. So I caught up. I'm invested. So it's a real life werewolves and villagers slash mafia,

which I think most people have played one of those two games. Right. And this season is, in quotes, normal people. But the other seasons are celebrities. but a lot of these celebrities are also from the reality TV world. So they're from Survivor or Real Housewives or anyway. It's so fun. So I watched this new one and then I went back and I watched the last season.

I watched the whole thing. Uh-huh. And I love it. But I was getting so mad because of the spoiler. Well, yeah. There's so much deception. And spoiler. So if anyone is going to go back and listen to watch season four,

skip ahead or pause. No, I think you got to skip ahead. Pause is going to deliver you right back where you. The winner is this guy from Love Island, Rob R. Okay. So he's a traitor from the beginning. Rob R is so hot. Okay.

He is insanely hot. Yes. Yeah. And he's... What makes them hot? Okay. I want to hear the breakdown. Well, do you want to see a... Rob, do you want to put up a picture of him?

No, I want to hear what you think. I think is hot about him. Physically, he's just so hot. His face is gorgeous? How's his physique? Do you care? I think his physique is good, although... That's not sticking out as one of the main thing.

But I think he seems tallish, from what I can tell. Yeah. Got great hair. Oh, great. Just a beautiful face. Yeah, it's super. And he wears kind of fun outfits. Like Ryan Hanson?

No, like... Like he wear, he wore like a sweater vest with nothing under it. That's a normally a very dushy move. I think he could be. He's on love island. But like no shirt cardigan is. I loved it. That's great.

Well, no, I had like hearts on it. Like it was almost like when you wore the sweater that Penae gave you. Yeah, yeah. But I wasn't like feminine. Yeah, okay. And it's like showed confidence. Okay. Yeah, it's just no shirt underneath.

That's like generally. I know. I mean, like, wore a vintage shirt once and it was kind of tight. And so he is a traitor. And at first when I first meet him, I'm like, oh, love Island. Like this guy. And he's. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There he is being hot. Angular features. Real strong chin. Yep.

Exactly. He's. He's classic. Not bulbous like mine. It's not. He doesn't have like a clown's horn on the end of his. That's not. Delta got to squeeze it in the other day.

and it was like, she was just got way to, like it became one of her fucking stuffies or her fidgets, you know? Yeah. And I just remember this trick you would do in junior high where you'd have someone to hold their tip of their nose. I forget the premise, but you can really easily turn the whole tip of your nose purple. Oh, okay. So then I had to tell her, I'm like, hon, you can squeeze any part of my face, just not the tip of my nose. I'm afraid it's going to be a big purple bruise. And she was having a hard time.

Of course. resisting. Yeah. Because it's just a clown's hon, hon, hon, no, because you said it specifically. So then for her, of course you want. She just found her way to it. The tip is the most fun part to squeeze.

Yeah, mine is definitely meaty, you know. You get a, even me, I can get all five fingers. You know, they're not touching each other when I hold it. It's like a size of a racquetball. No, it's fine. It's great. Okay, yeah, whatever. Yeah, I'm not complaining.

Okay. So Rob R is, is classically. Attracted. Classically trained, yeah. In the art of gorgery. Classically trained level of attraction. Yeah. Yeah. Everless it looks like. But so for me normally that is not my type. Because I do. I'm like, okay. Like, do she pretty boy. There's no way you have a personality. Yeah. And he's from Love Island. So I'm definitely like, yeah, fuck boy. Okay. But then he's like nice to people and like. And like. soft, kind of soft spoken, and then he makes friends with people that I like, but like in a real way, like he says, like, I don't want to kick this person off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got a heart of

gold. Yeah, and he keeps, he's like pretending. He's from Alabama and he's like kind of playing this like, I'm this dumb guy and he's not because he's also playing chess the whole time. So I'm like, uh-oh. And he's a traitor. He's bad, right? And this whole group of people get so fucking played by Rob R. And it is shocking to watch. I mean, it's shocking and that it's just like... Charisma. It's just so obvious.

Like, it's so real that this hot, tall... Kind. Kind in quotes. That's right. He is tricking everyone. Yeah, this is always my issue with... Well, he's not acting like he's like... Yeah.

Although he did stick up for his... He's stuck up for his best friend in the house. house who's gay. Okay. And it was hot. So he was an ally. Yeah. And like, so anyway, I'm just, then I'm starting to get furious, right?

Because then he. You felt betrayed. Well, even though I knew the whole time he was a traitor. Oh, you did. Okay. So it's not a mystery to you. Yes. That's what's fun about the show.

You know the whole time. Yes. So you're seeing people like, you know, you're kind of like, no. And like very, very smart people. The smartest people in the house are like, It could never be robbed. Like, they're saying it. That's happening on Million Dollar Secret, the one show I do like.

But I would argue none of them are very good at life. Like, as soon as they have the million dollars, they crumble. They could be, like, so convincing when they're, but it's like the amount of pressure once you have the million is pretty funny. Well, yeah. And then so Rob R turns on a fellow trader pretty early. And I, that I was like, fuck you. That's bad. You're having a real ride over there.

I hated that. And then he did it again to the other traitor. And I was like, this guy. But you still fuck him, right? He is a girlfriend. Oh. Anyway. Are you single?

Yes. The girl at the end with him too. I know. Okay. So that's the main betrayal. So he has this buddy who's also from Love Island, a different season or whatever. So they like bond. And she's this like gorgeous girl, more, moire.

Mara, Mora, I think. Do you smell something? Because I don't know if it's Mara or Mora. Oh, yes. That's a hard more. I think it's Mora, yes. She's Irish. She's in a full leather cat suit in this photo.

Yeah, she is great fashion and style, and she's very hot. And so they are best buddies in the house, and poor girl just getting played. She got played. And it was so sad because she kept saying, like, it's so hard for me to let my guard down. I've been cheated on so many times. My trust. I don't, it's very hard for me to trust people. She's saying this throughout.

And yet she refuses to see Rob as a possible traitor. And towards the end of the season, people are like, I think it's Rob. People are starting to say it. And she's like, she's going down at the ship. It can't be. And he makes her pinky promise. something and he betrays her. Well, he had to to win the game.

The point is to win the game. Dax. Right? Isn't that the point? You say so. I haven't seen it, but I'd imagine the point is to win the game. I- I hated it.

I hated it. Okay. I hated it. Do you still like him or no? No. Oh, you're mad. Well, I just don't know what to think anymore. You don't trust him, but you kind of love him.

I hated what he did, DeMora. Okay. And she was so fragile. And then I felt so bad because I was like, she has to watch this and watch herself. These shows probably have a little more PTSD than people might guess. I think so. I think so.

I know it's a great show. Okay. I'll check it out. But it sounds like the kids would like it. Yeah. Yeah. Calvin loves it. Okay, great.

Okay, some facts. Some facts. I think my favorite guess we've ever had on. I've talked about it to everyone. He is, dude, I did back to the Jack Black thing. I made him listen to 20 minutes about Guillermo del Toro yesterday at the concert. Like you told him about it. I was like, oh, my God, I interviewed Guillermo del Toro.

And I just kind of stopped telling him fascinating things about him. He has seen his notebooks. Oh, he has. Yes. I could not. He has the same feeling we did. He's like, each page needs to be taken out surgically and like framed and protected. Put in the Smithsonian.

Yes, yes. I could not believe we got to see those. And hold it. And hold it. Like hold his heart. Yeah. That's what it felt like. His brain and his heart.

And his brain and his heart, which are one thing. Yeah. He's so pure. And we put it on the table and your feet were up like this and I got real panicky. I did too. I moved it very quickly. I know. I saw it was too close.

For a second, I was like really feeling some panic. Don't be cocky to X. Don't overestimate your athletic prowess here. Yeah. It was just such a beautiful episode. he's, I couldn't, he gave us so many nuggets of wisdom. Oh, it's incredible. It's incredible.

He's a philosopher. He's an artist. He's a painter. He's a writer. One of the best directors to ever live. I know. I can't think anyone that's ever been better than him visually. I mean, Tim Burton is, you know, he's in, he's in that same space.

Of course. But like, the visuals of fucking Frankenstein are impossible. The world building. Because it's also like the visuals are unbelievable. but his stories are also so beautiful and moving and deep. I cannot wait to see it in 3D. I know. Same.

Yeah. Same. Okay. So that was just very special. I don't think I've felt like that after we left an interview in a very long. Maybe Khi Kwan was maybe the last one. Yeah. The way I said it is Bill Gates' holistic understanding of everything on planet Earth is something

that I've never observed in anyone else. Like it's just the totality of his knowledge is so impossible. It's like really hard to comprehend. And I feel this exact same way about Guillermo. Me too. And it's not specifically Bill's thing. It's like. Well, it's also knowledge.

That's true. Like his, the amount he knows about art and fucking writing. But that's not what's shining through. What shining through is a holistic view of the universe. Humanity. Humanity. Yeah. Yes.

Yes. A deep, deep, intrinsic understanding of humanity. Yeah. Yeah, he's outrageously special. Yeah, I too. I think we text to each other afterwards, which we haven't done a while. I was just like, whoa, that was a, that was mind-blowing. Yeah.

So lucky. Mm-hmm. So lucky. We didn't sit on this for too long, which is fine. But when he said that when he had that experience when he was a kid and he saw monsters and he, he needed to go to the bathroom and he told them, if you let me go to the bathroom, him, I'll be your friends forever. Yeah.

And he is. He is. He is a friend of the monsters. He literally is. It's so moving. I can't really handle it. You just picture him as a little boy and you're like, it must have been hard to have that enormous brain.

I know. Well, he said so. Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. Reading in the encyclopedias. Yes. In his father's library.

Yeah. Okay. You said that Warren, Buffett drove an old Cherokee? Yeah, Jeep Cherokee with wood grain on the side. I don't know why my Google doesn't know about that. Okay. It should.

There's a, your Google should know that there's a, uh, a profile of him on 60 minutes in the 90s and there's many shots of him driving that old clunker. Okay. Yeah. Because this is saying Cadillac XTS, Cadillac DTS. He may in the mid-2020s. are mid, I don't know how you say that, the 2010s. He might have, that Cherokee might have died.

But he still lives in the same like 3,000 square foot brick ranch. Yes, that is well documented. And he was driving a very old Cherokee in that segment. All right. Well, I don't know what to say. I never forget a car. I, that's true. Yeah.

That is true. That's one of your gifts. It's like Molly in the outfits. Molly McNerney and the outfits. That's right. Okay. I looked up, what are the most family? oriented cultures.

Cultures that are deeply family oriented, typically prioritize collective well-being, multi-generational living, and lifelong financial or social interdependence over individual autonomy. Regions and countries noted for strong family ties, South and Southeast Asia. I can say that's true.

Latin America. It's a southern Europe, Italy, Spain. and the Middle East and North Africa. So really everyone but northern white Europeans? No, it doesn't have China. Like it doesn't have... Well, it said Asia and South Asia. No, South and Southeast Asia.

India, the Philippines, Indonesia. Okay. Oh, okay, okay. So, yeah. Oh, okay. Interesting. Oh, I was looking up longest standing ovations at film festivals.

Longest recorded standing ovations. standing ovation at a major film festival belongs to Naza, which directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Zor, which received a 25-minute ovation this year at the Venice Film Festival. Okay, 25. And he was 22, right? Yeah. Historically, Cannes held the longest standing benchmarks for the endurance clapping.

Durance clapping is what they call it. Your fucking hands must kill after 15 minutes of clapping. That's really funny. Led for two decades by Guillermo del Toro's panes. Labyrinth, 22 minutes. Third is Fahrenheit 9-11, Michael Moore. Okay. I can 20 minutes, 2004.

Sentimental value. Oh, we love that movie. Love that movie. Can 2025, 19 minutes. Oh. How do people know when to stop? I don't know. They don't.

Clearly they don't. Like if you've gone 19, how aren't we going three hours? Do you think people are timing so they do know, like, I want to give this one the most? Or like almost the most. Do you think there's, there might be a timer? I can't imagine there is. I mean, someone's timing it for sure. But I don't think there's a big clock on display, no. Okay. Well, I find this interesting. Unfortunately, what if it was like an analog dial, like a watch face? And then it had along the way different movies as the like, like the pressure is rising. And then maybe they're like, I don't want it to be longer than pay.

Pan's Labyrinth. That's right. Yeah. And then right before it, someone goes, you know, Fini or whatever they, Fini, fini, finet, fini. I think it's just Finn, Finn, Finn. Finay. I think, I think, I think, you know, I went to Cannes, not obviously, I think just because I've talked about a lot, I went to Can study abroad, 2008. Yes, you and Callie. Nope, me and Anthony. You and Callie were in London. Yeah, we went to the breakup. We didn't go to the premiere. We stood outside. But no, I went to Cannes for study abroad, and that was in 2008.

And, you know, we had to beg for tickets to get inside. It was super fun. So I was looking to see if any of the ones I went to got up there, but. Were you a part of any standing ovations? Yeah. There's almost always a standing ovation. Man, I couldn't go. I couldn't go.

This is my issue with concerts and honors. Like any kind of whatever. I love encore. Joy. I hate concourse. Okay. It's pageantry. It's fine.

Okay. I mean, Guillermo deserves it, but the notion that this band, you know they're going to play two more songs, but you have to beg them to come out to play the two more songs is like, just play the two. It's fine. Okay. Okay. Now, unfortunately, I wasn't part of any of these top. which is upsetting. Yeah.

But I'm just double checking. Okay. A little quick. Dot in your eyes and crossing your teeth. That was, I saw Matt Damon at, he was there for, I think, Che. Was he in Che? Yeah, he was. He was, right?

Yeah, he played Che. No. And I, so that was so exciting because I got in that one. So I was just sitting amongst him. High up. Yeah. That was a long movie. It was like five hours.

I saw so many movies, obviously, over the course of that. How many hours was Jay? It was a two-partress. I think it was like five. I probably only saw one part. And Benizio del Toro plays, Chee, is that? Benizio. All of those movies really blur.

Like, I don't remember anything because I was just seeing like three movies a day. Yeah, it's too many. It was a lot. Okay, yeah, well, I didn't get to experience. A 20 minute one. Better that you got to sit in a room with Germo for two hours. Much better. Than 22 minutes of clapping.

I agree. Yeah. I agree. Oh, when he talked about how the people stole his puppets and then put poop everywhere. Yeah. And then you said, oh, they went ape. Now I understand ape shit. Mm-hmm.

Growing shit everywhere. Yeah, go on. Tonka. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've never thought about that before. Oh, you haven't. Okay. You knew that?

Yeah. Oh. My favorite is when they chuck it at viewers of the, at the zoo. Yeah. Because a lot of people don't know about chimp behavior. And when you're at the chimps of the Mahala here at the LA Zoo, you'll see one shit in his hand. And I know time to get behind something. Sure.

But other people don't. Oh, my. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't mind that because I'm like, this is what you get kind of. Oh, yeah. I don't mind that they do it. They should.

Yeah. If I was a chimp in a zoo, you'd do it. If I was incarcerated at a zoo, I would throw my shit every chance I got. Exactly. I agree. All right. That is all. Okay.

Wonderful. What a blessing. I agree. I wouldn't agree more. All right. Love you. Love you.