Chapo Trap House - Movie Mindset Bonus - Interview With Director Ari Aster

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Will & Hesse sit down with Ari Aster, director of Hereditary, Midsommar, Beau is Afraid, and the upcoming Eddington. They rap on evil movies, mixing stupid slapstick humor with pain & discomfort, creating a contemporary western out of the recent past, some of Ari’s favorite films & filmmakers, and of course…the all-consuming sense of impending doom & lurking doubt that surrounds us. Check out Eddington, in theaters this summer on July 18th.

Hello movie maniacs. We have a great interview with director Ari Aster coming at you in just a second But first a quick reminder that year zero a Chappo Trap House comics anthology is now available for pre-order at www.badegg.co Yes, five scintillating tales of madness one from each of the hosts of this very podcast, all collected in one gorgeous anthology, care of the good folks at bad egg comics that is available for presale right now at www.badegg.co. Go preorder your copy today. And now onto the interview.

All right. Welcome back movie fans. We've got a special treat for you mindset heads out there as part of our ongoing directors series. Hasse and I could not be more thrilled to be talking today with one of our favorite contemporary filmmakers. He is the director of such films as Hereditary, Midsummer, Bo Is Afraid, and the soon to be released Eddington. That's right, folks. We've got King Payman himself here today. Ari Aster. Ari, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. Oh, our pleasure. So, Ari, I just listed your filmography. I know people are familiar with you and your work. So, I guess my first question for you is, when are you gonna make a nice movie? For the nice people. Something I can watch with my mother. Oh man, yeah I'd like to make a nice movie. I don't know. There's nice stuff in all of this.

Yeah. Well I have to ask, did your mother watch Bo's friend? She did. Yeah. She a fan? She did. Yeah, we still haven't talked about it. Well, I guess just like, to give a sense of where I'm coming from here, I was hoping I could share with you three sort of personally unpleasant experiences that were sort of incepted by watching your movies. And two of them happened to me and one happened to a friend of mine. The first of them, I'll say, when I saw Hereditary for the first time,

I experienced for the first and only time in my life what could be described as a sleep paralysis demon at the night after I watched the movie. The second experience happened to a friend of mine, where let's just say the first 30 minutes of midsummer put way too close to home about his relationship and the person he was seeing the movie with. So I think you personally imperiled the relationship of a friend of mine. And then third and final, I've described before on this show my experience of watching Bo

Is Afraid, which was first hour laughing harder than maybe I've ever laughed in a movie in the past 20 years. Second hour, a growing feeling of discomfort and unease. And then by the third hour, I wanted you incarcerated. I wanted to put you under citizens arrest for what you did and like how that movie made me feel. But then I did say the silver lining is that I woke up the next morning and I had the image of the capsized boat in my head and I just sprung awake and I said, it's a masterpiece. My God, he's done it.

My God, he's done it. So, yeah, and I guess this is all to say that a quality I admire the most in your movies, and I mean this not as a knock whatsoever, but the quality I admire most in your movies is that they're evil. And yeah, I guess I'm just wondering, they're unsparing, but what other evil filmmakers do you like? Or just this sense of like, the cinema of discomfort? Like, are there other filmmakers or movies that sort of inculcated this sense in you that like that you're bringing out in your movies, this unsparing and pitiless

dedication to creating a feeling in your audience? Like, does that feeling start with you? Well, you know, I think, well, yeah, I do love an evil movie and it probably has something to do with the fact that the world feels evil to me. And, you know, I'd love to hear your argument against that. But, yeah, I don't know. I mean, and every time I set out to create, you know, like a different atmosphere or and I don't think I do. I kind of returned to the same basic hellscape. But yes, some evil movies that I love

off the top of my head. Peckinpah's Straw Dogs. Oh, absolutely. That's an evil movie. And I love it. Yeah. Um, what else is I mean, there's so many evil movies. Yeah, I love a film that that feels unsafe. Yeah. Where I feel like I'm in the hands of somebody really sick. What's an evil movie? I mean, I'm thinking like some of the Europeans

like Hanukkah or Gaspar No, like those movies are very hurtful. Yeah, I wouldn't call any of Hanukkah's films evil only because he is something of a moralist. And there's like, I love him. And I know that the people who reject his films think that there's like a sanctimony there or something, or like a lecturing quality,

which I think is only really in maybe funny games. But yeah, piano teacher maybe feels a little evil and cache. But cache again is a film that I think there's a real sense of morality anchoring the whole thing. The white ribbon maybe. Yeah. I mean, the white ribbon is

maybe the you know, my favorite film about Nazism, even though it's really about the roots of it. Or I guess what I guess what he's saying is that it was just always in that culture. Like it was just, you know, it was only a matter of time. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, Gaspar Noe for sure. I'm trying to, you know, I I mean Pasolini like Solo is a

pretty evil feeling film. God there's so many I mean I'm actually looking at my I'm looking at my shelf now like what which are those which of those are evil they'll come back to me. Well I was gonna say like the name that came out in my head that like I hadn't considered until this week and thinking about your movies is like those are the sadistic Europeans, but of our domestic variety here, I do feel like there's an element of the Co Testament and like they love just piling on catastrophe after catastrophe to these to like these the poor souls that inhabit and worship them as the creator. And I see that in your movie. But like at the same time in your I think the Coen's are other they seem like they're having fun doing this. Whereas in your movies, I really feel like you're torturing yourself first and foremost.

Well, you know, first of all, the Coen brothers are just inescapable, especially for, you know, any filmmakers in my generation. I, they're, they're just the best. Um, and yeah, I, I grew up just those films for me were, were and are just like a North star, but, uh But yeah, it does seem like they're having fun. I'm having fun, I mean, come on. It's just, I don't want these films to be like painful slogs. I want them to be enjoyable. In fact, I was pretty shocked at the reception

of Bo Is Afraid because so many people were going on and on about how torturous it was and I always thought I was making a comedy. I mean, I definitely, there were periods in the editing of the film where I got kind of giddy about the fact that, you know, at the end of the Orphans of the Forest section, It feels very much like a movie that's ending. I got very excited about the fact that there was an hour left. And it's like a joyless, life-sucking hour. Well, no. I mean, like I said, I think Bo Is Afraid is the funniest movie of the last 20, 25 years.

Like hands down. And this goes back to like the sense that Hassan and I have talked about a lot of the movies you talked about this year, like a lot of our favorite movies is the sense that like what is most evil and horrifying about the world is what's most funny about it. And films that capture that sentiment often end up being my favorite movies. And Eddington really has a lot of that, too. Like it's it's definitely about how evil the world is. But I mean, me and Will were losing it at some parts, like him

falling on Geronimo's bones. Yeah. Going through that like museum place. Just so many great little moments. I actually I had a question about the details, some of the details in Eddington, like the store names. There was I think there was a store named Samantha Sundries and there's one called you guys are catching everything. That's great. I love that.

I love and it reminds it really reminds me of like the little blink and you'll miss it jokes in Bo is afraid like one of my favorites is the Microwave meal he makes the oh loha Irish Hawaiian Irish Hawaiian breakfast and like how do you how do you pop go about populating your movies with such with like little details? Like that that you could like that maybe some of the audience won't even see or notice. Well, that's, you know, that's just the most fun part is working with these worlds.

In fact, I didn't have as many opportunities with this film because it's a much more grounded movie. So whenever I could, you know, put something stupid in, I was very excited about that. Like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, stupid in. I was very excited about that. Like Samantha's sundries. Samantha is a name that keeps showing up in all of my movies. There are a lot of there are a lot of writers of books named Samantha and Prawn is a first name I like to use anyway.

But yeah, no, you know, I mean, for me, the stupider, the better. And yeah, I I guess I you you mentioned, you know, humor being, humor that like, I don't know, nods to the, just the nightmare of everything is the best. You know, for me, I feel like there's like a line in the sand

that people end up on either side of which, and I just stand on one side. In the 90s, there were all those romantic comedies where the clumsy, beautiful woman would slip and then she'd go, I'm okay, and I'm okay kills it. I want a bone coming out of her knee. Jack, please. But like in this, like I said, like the cinema of The Unpleasant,

are you surprised by like people's reactions to movies like the people consider you personally some kind of sadist like I? Was thinking like preparing for this about the the part in Terry's why gosh a documentary about Robert Crumb? We're at one point like the greatest in like I've been like cuz you know crumb was just like Unsparingly showing you his own it in full detail without censorship and at one point he's like sometimes I think maybe I shouldn't be allowed to do this. Maybe someone should take my pens and pencils away from me so I can't hurt other people with my own, you know, inner thoughts. Like, have you ever been confronted with that making your films?

Well, first of all, look at his brothers and see around to taking the pens and pencils away. So we might only have so much time before. If it's not the current administration, then it's going to be this AI god that we're ushering in. So, you know, I, I, I, I, I probably only have like one or two movies left. Yeah. Right. Is that too, is that too pessimistic? No, I think it's very, I think it's quite, quite, quite, quite appropriate. Yeah. And that's another fun detail in Eddington was the name of the AI facility, Solid Gold

Magic Harp, which Will leaned over to me and whispered in my ear like 10 minutes into the movie, isn't that a Pokemon? Yes, sweetie. It is a Pokemon. Yes. It's also a term that, you know, when it's... That early on, these AI systems, if you typed in solid gold magic carp, it would just make the system go haywire. So it's a little...

A little bit. It's kind of an... It's sort of an inside joke for the people who are ushering this thing in. Nice. Gotta keep them involved. Hester brought up Eddington, which we both were lucky enough to see a screening of last week that you did a Q&A after. And Eddington, when people see it, I don't want to give too much away here, but Eddington is a movie that is essentially a period piece about five years ago. But like the period it conjures, like I don't think we've ever left that period. And what it depicts is

like the this unmistakable feeling of dread that like being alive in the last five or six years. Like beginning with COVID. And what your movie really portrays is that like I think what a lot of people are realizing now is that COVID was like the final push over the edge for like where our society was going of like people being increasingly like a place where consensus, consensual reality has broken down. And people are living in these kind of like, discrete boutique voluntary realities. And now that seems like that's all that's left. And Eddington is a movie that really depicts like, what happens when these realities, these different realities that we're all living in begin to kind of brush up against each other?

And I'm just like, what was your experience of COVID? And like, how did it lead to like the feeling that you're conjuring in this movie? Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I don't think we've metabolized just how seismic COVID was and and you know, and I don't think it was the advent of anything. I think it was an an inflection point. And it's where maybe, you know, just that last link to whatever the old world was, which, you know, is already decades behind us, was cut.

And yeah, I watch the film now, and it doesn't really feel like a period piece. We're still living in it. Lockdown is over for now, but yeah, what was my experience? Well, I'm from New Mexico. My family lives in New Mexico still, and I was brought back to New Mexico because of a COVID scare.

I thought somebody in my family had it. They didn't. And I ended up staying in a in a house near family. And in June 2020, when everything was really kind of peaking, I just wanted to make a film that reflected, you know, the environment. And I also wanted to make a film about the Southwest. I had this old script that never became anything called Eddington, and it was sort of a contemporary Western, and felt like a, you know, an interesting framework to do this.

And I don't know. And so so for me, it was an attempt at zooming as far back as I could without sacrificing story and just trying to give an impression of like the cacophony. And you like, as you said, it's a Western. And we are, we always try to get into the movie mindset of people, the directors we're interviewing. Were there any specific Westerns that you looked towards for inspiration of like characters or mood or, and like what are some of your favorite Westerns? Okay, so first of all,

the films that were really on my mind weren't necessarily Westerns. The traditions of the Western were on my mind. But, you know, one film that kept coming back to me was JFK, which I think is maybe the... Look, it's clearly a snarling together of a bunch of crackpot conspiracies that so many of which have nothing to do with the other. You say that, Ari, but it's been fairly well established that gay people did

kill John F. Kennedy. Well, look, with that exempted. But I do think it's the film that gets at conspiracy thinking and that creates like this this this heightened atmosphere of paranoia, which we're living in now. Like we're living in JFK and everybody is Jim Garrison. And so that that that that's really interesting to me. And that and that film was that film is always on my mind because I just find it to be, you know, kind of amazing and just this hysterical three hour freak out. That's great.

You know, like Oliver Stone is is often not my bag. But that movie and Nixon are. Oh, yeah. Nixon is so underrated. One of my top 10 favorite movies. They're like three hour plus movies that are pure entertainment and just pure. Like America's psychological history of America just fucking like just burned into your brain. Yeah, couldn't be greater. I just yeah, I'm happy to hear that. I I'm with you.

I'm wondering where the when that movie is going to be canonized, because it's a masterpiece. So, you know, that was on my mind. A lot of small town films were on my mind, like Fat City, which is also a great book by Leonard Gardner who wrote the screenplay. Last Picture Show, which is a film that I screened for the crew before we shot.

Another film that I screened for the crew was Nashville. And then, you know, I was interested in the Western as, well, first of all, it's like the national genre, and that's interesting to me, that it really belongs to America. And, you know, it's very much about, you know, as a genre, it's about the dream of America. And when it's at its best,

I think it's contending with the truth of America, the reality of it and its history. But I was mostly interested in the Western genre as something that the main character of this film, especially Joe, played by Joaquin Phoenix, he would know these movies. And I think he's in his whole life is informed by these movies. He sees himself in those terms, right? Like he's he's a man of action. He cares about his community. He loves his wife. He sort of like what's right. Sort of like

Gary Cooper in High Noon, except if the whole town was wearing masks and he was like, you don't have to do this. Absolutely. And he's also, he's kind of on to something. There's something about the, there's something very theatrical about COVID when I think about it, just like, you know, all the signage and, you know, stand here, say this, do this. And and he's he's a character who's kind of seeing like, wait a minute, like what's going on? Something's up. And then he says, no, I'm not going to I'm not going to play along.

And then what does he do? He like he gets on the Internet and just and makes a video. So he's you know, he's he sees like, wait, there's something wrong. And all of these characters see something's wrong. And I don't mean something's wrong with masking. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about there's just something going wrong. Like, we are, like, this is bad. Like, what is happening?

Something's falling apart. Yeah, like, everything is collapsing. Like, what is there to believe in? Or what, like, what... And so, and what is there to believe in or what, like what, and so, and what is actually happening? Like I can feel that huge changes are happening and yet I am utterly powerless, but because I'm on the phone

and everything is kind of like ready to order, like I have autonomy and so I'm not powerless and you know, like I've got chauffeurs I just need to call them on my phone. But the idea is that you know for me I wanted to make a Western which is this very old fashioned genre that was really inflected by like a sort of modern realism right and all of these people are kind of living in different movies. Joe is living in High Noon, you know, and at the end, you know, you've got a kid who's kind of living in a video game. Joe is kind of, Joe, you know, is 50 years old and would have,

you know, in the 80s and 90s, like those action movies would have been so central to his imagination. You know, at the end, he gets to live in an action movie. I think, I think like the thing that struck me so much about, about Eddington, and I think, I think like the thing that's of a piece of your other movies and why it fits so well in this kind of period piece of like the COVID, the summer of like 2020 COVID and the George Floyd protest. And the thing is like, no matter what side

of a political divide you fall on, I think that like what you're, what you're capturing here is there's this sense that everyone has that there's something out there and it's doom and it has our name written down and everybody else is lying to you about it like they don't know everyone is like they're not telling you the truth about it but also that maybe they're right and it's this question of doubt this like this instability between like our assuredness about like the cause of our doom and everyone else is lying about it. But also this doubt like, do masks really work? Does the vaccine really work? And I'm not saying

like I believe masks and the vaccine do work. But in this climate, like it's just this question creep open is the door is opened in your mind. I think that's definitely, that's absolutely true no matter what side of the conspiracy you're on. You're like, everyone's lying to me, but what if they're not? And I guess I was just sort of feeling about that, particularly about Austin Butler's character of the, like, recovered memory child abuse cult. Like, what if the shit he's saying is real, you know? And could anyone really, like, say with a hundred percent confidence that it's not Even though you'd like you he comes across as a lunatic

It's just this this doubt this this both confidence and doubt that has creeped into everyone's mind But like the doom is coming and it's out there. It's just we don't really know what to call it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean Well that that's right. That's absolutely right. I I don't even know how to add to that, because that's what the movie I hope is is getting at. And and is he right? You know, like I like is is he telling the truth? I see him as a charlatan and as like a Pied Piper figure, but there are plenty of those. And the movie is about people in crisis, living through a crisis, trying to navigate that crisis, having many, you know, I mean, they have many options as far as, you know, narratives and realities that they can live in. But at the same time, those, you know, have narrowed for them because they're inundated in, you

know, whatever their algorithm is giving them. But for me, at the core of the film is this other crisis that's sort of incubating in a lab through the film, which is this hyperscale data center, and it's an AI data center. And we begin there and we end on it, and it's peripheral, but it for me is the heart of the movie. Yeah. And I think that's also something that even then we were feeling the effects of this, the weirdness, the uncanny, the fact that everything is changing absolutely in In a way that it's so

gradual even though it's exponential that you know we adapt to it. So it you know even now like you know this AI generated imagery and video stuff it's I'm used to it. Like the most uncanny thing about it is that it's not uncanny enough. Is that it's... Yeah. Yeah. Like as another element to this movie I want to talk about, like, Ari, are you familiar with this sort of, like, this pseudo debate about why a lot of, like, top-flight contemporary American filmmakers are doing period pieces but about, like, what looks like a different era? And a lot of people think it comes down to that, like, the ubiquity of people looking at their phones and just like scrolling is so stupid and ugly that like

no filmmaker really wants to touch it. Well you sir had the courage to just drive full speed into that reality. So like in terms of like how do you depict as a filmmaker the world of people kind of like there's a scene in the movie that just struck me as like you know scene in the movie that just struck me as like, you know, like a small moment that just struck me as like indicative of the larger thing. It's Joaquin Phoenix and his wife played by Emma Stone in Bed at Night, and they kiss each other good night, and then he rolls over and looks at his phone, and there's just like his face is a glow in a dark room, scrolling on his phone. Like, what do you think of the smartphone's role in terms of an aesthetic object that

cinema is struggling to depict? Well, first I'll tell you just what I wanted to do, which is I wanted these phones to be totally pervasive, and I didn't want them to necessarily blend in. I wanted to sort of make you sick with the ubiquity of it as opposed to having it just be... One of my favorite phone moments is when the kid Googles the book that the girl is holding so that he could pretend he knows what it is and knows what he's talking about. I really love that moment. And the fact that the kids know how to use their phones more than the adults. Like Joaquin Phoenix, whenever he turns on his phone after sleeping, he has like 500 new messages. I love that as a detail of his life kind of collapsing. The more it collapses, the more messages he gets, the more alerts come in on his phone.

Yeah. No, it screens the movie. I wanted them to feel like alien, like these people are getting these messages from another realm. They're given these roles to play. I wanted to take away the innocuousness that I maybe was feeling in a lot of, like, you know, contemporary movies where it's like, yeah, somebody pulls up their phone and like a little text will like pop up, like bloop, you know, and it's cute. And, you know, but there is like a menace there.

Yeah, and one of the things you said is that like, this is a movie about like what it feels like to be on the internet. And one of the things that I really love about Eddington is that a certain point in the movie, like the reality that's being depicted and the reality of the internet kind of like merge and cross over. And like, I guess this would be like slightly a spoiler. So turn this off if you don't want anything to spoil to you. But for me, the key to the whole movie was the actual when the appearance the appearance and assault on the town of Eddington by anti-fa super soldiers.

Yeah, and that's when you're like playing with the global globe emoji on the back. Yeah, so funny. And I guess like, it's sort of similar to Bo is Afraid. It's this question of like, what is real here? Is this depicting reality? Or is this depicting the psychological reality of someone's interior life? And like, how fun is that to play with? Like, as a writer and as a filmmaker?

Yeah, I mean, it is, it's fun, but it sort of was at the, it was at the heart of the film. I wanted the movie to kind of become paranoid too. Yeah. And kind of get, become gripped by like kind of the, the worldview of these characters. And so, you know, it should function as something of a Rorschach test.

And I'm hoping that it does. Like I'm hoping that when you get to the people on that jet, that people have different arguments as to who those people are. And in the end, Joe is kind of, the threat is real, but he's shooting at phantoms. Okay, well we talked about the Antifa Super Soldiers, but when you were writing this movie or when you were thinking of it, being on the internet,

being on Twitter, you have a favorite, like insane Twitter idea or conspiracy theory that like, you like you think isn't true, but you kind of wish it was. Oh, let's see. There's nothing I wish was true. There's nothing I wish was true. Plenty of sinister. Like, you know, like there are, what is it? There are secret trap doors in the back, in like every Disneyland bathroom that lead down to a dungeon. And on the other side, you can go up into what is it

comet pizza is that what it's called? I'm merging the two now that's uh yeah well I was saying that's mine now the tunnels full of mole children you remember the mole people the mole children that would be in Oh that one's real. I've seen them. Yeah that and the Hollow Earth are the only two real ones. How about you guys? What are your favorites? I think Hollow Earth is really funny just the idea that if you dig far enough down you're gonna fall in. There's like nothing inside. That and Hollow Moon obviously. That the moon's like a death star. Yeah.

You know, like I said, I don't think the vaccine was designed to mutate the human race into demons, but sometimes I wish it was. I guess that's why I'm coming here. I mean, like, I don't know if the COVID vaccine has mutated my DNA, but sometimes I'm like, yeah, I hope it has. Maybe it's beneficial. Maybe it will help all of us. I don't know. Yeah. All right, if we can move on from Eddington. I really want to

talk about Bo is afraid because like, Hesse and I have bonded over this movie like this movie is like a litmus test. Like if you like Bo is afraid, like your name gets written in the Book of Life. You are among the elect. You are among the chosen. We can hang. I agree with you. Yeah. I saw it in a theater with my ex-girlfriend and she did not like it at all.

And I, meanwhile, was screaming basically. I was like, this is the best movie I've ever seen in like in years in a theater. It's unreal. Thank you. With Bo, I don't know. The only question I have is a stupid one. What was that all about? Where are you coming from?

No, I guess more like what impresses me about that movie is the way it just layers upon layers of building upon layers and layers of reality building, building upon like layers and layers of reality and psychosis to the point where there is no entrance or exit anymore. And I'm just like, what was like the first idea that like led to the genesis of Bo is Afraid? Do you remember, was it like a thought or like an idea, an image in your mind? It was honestly just, I wanted an excuse to like, just jam a lot of gags into a movie. You know, I mean, it was really as simple as that, you know, like, you know, I wanted to make myself laugh. And so everything came out of that.

And I would say the, you know, the first iteration of that movie, the first script, the first draft was just strictly comedic. So you know, there is really no story. I mean, I would say you could maybe argue that about the finished film, but it, you know, which is, you know, it's got like an Odyssey picaresque structure. And, you know, the first version, the first draft had had that quality. It was like an adventure film, very episodic. But it was really

just a gag machine and even stupider somehow and and then when I when I returned to it after midsummer I made it maybe more I tried to add like a certain like soulfulness and sadness to it. And the ending was totally new. The penis monster was already, it was always there. That, which was, which was just my way of deflating. It's always there in all of us. It always is. The trick there was to have this buildup, you know, it was a subplot, you know, that was supposed to, you know, there's a lot of intrigue, who's his father, you know, it was a subplot, you know, that was supposed to, you

know, there's a lot of intrigue, who's his father, you know, what's at the heart of this movie really. And then just to give you the, if like there's just nothing to be gleaned just as always talking about gags, but probably my favorite gag from brothers afraid is in the first hour, where Joaquin Phoenix gets locked out of his apartment. And like, you can just see it coming. What I love is just like, all the worst fears you have in your head

They're going to happen to you I'm like that sense when he goes out to the heat the store across the street and then someone leaves the door He like leaves the door open For like the mob of vagrants outside his house and he just sees one after another and then like the six He does like empty after shriek into the apartment building and go directly into his house to destroy it that was like that killed me but like the sort of scenes of like urban chaos and like fear in the beginning of that movie I thought was like really funny but also really uncomfortable because like you're I think you're being very honest and playing with like people since maybe that

they don't want to admit that it's like both funny and frightening to just like see mental illness and the homeless everywhere like it was it you don't ever get mad at you for that I was expecting people to but but but mostly people just love to tell me I love the first 45 minutes of Bo Is Afraid. So now I like to be introduced as the director of Hereditary, Mitzamar, and the first 45 minutes of Bo Is Afraid. But yeah, it's basically just life stinks, isn't it?

If they only like the first 45 minutes, then they're selling themselves short because that doesn't even get to the girl drinking paint, which is another one of the funniest scenes I've ever seen in a movie. That's my name. That's my name. My favorite line. Yeah, I love that too. I also, I gotta ask about when they're doing the play in the woods, one of my favorite laughs or favorite little moments in the movie is when they're doing the play and it's very

serious for a while, it's telling the story, and then the narrator goes, sometimes your wife will appear as a man to you. And then it's like the guy, like one of the actors. I love that. I love that guy. I just want to like ask about that. What's that? It just made me laugh. Yeah. I'm just I'm just goofing. Yeah. Yeah. For for me, yeah, people, there's a contingent person that just really, really doesn't like that section of the film,

but I find it, that's one of my favorite jokes, which is we go into this like, you know, like this fantasy of his, it's so supposed to be kind of a mix of like, you know, being moving and really artificial and really stupid. But, um, there's something there that I, that I, that is sincere on my part that I, that I find moving. And I, I just love breaking it.

And it was all just nothing. Like it just, there's something to me that's so because you know, because he you know, he comes together with his sons and then he's confronted with the fact that he couldn't have sons. Yeah. Anyway, I you know, that's just, I don't know, I love that joke. Yeah. So I don't know, I don't know what my point is. It's me just I guess griping. It's my it's just one of my many grievances about how that film was received. Well, speaking of jokes, I have I don't want to put you on blast, but I would like to share

your comment about the genius of Bo is afraid where you said, Yeah, it takes it takes a genius to make a movie that if successful Means that no one will ever have sex with you again for the rest of your life. So I guess I'm at Harry How's that going for you? You know, it's a it's a it didn't it didn't hurt Well, you're still a successful filmmaker. So, you know, there's movies and then there's reality. I guess like in the last time we have here, I'd like to just talk to you about movies in general. And I'd like to give you credit for turning me on to a movie that has fast become one

of my favorite movies. And I believe this is when you were, did one of those Criterion channel, like adventures in movie going and the film is Hobson's Choice by David Lean starring starring Charles Laughton and like you know that's an example of a nice movie but even you know even though Charles Laughton plays a miserly alcoholic I think that is a very sweet and beautiful movie and I'm just wondering like what can you share of your your experience of Hobson's Choice and the films of David Lean? Oh, I'm so glad that you watched that film and loved it. It's one of my favorite films, and it's a film that I wouldn't normally love. Like, in anybody else's hands, it would be so

cloying and schmaltzy. But as it is, I just find it to be so moving. And well, first of all, it has maybe the best production design of any film ever. Like the shoe store. Yeah, shoe store. It's just incredible. So beautiful. It's such a world and like, like the way they keep their like little like cockney slave and like the basement and he's just like always kind of popping out and coming out of the shoe dungeon. But then the love story between him and the eldest daughter is just so captivating. The way he just sort of through love becomes a real person. He becomes a man.

Yeah, he becomes a man. He gains this autonomy and it feels so earned. He also saves her from her father. Um, and, uh, you know, like if, if there's anything false, it might be like the, the, the silliness of the father's like alcoholism and like abuse. But, but there are also these amazingly strange sequences like, you know, um, that have to, that have to do with his alcoholism. Like, the effort he gives to like walk across a puddle when he's like blinded, drunk, trying to come home is like some great drunk acting by Charles Laudin.

Yeah, and him like the sinister moon in the puddle that he has to evade, which I think I'm guessing the Coens were alluding to that in Hail Caesar. There's a musical number with like a moon in a trough. And then there's the scene where he wakes up and he's hung over. I'm not sure if it's like withdrawal that he's going through, but like he's hallucinating like mosquitoes everywhere and there's hung over. I'm not sure if it's like withdrawal that he's going through but like he's hallucinating like mosquitoes everywhere and there's a giant rabbit at the base of his bed or the foot of his bed rather. Yeah just weird weird shit but I yeah David Lane is is amazing. That and Brief Encounter and Bridge on the River Kwai are as perfect as movies get, I think.

Well, you mentioned that Cohen's being very formative as a kid watching those movies, and I think that would be the case for anyone who got into movies of a certain age who saw Raising Arizona or Fargo or The Big Lebowski. But like, can you remember like, when you were a kid, like, what were like the big films that like turned you on to movies or just like made a huge impression on you like either as a kid or like maybe later in adolescence, when you started to like, maybe take films a little more seriously? Yeah, I mean, you know, I it's all the usual suspects, you

know, like, Scorseseese was huge and is still probably the biggest for me and, and, you know, Kubrick and the Coens and Polanski and, and, you know, I, I was like, you know, cinephilia was like my identity as a kid and I was very obnoxious. And you know, when, when you first become a cinephile you know you kind of follow the book and you and so you watch breathless and start acting different and you love the people you're supposed to love and yeah you're totally undiscerning so yeah I love you know I because I needed to I loved Gidar and Tarkovsky and Brisson and Antonioni.

And a lot of those filmmakers I still really love. Some of them I've rejected. I still love Brisson and I love a lot of Tarkovsky, although I think he can be kind of a bad influence on certain filmmakers, so can Godard. But Bergman was huge for me. And he's somebody who kind of only grows in my estimation. And you know, for me, a big one,

and I know it's the same for you, is Paul Verhoeven. Oh yeah. He for me, I think is one of the goats. I just think he's the greatest. What I probably feel closest to him or I I think I which is not to say that I that anything I'm doing is anything like what he's doing. It's just when I watch his films, I get very, very excited by the mission. And I find it very, it's like home to me. I just, I, and that's all of his films.

I mentioned this the other day, but over the weekend, I did watch a live stream of the president's wonderful birthday military parade and I was watching a live stream of that and it's like you know a group of soldiers walks by the announcer goes we'd like to take time now to thank our sponsors at Coinbase and I was like Mr. Verhoeven you've done it again yeah he really I mean starship troopers and RoboCop are so beyond

Precious and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that his parents were were Nazis were Nazi sympathizers Did they I also remember reading that the Nazis built a v2 rocket platform in his backyard That's perfect I didn't know that. Yeah. No, he's he's he's the greatest. He's so funny. Black Book 2 is under. Oh, Black Book is so good.

Is underappreciated. Really just, you know, what what he's doing there with having the resistance be the... Yeah, it's like, let's do a Holocaust movie where, like, the good guy, romantically, is a Nazi officer and the bad guys are, like, the Dutch resistance fighters. And it's just, like, a ripping yarn. It's just so... It's so old-fashioned and fun. I don't know.

There's nobody better there's a Turkish delight kind of now that I'm thinking about it reminds me a lot of Bose afraid and Eddington because of how like something totally ridiculous and insane and like over-the-top funny will happen but there's still like a heart at at the center of it that it keeps you like locked in and keeps you caring for the characters. Oh, that's great. Yeah, there's well, I appreciate that. There's definitely there's there's a real warmth to his films. He's really for films that are so bleak and cynical.

There is something really joyful about them. cynical, there is something really joyful about them. And especially in those early Dutch films like Soldier of Orange and the Fourth Man and Turkish Delay, he's just playing around. But he's an incredibly political filmmaker who just never forgets that movies are supposed to be fun. Yeah. You mentioned Scorsese as being a big influence. So, like, obvious. I mean, he's the goat. But what is it like? Because I've seen Scorsese talk on several occasions about how much he admires your films and says

this kid's got the chops. So that must feel pretty good, right? I've got this... Well, first of all, yeah, of course it's like it's, you know, it's in a way like life changing. But at the same time, I've got this disease where I can't internalize anything nice, only like anything nice being said. So I also just feel like it's bullshit well actually that's good that's good because it leads to my next question I don't really care how it makes you feel my question for you is you think Scorsese

would like me like think we could like hang out some me like have it would he like has said to myself yeah can you set up a dinner we're all four of us maybe No, no, you don't have to be there. It's fine. Definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so. Yeah, yeah. Take it from me. He would love you. I mean, in my experience, he's been incredibly generous and warm and likes it when people care about things. And that's the thing about him is that he's, and I think you'll probably agree with me that what makes him unique is that, well, first of all, he has a body of work that is unique. And I can't think of anybody who's made so many

like unimpeachably great films and then at the same time he just has spent his entire life championing other films and propping other people up and fighting for preservation and I mean he's probably done he's probably a more successful film preservationist than any other film preservationist who's ever lived. And so he's just like an impossibly giant figure and just the fucking greatest. I mean, you know, like, he's done everything. You know, like, the Age of Innocence is like, for me, like maybe the great tragic romance in film and, you know, that After Hours is maybe is maybe the best dark comedy and or King of Comedy. Goodfellas just like don't even bother, you know, like just, you know, or casino.

And yeah, it's just it's he's yeah, there's nothing left to say, but he's he's the greatest. Well, there is nothing left to say. We'll leave it there. But before we go, you have one final question for our yeah. Okay. Who do you think would win in a fight? Sheriff Sheriff Cross, King Payman or Bo's mom? If all three of them went head to head freestyle. Probably Bo's mom. Yeah. She's the right answer. She's really. Yeah.

She's almighty. But I I do want to say, I am a very big fan of this podcast and Chapo Trap House. I've been listening forever. And so I'm, I'm really, really happy to talk to you both. And and I hope to do it again. Absolutely. Ari, it really means a lot to me and Hasid, to hear that from you because like we have we have talked extensively among ourselves about how

much we love your movies and particularly Bo is afraid but like and then thank you for giving us opportunity to see Eddington to our listeners for when this comes out. Believe me when I tell you, the boy Ari done it again with Eddington. Believe me. You're not going to want to miss this one. Believe me. Eve is cooking.

Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for all your movies and for taking the time to hang out with us today. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. No, thank you. Thank you.