Fresh Air - Tom Petty / 'Reservation Dogs' Co-Creator Sterlin Harjo

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

We're revisiting our interview with Tom Petty, whose hits include "American Girl," "Breakdown," and "I Won't Back Down." The soundtrack of the new Apple TV+ series Bad Monkey is all Tom Petty covers. He spoke with Terry Gross in 2006. Sterlin Harjo, co-creator of the Peabody award-winning FX/Hulu TV series Reservation Dogs, is a 2024 recipient of the MacAathur "genius" award. Reservation Dogs is about a group of teenagers living on reservation in rural Oklahoma. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee and Seminole Nations and spoke with Terry in 2022. Justin Chang reviews the new film Anora by Sean Baker, director of Tangerine and The Florida Project.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tonya Mosley. If you've been watching the Apple TV Plus series, Bad Monkey, you've heard some great covers of Tom Petty songs, like this one. Well, I won't back down.

No, I won't back down. You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won't back down No I'll stand my ground Won't be turned around And I'll keep this world from dragging me down Gonna stand my ground And I won't back down That's Sharon Van Etten.

Tom Petty led the band The Heartbreakers, whose other hits include American Girl, Listen to Her Heart, Running Down a Dream, and Breakdown. The band's classic 1982 album, Long After Dark, was recently reissued. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the first year they were eligible in 2002. As a member of the band The Traveling

Woolberries from 88 to 90, Petty performed with several artists he admired like Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Roy Orbison. Tom Petty died in 2017 at the age of 66. Let's listen to a portion of the interview Terry recorded with him in 2006 when he had released a solo album of songs called Highway Companion. At the time, he was hosting his own show on the Exum Satellite Radio Network, and Terry asked him what radio meant to him as a kid. Everything. You know, I still see it as this really magical thing.

It was wonderful. I didn't have the money to have a vast record collection. So I learned everything really from the radio. And in the mid-60s, AM radio, pop radio, was just this incredible thing that played all kinds of music, you know, just you could hear Frank Sinatra right into the Yardbirds, you know, or the Beatles, into Dean Martin. It was just, it was this amazing thing. And I miss it in a way because music has become so compartmentalized now. But in those days, it was all right in one spot. And that's, you know, we used to learn, you know, when I was 15 or 16 playing in groups, we used to sit in the car and try to write the lyrics down as the song was playing and we'd

assign each person a verse. I'm going to do the first one and you go for the second one. And then sometimes you'd wait an hour for it to come on again so you could finish it up. What's the song you did that with? I'll tell you, the hardest one was Get Off My Cloud by The Stones. It had so many words. Oh, and fast too Yeah, and it took us a good three three hours to get that one written down, but It was that kind of thing. It was a friend, you know, we and it was something that was there

You didn't really think about it that much but looking back on it. It was It was such a musical education Well, I want to play another track from your new CD, Highway Companion, and this is a song called Down South. Is there a story behind the song? Yeah. A long time ago, I had done a conceptual record about

the South called Southern Accidents. This one was inspired by a book by a fellow named Warren Zanes had written this book about the South. And I read it and I was really impressed by it. And then I started thinking, well, you know, what if I, you know, I haven't been back there in a long, long time. I lived there, you know, 35 years ago and grew up there. But I went, you know, just kind of went back in my mind and a story started to kind of

develop and appear. And I'm not really sure who that character is is but I know part of it's me. And I wrote it, God, I wrote it kind of quickly. I wrote it, I wrote the lyrics out first before I did the music which is unusual for me. And then I searched for a long time to find music that created the right tonal kind of thing with the lyric and I had to find a melody that went with it. It took a little while to pull the whole thing together but it's one that I'm most pleased with from the record. Well, why don't we hear it?

This is Down South from Tom Petty's new CD highway companion Gonna see my daddy's mistress Gonna buy back her forgiveness They offer every witness. One more time down south, sell the family headstones, and drag a bag of dry bones, and make good all my back loans. the drive home that's down south from tom pty's new CD, Highway Companion. I want to ask you about a couple of lines in that song. You said you're not quite sure who the character is in it, but the song has, headed back down south, going to see my daddy's mistress, going to buy back her forgiveness.

Did you go back home to see your father's mistress, gonna buy back her forgiveness. Did you go back home to see your father's mistress? Is that part of the character, you? My father had many mistresses. I never made a specific trip to meet them. But my dad was a, he was hell on wheels, you know. He was quite a character. And he was hell on wheels you know he was quite a character and he was one of those people that was somehow remained likeable though he was really a cad you know but I you know I don't really know where that I guess the line just just popped into my head and seemed a good way to start it. Something I want to mention about the track that we just heard, you know it has that kind of jangly rhythm guitar that you play.

How did you start playing in that style? I don't know, it just appeared. I think we were inspired a lot by Roger McGuinn of The Birds and his 12-string playing. It was just something that came to me naturally and I kind of took it from there and I think we've developed it into our own thing. But I'm sure it comes back, you know, from the birds, from you hear that sound in a lot of early 60s records. The Beatles used it a lot, and Dylan used it. And between myself and Mike Campbell, our guitarist, we just make that sound when we play now. I'm not really as conscious of it as other people are, but it just kind of happens.

You grew up in Gainesville, Florida. I know, I think there's a branch of the University of Florida in Gainesville, right? It is there, the University of Florida, the whole thing. So were you in a college part of Gainesville or were you in a different part of town? No, I was in the Redneck Hillbilly part. I wasn't part of the academic circle, but it's an interesting place because you you can meet almost any kind of person from many walks of life because of the university, but it's really surrounded by this kind of very rural kind of people that are, you know, they're farmers or, you know, tractor drivers or, you know,

just all kind of game wardens, you name it, you know. So it's an interesting blend. My family wasn't involved in the college, you know, they were more of just your white trash kind of, you know, family. And so I have that kind of background, but I always kind of aspired to be something else. And I made a lot of different friends over the years that were passing through. What did your parents do for a living? Well, my mother worked in the tax collector's office as a clerk, and my dad had a variety of jobs, you know, from... At one point he owned the only grocery store in the black part of town, the only black grocery store that catered exclusively to black people and

so I used to go down there when I was quite young and I would, I was just put out in the back and so it was unusual to me that I'd play all day with black kids and then they'd bring me back to our little suburb that we lived in and it was all white kids. And then from there he did a whole line of different jobs of being an insurance salesman, a truck driver, all kinds of different things. Now you had an uncle, I guess this is a famous story in your life, because you got to meet Elvis Presley on a movie set when you were 11 through an uncle of yours who was doing something on the set, though I'm not sure what.

Yeah. Yeah, I had an uncle by marriage who was the kind of, he was very into film. He was the guy in town that developed all the film and he had a movie camera. He used to film the college basketball practices and football practices and when a movie came nearby as a lot of them did around northern Florida, he would usually hire onto the set and work in some capacity. And he was working on an Elvis Presley movie in 1961, I think, Follow That Dream was called. And I was invited there by my aunt, drove me down to see Elvis.

And I really didn't have much idea of who Elvis was. I was only 11. But we did indeed go there. And it was quite a circus, you know, a lot of, as you'd expect, mobs in the street, and he was just back from the army. But I didn't really talk with him. I mean, he just sort of nodded my way, you know. I was introduced by my uncle, so, you know, these are my nephew and my two cousins were with me, and he just, I don't remember what he said really, but I was very impressed by it. And when I went home, I kind of scoured the neighborhood and came up with some old Elvis records and I started listening to them and they really took me over. These were all 50s records and I had a friend whose older sister had gone to college and

left this beautiful box of 45s of rock and roll from the 50s. And I loved it. It just spoke to me. So how long did it take after that until you started to play something yourself? Well, the idea never dawned on me until I saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, like so many musicians did.

When I saw it, I didn't think you could just become a rock and roll singer. I didn't see how it could happen because you needed to be in a movie and have the music appear on the beach and stuff. So I didn't see how one would get that together. So when I saw The Beatles, it hit me like a lightning bolt to the brain that, oh, I see, you know, you have your friends and you all learn an instrument and you're a self-contained unit. This is brilliant, you

know, and this looks like a great, great job to me. And apparently it did to lots of people because very quickly after that, there were bands forming in garages all over town. And I was just one in thousands of little bands that started then in around 64, 65. Let me play another song that was, it's a great song and it was a very popular song of yours. Johnny Cash recorded the song late in his life and the song is I Won't Back Down, which you recorded in 1989.

I know it's hard to talk about writing songs, but is there a story behind this one? I wrote this song with Jeff Lin. We wrote it in the studio while we were mixing another song, and it came very quickly. And I was actually worried about it. I thought that it was maybe just too direct. I thought, well, there isn't really anything to hide behind here, you know, it's very bold and very blunt. There's not a lot of metaphor or anywhere to go. But I was encouraged by Jeff that, you know,

no, it's really good, you should record this and go ahead with it. And it's turned out to be maybe, you know, the one song that's had the most influence on people that approach me on the street or talk to me in a restaurant or wherever I go, or mail that I've gotten over the years. It's been really important to a lot of people in their lives. And I'm glad I wrote it. And I'm kind of proud of it these days. And I was very, very proud when Johnny Cash did it. Well, I won't back down No, I won't back down You can stand me up at the gates of hell But I won't back down No, I'll stand my ground Won't be turned around And I'll keep this world from dragging me down

Gonna stand my ground And I won't back down Hey baby There ain't no easy way out I won't back down Hey, I Will stand my ground And I won't back down

Well, I know what's right. I got just one line. You recorded that song just a couple of years after an arsonist burned down your house. The house was set on fire while you and your family were in it. Did your instincts kick in like they were supposed to when you realized that your house was on fire and that you and your wife and child had to get out of there? They kick in pretty fast, you know, when your house is on fire. Yeah, they kicked in really fast and it was a pretty horrific thing to happen and I did just survive with the you know the clothes on my back but I

I don't know, maybe you know that had something to do with the songs, like I won't back down in things, because I felt really elated that they didn't get me. That was the thought that was going through my head as well, you bastard, you didn't get me. I survived. But it's very hard to even believe that someone wants to kill you. It's a very hard thing to go through. And when the police and the arson people are telling me that someone did it, I'm just going,

well, surely there's a mistake. It must have been a bad wire. And they were absolutely sure there was a mistake, you know, it must have been a bad wire, you know. And, you know, they were absolutely sure there was no mistake. So the interesting thing about that is how many people called and confessed the following day. Oh, you're kidding. Really? You know, yeah, they were confessing from all over America. And it was like, you know, people in New Jersey would call and confess. Then I realized just how bonkers people are, you know. It's like there are some people that are really bonkers and you have to be careful.

But, you know, that was, you know, I never really talked about that much because it stunned me so so deeply and I'm sure it had a great effect on the music I did because I came back with this very positive happy kind of music that I didn't want to go into any dark corner or anything like that. I was just so glad to be alive and to have to have escaped something like that and you know it was also really traumatic and and and terrible but the part of it made me really be extra glad to just be alive. Well Tom Petty, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

It was nice to be here. Tom Petty spoke to Terry Gross in 2006. He died in 2017. After a short break, we hear from filmmaker, director, writer, and now MacArthur fellow, Sterlin Harjo. He co-created the popular TV series, Reservation Dogs, about a group of teenagers on an Oklahoma Indian reservation. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Molly C.V. Nesbitt, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terri Gross, host of the show.

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Listen to the NPR Politics podcast wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. Sterling Harjo, the filmmaker, writer, director, and co-creator of the hit TV series, Reservation Dogs, is a recipient of the 2024 MacArthur Fellowship, better known as the Genius Award. Harjo co-created Reservation Dogs with New Zealand director Taika Waititi.

Reservation Dogs is part comedy, part drama about teenagers on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma who want to break away from the reservation and all the dead ends it represents, while also finding reasons to stay. The characters face generational differences and the confusion of growing up between traditional and pop culture, the spirit world, and rap music. The series shows the importance of Native traditions while mocking how tradition can be turned into sanctimonious pop culture cliches. Harjo belongs to the Seminole and Muskogee nations, and he's made several independent

films and documentaries about natives in Oklahoma where he lives. In 2023, Reservation Dogs was awarded the prestigious Peabody Award and ended after three seasons. It's still available to stream on Hulu. Terry Gross spoke with Harjo in 2022. They begin with a scene from the first season. One of the teenagers, named Bear, has been planning to leave the reservation with his friends and start a new life in California. He's just been knocked down after being hit with paintballs by a rival group of teens, and when he opens his eyes, he sees an Indian warrior

from the spirit world mounted on a horse and dressed in the kind of traditional warrior clothes you'd expect to see in a Western. It's a funny scene, and the advice the spirit gives at the end is pretty good. Bear's played by Deferro Wunatai, and the spirit is played by Dallas Goldtooth. Ah-ho, young warrior. Looks as though you've tasted the white man's lead.

It's only paintballs. I've had many brothers and sisters meet the same fate in my time. Are you Crazy Horse or Sitting... No, no, no. I'm not one of those awesome guys. No, I'm more of your, uh... I'm more of your unknown warrior. Yeah, you know my name? William Knifeman. Ah, ah, ah!

I was at the battle of Little Bighorn. That's right. I didn't kill anybody, but I fought bravely. Well, I didn't actually fight. I actually didn't even get into the fight itself. But I came over that hill real rugged like, ah, ah! I saw Custer like that, that yellow hair. He was sitting there.

Sun of the morning star, that guy right there. Guy really hated him. So I went after him, but then the damn horse hit a gopher hole, rolled over and squashed me. I died there. This horse actually, holy s**t. And now I'm meant to travel the spirit world, find lost souls like you.

The spirit world, it's cold. My nipples are always hard. I'm always hungry. Got it. Being a warrior, it's not always easy. You and your thuggy ass friends, what are you doing for your people? It's easy to be bad.

There's hard to be a warrior with dignity. Remember that. In my time, we gave everything. We died for our people. We died for our land. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna fight for? Ahh!

I just f***ed with you. But for real though, listen to what I said. Marinade on that. Ah-hoo. I love that scene so much and I love this series. Sterling Hartrow, welcome to Fresh Air and thank you for Reservation Dogs. Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about coming up with a way to both satirize pop culture images

of Indians and also just come up with really comedic Indian characters, but also to create a sense of understanding of the importance of traditions. It's a lot to do all at once. Yeah, real quick, Terry. So I'm a big fan. I remember being in college, driving around listening to your show. And I think I'd made, or I was like attempting to write a film, I believe. And I remember thinking to myself,

I'll know I made it when I get on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. So thanks for making my dreams come true today. Oh, thank you so much for that. You made my day. Yeah. But yeah, you know, I think that that character in that scene is crucial.

And I think, you know, most most of the time people are very precious with Native people and this is no laughing matter and this is very serious and stoic and that's kind of how the world is trained to view us. And we realize that we need to bake in in this show like permission to laugh with us. And I think that that spirit character, he comes in at this moment in the pilot

and it's like if I asked most people in the world, draw a Native American, that's what they would draw. They would draw an Indian that was dressed in buckskins from the 1800s. They wouldn't draw me, they wouldn't draw any of the characters on the show. So it was almost like giving people some familiar territory and then turning it on its head.

And it allows the audience to say, okay, isn't this funny? We still think that native people are like this. And yeah, in history, some of us were like that, but isn't it ridiculous that we still think that they are? And so it gives people permission to laugh. I think it sort of welcomes them into Native humor and allows you to kind of get your footing

as you watch the rest of the show. Well, we're on the subject of permission. Yeah. I had asked you before we started, like, what word you like to use? Do you like to use Indian, Native American, indigenous, and the term that you don't wanna use is Native American. But some people say that, you know, as a white person,

like white people shouldn't use the word Indian. So before everybody kind of gets annoyed with me, or I get annoyed with myself, or you get annoyed with me, just help me out here. Like, what works? For me, I mean, look, I grew up, my grandma said Indian. So I'm not here to change what my grandma said. And it's what I know.

I'm sorry that Christopher Columbus got it wrong, but that's what we call ourselves, you know? And like, we also, I also say native and I say indigenous, just depending on where I'm at and who I'm talking to, those are all interchangeable to me. Native American's just a mouthful, I don't have to sit around, it just, you know, it wastes time.

All right, so the series is called Reservation Dogs, an homage to Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino's film. What did that film mean to you? And the sensibility that he created in it, which was really something new. So it came out when I was in college, and it was right as I discovered that I could be a filmmaker.

And there's something about Tarantino's love for cinema. It's like, that's the same thing as growing up as a native kid in rural Oklahoma. My father had a friend who worked for the cable company and that's the only way that we got cable. So I was able to watch movies for free because his friend hooked us up with a cable box that allowed us to watch HBO and Showtime.

So I was, I just became immersed in HBO and Showtime. So I was, you know, I just became immersed in like, in movies and pop culture. MTV was out at the time. And I don't know, like, I think that when you're from a rural community, you know, that's kind of how you live your life. You almost like live your life through movies and through pop culture.

And it just felt like the right, I mean, first of all, it's a catchy title, I'm not gonna lie, but Tyke and I came up with that. Absolutely, yeah. And then it was, well, if we're gonna have this show where these kids are living through and constantly referencing pop culture, like we have to tip our hat to the master of that. When you were growing up, were you growing up

on the reservation or near the reservation? Yeah, well, right now, there are, right now I live on the Muskogee reservation, which is part of Tulsa. Through a lot of complicated government policy and interactions with tribal governments that I can't go into because it'd be another show. It was not identified as a reservation before,

but it is now. But if you look at Oklahoma, it used to be an Indian territory, which was essentially one big reservation. It was, you know, and then of course oil and the land run and all, and other things disrupted that. But this is where Trail of Tears ended. This is where all of the tribes

that were forcibly removed by the US government, we were brought to Indian territory, which is Oklahoma now. So essentially it was one giant reservation. And you go an hour in any direction in Oklahoma, or 30 minutes in any direction in Oklahoma, you're going to be in a new tribal territory with different tribal languages

on the stop signs and on signage in the town, different culture, different customs. And I think there's something like 38 tribes here. So you grow up different when you're in Oklahoma as a Native kid. I didn't feel different actually. People know Native culture, people know who Native people are. And it's a very diverse state. I mean, I think that not a lot of people know about Oklahoma and the diversity here. And I don't know, it was something that I wanted to celebrate in this show, you know, growing up in Indian Territory, Oklahoma.

You know, in talking about the influence of pop culture on the characters, on the young characters in your show, and some of the older characters too, the younger characters are so influenced by black pop culture, by rap, their style of speaking. I found that very interesting. And I'm wondering if there were many black people where you were growing up.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it was mainly made up of white, native and black people and all of those cultures mix and collide and come together. The people in the show, they're not acting those accents. That's where they come from and that's how they talk. And as far as like rap being an influence on the culture, I don't know, I think like coming of age as rap was, reaching the height of popularity in rural Oklahoma

and being a native kid, we gravitated towards it. It gave native kids a culture and an identity that they could grab ahold of. At a time where our own identity was a bit lost and our own identity was less celebrated, we could grab a hold of hip hop. And that became something that we could identify with. Sterling Harjo speaking with Terry Gross in 2022. More after a break. This is Fresh Air. When voters talk during an election season, we listen. We ask questions, we follow up, and we bring you along to hear what we learned. Get closer to the issues, the people, and your vote at the NPR Elections Hub. Visit npr.org.

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Let's get back to Terry's 2022 interview with Sterling Harjo, the co-creator of the hit TV series Reservation Dogs. This year, he was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, better known as the Genius Award. So in this series, you know, dead loved ones return as ghosts. What are your experiences experiences with keeping up a relationship with, you know, family, friends who have died and you want to keep in your life. Were you brought up with the idea that they are still spirits or ghosts? You know, I think that part of growing up and with Muskogee and Seminole culture is death is such a part of our experience.

It's very community driven. Your cousins are like your brothers and sisters, your aunts are your extended parents. And you're close to your elders and everyone's a part of this tight community. And I was constantly at funerals. Someone was always passing away. And that is the big mystery and the big confusion.

I think for most people it's like, wow, like they're gone. And in the culture, you're taught that they're not gone and that you can still speak to them and talk to them. And there's ghost stories and things like that. But I just grew up with this sense of magic and there's a sense of like, we can communicate, we can reach people in other places and there's ceremonies for it and there's different things.

But I don't know, it's something that I'm fascinated with and I explore it as much as I can through my work. I mean, all of my films deal with death in some way. And if you look at season two, I mean, there's an episode that aired called Mabel that is about the character of Laura Dannen's grandmother passing away. And it's a whole episode about her dying.

And they're all at the house. I wrote it with the actress who plays Laura Dannen, Devery Jacobs, and it's based on my grandma, my grandma passing away. And like the whole community came together. We were all there. The family was there every night. We were with her and people would come in and sing songs

and funny things were happening outside and sad things and everything. Life was happening in this one house and that's what I try to show in this episode. So teenagers in your TV series, they want to leave the reservation and two of them actually get out and go to California, end up coming back.

What about you? Did you want to like get away? Because I know you're living back in Oklahoma in Tulsa and I Know you went to college in Oklahoma So did you feel this this push and pull between leaving and staying? yeah, I mean like you know like a lot of people I wanted to leave and art was kind of exploding for me. Like I always wanted to be an artist.

And when I got to college, I was kind of blown away with literature I'd never read and like music I'd never heard coming from rural Oklahoma. And I just like, it just kind of expanded my worldview and I wanted to get out and I wanted to travel. And then I did, I traveled and I went to Oregon and different places, New York. And what I came to realize, my grandma actually wrote me a letter

while I was living in Oregon. And in the letter it said, someday you should come back home and write about these Indian churches around here. And something about that, I was just getting into the idea of writing movies at that time. And something about that sentence that she wrote me

just clicked. And at that point I'd been missing it, and it is special. And I was really realizing how special it is. And I was like, you know, that when my grandma wrote me that, I was like, wow, no one knows about where I'm from. No one knows about the people that I come from.

You know, I moved back home. And I just like, it took me to leave to realize what I had at home and how unique it is and how much kept secret it is, you know, like it's such an interesting community that I come from. And I wanted to be back. Can you tell us something about your parents? Yeah, my parents, my dad roofed houses when I was young. Oh, oh, because one of your main characters learns to be a roofer and then bonds with

one of the people teaching him how. Right, and I've never seen that on TV, you know, or movies, something that took place on a roof like that. And like it was such a part of my uncle's roofer as my dad. My dad also taught martial arts since I was five. Did you learn how to fight? I did. I was a competitive fighter growing up.

At the age of four, I think there's video of my first fight. My dad still teaches martial arts to this day in rural Oklahoma. My mom worked for the tribe when I was young for the Seminole Nation. I then worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. What did you do in law? When she worked, she was a secretary for the chief of the Seminole Nation when I was young. You know, now what she does with the Bureau of Indian Affairs

is she kind of oversees, like, there was so much crookedness done towards native people, and land ownership, and mineral right ownership. There's all of this record and things that have gone on since then. And my mom works in helping people kind of trying to figure out if there's land that they own that they didn't know they owned or mineral rights.

She must be so proud of you. Oh man, my parents are so overjoyed about the show. My dad said something to me the other day after the first season came out. My dad one day said to me, he said, you know, you gave native people a reason to hold their head up. He's like, this show has given people,

native people, a reason to hold their head up a little higher. And I mean, like, you know, to hear my dad say that, it's like, that's better than any Emmy that I could get. And just to also see the amount of people that love this show, especially in my community, because that's who I made it for. I'm glad everyone loves it, but I made it for my community, native people.

And every year at Halloween, there's people that dress up in these like fake dime store, Indian clothing, and they are quote unquote Indian for Halloween. And we've all seen that growing up. We've all seen it. And my kids are gonna have to see it. But all of a sudden after season one,

people, kids started dressing up as the reservation dogs. So many pictures flooded in on social media of them dressed as the reservation dogs so many pictures flooded in on social media of them dressed as The reservation dogs it's something you didn't have when you were growing up, right? I didn't have that, you know and and it might have made some sort of difference if I had I didn't have that, you know, but I did what I did have was The best storytellers in the world

Sitting in my grandma's kitchen telling me stories about these amazing characters that were real and or not. And I just try to transfer that to this show and to all my work. S.S. Sterling Harjo, it's really just been great to talk with you. Thank you. Thank you, Terry. It's been great. For this interview. Thank you. Thank you, Terry. For this interview. Thank you for the series.

I really love it. Awesome. Thank you so much. Sterling Harjo speaking with Terry Gross in 2022. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews Anorah, the new film that won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. This is Fresh Air.

This message comes from Pushkin. In Revenge of the Tipping Point, bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell returns to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points and the dark side of contagious phenomena, available wherever books are sold and wherever you get your audiobooks. This message comes from the Open Book with Jenna podcast. Join the today's show, Jenna Bush Hager for inspiring conversations with celebrities,

experts and authors. Hear from guests like Stephen Colbert, Nicholas Sparks and more. Search Open Book with Jenna to follow now. How does the brain process memories? Why is AI a solution and a problem for our climate? What is leadership in 2025 and beyond? The TED Radio Hour explores the biggest questions and the most complicated ideas of our time

with the world's greatest thinkers. Listen now to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. This is Fresh Air. The new comedy, Anora, which won the top prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, opens in theaters this week. It's the latest comic drama from Sean Baker, the writer and director of Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket, and it stars Mickey Madison as a New York stripper who gets more than she bargained for when she marries the son of a Russian oligarch. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review. When Sean Baker won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for his new movie, Anora, he dedicated the award to all sex workers, past, present, and future. It was a fitting shout-out from a

director who put transgender sex workers front and center in his buddy comedy Tangerine, and cast Simon Rex as a scheming ex-porn star in Red Rocket. In film after film, Baker has sought to portray sex work honestly, with none of the usual judgments or stigmas attached. But he's also a master of comic chaos, and he loves telling stories about strivers and dreamers, and putting them in situations that can blur the line between hilarious and harrowing.

Anora is easily one of Baker's funniest works, and by the end one of the saddest. It's a film of unflagging comic energy and roiling emotion, both courtesy of its star, Mikey Madison, best known for her chilling supporting roles in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and the fifth Scream movie. She gives a dazzling star turn here as Enora, or Annie, a twenty-something exotic dancer at a high-priced Manhattan strip club. Baker plunges us right into this world of neon lights and bared flesh, but his view of Annie and her fellow dancers at work is more humorous and detached than titillating. It's a job, and Annie's very good at it, as we can see when she staggers home exhausted to Brooklyn every morning to catch a few hours of shut-eye.

Annie is flirty and disarming with her customers, but no nonsense with everyone else, especially the boss, Jimmy. In this scene, Annie is taking a meal break in the dressing room when Jimmy barges in. Annie, I got a kid who wants someone who speaks Russian. Jimmy barges in. Annie, I got a kid who wants someone who speaks Russian. You know, Jimmy, the girls and I have been talking and if your cousin doesn't start showing us some respect, we're not going to tip out anymore. Alright, I'll talk to him. Who are you talking about, the DJ?

Alright, seriously? I shared my playlist with him and he was very rude and dismissive. You're killing me. Let's go, come on. No, I'm not eating my food. That's why you have Tupper go. Come on. No, I'm eating my food. That's why you have Tupperware. I keep being frish. He's eating. He's a spender. That kid who needs a Russian speaker is a young man named Ivan, played by a terrific Mark Edelstein. Annie speaks a little Russian, she's Uzbek-American, and she and Ivan hit it off.

Before long, Annie is sleeping with him on the side for extra money, and judging by his parents' waterfront mansion in Brighton Beach, Ivan definitely has some extra money. He's the son of a Russian oligarch, and leads a life of hard partying, coke-snorting privilege. Impetuous and immature, he whisks Annie off by private jet to Vegas, where they tie the knot. It's a fairy-tale romance, until Yvonne turns out to be more frog than prince. Without going into too much detail, let's just say that back in New York, some men who work for Yvonne's father are none too pleased to hear that he's wed, in their words, a prostitute. From there, Anora morphs from a delirious screwball comedy into a full-on action movie,

starting with a nearly half-hour set piece that deploys violence in ways both funny and unsettling. Baker is playing with fire here, pushing the comic mayhem well past the point of comfort, and sometimes putting his characters, Annie included, in real danger. Yet you sense that Annie will make it through, and not just because of the grit and ferocity of Madison's performance. Baker has zero interest in making a movie, and there have been too many, where a female sex worker becomes collateral damage. When the cowardly Yvonne flees, and Annie and the other men sit out to find him,

Anora shifts again into a kind of madcap chase thriller, influenced by everything from Preston Sturges to The Three Stooges to Martin Scorsese's classic New York Nocturne, After Hours. It's a ragged and sometimes wearying experience, but it's also furiously alive, and with a real feel for the cultural mix of Brighton Beach. It's great to see the Armenian-American actor, Karin Karagulian, one of Baker's regular collaborators, pop up as one of the henchmen tailing Ivan. The Russian actor, Yura Borisov, packs some poignant surprises as a hired thug, who's kinder and more thoughtful than meets the eye. As for Madison, she makes Annie a richly complicated heroine, vulnerable, defiant, lovable, and exasperating. As frenetic as it is on the surface, Onura has an unmistakable moral undertow. This may be Baker's latest story of a sex worker, but it's also a tribute to workers

in general. His sympathies are forever with those just trying to do their job, whether it's the cleaners who show up early each morning to tidy up Yvonne's latest mess, or a hairy tow truck driver who nearly derails the plot. Perhaps that's why we feel so deeply for Annie. Even as everything around her falls apart, she's too hardworking and tough-minded to be waylaid by self-pity. She may be chasing an impossible dream, but that's what makes her one of the most vivid and memorable characters I've encountered this year.

Justin Chang is a film critic at The New Yorker. He reviewed the new film, Anorah. On Monday's show, Bridget Everett talks about her semi-autobiographical HBO series Somebody Somewhere. It's about a 40-something year old woman who returns home to Kansas to care for her dying sister, but feels like an outsider until she finds a place in the LGBTQ community, even though she's straight.

I hope you can join us. With Terri Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Dignity Memorial. When your celebration of life is prepaid today, your family is protected tomorrow. Planning ahead is truly one of the best gifts you can give your family. For additional information, visit DignityMemorial.ca. This message comes from EasyCater, helping organizations manage all their food needs with online ordering from restaurants people love, employee lunch programs, and tools to

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