Happy Sad Confused - Albert Hughes

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Albert Hughes was barely 21 when he co-directed MENACE 2 SOCIETY with his brother Allen. In the 30 years since he's charted a path sometimes alongside his twin (BOOK OF ELI, DEAD PRESIDENTS, FROM HELL) and in more recent years on his own (the new Peacock mini-series THE CONTINENTAL). What's consistent is his consummate craft and his passion and candid take on filmmaking. SPONSORS MOSH -- Head to ⁠moshlife.com/HAPPYSAD⁠ to save 20% off plus FREE shipping on your first 6-count plant based Trial Pack. DraftKings -- Download the DraftKings Casino app NOW, sign up with promo code HAPPYSAD, and new customers get a deposit match up to ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS in casino credits when you deposit $5 or more!   Check out the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Happy Sad Confused patreon here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! We've got discount codes to live events, merch, early access, exclusive episodes of GAME NIGHT, video versions of the podcast, and more! To watch episodes of Happy Sad Confused, subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Josh's youtube channel here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Happy, sad, confused begins now. I'm Josh Horowitz. Today on Happy, Sad, Confused. Imagine barely hitting 21 with a game-changing film that transforms culture like menace to society. What do you do next? Well, over the last 30 years, Albert Hughes has never taken the obvious path. A Jack the Ripper Tail courtesy of Alan Moore in From Hell, directing Denzel in a post-apocalyptic landscape in Book of Eli. And most recently, taking on the world of John Wick with the Peacock event series, The Continental.

Always been a fan of this man's work. And I know he loves dishing movies just as much as I do. I'm so thrilled to have Albert Hughes unhappy say I confused for the first time. Hey, man. Well, thank you. I wanted to be on because I saw you, whatever it was, a week and a half, two weeks ago, I forget. And you heard, you saw me in my most loopy, goofy state because I was jet lag. I felt connection.

It was a Joe Silver. Yeah, there was a connection because I go, oh, wait, he's funny. He's funny. He must have something going on other than this. And then you told me. I appreciate. Thanks, man. Perfect.

All right. Well, yeah, that was the amuse, bouch. Yeah, you can tell us, you know, I don't know about you. but you can tell if you're simpatico with somebody pretty quickly. I also were discovered in our research, in my research, I had the explanation. We're both April Fool's babies. I was born on April Fool's Day, too. Wow, I've never met one, really.

Maybe I have, but I don't remember recently. You had at least one, your brother, so now two. Oh, yeah, yeah, I met him at the same time. He was my wombate. Did you suffer, did that define you? Did you suffer all the stupid jokes that I did as a kid? Of course. But you know what's interesting about our birthday is that nobody forgets it.

This is true. And they also like, because you have a sense of humor, so I'm sure you can be goofy. And, you know, the word full is aptly applied to us, I guess. I'll take it. I'll take it. There are worse things to be called. That being said, you hear the same. Well, fat Albert.

I had to grow up with that too, fat Albert. And I was in fact. That's a rabbit hole. I was fat and I got a lot of a lot of consternation for that. But that's for the therapist session. That's not for today. All right. So look, I alluded to the long story history of you and your brother, but I do want to give

some folks in context before we dive into all sorts of different aspects of the career, including the Continental. So for the youngans out there that don't know the storied history, like I said, this goes back 30 years, menace to society, seemingly for a lot of folks like me, I'm 47. So this definitely hit me at the right time when you and your brother came around. Um, you guys exploded seemingly out of nowhere. Um, were you guys? I mean, I guess give me a little bit like the clip notes of the origin story. Were you destined for this? Like as, as kids, were you obsessed with film, knew this was the one true path?

Well, I think it starts. I mean, now I can psychoanalyze a bunch of stuff and go back in history. It's like, you know, April fools, fools, twins, growing up in Detroit, when you're twins, people poke and prod and want to touch you. they want to look at you. So I think that prepared us for Hollywood in a way because we were always looked at. So we were almost ready for it when the time came. But before then it was age 12. You know, my mother rented a video camera for us,

a 24-hour video rental. And it was that kind of video camera you had to attach it to the VCR and slide the VCR out and hold it in the pouch. And we were just goofing around, not knowing. And just we were such fans of behind the scene. like back then it was Superman the late 70s Richard Donner's

version of all the blue screen stuff and we always were more fascinated with the making of than we were the actual movies and then it rolled into our babysitter taking us to see a Raiders Law Stark with her boyfriend and I remember we were in a theater

like oh my god it's another like period piece oh God and then the boulder starts running and it just was non-stop like what the hell is this and that movie probably was the one that first had us think about movies not think about a professional sure but just think about the power of how much fun you can have in a movie or how much you can be moved um and then we were still continuing to do the home video stuff at that point our mother had bought a camera for her business we'd come from welfare and a poor background and she was this very intelligent smart woman that got herself into a position

of now she's a millionaire but won't admit it um so she would buy this stuff for her business she said because she would get tax write-offs. And she was like, this is my camera, it's the company's camera. You guys can use it, though. Years later, we found out it was never the company's camera. She just wanted us to respect it. So we continued and we started making stuff in middle school, elementary, middle school, high school.

High school, we had a public access station, and we had shows on that. My brother had a talk show. It was very much like Phil Donahue or Oprah Winfrey. Then it gets into the nuts and bolts of how we got into music videos, which we never were intending to do. We always thought we were going to be movie makers. And we didn't realize that it was possible. I think subconsciously because of the brown skin, we didn't think it was possible for us to be in the business.

Until we saw Spike Lee and Robert Townsend, they both around the same time came out of the movie. One was, she's got to have it. The other was Hollywood Shuffle. And we go, oh, this is possible. So I'm trying to make a long story. short. Well, and I'll help guide you along. So like you do, you, you, you, you earn some acclaim in the music video side.

I'm curious, like, how, like, did you have heat on you by the time you were trying to get menace to society made? Were you going to studios? Were you doing the whole water, you know, water cooler tour? Well, we, we had apex in music videos where everybody in the music business knew our names, right at the time that we would have parlayed that into a big music video career. This was back when music video was. were very low budget, particularly for hip-hop, like $30,000 a piece, $40,000 a piece.

But we got into that because Tamara Davis, a woman who was a director at the time, who'd done hip-hop videos and done movies like CB4, helped us put together reels and shopped them around to different companies. And Hollywood Records was the first one to give us a music video, a guy named Chris LaSalle, who was A&R. And we did our first music video, and then it just, we did like 20 or 25 from 18 and a half, 19 to late 19

we did 20 music videos and we had been developing menace the script men's society now at the same time we didn't get those music videos without having the real was my short films

from Los Angeles City College film school and they were super eight one was called the drive-by one was called Menace to Society unrelated to the movie but it was my brother's idea

to take that title and put it on the script right then we started passing out the script to various people if you get it made you can be the producer and a couple of our line producers for our music video and we got an agent sent it out we got rejected um time and time again um but somebody at new line took interest at it and at that time we had just done only music videos and we'd done one

one episode of america's most wanted that we were trying to hide from everybody because it was horrible because it was the first time we dealt with acting and so uh bob shay gets bob shay was running the owner of New Line gets the script because the executive on the West Coast didn't want to meet with us about the script but wanted to meet with us about the Last Dragon Part 2. There was an executive

on the East Coast that liked the script that was a threat to this guy so he had to give it to Bob Shea, right? But before we were even given the opportunity to do the movie the agent says when you go in, don't talk about menace. Hear them out on their pitch for Last

Dragon Part 2. And my brother and me We drove there. We parked on a street because we couldn't afford to ballet. And my brother looks and he says, fuck that. We're going to talk about menace. We're not doing that goddamn Last Dragon part two. So we go in and repitch it. Then it gets put on Rika and Reed.

Then Bob Shea greenlights it but says, hey, before I green light this, I hear you have an episode of America Most Wanted. We want to see. And we thought, we're over. We lost it. Sorry. We watched it. It's gone.

But to his credit, you've got to look at the history. of New Line. They give a lot of people. They were like what Roger Foreman used. I was just thinking about that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like you look at PTA back in the day, the late 90s, early 2000s, New Line was the place. Huffin brothers. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So they were, they knew what they, they knew their niche. They knew that they were going to get the up and comers, you know. So when you look at and you think back to those days on the set of menace and you taught, you alluded to this of kind of like before that, just learning how to direct actors or work with actors. I mean, that film was like a jolt of. of energy, a jolt of lightning. And that often happens when folks are just, like, ready to burst with creativity right out of the gate. It seems like that's where you guys were. Do you see, like, when you look back at that film, do you see the mistakes or do you see, like,

just like the energy pouring out of you guys? The idea is just hurtling out of you guys. Well, that's interesting question, because I think we were shocked by the response because we thought it was a piece of shit. It was a response we had hoped from the movie that we had hoped to have made, right? not having any reference point for what you go through and edits and shoot days three days in we thought our career is over we're just going to we're going to sleep walk the rest of this although i didn't understand back that i prepared everything i prepared better than most directors okay the town is built for dysfunctional directors let's be honest okay and i didn't know i prepared so well so and that's a product of like you know those bad nightmares and not having your homework um and also i had a drawing background my mom was brumming me for so um when we saw it

we were like, we didn't understand it. We didn't understand the response. We were quite in shock for years. And five years later, I looked at it. And it's too, it's pointing to something you said in your question. It was like, oh, I get it now. There's an energy here. It's not necessarily like, I can see all the warts and bumps and bruises and all that stuff too.

But there's an energy here that you can't replace because it's, it's about 20-year-olds made by 20-year-olds. Literally, we were 20, the cast was 20. And there's this hip-hop, angsty, anger, and, you know, irreverence and all kinds of stuff going on that's from the generation we were coming from and we're coming from hip-hop videos so we were actually quite angry and we made the movie like we were mad we had a chip on our shoulders we were goofy and funny like silly funny you know um while we're doing a violent scene we'd call cut and we just start goofing off with the cast but there was a lot of angst in us and there was a lot of angst i think in that neighborhood and in the cast and now i

understand the only thing i understand is the energy of it i don't understand or ever fully comprehended what it is that people see. So you don't have like a handle on the legacy of that film because it's not yours anymore. It's kind of like it's been taken up by a generation and it's. Yeah. And you got to parse it out in different ways. It's like, you know, there's black exploitation films I love, you know. Sure.

There's exploitation, you know, white exploitation films I love too, which is, you know, whatever it may be. And they're flawed, but they're embraced as something, you know, like, I love the Mac. You know, I love Superfly. Superfly is a very flawed movie. You know, the sound mix is very flawed. Not the soundtrack is genius. But the looping of the background,

Walla, walla, it's like a three-second loop in some of those scenes, right? And the technique is not all that great. The Mac is a better made film, but I love them both equally in a way, you know? Got it. How did you handle success? Yeah, yeah, I got you.

How did you handle success? You guys went to Canon with Menace, didn't you? I could only imagine, what must have been like, we're 20, 21-year-old guys again, just like, who has their shit together at that age? Nobody that I know. I certainly didn't. So did you handle it well? Did it get to your head? I mean, give me a sense of what you were like back then. I think we handled it well considering we were still quite angry in kind of volatile, not volatile in bad ways, like physical, but our mouths were unfiltered. I think the media loved that. They tried to put us in media

training it didn't work it was before twitter so it was fun for them um i think the most mind-blowing thing was being in can and walking down the promenade and being jet lag and someone gave us the transcript of ciscoll and eberd reviewing the film and we're reading it blown away because we grew up in these guys and they're saying nice things about us and then there's a tap on our shoulder and it's iber and he wants a picture with us and that's when it kind of hit us like oh things are about to change yeah you just went through the looking glass you're in you're in the dream now Yeah. Yeah. And what about the fact is it's more. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. Well, I was going to, I was going to say, I heard you in another interview talk about this, like how a lot of folks wanted to group you in with, you know, other black filmmakers of that generation. And you guys really resisted that. You didn't want to be defined by your race and grouped with other folks. And part of that probably also had to do with your age at the time and wanting to define yourselves as something all your own. But I would imagine that's a complicated thing because also it must have been you just talk about like, you know, getting the props from Ebert,

it must have been a gas to like get props and be associated with these amazing filmmakers that you grew up with that you were revered. So like, is there a push and pull of like, we want to do our own thing, fuck that? And also like, oh wait, this is amazing. Like Scorsese wants to have a conversation with me, et cetera. Like, yeah, it was all that, you know,

I think we were raised in a way that prepared us for a lot of it and some you can't prepare for, you know. The comparisons we knew right away, we were never going to be photographed with the so-called black filmmakers. They would always label a black filmmakers. Then we were like, well, how come we don't talk about spillwork and Jewish filmmaker with another Jewish filmmaker or an Italian filmmaker Scorsese? Sometimes you'll see the odd story about him and Coppola, to be fair, the Italian-American ones, right? But we knew that we had to separate ourselves. Right.

And I think it was a very conscious thing. And it came from hip-hop, too. It came from like beasts in battle, but not real. not a real beefer battle. It was just like making your mark and also being biracial. It's like you guys are also forgetting, you know, the media that we're half Armenian. We're not just half black or half Armenian, which some could translate as being half

white, whatever you want to translate it as being, but half our culture would be rejected. Hey, Michael. Hey, Tom. Big news to share it, right? Yes, huge, monumental, earth shaking. Heartbeat sound effect, big. Mink is bad. that's right after a brief snack nap we're coming back we're picking snacks we're eating snacks we're

raiding snacks like the snackologist we were born to be mates is back mike and tom eat snacks wherever you get your podcast unless you get them from a snack machine in which case call us are you looking for a movie review show where the critic is at the top of his or her game meticulously breaking down and explaining exactly why a film does or does not work? Well, good luck with the search. Because we're having fun here on Adam does movies. Each and every week, I hit the big blockbusters, I cover the streamers,

and I even toss in some movie news for fun. Check out the show on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube. And hopefully, we can do movies together. Hot. And it was a culture that really raised us, you know, even though the streets or the nature versus, nurture a lot of that was about black culture raising us too you know sure um so it's very confusing but uh being a biracial kid you know how to parse that out pretty well because you're always an

outsider you're never fully embraced by either side and you're uh you you have this weird sense of studying human behavior and what you want and what you don't want on our life and you also have a chip on your shoulder like being black you already partly in this business have a chip on your shoulder but being having a biracial chip on your shoulder that's a different chip all together. So you do dead presidents with your brother. You do from hell in 2001 with your brother. I'm a big fan of that one. People should check it out. As I mentioned before, it's based on the infamous great Alan Moore's work, Donnie Depp's in that one. I was interesting. When I was reading, about it i was reading some other casting what ifs is it true that you guys did you guys go after

daniel lewis sean connery did you ever come close on other of those guys i think definitely daniel was in of course he's on everybody's list right so maybe past the mid 90s right that you know that that that that pipe for him goes away quite quickly sean connery was literally signed and going to be in it and there was some behind the scenes things that went on that i I don't want to throw anybody under. And I don't want to speak ill of a person who was passed. But it wasn't the right fit for us. So we moved on.

Okay. Didn't vibe. Fair enough. Okay. What was the, I mean, what was the attraction of that at the time? And was that, by that time, had Alan Moore totally, I mean, he's infamously disassociated himself with every adaptation of his work. He, like, it's so anti-Hollywood.

It's not even funny. Yeah. But I also think that's part of his, like, mystique he's building because the truth is you know dude build it in your contract if you don't want to stuff that if you're that great of a power and the what do you call it

graphic novel game you know stop stop doing that but it's it's what he uses that to kind of like you know to build his little legacy and mythology behind him I think it's bullshit and I think it's unfair to a lot of filmmakers that do make them and I think it's not cool that he does that put it in your contract

you don't want to mean in a movie period right end of story right he is a fantastic writer, okay, that is not to be denied. And that was, we did dead presidents. That was owned by Disney, that project. I think after they saw dead presidents, we don't want these guys making another gross fest. I mean, just, just you throw that away, just like that Disney made dead presidents. That is a sign of the times of where we are then versus now. Well, yeah. And they wanted us badly. There was a history behind how we got there. And it's like Michael Eisner, after he saw our first music video, wanted us at Disney.

under another shingle so we can do our thing. They fumbled the ball, the people beneath them. A Time magazine article came out about us when Menace dropped, and he came into a boardroom. We said, I thought I told you guys to sign them two years ago or a year and a half ago. Now look what happens. Get them at all cost. So they got us at all cost.

We make that movie. We're insecure while we're making it because it's the Disney parent company, and we're making it for Joe Roth and Roger Burnbaum, who had, it wasn't Spike Glass, So it's caravan pitchers. And the only way they can get us to do it is by saying we can protect your rated R. Right. Yada, yada.

So then after that, that's over. My brother says, hey, there's this really good project called from hell. You tell me about it's about Jack the River. I'm like, cool. And we're consciously thinking now, again, it's this race thing. Black filmmaker. What are the black filmmaker going to do? Well, let's go 180 on them.

Let's just do a normal movie. And it was very calculated, and we did it for a reason. We liked it a lot. There was no doubt. But then it bounced from there to New Line to Fox in a course of three and a half years. And I thought it was going to be made like our only experience of making the movies is they happen right away. You don't wait forever. Our first movie happened overnight.

Our second one we got rushed into. This third one surely is going to happen within six months. So meanwhile, I'm doing all the Jack the Ripper research, reading all the books, watching all the movies, not knowing that we're going to get bounced around in development hell. and by time we get ready to make it, I know about the same as the riparologist that they call them. Like all the theorists that online,

back then they had their own chat board. I was pretty well versed, even to the point where when I was in the east end of London, I would see a tour group going around with a guide showing all the murder locations and talking about the details. And I was like, well, he's wrong about that. There's new information.

But I knew all the up-to-date information. So by time we got to make it, I was able to replicate all the murderable locations more accurately than it had been done in the past. What about in terms of... And that was a big geek thing, me. And what about in terms of, look, again, from the first film, we can see that you guys have technique pouring out of you. Like, you know your way with a camera. You know what to do. In terms of working with actors, as you start to work with these, quote, movie stars, was there a learning curve?

Even by the time, like, from hell, you'd made a few movies. But now you're working with, you know, Johnny Depp, who's freaking Johnny Depp. Like, did you kind of know how to treat and adapt to different kinds of talent like that? Yeah, I mean, it's a different poison for each person, you know, excuse the expression, you know, if they're up-and-comers. You usually have more traumas than things with up-and-comers who are trying to emulate, like, the method or whatever the fuck it is. They're the influence by, right? They're the ones that are usually bringing more trauma. But then you have the star power that sometimes can bring their own set of issues.

We learned very early on to separate the duties. Alan would talk to the actors. I would deal with the crew in prep, you know, and the camera. And we learned that through an experience on Menace where there was a blowout between me and an actress. And I wasn't great at communication, and I was very introverted and shy. I still am, but I know how to play the part of an extrovert now a lot better.

Alan was more the extrovert. So when you're dealing with something like Johnny or, let's say, Denzel, or Gary Oldman, they all have their different things. But the one thing about Johnny is he spoiled us because he was such a sweetheart. He was just the most giving guy and so supportive. And he had a back issue. And I remember we had to do this thing

where he fell back in the chair and were in take two. And my brother and I were like, Johnny, let's just call it a day. We got what we need. But are you guys happy? Are you happy? If you're not happy, let's do it again. Like, okay, Johnny. So he would do it again.

And he would have his way where some people can get like a cantankerous and obstinate and, you know, badly behave when they're trying to tell you something. We were doing, because we hadn't shot in so many years. And sometimes we don't know the ways of a set because we, be honest, we weren't on many sets professionally, right? Even up that, at that point. So we're doing this wide shot over and over and over again.

And he's squatted down next to a body taking notes. And he goes, during a middle one take, he looks at the camera, he goes, you think you guys got it? And that was his way of telling us like, you know, come on, you guys. Let's move on. But he did it in his very fun way, you know, very funny way. So by the time of Book of Eli, which I think that's the last film that you guys collaborated on you and your brother, correct? That's 2010.

Another big gap, but, you know, a really solid flick. I mean, Denzel in action mode, he hadn't done even that much action by them, but that was just like a pretty bravora performance from him. This is a guy that, like, you know, he doesn't suffer fools. You need to bring it with Denzel. You can't, you know, just wing it. You know, I've heard stories about, like, you talking about how sometimes you, you and your brother weren't able to kind of hide friction on set. If you disagreed, the actors would see it.

And maybe that's not the best look sometimes. How did you handle that by the time of Book of Eli? How did Denzel handle it when he saw you guys maybe not being in sync? He handled it very well. And he said something sweet at a rap party one day goes, the reason why I did the movie is to see you guys work together again. And I thought that was really sweet. And he saw some pretty ugly stuff.

You know, because at that point, my brother and I were starting to fracture in real time in front of people, you know, and it wasn't a, it wasn't a pretty scenario, let's say, and he handled it like a professional, you know, he would either just walk away or smile, you know, from afar and let it play out, because a lot of times when my brother and I would fight it, it wasn't as serious as it looked. On that one, I think they, they appear the way they did in the past, but they were quite, there was quite a fissure. And I, um, I think, I think that's when we we knew that was our last movie together. I mean, in our hearts, we knew that.

Because we just were seeing eye to eye with how to make a movie, showing up on time. I'm always been a guy like I just respect it. I'm not trying to throw my brother under, but like I just respect the crew's time. I don't like going into overtime. He has a different way of working. It was mostly, I think, working methods.

And then there's twin stuff thrown in there. you know a bunch of other stuff but out of that came a lot of fun i mean gary oldman was very very fun to watch work because he and denzil have two styles they they both people presume come out of method and they both kind of do yeah gary much more in the past was a real hardcore method actor but when he'd get upset he'd yell at the clouds he wouldn't yell at anybody he was the sweetest man if you did a read-through you know those read-throughs everybody goes half half speed right gary oman goes one knows one speed 110 he does 110 i love it i love it the low point in my career my early career i used to do sketches for mtv in addition to my like straight interviews

and it was one of those things where um we had um got in team oldman to agree to him doing a comedy sketch unfortunately no one told gary so he walks in the room and i have like literally a pinata up all this shit up and he walks in he couldn't have been sweeter but was basically just like in that whisper voice like what are we doing and like it was just it crushed me because there's no one I review more than Gary Oldman and in the years since that's a sketch and you should have recorded that if you recorded that you got yourself Albert I will never look at that tape I will never look at that tape since then he's done the podcast we're good but that was a that was a dark moment so by by then you look I'm talking to you from Prague this is home for you um I didn't realize

until you know talking to you the other week that you've made your home there for about what at least 20 over 25 years right so was part of that loosely okay so was part of that to kind of look I mean did you want to disassociate get out of the game so to speak I mean to stay in the game but not be in the game was that part of it well I mean you know not to be presumptuous or to compare myself with someone but I can understand Kubrick moving to London and never wanting to fly never wanting to fly I got some arguments with that but I understand um it's just the same separation from American culture that I needed. And it has more to do not with his reasoning. My reasons is, you know, there's some weird stuff going on in that country, especially when you're brown or a woman or any other person of color. And I recognize it at three, not three, at five. I smelled something wasn't quite kosher. And I was like, in my whole life, I'm like, this ain't. There's something not right. And I vowed never to come back to Prague after I shot from hell because I had some problems with the working environment here, more so than the culture. I got some issues with the culture, post-communist kind of attitudes.

But it was a freeing experience, and I don't want to be corrupted by being around American culture where I'm constantly reminded that I'm brown. I may be running out of brown in Europe, but they don't have this deep-seated, weird history with it. They could be racist. They could be genuistic. They could be nationalistic, all that other stuff. But once they sit down and get to know you, they're cool.

I've never been beat up by their cops. I've never been pulled over by their cops. I've never been pickpotted. You can get pickpocketed easy anywhere, by the way. But I've never been roughed up and mishandled by Europeans. Not to say that it can't happen, but it doesn't happen to the frequency it happens in America. Goodbye summer movies, hello fall. I'm Anthony Devaney.

And I'm his twin brother, James. We host Raiders of the Lost Podcast, the Ultimate Movie Podcast, and we are ecstatic to break down late summer and early fall releases. We have Leonardo DiCaprio leading a revolution in one battle after another, Timothy Salome playing power ping pong in Marty Supreme. Let's not forget Emma Stone and Jorgos Lanthamos' Bagonia. Dwayne Johnson, he's coming for that Oscar. In The Smashing Machine, Spike Lee and Denzel teaming up again,

plus Daniel DeLuis's return from retirement. There will be plenty of blockbusters to chat about, too. Tron Aries looks exceptional, plus Mortal Kombat 2, and Edgar writes, The Running Man, starring Glenn Powell. Search for Raiders of the Lost Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times. And I'm Paul Shear, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

We come together to host Unspooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits. Fan favorites, must-season, and case you miss them. We're talking Parasite the Home Alone. From Greece to the Dark Night. So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure. Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to hit the follow button. And I just wanted to go through life that if I'm going to be looked at for being different, I want a different energy.

Right. You know, I don't want that. We fixed everything over here. Everything's good now. You can come back. Oh, you have no speaker. There's no speaker of the house. Apparently.

Besides that and the fact that Trump's going to win again, we're fine. It's going to be fun. We're fine. Oh, God. That's another rabbit hole. That's not going to talk about that. Yeah. Okay, it's official.

We are very much in the final sprint to election day. And face it, between debates, polling releases, even court appearances. It can feel exhausting, even impossible to keep up with. I'm Brad Milkey. I'm the host of Start Here, the Daily Podcast from ABC News. And every morning my team and I get you caught up. on the day's news in a quick, straightforward way that's easy to understand with just enough context so you can listen, get it, and go on with your day. So, kickstart your morning,

start smart with Start Here and ABC News, because staying informed shouldn't feel overwhelming. We should give some love to the Continental. You did a great job with this one, man. This is a three-part, I don't know what the event series, what we're calling this, This is, for those that don't know, a bit of a prequel from the John Wick world, some backstories that were illuminating on some key characters. From what I gather in talking to you and what I've heard you speak about, I mean, I get why this was appealing, but tell me why this is appealing. This feels like just like a fun, like you can really like flex some muscles, let loose in a really cool environment and just kind of show off in a good way. Talk to me about like what boxes does this check for you? It was that. It was like coming out of COVID and everybody kind of stressed out and I go, well, I don't want to do any serious topic. I don't want to deal with slavery. I don't want to deal with generational trauma, intercity gun violence, you know, been there, done that. Let me go have some fun. And I think the audience was to have fun. I didn't realize I would have that much fun, though. I loved all the John Wick movies. And I thought this was an interesting story. But I thought it was for me at my point in my life, a checkout. Like, where you're just like, I'm just checking out. And let's see.

see what happens and what it did for me was it um like when it comes to like filmmaking it was kind of this exuberance that came out of me of you know sometimes you can watch a film for fun and you can see the filmmakers having fun and then you can see that same filmmaker go do a very serious topic and you can tell it's not a fun topic but they have their their thing going to in that film but there's no sense of joy right in it um they're they're just telling the story the best they can with the tools that they have if they're very skillful, you know, as a filmmaker like Alfonso Caron, let's take, for instance, like the difference between him on Harry Potter and Roma. Those are same guy, two different feelings, I'm sure, you know, and I wanted the fun, the funny bone, whatever you call it. And I didn't expect

the kind of the exuberance of the word I never used. It's actually a word that's quite silly, but the exuberance from the crew, the cast, and it just was infectious. And for people to understand, like sometimes I think they take some filmgoers take even WIC too seriously or to take the show too seriously it's like no it's meant to be popy and campy in a very elevated way you're meant to have fun the premise is quite silly in the most glorious way in a way you know it's like if you buy into this world of assassins and this kind of parallel universe then you're in for a fun ride it's also ironic to me that like like you're playing to a degree in someone else's sandbox yet this gives you so much freedom in a way you're locked in in a certain way but you're also able to kind of like make your 70s new york stylized action film that not many people get to make nowadays that's interesting because you would think you know like i i would never want to playing another man or woman sandbox that's just a hard and fast rule of my brother and i have always had but then i started thinking about but I think I may have brought this up to you too,

like Noah Hall in Fargo. Mandelorian with John Favreau and Tony Gilroy more recently with Andor. I go, oh, it can be done. I didn't expect that I would, I feel like the chains were off in a way. Like there was no appropriate committee telling me you can or can't do this or put this in because that's coming out in four or that was in three. It was just like free reign.

And what's wonderful and weird about the, John Wick world is that it just eats up oddities. It wants all that odd, wild stuff. Yeah, yeah. It embraces the eccentricities. Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wants seen, chewing, all that kind of good stuff. You can't get away with this stuff in any other move. That's, you can tell, like, if you're going to psychoanolize a Chats to Hellskey, why he hasn't left the series? Because it's probably constraining to him to do something else. Totally. What are your own pet peeves or loves right now in action? I mean, I was, I was raised on action and I feel like I'm like desensitized and like so little works for me nowadays.

Like I, if I had a nickel for every time I watch action, I'm like, where the fuck am I? Just show me where I am in the scene. Like I, geography kills me nowadays. And so few filmmakers know how to do it. What are your own, what are your loves, your hates in action now? Well, it's the, it's the obvious one that obviously Chad and I shared because around the time of Book of Eli, I didn't know that he and David wanted to be coordinators on that. And he reminded me like, no, we, we interviewed for them. I'm like, oh, my God, I wish I hadn't known.

I look like an idiot now. No, it was my big thing was the early odds. I won't name the filmmaker you know it was a series of films with all this handheld bullshit, rapidly edited, where it was just close-ups and sound effects. And I think Chad's response to that and my response was quite the same. Book of Eli, you see it, you know, there's a wide shot moving slowly. He destroys all the bad guys.

So geography is one thing, and geography could be taken care of if you settle on the wider shots with your actor actually in it. If it's a more sprawling, like sometimes I think Mission Impossible does a really good job, and some of those Bond films do a really good job on geography

because they have the best doing it, you know, the best action directors, the best second units, you know, and they actually know how to service an action audience. Then you have all those in-between films who don't. And it's either the director or the second unit or the action director. It's a combination of like one,

one element is pulled out, it can all be a house of cars that falls. But if you have a filmmaker who's very conscious of things that you're talking about, like, I don't want the audience feeling this way. I saw, I'm not going to name the filmmaker again, but it was one of those series in the early odds where it was a car chase and it was handheld, shaky, shaky, shaky. And then the car chase ended by a car flipping, and the car wobbled to a stop. It was stopped. And then the camera, two beats later, went like this.

I'm like, oh, my God. Like, why? Why? So that's my big pet peeve. I hear you. I'm with you. Okay, so you did, look, from hell is a graphic novel comic adaptation. You haven't done, unlike many filmmakers, a comic book film, necessarily a superhero film. I read an old interview with you where you mentioned that, like, Batman was actually

offered to you guys at least once way back in the day. It was Superman's and Backman's. I don't know why out of the first movie they were, the town was very nice to us. And we're thinking we could handle that. But I'm so happy we would have messed it up. Did you have a take on either one? Did you, yeah. No, not at all.

We knew that was a bad situation for us that don't even step into it. We're going to ruin that movie. We didn't have the skill set. We didn't have the wherewithal. We, you know, that old Clint Eastwood line, a man's got to know his limitations. We knew our limitations. Now, cut to nowadays, like I've been, I've been in time. talks with the obvious studio about superhero movies a couple of times, but I always felt

uncomfortable because I knew it was a system. And they're very nice, and I went through a long process. In fact, I broke down, I still have this from a year and a half ago where I broke down all their movies, put them in a spreadsheet, and broke down the box office, the Ron Tomato scores, were the BFX. I ranked the BFX. I had to do a deep dive on them. And I got very halfway not very close halfway through the process and I go nah I would implode from kind of

the controlled nature of that world and not being able to do what I do and I don't understand I wouldn't understand why a real filmmaker would want to be in that system I would understand why up-and-combers would which they do a good job of like finding people at the right time but I think I would implode

and there wasn't one character I was interested in all the others I really weren't and there were two other operations I just know. It's a bad, a bad situation. You never want to be somewhere. You're not truly wanted, you know. You're not truly wanted for what you do. Does it rhyme with, with Glade? Does it, that smells, that smells like it's on the right trail. Nailed it. Nailed it. Fian of that character. We love that character. But you're saying, like, within the parameters, you couldn't do what you do best, you felt. I think there's a thing that,

rarely talked about in Hollywood when it comes to the difference to me there's a difference between a director and a filmmaker a filmmaker it's all encompassing what their their touch is on that film that's a filmmaker to me and there are filmmakers like well a producer can be a filmmaker too you know a cameraman is a filmmaker you know but a rock star cameraman right a director is the one who just comes and calls action and leaves and doesn't really checks in and they edit every once in while you know you've seen a million of those so if you're getting hired for you and what you do and what you bring. I've been in this situation more recently where I started getting poked and prodded and I'm like, oh, they didn't really want what I do. I was checking a box

for them and this is not going to work out and it didn't work out. I had to quit that job. I smelled it pretty early and I'm like, no, I'm not here for this. I love that you that you literally have a chart. So that was like when you were like really seriously considering getting involved. And you're like, let me really like think about this meticulously how it succeeded or hasn't for other folks and if it would work for me. And like that's a degree of like research you did, not even just into the project. Well, this came out of like what this did for me is like know who your daddy is. Your daddy has never failed that the producer who does this is the most successful producer in Hollywood history with the most successful studio in Hollywood history. Right.

So if I'm going to walk into that, you have, I have to. drop my ego and go, are you ready for this? Like, that's daddy. And daddy's going to have some wants. And so that was a process I had to go through, you know. What about way back when I was always, one of those projects that no one's been able to crack yet is Akira. Did you, did you have a lot of love for Akira? Was that, was that a sadness that that's in and come together? I was deep. The dirty little secret on there is they tried it many times. They were nine million dollars in by time I got on. I had another three on the project. So they're in 12 right now, right? I had a production.

what do you call it, a production designer, a whole office, pre-biz. And it all came down to, you know, it's this BS stuff in town like, oh, the right casting. It's like, well, Akira is the name. It's the IP. But they just weren't, they were scared to make it, and you could smell it after a while. You know, it's like, well, why did you get me involved? This was after Book of Eli would when Warner Brothers opened up the vault. And they said, what do you want? I said, I want to cure it. And so I was on that for a little under a year, and I started smelling it.

the roses of the coffee. I'm like this. They're not really ready to make this. They're using the excuse of casting, but that's BS, you know. And then, you know, the white washing thing comes into play, like, are we going to hire Asian actors or white actors? And like, you know what, I'm not trying to get involved in all that.

Like, I'm fine with doing the original, the way the original needs to be done. And I think the IP is bigger than anyone actor. But at that time, that was 2010-11. Right. when we got and I did some really cool previous though I had some fun doing that and redesigning the bike redesigning the bike and the funniest story comes out that I had to go to BMW in Munich and sit down with an American guy who's their head kind of concept designer

and me and him get into a rumble like we're literally arguing with each other because he's trying to introduce this new technology that he's trying to put into the vehicles and I'm like no this is what I want right here I just want your emblem like can you just sign off on this because I went so he's put his dick on the table and in my dicks on the table. I'm like, fuck this. I get up and I walk out the production design. Albert, they go back in there, just calm down.

I go, but this guy trying to put some bullshit on it's because he wants to sell some other motorcycles that have nothing to do with the movie. Right. And then he starts insulting the concept art. And I'm like, okay, I've had it. I'm out of here. This is the last time I have a German talk down to me. You're not even German.

Literally every actor in Hollywood was associated with that project. Did you have, like, who was your dream cast? Did you have a dream cast in mine? Gary Oldman, I had, Gary Oldman, I had sketched, like storyboard sketches. I'll send it to you, man. It was amazing, okay? He was the only guy. Okay.

And then there was, like, talks about him and her, but nothing. Okay. Gary Oman, I wanted. It's like the heavy, the guy who controlled the corporation. He's the best. Look, I got a sense of this when we were just chit-chatting before our event the other day of Joel Silver's stories. You must have so many. You could probably write a really interesting memoir of the different meetings and personalities.

you've met along the way. Give me one. Give me a random. What's the, what's the strangest pitch meeting you've had? The strangest person you found yourself in a room with? There must be, what jumps out at you? What's your go-to cocktail story of like, wait, I'm suddenly in a room with Kanye West or Tom Cruise or Vin Diesel, and I have to pitch this.

Anything come to mind? Man, there's a thousand of them, okay? And Joel Silver could be a book about him. But I would say the weirdest was Robert Blake. And it wasn't weird. it was, I think it was pre-murder. Anytime you have to say, qualify that in a story. So this was pre-murder, just so you know.

I'd seen Lost Highway, which is where I found my cinematographer Peter Deming. And I was like, oh, my God. So he comes to our office and he sits down and it's just this weird energy coming off of him. Then he starts talking about, like, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, and he starts telling this wild story about cocaine. And I just knew it wasn't real. the story wasn't real or maybe it was, but why would he be telling us about being in an office

with a bunch of different filmmakers and cocaine coming out and him not partaking? And I don't, I didn't know heads from tell, but the guy was definitely on a different planet. Right. And I've met people on a different planet. Like I had to meet an actor once.

The guy used to be, he's a little troubled, I guess, forgot his name, young actor who wanted to meet. And he wanted to meet me at a motel off of Hollywood because it was, right next to where Mani Pacow training trained and he was a big Mani Pacal fan but he wasn't even there when I got there was Citi like drug prostitution all kinds of shit then he had rented three

rooms and then he sat down and he's like I haven't read the script Michael something he was in the boardwalk empire oh Michael Pitt yeah he's he had some issues yeah yeah he had some issues so he's sitting down and talking to me there's no eye contact there's all these weird people coming in and I'm what the fuck is going on here I haven't read the script but uh here it's this and uh blah blah i'm like okay i got out of that come i'm like yo i don't know what's going on with my man but i don't meet at hotels with shifty people around and there's no reason to have a meeting if a person hasn't read the script but that was just fucking wild amazing there's wilder wilder stories i'm sure i'm sure well we're building to it this is the

beginning of a beautiful friendship albert don't worry about it um is there is there one i have to send you the gary oldman the gary oldman um story for it i'm ready to receive bring bring me um i'll let you go on this how does it feel just like look coming full circle we've been talking about this 30 year journey like back then menace was so influenced by all these other filmmakers everyone you'd grown up with it must be a trip to hear menace and you guys referenced by the generation that's come do you let that sink in a little bit that like you guys now have influenced another generation of filmmaker no it hasn't sunk in and i think it's partly like, you know, the self-imposed modesty, you know, there could be false modesty and real modesty.

And then the nature of like being so many miles away from it, you know, you'll bump into people in forward countries, but not like if you're in L.A. or New York. And you can see things online. But no, I just, I kind of, it's like seeing somebody else. It's really weird, out-of-body experience. I would never want it to go to my head. Other things have gone to my head, not that. And I just respect, I respect, I guess, what it did for us and what people did for us back then. Like the convergence of luck and opportunity, whatever that expression is, I know, I don't forgot what it is. It was luck and opportunity.

And yeah, a little skill, a little skill in there. Well, not a lot. That argument could be made if it ended there. But there's a 30 year track record and you guys are both going strong in respective realms. And that's really impressive. I'm so thrilled that I finally got to know you after being. such a fan for all these years, man. Congratulations.

Everybody should check out the Continental, this three-part series. It's on Peacock. Check it out. Albert directed himself. The first part, the third part. The third part's going to blow your mind. It's action that's like really, thank you.

It's just next level stuff. I hope you guys to do more of it or, you know, whatever you do, I'll follow you, man. Congratulations. And this is the beginning of our beautiful, nerdy film. I know. I would say, I was going to say likewise, because I want to, I want to,

I want to question you now. I want to do a podcast where I question you. You know where to find me on filming history. On film history. We'll talk 80s and Rambo movies anytime, yeah. Oh, we can go. And you'll get my email up with this because I've got to send you that stuff. Definitely.

All right, man. I'll hit you up. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. And so ends another edition of happy, sad, confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley

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