Happy Sad Confused - Darren Aronofsky

Episode Date: March 27, 2014

Josh chats with visionary director Darren Aronofsky about his latest film, “Noah,” his flirtation with shooting Superman and Wolverine movies, and why he’ll never see any of his movies ever again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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please contact ConX Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Happy Sad Confused. I'm Josh Horowitz. Thanks as always for subscribing and tuning in. This is a really important episode for me. Frankly, one of the reasons I created this podcast was to talk to folks like this. Darren Aronovsky is my guest today. He is, for my money, one of the best filmmakers working on the planet today. If you love movies, you probably love and appreciate his work as I do. He's made Black Swan and the fountain and Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler and Pie and his new film, which as I speak today, is about to come out, is Noah, which is his biggest film, certainly from a budget's

perspective and certainly from a controversy's perspective. It's a retelling, of course, of the story of Noah and his arc, and it's all there, the animals, the flood. There's a lot to chew on. It's certainly a movie. Once you see it, you will have questions and you'll want to talk about it. And that's what I got a chance to do today to talk to Darren Aronofsky about his new film and talk about his work thus far in the industry. The films he's made, the films he's almost made. We talk a bit about his portation with comic book movies like The Wolverine and Man of Steel. This is, for my money, one of the most interesting filmmakers out there today. And he's a smart guy. He's a New Yorker like myself. And I feel definitely a kinship

with him because of that. And it was great to talk to him the day after his film premiered here in New York. I was there with him at the Ziegfeld last night, which is kind of the ultimate New York movie theater. We talk a little bit about that at the outset. And a whole lot more. I think you're going to enjoy this conversation. If you love movies, you will love hearing from this guy because he's a good one. So here it is my conversation with the great filmmaker that is Darren Aronofsky.

I did my first eight field premiere on Black Swan, and that was great because it was very emotional because growing up in New York, that is the theater of theaters. And, you know, when it became a possibility for Black Swan, I was like, please, and I begged Fox Searchlight, which was beyond, you know, it's usually beyond what their reaches.

But they did it for me, and it was just, it was great. But to be back again, it's just always, you know, I mean, the two places you want to premiere as a film director is there and the Chinese man, you know, because that's the dream. So talk to me a little bit about, you know, what, like a pie is, what, a $60,000 venture. And here we are, what, 15 years later, 16 years later, something like that. And you've got exponentially the biggest film you've ever done by a factor of, I don't know what, I don't know.

I mean, at what point in the career did you know you were sort of headed or feel that you could be headed into this scale of filmmaking? Was this something that you knew you were going to get to at some point that you wanted to do at some point? Well, I've always had an interest in it. You know, there's been my connection to a bunch of the superhero films that I was always very interested in. They just never seemed to really work out for one reason or another, usually because I was lucky enough to be able to get something going that I self-originated. But, you know, when you were undertaking something like Noah's Ark, you knew you were making a spectacle, something that had to really push visual effects and scope just because

you're dealing with God's miracles. So we had to bring them to life. So we knew it was going to be big. But, you know, it's relatively small, even though it is big. As compared to, I can't believe, someone was telling me how much movies, some movies cost. I should know that, but I was kind of stunned myself. you know when you get into i know this is a passion project this is something that goes back a long ways for you um you know when you're dealing with you know i don't know if you can

call it a genre of filmmaking but films that revolve around stories of the bible and faith um you know in our lifetimes the two films that probably most people referenced the most that were the biggest high-profile ones were passionate of the christ and last temptation of christ and both of them arguably are the two most controversial films of their respective years and times and you know, really killed like Scorsese and Mel in different ways. So, you know, you're a smart guy, you know what you're getting into. Does that enter the equation when you... I think there's a different genre when you're talking about New Testament and Old Testament.

I think the Old Testament has not been tackled for 50 years. There's been many New Testament films a lot that just sort of go by without anyone noticing or any kind of controversy. But no one's really touched the Old Testament since, well, I mean, John Houston did something that didn't, you know, was sort of a footnote in his career. But then, of course, there's, you know, Ten Commandments, which for me was one of my favorite films as a kid. And, you know, whenever it's on TV, it's completely watchable. You just can't turn it off.

So I just felt it was a dead genre, and it's not really a living genre because, you know, and it was strange because there's so much. to those stories and yet they were attempted and they pushed visual effects you know you still go on I guess it's the universal right and you see the noah I mean excuse me you see the parting of the red seas type of thing effect that was groundbreaking then yet now we're here in the 21st century where visual effects have completely changed and you can really do God's miracles in a whole different way right you know so tackling this one I mean I remember um the fountain initially was intended to to be a much larger film, at least budgetarily speaking, right?

I'm curious, like, if that film had come to fruition in that way, do you think you'd still tackle this in the same way? Do you see any linkage between what you were doing there and what you're doing here and no? Because they feel like spiritual cousins in a way to me. I've heard that from a few people, I think, I don't know what it is about the films. For me, you know, the fountain was a great accomplishment,

but there definitely was a spiritual, and there was quotations taken from the Old Testament, but it was a mythology onto itself. This was an adaptation, you know, and it was about, you know, taking what's in the Bible and turning it into myth and making it big for, you know, there's so little there in the four chapters

and everything is symbolic and legendary. And that if you look at the Bible, myth and and take you know imperable and take from it lessons that apply to you it's it's very very effective the fact that there's a cautionary environmental tale written thousands of years ago right about that if you kill each other and if you have wickedness in your heart and if you corrupt the earth you're going to get punished right is so apt to what's going on right now that, you know, it was so easy to draw a connection. Are you someone that my wife actually works for an environmental group and, you know,

fighting the good fight and we're all a little, you know, depressed to different degrees every day? I mean, are you someone that's kind of pessimistic about where we're at in terms of the world going to hell and a handbasket or? I think it's critical. I think it's really critical. And, you know, people have been talking about the end of times all the time. So you go back a thousand years, people are talking about the end of the times. But, you know, we have significant evidence now that things are changing. It may be something that's happening in 100 years from now. It may be happening in, you know, 500 years from now. But I can see the impact in my lifetime. You know, when I was a kid in elementary school, there was a one-page piece

of sheet that showed you the endangered species of the world. And now, basically, you can't find any environmental location in the world, any place in the world that doesn't have some type of human impact. I was actually, I spent five weeks with a program called School for Field Studies, which is a great organization still around and takes college students and in my case high school students into environmental areas and ecological areas and you do research. Our textbook was the origin of species and our classroom was actually Prince William Sound and that was three years before the Exxon Valdez. And it was one of the most beautiful places I ever saw on the planet and I remember at one point eating a granola bar and a wrapper fell off into the water

we were kayaking around and I remember circling around and searching for that wrapper but it went under and I felt terrible and still every time I ever think about littering I think about that wrapper in Prince William Sound which it was there now that wrapper is nothing as compared to what happened three years later and evidence of the spill is there you know every plastic model we deal with unless it's, you know, dealt with correctly, is around for 10,000 years. The other thing that, you know, I was working on a Western that was set in the 1860s. And I realized I was thinking at the time that if every single person was to drop dead and disappear on the earth, except for forged metals, you know, like belt buckles and horseshoes

and some gun parts, every evidence of mankind would be gone in a couple of hundred years. All of our homes, everything we have would be gone. Right. And now you look, since the 1950s and all the pesticides and all the petroleum products, there are things and everything that's in this iPhone right here. I mean, who knows what type of stuff we're pulling up and putting in different places? What is going to happen to this iPhone in 50, 100, 1,000 years? What is it going to be like? And how many are there?

It just seems like it's changed and there's definitely, you know, I believe that our, you know, our grandchildren's grandchildren, They'll look back on us and say either we saved it or where the most selfish, you know, dumb people that ever existed. I'm curious, like, also just in terms of this kind of a film for you right now, you know, you come off of Black Swan, which is, I think, you know, your most successful film probably by a couple different degrees in terms of financially. And, you know, you've had great critical success, but that was a huge critical win. I don't know. The wrestler did better critically. Do you think? Oh, absolutely. I guess, yeah, I guess, I guess Black Swan was more divisive, the people that loved it, loved it, and there were people that it just didn't work for for whatever reason.

But what I guess my point is, like, it feels like cashing in a chip in a way, and it's fascinating to me that you kind of cash it in this way and, like, make this really bold, and, you know, it's, it's, it takes a lot to get something like this going and to get a studio interested in something like this, I would think. So I'm curious, was it a strategic kind of play as well in terms of thinking like it's now or never? I have what it takes to get this going now. No, it's just passion. It's something as I've talked about, I've been thinking about for 30 years. I wrote a poem when I was 13 about Noah, and so he's been kind of this person and this character in my life that's kind of inspired me to go down this creative path. And literally, after Sundance in 1998 with Pye, I came to L.A. and it was raining. And I know this is, it's, I was just looking in an old journal about this because someone

asked me some information about the, I was trying to find the origin of it. And it turned out it was raining in L.A. and I went to the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Have you been there? It's this really, really cool kind of pseudo museum on Venice Boulevard that you got to go check the next time you're in L.A. And they had this little diorama on Noah's Ark. And so I saw it and I, and it resonated for me because of my life and that poem I wrote. And I, and I started thinking about why haven't, why hasn't anyone made an Old Testament movie in 50 years?

And I just started, you know, thinking about it and dreaming. So for me, you know, it's just about passion. I don't care about it. There's no size or scale. I don't care. that's not why I'm out making films I you know I do make a living at it but it's never been about you know that part of it um it's really just about the work and about telling stories that I know my friends will dig you know for me last night at the premiere the only guys I cared about

were the guys I met in elementary school and they were all there I had like five my old friends the whole posse and we just sort of I was like guys are we okay and they were like oh it's great and you know and when I see my old friend Eric you know who I used to draw with you know in second grade and write stories with and he starts like talking to me in the language I talk to my team with I know it's great and it's working so you know that's the passion is there is there any other story you've obsessed about as much of this over the years and that would be I can't talk about that you got to keep it down deep you know we've got a there's a couple of ideas there's two more ideas or so that are old school that I'm going to have to

to start finding screenplays. Were they also poems penned in Graysville? I wasn't much of it. I see the fine-year-old composition notebook. Exactly. My mom threw out all my old notebooks, and I don't have it. Otherwise, I'd have a lifetime of stuff to do.

Russell, as you're lead in this, you gravitate towards certain kinds of performers. I mean, Russell is extraordinary. Does it suffer fools? We know that. I mean, much like Mickey in that way. Do you feel like there are certain kinds of actors that you look at?

forward that you gravitate towards this was a i don't know i don't think so i mean you know you also look at natalie i mean i i think you got to find the right actor for the role and and when you're dealing with noah an iconic role you know you look at what charlton heston did and became the image of moses you know for most people on the planet when they think of moses or if you probably google moses that's what comes up you know it was a very uh hard role to fill it's uh you know really a very role to undertake. And also you have that big Cajonis to really, really want to, you know, trust that I'm not going to embarrass you, you know. And he did it. You know, the best compliment I got about his performance and has been really great writing about it, everyone's saying, you know, the best thing he's

done in a long time is Ray Winston, who was like, you know, what's great about Russell is that every scene he's so subtle, taking such small choices and look where he goes. And I was like, Oh, that's true. You know, but to have the confidence to do that is a real veteran, a really a great actor to basically take those steps on the path to where he had to get to, which is pretty extreme in this film. And coming from Ray Winston, who, by the way, just like he has in many films just owns the screen. Like, he's just...

Yeah, he's a badass. Oh, my God. He's amazing. And a great human being. Did you talk to him? Yeah. And he walks into room. He is the room.

He's Ray. Ray's great. Amundo, he's one of my favorite people right now. Can we go back a little bit of this background? Sure. You know, we both, you know, as I said before, we're New Yorkers. We still live here. You know, it must, and you've never, as far as I know, moved to L.A.

You never... I lived in L.A. for, as a film school student, for, I think, two and a half years, like in the early 90s. When Venice was still a ghetto, pretty much, it was rough. And I lived in Venice. It was fantastic. But now I go, I'm like, how much? much for that house. Like, unbelievable.

How important is your intrinsic New Yorkerness to your film, your filmmaking style, you think? How much does it go? No, I wish it was more. You know, I look, I mean, I grew up looking up to Marty and to Woody, you know, and those New York filmmakers, you know. So my films aren't always, you know, I mean, no, it has really, you know, actually someone said to me, you know, Joshua Rob Kauf from Timeout, yeah. He's like, this is the New York Bible story. I was like, what are you talking about?

He's like, the way they talk. I'm like, what are you talking about? Don't write that, please. Funny, but don't write it. Exactly. But I thought it was cool. You know, I think, you know, anything is, it's definitely, there's a lot of Jewishness to the film, I think,

because it's kind of the Jewish tradition to, you know, have Midrash and to have discussion and to think about these, you know, to look at these Bible stories. as why are they written that way and what does it mean to me right now and there's just been thousands of years people doing that so that to me was nice

we showed it to a room of 10 rabbis and they were all like oh yeah it's a post midrash examination of the text and I was like oh cool was your experience growing up before a film school and before it started to make your own stuff like were you did you stop film sets were you like a film nerd like as a kid

no no no not really not at all I mean, I, growing up in South Brooklyn is miles away from New York City. And, I mean, we did come into New York City. My parents were great because they loved Broadway shows. And we sat in the last row, the cheapest seats. And I got to see, I had a stack of playbills by the time I was, you know, 12 or 13. So I grew up with a lot of Broadway. And also, you know, Manhattan was always there.

So the greatest city in the world was right there. But I didn't really understand what a director did. I did grow up, you know, I was that. that sweet spot when Spielberg and Lucas were coming, so I had heard of them. Like, I remember when E.T. came out, and I knew it was Spielberg, but I didn't really know what a director was. I had no idea what that all meant. And then I think the turning point for me was going to, there's one mall in Brooklyn called King's Plaza, and it's all the way out in South Brooklyn. And we went to see some movie and it was sold out, and there was this weird

looking guy with a Brooklyn hat and funny glasses and we're like oh let's go see that and turned out to be Spikesly's she's got to have it and I walked in two minutes later or five minutes late and it was during that montage when all the different guys are doing their pickup line and I was just my jaw dropped

I was like what the hell is this and I've always had a taste for different for independent stuff I think just in music and art before that but seeing that it was like oh there's something going on here and then the night thing about when we were kids

I don't know how old are you 37 so you know the video store thing was like you know the only way to sort of see a naked woman in some ways and they were often in foreign films and I've heard the story I think from Harvey Weinstein or someone like that but you know that was like oh I'd

watch the old Italian films and somehow I stumbled on a Fellini film and then you know that changed things and so then I actually just started watching movies from the video store and And I got to see a lot of really great stuff. It must be such a guess for you for, like, you know,

to obviously have the place you have in the industry and in the world of film now where, like, you're like the cool film nerds, you're their guy. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you have that place with like a P.T. Anderson, whatever, a very small company. It's got to be, I mean, do you take stock of that? Do you think of sort of like how far you've come in terms of, like, what your name actually means to a lot of young film students, et cetera, nowadays?

Well, it's always great when you meet young. people who talk about, you know, what Requiem meant for them or the fountain, you know, it's always great when you realize you've impacted, you know, people in a positive way. There was one yesterday of, it's just really nice when you hear that people, you know, because we all remember those films that kind of changed us and made us think about things differently. So, you know, that, it's a thrill. And I mean, it's, I mean, you're talking about the filmmakers I love, you know, I love seeing Wes's movies and PT's films. and I barely know them, a few handshakes,

but it's great to see that there's exciting, you know, things that get you out of your house, you know, because TV's so freaking good now that, you know, and movie theaters kind of stink to a certain extent. I shouldn't be saying the day before it opens, go see Noah in the theater. It's a big thing, certainly. The Ziegfield's great, and we're playing in the Ziegfield,

which is so cool. But, you know, I, you know, it's great to go out to the theater and see some of the people I look up to making awesome stuff that inspires. Well, one thing that I do appreciate about you is like, I remember one of the times I just ran into you randomly in the last few years I saw you at, like, there was a screening

of Prometheus, and there was like a shared geek moment where we were both like, I can't believe we're here. This is so cool. Ridley's back doing sci-fi. That's great. For whatever, you know, whether we ended up liking it or not. I loved it. Thank you. I loved it. I thought Ridley's use of 3D was remarkable. Of course.

Because he's a great 3D filmmaker. And sure, there's some plot holes or whatever, but it's a good film. You know what it is? It kind of takes all the tropes of an alien movie, and they're all in there, you know? And for me, I had a great time with it. Yeah, and Fast Fender kills it. Always. Amazing. Do you, you're consuming a lot of film always, I would assume, again, you're trying to get out there. A little bit, I'm a little behind.

This year was hard. The last six, seven months was hard, so I missed a lot of good films. I saw all the, I mean, it was a great year for film. I just, you know, seeing Spike's film horror was just incredible. I actually saw it unfinished. I got to see it early in September, and it was just incredible. Alfonso's gravity was just remarkable. I mean, it was a great year.

It was just American Hustle was great. And, I mean, you just look at the film's nominate, it's like, okay. I remember it was a year like that, the year before Requiem came out, and I can't remember what it was. I didn't know Fincher had a film, and all these people had, I think it was the year of being John Malcovic. Yeah, it was just... And by club, it was like another one of those years. Yeah, yeah, it was the year before. Or no, it was after 98, I think it was 99 or 2009, probably.

But it was those years, I just didn't know if we'd ever get another year like that, and then this was it. So it was a good year, you know. You mentioned before, and, you know, part of me just as a huge... huge fan of your work and a huge fan of frankly blockbusters when done right and comics with movies when done right has always like you know wanted to see it come to fruition whether it was Wolverine or Robocop one of those things and I know they come varying degrees of closeness um like what happened on Wolverine was it just like it just didn't it wasn't it just a right what I love the script and I actually thought the phone came out great

um I just um had uh it was just a hard time in my life it was complicated and i couldn't i couldn't leave new york for that long amount of time and then to be honest you know that the possibility of noah started to emerge and that here was something i had been thinking about for years so i got really excited by that yeah what was uh was man of steel something that you were actually concerned they were absolutely yeah i mean you know i you know superman's one of the holy grails of of i mean it's superman yeah it's like the best superhero i mean batman of course is great but it's superman so it's on the same level so that possibility was great, but, you know, I thought

Zach was a great choice, and, you know, I loved the Watchman movie. Are you a Watchman fan? I think I love Zach's interpretation. I'll be honest. I love it. I loved it. I thought it was great.

I thought, as a fan of the comic, you couldn't have hoped for a better interpretation. Ironically, I like that, I think some people, I know that's a device of film, too. I love, like, the first, like, opening montage that is made the thing most different from the comic. I like when he diverged a little bit. Oh, really?

No, I like the orthodoxy of it. Interesting. Did you ever have, I'm just curious, like, did you ever have a take on what you would have done with Superman or Man of Steel? Was there a... You know, it was very, it was just a couple of conversations. I talked to Nolan, and he was great. And, you know, there were a few conversations. You know, the script I saw was definitely not as good as what they did.

They did a lot of good work to it. But I liked, you know, it was interesting. add the pathos that they try you know they kind of put into the character because it's a hard one to do with that type of you know I think you look at what Christopher Reeve did it was perfect because it captured that kind of good old boy thing but to try and redo that again or bring that for a modern audience is tough in a post-batman world and wolverine world it's hard to do that are you kind of reliving this stuff again through you've got a son that's probably at the age where he's probably enjoying this kind of that those kind of films I would think yeah

No, he's a little too young, which I'm not pushing. See, Noah yet? Are he going to hold off on that? He's seen so much over my shoulder because I liked him to see what his, you know, what I'm doing. Because I think that's good. Arna Milsha, my producer on this film, always included his children. Like, since I started working with him on the fountain, his kids would be in like the top level meetings, just hanging out. And I was like, I was like, that's cool, actually.

You know, they should see what their dad's doing. in terms of just like approach to filmmaking like i remember i correct me if i'm wrong but i feel like wrestler was a bit of a turning point in terms of um less storyboarding uh maybe uh just a little bit of a loose approach did that inform something like i mean noa which to my mind you would have to pre-vis and do a ton of stuff like that but does that loosen up the approach a little bit having an experience like yeah i mean you know i think the most uh the most precise Ice film I have done was The Fountain. I mean, it was

also built on sets and the location work was very limited. So we were really able to control the entire visual, you know, experience. I mean, with Noah, there's so much environmental elements to it

that we couldn't do that. Being in Iceland, where basically the weather would change every eight minutes. Completely change. It was, you know, instead of having Mickey Rourke to sort of respond to, it was the weather in this film. And that continued even when we were working in, you know, even a Long Island outside, it was hard. But, yeah, I mean, you know, it's always a constant change.

I mean, for me, Black Swan was a really nice marriage of, you know, a very loose style and then some complicated visual effects. And I think this is sort of similar where it's like, I don't know, I guess the older and the more experience you get. that there's a certain type of ease that you can take to the set, knowing that you can hopefully create something with what's going on. You still got to do your homework. You still got to be as prepared as possible. But if you have a great team and you thought about the scenes a lot, because even in the wrestler, I never walked, you know,

it kind of came across that I was like naked on set. And I wasn't naked by any means. I knew what I had to get. And I had an idea of what I wanted to sort of shape it. But then I was really completely open to see how Mickey played it and where it went. I'm still frankly surprised just again from like a film fan perspective. Like I wish the industry made more of Mickey since then, since that amazing performance. And I don't know what.

Well, he had that great role in Iron Man and stuff. Yeah. It is what it is. You know, it's all about choices, you know. And so I, you know, look, I was with Mickey the other day and literally, I guess it was three days gone. He looks great. He's so fit. and his spirits are great and he looks gorgeous and uh and he's just clear-headed and so it's only a matter

of time until he does another great role yeah how do you think you are um most different as a filmmaker just like night and day from the beginning from the first from the first couple oh wow i got no idea you know it's i there's a story i've told a couple of times i had to go see you know usually i don't watch my films again after you know last night's the last time i'll see Noah. I won't see it again. And so it was kind of like the breakup. When you say last time, do you mean last time for a couple of years? Or like as far as you're concerned, you don't need to ever see Noah again? I won't see it. I mean, I don't see it watch the films again. Sometimes when they flip on TV, if it happens, I'll watch

for a few seconds and I'll just sort of, you know, I'll have a moment of thing. But I think it's kind of, it is, you know, my mentor would always say watching your old films is like masturbation. It doesn't do you any good. Well, I don't know about that. but but I think that his point was it's you know it's like self-love it can mess you up and also it hurt you know you start to see the mistakes it's all that stuff um but uh you know i had to watch record because they did a blu-ray version right and uh and my team had done all this work they remixed it and they and mattie went back to the negative and rescanned it so they all they all they all say come on you have to watch it so i watched it do what do you think

I thought it was really good, but I could not, I did not recognize, I remembered making it, and I remembered everything, but I could not, I was clearly not that kid anymore. Interesting. It was not me. So, you know, I think the most important thing, you know, that Madonna teaches us is that you got to keep changing and reinventing yourself and being present, you know. And that's what I've tried to, you know, that's why I'm trying to do is just like, okay, this is what we're going to do now. And then you just try to be present in that project. of course I've changed

because I'm a different person than I was when I was eating falafel and starving myself to figure out how to make pie it's different world now you mentioned Requiem it occurred to me when I was watching the film last night I feel like you're like a closet like horror filmmaker You make some of the most disturbing imagery and no there's some haunting shots and in most of your films

that are just like that stick with you I mean people still talk about like I mean I was talking to some folks at work the other day like it's like a reference point like how bad can things get that last scene in requiem for a day yeah that's the worst thing possible ever yeah um i mean i don't know what my question is there but i mean is that occur to you that like you have some kind of strange deposit of yeah of horror in your head that you're just meeting out one at a time no i don't know i mean i like that you know for me you got to make them laugh cry or scare the

shit out of that's your job as a filmmaker and so you know you try to do hit them all you know the laugh thing I got to work more I got to get that going a bit I'm looking for it I'd like to do a comedy that would be great I'd like to see that yeah it would be awesome is the Western still something you want to do or is that no I was working on

some it just never never jelled you know there's always I mean that's the thing about development you got to develop you got to keep moving forward and developing stuff and you're always going to know a lot of stuff is just not going to happen but it's the stuff that you keep going back to and that's what happened when Noah is

I just kept going back to it So I knew there was something really cool there. And the fact that, you know, it's just never, it's one of the greatest, you know, stories ever told, really. It's one of our oldest stories. The fact that people are still telling it thousands of years after it was recorded. And it's never been on the silver screen is, was a big challenge to, you know, just try to bring that flood story to life. And last thing for you. I mean, do you enjoy this time?

Like, you know, obviously the film is done. Now it's the critics come out. You know what? I learned about it. You know, when I was watching the film yesterday, I was like, I actually understood it more. And that always happened. I mean, that's crazy because you're working on it so hard. But when you got to explain your shit, you got to understand it, you know. And that's always happens.

I remember Pye, I really never really knew what it was about until I started doing press on it. Because you start to put into a different type of words to. And I think that's always happening. You're just learning about it. And then, of course, you know, seeing what the impact in the world is, if there is any, and if it works for people or if it doesn't work, just getting that type of feedback and vibe from the planet of what it means is always interesting. Because Black Swan completely changed from when it was at Venice, our first, you know, we opened up Venice with it. And no one knew what it was.

and it was an Italian audience. So it was with subtitles, and it didn't, it was kind of dead in the room. To then seeing it like two months later, it was the next time I watched it in Philly at a random festival. And I just went down to Philly

because it was playing in Philly. I was like, oh, I love Philly. I wanted to go check it out down there. And people were, you know, laughing and screaming. And I was like, oh, you know, it just changed. Yeah.

So, you know, I think all you can do as a filmmaker is you just put your, what you think is right and truthful and not just you, your team, because you've got a, it's always a group of people. But then you listen to you, you listen to what everyone's saying around you and then you go with it.

And that's what, you know, that's where the good films I think come out of is like a small, specific team that has all been talking for a long time about it and then just keep pushing in that direction. It becomes a problem when they're made by committee. You know, you get one of those

widgets. Well, I appreciate that you've kept that small group for many years, and you're growing in interesting areas, to say the least. And, you know, I mean, if I didn't say it at the outset, I'll say it again. You know, I have great admiration for what you do, and it's always good to catch up with you, buddy. Thank you. I'll see you on the next one before. Actually, Prometheus, too. I'll see you on the opening.

There you go. They're making it. Yay. Good to see you, Darren. Thank you. Thanks, buddy. Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself, like you were hiding behind a mask? BetterHelp online therapy is convenient, flexible, and can help you learn to be your authentic self so you can stop hiding.

Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. 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 love movies, and we come at them from different perspectives.

Yeah, like, Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas, and I don't. He's too old. Let's not forget that Paul thinks that Dude, too, is overrated. It is. Anyway, despite this, we come together to host Unspool, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits. Fan favorites, mustsies, and in case you miss them. We're talking Parasite the Home Alone. From Greece to the Dark Night.

We've done deep dives on popcorn flicks. We've talked about why Independence Day deserves a second look. And we've talked about horror movies, some that you've never even heard of like Ganges and Hess. So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure. Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to hit the follow button. I don't know.