The Big Picture - Amy Schumer’s Career Arc, and ‘Snatched’ Director Jonathan Levine | The Big Picture (Ep. 14)

Episode Date: June 1, 2017

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey discusses comedic storytelling and Amy Schumer’s career arc, from stand-up comedian to movie star, with Jason Zinoman of The New York Times (0:50). Then Sean is joined by filmmaker Jonathan Levine (‘The Wackness,’ ‘50/50’) to discuss collaborating with Schumer on his new comedy, ‘Snatched’, his own career arc, finding his path, and dealing with bad reviews (14:20). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, I'm really excited to tell you about a new podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. On Monday, June 5th, we're launching something called Binge Mode. It's a podcast dedicated to re-watching and expert analysis on our favorite TV shows. For the next six weeks, Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion, our mother of dragons and the maester, will dive deep into HBO's Game of Thrones. From theories to history to their best impersonations of Robert Baratheon, watch along with our Thrones experts. The 10 first episodes of Binge Mode drop Monday, June 5th. They correspond to season one impersonations of Robert Baratheon. Watch along with our Thrones experts.

The 10 first episodes of Binge Mode drop Monday, June 5th. They correspond to season one of Game of Thrones. Then every Monday after that, we'll release a new batch of 10 episodes leading up to the premiere of Game of Thrones season seven. You can subscribe to Binge Mode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to The Big Picture, a Channel 33 Movies podcast. I'm Sean Fennessy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer. Today on the show, I'll be talking with Jonathan Levine, director of the Wackness 5050,

the recent Amy Schumer comedy Snatched, as well as the pilot for Showtime's new series I'm Dying Up Here. But first, I'm joined by Jason Zinneman, who writes the On Comedy column for The New York Times and also wrote the recent book Letterman, The Last Giant of Late Night, which I recommend everyone pick up right now. Jason, thank you so much for being here today. Great to be here. So Jason, you've been covering Amy Schumer, the star of Snatched, for six plus years, essentially since you've been writing the column. Tell me a little bit about what you saw from her in the early days and how you've seen her evolve as a comedy figure. Yeah, I mean, I saw her at Gotham Comedy Club and the first person to write about her in

the New York Times was probably the second column that I wrote about comedy. And she seems like a particularly gifted storyteller and deliverer of jokes who had like a really well-established character on stage. And then I ended up, before Insight Amy Schumer started, I spent several months with her reporting a story about her writer's room, in which I spent a lot of time with her right before she became famous on television. And even then, she was thinking about what it meant to be famous. And I've watched her now become, you know, I think she was arguably the biggest, most influential comedian in the country, and maybe the first female to have that role since Roseanne.

And now, of course, she's moved on to be a movie star. So, you know, I've seen this huge arc. This sounds like it's arrogant to say, but I'm actually not surprised. And that's not just because I thought she was really talented and really funny. But in spending time with her, what she also is is ambitious and really hardworking. And the most telling story I have of Amy Schumer is, I've interviewed legions of comedians and artists generally. And one question that I often ask when dealing with a longer profile,

when I'm talking about their childhood, I say, what kind of high school kid were you? What clique were you in? And invariably, they were a nerd or an outcast or some weirdo. And Amy Schumer is the only person who's ever answered this question this way. She's the only person I've ever interviewed who said, I was in the popular crowd. And I thought that was so telling and refreshing for two reasons. One, I think it shows you that even when she was little, she wasn't some weird quirky goth kid.

She was a theater kid who definitely loved theater and loved to act. But she was in the popular crowd even in high school. Second of all, it sounds counterintuitive, but at the place where she is now, saying you're the popular kid is actually the least cool thing that you can do. The cool thing is to say, oh, I was never popular. I was ugly and an outcast. And what that says to me is that she really does value being honest and true to herself, even if it makes her look bad. It's a cliche, but I think it's something that if you're a comedian coming from where she comes from

is as much part of her success. And I think you see that in her stand-up as well. She doesn't mind looking bad. And that answer, Frank, that answer is, you know, I think I wouldn't make her look bad, but in the context of celebrity interviews, that's not the quickest way to get sympathy. I feel like she's made a lot of decisions like giving an answer like that, that she's kind of come under fire for.

What have you observed about the criticism that Amy Schumer has received, and what do you make of all that in the last couple of years? I mean, when I was doing the story about in the writer's room, you know, it took like two or three months maybe. And I kept a search on Twitter to see what everyone was tweeting at her. And, you know, it's one thing when you hear about, oh, women stand-up comedians have it tougher than men and they take take more abuse online. When I actually did that for a couple months, I actually got to see it, like how extreme it is. This is before even Inside Amy Schumer comes around, but the amount of shit she takes on a daily basis, even back then, about how she looks, about it. It just doesn't compare to her male equivalent. And now then you put her in the context of a superstar stand-up comic

and a movie star, and it's just magnified. So, you know, that's not to say that all the criticism of her is not earned or is not true or doesn't have points to make. But I do think there is a real double standard.

And when you're in the realm that she is, which is this sort of trying to be a big movie star, stand-up movie star, it's almost like becoming a big, running for a high office. There's a likability gauntlet that you have to run. And I think she gets hit from it from both ends. You know, she gets hit by it the same way you could make an analogy to, you know, to how Hillary Clinton gets hit. In her position, she earns that and people should, she deserves all the scrutiny she gets. I would say she's had, you know, a few missteps for sure. And I think that some of her recent problems, I think, have to do with what she's trying to do now is be a working stand-up who plays in a big, high-profile special release and be a big movie star.

There's very few people that have done that without hurting one of those two. When she put out that Netflix special, which wasn't that far after her HBO special, I was like, wow, that's a huge amount while you're also putting together a sketch show and being

a movie star. That's a lot of product you're putting out. It feels like, Jason, it feels like when men are that prolific, you know, particularly with Louis C.K., we've definitely, he was lauded for that. You know, he was lauded for his ability to write a special year and to also keep creating Louis. And it does seem like there's been a little bit more Schumer fatigue

and criticism around the fact that she's been creating a lot of stuff at the same time. Does that seem accurate to you? I think it is accurate. I think, and I would say there's two mitigating factors. One is that even Louis, as busy as he was, isn't in the ballgame of headlining huge movies. That's right. He's putting a TV show out. But he really is a different, at this point, you know, she's, her analog is Adam Sandler,

Will Ferrell, Eddie Murphy. That's the game she's playing right now. And the second point is that, you know, is sort of the political one. Starting with her TV show, you know, some of her success came from having kind of this more overt feminist angle. And then she became a big, you know, she became active in terms of gun control and then supporting Hillary, etc. And that, of course, is going to polarize her audience because, of course, when she goes to play stadiums in Florida, her crowd isn't partisan. You know, she's so big, unlike, you know, say, Tina Terrell or someone of that, you know, a small

– she's drawing Trump supporters, too. So she's being very political while at a certain level of fame, where Louis is all has moments where he's been outspoken and political, but I would say his work is less so. So, you know, a lot of her choices, both playing in this big ballgame of Sam or Will Ferrell and also wanting to be, and also being political, make the target on her even bigger. It's a fascinating thing.

We'll have to see what happens with Amy's film career. There's kind of no telling if the persona that she's created is something that she'll be able to sustain. Do you think that this sort of boozy, promiscuous, you know, self-effacing, but kind of goofy persona that she's built is something that she can be doing 10, 20, 30 years from now? No, no. The next real challenge for her is, you know, you've got to evolve.

I think parts of that she can keep, but I think that any great comedian to stay on top has to evolve, and particularly a stand-up who is drawn from their life. So what she's like at 45 or 50 is going to be totally different. I mean, it depends. I think it's possible for her to still play that role if she just wants to be a movie star. I mean, Adam Sandler's pretty much had the same, similar persona. But even he, I would say, has evolved. But certainly in her stand-up, she would need to, I think, adjust to where she's at in her life, just like any successful stand-up would. I mean, look, her first movie was a massive hit, and her second movie, I would say, you know, we'll still see,

is not really a sophomore. I mean, it's not a terrible sophomore slump. I mean, I think she's made like $32 million. It's been successful. I mean, broadly, it's been successful. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you would think by the reviews that it had, the reviews have not been successful. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you would think by the reviews that the reviews have not been good.

But again, if you're comparing it to Sandler and Will Ferrell and stuff, those guys made a lot of movies that critics didn't like, too. It's true. It's something that Levine and I talked about, about the prospect of working with a comedian who you know may not get great reviews after he's gotten largely good reviews his whole career. And it's different when you're working with a big

comedian star, right? Definitely. Definitely. I think, you know, as a second effort, which is, again, a real Amy Schumer vehicle. I mean, Goldie Hawn is the one selling tickets there. In a way, this is a better test than Trainwreck, because there's no Judd Apatow. There's no critical acclaim. There's no one else in that movie who really is selling box office. To the extent

that this thing is a hit, it's because of her. So if this movie does well internationally and makes $60 million, $70 million, whatever it is, I think Polly was going to look at this and be like, this is a real movie star. She can make close to $200 million with good reviews and everything working right. And even if everything doesn't work right, her name still is bankable. Let's transition really quickly. I want to ask you about something else that Jonathan Levine made. He directed the pilot of I'm Dying Up Here,

which is Showtime's new show about comedy, stand-up comedy, in 1970s L.A. I know you are a student of the genre. I'm curious what you think about putting stand-up comedy on TV or in movies and what the successes and failures of that can be. I mean, I think there's a lot of possibility in it, but the problem right now is there's kind of a glut of it. There's been so much of it now that, and you're going to have, you know, also there's this movie, The Big Sick, which is coming out, which also has a stand-up comic protagonist. And like, for instance, the scene has a stand-up comic protagonist. And like for instance

the scene where the stand-up comic is, first of all, the scene where the stand-up comic bombs or the scene where the stand-up comic is bombing and then he leaves the material and starts telling the truth. Those are now pretty hack.

You know, we've seen that so many times. The challenge for these shows is going to be, all right, why another stand-up comedy narrative? You know, what fresh thing is it bringing to the table? You know, the advantage of it is that you can tell a dark story or a romantic story and then know that you could have a few laughs in the movie. That's the real, you know, the great thing about having a stand-up comedy protagonist in TV or movie is that, you know, if things getting too dark or too slow,

you know, you can rely on a few jokes on the stand-up comedy set. So there's a real appeal to it. But I mean, I think the problem now is that there's just been so many of them that it's hard to stand out. Now, this show is set in this interesting time period,

which is a real, you know, has become this sort of legendary period. And yet, it's not about the people who you,

it's not about Leno and Letterman and Sandra Bernhard and Misty Shore you know although they're kind of a Misty Shore stand in so it's also competing not only with other shows about stand ups but it's competing with all the stories

about the actual people including the book that it's based on which is an excellent book by the way it will be interesting to see how it's received yeah I think just like with Amy Schumer the jokes are going to have to work for people to be completely entertained. Jason, thank you very much for joining me today and sharing your expertise. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. It was great to be here. All right. When we come back, I'll be talking by Jonathan Levine today,

director of Snatched, among many other films. Jonathan, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Okay, Jonathan, put me in your mind right now. You've just finished The Night Before, your comedy with Seth Rogen, Jason Gordon-Levitt. Great movie. Thank you.

How do you make a decision as a Hollywood filmmaker about what to do next? I'm very curious. It's almost a reactive decision. I mean, The Night Before was a very easy decision because it was a script that I wrote. And then I found myself in a position to sort of, I wanted to take that next leap as far as having more people see my movies, as far as doing something very commercial. But I didn't necessarily want to do something that was deeply impersonal, which is sometimes how you get into – like when you go up a scale, you're kind of in a very non-filmmaker world. You're really catering to a lot of different things.

Comedy is a great place to sort of expand your scale and do an original story. So Amy had just kind of finished Trainwreck and I had read the script and I thought this is a great way to sort of apply. I thought there was a great core of heart to it and also the ability to kind of work on a bigger canvas. So I thought this is a great way to sort of expand my skill set and also just kind of make that jump to the next level as far as like a poppy kind of commercial movie. Was there ever a time when you were going to do not a comedy?

Did you toy with doing pure drama or a franchise kind of thing? I mean, I've definitely like done like sort of rounds on the comic book movies. And at the end of the day, they kind of felt like a a weird fit like i i definitely like took a few steps deep into like the spider-man world um because i thought that on a certain level that was like it's a kid from new york it was like there was a world in which my having made the wackness like made me a very good fit for that um but at the end of the day, that didn't feel like a good fit. And so, no, I mean, I think the thing is, it's like, if you want to expand what you do, you sort of have to accept the box

that they're giving you a little bit. You know what I mean? Like, I can't just be like, I'm gonna do a big drama because that's not necessarily what my kind of filmography lends itself to. So it would either be a comic book movie or a comedy if that's what I wanted to do. And it was at the time.

So that's interesting, though, because I think if right after the wackness, I think you could have said you could have made any kind of movie. Really? Yeah. That movie is a lot of it has a lot of different colors in it. Right. So do you feel like you are now on a trajectory as a comedy filmmaker? No. Well, maybe I was, but I'm derailing it.

Which is kind of what every film is. It's an interest in not being placed in a box, but it's also an interest in getting more people to see your movies, making more money. I mean, there are also pragmatic things that apply to this stuff. But I think that for me, now I have, you know, this movie and I have this Showtime pilot and then I have my sort of background, which is kind of varied and all over the place. It'll open some doors.

It'll probably close some doors. But then I also have the opportunity to write my own thing, which haven't done in a few years so there's always that so there's like a lot of obviously compromises that would have to come with making say spider-man but there's also a lot of things that you have to manage when you're working with a huge star personality like amy yeah what was your first meeting with her like you know what did you guys talk about how did you figure out we kind of talked about yeah we talked about our own relationships with our moms, actually, because that was kind of one of the most important parts of this movie to me. And we got along very well.

And, I mean, to say that there are compromises when you're working with Amy, it's not necessarily true because the way I work is so collaborative that nothing feels like a compromise. It just feels like a shared vision. And especially on this movie, where I'm a guy directing a movie about women, I really needed to lean on them a lot. But that's something I learned from working with Seth and Evan, which is like, it sort of becomes a mind-share,

kind of groupthink thing. And at the end of the day, I'm the filmmaker, and I can veto things or not, but I also have all these people to lean on. So it doesn't necessarily feel like a compromise when you're doing comedy. What is the writing process like with someone like Amy? Katie Dippold is the screenwriter of the movie, but there's obviously on set, I'm sure there's a lot of things that are changing.

You guys are reimagining. What is that experience like? Yeah, I mean, it's not just on set. It's like Katie wrote and rewrote and rewrote, and then Amy and Kim, her sister, wrote and rewrote and rewrote and then we got to Hawaii, which is where we shot and we would all kind of sit down together

and you pass drafts back and forth and you, you know, you sort of share this final draft document and it gets a little confusing so you need to use the asterisks

in the margins but then what we would do is we would sit down with Amy and Goldie like two weeks before and we would go through that we would page through the script and we would take their notes and then we would kind is we would sit down with Amy and Goldie like two weeks before and we would go through that we would page through the script and we would take their notes and then we would kind of rework it and it's a constant writing and rewriting process that you're right goes all

the way on to set and when something's not working on set we kind of workshop it in the moment come up with different jokes come up with different even intentions for the scene so it's a very very fluid process and it in and everyone sort of feels ownership over the script. In a way, and to Katie's credit, she was fine with that. I mean, I think that it was a little more than she's used to on her movies with Paul. But, you know, you have people like Amy and Kim who are incredibly talented writers, just amazingly talented and funny people. It would be a crime not to let them collaborate on the script.

I know you did a lot of that with Seth and Evan on the night before. Is that something you had done on your previous movies too, or were they more like locked environments, or like with something like Warm Bodies, you had something that was really hard and ready to go when you were shooting? Well, Warm Bodies, I was like the only one who wrote on it. So I didn't have it on Warm Bodies. And on the night before, I mean,

and Seth and Evan do this on pretty much all their movies, and i'm just waiting for it to happen on the next one because we're about to we're gonna shoot in like three months but you know at a certain point it's like oh this doesn't make sense and this doesn't work and this and it was like i remember about two months before seth was like i think you should re-outline and i was like what the fuck dude like that's terrifying i'm like prepping locations that we may never shoot and just pretending that we're gonna shoot them so that the whole like movie doesn't think i'm insane and then in the meantime i'm re-outlining and it's just great that they're so rigorous i was very frustrated in the moment but then at a certain point like

seth came into new york we were all in new york in New York Evan came and uh Kyle and Ariel who had helped me actually a lot on at the last minute on Warm Bodies with helping me rewrite the voiceover which actually made the movie kind of take a quantum leap forward so anyway we all kind of crowded into this room and Seth the place Seth was renting and we wrote day and night for like a week I remember I would leave his house at like sometimes the sun was coming up. That's got to be really scary. I mean, do you have to tell the studio that you're re-outlining? What about the apparatus around you that you have to manage?

Well, the great thing about Seth and Evan and our producers and financiers had worked with them on several movies, including 50-50 and This Is The End and stuff, that no one is ever going to be mad at you for continuing to work on the script. Even if it sometimes creates some inefficiencies, the way that their movies are built really support that kind of fluidity. And as a filmmaker, you have to just roll with the punches. And on a certain level, it's amazing because you realize that you can kind of do anything. It's very empowering. On another level, it's kind of a bummer because you you can't take that sort of really long-view visual approach to a movie.

But at the end of the day, like The Night Before is a movie that benefits more from those rewrites than it would have from whatever five cool shots I missed out on. But it is scary. I mean, I would leave the house and just be freaking the fuck out, definitely. But I'm really glad we did it. But you're throwing yourself back into that fire again. Well, yes.

But it's also like it was a little different because it was something I wrote. And so it was that that kind of thing of giving away your it was it was not just the intensity of working those late hours and all that stuff. It was kind of just like letting go a little bit of my preexisting version version of that movie um and i liked the movie that was evolving so it was fine um but it was a little scary but in this situation this is going to be more akin to i think 50 50 whereas we've had it's like we've had a script for a very long time it hasn't really changed that much it's it works and we're continuing to work on it we're going to do a table read in a couple weeks like we're going to sort on it. We're going to do a table read in a couple weeks. Like, we're going to sort of hit some benchmarks a little earlier in the process so that we don't

find ourselves in that situation, because I don't think anyone wants to do that again. So I think of you as a very personal filmmaker because of the whackness. What is it like trying to balance putting your touch on stories that you haven't written? How do you feel about the concept of being a director for hire versus making something that originates with you? I mean, I like doing both those things so when you ask like how do i choose doing snatch like snatch was a was a reaction to having done a semi-personal movie that i wrote and just getting sick of writing and just being like i just want to do something that someone funny who i know like i know they're funny and i know it's going to be funny and i just want to do that and not

even think about it and the showtime show that i did was this you know Dave Flaubot this amazing writer this very like kind of like smart dude who just wrote a very um insightful and very different than anything I would ever write um almost literary like script um and I was so excited to do that so um you kind of have to find the personal in the sort of for hire gig, you know? Like, otherwise it's just not going to be that interesting to you, and it's also you're just not going to be the right person to do it. So in Snatched, I just had a son, and I was starting to think almost existentially about, you know,

what it means to be a parent and how I treated my mom and all this stuff. And so it sort of just came along at that time and I thought, okay, I can kind of view it through the lens of that. And in the Showtime show, I was always a huge fan of stand-up comedy and always kind of liked viewing comedy through this kind of dark lens. And whether it be the Wackness or 50-50, this sort of combination of comedy with this kind of dark lens and and and whether it be the wackness or or 50 50 this sort of combination of comedy but this kind of sardonic view on the world and and uh so that felt like a good fit too i think you always just have to find something otherwise there's no reason for you to be doing it let's talk about i'm dying up here that's the pilot that you're talking about on showtime um

it's very good thank you and i think what's interesting about it is you've created essentially a parallel universe to reality. I have a lot of questions about how you go about doing something like that. Obviously, the writer is in charge of creating this world. But how do you execute against a Los Angeles that you're essentially recreating but also creating a new reality attached to it? Well, it's weird. I don't know if this just sort of happened. I mean, what I did was I used references that were all filmic.

So my references would be, I wouldn't be looking at images of 70s LA. I'd be looking at a Mazursky movie. So I think it's sort of just that kind of maybe enabled it to, that maybe helped with the sort of reality, not reality version of it. It's sort of this, I mean, these guys were almost living in their own cinematic universe, so it kind of made sense to do it that way. And then I would do like, I just ripped off like all these great filmmakers.

So I ripped off Scorsese, I ripped off Boogie Nights, which is like the same thing. It's like a copy of a copy of a copy, but it just sort of seemed, if we had the grounded performances and the grounded script that it seemed like it would kind of blend in this in this weird good way um i ripped off oliver stone i ripped off mazerski i ripped off altman do you is that something that before you start a movie you say i need to watch these 10 movies to get prepared yeah yeah always always yeah um so like for snatched it was like

um it was like 21 jump street it was everything from 21 jump street to like for Snatched, it was like it was like 21 Jump Street. It was everything from 21 Jump Street to Fitzcarraldo. It was like all these. And they're always so weird, you know, and because I like to sort of throw them all together and shake it up and then just sort of see what happens. And it's a shorthand that I can have with the DP. It's a shorthand that I can have with our editor. And yes, for I'm Dying Up Here, you know bob and carol ted and alice i watched uh king of comedy of course i watched boogie nights i watched what else a lot of really really cool oh a lot of cassavetes too um and because killing of a chinese bookie i watched killing of a chinese bookie yeah and in fact like i think a lot of like the red light in the club stuff was

just stolen directly from that and then you kind of add to it this like a dash of boogie nights and it, you know, and then you can kind of turn the knobs up and down in the editing room, but that's, those are the things you have and they're going to be part of the DNA of it. And they sort of also let you know how many risks you can take. Um, cause you start to feel like a pussy if you're like, this shot is too crazy. And then you're like, well, boogie nights, like, come on. And it worked there. So may as well try it. What's your relationship to TV at this point? is it something you can see yourself doing more of i love doing tv um i i i've had kind of mixed success in it i think i think i did a tv show that we shot like here i mean that we we had the writers room here called called rush and i was sort of half in it half out and i i was i written the pilot script, and then we sort of got into, it was like before pre-Mr. Robot USA.

Blue Skies time. It was Blue Skies time. And I, you know, whatever. It was just not a good situation, and I was not necessarily that psyched with the finished product. I'm dying up here. I'm really stoked with it. And I'm doing another TV show with Nas at BET.

Really? Um, yeah, I see you have Illmatic. Illmatic's on the board. Yeah. Yeah. Illmatic is a, is an important document at the ringer. Um, it is the greatest album ever. Maybe Purple Rain.

I like to. Well, Purple Rain may be getting more votes these days for sentimental reasons. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what do you, so what are you doing with Nas? We're doing a TV show about his kind of childhood and his sort of the origin story of becoming Nas. Really? Like a docudrama?

Yeah, I think. I mean, we've been doing it for so long, I don't have any comments that it's ever going to happen, but it's supposed to happen. It started out as me just wanting to kind of like get to sit in a room with him. But we've, you know, I wrote a script and it's supposedly going to get to sit in a room with him. But I wrote a script, and it's supposedly going to happen at some point in the next year. So I have that, and then I have another thing that I'm writing about film school that I really, really want to do. And that's a personal thing, that I would just run that show. I'll have to see how much traction it gets. Is it a fond look at film school?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's about creative people and about how to, it's kind of like just hustling kids in LA, broke kids trying to make it. Where did you go to film school? I went to AFI. Okay, what was that like? It was really fun. I went to AFI with Sam Esmail, actually,

who does Mr. Robot. I loved it. I mean, I ended it with a lot of debt, but I had a short film that actually got me a lot of attention and helped me make my first movie. I just thought it was really fun to go to school and talk about creative stuff every day and just kind of get a more sophisticated look at how films are made, and I got to make movies,

which I wasn't doing. Prior to that, I was Paul Schrader's assistant, and I wasn't making movies. I just wasn't. I was 24. I was going out of New York. I was getting drunk. And then I would just sit in his office and be a terrible assistant. I want to ask you about being Paul Schrader's assistant.

That sounds interesting. It was really interesting. But anyway, let me just finish this film school thing. Because I loved it and it really worked out perfectly for me. It was, like I said, a lot of debt. So like when people ask me if they should do it, I'm very cautious to recommend it because other than myself and Sam, I feel like a lot of my colleagues are still having a hard time kind of making a living. So unless you have rich parents, which I found out a lot of my colleagues did, which is great. It's helpful. It's helpful. It's really nice. I mean, I did not have the benefit of having that. So I ended up with $250,000

in debt that I just paid back, I think, after Warm Bodies. But I found it to be an incredibly rewarding experience. And I learned so much. All you need to do is have four successful studio films to pay off your film school debt. It's pretty terrifying. Yeah, I was surprised at how long it took to pay back my debt. I'm still surprised at how much money I have. It's not as much as I would think. Well, that's a very unspoken thing, right? Among filmmakers, people seem to think that you're living in some pl plush mansion but it's it is it's a it is a job it is a a trade it is a trade and and i'm not

certainly not complaining i i do have a lot of money now or at least what what seems to me like a lot of money um but it was it it didn't happen very quickly and in fact when i was making mandy lane by the time i got done with that it was like I got paid 15 grand for I think two and a half years of work. So by the time I was done with that, I was like selling the guy, I own the computer that we were editing on. And I had to sell it on Craigslist. I remember a dude came up to our office and bought the actual computer. And so when we sold Mandy Lane, that was like the first time I ever got like real money. And that was cool one more thing about film school when you were in film school are you making the films that you

thought you were gonna make when you were in film school no I probably thought I'd do more like wackness type stuff okay and I think I I think I will I mean I I feel like I can still sort of zig and zag a few different times before I need to sort of lock into my old film years, you know, like, I feel like once you get to maybe 55, 60, you're kind of just like, you probably should pick a path and just like stick with those type of movies. Cause you're a little, well, you have less to say. I mean, you know what I mean? Or at least less to say to young people and saying something relevant to young people is probably one of the most important things as a filmmaker, I think. So by that point, I'll do like period dramas and shit.

But until then, I feel like I can do like I want to write a sequel to The Wackness. I have other original things I want to write. I probably will end up doing one of these comic book movies. You know, I just feel like I want to I like to keep working and I like to even though I actually hate working but I but I actually like it feeds this kind of need in me I don't know what it is but I like to keep working so I do feel like there's still time to sort of do whatever film school version of myself I imagined but I also feel like even in film school I wrote like a thesis project that I thought was like so great and they didn't approve it, you know. So then I had to do someone else's project.

And that is what ended up getting me to the next movie. So I think there's something a little best laid plans about it that, you know, sometimes the universe just pushes you in a certain direction. And I also have a skill set where I can work with other people really well. And so I would be remiss if I didn't pursue that too. I mean, my favorite movie of mine is 50-50. And I had so little to do with the writing of that. And that's probably nothing I ever imagined myself doing. But it's something that turned out really well.

Paul Schrader's assistant. Yeah. So you went to film school after you were doing that yeah so like so you're living in New York you're in your early 20s you're trying to break into film

yeah I'm reading page two I'm reading like Hunter Thompson me too yeah Ralph Wiley yeah

who else were you reading yeah yeah Bill Simmons maybe Bill Simmons I was reading Bill Simmons I was reading the mailbag thing and then Hunter Thompson but I like the Bill Simmons

stuff way better anyway I was working at an internet company like no idea what i was doing and like yeah like reading espn.com and just like spending the whole time probably on like my fantasy team and hiding from people to to so that they didn't know that i didn't know what i was doing sounds like we had a very similar early 20s where a lot of the same things i was living in new york yeah a very similar early 20s. Where were you living? I was living in New York, reading a lot of ESPN.com, trying to pretend like I knew what I was doing.

Yeah. It was amazing. I was like this consultant at an internet company and I had no idea what I was doing. But I could write and I kind of could pretend I knew what I was doing. I was relatively eloquent,

more so than I am now. And then I got this opportunity to work for Trader and it was a lot less money, and I had just been laid off, actually. And I had this apartment that I needed to pay for, but I was like, I really wanted to get back into film. I thought, I think my original idea was that I would work

and then make movies, like, on the side with the money I was making, because I was making good money right out of college. And then I got laid off, and I never found myself, like, just, I was making good money right out of college. And then I got laid off and I never found myself like just I was not just I would write a little bit, but I just was not a self starter in that way where I would where I would just devote like all this time to making movies. So I started working for Schrader. My girlfriend at the time was working for Philip Seymour Hoffman as his assistant and found out about this job working for Schrader. And I went and started working for him. And it was not, I mean, it's not

that fascinating a story. I mean, I just basically, he had this office in the Paramount building in New York. He was making autofocus. He was editing that movie. I really, really liked. It's a great movie. Yeah. And so I got to see that, you know, it's most of the stuff I learned was just from like listening. It would seem like I wasn't learning anything and I was just doing really boring stuff. But at the end of the day, I guess I did pick up on a lot of stuff. And what I picked up on was like he was a badass, like he had a really cool attitude. He was really supportive of his collaborators, was really supportive of people at his studio when he agreed with them, but also had this iconoclastic,

like, fuck you, everyone, if you crossed him. And I could see he would get stressed sometimes, but he had this kind of cloak of that attitude that really, really helped him. And so not that I ever kind of took that on. I could never tell if it was an aft act or if it was real. And I ended up really getting along quite well with him. And he would come to my movies and give me notes. And he's just a great dude. But he is like an OG 70s filmmaker. And so it was just so interesting to be around that and to see kind of how he interacted both with his editor and with people at the studio and with trying to get actors to do movies.

So I do think I picked up on a lot of stuff, even though most of the time I was just giving him directions for how to get to places and stuff. So you wouldn't corner him and be like, tell me everything about the making of Taxi Driver? No. Because I think that would just be weird. Who wants to do that all day? I don't know.

Some people want their ego fed, and some people just want to be able to get to where they need to go. But he probably didn't want me talking about Taxi Driver. He probably wanted me talking about his more recent stuff. What I would do is when he would leave the office, I would kind of go through his files. And both because I had to,

like he would tell me to file stuff. But then when I came across something, it was like the Taxi Driver file. I was like, what's this? And it's like the original yellow legal pad of an outline for Taxi Driver. Just like page one,

Travis interviews at the, you know, whatever, taxi company. And like page one, Travis interviews at the, you know, whatever, taxi company, and like, page by page, what was what was going to happen. And that was kind of remarkable to me, because I had been writing, but I never knew what was going to happen from one moment to the next. And he had planned and outlined the entire thing before he even started writing. And I think like the story is he wrote that out of like a car, you know, he was living out of his car so like even a dude who's like life is incomplete

and utter disarray had to have that kind of rigid structure for his screenplays and he is one of I think probably the greatest screenwriter who ever has existed so that was very interesting to me too and then just like picture like a signed picture from Scorsese to him of the two of them at Cannes

that said from one Travis to another. Um, there was all this shit that I probably shouldn't, that was probably personal that I shouldn't be talking about, but it was cool. That's very cool. And taxi drivers, like probably my favorite movie. It's an amazing experience. So for you now, uh, what happens? You've made snatch, you've made, I'm dying up here. You are making a movie with Seth and Evan again? I'm making a movie with Seth and Evan and Charlize Theron that we're going to start shooting

in a couple months. I am, it's just been like an intense couple weeks. I'm going to try to chill a little bit. I'm going to, But you get to spend

all this time in Hawaii. You know, you're already, Well, that was fun. Shooting the movie was fun. Having a movie come out is kind of no fun.

It's a lot of stress. It's a lot of like, I mean, luckily the movie did well financially critically not so much but that's something you have to navigate to what is that like for you i mean it was a first because usually my shit gets good reviews um it sucks it completely sucks and there's like no real way to avoid it i think you read it you look at it well we an email. You get an email from the studio. So this is, I really do want to speak about this because what, I do want to know how other filmmakers handle this shit. Because no one wants to ask a filmmaker like that because.

I actually try to do it here often, to be honest with you. Well, tell me like, this is what my experience with it was. I looked, we got like the first email of like all the trades and stuff. And it was like, I think one of them was, like, mixed and the other four were shitty. So I got it at, like, midnight a couple days before it came out. And I'm, like, looking at it with my wife at 11 o'clock in bed. And I'm, like, this is not good. So then I pop a Xanax and I go to sleep.

But, like, this is the thing. Like, you have to just develop this thick skin. And it's, like, interesting to talk about Schrader because I think that he and also Amy, like, here, this is the thing. Like, you have to just develop this thick skin. And it's, like, interesting to talk about Schrader because I think that he and also Amy, like, they just have this sort of, these inherent coping mechanisms where they genuinely don't care. I, like, take, I internalize all this shit. So then, like, the next day, I'm just checking the tomato meter. I'm not reading anything. But I'll go to run tomatoes, like, kind of in an OCD kind of way. And then at a certain point, I'm just like, fuck it. I got to stop. I'm not reading anything, but I'll go to Rotten Tomatoes like kind of in an OCD kind of way. And then at a certain point, I'm just like, fuck it.

I got to stop. I'm hurting. It's like, you know, it's like an addiction. I'm hurting myself. And I wish it had gotten better reviews. But at the same time, like this was made as a pop kind of confection. And let's hope people see it. And so then it's like, are people going to see it?

And then like the weekend started, people weren't seeing it that much but then by mother's day by the end of the weekend we had a really kind of successful weekend then i was like i'm checking the fuck out this is too much like it's just too intense does the reception both critically or the financial success change how you feel about the movie in any way um probably day to day, but not when I zoom out like a year from now. Okay. You know, because like the night before, I think when it came out financially was not very successful. So I was just like, you know, I did, I second guessed like what could I have done differently

and whatever. And now when I zoom out a year later or a year and a half later, I'm very, very proud of that movie. I think that movie has a chance to be like a Christmas cult classic kind of, you know, people who didn't see it in theaters, but discovered it on cable are like, that movie's good. Yeah. It's, it's really what we hoped for.

Yeah. Um, so I try not to think too much about it in the moment to moment because, uh, you know, yeah, of course you're, you're always, I think as a filmmaker, you're always second guessing stuff and you're always in a constant state of evaluation because you need to get better always. You know, if you stop second guessing stuff, you know, it's this weird combination of confident and kind of permanently in flux. And you have to be confident and try things. But, you know, if you're editing and you're like, no, that's awesome. And everyone's telling you it sucks.

It sucks. So, you know sucks, it sucks. So you have to – and like with the reviews, it's like, well, I've gotten good reviews most of my life. I don't want to discount those. So I have to like kind of take it – I have to kind of take it a little bit and just use it to move forward. And not that you make a movie to get good reviews, but it's always nice. Sure. So. Especially if you've gotten so many,

I assume that you start to think that this is commonplace, that you can expect it to be thought of well every time you work hard on something. I don't know about that. No, I always envision the worst case scenario regardless. So I'm always relieved when it comes out and it's not the worst case scenario. So if you internalize this,

do you now have the feeling like, fuck these guys, I'm going to show them on the next thing? I don't think it's very, I don't want to take the fuck you guys thing. I mean, I certainly like, you know, it's nice to just sort of have like, like a coach puts a motivational quote in the locker room to like,

yeah, like I'll picture some- the whiteboard reviewers fucking face when I'm making the next movie and it'll motivate me. Yeah. But at the same time, like I think that film criticism is like an incredibly valid thing. And I don't, I'm not one of those people to be like, they don't know what they're talking about.

Cause obviously most of the time they do. Right. Um, it's how Schrader got his start. It's how Schrader got his start. But at the same time, it's like, yeah, it's kind of like, well, I'm not going to look at it and I don't necessarily care on this particular project. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's wrap with this. What, what is, you've made a lot of different kinds of movies, even though they all have a, you know, a certain tone, you

have a style. Is there a kind of movie that you've always wanted to make that you really want to do in the next five to ten years? It's interesting. No, I mean, I would really want to do – what I really want to do is a movie that allows me to sort of flex style muscles a little bit more. You know, The Whackness was probably one of the only ones that sort of allowed for this kind of agility of style. It was so point of view driven that I could do the Billie Jean thing and I could do these kind of flights of fancy. And so, yeah, I don't know what the genre would be, but like a single point of view driven movie that can be more aggressively stylized.

And it would probably be something original that I did. But as far as like, you know, flexing those muscles as a filmmaker, I think the Showtime pilot really did allow me to do a lot of that. And I really liked it. So I think I'll do it more on the next movie, the Seth Sharlies movie. I like the idea of kind of, and even on Snatched, I think I did some more aggressive stylistic filmmaking than you see normally in a studio comedy. So I like the idea of kind of trying to bring more and more of that into my process. Even though in comedy it's hard because you really want to control the timing of things in a very kind of diligent way. But I'd like to try that. What's the last great thing you saw? I think this Dear White People thing on Netflix was really kind of mind-blowing.

I really, really liked it. I'm only halfway through the season, but I thought it was great. I just saw a movie called A Bigger Splash. Have you seen that movie? Amazing. It was my favorite movie of last year. I love it, dude. So good.

It's so beautiful and so cool and so weird. I would like to do a movie like that. High-level Ralph Fiennes performance. It's a really good Ralph Fiennes performance. You see his dick. You do. He shows it all. It's great.

Good for him. That's an amazing place to end this great conversation. It's a nice dick. Ralph Fiennes performance. You see his dick. You do. He shows it all. It's great. Good for him. That's an amazing place to end this great conversation. It's a nice dick. Ralph Fiennes' dick. Google it, guys. Jonathan, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Appreciate you, man. Thank you.