The Big Picture - ‘Beau Is Afraid’: The Most Audacious and Polarizing Movie of the Year, With Ari Aster!

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

Ari Aster’s third feature, the Oedipal nightmare comedy ‘Beau Is Afraid,’ is here. Sean discusses the film’s virtuosic gifts and alienating approach at length with Adam Nayman (1:00). Then, Sean is joined by Aster to discuss how he made his thrilling new movie (58:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Ari Aster and Adam Nayman Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Sean Fennessy, one of the hosts of the Prestige TV podcast. HBO's Barry is back for a fourth and final season. And that means I'll be back recapping the show with co-creator and star Bill Hader to dive deep on the themes, scenes, and major moments in the series. Bill will provide insight into how every episode was made and why it's ending. New Prestige TV Barry recaps will go live every Sunday night when the episode ends. So make sure you're subscribed to the Prestige TV podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express.

Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about scaring Bo. Later in this show, I'll be joined by Ari Aster, the writer and director of Bo is Afraid, one of the most fascinating and polarizing movies of 2023. This is Ari's fourth time on the big picture. He is always a mensch, but he's thoughtfully circumspect about his films. And so we talked a bit about Bo is Afraid, but before we get to that conversation, Adam Naiman is here to actually dig in to this new film. Certainly the most controversial, debated, take-upon movie of

the year. Hi, Adam. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm just dandy, as I told you when we just started. But I was afraid. This is the third film from Ari, who has become, I think, one of the signature auteurs of the late 2020s, safe to say. I mean, alphabetically, he's at the top. But I think that the question of what a tourism is and whether that's a construct of critics or a tool of marketing departments

or a mandate of directors is always very tricky. Certainly, this is a writer-director who has had the opportunity to make the movies that he wants to make the way he wants to make them, and people have responded to them. So in that sense, he's definitely a name American filmmaker. His first two films, Hereditary and Midsommar, I think announced him as a major voice in horror, though he did not always seem very comfortable with that idea.

And in fact, in some occasions, rejected the idea of horror and elevated horror, which has become a bit of a dirty word in the critical and cinephile space of late. But he did leverage the success of those movies, which was, I would say, very unusual given how severe and intense those movies are and how artistic and arthouse they are at times, to this $35 or maybe $40 million budgeted nightmare comedy that he had been doodling on for a long time. He made a 2011 short film called Bow, and there are some remnants of that film in this massive story. And it is really massive, and that's been part of the discussion point. It's 179 minutes long. It is a true odyssey. It is modeled on the odyssey. is episodic in nature he's described it to me and many others as picker as a picker-esque and so because it is so expansive and because of the

subject matter and what the character of beau who's played by joaquin phoenix endures in the film um it has it has drawn some radical reactions all veering from full-blown masterpiece to unwatchable adam you're a very thoughtful and even-minded critic. What'd you think of Bo as a Fray? Well, thank you. I mean, I put the reviews up on The Ringer today, and I think I spent a good portion of the beginning of the review

kind of talking about all the things you just talked about and that we will go through again, which is the position that this filmmaker occupies, the polarizing nature of the movies he's already made, and you used a really important word, I think, which is the position that this filmmaker occupies, the polarizing nature of the movies he's already made. And you used a really important word, I think, which is leverage, right? Which is how do you take a couple of hits like Hereditary and Midsommar, themselves divisive films, not just within the horror community, right? They are movies that quote unquote normal people might be in danger of somehow watching when they show up on streaming

or play in theaters. They have stars in they have you know a big big distribution behind them so you have this very eccentric idiosyncratic filmmaker making two successful genre movies and leveraging that into a tremendously personal movie that kind of bypasses genre or like collapses a whole bunch of different genres into it you know into itself so it's just very momentous before you even get into the question of whether one likes it or not. And then the question of whether you like it or not is a pretty hard one to answer, because it's basically a parade of alienation effects, right?

And there was one tweet, I won't say who tweeted it, I think it's a really bad way of looking at the movie, where someone said, you know, I don't have anxiety and I don't have a bad relationship with my mom. So there's nothing for me in this movie. This is a movie that people on its wavelength will love and it has nothing for anybody else. I don't think that's true. On the other hand, there are very few people in my life, from colleagues to loved ones to family, who if they were to say to me, you know, I watched that and I didn't like it, I wouldn't really jump down their throat about it, right?

Because it's pretty alienating. And that is part and parcel of both a deliberate strategy and part and parcel of what is such a risk. You can't blame somebody, I think, for being put off by it. I think that that is part of the intent. And I'll explain why I think that's part of the intent and why if you accept the film in good faith and what its attempts are, getting confused about whether or not you have a bad relationship with your mom

shouldn't really factor into the equation of whether or not the film is effective. If you don't like it, I think that's eminently reasonable as well. I had a very similar reaction coming out of the movie. Coming out of the movie, I had the same reaction I more or less had coming out of his first two films, which is, wow, he really elbowed everybody in the gut for two plus hours, in this case, three hours. For me, I've always found his films very funny. I found this one even more funny.

It is imperfect. I think it is actually the most imperfect of his three films, in part because his audaciousness gets the best of him at times. But I really, really liked it quite a bit. And I also found it hilarious. But the film is actually about, strictly from one character's perspective, the intensity of anxiety, which is a word that has gained quite a bit of coin in the last 15, 20 years. It has become much more powerful in our discourse. And so I think it has become overused and kind of worn out. And so when you say, oh, it's a movie about a guy with anxiety, that actually sounds awful. And in some ways it is awful because the Bo character that Phoenix plays has to endure

this long journey while being wracked with a kind of guilt, paranoia, desperation, sadness, all of the attributes that we associate, this fear of impending doom that is associated with what is meant to be a journey from his home in a big city to his suburban home where his mother raised him. And a number of things happen across the way. I think we should talk in some detail about some of those things that happened because the film is so episodic. But Bo is being tortured throughout the film

and we're meant to understand his torture explicitly. Now, if you don't want to watch a person be tortured for three hours, you might not want to watch this movie. But if you can find the humor that that ari's seeking in his what feels like as you said a very personal manifestation of his own anxiety and frustration and confusion and paranoia then you then going along for the ride i think is worth it well you don't want to do the thing where you equivocate every single thing about a movie and you kind of

just turn everything in like every aspect of a movie into its own kind of debate but that's the nature of his filmmaking not just the polarizing love it or hate it thing but he's very interested in self-division i mean sometimes he literalizes it because he at least has one decapitation per film you know or one mutilation i made that note as well i mean he's he's he's very interested in people being pulled apart or separated bodily from parts of themselves. But I mean, more figuratively, you know, I think he's interested in ambivalence and contradiction. And so when you talk about anxiety in this movie, I mean, one question you have to ask, even before you start describing the plot, you describe the world that is entirely entirely surrealistic and which bears down monstrously on this character who is unfortunate to live in this evil world with anxiety this world of like marauding street gangs and loose poisonous spiders and you know just just the worst possible

people in his proximity like serial stabbing killers you know live around the corner or you ask the question is this world made in his image because he's our entry point into it and it's his point of view so it's both the profound and cheesy question of like how real is this how reliable is this it's introduced fairly early on in the movie that the character is on strong medication including a medication he ain a medication he has to take with water, which is this hilarious scene where he sprints from his spider hole apartment to this convenience store from hell to try and buy water with change. And then I think the hardest I laughed, not to go joke by joke through the movie, but this is one that I just wanted to get out and say,

because I laughed really hard. He's checking the medication side effects a little later. He's Googling the medication, and the first thing that comes up is this funeral website, which is like, remembering John, and all the people who've died from taking what he's taking. So there's a plausible deniability built into the film that whether a byproduct of his actual anxiety, or his medication, or some combination thereof, the world is not as crazy as it seems in the movie. It's being filtered through him. And I'm always interested how fairly is a movie playing with that and how rigorously is a movie playing with that?

I think there's a certain point maybe where the rigor falls away in this movie, but it's on the table, right? Is anxiety a thing that this guy is suffering and boy is he living in the wrong movie for it or is the movie only this way because of the nature of his anxiety right that's sort of where i started with it i guess it's not really in my opinion it's not important for that question to be answered and no no like when i think about it because i i consider that quite a bit as well And I think that there are a lot of people who feel like the surrealistic or extremist perspective of the character

is part of what is keeping them locked out of enjoying the experience. But, you know, a Marx Brothers movie is significantly more fun than Bo is Afraid, but it operates in a kind of a similar fashion. You know, there is a kind of absurdist approach to the reality of the world that has been created. And, you know, one thing about this film, I think you noted this in your piece as well, but it is this, you know, very

clear agglomeration of influences. And you can almost in real time handpick out where you feel like Ari's mind blended all of these pieces together. And that extends from David Lynch and Von Trier and Jacques Tati and a whole raft of filmmakers that he's talked about. Albert Brooks is like the signature to me in many ways. He's been very vocal about his appreciation for Albert Brooks, who's sort of out of fashion in the mainstream as a filmmaker because it's been so long since he's made a movie. But even with that in mind, all of those filmmakers I just named

operated in a similar fashion. They created worlds that felt somehow more angsty or weird or disorienting, and you accepted them as the mode of creation that the director was working in. And so I feel very similarly

about all of Ari's movies. Like when I watch Hereditary, I'm not like, this is an accurate representation of what it's like to go to a high school party and drive and knock my little sister's head off. Like it's a nightmare. All these movies are nightmares. So I'm not as maybe frustrated or confused

by that entry point. But we are living in an era where the greatest Letterboxd review of all time was the guy who reviewed Joker and just wrote, that happened to my buddy Eric. But that idea of plausibility is, I think, important. I mean, Hitchcock, not that Ari is like a Hitchcockian filmmaker. I mean, he's somewhere there in the Matrix, especially with the mother issues, right? But Hitchcock had that line about audiences where he said, the plausibles, right?

And that if you're ever watching a movie and saying that would never happen you should probably proceed directly to not watching the movie right like you're you're you've chosen the wrong art form i mean that said if movies choose to work in a realistic register or to represent history i guess that level of responsibility is increased is it no i mean like that's a can or or it's a big question that's a big interesting question about not to be too highfalutin eight minutes into our podcast but like why do people go to the movies they go to the movies to see real life that's absurd i mean it's it's it's a fair question and sometimes i wish there were films and filmmakers who would take those kamikaze turns

like truly you know out of out of nowhere but i would just say this is not a movie for people whose response to things happening on screen is well that would never happen right i mean this is a this is a movie that operates according to its own logic whether it operates all that consistently or successfully according to its own logic is a whole subset of of questions but like this is a movie where a guy running across the street to get water, to swallow pills, and having to literally dodge half the cast of The Warriors or Grand Theft Auto in order to do it while people are being stabbed in front of broad daylight in front of cops who are just like, whatever. That's the world. Whether that's an interior world that's externalized or just a horrible version of reality that this poor guy is fated to live in. That's something you have to just go with.

And what makes you go with it or not, I agree with you, is whether you find it funny. I found the whole hell New York section for the first 20 or 25 minutes of the movie culminating with the phone call in which he is informed of his mother's apparent demise. I guess that's not a spoiler. That's pretty early in the story that he's got to go travel to find what's left of her and pay tribute. I found that stretch of the movie extremely funny. Agreed. I was laughing consistently. And I think that that helped carry me through the sections later that, well, no less formally assured or daring made me laugh less

and i think that that may be by design you know the film is very schematic it effectively opens in a city it moves on to the suburbs in its second act after beau is the victim of a an accident and he is taken care of by a an executive and a surgeon played by Amy Ryan and Nathan Lane in two hilarious turns. The film becomes increasingly paranoid in a different kind of way, in a slightly quieter and I don't want to say subtler way, but then it moves from the suburbs into a kind of sort of wilderness forest landscape

before effectively returning home, much like The Odyssey. I don't think we're spoiling the movie to kind of outline some of those, the shape of the movie. And, you know, again, I think that that's, um,

by design, by letting Bo take us through all the various stages of man against nature. You know, the, the movie feels like one man's war against existence in many ways. And from whence he came, which is his mother. And,

you know, I, I, Ari's relationship to, came, which is his mother. And, you know, Ari's relationship to the idea of motherhood and mothering has been raised quite a bit, critically, of late. He's deflected a lot of questions about that specifically, but if you've seen Hereditary, you can see a very frantic representation

of what our parents give to us and what we take from them. I was curious, like, what your perspective is on it with this movie because this is an even more literal, uh, aggressive portrayal of Oedipal, you know, disruption. I mean, it is. And I keep, I keep finding these sort of like glib little, these glib little social media

formulations that I think end up being profound. Another great contemporary film review is the guy who tweeted, the guy who's only seen the boss baby says this movie is giving me boss baby vibes. Right. So we're also all helpless in terms of what our frame of reference is. Right. That's right. So it's interesting.

Like we meet Ari on the term, Ari asked her on the terms that this movie sets, which to some extent are the terms of lots of other movies. So when you ask about the mother relationship as a viewer, your frame of reference starts drifting around. You're like mothers in Hitchcock or mothers in horror in general. And the movie I thought of while watching this, which gave me boss baby vibes because of my own obsessions. So I thought a lot of Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, not just because of Joaquin Phoenix, that's obvious, but this idea of a character who sort

of experiences this psychic drift while around him, all these reflections and manifestations of some lost female source, right? All the women seem like reflections of one lost female character, and The Master master that's arguably his mother here it's very it's very inarguably sort of his mother and that idea that it's like constantly he is encountering the trickle-down effects of some primal scene or the the the aftermath of some primal scene that you're moving towards towards solving i think the difference is that in The Master, there is no sole female figure to reckon with, whereas here it's, again, not a spoiler because

she's on the cast list, but it's Patti LuPone. So there is going to be a sort of bravura, tour de force performance of maternity that at some point, whether it's in flashback or in hallucination or in something you're going to have to reckon with. And I found that to be funny, but in terms of adding to the canon of like, you know, dealing with mommy issues, it's not terribly mysterious, you know? And that's the thing I wanted to ask you about the movie or that I tried to write in the movie in the review as well without being too harsh, but also trying to be honest there is a difference between movies that use these references or these mysteries to signify

outward and ones that kind of collapse into a kind of solipsism and everything in this movie sort of seems to signify inward it's very very personal to him, right? And I guess the question is whether, you know, you find just observing or being dragged along on that solipsistic trajectory, whether you find it funny, whether you identify it, whether you have a certain curiosity about it, whether you can argue solipsism is a great millennial subject, right? Or people are going to say, I feel pretty shut out by this. Well… I'm asking, not saying. It's a vital question to the conversation about the film. I am Irish. And so my filial anxieties are rooted in my father, not my mother. So to start, I don't come to the film.

And I should say, the film has been defined, even though it is not identified as a very Jewish text and the relationship between a mother and a son in this, in that culture, in that religion, you know, has a certain kind of burden to it. And the film was very clearly commenting on it, especially when you consider the cast, some of the members of the cast. And anyway, the alienation that you're describing, I think many of my favorite filmmakers are constantly attempting to impart upon the audience. And frankly, I'm kind of rooting for it and I'm hoping for it because I don't really like anything that is attempting to satisfy me. I mentioned the Marx Brothers earlier and the Groucho Marx idiom about not wanting to be a member of a club that would have you it always rings true I really like and I know you do too I know you really like the kind of like angsty rude I'm a little bit smarter than you but also I kind of hate myself

but how can I project that into a meaningful artistic representation those modes you know the Coens Cronenberg like all of these filmmakers that kind of hover over the cultural landscape, but also there's a lot of self-recrimination in their work. That is my flavor. You know, if I had to boil down my taste ultimately, with some exceptions, of course, but in general, I really like those filmmakers. I think Paul Thomas Anderson falls into that category at times. I think even the Tarantinos of the world fall into that category at times. So I don't need to be purely entertained to feel moved or impressed by a movie.

In this case, well, I'll just say, in this case, this movie is assaultive by design in a way that a lot of those other filmmakers are not. And its length

and point of view in terms of the way we're meant to feel inside of Bo's experience is unusual and actually bears more comparison to von Trier or torture porn at times than it does to some of those people I just mentioned you know like you could say well Barton Fink and a serious man feel like key texts here but they're not really as fun as those movies are like a Bo is not as fun as those two films you know what i mean yeah well yeah i think i think sir i think i mean i know ari's a fan of of serious man as are all right thinking people this great movie um i think that you know i it it is interesting

that the discourse around this movie is gonna have to some extent what's the mel brooks line you know you don't have to be jewish but it wouldn't hurt. And I think that that's kind of true. I think that in some ways that what you're talking about wanting to be alienated or not being pandered to, it's a very valuable impulse. And it's not just a valuable impulse in and of itself, it's what it runs counter to in the culture now, which is complete pandering gratification, right? Or a complete lack of challenge, a complete correct assumption, like an algorithmic assumption of what your preferences are, and then just like filling those preferences. And I agree, I find that kind of spectatorship and that kind of content creation, you know, alienating.

Whatever you say about Beau's not afraid, it is content in neither sense of the word, right? It is neither content nor is it content. And that's something. And I think that that's where there's going to be this big argumentative discourse around it online, which has already started, which is you have people of varying levels i think of expertise and varying levels of just basic iq whatever their professional designation is being like how can you waste a24's money this way how can you waste people's time this way you need to be held to

account which is this you know i love the idea of these grand inquisitors holding people to account, which is funny because that scene is literally in Bo is Afraid at one point, of a character being held to account for disappointing everybody, except in the movie, the list of charges doesn't involve wasting $40 million of A24's money. But I mean, these people are literally taking that same antagonistic tone that he is hyperbolizing and satirizing within the movie. This idea somehow that movies have to be worth it is complicated, but asinine. That often feels like something uttered by people who just don't watch enough movies. I think if you watch a lot of films and you see something like Bo, it's hard to walk away

from it, at least not impressed with craft and acknowledging of the experience experience if you hate it in a way that is an acknowledgement of its power um the as far as the you know holding the filmmaker or the studio to task for the what the work of art that they've created that reminds me a lot of the way that people get mad at athletes for asking for more money from professional sports franchises. It's just like going to bat for the biggest corporation and, you know, siding with, like wondering how the infrastructure of power should be punished for their failures is just weird. Like it's just a weird, this is, this, this is entertainment. You know what I mean? It's a world of entertainment. It's really, that's as high stakes as it is. It's Like, it's just a weird... This is entertainment. You know what I mean?

It's a world of entertainment. It's really... That's as high stakes as it is. That's as high stakes as it is in sports. That's as high stakes as it is in film culture. RE getting $35 million, which frankly, like, if you look at the budgets that say,

I don't know, Nancy Meyers was seeking for her film that eventually didn't go or ultimately was paid for air, $35 million is a very modest amount of money and if the film does become in fact like a kind of blank check disaster and there have been a number of them i know you uh cited michael chimino's uh yeah but cited it only because it's a powerful myth that has swung in chimino's direction not just because heaven's gate is obviously better than people said it was, but because

that myth is now shorthand for an entire lost, lamented moment of American moviemaking, which will never come back because movies are never going to quite mean the same thing culturally that they used to. There's too much competition. There's too much content. Right? People have a three-hour attention span for streaming

series. I mean, not for movies, whether it's Heaven's Gate or Babylon, which is also a movie that you could put in the conversation with something like Bo is Afraid. I think that's more of a, I think what those movies have in common, you and I talked about this before, just about Babylon is there is also the sense that attention spans are growing shorter and distributors are growing, you know, less, you know growing more and more risk averse, get it all up there while you can, which is the other anxiety you have in Bo is Afraid, which is not maybe the anxiety of the character, but the anxiety or the ambition of the filmmaker, which is just, well, I've earned my shot because by that capitalist logic that people want to burn the movie by, the people who are

standing there with pitchforks being like, you're wasting money. Hereditary and Midsommar did really well. And they didn't have to. There's no huge stars in those movies. There's no superheroes. There's no Nick Fury cut scenes in those movies. They did well. So that's what you call earning your shot.

So if he chooses to spend the money this way, it may be because he suspects this kind of canvas may not be available to him anytime soon. I've seen Ari express gratitude for the opportunity to make the movie, but I hadn't really read anything. I hadn't spoken with him or read anything that he had to say about it when you and I discussed that about a month back, which was just the idea that this generation of filmmakers, Chazelle is one of them. Jordan Peele is one of them, Ari,

we saw Robert Eggers do something very similar with The Northmen recently, we're seeing Greta Gerwig make Barbie, Ryan Coogler making a second Black Panther film. This generation of filmmakers, probably between the ages of like 35 and 45 right now, Barry Jenkins even making The Underground Railroad as a TV adaptation I think might fall into this category. This attempt by this generation of widely critically acclaimed directors who have had surprising commercial success saying, I have to seize on this moment to capitalize and make something grand, make something ambitious, make something at a large scale. I do find to be an interesting, I don't, I'm not sure it's a trend

necessarily so much as it is kind of a culmination of a post indie boom, right? Like it's like, we're in the third wave of independent cinema in America right now. And in this third wave, you've got stars and those stars are doing everything that they can to become all the people that they idolized. And, but doing so in very idiosyncratic ways with more movie history to pull upon than anybody who had come before them and so it's been so fascinating to kind of dissect and we're going to do this with barbie and i'm sure it's going to become a lightning rod in a somewhat similar fashion honestly because of what greta means to a lot of people but i i love it i'm like what is the point of even trying to be an artist on a grand

scale in a medium that is basically a wide audience medium if you're not going to go for it and so chastising people for that literally should be your last reaction but i i guess people can't help themselves well i mean you know people people can't help themselves and because it's a you know uh it's it's a it's a it's an interesting industry to write about because it's an art form, and it's an interesting art form to write about because it's an industry. None of these are newsflashes, by the way. a lot of stuff out there as content that stays in its lane or a lot of stuff out there that is art or or you know varying degrees of of of art that isn't considered on that kind of big stage right i think that there are things about this movie the the star and the subject matter and that idea of male white male anxiety and frustration and dealing with mediocrity in the most virtuosic film language possible that doesn't just bother the showbiz bloggers of the world, but to some extent

bothers cinephiles too. And I'm not saying they're not right to be bothered as well. They see it from the other end, right? As an incursion on genuinely eccentric, weird, marginal territory. This movie that's trying to speak the language of kind of, you know, outsider art, which is really a kind of insider commodity, which is why one of the things that I think this movie will end up being, however it does, is a movie to use a kind of political metaphor that goes on in America, you know, in terms of American politics, North American politics, it's going to get it from both sides. It's not just one or the other. It kind of gets it from both. And I think reading the interview that Ari Aster did with the brilliant Michael Koresky from Reverse Shot, you know, he did an interview with Ari where they

talked about this. And Aster said he felt, and again, I don't feel bad quoting him for saying this because it's in an interview that he put out there where he's like, he goes on Twitter and he sees a lot of people who have similar tastes to him who like the same movies. And then they're frustrated with his movies. He's like, what have I done to alienate them? On the one hand, well, you make movies

that have very staunch alienation effects in them. Yeah, you made Midsommar, that's what you did. You made Midsommar. But also, yeah, same taste as a lot of people who don't have $40 million to make a movie. And whether, I'm not saying all negative reactions to his work

is couched in envy. I'm not saying that at all. Negative reaction to his work is fair enough. I share some of it sometimes. But he is not necessarily going to be championed by the lovers of esoteric marginal cinema. They don't necessarily see him now as one of their own who's made it. They sort of see him as establishment.

And that's a tough spot to be in, where there's a whole audience that won't want to see your movie for one set of reasons, and then a whole other audience that might normally want to see your movie, but kind of thinks you've become the man, you know? I think that's very insightful and is in fact probably quite torturous for any filmmaker who finds himself in that position. On the other hand, Ari is undeniably, as you say, virtuosic and also is publicly celebrated by the likes of Martin Scorsese, who has called him, you know, one of the lights of international cinema right now.

So you really can't get praise that is much higher than that. And, you know, Ari has something in common with Scorsese and with David Lynch and with the Coens and with a number of other people who have been through this kind of take cycle well before there was an internet,

film, Twitter concern, which is like people hated some of their movies and they rejected them publicly and then they were re-evaluated as part of a collection of work and when you see them through the prism of their entire filmography or even you know just seen in a different perspective 10 years later they understand them more deeply or they accept them on different terms when there's not all this noise of how could a24 allow this to happen and my gut is that this movie will just be one more example of that that there is just so much technique talent and um personal vision that it's going to be a little hard to deny if not a uh a love for a greatness around

the the execution of the film yeah And I think that interesting writing about it will probably be writing that either less that uses love it or hate it, not as the end point, but as the starting point. I mean, that's what I tried to do instead of sort of saying, you know, and in conclusion, I love this movie or I hate this movie. It's sort of more what if love it or hate it is a, is a, is a almost a subject a subject or almost an aesthetic kind of in and of itself and then how do you how do you navigate that because it gives you lots and lots to navigate it's a very spacious movie you can move around inside of it that's why i think when ari calls it picaresque you know he's right and one of the great functions of picaresque if you know

picaresque literature is that it is really alienating and grotesque because it gives you a tour of everything and when you tour everything you kind of get into the bowels of things literally and and and figuratively i mean some of my favorite filmmakers of all time are avowed makers of picaresques i mean that's what paul verhoeven is you know that's that's that's that that's a a high compliment i think to pay to filmmakers to say that they work in that picker-esque mode. So the film is audacious in other ways. There is, for example, an extended animated sequence in the movie.

The conclusive segment of the movie is largely computer-generated imagery, which is unusual for Ari. The level of design in the film in particular is ornate to the point of parody. There are so many gags and Easter eggs throughout. I was hoping we could just talk a little bit more about effectively what worked and what didn't work in that respect, and the too-muchness maybe of some aspects of the movie as well yeah i mean it's hard because there are certain things even in the review that i wanted to describe them because it's just fun to put words around them like what was that but but i also do think and this is very true in horror movies where people did tread lightly with hereditary especially in terms of

spoilers like i think spoilers are crucial to writing seriously about movies, but you're also trying to think about your form and it's, you know, we're on a podcast with a lot of really nice people listening who might go see this movie this weekend and who already would probably want to see the movie this weekend. You don't want to, you don't want to give too many spoilers. You're speaking of the epic conundrum of my time, making a contemporary film podcast without telling people what movies are about. I know, but you seem so unbothered.

I'm well, no, I'm, I'm Sean is afraid, but unfortunately, I'm enduring. Sean is afraid you're enduring. I mean, I mean, I, I tried to the review to kind of stop at the halfway point in terms of describing it, but you know, the animated sequence is kind of a good place to go. I know that, uh, for example, a lot of people have compared it to Michel Gondry. And I know for a fact that for Ari, the reference point was actually several steps earlier than that in terms of the artistic actual inspiration. It's just that Gondry reflects that inspiration too.

I agree. People see what looks to be set-designed construction paper animation, and they can only of michelle gondry as written by charlie kaufman i found those to be like really facile comparisons honestly i that it just seems a little bit different than that yeah i mean i i think that there if if anything it reminded me of some of the staging and uh you know in jap jap japanese ghost films and and sort of you know uh some of the the the integration of you know, of theater and film techniques, even back to silent cinema, some of the stuff in that. Yeah, German expressionist films, Melie, like all that, yeah.

But that sequence is a good example, I think, as a microcosm of the whole movie. It's like, it's longer than it needs to be. It drives towards a very obvious point. You kind of see the point coming and it's a joke and everything I've just said is neither is neither good nor bad, but I believe those things I just said are true, which is it doesn't need to be that long, but it's like a shaggy dog story. It doesn't need to be that long, except if you think it's funny, at which point, the

fact that it goes on and on and on and on to get that long, except if you think it's funny, at which point the fact that it goes on and on and on and on to get to this punchline that you kind of have to see coming, because you've been given the punchline in advance about, let's just say, this character dreaming about the family who he's lost and we might never see again. There's a very obvious physical, biological red herring there, but how that's not possible and i laughed really hard when it got to the ending because it's just such a long joke for such an obvious punchline but it's it it worked i it does it does feel like a moment when a lot of people are checking out on the movie when they're sort of saying to themselves all right

we're two plus hours in and i'm not sure i want to be around this anymore but if they do do that and when the film moves out of theaters and into a different environment they will miss and i'm not going to spoil anything but they will miss the sequence with parker posey that is probably my favorite thing in a movie in the last two years that that the in very similar fashion the way you describe the animated sequence both the execution of the scene and the joke are amazing and for a for a i would say particularly for a man of a certain age casting parker posey in this role and then the way that these the sequences soundtracked is genius level clownery and i really really appreciated it i've i've never met or profiled or anything with Parker Posey,

just watched her movies like everybody else. I will say this. In addition to being perennially a terrific actress, which she is, she's a good sport. Oh my God. Which doesn't mean that even what happens with her character is glib. I don't mean that like, well, it's kind of awful,

but she sells it. I just mean she's a good sport, I think. And I think that a lot of people were also again on Twitter when they saw photos of the premiere, they saw Mariah Carey was there. They're like, why is Mariah Carey at the premiere of Pose Afraid? Which the movie answers. And she is also maybe in a more detached way or a more disembodied way. She's also a good sport in terms of how she connects to to to to this movie because yeah that's a pretty memorable sequence that speaks even more deeply

to some of my confusion around the reaction to the film where it's like do you not see bryan carry at the premiere of the film do you not see that everyone is in on this joke and that you are not in on this joke but nevertheless can't can't account for that but what i also want to say is we hurdle closer to the end and if if you read my piece, you know, if you've seen it, it's a lot easier, I think. And I'm kind of writing it that way for people who will end up seeing the movie and going back to it. I will say this. Even if it took all three hours, there is something about the last five minutes of the film that I found convincing. There is something at the end where some of my doubts and some of my hedging,

I was then finally convinced. And I guess the ending of a movie is a pretty good time to convince somebody. And I think that that last sequence, which I don't want to say what happens, but we can just, let's just say it involves a kind of a reckoning with all that's come before, sort of an official reckoning. And all the things he chooses to stage it with, the where and the how, and just even the choice of location and props, it's pretty stark and bleak and funny. And the last shot is a keeper.

So it's funny that you say that, because that is where I slightly veer from you. I struggled with the last five to ten minutes of the movie and I didn't know this at the time, but when I spoke to Ari, he talked about, I don't, this is not spoiling anything, but there's CGI in the final sequence. And it was the only time in a film that is wildly ambitious that I felt like maybe his reach exceeded his grasp and that he was attempting to render something visually that I did not think was quite there. Now there could be a variety of reasons for that. Um,

an unfamiliarity with working in that mode, uh, budgetary, um, clarity of vision, whatever it might be. But I, you know, maybe from a storytelling perspective, it is conclusive and makes a lot of sense, but just visually a movie that is so assured visually for two hours and 47 minutes, it did, I bumped on it, as they say now in podcasting. I'm kind of fascinated for anybody watching this movie

at home too. I saw it in IMAX with Dolby. It was perfectly rendered and you may not realize anything like this when you see it at home or it might be magnified. You never can tell with these sorts of things that was actually the one thing i'm sure there are many people who are like oh you so you enjoyed the sequence where you know

he was tortured by a poisonous spider and in fact i did you know i do i did find that funny but that final sequence was the one thing that was kind of frankly holding me back from being even more rapturous i think in my appreciation for the movie. Well, I mean, leaving the quality of CGI aside, which didn't occur to me one way or the other, but it's fair enough. I just meant what he has you look at at the end and keep looking at it. And the way it seems to mirror, I think, the environment that anyone sees this movie theatrically is going to be seeing it in. he actually turns the screen into a, a kind of a mirror and it was uncanny. The crowded theater. I saw it in as a preview,

almost like parts of the movie theater that I was actually sitting in were mirroring what was happening on the screen and other parts were trying to wait the shot out and sort of be like, I'm going to, I'm staying, you know? And again, there's no cut scene.

No, Nick Fury is not going to show up at the end of bow, but he doesn't let the movie end. He holds onto the movie past the point of, of hope or, or past the point of no return or whatever else. And it felt very deliberate and very confrontational that it's going to be his movie to the end.

Even the parts of movies that don't belong to the filmmaker anymore, which are the credits, you're going to hold it. And when he held it and held it and held it and held it and held it, and then, you know, eventually the lights do have to come up and you have to go home. I laughed out loud. So that widely circulated story on Twitter where during the credits some guys stood up in a preview and said you people better not fucking clap which is real there's audio of it as i said in my review in an odd way as the credits were rolling that was sort of the one time i actually

felt a bit like clapping i'm not just being perverse i was like i i thought how he chose to wind the whole thing up was pretty great. It's so wonderful, though, that there is, I guess, ostensibly what could be described as mainstream film art that is making people demand reaction from crowds. to control how people feel about things which is this bizarre tick that we have that we've probably always had in our culture but that we have much more awareness of now the idea of someone saying no one clap after watching a movie is utterly deranged and yet must be at least in part exactly what ari is going for you know like i think he's such a nice guy that it's confusing to imagine someone attempting to purposefully alienate but it's so effective and you can't help but assume that there's so much intent well this is what this is that those i mean you mentioned von treer earlier who where i see him in this is not really in any of the style or the the the theme but where i see

von treer and some other filmmakers too, you know, Zulawski did this with Possession, which I know is a movie you really like. David Lynch does this all the time. You work with the kind of actors and the kind of aesthetic and canvas where more people will have a chance of seeing the movie than maybe should. And I know should is a big load-bearing word there, but that's the von treer trick is if dogville would have just stayed in its lane as a small movie at film festivals that maybe has some kind of famous old people in it you know you hear down the grapevine oh that danish guy's making a movie about america who cares but he works with nicole kidman and it's like oh you

know this is the trick this is the open season thing that smart directors and it's like, oh, you know, this is the trick. This is the open season thing that smart directors, and it's got to be casting because unless you are somehow in that unbelievably small group of filmmakers, a historically small group of filmmakers whose name really gets normal people into a movie theater, and then who also isn't a Steven Spielberg, but is a sadist, right? Like, this is a small group. You have to use stars. And Joaquin Phoenix is not Nicole Kidman, but he is a sadist, right? Like this is a small group. You have to use stars. And Joaquin Phoenix is not Nicole Kidman, but he is a guy who has, he's almost a genre unto himself, right? So there's light on this movie

and people will go see this movie. Like someone who loves Joker might see this movie. I think what I'm saying makes sense. No, it definitely does. It's just big enough and just expensive enough that people will care to be annoyed by it. From the filmmaker who made that weird horror movie Hereditary and the star of Joker comes Bo is Afraid. I mean, that's how the movie is being sold.

So with that in mind, I mean, I did talk to Ari a bit about Joaquin and he expressed his admiration for him. He said, I could never have imagined he would have wanted to do this. He effectively called him the greatest living actor. And whether or not we agree with that is kind of meaningless. Well, Ken Marino says hi. Greatest living American actor. Did you watch Party Down this season?

It's the best. It was magnificent, wasn't it? He's the greatest American actor in case he's listening. I would watch Bo is Afraid 2 entirely about Ken Marino's character from Party Down. They have a lot in common. It's body horror, anxiety. Anyway, I digress.

Well, it's interesting because when Ari was going down a list of the performances from Joaquin that he liked, he said many times, I'm still here, the sort of mockumentary that Joaquin made in 2010 with Casey Affleck was high on his list but then he also cited two lovers and her and films that he really admires or performances that he really admires that are Joaquin in a low register you know that kind of restrained confused quiet Joaquin Phoenix not comedous from no you know he's in a pretty low register in this movie this is a he is with the occasional shriek you know and he has talked about screaming on set i don't know if you heard him say this he said he would randomly scream on set when they were not filming just to stay in the mode of the character which is somewhat upsetting but also

very funny. He has like a stunned quality through a lot of them. I mean, he's subject to a fair amount of abuse, so. He's a flavor all of his own, but I love him so much. And he's going to be Napoleon later this year with Ridley Scott. So just quite a year for Joaquin Phoenix. What else is there to say about Boa's Afraid? Maybe that, you know, I think you had it on the,

I'm opening the podcast to it here. You know, you had somewhere in the plan or what we were going to talk about is like, you know, what's the legacy or what's the shelf life, which is such in some ways a tough question to ask on opening weekend. I do think that movies like this, when they find their audience,

they don't always find it right away, but historically they're more and more pushed to having to right i mean eraser head for instance played for three years you know in drips and drabs finding those but that's why there's that beautiful story about spielberg talking to lynch and lynch say you know the only difference between us is you know people see your movies and steven spielberg was like i think as many people have seen a racerhead as et david you know just depends on where they see it yeah you know and when they when they when they get to it so i think in the past a movie that would take its time to find a cult uh wouldn't have that opening weekend necessity

riding on it this movie's got to find some of its cult pretty fast or else we're not getting Bo2. Too Bo2 furious? Too Bo2 furious. I think that that also is the economics of cult movies are never conventional. To cite a movie that I know a little bit about, which is Showgirls, Showgirls is really profitable now, but it wasn't. And no one got to make it be so at the time. It wasn't like in 1995, anyone had the safety net ready. The movie was a fucking disaster. And years and years later, it's been redeemed and reclaimed and become profitable, but that doesn't

happen overnight. I think everything's so accelerated now. We have backlash to movies before they've opened and cult status gets applied instantaneously. That dovetails with something I wanted to note, which is that one of the things that many people predicted before this film was even released and critics saw it was the inevitable F cinema score. Now we're recording it on a Thursday. We don't know what the cinema score will be. I guess it will come out on Monday. You know, the cinema score is ultimately meaningless because it's a reading of what a filmgoer's expectations were going to get that in this case. But an F Cinema score is rare. And it's ultimately a badge of honor, I think, in this modern condition. And the thing that you're describing is very true. A couple of movies that I thought of while I watched this, not because they are necessarily similar, but they operate in a kind of a similar frenzy, were Under the Silver Lake and Darren Aronofsky's Mother, which were two

movies that were more or less rejected, were not box office successes, were films that were made by filmmakers who had made previously more conventionally successful films at the box office. And it was easy for me, at least, to identify that they were films that I liked a lot and admired a lot instantaneously. And maybe there was a little bit of like, I want to be at the forefront of the cult status of this film, but not so much that it was uber self-conscious. I was just like, I like that filmmakers are willing to be this bold and this uncompromising and this provocative. And this just feels like another in a long line of those. It's an interesting thing because the idea of being hated in the moment and then enduring is I think what a lot of filmmakers would like they take that if that was a package that they could be offered. So instead of waiting for it to happen organically,

I think some filmmakers try and make cult to order or make scandal or provocation toward I'm not saying that about bow. I'm not not saying it about bow but i'm not i'm not i'm not solely saying it saying it about bow and i think that that idea that movies organically naturally alienate themselves from the zeitgeist until surprise they captured it all along is harder and harder to do now because again everything's accelerated there's shorter windows people have people have more and more content to kind of consume. Like it's rare that a movie rattles around the culture, which is why checking our ringer podcast boxes, a film like the empty man is so odd. That didn't even take years, but it at least actually took some form of grassroots, non instant opening weekend reclamation. It's rare that that happens.

It's an interesting one because that's one that the only people who seem to hate that movie were the executives who funded it as opposed to the audiences who at a minimum felt like the film was mediocre and at a maximum felt like it was an instant classic, like I think you and I essentially did. You know, I wanted to talk a little bit about Nightmare Comedies before we wrap up. We don't have to do a whole list-making enterprise, even though I did ask you to do that because it feels kind of ultimately immaterial. But were there any like were there movies that this movie reminded you of or like films that you would potentially pair with in a double feature? I mean, I think both of us when we were making those scratch lists and I'm sure Ari Aster probably be happy to hear this one. I mean, you do think of a serious man. Yeah.

Which is the idea of, you know, how much is, what is the universe trying to tell you? And is it trying to tell you give up? You know, I mean, it is pitiless. Pitiless is ultimately how I felt walking out of the film. Pitiless, but also like unduly interested because it's not quite indifferent to him. It's not just, it's kind of telling him like, no, Rocky, stay down, stay down. You know, so, you know, I thought of that. I mean, I thought, and this is as high a compliment as I can give, maybe not as a direct influence, but my favorite filmmaker of all time, or one of them has been well, and that idea of constant lack of consummation. Like when we were making this list, I think I had high on it,

Lajdor, which is his surrealist film from the early 30s, which, you know, you want to talk about controversy. I mean, you know, he had to, you know, he literally had Jesus emerge from an orgy at the end of that movie. I mean, you can't cancel Bunuel. He's canceling himself. But the Bunuelian rhythm is one that all these filmmakers on their best day would love to emulate, which is basically you are constantly working towards a sense of climax often literally like some kind of sexual release the movie says no no no and takes you out of it takes you out of the dream takes you out of the the the passion takes you out of the sense of certainty and just leaves you so for lack of a better word it's like spectatorial cock blocking you know know, like that's the Bunuel

hallmark. He's the greatest ever at it. And he's a real surrealist, you know, like he has the member jacket. So if you see a lot of these other people as trickle down surrealists, they're all answerable in a way to Bunuel, who's the greatest of all time. And yeah, I think there's a little bit of him in this movie. So that's a big compliment for me. Yeah, there is. I thought of Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and even Viridinia, like movies that when you're watching them, you're constantly asking yourself, what is going on here?

Like how you can never really get settled in your seat as you endure them, even if they're long or the pace is somewhat slower. So I think that's very clear. And then I mentioned Albert Brooks and we both cited a couple of Albert Brooks films. films you cited defending your life i think for very obvious almost one-to-one textual reasons which we don't want to spoil um yeah and i i cited lost in america because there is a kind of um i think the the lie of contemporary happiness seems to be um

a big focus of aries and it's certainly a big focus of albert brooks's and exploring what it means to truly be free of all of the the shackles of our our convenient life so and and you know i i think that the i think 1980s martin scorsese is a very reasonable comp for a lot of what this movie is trying to do. This sense of paranoia and frustration, but also everything is kind of hilariously dark. You know, The King of Comedy and After Hours are probably the two best examples of this from Scorsese, but it's all over all of his movies.

So it's nice to watch him publicly celebrate Ari's movies because you can see that he has a sense of communion with him. Yeah, one of the things I love about Scorsese's cinephilia, not just the directors who I think he sees some of himself in, but, you know, when I hear him talking on a podcast or whatever it was with Joanna Hogg, who is not a Scorsesean filmmaker, you know, really at all, or hear him talk about, you know, other directors, he really actually means it. He doesn't have to do this. No. but other directors, he really actually means it. He doesn't have to do this. He doesn't have to.

He's given it the office now for a long time. And the fact that he's still so determined to help pull up all these filmmakers, I think is the sweetest compliment that you could pay him, almost on top of the great movies that he's made. I mean, he's a wonderful advocate. It's really just nice. You're a wonderful advocate for film, Adam.

Thank you so much for chatting with me. No, apparently I hate everything. This is the problem. I can't tell who's right, whether it's two people on the internet or you. Mean podcast guy returns. What's the next movie you want to talk about on this podcast?

Well, I don't know. I mean, there's a potentially interesting you want to talk about on this podcast? Well, Oh, I don't know. I mean, there's, there's a potentially interesting movie coming out of my home country soon. That might be worth, uh, that, that might be worth being part of the big picture. The biggest movie to ever come out of Waterloo,

which also fits into that corporate origin myth, uh, cycle of movies coming out. We can maybe, you know, maybe, maybe talk about Blackberry. Sounds like you joined me for a Blackberry pod.

That sounds fun. But we also got to see what, what what's coming out there's so many great movies on the horizon like and now i have no notes for anything um oppenheimer oppenheimer uh you know sure yeah uh oppenheimer you should we should have a big picture about the second season of party down man i would like to, but I don't know anybody else besides you that's watching it. Who's watched it.

Thank you. Thank you as always for having me. Thanks for not mentioning that the Raptors aren't in the playoffs, you know. But the Knicks are. And the Knicks will be returning to Madison Square Garden

on this Friday night. Very excited. And for you, I am pulling for them every game. Thank you so much, Adam. I really appreciate you. Let's go to I am pulling for them every game. Thank you so much, Adam. I really appreciate you. Let's go to my conversation now with Ari Aster. In 100 meters, turn right.

Actually, no, turn left. There's some awesome new breakfast wraps at McDonald right. Actually, no. Turn left. There's some awesome new breakfast wraps at McDonald's. Really? Yeah. There's the sausage bacon and egg. A crispy seasoned chicken one. Mmm. A spicy end egg. Worth the detour. They sound amazing. Bet they taste amazing, too.

Wish I had a mouth. Take your morning into a delicious new direction with McDonald's new breakfast wraps. Add a small premium roast coffee for a dollar plus tax at participating mcdonald's restaurants delighted to have ari aster back on the show ari congrats on bow is afraid i have many questions for you about your new film um this is based on a 2011 short that you made that you have since uh expanded significantly why did you feel the need to revisit this idea that you had so long ago? Well, I wouldn't say that it's based on the short. What got me going on that?

So I, at the time, had just left school. I was at the American Film Institute. And I was, I guess I'd graduated a few months prior, and I had to move out of my apartment. And I just recognized that the apartment was a possible location. And those can be hard to come by. So I thought I better come up with something to shoot in one day. And, uh, and, you know, but, but the, uh, the idea of a guy leaving his keys in the door on his way, well, the idea of a guy whose keys get stolen from his door as he's on his way out of his apartment, uh, to, to take a, you know, a, a trip that he's stressed out about,

uh, uh, stuck with me and, and, and it's, it, you know, it functioned as, you know, the catalyst for whatever this thing is. What, what is this thing? How are you describing it to people? I've been doing my best to reduce it as much as I can in order to avoid talking about it in earnest, especially before it comes out. Because, you know, it is an odyssey, but then I say that and I want to throw up. So it is something that you self-consciously, though, you were trying to create a kind of mythical journey for this character. Like that was a very purposeful design of the film yeah well you know i i mean really it it kind of began as just this receptacle for a lot of my stupidest ideas and just things that made me laugh and when i first wrote the film that's really what it was it was just this

kind of big kind of mean-spirited, you know, pitch black comedy. And then, then I, I went back to it after Midsommar thinking like, uh, it might be fun to make Bo, uh, and then, you know, rereading it, I had all these new ideas and, and what it was, you know, still really made me laugh, but it felt a little, it felt like too small to me and but but i i kind of just lived with it for another six months and and yeah just spent that time

yeah just building it up and let me ask you this would this have been your next film if mid samar were not a hit did it need to did your two films need to be as successful as they were to make a movie like this? I mean, yeah. No. Well, I'm kind of amazed that the film exists and that I was given the resources and the freedom to make it. And not only that, but I'm kind of amazed that I was allowed the freedom to make sure that it kind of retained its shape. I never would have been able to make it without the support of A24. There's no, I mean, there's just no way.

When you were writing it and kind of retooling it and filling up the receptacle with ideas, did you feel like you were trying to push as many things that you wanted to see as possible into it you know there are these like there are series of kind of amazing set pieces and it feels like some homage to some filmmakers that you like and there's this it's in this entire psychological fabric that you're weaving throughout the movie but it does feel like there is a kind of like, will I ever have another shot to do something this epic and scale again? Like that wasn't a feeling that I had walking out of the movie.

And I wasn't sure if you were thinking about it creatively that way, like how far can I push this? I don't know if it was ever as self-conscious as all that, but there was definitely a feeling of like, oh shit, this is like a real opportunity. And I really better take advantage of it because I might never get an opportunity like this again. It's also just the nature of the film. You know, like I, in the first section of the film, like, you know, I really kind of viewed that as a gag machine. And the idea was like, how densely can I pack this thing with,

you know, visual jokes and, and, and, you know, just kind of oversaturate this world. Bo is kind of launched from world to world and, and each of those worlds, each of those worlds demanded a different kind of attention and a different kind of, I don't know. I don't know if the word is ambition or in some cases restraint. I don't know. It was a very, very intuitive process making this film. It wasn't schematic in that way. I was really, really kind of feeling my way

through the movie from the writing process on. I mean, even the shape of the film strikes me as kind of counterintuitive. It doesn't, you know, it kind of reaches this emotional peak two thirds of the way through. And then from there, it kind of descends into this

like wallow and it's and and i and even that was something that you know like i it just made total sense to me but uh but also felt counterintuitive in a way that was exciting to me and and and whenever i watch the film, if I have, you know, if I'm able to achieve any sort of objectivity, that's usually the thing I get the most excited about is just the shape. It's interesting that you say that because I had written down here

was this kind of purposefully schematic because structurally it's film starts in a city and then it moves to a suburb and then it moves to the wilderness and then it moves to a suburb and then it moves to the wilderness and then it moves to something more ethereal and also returning home in some ways and it felt like very structurally dynamic but very very purposeful you know and very and you know you mentioned the odyssey obviously like it just feels like there's this big world of historical storytelling that is shot through the prism of your mind in the movie. And it felt like designed.

And it's interesting to hear you say that it's it was completely intuitive to you to build it that way. A year into feeling your way through something, you start to get a picture of what you're doing, right? And then you start to make, you know, more, then you're able to work a little bit more decisively, right? And you're able to prune it, right? And to take things out that maybe are no longer working for the story you're telling that otherwise you love, which was definitely the case here. There were a lot of things that I had to cut from this film before we shot it, while I was writing it, that I just really loved as material, but just it didn't work.

And so, yeah, it's tricky because everything, I guess it is very heavily designed. And I hope that there's almost like an obsessive, like focus there, but I, I, I, I don't know.

It was important to me that it kind of stay freewheeling in a way. I mean, it, which really also is just, if the film could be categorized as anything, I guess it's a picker risk. Right. And so that, that, If the film could be categorized as anything, I guess it's a picaresque, right?

So that's honestly just part of the nature of that kind of a story. It kind of is both a meander and something, in order to work, needs to be very tightly focused. Yeah, it is propulsively mysterious but also takes its time which is an unusual blend for something like this you know i feel like the first couple times we talked about your films i'm sure i said it and i'm sure you or i think or you said or whatever but i was like these movies are very funny to me hereditary and mitsumaru are very funny to me they're more than funny but they're very funny and they feel purposefully funny but they were were not comedies at all. And in fact, I think you disturbed a lot of people with both of those movies.

And this movie feels more overtly comic, even though it has nightmarish aspects and fantastical elements. Did you feel like... Was there any shift that you had to make creatively to do something that had... Because it is a tonal change I think from the previous two features and I'm curious like what it was like to make something that had a different form

essentially well there's a shift in that it's just a different kind of film and I I mean yes it is a comedy and that's how I see it but if anything I found this to be like more liberating and that I how I see it. Um, but if anything, um, I found this to be like more liberating, um, and that I, it like didn't demand the same kind of like restraint as the others,

uh, or, I mean, by like a certain kind of restraint, of course, the others are pretty unrestrained in their way, but, uh, but this film allowed me to jam as many ideas as i possibly could into it and there were a lot of like you know i i it the nature of the world too which is basically a mirror of the world we're living in and it's kind of awful in all the ways that the world we're living in is awful but just with the the dial, like, you know, just turned up, you know, it just, it was a very joyful experience making the film because I felt more untethered. And so, you know, because of it, you know,

because of it, I feel like this is, this film feels more like me than anything I've done. I was going to ask you about how much of it is meant to feel like a projection of someone's psychology versus something that is literal. I know that this is not exactly our world, but how much of it were you thinking of it as a real world versus how much of it is prismatically Bo's mind or Bo's mother's mind into Bo's mind? How did you see that? That's very hard to answer, right? Because I mean, the best, the best answer I can give you, I think without saying more than I want to, um, is that no, no, like the world is real. It is, it's, it's, this is the world of

Bo is afraid, you know what I mean? Like, and Bo is living in it, but it was very important to me that the film feel claustrophobically like suffocatingly close to him, to Bo. Like, like you are kind of traveling through him and that you're really, and that you are not so much in his psyche as in his experience that the film is you know and it and i think it's it's it's not wrong to say that we're in his head but more than that i really want to feel like we're almost really more in his nervous system because it's i mean like we're really i i don't know. It's all, I mean, anything I say can only be like an obstruction to somebody watching the film in the most open way.

Can you tell me about why Joaquin Phoenix was right for this? I've wanted to work with Joaquin for so long. You know, my feeling before I worked with him was that he was maybe the best actor alive. And my feeling, having now worked with him, is that he's better than I thought he was. I do remember seeing I'm Still Here in the theater and finding that to be like one of the funniest things I'd ever seen. And thinking that that was one of the most amazing performances I had ever seen. Not only because of the performance.

And it is, I mean, he's inventing a character there. And it's such a brilliant comic performance. But really it's what he was doing with his own name that struck me as like, you know, and I think it struck everybody as like suicidal and really exciting. And I just remember thinking like, Oh, this guy is like a real artist. I really, really would love to work with him.

And then, but you know, I mean, I, I, I've been, I, I, I've wanted to work with him since I first saw him to die for, you know, and I think what he did in the master is just unbelievable. Like there's, I've never seen anything like it and, you know, and what he does in two lovers and the last scene of the immigrant, you know, I, and her, you know, you know, he's incredible. He's there's, there's nobody like him. Um, and, uh, and it was really, uh, you know, without hyperbole that, that was the best experience of my life was, was working with him on this film.

I was, I was wondering how you thought about who to surround him with, because a lot of the actors in the cast, they feel like they come from two schools, and sometimes those schools cross over. One is these kind of like borderline legendary recent Broadway figures, and then these kind of deeply familiar figures from the last 20 years of independent film and you know sometimes those two things are correlated to each other but i thought that that was an unusual collection to kind of surround joaquin who is like the most interesting kind of male movie star we have right so like what went into the was that was that also kind of like world um and so it felt right to go to actors who you know weren't just theater actors but in some cases like you know broadway right um i mean you get to that final you know the final hour and you get to patty lapone and you know i mean she's like you know that's like right out of tennessee williams or something it's very it's very theatrical um and

but i uh but i was definitely thinking about what kind of alchemy might come out of that like putting somebody that works the way joaquin works with, with, with that, with that, with another approach. And, you know, it turned out to not be as like radical as I expected because Joaquin really is very technical. You know, I, I remember thinking before I worked with him, like, you know, it, it, it feels to me like he can only do whatever he's doing once, you know, and then it's, and then it, it's escaped and you have, and then it's and then it it's escaped and you have and then it's over and that's sort of true because he doesn't want to do anything to death but he he's really you

know he he's working these things out like we're we're working these things out well in advance like we're rehearsing these scenes and we're feeling our way through it so that it doesn't feel prescribed, you know, so it feels true in one way or another, even if it's just true because it, you know, you you're, because it felt right when we were working through it and finding what the scene was. But I, you know, but he's, he's, he's much more, he's much more muscular of a of like a technical actor than i i expected and and so it wasn't crazy to you know to to put him against these guys uh although but but but i but but i think the one thing that was important was to keep Beau like extremely real and naked and vulnerable and exposed and having the people

around him be kind of these grotesques, you know, and that, that is, that was part of it, you know, was that there, there's a falseness to this world that he's engaging with. And so the, the, the trick was we have to keep him extremely real and really grounded. Yeah, that was my reading on it was that that was the best way to render like the obnoxious calamities of daily life was just to have the loudest,

most theatrical people in the world delivering words at you nonstop. So I thought it was just amazingly effective. In the past, I've heard you talk a lot about filmmakers that you love. We've talked about some films that you really admire and appreciate. This film felt like more overt in its admiration for some of the people that you've talked about, Jacques Dati and Albert Brooks and Roy Anderson. And I was wondering how self-conscious that was for you and kind of the design of the film and feeling like you could pay homage or at least like show inspiration in some

ways to those films in a way that maybe you couldn't in the previous two you know to be honest I wasn't really thinking that much about other films I was thinking a lot about books, to be honest. I mean, I felt like the film was kind of working in these literary traditions more than it was really working in more than anything else, I guess. But a lot of things dawned on me while we were shooting or while we were in post,

like, oh shit, yeah, yeah wow of course yeah i'm like and and the people you just mentioned are are you know heroes of mine and and uh and i love their work so much and i feel like i've like you know so thoroughly like metabolized it that you know sometimes that i that you know it's just it's it's uh i don't know i i yeah it's uh and it's and it's really not not a a defensive answer because i like now i really see those things and i see like oh god yeah of course like of course this can be traced to that, you know? But I, you know, one, one,

one film that I was thinking about as we were, as I was just building out the world, especially of the first section was, you know, you mentioned Jacques Tati and I was thinking about playtime for sure. And the way that, you know, for him, just no background actor is too small to not be given all the attention in the world. I wanted to ask you about that. Like, especially in the first act,

there's this, like, incredible chaotic choreography and the production design is so massive relative to other things you've done in the past. I was hoping you could just kind of talk about designing a movie with that much in the frame at any given time and how you did it. In some cases, we used storyboards. I definitely storyboarded the animated sequence,

but I always use shot lists so i i do these very very thorough shot lists that you know by the time we're shooting they're about 100 pages long or so um and you know we'll do these like kind of these these these overviews that look like game plans where you, where you have the blocking and you have the camera. And I did those for this film, but I also in a lot of cases had those in my back pocket and did not impose them on Joaquin. It's one thing if the scene is pretty simple and it's just, you know, you're going from A to B, then, then it was not a problem, but for,

you know, the for the more complicated, emotional, those bigger scenes, I tried to really never betray to him that I had worked it out in any way. And if I ever did, then we really had to deviate. And usually if I kept it to myself, it would end up, you know, kind of landing more or less where I kind of anticipated. So with, you know, some big surprises here and there. To answer your question, part of the joy of building this world was that because it is this invented world, all the, you know, all the details kind of needed to be worked out and made from scratch. It was very important to me that there was like a poster on the wall or an ad, like a billboard or like an advertisement or a, you know, like a street sign or a product you know that that that was all made from scratch but

also like very decisively and also kind of finding a way to to have it all kind of like fit the humor of the film um and so there was a i don't know if I mentioned this, but I was recently introduced to the term chicken fat. I don't know what that is. It was coined for Mad Magazine. And it's a term that they apply to just like, you know, when so many gags, like background gags, are jammed into a panel in comics, right? You find it especially in Mad Magazine.

You find it in, like, you know, especially like early Dan Clowes and like 8-Ball. And by the way, 8-Ball is, you know, that's one of the things that meant the most to me as a kid and that and that was on my mind when i was making this i was thinking like okay i want to like work in that mode because i i love it um but uh but yeah so it was it was just uh so part of the joy was just taking a lot of time in pre-production and just coming up with stupid names for things and just things that made me laugh and and uh you know like there are a lot of things that nobody knows

like there's this weird i mean this this was before you know ray liotta died which which is so sad um who's the greatest but i but there's for for whatever reason i can't really, I, it made me laugh. There are all these like Ray Liotta references in the film, like the city that Joaquin lives in, in the beginning is Carina Carina. And then the airline that he's, that he's flying on is Air Liotta. Like it just, I don't know. I don't know why I'm using that as an example there. It it's the stupidest thing but uh you know and just there's just so many like band posters just like you know death by anal murder by fuck uh there there's a lot of very very stupid stuff uh to stuff to find on the walls in the background.

And one of the things I'm most excited about with this IMAX release is that when I was watching it down in IMAX, when we were converting it, was to see just how many of those details that I, you know, I was kind of heartbroken to find in the edit that they were just really hard to, like, you couldn't really see these, like, this, like, store that we built. And, you know, this, like, sign that we put, like, deep in the background, because I like to shoot wide. I like to shoot a lot of things wide, rather. And suddenly, you know, in know in imax i was able to

really see all those details and i think it it encourages us you know a different kind of engagement where you're really scanning the screen and trying to find all those things yeah it's in it's kind of a paradox because the film plays so wonderfully on a big screen but it probably won't be fully appreciated until it is like micro analyzed and home entertainment and people are pointing out all of the easter eggs so to speak all the gags that you've built into it um let me ask you about the freudian theme of the the film um you must be getting a lot of questions about like this concept and the kind the idea of like what our parents give us.

Cause it's now strung through three films. Like, I'm just curious, like how you, um, think about that as an idea. Like, do you feel like it is an essential part of every story that you want to

tell? No, no. Well, I mean, I don't know. It, uh,

in some ways this felt like, okay, this has to be like the last of these now. Like I, in some ways this almost felt to me has to be like the last of these now like i in some ways this almost felt to me like a like a sort of like i don't know grand finale yeah or like an evil parody of like like one of the first two i don't know um did you want to purposefully kind of detonate the like master of horror reputation that you were accruing in any way?

That wasn't like the purpose of this. Um, you know, I, like I said, you know, the, the plan was to, to make this before I made either of those films. So there's a world in which if I could have gotten this made, uh, like admittedly for a lot less money i i i would have tried uh and and so yeah i mean is there anything else i want to say to that effect i'm not trying to trap you i just i'm genuinely curious about that uh we're very quick to anoint in a way maybe more so than we were previously and so i feel like you had two in a row that felt like they were within a genre format and so i think there's the desperation even by jerks like me that are like hey we got a guy who does this now and so by making something so expansive and so kind of genre agnostic in some ways genre you know kaleidoscopic it felt

like almost like a rejection of the way that things had been framed previously yeah well i guess i mean but even then when i like when i was asked how i felt about it i think i said in one interview like uh i don't necessarily consider myself a horror filmmaker i kind of consider myself a genre filmmaker like that that pissed off a lot of people like a lot of horror people apparently um but that but that's not just that but that that that was in no way like a dismissal of the genre you know i love horror movies i consider definitely hereditary to be a horror film i'm not i'm not sure i really midsummer feels more to me like a kind of a dark comedy but i i, I mean, whatever it is, but I, I,

but I try not to think that way at all. Like, I, I don't know. I find, I find it to be like, like, I, I'm already regretting even having said that because I feel that there's just no upside to engaging with, with the, these things, you know, I, it, it, it ultimately has nothing to do with me and and you know uh i'm hoping that you know as i go forward that you know every film is different from the last and and i i don't know but um but but there is no there was no point at which i

was thinking like uh yeah like this is like this is going to really upend whatever reputation I might have. But, but, but I, but I do think there is a, you know, when the films come out and, you know, they've been marketed and they've been seen by people and, you know, given whatever designation or, you know, where they're dropped into this or that category, more and more I feel like alienated from the film. And I don't recognize it anymore. It's not necessarily what I made and even the way that it, but I start thinking about it in the way that it's been presented to me by

other people. And so I do have this impulse to get away from the last film. And I do feel kind of like eager to just do something that's mine. And then I, but then, but then it comes out and it goes through the same process and you realize, well, no, it was mine,

but now it's, now it's mine and not mine. Yeah. Already Bo is going through that process. You know, I know. I'm sure that that's painful for you and I'm sorry to force you through some of those feelings.

Like I'm, I you're one of a handful of people who have been, who I've talked to on the show about each of their feature films since I started doing this. And so I'm kind of interested to kind of chart how you've been feeling about those things in particular. And like, and this one, you know, this is such a bold movie it's not it's not a cheap movie you know there's something there's kind of a risk both creative and kind of structural to

making a movie like this too and i i also kind of wanted to know like will you read the reviews of this movie are you charting the box office success of something like that like do you like or are you just trying to just evacuate yourself from all aspects of it after you've made something uh i'll resist reading the reviews and then i'm sure on one dark night i will succumb um and yeah i mean like i'm paying attention to whether it makes any money or not because i hope to make another movie now. So, but you know, it's really about just getting to the next one.

But is that how you're plotting it? Do you think just like, let's just make one more, let's just make one more. Yeah. Yeah. And then just put everything into that one, you know?

Yeah. But I, but I, but I, I can say that I'm, I'm very proud of this film and that i i'm so happy i was given the opportunity to make it and yeah especially at this moment you know in this climate where it really does feel harder and harder to get anything made um i want to ask you just one more thing about making it.

You mentioned that there's an animation sequence, there's this amazing design and detail that is plugged into all the worlds that you're building out. What did you find to be the most challenging of all of the things that you built for yourself in the screenplay to actually execute on? Well, there's a, would say the the final sequence of

the film which i don't want to get too far into because it would be a spoiler that was you know that entire environment was made in in you know uh uh in post so that that was all green screen none of that existed that was very difficult and that took a long long time to just build that environment in cg and and uh and then you know i mean the the the animated sequence was difficult but it was like a a real joy. And just working with Cristobal León and Joaquin Cosinha, who are these two Chilean animators who made a brilliant film called La Casa Lobo that I think everybody should see. It's just beyond belief what they, what they achieved. Um, and, uh,

and working with them on this film was really just like so much fun and, and, uh, kind of a, it was a long, long road, but, uh,

but a really, uh, pleasurable one. I think it, I think it drove them a little crazy. Did that final sequence kind of push you off from doing more in cg in the future or did it make you more curious about it well i think i learned a lot but uh no i mean i'm sure i'll get there again but it it's it's you know it it's uh it it's it's hard uh it's hard when you don't have maybe all the resources you need.

I think if we had a little bit more money, we would have been able to get there faster, but I'm happy with where it landed. It just took a long time. Yeah. Ari, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen. I know you're a great watcher of films. I don't know if you've seen

anything that you've loved recently. No, let me think. Let me think. I saw this a little while ago. It wasn't that recent, but Jafar Panahi's new film, No Bears, is incredible. And I don't feel like that was talked about enough. That was really, I thought, a pretty magnificent film and really upsetting and very haunting. It's really been nagging at me since I watched it, I think in December. So I would encourage anybody who has not yet seen No Bears to watch it right away. It's a great recommendation.

We actually haven't even discussed it on this show. So thanks for bringing it up. Hey, congratulations on Bo is Afraid. I think it is like an amazing and bold film and I'm glad you made it. Thank you so much. It's always great to talk to you, Sean. Thanks, Ari. Thank you to Ari.

Thank you to Adam. Thank you to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on this episode. Next week on The Big Picture, we're drafting again. Ciara and Amanda are back. We'll see you then.