The Big Picture - Charlize Theron, Plus an Interview With ‘Long Shot’ Director Jonathan Levine | Career Arc

Episode Date: May 3, 2019

We examine Charlize Theron’s arc on the big screen—from prototypical roles that leaned heavily on her sexuality to her turn toward action stardom, ultimately leading to her role as secretary of state in Jonathan Levine’s new comedy, ‘Long Shot’ (0:45). Then, Levine joins the show to talk about working with Theron, Seth Rogen, and what types of films he sees himself making in the future (49:15). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Amanda Dobbins, Rob Harvilla, Jonathan Levine Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. In the past month, we saw the return of some of TV's best shows, so we wanted to remind you about our Recapables feed, where our staff breaks down current episodes from your favorites like Game of Thrones, Killing Eve, and Billions. Also, make sure to check in each week to hear special one-off recaps on shows like The Bold Type, Very Cavallari, Cobra Kai, and more. So as you keep up with your top shows,

tune in to the Recapables feed each week on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessy, Editor-in-Chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the wide scope of various movie stars' careers. I am joined by my two career archaeologists amanda dobbins and on the line rob harvilla hello guys hello sean rob this is where you say hello

yes thank you sir hi rob hello there guys we're here to talk about avengers endgame just kidding we've been doing that for what feels like 300 years as soon as you said that i was like sure okay let's go now we talk about superheroes. Muscle memory. No, of course we are here to talk about Charlize Theron because Charlize is the star of a new romantic comedy called Longshot. Yes! Longshot is a delightful new movie about a very powerful politician and the schlub that she falls in love with.

The schlub, of course, is played by Seth Rogen. We're going to talk a little bit about Longshot at the end of the show. And then after that, I have a conversation with the director of Longshot, Jonathan Levine, returning guest to the big picture. Very smart guy, also a fellow Mets fan, so please support him. But first, let's talk about Charlize. Amanda, I'll start with you. Just generally speaking, what's your relationship to the actress Charlize Theron, one of our perhaps last true movie stars? Yes. It was interesting when I was going through the IMDb to kind of take in the whole career and be able to answer your question. I realize I'm a very late past Charlize person. And I think that she came into my life like in

this decade, in the beginning of this decade, probably around young adults and the third wave of her career. And that is not, that's on me. That's not on Charlize. Charlize has been like a really, really famous and successful movie star doing a lot of different types of movies for many years now. But for a long time, she made the types of movies that I don't really go see. And, you know, I saw Monster because she won an Oscar for it. And I saw The Italian Job because I like a heist movie. You know, I was very familiar, but I didn't, she was doing a different type of movie, like kind of action based. She was often the only woman in a cast or the only you know one of the only women in the cast and so it has been it was interesting just to reflect on how I found her and the choices that she made um and what kind of movie star she became and she really did level up as well and I think

that's when we all kind of paid attention it's it's funny to say that she leveled up like 10 years after winning an Oscar I think that's part of what makes her an interesting person to talk about because she is definitely having a sort of career in reverse from a lot of other people who start out maybe in genre movies or movie starry things that are not as prestigious and then slowly evolve and eventually get to their Oscar moment. She did the opposite in many ways. Rob, what about you? What's your relationship to Charlize? You've been down since day one? I can't say that I have because for a long while, she made movies that I sort of instinctively avoided. As we'll discuss, I think my favorite movies of hers are Young Adult and Tully, which are both movies that I avoided the plague

when they first appeared. Because Young Adult, I have sort of an aversion to cringy sort of super sour movies and tully i have an aversion to like movies about struggling parents for reasons you know i don't think you have to psychoanalyze either of those too deeply but i just i feel like i missed her best work on purpose you know and like i i saw her and in mad max and in atomic blonde and movies like that. And like Amanda, I saw a monster and just sort of this dutiful, like this person's going to win an Oscar and I guess deserves to win an Oscar sort of way. But I guess in the end, she's a movie star in the sense that I ended up really loving movies that she was in

that I am extremely preconditioned to not love and to almost not be able to watch at all, if that makes any sense. It's very impressive what this person, the kind of experiences, movie-going experiences this person has sort of dragged me through at this point. Yeah, I think of her as arguably the most versatile actress of her generation, and I'm not totally sure that that's her reputation per se, but if you look at the different kinds of movies and in some ways, Longshot is a new shade, it's a new color for her because she has done comedy before, but maybe not this broad and this kind of down the middle and this crowd pleasing. A lot of her comedy has been Arrested Development,

Stint, or A Million Ways to Die in the West, which is perhaps not as successful as we'd want it to be, or Hancock, which is sort of the action comedy variety. She started out in interesting fashion. I feel like the three movies that we picked are all very different, though they use her in similar ways. We usually start these shows specifically

by talking about the sort of breakthrough moment. Rob, for you, when does Shirley's really break through? It's alive! It's alive! It's alive! It's alive! My pick was Two Days in the Valley. You made your husband feel like shit. That's why he cheated on you.

You deserved alimony. You liked him. You really liked him. Of course I liked him you really liked him of course i liked him uh which is from 1996 it's john hersfeld and it's like it's an extremely 90s movie like it's you know like a tarantino whimsical misadventures of small-time crooks in la ensemble type situation like danny aiello cooks and eats an entire meal of italian food while holding a gun like it's that kind of movie and i it's it was my first exposure to her and like the first time she appears on screen is james spader holds up a

naked bloody polaroid of her insinuating that she's dead which she is not but like that's the way she's introduced in the movie her character's name is helga svelgin it's just it's it's a very inauspicious like introduction like her first big scene is like this super lurid sex scene with james spader which was like you know a requirement in la in the 90s you know like to get a driver's license or whatever like her big scene her climactic scene is this hotel room brawl with Terry Hatcher. There's clips from this movie on Pornhub, I guess, is the simplest way to explain it. It's inauspicious. And at one point, James Spader says to her, you're not too tall.

It's the world that's too short. And I feel like that's her career for like the first five years or so. Like I actually think the first movie I saw her in was Celebrity, which was a couple years later from 1998. And it's like extremely minor Woody Allen. And her character's name is literally Supermodel. And Kenneth Branagh is the star. And he's like doing a Woody Allen impression. And she appears on screen and she's beautiful and immaculate and super intimidating. And she goes like, I like your car. And Kenneth Branagh just goes blah, blah, blah, blah. Nobody on screen

with her could even talk to her as though she were a normal person. It feels like for the first solid half decade of her career. You see this person, you can tell they're a movie star and you can tell that the movies are going to take a really long time to figure out how to interface with her as like a human being. I think that's incredibly on point. I mean, she, of course, is from South Africa, got her start in the business as a model, and it just seemed like they were iterating on model archetype for four or five years. And she becomes this object of affection slash adulation slash objectification in every single movie. Two Days in the Valley in particular is like, isn't her character sort of an assassin, but sort of a sex pot,

but sort of just like a side piece, you know, like all of those things. She contains multitudes. Sort of in a way. In a very. And yet nothing at all. Yeah, exactly. That's sort of like such an empty vessel, such a perfect embodiment of life in the valley.

But it's interesting. I never would have guessed that she would have gotten to where she got based on that movie, such a perfect embodiment of life in the valley. But it's interesting. I never would have guessed that she would have gotten to where she got based on that movie. Because there are a lot of movies like that. And there are a lot of supermodels who were cast in movies at that time who don't ultimately go on and don't have talent or don't have the right vision for how to shape a career. And I think one thing that I think we'll get a sense of as we talk about this is she's very smart. And she's very smart about knowing what kind of roles to pick and when to zag when everyone is zigging. And in some ways, it took her a couple of years. Like you say, Amanda, your first pick is also sort of an objectification role. It is, though it's a little more self-aware.

I picked this for a couple of reasons. Number one, because this is the first time that I saw Shirley's Theron on screen, which was in That Thing You Do. And if you don't remember her role in That Thing You Do, she plays the hometown girlfriend of guy the drummer this is hardly a date guy i thought we were going to the movies and dinner at the club we're gonna cream these ladies well how long is this going to be i've been looking for you everywhere you gotta set up who eventually becomes a one-hit wonder with the band and then falls in love with limp tyler and Charlize is his very beautiful, cold, distant girlfriend who doesn't really care that he's in a band, isn't really into him, and then falls in love with her beefcake dentist. And they play that for laughs. And so she

is kind of more attractive than everyone else on screen and is kind of dolled up in that 50s, 60s way and is supposed to be unapproachable, but that is also supposed to be funny. And she is playing a little vapid and out of it. She's in on the joke. And so I think, you know, because we're going to talk about her comedy, I thought it was relevant. And also I think we've already talked about how beautiful she is and we're going to have to deal with it. But the way that she plays with her attractiveness throughout her career is like kind of the through point. She's like kind of she's either using it or turning it on its head. She's very aware of it and is aware of how people respond to it. And you can see that even in that thing you do.

Yeah, she's a real shapeshifter in some ways, too. And the movie that I picked for the breakthrough is certainly one of the most ludicrous movies ever made. It's The Devil's Advocate. Kevin, I'll never see you anymore. And now that you've got this big case, it's just only going to get worse. If you can believe it, I'm actually looking forward to having your mother come and visit. What about the apartment? God damn you!

Why do you always have to go and change things around? This is not about the apartment. I hate this stupid place! Perhaps even more ludicrous than Two Days in the Valley or That Thing You Do. And Charlize is also a supporting character in this movie. She plays Marianne Lomax, the, I guess, sort of vivacious party girl slash hardworking wife of an aspirant young lawyer in Gainesville, Florida, played by Keanu Reeves. This lawyer is hired by a white shoe law firm in New York, and they move from Florida

up to New York, and they take on this new and fancy lifestyle. And it is very exciting, but ultimately overwhelming. We come to learn over the course of the movie that marianne lomax is either suffering from schizophrenia or has been raped and damaged by satan who is the man who runs the law firm that kevin lomax has been hired by and that man is played by al pacino all that is real and all that is true about this movie i think the only performance in the movie that seems to be, that is pretty hysterical, but there's not trying, it's trying to be real.

I think is Charlize's performance. Everybody else is acting in a movie that is a ridiculous Caravaggio painting. It's just like over exaggerated, ridiculous, metaphorical. And Charlize is, you know, she's a young actress at this point,

but she's trying to do a transformation from a woman who's got curly blonde hair to a woman who cuts all her hair off and dyes it Brown, who changes her, uh, the way that she looks, she sort of goes from like high powered Hollywood executive style to like Eileen Fisher. Like I stay in my apartment all day style in the movie. It's a very fascinating transformation. I just, let's talk about a high powered Hollywood executive style for like the- She's in a power suit at the beginning of the movie. It's a very tight,

it's the 90s lawyer movie version of a power suit, which is about three sizes smaller than any professional woman, which you know what, Charlize pulls it off. She looks great. But let's, it's like the Ally McBeal version of a suit. Well put. That's a good point. Nevertheless, she goes through a crazy transformation. And in some respects, the performance doesn't work. It's really over the top. But you can sense that she's trying to locate something that is real in a movie that is

completely unreal. And it's just incredibly memorable to me. It sticks out to me in a movie that is full of a lot of things that really stick out. In each of these movies that we're talking about, she is not the star. And she's used as a person who is sort of like positioned against what a man is doing. And you can see this kind of throughout the first four or five years of her career. You know, she goes on and she makes like the astronaut's wife. And she is the wife. She goes on to make the Cider House Rules and she is not the main character.

She goes on to make Reindeer Games and she is stuck beside Ben Affleck. Like for about five to 10 years, she has to be subservient in a lot of ways to the male characters. I don't know if she did it by dint of her own will or because, you know, she's gone on to be a producer. She's a humanitarian.

She is a person who is in control of a lot of the things in her career. But I've always found it fascinating that the switch just kind of flipped at some point. It feels like it's basically Monster. And I think we have to talk about Monster, even though, you know, you guys have both noted that you watched it sort of out of obligation rather than enjoyment. Because a lot of the movies she had made to that point were very popcorn-y. You know, movies like The Italian Job. I'm here. I never heard how you got your start.

Me? Well, I've been a thief since I had baby teeth. Sweet November and... Got the job, didn't you? Best offer anyone ever made me. Even The Cider House Rules, to some extent, was sort of like that warm bath literary adaptation. Hi.

I'm the best. You are? Wow. The best, the best of what? I'm the best one. The best one, huh? The monster is, of course, Patty Jenkins' portrayal of Eileen Wuornos, who is a perhaps the most famous female serial killer.

And it's a very ugly movie. It's very unpleasant to watch. You know what? I think now I'd like to have what everybody else has worked their entire life for. It doesn't work that way. Fuck you, man. Yeah, fuck you! You don't fucking know me! I wouldn't say it's

even particularly great. I don't think it has a much narrative shape. I don't totally... I was surprised that it emerged. It seems like a classic example of this woman made a choice to get closer to the character, uglify herself, and we should reward that. It's pretty much the standard example of you go ugly to win an Oscar, which we have, you make a physical transformation to win an Oscar,

which is something Sean and I talked a lot about on our Oscar show. And Charlize is always example number one. She comes one year after Nicole Kidman won For the Hours. And Nicole Kidman also wore prosthetics in that movie. It was a weird moment in time where this is what we decided to reward, which was the most beautiful, literally some of the most beautiful women in the world just wearing fake stuff and it's like wow bravery um but I do think that monster is just be is beyond just putting on some weird teeth for Charlize it's definitely a different dark strange type of performance it asks a lot of the audience I had forgotten you really are supposed to empathize with this person, which we could talk about that. Or you know what? We don't have to talk about it. But it's challenging.

And she really goes for it. She goes for it in movies a lot. I mean, that's even in The Devil's Advocate. You were saying that she's trying to be real. But she's also screeching with the rest of them. She is not doing the quiet, distant supermodel in a lot of these movies. And I think the Oscar for Monster is as much about... It's definitely for uglifying, but as much just going for it, which she does. Rob, when's the last time you watched Monster? Like two days ago. And I agree completely with Amanda.

And again, I did at the time. It was the perfunctory, this is what you do to win an Oscar. And it's, the full body, you know, and full voice sort of transformation was impressive to me then and still is now. Like, that violent, like, hair flip that she does where, like, she throws her entire, like, she, like, snaps her neck, like, her entire head back. Like, she's really honoring the specific nuances of this character who, who like you couldn't blame her for just not wanting to honor at all you know it's impressive in that sense and it i i think it only it it feels obvious and like a gimme and like just uh the thing you do to win an oscar in retrospect like i i think it was braver at the time and when she was on bill simmons's podcast i think a couple years ago uh before atomic blonde like she talks about how they started shooting

and they sent some footage and producers called and screamed at her on the phone early in the morning because she had uglified herself because it wasn't a kicky lesbian serial killer, titillating sort of movie. It struck me then as the movie more to be admired, to be enjoyed, certainly. And watching it a couple of days ago, I took it as that, but had a little more appreciation for it. Like I kept thinking about this movie we got coming up where Zac Efron plays Ted Bundy, you know, and it's like, and based on the trailer, at least, you know, it's looking to be this sort of satirical American psycho, like, of winking, lurid type thing, you know?

And I sort of walked away from Monster the second time thinking, you know, like sometimes too heavy is better than a lot of alternatives. It's an incredible tease for a forthcoming episode of The Big Picture, Rob, where we'll be talking to the director of that movie, Joe Berlinger, who the Ted Bundy movie you're referring to, which I believe is called Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Vile, and Evil.

Right. The judge's quote. Yes, of course. Delivered with real sincerity by John Malkovich in the movie. What happens after Monster is interesting because you see that she gets a chance to be the author of her own fate much more in Hollywood. And the movies that she takes on, almost all of which do not succeed, is pretty fascinating to me.

And you can see that she uses this period, and this sort of gets us to our individual personal pinnacles. These are the new leads. These are the Glenn Gary leads. Immediately afterwards, she makes Head in the Clouds, reuniting with Keanu Reeves. She makes North Country, a movie that she is nominated for an Oscar for that failed at the box office.

And I think has like basically no reputation in the popular consciousness. And it's actually a really interesting movie about a woman who is fighting sexual harassment working in the mining industry. And I wouldn't say it's a great film, but it is a film that she made with a female filmmaker in the mid aughts and is meaningful. And it's fascinating that those are the really her only two Oscar moments, despite having this sort of blooming career. You know, Amanda, you've only really gotten interested in her in the last 10 years, you said, despite the fact that she was doing this kind of work, you know, a couple of years later, she makes In the Valley of Ella, which is also a sort of very heavy handed, but interesting piece. I think it's Paul Haggis' first movie after Crash.

Features a good Tommy Lee Jones performance. Wedged in between those two is Aeon Flux. Why did you come back? What do you want from me? What do I want? I want my sister back. I want to remember what it feels like to be a person. Aeon Flux, I think, is the failed test tube baby for what her career was going to be.

She kind of wanted to be an action star. She was looking for a project to position herself as a mainstream, big top action hero. And she chose Karin Kusama, who had only made a couple of small films prior to this. And it's one of the all-time notorious, mismanaged, overmanaged recut at the end, at the very last minute. Hollywood Productions, it lost a lot of money.

It was based on, Rob, I'm sure an MTV animated series you remember quite well. Yes. I'm certain that we were watching in that weird block of Beavis and Butthead and the head. Liquid television. Liquid television. That's exactly right. The fly and the eyelash. Yes, I remember it well. But all of that sort of, you know, failure, for lack of a better word, these sort of these

projects that don't really take off leads to Hancock, which is in some ways basically 10 years ahead of Captain Marvel and did all the stuff that we've spent a lot of time in the last couple of weeks celebrating Hancock. You know, the twist of Hancock, for those of you haven't seen Hancock I guess you can turn this podcast off though you're your sociopath if you're concerned by the way I only watched it last week and it's the twist is obvious in the first 10 minutes it is very obvious you know yeah it is very obvious and Hancock you know some some of Hancock is very charming some of it doesn't work that well it was in sort of the latter stages of Will Smith as the very most important movie star that we had. He plays a sort of drunken

and lazy and frustrated superhero. Charlize Theron, it turns out, is also a superhero in this film. And she's very charming. I wouldn't say it's one of her best movies. No, she is really the only person doing the emotional lifting

in this movie. Hancock sneezed, huh? Can you believe it? That's true. It's amazing that you slept through that. You're a good sleeper. Holy shit. I'm not going to say I told you so, but...

What about Bateman? False her... No. God bless Bateman. Very funny. What's this? Are we going on vacation? Mm-hmm.

Are we? Just the three of us. End of the summer tonight tonight spur of the moment tonight might be a little tough come on the three of us me and the bikini i'd like a great reconnection for them i think it's a great bateman moment yeah and but it's it's kind of that was a nice way of saying that will smith is like a little this movie doesn't know what to do with will Smith, which is like if your movie doesn't know what to do with Will Smith, then you failed as a movie. But she pulls it together.

The one scene when she's like explaining the mythology and explaining how they're connected is like when you care and when you're invested in what happens in it. Who are we? Gods, angels, different cultures call us by different names. Now all of a sudden, it's superhero. Yeah, I always wanted to see the original version of Hancock, which was written by Vince Gilligan and then completely rewritten. And this was sort of in the heyday of the Breaking Bad rise. And apparently that original script was hard R, very vulgar, very complicated.

It was way before the sort of like zack snyderification of these kinds of movies um but still meant to be funny we never got it alas it does take us essentially to rob your personal pinnacle who which you alluded to at the top of the show yes uh young adult uh from 2011 uh it's directed by jason reitman and written by diablo cody which their second collaboration after Juno of course which depending on how you feel about Juno like either don't get excited or don't hold that against

them you know my wife walked in while I was watching it and she was like what was it like and I said it's super sour and she said you hate sour and I said yes so I again let me preface this by saying that I hate sour and like find these kinds of movies very specifically difficult to watch. She plays a young adult fiction author in her late 30s who's a stunted and actively terrible person.

She's returning to her tiny Minnesota hometown to steal back her high school boyfriend who is happily married with a baby. She meets Patton Oswalt, who's one of her many spurned high school classmates. And she sort of just proceeds to offend and horrify and dismiss everyone. Watching it now, she reminded me a lot of Villanelle in Killing Eve, like the less whimsical version, but just this very misanthropic,

villainous person who also has this kind of irresistible hit me with a truck sort of magnetism like even in her worst moments like and i i think what strikes me about this movie it's just the details add up for me and sort of resonate with me like the teenage fan club song and like the ben and jerry's pints and the way she's chugging like two liters of diet coke you know the way she's exercising on a nintendo wii you know for a long watching it myself like i'm braced for all these sort of massive cringy like office style set pieces where i have to sort of hide under my couch

but like the vast majority of the movie it's like it's mostly her small gestures and like her eye rolls and just this sort of statuesque presence that she has that like weirdly reminded me of mad max in fury road like just where it's less anything she says or does or like these huge that she has that like weirdly reminded me of Mad Max, Fury Road, like just where it's less anything she says or does, or like these huge melodramatic moments she has, and just how coolly she does everything. Like everybody around her is still too short, you know?

And it's the movie, like it's, it's sort of set you up for her redemption and then very graciously declines to redeem her. And it's as ugly. And, you know, there's a lack of vanity vanity that in its own way is as bracing as Monsters was. And yet you never quite stop rooting for her. And I surprised myself again very much by just never having to turn it off. You and I talked about Young Adult Amanda a little bit. What is your relationship to that movie? I don't love the movie.

Rob, I share your aversion to sourness. And I find that all of these characters, we'll talk more about Tully, are not just sour, but really infatuated with their own sourness. And the entire character work is just like, wow, can you believe what a dick this person is? And I'm just like, well, yes, I can. Because everyone's a dick. And then often the whole arc of the movie is like, we're going to make him not a dick anymore. And I'm just like well yes I can because everyone's a dick you know and then and then often the whole arc of the movie is like we're gonna make him not a dick anymore and I'm just like well life doesn't work like that so I find that aspects of it a bit limiting but at the same time this was when I was like oh this is a movie for me you know like she

is kind of picking different projects and I went to see it and I was interested in it. I, you know, recognize the references. She's basically writing The Babysitter's Club, but not. And Patrick Wilson is in it. And that was very exciting for me. So it's kind of when I tuned back into Charlize because of her choices. And I just think it's so interesting because this is really the kind of the tipping point for her. She was a mainstream movie star when we still had mainstream movie stars. And 2011 is kind of when you see the rise of franchise and when you see the rise of superheroes and you lose that like big name box office appeal. It's just not working in the same way anymore. And she has managed to totally find a new phase of career for herself when a lot of people were not able to do that. Like a lot of our great movie stars of the late 90s and 2000s were wiped out.

And she has a knack for picking projects. She has a knack for doing something interesting. She clearly had a vision for herself. And it starts with young adult. So I think it's interesting i do think i've always i admire the fact even if this is sort of a basic opinion that those characters that she's creating with reitman with diablo cody are not redeemed they're they're almost never like perfected like young adult to me doesn't end on like a a super happy note they're not perfected but they

are redeemed or defended they're defended yeah without a lot of complication which is kind of my ultimate problem with them yes then well that's complicated i mean i think it's interesting that she chooses great parts but also chooses bad parts and we don't hold them against her um the movies that she makes after young adult this is quite a run actually snow white and the huntsman in which she's having a lot of fun kind of hamming it up as an evil queen yeah not a memorable movie probably best remembered as the movie in which kristen stewart cheated on robert pattinson with the director rupert sanders i gotta say though that like that was a real moment and snow white and the huntsman is a movie that i saw in theaters which is hilarious that some weird

stuff happens in it they did have that tabloid moment at a time when it was hard to have a tabloid moment. She's still relevant. So she's no doubt. No doubt. And it's like hard to be relevant with a weird movie

about like a Snow White fanfic. I agree with you. It's an even weirder movie is called Prometheus that comes immediately afterwards. I like her performance in Prometheus and I'm a pretty avid defender of that film, though I'm not sure that it's aging that great. I'm not sure that in

the consciousness it really holds much importance. Her role is complicated and in some ways she is also sort of subservient to this extremely old Guy Pearce character and is bound by his wishes and she's on a mission that will ultimately lead to basically the destruction of the universe and all of its societies based on the whims of her evil father. Then she makes

A Million Ways to Die in the West, which is Seth MacFarlane's very, very bad Western comedy. Yeah. I'm not sure what there is to say about that movie. It's pretty fascinating

that she made young adult and people were like, this is really, truly an exciting and brave actress. Can I just say... And then she made these three movies. Can I just say? And then she made these three movies. Can I just say?

Yeah. She's got a cool girl streak. If you're familiar with the cool girl rant in Gone Girl. Cool girl. Men always use that, don't they? As their defining compliment. She's a cool girl. Cool girl is hot.

You look amazing. And maybe a little uncomfortable. I look like Jane Austen threw up all over me. You do not look like Jane Austen threw up. No, you look absolutely beautiful. Cool Girl is fun. If I can shoot six out of six on Albert's behalf, you owe him a dollar.

If I can't, he owes you a dollar. Wait, what? A dollar? I've never seen a dollar. Nobody's got a dollar. Let us see the dollar. Well, what? A dollar? I've never seen a dollar. Nobody's got a dollar. Let us see the dollar. Well, cool girl never gets angry at her man.

She only smiles. I kissed her. She didn't kiss me, all right? It's not her fault. I mean, she didn't tell me she was married, so it's a little bit her fault, I guess. So yeah, I guess that's kind of true. So maybe just shoot her in the arm?

What the? And one more thing. She likes to pick movies where she's just hanging out and then like busting stuff up with a bunch of dudes. And that to me is the Seth MacFarlane million ways to die in the West thing in a nutshell. There are some ways to do that in a way that is ineffective and there are some ways to do it in a ways that are effective. And so my personal pinnacle is kind of a two part kind of a cheat. I think Mad Max Fury Road might be the very best movie she's been a part of and her role,

she's critical to the movie and Imperator Furiosa, I can't say the character's name. This is a huge problem. How did they make a movie with a character named Imperator Furiosa and she's the star? Well, no one talks.

So they don't, like they never have to say it, which is true. And that's no shots at Mad Max, which I think is probably, I agree with you, it's her best movie. And it's sort of like the single, when you think of New Charlize, you think of that image of her. Right. And it's basically a silent movie performance.

It's her glowering behind the wheel of a furiously racing car and going toe-to-toe with Tom Hardy, and on a mission that we can't fully understand until we get to the end of the movie. And it's just kind of an amazing old-school action movie performance. It's kind of a John Wayne movie, and that's obviously larded with some political complications, but she is in the vein of the kind of like Lee Marvin, stoic-type, angry character

who never really breaks that stride until you get to the end and you have the sort of emotional climax of the movie it's very cool it's quite different though quite the same to atomic blonde which is far more physical balletic emotionally charged she kind of goes to the depths of her feelings in that movie even though it's about a three-timing assassin um who you can never tell whose side she's playing that's also, she's also playing a character who is bisexual, it seems, and who is somewhere between comic book fantasy and real life hard bitten detective novel.

And that movie didn't quite have the impact on culture that I thought it was going to. Chris Ryan and I saw it at South By, and I remember that was sort of one of the most raucous screenings I had ever been to in my life. I mean, people were crawling over the chairs at the end of that movie. And I expected it to be a big, big deal. It's well remembered for the two very famous fight sequences that happen in the apartment and then on the staircase.

And that's, of course, part of the reason why it's an amazing thing that she's done is the fight choreography that happens in that movie. But I think the performance in Atomic Blonde, just as an actress, is also really, really impressive. Amanda, I know Atomic Blonde is your favorite movie of all time. This is the most Amanda story, but I very famously and honestly, totally accidentally went to the bathroom during the staircase scene. I just like didn't know that that was why you're supposed to go. And afterwards, my husband was like, interesting choice by you. That said, I agree with what you're saying. And just to go back to Mad Max, both of them are very interesting. They're not super verbal performances. And in many ways, she is with what you're saying. And just to go back to Mad Max, both of them are very interesting. They're not super verbal performances.

And in many ways, she is playing with her image and kind of using her extremely striking physical appearance. She has figured out how to harness it and make it work in really interesting ways. Like Mad Max, in some ways, what she's doing is both. It's like John Wayne, like an action star. And she's also kind of modeling like in many ways it's it is using her physical powers which in her case are like a skill in addition to an attribute and figuring out how to make those work within film which is an extremely visual medium and Atomic Blonde is an extension of that it's really physical performance and she is so she is so striking that for a long time she was playing against type.

And even in Young Adult and Tully, which we'll talk about, she's kind of playing against her attractiveness. And it's interesting to see her use it in different ways. I get a big kick out of her next movie, which is The Fate of the Furious, in which she, I think, just went to a blacked-out room full of satellite technology for four days and just yelled into a microphone at Vin Diesel. It was really fun. I hope she made like $500 million for that part. She plays a character named Cipher.

It's the classic thing where I think they probably wrote that part for a man and then they gave it to her and then she was like, I'll play Cipher. And they were like, okay, cool, you play Cipher. Rob, what do you make of the action trilogy that charlize is doing as she sort of enters her 40s interestingly you know what's an interesting movie to revisit now is aeon flux actually uh which i i was also struck when she was on bill's podcast like he was just going through her imdb and he said aeon flux and she just went like she she's

not arguing for it even now as some kind of misunderstood masterpiece. And like, I'm not either. But like watching it, you know, it's just it's all like gymnastics and exposition and techno. And there's a lady in this movie with hands for feet. And it's like, it's totally ridiculous. And it also struck me in retrospect as like a drive run for Atomic Blonde. Like it's basically the same movie, you know, like she's badass, but she's vulnerable. But she's a badass, but she's vulnerable, but she's a badass,

but she's vulnerable. And she's filmed this lethal art object. Amanda says she's modeling. And there's a conspiracy, and it's confusing, and it's heavily stylized to the point where she can disappear if she wants. And it's just interesting to think about the effect that John Wick has had on action movies and the way that these movies are validated now if they're prestige and gritty and you can do that sort of affect list like extreme zen kiana reeves type deal you know like it's it's but the i i was also surprised that atomic blonde did not have the impact that i that i thought it was going to have and i think part of the reason is like people forget that a big part of the appeal of john wick is that the plot of john wick is literally he

kills several hundred people because they killed his dog like that's the plot of the movie like i re-watching atomic blonde now like the fight scenes are incredible and it's it's it's genuinely a joyful thing to watch her just beat the crap out of people. But the double, triple, quadruple cross political intrigue parts of that movie just don't land for me at all. It's just total confusion followed by incredible fight scenes, which is a totally delightful way to spend two hours. But yeah, it's interesting that she's become an action hero but in in that same kind of way you know she's still modeling and she still feels like she's nine feet tall compared to everyone else on screen and i you know the way amanda hearkened you know hancock to captain marvel like watching mad max again i was thinking about you know the big all the female

superheroes moment and end game you know like it's like, oh my God, what are you doing? Like, you don't have to advertise girl power, quote unquote, like this explicitly, you know? And I think that she's found a way to be an action hero without like spelling it out in these huge bold letters. And sometimes it doesn't work, but when it works, I think it's more effective for the way that she's underplaying it yeah i agree with that um amanda you chose tully it did which is significantly different from these action movies that we're talking about yeah and it's it's so fascinating to me that there are two jason reitman movies in the in this conversation and you're not historically a big fan of jason's movies i'm not and i think like the first 15 minutes of tully are really difficult for me because they're doing the same like well

this person sucks isn't it funny and i find that see i would say that in that case the person who sucks is the children that is the that is the all-time do not have children it's true advice machine i've ever seen that's true they're working through some stuff. And then I find the ending way too neat, which we don't even need to spoil the ending if you haven't seen it. But I chose Tully because she does this after Atomic Blonde and Mad Max, and she's reinvented herself as like this kind of unapproachable action star, intimidating and strong and amazing. And then she does Tully, which I just think is a cool pivot. This is when you're like, she really does have the range. I also find the hour in the middle when it's just Charlize Theron and Mackenzie Davis kind of two-hander to be electric. And

you see Charlize, she just has a range of emotion. She has empathy, which is like not something she often gets to deploy. She is sensitive. She's angry. It's like it's a fully lived in performance. And I think it's also really interesting. You don't see her acting with women that often. And I thought this was just really interesting what Mackenzie Davis brings out in her. And to me, I was just like, she can do anything is what Tali brought home, even though it's a tough watch and I don't know that it sticks the landing.

But I think she's spectacular in it. Yeah, I like that movie a lot. And it haunts me. It haunts me every time my wife and I sit down and talk about the future. I'm like, have you seen Tully? It's just a very upsetting movie. Rob, as a parent, what do you make of Tully? Well, yeah, I was going to say the villain of that movie for me is Ron Livingston.

Honestly, like in my 20s Well, yeah, I was going to say the villain of that movie for me is Ron Livingston, honestly. Like in my 20s, I fear like I was going to turn into John Cusack in High Fidelity. Like just this super aloof and heartless doofus, you know. And now here in my 40s, I fear turning into Ron Livingston in Tully. Like every time they show him with a video game headset, just checked out. She describes him at one point as the bench on the carousel, I think. The parts of the movie

I winced at the most were his parts. I agree with Amanda that I love the part in the middle with Mackenzie Davis. Diablo Cody's dialogue is sort of a strong spice. The way that she delivers a joke, no one's dialogue is sort of a strong spice and like just the way that she delivers like a

joke like you know no one's treated my hole in a real really long time like you can imagine like the Zach Braff version of that movie where that's like a super groaner line but like Charlize has this way of telling jokes that keeps them from becoming like groaners you know and at her angriest like her voice is not rising above a whisper you know to not frighten the baby like i again i was really nervous about watching that movie i i can't say that i enjoyed it in real time but i i did i was just pulled all the way through it by just how vivid and how real and how honest it was how honest do we think charlie's new movie Long Shot is? I wonder. They're here. Well, Rob, you have thoughts on this.

You want to start? The first thing I need to say is that I've watched her spit take on the internet. Like the part where he's walking downstairs in the stupid Swedish outfit and she spits out the water. I've watched that on the internet like the like the part where she the way he's walking downstairs in the stupid swedish outfit and she spits out the water i've watched that on the internet like 200 times like that's my favorite like two seconds of comedy in forever you know like i yeah i mean i'm writing a piece right now and thinking a lot about this from seth rogan's perspective and like the schlub paramore in a rom-com where like the entire premise of the rom-com is, I can't believe that this beautiful woman is going out with this total

doofus. He asked a thousand constituents how they would feel if Kate Middleton. I see where you're going with this. Were to start dating Danny DeVito. Pretty negative reaction. You know, and I, I,

I think that she really works to short circuit a lot of the tropes of that movie, you know, and, and knocked up the problems that sort of arose in retrospect with knocked up specifically. Like I, I really liked the part, like they established that she pulls as not funny, you know, and they need her to be funnier. And like the reason he enters the movie is to make her funnier.

But like the movie doesn't make like a big show of trying to convince us that she's actually not funny. Right. Like you're primed for a bunch of scenes where like she's horribly stiff and she's inhuman and she's she tells these lousy jokes and nobody laughs and like he has to save in he has to like jump in and save her and like humanize her like it's not one of these movies where this woman is a huge career success but the trade-off is that she has no like human personality you know like it's she doesn't watch game of thrones because she doesn't have time to watch game of thrones like again it's

still that just everybody around her is just too short and you know again i think everything about that is really nicely underplayed and she's just she is a human and she is funny and like she doesn't need like a man to make her human again and like even when she's on molly you know and defusing a terrorist crisis like she's not on molly the way a career move a career woman in a movie like this would be on molly i don't want to spoil too much but that sequence is extremely hysterical it's really funny yeah to. It's like Atomic Blonde. Yeah. I mean, but I didn't go to the bathroom during it. To go back to the question of honesty, there are two things here. Number one, that she and Seth Rogen really do have chemistry in this movie, which is hard to recreate.

And we're going to talk more about Netflix rom-coms and kind of the new wave of rom-coms in the next few weeks. But chemistry is hard to manufacture. It is an important part of these types of movies. When a movie rests on relationship, they have to work. And I think that there actually is something honest in what is going on between them. And as Rob said, the movie presents it at face value. She doesn't need him to save her, or it's not that she just doesn't know how to be a person it's that they have a extremely unlikely connection the other thing this movie is really honest about is just how freaking beautiful charlie's therein is i think i walked away from this movie more than any other

being like holy shit charlie's is the most beautiful woman on the planet and they're not in that way fish cherubic like 19 year old way. She's a 40 something woman. Yeah. The most striking person in the room no matter the room. And not in like this sexed up valley way

two days in the valley. It's just like she is an accomplished attractive person and they're letting the full force of her shine and it really works. They're not

they're being honest about the unlikeliness of the of the setup and in fact it is like that's the premise of the movie. So it is more honest than you might expect from watching the trailer.

How about that? Yeah, and I think it eludes a lot of the kind of quote unquote problematic aspects of a premise like this, because as Rob is saying, it's about the perception of someone. Because when you're a politician, you don't ever actually know the person. And so it's attempting to give you kind of an inside look at a person that you would never have a chance to really understand. And likewise, it gives you kind of a funny look at what seems like a kind of woke strident dummy Brooklyn journalist. And I feel like we know a lot of those. And I kind of liked those people also having the kind of the piss taken out

of them a little bit. I thought it was a pretty darned effective modern equivalent of these kinds of movies. When Jonathan and I were talking about the movie, you know, every filmmaker will be like, well, I watched the films of Ernst Lubitsch and I watched the films of Hepburn and Tracy. But if you squint, you can kind of see that they're attempting to affect a lot of that stuff. I think that they pull it off. I was dubious, both because, you know, every single person who has only seen the trailer, their reaction has been like, seriously, Charlize and Seth Rogen, like, you know, that's not fair to womankind. And yet the title of the movie is Longshot. Yeah, you know, like people aren't really, they're knee-jerk reactions.

And I think also, again, romantic comedies and studio romantic comedies and studio comedies which this is as well are just in such a strange place right now one of my thoughts was will people go to a movie theater to watch this this is like the jam and friday night you're at home rent it on whatever and watch it but i i think it is also it's big and there are the set pieces like the nuclear thing which we won't that's it it. It's just really funny. It does justify. It feels like an event. It feels like one of the big old-timey, two recognizable names, fallen in love type of movie, which is a feat in this day and age.

It also features a live performance from Boyz II Men. So if you like great R&B music, I would encourage you to check that out. Are there any other Charlize Theron performances that you guys looked back on that you want to just reflect on before we wrap this thing up? Well, Sean sent us the Between Two Ferns clip this morning and I had five minutes, so I watched it. Oh, you were in the movie Monster.

Monster, yeah, just Monster. Did you win an Oscar for that? I did. Where's your Oscar statue? It's in my house. Wouldn't it be cool if you hung it from the rearview mirror in your car, in the high school tassel? Where did that come from?

That stuff just hangs out in your head. That's funny. You know, I said that Mad Max is her best performance, and I think she's a great comedian in long shot. But what a transcendent performance by Charlize. And it also does such a good job of isolating her place in culture and how people think of her. And she's making jokes about her own place in the world and how people respond to her. It's really insightful as well as extremely funny and unexpected. She's negging him, but she's laughing the whole time, which is so much more powerful than what we would expect her to do. Great stuff. Yeah, she's a very gifted comedian. She's very funny as Rita Leeds in Arrested Development as well. Rob, you want to stump for The Legend of Agravance?

Anything here that you'd like to shout out? I'm going to decline to do that, but I thank you very much. Yeah, she's my second favorite Between Two Ferns guest after Jennifer Lawrence, which I suppose is a topic for another time. But yeah, the cackling there really, really got to me. Rewatching all these, I really did like Hancock. And I really did think that her chemistry, both with Jason Bateman and with Will Smith in sort of different circumstances, was both very effective. And I think that was also, other than Longshot, the movie where her beauty was sort of the most striking and the most intimidating.

But she's sort of working to diffuse that in real time and like she just has these very human relationships interactions with both of these people in a way that it's very hard to pull off and like in retrospect you know that's the same year i think hancock is iron man you know and i i like how she sort of sketched out this superhero slash action hero career that's running parallel to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but is in a lot of ways like just a better and't, I'm not sure if we'll focus on that too much on the show, but then at the end of the year, she plays Megan Kelly in fair and balanced, which is Jay Roach's portrait of the fraught scenario at Fox news in the

21st century. And that sounds like it'll be an interesting opportunity for Charlize to reinvent herself once more. Amanda, Rob, thank you guys for doing this. Thanks, Sean.

Thanks. Thanks again to Amanda and Rob. And now let's go to my conversation with the writer-director Jonathan Levine. Delighted to be joined by my fellow Mets fan, Jonathan Levine, back on the show. Jonathan, what's up, man? Hey, how are you? I'm good. So Jonathan, I think that Long Shot is your best movie. So I'm really excited to talk about it. Thank you. That's so exciting. I am very, very proud of it. I am not a good judge of my own work, but from the very beginning of this one, we really felt like we were doing something that people were going to really enjoy. Yeah. I want to hear a little bit about how you did that. When I saw the movie at South by, you came out afterwards and you were like, I'm a little drunk and I don't know what to say. And you seem very nervous.

Well, yeah, I was very nervous because I mean, first of all, South by is such an amazing audience, you know? And so you really want to nail it with them. And,

and of course they immediately make you feel completely at ease. Um, and, but it was like a big moment for our movie. Um, we were talking right before we started recording about how hard it is to really make noise in this current environment of superhero movies and stuff like that.

So I just think we felt a lot of pressure, not just for people to like it, but for people to really like it. And that from the whole, from the beginning of the conception of this thing has been our goal is just to make it great. Like the bar is just constantly being raised on entertainment, um, like non superhero movie entertainment. And we really felt that pressure and we really wanted to meet that, that, uh, that pressure. Yeah. You guys really had that annual South by screening where people

were like, Oh shit, I love this movie, which is like a good spot to be in. Right. It was great, man. It was so fun. I mean, I'm, I'm usually like, it is like a good spot to be in, right? It was great, man. It was so fun. I mean, I'm usually like, it's kind of an out of the body experience for me. I've had many great film festival screenings. Been very lucky to do that. Does not always translate to success in the real world. You know, South By, I think is definitely a great barometer of like commercial success. Like my first movie, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane premiered in Toronto and we sold it for a bunch of money, never came out or came out years later. And I think just the mythology of it was so built up that people were like, oh,

that that's what that film festival thing was. And the Wackness won the audience award at Sundance, had an amazing screening there. And then, you know, came out and I'm very happy with the movie, but wasn't like, didn't kind of capitalize on that the way I'd hoped. So I'm always a little skeptical of film festival audiences, but this night was, felt very special to me. And when Boyz II Men came out, I mean, we knew we were going to do that, but it was, that was something I'll never forget. It was a very memorable moment. Let's talk about that a little bit more once we get into the movie. So tell me where this movie started, because it like you're very much still in that very mainstream comedy lane right now,

which is a pretty empty lane in a lot of ways for a lot of reasons. Yes. This movie – but this movie did not start in the era where mainstream comedy was so as challenged as it is now commercially. I think this movie started – I mean, Dan Sterling wrote this script many, many years ago in, in probably during the Obama administration. And it, James Weaver, who is Seth and Evan's partner gave it to me. I think I was in Montreal shooting Warm Bodies and I just, I loved it. I remember the writing just jumped off the page, but I wasn't ready to do it then. And I think, and it was just Seth. And then when they got Charlize,

and it's completely without me, they went and got Charlize. And I think Seth- So you read this like five plus years ago. I've read it so many times, yeah. Yeah, okay. And I think Seth was like, there's only one actress who this movie makes sense with,

and it's Charlize. And of course that is not the easiest actress to get. And when she wanted to do it, I mean, luckily she was a fan of Seth's and she was a fan of my work. And so when she wanted to do it, that's when I came on board because that completely made sense to me. kind of two um personas two movie stars um kind of uh and exploring the chemistry and tension between those two almost like a Hepburn Tracy kind of thing um and so that became incredibly exciting to me and that's and that's when we started really um developing the script and and and getting ready to make this thing what so what happens when somebody like Charlize comes on like does she say I have a lot of ideas about this character. How can we retrofit it? How do we make it feel more 2019? Yeah. I mean, we all kind of had the goal of how to make it more 2019. When Charlize

comes on, look, I mean, I've been, this is my third movie with these guys. And like, as much as we know what we're doing in the presence of Charlize, we seem very unimpressive. So, so like, she just forced us to, to, to up our game. Um, you know, we didn't want to let her down. So she just brings like a level of quality and relentless pursuit of greatness, um, that we do have, but we don't wear it the same way she does. And so it was both intimidating and exciting to have to like really take our game to the next level. And yeah, I mean, she's a producer on the movie. She and Seth are both producers on the movie.

So they both have instincts and they're both collaborators. And they both have people they work with who are also contributing to giving notes and talking about where it can go. So, but I mean, I'm sort of generally that way with most actors, whether they're producers or not. If they have ideas, usually they're good ideas, and I sort of incorporate them into whatever we're doing. But like, you know, once we were ready to make them, once we were ready to like, we had a start date for the movie,

and we had to like really rewrite toward a start date, that's when myself and Seth and Dan and Liz Hanna, with lots of feedback from Charlize and her producing partners, set about the hard work of making this a modern film. You know, it was, like I said, it was written in the Obama era. It was a very different conversation when you were talking about politics then. I mean, it's always been first and foremost, a romantic comedy. And certainly our references were much more movies of, you know, the films of Cameron Crowe or, you know, or 90s, like, you know, When Harry Met Sally and stuff like that, like sophisticated romantic comedies that are both funny and romantic was always our number one goal, but you know, it was taking place against

the backdrop of, of politics and you can't not acknowledge the modern realities of politics. Yeah. How much were you literally considering things like the way that the relationship people have to this stuff in the, in a, during a Trump administration? Well, like we wrote it when, when we were rewriting it and, and, and to say, um, rewritingwriting is like we rewrote every day on set. You know, we are very kind of agile and we can react very quickly. And that's part of why I think comedy is so exciting because you can comment on things. But, you know, there was like this kind of whiplash thing going on. Like I think we wrote when like I remember we were in Seth's apartment in New York and Scaramucci started and then got fired. It's stuff you don't even remember.

But it was just- That does feel like 10 years ago. And so the sort of velocity of drama was coming at you at such a speed that it was really, really hard to figure out where are people going to be in 18 months when this movie comes out. But what we did know was that we had to acknowledge sort of the contemporary political climate without, but not in a way where, not in the same way that like Colbert does or John Oliver

does or even Saturday Night Live. We wanted to do it in a way that allowed us to sort of have a lighter touch with it. And so we were just thinking of things, like we were just inspired by real life and not sort of that dogmatic about what really was there. And we also didn't, you know, we are not the people to give you like super relevant political insight. Like we can take the piss out of stuff, but we're not, you know, we're not going to do it inside as well as John Oliver.

Yeah, I'm always interested with political comedy. If there's ever any concern, like Adam McKay was here last year and we talked about Vice. I was like, are you concerned about potentially pissing off half or one quarter or whatever of your audience by being too precise and too cutting about something?

Is that something that you guys are actively talking about? Yes, 100%. Like we're talking about, with this, it was such a fine line to walk. We are always talking about everything about who we might offend, who we might embrace, what the message of the movie is, and what the sort of point of view of the movie is. And Vice, as much as I really enjoy that movie, is an example of something we did not want to do. That is a provocative movie with a point of view about politics that its entire goal is to get you to see that point of view.

Our goal was to entertain you and make you laugh and make you feel what it's like to fall in love. And our messages were much more universal. Our messages were much more about things that transcended politics, like remembering who you wanted to be when you were young and finding that person who reminded you of that, or staying true to your values, but at the same time, like listening to other people. It was like these kind of moral things that when you get into the sort of anger and vitriol of like the divisive world that we live in right now, you kind of forget that there are things that most people agree on. Yeah, it is a really good love story. And the Hepburn-Tracy thing makes a lot of sense to me.

When you guys are talking about that, are you literally saying like, let's watch Pat and Mike and try to see what the vibe is here to understand it a little better? I mean, I don't really like bring Seth and Charlize into that. I just watch that stuff. Like I watched a lot of Lubitsch movies.

I watch a lot of movies every night in pre-production. Seth and Charlize both have different reference points for everything, but they just know what the end goal is, and you don't need to give them a movie to sort of get it. Sometimes if it's not coming across, I will say something like, it's like that movie, but it has to be a movie that they've seen. And I wouldn't be like, you have to see this movie. First of all, Seth just wouldn't watch it.

And Charlize would, and then it would just be weird. But yeah, I mean, for me, that's like, that's, I do, I watch stuff a lot in pre-production. It just makes me feel good. And more often than not, it actually informs the writing than the actual direction of a scene. Seth and Charlize both are, they, you know, they almost direct themselves in a way. Like they just, they're just such good storytellers and they, and they understand so much about what we're doing that I don't really have to go in and, and, and sort of calibrate things. Um, you, you usually I'll just, uh, suggest something that we try something a different way, or I'll find a joke or I'll find frequently with working with

Seth and Evan, like my job is to be kind of mindful of the emotion. They kind of have the comedy covered. So I am always looking at scenes with an eye toward that. How can it be more emotional? How can we sort of amplify that? But yeah, I mean, I definitely like to watch movies in prep. It gives me ideas for shots. It gives me ideas for lines of dialogue, stuff like that. I really love the collaboration that you and Seth have going over the years. I feel like his most vulnerable movies are the movies that you've directed him in. Like, yeah. And, and I think, I do think that's, that's true. Although I think he, he gives a great performance in funny people. Um, uh, that's very vulnerable and, and awesome. And, and, and the jobs movie, like, I think,

you know, obviously he has done vulnerability before, but I think that in comedies, what I'm able to do with him and why he kind of likes having me around is I am mindful of like pushing him in the sort of sweeter, um, direction and, and, and, and stuff he's like probably would not be as comfortable with on his own. I can sort of, he trusts me on that stuff. And so he's willing to sort of show that side of himself with me, which is really sweet. What's it like when you have a longstanding relationship with a movie star that you've worked with before and then another movie star comes in who's, you know, even in many ways a higher wattage.

Oh, she's, you know, I was, I've never been that intimidated by Seth. Like Charlize scared the shit out of me but i hear that frequently with people who've worked with charlie i mean it's but it's not like it's not it's just because her reputation uh precedes her as far as being just an incredibly talented actor and she's tall you know which is a little scary but like she um and she i've seen her kick the shit out of a lot of people in movies which i guess is a little scary but like she's just so, I've seen her kick the shit out of a lot of people in movies, which I guess is a little scary. But like, she's just so good.

And I think that, you know, for me, what she brought to this movie was like, she definitely classed us up a lot. And she brings this sort of, you know, when she's in a movie, it's going to have a certain quality level to it. So, but that said, like on a personal level you know Seth and I are now I guess friends I never forget that he's a movie star and I don't like I wouldn't text him as quickly as I would text like a friend who's not a movie star right um because I think he's just busy um but he definitely is like it walks the line between friend and collaborator and movie star and

Charlize very quickly strangely fell into that as well um she when we started uh prep and and we would sit we sit down and like I don't really rehearse but we sit down like go through the script and read scenes and if dialogue doesn't seem like it's working we'll talk about it or or we'll also talk about our own personal experiences and and what we think the vibe of the scene should be and frequently in in those instances, the actual words will change and we'll rewrite the scene sort of on the fly. We'll have writers there and we'll just rewrite the scene. And when she sort of sat down with us and like, she's just a very down to earth, incredibly open, funny person. And we just liked her a lot. So it's harder to forget that she's a movie star. Um, but you

know, she, I, I, I now consider her to be a friend and it, and it happened very, very quickly. Um, and so that was just really nice. And I think you see it in the movie, you see how much, you know, love there is from her to like what Seth does and how much admiration there is from Seth to what she does. And like, in many ways we're sort of playing off those personas, even though they're playing characters, we're playing off those personas in the actual execution of the film. Yeah, it's true. It totally fits their characters. It's funny. I was thinking about it with her and it seems like she bounces from a different sort of project every time where she's like, I did Atomic Blondes and now I do Tully. I did Tully, so now I do Longshot.

Yeah. And there seems to be something very precise about the choices she makes. But I don't know if I'd ever really seen her in like a classical romantic comedy before. No. And I think that, you know, what told me that she could do it was young adult. And that to me, because in order to do these things, you just have to be willing to go out of your comfort zone. And for me, that movie is the most discomforting thing you could, I mean, she's really just pushing the audience, almost like alienating the audience.

And it's so ballsy and punk rock and she does it so well and she's still getting laughs out of it. And so that was the one. And then just meeting her, you just realize that she's super funny. But that's a thing about her is she's always pushing herself and the movie to be better. And Seth is too. But with Charlize, it is like an obsession. It just has to be better.

And we have to be trying things that we haven't seen before and have to be... And she just, you know, I'm just very lucky as a filmmaker to have both her, who's pushing us to get better in a certain way and

Seth who is never accepting anything as like finished and we're just always reworking always reworking until it's as good as it can be you feel very supported I feel like there are several moments where different supporting characters kind of walk in and like walk off with the movie there's a few people that like really own Alexander Skarsgård and definitely Andy Serkis but particularly I thought O'Shea Jackson and June Diane Raphael are like kind of just put the movie in their pocket for a little while um how did you put all those people together had you decide to bring in the friends and the the collaborators well um June was someone who had worked with Seth and Evan before I think she's in blockers for a little bit and And they just know her for a long time.

And she is, you know, she came in and auditioned and she was incredible. But I just wasn't that familiar with her. And Seth, you know, talked to me about her. And I'd seen Burning Love a little bit. I think that's the name of her. And so I just, and Seth was like, she's just comedy gold.

Like she will just give you like five of the best jokes in the movie that she'll just come up with out of, out of, in, out of her head. And, and he hadn't seen her audition yet. And he was like, I'm not so sure about the dramatic stuff. And I was like, oh no, she nailed the dramatic stuff. I just didn't know that she had it in her. She was so good at the dramatic stuff. I actually didn't even know that she could be incredibly funny.

Yeah. Um, and then, you know, I met her and just loved her. She's just so wonderful. And she's married to Paul Scheer, who is also in the movie. Um, and the two of them together are just this, this amazing couple and they're just so, so funny. But June, um, what I loved about her, cause I, cause I called her after her audition, and she's very, like, politically active, and she's very, like, she took it very seriously from a research perspective as well. She just carried herself very much as this character would, and I think that that was something that was really important to us with this movie, was we wanted, you know, we wanted

it to be as funny as our other movies and or as this is the end or neighbors or whatever but we really did want to a lot of time in those movies you don't believe really what's happening and you don't have to you don't care um it's just funny and with this we really wanted everyone to be playing a character um and so that's something that she was really able to do and it was remarkable that she could do it and improvise and, and, and be so funny and yet also really like help support the heart of the movie and, and the stakes of the movie. Um,

and with O'Shea, like I had just through a mutual friend, I had, I knew the writer of Ingrid Goes West. And before that movie came out, he was just like, you have to see O'Shea Jackson. He's amazing.

And I know no shade from straight out of Compton and whatever. But then he came in and auditioned as well. And he did a chemistry with Seth. And he was just so great. He's so funny. Oh, he's so funny. And I really, really hope that he pops from this movie because he is a movie star. And yeah, and he was just so delightful to work with.

Always jovial on set, always happy on set. And just one of those guys who you could just tell him anything and he would try it. There's a great subversion in his character, which I'm not going to spoil for people, but that comes later in the movie, which is really fun. And it does remind me a little bit of what you're saying about June. How effectively were you trying to, I guess, replicate real life in a way

or just like authenticate the experience of what could happen to these characters in these situations. Yeah, I mean, it was really, really important to us that what we do in the movie is we take some absurd situations and treat them very seriously. And I think that real life did give us kind of carte blanche to do that.

There are things in the movie that sort of like started to kind of happen in real life sometimes that like it was sort of an art imitating life type thing and and that was one of the that was one of the very interesting things about what was happening in the news when we were writing this movie was we were like there's nothing that's too fucking crazy for us to do right yeah there's nothing that no one's going to believe as long as we treat it seriously um so yeah like there's something that happens with Seth at the end that I don't want to give away that is like, it's kind of similar to like something that

happened with Jeff Bezos. There's something that happened. Um, you know, there's just, there's just, and, and I, and I truly believe that more stuff like that is going to happen. Um, but it was very important for us to take it seriously. The stakes are very, very important. And so, yeah, we didn't really, I mean, I did more research for this movie than I've ever done for a movie. We wanted it to be, feel super real. So we had John Kerry's chief of staff was like our consultant and he was on set a lot.

And it wasn't like we were, I mean, I don't want to make it seem like we were trying to make, you know, a like political docu-trauma. It's not advising consent. No, but we did want it to pass that test. You know, that's something I really like about Veep is that it just has the rhythms of what you imagine real politics to be. So we really did make sure to do our due diligence.

I read Madeline Albright's book, all 550 pages of it. What'd you learn? She's super cool. Yeah. She's awesome. Beyond that, I don't know that much got in. It kind of informed the writing a little bit. There was some interesting stuff about, but yeah, no, it didn't really make it that much into the movie. But primarily I did it so I could tell

you I did it when I was doing press for the movie. So that I seem like a good director. You nailed it. How's it going? It's going great. You're crushing it right now. When you're doing a movie like this and you're improvising a lot and you're rewriting every day, do you ever get crushed by continuity? No. No, you're always aware of kind of—

No, because we use two cameras. It's really like I remember—so we shot this movie in Montreal where I shot Warm Bodies. And it is a very, what's great about Montreal is they have sort of this French love of cinema. And also like a complimentary sort of French, how should I put this? They felt like they knew more about how to make the movie than I did for the first few days. That's really funny that you returned the favor by destroying their prime minister with Skarsgård's character. They loved that part. They love, I mean, they love,

they don't get to do a lot of comedies. Like Montreal is not a place where people shoot a lot of comedies. So, and I loved it because you could get many different looks there. And I also just loved the crew and their passion. But yeah, the first day, the sound guy who I had worked with on Warm Bodies

came up to me, he's like, this is never going to cut. I was like, yeah, it'll cut, dude. Like I've done this before. It's going to be fine. And what people don't always understand is like we just use two cameras. And when people are overlapping their dialogue, you just ADR the dialogue. It's really like now there's just so many little tricks. So no, continuity is not really an issue.

What kind of is an issue sometimes is it forces you into blocking that's a little tricks. So no, continuity is not really an issue. What kind of is an issue sometimes is it forces you into blocking that's a little boring because when people are improvising, you kind of want them, for those two cameras to work, you really don't want them on the move. Or it forces you into, it's hard to do like a one-er, for example, it's hard to like give it visual flair when you are trying a ton of different jokes. So what I tried to do, and because I like showing off as a director and I don't get to do it that much with comedy, but the movies I love are movies that show off. So I tried to like pick my spots where I could do things with the camera as much as possible. And I tried honestly with this movie, like with The

Night Before and with Snatched, I felt like it was getting to be too much for me with improvisation and it was just like it wasn't I would find myself sitting watching two funny people just talk for a while and I would be entertained by like this is not going to be in the movie and like that was that was the cool crane shot there it's gone because everyone's been making jokes for half an hour so because you know every decision every choice you make is a choice. Everything you decide to shoot is like something else you can't shoot. So I sort of decided to like

rein it back a little bit on this movie and do a little bit more with the camera. That was going to be my next question was basically, I think, even if you've seen your other films, if you watch Mandy Lane or Warm Bodies or there is their style and comedies, especially mainstream comedy, If you watch Mandy Lane or Warm Bodies, there's style. And comedies, especially mainstream comedy, people don't think of as filmmaking.

They think of it as like, put the camera on the funny people and let them say stuff. And so I was kind of interested. And you could tell there were some moves in this movie. What informed that? Well, I definitely wanted the audience to feel like we were trying hard. I really wanted it to feel like we are, we take you seriously, we respect you, and we're going to give you a show. And so that was something that I really, from the beginning, from the moment I was visually conceiving the movie, that was something I kept in mind was like, I want this to feel like

eye candy a little bit. And that's what my favorite romantic comedies did. They had big sweeping set pieces and we do a lot of that in the movie. And, um, so even when I picked my cinematographer, um, who is, uh, um, uh, a guy called Eve Belanger who shot, um, with Jean-Marc Vallée and stuff like that. Um, he, he has a artistic eye. Um, and, and, And I've been lucky enough to work with a lot of amazing DPs, but with him, he was not a comedy shooter. So I thought that that would be an interesting, he had never done a comedy before. He was very funny. But I thought that would be a very interesting way to approach it. And he, like Jean-Marc Vallée does not allow him to use lights, I guess. So he has to always like use practical lights and kind of sneak lights into the frame that are real lights, not movie lights. We didn't go that far with him. He was allowed to light.

But he was so incredibly fast that it allowed us to do more cool stuff with the camera than we normally get a chance to do. Do you think you're going to stay in the comedy lane? I kind of want to talk to you about that in a bigger picture. No, I don't think so. Because your last few have been very distinctly studio comedy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I don't think so. I think I'm getting a little bit bored of it, to be honest. What I loved about this one was that it was a little bit of both, and it was a little bit more like 50-50 or Warm Bodies or even The Wackness,

where I could do more interesting tonal stuff with it. And I could really explore emotion and explore what it means to fall in love. And that was something that really made this movie very interesting to me. So I always like funny stuff. But what I found with this movie was, like, I really like the scene where they break up.

Spoiler alert. It's fine. It's a rom-com. People know. Yeah, yeah. They break up. I'm not sure. I fine. It's a rom-com. People know. Yeah, yeah. They break up. I'm not sure. I can't tell you

whether they get back together or not. But anyway, it was like, you know, I had these two amazing powerhouse actors giving it their all and it was a purely dramatic scene.

There's a couple jokes to undercut the tension, but I loved it, you know? And when we were about to film it that morning, I watched the scene in Closer. Do you know that movie? Yes, I do.

The Mike Nichols movie? Yeah, I love that movie. And the scene where Julie Roberts comes home and Clive Owen finds out Clive, or is it? Yeah, Clive Owen comes home and finds out Julie Roberts was cheating on him. And just the way that he blocked that scene, it's like he's just obviously an amazing filmmaker,

but he's a great theater director too. And the blocking of that scene is like he's just obviously an amazing filmmaker but he's a great theater director too and the blocking of that scene is really incredible so i watched that and tried to like have a little bit of it inform the dna uh basically i'm saying i'm as good as mike nichols this is the shit i live for in this podcast so i'm so glad you told that story um so yes i but i do thank you i do i would like I just found myself like real, uh, into doing the dramatic stuff and figuring out how to make it feel as real and emotional as possible. So I think that, look, I don't know what I'm going to do in the future. I actually don't have a new movie lined up because I'm so proud of this movie. I just want to kind of chill and, uh, afterwards and see what new doors it opens or opens or just write some stuff myself.

So, but I do have an eye toward doing less overt comedy. Is there a catch-22 there where if this movie really works this summer, then all the offers you'll get will be for things that are trying to iterate on the thing that you just did? I don't think I'm going to get like a lot of offers for political romantic comedies. No, but romantic comedies with movie stars that...

But I would love, I mean, I would love, but romantic comedies with movie stars that... But I would love to do a romantic comedy with movie stars. I really, really loved doing... I mean, Worm Bodies I view as a romantic comedy. It's completely different, and it allows me to flex a completely different muscle,

but it is a romantic comedy. It's a romantic comedy, action, zombie... I don't know what it is. But I guess that's what I'm saying is it's not doing something that's emotional and funny is different than doing like a studio comedy. You know what I mean? So if it just opens up doors into more emotional, funny material, or if I write something cool, I don't know.

Maybe I will. What's that like? Have you considered it? Writing stuff? Yeah. I have some ideas of stuff I'd like to write. I haven't really had an opportunity to write too much. What's the last film that you wrote that was yours?

Warm Bodies. Warm Bodies. No, the night before I wrote. Okay. Sorry, I forgot. Because I rewrote myself with Seth and Evan and Kyle and Ariel. Is it harder now to write original scripts? It's probably harder to get them made.

But for me, I like doing it. Yeah, when I don't do it for a while it's not hard for me to just sit down and do it. It might be hard to make them good.

But I just finished writing something. I'm hopefully like a TV thing that hopefully I'm going to take out. I'm not sure how commercial it is but it's about like

my film school years and I think it's pretty cool. It's like a John Hughes kind of film school thing. As I was writing it I was like, okay, I still know how to do this. It's still okay. film school years. And I think it's pretty cool. It's like a John Hughes kind of film school thing. As I was writing it, I was like, okay, I still know how to do this. It's still okay. That sounds good. Yeah.

So why do you think that the comedy has been in a rut in the last couple of years? I think anytime the audience feels like they know what they're going to get, the genre kind of starts to feel a little played out. I think that, you know, when Apatow came along, that was in response to a period of comedy that was like starting to feel a little played out too. I think you had kind of like Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson and those kind of like movies. But Judd brought this amazing grounded naturalism to them

and was reflecting back people like the people that the audience is. And I think that that was a revelation. And then just his whole style of making movies, which is like, sort of, we definitely have, have ripped off, which is the two cameras and the improvising and stuff. I mean, that's what Seth and Evan, that's, he mentored Seth and Evan and that informs, you know, on 50, 50, I learned that style and I employ it today. And so now I think people are just starting to notice when people are improvising or people are just kind of maybe getting sick of the same pairings of the same actors. I just think it starts to feel a little like you've seen it before. And I think that that's an opportunity. For me, that was liberating on this movie because I was like, okay, I get to kind of be more unique and try new things or try things that harken back to a time before these movies.

And that was something I even felt on 50-50 was like, I'm not going to, you know, Seth is not doing the same thing as in Knocked Up. Like, this is an amazing script and we're going to take that Knocked Up guy and put him in a real life situation opposite an amazing dramatic actor who's also funny in many ways it seems it was not dissimilar to what we're doing right now but i think like i went first of all there's a couple things that really are inspiring about comedy today i think a lot of the stuff that's happening on streaming is just incredible i don't know if you've seen pen 15 i have so dope and like i just started watching broad city the new the last season of Broad City. It's amazing.

And then this movie Game Night, which I just wandered into a year ago, and just watching what those guys were able to do from a filmmaking perspective, it was almost like Edgar Wright. It was just really, really stylized. It's very good. Very smart.

It's great. Yeah. It's great. So that made me feel, I think I had already shot most of this movie when I saw it, but it really made me feel very positive about the future of comedy. Um, and I love comedy. I mean, more than anything, I, I love comedy. Just the movies I grew up on are all comedies. Um, but it's, it's a constant renewal, you know, right now it's like horror movies are the, are the movies that are most, um, kind of culturally relevant.

And like what Jordan Peele is doing is like, there's this amazing provocativeness, um, to it that is like, you can, you can right now horror is the, is the genre that's doing that, but comedy will be the genre that does that again. I think. It's interesting. Cause I felt like you were very ahead of the curve on the highly self-referential horror movie, and now you're not doing that, and that's the thing that is having the moment.

Well, yeah, I always kind of like I'm a little bit, I'm either a little bit ahead or behind some of these things. Feels like Longshot is right on time. I end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen. You watch a lot of movies. What is the last great thing you've seen? The last great thing I've seen,

well, I have to say the criterion channel streaming situation is wonderful i was very bummed out when filmstruck went away but i was like a very early adopter of the criterion thing and like okay so the reality of my life is my wife and i watch these movies at night right before we go to sleep and like even the greatest film aficionado cannot deny that most of these movies are super fucking boring. So we watch them, but they are broken up into eight installments. We sort of turn it into a season of TV. Yes, the smarts.

So right now we're watching The Life of Oharu. Okay. I don't know maybe I should come up with a more mainstream suggestion for your audience we have a lot of Criterion subscribers I'm sure

this is week one of Criterion so if you want to get on there check it out it's really great and what's cool is they have a category of like canonical movies

that you have to see and it's just you know all these wonderful like the art house essentials exactly um I'm trying to think of like something new what's the last thing you saw in a theater I saw Us that you have to see. And it's just, you know, all these wonderful- Like the art house essentials. Exactly. I'm trying to think of like something new.

What's the last thing you saw in a theater? I saw Us. Yeah, what'd you think? I really liked it. I really liked it. I was a little confused by some stuff. I think that that's been the general response. Well, I just think he's- I was impressed, but also I'm confused.

Yeah, I think he's a very, very amazing director and filmmaker. I think that there were, like these are minor quibbles, but I think that confused. Yeah, I think he's a very, very amazing director and filmmaker. I think that there were, like, these are minor quibbles, but I think that, you know, I did want it to make more sense

a little bit, realistically. But, look, I just, I did think it was wonderful and I love his movies and I loved his casting and I loved his,

I love him as a filmmaker. Yeah, his direction is really impressive. It's just, just amazing. I just didn't get, like, where did everyone

get the scissors? And, like, I just have a bunch of questions about it. But, like, that's not what, that wasn't what he cared about, right?

He cared about this allegorical thing that worked. Like, it just worked. You know? And I got that. As dumb as I am, I understood

what he was going for. I completely agree and long shot works Jonathan thanks man thank you very much man thank you again to Amanda Dobbins Rob Harvilla

and of course Jonathan Levine please join us next week when we'll be back on the big picture talking about Netflix's new Ted Bundy film

among other things see you then