The Big Picture - Danny Strong and the Recipe for a Classic Biopic | The Big Picture (Ep. 25)

Episode Date: September 15, 2017

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey and executive editor Chris Ryan reveal their favorite biopics and hash out what makes them great (1:00). Then, Sean sits down with writer, actor, and director Danny Strong to discuss his recent J.D. Salinger biopic, ‘Rebel in the Rye,’ and how doubling down on his passion paid off (12:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. Wanted to make sure you subscribe to The Watch with Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan. Two longtime friends who have had this podcast since 1973. Yeah, that's how long. It was even before podcasts were having this. These guys spent their whole life arguing with each other. And now we just record it and they go at it. They talk about everything pop culture. It is one of the most popular pop culture podcasts, especially valuable during Game of Thrones season. But they'll argue about movies,

music, TV, you name it. The Watch, one of the best pop culture podcasts on the internets. Subscribe now, wherever you get your podcasts. When I finished the second Hunger Games movie,

I literally said, I don't want to do any of this. I want to go write this J.D. Salinger movie. And then that's what I did. And then I got it made. I'm Sean Fennessey, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and here's the big picture. What goes into putting a person's life on screen? That is a very difficult task. Today, I'm here to answer that, hopefully, with the writer and now director Danny Strong,

who's got a new movie called Rebel in the Rye. But first, I'm here with the podfather? Is that what I am now? No, that's Bill Simmons. But you're the podfather junior, but you are the blog father. Chris Ryan, executive editor of The Ringer, co-host of The Watch. Chris, what's up? What's up, man? How you doing?

I'm good. Chris, how do you put someone's life on screen? It's so hard. This is one of my multiple big picture appearances. This is the one that's vexed me the most because I literally kept up awake at night thinking about this. What is the difference between Malcolm X and Citizen Kane? One is a fictionalized version of a historical character. One is a very stylized version of a historical character. How do we define these things? I think that you and I both have a kind of unsaid understanding of what these movies are, you know, what these biographical films are.

And I think that in our minds, like, when you think of them, this thing's like Ray, which is just like the name of the guy is in the title. And it starts in his childhood with a forming event and we follow his rise and fallen rise. That's right. Capturing 80 years. Yeah, exactly. And then I think that there are more unique takes on people's lives that are a little bit harder to process. So I throw it back to you. I mean, the rules of the game need to be laid out for me here before I can answer the question, I guess.

It's hard to know. So in Danny Strong's movie, which is about J.D. Salinger, he looks at basically the middle part of his life, which we think we don't really know that much about, which is to say, you know, his time as a student, when he goes to war, when he becomes a major success. There's information about that, but we don't really realize some of the catalyzing events. So some movies and some of the movies we'll talk about here focus very narrowly on individual events and saying that these are the things that are most important about what this person is doing. You know, Straight Outta Compton came out a couple of years ago and was a huge hit, but that movie only captures a very small

segment of those guys' lives. Something like Raging Bull looks at like a 40-year span in the life of a person. So to me, there's no hard and fast rule. Yeah, like for something like The Imitation Game, to me, I don't think of that so much as about the character as about the task at hand, right? And that makes it slightly less of a biography as it is a procedural almost. These people are building the world's first spy computer and to save the war effort, they have to do this. It didn't feel like – when you were saying this, it never occurred to me to say, oh, like Imitation Game, right? So what is your favorite example of a movie, of a true

biopic? Yeah, Malcolm X. I think that one thing that a lot of these movies sometimes lack is legitimate passion on the part of the filmmakers for the subject matter. I think that you'll often come across somebody and you're like, oh, okay, well this is just a historically relevant figure that blooms large in our public consciousness.

Obviously, there should be a movie about them. I think Malcolm X is Spike Lee's Citizen Kane. I think that it is his legacy work when in 50 years we look back on Spike Lee's career, people will teach Malcolm X. I think it is an incredible act of subjective biography. There's a lot of Spike Lee and Spike Lee's thoughts and feelings about Malcolm X and about civil rights

in the film. And it is obviously you can't make one of these movies without a very, it's a difficult tightrope to walk to perform and have like a performance of value while also paying

appropriate tribute to the character, to the actual person that you're portraying. And so for me, the Denzel Washington's performance still towers above many others of the last 30, 40 years. And it's definitely, it's my favorite biographical film I've ever seen. So you've got a couple on your list of your favorite biopics that are interesting to me. One, Steve Jobs, which is a movie that you and I like a lot. We may have even talked about it on podcasts. I think we have before, yeah.

And I think a lot of people hate it. Yes. What is so good about it to you and why do you think people hate it? Well, I like the fact that Steve Jobs gets rid of what most biographical films would spend two hours doing in expository dialogue. The Katherine Waterston relationship with Michaelael fastbender does steve jobs uh it should be the movie you know it should be this it was this guy's troubled relationship with his ex-wife and daughter that led to him eventually finding the humanity inside of himself

necessary to make a truly human piece of computer equipment, I guess, or whatever you want to say. All that stuff is just like yada yada. And it's much more about the process and production of the public figure. So it's about him sort of coordinating and stage managing how people view him while also keeping the people who truly do know him at bay. And so the story, the formal technique that they used to tell this over the course of three Apple releases, just, I also just, you know, you and I are sorkin heads and I unapologetically. Yeah. Molly's game coming. Yeah. Yeah. I feel similarly about something like Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford, right? So that's a movie that

is essentially about the mythology of a person. And there have been many Jesse James films. Right. Exactly. So we have a lot of text to pull from. We have this vision of this guy as this great robber, this great rebel in American times. And in fact, like he's kind of weak. He's kind of a crank. He seems like not a good person. And it shows us that he's not really a good person. And we see that through someone else's eyes who then deems himself worthy of taking this guy out.

And so really it's a fascinating deconstruction, you know. I'm also interested in why you have Wyatt Earp on your list. So this is a weird one. I don't know why I have Wyatt Earp on list. I love this movie. It is obviously in the same way that it is Kevin Costner's Malcolm X. Oh, no. It is clearly the movie that he waited his entire life to make.

And I don't think that he, I think he's actually mad that it wasn't longer. I believe it was written with Lawrence Kasdan, and the initial idea was that it was going to be a six-hour miniseries, and they got it down to I think three-plus hours for its theatrical release and never released this. Oh, just three-plus hours. Yeah. It's sort of in, I think, among our friend group, a little overshadowed by Tombstone because Tombstone is so quotable and has Val Kilmer. And it's just more of like a really fun, rewatchable action western. Wyatt Earp is boring. It's got lots of like Tom Sizemore and Kevin Costner hunting buffalo and a series of laudanum addicted women who come in and out of wyderp's life and tombstone itself is depicted as the okay corral battle itself is sort of sad like what happens to everybody coming out of it

and just the way it defines their lives but as a epic portrait of the american west and of a character it's i admire it very deeply for how unconcerned it is with how cool it is, how uncool it is. It's just like this is this movie. It's a very old school traditional like I just want to shoot it all. This is your dad. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I get that.

So there I also really like movies that play with the tone and don't necessarily celebrate sort of the antithesis of wider. They're like valorizing someone, but they are finding ways to celebrate people. So, you know, there's Amadeus is a really interesting example. Same filmmaker as The People vs. Larry Flint, Milos Forman, who likes to look at grand and eccentric characters in history and spotlight why they're fascinating, but why they're not necessarily good. And Mozart being a bit of a frothy fool at war with Salieri is like an interesting portrayal. But I think the number one example of this, which I think has really held the imagination of a lot of film fans, is Ed Wood, which is obviously Tim Burton's ode to the famous schlockmeister, the terrible filmmaker Ed Wood. But it's like a really loving portrayal of somebody who sucks at something.

And there's something unique about diving deep into failure and not knowing that you're failing. You know, Edward is portrayed by Johnny Depp, probably my favorite Johnny Depp thing, as this like incredibly cheery, driven, fun-having buffoon. Yeah. And somehow he comes out the hero. It's strange that this is like the last good Tim Burton movie and that since then he sort of became Edward. It's very true. It's very sad. Edward with a budget. Yeah, right. I

definitely think that that is an example of someone who sees something in a character that only they see. So then that is probably the most important part about this. Lincoln is a great time at the movies and Tony Kushner's script is amazing and the performance is amazing and Spielberg is at his sort of like, I'm just this – like this is the safest pair of hands you could possibly be in. The grandmaster, yeah. But I think that what it really tells us is what we already knew about Lincoln, which was that he was a great uniter and that he was actually a very savvy politician while also being this idealist. That doesn't change how we feel about Lincoln you you come out of Ed Wood being like well he's like you know he loved movies as much as true foe loved movies and that's that's an incredible way like feeling to have when you when you walk

out of a movie let's do your your two anglophile hits at the end here yeah one is Lawrence of Arabia perfect movie grand selection yeah I had some trouble with this one. This is one of those things where are we talking about the person or are we talking about the thing? And the thing in this is actually the grandeur of widescreen cinema. I don't... It's the desert. You know, you really think a lot about the Turkish revolution, you know, the revolution

happening in World War I there, but in the Middle East. But there is a lot of, you know, you go back and you watch the peter o'toole performance and you think about the sort of messianic quality of this character who's sort of stuck in a map room and and dreams of something bigger for his life and just goes out and makes it happen um and even the framing devices of his death off in a motorcycle accident and then going up to the – It's a spoiler alert for Lawrence of Arabia.

Sorry about that. T.E. Lawrence is no longer with us. I'm sorry, guys. The politician who's just like, well, I don't know if I knew him. And then the whole movie is trying to help us understand this unknowable mythical figure. I guess the problem I have with keeping Lawrence of Arabia on this list is like, well, isn't that kind of like saying King Arthur? You know what I mean? Like does anybody really know this person?

Isn't this person almost like a folk tale as much as – I mean but, you know. Guy Ritchie tackled that this summer. That's right. So Guy Ritchie answers the question. The other one that I have on here unapologetically is 24-Hour Party People. One of my favorite movies. Great pick. story of Tony Wilson who started almost by accident Factory Records and was one of the sort of pillars of post-punk in England

and was riding the wave of experimental drugs and dance music in England at a time where you wouldn't really think of England as being the sort of heartbeat of dance music but with the Happy Mondays and Joy Division and New Order and just

I love characters who are surfing the waves of change. And I think, you know, one other movie here that I didn't put on and that I don't often want to rewatch, but a movie that's like 24-Hour Party People is Milk, which is about just a character who is right in the middle of a great cultural upheaval. And I think that those are also really awesome biographical films to see. You often find yourself in the middle of a great cultural upheaval. And I think that those are also really awesome biographical films to see. You often find yourself in the middle of a great cultural upheaval. Chris Ryan, thank you for joining me

today to talk about these biopics. Thanks, man. And now here's my conversation with Danny Strong, director of Rebel on the Rye. Danny Strong, thank you for being here with me today, man. Thank you for having me. So you're a director now. Amazing.

Congratulations. Who knew? Yeah, it's exciting. Rebel in their eye. So you could have made any number of films, I imagine, given the success of Empire, the many films you've written, the many acting performances you've given. Why a movie about J.D. Salinger? Well, I knew that I really wanted to direct a movie for a while now. And so I was subconsciously or consciously at times trying to figure out what that movie would be. And I came across this biography on Salinger that came out in 2011, 2012.

And I saw it in a bookstore and I just bought it to read it for fun. And as I was reading it, I was so stunned by the story. I knew very little about him. I'm very moved by the story, to be honest with you. Surprisingly so. Were you a big Salinger person, though? Was he an important writer for you? Well, I loved Catcher in the Rye in high school, like everyone else that loved Catcher in the Rye

in high school. And I had read the other works over the years, probably in college is when I read them, but I wasn't this obsessive Salinger fan. But I did always really love Catcher in the Rye. But when I was in high school, pre-internet times, there was no information on him, and he was this famous American enigma. It was a national mystery. Where is J.D. Salinger?

Why did he stop – what happened to J.D. Salinger, right? So that was always a myth. And so when I saw the book, I just thought, oh, wow. I want to know what happened to J.D. Salinger. That looks really interesting. And really was so taken by the story, the fact that he was this young guy from the Upper East Side in New York City, incredibly ambitious, wanted to be a writer, pursued it aggressively, trying to sell his stories. And then goes to war and the war transforms him as a writer and then he's traumatized by the war. He's institutionalized after the war and then from the war, the writing goes to a whole new level and then he writes Catcher in the Rye.

The fact that Catcher in the Rye was written by a veteran of World War II, I found that so moving and it made so much sense to me immediately, right? The story of this troubled kid wandering New York City for a few days and then it also for me informed what happened to him, how this charismatic individual of the city who went to jazz clubs and picked up on girls and hung out at the stork club ends up moving to the wilderness and isolating himself. He's famous for being a recluse and it was interesting to read that he actually wasn't a recluse. He was part of the community in Cornish. He would come to New York City from time to time, go on vacations. But he, for the most part, wanted to be in this very quiet, isolated environment in Cornish, New Hampshire. So you finish reading this biography and you immediately think this is cinematic.

This is a story that has to be told or did something happen in between that? No, I immediately thought. Really? Yeah. I mean that's my job, right, is to find stories and to find things that I think could be stories. And I immediately saw this one and thought, okay, I want to get this made. I want to write this and I want to direct it. This needs to be the first movie I direct because it's about a writer.

And I can relate to so much of what he went through except for the war element. And so much of what he went through as a struggling young writer is not only what I've been through but so many of my friends have been through. There's this real universal experience of what it means to be a writer. And I thought telling a story of A, what it means to be a writer, the story of a veteran and how art is created through trauma, and then the story of the creation myth of not only Catcher in the Rye, but unraveling the famous American enigma, I thought, this is amazing. This is an incredible movie. Little did I know how really difficult it would be to execute. It was so challenging. It was very, almost hubristic of me to make this the first film I direct.

I want you to tell me about that. So in the industry at the time, as many people knew you for Buffy the Vampire Slayer as they did as a screenwriter. So how do you make a movie happen? How do you convince people to give you money to tell this story? What happens next? Well, you know, I'd already sort of, quote, unquote, broken through as a writer because of recount. So it wasn't there's there was not a stigma of, oh, the guy from Buffy, most of the development people, I don't even think watch Buffy and knew what it was. So it was very independent. And the good thing about writing is people have asked me over the years, you know, did my acting career have people have preconceived notions about me? So they weren't interested in me as a writer. And the truth was the answer is no. The good thing about writing is the proof is in the pudding. You give them the

script and they like it or not. And it really doesn't matter whose name's on it. And maybe there's a tinge of bias before they start reading it. But once you start reading the script, you either hate it or you like it. And pretty much, you know, in a couple pages, screenwriting is this very interesting thing where you can sort of tell right away if the person can actually do it. But you've said before that it did take you five, six years to really get something across the line. Was that just because you needed to improve as a writer? All the above. Yeah. And I think that's just a natural progression of who writes one screenplay and becomes and is a sensation. I I mean the scripts got better every time.

But even the first script, producers were really taken by it and really encouraging of me and asked, can we bring it to the studio? So I was already encouraged right out of the gate. But then it just took me many years to kind of find my footing. And real quickly, the journey of that was I spent all these years writing scripts that I thought Hollywood wanted that I could sell. So there were all these high concept comedies. And after five years of that, I hadn't sold a script. And I realized I was writing movies I didn't want to go see. I was writing movies I thought I could

sell. And I told myself the next movie I write is going to be something I want to go see see and then I came up with the idea for Recount, a movie about the Florida Recount, which was as unsellable a script at that moment as you could possibly conceive and then I sold it as a pitch to HBO, the only company in town that would have even have made that script at that time. It was a weird time in the business where the adult drama was quote-unquote dead, which is the stupidest thing. Still hearing that today. It's so goofy, you know. But nonetheless, the sort of Christmas

miracle of my career, and I'm saying a lot because I'm a Jew, is that HBO bought that pitch from me when I had never sold anything and I wasn't in the union. Was it easier for you on this movie then to say, I've done Recount, I've done Game Change, let's make this movie?

Yeah, it was nothing's ever easy. And even when I'm at the close to the finish line, it's never easy. I mean, finish line and getting it made. So I had a very specific plan to get this movie made. So by the time I was wanting to do this, I was already an in-demand screenwriter because of the recount script. It really transformed my career in this extremely exciting way. And I could have taken this book and sold it to a studio and gotten paid, gotten the writer of the book paid, and then written the script. And then maybe it would have gotten made, maybe not. I've written many scripts that haven't gotten made and they get lost in the kind of studio shuffle.

And it's sort of crazy. Sometimes they die in 24 hours. Sometimes a script everyone loves is all of a sudden three days later a dead script. it's sort of crazy. Sometimes they die in 24 hours. Sometimes a script everyone loves is all of a sudden three days later a dead script. It's unbelievable. Yeah, it's crazy. So I decided I'm not going to do that. This was my plan. I came up with this plan almost

simultaneously of me deciding I wanted to pursue it. I thought, okay, here's how I'm going to do this. Because I'm a first-time director and if I'm attached to it and sell it to a studio, it'll only be a hindrance to it A, selling or B, getting made. Right. They can spike it whenever they want. Yeah, exactly.

I'm not going to sell it to a studio. I'm going to go to the writer of the biography and I'm going to see if I can option the book from him directly. And then I'm going to write it on spec. So I control everything. I control the book and I control my screenplay. No one controls it but me. Then I'm going to get a few powerful producers on spec. So I control everything. I control the book and I control my screenplay. No one controls it but me. Then I'm going to get a few powerful producers on board. And then we're going to shop it directly to independent financiers and see if we can get someone to give us the money to just

make the movie with me attached as the director. And if they don't want me to direct, well, then I won't sell them the script. So that was my game plan is that I'm going to control this. And it absolutely worked, which is amazing. How often does a plan come together to quote the A-team? It was really, really cool. And the guy who wrote the book, Kenneth Selinsky, really kind of leap of faith, jumped on board with me. And I took him to breakfast, and I explained to him what I just said to you. And I said, I can get you paid, and I can get me paid, but the movie is less likely to get made

for this upfront money. And at one point, a studio found out what I was doing after I'd optioned the book and said, we'll pay you to write the script. And I said, no, I'm doing this to get it made. And they said, okay, how about this? We'll option it for 18 months.

And if we don't make it in 18 months, you keep the money and then you get the script backed, which sounds like a good deal, right? But I just thought, no, I got this plan. I got this plan. I need to stick to this plan. I need to do this on my own. And that's what I did. And then I got it made. So what's amazing about that is you also had a lot of other things happen in that four-year period. You write Hunger Games movies. You obviously launch a hugely successful TV show.

What role does the movie play during this time where your profile is really growing? It was I slotted in between stuff. So it kind of took a backseat, to be honest with you. I optioned the book, and then I didn't even write the script for 18 months because I got the Hunger Games movies. And so then I wrote Hunger Games 3, and then they hired me to write Hunger Games 4. And then before that I had written a Da Vinci Code movie that didn't get made.

So I was doing all these jobs and it kept slowing me down and I ended up having to re-option the book because the option lapsed. Was there ever a time where you thought this wasn't going to happen?

No, no. I just thought the only time I got scared that it wasn't going to happen was when the documentary Salinger came out because I thought it might have made my movie irrelevant. And that I was so excited about revealing this sort of mystery for the first time.

And then with the documentary, I thought, well, that's going to ruin the mystery. It takes a very different tact in your movie. It's completely different. And when I went and saw it and I very much enjoyed it, it was so different from my movie. I mean, Whit Burnett, the Kevin Spacey role is about two two minutes in the documentary, and it's 50 percent of my movies. He's in the center of your movie. Yeah, it's also the documentary is a comprehensive birth to death, which is what it should be. It's a documentary where mine is a story about a specific period in his life.

So, yeah, the script took a backseat to my paying gigs. But after I finished the second Hunger Games movie, I had done four studio assignments in a row. And I was really burnt out on the studio assignments. It actually made me rethink even my writing career, what I wanted from a writing career. I thought I wanted to be a big studio writing big movies. And then I did two of them in a row, the biggest, right? These two Hunger Games movies. And I thought, I don't want to do this anymore. Is it because you're getting noted to death and because it's just so controlled?

Because it's so controlled. And not so controlled in a way where I'm judgmental of them. I understand it's controlled, right? I mean, it's a $150 million movie for trying to create a billion dollars in profit. And it was something that when I finished the second Hunger Games movie, I said, I do not want to talk to anyone. I want to go write my J.D. Salinger movie. It was kind of, I wouldn't say it was exciting. I literally, the second the Hunger Games project ended for me, I got about 10 studio offers. And I- Tempted to take any of them?

You know what? No. I literally said, I don't want to do any of this. I want to go write this J.D. Salinger movie. And my agents have been completely cool over the years. I mean, they're very, you know, they're smart business people. And you sure? And then I go, yeah, I'm sure. And they go, okay, go write the movie. Right?

You know, there's not, it's a real soft pedal, just checking in. But ultimately, they're completely supportive of what I want to do. And so that's what happened. So I wrote it, and then people really liked it. And we found a financier, and then Empire happened. And then that took me away from it again. But Empire ended up being so helpful because I directed multiple episodes of Empire. And I don't know if I could have pulled this movie off in the 26 days I had to shoot it,

which is so fast, had I not directed multiple episodes of Empire. It makes sense. Hey, guys, we're going to take a quick break to hear about some more shows from the Ringer Podcast Network. Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I wanted to tell you about Black on the Air, hosted by the one and only, the great one, Larry Wilmore. Even though he's a Lakers fan, I still like him.

I think he's talented. But he has all kinds of guests on, from Neil deGrasse Tyson to Al Franken to Bernie Sanders. You name it, they're coming on. Pop culture, politics, newsmakers. And then at the beginning of every podcast, Larry does a little riff about whatever is either sticking in his car or things that he's enjoying. Although he has been enjoying much lately with the way the world's going. But Larry will riff on anything.

And then he has guests on. It's great. If you liked everything else that he's done comedy-wise, if you love this Comedy Central show, you will love this podcast. It is a medium that he has built for it. It's called Black on the Air, hosted by Larry Wilmore. Get it wherever you subscribe to your podcasts. And now back to my interview with Danny Strong. There's this great story that you've told in the past about going to video archives

growing up in Manhattan Beach in Los Angeles, seeing Quentin Tarantino there as a young kid. You know, his creation myth is well known about wanting to be a filmmaker. Did you have the same one? Because obviously you had a long career as an actor and now as a screenwriter and now as a director. Were you also always wanting to be a filmmaker? No, I always wanted to be an actor. So as a kid, I wanted to be an actor.

I was alone a lot as a kid. My mom was a telephone operator and she worked the shift after school. So I would come – my sister was five years older than me, so she was off doing her thing, right? So I would come home after school at 7, 8, 9. This doesn't happen anymore where kids are alone, but my age they were. Yeah, I was last key too. Yeah, like we would just – I would just go home and make a bowl of cereal and watch TV, and I would just watch television. And I would watch watch television. And I watched so much television. And I remember being seven, eight, nine years old thinking, I want to be on television.

And I think this is so funny, I would think I could do better than them. I would literally watch it and be I just think I could do so much better than this guy. And then I started writing letters to agents at eight. And I wrote letters to William Morris and Harry Gold and sent them my picture, just some random photograph, right? Did your mom know about this? Yeah, yeah, no, she looked up the address for me. And she would tell me the names of the agencies. I would say, I wanna be on TV.

And she'd say, well, you need to get an agent. And I'd say, how? She didn't know, she's a telephone operator, right? So she said, well, let's send them letters. And I would write the letters and send them and then come home every day after school waiting for them to respond. Did you get any bites? Never got a bite.

I don't know when I stopped expecting the letter to come, but I specifically remember I hold it against William Morris to this day. But that's why I'm with CAA. Not true. Just joking. But so, yeah, I was very interested even as a kid and then started going to video archives because I was into adult movies at a young age. And Quentin Tarantino was the clerk there, and I would spend an hour at a time just talking to him. And I spent so much time in there talking to him that they called me Little Quentin. So that was my nickname was Little Quentin.

And Quentin Tarantino to this day loves telling people the story. When he won the Golden Globe for Django Unchained, I won the Golden Globe for Game Change. And so we were at a party afterwards both holding our Golden Globes. And Quentin was just telling the whole room. He was like, you don't get it, okay? This is Little Quentin, all right? And then he would just like tell the whole story. And it was so cool.

That's a good Quentin. Yeah. So you are a filmmaker now what are you going to do with being a filmmaker are you going to change uh your career completely i bought a mascot i have a pipe i've got a valet it's great yeah it's a terrific valet if you ever want to borrow the i mean look i always wanted to do this i always wanted to direct i love that I did. It now makes other things. So just the writing and producing, and I have such a different perspective. I'm producing a film right now that stars Taraji P. Henson that will come out next year called The Best of Enemies. And Sam Rockwell, it's an amazing movie.

This movie is incredible. And as a producer, now that I've directed a film and it's a first time director, I'm so helpful in a very specific way because I literally just went through what he's exactly going through right now. And it's a very cool, whole new perspective. And I'm absolutely planning on directing another film. I get why directors make films every three to four years. It's just an incredible amount of work and it's so challenging. And I mean I'm publicizing it now and I still don't know what's going to happen. And I certainly don't mind the idea that I won't be directing a film in the next year. And you debuted at Sundance.

I mean you've been locked for nine months. No, I debuted at Sundance and then recut the movie after Sundance. OK. Significantly? Significantly. I recut the movie. And so it never ended, right? And literally until I started screening it about four weeks ago, I didn't even know what

I had. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. How do you make those choices? How do you figure out what needs to change? It's challenging. It's really challenging.

But I kind of, I rushed it to get into Sundance. It was very common. That happens. I viewed it as a work to get into Sundance. It was very common that happens. I viewed it as a work in progress at Sundance, more work in progress than I realized. But from Sundance, I kind of figured out what was missing and what needed. And maybe if I'd had more time in post production, I could have gotten here, or maybe not. Maybe that Sundance experience of experiencing it with these audiences taught me where the film ultimately needed to lie because it's not this wildly different movie. But it's significant surgical changes that significantly improved it.

That's so different too from so many of the experiences you've had as a writer, right? I mean an HBO movie is a locked experience. That's not being shown to anybody but the studio or the network before it goes. Hunger Games is different. It's all internal. Even Empire

was such a breakout success. There wasn't a lot of like testing going on where people see it early. To be honest with you, there is on all these projects. There's a lot of testing.

And I even tested Rebel and the Rye two times before Sundance. Okay. And Sundance was the third test. And then after Sundance, they tested the Sundance cut IFC because I wanted to recut it and they didn't. So they tested it and then it tested too high. And they said, we don't want to recut it.

These are great test scores. But I was convinced I can improve it. And we made this deal that I can recut it. But if I don't test higher, we'll go with the Sundance cut. Yeah, really interesting. And so I rec improve it. And we made this deal that I can recut it, but if I don't test higher, we'll go with the Sundance cut. Interesting. Yeah, really interesting. And so I recut it. I was convinced it was better.

And then we retested it, and I tested 10 points higher. So I was like, crack the champagne. It was one of the happiest nights I think I've had in this industry was when I got my test scores on my recut of Rebel in the Rye. That is fascinating. So how do you make a decision now for what comes next? Now you're producing films, you're writing. You know, I just saw that you're writing another television show. Yeah, well, that show I'm producing.

So I'm working on shows as a producer on television where I'm supervising other writers, but I will be writing my own pilot this year too. I'm not, I think I know what it is, but we're not totally sure yet. So the next thing up for me is I'm writing a pilot on a TV show and I'm working on multiple stage plays. So I'm really trying to break into theater and everyone thinks it's so funny. That sounds insane. It's what I'm most interested in right now are these stage musicals that I'm writing and I'm writing three of them and I love them. It's really fun for me. In an effort to be on Broadway? Yes. Bam.

That's it. Yeah. The goal is to get to Broadway. So you did write a Guys and Dolls remake at some point, right? A movie version. The movie version, yeah. Still hasn't been made. It's actually, of all my unmade scripts, it's the most frustrating because everyone loves the script and it feels like it would be a very successful film. And it's just difficult to get a movie made.

Is musicals where your heart really is? Everything, you know, it's just one other thing that I really love. Right. So it's like I love musicals. I love my political dramas. I like working on whatever. There's a lot of different things I'm interested in, which is why my resume is kind of schizophrenic. It's not just, well, I'm the horror guy.

It's just a lot of random things. And I never care about how I'm perceived about, oh, well, people aren't going to – they're going to be confused if you write a Hunger Games movie and political dramas. I don't care. And people ask me – But writers get typecast too, you know. Yeah, whatever. I mean people say, well, do you want to be known as a director, as a producer, as an – what do you want to be known as? And I'm like I don't care what I'm known as.

I just want to work on a bunch of random things that interest me. And, you know, right now I'm acting on Billions, the TV show. Love it. It's so much fun. Just talked to Brian Koppelman yesterday. Koppelman's the coolest, right? So when I'm on Billions, I'm an actor that day. That's the most important thing to me in the world.

When I finish shooting, sometimes I'll have some time, I'll go work on a script. In that moment, that's the most important thing to me in the world. You know, it's just for me, it's just whatever I'm working on. And I'm not worried about all I'm excited about. Is it cool? Is it exciting? This movie that I'm producing, I'm so excited about because I just love it so much. And it's just exciting knowing that good stuff's going to come out.

I'm always fascinated by somebody who can wear six hats. How do you manage to do all of these different things and fit things into these time frames? That's it. The timing of it can be challenging. Naps are really helpful. I love a good nap. I'd like to take one now after we finish this interview. Okay, deal.

But, yeah, it can be challenging and overwhelming. And then there's these random pockets of time where I have nothing to do. And I just think, how the hell did that happen? I've got nine projects time where I have nothing to do and I just think how the hell did that happen? I've got nine projects and I literally have nothing to do this week and then so I'll start working on something else because I always need to be working on something or I get kind of depressed. Amazing. So that's why

I do all these different things. Maybe it's unhealthy. I don't know. No, no. You seem like you're doing it all. I'm impressed. Trying. So I always like to end these conversations with asking filmmakers what's one great thing they've seen recently? Is there something you've seen recently that you that really knocked you out? Well, I mean, this film that's going to come out next year, The Best of Enemies, I just saw the first cut of it. And it blew me away. I mean, I knew the script and I was crying at the end. Who is the filmmaker? His name is Robin Bissell.

Okay. And he was it's he was the first script he wrote the first film he's directed, and it's a producer I've known for years. He produced the Hunger Games movies and produced Seabiscuit – or produced the first Hunger Games film and Seabiscuit and basically asked me to help him develop the script. And I was the first producer he brought on board, and I did it out of friendship. I didn't think he could pull it off, but the story was very beautiful. And he writes this first draft, and it's amazing, and I didn't think he could pull it off, but the story was very beautiful. And he writes this first draft and it's amazing. And I can't believe it. I just literally, it almost made me angry how good it was. And then we went on this journey to get it made. And it took a while and other producers have come on board with us that have been, you know, terrific collaborators. And then lo and behold, five years later, got the movie made and it stars

Taraji. And it's fantastic. I also saw Battle of the Sexes, a screening. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. I saw a little peek of it and it's really good. Okay. Yeah. I think people are going to really like it. I just thought I really enjoyed it and was very excited about it. Danny, thank you very much. Congrats on Rebel on the Ride. My pleasure. Thank you. you