The Big Picture - ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife,’ ‘Tick, Tick ... Boom!,' and Our Top Five Feel-Good Movies

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

We're talking about a trio of new releases—'Ghostbusters: Afterlife,' 'Tick, Tick ... Boom!,' and 'C'mon C'mon'—that attempt to pluck our heartstrings. They inspired Sean and Amanda to share their top five feel-good movies (1:00). Then, Sean talks with 'C'mon C'mon' writer-director Mike Mills about his wonderful new film (1:00:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Mike Mills Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Derek Thompson, longtime writer with The Atlantic Magazine on tech, culture, and politics. There is a lot of noise out there, and my goal is to cut through the headlines, loud tweets, and hot takes in my new podcast, Plain English. I'll talk to some of the smartest people I know to give you clear viewpoints and memorable takeaways. Plain English starts November 16th. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about busting ghosts, which makes me feel good. Later in this episode, I'll have a conversation with Mike Mills, the director of films like Beginners and 20th Century Women.

His latest movie, Come On, Come On, is quite simply one of my favorites of 2021. Amanda and I will chat a little bit about that movie later in the show, but I hope you will listen to this conversation because Mike is really a terrific interview, wonderfully specific about all the choices he makes as a storyteller. I love this movie. From the sublime to the ridiculous, we're going to be talking about a few more releases today. Theoretically, movies that make us feel good. And we'll talk about our favorite feel-good movies. I'm talking about two new releases. Andrew Garfield stars as Rent creator Jonathan Larson in Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tick, Tick, Boom, which is on Netflix right now.

And Ghost starring in Ghostbusters Afterlife. Let's talk about Ghost Tick, Boom, which is on Netflix right now, and Ghost starring in Ghostbusters Afterlife. Let's talk about Ghostbusters Afterlife, Amanda. This is Jason Reitman's revivification of his father, Ivan Reitman's famed film series. This comes five years after Paul Feig's also revivification or attempted revivification of this franchise with a largely female cast, which became a lightning rod for conversation. This movie did very well at the box office, made $44 million over the weekend, especially considering the pandemic era. And I have a lot of feelings about this movie. I feel very bent out of shape about it. I want to know what you think about it before I go into my jag. I thought it was a fine movie for seven-year-olds.

And it seems like that's what happened at the box office, that it was primarily like families going to the movies together to see a very PG'd version of, and really just like child friendly version of ghostbusters uh remade for 2021 and i guess it's sweet and i guess it has nice things to say about family values or whatever um but is it the ghostbusters that you and I remember from childhood? No, it's not.

It's not. So you're right to locate the children's interest because kids are really the stars of this movie. McKenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard play Phoebe and Trevor. These two kids who arrive at their late grandfather's old farmhouse in Somerville, Oklahoma with their mom after they've been evicted from their apartment. Their mom is played by the great Carrie Coon, who I hope she got paid a lot of money to appear in this film.

For about an hour of this movie, it is a very cute coming of age story, a bit of an Amblin, like Ron Howard-y, early Spielberg kind of a movie. Sort of, but I do think that's giving it a little bit too much credit. It's not quite as accomplished or nuanced it's just like some kids and their mom and they have to move somewhere new and then you know they make some like knock

knock jokes about ghosts or other things i actually like the knock knock jokes mckenna grace i think is probably the best part of the movie uh who's the girl who's the young girl who stars as phoebe um but the movie does often feel like a pencil sketch over a xerox you know there is this feeling like there's a very by numbers aspect to the story so much so that the movie has been i think both celebrated and criticized for this overwhelming amount of fan service you know obviously jason reitman as ivan reitman son, has talked quite a bit in the press about his desire to kind of honor the legacy of his father's film franchise, which seems kind of weird to me. And here's why. So Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2, obviously very meaningful to someone who is 39 years old.

You can imagine I had the Ecto-1. I had Slimer. I had all the action figures. I watched the animated series. I was all in on Ghostbusters. But Ghostbusters was a self-aware, aspirational kind of comedy. It was like it made young kids want to be older and cool. It didn't make adults want to be kids. And that inversion of trying to make something youthful for older people rather than something excitingly old for young people

is kind of what has me at cross-purposes with this movie because at a certain point about an hour in, after we've spent some time with our main characters, it becomes clear that this isn't just a new movie in a Ghostbusters franchise. It's basically trying to do the same thing that The Force Awakens did, where it's like, here's all the stuff you love

from the first Star Wars that we're going to put in the back half of our movie now you don't usually care as much about the ip wars and this i don't even i don't think this like sense of nostalgia necessarily bugs you as much as it does me but what did you make of the kind of decision to throw so much you know zool and the gatekeeper and the key master and the little stay puffed marshmallow men all that stuff getting into the movie the stay puffed marshmallow men who I are characters I the original character I feel a great affection and connection with that scene was the real low point because that is definitely takes place in a product placement Walmart ad And there is just a lot of time spent of Paul Rudd showing you the various deals available at Walmart before all of the tiny marshmallow men who are also being advertised as

product to sell to your next generation of children are running across all the other other things that are available to be sold at Walmart. And it was just kind of obvious in like a crass, craven sort of like, yeah, we want you to buy stuff sort of way. But all of the art and the humor that you and I associate with the original Ghostbusters is like totally missing. And there's nothing wrong with making children's entertainment. And it's nice that kids can go to the movies, but you're right that this strips out everything that made the original Ghostbusters a classic. And, and I think misunderstands what we as kids of the 80s really loved about it and also indicates like a pretty bummer approach to how we're putting together quote family entertainment in in the 2000s both

in terms of selling you stuff and also not really making you laugh yeah it's a bit infantilizing in general i re-watched the first two Ghostbusters movies over the weekend. And the first movie is a diamond. I mean, it's like a perfect piece of 80s popular culture entertainment. It's also like it's very smart. You know, it's the villains of that movie are not the ghosts. They're the bureaucrats in the New York City government. And that's a very clever construction.

It's also a movie that was shot by Laszlo Kovacs and scored by Elmer Bernstein. This is like the highest class Hollywood craftspeople making a goofy movie about ghosts with a really, really fun script by Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd. So inevitably, and I think Feig took some fire for this as well, in addition to all of the intense bad faith arguments about casting women as Ghostbusters. That was so stupid. This is a different sort of thing. That was just a terrible internet flare up that, and it was before we had really learned to not give that much airtime to that particular corner of the internet.

And unfortunately, some people still do, but that was like 2016. God, that was an awful year on the internet. Yeah, I mean, with Ghostbusters Afterlife, I didn't hate the movie. I just felt disappointed and kind of a little bit baffled as to why it felt the need to so closely hew to the mythology and the storytelling of the previous films. Because I don't think that that mythology is really what anyone cares about. Like, no one cares about Gozer the Gozerian and like needing to.

This is not thanos in the marvel history of of comic books like it's doing a different thing it was doing a thing that was already kind of parodying that kind of thing 25 years ago so i i i found it quite strange yeah i it just i i liked the the 2016 one a little bit defensively and a little bit because I thought the Chris Hemsworth character was just very funny. And they should let Chris Hemsworth just be a comedian more often. I mean, that is sort of what he's doing in Thor. But it felt like a different kind of misapplied lesson of it was trying to recreate what Marvel has done. And just it's the only way you have success at the box office now is by

latching on to that serialized story. And this is really this, and we're going to have a reveal in the third act that it connects to eight other things and four products and two shows. And, you know, it, it got caught under the pressure of doing a lot of different things,

which is, I guess what happens when you just try to do a reboot of something that was successful the first time around. You know, it's hard. It is hard. They had a difficult task here. I think what they ended up with

is this odd agglomeration of some things that work and some things don't. I do want to point out to you that when you and I, we saw this movie together. Love to see a movie with you that I know we're going to talk about on the show because I can directly reference things like this, which is I have never heard you laugh as hard and as deeply in just that tone. across the damn city in rush hour traffic to see a movie for elementary school kids you know and i'm just hanging on to what i can so when like muncher the blue blob shows up and is humping a

fire hydrant like yeah i laughed like i just i'm trying to find the joy that is a funny gross looking dude who is just like half humping and half like pat you know teleporting through the fire hydrant for like 45 seconds yeah i i liked it you very rarely channel your inner child and i i could i could i felt like i met nine-year-old amanda when muncher hit the screen and i was like why isn't it doing more of this why did i have to wait until the end credits for the ghostbusters theme song come on if you're trying to sell me shit just start playing it as soon as they get the guns out you know like give me some energy there was no energy there was no like antic silliness except for muncher like eating his own tail and also the fire hydrant. Muncher was, was amusing.

I thought that that part was effective, even though it was just a, basically also a photocopy of Slimer, but with blue, you know, I would have laughed if Slimer showed up too. I mean, I want,

I want to just, just pick two knits, which I realize is absurd, but one, how does nobody, how did nine-year-olds not know that ghosts terrorized New York city and that the state puff marshmallow Man almost destroyed it. How is that?

How is something that happened 30 years ago already in the conspiracy theory corner of YouTube? That's just silly. If this happened, if Ghostbusters happened, this would be the biggest thing since the Crusades. Ghosts come and terrorize New York City, and people are like, oh, I forgot. I forgot that happened.

What? They're nine. They're nine. They haven't been showed oh, I forgot. I forgot that happened. What? They're nine. They're nine. They haven't been showed the YouTube clips yet. I don't know. Nine-year-olds are on YouTube. I know, but like,

don't you remember? Well, maybe that's how they got there. It is weird that the conspiracy theory kid who we'll get to in a minute didn't know about it. Yes.

It's true that it's not an accurate portrayal of YouTube algorithms, which is once again, Jason Reitman sanitizing the American experience. We'll come back to that. But, you know, they do make a point of saying that the Finn Wolfhard character, who is, you know, what is he like? I feel like he's very grown up now. Yeah, I think he's 38, Finn.

Stranger Things kid forever. Finn and I graduated from high school together. Yeah. Yeah. he knows about it and the other kids don't I thought it was supposed to be like you remember when you took like history class in

in in school and it was like you made it to May 15th or whatever and you'd only made it to like 1940 that was like the latest it ever got and they were like Vietnam in one day.

Like World War II and some other things. And you just like never learned about modern history, like at all until maybe you made it to college. I think it's something like that. That's persuasive. Let's talk about the character who definitely should have known about this. That character's name is Podcast.

There is a character named Podcast in a movie. This is happening more and more. We saw this in godzilla versus kong we're seeing it in movies all the time podcasters are becoming vectors for storytelling and um i do you feel seen amanda it was a little bit like is it a k Kia commercial that like the car is now a storytelling machine? You know, like it's just, it has no meaning at this point, but I thought that was one of the sharper veins of humor in this not particularly sharp movie of, of making fun of the like true crime and mystery podcasts and the kind of the conspiracy corner

that we were referencing though once again like there's a joke about how the podcast really finds its voice in the 46th episode which is funny actually that was like a good one-liner i mean same here at the big one of the only like knowing adult jokes put in a child's voice but he probably should know about the ghosts in new york city i agree i thought logan kim who plays the the podcast character was very funny very cute yeah most of the child actors in this movie i think are pretty good but um there's something a little bit like once again that this is a movie made for adults who want to be children and who know what podcasts are because i don't based on my spotify experience i'm not sure that like eight-year-olds really know what podcasts are either but that's a whole

other realm of conversation um this is a very weird movie i'm gonna i want to demarcate one minute for a spoiler note okay so if you do not want anything in this film spoiled for you if ghostbusters afterlife is a deeply important theatrical experience for you. Just fast forward ahead one minute. Okay, here's the thing. Bill Murray, for 25 years, has declined to participate in a third Ghostbusters film. He has railed against it repeatedly. He has turned down every possible iteration, including films potentially scripted by really, really gifted people. Why he came back for this movie, I have no idea. I guess because Ivan Reitman produced it, and he knew Jason Reitman when he was growing up because Jason Reitman was on the set

of some of these movies. But Ackroyd and Ernie Hudson and Bill Murray and the spectral vision of Egon Spengler, aka the late Harold Ramis, appearing in this movie, while affecting to me personally, I also was like, this is pathetic. We didn't have to do this this way. It really was a bummer, wasn't it?

Yeah, because it just, they showed up and our theater was silent. By the way, I should say, I was the only person laughing at Muncher. So it was like really not an enthused theater. Well, I was laughing at your laughing. Yeah. You also, when Tracy Letts showed up, you like looked at me and then like you gestured and you were just like, they're married. They're married.

And I was like, yeah, Sean, I know, believe it or not. I enjoyed that as a, as a fan of theater. Sure.

Yeah. It's like, I'm up on that, Sean. Um, yeah, but it wasn't even exciting. And there is also,

and I'm afraid that people who only fast forwarded in a minute have now reached the spoiler zone again. So guys hit another minute. Um, I'm afraid that people who only fast forwarded it a minute have now reached the spoiler zone again. So guys hit another minute. I'm really sorry. But Jason Reitman filmed a little thing to go in front of the movie being like, please don't spoil the end of the movie. So by the way, I knew that all the Ghostbusters were showing up. I was like, great, cool.

And then they showed up and it was just very flat and they don't seem excited to be there. And it's the same there's a real lack of connection between the little kids and the ghostbusters because they don't know who the ghostbusters are which like then why are you doing it like if the even the people in the movie themselves don't care you're just missing again it's missing that enthusiasm and zaniness that was the mood of the original yeah and the original ghostbusters are 70 years old so what kid is going to be like the 70 year old is here yes i mean come on it's just a bizarre choice i mean i know why they did it i understand why they did it uh what what a curious film let's let's talk about jason reitman for a little while

um jason reitman has been a guest on this podcast. He has made movies that I really like. He has also made movies that I find utterly confounding and in some ways a little bit offensive. And that might seem strange because they seem, I think, very sweet and maybe a little bit milquetoast and a little bit traditional. But he occupies this very strange space in Hollywood.

And this decision to make this movie, I think has been criticized as being quite cynical. Obviously he has gone out of his way to talk about his personal connection to the franchise because of his father's involvement. I think you're a little bit tougher on Jason Reitman than I am historically. Where is he right now?

I just, there is, as you mentioned, this underlying like old fashionedness and kind of like family values, like defense of the nuclear family in to even the movies that are purporting to examine those constructs. I'm thinking about everything from Juno to the last five minutes of Tully, which still makes me want to, I loved everything, but the last five minutes of Tully,

let me just say, and then wanted to just jump out of my own skin. And, you know, this movie again is reinventing a like a weird and funny comedy into a moral about how family is the most important thing that's i mean and that's that's what it is again and like i don't i love love families i'm not gonna be able to be with my family this Thanksgiving. I'm very sad about it.

Pro family. But there is just something kind of so insistent about it that's like, who died and made you Phyllis Schlafly? I don't get it. It's well put. I think that the films of his that are a bit more hard-edged, a little bit sharper elbowed. I'm thinking specifically a little bit of Thank You for Smoking,

which I felt was a little overdetermined in its attempt to be satire. But Young Adult and Tully and to a lesser extent The Front Runner, those are really his films that I really, really like. And those films don't feel as indebted to some of those ideas and they feel like a little bit

like the movies that he wants to be making. And then you look at Labor Day or Men, Women, and Children, which is really just not a very good film at all. And certainly this Ghostbusters movie, certainly Up in the Air, which I, you know, does not work for me. You know, Juno, which is aging in a very odd way.

He's got this really fascinating, strange, sometimes successful, sometimes really unsuccessful filmography. In some respects, he is kind of like his heroes from the 70s and 80s, where if you look at the CVs of a lot of those directors, very few people are Coppola, right? Where they've got just like eight great films in a row. And he's really bouncing back and forth. And this feels like him ultimately capitulating to the state of Hollywood by deciding to participate in this. And now this movie being successful, which will probably alter the

trajectory of his career. Maybe he'll continue to make dramas or dramedies in the way that he has, but in all likelihood, he has kind of minted a future as a franchise filmmaker. And I'm sure that's great for his personal wealth but it's a there's like an inevitability about this no I'm sure he's doing quite well but um you know Jason is a is a punching bag for many people on the internet our friend Adam Naiman is very notoriously tough on Jason he was there before everybody else yeah he has been on that corner um I certainly don't feel that way about him I think he's made some good stuff but this is one of those movies where I'm like I I would have just avoided this movie now I would have preferred that this movie not happen I certainly don't feel that way about him. I think he's made some good stuff, but this is one of those movies where I'm like,

I would have just avoided this movie. I would have preferred that this movie not happen. I think I would have felt happier to have not seen it. And a lot of people may disagree. A lot of people are going to see it and feel good. And if kids love it, that's wonderful. But it does feel a bit like trampling on ground that should have been left undisturbed to me. Any closing thoughts on Ghostbusters Afterlife?

I mean, I agree with you. If this movie were just like a Paw Patrol movie, I'd be like, that's so great that the children have Paw Patrol and they went to the theater with their family and they learned, I don't know what Paw Patrol is about. I've listened to Andy Greenwald talk about it

at great length on their watch and I've even seen some of the episodes while babysitting and I still don't know. But the fact that it tried to co-opt something that's so dear to us kind of dumb it down or strip it of all of the things that made it quirky and then sell us a bunch of tiny stay puffed marshmallow mans at Walmart is a bummer it is so let's talk about a movie that may have been a bummer for some of us it's it's listen we're moving into a section of the podcast that is about knowing what is in your interest set and what is not in your interest set and what is for you and what is not for you and i

know i trot that out a lot but i think it's really important in this conversation and in many conversations because not everything is going to be for everybody. So something that clearly is not for you is the film Tick, Tick, Boom. This film is Lin-Manuel Miranda's directorial debut. It's a kind of biopic slash musical hybrid chronicling the really the latter stages of the life of the rent impresario jonathan larson movie is told largely through the music of his first would-be musical which is called superbia stars andrew garfield now andrew garfield is one of my favorites you've heard him on this show in the past he's a terrific actor he's wonderful he's one of the few actors i think who is around right now who is actually willing to

take chances as a performer and go for something that maybe isn't within his grasp. So this is like a full song and dance band movie. This is a it's like it feels like Gene Kelly on Adderall, his performance in this movie. He is constantly bopping in a way. And it's been interesting watching some of the reception of the film because I saw many of the pundits this weekend say, well, it is now a lock that Andrew Garfield will be nominated for an Oscar for this performance, which I find kind of fascinating because I do think it would be a divisive performance. I'm curious for you what you thought of Garfield

and then maybe tell me a little bit about why these sorts of films don't work for you. Well, I think the Garfield performance is tough to talk about without talking about the musical itself, which, as I understand it, is an early about wanting to be what Jonathan Larson ultimately becomes, like a musical theater person. And it's workshopping a lot of the kind of artist bohemia ideas that show up in Rent. Our pal Juliette Lipman, who is very knowledgeable in the musical theater space, also pointed out that it's workshopping a lot of like the actual like guitar riffs and music ideas that end up and rent itself. And, but it is a, it is about the art of being a theater kid essentially. Um, so there are two things in there. One, it's really, really, really passionate about musical theater and a specific generation of musical theater as well that I have never really connected with and and also I think it is not fully formed in the way

say Rent is it was I believe it was finished after Jonathan Larson's untimely death and is is beloved as sort of like an early Rosetta Stone for everything that his work would become and mean to a lot of people. But so Andrew Garfield is playing like a very earnest theater kid in a musical about being like an early 90s theater kid. And that's just not gonna be for everybody. That energy is not gonna be for everybody.'s just not going to be for everybody. That energy is not going to be for everybody.

The songs are not going to be for everybody. They weren't for me. He's certainly committed. I'll give him that. He's doing his all. And that he never shows up with less than his all. I confess that at one point, I was like, I just started thinking about his silence performance

for absolutely no reason in the movie which is just to say you know sometimes you get Andrew Garfield on 11 and sometimes you get like restrained sort of tortured Andrew Garfield I think he has more fun just going for it and I think sometimes I prefer the more restrained performances, but again, it's a question of taste. I do find it, I don't know, a lot of people really love Rent and a lot of people do really love this era of musical theater. And a lot of people really love andrew garfield so you could see those things coming together for a nomination but it is hard to imagine so many people being like yes to what is definitely a um a litmus test of a performance how about that i think that's right i think it is the kind of film and the kind of performance that if you like

it, you love it. You are all in on this. And I think a lot of people are going to be all in on this. Will enough people, time will tell, but passion is often very important in something like this. And it's otherwise a strong cast of performers, Alexandra Shipp and Vanessa Hudgens and Robin DeJesus. There's some really good performers, both with Broadway experience and non-Broadway experience. And the other thing too, is if you care about Broadway, this movie is kind of secretly like Marvel's Avengers, but for Broadway.

There's so many cameos, you know, Andre DeShields and Bebe Neuwirth and, you know, Renee Elise Goldsberry and Philippa Soo from Hamilton and Felicia Rashad, Bernadette Peters, Judith Light, all these people who have all of this experience on Broadway crop up in this movie, sometimes in big parts, sometimes in cameos. Some of the songs I agree with you work, some of them really don't work for me. And you can see that there is still kind of like a cutting room floor quality to some of this work. I just think ultimately it lands on Garfield and I'm willing to go there with Garfield, kind of wherever he wants to go. You mentioned Silence,

I would go there with Silence. You mentioned Under the Silver Lake. I'll go there with Under the Silver Lake. Even The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which is not necessarily the most successful performance of his career, I still liked what he was trying to get up to in that role. And I think he's just got a lot of supporters. He's been nominated twice already. Can you name the films for which he's been nominated for? One of them is Long Walk of Billy Lynn or something.

Billy Lynn, right? No, that's not correct. He's not in that film. I misspoke. He's actually only been nominated for one film, but it is a strange one around that time.

Well, then was it Hacksaw Ridge? It was Hacksaw Ridge. But those were the same years. That was the same year, right? I think so. I think they were both 2016. Yeah. Okay.

So he's been recognized for a strange movie directed by mill gibson so there's there's some appreciation for him at large here uh i don't really know what else to say about this movie i mean lin-man lin-manuel miranda i think as a filmmaker this feels like him trying to get all of his ideas into one movie um i found the camera work to be a little bit busier than it needed to be i found it to be a little bit more antic I felt like he was really trying hard to show the relationship between workshopping and execution and there's so much of the film is this sort of like workshopping stage setting with these three people who are performing this ambitious musical cut against this whirling dervish vision

of New York City and it's okay I'd like to. I'd like to see another Lin-Manuel Miranda directed movie that is perhaps a little bit more traditionally constructed, written by Steven Levinson, this screenplay, who also wrote the book for Dear Evan Hansen, which was a struggle for us. So maybe we've located part of the issue here for you as well. i would say that just the content itself the the the musical the book and the lyrics were not my cup of tea and it's there's always going to just be a limit how much you can invest in something if you're not there for the songs and and what it's about okay let's transition to something we both really loved just absolutely tore our hearts out so there's a new film that came out this weekend limited release and did wonderful business which

i was delighted to see the movie is called come on come on it's directed by mike mills stars joaquin phoenix um here's a rough sketch of the film uh phoenix plays johnny a public radio producer journalist who comes to the aid of his sister and offers to look after her nine-year-old son jesse while she takes care of her struggling husband who's played by scoob mcnerry they go cross-country moving from la to new york city eventually visiting new orleans for johnny's work they learn about each other and about the profound connection between children and and their caretakers their parents their surrogate parents um this movie touched me it really it really touched me.

How did you feel about it? Same. And I was just thinking I was being a little sassy earlier about family values. Um, but this is, this is a movie about families and the connection between a parent figure and a child and how that can be complicated, how that can be rewarding. And, you know, I think it is certainly pitched to people at certain stages of their life. And it certainly could be dismissed as like a little bourgeois, like a fairy tale of sorts. So I, you know, just because I subscribe to the bourgeois fairy tales, you know, I i'm conscious of what i'm waiting positively with

respect to family values and what i'm like sneering at in this podcast this is self-aware even if ghostbusters afterlife is not um but i just was so moved by it i thought it was so um lovely and open-hearted and i thought the joaquin phoenix performance was absolutely astounding um i you know i'm like a massive joaquin phoenix fan but it's just what he's doing in terms of working with this wonderful child actor woody norman um and just kind of like it's it's really chemistry it's like parent kid chemistry even though he's an uncle in this film it's incredible and and so unlike so many Joaquin Phoenix performances and certainly like the Joaquin Phoenix uh interviews that you see from time to time um and and just and heartwarming it like it really is we're just gonna be really sappy about this movie that's why this is the feel good movie podcast sorry it was not the first two movies that

made me feel good it was this one just to be clear um but yeah wonderful i thought it was wonderful too i think on the one hand there is a an emotionality and a sentimentality that's very easy to understand in the movie right it's about these very deep relationships in a family that to the rightman point is not a traditional family is a family that is a is complected in a different way and um i think what phoenix brings to it is almost the exact inverse of what we know him for from the joker and from the master and from all of his unusual explorations of damaged masculinity. This is a nice guy, an imperfect guy who doesn't really know very much about children or what to do with children, but who wants to learn and finds a way to learn. And like you said, Woody Norman, incredible find.

I mean, it's hard to get good performances out of kids. It's hard to get complex performances out of kids. It's hard to get complex performances out of kids. I think he's really, really talented and really gifted. Gabby Hoffman, also one of my longtime favorites. I think one of yours as well from the now and then days is terrific as his sister. And there was a lot of choices that are made in the movie by Mills

that you don't necessarily think about, but that work. When I talked to him, I pointed out that I felt like this was the most stripped down of his movies relative to kind of some of the like busyness, the kind of intentional busyness of beginners and 20th century women with all the archival footage and the way that the films are cut together and this sort of like wave of feeling that he drops into those movies. This is a film shot in black and white. It uses this, I guess, this device of the radio producer interviewing kids

to talk about their experiences, which is- A podcast character of its own. A podcast character. Just to draw another comparison. It's happening all over. I think it's a little bit more in the tradition of Ira Glass than it is necessarily in the tradition

of the conspiracy theory podcaster. But nevertheless, you're right and so there there are some specific choices that are made but they feel more uh naturalized i think in this setting i don't think this movie is going to be for everybody i think some people are going to be like this movie is to your point like a little bit like bourgeois nice bullshit and i i get that um i think it's just that this is one where it's truly just a matter of personal taste and what you said earlier, which is I have a daughter in my life now. And so it's like, how could a movie like this not reach into my chest and squeeze? Because that's really what I think Mills is trying to accomplish.

And he talked about that in his relationship with his kid and how deeply this informed that. And this is like my highest possible recommendation i i absolutely love this movie and i think if you are at a stage where a movie like this can touch you it will it will brighten your day completely i 100 agree like full endorsement um just lovely which i know i've said five times but that's like the nicest thing that I can say about a movie. So I want, I, I, this came to me kind of late,

this feel good movie concept. Um, because I feel like all three of these films that we're talking about here today, aspire to that. They want to be movies that make us feel almost ineffably happy. You know, that,

that sensation where you get like a, a, like a chill or like a tear in your throat or something where you're just like, God, isn't it just good to be with this art? Isn't it just good to be with these people? Isn't it just good to be with this experience? And that varies for everybody. You know, I think some people will come out of Ghostbusters Afterlife and they will say to themselves, I'm so happy to be alive right now, right? Yes. And that's great. I mean, it is like maybe they were just really moved by Muncher too, you know? And then I hope that brought me two minutes of joy, maybe 90 seconds total.

How much? Yeah. So it's a hard world out there. Whatever brings you joy. So when you think about a feel good movie, what do you think of? What are you looking for? So this was hard because all my favorite movies are feel-good movies. And I basically put a list together where I had to strike a number of movies that I've

talked about so many times that people just don't want to hear me talk about. You've Got Mail or Apollo 13 or Working Girl. Again, you guys like four wings and you guys know and and especially like the romantic comedy genre is to me a specific type of a feel-good movie um but i realized that oh yeah that's ultimately what i carry with me in terms of like loving movie experience that's that's true i remember like certain movies that really like rocked me emotionally or challenged me but in in our nostalgia rewatchables context i just want to be cozy with my fave movies i do too that doesn't necessarily mean it's all saccharine gloopy stuff i see a couple of movies on your list that have some some complicated feelings some complicated

storytelling that is not always pure happiness. But I think a kind of safety and a security. And, you know, I think the concept of being seen is a rote, pathetic generational joke at this point.

But it also has power. It has meaning to it. So why don't we just do our list? Okay. What's your number five? Speaking of Ivan Reitman. That's right. Dave. Yes. Dave, which we did a rewatch of what was on right it was you me and Bill we did um

this is one of the ones I had on VHS and you know I just think of Kevin Kline at the weird auto factory oh yeah Sean just showed he has it on is that blu-ray Sean it's blu-ray he has it on. Is that Blu-ray, Sean? It's Blu-ray. Sean has it on Blu-ray. It did make the collection. Thank God. When the apocalypse comes, Sean's physical library has preserved Dave. I'm happy. I'll come over and watch it. You can come over, yes.

But, you know, this is the, you know when Kevin Kline goes to the auto factory and he's like, I once had a fish this big with like the giant arms also going this big, which I just thought was the funniest joke when I was eight years old. But this is if possibly not possibly certainly an over optimistic view of the American government and the American political system. But this is about one guy being good can make a difference and can bring the good in everybody else while also being quite funny um and you leave feeling good about pretty much everybody except for the dead president sorry

but he was a bad guy so it wasn't that complicated and just just i guess a a very uncomplicated belief in the goodness of humanity. I thought that was beautiful. I love Dave. Yeah. I like the films of Ivan Reitman. Yeah. He had a knack for a certain kind of movie. You know, I thought of another Ivan Reitman movie when I saw you had Dave on your list.

That I don't know if, is this a great movie? No. It's a movie I like a lot. It's called Twins. Oh, yeah. It's by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. Certainly an HBO classic back in the day. That again, if you just throw that movie on,

I'll go to a happy place. My number five, very much in the same vein. I was surprised by how many of the movies I chose were from the 1980s. In fact, four of the five. But the first one is called Big, directed by Penny Marshall, starring Tom Hanks. Yes.

Perhaps you've heard of him. He is really truly the lord of the feel-good film. I do have a Tom Hanks movie Yes. Perhaps you've heard of him. He is really truly the Lord of the feel good. I do have a Tom Hanks movie on my list. And I, as I think like half the movies I just listed that like weren't eligible because I love them. Talk about them too much. All Hanks movies.

Yeah. Hanks is wonderful. And he's wonderful in this movie. This movie, I think feel good movies are often about when you saw them. And I think if a movie with this premise starring Noah Centineo came out today, I would not enjoy it because I have-

You'd be so creeped out. I have aged into a difficult period and this concept has aged complicatedly. I'm glad we're not negotiating that here and that we can just purely celebrate what is a fascinating and beautiful movie about a 13-year-old, 12-year-old boy who suddenly becomes a 30 something year old man

after uh dealing with a a is it zoltar zoltar zoltan zoltar yeah um and getting his sort of fortune read and having his fortunes changed this movie um is a little bit like led zeppelin four to me where i've i've I've heard it so many times that I'm like, I don't even know how to, I wouldn't even know how to put words to it. Like, you know, sometimes something gets like, seeps into the concrete of your life

and you're like, I don't have an opinion about this other than like, it's perfect. You know, it's very special and it clicked in at the right time. I don't want to put some sweeping declaration on it like they we can't make art like this anymore but like also we can't and i think our cultures maybe become too self-aware too savvy too angry too cynical to something something something but uh big is very special to me yeah you also again you saw

it at a time in your life where it's just, it's all emotion to you now, you know, you just say big and you can actually like feel that comforting, like sentimental, it's just really big piano vibes. Um, have you ever jumped around on one of those? Yeah, of course. At the FAO, there was like an FAO Schwartz at the mall and there, they had a giant piano and we would all do the thing and then until you got kicked out of the faa schwartz uh because they like everyone wanted to play the big keyboard but you knew how to play the keyboard in fact i've seen young you playing the keyboard i've seen video of that um that actually wasn't that was me like two years ago yeah that was you were

younger than yeah that is true i was so much younger than a lot had not happened but what could you play well with your feet uh i was okay because i as you know i also took a lot of dance classes as a child i was like the full my parents put me through the full performing arts so more coordination then and more like able to watch something you know i could watch the the big the movie and learn some of the dance moves that way because that's ultimately what it is right it's about coordination what is it chopsticks and heart and soul that they play i think i think it's i would have said heart and soul but it could also be chopsticks okay um hey check out the film big yeah quality quality material uh okay what do you got a number for speaking of tom hanks the one i did pick that thing you do which is not a movie that we talk

enough about on this podcast for how central a role it played in my life i've seen this one at least 75 times had the soundtrack if you have not seen it written and directed by Tom Hanks and he plays a supporting role, but it's about a Beatles esque or a wannabe Beatles band in the sixties. And they have, they're called the wonders and they are one hit wonders. They have one magical song that takes them through the Playtone galaxy. And it's what happens to these,

these four sweet guys and their one and the one girlfriend, um, as they almost make it and, you know, spoiler alert, it doesn't totally work out for the band. It's right there. And one hit wonder,

they are literally called the wonders. It's cute. Uh, but there's love. There is, there is art and there is just, you know, it's the friends we made along the way for sure.

It's in a movie. Plus this, this single greatest pop song ever written for a movie of all time. Strong declaration. I'd love to do that. I'd love to do an episode about that in the future. Yeah. Fun topic of conversation.

One thing about this movie is very similar to say something I was pointing out about Ghostbusters. This movie is produced by Jonathan Demme and Gary Getzman, who Gary Getzman will come up on the show soon. We'll be talking about him. He was an inspiration for the film Licorice Pizza. But obviously, two of the great kind of film filmmaker and producer pairings of recent years, also shot by Tak Fujimoto, Jonathan Demme's longtime cinematographer, score by Howard Shore. All of the component parts of this movie make it a really high class Hollywood studio production. So in addition to those great performances, Hanks' script, which I think is actually really quite good. Yes. addition to those great performances hanks's script which i think is actually really quite good yes and um and that perfect song that perfect pop song you've got again another this this

cocktail of mid-90s beauty beauty you know like another another era that i feel like has is lost to time in a very unique way um i i love this movie too it's horrifyingly the 25th anniversary of that thing you do this year and we had a wonderful oral history about it on the ringer which i recommend to anyone epic history it's just like tom hanks is just really sharing a lot in that wonderful oral history um so check that out and then if you haven't seen that thing you do recently god there's it's delightful turn it on uh i'm gonna go with this is the only film at number four that I've seen since I reached my 30s for the first time. This film is called Local Hero.

It's directed by Bill Forsyth, the terrific Scottish film director. If you're not familiar with the films of Bill Forsyth, Gregory's Girl, a number of others, I would highly recommend you seek out his work. I think Local Hero is his best movie. From 1983, it stars Peter Riegert and Burt Lancaster. It's basically about

an oil executive traveling to a very small town in Scotland where it is understood that there is a large oil reserve ready to be tapped. And Peter Riegert has to insinuate himself into the culture of this town and get them to agree to basically sell off the people in this in the Scottish Highlands that makes it one of the more mysterious, almost ethereal examinations of humanity and friendship that I've ever seen. Burt Lancaster plays like a kind of like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk before they were Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk type character. He is like an absolutely batty oil billionaire also doing one of like the great late stage performances of his career. But really, it's mostly about the relationship that Riegert forms with a number of folks in this small town, including Peter Capaldi of In the Loop fame. And I watched this movie in probably the third or fourth month of quarantine

with Eileen. And I just felt better at a time when it was hard to feel good about very much. So if you have not seen Local Hero, I highly recommend it. It's a beautiful film. It might be on Criterion.

It was on the Criterion channel for a while. It may be elsewhere now, but seek it out if you can. I haven't seen it, so I'm putting it on my list. Do you have a DVD that you can lend to me? I do not, unfortunately. That's sad.

Perhaps I should acquire it so when the apocalypse comes, we can do a Dave and local hero double feature. Okay. What do you got next? Bring It Up, Baby, which just sometimes you need to see Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn kindly screaming at each other in impeccable costumes while a real leopard just runs around for no reason. I just like that's this zaniness and this simple over the top comedy of it to me. I mean, obviously, it's one of the screwball classics that people have been imitating for, uh, or trying to imitate

for almost a hundred years, but it has that like gleeful, but still smart energy to it. That in a lot of ways is the same thing that you and I responded to in Ghostbusters that so many people dumbed down. It's just, it's, it's a real why not in the uh in in a sharp but silly uh but uh joyous way um great pick uh obviously i love this movie as well this is this is this might be my favorite carrie grant performance i feel like it this and his girl fr and it's like, you know, the same that era is probably like but him doing screwball is probably my favorite as well. Cary Grant episode. Absolutely. Let's do 10.

Okay. My next pick is my only animated movie on the list and I probably could have picked one of 20 Pixar films. I probably could have picked Disney classic. I'm'm gonna go with the studio ghibli film my neighbor totoro from 1988 which is uh the beautiful story of a uh two young girls who move into an old house to be closer to the hospital where their mother's sick and she's recovering from a long-term illness and there are these creatures in the house these small creatures and they lead the children into this kind of fantasy world this is a very strange very beautiful movie that i think teaches kids and adults how to get outside of the bullshit of your day-to-day life i think there's something nice about the broad overwhelming creativity

of the studio ghibli films and hey miyazaki's movies in particular the kind of like absurdist but also deeply grounded kind of portrayals you know this is a movie that's probably best known as the movie where the the the giant creature stands next to the little girl at the bus stop as the rain pours down um but it's also you know one of the all-time animated classics and i was on the i was on the letterboxd podcast recently and when i was chatting with uh jemma gracewood who's one of the hosts of that show i was saying i just had a daughter and she was like you know i was like how should i show my kid movies and she was like just start with ghibli just start with totoro and she will be a creative and open-minded soul and so this movie is top of mind for me that's very sweet thank you uh okay

i meant that genuinely i was i'm not being sarcastic at all i'm not saying anything about animated movies that's really nice what's what's your number two um francis ha which is a movie we've talked about a lot and this is a really personal pick uh just because I was of the same age as Francis Ha in New York at a similar time trying to figure things out and that's one of the the feel-good lessons is that Francis goes through her issues but she's she's gonna figure's going to figure it out. Um, and it makes you believe in that character and just in, in all of us who are a little lost, just a little behind the ball,

not making the best decisions, nothing totally catastrophic, but it's just not quite coming together, but there's hope that things can keep coming together. In addition to that, I, you know, I do think that this is a movie made by two people who were very clearly falling in love as it was being made. And you can feel that in the movie as well. And the scene of Greta Gerwig pirouetting down to modern love is for me, like one of the all time. That's what like the jubilant exultant,

like actually falling in love feels like. And it's beautiful. It makes me cry. It makes me a little homesick for New York. It makes me feel older every time I watch it, but like in a really lovely and so hopeful way. I think of myself as a very driven person, but that doesn't,

when you're driven, that doesn't mean you know what you're doing all the time. And I feel like this is, this is probably the best movie I've ever seen about being in New York in your twenties and wanting something, but don't know, not knowing how to get there or how to do it or how to get it and greta gerwig's aspirations and ambitions and yearning in the middle of a world that like

kind of doesn't care about her you know it doesn't is going to truck on without her no matter what is so specific and you feel you can feel greta gerwig collaborating with noah baumbach and finding that sensation putting it on film in such an incredible way. I mean, like you said, you and I both literally had the experience that Frances has in this film. So I think we connect to it very deeply. But great pick. This movie is also quite sad and quite hard. And it's an interesting text about losing friends at a certain time in your life and not knowing where you fit in and struggling with love.

And it's, you know, it's complex too. Right. Like bad things happen, but it, nothing, the bottom never totally falls out. And it's about actually what you do after the bad things happen and inching towards like putting things back together and ends on, I think, an optimistic note of

it won't all be perfect. And she may not be, you know, the next Martha Graham, but she's going to make her little space. Let's make a big space for my number two and your number one. Yeah. I mean, what is it? It's singing in the rain. It has to be singing in the rain.

Like what else? At some point, I judged these movies by like, do I just involuntarily smile at the screen? And this, I just can't not grin for just a majority of the movie. And this is one I save for when I'm feeling really down. I had surgery last year. I saved it to the night before of just being like,

I really did. And I was like, I know I'm going to be nervous and all of these things. And I will just watch this movie and it will make me feel better and make me feel okay. And it's like medicine every time. Yeah, that's the same. I love it. I think I might've told the story about begging my parents to buy me the VHS copy on a trip to Disney World when I was like 11 years old. I don't know. I don't even know what compelled me to want that. But I begged and my mom bought it for me and I watched it on VHS repeatedly as like a 12-year-old. And again, it's in a zone of uncomplicated love. It's something that still makes me laugh. I still think it's incredibly clever and incisive. But mostly it's just a big movie rainbow.

It's just like, God, look at how beautiful everything is. And how dynamic it all is. And look at how these people, how they move across the screen. And how they sing. They sing so beautifully. And so funny. Just perfect movie. Perfect five-star movie.

Okay, so that leaves me with number one. Also, I think a perfect movie, but a movie that is... An incredible transition. I want to know your opinion of this movie. My number one is 1985's Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, directed by Tim Burton, and of course, written in part by Paul Rubens, who portrays Pee Wee Herman

co-written with Phil Hartman, little known fact. This movie was born out of the success of the Pee Wee Herman show and before Pee Wee's Playhouse but in this period when Paul Rubens had developed this man-child character

in LA comedy clubs and was looking for a way to take a whole vast world of Hollywood history and apply it to this very strange comic creation. Now, Pee Wee Herman, forget about Paul Rubens' personal life

and all the stuff that came there. I'm not interested in talking about that. The Pee Wee Herman character is incredibly weird. If you wrote down in pencil on a piece of paper what Pee Wee Herman is and what happens to him you'd be like this is the work of a deranged person nevertheless

all of these movies for me are about when you see them just like Come On Come On is about when you see them and Ghostbusters Afterlife is about when you see it and this is a movie that taught me that you can do anything in a movie you do not have to be bound by any restrictions this is a movie about a guy who loses his bike and needs to go find his bike and he goes across hell on earth to get his bike back and the bike is cool but is it

that cool is it worth it all the stuff he has to do here all of the the troubles and the travails he has to endure incredibly strange film obviously sets troubles and the travails he has to endure. Incredibly strange film. Obviously, it sets up Tim Burton as one of the more significant filmmakers of the 80s and 90s. I loved Tim Burton's movies. It's so strange what has happened to Tim Burton as a cultural force. I mean, literally, like his last five or six movies. I'm like, how did this happen? This guy was so unique and so specific for his first 10 films. But I still have such a warm place in my specific for his first 10 films. But I still have such a warm place in my heart for this movie in particular. I like the sequel that came a few years later, Big Top Pee-Wee, OK?

Introduced the world to Benicio Del Toro. Pee-Wee's Big Holiday in 2016, a little bit less successful for me. But this movie is fun, funny, weird, scary, and altogether well-made. I imagine we're at a phase in our lives now where people don't know what Pee-wee's Big Adventure is, right? I assume so. I mean, I have definitely seen all of it, but I can't remember the last time I saw it in full. And Pee-wee Herman just kind of exists to me in kind of clips and scenes and the laugh. Like, I can see him in the suit.

I can see him walking around. I can hear the cadence. And I do, it does conjure up that like slightly off kilter, but like welcoming still emotion. So I know what you're recreating, even though I barely could tell you what happens in this movie, but I bet it is something. I wonder if you just showed it

to a grown-up now what they would say. The gag that sticks out in my mind is when you get to the end of the film and you get the movie version of Pee-wee's story and we see James Brolin and Morgan Fairchild

portray Pee-wee and Dottie and the replication of that. It was like, this is 10 years before the Tom Cruise playing Austin Powers joke in the second Austin Powers movie you know I mean this movie also just so way ahead of the curve on on parody and satire and also out and out absurd comedy uh Pee Wee's Big Adventure that's my last one that's that's our list all all 10 of those movies are all nine of those movies are great and I feel great about what we've done here um

should we go to my conversation with Mike Mills yes before we do that I'm just going to tease All 10 of those movies or all nine of those movies are great. And I feel great about what we've done here. Should we go to my conversation with Mike Mills? Yes. Before we do that, I'm just going to tease really quickly. Dynamite Week on the podcast. House of Gucci, Wednesday. Licorice Pizza, Friday. This is the time. The following Monday, we're talking about the six-hour Beatles movie

that we're going to watch on Thanksgiving. Extraordinary time for movies, Amanda. I just, I can't believe we finally made it to this moment. All our dreams are coming true. I'm so proud of us. Okay, let's go to my conversation now with Mike Mills. Delighted to have Mike Mills on the show mike thanks for being here wow thank you so much okay mike you have a a dad film and a mom film and now in come on come on you have a you have a child film so i i wanted to start by asking you about the character of of jesse where did where did jesse come from um well definitely the seed of it, the beginning of the whole project is just my kid and me being my kid's dad. And the sort of, I don't know, it's like radical deepening that I found happening by being a dad and being the one that had to explain the world to this little person and um and it's both such a crazily intimate space that i wanted

to try to get on film and also such a big social space between you and a child like you're you're tied to history you're tied to like all the power and the what's going on in our society i feel like so you made this interesting choice to make the joaquin Phoenix character, not the father, a kind of, you know, a father figure for a period in time. Like what, what motivated that? Why did you decide to do that?

Yeah, it was sort of a, it's a very processy answer to that. So like, yes, this one. So, so this time I am kind of modeling it off of my experiences with my kid.

And it does, you know, it changes a lot. He's just start writing. He's, you start really working with actors. It just grows and becomes its own entity but this is the first time I've done something with a living person like my parents were gone when I wrote about them and that's like

a really different negotiation you know what I mean and I'm their kid right so I kind of felt like I had the right to do it in a weird way I just had to know like okay if I see them again and in the clouds like what am I gonna say you know? And that's all I had to know with my own kid. It's really different. And for a long time, I just couldn't figure out how to make this because I didn't want to cross my kid's path too much or mess with my kid's mystery or my kid's privacy and my kid's sovereignty, you know? So I had to find ways to like distance it. And, and I was struggling to figure out how to do that. And the uncle idea came up to me and I was like, well, okay, cool. Right. It's not me or it's less me. It's less me and Hopper. But then

as I started sort of playing with it and trying to flesh it out, I was like, Oh, this is actually really, really good because if he's an uncle, who's a dad right an uncle an adult person who hasn't have a kid every single scene every single minute every single point of the day where he's solely taking care of this child he's gonna not know what to do right so it's like it's like a buster keaton movie all of a sudden you know and i mean i mean that with like full respect like i love like i love that cinema anyways it just really condensed the whole process of talking about parenting right because every minute it's like you got to figure out parenting and i was like okay great that's really great for filmmaking and as i start to write i'm like wait a second

this is actually how it feels like as this biological father of my kid because as the i only have one kid and every week i'm like a novice to a new territory or new side of my kid. And it felt just really accurate, you know, if anything. So that's my answer. It was a way to get away from us, but then it became like a really beautiful tool or something or line into the story for me as a writer. Yeah, it's very effective i have a four month old it's our first and she um i felt that compression because you know in the early stages every day is something yeah new and radical and it felt like using joaquin's character like

as a as a new entrant into the kid's life meant that you every day was this new mind-blowing experience where you were learning something significant it was very effective yeah and then also i'm so if you're a parent you'll know this um yes your child is smaller developmentally um younger um but it's not that they're not incredibly powerful and able to kind of like judo flip you in eight different ways at any time during the day just by their needs their way of processing the world their accuracy their my kid will accuracy accurately describe and pinpoint things about myself which i thought i hid so well for the whole universe and they're like boom there you are and you're like ah and i feel like that's happening in the, in the film or in the story. And the film has a lot about that. Like, how is this person judo flipping me in so many different directions all the time?

Right. I should be the adult here. I should be in charge. And you're so not. Yeah. You located this very specific sensation I've had, which is, I feel like I spent the first 39 years of my life being active and now I'm entirely reactive. Everything is related to what someone else is doing. And I felt that's

kind of like the engine of the movie, it feels like. Yeah, that's really beautifully put. And I was 46 when that transfer happened, right? And I loved it. It kind of saved my life in certain ways. That's too much pressure on my kid, kind of saved my life in certain ways that's too much pressure on my kid but it changed my life in this really deep meaningful way in that to be needed like that and and to serve that need i i love it i find it so meaningful and beautiful and and um deepening my whole connection to like the whole world right like um like and everything before having the kid was child's play do you feel like that right it's like it's like it's ironically yes yeah it's a great dividing line in in just the population like and um um it just yeah it's hard

to explain how much meaning is created by being so entrusted by this young person. Yeah. Is that the right word? No, I completely understand. I mean, you have more experience than I do, but tell me. Barely. Tell me how that experience changed you as an artist and like the kinds of things that you wanted to make in the aftermath of that. That's a really good question.

In a weird way, that's kind of why I interviewed all the kids in this film. Because my kid, my experience with my kid, it's not like it narrows you down, right? If anything, it kind of like broadens you out. So like I'm very interested in all the other kids in my kid's school and what they're going through and just what childhood means. And I'm very interested in, yeah, just like the plate and the sovereignty and the trippiness of child adult relationships and how we tend to like treat children as cute or less than or

all that kind of stuff. And I've met people in my journey as a parent, some of my kids, great teachers, Nancy Gale comes in mind who ran my kids' preschool. She's a very deep person about children and children's power and children's breadth of feeling and accepting all of feelings. And so, yeah, it changed my whole understanding of adult and children or deepened it. I would say I keep using that word, but it's really, I think it's the right word. And even myself, I bet you have this, like you're like, well, maybe when your kid gets a little older, like Hopper, my kid at like five, like, wow, when I was five, this and that happened in

my life. I can't believe that happened to me. I was so little, you know, I was like this little innocent creature and that crazy thing happened. Whoa um so kind of more sympathy or understanding or empathy towards my own childhood too definitely happened i think people can think that having a kid makes you more solipsistic or more inward and actually made me more outward and and that i think this film actually kind of represents that to me at least so i was wandering around um the san francisco museum of modern art like five or six years ago and i stumbled onto this this video piece that you made and then i saw this film a few months ago and i was like this feels familiar to me yeah yeah can you kind of explain that piece a little bit and kind of how you extrapolated from there for the movie yeah so um

the san francisco Museum of Modern Art asked a bunch of artists to go to some little town in Silicon Valley, whose name I keep forgetting, and to create a piece about Silicon Valley and its impact on our culture. So in my research about it, I learned how all those companies are so interested in the future and they have these futurists and it just kind of tripped me out. It's like very normal to that culture but it was kind of new to me and so i was thinking about it i was like huh maybe my piece i should just interview children of people who work at like google apple like any tech company in that town just find their children nicely and uh and uh ask them about the future and just very seriously no no kid talk no no being sweet

or kind can i ask you a question about that how did you find the children and what did you say to the parents of the children about this project well that's really interesting so um i had a had a local um casting person and i'm sorry i forgot her name from the bay area who's often works with finding like real people like real people castings like kind of a thing and advertising so that casting person and i'm sorry i forgot her name from the bay area who's often works with finding like real people like real people castings like kind of a thing and advertising stuff that and so it's a lot of word of mouth stuff and like all the kind of different social media messaging boards that go with families of like google and apple and um microsoft and blah blah blah like all those kinds of companies and those you can imagine there's a lot of like social media around those

communities but then it was a real long process of obviously having everyone trust me us you know and of course that's really important to me and as a parent I completely sympathize so it's like a long process like you start with a letter and then you talk to them usually I live in Los Angeles so it's like on the on zoom or something and of course the parents are invited and they're sitting right there and you just hold demeanor the whole way through. You're trying to just make them feel comfortable and explain to them that you acknowledge the vulnerability of them having their kid do this. The trippy part was that all the people that worked at Apple mostly

couldn't do it because they signed these crazy NDAs. So even their family members couldn't do it. And some people have run into trouble where their children said something on social media and it got kind of the parents working at the company in trouble. So I found that really interesting. So anyways, that project, I have done other things like that, where I gather a group of people and just do like a talking head interview. It's a video piece. And I asked them a similar set of questions and I kind of cut through all the different people. I've done like four of these now. I really love them. I think it's maybe the most important work I've done. It's the most simple thing. It's just like an index of what people are thinking about something. It's like a chronicle. And I really love that kind of dryness

and I could easily just have that career I was like a little bit more disciplined and so I so yeah I love that project I always want to do more of it and I really didn't feel like I was done with asking kids about the future it was just kind of gnawing at me and so at the beginning of this project when you're just figuring out like the planets in your in your universe you know like the elements the basic elements of the story have this intimacy of this uncle and this child, the sister and mom themes. I know I want all that. I really want it in the world. I want it in the big world. How to do that. Oh, the kids, interviewing the kids. It's like kids, psychic space landscape that my intimate characters are sort of walking through. So it does. You're on a podcast right now and yeah it's also in the

milieu of sort of you know it seems like public radio and podcasting kind of blended together somehow yeah um what why why using that as the tool to kind of help tell johnny's story i think i've always loved it and to me he's like a very wnyc slightly old school scott courier radio journalist you know and he's like he loves studnyc slightly old school scott courier radio journalist you know and he's like he loves stud circle that that character does and so that's how i thought of him and and that actually really helped joaquin to introducing joaquin to stud circle and i've always loved um this american life and ira glass has been like a big influence big hero to me so i guess i want that job a little bit where right? I like that. Grass is always greener.

So I kind of like, I look at Ira's life and like, man, that's rad. Like what a powerful, awesome medium. And then again, so I have, you know, often your idea is you have a first blush of why you think you're doing it and then it deepens. And when it deepens is when it stays. You have so many ideas that kind of don't stay, or at least I do. Dozens, right? So this one's stuck, stuck, stayed?

Stuck. Stuck. That's the word. Stuck. Sorry, getting older. This one's stuck because it's a way for him to explore the world for this Johnny character, the Joaquin's character. And it focuses everything on sound and listening.

And those became like very deep themes of the whole thing and they kind of accidentally or unconsciously aligned with what i think is one of the bigger themes of parenting which is listening and like full respect you know the child and the child's needs while they may appear irrational strange whatever are not they're completely legitimate they're completely reasonable as as Johnny says in the movie. And they're there for a very good reason. So like listening, being open, being receptive, I think like what you said, like being ready, willing, and able, right?

And then sound is so much about time, right? Sound is deeply ephemeral. Sound is always going by. You can't like take a still shot of sound you know in any way and sound and time and presence to me became um yeah like the deep underlying sort of like pretentious union themes of my film if anyone's listening to this before they've seen the movie i'm ruining it but anyways that's cool i apologize i don't apologize i don't think that's true um so i'm curious about this concept of uh performance

so you you know you've done these interviews with these these kids from silicon valley in the past you are interviewing seemingly real kids and capturing their real thoughts in this film yeah you're also directing actors. And I'm wondering in your experience talking to quote unquote real people, people living in the world and talking about their experiences, like how you navigate, like whether they're being truthful,

whether they're being authentic, you know, like are they, you know what I mean? Yeah, totally. That's a really neat question. Well, first of all, I'm trying hard to blur all these boundaries that you're talking about. And I find that really exciting. So yes, these interviews with the kids, they're non-actor kids who've never been in the film industry or anything. And the interviews are, we start with a list of questions, but it's up to Joaquin and Molly Webster to get in there, you know, and to follow the, follow the ball of the interview, follow the flow. And they're really great at it. And Joaquin, Molly, of course, is like amazing at it. It's like, that's her background, but I was surprised at how deeply Joaquin got into it and how good he was at

it. So I'm trying to blur all these boundaries. So like Molly Webster is from Radio Lab and is a radio journalist, is not an actor. And she's an actor in my movie. Jaboukie Young-White is, yeah, a comedian. I think he's really an actor and like he's going to be more and more of an actor, but that's not really how he's known. And I really enjoyed that texture of those two minds.

And they're both like hyper smart. And I love that. This movie, I feel like is like filled with like really smart people. The Sonny Patterson who plays the woman whose house they go to in New Orleans. She's not an actress either. And and Joaquin even love that. Like it adds like a whole vibe to it. And then in terms of like, are they telling the truth or not? What is the truth, man? Like what is who knows what the truth is what the truth is. And I don't even, I don't know if I'm interested in that. I'm

interested in like someone masking or, or being really nervous and like skittering on the top of like their consciousness or a subject and not really getting to something deep is can be really interesting and really revealing or just really shining a light on contemporary life and and so i'm i take anything anyone says in an interview like that at face value and as um what they wanted to tell me right i might keep asking right i might sense something and want to know more about something but yeah i'm not a super believer in like there's this like thing called the truth that sits over there all innocent and clean and stays over there in its lane i think it's a very messy world right except when you're talking to me then there is you feel very truthful yeah yeah um so i've been revisiting your films this week

and um it feels like looking at come on come on while you do have some devices like this and some sort of like i guess for lack of a better word experimental approaches to telling the story it feels very pared back obviously it's black and white but also it is it is i feel like missing some of the i don't know the sort of like artistically decorative aspects of particularly beginners and 20th century women is that is that fair to say is that was that a conscious decision on your part i guess so yeah visually it's a little just in terms of straight visual um like um imagery right it is more naturalistic through and through i think structurally it does pretty weird things. And like, for instance, like having a documentary strand to the film is quite a stretch in terms of

the experimental elements of this film. You know, I think it's actually one of the bigger stretches I've done to have something so independent, autonomous and kind of feral mixed in with my narrative. And like the, all the texts that i included you know um um different texts by like jacqueline rose or kristen johnson or um i i feel like that's sort of like in keeping but yeah in some ways i did sort of see this as simpler or like sati music you know or like a

drawing i kept referring to a drawing not a painting and so maybe my other films are more like a painting you know or there's um a wider palette deployed to tell the story and in this one um um I want to be like a David Hockney portrait of a friend you know and that's part of the intimacy of the man and the child the kid and the adult relationship to me and the and yeah kind of like a smallness yeah you know it's very effective and like that really comes across is that also would inform the black and white approach that's almost like a pencil sketch or something that's one of the things i told myself because like when i'm starting i'm really so doubtful and like the my own worst enemy and i have to freaking talk myself into it like in

every different way so yeah it's drawing not a painting was one of my little mantra things to myself um you know to me also this image of the child and the adult it's like a fable image it's like a mythological image right it's like an ancient image and I wanted to I don't know I just felt excited by that like that's so weird for me it's like so classic and I I was like oh that's sort of like deliciously illegal to my to my usual open like space I work in so I wanted to embrace it and to me black and white pulls you out of versamilitude reality your our associations and it throws you into like a story space or like an art space or like i think a lot of people find it like a pretentious space but i i love it for being like it's more i'm gonna say

the word arty and i mean it with full pride and love and expansiveness and and um i did find that so anyways i did feel like it that black and white helped underline underscore support this sort of fable quality. And then some of my framing and the way I shot it, it's like clean singles. It's like out of Casablanca or something. And I really like that mix with, usually I'm much more of like a French New Wave person. That's really my home. You know, like somewhere between Italian, like Fellini and Truffaut and Godard is like where i learned how to get interested in

filmmaking so yeah yeah that's like my usual language yeah the cutting style seems very different and the lack of archival and you know the things that you've you know well like some things you just can't do again right like i love i love archival stuff and real but i feel like i just did that with the text i found a different way to do it. Yeah. When you're at the beginning of a new idea and a new project, do you feel like, are you consciously trying to explore a new structure or style or approach? Or you're like, I want to knock down a new wall and that's the reason to make this or one of the reasons to make this?

Well, it's more like the big reason to make it is one of these primary relationships of mine, right? Because that's where the love comes from and that's where the big questions come from. They're actually truly eating at me or like a question, saying the word question is almost too small. It's like this large psychic emotional blob

that's like sitting on your chest that you can't figure out right like my kid you can't totally understand your kid even no matter how much you love him no matter how close you are they're gonna be a mystery and there's a mystery in the relationship sometimes that mystery is just sort of sitting there pretty and beautiful and sometimes it really gnaws at you you know and and so i'm trying to like hold on to that or trying to like wrap my arms around it a little bit more. That's what really makes me go like,

okay, I'm gonna spend the next five years of my life and potentially humiliate myself for this. Like it's worth it. I'll put all my chips on the table for this. And for me, each of my films is kind of like a bet like that. I can only do the bet if I can willing to bet all my chips, you know? And then these other things like, oh, black and white. Oh, no more archival footage.

Sort of simpler storytelling in some ways, but I don't really think so. Like really getting very, trying to get really real, realer than I've ever been in some of the acting and the Mia's on scene of the way this is shot and stuff. So yeah, those kind of come secondary. But then when you go to shoot the film, they become very primary

because that's really what you're doing in that part. There's a really complex brother-sister dynamic in this movie too. And I feel like your other films, I think they're mostly about only children and i i that feels like an like a really it's a small but big wrinkle on the storytelling too like where does that come from well so i have sisters but it's not really i'm

not trying i'm not drawing on our relationship in a direct way at all. But just being a 55-year-old person in a family, just families are so complex and layered and filled with both antagonism and deep love and just paradoxical, like familial primary relationships. And I think Joaquin can completely relate to that. Gabby can completely relate to that. And to me, it's sort of like, it's just a part of life.

I got a lot of that just from watching Friends as well. You know, and just living through life. All of us clearly have such complex relationships with our siblings. So that really wasn't direct. I'm not trying to comment on them and anything i've kept my sisters largely out of my films except for 20th like the greta character is really based on one of my sisters who but i because it's like again they're living in their life and i don't want to mess with them and i already am messing with them too much by making a film about our dad

you know people go like the one where i've had this experience as someone's talking about their father dying and i told them about my father dying and they go oh you should see this movie called beginners with christopher plumber and i'm like oh i i made that movie you know that's sort of me and my dad and i told this story to my sisters and they kind of looked at me like uh-huh i was like what do you mean they're like that happens to us all the time and i'm like oh i'm sorry you know yeah so but that's such a curious burden i mean you know i lost my mom a few years ago and that movie is really like a salve i think for people who are trying to cope and and figure out how to feel and for people that you know when they understand that you actually made it for them to dump that on you has got to be kind of intense too, right?

No, no. That's really quite kind. Or I don't know. I feel very humbled when that happens. Or like I've heard a lot of stories like someone coming out either slightly later in life. And they'll talk about, I don't know know seeing the movie and it resonating with them either before or after i that's the kind of the highest honor in a funny way or i don't know the most like human connective crazy situation to come out of making a film right to have some stranger

tell you something so personal um or sometimes write to me something really personal. And that's, I don't know, that's like the highest honor to me. This is kind of a goofy transition from that, but people, I think, discover your films not right away at the box office. What? What are you talking about? Sorry, I hate to break into the mic. Oh my God, we're at day 24.

What's going on? But obviously the modesty and the approach is a part of that. But they have these long shelf lives. And people build, I think, very deep relationships to your movies. At least I have. That's nice. And I'm wondering now. That's my game plan right there.

Is it actually easier now to be a filmmaker like that? Or is it harder? Obviously, the industry that you work in is kind of in a state of dis disrepair and there's a lot of uncertainty around what's going to happen is it is it actually better to make something that is a little maybe lower to the ground a little less expectation around the business i'm gonna call my therapist and get her in on this phone call um um i kind of think so as long as i you get, here's the deal. I'm just going to be really honest with you all. Okay.

As long as you get enough praise and attention to make the next movie and to satisfy your ego, just enough, but not too much. Just to feel like part of the game and not too much. I actually really, and I feel actually so lucky that my films have whatever life they've had. You know what I mean? I feel, because it's really trippy to make quite personal movies and a personal filmmaking style that's not very plot driven that's like kind of uncommercial in lots of ways you know what i mean um i i feel like uh

robin hood like i got away with murder you know by making these three movies um so i'm i'm totally satisfied um i i don't think it hurts to be slightly underexploited i've i've watched friends and people blossom into like crazy success and that is that has its own burdens that's not an easy ride at all and so um so i'm i'm i'm aware of that um and and with the most meaningful thing that you said to me or the thing that makes it all fine, if it has like a long shelf life where people have like a relationship with the movies,

what else could you ask for? That's like it. That's like, that's it, man. That's as good as it gets, you know? So I'm pretty, as long as I keep keep making films i'm quite happy with my life i feel very privileged i gotta say to you uh five almost five years ago january 2017 uh you almost certainly don't remember this but you came you came to our studio sat down sat down for a podcast conversation with me we talked about 20th century women

and that was the first conversation I ever had for this show. Oh, sweet. We are hurtling towards 500 episodes of this show. So I just wanted to say thank you for doing that. So nice. Wow, you've been so much busier than I have. Well, I'm making- 500 episodes. Yeah, I'm making a lot, but none of it is worthwhile. So, you know, it's just one of those things.

Well, I'm going to call my therapist again to talk to you. But yeah. That sounds nice. We end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they have seen? Have you seen anything good lately? Oh my goodness. You mean a movie, obviously.

Well, in theory, but you know, you're a creative video artist as well. I have two things for you on the two sides of the spectrum one is um a hero oh wonderful film i thought that was so masterfully built up like such a micro layering of a story with such patience and control you know and just really beautifully open too i was very deeply impressed by that no judgment in that movie yeah that's cool right and and yeah deep and ambiguity like very positive ambiguity right like very like thrumming ambiguity so so cool and just really fascinating as an American to get plopped down inside an Iranian life like that

in a living room. And just like, I felt I learned a lot culturally, you know, where I was exposed to a lot. And the other end of the spectrum, one thing that my family loves dearly, me and my kid love dearly, and I find to be like equally masterful in lots of ways is Bob's Burgers. i love bob's burgers i think bob's burgers is totally chikavian awesomeness like

it really like the micro um you know that it's about nothing usually and and that it's so beautifully rich and funny and big and dense um i i do i find it like russian it's like beautifully rich and funny and big and dense. I do. I find it like Russian. It's like a Russian short story. Each one. That is, that is a, those are beautiful recommendations.

Mike, thank you for doing the show. Congrats on all the films and everything you've done. Thanks. Thanks so much. That was really fun. Those are great questions. Those are different.

I've been like interviewed a bunch. Now you, you, I didn't get asked any of these questions. Thanks for saying that. That is literally what I try to do a bunch now. I didn't get asked any of these questions. Thanks for saying that. That is literally what I try to do. Really good. I'll see you around 1,000.

Thank you to Mike Mills. Thank you to Amanda, of course, and our producer Bobby Wagner for his work on this episode. Later this week on The Big Picture, House of Gucci. See you then.