The Big Picture - Ten Movies to See Right Now. Plus, James Gray Returns!

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

It’s a tremendously hectic period at the movies right now, with award season picking up pace, the Streaming Wars in high gear, and some major-event movies right around the corner. Sean and Amanda break down 10-plus new releases now streaming or in theaters (39:00). Then, writer-director James Gray returns to the show to discuss his autobiographical new film, ‘Armageddon Time,’ and the state of the movie business. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: James Gray Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Terms apply. Prices may vary at participating restaurants in Canada. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about personal apocalypses. We are in a tremendously hectic period at the movies right now, with award season picking up pace, the streaming wars in high gear,

some major event movies right around the corner, though not yet here. On today's show, Amanda and I will have a speed round of recommendations to make sense of the month in movies. After that, I encourage you to stick around as writer-director James Gray returns to the show to talk about his new film Armageddon Time. It's one of my favorites of the year. This is James's fourth time on the show. He's one of

our most requested guests. Our conversation, as usual, went deep into his film, state of the movie industry, and the state of James. So please stick around for that. First, let's talk about movies, Amanda. There are so many. We'll start with Armageddon Time, James's latest film. This is an interesting piece. It's by far his most autobiographical movie. It is ripped almost entirely from his life as he's coming of age in Queens in the late 70s and early 80s. It's star-studded cast, Jeremy Strong, Anne Hathaway, Anthony Hopkins. This is, I guess, a contender for awards season, but it's certainly more a personal piece beyond that. What do you think?

I'm a fan of James Gray's movies. There is a lot to discuss here. You mentioned that it's autobiographical, and I want to start with the child performance. This is set in 1980, I think exactly. And so the James Gray stand-in is 11 years old, is played by a young actor named Banks Rapetta, who is, I think, wonderful. And also, if you are familiar at all with James Gray and have listened to his interviews, unmistakably him, it's really uncanny. It's remarkable.

I spent some time being like, is one of james gray's children um so i really was amazed by the performance and i think the performance you know summarizes what is like best about this movie which is this memoristic through the the eyes of a child and james Gray kind of excavating and, and remembering his youth, which I think he does beautifully and it is very emotional and evocative. And especially Anthony Hopkins plays his grandfather or the grandfather. I mean, I, you know, you can, you've spoken to him,

so you can tell me more like how much we should just take this as autobiography. I think a lot of it is very, very close to his experience. You know, and Anthony Hopkins is tremendous in this movie, I think. So those are the aspects of it that really worked for me. This is also a movie set in purposefully in 1980 to comment on the political moment in 1980 and it brings in the trump family like literally and um is is clearly a movie not just about personal wrecking but also reckoning with that moment in time and how it parallels the recent american history if you will and i think there are some strong points in that and some limitations in that as well, which is mostly just a limitation on how much of that content, A, you want to consume in general and B, you want this perspective on. But I, you know,

the personal stuff to me, it was very beautiful. Yeah, I think that's well put. There's a kind of paradox in the movie because on the one hand, the only person who can tell the story is James Gray. And the detail and the care that is put into the performances and the specificity of the setting, the milieu, is pretty incredible. It's like a pretty amazing accomplishment in terms of just like kitchen sink drama. It is a movie, movie though that is fundamentally about how James got here and how we got here.

And so the idea literally of white privilege, of race and power and class in New York City and in the United States of America are essential core themes of the story. That's a big swing. That's a lot to chew on. And so I think some people will have a complicated reaction to some of that stuff and the idea of who gets to tell whose story is is a complexity there too but i think in this case he's the only person who can tell his story so i too

am from an immigrant family in queens that was middle class and upper class aspirant and conscious of our station in life and looking for looking toward art for inspiration and escape and like that is really what the movie is about sure it's about donald trump it's about like how fascism rises or whatever but it ultimately i think when it's at its best like you said it's about this kid it's about this kid figuring out who he is and how he fits into the world yeah we should say it's also about another kid who's played by Jalen Webb, who plays Johnny, a young black kid who Paul, the main character, befriends. And I think it's sort of indicative that we had the whole conversation without mentioning Jalen Webb, who plays an essential role, who's wonderful and really affecting and plays an essential role

in the film but the you know i i think there will be discussion about how that character in that particular revelation and the understanding of uh white privilege um and and the takeaways from this film will be a source of continued conversation it has been and i asked james about that and he had a he had a passionate response. Our friend Adam Neiman described this movie as fatalistic, which I thought was an interesting read on it. That there is a sense that we are kind of fucked and that this is a centuries-long cycle of power shift. And I thought that was interesting. I'm not totally sure how I feel about that. I've seen it a couple of times now. I was very touched by the movie. And so when I

have an emotional response being the cyborg that I am, I don't think of it as cynical, though I am truly at heart a cynic. Did you think it was hopeful at all? I thought it was incredibly hopeful. And maybe that was, especially the last shot, which can also be debated and we don't want to discuss it. And I do think it's hopeful. And my cynicism kicked in a little bit at that particular moment. Whether it's self-serving or whether it's meta is a different question. There's also a Jeremy Strong speech that, as Adam said in his review, is his four-year consideration real? But how that lands and how it's supposed to land is also a source of debate. And I don't want to spoil it for people.

I seek out this movie because it is, you know, James Gray is an extraordinary filmmaker. So there is just watching craft at work. I did interpret it as hopeful. If anything, I thought that was like maybe a fault of it. But maybe that's also my read and people will feel differently. Yeah, much like Tar, a little bit of a Rorschach test here

for how you think this person's life plays out and how all life can or should play out. Right. I recommend the movie. It's definitely one of my favorites of the year. I do fully understand why people will blanch at it. So it's an interesting topic of conversation. So let's talk about another movie. We're just going to fly through these movies.

Armageddon Time is only in theaters right now. It's only playing in New York and LA this week. I think it expands in a couple of weeks. Part of the reason why we're not spoiling it is because a lot of people won't get a chance to see it until that time. But After Sun is another movie that is only playing in a few theaters around the country at the moment. It's starting to expand more and more. This is the debut from a filmmaker named Charlotte a few theaters around the country at the moment. It's starting to expand more and more. This is the debut from a filmmaker named Charlotte Wells. I saw this movie at Telluride. It stars Paul Mascow, who people may recognize from Normal People,

and a young actress named Frankie Corio. It's a very sensitive, similarly memoiristic, similarly memory-bound movie about an 11-year year old girl going on vacation with her father who is a significant who's a young father and seems that she and her parents have split they're not together anymore and it's just a almost like a document of what transpired through her eyes during this vacation this was one of the most acclaimed movies out of can earlier this year in the run-up to tell your ride people were like gotta see after sun it's produced by pastel uh adela romanansky and barry jenkins's production company barry introduced this movie to tell your ride i am uh recently a father of a young girl i was primed to get like pulverized by this movie. I would say I was not pulverized.

I liked it. I admired it. And you had a very funny reaction to it too. You know, it's a very sensitive piece of work. And so we're not mocking it, but I think maybe we're doing some self-analysis about our reaction to the movie. What did you think of After Sun?

Well, I did not attend Telluride. So I got even like the second wave of just, you know, I even texted you. And I think I asked, is After Sun going to completely wreck me? And you said yes. And then you told me to bring tissues when I went to see it. And my response is I'm trying to be self-aware here. And I just think I'm just in a place in my life of too much physical exhaustion to fully appreciate like quiet slow movies and this

is an observant movie as you said it plays with the idea of memory and I think it's very accomplished and really lovely and and the performances in particular like very beautiful they have like a lovely father-daughter thing so I appreciated it while also not totally connecting to it. But I got to say that's on me. You know, I just, I'm not sleeping that much right now. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it's entirely on you. I also, I had, I think, a really strong appreciation for the filmmaking.

And it feels similar to Armageddon time, like a deeply, deeply personal story. And the stakes are pretty high by the time we get to the end of that story. But at the screening that I went to, Telluride, when it ended, the person who was sitting next to me, who works in the industry, stood up and just said, nah, and then walked out of the movie. And I was like, wow, that was a really strong reaction. But I think that's the challenge of films like this too, is they are dependent on word of mouth and so oftentimes and we fall prey to this frequently um you tend to overstate the importance or the the the greatness of something in an effort to get people to get interested in it to go check it out you know like the advocacy is such a huge part of what we do on the show sometimes that can work against a movie too

because of the way you described it you know it is it's a very intimate movie and it's a movie that like it's the rare movie that i actually think works at home in a quiet setting as opposed to like a big night out you know i'm not sure that you'd want to have like a three-hour dinner conversation about this movie it's it's very emotionally raw and challenging but also quite direct and simple um tricky one tricky one i would not have made it at home. And I, I feel really churlish saying all of this because I, the idea behind this movie and the idea of the mechanics of the film is really interesting. And I think it does succeed. You know, it's like proof of concept is there.

Um, but you know, you have to concentrate, you have to concentrate, um, which is okay. And I think as you said, because of the word of mouth, I was expecting a more like emotional connection. I was afraid I was a psycho. Basically there, there was, I had some time in the theater reflect on, you know, maybe my emotions are, are not functioning right now, but I actually found it more of an intellectual experience. I don't know.

Maybe I am a psycho. That's fine. Let's go to another movie. Okay. What a segue. The Good Nurse. This is a movie that's on Netflix. Yeah.

It stars two Academy Award winners, Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne. They portray nurses. You can imagine who the good nurse is here, the titular good nurse. One of these nurses suspects the other of being responsible for a series of patient deaths.

This is based on a true story, an absolutely mystifying, maddening true story. Yes. This film is directed by Tobias Lindholm. It's written by Christy Wilson Cairns, who was the co-writer on Last Night in Soho, the co-writer of 1917, is a rising star in the ranks of screenwriters in Hollywood.

This movie I thought was not good. Can I take you on my journey? Yes, please. Of this one? So first of all, I watched this in three to four segments at home, which is already just not how you're supposed to watch a film. And speaks to, frankly, like the Lifetime movie-esque-ness of this. And I spent the first half being like

why are these two very accomplished successful actors and it and everyone involved just making a lifetime why are they in a lifetime movie yes like why are we doing this but then I was thinking about how honestly like in the 80s and 90s in, in the heyday of studio movies that you and I grew up on, basically they did make a lot of Lifetime movies, but slightly better. I mean, Harrison Ford was just in a string of like presumed innocent. And honestly, The Fugitive is not quite a Lifetime movie because it's one of the best movies ever made but the source material it's it's people doing these ripped from the headlines like slightly trashy very manipulative stories better than lifetime right well i mean production value is significantly higher yes exactly right and i was kind of like well maybe i'm open to that. Maybe this is okay. And I also did want to watch the end of it.

Even though everyone knows what's happening and the investigation in this film is completely baffling, you know, in terms of people just yelling medical names and everyone seems to know everything instantly. The reveal is completely not convincing even if we're not the reveal but like the final solution and the breakthrough even if that's how it happened in real life it's been pointed out one of the most absurd final uh like title cards or whatever in history i i'd be i'm just so so confused by this movie so Tobias Lindholm who directed it he did not write it but he's best known as a Danish screenwriter he's Thomas Vinterberg's key collaborator

he co-wrote Another Round he wrote A Hijacking he wrote The Commune he's written some really interesting films he's a talented guy and this movie has Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne and in the first 12 minutes of the movie I was like I know exactly what this is

I know exactly where it's going I know exactly what's going on I didn't know anything about the true story I was like, I know exactly what this is. I know exactly where it's going. I know exactly what's going on. I didn't know anything about the true story. I was like, this is the most telegraphed film of all time. Why do we have to be here

to watch this? Like, we didn't learn anything. Nothing was revealed. I'm not, Jessica Chastain, who we should note makes an interesting appearance in Armageddon Time.

Sure. Which I thought was going to be held back as a reveal, but I see now they're putting in the trailer, so it's not a spoiler to say that. I don't know what she saw in this. i i don't this is confusing i think this is the kind of movie that actually netflix gets a bad rap for it's not the like junkie romantic comedies for teenager stuff like every studio makes that stuff that's all kind of

necessary for moving for kind of moving the chains this is like high-toned expensive stuff that stinks and i i don't know I was bummed out watching it. I was like, why is everybody here for this? I'm so confused. I was bummed out watching some other things. I could deal with a little more high-toned junk that's not. But like you compared it to Presumed Innocent and The Fugitive, which are like so well-written as those kinds of films go.

They're such great scripts. This is silly. This movie is trying to say something about the completely evil hospital system in this country, which is, I guess, maybe what appealed

to these people because, by the way, the hospital system in this country is completely screwed up in addition to the act of complete psychosis

at the center of this film. I don't know. I wasn't as mad. I get mad about other things. Man, you're giving this one a pass? I'm shocked. i'm not giving it a pass but like i wanted to finish it you know like it's like the ultimate wikipedia movie though you could have just wikipedia this incident and just and you could have been done like we didn't

learn anything that nothing emotionally was drawn out of us because by telling this story i don't know i just wanted to watch the end of it whatever Whatever. It's watchable. I find movies like this more watchable at home than some other sort of thing, even though it was total garbage. Of course it was garbage. Okay. I don't know. I'm just telling you my thoughts. You didn't watch Wendell and Wild, did you?

Absolutely not. Why don't you tell me about how it's the best movie of the year? You know, it really wasn't. I thought I was really disappointed. Okay. It's sad for me to say. Wendell and Wild is a new animated film

also on Netflix directed by Henry Selick who is one of the most significant animators of the last 30 years. This is the guy who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas,

James and the Giant Peach, Coraline. He's a stop motion animator. Really a visionary filmmaker. Somebody who is like widely celebrated, a little bit mysterious, hasn't made a movie

since Coraline which was 2009. He's had a number of mysterious hasn't made a movie since Coraline which is 2009 he's had a number of movies he had he had a deal basically with Pixar right after Coraline to make a number of films that never came to pass and so his next movie has been really anticipated among fans of this kind of um this kind of filmmaking and Wendell and Wilde is co-written with Jordan Peele and it stars Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key. And it is really overstuffed and has just a lot of themes and a lot of ideas. And it's very cool to look at

as all Henry Selick movies are. But I'm just going to read you the setup for the movie. This is from the first paragraph of the Wikipedia plot summary. Cat Elliot lives with her parents, Delroy and Wilma, who own a root beer factory

in the town of Rust Bank. Driving home on a stormy night, Cat is frightened by a worm in her candy apple, leading her father to veer off a bridge. Only Cat survives. Years later, Cat is an embittered, punk-rock-loving juvenile delinquent who blames herself for her parents' death. Meanwhile, Demon Brothers, Wendell and Wilde, spend their days in the underworld, putting rejuvenating hair cream on their balding father, Buffalo Belzer, while dreaming of making an amusement fair for departed souls.

That's like the first eight minutes of the movie. This movie was very strange. And I love filmmakers taking a weird shot and saying, I may not have another chance. I just got to put all my ideas into a movie. But I struggled with it. I was so disappointed. Coraline is like, I think one of the most beautiful movies of the last 25 years. It's

such a simple story. It's such a very specific story. Like being a parent now watching that movie, it's crushing. I looked at it just to kind of like refresh myself and what I like about movies. And I felt like this was the exact opposite. I felt like it was 300 million things trying to happen all at the same time. So bum me out. I'm sorry to say. Yeah. This is why I'm just like, sure. Let Eddie Redmayne be a creep in a movie for 90 minutes and I can move on with my life. Yeah. But there's no, there's nothing, there's no risk there. You know what I mean? Like that's the thing. This is, this was a risk and it didn't work out for me. I'm very sad to say. I was wondering why this movie was kind of like soft peddled. Like it was not heavily marketed. and i think we know why now and people will i think be um apologetic for it a little bit in part because you know it's

telling story about characters we don't often see in movies especially animated movies and obviously key and peel are are great and jordan peele is great but didn't click all true statements so you know the feeling that you were trying to evoke when reading that paragraph of the plot summary? What was that feeling? Exhaustion? Confusion? I mean, I just, do you have a, you felt that feeling, right? You were trying to express something. Yeah, yeah. Right. So that is how I feel at every single, like, title card in a sci-fi movie where it's like, it's the year 2432.

And cyborg aliens have, you know, taken over the supply chain or whatever. I'm just like, what the fuck is happening? Who is that character that you were just doing? Do you think that those pieces were written in that voice? Yes. Those title cards? That's how I hear all of it. Is this how you felt watching Star Wars?

A New Hope? No, I liked that one. Okay. Let's talk about the stars at noon. This is a personal one for me. Yeah, I'm just going to clear out. Okay. And you do your thing.

This is one of my favorite movies of the year as well. This is directed by Claire Denis. It's her second film of the year. She was on the show earlier this year to talk about Both Sides of the Blade. I actually think this movie is a lot better than that film. It's co-written by Denis and Lea Mises and Andrew Litvak, and it's adapted from a great book by Dennis Johnson, the kind of transcendental acid novelist who wrote a number of great books like A Tree of Smoke and Jesus is the Son,

the collection of stories. I was actually gifted a first edition of Jesus is the Son for my 40th birthday this year from a coolest friend. Amazing gift. This is a book that was considered by many to be unadaptable. It's set during the Nicaraguan Revolution, and it is about a young female journalist and a young male kind of businessman slash maybe he's something else. Maybe he works for the government. Maybe he's a spy. We don't really know. And there's a kind of elusiveness to this story and its meaning as there is in many Dennis Johnson books and also in many Claire Denis films. Claire Denis has updated the story to have it take place somewhere in Central America. I can't recall if she shifts it to Panama or I can't recall, but it's set during the pandemic. To me, it's one of the only

realistic portrayals of what the pandemic was like. Obviously, it was not in that country during that time, but I thought it was interesting that the amount of times where people would just have their masks off,

but they're around their ears. That's not something we've seen in any movie because they're trying to be careful about moralizing about mask wearing. It's a very slow, slightly confusing,

deeply elliptical movie about people who are lost. Like a young woman played by Margaret Qualley, who plays the journalist, who is just desperate and a little crazy and driven mad by her circumstances and needs to get out of this country and just cannot. She can't get an assignment. She can't get her passport back from the revolutionaries. It's like a very confusing story. This film just hit me on a deep level watching it. I was really, really fascinated by the search for any kind of meaning, any kind of connection in a desperate time. Obviously, that's a big metaphor to swing at, but I thought it was great. You look absolutely baffled by me right now. I was just thinking about the Zoom call scene that Margaret Qualley does with John C. Reilly as her editor. Which I understand we're not searching for realism in this film or, you know, but that's just not how assigning editors work or talk to each other.

It's very funny. I believe Reilly impro talk to each other. It's very funny. I believe Riley improvised that whole sequence. It's really funny. He's hilarious. There's also Benny Safdie appears later in the film in a similarly kind of like menacing and creepy, but also very effective turn as a significant figure in the story is all I'll say. Denis doesn't really make very many films in English. High Life was her first. And she has an interesting facility with it.

You know, like it really did. It felt very much like a Claire Denis movie to me because a lot of her movies have this kind of like elliptical and like emotionally intense, but also distant quality where you're sort of like, what is the story of this movie?

I don't really know what these characters are striving for or trying to do. But by the time you get to the end of it, you're like, everything is hopeless. That is how I often feel coming out of her movies. I like this one a lot. It's on Hulu now. It just came to Hulu. It was played just a couple of weeks in small set of movie theaters. I think most people listening to this show will watch and be like, what are you talking about? I watched it on Hulu and I would not say that was the ideal environment to be watching it. You didn't mention that Joe Alwyn plays the mysterious Englishman, which we'll be coming back to Joe Alwyn on this podcast. It's what a time for him.

Alwyn season. Which it has been sort of for like a year and a half. I think everyone during the pandemic was like, sure, we would love to put you in our film, Joe Allen. If you are not familiar with Joe Allen as an actor, he is also the significant other and sometimes co-writer of Taylor Swift. Is that so? Yeah, but he had a pseudonym and then he, whatever. That sounds cool. Actually, that might be one of the only good songs on that album in my opinion i'm not a big fan of the recent taylor swift work but i wish her well

and i think he has it but i don't know whether he has it this was very convincing for me it was this this was the first time i think since i've seen him and i've liked him in some things i liked him in mary queen of scotts which was not a great movie but i thought he was pretty good in um he's billy lynn and billy lynn's long halftime walk i think that was his first film the angley movie which is a little bit i'd like to revisit that one um and like you said we'll talk about him again soon because he's coming up in another film on our list uh okay let's go to another movie rosaline rosaline how do you pronounce this rosaline i think or or rosaline i don't know it's the rosaline from romeo and jul, a Shakespeare play.

Do you have any thoughts on Romeo and Juliet that you want to share with the crowd? Quality material. Oh, you're pro. Pro. Very pro. Okay. Then you probably won't like Rosaline. Okay. In the play, Rosaline is a bit character. You may recall her as the person that Romeo is in love with until she can't show up to a party. And then he meets Juliet instead. And then,

you know, events happen. So this is told from the perspective of Rosaline. It's played by Caitlin Deaver. And so it's part Shakespeare send up part teen comedy. It's definitely a comedy. It's told it's set, I guess in the Renaissance times in Verona.

You know, they're all wearing long gowns and funny hats, but they speak in a modern vernacular. And Kayla Neve are sort of doing like an eye rolly, this is all pretty silly take on all of this, which is amusing. It reminded me, the setup at least reminded me a lot of um one of the great mcsweeney's pieces remember when mcsweeney's did things and we all read them i think they still do but it was 10 years ago for me but it was written from the perspective of the baroness in sound of music who gets dumped for uh maria and so it's a it's a letter announcing that the wedding is off in the voice of the Baroness. It's really very funny.

Rosalind the movie becomes, you know, more of a slight rom-com. I think like the premise is funnier than the execution. I don't know. I like that they try it. I've always had a soft spot for teen Shakespeare. I mean, think about 10 Things I've always had a soft spot for teen Shakespeare. I mean, think about 10 Things I Hate About You, a classic.

There's another one that I can't really think of right now. Well, Romeo and Juliet is teen Shakespeare. Well, sure, but like sort of the funny updated comedy ones as opposed to Romeo and Juliet, which is still like in the Shakespeare verse. I don't know. Nice idea. Happy for Caitlin Dever that she's getting to do things. Yeah, I like her. Should I watch this? Probably not. I don't know. Nice idea. Happy for Caitlin Dever that she's getting to do things. Yeah. I like her.

Should I watch this? Probably not. Directed by Karen Mayne, who made a movie called Yes, God, Yes a few years ago. And screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, who were the 500 Days of Summer guys and who have written a lot of successful movies in the last 10 years. Good setup. You know, like all comedies, you can like the first 20 minutes and then, I don't know. What do we do with an episode

like this where we're like there are a lot of movies some of them have some things about them that are okay i don't know this mini driver is also in this i love her i do love her you know as a sick criterion closet episode as many driver oh i didn't know that yeah it's great love her i really enjoyed the um kate blanchett todd field yeah yeah they seemed a little loopy. Yeah, that was great. And it was very funny that she did that and Hot Ones on the same day.

Same outfit. Yeah, it was really good. Pretty special. Okay, I'll talk about a movie now that I watched last night called The Stranger. Seems pretty far

from Rosalind in terms of intensity and the kind of story that is being told. This is a contemporary story set in Australia in the 21st century. It's inspired by

the murder investigation of a 13-year-old boy named Daniel Morcombe. Really unusual kind of setup for a story like this. It's not about the abduction of a boy. It's about the investigation specifically of a person who is believed to have been responsible. And so I've never seen this specifically rendered on screen, but are you familiar with what a Mr. Big style investigation is? Does it have anything to do with sex in the city? It has nothing to do with sex in the city.

Then no, I'm not. So what some law enforcement officials do, and this happens all over the world, I can't remember where it was first created. I want to say it was in Germany. Law enforcement creates what seems to be a massive criminal conspiracy, like a crime organization, and then invites the suspect into the organization. And they create a series of schemes to gain the trust of the criminal and then later draw

out information from the criminal. And the way that they set up this organization is that everything is built on the idea of trust. So if you are going to be a part of this and partake in it, and let's say like high level credit card fraud is an example of this and partake in it, and let's say like high level credit card fraud is an example of something that these organizations theoretically do, even though everyone who is participating in it

is a cop or an FBI agent or what have you. But so they invite this guy who is the prime suspect in this abduction who's played by Sean Harris, the great Sean Harris from the Mission Impossible films, who's just an absolutely extraordinary actor and screen presence. And he builds a bond with Joel Edgerton,

who plays an undercover police officer, and then is surrounded by all these other undercover police officers as they build out this world. And so we see the film kind of in two strikes. We see on the one side, we see Sean Harris entering this criminal organization and being indoctrinated into it. And then we see the investigation and like sort of the cops who are observing everything that is happening by a wiretap. Very pensive, slow kind of a movie. A little bit actually difficult to understand at times, but kind of riveting in getting us to the bottom of what we really feel from the very first minute. And it's kind of an interesting inverse to The Good Nurse where it's like, you know where we're going with this the whole time, but the

actual procedure is the most compelling part of it. Again, this is a movie they played at Cannes that is like not your run-of-the-mill festival. It's more of a festival movie than it is your run-of-the-mill Netflix movie. Really interesting. I was not familiar with Thomas Wright, who's an actor. I think this

is only his second film. But it has like all the quiet parts of Heat and none of the loud parts. In terms of it's simmering. It's pretty masculine. It's pretty devastating in terms of what's really at the heart of this investigation. I thought it was good. I thought it was powerful. I would recommend it.

I have a lot of legal questions that we can do for a separate podcast. For our legal show? Yeah. Adjudicate that. Right. This have a lot of legal questions that we can do for a separate podcast. For our legal show? Yeah. Yeah. Adjudicate that. Right. This spinoff of JMO. That's right.

So Monday is just my opinion. Tuesday is the big picture. Wednesday, adjudicate that. Thursday, JMO part two, seven hour edition. Friday, the big picture. Great. That's my schedule these days. Okay.

What a network we're building out. I'm pretty proud of our work. Amanda, why don't you tell us about a new movie? Catherine Called Birdie. This is on Amazon, written and directed by Lena Dunham, adapted by the Karen Cushman novel, YA novel that I read as a child and loved. Really? Yeah.

I didn't revisit it. And my memory of it was sort of hazy. But Catherine Called Birdie, I was like, oh my god uh I loved that uh I thought this was a total delight I have to be honest I mean it is a it is an adaptation of a YA novel and I think it would be wonderful to watch with the a young woman young person in your life honestly the lessons can be applied everywhere and it I will read this plot description that you have provided sean thank you katherine is a 14 year old lady living in 13th century lincolnshire with her family and she has to get married off to make money for the family it was interesting to watch this after having watched

three episodes of house of dragon and then like not caring and quitting. But then listening to the Watch podcast talk about it. Because it's set in a similar time period and it's, you know, about marriages and the young women. House of the Dragon is set in Westeros, which is an imaginary place. Well, whatever. They're all, I mean, it's swords. It's long dresses. It's, you know, marriage is a political. No dragons in Catherine Calderon.

No Catherine. it's long dresses it's you know no dragons and Catherine called Bernie no Catherine but this is just instead completely delightful funny take where nothing ultimately bad happens

to the young woman even though there is some harrowing childbirth scenes but it has a positive funny view and also

it stars Liana Mormont did you realize that that's her? Bella Ramsey, yes. Yeah, Bella Ramsey. She's terrific. She's the best part of this movie. Yeah, she's really wonderful. But I don't know. Billy Piper plays her mother. Andrew Scott, you know, hot priest, plays her dad. He's pretty funny. Joe Alwyn shows up as the uncle she has, like, a crush on, which, you know, is played for laughs. I don't know. I mean, it's a movie.

It's a YA movie, but it's really well done. Yeah. So Lena's second movie of the year after the absolutely bewildering Sharp Stick. Didn't watch that. Which I had, I actually had a lot of fun with, but found very strange. Okay, yeah.

And would like to speak with Lena about it. But maybe, so maybe I should pursue that. Sure, yeah. Also features Jon Bernthal. Okay. One of many wonderful Jon Bernthal 2022 performances. Actually that should probably be

like a bonus Thursday podcast on the network. It's just like the Bernthal. Did you know Bernthal has his own pod? No.

Yeah it's called Real Ones not to be confused with the great show that Logan Murdoch and Roger Bell host on the Ringer Podcast Network

in which he interviews complicated 90 minute conversation with Shia LaBeouf that I don't know if I can recommend but I can say exists the ringer podcast network uh in which he interviews complicated 90-minute conversation with shiloh buff that i don't know if i can recommend but i can say exists um how can we get chris ryan on this podcast man like you know for the next milestone birthday if anyone producing knows god can you imagine surprise chris we just We're just like, we're going to, you know, get ready. Put on your best vest. We're going to pick you up at 9 a.m. You know, a surprise treat.

And then we drop him off at the podcast studio with Bernthal. Do you think, so Dana Carvey tells this great story of being asked by George H.W. Bush to do his Bush impression for him and kind of sort of being bashful, but also doing it. Do you think Chris would be bashful about doing his burnthal in front of burnthal yes of course he would yeah he would but he would do it right i don't know i mean it depends i don't know what's gonna happen at minute 80 on this podcast it's a gift for chris but also a gift for us you know i don't think chris chris is a star but i don't think chris says he had ascended to the level of appearing on the real ones podcast that's why it's a gift for him.

So I'm going to let you book this. Okay. Let's talk about one more movie before we go. This was an interesting one. Okay. That's never followed by anything good. Just so you know. Well, this is a similarly grim tale. And clearly, I watched a lot of grim movies.

This movie is in theaters now. It's called Holy Spider. It's by the, I believe he's a Danish and Iranian filmmaker, Ali Abassi. He made a movie called Border a few years ago, which was pretty widely acclaimed. It's based on the true story of Saeed Hanai. It's a serial killer who targeted sex workers and killed 16 women from 2000 to 2001 in Iran. And it's sort of about the pursuit of him and it's sort of about him and why he does the things that he does, or at least like his trial and sort of persecution. And it's like a split between, it's like a split between all the president's men and seven,

you know, it's like in part kind of scary and kind of grim and dire and there's murder in the film, but it's also about the process, the procedure of, you know, finding him, reporting on his story, and then the way that he pleads his innocence as a kind of like Travis Bickle-esque cleanser of society, which I think is interesting. I think the movie struggles

because it's really kind of neither fish nor fowl, and it's trying to be both kinds of films. And I would like to see the version of the movie in which he leaned into one or the other. If he leaned into the one that was primarily about Hanai, like it would be a pretty brutal and tough to watch film, but really good performances. And he has a real power, Abasi has a real power

of like creating a world that you slide into. So I thought it was effective. It's like a borderline horror movie. Probably not for you ultimately, although it is not supernatural in any way, but very, very well made. It's possible that it's in this Best International Feature conversation

towards the end of the year, though its severity makes me think it will probably be on the outside looking in, but worth checking out for sure. There's like a ton of movies that we didn't even get to that are like, there's so much stuff right now.

Like Apple put out the Louis Armstrong documentary that Sasha Jenkins directed last week. A Descendant, Margaret Brown's film, which I think is definitely a contender for best documentary is on Netflix now.

That's about the Clotilda, which is the last ship that carried enslaved Africans to the States. There's so many movies. We're going to have to do another episode like this like 25 days from now because they're just pouring stuff out. You and I are overwhelmed with screenings over the next couple of weeks. What are you most looking forward to out of everything coming in the next 30 days?

She Said. Oh, yes. I've seen She Said. I know. I won't spoil my thoughts on that. And then The Fablements. I'm very excited about that. Glass Onion. Yes, Glass Onion. She Said. I know. I won't spoil my thoughts on that. And then The Fablements. I'm very excited about that. Glass Onion.

Yes, Glass Onion. What am I forgetting? Black Panther, Wakanda Forever. Oh, yeah. I'm excited about that. People seem to like it, right? Great reviews out of its premiere. That's exciting.

There's a lot coming. I like it when they release big movies, you know? One of the best movies that's been released thus far this year is The Banshees of Inisharen. So next time I see you, me, you, and CR will be talking about that movie and I'll have Martin McDonough on the show.

Until then, let's go to my conversation now with James Gray. Returning champion James Gray is here. One of our favorite guests. People ask me James when is

when is he coming back when is he coming back to pontificate about cinema and his work key word there is pontificate how are you

well I'm alright I suppose I mean I'm feeling very annoyed by and sick of myself

so that's certainly not a new thing for me but there's a lot of self-hate you know it's it's a pleasant place to be i can relate i think that that's the the new york in us a little bit um so well i you know i asked you about this when i saw you last on the show because you were the subject of a new yorker profile and i was kind of interested in what happens when you like expose yourself. No, it's terrible.

And then you, you see yourself in the world. You see people writing about you and, and, and making videos and tweeting about you and kind of mangling the things that you say publicly. And now it's, you're kind of like a social media star in a way.

You're the seer of modern cinema. Um, that I don't know about. I can tell you that the Neworker profile was written by a man named nathan heller who's a brilliant writer and he did a great job which is the problem you know have you ever i the analogy i use is like um and i may have even told you this story but i can't remember anything i remember my mother said, she said, we have to get you a nice suit because you're going to do your brother's bar mitzvah and you got to look good. Of course,

my brother wound up not even getting bar mitzvah, but we had a big party for him anyway, because he quit Hebrew school, but that's a whole other story. And they said, okay, you're going to go to Barney's. Now at the time, and Barney's doesn't exist anymore, but at the time Barney's was kind of like a very low rent kind of what they used to call schmata place on 17th street and 7th avenue this is 1979 and I of course thought of myself as just sublime and I remember getting fitted for a three-piece suit and the tailor was a diminutive Italian man with a very thick accent. And he said, please step on this right here, please. And I stepped on this platform and I looked at myself with the three-piece suit and I thought, man, you look hot. And then I looked to the left and the right and I said, who's that ugly guy?

Three-way mirror. All of a sudden you see a side of yourself you never saw before and it ain't pretty. That's kind of like a perfect metaphor for life. You know, you go through life early on thinking, you know, your mother holds you to the mirror.

I think Freud had a term for it, actually, misrecognition. And you see yourself one way and then you actually find out the truth. So, it's an elegant segue, I think,

to your new film, Armageddon Time, which is... That was intentional, not. It's,, I think, to your new film Armageddon Time, which is… That was intentional, not. All of your films are very personal, right? I can sense you plucking detail and putting them into genre pictures or your recent films are adventure movies in many ways. But is it fair to call it pure autobiography? Well, I guess it is. Is it fair to call it pure autobiography? John Ford movies, for example, who's probably the greatest director ever, they all feel like

they're made by the same person. It doesn't even matter what genre it is, although a lot of them are Westerns. There's always his voice in it. And to me, that's the calling of the creative person to try and put him, her, themselves into the work. I mean, what other option is there to just like take a job for money? If you wanted to do that, Wall Street is beckoning, corporate America is beckoning, or maybe not so much anymore, but they were certainly in 1992 or three when I graduated. So I've always thought that it's a necessity to do it. This is just a kind of a logical extension, I think, of that whole effort. And I had seen, you know, I've been telling

stories to my children, bedtime stories. Now they're too old. They think I'm an idiot. But, but at the time, this is by five or six years ago, I was telling them stories and they loved them, almost couldn't go to bed without them. And they liked the ones that were truthful. They didn't like the fantasy or the fable and they always could detect it when it was crap. Dad, that didn't happen. They have an excellent, that didn't happen. They have an excellent, excellent detector for that. So I started telling them all these stories from my childhood. And then I remember we were in, we were on the 59th street bridge at one point.

We're going to the beach, which I hate, but my kids, oh, it's terrible. We're like, I'd be burned to like a total crisp within seconds. It's horrible. Yeah. But they keep, my kids love the beach because my wife is from Southern California and you know, I don't know, they have like a, they're, they're all born and bred here.

They're like all like nine feet tall and corn fed, you know? So they wanted to go to the beach and I, so I were driving on a beach and we're driving on 59th Street Beach and my kids said, dad, where did you grow up? I said, right there. And they said, oh, can we see what we want to

see? So we pulled off and i was overwhelmed with a feeling of melancholy which i did not expect i saw a neighbor who didn't come out and say hello but i saw him looking at the window he i know he recognized me same person who lived there for 45 50 years and the house seemed of course smaller and there was very little evidence i mean there was some evidence there was some paint on the wall where i made my model rockets but other than that not much evidence that my family and i had inhabited this space and we'd had all these incredibly important conversations of such profundity and all that and you realize well at the time my father was still alive, but my

father and my brother, thank heavens, but everybody else is dead. And you realize there's an ephemerality to our lives. And part of that is what makes life extremely beautiful, but it also makes for a certain sadness. And, um, that was the real impetus behind trying to, to make the film. Mm-hmm. thing about their own lives do you treat it like a journalist before you start writing do you start speaking to people who were there how do you rebuild your own life there is no easy glib method to writing anything i've found you're always trying the process of discovery is halfway through you don't even know what it is you're trying to say you discover it as you go and then actually that process continues really up until you lock picture to find out really to crystallize what it is the thing is saying you have so many ideas and aspects to any creative process that are unconscious and necessarily so really because

if they're all conscious then the thing feels jury-rigged and you want a certain kind of expressiveness that feels almost uncontrolled. And sometimes it's not pleasant, by the way. Sometimes people tell you things about your work and you have a feeling they're right. And it's not, it's not comfortable. Do you have an example of that? Well, I mean, about this movie, people have told me very directly about how, um, what, how much of a jerk the kid can be at times. And I like that, but I also hate that.

I mean, who wants to hear that about him, her, themselves? I mean, I was a jerk. And a certain moral failing, you know, at key times, which I think is important for the drama, but is not pleasant. I think also when you put a child in a film, there's an expectation that the child will be winsome and will be someone we're rooting for, as opposed to complex and nuanced and making mistakes. Yeah, that's part of the challenge too, because I don't believe in loss of innocence.

I think that's a kind of a bogus and somewhat bourgeois concept, because people have, I think, a mistaken idea of what it means to be a child. This is my own opinion anyway. I mean, children are liars. Children are cruel, hopelessly cruel. And children can be obviously deceitful. I remember I had this moment where my daughter made a sheet cake and she needed some Duncan Hines chocolate frosting. And, and, you know, it came in one of these little paper cylinders and I came downstairs and it was all gone. And I, of course I, we have these cameras

up and a security cameras or whatever this is, this nonsense. And, um, I saw my son on the camera, ring camera eating the frosting. So having three children, I said, who ate the frosting? Knowing the answer, I didn't do it, daddy. I didn't do it. And of course the kid who did it said, I didn't do it. And then wound up actually saying, Henry did it pointing to his brother. So I say this because, and of course I then tested to see how far I could go to quote unquote punish Henry, the person who didn't eat the Duncan Hines. And I asked Henry to play along just to see Raphael, who actually did eat the chocolate, how far I could take it before Raphael would finally confess. And it was deeply troubling, the answer. I mean, the truth is, is that I had all the punishment in the world meted out to Henry before Raphael finally had some pangs of conscience. So this idea of innocent children,

no, no, no. I think children are just as complex and troubled as adults are. And in fact, maybe in some ways more so because children are not born innately with an idea of what is morally or ethically correct. These are teachings that have to be given to them at some point in their lives. Used to be that religion filled that hole, right? I'm not a religious person at all, but it did fill that hole. There were parables, metaphor, all that thing that said, this is right, this is wrong. Today, it's actually weirdly maybe a hole that we haven't filled yet. Now, for me, I think it's art.

And also maybe in some ways my grandfather. But it was not as set in stone as maybe it should have been. And I'm sure that I have made many mistakes across my life. But so I resist this whole idea of a non-nuanced portrayal of the beautiful child who's been destroyed. I think that's a lie. Was it difficult to reconcile how selfish or even immoral you were as a kid? And to not just reconcile it, but to characterize it, to make something out of it.

Was it difficult? Well, I don't know how difficult it was. It's unpleasant, but to characterize it, to make something out of it. Was it difficult? Well, I don't know how difficult it was. It's unpleasant, but it's my job. It's not my job, Sean, to show you the best of me. It's not, I'm not here for self-aggrandizement. Well, maybe I was. You might be in this room for self-aggrandizement. Yeah.

Well, I'm, I'm feeling great right now. No, I, I, I just, uh, I try to reveal what i'm uncomfortable with i feel like that's my function that's my job and you know a lot of people will like the film or hate the film which is a weird thing for me because i try to isolate myself from criticism not because i want to live in a bubble but because when somebody says to me uh they love the movie terrific they, they love the movie. Terrific. They say they hate the movie really means they hate part of you and who wants to be hated. And yet this is the choice you have to make. If you want to make movies that are, you know, let's be honest here, personal or ugly in some

ways. And to me, that's what it means. Dare I use this dirty word to be an artist. So what did you do? Did you just sit down in a room and try to remember things? That's what I did. See, I didn't answer your question.

I know. That's why I went back to it. Well, that's very clever of you. I make lists. The most important thing to me is the outline. To me, the outline is where the rubber meets the road. And I work on that for months and months and months. And the actual writing of a script doesn't take all that long.

But the outlining takes forever. It's funny, even people who I remember, I was talking about outlining once with P.T. Anderson. He said, I don't outline, Gray. I don't outline. And then I said, well, what do you do? He said, I make lists. I said, well, that's what I do.

That's an outline. What do you mean? It's a different way of going, you know what I mean? Everybody who has some semblance of the shape of the film, you have to write it down or you forget it and you wind up running out of ideas on page 27, you know? So I make lists. In this case, I called my brother a lot because he has an incredible memory, uh, asking him stories, but I was also trying to really look inside of myself, uh, and to try to, I've said this before, but it really is everything to try and knock down the wall that naturally gets erected.

The self-defense, the, um, the almost, like I say, self-aggrandizement way to try and make myself look better. All the instincts that we have that get in the way of a certain kind of honesty to be, to be, to be frank about it, because without that, you have nothing. So I was just, I was just writing down different, uh, scenes that I could recollect different stories that I could recollect with my children. And it was pretty quickly, the story, uh, revealed itself. Now the outlining wasn't quick, but the story revealed itself very quickly. And maybe it was aided and abetted because I was by myself in what was kind of a gilded cage in an apartment in Paris. I was directing an opera. I was directing

Marriage of Figaro there. And I would work in the theater during the day. My wife and children hadn't joined me yet. And I had nothing to do in the evening. It was a residential neighborhood. I didn't know many, many people. I probably had some version of culture shock. And you start to look inward. So I'm very, very fond of this movie. This probably had some version of culture shock. And you start to look inward. So I'm very, very fond of this movie. This is my favorite movie of the year. So nice to hear. But I want some self-recrimination.

I am from a middle-class family from Queens, you know, recent immigrant family, desperately trying to seem more artistic than my roots, trying to better understand the world through art. I really relate to this movie. I don't have the same life as you, but I see a lot of myself in the story that you tell. But the thing that is chilling to me is how accurate it is,

how close it is to rooms that I've been in, to homes that I've been in. And the reason I ask you about the writing and getting details is that it feels like a real place that I know. So once you have written the outline or even written the screenplay, how do you then reconstruct the way something feels, the way something smells, the way that it looks on camera? By the way, smell is one of the most important conjurers of memory. So I had the props department making a lot of brisket and keeping it on the set of that

house. One of the things that helped enormously was that my father's obsession with photography, he's a terrible photographer. He was really bad, but you know, he would take a photograph of like a lot, you know, three, three quarters of the picture would be dirt. It's incredible. But he did chronicle our lives in great depth in slides and Instamatic photography. And that was an unbelievable resource. And all I did was I said to the art department, I said to the actors, I said to the customer do this now once you get on that level you there are ideas that come into play and you encourage that that somehow expand the idea but you want to stay somewhat close to what it was because you cannot invent better stuff than like these bad lamps that we had or this fake wood wall paneling on one side

or the green carpet that we had all of that stuff, which wound up in the film. I mean, if I had tried to conjure it through some kind of imagination, I wouldn't be able to do it, but it is very important. I mean, I want you to think about it this way. So much of what we do in the cinema is communicated through detail and detail and nuance is the whole ball game for a drama. Let's say I did exactly the same set, Sean, exactly the same, but I put plastic on the couch. All of a sudden that sends a different message. Uh, we didn't have plastic on the couch, but we might've, that sets a different message. So you have to be very specific because that's where the thing lives and dies.

Now we could, of course, go off on a tangent and talk about, you know, the internet or social media or whatever, what little I know about it, because I'm not on Twitter or Instagram or Snapchat or whatever. What about TikTok? Are you on TikTok? No, I, I, I, i i i think it's very harmful um there are some people who twitter or tweet or whatever brilliantly uh my children will show me stuff or you know news stuff that's like really funny and clever and brilliant in the number of characters but all of

the drive to create something of value is in details. If that is the number one reason that something is of value or not, what are we to say then about social media and what that means for reducing it to 280, or I think that's what it is, 280 characters or less. It literally is the exact opposite of what it is we need to try to do. Let me give you an example artistically, if I may. How many movies have been made about a boxer in the 1940s? Well, I mean, there's a huge number of them. I mean, half of them are probably starring Kirk Douglas or whatever. Why is Raging Bull an enduring powerhouse?house well there's the use of the mascanye music the

slow motion opening shot there is the details of his performance as jake lamotta there are the details of like them eating the chinese food at the tables he said he's not gonna forget about you you know all this stuff the way that they speak with each other, the details is where the thing lives. I always thought 2001, part of why it's so great, as visionary as it is, is what's that chicken? They're talking about like sandwiches on the spacecraft. I loved that. I loved seeing, you know, someone left a cashmere sweater or something on the spacecraft. You hear that announcement on the station. So all of that stuff matters hugely.

And how we can reduce that in the world, out there in the world, it's impossible. You can't reduce that into like a slogan or a statement or just some kind of basic idea of drama. It's not possible. So the details, whether it's in production design or character or music or anything, I think that's where it all lives. The reconstructed adolescence is a very familiar archetype. I'm sure many of your heroes made films like this. That's true. You know, The 400 Blows or Dazed and Confused. I mean, it expands the history of movies, really.

Did you look at anything before you started working on your movie? I didn't. I had seen Amarcord not too long before, which lingered in my mind because of Fellini's sophistication with history. Because I think that the mentioning of Mussolini is of critical importance to the picture. It lends a power to the film that it otherwise wouldn't have if everyone's just, you know, that what happens in that movie, of course, is that everyone is having this great or distracted time in this town of Rimini and, uh, hanging over the whole thing is fascism and the coming war, which is going to devastate Italy. So I had used that as a kind of something of a guide, something of a guide,

something of a guide for me, but I tried not to. Now, having said that, I'm sure I rip off four and it blows. Many people have asked me about like, oh, they steal a computer. Isn't that like the typewriter,

which I did not think of at all. But of course now I see it completely. You do it unconsciously. You're always stealing anyway. And you're right. It's something filmmakers have done before. But like I've said, the devil's in the details i have a theory about why there are more than normal number of films like this in which great film artists are returning to their youth at this moment i have one too so i want to hear yours um he's just spent a lot of time inside

thinking about our lives and what our lives mean for me. Had a kid, which is of course, wonderful and powerful. But then of course, I'm like, this actually perhaps is the meaning of my life is this person that we have now. I wonder for artists, especially those who already have children, you're looking back and saying, what, who am I? What did I do with my life? How did I get here? And how can I better understand myself through what I do? Is that fair?

Well, yes and no. I wrote the script before the pandemic. So in my case, not really. But I think there is validity to what you're saying. But I think it has to do with, I'm going to bring in something a little darker, which is the movie business is in considerable peril on a variety of levels. And because of that, I know in my case, and I know in my friend's cases who have made personal films in this way, we may not get another shot. And that's, I think, really the bigger cause to be candid. You're not wrong about the pandemic certainly forcing a kind of look inward, but one thing is connected to the other.

The pandemic speeding up what has these darker clouds in the business, all of it's contributed to the soup. So in that way, you're right. But I think it has to do with the fact that we're not sure this is going to last, this thing called cinema. Is it related to what you've talked about recently around the loss of control of your last film and wanting to have one more film in which you had total control or just one more film, period? Like, is this my last movie? Well, it started out as the former and wound up as the latter. I wanted one film that I could control and not just, not as a, let me say this, not as an ego thing, not as like, oh, I need to control it.

Every last thing I say goes. No, you want the control so that you have the freedom to accept the ideas that enlarge your original concept and get rid of the ones that get in the way. I've talked about this many times. That is the process. But you cannot have other people telling you what you need to put into your movie because then it becomes like, you know, imagine if you were making a sauce and everybody kept adding paprika and you'd say, no, no, no paprika. And they say, well, no, paprika and they say well no paprika is good for you you should have paprika and then all of a sudden you have nothing it's it's terrible

so my attitude was always like i want to have something that's at least my own filter but then i started to feel an existential crisis for the medium and that took on a whole new kind of meaning for me i'm not alone in that, by the way. I would like to talk to you more about that. You've talked about it with me on the show in the past, but you have been proven somewhat visionary, I think, in the direction that things are going. I did? Well, I don't remember what I said, to be honest. I couldn't quote you verbatim, but that dark clouds were forming, and this was was of course, pre-pandemic. And yeah, I, I, I will tell you this. I have done, unfortunately, an excellent job in being a kind of Cassandra, but you know, Cassandra was right. Yeah. I mean, I look, the forces of

capitalism are such that they will, corporations have their way with us. They really do. And they've actually completely colonized our unconscious in ways that are frightening. You know, I'll be walking down the street and talking to my friend about, you know, I've never been to Cancun. I don't know what that's like. Is it a beautiful? Oh, it's very beautiful. I love it.

My friend will say I've never been to Cancun. And then the next day I'll look, be reading the Washington Post or something and an ad for Cancun will come up. The phone has been listening. I mean, they have our number. And when you look at what has happened really since 1979, since middle-class incomes basically stagnated, there has been no lack of economic growth. There's been an explosion of growth since 1979, particularly since 1983. And yet it has gone to 0.00001% of the population. You're looking at basically the biggest theft in human history. And people are not fully aware of it.

Now, it translates anger, hostility. I need to, as kind of narcissism out there, like I need to have my position known, which social media has done a brilliant job in allowing people to express themselves. But the anger really does come from this sense that we've been had. And it doesn't stop with the movie business. The movie business is part of that. So you see the same fissures in the movie business as you see in the world at large. It's simply a microcosm. It's simply a representation of the larger issues. This is a theme literally in your film to go back to the Mussolini inspiration

or at least the observation that the way that power looms and then works over long periods of time. I mean, Fred Trump is a figure in your film. The Trump family is a figure in your life in a way, at least in an abstract way. I mean, I don't know. That's, it's, that seems crazy to me, but it's absolutely true.

And it's nuts, right? That I have these encounters with these people, but you know, that was the, the major thrust of the whole project was this idea that to unearth the idea of identity, usually along class or race lines, is unendingly and frustratingly complex. It's like trying to peel away the layers of an idea. People want to reduce it, right? People always want to say, these are the signifiers of representation. This is what this means in this moment.

This is what, but you can't just, is history shaped by a pandemic? Of course it is. Is history shaped by fascists? Of course it is. Is it shaped by great men and women? Of course it is. Is it shaped by a class and race? Of course, of course it is. Is it shaped by climate? Of course it is. So much goes into history that to try to unpack it is, uh, is, is, is almost futile. So what I tried to do was say, here are the layers that I observed, that I observed, the layers of antisemitism, class aspiration, racism, all this stuff, it all goes into the same cauldron of fire. And what does that mean for us? Well, I will quote Thomas Hardy, if a way to the better there be, it lies in taking

a full look at the worst. You have to try to unearth as much as you can and express it all. Now, some people are going to be pissed off. Some people are going to love it. Uh, that's what it's there for. It's there to create some kind of debate. I do want to, I don't, I certainly don't want to debate you, but I do want to investigate the way that you explore it in the film a little bit because I find it to be interesting and I think it will be divisive for some people. Really? Why is that? Well, the way that you characterize the sort of stand-in for you is as a person who makes mistakes and is fortunate to survive by the token of your privilege. Yeah, that's right. But then you're operating in the other corner of the film, you have this idea of a greater forces of power at work and the way that they're kind of trampling really everyone

with a very vanishing few, even more privileged than your own privilege. That's not the world? It is the world. Okay. But what I worry about, maybe even on your behalf, but what I worry about, and it's in part informed by some of this conversation

you're talking about social media or the lack of nuance and understanding art or an author's intent or whatever it may be, is because we spend so much time with this young boy and we are so focused on his story. And at the end of the story, we realize this is a kind of a selfish kid who doesn't really understand the world. And he reflects some of those things you were saying about young children, if they don't have those parables instilled in them, for example, that there will be more kind of anger and frustration cast in your direction than in the direction of the truly powerful who are really building the systems. And on the one hand,

that's an impressive feat of dramaturgy that we are really so invested in this boy's story that you've focused on. But it's almost like you've teased us by putting these significantly worse people these bad actors on the periphery of your story and there will be viewers i could feel this when i was watching the movie i was like there will be people who will take the wrong message from this who will be like james is uh tenured to the problems of even less privileged people than him in our society. And so if I'm tinier, then how come I made the goddamn thing?

Well, I, I wonder how you thought about that. The point of art, if I use that word, which is disgusting to a lot of people, if I use that word, the whole damn point of it is to try and explore what you are vulnerable,

vulnerable about your most intimate impressions of the world, to try and extend the idea of compassion. And yes, dare I use the word love to understand the world in some kind of context. If you start creating rules in which I can tell the story of myself, but it has to be through this morally correct lens. Let me ask you something. What would happen if 50 or a hundred years from now, don't you think the sense of what is moral or ethical will change? Absolutely. And then what? And then what? What I think is incumbent upon the viewer, the reader, anything, any art form is to allow the work in first and foremost, as a work of emotional expression. That is what we have. It's not about boiling it down to what is morally correct.

You cannot do that because that is not a fixed object. There is no such thing. When you create a work, uh, uh, in the, in the world, you are, yes, of course, putting yourself out there. And yes, of course, criticism is valid, but you cannot, even if people misunderstand it, they have a right to do it but it has to be part of the discussion has to be part of the soup it i i yes i've been eager to talk to you about it because i'm interested because i know that you're trying to align a lot of complicated themes into

a film that i think will be misinterpreted. Not every movie is misinterpreted. Every movie receives criticism. I think you personally are very sophisticated about how you think about not just your own films, but other people's films. You're a great historian of movies. And so this reduction of dialogue, of understanding of stuff is interesting to me in part because I spend a lot of time

talking in a microphone about movies. But when it's this personal, this is not The Immigrant or We Own the Night. Right. This feels very close to what you lived through. And so I wonder if that even cuts deeper than misunderstanding. It's hard for me to respond because I haven't read Misunderstanding. I mean, I can never predict what people will say. I live a very fortunate

existence. Um, but if people misunderstand it, there's nothing I can do about that. And maybe they'll misunderstand it in ways that'll teach me something. I don't know. Maybe not look, every work of, uh, cinema has been misunderstood in positive and negative ways. Sometimes we benefit from it. I think Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven was completely misunderstood in the best way for Clint Eastwood. the audience was applauding and that made the movie quite commercial but I found that deeply upsetting because what I thought the movie was about was a revisionist idea that this man does return to hell and that is he's revealing himself to be this horrifying individual

and that is an unsavory thought. That's the reading that is now commonly accepted. accepted well it wasn't in 1992 i can tell you because i saw it in the theater on opening day and when he says yeah i'm gonna kill you a little bit and everyone applauded they thought it was incredible he kills a guy wailing on the floor he just shoots the guy everyone clapped so what does that tell you everything's going to be misinterpreted. You have no control over that. I mean, now I think the only reason it seems more acute to us is because everybody has this voice and some people do it anonymously and some people don't and everybody's looking for their own way in. And that's fine.

That's part of what it is, but I can't control it. And I don't know what it is yet. So I can't speak to it. I don't want you to speak to imaginary criticisms that maybe don't even exist. Well, I, the only reason I'm speaking to it at all is because of what you brought up, how people will misread as you put it. So it's, it's the only way I can respond. Tell me about, um, casting yourself in your own family in a film. That's insanely weird.

Yeah. How'd you do it? Well, you just read 600 kids or whatever. I had a casting director who's brilliant named Doug Abel and he, uh, he, he, he would send me, I mean, he probably saw three to four times the number and then I sort of look at tape after tape after tape.

And what I finally found was a couple of kids who were incredibly smart and listened brilliantly and would improvise brilliantly and sort of looked like their counterparts. So they got the part. I mean, it's weird too, because I almost never, by the time I see something, uh, it's gone through the casting process. I see almost exclusively very talented people. It's very rare that I see someone that It's gone through the casting process. I see almost exclusively very talented people. It's very rare that I see someone that's inept. I mean, almost never. In fact, I'm not even sure I can even think of an example of that.

I see fantastically talented people and it's just becomes about almost something indescribable when you cast them. The actor is Banks Rapetta, is it Banks Rapetta? Banks Rapetta, yeah. He really does embody, I think, even what little I know of you, you know, your assuredness but vulnerability. Like he really kind of nails what it's like to be with you in a room even though you're much older now. Oh, God.

Well, maybe that's true. I would have to ask my brother how he feels about that. A lot of people have said that he reminds them of my son, Raphael, but then a lot of people have said that Raphael is like a miniature version of me. So he must have something down, but also what he, I mean, I was very specific with him in a way that I'm not with adults. I was very specific with him and with banks, uh, uh, with, and with Jalen about how I would, you know, specific actions in behavior.

Um, yeah. And I think that probably they, he just took on that, that aspect of my character. And so my own character. So I think he, I think that's probably why it feels accurate. Has your brother seen the film? He did. He saw it, uh, at the New York film festival. And, um, he thought it was, uh, he, he, he said he,

he loved it and he's very honest with me about my work, but he's, he loved it. And he's, he found it at times, uh, disturbing. How so?

Well, it was, it's like watching a home movie. I mean, it's like, you know, he times you see Jeremy strong is basically playing my dad and Annie Hathaway's mom and Tony Hopkins. I mean,

it's design of the house is exact. The chandelier is the same in the dining room, in the dining room, Danish modern furniture, all that. You know, he saw all of the details as you, as you asked me about earlier. And I think it lingered with him. You mentioned three very famous people playing members of your family. All three who are quite brilliant in the movie,

but it does, I've never seen Banks before, but I certainly have a big relationship with Jeremy and Anne Hathaway and certainly with Anthony Hopkins. That's intentional though, Sean. So tell me about that. Well, because when you're a child, you look at your parents as gods.

And I thought it was very important that they be, and I usually don't say this sort of thing. I thought it was very important that they be famous people I usually don't say this sort of thing. And it was very important that they be famous people because you see, you look up to your parents at age 11 and you think of them as like somehow bigger than life. And so I wanted the audience to feel that same sense for the kid's point of view. It's why I needed someone I thought famous and thank heaven she granted me a day of her life to play marianne trump because when that woman came to the school to speak it was like boom somebody of real import gave a speech

and i wanted that to feel the same way with the audience so it was intentional that they had a kind of mythic quality anthony hopkins's character he plays your grandfather in the film, even more so than Anne Hathaway and the woman who plays Marion Trump and Jeremy Strong, has a kind of otherworldly wisdom, I would say. Is that

because that is who your grandfather was, or is that because that's how you saw him? Have you thought about the subjective versus the objective and trying to render people especially people who have who give you something very powerful yeah but you see i i see uh and this doesn't mean you're wrong sean but i i have a very different read on the grandfather i think than everybody who's seen the movie. So maybe I failed because I see the grandfather as very loving person, a wonderful person, a

wise person, but somebody who bequeathed to me some serious cognitive dissonance because it's one thing to say, be a good guy in the world. And then right before that, having said, your name is Graf. You can blend in. You can fit in. Play the game. Game is rigged.

You play the game as it's rigged. But be a good guy. But the game is rigged. But be a good guy. Play the game. But be a good guy. I find that. But isn't he right about that?

I mean, that's, that's like kind of a deeper conversation. Well, he's right and wrong. The father is right and wrong at the end. I mean, I can only give spoilers, but, but, but that's why the reduction of a work is so dangerous because I've always felt that ambiguity is to be treasured.

Vagueness is the worst thing ever. Like if I don't know what's actually happening, I can't make out the plot. That's terrible. But if the thing is so clear that you can see both right and wrong, uh, to me, that's the biggest gift I can give to the audience. It's because it's the same idea that I'm trying to express to you, maybe ineptly today. I don't know. But this idea that you cannot boil something down to its essence. That is why Citizen Kane is so great. You really want to know.

I showed it to my kids during lockdown. Oh, I see, Daddy, what Rosebud is. But I said to them, no, no, no, no. The whole point is that the object has no real meaning. In fact, Wells didn't even want to reveal it. He thought it was, no. The whole point is that the object has no real meaning. In fact, Wells didn't even want to reveal it. He thought it was a mistake to reveal what it is. The whole point being the pointlessness with trying to get at right and wrong, the pointlessness with trying to get at what is the idea of identity itself. That is why art can be so beautiful. That's when

cinema is so beautiful. What about Michael Corleone? He's going to save his father and goes to hell to do it. This is why Shakespeare is so enduring. The complexity of ambition and intention. I mean, in King Lear, he doesn't just say, oh my God, my daughters, they're turning against me. He asks a sick question. Who loves me the most? I mean, that is a sick, sick question. So then you're put in a difficult place because he's asked this question, which you know is damaging to begin with.

So the whole point is we can be right and wrong and wrong and right. And that is why there is this cognitive dissonance, this thing that forges a sense of ourselves at risk and at a loss very early on. At least it did with me. Let me ask you a practical question about getting to that place of ambiguity. When you're writing, do you write to a quote-unquote logical conclusion and then attempt to complicate it? Or are your instincts naturally leading you to that ambiguous place? It's a great question. I never write not knowing where the thing is headed in some way. Now, that doesn't mean I'm trying to jury jury rig the thing or force it into a preconceived idea, but there always has to be some idea of where it goes and what the whole thing is going

to mean ultimately. And in that struggle, uh, you're always finding the different reactions because I once, I, my first movie, I worked with a brilliant actor named Maximilian Schell. And I'll never forget, I said to him, at one point I said, well, your character wants this, but this happens. And he said, yes, but remember the world is ruined by well-meaning people. Which I thought was so fantastic because all of a sudden you realize like everybody has their own intentions, most of which are kind of good. Amazing from the star of judgment at Nuremberg to say something like that too.

Oh, exactly. He knew it. Yeah. And in fact, you know, we, we talk because I have a strange obsession with that period in history. You can't get your hands around, uh, Nazis. It's, they're very, almost like too easy as villains um but i

remember reading about a rudolph haas who was the head commandant at auschwitz it's a person responsible for about 1.3 million deaths and the british interrogated him after the war and they said do you have any regrets you killed 1.3 million people and he said yes i did not spend enough time with my family and so what you realize is like there is a kind of the what hannah arent referred to as the banality of evil what she was really saying is the when people are unable to see into the souls of another this is why it gets back to what you're saying about, um, you know, the reaction or misinterpretation of a film, whether, you know, uh, where everybody sits in the pecking order and all this, it is incumbent upon us to struggle and try to find the humanity in others or else you get Rudolph Haas, right? I mean, I had spent more time with my family. I was just, I had this thing I had to do and could not see, blind to it. So to me, when you're writing characters, you're always trying to think, what's their point of view? What's their point of view? Try to rationalize it. I mean, in a sense, a story about Hitler is not interesting because it's impossible for me to build a moral case that he's putting forth for the world so there's something very

simplistic about him and that's not interesting what is interesting is when people have good intentions but everything goes awry or people uh don't intend for x and y happens and that's why comedies in the 1940s musical comedies could be so beautiful and transcendent, right? Because we're all silly and stupid things happen. And yet it all becomes this kind of perfected hole at the end. Shakespeare, of course, his comedies do the same thing. Different ways in. It doesn't all have to be tragedy. Comedy is beautiful too. I've been at a few screenings of your films in which your children were present, but I don't know if they saw the films. And I was wondering, especially with this one, have your kids seen this movie?

They did see this one. They have not seen a few. They've seen the last three. This one is different from Lost City of Z and Nat Astra. What did they say when they saw it? My eldest was in tears at the end because he'd never, you know, he knew my father, his grandfather, and they loved him. He was, you know, grand, grandparenting is easier, you know, kids go home at the end of the day. Yep. And they could not understand that vision of my father. They couldn't believe it.

And I think they recognized, you know, he died two months after we finished shooting. I was still editing. He died of COVID. And I don't think they properly understood or processed that. I mean, how could we, and nobody understands a process as death really. And I think that they just had a reaction to the film that was connected to my own life, seeing a window into their father that they didn had a reaction to the film that was connected to my own life seeing a window into their father that they didn't expect and it freaked them out a little bit it's an unusual thing sean i mean let's be honest here to have your kids watch you at age 11 or 12 that's weird and and acting in ways sometimes that are extremely unpleasant well that i mean that is why i ask you

because it is in it is um you are not putting yourself on a pedestal in the film and even your parents are complicated and making mistakes. Are you kidding? I, I, I found, you know, my parents were, look, I mean, they had a daily struggle, which was to put food on the table and that was a struggle for them, but they were of course, uh, racist and,

and certainly had, uh, ideas of class ascension, which were in some weird way connected to that. I mean, the whole thing is like, it was the whole idea of it, you know, can you, as I say, can you be a presser and oppressed at the same time? You know, that Fred Trump can be looking down on me and they could be struggling to put food on the table. And at the same time, their fo's metaphorically on Johnny's neck. Right.

So that all of this can be true at the same time. And that to me was both the troubling and interesting thing about trying to dramatize to begin with. I don't know how much of that my kids got. I mean, they're still pretty young. I was going to ask you that too, is do you find that you,

is it purely emotional for them or that you will talk about the idea of theme and meaning when it comes to something that is so personal? I do talk about that stuff with them all the time. I think it's important for them to see that the movies are not always meant, sometimes they are, by the way, but not always meant to be escapist. See, part of what I think George Lucas did brilliantly, actually, particularly with Empire Strikes Back, is he made a fantasy, but it has tremendous metaphorical power. And I remember when my children first saw Empire Strikes Back, no, Luke, I am your father. It was like devastating to them them and it makes you realize that a film can appear escapist on the surface but if the mythic core is there not to sound too

cambelyan but if if if the mythic core is there the thing can still maintain tremendous power and force and i wanted them to understand that that that's part of what it's about. Uh, no matter what the type of movie is, you know, I mean, many people I think have inaccurately described jaws as the end of the new Hollywood, which I think is nonsense because jaws, which I think is a great movie, uh, has a tremendous amount of complexity in it. Not least of which is let's face it, the Trumpian mayor who will have people being eaten on the beaches

if it means that he can maintain his profit, which is why Fidel Castro, by the way, loved Jaws. So all these things go into the work, and I want my kids to know about it. You often get asked, probably by me a few times in the past, about not just the state of the business but sort of the movies that are being made and what's popular and your opinions about superhero movies for example are not or they're widely known at this point i think yeah but you

know what i think they've been a little misrepresented because i've seen very good ones um and i've talked about this but i i uh, there is an absolute place for them. So I don't want to, I, you know, I have had people say to me, you hate Superman. No, no, it's not true at all. And, and in fact, I think they have not only a right to be, but they should be made. They're obviously filling a need, a desire. So, uh, I, I just, my complaint is that when, if when if that's the only thing studios will make then you start really limiting what people want what people think about as a as a work of cinema then it becomes

like completely limiting enterprise it's like crazy it's the analogy is is is very clear with other other things with food I've used this as, as well. If you just give people McDonald's all day, then that's their expectation for food. You give them sushi. They don't know what it is. So Mike,

that's my complaint. It's not that superhero movies exist. I, I only bring it up not to force you to repeat your, or clarify your opinion about it. I'm here for you. Thank you for that. Um, it's more because you talked about the concern about the business and what repeat your or clarify your opinion about it. I'm here for you, Sean. Thank you for that.

It's more because you talked about the concern about the business and what films will you get to make, but then also hearing you talk about The Empire Strikes Back. Film I love. Film is very, very, very formative for me. I think it's a great movie. Is there any part of you

that could see a world in which you tried to make a movie that had that mythic core but served the McDonald's hungry audience. I would love to do it. I mean, for example, I would love to do one of those. I would love to do a James Bond film, but you'd have to have some measure of control.

I mean, I don't mean like, you know, where the ending is grim and all that. You know, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about where it's actually still you and it's not every, your ideas are like all taken away or everyone says no. And then the whole thing becomes a mishmash. Um, and if that were the case, I would definitely do one.

If they, if they, if they said here, you have control, go do Star Wars. Would I do it? Yeah, I would, but that's never going to happen. That would be nice. It's never going to happen. They won't do it. Are I do it? Yeah, I would. But that's never going to happen. That would be nice. It's never going to happen. They won't do it. Are you writing anything?

I'm at a loss. I mean, I finished the thing only six weeks ago. It doesn't seem like it because I went to Cannes with an unfinished version of the movie. Okay. Did it change significantly since you screened it? It changed a little bit. Not because I, you know, change it because of Cannes,

but simply because I hadn't looped Tony yet. And there was a few lines of his missing and the score wasn't finished. So we had two more pieces of music, things like that. And I was very uncomfortable going to Cannes with a three-day temp dub, but I lost the battle to keep the film

and not let it get out there. So it's changed a bit. I think it's a better movie, of course, but I'm biased. This is again, kind of a question about reaction to your work, but I was wondering how you felt.

Why do you see this as very dangerous? Because now you're asking me to guess what people will say. No, not in this case. In this case. And then of course, somebody is going to Twitter or tweet or whatever that I'm an asshole because of the response I gave to something I didn't even know about. No one's going to do that.

Oh, trust me. It'll happen. My daughter will tell me, trust me. You are beloved. You'd be the one. So it played a can and you were there and I saw the film at Telluride and at Telluride, especially people who are not at can like myself, a lot of people, the reaction I felt was people were like, that was really good. That was really, really good. And I think maybe we're always trying to navigate the reaction at film festivals internationally if you're not there and your consensus and standing ovation terms and things have gotten so weird with all of that stuff. Unbelievably horrendous. And so I think actually there was a kind of like relief and a pleasant surprise almost,

even though your film is, you know, at times grave and very serious. I think it was interesting to watch it in America is really what I'm saying. And it's a very American story. It's a story that I think if you grew up in a city

is a very legible story. And I'm wondering if there was, if you felt that there was any kind of difference between showing the film with all the pomp and circumstance of Cannes or, and then now, you know, it played in york at the new york film festival it played

in colorado i assume you've played it out in a handful of other places is there a difference really from when you first rolled it out to where how it's playing now yeah there's a huge difference every time it plays huge can was uh its own thing because that's a bubble and you know you're showing your movie and you're in a tuxedo and you know half the crowd is like vichy collaborators or something i don't even know what the hell that group of people is they're south of france they're all trillionaires okay you know and it's a weird thing and it's very stiff uh telluride was beautiful a great experience i love telluride and the audience seemed very warm to it uh New York is different still because obviously it's a New York story and maybe

it's too close for some, maybe it's offensive to some, maybe it's beautiful for some, you don't know. I try again, like I say to wall myself off. I didn't watch it in New York. I did in Cannes.

You have to, you have to sit through it, which is horrendous. Steve Soderbergh once said, it's like having your movie projected every frame of your movie lasting 30 seconds during the projection. Cause you don't know whether the movie is going to end. They're going to boo, they're going to cheer, they're going to do, as you said, the timing of the standing ovation, six minutes, nine minutes, 10 minutes. It's nuts. So, um, every, every experience is different.

I just came back from Europe and they see class, race, history very differently than we do. The ideological spectrum of Europe is vast, right? You have left and right is a mile wide. In the United States, it's actually perversely getting wider because the right is going ever more right. And in some cases, but mostly not, the left is staying where it was. I mean, there are some people who are moving more left, but mostly it's staying center left. And so the Europe spectrum is so big that their reactions are really interesting to me. They tend to see history as more determining our fates, which I think, by the way, is probably why the work

that I've done first received, not anymore, but first received a bit more praise there than it has here. Well, so then how does that contrast specifically with the U.S. audience? The U.S. audience, sometimes they get very impatient with when the fates of the characters are unhappy ones. Because it's not my job to give you a continued advertisement for the excellence of American capitalism. You know, this idea that at the end, the person wound up making $15 million. That's like saying, you know, the person wound up winning the lottery. And you find that a lot of American cinema on a studio level is programmed towards

proving to you how you too can get rich. One time I was at a dinner party with Wall Streeters. Um, and, uh, one young woman who was otherwise, uh, uh, unbelievably brilliant person kept saying the same thing over and over again. She kept saying, well, anybody can make it in America. And I kept saying, well, I finally, I was sitting there, you know, gritting my teeth and my wife's kicking me under the table. But finally I said to her, I said, listen, I understand what you're saying. Yes, anybody can make it in America, but you know, anybody can also be hit by a meteor. Anybody can win lotto, you know, at some point that doesn't really make any sense anymore.

And you have to look at the structures of the world and what is likely and what is actually working. Not could it absolutely ever happen. This is a gruesome follow-up, but I'm going to ask it. You make art that is distributed by a commercial entity. Of course. Martin Scorsese at the New York Film Festival just decried tracking box office as a degradation. I know I read that. But I say this as somebody who talks about movies all the time into a microphone.

It does kind of matter. It matters in terms of what gets made and how. And specifically, if you're not Martin Scorsese, what gets made and how. And so when you're making a film that is this personal, and you can reflect on how it's discussed in the wider landscape, but when you're making a film that is this personal, and you can reflect on how it's discussed in the wider landscape, but when you're making a film that's this personal that is then sent to market, how do you reconcile that? How do you cope with watching something perform or not perform or whatever the right terminology is? and I loved it because what he's actually talking about is the fact that like, uh, my dad would have known that was the number one movie in the country last week. And it's like, well, okay.

I understand why, you know, uh, I don't know why, uh, Tom Rothman at Sony should care. He should, it's the business. Yeah. But my father shouldn't know what the top grossing movie is. He's not a stockholder in the company that made the film. And as a person who has the film released by a division of Comcast, I have to function in the world. Everything, nothing, nothing, nothing that we do in life is without some form of ethical compromise. Anytime we buy a tennis shoe, we are in some way performing an act that is like ethically bankrupt. You can't, uh, all of a sudden,

I mean, I did made a film for Rupert Murdoch, a person I think has done terrible damage to the popular discourse. You can't live inside a world where you never make those compromises. That's part of why I am so stressful about the need for compassion because everybody lives this life. We are all trying. And if you start pointing fingers and saying, this person's a piece of crap, we all live in the world where we are fighting to do our best. You know, I try not to eat much red meat because I know it's horrendous for the environment,

but if I eat a salad, what about the people who are actually picking the lettuce? At some point, you can only do so much, and the most you can do is the best you can do. That's why the kind of core conflict of your movie resonates so deeply. It's what you try and you try. And I've quoted this so many times it makes my, uh, myself, I may, I'm sick of myself

with it, but, um, I've quoted this many times and I'll say it again. The writer, George Eliot, she said, the thing we owe the artist is the extension of our sympathies. And that is everything. That leads to a more humane world. That is what art should give us. We end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen.

We usually want to hear more than one thing from you because you're always watching things I either haven't seen or haven't thought about in a long time. Well, I've discovered a great Italian director who's hard to see,

Valerio Zerlini. And I'm obsessed with a movie that he did called Girl with a Suitcase with Claudia Cardinale, I think from 1961. I could be wrong about the year, which I think is a great film. And I watch amazing stuff all the time. I mean, I never, I watch a movie every night if I'm at home, basically, after my wife and kids go to sleep. And it's very rewarding to me. But I also have lately become obsessed with the artist Francis Bacon, who, for whatever reason, I've known Bacon's work for a long time, but there's something about him that is capturing my interest in a kind of obsessive way.

I have to look at his work and I know that's not a movie, but it fills my soul anyway. I'm relying on painters now more than movies. That is a great thing that you've seen though. You have seen his work. Oh, I suppose you could say that. I did see, well, I have a great excitement about this show of Edward Hopper's work at the Whitney that's coming up because Hopper has been such an important person to me visually. But I have relied now more on painters because I don't want to rip off other movie makers. And like I say, I see great movies all the time. And usually, I'll tell you what, I watched The Conversation, which obviously I'd seen a trillion times, with my children who had never seen it pretty recently. And they loved it. They found it incredibly frightening, which I found interesting. My younger son was terrified by the movie.

Because of its prescience in terms of knowing how we're all being listened to? No. To your point earlier about uh cancun i think it was just some kind of mood a mood of dread that felt so palpable to him he kept saying dad this is great but it is so scary and i didn't see the movie in that way ever so that was seeing the conversation anew um that was great but great, but I see, like I said, I mean, if, if you're talking about what I've seen recently, I've also been trying to read more because it's a gap in my education. I, I really did cheat my way through a lot of the, what they call the great books. And, um, uh, I've been trying now to, uh, I read, uh, Goethe's elective affinities, uh, recently,

which was brilliant. I'm I've, do you see a book? I don't know. And I'm trying to, uh, try to look at it. Yeah, you do. I've tried to become a little bit more educated as opposed to just the kind of a boob who can, you know, tell you everything that Busby Berkeley ever choreographed, you know, at some point it has to move beyond that.

Unfortunately, that's my station in life. So you can extend beyond that. Your station life is what? To be the boob, you know, at some point it has to move beyond that. Unfortunately, that's my station in life. So you can extend beyond that. Your station in life is what? To be the boob, you know, to just be the guy who tells you about films, you know? No, what do you know? That's not, I'm saying for me, not for you. I know. I'm the boob.

But you're the person who's advancing and I am. No, no, I'm not doing any advancing. In fact, one of the things that's so frightening about getting old and having lower back pains and being so blind you can't read a menu is you realize you don't know anything. I mean, it's a sort of a hackneyed thing to say, you know, the sort of more, uh, enlightened among, among us know how ignorant we are, but it is really, I think it's just a product of getting older. You realize there's just vast swaths of human experience. You have no knowledge of understanding of cannot get a clue about. And, uh, that is an enduring and frightening sadness, but it is also very encouraging because there's no amount of stuff you cannot rediscover.

I mean, if I said to you, the Beatles, you think you know so much about the Beatles. And then Peter Jackson does eight hours of stuff, which to me is extremely enlightening. I mean, seeing Paul McCartney come up with Get Back in real time. Inspiring. Beautiful. That was one of the greatest things I've ever back in real time. Inspiring. Beautiful. That was one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life. That's why I'm asking you questions

like I'm asking you today, where I'm like, give me very specific details of how you do the thing that you do. I think in part because we are fascinated by creativity, but don't understand it at all. Well, I'll tell you,

I'm going to say something which hopefully everyone's turned off this podcast by now, but if they haven't, I'm going to say something which everyone's going to get really angry at me for. Great. I think Ringo Starr is the most underrated musician in history. You ready for why I think this? Fire away.

It's a great take. So, um, my son, uh, is a bass player and loves Paul McCartney's bass lines and loves Entwistle's bass lines and loves, of course, John Paul Jones, all these 60s bands, 70s bands. And, um, he said to me, dad, uh, we were talking about the Beatles and I said, you know, uh, I said, you know, the Beatles were rejected by Decca records. He said they were, and we were doing a little internet search and I found the Decca sessions where the Beatles were auditioning for Decca records. A man named Dick Rowe, his name was. And he turned them down. Later signed the Stones. But he turned them down and they're not good.

The audition's bad. John, Paul, George, and Pete. And Pete. Pete Best. They're the Beatles. And you realize the groove was no good. And all of a sudden, they added Ringo. And you realize the groove was no good. And all of a sudden they added Ringo and guess what? The musicianship goes through the roof. The swing is through the roof. So, I mean, I have a Zoom on every Sunday where I Zoom with fellow Beatle maniacs, musicologists. I mean, they talk about

the kinks. They know every detail, but the k incredible people and uh it's it's it's really enlightening but this is so now i see uh ringo as a perfect uh a perfect a person to study because as a creative person um so much of what you express is not the technical side it's not can you drum super fast like buddy rich hit every single symbol every single thing buddy rich i i don't have any buddy rich albums i think i have one ringo knows when not to play sometimes space is needed for the song that is its own form of genius sometimes knowing when not to move the camera, sometimes knowing when not to paint that part of the building, sometimes knowing what to leave out is a part of the mysteriousness of the

beauty of art. James Gray. Thank you for being here as always. Wise, thoughtful, decent. Armageddon time is wonderful. Thanks for being on the show.

Thanks Sean. as always wise, thoughtful, decent Armageddon time is wonderful. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks. Sure. Thanks to James Gray. Thanks to Amanda. And thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner for his work on today's episode. Later this week, like I said, CR will join me and Amanda to talk about Martin McDonough's fantastic new film,

the banshees have been a Sharon. We'll see you then.