The Big Picture - Top Five L.A. Movies, Plus Karyn Kusama on ‘Destroyer’ | Interview (Ep. 116)

Episode Date: January 11, 2019

Chris Ryan joins the show to break down the latest news that the Oscars will be hosted by committee and share his top five Los Angeles films. Then, director Karyn Kusama joins the show to discuss ‘Destroyer’—her second movie with a distinct take on L.A. Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Karyn Kusama, Chris Ryan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelley, and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. True Detective is back, and The Ringer's Chris Ryan and Jason Concepcion are our guides as we navigate the twisting pathways of Season 3's plots, themes, and characters on The Flat Circle, a True Detective aftershow. Follow Jason and Chris as they chase down leads, explore each episode's cultural context, and discuss true crime cases that mirror the ones in the show. Join the guys live every Sunday night after True Detective on The Ringer's YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook pages.

I'm Sean Fennessy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the most interesting filmmakers in the world, and also my colleague and thoughtful friend, Chris Ryan. Chris, hello. Hey, man. I didn't think you thought I was thoughtful. I think you're one of the most thoughtful guys around, and that's why I wanted you on this show. You know, you and I moved to Los Angeles right around the same time.

Yeah. So I've asked you on this episode of this show for a very particular reason. We have a nice conversation with Karin Kusama coming up. She directed a movie called Destroyer, which I think very quickly ascends the list of modern LA movies. And an LA movie is a very specific kind of thing. And so what I wanted to do is you and I share some top fives about our favorite LA movies since Chinatown. We're going to get to that very shortly. But first, I think I'd be remiss if you and I didn't talk just a little bit about what the hell is going on with the Oscars hosting. So yesterday, in keeping with the test balloon nature of this stuff, we found out that the Oscars said they had no plans to go out and ask for a host of any kind.

And today, this is Thursday, we're recording. We learned that the Oscars is, quote, scrambling to unite the Avengers, assemble the Avengers, as Stanley would say, to, I guess, sort of kind of host the Oscars. What the hell is going on with the Oscars hosting? What do you think they should do? Did the Academy learn something from the NBA trade deadline where all news is good news? Yeah. And you can just kind of dominate a news cycle? Because, like, would we really just be talking about Green Book right now?

Or I mean, I guess maybe we would. Are the movies captivating and gripping enough to have this horse race debate starting now? Maybe, maybe not. But what is captivating is watching all of these celebrities get nominated and then get their tweets read and then have this public debate about whether or not that's a good or bad idea. It really does remind me of we have no intention of trading Anthony Davis.

Truly. There's a lot of coded language in every one of these announcements. And the sourcing is fascinating to me. I wish somehow we could know who decided to say. You've got to become the Woj. Yeah. You want me to become the Woj?

Yeah. I think I'm a little bit too free with my takes. That's something I've come to understand. Because Wojs are shrinking violently. That's true. That's a good point. He did actually pivot effectively from throwing thunderbolts about Kobe Bryant and LeBron James 10 years ago to becoming the information merchant.

Yeah. And there's a lot of merchandising going on right now about ideas around the show. I'm so fascinated by it, mostly because I stand by this general observation that this is like the third most popular television show all year. So getting on this show and especially hosting this show, there is a part of it that despite the sort of reading the bad tweets and the propensity for failure that comes with it is the biggest platform you can imagine. Like if you're trying to sell something, Kevin Hart was trying to sell movies.

That's why he wanted to get on that show. He wanted to become more famous. He's also trying to sell his brand and his comedy specials and everything else he does. The idea of no host, I've already mentioned, I think it's just a really bad idea.

That's going to lead to a dull show or a show that is driven by producers' bad ideas. We saw that 30 years ago in 1989 when the show had no host. That was the last time that happened. Do you think that 12 people, 12 Avengers hosting is a good thing aside from the synergy of Disney? That's a really great question because the first thing I started thinking of is like, do you sure you want to put Robert Downey Jr. in front of tens of millions of people with a live mic? Fuck yeah. Yeah, that would be great. But like some weird stuff comes out of his mouth.

It does. It does. You know, just because they're in the most popular movie franchise in the world doesn't make them you know, able to manage that situation. And also, I mean, that's the thing that I think is so crucial is like we kind of saw this with the Globes where

Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh had their moments, but they weren't like polished hosts. It wasn't Ellen DeGeneres. They didn't walk out and just say like, I know I can feel the room. I know the deal. The teleprompter is or isn't working.

I can read which jokes are kind of going well or which aren't. I can point and say, hey, there you are. Like it was very much like I've been rehearsing this. I'm an actor. I've been rehearsing this for weeks and now I'm going to go do it. And that's sort of not unlike what happened

with Franco and Hathaway a couple of years back. The reason why they keep going to these stand-up comedians who have experience hosting late-night shows or are confident in emceeing an event in some way is because it is a live event. It's because it is an organic, happening thing. You don't get a second take with a green screen. And I just think that while it would be a spectacle to see the Avengers and maybe get people like, you know, like your sister to watch or something, I don't necessarily think that it would make for an entertaining show.

Yeah. I think the other thing too, is we think of Robert Downey Jr. or Chris Hemsworth as sort of famous people who were in these movies, but also like, does this include Elizabeth Olsen and Anthony Mackie? Like how many Avengers are we talking here? Does Clark Gregg get a look here? can we get a little Kobe Smulders yeah that's a good point I I'm quite certain that Brie Larson would be there though because there is Hugo Weaving come in as Red Skull I think I maybe just Red Skull should host a solo he's the one who nominates Green Book yeah I'm reluctant to even dive into the Green Book conversation maybe we'll do that

next week on the Oscar show with Amanda we'll be keeping a close watch on this Chris I appreciate you even just acknowledging that this is a thing that is ongoing

in the world with me I think it's fascinating I think it's fascinating it's really interesting let's just pivot to Los Angeles this is our city it is our adopted city

I've come to really love it and I've come to understand movies personally in a different way living here. I think that's something you hear oftentimes. Angelina is a city full of transplants. Most of the movies throughout the 75, 95 year history of film are made here.

What makes an LA movie to you? And then how did you decide about what your top fives were? Well, this was a really thought provoking assignment to do this because I think that you could just do best movies that happened to be set in Los Angeles. You could do your favorite movie set in Los Angeles, or you could do movies that say something specifically about Los Angeles,

Chinatown being the, I'm glad you said it from Chinatown on because Chinatown obviously, I think in a lot of ways, is what shaped our idea of Los Angeles in cinema. But for me personally, I decided to take this in a more biographical route, autobiographical route that movies that sort of documented my intellectual and emotional relationship to the city throughout my life rather than,

Oh, LA confidential. This movie just like is about the underbelly of the glitz and glamour of the city yeah um even though that's what you love you live in that i mean like we could sit here for 20 minutes just listing movies that are set in la that we love you know what i mean and you worked for 12 years as an editor at the tatler that's right reporting on celebrity gossip around town, as I recall. I have so many used flash bulbs from my camera when I used to surprise Lana Turner outside the Brown Derby. Okay, so you chose a more specifically personal approach to this list.

Yeah, and I found it. Basically, I know we're doing a top five here, but what happened was for four of these movies, they very much work in pairs. Oh, interesting. So we can break it up however you want, but I have a couple of films here. And these are, I actually purposely went away from,

if you don't mind me self-anthologizing, typical Chris Ryan core. So you will not find any Michael Mann movies. Wow. Or Training Day, or a lot of the movies I typically talk about. Not that these movies are necessarily devoid of gunfire and car chases,

but these are just movies that at different points in my life defined how I felt about Los Angeles. I wonder if that means we'll have crossover or no crossover. Yeah, I'm interested. I gave you a little bit of a pregame, like I'm stepping off the man corner if you want to live on it. I just feel like there's a lot of content out there where I talk about Michael Mann.

True indeed. And in fact, every time we record a Rewatchables, you insist upon more. It's an interesting ongoing bit. I will say that I have like 500 honorable mentions here. This show is sort of by design provoking people to say like, you forgot about 310 to Yuma. Yes. Which is cool.

I totally acknowledge. I love that people think we're wrong about stuff or have missed something that is vital to this. But I had a very similar experience. This is a personal exercise. Some of this is about movies that I just purely love. Some of it is about getting a sense of what the city is like. Some of it is about just my personal interaction with the city. You know, I think at the top, I don't know if this is movies on your list, but I do want to just cite LA Plays itself. Do you have LA Plays itself? I don't, but I figured that would be cheating.

One of the glories of Los Angeles is its modernist residential architecture. But Hollywood movies have almost systematically denigrated this heritage by casting many of these houses as the residences of movie villains. So L.A. Plays Itself, for those of you who haven't seen it or are aware of it, is a documentary by Tom Anderson. It's like a three-and-a- driven voiceover cut film. It just shows a series of visions of the city in cinema over the last hundred years. And it includes everything from, you know, Blade Runner to, you know, Terminator 2. And it just shows the city in a lot of different ways. I would encourage people if

they're just interested in the city of Los Angeles and they're interested in movie making and the idea of location to just watch that movie. But I felt similarly, I didn't put it on my list because I was like, this is kind of like putting a greatest hits album on a best albums list. Let's start at number five.

Chris, what's your number five? This is the first movie that I remember thinking about Los Angeles through. So this is the first movie that I saw that made me think, okay, so what's LA? Like, is this seems like a, just a completely foreign planet and it's a Beverly Hills cop. Don't you think I realized what's going on here, miss? Who do you think I am? Huh? Don't you think I know that if I was some hot shot from out of town that pulled inside here and you guys made a reservation mistake, I'd be the first one to

get a room and I'd be upstairs relaxing right now oh yeah okay good I almost put this on I haven't listened to you watch Beverly Hills Cop it's been a while how's it aging?

it's got it's it still has moments that are apex Eddie Murphy so you're just like oh god this guy is so so funny

but like a lot of these 80s action comedies there's like a ton of action. And there's a ton of like, just like it's a cop movie that Eddie Murphy is in rather than like an Eddie Murphy movie about cops. And it's the action comedy genre is so funny because I think when people our age started making movies,

we were trying to like, like when you see Pineapple Express or you see the other guys and you see like that, try to capture that. It's so hard to get right. And partially it's because a lot of these movies were scripts lying around

that they would then say, well, let's try to get Sly Stallone and let's try to get this person. And then they would finally be like, well, let's try this Eddie Murphy kid on it. And then it turns into this huge juggernaut. But this is so great because it's a stranger in a strange land movie.

It's Eddie Murphy coming from Detroit, chasing a case of his murdered friend out to Los Angeles. And he arrives and is immediately thrown into the world of like the most stereotypical Beverly Hills world that you could think of. All these people have Lakers season tickets. They all have, you know, Maserati, drop-top Maseratis and plastic surgery. And there's some great, even things like the art dealer, you know, and then also his assistant, which is famously played by Bronson Pinchot,

Serge. Serge. Serge. Serge. I make it with a twist of lemon. Yeah, that was the first movie that I saw where I was like, what the hell is Los Angeles? Yeah, that's a really good one.

And I think you make a very trenchant observation that it seems like that movie wasn't written for Edgar Murphy. Oh, no. There was a version of it that Sly Stallone wrote. Oh. Yeah. Well, as we know, Sly Stallone has written virtually every movie in Hollywood history. Yeah, but there's like, I think his like,

the character's name was like Axel Colletti. And like they had like, I think his like, the character's name was like Axel Coletti. And like they had like a whole, you know, it was like him just gunning down people in LA avenging his

friend's death. Okay, I didn't know that. That's a very fun movie. I haven't revisited in a long time. I wish Eddie would make more movies

that were not written for him. I feel like you hear a lot of stories about Denzel coming in getting a script that isn't written for him.

Yeah. And then he's like, I put the Denzel on it. Eddie Murphy just as a figure in general, maybe a top five Eddie Murphy's is a good that isn't written for him. Yeah. And then he's like, I put the Denzel on it. Eddie Murphy just as a figure in general, maybe a top five Eddie Murphy's is a good episode to do down the road. Yeah. What a complicated and interesting career.

Remember when he almost hosted the Oscars? We got Synergy coming left and right. I'm not so sure Eddie Murphy could survive the archaeology expedition. No. I wonder, well, let's not. Let's say we did and not. My number five is White Men Can't Jump.

You set me up. Look, look, look. Raymond, Raymond. Now, I seen you hustle, man. Hey, I ain't never used no goofy white motherfucker like that. Hey, who you calling goofy white motherfucker? You, you goofy white motherfucker. Let's go, let's go.

Yes. Which, is this on your list? No, but it's a fucking awesome movie. This is a really good, it's a great movie. It's a movie I love. It's definitely in the pantheon of movies I've seen over a hundred times. Oh, easily.

It'd be a very low-key good LA movie because LA is a city full of hustlers, right? And this is a hustler movie. It's a sports movie. It's a basketball movie. It's a friendship movie.

It's sort of the green book of its time, you might say. White guy and a black guy, what they learn from each other, what their differences are, how they show their life. In this instance,

this movie does a really good job of showing, I think, two guys who are down and out and trying to figure out how to rise up. And the way that they live, the homes that they live in, the parts of town that they live in, where they play basketball, is such a profoundly important part of the movie. And I didn't realize it probably the first hundred times that I saw it. I wasn't thinking, I was thinking about Venice Beach and, you know, that opening scene when you see them playing on the court and the acapella singers and the idea of a space, but not really thinking about

how it fit inside the city. You know, we spend a lot of time with these guys in their cars, you know, that famous scene where they pull over on the side of the road

and the bet between Woody and Wesley Snipes about whether or not Woody can dunk. Like, there is something so specifically emotional about how they travel together.

Yeah. And I hadn't really thought about it as an L.A. movie until I was thinking of it in this context, but it does give you a little bit of a guided tour.

Additionally, I feel like Rosie Perez's character, which is controversial, but definitely one of my favorite parts of this movie. Sure.

I think Bill in the past has said that he doesn't like Rosie in this movie. He has said that, yes. Which is a blasphemous opinion. But Rosie also is this kind of aspirant person.

You know, she wants to rise up. And the way that she does it is kind of through show business, through Jeopardy. Yes. You know, like there is, there are all these little stray observations. And of course, Ron Shelton, who wrote and directed the movie,

the longtime Hollywood gadfly, knows a lot about the game and knows a lot about games. And so this is like a, this is my sports movie entrant into this. My favorite detail that you don't know until you live in Los Angeles is that there are all these apartment complexes and motels that have parking in the alley behind the building. Yeah.

And when Billy and Gloria, when the gangsters finally catch up with them and they have to run out the back and jump down. And that's actually, all over Los Angeles, there are these either small little apartment complexes or motels where people typically park in the alley behind the building or there's maybe an underneath garage

that has half open, but you have to go through the back. And it's one of those things that when you watch it now after living here for a couple years, you're like, oh yeah, that's right. And in New York, you can't drive in the alleys.

There's no through way there. But in LA, you can drive through all kinds of alleys. Yeah, you can cut through all sorts of, yeah. That's a great one. Number four, what do you got? This one kind of pairs with Beverly Hills Cop in the sense that it was also made in 1984. It was also released in 1984.

And that is Repo Man. I'm sick. I got to get her to the hospital, okay? So what? Take her there. I can't. I can't leave her car in this bad area. Look, I need some helpful soul to drive it for me, okay?

She's pregnant. With twins, she could drop at any time, all right? So Repo Man is my doorway, gateway drug to punk rock. And it was my gateway drug to independent film. I can't remember how the hell this wound up in my my vcr except for maybe i liked uh breakfast club and so i was just like i want to watch any movie with emilio estevez maybe it was even as late as young guns i can't remember was young guns like 88 it was definitely after repo man so this was like a video store discovery yeah this was like if you like like some guy at tla video in philadelphia

was like you should check this out and i think i was just starting to kind of like, I was, I definitely liked music, but I didn't know anything about it. And you don't necessarily walk out of repo man with a comprehensive understanding of Los Angeles punk rock, but you get the idea of the Southland as a neon wasteland. And like all this weird, this feeling that Los Angeles among other things is like this home for stars and rich people and all this stuff, and it's gorgeous, but it's also like the end of the road for a lot of people. And it's like, you know, the road stops at the Pacific Ocean, and a lot of weirdos come out here

to kind of like just stare out into the sunset a lot. And there's a lot of those characters in Repo Man. There's a lot of kind of like hustlers, grinders, con men. How would you describe the plot of Repo Man? Sure. Loosely, there is a guy driving across the country with a car with a nuclear

power in the trunk. Yes. And he comes to Los Angeles and his car gets repossessed, I believe it gets repossessed by Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez, who play repo men who are just basically sitting in their car, doing coke, drinking beer,

philosophizing. And there's also a subplot about a group of punk rock bank robbers, uh, led by Dick rude, who is a kind of, uh, fixture in the LA punk rock scene. And he shows up in a lot of acts, Alex Cox movies. Uh, and there's a kind of fixture in the LA punk rock scene. And he shows up in a lot of Alex Cox movies.

And there's a lot of like really like out there comedy, like all the food and drink in the movie is just like, it has no frills labels that say like food or, you know, beer on it. And it's like a real post consumerism, post capitalism satire on this, this whole city. And I still, you know, it's like a real post-consumerism, post-capitalism satire on this whole city. And it's just one of those movies where you're like, how the hell did you make this?

How did you even think to make this? Yeah, before we said stuff like this, Repo Man and Alex Cox's movies are a vibe. There is a complete tonality shift that is going on. If you're 14 and you see it you're like this isn't like other movies that something has changed here and it makes you kind of look more closely at why they've done those things right yeah and especially it's crazy to imagine repo man and beverly hills cop being made in the same year uh not that they're i mean not that they both don't have like obvious like connections in terms of like this sort of outsider coming into this weird world but it is uh not not unlike white

men can't jump about people at the sort of bottom rungs of of society in los angeles and also just introduces you to black flag and uh like solo era like hip-hop and the germs and all this like la punk rock that's incredible so many of the movies and a bunch of the movies on my list now are also about people that are at the lower station in the city yeah you know i feel like it's all kind of like the which which guns and roses is a sweet child of mine you know getting off the bus yeah at the beginning and and oh no it's welcome to the jungle yeah jungle excuse me um and axel gets off the bus at the beginning of the movie and is you know the young star in the same way that the alana turner figure would get off the bus at the beginning of a movie and try to become a big star. All of these movies, and this pick is

kind of a nod to that, sort of. It's The Big Lebowski, which is a movie that you and I have talked about a lot. We did a Coen Brothers podcast. We did a rewatch of The Big Lebowski. I don't want to talk about it too much, but since we set the parameters of this movie at since Chinatown, there's no way to do Humphrey Bogart. There's no way to do the Gumshoe movies. There's no way to do Raymond Chandler in any way. But I did want to nod at a different side of the seedy underbelly of the people that are trying to rise up. And then the people who you believe have risen up,

you know, the actual, the titular Big Lebowski in this movie, you think is this very successful guy living in this grand palatial estate with the young trophy wife. And in fact, he too is a fraud. Yeah. And there's a lot of ideas in the Big Lebowski. We could talk about it for three hours. And I picked it in part because I didn't have to talk about it too much. But one of the things that I like about it is it shows the illusory nature of the city.

Yes. Every time you go to somebody's house, you have to be like, do they own this house or do they rent this house? Right. And if they rent this house, is it entirely on credit? Yeah. Do their parents buy this house for them? Is that maserati like are they in hawk for maserati like what's going on here um and so i just wanted to give a shout out to the big lebowski which is a movie that i know you and i both love uh number three speed open the door 50 stand for 50 alright great

you're really going action I love it really going cars too a lot of cars in your picks well yeah I mean do you mind if I also say

what my number two is here to connect the two absolutely so it's speed and drive yeah okay I was afraid to pick drive for fear of being pilloried by the critical establishment.

Why? Do people not like Drive? Well, this is a good conversation for us to have. I'm glad you're mentioning the movie. Why don't you do your riff on 3 and 2? Speed is a movie that came out right when I got my driver's license. And not that I modeled my driving after Sandra Bullock. As you know, I'm a pretty relaxed driver, I think. Sandra Bullock is a marvelous driver.

She is. She's quite good, actually. I think weaving is kind of the key element to Los Angeles driving. This movie starts to give you an idea of the expanse of Los Angeles and the fact that it's just a collection of these little neighborhoods and mini towns connected by this massive set of freeways. And aside from the fact that it's just an astonishing action movie with an incredible conceit that's elevated by the fact that Bullock, Keanu, Hopper, and Jeff Daniels just completely make this movie way better than it has any business being. I think it really does a lot to show the way and the sprawling nature of Los Angeles and how difficult it is to navigate in some ways. I'm not trying to put too intellectual a point on a movie that's about a bus that can't go below 55, but like, it's just, it shows you like, if you were told you have to get out to LAX in this amount of time, it would be like really daunting.

You know what I mean? To say nothing of the fact that if you had Alan Ruck and a bunch of people on your bus and you couldn't drive slower than a certain speed. So there's that i also really liked the fact that i when i've thought back about it her the the reason why she's on the bus in the first place is she's got the all these tickets she's got all she's got all these moving violations so she her driver's license has been suspended so she's forced to take the bus and uh like you've been saying like we've been talking about it kind of bring that's a perfect place to bring together a bunch of strata of society

and a bunch of different kinds of characters. It's a great ensemble movie on that bus. So yeah, Speed was one of, It's kind of a 12 Angry Men update in a way. Yeah, kind of. It is. Different perspectives. So that came out like right when I was

getting my driver's license and, you know, obviously has some incredible chase sequences. And then Drive came out when I moved here, right before I moved here, but was like very much in the consciousness then and definitely informed what i kind of hoped los angeles would be when i moved out here all silk jackets and yeah neon a lot of chromatics a lot of uh johnny jewel records um a lot of like driving around in very verdant parks or having picnics by the LA river with

Carey Mulligan. None of that stuff really happened. I feel like I met an Oscar Isaac character too as well. You know, that guy, there's something that sort of like, is this guy going to punch me or hug me? You know that feeling? You know, it's like, it's probably, I mean, cause I, I also purposely didn't put a Quentin Tarantino movie on here because I felt like Pulp Fiction Reservoir Dogs would have been so easy to go to. Those are not my Los Angeles though. I don't identify. And that's the thing is that I think that Drive was the first update of cool in LA for me. In the past, my concept of what LA cool was, was like Eric Stoltz in the Valley dealing heroin. And then Drive was more like,

no, it's Gosling driving around in a stolen Ford Fiesta with the speed, the restrictor plate taken off. And I think that movie still goes hard. I don't know what people talk about. I think there has been a, not a reversal of opinion,

but the negative feelings about it have risen to the surface while the defenders have quieted. And you are here holding the sword. Is this because people don't like the movies that came after it by Refn? I think so. I think the kind of conversation around Nicholas winning Refn and the idea that he is pure style and has very little else to say is kind of taken over.

I don't agree. I love Drive. Drive is like at number seven. Should we do an Only God Forgives rewatchables? I think we might have even done a podcast about that movie. I still love that movie too. Is that movie problematic now in 2019? Okay, good.

All right. So you've done three and two. I'll do number three. I didn't put Quentin Tarantino on this list. I would be insane to not put Paul Thomas Anderson on this list. My pick is Magnolia. And I think that it's because all of my movies all kind of have the same vibe, I think, which is like people living

in slightly uncomfortable circumstances and they're kind of lonely. And LA is a weird, it's a really weird town. It's like a really interesting place. I love it. It's definitely my favorite city I've ever lived in, but it has this odd feeling of closure around you where you're like, everyone is doing something and I'm not doing it, but also I don't want to do it. Like I don't want to leave my house. Yeah. And one of the things about Magnolia that I really love is it's tapestry. It's like a hundred characters in this movie, all from different walks of life, all equally kind of depressed

and confused and unsure about their way of life, except for Phil Parma, the great Phil, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays a nurse, who's one of the truly decent characters in the history of movies. I love that performance so much. But I think that the thing about Magnolia is it feels like it's made by an Angeleno. It feels like it's made by a person who was born here, lived here, grew up here, knew all the different stations of life in Los Angeles, which is rare. A lot of times the people that are making movies about the city are making them about Beverly Hills, or they're making them about the valley, or they're making them about the place where they live or where they spend time. Magnolia cuts across the entire city in a lot of ways,

you know, it cuts into deep into Hollywood. It cuts deep into the Valley. It cuts onto the West side. It's on the East side. You know, there is, he, he weaves the tapestry. And when the movie was released, it was his PTA's third film is his first after boogie nights. And I think it was considered kind of a grand mess and not a movie that had a lot of flaws from somebody who we thought was going to be maybe the next corsese um magnolia is just an incredible movie that i think 20 years later deserves a little bit of re-examination so that's my number three yeah so my number one is a really nice partner movie with magnolia shoot it's afternoon delight i really think i can help her she's had a really difficult life

this is logan's new nanny be careful i am a nanny stealer wow yeah so this is not number one like my favorite los angeles movie ever made i did these chronologically and a heavy flex yeah and me and quentin tarantino both big fans of this movie is Is that true? Yeah. Uh, this is directed by Jill Soloway. I came out in 2013 and stars, uh, Catherine Han as a woman in a, not loveless, but I think calcifying marriage with Josh Radner. Uh,

it's all my, how I met your mother heads. And, um, as a Lark one night, they go out to a strip club and, um, they meet Juno Temple as who plays a stripper.

And, uh, she becomes sort of infatuated. Catherine Han becomes infatuated with Juno Temple. And she winds up moving in with Catherine Han and her family and becoming the nanny for their family. And it's a very LA thing. Like, I've spent some time outside of Los Angeles in the last couple of months.

And you always get that charge when you're in New York or a big city and you're kind of elbow to elbow with people and you're like, hey, hey, I'm walking here. That kind of thing. You know, you get touched a lot. Sure. And you also just like you overhear more conversations and you're just kind of like trying to make it across three avenues without getting hit with like, you know, scabies water or whatever, you know, like it's like a challenge.

And in Los Angeles, generally, I think, uh, the quality of life is pretty high. The weather's nice. You're kind of like, you don't have to worry about anybody coughing in your face while you're driving to and from work. But I think all that time in transit and in your nice house where you're kind of like walled off from stuff, it allows like crises to emerge. And you often will hear in Los Angeles, like you'll see somebody for the first time in three months and they'll be like, I just, I picked up this new obsession. Now I'm doing this.

You know what I mean? Now I'm like, I'm into hiking. I'm into this juice. I'm into like this kind of working out or I'm into this kind of like spiritual reawakening. It's a place of this kind of like enormous changes at the last minute kind of behavior. And I like how there's this contrast here of living well, but like empty inside and trying to fill that emptiness inside. And this movie, while incredibly funny and like really great bits between Catherine Han and her

therapist, Jane Lynch, and it's just like a pretty delightful movie generally. Kind of gets at that. And in a lot of ways, you know, like Catherine Han is to contemporary Los Angeles what Elliot Gould was to like 70s Los Angeles. Incredible, incredible note. She's like the avatar of like upper middle class neurosis here.

Yeah, the number one movie that is left off of this list due to the time constraints that I have magically put around it is The Long Goodbye, which is obviously a great LA story. And I think representative of the kind of the Elliot Gouldness you're describing. Yeah. And so I just think that her work over the last decade, kind of like in a weird way and not to be creepy, but like you kind of see Catherine Hahn around where we live. Oh, no doubt. I've seen her many times. Yeah, so it's like... She's the Grand Dame of Star Wars.

Yeah, so in a weird way, she's like the actress that I just most closely associate with the time that I've lived in Los Angeles. And this is my favorite performance by her. And I think it's a real underrated movie. It's a great pick. It's really just an eye-strafing choice when you see it on social media.

I'll do two and one together. It's Swingers and The Player and they represent two sides of the same coin. I'm obviously pretty obsessed with kind of class and aspirational people and these two movies

represent both sides. One is kind of almost like a meta-text about trying to figure out your life in LA, which is swingers. Jon Favreau was an actor. People had known him maybe from Rudy and he'd done some work on like some children's TV shows, some commercial work. He wrote and sort of guided, though he didn't direct swingers. He would go on to become obviously a very successful director.

Doug Liman directed this movie. Everybody knows it. It's, you know, similar to the thing about like there are people who take up like hobbies to fill their time and causes. Weirdly, swing dancing at the time was relevant. And in Swingers, it kind of defines

a big part of the social lives of these kind of suave, loser or wannabe actor types. Yeah. And you know, there was just that Hollywood reporter just did the piece on that book of photos

from early 2000s. LA, Hollywood's like nightlife with all these actors and actresses who were out. And the big thing was that social media killed their ability to just be themselves and go out. Absolutely. But this is back in a time when LA, I think, had a different kind of nightlife. Totally.

And Favreau has a lot of that, almost like Woody Allen-ish neuroses in his work, but also he has this great counterpoint in Vince Vaughn's Trent. And the two of them together make a kind of a buddy cop movie about just making it in LA. The two of them kind of toggling back and forth and making each other better. So I love swingers and I love the idea of like, I moved here and I'm trying to make it here. I totally get that idea. And then when you get there. And then when you get there, you get there and maybe you get to the top

and maybe you're an executive and then maybe you kill somebody by accident. This doesn't bode well for my life. This is tough for us. So the player, of course, is Robert Altman's complete masterpiece from 1992. It is, you know, based on a novel and the screenplay is also written

by the great Michael Tolkien. If you're not familiar with Michael Tolkien, I would encourage you to seek out all of his work, his films, and his novels. And this is- Road Escape at Dannemora. Did he really? I had no idea.

Maybe that will inspire me to finish Escape at Dannemora. So Altman, total genius. He directed The Long Goodbye, which is the movie we just mentioned. And this is a movie about what happens when you think you're more important than you are. And that's just clearly an idea that runs through the veins of so many people in this city.

Every meeting you take, every person you meet on the street is quite certain that they are the person that has the answers. Well, you can create your own reality out there. Totally. And I don't want to spoil any of the plot for anybody who hasn't seen the player.

It is in some ways a kind of classic noir murder mystery story, and in some ways, a highly self-referential satire of the city and of Hollywood and of all these different things that I have always been so fascinated by. Includes a top three Tim Robbins performance in the lead. It's strewn with famous people kind of just walking across the frame throughout the movie. A lot of the movie takes place on a Hollywood lot so it's normal to just see Whoopi Goldberg

come in for three seconds. One of the great opening sequences. Incredible tracking shot that walks us Tim Robbins' character through that lot. The player is somehow both

a cautionary tale and a middle finger at the same time and I love it. It makes me think of the city all the time. That's our top fives. We did it. We did it. Do you want to say the city all the time. That's our top fives. We did it.

We did it. Do you want to say a few honorable mentions? I'll start going down my list. It was hard to not put Mulholland Drive on this list. That's probably number six. To Live and Die in LA, which is a really excellent William Friedkin thriller, was clearly an inspiration for Destroyer, for Karan Kusama's movie. We'll talk a little bit about LA when we get to that conversation. The other one that she and I talked about is her movie, The Invitation. My wife is going to be incredibly mad that I didn't put The Invitation on. It's a fucking great movie.

It's an awesome movie. I said to Karan when we talked that it really reminds me of a lot of my experiences living here. You go to that dinner party where you don't know people and then all of a sudden it feels like weird shit is happening and you need to leave. I've been at that party before. The Limey? Yeah. Soderbergh's movie? What are some of the, some of the, you have on your list? I, well, I would just, people are probably going to be like, why don't you have nine cop movies on here? So I would just say, obviously Collateral and Heat are the alpha and

omega for me of Los Angeles movies and lots of different ways. I would also shout out End of Watch. Oh, good. Which is a really, really, really underrated David Ayer movie with Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña. Probably two of their best performances, I think, for those guys. And is a little gimmicky. A lot of handheld stuff, but it's really,

really, really incredible. Cop movie. Also, I love To Live and Die in LA. And yeah, it's just, there's so so many and i think it would be we we should we should also mention la confidential which we we touched on earlier but is is a great kind of 90s version of of 50s la yeah i think that's a great movie um there's a there's a few more i mean we didn't talk about either menace society or boys in the hood right i think those are movies that I watched constantly in the nineties. Um, that I honestly just didn't want to seem like I was trying to absorb someone else's

experience because so many of my LA movies have become about what I see in the city and what I like about it. Um, you know, Friday, uh, Friday is like a great LA movie. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Yeah. Um, Jackie Brown. We talked about Tarantino that Jackie Brown might be his most LA movie in many ways. Nightcrawler?

Yeah. I have one that's very, like, I think this is Bill Simmons' core, but has not really been talked about in a long time, which is Sleep With Me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if I've ever seen Sleep With Me. Well, it's sort of famous because it features the quentin tarantino cameo where he does the uh the top gun monologue but it's uh another kind of swingers type portrait

of people kind of like young people living in los angeles uh i also just because i don't even know if this movie still plays well but i remember being very struck by its depiction of LA is Alpha Dog, which is a Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster movie from a while back about a murder up in the Hollywood Hills that I thought was pretty cool contemporary tale. I think we'd be completely remiss if we didn't mention Clueless, which is, I think shows basically only one version of Los Angeles, but a very funny and clever approach. Less than zero. Also, similarly, only shows one part of Los Angeles.

Mulholland Drive. Yeah. Yeah. And what about Greenberg? Yeah. Chris, this has been fun. Thanks for doing this, man. My pleasure.

We're going to go now to my conversation with Karin Kusama, but first we'll take a break to hear a word from our sponsor. Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Sonos Beam. Sonos Beam is the smart, compact soundbar for your TV and newest addition to the by Sonos Beam. Sonos Beam is the smart, compact soundbar for your TV

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It surrounds you with intensity. Try Apocalypse Now with the Sonos Beam. It will blow your mind. So go to Sonos.com to learn more and order your Beam today. That's S-O-N-O-S dot com. I'm so delighted to be joined by Karin Kusama. Karin, thank you for coming in.

Thank you for having me. Karin, Destroyer is a really fascinating movie, and it feels like it's really in keeping with your work. I'm really interested, when you have a movie like this, when does it really come into view for you? When do you say, like, I know what this is going to be? Is it right after you read the script? Do you have to germinate on it?

If it's a script that i'm interested in tackling and actually directing i start having that feeling while i'm reading it um it has to have it has to pull me in somehow with that feeling of of presenting the question do i want to see it do do i see it that's kind kind of the test in a way. So even if I can't answer every question about how I see it, I have to be engaged with the desire to interpret it. So your husband co-authored the screenplay. I'm curious, Phil Hay is his name. I'm curious when he's working on something with his writing partner, are you strategizing with him or does he go off into seclusion, write and then present something to you? Yes, into the prison of their creative man den. No, actually in this case, I mean that is how they often work. They really, I've seen scripts of theirs that i've offered thoughts about um long after

they've they've been in that kind of secluded period but in the case of this project we had made the invitation already together and um and had even formed our relationship because we had made eon flux together and even though that was kind of a creatively difficult experience, it was such a good experience between us that that's what led to us reuniting as a team for the invitation. And that went so well that for Destroyer, they were really writing it with me in mind. And so they brought me in at the outline phase and talked me through just how they saw the movie. And so I was able to offer a few thoughts about areas that I would probably want to amplify or explore further along with areas that I might have been a little bit less interested in exploring or that might feel more cursory to me. And so with those thoughts in mind, they then started executing the outline into the script. And that's when they go into seclusion. But it was really nice to be weighing in to some degree a little bit earlier and not to change the direction of anything so much as to be aware of the direction or the shape

that things were taking. Was that the first time that had been the case for you since your first film? Where I was a part of the process that early? Yeah. Yeah, actually, probably, because Eon Flux was a finished script when I read it. And of course, it changed a lot, but I wasn't a part of that development. I wasn't a part of Jennifer's body's development. And I wasn't really a part of the Invitation's development. So, yeah, Destroyer is unusual in that respect.

What was that like? Was it something that you felt like you want to have more going forward? Did you like it more or was it just sort of this single incident? It's just another way to work. You know, if a script is great, part of the pleasure of it is that it doesn't feel like it needs a lot of work. In fact, if I'm reading a script and loving it, I'm not talking back to it all that much. I'm sort of under its spell. And that's part of why, as a director, I'm really pretty vocal about the fact that writers are essential creative collaborators to a director if a director

isn't writing their own work and the notion that a director sort of takes over and then makes the movie from a script not written by them is absurd um so i i'm pretty open about the fact that like great writing is the genesis of great movies. So, you know, I'm, I'm open to being a part of the process in the, in the early stages, if I have anything to offer. Sometimes I don't. I'm always interested in how partners work together professionally. Paul Dino and Zoe Kazan, I talked to them about this. I talked to John Krasinski and Emily Blunt about this this year. What is it like when you have to give Phil a note? You know, is it, do you, can you,

are you operating in kind of a different plane of your relationship when that's happening? One thing that I think tempers all of it is that I'm giving Phil and Matt the note. And so I'm really, I'm really talking to them as a team. They are, they have been working together for over two decades. They are very, have been working together for over two decades. They are very, very, very close. And they are incredibly, like, creatively aligned and also great sort of, like, bounce boards for each other. And so when I give a note, it's, I hope, in the spirit of what is this thing we're all interested in together. And I try to be mindful of the fact that it's hard to take a lot of even constructive criticism, but there's no harm in trying to be better at giving a note that can also open up a door toward a strength that the collaborators you're working with already have.

I feel like this movie very quickly entered the realm of great L.A. movies. And particularly, I Live in Echo Park. There's an interesting portrayal of what a lot of in Echo Park. It's like a really, there's a really good, there's an interesting portrayal of what a lot of LA really looks like, especially on the East side, but all over the city. Totally. And it's not an LA I've seen in a lot of movies.

I'm curious like how you found the shape of the city and where you went and how you guys scouted. What was that process like? Well, coincidentally, the film was originally titled echo park oh i didn't know that yeah um and the well because they they had started talking about this project like a lot of our our sort of indie spec projects um they talk about ideas for

years before they put pen to paper and And so they had always talked about a movie that starts with a body and has an unusual structure. And that body was meant to be face down in Echo Park Lake. And at the time, 10 years ago, when they were imagining that, Echo Park Lake was a little bit scuzzier yeah um but it's just

been so like beautifully it's ridiculous it's like been so beautifully redone yeah you can get like a sweet scone and go so bourgeois yeah yeah it's like it's such a um you know who wouldn't want to be there picturesque yes exactly and so um the combination of that happening along with as they were writing the actual script years later, you know, off of that jumping point for the location, a movie called Echo Park was released. And so they were like, okay, Echo Park is officially going away. And so that's where the LA River at Bowtie Project in Frogtown came up. But I think LA is such a, it's just such a fascinating city and we don't see enough of what it really is and how it really operates in a lot of movies. I think so much of how we experience Los Angeles is its fantasy of itself as like a, as an entertainment

nexus, which it is, but it's so much more than that. And so, Bel Air and Beverly Hills and Hollywood is just really, like, really scratching the surface. And so, we were always just like, we never want to see that in this movie. Frankly, we never want to see Santa Monica. We never want to see the stuff we've kind of seen pretty, you know, mined pretty extensively and effectively in other movies and TV shows. And so for us, it really was about the East Side and the cultural density of Los Angeles, you know, the sense of, or I guess I should say multicultural density of Los Angeles in that there are so many different communities like sort of abutting each other.

So it was always a priority that it be both set in L.A., shot in L.A., and truly in some respects legitimately about the L.A. that she was traveling in and through. Yeah, it seems credible that the characters in the movie would not never be in Bel Air. They would never be in Beverly Hills. There's no reason for them to be there. Right, right. And even the scuzzy lawyer is in Palos Verdes, not, you know, not Santa Monica. Right. Also accurate to a lot of my experiences with lawyers in LA and places like that. It's funny that you say that too, because in the past when people would ask me what it's like to live in Los Angeles, I would recommend the invitation. I would say like, this is kind of not, not entirely my experience, but like the dinner party version of my social life is not, not, they're not no cultish aspects

necessarily, but the anxiety of kind of like, let's go to someone's house. I don't know whose house it is. It's a little bit strange. I wonder, do you sense you're sort of putting together this like vision of Los Angeles in the work that you've been doing in the last few years? That's really interesting. I'm both happy to hear that and really sorry to hear that. But obviously the invitation was born out of a sense that I had short of a cult massacre, had experienced a lot of uncomfortable moments like what you're bringing up in this city, which I think is very much often a city of transplants. And it's something that I've talked with a lot of people about, that it's a hard city to get to know people because it is truly so sprawling and

overwhelming. That is not a cliche about the city. It's a truth. And you can have so much contact with people and faces, but not a lot of connection. And so I do think my vision of LA is about, to some degree, about the experience of loneliness and how we attempt to answer that loneliness or bridge it or erase it or um soothe it and um and yet it's also a city where i think so much is happening behind closed doors that we can't possibly know which is true of every place in the world but because you drive so much, you just pass sort of startling sights and scenes. And even if you wanted to intervene or even if you wanted to sort of stop and interrogate what you just saw, you can't because so frequently you're in the flow of traffic and you can't just like, you know, pull off of a busy boulevard or you know i feel desensitized to it i'm like i forget it 30 seconds later if i see something on the road i can't even remember it anymore well and that that's part of what i was attempting to defuse um if that's possible to sort of give vividness to something in this compressed thing we call a feature film.

So that, for instance, if we were to revisit that film, we could say, you know what? I've had experiences where I pass that kind of scene or I encounter that kind of person. And the film memorializes that experience in some way, you know? And I think probably the next film I make with Phil and Matt that's part of like these LA movies we want to make. Your trilogy. You're making a trilogy? Yeah, we're trying. Okay, that's cool. We'll also continue to sort of explore these lonely ports, you know? There's so many of them in this city. Yeah, I want to talk about Nicole Kidman's character, Erin, and her isolation and the way that you guys put that character together. Obviously, you know, Nicole has been nominated for awards and is recognized for her performance.

It's an amazing performance. She transforms in the movie. I'm curious, what was it about Erin that spoke to her? And then how did you guys kind of work together before you started shooting to say, this is who this person is going to be? And this is because we spend a lot of the movie just with her you know in those isolated in the car sitting alone figuring out what to do you know so how did what were those conversations like you know i think for her what drew her to the role well really caught me off guard off guard i mean in in retrospect when we've talked about the role now together you know sort of past the process of having made the film together um what she talks

about that that really excited her was how emotionally shut down the character was because she often plays people who while they might be calculating or might be um even cold their emotional life is still present whereas aaron is someone who really has to actually work to understand what she's feeling or that she is feeling and and nicole finds that fascinating about her because um she's used to playing people who or she's's drawn to people who can eventually make some sense out of what they feel. And there is something about Erin that is so disconnected, even from that kind of introspection or self-knowledge or self-awareness that she found herself curiously empathizing with, but also quite sort of puzzled by and wanting to get to know better.

You know, I think Nicole is interested by people who, and I mean, this sounds so perhaps obvious, but she's really interested in people who are really different from her. And so- How would you describe her? I would describe her as a pretty open emotional channel, curious, engaged. And there's some truth to the observation that it would appear that there is almost no one more different from Nicole than this character, Aaron Bell. That's actually quite true. And she had said to me early in the process, you know, I think we'll probably get to know each other after this is all over. And I was like, oh, that's a funny thing. And then as I started working with her, I was like, oh, I see

what you're saying because she was immersing herself in the character to a degree that I was sort of not getting open Nicole Kidman. The full depths of her personality. No, I was getting a version of Erin and really had to sort of accept that there was a point at which, when deep in shooting, that I was negotiating with the character, really, in terms of directing her

because she was very committed to staying with that, i want to say like frequency because the frequency was so demanding for her you know like there was so much tension and like hunching and rage um she found it kind of like hard to disconnect from and then like let go of so she was like you know what i'll just hang on to this get to the end and then like you know take a sort of metaphorical shower that lasts you know like a month and a half but i'm gonna cleanse myself of the character when it's all done i i don't have the energy to swing back and forth between myself and aaron i know there's been a lot of conversation

around the movie and the concept of a female anti-hero and what that means relative to a male anti-hero. The characters that she most reminded me of were Bogart characters. Oh, that's interesting. You know, like in A Lonely Place or in some of the detective movies in that, you know, there's sort of like a native wound, but it's a little bit in trying to, she's trying to stymie it in some way, but she's also trying to get to the bottom of the case. She's kind of ruthless, even though you're on the journey with her. Did you guys talk about other movies? Did you talk about other concepts that you were thinking of? I mean, we did.

I talked a lot about my relationship to Taxi Driver. And I said, you know, when I revisit that film, I'm struck by a couple of things. That it is grimy and kind of grueling at moments, but also, in my opinion, just one of the most thrillingly entertaining films ever made. And I have to ask why, because a lot of what I'm watching isn't that entertaining on the surface. And that's one factor. But the other factor is the experience of watching Travis Bickle and understanding that though the movie develops on a plot level towards something that we would call a genre narrative, it's really a character study and what I was hoping to achieve with Erin Bell. A sense that you watch her and then you start to sort of get more access to her. And that in getting the access, we're starting to understand the brokenness. And so we talked a lot about like what are the points where we really get to the heart of the matter in that

character a little with a little more um openness and then where where does she remain closed and you know it's funny for some reason i'm thinking about the scene with defranco that lawyer in palace verdes it's like even at her most enraged she's hiding there's something essential about her rage when she lashes out and on a movie level i think there's probably something kind of cathartic about it but we're still not understanding her and i think there are areas of the film though where we are allowed to understand her better and that was part of the sort of um the shape of the movie is getting you closer to to that experience of understanding her yeah and you have this kind of russian is getting you closer to that experience of understanding her.

Yeah, and you have this kind of Russian doll reveal where each section that you peel away, you show kind of why she feels the way she does. But for a long period of the time, you don't really understand what has turned her into this person. Wouldn't you say that's also true of a lot of anti-hero cop movies? Yes and no. I think audiences, I'll generalize it. It's an interesting question because audiences, when it's a masculine figure, often think that that character is never going to ultimately express specifically how they're feeling. With a female character, there's this expectation that there will be this cathartic explanation. Now, that's not necessarily what happens in your movie. It's more like because of the time structure, you have this great way of showing us kind of what the series

of events were, which is very cleverly done. But it was interesting to me the way that you put it all together. But that generalization that you bring up is, to me, the very thing I'm sort of hoping the audience that is engaging with the movie will start to interrogate with themselves yeah why do we expect or allow men to have no emotional life on screen when in fact there's actually something both one note and untruthful about it so not just like why do men get to play those characters and then still be called complicated and interesting and then when women play those kind of characters, do we find them just a turnoff? I guess I'm trying to get the audience closer to asking themselves about why they go to the movies in the first place and what they're expecting out of them and what are the things

we need out of movies. I guess I'm trying to figure that out. I like also just the way that you roll reversal with Scoot McNary's character as well, where he's a little bit more open-hearted and he's trying to understand and he's trying to be there, you know? That guy is playing a character who is just really like, he's truly struggling with that, you know, situation that he's in and it's Scoot. So he's so good at doing it. I'm curious. Your career is obviously fascinating for many reasons. And I feel like you're – tell me if I'm wrong, but I feel like – Loaded statement. Well, it seems like you're in a great place.

You've made a few great films in a row now. Like, you are back on the track of making films regularly. But specifically, the idea of a couple of, like, cliche aspects of Hollywood have been affixed to your resume, your filmography, the Sundance effect and, you know, like sophomore slump, director jail, like all these like phrases that we hear people talking about, which are some are bullshitty and some of them are true. I don't necessarily want to know what that was like to be in director jail or whatever. I'm more curious what it's like to be a person who gets cited as an example of a thing like that. Do you feel outside yourself when you see yourself written about in those ways? Well, I'm curious about the desire for narratives like that in the

first place. I mean, I think the notion of comeback is kind of interesting to me because I'm just like, I've always been here. I've always been working. I've always been here I've always been working I've always been for myself pushing things along so I don't see myself coming back I just see the attention coming back but I might be another form of a cliche by even just saying this but like having sort of tremendous almost cliched success at the beginning and tremendous, almost cliched failure second time around. And then Shades of Grey after that and something back to what I think is a kind of success, which for me is just simply personal and creative. I got myself into a situation both creatively and financially after doing a lot of TV where I could make a small feature on my terms,

get final cut, make another feature on my terms, smallish budget, but still more than the invitation and get final cut. And for me, that works. I mean, like, I'm just feeling like if there's a cliche I'm willing to ascribe to, it's that i'm a director who needs a tremendous amount of creative authority and and that doesn't make me better or worse it just it's how i work best and that may not even be a commentary on the movies themselves um i you know i do think i make better movies with more creative control afforded me um i'm sure the public or studios can disagree with me about that. Well, I feel like the last, I wouldn't ask you that question if I didn't feel like you felt like you were in kind of a good stage of your career.

Obviously, the last two films in particular, critics love and I think for people who've seen them, they just really like them. They're really intrigued by them. Yeah. I mean, I guess what it is, is that I feel like when I get to make my own movies, I find the audience that receives them. Do you know what I mean? And that I just think it gets really messy when you can't make work that you can totally stand behind. the machinery around making movies is that even making a movie like Jennifer's Body, which was largely my movie and very much a movie I was happy with, I couldn't quite stand behind it because the way it was being presented to the world was so different from the movie. It was marketed oddly.

Yeah, it's so different from the movie. And so I was a little bit like, how do I participate in the machine of marketing this movie when I don't agree with how they are framing the movie itself? It was all just so like, you know, it's like being a candidate in a political race where you don't believe in the central tenets of the party. Do you know what I mean? That is like every politician, but sure. Yeah, that's right. But to just kind of give you a sense of it's, I don't know, just how kind of normal or average it is to have this experience. It's very difficult to get to the place where I am now in which I'm saying I realize truly how I work best. And I need a tremendous amount of creative respect and freedom. This shouldn't be rocket science, but it is for me personally to have gotten here, to have figured this out for myself and to understand that I'm a much better collaborator

when I have that control. Maybe that makes me insane. I realized just as I said that, I was like, wow, that sounds like what a dictator or a tyrant would say, but I am neither of those things. Well, you know, not to draw too clear a comparison, but it's a little bit of the paradoxical Aaron Bell with a male. You know, we think of directors as these sort of tyrants, you know, the cliche vision of the John Ford figure, you know, pointing and saying, do this now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But as a woman, I'm sure that there's much more complexity in the way that you're perceived in the industry, presumably. So that makes sense. The other kind of, this is a less known phrase, but in our offices when we're talking about movies, I feel like the five-year bounce is a thing, and Jennifer's Body has really benefited from kind of the five-year bounce, where like people who have discovered it now, they love that movie now. Oh, okay, good, good. Does that seem accurate to you?

I feel like the movie has a real fandom. Oh, yeah, no, totally. It does. seem accurate to you i feel like the movie has a real fandom oh yeah no totally it does it's really found it's um it's kind of found its audience late and has been re-evaluated and reassessed and that is something that happens to movies that happens to books that happens to culture sometimes you need time to hear things or experience things or see things in a more pure way. And my sense is that minus all of the machine around Jennifer's body, people are actually experiencing the movie for its meaning as opposed to the meaning of its framing, which was faulty framing. Right. You mentioned that you did that work in television.

I'm curious kind of what the balance is for you now. Is your hope that you'll continue on the path of making these features with this modicum of control that you're describing? Or could you see yourself doing something more television episodic in the future? Well, I mean, I've done a lot of episodic and I really enjoy it. I really enjoy like being on a team where I am sort of relieved of the duties of highest up on the totem pole. There's actually something, I mean, there's something kind of nice about just speaking the language of a show. I'm trying to find that pilot that could like actually be something where I establish the language of the show. Yeah.

And that'll come. I mean, my agent disagrees with me. Yeah. Interpreted or reframed or reconceived in a way that you say, ah, you know, chalk one up to life ultimately being chaos and out of your control. Right. That's part of what I've come to understand about this business is that like try as I might to control every element, I can't. And so for me, when I really look at the reality of what I want out of this business, I want to be making movies with as much creative control as I can. That means in today's world where theatrical features are increasingly hard to get made and financed, I have to be making those movies most likely for the lowest possible number, which means I get the lowest possible number as a salary. So things like TV are a way for me to like keep doing the movies I want to do. And I'm very thankful for that bargain. Like I don't think, I don't know, I don't like being snobby about the stuff that actually allows me to do the work that I love, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does. I mean, one of my favorite things to do, and maybe this is because I watch too many things,

but is to look at an episode of Halt and Catch Fire or Billions, two shows that I like, and to see your name on it. And then to think about what this means sort of for your career, what this means for the show, what are you bringing to it? Try to understand it on that level as well. Yeah. Do you find that you can still assert some of your visual cues or your ideas absolutely yeah and i mean those are also shows with you know showrunners

who are really open to hearing hearing from the director you know i'm sure there are shows that aren't as um flexible but um those aren't the right shows for me. I like being able to say, I've thought of something, can we explore this idea? I also like working on shows where frankly, the scripts are really good to begin with. So it's not about like, oh, how do I make this terrible script work? It's more about how do I best serve this really good script? And, again, as somebody who loves writers and respects screenwriters and what they do, I'm very lucky to have worked on so many shows with so many talented writers, you know? So I'm able to just sort of see the job differently

and see the job as like, how can I use my skills to best achieve or execute or bring to life this story and these characters who have been established often long before I've come to the town. And I have to respect that. You used the word theatrical earlier. I'm interested specifically at this stage of your career, what your feeling is about making a film for a streaming platform versus, you know, making a film that is to be released in theaters like Destroyer is. Yeah. I mean, I'm such a purist in this regard. For me, a film is something you see in a movie theater on a big screen, ideally with a killer up-to-date sound system.

It is how I was introduced to the art form. And while I don't doubt that i've had really amazing movie experiences and memories that have been formed from watching a tattered vhs tape or dvd or blu-ray or streaming experience the memories that have actually like changed my cellular makeup all started with the big screen and so like i liken it to visiting notre dame for the first time you know you walk in there and you say well fuck if they didn't figure out how to make you believe in god it's spiritual it's spiritual and they said look if we're gonna make you work for it if it's gonna take 227 years to build this place and people are going to die getting here and families are going to see their sons buried in rubble making this damn cathedral, better be good. And you walk in there and you say, you know, as an atheist, I see the point. And so for me, I just feel like there are movies that just simply cannot live anywhere else but the big screen, and they were conceived that way.

And I'm not saying that's the only way I've made my movies to be seen, and I certainly accept it if somebody says, oh, I watched your movie on Netflix. I mean, so many people watched The Invitation on Netflix. I have to accept many people watched The Invitation on Netflix. I have to accept that that's one way that it happens, and I'm so thankful for the opportunity. But that being said, the people who say, oh my God, when I went to the Arclight and saw The Invitation for the first time, it took over my kind of headspace and it got in my craw. And that's what I look for from a movie and so your question brings up like literally day-to-day questions for me about what I want to do next because there's so many opportunities in streaming but they don't often speak to me simply because

the delivery system feels innately flawed and maybe that makes me really a dinosaur. Like maybe that makes me like somebody who is not going to be able to adapt very well. I don't know. Well, I think probably resolute and ethical is kind of an interesting way to frame it. You know, you have a set of belief systems. You're talking about the building of a cathedral, literally. Right, right, right. And you think that this is what movies are.

I mean, I love to ask filmmakers about that because everybody is obviously very different. And I think that there, I suspect for someone like you who has now a lot of experience and a lot of different kinds of experiences working with studios, indies, et cetera, that opportunity must also be appealing to say,

make this movie and instantaneously 20 million people can see it as soon as it's ready to go. Yes, although it's so funny, the control freak in me that really, again, it's like this control freak that can't have control ever, really, when you think about it. I mean, the irony of making theatrical features that you see in a movie theater is you don't set the volume level. You don't change the bulb when it should get changed. You're not in control of the the viewing delivery system almost ever i still

somehow it's the big screen that somehow still seems like a more ideal way to watch a movie and so even though i might have access to 20 million people if i were to make a movie with netflix and i don't discount the opportunity somehow that that doesn't land for me as quickly. But that being said, it was really instructive to make a movie like The Invitation, which Drafthouse released in 15 cities. They did a beautiful job with it. A lot of people saw it in the movie theater, and tons more saw it once it was on Netflix. We recommended it on a podcast like six months ago and just heard from a lot of people who liked watching it there.

It's one of those things where if the goal is to get people to see things, it creates this complex conversation around what ultimately do you want. Do you want people to see your films? Yes. Or are you more concerned with the way you think it should be? It's interesting it's a it's a really i mean it's kind of like you know ethan hawke's church and first reformed versus cedric the entertainer's church yes you know like well everyone's doomed in that movie so well hopefully right but there's a sense that like you know on the side of faith there is no villain there it's just a question

of your delivery system um obviously there are villains in that movie but they're just the people who actually just deform faith and wreck the environment but um and we have plenty of those in real life to use as examples but i mean i think for me there are certain projects where i get why they would go just directly to a streaming outlet. But I'm at an interesting moment where, as I've made now my last couple of movies, I think what people see in me, for anyone who engages with my work in a positive way, is that I make movies with the big screen in mind. And for that reason, I'm in a moment where, because I have a rare opportunity to continue to try and do that, I'm just like all my chips all in. I'm just going to keep making theatrical features as long as they exist and as long as they will have me.

Do you know what I mean? I do. Can you tell me anything about your next cathedral? It feels kind of like an epic. It's about making movies, and it's about… Truly an epic um it's about making movies and it's about truly an la experience yeah it is it is and you know it's like um about the act of making something so if andre rublev were um not quite so devotional and maybe a little more fun. It's about the act of having to, you know, make a dream and put it up on screen. The last filmmaker who was here who referenced Tarkovsky was Paul Schrader and you just referenced First Reformed. So there's some nice circular logic.

That's really funny. I love it. Cara and I end every episode by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they've seen. So what is the last great thing you've seen um okay it's so funny because i feel like what that means is i keep giving props to the exact same thing that is the last great thing i've seen that's okay just be honest mandy um yeah you know i just i loved mandy i loved mandy i i i dragged my husband to see it on the big screen just a couple weeks ago because it was here in LA. That is a big screen movie. It's a big screen movie, and that's the thing. It's like I really respond to those movies that get me out of the house and that I put in my calendar and they stay in my calendar and I live by the law of going to the movie theater to see. And so something about that movie, I was like,

oh no, I need to see it again on the big screen. And so making that effort and introducing my husband to it and saying, you know, this is a version of feminism that I can get behind in a kind of macho exploitation flick. There's something fun about that to me. I love that answer. Karin, thank you for doing this. Thank you.

It's really a pleasure. Thanks again to Karin Kusama. And please tune into this feed next week on Tuesday. Amanda and I will have a new Oscar show. We'll be breaking down this host, Mishigas, and we'll be talking about Kevin Hart again, I'm sure no doubt, but hopefully some of the great things that we'll look forward to in the nominations as well. See you then.

Thanks again for listening to this week's episode of The Big Picture, which has been brought to you by Sonos. Sonos Beam is the smart, compact soundbar for your TV and newest addition to the easy-to-use Sonos Home sound system. I have been using my Sonos Beam endlessly as I watch movies every day, preparing for Oscar season. I've got screener upon screener, and I'm delighted to have the Sonos Beam surrounding me as I listen and watch all of these movies. So go to Sonos.com to learn more and order your Beam today.