The New Yorker Radio Hour - Guillermo del Toro and Bradley Cooper on the Enduring Appeal of Noir

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Guillermo del Toro has been called the leading fantasy filmmaker of this century. His movies include “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “Hellboy,” and “The Shape of Water,” which won four Academy Awards in 2018, including Best Picture and Best Director. He joined David Remnick to talk about his new film, “Nightmare Alley,” along with Bradley Cooper, who plays Stanton Carlisle, a grifter who seems to want to do the right thing but is unable to resist the pull of the con. Based on a 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham, “Nightmare Alley” is del Toro’s first film that isn’t somewhere in the fantasy genre; its dark depiction of American life is grounded in film noir. “We went to the root of it, American existentialism,” del Toro says, citing sources like the novel “The Day of the Locust” and the paintings of Edward Hopper. “It’s a discovery of America reckoning with its own ideals and its reality,” and a sense of tragic fate. “We knew that we needed to create not an up-and-down structure but a very steady, inexorable ramp.” The film, which was released in theatres in December, during the surge of the Omicron variant, begins streaming February 1st. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Guillermo Del Toro has been called the leading fantasy filmmaker of our time. His movies include Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy, and the Shape of Water, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Nightmare Alley is Del Toro's first film that isn't somewhere in the fantasy genre. There's no magic, no monsters, although some of what has... happens has got to be described as monstrous. The movie is based on a crime novel from 1946 by a writer, not terribly well known, named William Lindsay Gresham. Bradley Cooper plays a

grifter who gets a job at a carnival, and there he learns the secrets of how a mentalist deceives an audience, and he tries to parlay those tricks into a bigger and much more dangerous swindle. Nightmare Alley begins streaming next week, and I spoke with Bradley Cooper, who was also a producer of the film, and the director, Guillermo del Toro. Guillermo, this film is based on a novel from the 40s, and I wonder what led you to this story. You have all the source material and all the stories in the world that you could choose from. Why this?

Well, I think what attracted me is that it reflects where we are in terms of truth and lies and the erasure of that barrier, the sort of charlatans that we see rising. and a populist discourse that we want to hear, and also the reality of this character, this character that is on the verge of losing everything in two seconds, these are things that I feel in the air and anxiety that I think is very now.

And I know this guy, I understand this guy, and I felt his downfall and his revelation happened at the same time towards the end of his journey in a very brutal way. And I like that. I like the idea of this character discovering

truth that liberates him as he falls down. So I think what you're saying, in a maybe guarded way or a veiled way, is to some degree, that Bradley Cooper, in the guise of Stanton Carlisle is playing Donald Trump in some way. That was an inspiration for you. No, not really.

It goes beyond politics for me. What I think is what part of Stand on Carlyle is alive in all of us, and latent and alive right now. You know, I think that it's a character that we can identify in every sphere of our lives, intimate, and it can be as simple as you courting likes and dislikes and followers on social media. It can be a spiritual thing you're going through,

but there is the charlatanism and what they call shot eye in mentalism which means you believe the lies you say

you tell are very much alive right now and the way we curate our sources to only confirm our bias basically it's a very strange moment

in human communication the first half of the film is set in a carnival it's an incredible incredibly vivid portrayal of the carnival world of tent shows and freak shows and rides and mirrors and all those things that probably a present generation of Americans has not seen in its kind of most elemental form that I barely remember from childhood as kind of local tent shows that we had was I was

witness to but it sounds like this was a very vivid part of your growing up that you had some access to this kind of yes in fact in fact the Spider Woman that appears in the movie is taken verbatim from the speech I heard when I was about six or so, even younger. I have the photograph of the day we went to see the Spider Woman. I was turned into this sorrowful shape, for I disobeyed my parents. Well, tell me about the carnivals of your youth. What did they look like? What did they feel like? Who were they for? Well, they were almost exactly what you're seeing on the screen. They had this mixture of grime and like stained wonder, you know?

They were really frayed wonder. And they felt like that as a kid. I sensed the tragedy and the pain behind the lights and the colors. And, you know, I was always a very observing kid, and I could see the tragedy on the painted faces or the barking, the attractions, the wonders that you were about to witness. Remember that this exhibit has been presented. represented solely in the interest of science and education.

Where did it come from? Is it a beast or is it a man? Come on it. And I thought it was important to have Stan from a place that was very honest about being dishonest, but also very human in the textures to the city. And, you know, he goes from one place that was horribly alive in a way, very imperfectly alive, to a place that is... taxidermy of humanity, which is the city.

And in that journey, have him change and acquire everything that he would have hoped for on the beginning of the film, and it's not enough. In an early scene, Stanton is looking in a storm after dark for the geek, this poor deranged man who's exploited by the carnival owner. He's escaped, and Stanton finds him hiding out in a carnival tent. Yes. the beauty of this moment and this was very deliberate

this is the first time Stan speaks in the whole movie and the first time he utters his words he's in complete shadow we don't see his face against a beating heart of a red tent in the background

in an interior of the fun house where rain permeates the tarp and is raining inside and in that fun house the whole journey of the movie is a microcosmos. You see everything he's going to go through, the mirrors, the sins because he's dedicated, it's called the House of Darnation. And he's having a moment with the geek,

which is a dark mirror of himself in a strange way. And he's saying clearly to the audience, because it's his first day in the carnival, and he has been given orders. You've got to blow the whistle, call everybody, and he's saying, look, I'm not going to obey. Hey, pal, everybody's looking for you. I'm not going to blow the whistle.

You didn't do nothing against me. Let's come on now. Come on. I'm not going to hurt you. And the fun house is at the same time very real to what you could find in the late 30s, early 40s, and at the same time incredibly beautiful and almost symbolic of the journey. The first couple of things that are repeated through the movie mirrors. circles and eyes looking at Stan, which will happen over and over and over and over again,

are first ciphered in this scene. I'm talking with director Guillermo del Toro and the actor of Bradley Cooper. More in a moment. This film has often been compared to and put in the category of film noir, but it's not one of Venetian blinds and trench coats and things like that. There's no Fred McMurray vibe going on. No, we went to the root of it and that it really American existence. You know, is that period in which you start having literature that the debunks, the American dream, you know, in the clash of industrial and urban living.

And you have things like they shoot horses don't day or Miss Lonely Hearts or Day of the Locust. And this novel fits perfectly in that period. In the painting, you have Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood. It's a discovery of America reckoning with its own ideas. else and its own reality, Edward Hopper, you name it. And I think it's important to say this because you mentioned something that people associate with noir and I love in noir, which is even grander than that because it's the inexorability of that ending.

It's inexorable. You know it's coming and the way he advances towards it. Without revealing the ending, we knew that we needed to create not an upset. and downs structure, but a very steady, inexorable ramp of a movie that ended up and was a prologue, the last couple of minutes of the film, which are a close-up that reveals a whole world. I'm glad you say that, because over the course of the film, there are moments when Stanton seems to have some goodness in him, to have an escape route to happiness, and yet he can't seem to take this off-ramp toward goodness. Let's play a clip here of when Stanton first goes to visit

his antagonist, the psychiatrist, Lilith Ritter, who's played by Kate Blanchett. Is that why you're here? Look at me. I'm just thinking that if you help me, we can make quite a big dent in this town. We? Mm-hmm. You give me something on that judge, any of the other higher-ups. I'll make it worth your while. You think you got something big enough or interesting enough for me?

Well, nothing matters in this goddamn world, but though, and you get that raw. All right. I'll give you something. In exchange for the truth. Truth about what? Yourself. I give you a little information, and you tell me the truth. I hear the sound of somebody getting set up in a film noir here.

Bradley, tell me about that scene. Well, we learn as an audience member prior to that scene, as he's going up the elevator, that he's rehearsing something. and he's saying you and I can make a pretty big dent in this town and we watch him rehearse it five times by himself as in a private moment in the elevator i was thinking you and i can make a dent in this town you and i can make a pretty big dent in this town i was thinking you and i can make a pretty big dent in this town which really clues us into what his uh his objective to visit this psychiatrist that he has just uh won up the night prize

at the Copa show when she tried to reveal his grift to the audience. And instead of him trying to take her down, we realize, like, oh, he wants now to use her and take another bite of a bigger apple here in Buffalo, of the rich people and grift them. You're sort of catching somebody in like the flame of their, I wouldn't say addiction or not addiction, but they're running away from, who they are or desperately trying to fill the hole, which cannot be filled, in a joyless way. He doesn't do it.

He's not in the elevator like, oh, I'm going to do this. And, you know, I'm about to have my big audition. You know, it's like all those things are gone. They're all gone. We're watching a man who's, and that's what breaks my heart as a viewer is. And I think that's part of why I think the audience can connect with Stan because there is a human sadness, there's a quality of him being in a, it saddens me. You know, he's vulnerable. One thing that film noir always has is a visual feel, whether it's shadows or blinds or

whatever it is. And here, unless I'm crazy, throughout the entire film or almost all of it, it's always raining. It's always snowing. There's some, that, that heavy weather is always around. When you're conceiving a film, how much of the conception of a, film is beyond story, but is rather those kind of atmospheric or visual. I must tell you, the visual aspect of this film was solid since pre-production all the way to post-production. It was really gelled in my mind early, early on. We knew that we were going to light it. The cinematographer and I called it a black and white film in color. We had the contrast ratio of expressionist film. We had the contrast radio of a classical movie, you know.

It's so achingly beautiful that it allows almost the degree of metaphor to what is otherwise an incredibly realistic, emotional journey. Wasn't it a temptation to do it in black and white? In fact, I think I heard that you were going to show it in black and white. We are showing it. We are launching it, the Black and White Road Show, so to speak. We are expanding to hundreds of theaters in America, Because what I love is this, you have a moral weight and a grittiness on black and white that Bradley and I love and recognize in films like The Elephant Man.

And in the color, you have a very complete, almost bewitching, seductive universe that keeps moving forward. There are two different experiences. Now, everything has been hit by the pandemic, every realm of life. But you had to suspend work for... half a year, right? You started filming and then suspended work. What did you do for six months, Bradley? Well, it wound up being a wonderfully fruitful time for Nightmare Alley.

We all got together and we worked on, we shot the second half of the film first and we got to work on it and learned and discovered so much that we could then explore in the first half of the film that would pay off. And the other truth is, is, as it affected everybody, post-pandemic, a lot of people, we just were different people. And that, I think, really impacted everything we did. How do you feel like you're a different person after the pandemic? I think it reaffirmed things that I may have known were important cerebrally, and it sort of

brought it down to an emotional sense of knowledge, I would say. If I were going to boil it down to one sort of element. There was a grace and humility, if you want. I mean, these are words that are easily said, but they're very deeply experienced. But it also made us, or pores opened to a condition that was very much the condition the movie demanded. We were blessed to shoot the colder part of the movie, the more sort of elegant and velvety part of the movie first, and then made permeable by this experience and approached the carnival

which was completely a different beast. It's almost like two films joined together by the experience of Stan. I mean, in Germo, remember we talked about, we said, well, we could release a 30-minute movie. We were like, oh my God, this was getting to be so good. And then we said, we should even, if the words would happen, let's release what we have,

Because we loved it so much. Now, the film business has been hit by COVID in a very tough way, and this film was released in the mid-7. Amacron's surge, and many films don't benefit all that much by the difference between a small screen and a large screen. I have to think this is one that does. Does it cause you great pain that a lot of people will possibly, possibly miss it on a large screen and watch it on the laptop.

Look, I really believe that one of the great blessings was that we released the black and white when we released it. So a lot of people are able to continue experiencing the film, even if it's in color and HBO, they'll experience the black and white on the big screen. We've been going to the Q&As for this sort of road show that we have. and it's so beautiful to see the theaters packed. And we started with just a handful of cities and now we're going to be in hundreds of theaters.

That's really a journey that is worth it. And I find the film, you know, the ultimate journey of the film is better experience, better on the big screen, but it's so commanding in the way that we are ambitious about theme, we're ambitious about reality and humanity, and then also on the scope of the sort of cinematic experience. And that will translate no matter what.

Guillermo de Toro and Bradley Cooper. Thank you so much. A pleasure. Thank you, David. Guillermo del Toro directed Nightmare Alley as well as writing the screenplay, and Bradley Cooper is one of the stars. The film begins streaming next week on Hulu and HBO Max. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today.

I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Brita Green, Cala Leah, David Krasnow, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. With help from Alison McAdam, Harrison McAdam, Keithline and Meng Fei-Chen and guidance from Emily Boutin.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.