The Press Box - 'The Big Picture' — Amy Schumer’s Career Arc, and ‘Snatched’ Director Jonathan Levine (Ep. 315)

Episode Date: June 1, 2017

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey discusses comedic storytelling and Amy Schumer’s career arc, from stand-up comedian to movie star, with Jason Zinoman of The New York Times (0:50). Then Sean is joined by filmmaker Jonathan Levine (‘The Wackness,’ ‘50/50’) to discuss collaborating with Schumer on his new comedy, ‘Snatched’, his own career arc, finding his path, and dealing with bad reviews (14:20). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, I'm really excited to tell you about a new podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. On Monday, June 5th, we're launching something called Binge Mode. It's a podcast dedicated to re-watching an expert analysis on our favorite TV shows. For the next six weeks, Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion, our mother of dragons, and The Maester, will dive deep into HBO's Game of Thrones, from theories to history to their best impersonations of Robert Brathean, watch along with our Thrones experts. The 10 first episode's binge mode dropped Monday, June 5th. They correspond to season one of Game of Thrones.

then every Monday after that will release a new batch of 10 episodes leading up to the premiere of Game of Thrones Season 7. You can subscribe to Binge Mode Now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast. Hello and welcome to The Big Picture, a channel 33 movies podcast. I'm Sean Fentasy editor-in-chief of The Ringer. Today on the show, I'll be talking with Jonathan Levine, director of the Wackness 50-50, the recent Amy Schumer comedy Snatched, as well as the pilot for Showtime's news series, I'm dying up here. But first I'm joined by Jason Zinneman, who writes the On Comedy column for the New York Times, and also wrote the recent book Letterman, The Last Giant of Late Night, which I recommend everyone pick up right now.

Jason, thank you so much for being here today. Great to be here. So, Jason, you've been covering Amy Schumer, the star of Snatched, for six plus years, essentially since you've been writing the column. Tell me a little bit about, you know, what you saw from her in the early days and how you've seen her evolve as a comedy figure. Yeah, I mean, I saw her at Gotham Comedy Club. and the first person to write about her in the New York Times was probably the second column that I wrote about comedy. And she seems like a, you know, particularly, you know, gifted storyteller

and deliver a joke, established character on stage. And then I ended up a whole month, a lot of time with her right before she came, famous on television, and even then, she watched her now become, you know, I think she was arguably the biggest, most, not to be a movie star. you know, she's, I've seen this huge, it's like

arrogant to say, but I can't, I'm not actually not surprised. And that's not just because she, I thought she was really talented and really funny. But in spending time with her, what she also is, is ambitious, and the

consumers, not interviewed lesions of comedians and artists generally. One question that I often ask for doing a longer profile, you know, I'm talking about childhood. I said, what kind of high school kid were you? What click were you in? They were a nerd. And Amy Schumer's the only person who's ever answered this question this way. She's the only person I've interviewed who said, I thought that was so refreshing

for two reasons. One, I think it shows you that even when she was little, she wasn't some weird quirky goth kid. She was a theater kid who definitely loves theater and loved to act. But she was in the pot of the crowd, even in a high school. Second of all, it sounds countering intuitive, but at the place where she is now, saying you're a popular kid is actually the least cool thing that you can do. The cool thing is to say, oh, I was never popular. I was, you know, I was ugly and an outcast. And what that said to me is that she really does, even if it's a cliche, if you're a comedian coming from where she comes from, is, and I think you see that in her stand-up as well. She doesn't mind looking bad. And that answer,

Frank, that answer is, you know, I think I wouldn't make her look bad, but in the context of, like, celebrity interviews, that's not the quickest way to get sympathy. I feel like she's made a lot of decisions like giving an answer like that, that she's kind of come under fire for. You know, what have you observed about the criticism that Amy Schumer has received, and, you know, what do you make of all that in the last couple of years? When I was doing the story about in the writer's room, you know,

it took like two or three months, maybe. And I kept a search on Twitter. And, you know, it's one thing when you hear about women's stand-up comedians have it tougher than men, and they take more abuse online. And when I actually did that for a couple months, I actually got to see it, like, how extreme it is. The amount, this is before, you know, even inside Amy Schumer comes around. But the amount she takes on a daily basis, even back then, about how she's, looks about it.

It just doesn't compare to her male equivalent. And now then you put her in the context of a superstar stand-up comic and the movie star. And so, you know, that's not to say that all the criticism of her is not earned or is not true or isn't doesn't have, you know, points to make. But I do think there is a real double standard. And a kind of, when you're in the realm that she is, which is the sort of trying to be a big movie star, a stand-up movie star. It's almost like becoming a big that you have to run.

And I think she gets hit from it from both of that. You know, she gets hit by it the same way you could make an analogy to, you know, to how he couldn't get hit. In her position, she earns that, and people should she deserve problems, I think, have to do with what she's trying to do now is being stand-up, who plays, has big, high-profile special release, and be a big movie star. there's very few people that have done that about hurting one with those two

which he put up at Netflix the latest Netflix special which wasn't that far a huge amount while you're also putting the other a sketch show you know that's a lot of products you're putting out and it feels like Jason

it feels like when men are that prolific you know particularly with Louis CK we've definitely he was lauded for that you know he was lauded for his ability to write a special year and to also keep creating Louis and it does seem like there's been a little bit more Schumer fatigue and criticism around the fact

that she's been creating a lot of stuff at the same time. Does that seem accurate to you? I think it is accurate. I think there's one is that even Louis, as busy as he was, isn't in the ball game of headlining huge movies. That's right. He's putting a TV show out. But he really is a

different at this point. You know, she's in the, her compare, her analog is Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Eddie Murphy. That's the game she's planning it right now. And the second point is that, you know, is sort of the political one. Starting with her TV show, you know, some of her success became from her feminist angle.

And then she became a big, you know, she came active in terms of gun control and then supporting Hillary, et cetera. And that, of course, is going to polarize her audience. Because, of course, she's, her, when she goes to play stadiums and, you know, she's so big, unlike, you know, say, Tintanaro or someone of that, you know, a small, she's drawn. Trump supporters too. So she's being very political. Louis has moments where he's been outspoken and political, but I would say his work is less so.

So, you know, a lot of her choices, you know, make the target. It's a fascinating thing. We'll have to see what happens with Amy's film career. There's kind of no telling if the persona that she's created is something she'll be able to sustain. Do you think that, you know, the sort of boozy, promiscuous, you know, self-effacing, but kind of goofy persona that she's built is something that she can be doing 10, 20, 30 years from now?

A challenge for her is you've got to evolve. I think parts of that she can keep, but I think that any great comedian is drawn from their life. So, you know, what she's like at, you know, 45 or 50 is going to be totally different. I mean, it depends. I think it's possible for her to still play that role if she just wants to be a movie star I mean Adam Sandler's pretty much had the same

a similar persona but even he I would say has evolved but certainly if it's in her stand-up she would need to I think adjust to where she's at in her life just like anything that's a stand-up would I mean look her first movie was a massive hit and her second movie I would say

you know we'll still see it's not really a sophomore I mean it's a terrible sophomore slump I mean she I think she's made like 32 million. It's been successful. I mean, broadly it's been successful. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's sort of you would think by the reviews that it had, the reviews are not been good. But again, if you're comparing it to Sandler and Will Ferrell and stuff, those guys made a lot of movies that critics didn't like to.

It's true. It's something that Levine and I talked about about the prospect of working with a comedian who you know may not get great reviews after he's gotten largely good reviews his whole career. And it's different when you're working with a big comedian star, right? Definitely, definitely. I think, I think, you know, as, the second effort, which is, again, a real Amy Schumer vehicle. I mean, Goldie Hawn is the one-selling tickets there. In a way, this is a better test and trade. In that movie, you really is getting it. To the extent that this thing, if this movie does well internationally and makes, you know, 60 million, 70 million, whatever it is, I think Polly was going to look at this and

be like, this is a real movie star. She can make, you know, close to 200 million with good reviews and everything working right. And then even if everything doesn't work right, her name still is bankable. Let's transition really quickly. I want to ask you about something else that Jonathan Levine made. He directed the pilot of I'm Dying Up Here, which is Showtime's new show about comedy, stand-up comedy in 1970s, L.A. You know, I know you are a student of the genre.

I'm curious, you know, what you think about putting stand-up comedy on TV or in movies and, you know, what the successes and failures of that can be. I mean, I think there's a lot of possibility in it, but the problem right now is there's kind of a glut of it. There's been so much of it now. And you're going to have, you know, also there's this movie big stick.

which is coming out. The scene where the stand-of-comic is, first of all, the scene with the stand-of-comic bombs or the scene, and then he leaves his material and starts telling the truth. We've seen that so many times. The challenge for these shows is going to be, all right, why another stand-up comedy narrative? You know, the advantage of it is that you can tell a romantic story and then know that you could have a few laughs in the movie, TV or movie is that, you know, you know you can rely on a few jokes on the stand-of-comedy stuff. So there's a, now that there's just set in this interesting

time period, which is a real sort of legendary period. And yet, it's not about the people who you, it's not about Leno and Letterman and Misty Shore, you know, although there's kind of a Misty Shore stand-in. It's competing with all the actual people, including the book that it's based on, which is an excellent book, by the way. It will be interesting to see how it's see you. Yeah, I think just like with Amy Schumer, the jokes are going to have to work for people to be completely entertained. Jason, thank you very much for joining me today and sharing your expertise. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. It was great to be here. All right. When we come back, I'll be talking with Jonathan Levine. I'm very happy to be joined by Jonathan Levine today, director of Snatched, among many

other films. Jonathan, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Okay, Jonathan, put me in your mind right now. You've just finished the night before your comedy with Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Great movie. Thank you. How do you make a decision as a Hollywood filmmaker about what to do next? I'm very curious. It's almost a reactive decision. I mean, the night before was a very easy decision because it was a script that I wrote.

And then I found myself in a position to sort of, I wanted to take that next leap as far as having more people see my movies, as far as doing something very commercial. But I didn't necessarily want to do something that was deeply imperfect. which is sometimes how you get into, like when you go up a scale, you're kind of in a very non-filmmaker world. You're really catering to a lot of different things. Comedy is a great place to sort of expand your scale and do an original story. So Amy had just kind of finished train wreck and I had read the script and I thought this is a great way to sort of apply. I thought there was a great core of heart to it and also the ability to kind of work on a bigger canvas. So I thought this is a great way to sort of expand my skill set

and also just kind of make that jump to the next level as far as like a poppy kind of commercial movie. Was there ever a time when you were going to do not a comedy? Did you toy with doing pure drama or a franchise kind of thing? I mean, I've definitely like done like sort of rounds on the comic book movies. And at the end of the day, they always kind of felt like a weird fit. Like I definitely like took a few steps deep into like the Spider-Man world. because I thought that on a certain level that that was like, it's a kid from New York.

It was like there was a world in which my having made the whackness, like, made me a very good fit for that. But at the end of the day, that didn't feel like a good fit. And so, no, I mean, I think the thing is it's like if you want to expand what you do, you sort of have to accept the box that they're giving you a little bit. You know what I mean? I can't just be like, I'm going to do a big drama because that's not necessarily what my kind of filmography lends itself to. So it would either be a comic book movie or a comedy if that's what I wanted to do, and it was at the time. So that's interesting, though, because I think right after the whackness, I think you could have said you could have made any kind of movie, really.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That movie has a lot of different colors in it. Right. So do you feel like you were now on a trajectory as a comedy? filmmaker? No. Well, maybe I was, but I'm derailing it. Which is kind of what every, which is kind of what every film is. It's like an, it's an interest in not being placed in a box, but it's also an interest in getting more people to see your movies, making more money. Like, I mean, there are also pragmatic things that, that apply to this stuff. But I think that for me, now I have, you know,

this movie and I have this Showtime pilot, and then I have my sort of background which is kind of varied in all over the place, it'll open some doors, it'll probably close some doors, but then I also have the opportunity to write my own thing, which I haven't done in a few years, so there's always that. So there's, like, a lot of, obviously, compromises that would have to come with making, say, Spider-Man,

but there's also a lot of things that you have to manage when you're working with a huge star personality like Amy. Yeah. What was your first meeting with her like? You know, what did you guys talk about? How did you figure out if you worked together? Yeah, we talked about our own relationships with our moms, actually, because that was kind of one of the most important parts

of this movie to me. And we got along very well. And, I mean, to say that there are compromises when you're working with Amy, it's not necessarily true because the way I work is so collaborative that nothing feels like a compromise. It just feels like a shared vision. And especially on this movie where I'm a guy directing a movie about women, I really needed to lean on them a lot. But that's something I learned from working with Seth and Evan, which is like it sort of

becomes a mind-share kind of group-think thing. and at the end of the day, I'm the filmmaker and I can veto things or not, but I also have all these people to lean on. So it doesn't necessarily feel like a compromise when you're doing comedy. What is the writing process like with someone like Amy? Katie Diplett is the screenwriter of the movie, but there's obviously on set. I'm sure there's a lot of things that are changing.

You guys are reimagining. What is that experience like? Yeah, I mean, it's not just on set. It's like Katie wrote and rewrote and rewrote and then Amy and Kim, her sister wrote and rewrote and rewrote. And then we got to Hawaii, which is where we shot. and we would all kind of sit down together and you pass drafts back and forth

and you sort of share this final draft document and it gets a little confusing so you need to use the asterisks in the margins but then what we would do is we would sit down with Amy and Goldie like two weeks before and we would go through that we would page through the script and we would take their notes

and then we would kind of rework it and it's a constant writing and rewriting process that your right goes all the way on to set and when something's not working on set we kind of workshop it in the moment come up with different jokes, come up with different even intentions for the scene. So it's a very, very fluid process.

And everyone sort of feels ownership over the script. And to Katie's credit, she was fine with that. I mean, I think that it was a little more than she's used to on her movies with Paul. But, you know, you have people like Amy and Kim who are incredibly talented writers, just amazingly talented and funny people. It would be a crime not to let them collaborate on the script.

I know you did a lot of that with Seth and Evan on the night before. Is that something you had done on your previous movies, too, or were they more like locked environments? Or with something like Warm Bodies, you had something that was really hard and ready to go when you were shooting. Well, Warm Bodies, I was like the only one who wrote on it. So I didn't have it on Warm Bodies. And on the night before, I mean, and Seth and Evan do this on pretty much all their movies. And I'm just waiting for it. I'm not on the next one because we're going to shoot in like three months.

But, you know, at a certain point, it's like, oh, this doesn't make sense and this doesn't work. at this. And it was like, I remember about two months before Seth was like, I think you should re-outline. And I was like, what the fuck, dude? Like, that's terrifying. I'm like prepping locations that we may never shoot and just pretending that we're going to shoot them so that the whole like movie doesn't think I'm insane. And then in the meantime, I'm re-outlining. And it's just great that they're so rigorous. I was very frustrated in the moment. But then at a certain point, like, Seth came into New York, we were all in New York, Evan came, and Kyle and Ariel, who had helped me actually a lot on, at the last minute, on warm bodies with helping me rewrite the voiceover, which actually made the movie kind of take a quantum leap forward. So anyway, we all kind of crowded into this room, and Seth, the place Seth was renting, and we wrote day and night for like a week.

I remember I would leave his house at, like, sometimes the sun was coming up. That's kind of be really scary. I mean, do you have to tell the studio that you're re-outlining? What about the apparatus around you that you have to manage? Well, the great thing about Seth and Evan and our producers and financiers had worked with them on several movies, including 50-50, and this is the end and stuff. That, you know, they just, no one is ever going to be mad at you for continuing to work on the script. Even if it sometimes creates some inefficiencies, the way that their movies are built are really support that kind of fluidity. And as a filmmaker, you have to just roll with the punches.

And it's, on a certain level, it's amazing because you realize that you can kind of do anything. It's very empowering. On another level, it's kind of a bummer because you can't take that sort of really long view visual approach to a movie. But at the end of the day, like the night before is a movie that benefits more from those rewrites than it would have from whatever five cool shots I missed out on. But it is scary. I mean, I would leave the house and just I would be freaking the fuck out, definitely. But I'm really glad we did it. But you're throwing yourself back into that fire again.

Well, yes. But it's also like, it was a little. little different because it was something I wrote and so it was that that kind of thing of giving away your it was it was not just the intensity of working those late hours and all that stuff it was kind of just like letting go a little bit of my pre-existing version of that movie and I liked the movie that was evolving so it was fine but it was a little scary but in this situation this is going to be more akin to i think 50-50 whereas we've had it's like we've had a script for a very long time it hasn't really changed that much it's it works and we're continuing to work on it.

We're going to do a table read in a couple weeks. Like, we're going to sort of hit some benchmarks a little earlier in the process so that we don't find ourselves in that situation because I don't think anyone wants to do that again. So I think of you as a very personal filmmaker because of the whackness. Yeah. What is it like trying to balance putting your touch on stories that you haven't written? How do you feel about the concept of being a director for hire

versus making something that originates with you? I mean, I like doing both those things. So when you ask, like, how do I choose doing snatch? Snatch was a reaction to having done a semi-personal movie that I wrote and just getting sick of writing and just being like, I just want to do something that someone funny who I know, like I know they're funny and I know it's going to be funny. And I just want to do that and not even think about it. And the Showtime show that I did was this, you know, Dave Flabat, this amazing writer, this very kind of like smart dude who just wrote a very insightful and very different than anything I would ever write, almost literary, like, script. and I was so excited to do that. So you kind of have to find the personal in the sort of for hire gig, you know, like otherwise it's just not going to be that interesting to you. And it's also, you're just not going to be the right person to do it.

So in Snatch, it was just, I just had a son. And I was starting to think almost existentially about, you know, what it means to be a parent and how I treated my mom and all this stuff. And so it sort of just came along at that time. And I thought, okay, I can kind of view it through the lens of that. And in the Showtime show, I was always a huge fan of stand-up comedy and always kind of liked viewing comedy through this kind of dark lens and whether it be the whackness or 50-50,

this sort of combination of comedy with this kind of sardonic view on the world. So that felt like a good fit, too. I think you always just have to find something. Otherwise, there's no reason for you to be doing it. Let's talk about I'm dying up here. That's the pilot that you're talking about on Showtime. It's very good. Thank you.

And I think what's interesting about it is you've created essentially a parallel universe to reality. I have a lot of questions about how you go about doing something like that. Obviously, the writer is in charge of creating this world. But how do you execute against a Los Angeles that you're essentially recreating but also creating a new reality attached to it? Well, it's weird. I don't know if this just sort of happened. I mean, what I did was I used references that were all filmic. So I would, my references would be, it wouldn't, I wouldn't be looking at like images of 70s L.A.

I'd be looking at like a Mazzersky movie. Right. So I think it's sort of just that kind of maybe enabled it to, that maybe helped with the sort of reality, not reality version of it. It's sort of this, I mean, these guys were almost living in their own cinematic universe, so it kind of made sense to do it that way. And then I would do like, I just ripped off like all these great filmmakers. So I ripped off Scorsesey, I ripped off Boogie Night. which is like the same thing. It's like a copy of a copy of a copy,

but it just sort of seemed, if we had the grounded performances and the grounded script, that it seemed like it would kind of blend in this weird good way. I ripped off Oliver Stone. I ripped off Mizzerski. I ripped off Altman.

Is that something that before you start a movie, you say, I need to watch these 10 movies to get prepared for this? Always. Always, yeah. So, like, for Snatched, it was like, it was like 21 Jump Street. It was everything from 21 Jump Street

to Fitzcarold. It was like all these. And they're always so weird, you know, and because I like to sort of throw them all together and shake it up and then just sort of see what happens. And it's a shorthand that I can have with the DP. It's a shorthand that I can have with our editor. And yes, I'm dying up here.

I watched, you know, Bob and Carol Ted and Alice. I watched King of Comedy, of course. I watched Boogie Nights. I watched what else? A lot of really, really cool. Oh, a lot of Cassavetes, too. The killing of a Chinese bookie. I watched killing of a Chinese bookie.

Yeah. And in fact, like, I think a lot of, like, the red light in the club stuff was just stolen directly from that. And then you kind of add to it this, like, a dash of boogie nights. And then you can kind of turn the knobs up and down in the editing room. But those are the things you have. And they're going to be part of the DNA of it. And they sort of also let you know how many risks you can take because you start to feel like a pussy if you're like, this shot is too crazy. And then you're like, well, boogie nights.

Like, come on. And it worked there. So may as well try it. What's your relationship to TV at this point? is something you can see yourself doing more of? I love doing TV. I've had kind of mixed success in it. I did a TV show that we shot here.

I mean, we had the writers room here called Rush, and I was sort of half in it, half out, and I had written the pilot script, and then we sort of got into, it was like before pre-Mr. Robot USA. Blue Sky's time. It was Blue Sky time. And I, you know, whatever.

It was just not a good, not a good, situation, and I was not necessarily that psyched with the finished product. With, I'm dying up here, I'm really stoked with it. And I'm doing another TV show with Nas at BET. Really? Yeah. I see you have Elmatic. Elmatic's on the board.

Yeah. Elmatic is an important document at the ringer. It is the greatest album ever, maybe. Purple Rain, I like to. Well, Purple Rain may be getting more votes these days for sentimental reasons, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what are you doing with Nas? We're doing a TV show about his kind of childhood

and his sort of the origin story of becoming Nas. Really? Like docu drama? Yeah. Okay. I think. I mean, we've been doing it for so long. I don't have any comments that it's ever going to happen,

but it's supposed to happen. It started out as me just wanting to kind of like get to sit in a room with him. But we've, you know, I wrote a script and it's supposedly going to happen at some point in the next year. So I have that. And then I have another thing that I'm writing about film. school that I really, really want to do. And that's, like, a personal thing that I would just run that show.

Oh, I'll have to see how much traction it gets. A fond look at film school? Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's like, it's about creative people and about, you know, how to, it's kind of like just hustling kids in L.A., broke kids trying to make it. Where did you go to film school? I went to AIFI. Okay.

What was that like? It was really fun. I went to AIFI with Sam Esmail, actually, who does Mr. Robot. I loved it. I mean, it was, I ended it. with a lot of debt. But I had a short film that actually got me a lot of attention and helped me make my first movie.

I just thought it was really fun to go to school and talk about, you know, creative stuff every day and just how to just kind of get a more sophisticated look at how films are made. And I got to make movies, which I wasn't doing. I was prior to that, I was Paul Schrader's assistant, and I wasn't making movies. I just wasn't. I was 24. I was going out in New York. I was getting drunk.

and then I would just sit in his office and be a terrible assistant. I want to ask you about being Paul Schrader's assistant. That sounds interesting. It was really interesting. But anyway, let me just finish this film school thing because I loved it and it really worked out perfectly for me. It was, like I said, a lot of debt. So when people ask me if they should do it, I'm very cautious to recommend it because other than myself and Sam, I feel like a lot of my colleagues are still having a hard time kind of making a living.

So unless you have rich parents, which I found out a lot of my colleagues did, which is great. It's helpful. It's really nice. I mean, I did not have the benefit of having that, so I ended up with $250,000 in debt that I just paid back, I think, after Worm Bodies. But I found it to be an incredibly rewarding experience, and I learned so much. All you need to do is have four successful studio films to pay off your film school. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty terrifying.

Yeah, I was surprised at how long it took to pay back my debt. Yeah. I'm still surprised at how much money I have. Are you? It's not as much as I would think. Well, that's a very unspoken thing, right? Among filmmakers, people seem to think that you're living in some plush mansion, but it is a job. It is a trade. It is a trade, and I'm certainly not complaining. I do have a lot of money now, or at least what seems to me like a lot of money. But it was, it didn't happen very quickly. And in fact, when I was making Mandy Lane, By the time I got done with that, it was like I got paid $15 grand for, I think, two and a half years of work. So by the time I was done with that, I was like selling the guy.

I owned the computer that we were editing on, and I had to sell it on Craigslist. I remember a dude came up to our office and bought the actual computer. And so when we sold Mandy Lane, that was like the first time I ever got like real money. And that was cool. One more thing about film school. When you were in film school, are you making the films that you thought you were going to make when you were in film school? No, I probably thought I'd do more like whackness type stuff. Okay.

And I think I will. I mean, I feel like I can still sort of zing and zag a few different times before I need to sort of lock into my old film years, you know? Like, I feel like once you get to maybe 5560, you're kind of just like you probably should pick a path and just like stick with those type of movies because you're a little, well, you have less to say. I mean, you know what I mean? Or at least less to say to young people. And saying something relevant to young people is probably one of the most important things. as a filmmaker, I think. So by that point, I'll do, like, period dramas and shit.

But until then, I feel like I can do, like, I want to write a sequel to the Wackness. I have other original things I want to write. I probably will end up doing one of these comic book movies. I, you know, I just feel like I want to, I like to keep working, and I like to, even though I actually hate working, but I actually, like, it feeds this kind of need in me. I don't know what it is, but I like to keep working. So I do feel like there's still time to sort of do whatever film school version of myself I imagined. But I also feel like even in film school, I wrote like a thesis project that I thought was like so great and they didn't approve it.

You know, so then I had to do someone else's project. And that is what ended up getting me to the next movie. So I think there's something a little best laid plans about it that, you know, sometimes the universe just pushes you in a certain direction. and I also have a skill set where I can work with other people really well. And so I would be remiss if I didn't pursue that too. I mean, like my favorite movie of mine is 50-50. And that's I had so little to do with the writing of that. And that's probably nothing I ever imagined myself doing.

But it's something that turned out really well. Paul Schrader's assistant. So you went to film school after you were doing that. Yeah. So you're living in New York. You're in your early 20s. you're trying to break into tone. I'm reading page two.

I'm reading like Hunter Thompson. Me too. Yeah. Ralph Wiley? Yeah. Yeah. Bill Simmons, maybe. Bill Simmons.

I was reading Bill Simmons. I was reading the mailbag thing. And then Hunter Thompson. But I like the Bill Simmons stuff way better. Anyway, I was working at an internet company, like no idea what I was doing. And like, yeah, like reading ESPN.com and just like spending the whole time probably on like my fantasy team and hiding from people to, to, so that they didn't know that I didn't know what I was doing. Sounds like we had a very similar early 20s.

Where were you living? I was living in New York, reading a lot of ESPN.com, trying to pretend like I knew what I was doing. Yeah. It was amazing. I was like this consultant in an internet company, and I had no idea what I was doing. But I could write, and I could, like,

I kind of could pretend I knew what I was doing. I was relatively eloquent, more so than I am now. And then I got this opportunity to work for Trader, and it was a lot less money, and I had just been laid off, actually. And I had this apartment that I needed to pay for, but I was like, I really wanted to get back into film. I thought, I think my original idea was that I would work

and then make movies like on the side with the money I was making because I was making good money right out of college. And then I got laid off and I never found myself like just, I was not just, I would write a little bit, but I just was not a self-starter in that way where I would just devote like all this time to making movies. So I started working for, Schrader. My girlfriend at the time was working for Phillips Seymour Hoffman as his assistant

and found out about this job working for Schrader. And I went and started working for him. And it was not, I mean, it's not that fascinating a story. I mean, I just basically, he had this office in the Paramount Building in New York. He was making autofocus. He was editing that. Movie I really, really liked. It's a great movie. Yeah. And so I got to see that. You know, it's most of the stuff I learned was just from like listening. It would seem like I wasn't learning anything and I was just doing really boring stuff. But at the end of the day, I guess I did pick up on a lot of stuff. And what I picked up on was like, he was a badass.

Like he had a really cool attitude. He was really supportive of his collaborators, was really supportive of people at his studio when he agreed with them, but also had this iconoclastic like fuck you, everyone, if you crossed him. And I could see he would get stressed sometimes, but he had this kind of cloak of that attitude that really, really helped him. And so not that I ever kind of took that on. I could never tell if it was an affact or if it was real.

And I ended up really getting along quite well with him. And he would come to my movies and give me notes. And he's just a great dude. But he is like an OG 70s filmmaker. And so it was just so interesting to be around that and to see kind of how he interacted both with his editor and with people at the studio and with trying to get actors to do movies. So I do think I picked up on a lot of stuff, even though most of the time I was just

like giving him directions for how to get to places and stuff. So you wouldn't corner him and be like, tell me everything about the making of taxi driver? No. Because I think that'd just be weird. Like, who wants to do that all day? I don't know. Some people want their ego fed and some people just want to be able to get to where they

need to go. But he probably didn't want me talking about taxi driver. He probably wanted me talking about his more recent stuff, you know? What I would do was when he would leave the office, I would kind of go through his files. And both because I had to, like he would tell me to file stuff. But then when I came across something, It was like the taxi driver file.

I was like, what's this? And it's like the original yellow legal pad of an outline for taxi driver. Just like page one, Travis interviews at the, you know, whatever, taxi company. And like page by page, what was going to happen. And that was kind of remarkable to me because I had been writing, but I never knew what was going to happen from one moment to the next. And he had planned and outlined the entire thing before he even started writing. And I think, like, there was stories he wrote that out of like a car, you know, he was living out of his car.

So even a dude who's like life is incomplete and under disarray had to have that kind of rigid structure for his screenplays. And he is one of, I think, probably the greatest screenwriter who ever has existed. So that was very interesting to me too. And then just like a sign picture from Scorsese to him of the two of them a can that said from one Travis to another. There was all this shit that I probably shouldn't, that was probably personal that I shouldn't be talking about. But it was cool. That's very cool. And taxi driver is probably my favorite movie.

It's an amazing experience. So for you now, what happens? You've made Snatch, you've made it, I'm dying up here. You are making a movie with Seth and Evan again? I'm making a movie with Seth and Evan and Evan and Charlize Theron that we're going to start shooting in a couple months. I am, it's just been like an intense couple weeks. I'm going to try to chill a little bit.

I'm going to... But you got to spend all this time in Hawaii. You know, you already... Well, that was fun. Shooting the movie was fun. Having a movie come out is kind of no fun. It's a lot of stress. It's a lot of,

I mean, luckily the movie did well financially, critically not so much, but that's something you have to navigate to. What is that like for you? I mean, it was a first, because usually my shit gets good reviews. It sucks. It completely sucks. And there's, like, no real way to avoid it, I think. You read it, you look at it. Well, we got an email, you get an email from the studio.

So this is, I really do want to speak about this because I do want to know how other filmmakers handle this shit. Because no one wants to ask a filmmaker like that because. I actually tried to do it here often, to be honest with you. Well, tell me, like, this is what my experience with it was. I looked, we got, like, the first email of, like, all the trades and stuff. And it was, like, I think one of them was, like, mixed, and the other four were shitty. So I got it at, like, midnight than a couple days before it came out. And I'm, like, looking at it with my wife at 11 o'clock in bed, and I'm like, this is not good.

So, then I pop a Xanax, and I go to sleep. But, like, here, this is the thing. Like, you have to just develop this thick skin. and it's like interesting to talk about Schrader because I think that he and also Amy they just have this sort of these inherent coping mechanisms where they genuinely don't care.

I like take, I internalize all this shit. So then like the next day, I'm just checking the tomato meter. I'm not reading anything, but I'll go to round tomatoes like kind of in an OCD kind of way. And then at a certain point I'm just like,

fuck it, I gotta stop. I'm hurting. It's like, you know, it's like an addiction. You're like, I'm hurting myself. myself and I wish it had gotten better reviews, but at the same time, like, this was made as a pop kind of confection and let's hope people see it. And so then it's like, are people going to see it? And then, like, the weekend started, people weren't seeing it that much. But then by mother's day,

by the end of the weekend, we had a really kind of successful weekend. Then I was like, I'm checking the fuck out. This is too much. Like, it's just too intense. Does the reception, both critically or the financial success, change how you feel about the movie in any way? Probably day to day, but not when I zoom out like a year from now. Okay. You know, because like the night before, I think when it came out financially was not very successful. So I was just like, you know, I did. I second guessed, like, what could I have done differently and whatever?

And now when I zoom out a year later or a year and a half later, I'm very, very proud of that movie. I think that movie has a chance to be like a Christmas cult classic kind of. You know, people who didn't see it in theaters but discovered it on cable are like, that movie's good. Yeah, it's really what we hoped for. So I try not to think too much about it in the moment to moment because, you know, yeah, of course. You're always, I think as a filmmaker, you're always second-guessing stuff and you're always in a constant state of evaluation because you need to get better, always. You know, if you stop second-guessing stuff, you know, it's this weird combination of confident and kind of permanently in flux. and you have to be confident and try things,

but if you're editing and you're like, no, that's awesome and everyone's telling you it sucks, it sucks. So, you know, you have to, and like with the reviews, it's like, well, I've gotten good reviews most of my life. I don't want to discount those, so I have to like kind of, you know, take it, I have to kind of take it a little bit and just use it to move forward.

And not that you make a movie to get good reviews, but it's always nice. Sure. So, especially if you've gotten so many, I assume that you start to think that this is common, commonplace, that you can expect to be thought of well every time you work hard on something. I don't know about that. No, I always envision the worst case scenario regardless. So I'm always relieved when it comes out and it's not the worst case scenario. So if you internalize this, do you now have the feeling like, fuck these guys, I'm going to show them on the next thing? I don't think it's very I don't want to take the fuck you guys thing I mean I certainly like

you know it's nice to just sort of have like like a coach puts a motivational quote in the locker room to like yeah like I'll picture some it's on the whiteboard reviewer's fucking face when I'm making the next movie and it'll motivate me but at the same time like I think

that film criticism is like an incredibly valid thing and I don't I'm not one of those people to be like they don't know what they're talking about because obviously most of the time they do. Right. It's how Schrader got his start. It's how Schrader got his start.

But at the same time, it's like, yeah, it's kind of like, well, I'm not going to look at it, and I don't necessarily care on this particular project. Yeah. Okay, let's wrap with this. You've made a lot of different kinds of movies, even though they all have a, you know, a certain tone. You have a style. Is there a kind of movie that you've always wanted to make that you really want to do in the next five to ten years?

It's interesting. No, I mean, I would really want to do, what I really want to do is a movie that allows me to sort of flex style muscles a little bit more. You know, the whackness was probably one of the only ones that sort of allowed for this kind of agility of style that it was so point of view driven that I could do the Billy Jean thing and I could do these kind of flights of fancy. And so, yeah, I don't know what the genre would be, but like a single point of view driven movie that can be. more aggressively stylized. And it would probably be something original that I did. But as far as like, you know, flexing those muscles as a filmmaker,

I think the Showtime pilot really did allow me to do a lot of that, and I really liked it. So I think I'll do it more on the next movie, the Seth-Sherly's movie. I like the idea of kind of, and even on Snatched, I think I did some more aggressive stylistic filmmaking than you see normally in a studio comedy.

So I like the idea of kind of trying to bring more and more of that into my process, even though in comedy it's hard because you really want to control the timing of things in a very kind of diligent way, but I'd like to try that. What's the last great thing you saw? I think this dear white people thing on Netflix was really kind of mind-blowing. I really, really liked it. I'm only halfway through the season, but I thought it was great.

I just saw a movie called A Bigger Splash. Have you seen that movie? Amazing. It was my favorite movie last year. I love it, dude. It's so beautiful. It's so cool and so weird. I would like to do a movie like that.

High-level Ray Finds performance. It's a really good. Ray Feinzborn. You see his dick. You do. He shows it all. That's great. Good for him. That's an amazing place to end this great conversation. It's a nice dick. Ray finds his dick.

Google it, guys. Jonathan, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Appreciate you, man.