The Press Box - The Rise of Alex Ross Perry: From the Art House to the Mouse House | The Big Picture (Ep. 425)

Episode Date: February 12, 2018

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey speaks with filmmaker Alex Ross Perry about his quick-and-cheap working style and his shift from art house movies like his latest, ‘Golden Exits,’ to his upcoming big-budget ‘Winnie the Pooh’ adaptation for Disney. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, before we start today's show, I just want to give a quick shout out to the rewatchables, one of my favorite podcasts that I sometimes participate in here at The Ringer. It's a movie's pod. It's a little bit different, though. It's a hardcore breakdown of movies from start to finish. You'll find Bill Simmons on that show. You'll find Chris Ryan, sometimes Juliet Litman. The list goes on any number of your favorite ringer friends.

So please check out the Rewatchables on the Ringer podcast network. When someone says, do you think you can make a movie for $150? It's like, I could probably make three for that, depending on how I make. made them. But if I made one, I think it could be pretty slick. I'm Sean Fennessey, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the most exciting filmmakers in the world. Alex Ross Perry works cheap, fast, and totally in control. In all five of his films, Implex, The Color Wheel, Listen Up, Philip, Queen of Earth, and his latest golden exits, Perry has shown a

real knack for subtle jumps and genre, thoughtful composition, and the gift of keenly observed discomfort. These are low-budget movies made quickly about people living largely on the East Coast and surviving fraught relationships. Perry's about to make a change, though. When I sat down with him, he had just returned from the Disney Studios lot where he watched a cut of Christopher Robin, a new iteration of the Winnie the Pooh story that he wrote for the Mouse House, and he was beaming when he showed up here. You can find out why. Here's my conversation with Alex Ross Perry. Really excited to be joined by Alex Ross Perry today, who has a new movie called Golland Exits. Alex, thanks for coming in. Thank you for inviting me. Alex, I'm very curious

where a movie starts for you? Well, I suppose at this point, it depends. I would say that Golden Exits being my fifth movie, also, you know, fifth in the last eight years or so. I think the easiest way into them now is partially a pendulum swinging away from whatever the last thing was, which is, of course, a very common response. and then it just kind of becomes that plus whatever the thing is that's of interest at that time

because the last couple of movies have been made fairly spontaneously. There's maybe a year between writing a script and having the movie be finished. So your last film was Queen of Earth, it's significantly different from Golden Exits, It's tonally the way you shot it, the story that it tells. What were you reacting against for Golden Exits? Queen of Earth is a single location movie with essentially four characters. And it sort of existed in the world of movies. It has all the tricks you can throw at it.

It has 60-second zooms. It has subjective POV handheld camera where characters are looking at the lens. and it flirts with genre elements. And then Golden Exits, the opportunity was there to create a larger ensemble than I'd ever worked with, seven main characters. And to sort of go back to the locations adjacent to where Lus and out Philip was shot,

Brooklyn, Brownstones, my neighborhood, streets around me, and just do it differently. And there was an inn in my... mind to a movie that was that, but not that, that was back in Brooklyn, back in places that were familiar, but now there's no central character. And now I want to try to make a movie that's very subdued emotionally and in terms of the dialogue, and I want to try to make a movie that has no handheld photography in it as part of a three-part progression from ListenUp Philip,

in which every single shot but three is handheld. Queen of Earth, which is 50-50, and then Golden Exits, which is there's not a single handheld shot in the movie. It's very static. It's very locked off. It's very slow. It's very deliberate in all of these decisions. And that sort of just becomes the challenge after whatever the other thing was. That's really interesting. How much of the practical do you have to consider when you're writing something? Do you have to think about how much will this cost and what kind of actor do I want in this and which company will I work with to fund it while you're doing all that stuff? or can you separate those two things? It depends.

The amount of writing I do with a producer hat on, having been involved in that capacity on my movies, is unavoidable to a large extent. And certainly my first two movies, Implex and the Color Wheel, were written after I asked people if I could write a movie starring them and written with locations in mind. And then Listen Up, Philip was written with no concern for that. How do I get a college to film on? I don't know. How do I get a country house that looks like this? I don't know. Those are all things that I just wasn't even thinking.

How do I make this movie? My last movie was $20,000. I could probably make this for 50. If I made it the same way, do I do that? Or is this a movie that gets made with known actors and actual resources? And then Queen of Earth and Golden Exits were back to the original model of I'm going to, I have this in mind. I have the logistics in mind. In some cases, I might even have a budget in mind that I know I can get. And therefore I'm writing for that.

And that's just, it's really the rare skill that people from my momentarily momentarily intelligent generation, you know, I can make a movie like Queen of Earth in 12 days for under $200,000. I can make a movie like Golden Exits with a cast like that and locations like that in 15 days for not much more. Just because of how we came up, there's the ability to do that. Well, explain that though, because I think most people won't fully understand how you acquire the wisdom in your 20s when you're making films. How you know something will cost 50 versus 200? By making something where you don't have 50. Right.

then you'll learn that when you have 50, you can do anything. When you have 200, you can really do anything. I just think it's a different approach. You know, there was a moment where, you know, a moment 20 years ago and then 20 years again, you know, like mid-90s, mid-2000s, where people decided to make movies for roughly $10,000 to $50,000. And then there's a long ebb and flow away from that being, a great idea for your first movie. And then that goes from 94 onward. And then by 2005, six, and seven, that is now yet again the most viable way to make your first movie. So I came up from

that. So making a movie like Implex for $15,000 or color wheel for $25,000, when someone says, do you think you can make a movie for $150? It's like, I could probably make three for that, depending on how I made them. But if I made one, I think it could be pretty slick for what we have. And generally I can tell people, even industry people, the budgets of these movies, and it just doesn't compute. It just does not make sense that you make those movies for that. And it just comes from the fact that I know if I'm writing a movie in Brooklyn and I need a bar,

my buddy who used to be a bartender can get us the bar for nothing. We're not paying retail on any of this. I wouldn't write this stuff on these movies if I didn't have it in mind. But it's just, you know, it's a decision that you have to make at some point if you want to make something. And I've written movies that, in addition to listen to up, Philip, that are written with none of those concerns figured out from a creative standpoint. And that's the only one that got made. It was the only one that there was a seed in that pot of ideas that will allow it to grow out. The other ones, how do we get this?

What is this, you know, mid-century modern house that, you know, all went, like, I don't have it to grow up. that. I don't know how to get it. There isn't one in New York that a friend of a friend owns, so the movie doesn't get made. And it just means if you want to make something and you have the ability to say, I think we can make this movie, but our locations budget can be nothing because we're just shooting in houses of friends or friends of friends. Then you can make a movie like Golden Exits where you have a pretty big cast of actors and, you know, all well known. And the locations are all just borrowed and taken and cobbled together from favors. And it's kind of an embarrassing thing to be doing on your fifth movie,

begging for favors. But at the same time, it's less embarrassing than someone saying, feels like you haven't made a movie in a really long time. Do you have anxiety about that? Do you worry that too much time will go by without doing something? Well, no, not at this point. I had extreme anxiety about that after a listen to up, Philip, was finished. Because of how well received it was?

No, just because that was the moment that historically people like me would have been taught to expect an opportunity to appear at the end of. That anxiety lasted two months until producer and friend Joe Swamberg said, I'm starting a company. I can give you this much money. Do you want to make a movie for this? And then I said, oh, now I can go make Queen of Earth. Joe can help nurture and develop this as a producer and a financier. now because of him just saying that to me and showing me how he made his movie happy Christmas, I said, this movie and Joe giving me this is the reason that in 30 years I'll have made 20 movies instead of seven.

Because I'm just not going to wait anymore. And I'm going to always try to have this as an option. Let's go back to when you were in college or when you were working at Kim's video in New York. did you see yourself as someone who's going to make movies like die hard or like studio movies or did you always think you were going to be going along a path that you're on right now? Well, I, you know, well, I just came from a studio a lot for a movie that I have written, which is coming out soon. So we should talk about that.

Yeah. I think that just it's impossible to say because at that time you could, you know, I was in college graduating 2006. So at that time, a studio. movie was Royal Tenant Boms. You know, a studio movie looking at that moment was like a Cohen Brothers movie. Right. You know, like, so that...

You could aspire to that. Yeah, that was on the table as an option. And then you start seeing people from that generation making strides into bigger and bigger budgets, but they still maintain that very traditional, Hollywood dependency. You know, Kill Bill is a studio movie. Those are the movies that in college were the events of our year. And those seemed like movies that you could make because all those people started off not at a different place.

But that just meant that when those expectations of what studios were making changed, I don't know how to adjust to that. Does it feel radically different to you now? I mean, it's harder to say because at the time I was just, you know, some bozo living in New York going to NYU. and now I'm, you know, someone with a tiny foothold in the corner of the industry from my vantage point of living in Brooklyn. But it does feel different. I mean, just I don't know what people can look to to aspire to be thinking about that anymore. I don't know what trajectory, me at 20 today, would be interested in because there is no $40 million life aquatic being made by Disney. or whoever was financing movies like that at the time there is no, I mean, you know, Greenberg being made for $10 million by Focus Universal, although that is kind of coming back into phase with Focus at Universal, making movies like The Beguiled and whatnot, Phantom Threat, obviously.

But that's a new development. But you know what I mean? Like, I just don't know what people could look at now other than the kind of things that we were looking at then that were smaller. But all the people that we were looking at at that time have gone on to conquer the world. Like, you know, the people at that time that were making their, like, first or second movies that were clearly pretty inexpensive,

Sundance-sized movies, you know, like, we're excited about brick. Now Ryan Johnson makes Star Wars. Like, that was a guy for us in college, you know. I've seen you write about that, like that generation that you thought was going to be the sort of the 10 years later of the Soderberg, Tarantino, Fincher, you know, that whole group of guys and then the next level. But it hasn't totally worked out that way.

I was curious about that too because do you feel like you have your contemporary generation that you think about and measure yourself against that you're also friends with? I mean, I feel like I have a bunch of friends that make movies and the way that people from one era seem to know each other.

People from the 90s all seem to know each other. People from the 2000s like Ryan Johnson, Edgar Wright, and all those guys seem to know each other. It seems like whoever comes up together knows each other. Certainly I have that. but, you know. But you talked about Joe, like, helping you and helping produce a film. Yeah, I mean, the history books are yet to be written about any of this, so who knows.

But certainly anything that is a kind of communal moment of something results in a group of like-minded individuals who are all kind of doing different things together at the same time. The difference is that a lot of me and my peers are about 10 years into the trajectory. and are still not making movies at the budget level that most of other generations second or even first movies would have cost. Let's go back to Golden Exits. When you're writing a story like that, do you feel hindered at all by thinking about some of those producing questions,

or is it helpful? It's just helpful because I know I'm making the movie. Are you writing with actors in mind? In the case of Queen of Earth and that, yes. Just because I'm kind of asking the actors, if I write this right now, when can you make it? When can you make it? So, but not all of them. I mean, Golden Exit sort of came out of the embers of a movie that proved unproducible, for which I met a lot of actors who I really liked. I had a lot of meetings for this movie that never got off the ground, and a lot of them ended with me saying, I really want to put this actor in the movie. And I was always told, too expensive of a movie, we need bigger, more well-known actors. And then it's like, well, why did I have this meeting?

I just really decided I want to work with this person. And then I was thinking of a movie and a character, which in the case of Golden Exist, which is just the Naomi character played by Emily Browning. And I was meeting with Emily about that other movie. And by the time my meeting with her happened, the writing was on the wall, that the timeline for that movie was clearly not happening. So I was able to say to her, look, let's talk about this, but I'm going to be honest, this seems so unlikely that this will occur. Let me just pitch to you this idea that I think you fit right into.

If I could get this off the ground, would you play this character? And she, on the spot, essentially, said yes. She said, this sounds very interesting. So then I knew I had some work to do to present her with something. And then we were able to talk throughout the couple of months that I was shaping things. I then was able to take other great meetings I had for that movie and say to the actor, say to Annalie Tipton or someone like Chloe, this movie, we've met for other purposes, but I'm going to try to make this thing. Can I just talk to you about a character that I think is going to be in this movie that I think could be you? This way we get to collaborate and we get to start that relationship.

But if you're okay with that, this is a much smaller movie, but I think it'll be. be a fun way to kind of get to work together. And everyone I asked said yes. That's how Emily, Annalie, Chloe, Jason all ended up in golden exits. And then I got to have fun of saying, oh, I'm going to write a role for someone I've never met with, you know, a woman in her 50s, never had a, never had a role like that. Now who do I get to find? Who do I get to meet with? So it's a mix. And, you know, on other things that, you know, are sort of shaping. it just depends if you have the tool of saying to a Lizzie Moss or Jason Schwarzen, like, here's another movie, I'm going to write this, but before I do, can I pitch you on a character that I think you must play?

Was it similar for other films you were writing where you would approach people and talk to them about the character before going out and writing everything and trying to put all that stuff together, or does it work in different stages? It just depends. I mean, the other, there's not, I don't have, you know, a drawer full of these scripts. It's just this one big movie that was meant to have Jason in it. So his involvement in that was able to roll right over to his involvement in Golden Exits, which I used the time I had blocked off for the crew that I like working with to make instead for a fraction of the cost. But Jason was already planning on being there for me in April of 2016. It just turns out instead of making a much larger movie, we made a much smaller movie. But he's there anyway.

And I said, I'm going to write this instead. Here's the character I have in mind for you. And he just said, whatever it is, I'm in. I'm saving April for you. So what we do so long as we're working, it's all the same. You alluded to Mary Louise Parker's character. The other character that plays a major role is played by Adam Horowitz. Most people will know from Beastie Boys.

People have seen him act in recent years. He had a role in While We're Young that is not too far away from this character. But I was kind of amazed to see him transform into the character in your movie. How did he come to the movie? How did you get him involved? It was another one of those things where I'd never cast a lore for a guy in his 40s or 50s. Listen up, Philip, has Jason early 30s and Jonathan Price in his 60s. So it was just another thing where I said this is a new guy for me.

This is a new demographic of actor that I've never seen a list of who in this age range would want to do a movie of this size. So I'm curious who's out there. And it's like anything, it's just that you have an idea eventually of a tough little narrow, idiosyncratic vision of who the guy is. So, like a lot of the characters I write, we need someone who seems intelligent. Can't have a kind of macho dufous. So that cuts the list in half, if not more. Then we need a guy who believably seems like he's married to Chloe because she's already involved. So now I'm thinking, looking at a list, which of these guys actually looks like he's married to Chloe 70?

Like, who are we not fooling with? And I saw him on there and, you know, I mean, he's a legend and an icon, truly. These are terms that apply to very few people. Both of them apply to him. Yep. And I loved while we're young. I'd seen it several times and I just saw his name. And, you know, there's people on the list that are more known as being actors.

As soon as that idea was there, I just said, that is the thing to take a swing at. I never met with somebody else about that role. I never had any other idea of first. thing on that list jumped out and I said if there's any possibility that Ad Rock wants to be in my movie after being and while we're young, I am there for him. And I had never been more nervous to go meet somebody, not because I expected him to be intimidating. I had just never met somebody who loomed so large in my life and in our world. And, you know, we went to panquotidian. Like, it's just, you know, right away, I said, this is the guy. I mean, this is the guy. There's no

version of having a chance to get to call him a collaborator and not take that chance. The easiest decision I could make. And he wants to do it. He's interested because he doesn't understand why I want him to do this. He's kept saying, why me? Why not? You could be married to Chloe and you're the guy, you're this guy. And he said, yeah, I mean, you know, I can't believe you're asking me this, but I'm so flattered. Of course. Yeah, let's do this. And it's just like out-of-body experience to get to spend three weeks with that guy. He's really, really wonderful in the movie. I mean, it's almost like it's a darker sequel, I think, to his character

and while we're young in some respects. But he made me think a little bit about the men that you portray in your stories and the, for lack of a better phrase, unlikable nature of some of them. And I wanted to ask you a little bit about crafting character and deciding whether someone,

whether it matters if people identify with a person or not. At this point, I can say, based on my experience, is making my own movies and being involved in movies for other people. It matters if people, can identify with something. They don't have to identify with a character or with the main character if there is one, but if there's something that is universally graspable, then you're fine. So can the plight of this guy, a little lonely, a little bored, a little dishonest, is that relatable?

No. But the movie doesn't ask that. And it's just, hope that viewers, because I assure people, like, if there's an independent movie or a studio movie, somebody is thinking about what is the audiences in to this movie. Let's talk about the work for hire stuff. I'm very interested in that because obviously you've made these films that seem very handmade and personal and they have lower budgets, and now you have two films coming out this year, both of which you have screenplay credits on, but you didn't direct. What was that experience like?

How did you get those gigs? And how did you feel when you started working on them? It's very particular how somebody like me, chronologically, like three years ago next month, ends up getting hired by Disney who has no reason to hire me. There's no incentive. it's not getting them good publicity that they need. Well, in certain corners, maybe.

Well, in certain corners, it certainly is, but that is not what they're thinking. And they're not looking in those corners. In fact, they don't even know where those corners are. Right. It's just, it's not about it. They could do anything. The last thing in the world that they need to do is look outside the box for who's going to write tent pole movies. So it's just a very unique situation to have found myself in.

So how does it happen? I mean, the nuts and bolts of that is, I mean, it's really unromantic and very simple, but essentially, so listen to up Philip was at Sundance in January of 2014. Shortly after then, I delivered to my agent and manager a dossier of just everything I'd want to do, every kind of idea I'd want to do. And in there was an idea for a children's property that I wanted to operate. that they all said, this is a weird, what, like, what a weird thing for you to want to want to do? Which was that I decided that I would not, I would stop at nothing until I could option the rights to Teddy Ruxman and make a stop motion movie of Teddy Ruxman.

Wow. Like Fantastic Mr. Fox. But set in the world of Grundo, following up the events of the, of the, of the, the Teddy Ruxman's stories and specifically the animated series. We really are like the same agent from the same generation. Yeah. I would say so. Yeah.

And for the listeners at home, dressed identically, which we covered when I walked in. That's really sad. But yeah, I mean, that's resonant hearing you say that out loud. Okay, that's really interesting. But you'd be shy to how many people would respond to what I just said by thinking that I was having a stroke and just saying words. So anyway, this was my goal. And everyone I work with was like, that is. insane, but who knew you had this in you? Let's work on it. Long story short, it's now the end of the

year and this has completely gone nowhere. It's just not a thing that can happen, which is a shame because there's a whole great idea that I have about why this needs to happen and the kind of story, which, by the way, just to give a sense of it, was basically the same exact plot that the Force Awakens later had, which to me was just a younger generation discovering the legends of these characters who have kind of drifted away from the world. But Teddy Rucks been in the role of Han Solo, essentially, is this fabled adventurer who comes back into this thing to kind of do this one bit of unfinished business.

Well, then there's at least some light synchronicity with you eventually aligning with Disney. Well, so then this was not happening. Yeah. And it was a bummer, but, you know, who knows, whatever. And a couple months later, my Asian calls and says, you know, very circuitous conversation, but he also represents David Lowry,

who produced Listen Up Philip and was finishing Peach Dragon at that time. So he said he was on the phone with Disney, and crazy thing, I never would have thought of you for this except for our eight months of Teddy Ruxpin, but they're looking for a writer on Winnie the Pooh, does that mean anything to you?

And I said, if anything would mean more to me than Ruxpin, it's this. If any bear or bear-like character would mean more to me than that, it's this. Of course, I thought I could maybe get the rights Teddy Ruxman. This is something I never even would have thought.

But yeah, get me on the phone with that. I said, whoever you can get me on the phone with, I will blow their minds with how much I love this character and how much this world means to me. And that's exactly what I did. So, you know, this is October of 2014. Now it's March, and I've slowly won the bakeoff and climbed the ladder and accumulated support at an executive level, been groomed. and now I'm out here, and I am through my own passion and my love of that story of this boy and his friends and that world, and my just deep love of Disney lore and the Disney touchstones of storytelling and how important that's been to me, not evident in my work.

At this point, Queen of Earth is about to premiere in Berlin. So it's, I mean, my call for this from my agent was in the editor. Room of Queen of Earth. And Robert Green, who as my editor, said, you hung up the phone and you came in and said, it just got a call about writing a poo bear movie for Disney. He said, I could not believe that you used the phrase poo bear. And he said, that was shocking. I learned a lot about you when you said poo bear.

So, you know, eventually I just get the job because, as I predicted, there's no one else who should have been writing that movie. No one else you could talk to would have that same passion. and it's not like, oh, great, this is a cynical job. If I was cynical about it, I never would have gotten to the second conversation. These people can sniff out cynicism and whoever they're trying to hire. They're not thinking, yeah, I mean, this guy, he's an indie guy with all this, you know, good reviews. He doesn't really seem super into this, but we can force him to.

No, I mean, if you don't genuinely think you could go toe to toe and beat anyone else who's pitching on this, you will never get very far. So it was just really emotionally important to me to try to be the person who made that story a new thing again. And then it was just endlessly liberating and just shockingly educational to be inside that world coming from where I've come from. It seems like you are enjoying it, though. I mean, when you came in, you just come from Burbank and you were in good spirits. I was. I still am. I'm not having a bad time here. Okay, that's nice. But, I mean, it is just like, you know, you talk about what did you think about?

in college of studios, it's like, somehow I knew that this was the future. There's some future of this. And you have to just love the thing. If you don't love the thing, then you're not going to do it at all. No one will let you do it. And if, you know, I've been, like I said, three years ago, my first in-person meetings there, if walking on do a lot, any lot, but for me, specifically a Disney lot with the Seven Dwarfs and the Disney Legends by the courtyard and walking into the old animation building with Walt's office, if that doesn't send a tingle down your spine, you're in the wrong place. And most people know that. And a lot of people don't love that. And a lot of people don't want to do that. And a lot of them wouldn't find that to be such a

personally exciting moment. But it was for me. And I've now been on a lot, you know, dozens, perhaps even over a hundred times in the last couple of years for sometimes, you know, five days in a row of work. And it's just never not fun to poke around. They change the posters all the time. It's just never not fun to look around and just be there and think, this is the spot. This is where it happened. This is where all of the stuff happened. This is where all of the history of this entire one studio of this one medium happened. And I like that. I like being there. It just makes me feel like I've reached some eventuality of the kind of stories that when you're four and you're watching videotapes, this is movies. You know, no one's a child discovering cinema, discovering,

challenging, aggressive, thought-provoking films. You're discovering entertainment. And if it works and you have the right brain for it, it's a gateway. And to be a part of that is clearly for me a dream and a goal. And my experience working with the team that I've had, You know, it's like if you're a self-taught chef and you can open four reasonably successful restaurants. But then someone steps in and says they're going to send you to France and Italy for two years to just travel around, eat, and learn technique. And you come back and immediately everything you've ever done came to believe that you could serve this food to people. Because now you know everything. And that's kind of what it's been like.

It's just a really educational and emotionally satisfying job, which is not something most people say with the word job. What was the most difficult thing to adjust to? Did you have to change the way you thought about anything when you started the job? I mean, I didn't know anything. I had no preconceptions. So there was nothing to adjust to. The whole thing was just a delirious fantasy for months and months and months. This is quite a positive review.

I mean, it's been great. And I, you know, really respect deeply the people I work with, which is also rare, even in the industry. And my other experiences of professional things, that is not true. And our executives and producer and the one executive who became a producer on the movie, they're all so intelligent and they, the only thing I could do that would be wrong would be to think I know more than them about anything. And I'm there to learn, and I'm there to listen, and then I'm there to be trusted. And for them to just say, now that you've learned and listened, see you in five months when you have another draft. And it's been very, it's just very interesting. So the thing I learned was

that, which is a fairly obvious lesson for anyone who has any humility. But also, in terms of nuts and bolts writing, I just learned it's never done. Don't even think about it. Don't not go on to the next page because you don't think you've gotten this perfect yet. Because the process of a studio movie and the reason they take so long and the reason they pay you real money is because you're doing it a lot. If they just wanted you to write a draft and then go away, yeah, that draft should be really good. But if you know that you're on the line to kind of keep at it, then the lesson is just don't sweat it. It doesn't matter. I did the final polish on the script, maybe eight days before the start of shooting.

That's the lesson. If you're a writer and you're writing for someone else, you're writing for yourself, that's when it gets real. First draft, second draft, 10th draft, 20th draft, don't worry about it.

If it's all in the right zone and it all feels good, this is fine. Those final little particulars, there's a time to worry about those and if you're so lucky as to be three weeks out. And that's a fun lesson.

It's just the cool thing to do is a writer for hire. And the lessons I learned from all these people about my own work has just helped me write better scripts now. So it's very, it's just educational. I mean, it's like getting a PhD. Someone pays you a bunch of money, but also you get to learn a bunch of stuff. And also you can kind of take it easy for a couple of years. Because if you're getting a PhD, you get to go live at your college.

And if you're getting this, then I'm no longer below the poverty line. And I can take three weeks off and make a movie like Golden Exits. because I can afford to do that and not sweat it. Does it make you want to make a movie like Christopher Robin? I mean, I have made it. I mean, I have made the movie. I am involved with it. To direct it, I should say.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it just depends. It's, I mean, honestly, like, it's a lot of work. I'm beginning to go visit the set, the director, Mark Forster, seeing what he does, the toll on your life and years of, I mean, it's just a lot of work. I don't know how interested I am working that much on something. But you could see yourself writing something like this again. Oh, easily.

I mean, that's the hope and that's certainly the intention. And, you know, like, it's not that I'm lazy. It's just there's a lot that I like about being on set and making movies. And there's a lot that I saw on that set that really terrified me about being the person who has to do all that stuff. which is not to say that it's not for me. It's just to say, I don't really feel like I'm there yet, where my ideas can only be reached if that's the kind of movie I'm making. Right now they're all still kind of in the ballpark of things I understand.

But ideally, there are things that can come to me in the future when I feel qualified to make them that might put me closer to that, which is exciting. And, you know, for the other movie, so I also, wrote this movie that comes out, you know, now-ish, called Nostalgia, written for director Mark Pellington, only writing movies for Marks, is the rule. Mark Movies, 2018. You know, it's the same kind of thing.

He just, that's like, it's the same, but it's different. He is of another generation, which I enjoy talking to and learning from as I'm talking about my experience with Disney people. And he's one of these guys who kind of came up at a time where movies. movies were easier to make. And now he looks at people like me and my peers and says, how do you make movies for under a million dollars in three weeks? Right. Mark directed the Jeremy video very famously. He made Arlington Road, right? Big studio movies, Mothman Prophecies. That's just not a thing right now. But guys like that, if they're serious, they need to work.

Guys like him or like a Paul Schrader guy, like they don't say the game has changed and I'm a dinosaur. They say the game has changed, so how can I grow wings and fly? And Mark Pellington's answer to that was like, I like your movies. You're very unsentimental. I'm a very sentimental guy. I'm a big softy. I have an idea. I want it written by an unsentimental writer.

If you wrote a movie that I could make for a fixed budget, then I'm going to tell you. And I could shoot it on a fixed number of days, and I'm going to tell you, could you just deliver me a script that fits into the production parameters? This is a Facebook message. Really? I mean, basically, no, I mean, he reached out to me on Facebook, said I'm a fan. I said thank you. He said, do you ever consider writing for anyone else? I said, no one's ever asked.

He said, give me a call. And then I said, you've come to the right place. Tell me what your budget is. Tell me how many days you're going to shoot for. And I'll deliver you something that is exactly this idea that you can make for that because I know exactly what you need. And that's just another fun challenge. And I know what kind of director he is.

And I know the kind of visual ideas he has. So I knew how to write that for him. And I think people's response to the movie has been very, they're just, they're not confused. It's just curious that I wrote this movie. Oh, this movie seems so sentimental and so emotional and earnest in a way that your other movies are not.

Well, it's not my directing movie. I wrote it for someone who brought me an idea. Who's a job? Yes, I mean, it's a job because it paid me money, but if I didn't like Pellington, it would be a terrible job because I'm talking, whoever you're working for for a job, you're on the phone with them all the time. This is the great you asked me about living in Brooklyn.

And if I'm there, I'm on the phone with people. If I'm here, I'd have to see them face to face all the time, which I just can't live like that. It would just be too much. So, you know, whoever you're working with, you're on the phone. Pellington's a great guy. I like talking to him. Happy to get on the phone with him and talk script notes, talk ideas. But I also know what he wants.

And he doesn't want a script that I tried to direct myself that I couldn't get off the ground that he's going to make that is actually a movie of mine. He wants this thing for himself that's based on his own experiences. and then he's inviting me to add my own experiences to it and add my own voice to it. And then he can direct my dialogue how he directs actors, which is not how I would do it. And just as a writer who believes in myself enough to feel like I should be working, who can pass that up to say, I want to see my dialogue directed by someone else? That sounds like a cool thing because I like the way I write and I have fun with it. and I just thought it would be very compelling experiment

to put my work in the hands of other people and just kind of see what they do with it. Maybe I'd learn something. Maybe I'd see that they cut half of every line when they edited it, and then I would think, boy, I really do write too much. And this other guy figured that out for me.

So now I can go back to my own work with an increased perspective. And this has been a kind of Disney conversation where the lessons of that, many, though they are, they've informed things I'm doing that are, you know, light years away from what a movie like Christopher Robin feels like.

But it's all the same craft. It's all these lessons I've learned. I've learned proper knife work on my two-year tour. So now I can actually like prepare vegetables in a way that they look nice. They don't just taste edible. Wow. You really pulled the metaphor beautifully there. Yeah.

Well, you know, I'm hungry and I think about food a lot. We have to wrap up here. But before we wrap, I end every show by asking filmmakers. is their last great thing that they've seen. So what is the last great thing that you saw? I went to an all-day five-movie, 35-millimeter Hong Kong action marathon. Wow.

And the highlight of the day was a movie called Cheap Killers. Cheap, not sheep. Okay. Inexensive. And it's a super-coated gay romance between two hip men who wear white linen. in Hong Kong and they're so in love with each other. And one of them tries to force himself to be in a relationship with a woman

and then gets hit in the head and he becomes handicapped and he's peeing all over himself. And it's just beautiful action and just breathtakingly from another culture that will never understand the world that would make movies like that possible. So that was the greatest thing of that marathon. And then on the plane here I watched Home Against starring Reese Witherspoon, which is also very enjoyable. Oh, that's great. That's a ringer favorite.

That movie? Yes. It comes up. Home again. Not Cheap Killers, I can assure you that you are the first person to recommend cheap killers on this podcast. But Home Again has come up and it's... People dig it. Five months of... Yeah. Yeah. It's got some life.

Well, that's probably because there's this weird little filmmaker subplot in it that kind of tugs at the heartstrings of people, whether you want to resist it or not, you look at these three young lads in the movie who are out in Hollywood trying to make their dreams come true. and you just kind of root for them. That makes sense. Alex, I'm rooting for you because I love your movies. Thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Thanks again for listening to today's show.

Later this week, I have another show. It's a conversation with the legendary Nick Park, creator of Wallace and Grommet, owner of four Academy Awards, and the director of the new stop motion animation film, Early Man. So check for that this Friday. And then after that, we'll be focusing on the Oscars for much of the rest of the month.

I wrote about the award shows declining relevance on the ringer.com last week. Check that out, and we'll have more guests on to talk about it soon. And let me know what guests you'd like to hear in the future. You can find me on Twitter at Sean Fennessey. Hi, Bachelor Nation. This is Juliet Litman, host of the Bachelor Party podcast. A new season of The Bachelor is in full swing, and so the podcast is back.

But this time, I have my own feed. You can find new episodes every Monday night by going to the ringer.com slash podcast or by subscribing to Bachelor Party wherever you get them. Come for the recaps and roses. Stay for the drama and for moments like this. Please tell me you don't already. have a little wiener. I do not have this. So yeah, you did good. Awesome. Don't forget, subscribe to the Bachelor Party podcast today. It's available everywhere,

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