The Watch - Big-Ticket TV Overload and Talking With Carla Gugino of ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ | The Watch (Ep. 298)

Episode Date: October 16, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald give a quick review of ‘First Man’ (4:53) before talking about their lack of excitement for ‘The Romanoffs’ (11:17). Then Chris is joined by Carla Gugino from ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ to talk about the creation of the show (19:56) and acting in a horror series (28:27). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit navyfederal.org slash flagship for more information. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA. I ain't sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the ringer.com and joining me from an editing base somewhere in Culver City, I think.

It's Andy Greenwald. Oh, I'm deep in the bunker, buddy. That's not even a bit. That's real. Baby's first edit is underway. Who isn't an into the tense process? Yeah. So Andy's on his cell phone.

He's calling from the first pass he's doing on his. his show Breyer Patch, the pilot episode. So he's off editing that. Today, we're going to talk a little bit about popular culture as we usually do. And then later in the episode, I was joined by the amazing actress Carla Gugino, who's in Haunting of Hill House, which is on Netflix now, and got a lot of, got a lot of people watching. I saw Twitter really lighting up over this over the weekend.

So I'll be talking to her about the show. We get into about the first five, six episodes. Not deep spoiler territory, but I, you know, I would. watch some of it first, if you can, just to kind of get a sense of it. But Greenwald, spotlights on you, man. Wait, wait, wait, I have to ask you something first. I want to apologize, by the way,

to Kaya and all the audio fidelity heads out there that I forgot my fancy recorder today. Yeah. And I'm on my cell phone. It sounds like you're in a wind tunnel. I'm in a wind tunnel. A lot of, can you hear me now? And I apologize.

So I got to ask, remember when you were on vacation, like a year ago and when you were gone, I was like, oh, by the way, Nick Kroll and Jason Benzookis are coming in to fill in for you. Yeah. Was this revenge having Carla Gugino come in when I'm just not even within the same zip code as the podcast? Is this you getting back at me? No, but there is some subtle ringer podcast wars going on.

We had Carla on and Bill was quite upset that I did not introduce him to her. And I said that it was payback for being shut out of the Ethan Hawk proceedings. That's fair. Shit gets deeper here. Who should I bring up my personal issue with Dave Chang for not. introducing to Jessica Largey, the chef of the That's a great. You should hit up Isaac Lee.

Or Dave Chang himself, because you're such an avid listener of his podcast. It's a great podcast, guys. I don't know what you're doing. I listen to this one. That's really worth that. What do you want to talk about? Obviously, you're like, you're still in the early stages of the edit, so you probably can't give like a huge PowerPoint on that.

But, you know, I mean, I have some stuff I can tell you about I did this weekend, some pop culture-related stuff. I'm curious how you're doing. Well, I'll tell you one thing about editing, and I'd like to hear about your weekend. And then there is a question I have for you about pop culture that it's a little self-serving, but I'm going to ask it anyway. So the only thing I'll say about editing so far is that it is the closest I've ever been to being in a 90s movie like Swordfish that's mostly about like hacking.

Yeah. Because I'm sitting with our friend Gina, who is also the exemplary editor of this project, and she's got like seven screens in front of her, and she types really fast, and she has access to everything. Right. And it's amazing. And I'm like, could you just make her say this, but say it backwards and upside down and then add music to it? She's like, yeah.

And then she hacks into the mainframe. And I don't know. It's like, it's pretty incredible. Yeah. So that is, I highly recommend that experience for, for anyone. Are you just sitting there? Can you dial up and you be like, can you put Olivia Coleman in this? So far, the only thing I'm getting pushback on is I suggest adding to Benny Hill theme music to nearly every scene.

Yeah. And apparently there's some tone issues with that. Yeah, different vibe. Yeah, I don't even know if that's coming from the studio or network. But no, so far, it's just fascinating. We're just putting it together and taking it apart and putting it back together again. It's very work. Does that make sense?

It doesn't work out very well for a lot of people in Infinity War. So I hope that you're one of the people who don't get disappeared. No spoilers, please. So what did you do this weekend culturally? So my wife was away. This isn't supposed to be like personal sharing time, but I had like the whole weekend and myself. And what I did was I went and saw First Man alone at the Cinerama dome at the Arclight.

I highly recommend seeing that movie on a big screen if you're going to see it. And it's been really interesting to read the response, which I think is kind of muted towards this movie. And it's obviously, if you don't know, it's Damon Chazel's new film, follow up to La Land. And it stars Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong. And essentially documents, I think like about an eight-year period of time

from when he joins the space program to when he lands on the mood with the Apollo mission. And, like, for one thing, I think I thought going into it was going to be, be this sweeping epic. And in terms of time covered, I suppose it is. But a lot of the story is told very intimately, even in the space travel scenes, a lot of it is told in insert shots of dials and things shaking and bolts coming loose and wires catching. It's a very, very tactile movie, but it's a very tactile movie very close up. It's not a lot of like huge shots of a rocket

taking off. And there's some of that. But it's not like Apollo 13 where you get a sense of the scope of the mission and the scope of the project. It's very much Neal's perspective the entire time. And I think a lot of people have been talking about the Gosling performance because we're kind of getting to the point where you get one of two performances from Gosling. You either get Notebook Nice Guys Gosling that's like incredibly charismatic and could just essentially sell you like a Chevy with three wheels if you wanted to. Or you get this kind of introverted internal muted gosling.

which I think would be Blade Runner and this film, which is like everything is repressed, everything is tightly controlled. I actually thought it was a very good performance by him, but I see where people are coming from where La La Land, I think La Land and First Man are equally earnest films. They're very, very sincere about their subject matter. I think that all of the sap that was in La La Land,

I don't know whether this was a reaction to the critique, some of the critiques of La Land, or whether it's supposed to be accurate to this sort of early 60s post-World War II stoicism that Chazelle kind of imbues the characters with. But like, there's not a lot of sentimentality in this movie. There's not a lot of emotion in this movie.

In fact, a lot of it is about a person who is basically repressing all of that despite going through several traumas over the course of the movie. So it's an interesting movie. I would be curious to know your thoughts on it, but it is very much a, one of those movies that overwhelms you and is a very physical experience. So I'd recommend seeing it

on a big screen. I really want to see this movie. I think my question for you is, what if my main point of reference for loving Ryan Gosling is crazy stupid love? Then you're in more of the nice guys camp and the big short camp. And you're like, why would this guy play with one hand tie behind his back? And it's the same thing that I think a lot of people are talking about with Tom Hardy, where you have this incredibly charismatic movie star who is actually, trying to sort of deflect or hide behind accents and masks and all this stuff. I think Gosling is definitely trying to be iconic in this movie, but he's going about it as, I think this is his read on like, oh, I'm like Sam Shepard here.

Like, I'm going to do this sort of, I'm going to just be the outlines of this person, and you're not going to be able to see inside. But, you know, at times I think it hurts the film itself. The other thing that I saw this weekend that I did really want to talk to you about. Wait, wait. You go ahead. I just wanted to take your temperature, and we can talk about this more when I actually see the movie. But I understand that there is some political uproar over First Man, and again, I haven't read the details,

but I believe it has something to be with the fact that the Armstrong film is married to Queen Elizabeth. And people are taking issue with that, right, because it is meant to be a much more American film. Yes. Yeah, I mean, it is a strange. I didn't think I'd see a crossover event between these two things. You know, it is fair to say that First Man, it does exist in the Crown expanded universe. The universe known as reality. Yeah. The other thing I saw this weekend that I thought you would really, really enjoy, if you get a chance, is Beirut, which is a movie that came out earlier this year, kind of came and went. It's written by Watch icon, Tony Gilroy, although it was an older script that I think got dusted off and made.

And it stars John Hamm as a alcoholic mediator and negotiator who used to work in the Middle East, used to live in Lebanon. and tragedy strikes, he leaves, he just falls into the drink, and then he is called back to Beirut to do one last job, to sort of negotiate the freedom of one of his old friends from his earlier days in Beirut. And this movie is very by the numbers. Like I think it pretty much is like when people are like, whatever happened in 90s thrillers, like they're right there.

It's Beirut, nobody went and saw it. That's why they don't make these anymore. But right now it's like 99 cents on Apple. So if you like are just like what the hell, I'll take a shot at it. It's only a, it's a really cheap rental. And it is at its best really fucking good. Because it's like, what if Don Draper was a hostage negotiator? That sounds great.

Why didn't they just call it that? And Don Draper hostage negotiator probably gets more of a box office. And it's got so many Gilroyisms. It's just, it's essentially just like, I think they bring up this line a couple of times. It's just like let the downside of that ring in your ears. You know, just like everything is like, you're shitting me up and down. It's everything is like, it got like this little bit of spice to it. And it's actually a really, really entertaining movie.

By the way, the phrase fall into the drink sounds delightful. That sounds like what you should do in your swimming pool after a long day. This does not sound like a cautionary tale for an alcoholic whatsoever. Yeah. I realized that affecting the audio fidelic, I did just want to make you a question before we get into that interview. So last week, Chris, you correctly gave everyone homework that we should all watch. watch the Romanos, Matthew Weiner's new sort of anthology series for Amazon, the first two episodes of which are available now, and I think one episode will be available for the next

subsequent, I don't know, however, many weeks. I didn't do it, and I apologize. I did not do my homework for situations, circumstances outside of my control. But I did wonder about the lack of urgency, considering this is a new TV show from the creator, one of the all-time great TV shows, and with a cast of, you know, dozens of people that I really like and admire. and I just hadn't really thought about it before. This is very self-serving, right? Because I didn't do my homework. But I also didn't feel any urgency about it.

And I realized, you know, this may be, we may look back on this moment as like the apotheosis of this autore era where basically Matthew Weiner could do anything. People wanted from him, right? Which is his ability to weave a narrative over multiple episodes, which in effect not just creates serialized drama, but still, even in the streaming era, creates an urgency to watch it.

Yes. Do you want to talk to people about it? If these just sort of flow dripping eight movies that are loosely connected to each other, I didn't feel the neat. I didn't feel fired up about it. I don't know if you felt that way. I don't know if other of our listeners felt that way or if I'm really just covering my ass here because I blew it. Yeah, I think Allison Herman's actually going to be writing a story about this tomorrow.

And so I'm really interested to see what she says about it. Maybe we'll have her on later in the week to chat a little bit about this. I think we're at a certain point where we need technology to meet us halfway. And here's what I'm saying by that. And I don't want to throw away a billion dollar idea here. consider this, I don't know, this is an official trademarking of this idea, I'm sure somebody else has thought of this, but I think we start, we're at the point

now where we need bookmarks for television shows. Like, we essentially need some sort of product or some sort of way to say like, okay, like, I have expressed interest in these 10 shows of the 150 that have come out this month or these last two months. Now I need to like basically have a process by which I actually watch them because I get so overwhelmed by the wave after wave after wave every week.

and I was even just looking at the next couple of weeks and it's like the bodyguard which is a hugely popular show in England is coming out and next week Narcos and Little Drummer Girl are coming out in November. You've got the Romanoffs now. I mean, it's just so much plus all the award season movies and playoff baseball, middle of NFL season,

and NBA season starting up. So this is high season for anybody who likes watching anything. You also forgot to mention Doicheland 86. Yeah, Deutsche Land. I mean, I forgot to mention 10 things that we want to watch, you know what I mean, that we want to check out. So I almost feel like at this point, it's like people need to have almost a way in which these things are are bookmarked and saved to long reads or saved to like their pocket app

in some sort of way because this stuff really does slide away. You know, for the most part, we've taught we spent what like five or six weeks. The last five or six weeks, I think we talked about Better Call Saul almost once a week. Everybody I know likes Better Call Saul. All of them are like either one episode behind. three episodes behind, waiting to watch the whole season one weekend when they get sick. It's really difficult to keep up. I will say in the Romanov's defense to some extent, I don't remember everybody coming out of

the gate being like, Mad Men is now what I do on my Sunday night. So there is the possibility that it could be a slow adoption of this, right? True. And it could be, my guess is even from reading the small amount of reviews that I glanced at, that clearly they're going to be high highs and maybe some frustration to earn that right as a TV creator, and I am excited to watch it, but it's also weird. I think we're lucky with the way we do our show now, because I think people listening, and feel free to correct us if I'm wrong about this, no, we're going to watch the show,

and we're going to talk about it, and maybe they haven't watched it yet either. We're okay in that ecosystem, but the sense that the general sense of chaos, and like no one really knows what people are watching I want to talk about, to me what's emblematic of that is like looking at vulture a website that I very much enjoy, the breathless way that it covers the good place, a show that you and I both like very much, but it seems almost out of whack with reality. It just seems like that's a show that has figured out a way to succeed

even beyond its excellent content in this era because it's highly serialized and it's a half hour and it somehow feels like less pressure. So it's almost that people, I don't know people are really watching it and consuming coverage about it the way that they did about Mad Men are Breaking Bad, but it seems better suited to a moment where Vulture and other sites like Vulture and even other podcasts like to break it down and consume it.

Yeah, and they've also, you know, they had the, the first two seasons were a matter of people basically evangelizing for the show and converting fans. And now it has its fan base and they're in the, okay, now make the leap season. And that's why I think there's so much attention being paid to it. because, like, they have all the people who have caught up with the first two seasons paying attention now. Right. Thanks to Netflix, by the way. Exactly.

I mean, that's the reason why the show exists. You know, it's just funny. Like, everything you said, I think, is exactly right and true. And yet, both of us have felt it doesn't mean that it's not good, but it's just like the spotlight of urgency has turned to it, maybe for lack of anything else. And is it meeting it? I don't know. I, you know, this is, again, I feel very, very self-conscious making this argument on a day

when I am woefully unprepared to do a podcast with you. It's fine, man. But it remains interesting to me as I am trying to make a TV show wondering what could possibly cut, get people to pay attention in the urgent way we used to. And I say that also realizing what a ridiculous dismissive. It shouldn't be this way. I think your idea is probably a good one, especially for being plugged into culture. But as soon as we open up one of the many apps we use, we feel totally overwhelmed and

it's fee by all the options that have been added to the last time we logged on. Yeah, absolutely. All right, man, we're going to let you go. We have our interview with Carla coming up, and we'll be back on Thursday. And I would imagine we will be talking about Romanoffs on Thursday. I promise. I promise. Thanks, Baranskis. Hey, everyone, it's Liz Kelly, and I want to tell you about the second annual Ringer NBA Palozo we have going on next week on Tuesday, October 16. We'll be streaming a live marathon countdown to tip off with Bill Simmons and the Ringer NBA crew, featuring live podcasts, special guests, Ringer original shorts, and culminating in a Sixers Celtics watch part. You can check it out live on Tuesday

across all of our social media platforms. And don't forget to check out a brand new NBA Paloosa merch on the ringer.com slash shop. So we're about to get into this interview with Carla Gugino. She came by to talk to us about the haunting of Hillhouse

and her long and story career in TV and in movies. It was really neat because Carla is somebody who has kind of lived through all these different eras. She's been working since she was a teenager,

honestly, since she was on Who's the boss, for having the sake. But, you know, she is now kind of moved into this era where really interesting stories are being told on streaming television and that's what the hunting at Philhouse is. It's a show that's based off a Shirley Jackson novel

that is directed and co-written by a man named Mike Flanagan who we've talked about before on the watch. He directed the second installment of Ouija. He did Ouija 2. He directed Hush and he directed Gerald's Game which was a Stephen King adaptation that came out last year I believe on Netflix

and Carla was also in that. So she's worked with Mike Flanagan before. Mike Flanagan might be the best horror director in the world right now. He integrates stuff from sort of the 70s, these kinds of long tracking zoom shots. He's an incredible artist when it comes to creating tension in rooms in domestic situations.

Hush, Gerald's game all use these homes as these elements of terror and fear in the character's lives. And it's not haunted house per se. It's more about the ghosts of family trauma. And that certainly is our theme. that get extended into the hunting of Hillhouse. On the surface, you think this is a haunted house show.

You think it's a horror show. But in reality, what this is is a family show, and it's a family drama, and it's about trauma, addiction, loss, all these things that kind of tear apart families, you know, outside of the horror genre anyway. But what he does is he takes these very real things and adds a supernatural element,

and it's a really, really, really interesting show. It's one of my favorites of the year. It's a little bit of a slow burn. It takes a little while, I think to get the rhythm of it for the average viewer. But if you see Mike Flanagan stuff before, you'll be familiar with where things are going in some ways. So here's my conversation with Carla Hougino from The Haunting of Hill House.

Carla, we were just talking about the haunting of Hill House, which is really just this remarkable thing where I think we hear a lot about like the promise of long-form television storytelling. And this is a great example of really what you can do with it. Because not only is it just this story that unfolds at its own page, at its own tempo throughout these episodes. But it's kind of this Trojan horse of this really moving family drama

inside of a horror story. It's the second time you've worked with Mike Flanagan. What was it like going back right after Gerald's game, working with the same director, different material. Some similar themes, though, I thought. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's such a gift working with him. I really do. You know, it's funny, you never know when you'll find your collaborative partners. Yeah. And in this particular case

from the moment that we began Gerald's game, and I think it was the way in which we began that as well, which was that I was cast quite last minute. Bruce Greenwood was attached, and they had sort of a whole other plan, and as we know in Hollywood, things often happen where people fell out and things changed, and there were all of these sort of restructuring. And so I had to decide, from the moment that I read the script of Gerald's game until when I was on set was two weeks

when I read it for the very first time. So it was a huge amount of preparation to do in an incredibly short period of time. But the moment that I, I Skyped with Mike, and he was in a, he was scouting in a forest in Mobile, Alabama. His son was obsessed with like dangerous insects, deadly insects. And so in the middle of our conversation, he went, oh my God, it's the red, they kill you, the spider on the ground right here. Anyway, so we had a whole, I think it was maybe an aunt, actually. And so we had this very bonding session in the woods. And I was like, I'm in. I can see that he has this very clear vision. And so what's really beautiful. is this, he is so clear and you are a fan of his as a filmmaker, so you know that. He's so

specific. He and Michael Feminari, who is his director of photography and just an exquisite director of photography, they have shot listed every single frame before you begin, and he also edits his own thing. So it's, it's, there's this really strong structure, this really strong vision, and then the allowance for collaboration within that because you have such a sturdy base. So for me, you know, one of the reasons that I wanted to act, and I'll never forget this because I was such a controlling kid, and I was like a straight-A student. I was all very, very, very serious. And I remember taking my first sort of significant acting class, and I was 13, and I remember thinking, oh, wow, I get to lose control in a controlled environment. There was something about the idea that it was my

job to let go that made me able to do it and gave me a great sense of freedom. So in that way, he and I, it's a really nice, I love different qualities and directors, but that's a really cool combination. So when we were doing Gerald's game, to get back to your question, he said, you know, I'm going to adapt Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hillhouse, and there's a role I think that you'd be really amazing in. And it's funny because originally we had spoken also very early on about the role of Shirley, which Elizabeth Reeser plays so brilliantly. And as these things are always meant to be, and that was very early conversations, but then Olivia started to sort of emerge and that became the clearer route for us. And a lot of stuff just came about together,

like the visual migraines. They weren't in there. And the seeing colors stuff. Yeah, yeah, just various things that you'll see sort of unfold. But I love working with him so much. And I think he does have it. He has such a, he has really an interesting affinity with his genre. Yeah. Because he will never, he will always go deeper with it. But I don't think you could make this story as powerfully as this is done and you'll see when you get to the end if it didn't have the heightened elements of horror. That's a really good point. So I wanted to ask you about that. What's your relationship to horror as a viewer? Well, I will say this. I'm not a like a horror geek quote and quote. The Shining is my second favorite movie of all time. So that's obviously a horror

film, but it's not, I don't perceive, I guess it's funny. It's like, that just happens to be because I think the movie's so brilliant. And I think it was the moment in my life. as a kid when I saw it that I'd never seen anything like. I'd never been that scared. So I think its capacity to affect me on that level has never left me. My first favorite movie is all that jazz. So it's totally different. That's very high up on my list as well.

Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. So I love storytelling and I love it in whatever form it comes in. So for me, I can really appreciate a great horror film, but I'm not going to go to something because it's a horror film. I was curious because I was wondering whether or not awareness of

genre ever impacts performance. Like if you're like, okay, so I understand there are certain visceral elements of this show or movie that has to happen. There has to be like a fright, a scare or whatever. And with you're calibrating your performance ever around those kinds of things that you wouldn't ordinarily say

in a regular drama. Absolutely. Especially in this particular one, this character that I play, there is an archetypal nature tour. I think when any child loses a parent early on, the memories are all very subjective and they're accurate maybe to you but in this case all the siblings now grown

adults have an entirely different memory of her and so for me it was about a slightly larger than life nature to things she has a spectral quality even without spoiling too much before she is a specter yeah that's really cool to hear you say too because it was something that we spoke about oddly i felt really strongly at the beginning which is not always the case that i have a physical notion like that, but I really wanted that long, flowing hair. Yes, yeah. It was very much influenced by Meryl Streep and French Lieutenant's woman. Oh.

Because she was such a sort of mercurial, curious woman who clearly kind of commanded this kind of power, that character, but you didn't quite ever understand her. And so that was the first visual influence that I got for this, and I kind of sent it Mike's way. And, you know, we knew we would stay with dark hair because the family was going to be dark haired, but he really kind of loved that idea. And then Michael Fiminiari really did with lighting a lot, where we were. When you see her, you'll notice if you're kind of watching the subtleties, she has this sort of glow around her.

Yeah, and I have to rewatch the episodes, but I feel like your costume design is slightly to the left or right of what everybody else is kind of wearing. Henry Thomas is and all these denoms and the kids are kind of in muted colors, but you kind of pop a little bit more. No, it's true. And we actually even did some really fun stuff. We had such an amazing costume designer, and we did. There are very specific things done with the costumes in that regard as well, which I guess I would be giving something. way. What I was going to say about episode six, which I feel I can say because I know it's been talked about to in the press and you're about to experience it, is that that's an episode that we

shot, 97% of the show is in four takes. Wow. So the first minute and half is traditional coverage and the last minute and half and everything else is literally four takes for an hour long episode. So can you explain what that means for people who don't, yeah. So the camera never cut. So basically what we did is the shortest one is nine minutes, the longest one is 18 minutes. We came in a week early just to rehearse. They lit a ceiling grid of all of our lights. So there was someone doing, orchestrating which lights were on us at which times. There was a steady cam operator who from the very beginning of filming was physically training to be able to hold the steady cam for that long. Oh my gosh. And it alternates between, as the show does, the past in Hillhouse and the present. And it's

going to be an episode that will reveal a lot of things. But one of the things that Mike wanted to do from the very beginning was have it be, so you will never see a cut. There's never any coverage. When the camera starts, we all began moving and we didn't stop until that particular section was done. Wow. It's an incredible cinematic feat. The amazing thing about it, too, is that there are some action sequences within it. There are some sort of thrilling sequences. And then there are also emotionally, my personal favorite section, I'm not in it, is an 18-minute take of the adult children in the funeral parlor. Wow.

And they're talking. Yeah. And the camera's with them. And the incredible thing is as sort of showy as it is, it's never flashy. And the camera never takes you out of the narrative. It is so intrinsic to the narrative. And I think that's the other amazing thing about Mike is that he is technically extremely adept. But he's never there to kind of like blow a whistle and say, look at me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's really a storyteller. Yeah. When you hear the plans for that, what's going through your mind? Are you like, how are we going to pull that off? Do you have complete faith in Mike? Is it a huge discussion among the cast about blocking and how are you going to do this and how am I going to do this? I mean, it almost sounds like you're getting ready to go play a game that day or something.

I know, it's all those things. I think everybody had a, you know, it feels, I do a lot of theater as well. And so for me, that was the thing of like when you get out on that stage, you're going to cover anything that doesn't work. You're going to just the show must go on. So in that sense, I think everybody was at the top of their game and had a, you know, And though we got to rehearse in TV or film, you never get to rehearse enough to, you know, in play, you get to rehearse for a couple of months and then do eight shows a week, whereas this was like, you know, we got, you know, five days of rehearsal, which really meant for each section, it was about a day and a half. But you will feel the electricity. Sure.

And also we had to, the only way we could kind of pull it off within the constructs of making a television show was that he blocked it with our stand-ins for a week before us. So he was all set. So we also came into an almost a preset situation, which is also challenging. Sure. Because it's about you might not be following your actual instincts on a physical level. You're like, I want to throw my hands up the area or something. Yeah. And I want to walk to that door, not this door, or those kind of things. And for me, I'm always interested in a new experiment and a new way to try to find, to excavate something cool within parameters.

Yeah. Because, you know, any artist you talk to will say limitations are imperative to creativity. and you think you want everything and you want all this freedom but the truth is you know when you get to a you get to set one day right now I'm working on a show called Jet

which I'm super excited about that I'm also a producer on and but one of the things with that is like you know you get to the set and you're like that set the wall fell down so we can't shoot in that direction what are we going to do

and inevitably you end up finding something more interesting than what you had planned so this was a really cool exercise that I've never gotten to do on film and I just it's it's insane you're talking about jet and being a producer on it and I was curious about because you're you've done Gerald's game and that was released through Netflix and this is a 10 episode one hour long form story released through Netflix you've always done

lots of different kinds of work is it a particularly exciting time to be working right now because different things can get made and seen by different people in different places in a way that maybe it wasn't always the case because you have like all these shows that I really like like Karen Cisco and stuff like that where I'm like, oh man, like I wonder what would have happened if Karen Cisco had been around and there had been like an FX or something to pick that up. What's it like working right now? I know it is funny because a lot of people say that about Karen Cisco and I do think had we been even a year later, it would have been a different thing.

And by the way, Jet is quite Elmore Leonard influenced. And so definitely I play a thief named Daisy Jet Kowalski and she is like a sister of Karen's in a way. So that's really fun. But there is no doubt. I think we're in an amazing time where, you know, I think the only thing now is about kind of curating what you're watching or making sure there's so much content and you can all have it at your fingertips.

So it's kind of about making sure you can get it through, like can actually make people aware of it. Yeah. Which is wonderful with something like Netflix, obviously, because they're really good at that. We were, you know, you and I probably are traditionally like it comes on once a week. There's this huge push. People talk about it throughout a season. You know, how do you, like, what do you've been watching recently that? It has broken through for that.

Well, I have to be honest and say that I literally worked on the haunting of Hill House for, you know, eight months. I was supposed to have six weeks before I started Jet, and it was one week. Okay. And I'm on day 62 of 86, and I'm in 79 of the 86 days. Oh, my gosh. So I've watched very little. Okay. But I will say killing Eve, I think is so cool.

I'm trying to think of what else I watch. You know, it's funny because for me to even just watch the haunting of Hillhouse has been epic, and I have to do it for work even. So I still haven't seen episode 10. But this story, I think, is actually is designed so much for binging in the sense that, as you said, Mike is such a slow burn. Yeah. And it's orchestrated exactly as he wants it to be. There's no sort of randomness to it. He is an otur in that way in the sense that, you know.

So I am really excited for this show in particular to not have it be a weekly thing, but have it be something that you can parse out how you want or you can watch it all at once. because as you've seen it kind of sort of unfolds in this way that, you know, he's telling it like a 10-hour movie. But, yeah, I think, no, it's an incredibly, it's just, it's, it's, it's, we're in a, you know, I know we keep saying a golden age of television, but I don't really care where it is as much as the fact that there's a place right now for O'Tours to tell character-driven stories. Yeah. And Francis McDormand, who, you know, is Francis McDormand. but I'm such a massive fan of that woman on so many levels but one of the things she said to me one time she asked me what I was up to

and we know each other not super well but for a very long time and she asked me we were both in Austin working at the time and she's like what do you up to next? And I said, I'm going to do this TV show, da-da, and she said oh good because you know women's stories they aren't really three acts they aren't really an hour and a half that you need longer to tell a woman's story

and I thought it was such an interesting I've thought about that a lot That's really interesting. Yeah, and I think it is. It's just there's something about being able to live in it a little bit. And, you know, and that was a real challenge with this because this was not an easy character to live in. And each episode, as you've seen, is sort of one character's perspective. And Olivia's comes in nine.

So I was like a horse at the gate in terms of having to leave this very, very intense character on the back burner bubbling a lot while waiting a lot. And have, like, such an impact on these. people's lives in the scenes that you're seen in up until then probably. Yeah. Yeah, it's so fascinating what you said about like the it's not a three-act thing because one of the things we often talk about on this podcast is that you know, when

Madman in the Wire and the Sopranos kind of were happening and everybody was like this is the new 70s American cinema moment for television and it's going to go in all these different directions and I think that there was a slight correction where it then started to just feel kind of like a lot of stuff started to feel normal again and it sort of started

to follow very familiar blueprints. and slowly but surely everything from Mrs. Maisel to, you know, there's lots of different shows, and this too, that are kind of breaking it apart a little bit. I think you're absolutely right. And I think it's just the nature of, by the way, Babylon Berlin. Oh, yeah, I love that. Obsessed with Babylon, Berlin. And I did that one.

I couldn't stop watching. It's so interesting to say that because I think what happens is, and I've seen it so many, it's because I have done this for so long. I've seen it in a multitude of times in my career. But I would say Spy Kids was a really interesting example of that. because Robert Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avion, his wife at the time and producer of the movie, they really were making their own, cooking up their own little magic in Austin. And it was sort of like we were left alone.

Nobody really knew what we were doing. And then it became sort of the quintessential family movie where the kids were kickass and the parents were sexy. And there was this kind of, and they weren't all blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Like there was this sort of like, it sort of broke a lot of boundaries without trying to. It was just a very pure story that Robert wanted to tell. And then it started being like, oh, let's try to do the Spy Kids like movies. And I think inevitably what just happens is once people feel that they can understand something or we do it to each other too. You know, you try to quantify something and you try to go, oh, you're kind of this kind of.

Your podcast might be this kind of thing. You know, you guys are really cool. You love movies and you're really articulate and da-da-da-da. It's like, yeah, and all those things might be true. But also you're like, yeah, but we want to break new ground every day. Like we want to. And so. Where's my poetry podcast, man?

Exactly. I mean, who knows? It might be coming. But you know what I mean? So I think that it's by nature we start to kind of like put things into categories. And then it takes a real artist to see something from the inside out to tell a story the way they want to tell it. You know, I mean, anything new gets resistance. And then once it is successful, everybody wants to do it again.

It's just the nature of the beast. And same with us. I mean, you know, The Haunting of Hillhouse. This was not, I mean, Mike had to fight a lot of creative fights. Like this was a real, he had a really clear vision. And it wasn't a template to go, oh, it's going to be like this so you guys can feel really comfortable. You know, the great thing is they trusted him and they, you know, they allowed him to do it. But it was, you know, it doesn't come, it comes at a cost.

Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the coolest things about it is it starts and you're, you just sort of feel like the net gets pulled out from under you all of a sudden. And you're like, I can't tell. Is this a story about addiction and trauma? Like is that what, is this just? And you're like, oh, I see what's happening here. And it's, once you start to feel like, it kind of goes back to what you're saying about the losing control in a controlled environment. I think that that's the same thing for viewers. Like, you want to feel like you know where this is, that the director at least knows where it's going.

Totally. You don't have to feel like you know where it's going. Yeah. It's kind of neat. Thank you so much for joining me today. So good to talk. And I can't recommend the show highly enough. Carla, thank you for coming.

Thank you so much.