The Watch - On the Ground at South by Southwest, Plus: 'Olympic Dreams' | The Watch

Episode Date: March 12, 2019

'Game of Thrones' was one of the main topics of conversation at South by Southwest last weekend (4:32). The Russo brothers are adapting the book 'Cherry' into a movie. The book is about a veteran who falls into opioid addiction and starts robbing banks to support his habit. The movie will star Tom Holland (10:23). Plus an interview with Nick Kroll, Jeremy Teicher, and Alexi Pappas of 'Olympic Dreams' (19:57). Host: Chris Ryan Guests: Jason Concepcion, Nick Kroll, Alexi Pappas, Jeremy Teicher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I need supports to have to clear the run. Stand up and warm. Walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at The Ringer.com and joining me in a living room in Austin, Texas. It's Jason Concepcion! Yeah!

A little bit of reverb on this one. I can see Kaya's madly trying. She's like Lee Scratch Perry trying to get the reverb down. I will not use my usual speaking voice for this because I think that might have something to do with it. Lovely place that we're staying in here. It's beautiful. Jason and I and Kaya and Amanda and Sean and Mout. Mallory, have been in Texas for the last couple of days, as has Shea Serrano, doing a series of,

we did some panel talks, we did some live podcasts, and we saw a lot of movies, and we drank a lot of Lone Star, and we ate a lot of food. Jason, first time to Austin, though. It's first time. I'm more taco than man at this point. Yeah, Jason, I feel like, it's cool. I've gone to a couple of places, Jason, and there's always, like, you know, you go somewhere, and you're just like, that's pretty cool. But then when you, I've seen Jason a couple times, This is the best one where he just is like, I'm home, even though I've never been here before. It's great. You know, Jason did not do what he promised, which was to go full cowboy down here.

Can you want to? Well, I tried, but I couldn't get back there. I couldn't get back to the strip where I was looking for a full Western apparel. And I liked it because you were like, it would be a post-Austin look for you. Right. You would just be walking around L.A. It wouldn't even be a look. I would just want to have it for my home.

I wouldn't wear it out. That would be ridiculous. Would you have a mannequin that you were dressed like a cowboy? I might hang the hat like on a wall. Okay. And then I would maybe very occasionally wear it in the house just by myself. Like playing Red Dead. Yeah, that's it.

Why don't you just admit it? You wanted to get a full cowboy regalia to kind of see if you could enhance playing Red Dead. I certainly like a Western shirt I wouldn't turn my nose up at, but I definitely was looking for that classic Stets. And then I'll, we'll see if I have time to get back there. There was some really great Olympian eating going on. we basically would become incredibly full on one kind of food, Mexican barbecue, whatever. And then someone else would be like,

I'm hungry. And you would inevitably wind up having just another dinner? Yeah, I mean, two dinners was the norm here. Breakfast tacos to kick the whole thing off. I've eaten myself out of my clothes. It's been really incredible. How many times you go to the gym? I went once.

And they didn't have towels. and I had to dry myself with brown paper napkins. How many napkins does it take? Let me tell the story. So I'm not going to call the gym chain out because that would be wrong. But it's a national chain. And the cool thing about it is you can go to anyone

that's like in any city. And I went to this one, did the whole thing, went to go take a shower, no towels. I come out. I'm like, what's up with the towels? The guy's like, listen, We were having an issue with people taking the towels home, but I'll tell you what, I've got some paper towels for you. And I was like, what? And he comes out with like a four inch stack.

And your pot committed to showering at this point. I mean, yeah, you got to. Yeah, I had to. And it was like a four inch stack of like the brown paper like public school napkins that they have like a shop class. I didn't even like drying my hands with those back in like when I was seven. It's like drying your hands with like bark. And, you know, I was just like, you know, whatever, do it. do it. And then to make things worse, he's like, and listen, if you need more, you can call out. You know, just call. Just knock on the head. And I'll come to your shower stall and bring you more brown paper towels. And I'll come and bring you another five inches of paper towels. I kind of wish you would have done it just to have seen what the exchange would have been like. Would he have done

the like hand around the stall? Would he have like opened it up and just gotten in there with you? That's what I was expecting. And like, it's a semi-boosy chain. So like, honestly, I'm shocked by this. Okay. But come on, guys, towels. What's going on around? We're not just here to talk about hygiene and towel usage and gyms. I wanted to talk to Jason a little bit about Game of Thrones because that's kind of why we were here.

We were doing a Talk to the Thrones Live panel at the convention center here. And we kind of had more of a sort of self-reflective meta-conversation about what it's like to talk about Thrones. But you guys have so many great fans down here who were coming up to you and talking to you a little bit about binge mode and Game of Thrones. And I was curious whether or not your conversations with fans had changed anything about what you were thinking heading into this season or any things that were like, oh, I had really thought about that. There were some pretty cool theories that we got out there. A little bit, just in the sense of you kind of get a very anecdotal reading on how various theories are impacting the community and just what people are thinking about it on a one-to-one basis. That's, you know, it's one thing to read like, is Little Finger still alive? on Reddit, and then it's another thing to have someone be like,

what do you think? Do you think Little Fingers still live? And then chop it up with that person and be like, well, why do you think that that's the case? But it hasn't really, I'm going into this season, just expecting anything to happen. I really don't have any one particular thing that I'm leaning towards. Well, that was the cool theme. It was the cool theme of the conversation that I think came out of.

It was our kind of like coming to grips with, at least as the show. how much about it of the early seasons were about the subversion of expectations of whether or not that that attitude like that kind of almost like against the grain attitude that they they had would also make for a satisfying conclusion for the story. I mean, it's a great, it's a great topic to think about both for the show and for the books. How do you maintain the character of a series and provide a satisfying ending? Is it possible? Right. And was this story really? really ever supposed to end, which is kind of the thing. That's the thing that we were talking a lot about the books, and we were talking about Benny Offen-Wa's leaving Game of Thrones, or not

leaving it, like they were like, we quit, but like, I think that everybody involved on the creative side of the show was probably like, it's time. Yeah. I'm sure HBO would have been happy for this show to have gone on for six more years. Hell yeah. If not longer. And that's proven out by the fact that they immediately went into, you know, working on these spinoffs and prequels and whatever else. But I think that you could make the argument as this story has not been finished by its original author in general, and perhaps is, since it's like his life's work, you could see this being the kind of thing where he was just going to keep writing Game of Thrones books with some variation of these characters or their descendants. I mean, that's part of, that's certainly part of

the theorizing among the community about what exactly is holding George up. I mean, he always says that he went into writing this story with the idea that he wanted to write something that couldn't be adapted for movies, for television. And he largely did that, you know, books four and five were supposed to be one book, but he wrote so much material that they had to split it up by geography and also split it up because physically it couldn't be bound using modern book binding techniques into one publication. So really he's written, something that has broken the bounds of various mediums and indeed has at this point escaped his own ability to finish the story. And I think, I think to a large extent,

you know, what we're seeing with season eight with the six episode structure is the kind of the width and size and scope of this story kind of coming up against just the reality. Yeah, the realities of making a TV show. Yeah, I thought that it, for a second there when we were talking over the course of this weekend, I've been kind of like, I wonder if this is going to come back around and kind of land in George's fever. Like, I wonder if this show ends and that in itself is a little bit of like a relief to him.

And then, like, you know, I mean, I do, I can, I know that his productivity has been an issue. Yeah. But could he then write two or three more books about this, you know? I mean, I would imagine that it might be somewhat easier to know what he, he wants to do once he sees what the show does. Yeah, and he also could change that. I mean, it's his story.

If he wanted to change parts of it, it's well within his rights to do so. Any other big, like, Game of Thrones like conversation topics that you thought were really interesting that came out of, like, chatting with fans over the weekend? Just how much momentum there is in the community towards some kind of brand night king. Yeah.

whether that be Bran is the Knight King or they have some sort of time traveling relationship where Brand caused the Night King to happen or caused the second long night to happen. Some version of that

seems like it has entered consensus. That's gonna be like I think if they try to pull something like that off that'll be the hardest than they do. Like that's harder than any battle is to explain that in a way that's understandable.

I think even super casual fans were still like, I don't, wait, what happened with Hodor? You know, like, how do you do it where it doesn't seem like a cheat? How do you do it where it doesn't seem cheap? How do you do it where it's understandable? And also, how do you do it where, you know, this is a character, brand who was shunted out of the series for a portion of it. So how do you lay that kind of like story load material onto a character who was vacant? Yeah. It was not there for most of the time and do it in a way that is like respectful of the rest of the story. I think that's a really difficult thing to do. And I'm interested. to see what happens. The only other thing I wanted to tell you about is this just happened when you were coming over aside from Game of Thrones

was that, so, you know, the Russo brothers, the directors of the Avengers movies, they're making, or they bought the rights to Cherry. Oh, shit. The Nico Walker book. Now, this book is a book,

I've been talking about a little bit on and off for probably last six months. It's a book by this guy named Nico Walker. He's currently in prison. He wrote his debut novel with the help of an editor. He talks a lot about the process in the beginning or at the end.

at the end of the book. And it's essentially, the easiest way to describe it is like an Iraq war era Jesus' son. It's about a guy who is kind of disaffected, living in Ohio, dabbling with drugs, joins up the armed forces, goes overseas, has a horrific experience, although it's not told in a very matter-of-fact way,

but the things these witnesses are horrific, comes back, gets deeper into drugs, and just feed his drug habit becomes a bank robber. And it is one of the most like unrelenting, highly stylized out of like no style at all. Right. It's just like straight talk express about like this guy's life. And it was, it's, it's not necessarily like a discernible three act structure. There's not a darkest before the dawn.

There's not a lot of redemption. And he does the main character does a lot of like really dark shit. And now today it was announced that that main character is going to be. played by Spider-Man. What? Tom Holland. Well, that's not at all what I was picturing. Yeah, that book, which you, every book you recommend to me I read.

Thank you, man. Because that's just what I do. That is a book that put yourself in a safe mind space before you dive into that book. Because it will take you to dark places and you'll just be like, wow, I need to sit the next six hours of my day out. Also, this country is fucked. Yeah, it's extremely heavy. I like the way you describe the writing style,

which is, it reminds me a lot of Tov Jansen, is like this Swedish writer who wrote the summer book, and it's the same thing where it's very matter of fact, this happened and this happened, then this character is doing this. But it, the accrued effect is just like extremely impactful. Yeah. And I got to say, I don't see Tom Holland as this guy at all.

I think, you know, the reason. The reason why it's so interesting is that you've essentially got the biggest directors in Hollywood in terms of box office right now. And we always joke about on the rewatchables like, what's Apex Mountain? These dudes are at Apex Mountain right now. Oh, for sure. And they've chosen to make this really, really, really dark story about drug addiction and war with a kid who is honestly fucking adorable. Yeah, he's like a really cute. He's like a really five foot seven like little teacup. Yeah, and so I will be fascinated to see. I would recommend people go check it out because it's almost going to be a case study of an adaptation. If you guys want to know about the way in which things change as they move from page to screen, I believe the screenplay was written by someone who worked on the path

or did the show The Path. And, you know, there are going to be a lot of people involved in this movie who probably want to make sure that, like, at the end of it, Tom Holland either has an Oscar or his reputation still intact. And that's going to be hard to do if you're also shooting the what's in this book. I mean, that's a, listen, you know, like ever since De Niro, changing your body drastically for a role has kind of been the stereotypical thing you do to chase an Oscar.

And thinking about Tom Holland, who is Spider-Man, and is extremely fit, and you can go on his Instagram and see videos of him dancing and doing gymnastics and stuff, turning him into this character who is like... Smacked out by a bank robber. smacked out skeleton. Yeah. And a scuzz ball. Like just like really like sitting in cars and smoking like, yeah.

It will require a real physical transformation, like a real physical transformation that would be astounding to watch. And I'm very interested to see if it takes place. Yeah, me too. Man, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. And we come back.

I'm going to talk to Alexi Pappas, Nick Croll and Jeremy Tiger from Olympic Dreams. Tired of standing by idly while the world. goes crazy Diane Lockhart is, and so is the cast of the critically acclaimed legal drama The Good Fight. Stream the new season, premiering March 14th exclusively on CBS All-Axas, and tune in to see if Diane Lockhart will lead the resistance in a new post-factual world where the lawyers with the best stories triumph over the lawyers with the best facts. Christine Bransky is back as Diane Lockhart. She is our patron saint. So shout out to her. She stars alongside Cush Jumbo. Rose Leslie Sarah Steele and Audra McDonald, whose characters challenge the patriarchy at every turn.

Delroy Lindo delivers another can't-miss performance while actor Michael Sheen shakes up the screen as infamous lawyer Roland Blum. New characters, new ripped from the headlines, new stories, a dynamic cast, and so much more this season. The standard playbook goes out the window. This is one of my favorite shows on television. Everybody always is like, Chris, which I watch, I'm like, the good fight. And then they're like, how? And I was like, CBS, All Access.

And they're like, oh, okay. Guess what? I'm here to help you out. I'm cutting out the middleman. Join the fight by heading over to CBS.com slash the dash watch to redeem your free trial of CBS All-Axas. And now you can watch The Good Fight. You get to catch up on the first two seasons of the show out of the season premiere on March 14th exclusively on CBS All Access. That's CBS.com slash The Dash Watch to redeem your free trial of CBS All Access and start fighting the Good Fight. Hey guys, we're about to get into my interview with the creative minds behind a film called Olympic Dreams. And those people are Alexi Pappas, Nick Kroll, and Jeremy Tyker. Now, Olympic Dreams you probably haven't heard of. But I am happy to evangelize for it. I saw it a little while ago, and it premiered here at South by Southwest down in Austin. And it is really like a small miracle of a movie. I'm sure it's going to get distribution soon and you guys will be able to see it. But I thought that the story of the making of the movie was something.

so cool that we would be able to share it with you now. Alexi is a Olympic athlete. So she is actually an Olympic athlete. She ran in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. And she and her husband, Jeremy, are filmmakers as well. Jeremy is a director and a really accomplished filmmaker on every level because he is essentially on this film is his own crew. And here's what they did.

they got in with the Olympic committee who asked them to be artists in residence and they went and made a romantic comedy in Pyongchang during the Olympics. And it was really, it's a really incredible accomplishment. The basic story set up is that Alexi plays a woman named Penelope who's competing as a cross-country skier. She competes early in the game, so she has a lot of free time afterwards.

She's kind of feeling a little bit of an emptiness after competition. and she meets a volunteer dentist at the games played by Nick Kroll, and they kind of have this whirlwind friendship slash romance throughout the movie, and every scene takes place in some part of the Olympic experience, whether it's the opening ceremonies, the dining hall at the Olympic Village, in the dorms, in and around Pianchang, going to kind of behind the scenes of these athletic events.

I kind of have a little bit of a frustration sometimes, I'm watching television because you can kind of see the seams a little bit. You can see people. They're shooting on sound stages. They're shooting in a lot of interiors because that's easy to control. You can see easy to light. You can kind of get things in and out. But sometimes it doesn't feel of the world. This movie is kind of remarkable because it feels both very of the world. You get to see all these incredible locations. And, you know, they're running around in parking lots and in like food courts. And then they're like at a, you know, karaoke bar or a nightclub.

But then it also is a world that basically like 99.999% of us will never get a chance to see. We will not be Olympic athletes. We don't know what it's like to train all your life to do something so incredible and then have to kind of come down from that emotionally. And it is also like a lovely, lovely story about two people finding each other sort of at the exact right time in their life. it's got a really cool story and how it was made. The three people who made it are remarkably interesting. Alexi is just such a fascinating character. You should check her out on Instagram.

She is still a competitive runner. She does runs when she shows up in towns. She does runs with people, local people. It's just kind of like as a community building exercise and to get people moving. It's pretty cool. I'm a relatively cynical person and I was really inspired by this movie. So I kind of wanted to talk about it and talk with them

about it. This movie, I'm sure, will be out imminently. I can't imagine it not getting distribution. It's a really, really, really cool accomplishment. So here's my interview with Alexi Pappas, Jeremy, Jeremy, and Nick Kroll. Alexi, Nick, Jeremy, the makers of Olympic dreams. I saw this movie last week. I was lucky enough to go see a screening of it. And me and a coworker went, we had no idea what to expect. And we walked in, we saw it, we walked out, and we felt completely stoned. We were like, that movie was so delightful. It was so moving. It was so moving. and so unexpected to see that kind of like amazing emotional romantic story played out in a way that in a world that you never ever ever thought you'd get a chance to see as like a just normal person.

So first of all, thank you for making this movie. Thanks. It's just fantastic. I thought maybe we could do kind of like a little pre-production and then what it was like to make it and then what it was like to see it afterwards and how you're feeling about it. So the Olympic, how did the Olympic relationship start with you guys as like artists? in residence. That relationship started when the president of the Olympics saw our movie, Jeremy's in my

previous movie, Track Town on a flight. Yeah. And called me to ask if Jeremy and I would be a part of this new artist in residency program that the Olympics started in 2016 in an effort to bring back the arts to the Olympics, which has always been a core value, but not always, you know, practice. recently and so we became these artists in residence but Jeremy and I are

you know you give us a stick and we'll make a tree house and so we started thinking in our head about what could this be and we started out with this short film idea which the Olympics really took to it's good content for them and then we

blew that balloon up just a little bit bigger to capture enough for a feature film and that we that we did. The thing that I'm amazed by is how it's not just like a one-sided portrayal of the village. It shows the alienation and loneliness

that you obviously can go through if you're in another country to say nothing of having to live in this sort of like enclosed area, but it's also this really inspirational vision of that community. So I thought it was really amazing how you guys were able to show

both sides of the story, where is there any editorial, you know, control by the IOC Were they like, can we see it first? Or can you guys only show this kind of stuff or anything like that? No, not really. I mean, they, of course, saw the film. But we made the movie that we wanted to make.

And, you know, and it worked out. Yeah. I think, you know, we just wanted to be truthful about capturing, like, the athlete experience. Because Penelope, Alexi's character in the film is a cross-country skier. She does a personal best in her race. And she, you know, doesn't finish anywhere near the metal slots. of those top three spots because you have like a hundred of the world's best. So that's what the question of the movie is. Like what do you do next? And that's like the theme of the film. It's like

figuring out what your dreams are and being brave enough to chase them. And then also kind of figuring out what happens after one dream. Yeah. So we just knew that this was the story we wanted to tell. And, you know, Alexi lived in the Olympic Village in 2016. So we had a lot of real life things to draw on. In addition to Alexi and Nick, we just cast other athletes. Like we would pluck them from the game room. And so our portrayal was truthful. And I think it spoke for itself. And what was so cool about these athletes speaking,

so you've seen it, and there are scenes with the athletes just with Nick or maybe just with me, and they're so used to, or we are used to as athletes, being on camera for an interview and being really in the spotlight in that way. And I think our three-person crew and the benefit of having someone as approachable and talented as Nick there made them feel comfortable in a way that they haven't I think experienced

we don't athletes experience every day is being in a room for three people in a dentist office just I feel that we all opened up as athletes in a way that we wouldn't necessarily in other contexts and that was really special so let me ask you a little

this is the question I, the biggest question I had coming out of the movie is how much dentist work is actually being done. It's like, are you guys like, hey, dentist is here? Well, this was an interesting. I found this really interesting when I joined the project was that in talking to Alexi specifically about being at the summer games because Alexi competed in Rio and the story

is inspired by her meeting like a doctor at Rio at the games and they start a friendship. He was interested in perhaps something more. Alexi was busy running in the Olympics and being engaged to Jeremy. But that sort of became the jumping off point. It's like, all right, well, athletes are crossing over with dentists, doctors, chiropractors, people helping out there. So we, as far as what you said about the dentist is that, especially for the summer Olympics, there are a lot of Olympians who are there. This is the only time that they get dental care, that a lot of them get medical care,

because they're from very, very poor countries where those kinds of things are not easily accessible. So part of the one of the real perks for certain people going to the Olympic Games is that they're going to get like their checkups. Checkups in medical and dental care. We found, I think, ultimately, at the winter games, there was a little less of that because it's just the, for whatever reason, the athletes that are with the winter games are just might be slightly different than those of the summer games. but we took over a dental office. Again, one of the things about Jeremy and Alexi is that they are hustlers, they are real rascals. And they are,

Inevalon rascals, truly. And they are of an ethos that you do what you got to do to get the shot, get it made. And we brought a dental chair with us from the U.S., like a mobile dental chair that was. Did you have to pay a check-on fee for that? Yeah, we need to pay a lot of check-on fees. because the three of us flew an entire, you know, kits of camera, sound, everything. Jeremy can tell you everything in it.

But we also carried a like four by four foldable mobile dentist chair because we didn't know what we were going to have access to once we were at the games. And then we got there, they put us in a basically a storage container that we were going to have to try to turn into a dentist's office. But it was freezing and right outside the, in the Athletes Village where there was sound. It was just not tenable. And I think it was Alexi, who went to the med center and just basically convinced the Korean dentist there. Empowered him.

Empowered them to make the choice to allow us to take over their office during work hours. And that's why in certain scenes, you'll see dentists and hygienists literally walking in and out of the room because we were just shooting scenes while their office was functioning. And so we got very agile in learning that we don't stop acting until Jeremy says cut. So Nick and I just tried to listen to our director despite the very real world adventure and chaos of the Olympics going on around us. And so, yeah, the interruptions are all real. And they give it dynamicism, I think, to the film. And certainly I think we were excited that Jeremy was working in a way where, where we felt comfortable doing that.

I mean, it honestly threw me off because the dining hall scenes are probably like my favorite, like, kind of scene in the movie, the ones where you guys are just like kind of looking for a place to sit. And should I, you know, like, you have like these amazing meals that you've concocted with like Nutella and bread and bananas. And then what's amazing about it, though, is like you're shooting in a lot of like distance. Yes. And there's just all this life happening around you, you know, and people are doing their own thing. And I was wondering, like, do you go up to like 15? 20 people and be like, hey, just FYI, you're in a shot. And like, it's cool, but like, just do your

thing or do you kind of, are you secretly recording? Do you have, like, IFBs talking to Jeremy? Like, we did not have long distance microphones. That could have been good. But yeah, you know, our philosophy was like embrace the chaos. As a result, there are some scenes, like really emotional scenes where where bogies, like, walk in and, like, literally interrupt them and it made the cut of the movie because it's just magic. Embrace it. We're in the Olympics. The dining hall, that you just mentioned. So in the Olympic Village, it's like a football field-sized dining hall.

The perimeter is lined with just endless amounts of food. And then just every athlete is like sitting in there eating. And so we had a lot of dialogue scenes there. And what I would do is throw on the long lens, kind of plant myself a few tables away and shoot. And, you know, people are used to seeing, like technically no media is allowed to shoot inside the dining hall. Both athletes, like, don't know that.

But they're used to seeing, like, crews hustling this way and that with cameras. So people actually didn't like bat an eyelash, really. They're just like, oh, some person with a camera. And then I'll be shooting them three tables away. And it's also their Olympics. Like if it was Rio, you know, I was so laser focused that if someone, even if a movie star walked in, I would probably be excited, but we've worked our whole lives to get here. So a camera isn't going to get in the way of me getting my pre-race fuel.

Yeah. You know. Yeah. And that scene you're talking about is great because like he's trying to make conversation with you. And you're just like, it's cool, man, but I just have to do my thing. Nick, for your scenes in the dentist office, so was there any prep work with the people who were walking into the office? I mean, I watched a YouTube video of how you do dental exam, I think.

There's dentists YouTube. It's a thing. But then really what we would, basically, we would camp out in there. And then Alexi really was the recruiter and she'd just go to the athletes lounge and be like, do you want to go be in a movie? Yeah. And we would just grab people and run them through. And it was a really interesting, it was a really smart idea that Jeremy and Alexi had, which was make me a dentist.

So you have this thing where it's these one-on-one moments. It's really me interviewing athletes about their experiences at the game. They're kind of on a therapist couch it away. Yeah. And there were amazing stories that kind of that we found of like a woman, a Belgian skier who didn't qualify. Yeah. And then someone got injured and got injured. got to call like two or three days into the Olympics being like, you have to be here in like three days in your racing.

And it's just like all of a sudden she's thrust into it. Or like an Estonian cross country skier who was like, you know, had been training for 15 years every day of his life and was racing the next day. And everyone has a 16 year old New Zealand kid who was like the youngest male at the Olympic Games. And it just was all. He meddled. And he meddled like two days later. And Nick's got his fingers in his mouth. And I'm like, and I, by the way, have the little scraper and I'm like, what if I puncture this kid's gums?

Or even heartbreaking. The girl who plays my roommate, she got, you know, injured a week later in competition, which happens to athletes all the time. She was a freestyle, like a mogul skier. Yeah. Yeah. And then Gus Kenworthy, who is in the film and is amazing. It was the only athlete that you guys had gotten before the games. Right.

Who is one of him and Adam Ripon were the two first. openly gay male American athletes. And so we were, he was shooting with us. He fell in a practice run, broke his hand, was still skiing, and was also simultaneously, like in a Twitter war with Mike Pence who was visiting the games. He broke his hand. He goes, at least now I don't have to shake Mike Pence's hand. So to be, to be acting with a guy like Gus Kenworthy, who's a, has already meddled

at the Olympics previously and is in this. international spotlight. It just was, it's just this kind of thing that you can't ever. It's just, you never can really experience it because it's like, I've been around people going through like an Oscars race or whatever, and there's an incredible amount of pressure around something like that. But when you add on top of that, if you're in a Oscars race, you're trying to get an award season thing, you've already done your job and now you're

just trying to get an award for it. Yeah. When you're at the Olympics, you're both simultaneously like, participating in the media and everything that goes around it and then simultaneously have to go accomplish your job. Right. And it's a truly unique and bizarre, like, fishbowl thing that's happening. And I think because of Alexi's experience as an athlete and Jeremy's experience having been with Alexi, they were able to provide an insight that I don't think you really ever get to see, even when you're watching like those Olympic packages. that are great, but it's just a different thing

because you're not seeing the actual personal journey that a lot of these athletes are going through. Yeah, and Alexi, I thought the coolest thing about this movie is how you guys inverted. So, like, typically, Nick would be the audience avatar because he's the outsider joining the village, but I identify more with you because you were like, I've worked all my life to do this thing,

and now I don't know how it feels, but Nick's the super romantic about the Olympics and he's like, I can't believe I'm at the Olympics. This is so amazing. But did you, when you guys were writing it, I mean, obviously it's pretty true to experience, but I love the fact that like those emotional states of being were kind of transposed. Like I felt like I was like, oh, yeah, this is exactly right. Like you find yourself in these places in your life, whether you're an Olympian or you're a writer doing whatever.

And you're like, this isn't how I thought I was going to feel. And I've been building my life towards this. I thought that was so incredible. It's the very real experience of thinking about obsessing over and chasing a dream, regardless of its Olympic or creative or otherwise. To get to that goal, you know that you have to be laser focused and set yourself in the place of getting to the goal until that time period. If it's the Olympics, you're not thinking beyond that. And so I think that everyone can hopefully relate to that. idea of when you get there, whether it is everything you imagined or it's not, what happens next?

How do I process it? And so many Olympians go through this almost dip afterwards. I certainly experienced it and didn't expect it, where you are an Olympian forever and so proud and it is everything or not everything you expected, but regardless, it's over. and you need to set a new goal or change your goal or process it. And it's really, really tough because all of your energy up until that point has gone into getting there. And so I think Penelope faces something that maybe we all can understand. And Ezra provides this wonderful outside perspective for her to see it a different way and also hopefully help him see his situation a different way.

Did you guys have much time Not shooting? So like were you never not shooting Essentially when you were awake or was it Were you like cool we're off like I'm gonna go check out downtown Pianchang and stuff There was not a lot of downtown yeah We shot the movie in I don't know I left a couple days before you guys

Because I was yeah because I was I was in I literally had like I don't know how many days but I think I was like 16 days or something like that I was two and a half three-ish weeks. They had a few more days. And we basically shot every day. I remember once, though, we were like, we had just shot at the opening ceremony dress rehearsal because we had this scene we wanted to do in the opening ceremonies,

which was like fucking crazy. But then we were like sitting in this bus because there was a lot of traffic leaving the stadium and we just had all the gear. It's the three of us. Let's shoot a scene. It ends up being one of my favorite scenes in the film, the bus scene. I won't give away any. more than that, but it's like a really fun conversation. It was just, that was like, let's just shoot this thing.

And that's why it was so cool. As a independent filmmaker, you try to grow your career and work on bigger and bigger stages. And I felt like this was that with like being with Nick, being with Alexi. It's almost like being an athlete where you're on all the time. Like when we were filming, I don't know how every film set is, but I imagine when you're done, you can kind of check out. And for us, because we didn't really check out, we took advantage of everything.

So it was like, you know, as an athlete, I have running is my lifestyle. It's not just something I show up to and end every day. It's really my whole life. And I feel like as creatives, we took it on as our whole life for three weeks. Yeah. It was like you wake up, you have, Lexi would run in the morning, train in the morning. We would have like a huge breakfast at like 9.30 and then load up and then just go until. There was one day in particular that was I will, it was the opening ceremony's day.

Where we went, what were the things we did that day? That morning, it was the coldest day of any of our lives. The camera froze. Actually, the New York Times was following us around, and we were supposed to shoot this outdoor scene where they meet outside the gift shop. It was too cold. Not only was the camera breaking,

but my actors were breaking. So we had to quickly revise. We found some media employees coffee tent, shot the scene there. Then we got to the opening ceremonies. We were in the athlete. holding pen, which is where all the athletes kind of have to be grouped together, and then they do the parade of athletes.

If you guys remember, like, every Olympics, they all walk it. So everyone's, it's just this ultra-high-energy thing, and we were shooting this, like, musical montage. I knew it was going to be a musical montage. Did you shoot a lot, like, knowing how you were going to kind of cut it together in your head? Yeah, for the most part. I mean, we also totally, like, Alexi and Nick were so plugged into their characters.

A lot of the dialogue was improvised. Yeah. But I, in the back of my mind, like, had the structure. of the story there. And so we could be totally free and improvise and move. And then I would move my imaginary Excel spreadsheet like in my mind.

So I kind of was keeping the ship steering. Yeah. I also think, Jeremy, maybe you can speak to some of the mentorship you got after when you were editing. Oh, yes. Was it because of this podcast? Yes.

Is this PTA? Yes. Okay. So this was the coolest thing. So Bill did an interview with my boss, Bill, did a podcast with Paul Thomas Anderson. the end of the podcast, they're like, what's something really great? What's the last great thing you've seen?

And he just is like, well, it's this really small movie. And he says Tracktown. And like, you can hear Sean who's doing the podcast like Googling Tractown while it's happening. And he's like, he just gives this like glowing, loving review of Tractown. And I think like everybody at our office is like, I guess I got to go see Tractown now. Paul Thomas Anderson. Amazing.

Little does Paul. Actually, he does know because I've since told him that helped us get this movie made. Oh, that's awesome. Because we were like convincing, you know, even. though we were invited by the IOC International Olympic Committee to go do this project, there's like, wait a minute, you want to do a narrative film? Just trust us, PTA, let me send you this link. The IOC was probably like, man, I hope they don't make, there will be blood in the

thanks. But we later connected with Paul, and he is in the special thanks because he became a mentor. Like, I sent him a rough cut, and I actually, like, one of the coolest moments in my life was sitting with him at his house and, like, workshopping a scene with him. It was just, like, crazy. I remember he sort of pushed us in the edit to lean in to almost the magic of it all. And that as young filmmakers, we never want to make something that leans in too hard to something, you know. Like a genre.

Like a genre or like something that could feel, you know. Schmaltzy. Exactly. But Paul was so, you know, you need a mentor to give you permission to believe in yourself. And I feel that he and Nick, like what. have given us tremendous gifts in believing in us and encouraging us to lean into those little itches that we have and try it. And so it paid off when we were on the ground with Nick. I mean, he is a captain on the field, if you will. He leads while he's playing. And I think for

Jeremy, Paul was like that in the edit. And we're very grateful. That's great, man. Well, I adore this movie. So I hope a ton of people get to see it. And thank you guys so much for coming by the Watch. Thank you. Appreciate it. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by the Good Fight. Christine Bransky is back as Diane Lockhart in the new season of the Good Fight premiering March 14th alongside Cush Jumbo, Rose Leslie, Sarah Steele, Audra MacDonald, Delaware, Lindo, and Michael Sheen. I've been telling you to watch the show. Now you can join the fight at cbs.com slash the dash watch to redeem your free trial of CBS All Access and catch up. on the first two seasons ahead of the premiere of the third season on March 14th exclusively

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