WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1117 - Barry Sonnenfeld

Episode Date: April 23, 2020

Director Barry Sonnenfeld had zero interest in film and went to college mainly to get away from his parents. His obsession with lenses and f-stops put him on the path to becoming a cinematographer and soon he was making his first feature film with the Coen Brothers. But not before getting hired as the cameraman for a porn shoot. Barry and Marc talk about Men in Black, Get Shorty, The Addams Family, dealing with bullies in Hollywood, and firing Donald Trump. This episode is sponsored by SimpliSafe. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated

category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton.

The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what's happening what is happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast, WTF. Is everybody okay? Are you all right? I know. Dumb question. I know. There's a lot of people in a lot of fear. There's a lot of people in a lot of trouble. There's a lot of people with financial issues going on. I know. I know. It's hard to wrap my mind around every day. It's hard to, you know, if you're an empathetic person, which I am, but I have to, you know, I have to regulate it so I don't get destroyed by my own sensitivity.

And I'm not, that's not tooting my own horn. It's just that if I open my heart too much, or if I open my mind too much, and I really sort of take in, if I'm empathetic to the entire global community at any given point in time, I'm going to explode into a black hole of bleak darkness. So I keep it relatively small. I'm waving to people on the street. If I'm running or I'm walking in my mask, make sure you wave. Hi, look at us. Wearing masks outdoors. Hello.

Hi. That's okay. I'll go to the other side of the street. You've got a stroller. Let me run away from you. I find waving is nice. I find that there's that beat. Like I was walking out today, taking a walk,

got my mask on, came up on a woman walking her dog. She was walking across the street. We were going to intersect at the same time. She had her mask below her mouth, saw me, put her mask on, said hi awkwardly. I'm like, I get it. There's that moment where you're like, I know this is hard. I know, I know.

But hopefully the means will justify the end a little bit, a little bit. If we can just take the weight off, take the weight off the people on the front line, the hospital workers, take the weight off, man. We're not over there every day. Hey, we have a guest today. Yes, it's like he's the second guest. We've done the new way, the second guest. We've done The New Way, The Adaptive Way. Today, I talked to Barry Sonnenfeld.

He's directed a lot of stuff, a lot of cinematographer, a lot of Coen Brothers movies, the Addams Family movies. But he's, more importantly, for now, right today, he's written a memoir called Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother, Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker, which you can get. It's out now. Very funny, very dark, good moments, nice pace, but a lot of great information about his work in film, his work in movies. So that's going to happen soon. I'm not going to talk too long. I can tell you what i'm up to but i don't want any i don't i don't want you to get snappy with me man i don't want to trivialize

anything and i'm certainly not talking to anybody here to make you resent me because of you know that it seems to be easier for me because i don't have a wife or I don't have children or I've got some money saved whatever it is I can only share what's up I'm sensitive to your plight I'm not living many of your plights what is really important right now seriously I mean anything I talk about is like is that really important is that really where we're at? Are you really going to talk about going through all your records and purging the albums that you do have? I am. It took days. I carefully went through all of my records. And I listened to ones I wasn't quite familiar with.

And I processed a lot of records. I listened to a lot of records and a lot of music. I decided sometimes it wasn't easy to get rid of a lot of records because I'm not running a record store hey man is this really important right now a lot of us are dying out here we're suffering we're in trouble I got some pretty cool records in between my own panic and fear and curiosity as to whether or not I have the virus or had the virus or I'm heading into the virus at any given moment. I listen to a lot of music, a lot of vinyl, a lot of records, and I'm happy to say I'm getting rid of a couple hundred. And I'm thinking I might even call Sharpling up and get

him over here if he's willing to do a six-foot separation podcast with me to go through my records and maybe tell me whether or not I'm rethink I should rethink it or not I wish I was announcing that happening but I'm not I'm just telling I'm thinking out loud I may call Sharpling to do that with me so I want to clear up something that happened on the Rosie O'Donnell episode O'Donnell not that anyone's necessarily paying this severe attention but uh we brought up John Mulaney it wasn't John Mulaney all right that that does not mean uh the John Mulaney we all know young John Mulaney both Rosie and I were talking about a guy named John Mulrooney who was a comic of her generation a little uh a little before me and he was sort of a big deal for a while.

Just want to clear that up, clear that up. Also, Lynn Shelton noticed something when we were talking. I said, are you a friend of Bill's after she brought up Adrian Tosh? Bill Sheft is what it was. I wasn't asking her if she was a member of the Secret Society. I wasn't asking her if she was a member of the secret society. I wasn't asking her if she was in the program. I was actually asking her if she knew a guy named Bill that we both knew.

If that wasn't clear to you. Just clearing that up, man. Hope you're doing okay. Go easy. All right? There's a lot of ways that this plague is hurting us. One of the ways is saying fuck it too often when you're eating things. You don't want to get an underlying medical condition while you're trying to avoid getting

COVID. You dig what I'm saying? Watch your diabetes. Watch it. Watch it. You know, come on. And who am I to talk? Here's the nice thing about being kind of famous. I guess I'm famous. Look, man, I'm just trying to stay afloat, trying to stay alive, doing the work that I've cut out for myself. But people send me shit. I don't ask for it. They send it to me. All right?

And sometimes it's great. It's always pretty great to get shit. I'll be honest with you. But. I got to tell you, I got a package, big box of ice cream from Van Leeuwen ice cream, two boxes, four little pints in each box. They make some of the best vegan ice cream in the world, some best of the regular ice cream. Do I need it? No. Is it fucking amazing? Yes.

Is it fucking horrifying to me to know that I got eight pints lined up in the chamber just waiting every night? Tough, man. It's tough for me to not eat them fucking during the day. Just hit those things all day long. They sent some vanilla to cut it with. Very nice of them. They know me. They know me.

Got several different masks now. Lynn and I are getting along. It's okay. See, that's why I didn't want to tell you. That's what I was sort of heading towards because I know there's a lot more panic in the world and I don't want to die of this no one does and I'd like our country to survive it and I'd like things to level off at some point but one of the things I'm realizing is that if I don't

lose everything that I might be done. I'm good. If we get through this and everybody does okay, or most people do okay, and we can get back to something, then I don't, I might be done. Not right now, but maybe, I'm just wrapping my brain around that.

Might be done. Not today. We'll see. Here's what I think we can glean from what I'm talking about today. My brain is working overtime, as is my body and my hands

to not fucking lose my shit daily. My brain is distracting itself with mundane things to worry about, to focus on. Sometimes it propels my hands into action to clean things, to rearrange, to cook things. Sometimes it makes me go out and run. to cook things. Sometimes it makes me go out and run. Sometimes it makes me listen to music all day long, all kinds of music, just to stay away from the fear or the panic or the bad thoughts. That's what we're learning. Maybe many of us are doing those things the one thing i'm trying not to do is eat the bad thoughts away but right now i got about six and a half pints of fucking ice cream right over there yep right over there. All right, so Barry Sonnenfeld, folks.

It was one of those books that came to me, and I was like, what the fuck is this book about? This guy looks kind of interesting, funny. I read a little bit, and then I couldn't put it down. Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother, Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker. He's a director who started as a cinematographer for the Coen brothers. I talked to him. This was, I think, the we did i'm gonna i'm getting better at this it's okay it's working out all right i like when i can look people in the eye and there's an intimacy to it and it's it's okay it's getting better and this was a great talk so this is me and Barry Sonnenfeld talking over the video conference-y kind of thing.

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you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Oh. So I don't know what I expected, but I expected someone more fraught and tormented and less stable looking. But you seem to be comfortable and relaxed. Is it because the world is ending? You know, the world is always ending, Mark. It's just I'm very much aware that the world is ending.

Mark. It's just, uh, I'm, I'm very much aware that the world is ending, but if it's going to end somewhere, you know, sweetie and I are totally isolated here in Telluride, Colorado. We've got 62 acres. We go to get, uh, you know, food once a week. I make her wear a mask. She refuses. So I say, okay, I'll go in and get the food, you know. So it's really that there's no big change of life for you two? Truly, there is zero change of life. We wake up, we have breakfast, I take the dog out, we lay on couches, we read, we talk about clouds, and if the cloud is more like a dog eating a pizza or like a dinosaur chasing an eagle, and then, you know, it's dinnertime. So for us, it's exactly the same, except we have three children, one in Jersey,

one in New York, and one in L.A. So they're all in hotspots. So we don't feel good about that. Oh, so is everybody holding up? Is everybody OK? Is everybody following the rules? We're told they're following the rules. So, Barry, I love the book. I actually finished the book, which is sometimes a problem for me, because that means I can lead you, and I already know how the story ends. You live. Yeah. But is your father still alive? Thank God they're both dead.

Father and mother. When did, when did he die? Cause at the, at the end of the book, he's 90 or something. He's 94 at the end of the book. He died because he just wanted to die. You know, he saved up a bunch of, you know, sleeping pills and he was, I guess, 97. His brother died when his brother was 100. So I've got good genes and bad genes in my family. But yeah, dad died about three or four years ago,

I guess. By his own hand, because he'd had enough. Yeah. And by the way, no one was more up with Sonny than Sonny. I mean, this man was just totally in love with himself and very optimistic. But, you know, he just, you know, he still had a girlfriend, a famous lighting designer named Jennifer Tipton, and everything was great. He just felt tired. Really? That's interesting. I mean, did were you proud of him for making that decision on some level? You know what? Not really, because, you know, I think it was a little bit selfish, you know, because he wasn't that sick. And, you know, he was beloved by, you know, the woman he lived with, Jennifer, and he had, you know, lots of visitors and all that. with Jennifer and he had, you know, lots of visitors and all that. So listen, I think it's a great way to go because the last place you want to die is in a hospital. And I'll tell you the

truth, Mark, one of my biggest fears about coronavirus is all these people that end up dying alone. In the hospital. Yeah, because no one can visit them. And so that's where I go when I'm trying to nap is I go to the dark place. Well, yeah, the dark place where there's just sort of an empathy short-circuiting. Like there's no hope in that vacuum. Zero hope. And that's my biggest fear is suddenly someone saying, all right, we're putting you in the ambulance. biggest fear is suddenly someone saying, all right, we're putting you in the ambulance.

We're taking you to St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction. And then I don't see anyone ever again. And I die. It's awful. That's an awful scenario. Let's hope it doesn't happen, at least not during this interview. So nice. You're the best. So nice. You're the best. I just wanted to to give my my self-centered Jewish bona fides, put it out there right at the beginning. You did a good job. Well, thank you. No, I'm happy to see you. And I appreciate the fact that you take such shameless shots at your parents throughout the throughout the book, because I, too too have done that in all of my work. And sometimes I did feel guilty about it. Sometimes it upset my father to the point where I don't think he threatened me, but he insinuated that my depiction of him was going to cause him legal problems. Really? Yeah, that was a good one.

Are both your parents still alive? They're both alive. And I'm happy that you like my special because that was one of the things coming out of that special was how my mother was going to take being referred to as the aging Jewish witch. And I was upset because in preparing for the special when i did it on stage what it was always the the i was mad because i would say the uh aging hebrew witch right which i thought was more biblical i i prefer yeah but but calling her a witch was not the issue it was that but she uh she seemed to be okay with it i mean your mother in the book is almost a monstrous

character sure it reminds me of uh for some reason for for the moments that we saw richard kind in a simple man right that that that was sort of like your mother you know uh i think that's a really really really good example. Plus, mom looked like Richard Kind. So there's also that. Is that nicer than saying she looked like Vincent Gardenia? I just want to know. Well, yes, because, you know, Gardenia has a sharper edge face, as does Roger Ebert.

While Kind has a softer, more feminine kind of uh face i i will say i that that movie that the cohen's directed is literally my favorite movie since i i was the cinematographer on their first three movies yeah and and then my favorite movie after that is uh that movie i think it's extraordinary i just i love it love it so much i love i i'm a huge fan of um that movie and some of the other ones that people don't seem to really care about i liked all your coen brother movies all the ones you did blood simple raising arizona and miller's crossing right those are i've re-watched all those recently but i'm a huge fan of that last one, the Hollywood one, Hail Caesar. Hail Caesar, me too. And Barton Fink, I think, is really the great, that's a double feature right there.

I mean, it seems like just the same, a continuation of the same story. Oh, I totally agree. They're very similar and very Jewish, obviously. Yeah, and same with A Simple Man. If you're a Jew, a middle-class Jew who grew up conservative, I mean, how is that movie not going to be the best movie in the world? I agree. I also have never heard of a movie that used white rabbit for comic effect

quite so much as they did either. But you didn't grow up that Jewish, right? I mean, yeah, I mean, culturally, obviously. I'm a cultural Jew. I'm a religious anti-Jew. You know, I don't get the whole Old Testament God and why he's so mean and insecure. And so, you know, I went, you know, I played hooky from Hebrew Hebrew school I was vomited in the church uh I I have yeah what is that story I love that story I mean do you I mean you seem to put some sort of um a premium on this quantum idea of of of serendipity and and you know things leading a certain place that if the butterfly effect to a certain degree, right, if one thing had gone one way, you might not be here. But do you attach any other mystical significance other

than you're clearly not cut out to be a real Jew by having to be bar mitzvahed in a church? You know, it's all about quantum. It's just about that weird quantum reality. And, you know, I love the concept of the multiverse and that literally for every decision, every single one of us on the planet make. And every dog and cat and tiger, there's a version of Earth somewhere where they took, made different choices. I just love that. I think, do you think that's true? I kind of want to say yes, actually. Because I have moments where I am kind of half asleep and I'm living a different life and it happens all the time.

You know what? I also think that if you look back about some of the times you were in a near death experience, if that's ever happened to you. Sure. I kind of think there's no way I didn't die. There's no way that plane didn't blow up when I. And there are other stories that aren't even in the way. But but that plane but that plane didn't blow up. It didn't.

OK, so the question is, did it not blow up in the reality I was in or the reality I had to shift to because it did blow up? I guess your point is it didn't blow up. So what what are you talking about? I guess it's one of those things where you're like, it's like my mother, like if she, like one time she was sure the plane was going to crash and she had them, you know, abort the takeoff, get off the plane and it took off and it didn't crash. Right. So, I mean, would it have crashed with her on it? I don't know. But the fact is, is that it did not crash, but I, I do seem to be living a different life in my waking consciousness. That seems very tangible and real to me.

No, I think there is something to that. I felt like there was a lot of similarities between not so much between our upbringing, but our association with Jewishness. And I think your parents are a little older generationally than mine. But there was something about being a Jew. And I talk a little bit about that on the special that it was important to me. It seemed important to you. Yes, I agree. I definitely feel very comfortable with being Jewish. I feel very comfortable with being a cultural Jew. I feel very relaxed about being anti-religion, which I suspect you are too. Yeah.

And yet it brought us both a lot of joy through discomfort sitting in, you know, sitting in temple, listening to people being called to give money to the temple and that kind of stuff. Yeah. The way you capture some of that stuff. But I mean, like in terms of because I had a philandering father as well. And my mother was, you know, she was a very vain kind of self-centered woman. But but it just it is weird to the revelation you make at the end of the book about your parents, which I don't need to spoil because it is sort of an interesting thing to to put it the second to the last chapter. Right. The distinction you make is that, you know, other people's basically other people's perceptions of your parents are are different,

totally different than your experience. Well, by the way, just like people are always experiencing your children differently. They're always saying Phyllis was so nice. Well, yeah, to you, they were, you know, Phyllis was lovely. Sure. But you keep referring to your mother as was. Oh, well, she seems like she's getting a little better. I see. You know, whenever I'll tell you, Well, she seems like she's getting a little better. I see.

You know, whenever, I'll tell you, whenever any of my friend's parents die, and I hear about it, like the Cullens' mother died about, I don't know, a decade ago. And I called up Ethan, Joel and Ethan, and I said, I'm really sorry that your mother died, unless that's a good thing. Yeah. So, I mean, and that that's and like people are always thinking wait no one's supposed to say that but in my case i was very relaxed to say the least when each of my parents moved on yeah i've i've been playing with that idea on stage a lot where you know i where i say like my mother's still alive and then i say wrong tone i'm blessed you know you know and i've done that with both of them at different and in different uh specials but but i mean i've talked to other people about this before because i don't think you had the connection that most people have with

their parents there was no nerd they were your father was passive and your mother was this needy kind of person that you know that had a complete complete sort of hold on your emotional system in a very manipulative and malignant way. No, she really did. And, you know, it really made me who I am. And maybe I shouldn't have gone to what you called sleep away school. Others call it college. That's what she called it. Sleep away school. Mark, do you have a lazy l i do yeah so do i did you do speech class not for very long i've i've you're not yeah i've

i've discussed it i have a slight lisp and a lazy l which is really a w right yes it's like tom brokaw. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, he's got one, too. You actually sought out the famous people that have lazy L's? Yeah, because I was in speech class for seven years from kindergarten through sixth grade. It's why I can't spell because speech class was always every single year when there was the spelling retest on Friday from two two to three i was in speech class

so i never had to take a spelling retest so i never learned how to spell what did you did they fix the lazy l well to a certain extent i think i think you and i are similar in the extent of our lazy l's and uh but i used to write, you didn't grow up in New York. No, I grew up in New Mexico. My family's from Jersey. Well, so you would know a guy named Louis Lefkowitz, who was the attorney general in New York State. But I would write slogans like, you can laugh at Louis Lefkowitz because he lost the last election legally, which has a lot of L's in it. I was very proud of writing these things.

True story. Not that interesting. But if you've got a lazy L, you're all over this. I've made random attempts to try to fix it. And I try to be conscious of it because it's really using your throat to say L as opposed to actually forming the L with your tongue, la, la, you kind of go la. And it's like, it's, it's the, if I really think on it, I get, I, I, I just get into a real pit of, of, of frustration and self-hatred because,

you know, I think to myself, like I could have, that's why I can't do voiceovers for commercials. That was like, I remember like going on voiceover auditions early on in my career and I don't want to do voiceover for commercials, but I was like, why am I even doing this? You know, just to hurt myself. How are they going to hire with my mush mouth, lazy L garbage? But the fact that you said that it made you feel self hatred implies you don't all the time. It seems that as I get older, some of it's relaxed a little bit like this morning here in quarantine. I'm doing the best I can. And somehow or another, you know, we're buying healthy food. I'm lucky to have my girlfriend with me, who's a director.

Her name's Lynn Shelton. And, you know, I somehow made the exception for peanut butter. So I've been eating fucking peanut butter for days. And my mother, her problem was, unlike yours, my mother's manipulation completely revolved around food. She was anorexic. So, you know, it was always like, you know, she actually said to me, if you were fat, I don't know if I could love you. Right? So that was my trip. So the food things loaded. So this morning it was like really deeply assessing, I would say, in a self-hating way, the presence of peanut butter in my current diet.

What do you what do you do? Do you do you really still hate yourself? I mean, you say that. I mean, I know it's our job as Jews to some degree to live up to these stereotypes, but do you find them to still be true for you? Yes and no. I will say, as I've gotten older, I've gotten less angry as a person. I still don't particularly. Look, it's we all are self-loathing, yet we all don't understand why people don't love us and respect us more.

It's that weird combination of need and ego versus self-loathing. But I would say I love myself less, but I still don't understand why I'm not getting certain jobs and, you know, what I did wrong and all that kind of stuff. You know, I do that too. That's like, it's the compare thing. I'm comparing yourself to other people. Yeah. The great thing about this quarantine is like, nobody's doing anything. So no, you're right. You can't resent people for doing something you're not that's they're not there's a reprieve here right it's not like you you get to open the paper and say how did why did they hire that guy instead of me because yeah who the fuck is that i could do that right right nope

nope everyone's doing nothing nothing which is what we, sweetie and I are always doing. You know, it's, I'm either working or not working. And when I'm not working, that's why we live in Telluride because we're never going to end up working where we live. Right. So we picked a great place to live.

And then when we have to work, we go somewhere. Right. And then, and because it's show business and movies, it's, it can be for months. Right. And you have a new bunch business and movies, it can be for months, right? Right. And you have a new bunch of friends. You know, we love Vancouver. But if we lived in

Vancouver, then I'd get a job in Atlanta. So, you know. Did you think about living in Vancouver? I love Vancouver. Absolutely. Especially where Sweetie and I are now permanent residents on our way to being citizens, because we were up there for three years on a series of unfortunate events, which we did for Netflix. So in fact, here's what happened. I was directing an episode and there was this weird, wacky woman who was, you know, obviously she got invited to visit the set and she had like a 12 year old kid who loved the books. And I was joking around with her and I said, this is three years ago, who are you and why are you here? And she said, oh, my name is Chrissy Clark. I'm the premier of British Columbia. And I said, in a week, you may be very important to my future.

And in a week, it was election night. She emailed me and said, are you ready? And I said, yes. And she got us permanent residency in Canada. Oh, you lucky. You lucky bastard. I'm a lucky bastard. And we have permanent residency cards and everything.

Can you work up there as long as you pay taxes up there? Is that it? Right. And any taxes you pay up there come off of your American taxes. So it's a wash. So we can use their health system. We we can buy a place without paying non-residency fees, et cetera, et cetera. So we're thinking that our future is in Canada, is in Vancouver, which is a fantastic place. Oh, really? So you're like, if this goes on, we're leaving. Well, if this goes on, meaning if Trump is still president, we're leaving. Well, congratulations on getting yourself set up like that. Very proud of it worked hard just for being a nice guy huh just having good timing brilliant

timing and making fun of this woman who ended up being the premier british columbia so let's talk about the irony or at least i you know i i in the book which i i again i read, and I'm just saying that again, cause I'm proud that I finished something. Um, and you liked it and you liked it, which is why you read the whole thing. No, of course I liked it. It was very funny. It was very dark. I thought it was very, uh, I thought, you know, you explored yourself thoroughly. It was disturbing. And, but, you know, you as a character, as a, you know, a great character,

kind of a, not self-defeating, but a guy who gets himself into situations, can't quite control, you know, his disposition sometimes. And, you know, I just thought the whole thing was good. And I like I like Jews, you know. Yeah, sure. But but the fact that your father was this kind of like, you know, hustler, philandering salesman of lighting in particular. Yeah. And that the the idea that, you know, you deal with lights for a living, the idea of that is not lost on you. Have you explored that more, really? You know, I haven't, and I should, because ever since I was in second grade, I had a dimmer board that my father made me, and whenever there was a school play, I was called to come to the auditorium

and I would light the school play. My father used to come to my elementary school and show kids games you could play with lights that white light is really made of three different colors and you combine those three colors and you get white light, all this really interesting stuff. And it never dawned on me. And also Schwarzenegger ran into me at some event. I think I was at a screening at, I'm good friends with Rob and Michelle Reiner. I introduced them, actually. And so I think Schwarzenegger was there one night. And he was trying to explain to me that my name means field of light.

Oh, yeah. Sonnenfeld. I always thought it meant sunny field, but he says, no, it means fields of light. So I guess I was, uh, I guess I was born to be a cinematographer and a director, I guess. Predestined, predestined Sonnenfeld and your father's cells lighting. Yeah, I guess it was an easy choice, but I didn't know it. It took a long time to figure that out. And that doesn't make you want to read the Kabbalah? It so doesn't. It really, really, really doesn't.

When I'm reading the book, you know, I wrote a book and there were certain chapters that, you know, I really wanted to get right and work very hard on and really kind of labored over. Right. Now, it feels to me that there's a couple in your book. And one of them, I think, that was meticulously handled in almost, you know, the minutia of it was just perfect. It just felt like, you know, like you spent a lot of time on that porn chapter.

Yeah. Minutia indeed. But, like, I guess we should go back a little bit let's just talk about your cousin mike for a minute sure that that you know the way both of your parents handled the the fact that you were molested by your mother's cousin who was around and lived in the house. Yep. And you later found that both of your parents knew. Yep. That was happening. And what did your father say?

So my mother had this cousin, cousin Mike to Chad molester, CM to CM. And he lived with us whenever he was unemployed. And when my father was 94, actually, I read an article in Slate magazine by a former neighbor of mine who wrote about being molested by this person. And I emailed him and I said, see him to see him. And my friend said, yes. So I went to see my friend whose life was pretty much ruined by CM to CM. By your mother's cousin.

By my mother's cousin. This is a kid who lived in the building. Right. He lived one floor below me. He's had a weird sex life. He's been divorced several times, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I decided to go see my father. Because you always assume

your parents know, but you weren't sure what they knew or didn't know. And so I confronted my father and I said, did you hate mom so much that you had Mike live with us just so that there would be someone paying attention to mom? And dad said, you know, Barry, there are three reasons why we let Mike live with you. First of all, remember, child molestation didn't have the same stigma back then that it has now. What does that mean? You go, well, okay,

well, it's sort of always had some kind of stigma. Yeah, it's always been a bad thing bad thing yeah second of all remember your mother was so upset because of all the affairs i was having that i thought having mike around would make her feel better and have someone to you know drive her to the premise park mall and then he, and this was the one where you go tilt and the game ends and the lights go out. He said, you know, I never thought Mike molested you. I only thought he was playing with your penis. And that's where you go. That's where you go tilt. Game over. Right. And I said, and that was OK with you, Dad. And he said, well, I play with my penis.

It feels good. And I said, yeah, but that's you deciding to play with your own penis. That's not someone forcing themselves onto your penis. And dad said, you know, I never thought of it that way. And I said, all right, dad, I'm going to say goodbye now. And that is, uh, that is pathological narcissistic thinking. That's both of them were total narcissists in different ways. Dad was very up with himself. Mom was very down with herself,

but they both required constant, you know, attention. But the horrible thing about becoming a parent is you become your parents and then you see your kid becoming you. And you, you know, I know this is very dark, but I don't think that any child chooses to be born and therefore they owe you nothing. And therefore, they owe you nothing. Children really owe you nothing. Because and everything you do for them, that's great. But don't ever think they owe you anything for that because it was not a request they made. So that's why I feel very comfortable saying mean thing about my parents, because I didn't ask for this. Sam Kennison once did a bit.

To paraphrase it, it was just about, you know, like I was a free spirit floating through the universe, no space, no time, no body, and you two had to fucking bring me here. Yeah, right, right, exactly. I'm with Sam. I agree. But I guess, you know know in dealing with that reality so you were saying that your friend it it emotionally and psychically crippled him somehow yeah and and what was your experience in talking to him about it in terms of where you where you're at with it I don't want to make light of it. And in fact, it was Sweetie's idea. Sweetie is my wife. I call her Sweetie. It was Sweetie's idea to add that chapter near the end of the book where after I was paid at Madison Square Garden. I talk about visiting dad and asking about cousin Mike.

But sweetie felt and I agreed with her that it seemed like it was making light of it. I'm not a perfect person and I do have my problems and I wish I was a better husband and all that. But I was not emotionally or psychically wrecked by the experience at all. Well, it was kind of a, well, it was sort of an odd choice because I, you know, I read that this morning and you're coming up on the end of the book and then that's when you decide to graphically, uh, sort of depict Mike as, as a character and also, you know, detail some of the abuse. Yeah. I thought it was important so that you,

the reader didn't think I was just sort of relaxed by the whole thing. And I think the readers would have been mad at me in the same way, Mark. I think it's really good that I give my parents a break near the end of the book. Yeah. good that I give my parents a break near the end of the book. Because for me, it allowed me to be so mean to them during the book. Right. If I knew that there was more to them than just that. So the fact that I give them a little bit of space at the end allowed me to feel that

I had every right to be as mean as I wanted to be the whole way through. Well, yeah, because it turns out that, you know, you guys, you know, that you, you as their son got the short end of the stick. That's right. Everyone else did great. Right. And I think that it seems like that the party you threw for your father when he was 90 was revelatory in that way. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. It was a horrible thing he made me do. He made me throw him this party. Luckily, Sweetie is a much lovelier person and agreed that we should do it. But it ends up really well, the party, because you get to see that the two people that I sort of create as monsters were actually beloved by and rightfully

so by the way they were just bad parents right but like you know but they were really bad like you know I mean you know everyone thinks my father's charming and to a degree and you know my mother is my mother you know but they were you know, my father was a doctor and, but my, you know, a teacher is a teacher, but I guess like, as soon as, you know, either of them got home, you know, because of their dynamic with each other, there was no way you were going to get anything, but, but, you know, just needy garbage. Isn't that amazing. But didn't you ever feel like, cause like my experience with the narcissistic parents, one who was pathologically narcissistic, but I can punch through it. I mean, I don't know if you ever took your father to the mat, you know, like where you really kind of get into it with him and you keep going at him and at him.

Usually what's at the core of a narcissist is just a sort of like almost primal infantile. Fuck you. Really, that's you know, you break them all the way down. It's just like, you know, so like, I, but I felt did you find and I guess maybe if I'm thinking about your book that that you felt incomplete, in terms of your sense of self? Yeah, kind of. Well, first of all, I never felt I needed to confront my parents any more than I did. I mean, my version of confronting them is when they would come over to the house, visiting us and the grandkids. At some point, I would just stand up and say, must you leave? And truly.

And and then dad wouldn't get up and mom would say, Sonny, he wants us to leave. And I go, yeah. So but. I, I never really wanted to. I didn't want to deal with my mother's uncontrollable weeping. Yeah, because that was her go to position. And right. Nor did I want to deal with dad who literally as i told you

earlier literally never thought he did anything wrong right so so there was so taking him to the mat wouldn't have done anything except get me upset so what i have instead and I've had for 30, 35 years, is profound sciatica, which is actually brought on by unconscious narcissistic rage. Is that true or is that speculation? It's true. If you've got back problems, I can chew over for you. That's it, huh? Yep. What'd you do about that?

Did you go see somebody? How'd you release the rage have you released the rage or is it just come out at weird moments and you know to unassuming people uh i have not released the rage because i have sciatica if i could release the rage i wouldn't have sciatica see what sciatica does is it gives you so much pain and it focuses all your waking time on this pain because your unconscious knows that you're so angry at someone you love or someone who is in charge of you that if you express your anger you would do permanent uh permanent uh damage to a relationship. So your unconscious gives you so much pain that you put all your focus on that. And I can tell you when I got it. I got it when I was yelling at some special

effects people on Men in Black. We were on the stage and I said to the guys, look, tomorrow, on the stage and I said to the guys, look, tomorrow that elevator has to work perfectly. And you can come in at 3 a.m., 4 a.m., but I don't want Tommy Lee Jones standing there and that elevator not working because he's going to get really angry and he's going to take it out on me. So what time do you want to come in? No, boss, it's fine. We don't need that elevator working until 7 a.m. We'll come in at 6. No problem. Of course, it's a disaster. It's now 9, 10 in the morning.

Yeah. And I start screaming at them, saying, guys, you could have come in at 4, 3. I gave you whatever time you wanted. You didn't come in. And just yelling in front of the whole crew and everything this is on the first men in black in 96 we were shooting it yeah and sweetie said to me you know what they knew they were at fault they knew they did something wrong but you yelling at them now they get to be angry at you instead of feeling bad that they screwed up and so yelling doesn't help and after that from that day on i've never

yelled at a crew member since 1996 and instead i have terrible sciatica really it's a you oh you're really able to track it like that yep yeah that's insane like now I gotta wonder like what are like what what are my you know what I don't have sciatica do you have any back pain a little bit but not not not that isn't founded in one's a bit of an injury the other one the lower back pains because I exercise too much but sometimes my chest gets tight there you go uh it's a it's a breathing thing with me. There you go. It used to be a stomach thing with me. Then it went to a back thing. So you've got a stomach thing. So you've got to figure out.

I've got a chest thing. Lungs. If you can yell at someone. Dude, I had to stop that. I was a yeller. See, I had the gift of yelling. See, I had the gift of yelling. I am not. I am not the I my anger does not really go inwards generally. That's why I guess why I'm not a depressive. I get paralyzed with anxiety, but I'm not a depressive.

So how do you like and I know in the book, but we should tell some, you know, some of the process professionally that, you you know you didn't set out to be a cinematographer really right oh i had no idea what i wanted to be at all you know i went to i thought i wanted to be a still photographer my idol was you know elliot erwitt and gary winogrand and i knew i you know it's like i knew those guys you know i knew friedlander and and uh Winnegram but I didn't know the guy that played such an important part in your life oh you didn't know Elliot's work though no I didn't oh he's he's the best of those street photographers really and I studied these guys I don't know how he got by me oh you just check him out because you'll love his work it's all very funny and visually humorous.

And then I realized that I don't think I had the ability to be a still photographer. I didn't think I was good enough, and I didn't want to be so alone. I think I wanted to have a job that involved more people. That's why I now love writing, but that's why I never was a writer 30 years ago, let's say. So for lack of anything better to do, you know, I got a degree in political science from NYU only because the courses met Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So I only had to be in college three days a week, took a year off, graduated from Hampshire College. You did? Yeah. the hippie school yeah up in amherst yeah in amherst mass wow i'm the only child who went to college

and gained weight because he finally had decent food yeah your description of your mother's cooking is that my mother didn't eat and her cooking was awful. But you're like, I it's almost to the point where you're you ride such an edge of of of in your childhood. Some of the stories of like that can't be real. But then the details that you you share are so real. Like, it's like it's real. It's it's horrifying. It's it's horrifying. Yeah. You and your father had to play along with this thing. I mean, there's you lived in fucking New York. You had decent furniture. You could have just gone out and got food. Well, I was like, you know, they didn't have Grubhub and Seamless Web back then.

I know. But to peel like to have to like douse a piece of meat with salt because your mother wanted to put the thing on foil in a broiler in a shitty old oven, and it would always catch fire, and you'd sit there and still eat it. Yeah, well, sure. That's some sort of, you know, that is the trial and tribulations of the non-yelling Jew. I guess you and your father were both non-yelling Jews. We were very non-yelling Jews, so we ended up with bad food. But we did have a Chinese restaurant nearby and a couple of delis. So Hampshire College, you ate better?

Did you design your own major and that kind of shit? Yeah, you know, I went there as a senior, which was even better. Because NYU said, go wherever you want for your senior year, and we'll give you a degree. Just transfer those credits back. senior year and we'll give you a degree. Just transfer those credits back. So at Hampshire, I would have been a division three person, which meant you design your own sort of thesis for your senior year. It was a great school. I could not have been there as a freshman because there's no rules or regulation or, you know, you're totally on your own and i would have floundered but as a senior you know i was 20 hampshire is the only school in america that your class is based on the

year you enter not on the year you're going to graduate because you could spend 11 years there or six months if you once you pass the three divisions, you're out. So you went to Hampshire, then you went back to NYU to the film school where you studied what? The great thing about NYU graduate film school is you don't, you have to do everything. You can't just be an editor or just be a writer or just be a film critique person. Everyone had to make over the three years, five movies. And the rest of the

time you were crewing for someone else. So you were doing sound for this guy and script for this guy. And both me and my neighbor, Bill Pope, were the two cinematographer guys. But we also still had to make our own movies and all that. So I graduate film school and I realized I have, and again, it was just to not be in a job market for three years. I had no interest in, in film at all. When I started zero,

but no interest in film at all. No, none. Zero was not a film buff. I mean, to this day, someone will tell me about some movie and I'll go, ah, not a film buff. Zero. Was not a film buff. I mean, to this day, someone will tell me about some movie, and I'll go, not a film buff.

Yeah. But I do love the Weather Channel. Still? Yeah. It's their way, because it's meditative? It's so meditative. And they're all alive, all those hurricanes and tornadoes and stuff. If someone would pay me my directing fee to be a meteorologist,

I would be, if I could stand next to Jim Cantore, man, that would be the best. This seems like an accessible dream. You know what? I'm going to look into that. Wow, that's very encouraging of you. Thank you, Mark. So I buy a camera because my feeling is if I own a 16 millimeter camera, a used one, it cost me five grand. I could legitimately call myself a cameraman and not be a dilettante. call myself a cameraman and not be a dilettante. So the first job I get is shooting nine feature length pornos in nine days, which paid for two thirds of the cost of the camera. So it was fantastic. But I'll skip over it because the point is years later, I had nothing to do. It was like

the coronavirus, but not really. I was just sitting around the tell, I had nothing to do. It was like the coronavirus, but not really. I was just sitting around the telluride with nothing to do. And I wrote that porn chapter just for my own edification, just to see if I could write something. About two years later, I said, hey, sweetie, can you read something and tell me if it's any good? Because she used to be an editor. And she read it. And there's nothing better in my life than watching my wife laugh. It's the ultimate joy in my life. And she was shaking the bed with laughter, reading that porn chapter. And I put it away. And that was it. That was it. Five years ago, my neighbor in Telluride is Jerry Seinfeld. And Seinfeld had heard about all the problems I had directing Men in Black 3 and the producers and the studios and how I didn't have any control,

but I had all the responsibility and none of the control. And Jerry came to my house on Christmas day and said, I think you would love standup. You would love it. You're totally in control of your own material. You fail or succeed based on your own. No one's told you what to do. You can make changes. He went on and on. And I said, Jerry, aren't I like way too old to be a stand up? And he said, Oh, God, yeah, you're way too old. You won't be successful, but you'd have a good time. So I said, Well, that's great, Jared. Thanks. Yeah. And the third part of the puzzle was a couple years ago, David Granger, who was the editor in chief for many years of Esquire,

who was the editor-in-chief for many years of Esquire, and I had a column in Esquire for about a decade, said to me, he left and became a book agent, and he said, you have a book in you. And I gave him the porn chapter. And he read the porn chapter, and he said, give me two more chapters, and we can sell this. So I gave him the Fear of Flying chapter about my plane crash,

and also about being Paige at Madison Square Garden, which is the title of the book. And we went out to six publishers and they all wanted it. And I became a writer and I could sit down and write 40 pages a day. The first draft of this book is twice as long. I removed 11 chapters just because I don't think books or movies should be movies shouldn't be over 90 minutes and books shouldn't be over 350 pages. Well, you just write another book and it's called Call Your Mother Now. Now. Hurry up. Well, that's interesting, sir, because, you know, that was the one I was like, you know, I wrote a book years ago called The Jerusalem Syndrome Syndrome and it was very important to me that I had my drugged out period

at the comedy store just be so on the money like every detail and you know and I look at that thing and I marvel at that particular one you know it involved you know psychotic hallucinations from cocaine and sleep deprivation whereas yours involved the double penetration shot that really kind of was the through line of the thing. But I thought that what was interesting about, you know, the world you came up in in that time was that, you know, that you could find just a person who had a regular job at a place, you know, do a filthy movie and enjoy themselves. I mean, I imagine up until what happened happened. I don't want to spoil it for

anybody, but, but you know, that the, the, the, the permissiveness of the time and the sort of spirit of the time was sort of like, yeah, let's fuck. And yeah, yeah. But you weren't, you were just there to do the job. And I imagine it prepared you for something because it sounded, you, you, you're very, you're very, um very kind of sensitive to smells. So the way you capture not only the smell of your mother's breath, but the smell of doing a close-up of a double penetration, I think it really resonates. Well, thank you so much.

Yes, no, I'm a big believer in smell and all the things that can go horribly wrong with smell. And getting back, I guess this is a layered question in that the idea of control is interesting to me. Right. You know, that somehow or another you gravitated towards, you know, lenses and F-stops. And these are, you know, you're a manager of perception, right? So that, you know, I don't know, you know know how that seems to be in a very broad way about control.

But what did you learn from having this hands-on experience of something that was as chaotic as a double penetration on a shoestring budget with a whack job director? who were sweating and coming and you know these this process of doing porn that you know you experienced through the camera you must have been some you know rites of passage some baptism and fire of some kind well it's funny cuz I think everything I do and everything I think about is about control and it's I think it's because my mother was so out of control. So the fact that I choose lenses and f-stops and all that is incredibly perceptive. Because for me, it's all about control. And what I learned about on those nine days of porn shooting, which had nothing to do with me personally, was I love to discover that the porn industry is a totally female-controlled business. At least it was on those sets.

In that, the man could only screw up. He could either not have an erection, not maintain an erection, have an orgasm before we're ready for it so the the men were always desperate for the women to help them and the women totally knew they were in control and knew they could so screw around with these men, you know, claiming they were soft when they weren't or not helping them. So I loved how female in charge, female powered those nine days were. I mean, it was truly horrible. I mean, truly, truly horrible because these were not high-end pornos and we had a woman named mandy the paper towel girl who represented 30 of our entire crew whose job it was to clean up the cum shot i mean this

is a low budget show uh but um uh it was truly horrible it smelled horrible it looked horrible there are things about the human anatomy you really don't want to know about. And I think maybe because of that, I've never been an overly interested in porn kind of guy. I'm not a porn hub guy. Yeah. Well, that's good. Well, it gives me more time to nap. but but you know heading out of that you know i guess the relationship that you established with the uh the coens is really the one that you know made you right yeah and it's funny because talking about control i you know those guys and and probably someone you know in the same light in terms of framing Wes Anderson are really some

of the most controlly filmmakers that you can watch. I always tell people that Wes Anderson learned so much from me. There's nothing that makes me more upset than reading about the three years I worked on a series of unfortunate events and people saying it looks just like a Wes Anderson show because I always think it looks like a Barry Sonnenfeld show. But you're right. Yeah, they're all very controlling. I'm very controlling. No, but like let's like talk. I mean, talk to me a little bit about that. I mean, how much of do you think was a symbiotic thing that you helped? You know, obviously you were there at the beginning with the Coen brothers of their feature making process you were on their first feature none of you guys had done a feature so it seems to me that

you informing them and vice versa probably defined both of your styles absolutely we're in many ways the same person we both believe totally in pre-production and totally in control. The worst place to make decisions is on a movie set where you've got way too many crew members playing with the Frisbee and all that. So for Joel, Ethan and I, we would spend months designing every single shot. And I think what I brought to the table a little bit is lens selection and the use of wide angle lenses, which have a certain energy to them. And I think because I was an only child and wanted attention for me, I feel the camera can be an actor in the movie. And just if you look at the Coen Brothers movies or the films I shot and directed, the camera is not just a recording device. The camera tells you like where to look and how to pay attention. And so I think the Coens and I sort of figured that out together, you know, Raising Arizona.

Well, even in Blood Simple, there's a shot where the camera is tracking along a bar and there's a drunk sleeping on the bar. And the camera booms up over the bar and there's a drunk sleeping on the bar when the camera booms up over the bar and the drunken continues. It's totally a self-conscious kind of move, but it's what we did. And in fact, we were talking about a serious man when I was at the premiere and I told the Coens how much I loved that movie. And they said, why that one? I said, it's your best movie since I was your cameraman. They said, why that one?

And I said, there was no panning. I'm a big believer in not panning. And the Coens didn't pan in that movie. And I love the control in that movie. It's amazingly controlled. Yeah. Well, what is it about panning? Panning's really lazy.

Panning is just, you know, either let someone exit frame and pick them up over there on another beautiful Wes Anderson design frame, or you track, but you stay parallel to the horizon and all that, or you track in and out. And I just find panning really lazy. And I remember Joel and Ethan and I went to see Gangs of New York, the Scorsese movie. Yeah. And Ethan turned to me at the end of the movie and said, why was that movie so bad? And I said, too much panning. Well, check it out. I swear to you, the more panning there is, the lesser someone in charge.

It's just a lazy way to frame, in my opinion. You work with Scorsese a little bit, right? I shot the last two weeks of Goodfellas. How does that happen? How does the cinematographer split on the last two weeks?

Seems impossible. He had this very talented German cinematographer split on the last two weeks? It seems impossible. He had this very talented German cinematographer named Michael Ballhaus. And Ballhaus also shot little Mikey Nichols' movies. And so Ballhaus had an out date to go shoot Postcards from the Edge for Michael Nick, Mike Nichols. And I think they went, I think, um, Goodfellas went weeks over schedule. And so Michael said, I have to go. And Michael Ballhouse and I, when I was a cinematographer, she had the same crew, same grips, same electricians. So it was easy for me to come in and work with, you know, So it was easy for me to come in and work with Dennis and Rusty and Blauvelt and all those guys.

But it was just amazing to work with Scorsese for two weeks. And the last day of De Niro's job on Goodfellas was my first night. And Scorsese and De Niro kept sitting. They would sit next to each other looking at the video monitor. And I would be sitting behind them. And they kept tapping each other and turning around and pointing at me and laughing. And at the end of the night, De Niro yelled, see you around, Barry, and started to laugh. So the next day, I said to

Scorsese, am I nuts, or were you and De Niro laughing at me and making fun of me the whole night? And Scorsese went, yeah, yeah, we were. We were. We were making fun of you the whole night. Yeah, that was us. We were making fun of you the whole night. I said well but why and literally he said look at you that was the end of it thanks marty yeah great great moment yeah so like in in in doing the uh the first three coen brothers movies like i reading your book i get a sense a little more of a sense of them i you know i'm a huge fan of their work in the in in your work on with them and on your own but i just like you know it's nice to know that they were just these these kind of you know fairly punky jewish kids who smoke cigarettes and we're just running around austin trying to make a movie yep they seem to

become quite lofty presences in the modern cinema. No, they're totally not lofty presences. They, unlike me, actually loved movies. You know, when they were in Minneapolis at ages five and eight, they were remaking The Naked and the Dead. And, you know, they were film buffs. They were film buffs, but literally the first day on the set on Blood Simple was the first day that any of us had ever been on a movie set. But they were really, they knew what they wanted. We made fun of each other all the time. They would make fun of me.

You had all these codes. What are the code names for things? Oh, yeah, yeah. The Larry Kazin panty insert. The panty insert. Yeah. Larry is a huge fan of yours, by the way. Oh, really?

Yeah. Larry and I talk about you a lot. Yeah. Oh, I got to get him on. I talked to his son. Yeah. No, I know that. You talked to Jake.

By the way, Larry is our other neighbor in Telluride in this same little development. That's how we ended up here. But the best, though, was, and this isn't in the book, but when we shot Miller's Crossing, we shot the entire movie in New Orleans. And we were staying at a place called the Canal Place. Orleans and we were staying at a place called the Canal Place. And the first week we were there, and it had huge red neon across the top of the roof that said Canal Place. And literally the first week we were there, there was a hurricane that took out the letter C. True story. And for the next eight months, they never turned the sign off. They didn't replace the C. And for the next eight months, they never turned the sign off. They didn't replace the C. And for the next eight months, I'd say to Joe and Ethan, you want to go to, what do you want to eat dinner?

And Ethan would say, oh, let's just go back to the anal place. So for eight months, we lived at the anal place while shooting Miller's Crossing. Yeah, that's funny. What was the other one for going to the bathroom? The green. Oh, Green Bergen. Yeah, Green Bergen for going to the bathroom? The green? Oh, Green Bergen. Yeah, Green Bergen. Green Bergen was going to the bathroom. Yeah, we were going to name his biography Between Two Stools.

Right. The Joe Cullen story. And they were going to name my, they wanted me to name my memoir Asleep at the Eyepiece, the Barry Seinfeld story. Right. Sleep at the eyepiece, the Barry Seinfeld story. Right. So using the wide focus lenses or the wide angles, because I just watched Antonioni movie, you know, the passenger with Jack Nicholson. And you get that's what you get from that is a, you know, an extreme depth of field,

right? Like everything can be in focus. Right. And that's the benefit of it. That's one of the benefits, but also a detriment, because if everything's in focus. Right. And that's the benefit of it. That's one of the benefits, but also a detriment. Because if everything's in focus, how do you tell the viewer where to look? Because you still want the viewer to look at a certain place. And that's why I used to use the camera and Dolly to track in and track out.

Yeah. So that it's also why I use a lot of uh center framing just like fucking wes anderson does a lot of center framing so are you mad because i brought that up because you feel like he learned from you he he lifted your style uh not at all everyone has their own style and has created their own style and i don't think Wes learned anything from us, nor do I think that anything I do should be compared to Wes, nor should anything he does should be compared to me. You're not, what are you in court? Well, you're not in court. I'm not yet.

Well, I, you've established a tone here, Barry. I'm not, You've established a tone here, Barry. I sound bitter, and it's coming out very legal. But no, no, I adore his movies. I think they're fantastic. I love the Budapest Hotel particularly. Yeah, I mean, I think that if there's one fault to it, it's that he spends too much time worrying about the frame and not enough time worrying about the humanity of the thing.

I wouldn't know. Okay, fine. You went to school with Jim Jarmusch, right? Yes, and Spike Lee and a whole bunch of others. That just reminded me of a, there's a scene in Mystery Train where the Japanese tourists open up their luggage and everything is sort of like, the packing of it is so beautiful and compartmentalized and colorful. And he said that the reason he modeled that after was when you open up a transistor radio and you look inside. Oh, that's great.

Right? That's so great. Yeah. There's little bits and pieces like that that I kind of remember. Like when someone asked Tom Waits what his favorite music was, he said, an AM radio across the street. That's very specific. That says youth, doesn't it?

Yeah. But it also says like he likes that distancing. You know, if you listen, I don't know what it is. There's an audio element to that. But moving into the Scott Rudin period of your life, there's a lot of interesting, like it's weird. I don't know what it is. There's an audio element to that. Yeah. But moving into the Scott Rudin period of your life, there's a lot of interesting, like, it's weird. I read these Hollywood stories and after talking to so many people in person, movie stars and the like, that I'm still sort of amazed at the kind of indulgence and, you know, horrendous social etiquette that that movie stars feel entitled to and that you know people in your position have to put up with like there there's be i guess as i get older and i and i know more of these people as people when i hear things i'm like what kind of

fucking asshole does that right you make someone wait for a week at the beverly hills hotel to sit down for an hour and and knowing the outcome was going to be what it was going to be. And given that given that situation, the meeting with with Warren Beatty around doing the lead in Get Shorty, which wouldn't have been a good movie with him. Right. You never know. You never know. I mean, you don't. I mean, people are amazed that Robert De Niro was supposed to be the lead in Big and say, oh, that would have been a bad movie. But I don't know that that would have been a bad movie because it's De Niro playing a kid as opposed to Hanks, who's also a kid playing a kid. I guess so. But like, you know, like De Niro definitely got funnier as he got older. I guess so but like you know like De Niro definitely got funnier as he got older I don't know what his capacity to be uh to be aware of himself in the way that was necessary to do that part without it being overwrought you know I think you're right I think you're right and you know

when I think about Warren Beatty you know in the John Travolta part but I just thought what was interesting was the conversation you had like you because you literally said you you're right yeah it's always the right way to go whenever they want to be convinced to do it you know Warren Beatty in that what we're talking about is you know I had to fly out to LA spend five days at the Hotel Bel Air waiting for Warren to meet me to then tell me he didn't want to be the lead and get shorty because he was too good looking. Yeah. And how could someone who looked as good as him be so low in the numbers racket?

The way to deal with that always is to just say, you're right. Thank you for your time. Goodbye. Don't try to convince them uh i did this show called the tick with patrick warbird not the new amazon reboot but the original was on fox and nester nester came in for the role of batman well and and he said but you know what the problem is i don't want to play it as a spanish guy i've done this is nester kamanara he's done too much uh spanish stuff i don't want to play hispanic and my producing partner at the time said oh well maybe we can

change it and all that and i said you know what nester we're not going to change it and all that. And I said, you know what, Nestor, we're not going to change it. The character's name is Batman. Well, he's Hispanic. Thank you for coming in. I'd love for you to do it, but I'm not going to, we're not going to change it. And at five minutes later, he called up and said, I'm in. And that's what you got to do, you know? And the problem is, is everyone's. And the thing that Scott Rudin knows so well is everyone is so scared in the film business that if he says, I won't do this movie if I don't have Maggie Smith, I will quit right now. No one ever says quit. Right. They say, all right, okay, okay, we'll get you Maggie Smith. He doesn't mean it he's not

gonna quit if he doesn't have maggie smith for that three-day part but everyone is so afraid in hollywood that that being a bully usually gets gets what you want well yeah because also in the back of their head they can be like well this goes down, we're hanging in on that guy. Well, there's that, too. Well, there's that, too. But by the way, here's another bully situation. I fired Donald Trump off of a Macy's commercial because remember, Macy's used to have those commercials where there was Martha Stewart and Emeril. And yeah, they were all like in the Macy's store and all that. So I directed

one of those. And it's we rebuilt the Macy's lobby and it starts with Martha and Emeril and Usher and everyone who has some sort of thing at Macy's. And we do a massive pullback with a big techno crane. And it ends with Donald Trump and three little kids sitting at the children's table. Yeah. And Trump says, how did I get here? Right. So we do the shot. It's great. And I go, all right, Don, we just Donald, we just have to do a punch in for a close up of you. And then you're out of here. And Trump said, well, you're not shooting me from that angle. That's not my good side. You got to come around to the other side. And I said, well, Donald, I can't.

You'll be looking the wrong way. It's called crossing the line. I have to shoot your close up from here. And he said, either figure out where you can put the camera, where you're seeing my good side, or I am out of here. And the ad agency and Macy's's client all looked at me what I was going to do. And I said, OK, well, thanks for coming. We're good. We don't need the close up. You can go. And he said, you're not going to get a close up of Donald Trump. I mean, this is like, you know, 12 years ago. And I said, no, well, I can't because I got to shoot it from

here. But you won't let me and you want me to shoot it from here. But that doesn't work. But don't worry. We're good. Go, go, go. And then I said, come on, guys, we're over here. We're shooting a close up of Martha. 20 minutes later, tap on my shoulder.

Donald Trump saying, all right, you can shoot me from my bad side. And I said, no, we moved on, Donald. Go home. I thought you left 20 minutes ago. But that's the way you have to treat bullies. all right you can shoot me from my bad side and i said no we've moved on donald go home i thought you went left 20 minutes ago but that's the way you have to treat bullies and no one in hollywood knows that just just tell them the truth and maybe it's one of those quantum things that if you would just let him have his way he wouldn't be president. Right, he wouldn't be president. Wow, you're so right. It's all my fault, isn't it? I'm not, you know, take it how you're going to take it.

Okay. But I think the way you captured Scott Rudin and his kind of mythic bad side and balanced it with his good side, because you did have a deep working relationship with him through all the Addams Family movies, right? Yes. Like, I don't really

know box officers or this or that or yeah but the struggle to get that movie made and you deciding to do it if you got paul rudnick you know to to write it properly to honor you you know uh the vision of of uh charles adams yeah if charles adams you know really paid off obviously and and and and all all a good story But like but with Rudin. Now, you guys still good? We're still good. We don't see each other. You know, we'll see ever because I'm in Telluride and he's in New York. But I sent him the book. He read the book. He loved the book. Good. Yeah. He's booked. He's booked this show occasionally. Really? Yeah. Yeah. He like he got me sort of dug into the New York theater scene

when he was producing a lot of plays. I just get emails out of nowhere from Scott Rudin going like, I think you should take a look at this. Do you know this person? Yeah. But he's never been on your show. No, and I've never met him in person. But we've had this email thing where several guests, and I've seen several theater shows

because Rudin wanted me to see them and he thought that I would like talking to this person who wrote the play. That's fantastic. That's really great. And I've said, maybe you should do the show and he's always sort of, no. And it's probably better off. Maybe that's better off I never meet him. We don't have a face-to-face conversation. It is what it is. And I guess we've worked together to get on the show.

We've all been very good. That's very funny. Well, he is a genius. In what way? Oh, he has profound taste. He reads everything. He's the fastest reader i've ever met he he's just you know if you if you get past the pathological lies and the screaming there's no one better and does that but like you you talked about how you dealt with him in those situations that he has

yelled at you oh man he's oh listen the first adams family i would go home every night weeping i don't write about it but i fainted on the set i mean literally fainted like where they had to send you know shut down and send me home i mean ruden was a screamer and you fainted on set yeah faint totally fainted i thought someone was blowing a balloon up inside my chest, and then I thought, maybe I should lie down, and then I heard the cinematographer, Owen Roisman, screaming, get a blanket, and they carried me on a ferny pad back to my office and shut us down just from stress. Wow. So how did you deal with it? I went to work the next day.

Yeah. You know, listen, stress is part of everyone's life and stress is, it's not healthy for you, but directing is full of stress. I thought it was interesting, why you think that you were successful making the transition from cinematographer to director as opposed to some of the other great cinematographers, you know, that you mentioned in the book, like Gordon Willis and Bill Fraker. Yeah, that you've known many. I think your observation was interesting, and it's interesting for, I think, filmmakers to hear that. Why do you think you succeeded?

which meant they didn't want to give up the camera. Right. Because if they did, they would have gotten a really good cameraman. They wouldn't have said to their camera operator, this is your chance to be a cameraman, because they wanted to tell them where to set the lights and all that. And I realized that none of them became successful directors. So I felt I had to get a cameraman so good that he would say that I wouldn't say put the 10K there, you know? Yeah.

I got Owen Roisman, you know, French Connection, Tootsie, all these great movies. And I just said there were three things I wanted to do. wanted to do one was could i choose the lenses because i've always and designed the shots because i've always done that even when i was a dp for other directors you know penny or danny or and uh second of all i wanted morticia to have her own motivated lighting which he loved that idea anyway and the third is i asked him to use a very specific film stock which was very slow which required more lights and he asked the perfect question which was will i ever have to pan literally and i laughed out loud because that's what i would have said and i said you will never have to pan and he said okay i okay, I will shoot it on 52-47.

And so I think what happened was because it forced me, by having Owen, it forced me to hang out with the actors who were the people I was most afraid of because I didn't know if I was going to be able to communicate with them. And then I discovered early on that the secret to directing is just to tell actors in any situation, let's do another one twice as fast. And if they talk fast, they can't act. And for me, acting is the worst thing you can ever see in a movie you never want to see acting you want to see reality not acting yeah yeah so so i literally um just tell actors can you do it

much faster and that it's gotten me where i am today so you instead of improvising the take you'll just do faster takes oh listen i really don't like improvisation and it's so interesting because Kubrick used to do a hundred takes of every setup, you know, you would hear horror stories about eyes wide shut Yeah, go the reason he would do a hundred takes of everything was To get the actors so tired, so bored, so fed up that they would just say the lines without acting. And I could have saved Kubrick 99 takes by just telling him, just make him talk fast. And it achieves the same thing. Well, I'm sad you didn't get to have that conversation.

Yeah, no, it would have been a good one so like to get shorty stuff was great because i i feel like you can see yourself in it but like these men in black movies in the adams family because of your reverence for adams but like like you obviously like the men in black movies and they're fun movies but yeah i think you like you there's something uh you have an emotional investment in it. What is that? Well, I don't write much about the men of black movies at all because they were very difficult experiences for me because of the producers in the studio. However, we read Sweetie and I always get two scripts and she gives me a 60 page head start because I'm a slow reader. We finished together and she turned to me and said, Will Smith. And I turned to her and said, Tommy Lee Jones. So for me, the fact that I got the two people. Yeah, because that's not who the studio wanted. That's not who Spielberg wanted. But I won that one. So for me, the fact that I got the cast I wanted,

and those movies are just small buddy movies. They're not Marvel movies. They're not big science fiction movies. You look at The First Men in Black and there's barely visual effects in it. It's just really a buddy movie, and that's why I like it so much. After all is said and done, your experience on set with the Coen's and like you know the education you got from directing porn and working with Rudin but you really sort of like hang a lot of respect on this woman who was the editor what's her

name Dee Dee Allen Dee Dee Allen as being some sort of portal or some sort of sage around filmmaking. What was it that you learned from her? The two people that have taught me the most about filmmaking are Scott Rudin and Didi. What Scott Rudin taught me is just if you believe in something, just stick to it, and everyone will give up and let you do what you want to do because they're all afraid. So if you have a strong opinion. up and let you do what you want to do because they're all afraid so if you have a strong opinion and what dd taught me is the incredible plastic and fluid nature of film and i'll tell you what

i mean by that oftentimes if something's wrong with the third act yeah the problem is in the second act right and and and literally change something in the second act and now suddenly that third act you'd go what did we do differently in that scene oh we didn't touch that scene but we lost half of the other scene i remember one night saying to didi should we just lose this scene and she said yeah, yeah. And I said, how long did you know that? And she said, I don't know, five months. And I said, well, why didn't you say something? She said, you needed, she was like a psychiatrist that way. She said, you needed to discover that we didn't need the scene. But so often she would fix things by not touching the

thing that was broken. And I thought that was brilliant. And so she taught me so much about how fluid and plastic and, and on anal film can be, you know, she would always do jump cuts and have someone not leave frame before you picked up the next shot. And suddenly, there would be a different energy to. Oh, wow. Yeah. She you know, she did a lot of Warren's movie. She did Reds and Bonnie and Clyde.

And she she was truly the best. Is she still around? No, no. I made a very passionate speech at her memorial service where I attacked the head of Paramount, Stanley Jaffe. What'd you say? I said that fucking Stanley Jaffe didn't have any concept of what comedy was and and, you know, was mean to Didi and Paramount was really mean to Didi and, you know, claimed she was too expensive. But the most expensive person is the cheapest person if they do the right thing.

You always want to hire the more expensive car mechanic, for instance. Anyway, DeeDee was the best and Stanley wasn't. Are you working on something now? I was supposed to have this book tour, which all fell apart. And then I was supposed to do something for Lorne Michaels, who's a really interesting guy, and Apple Television. But it might come back. Who knows? We all might be dead in six weeks.

Great way to end. Thanks for talking to me, Barry. Thanks, Mark mark what a pleasure there you go folks barry uh from tell your eye colorado there uh call your mother memoirs of a neurotic filmmaker is available wherever you get books all right right, now I'm going to play some bouncy, raga-like guitar through a thing that makes it, it's called a Dispatch Master. I keep going back to the old Earthquaker pedals that I have. All right, okay, here we go.

Play it out, man. Thank you. Norske Rundforskning Thank you. Boomer lives. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m.

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