WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1290 - Guillermo del Toro

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

Guillermo del Toro believes in one universal truth: We all get to a moment in our lives when we see ourselves for who we really are. That belief not only guides his own life, it guides the characters through his many films. Guillermo and Marc talk about how he takes on the dark forces of the world in his movies, including his latest, Nightmare Alley. They also discuss his friendship with fellow Oscar-winning directors Alejandro González Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón, his expansive collection of oddities, and his strong identification with outsider characters and monsters. 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.

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and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fuck, Knicks? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron.

This is my podcast. Welcome to it. It goes on. It continues to go on. It seems that no matter what is coming down, what kind of shit show is happening, this thing just, it's a constant. This shit keeps moving. Every week, two times a week, and you know what? It's been great. I've been enjoying my show lately. I've been enjoying this show lately. There've been a lot of great conversations. That's the one thing that bums me out about this new strain is people are freaking out and I don't want to have to go back to Zooms. I will, if that's what people will do, but it's so much better talking to people in person. Although I did, I did learn how to do zoom pretty fucking good.

And I got some pretty amazing conversations. You know what? Whatever happens, happens. But the conversation that I'm sharing with you today with Guillermo del Toro was fucking awesome. I mean, there's just been some great talks here. Great talks for me. And that means something i mean

i've done thousands of these or at least a thousand plus 1300 whatever it is and the last couple weeks it's just been lively and invigorating and exciting and engaged it's very uh satisfying when that happens because this is my social life you're you're witnessing my social life my social life is hanging around with one or two people and then uh i hang out for a very focused hour plus with uh strangers who are interesting a couple times a week that's my social life i'm not complaining not complaining at all but i did see Del Toro's new movie, the Nightmare Alley movie, and I loved it. It really seems to be him kind of focusing on human stories. But there is a fantastical element. But it's more, I don't know what you would say.

It's a little grounded in sort of a nasty, carny culture. And also suggestive of a slight suggestion of uh metaphysics but not much it's a mostly kind of revealing the bullshit the grift the con the hustle and i thought it was great and i watched this is one of those conversations where i wasn't sure what to do look i've seen the shape of water uh and i've seen maybe a couple of his other movies. I don't remember Pan's Labyrinth, but what I did do knowing I was going to talk to him was I went and watched his very first film, Kronos, which turned out to be an amazing choice. Nice. I'm not tooting my own horn, but I had a lot to choose from. There's a lot of movies of his that I don't know. I am familiar with his work, though, and I do like his work. But to watch the first movie alongside of the most recent movie, you can sort of see the themes that he threads through. You can sort of see where his vision sort of took hold. And it just became this an amazing conversation. The guy's a great guy. There's just been a few conversations that have been real life-changing for me and I've enjoyed it a great deal. And the movie's beautiful to look at and it's engaging and the performances are awesome. He deals with a cast of characters.

Ron Perlman is in everything he does. I mean, he did the Hellboy movies. He's a great director, but what a sweet guy. And he said I could come over. His house is sort of like, he's got a couple of houses that are just filled with weird, creepy stuff. Man-sized replicas of humans and human anomalies. of humans and human anomalies. I showed him the Drew Friedman's print of the P.T. Barnum, the Barnum and Bailey freak show because he has a couple of them

in full-size mannequins in one of his houses. What a, just a beautiful thing to talk to the guy. Really was. And I don't know why i'm so amazed but open-hearted tremendous conversations it was really nice a couple of friends of mine really old friends of mine stopped by the other night they were in town briefly for a memorial service that um that couldn't happen because of covid and they finally got to it. Sad, a sad event. But, you know, the passing is like a year or so back now. And I hadn't seen them in a long time. And these were people that knew me back when,

that took care of me, this couple, the lovely Antons. I love them. I mean, they used to, they knew me. I've known Craigie since New York, since the late 80s, and his wife as well. They weren't married then, but she, I've just known them forever. I mean, how long is that? Let's say 1990, 2000, 2010, 2000. Wow. Like 30 years? Jeez, man. That's nuts. That is nuts. I guess it's just part of aging.

But they used to take care of me when I was wasted. I used to stay at their house when I was in New York. And they had moved out here in that beautiful house. I used to stay at their house. And I'd go out and get wasted. And I remember Craig, he had to come pick me up once. And they just had these. I just remember being.

They had twins. These twin girls. Ruby and Del. And, and they just had these, I just remember being, they had twins, these twin girls, Ruby and Dell, and they were tiny little babies. And I was sleeping in the guest room. I just remember waking up hungover. And this is two tiny little babies that looked exactly the same crawling around, crawling on the couch, getting on me. And I, and it was it was just uh the yin and yang of it was just astounding they they fucking saved my ass it's just so nice if you can and you have the opportunity uh reach out to somebody you haven't talked to in a while who's important to you in your life it's nice it's nice i don't know what's happening with me, folks. Something's happening. I'm evolving or dying, getting older, getting simple.

I don't know, maybe both. But, you know, in this lifetime, how many friends do you really have? And it's Christmas and New Year. Maybe, you know, hey, how's it going? Maybe it's a time to, whatever that song is, my old friends and whatever. I don't know if that's it going maybe it's a time to whatever that song is my old friends and whatever i don't know if that's the right song you know what i'm saying reach out make up make it okay try to so this brings us to uh guillermo del toro and again i just want to say that I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with this guy.

He's a good human, intellectual, real artist, and puts a lot of thought into every aspect of his life, mentally and emotionally. And I could feel it. I could feel it. So this is me talking to Guillermo del Toro,

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I wanted to show you something. Because there's very few people that appreciate it. Do you know Drew Friedman? Yes. Do you have this? No, I don't have it. I love his cartoons of famous strange people. Oh my God, this is gorgeous.

That's the P.T. Barnum bunch. Yeah, he tends to find the slightly grotesque in the familiar. I love it. I have some of his books and a couple of his collected cards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, you don't have any of the art? You know, I try to, I'm out of wall space. In both houses?

I have only original art. Yeah. I have like four posters, and that's it. The rest is original art. Yeah, like what's some of the art? Richard Corbin, Bernie Wrightson, Robert Crumb. Oh, so you got comic art. You got the...

Yeah, Edward Gorey. Robert Williams. You got any Robert Williams? You know, I love to look at it. Yeah. I've never been a collector of... I have very few pop art from L.A. Yeah.

All that L.A. movement, which I like and I appreciate it, but I have very few. And some of his are very big. Very big. Yeah. And now exceedingly expensive. Are they? Yeah. Well, good for him.

If I could afford a Joe Coleman, I would have Joe Coleman. Oh, yeah. Joe Coleman. The guy, he's blowing himself up all the time. Yeah, I like his paintings a lot, but I remember when he was doing that stuff in New York. And I think I've got the books as well. But you can't afford it? Well, maybe now I can.

I mean, I don't know. I haven't checked. I remember checking in the early 2000s. Yeah, too much, huh? It was too much back then, yeah. But, you know, I collect Victorian illustrators, Arthur Rackham, Edwin Dulac, Kay Nielsen. So, I mean, I saw the piece you did with Andy Richter a while back,

walking through the... But that's the museum house. Well, that's one of the museum houses. It's two and a half. It's two houses and an apartment that are basically set up as a museum. Are you, then you live in the apartment? No, I live on a fourth house. Oh, okay.

But no, they're not museums. They're my office. No, I get it. I get it. But they keep gaining clutter. Well, let me put it this way. Right now, I think they own me. they own me more than I own them. And what is it that you are trying to complete with this collection?

You know, for the last three years, I pretty much felt, I'm done. You're done buying things? Yeah, I'm done. I mean, I still buy the occasional thing, like if a great Arthur Rackham comes up, I'm done. I mean, I still buy the occasional thing. Like if a great Arthur Rackham comes up, I try it. Yeah. But that's it. No big things. I try.

I mean, you know, I don't need things anymore. I know. I mean, how old are you? I'm 57 and I'm done with things. Yeah, I'm 58 and I'm starting to feel it. Yeah. Because you pick up a thing. There's a few things here.

And you look at the things and you realize, like, does it mean anything anymore? I mean, what's it going to do? But I tell you, yes, that's one part of it. But the other part is I have auction houses constantly asking, do you want to sell anything? And, you know, I said, well, let me think about it and I'll put together a list. And I say, maybe this one, and I go, no.

Right, you can't let it go. You're invested in it emotionally. No, but I actually also, and this you might find funny. Yeah. I talk to some of the pieces. Like, I do, like, literally, I have...

Oh, really? You have a relationship? Yeah, yeah. Like, which one? Or I look at them. Yeah. I take them down from the wall. Yeah.

And I look at them because I'm a self-taught artist. Yeah. The word is very loosely used because I illustrate a little. Yeah. And I like seeing how they did it. Yeah. Yeah.

I like seeing, for example, Richard Corbin uses a lot of Pantone, a lot of whiteout to correct his mistakes. Oh, yeah. On the other hand, Bernie Wrightson uses no corrections. Huh. At least in the Frankenstein plays that I have. What do you do with the Frankenstein plays? I just look at them and see the cross hatching.

Oh, yeah, sure, sure, sure. Or I try to figure out how he did that texture. Like, he is very good with negative space. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really good. Yeah. But that's the kind of relationship you have, a craftsman's relationship with it

and a fan's relationship with it. You don't actually talk to some of them, do you? I talk to certain little statuettes. Hans, the little guy from Freaks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right when he opened the door, I say every morning, I say, good morning, Hans. If I'm going to the door, I'm not joking. I'm going to open the door and say, who do you think is knocking?

And I talk to Hans. I say hi to... Hans was the one that was in love with the big lady. Yes, yes. And got made a fool of. And I talk to the elephant man who's in my living room every day. I didn't see that one, yeah? Yeah, no, that's a new one.

Oh, it's new. That's new. Is it didn't see that one, yeah? Yeah, no, that's a new one. Oh, it's new. That's new. Is it based on the original John Merrick? Yes, yes, with a very, very detailed anatomical study. And it's life-size? Life-size. And who does these for you? It varies.

There's a guy that I work with very often, Mike Hill, and then there's a guy called Thomas Kubler. You've got two guys that'll do the life-size. Yeah. What do they do as a job? That? They make life-size. But it's not like wax statues.

No, they're silicone. And Patrick McGee is the other one here in L.A. So if you need a guy to make a full-size. Those are the guys. I commission now and then. Yeah. Like I just commissioned Mike a couple of years ago. I marry Shelly, life- then. Yeah. Like, I just commissioned Mike a couple of years ago. I marry Shelly, life-size.

Yeah. I have her desk. I have the manuscript of Frankenstein laid out in front of the area she's going to work in. I have a candle. Yeah. I have everything. Now I'm waiting for her to come home. So what do these do? Are there many people like you that do that contract life-size silicone replicas of humans? Some people do it.

I mean, yeah, some people do it. A lot of the black metal or rock and rollers, some of them collect horror stuff. Oh, they do? Yeah, some of that. Oh, okay. But I have a very intimate relationship with the objects and the books. Like, I know where every book, where I got the books. Oh, yeah.

My car, which is, I don't know how many years old, about 10 years old. Yeah. I love my car. I tell him, okay, we're going to go here. Yeah. I get attached to things. I just don't have as many things. But there's a few things I've gotten attached to.

Some of them, I guess, well, there's some element of, you know, I don't know if it's a magical object, but the sort of... Talisman. Yeah, talisman. It does have a power, and it's relative to you. They do. I do believe in that. I believe in that 100%. Yeah.

I think that you... The thing is, does it inspire you? And if, like, I know friends that have three times the collectibles I have. Yeah. But they have it in warehouses. Yeah. Or filing cabinets. Or in mint in the box. Yeah.

That I don't understand. Yeah. I just don't understand it. So everything you see is in plain sight, so you can understand. Yeah. I just don't understand it. So everything you see is in plain sight so you can engage. Yeah. I have nothing. And these are the things

that have defined your life to a degree. In many ways. In many ways. And for example, I can keep a model kit for 15 years. And then one day,

I go, finally, and I go and take it out and paint it. Yeah. So you put together what models? Cars, planes? No, mostly figures. Yeah. So you put together what models? Cars, planes?

No, mostly figures. Yeah? Like Lon Chaney is my project for Christmas. You're going to do a Lon Chaney model? A Lon Chaney model where he is with his open box. It's sculpted by a guy I like called Jeff Yeager. Yeah. And this is what you got to glue it together?

Yeah, you got to glue it together and then put the base. Are these high-end models or they're just like the old days, like we get them in a box? No, they got to glue it together, then put the base. Are these high-end models, or they're just like the old days, like we get them in a box? No, they are garage kit. Okay. I have one or two that have been one-off. Yeah. When people show the equivalent of the NFTs, like they show something they modeled on their computer, I can write to them and say, would you please print one for me? Yeah. And sometimes I print it, I pay for that, and I paint it. Is that how you started creatively as a guy who painted things? Well, I did start painting models when I was a very young kid.

Yeah. And I liked it. But I was already drawing and sculpting and writing stories. All of it? All of it. It was very, it's funny because it started because I was competing with my brother. Your older brother?

My older brother was the one, quote unquote, that was good at drawing. Yeah. And I said, I'm going to draw better than him. And then I fell in love with it. I fell in love with drawing, sculpting, everything. How many kids in your family? It's three brothers and one sister.

Oh, a lot of you, huh? Yeah. And what part of Mexico you grow? Guadalajara. Yeah, and you've been here a while, though. Well, I've been coming to Los Angeles every year of my life since I was three. Really? Why so young?

What was that? Do you have relatives? No, no. My father and my mother decided to take us to Disneyland in 1967. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we started coming every year. And, you know, I love Los Angeles.

I love how many Los Angeles there are. Yeah. When people say, I don't like L.A., I say, you don't know L.A. Yeah, how can you, like, it's very hard to generalize. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, do you want to feel some. And do you want to feel some grit? Do you want to feel some reality?

You don't go to Rodeo Drive and you don't go to Malibu. You go somewhere else. Sure. Go downtown. Go further than downtown. You can go a little Korea. You can go a little Tokyo.

You can go to, you name it. Yeah, and you can actually see the apocalypse happening in some areas. Yeah, in some areas, yeah. You name it. Yeah, and you can actually see the apocalypse happening in some areas. Yeah, in some areas. Yeah. Look, it's not an accident that this city is noir in many ways. Yeah, that's an interesting idea. I watched a new movie, and I thought it was great.

And then I watched Kronos. Yeah. So I kind of bookended, and I've seen scatterings of the movies that you've made in between. Not all of them. Yes. But it was interesting to watch those two together. Yeah. Within 48 hours of each other.

Yes, of course. In terms of the evolution of themes. Yes. And the ultimate success in the last two movies of humanizing monsters. And then all of a sudden now we have monster humans that are somehow sympathetic as well. Yeah, that would be a curious exercise. I wonder if I think that I can do it in my head, but I...

Which one? To see Kronos on this one. Yeah. Because obviously there's commonalities in theme and commonalities in some style. Well, it hit me this morning that the commonality and also, I guess, the sympathetic monster seems to be something that kind of moves through a lot of it. Yeah, the understandable. Even this goes counter to a lot of what it makes the noir according to the genre. But one of the things we...

In the new film. Yeah, in the new film. We wanted to make it a character portrait. We didn't want to judge the guy. We wanted to present you with what he does and what everybody does. But ultimately, we were not imposing a downfall or, you know, we tried to include relief and humanity in the way he's released by finding out the truth of who he is at the end you know well it was that's a great ending yes

and and an ending that was uh quite frankly that was the north star for, we said the whole movie is prologue to those last two minutes. Really? Yeah. Well, I mean, I saw the set, oddly, and I didn't see the original. You wrote this with your partner? Yes, my wife. Your wife, yeah. So, when you look at the original movie, which I did not watch,

all I know is that when I told Drew Friedman that he's got to see the movie, he goes, you know, Georgie Jessel produced that. Yes, Georgie Jessel, the famous vaudevillian. Yeah. Yeah. So, of course, Drew was excited. But what was the challenge?

You know, when you looked at the original, what were the fundamental differences in how you were going to approach the story? Well, I was blessed. I would say I was blessed by discovering the book first, by a matter of a few days before the movie, yeah. In a bookstore? Yeah, in L.A., I was with Ron Perlman, and we were watching Elmer Gantry, and Ron was...

Burt Lancaster? Yeah, Burt Lancaster, and Ron does a pretty good Burt Lancaster. Yeah, Ron, I talk to Ron. Yeah, I like Ron. Well, you know, he has that pro I talked to Ron. Yeah, I like Ron. Well, you know, he has that proclivity

to imitate certain actors and he... Brando. Brando. Yeah. Which is, I like his Burt better. Yeah,

yeah. But he said, I want to play a character like this and there's this movie, he said, Nightmare Alley. Uh-huh.

And there's a character, Stanton Carlisle, that I would like to play. And I said, well, let me look at it. We couldn't find, this is the 90s. Yeah.

You couldn't find anything. Right. Everything you wanted, you had to search for, like a scout. Yeah. And I found a novel. Yeah.

And I said, Ron, I found a novel. He says, there's a novel? I said, yeah, there's a novel. I'll read it. I read it and I was, I said, how could anyone make a movie

from this during the code in Hollywood? And I, Which code? The censorship code? Yeah, the censorship code. When you couldn't show

three quarters of what I've read. Yeah. And then I saw the movie and the movie, of course, was one interpretation. Uh-huh. But the novel left room for three, four, five more versions.

Oh, yeah. So I said, let's try it. We couldn't because it was a Fox library title. Oh, really? And in comes Ron Perlman, a Mexican guy of 28 or 29. Can we make a new version? Oh, so this was a long time ago. Oh, 90s, yeah, 90s.

Oh, so you've been dealing with this story for a while. Yeah, I didn't think I could get it made, honestly. How many films had you done to that point? I had only done Kronos. So you watch my entire filmography from where I pitched Nightmare Alley, yeah. That's incredible. It was all delusional. Yeah, but I mean, it's odd that you, it's like those things that we were talking about before.

You locked in. It was, you know, this was some sort of lifelong obsession. And I guess when you read it as you grew, like a good book or any book or any piece of art, it somehow evolved with you. This was the time to do it. Yeah, if I had done it back then, it wouldn't have been the same movie. It would have been a lot more interested in sort of the, shall we say, Todd Browning aspect of it. Yeah, the anomaly, the human anomaly. Yeah, the anomaly.

And I would have been attracted to the imagery and this and that. I would have been attracted to the imagery and the this and that. And, you know, I tried to approach it this time from a point of view that I think does what I like to do, which is take a genre or something that we like to do and then deconstruct it a little or try to make it different than the regular movie in that genre. And I do that with action or horror, sci-fi, whatever I do. So, in your mind, or in the way you constructed it,

because the story is pretty noir, right? Yes. It checks the boxes. So, what were you going to do? I mean, obviously, the lighting is different, because you made this spectacular del Toro style, colorful, but that tinted color. Yes.

That you seem to have locked into the last couple movies. Yeah. That is morning Kronos in about four shots, that habit. Yeah. I said, this is what I want to do. In Kronos? Yeah, in Kronos when he's reading the diary. Yeah, yeah.

I have that contrast between the warm light and the cool light. Oh, yeah. And I said, oh, this is it. This is my vibe. This is where it happened? Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah.

So what was it? What's that noise? I don't know. It's your house, man. Did it just happen? Yeah. It know. It's your house, man. Did it just happen? Yeah. It sounds like an AC. Oh, no.

It's out there. It's outside. It's okay. It's okay. What did I want to do differently? No, no. Well, what did you do? I mean, like, yeah, when you were constructing it, because, I mean, obviously, it doesn't

look like an old noir, and there's been many attempts at noir, some more successful than others, right? Chinatown, L.A. Confidential, Body Heat. You know, these are modern noirs. So what was it that you were going to bring to it that you said this is going to deconstruct it a bit? For me, the first approach to the novel, the novel is presented like a fresco, like a mural. Yeah. And then in the course of our deep dive into everything we did as table work for the writing, you know, I decided that the proper thing was to make it a character study. Right. Rather than a full fresco.

So I said, we should open with this guy and the biggest question mark we can, him dragging a body and then burning it. Yes. And end up, hopefully, and you can condone him or not, I don't care, but you understand him. You know who he is a little better than on the beginning. And oddly, you know, as an antihero goes or as an underdog or as a criminal or as a morally corrupt person, you seem to manage the balance. person, you still, you seem to manage the balance. Like you do, because of that dynamic with the father, that you do have empathy for the guy.

Yeah. It was, that was one of the first principles was, can we develop, without ever telling the audience, I'm going to stop the movie and tell you his backstory. Can they sort of piece it together? You know, there is little snippets. He has a scar on the back. He dragged a corpse. Yeah.

He talks about his father. We find out where the watch comes from. We have little snippets of dreams, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And piece that together without some of the noir tries to or has a downfall aspect to it that is very moral. Yeah. I didn't want to have that. I wanted to, as I said to you in the beginning, I wanted to include relief.

Yeah. The thing you feel when you've been hiding who you are through masks of success or sophistication and then finally you breathe out because people see you for who you are. And also, like, in terms of what you do, you were able to kind of integrate all the themes that, you know, that you've been preoccupied with in a fairly kind of dark, but odd, you know,

there was fantasy elements, but it was all human-based. Yeah, they were. Yeah. And the idea was, look, there is two aspects to it. One is the visual attraction, where I tried

to move the camera in a beautiful way. I tried to encompass the sets. I tried to transport you to realities that are really compelling. Yeah, yeah. But one of the things I abandoned was

some of the whimsy. Yeah. You know, it's not whimsical. It's pretty much a lot more raw, a lot more brutal, if you would. And that has to do

with a thing that is very, very hard to explain, but the directors know very well, which is tone. Yeah. The tone of it needs to stay in reality.

We don't go to heightened set pieces, you know? But you know how to do that. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of the things. Look, I believe I handle some difficult tone in things like Ship of Water or Pan's Labyrinth, where you have to balance the reality of the Civil War with a phone walking into an attic and talking to a girl about a secret door, you know?

Those are hard to balance, or the musical number in Shape of Water coming out of the kitchen and all that. But the key here for me is, why do it now? Why is it? And I was responding to a feeling of anxiety, a feeling of disarticulation of truth and lies

and the capacity we have to... And belief. And belief. And the capacity we have to be cruel to each other in an almost seemingly endless way. to be cruel to each other in an almost seemingly endless way. And also in a currently seemingly shameless way. Yeah.

That there is something that a lot of humanity is locked into right now, which is a lack of shame and conscience that enables them to honor their anger. Yeah. Seemingly without thinking there would be any recourse or any consequence. Well, I think Bradley Cooper and I, when we talked about the movie, we said, it has to be a reckoning. Yeah. Yeah. No, it has to be a reckoning.

And one of the hard, hard things to do for him as an actor and for me as a director, you basically have a character that doesn't change for 90% of the movie. He stays on the same path. He stays relentless. I mean, look, the second half of, there are two very distinct by design halves of the movie. The first half is him collecting, almost not speaking, and collecting information from everyone, using it in the second half. And the first half ends on what should be, by all rights, a happy ending.

The second part is him starting to land on reality because he finds somebody that is a match for him and even bests him. And that someone is Cate Blanchett. The thing that amazed me, though, in looking at the arc of your work is that you were able to integrate belief. You were able to integrate religion. You were able to integrate grifters. You were able to integrate, you know, in almost a narrative way, Todd Browning. Yeah, at the very end, for sure.

Yeah. I mean but I like there was something about the beginning where I kind of I kept going back to that yeah whatever he was looking at in that cage

at the beginning he found yeah well the thing the thing if you watch the movie again Marcus the whole thing

is constructed very very carefully visually with circles because that's the geek pit calling him. And it starts with the ferris wheel. Then you go to the pit itself.

And then you go to the eye of the baby. Then you go to the circles throughout the movie. The cabaret is a circle. His dressing room is a circle. The mirror is a circle. There are circles by design in the Grindle office blah blah blah and at the end

at the end when he goes to talk to the carny guy there's a huge circular window behind him he finally is going to go there

because what happens to him and this is something Kim and I decided early on we said we don't want it to be a surprise

people will see it coming let's assume it it's not the what, it's the how. How you handle the ending. How to handle the ending. I thought it was very effective. Because my brain, I guess, from watching too many movies and also having some sort of still, even as cynical and dark as I've become and always was, I still have an innate desire

for closure and to have a happy ending of sorts. But this does circle and there is closure and it is satisfying. It's not some weird open-ended fucking R. I mean, look, one reason why we... And by the way, there's not such a thing as a spoiler on this. If you know it, you know it, I'm fine with it.

The fact is, what it is, is we present with great detail the last moments of the life of the geek. We see him bite the chicken, we the geek. You know, we see him bite the chicken. We see him in the cage. We see him thrown into an alley in the rain. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And you know that's going to happen to him. You have to know. The movie was built, Mark, as a circle. In theory, if you loop it, he's laughing and then he remembers dragging the corpse. And then we start over. Right. And then it's a perpetual loop.

So, like, at what point during the process of creating the story do you decide on this circle thing? When we were, well, visually, we logged into it during a period that I called the submarine. Yeah. Which is before anyone comes, I work with four guys that are visualists. Yeah. And we design a certain code. Who's this? You know, my main guy is Guy Davis.

He's a comic book artist that has worked with me for the last few movies. And then we call two or three people, like we cast them for the specifics that we need. Just visually? Just visually, but to story. Do you still consult with Alfonso and Alejandro? Oh, yes.

Oh, yes. Yes. I keep a very open editing room. So, and Ritu comes over during editing and so does Cuaron? Yeah.

And you guys do that with each other's movies still? And J.J. Abrams and Bradley. Yes, everybody. I keep it open and I say, look, come in and be brutal because we have a saying, before it comes out, when it comes out, we all agree, it's masterpiece. Yeah, yeah.

But before it comes out, it's a piece of shit. Let's brutalize anything you want because, look, in the editing room, in the digital realm, it's easier to do the change than to argue about it. Right. Yeah, digitally, sure. Yeah, you can undo it. I mean, I edited analog and we used to save one frame with

a clip on a line like a clothesline. So you remember, you came up during those days oh yeah well that well that's interesting so who's the like you know because all you guys you're all academy award winners now but but you all uniquely auteurs in in in your approach so when when those two are dealing with your work yeah which i think is you know different than either of what yes yes uh what's their approach what are they good for in terms of what they bring to the table

when they bring notes? Very different. Yeah. Like Alfonso. Alfonso is really, really close to me. Yeah. So he's a lot more brutal. Yeah.

He's a lot more like a brother that, you know, like a sibling. Yeah, yeah. He uses words that are not encouraging sure sure yeah like what the fuck are you doing Alejandro also goes a lot more tactful but he would say

Gordo are you gonna finish that crane all the way until it stops it's beautiful yes it's beautiful it's so long you know he's commenting on length of movie yes it stops. It's beautiful. Yes, it's beautiful. It's so long. He's commenting on length of movie? Yes.

But we have that, you know, each of them brings a different point of view. Sometimes they disagree and it's good to hear somebody saying, this is my favorite scene and the other person saying, this is my least favorite scene. And then you make your decision at the end of the day. You say, okay for me yeah it's in or it's out well i think what's what's interesting

also about the last two movies in that like you know you've used you know industrialists as villains before right and you've used you've used uh you know fascists as as villains and and uh and you know you still have some of that here but But as you were saying, the time now that you chose to make this around these issues of belief and, you know, where belief is taking people and people hurting one another, there is a genuine threat of authoritarianism now. Yes. And are you feeling like you need to approach that more? Because I know that World War II is in the background of this. Yes, of course. And there's a very nice moment where she says to him, haven't you heard?

We're at war, which is about them too and also about the world. Yeah. Well, the thing is- He says, I don't care. There's something- He says, I've heard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm aware.

Yeah, but the guys like him, they don't give a shit. or something. It exists, I've heard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm aware. Yeah, but the guys like him, they don't give a shit. No, because I think this guy is about

the thing that I feel is one of the things in noir that is very important. Success as a torture machine. Uh-huh. Success, which is a torture machine that says you could have more.

Yeah. But listen, you could have more. Of course you could. But very often in noir, for example, the money, which becomes a symbol, ends up being meaningless at the end, floating in the air around the corpse of the hero or anti-hero, and void of meaning. And I think this guy's about climbing and climbing and climbing. It's interesting, right?

Through lies, yeah. Because, like, you know, I just realized, you know, like watching Kronos, you know, nothing mattered to that guy anymore other than maintaining power and staying alive. Yeah, but even then, if you, I'm very glad you saw it that recently, because

the guy wants to live forever, but all he does is shit and piss and stay in his room. Right, and torture his nephew. And torture his nephew. He doesn't go out. He doesn't enjoy the world. He just wants to stay alive. And I just watched the final episode of Succession last night.

Same story. Same story. Because there is a point. Look, is there such a thing as enough money? Yes, there is. But for some people, there isn't. And that's a complete derangement. Look, is there such a thing as enough money? Yes, there is. But for some people, there isn't. And that's a complete derangement.

I know. I never understand it. No. And it annoys me because it means that we have to deal with people. If their money is being made in the world of show business, we have to deal with these people that become redundant generators of their own hackneyed content in order to keep making millions of dollars. Well, you have to. I mean, look, there is a point in which somebody has enough money

that their entire bloodline, they couldn't spend it. Of course. So at that point, it becomes an idea of an idea of an idea. And the movie says it very clearly. If they did a number on you, then you have a hollow, and you'll never have enough. You know, the movie says that very clearly. And you have this guy that has... What is moving about this character that Richard Jenkins plays, the industrialist,

is that he's horrible, and at the same time you understand that he wants forgiveness. He's not just a monster. He's a monster and a human at the same time. Exactly. And what I think this amount of wealth does is it pulls people away from reality.

It really does. Because you can't live in it anymore. No. You can only hang out with people that are at that level of wealth. I'll never forget, like, you know, someone's told me a story, a guy, just a working guy in the show business years ago, who was a friend of Ben Stiller's. He went to a party at somebody's house.

Stuart Cornfield. No, it wasn't Stuart. It was a guy named Jeff Kahn, writer. But he'd gone to a party, and's house. Stuart Cornfield. No, it wasn't Stuart. It was a guy named Jeff Kahn, the writer. But he'd gone to a party, and it was just the type of, the people that were there were clearly of a class. It's no fault of their own. It's just the nature of wealth. You would never think they'd hang out with each other, and the only thing that makes

them hang out is like Lance Armstrong, and like this random cast of characters that operate in this rare air that have to spend time with each other because they can't even, you know, some of them have to wear masks to go out in public. Yes. But I think it's insulating in and of itself. Well, if you see Kronos and this, they present the industrialists exactly the same way. They are isolated in a chamber that they can't leave

or a world that they have built that they can't leave. It's exactly the same presentation. In fact, in fact, except the axis is reversed, left to right, right to left, the presentation of the space where the industrialists live is exactly the same, which is a movement that I call the hinge. You come laterally and then you reveal the depth of the place. And I do it very pointedly. I do it in every movie

when I reveal a certain space that is significant to them. I do it on Hellboy 2. I do it on Hellboy 1. Blah, blah, blah. Because those spaces are to character. They're not just beautiful design. They are telling you character.

They're telling you psychological condition. They are, people say, it's the opposite of eye candy. It's eye protein. It's nutritional. And to give you an example, this industrialist, when you present all this space, he owns this factory. He owns all that wealth. Every one of the sets in the city is built like an alley.

It's built like an alley. Yeah. Right, right. He's built like an alley very purposely. Oh, yeah. And the hotel, the hotel room, the industrialist, the office of the psychiatrist, all of them are alleys. Huh. He's on an alley heading for a circle. Yeah. And when we're going to this place, all that power, and then you see him simply sitting

in a little chair, completely calm. Because he doesn't have to be behind a big desk. He is in complete quietness because he has power. Did you tell him that? Yeah. That was your direction for Richard? That was my direction. Yeah.

And then Richard and I said, what should he do? And then he said, what if I ask for his jacket and I fold it really nicely, like I'm his ballet? And I said, that's a great idea. Because then he's being servile to him. He says, please, please, thank you. Thank you for coming. That was a whole odd element of that character. Yeah.

It had such depth. It added this depth of empathy or something. Yeah. When he says, you're very kind, I wouldn't count on it. So this intention, moving from Kronos, because I know Kronos was your first feature, but you were sort of in show business before that. Yeah. Because professionally, I was there for 10 years before that, doing storyboarding, makeup effects design. I was an assistant director. I was PA.

I was everything. But did you have a company that did effects? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because when I was doing my short films as a kid, 16 millimeter, Super 8, 35, I didn't have anyone to do the makeup effects. So I wrote to Dick Smith. Yeah. 16 millimeter, Super 8, and 35. I didn't have anyone to do the makeup effects, so I wrote to Dick Smith. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Who was a very famous Academy Award. We had Baker on the show. Yeah, Baker. Yeah, yeah. His direct son, so to speak.

Yeah. And Dick, I said, can you teach me makeup effects? And he said, he said yes. Oh, really? He had a course

open for international students yeah and he accepted me yeah oh wow so you do you took it from the master yeah i mean i he he said look you and there are many many makeup artists guys that that are uh a lot more better a lot a lot better about sculpting or painting than any of what you do, but you are the one that needs it the most because there's no one in your country. Well, what was interesting is I guess you were making sort of an inside joke with the mortician and the putty. Yes, very much so. He's like, good job.

All the effects in Kronos are done by my company. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, because that played against the skin coming off, the actual effects with him putting that piece of putty. The putty, I'm saying, look at how well I'm blending. In fact, I sculpted the tail of the insect. I did, personally, and I sculpted one of the machines in the interior of the device. So through storyboarding and through makeup, this is where you defined your own approach to the language of film and the way to shoot.

I was doing movies before then. What it did that helped me is to break any idea into elements. Makeup tells you how are you going to best express that idea and what

are the elements you need? How many codes? What instruments? You have to break every idea into pieces. Right. So in this movie, well in Kronos, I mean obviously you're reckoning with some religious stuff. Eternal life.

Why? I mean, you know, I always assumed that Jesus was a vampire. Yes. Well, there is an element always assumed that Jesus was a vampire. Well, there is an element to that, the communion, for sure. No, that's what I mean. Yeah. I mean, you're drinking blood. I mean, I'm a Jew.

You know, I took a trip to Italy and I went to all the churches. Yeah. And I used to tell a story about how they all have their dead wizard. Of course. Of course. They do. Dead wizards. And course. Of course. They do. Dead wizards. And pieces.

Little pieces. The relics. Yeah, yeah. Which led Mark Twain to exclaim, I know why Jesus was so famous. He was a giant. I saw bones of him everywhere in Europe. But I'll tell you one thing I realized, you know, because I enter with sort of a child's mind in that I don't know a lot about Catholicism, is that, you know, the weight of the imagery of those churches. Tremendous.

And the structure. I mean, if you're a working class or, you know, in the fields, a peasant class person, you're going to be crushed into belief just visually. Yes. Well, they wear, look, the pageantry of Catholicism is almost unparalleled. It's like Cecil B. DeMille compared to my dinner with Andrea. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

It's so oversized. And in fact, the whole idea of Gothic cathedrals, one of them is to make them so big and pointing to the sky with the arch, the Gothic arch, is like a finger pointing to the sky to say, this is how small you are. We are connecting you to what is in heaven. Yeah. And how did this, like, I mean, I was going to ask you, because I have a sort of, from early on, a strange fascination with sideshow personalities. Me too, yes. But I don't know why.

I think for me, there is a beauty. Look, the carnival, the beauty of a carnival is that it's very honest about being dishonest, first of all. Yeah. The second thing, it's the poor relative of the rich people and royalties cabinet of curiosities. Okay, okay. Is that where it came from? Well, I believe that the purpose is the same. Yeah.

You went in a world in which traveling was a luxury and a risk and an endeavor. Yeah. People collected oddities from all over the world to bring the world to you in a way that surpassed your imagination. Yeah. Right, right, right, right. And in fact, the spider woman that is in the, that one I saw when I was four. I think, yeah, it looked familiar to me too. Yeah, I saw her in that carnival when I was a kid.

And I was amazed. And what she says is exactly what she said when I was four. Really? Yeah. So I went to a side show too, but I was like, you know, it was at the Albuquerque State Fair. So it wasn't a carnival. I saw Ronnie and Donnie. You know,

they were the last living Siamese twins that were touring. I saw the man with the biggest feet in the world and he had some sort of elephantiasis. Yes. And he was sitting there in a loincloth.

Yes. And then I saw, there's a couple, a lot of, a lot of, you know, babies in jars. Yes. But I try to think about, so when was the first time you saw an actual human anomaly outside of Perlman?

Perlman is over our size human. I saw most of them, as you may notice from my movies, things in jars. Yeah, I like that in Kronos, and I like that. It's almost every other movie has that. You got something in a jar? Yes. When you're a kid, it's very impactful. Yeah, it's very impactful because to me me they look like angels. Oh, really?

For me, they were little souls that didn't, you know, in Catholicism, there's the notion of limbo. Yeah. And to which babies that die without being baptized go to limbo. So you just saw a little... And for me, I was so moved by them.

They were like floating little souls. But not afraid. No, I was fascinated by them. I was fascinated since I was so moved by them. They were like floating little souls. But not afraid. No, I was fascinated by them. I was fascinated since I was a kid. And it's an image that pursues me. It symbolizes, like the little guy with the cyclopean baby for me. It's two things. It was in an earlier treatment of the screenplay.

He was God. Yeah. And there were lines to that effect. And then eventually he came to symbolize Stanton for me. He's like. The main character. Yeah, that is his inside. Yeah.

That's him. And then he uses it on his blindfold. Yes, he uses it on the blindfold. But we have the other symbol we repeat over and over. It's a single eye watching him. It's in the fun house. It's him. Yeah. It's in the fun house, it's in the blindfold, it's in the baby,

and it's in the amulet that Zina has. It's also Egyptian and also implies global order on behalf of the Illuminati. Well, for those inclined to those conspiracies. That wasn't part of it, though. Yes. Did you know that going in?

I did, but I don't subscribe. No. Right, of course. Yeah. I think that that going in? I did, but I don't subscribe. No. Right. Of course. Yeah. I think that we are- But it would fit in with the industrialists. It would, but I subscribe to incompetence and greed as the forces that run the world.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, in terms of the effect, so when you were younger, it was just a fascination. And the idea, I think what I came upon in thinking about my own fascination, because I mean, I didn't see Freaks until I was much older, but I had the book Very Special People. Yes, of course I know. And I had that when I was a kid, like 11. I got it at a bookstore just by coincidence. I went with my grandmother and I was looking at the pages, at the pictures, and I was like, I could not get the mule-faced woman out of my head.

Yes. And some other people. Because I think there is a thing, the fascination comes from, I think that we, look, if we are semi-rational people, we are able to see what is damaging us. That's right. Exactly. And then we recognize it when it's exteriorized in that way. But that's why I very, very consciously moved away from showing the freaks until the very end in the wide shot and not give them any, you can barely notice them.

Oh, the contortionist and- No, there is Zizi, well, they're called Zizi the pin girl. Oh, yeah, sure. And the bird girl. They're in the movie? And they're in the final shot of the final carnival. Really? Yeah, but they're very hidden. And we spent hours and hours of doing the makeup perfect.

Because even the ones that you did see were not, you know, they were not hobbled. No. You know, because Ron plays the strong man. Yeah. And then you have the contortionist. The major mosquito, the contortionist, and Dog Boy. Jojo the Dog Boy. Oh, yeah, and the dwarf.

Yeah. But the thing for me is to present them in equal footing, I think when you're a kid, they're almost as attractive as a superhero for me. Yeah. And they were people I thought I could have a conversation with. Well, I think that for me, and I agree with what you're saying, but I think if you're a young person that has a heavy heart or feels different than everybody else, there's a comfort

in them. Of course. different than everybody else. There's a comfort in them. Of course. There's nothing more moving for me as a kid. And I saw Freaks at a very young age because it was shown in a late, late show that showed silent film and early film.

It was presented by a guy that was very knowledgeable of cinema. And I saw it. And when they say one of us, one of us, I felt it. I felt, yeah of us, one of us I felt it I felt, yeah, that's we're all here where do I subscribe?

I completely identified because you felt different oh yeah, very much I felt really and I still somewhat I feel socially not quite a great fit to what was expected of me when I was a kid. Like what?

Well, I was expected to be outdoorsy. I was expected to be cheerful. I was expected to, and I was expected to believe that the world was good. But everything I saw confirmed that it wasn't. And then horror film confirmed that I was right. There are things that they don't talk about and I wanted to talk about those things. And this movie is, even now, is sort of that.

I mean, I think that there is a certain tyranny of nice. Yeah, right now. And it's totally counterintuitive on purpose. And then you go, I want to make a movie that is not nice. Yeah, right now. And it's totally counterintuitive on purpose. And then you go, I want to make a movie that is not nice. Yeah. That represents all the anxiety that is in the air, that is sort of a convulsion for me. Yeah. And I decided to do it right after having great success with The Opposite, which is a really sort of love song. Yeah. And I thought, okay, well, time to try something.

Dark. That is at least complex. That doesn't have the answers, but has some questions. So what is it? Now, I haven't talked to too many Mexican Catholics. Yes. But it seems like it really did a number on you. Oh yeah.

And how does that come down? I mean, like, you know, outside of feeling, you know, awkward and being very sensitive to the dark forces in the world, there was no relief from Jesus. There was. It was a really strange environment to grow on because, first of all, when my grandmother, or my great-aunt, whom I call my grandmother, when my great-aunt explains to me the very tenets of Catholicism,

and she says, look, you're going to go to purgatory no matter what because of original sin. That scared the hell out of me. I said, do you mean I haven't done anything bad and I'm going to be in flames? Right, right. For how long? And she said, well, a few hundred years. And I said, really? She says, yeah, yeah, a few hundred years. So you have to mortify in life to atone for that. And I could

understand how, look, there's a thing Noir does. How do you start that way? You know, like you start at such a deficit. Well, noir has a great thing that says the game is rigged. And the only way to break through is through transgression, right? And as a kid, I was like, wow, I really landed on a great dimension, a great planet where this happens. A great planet where this happens. And I think the beauty of the pageantry of this thing is that it has a component that is very attractive visually. And that is very, it seems to hint at dimensions that are, I don't know, Jungian or Freudian. Oh, yeah, no, yeah.

It's total mysticism. Yeah. And there's hundreds of years of it. Hundreds. There's so many. Going back to Jesus and the pieces and the parts and the relics. I never knew there were so many dead popes. And it seems eventually like a bad leeway system or a Ponzi scheme.

Yeah. Eventually you figure out the game and you go, oh, so is paying now for a world I may never really get. And also when you realize now in retrospect, knowing what we know in the real world, that this was a just sort of a, what's the word I want? There were so much pedophiles, so many pedophiles. Yeah, but the church, I think the church, look, for me, what Jesus says makes a lot of sense. Sure.

But Jesus is the Beatles. The church is a cover band. It's a really bad cover band on a bad bar somewhere. No, I get it. I get it. But I'm just, in terms of moralistically and the structure of it, that they were hiding these pedophile priests for so long, for what I assume is probably centuries. No, I would say millennia and plus. It was just part of the fabric, the moral fabric of that church that was hiding this, the most egregious and horrible of sins, the shy of murder, if not worse than murder. They're hiding that. They're hiding genocide, appropriation of property.

There's a lot of things. And I saw some of it firsthand when I was a kid. My great aunt, who belonged to a very, very religious organization, she gave them her house while she was alive. She did a living testament. Uh-huh. And they took it. They took it and put her in a home.

Oh, my God. And I saw that firsthand. And I just think, look, I have great faith in a spiritual dimension. You do? I do. I do. I think that it's inescapable that we do have a spiritual dimension. But I don't have any faith on an organized religion.

Anything that depends on a system and a hierarchy and a high bound society, I don't have much faith. I have faith in the fact that the universe has a dimension that is interesting, mysterious. I wouldn't say magical. I wouldn't say the proportions of it are human proportions, but there is a spiritual dimension. Very expansive. Very much so. I saw some pictures from the Hubble telescope where you look at all these little dots and they're galaxies.

Yes. You can't even wrap your brain around no you can't and and in fact uh what is attractive to me from about the guy that wrote the novel yeah and Lindsay Gresham yeah he became our north we said we're we're honoring his uh search because he is a stanton yeah in, many ways. The writer of the novel. The writer of the novel. Basically, Nightmare Alley is a kaleidoscope of his brain. You feel that it's an oblique biography, this. And he was a seeker, like Stanton. He symbolizes Stanton with the card of the fool from the tarot. And the fool is the seeker. He's looking for. The tarot card. from the tarot. And the fool is the seeker.

He's looking for. The tarot card. In the tarot card. And Gresham was into occultism, Catholicism. He was a folk singer. He fought in the Spanish Civil War in the Lincoln Brigade. He was into physical culturism, magic, everything. Theosophy.

He wasn't, of course. He was curious about Madame Blavatsky and all that. But he was really an interesting guy that wrote Nightmare Alley to get rid of the image of the geek that was told to him by an old carny in the Spanish Civil War, precisely. So it was an effort at exorcism. At that, and he really wanted answers. His wife and him were big fans of C.S. Lewis. She married, she left him and married C.S. Lewis. Really? Yeah, if you ever saw Shadowlands, that's the story of his wife.

The last wife? Yes, yes, the one that... Joy. The one that died. Yeah. The one he married who had cancer. Yes, exactly. That was Gresham's wife. And Gresham got success from the money of Nightmare Alley, mishandled the money, and ended up, he got cancer and ended up committing suicide in the same room, in the same hotel in New York, that he had written Nightmare Alley. And in his pocket, he had a card that read, you'd rather die than face the truth.

That he wrote? That he wrote. He had it printed, his personal card, one of them. You'd rather die than face the truth. And the other card is, I will leave you to Google it, because he had two personal cards. The other one was retired, no job, no money, blah, blah. You should see them.

And that card, You Rather Die Than Face the Truth, is what we said. This is the way we structured the movie. He tries to put masks of sophistication, of this, of being charming because Stan is a maybe. He's a maybe.

Everybody says, maybe he'll be nice to me. Maybe he'll be like my son. And we gave him three mothers, three women, and three fathers and said, let's let him lose. And then at the end, he takes all the masks, finds the truth. But see, what's interesting about the way you're structuring this thing and also about the way that you have talisman-like engagement with so many of the artifacts and pieces that

you surround yourself every day, is that this, I don't know if it's a necessity with every film you make, but there is a need to draw from all possible sources that are seemingly but nonetheless involved in order to make this whole. To get back to Kronos, there's an alchemy involved. 100%. I mean, like, one of the things, look, people say, oh, you must have looked at all the noirs. We didn't. We looked at the noirs that normally people don't look at, the ones that are more brutal.

Yeah. I went into studying American realist painters, Thomas Hadbenton, Rand Wood, Andrew Wyeth, Edward Hopper, because they were at the cross of a really important moment in America where the pastoral ideals that founded the country clashed with the industrial urban reality. And it shows that the game is rigged and the have-and-have-nots are basically two entire separate Americans. are basically two entire separate Americans. And then you have, in that moment, comes a beautiful moment in that way.

You get They Shoot Horses, Don't They? as a book. Miss Lonely Hearts, Day of the Locust. Yeah. And then all the hard-boiled literature of James M. Cain, Chandler, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah. So that all happened in a window of time that where this, in this time

is what you were capturing. A couple of decades, yeah. But you can see the buildup to it. Yes. And also the idea of the grift, the carnival,

the sort of P.T. Barnum-ing of the world, the idea that it's all rigged is that, you know, there is, you know, I would say most

of American business in terms of, you know, there's a sucker born every minute and we're all a bunch of marks. Yes. You know, it was that is uniquely American and still honored. Still honored. We just had a president. I would say the beauty or the horror of what we present is, you know, when the guy says, that's a little old-timey. The carnival as we see it in the movie is the last spotter of that folksy brutality. And then we go into the city and it's beautiful, but absolutely ruthless.

And I like that progression from one type of hucksterism to another. Well, I think it's sort of fascinating as I listen to you that the idea that you're going to bring all these parts together to realize this vision and also to seemingly get some peace within yourself somehow, at least intellectual satisfaction, but I imagine to seemingly get some peace within yourself somehow. Yes, somehow. At least intellectual satisfaction, but I imagine emotional satisfaction, right?

Well, you do it every time that you, I mean, look, if you're true to yourself and what you feel, and you say, this is the movie or this is the story I need to tell right now, and that's why I say success, if you're not true to yourself, is very disorienting. And to take- Because you live a lie.

Because you can start buying into, you can get high on your own supply. Right. And also buy into what people think you are. Exactly. And say, oh, they expect this of me or that of me. But you say, let's go another way. Do you see yourself as a searcher? Is this part of it?

Yes. Is each movie another stone in the broader understanding of your path? Well, I believe that if you're lucky in life, at the end of your life, if you're really, really lucky, you understand one or two things. No more. One or two things no more one or two things somewhat i always say the the most sacred moment the one that is in this movie which is a sacred moment is when you see yourself for who you are and it happens to everyone it can happen in the middle of your

life or it can happen at the very end of your life but believe you me we all get a moment where we see ourselves for who we are without you moment. Have you had them? Yes. Yes, I had it. I had it a couple of times, you know, when the reality is pulled from under your feet. The first day of the kidnapping of my father was one where

I just suddenly... Everything's gone. Everything's gone and everything is changed and I know... Is he still around? No, he passed away after a ship of water, but he came back from the kidnapping. We got him back. Right, right. After 72 days. But you're pulled apart by violence.

And then there was a time where I had a complete dehydration and I passed out and I almost went. And I saw not a tunnel of light, nothing. I saw basically the brackets of my life, if that makes sense. I didn't see them visually. I felt, oh, my God, I'm so tiny. I was alive for so little. And I went, it's okay. I went, eh, I guess it's okay.

That's the best reaction. That was the reaction. It was like I saw the cosmic proportion of that. I saw the cosmos for like a millisecond, and I went, eh, it's okay. Nothing I can do about it. Nothing I can do about anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're here, and then we're not.

Yeah, cool. Yeah, I think that's true. Because I've personally experienced some tragedy in my life. And, you know, in the form of somebody close to me passing away in an untimely way. And then you start to really think about, well, it's hard not to get cynical. I imagine that going is the best way to embrace moving forward as opposed to like, what the fuck is the point of even searching? Yeah.

But you see, the thing is, and there's a big difference, this movie, for me, it talks about acceptance and not cynicism. It's a brutal reality. It's horrible and it's all this, but it's choices. This guy made, and that's part of the noir. What is beautiful about noir and the thing that gives it the dimension of tragedy is that

you know when you see the character make the choices, you know inexorably his fate is coming, but it's his decisions that are doing it. He doesn't see it. He thinks it may be the cards, it may be his education when he was a kid. It's him.

You see him, fuck it up. And that, you think that in terms of the narrative is an antidote to cynicism? I think what it is, is it tells you, look really carefully and you'll see yourself shaving it. Right, right. If you are really somewhat true to talking to yourself, you shape what happens in some degree. You know, Carl Jung said, and I'm going to mangle the quote, he said, for as long as we don't make the subconscious conscious and we keep doing the same thing, we'll stay the same and call it destiny.

And it's true. You see it in operation here. The mystic thing, there's not such a thing as the tarot card told me and it's going to happen. But he turns and says, I fixed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That hubris. Yeah, but that moment you're like, he's fucked. Yeah, he's completely fucked.

But you see, noir, one of the rules, noir, one of the rules is you have to see the character make the decision. Yeah. And the consequence comes from there. That's what is beautiful. I think I just wrote this down and we could wrap it up because I think there's a lot of nice stuff here. But I was just thinking about True Confessions that movie I think that's as close

a noir as I've seen to some of the things you're dealing with I think so in the sense there are others that are interesting to me like I highly recommend one of our favorites is Too Late for Tears with Litz Vitzcott which is just such a

discarnate, is that a word in English? Discarnate? No, like such a raw, such a raw noir. And Born to Kill, which is really interesting. Robert Wise. Oh, interesting. Those are very, very good. What's that Siadnok movie with Lancaster?

Which of them? The first Lancaster. You mean The Killers? Yeah, The Killers. The Killers is incredible. Yeah. But I think it's very well known. I like, one of my favorites that I watch all the time that had a profound effect on me was Out of the Past.

Yes. Beautiful. Yeah. That's one of the noirs and caps. Beautiful classic. And Mitchum is always so clearly the anti-hero for that period. And then you have, you know, the Long Goodbye, the Robert Altman one with Elliot Gould. I just watched that again. I didn't like it the first time and I like it more now yeah i quite i love it and his gold is the perfect embodiment of that anti-hero pulls vietnam this illusion yeah i think so you know and then you have the 80s neo-noirs as you said well i mean i think that now that i think about true confessions is a neo-noir and it was it will go spark who did that i can't remember yeah it's it but there's no guy you know it's

the brothers it's the brothers and and you have uh me, one of the great ones is Blood Simple. Oh, yeah. That's one of the great neo-noirs. Neo-noirs, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that there's a couple like L.A. Confidential. I think there's too many storylines. But I like it as I get older more. I think it's

a quintessentially American genre that was birthed here. Yeah. Out of that, disillusionment is a very existential one. And I think it's really good for me. One of the things that cinema can do beautifully is existentialism. Yeah.

It doesn't do it often enough. But, you know, and we tried to do it with that really expansive world, recreating period beautifully. Well, yeah. I mean, yeah. And also, like, when you're dealing with existentialism, like, you know that in your heart. But, you know, the sort of the trappings of your existentialism are spectacular. Beautiful. Right.

So at the core of what this is, you know, that moment that you have when you know who you are, great, but that's not a movie. You get there through cinematic devices. Right. But it's the same as the violence or the sex or the psychosexual stuff. If I just did a beautiful movie, then that's what it is.

It's almost a decorative piece. Yeah, no, of course. But when you have the violence, you have all the inner brutality and the human ruthlessness, then that makes for me for a complete meal is the umami of brutality. You did it. Yes. Well, congratulations on once again completing the circle.

Yes. Yes, it is. And what's on the whiteboard right now, outside of the Lon Chaney model? I'm doing that. I did research in the past for the Napoleonic era for a version I wrote of Beauty and the Beast for Warners, and now I'm setting up the next project that is set during that period.

And I got to go back to my books over Christmas and annotate a couple of little military skirmishes and things like that. And then, you know, if I solve that, I'll announce what it is. But it's a nice, it's going to necessitate a little careful research during the holidays. You love that.

I love research. Yeah. And Pinocchio's out? Pinocchio is shooting, has been shooting for a while. We are in minute 60 of about 90, 95. And how are you approaching this differently? Well, it's set during the rise of Mussolini in fascist Italy. Oh, so here's the fascist movie.

Okay. And what it is is the puppet doesn't understand why humans act like puppets. And the humans don't understand why the puppet acts like a human. Right, and they hate the puppet. Well, you'll see. Okay. the puppet acts like a human. Right, and they hate the puppet. Well, you'll see. And the origin of Pinocchio is so moving in this version. I came up with an idea that I think

is very essential to what he is. So it's a different sort of reformulation of the myth. Based more specifically on the original? Well, based more specifically on some strands of the original, but very much is a fable that I, I mean, look, for me, the two great stories of my childhood, and I know this sounds very sad, are Pinocchio and Frankenstein. Because they're the same story.

Different versions of the same story of the... Man-made monsters who... Are thrown into the world... Hearts broken. To figure it out, yeah. And they're totally sympathetic characters. To me, they are, yeah. No, no, I...

And one of the things I never liked about Pinocchio is that it says that your reward for being good and conforming to society, you become a real human being. And I thought, I don't want that. Let's see if we can reformulate that one. That's interesting. Yeah. Well, it was certainly an honor talking to you, my friend. Same here, Mark. Well, I'm excited for people to see the movie.

Me too. All right, buddy. Me too, man. Have a good one. You too. There you go. How was that? What a great talk.

What a great guy. Nightmare Alley is in theaters now, and I was just thinking about it. Yeah, I think I got to make some amendses. But here's three chords, and then maybe a fourth that I've played before, but I play again in a slightly different way. Thank you. Thank you. Boomer lives. Monkey and La Fonda.

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