WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1401 - Todd Field

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

Todd Field toyed with many pursuits before he ever directed a film. First there was close-up magic. Then he went to school on a music scholarship. He also hoped to become a baseball player, working as a batboy for a minor league team. He helped invent Big League Chew. Then he became an actor and worked with Stanley Kubrick and Tom Cruise, who both offered Todd support as he made his first movie. Todd and Marc talk about the decisions that led him to each of his three films: In the Bedroom, Little Children, and Tár. 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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Zensurance does all the heavy lifting to find a policy, covering only what you need. And policies start at only $19 per month. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance and fill out a quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. Lock the gates! soon go to zensurance and fill out a quote zensurance mind your business all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm. This is my podcast. WTF, if you've never been here before, have a seat. Hang out. We're going to talk, you know, with, uh, we're going to talk to Todd Field today. Todd Field is kind of an interesting guy. Amazing director. But he's only done a few movies, and they've been pretty spread out.

I just, uh, I've been fascinated with his movies. I don't know about you guys, or I don't know how many of you even know him. He's the director of this movie Tar, which is getting a lot of Oscar buzz. He's also the director of In the Bedroom and Little Children. Heavy movies, real gut punchers, real art stuff, but devastating and dark. And before that, the guy was an actor. Did you see Eyes Wide Shut? He was the piano player in Eyes Wide Shut. Also a jazz musician and a former minor league baseball bat boy and the co-inventor of Big League 2. I'm not making this up. This is all true. and you'll find that out when I talk to him. All 100% true. Last night, or the night before last, we did a music show at Largo.

Me, Ned Brower, Brandon Schwartzel, and a new guy on guitar, this guy, Jason Roberts, uh, Ned brought him in and, you know, I, I've never been more comfortable playing. I can't say that I didn't fuck up, but I've never been more comfortable playing. And we did, there was a couple of songs that were kind of amazing. And I'm just telling you this because you guys have been with me throughout this, this unfolding of me kind of doing music publicly. And I'm very comfortable with Ned and, uh, and Brandon and Jimmy Vivino usually plays with us, but he's out with government Mueller in Jamaica or something. Jimmy's, you know, he's out there doing the big, the big musician work. So this guy, Jason comes in, but we've just kind

of got this stonesy groove going, a lot of conversation, a lot of back and forth. And I'm tight, you know, with the rhythm section now, because we wrote that piece for the HBO special and we've been playing now for like, it feels like over a year, right? And it finally has happened where whatever my aversion was or my inability to play with people because I didn't have the skillset really is kind of fading. And I just want to mark it as a bucket list accomplishment for you, for those of you who can handle me talking positively about myself. Also, again, I don't talk about this specifically, but look, if you're a drug addict or you're an alcoholic, if you have addiction problems, you know, maybe check into the microdosing situation

before you do it. Don't just start microdosing because a guy gave you the doses. I mean, look, I'm not proselytizing, but I know some people, some people who are sober and recovery people, and they're like, yeah, I've been microdosing. It's helping. It's like, you're doing drugs. Yeah, but it's microdosing. Yeah, but where do you get it? You know, from a guy. What guy? A guy named Sunshine. You know, he's, I know him from the coffee shop, but that's not a doctor. Look, again, the way I handle whatever sobriety I have is the way I handle it. But if you're making choices around your own mental well-being that involve hard drugs, you might want to check yourself a little bit. But again, do what you got to do.

It's the same with ayahuasca. I get the sort of recalibration. I get the sort of like, man, you got to trip on shrooms like twice a year just to get the portals clean and pop open some new neural pathways. I get it. I get it. And maybe if you're one of those people that can do the ayahuasca once a year or once in a fucking lifetime, you go out there and shit yourself and throw up on people you don't know in a circle and get visions and you're carried through it by some shaman who used to work at a call center. I understand. I mean, I'm sure it's valid. Again, I'm not proselytizing. Maybe I'm a little jealous of the micro dosers. Maybe I'm a

little jealous of the ayahuascans. I don't know, but I can't do it because I know me and I don't know who you are, but I have to assume that if you do a little dose of something, because it's been referred to you by, you know, a sort of a half-baked shrink of some kind, or a psychotherapist or a spiritual therapist, if you do that once, and then somehow within a week or two, you're kind of thinking, well, you know, why don't I do this every week? Then it's not really a recalibration, is it? It's a habit. And look, only you can decide if your life's unmanageable. That's not true. Sometimes law enforcement could make that decision for you. And sometimes family can make that decision for you. But ultimately in relation to whether or not you have a problem with anything, it's relative to your life being unmanageable. So look, man, take care of yourselves.

That's all I'm saying, right? I'm trying. I'm taking mushrooms every day now. Reishi's, Reishi tablets, not psilocybos. The woman who trains me said that the reishi's that the mushrooms are where it's at for the joint pain and i am in fucking pain every day because i am exercising compulsively because it makes my brain feel better and it's part of my eating disorder it's part of my eating disorder regimen is to exercise compulsively but i'm 59 years old and every day wake up sore. I wake up and have to stretch like a pro ball player, you know, with, with my back hurting, my knees hurting, you know, the joints hurting every day. And it's only because I exert myself too much and I exercise too much. And I'm not even a guy looking for six pack abs. I'm not a guy. I'm not taking testosterone.

I'm not taking HGH. I'm not lifting like that. I'm just trying to stay limber, stay in shape and get my heart going. And I'm sore every fucking day because of my age. And now I'm taking reishi mushrooms and God damn it. I hope they work. I'm not afraid to take those mushrooms. They're not going to take me through any portals. Again, I'm not against the portals. You just can't live there. But I hope they work on my joints. But the only comfort I'm finding recently in this soreness is that like, if I'm this sore and like, and I'm, I, you know, I'm barely, I'm fit, but I'm not ripped. But like, if I'm this sore, that means like Brad Pitt is just walking around in pain all the time.

And I don't want Brad to be walking around in pain, but like, he's so cool and he looks great, but there's some part of my, my, my dark little heart that's sort of like that guy's sore all the fucking time. Cause I don't see how you get around it. You may have your own ways of managing it, but anybody who looks awesome at my age, in a lot of pain, almost every day. Now, I'll get emails like, dude, here's what you got to do. You know, you don't have to be in that kind of pain. Here's a series of stretches you can do. Also, if you just take a microdose of psilocybin, you can sort of go inward and sort of treat the pain from the inside. You just have to use your mental toolkit to sort of travel into your joints and tweak things, man.

You can use your hands as a little you inside of your body. Yeah, man, that's the answer to microdosing. I'm not doing that. I'm just going to stretch. So listen, Todd Field, it was kind of like great to meet this guy because his work is, it's sparse, the amount of work he puts out into the world. And when he does, it's deep and it's powerful. So, and I found him to be a mysterious guy before I talked to him. So enjoy this.

The movie that he has out now, which is getting a lot of Oscar buzz is Tar, but he's also the director of In the Bedroom and Little Children. He's an actor. He's a jazz musician. He was a bat boy for a minor league team. He's a co-invent was a bat boy for a minor league team.

He's the co-inventor of Big League Chew. Yeah, the guy who made Little Children also invented Big League Chew. Also, if you want to see the new film, Tar, it's playing in theaters and is available to buy or rent on digital platforms now. This is me talking to Todd Field. It's winter, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs,

mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No. But moose head? Yes. Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age.

Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Be honest. When was the last time you thought about your current business insurance policy? If your existing business insurance policy is renewing on autopilot each year without checking out Zensurance, you're probably spending more than you need. We'll be right back. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance and fill out a quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. But you don't live here. I used to live here. I think 26 years ago.

Where do you live? In Maine. Really? Yeah. Where do you live? In Maine. Really? Yeah. Where in Maine? Sort of in a little place called Rockville, between Rockport and Rockland. Back when I started out, I used to do gigs in Maine, one-nighters. Where?

Oh, geez, dude. I opened for an X-rated hypnotist in Machias. Oh, my God. Yeah. Wow. At the college. Yeah. Wow. At the college. Wow. Wow.

I mean, that's the furthest point east in the country. What year is that? Oh, God. Probably 89-ish. Okay. 90-ish, maybe. Like, driving up there gets a little trippy, man. Well, that was Maine then. I did one of my first gigs in a gunkwit at Captain Nick's.

I've been to Rockville, done a gig in Rockville. I can't remember which one, but I remember seeing it in my calendar. You're probably not Rockville, probably in Rockland. Maybe. Yeah. And that was a rough, it's slowly gotten, you know, gentrified. But Rockland was a really, really rough fishing town. Oh, yeah?

Well, yeah, there was a lot of those, man. I used to do gigs down in Fall River. Oh, yeah. And, like, it was just— Lizzie Borden land. Yeah. And also, like, where the, you know, that horrible rape happened that the accused was based on, I think, is Fall River. Yeah.

Yeah, that's tough country. Tough. Yeah. It's kind of, I think it's sort of like rough fishing towns, Portuguese. Portuguese, high prostitution drug rate. Yeah. Historically. Worcester. Not Worcester, Gloucester. Gloucester.

Yeah. There was a gig up in Gloucester, and that place was like fucking, you know, heroin central. Oh, yeah. Now, all my fisherman friends in Owl's Head, Maine, would all say, you know, because I was thinking of shooting a movie down in Gloucester years ago. Yeah. And they would say, no, no, you don't go to Gloucester. Don't go to. Really?

Yeah. Because it's pretty. It is pretty. How do you end up in Maine? Well, my wife and I were, our best friends were really her parents. Yeah. And so we used to summer together. Uh-huh.

And there was a certain point where I realized that if I wanted to have my own family, that I needed to go away with my own family. Right. So I said to my mother-in-law at the time, who was a very practical woman, where would I go where you and Bo wouldn't follow us? Yeah. And she said, Maine. If you go to Maine, he won't follow us because there's not enough Jews up there and he can't get the New York Times

and there's no phones. Was this your father-in-law? Yeah, there's no phones to call his agent on this little island. So we headed up there and then that was it. We kind of went up there and we never left. But do they come up there? Well, my mother-in-law's passed.

My father-in-law, ironically, lives with us in Maine now. He needed an agent. What did he do? Oh, he's one of the great screenwriters of all time, Bo Goldman. Oh, God, yeah. Yeah.

I've heard of that guy. Yeah, he wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Yeah. He wrote The Son of a Woman, Melvin and Howard, won a couple Academy Awards, yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. Yeah, great, wonderful, wonderful,

one of the great, great screenwriters of all time. Those are great movies. Every movie you just mentioned is a great movie. And he wrote on a lot of movies that you don't know about. But he's an incredible person. He's one of my favorite human beings. Is he mentally okay? Yeah, I mean, he's 90 now.

But he's not losing his mind. His long-term memory is very good. The short-term memory, what you would expect. Yeah, that's what's happening with my dad. Is it? Yeah, he's now just, he's like, his long-term memory is okay. And his practical memory, because he was a doctor, especially around medicine, is pretty tight. But day of shit.

And day before shit, no, then he's just sort of like the ventriloquist dummy of his wife. Yeah. He's like, what was that movie? Oh, yeah, yeah. No, then he's just, he's just sort of like the ventriloquist dummy of his wife. Yeah. He's like, what was that movie? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how that works. Yeah, yeah. I'm looking forward to experiencing that myself. So, you know, I watched this movie, Tar, is that how it's pronounced? Yeah. Okay. I liked it. I liked the movie a lot. Yeah. I mean, I have questions, but I want to, I'm trying to figure out where to start because, you know, in terms of movies you've directed, there's three in like 30 years. Yes. It's very decisive. Yes. And all of them are amazing and get amazing attention and deserve it. But, uh, interesting to me though, is this,

of it. But interesting to me, though, is this, you know, you seem to have had not several lives, but, you know, your talent has sort of, it seems to have kind of moved around. Like, it seems like at one point, the music was the thing. Do you still play jazz? No. Nothing? You know, I futz around on the piano, but anybody that is serious about music and really is a player knows it unless you woodshed that it's a fool's errand to pick up an instrument

because your imagination and your ability have no... Can't connect anymore. Yeah. That's why I never did it as a dream. These are all hobbies. These are hobby guitars. They're not, you know,

vessels of broken dreams. Yeah. Well, I have a whole barn full of vessels of broken dreams. In the form of what? Horns? Horns, yeah.

Uh-huh. Yeah, I was a trombone player. Trombone's interesting. I talked to Trombone Shorty lately, not too long ago. He's a wonderful player. He's a good player, right? Yeah, yeah, amazing player. So where'd you grow up?

I grew up in Portland, Oregon. Your parents and you, you got siblings? My parents and three siblings. Oh, wow. And yeah, I was born in Pomona, California, and my parents had a chicken ranch down here. Chickens? Yeah, chickens.

Do you remember it? No. Now, my mother tells me stories. And then we moved up when I was like two years old, so it's really the only place I ever knew growing up. There was no chickens up there. Did your dad do the chicken business still? No. No, my dad sold a welding rod, and he was a cop. And then my parents opened a small market.

Oh. Yeah. That's sort of like an interesting kind of low-level entrepreneurial thing to sort of end in the market, just a mom-and-pop shop. Yeah, and they kept it forever. Yeah. Yeah, it was named after my mother, Candy, Candy's Quick Shop. Yeah. Yeah.

Did it have a counter, lunch counter? No, it didn't have a lunch counter. It was a small store, and it was located in Milwaukee, Oregon, right in the center of the highest population of ex-convicts in the state. Uh-huh. So a lot of sort of we're picking up stuff to bring our husband or father or? No, I mean, a lot of people lived out of that store. My mother is a kind of, she's an extraordinary person.

And because a lot of people were living hand to mouth, she would give them credit based on a handshake. And she'd give everyone a fair shake that way. So people were hugely devoted to that little market. And because of the population there, a lot of larger change didn't want to come into that neighborhood. Oh, really? Yeah. So they were able to hold on to it for a while? They held on to it until my mother retired, yeah.

That's great. Yeah. And what were you doing as a kid? What was I doing as a kid? Well, I've read a little bit of stuff that I've got to ask you about. We've got to get to the bottom of something. I mean, it seems kind of trivial. Well, I started out obsessed with, like a lot of people, with close-up magic.

I used to take the bus downtown Portland alone, eight years old, and go to the House of Magic and take lessons with this old guy. I used to cut cards down until they'd fit into my hands. I drove my family crazy. They never wanted to see another card trick. So it was all cards, or did you do rings and cups? I did everything. And it didn't stick, huh? No, it's a tough life.

No, it is a tough life. And the Society of American Magicians and the International Brotherhood of Magic wouldn't let me join because I was too young. Then I got into music. Yeah. And that was my thing. And I went to school on a music scholarship to Southern Oregon. Were you a wizard? No.

No. I was a wizard? No. No. I was a dreamer. And I happened to be around a lot of really, really talented musicians that allowed me to sort of stick around. And most of them are still playing music professionally. So I was lucky to get a scholarship. Let's put it that way. And then I kind of followed somebody into the theater.

And the next thing I knew, I was, you know, on stage and directing stuff. I want to hear the baseball story. Oh, the baseball story, yes. I mean, there seems to be some connections, sort of weird show business connections unfolding that I like in this story already. So you were not on a baseball team or you were on a baseball team? Well, I played baseball. Sure. You know, like every kid, I thought I was going to be playing Major League Baseball.

Yeah. You know, obviously, you know. When you're like 10. Even 12. Yeah, we won the championship that year and I figured like the next step. Yeah, that's it. But you were playing horn too. I was playing horn, yeah.

And baseball. And baseball. Both sides. Both sides, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, baseball. Both sides. Both sides, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I could do both. Because it's kind of interesting that, well, but it's sort of interesting, you know, when you evolve as an artist, you know, who you really are. And I think there's an interesting beat at the end of Tar that you just kind of, like, I really don't want to spoil that movie because there are spoilers.

You know, but there is something that happens in like three minutes and you're like, what? And it has something to do with that, who we really are. Yeah, who we really are and what does it mean to really play your instrument. Exactly. It's something you wrestled with. Yeah. And I still wrestle with.

Huh. Exactly. It's something you wrestled with. Yeah. And I still wrestle with. Huh. So the baseball thing, so you're playing ball and you're a bat boy? I was playing ball. I went to this, the thing that you're referring to is the Portland Mavericks. Yes. And the Portland Mavericks were- And I rarely do this, but it just needs to be a question answered. we do this, but it just needs to be a question answered.

They're a Class A short team. They were the only independent baseball team in professional baseball at the time, from 1973 to 1977. It was a team that was founded by Bing Russell, who's a great storied character actor from Rangeley, Maine, who has an incredible

story, and I would encourage you to look at Mac and Chap Way's documentary, The Batter Bastards of Baseball, if you want to learn more. But it was started by Bing and his son, Kurt Russell, who I've known since I was 12 years old. Kurt Russell, son of Flaubert? Yep, son of Flaubert. And escaped from New York. Escaped from New York and many other-

And everything in between. Everything in between. So you probably knew him when he did Son of Flubber, when he was a kid, right? He quit acting. He was playing professional baseball. He was drafted by the San Diego Padre organization. He was a serious ball player.

Okay. And he had gotten injured toward the end of the Portland Mavericks, like toward 77. So he came and played that season. What position did he play? He was a middle infielder. Okay. But he was a hell of a ball player.

Yeah. And that group were kind of an amalgamation of people that had been kicked to the side and outcasts and people that, you know, a crazy group of guys. Guys that, one guy who ended up winning the Pulitzer Prize, you know, one Jim Boughton who wrote Ball Four, who, you know, had been one of the great hurlers for the Yankees. Yeah. You know, pitched in a couple World Series, you know. Rob Nelson, who was my sister's boyfriend, who was a pitching coach, who I lived with on

and off again, who ran this camp and sort of brought me into that world. So it was an incredible experience as a child and not something that any sane person or any parent had my parents known what I was really exposed to probably would have endorsed, but I'm certainly grateful that they didn't know and that I was able to have that experience. But it's interesting, this convergence of, you know, athletics, acting, and then Kurt Russell, of course. Kurt Russell and Rob Nelson, who was a pitching coach who, you know, when I was 12 years old, he hit me on the back because he saw me spitting something out of my mouth. And, uh, and I just had a, you know, I had a pouch of red man and I had ripped up black licorice and I was acting like I was chewing tobacco. And he said, you can't do that. And I said, well, I just,

it's licorice. Don't worry about it. He said, well, if it was gum, would you have it be gum? And I said, sure. Yeah. If I, uh, if I could spit the juice spit the juice. So, you know, cut to like four years later, we're making the first, you know, batch of Big League Chew in my mother's kitchen. And what do you mean? Like you're shredding gum? Shredding gum. Rob bought a kit out of like the back of People magazine. We put it in pizza trays and took knives and he cut it. But you weren't making the gum.

No, we made gum. And then we decorated it. And then Jim Boughton, uh, and Rob went out and sold it to Wrigley. And that was the beginning of Big League Chew. Yeah. Now you get a piece of that?

No, just a story. Really? Yeah. All right. So that, I mean, for some reason,

like that's what I, I, I had done a little research and that was the deal. But my, my producer seemed to thought that you were rumored to have made it a fortune off big-league shoe that enabled you to live independently for the rest of your life. No, I'm working stiff just like the rest of us. No big gum money? No big gum money, yeah.

Oh. Did that bum you out? No. Sounds like you should have got a piece of it. No, I think it would have wrecked my life. I think I probably would have wound up in a gutter with a needle in my arm. I don't think you could deal with that kind of money at a young age. At 12 or 16?

Or even 20 or 25. Were you compelled towards the booze and shit? No, but I mean, I don't think that money is really the answer for a young person. I don't think it tends to have you necessarily experiment with life very well. I agree with you. I mean, I mean,

but I'm happy to hear that. I'm happy to hear you didn't make the big Wrigley sellout. Yeah. Because that would have made me look at you differently. I'm still pure, Mark.

Yeah, you're just a gum fortune guy. I thought you were an artist, but no. No. It's all the gum. It's all the gum. So you get through the baseball, and then you're, you know, when does that dream die?

Oh, pretty quickly. I mean, working with the Portland Mavericks as a bat boy, I could tell, you know, first of all, like Bing and Kurt's, Bing's grandson, Matt Franco. Yeah. You know, he came up, I think I was 12 or 13. Matt was 10. Yeah. Matt could already play so incredibly well. He was a foot shorter than I was. And, and I couldn't keep up with him. Matt went on and played Major League Baseball, you know? Yeah. So it was really clear, like, okay, that's what somebody that's going to play Major League Baseball is like. Yeah, yeah.

That's not me. Right. You know? And so, and music, how long does it take for that to kind of fizzle? I was in earnest about music. I played with everybody that came through Portland. And Portland was a really unusual town in that back then, you know, pre-internet, pre-cable, all that was a very isolated place. It was very provincial. You know, people would wear clothes that were five years past LA and New York because that's what they shipped to Portland.

So it had this weird sort of environment in that there were like four very, very active jazz clubs. So it was a must stop for major players. Dexter Gordon would come through there. Wynton Marcellus, when he was 20 years old, came through there with VSOP. Like everyone came through there. Charlie, me, I mean everyone. Yeah. And so, um, if you were a young, you know, journey man or woman, you know, jazz player, it was the place to be and you were allowed to go in and sit in, in those clubs.

So you met everyone and you played with a lot of different. You played with a lot of those guys? I would play, you know, jam sessions after those guys. But the guys that I played with were really, really solid players. Many of them did play with them. Yeah? Yeah. So when does the acting start?

does the acting start uh well it started uh when i went to when i went off to school uh and i i followed somebody into the theater department and where it's southern oregon which at the time was basically a wrestling school you know sort of arts adjacent you know and uh but that's where you really get to you can have a lot of freedom had a lot of freedom and it was right next to the oregon shakespeare festival and i was studying outside of school with this wonderful actor, Mark Murphy, who had come up from ACT and was doing Hamlet up there. And that's who really turned me on. To acting. To acting. And he said, I'm going to tell you something that I've never told another actor, which is, I think you can make a living doing this.

But if that's going to happen, you need to get out of here right now. And I said, okay, what should I do? He goes, go to New York. Here are three names, call these people up, get out of here. And I did. So you made an impression on him and what, what were you getting out of it? I mean, what, cause like I do a bit of acting now and it's hard for me to, to sort of like balance out the acceptance of sitting in a trailer for eight hours with the five minute, like to find the beauty and, and, and creativity in those moments that makes it worth it. I mean, obviously I do other things. Acting is not my top thing. Right. But what was it early on that was rewarding to you? Well, one of the things that I did growing up was I worked at a second-run movie house for a few years as a projectionist.

So we get all kinds of eclectic titles for months. So I might be watching Diner for six months or Raiders of the Lost Ark for six months. Yeah. I mean, long, long runs on these things. And, um, and so I hadn't seen a lot of films growing up. We didn't, we didn't go to the movies, went to the drive-in a couple of times. Right. So I kind of fell in love with movies then.

Yeah. Um, and that was a period of time where for the first sort of, you know, movie era, young people were starring in films, you know, I mean, that was a new thing, you know, people that were roughly my age and you went, oh, wow, you should do this, you know? And I just needed somebody to tell me that it was okay. I would have been too embarrassed to have done it myself, you know? Oh, yeah? I think so, yeah. Why? I just didn't grow up around that. I didn't, you know, I had never...

Didn't seem like a job. It just seemed like something that was so exotic and strange, and the people that I knew that did theater in high school and stuff were not people I related to very well. But you obviously had something. All these people were telling you. I guess, yeah. Where'd they see you do it? Where'd you make this huge impression? I did a couple of things at school and just did stuff with Mark in this class. I don't know. I'm the last person that would understand why he told me that. So you go to New York. I go to New York. My sister's in New York. We end up living together in a room this size.

We have nails on the wall. We hang our clothes. There's a hot plate. There's barely a toilet. And I'm in heaven. Like an SRO. Yeah. I'm just thrilled. It's like the greatest. I feel like, wow, they invented this city for me. I just felt like I was home for the first time. Wow, yeah, yeah. And yeah, so I got a job waiting tables and met a lot of other people that were, you know, very, very generous with sort of pushing me

and pointing me in the right direction. And things happened, you know, pretty quickly for me. Who'd you study with? I studied with Robert Xavier Modica at Carnegie Hall on the eighth floor. Uh, great guy. It was, we had been one of Sanford Meisner's, uh, assistants and, uh, it was a wonderful teacher and he was an old Jesuit priest, very, very tough teacher. Uh-huh. Yeah. What'd you learn? I think I, I think, what did I learn? I think I learned that, um,

half, you know, the half the battle of acting is convincing yourself. It's all the cliches that they say they're true, which is just getting out of your own way. Yeah. Interesting. And listening. Listening, yeah. But no directing on the horizon. Weren't even thinking about it well i had kind of directed something in school um but i was thinking about it and and i would open up backstage and there would be all these nyu you know film project looking for actors and i would go down and under the pretense that i was auditioning for these things but really just so i could crew on them so i could get close to the camera and you know drag cable and stuff yeah so you get a hang of it? Get the hang of it, see how people were doing it. You never went to school for it?

I did go to school for it later. I went to the American Film Institute, and I was a fellow there from 92 to 95. After you did a bunch of acting? After I'd acted for about five years, yeah. But so what do you mean things happened fast for you? You just started getting cast? Yeah, I mean, I got a part in a play with most with yale rep that was a pretty high-flown group um yeah and then i was that in cambridge no and it was in it was downtown it was in soho

an old theater um they're called that's no longer there sadly um and um and then i and then i got some you know small parts and films and and one out of some of that, I got an agent. And one of my buddies was playing hockey up in Montreal. And he said, you should come up and visit sometime. And so I woke up one night. I had this dream. I went to Canada, and I got a job. So I called him.

I said, David, can I come up there? He goes, yeah, yeah. Just fucking go down to People's Express. It's 35 bucks. You pay on the plane. I'll pick you up at the airport. So he picks me up at the airport. We go up there and he said, look, I'm doing this hockey television show up here.

And they're looking for a Swedish goaltender. And they've gone to the Swedish embassy. They've gone to these semi-pro guys. They don't find anyone like, let's smoke a joint. And let's go over to the casting office and just fuck with them a little bit and just, can you do any like Swedish sounding stuff, you know? And I said, yeah, yeah.

I just actually auditioned for the Swedish coffee commercial. I think I, he goes, well, just do the gibberish and just pretend you don't, you don't speak, you know, English or French. I said, well, the French part

will be easy. So we went in there and we did this and then we walk out like, you know, idiots going. And later that day, he said, we got to go out by the production office because I got to pick up the scripts for the coming week. And we walked in and everybody started mobbing me. And they said, Anders, Anders, you got the part.

And I said, no, my name is Todd Field. I'm from New York. I don't speak Swedish. They said, well, you fooled us. You got the part. So I lived up in Canada on this television show. We're doing this TV show. And while he's doing that, I got a call from out here from some guy that said, I need you

to come out here and test for a film. And I said, oh, I'm not leaving. I'm opening a Mexican bar on, and I'm the, be the first person to import tequila into Quebec. That was your plan? That was, oh, absolutely. Yeah. And, um, I'm not, I'm not coming out there.

And he kept saying, no, you got to come out. You got to come out. To LA. Yeah. And I came out and then I stayed. That's what happened. That's what was the part that got you out here? Nothing.

It was a ruse. It was all smoke and mirrors. He was just trying to, he knew once he got me out here, he could probably get me hooked, and that's what happened. And then you had, like, you know, you did a string of little parts in big movies. I did. I did, yeah.

You know, one of the things when I came out here, it wasn't really he. Just to be honest, it was Serena Rathbun, my partner. I met her, and she said, what are you going to do with your life? I said, I'm going back to open this Mexican restaurant. And she said. In Montreal. She said, you're not a serious person. She sort of challenged me.

This is your wife? This is my wife. Yeah. So, yeah, I got a lot of little parts, a lot of small, you know, bits on TV shows and met a lot of people that are still friends today. Yeah. Like Jimmy Vallely and people. I know Jim Vallely. How's he doing? You know, I think Jimmy's doing great. Yeah? Yeah. What a character, man. I know the other funny boy, too. Jonathan Schmock. Yeah. And I know Jonathan.

And all the people I met around that period, you know, Marr and Sandler and all that group, they were just young guys in town, you know, trying to hustle. But you didn't work with those guys, did you? I did. I did a TV show that Chris Thompson did. That's how I met Jimmy. And I did scenes with Bill Maher. He was on that show. Way back That's how I met Jimmy. And, and, and I, I did scenes with Bill Maher. He was on that show.

Yeah. Way back. Way back when. But you did do big movies with some interesting directors. And I just sort of kind of building where you got the confidence or the vision or, or even the skillset to start, to, to start making your own movies.

Like, I mean, you worked with, you know, Kubrick later, right? But that was towards, that was Eyes Wide Shut. But Woody

Allen, I don't know how big of a part that was in Radio Day. It was a nothing part. I got my SAG card. What about, well, Hollis Center, that was a real part. Nicole, Nicole Hollis Center. Yeah, yeah. I worked with Nicole Hollis Center. I'd already been to film school at that point. So you did some TV and you did a few movies and then you went to film school. I did some TV. I did a couple movies, like two or three Roger Corman movies, a couple with Carl Franklin. Oh, really? You did the Corman thing?

Yeah, I did the Corman thing. Did three movies with him. Met a lot of, again, met people that became lifelong friends. Carl Franklin, who was at AFI at the time, really pushed me into going there. Like most directors did because I would pester them. Yeah, what'd you learn from Corman? I've talked to that guy. Well, I didn't have that much to do.

I mean, Roger produced those. The only thing I, the only real encounter I ever had with Roger was when Roger would still back then, believe it or not, take these films that had guaranteed output situations straight to video for MGM that no one was ever going to see.

And he would still go to the Valley and do full 35 millimeter tests. So I did this terrible submarine movie with Carl and Carl and I went out to go test it. He said, well, Roger's coming. And I said, oh, really? Roger's going to come? Yeah. Yeah. He really wants to be there for the test. So we're sitting in the back of the house and I have this big tub of popcorn. And I looked down and Roger's just eating all my popcorn. He was so cheap he couldn't even buy his own popcorn. Those are the moments. So what'd you learn at directing school? I think what I learned, again, Serena's father

had come home at Thanksgiving one year. Beau? Beau. And he had brought, he'd been in New York and he brought a video camera and he handed it to me and he said, do something with this. And I did for about three years. Would you make shorts? I made shorts and I crudely cut them between the camera, you know, and a VCR day. And that's

really where I learned almost everything, you know, that and watching a lotCR day. And that's really where I learned almost everything, you know, I, that and watching a lot of films. When I went to film school, the one thing that I think I really got out of it was, um, I had a couple of very, very fine teachers,

a guy named Stuart Rosenberg, who, uh, is no longer with us, who, um, had a big background in, um,

television, but it also directed like Cool Hand Luke and films like that. And he was a very practical, sensible teacher. John Alonzo was our cinematography teacher, and he had a lot of practical knowledge. Bob Boyle and famous Henry Bumstead both came out of Hitchcock and two of the greatest production designers ever. That's all practical stuff.

That was really practical stuff. But in terms of just like following your nose, it was really more about watching films and just doing it. Doing the videos. Doing the videos. What'd you learn from, I imagine that the relationship with Bo Goldman evolved as you got older and got on and was he a resource? No, we always kept church and state separate. He gave me one piece of advice when I started film school, because that summer I wasn't going to be able to go away with my family because it was a summer before I started the American Film Institute. And we were told we

were supposed to arrive with three scripts and I'd never written anything before. Full scripts? Yeah, but three, no, three short films. We're going to have to make three short films. And so I called him up and I said, Bo, how do you do this? Yeah. And he said, are you ready? I said, yeah. He goes, you ready?

Yeah. Okay. Wake up in the morning, go to the desk, take the phone off the hook. You know, we didn't have internet or any of these distractions. And he said, don't do anything else. And he said, after a while, you'll have a script. And that was really good advice. Yeah. And that's what I did. And so that's how I started writing. And those were shorts. You made a few shorts. I made three shorts the first year. Uh, and then

I made my thesis film that my wife, that Serena actually wrote, that went to Sundance. Which one was that? It's called Nani and Alex. And it won a prize at Sundance. Is it short? It's a short. Yeah. Very good.

Yeah. Nice script. Good. Very, very. Your wife wrote it? She did. Yeah. Is she a screenwriter?

She could be if she wanted to. Yeah. Yeah. But okay. So you do the film school, but you're still acting while you're doing these shorts, right? Well, no, I wasn't acting. I'd stopped acting. Serena had bought a pickup truck. So, oh, so this is like 2000 and something. When'd you go? No. I mean, what happened was I started school in 92 as a fellow. Serena, we already had a child at home, another one on the way.

Serena got a pickup truck and she would go to these flea markets out in Long Beach and stuff. And she opened up a shop and within like a year, she started designing. And within like three years, she was like the biggest,

you know, interior designer on the planet. So she put me through school. Now, when I, when I started school, I had just finished this film. And this is probably the most important film I ever worked on as an actor was this film called Ruby in Paradise that Victor Nunez wrote and directed.

Uh-huh. And I learned a lot from Victor. And Victor was very generous. And so I thought, that's it. That's my swan song. I'm not going to act anymore. And then when I was in film school, that went to Sundance and it won the Grand Jury Prize. So all of a sudden my phone started ringing.

I didn't have an acting agent. I didn't have a manager. I just had an attorney. And so I took jobs just to try to chip away at my student loans. But I had no intention of acting ever again. And I continued to act for the next eight or nine years. Yeah. So you got caught up?

Did you take care of those loans? I took care of the loans eventually. But I mean, that film is why Nicole Hall of Center called me for Walking and Talking. That film is why Stanley Kubrick called me for Eyes Wide Shut. I mean, that one film that I did with Victor before I started school kept me working for almost 10 years. What is some of his other movies? almost 10 years. What is some of his other movies?

Well, he was really an early pioneer for what we would think of as American independent cinema before it was such a thing back in the seventies. So he did a film that was at the New York film festival called Gal Youngin. He did another film with Ed Harris called a flash of green. That's very, very excellent film. He did a film after Ruby in paradise called Uli's gold with Peter. I saw that one. And he was nominated for best actor. Yeah. He did a film after Ruby in Paradise called Yuli's Gold with Peter Vonda. I saw that one.

And he was nominated for Best Actor. Yeah, yeah. And he's in the middle of- That's the bee movie, right? Like it's a honey- Yeah, yeah. He's a beekeeper. Yeah.

And actually, Victor is in the middle of finishing film right now. What was it about your relationship with him around, in terms of the process of directing, he was helpful? Just the way he thought about, he was really focused on character. Yeah. And so, like, the character I was playing, Mike McCaslin, sort of, you know, tip of the hat to Ike McCaslin from Faulkner's The Bear. You know, he's the kind of director that would sit you down without it feeling pretentious or anything and say, okay, this guy, books are really important to him.

These are the books. Read these books and you'll understand this character. And he was right. This is how he lives. This is how he thinks. This is the family he came from. Do you do that? Do you do that with your actors? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Because a lot of actors like to show up with their own backstory, but you fill it in. Well, I think when you write your own material, you're allowed to give them a backstory. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, that makes sense. But what was your relationship with Kubrick? Any? That was a very important relationship because there are few people when you're a young person that are your heroes that you fantasize about meeting. Yeah. And I've been very lucky. I've

met almost all of them. Who were they? Paul Newman, who I worked with in 1988. And I spent my daughter's first birthday with and New Year's Eve with. And Robert Redford. What'd you work with him on? I didn't work with him, but I met him and spoke with him. No, Newman, I worked with him on a film called Fat Man and Little Boy, directed by Roland Joffe. Oh, yeah, Roland Joffe. That was the new Queer Bomb movie, right? That's right.

Yeah. Andre Debus was a huge hero of mine in school. Andre Debus? And then I ended up being able to adapt his short story for In the Bedroom. Jonathan Franzen, huge hero of mine. I've ended up working with him and we're friends. But, you know, someone like Stanley Kubrick, I mean, I remember, you know, when I was in school in Southern Oregon, that's when he was casting Full Metal Jacket. And he put ads in the back of the theater magazines.

And I remember getting drunk one night and calling from the dormitory payphone to England, asking information for Stanley Kubrick, you know? So it was like the idea that he called me, um, and that I was able to actually, you know, have that experience and an experience that, you know, really should have taken two weeks. And instead I went over there in October of 96 and I wrapped in January, 1998. So it was a, it was like, wasn't it only like a couple of scenes? It's three scenes. Yeah. I was at you and Cruz. Yep. I was, I was there the first day of the shoot and I was there the last day of the shoot. But you stayed in England. I didn't stay in England, but I was over there a lot because Stanley wanted to have flexibility. So I was there for about nine months. And did you, were you able to

spend any time with him or were you just an actor? No, I mean, when you, the way Stanley worked, anyone that has worked with Stanley will tell you this. Like, very much like Victor Nunez, like, he, his focus is with the people on camera and that's who he spends time with.

So he does extensive prep work, but mostly, unless it's, you know, people on camera and that's who he spends time with so he he does extensive prep uh work but but mostly unless it's you know something where there's a lot of logistics involved the crew goes away and it's a very small crew it's you know eddie tice would do the sound in a small count uh camera crew but the lighting was done so it wasn't the set wasn't the way that we all you know we were used to experiencing it so he would sit with you and you would talk about uh a scene for a very long time also i would be at work you know when for weeks when i wasn't shooting and he would send me into his trailer and have me look at dailies

for things i wasn't involved in and talk to me about it and actually i wrote a i wrote my first uh film while i was over there and talk and was able to talk to him about that too. That was in the bedroom? That was in the bedroom. Like really technical things where he'd say, okay, call this guy. He does this. Call that guy.

Okay, who are you going to cast for this? Well, I was thinking about so-and-so. No, don't cast him. Why? Well, let me tell you about it. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, he was very, very fatherly that way.

Around that first script? Around the first script. And did you let him read the first draft? Yeah, I did. he was very, very fatherly that way. Around that first script? Around the first script. And did you let him read the first draft? Yeah, I did. And? Yeah. What did he say? I mean, he was practical.

He didn't say, you know, good boy or bad boy. He just said, let's talk about it, what you're trying to do here. Oh, yeah? Yeah. And like, what were you trying to do? I don't know. I'm still trying to figure that out. So what'd you tell him?

I didn't, it wasn't, I mean, we would never talk like that. We would never talk about themes or, or any of that. I don't think people that really make films talk about those. We talk about practical matters, you know, like, like how are you going to make this shot? How do you make a thing work? Yeah. What is it? What's your point of view? And, um, uh, and a lot of technical things. And why that story? I think when I read it, I read it in 92 in school. And there was something about that story that really hit me because there's a scene between Matt Fowler and his friend Willis where they're hatching this murder.

Yeah. where they're hatching this murder. Yeah. And there was a way that they were talking back and forth that haunted me because it was a kind of conversation I heard my father have with his male friends. And I remember waking up. They were murderers?

Well, my father had been a cop and I remember going home once and I'd had all my wisdom out, and I was hopped up on Percocet. Yeah. And I remember coming to on the couch and hearing my dad on the telephone, and it was a conversation that was like, yeah, uh-huh, yeah. Well, he can't do that. Well, no, we're going to have to take care of that. No, we'll take care of that. Yeah.

We're going to take care of that. You know, and he got off the phone, and I said, dad, who the going to have to take care of that. No, we'll take care of that. Yeah, we're going to take care of that. And he got off the phone and I said, Dad, who the fuck were you talking to? And he goes, oh, yeah, I was just talking to my friend Walt. And I said, yeah, but what are you talking about? And he's like, oh, nothing, nothing. And I thought it felt like he was planning a hit. And that's what that story left me with.

So, I mean, my initial reason- Haunted by tone. Yeah, haunted by tone. And then I didn't really work on it until, you know, seven years later. And by that time, it took on a different life because I'd had seven years for that story to do different things, you know, to me. Yeah. And so, like, you kind of grew up around that story like you know you were

obsessed with it in a way i was obsessed with it um but then you know between that and and actually thinking about what is this like it's a very backloaded story yeah and um so how do you get to that you know and what what does that look? And that was informed by a lot of different things. It was informed by, um, where Serena and I were raising our kids at the time in Maine and, and that really plays a part that the town, it's a big part in that. And, and, um, but also stuff that had happened, you know, my, my, my, my in-laws had lost a child. So, um, there was always an empty, uh, space at the table during holidays. And there was a lot of talk around Jesse, who they'd lost at a young age, at the same age that this character, this Fowler boy is killed. So that really, really had a huge impact.

So you're kind of living with the emotions of this thing. I mean, it wasn't a murder, I'm assuming, but. No, it wasn't a murder. But it's like what happens between, you know, two people form a third entity. Now, in the case of my in-laws, that third entity was very different in terms of how they dealt with their grief. But for this couple couple obviously um that third entity is something else that third entity is a murderer and resulting from a relationship they weren't approving of anyways and or that the husband sort of just was dismissive about and the mother was concerned yeah and and then like how the grief and the the tragedy shifts their

disposition yes and and and sort of this terrible overcompensation to try to find some normal between them as if that could ever exist. It's kind of a genius movie. I loved it. And now, wasn't, isn't William... Maypother. Isn't that Tom Cruise's cousin?

It is. What was your relationship with Cruise? From Eyes Wide Shut. Well, we were very good friends. And Tom was, actually it was Tom that got me into, I mean, I wanted to make a feature. I tried to make a feature.

But while we were on that, he really challenged me one night. He said, okay, you're about ready to leave here. Yeah. You're going to make a film. And I said, well, yeah, I've made a lot of films.

I was in film school. He said, no, no, no, you're going to make a film. Oh, no, you put the focus on it. Yeah. You're going to make a film. And I said, well, yeah, I've made a lot of films. I was in film school. He said, no, no, no, you're going to make a film. Oh no, you put the focus on. Yeah. He said, he said, he said, what are you going to do? And I said, well, there's a story I was, you know, reading, but I can't get the rights. He goes, go back, do whatever you have to do, get the rights to that story. When you get back here, I want to see a script. And he really, you know, kind of, he did, you know, he did me a giant favor. And he did me a greater favor because that film, I think a lot of people watch it, they go, oh, it's a Miramax film.

It had nothing to do with Miramax. That was a good machine film that no one wanted to make. What does Miramax mean? Is that now, like, at that time, you mean it's loaded because of Weinstein? Yeah, exactly. And it was a film that I sent that script around to 50 different places, and they didn't want to make it. And I finally sent it to Ann Carey at Good Machine. And she read it and said, we're going to make this.

I'm sending it to Ted Hope. Now, Ted, weirdly, had grown up down the road from Andre Debus. And his father had been his best friend. So he said, we're going to make this. Yeah. And so that's how— That helped you get the rights? Yeah. And he, he said, we're going to make this. Um, and so that's how that helped you get the rights. Yeah. And then he, and he helped negotiate the rights. The rights were held by, by, uh,

Graham leader who was a producer on the film. And, um, and, and he agreed to, to let us do this. And we made it for, you know, we made it for a song and it went to Sundance and Harvey wasn't allowed in Sundance that year because he had attacked someone the previous year or two. Yeah. And so his lieutenant, you know, at the time, Mark Gill bought it. And then Harvey was furious. He said, why'd you buy this piece of shit movie? It's like, nobody wants to see this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, he didn't have another film that year. So he ended up throwing, you know, way too much marketing behind it. And it kind of felt like this weird sure thing movie about these two people that lose a child and are grieving, you know, way too much marketing behind it. And it kind of felt like this weird sure thing movie about these two people that lose a child and are grieving, you know. It couldn't be anything further than that.

But that was a, you know, that was a very, very strange sort of experience. Like he threw all the money behind it, but it wasn't out of spite. It wasn't like, I'll show you this is going to fail. No, what happened was he said, I'm going to buy it, but we're going to recut it. And I called Tom Cruise up and I said, Tom, can I show you the film? He said, yep. And I showed it to him and he said, okay, let's go. And he took me to where he was staying at the night and he kept me up all night long.

And he goes, okay, this is what you're going to do with Harvey. This is how you handle him. He's going to do this. And then you're going to do this. And he's going to do this. And you're going to do this. And he's going okay, this is what you're going to do with Harvey. This is how you handle him. He's going to do this and then you're going to do this and he's going to do this and you're going to do this and he's going to do this and you're going to do this. And this is going to take you about six months. You have to be really patient. Keep your powder dry. Never let him know that. Just agree to everything.

And eventually you'll beat him. And he was right. It took me six months and I beat him. You know? What does that mean? Well, it means that I got to release the film that I, that was my film. But how, what was, what was, how'd you navigate that? What are these, what are these beats you're talking about?

Well, the first beat was, he said, go there and do everything he says and say, you're, you're a genius. Of course I'm going to do that. And then, and he said, and then test the movie and the test numbers are going to be terrible. And they were, and then he said, and then let him keep doing it. And he goes, the test numbers are going to go down. And he goes,

and then wait at the last minute, say, you know, maybe, I don't know this film, you know, had some nice feelings about it at Sundance and people have written some positive,

you know, supportive things. And I don't know, maybe we, how about if we just tested the film you bought? Well, it took six months to get to that, you know,

just throw that away. And then we tested it and it tested like 50 points higher. I don't understand. What were you testing initially? We were testing cuts with Harvey and his, his hatchet man, you know, cutting the film down and trying to turn it into something. Oh, you let them do that? Oh, I helped them do it.

Yeah. Oh, so you're just watching them butcher your fucking movie? Yeah. I'm going, let's go further. No, let's cut that out. Yeah. Oh, so you're just watching them butcher your fucking movie? Yeah, I'm going, let's go further. No, let's cut that out. Yeah. Wait, I don't think you've cut enough out, you know? And that went on for a long time.

It went on for six months, and I was broke. I mean, I was supposed to, Ridley Scott had asked me to come do Black Hawk Down with him for a really good part, and I wanted to do that because I wanted to watch him work. But yeah, I mean, I was desperately broke. I mean, Serena and I were scraping by, but Tom said, just stick with it. Don't, don't, don't, just. Oh my God.

Cruz gave you the focus. Yeah, he did. Yeah, he gave you that. He's good at focusing. He is, he is. So, but so like it took six months before he relented and just tried your cut yeah and then that was it and then after that he had another

film this film that he had with um uh with uh what was it called the shipping news with uh kevin spacey and that film wasn't going to open and so he pivoted to in the bedroom and that was kind of and that's what it did and then it got the Academy Award nominations and all... But it was... But it's so interesting because it comes out and it's obviously a fully realized,

you know, your point of view is there, your sense of setting and tone is all there. It's all, you know, it's a beautiful movie. Deserved all the accolades. Thanks.

But then you wait a long time to do Little Children. Well, I think it was about five years, yeah. And so you didn't feel the pressure to sort of like, you know, what's anyone got? Let's go. Give me another movie. No, I mean, part of the reason that I wanted to make films was to make films. So you wanted to be the writer, producer, director, the whole fucking thing. Yeah, I really envy people that aren't built like that.

But it's probably better for me to be on the floor doing advertising if I'm going to be a director for hire. There's no pretense about it. Right. Just like, I'm a shooter. Okay, go shoot. Do this, do that. You don't want to do that. No, I do it in advertising all the time. Oh, you do? Yeah, because there's no pretense about it right just like i'm gonna i'm a shooter okay go shoot do this do you don't want to do that no i do it in advertising all the time oh you do yeah because there's no pretense about it there's no idea that it that's anything but someone else's i have no control over it whatsoever yeah and it's you know there's right and it's very specific it's very

specific and it's uh and and it's useful if you look at it as a way to sort of preview technology before it ever gets to people in feature films. Oh, interesting. So during the, like, whatever, 15 years between Little Children and this new movie, you're making good bread on advertising. Yes. Now, Little Children, again, not an uplifting film. Now, Little Children, again, not an uplifting film. So in the bedroom, heavy, heavy. You don't walk out skipping.

And look, I love it. Darkness is the best. But Little Children, it was like the end of Little Children. You're like, oh, my fuck. What the fuck just happened to me? You're asking that as a viewer. But it was another stunning movie. But what compels you to do, like, you know, to follow up in the bedroom, which was sort of like in the bedroom was, you know, the story of murder around jilted husbands and, you know, this is not unfamiliar.

It's not unfamiliar. And, you know, but it seemed very, you know, real in the setting that you created. And it was, you know, in a beautifully acting shot. Little Children is kind of spectacular in its darkness, you know, in the choices. So why that story? Well, Serena had given me Richard Yates' incredible book, which probably, you know, it kind of broke Richard Yates, I think, because it came out in a year, I think 1961,

where it should have won the National Book Award. And that year was like J.D. Salinger had a book. Percy Walker, I think, won for the moviegoer and stuff like that. But that was kind of Yeats' magnum opus. And it's a very dark book, A Revolutionary Road, which eventually was made into a film by Sam Mendes. And that was the film I really wanted to make. He made that with Leo?

With Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Shannon. And so I met with Cynthia O'Neill, who actually turns out to be the wife of my old boss for my first job in New York, and showed her in the bedroom. And she said, okay, you can make it, but you have to use Patrick's script. Now, Patrick was no longer living, and I just couldn't use someone else's script.

I just couldn't do it. So in the meantime, Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa had sent me the galleys for Tom Parada's Little Children, and Leon Vitale, who I was working with at the time, we had a deal, uh, with Steven Spielberg and Mike DeLuca at DreamWorks, uh, sent it and said, you should make this. And, and I read it and I said, I think, I think you're right. You know? So, uh, Tom and I started talking, but I said, you know, I think I, I'm, I'm suspicious that this, what's so great about the novel, we'll lose because,

have you read the book before? It has all these wonderful character digressions and they're just wonderful. And so I said, why don't we take it to HBO? This is 2005. And see if they'll let us make it as what then would have been called a miniseries.

And they said, nobody makes miniseries anymore. No one would ever do that. There's no such form. That's all they do now. And that's all they do now. Yeah. So in the meantime, Scott Rudin swooped in, bought the rights,

and said, we're going to make it into a feature. And I had to decide, you know, and I said to Tom, you know, first of all, we can't, Scott won't give me final cut, so I can't do it with Scott. So Scott said, you can have it, you can shop it, you have 24 hours to meet my terms. And I took it over to Toby Emmerich and Kent Alterman at New Line and they said, okay, we'll do it. kind of like, okay, how's this going to work? And Tom and I held up in a hotel room in Boston and, and we, and we started getting into it. And, and, but I think that one of the things we talked about was that Richard Yates book and Richard Yates weirdly had, you know, had a terrible drinking problem. And that drinking problem was sort of, um, uh, hosted about two blocks from where we were riding. So we would walk past his bar every day. And I think a lot of sort of that Revolutionary Road, in a weird way, really kind of took Tom's book into that screenplay that Tom and I wrote in an odd way. Huh.

You know? Interesting. So it all started with this kind of, it started with the Revolutionary Road thing. Yeah. this kind of, it started with the Revolutionary Road thing. Yeah, well, I mean, it's the ultimate sort of, you know,

dashed American dreams or the lie of sort of, you know, the middle class in the suburbs. I mean, it's the seminal novel. It really is. Really? Because there was a few guys charting that Cheever, right? Like Cheever.

Yeah. Updike a little bit. Like Updike. Yeah. But, you know, the rabbit stuff. But Revolutionary Road is a whole different world. So you saw this as sort of a modern interpretation. Yeah, absolutely.

And to an extreme. Yeah. Yeah, very much so. And not unlike the other movies, having talked to you just now, that the way to sort of put together these characters, that your focus is really, I mean, the story is there, but it is still becomes apparent that it is about these characters. Absolutely. Yeah. Very much so.

It's like, I mean, in that regard, just like if you're playing, if you're a jazz musician and you're playing a chart, you know, um, you're not just playing the chart. It's not like classical music, you know, you have to interpret that chart and you also have ABA or you have, you know,

whatever the chord patterns are to, to, to riff over, you know? Yeah. And the same thing for, you know, for an actor,

like your initial training is about interpretation. Um, but it's, it's an inside-out process. So, yeah, I'm not really a plotter. I'm a character sort of person. And then you resurrect Jackie Earl Haley. Well, Jackie really did that on his own. I hadn't seen anyone else for that. Phil Hoffman had called me up actually wanting to play that part. Of the pedophile. Yeah. But I got this weird tape that arrived at my hotel in New

York and it was Jackie and he made this film of him as Ronnie McGorvey. And Jackie had been working in advertising down in Texas. Yeah. And it was a very funny film, like tonally, like way off the range from where we wound up. Yeah. But his filmmaking skill was so exquisite, it demanded your attention. Yeah. And so I had to call him just to take my hat off to the effort he'd put forth. And I said, look, man, you know, we're, we're casting in, in New York. Um, if you can get yourself here, uh, and you get the part, I'll pay for the plane ticket. But if you don't, you'll not only have not have the part, you have to play for the plane

ticket. It's a terrible deal. And he goes, I'll take it. So he flew himself to New York and, and I mentioned this to Kate and she had just worked with Jackie cause he had a small role in Steve's aliensian's film, the remake of All the King's Men. Yeah. And she said, I know Jackie. I'll come in and read with him.

So she came in, and they did this scene together. And it was obvious. It was Jackie. Right. That's a great moment, right? It was a very emotional moment. A fairly emotional. Yeah, they were both in tears.

right? It was a very emotional moment. I feel the emotion now. Yeah, they were both in tears. So, let's talk about Tart, because I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know the story. I didn't know what the fuck the movie was. All I knew was that Blanchette was

playing a conductor. That's all I knew going in. So, it was kind of wild. And then all of a sudden you're immersed in this world where I don't know anything about it. Classical music is an insulated kind of rare air, you know, self-important world. You know, not unlike some of the other arts. And I'm like, you know, how's this going to. How long is this?

And, you know, but then like, you know, from the get-go because she's who she is and the script was oddly stripped down. You didn't seem to give a fuck whether anybody really knew about classical music. Right. Which was a good choice. Yeah. I mean, the main thing is that you know that she knows her stuff. Right. Right. Which was a good choice. Yeah. I mean, the main thing is that you know that she knows her stuff. Right. Right.

But in sort of this amazing world, especially if you're like somebody, obviously, like you are and I am, where you're a fan of the arts. You think of yourself as somebody who appreciates things. But that's a stretch to get to that, you know, for me. Like, to even begin classical music, it's not going to happen. But I know that that world exists. I've been to those halls. I know that there is a very rarefied and specialized, you know, trip to it.

I know who Leonard Bernstein is. But I don't know the nuances of, like, performing Mahler's symphonies. But I guess my point being is that, you know, the way you, you, there seemed to be an honesty to it all. Where'd you,

where'd you come upon that in terms of the actual world of classical music? Well, I, again, Toby Emmerich at New Line, when I was doing Little Children, I needed some money and he threw me a, a piece of writing about this sort of very fanciful, about a young guy in Maine who ends up through a sense, you know, meet cutes and typical tropes becoming a conductor.

So I had done a little bit of research, but nothing terribly serious. And so this was at the very beginning of March 2020. And Peter Kijowski and Kiske Higgs at Focus Features said, you can write anything you want. And we had been talking about a conductor. And I said, anything? Yeah, just you can write anything you want. We don't care. And it was a period of time where, you know, you're trying to figure out

like, how am I going to get groceries? You know? And, and is it trivial? The beginning of the pandemic? Very beginning. Yeah. March. Yeah. Middle March. Sure. Um, and, and could I possibly show up at my desk every day? Yeah. With all this weirdness. Yeah. I mean, is there a world for a movie anyway? What are you doing? And, and um but i've been thinking about this character for about 10 years and um not in classical music just as a character um just sitting atop some kind of power structure uh uh a sort of inspired lesbian yes and um uh so i started i just started reading and the first book I read was this book called

For the Love of Music by John Moucheri and John had been Leonard Bernstein's assistant John taught at Yale John is a is a

is a is an incredible conductor he had been he had conducted movie nights for the L.A. Phil at the at the Hollywood Bowl

for many years and he's also just a marvelous oh that comes into it. He's a marvelous writer. Yeah. Yeah. So I finished that book

and I called up Mike Nobluck and Natalie Hayden at Universal Music. And I said, look, I don't want this to be like some toy town version of this. You're like, we have all seen movies that are about people that make movies.

And if you've been on a movie set, you go, that's just bullshit. That's not, you know. And there will, no matter how we do this, there are going to be people that for whatever reason within the milieu that are going to say, oh, you got it wrong. But, but, but let's try to have that not happen as much as we can. You know, uh, is there someone I can talk to? Do you guys know anyone? And they said, well, there's this guy, John Moucheri. And I said, funnily enough, I just finished his book. Do you

think he'd be willing to do this? And they said, yeah. So I called him up. I didn't tell him anything about the story other than that it was a conductor. Again, he'd spent time out here. So he understood movies. So it wasn't like a lot of people in classical music, it would have been a very awkward conversation, but I could say to him, look, there's this little move where I want this character to do X, Y, and Z. And he is that plausible? And he would say, well, yeah, there's this little move where I want this character to do X, Y, and Z. Is that plausible? And he would say, well, yeah, it could be, but not like that. Maybe you could try this and that and the other thing. But the other thing that he did was he gave me the language. He gave me what was important that she would understand. He gave me what would have been plausible and very likely uh practical uh sort of

containers for someone like that in terms of their education and and and the places that they may have traveled and all of that right and that was and he did that for with me on and off for about three and a half weeks and also telling you like you know, what are the notches in the world of classical music? Where are you climbing? That's right. Yeah, that's right. What is that structure? Who's at the very umphalus of power?

Umphalus? Yeah. I like that. What is that? Belly button. Because, yeah, she's amazing. It's a different character for her, but she's very good at these characters

that have a lot going on in their minds to the point where it starts to manifest in their body somehow. Like, no one's, and she's done it before, but this is not like a crazy person. This is not Blanche. This is not whatever she was doing in that Woody Allen movie, but this is a person who is not blanche you know this is not you know whatever she was doing in that woody allen movie but this is a person who is brilliant and and and has physical manifestations that she

had to choose which i like because she doesn't use them very much whatever that tick was but it's there she has a lot she has a whole score of physical actions for this character that that were you know that i was aware of while we were working together and that we talked about, but some until I really got into editorial where I really was able to sit there without 300 people around and really watch what they were. Where Monica Willey and I, my editor,

we'd just giggle. Like, oh God, look what she's doing. She's very fussy with her hands and all of these sort of wonderful things. The other thing is, is that she moves at a very particular rate, you know, and that was something,

after Kate agreed to do this, the next person I called was Hildur Gondedater. And, you know, Hildur- The assistant? No. Oh. No, she's the composer.

Oh, okay. And she's one of the only women to ever win an oscar she went for joker oh yeah yeah i was in that movie were you for a minute i did i was the i was uh uh de niro's assistant oh that's right oh yeah yeah yeah okay so wait so you know her so so she well i didn't but so she sat me down and she said how does she move and i said what do you mean she said what is her internal rhythm? And I thought, that's a really interesting question. And she said, if you had a piece of music, what would it be? And there was this piece by Gorecki that I've been listening to since 1992 that I just love.

It's really relentless. And it goes, bum, bum, bum, bum. And she goes, well, that's 120 beats a minute. OK, so her beats per minute is 120 beats per minute. That's how she walks. Okay, that's her meter. Now let's talk about this other character. And so we went through and tempo mapped how people move before we'd even gotten into rehearsal, before anyone even showed up.

And you laid this on them? Yeah, and then she actually brought in players into Berlin, and she recorded music, and then we would put that music into the actors' ears so they would hear it. Oh, what's her credit on the film? She's the composer. Of TAR? Of TAR, yeah. Okay. Huh.

Wow, that's pretty incredible. Yeah, it was really... It's exciting, right, the collaborative experience? You know, you're bringing what you're bringing, you learned what you learned. Yeah. And then, you know, these people are adding things that you couldn't have ever expected. That you could never have expected. And especially with a film like this, because this film is really about process.

It's about how many people are involved in a process with somebody at the head of that, right? And how does that, in this process, there's clear power lines, right? Between the fulcrum of her power all the way to, and who feeds that and who benefits it and all these other things. Well, you've had the school that she's a benefactor of, right? And then, you know,

the system itself. But there's so many people that are complicit in that in the same way that people that are working on a film, there's a complicity with you, right? Sure, sure. And so there is that thing.

Yeah, you sit down with somebody and they say something to you that seems so sensible that you'd never thought of before and it changes everything. But it's sort of interesting that you had this amazing, unique palette of the classical music world and the symphony orchestra to sort of explore what ultimately becomes a movie about abuse of power. Yes, absolutely. And in a way that it's something we've all heard about, but never rarely about a woman, and certainly rarely set in a political world that is this, that involves so many people, and it's an art. It's a world of the arts. But it's unlike anything we've ever seen before. So was that the intention?

Like academia is a world outside of life. They're hermetic worlds. And they're worlds with their own rules and their own laws. And people in those worlds understand or don't understand certain things. And they play by their own rules. unfolded, you know, what becomes the story is, you know, secondary or third to what's happening on screen in a way. I mean, it's really about her and the music and her relationship with her daughter and with her wife, who's a violinist and a composer in her own right, and the dynamics of, you know, her peers who are obviously she sees as, you know, people who are beneath her or threats. So and then her assistant who is also a conductor in waiting.

But what's percolating is this thing that is presented as a nuisance and as a, you know, some sort of, you know, like aberration. Right. That just kind of threads through. You know it means something because, you know, you're not, you're putting together a story. You're not sort of like, that doesn't mean anything. But it does sneak up on you, even though.

I mean, that third act is a motherfucker. Well, she's someone that's been doing this for a long enough period of time where she's kind of in denial about the fact that, I mean, she feels, on the one hand, she's felt bulletproof for so long. But that's, but see, then you're kind of confronted with that. I understand that. But you're also confronted with what is probably a narcissistic personality.

Most certainly. So, like, all that stuff, you know, denial and this or that, really becomes secondary because, like, at some point, you know, she is barely, she's no longer an empathetic character. Right. Well, I mean, she said at the very beginning there's a line where she says, you know, you must obliterate yourself, you know. And I think that there's a desire in this character, like she's, she doesn't show, she doesn't display a great deal of self-awareness, but I think there's enough self-awareness in her, or at least, you know, some part of her subconscious that's waving at her, that's saying, hey, you're about ready to record the Mahler Fifth Symphony

with this, the greatest orchestra in the world. You've reached this mountain peak. Yeah. You, you're, you've reached this mountain peak. Yeah. You've won every possible prize you can. You're 50 years old. What next? And if she's at the top of that peak and she's looking at the next peak,

there's a very good chance she's not going to get to that next peak. Everything from this point on in her life professionally is probably going to be a straight nosedive or straight downhill. It's going to be a slide for her either way. But she's also a compulsive person. She's a compulsive person, but she started doing something because I genuinely believe she started doing something because she saw beauty in it and she saw salvation. But that's not what's happening with her when we meet her. When we meet her, she's sitting on top of a bureaucracy. It's a political position.

Yes. It's not a creative position. And she's protecting her place. And she's protecting her place. And that's death. That's legacy. Yeah. And that's bullshit.

Right. I mean, that's like, that's a dead end for anyone. Right. You know? Yeah. But I tell you, that last 20 minutes

is like fucking mind-blowing. Like, that guy, this will give anything away but that you know that way he says you know brando did a movie here i'm not even gonna tell anybody what what that is but that like where'd that line come from is that a true thing well um one of the roger corman movies i did the first one i did was was right when Serena was pregnant. She had our first child.

And my agent at the time was ready to fire me, although I thought agents were supposed to work for us, but apparently they can fire us. Because I was up for Heathers with Winona Ryder. Yeah. And it was, she kept saying, you're going to get this part, the Christian Slater part. And I said, I can't wait. I can't wait. I have to be a man now.

My wife just had a baby. I have to go to work immediately. I just kept pounding on her. Finally, she said, okay, well, there's this Roger Corman thing.

You know, you can go by San Vicente. And I went in and I got it and she was furious. She said, you can't take this film. You can't do it.

This is, you're going to get Heathers. And I said, no, I'm taking it. And she was furious. She said, you can't take this film. You can't do it. This is, you're going to get Heathers. And I said, no, I'm taking it. Well, that was a really important decision because that was Carl Franklin. He was at AFI. Yeah. And that's how I got, it totally changed my life. But I'd never left America before.

I'd never been out of the country. Yeah. You know, I was this wide-eyed kid. Right. And now I found myself in Manila in 1987. Well, Manila in 1987 was a really very interesting place.

Yeah. Um, and on one of my days off, I got into a jeepney and I went out into the, you know, into the jungle

in Los Banos up to where Francis Coppola had shot Apocalypse Now. And when I was out on the water, Yeah.

That's where that, that's where I came from because the guy that was with me, I said, maybe we could stop and go for a swim. He goes, no, no, no, not here. I said,

what do you mean? He goes, there's crocodiles. And I said, there's no crocodiles here. He goes, no, no, no, they're left over.

When Francis was here, he brought, he shipped crocodiles in and they got loose. And I said, well, I don't remember there ever being

crocodiles in Apocalypse Now. He goes, no, he cut that part out, but he brought in crocodiles. Oh, that's a good one. That's a good story. But I guess what I'm here to say is I thought the movie was really brilliant, and I loved it.

And it was completely engaging because I really was – I do look at time, you know, where I'm like – it's like I've got to see this before I talk to him. And then I'm like, you know, it's two nights ago. And I'm like, oh my God, two and a half. All right. So, but, but it was completely compelling. And I think not knowing about that world and the way that you captured it through her and through, you know, the detail was, was pretty fascinating, you know, to me, that classical music world. It is a fascinating world. I mean, I, you know, I felt the same way, you know, dipping my toe and getting into it. How do you see it?

You know, I see it differently every time, you know, and I don't mean to be coy or cute about it. I mean that for real. Like, you know, when we started editing the film, part of the deal, you know, part of the deal was making the film was I was the only American I had to work with. Everyone had to be in Europe. And so those were all new people. Monica Willey, my editor, was someone who I'd wanted to work with for about over 15 years. And we'd been talking about it for a long time.

But we were supposed to edit with, she lives in Vienna. Yeah. Vienna lockdown, London lockdown. long time but we were supposed to edit with she lives in vienna yeah vienna lockdown london lockdown and so we wound up in the middle of scotland uh in i'm in the middle of nowhere yeah on a 15th century nunnery and neither one of us drive on the right side of the road so we we we just work seven day weeks and and we would walk and we're in the i mean the middle of nowhere we walk four and a half miles every day, and then we go to work. And when we got to the point where we were actually screening a run of the film, every time we would do that,

we would turn to each other and say, how did you feel about her today? And our feelings about her would change all the time, sometimes based on the cut, sometimes based on the time of the day, sometimes based on whether time of day sometimes based on whether we retired you know so um you know my impressions about about this character um are fairly fluid depending on um the last time i've seen the film interesting and and yeah i could see that like i i know that if i

watch it again it'd be different um and would you tell Kate, you know, in the way that you like to work with actors? Would you lay down for her? Well, again, I mean, sort of like how filmmakers talk to each other. We don't, we just talk about practical things that you have to get done. I mean, Kate and I had met 10 years before that on this project that I'd written with Joan Didion. What happened to that? No one was as excited as Joan and Kate and I were about it. And it was a period thing, so it was just no one wanted to give us the money we would have needed to have made it.

But I knew in talking about that character and the material with her that I was talking to like, you know, one of the great minds that I'd ever come across. And somebody that really looks at a film in a holistic way, way outside their character. So our initial conversations were like that. It was not sort of like, how do you play this character? It was more about the thing, the thing. What is this thing we want to accomplish and um at least you know from day one and and of course that changes uh as as you're as you're continuing that conversation but um you know the things that she had to master were were self-evident you know so there's no point in me talking to her about any of

that. I knew she was conducting, learning to play Bach on the piano, doing an American accent, speaking German, stunt driving, all those things were, those are just practical things she would have to learn, you know? And so she did. I mean, we had a year before we started rehearsal in Berlin. And so she made two other films in that period of time. And she would finish a day of work and call me from Budapest or whatever. And we'd get on the phone and we'd just start talking about things. Or she would be doing Zoom lessons with someone. Or she'd be doing piano lessons.

So by the time she turned up in August, we had about three weeks together in Berlin. In August, we had about three weeks together in Berlin. But in terms of the character, in terms of the actual, all that groundwork had been laid. Yeah. And by the time we got into it, it was, you know, the way that I always like to work is, you know, we rehearse. Yeah. And at the beginning of the day, we rehearse again alone. and then we bring the crew in and show them what we've done and say, okay, the camera's going to go over there.

It's on a 29-millimeter lens. It's three feet high, zero tilt, and the shot's going to go from this to that. And that way, especially for a piece like this where you're following a single character, it was important not to have any safety net for her. So it really is a very it's a very theatrical kind of film in a way it's almost like watching a play in many respects yeah

there are places where it's not that you know but um but it really is sort of like giving this you know bull in a china shop a container to to do whatever that bull is going to do. Right, yeah. Oh, my God. Wait, was, I just, at the beginning, what was her assistant's name? Francesca. Is she texting Krista? Maybe. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's certainly possible, yeah.

Okay. Good talking to you, man. Yeah. Good talking to you, man. Yeah, nice talking to you too. Good talk. Tar is playing in theaters and is available to buy or rent on digital platforms or watch it on your Academy screeners, you Academy people.

You hear me? Huh? Hang out for a minute. Also watch 2 Leslie, all right? Okay. Hang out for a minute. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything.

So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea and ice cream? Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost, almost anything. Order now. product availability may vary by region see app for details 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. People, if you want a good companion for this episode, go check out episode 1122, 1,122 with Cate Blanchett. It's from early May 2020. So we're right at the start of the pandemic. And she was one of the first people we had on the show remotely.

And actually, we had to do it twice because the first time got screwed up. And that only made the second time even better. It's a great talk. And it's also where Kate outed herself as a fan of Tim Robinson's I Think You Should Leave. I was just going to comment on your shirt. It's another. You must only wear Lacoste. I barely ever wear them.

I barely ever wear them, Kate. And the reason I'm wearing them. Just when I see you. Right. The reason I'm wearing them, it's gotten kind of hot here. And if I wore a regular t-shirt, I just, I'm not feeling that. It's still going to be a little hot. And these are the only things that I have that look like this that aren't buttoned up

that, you know, make it give me a little, it's cooler. That's all. I own three of them. There was a time where I own more of them because I thought at some point i could make them cool which you can't they're always going to be what they are but i have them i i quite like them oh you do you were just doing that tc tugger thing you said is that what you know you're pulling your shirt out to make sure there's no they don't they don't crease no i like things that don't crease. Yeah, me too. Yes. Yes. A TC Tuggers reference from Cate Blanchett.

Huh? How great is that? Again, that's episode 1122 with Cate Blanchett, available for free right now in all podcast feeds. If you want access to all WTF episodes without ads, sign up for WTF Plus at the link in the episode description or go to WTFpod.com and click for WTF Plus at the link in the episode description or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF Plus. On Thursday, I talk with Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, folks. All right, here's

some simple stuff on the guitar. I got my guitar back. The Gibson, the headstock is fixed. My buddy Skills did it. Brilliant. It's fucking brilliant. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Boomer lives. Monkey and the Fonda. Cat angels everywhere.