WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1515 - Rodrigo Prieto

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Rodrigo Prieto is the cinematographer of two of last year's most celebrated films: Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon, for which he is Oscar-nominated. Rodrigo talks with Marc about finding the right look for multiple Martin Scorsese movies as well as his strategy for achieving what Greta Gerwig called "artificial authenticity." They also talk about Rodrigo's work with Spike Lee, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Ang Lee, Julie Taymor, Oliver Stone, Cameron Crowe, Pedro Almodóvar, and Ben Affleck, his visual contributions to films like Babel, Frida, Brokeback Mountain, and Argo, as well as his own film which he just directed.This episode is sponsored by Acorns. Notices: Paid non-client endorsement. May not be representative of all clients. Tier one compensation provided. Compensation provides an incentive to positively promote Acorns. View important disclosures at acorns.com/WTF. Investing involves risk, including the loss of principal. Please consider your objectives, risk tolerance, and Acorns’ fees before investing. Acorns Advisers, LLC (“Acorns”) is an SEC-registered investment adviser. Brokerage services are provided to clients of Acorns by Acorns Securities, LLC. Member FINRA/SIPC. For more information visit Acorns.com. 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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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. and ACAS Creative. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series, streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. 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? How's it going? How's your hand? How's your stomach? How's your knee? How's your foot? My foot is okay, I guess. I don't know.

You know, I'm going to have to unwrap it like some sad present in a couple weeks to see if the goddamn thing healed. I've been taking calcium. Calcium. I don't know. Some of you might have misheard me when I said I was taking calcium. I got more emails about that than the actual question I was asking, which was, does calcium affect your gut health? And everyone chimed in. It was probably the magnesium that's in the supplement, but a lot of almost aggravated neurotic reaction to me mispronouncing calcium as caliseum. Caliseum, I don't even know if it's a thing,

but it has been the way I've been saying it. Caliseum. It's like Kit, she was, now I'm pretty sure about this. I'm not sure if you're on the West Coast, I'm pretty sure it's Knutson's milk. Am I wrong? Not Knutson's. I mean, you know, it's an easy mistake, but it's not adding a syllable like calcium. Calcium. Yeah, I got the gamut. You know, some people say it's good. Some people say it doesn't absorb. It's in your bloodstream, can harden your arteries, helps with kidney stones, doesn't help with kidney stones. You know, might be hard on this or that, might be great for this or that. Who the fuck knows? I guess you can take all the studies and documentations about these random supplements and just run with it. Everything's got side effects, but these things, you know, they don't no one knows.

on the calcium pronunciation and on the possible good and bad effects of magnesium and calcium. Okay. Listen, listen, listen to me. This is kind of a great show here that we're about to do, that you're about to hear. Rodrigo Prieto is a cinematographer. He's nominated at this year's Oscars for Best Cinematography for Killers of the Flower Moon. He also did the cinematography for Barbie. He also did a lot of other films. Babel, Brokeback Mountain, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Irishman, 21 Grams, Argo, many more. It's an amazing conversation. And I'll explain why in a minute.

But I do want to point out that Rodrigo is not the only Oscar nominee we have from Killers of the Flower Moon. Lily Gladstone, yeah, is on Monday's show, and she's nominated for Best Actress. Here's a little preview of that episode. Enjoy. You must be aware of that when you have to approach a significantly native character. Right. To make sure the humanity is correct. Yeah. When it's essential to the story that that character is native because it's getting out of history.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I was a little resistant early on when I was told that I'd be pigeonholed in typecast because I was like, well, native people are everywhere. Right. There's a lot of people that you watch on follow and probably have on your playlists that you have no idea are native yeah they're i mean i met a blackfeet guy in austria named klaus bakowski we're everywhere but um yeah and when i was playing like for a role like molly yeah even though there's nobody alive who remembers her specifically. There's absolutely a legacy and there are descendants and there's people who are her living flesh and blood today. And, you know, the whole reign of terror is still an open wound for the community.

So there's a lot of ways that you need to approach it. And I hate the word. I both hate and respect the word authenticity because authenticity at a surface level feels like you're appraising a rug you know yeah i i i was thinking about that too because the idea of authenticity i think what i said was that like if i was my authentic self i would do nothing i am with you on that far enough into this campaign i just want to be a slug for a minute. Right. But you do like there are components of charm and vulnerability that I think has been kind of put under this umbrella of authenticity.

That if you are candid enough and you are empathetic and exude a certain amount of vulnerability, I think it's just culturally surprising. So people are like, oh, that's a real person right there. It's their authentic self. Right. Right. And that element, I think,'s just culturally surprising. So people are like, oh, that's a real person right there. Right. It's their authentic self. Right. Right. And that element, I think, is something that is easy for people to access with my performances on screen. Yeah.

Maybe why you pick up on this people projecting whatever they want. Yeah, sure. Which is. That's good. Yeah. Which is, um. That's good. Yeah.

It's, especially if you want audiences to have empathy for your character and what they're going through, which was essential for this story. Because for so long, the focus was only on the FBI element. Oh, you mean building the movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then, um, in building Molly, there's, there were a lot of responsibilities to hold. Responsibility, first and foremost, to her grandchildren, like her family. Did you meet them? as a character in his book was, um, cause when you're with Margie, that's a lot of that is there. And a lot of Margie went into Molly.

We only had one, you know, a good significant long amount of time together. We had a meeting. What does she do? Leo was there too. You know, we were just kind of talking about how,

how this love story would maybe be possible. And though Margie was the one who told, who told Marty at a meeting, um, Gray Horse had held with, you know, all the filmmakers, she got up and said, you have to remember these two loved each other. Um, in my meeting with Leo, she was also at the same time, very skeptical about how that could have been possible and how we would possibly be able to play it. Yeah. I, it's one of the things that sticks in my mind about the movie, almost more than anything else, was that, you know, how does Leo, or how does that character, or that person necessarily,

who I'm sure is not, you know, as compelling as Leo in real life, but how do you hold both of those worlds in place and still honor the love? How do you know that what you're expected to do is kill your wife and then have this compartmentalized love for them? I thought it was very tricky. Yeah, and I think he did an incredible job

with an almost impossible character to play. The full talk with Lily Gladstone is on Monday's episode. And that was a great talk. I'm telling you, man, you know, for years with actors in general, sometimes it's always good, but you never know. You never know where actors are at. But these last few I've done have just been great. America Ferrara, Mark Ruffalo, Lily Gladstone.

What a pleasure. You know, because it's so easy to become obsessed with whatever that woman's amazing presence is. You know, it's easy because you're like, what is going on? She's in a different time zone than other people, spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, seemingly that way, right? And I've been talking about her since I saw Certain Women, the Kelly Reichardt movie, and I talked to Reichardt about it.

That was the first time I saw her. That was a while back. And then she shows up in Flowers of the Killer Moon, Killers of the Flower Moon. Fucking fuck. You know, the caliseum involved in Flowers of the Killer Moon. Yeah. God damn it. But what an amazing conversation. And I was excited to have it. So that is Monday's episode. Let me do this now. I have shows in LA next week, Largo on Wednesday, February 28th, and The Elysian on Thursday, February 29th. I'm in Portland, Maine at the State Theater on Thursday,

March 7th, Medford, Massachusetts at the Chevalier Theater on Friday, March 8th, Providence, Rhode Island at the Strand Theater on Saturday, March 9th, Tarrytown, New York at the Tarrytown Music Hall on Sunday, March 10th, Atlanta, Georgia. I'm at the Buckhead Theater on Saturday, March 9th. Tarrytown, New York, at the Tarrytown Music Hall on Sunday, March 10th. Atlanta, Georgia, I'm at the Buckhead Theater on Friday, March 22nd. We might be adding another show. Boise, Idaho, I'm at the Egyptian Theater

on Saturday, March 23rd as part of Comedy Fort at the Tree Fort Music Fest. Madison, Wisconsin, at the Barrymore Theater on Wednesday, April 3rd. Might add a second show there too, I think.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at the Turner Hall Ballroom on Thursday, April 4th. Chicago at the Vic Theater on Friday, April 5th. Minneapolis at the Pantages Theater on Saturday, April 6th. Is that where I might have the second show? I'll let you know. Austin, Texas at the Paramount Theater on Thursday, April 18th

as part of the Moontower Comedy Festival. Go to wtfpod.com slash tour for tickets. I actually had an old buddy over, and it was kind of a surprise. I didn't know it was going to happen, but me and Dave Attell taped a little conversation in here, recorded a bit of business, and I really see that guy.

Now, this guy is a guy, Attell is a guy I've known for, geez, whew, fucking 35 years, and I think we've had now two long conversations, both on this show. So that'll be coming up. That was fun. It was fun to see old friends.

Because now you have, the talk is different. The conversation is different. We're veterans. We're old guys. What else? Oh, I remember what I wanted to tell you. I wouldn't say I complain about not being recognized by various awards and communities of artists. I wouldn't say I complain about it, but I would say that I would enjoy one statue of some

kind. I mean, I've got a couple of podcasting statues. That's not nothing, but it's not, you know, the other ones. It's not the fancy gold ones of different sorts or another. But I got some news yesterday that I have been nominated for a WGA award, a Writers Guild award for my writing on my special from Bleak to Dark. That's that's exciting. my special from bleak to dark. That's exciting. And I'm grateful for it. And I'm happy to be recognized by that guild. That's a good one. Very flattered. And I didn't see it coming. And neither did anybody else because I haven't heard from anybody. But I know, I know. All right, listen. This conversation with Rodrigo Prieto is unique. Cinematography, DPing, director of photography, whatever you want to say. And actually, he told me that they no longer have best cinematographer awards at some of the major award ceremonies.

And the DPs and cinematographers, same thing, are a little upset about that, as they should be. And the thing about cinematography, as you may or may not know, is it's the whole thing. It's all of it. I mean, the director has a vision, but it's on the cinematographer to capture that vision,

but also to work in a symbiotic way, in a collaborative way with wardrobe, with production design, with sound, with the actors. I mean, the cinematographer is where it comes in first. He sees it all first. She sees it all first. They see it all first. And they have to realize in a collaborative way most of the time the director's vision. But the depth of knowledge and tools one must have is baffling and mind-blowing to me. I mean, talking to this guy was really fucking mind-blowing.

Rodrigo. was really fucking mind-blowing, Rodrigo. I mean, he has done such diverse projects. You know, to go from Killers of the Flower Moon to Barbie and to, you know, and having the resume that he has, it's kind of astounding to talk to him about how he thinks about, you know, shots, about lights, about tones, about film,

about, I mean, about tones, about film, about... I mean, the poetry involved in cinematography is deep. And I imagine it's deeper for each individual cinematographer approaches it in their own way. But this guy was fucking fascinating to me because I remember there's stuff that goes into film, just into frames of film that you watch into a scene that you watch that you're never going to know the depth of reason or intention of a director, but more so a cinematographer and how they construct that that scene or that frame or that film stock. You're just going to watch the thing and whatever they put into it, you're going to absorb somehow. But the depth of it is fucking mind blowing. I don't remember what film class it was. We were studying the scene in The Godfather,

the first Godfather. And it's the scene where the Godfather is in the office and he's meeting with the Turk, with Sollozzo. That's a scene I talked to James Caan about. It was the first scene he shot. And he told me he wasn't sure really whose son he was on that day of shooting. And he hadn't put that character together totally until he realized he was Don Rickles.

But when you're seeing Marlon Brando's side of it, when the Godfather is talking, Vito Corleone, he's wearing a brown suit, his collar's a little loose, the color palette is sort of brown. There are old pictures in the background. You know, you see the desk and what you feel subconsciously, as it was pointed out to me, was that this is the past. This is the old days. This is the old guard. Because then when they cut to Salazzo, to the Turk, his side of it, he's wearing a spiffy tailored suit. His hair is shiny. There's a green plant behind him. And he represents the new way.

Now, it didn't end well for Sollozzo. But nonetheless, that was on the production designer and the cinematographer. And like, I couldn't believe it. I'm like, that was all on purpose that somebody, because, you know, what would it take to do that? I mean, and then you think like, was that all Coppola saying like, no, I really need this side of this shot to have this look old. And look, have this vibe. Maybe he did, but if it was, it was a collaboration with the cinematographer, the genius Gordon Willis, right? But, but I don't know. I just remember at that

time, I was like, wow, you know, this making a movie business is, is much deeper than I ever realized. How do you even do it? How do you even find these people to make these decisions? I mean, whose vision is that? That's crazy on that, on the minutia, on the micro like that. Now, talking to Rodrigo, you're going to find in this conversation that,

you know, it's all intentional and some of it gets pretty deep when he talks about, you know, the look of different film stocks, you know, going back to, you know, still photography. But the entire arc of Rodrigo's career from when he was younger and how he got into this is pretty fascinating. But listen to what he's thinking about when he's shooting the native people versus the white people. I mean, this is, there's a poetry to it and it's a poetry that is informed by a very deep

skillset that puts together the look of a movie in a way that has meaning to him and is sourced historically through effect and sensibility and look. But to us just watching the movie, we're just sort of like, that was a good scene. That looked cool. Or, you know, it seemed like, did you like the effect that the lights were having? But it's just so much fucking deeper than that. I mean, it was just, it was mind blowing to me. Totally.

And I think you're going to dig this conversation. Why don't I do it? Why don't I let you listen to it already? You can watch Killers of the Flower Moon on Apple TV+. Rodrigo is nominated

for the Best Cinematography Oscar for that film. And this is me talking to him. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance Talk to him. Don't let the I'm-too-small-for-this mindset hold you back from protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. Death is in our air.

This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. Will I die here? You'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun. A new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required.

T's and C's apply. on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. People, we all know that we should be saving and investing, but it's always overwhelming, which is why I was excited when Acorns reached out to sponsor today's episode. Because let's be real, investing can be intimidating.

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The app even gives you access to education and guidance to learn more about investing. Head to acorns.com slash WTF to sign up for Acorns to start saving and investing for your future today. And please see the show notes for all legal disclaimers. We're the new old guys, and there are things that we just missed. Like how to innately interact with our portable technology. Exactly. I mean, I was in high school. We didn't even have laptops or any of that.

No, it may be a pager. Right. Yeah, pagers. I remember that. No, no. It may be a pager. Right. Yeah. Pagers. I remember that. Yeah. You had to see what number was coming in. Oh gosh. And call back. No computers. Right. Like where'd you, where'd you go to high school? Mexico city. I feel like I have to go to Mexico city. Yeah. No, you should. I mean, everybody says it's amazing. Yeah. It's pretty great. My, my, one great. One of my daughters, we moved here when my daughters were five and six, and the one who was five is 29 now. She decided, I'm going back to Mexico City two years ago.

Really? She loves it. That's, well, I can see that. Don't you ever think that? Yeah. I do. I mean, Los Angeles is okay. It is. I do like LA because my uncle, my mother's brother lived here. My mother was born in Montana. They were born in Montana.

Really? and he had an antique shop and he did tarot and, you know, he was kind of into the occult. Yeah, he was a ballet dancer back in his day. Oh my God, that's a lot of things. So he owns an antique shop,

he's a tarot card reader and he's a ballet dancer. So that's why I love delay. I love to come to see my uncle and they took us to Universal Studios and all that stuff. And he's from Montana?

Yeah. And he ends up like a dancing witch? Exactly right. Why wouldn't you want to come to LA? Yeah. My uncle Sidney. Oh my God. So wait, so how did your parents get together? They met in New York. My mother actually went to Pratt Institute to decide what- Design? Yeah, for design. Yeah. It was called commercial art. And my uncle, her brother, was there in New York in the ballet. And so she-

He was in the ballet. Yeah. Yeah. A ballet dancer from Montana. Yes. Wow. It's kind of a Brokeback Mountain story. What's his name?

Sidney Stambol. Oh, Stambol. Stambol. That's my mother's last name. What kind of name is that? My mother used to say it was Stambol. Oh, Stambol. Stambol. That's my mother's last name. What kind of name is that? My mother used to say it was from Prussia. Oh. But yeah, not that common.

But it turns out when I did a DNA test, I'm a lot, like 47% from Irish. Irish? Yeah, I know. It's weird. That's crazy. I know. So they met in New York, but your dad grew up in Mexico? Yes.

My dad's Mexican. And then he went to do a master's degree in aeronautical engineering. Oh. And yeah. So and they met at the International House. Yeah. And she was there. And I guess.

That was it. They liked each other. And that was it. My God. So what? So your dad just left Mexico for college? Yeah. For this master's degree,

he did college in Mexico city. Yeah. And, but before that he, he spent 10 years in the United States from the age of two to 12, because my grandfather was sent out in exile from, from Mexico. He was a troublemaker and this is in the 1923. Really? So? Well, that was back before they just shot people, I guess. That was when they shot people. Yes, he was in danger. So that's why he got out. Yeah. He started a rebellion, an actual insurrection against the government at the time.

Against the president? Yeah, against the president. Because he was in government, my grandfather, and he was at the same time mayor of Mexico City. He was in Congress at the age of 28, and he was also elected governor of his home state, San Luis Potosi. Yeah. But he got into a fight with the president at that time, and the president was threatening to kill him. So he actually started this insurrection, which, by the way, this famous Mexican director, Emilio Fernandez.

Yeah. El Indio. Yeah. Who, by the way, another story they say is the model for the Oscar. Yeah. So he was a soldier

in this rebellion. Okay. And he also had to go on exile at that time. And that's where he posed for the Oscar? That's exactly right. And that's where he got into filmmaking and all that. So anyway, everything's kind of weirdly connected.

And you're part of it. Yeah, I'm definitely part of that. You're part of the legacy of weirdness. I know. Exactly. But do you have, like, I know you worked with Enneritu many times. Yeah. I've talked to Guillermo del Toro here.

Caron, did you work with him? Only on a commercial once. Oh, yeah. We know each other. We're friends. But is there a crew? You all seem around the same age. Yeah.

But is there, like, some sort of collective that you were all part of at some point in time early on in Mexico? Nothing official. But it was a time they called it like the new Mexican wave of cinema, you know, in the 90s, beginnings of the 2000s. And I actually worked in Alfonso Cuarón's first film besides that commercial. But as a second unit cinematographer and director. I was finishing film school at the time, and they hired me for free. The second unit guys are like, you know,

just go out and shoot the field. That sort of thing. Everyone's leaving. Could you get that pickup shot that we didn't get earlier? That's exactly what I was doing in the inserts. And a lot of condoms passing from hand to hand. I did a lot of shots of that. Of condoms passing from hand to hand. I did a lot of shots of that. Of condoms?

Yeah, condoms. For what reason? Were they? Well, the film was a comedy about AIDS, actually. Oh, okay. And so, yeah, a character gets a wrong diagnosis that he has AIDS. Yeah. He's very promiscuous.

And it's a comedy. Yeah. So, yes, for the credit sequence, I shot all these hands passing condoms from one to the other, things like that, airplanes. So that was your first real gig? That was. So when you went to the theater, you're like, wait till the end, that's me, the condoms. That's right.

Yep. But did you, so you went to film school there? Yes, and that's how I got that job. You know, I was in film school, Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica. Yeah, yeah, yeah. job, you know, I was in film school, Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Lubezki, the DP of that film, went to see my short films, and there was a show of student films in the Cineteca Nacional, and he liked what I'd been doing, and so he approached

me and said, hey, would you shoot the second unit of this film that we're doing? That was that for that part. Do you remember what you were doing in the short films? What do you mean? Like what type of short films? Well, I mean, has there anything that's,

because I know you just directed your first feature, right? That's right. Has anything, do you ever look back at your old stuff and feel like, well, you know,

that's a thing I do still? You know, it's interesting because not exactly, of course, well, you know, that's a thing I do. Still. It's interesting because not exactly. Of course, yes. But these things that Chivo saw and then Alfonso were a reaction, I think, we had as a generation to Mexican cinema before us, like in the 70s, 80s. What was that like? Well, what was happening is that the unions were so, so tightly closed,

it was impossible to get into cinema. By the way, there was no non-union work. It was illegal to do non-union movies. In the 70s? Yeah, in the 80s and even the 90s. Yeah. And so it became really stagnant, the look of films. They were lit like black and white films,

even though it was color. You know, it was just a very... Was it just disposable entertainment? Were there artists? No, there were artists, too. I mean, there was both. There were a lot of very commercial, sort of soft porn, almost, films,

and that was one genre. And then there were also the festival films. But in total, maybe there were 10, 12 movies a year. So there weren't many opportunities at all. So it was kind of irresponsible to go to film school. But what we were doing in school was just different. We were looking at movies from the rest of the world, and yes, movies from Hollywood,

and the lighting we were doing was very different. You know, soft light with just a different thing. And what happened is that producers and directors started noticing what we were doing. And then we were hired. And the rule was you could hire someone that was non-union as long as you paid the salary of a union person to the union.

So they had to kind of pay double salary, but they paid us almost nothing. But that was a door that opened. That was a loophole that we all came in through. That's almost like a shakedown. Yeah, no, totally, 100%. So you can hire this guy that's not in the union, but you got to give us the money for the union guy.

Yes, that's exactly right. And I don't care how much you pay that guy. Yep. We're not responsible for him. Nope. That's how it went. That's what it was. But luckily for us, because that's how we all started.

And, you know, I got to do maybe, to shoot maybe five, six movies before the union finally came to me and asked me to join. Instead of me begging, which I had done. I had begged for them to let me in as an apprentice. Yeah. Nothing. And then finally they came to me. Hey, we'd like you to join the union as a cinematographer. Okay. So that completely changed.

But it's just, you know, time. Was that a government thing? I mean, why would they limit, you know, what would seem like a potentially lucrative business or industry that much? Yeah, it was a government thing, and it was protecting the jobs of those who were in the union, and the unions were pretty strong, which, you know, it's a good thing, strong unions. Of course. But in this case, they were limiting their own scope and not allowing new blood in, and

that was just, it eventually became totally counterproductive because now the union is like nothing. It used to be like too strong and now it doesn't have any clout anymore on Mexican cinema. And what was the stuff that, you know, what drove you into filmmaking? For me, it was stop motion, actually. Oh, really? Yeah. I was, as a child, I would do with my brother, we did haunted houses at home. Sure.

And I loved monsters and science fiction. And so we did little clay plasticine monsters, actually. Yeah. And like dioramas. Yeah, yeah, sure. With victims and gore. Sure. And my father had a Bellinghau 8mm camera.

Okay. And we taught- The little metal thing? Yes, that one. That you could drop off a building? That sort of thing, yes. I think Kubrick used those and dropped them off buildings for shots in Clockwork Orange. Yeah, must have been a Bolex in that case. I don't know.

It was like those ones that were almost like encased in metal. Yes, yes, Bolex. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, in this case, similar, but 8mm. Right. It's much smaller. The format is tiny.llocks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, in this case, similar, but eight millimeters. Right. It's much smaller. The format is tiny.

So you could actually shoot frame by frame. So he explained to us how to animate our monsters, and that was magical, and that's what got me going. That's what got me hooked, not into I'm going to be a filmmaker.

I had no real notion of that. Yeah. For me, it was, oh, I love this, the way people react, and my friends react to seeing these monsters, and I'm going to keep on doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, it was, oh, I love this, the way people react and my friends react to seeing these monsters and I'm going to keep

on doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how it started. Well, we had a guy on here. Now, I feel bad I don't remember his name. I think he did a movie that took him like

decades to make. I think it was called Mad Gods. Phil Tippett. Oh, yeah, Phil Tippett. Yes, yes, of course. Yes. Master stop motion

animator. Yes. Amazing. He did this movie like it took him decades. And it's crazy, dude. Oh, I've heard of it, but I haven't seen it. It's crazy.

You've got to watch it. I will. Like, I don't know how we came upon it, but he's an interesting guy. And I don't even know if the movie was released in a big way, but I was very happy. I felt like I was like, well, this guy put his whole life into something. Yes, wow. Yeah, Mad Gods was the name.

So when do you start refining that and realizing that there is a place for you to be in movies? What do you watch? Well, little by little, we started getting a little more sophisticated in what we were doing. Now we were rewinding the film, doing double exposures, you know, those sorts of small visual effects. Editing actual film?

Editing, scratching the film to create laser beams and putting chlorine on it to create explosions, things like that. On 8mm? Yeah, first it was 8, then Super 8, and then sound. Still pretty meticulous work. Oh my God, it's tiny. It was with a loop like this one. But then we started being aware of people like Tippett or Ray Harryhausen.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wills O'Brien. Yeah, yeah. You know, Jason and the Argonauts. The Argonauts movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, those type of movies were just magical for me. I think that was really inspiring.

And later, I started getting kind of into the photography side of it, but I didn't understand yet for the longest time that you could be a director, and separately there was a cinematographer. I was like, what is that? There's the guy that's really responsible for the movies. Exactly. Finally, I learned

and I said, okay, those are the ones that make movies. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But, yeah, and also, eventually someone told me

you can actually go to film school as a teacher in my high school. Yeah. I didn't know. I thought I was going to be maybe,

you know, a creative and an ad agency. That was kind of going to be maybe a creative ad agency. That was kind of what I thought maybe. Also, I guess my mother's influence, I was also into graphic design and that sort of stuff. But then I learned that that was possible, so I decided, okay, I'm going to do that. But before I went to film school, I worked for a year in a still photography studio with a photographer called Nadine Markova, American woman in Mexico, an expat. She was incredible.

So she was my mentor. So you're still doing processing. You're learning about films. You're learning about chemicals. You're trying to roll the negatives onto those loops in the dark. All that. That's exactly all that. Yeah, it was a magical time.

I don't know that, like, I don't know what they teach you. Maybe you've taught cinematography recently, but is that, is knowing exposure, not just, not obviously exposure, but film types a thing that people learn now? Well, I don't know if they learn it,

but it is important, at least to me, because even when shooting, say, with a digital camera and digital post-production, I still look at film emotions as inspiration, and I emulate them, and they look a little negative. Yeah, I noticed that because in, well, I guess it was The Irishman, you're changing, it seems like you're changing stocks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. We were trying to make certain eras look like the still photography of the time.

So that was Kodachrome or Ektachrome, which weren't movie film stocks. They weren't still photography stocks. But digital, we were able to emulate those. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, it's awesome. So when you're working in the still studio, do you shoot? Yeah, I was shooting a little bit. She didn't like product shots, for example,

so sometimes she'd let me do the products. So she did all kinds of photography? Everything, mostly fashion, portraits, but architecture, anything that came her way. She had this work ethic. She was a workaholic, and I guess I'm a bit of that too. And she was funny, and yeah, she taught me about composition,

and that's where I really started liking that. And in fact, I pressured her to get back into cinema. She had done a couple of documentaries. So she was hired to be the cinematographer in a movie that was shot in Los Angeles called Welcome Maria with this actress Maria Victoria. Yeah. And it was produced by Cantinflas' son, by the way. Cantinflas.

Yes, Cantinflas, yeah. So it was a very low-budget movie, and I was the apprentice there. I came to L.A. and, again, loving L.A. because, you know, the history of my uncle and all that. Yes, I actually stayed at his place in Hollywood. Did you get a tarot reading? La Mirada. Of course. He had this thing.

When he didn't tell you what he saw, it was because he didn't want to tell negative things. You know, if there was something bad in the future, he wouldn't tell you what was terrifying. But, yeah, so that's where I thought, okay, this thing, the camera lighting, this, I remember the smell of the camera truck, for example. Yeah. The oil that you use for the cameras to lubricate the movement and all that stuff. I loved it so much. So, when I went back to Mexico right after that shoot, I got right into film school and I decided I wanted to focus on cinematography. Okay. That was the focus. Yeah. Let's talk about,

how do you say, Cantinflas? Cantinflas. Cantinflas. There we go. He was a very important entertainer. Yes, he was. And he was ever present through everyone's childhood in Mexico? Yeah, definitely. He was on TV. His movies were there all the time. I mean, his heyday was perhaps more the 50s, 60s. Yeah. In the 70s, he was still doing some stuff. But yeah, you saw him all the time. He had this thing.

There was this stick that maybe I'm doing right now myself, that he would just talk gibberish, gibberish? Yeah, gibberish. Gibberish. But it kind of made sense. Yeah. And he would say it with a conviction. It'd be, you know, he'd say all these words that sounded fancy.

Yeah, yeah. And he just went on and on. And everybody's looking at him like, what's he saying? So now there's a word in Spanish that's cantinfliar, meaning you're doing that. You're just saying a lot of words and you're not saying anything. That's his legacy. Yes, yes, yes.

I might be in that legacy right now. So you go to school for how long, for four years? At least. It was long. That was about five. I say about five years because there wasn't a definite moment where you're, oh, I'm done. Sure. You just kept, you know, the beginning was intense and lots of classes and all that and a lot of things to shoot and learn.

But then by year three, four, five, you're just doing the, let's say, let's say the documentaries and then the pre thesis and then the thesis. So you're just shooting that stuff and editing and all that. Yeah. And no more classes really. Yeah. So, uh, I think it was about five years of that. But in the meantime, during the last two years, that's when I started working.

I started, you know, like in Alfonso's film and things like that. Making shorts. Making shorts and then starting to do like commercials. And, you know, I, I, I's film and things like that. Making shorts? Making shorts and then starting to do, like, commercials. And, you know, I did everything. Whatever came my way. I even did some, what is it called? Electronic news gathering. I was a news cameraman for, you know, freelance.

Wow. This was a time when there was this huge fraud in Mexico and Salinas de Gortari, who became president, and the Congress where they had all the votes stored, just happened to burn. And also as the voting was happened, there was this whole thing with the computer system in Mexico. It broke down magically, you know, and suddenly, oh, he won. You know, I was a news cameraman at the time. So I was in Congress. I remember filming the opposition screaming and yelling and throwing papers. And there was a congressman who had a heart attack.

He survived. But it was dramatic. Wow. So that gives you good experience. Yes, it does. Again, I think when you watch Kubrick, like Strange Love, that documentary vibe when he's on the ground with the troops. I think he had actually done some of that type of shooting where it has that feeling that's pretty vital. Like it's a way of shooting.

Yes. Well, I mean, it sounds like he got a lot of good experience before he even started. Yeah, that's right. So tell me, like, let's play something out here. So I'm a director. Let's say I'm going to direct a movie, and I'm meeting you. Uh-oh. Yeah.

Okay. What do you need to know? I'm nervous. Let's see if I get the job. But in general, how does that – what transpires there? What do you need to know? What questions do you have? A director.

Any director. Like, you know? A director, any director. Like, you know, I say, oh, I got this idea for a movie. You know, it's in the Lower East Side of New York. It's in the mid-'90s. It's got kind of a gritty feel. The city's, you know, beginning to gentrify. Like, what would you think? Well, were you there in the 90s?

Yes. And what were you doing? How did it feel? Well, it was interesting because, you know, there was a tremendous homeless issue down on the Lower East Side and that there was riots in Tompkins Square Park about the squatters. There were homeless people like selling all kinds of appliances and things all over. And it was just definitely a vibe like something was teetering, like the people that lived there for years and years are now being pushed out of their buildings.

So it was tense, but it also felt chaotic and gritty. So you want to capture that feeling. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I don't think this is a movie for me. Sorry, man. I showed Barbie, remember? You're right.

You're out. That was it. No. Well, yeah, it's kind of like that. First of all, for me, the main thing is to listen. Right. And listen carefully. I didn't used to do that.

I remember when I, in fact, my first meeting with a director in the U.S., I won't say the name, but I got an agent from some movies I did before Amores Perros even. And so I flew to L.A. and I read the script on the plane and took down copious notes and I got there to the meeting with the director and I told him all these ideas I had and I could later, in retrospect,

I realized I talked too much. I gave too many ideas. You cotton-flashed. I did, 100%. I cotton-flashed, yes. I gave too many. You cotton flossed. I did. A hundred percent. I cotton flossed. Yes. I was cotton fliando.

So I didn't get the job. Yeah. And, and, uh, and I realized, yeah, you know what? Just shut up and listen. And that's what I've done ever since. And, and I think it's worked because also it helps me understand what the director is, you know trying to do and then build on that right but i mean when you worked on that uh the what is it a morris

peros yes with uh inaritu what was your relationship with him was it different like with these with the the movies you shot in mexico was there uh what was the learning curve on that yeah that well i'd actually worked with alejandro commercials, many commercials before that. Okay. So you guys knew each other. So we knew each other. Right. And I noticed as we were shooting this stuff, how it was changing.

Because he was also the creative. Yeah. He was also the owner of the ad agency. So he was writing the stories and then directing them. But usually there were these little comedic pieces that were bizarre and extreme. Yeah. And just weirdly funny. And then he started doing little dramas.

And I said, hmm. So I thought, this guy wants to make a movie. And I admired his talent very much. And then I could tell he really knows what he's doing. And he didn't go to film school, by the way. So he was a DJ, a radio announcer. No. Yeah, so I had heard his voice in the radio a long time before I met him.

Yeah, music. He was the head of this radio station. Well, he got there. He started out just as an announcer and then became the head of it. And it was WFM. And he'd go like, WFM, Radio de la Ciudad de México. And he'd speak very fast. I can do it. He'd speak very fast.

And the sound was very interesting. They do weird things with the sound. Anyway, so finally I met him for commercials. And I put the face to the voice. And we started doing all this stuff. And then I said, hey, Alejandro, if you do a movie, I'd like to shoot it. And he said, well, funny you'd ask.

Yeah. And he gave me the script for Amores Perros, and that's how that started. That's crazy that that guy, this genius filmmaker, is a DJ. Yeah. Yeah, he's definitely into music. But that's how he started. It's wild, man. that's how he started. It's wild, man. That's how he started. And then later we learned that one of my first movies,

one of these low-budget, cheap movies that I did, he actually composed the music for. Come on, which one? I think it was, what was it called? Asesino del Zodiaco. Okay, yeah. It was a horrendous movie. Horrendous movie.

Yeah, but I loved it. For me, it was Gone with the Wind. You know, as I was shooting it, I was thrilled to be doing it. Was it a feature? A feature, yeah. I did some even before that on 16mm feature films. This was the first one on 35 that was actually shown in a cinema. That's why I always call it my first movie.

Yeah. I don't even think it's on your credits. It might not be. What's it called? Asesino del Zodiac. Oh, yeah, I see it. There we go. Cristian Gonzalez? Cristian Gonzalez, yes. I remember him well, yes.

Three weeks shooting. Three weeks, that's pretty quick on film. Boy, you knocked that out. Yes, yes. Had to rush. The producer at one point, the first shot we did, the dolly bumped, and I asked, can we do one more take? And the producer, Rodrigo, come over here.

He said, listen, we can't be doing two takes of everything. Come on. I'm like, oh, Jesus. Okay, that's how it's going to be. Don't be crazy. Yeah, exactly. I mean, one's enough.

Yes. So, but when do you feel like, you know, like what'd you learn from working with, you know, Ritu? I mean, like what, like at some point you have to create some sort of almost symbiotic feeling with directors, I guess, sometimes quicker than others. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Alejandro, you know, we had this friendship already, but, but, uh, and, and I was a veteran in a way because, uh, even though I'm a little younger than he is, but he, he done all this other stuff before I had been doing movies already.

Amores Perros was my ninth movie. Right. But I loved from the very beginning his passion, his focus on every single aspect of filmmaking. Yeah, yeah. Sound, for example, editing. He knew already, you know, what a shot would sound like. And when we were shot listing together, we'd discuss, you know, the shots and how we're going to approach a scene, you know, with the camera. And I picked up on describing a shot with the sound it would make, you know.

And then we go to an incident. And then the wide shot. You know, and each shot wide shot, and then, you know, and each shot has a sound to it. So that vibration, I've sort of kept that throughout my career. I'm sometimes operating the camera, and I'm making noises,

and sometimes the sound, you know, the boom operator will stare at me like, shut up, man. But it's just part of it, to me. Images have a noise, a sound. But it's also on you,

like, you know, in my minor my small experience in making movies or being in movies or TV that you know you have to make suggestions

you know practical suggestions about coverage right oh yeah like I mean it just seems like you know directors have a vision

and they're managing a lot in their mind but you know there's a sort of like are we going to do a two or you want to come around you do the master then we'll go in and do it that's on you a lot of times a lot in their mind, but there's a sort of like, are we going to do a two, or you want to come around, you do the master, then we'll go in and do it.

That's on you a lot of times. A lot of times, and it varies enormously depending on the director. Ang Lee, for example, he makes all those decisions, and he's very specific about the focal length,

about the camera height, all these things. Was he a cinematographer? No, but he knows his thing, and he uh um he's just very specific and he can he'd like to control everything uh other directors will you know we'll see a rehearsal and they'll turn to me and go so what do we do first rodrigo what do we do you know now and then i'll okay how about we do you know and then i take over that part of

it yeah and it's so it's. Yeah. And so it varies enormously. Is that more the norm? No. No? I would say it's kind of somewhere in between. Uh-huh. And, well, Scorsese, for example, he does a shot list of the whole movie himself. He'll sit down in a room alone and we'll take the script and each sentence or paragraph will be, okay, this sentence is a close-up. Oh, really?

And this part here will be a dolly in, you know, on the script itself. And he calls it his annotated script. So then he explains this to me and, and we spend, you know, three days where we go through every single shot. He's not talking lenses. He's just talking the way it looks. Exactly. He's, he's describing the, the energy and, and what he wants it to feel like. Right. He's describing the energy and what he wants it to feel like. Right.

But I now understand, because of what he's explained, what I can do to bring that to the screen. And by the way, it's the best master class in the universe for filmmakers, and I'm right there. I'm in the front row. Nobody else is there except the assistant director, and I'm learning all this stuff of why he wants to shoot a certain way yeah but that like I mean your relationship with Scorsese came much later I mean he's already worked with I mean like even Spike Lee is very specific yes right and you shot uh 25th hour yeah and he's very you know that must have been interesting because you know he kind of

breaks the rules a little bit yeah in terms of of film, and he sometimes does shots that are uniquely his. Yeah. You know, those weird kind of walking shots that are clearly on a dolly. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Love those. But so he must have come at you with, like, a very specific palette. Well, with him it was interesting.

He said two things. First he said, I want to shoot every scene with two cameras simultaneously in opposing angles, which is a very challenging thing. Lighting wise for cinematographers. So that was huge for me learning how to do that because I've applied it later in my career. But at that point it was just really trying to figure out how, you know, cause it's at the same time you have to figure out the background and light that and light an actor.

And whatever lighting you're doing on one of the actors will affect the lighting on the other actor. And, you know, it's kind of like, it's complicated. Must have taken hours to light each scene. No, but I didn't have that time. So I had to like really figure out ways to do it quickly and efficiently. Yeah. And, uh, but what he also said is, okay, I want six distinct looks for this movie. Yeah. That's it. He didn't say what looks, he just said the six distant. So that was great for me. Cause then I got to propose all these different ideas. How about this section we do with this technique? And I, I, I shoot tests, show him the technique. Yeah. And if he liked it, then we did that. And if you see see 25th hour there is these different feelings and different different sections yeah very very uh particular i mean you can actually notice a difference and it is something that i have been doing to maybe a

more subtle way and in every movie i've done actually ever since amor esperos because even there i did a little bit of that yeah where they're the different sections have a different technique different type of focal length i mean well you did well that the other in a retool movie because even there I did a little bit of that. Yeah. Where the different sections have a different technique, different type of focal length. Well, I mean, you did the other Inuritu movie, that Babel, that's very specific for each story that is going on. Exactly.

And there was a Japan story, too. Yeah. And then you had to sort of like, you know, kind of get those lines of Japan, you know, which is very, I don't even know how you would describe it, but, you know, kind of get those lines of Japan, you know, which is very, I don't even know how you would describe it, but, you know, compared to Morocco, it's almost like Legoland.

Right, yeah. Well, you know, I think that's a very good example, Babel, because they're different countries, different cultures, but it's the same movie. So how do you maintain, you know, something that's akin for the whole movie,

and yet you feel like when you go to a different country, it smells different. How do you represent that visually? Yeah. And so we shot with different formats. So Morocco was 16 millimeter cameras. Wow. And so it has that grain structure.

Film. Film, yes. There's no digital. That was before. Yeah. Digital was starting, and in fact, I remember one of the producers were, hey, why don't you shoot Japan with digital? Because then you'll be able to There's no digital. That was before. Digital was starting and in fact, I remember one of the producers were,

hey, why don't you shoot Japan with digital because then you'll be able to shoot with no lights

and so I shot tests in Tokyo with at that time the Viper camera and film and showed

them that I could just as easily shoot with available light in Tokyo because there's a lot of light on film and

digital and the result was infinitely better. But, so we shot it all yeah but um so for example talking about Japan yeah this is I think a good example of what you do with cinematography or what I try to do which is the main character is deaf deaf mute yeah so how do you represent that visually so i they're doing different tests but we ended up filming that section with anamorphic lenses and these lenses even though we weren't widescreen normally anamorphic lenses are are used to do widescreen yeah uh but we were doing 185 which is a format that's a little tiny bit more square. But what they do is that the background gets out of focus.

Yes. So the feeling when we're filming her is that you don't see what's around her. It's muted. It's muted. Exactly. It's out of focus. Just like she can't hear well, we can't see either. So I always try to do that, make the lenses we use, the lighting,

all the elements I try to put in service of what the character would be feeling. Interesting. Of course. But as you go on in your career, your toolbox gets bigger. Right. And you learn more techniques. That's exactly it. But, I mean, when you did, like, Frida, I mean, did you feel responsibility as a Mexican?

Yeah, that was a big thing. Frida was huge. And of course, growing up in Mexico, Frida is such a big part of our culture and Diego Rivera, come on. His murals are everywhere. As a child, we saw them all the time and something you study and revere

and now I'm shooting that movie what was it like working with julie tamer julie was amazing and she also is very um respectful of of the culture she's portraying you know if that movie was made now they would have been mad it wasn't a mexican director a hundred percent it would be impossible nowadays to do a movie about freedom. Right. Yeah. So I think I was fortunate because Julie is such an incredible creative and director. The things she would do. I mean, this was her second movie, I believe Titus was first. And she approached it with such freedom. And our meetings talking about transitions and ideas where anything goes in a way, right?

She wasn't technically savvy, so she wouldn't be worried about how do we do this. No, it was like, how about this and that? So now it's up to us to figure out how to do that, the production designer, myself, and also to propose ideas. And it was like just a creative table where we'd be spitting out ideas and something would catch. But you also knew in the back of your head that given the art of Frida and the art of Diego, and I'd imagine with dealing with the character of Frida, those colors had to play into it. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

They're very specific. Yes, that was a big part of it, the color palette. Yes, and of course the production of it, the color palette. Yeah. Yes. And, of course, the production designer, you know, incorporated a lot of that. And, yes, the film stocks we used and all that. But a funny story, I think, is that after Frida, I did 8 Mile, the movie 8 Mile with Eminem in Detroit, Michigan. And we had a scene in the movie of Frida that happened in the Detroit Institute of the Arts

because Diego, at one point, went there with Frida and she was in the hospital bed and she wasn't doing good. I think she had an abortion there around that time. Yeah. And Diego painted these murals there in the Detroit Institute of the Arts about the auto industry. Yeah. So, yeah.

Yeah, it was big, right? Yes. Yeah. So, when I finished Frieden, I went to start preparing 8 Mile. First thing I did was go there,

go to see Diego's murals. And the colors that he used to portray the industry are the colors that inspired me for the lighting of 8 Mile.

So there's these... The murals have kind of a cyan, blue-green... Yeah. I think I've seen that. I mean, there will be... There of a cyan, blue-green. Yeah. I think I've seen that. Industrial light.

I mean, there are a lot, right? It's very long. It's long, yes. I don't know where I would have seen it. Maybe I went to that. Are they still in Detroit? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Right there. Yeah, I think I've seen them. Yeah. And then there's a molten steel. Yeah. And so I emulated that with light bulbs that are orange. So it was taking kind of my Mexican culture

through the way of Detroit into a movie about hip-hop, which is interesting and weird. But that's your art. I mean, that's your contribution. That's what you come to work with. How'd you not get The Revenant? Well, it turned out at the time

I was working with Scorsese, it must have been maybe silence already. So it turns out when I met Scorsese and he started talking about Wolf of Wall Street, this was one of those meetings that was from one day to the other. Rodrigo, Scorsese wants to meet you. Get on a plane, go to New York. So I went and met him.

And after the meeting, I learned that he did indeed want me to do the film. Right away, they told me. And I called Alejandro right away. And I said, listen, you won't believe what just happened. And he's like, what? Wait. No, I'm going to do a movie. We're going to do The Revenant.

The what? The Revenant. Oh, I didn't know anything about it. Because we're friends. We don't talk about our project. We just talk about life. But both movies couldn't happen because both were with DiCaprio. and then right as that was ending is when he started preparing Birdman. So I couldn't actually do it because I was still finishing Wolf of Wall Street so he hired Lubezki for Birdman and I helped out with some additional photography. And then The Revenant. I don't remember what I was doing

but that's sort of what happened. But you know, we're still best friends and hopefully I get a chance to do another movie with him. Who did The Revenant? That was Lubezki, El Chivo. Oh, he did, yeah. Yeah. Is he a Mexican guy? Yeah, he's Mexican. And you know him too? Oh yeah, he's a good friend.

He's the one who shot Alfonso Cuarón's first movie. He's the one who saw my short films and asked me to... That's the guy. That's the guy. Oh, everything's connected. So let's talk about then, like this, because you are nominated um for uh the scorsese movie yeah whose name i always mangle killers of the flower

moon i get moon and flower in there but but um this relationship now i imagine coming up you were a student of his movies, right? Yes, absolutely. And did you have movies of his that were important movies to you before? 100%. Raging Bull is my favorite. It's the best. I watch it at least twice a year. Yes, I watch it often, too. And in fact, one of my most prized possessions is a poster. On my birthday, when we were shooting The Irishman,

my wife purchased a classic poster of Raging Bull and had Scorsese and De Niro and Joe Pesci sign it. So, yeah. No, it's my favorite film. I love it. Yeah, it's, you know, I mean, in terms of, like, editing, cinematography, and just sound. Yes.

Because I remember realizing that, you know, the way they, when they did the ring stuff, especially some of the, you know, the way it goes, you know, the way they, when they did the ring stuff, especially some of the, you know, the way it goes, you know, like that. Yeah. Almost sounded like animal noises. Yeah, well, he did use, yeah, like elephants and stuff. He did, right? Yeah.

That's crazy. So what was it about that movie? Just the layers of? To me, it was something that I think I didn't realize at the time. But first, it was certainly the way it was done, you know, and yes, the photography, the editing and the sound. I found the sound startling and hearing all these things that were happening off camera and the ambience of the tenements and all that was to me was amazing. And just the story. And just a story.

And I've come to realize that one thing that I love about Scorsese's films is how he takes characters that are morally reprehensible between quotes. Yeah. And looks deep into their souls. And this is a human being like all of us, right? Yeah. But has done these horrible things. Yeah. Why? How?

How does that happen? Why does this person do this? And not even posing an answer just just trying to understand yeah and also because of the the catholic thing that hangs over yeah all of it it's the the idea of redemption right and sometimes that doesn't even come or exist it's just you know even yeah i'm killing the moon jake could barely get his brother to hug him. Right. Exactly. Exactly. I know. So that to me is very profound.

And I really enjoy going as a cinema viewer, right? Going in there, going into these dark recesses of the human soul and looking at my own darkness. And then as a cinematographer, same thing. You know, I don't see myself as, you know, someone who will figure the shot out. Right. You know, I see myself also as a filmmaker as well. So a storyteller, let's say, you know,

and I tell stories with a camera and with the lights. And, you know, and it's maybe more abstract than writing or even directing actors, you know, but there is feelings there and emotions that I'm putting there. And that sometimes a lot of it, I don't even understand, but I try to, but yeah,

but you're the guy you're, you're the, you know, you're really the, the first guy that sees it in a way. Yeah, that is true. You know,

with all the, everything's set and the, you know, this is going to put the actors in position, but you're the guy that's, you know, engaging with it emotionally first. Yes, that's right.

And everybody's work actually comes in through that lens. If it doesn't come in through that lens, or it's not lit, then it doesn't exist. And that's on you? That's on me. No shit. Of course it is. But the first movie you did with him, that was after you worked with

Ang Lee, and it was after the Oliver Stone, Alexander. Yes. You did a did with him, that was after you worked with Ang Lee, and it was after the Oliver Stone, Alexander. Yes. You did a couple with him. Yes. And documentaries, too. The Putin documentary. Yes, yes, yes.

Are you guys buddies? Well, he did save my life. What? Putin saved my life, yes. Stop it. No, it's true. Really? Yeah, I was shooting this two-shot in the Kremlin,

and it's Oliver and Putin talking, and I'm walking backwards with a camera. Yeah. This long hallway in the Kremlin. And I didn't know there were these steps behind me at a certain point. Yeah. So, of course, I start falling because I, you know, the steps are right behind. Yeah. And I was very close to them, wide-angle lens, and Putin grabbed my arm.

Yeah. And stopped me from falling backwards down these steps. And then he said something in Russian that the translator said was, you owe me your life, something like that. No, no, no. He might call in that favor soon. Yes, oh my God, no. The Tucker Carlson thing didn't go great.

He might need somebody to shoot another. Oh, no. Yeah. No, I've done a couple of things with him. Also in Ramallah in Israel, we did a documentary. And then with Fidel Castro, we did a couple of documentaries. With Oliver. Yeah, Comandante, it's called.

So I met Fidel, you know, closely. Wow. Yeah. So what's the difference? Like, what is the responsibility as a cinematographer shooting doc? For me, shooting documentaries is much more technical. It's just get it in focus, get it properly exposed, and get the moment.

So as a cinematographer, I don't enjoy that as much, you know, because it's a huge responsibility, but without the sort of creative... Oh, right, because you can't go, can we do that again? Right, no, and oh, no, stand here, the light's better. It's just like, okay, just capture it, you know. But the experience you live doing these things

is what's amazing. And that's what's unforgettable. I mean, imagine all this time with Fidel Castro right there and, you know, getting to spend hours with him. And Oliver, too, yeah. That's a lot. Yes, it's a lot.

Unforgettable. But, okay, so, yeah. That's a lot. Yes, it's a lot. Unforgettable. But, okay, so, you know, you start working with Scorsese on Wolf of Wall Street. Yeah. Now, what did he know coming into that? What was the collaboration? Because that movie, there's something very specific about that movie. And it has to do with that room, with those men. Yeah.

You know, that keeps growing. And eventually they're doing backflips and their testosterone is building up. But there's that one shot that kind of repeats itself of the scope of the entire brokerage for. And just the insane energy. So what do you bring to that movie? What was your contribution

other than just shooting it? What were your ideas? Okay, well, a funny thing, you mentioned what did your ideas? Okay, well, a funny thing. You mentioned what did he know. Well, what I found refreshing and interesting is that on our first meeting after I was hired, so now it's a meeting where we're going to actually talk about how we're making this movie. He said, I don't know how this movie is supposed to look.

I don't know. And I was, well, how about we make the you know the look of the 80s we emulate how movies looked in the 80s he said i don't really know how movies looked in the 80s like come on you should you did the you know after hours you know and he's like yeah no but i was not you know he didn't seem so connected to that era yeah and i was like well that's when i started shooting you know so i know very well, you know, how things looked back then. So that was sort of the first, the starting point.

But then it became to me about, again, the character, Jordan Belfort. So to me in the beginning, he doesn't really know what he's going to do. And then he gets clarity and he does this thing, you know. Yeah. So I shot it with two different types of lenses uh where we started with anamorphic lenses that again uh that distort the image a little bit yeah and so you see the room these these office offices in the beginning and the edges are bent a little bit with anamorphic lenses also i used a little bit of smoke and diffusion so everything is let's say

a little bit murky yeah and as he gets his mojo i went to spherical lenses and sharpest lenses i could find and everything was very graphic yeah now all the fluorescents are like perfectly lined up and yeah it became still wide angled but clearer yeah so and the other part that i proposed was this idea of you since we were going to use digital for certain parts of the film, I was, okay, what can I do with digital that I can't do on film? And I was thinking about time and

how to utilize shutter, for example. One thing I did when we were talking about these drugs, what are they called? The ones that... Quaaludes? Quaaludes, thank you. Okay. So, I started learning what Quaaludes do. I've never done them, but I asked questions and I understood that it relaxes the muscles, basically.

Yeah. Right? And that's why he speaks like a slur. Yeah. So I thought, how do I represent that visually? So what I did was I used a digital camera. You can open up the shutter to almost 360 degrees, which means that each frame is exposed double the time.

And then I also shot it at 12 frames per second instead of 24. So now it's four times the exposure time for frame. So the image is blurred. And so if you look at the film, you'll see that when he's there on quaaludes the image looks blurry like yeah you know so there are these sort of things that i i you know presented these ideas shot tests and of course as i like them and there you see them was he like oh it's great yeah yeah basically i love that movie yeah oh and then you work with cameron crowe in the zoo

movie yep that was a nice guy right? Cameron is the best. That was so much fun, and he's lovely. That was one of those where we'd sit down to shot list together, and he'd play music. He'd play a song and read the scene. Yeah. And then it'd be really up to me to design the shots. He obviously had ideas and all that, but most of it is,

okay, what do you, and so I'd say, how about this? We do this, that, that. Yeah. And if it jived with the music, he was all for it. And in fact, he told me, I remember that when he wrote scenes, he wrote them with a song in his mind or playing even the song. And he said, if, if this scene doesn't raise to the level of the song, out it goes. Right. Yeah. And with Ben Affleck on Argo, you've been nominated a few times, haven't you? Four times.

This is the fourth. What were all four of them? It was Brokeback Mountain. Yeah. It was Silence, The Irishman, and this one, Killers of a Flower. Now, before I space it out, Brokeback Mountain, you know, what was your intent visually on that one? Well, the first thing for me was a relaxation after shooting Alexander with Oliver Stone.

It was insane, you know, and all these actors and battle scenes, and it was intense. And I loved the experience, but when Ang Lee asked me to do Brokeback Mountain, it was, okay, good, a quiet film, two characters. And he said to me that he loved Amores Perros. That's a movie that he'd seen that I shot that he loved. But he said, but I don't want you to do that. But I know that, he said, talent is talent.

So I'm sure you'll be able to do this quiet, static movie, you know, as well. Even though maybe you did this crazy, you know, well, crazy handheld film and the energy of Amores Perros, he wanted something the characters don't speak a lot, you know, they're pretty quiet. So he wanted the camera to be

like that. And so it was fairly, the look was fairly simple you know and one thing that ang does he the camera's always at the exact height of the eyes of the character yeah the main character of the scene you know so yeah so and as i said he's very specific about the focal length and all that so my thing was more about capturing you know the feeling of being there and and we shot it in canada in calgary but you know, we were trying to make it as if it were Wyoming.

And I guess for me, it was going back to my, the roots of my other side of the family, the Stambos, because I grew up in Mexico. So the Prietos is this political family that I grew up in, uh, you know, very intense. And, you know, and like I said, my grandfather was grandfather was you know a firebrand politician and they fought in the mexican revolution and i i had a cousin also who joined the guerrilla movement in the 70s and was killed and you know like intense political family yeah and growing up in mexico too so brokeback mountain is a story about these gay cowboys men in in Wyoming, that herd sheep. Yeah.

Just like my mother grew up in a sheep ranch in Montana. Not in Wyoming, but in Montana, close by. And my uncle, he became a ballet dancer, you know, a gay man in this environment. And with sheep. So for me, it was kind of going back to that part of my roots. And you felt that poetically? Yeah, I sure did. Oh, that's... Well, that's great that you can draw from that.

We didn't talk about Almodovar either. Oh, yeah. But it seems like Almodovar got a pretty specific sense of color. Oh, yes. And that's his thing. Yeah, it's funny. He told me when I went to Madrid, we'd met on the phone. So I fly to Madrid, I'm hired already.

And he says, the reason I chose you is because I know that being Mexican, this is a cliche, right? Yeah. Being Mexican, you won't have a shame about color. Pudor is the word he used. You won't be ashamed of using color. I'm like, okay, okay, I'll take that. All right. It's a cliche, but all right.

Whatever you say, Pedro. But yes, he loves color. And also the set dressing is essential for him. He'll arrive every day to see the set before the shoot or the day before, whatever it might be. Always throw a fit every time because something's wrong. And he'll ask an assistant or something, go to my house and get that painting, the one that's next to my, you know,

and also get the lamp that, you know, he'll redress it with his stuff. Yeah. So that's why his apartment looks like his movie, you know? He has a very specific taste. That's crazy. But I love him. It was great to work with him. With Argo, now, because like if, maybe I'm wrong, it seems like if I'm wrong. It seems like, if I'm thinking about it, that maybe something you learned in Morocco during Babel could have applied to some of the stuff you did with Argo.

Yes. Indeed, the whole Iranian section of the film, we had originally thought of shooting on 16mm as well, just like in Babel. Yeah. But shooting tests, I felt that it wasn't sharp enough. Yeah. So we ended up shooting 35mm negative, but just kind of zooming into it and using what's called 2perf. You know, film normally uses four perforations with sprockets, and you'd create the whole

image with all that space. So we used only the two perforations. Yeah. So it wasn't as small as 16 millimeter, but smaller than 35. So the grain structure is more present. Okay. And we also gave it a developing style

that's high contrast and like in Amores Perros. Yeah. So the whole part in Iran has that feel, that sort of newsreel documentary style of the era. And then again, separating the fields, or the feelings. The CIA, for example, fluid camera, mostly Steadicam.

Yeah. Kind of, you know, the sort of thrillish style where the camera's just moving around. Also inspired very much in All the President's Men, some of these office rooms. Yeah.

How they go from desk to desk. Yeah. It's always active. Yeah. And Hollywood. That, I created this look that emulated, again, ectochrome. But this was... That's right, yeah. This was sort of a reversal ectochrome.

This sort of high, very saturated color of, in this case, it was film stock for motion pictures. So each story had its very specific feel. That's interesting. So do you, now, do you have these conversations with like Ben? Oh, yeah. Do you say we're going to go to the two perf? Yeah, definitely.

And then say four, and it's like, okay. Ben is very technical, actually. Yeah. He totally got it when I said two perf. He was like, oh, okay, let's try two perf. And he knew, he wasn't bullshitting. He knew exactly what I was talking about. And when I showed him different types of lenses

and he understood the subtlety between the ultra primes and the cooks, he could totally tell and also learned. I mean, he's brilliant. Things he didn't know, as soon as he saw them, now he knows it, he understands it, and he uses it. That's great. Yeah.

And then, like, I imagine with, when you do Silence with Scorsese when he presents that to you were you sort of like well this is

a different type of Scorsese movie oh yeah and I imagine you were able to integrate some of the Brokeback Mountain

meditative quality yeah it's true you know he we did Wolf of Wall Street the last day of the shoot, we go to his trailer, and I think we opened up champagne,

and we're celebrating and very happy, and he hugged the assistant director, Adam Somner, and myself, and he said, he told me then, Rodrigo, I'd like you to shoot Silence. And I was blown away because I knew that this is a movie he'd been wanting to do for decades, well, more than 10 years.

And it just hadn't happened yet. And suddenly he's asking me to shoot it. And so I was thrilled. And then the process began, you know, of scouting. We went to Taiwan. That's where we did it. It's supposed to happen in Japan, but we shot it in Taiwan. And yes, he actually said, you know, I think the look of this film, people expect this

Scorsese camera movements and that sort of thing. But this, it's not appropriate for this film. It has to be sort of silent. So again, yes, like Brokeback Mountain. So the camera, you know, there's some odd angles sometimes, you know, top shots. And here and there we have some camera moves. But for the most part, it's very simple and static. And even the lens choice, all of it was based on sort of what we thought it would feel like to be there in Japan at the time.

And the flies are buzzing and, you know, and it's hot and, and you know just sort of very realistic in a way yeah it's beautiful movie and then like then you get to shoot like a legit old style scorsese movie the irishman yeah it's good some gangster stuff yeah yeah gangster stuff and then and then the whole last section of the film you know that's that remembering your life right what was it all about and what was this for and those glory days that were based on murdering people and how you know the character lost his family and everything and was there was there ever a suggestion during the the shooting or with scorsese that may or may not be true. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. But we decided that this is the story we're telling and this is our truth. Okay. And even if it's not exactly what happened, but, you know. Yeah, this is the story. So we decided to believe it. Yeah.

And it's believable. Yeah. And I think it's, you know, Scorsese putting himself in Frank Sheeran's shoes. You know, how Scorsese has his incredible career and now he's older. And how does it feel, you know, to remember all these things and what did it mean? And in this case, it was. And will he ever tell anyone that he killed Jimmy Hoffa?

Exactly. I think Scorsese is not ready to reveal that. and in this case it was and will he ever tell anyone that he killed Jimmy Hoffa exactly I think Scorsese is not ready to reveal that no but but there was one thing that I remember he told me then

was he wanted he wanted us to approach it just like the character approaches his killings which is a job

it's methodical he said it's like clockwork you do this you do that you do thatical. Yeah. He said it's like clockwork. You do this, you do that, you do that. So the camera behaved like that. It's just traveling frontal with a car or sideways. You know, there's, it's graphic and it's kind of simple and to the point. Yeah.

So that was the basis of it. That's interesting because you can feel that. It's like just drives him to the plane. Gets on the plane. Yeah. Picks him up when he comes back. Exactly. Oh, that's, yeah, that makes sense to me.

Yeah. Killers of the Flower Moon, in some ways, it seems like outside of it being, you know, in Oklahoma and in the, what year was it? 18 something, 18, 19, 19 something. The main part of it is like 1926, 24 to 26. But there is a similarity between, you know, some of the other Scorsese movies

and how he shoots, right? Mm-hmm. So what was he telling you to do? Well, yes, there are similarities in the way that the camera behaves too you know like when the character uh the cabrio plays earnest yeah when he's in the train and the camera goes through the train car and and to reveal him and later also when he gets off the train and we have a big wide shot where you see the train station the camera swoops into him it's it's it's a way that

he uses and he's also in the past, of saying, this is where we are, but this is what we're focusing on. It's the big picture and the intimate individual story. So those are the type of shots that he does.

But the way we approach it was evolving constantly because the script itself changed completely from when I started prepping. It was a script much more similar to the book it's based on. And that book is focused on the FBI and Tom White's the main character. Jesse Plemons' character. Jesse Plemons. So, DiCaprio was going to play that character.

Yeah. And Eric Roth wrote that script. And it was a great script too, but it was very different. Yeah. It was a story of Tom White and how he discovered who the bad guys were. Yeah. So then both Scorsese and DiCaprio were, we're not sure this is a focus we want. And Leo himself at one point said, you know, when I see this story, the character that moves me is Ernest.

I'd like to play him. So then everything shifted. And Paramount decided we're not doing that movie. Oh, really? Yeah. They were going to produce the first version. The FBI movie. The FBI movie.

So then we were studio-less. And we had already been prepping in Oklahoma. Then it all fell apart. So then we were studio-less, and I'd already been prepping in Oklahoma. Then it all fell apart, and then COVID hit, and, you know, so it was a long period of gestation while the script was being rewritten in a new studio.

I heard a rumor. Paul Thomas Anderson, did he have anything to do with this? I've heard that rumor, too. But you don't know? I don't know. You know. I don't know.

All right. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Okay.. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Okay. Yeah, but there were people involved in rejigging the story, and Scorsese was very deep into that. Yeah. And as well DiCaprio.

Yeah. So Apple got into the play, and that's where it resurrected. And Paramount, in fact, distributes the movie in cinema. So it wasn't like a divorce, you know. But they just didn't want to put the resources into this different story. To embracing a Scorsese bad guy. Right. Exactly.

Yeah. So then that gave me time also to kind of think of how to evolve, how to change that look into test stuff. So when we got back into pre-production, I already had all these notions and started showing Scorsese images and then shooting tests and seeing what he liked. And he was at the moment so involved in the script and all that that he kind of was letting me run free for a little bit with all these ideas and stuff.

And then he started getting inspired, too, and throwing ideas as well. And we tested all sorts of things from pinhole photography, infrared, all sorts of things. Well, it seems like, yeah, it seems like, especially with the Native Americans, that there was something about composition that was reminiscent of those documentary photographs of the era. Yeah. You know, that were sort of trying to show examples of the pride of Native Americans. I mean, I don't know what you drew from in terms of still photography, but did you? Oh, yes, definitely. Yeah.

It's interesting. You mentioned that because that really became the basis of the look of the film, not only in composition, but I thought, okay, this movie is a representation of the story of the Osage and the FBI. At the same time, we see in the film, these newsreel images, for example, and towards the end, we see a radio show telling that story. And stories are also told with still photography. So I thought that basing the look on still photography was a way of showing that we're also telling a story that's being remembered. So I decided to, this is where we ended up, looking at the beginnings of color photography. Yeah.

I got deep into autochrome, which is a technique to create color that the Lumiere brothers invented in Paris. I think it was around 1917. And so I started testing digitally. We shot on film, but digitally emulating the look of autochrome colors. It's a system of creating kind of transparencies on glass plate with potato starch and dyes and all sorts of...

You were doing that? No. Okay. I was emulating that. But I studied many autochrome photographs to understand what the color, what was happening to the colors, how grass looks, how an apple looks,

how the sky looks. So we created what's called the look-up table, LUT, to emulate autochrome because it's also an import from Europe, just like the white people are imported from Europe. You know, the descendants of the settlers. So everything that has to do with Ernest and

Hale and the white folk, I use this LUT of autochrome. And the Osage, the scenes that are just Osage, we shot completely naturalistic in terms of color. So green is green and all the foliage is the actual color

and the sky, you know, so it's naturalistic. The Europeans are autochrome. And so then, so I showed these ideas to Scorsese. He liked it. I shot tests. He loved it. And then he said, so then what?

How does the look evolve? So I said, how about we pick a moment in the movie where things shift and we change to something else? Okay, what would it be? And so I thought, well, a technique we used actually in The Irishman before was ENR, which is a technique of printing film, motion picture film, that adds contrast and takes away color. And it's pretty dramatic. Yeah. So we decided that once the Molly's sister's house explodes, Rita's house, and all hell breaks loose. Now, from then on, we don't differentiate between the white people and the Osage.

Everybody is seen through ENR, high contrast. It's harsher. The image is harder. Yeah. So let's say the last third of the movie has that look to it. And also the lighting, I evolved into something sometimes uncomfortable. Like Ernest, we see him several times in hot light, either from a light bulb or on the cells or in the interrogation.

He has this ugly light coming from above or in the courtroom. He's giving his deposition, whatever you call it. And I put direct sun on his face, which is a movie light, but it feels uncomfortable. It feels hot. You know, it's like when you're in a place and the sun's hitting your face, you're not comfortable. So I tried to do that with his character. Was the turn,

it seems like around the time of the fires too, that De Niro set. Yeah, that's part of that too. Yeah, that whole sequence. And also precisely around there, we allowed ourselves to be a tiny bit surrealistic because it's kind of hell now is developing everybody, you know. How'd you shoot that?

Was that all intentional? Kind of. And yes and no. It was one of those things where you design something and something else happens that you didn't expect. In the case of the fire scenes, we had two cameras. One was shooting a wide shot with the house and the fires and the people moving around, just a wide shot. And then we had another camera with a very long lens. So it's like a, you know, like a telephoto, like a telescope, let's say, shooting just some of the people through at the distance.

So I had fires, special effects fires with pipes and gas and stuff way in the distance to create silhouettes of the people. And then we had another layer between the camera and those people that had another layer of fire through pipes. And then I had close to the lens off camera just a pipe to create heat waves. Yeah. So I knew that with these heat waves

there'd be a distortion to the image. But what I didn't count on was that the second layer of fire created a much stronger distortion to the image. So we're actually seeing through the heat waves. And it created, we, first of all, we couldn't get focus on the actors in the distance. Then I asked the focus polar, okay, pull to the distortion. So move the focus closer. And then suddenly it came alive, you know.

So we were actually putting focus on the heat waves themselves. And that's what created those weird silhouettes. Yeah, wild. Yeah. The hell. It was, yeah. And I remember when we were shooting it, we all were surprised. And Scorsese was loving it so much that he kept shooting it

and asking the choreographer to move them this way or that way. And it was just mesmerizing. Oh, wow. And he's got a very specific way of choreographing violence. Yes. Right? Yes. In fact, on The Irishman,

he purposefully, violence, he wanted to shoot it and show it in the same thing, similar thing, actually, on this film, in a very dry manner, where it's maybe on a wide shot. You know, it's not dramatic and in your face and sexy right the opposite yes ugly and and and boom just happens right in a second yeah

done yeah you know and so we see some of the murders of the osage in in that manner where it's simple we don't do a close-up dramatic dramatic closeup of the guy and the gun close to the lens and the focus pulls to the, you know, trigger. Sure. None of that. Yeah. Sweat, none of that. Yeah.

You know, so, so. It makes it more disturbing in a way. Exactly. Yeah. From the distance. I feel so. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know, I thought it was a stunning movie and, you know, the details, there's got to be so many more details. Oh, a lot. Like every shot that, you know. But how do you go from that to Barbie? These are like, you must have been, it must have been a relief in a way. To be like, I'm just here in the studio, and it's one look, basically. Right, right.

Yeah, yeah. I was pretty intrigued by that, by being inside a studio. Yeah. I have shot many things in studios, but not most of a film. And besides, with a look that's supposed to feel like you're in a studio.

Yeah. So that was really attractive and interesting to me. But when I was prepping Killers of the Flower Moon in Oklahoma and Bartlesville during COVID, I got the call from Greta. What did she see that made her interested in you? I'm trying to think of a joke. No, you know, just many movies. She didn't actually say what it was. But so I started actually, you know, I was still in prep

of Killers of the Flower Moon and on Sundays I'd talk to Greta, do Zooms with her and with Sarah Green with the production designer and talk pink, you know,

and how do we, now you see the film and it's like, oh yeah, of course. But designing all that took a lot of thought and it wasn't scripted

really precisely of, you know, what this world would be like. So we had to invent it really. And, and obviously based on the toys and all that, but,

um, it was, it was a challenge. And then, then, so finally I told Greta, listen, this is fun and all,

and I'm loving it, but I gotta stop these Sunday zooms because I have to focus on killers of Lara Moon. And I'll be as focused when we're doing Barbie. Yeah. I'm in Oklahoma. I'm in Oklahoma. I'm in Oklahoma and it's nothing around here.

We're in 1900s. Yeah, exactly. With the Osage, you know. But I do actually enjoy very much that, jumping from one genre to the other. After Silence, for example, I almost immediately did Passengers, this science fiction movie.

Oh, yeah. Again, that was in the studio. Yeah. But like that, like I said, this science fiction movie. Oh, yeah. Again, that was in the studio. Yeah. But like that, like I said, Alexander to Brokeback Mountain. You know, it's kind of been that way a lot in my career. Or even Amores Perros, the next one was a movie called Original Sin. And then Frida. You know, all of them, they're just very different.

So I've been lucky that way because I really enjoy that, just doing very different things. And I try not to have like the Rodrigo Prieto style, you know, although there has to be something, like you even said before, that carries through. I don't know exactly what it is,

but I don't do it on purpose. I think it's probably your intuition about the subject at hand. That makes sense. But I mean, and I imagine that working in a studio

in a controlled environment, that takes a lot of things off your plate. Yes, and it adds some more for sure. No, it's, one of the challenges

on Barbie was making it kind of feel like we are outside, even though we're inbound in a studio, but I wanted the sunlight to feel pretty natural oh okay you know so so that's creating sunlight is very challenging making it believable greta called it artificial

authenticity and and so we wanted to feel the walls feel that they're painted that the mountains are cut out so i wanted to feel all that but at the same time i wanted the lighting to feel pretty realistic except for one thing. One of the rules that I suggested to Greta is that in Barbie Land, it's always backlit.

Yeah. The sun's behind the actors. So it creates this beautiful glow on their hair and their shoulders and the light on their faces is soft.

Right. And that's because every day is perfect in Barbie Land so every angle is perfect in Barbie Land. So when you jump to Venice Beach, when you jump to Venice Beach,

when you jump to the real world, what's your concentration on? Yeah. On trying to not photograph tourists taking selfies and then taking photos.

I mean, it was crazy. It was, that moment was when we realized this movie's gonna be the phenomenon. Yeah.

Because so far we'd been secluded in sound stages in London. Right. So we came to Venice and people went bananas when they saw Ryan and Margot dressed in those costumes and it became this viral thing. You know, everybody took photos.

So suddenly it blew up. But what was your concern about the light? Well, yes, there was big concerns. First of all, we did want it to obviously feel different because now we're in the real world and things aren't perfect. Right. But we also wanted,

part of the idea behind the whole film is that the imperfection of life is beautiful. The messiness of life. That's what Barbie finally learns and embraces and decides, I want to be mortal and be able to even die and be not perfect and have cellulite

and all these things. So it was making the real world look messy, but also not ugly. It shouldn't, it didn't have to be, you know,

off-putting. So it was kind of finding that balance where it felt... Gritty. Kind of gritty. Right, right. But where you believe it and say, okay, yeah, that is Venice. Sure.

You know. But we shot it in the summer. And first of all, all the people in the summer in Venice. But also, I actually requested, and I was turned down, to shoot that part first. So that we'd be shooting when the sun is lower and it's not so much in the scene of. Yeah. Which is not a...

Shoot it first before the sound studio? Yes. Because otherwise we did what happened. We ended up shooting in the summer. So most of the day the lighting is not... It's not very good on actors' faces. You know what I mean? And I knew it was, it was very,

going to be very difficult to control this in, you know, in these big exteriors. So it was just all about scheduling. This angle, we have to shoot from 8.30 AM to 9.30. And this other angle, we're shooting. And then when it's noon, we're going to go to this other area and then we're going to cover it with diffusion. Right.

Things like that. Wow. Yeah. And did you watch some musicals? Yes yeah we did yeah we saw singing in the rain we saw uh the umbrellas of cherbourg was that the first dance sequence you'd ever shot uh on the movie yes yes you know music videos i've done oh yeah some of that but uh yeah it was my first and i i loved it you know and and greta created this um uh. But yeah, it was my first. And I loved it. And Greta created this playlist with songs. And it was all lots of disco songs.

I remember growing up in the late 70s, early 80s. And I was all against disco. I was one of those. I was like, oh, rock and roll. Yeah, man. Disco sucks. Oh, yeah. Got that t-shirt.

Yeah, totally. But now it's like, OK, yeah, I actually do like disco. Sure. You growucks. Yeah, got that t-shirt. Yeah, totally. But now it's like, okay, yeah, I actually do like disco. Sure. You grow up. Yeah. And I like the riff

on Saving Private Ryan on the beach. Yep. In fact, we storyboarded sometimes imitating shots from Saving Private Ryan. But, you know,

also I closed down the shutter. I did this technique that also was done on the film Janusz Kaminski did, you know, with a closed shutter. And that's the only part where in Barbie Land it's not sunny. Every other scene there's sun. On this one we decided to go kind of overcast. You know, but then the slow motion. That was, okay, I'll say this here exclusively.

I hope Greta doesn't hear this. Because I'm pretty sure it was my idea, but I'm not 100%, but that the slow motion is not actual slow motion. It's acted slow motion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So then it was the most fun was seeing all the actors trying to figure that out,

trying to act like they're running, but they're not running. And then an explosion happens and the reaction to it in slow motion. Yeah. And then at a certain point, great, I would say now, and then everybody went up to regular speed. Right. Oh, that's great.

It was hysterical. That's funny. It was very funny. Well, I guess, you know, when we're going to find out whether you have a specific sensibility is when your movie comes out. That's right. Good point. Then we're all going to know what's really going on.

But, I mean, did you struggle with, I mean, you must have a fully realized sense of what's this movie about? It's called pedro paramo okay and this is based on a novel with that name yeah which is a very famous mexican novel yeah that was written in 1950 well came out around the 50s but it was written since the 30s yeah juan rulf was their author and he it's a kind of book that everybody reads in high school in mexico okay so we all read it everybody. And so it's a classic of classics. And it's a strange story that happens

around the Mexican Revolution, before and after. So part of the story starts in the late 1800s and ends in 1927, around there. Period piece? Period piece. Yeah. And it won't reveal a lot of the story for those who haven't read it. Yeah. There's a new translation, by the way, by Douglas Weatherford, which is really great. I highly recommend it, Pedro Paramo. And it's, again, many kind of layers. There's the surreal and the real. And it's not exactly magic realism, but Gabriel Garcia Marquez was completely inspired on this novel in his creations of magic realism.

Yeah. This, I would say, is more surreal than magic realism. But part of it is completely realistic, and other parts are surreal and like a nightmare. So it's a pretty challenging film. Also, I guess sometimes I'm a little irresponsible and people keep asking me, why did you dare do this? This is untouchable.

This novel is like, you know, such a classic. I know, but it's been tried twice before. This is a third adaptation. Okay. And it hasn't worked yet.

Hopefully, a third is a charm. Well, that's great. Yeah, one was in the 60s and then another was in the 70s. And now, the Netflix produced.

And one good thing is that now we have visual effects and things that will allow, things that were impossible then. You know, like to tell the story that spans all these decades with the same characters. Yeah. And just makeup and de-aging and also just visual effects to make the town look like a ghost town and then the same place look like it's thriving you know so it took a lot of a lot of work and and i co-shot it with a another dp nico aguilar so i directed yeah half let's say half shot it so i was deeply involved in the cinematography and all in the lighting and nico you know helped me with that enormously.

That's exciting. Very exciting, yeah. And it's all in Spanish? Yes, yes. It would be unforgivable to do pero para muy in English. And did, now, how much did you have to do with the de-aging technology in The Irishman? Did you have to, was that part of your job?

In a way, just in the sense that the cameras had to have certain characteristics to be able to, for the visual effects to do their thing. Oh, okay. We had this thing,

we called it the three-headed monster or Hydra, where we had a main camera and to the sides we had two attached cameras that were capturing with infrared light

and it was a whole thing. I see. So every angle, even a Steadicam shot, had to have these witness cameras. So the rig was much heavier than usual and took a lot more space than a regular camera. So I had to figure out all the rigs,

like the crane, how could it hold this camera? So we tested, and it didn't hold it. It didn't work. We had to reduce, use special materials for the cameras. It was a whole thing. Did you have to use that for your movie? No, things have evolved, thankfully. Oh, good.

So now we're using, it's a combination of actually artificial intelligence and artists. Yeah. Where you see the face of the actor and it's retouched, kind of like Photoshop, let's say, in certain key frames, and then the artificial intelligence figures out the in-between frames. Oh, wow. So that way it kind of creates this animation, but it's done AI,

to transition from one frame to the next. That's maybe, you know, 48 frames later. Wow. And it's pretty incredible. In fact, tomorrow I'm seeing some more, some more of the shots. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. All right. The last question, cause I didn't know where to put it in. I would just keep thinking about it and I just want to make sure I know when, when they show, when I see things about the color palettes of films, um, is that something that

you decide before you shoot? Yes, yes, very much. I mean, it depends certainly on the movie, but it's something that's a collaboration between production design team, costumes, and cinematography. Okay. So I sometimes use filters on the camera or sometimes the digital filters,

and sometimes it's just color grading where you affect the overall image. So things happen to costumes, for example, that maybe a gray costume, it happened to me on Wolf of Wall Street. One of the scenes in one of the office spaces, I wanted to be lit like gold, the color of gold for obvious reasons.

And so the gray costume looked brown and the costume designer was pretty upset. I'm like, but that's the color of the light. Yeah. or if the light's going to be a certain color, make sure that every department sees their stuff in this light. Right. And that we all agree on what the colors look like. Certainly on Barbie, that was a huge deal, you know, the colors. Yeah. We created another lot. I was talking about look up tables based on Technicolor.

Yeah. On three-strip Technicolor that we called Technobarbie. Yeah. But it was based on Technicolor, but we adapted it to the colors of Barbie land. So, yeah, it's a, the colors is a

huge collaboration between departments and certainly the director, you know, has a final say, but we all present these ideas of color

to a director and then we take it from there. Oh, and some of that happens in correction, too? Yes, in color grading, exactly.

Yeah, that's a big part. Wow, well, this is good. It's a master class. Exactly. And, you know, I wish you luck

at the Oscars, but you do amazing work. It's a real honor talking to you. Thanks for doing it. Thank you so much. No, it's been fun.

I really appreciate it. Right? How crazy was that? How amazing was that conversation? He's nominated for Killers of the Flower Moon, which is streaming on Apple TV+. Hang out for a minute, folks. 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. company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre

in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9 life stuff gets in the way. That's why Noom builds plans that are personalized. Noom takes into account your dietary restrictions, medical issues, and other personal needs, and then builds a plan that works for you. I like to see all my progress in one place, which is what makes the Noom app great. You keep your meals logged, keep track of your exercise, count your steps, all of it. Stay focused on what's important to you with Noom's psychology and biology-based approach. Sign up for your trial today at Noom.com. That's N-O-O-M dot com. And check out Noom's first ever cookbook, The Noom Kitchen, for 100 healthy and delicious recipes to promote better living. Available to buy now wherever books

are sold. You've heard me talk about some of the world's greatest musicians on this show. I learn a lot from them. And now there's another way to learn about music from experts. Musora. It's like having your own personal music teacher, whether it's guitar, piano, drums, or singing. Musora's got you covered with more than 100 of the world's best teachers. You don't just get lessons and assignments. These teachers help you practice.

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her challenges, and her career, including her Oscar-nominated role in Barbie. But with the monologue, which is like literally a page of dialogue, I was like,

okay, okay. We didn't really rehearse it that way. We talked about it a lot, but we didn't rehearse it. What was the conversations about mostly? Themes or like what? It was a lot about, we shared a lot back and forth between like poetry and songs and episodes of TV shows and articles and op-eds,

like everything that kind of felt like related to the monologue, we spent months kind of sharing to kind of have a common language around what is the essence of what's happening here. And then I remember closer to shooting, we had a rehearsal at her house that she was staying at in London and we sat on her couch and like that felt more like it was making it incredibly personal, you know, which I don't know how to do it any other way as an actress, but to make it deeply personal. And and that was about kind of us relating it to us. Yeah.

You know, she and I and like what, how this plays in our life. That's available now on all podcast feeds. The episode right before this one. Next week, as I mentioned, we have Lily Gladstone on Monday and comedian Mae Martin on Thursday.

And just a reminder, before we go, this podcast is hosted by ACAST. Here's some guitar. Kind of neely. Thank you. Thank you. Boomer lives, monkey in La Fonda, cat angels everywhere.