WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 587 - Joe Swanberg

Episode Date: March 22, 2015

Filmmaker Joe Swanberg is a true independent in every sense of the word. Marc looks at Joe's most recent films, Happy Christmas and Drinking Buddies, to understand Joe's approach to his art. Also, Joe talks about shooting on film, the kind of movies he thinks should win Oscars, why he seeks out certain actors and what his version of a major studio film would look like. 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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From cleaner energy, safe and secure food, efficient movement of goods and people, and better health solutions, Calgary's visionaries are turning heads around the globe, across all sectors, each and every day. Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look how at calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com. Lock the gates! All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fucking ears? What the fuck, nicks? What the fucking avians? What the fucking ucks? Because I am close to Canada. This is Mark Maron. This is my show, WTF. Welcome to it. Today on the show, independent filmmaker Joe Swanberg, the amazing Joe Swanberg, who I couldn't be more excited to have on the show, independent filmmaker Joe Swanberg, the amazing Joe Swanberg, who I couldn't be more excited to have on the show.

His recent films include Drinking Buddies and Happy Christmas. That one with Anna Kendrick and Lena Dunham, I thought it was a stunning movie. I've watched several of his movies, and I love them all. This is true independent filmmaking at truly a low budget. And this guy does whatever he wants. And he's got a great sense of cinema and a great sense of aesthetic as an artist. He shot his last film on 16 millimeter film as a choice. Love it. Love him. Great conversation. Those movies that I mentioned are available on Netflix, but Joe Swanberg and I will talk shortly. I know it sounds a little different.

I am currently sitting at the window in a hotel room in Rochester, New York. I'm at a Holiday Inn Express, classy, overlooking a bank. It's Saturday, so that bank is closed. There's a parking lot. I'm sort of in not really a strip mall situation, but it is a more, I don't even, if it's an industrial situation, but it's certainly, I'm sitting here sort of catty corner to a small mall with a Red Robin. There's a mobile gas station with a Dunkin' Donuts within it just across the street.

And as you know, have not been drinking coffee lately, but when in the East, I will do as Easterners do. I will drink the Dunkin' Donuts coffee, and that combined with Sudafed, the good kind that you get behind the counter. So the Dunkin' Donuts and the Sudafed have given me somewhat of a crack-like buzz without all the sweating and bad smells. I don't consider this a relapse in any way. I do

have a horrendous cold, and I am entitled to caffeine as an American. So that's what I'm doing. I'm wearing sunglasses in my room, looking outside at the clouds breaking apart. It's very exciting to be in Rochester or upstate New York at this time where the people are coming out of their caves for the first time in four months. I am very happy I do not live in a part of the country where seasonally you are pushed to the limit and you may kill yourself or your family. Those things are thought of and those things become options when winter is as oppressive as it has been for much of the East Coast this year. My heart goes out to them. I am empathetic, but I am glad I'm here. Like the sun is shining in

and there's still some snow thawing. So I'm getting a little taste of winter, just enough. But I do miss the winter. I actually miss digging my car out of the snow. I miss fighting the authorities because you're not allowed to park on the street during a snow emergency, but yet your car is buried and you have to unearth it.

You have to unbury it. You have to find your car within the snow bank to try to move it so you don't get cited for being part of the snow emergency, although being parked there is illegal. The little things I miss about the East Coast. So I'm doing warm-up shows though they are not booked as that i'm just booked here at the club at the comedy club the proprietor here uh mark is a tremendously proud of his club this is a a genuine comedy club folks

up here in rochester it is a a a box of a room not much on the wall, and it is spectacular. It's the raw goods. It's the real deal. And Mark Eppolito, the dude that manages the place, is very proud of it. A lot of guys and women come up here to do the stand-up, and it's got sort of a reputation as being a stand-up comedy room. And there aren't that many in the country anymore you know when you have corporate run comedy clubs to sort of play a

a real gritty comedy club you know it's not it's not as uh it's it's it's appreciated it's a great room and the guy runs a great room and we had great shows last night we're doing the shows tonight but i'm just here i'm just here in ro. And I'll be honest with you. I have never been in a part of the country where I have no compulsion whatsoever to the regional cuisine. Like usually I look at it as an excuse to eat badly whenever I'm in a part of any part of the country that offers up anything unique. But really the only thing they have up here that they're proud of. I mean, I'm not in Buffalo. I'm in Rochester.

So what you have here are these things called garbage plates, and I think I might have discussed them. There's some sort of holdover from the Depression era, but it's just a plate of horrendous food. And even when people, even local people, like there's this place called Nick Tahoe Hots, and for some reason, I think it has the Hots name has something to do maybe with, with the hot dogs or links or whatever. But every restaurant, every other greasy spoon in this area has the word Hots on it. There's Empire Hots, there's Joe's Hots, there's Frank

Hots, there's Jimmy's Hots and whatever. It's all Hots. But the garbage plate, I'll just read directly from Wiki and then sort of go into what I experienced last night the garbage plate is a combination of two selections of cheeseburger hamburger red hots white hots Italian sausage chicken tender fish fried ham grilled cheese or eggs and two sides of either home fries french fries baked beans or macaroni salad on top of that are options of mustard ladled on, onions ladled on, or a proprietary hot sauce with spices and slowly simmered ground beef. So it's pulverized ground beef made viscous into a sauce with spices in it that they dump over and they sort of throw a piece of bread on the side.

Now, did any of that sound good to you? I mean, it sounds good if you want maybe if you're uh you haven't eaten in days or food is uh is sparse or if you're completely shit-faced and you just need to carb the fuck out but people i was sitting with mark and a few of the people that work at the club last night because i wanted to get something to eat and they're like you get a plate get a garbage plate over at uh whatever last night because I wanted to get something to eat. And they're like, you get a plate, get a garbage plate over at whatever hot. And they're trying to explain to me what a garbage plate is because you sort of have your own plate.

When you grow up here, you know what you want. You get the hamburger patties, you get the links, and you get the max out and the baked beans that are served cold and the potatoes, the home fries, and just ladle on these simmered onions, ladle on the mustard, ladle on that fucking hot sauce. And they're describing it to me. And I'm like, there's no part of me that, that is going to eat that. Where's the art in it? It's not like barbecue. It's just like, it's just shit food stacked up and then covered with goo. And I just couldn't deal with it. And then all of them were like,

and you're going to get diarrhea. There's like, that's just part of it. That's part of the experience. Like you'll eat this, you'll have the shits tomorrow. But you know, and I'm like, then why do you eat it? Like, well, for us, for me, one guy says it's worth it. It's worth it to eat that. So you grow up with something.

There's no end to what you'll put up with coming out of your ass. Just to justify that nostalgia, that comfort of eating just a plate of shit that you grew up with now i don't want to be condescending i don't want to be rude to people who enjoy a nice garbage plate look i'm sure this but this is the type of food where it's like there is no high end there's no one that's like there's no gourmet garbage plate do you know what I'm saying? But who knows?

Tonight, my entire attitude may change. I may be coming at you next Thursday with a celebration of garbage plates. Who knows? Who knows? It's all possible. I tell you, man, every time I've been to New York, the last five or six times, it's just been shit weather. All I'm looking forward every time I've been to New York, the last five or six times, it's just been shit weather. All I'm looking forward to is I'm going to New York and all I'm

looking forward to is taking a walk four blocks of Veselka and having a bowl of hot borscht like an old Jew. That's what I do when I go to New York. I'm like, I need to go someplace where I'm comfortable, where I have some comfort food. I don't even want to go to the comedy cellar. I don't even want to do anything. I'm going to go. I got some meetings I got to do, and I'm going to have these four shows here. What do I got to go bust my ass for and go do a 15-minute set in New York for? I could. Does that mean that I'm getting old? Does that mean I don't give a shit anymore? Folks, let me be honest with you. I don't know what the magic number is, but I'm telling you, man, if I hit it, if I hit the magic number, if I win the lottery, or I hit the magic number of fuck you money,

I'm not one of these people that's going to hang around and keep coming back, keep coming back to prove that I still got whatever it is that I have. If I hit the magic number or I make it to fuck you money land, I'm going to take a trip, perhaps forever. I have this fantasy where I just throw my phone into the river, whatever river, perhaps the ocean, just throw my computer away and just walk off

and just park my car along the side of the road and have a bag with a few legal pads and a couple of the pens I like, and I just head out. Perhaps I should bring some supplies because I imagine I'd be abandoning my house as well. Perhaps maybe a sweeping bag and a tent that accommodates one or two people.

And I'm maybe one of those little burners where I can boil water on and make soup. And I'll just have that and the knowledge that I have some money saved. And that's what I'll do. I'll be a hobo just by virtue of the fact that I have no idea what to do with myself, but I know I don't want to do anything anymore. Is there any shame in that? Don't freak out. It's not happening tomorrow. That was just a fantasy. Isn't that pathetic? That's a fantasy? Is this like walking away from everything that defines a responsible life

and just having a traveling kerosene burner or a little sterno burner that I can make some soup in and one of those ridiculous pots that you can snap shut and eat out of and also cook in? That's my big fantasy. How can anyone get in touch with Marc Maron? I don't know. You better check the trails.

Look at the little books where you sign in on the trails. I would freak out day one or two. As soon as I saw an animal bigger than me, that trip would be over. So I did the Brother Wheeze show up here, you know. Brother Wheeze is one of the powerful dinosaurs of morning drive time radio going back a couple of decades, maybe almost three decades. One of the originals, the Brother Wee's show. I'd never gone in and did the one-on-one with Wee's. And he's a classic man, classic radio dude.

He's got the pictures from all the different times of him, you know, all the different eras. You know, he's got to be in his 60s, but he's got those pictures of when, you know, partying was fun and hanging out with Joe Walsh and Kennison and my buddy, Jimmy Schubert. You kind of, it's weird when you know the old demons, the old warriors, the guys that lived it who were still around and you get into that conversation with them it's like oh yeah that dude is he all right is that guy still alive oh he didn't make it huh yeah that back in the day shit it's getting more intense as you get older people are dropping you know but wh Weez is still alive and I'd never met him before

and that was a good time. It was a good time. All right, so let's, I really enjoy talking to this guy, Joe Swanberg. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. I just found him to be a very earnest, very smart, very unaffected guy

that does exactly what he wants to with the medium he has chosen. Why would I find that so compelling? I guess there's a similarity, you know, but I like his movies. I mean, there's a lot of movies that are called independent movies, but this guy really does independent movies, and he does them with a sort of courageous aesthetic. Like, he takes chances, and he kind of pushes the medium a little bit, and he's very smart about it and and he's the dude who's making the choices and it was just great to talk to

what i would consider a real uh artist of of of cinema you know doing it the way he wants to do it uh and and like it's just rare that i i meet a guy a guy that I connect with as quickly as I connected with Joe and like as much and respect his art. So please enjoy this conversation with me and Joe Swanberg. And also, before we talk to Joe, DJ Copley has been doing some bumper music for us. has been doing some bumper music for us. And here's what he did with some of my guitar noodling that he pulled off of the end of one of the WTFs recently and sort of remixed it and put some stuff behind it. He's on Twitter as WebPuppy45

if you want to check out his stuff. But now we're going to talk to Joe Swanberg. So enjoy. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats, get almost almost anything.

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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. So you have a well-stocked beer fridge. Definitely. Like, that's... If you went into my basement, like, the fridge has... Did you shoot Happy Christmas in your house?

Yeah. That's your house? That's my house, yeah. Totally. That's the basement, yeah. It's a tiki basement? Yeah, absolutely. And it was like that when you got it?

It was built by the previous owners, yeah. We just moved in... Who had lived there for how long uh for a long ass time like uh we bought it from a 91 year old woman and her grandparents built it so it's been in that family until like the tiki thing that's like that's the original tiki craze so it's like the 50s 40s yeah he was a gi i mean it's that first wave when when actually, for the first time, went to the Polynesian Islands and stuff. They were fighting the war out there. Right.

And then they brought all that stuff home and Americanized it in the kitschiest, weirdest And it became popular, right? Definitely. And has gone through waves of popularity. Yeah, kind of came back kind of campy in the 80s. Yeah. It was always sort of like part of the you know the betty page haircut yes totally area of things yeah yeah there's always a tiki thing tikis and pinups yeah right

there was also some like you know kind of mondo film stuff around that stuff too right kind of weird shit yeah so all right so you buy this old house you grew up in chicago though you didn't i moved around my dad was an engineer so i kind of moved like an army kid, even though we weren't military. An engineer. See, I've talked to some people who have engineer fathers. What does that mean? I mean, what did he do specifically? Well, he worked for a company called Johnson Controls, which is like a big engineering firm.

I never quite knew. I mean, I think he did a lot of different things. I just knew he worked for Johnson johnson controls and i knew that we moved like every two years it's very funny how many people i talked to they're like yeah they don't know what they're doing i know totally also why haven't i ever asked him it would be this afternoon yeah like just walk me through like what were you doing when we lived in georgia what was happening in california what was he what did you walk into the... You left the house. Yeah. Where'd you go? Don't even know.

So weird, right? I know. Maybe he's CIA or something. I doubt it. But it also speaks to how pathologically selfish we all are. For sure. That's the guy that shows up and apparently I have to listen to him. Yeah, exactly.

And he brings money. Totally. He's the law. He's the man. He's literally the man. Was he a good guy? For sure. Yeah? Yeah. You seem pretty well adjusted. Totally. He's the law. He's the man. He's literally the man. Was he a good guy? For sure. Yeah?

Yeah. You seem pretty well adjusted. Yeah. When I think about it now and the more people I meet, I had the normalest, most healthy childhood I could imagine. My parents are still married to each other. They're totally in love with each other. Really? I have two younger brothers.

We always were fine you know i mean it was just like really i'm like super well adjusted to whatever being an american is yeah i'm sure in other places i would be weird but like for living here right now i'm like straight down the middle baby i'm totally a normal guy but i wouldn't i don't know what that means like if you went to some other place as a well-adjusted american i'll people be like what is this freak well you know like i you know i probably have like capitalist tendencies that wouldn't like be cool other place like i'm an american i think that's i think that's tempered by your career choice yeah maybe but you know like i'm into buying stuff that would be cool somewhere else like i want to own a house.

Other cultures are not into private ownership in that kind of way. I guess so. But it seems like you got a reasonable house. Definitely. It's a very... Okay, so what else did you learn about the history of that house? So they did the tiki stuff in the 60s. And then according to the neighbor, I live next door to like a 70 year old dude who's,

who knew them really well. So he's mostly who the history is. The old working class neighborhood. Totally. And it's still it. I mean, like the neighbors on both sides are really awesome. They know everything about their house plus my house. Like my wife and I have learned how to be homeowners from our neighbors.

Right. Like when I have a problem, I can either call my dad who can try and talk me through it on the phone or i can go knock on ray's door next door and be like ray i don't know what's going on here like there's water all over my back porch and he's like oh you probably have a leak under the thing yeah let's like i'll go get my stuff let's dig it up and then i watch him do it and then the next time i don't need to go knock on his door i'm like okay cool ray, cool. Ray showed me how to do that. That happens here, too. It's awesome, right? I had this, like, there was a puddle forming in that garden over there.

Yeah. And I'm like, it smells bad. Yeah. And I'm like, and I said to my neighbors out there, I'm like, what do you think that is? He's like, I think it's shit water. Yeah. And I'm like, what does that mean? Yeah.

Because there's that moment where you realize, like, no one's going to fix this. Doesn't it suck, that moment? A little bit, where you're like, this is my problem. Right, somebody better fix this. And you're like, no, I don't think anyone's going to. I know, it's such a bummer. You're kind of in charge of that. Yeah, it's bad.

So you didn't grow up in, where'd you grow up mostly? Every two years you moved? I would say I grew up mostly in Georgia. That was sort of the place during the big formative years for me. Atlanta? No, Augusta and then Kingsland. Two different times. Augusta and then I moved to Anniston, Alabama,

and then to Kingsland, Georgia. But to South and the Midwest is your sort of backdrop. Yeah, and then weirdly there was a two-year period where I lived on an island called Kwajalein, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It's part of the Marshall Islands. And that was the middle of sixth grade to the middle of eighth grade. And then I moved to Illinois and I've been in Illinois since then.

Quadulin? Quadulin, yeah. You don't know what your dad was doing on Quadulin? I do. I actually, you know, it was only when I was older. I'm not sure what my dad was doing every single day. Yeah. But Johnson Controls, you know, they bid on these military contracts.

So Johnson Controls won the contract for a two-year period where they did all the facilities maintenance and, you know, I'm sure, like, oversaw the upkeep of the buildings, installing air conditioning systems, like, whatever stuff needed to happen out there. Sure, sure. And then Raytheon underbid them, and then all the Johnson Controls people moved, and all the Raytheon people moved in. So it's a contractor. Yeah. It's like, but not military contracts, but not weaponry. Not weaponry. Right.

I don't know. Maybe Johnson Controls does that, but my dad wasn't doing that. And this island, here's what's up with this island, which I didn't learn until I was an adult. And then I was like, I wonder what I was doing on Kwajalein for two years. They were testing the Peacekeeper missiles. So they were firing them from, I believe, Los Angeles, like blanks, into the atoll. Kwajalein is an atoll.

Yeah. So it's sort of shaped like a boomerang. Yeah. They were shooting them in there and gauging accuracy and tracking how- You could have been sitting on the beach- I didn't know that. Watching missiles come in. We did.

We would go. On the days where the missiles were going to come in every there was only 3 000 people on the island everyone on the island would go out to the beach and you'd see like streaks of light and it was like cool that's cool yeah was there too far out oh it's too far out yeah oh i guess they wouldn't want too close let's see how accurate you see like five you know five of them all lined up perfectly next to each other like all coming in that's a crazy interesting right? I wonder what your brain did with that. I don't know how it didn't register for me until I was in my 20s.

But you remember doing that. And then I got on Wikipedia and was just like, what was going on out there? And then I was like, ooh, that's the nasty business, man. Right, but you still went out there and saw the show? Definitely. I mean, as a kid, I was like amazing to go see missiles. I didn't think about like,

oh, they're figuring out how to kill people better. They're just like, they're honing in. Do you? It was just like, oh, cool. It was like to go see Missiles. I didn't think about like, oh, they're figuring out how to kill people better. They're just like, they're honing in. To you, it was just like, oh. It was like cool missiles. But you didn't find it was tricky for you moving all the time, making new friends? It was very tricky, but it also was like director boot camp. I could not have had an upbringing that would have better prepared me to be in the film business. How do you figure that?

Because my whole childhood was you move into a new situation. You have to quickly make friends with everybody who've known each other longer than you've known them. Right. You form tight relationships. You figure out your thing in that circumstance what does that mean it means like am i uh the sports guy here am i the funniest one am i uh known for eating weird stuff like what's my thing that's gonna mean that i can have friends and like be willing to go any direction well however it works out works out. Often it just happens to you.

Yeah. You, you know. You have, you are well referenced in sports and eating weird things and you're witty enough. Or whatever the thing needed to be. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But I mean, this still happens as an adult. You walk into a group and you sort of like read the room and you're like, okay, cool. What's like, how am I going to have a fun time tonight? Yeah.

With this group of people. Am I going to eat that? This guy's clearly already the one they all think is really funny. So I'm not going to get in a pissing match, funny contest. Maybe you will, though, a little bit. You'll feel it out? It depends. If he's not funny at all, then you're like, oh.

What if he's a dick? I tend to not engage with dicks. Oh, okay. I'm not confrontational in that way. I don't want to- Not even a sideswipe? I don't think. Somebody has to be really bad i was at a bachelor party recently and there was a guy that was that was just out of control and in those situations i can't stay quiet then

and then it got like openly hostile where i was like dude you are freaking me the fuck out like you're bothering me he was really very, very drunk and aggressive. He was ruining everyone's good time. And I was like, I'm not going to... My buddy's getting married. Right, right, right. I'm not going to let this night go downhill like this. You need to chill out.

You stepped in. I had to. Take a walk, pal. Dude, he was so far across the line. It has to get bad. Most of the time, I'm just going to be quietly angry that somebody's dealt with drugs before uh a little bit we have a lot we host a lot at my house so i'm like getting versed in drunkenness like i'm starting to like be like a bouncer or something like you know it's like now i'm around parties often enough that i'm like okay cool all the warning signs are up this

person's gonna is really fucked up all right So you become a director early on because you had to manage situations and get everybody just had to, I mean, I think I became a director because I'm like self-centered and think I have good ideas. I mean, I think that's the director thing, but I had to get good moving around a lot growing up. I had to get good at, uh, walking into a situation, like making myself comfortable in that situation yeah forming friendships yeah but then also like then i had to move and i had to like not uh not i had to form new friendships but so you do not carry every single friendship i could be that emotionally invest yes that emotionally invested in a way That emotionally invested. In a way, well, no.

Here's what I would say. Ideally, what I would say is that I am that emotionally invested. I'm not fake emotionally invested, but also I know it's going to end. So it's a real investment, but it's also like it can't crush me every time I move. It's like heart hardening a bit. Yeah, in a way, for sure. And I think that being involved with a direction or with a film film but not so much i'm like a long shoot that you do you love those people i mean yeah for me every movie i've ever done you forget the rest of the world exists you're like these are

my friends this is what's funny to us this is the restaurant we go to every night like this is my life yeah and then the movie ends and if you're not okay with going and doing that again with a different group of people, you're fucked. I mean, you'll just be sad the rest of your life. You'll be like, it's never going to be that good again. That one movie. That was the gang. And like, now I have to just like recreate that scenario. So in a way, it was just like, you know, the baby steps towards like, here's how you totally invest.

And then here's how you also accept the end of that yeah and how do you do that um because you seem all you know blown out by the the fact that you're gonna die that's like the biggest human accomplishment we've ever done is we forget we're gonna die how amazing is that we're the only ones that have that choice and then so we're just able to want we have to wander around and look from things that mean things it's the worst like like this self-awareness and then knowing that there's the finish line it's sort of like well then this has to i have to do something yeah something has to mean something i'm in a weird position with that right now about like meaning yeah what are you thinking what's tell me more well well i more. Well, I just turned 51 and I've spent a lot of my life sort of like not acknowledging,

knowing you have problems or whatever they are, or knowing you're hobbled in a certain way emotionally. And then all of a sudden realizing like, well, all right, I just got this book where I'm reading this book and it's really giving me a map of what's really going on and what happened. It's a clinical psychology book. And I'm like, oh, so this makes total sense. So now how do I get at that part of myself that needs to come out and needs to figure out how to live in the world and find, you know, like literally questions like, I don't know what I enjoy. What do I want to do today? I'll choose panic almost every time yeah like i'm just gonna sit here and dread doing things yeah and that's a problem because life is short but it's so cool that you're trying to be a better person that you're like putting the effort in i mean it's

like really easy not to right i know but well it's it well it becomes draining because like once you're on to yourself yeah it's not so easy not to when it's just second nature you know after you know after a lifetime of people going like you gotta fucking get your shit together or you're an asshole or whatever eventually it's gonna be like oh maybe yeah yeah yeah yeah but right but it's anyone's journey do you know what i mean and then you get into that zone where it's sort of like i don't know if i'm gonna be able to fix this so what can i accept and who can i find that can also deal with that shit yeah let's be friends and right romantic partners with right like when i think about my wife i it's amazing to me that she loves me and can like spend that time spend

so much time with me yeah what what about you do you think is difficult um a lot of things man i definitely i definitely almost always think i have the best idea of how to like handle a situation so you're it doesn't occur to me that would be wrong right i think i think i'm uh you know like i was the kind of kid that like a lot of stuff came pretty quickly too but then also uh i don't i often then don't put in the work to get a lot better at that thing oh yeah see i was like pretty quick i like i figured it out and i was like pretty good at it very quickly so then i was like the best at it for a while and then the people who really put in the work to get good at it got way better than me or i'll say stay good like the weird thing is is like there's some part of the brain like

like if it's um whether it's an art thing or maybe it's a you know bowling or whatever like there's that need to fucking do really well either to prove to yourself or to prove to others just innately like i'm gonna do this yeah and then you kill it that one time yeah and then it never comes back and you don't want to put the work in, you're sort of like, yeah, maybe I'll focus that hard again. Yeah. So, you know- Like what kind of things were you really good at?

Well, definitely at school. I mean, I was like, could get good grades and, you know, I didn't, like my younger brother James had to put the work in. It didn't come easy to him. Like if he wanted to get A's at a subject, he really had to work. I could just, like, get A's at things. I could, like, figure out how that thing worked. Enough to, like, be okay

at it. Right, you were able to contextualize. Yeah, I was like, here's how school works. Here's the dynamics. Like, this is how a test goes. There's a system to most things. See, I'm bad at that, man. I can't compartmentalize very well unless i have to like you know for secrecy reasons yeah but i can't know sensitive information sure

but uh but but it's interesting because like you are the way you are like i saw you briefly i went to a screening of uh happy christmas at the Roxy, the last night of that guy who worked there. Mike Keegan, yeah. Mike Keegan. I didn't know him, but I walked in just to see the movie out of nowhere. And we were seeing the showing after you spoke. But we got there early and you were on the Skype. Oh, cool.

So that was the first time I encountered you. Yeah, cool. You were talking live to other people. And I'm like, this guy seems to be a smart guy. I should probably talk to him. Talk to that guy. It's nice that I come across that way i'm happy to hear that no you come across so well adjusted and like you've got your head on straight and you know you come from this

nice family but your movies are difficult i think you have to have a very uh safe protective healthy home life to make difficult artwork but the thing is is that the fact that you're so consciously doing artwork is an amazing thing like i don't think anybody's doing independent movies like you do them and and continuing to do them without really too much of a hint of it of it's some sort of launching pad i mean i watched i haven't seen all of them because you've made like 20 fucking feature films in what nine years yeah i've made a lot but but the the point is is that what you do is not easy to do it's not easy to balance it's not easy to make compelling there's a lyricism and a poetry to it that is

specifically art movies yeah this is not just indie movies yeah yeah yeah you make art movies yeah and well yeah for sure i mean i grew up uh i fell in love with that and then have like always aspired to that. Well, what's your theory? My theory in the artists that I've known is that if you, there are the people who are making art to be loved by others who like sort of are lacking, this is very broad. So, of course, like everybody doesn't fall easily into one or the other category. But like there's a way if you sort of are feeling a lack of love in your personal life or or sort of a uh a lack of a foundation of love i think it's easy to become an artist because it's it's a very quick way to get like love from a bunch of strangers right uh if they get it yeah or whatever

or you can bend yourself to make them get it like i think that you you know if that's the path you're on you can figure out an area where you can find that love from from as a creative external yes yeah uh if you don't need the work to provide love then you can make challenging work because you're like i'm i'm okay as a person like i have i'm married i have a child my parents love me like i'm doing all right i have like a bedrock of stability and love so now the artwork can push people it can challenge people because if they don't like it i'm okay still but if you need them to like it because that's where your love's going to come from i think then you make like could make safe likable or right if you need to love movies depends how complicated are so like the thing is

like so if like if your model is true and you feel stable but you still have to put some element of passion your explorations are emotional so you may not be seeking the love from those, but the challenge you're presenting, I just have a hard time completely believing that it comes all from emotional stability. It seems to me that you are working out equations and possibilities emotionally on screen that must be percolating inside you. You can't be that detached definitely i i am but but you're not if well no here's what i would say like if if my relationship's in a good place and my wife and i are in a good place i can make a movie about what it would be like to cheat right yeah and then i don't have to worry that that movie's gonna fuck up my relationship that can be a

conversation my wife and i can be having while I'm making the movie right I can explore a treacherous emotional territory in a very real way like in a way that hits close to home like for instance with happy Christmas that's a movie that came out of conversations my wife and I were having after we had a kid where she felt really like uh stuck like trapped at home with that kid and like she had bigger dreams well definitely she's we met in film school she's a filmmaker also and like i got to like after the birth of my son because i could make more money than she could at the time like it just made sense for our family that you know like i kept working right and she stayed home practical and then you know

we sort of like reached the tipping point of that where like, this isn't cool with me anymore. Like, it can't just keep going this way. Because I'll die inside and hate you. Yeah, exactly. And so that's what that movie's about. It's shot in my house. My son and I are in it. Like, that's a movie.

Your son was good. Yeah, he's pretty amazing, man. He's got some good stuff. Yeah, he's a total sweetheart. He's amazing, man. He's got some good stuff. Yeah, he's a total sweetheart. But, you know, like that movie pushes a lot of buttons, not only for my wife and I, but for a lot of other people who maybe find themselves in that same position, right? Well, I think that the other thing that movie did, you know, I guess we can work back because that's the most recent movie, is that the character that Anna Kendrick played, you know, for even someone my age.

How old are you? I'm 33. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. It feels... You've made 18 movies. It feels old and young at the same time to me right now. Like, I keep this picture.

There's this picture of Robert Altman making Nashville. Yeah. That I like to keep handy because he's... Maybe he's 50 or maybe he's like into his 50s. He looks so playful. And like, if you look at his career, he's like still figuring his shit out. Like still like inventing stuff, still like totally changing the game and the way movies

are made. At Nashville, yeah. Yeah. It's really useful for me to have that around because even even though i made a lot of stuff like i don't i mean the stuff that i've made so far is so i i hope that the movies get so much better and like i want to definitely make sure that like 20 years from now uh i still feel like an amateur you know like i still have a spirit where i'm like cool cool, let's reinvent it every time out. He took some weird risks. He's amazing, man.

He really- Like Quintet's- Yeah, he has made very, very bizarre movies. Yeah, man. And bad ones too, which I really like about him. Which ones do you think are bad? OC and Stiggs, I think, is really bad. That was late.

That seemed like a cash grab. That's like an attempt at making a teen comedy. It's a money thing, wasn't it? Yeah. And he shot the player too, didn't he? Yeah. That at making a teen comedy it's a money thing wasn't it yeah yeah and he shot the player too didn't he yeah that was tight yeah i mean like that it's it's interesting when someone breaks from his own style and says i can make a regular movie yeah here here's a regular movie it's like a 90s hollywood movie yeah but but it was so dark it was so like such a nice kick in the balls to the industry definitely all right so but well okay well that frames something interesting about you

is that because you have the facility that he did not have, which is the ability to shoot on cameras in a relatively expensive way and the compulsion to continue learning and pushing your own creative envelope, that the fact that you're 33, it's like, do you feel like at some point

you're going to be like, well, I'm going to get this art shit out of my system and maybe level off on a vision that's a little more palatable to the general population? I think that that's happening anyway. I mean, it's maybe like just a getting older thing, or maybe it's being a dad and a husband now. But the last couple movies I've made in essentially the same way

that I've always been working, and yet they feel more accessible to people. Happy Christmas. And Drinking Buddies, the same way that I've always been working, and yet they feel more accessible to people. Happy Christmas. And Drinking Buddies, the one before that. Drinking Buddies feels different to me. How does it feel to you? There were moments in it that felt kind of a little more, I don't know if they're mainstreamy because, like,

Ron Livingston brings a certain amount of uh recognition for sure and and you know the backdrop of the brewery was okay and some of the relationships were okay but like for me what really seemed to be most like you was the tension of of the friend slash love dynamic and that other guys you know the marriage of the other people. But she, the primary character, was a difficult character. I don't know necessarily at the end of it all that she was ever going to really be able to access her emotions. Yeah, she's in a bad spot, I think. It's a complicated character.

It just seemed a little, I guess so. I think it was because coming into your work, and I know Duplass and i've watched their stuff but the whole movement that you're involved in you know happened after i i was in a you know i wasn't on the inside of things yeah you know i kind of i missed mumblecore yeah yeah sure it's not my generation so i got to go back so starting with happy christmas and then immediately knowing and hearing you talk about it for 10 minutes right i got to watch the movie right that's a crazy context to see a movie what was the q a beforehand because okay i've never seen that before ever the squirrel just climbed down the screen we just saw a squirrel

stomach it must happen a lot i bet it happens five times a day and you've just never been here to witness it. Never seen it. It's a pretty ingenious way to get around. It's just crawled down the screen. I know. Squirrels are amazing, man. They're very versatile. Yeah, I barely really pay that much attention to them.

And they're around. I wouldn't even identify them. If someone said, do you have wildlife? I'd be like, coyotes, skunks, possums, raccoons. Squirrels wouldn't even make the list. That was a big squirrel big but but the fact that you shot on 16 like there was something about for me as an older guy and like you came up in film school where you didn't fucking have to shoot on 16 if you don't

want to did you no well i went to a really old school film school so while i didn't have to most people did and you got the sense from the professors that they very much preferred it and would want but there are certain skills i mean outside of of understanding you know how to really control aperture and how to uh to really get the most out of your actors and how to to think economically yeah but like you know the you know editing 16 is useless yeah it's like you know unless you're doing it absolutely is and it's but it's also how i learned so i have that's how you learned how to put things together flatbed editor cutting 16 millimeter yeah because i thought just the tone of it you the amount like it's not that you have to forgive anything, but you realize, like, even when I watch the, even Drinking Buddies, which is not shot on film.

No, it's shot on video. Of course. Right? Yeah. So, and even the one that I just watched with Jane Addams. Uh-huh. All the Light in the Sky. It's a great movie.

Oh, thanks, man. You like that movie? I'm very proud of it. Yeah. But, like, what you can do with a camera just with the ocean, what you had to do you could not have done with 16 right ever so there's your context you know everything's saturated a certain way yeah but it does have that feeling of like you know like when i was younger it's like i'm watching a movie yeah you know like you you can't manufacture that has that for me too it's a really it's the second it hits the screen, chemically, your body feels different. You're like, I'm looking at something shot on film. This is a film. Yeah, I know.

So, so making that choice, where did that come from? It came from a fear that it was going to go away. I mean, I, I having gone to film school and done work on film and then sort of spent 10 years making movies on video, I always told myself, well, I'll get back to film, you know, like that's once it's an option again, it'll sort of be on the table. And it just kept becoming less and less of an option. I mean, even if you have a little bit of money, nobody wants you to shoot on film, you know, studio movies are not shooting on film anymore, even though that line item would be a tiny one in the general budget they're still like why would we even spend an extra seventy thousand dollars that we don't have to spend and so i got very afraid

that i might go the rest of my career never make a film a real film and so i just decided to do it you hadn't done a feature on 16th no that was your first feature on film. Yeah. How was it for you? Great. Really a nice experience. I just, the economy of it must really raise the stakes for everybody. I noticed it in a very positive way. Because you're working with actresses that have probably never shot on film. Most of them hadn't, I don't think. Melanie Linsky, who's a genius.

Yeah. Anna Kendrick. And just this, there's this idea that like in the world that they grew up in, it's sort of like, we can do as many takes as the day will allow. Yeah. Because it costs nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe very early in their careers, they had done indies on film.

Student film. Right. I bet it had been a decade, at least for all of us. And you felt that. Did you have to have a conversation about that? It was a part of how I talked about the movie. I mean, I let them know that that was going to be a priority, that it was important to me to do this one on film and that, you know, that was going to be where a lot of the money was going to go and that we were just going to

make that choice. But, you know, you work completely improvisational. Yeah. So it's a gamble. Well, we budgeted a four to one shooting ratio which meant we four takes was the most we could do and you stuck by that we came in under actually huh yeah because you just let it roll uh yeah we we did that and also i'm my own editor so when i when i like something and i know i'm going to use it i don't need coverage then after that you know we don't need to beat around the bush and say like well just as a safety net let's go ahead and shoot this and this and this because it's my movie that take was great i'm gonna use that take i'm not gonna give myself a note later that i want to cut to an insert shot so let's not shoot the insert shot well it's interesting that you know

that that's a confidence of a of a creative person that comes from having made 17 movies already too you know i mean i you get a feel for it and you're also acting in it yeah you know i know like i'm my you know ck is a friend of mine and he has that same sort of you have to have that kind of weird creative fortitude to you know to direct your own your own movies and then to cut them and then to be in that you you you can't you can't have that thing you're talking about right the need for love like i don't know how'd everyone else feel i'm not i know someone's got to drive right so but but it's interesting to me with with happy christmas that it wasn't you knew the story right so yeah in your mind when you set out that was a pretty specific story this

this girl comes in she's your sister she's got her own problems. And that character was pretty amazing. What I was about to say before was that no matter what age you are, but I'm only 51, so I grew up post-60s or whatever. There's always that strange, entitled, kind of troubled, substance-wise, but not sure what she wants to do with her. I recognized her. Yeah. it's a i recognized her yeah like it's been around for a while i don't think it would have been around in the 40s in the same way but there's there's that character and she's really the the pivotal thing the the changer and you hate her in a bit yeah not hate her but sort of like oh fuck for sure i hope but why how did you construct that story i mean i understand that you had your

wife coming out of really personal stuff also my younger brother james who was not nearly as bad in real life as anna's characters in the movie but my younger brother james had come and lived with us after we bought the house and you know you reach a certain age where you just it's hard to have people in your space for a long period of time even if they're your family yeah even if they're your family and even if they're great. And even if they're helping out, you sort of, you get used to a level of privacy and a level of autonomy. And then suddenly, you know, he was living in the basement.

That basement is where my wife and I hang out. It's where the only TV in the house is down in that basement. It's sort of where we go if we just want to like catch up on a movie or show. And he was down there so even just by being there he was in the way even if he was the politest best house guest ever you know and you feel like you have to do it because he's family i wanted to do it and also like you know he had gone to school in lexington kentucky he was ready to move you know out of the college town and move to the city i thought that that was a good idea so i was happy to be able to be helpful it's nice to be an older brother and be in a position to

help if somebody asks right and so you know all of it was great i mean it was really nice to have him with us and and uh you know he has a weird relationship to the movie because it really makes it look like he was a fucking mess who like you know really that's fucked our house up but he wasn't uh he had to explain that to him uh we've talked about fucking mess who like, you know, really fucked our house up. But he wasn't. You had to explain that to him? We've talked about it a couple of times, but you know, he wasn't the best house guest ever either. Yeah, but he's your brother. Well, and he's my younger brother too.

And I try and be generous to younger people. But it's interesting though, because I've had to deal with that with my father and stuff because of the TV show. Like where you're like, well, you threw me under the bus. I'm like, no one knows that but me and you. You know what I mean? But you can't explain that to somebody. It's like no one's going to make an assumption. It's a very tricky thing if you're going to use your real life in your art.

Before I get away from this, the one thing I've noticed in watching the films is how deeply the expectation, narrative expectations of films are plowed into us almost like as old as as from when we're children for sure so it's very interesting to watch your movies like even when i was watching happy christmas you sort of wait like something's gonna get bad this shit just something's gonna go down man like yeah is she gonna get in a car accident like but the big turn was she like when she burnt a pizza yeah yeah and and that was like that was a moment yeah and even in uh in the stars and what is it the sky all the light in the sky all the light in the sky do you know what the biggest moment in that in that like the most like jarring moment was for you i mean that big conversation she has with uh with larry fessenden in the movie where he does the jack nicholson impersonation that was great he feels like the crux that's like my big climactic moment is two people on a couch talking for 20 i thought

that the the most powerful moment in that fucking movie was when that coat rack came off the wall that's my action scene that was it yeah but it was satisfying i couldn't believe it like after she leaves like that yeah and then that thing just goes clunk. And I'm like, oh, that's the end of the second act. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. That's really funny. Yeah.

That's my sense of humor. I mean, that coat rack coming off the wall to me is the funniest thing I could do in that. That's so totally my sense of humor. But it's also very telling. And it's like, because you're working improvisationally and you're hanging this stuff on a loose story that's based on emotion. Yeah. Because you're working improvisationally and you're hanging this stuff on a loose story that's based on emotion, to find those things that hang your narrative on, literally, that's sort of the trick of making movies the way you do.

Yeah. And it's got you. Either people are going to feel it or they're not. Yeah. I mean, I would say even that there is just like you're already in a very small pool of people that are even capable of feeling it, and then some of them are going to feel it, and some of them are not. It's interesting because, like, for me,

it's like it brings me back to a different time where I was studying film in college, and, you know, you had to be hyper-attentive and patient and try to, like, you know, someone has told you that this is the good stuff, and then you just got to sit there you know watching saint joan you know going like what am i doing like red desert antonio you're like i can't what why what am i missing yeah and it's like you can't be so hard on yourself yeah it's it's you know i'm like the kind of person that automatically bristles when somebody tells me something's

genius you know like like no yeah this is a masterpiece that's a terror and then i like fold my arms i'm like all right prove it but now i'm skeptical right yeah but so like you got there's something i mean like some of your stuff is kind of gadardian definitely i mean like that some stuff like his playfulness with editing is like for sure always been a big influence yeah but even like i kind of got the feeling watching Silver Bullet when she's playing with the gun in the mirror, that was almost an homage in a way. Yeah, that stuff, it's funny how that stuff filters through. I sort of landed upon the way that I work specifically to avoid references. I feel like I went, I was in high school when Pulp Fiction came out and I feel like that was,

that changed everything. Yeah. There was then a period of like three or four years where every movie that came out was just a knockoff of Pulp Fiction, it felt like.

Right. Everyone was just trying to do that thing. A knockoff of knocking off movies. Yeah, exactly. A knockoff of pastiche. A knockoff. Yeah.

Okay, yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, it was like a really, that was the time period where I was falling in love with movies. And so I had like, had to go outside of that stuff because it just got so similar. Where'd you go?

I mean, I, I worked in a video store and so, and we had the ability to order movies for the store. So, you know, we were, I was just like trying to watch a lot of documentaries, a lot of foreign films, a lot of like exploitation trash i mean i definitely was into trauma you know i was just like sort of trying to dip my toes in all the waters to see what was registering and also what was achievable trauma movies definitely yeah but you did like did you make horror movies early on no but i probably thought i would i mean i i was drawn to them i was drawn to the ability to do them on a low budget they felt achievable well you kind of

pulled that out you kind of dealt with it in silver bullet definitely thoroughly as you needed to that's like uh yeah as horror movie as as like my interests would allow me to get probably well it gets like but uh but but what about cassavetes no yeah cassavetes only via osmosis like i've never really seen cassavetes movies but i'm was influenced by the people who were influenced by cassavetes so i'm who would they be uh anybody who was like an 80s or 90s american independent filmmaker everyone right i mean he's the godfather right like he sort of changed the game and then like in one way or another, everybody who has the gall to pick up a camera

and go with their friends and say, we're going to make a movie is influenced by Cassavetes. Right. So like, wow, he's not for me a direct influence. And in a way now it's like those movies have become holy because I know that I'll like them when I finally see them. So I've sort of been waiting for the perfect circumstance.

Like I'm kind of waiting for a Cassavetes retrospective where I can just go and watch them all in a week. Just get the Criterion box. Well, I want to see them in a movie theater for the first time. Okay. I'm waiting for that. Maybe you should build a theater.

Maybe you should. Why don't you? I could talk to maybe like uh somebody and just see if you're in chicago go curate a yeah that's a good idea actually why don't you curate something like movies i haven't seen but i want to see yeah that's a good idea man yeah yeah shit i've been meaning to watch yeah that's a good idea man i might do that you should do it i might do that. You should do it. I might do that.

And you get to watch it for the first time in the theater. Get prints of it. Yeah. That'd be fucking awesome. I like it. I think I've always... The Celebration, that film. Thomas Vinterberg's movie?

Yeah, it's amazing. What is that? Yeah, I saw that in film school. That was a big one because that... I mean, what's great about movies like The Celebration is you no longer have permission not to go make a movie because you look at it and you're like, it didn't cost much money. It's all it is, is really compelling performances and a really compelling story.

Like now you, now you have no excuses. You have to, if you think you have the stuff now go prove it. That movie did that for you. For sure. All those dogma films were really important to me yeah because like what i love about lars von truer and and those early dogma guys was they they for at a very important time in my life they took all of the emphasis off of production design and slickness which is the one thing you can't do right in film school you can't do that right you have to have a lot of money and be working with really good people. And also that changes all the time.

Like our idea of what's slick and expensive looking shifts every couple of years. So even if you got good at one thing, you'd be out of touch by the time you like could put the resources together to fake it, you know? And like, so by taking the emphasis a hundred percent off of that, and actually by calling that stuff bullshit and saying the only thing that matters is actors and a handheld camera and a story i was like oh yes now i can work now i now there's a context for the work even the precedent has been set yeah like a guy who did the other thing really well just said that the other thing is bullshit yeah yes yes yeah and i was so liberated

to just like get out of film school grab my friends grab a video camera and just make a movie but but it also seems like you know you'll make a movie sort of at the drop of a hat if i meet a cool actor or there's a cool idea that like enters the ether and i feel like i can like snatch it and go do it i'll go do it well what about the the the the thing where you obviously shot some of the Sky movie and Silver Bullet simultaneously, or you had leftover footage? Several of them simultaneously. There was a period of time where I was working on, I think, four movies at once that had a lot of the same actors in them, and there was just like a ton of overlap. And there's certain people, it seems, that can do what you want them to do, and certain people that probably couldn't. When I meet people who can do it, I hold on to them very tightly.

Like Anna and Melanie and Jane, for sure. Yeah, for sure. That dude who was in the Sky movie? Jack Nicholson? Yeah, Larry Fessenden, who's also a director whose work I really like. Yeah, and I like the other kid, too, the one she slept with. I like him, too. Ty West.

He's been in some other movies. Kent Osborne. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, those guys, if you look at my movie kent osborne's in almost everything i've ever made like he's like uh i can't i get an idea and then i'm like well kent would be perfect yeah for that but this is also familiar to you these are these are types of people that you kind of know in your life like they're familiar to me they're they are creative people like there's a there's a in the world of where creative people work when they're they are creative people like there's a there's a in the world of where creative people work when they're not being creative and also how they

carry themselves yeah whether they've turned their back on their creativity or not yeah there's a certain community to that definitely you know what i mean if they're not if they're not actually you know actualizing creativity they're you're they're a brewer yeah yeah definitely it's a it's all very familiar to me but in silver bullet like there's some real kind of like and not that you need to reference it but you know the fact that you know she's playing with a gun and he's behind her oh definitely that that that is a reference i mean that's that's like taking the whole history of movies into account yeah okay like that's a scene from a movie. Right.

Purposefully. Yeah. Okay. All right. So you're not lying to yourself. No, no, no. Just filtered in. I'm like, Kubrick.

I just like, man, I don't even ever think of anything. Like, I haven't even watched any movies. Did you watch? I just wanted to be pure, man. Did you watch that documentary about The Shining? Yeah. What? I had a really good time with that movie.

Me too. It's really fun. But the only thing that was interesting to me was the one guy who said that he was such a deep intellectual that he might not have had any clue that he was a vessel

for these layers of... Conspiracy theories. Of significance, of symbolic significance, of semiotics. Yeah. Because once you get hung. Of significance, of symbolic significance, of semiotics. Yeah. You know, because once you get hung up on that, what was it, the flower or the box of Calamit? Yeah.

Or a coffee can that's turned a certain way or whatever. Right. It's like you have a really hard time believing like Kubrick's like, you know, we're going to... I know, yeah. Hold on, I've got to adjust that. But somebody did. Sure.

But your movies are not loaded up the same way. Not at all. I mean, I'm hoping that my, you know, it's really, it's a lot of it's accidental. I mean, I'm trying to create an environment on set where accidents can happen. Because I, like, my feeling is that you only innovate by accident. That nobody's smart enough to have a new idea that just like takes things into a new realm. Or it doesn't feel so constructed. Yeah. Somehow there's like a limitation that forces you to solve a problem in a new way.

And that for me was always kind of the guiding light was let's put ourselves in a situation where we don't know what's going to happen, where I don't, I have to follow the action, the way a documentary camera person would have to follow a real life event like i'm not setting marks where you start here and you have to walk over there i'm just saying do it and then i'll try and capture it and by not capturing it then i'll have to figure out how to edit the scene in a cohesive way and then i might accidentally do something interesting or several interesting things um that's that changes based on the movie like obviously with drinking buddies uh there was a level of improvisation and uh and sort of a space

where accidents could happen within the context of uh stronger narrative and better lighting right say or something like that and once you introduce better lighting, you sometimes have to set marks. You know, things start to change. Show business, man. Show business, baby. Now you're making a movie. And so, in a way, I have more recently embraced movies, the way movies are made because I did so many things outside of the bounds of how movies are made and I also got to a

point where I wasn't creating situations where accidents were happening anymore I was like too familiar with all those scenarios i don't weren't scripting dialogue film yeah so i still wasn't scripting dialogue but i was like uh i don't know it just wasn't feeling chaotic the way it maybe did on the early movies and i was like you know what i've become a director i've so you're okay with it yeah and now i'm like trying to do that for a period of time just to like see if i can get good at that thing too. Well, it sounds to me what you were doing with once you were freed by dogma films in terms of process was you were like, all right, so, you know, I'm going to treat this organically because I have the freedom to do that and I have the equipment and it doesn't cost me a lot to treat this as as an organic process where surprises can happen I can learn

about myself through structuring these loose narratives to see how people engage emotionally yeah and I can put myself in it and and and take the parts of myself that maybe are not that high quality people stuff. Yeah. And resolve. Because like in Silver Bullet, I mean, the stuff that you were dealing with in that character that you played was too, there was too real, some of that. Pettiness, jealousy. But just the hilarious.

But yeah, that stuff, like straight up artist kind of stuff. Maybe it's not the kind of artist you are, but it's got. Well, it is for sure. I'm playing myself in that i know but the funniest thing is is that in every scene you're way into that overly large book yeah like that you're always reading this book and it's like got 500 pages yeah and you're well into it yeah and never once did i think that you had read the other 400 pages necessarily yeah but you're sitting there going like, you're having this discussion about form because you're so insecure and you're trying to act like you know more than you do.

But I thought it was hilarious that that book was always like, right. The answer, because I've been that guy. It's like, it's in here. This is the book. Yeah. What book was that? That was the complete plays of Chekhov.

Was it important to you at the time well we were basing silver bullets off of the seagull so we we had like stolen some character uh types from that i wouldn't have known that because i'm not that much of an intellectual nor am i i mean jane adams turned me on to the seagull when we started the process of doing silver bullets she was like you should read the seagull. It might be useful. And it was super useful. But like the stuff you were doing with color and with video and then, you know,

like some of that stuff was shot on 16, the horror stuff, was it? Super 8. Super 8 even. So, but like to make decisions about, you know, montages like the ones you did in that.

I mean, that was like fucking, you know, like... Stan Brackage? Yeah. It was straight up brackage shit well definitely the film school i went to brackage was a really important person there because like that you know to take in brackage at that time when when i went to a brackage festival i'm like okay i'm gonna i gotta you you had to like i had to sit there and go like i okay i like mark rothko i understand i

had to make this transition yeah to to understand that like film can do this yeah it may not be everyone's idea of a night out yeah but you can do it yeah but i felt like some of that stuff in there to have the confidence to to string those kind of images together and that kind of movement and those kind of colors specifically for a poetic effect is is ballsy and uh not in not many people are doing it it's not very valued right now culturally i mean that's why a lot of people aren't doing it well i don't know if it was ever valued except in the world that it was maybe not maybe you're right i might be a little nostalgic and and like well you're you're film school nostalgia yeah because you know those

guys were valued in film school yeah yeah because those guys were fighting exactly what you know you were fighting initially, which is to think that everyone's hacking on Tarantino, hacking on other things, and then the idea of production value. I mean, people like Godard and Brackage, to an extreme, were saying like, fuck all that. Let's bring it back to high art. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Even like they were turning their back on everybody, on Wells. It's all garbage. I can just put pink up for two minutes yeah yeah it's tough to sift through which of that stuff is uh legitimate and which of that stuff is laziness it's hard i mean in film school that was a big challenge for me with somebody like because you could you could be the character in that movie and be full of shit very easy to just look at that stuff and say, this is lazy bullshit. Anyone could do this. And then defend it.

Like, why do we think this guy's so great? Right. But you as an artist, then, like, you can do that and rationalize it. Like, you know, like, this is your vision. But the difference between you and the reason that I'm talking to you at all is that there's a tremendous difference between an established abstract artist and then a guy who just says, anyone can do that. I agree with you. Of course.

I mean, if that wasn't true, we'd all be in trouble. We'd be surrounded by undecipherable garbage. Yeah, but fraud slipped through the system all the time. For a little while. And sometimes are so established that forever they do. But I mean, here's what I'll say. It's very dangerous to just accept that somebody's great. It's very dangerous because you always should investigate as an artist.

You always should decide that you like Brackett. You shouldn't just assume you like Brackett. Right, but as an artist. See, that's the difference. See, like a fraud can exist in a world. if that fraud is making money for somebody else who gives a fuck if he's a fraud it's a different you're saying it's a different context yeah but you know if you're going to talk specifically in the context of art then there's different parameters and there's and then the inside struggle in between artists and justifying that and the

critics that need to justify it or establish it yeah out in the fraud world hey the guy made a million dollars for us last year. So, okay, he's a fraud, but he's probably going to make two next year. But there becomes a system. I mean, I don't know if you have this feeling when you watch movies, but at this point in time,

there is a kind of a movie that wins Academy Awards, right? Sure. It's not a- That's politics. I'll fuck in politics. Well, I totally agree. But when I was a kid, movie that wins academy awards right like it's not a that's politics all fucking politics well i totally agree but when i was a kid that kind of movie also was the kind of movie that felt like the best movie to me right yeah the older i get and the more the more i make of my own stuff and

the more i see of other people's stuff uh the less those worlds seem to overlap right so there's like the marketing machine that decides that like you know uh david o russell martin scorsese paul thomas anderson uh david fincher these guys like okay these guys make important awards you movies everything they make is going to be marketed and pushed through that system aimed at those release dates aimed at winning those oscars and then like sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. But it all sort of belongs to that world. But fortunately, out of that list, which is one list, not tremendously schlocky.

I totally agree. They're all amazing artists. Because there's a schlock component too to some of that. So those movies come out and they sort of are pushed through the system as the important Artie Awards movies, right? into some of that so those movies come out and they sort of are pushed through the system as as the important arty awards movies right but like i saw that movie the conjuring that james wan movie i think that movie's a masterpiece that movie's never going to be nominated for an oscar they're closed off to it before it even exists i don't i didn't see it was it good i think it's amazing man it's a really uh to me the best crafted and best uh for certain people the best acted movie of the year like lily

taylor's performance in the conjuring is certainly better than anyone who won an oscar last year right but because it's a horror movie directed by james wan that avenue was never open to it from inception. They weren't playing the game. And that bothers me. Right. Right? That we've, that like,

it's so much just a part of the, how the industry markets stuff that certain movies are eligible for awards and other movies never will be. Right. And they're not looking at the level of quality. They're just looking at like, is it that kind of movie or not that kind of movie?

Does it honor the system that we put into place? And I think that that's why it's dangerous and that's why it's like you always have to investigate and decide for yourself if you even think a certain filmmaker is any good. Yeah. Let alone a master. Right. But a lot of times, like, sadly, like you said, they may not be frauds. Oh, sure, sure, sure. But they may not be frauds but they might but they might not be well if you can make a movie that consistently makes a lot of money that's very hard to do they're not i don't consider those people frauds right actually i think uh these days my suspicion is that it's easy

it's easier to fraudulently sneak into the important, serious art world, world of things than it is the commercial world of things, because the commercial world of things, it either works or it doesn't. It makes money or it doesn't. There's a million shades of gray in the art world of things. Right. Exactly.

In the independent cinema and that kind of stuff. Yeah. There can be some real, some garbage. Yeah. Some garbage that like still has a place and still some, like you're blowing smoke up that person's ass. Right, right.

But you have like, I've decided somehow or another that you're the only guy I know that's like making these art movies in a way that is poetic and requires a sort of openness to allowing the thing to not give you what you want yeah yeah and and and reckon with it i'm asking a lot of the audience i'm asking them to participate in that with me yeah which is uh it's a big ask and all you know as i've gotten older

it's an even bigger i'm realizing what a big ask it is because I, uh, I don't get to the movies as often as I used to, you know, it's, uh, it's a bigger deal for me to go to make the time to go to a movie theater and see a movie. And so, uh, I think when I was younger, I took it for granted and I'm, I made some, uh, lazy choices because I, I didn't, uh, feel the responsibility that I feel now towards the audience. Well, okay. So now as you're shifting, as you went to film school and then you decided to actually take advantage through your compulsion and desire to figure out some things about the

medium and about yourself, and you've had all this experience that you've done on your own terms completely, what crossroads are you at? I mean, how do you not end up becoming a college professor? That's been an easy choice not to make because I wouldn't be able to make enough stuff if I was a college professor. But you know what I'm saying, though, right? Because you have an integrity that there's some part of you. you know i know your cohorts i know duplass yeah i know i you know i know of lynn shelton yeah i know of people that that come out of a real sort of like

scrapper indie yeah ideal but but you have a commitment to a vision it seemed that some of them were sort of like well i'm going to find my place in this machine here yeah like you're in chicago yeah you don't see you just bought a house in chicago you're not like i'm coming to la tomorrow yeah so what's the plan joe the plan is uh to have as much ownership as possible in my own work so that when that work does well, I benefit from it. And the plan is to just always work with really talented, good people. And I think that the plan doesn't have to be a lot more complicated than that because it's always going to make me wake up in the morning excited to go do it. If I'm around people who are stimulating, who are challenging me, but who are good people. I just can't deal with a ton of bullshit. And I am really bad creatively when I'm around people who

are insecure or who are mean, all those sort of things. i'm like sort of sniffing around and just like i have my antenna up and i'm just looking for people like i found anna kendrick right she's somebody who i hope to make 70 movies with like we get it together and like the thing that we can do we can do in the most economical efficient way possible because there's no wasted time there's no bullshit there's no like that i have to like send the offer in the certain way and take her out to dinner and then like send you know send roses on the first day of shooting and whatever she's like let's go make a good movie and that's all we have to worry about right now i'm not gonna like make a thing of it yeah and and jake johnson is like that olivia wilde's like

that ron livingston's like that like those people that I worked with on Drinking Buddies, I promise you, you will see them a lot throughout the rest of my career. And within the context of that, if the doors to doing like bigger movies, like a studio movie or something, for instance, opens, my guess is it will open in the context of doing a studio movie with Anna or doing a studio movie with Olivia or doing a studio movie with Jake.

And then we'll go do our thing with different resources, with a bigger crew, with whatever. But in my heart, I'll still be going to work with Anna. But here's my question. Yeah. Is that then all of a sudden the collaboration becomes much broader and much bigger. I've never done it. Yeah.

Right. I assume, but... Then you're going to have to deal with the horrible menace of production value. Sure, sure. And set deck. Yeah. And, you know, construction.

Yeah. Hmm. Totally. But, I mean, this could be we should like you know we'll follow up in like two years and see if i've done a studio movie and if i like i'm back in chicago like licking my wounds or something but um i love a lot of big budget movies truly love them like the conjuring right this horror movie that i'm talking about i haven't made a movie that's as good as that one that i love you know that's like sort of like

my movies i love i'm so proud of them and they're doing a thing that the conjuring's not doing but the conjuring's doing a thing that's really cool and fun yeah and it's very very exciting for me to maybe also do that thing yeah right and the other thing that's exciting to me is I don't know that I'm good at that thing, but it would be fun to get good at that thing just because it's another skill set to tuck in your toolbox. Well, I think the thing you have going for you is a confidence in, at the very least, editing and, at the very very least getting amazing performances out of people and also the capacity to collaborate yeah for sure i mean the way that i look at the work that i've done with actors is like not getting amazing performances out of people it's allowing people to give amazing performances like they've got the stuff right and like as long like i'm good at getting out of the way yeah and letting the stuff

just shine through a lot of times you're acting yeah that's right you're good at that well thanks man i like doing it it's fun for me um i hope you can keep this disposition i want to i want to talk to you in two years just to see if like if anything is sort of like what could happen what do you think could happen what do i think could happen, I could die a little bit inside? Or what do you mean? Well, I mean, I think that's sort of a... That's a trope. I think what happens is...

You have to negotiate. Yeah. And you have to negotiate vision sometimes. Yeah. Even if it's not because of power reasons. It might be the right thing to do. And I think having never had an experience with that. Yeah.

I don't know if you die inside, but I think it's a painful process. Yeah. Can you be more specific? process. Yeah. Can you be more specific? It sounds like what you're saying is it's a painful process to acknowledge that somebody else might be right or more right than you are. Yeah. And also that you might have to not do it exactly the way that you wanted to do it. Yes. Totally. And that there are actually people that might know better. Totally. This sounds very exciting. This kind of pain sounds very exciting to me though, actually.

Like, if I can do that with smart people who actually are right, it sounds most painful if they're wrong. And they like, you have to compromise and then it doesn't work. Right. That sounds very painful to me, where it's like, fuck, I trusted you and you fucked me. And now the movie's bad because I listened to you. Or because you had the power to just do it. Well, that happens. See, that's the other part of it it is that when there's larger stakes and there's more power involved, then you're going to be the guy that gets thrown under the bus. So, yeah, it all gets tricky.

But I think what you've done for yourself ultimately and your real passion is to make films the way you want to make them and to experience the organic connection of the process and the event itself outside of the movie, you know, has as much significance to you. So like the weird thing about that is, is that, you know, if you get beat up a little bit, you could just go back and make your movies. That's how I feel about it. That's why I'm even entertaining the idea. Believe me, like I know whatever's going on for me now that at the end of the day, I can come do this. Yeah.

Right. It's great. In my garage. I'll talk to you. Tell me about it, man. But you know, it's very nice to have that.

Yeah. You just don't want to get heartbroken. That's a, I think that, you know, and there's no way to avoid it, but yeah, I think that if you have a good head on your shoulders and you have things in

perspective, which you seem to have, you know, you can, you know, yeah, man, you can kind of relegate the, the risk, you know you can you know yeah man you can kind of relegate the the risk you know

it's not like anyone's gonna ask you to direct a superhero that's right that's right not yet yeah not yet nor do i want to so so like everything right now is pretty cool like the stuff that i'm reading that's written by other people that could be bigger movies isn't superhero stuff. It's mostly like the smartest, cool stuff. I mean, George Clooney has consistently made really good, smart movies. I mean, he doesn't seem to fuck around and just like do dumb shit. They're almost all good.

Yeah, and he seems like a pretty good guy. You can talk to Anna about him. He seems like a great guy. Yeah, she had a really good experience working with him. Yeah, man. Definitely. Yeah, so did Danny McBride, you know, like these guys. Yeah.

So you come out here to L.A., and why would you come to L.A.? What's happening? Well, I come to L.A. because I have business out here now. You know, like I work – I come out here to work. I actually live in Chicago to like live. You're in the movie business. I am in the movie business. I actually am like – I make a living from my movies.

And so I come out here to work. How do you make a living from your movies? Well, it's come in various channels. My earlier movies are starting to bring me some money now because they are getting distribution in other countries. You know, some of them are seven and eight years old but uh if the Sundance channel you know like had success with drinking buddies then they're like oh this guy has other movies we've never aired on the Sundance channel let's license these for a small amount of money so that

stuff is like from the old stuff's kind of starting to trickle in and then I am developing a movie for Fox Searchlight so I got paid money write that, which is part of how I'm living right now. And then I make money when I sell my movies. Is that a movie on your terms for Fox Searchlight? Definitely. I pitched them an idea and they liked it. Yeah. And do you hang out with the other young guns like the Duplass Boys?

I see them sometimes. They're taking over Hollywood. They definitely I mean it's amazing it's it's uh they uh without knowing it have been incredibly helpful to me how so because uh my stuff doesn't seem as crazy in a world where the Duplass brothers are really successful. And so they paved a way in the industry during the years where I was so resistant to the industry. They were out here making these kinds of movies in the studio system. And now the studio system has context for these kinds of movies. And so, you know, when a movie like Drinking Buddies got seen by more people than we expected, it was a lot easier for me to come out here

and say, this is the next thing I want to make and to have agents want their actors to do it, to have distributors want to buy it and release it. And, you know, to a certain extent, Lena Dunham's done that too. Oh, that's right. She was in Happy Christmas. She acted in Happy Christmas.

And she and the Duplass brothers, I would say, have sort of been the biggest advocates for stuff outside the system. Even though they're known now for making stuff within the system, they've given context for the weirder stuff. And so in a world where Girls is on TV and where Jeff, who lives at home, opens in regular movie theaters, my stuff seems a little less weird. And that's oddly a big difference in the last couple of years. It's interesting because it's almost a return to, for years, even when you talk about David O. Russell or where Scorsese came from, that this sort of highbrow intellectual discussion around anything, film-wise or art-wise,

became very insulated and kind of old guardish yeah and i think that with people like you and when people like lana who i've talked to and duplass when he feels like talking about that you know and about you know you know what his place is and why the films he made were important that it's sort of coming back like there there's a little more movement towards you know an actual kind of intellectual discussion about art yeah and about what film is capable of yeah and and also i think that the business is broken open enough that really everybody can find their niche and and and in a way especially if you've got talent and you've got friends and you're part of a momentum you know that you know that you know, that justifies you, you know? Yeah.

And also we, even in my life, I've seen it go through waves and, you know, we happen to be in a wave right now where the studio system is, let's see, as risk averse as I've ever seen it in my life. Right? Like, they're only making movies that make complete sense and are almost guaranteed to succeed. Internationally. Yeah, for sure. It's a global industry now.

Which means the bar is low. The bar is low, but the bar is complicated. It's like a low bar that has a lot of twists and turns in it, and they know how to navigate that geniusly but like i for instance they're making amusement park right they're making amusement park rides i mean on the bigger scale they certainly are definitely and as somebody who likes to go to amusement parks i also like to go to their amusement park rides as often as i like to go to indie films you know it's like it's actually really fun for me to put on the 3D glasses and like

drink a large sugary drink and like fucking kick back for two hours. I dig it. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, there's that thing happening. And I think that what I've noticed happening is that that pool of actors that can do those kinds of movies is pretty small. Yeah. That pool of actors that can do those kinds of movies is pretty small.

Yeah. And unless you get absorbed up into it, you're kind of left these days, if you're a really talented actor, with then sort of slim pickings on the other kind of stuff that they're making. And what that has done for me is meant that a lot of really, really talented people have been willing to come out and do a small weird movie. It's great. It's great. Yeah. It makes me very excited. It makes me feel like we're almost about to be in a really cool period of movies. Yeah.

Where suddenly it's like, oh, holy shit. There was 15 great movies that came out this year. Yes. With great performances, like classic, amazing performances. Yeah. And it's because those people didn't get cast in the comic book movies that came out this year. Yes. With great performances, like classic, amazing performances. Yeah. And it's because those people didn't get cast in the comic book movies that year. And they have enough money that they don't need to go to a job. And they want to work.

And so they went and did something cool. Yeah. They want to do, they want to act. Yeah. Are you ever going to do like a large ensemble piece, like an Altman movie? My new one is like that. Yeah. Yeah.

This movie, Digging for Fire fire that i'm finishing right now it's there are new characters showing up all the way through the last couple minutes of the movie like just uh it's a sprawling sort of la movie with a lot of you shot it here a lot of roles i did shoot it here and we shot it on 35 millimeter really shot on film again yeah who funded that uh i did partially and then this group of chicago investors that i work with and then jake johnson the lead actor wow yeah well well shit man i wish you all the luck in the world thank you i'll take it and uh and i you know i gotta catch up with more of your movies but i think we did all right with the knowledge i had i'm surprised you've seen as

many as you've seen really yeah no i love No, I love them. Thanks, man. Like I'm, I'm telling people about them. That's really cool. That's nice. I like them too. But you know, it's like, uh, getting older, I'm just like more every day. It's more and more clear why other people don't. I'm like, I get why it's not, or it's not what you're looking for. Yeah. But I used to, when I was young, I was so frustrated. Why don't you like it, man? It's like, I'm trying these things. How can you not engage now that I'm a little older, I'm like, some days you're in the mood for it. Some days you just want something easy. Like, I get it. That's right.

And I've had to feel that way about my standup and stuff. It's like, I can't, I never set out to make everybody happy. That's right. Like, you can't do it. Totally. But if enough people are into it, it's sort of like, well, then I'm going to keep doing it. Because you're up against the meaning thing and the fear of dying thing yeah that there's some part of you that's always going to think like well i have to make the thing that impacts the world yeah you know

and who's going to do that i'm not beyonce awful lot of pressure it's an awful lot of pressure but it's awful a lot of compromise in a way right you know what i mean it's like because once you do that then you're sort of like boy i, I hope he does it again. Yeah. And then you're like, I got to do it again. Yeah. And then like, if you don't do it again, you're like, you failed the world.

Yeah. Like they didn't come see you in Sweden. Yeah. But you probably do all right in Sweden. Thanks for talking to me, man. Yeah. Great guy, right? I love that guy. and I love his movies.

That was Joe Swanberg. Hope you dug that. I'm coming to you, if you forgot, from a hotel room in Rochester, New York. And I'm fine. I'm fine. I've got a crate of mandarin oranges, and I'm eating them thinking that they will change something. Go to WTFpod.com for all your WTFpod needs. Pick up the app.

Get on the mailing list. Leave a comment if you want. We're going to have some new merch coming. Marination tour dates are up at WTFpod.com. Everything's looking good. I'm excited to get out there. These warm-up shows are going well. What else can I tell you?

Yeah, so the Trippany House shows in Los Angeles at the Steve Allen Theater on March 31st. That's a Tuesday. And April 6th, that's a Monday, if you want to get in on that. What else? I hope I get better soon. I like being, there's something about being sick that's relaxing. And there's something I enjoy about hearing my voice like this. But my brain is not as good as it should be when it's sick.

I mean, it's always a little sick, but not like sick from congestion. I hope you feel good. Okay? All right. Boomer lives! it's a night for the whole family be a part of kids night when the toronto rock take on the colorado mammoth at a special 5 p.m start time on saturday march 9th at first ontario center in hamilton the first 5 000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to

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