WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 670 - Todd Haynes / Sarah Silverman

Episode Date: January 7, 2016

Todd Haynes has been messing with Marc’s mind for decades. Well, his films have. The writer-director sits down in the garage to go over it all, from his Barbie doll biopic about Karen Carpenter to his identity-bending Bob Dylan film to his latest love story, Carol. Plus, Marc gives Sarah Silverman a call to congratulate her on her SAG Award nomination. 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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all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters mark maron this is wtf welcome to the show thanks for listening very excited about this show today todd haynes uh the director of many great movies currently the director of many great movies, currently the director of Carol, but some of you may know his filmography. He got very famous in some circles with Superstar, the Karen Carpenter story, which was actually very difficult to find for years. For years, it was hard to find, still hard to find for very specific reasons that I'll talk to him about. But if you were like me, you somehow managed to procure a VHS of it and cherish it for years. Also, man, holy shit. Can I just thank all of you folks for watching Marin on Netflix? All three seasons are there, but the feedback that we're getting for season three is amazing. I didn't get a lot of feedback when it ran initially on IFC.

I don't know why. It doesn't matter. But once it goes on Netflix, it's just a full-on tidal wave of really good feedback. And it's exciting because sometimes you think you work in a vacuum and it's just great that you're watching it that you're digging it and uh it gives me a lot of good momentum sort of happy momentum leading into the new season we just finished tabling uh the last of 12 scripts i have to uh finish writing finale. And the stories are great. It's going to be a completely different show this season, really. Those of you who know how season three left off know that Mark needs to,

the character of Mark, the character of Marin, needs a little help. So we're going to get him that. So don't worry. Don't freak out about what happened at the end of season three there. But again, thanks for watching it. I appreciate the feedback. Oh, what I want to do also is clear up something. It seems that there are many new listeners to the show.

And some of you may be baffled by my closing scream, which is Boomer Lives. I got a couple of emails recently from people who were like, I don't know. What is that story? Well, you can listen to all the episodes or I can explain it to you. Years ago, I had a cat called Boomer who was an outdoor cat, lived in the back, and I had him a long time. And I love that guy. And right around the first or second day of shooting my first season of Marin, Boomer disappeared and did not return. And I have no real idea what happened to him. I can speculate

for better or for worse. But instead of doing that, I honor him by screaming Boomer lives at the end. It's become sort of a mythology, a mythological figure. I feel that Boomer watches over me at times. I named my production company Boomer Lives Productions. So that's that story. That's the story of Boomer. Now, look, you know sometimes I talk to my comedian friends, you know, for short phone conversations. And I wanted to talk to Sarah Silverman.

Sarah Silverman is in a film that you can watch called I Smile Back. OK, it's a serious role. It's a heavy role. It's a dark role. And it was it was fucking deep, folks. It's available on iTunes and video on demand and the thing is is that sarah is nominated for a screen actors guild award for best female lead performance and i wanted to call her up and talk to her about the experience of doing i'd never seen her in a

serious role i don't know i i'm not sure maybe she did one other one i'm not sure but this one is it's heavy, man. And it's weird when you're a comic. Like, I would never consider myself an actor per se. Like, I can show up, but I got to bring all of me with me. I don't have a lot of craft in place. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it works better than others.

Usually I do okay. But this performance that Sarah did was like really emotional and pretty disturbing. And I know for me, when you have to show up emotionally for a role and you don't have a lot of acting craft like me as a comic and you've got to get emotional, you know, it's really you getting emotional. You don't have any real distance. There's no sort of like snapping out of it. I'm going to talk to her a little bit about that and about what her plans are in terms of doing these type of roles. But let's talk to her now. I'm going to call Sarah Silverman. Hello? Sarah, can you hear me? I've never used my home phone. Very exciting. I'm glad to be part of this exciting

moment with you you didn't even know you had a home phone how could you not know i just have never used it and i i did know i i've noticed i have like a little phone in my kitchen but it's the ringer doesn't isn't on and i've never it. And so I just was like, I guess this phone works. And I looked up my own number on my cell phone, and it was listed. All right. Well, look, you know, I love you, first of all. And I you. And second of all, I watched your movie because I wanted to talk to you about it.

And it's usually really the movie I smile back. All right. So it's usually like I'll watch movies with people I know, like, you know, our friend Louie or whoever, Todd. And sometimes I don't know if you have this experience where you see, you know, these guys you've known all your life and you see them trying to do a part. And you're like, oh, that's that's just Todd doing a part. I get lost in Todd Barry's work are you talking did you say Todd well no I do too I mean he's great he's great but we also know each other as as people you know but like I'm watching you and and I'm like holy fuck this is serious you took some like serious fucking emotional risks and you know it was it was

disturbing and i felt uh i had to you know check myself to realize that you know you were okay it's sarah and this was a movie i mean did you feel that when you were doing this movie where you know because he held the camera on you a lot just kind of emoting yeah i i i you know what I've found is almost everything I've rolled my eyes at that actors say in interviews has become true for me. You know, like, I couldn't shake it. You know, it felt like a low-grade flu for about three weeks after we finished shooting. It was, you know, you know what it is, is I'm not experienced enough in this kind of acting to be able to just access my emotions and then put them back. And I don't have easy access to my emotions. And Lainey is, see, I'm saying my character's name like it's another person.

See, I'm saying my character's name like it's another person. Right. Yeah. Lainey is, she feels so much, and then she covers it expertly. So I had to get it all out from their tightly compacted compartments inside me, and then I couldn't just put them back easily. Like, you always hear, like, Tom Hanks can be the life of the party on the set. And then they call action and he's like Captain Phillips. Right, right.

I don't have those skills yet, you know, so I, I just kind of sat with them on my lap. It wasn't, you know, I had convinced myself it would still be fun because even though it's bleak, because, you know, we'll have inside jokes and in between shooting, it will be fun. But I'm so glad I didn't know ahead of time that that would not be the case. It wasn't that there was not a lot of fun on the set? Well, everyone was wonderful. I mean, it was something that was other than fun that was worthwhile.

It was exhilarating, but I'm a fun slut. fun that was worthwhile or exhilarating, but I just, I'm a fun slut. Like, if I knew it wouldn't be fun ahead of time, I would have weaseled out of it 100%. Well, some part of you... Because, you know me, I like, you know, lunch with friends and belly laughs every day. And I'm terrified of the thought that that isn't going to happen, you know, for a month. Well, something must have been like challenging because like, you know, I know I'm not a great actor, but I do try when I do my show to access feelings, you know, and I've done some fairly disturbing things.

So whether we're good actors or not, and I think you were great. I think you're a beautiful actor. Oh, you're so sweet. And I thought you were beautiful in this movie. But like for you to access those kind of emotions, like there are several points in this movie, but like for you to access those kinds of emotions, like there are several points in this movie, which is it's bleak, but there, there's something very real about it. Like, you know, it's a story about that. You never, you don't ever really see on screen in this way where I think you're totally a sympathetic character sort of lost in a pretty hopeless, um, um, you know, the grip of, uh, of addiction and, and grip of addiction and personal problems and playing that up against, you know, a nice family.

It must have just been sort of heartbreaking. But I assume outside of having a good time on set, you must have been like, you know, you challenged yourself to go to those places. And it is heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking. But also, she doesn't know she's in a drama right really you know i mean she's just living her life but her life is is pretty heartbreaking and it was a lot of feelings you know i i found myself acting out on set you know like i'd be like how is there no coffee? It's free. It's water and coffee.

And I'd be like, who is this person? And I realized I was like a toddler who didn't know what to do with her feelings. Well, you play your cards pretty close to your chest feelings-wise. You're always pretty chipper and fun to be around. And I've never seen you lose your shit or, or, or cry. It's not like me. So how did this, how did this happen? I know, like I saw Brian Kopelman is in it now is his wife wrote this thing. Yeah, she wrote it. It was a novel and, uh, she adapted it into a screenplay with her writing partner, Paige Dillon. Her name is Amy Koppelman.

And, um, and yeah, she, she heard me on Stern and, um, just decided that it was me. Like I just, it was just, I got real lucky. It's weird because how did, I mean, you don't, you know, obviously we are among, uh, our peers of, uh, who are childless and you really had to, to step up and, and behave like a mother, but I guess you've got so many nieces and nephews that you have that instinct in you. Yeah, and I'm 45, and I don't have kids, and when you're a woman, I'm finding out, it's like, I mean mean you get so much pressure i i got two emails within the span of a week two weeks ago from from people in my life who i don't necessarily know really well yeah

who just out of nowhere just said you should really have kids and i've been thinking about you and it's such an odd thing to put on someone and it's a sadness for me because I love kids. I ache for kids, but I don't, but I love my life more. I just, I've, you can't have it all. You really can't unless you're like a fun dad married to a woman who wants to have kids and understands you're on the road and then you come home and everyone's like, Dad, and you can give your best self. I could be a fun dad. I feel totally prepared for that, but I don't have the lifestyle that is conducive to having

kids the way I would want to have kids. And I've just made that choice, but it doesn'm happy that that choice is like easy i have no regrets or no sadnesses about it right and so in a way it was kind of perfect because i have this sadness and this desperation around children that i feel like worked well for this part because she has so much anxiety about loving her kids and not wanting to fuck them up and you know um no and and living in anxiety where she's constantly saying i'm gonna fuck them up i'm gonna ruin them i'm gonna abandon them i'm gonna there's no room for anything else you know and it's energy and right kids feel that oh no it's it's real. It's science. It's matter.

Yeah, yeah. Just like crystals and shit. Yeah, it's like the, it's also the struggle, I think, of a self-centered parent. Totally. And like, you know, everything you're saying to me

about the reasons you have for not wanting kids, which are reasonable, is primarily because, like you said, you're fundamentally like your life the way it is. So it's smart.

I don't have kids either because I'm a selfish, anxiety-ridden mess. Yeah, but, yeah, and is that selfish because we're not having the kids? No, no, no, no. No, I think, I think, I think. There are plenty of people like us that do. I can't, it blows my mind how easily people make the decision to have kids. It's, I'm totally paralyzed by it yeah me too me too but i'm not saying that we're selfish for not having kids i'm saying that that we identify our selfishness and that we just you know we don't want to have we don't

necessarily have the emotional time or the desire completely to make that choice with our life but a lot of people who are like that uh still have the kids uh like my parents for instance but you're glad that they did i'm glad that they did thank you but i thought that that element of your personality of of being very hard on yourself you know because you don't want to be you don't want to fuck the kids up and this character is fundamentally selfish because she's consumed with her own problems. Well, that's exactly right. There's no room for anything else. She's so, you know, people, you know, and it's funny because there have been parallels to this part with like stuff I've thought about in comedy.

And of course, it's so totally different than comedy. But, you know, just the idea that people think that this self-hatred is modesty, and it's the opposite. It's total self-obsession. There's no room for anything else. So she might be consumed with, I'm going to ruin my kids. I'm going to what if, what if, what if, like that living in that anxiety state. It is totally self-consumption oh yeah no no no you're itself you're uh you're yeah completely self-consumed because you're not really like the character and maybe like is not necessarily capable of nurturing like all those parts where you're just looking at your kids looking at your daughter and you feel this like distance there but you're completely panicked but you're sort

of unable to reach out properly i mean jesus christ sarah that scene where you but you're completely panicked but you're sort of unable to reach out properly i mean jesus christ sarah that scene where you know you're fucked up and you go into your daughter's bedroom that scene with that teddy bear was crazy yeah i mean like i in like i've been on sets before was that one of those situations where the director's like all right can we clear the set please can we well there's nothing really to clear because the the crew was so bare bones anyway every day you know we you know it's a four hundred thousand dollar movie so there wasn't um right there was excess people on the set at any given time but were they saying did he say things like you know you know give her space do you need space to sort of figure out and

get into this it's really kind of intense when you you're put in a position to have those kind of emotions you know on camera and you're sort of like all right uh action and it's like it's really fucking heavy was it did you feel that when you were doing some of this stuff yeah i just um i think i just got to a place where i was so inside that head and it just, everything felt, you know, like you'd think that would be like the hardest like scene or something, but it wasn't because it was so exhilarating and challenging and there was so much energy behind it that, you know, it was kind of, I mean, fun isn't the word, but it was, you know it was kind of yeah i mean fun isn't the word but it was you know like exhilarating yeah because you were in it you were in it you were just so you were totally

immersed in it yeah i was immersed in it yeah and and it is true it was like i i'm not i don't know my 10 000 hours in of that kind of stuff to snap out of it or to access it easy and then put it back so it was, it was pretty intense. But you were willing, you were willing to go there and you, you know, and you showed up for it emotionally. It's like, you know, I don't know how real, uh, you know, like people with 10,000 hours of acting or whatever, or, or years of training. I do know something about comics though,

is we know how to be fucking present. Yeah. And, you know, when necessary, we can really, you know, be present. And you just sort of, like, you pulled it off. And the supporting cast was great, too. Josh Charles was great. The kids were great. Oh, my God.

So delicious. Right? They were so good. Yeah. And, like, at the end, like, I emailed you after I saw it. Like, I just couldn't, like, at the end of it, you know, I watched it on New Year's Eve and we had to watch something else after because we didn't want to fuck up our New Year's Eve with the intent. I can't believe you watched that New Year's Eve.

I guess there's no good time to watch it. I mean, go watch it. Well, I don't think there's no good time to watch it, but it is like a very human story, and it's a dark story. And it's not tragic in the sense that, you know, people die or anything, but it's tragic in its struggle. And like I wrote you in the email, like, I want to believe that she's going to be okay. You know, like, and that story comes from a place where, you know,

because I'm a recovery guy, I'm like, she can still, you know, pull it together, that woman. Everything's going to be all right for her. She just has a really, really low bottom. Yes. And we didn't see it yet. But, you know, that's the thing that I love about this movie is that, what interests me about it is that there isn't anyone who isn't

or hasn't been on one side of this depression or addiction in their life and so what you think of her whether you have empathy or total disdain or you fucking hate her guts or you your heart breaks for her it it has only everything to do with your life experience that you're walking into the theater or you you know, into your living room with, you know? Yeah, absolutely. So what happens now?

I'm very excited that you're like, you're nominated for a SAG award for, for best female actress. That's fucking amazing. Isn't that crazy? It's exciting. Do you want to do more of this type of acting though, Sarah?

Um, I don't think I, yes, yes. But I, I don't think I can, I don't think I, yes, yes. But I, I don't think I can, I don't, I don't know that I would ever want to do anything this bleak again, because it really, I'm so glad I did. No, I don't, yes, I, yeah, I mean, I definitely am interested in acting.

I always have been. I just got this chance, you know, and I got real lucky. But also it's funny, and you know this probably, well, unless you have better stamina than me, but when you shoot your show, you're probably not out doing sets at night. No, just on the weekend. Yeah, it's really hard because you've got to— I can't even believe you could do that. But I just—when I do acting stuff, it takes me away from stand-up.

And so I, then when I am done and I can go back to stand-up, I'm like three steps behind where I left off. And I, it's a kind of psychophysical thing where I can't, I'm not like, I don't have an hour to headline on the road and actually make a living, you know, because I'm, you know, I make no money in acting. No, no, that makes sense. I'm low rung, you know, which is fine. But to make a living, we're comics. And also, it's who I am, you know, and it's, you know, I'm envious of people like Todd or Tig, who, if they have only 15 minutes of new material, they can still go on the road because they can just do crowd work until they have, you know, they're brilliant without material.

And I don't, like, trust myself enough for that, you know. So I feel, I get so deficient in stand-up and it's kind of the one thing I can count on. So I, you feel kind of free folly but i do like i do you know i like doing all those things i like doing odd jobs i understand have you not done stand-up for a month no i can't remember terrifying it's horrible because you go back and you're like scared again and it's fucking ridiculous yeah it's it's just like the gym you know i mean oh yeah absolutely because it's your whole life exactly no but it was great and uh and I'm excited for you and I think that ultimately the the one of

the great things is that now that you've you know you're able to push yourself this far out emotionally that anything in between you know your comedy and this type of emotional work you know is is open game now like it seems like you could probably handle any role, you know, within, you know, the parameters of, of, of who you are, which is great.

That's beautiful. Oh, thank you. Inspiring. I'm glad I said something inspiring. You always do. Well, I love you and I,

and I, and I hope you win the thing and, and I hope I see you soon. Me too. I love you too. Thanks Sarah. Bye. That was my friend. Thanks, Sarah. Bye. That was my friend Sarah.

Sarah Silverman. Hope she wins. It's very exciting that she was nominated. Proud of her. I've known her since she was a kid. Really. I've known her since she went to college. And she started stand-up shortly after that.

I think she wasn't even 20 yet. So Todd Haynes. I was thrilled to't even 20 yet. So Todd Haynes. I was thrilled to get the opportunity to talk to Todd Haynes. I've been sort of mildly obsessed with his work for years. As I began to say at the beginning of the show, I had a VHS of Superstar, the Karen Carpenter story. I happened upon the film Poison, which actually is three films in one. In my recollection, when I was living in San Francisco in the early 90s, it was part of the Gay Film Festival. I think it was at the Castro.

I believe I went to the premiere and I couldn't wrap my brain around what Todd was trying to say with this film. He's a real artist, Todd. And I've always been sort of fascinated with him and fascinated with his movies, especially because they confounded me. I followed his his career. I went to see safe, safe. Are you kidding me? When that movie came out, I don't even know where I was. I must have been in New York.

I remember going to see it. I saw it with a friend of mine and I walked out just thinking like I have no fucking idea what that was about. But man, was that compelling it always struck me that todd haynes had a a vision like he made movies especially the movies he wrote and directed where uh he had the freedom to do what he wanted to do and and he had a true artistic vision and and the movie Safe never left me. Like there's very few movies that do that. There are some big movies that, you know,

obviously we all know that you can't get out of your head, but Safe is a difficult film and it's sort of cryptic, but it never left my mind. When I think about it, it still has an effect on me. Velvet Goldmine, that was another one about Bowie and Iggy Pop, fictionalized, but that movie was fucking great what a great period piece far from heaven was amazing his riff on a douglas cirque film i just i just have a lot of uh a lot of respect for the guy takes chances and he makes

real real art movies i'm not there are you kidding the bob dylan movie what i don't even know what that was but i was like holy shit I gotta reckon with this and now this new one Carol which he directed only but it it the the combination of this script and I guess this story which is based on a book and his sensibility his uh auteur's vision it was like a perfect match. I don't know if you've seen the film Carol, but to me it is one of the best love stories I've ever seen. Uh,

it was completely moving to me. I've watched it three times and I'm just astounded by, you know, what he was able to do with that camera and also, you know, what he got out of those actors and the story itself, just spectacular. So I was a little nervous here.

Um, you know what he got out of those actors and the story itself just spectacular so i was a little nervous here um you know talking to todd because uh i you know those of you who've been with me long enough know that um if i'm a real fan i get a little excited but i was i was i was really it's it's it's very exciting to talk to a director whose work that you are very familiar with. And we had a great conversation. And also, I might want to mention that his new movie, Carol, is in theaters now. It's nominated for five Golden Globe Awards, six Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Director for Todd. So this is my amazing conversation with Todd Haynes. Before we get into it, I just want to preface this with saying this is a little filmy. This is definitely a film fans conversation. All right. So here's

Todd Haynes and myself talking. 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. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th

at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5pm in Rock City at torontorock.com. Fucking. so i'm uh i'm excited to meet you i had no idea what to expect some of your movies have uh profoundly altered my brain no way no seriously that's pretty cool no they're like i have got questions okay i've got questions i hope i have Well, you might not, but I think a guy who makes movies like you should have a couple answers.

We'll see. I mean, just the early ones. You've got to have a couple answers. Sure. No, I think I have some. You do? We'll see what your questions are. Well, I don't talk to directors too often, but we're about two years apart in age, so I feel like we've had some of the same influences, and you probably went to college with some friends of mine.

Where'd you grow up, though? I grew up in L.A. You grew you grow up though? I grew up in LA. You grew up in Los Angeles. I grew up in LA. That's, I'm not, that's not disappointing. That's okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Like where? No, it's good. I grew up in the Valley. Really? Yeah. Were your parents in show business? Not my folks. No?

My grandfather worked at Warner Brothers. As what? Worked up from messenger boy. Yeah. To head of, to union organizer, to head of set construction in 1940. So he was a union set guy. He was a union set guy. At Warner.

At Warner's. And got, you know, I don't know how much the culture of L.A. and the people he was around sort of oriented his politics and a sort of progressive streak. Well, you didn't, guys. Yeah. Yeah. It definitely formed while he was there.

And he left when the blacklist culture just became too, you know. Out of disgust? Yeah. And his friends were getting blacklisted and he felt it. It wasn't him, but it was people he knew and people he admired. Within those departments? Every department? Well, I think he knew writers.

And there was a warm fraternity in that place. And I think he felt it. Right. There was a small community to movie making at that time. Yeah. And did you know him well? Yes. He was a huge part of my life.

Did you go to the set? Oh, no. I didn't know him well? Yes. He was a huge part of my life. Did you go to the set? Oh, no. I didn't know him then. Oh, after. That was the 30s, 40s. But he started his own business. He gave money for my film Poison. Did he?

I mean, he helped put me through college. I called him Bumpy. Uh-huh. And he was an amazing guy. And his wife, my grandmother. Bumpy. Mana. Mana and Bumpy. What kind of names are those? Baby names. Uh-huh. And he was an amazing guy. And his wife, my grandmother. Bumpy. Mana. Mana and Bumpy.

What kind of names are those? Baby names. Oh, okay. That stuck. That everybody followed. All the grandkids followed suit. Was that your mom's dad or your dad's dad? That was my mom's mom and dad.

Uh-huh. And they were pretty awesome people. And they were from here? They were from, they were, they were born, he was born in Portland, Oregon. Oh yeah? Moved when he was a kid. I live in Portland, Oregon now. Why, is there any family connection there?

No, no. It was like my sister sort of rediscovered Portland in the 90s. Uh-huh. Moved there. It was always like Wendy's town. Uh-huh. And I moved when I, after living in New York for 15 years. Had enough.

Yeah. It had changed a lot. It's where cultured people run at Portland. It is. Yeah, it had changed a lot. It's where cultured people run, that Portland. It is. Yeah, you know? It is. I hope they know what to do. Yeah, other people run to Florida.

Right? But I mean, they have amazing human resources in Portland, and I don't think Portland knows. Like, what do you mean? Well, just there's amazing people there. Oh, yeah. And people go there to be in Portland. Yeah. Not because there's industry there, not because there's really jobs there, not because there's a university there. Oh, yeah. And people go there to be in Portland. Yeah. Not because there's

industry there, not because there's really jobs there, not because there's a university there. Because it's Portland. Because it's Portland. I like it all right,

but I've never been sort of like, I got to live here. I mean, it's a little odd to me. It's structurally and the way it's laid out is a little peculiar.

It seems a little dark, which I usually like, but I never quite got a handle on it. I've had some good sandwiches. There's some good food there. There's some really good food there yeah no i i i left at a time that i needed to change right and maybe even more than i knew you know and i went away to right and get out of the city and i met a lot of really cool people who were just not fully

defining their lives by their careers and their ambitions and their right and their uh people who just live in life he kind of live in life artists writers you know and i and i uh and i think i was going through a little bit of a midlife crisis i started hanging out with people about 10 years younger than me that'll help and yeah either way and then they were at that point they were still unattached, and there was that sense of fluidity and movement. Right. And it reflected my life maybe a little more as a filmmaker than my peers in New York.

And then, of course, the music stopped. They all coupled up. Now they all have babies. Now they're all coupled up. Odd man out. Exactly. What are we going gonna do with todd yeah old geezer he's hanging around again wish you had some friends so all right well let's go through it

then so your interest in film started when well my interest in film i think started you know when i saw my first movie when i was when i old. When I saw... You can feel the impact? What was your first movie? My actual first movie? Yeah. Do you remember? Well, the one I remember, I remember going to Radio City

with my grandmother to see something called The Red Tent, which was... Like a Disney thing? No, no. It was this horrible ice survival movie.

Scary. Yeah, it was disturbing, but we went to like i was disturbing but we went to radio city i think we were in the city she goes i'd like to take you i don't think she'd put my research into it yeah but i feel like that was one of the first ones i really remember seeing uh you remember the show the radio city show before yeah i remember the rockettes a bit yeah but i just remember a guy that went to die in a hole of ice. Like, he had given up. Yikes.

I just remember. Yeah, he dug a hole in the ice, and they just left him. It was traumatizing. And then my other grandparents, when I was like eight or nine, accidentally took me to deliverance. So, like, my- What? Yeah, my early movie-going experience.

I don't think they knew what we were getting into. I had no- Look, I just watched that recently, and I did not remember it being as graphic as it was. You were a kid when you went to see Deliverance. Yes. Yeah. Mark, I think that explains a lot. Does it?

I think that might. I don't know. Well, what was yours? I hope it was better. No, mine was, I guess, past the code. It was Mary Poppins. That was three. 1964.

It had some kind of seismic effect on my brain. It provoked a kind of intense, almost obsessive creative reaction to the movie. Really? Where I had to reproduce it, draw of mary poppins constantly act out scenes from mary poppins i mean some some yeah psychosis really set in you loved it i loved it and it it touched some crazy nerve and i'm and i'm sure the the maternal figure had some part in that and uh you know the spectacle of that movie with its animation and its live action and, you know, the music.

Sure. How were things at home, though, generally? They were good. They were stable. Yeah, that's good. Parents fought. Yeah. But they sort of fought it out, you know?

They stayed together. Did they? They did. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's also that escape thing, because I watched your film today. I watched Carol, which is like, what a great love story well yeah that's why i sort of wanted to do it i mean it's a real love story in in a very deep way yeah and like there were points where i didn't even know why i was experiencing emotion right that's cool well yeah like well i'm not today i don't know if

you're getting it but i don't know what the fuck is wrong with me. I cry about everything. Now I just get weepy at shit. Did you lose a parent? No, no, I didn't lose anybody. I think I'm just watching my,

uh, my life go away. That's it. I mean, why mom, I lost my mom in 2010 and that produces surprising moments of sentimental, you know, affect like whoa i just walked past a flower patch and oh yeah you know yeah i'm crumbled yeah and mine usually has to do with

story yeah like uh i haven't had the the kind of like just flowers or any right proustian no not quite like that but like you know it turns in stories and moments and things that are loaded up. But we can get to Carol later. I did love it, though. I love the way it looked. It was tight. Thank you. Took a lot of work to make it look like that.

It did. We didn't have a lot of money and we didn't have a lot of time. I don't even know how you manage that. It's very hard to make that effective in the tone of that time. What was that, the 40s? Early 50s. Early 50s. Early 50s. But you're right, it wasn't the full-on 50s yet.

It really felt like the end of the 40s. 52 into 53. But Eisenhower had not yet taken office. He had been elected, and you see his inaugural address toward the end of the movie. Right. But it really wasn't that Eisenhower gloss. Because I think I've seen all of your movies except for the shorts.

Right. And I did see the Karen Carpenter story. You did? Yeah, I had it on videotape. I don't know where the hell I got it, but I had it. And I used to show people it. I'm like, you can't watch this anywhere else. I got a copy.

Awesome. But that felt like a feature, wasn't it? It was like 47 minutes, like a weirdly length, too long for a short, too short got a copy. Awesome. But that felt like a feature. Wasn't that like a feature? It was like 47 minutes. Like a weirdly length. Too long for a short. Too short for a feature. And I believe I saw the premiere of Poison at the Castro Theater. Oh my God. No way. At the Castro Theater. Did it premiere at the Castro Theater?

It probably premiered. During the Gay Film Fest? Because I was living in basically in San Francisco in 92. Yeah. Would that have been about right? That would be about right. That would be exactly right and like i've bit some pieces of that movie lodged in my head mostly the horror part there i know there was a black and white part black and white part yeah with the pus coming out of the guy it drips into his hot dog right yeah while he's eating yeah that that kind

of stuff like kind of stuck with me like a tronic kind of the red tent thing black black and white yeah that that went home carnival of souls safe i never recovered from because like i've never been so um like you know in in in raptured by a movie that i did not fucking understand i i it's a long movie i remember i remember like i went with people it's like two and a half hours or something no it's not that long but it probably feels that long okay so that was intentional well it has a pace all of its own and it has that whole final chapter

in this crazy new age camp right right I remember being like is that guy evil or is he good well because he's described as you know an amazing leader with aids right and that was a mcguffin that was a misleader on my part because i wanted everybody to think oh wow he's got to be a good guy he's got aids but he's still one of those guys it runs one of those guys and he basically is there to tell you that you're responsible for

your own illness the way people were telling a lot of people with hiv at the time like louise hay the new age guru you know right writer that you know your your immoral lifestyle well not even that but you if you learn how to love yourself you'll get get rid of your HIV. Oh, no. So it comes from a place of love, right? Right, but that was- But that entraps the sufferer. Right, and that's 11 years in. In an impossible place.

That's like 95, so people are really dying. Yeah, absolutely. But I remember I was with people and they were like, what? And I'm like, I don't know what, but it meant something. There's something to that thing.

It was very powerful, and I love her. She's amazing. And that was a really crazy role. That was like an impossible role for an actor to play. But we can talk about essentially what it was. The Velvet Goldmine I saw because I love all those guys. I think we have some similar heroes. Far From Heaven, I loved it, that look of that thing.

But we're going to go backwards. I'm not there. I saw, found it difficult. It was difficult. Okay. Are you a Dylan fan? Yeah, I'm a big Dylan fan. Yeah.

But once we got to the sort of weird Western town with Calexico and those guys, but Carol, okay, so let's start there. So it's taken from a short story or a novel. It's taken from Patricia Highsmith's second novel. She wrote Strangers on a Train first, her first outing the hitchcock that we sold that she sold to alfred hitchcock okay so this is an early 20s and i don't know what the date of strangers on train was but she wrote the price of salt which is what carol's based on in 50 was published in 52 how did you come to that subject matter this came to me this is the only film i've made so far that i didn't originate

and write and sort of struggle to get into you know into being you're hired as a director i was brought in i mean basically it's i wasn't high i mean i was the the the person who'd been shepherding at last is elizabeth carlson is a an English producer who I've known for years. She's an old, old, old friend. And Kate was attached to play Carol. And Sandy Powell was attached, the costume designer who I'd worked with. This was my third time with Sandy. So I'd heard about it. And I think they were moving from director to director or something.

And My Fall opened up in 2013. And they came to me with the project uh-huh and and who wrote the script phyllis nage this woman who'd been with the project the longest she'd probably been with carol for almost 15 years believe it or not because it sort of functions thematically as a companion piece too far from heaven in a way it it people have definitely talked about it in that context i mean to me they're really different in style and in tone you know definitely but yeah it deals with they both deal with homosexuality in the 1950s secret uh secretive lives or lives of people discovering things about themselves and horrible and desire kind of like pounding its way through societal norms and personal

repression. But in Far From Heaven, I really wanted to put you in this slightly strange position where you're aligned with the wife who basically has to stand by the family institution while the husband in secret is dealing with his feelings, his homosexuality. But we're aligned with the wife. We don't really have access to what he's doing and where he goes.

I mean, we get little glimpses of it. But we're really in her story, which is the more passive side of the story. But once established that the husband's leading this secret gay life, the emotional story is more with her, even if it's passive. Exactly. Because she's got to struggle with her feelings. She's got to struggle with her feelings and an outlet for them,

which she finds unexpectedly with the character that Dennis Haysbert plays, the gardener, the African-American gardener. Which is loaded on a couple levels. Totally. So you have sort of a race and gender and sexuality in this little crazy knot. And to frame it in an homage almost like perfectly to Douglas Sirk, what was it about those films that compelled you to use that as a framework, as a context? I saw, you know, I in cal i first encountered cirque

in college yeah and they're the most fascinating films i mean they're not easy films i think a lot of people encounter them first on late night tv watching written on the wind or right and your first reaction is like look at that color yeah yeah look that color and you and how sexist. And then there's something about those movies that feel like they cut through to some level of truth almost more powerfully than if they were done in a kind of documentary style. about the artificial worlds that they inhabit, and these impossible interiors that seem to be crowding in on the characters in the movies. They're like little dolls in dollhouses where the walls are slowly crushing these people. Dolls come up in this film. Dolls come up in this film.

Dolls have been sort of trailing me from the beginning. Dolls. What is it about dolls? I don't know. What did you study in college? I studied film, but I studied art. But I went to Brown, right? Yeah.

And when I went to Brown, there was this new program within the English department called semiotics. You know, it was like the post-Freudian, post--feminist post-structuralist sure there was a couple guys i knew who were studying uh film at bu and i've and i felt uh fascinated with it but i couldn't wrap my brain around it right so you were in it i was in it and i didn't know what it was either did anybody i just knew well yeah i think i think I started to understand exactly what it was about when I went to one of my first semiotics courses. And it was about sound theory in movies. And they were talking about the classic Hollywood text.

And they said, and this film ends with the obligatory heterosexual closure. And I went, whoa. And you were out and gay and well i was out and gay but i was like you just said the unsayable uh-huh you just said the thing that we're all supposed to think is natural is unspoken uh-huh is expected in movies in in resolutions of movies and stories and you just outed it, right? Yeah. And all of a sudden I was like, okay, I get what this is. It's talking about the language of our society

that we don't notice as constructed, as intentional. And confining. And confining. And putting everybody in their places, even when they don't even know it, even when we all salute it. Sure, it's the the big ever pervasive cock of patriarchy totally well that's exactly it that was a that was a big word yeah

patriarchy too uh-huh uh but uh no it was that to me was like you know i know i get this but i didn't really know what it was like a parallel language to things I think I was already starting to feel and think. But that's sort of like, you know, so that was almost like the hermeneutics of American cinema. Yes. So, okay. And all cultural production.

It was sort of saying like, look, there are all of these languages that keep people in place that conform us to a sort of set of terms. It's why I think the whole idea of identity as something that is somewhat of a straitjacket that most of us like to think of as something natural and innate that we just find and go, yeah, that's who I am. Without realizing it's a mindfuck. It's a mindfuck and it keeps you straight jacketed to something or other. But like, you know, some of us might not have the courage

in a way to sort of start, most people are constructing their sense of self. Sure, exactly, totally. If they were lucky, they were properly parented on some level and given the freedom to do that with a certain amount of autonomy, but with some parental guidance that enabled a safe place for them to do that.

But most people come from chaos and bullshit. Right. So the struggle for self becomes- A struggle for stability or some sense of normalcy, I guess. So if you start to fuck with the idea of identity being a construct, you can have a lot of people losing their mind every day. Except that. Except in movies. Except in movies.

But except or like, let's talk, you know, like in Glam Rock. Like all of a sudden, these teenage kids who are in a state of constant instability, uncertainty, have this image of a bisexual space alien up on stage. Bowie. Prancing around. Bowie. Or Iggy Pop. Sure. Who was also dealing with gender.

A little lower than space. A little lower than space. Way down at the bottom. But playing with notions of masochism, sadism. Without knowing it, I think, on Iggy's part. I think you captured that in Velvet Goldmine. The Bowie character was so aware of the drama

and the theatrics. Iggy is just like, is he a grunting animal? He was, but they knew that they were challenging the kind of dictum of the 60s. You know what I mean? The Velvet Underground and the Stooges and even the Doors.

There was something they were attacking about a kind of holistic idea of peace and love that they wanted to kind of undermine yeah the idea of sex and love was uh was again contextual and and limited and started to feel oppressive right and started to feel like you know my brother's back at home with his beetles and his stones and that's it and and that's and but but you know but all the young dudes right doing something else sure and so it felt like a new exactly right like a new era so when you were sitting in that semiotics class party you realizing you hear this they're saying the unspoken and you're like well i'm gonna just break that up like i'm good that's my challenge yeah or

at least like you know the thing is is that that what I dig is that those codes of expectation where we expect a movie to resolve a certain way, those aren't things to just throw away. They're things to actually use, you know? Right. Like a spectator is a participant and they have expectations and they want to enter a story and they want it to move a certain way and they want it to move back another way. Yeah. And they're anticipating how it moves. Like that's a powerful thing. So it's cool to like use.

I think it's exciting to see the powers of the imagination of the spectator and stoke them along, but then put up little boundaries or little obstacles. Well, that's sort of like it. So that's sort of a French new wave trick in a way that you had to sort of like, you know, kind of kick them in the head and make them realize that they're watching a movie. Yeah sort of like, you know, kind of kick them in the head and make them realize that they're watching a movie. Yeah. But still provide pleasure.

Sure, sure. And desire and excitement, you know, and still use the fact that they're investing themselves into it. But your last two big movies, Far From Heaven and Carol, well, I'm not there, is in the middle, but these two movies are standard structure. Right. Really.

I mean, I think, you know, it's like, I think there was a place where the idea that, you know, a schoolgirl could get a crush on her teacher. Okay. Was not completely outside of our. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think what's interesting is we always think, oh, things were way more repressive in the past and we've just moved forward, you know forward as a culture and everything's more permissive today.

But you forget that there were humans everywhere. There were humans and there were all kinds of weird accidental little places of potential space or little accidents. And Glamrock is a big accident. That was one reason why I wanted to explore it. But when you see Carol take Therese out to lunch, or the two women check into a motel together in 1953, you realize, oh, wow, if they were a heterosexual unmarried couple, it would be scandalous. But an older woman and a younger woman checking into a motel, no problem.

So there are these little places of movement. This novel has been distinguished by a lot of lesbian fiction that preceded it for having a non-punishing ending where the lesbians didn't end up one of them in a sanitarium or the other off the edge of a cliff. Is that why you like the project?

No, I didn't really know much about the novel before I came to it. It came to me kind of, I didn't know about The Price of salt and its sort of legacy. My lesbian friends were quick to remind me how, how uninformed I was. And did I, were they quick to remind you during the process of like,

don't fuck this up. Don't fuck this up, dude. You're the mascot. But, but, but, but no,

I, I wasn't interested in making a things are so much better now movie or a um i really loved how much it reminded me of being in the dark falling in love with somebody for the first time being young dad stuff at a movie theater or just in no life when i was a kid you know when i was when it consumes you when it consumes you and you are like absolutely sort of shut out of the world and you are reading every sign that they offer you every signal and it all your fate rests in what did that gesture mean what did that word mean what did that look mean where's it that word mean? What did that look mean? Where's it going? Do they like me?

And how, in a way, how pathological that is. Or how, you know, like what I love about Patricia Highsmith's, what she does in the novel is that all her other novels are about the criminal mind. And you're locked inside that festering mental state. And this is about the amorous mind. But it's a similarly festering state. For both of them. For both of them, but particularly the one

who's in the more powerless position. And I was like, so as you look at that script and as you visualize it as a film, obviously, you know, from looking at it, you said to yourself yourself somehow we have to capture this time uh perfectly yeah yes and and in a really different way than far from heaven

which was really all filtered through that kind of highly artificial and specific language that comes out of we used that old technicolor didn't you well we didn't we that was the one thing we wished we could have done have a real technical but you didn't you? Well, we didn't. That was the one thing we wished we could have done, have a real Technicolor camera. But you felt like you saturated pretty good. We did it all non-digitally. It was all done on film and we didn't even finish it on a DI the way people do now with a digital

intermediate. There was no... We did all like non-digital color timing and stuff like that. Optical. You wanted to have your hands on the cellular. And you still could then. Yeah. And there were people who could do all the work optically.

And do you think it made a difference? I think it did. I mean, it really did. And I learned so much about the process by doing it that way. It makes a difference in your choices. Because you don't have a million takes. No, exactly. All the choices are curtailed in a period.

Are informed by the period, by the details, by what you see in the frame because you only have so much money and you got to be able to afford it. Right. You know, that was true for Carol as well. What struck me about Carol though is it would have been fine in black and white. Yeah. It would have made sense in black and white as well. But you were so tight with the period and also with the sort of muted colors that outside of the drive, I think you would have lost a lot in black and white. But it felt like a period film. Well, it sort of desaturated the color photography process that we were looking at from the early 50s.

And now, was that just impulsive or did you see with your semiotic brain that that had meaning? When we opened the film on a subway grate, did you have a plan for that, or was that just impulsive? Well, subways and trains were sort of a theme in the film, the little toy train that Rooney... And that was in the script?

That was in the book and the script. It's described very intensely in the book from the source material. Does it have thematic meaning to you? Well, what's interesting is it's not just an example of Therese not following

the sort of conventional choices of wanting to... loving dolls and she likes boy toys more. She works at a department store. She works at a department store. The doll department. And she offers Carol that maybe your kid would at a department store. She works at a department store. The doll department. And she offers Carol that maybe your kid would like a toy train instead of a doll.

Your daughter. But the train is described by Highsmith as a kind of almost having a madness of captivity. Like it's like spinning around on its tracks and it's maybe going to fall off. And then, okay, so there you have the great. Beneath it, the madness of captivity. And that Therese is sort of in a state of potential captivity in this job. Almost paralysis. And paralysis.

And there's a character that is in the figures in the novel that we actually did shoot in the story, and we ended up cutting out to trim it down. Ruby Robichek, who's a sort of career shopwoman who's therese sort of sees as a potential future for where she a you know scary idea of where she might end up well you kind of got that feeling with the overbearing manager the manager that that red yeah it's like well that's where you end up exactly right yeah so what So thematically, what do you feel, as a poet who makes movies, was the kind of message of this movie? The message of the movie. I don't know if I have a single message. I think I wanted to explore the love story. I felt like I'd never really done that per se in a film before.

So that's what it was. And so it made me look at love stories and made me look at how point of view functions so interestingly in love stories where you're on the side of the weaker party. And, you know, like in war, it's the object that gets conquered. And in love, it's the subject that gets conquered. So we're on the side of the vulnerable in love of and there it kind of rocked a little bit there was there was and that changes yeah horse of the movie it's it starts where Therese is that person and by the end and a lot of it all those shots through windows right and you know through glass and reflections and all that stuff sort of makes you aware or i hoped it would of who's

looking at who who's on this side of the lens and who's on that side yeah and therese is an you know aspiring photojournalist herself and is learning how to frame the world her first subject becomes carol but by toward the end of the movie when things change it's carol who's in the cab seeing therese cross the street assuming her role in the world yeah looking more like carol than she ever has yeah it was beautiful movie and i there was one there was one scene there where they're in the car and you're shooting outside of therese's window and um and she takes a hit off her cigarette it's a sort of tense scene and she coughs. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I thought to myself, like, he must have been like,

we got to use the cough one because that was a real cough. It's like we had two takes. Oh, that was it? Something like that. All right. I mean, it was a tight one. Doesn't look like a tight one. All right, now let's move back to the Dylan movie

and, you know know you have some explaining to do i because like i i saw the conceit it seemed very high-minded it seemed very art film to me that you're gonna have a movie about dylan that he signed off on which of course he would uh i i can't like i've met jeff rosen once and i imagine like he took this like now bob's gonna love this right right did he is that what happened pretty much yeah because this is something alan ginsburg once said about dylan that he's like a collection of archetypes is that so that was a cluster of that was what jeff said but was that my comment when he heard my concept but was that your concept not based on that no but like what was your concept going in? My concept was just simply like, you know, I got back into Dylan at this sort of, you know, in the end of the 90s.

Right. Well, we missed the beginning, really. The 60s. Oh, yeah. I mean, I was into him in high school. Right. And he was a driving voice and kind of energy in my high school years. But I sort of lost, I wasn't paying as much attention to his music during the 80s.

And just for some reason, just felt need for dylan in my life i think yeah you got a symptomatic thing visions of joanna looms large you know like you always that's how for for guys our age you're always going back to dylan and you can go back to whatever period you want exactly exactly but like in my mind it's like all the answers are in Visions of Joanne. It's all in Visions of Joanne. It's all in that record. Yeah. I mean, really that,

and I have, you know, I have, you know, amazing cuts from so many periods of his life. Oh, and in the film, you know. The soundtrack I got to use. That fucking movie is a masterpiece. Yeah. You got all those people to fucking do.

To do covers, and then we got all the dylan stuff and we got some really rare and unreleased stuff like the song i'm not there so it comes from uh that's a good song and didn't really amazing didn't uh who's like you've covered that's a really cool haunting cover version so okay so the plan so i just started to read biographies about dylan for the first time when i was getting back into the music and it was around the time the bootleg series stuff was just starting to get released and that stuff kind of blew my mind i hadn't heard a lot of that material and it took me back to periods i loved but all the

biographies described the same unbelievable shape shifting guy during the 60s where literally guy during the 60s where literally you'd meet him in you know april of 64 right and he'd be channeling well it would be earlier when if it was woody guthrie right you know and he would be talking like guth woody guthrie and dressed like woody guthrie and rambling jack elliott yeah and rambling jack elliott and completely you know channeling that tradition sure and encompassing it and creating so much work. And then people would meet him literally three, four months later, and he'd be a different guy. He'd look different. He'd speak different.

He was doing different music. He'd rejected everything he'd done before. And this would keep defining all of those remarkable outputs of music throughout the 60s. Yeah. And culminating in really well-known moments sort of like explosions when he plugs in electric yeah yeah sure or when he finds jesus yeah in in the 70s um and not bad records amazing records i mean slow train coming is great fucking beautiful perfect record yeah incredible beautiful, beautiful love songs, really.

Gorgeous love songs. So I just thought, wow, the only way to really describe this guy is in multiple. It's to show literally the fact. And because each time a new guy would come into being, there would need to sort of be an assassination of the last one there was a way in which just to keep creating and keeping a little space where he could keep making stuff which i think is sort of how he survives um he has to sort of do away with the expectations the burdens the pressures of what he did before, which had been so influential

and attracted such a following each time. Yeah. So I think it was basically a practice for survival for an intensely creative individual. But it also meant that you could demarcate these different people in these different moments. And the 60s were so combustive and so concentrated. And Blanchett was the 60s. Blanchett was 66.

Right. Blanchett was the electric Dylan. And who was right before? Ben Whishaw was sort of the poet. Right, right. The kind of Art Rambeau-inspired Dylan who was sort of being interviewed. The Beanie-inspired Dylan. Yeah, exactly.

When he had fully given up the sort of folk, you know. And Ginsburg took hold of his brain. Yeah, exactly. But he was also starting to speak in code, David Cross. You did, right. He had Dave play to Ginsburg. That's right, yeah. Yeah, and he did a pretty amazing job.

Dave's great, yeah. So great. But yeah, he was starting to speak. His interviews from that time were so remarkable, and they were like extensions of the lyrics that were starting to depart from a sort of, you know, socially conscious, applicable, you know. Populism.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the people's music. Exactly. He's out there to disappoint Pete Se seger totally totally break the rules and you know when he was in his high folk moment he had the answers just like when he was in his christian moment he had the answers and when he was when he rejected that he said there are no answers. Oh, yeah. And that screwed with people's minds and expectations. So that was the spirit of it. But I also wanted it to be, I did want it to be fun. I don't know if it was so fun for you.

No, it was fun. But there was like, it became like, what can I compare it to? You're a great filmmaker. And you're an auteur and you're a visionary filmmaker and when you when you have uh when you trust somebody to be a great artist you have to reckon with what they're doing right so if it's not sitting with you right usually it's on me so like i gotta decode what what the intention is here it's like watching uh the the david o russell i heart huckabees like Like, you know, what is that? Right. It's a farce. It's difficult. It's bizarre.

It's like an Ionesco play. Yeah. You kind of can't look away. Right. You're compelled. Yeah. And I felt that, but like there were so many different styles that you were moving through because of the timeline you were doing it.

Right. So I did not like the movie. Right. I just like, there was a couple of questions like, why Richard Gere at some point? You know, like, and there was part of me that thought like, I like this Wild West Town thing with these hippies around. Why can't we have a little more of that? So there was part of me that was like, that seems like a cool place to hang out. Yeah.

And you kept moving. And I don't know. It's almost like it should have been a HBO miniseries with many parts or something like that. But you couldn't have visualized it like that, right? I mean, that movie is a movie to you. No, it really is a movie to me, and it needed to intercut. I mean, Harvey Weinstein didn't care for the Western part either. I liked it.

I dug it too, and I thought it was a necessary outgrowth. That was the Rolling Thunder part, right? It was the Rolling Thunder part, and it was the Woodstock. It was like, get me out of this urban crazy life that really is only leading to disaster. It was going to lead to a critical mass that was not going to be a healthy one for Dylan. And the motorcycle crash was sort of the symbolic border.

As an artist who made a decision to make this film from your own fucking mind and heart, was reckoning with these closures that dylan with these obstacles and and departures from self so this is an identity thing exactly it really was it was a multiplying of identity and a refusal of fixed identity with the artist who received probably more pressure to keep fulfilling expectations and from the record business from the record business from the audiences from an entire culture that he was inspiring you know and that obviously was inspiring him as well and you love him for that of course god did you ever

I never met him you have no idea what he thought of the film I he he finally talked about the movie in the in a rolling sun interview that came out after a good year after the film came out and he praised the film and he dug, of course he dug Kate. He was sort of blown away by Kate. He was like, I should have put Kate in Masked and Anonymous. What the hell was I doing in that movie? But there was a moment I have to say with Jeff Rosen, who really was our liaison through the whole process that's

Dylan's personal assistant his guy yeah his guy yeah and the the keeper of the gate the guard of the gate of the Dylan uh he's still got an office in New York over by uh yeah cram with all the stuff exactly as far as I know but there was a point where we had to extend the rights I was doing more work on the script and doing more research and I was like talking to Jeff about and I said Jeff you know I feel a burden man you're giving me the rights to Dylan's life and music for the first time ever to make and do a film I know he loves movies yeah and I feel I have a responsibility to get it right and he said and this is Dylan's manager this is Dylan's gatekeeper talking. And he said, Todd, don't worry about that shit. You just have to make your own weird story and your own interpretation of what this is about.

That's what you're doing. And I'm like, Jesus, what, who gets to do this? You know? I mean, I felt really,

it was almost like the, the freedom of artistic integrity that Dylan demands. I was being handed. Well, he'd made a couple of forays into weird old movies. He had. He absolutely had. Renato and Clara. Right. Eat the Document, which is a fantastic film, which

Dylan edited the first half hour of. It's the color companion piece to Don't Look Back that Scorsese used a lot of footage from in the direction home and but it's all that color stuff from from the electric gear yeah yeah and dylan cut it together in this crazy experimental documentary and robbie robertson i think finished the cut and so dylan's never been felt completely and he was also acted he was in uh he

played alias and peckinpah's Billy the Kid. Peckinpah and Billy the Kid. And that was a reference to the Western part. It's why it's Billy the Kid. And the tone, the color was like Peckinpah. It's like those hippie westerns

from the late 60s. I love those. You know, Butch Cassidy. Oh God, how great is that movie? When was the last time you watched that? Oh, it's so well done. It's so beautifully shot. I just love the pairing of those guys. I know. Right?

Oh, my God. You wanted him to win. But it had the tragic ending, which was also so romantic. It was. It was. The freeze frame. The freeze frame. The slow zoom out.

And it's just hearing the Spanish fire. Firing. And then the slow score, I think, fades up or something. Really awesome. Are you a big Peckinpah fan? Yeah. Some of that shit's great. Incredible.

Straw Dogs. But Altman. And The Wild Bunch. Exactly. Those two guys. Altman, too. Those two guys. Like that movie.

It's similar in a weird way to the freedom that you found in Safe. McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a difficult movie. It has a pace unto itself. It has a pace unto itself, and you're not really sure what it's about. It really turns out it's about corporate takeover. It is, exactly. It is. Exactly. It is.

And it's about the building of a town and the compromises that that brings upon the freedoms of this new frontier. And you get this weird, almost comic character just befuddled. Completely. Under the thumb of the Julie Christie character. But even the way the camera is always searching

through those long shots those long long lens shots really long where it's really blurry and everything's compressed and the camera's sort of locating the subject uh-huh through the haze you know whatever it is and if it's and you feel like the movie's doing that you know and if it's inside there's just chatter there's just like chatter everywhere all of the classic multiple altman dialogues going on at the same time what's it what like uh do you have a favorite director that moved you the the most oh god it's really hard there's no one director um you know i mean i it's a bad question it's a hard one i mean you know it's a bad question. It's a hard one. I mean, you know, it's a, and it always, you can answer it with some generalities, but like, I go back to Hitchcock.

Really? I just, he just blows me away. See, that's so wild because like, I know that's true. And I know that he has, you know what I mean? But like, I don't have patience for thrillers. And I know that he was so on top of it and the control that he executed and the ability to really be aware at all levels of story and cutting and sound and all that. But I have a hard time sitting through these movies. You know what they do, though?

They implicate you in the guilt of the subject. So you are all – it's always about the innocent guy who somehow just manages to become a Suspect right and who stumbles into a crime right unwittingly right and that is so amazing to me because that just puts a sense of Imminent guilt in the hands of every viewer and it's psychologically menacing completely, but we're all Susceptible to that because we all feel guilty. We all feel like criminals. I never thought about that.

Or a step away from that. And so that's where you're hooked. Right. So that's like, because I don't get hooked on it, it's like I have an aversion to existential terror. Maybe it touches a chord.

Of course it does. Isn't it what we're all trying to get away from? I don't want to immerse myself in it. It's what makes the wrong man so amazing because he is innocent, but he goes through the system and he never comes out the same. It completely destroys his marriage and his wife. It's what makes like- North by Northwest.

North by Northwest, which is a lighter, more sort of fun- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Strangers on a train. Strangers on a train where just two guys, and it has this strange sort of weirdly homosexual subtext. Two guys knocking feet on a train, and the Bruno character implicates the Guy Haynes character just simply by the accident of running into him, you know.

Right. And he's immediately susceptible. Now, all of a sudden, he has his hands are guilty. His hands have the ink of fingerprints on them. So you like that sort of narrative tension popular way and in the most, you know, socially critical way at the same time. And also like meticulous filmmaker. Absolutely.

Like so in control of it. Of course, he invented the language of the kind of movies he made, really. Yeah. You know, but they're corrupting. They are corrupting and popular at the same time. And I just find that to be so genius. Subversive?

Subversive is the word I'm looking for. Uh-huh. Yeah. Totally. All right. So now let's deal with safe. Let's deal with it, man. We got to deal with it.

Let's tackle this thing. Todd, we got to do it. Yeah. All right. Because it's hung with me. So you have this Julia Moore character who is a suburban housewife in sort of upper middle class trappings of that time 1995 yeah in my recollection yep and she's just feeling ill all the time yeah and and then

like i remember the allergy test right right yeah and then and and her she's just she's she's diagnosed with environmental illness and yet Is that something you made up? No, no. God, no. No. It's a real thing. That's what I heard about on the radio one day. I was like, housewives are becoming ill with something called 20th century disease or environmental illness.

It's the illness people get who become susceptible to chemicals in common household products. susceptible to chemicals in common house products, common household products, all the chemicals that we use in our, you know, outgassing carpets. And, you know, obviously that was such an open metaphor for the way we live. Right. It was almost like it just reminded me immediately of, of the, the sort of, uh, in the twenties and thirties where women were being diagnosed with certain types of psychological illnesses because hysteria, right. Yeah, I mean, it's what Freud's whole career began with, studying this whole idea of hysterical female subjects. Charcot in France and all those guys.

So there's a long history with women not fitting into social settings or having sort of unconscious rebellions. Right. Physical. Right. Physiological. So that was. Symptomatic rebellions against their.

That was in you when you were. Yeah. Yeah. And how we attribute that to something uniquely female. Uh-huh. You know? And how, yeah, I just thought that was too. But this was still the AIDS era.

I just thought that was too, but this was still the AIDS era. And I really was thinking a lot about, like a lot of us were, how people make sense of illness, how people sort of theorize illness. And you were in it. You were losing friends. I was losing friends left and right and seeing how patients suffering from HIV were drawn to these kind of new age answers. They had no answers. They had no answers. So it gave them some sense that they could control an uncontrollable situation. And I just found it so interesting that people, and there was a quote from a cancer

patient I remember stumbling across that said, we humans would rather accept culpability than chaos. across and said, we humans would rather accept culpability than chaos. And I thought that's so true that we'd rather blame ourselves. It's almost like little kids. This was about cancer patients? Yeah, it was about cancer patients, but it was about the whole idea of having no cure for your illness and going, yes, I made myself sick. Yes, I didn't love myself enough. Yes. yes i made myself sick yes i didn't love myself enough yes it's like the little kid whose parents are divorcing and they say mommy is it because of me and the parents like no what are you talking about of course not right something between your father and i well that well that's because you know uh kids have to think their parents are perfect so sure so when something goes wrong

Kids have to think their parents are perfect. Sure. So when something goes wrong, there's no one else to really blame. You have to blame yourself. Right. But how easy, how often we do turn to ourselves. Sure. And blame ourselves. And in a weird way, that's sort of the free market sensibility.

It's like the individual is responsible for their conditions. It's like the individual is responsible for their conditions. It makes conservatives feel like they're in control, but there's something blameful about it. Sure. And it doesn't look at social systems as culprits. Or democracy. Or democracy. As a solution.

Or capitalism or whatever. Right. It doesn't look at a social problem. It's all on the individual. Buck up. Be self-reliant. Right. Take responsibility for your illness. You made yourself sick.

We're going to destroy this place in the name of money. Exactly. So you're just going to have to, you know. And basically, if you're poor, you chose to be poor. If you're sick, you made yourself sick. It's a weird, and it's just so funny how often we accept that and accept those terms. I don't know. There's something about it that feels consistent, but I put it just in the context of the story about somebody getting sick with a mysterious

illness, a housewife who really doesn't have know person a strong sense of self or character to question yeah that world around her sort of middle class completely a complete product of her own environment and then she becomes the victim of that and of her own many of the the expectations that were manufactured for her exactly yeah. Yeah. Wow. Because like, it's like to me, like, you know, when you get to a certain point or a certain age and you start to realize

like, you know, there aren't answers and doctors don't fucking know. I know. And there's part of me that thinks like, how complicated can the body be? We go to space. I know.

Why can't you fucking figure it out? I know. But then how much we all love to say, oh, it all happened for a reason. You know, everything happens for a reason. Nope. Actually, most things probably happen for no good reason. It's fucking random. Yeah.

Who the hell knows? You know, plagues happen. You can track things. Right. Obviously, environmentally, there are issues. Right. Exactly. But sometimes, like, shit happens and a lot of people die and it's horrible and you do but the fact was

that there was the i think also the issue of of and i think you found it in her character more specifically uh in a way that that a more a broader public could understand that that they were hung out to dry women were were they they weren't a the gay population was not important right of course enough no no and women have never been important black lives matter we were dealing at a time where it was it was gay and lesbian lives and african-american lives and drug addict drug users who were were dispensable in this society. Yeah. And you saw the machinery and the political culture and the mainstream culture sort of pull away.

So that was the sort of, the turn was that community. Like, I just remember the movie, I haven't seen it in a long time, but the guru's house. Oh, yeah, right. Up on a hill. It was one remember the movie. I haven't seen it in a long time, but the guru's house. Oh, yeah, right. Up on a hill. It was one of the indicators. You remember so well. It's amazing. That was one of the indicators that, wait a minute, maybe this guy isn't all good.

Right. Isn't all trustworthy. It's a racket. There's a racket here. And someone's falling for it. But then Julianne, at the very end of the movie she follows the mantra and she looks in the mirror and she says i love you in her fucking i love you in her hut in her sealed off safe house and then you go and she's got a big kind of blemish on her head that keeps festering

so she something's not right here and yet what's what I was also doing at the same time was like disease movies of the week, which sort of give the subject, they don't always solve their cancer in those movies. Right. But there's some way in which they take possession of being a cancer patient and learning about what that means. You know what I mean? Right, right. And so this film sort of follows that narrative shape.

Yeah. And she accepts the terms of what that illness means and what it asks of you. But what I hope is that you also are left, it's sort of like a Circe and happy ending where you're left with all of, after it's completely criticized, the whole culture that you look at,

and then the people have a happy ending and you know, wait, you're like, wait a minute. Something's not right here. It isn't really happy not happy the the circumstance everything that's been revealed along the way shows us that it's anything but all right so let's go back to we're almost we're almost all the way back to birth so so poison i remember like it was one of those movies for me because i was living in San Francisco. I was a little, you know, I was 95. I was trying to stay sober. 91 or 2. So I'm trying to stay sober.

You know, I've been through a lot. You know, my sense of self is fairly expansive and, you know, I'm open-minded in a way that I had no real choice over. And, you know, and I'm wandering around San Francisco, which in and of itself is this, I don't know what the fuck is going on there. I don't know who's in charge. I always felt ungrounded to me.

And I go see this movie that, I'm not gay, but I'm at the theater. I'm at the Gay Film Festival. And this is a movie that had themes in it that were relevant to that community. Right. And metaphoric. Right. Filmically.

And did you know it had stirred up the far right? Had you heard that whole thing? I don't know. The flap about the sort of culture wars. Well, I don't know, but I knew there was three movies within it. Right. And that in not unlike the Dylan movie or Safe for that matter, that I had to reckon with what it was you were trying to do. Right.

And the three movies, I remember the horror movie. Right. And then what were the other two? One was a sort of pseudo-documentary about a suburban story of a little boy who had flown away. And the mother is recounting the whole story. And there was something a little off about this kid. Basically, all three stories are about outsiders, about transgressors,

and sort of followed these genres that usually address the outsider. In the horror film as the monster, in the sort of tabloid documentary as a sort of outlier to suburban normalcy or something. So this was the one... And the third was much more directly a Jeanne, Jean Jeanne kind of prison love story.

Now, what was it about Jeanne? You know, it's your normal run-of-the-mill kind of... Trilogy. Trilogy, you know. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. But these were not conceived as shorts. This was conceived as a film. It was conceived as a feature

for the three stories to interact. I mean, the thing is, is that when I had done Superstar, the Barbie doll, Karen Carpenter's story, I mean, that was sort of the beginning of my independent voice as a filmmaker. And it kind of fell into a cultural awareness

that was written about in The Village Voice by Jay Hoberman and Barbara Kruger. It was a fascinating film because you did a full narrative, a biopic of Karen Carpenter using only Barbie dolls and using the real music. Right. And sort of like somehow finding uh somehow finding the the mise en scene within these these these puppet shows that were loaded with emotion right that exactly you you you at some

point watching that film within 10 minutes or so it didn't matter that they were done right you forget that they're dolls and then you have to remember that you're watching dolls and what that means and it's sort of like how you feel when you're listening to that music right which is incredibly manipulative and sentimental and yet somehow it creeps up inside you yeah and grabs you at the same time and you got to the heart of it through her through her and what i found but and yet it still kind of had these little pseudo-documentary passages and these sort of little experimental film-influenced moments in it. And I just found that because it had reached a slightly bigger visibility than I ever really anticipated. With no release.

With no release. I mean, it did have little sprinklings of releases here and there. I imagine the family was pissed off and the music. You had to have the music in there. I had a year of freedom with it before the legal stuff hit me. And then you just had to get it on tape like I had. Exactly. And then it got to be an underground bootleg movie.

Is it on YouTube? It must be. It's on YouTube and then they yank it and then it comes back. It's sort of a back and forth. But it's one of the Fuyu movies, you can say, are a band film. Sure. You know, cocksucker blues and maybe Superstar. Yeah.

So there was a pressure on you to deliver or or what i what i thought was cool is that audiences who i didn't think were maybe the audiences i had conceived of for the movie a wider audience was seeing superstar than i had expected yeah and they could navigate between these different sort of tones and they could enter the movie and find interest in the film. And it just made me think like, wow, audiences are sophisticated. And so I just wanted to kind of keep riffing on that idea and take that a little further. And Poison was really a sort of a film about the AIDS era. Yeah.

a film about the AIDS era. Yeah. And a way of sort of taking back some of the guilt and feeling of culpability that the gay community was sort of accepting from dominant society, right? Victimhood. Yeah. And using self-punishment.

Who was like a, you know, a warrior, you know, a poet warrior, basically. Like, I never got into him. I always knew of him, but I didn't read him. He was a prisoner and a writer. He was a condemned thief, and I think he ultimately, after so many incarcerations, had life imprisonment and then wrote his first novel,

Our Lady of the Flowers, while he was still in prison. And it is a magnificent piece of writing and a crazy, what he sort of always said when he was like kind of named a thief and named a queer, that he kind of took those titles on and decided to fulfill them tenfold and say, fuck you. You know what I mean? And then sort of invert the values of society and make perversity and transgression something of a religious expression. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And make that sacred. Yeah. And sort of invert the values of the society that had condemned him.

So it was an amazing kind of- Freedom in that. Yeah. And then he became a real once he was freed by all the collective poets of french society at the time cocteau and all those guys he later became involved with the black panther movement the palestinian movement i mean he was a radical you know he maintained a radical's position around political activity and you felt that drawing from the power of that

in the midst of the AIDS epidemic, like 10 years in, that you would deliver a message. That there was a way to say, we can stand up and say, screw you. And that our difference was really our power. You know what I mean? And that's really changed.

The sort of assimilation, basically, of any minority culture as it gets accepted into mainstream society. It loses some of those political edges. But interesting, no matter how slow the pace of progress is, that the gay community weathered that fucking storm and came out stronger. Well, that's undeniable. And can't be stated strongly enough. Right. I mean, that's absolutely true.

It's incredible. Yeah. I mean, just all of us who were kind of formed by that political activism of that time and watched the radical changes and that political organizing produced direct results. And it really did. It really changed the whole treatment and development of drugs and turned that epidemic completely around. But then it's just ironic that then as gay lives became more accepted in mainstream society, the issues that were being fought over was gay marriage and gays in the military. Right, right. Like the most conformist sort of elements.

But they're symbolic and they're meaningful. And I get that. There's a little bit of fuck you to it. You know? Yeah. I think that there is that it's I never really thought about it until right now that to have the right doesn't necessarily mean you want it, but you deserve it. Right.

Well, that is true. That's absolutely built in. I agree. I agree with that. But I think people then think that they're supposed to want it. Oh, yeah. Maybe there's that. Sure.

That's the confusion. It's sort of like everybody's like, oh, well. Maybe there's that. Sure, sure. That's the confusion. It's sort of like everybody's like, oh, well, now you're married, right? Right. Right. Well, you know, it's just to be treated like an equal. Of course. Right?

And look, all of these things for every kid who's coming out today, this just creates an entirely different culture and world. It's still hard to come out. Right. It's still a transition for kids to kind of, and I think it maybe goes back to those issues we were talking about with the identity period claiming identity you know well you got to at some point right you end up sort of a lumpy and game swinger

i don't know come on bring it on, I guess I like that. But, I mean, it's a different world for those kids. And that's really essential. I mean, that's a contestable change. Well, they have support. They have support. They have support. They have examples in the world. Exactly, yeah.

And they have a place to... Well, that's interesting because now here we are. I'm 52. You're what? 54. So, like, I do feel that there might be, along with these sort of nostalgic framings for films that you've done recently,

there's a nostalgia for that fuck you. Yeah. That fight. Yeah. Like, what do we fight about? What are we fighting for now? Well... Creatively.

What are you? Creatively. Sure. Like, what's the next film? I mean, you were doing... I mean, you know, Fran Lebowitz said something in that Scorsese documentary he made about her that I think about.

She said, we didn't just lose an entire generation of artists to AIDS. We lost audiences. We lost reception to a certain quality or caliber of work. Sure. A kind of demand, you know, of you know intellectual and sure that whole part that whole new york in the 70s thing right like yeah that once that the the the sort of media outlets broke open and the consumer-minded culture yeah uh won on the level of art in general yeah that you know it just killed the intelligentsia it really it really

did and i don't know if it's just aids i mean i think it maybe reagan era well i think within theater and within art because it seems to me that new york in that time in the late 70s like was the engine for all that shit and that lost a lot of people definitely because it used to be sexy and cool like you'd see you know people people like Fran Lebowitz on Letterman. Yeah. That shit is overdue. Yeah. No, I know.

Who are those people now? Where are they? There was a blending of counterculture and mainstream culture. And now it's sort of like, what is counterculture? Who the fuck knows? There's nothing outside dominant culture. Capitalism is what won out. Well, dominant culture has become.

Capitalism has won out. Of course they have. I think that's the undeniable truth with Apple and all of it. Right. There's no context anymore. So everything happens immediately at all times. Exactly. And that you now have the whole compulsion is to create something viral enough to get people to it. Totally. And to attract corporate branding. It's like that front line called generation-like about young people and digital culture. I'll tell you, there's a couple weird little bits of hope.

The political dialogue, I think, is evolving a bit. That what was once titled the right wing, if there was ever a majority this is very much diminished in a way in in real numbers i think i think a lot of people are are not necessarily progressive but they're accepting as members of this uh of this country and this democracy that you know things can change and tolerance is necessary i think that's going to win but also that you know i recently read an article that people are buying books again. That the Kindle thing, that reading on a tablet. Right, no, I read that too. That's cool.

It is kind of, right? Yes. That's what I love about, I have to say, Portland, Oregon. Go to Powell's bookstore on a Sunday afternoon and it's a circus. Everybody's there. Every age, every family, every old person, every kid with a tattoo is that Powell's reading books you know there's a tactile experience and a connection to a historical context yeah so you know it's a reaction against sure all this right

well well you know how can you not eventually you know I don't even know we don't even know what these phones are gonna do to our brain or what they do in general no I know exactly and I. Exactly. And I mean, I know we sound like old men, but there is, there is, I think there's no mooring to the narrative of history.

And that to me is scary. It is scary. Because what do you fall back on? Yeah. Well, I just think it separates us as human animals from each other.

Yeah. Just the way we used to. We are isolated. Like that phone is your, that's your home it's your screen it's your bubble it's your you know it's a divider what what are you thinking for the next film you got something i have something we're trying to get off the ground which is uh based on brian selznick wrote hugo cabret which scorsese made into the movie Hugo. Yeah. And this is his graphic novel that followed that.

So it's another, it's a film basically carried by young people, for young people, which I've never done before. So that should be cool. Also a historical thing, kind of a love poem to New York City, the way Hugo was to Paris. Okay. So I'm excited. Wow, that's a departure.

Yeah. You're just spreading it out. I'm spreading it out. I'm doing stuff more back to's a departure. Yeah. You're just spreading it out. I'm spreading it out. I'm doing stuff more back to back too, which is weird. It means you're working. I guess so. You're hireable.

I'm hireable. There's money maybe somewhere. I loved Carol. I love all your shit. Thank you so much. It's a real pleasure. It's such a pleasure, Mark. I really appreciate it. Yeah, it's great talking to you.

Awesome to talk to you. Thanks. Thank you. What an exciting conversation that was for me. I hope you dug it. That was Todd Haynes. Go see the movie Carol. See any of his movies.

See if you can get a hold of the superstar, the Karen Carpenter story. It's got to be around. It's got to be out there. It's got to be on the computer, right? You can get it on the computer. Also, WTFpod.com. you can get it on the mailing list. You can buy some posters. You can get some JustCoffee.coop.

You can go to WTFpod.com slash guide to see everyone who's been on this show. And you can also be directed to Howl.fm for the archives. All that's available to you. I know what you're wondering, but is Mark going to play guitar? Maybe. Thank you. Boomer lives! You can get anything you need with 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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