WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 826 - Jeff Baena / Dave Anthony

Episode Date: July 5, 2017

Filmmaker Jeff Baena was always into movies that didn't fit into easy categories. He tells Marc about having his mind blown at an early age thanks to directors like Kubrick and Fellini, which helps explain how Jeff could wind up writing a screenplay like I Heart Huckabees and directing a twisted Middle Ages comedy like The Little Hours. Also, Marc gets his friend and television foil Dave Anthony to stop so they can talk about Dave's new book and make fun of each other. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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and ACAST Creative. Lock the gates! All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fucking ears? What the fuck, publicans? What the fuck, acrats?

What the fuck, nicks? What's happening? I i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf thank you for joining me i hope you had a pleasant fourth i hope you have all your digits i hope you uh didn't wreck your car or black out or make any family members cry or burn your hands and face i hope everything worked out for most of you and you reflected and were thoughtful or you were just uh aggravated and excited whatever it was welcome i hope you had a uh a pleasant fourth of july i find that uh well you know i first let me deal with some sadness there's some sadness a couple of days ago since i last talked to you i i i got confirmation that uh one of my ferals one of my uh my old uh outdoor buddies the uh one of the one-sided relationships i have with uh with wild animals with wild animals, with wild cats who I feed, is dead.

And I've talked about this guy for a long time. This is Death Black Cat, RIP, DBC. He was an amazing cat only because, if not only what how do i want to say it he was amazing cat in a lot of ways but the primary one being he was completely wild and he couldn't hear shit could not hear anything it was a miracle that he lived he was uh he was an actual spirit animal i thought he had a mystical quality. I was always amazed to see him when he'd show up. And he'd go away for weeks at a time and go eat somewhere else. And he didn't eat for a few days. I just had a bad feeling. But I always have a bad feeling about that stuff.

And then my neighbor, Adam, confirmed that his daughter, his little girl, Isabel, had found the cat under a tree over there next door down on the hill, dead. And he didn't look sick. And I don't know. I don't want to get too grisly about it. But somehow or another, I've been blessed with not having to find the animals in my life dead. You know, Boomer disappeared. butchie died when i was away uh scaredy cat one was uh dead out in the street and then disappeared deaf black cat is now dead in a grave down on the hill next to another feline in a small uh in adams a small feline uh

burial site the truth of the matter is that cat's been around for at least seven years that I can remember. And, you know, I did the best I could and gave him a good life. He lived under the house. It was a miracle that he lived for so long. But he did. He was sort of a symbol of strength for me. Deaf black cat.

And now he's gone. I remember i took him to the vet once i had to trap him and take him to the vet because half his face was bleeding and swollen and full of pus i thought he lost an eye and i thought this cat cannot afford to lose any more of his senses and it wasn't it was an abscess and i got him back but the vet said i've never i've never seen a wilder cat. He was a tough little fuck, and he managed to dodge death for many years, and now he's gone. So rest in peace, deaf black cat. I'm sorry to see you go.

Today on the show, I got a short talk with my old writing and acting comrade, Dave Anthony, about his book that apparently he didn't really want to sell. I don't know. He wrote a book drawn from his Dollop podcast, he and his co-host, Gareth Reynolds. It's called The United States of Absurdity, Untold Stories from American History.

You can get that wherever you get books but apparently dave didn't think to give me a call maybe this platform was not enough for dave i'll talk to him about it but he's here for a minute and then after that i talked to jeff baina the filmmaker maybe you're familiar with some of his movies i guess the biggest one that got a bit of attention a little while ago was joshie which i enjoyed he's got a new movie out with my co-star in glow allison brie and her husband day franco and aubrey plaza and kate mccoochie and john c reilly and uh molly shannon and there's a lot of people in it nick offerman's in it for a second paul reiser does a great job in it fred armisen's in there for a second a lot of people in the movie and it's an odd dirty little period piece based in medieval times at a nunnery

but uh jeff baina is a very engaged intense smart dude and it was good talking to him so this year i went over uh to the regular party i go to at dan and jen's house dan from gimme gimme records and his uh wife jen a a acupuncturist is that what you call him is it yeah i think that's the proper term it's nice nice gathering people but you know there's a lot of good conversations around a lot of good food a lot of roasted pork my statins are working overtime today because i did make the exception i did you know it's weird when you eat shit like that after a certain age and i don't know if it's trackable or you just start to wonder which burger did you in which burger just filled that tube going into your pump which one was it which was the last straw which piece of pork which

rib which burger which egg you know which one was it and was it worth it if you could have avoided that one burger that finally uh spackled your pipe you know would you have done it but uh you know i've been good and the pork was good and the desserts were good pie a lot of pie fucking happened i think i annoyed uh dan's wife jen because like she makes this huge she slow cooks his pork all day so of course i'm just going to be lingering around the kitchen helping out until the pork comes out and then again i go back and i'm lingering just hanging around waiting for the pies to come out offering some help can i put that pie on the table

and watch you slice it and take the first piece is there ice cream is there any shame in that why have decorum i don't want to be cut out of the pork or the pie but i was i went home and i felt like you know maybe i should try to behave like a fucking adult but i've never been cool or an adult or anything else i'm either sort of withdrawn or kind of uh aggravated or just running around like a fucking child that's that's a pretty good range though spent some time talking to a guy i kind of know joe wong a lot of soundtrack people he does movie and tv soundtracks but joe wong has a podcast that he only talks to drummers he's a drummer it's called the trap set so if that

interests you musicians and drum aficionados go check out joe's podcast he kind of he claims he based it on this but it's just the drummer specific all right so dave anthony dave anthony is a friend we should be spending more time together he lives close by we should be hanging out but for whatever reason we don't and when i told him i said i can't you know i saw his book in chicago at a bookstore and i was like why the fuck wouldn't he come over and and try to talk about his book and maybe get people to buy it i i don't know but this but i'll get to it with him so this is me and dave anthony having a you know a tense reunion a friendly tense reunion which is uh every time we get it's hockey season and you can get anything you need delivered with uber eats well almost

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where do you record your podcast? The, the, what is it? Dollop. The doll. I supposed to know the name. Dude, I just-

How long have we been, how long have we known each other? Okay, I know the Dollop. Of course I do. I just had a brain fart for a minute, but I thought you were going to say that I was supposed to have done research for this particular conversation. I don't think- Let me give the backstory. I'll give the backstory.

Go ahead. So I don't see you for a long time for whatever reason. We're both busy and we're both isolating. So it's nothing personal? So we've worked together a lot. We like each other. We have a good time when we hang out for a little while. And I'm in fucking Chicago doing a shoot.

And one of the locations is a bookstore. And I'm looking at their table of new books. And I'm like, is it a fucking Dalek what does dave not want to sell the book i mean like i'm down the street i have people who i like on my show to maybe help sell the thing they made but i guess he doesn't want to sell the book at all do you so you have a podcast that you do stuff yeah no i'm sorry did i need to shoot a reminder that we're still on the air over here? I remember I had a list of people. Okay, what was on that list? And then you were on the list.

In parentheses. Did you never get a book? No, I didn't get anything. This all seems very weird. Yeah. Because I think what happened was I had a list of people, and then I think I got, I know what I did. I got to you, and I've seen all the shit you get.

Yeah. So I was like, well, I have to hand deliver this to him, because if I send it to him in an envelope, it's going to fucking sit there on the ground. Oh, that's what you thought? Yeah. But I didn't get a text from you or anything. No, well, that's a complicated and involved process to reach out to another human being. Really?

To say, like, I got a book coming out. Yeah, I want to send you one. Maybe I could come on and talk about it. Yeah. Yeah, so right there, there's a lot of levels to that. Well, let's talk about those levels. First of all, I'm leaving my house. Well, what about the level of sort of like,

I'm not going to give him that. I'm not going to let him have any. What about that level? Fuck Marin. I'm not going to put myself in that position where I got to kiss up to that guy. There's a lot of, I think there's a lot of jealousy with my book because I don't think your book has the same sort of pictures. Oh, pop-ups.

We have a lot of drawings in here. So you didn't buy it in Chicago. You just looked at it and then you were a little bit angry what that was weird my anger was so stupid because i'm like well fuck him if he doesn't want to let me help him out i'm not gonna buy his book if it's convoluted i was just like i although i remember thinking i have to i have to actually hand this hand deliver this to Mark, but then I never. I know. Yeah, I get it. And it just sits there.

I get it. And then you sit at home and go like, I don't know, why isn't this book selling? Yeah, it's not selling. Why isn't this going on? And then everything just works out exactly as you expected, Dave. Yeah. I told you we shouldn't have done the book. I told you.

I told you we shouldn't have tried to sell it. I told you. So convoluted plans on both sides. Have you ever heard the podcast? Have you listened to it? I watched you do a live once. Oh, that's right. And the thing, I like it,

but I wouldn't take that personally. Ask me a more broader question. Do you listen to any podcasts? Try that one. Do you listen to any podcasts? I don't, Dave. I don't know why. I don't listen to one podcast.

You know why? Not one. Here's how I take in audio material. I'll put on my Sonos occasionally. For the last three months, I'm so engaged in the news in print that I don't even listen to NPR news. And most of the time,

I listen to records or I listen to music in my car. I primarily listen to music. And that's it. That's the story. Even when you're traveling, you listen to music? I do.

A lot of times when I'm traveling, I don't listen to anything. I'm so inundated with music on an intentional basis. Sometimes when I travel, like on a plane, I'll watch some movies or I'll just sit there

and listen to the plane engines in a mild panic. Yeah, that's... First of all, that's not good for you. I know. You should always have some sort of noise happening

that can distract you from your own thoughts. And sometimes if i'm interviewing a musical guest i'll be busy listening to their entire catalog for no reason but yeah you gotta pretend you gotta pretend like you're doing research well i'd like to get a handle on something i'd like to know where it went bad and why i don't know the most recent 20 records well you never know the recent 20 i mean after why is that because after a certain point you go i get what you do right and then you're done and then they think they're doing something miraculous and amazing and sometimes they are sometimes they do put out good stuff

when they're older but just no one's listening so the podcast is you take bizarro american it's not even bizarro it's just sort of you know i i guess the best way to describe it is like uh history of united states by howard zinn yeah i sort describe it is like uh uh history of the united states by howard zinn yeah i sort of took that uh people's history of people's history so so i try to look at history from the people who were being persecuted or oh really so but it can be but sometimes you do smaller stories too yeah yeah we do small there's smaller stories for sure um i think the book is mostly full of uh so these were all stories that were featured on the podcast yeah except for one uh that we threw in there but so you got sports

stories yeah we got a lot of sports stories medical breakthroughs well there's a lot of medical what's the lobotomy one freeman's lobotomy uh that was a guy who uh basically started uh a lobotomy craze because they had a lot of people in hospitals that it was just packed full of people they didn't know what to do with. Is that when Frances Farmer got hers? No, I think she came later, but at the tail end. That was like the new great psychological breakthrough. Totally.

This will work. And this guy went around like, I mean, he was like a rock star. With his little ice pick. Yeah, and do a bunch at once and really he'll be lined up and then just stick that ice pick up into a frontal lobe and just knock that person into dumbness just like just like blender it just like yeah and then like you're fixed and then and then the doctor's like this is great now he sits in a chair and smiles perfect thank you for doing Yeah. I wish you would have left the ability to use a fork in there. That would have been helpful to everybody.

Yeah. So he went around doing that. And I think at one point he had a gold-plated pick and a hammer. And like, yeah, he was like Henry Ford setting up a factory. No, no. He was just rolling them through. And he's doing a bunch. So what was the commentary angle on that? I mean, why that story?

Well, for us, there's a big emphasis on what medicine started out as and what it became. And the fact is that it was a crazy barbaric thing that he did. But at the end of the day, it helped lead us to chemical fixes for these problems. Well, they were able to like, well, he got the area right. The lobe seems to be where things are happening. Yes. How do we leave their personality intact? How do we not do it with a hammer?

Yeah. So all that stuff. And what's the death of George Washington? Well, they bled George Washington to death. That's how George Washington died. He had, they believed in bloodletting then, and three different doctors came in to treat him in one night, and they all bled him, and at the end, they had taken half of his blood, and that's how he died.

Really? Yeah. And was he sick with something, though? He'd gotten a really bad cold, possibly pneumonia. Come on. He was just out. Hilariously, he- Was he in his 70s, though?

Was he old he was in his 70s but he went out on his farm for whatever reason in a storm and he got soaked and he was in his dinner clothing

and he refused to be late to dinner so he just sat there in his cold wet clothing eating with his wife and after that he went upstairs

to change so he got really sick because of that so maybe at that point the president was not didn't have his full capacity. Or slightly stubborn to the point of death. And what was your angle on that?

What was the commentary? Like even the father of our country was a dummy? No, that was another medical one of just, you don't hear about that. But they bled our president to death, our first president, because they thought they were doing the right thing when they were clearly. What's the Kentucky meat shower? That's just crazy. No, I wouldn't have known that from the title. A lady was just out in her yard doing a little laundry and a bunch of meat fell out of the sky and then everyone was trying to figure out where it came from.

What about, what's the Tim Doc Anderson story? Oh, that's a guy that's still alive. He is a boxer, was a boxer in Florida and he was part of this manager who kept wanting to take falls. Yeah. And he was trying to build up another boxer

so he told him to take a fall and at some point the guy wouldn't so he drugged him and that whatever he drugged him with it lasted for years oh my god and he confronted the manager and like this guy yeah because he didn't know what was wrong with him after a while he confronted the manager yeah and the manager's like i'm going to kill your sister whatever and then he ended up shooting the manager killing the manager so now he's in jail right but it's one of, he didn't know he was going to die. You poisoned me.

Oh, my God. So he got life in jail. But I kind of think a bit much. You and Gareth Reynolds, who does the primary research? I do. Gareth is the funny part of the thing. Yeah. It's important that you have one of those guys.

I'm the straight man. You know that. No, you can be funny. I've seen you be really funny. But I understand you need a different type of funny. Well, I mean, it's not like on your show, I would sort of carry the- You were psychotic. Yeah.

So I would carry the scenes with my hilarity. All right. And now it's sort of the opposite on the podcast i think i think what really happened was we both added to a certain dynamic that created the humor yeah there was a there was a relationship that was sort of accentuated our issues and then and then from those i i got to come in and steal scenes i know i knew that that was a wind-up. You know, like, I know that it was going to start out pretty good. Like, right when I heard you started, I'm like, is this going to end the way it always does?

Yeah, it doesn't. I mean, just don't give me room. Why don't you give me room? But what is the process of, like, you do two of these a week on the podcast. Yeah. So, I do a lot of research. It's a lot of work. And I write them up. And then he just, he's never heard of the subject. Yeah. So I do a lot of research. It's a lot of work. And I write them up.

And then he's never heard of the subject. So I just sit down and read it. And the only context is you just think it's weird. Or you think it's an interesting story. Or it has something in it that relates to today. There's a lot of stuff I do that I try to parallel whatever's happening. Yeah. Well, I mean, because I initially thought that, because I don't listen to it regularly, yeah there's a lot of stuff i do that i try to parallel you know whatever's happening yeah well

i mean because like you i initially thought that because i don't listen to it regularly that it sort of has a tabloid element but it doesn't really some of it is it's more of a social commentary element than a tabloid element right like look at how fucking weird people are yeah and look how fucked up things weren't oh shit's not that different it's still fucked up yeah i don't know if you've noticed what's going on it's not it's not really that great people are telling me yeah yeah i did you know what drives me nuts is there are people out there in the world who are just going about their lives and they're just sort of like yeah i don't know really what's going on i was in the gym today and the lady next to me was watching uh uh extra and i was like how

do you do that now i know i i feel that too but like there's also a part of me that's sort of like well i have to remember to do that occasionally yeah check out and just kind of well i don't know if it's checking out it's like be by being checked in ultimately unless you're actually you know uh taking action all you're doing is just heating your shit up yep and just going like we're fucked yeah we're screwed yeah and then you just sit around that's what you're doing that's what you're living in yeah so unless you're like taking like taking it in and going like well i'm gonna send some money or write some emails or or go out into the streets all you're doing is like oh it's not

getting any better you know why aren't you watching extra well what's the point yeah why is it over it's over what's why would you want to watch that no one cares why i would never watch that anyways but i do try to you know have conversations with people and stay on top of things it's very hard for me knowing i have a platform yeah to you know not just become one of those kind of you know strident existentially panicked aggravated people that's just sitting reeling off the news and reacting to it because there there is humanity still going on so i like i'll choose to you know to pick stories that sort of like well this is where the human spirit kind of won or you know or like i kind of related to that like because

they just ramming up against this fucking doofus is it's just feeding it oh it totally feeds it yeah it's like he likes any kind of attention yeah doesn't matter what any any sort of swirling madness he's like this is great so what else is going on how's the kid the kid's good the kid's a little baseball uh freak right oh yeah we talked a little bit about that i just like i i you on the field, you're coaching too? Coaching. Getting into arguments and possible fights with other coaches. I may have told a guy to fuck off on the Little League baseball field after he screamed.

I can tell you this. Do you want to hear the story? You're not going to deny or confirm it? I'm not going to deny it. That's what happened. I went over to them to hey can you talk to your team about misbehaving they're being kind of what were they doing they were uh they were badgering our kids yelling them you're pitch slow just that kind of the kind

of stuff you don't want to happen with little kids yeah and i went over to say hey could you talk to your kids to make them stop and he got in my face and screamed at me and i thought we were going to get in a fistfight oh so you knew exactly where it was coming from like not only were they not going to stop but he was probably encouraged i immediately realized oh this is actually coming from the top it's a top-down thing and so he was screaming at me so i did what i always do which is i looked at him i said fuck. And then he got more mad because I swore around children. Oh, really? And then he said, what did you just say to me?

And I said, go fuck yourself. Oh, good. And then he didn't know what to do because he thought I wasn't going to. He thought I'd be like, oh, I'm sorry. But I didn't. I doubled down. Yeah. And then he got very angry.

He wouldn't shake my hand at the end of the game and all that stuff. And then I went home and I looked him up. Yeah. And he used to be Jeb Bush's press secretary. Oh, see, it all comes around. Everything is political. Yeah, it really is. And he used to also, when he was in college, he was the college mascot, Bobby the Bear.

Oh. Yeah. So he's got a lot on his plate. He's got a lot on his plate. A lot of baggage. And I know if I see him around town i can go bobby the bear and he'll lose his mind that's your ace in the hole you're ready all right so this book the united states of absurdity untold stories from american history dave anthony and

gareth reynolds and this is uh with a forward by pat and oswald i might as well mention that because that was your big idea, wasn't it? What, Patton Oswalt? Oh, yeah. That was going to sell it, right? Yeah, I think. Did it? Do you know?

Books are hard. It's been, yeah, the publishing company is happy with it. You get these quarterly sort of invoices that just show you how much money you didn't make. It's just like in parentheses against your advance how much in debt you are still. I just assume I'm going to get something that says almost. Yeah. And that's about it. Well, you'll get them for years.

Unless a miracle happens. But this one, they ordered a second printing because they didn't think it was going to sell that well. And then it did. Oh, good. So it's who knows knows what i don't know what the numbers are and the podcast is popular yeah the podcast is doing well we're not are you is it still limited to australia or is it spread no no we're actually more popular in america than australia now wow yeah we we came around and uh good yeah it's exciting well it's good to see you nice to see you which is we should see each other more than once we live down the street we do live i don't know why i'm not you know i don't know

what it is or who you hang out with but i know you long enough and i've heard you talk about enough people to where like i'm one of the better ones that gets i understand you yeah we know you do and that might be a problem together you understanding me might be the issue oh i'm sorry yeah you'd rather just sort of like hey can you just let me be a dick can you just that's sort of what i do publicly and with most other people yeah yeah do you still work out at my gym i belong there i'm still able to i never see in there i know she goes to the yoga classes sometimes yeah and i tend to work out with a little this woman who trains me to the yoga classes sometimes yeah and i tend to work out with a little this woman who trains me down the street over here okay but i do want to go up there

yeah what do you do there uh i just mostly ride the bikes maybe a little bit i tend to like run outside run on the circle thing up above the the no no like i tend to run out here like oh just outside just outside the world how is that it's great it seems terrifying to me well it's quiet up here like i can go up in the hill there's no cars but there's enough room to run around up here yeah yeah there's like hills like now i'll run up the street and run down then i'll walk up this big steep hill and run a little bit and come back around and like running on the machine like it's just sort of like now running on a machine is tedious but if i could get into the habit so the other stuff like it's just sort of like. No, running on a machine is tedious. But if I could get into the habit.

So the other stuff, like the working out business I do with her. But I should go and do some classes, like some yoga, man. I was in yoga for a while. I'm thinking about jumping into a Pilates thing. Yeah? Yeah. That's hard with the machines. Oh, yeah.

It's subtle. Like you don't realize it until the day after when you can't stand up and you shit your pants. And you're crying. Yeah. I got to go easy on this. Lost control of my digestive system. I think I pushed it too hard.

That's the kind of workout I want is when I stand up and just evacuate my bowels. Preferable to get to the bathroom first or you don't want to go back to that class. You don't want to be the guy who shit his pants. Well, if I stand up and shit my pants i go it's working i'm getting in shape to the shocked look of housewives who let that guy in all right buddy well maybe i'll see you up at the gym yeah thanks for having me on yep there you go so go get the go get his book it's fun there's pictures and you know it's a nice maybe you know a uh like you know i'll take this into the bathroom book you know what i'm saying

so jeff bain uh uh is a guy i met you know i went to where'd i meet him first oh yeah we were set up on sort of a coffee date by uh agency. And we had a great talk. And then I had him on. And I went to a screening of his movie. It was very funny. While the little hours was still in post-production, when they were still tweaking it, Jeff let me come watch it where they were doing the editing in a screening room. So it was a screening.

And you never know what a screening is going to be, how many people are going to be there, who's going to be there. And I remember I showed up and we were waiting. I was waiting for Jeff. And then, you know, another guy walks in and it's Father John Misty. So it's just me and Father John Misty at a screening with Jeff. And it wasn't awkward. Just, you know, very small and kind of an interesting crowd.

Me, Father John Misty, and the director. But the movie is funny. It's raw. It's good. It's a unique thing, that's for sure. And it's based on a very old piece of literature, which I found compelling. And I talked to Jeff about it.

But this is me and Jeff Bain. The movie is The Little Hours. It's playing in New York and L.A. It's going to be expanding throughout the country this month. So this is me and Jeff Bain. The movie is The Little Hours. It's playing in New York and L.A. It's going to be expanding throughout the country this month. So this is me talking to him, to Jeff, the director and writer of the thing. It was very funny to me that, like, I'm going to see the screening of this new movie. Alison Brie's in it, who I just worked with, and John C. Reilly, and Aubrey Plaza's in it, who is your girlfriend.

Yep. Molly Shannon. Kate Micucci. Kate Micucci. But I didn't know what to expect. I know that you told me it was based on the Decameron, which is a big book, and this is one story in that book. I read the Decameron, I think,

when I was in a satire class in college. Right? Who wrote the Decameron? Giovanni Boccaccio. So you invite me to this screening and I didn't know who was going to be there. And it turns out it's just me and Father John Misty sitting there. What's his real name again? Josh Tillman.

Josh Tillman, who I've met. And it's just me and Tillman. Well, you did the WTF with him, right? I did, yeah. And it was just an odd thing. Like, it was just, to me, it was very odd. It's just like going to be me and Father John Misty watching a movie with you.

Perfect audience. Yeah. Are you guys real tight? We're friends. I wouldn't say we're super tight. He's better friends with Aubrey. Oh, okay. She's known him for years.

She did a music video with him. Yeah. But the movie is, it's's kind of raw it takes place in what what's it what's the date 1347 1347 at a it's is it a it's not a convent it's an action it is a convent it is a convent and the premise is that you know like some of the stuff that i didn't know about that time was that that some women were sentenced to convents in a way right most women i mean the the way it kind of worked was a convent was a school so every you know especially if you're a noble you'd go to a convent and then

at some point you come out you know right graduate right either get married or you just lead your life but there's a bunch of sort of considerations uh that i guess we don't have now about people the way people are treated yeah and so if you were the youngest kid generally a man or a woman you'd be a priest or nun right if you were not married you become a so if you were the youngest kid generally a man or a woman you'd be a priest or nun right if you were not married you become a nun if you were divorced you became a nun if your husband died you became a nun there's and then generally if your father wanted to have favor with the church the more daughters or sons he had in the church would be better so it just there's all these different versions of how you end up becoming a nun that's the middle ages middle ages

then a little bit later i think in around 1410 or 1420 yeah um women started almost doing it as a feminist movement where they would like choose to become nuns yeah and it was very funny because allison brie's character is there because her father wants to have uh you know a relationship with the church right yeah and the father could be it could not be any more jewish than paul reiser even in the scenes which i thought was funny yeah and when i talked to you afterwards about this because it's really about sex in this convent mostly right yeah would you say yeah and then that's directly from the camon? The sex aspect? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So what I told you afterwards was it felt somewhat like Alex Cox's movies, or specifically

Walker, for some reason, because there was something about- Anachronism? Yeah. And also that there seemed to be not as much of an intentional infusion of modern sensibility into the dynamics between people, but it was definitely there that you felt like the setting was what it was. The premise and the story was what it was, but there was the activity and visceral type of engagement between these

characters seem sort of modern and raw. Well, I just think it's timeless. I think that's, that's human humans. I guess, I guess that's probably true. And I don't,

I guess we don't usually think about that time. I mean, that was pretty much my, my intention was to sort of bridge that gap so that you're, when you're watching that time period, you don't have this sort of hazy sort of buffer between you and that time where you're not connecting with these people, but they're just people that, you know, obviously they don't have technology and they're, you know, nuns, but they're just people. They have the same desires and same hopes and dreams. And they're filthy.

Just like they've always been animals and filthy animals which struggle in conflict and now what how did this work out because i mean you don't spend a lot of money on movies so how do you get to shoot in italy at this beautiful place um it worked out really well. So we, so just sort of like going back in history, I guess, sort of preface all of this. Um, I went to NYU, I got a degree in filmmaking. I also got a minor in medieval and Renaissance studies, which wasn't on purpose. I took a bunch of random ass classes. Like I took a class on harmony of the spheres, Arabian nights, Jewish mysticism. And one of the classes I took was called sexual transgression in the middle ages and Renaissance. And we studied the Decameron and the heptameron and the penitentials and just sort of the whole history

yeah and what it did was it opened my eyes to this time period you always think of nuns and priests and all these people sort of just being these like religious robots that are just going through their day and yeah and almost so unrelatable and we the penitentials are sort of the punishments the church levy against levies against people, you know, for different transgressions. And there are so many of them. And it was so specific and rich that you just realize people are just doing fucked up shit all the time. And, you know, one of my teacher explained to me is nuns weren't obviously wanting to be there. They were just kind of stuck there by circumstance.

And sometimes like the Mother Superior isn't the most religious or the, the, you know, the most, I guess, rule oriented. They, they sometimes were just the oldest people that were surviving and they were like party girls. And so it was almost like they were having these like crazy orgies all the time. And it was,

you know, hoping no one would look. And it was, there was a crazy bureaucracy to the church, obviously. And the higher up you are in the church, you know, you kind of want to look better.

So you, you, everything that's below you kind of like, you know, pushing under the rug. Right. And and so there was just there wasn't a lot of accountability it was just like this shit show happening and so which you know obviously in the the more demonic and evil way it had been happening with the the pedophiles for sure for centuries yeah yeah you just brush everything under the rug and you just hope it goes away because people are fallible and so that just i always wanted to make this movie.

And then Joe Swanberg, who I know you've worked with. Yeah. Um, he was crashing on my place and I was telling him this idea and we were actually watching dog TV and, um, he was like, this is amazing. You got to make this movie. And so I called my producer and she, she, she did my first two movies and she's like, what were the first two life, and she's like- What were the first two?

Life After Beth and Joshie. Yeah. And she's like, you're not going to believe this, but one of the investors who's invested in our last two movies, she's this Italian lady who's in Tuscany,

and she's been asking for, for like four years for them to shoot in these medieval villages, and you're literally asking to shoot in a medieval village in Tuscany, and within like a month or two,

we were in Tuscany scouting. This woman, Marilena Marcucci, her family was like loaded from from I guess they're in the plasma business from the 20s or something like in the pharmaceuticals plasma okay fake blood yeah and um so she and then she brought MTV to or she did some version of MTV for Italy her family's just loaded and her brother's a senator who runs the film commission we were so crazily hooked up yeah that I mean we didn't get we didn't have to spend as much money as we normally would because we had access to, we had this one guy,

Alessandro Bertolucci, who was sort of our liaison. He was kind of our line producer. And he knew all the mayors of these little towns that had all these, you know, relics and...

Any relation to Bertolucci, Bertolucci? No relation at all. Yeah. It's just a common name. Yeah. I figured, but it's not.

Yeah. And so it just, it kind of just snowballed really fast from this conversation I was having with Joe to we were actually in Italy on the ground

scouting locations and then a couple months later we actually were shooting it. And now how how heavily scripted was it? Not that heavily. We it was maybe like a

25 or 28 page outline. So a lot of improvising. Dialogue was improvised. The story was not improvised but a lot of the dialogue and the improvised the story was not improvised but right a lot of the dialogue and the dialogue the specific dialogue so the the scenes were written out what each person was going to say and what was happening in that scene but i

after doing joshy that might i sort of changed my process and and i i start off as a writer it's like a hardcore writer where you know you almost don't change a word at all there's no improvisation and and you like the control of that at that time? At that time? No, I just, it's just how you were taught to do stuff. Right. I actually don't. I don't mind. I like freedom and I like things kind of like bleeding and sort of getting blurry. Yeah. And I also like how honest and authentic it sounds when people are saying their own lines instead of forcing someone to say something that doesn't sound real. There's something more present about it certainly. Well, they're looking into their eyes and connecting not knowing what the next person

is going to say so they're really present yeah you have to and that's for acting that's the most important thing it's not just waiting for the person to finish the line like you see like really bad in movies you know like ed wood stuff and you almost see like the person like kind of mouthing the other person's eyes waiting for their line is like that's me people have that weird habit i know people that do that while you're talking in real time really it's very odd yeah my friend sam does it like when if i'm just talking to you now finishing your words or not really finishing but like just like a half a beat after saying what i'm saying he's like processing it he's got like i think so it's a lay i think he's listening and as he

listens he mouths it maybe he has like some coping mechanism because he's got some add or something he's like trying to figure out how to like i i just noticed it as being a weird habit you know i i think some of it's finishing sentences but some of it is just so you know kind of like the way that people listen it's interesting it is interesting yeah so i just i just found that that creates a more yeah real dynamic right and now when how much how much did you shoot like how many days well i mean how much footage did you the weird thing about digital and after working with joe i think the real challenge is is that you sort of have a an embarrassment of riches usually usually if you have a lot of time yeah we were under the gun so you know we shot the whole thing in 20 days um pretty much if with the exception of just stuff

that takes place in the convent if you see a location like for instance a church or a field every single thing that takes place in that field was that day. So sometimes we're stacking like eight or 10 scenes a day. So sort of jamming through it. So we didn't have a lot of coverage. So, you know, generally it's the first three takes is sort of a master, you know, something kind of wider. And then after that, we just punch in and we're pretty much replicating what we did. So now tell me exactly what you were like. I mean, I remember after we watched it that you know talking about it as a comedy or or as you know necessarily trying to put it into a genre that it was not something you i didn't feel like you wanted to do that i just don't want to do that ever i mean i

think what happens especially with the way media is sort of like uh disseminated today yeah everything is marketing yeah and so everything is labeling everything is sort of compartment disseminated today. Everything is marketing. And so everything is labeling. Everything is sort of compartmentalizing. And so your experience is almost pre-digested before you experience it. And the only reason I'm doing this is to kind of do new stuff. So it creates expectations. Creates expectations and it creates disappointments.

Sure. Because if you're like, oh, I'm going to see a comedy. It's the same thing really, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, it leads to that. Yeah, it's one way to cause and effect. But I think especially with comedies, that word comedy is so vague and you know there's like there's obviously like you

know levels to it there's dark comedy there's broad comedy all that kind of stuff but i don't think of it as like i'm gonna write a comedy or i'm gonna write a dark comedy i just i'm trying to make my own thing and then what ends up happening is people try to sort of put their you know put like figure out a way to describe it yeah and then that is not really the best you know well it's interesting but you knew going in like that's what the interesting thing about that is however you want to describe it you know you've got you know the actors i just mentioned and then in bit parts you have uh you know fred armisen you have uh offerman uh these are you know comedic actors really comedic actors but for me are comedic actors, really.

They're comedic actors, but for me, a comedic actor is someone that can do comedy, that isn't always doing comedy. No, I know, but they're known for that. They're known for that. Right now. Yeah. But I'm curious to know, because it was hard to sit there with you and looking at a rough cut, which wasn't really a rough cut other than, I guess, the credits, so it was pretty tight.

Yeah. And then to have to talk about it, there's a sort sort of you have to be I I didn't I didn't really know you so it wasn't that I was diplomatic but I was certainly trying to figure out how to talk to you about it now now that you showed it for large audiences you know what was the feedback was there something more specific that you found resonating with people did people say more than like that was interesting or fun or you know I mean the good thing when you do more than like, that was interesting or fun or, you know? I mean, the good thing, when you do it at Sundance,

that's your real first time anyone's seen it. So no one's bringing in expectations other than, like you said, the cast. They're hoping that something is different, weird and new and they're surprised. Completely. And to some extent, I'm not, you know, I'm not at a place now where I'm a recognizable brand. But when people have seen a couple of my movies,

they know what you're getting into. It's not be a straight up comedy sure and i you know i think one of the things that was really great is i was hearing a lot of people saying like this isn't anything like i've seen before you know there's a couple of sort of i think stale comparisons you know people i think automatically go to like monty python or brooks because you know those guys were doing period piece comedies right and so that is something that people can glom onto. Right. In terms of, I think, like in terms of the craft or anything like that, I don't think anyone is that that kind of knows their way around stuff will identify that as sort of like a marker. I think it's more just sort of an easy way to digest it.

Now, let's go back a little bit. I know we talked a little, but I don't, I mean, I've retained some some things but you grew up in florida in miami right in the middle of it and what i i can't imagine miami's a chaotic place yeah especially when i was growing up yeah why because what was that the 80s yeah it was the 80s i mean i grew up uh pretty much at the height of the cocaine boom so i got to see a lot of that stuff Like just people being gunned down in the streets and insanity and coke money everywhere. Yeah. What do you remember about it?

I mean, I remember my neighbor across the street was murdered. I remember a lot of my friends in school, their parents were busted for either being smugglers or I went to private school for one year in eighth grade. And then there was a bunch of actual drug deal. Like I got to go from public school where everyone's like you know the closest you got was like maybe their dad was a smuggler yeah you know like riding the boats at night and then when i went to the private school it's like their dads were the kingpins right just for that one year

yeah yeah i mean everywhere you look there was coke and it was yeah it was pretty gross and it was miami vice like that's right right that was the time yeah and you're and what'd your dad do again he's an attorney right right and yeah but he he stayed above it somehow sort of i mean i i don't like i might be speaking on a term but i he's from my all my family's from new york like yeah and the only reason we were in miami is because my dad got a job down at a law firm and right after he graduated and the guy whose firm that he got a job at was this guy named john helliwell yeah and this sounds like conspiracy theory shit but the oss is the precursor to the cia right so the oss was started by john helliwell and wild bill donovan

i think his name is and a couple of other guys and so they were you know doing sort of uh you know crazy stuff in Italy and Germany, like with partisans to try to take down the fascists. And then that ended up becoming the CIA. And so this guy ran the CIA for a little bit. He was a lawyer. And then after he left the CIA, he started this law firm, how they will Melrose and DeWolf where my dad got a job. And effectively what they were doing was opening banks in the Bahamas and the Caribbean for the CIA and drug dealers. They would take their drug dealer money and then use that for CIA operations.

And then I guess towards the end of it- That's like the Contra thing, right? We talked about it. Yeah, definitely the Contra thing. And I think a couple of the lawyers in that firm were busted for various- So they were running covert operations at the behest of the intelligence agencies outside of the parameters of government in fact the fbi came after john heliwell because they saw what he was doing and you know the cia and the fbi are not best friends and um they were they were coming after him and i guess the cia kind of prodded them and like just leave him alone yeah he's an old guy he's about to pass away this is

like cool just let it go but yeah my dad that's how he started off doing law is he still around yeah he's still around like he uh i know he deposed samosa oh and he helped extradite vesco and he he was involved in a lot of weird latin american stuff when you were a kid when i was a kid yeah so you didn't quite grasp it and you still don't because you can't or they'd have to kill you exactly keep my kid out of it. Yeah. Stay in the dark. And what did your mom do during this? Teach her. When I was a kid growing up, she was just a mom. And then she went back to teaching.

How many brothers and sisters? One brother. Little brother. Oh, yeah? Is he out here? No, he's a detective. He's a sergeant in the police in Florida. In Miami?

In Coral Gables, yeah. In Miami. That must be exciting. Yeah, it's definitely. I mean, he gets high-speed chases every once in a a while and I mean I don't know if he's actually pulled his gun I mean Coral Gables is like Beverly Hills in Miami yeah so it's a lot of you know are you guys close yeah we're close oh that's good yeah and it was super different but yeah and and you like your grandparents were New Yorkers and that kind of thing where you always

tapped into New York so you're always going up there yeah because how do you know in order to be a kid that had your interest something had to spark you in terms of like film stuff well just like you know being a 14 year old who finds Eno I find that's a specific thing that like you know because because I'm the same way and I don't know whether it was my mother was an artist and you know and I always felt that that was important like there there's something that hits you when you're younger where you're like you know art is where it's at whatever the fuck it is yeah you know being outside of whatever this norm is yeah to find truth and to find yourself is is is something you don't have much control over either it happens to you or it doesn't and usually there's somebody that just delivers the message to you somehow

yeah i think i got lucky i had a bunch of those things kind of happened to me yeah like what um i remember when i was like 11 we had a way cable and yeah in my my bedroom yeah i was always watching tv but i was watching movies all the time right and um one time a clockwork orange was on tv right and i caught it in the middle of it and my dad walked in and he's like oh you're watching're watching that fucking weird movie. I'm like, what is this? And he goes, I think that's a Clockwork Orange. And I'm like, this is crazy. And so the next day we went to the video store and I'm like, dad, like, what's another crazy movie?

I want another crazy movie. And he's like, I don't know, eight and a half is supposed to be crazy. I don't know. And so we rented eight and a half and I watch it. Different kind of crazy. That's what, I mean, he just, for him, it was like just weird movies.

Like it's just this one genre. Right, sure. And yeah, that's what made me want to do film so you rented eight and a half i rented eight and a half it blew me away i mean i was like probably too little to fully grasp it but i knew something it was sort of like you know stuff where you're listening to it and it's pushing you in an uncomfortable space and you can either like shy away from it and turn it off or kind of give into it and sort of see what happens and just trust that this artist knows what they're doing and that's what i did and then because you're a

kid and they're grown up so why would you question the artistic integrity of either of those things that like what how old were you 11 yeah you're like this fellini guy's a hack yeah i definitely didn't have that sort of critical ability well that's interesting because both of those movies visually are so you know unique and fucking you know you know they really punch you in the head yeah like eight and a half even if you don't know what's going on you're gonna be like what the fuck yeah you're just you can just be absorbed by the style of it yeah you can't you don't even have to listen to it but the themes are obviously the where it's at yeah and i think also my mom right around that time too she was a really big fan of metamorphosis by kafka and she's like you should read this and i read it and that blew me

away i was too young doing this stuff like i i was watching radar movies when i was like six or something like i definitely was you know so you read metamorphosis i mean i remember reading that and i still couldn't grasp it completely yeah i remember reading it and thinking it was actually funnier than it was supposed to be i was i thought it was supposed to be kind of sad and messed up and then i was like this is actually kind of yeah the guy's a bug the guy's a bug but sort of just the matter of fact dryness of it i was really drawn to so those that was the that was the trinity uh yeah kubrick uh felini and kafka yeah that blew your mind initially yeah and you're like there's something else out there i remember time bandits was a really big thing for me when i was a kid i don't know if you like terry gillian movie yeah yeah yeah yeah the end of it really kind of messed me up in a good way

yeah where you know his parents they have the the it's like a toaster and the demon's head is inside of it. Right. And he's like, don't touch the head. And they touch it, like just defying him. And then they explode. And I remember how dark that was. I'm like, you can get away with that kind of stuff.

Like you can have the parents just die at the end like that. And yeah, that definitely stayed with me. You sure you can get away with it. I mean, is it going to be a popular movie? I don't know. Yeah. But so, so then what, what do you do to begin your artistic journey? Do you pick, you know, music or, or, or drawing or what?

All of it. I mean, I was drawing all the time. I was painting. I took painting classes. Yeah. So you were like, I'm going to find it. Something, what's going to stick. Yeah.

It wasn't even like I'm intentionally trying to be, I didn't even think I wanted to be an artist i knew when i was 11 or 12 i can't remember when i was like i just want to be a director yeah um but before that it was always just you know i i don't have a good singing voice but i like playing music like i'm not good at any individual instrument but i'm like decent at all of them like i can like play drums or guitar or whatever and uh yeah i was always writing it just sort of seemed like film was the thing that kind of brought all these things together that i had like a sensitivity to right and when you went to high school what what sort of what were the kids you were gravitating towards i mean because i mean we went to high school when did you graduate high school 95

right so i graduated in 81 it's a whole different fucking world so so by 95 there you definitely had enough like-minded people around i would think yeah my school was a super outlier too because i don't get in trouble but the the principal at the time um there were rumors that he was a coke dealer yeah and he actually helped me skip school a couple times like it was a completely corrupt it was almost like the way it was completely a bill Bill Clinton style school where it was definitely corrupt and sketchy, but it was ultimately like utilitarian and for the greater good. Right. And so I would, it was really like, it could almost be like a TV show the way it went down.

Like the jocks and the drama kids and the nerdy kids and like the artsy kids, everyone was cool with each other. It wasn't like bullying. Right. So it was like a really kind of, I went to a school with like 5, 000 people like it was a massive yeah i had a big one too like 3 400 yeah yeah i mean there was definitely like you know gangs and fights and stuff but there was an overall vibe of like we're kind of in this together which i didn't exist for any of the other classes it was just my year i think we somehow figured something out that was kind of cool and the teachers were pretty cool there's one guy mr hood who he actually passed away like 10 years ago but he he started a cinematography class so we would

actually make movies in class and watch movies i would go see i remember i saw kozlowski's red with him and um you know he was always making me dubs of you know the the todd haynes superstar and oh yeah he gave me blow up on vhs and he just gave me some really cool movies um he was a big felini fan and so and he was also a really big bowie fan we like tripped out on like low and he's he was awesome did you ever like watch any of those other ones what red desert yeah passenger yeah they're hard movies they're great i just remember like just wanting it to make sense uh-huh like i had this expectation which it seems like you were able to sort of jump over fairly young just by virtue of what you were taking in. Where if I didn't get it or it didn't make sense to me that I was missing something.

That I couldn't just take it in. You couldn't just have like a holistic experience. No. Yeah. Could you? Yeah, because I think I'm able to zone out sometimes. Yeah. And I don't get kind of caught.

I'll watch movies multiple times. I'll watch a lot of movies more than one time and just kind of like let able to zone out sometimes. Yeah. And I don't get kind of caught. I'll watch movies multiple times. I'll watch a lot of movies more than one time and just kind of like let it wash over me. Sure. Sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Pick up the pieces. I was, one thing I learned about the way you should see art isn't, you don't go to a gallery

and see every single painting and just stare at it and give it an assigned amount of time. Yeah. You just sort of drift to what draws your attention and then focus on that. Right. You don't, you're not doing a chore when you're watching art you're experiencing something and whatever resonates with you you should kind of go with that and also like sometimes i have found that that things that i i that may have caught my eye or resonated with me when i was younger or even if i didn't quite get it or

like the artist whatever medium it was that as i get older and i go back to things i'm like oh yeah now it yeah i mean i just having me the roxy music i i love roxy music especially the early stuff yeah speaking about you know but the later stuff i always i think i had like a reaction to kind of reject it because they rejected you know and i kind of was defensive for and also there was a lot of sort of suave suits and yeah of a little cheesy. Yeah. Yeah. It's beautiful. I love it. That's great.

It's so good. So yeah, I don't know if it was like, there was, there was, yeah, there's a problem with Brian Ferry, you know,

in, in, in terms of like taking him in. Yeah. As a, as an entertainer and as an artist, like there's something about his stature that's sort of like, eh,

he's almost like trying too hard to be charismatic. Something. It's like Bowie. It's just effortless. And with Brian Ferry, it's like, he's like, check me out. Yeah. almost like trying too hard to be charismatic. Something. It's like Bowie. It's just effortless. And with Brian Ferry, it's like he's like, check me out. Yeah. Right. He's like, I'm smooth.

Yeah. I had the same reaction to him. Yeah. Like with Leonard Cohen. Like I'm just now, like it's now connecting with me. Oh, he's connected with me from the beginning. Yeah. He's like one of my all-time people.

What was it? It's so sparse to me. It's so raw. I mean, I love to start like like mccabe and mrs miller is really one of my favorite movies so good ever like i love those songs but like you know to take on the whole leonard cohen catalog yeah at the first at the time i watched mccabe miss mill i just couldn't i couldn't grasp it i love melancholy stuff yeah me too but i i still couldn't like i just there was something

about a lot of it that i didn't quite get until not too long ago that movie like like the more i watch that it just blows me away every fucking time oh it's so good i mean that's to some extent what i was trying to do with little hours which is you know find a historical period and kind of just tell it in a really contingent way instead of having it hit all those like points that you're expecting it to hit kind of it's fallible people and just sort of watch it in a really contingent way. Instead of having it hit all those points that you're expecting it to hit, it's fallible people and just sort of watch it play out. I mean, that's obviously Altman, who's a master doing his thing.

Yeah. But yeah, the movie is super inspirational. It's an insane movie to sort of like, I feel like I need to watch it again. Yeah, I could watch that movie. Altman movies I could watch. You know, California Split? Yeah. That's probably my all-time favorite movie. I could watch that movie. All the movies I could watch, you know California Split? Yeah.

That's probably my all-time favorite movie. I could watch that movie every week. Really? Yeah, his movies for me are just the easiest things to watch. They're just, like the language he's speaking, it's just, I digest it instantly and I just love it. Like, I love it. Yeah. Yeah, and if he picks the right period, like in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, that juncture of commerce and the wilderness and the death of the Old West, it was so fucking dense.

But yet, you can watch it casually. But if you just want to investigate that guy who's building that church, you can write a paper on that. And it's also like McCabe is, a general western would have mccabe as the gunslinger and we don't know his exploits we don't know how talented he is until the end of the movie in a minute in a second yeah but up until then you're sort of just watching this guy kind of hiding out and also but he's also like not only a flawed character but bordering on a comic character like you know i had a discussion with somebody about the choice of the derby. That he's wearing?

Yeah. Yeah. Because that's a comedic hat on some level. Right. And that he was sort of- It's like a fancy hat. It's a fancy hat, but it's also a chaplain hat. So, you know, when you start thinking about his bumbling around

and his inability to connect with this woman, you know, and his mumbling to himself, that there is an is a a an almost slapstick nature to him and it's so tragic as well like his inability to connect with julie christie completely you know the fact that they're they're they're simpatico but they're there's a limit to how far they're willing to go and the sort of unsavory choices they've made in their lives have sort of i guess metastasized into who they are that doesn't allow them to connect. So the first time you really learned about film in terms of practical, in terms of technical things

was in high school with the cinematography class? Yeah, I mean, I was always messing around with video cameras and Super 8 cameras. Do you have that stuff still? Yeah. Do you have your movies? Yeah, I still have some. Yeah, did you digitize them?

Not yet. No? No, I actually like how they're falling apart. It's kind of amazing. What did you shoot? Like what kind of short films? Was it stop action stuff? No, it was always dramatic, comedic, you know, like stuff with people.

Not a stop motion animation. Just, you know, like little. I remember when I was a kid, I was watching Nickelodeon. Yeah. And this is like a stupid story, but there was a show and I can't remember the name of it. Like this is not really like a great reference, but there was a show and I can't remember the name of it. Like, this is not really like a great reference, but there was a show where it's like a bunch of people in leotards would get on top of each other and make shapes. Like they would turn into like elephants or whatever, just by working together as a team.

Yeah. And so they would always ask for suggestions, which would basically be like, hey, send us a thing and we'll, you know, be a tank or something. And then they could do it. I sent them this like four page. And this is when I was like five or six years old. I had my dad help me, but like a courtroom drama. Yeah. And they're just like, we can't, you page and this is when i was like five or six years old i had my dad help me but like a courtroom drama yeah and they're just like we can't you know this is not gonna happen so i was always trying to do something a little bit more dramatic i think than

probably like i was capable of doing yeah yeah a courtroom drama yeah and they're like this is not exactly for us and they sent me like a black beauty vhs tape as like a consolation prize but yeah we don't act we just sort of make shapes with our bodies yeah yeah yeah yeah did you did you picture them in your courtroom drama doing oh yeah no i was so into it i was you know because like i think you know my dad's a lawyer so i was looking up to him i probably wanted to be a lawyer at some point and then i was like this is a great story i'm gonna tell and they just were not having it so what was the first piece of uh of uh cinema that you put together that you thought had you know was solid that i directed myself yeah um i mean before nyu yeah i mean i i did a short film to get into nyu yeah

that was it was uh with my teacher mr hood who i referenced before um about a kid who realizes his parents are cannibals uh-huh and that was pretty fun yeah that was like the and it was like the most i guess uh professionally done thing i did a contest for twinkies they did a they asked us to do like a um or they don't ask us they ask people to do uh like a short piece for for like something to have to do with twinkies yeah and i did some random ass like uh mixed together a bunch of short film tropes you know like, like Fellini and Bergman and Truffaut. Yeah. When I was in high school and we got second place, I think.

Second. We got a lot of 20s. What won first? I don't know. It wasn't like, there was no internet back then. So it wasn't like you really were able to like do that. Right. To do that kind of research, you'd have to go real deep. Yeah.

Yeah. Before the internet. Yeah. Do you know a guy that can get me the tape of the winner? Yeah. Right. So when you went to NYU, when you moved to New York, you know, was that the big, like, what were you setting out to do?

I wanted to be a filmmaker and I wanted to not go to a campus school. I wanted to sort of be in the world. Growing up in Miami is great. You know, the beaches are amazing. All my friends are great. But I just couldn't wait to get out of there. Like, it was to me, like, not a cesspool, but it was definitely something that was limiting. Yeah, yeah.

There was no cultural element. I think now that you have, what do you call it, Art Basel and Wynwood is kind of becoming a thing and the design district. There is an element now. But back then, everything was Romero Brito. I don't know if you know that artist, but he's a bad version of keith herring that's really colorful like there's a lot of money but not a lot of taste not a lot of taste it's like la minus the mountains and minus the entertainment culture right you just get all the negative stuff you get literally get people driving around lamborghinis and ferraris you know yeah mesh shirts and yeah so like i was looking to

get out of that and go to a place i mean new york for me always was a place i wanted to live my parents are from there you know every every piece of film that i really like family there yes i'll film me there yeah and did you then where you're like was there anyone when you went to college did you oh yeah i mean all my cousins and my aunts and uncles live there i mean pretty much everyone in my family was in new york except my grandparents and my parents everyone my everyone else was up there so all right so you go to nyu and what do you what do you what do you learn i mean more than anything it's just how to how to be on a set you know they don't teach you how to get a job they don't teach you you know how to write stuff they just teach you the formats how it breaks down how it breaks down and how to do it

not specifically what to do yeah and so for me that was really invaluable i don't i don't i didn't want people telling me how to make stuff i mean what to make yeah i always had an idea of what i wanted to go for but how do you how to load a camera how to light something you know how to record sound all that stuff is really i have a good memory so i'll remember all that stuff like i ended up shooting everyone's movies in school so how to format a script how to format a script yeah what program to use yeah all that stuff was like super important, but I never was, you know, I never thought of it as a lot of people I know that went to school,

they're kind of like talk down on it as if it was like, I don't understand why I thought it was great. Like to be able to live in New York city as that, at that age, to be anonymous, you know, kind of blend in, but also be able to,

I mean, then that was in the nineties and there was a lot of really cool creative stuff happening, especially with independent film. And who are your classmates. Who were your classmates? Who were your teachers? Do anyone we know? I had a teacher for Italian cinema called Antonio Monda.

He ended up doing the commentary on Eight and a Half, the Criterion version. I had a couple of kids that I went to school with that kind of became stuff. Jonathan Liebsman, he directed Clash of the Titans or one of the Clash of the Titans. Oh, yeah? Were you shooting stuff stuff i was shooting stuff for sure who were you using as actors any new york people that you know you actually rob delaney do you know him so he we went to school together i know him since i was 18 so he was in a lot of my stuff like he was my guy so you knew him through the whole crack up i knew him he actually you talk about when he got into his accent stuff he was leaving my house well he so we were hanging out that night and uh we had a

friend who's i who he grew up with and they were kind of hanging out at my place it was like two in the morning i i didn't really i mean i was too young i was like 22 i think at the time so i wasn't i didn't see all the warning signs of what was going on but um yeah he left my house and went to a friend's house that was having a party at two in the morning and he was one of those guys like that would bring over a six-pack for himself right but you know we're that when you're that young everyone's just kind of partying and yeah yeah you knew they're like wow that dude can drink a lot but you didn't connect it to like not at all problem yeah the weekend before it got a little dark because we i was doing this

documentary on you know world's strongest man competition yeah i found this pocket of guys up in Sacramento that were trying to do the same thing, that were trying to go pro. And he came up with me and helped me, like, kind of work on this documentary. And he was drinking a lot. And then it got a little bit dark. And then we came back. And then he left to go to this party, basically, at 2 in the morning. I'm like, what are you doing? And I guess he started drinking and blacked out.

And then he just took off at 5 in the morning. Drove it into the water you doing? And I guess he started drinking and blacked out and then just took off at five in the morning. Drove it into the water building or something. He took a bunch of meters out. Yeah. No, I mean, I've talked to him,

you know, and he's sober a long time, but you know, we went into depth about that event. Yeah, no, that was, I mean,

I've never seen something as transformative for a person as that. I mean, that it's, there is a chapter shift like things change of course yeah he got sober he got well not but i mean it on all fronts like he he had a lot of stuff going for him like he was he started getting casting callbacks and things were happening when you were like 22 when he was 22 and then you know after that you know his knees and his elbows were busted and he couldn't go out and It's like when you first get into AA, you become like a true disciple.

It's like there's no Catholic, like a new Catholic or whatever. And so it became his whole life. And then I think slowly he sort of got a little bit more balanced and stuff. But I mean, he's one of my favorite people in the world. And you used him in college in movies? Yeah. He's in my first movie for a second in Life After Beth. Yeah. And I always want to work with him and I love him yeah he's doing well yeah he's doing great so you did how you did one big film in college or short films or i did a bunch of

short films yeah and my thesis film didn't happen my my teacher didn't turn in my insurance form and they just disappeared like two days before we were supposed to start shooting your teacher disappeared yeah this total jackass like he he was supposed to pretty much they give you an allotment for film like you know equipment and stuff he you you got the insurance for that he but you end up getting other film equipment like you rent out for rental houses and you need the insurance form or because you're a student like no one's gonna cover your shit yeah and he never turned it in and then like went awol and so nyu felt bad and they're like hey why don't you just come back for another year and we'll guarantee you with you know an allotment but like they wanted me to spend 40 grand to go back to

the do senior year year of again and it was just why would you do that yeah exactly it's like i don't know yeah so you left you left film school and came right out here came around here i started working for roberts and mechis um what movie was he doing then what lies beneath and cast away i got really lucky because i i a friend of mine that had moved out here showed me what his resume was which was like ridiculous it said where he was born and stuff and i didn't i didn't know what you're supposed to do on a resume who does so i put down that i was born in miami and it turns out the guy who runs jack uh this guy jack rapke who runs runs uh zemeckis company he was from miami and went to nyu and thought he was i was like his second coming, so he hired me.

And so I got to work on, well, Lesbian Ethan Castaway, like a PA, and it was really fun. You were on Castaway as a PA? Yeah. Not in Fiji or Bora Bora. Right. It was just the LA stuff.

Uh-huh. Yeah. And so you're right in it. Yeah, I was right in it. Yeah, and like I grew up, I was a big time Zemeckis fan. Like I love Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Yeah. I really loved Used Cars for some reason. I don't know why. Yeah, and like I grew up, I was a big time Zemeckis fan. Like I love Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Yeah. I really loved Used Cars for some reason. I don't know why. Used Cars with Kurt Russell? Kurt Russell, yeah. Oh, yeah. So good. Did Zemeckis take a liking to you?

Yeah, he was really sweet. Like whenever I would go, I mean, I was pretty much just doing, you know, go for runs kind of stuff. But he would always let me kind of come and sit and watch them work. I remember one time he's like, hey, do me a favor. Go get Steven at the gate and bring him to me. I'm like, great. And there's a guy named Steve Starkey, who's his producer,

who I'm just assuming I'm going to go get. This is like literally day one of my job. And I see this like turquoise Explorer pull up and it's Steven Spielberg. So I have to take Steven Spielberg to him. And like, I mean, that was like mind blowing. I remember Steven Spielberg was giving me like a pep talk and you know, like, oh, Bob's a great guy

and you're in great hands and all this. And it was just so surreal. And so, but they knew you were lit up and intelligent, right? Yeah. But that's not the best combo for like an office worker. Or a PA. Sometimes it can work against you. Like I'm sitting there like looking at all the film stuff and they're like, well, can

you go get the dry cleaning and like make sure I have enough oranges and, you know, make sure I have my petty cash. Like that's, that's like your job is. Right. But like I'm like, okay, cool. But I just want to sort of stay here for like a little bit longer. Yeah. And how long did you work for Zemeckis?

Like almost a year. And then I started working with David Russell. So you're 21? 22. Where are you living? In Los Feliz. I've lived in Los Feliz the whole time I've been in LA. That's a pretty good move.

Yeah. And you're like connecting with people of your age and like you got a crew out here. Yeah. And like everybody was doing their PA work or getting their little breaks here and there. Yeah. Like who were your crew? A lot of NYU kids. Some, I hung out with a lot of actors, honestly.

Yeah. I don't know why. It's always, I'm friends with tons of actors. And yeah, it's like fun watching them sort of like kind of find their way or not find their way and like become pastry chefs and stuff and just sort of like find their own thing. But yeah, but it was definitely fun. So you go right from Zemeckis to David O. Russell.

How'd you get the job with David O. Russell? I applied to a jobless ad for a director who was looking for an assistant editor and I know how to edit. So I applied and then I met him and we had like a you know he interviewed me and it was i was actually putting flooring with disaster on laserdisc which is like super dating it but i was putting the laserdisc on as he called to say will you come in and meet with me i had no idea who it was and so he was working on some online documentary that ended up nothing nothing ever came out of it but um I would just start editing stuff for him. So by the time when you started working for him,

he had made Spanking the Monkey, he had made Fording with Disaster. And he had just finished Three Kings. Fording with Disaster is a great movie. It's amazing. It's perfect. Yeah. It's some of the funniest shit ever.

Yeah. I don't know that people talk about it enough. And there's some great acting in it, too. I think that's my favorite movie of his. That's with Ben Still ben stiller leone richard jenkins roland's in it roland alan alda lily tomlin yeah it's like it's an ensemble comedy yeah and you know it was like it's almost a genre movie in a way right it's like a road trip um finding yourself movie right and he's finding out who his parents are right he's adopted right i gotta watch that again oh it's so great because like you know spanking the monkey i've watched a few times fording with disaster a couple times

i like in three kings i watch whenever possible i should probably own it because there's something so there that movie to me is sort of a masterpiece somehow definitely i mean it's it's you know talking about not having a real genre. It's an action movie. It's political. It's funny. It's got pathos. It's shot really well.

It's whip smart. Yeah. It's a really amazing movie. I mean, I guess it's timely. I mean, I would say timeless because it's applying to everything. And you know what? I remember about it always in getting back to Blood and Guts and getting back to satire, which I think Three Kings probably is in a way.

Definitely satire. I mean, with the army and oil. Is that weird cutaway to the inside of the body? Yeah. David thought that CSI ripped him off with that because it shows the sepsis where the bolts go in and you start seeing the effect of... Yeah. He was pretty convinced that CSI ripped him off with that you know because it shows the sepsis you know where the bull's going in and he starts seeing the effect of yeah he was pretty convinced that CSI ripped that off well whatever he may have been convinced of or not that I thought that as a specifically satirical device that that you know there there's something you know that goes

beyond humanizing by just making that choice to do that by taking the time to show a bullet entering inside the body that is so like you know specific but you know the humanity of it is disturbing i mean it's like the i guess the more grounded version of when austin powers when when he runs the guy over with the steamroller and then you see the wife get the call of the henchman the henchman's wife getting called he died and she's like super distraught yeah which is like you never go that far right yeah yeah and then that like you know but it also it's sort of like you know it's just the the raw goods yeah the animal this is what's happening right yeah yeah it gets glossed over i mean i remember i had a panic attack one time when i saw avatar you know

the movie avatar yeah i saw that and i've started tripping out on the fact that you're seeing thousands of people die and every one of them has a life. You know, I think it's what's it called? Sonder when you when you sort of project yourself into all these different lives. Right. Yeah. And then just the sheer, I guess, number of people that are dying in the lives that are. I just I like literally lost it when I watched that movie.

I'm like, this is like a nightmare. I hate this. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when I have those feelings, it is overwhelming if you have you know uh an eno brain which is sensitive yeah that you know the amount of anxiety available if you open yourself up to those possibilities is like you know can be uh annihilating yeah mentally annihilating how'd

you pull out how'd i pull out avatar yeah of the panic attack oh yeah i i just realized i never had a panic attack before it was literally my only panic attack. I knew I was having a panic attack. And I know when you're having a panic attack, you're supposed to realize you have a panic attack and breathe. And you're not having a heart attack and you're not going to die. Yeah. But it took a while. It was definitely like a nightmare. So what would you learn with David O. Russell, who is notoriously difficult?

Well, when I came on with him, we were basically tight. We were super tight. He took you under his wing-ish? He took me under his wing, but at the same time treated me as an equal, which was insane because I was like 23. And how old was he? He's 20 years older than me.

Okay. So he had done four movies, I guess, at that point. Uh-huh. Or three movies. I don't know if it was three movies. And he's a genius. Super genius. And I mean, so and i like that time when we were writing together to me is like one of the highlights of my life because he was we we

were on the same wavelength and he's so talented and he just taught me how to sort of have an ear for things how did you get to a point where you said let's write together you know you're entering as what a glorified pa or i mean i was an assistant assistant editor assistant editor assistant um yeah what really happened was i i mean this is like this is i don't know if this is like too much but i had this weird dream um this one night that i was driving in a in a car and i saw this big uh white sphere and i it looked like i knew it was a motorcycle and i clipped it and i got like i made a little like dent on it yeah and i was like oh shit and as i was driving i saw a cop behind the thing and i saw him put his lights on i'm like oh shit and then

just as i look at my rearview mirror i saw this green truck lose control and hit me and i was like great now the cop's gonna be more focused on that accident than a little like thing i did yeah so the next couple days i was super paranoid about getting in a car accident um cut to two days later i was at franklin western and stoplight and i looked at my rearview mirror and i saw a green truck lose control and hit me from behind and i got out to like deal with the accident and there's all this dust in the air and some of it got in my eye whatever so i went to david's house told him what happened everyone was like tripping out about this dream because I had told my girlfriend at the time about the dream.

And then like literally got hit by a green truck. And David was like so fixated on this. What is the white thing that I hit? You know, this white sphere. And then as the day went on, my eye got really messed up and I had his wife took me to the eye doctor and turns out I had an ulcerated cornea because I wear contacts and I guess like a piece of dust gun in there and start eating it away and I would have gone blind. And then we realized like me, like knocking off the cap of the white thing was my eye.

And it was just this whole crazy thing. So for like two weeks I had this ulcerated cornea. So I'd put these drops in every hour in the hour and I couldn't really sleep and I was losing my shit. And I think he felt really bad. So he started telling me about some of these ideas he wanted to work on, told me about the Huckabee's idea. There was another couple of things that we worked on.

And then we started like spitballing ideas at me. And we had like, especially when we were doing the editing stuff, we had like a real easy sort of rapport in terms of creative stuff. What you were editing that online thing you was working on? Yeah. Cause like when you're missing a scene or when you have a scene that leads to another scene, it's not exactly working. You got to find the glue between it. So I would start pitching ideas, you know, and he, and so he just started kind of spitballing ideas off me. And then we just started writing together. And then I don't know, I was like 24, 25. And then I was working with him nonstop.

We wrote four scripts together. You wrote Huckabees? Huckabees. We did like a Meet the Fockers version. Like a meet, is it Meet the Fockers? Meet the Fockers. Yeah. And then we did this script that I love that I think is the best thing we wrote

about this dermatologist who joins basically the forum, the and then you know becomes a mess and i can't remember the other thing we did never made it to screen no new line got it and sort of in turnaround so but yeah he's still in in the works no there's no way it's gonna happen they have too much money against it but we uh yeah we just had like a really good way of working like we would sit next to each other and just pass the laptop between each other and it was like we shared a brain and I just learned so much from him like what I mean the main thing I learned is just sort of how to juggle characters at the same time you know how to create distinct characters put them in a situation he calls them confabs like confabulations yeah and sort of just like let that scene play out and so I've always been drawn to

like chaos and you know large groups and but i don't like just arbitrary chaos i like where you kind of are able to track like you can actually parse through it and say like oh this is that tack and this is what this person's doing and this is where their motivation is and how it all kind of collides and that it actually works out in a way that right is chaos but there is a logic to it right and so i think um well that could be all about that in a way yeah i mean ensemble mean, ensemble comedies of people coming together and crashing into each other and just all the stuff that happens. Yeah.

So I learned a lot about that from him. And you saw a movie all the way through. I mean, you guys wrote Huckabees and then you were on set with it. For the most part, yeah. Yeah. And that's a difficult movie. I like that movie a lot and i don't know why necessarily you know what i mean like yeah i watch it and i like right when

the first time i saw it i'm like well this is like absurdism this is like a eugenie yanesco play this is a farce of some kind and i don't know that i could completely understand it. I don't under, you know, like in my recollection, the thing that triggered my, my analysis of it was that Marky Mark's a fireman. I don't know why, but he just showed up as a fireman. And I, what was the construction? What was the intent? I mean, David had a dream about a detective following him around in his everyday life. So he wanted to do something where a person is sort of charting your every move and sort of doing an existential

analysis instead of you know a legal or i guess right anything like that a philosophical analysis a philosophical analysis but you know a metaphysical philosophical analysis right and um he kind of pitched that idea to me and i was always drawn to philosophy i read a lot of philosophy and studied a little bit and I've always been interested in that. And I think the timing of it was, uh, auspicious in terms of,

um, sort of the zeitgeist, you know, a lot of people were coming out of nine 11 and there was this shift, I think in terms of comedy, especially with sincerity where after nine 11, it was okay to be sincere again. I think coming out of the nineties,

everything was so ironic and so glib and so sort of harsh and acidic and i think all of a sudden people had a moment to kind of come together and you know the reason why um walbert's character as a firefighter is obviously 9-11 right and so he's the kind of person who up until that point would have just sort of been coasting through life and kind of doing his thing and then all of a sudden someone that you don't associate with having deeper thoughts and sort of going deep not that firefighters don't have deep thoughts but in general we sort of don't attach that our idea of them change yeah our idea changed and then you know especially after the way it all kind of played out then we go to war and like why did

we go to war was it because we want justice is because we're just it's socioeconomic petrodollar stuff like what what are we doing yeah and so i think a lot of people have those questions and i think it kind of and there was also i don't want to call it new age because i kind of it's sort of uh i think cheapens it a little bit but there is sort of a metaphysical sort of openness that sort of occurring started occurring around that time as well you know you saw the the how yoga started blowing up and you know people were more conscious about their diets and stuff like it was everyone was just sort of taking stock i think after that and yeah the reverberations i think we're still feeling them obviously but um yeah at that time it sort of felt like that's that was what we were

kind of connecting with and david and i well david specifically was really on a buddhist path you know at that point he's i don't think he is anymore but you know we we were studying zen and we got way into zen and sort of these ideas were sort of percolating and i think we just created a sort of mishmash um like a pastiche of all these different things that we're like culling from right and uh yeah i mean i don't i mean the craziest thing is that was a studio film like you like can you imagine yeah like at one point that was gonna be a warner brothers movie like warner brothers was supposed to make that movie and then they just like obviously like were smart and you know for them like that doesn't

make any sense but who ended up making it searchlight fox searchlight and how did you guys feel about it um i think it's cool i mean i haven't seen it since it came out you know like it it was definitely there's what you intend to make and then there's what ends up being made yeah and i mean truthfully i wasn't on set at the end of it you guys had a falling out a little bit yeah yeah i mean because i you know there's you know i've heard rumors about you know what happened on set and you know that you know he kind of lost his mind and whatever yeah and i you know i don't know that you can speak to that but whatever you guys grew estranged yeah yeah i don't want to get too gossipy yeah we uh grew

estranged uh-huh yeah and still yeah i mean it was you know it was a lot of stuff happened a lot a lot of crazy shit went down so like it's not i always respect him and love him for who he is because he's a true visionary and a rebel. And it's hard to sort of separate someone's art and their soul and their actions. Yeah. But, you know, he's a true artist and he's a super genius. And when we were writing together, it was one of the highlights of my life. Like I remember one time we were, he got an award from Amherst because he went to Amherst. life like i remember one time we were um he got an award from amherst because he went to amherst and we got wind of um antonin scalia was giving a a speech to this um like pre-law class there

i can't remember the name i think the guy's name was arkis the teacher's name was arkis he was like a pre-law or whatever it was so we snuck in and um it was you know horrifying because he's not my guy yeah and scalia was going off about the constitution and how you know you're not supposed to obviously his whole take on it is it's it's not a living breathing document it's it's a set of laws that are very clear and you know you think about what the framers were thinking of and just apply that don't he's an originalist yeah you don't you don't think of it as something you can interpret because you can't interpret a law right because then anyone can interpret a law and subjective so anyway he was saying like back then a felony was if you commit a felony it was instant death and he goes uh not like now so that's pretty effective huh and it was like so like oh like

you're just gonna kill someone for a felony and then i remember he um so at some point we were being rushed out and uh david goes through something at him like you know uh how dare you with you know the the gore election and then i remember he goes uh scalia goes have have some dignity like how dare you interrupt my process and then i said well you interrupted the election and then like who are you guys and they started screaming at us and then we ran and we i remember running through the quad like just running for our lives away from this thing it was like so much fun you you and david o'rezal running from scalia and his like cronies yeah it was awesome wow so like there was a lot of fun stuff

that happened with us and like honestly creatively i don't think i've ever met anyone that i've identified with as much and it was like a real education yeah but you know guys who ever bring it around maybe i mean i'm not opposed to it it's just you know people change and sure people do stuff that's kind of hard to swallow and right you know yeah so when when that happened it sort of you know whether the timing was right or not or whether it was a good thing uh how it felt at the time it kind of what that's when you took up on your own yeah i mean it was directly related to that so the the pretty much i think it was like the fourth week yeah filming is when i kind of peaced out um i started writing my first script on my own

that ended up becoming my first movie life after beth and uh and you made that i made i ended up making it 10 years later i wrote in like 2003 what'd you do for 10 years i was just writing studio jobs i was like doing you know rewrites and stuff like really yeah that's what you were able to get from working with david that you had done some rewrites yeah i mean my first thing i wrote became a feature that got produced so like you get in a did you share the credit yeah it was me and him and like what kind of rewrites were you doing because i rewrite rewriters are sort of unsung sometimes heroes sometimes guys are just making a buck but yeah it's amazing how many people i know that are accredited for anything but did a pass on big scripts i did a pass on a bunch of stuff i can't remember anything that like it was a lot of stuff

i that there was a couple of originals that i mean i'm dealing with studios and i mean i don't know if if you like you can tell by my last movie it's i don't have necessarily the most like is that just a a fee thing where they're like give this kid 25 grand or 10 grand and let him do a pass and that's that no i was doing like originals too so like you're getting paid a lot of money to you're writing writing original scripts yeah it's not like i'm doing a polish so you had a script you had a script deal yeah i was always doing scripts for years and i think you know coming off of that experience i was in 2003 i wrote life after bath to direct almost made it with searchlight it got really close and then And I think, you know, coming off of that experience, I was in 2003, I wrote Life After

Bath to direct, almost made it with Searchlight. It got really close and then it kind of fell apart the last second. I think I was discouraged and I'd never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a director. But when you have a script deal, what does that mean? It's like you got three, a three script deal. It's not like it's, I didn't have like an overhead deal. I would just do job, job to job.

They would send me, you know, they'd send me scripts. And then if I like identify with them and I thought I could could fix them or if it was an idea that i thought like would be fun to work on i would do it but you know eventually it kind of like wore out its welcome and then uh i just started getting back into trying to direct but i think the that whole experience kind of that whole time period was like a little bit dark yeah and so i try to like because of what went on with david yeah and just sort of like yeah the whole time was like slight disillusionment definitely more than slight yeah oh yeah about like what you could and couldn't do in this town yeah like what you can get away with what

what people were open to letting happen and also like what wasn't allowed to happen and how can you make what you want to do happen yeah and then you're just sort of like okay i got it and then obviously the as the economy started going south and if you start tracking that time period was sort of this like highlight creatively i think of the mini major studios you have all these different guys you know like wes anderson david um alexander payne spike jones they're all kind of blossoming around that time and then a little bit after that those companies started shutting down like there's companies that don't exist anymore. Like Warner's Independent doesn't even exist anymore.

There's tons of places that were outlets for that kind of style of filmmaking. And I think now you're starting to see it kind of come back. Like it's coming back in vogue and you see a new generation of people trying to do this thing. But for a good run there, it just disappeared. You know, that's when you started getting all the superhero kind of comic book things. Right. Action movies and science fiction stuff. They need to make the big bucks. Yeah. yeah i mean like everything's much more reductive and especially when the economy went south like i guess in between 2007 and 2009 that was like the death

knell for all those guys you know like everyone had a harder time kind of making that stuff happen so how did you pull yourself together to put your make your first movie it just kind of happened like i um mike zakin who runs a random american zoetrope he kind of figured out this system with the tax credits in los angeles yeah and he's like dude we can make a movie for a million dollars do you have anything you want to do and what ultimately joshie was what i had wanted to do this is back in like 2011 or something 2012 i wanted to make that movie and i got together chris pratt and um uh pally it was pally and i you know it was our thing adam pally adam pally uh chris pratt jake johnson and ben schwartz got together and we were going to make this movie and then pally's

mom passed away and so i had this tax credit and then we're like well what are we going to do and then i uh aubrey's agent remembered this script that I'd written, Life After Bath. And he's like, what about that? It would be perfect for Aubrey. And I was like, holy shit. Like, I wrote it for her. But I didn't know. This was like seven years before I even met her.

And like, I don't know who else would have done that. You know, like. Right. It was like, I think Zooey Deschanel or someone we were talking about. But like, no one can do what Aubrey did in that movie. I know you haven't seen it, but it's like, it's basically like a vehicle for Aubrey, even though I didn't know who she was. Right.

And then we just jammed that through like at the last as a lot of my movie moves have been like last second like jumping on opportunities instead of like careful plotting for years yeah it's almost just like sort of reading the tea leaves and being like okay this can happen right now and i gotta move real quick uh-huh yeah i mean i thought joshua was great. I enjoyed it. But, you know, this idea of, you know, fate comes and goes. Like, what did you study when you studied Jewish mysticism? Like what, specifically? Well, I mean, what did you take from it? I got way into mysticism at one point.

I don't know how that went down. I think when I was a kid, I was studying about the history of spain yeah and all the different words that come from arabic words from the moors you know like there's zero and zenith and nadir and one of them was um alchemy yeah where chemistry ultimately came from and i was just so blown away by this idea of alchemy of uh that there are people that think they can turn lead into gold and live forever and like as a kid that's amazing but i never like let go of that yeah and so especially as i got into high school and college, I was always reading, you know, works that had to do with alchemy.

Not like new agey stuff, but like literal original works. And Kabbalah, which is like the Jewish mysticism, features prominently in that stuff. Like that worldview of this idea of repairing, there's this thing called tikkun, where you find the sparks of divinity in trash basically and elevate it to make it divine is the the basic premise of alchemy yeah and so i i was definitely you know into all that kind of occult shit when i was in college like like how far like what how did it influence your life i mean at one point i did the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram yeah so like shit like that but yeah i mean i was i wouldn't say like i'm an occultist right but i there's something poetic and beautiful about it almost artistic yeah um and i think as an artist i think

opening yourself up to that process where i i mean i think ultimately all that stuff is a metaphor so if you're if you're talking about the you know mystical philosophy of the middle ages and renaissance it's i don't know what percentage of the people thought they were going to really turn lead into gold, but it's, you're transforming your soul. I mean, you look at Carl Jung stuff and Carl Jung super identified how that is

completely mimicking or not mimicking, but mirroring what's going on in our brain and how our unconscious works with our conscious mind. And so there is something to be said about that. And I think opening yourself up to that kind of like logic, or I don't't know if it's logic but sort of that imagery and that sort of allegory allegorical stuff right it allows it kind of creates a conduit for i guess creativity yeah but but you also have to be careful that you you have some context in place or it can get pretty crazy making like alistair crowley golden dawn style well i mean

well that that had a context you know that that practical magic business but but even in reading you know mystical texts and and you know looking at it as allegory that you know sometimes you know the dark side of that um if you get hung up on it or or sort of crossing over it into being like well this is real you know where you get into da vinci code land yeah that can kind of crush you in the same way that avatar does for sure i mean i definitely read holy blood holy grail but i also had read fukos pendulum by umberto echo which is poking fun it's satire of all that kind of stuff too i mean i always had a sense of humor about it. I was never like, you know,

wearing robes and, you know, trying to conjure up demons. And if anything, it was more just for me, it was more just kind of coming up with a cosmogony, like trying to come up with a worldview, trying to come up with like some structure to the universe.

Yeah. That isn't as obvious as religion or science. Yeah. That there is something like, I feel like you can tap into that is a little bit bigger than us. That has a structure to it. Yeah. So that was always what was really interesting i never really wanted to manipulate it from my own ends sure but i did feel like there is some kind of sympathy there but you do believe in like the you know the prophecy of dream and the uh the the the the

dubious timing of things that transcend coincidence? Absolutely. I mean, I've had dreams that have come true, like obviously with the weird eyeball thing. I've had weird out-of-body experiences that I was able to verify, you know, like with people. I was able to see people doing stuff as they were doing it, and they were able to like say that actually happened.

So I don't necessarily think that that's supernatural. I think it's natural. We just don't understand the extent of it. Or the, you know, what parts of our brain have been shut down out of necessity to uh function as humans yeah i mean i think it was uh was it seneca or maybe not even necessity maybe that were shut down for us to be civilized i think it was like seneca said the only thing that's stopping us from walking on water is our doubt. You know, like I obviously like then you can't not think of it. But yeah, I think like the ability of our minds are obviously we don't know to what extent what we're capable of.

So we just. Or what we're connected to. Or how we're connected. Or how we're connected. Or, you know, like I've read all kinds of stuff. You know, there's ideas that our brains are just basically antennas and we're just picking up, you know, signals. Yeah.

And that's what we are right um but i don't know i i'm just i don't have any answer i just know there's a lot more going on than when we explain good good thank you i'm i'm happy to know that thanks for talking to me man yeah of course all right man that was a high-octane conversation. Intense and engaged and good. I like that guy. Smart guy.

Good director. Interesting fellow. As I said earlier, The Little Hours is now playing in New York and L.A. It's going to be expanding throughout the country soon. Maybe I'll play some guitar. It's been a few days. I know a lot of you are just clamoring

to hear me fucking noodle and repeat myself. Hold on. It's a on so dead deaf black cat blues meditation i think i think we'll try to do that I'm sorry. Goodbye, deaf black cat. Boomer lives! you can get anything you need with uber eats well almost almost anything so no you can't get an ice rink on uber eats but iced tea and ice cream yes we can deliver that uber eats get almost almost anything order now product availability may vary by region see app for details calgary is a city built by innovators innovation is in the city's DNA. And it's with this pedigree that bright minds and future thinking problem solvers are tackling some of the world's greatest challenges

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