WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 892 - Duncan Jones / Brendon Small

Episode Date: February 21, 2018

Filmmaker Duncan Jones put his philosophy degree to good use when he started making science fiction films. Now on his fourth one, Duncan tells Marc how he tries to crack life's big questions through sci-fi stories, including Moon and his new movie Mute, which he likens more to Robert Altman's MASH than to Blade Runner. Duncan also talks to Marc about the burdens of having a famous parent - his being David Bowie - when you're trying to carve your own path. Plus, comedian and metal guy Brendon Small returns to the garage to talk about his new Galaktikon project. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. 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.

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 from right here in Calgary. From cleaner energy, safe and secure food, efficient movement of goods and people, and better health solutions, Calgary's visionaries are turning heads around the globe, across all sectors, each and every day. Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look how at calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com. Death is in our air.

This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global bestselling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life when i die here you'll never leave japan alive fx's shogun a new original series streaming february 27th exclusively on disney plus 18 plus subscription required t's and c's apply all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it welcome to the show

uh i'm recording this a little ahead of time just so you know that it's not as fresh as usual. It's not as freshly baked as usual. This was recorded about a week ago because my buddy, Brendan, my producer, is on vacation. So I don't know why I have to. There's no reason. You would never know the difference it's just like i just want you to know because if something goes down which i you know everything there's always shit going down now there's never any like maybe we'll have a three-day run where shit doesn't go down so basically the reason i'm giving you this info that it was a little uh further back that i

recorded this than usual is that if something horribly tragic has occurred and you know the only thing that's left on earth is the ability to post a podcast that i didn't know about it so uh well i guess it wouldn't matter wouldn't have any listeners anyways let's say the that most of the communications in the world are just they go down except for this podcast. I can offer you no help, no information about what's happening out there. I can't because I pre-recorded this, but Godspeed to all of you. And get out and start foraging.

I guess that's what it's come to. I hope you stash some money because I had no idea this would happen. Okay, so did I mention today on the show, Duncan Jones is here, the film director. He directed, you may have remembered the movie Moon with Sam Rockwell. And he did Warcraft and he did, what is that, Source Code. And now he's got a new movie out, which I enjoyed. It's called Mute. It's going to it's called mute it's going to be on netflix it's going to be available on netflix tomorrow uh he co-wrote and directed this and

i've talked to him before i talked to him years ago in another manifestation of media and another manifestation or incarnation of myself back in the day break room live it was shortly before i started the podcast so i haven't't talked to Duncan in a while. I liked him then, and I enjoyed talking to him this time. I think I pushed some buttons, but I'll get to that when I introduce him. I did want to, also, Brendan Small is on the show today. Brendan Small, who you know from Metalocalypse

and home movies and from his comedy, from his guitar playing. He's a metal dude. And he's made this video for his new sci-fi concept record. Yeah, that's what's happening. And he'll explain it. The odd thing is, is that now this has become sort of a science fiction theme show because duncan jones is also a sci-fi guy uh the his films are sci-fi and now i got brendan on here with his sci-fi guitar work and his new sci-fi video for the guitar work and a sci-fi concept record and i i

think if there's one thing you know about me is uh i'm not a sci-fi guy i think i i don't i think i've only seen two star wars to be honest with you i i have very little interest in sci-fi of any kind though i'll read i don't i know i didn't even i don't know that what the comics that i did read when i did read them were sci-fi i don't think that hellblazer is really a science fiction uh comic series it seems like a practical manual for those who are aware of what's really happening in the world yeah that's what the hellblazer is john constantine is just somebody who's dealing with what's really going on in in a way that you know uh has a handle on it just it it's a sort of a self-help series, that Sandman.

I guess that Hellblazer. I guess Sandman is kind of sci-fi. I guess it is. But it's more, you know, romantic sci-fi somehow. It doesn't involve aliens and spaceships, really. Different scapes, levels of things. I like Blade Runner as much as the next guy. And, you know, I talked to Duncan about Blade Runner.

I like Blade Runner because that's not so far in the future maybe i'm i i can i enjoy sci-fi if you know people still uh move through the world like humans like there's still some grit and some dirt to it you know that it's not a complete alien scape you know and spaceships do nothing for me zero i get no thrills from spaceships. But it just turns out, coincidentally, that we have two sci-fi themed things on the show today. I did want to read a couple of emails, I think, because somebody responded. There's a couple of reactions like this one. Corrections on your pronunciation and dot dot dot now see that

right away when i see that subject line i you know the and dot dot dot is not going to make me feel any better i'm already guarded this is just i'm i'm bringing this email up because it's it's about how these things make me feel, even though maybe she had a good point. Maybe her heart was in the right place. Hey, Mark. Osage County is O like O-H and sage, S-A-G-E, like sage. You say something like osage. That is what I said.

I said osage. So thank you. Osage County. Got it. You didn't have to tell me what I said. I said Osage. So thank you. Osage County. Got it. You didn't have to tell me what I said, but I'm okay. I'm okay. Almodovar. Almodovar. You said Almodovar. See now that I think that's that's nitpicky a little bit, but because I don't even know the difference. Almodovar. That's nitpicky a little bit, but because I don't even know the difference. Almodovar.

And I said, Almodovar. Almodovar. Almodovar. Almodovar. See, I'm still, you know, it's, I don't know, six and one maybe. But I appreciate you trying to help. You talked to Gina Rodriguez about being a Latino. That would be Latina if you are talking about her or women.

I know that. I know that. You know, I mean, you know, I know this is helpful. And then she writes, not trying to be a dick or more accurately, a cunt. Ruth, with a smiley emoji. I'm glad you added that last part because that made me laugh. It freed me up a little bit.

And thank you for the, and because you added that last part, the self-deprecation and knowing from probably living a life of being a corrector that you have to soften it because it's right to do it, but it's a tough position to be in it's a tough place to be the grammar police it's right it's righteous it you know it is very

basic and respectful but uh you know from uh the reactions you get that you qualified it a little bit with the with the funny thing at the end but you were being kind of a dick really still but thank you here's another one emails slash text falling through the cracks mark i was ecstatic to hear someone else talk about this problem i am the worst at forgetting emails and texts today i got a call from someone whose email i completely forgot about in which she asked for help with a client on a fairly urgent matter i felt absolutely horrible when she called even more so because this was already on my mind from your podcast this morning. At least she called to follow up instead of assuming I was ignoring her. I'd already been reading a book called Getting Things Done,

The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. And this email slip up made me stop everything and put the practices he advocates into action. I created a folder in my inbox called for review slash action. I went through my inbox and moved anything i haven't responded to yet to this folder hopefully this will help at least for work emails i have some personal emails that i never responded to but i meant to and and and the memory of those sometimes haunt me i will think of them randomly which causes intense stress and anxiety one email in particular from about four years ago still weighs on me occasionally but now it is way too late to respond text i have no hope for responding to these i vote we all start calling each other again regards amy now obviously i brought something to that reading but i don't know

about you listening to that but what what was that email four years ago? I mean, I appreciate the sentiment of this whole thing, and I'm glad that we're kindred spirits, but what was that email that's still weighing on you occasionally from four years ago, and it's too late? You can't just leave us all hanging like that, Amy. What was it? Okay, listen, Brendan Smallan small good friend of mine great guitar player has a a new music video coming out on um funny or die it's sci-fi but he talks about it it's

from his last record which um is a sci-fi concept let's talk to him about it sci-fi Brendan Small, right? Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life.

When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series, streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. 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, from right here in Calgary. From cleaner energy, safe and secure food, efficient movement of goods and people, and better health solutions, Calgary's visionaries are turning heads around the globe, across all sectors, each and every day. Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look how at calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com. at calgary economic development.com. Calgary is an opportunity rich city home to innovators,

dreamers, disruptors and problem solvers. The city's visionaries are turning heads around the globe across all sectors each and every day. They embody Calgary's DNA, a city that's innovative, inclusive and creative. And they're helping put Calgary and our innovation ecosystem on the map as a place where people come to solve some of the world's greatest challenges. Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look at CalgaryEconomicDevelopment.com. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th

at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Now. city at torontorock.com now so i don't think i haven't seen you in a while it's been a while yeah what's happened since i saw you last we probably performed together on stage probably played some music together are you still doing those shows i'm sorry i can't do it with the

improv i know you can't i know you can't i know you can't but but uh it's always fun when we do it we're gonna start start doing it soon again. So I'll be asking you at a different theater. So like, what's the name of them? It's Mike. Mike Keneally. Yeah. And then the drummer?

Joe Travers. Those guys are both ex-Zappas. Dweezil Zappas. Mike Keneally played with Frank Zappa. Right. And Joe Travers played with Duran Duran. He played with Dweezil Zappa. And what about the bass player?

That's Pete Griffin. Pete Griffin, yeah. He plays in a lot of different bands. He's a great bass player. And he plays in a band with one of the guys from Mastodon, too. Yeah, that'd be fun. They're all monster players. They're super musicians.

Because I got together with some other guys you know they're super musicians i got together with some other guys and they were good musicians too but i you know i i just wanted to jam a little bit yeah and no one does that no one does it you pros don't do that like i need to get into a groove i can do it you know i need to get into a group like i want to learn how to play with people but the way the way i'm going to learn how to play people is not to work out songs yeah yeah it's it's well you know what the the best thing about those guys and it's like great acting i think at the same point the same time they they they kind of fold in they're just listening to each other they're just paying attention i gotta learn how to do that and someone's got to let me do that all right like i played with these other

guys you know just i was gonna work out a few songs maybe just show a largo yeah but after two things i was like i can't do it. Because it was like, well, let's start over. Let's do this. Let's do that. And then one of them, they were like, why don't you just sing on this one? I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm here to play guitar.

So wait a minute. They're good guys. What did you want out of that? Well, I thought maybe I could put together a variety show where I could have an ensemble and do four or five songs and bring people up and do some stand-up, just like what everyone else does. Just an excuse to maybe get out and play out. Yeah. And do like four or five songs. Sure. And bring people up. Sure. And do some stand up. Just like what everyone else does. Just an excuse to maybe get out and play out. Yeah. You know what you want? You want a musical director, I think.

I don't think you want to deal with the bullshit. What do you mean? Meaning I think you want a guy to set up and have the band ready to go. And then if you want to jam, you get Marcus to jam. No, I really wanted to like do this. We put together the songs and they all sounded pretty good. But when you're a pro, there's an expectation to sort of like go yeah wait what are we doing yeah oh you just show up and get it done and not fuck around yeah what are we doing you know what i mean well i get that

i mean if i want to jam i gotta find some amateurs that's or just pay a bunch of guys to sit around that's what amateurs do play the same play an A blues like for 45 minutes. No, I'm willing to go other places. Okay. B? C? No, I'll go, no, I could do

three chords that aren't a blues. I don't need to play blues. I know, I know. I could play hard rock. I've seen you. We played a lot of music together. Look, Mr. Compression.

Compression? Whatever the fuck you do to your sound. My sound? It is, I have a little gainier sound. I have a more modern high gain sound than I think you do. Is that what it's called?

Modern high gain? Yeah, but I respect old amplifiers and old instruments, but I also like modern instruments as well. Yes, I do. There's something to be said for both. It sounds like you're playing a guitar in outer space. I know. It does.

It does. That's kind of what I've been doing lately. It is? Yeah. I've been in this outer space world since I put this outer space record out that i just made this outer space video for that's oh that's what we're going to talk about wait you put an outer space record out well that's what i did it's like an uh high stakes intergalactic extreme rock album galacticon two is the record you already where's galacticon one that came out also it already came out yeah that's something i put in like in between death

clock records as as uh as just because i didn't know i didn't know if i was going to do another death clock record yeah because there was like i had booked um death clock one came out did really really well i'd booked the and then we'd gotten this uh this whole deal together with adult swim for the second one but the last day before they said we the deal's not ready the deal's not done we can't do this and i had already booked studio time, booked all these musicians. And I didn't want to look like a jerk in front of these guys and make them refuse gigs to work with me. So I said, let's record something.

I'm going to grab all these other songs. And I wanted to do something that was a little bit more melodic, a little less heavy. Galacticon? And that's what Galacticon was. Who's singing? That's me. I'm singing.

And I'm singing on the new one. I'm singing somewhere between, it's kind of like the natural next step after Death Clock, which is kind of brutal, guttural stuff, but also very melodic and stacked vocals and more kind of like heavier queen kind of stuff. Yeah. Meets like Soundgarden, meets like Wheat. That's the new one? That's the new one, yeah.

So wait, the first Galacticon, are these concept records? They are. They are. And so here's what happened. This all happened as an accident. And then I put out this record. And I put out this- The first one?

I put out this first one. And then- Who's on it? It's myself. It's Gene Hoagland, who I play with on Death Clock. And Brian Beller, who played on Death Clock, too, is a monster player. You probably met him in passing. But he's a great bass player, too.

And now all those guys are out touring with other bands. But that's the band. So I wrote a bunch of songs and I wrote a story. I wrote a couple stories. What's the story of Galacticon One? So the story of Galacticon One is an intergalactic divorce story. So this is about like basically the idea was what if Superman and Lois Lane had this big public messy divorce and she got everything. She got the Fortress of Solitude and then and he got nothing and he has to go to anger management

and all this stuff he has to go to therapy and all kinds of stuff to get his sponsorships back and all kinds of shit and she starts dating Lex Luthor and that's basically the idea that was like a three-act hero's journey kind of a thing yeah and um and so but underneath it is a comedic thing and also kind of a hero's journey. Really? I shouldn't be taking this seriously? There are divorce lawyers, space lawyers and space predators in this story. But so what happened was, so one thing began another and then I put out a comic book with this guy, Eric Powell, who does a comic called The Goon on, and he has his own comic company

called Albatross Comics. So he said, can we make this into a thing so I did that this year too I wrote like a six issue. You used Superman? Don't you have to get permission to use Superman? I didn't really use Superman the idea was what if Superman and then I created a totally different character that doesn't feel it's more like Charles Grodin in outer space kind of a thing you know from like you the heartbreak kid that kind of a Charles like a cranky fucker who's like who it's a redemption story. He wasn't quite cranky in the heartbreak kid, that kind of a Charles, like a cranky fucker who's like, it's a redemption story.

He wasn't quite cranky in the heartbreak kid. He was kind of confused. He was a little moody, though, watching her eat breakfast. Yeah, oh, that, yeah. I put cream on my face. Don't put a Milky Way bar in someone's mouth who doesn't want it.

That's one of my favorite lines of all time. So you did the comic book about the divorce article. Yeah, I just finished. So it's still coming out right now. I just finished writing it. So the comic book for Galacticon 1 is coming out. Yes. And the record for Galacticon 2.

Just came out. With a new story. With a new story that I'll get into later on, but not here. What do you mean? Meaning that. You don't want to ruin it? I don't want to ruin it yeah that's kind of it but because everything's going with galacticon one right now but the but this wait the video is galacticon one videos galacticon two the video that you're here to talk about the video that i'm here to talk about is promoting

the second that i watched 30 seconds of i watched a trailer for a video yeah i know i know you got to promote it somehow well what do you but that's but just put the video out i'm going to but i have to make people watch it i have to let people know that it's happening at some time you have to create an event you have to show people where it shows up because there's no like mtv anymore right all right and videos are hard to sell by the way videos are hard to to to find money to. Videos are hard to find money to do. What is it supposed to sell? Well, it's hard to make money. It's hard to-

Get the money to make them. Get the money to make them. Thank you, Mark. Sure. That's why I'm on this side of the table. But it's hard to raise money. That's what I'm trying to say. So here's the thing is that this all comes back to you in some strange way.

As I was listening to the Roger Cger corman oh yeah episode yeah and it was a really inspiring thing you know i've gotten to um i've been lucky enough to to be paid by networks to do stuff for a long time but every once in a while i want to do my own stuff the way i want to do it how i want to do it right and that's what this whole project is right and so so raising money is really funny because y'all everybody turns into ed wood you're baptizing all your friends trying to get like you know forty thousand dollars to make something and um luckily i got a lot of sponsors to chip in and I got Megaforce Records who I'm working with to chip in and I got Loot Crate and I got a pinball company, Stern Pinball, who I do the voices of.

I'm the voice of the Metallica pinball game and the Aerosmith pinball game. Do you do their voices? I don't do their voices. I play an obnoxious character who just taunts you, like at a dunk tank. Come on! It's pretty much exactly that voice. Come on! You can do better than that!

That kind of a horribly annoying voice. And I got those guys to help me make this video. So there's a lot of people. A lot of people got their taste. Exactly. Well, the thing is, I wanted to do something that was only like available to be done, almost like, you know, Dogma 95 is like all this restriction-based thing. I wanted to do something like a sci-fi fantasy video using all practical effects, meaning no CGI at all, all tactile things.

And that's the Corman angle? And that's the Corman angle. And also, so instead of Dogma 95, I want to do Corman 82. Anything that was available in 1982, I can do with this video. So that's the Corman angle. And that's the Corman angle. And also, so instead of Dogma 95, I want to do Corman 82. Anything that was available in 1982, I can do with this video. So that's the idea. So my brother luckily works in makeup effects and he builds creatures and he's worked on Jim Henson stuff. He worked on Hellboy.

He worked on all kinds of different movies, but he's really good at what he does. And it was a good opportunity for us to partner together and just get our hands dirty and have paint on our pants when we go home and all kinds of stuff like that. So we use this old technique from like Flash Gordon, the movie, where they had these aquariums filled with ink and you use them for these really cool science fictions skies. So all those skies that you're seeing, even in that 30 second trailer, are generated through a 50 gallon aquarium. And it's just the gift that keeps on giving.

We keep using it for all these really cool moments and it's really outer space and it's tactile and it feels like it's really there. And we built spaceship models and we built robots and we built weird silicon whale creatures with glowing eyes and fucked up stuff like that. And it's a really crazy, fun place to be. And we found a standing spaceship set that I guess James Cameron built 20 years ago,

30 years ago, like up on the five somewhere. And it looks really cool. They on the five somewhere. Yeah. And it looks really cool. They shot the show Firefly there. Uh-huh. But we just wanted to light it really cool, like science, almost like heavy metal, the comic book, but up on its feet. Right.

Or in this case, my comic book totally up on its feet. Right. So, that was the idea. And I realized I was having so much fun, I couldn't deny this. I just wanted to keep building it out and building it out. So, I made it into this seven and a half minute short film where the song doesn't even start for the first two minutes. I wrote score.

I wrote like this John Carpenter kind of like Tangerine Dream style score with all these like square wave synthesizers. And like there's a little bit of Jerry Goldsmith in there from the Alien soundtrack. Yeah. Kind of like nods to this, that and the other thing. And then the song comes in. And then I figured I'm not even going to, I'm going to cut in to a second song that's on the record at the same time. Why not?

I'm here. I showed up. We have paint all over ourselves anyway. Why don't I just continue this out? And so it ends with this big epic outro of this other song on the same record. So it's just a big advertisement of just eye candy and fun and sci-fi and escapism and that was all because i i forgot you can just go out and start doing stuff right and that's what that corman interview kind of told me right yeah because no one's gonna pay me to do that stuff sometimes i

just gotta stand up and say okay here's what we're doing today you know everyone's like uh okay well the 30 seconds i saw look good it looks really really cool. Well, God forbid, you know, you're coming on the show, and I know it was at short notice. Yeah. That maybe I could see the whole... I can show it to you right now. I could have showed it to you beforehand, but we just started talking. I have a computer here and everything. I can show you the whole damn thing.

Well, maybe I don't want to spoil it. Maybe, yeah. Because the first 30 seconds look pretty good. Mm-hmm. Look really good. It looks really cool. It looks... We shot in anamorphic lenses.

Are you getting more nerdy as you get older? I mean, you seem like I don't. No, I mean, it's the same nerdery that's been there. It's just at some point, it's the same thing as the guitar. Look, everything is a guitar as far as I'm concerned. You know, you learn how to play it. There are like certain things. Would you ever play that guitar?

That's a Fender Strat. Of course I would. It's like an 86 Strat strat but it's got no frills no i have i have a 54 reissue with the baseball bat and act that sounds really great with the maple yeah of course i do i've used it on recordings oh you use the trick is that you surround yourself with all get all guitars are good yeah you just there's no i don't i'm never gonna kick a guitar out of bed they're all good pedals. Do you need any pedals before I go? Yeah, I do. I'll take a look through your pedals. But yeah, nerdery is part of this whole thing.

It's just, again, at some point you go- I didn't know your brother was in that racket. Yeah, he's been doing it for a long time. A fax racket. He got started with this guy, Gabe Bartolis, who's known for doing the Leprechaun series, Basket Case, these B movies. But he also does the Cream Master Cy the matthew barney stuff that's super artsy crazy oh yeah yeah so yeah it's this crazy cross section of the minotaurs yeah like a

weird like dancing goats and crazy shit and there's all this testicle related shit so so yeah i am getting nerdier and i want to learn more and honestly it's just like guitar i want to get better every day at shit don't you i mean like don't we want to just learn something new? Yeah, I'm thinking about taking guitar lessons. Yeah? Yeah. Are you really? Yeah.

I buy them online and I sit for like a half hour to 45 minutes every morning and try to learn new stuff. From who? Nerdy Fusion guys. Really nerdy stuff. Do you buy them though? They're that special? They're very specific?

I buy one I buy one and it lasts me three years to like get through it to like to be able to put it under my hands really yeah

wow like improvisational thinking stuff and fretboard knowledge and just going back to basics constantly yeah yeah

I mean just seriously like just going like alright let's look at my picking yeah oh really let's just go back down to just like

the mechanics of everything because you're working in millimeters. Uh-huh. There may be a better way to skin a cat or something, you know. Oh, my God. I just want to learn a couple new riffs. It's fun. You're allowed to do whatever you want with it.

There's no wrong answer. You know what I mean? I just want to get out of my- I know, but you can play. My circle of riffs. That's funny. That's true because we do plateau. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I just want. That's true because we do plateau. Yeah.

Yeah, I just want to see how far out I can get. I got a big blow to my confidence just playing with these guys. Oh, yeah? Why? Because I don't know. Because I think I can play, but I don't know. Can I play? For how long can I play?

Listen, you can play. Half the time, I think we start talking about guitar, you're just fishing for compliments from me. What? I think half the time I think we start talking about guitar, you're just fishing for compliments from me. What? And I think I deliver them every time and they're just not a good enough compliment. No, no, I need a boost.

I took... All right, fine. Mark, you can play. We played together live on stage. Yes, we have. You can play. You can question answer. You can listen.

You can... I think the most important thing you can do as a guitar player is is be able to bend a note and give it a little bit of life and that's the thing that that makes a guy from guitar center playing on a sunday versus a guy that's actually i can do that i know you can do that that's why i think you're good all right because it's almost like we're so close to picking up that guitar i know we. We're so close. But it reminds me of starting out comedy. Yeah. Sometimes we don't start out in a...

You're a guy with a real personality on stage. You may have started out that way, or you may have started out trying to copy one of your heroes. A little muted. Yeah. I don't think I did much copying. But I mean, you probably had inspiration. Sure.

You probably thought, what does this guy do? Sure. I might have been a little hicksy at one point. Exactly. So that's where we start out with comedy, and that's where we start out with guitar. You've got to learn how to impersonate your heroes a little bit so you can kind of find your own voice. All right. So when is the video up?

Is it just called Galacticon? It's called Galacticon. Galacticon? The song is called Nightmare, and it's a partnership between myself and Funny or Die. So it's going to show up on Funny or Die March 22nd. This may be out by... I don't know. Yeah.

We'll see. So it's either out right now or go check it out on Funny or Die. Thanks for coming by. I'm sorry I was late. And thanks for saying that I'm a good guitar player. You're welcome. And good to see you. Good to see you.

All right. So go watch that thing. He put a lot of work into it that's his sound is too it's too i don't know what it's something you know what i mean it's the same with the science fiction but he can play anything that guy so duncan jones sci-fi the the the the theme continues uh duncan jones has a new film outute, which he co-wrote and directed. It will be available on Netflix tomorrow. I enjoyed the film. And I like Duncan. But this time, okay, here's the deal. He's a great director.

He's a great artist in his own right. But between you and me, his dad is David Bowie. His dad was David Bowie. And I think many of us who love David Bowie and miss him, obviously, who are fans, the loss of David Bowie was profound and sad. And there was part of me that wanted to talk a little bit about David Bowie. And not in a way that I thought was intrusive. But I knew it was probably inappropriate. Not inappropriate, but probably something that

duncan didn't want to do which was true but i kept kind of doing it and uh he handled it he handled it very well and at one point we were talking about some i i just wanted to clear this up because in listening to it i mentioned sam peckinpah and i mentioned a sam peckinpah movie that had bob dylan in it and that movie was not the wild bunch it was um pat garrett and billy the kid he played alias that that's all you know that that's my little my little pet peeve but enjoy this because there was it wasn't real tension he was a little worked up anyways but i we had a lovely conversation about movies about um about his work and and i you know and every so often every so often i i did i did try to bring up his dad but i think it worked that's what i'm telling you it's a good interview i enjoy the guy i think we

could be friends i don't think that anyone got hurt here i don't know though i feel good about it this is me and duncan jones so like it has been like a long time since i saw you yeah 2009 that's when it was yeah really yeah so that was right towards the end of whatever we were doing there in the break room. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I remember it was, my memory's bad. That's okay. I wouldn't expect you to remember. I remember you and I remember talking to you and I know why we were talking. Yeah.

But that whole time period, it's sort of like, I don't know where it was in the arc of whatever was going on there at the time. I knew if it was 2009, which is when we started this. Yeah. But we talked about Moon. That's right. is when we started this. Yeah. But we talked about Moon. That's right. That was the first film. Yeah.

Sam Rockwell in a spaceship. I liked the movie. I remember I liked the movie. Yeah. No, it's done me well. It has? Yeah, absolutely. Because it got a lot of critical acclaim and people dug in.

And people still love it today. So it's been remembered, which I think is a good sign. So has it found an audience in that world of uh sci-fi nerddom definitely definitely that's an important they'll keep they'll hold on to it forever they'll make sure it stays vital for the rest of a time absolutely and i know sam gets talked to you know whenever people talk to sam they always bring up moon that's one of the first things they talk about oh really yeah and it's funny because in the new movie you see sam briefly in a couple of a couple of moments that's right there's several sams yeah in in one clip which is sort of funny that but

before we get to the new movie like so you walked in he said you're you're more angry than you were back then i was i was a young, naive, open-eyed guy when I came and saw you on Moon. Oh, really? So usually people do the young... I'm an angrier dude. Really? People usually do the young and angry thing.

No, I went the opposite way. Is it because of the world? I think it's the world and life. And yeah, no, it's just been a wild ride those last 10 years. Yeah, so you're starting to realize, like, it doesn't always work out. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't work out the way it's supposed to. The way you think it should.

Maybe it's working out. No, no, no, Mark, the way it's supposed to. The way it's supposed to happen. See, that disposition, that is a sure uh recipe for anger exactly this is not how i want it to be yeah yeah well i don't we i don't know we i think we only spent a little bit of time together last time but so let me get some let's do the the standard like where where do you live now i live here in la my my uh my wife is actually from pasadena. In fact, she grew up a couple of blocks from here. I know.

Back when this neighborhood wasn't quite as nice as it is now. I don't know. It's still true. It's like I have mixed feelings about that. Yeah. She grew up in Highland Park? Yeah. Really?

Yeah. Your wife did? Yeah. So did you tell her you were coming to Highland Park? Oh, yeah. She wanted me to make sure that I got back safe as quickly as possible. It is a little better than that now. Yeah.

And she went to what? Then she moved to Pasadena? Yeah, I think her dad was in the U.S. Navy, so they moved around all over the country when she was growing up. Oh, no kidding. She ended up back here. That's wild. So you actually, by default or by once one

degree of separation you have history in my neighborhood absolutely a couple blocks from here I gotta bring my son it here at some point so you can see where his mom grew up how long you been here since since my since source code which my second film which so it's about 2011 six. I've been out here for about six years now. Really? Yeah. And do you like it? Eh. I'm grudgingly growing to love aspects of it. Uh-huh. I think that's where I'm at. And you moved here from London?

Yeah, I lived in London before that. But with the films, we traveled so much. So I was in Montreal for one film, then Vancouver for another. This most recent film, we were in Berlin for a year. You really went to Berlin, huh? Yeah, huh yeah yeah now where'd you grow up primarily um again all over the place wait but why your your mother wasn't in the army and your dad was my dad was traveling though so it's kind of like the army so so you were with him most of the time yeah yeah no kidding because like i was trying to put it together like There was some weird, like your mother lived out here for a while. Yeah.

Yes, that's correct. Are you guys talking? You're not talking? No, not since I was 13. Really? And that holds? Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Really? You think that has anything to do with why you're angry? No. No. You just find it safer not to talk to her? She was a corrosive person. Oh, yeah. So that's interesting.

So you don't talk. I only know one other guy in my life that has completely not talked to a parent. Right. Just like, I'm done with that. Yeah. And it's just not getting any better. There's no resolving it. And that's just the way

it is absolutely that is correct but it doesn't you know it doesn't it doesn't drain you in any way no no no i was i was fortunate in in in that um when my dad was traveling and i was you know with him there was this amazing woman by the name of marion skeen who was actually you know came into my life when I was two years old to look after me. Oh, yeah. And she was there. My she was basically essentially my mother growing up.

Was she like a nanny? Yeah, she was. And she died while we were making Mute. So my dad died the year before we started. She died while we were making it. But I also had, you know, I've started having my family. So my son was born just before we started. Wow.

My daughter is coming right now so wow that's so that's a lot yeah it's been heavy well i mean you're getting both sides exactly you got to make room for the new guys with the uh you know make some space from the old that's a heavy few years man and you're making a movie how how long was was your dad sick uh because like you know i mean none of us obviously knew details. And I'm sorry for your loss. And I'm sorry for everybody. Everybody's loss because that one for that, his death was a very big hit for, I think, a lot of us.

Yeah. I'm not comparing myself to you. No, I understand. You know, he's just, you always thought he'd be there for some reason. Listen, if you don't know and the information's not out there, then I really would want to respect the rest of my family who haven't put that information out. Sure.

Well, I just, you know, there were rumors that he was sick, but, I mean, you knew that, like, he knew. He knew he was sick. And he made that last record. Yeah. No, there was an amazing effort by him to, you know, keep focused and produce something that meant a lot to him. Well, keep focused and, and, and produce something that meant a lot to him. Well, I think then, like, if you don't mind talking about a little bit,

not the death necessarily, but just the fact that like, cause there's, you know, when you grow up with somebody like David Bowie as your father, like, you know, we, we don't know anything, but like, it seems to me, you seem like a pretty well adjustedadjusted guy. That, you know, like, we don't necessarily picture him as a father. Yeah. But he also moved through a lot of personalities, like intentional personas, right? But the one you knew was probably much different. Yeah, I sort of saw him, you know, as he naturally was in his native state. Yeah, which was what?

A proper English guy? Just a nice guy? Yeah, absolutely a nice guy. Yeah. And he was a good father. He was a great father. Yeah. No, I was, you know,

I had an unusual upbringing, but not a negative one. Traveling on the road. Traveling. Watching the shows. Watching the shows. Seeing Clockwork Orange at too young an age.

But you must have been on film sets. There must have been something that inspired you what where were you when he did man who fell to earth i mean yeah no i came out to new mexico right yeah absolutely there's there's i grew up there they were doing that when i was there oh really i was a kid though but that's where they shot it right yeah absolutely yeah and that's why there's there's you know i was i was out there for that i mean obviously i was very young so it didn't have an impact for me as far as making me want to make movies but right you know as as i got older i was on shoot other shoots um and those were more impactful yeah like with who like with what directors like like who did you like at that time or were you when you started registering henson Henson, obviously, when I got older for Labyrinth. Right, right.

So you're a real sci-fi guy. I am. Yeah, partially. It's part of my interest. But I like the fact that science fiction allows you to kind of push people into examining stuff without them feeling judged, you know? Sure, sure. So where did you do most of your schooling?

I mean, if you were traveling so much, where did you end up going to school? Well, we were in Germany for a little while so there was a an american military academy there and then in berlin in berlin yeah back in the 70s say how long was that a few years that was like a like a year and a half or something when he did heroes yeah yeah it was um i was in switzerland for a while wow you know that became a kind of a base for him while he was while he was traveling we were oh my god you know a little bit of tutoring in Australia and school in the north of Scotland,

a boarding school in Scotland. So there was a boarding school involved. Maybe the kids shouldn't be on the road so much. Let's put them in a place where... And that was in Scotland. And in New York as well. There's a great school there called the Little Red Schoolhouse I went to.

That's down the street from where I live. And then where'd you end up going to college? Where'd you end up? Worcester, Ohio. Really? In Amish country. Really? Yeah, absolutely. What was the name of that school? Worcester. It was called the College of Worcester. It was a small liberal arts place. Oh, yeah. Just kind of near Akron. How'd you end up there? What was the choice? I got kicked out of boarding school. In Scotland? In Scotland. After I got kicked out of boarding school,

I spent like a year and a half trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life. Took my SATs, which obviously in a UK school, you wouldn't normally take. Sure. I took them and did pretty well in those and then got an academic and a soccer scholarship to college in Worcester.

And that's why you're like, well, I can go for free or partially. I still had to pay a bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, it just seemed like, wow, this is a whole different thing than where my head's been at lately. So I went out there, did that, and then went off to graduate school

for three years at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee. What were you studying in graduate school? Philosophy. Really? Yeah. So that was where you ended up. You, you know, you went to undergrad and you're like, I'm going to study philosophy. Yeah. Yeah. And I did, I had a really good time at undergrad Vanderbilt graduate school. I realized pretty quick that I did not want to be a teacher,

which is one of the few professions you can really get into with a philosophy doctorate. But like philosophy, I sort of like, I tell when people say they study study philosophy i'm always curious because i can never wrap my head around it were you were you moving towards something did you have yeah my philosophers yeah absolutely i mean i was trying to find the path that was most in sync with my interests which were science fiction so i was i was looking at artificial intelligence and the application of morals and ethics into into how do you how do you treat artificial intelligences you know as far as as ethical entities wow as entities that have their own agency and that was what you were studying when you were in college or like that and what philosophers

cover that who are you reading um i guess peter singer who was more from the animal rights side of things sure sure yeah um and then uh dan Dennett, who was kind of much more known for sort of artificial intelligence and things like that. Now, Peter Singer was right. So he wrote some book. Practical Ethics. Practical Ethics. There's a great book he wrote called Practical Ethics,

which is really just kind of building up the case of how do you ethically use animals? Because obviously, you know, we're custodians for them. How do you manage to make that work when you're trying to create the least cruelty possible? Right. That was it. Right. And then I remember I had the book and had pictures, like vivisection pictures.

Yeah. It's heavy. Yeah. It's heavy, but also it's what the title says. It's very practical. It's looking at it's it's heavy but also it's it's it's what the title says it's very practical it's and looking at it in a very cut and dry way and how did that affect you as a student i mean do you are you a vegetarian nope no but in that book he doesn't really kind of drive towards that he drives more to a much more practical solution of of if you are going to eat

animals try and try and give them the best possible life that you can right um and then use them you know and what do you think like on a metaphysical level like in terms of i don't know if it's metaphysics or not about you know unleashing all of that pain into the world do you think along those lines do you know like you know if with these kind of agri-farms and these just you know thousands of animals being cruelly managed and then you know you know, like, you know, with these kind of agri-farms and these just, you know, thousands of animals being cruelly managed and then, you know, kind of violently killed. Yeah. Do you believe that it does enter our consciousness or atmosphere somehow? I certainly think it sets up an environment where we become desensitized to certain things.

Yeah. And practices. Yeah. I don't think, I mean, I am absolutely, you know, I would be very happy to eat something alternative to meat if I felt that it tasted and had the texture of real meat. Have you tried some of those things? I have.

I haven't been sold yet. No, you don't like the- But I think it's coming. I think it's coming. Jackfruit tacos? There's a place actually called Locali. Have you ever been there? They serve a Reuben.

They serve a vegan Reuben. Oh, yeah? Which is really pretty good. Really? Yeah. Where's that at? Gosh, where is it? It's just south of the hills.

Locali? Yeah, Locali. I'll get you there. There's some guys that set up here that's all sort of like plant-based meats yeah meats for tacos and stuff they set up down here yeah it's pretty good i thought i haven't been eating red meat in like five months right because primarily just because of cholesterol reasons and i'm okay without it i do get a little tired of fish and i and tofu is okay do you find yourself more low energy are you no i don't think so i am all right yeah you seem very happy these days i don know. I don't know if I'm happy.

You know, I saw places. Yeah. I'm better. That's true. I think I'm better. I think some things worked out that didn't necessarily look like they were going to work out. Yeah. So when, so what do you do?

You drop out of philosophy. What did you end up like? Did you find that what provoked you and you're thinking to study film i mean yeah my my my um you know i i think my dad you know realized that that this was not going the way i had hoped it was going as far as pursuing philosophy into any kind of any kind of career he realized it yeah i think he realized it before me well he realized that i was miserable oh yeah before i did uh-huh i mean i kind of thought all, this is just part of the process of being in graduate school. Right.

And he said, no, you seem unhappy. No, this is not a healthy choice. So he was actually working on something with Tony Scott. It was not the original film, The Hunger. Yeah. They did a TV show of The Hunger. Before or after? No, this was after yeah so so um terence

stamp i think was the kind of host of the first uh season of that show and my dad was asked to come and be the host for the second season of the show so they were shooting that up in montreal my dad asked me if i wanted to come and join them and i went and spent my time you know spent a couple of weeks with them uh shooting on one of the cameras. Him and Tony? Him and Tony. And Tony gave me a lot of his time. A very generous man.

And I got hooked. I was absolutely hooked at that point. Oh, yeah? So you're sitting behind the camera with Tony Scott and he's showing you what's up? In a sense, basically, yeah. What did you learn from him in that moment? Or was it just more of an impression? It was an impression and just the the excitement and and and creativity of of making movies and just you know how much fun it can be yeah and how obviously there's there's a blueprint you know

when you when you've got a script and you sure there's a way to do it there's a but at the same time there is the the actual activity of doing it yeah and the improvisation and just the fun that you can have on the day it's it's uh it's a great blend of of of art and being able to be creative and at the same time jamming with a bunch of other people right the the sort of group effort the ensemble actors gaffers yeah all the people everybody lighting yeah ad's catering yeah oh yeah very important everything absolutely crafty gotta have it yeah good crafty. Yeah.

All right, so then you just go back to Vanderbilt and you're like, I'm done. I'm done with Tennessee. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, but almost as soon as that was done, I moved back to London and spent my time there working in low-budget music videos, commercials, and sort of- No school? Yeah, I went to film school too. Which one?

I was doing a place called London Film School. It's right off Covent Garden, right in the center of the city. Yeah, and what do i went to film school too so so i was doing a place called london film school it's right off covent garden right in the center of the city yeah and what now what do you what do you learn in film school like because now like i i talk to actors more specifically now but like in film school like what do you learn at london film school there's a lot of basic technical things about you know how you how you put a project together how you how you make sure that you're budgeted and oh it's so production stuff. Production stuff. But to be honest, most of the learning happens when you're working with other students

on their short films and on their projects and you all help each other out and you try out different jobs and you understand what all the jobs are. Did you do some short films? Yeah, yeah, I did. I did some short films. What were the early Duncan some short films yeah what were the early uh duncan jones short films um one of them

was a was a was a was a celtic love story in in welsh and icelandic language so there was no english in it um those are two tricky languages no you pretty much guaranteed no one would be able to just roll with it it was an x well it was an exercise for myself in that I wanted to see, can I tell the story with not being able to rely on dialogue, which obviously comes up in Mute too. Right, but Welsh, that's... Well, that was the closest I could get to an original Celtic language. Oh, okay.

It's an odd language, right? Between Gaelic and Icelandic. Yeah. There was kind of a battle for me as the director to understand what the actors were saying. And how long was that film? That one was like 10, 12 minutes. Did it work? Yeah, I think it was okay.

And then I did another one, which is actually on the DVD for Moon called Whistle, which was a contemporary sci-fi film set in London. So that was another one. Where's the, like, see, like, I'm not a sci-fi guy. Yeah. You know, in general. You know, like, I'm not a sci-fi guy yeah you know in general you know and like i'm not a fantasy guy really yeah like it took me like i you know i i don't know why i watched the shape of water but i did yeah and i found it very moving yeah and beautiful and compelling but i don't think to do it right and i know you you have you're you're a practical man though you want practical answers to practical questions.

How do you know that? I watch you. I've seen you. I hear you. I know what you are. So you already have those answers then? Or are you avoiding them? No, I just think that you can hit those same questions from a different perspective.

But did you always like sci-fi? Yeah. It was just your thing. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think I enjoyed this. I enjoyed the fantastical elements of it before I realized how useful it was

as a tool to get to practical things. Hmm. So you got to go to space to get to here? I think it's a different perspective. You get a chance to look at things in a different way all right so what what are some of the inspirations that like so you're growing up and you're getting into sci-fi like do you read like you know what what do you start with how do you get to jg ballard do you do you read asimov do you read uh allison who do you read um all of those uh ballard was one of the later ones for me it was actually i was

introduced to that much later on but um i think you know i think a william gibson was a big one for me as well early on um yeah as soon as i read neuromancer i mean my dad actually gave me neuromancer to read and and i thought that was just the bee's knees that was the big one that was the one where he discovered the internet yeah yeah he sort of came up with everything yeah that we know today on the goggles we're going in i read those i felt like i had to read those yeah like there were ones that for me there were ones that referred to me by uh people that i kind of respect that were like what i met certain highbrow expectations yeah because there was there were other ones like what's that

guy's name harlan ellison harlan ellison yeah like, you know, I tried to read him, and people love him, and there's hundreds of books, and he's an interesting guy. Yeah. But there was such a sophomoric approach to women and sex in them. Yeah. That I just, like, I'm like, but where's the literature here? Yeah. I mean, maybe the device is great, and maybe, like, as a device writer in science fiction, he's a genius. Yeah.

But I couldn't get past the prose. Yeah. No, I can get that. I mean, did you get anything more out of maybe philip k dick or something well yeah i mean i could read that because like you know the ones that um is that android's dream of electric sheep so he did the original thing that blade runner was was based on yeah i read that because he's like you know he's lean and poetic and you know thoughtful there was a uh the he could create a tone with his language yeah right yeah absolutely same with bowerd I think yeah and I've always dug

burrows and burrows will go to space occasionally yeah but I love had this amazing house actually just down the street from Shepperton studios in London where we shot moon I was I was always amazed whenever you drive past it is just it is the most quaint normal normal-looking cottage. Of course. I mean... I think all those guys with the imagination, it's like Tolkien, too.

Like, I never was a hobbit guy, but, like, he seemed like just a proper guy who lives in a cottage. Yeah. But that's where the... See, this is the same thing I was asking about your dad.

It's like, does he live in a spaceship? You know, like, did you grow up and where did you go? But I have to assume, like, Britain has a certain thing. Like, they have, you know, the intellectual life and also the fantastical artists that live there. They always end up, even if it's a big house, it looks like a fucking hobbit house.

You know, like, it looks like English countryside. The most cool house you're going to get in Britain, you're going to be like, oh, that's like a British house the the most cool house you're gonna get in britain you're gonna be like that's like a british house that's a farm right yeah you know like you know like your dad didn't live in like some modern fucking weird did not we never lived in a big modern crazy house you have an english house it was we no we lived in other countries but but it was never they were never crazy houses yeah yeah so all right so you're reading ballard you're reading you know these things and it how so when do you start kind of chipping away at the vision you know didn't that second short um no i mean i

was i was always interested in in in making films even if it was just sort of as a hobby right um you know one of the things i i never really got into music it was it was never something that felt like a natural fit to me yeah uh i think i kind of pushed away from it um but one of the things that i always did enjoy pushed away from music yeah yeah i mean didn't want to play guitar didn't want to do drums didn't want to play saxophone you're surrounded by it and i was constantly you know urged to learn an instrument by who by dad and i just i just wasn't interested but like when you're a kid it's like And I was constantly, you know, urged to learn an instrument. By who? By dad. And I just wasn't interested.

But like when you were a kid, it's like weird Mick Ronson hanging around. And, you know, these guys would play guitar with him. Like, you know. Dennis Davies, amazing drummer. Yeah. He was trying to teach me drums. And I was just like, no. No.

I don't want to do this. I don't want to do drums. Did you meet like Fripp and those guys when you were a kid? I met a lot of people when I was a kid, but most of them were just dudes. They're just guys who work with your dad. Yeah. So you're like, no, no music for me. Yeah.

Do you like listen and do it? Not with any great enthusiasm. It was just work. It's like watching your dad do accounting. But everybody has to have a little music in their soul. I'm not telling you whether your dad was who he was or not. Like, you don't have to turn your back entirely on enjoying music. Nothing resonates?

No. I listen to a lot of CNN. Oh, yeah. And I watch a lot of news. Yeah, I get that. These are not helpful things. I know, but it's not music. No, it's not music.

But that's kind of when people ask me, what do you listen to? I listen to Marc Maron. Oh, well, thank you. NPR. Oh, good. CNN, MSN. Sometimes when I want to really punish myself, I watch some Fox. Right.

You never think to listen to music? No, not really. Huh. Doesn't that strike you as odd no it's almost too obvious so there's two kinds of people like if there's people who grew up with and this is just

an analogy like people who grow up with fathers who smoke either they smoke or they're totally against it same with boo right same with booze same with anything so because your dad was immersed in music yeah you're just sort of like nah i don't register it doesn't register with me but but he did he but he also spent a lot of time with me with cameras and teaching me how to film and edit and he he got me this beautiful little

you know super eight camera when i was a kid yeah um and taught me how to edit and um that took that i loved oh yeah from an early age and was he always on board did he like you like yeah i think so in fact i think he was he was waiting for me to get back into being interested in film when i went off on this on this academic jaunt oh yeah for three years yeah but i think it seems to have served you somehow i mean i have to assume that studying philosophy at a graduate level for three years has got to do something. Yeah. It has to inform something. It's no coincidence that three years of Sam Bell on the far side of the moon is the same amount of time I spent in graduate school in Nashville, Tennessee. Right, right.

So that movie, so you just went right into film. You didn't have any other interests in your life that you were thinking about pursuing? I dipped my toe into computer games. I worked at a computer games company in London for a couple of years when I was there. Early on? No, this was actually just after film school. Right. So I was trying to pay the rent with working at this games company.

And with the money that I was saving there, I was spending it on these low-budget music videos and things to try and build up my showreel so I could hopefully move into commercials. Did you ever do any commercials? Yeah, I did a bunch of commercials in the UK. Yeah? Before I did Moon, that's what I was doing. I worked at an advertising agency.

And music videos? Yeah, yeah. There's a guy called Nick Armstrong who wrote a song called Broken Mouth Blues. You should listen to that. It's fun. And it's your video? That's one of the videos I did. And it's a blues song? No, it's not really a blues song.

So you're directing music videos and you don't give a shit about music. It's great. I concentrate on the visuals. The music's made. When you do a music video you're not trying to make the music. You're just putting visuals and your music's made right when you do when you do a music video you're not trying to make the music you're just you're just putting visuals to the music and do you get to script all that is that on you um yeah i do the scripting and then obviously i have to run it past the the bands and the record companies and make sure everyone signs off on it but the budget i was doing them at which was super low yeah it kind of as long as you deliver

something they're happy oh so you were that guy? You weren't doing the high-level ones? No, I wasn't doing the high-level ones. What about the commercials? Were you just doing like- Those got bigger. Those got bigger and better. So, yeah. Do you like ketchup? You like Heinz ketchup?

Sure, I do. I did one of those. Yeah, I like Heinz ketchup. I did a Heinz ketchup ad. Was that the angle? Was that what they said? Do you like ketchup? Or are you just asking me?

I was just asking you, man. I thought that was the ad. I do like Heinz ketchup. I'm good at this. I prefer Heinz ketchup. There is no other ketchup. We're writing an ad right now. Is there another ketchup?

Why does Heinz even need to advertise? It's just to remind you how much you like them. Yeah, yeah. Don't forget it. It's like tradition. Yeah. Don't go over to Del Monte or whatever they got in England. You know, call. You should call me. Yeah. Call your don't forget us. It's like tradition. Don't go over to Del Monte or whatever they got in England. You don't call. You should call

me. Yeah. Call your mom. Call Heinz. That's it? That's the subtext? That's what it should be. Remember us? Don't forget. You didn't put ketchup on your hot dog. Oh, who does that?

That's not a ketchup thing. F come on so you don't you don't really spend much time in britain anymore um we were out there for post-production on mute so so we shot in berlin and then we went to london and we were there for a while um but we had a little baby so it was it was really hard to do you have one traveling so much yeah the second one's due in april oh my god very soon that's soon yeah how old's the one um 19 months well these are little kids yeah so you're not sleeping much no it's part that doesn't help with the anger no you're up all night because the kid's crying and you're reading the fucking news exactly it's like you know the world is ending and now what am i going to do with this king this is a phase mark right it's just a face i don't have any but i hear they grow up i hear that yeah but you just you got another one coming so it's back to back i know

i know it'll be a few years of fun but do you but the kid's good he's amazing all right so let's get to like so with moon how long did you but I have to assume that when you're doing commercials and music videos, you're learning the shit. You're learning your way around a camera. That's why I wanted to do it. Right. Especially on the lower budget level because, you know, you get a chance to experiment and try crazy, stupid shit,

and hopefully it all comes together and you pick out the stuff which is working and you realize why people have turned away from stuff that doesn't work. Right. And you learn that in a hands-on way and you can fail without it costing anyone a lot of money. Exactly. You just sort of get frustrated and maybe the band gets upset, but no one's like, you're never working again. You just lost $50 million. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. So when do you start thinking about Moon and how does that sort of come together? Because obviously, you know, Sam thinks a great deal out of you to kind of pop up in this movie in a very passive way. Yeah. Well, I've been working in these adverts for a couple of years. And I had this mentor, a guy called Trevor Beatty, who's a big deal in the advertising industry in the UK. And I'd been working for him, basically writing commercials and then directing them.

So he was a mentor in copywriting and in filmmaking? More in copywriting and also just as a supporter of... Your creativity? My creativity. And I told him that i was probably going to leave advertising because i really wanted to try and move into feature films and would he be interested in maybe helping me out if i did a little british film and and he was kind of the first person to put some support behind me when we made moon in the form of money in form of money uh-huh yeah

um and then we were able to find some other people who helped out. And you wrote Moon, right? Co-wrote it, is the fair way to say it. I wrote the treatment, so the story is mine. I wrote the treatment. Yeah. A very talented guy called Nathan Parker came in and wrote the first draft. And then we bounced back and forth. You know, I'd write a draft, he'd write a draft.

And you got a full... Now, forgive me for asking. Yeah. But, you know, did you... You didn't think to ask your dad for money? I've tried to, you know, as much as possible, wherever I can. Separate yourself. Forge my own path. I imagine that's, yeah.

And forgive me if I keep bringing it up occasionally. Yeah. But, you know, but because I, look, I've had, I had Jacob Dillon in here. Yeah. You know, and he doesn't want to I had Jacob Dillon in here. Yeah. You know, and he doesn't want to talk about Bob Dillon at all. I understand. I don't want to talk about him either.

Bob Dillon? Bob Dillon. But there comes a point where I'm asking him about songwriting, and I'm like, Yeah, what are you going to do? And I'm like, you don't talk to him?

He's like, of course, of course I talk to him. He's my, he's my father, for Christ's sake. And I'm like, do you understand him? He's like, yes, I understand. Because I guess it's difficult. Look, there's this weird little group of us who don't know each other,

who don't know each other but all have the same experience whether it's me or jacob or or stella mccartney right or um you know yeah julian lennon right you know there's only kids right that um have had to find you know what how are we gonna be people that we actually can live with right you know and and um we've all found different paths the the ones you've mentioned you know i i don't know how julian's doing but it seems like the the other ones have done all right yeah i mean i think you know it's it's it's everyone's experiment no no one there is no there is no uh textbook on how to how to be this not in the modern world you know like

yeah i imagine like you know i think you know some of the marx brothers have kids and i don't think anyone gave that much of a shit. But in the modern world where these people are mythic people, they're that large. Yeah, I mean, it's a whole... You guys don't keep in touch? There's not like an email? We have our own Facebook. Is that...

I talked to Mark today. Don't go in. He's just going to bring up your dad. He's just going to bring up Bob Dylan. Don't go in. He's just going to bring up your dad. He's just going to bring up Bob Dylan. Over and over again. No matter what. He's going to pretend like he doesn't want to talk about your famous parent, but he'll bring it up over and over again.

That's funny. So you never met anybody of your ilk and had the conversation? Like, how are you doing? I've met a few people, but no, we've never had the conversation like how are you doing i've met i've met a few people but no we've never had the conversation i'm actually fascinated to though one day i'll uh to talk to the mccartney kids or the have an anonymous like a chat with uh celebrities anonymous celebrity offspring well i mean you're fortunate in that the name doesn't travel do you know what i mean you can you know you get under the radar i noticed that you did dedicate the movie to him which is nice

yeah um because it does you know end up being about parenting to it to it to yeah it is about parents isn't it yeah so before we get to that i just want to talk about the the sam rockwell thing because i i like that guy he's great and i think, hopefully, this is the year for Oscars and stuff. Not that that matters. It feels like it. It feels like it. Yeah, it feels like it. Did you see that film?

I did. Yeah. I did. I saw it. He's amazing in it. He's great. Yeah, he really did it. And Frances McDormand is mind-blowing.

She's amazing. But Sam did something that he never did before, is that he shut something off to turn something else on. You know what I mean? Because Sam is great, but he relies on a lot of sam juice so like yeah yeah you're right you're right you know so he kind of he tempered that sam juice to make this guy have a different depth different you know he can do different characters but this guy was like there was you know yeah he shut something off yeah it's like i don't know if he'd look at it that way. Maybe that's not exactly the right wording. There was no dance break. That's right.

And it was almost like when Nicholson did Pritzy's Honor. I don't know if you saw Pritzy's Honor. Yeah. Where he just like, you're playing this guy. And he shut off Jack. Yeah. He shut off that charm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's very true. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, yeah. And then all of a sudden it's like, hey, he can do it. He can really do it. Because, like, you know, movie stars, they come to the table, some of them, with so much charisma that, you know, you don't need to. Yeah. You know, the necessity to do much of anything is limited.

They just charm the audience and that's it. Sure. And one way or another, you know, it doesn another, I'm not taking anything away from them. They obviously have a, like someone like George Clooney is roughly George Clooney. Yeah. No matter what, you know,

but that's good. You kind of want, and I think Sam is sort of like that, you know, like, you know. I didn't come here to watch some schlub on the screen. I want George Clooney. Exactly.

I want George Clooney. Yeah. Yeah, don't take too much of the Clooney out of this guy but he's got a lot of range too it's very interesting that yeah because i've had that conversation before with people where or maybe just with myself where you know a movie star fundamentally can be a great actor yeah but you're always going to sort of see them you know there are character actors that sort of get lost in everything and they don't have the same sort of like level of intensity or the same level of know of, you know, them as movie stars.

But they just kind of move through characters in a different way. But like Brad Pitt or Clooney or some of these other cats, like they can do all these other characters. Yeah. But let me give you an example. Yeah. Paul Rudd. In your movie. But, you know, I want to talk to you about that,

about the dynamic there. Yeah. Because, like, I liked the movie. I liked Mute. I liked it. And I thought, like, it was beautiful. And when I read, you know, that you had spent so, you had such a long commitment to this,

that was sort of what I was getting at, was that, you know, you did this thing with Sam. How long did that take? Moon? Oh, Moon was a 30 days shooting. And, but, but when was the story done? Like what was the total commitment? It was one year. Oh, really? It was, it was nine. It was basically, I had a meeting with him because I wanted him to be in mute,

but this is before Moon and I wanted him to play the character that Justin Theroux ended up playing up, Duck. So I had the meeting with him. He wanted to play the lead Leo. And I said, no, you character that Justin Theroux ended up playing up, Duck. So I had the meeting with him. He wanted to play the lead, Leo. And I said, no, you just don't. It's not going to work out. So I said, but I really want you to be in my first film. I'm going to write you something. I went away and wrote Moon.

Oh, so you pitched him Mute first. I pitched him Mute first. So Mute was like festering with you before Moon. 16 years I was trying to make Mute. What the fuck? So you were like 20 to 25? God, how old was I when I'm now maybe 30 you're 40 so like 30 so you're 30 when you come up with this idea yeah now what was it at that time in your life that made you so hung up on this story what was the exact like without giving away

the ending yeah what was the one-liner that you know the what was the poetry of this thing because this is a very human movie and it's not yeah moon is too like now i'm starting to see the whole you know sci-fi you know human no because these are not you're not dealing with aliens no you may be robots around but not but they're not yeah it's not about that right it's not about robots these are character movies they just happen to be in futuristic settings so what what was it that got you hung up on this story? Where'd the story come from for you, for Mute? For Mute, it was two things.

It was, I wanted to make, I wanted the technical challenge of a lead who didn't talk. I wanted a protagonist who didn't say a word because I thought if I could pull that off in the same way with Moon, we have Sam Rockwell playing multiple characters who are separated by their age, and those made different people

just because they had different life experiences. Yeah. With Leo, I wanted to see, can I create a character that the audience is actually going to get to know, even though they never say a word? So that was part one. The other part was, I was a huge,

well, I am a huge fan of Robert Altman's M.A.S.H. That's what I was going to ask you. Why the nod to Trapper and Hawkeye? Why the nod? It's like them. It's them gone bad. Gone totally bad. And I love that film and I love the relationship between those two guys, between Trapper John and Hawkeye Pierce.

But they've always come across to me as they think they're the smartest guys in the room. They probably are the smartest guys in the room and they're funny and you wish that they were your friends too. But then the more you watch them and the more you think about them, the more you realize these guys are actually kind of mean. There's something kind of nasty about them. You know, they can be mean, I guess is what it is. And that's why I decided, well, why do I feel that way? And what is it about them? And I have a, you know, growing up and living in houses with a bunch of other guys, just when you're trying to live in the city and it's too expensive and you live with four or five other guys, you get to, you know,

you get to live out of other people's pockets sometimes, you know, when you get that friendship and it can, it's kind of a love hate thing where you're kind of pissed off with people and, and you love them at the same time. And, wanted to see that relationship but just turned up a little bit and just made a little bit meaner and that's where cactus and duck came from these these guys are morally bankrupt motherfuckers yeah but i mean i don't know maybe you didn't feel it but you're charmed by them for the you know at the beginning of the film they're they're funny and they're they're smart and and they're and they're kind of like you don't know what's up they They're the coolest guys in the room. Yeah. But like,

but I think what you did, like now, if I'm going to rethink, you know, mash is that, and I think you captured a little bit of it by, you know, you did make them veterans.

So, so you, and in mash, you see the carnage every day. Yeah. And so you see the sort of detachment that is necessary. Yeah. And,

and certainly that, that Sutherland's character, is he Pierce or is he Hawkeye or is he Trapper? He's Hawkeye. Hawkeye. Struggling with it, you know, and both of them struggling to a degree, just the relentlessness of war.

It is an anti-war movie. Yeah. So, like, they do have to create, there's obvious cynicism that's going to happen in that environment. Yeah. Hey, listen, I love the movie too. And I love those characters.

So I don't get defensive about them, Mark. I love those characters. But at the same time, when they don't like something, when they see an injustice in the world, they can become very mean and they do it from the right place. Right. But at the same time, when you see that, it's very easy to see, well, what if they, what if it comes from the wrong place? What if they're vindictive?

What if they just hate someone? It's weird that you landed on those two characters. Of all the characters in the history of film that you decided to kind of riff on on a morality level, you picked those two guys. Yeah. Now, what is your experience with altman in general are you a big altman fan i'm a big mash fan in particular i mean i'm i'm you know i know some of his other films like mccabe and mrs miller is my fucking movie oh really i like that one yeah and i like mash too yeah you know and like but like mccabe miss miller i watch over

and over again i think i think what i i think why i gravitate to mash is that is that that brotherly bond um you know that to me was always such an interesting relationship you see loving you see you see men women relationships all the time and you see you know you see other kinds of relationships but that's the strangeness of of male bonding i think is is something that i find really kind of intriguing. You a Peckinpah guy? I mean, I know Peckinpah films, but no, I'm not in any kind of... Yeah, because there's like the end of Straw Dogs, where it's just Dustin Hoffman, the mathematician,

and the local pedophile driving away as the closing marriage of the film in a way, getting out. That's some dark man shit. He's real good with dark male shit bonding. Dark male bonding is the Peckinpah thing. You may do yourself a film festival. Yeah, exactly.

Watch the Wild Bunch. And then you could see Bob Dylan. Maybe talk to Jacob about it. Circles, circles. I love exactly. They watched a wild bunch and then you could see Bob Dylan maybe talk to Jacob about it. And then... Circles, circles. I love it. They're very clever. When he doos it out with Jacob...

For those who haven't seen this room, it's just a circle. There are no corners to hide in. It all ends up in Bob Dylan. Doesn't everything? Really? So, but like, okay, because I'm wary to give away too much about the dynamic but yeah

paul rudd who like as we were saying before movie star who is generally cute yeah uh you know starts out cute here and when i felt him starting to get menacing in the movie yeah i'm like i don't know if i'm going to be able to to i'm not going to be able to suspend my disbelief yeah to believe that he's a fucking monster yeah um but you know he does he gets there you get there he gets justin thoreau i i'm never clear about anyway so for him to shift morally or be a monster it was too easy like yep yeah of course yeah i think he might really be like that no of course not that's a it's a lot to put on a guy he's not that i need to say this but he's's an amazing, very funny, very sweet guy.

Yeah, I've met him. I gave him a ride once to a thing. And I do appreciate, I'm a big fan of Tropic Thunder. And I know he is a part of the conception of that. Yeah, he wrote it. And I talked to him. He seemed like a good guy. Yeah.

Yeah. And what was the process of getting a scars guard what's his first name again alexander alexander scars guard yeah um like you couldn't have who did you originally think when you have 15 years ago yeah but like who did you think that could do it one of the guys was ray stevenson i don't even know if you'd know him there was a tv show on hbo called rome did you you ever see Rome no um he's he was he was in that in that show and I thought he was terrific in that I mean he he he was really an interesting actor Irish actor he's amazing actor and and um you know he I thought I thought he would be great and then as you know 16 years later you know

his time flew by it just it, you know, things moved on. And then saw Alexander in, it was, gosh, what was that? What was that show called? Big Little Lies? No, no, no. This is a long time ago. Generation Kill. Oh, right, right, right. I saw Alexander in Generation Kill.

That was the war one. Yeah. I thought he was really interesting in that. So when I got the chance to, you know, look at the short list, because. Yeah. The short list of tall people is what I was looking for sure um he was kind of he was someone that i always thought oh yeah he there there is some some real nuance and and interesting things that he could do as an actor because i needed the physical presence of someone that all of the people that he meets in

the movie can bring their own baggage they sort of see this big quiet guy are they intimidated by him do they think he's a dummy do they think that he's just a tall silent type um but at the same time i need a great actor who can who can carry that character when they're on their own and there's no dialogue to hold it to hold that character that was some discipline yeah and the vulnerability and strength of it yeah absolutely that was no easy trick it's it's it's real acting it really was yeah and what was it like being on the set with that it's great in between takes he was talking as much as he could is that true yeah he's a funny guy he's he's a fun person to be with and i think uh you know he had to kind of put himself in that place when we were doing takes but how you know he is becomes mute is is the way the film opens and it's it's pretty

lurid it's some sort i imagine it's not a riff on the opening of sunset boulevard no but i think i mean that is that i don't mind talking about it's right at the start of the film but basically you know as a kid he gets hit by a motorboat and and the propeller cuts open his his you don't see that the movie opens with a kid floating in the water with his neck cut open. Yes. You, I mean, you put it together in a second.

And I wonder why the studios didn't want to make it. And we had to do it on Netflix. Is that, is that really, it was too dark. It was, it was always considered too dark and too weird. And you know,

you, you've seen it, you know what the characters are like, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a lot of ugliness,

hopefully buoyed up by some, some charm and some humor and, and, and, know what the characters are like and you know it's it's it's uh it's a lot of ugliness hopefully buoyed up by some some charm and some humor and and um and and an ending that we can feel good about no i loved it i love the ending and i you know i didn't i i don't know like you know i know that you talk about blade runner um but you know in terms of just aesthetic i mean it's just really having a living period a living breathing that period of possible future yeah it's a similar period yeah exactly it's science it's science it's a science fiction believable city right yeah right it's set in a in a in a uh in the same fake uh manufactured uh possible future exactly well uh rutger hager Hauer is walking around Highland Park, this is going on in Berlin.

Exactly. It's going on in Berlin. But that movie, I haven't watched in a while. So that was Ridley Scott. Did Ridley Scott? Yeah, Ridley Scott made that. And Tony Scott, what was his... Tony, the guy you met when you were a kid.

Top Gun was probably the one he's most well-known. Didn't he do the American Gangster 2? That was Ridley. That was Ridley Scott. I like that movie. Yeah. I can watch Denzel do anything. True Romance was a good Tony Scott.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That was a Quentin Tarantino script as well. Yeah, right. Days of Thunder. He did some big movies. Enemy of the State. What was that? Oh, yeah.

That was Will Smith and Gene Hackman. Gene Hackman. Yeah. Why did he retire? I know. He's so fucking good French Connection anything the guy just

just had a thing yeah but the French Connection when was the last time you watched that probably not that long ago it's great right just for mood and tone

I think we kind of watched it as part of sort of getting ready for mute oh that's right because you're driving under the he's chasing the

yeah you see yeah the, he's chasing the. Yeah, you see? Yeah. The looking up and chasing. Yeah, exactly. That's from French Connection. I know it. I immediately knew it. Yeah.

I immediately fucking knew it. Yeah. And then Paul Schrader's Hardcore as well was a big inspiration for this film. Oh my God. Do you remember that one? Sure do. I didn't realize he didn't direct it, but he wrote Hardcore. I thought he directed it.

With Georgie Scott? Yeah, yeah. Paul Schrader directed that. Oh, no wonder. I don't know why he didn't put that together. So that mixed with a little sci-fi. That's kind of what I was going for. That little Lee Marvin from Point Blank.

You're right. He did it. Of course. Why? Of course that's fucking. I don't know why I didn't put that together. I just talked to Nick Nolte in here. Oh, really?

Yeah, because Paul Schrader, Affliction, Taxi Driver, Autofocus was him writing and directing it. I think he did the third, Exorcist, maybe. I didn't know about that. I think, but like, wow, man.

See, that just blows my mind because of course that's a fucking paul schrader movie right yeah or hardcore yeah i mean that's straight out of his his i mean why wouldn't he does but like the but you can see the inspirations now of kind of where where it's back i mean it's not it's not a science fiction movie in that there's some technology and it's all about how that affects the world it's right it's it's a's a 70s noir-ish thriller that happens to take place in the future. I talked to Elliot Gould in here too.

Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, I would die to have Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould watch this movie. That would be my dream. Oh, yeah. Just to be a fly on the wall with those guys watching this movie.

I wonder what... Elliot's kind of a... He's a circuitous talker, a loopy dude yeah uh it's sort of semi-spiritual kind of yeah you know ongoing like you feel like you know every time you've talked to elliot because i had him on my tv show yeah that you're entering the conversation mid-conversation like you know right when you start you're like whoa wait what backup wait yeah where are we coming from?

What are we talking about? Exactly. That's his trip. And, you know, and then you think it's your fault. Yeah. You're like, wait, okay, I got to follow this. So, now, the shooting it. Yeah. That must have been kind of tricky.

So, I mean, you did shoot in Berlin. Was that necessary? Maybe not 100%, but it was necessary for me um budgetarily or no i mean it would have been probably cheaper to find some other european eastern european city to shoot in but it seems like a lot of it was on set uh half and half it was 50 in sets that we built um in in at at studio babelsberg where fritz lang shot metropolis. Oh, so there you go. So that's amazing.

But did you go there on purpose? Yeah. Because of that? Yeah. Oh. Okay. So you got a little

mysticism going. I don't know if it was mysticism or just I got a filmmaker chubby about the idea of being at Studio Babelsberg.

But you're telling me you didn't think there was magic in there? No, I don't believe in that stuff no how can you be fucking every god oh my god all right and then the other half of the film was shot in locations around berlin so and and what's the the beauty of being in berlin is that we were able to find places that we would have never have thought to look for. What is Berlin like now? It's amazing.

It's an incredibly dynamic, fast-changing, artistic city that really is right now, I think, at the crash of Eastern and Western civilization. I mean, between all the Eastern European and Russian immigrants coming into Berlin and all the Turks coming up and then those from the West who want to come there for some kind of artistic inspiration. It's an amazing, incredibly vibrant place. But I would imagine that artistic inspiration is different than when your old man did like Heroes there because that was the Cold War thing. It was dark, right? Yeah.

It was like Fassbender. It was cheap is what it was. Oh, really? Back when my dad went there, we were broke because he had no money. Yeah. And we went to Berlin and he was trying to sort of find himself

and clearing himself up and things like that. These days, it's more of an artistic mecca. It's kind of just somewhere that a lot of people want to go for inspiration. Absolutely. like that um these days it's more of a you know an artistic mecca it's kind of just somewhere that that a lot of people want to go there's light for inspiration absolutely it's yeah i think people uh want to go there because they want to be inspired whereas we went there out of necessity yeah i mean it was dark and gloomy and then what was coming out of there felt like that the tension of the cold war and what and the disposition that was left over from the Second World War.

But I would say in all cases, whether it was back then or now, it's always had this really interesting energy. It feels not an energy in a supernatural way. Why are you so against that? I mean, come on. You come from magic. Own it. It just

feels like there is a sense that things are changing and people are excited about the change there. It's interesting though that you don't have any of that and I don't always either. I'm not a full believer in mystical ideas

but the idea of making science fiction movies is magic. Movies are magic. Now I'm watering down my, like you go to where Fritz Lang shot Metropolis and you're just sort of like, yeah, just a nerd thing. Not like, you know,

now we can pull some of the energy. Yeah. No. I will be a conduit for this power. None of that? No. All right. All right, dude.

So what about the... Now, since this was something that evolved in your mind, why the Amish thing? Did you get that from the movie Witness? No, that was four years in Worcester, Ohio, Amish country. Oh, that's where that came from. When I was at college there. And when I was thinking about the film, and why is this guy in the future not able to talk? Surely the technology would exist, as you see in the film. But to me, it made sense. Well, it's probably a religious reason. And if it's a religious reason, how did you know what religion is it? Amish makes sense. Why did the Amish end up in Germany? Well, in the same way that the Jews have come to Israel because they've been called to come back to the homeland.

have come to Israel because they've been called to come back to the homeland. In my crazy idea of the future, the German politicians have wanted to draw all Germanic people back to Germany to try and reinvigorate cultures and traditional German morals. And they've asked the Amish to come back to Germany. That's the backstory. That's the kind of, yeah, my idea is that after Angela Merkel and the mass immigration of other cultures into Germany, there would be a backlash, and that backlash would involve far-right German parties

asking white Germanic people to come back to Germany. The Amish were originally Germanic? Switzerland, Germany. Is that true? Really? Yeah. And they came over with the big need to have the Midwest farmed. Like, why did they end up here? I think it was like a second phase of freedom of religion and the chance to live their lifestyle the way they wanted without being interfered with.

Right. And America seemed to be the place to do that. And I think that, if I'm remembering properly, the book The Great Plains, that there like sort of an open invitation to people that were able to farm in rough terrain yeah to come and have land in the states if they would figure out how to make the fucking land work in the midwest yeah that makes sense yeah like that's where you get like scandinavian that's where you get winter wheat yeah that like these people that come from generations of farming hard land yeah they're like we'll give you some if you can come make it work yeah yeah yeah so okay so the amish well yeah now why when you're scripting it why what's the

decision to not include some of that rich bizarro backstory there's only you know you want to make a movie that tight that yeah you want to make a movie tight we did shoot some stuff we we had some some things that were there to fill that out. But just in the editing process, you go to the core of what is the story that we're trying to tell. I like the way that they're – there's several movies for evil intent and also for good reasons have the trinket, recurring trinket. Yeah. You like the trinket recurring trinket yeah yeah you like the trinket i like the recurring trinket that ties a yeah where the whole movie gets tied together with the trinket yeah you know like rosebud yeah it's a sled she just ruined that movie for oh spoiler words on the citizen cane it's a fucking sweat it's a sweat sorry but too early too soon yeah

but believe me now that everything's available people will accuse you of spoiling movies that are 50 years old because they haven't gotten to it yet yeah you know shider kills the shark uh oh man i but i am glad that it did have that poetically uh there's a head in the box there's a head in the box that had a poetically satisfying ending you know. Had your father seen some of your work? Did he watch Moon? Yeah. Did he dig it? He came to Sundance to watch it.

Oh, yeah? Yeah, which was amazing because he didn't like to travel much by that point. Yeah. You know, he wasn't keen on traveling. But he came out to Sundance and we had an amazing time watching, you know, having him in the audience watching Moon with me. Oh, wow. So that was great. Yeah.

He must have been proud. Did he say it? Yeah, yeah. He's always been very, very supportive of anything that I tried to do because, you know, I've tried to take stuff seriously. You know, I try to do it properly. Right, right. Hard worker.

I try to be. Well, he definitely was too. Yeah. I mean, if there's one thing you got there, that guy was always working yeah you know yeah it took me a long time to work it out what i wanted to do but when i when i got there i i go for it and what about how many siblings you got um i've got uh half i have two half sisters and one step sister oh yeah yeah and does everyone get along there um well they're all really different ages and no i mean there's yeah you know i i keep in contact mainly with my my one half sister who's

iman's daughter uh-huh um you know that she's the one that i'm closest to of the three oh yeah in age uh no i mean huge difference i'm 30 years older than oh wow so wow my relationship is more like a fun uncle oh good well that's nice that that's nice that you show up and they're part of your family. Like, you know, they know your kid. Ah, see, that makes me happy. But here's a question. In terms of this science fiction thing and in terms of your life in general. Do you think that your sort of obsession with it is a way to manage your own feelings,

like to get away from them? I definitely see Moon and Mute in particular are therapy in their own way. I channel a lot of my own stuff into my movies as much as possible. Even something as superficially commercial as Warcraft, which was this big fantasy film that I made, I channeled a lot of personal stuff into that too. That was based on the game?

That was based on the game. And did a lot of people enjoy that movie? It did well internationally. It did not do great here in the u.s so it's kind of a weird one it's you know did warcraft fans like it um pretty split between loving it and and those who were just you know fuck this he doesn't get it yeah exactly but it was it was it was a good split but wasn't that your audience though i mean those were i mean you were banking on at least half of them. Were you? Right?

Yeah. But, you know. Did you play Warcraft? It was what it was. Yeah, I played Warcraft. Yeah. When I was in graduate school. So then along that same line, what were you working out in Moon? Like in terms of emotionally, how did that?

Well, in Moon, I was going through a long distance relationship at the time. And I had just left, left you know not just left but i i had it was recent enough graduate school three years of graduate school feeling totally alienated from the from the culture and the place where i was yeah that um that i felt very isolated um so that's what was going into moon oh interesting um and the long distance relationship obviously was part of it wow um so that was you know that was the the sort of therapy side of moon and then mute mute really does have a pretty strong subtext about parenting and about you know what parenting can do to you and what your response responsibilities are as a parent to um to to look after those that you know they're looking up to you yeah now when he's um like when he's drinking when he's drinking the water like he drinks it yeah you know like yeah was that to is he constantly trying to transcend you know to the trauma do you know like like all that time

in the water yeah well the fact that what i mean again the film begins and ends with with water really um yeah that was something i took away from from uh uh i think it was a talk that uh takeshi katano gave uh-huh about movies you know him be no keshi he's a japanese uh actor and director uh-huh worth looking up his movies if you haven't seen any of his. He's fantastic. Yeah. What was it talking about?

It was really just about how going back to sort of spiritualism, but not believing in it, but just that there isn't. You want to make that clear. He doesn't believe in magic. No, I do not believe in this. No spiritualism. He's got a math brain. But I do like the idea that life comes from water. And in telling stories, I think that there is something which feels fundamentally right about a film or a story that begins at water and ends at water.

It's that circle that you're talking about. That cycle. So I tried to make that work in Mute. And the wood shop. That was tried to make that work in Mute. And the wood, yeah, the wood shop. That was interesting. Throw that in. He shows up with his hand-carved bat, though. His big phallic bat that he's made about his love with dolphins on it.

Oh, fish again. Fish and dolphins also. You can breathe in and out of water. I mean, it's, there are a couple of little semi, semi, um, uh,

hidden, uh, illusions to, to, to dad and what he did. And obviously in heroes, there's this whole dolphin theme in that. So there's,

there's kind of stuff throughout the film. That's a little more subtle. Well, I felt that like I, cause I, I had to, because I had to think that because it was in Berlin. Yeah. And that, you know, he certainly had written songs about future scapes. Yeah. But I didn't know there was a dolphin thing in Heroes.

Yeah. What is it? It's in the lyrics. Oh, yeah. If dolphins could swim. Of course. Well, I hope I didn't offend you by talking about him a little bit. Not at all.

And I love the movie. This is the fourth film I've made, and I always promised myself, if people bring it up on my fifth film, I'm going to stab them. Really? Yeah. Is that part of what's making you angry? I won't bring it up. I won't bring it up.

Really? But I think all people want, the weird thing is, is that I don't want you to tell me stories about him. I want to know what kind of guy he was. Because all we know, we've got about 10 to choose from. Oh, there's so many books.

But so many Bowies. You can choose your own version. Right, so like when I got you, I'm like, does he just eat like a person? You know what I mean? Right. So like when I got you, I'm like, does he just eat like a person? Does he, you know what I mean? Yeah. That's all. I'm not taking away from your talent.

I love what you do. You become a fine man, a great director. And, you know, he was great at what he did. You're totally different. But it's nice to know that he was a good dad. Just promise me when my son has a has a career as a dancer that you ask him all about you me i don't just me just talk about me i don't think i overdid it today no do you no you got away with it oh thank god i know there was a frozen

you froze up for a second i'm like oh but didn't stop me didn't stop me from weaving you're a pro and you volunteered the dolphin thing. I did. I did. Thank you for doing that. Yeah, you're welcome. And it was great talking to you. Yeah, you too.

Thanks, Mark. Okay, that's our show. Go to WTFpod.com for all your WTF pod needs. Go to the tour, WTFpod.com slash tour for my dates in London, Oslo Stockholm, Amsterdam and Dublin and also

Pasadena, I can play guitar because I hooked up these boxes and I hooked them up the last time I played and it was fun so I'm going to do it again alright, okay and it was fun, so I'm going to do it again. Alright? Okay. Boomer lives!