WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 933 - Gus Van Sant

Episode Date: July 15, 2018

Filmmaker and kindred guitar noodler Gus Van Sant meets Marc in the garage and jumps in for a deep dive on his movies, including Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, To Die For, Gerry, Elephant, Last Days, Milk and more. Gus tells Marc why doing Good Will Hunting felt like such a personal risk at the time, why the remake of Psycho got green-lit in spite of itself, and why his latest movie Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot owes its existence to Robin Williams. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucking ears? What the fuck faces? What's happening? Yeah, threw a new one in there. Someone just sent it to me. I'm sure I've had it on the list before. what the fuck faces what's happening yeah threw a new one in there someone just sent it to me i'm sure i've had it on the list before what the fuck faces who wants to be that who all right did i just speak to someone out there did someone just think i'm a fuck face but now it i threw one in there so how's it going you all right i'm mark maron this is my

show wtf it's a podcast you've got it plugged into your head. How's it going in there? Got a good show today. Gus Van Zandt is here. He's on the show. He's not here right now as I speak to you, but he's on the show. How good is watermelon? That's just a non sequitur, but in the summertime, man, I've been eating so much fucking watermelon. I think it's good. I hope it's not making me pre-diabetic but uh it's part of this dumb diet i'm on kind of you know when they say you can eat things that have any amount of sugar in a totally non-sugar situation you eat a lot i'm going through a couple melons a week it's a bad habit i got a watermelon habit i got a melon on my back oh man i can't wait for summer to be over so i can

stop just carrying around watermelons it's it's bad man when you get itchy and you get kind of squirrely and you gotta run out to whole foods or vons or ralphs or wherever the fuck you can get a melon oh geez but it's good put a little salt on it. Awesome. That's it. It's just, that's my summertime tip. Salt your melon. All right? That's, how's that? Is that all right? Before I forget, let me tell you what's happening.

I'm going to be at the Ice House this week, the 19th, 20th, and 21st, doing shows, working on that hour. I'm going to be at Wise Guys in Salt Lake City on the 3rd and 4th of August. I'll be in Chicago. I think that show's sold out at the Thalia Theater, I believe is where I'm going to be at Wise Guys in Salt Lake City on the 3rd and 4th of August. I'll be in Chicago. I think that show sold out at the Thalia Theater, I believe is where I'm playing. August 30th through September 1st, I'll be in Bloomington at the Comedy Attic. And September 6th through 8th, I'll be in Minneapolis at Acme. And September 21 and 22, I'll be at Denver at the Comedy Works doing some club work.

I'll provide links for that on my site. That's what's happening i don't think i've talked to you guys since uh glow got nominated for all these emmy awards they got nominated for a bunch of emmy awards no i did not get one and no i did not get robbed and no i did not it's like the the sort of imposed competition thing is a little is a it's a little disturbing in some ways. I'm glad that a lot of you thought that I should have got one. But the fact is, it's all gravy for me, folks. Everything is going fine.

I'm not a big award-winning guy for whatever reason. There were times towards the beginning, the first couple years of this podcast where i really was upset that we didn't get a p-body and i think it was because the word fuck is in the title of the show or there was some fuck at the p-bodies who didn't want to you know give us the fucking satisfaction of getting one of those things and what does it really mean in the long run the fact of the matter is that people enjoy what we're putting out there they enjoy what i'm putting out there. They enjoy what I'm putting out there. I'm making an honest living out of it and I'm thrilled. The show got nominated for a Best Comedy Series Production Design for Narrative Program. That was also nominated. Casting for a Comedy Series, Jen Houston and her crew. That's great. Cinematography for a Single Camera Series nomination. Great directing for a comedy series. Great hairstyling for a single camera series.

Nice. Congratulations, ladies. Outstanding main title sequence. That is amazing. It's all amazing. Makeup for a single camera series. Awesome. Stunt coordination for a comedy series.

A variety program. Awesome. And then Betty Gilpin. Fucking Betty Gilpin. series a variety program awesome and then and then betty gilpin fucking betty gilpin gets nominated for best supporting that is spectacular betty is such a force man i didn't know betty at all before we started doing it but she is a complete sort of uh questing oddball she's a real risk taker with what she does. No matter what she does in terms of how she's approaching a character, she's going to push it.

And it's something to watch. I love working with all these people. I love working with those women. And again, this imposed competition thing is annoying. Look, I know we're all competitive. I think that by nature, people are competitive. Maybe you kind of have to be to survive. Let's assume that, you know, your genetics have gotten you here.

So there was some natural competition along the way in the last couple of thousand years. And remind me to tell you about genetics because I got my genetic breakdown back. And boy, what a surprise. Oh, yeah. You guys are going to be really surprised i waited weeks for this and you know i was supposed to do that show where they do the the sort of like this is your life genetic show and they never got back to me and now i know why now i know why my genes have persisted but they they stop with me in my particular line they stop with me. In my particular line, they stop with me. I have no children.

My brother has kids, but they stopped with him too because his kids are all adopted. But, you know, that's great. You know, kids are kids. But, you know, I don't know if it was part of our innate desire to not propel the sort of legacy of what we come from. Obviously, it's not malignant. It's not horrible. It's a little needy, a bit erratic, somewhat self-involved, and maybe at times depressive and anxious.

But look, I got my 23andMe back, and I was excited about it. I went all in, you know, like, give me the whole breakdown. Tell me what I'm going to get. Tell me, you know, what I'm destined to die of, the whole business. And drum roll, please, because my ancestry reports, my ancestry composition is Jew. I don't know if that's unique to me, but it just i don't know if it's it if that's unique to me but it just says jew basically it says 99.5 ashkenazi jewish so i guess no surprises no viking i was hoping for a little bit of viking i was

hoping for a little bit of something there's a 0.4 percent of broadly european but it all looks right around that russian poland that whole the green spot on the big global map is in the area that i kind of knew but i was really hoping that somewhere back there my great great great great grandmother may have consensually fucked a viking so i get a little of that but but no, no, that's not there. But now I know, now I know. I'm a full-on Jew with about 4% of Broadway European that is also probably Jewish. So there you go. Now we all know.

Hey, a couple of things. Just in the climate we live in, anytime you're thinking they can't, they can. Anytime you're thinking they wouldn't they can anytime you're thinking they wouldn't they would every time you think they won't they will and there doesn't seem to be anything holding them back so i'm going at this early i'll bring it up occasionally uh to your friends who are detached from the process who feel that they don't have a place in the political world or that may not have an effect on their lives please start planting the seeds for them to vote in November and to spread the word. They can, they will, they do.

Everything you imagine. It's so profoundly amazing how quickly and easily people in this country and people in power shamelessly slip into complete moral depravity and moral bankruptness. It's a human thing. It's nothing unique. Everybody's got that slippery slope. It's just, you know, all you need is an opportunity and you could find yourself in some deep shit. Well, a lot of people have found that opportunity and power and we're all in some deep shit because of complete shameless personal and moral corruption it's uh it's really quite astounding they will they can they do dig it oh also another thing i get emails occasionally you know when i have a big actor in here, specifically recently, maybe Josh Brolin and Paul Rudd, and I seem slightly condescending to superhero movies, and almost maniacally the integrity and need and greatness

of superhero movies. Look, I'm all for entertainment. I'm glad you enjoy it. I don't go. I'm not even saying that I wouldn't enjoy it. What I'm saying is the consolidation and leveling of the culture's taste to infantile intent and product is something that's been coming for a long time. It's great for movie companies. They can just, you know, guaranteed to make millions

on franchises that were fundamentally designed for children. So the fact that you're a grown ass fucking person and you've kind of justified it in your periphery and your fucking worldview that these are great and you just can't get enough of them great that's good for you but the truth of the matter is it pushes away and it pushes aside and you know real dialogue and real human stories that now you got to go to siberia i got to go to the lamley to see a a movie that you know is grown-up themed and is actually provocative and proactive in terms of making you think and making you move forward with your life and seeing things differently now i have to go i got to go find those i got to i got to watch those in my living room because and proactive in terms of making you think and making you move forward with your life and seeing things differently.

Now I have to go, I got to go find those. I got to watch shows in my living room because the audience isn't big enough to justify the release of these films that were once known as grown-up movies, thrillers. Like Michael Clayton's a good example. But you can keep coming at me about my tone around Marvel movies or any of the superhero movies.

I'm going to remain condescending as a grown person who questions them. And usually when I'm talking to an actor, it's slightly condescending, but it's really ribbing. I'm just busting balls. And every time I've done it, they knew exactly what I was doing. And they have it within them, too. But money is money. Entertainment is entertainment. But it was not supposed to be that every movie

has to be like a fucking amusement park ride it wasn't supposed to be that you know oh why are they talking what am i listening to how come someone's not flying where's the blowing up wait and you know maybe i sound like an old man but you're a grown person you know just lighten up i can have my point of view and i'll remain condescending because i feel like that's the place to be on this one and i'm sorry i'm sorry if i hurt your feelings and you're mad that i don't like the flying man i'm sorry you want some ice cream you want some ice cream or do you want a beer you're old enough to have beer you're old enough to have had too much beer don't cry because i made fun of the caped guy i saw that tri Triplett's movie, that documentary.

That was kind of mind-bending, very provocative, really kind of amazing, actually. I've been seeing a lot of movies. I saw Daveed Diggs' movie, Blindspotting. I'm going to talk to him on Thursday. And that was a great sort of real, personal, heartfelt Oakland movie that had some interesting sort of emotional and cultural twists in it from a very kind of grounded and human place. It was great to see. I'll talk to him about that on Thursday. I talked today to Gus Van Zandt about his movie, Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, which, again, is a very human story.

It deals with recovery. it deals with grief it deals with um tragedy there's some beautiful stuff in this movie and joaquin phoenix is uh pretty pretty fucking amazing man you know it's weird that you know as i talk to actors and i work with actors you can see how they you know where they come from with their acting you know it's very it's it's a very interesting part of my life to just kind of see how stories are told and how people construct characters and do things it's uh i don't know i'm enjoying it as the world burns if you don't mind so obviously gus van zandt has done a lot of films uh goodwill hunting elephant uh to die for uh drugstore cowboy he remade Psycho.

I mean, there's a lot of films this man has done, a lot of different types of movies, and a lot of which I've seen and enjoyed and found to be very provocative. Some of his smaller movies, Elephant and what was that one, Last Days, I think it was called? Very poetic and very challenging and great. And it was sort of like, I was a little nervous to talk to him, but I like talking to directors, especially ones that kind of do a lot of different things that take chances, that take risks. There's nothing better than talking to creative people who are willing to take risks, willing to fail, you know, willing to keep pushing to find a truth that in a way that hasn't been explored

yet. So this was a, this was an honor for me. And this is me and Gus Van Zandt. And, uh, the movie I mentioned, uh, don't worry, he won't get far on foot is now playing. So this is me. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations,

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go to Zensurance and fill out a quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. Gus. How long have you played for? A long time, like 30 years. Right? Yeah. Well, that's what I did too. Like you just play by yourself.

Yeah. You play along with records and stuff? Yeah, I play along with all kinds of records yeah like what in my history i used to play with charlie christian oh are you so you can really do it yeah i can do that really and it's mimicking you know because i don't know what i'm doing i can't say oh that's an a that's a c that's an e and even now i'm like i should have learned this kind of thing you know like well yeah well you can't though i don like i should have learned this kind of thing you know like yeah i well you can't though i don't i don't read music but you you can identify chords yeah i can do chords like the major chords i can't go into like minor sevenths everywhere on the right fretboard

but i can learn them you know but you can you can sort of noodle around with charlie christian that's pretty good like you do t-bone walker, too? I can probably do anybody, or, like, play along with the record where they're playing. Right. I can kind of, like, so the people that I've emulated are, like, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton. Right, yeah, I mean, definitely, yeah. They're easy. I mean, Hendrix is easy if you've got a strat. Yeah.

You know, it's like, if you just get into a thing, you can be him, sort of. You can kind of sound like him. Sure, yeah. And I don't even know the right chords. If you learn the Hend be him. You can kind of sound like him. Sure, yeah. And I don't even know the right chords. If you learn the Hendrix chords, then you can really sound like him. No, yeah. I mean, I used to do that all the time. I had a Strat out in my old place.

And yeah, it's the tone. It sounds like him. So you're like a real player then. I didn't play with people for years. It's sort of a meditative thing. Feels good, right? I'm just sort of daydreaming. Yeah. On the couch.

Yeah, everywhere. I've always got it there. So how long have you lived in Los Feliz? I think officially for a year. Like I sold my last place in Oregon, and I live here, and Palm Springs. Oh, okay. Well, that's nice. So I'm not stuck here.

Right. You can go to a hotter place when it gets hot here in LA. Although even 120 in Palm Springs isn't like the weather we're having here at 94 here is hotter. What do you make of that? Why is that, you think? Because of the air? The humidity, I think. Oh, yeah?

So there's just no humidity over there, so you can kind of like... Dry. Yeah. And you walk outside and it feels good until, so you can kind of like... Dry. Yeah. And you walk outside and it feels good until you realize you have no liquid in your body. Exactly. But it stinks up on you. You have to drink, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

So do you miss... I mean, it's a big shift, but Portland's very specific. Do you miss that? Well, I'd been there for so long that I think at this point I don't miss it. I probably would miss it or will miss it like in a few years. Yeah. I'll just go like I should really just get back there. How long did you live there?

Did you grow up there though, right? I moved there when I was 17 in 1970. Yeah. Or 16. And went to two years of high school And then I went to college in Rhode Island and then moved back to... At RISD? RISD, yeah.

You did? Yeah. What years? Where's that? 75 to... No, I mean 71 to 75. Who was there? Who do we know?

The famous talking heads were there. The heads were there? Yeah. I mean, Charlie Rocket was there. Do you remember him? I do. He killed himself, didn't he? Yes I mean, Charlie Rocket was there. Do you remember him? He was on Saturday Night Live. I do. He killed himself, didn't he?

Yes, he did. He was there. He was one of my big influences, actually. Really? As just a person. I said that so glibly. He killed himself. That's a point of reference.

It's sad. I know. How was he an influence? He and one of the film students students i was in the film department yeah where um they would go out and do this thing they that charlie was already doing called meet the stars charlie would go out on his own dressed up to just meet alice cooper see if he could get backstage it was really like can we get backstage without any credentials? Were they shooting it? And then with Scott Sorensen, he started shooting it. This was like for class projects, I think.

Which they did later on Saturday Night Live a little bit. And it just was, I saw it in a class and thought it was super funny. And joined them a couple times and screwed up the sound. Are you the sound guy? I was the sound guy. Yeah. And it was just, they were just, he was just also a singer, lead singer of the Motels.

Charlie Rock it was? Yeah, not the L.A. version, the punk rock band, but the Providence, Rhode Island Motels. Oh, I didn't know that. There were two. Fabulous Motels. There were two. Oh, now I know that. That's great. And the Fabulous Motels in Providence, Rhode Island motels. Oh, I didn't know that. There were two. The Fabulous Motels. There were two. Oh, now I know that.

That's great. And the Fabulous Motels in Providence, I think, is kind of forgotten, lesser known, but it was, in Providence, it was like the biggest thing we had. What kind of music was it? It was art rock. Oh, right. For sure. For sure.

It was a band that would come out playing as one band called Iron Grandmother or something like that. Right, right. Funny, it was comedy rock. Yeah, yeah. And like the Tubes. Yeah, sure. And would play as Iron Grandmother for like six or seven songs.

And they would go backstage and change into the motels or Electric Driveway or some other. So they all went to RISD? And they all were RISD students. Oh, yeah. And they started really from Martin Mull.

Oh, really? Martin Mull had a band called Soup and that evolved into... He was at RISD as well? He was at RISD. He was a painter. Yes.

He's a painter again, I believe. He's a painter again. So comedy rock. Right. In his case, jazz. Comedy jazz. And I saw him play

at the Roxy. But he sort of in the mid-60s, had a band, and then Tim Duffy took over, and there was a band called Snake and the Snatch. And that sort of engendered a few other bands, and eventually the Motels. Wow. Good. A real legacy. Yeah.

That's wild, man. I've studied it. You have? Yeah. I tried Good. A real legacy. Yeah. That's wild, man. I've studied it. You have? Yeah. I tried to. And the, but the heads were. And the talking heads were like David Byrne would do,

um, some things along with the band, I think performance pieces in between sets and things. So he was, he was sort of in there. Yeah. So you were there in the seventies, um,

early seventies to mid seventies. So like at that time, post sixties, I mean, that's when all that performance art, everything was really blowing up at that time. Yeah, it was the 60s were kind of hanging over into the 70s. And so everyone that was, the older students like Charlie Clavery or Charlie Rocket or even Martin Malt, they were the senior frontiersmen that had invented certain things and continued on. And we were newbies

and sort of learning from them like, oh, you don't have to do architecture. You can do rock music or pottery or whatever you want. Something different than what you already do. And what'd you start out doing? I was, I think everyone, a lot of people were painters.

Yeah. I know the lot of people were painters. I know the Talking Heads were all painters. And I was a painter, but I majored in film. You did? Do you still paint? And I still paint, yes. You do? Yeah. And do you show your paintings and everything?

Sometimes, when I'm lucky, I show my paintings. Figurative, abstract? A little bit figurative abstract what do you a little bit uh figurative and a little bit abstract uh-huh but you like doing it not unlike guitar it's something that you enjoy doing but you don't feel pressured exactly to do it it's yours exactly well you do that with film too but i mean but like with those things it's like you don't have to tell anybody you have to do it for anybody. Right. It's nice. Exactly. It's nice.

So out of RISD, because it seems to me that the 70s, like after the 60s, like once the hippie got drained out of the 70s and it just became drugs and sex and it had a little more edge to it. That seemed to be sort of the petri dish of where you started to develop your sensibility. Yeah. the the petri dish of where you started to develop your your sensibility yeah i think i was influenced i think by all the things that happened in the 60s were kind of culminating in 71 is when i ended up there um in making art in this case because we were in art school um How much of it was a reaction to Vietnam? As much as you were involved in Vietnam already, I think everyone was, but it was partly that or a reaction to the reactions to Vietnam.

Some people had been in Vietnam. One of my classmates had a nervous breakdown in a submarine. Oh, really? In the Pacific, yeah um who was a painter um so there were people with you that were that had had been in combat wow but um i mean just the whole thing that was happening in the 60s whatever you could call it was was still happening in the 70s and by mid 70s i think it was sort of changing so so you finish risdy you go all four i went all four years i i tried to leave after my first year and then i um was talked back into it by my parents of course and um oh yeah they were supportive though that's a good sign they were

supportive and um and then i uh graduated in 75 and came via um europe i went to europe for a little while and then uh came to la what'd you do where you weren't even doing in europe just hanging around i went on a student um group a film group and we were visiting in rome we were visiting um filmmakers who'd you talk so you talk to? So we talked to Fellini. Really? Yes. How many people were with you? There were about eight. Wow. And there were about 16 in total

but that particular visit was about eight students. We went to the set of Casanova. We went to the set of Seven Beauties by Lena Vertmuller. Oh my god. We went to talk to pasolini really in his um in his house but it was just a couple months before he died tinto bross was a

filmmaker he was making salon kitty which was sort of a semi-porno um entertainment yeah um did it have an impact on you do Do you, I mean, when you... I think it was just amazing. I mean, we were amazed. Was it the first time you were on sets? Yes. Ah. Exactly.

So you're on Fellini's set. Fellini's set. Did anything impact you about how he worked or anything? I mean, what did... Well, it was night and it was late at night. I think we ended up getting there about 11 because they were shooting all night and we they shot until say two o'clock and um when we got there there was a a cauldron it was at a farmhouse yeah um so the fire the fire was lighting up the set and there was some

extra lights yeah like flashing and in the middle of, there was a group of 25 people in folding director's chairs. Yeah. In a square. Yeah. Five by five. In the middle of them was the tallest woman in the world who was in the film. Right. In costume.

She was in an extra large chair. So it was kind of this weird graphic of 25 people. And we were told like in whispers that Fellini and Donald Sutherland weren't getting along and like they're discussing the scene and they've been discussing it for an hour and we're all just sitting here waiting and I said who are all these people in the chairs and they're like well they're they're people that insist that without without them Fellini cannot make a movie, each one of them. His entourage. Really?

That's what I was told. As I was 21. Right. Okay, gotcha. I thought in my head I was thinking, bullshit. Or it's better than thinking, make note, need 25 people to travel with me at all times and sit in a square. Or as I realize in Italy, when you go to a film festival, there will be a lot of people around.

Like they'll invite the cardinal and the bishop. And they'll invite people from the military. They invite people that they kind of need to invite. Yeah. And so they end up not necessarily needing to be there, but they're there. Right. So there might have been the same with Fellini's group. Did you eventually get to see him direct?

Or you left? No, I think they discussed the whole time. The tallest woman in the world got up to go to the bathroom, which was funny because when she rose up, everyone kind of cowered because she was so tall. Yeah. And she went to the bathroom, came back. I don't think I remembered seeing any sort of filming work.

Did he talk to you guys? And then on the way back from the set when we broke, he talked to us as we walked. Yeah. And I wasn't one of the lead. Like there were two of my fellow students were on either side. So I was listening to them talk rather than talking directly. Uh-huh. And did work Miller make an impact?

We had lunch um with them um i mean we knew i knew her work is she still around i think she i think she is she was a bit of a character i remember you know i i remember when seven i was young when seven beauties came out but i remember it being uh she had a very powerful presence. Yeah, in her white glasses. Yeah, in the white glasses, yeah. So she was having, we were having lunch and Giancarlo Giannini was there at lunch with us. And we just were kind of like part of the lunch.

I don't remember speaking directly to her either. But it was interesting. Yeah, and Pasolini was old pasolini was it was more like eight students talking to him and like um you know hearing him talk and so we each each were talking directly to him one by one he wanted to ask us like what we wanted to do in cinema yeah so each of us like had our moment um how'd you use yours and my moment was kind of awkward because i because i i sort of um i wanted uh cinema to be a little more malleable like the novel uh-huh and like a given novel because in a novel you can start off one place and uh you know um space into like another

time period and come back to where you were very easily whereas in cinema you can do that but it's like difficult for the audience yeah they they seem to need more linear storytelling so i said i wanted to translate uh literature into film, which is how I put it. And he didn't understand that. He was like, why would you? Why? It's a whole different thing. Why would you do that?

Why would you bother? And so I just let it slide. That was it? That was it. There was a translator. So I was like, it's okay. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I was nervous. But yeah, two months later, he was gone. Oh, wow. So we were the last people. Well, that sounds exciting. That's an exciting thing to do after college.

And then I went to London to visit some friends that were there, tried to find work, which wasn't really happening. And I decided, by then I had been in europe for three months yeah was starting to feel homesick and um decided i was listening to joni mitchell's blue and she was singing about california over and over again and i thought i should just go just hang it up go to california go to la what were you looking for work just on a set anything yeah anything yeah you know and there just wasn't a lot of work in general right in there in 1975 in london yeah so you go to la so it just ended up here and the first foray

into la yeah and living on argyle street and franklin oh back then what was that like that was that was nice yeah i mean it's like it is now it's the same actually and there was some there was apartment that some friends of mine had that I lived with them. And they were bouncers at the Roxy. Oh, yeah. In the mid-70s? In the mid-70s. So they would let me in the back door and I could go see the shows.

What was going on then? I remember seeing John Prine. Oh, yeah. I saw... He's great. I just saw him recently. Still at it. Yeah, he went...

He just had a new record out. He was back out, yeah. I saw Patti Smith. In her heyday. In her... Like, her first L.A. performance. That's great. I would see people also.

I didn't know who they were. Sure. I would end up in the backstage. But was it crazy on Sunset Boulevard? It was pretty crazy, yeah. And the rainbow next door and the parking lot in between, there was a lot of sort of dressed up people and craziness. I saw Martin Mall there.

Oh, yeah? Were you guys friends at that point? And I didn't know him, but I said hi to him in the parking lot. And then I was a RISD student. How did he respond? He was like, great, fine. But I was a kid. I felt like a fan.

Did you get a job? Yes, I got a job. Within about six months, I got this really great job. As you're looking for work in Hollywood as a young filmmaker, you're given pointers as you're doing it by the people that you're meeting. And somebody said, you know, you're given pointers as you're doing it by the people that you're meeting. And somebody said, you know, you can call people up, you know, you can call John Cassavetes up and get them on the phone. They have offices. You can call Alfred Hitchcock on the phone. And I was like, okay. And I just sort of filed that away. Like

I can do this. So, um, Chevy Chase had come for his first visit to la since he had become a star yeah and and saturday night live which was brand new at that at that moment and um they asked him in calendar section of the la times what are you going to do when you're in la and he said i'm going to maybe visit a friend ken shapiro who's a video freak who lives in beverly hills and i was like oh yeah ken shapiro he made the groove tube sure man and i looked in the phone maybe visit a friend, Ken Shapiro, who's a video freak who lives in Beverly Hills. And I was like, oh yeah, Ken Shapiro, he made the Groove Tube. Sure, man. And I looked in the phone book and he was there.

It was Ken Shapiro. And I thought, I can call him up. That's the one you chose? And that's the one I chose. And I got a job with him. Did he do Kentucky Fried Movie or just the Groove Tube? He did the Groove Tube. Right. And then he did Modern Problems later.

With Chevy. With Chevy. Right. And then he did Modern Problems later. With Chevy. With Chevy. Yeah. And he had a difficult time because he, the groove tube was like his homemade New York movie. Right,

Belzer's in it. Belzer, Chevy Chase is in it. I remember, is that the one where Chevy does the bit where he's singing, I'm looking over,

and then all of a sudden a guy playing on his head. Yeah. I remember, yeah. And there's Brown 25, which is the advertisement singing uh i'm looking over and then all of a sudden a guy playing on his head right i remember yeah and there's um brown 25 which is the advertisement for yeah like brown 25 which looks like shit coming from the spigot yeah yeah um there's a lot of great bits i mean it's essentially it is if you look at it it it's Saturday Night Live before Saturday Night Live. And Lorne Michaels worked for Ken.

Like when I got there, Lorne had just left to do Saturday Night Live a couple months earlier, but he was in the office that we were in working as his writer. And I thought, oh, so he just took Saturday Night Live and pitched it to NBC. Or it was influenced by, I mean, it had the news. It had musical acts, it had bits, it had skits, you know, coming from TV shows. Yeah. It had all of it.

Not to take away from Lorne Michaels, but. So you were comedy focused a little. Yeah. I mean, I, I liked that film. I liked, yeah, I liked Mel Brooks and I liked comedic filmmakers. And working with Ken, I met a lot of the comedians of the period, like Tim Thomerson. Sure. Pat Proft was a writer.

Yeah. And he had come from the Smothers Brothers. Uh-huh. And he was Minneapolis, I think. So a lot of the Minneapolis guys were part of the writing. He had these big writing groups who were writing Groove Tube No. 2. Oh, yeah. Which never happened.

And he had an office at Paramount. So it was like... You're on the lot. I was on the lot. Yeah. So for me, that was really big stuff. And what did you learn from that experience that sent you... I learned that I wasn't really able to pitch

or think up comic situations because I tried a couple of times with the professionals and I realized, oh, I'm completely dying. So you realized like comedy is not for me? Well, not that kind of comedy. I guess I liked, I appreciated it. And I was, I sort of, you know, yeah it's fixed by it and i would go to open night open mic night which was free at the com at the comedy store like on mondays on mondays

because it was a free place to go yeah and um that's crazy loved it but um that i could probably could never do stand-up comedy it's interesting that you liked it so much though but i liked it so i ended up basically rolling joints at the meetings oh yeah that was your job that was my main job buying the cheese and crackers beforehand the joint kid yeah yeah that's nice so but but so how do you move towards making your first film out of the shapiro well. Well, then at that time I sort of had plans. I had this short story written by William Burroughs called The Discipline of D.E., which I had read when I was in Providence in a bookstore.

And by the time I was working with Shapiro, or right about that same time, I had also looked up William Burroughs in the phone book in New York City. At the bunker? At the bunker. He was in the phone book, and I called him up, and I went over there basically to ask him in person for the rights, and also because in the Jack Corak books, everyone always visited Burroughs. Yeah, Bull Lee. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. Go buy. So I was going to go visit bully and um our meeting was very cordial he was very nice and um he had been to la so he gave me addresses of people to look up in la uh-huh where i was headed and then i asked at the end of the meeting can would you give me the rights and he was like well you have to call my agent uh-huh which i did and then they you know they knew there was no money in short films so yeah they allowed me to do it so eventually i made that short which is about a seven minute short and it's on um it's on youtube oh yeah you can

see it um and it's it's comedic it's funny and ken shapiro did the voice voiceover okay okay for it yeah and it's bros is writing So it's kind of austere, very dry. He's hilarious though. So funny. He's really funny. So you had a, you were into him since college. In college from Naked Lunch and all the kids

were reading Naked Lunch. Yeah. It's a mind blower. But you know when you start to realize the way he, and I imagine you had a relationship with him because you used him in what, two movies or one? Yeah, two. Yeah, two. That he had bits. I mean, he was almost vaudevillian in his commitment to shtick.

Exactly. He had characters. He had a way of delivering it. He was a real comic performer. Yeah, amazing. The first time I saw him was when he was on saturday night live in like what was 81 or something and i had no idea who he was because i was just a freshman in college and i watched him read those sections from naked lunch and i'm like what the

fuck is this who is that guy yeah mind blower i think that's how i've i besides meeting him, I did go to see one of those readings at NYU. He would read there. Yeah. And it was kind of explained. Somebody explained he read it like a police report, like his book. And I was like, wow, like a police report. Like he's a police captain at the bench. And he did.

That's how he delivered it. Yeah. He's definitely had a character that was what he was public with. Were you guys friends? Did you remain friends? I was friends later. I mean, that particular project happened. I showed him a tape.

It was like at that time there wasn't even VHS tape. It was like a reel-to-reel tape. And then it wasn't until later when I was making Drugstore Cowboy that there was this character named Old Tom. Yeah. Who was an old junkie that our lead character, Bob Hughes, knew when he was younger. Yeah. And I sort of looked up to him. The minister.

The minister. Yeah. Well, now Burroughs turned him into Tom the priest. Oh. But at the time he was just Old Tom. So I thought Bur burrows would be the perfect guy to play this character yeah and so we sent him the script and he was like yeah you know like i i'd i'd play it but only if like he had something more going this guy is like old tom a

forgotten older person i want to be an older person that has something happening. So we said, just whatever you want to do, go ahead. You can do it. Just so that you do it. And so he rewrote his whole part. Made him a priest. And Matt's part, too. He made all those scenes with them together.

Burroughs wrote. Or his assistant. Oh, really? James wrote. James. James Gromholz. Yeah. And after that, and we shot it in one day, too, which was.

They seemed very, like, it seemed like the, you know, the walk and talks were improvised. And those were just them talking. Right. Making stuff up, yeah. Because, like, he's a very good walk and talk narrator of what's happening. Yes. I've seen him in documentaries do that. But I could tell that matt you know in

character was was what like it was really happening whatever was happening was really happening and he was going what do i do and burles is like i used to know an old croaker right there yeah yeah but you made one film before that right um yeah before that i made one film before that right um yeah before that i made malinoche yeah which was a a small book by a poet named walt curtis who lived in portland uh-huh which was my sort of it was my first feature film i had made another so sort of a feature yeah in hollywood when i was living in hollywood that didn't really turn out that well like um what was it about it was called alice in hollywood about a girl who moves to hollywood and sort of gets in trouble um it dramatically wasn't really like playing well so i cut it down

it was a short film by the time i was done with it and then malinoche was the was the film after that i didn't i didn't see that one. I want to. It's a black and white film. And it's about a, it seemed like a complicated relationship movie. It's about a gay poet in Skid Row, an old town of Portland. And he falls in love with a Mexican migrant boy. Yeah. Who's sort of there over the winter he's

trying to survive the winter until the next growing season with his friends yeah and they're kind of getting in trouble right so the poet like becomes their friend and gives them ride in his rides in his car and tries to sort of seduce them but it doesn't really work out uh the the sad longing begins exactly um which uh yeah it's on it's um on filmstruck you can see that oh really at um in the criterion collection oh good good so it exists so so then like that sort of set a theme for you i mean like you know the tone tone. Yeah, because it was like a street story. It was a poet's story. He's sort of like a Ginsburg of, Walt Curtis is like sort of the Ginsburg of Portland. Oh, yeah.

Which Ginsburg would hate when Ginsburg would come to Portland. Walt would try to insinuate himself into the scene and Ginsburg was like, get rid of him. Because he was sort of copying his deal. Did you know Alan? Yeah, and I got to be friends with Alan through Burroughs and through also, we shared a publisher. We had photo books that we had met during this book signing.

I was just looking at his stuff yesterday because I was going through my books and all those old City Lights, the Small Pocket series. and all those old City Lights, the small pocket series. No, it's really kind of amazing to just, even at a glance, any Allen Ginsberg poem is so uniquely his. And so there's so much movement in them. It's really invigorating just to read a page. He was a nice guy.

Yeah, he was great. I mean, Burroughs was the type of person that really, you know, there were certain things that he really liked to talk about. He liked to talk about guns, knives, poisons, snakes. Control. Control. Talk about drugs or especially, yeah, government control. Conspiracy theories. Aliens. Sure.

Whereas Ginsburg was a little more like he wanted to hear what you were thinking about. He wanted to teach you about things that had been going on, you know, in the underground. You know, like, I guess, say, like, he would explain to you how during a protest, the feds would put, like, troublemakers in the front of the protest to cause the riot he would just he would just try and download information that wasn't you weren't going to get except from him oh yeah which was i always thought was really interesting so yeah because you're younger than them yeah and you were sort of like uh you know listening to these old guys did you ever get to the moment where you're like all all right, I think I've had enough? No, never with either of them.

Oh, that's good. No, I wanted to always listen to them. I mean, I wasn't really with them like for weeks on end. Right. It was usually like one or two nights or something like that. So I was always like all ears. And they were... Yeah.

With Burroughs, my relationship was, I learned at the very end of our relationship before he died that I looked like somebody he knew when he was younger. Oh, really? That there was this whole other thing going on that I wasn't really aware of. No, who told you that? He did. Oh, he did?

And I was like, oh, that would, if I, it makes sense, you know, like that he, he would, he would entertain you longer because you were actually this person. Drugstore Cowboy was the first big one, right? Where everybody's like, what the fuck is this guy? He's great. I remember seeing it. It was great.

After Malinoche, I was able to, with the small exposure I got at film festivals, and also the independent film scene was happening right about then, mid eighties. It was really, it had been going for a while, but, um, it was, there was a system in place. So I kind of like hit it right at the right time. And, um, Avenue Pictures financed Drugstore Cowboy.

Yeah. Which was a novel that a friend of mine had, um, the manuscript for. Who's the, Whose novel was it? James Fogel, who was a Northwest sort of criminal. He was in jail at the time that I was shopping it around. He was in Walla Walla State Penitentiary in Washington. It was an unpublished novel? It was an unpublished novel? It was an unpublished novel.

He had a few of them. There was one called Satan's Sandbox, and there was one called Drugstore Cowboy, and there was a few others. How'd you find that guy? I found him because a friend of mine was taking a course with a writer who was teaching in prisons. And he also was teaching outside of prisons as well.

And he was hooking up the prisoners, the insiders with the outsiders to basically get manuscripts sent around. Oh, wow. And my friend Dan Yost had two of these manuscripts. Right. I was starting to pitch it before I even wrote a script and eventually Avenue became interested in that one. So the first film you did

was in black and white and Drugstore Cowboy almost seemed like the color was like saturated or a little high contrast or something. What was the choice on that? Well, it was weird.

I mean, it was shot by Bob Yeoman who shoots a lot of wes anderson movies i think that what happened color wise was our art director david brisbane who was an la guy had chosen to use a lot of black and a lot of green because we really wanted to make a black and white film but we weren't really allowed to by our producers. So he'd chosen to sort of like make it so that your mind

saw it in black and white even though it was in color. It also serviced Portland though too. Like there's definitely a darkness. There's a greenness and a blackness.

Yeah, that's true. And then like with My Own Private Idaho like I remember, I still remember, there's one, I remember the weirdest part of that movie. I guess it was one of the Johns who, you know, he's got an apartment where he just sits on a couch and starts rubbing his feet on that, like something that almost looks like this. Yeah.

What was that? I mean, who was that guy? The guy was our publicist Mickey Cottrell and I had invited him to play this part yeah because because he would be the type of care he was the correct type of character yeah and he had a lot more you know he had written something on his own that was like 25 pages that he expected us to film. Oh, right. But when we ended up in the room where he was supposedly living, David Brisbane, again, the production designer from Deathstroke Cowboy, also did My Own Private Idaho, put in a new white rug that he said, wear these slippers.

um white rug where that he said wear these slippers i think that was probably ad-libbed because we had to wear slippers when we went in there yeah because of the pristineness of the white rug so he had in that case when we were rehearsing his shoes slipped on the carpet because it was so new yeah and he had these new like sort of dress shoes. Yeah. So he was pretending to do some kind of ballet. Right. And he claimed while he was doing it that he had done ballet when he was a child. Right. And it just looked so funny that we said,

okay, we're shooting this. Yeah. He just seemed so excited, I remember. Yeah, because he was excited. Yeah, that movie, and then it becomes sort of more, you're dealing with these guys that are kind of on the margins. It sort of became a place that you explored pretty well.

But those two movies, certainly. Do you feel like that was due to where you were at at the time? Because your curiosity certainly sort of ranged. I think it probably was, I mean, my first film was more of like tried to be a comedy, Alice in Hollywood. It was also about somebody that was dispossessed, losing her way in Hollywood, living on the streets eventually. So I lived a block away from Hollywood Boulevard.

So I saw a lot of kids on the street. I wasn't one of the kids. I didn't really, wasn't hanging out with them. I wasn't smoking pot with them or anything. You weren't Larry Clark. No, definitely. Although I admired that, you know, like I just was sort of visual, visualizing, seeing their lives and like imagining what they were, or maybe, maybe reading John Reishi, reading about what was going on on my own street and what was going on was pretty heavy. You know, like if you really did, did get involved, it was very heavy. Yeah. on my own street. And what was going on was pretty heavy. You know, like if you really did get involved, it was very heavy.

Yeah, in my own private Idaho and in Drugstore Cowboy, as heavy as it was, you know, somehow you tempered the tragedy that is Hollywood Boulevard at that time, I would imagine. Yeah, I think that both, Malinoche was very funny as a book.

Drugstore Cowboy also was funny, even though you might read it and not really get the humor, but it was a little yeah as a book yeah Drugstore Cowboy also was funny even though you might read it and not really get the humor but it was like it was a little bit like Larry Clark yeah I think it was funny

and then My Own Private Idaho was more surrealistic but funny there was funny moments it was funny moments as well because River was

a narcoleptic right yeah and that was its own comedic thing which came from George Eliot's Silas Marner

oh really you know it was just like this weird influence there and a little bit of Samuel Beckett uh huh And that was its own comedic thing. Which came from George Eliot's Silas Marner. Oh, really? It was just like this weird influence there and a little bit of Samuel Beckett. Uh-huh. And then a little bit of the reality and then Shakespeare. Yeah. Well, they did Shakespeare, right? They did.

Yeah. So it was a combination of all these things. It's a fun movie. It was a fun movie in that sense. Do you know? Well, I mean, you mixed it up, right? So I remember- It was really like a collage of different things. And then there there was a shot where doesn't a house fall out of the sky never mind making that up no it happened barn barn yeah but i think yeah burroughs's cut up

ideas were a little bit in play there so that's what you should have told passolini i'm gonna do what burroughs did with literature to movies. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Was it in play? I mean, consciously, the cut-up method? I had done it. On my own, I had... Yeah, I tried it too. I had written things by cutting them up and rewriting them,

like he was sort of explaining. So having already done that, also I had done a lot of, because of Robert Rauschenberg when I was a student yeah um high school student we did collages uh-huh that were you know things cut out of magazines and pasted together yeah so i mean i was used to to um cutting things up and putting them together marshall mccluhan was an influence um all these 60s things were an influence so they're all there the beats through risdy through the art and then onto my own private my own private idaho i was i was really putting everything i had into that one and that did it did well and that was didn't it i mean i remember

it did great they yeah new line was very happy and you know you sort of changed keanu's trajectory a bit, right? Yeah, from Bill and Ted. But again, there was a lot of funny in that, and then there was a lot of fun to die for is hilarious, dark satire. And you work with Buck Henry. Buck Henry. And he's like, going back again to Shapiro's world almost.

Yeah. Before it. Yeah. He did that. The Graduate. He did The Graduate. And he was a prankster in the 50s that could go on talk shows as a character, an invented character that wanted to put panties on horses because it was obscene.

Sure. Did that script exist without you? I mean, what was your relationship with Buck? Buck and I had the same agent. Yeah. I can't remember where we met unless it was through the agent. Probably it was through the agent and Buck was interested in working on something together. Yeah.

So, um, a producer had, had optioned the book called to die for by Joyce Maynard. And, um, Buck, um, elected to be the screenwriter and i elected to be the director of the project but you work closely together then no because um you know buck sort of like locks himself into his writing room and like writes oh yeah you know he doesn't he doesn't sort of spit ball at least with me but like once it was written that was it you know he didn't um it was well it was so good that i didn't you know have any suggestions for changes did he like the movie i think he was happy with the movie there was some things maybe that he doesn't like but um yeah i mean one of the things that he did when he wrote it i i can remember him saying that there

was a lot of ways to cut this together because everything was like a bit, you know, one minute. Yeah. Almost like joke. Yeah. So you could do it many different ways in the editing room. It's very interesting that like where Joaquin Phoenix was at at that time, I guess River had passed away. Yeah, he had just died. But like his acting, because in the new movie, Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far,

you can really see the arc within your films with that guy of his craft just evolving to this. He was all in on to die for, but it was almost feral. He was almost kind of like an animal, but very raw. And in the new movie, it's such a meticulous and controlled but very vulnerable performance. It's kind of an amazing thing he did. But how is your relationship?

Have you been in touch with him over the years? Yeah, I had. After To Die For, I was pretty much in touch with him. We lived, we were neighbors in New York for a while, lived in New York City. And we had projects that we sort of imagined together that we never did. And even then we all, like Casey Affleck and Joaquin and myself, found ourselves, we were all neighbors in New York. We found ourselves here in L.A. living near each other. Oh, really?

So continue, like, just our ongoing kind of dreaming together. And so when this particular project, Don't Worry, He Won't Get get far on foot became available it was something that i had worked on in the 90s became available again without robin williams robin williams was one of the originators of the project really yeah and um for the lead as the lead yeah and he was developing it how long ago was that uh 97 oh it's been a long time okay after robin and i worked together in goodwill hunting he had offered me this particular uh story to develop for him so i had done i had developed a couple scripts with robin yeah and then it just sort of was one of those projects that never he never got to right and eventually when robin had died it uh surfaced again at Sony. Oh, really? They called me and they said, you know, what do we do with this?

They still had it. They were still curious about it because of the attention that Robin had given it. Yeah, or else they just have a library that certain things have bigger price tags than others. Uh-huh. They either want to sell them or maybe do something with them. Well, yeah, and with Robin on Good Will Hunting, I mean, that was a huge turning point with him and for Matt Damon and for Ben. I mean, you were brought in by, how did you get involved with that project?

Good Will Hunting was an executive at Miramax. Mark Tusk was his name. He and I were talking about Bostonoston we're talking about south boston and he mentioned this script he said oh we just bought ben and matt's script and i said it's about south boston he's like well it's about characters that live in south boston he said i'll send it to you so he sent it to me and that's how i got a hold of it and i originally had just called um i called joaquin to find casey's number and casey's number to find ben's number and got ben and said this is great

you guys like um i knew that you had a script i never thought to read it because it was sort of a legendary script written by two non-actors oh yeah i mean non-writers yeah it had been around for a few years and i so finally i've read it and was like, I didn't realize it was so amazing. It's like this amazing thing. And if you need a director, I'd be interested. Which was the beginning of sort of a long process of, you know, other directors considering it. Me sort of standing in line before I could actually. And you just, what was it specifically about that story that made you want to do it?

I think it was not like the other stories that I had done. I think it was more of a uplifting story, which I was a little scared of. I didn't know whether I needed the down and dirty story to survive as an artist or a dramatist. You mean just your fear for your personal integrity or what you could bring to it? Or just whether I needed that kind of energy in order to actually make the dramatics work. Just because I had never done it.

Everything I'd done up until then was a little bit like about anti-heroes as opposed to heroes. And then also like with even Cowgirls Get the Blues, you kind of like went big and weird. Yeah. You kind of did that. It's interesting because like it seems even Cowgirls Get the Blues, you kind of, like, went big and weird. Yeah. So you kind of did that. It's interesting because, like, it seems like from my own private Idaho to, you know, the surrealness, like, you kind of even took it further.

And I guess it got a little unhinged. I got burned going too high. Yeah. Too close to the sun. So it was a risk for you, Good Will Hunting. That's the way I felt. Mm-hmm. Because I was saying, I'll do it. And as I was saying those words, I was thinking, I wonder if I can.

I wonder if I need something like I've done before. Can you make a sweet movie? Yeah, because it was very sweet. But there was some darkness in it. But I did like the kind of hidden genius aspect that the janitor is solving the problems on the Harvard chalkboard in the hallway was very, you know, was very, I guess, dead poet society. It just had this sort of warm and cuddly feeling about it. Sure, sure. Which I really was a fan of that kind of film.

I just never had done one. So I sort of, when I did do that movie, I kind of tried to put everything that I was doing in the other movies away to try and do something that was more like the movie wanted to be, you know, in the script. And you did it. And it worked. Yeah, it sure did. Thank God. And you did it. And it worked. Yeah, it sure did. Now, okay, so obviously I can't go through every movie, though. I want to, but I need to ask this pressing question. I mean, to remake Psycho frame by frame, that's an obsessive undertaking. Yeah.

And what did you- There's a whole reason behind it, if you want to hear the yeah i do i want to hear the reason i want to hear what you learned from it yeah i i mean i i didn't i think the the process of doing it was the learning it wasn't necessarily the result um and the and it wasn't really about learning about hitchcock it. It was more that when, during the 90s, the joke about the executives was that they would rather make a sequel than they would an original piece. Yeah. Because there was less risk. Right.

So they would rather copy or continue a story that's already known in the public. Right. And they were really searching for some way to do that. Now they've found out that comics is the way to do it. Like, it already exists in the public's mind. But at the time, they were sort of searching. They hadn't found comic books yet. And it's a universe, too.

A never-ending series of characters. It's never-ending. I mean, they just hit what they wanted. But back in the 90s, they hadn't found that yet. Yeah. But they were trying by doing TV shows as movies. they did the flintstones as a movie yeah they did the brady bunch as a movie right so when i went when i did uh drugstore cowboy i was all of a sudden meeting with the you know heads of studios because they knew that actors would work with me therefore

if they got me on their movie they could get the actor that they wanted so it would work with me. Therefore, if they got me on their movie, they could get the actor that they wanted. So it was less about me than it was about the actors. And so in, during one of the meetings, Casey Silver at Universal said, he brought in all of his, um, vice presidents. One guy was the head of the library and he said, in the library, we have old films that you could remake. We have scripts that haven't been made yet that you could make and it just reminded me of that thing that they wanted to do which is remake something and i said what you guys haven't done is try to to take a hit and remake it exactly rather than like remake it and like put a new spin on it yeah just remake it for real yeah because i'd never seen that done yet as an experiment right and the whole thing seemed experimental to me anyway yeah so i thought

why not yeah and they laughed you know they were like they thought it was silly ridiculous absurd and they left and so they said well we won't be doing that and that continued every time i would meet with casey i would bring it back up because I would remind myself, oh, you're the guy. And I locked in on Psycho. I'm not sure why Psycho, but it just seemed like the movie that would work the best. Yeah. I would bring it up again and they would laugh again. And then later when we did do Good Will Hunting and it did really well at the box office,

before the Oscars, it also got nominated for like nine Oscars or something. And the studios liked to get it. It won a couple. It won a couple of Oscars. Robin won? Robin and Matt and Ben for writing. Yeah, right. But what they like to do, right, you know, the night before or the week before the Oscars happen,

they like to get new deals in place with the people that are nominated because as soon as you win they've got your movie going you know yeah right they've got they can just lean over to their buddies and say we've got that nice movie we got that guy and i think that's why they do it and then they forget that they have it you know after the night's over so they were trying to make a deal with me and i had a deal at paramount and i had a deal at some other studio. And then my agent was saying, Universal really wants to do a deal with you. Have you got anything for them?

And I was like, Universal, Universal. Oh, yeah, tell them Psycho, frame by frame, new cast, in color, and that's the idea. And then my agent calls back and said they think that's fantastic so all of a sudden they were in so money talks after the yeah after the academy awards yeah after the box office yeah it was really the box yeah the awards were also part of it yeah um so then we were then then i had to make the decision whether i really wanted to do it after they said yes i was like oh geez and i was talking to danny elfman who i wanted to do it. After they said yes, I was like, oh, geez. And I was talking to Danny Elfman, who I wanted to do the score,

because he was so good at doing Bernard Herrmann-style scores. And he said, you know, they'll kill you if you make this. He knew. And I was like, who will kill me? He says, just everyone, like the critics, everybody that loves Psycho will kill you. And I said, yeah, but danny this is an experiment so this is not about who's going to get killed this is about doing just doing it yeah and then

i thought it doesn't matter if they kill me and then later when i got killed it hurt but um because you put a lot of time into it well because you actually care yeah whether your review succeeds so it didn't work um but the you know the idea was whether or not you could actually remake something and it would repeat the box office oh that was you know that was the sort of weird science experiment sure but did you did you glean anything from you know the process as a filmmaker nothing not really i mean it's the same process each time pretty much you've got the model you're trying to make you sure but nothing not really i mean it's the same process each time pretty much you've got the model you're trying to make you're sure but did you like i mean that was one it was easier because we we could copy the template yeah but like you know i mean you know hitchcock was

pretty good at editing right yeah so like when you're you know kind of repeating his moves it didn't leave any lasting impression on you or you no point? We were just copying the moves pretty much. At no point you said, like, oh, this is kind of clever, what he did? I kind of already had looked at it that way. I could see what he had done. So it wasn't in repeating it, it didn't bring any new insight. But we, you know, it obviously didn't work. But I think it lasted.

It's more important now, I think, because people like yourself will ask questions about it. It's more alive now than it was back when it failed. Sure. Just with, I guess, the art world or the modern world. Yeah. Now they've come around and realized it was an experiment. It was an experiment. Yeah.

I think that the other, I'm going to gonna skip around but like elephant and last days i thought were were beautiful poetic masterpieces both of them i loved them i didn't see jerry i should yeah jerry jerry is the first one yeah of the same sort of series of using very you know um long amounts of time, more as if they really are, in that case, the desert, or as if you really are in a high school. What provoked you to do that? What was the shift? Jerry being the first one. Jerry started as a project that we weren't,

we were going to make a film without a screenplay. And we were going to make a film without a screenplay and we were gonna we were gonna kind of like keep records and like and and improv and like make scenes up but we weren't going to write them down right so in the process of actually doing what we did in in forging the the dramatics and in the the things that that Casey did in the desert, I sort of was applying a style to it according to what they were up to and the way to tell the story. And it came kind of from a lot of different sources, the main one being Béla Tarr's Satan Tango.

Béla Tarr is a Hungarian filmmaker. Because what we were kind of up to in the desert was sort of going that way because i originally had thought we were going to make a film like a john cassavetes film with a lot of talking and they weren't really talking that much so i thought there's still a way to to keep going on this project yeah um and after i did that i i really wanted to try it again and elephant Elephant was the next time. And why did you choose that Columbine? Why did you choose?

Jerry and Elephant and Last Days are all based on real incidents that kind of have a mystery in the middle of them that can't really be solved because the people that can solve them are dead. Right, okay. So that was the... So the first one was really the Kurt Cobain death, which ended up to be the last movie made. The second one was Columbine,

and the third one was Jerry. Columbine, I had been working on trying to find a home for it. And I had found one at HBO with Colin Callender. And he's the one that said, I can't do Columbine, but I can do Elephant. And I was like, what's Elephant? And he's like, it's a movie by Alan Clark. And I was realizing, oh, that's Harmony Korine's favorite movie. It's like this movie that I hadn't seen. And he referred to it as elephant because it was in the middle

of a crisis in England with, um, Protestant Catholic, uh, violence. He made this piece that went on BBC, um, in the middle of it and, um, commented in its way on the, on the violence, on the senselessness of the violence. So Elephant was sort of a code name? It was his name for it. And then we didn't have a title for it because he didn't want to call it Columbine. So we just ended up calling it Elephant, which we liked. We liked the title.

I can't imagine what that set was like, you know, to be improvising and using, you know, non-acting kids. I mean, it must have just, there must have been days on that set where it was menacing. No, no, they were very good. I mean, the people that we cast were very good at making things up.

We had pre-worked with them and found the kids that were just really good at just imagining something. And they were all quite young, you know, like 14, 15, and 16. and they were all quite young you know like 14 15 and 16 so they were into it adept enough that like to just pretend and those were the first movies you'd improvised like that the jerry and elephant exactly well i mean the other movies we had gone off the page even back in drugs for a cowboy you know we were sure like matt dylan would go off

the page and you know write things up or or use other texts, you know, instead of the ones that we had. There were other times that I had kind of gone off the page. Uh-huh. This is the first time that we sort of made that the actual scene, you know, like not really having something written down. And as a director, you're excited? Is it more exciting to do that because an artist has to see as the thing reveals itself in real time? Yes. It's very exciting.

Yeah. Because a lot of magic happens at that moment when things are being made up. I think also all three stories were told as if the characters and what they talked about were really not the important thing. They weren't really the story. They were just sort of noises that the characters made between each other. Yeah. They weren't going to tell you anything,

or the things that they said weren't going to inform you. Right. What was your experience with what you had shot? Was there a clear difference between identifiably authentic moments and things that just kind of didn't work? I think all three of those movies are pretty much one-take movies. They're one angle. So whatever's going on, it's not edited.

It's just sort of one big long shot. I can't remember. I think that we arranged it so there wouldn't really ever be an incorrect thing unless somebody just said stop stop stop i can't go and go on you know did that happen that didn't happen um they weren't unnerving they weren't hard they were fun yeah the um as dark as they were last days and yeah elephant and the kids the kids could do like whatever they wanted

uh-huh we wouldn't tell them what not to do or what to do they didn't they knew that we weren't going to like be disappointed

they felt free to do whatever they want yeah and so long as sort of the actions as long as they get there are getting where you're supposed to be getting.

Then, which in the case of Elephant, they weren't really supposed to be getting anywhere. They're just wandering down the halls, pretty much. Going to class. That's right. They're not trying to get anywhere. The shooters are trying to shoot people. Right.

But, um... Yeah. Last Days, I mean, he's... The character is trying to avoid people yeah so he's doing that i thought that was really good yeah he's he's an interesting actor that guy i mean i haven't seen him in a lot i mean in bully i remember he was great in bully and then you go from those three to milk which is like a biopic yes you had man. You got to, like, was that, what brought you to that project? That was an Oliver Stone project.

Originally that he decided after JFK that he was not going to do another assassination movie. And that he had developed it, actually, but with David Franzoni, there was like 12 screenplays. franzoni there was like 12 screenplays and there were a couple producers who who had had bought the book the mayor of castro street which is where the original um novel about the about his life about harvey's life yeah and um that was my origin i worked on a couple of screenplays on that one and it never came about and eventually a different party yeah lance black came up with a um a screenplay about the same guy and the same you know uh rising to um to politics in his life in san francisco so i said well i know this very well so let's go make it yeah and. And you got an amazing cast.

Yeah, we called Sean. How was it for you working with him? I had, during another incarnation of the script, I'd actually contacted him before and asked him to do this biopic about Harvey Milk. And he was interested, and then we sort we sort of like the project didn't happen and I lost contact and like years went by like I think 10 years went by and then again we were back into it and Sean had gotten older he was more of the year age of the guy of Harvey yeah so um called him back up and I said so uh what do you think about playing Harvey Milk? He lived in San Francisco at the time.

Sean did. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, I'm interested. I had never worked with him before. I'd worked with lots of different people. I think for him, we have a lot of things that we like that are similar. We know, like we have similar tastes in things like styles. So I think that without too much discussion, we seem to be in the same track of like what we were up to.

I didn't really encumber him with a lot of details of things I needed, you know, like the way he held the pen in his hand or anything like that, because he'll do it like, and he, and he likes to do it. And I found this with a lot of actors, you know, if you let them just do their thing, that's kind of their happy place as opposed to being micromanaging, you know? And so if they can do that, it gets them excited because then they're contributing, they're inventing things for the the camera so in his case um he uh was happy he said i was one of the only directors they didn't feel like punching in the face at the end of the movie which was a compliment yeah i said who was the other one he was like clint eastwood that's nice and brolin was great and it was did it did you feel any sort of responsibility in that movie in terms of i mean in every movie you feel a huge responsibility but to the gay community

yeah i mean it's huge i mean you're very responsible to sort of like try and get things as right as you can. I mean, it's elusive because I think the, you know, looking back on that movie, the one thing that we may have like left out a little bit was the joy, you know, the gaiety of like the life on Castro. Like we were sort of so into the politics and the moment-to-moment things that I think we kind of didn't capture the hilarity.

Now let's just arrive at this. Obviously there's more films to talk about, but I watched the new one, the one that you're out talking about, Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, and I didn't know anything about that guy. I didn't know far on foot. And I didn't know anything about that guy. And I didn't know that the book existed.

I didn't know anything about the movie. And as a sober guy, which I am, on top of a lot of other things, I thought it was the most effective movie about sobriety that I had seen in a long time. Maybe ever. Because I've never seen anybody address the amends process. And I think that that amends.

That one, number nine. Yeah. Sought to make amends with people, you know, if you could in person, you know, face to face. And that one scene with Jack and Black and Joaquin is. And you built the weight of it properly you know that he's working his way towards that yeah right and and just like how do you like how do you address the guy who you didn't even know yeah who was responsible for taking your your legs and arms away basically you know but but like i'm getting ahead of myself i just i thought the movie was was amazing and he was amazing and and uh you know what were what attracted you to this one

sort of like the harvey milk story it was something that although i knew john callahan as a portlander and he was he did yeah he was a very um visible uh person on the street in portland because of his wheelchair and because of his bright red hair and the speed with which he was going down the street usually and by the time i got to know him it was because of his cartoons like they were being printed in the weekly newspaper and um he had written a book i was aware that there was a book i hadn't looked at it or read it. But I kind of knew his story. I knew one of the cartoons sort of explained his drinking and his, you know, attempts at sobriety were in some of the cartoons.

So, you kind of got the picture in his cartoon. in his cartoon world. And he was a bad, like he was like a low-bottom alcoholic, like a real, you know, hardcore alcoholic that just for people listening, that, you know, he wasn't a cartoonist

when he lost his ability to walk and most of his ability to use his arms in a ridiculously dumb accident with another drunk guy. He was an artist. Yeah artist of sorts in high school. And he was 21 when he had his accident. Really? 21?

21. So he was quite young. And he was in Long Beach working. And the party that he went to was in Long Beach. Yeah. And the guy that he met, Dexter, was just the party guy in Long Beach. Yeah. And yeah.

Is that guy a real guy? It's based on a real guy. I don't know his real name, but our movie studio is very worried about, like, real names. I don't know. I don't think that he ever used any real names in his book. John Callahan. John Callahan. But we changed a lot of them anyway.

I thought it was a fascinating decision on your part, which I assume it was on your part, of how you handled the actual accident. It's almost fleeting, you know, what you see of it. You know, you see the car, you see them driving, but what actually changes the trajectory of this guy's life is like, what, five seconds, right? Yeah, it's very short. Yeah. He was well known in Portland. Yeah. And I had met him because of just being around town, like just socially.

And it was Robin Williams who had bought the book. He and his wife, who had a production company, had bought the John Callahan book, Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot. And they invited me to be the director and to develop a script with the writer. So I found some writer friends of mine, and we made script, uh, sent it to Sony and there just sort of wasn't any continuation. And then a few years later we wrote a second script in 2002 again, cause they got interested in it again. Robin did, I guess. Yeah. And, um, again, we wrote a script, sent it in and there was just sort of like, you know, silence. Yeah.

Time went by. So, which could have meant they just didn't like the script. Yeah. Or weren't sure. God forbid they tell you, right? And then you don't usually hear. But also it could be, you know, the studio because the, you know, the idea is you're taking Robin and you're putting him into this like very real story. And he's a quadriplegic.

He's a cartoonist. He's like going through a 12 step program and so i think by then there had been a number of of recovery movies made that didn't make money right so who knows what combination of that of those things so time just went by and um and it was just one of those projects that I guess was never going to get made. And then John died in 2010 and then Robin died after that. And shortly after Robin had died, I think 2014, somebody called from Sony saying that they had this property that you wrote and that we had written scripts to and i thought do i want to like revisit it so i started to work on a new script to see whether i kind of like could get what i wanted out of it because which was what

well the other two scripts were a little bit they're written for robin right to do like robin things you know and and we kind of strayed a little bit from the book which was a little darker a little more austere yeah and so i worked on something that um that i thought could work which was closer to what i thought was his book and i also called joaquin because i thought you know I should really have somebody in mind if I actually get involved so we did um on spec wrote wrote a screenplay Joaquin and I went into Sony and then they said no after all this so but they did allow us to take it somewhere else and then who did it Amazon Amazon shot shot this I I tell you man I can't imagine anyone else doing it but Joaquin in the form that it's in. You know, there's a certain, like, his commitment to that character, whatever he did.

Like, because there's a weird thing that really bad alcoholics have in their demeanor. You know, which is, like, the bottom line is they need to drink, you know, now. Why am I not drinking? And, you know, he was able to sort of get that. It's a corruption of the soul in a way, you know, and you can see it in their disposition. And he was able to do that somehow. Wow. You know, like that scene where, you know, he's, you know, after the accident and he still can't stop drinking and he's in his wheelchair and he's knocking that half gallon of wine back in the park.

Yeah. And those dudes come up to basically take and he just gives them money to get their own. Like get away. Get away. Go get your own bottle. I need all of this. Yeah. And I mean, it was just a stunning performance.

And I thought you just captured it all so well. And I mean, it was just a stunning performance. And I thought you just captured it all so well. And the story is like incredibly moving. How are you going to, you know, but it's really a recovery movie. Did you see it that way? Yeah. I mean, that was the thing that we didn't quite, we didn't go for in the earlier scripts because even though he did go into AA, we didn't see him going through sort of the whole process. Yeah.

The first script was sort of written in 12 chapters, but they weren't specifically about steps. Right. And I thought that I wanted to actually address as much as we could the steps, because we skip over a number of steps. Right. But it feels like you're kind of marching through the steps and um that was the kind of thing that i was trying to bring about in this new draft yeah i i've never seen it before but you know a is weird about that and historically about you know uh being represented but but i i've grown as somebody who's in recovery to just like look look, it helps people, period. I'm sorry if you're upset about the tradition, but we're not representing AA here. We're representing a guy's story, right?

Yeah. I mean, it's intertwined. So, I mean, there were things about AA that I think were important for the characters to be paying attention to and to be wrapped up by. And Donnie, his character had to be sort of the authority. Jonah? Jonah's character. That was an interesting character because I don't know how much of that was in the book or what

because it was unorthodox. I mean, the guy who sponsors a lot of people is definitely not unorthodox, but the sort of meetings that weren't essentially AA meetings that were his house yeah uh which were these were things that john wrote about he like yeah they might have meetings yeah he may have like made that up there were certain things that it seemed like john did play with the reality of things um well they definitely have private meetings with people and it would make sense. It's not that unusual,

but it wasn't really an AA meeting. It was just sort of a group therapy trip, right? A little bit. Yeah. But yeah, definitely Joaquin, one of the main things that he does is he gets right into the middle of his emotions concerning each scene.

Oh, yeah? Which is great for for us for the director and for the how do you mean well he's sort of in the middle like when he's in the scene he's just really in there so you can't really go wrong or he can't and he makes it that way fortunately and he's trying to do that i I'm assuming. That's just his process? That's his process. Yeah. Just to get to that point. And what was different from the Joaquin that you knew?

He would never say that. Right. What was different, did you notice, from working with him when he was a kid and working with him now? The same.

Really the same. Really? Yeah. I mean, he was way more experienced doing Don't Worry than to die for. Sure.

To die for, he hadn't acted in a while. He had been in things when he was younger, like 14. Yeah. He was in Parenthood. Right. And he had been in Space Camp, which he remembers fondly. But he really immersed himself. I think it's just his natural way to do it um and um he just

becomes the character i think he he it's not like i um maybe the method right but it's his own version of it right he's he's really like moving like character. Yeah. And when you say cut, he's not still in character, but somehow he gets close enough to it that he can pop in and out. Wow. Yeah, it was great, and I hope it does well for you. I hope so, too. Yeah, and it was great talking to you. Oh, thanks.

Thanks, Mark. Thanks, man. That was a lot of stuff I didn't know about him. Why would I? Yeah, man, that was the first time I talked to him. How could I have known? So, all right. So do we play guitar?

Do we? I'll do it. I'll do a little. I like it. I like the way this sounds. I plugged the thing into a new hole and I haven't changed the strings yet and it keeps getting filthier. plugged the thing into a new hole and I haven't changed the strings yet and it keeps getting Boomer lives! Yeah.

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