WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 992 - Yorgos Lanthimos

Episode Date: February 7, 2019

Yorgos Lanthimos makes films that pose a lot of questions and Marc wants answers. But it turns out the question Yorgos finds the least interesting is “Why?” Perhaps his disinterest in simple answers stems from the fact that he was on his own at the age of seventeen, or maybe from his time spent directing hundreds of Greek television commercials, or maybe just from watching movies and being struck by broken conventions. Yorgos talks with Marc about all of his films, from The Favourite to The Lobster to Dogtooth, and his satisfaction that there are no easy answers. This episode is sponsored by Stamps.com and Carnival Cruise Line. 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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If your existing business insurance policy is renewing on autopilot each year without checking out Zensurance, you're probably spending more than you need. That's why you need to switch to low-cost coverage from Zensurance before your policy renews this year. Zensurance does all the heavy lifting to find a policy, covering only what you need. And policies start at only $19 per month. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance and fill out a quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. Lock the gates! soon go to zensurance and fill out a quote zensurance mind your business all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast how's it going

buddies what the fucking ears what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast how's it going yorgos lanthimos the director of the favorite is on the show today i don't know if you've seen his other movies but i've watched all of them yeah i've watched all of them alps dog tooth the killing of the sacred deer the lobster this one the favorite i think that's almost all of them there were some other ones some short films i didn't watch but uh go sink your brain into that stuff uh-huh yeah go sink your teeth your brain teeth into dog tooth. See what that does to your head. Try that. Anyway, I had some questions. And it never turns out the way I think it's going to turn out. But anyways, why am I saying that?

That's twice with the anyways. He's here. But first, let's walk through this experience. Look, I'm not a diva. I'm not a prima donna. I'm not a higha I'm not a prima donna I'm not a high maintenance dude on set when I act but uh the other day I'm going out into the night to shoot glow by night I mean I got up at five in the morning for a 6 15 call I generally bring a little travel bag with what I need in it to my trailer so I can function during the day. I need dental floss. I need toothbrush. I need toothpaste. I need mouthwash.

I'm just, I don't know. I've gotten weird with that. I just, after lunch, you know, when I get there, I just try to, you know, take care of stuff. You know, you prepare. I don't know what you do, but you got a little kit you bring. You got some things that make you feel at home when you're not at home. Some rituals, some things you need to do in order to keep your brain kind of grounded. And obviously one of those things that's in that bag is my nicotine lozenges. So now that we're in the throes of addiction to these fucking things, I need to get off and I'm hitting the wall again. How many times, folks, for you people that have been with me a long time, how many times is this? So it's 6.15 in the morning and I'm driving and I'm almost to set.

And I realize I don't got my bag. I don't got my stuff. I don't got my goods. I don't got my go juice. I don't got my goods. I don't got my go juice. I don't got my drug. And that wave of like, oh, fuck. Now, how am I going to function? I know what's going to happen to me in about two hours, maybe three hours.

I'm going to become an asshole. I'm going to become an irritable fuck. I'm going to become undealable. And this is a long shoot day. Now, look, we're not talking about meth we're not talking about coke we're not talking about dope not even talking about weed you know there's no real challenge to getting nicotine lozenges once the fucking walgreens opens but in that moment of panic i was just like my brain just started spinning. I got to deal with this now.

And I got out of my car. It's still dark out. I went up to the AD and I said, look, man, I didn't, I forgot my nicotine and I'm going to be, I'm going to be an asshole. When the clock hits about seven 30, I'm going to turn into a dick. So we got to get on this. She's like, no problem. And I problem and i'm like really i never ask people for much you know i'm not like you know i don't have a rider that's complicated you know i usually it's like uh veggies and some hummus and a thing of almonds backstage so i don't never i never really i don't want ever i don't like being a a problem to people and i'm like well what do we do she goes off transpo go get them transpo

the transportation guys they got their their ears to the ground they've got their foot on the pedal these are dudes teamsters and i'm like okay well and i go to my trailer and i look up walgreens there's one that opens very close by at 6 30 i'm like this is gonna be i'm gonna nail this thing man and like i i got a ride to set. The transport guy says, Ron, we're sending someone over the walk-ins. I'm like, dude, you don't even know. He's like, I do know. And I'm like, you know, I'm not really this guy.

I'm like, don't worry about it. I appreciate it. So I need that shit. And he's like, yeah, I know. I know what it's like to need that shit. And I'm like, great. And I just got that feeling that like i'm like you know i'm not i'm not high maintenance but i got that feeling it's like he said no you're not and i'm like wow

what have you what are the what are the transportation guy stories what have they had to deal with what have had what have they had to drive into the night to get you know to accommodate some more demanding celebrities yeah there's dark wisdom there i didn't really put it together and really realize because i'm in my own world but you know before we even started shooting i had a box of nicotine i had a bottle of mouthwash i had a fucking toothbrush and that was all i needed that's my diva kit nicotine lozenges some blue listerine a toothbrush and some floss picks huh i'm i am fucking out of control out of fucking control yorgos lanthimos greek fella great director has a vision it's daunting here's the here's the deal when i knew i was going to interview him i

was excited that he had a relatively small filmography like a handful of movies right there was a couple that were i don't know there was a couple of short film and another thing he co-directed but it seems like it really started with dog tooth and then and then there was the next film was called alps, and then The Lobster, and then The Killing of the Sacred Deer, and then The Favorite. He's a relatively young fella. When I had seen The Favorite, and after I'd seen The Lobster, I always assumed these guys who do movies that are challenging and disturbing and cryptic.

Is that the word I want to use? and disturbing and cryptic is that is that the word i want to use the surreal absurd but uh but aggressive that they possess dark wisdom if you listen to my paul thomas anderson i couldn't have been more surprised i thought that guy was going to be a dark wizard it turns out he's a goofball from the valley whose dad was a a goofball tv personality in ohio i think if i remember correctly best friends with tim conway so i always i still assume that like i'm gonna get to the bottom of what the fuck these movies mean because i had that experience i i'm like i say i watched dog tooth and i watched it and in 15 minutes in i'm like what's happening an hour in i'm like holy fuck what is going on this is disturbing it was hitting me i was getting punched around my brain was having uh an experience that was uh you know fucking with it uh but i couldn't put

it together really i mean and i i seek meaning you know i when when something is hard to understand that means see every time i watch a film that I don't understand or that seems to be layered, I never blame the film when I don't understand. I never dismiss it. I never say like, well, that was fucked up. Who needs that? Or fuck that movie. Or, you know, that was terrible. No, my first reaction is like, I'm a fucking idiot.

Why am I not smart enough for this how come i can't contextualize this i fucking studied film and i don't know what's going on and i lose sense with with art i forget what art is supposed to do and i'm i'm dating a painter and i and i get that but i never heard it put more succinctly. It was interesting because this all just happened. I like the movies. I liked Alps. I like Dogtooth.

I like them. Dogtooth is violently absurd. It's violent absurdism. Yeah, Alps is a, you guys know the lobster. Killing a sacred deer, heavy man. But what you realize with Yorgos is thatps is a, you guys know the lobster, killing a sacred deer, heavy man. But what you realize with Yorgos is that there is a vision that he does everything very intentionally. And if you watch the favorite, it's meticulous in how it's directed and how it's set. And you can see that he gets exactly what he wants out of his framing and out of the way he shoots.

And he's got a vision that he holds throughout all the movies so he means it and he's great at it and he honors his vision i saw that so i think i felt like he needed to answer for something you know and i've had this experience throughout my life when i was younger with films like i would watch you know some of the great surrealists like primarily boone well you know i remember seeing when shannon delu or large door or even tristana which was a later one that had a story but i was still like what the fuck is happening you know what am i missing something i'm studying this stuff and even with the teacher explaining it i'm like why am i not getting it red desert by antonioni it's like what what about okay i get it's stunning to look at but what am i what what's happened what what am i not getting

rules of the game grand illusion the renoir movies i'm like it's french is that where i'm it's dropping off on me what you know what dryers joan of arc i mean what how long are we going to look at this this is heavy man this woman is in the it's heavy but what's happening felini even the easy ones juliet of the spirits i'm like i'm missing something there's a layer here but but like what it is there are intentions you're not gonna you know as you'll see you may not get them from the person that makes it their intentions are honoring their vision right even if it's like i don't know what this means but the image i want the image i see this i want other people to see it it doesn't who cares if it's tethered to a story and the thing that kind of blew my mind it and it wasn't a theatrical performance, but I went to an event. All right, I'll get fancy with you.

I'll drop some names. I went to a sort of a toast, a reception for the Steppenwolf Theater that was hosted by William Friedkin, Bill Friedkin and his wife, Sherry Lansing. William Friedkin, the director of Sorcerer, French Connection Exorcist and two of Tracy Letts's movies but it was honoring Steppenwolf and Letts Tracy Letts who's who's my my buddy right now I don't mean that it's conditional I mean we seem to be becoming friends so I was invited to this thing and the Steppenwolf people were there it was about networking here in LA they're going to do several plays at the Mark Taper. As I told you before, Tracy's play Linda Vista is now at the Mark Taper.

It's great. I recommend it again. The cast was there. Laurie Metcalf was there. Some of the original members of Steppenwolf were there, and new members, the artistic director. But they want to have a presence in L.A. But this is all besides the movie.

This is just me telling you that i was at a fancy event but bill friedkin started talking about uh you know what theater does and also and his wife sherry lansing about when you go see a play it changes your life you you leave a changed person you you're talking about it you're thinking about things differently. You're seeing something differently for the first time. The play itself has an effect. And that's what art should do that. It should change your life.

And you can't explain that all the time. I mean, you can see narrative films and you remember bits and pieces, but sometimes shit goes deeper. And it's provocative in a way that you may not understand but you do feel changed and that was sort of a good uh a good thing for me to hear because sometimes i don't always know i i know i have said that you know a painting should should punch you in the brain and your brain should stay punched and that's a similar thing but even you when i talked to your ghost which wasn't that long ago, I was still looking for answers. But I kind of knew that it doesn't matter if the answers are there. You're going to have the experience you're going to have with these movies. Whether you think you understand it or not, it's going to stay with you. It might have impact you might not even understand on a level that might not even be apparent or become apparent to you but you feel it so i'm a changed man i don't need the answers anymore but i try to get them i try to get them so now your ghost the favorite is the movie that is nominated for 10 academy awards including best

director for my guest and I was looking for answers. And what ended up happening is we had a nice conversation. And I realized that answers aren't necessarily important, but conversation is. This is me talking to Yorgos Lanthimos. Be honest. When was the last time you thought about your current business insurance policy? If your existing business insurance policy is renewing on autopilot each year without checking out Zensurance, you're probably spending more than you need.

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18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. so how often do you come here i've been lately i've been coming a lot uh because of the promotion of films and all that yeah you like it i like it i i started liking it yeah when i first came here i was like what is this place i mean where where's where are the old buildings where when was this built what oh really that's your first reaction it's architecture issues yeah architecture issues yeah where's the center of this town yeah where's the center where which is a neighborhood which is residential right what's going on i mean i couldn't just figure it out and then i started to like it i'd like i'd like the chaos and i people take you places they hear yeah you don't know neighborhoods but it's all of a sudden like this is the office of so-and-so exactly yeah

no but uh yeah no i i really started liking it you know and when you know some people and you get to proper places and you see you know then you realize different things and i i quite you know some people and you get to proper places and you see you know then you realize different things and i i quite you know yeah i'm i've warmed yeah and now you're like uh you're you're somewhat celebrated i would imagine this is like i imagine you're here for the one year for the globes yeah i'm here for the globes and uh whatever is around it but so you're really going through it i mean i know that you've gotten some fanfare but but there's something about Hollywood fanfare. It's a little different, isn't it? It is kind of different.

It's like you actually made it. People know who you are. You're not just a guy with the foreign film nomination. Exactly. Yeah. But it's like that everywhere. I mean, like in France, you know, people are like about French films. Right.

And in Europe, it's about Cannes and Venice. Yeah. about French films. Right. And in Europe, it's about Cannes and Venice. Yeah. So it's all these little worlds that have their own rules, and you have different value in different places. I'm not like I'm a not-huge foreign film guy. I don't keep up as much as I should. I can't keep up with anything, really.

And I'd seen The Lobster a couple years ago, and then I watched The Favorite in a theater, which was good. I'm glad I saw it in a theater and not the screener. And then I went back and I watched Dogtooth, and then I watched Alps. Oh, wow. So I've seen all of them. And I got to be honest, it took me about four days to get through dog tooth. I had to take a couple of breaks. But yeah, because like, you know, and I don't know if it's a European sensibility or Greek sensibility or just your sensibility.

I've grown to believe that it's your sensibility. Yeah. But, you know, I have to approach the movies a little differently because there's so many things I don't understand. Yeah. And then layered on top of that, just your particular vision is somewhat difficult to understand outside of it being Greek. Yeah. Like the first link they sent me for Dogtooth didn't have subtitles. And I'm like, this is not going to work.

I'm not going to be able to do this. Translate it. Yeah. But so we're, like, tell me, I've never really talked to anybody from Greece, and I don't know much about it. So how did you come up over there? What was your childhood like in terms of, like, what did your folks do? Like, what is greece like yeah well that's a big one sure like but for you for no for me i my i i had a my parents

my father was a relatively known basketball player really and you know we're good in basketball in greece i don't see i don't how would i know that i mean well you should maybe you know we're good in basketball in Greece? I don't see. Did you know that? How would I know that? Well, maybe you know because we beat even the U.S. at some Olympics. You know, we're like that good at some point. Well, that's interesting because the Olympics, I think, when you're in Europe, I guess it's a pretty big deal for everybody. But I mean, I think when you live in a smaller country, America is so fucking big that you can just sort of like you know you you know texas is its own country that's true but i think with like greece like you know you know the national basketball team i don't know the national basketball team yeah so he was a basketball player so he was yeah and uh of course that was like back in the 70s so it wasn't so uh you know

professional yeah it wasn't so uh celebrated so he was, but he was well known. Was he tall? He was as tall as I, a little bit taller than I am. Not with today's standards. Right. Different generation. Right. He was like 192 centimeters.

So I'm metric also. You have to translate that as well. See, again. We have a lot of cultural differences. We'll figure it out. See, as soon as you say centimeters, I'm like, he You have to translate that as well. See, again, we have a lot of cultural differences. We'll figure it out. See, as soon as you say centimeters, I'm like, he's a very short man. He must be just as tall as this glass, I would imagine. No, he's like six feet, like whatever.

Yeah. But he's a pro ball player. That was your childhood? You grew up with a pro basketball player or he is retired by the time you remember? Well, actually, they were separated with my mother since i was very young so i i just got to see him now and then oh okay and i uh yeah so i grew up with my mother yeah um but she died she died when i was 17 oh my god um no no brothers or sisters you're it so i'm it and your mom passed away when you're 17. Yeah. So I basically, from then on, I just had to figure it out on my own.

Huh. And when did you start getting interested in, what did you start with, theater? No, I always wanted to do film. Yeah. But I couldn't really admit that in Greece, because because uh you don't know much about greek cinema i guess and that's right because there's not a lot of it and there hasn't been a lot of it i mean the last few years there's more younger people that are making films there uh but it wasn't like a proper it was never a proper industry yeah there was no structure. There was no proper education.

So for a young boy in Greece to go like, I'm going to be making films, people would look at you like you're crazy. Right. Well, what did you study early on? So I got into the university to study marketing and financing, which I never want to have anything to do with. So I dropped out of that i did play a little bit basketball myself until i was 17 18 were you good at it was it genetic did it i was okay i think one of the reasons probably that i didn't you know uh went through with it is that i i felt that i'd never be as good as my father kind of thing.

Was your father known nationally? I mean, was he like, do people come up to you? Yeah. Yeah. When I was young, like it was like, are you related to, you know, Adonis, which is my father's name. So I was like, yeah, yeah, he's my father. Now it's the other way around. Is he around still? He's around.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. You get along with him? I see him every now and then i mean we never had a very close relationship yeah uh but i would see him over the years every now and then yeah did like when like even after your mother passed away you didn't sort of no actually uh no that was um i guess one of the, you know, we didn't see each other so much that he didn't want to have the responsibility of. Oh, yeah.

Of you. Yeah. Have me. Yeah, yeah. I don't want to take this kid now. 17. Exactly. It's too late.

No, but that was, you know, it was fine and, you know, it enabled me to do things that I don't know if I would have done if I was, you know, brought up in a different way. And so I, you know, like I said, I dropped out from marketing university and I went to this, the only private little private film school that we have. Yeah, what's that called? It's called Stavrakos. It's someone's name. No equipment. Teachers haven't done many films for quite a few years. But I got to meet people there that were also interested in making films.

But the goal was, the idea was that I was going to study film in order to start making commercials because that seemed like a proper job. Practical. Yeah. Like I would, there is such a thing and people do it. And there was quite a boom in the 90s and 2000 in Greece. So that felt like a job. I never thought that I was actually going to be making films.

But when you were a kid, did you gravitate towards films? I mean, was it something that you were interested in early on? What created the idea, the notion? Yeah, it was. But as I said, it was never tangible that we would actually make films properly. We would do it for fun, you know, with friends. Yeah. You know, silly things. And, yeah, then it was like, why don't I do something which is related to it, that I'll get the education around it, and who knows,

maybe one day I'll make a film, but for the time being, I'll get the technical knowledge in order to do commercials or tv or whatever what did your mom do she was an employee in a store that sold up appliances you know electric appliances uh-huh and so no she wasn't a creative driven person no you didn't really grow up with it you just no really it's just um it just kind of came out of nowhere yeah i just decided so when did you start how did you start to sort of educate yourself you know in terms of like i i guess you say there was no real greek film industry but i mean you must have what were you primarily watching european films or american films all of it yeah it all came through and i started pretty

straightforward like you know i grew up with uh jaws and, you know, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Footloose and Flashdance. And, you know, that's. All the big ones. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. What more do you need? Exactly.

There's the four. You're all set. That's the education. You got your dancing. You got your scary. Exactly. You've got your swashbuckling yeah it's um and then you know i i also watched european films later on when i started studying film and i you know i got to know about filmmakers and uh watched a lot of films of

those well let's go through that because like because i you know i i studied film and you know i'm a relatively smart guy and uh you know i found i was talking about i was actually talking about watching your movie alps when i was doing comedy last night okay yeah but no because i want to hear that no because what i i said was like because i i go to the club late to do a spot and i'd been home. I had watched about half of it, and I said, you know, I had to come out. I was at home watching a movie I didn't understand earlier, and I had to take myself away from that. But the observation I made is when I can't quite grasp something, I never blame the art.

Like, I watch it, and I'm like, and I finish it, and i'm like and i finish it and i'm like i watched the whole thing i tried i'm not sure i got it and if i didn't it's i'm the asshole it was very generous but but you you the the thing about your films is that uh you everything's intentional this is not some sort of haphazard you know you make it you're making very specific choices you know from scene to scene in dialogue and you know i understand that there's absurdism at play but they're all loaded up and they all have an effect so it's not like you know he didn't know what he was doing he's just winging it you know you you sat there with a piece of paper and made decisions yeah and throughout the process you know in an editing room when when you're filming, yeah, you make decisions.

Well, who was the people, because, like, I just wonder, you know, not that I have a narrative craving necessarily, you know, but, like, in order to sort of pay attention and to have the effect of your movies, like I noticed today, like, I finished watching The Alps, and, like, I became very hyper-aware of everything I was doing when I wasn't watching the movie. Like the tone of the film somehow infused my life, you know, like everything became like the glass, is it a glass? You know, like, but, but where does that start for you? I mean, what was the, like when you did commercials, what, what, what were the first moments where you started to realize the the power of creating or evoking it's not so much confusion but but a tone you know what i mean i guess it happens you know first of all by watching films and uh you know realizing all the different effects

that they can have well who are your guys what was the first kind of mind-blowing moment when you were watching a film and you're like, oh, this is... I guess, you know, Tarkovsky was one of the, you know, first filmmakers that I got to learn through film school that I didn't know anything about. So that was in a film history class? Yeah, so we learned about it and then there's... There's some nice, nice you know during summer in

greece there's a lot of open-air cinemas i mean they're not as many anymore yeah um but they're beautiful open-air cinemas in various neighborhoods where you can you know have a little table and you eat something yeah you're outside surrounded by apartment buildings. Yeah. And you watch films. So they would do like retrospectives. So I would watch his films and then John Cassavetes was. What was it about Tarkovsky specifically that you found sort of engaging? Well, it was just for the first time seeing like a different, it was like a different, completely different medium, uh, you know,

discovering like something new, a vision, like how, you know, how can images affect you in a different way? Right. It doesn't have to be, uh,

a fast narrative and, you know, how poetic it can be and how you can, you know, lose yourself in it. Right. Um, engage,

but with your own personality, there's a lot of openness to it. You can lose yourself in it and engage. But with your own personality, there's a lot of openness to it. Like you can bring your own stuff into it and see things and understand things maybe in a different way to how the person next to you is experiencing the same thing at the same time. Right. Everything's not explained. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the use of sound and image, it was very different for me. And then watching right after that

a John Cassavetes film, which is very different stylistically. For me, in a weird way, it has a very similar effect, but through a different route. Yeah, it's more, it's a human-driven space. Yeah. You know, I mean, the few Tarkovsky movies I've seen, you know, it's a lot of cinematic space. But with Cassavetes, there's something heightened, but it's very engaged with people.

Yeah. But the fact that it's so heightened also takes it to a different level. And although it feels kind of more realistic, it kind of transcends that. And then you enter a different space again. Yeah. And there's also that feeling like these people are talking and the context seems familiar to me, but I don't know what the fuck is happening. What's going on with these people? Yeah.

I think that's a good feeling, I guess. No, again, I enjoy watching films like that. I guess what I'm trying to do is create films like the ones that I'd like to see. Because you watch movies constantly? I watch a lot of movies. I'm not like an obsessed film buff or anything. But I do. I kind of, I tend to watch the same films over and over again.

Like which ones? I feel safe. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. They're familiar. They're like friends. Yeah. over and over again like i feel safe yeah yeah oh yeah they're familiar they're like friends uh yeah so and uh yeah i'd rather watch something that i really like then what's it like which ones have you watched them over and over like every time it's like like sometimes i'll just

be watching tv or cable and one will come on i'm like i'm i'm in i don't it doesn't even matter where it starts i just watched casino again the other day i don't even know why because i have seen that like quite a few times. Isn't that great? Yeah, it's a great film. Can you watch how, like I found that as I get older, I'm not able to watch the head in the vice scene as much as I used to be able to watch it. You're more sensitive?

A little bit. Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. I was just sort of like, I don't know if I need this tonight. I know what's gonna happen here they were the weird thing with me is like um how much affected i can get by those kind of things being so much you know on the inside and seeing how these things are created even though you know how it works yeah you know how it works the the difficult thing is for me to be affected by these things and that's when i know that a film really

grabbed me because i forget about the way it's made yeah you're not sitting there going like oh i know how they do yeah i understand that shot i understand exactly when when you when you're able to do that and be someone that is actually making film then that's like very strong right yeah oh yeah so what are some other movies you watch on repeat um like i watch some Miklos Jankos films every time before. It's a Hungarian filmmaker. Like The Red and the White. Oh, yeah.

I haven't seen those. And The Roundup. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are great. They're pretty amazing. It's more about being inspired by people who made things, you know, that kind of changed cinema in a way. Yeah. They're just going like, look at, you know, look what they did.

Sure. And like, go on. Yeah, yeah. Do something. Right, right. You know, like, try. It inspires you to push the envelope. Yeah.

Or Cassavetes. I see husbands all the time. Yeah. Yeah. I love that role. Or Woman Under the Influence. That movie's crazy. I've watched that a few times. And Gina Rowlands is like, whoa.

She's the best. Yeah, she's amazing. People say that about a lot of things. She really is. But she's kind of the best. She's singular. That's for sure. And you tend to use actors more than once too you seem to lock into people but what was the first um what was the what commercials did you do oh i've done hundreds of hundreds

of greek commercials of g commercials. I started really low. I was doing... Like lawyers? No, no, even worse. Wait. Like I started, which I was very lucky. I started really young. I started while I was in the second year film school. So like I was 20 years old or something.

And I started doing commercials really cheap. And during that time, there was a lot of gifts with newspapers. They would gift a coffee maker with a newspaper. So you would buy the newspaper. With the subscription, you get a coffee maker. Yeah, you get a coffee maker. So I would do the commercial for the coffee maker and the newspaper. So things like that. I started with things like that. And then I maker and the newspaper. Yeah. So things like that.

I started with things like that. And then, you know, I moved up the ladder. And there was a lot of commercials for banks and, you know, mobile phone companies and networks. Yeah. But there was a time, like I said, late 90s to 2000, up to 2009, where the crisis hit Greece. Yeah. It was insane. I would do like two, three commercials a week.

There was a lot of work. I learned a lot, you know, technically speaking. I made friends that we ended up making films together. Yeah. And they kind of enabled me to because as i said there was no structure there's no financing in greece to make films they they kind of enabled me to go you know us five we can you know get the camera and a couple of actors and go and make a film yeah that's how i made my first film kineta which you probably haven't seen. It's a feature film, yeah. And, you know, we were very technically proficient.

You and your crew? Yeah, we didn't need much. We didn't need lights or makeup or anything. You were shooting on video mostly? No, film. Always film? Yeah. Well, I did a couple of films digitally,

but I didn't enjoy the experience. Digital, yeah. So I went back to film. And do you have experience with theater? I've made like three or four plays in Greece. That you've written? No, no. Directed? Directed. And that was a good experience for me in order to learn how to work with actors. But did you have any specific training in that?

No, it kind of happened. Did you read a book? I read a play. The first time it was they offered me to do a play. There was a very interesting kind of experiment. It wasn't experimental theater, really. It was just more avant-garde theater in Athens. And the director of the theater offered me to do a play

and I went, I read the play. It was by a Greek writer. And I liked it and I went like, why not? And I tried it and I enjoyed the experience of working with the actors. And I learned a lot. Yeah. And the great thing about theater in Greece is that you have a lot of time. You can have like two, three months for rehearsals before you stage the play, which is not common from what I learned afterwards.

So that, I learned a lot about working with actors. And working with, like, I imagine lighting people and technicians. Yeah, yeah. But that, I already knew a lot about that from commercials to, you know, years of doing that. And then I kind of did a play every you know two three years uh but i in the end i was never really taken by the the final result of theater i don't i don't really like theater as much no um but i i enjoyed the process what is it that that the the the temporary nature of it

or it's very ephemeral yeah you you can't really have a lot of control over it yeah yeah it changes every night i guess that's the interest the interesting part for the actors or for someone who sees it more than once but you feel kind of helpless you're you know Whenever I went to see the performance, I was in a corner going, like, what are you doing? That's not what we, that's not how it's supposed to happen. Couldn't manage it. Couldn't control it. So, yeah, I kind of gave up on that, and I focused more on films.

Because it makes sense. Like, you know, some people, that's the part they love about theater. Yeah, I do understand. And other people, it's like, what is happening, these damn actors? So the first film, I wish I'd seen that one. So Dogtooth was the second one.

Dogtooth was the second film, but everybody thinks it's the first one because the first one was very obscure, was rarely shown. Do you have a copy of it i do have a copy i'll give it to you and i don't think you're gonna i i love that bit that you do i don't have enough time i don't know how much time i don't know how much time left so i don't think it's a film that you're gonna spend time watching i'll take the time you know like, like, I really do. I do take the time. But sometimes I don't, I'm not exactly sure.

Like, I think that the idea I was talking about last night is I get intimidated by things where I think, which you didn't write right which is big difference you know to to try to find the the key to to to what you're doing like it's what's really interesting is when you go like on imdb and they they sort of give you the the line of what the movie is oh yeah yeah and it's just sort of like it's fucking hilarious you know like you look at the one for dog tooth it's like over protective parents don't let their, you know, like there's one line to describe that movie. Or with Alps, it's like a group of people create a business to help people grieve by posing as,

and that's all you got. And I'm like, that is not enough. But what was the first movie about? I guess that's a hard question, isn't it? It kind of is. I mean, physically speaking, it was about three people living in a resort town outside of Athens that was dying. And it was portraits of these people. And they were kind of reenacting crimes that happened in the area.

Yeah. There was a cop and a maid in a hotel and a photographer that were enacting crimes. And it's a portrait of these three people. But also the place is quite important as well. It's an old resort town outside Athens where they built an oil refinery next to it. Yeah.

So it kind of started dying. You know, people had summer, summer houses and hotels, and they kind of... They had no control over the oil factory, the refinery. So it kind of became a little bit deserted, all those hotels and those houses. And that became fascinating to you? It became fascinating.

I mean, I first, you know, wrote the story, and I was imagining those people, and then I was looking for a place to do it. And I drove by this place and I saw this hotel that was a hotel from the 70s and it seemed kind of empty on the beach. And I went in with my assistant director at the time. We were going around looking for places. And we walk into an empty hotel and we're trying to find someone and there was no one there it was open though it was open yeah it was

open um but there was no one there no one at the reception we started walking around the restaurant no one there yeah uh and at some point we see a guy and go like oh hi we, hi, we're looking for locations. We want to make a film. And we asked him, so when do you open and which are the busiest times for you? And he goes like, we're open and we're full. And we go like, okay, maybe he didn't understand. No, no, I mean like when is the hotel full and you have a lot of bookings and people going around?

He says, right now, we're completely full. There's no one there. And then we go, like, and there was no one there. And then we just thought that he was crazy. But then after a lot of time, he explained to us that all the workers that work in the oil refinery, that a lot of them are brought from Thailand, I think, actually live there. So they use this old resort hotel with a swimming pool that was empty and dirty. Just to house these-

Just to house workers from Thailand, I think. And so were you looking actually so you could figure out when you could shoot there? Yeah, so it was like, it's an empty hotel. Why can't we shoot here? So yeah, so we incorporated that in the film visually at some point. The Thai people? Yeah, the Thai, the workers there

that come back from work with vans and they just hang out there. Okay, well, i guess my question though with that is and i don't want you to misunderstand i like your movie that's okay no no i'm serious like i you know i find them fascinating and i was moved by them but like i have to like you know i get into the habit of watching straight narrative movies yeah you know and like you know i watched the gadar films the boom well films i you know I studied film history and I like those movies, but you watch them a different way. Yeah.

And you, but your expectations are still there. So when you have a brain that's always like looking for morsels of narrative that will somehow, you know, then you realize that part of what you're doing is undercutting that, you know, and everything becomes earned in a different way. Right. So like like just as an example when you talk about the conception of that first film what's the title of it again so you have this you have this scene where you have these three characters in this

deserted resort town reenacting crimes that happened in the area now that's something that that sort of reoccurs through at least two of your movies where you have people reenacting things for one reason or another. I mean, certainly in Dogtooth and definitely in the Alps. So what is the kernel of that idea? Why is that fascinating to you? That's an interesting question that I've never thought about. I don't know. I guess there's something about what draws us in all those spectacles in general, like theater and watching people reenact life in a certain way or moments of it or situations and how you can play around with that to expose more things and maybe even truer things about what goes on in those kind of interactions and events. Yeah. events by, you know, obsessing on a detail of something that happened maybe, or the way you do things or the way you say things. I don't know. I'm winging it right now. No, no. Because I haven't really, I don't really like to.

Talk about this. Not necessarily talk about it, but think about it too much and intellectualize it and analyze it. No, no, I get that. Because a lot of it is instinctive, you know, what we do. Sure, sure. But I think that it was my experience because, like, I just realized that, you know, you do it in The Lobster as well. I mean, there's, you know, there's improvise and sort of a process of complex complex sign language and then there's you know but but I

noticed that in all the movies that you have these emotional interactions and you realize that the dialogue is not matching the the the moment and and that is obviously intentional but what you do get is you realize how it kind of breaks down language itself in terms of like you know how important is it really and in even in our real life you know what you know what's really being said and it doesn't have anything to do with what's going on in this moment yeah i guess it depends in different situations sometimes it matters sometimes it doesn't yeah and in that movie so how was that received? In which one?

The first movie. The first was received as a very difficult, obscure. It wasn't released properly. It was only a few years released in the UK on DVD. But it's been, since the other films became a little bit known, it's been shown around. They showed it at Tate Modern at some point. Oh, yeah? So it has a new life.

That's interesting, that world, right? So that world, it's at the Tate Modern. That new museum, that is great. That space is great, isn't it? Do you walk in there and just sort of like, holy shit, I can't. Every time I go to London, that's one of the, and I don't go that often, but I always go there,

almost entirely for the building itself. Yeah. Isn't it? It's an incredible space. But that's sort of the world that you seem to be, that you might occupy a bit, is that your films will be shown at museums. There is a sort of art

to it that is not flash dance. There's a little bit of flash dance in it. Did you recognize in Dogtooth the flash dance reference? I don't know if I know that movie that well. Which part? There's a dance that she does

when she's completely dance that she does. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's completely ripped from Flash Dance. Oh, when she's dancing by herself in front of her family? Yeah. That's the choreography in totality. Well, let me ask you then, so without over-intellectualizing and expecting too much, I know it's hard to explain poetry or impulse, but you do commit to it. And I guess unlike theater, which your experience is that you don't have control

over it and someone misses their cue or does the line not in the way that you would rehearse, it's sort of upsetting or at least it's aggravating. But when you watch your films, which you spend a lot of time with in making them, do you get that satisfaction of resolution? What is the effect for you do you get that satisfaction of resolution do you do you know what is the effect for you once you've completed something no no well first of all after i've completed completed them i don't watch them anymore uh unless you know maybe 10 years later like for instance i did watch a little bit of my first film kineta when it was shown at the tape i just checked the print

yeah so i watched like 10 minutes of it uh-huh and i went like it's okay there's some good things in it it's you know it's not that bad as i remembered it yeah um you know mostly it's like you know this thing that you've tried to yeah you know, create and hide all the stitches and all that went wrong. And you're trying to fool people into believing that, you know, it's a perfect object that they, you know. Well, I guess my question is seeing how you answered that question before is that, you know, when you do a film where, you know where you're doing a three-act story, and you refine that script because you have a story to follow, I imagine a lot of the satisfaction or a lot of the challenges is,

does the story land? So in the way you answered that question before, it seems to me that you're taking risks and you're committing to situations and ideas that you don't really know exactly where they're coming from, but they are poetic and visually provocative enough for you to follow through with them. I guess my question is, when you finish something,

does some of that stuff, do you feel like you've resolved it? I mean, is the feeling one of resolution? Because you're not really, you're not thinking in terms of story necessarily. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's never a complete feeling. That's the thing. Right.

It's like I have made this thing. I had certain intentions. I started being confident when we wrote a screenplay, and I feel that's solid, and let's go and make it. Hopefully it's going to be amazing. And then on the way, things fall apart, and you have to deal with a lot of practicalities, and it becomes this other thing, and it's always like that.

And that's a nice thing about cinema, where you have a screenplay which is a blueprint and then you know you end up making something quite different because it's its own thing and it has a life of its own yeah so you have to accept that and i do yeah but within that there's all these other things you know that haven't worked well right right that you hopefully somehow disguise for other people that weren't with you during the experience. But what are they going to say to you? It's like, you know, I mean, this is something that no one can say to you

about any of the films that you wrote and directed. It's sort of like, you know, I don't think that story plot worked. But it's not about that. I mean, as you said before, it could be you entered in it through a different, you know, space or... So to hold that space is the job. Yeah, hold that space, you know, and to affect people, you know, in a certain way. And maybe if it doesn't hold together well, you don't affect people in whatever way it

is that you want to affect them. I get it. It's not about rigidly following certain rules about narrative or story. Yeah, yeah. It's a general feel about the film. A tone. If you manage that, you hope that people will buy into it. Yeah.

But I can't be so objective and have the distance to buy it myself. Sure. So it's always about doing the best that you could for each film according to what you had in mind and what you were trying to achieve. Yeah. And then just give it to people and then they have their own reaction. And then you just hope how I survive is like even during the editing process, I think of, you know, the new stuff and start writing and thinking of the new ideas, hoping that it's going to be better. Well, yeah. started writing and thinking of the new ideas hoping that it's going to be better well yeah and that's in that to me like okay so with the first film we you have the resort and you have

the crimes and you have the reenactions you know as a way to enter the the the people that you've chosen yeah so with dog tooth you know what was the first idea with that? Just in terms of like, all right, I'm going to sit down. I got this idea. Yeah. The idea was how much you can influence people's perception about the world through education and everyday life. Right. everyday life right the world that you present to someone it could be so extreme the idea that someone could have about the world if you limit them and yeah educate them in a certain way and how you know a family is you know the obvious first unit that can actually do something like this yeah um so i think it started from there

like yeah imagine if you have these children that never know the rest of the world exists yeah uh how you know what does that mean how you know and how do how do you do that and what does it mean and what kind of people you know come out of that environment yeah yeah yeah i so it's a it's a very close family movie yeah it is yeah it's so funny because the first time i ever heard about it uh was years ago i had uh do you know his name is adino stamatopoulos oh yeah yeah yeah you know his work i've i've uh i've read one of his screenplays. I've seen the series that he'd done. Orin?

Moral Oral? Moral Oral. I really loved that, yeah. I've spoken to him on the phone a couple of times. He loves you. Yeah, yeah, no, he's great. Yeah, yeah. And he lives a very interesting life.

But what did he say? Hold on. My eyes are terrible. Because he said, I don't blame my parents. They're people. They're computers. They just do things like we all do. Their idea of love was worry. Worry, worry, worry, worry. Shelter, shelter, worry, worry, worry. Where are you? What are you doing? They were Greek. In fact, a great movie everyone should see is called Dogtooth. It's a Greek movie. It's up for an Academy Award this year. But worry is a huge part of the Greek culture.

Is that a generalization? I understand. Being Greek, I understand what he means. There's a tight hold in, I don't know if it's Greek or Mediterranean, maybe. Family? Family and how, you know, kids end up maybe staying with their parents longer than usual. And there's that link, which is stronger. Oh, I see.

It could be, but, you know, like with all things. But it wasn't the way you grew up. No, it was exactly the opposite yeah because of circumstances it gave you a little more freedom in a way yeah that yeah that's true and uh yeah as i said in the beginning like i i don't know if you could easily make a decision like in greece i'm going to become a filmmaker having you know parent parents around you that you would actually say that and they wouldn't go like right let's lock him up and right and within within dog tooth like that's the idea that you know how how much control do people have over people's perceptions i have another guest on who actually made a movie

with very with the same plot line but it was a very kind of pithy you know cute movie that had a narrative structure was by the guy you know kyle mooney he's on snl he made a movie called bigsby bear oh yeah and bigsby bear is essentially that idea where this kid was kidnapped yeah and held hostage basically and his father was creating a t but like i watched both of them within a week of each other and i'm like it's interesting that very different approaches to a similar idea but within that world so you know you're able to explore you know uh you know sexuality power dynamics in you know over you know um you know violence you know strange fears the cat thing was hard for me i have cats it was difficult my girlfriend couldn't watch it but but you know

isn't it strange this thing about people and animals in films um yeah how they're affected more uh from violence on animals than violence on people well i think that a lot of people think that you know people have it coming that's true that animals are more innocent and uh yeah yeah yeah no i get that. I just watched a wild bunch again and it was like, oh my God, how many horses went down for that movie? Well, you didn't really kill a cat, did you? No, no, no. Of course not.

No, I'm just saying in fiction, how people are affected in fiction. No, no, absolutely. Because I think it must be the innocence thing. I remember watching this. Have you watched this film, Heli, by this Mexican filmmaker? No. Good. Amada Escalante.

It's really good, but it's really violent. It's about what goes on in Mexico, and there's people being, heads being chopped off, people hanging from bridges, and all that, but there's a scene

where a policeman picks up a little dog and breaks his neck, and that's when the cinema all went oh yeah it is interesting what do you make of it do you think it's the innocence thing i think you're yeah you're onto something there like the yeah so that movie like dog tooth i you know again like i i found it completely compelling and and a little bit disturbing. And you definitely honored the tone. And then you evolve into the Alps movie. It's fun for me to do this.

So what was the inspiration going into that film? What were you like, I got an idea, we're going to make a movie about it? Well, first of all, I work very closely with Efthymis Philippou that we write together. And he's a very good friend of mine. What's his name? Efthymis Filippou that we write together. And he's a very good friend of mine. What's his name? Efthymis Filippou. Okay. So we worked together very closely

and Dogtooth was the first film we wrote together. Yeah. And then after... How'd you find this guy? In order to have like some sort of simpatico, some sort of...

It would seem to me that it would be not that easy to find a guy who's like, we understand each other. No, he's very rare. But I found him in a commercials agency. He used to work, he was a writer for a commercials agency. And I had done some, I've directed some of the scripts

that he hadn't written. And I saw that he was a very specific mind, and we became friendly. And then I asked him if he wanted to write a screenplay with me, and that was Dogtooth. So it was the first time he'd ever written a film. And we spent a lot of time writing that and figuring out. When you deal with that type of, do you mind the word absurdism?

I don't mind. Anything absolute is quite limiting, but no, I don't. Well, when you're dealing with beats like that, where you're just sort of moving these actors through, it's obviously not random, but you're going scene for scene. Yeah. you're going scene for scene. Yeah. You know, when you're working with somebody else, what dictates whether you've landed or not,

like in any particular scene? Like even the scene where she does the flash dance after they all start dancing and then she keeps dancing and then she gets worn out. Do you look at each of those scenes as their own little arcs? Yes. Right. And actually, Doctor Who was a very very particular process yeah because we hadn't done it before together and uh as i said it was a themis's first time

writing a screenplay and we actually started by i had that the idea and i came to him with the idea. And then we just started writing scenes, not even a whole story. So we just started writing scenes to see if this thing kind of made sense and how we would approach it. And from writing like nine, ten scenes, we thought that there's something in there and this is working. We thought that there's something in there and this is working. And so let's sit down and write the whole story and see where that's going to go. But after that, I think we approached it in a more conventional way where we had the idea and then we kind of wrote down. For Alps? For Alps. Yeah.

We wrote down the story and the characters and then started writing scenes. And that was a discussion. So after Dogtooth, we started discussing what should we do next. We wanted to make more films. It's interesting because I just realized that that's sort of like the way that, again, part of that theme of people being not replaceable, but people playing parts like in Dogtooth, you know, you have this woman who is the security guard at the factory where the father works and he would take her home to have sex with his teenage son. And then, you know, that that somehow goes awry through a certain series of events and they just decide the older sister can do it. Yeah, he's safer. Keep it in decide the older sister can do it. Yeah. It's safer. Keep it in the house.

Yeah, keep it in there. There's no outside influence. You know, I think it's important to have this conversation with you because, you know, people are really, you know, digging and enjoying The Favorite, and that's something you directed, but you do have this filmography of these very specific types of movies that I think people should see and, you know, kind of get their mind blown. So going into the Alps, so now you're working differently. You're not just writing pieces. You've got, you decided, what was the original idea?

I think we're discussing about grief and Efthymis was saying something about someone making phone calls pretending to be someone that was dead for someone in order to- On purpose. On purpose. No, I mean not a prank call. No, not a prank call. Like someone would commission someone to do that for him so that he kind of kept the memory of that person or the presence of that person alive. And then I went like, you know, that it would be more interesting if that was actually there was a interaction and a physical contact. And how about having these people that were going to actually do that? And we just started creating this world. And also, I think at some point, a friend of ours found a letter in his house by a person who was looking to do some kind of work.

And in the letter, he wrote, I can do your shopping. I can come and have conversations with you. I can be your friend. I can come and have conversations with you. I can be your friend. We can go for walks. A companion. So that was also a kind of thing that pointed towards people that are maybe lonely or are going through something that they may need to, you know, commission a friendship to someone. So, you know, those kind of ideas morphed into, you know, this story about people that

have lost someone and how do you deal with it and would it be interesting if, you know, you hired people to pretend to be the people that you loved. Right. And that's the baseline of the movie. But very quickly, you realize, not unlike your other movies, that that's not really what this is about. But it seems that in talking to you, that the excitement of generating these ideas,

once you have this framework, which is a loose framework to see what these characters will do, that, you know, the excitement of just letting your mind and imagination go in how these people interact and what happens. And it doesn't seem like why is an important question at all. No, it's more about making an experiment and throwing all these people in this situation and see how they interact and what comes out of it

and making observations or exposing to people. And then, again, people, according to their own personalities and experiences and cultural backgrounds or whatever, will make out different things. They'll recognize different things in those situations. Right. And they might come up with why or what that means to them. Even if they can't identify that. Yeah, exactly.

It's a feeling. But it's very aggressive, much of it. And it's just like, I mean, do you get excited when you decide that she's going to go back to the dance hall

and aggressively dance with her father's friend and then eventually throw her on the floor and begin hitting her is that one a moment where you're writing that and you're like oh this is good yeah we got it and even more exciting the fact that it's her real mother in real life it is the lady there's just but the fucked up thing and the beautiful thing about that movie is that you

know it starts with this you know very oppressive gymnastic coach you know you're telling this gymnast who i guess the actress is your wife now yes yeah that she can't dance to a modern pop song she's not ready for it and if she brings it up again he's going to beat the shit out of her and then like throughout this entire insane you know grief ridden weird movie you bookend it with her, you know, being able to dance to a pop song and they hug. And it's like, for some reason, the ending is completely earned. It was very satisfying. It sounds great the way you describe it. It gets me excited. I want to make that movie. Yeah. I just want, I just want people to know

if they're sitting here listening, going like, well, that sounds interesting, a group of people that help people who are grieving. It's not about that. It's a group of people that very early on named themselves after mountains and have weird interactions that sometimes become violent and nonsensical. And it'll make you wonder about everything. And it'll make you wonder about everything. And then, like I said to you before, after exiting the movie in my own house, everything becomes very, you know, like I'm very aware of the life I'm living, which I think is a good thing.

Right? Yeah. All right, we're going to keep doing this. Now, Lobster, it seemed to me you were like, I'm going to make something accessible. I want to make a movie that everyone can enjoy yeah do you feel that that's exactly how we we approached it no but the difference is that it was um that film is quite important because it was the first english language film that i i made so after alps i basically decided to leave greece and go and live in london and start making english language films because

you know the way i made those films in the beginning in greece it was you know no financing just a bit amongst friends yeah people work for no money no pay or very little and we had to pay for it you know through making commercials and you know other people helped us as well but it was you know tiny small films you know if i wanted to progress and you know uh make other things and be able to make more choices about the stories i wanted to tell and and pay people properly and get paid as well and make this for a living. I had to start making English language films. It wasn't...

So it was accessible in a way. Yeah, so that was the part of it that said, I'm going to make English language films so they're more accessible in a way and I'll get a little bit of more financing in order to be able to make them and attract interesting actors and I tried you have interesting actors you always had good actors that woman is in there then

both of the Alps and the and the dog she's very good she's a big actress in Greece oh you know known I mean she's more of a alternative kind of act which is not like the well-known tv actress right right right again cinema is not very big right um she does theaters uh like devised theater and yeah because i can see that there are moments in the film where you know you really let them loose a little bit yeah well that's uh yeah of I mean, that's the best thing, if you let the actors loose. You make the right choice about the actors, and then you let them loose. So Lobster has a fairly straight setup.

If you're single and you don't get somebody, you go to this place, and then you've got a certain amount of time, and then if you don't get somebody, you become an animal of your choice. Exactly, yeah. The technology is not important. It's just a room where you go into. Exactly. And there are rumors about how it's done. But it's sort of a dystopian vision. Yeah.

But it is a full vision. You do have a story there that you're honoring, not unlike the other ones but maybe because it is in english that it seems a little more um accessible in the sense that like you are following a story yeah right yeah i i don't see it much different in terms of i don't find it necessarily more narrative than the other films. I guess not. I guess not. But I guess if you're familiar with, it is kind of a genre movie, though.

Yeah. Right? Well, it flirts with genres. Right. We need dystopian science fiction. Prison drama. A little bit. Prison drama.

But also just one of those ones where it's like, well, this is clearly maybe a future of some kind. Yeah, science fiction, prison drama. Yeah, yeah. And romantic comedy. Yeah, definitely romantic comedy. It's very cute. Yeah. And why, well, Rachel Weisz.

Weisz, yeah. She's a great actress, and Colin Farrell is in two of your movies. So, you know, you do make somewhat of a commitment to, to certainly him as an actor and driving two of your films. What are the qualities in him that, that make him, uh, compelling for you as, as a director and him as an actor? Well, I, I, I always liked Colin and, uh, uh, in bruise, I think is, is one of the great performances I've seen on film. And I thought he has a very special quality. He's charming and funny.

He's sympathetic no matter what he does. And you really shut him down in The Lobster. You got him pudgy and you got him yeah kind of a bit muted but he's still very charming he is yeah um and i uh and i i i met i met him i we we we spoke through skype the first time and uh when i'm looking for an actor and trying to decide i you know i try to watch a lot of stuff, not just necessarily the work, but also interviews or whatever I can find. So I can see how they are. I mean, it's not like it's how they are as real people, even in interviews.

But you get a different sense from when someone is acting. Yeah. So, yeah, I just thought he had an excellent sense of humor and, you know, there was, there's, there's all these qualities about him that I just felt were right. Yeah. And I think that movie also in terms of like, you know, maintaining my argument of accessibility is that, you know, through whatever surreal or, or, or seemingly absurd interactions almost all throughout that movie, they do speak to relationship. Yeah, I think one of the things is that, that relationships are a very big part of our life.

And that maybe speaks to more people than something else. Why do people belong together? Yeah. Why are we with each other? And, you know, it's about love and all these kind of things that are really a concern us a lot of the time. Yeah. And animals, too. Yeah, animals.

It was always nice out in the woods where you just see a llama or something walk by. There was a couple of exotic animals. Yeah, a camel. A camel. But now I'm just starting to realize that like the rabbits that he was killing for her to eat they were once people probably maybe who knows or do rabbits get a pass there's a lot of rabbits in uh in the new movie too yeah i never thought of that you didn't no yeah i noticed that when i was watching the lobster again i watched it a second

time and uh i was like you got something for rabbits, this guy. Did you add the rabbits to the favorite? Yeah, I mean, we, yeah, we were like looking for something

to represent, you know, the children, but it wasn't grim and like, you know, rabbits, 17 little graves. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah you know rabbits always 17 little graves yeah yeah right

yeah rabbits are always good for yeah oh yeah they're very cute no one's ever gonna say fuck that rabbit yeah yeah except for emma stone's character but uh all right so then we go the killing the sacred deer which i watched the first time a week or so ago that's another movie where i noticed that's when I noticed that the thing that you do that, you know, supports what you're saying about tone is that you're very meticulous that the amount of that movie that was shot in a hospital and then in a town that didn't have a lot of activity, you know, were clear choices that really kind of made the tone even more impactful. Like you're kind of tight with that, right?

You were like, this hospital's got to look a certain way. Yeah. Well, I wanted all, one of the main things about the hospital was that I wanted to feel that it was a hospital where they knew what they were doing. Okay. Because there's that part of the plot where, you know, they can't figure out what's wrong with the kids and why. Oh, right.

So you had to be the high level. So if it was like a, you know, shitty hospital, you could very easily dismiss the whole thing. Like, you know, they don't know what they're doing. Why doesn't he go to a proper hospital or something like that? And give some possibility to him as a character and he's successful and all that. So it had to look a certain way. It had to be kind of state-of-the-art hospital.

And that story is another, it's almost a genre film in that it's like, you know, one of those weird mystical kind of fantasy, I don't know what you would call it, but, you know, the sort of like the weird kid with the secret power movies. Horror-like. Horror. That's right. Okay. I feel that that movie even more so than The Lobster had more of a narrative through line.

And I don't want you to take that as an insult. I think it's okay. It's okay to have more narrative. It's okay to have a story. I'm fine with it too. That's what we're trying to do in all of our films, have a story. But that one was like, you know, once you, because the thing that I think a lot of your movies do is that because your brain is looking for reason or logic or explanation,

that, you know, you make assumptions. And I think that, you know, make assumptions yeah and and i think that you know throughout all of your movies like you realize that the assumptions don't matter as much as you know something that you're not quite conscious of happening to you you know what i mean you're sort of like well who is this fucking kid what's with the watch why is he at the hospital is this some weird uh you know pedophilia relationship what is happening and you don't even let us know what the kid is until like half an hour in and then you're like oh this just took a turn for the fucking weird and then it

becomes uh you know about you know choices and decisions and mistakes that we make and and and you know what what what is the price of that right yeah yeah it's allegory it's funny that you said you don't understand many things about my films, but you really explained them so well and much better than I could. You want me to go with you on the rest of the tour? That would be great. I'll take this question. Mark will take this question. He's put a lot of thought into it.

I have not. Yeah, I have not. I just spit them out there, and then Mark can talk to you about them. Well, I try. I try. I feel better now about my experience with the movies. Because, like, you know, there was, because I think that's the right way to be. And I don't think you're doing it on purpose.

I think you're being honest about it. But the fact that, you know, you are making the thing and, you know, you just follow through on these ideas. And I'm going to have my own experience. If I was sitting here telling you my experience and you're like, boy you missed it yeah that would be that would be bad bad for me so killing the sacred deer are you happy with that one i haven't seen it for a while after i finished it i guess you know we achieved certain things. We failed in others. Yeah. You know, it's not for me to say. Right. Okay.

I understand that. Again, you know. I do understand not watching what you do. Yeah. Yeah. Do you watch? No. And I have these conversations.

I don't listen to them again. Yeah. My producer, he remembers everything because he spends another hour or two with these, three hours. Do you edit? No, he does. Okay. Like, he's got this

amazing memory like he pulled up that dino quote i wouldn't you know like i you know like i have the conversation i'm engaged in it and then when i walk away from it you know i'll remember some things but after time it's like uh you've done many of those as well yeah so the new movie uh which people like the the favorite is like this is the first time you directed someone else's film? Yeah, but in the end it wasn't very different because I spent like eight years developing the script. Oh, my God. Who wrote the original script?

There was an original script by Deborah Davis. And then I worked on it a little bit with her and restructured the story. But then I felt the need to bring on someone different, to bring in a different tone. Your guy? Different approach. Tony McNamara. Oh, nice. It was the first time that I worked with him.

He's an Australian writer, playwright, and screenwriter. So why that decision? Was the original script more of a historical piece about a thing? Yeah, it was a more straightforward historical piece about her story. Queen Anne, is that her name? Queen Anne, yeah. What period was that? What year?

It was early 1700ss 18th century so it was a it was originally a historical drama that was uh uh telling the story yeah yeah um but i i had a very different idea about you know uh what i wanted this to be and the tone uh what sparked that idea like what was it what when you looked at the original script what were you like i want this to be this uh again it's it's not you know imminent like that it's it's it's more about i i'm interested in the story this you know is interesting about the women you know there's these three women it was interesting that they actually existed and at some point in time you know these women that had such power that i could affect the lives of so many other people and

uh also you know personally her story and stories you know quite sad so it went through a lot and so it was an it was an interesting story and the fact that you know, um, and their lives, you know, affected so many other people. It just felt like a rich thing to explore. Uh, but I, I didn't want to make, you know, another historical drama. I was trying to figure out, you know, what would be the tone that would make it something different that it would make it feel more relevant to us more contemporary um so i yeah i started thinking that first of all it should be you know funny and um because it is dark anyway it's quite a dark story yeah it's a very tragic figure she was she lost 17 children and she was ill with uh yeah throughout her whole life almost

i mean she was she was very young um and she was you know put in a position that she couldn't really cope with and yeah handle and um and it's a very responsible uh position to have yeah um so you know but i i wanted to bring in the comedy in a very specific tonality and uh also visually and aesthetically to make it feel more contemporary so i started making all these decisions along the line it wasn't like one moment where we're like this is how this is gonna be but starting from the screenplay i was was, you know, I read like hundreds of, writers, to find, what I had in my mind, and I came across,

Tony's stuff, and I was, I felt very confident, and then, you know, we started working together, and it was, very easy,

because we had, you know, we were thinking of, about the film in the same way, and, he had the voice, that I was looking for, it wasn't like, you're trying to, make someone, film in the same way, and he had the voice that I was looking for. It wasn't like you're trying to make someone write in a certain way.

Yeah. And much like how I found Efthymis, and we matched, and we understood each other. Right. So he was able to honor some of your ideas for what you wanted to do through the language. Exactly. The language being that you took some liberties in terms of more contemporary idioms, right? Yeah. But it's weird. It seemed to fit pretty well.

Because I've seen that done in other movies where it's sort of, you know, it's too up front. Yeah. But, you know, there's some moments with the dancing and then some of the things they say where you're like, what? Yeah. But, I mean, it must have been quite a labor to really get that period

because you really shoot the hell out of it. I mean, you know, you really kind of bathe in it. Yeah. You know, and you must have used a lot i think i read somewhere that you used a lot of point of references in terms of like what you were watching to to get the the long shots that you wanted and how you you shoot that era uh and in that way and you looked at some other movies right yeah more like a known period films yeah uh just to again to get our minds you know excited and by you know incredible people that have done amazing things

so we're watching you know zulavsky films and uh amadeus i read you amadeus yeah that's true but because that because of the tone because it was tone, because it was a funny film. Yeah. I really liked that film. It's great. And All About Eve, obviously, is quite a reference for the film or The Servant. Joseph Lowe's is The Servant. That's a rough movie.

Yeah. Joseph Lowe's. I don't hear that word, that name being kicked around a lot, but that was some important film. Yeah, not lately, yeah. British filmmaker, correct? Yeah. Yeah.

You know, Peter Greenaway's The Draftsman's Contract or Ingman Bergman's Cries and Whispers, you know, with the three women in a house. Yeah. We watched more contemporary films, films i mean filmically speaking because you wanted to you your vision was it had something to do with the the type of shots you wanted um yes just the the general feel yeah that um to get that weird grit in all that costume yeah for me it was the architecture was important.

Yeah. Like these huge spaces that were inhabited by so few people. Right. You know, the small human figure within that huge space. You do. When you visit those places, you're like, this was just one guy's room? Yeah, exactly. So there was this bed in the corner of this huge room.

Yeah. And a huge bed, but it looked very small within that huge room. And so that was quite important for me. And so in trying to find a way to film this and we ended up using quite, you know, extreme wide angle lenses to enhance that kind of feel like the loneliness of a person within such a room. To enhance that kind of feel, like the loneliness of a person within such a room. But also, you know, in the end I realized that it is also very relevant to the theme of the film. Like, you know, these few people affecting a much bigger world, a much bigger picture. And it also makes it feel quite claustrophobic in a way. Because, you know, you see the end of things.

You see the walls surrounding right and the fact that she was so um uh feeble from disease and and and in lack of uh competence that uh it was isolating you know she she felt very isolated and that you know the difference between you know what was going on the interior of the castle and even when anybody would just get on a horse and go anywhere you'd be be like, oh, my God, they got out for a minute. But that amazing British actress, what's her name, the lead? Olivia Colman. She was also in The Lobster.

Yeah. But she just is amazing. She is. I mean, what was your experience directing her? How did you push her out there? Well, I didn't have to do much. She's just incredible. Again, it's just making

the right choice. And especially with Olivia, one of the reasons that it took so long to make this film is that I had to wait for the right moment that the whole cast kind of fell together at the same time. And I waited for Olivia because I couldn't think of anyone else that could play this character. I just think she's unique and amazing.

And again, you just have to give them the space and just navigate them and get various options of things in order to be able to refine later on in the edit, the performance and where the story is going and when you discover what the film is. And Emma Stone was great. Yeah, she's great too, yeah. Did you know she was going to be so great? I knew it, yeah.

I have to say, I knew it. I was very confident about her. And she also really wanted to do this. She really loved the script and was very excited and is eager to do different things. And, you know, the only thing, my only thing was about the accent. Yeah. So we did, before making, you know, the final decision, her and me that we're going to make this together,

she had some voice, dialect coach. Yeah. And she did some sessions with her and then we did some rehearsals and she was brilliant. And so we made sure that, you know, we wouldn't have that problem and we would be able to do whatever we wanted. And, um, yeah, no, she's, she's amazing. And she's, you know, she's going to do great things. I think there's a lot in her still that we haven't seen yet. I liked her when she did Billie Jean King, she was great. Yeah.

And Rachel Weisz, again, great. Yeah. You like working with her? Yeah. She can do anything too. Yeah, she can, yeah. She's quite something. I mean, all three of them, I was very like, I mean, it was like a dream, you know, cast. And it's interesting, I guess one of the reasons it's resonating so deeply is it is a

movie about women and about the power struggle between these women and how women treat each other in a certain way in the 1700s in a castle. So some of that was historically accurate, a lot of it, but not all of it. The basic story is, yeah, quite accurate. Was the sexual dynamics accurate? Well, we don't have proof of anything, but there's a lot of letters between them. It seems that there was that kind of... And how did the original screenwriter feel about the final project?

Well, I mean, she loves loves it she says yeah um because i think a lot of it is true to the the the core of it yeah and it's just you know the the approach and the tone that is quite different and uh brings brings that whole story into now and makes it relevant in a certain way and i think you know she appreciates that and understands that and great um yeah and have you watched that one again no i last time was uh in venice when we premiered and How did you feel about it? Oh, I was nauseous the whole time. No, you can't see a film properly within those conditions. I mean, you're sweating and you're nauseous. People loved it, though.

Didn't it win the prize? Yeah, yeah, but, I mean, it doesn't make any difference while you're watching it, especially. So what now? You're going to run around and promote this movie and maybe you want a statue or two and then uh but you're already working on the next one i've i've started working on you know a few films but uh it's hard to concentrate right now with the promotion all this that's going on that's going on into the new things but i'm looking forward to you know

focus on the creative stuff again but yeah i have like three or four screenplays that i've started uh and they kind of piled up because i made the killing of a sacred deer and the favorite kind of back to back yeah so i didn't have much time to focus on the development. Well, you'll have time. You're a young man. Yeah. Not anymore. No, still pretty young. But I forgot to ask you about this because everyone seems to be talking about the lack of lighting,

the use of natural light, the Barry Lindening of the movie. And that was mostly true? Yeah, yeah, it's true. I mean, it's true for all of my films i i don't particularly like artificial lighting and uh i i also like the result but also the way of working without a lot of equipment and just have a camera it's crazy natural light and just have the actors and be able to and free to just change things around boy the unions must hate you no i mean

the lights are out there we We just don't use them. Best union job in the world is one of your movies. Yeah, exactly. You guys just sit down. Take it easy. So, but with the equipment that's available today, it must be a little less challenging than what Kubrick was dealing with in terms of... Yeah, I mean,

he had to use the special lenses, the NASA lenses. I mean, we have faster not faster than those, actually, but fast lenses. And, you know, you can push film quite a bit. So it's not as challenging. But those big spaces, sometimes it was like trying to light those huge spaces just with candles. We needed a lot of candles. And that's what you did? Yeah, that's what we did. And there's only a couple of scenes where we had to, the light because of the height of the ceilings or outside where there was nothing. So it was night with nothing and we had to light a light.

But it was only a couple of times. It's great talking to you. Do you think we covered it? I mean, some of it, yeah. What are you hiding? No no you seem to know everything beforehand what do you mean i don't i didn't know anything i just watched the movies yeah and you went like i don't understand anything and then you analyzed everything yeah perfectly and uh great come on yeah but you did it wasn't but you would have said that no matter what i said

no that's not true okay oh yeah that it was my experience was yeah because there's no wrong or right right but so that's a that's a pretty good place to be but you you described the films in detail which is they're hard to spoil which is a benefit of the way you work you know i'm not giving anything away with any of them, except for, like, you could, though. You could, though. You could with the Sacred Deer. I guess you could with a lot of them, actually, but not the first two. Like, there's

no way you can, like, you know, I could talk about Dogtooth or Alps, and people would be like, ah, you fucked that movie up for me. Yeah, so I'm kind of watching now. No, no, I think you did a great job. Oh, good. Well, good luck at the Globes. Thanks. If that's important to you, either way.

I mean, it's important for the film and your next film. All right, great talking to you, man. Thank you. All right, there you go. The favorite, obviously. Go see it if you haven't. It's a great film. Watch all of them.

Watch Dogtooth first. Now I'm going to have some fun on my guitar. I've really settled into this Telecaster sound through the Echoplex, through the old Fender amp. I'm just going to do things I've done before a little differently. Thank you. Boomers! Boomer lives. Hey, I know it got sloppy. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats.

Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats, get almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats, get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth

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