Movie Mindset Bonus - Interview With Director Ari Aster

Hello, movie maniacs.

We have a great interview with director Ari Astor coming at you in just a second.

But first, a quick reminder that Year Zero, a Chapo Trap House Comics Anthology, is now available for pre-order at www.badegg.co.

Yes, five scintillating tales of madness, one from each of the hosts of this very podcast, all collected in one gorgeous anthology, Care of the Good Folks at Bad Egg Comics, that is available for pre-sale right now at www.badegg.co.

Go pre-order your copy today.

And now, on to the interview.

All right, welcome back, movie fans.

We've got a special treat for you, mindset heads out there.

As part of our ongoing directors series, Hessa and I could not be more thrilled to be talking today with one of our favorite contemporary filmmakers.

He is the director of such films as Hereditary, Midsummer, Bo is Afraid, and the soon-to-be-released Eddington.

That's right, folks.

We've got King Payman himself here today, Ari Astor.

Ari, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me.

Oh, our pleasure.

So, Ari,

I just listed your filmography.

I know people are familiar with you and your work.

So, I guess my first question for you is, when are you going to make a nice movie?

You know, for the nice people, something I can watch with my mother.

Oh, man.

Yeah, I'd like to make a nice movie.

I don't know.

There's nice stuff in all of this.

Yeah.

Well, I have to ask, did your mother watch Bo is afraid?

She did.

Yeah.

She a fan?

She did.

Yeah, we still haven't talked about it.

Well,

I guess just like

to give a sense of where I'm coming from here, I was hoping I could share with you three sort of personally unpleasant experiences that were sort of incepted by watching your movies.

And two of them happened to me and one happened to a friend of mine.

The first of them, I'll say, when I saw Hereditary for the first time, I experienced for the first and only time in my life, what could be described as a sleep paralysis demon the night after I watched the movie.

The second experience happened to a friend of mine where let's just say the first 30 minutes of Midsummer put way too close to home about his relationship and the person he was seeing the movie with.

So I think you personally imperiled the relationship of a friend of mine.

And then third and final,

I've described before on this show my experience of watching Bo Is Afraid, which was first hour laughing harder than maybe I've ever laughed in a movie in the past 20 years.

Second hour, a growing feeling of discomfort and unease.

And then by the third hour, I wanted you incarcerated.

I was ready to put, well, I wanted to put you under citizens' arrest for what you did and like how that movie made me feel.

But then I did say the silver lining is that I woke up the next morning and I had the image of the capsized boat in my head.

And I just sprung awake and I said, it's a masterpiece.

By God, he's done it.

By God, he's done it.

So,

yeah.

And I guess this all to say that a quality I admire the most in your movies, and I mean this not as a knock whatsoever, but the quality I admire most in your movies is that they're evil.

And

I guess I'm just wondering,

they're unsparing, but what other evil filmmakers do you like?

Or just this sense of like the cinema of discomfort?

Like, are there other filmmakers or movies that sort of inculcated this sense in you that you're bringing out in your movies, this unsparing and pitiless dedication to creating a feeling in your audience?

Like, does that feeling start with you?

Well, you know, I think, well, yeah, I do love an evil movie.

And

that probably has something to do with the fact that the world

feels evil to me.

And, you know, I'd love to hear your argument against that.

But,

yeah, I don't know.

I mean, and every time I set out to create, you know, like a different atmosphere, or

and

I don't think I do.

Um, I kind of return to the same basic

hellscape, um, but yeah, some evil movies that I love.

Uh, off the top of my head, uh, Peck and Paw's Straw Dogs.

Oh, absolutely.

That's an evil movie, and I love it.

Yeah.

What else is evil?

I mean, there's so many evil movies.

Yeah, I love a film that feels unsafe.

Yeah.

Where I feel like I'm in the hands of somebody really sick.

What's an evil movie?

I mean, I'm thinking like some of the Europeans like Hanukkah or Gaspar No.

Like those movies are

very hurtful.

Yeah,

I wouldn't call any of Hanukkah's films evil, only because he is something of a moralist.

I love him.

And I know that the people who reject his films think that there's like a sanctimony there or something, or like a lecturing quality,

which I think is only really in

maybe funny games, but I, but yeah, piano teacher maybe feels a little evil and

cachet, but cachet again is a film that I think there's a real sense of morality anchoring the whole thing.

The White Ribbon, maybe?

Yeah, I mean, the White Ribbon is

maybe

my favorite film about Nazism, even though it's really about the roots of it.

I guess what he's saying is that it was just always in that culture.

Like, it was just, you know, it was only a matter of time.

Yeah.

But,

yeah,

I mean, Gaspar Noe for sure.

I'm trying to, you know, I mean, Pasolini, like, Salo is a pretty evil feeling film.

God, there's so many.

I mean, I'm actually looking at my

I'm looking at my shelf now.

Like,

which of those are evil?

They'll come back to me.

Well, I was going to say, like, the name that came out in my head that, like, I hadn't considered until this week and thinking about your movies, it was like, those are the sadistic Europeans, but

of our domestic variety here, I do feel like there's an element to the Coen brothers in your movies.

In that, like, I find that the Cohens are like, they treat their movies like the God of the Old Testament.

And, like, they love just piling on catastrophe after catastrophe to these, to like these, the poor souls that inhabit and worship them as the creator.

And I see that in your movie, but like, at the same time, in your, I think the Cohens are, they seem like they're having fun doing this.

Whereas in your movies, I really feel like you're torturing yourself first and foremost.

Well, you know, first of all, the Cohen brothers are just inescapable, especially for, you know, know, any filmmakers in my generation.

They're just the best.

And yeah,

I grew up just.

Those films for me were and are just like a North Star.

But yeah, it does seem like they're having fun.

I'm having fun.

I mean, come on.

I don't want these films to be like painful slugs.

I want them to be enjoyable.

In fact, I was pretty shocked at

the reception of Bo Is Afraid because so many people were going on and on about how torturous it was.

And I always thought I was making a comedy.

I mean,

I definitely,

there were periods in the editing of the film where I got kind of giddy about the fact that, you know, at the end of

the Orphans of the Forest section,

it feels very much like a movie that's ending.

And I got very excited about the fact that there was an hour left.

And it's like a joyless, life-sucking hour.

Well, no, I mean, like,

like I said, I think Boas of Creative is the funniest movie of the last 20, 25 years.

Like, hands easily.

And like, and this goes back to like the sense that Hasa and I have talked about a lot of the movies we talked about this year.

Like a lot of our favorite movies is the sense that what is most evil and horrifying about the world is what's most funny about it.

And films that capture that sentiment often end up being my favorite movies.

And Eddington really has a lot of that, too.

Like, it's, it's definitely about how evil the world is.

But, I mean, me and Will were losing it in the theater at some parts, like him falling on Geronimo's bones and

going through that like museum place.

Just so many great little moments.

I actually, I had a question about

the details, some of the details in Eddington, like

the store names.

I think there was a store named Samanda Sundry's.

There's one called Samanda.

Oh, you guys are catching everything.

That's great.

I love that.

I love, and it really reminds me of like the little blink and you'll miss it jokes in Bo is afraid.

Like one of my favorites is the

microwave meal he makes, the Oloha

Irish Hawaiian breakfast.

And like, how do you, how do you go about populating your movies with such, with little details like that that you could like that maybe some of the audience won't even see or notice?

Well, that's you know, that's just the most fun part is working with these worlds.

In fact, I didn't have as many opportunities with this film because it's a much more grounded movie.

So whenever I could, you know, put something stupid in, I was very excited about that.

Like Samanda's Sundries.

Samanda is a name that keeps showing up in all of my movies.

There are a lot of writers of books named Samanda.

And Prawn is a first name I like to use.

Anyway, but

yeah, no, you know, I mean, for me, the stupider the better.

And

yeah,

I guess I, you, you mentioned, you know, humor being

humor that, like, I don't know, nods to the

just the nightmare of everything

is the best.

You know, for me, I feel like

there's like a

line in the sand that, you know, that people end up on either side of which,

and I just stand on one side.

Like, you know,

in the 90s, there were all those like romantic comedies where like the clumsy,

you know, beautiful woman would like slip and then she'd, you know, go, I'm okay, and I'm okay kills it.

You know, it's like,

I want a bone coming out of her knee.

Jack, please.

But like

in this, like I said, the cinema of the unpleasant.

Are you surprised by people's reactions to movies?

Like that people consider you personally some kind of sadist?

Like I was thinking like preparing for this about the part in Terry Zweigoff's documentary about Robert Crumb.

Where at one point, like, the greatest.

Because, you know, Crumb was just like unsparingly showing you his own id in full detail without censorship.

And at one point, he's like, Sometimes I think maybe I shouldn't be allowed to do this.

Maybe someone should take my pens and pencils away from me so I can't hurt other people with my own, you know, inner thoughts.

Like, have you ever been confronted with that making your films?

Well, first of all, look at his brothers and see what happens when you don't do that.

No, it feels like

people are getting around to taking the pens and

pencils away.

So

we might only have so much time

before

if it's not the current administration, then it's going to be this

AI God that we're ushering in.

So

I probably only have one or two movies left.

Yeah.

Right?

Is that too

pessimistic?

No, I think it's very appropriate.

I think it's

quite appropriate.

Yeah.

And that's

another fun detail in Eddington was the name of the AI facility, Solid Gold Magikarp, which Will leaned over to me and whispered in my ear like 10 minutes into the movie, isn't that a Pokemon?

I was like, yes, sweetie, it is.

It is a Pokemon.

Yes.

It's also

a term that, you know, when it's

that early on, these AI systems, if you typed in solid gold magikarp, it would just make the system go haywire.

So it's a little

an inside joke for the people who are, you know, ushering this thing in.

Nice.

Got to keep them involved.

Yeah.

Well, Hester brought up Eddington, which we both were lucky enough to see a screening of last week that you did a QA after.

And Eddington, people see it,

I don't want to give too much away here, but like Eddington is a movie that is essentially a period piece about five years ago.

But like the period it conjures, like I don't think we've ever left that period.

And what it depicts is like

this unmistakable feeling of dread that like being alive in the last five or six years, like beginning with COVID.

And what your movie really portrays is that like, I think what a lot of people are realizing now is that COVID was like the final push over the edge for like where our society was going of like people being increasingly like a place where consensus, consensual reality has broken down and people are living in these kind of like discrete, boutique, voluntary realities.

And now that seems like that's all that's left.

And Eddington is a movie that really depicts like what happens when these realities, these different realities that we're all living in begin to kind of brush up against each other.

And I'm just like, what was your experience of COVID?

And like, how did it lead to like the feeling that you're conjuring in this movie?

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I don't think we've metabolized just how seismic COVID was.

And,

you know, and I don't think it was the advent of anything.

I think it was an inflection point.

And it's where maybe, you know, just that last link to whatever the old world was, which, you know,

is already decades behind us, was cut.

And

yeah, I watch the film now and it doesn't really feel like a period piece.

We're still living in it.

You know, lockdown is over for now.

But yeah, what was my experience?

Well, I, you know, I'm, I'm from New Mexico.

My family lives in New Mexico still.

And

I was brought back to New Mexico because of a COVID scare.

I thought somebody in my family had it.

They didn't.

And I ended up staying

in a house near family.

And

in June 2020, when everything was really kind of peaking, I just wanted to make a film that reflected,

you know, the

environment.

And

I also wanted to make a film about the Southwest.

I had this old script that never became anything called Eddington.

And it was sort of a contemporary Western, and that felt like a, you know, an interesting framework to do this.

And

I don't know.

And so for me, it was an attempt at zooming as as far back as I could without sacrificing story

and

just trying to give an impression of like the cacophony.

And you, like,

as you said, it's a Western

and we are, we always try to get into the movie mindset of people, of the directors we're interviewing.

Were there any specific westerns that

you looked towards for inspiration of like characters or mood?

And like, what are some of your favorite westerns?

Okay, so, first of all, the films that were really on my mind weren't necessarily Westerns.

The traditions of the Western were on my mind.

But, you know, one film that kept coming back to me was JFK,

which I think is

maybe the.

Look,

it's clearly...

like just a snarling together of a bunch of, you know, crackpot conspiracies that,

you know, so many of which have nothing to do with the other.

You say that already, but it's like it's been fairly well established that gay people did kill John F.

Kennedy.

Well, look, with like that, that exempted,

but I, but I do think it's it's

it's the film that gets at conspiracy thinking and that creates like this, this, uh, it, this

heightened atmosphere of of paranoia which we're living in now like we're living in jfk and everybody is jim garrison and so that that that that's really interesting to me and that and that film was that film is always on my mind because i just find it to be you know kind of amazing and just this hysterical three-hour freak out that's great you know like oliver stone is is often not my bag but that movie and uh nixon are oh yeah nixon is so underrated one of my top keyboards

they're like three hour plus movies that are pure entertainment and just pure

like America's psychological history of America just fucking like just burned into your brain.

Yeah.

Couldn't be greater.

I just, yeah,

I'm happy to hear that.

I'm with you.

I'm wondering where the when that movie is going to be canonized because it's a masterpiece.

So, you know, that was on my mind.

A lot of like small town films were on my mind, like Fat City,

which is also a great book by Leonard Gardner, who wrote the screenplay.

Last Picture Show, which is a film that I screened for the crew before we shot.

Another film that I screened for the crew was Nashville.

And then, you know,

I was interested in the Western as, well, first of all, it's like the national genre.

And

that's interesting to me that

it really belongs to America.

And

it's very much about,

as a genre,

it's about the dream of America.

And when it's at its best, I think it's contending with the truth of America, the reality of it, and its history.

But I was mostly interested in the Western genre as something that the main character of this film, especially Joe, played by Joaquin Phoenix,

he would know these movies.

And I think

his whole life is informed by these movies.

He sees himself in those terms, right?

Like he's he's a man of action.

He cares about his community.

He loves his wife.

He's sort of like

sort of like Gary Cooper in high noon, except if the whole town was wearing masks and he was like, you don't have to do this.

Absolutely.

And he's also,

he's kind of on to something.

There's something about the, there's something very theatrical about COVID when I think about it.

Just like, you know, all the signage and, you know, stand here, say this, do this.

And, and he's, he's a character who's kind of seeing like, wait a minute, like, what's going on?

Something's up.

And then he says, no, I'm not going to, I'm not going to play along.

And then what does he do?

He, like, he gets on the internet and just and makes a video.

So he's, you know, he's, he sees, like, wait, there's something wrong.

And all of these characters see something's wrong.

And I don't mean something is wrong with masking.

That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about there's just something going wrong like we are yeah like like this is bad like what is happening something's falling apart yeah uh like everything is collapsing like what is there to believe in or what like what

um and so and and what is actually happening like i can feel that huge changes are are happening and yet i am utterly powerless but i'm but because i'm on the phone and everything is kind of like ready to order like i i have autonomy.

And so I'm not powerless.

And, you know, like I've got chauffeurs.

I just need to call them on my phone.

You know,

but the idea is that, you know, for me, I wanted to make

a Western, which is this very old-fashioned genre that was really inflected by like a sort of modern realism, right?

And all of these people are kind of living in different movies.

Joe is living in high noon, you know, and at the end, you know, you've got a kid who's kind of living in a video game joe is kind of joe you know is 50 years old and would have you know in the 80s and 90s like those action movies would have been so central to his imagination uh you know at the end he gets to live in an action movie i i think i think like the the thing that the thing that struck me so much about about eddington and i think i i think like the thing that's of a piece with your other movies and why it fits so well in this kind of period piece of like the the COVID, the summer like 2020 COVID and the George Floyd protests.

And the thing is, no matter what side of a political divide you fall on, I think that, like, what you're, what you're capturing here is there's this sense that everyone has that there's something out there and it's doom and it has our name written down and everybody else is lying to you about it like they don't know everyone like they're not telling you the truth about it but also that maybe they're right.

And it's this question of doubt, this like this instability between like our assuredness about like the cause of our doom and everyone else is lying about it, but also this doubt: do masks really work?

Does the vaccine really work?

And I'm not saying, like, I believe masks and the vaccine do work, but in this climate, like, it just, this question creep open is

the door is opened in your mind.

I think that's definitely, that's absolutely true, no matter what side of the conspiracy you're on.

You're like, everyone's lying to me, but what if they're not?

And I guess I was just sort of feeling about that, particularly about Austin Butler's character of the like recovered memory child abuse cult.

Like, what if the shit he's saying is real?

You know, and could anyone really like say with a hundred percent confidence that it's not, even though you'd like you, he comes across as a lunatic.

It's just this doubt, this both confidence and doubt that has creeped into everyone's mind.

But, like, the doom is coming and it's out there.

It's just, we don't really know what to call it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I mean, I that well, that that's right.

That's absolutely right.

I don't even know how to add to that because that's what the movie, I hope,

is getting at.

And is he right?

Is he telling the truth?

I see him as a charlatan

and as like a Pied Piper figure, but there are plenty of those.

And, you know, the movie is about people in crisis, living through a crisis, trying to navigate that crisis,

having many,

you know, I mean, they have many options as far as, you know, narratives and realities that they can live in.

But at the same time, those,

you know, have narrowed for them because they're inundated in, you know,

whatever their algorithm is giving them.

But for me,

At the core of the film is this other crisis that's sort of incubating in a lab through the film, which is this hyperscale data center, and it's an AI data center, and

we begin there and we end on it, and it's peripheral,

but it's it for me

is the heart of the movie.

Yeah.

And I think that's also something that even then, we were feeling the effects of this.

The weirdness, the uncanny, the fact that everything

is changing absolutely.

In a way that

it's so gradual, even though it's exponential, that

we adapt to it.

So

even now,

this AI-generated imagery and video stuff,

I'm used to it.

The most uncanny thing about it is that it's not uncanny enough, is that it's...

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that goes into another element to this movie I want to talk about.

Like,

Ari, are you familiar with sort of like this pseudo-debate about why a lot of like top-flight contemporary American filmmakers are doing period pieces, but about like a like what looks like a different era?

And a lot of people think it comes down to that like the ubiquity of people looking at their phones and just like scrolling is so stupid and ugly that like no filmmaker really wants to touch it.

Well, you, sir, had the courage to just drive full speed into that reality.

So like in terms of like, how do you depict as a filmmaker the world of people kind of like there's a scene in the movie that I that just struck me as like you know like a small moment that just struck me as like indicative of the larger thing it's Joaquin Phoenix and his wife played by Elma Stone in bed at night and they kiss each other good night and then he rolls over and looks at his phone and there's just like his face is a glow in a dark room scrolling on his phone like what do you think of the smartphone's role in terms of like an aesthetic object that like cinema is struggling to depict well first i'll tell you you just what I what I wanted to do, which is

I wanted these phones to be totally pervasive

and I didn't want them to necessarily blend in.

I wanted to sort of make you sick

with the ubiquity of it as opposed to

having it just be

one of my favorite phone moments is when the kid Googles the book that the girl is holding so that he could pretend he knows what it is and knows what he's talking about.

I really loved that moment.

And the fact that the kids know how to use their phones more than the adults.

Like Joaquin Phoenix, whenever he turns on his phone after sleeping, he has like 500 new messages.

Like,

it's, I love that little, as a, I love that as a detail of like, um, you know, his life kind of collapsing.

The more it collapses, the more messages he gets, the more like alerts come in on his phone.

Yeah.

no it's yeah it screens the movie you know and it's like and and i i i wanted them to feel like alien like these people are getting these messages from like another realm and they're being given these roles to play and these i i i wanted to take away the innocuousness that i that i maybe was feeling in a lot of yeah like you know contemporary movies where it's like yeah somebody pulls up their phone and like a little text will like pop up like bloop you know and it's cute.

But there is like a menace there.

Yeah, and one of the things you said is that like this is a movie about like what it feels like to be on the internet.

And one of the things that I really love about Eddington is at a certain point in the movie, like

the reality that's being depicted and the reality of the internet kind of like merge and cross over.

And like, I guess this would be like slightly a spoiler, so turn this off if you don't want Eddington spoiled to you.

But for me, the key to the whole movie was the actual, when the appearance, the appearance and assault on the town of Eddington by antifa super soldiers.

Yeah.

And that's really when you're seeing the plane with the globe emoji on the back.

Yeah.

So funny.

And I guess like it's sort of similar to Beau is Afraid.

It's this question of like, what is real here?

Is this depicting reality or is this depicting the psychological reality of someone's interior life?

And like, how, how fun is that to play with, like, like as a writer and as a filmmaker?

Yeah, I mean, it is, it's, it's, it's fun, but it's, it's, uh, it sort of was at the, it was at the heart of the film.

I wanted the movie to kind of become paranoid too.

Yeah.

Like, uh, and kind of get, become gripped by, like, kind of the, uh, the worldview of these characters.

And, and so, you know, it should function as something of a Rorschach test.

And I'm, I'm hoping that it.

does.

Like I'm hoping that, you know, when you get to the people on those, on that jet, that people have different

arguments as to who those people are.

And in the end, you know, Joe is kind of, you know, the threat is real, but he's shooting at phantoms.

Okay, well, we talked about the Antifa Super Soldiers, but like, when you were writing this movie or when you were thinking of it, being on the internet, being on Twitter, do you have a favorite insane Twitter idea or conspiracy theory that

you think isn't true, but you kind of wish it was?

Oh, let's see.

There's nothing I wish was true.

I've got plenty of

plenty of sinister.

Like, you know, like there are,

what is it?

But there, there are secret trapdoors in the bat in like every Disneyland bathroom that lead down

to

down to a dungeon.

And on the other side, you can go up into,

what is it, Comet Pizza?

Is that what it was called?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm merging the two now.

That's, yeah, yeah.

Well, I was thinking of the

tunnels full of mole children.

Do you remember the mole people?

The mole children that were people.

Oh, that one's real.

Yeah, yeah.

That's right.

I've seen them.

Yeah, that and the hollow earth are the only two real ones.

How about you guys?

What are your favorites?

I think hollow earth is really funny.

Just the idea that if you dig far enough down, you're going to fall in.

There's like nothing inside.

That and Hollow Moon, obviously, that the moon's like a death star.

Yeah.

You know, like, like I said,

I don't think the vaccine was designed to mutate the human race into demons, but sometimes I wish it was.

I guess this is where I'm coming from here.

Like, I mean, like, I don't know if the COVID vaccine has mutated my DNA, but sometimes I'm like, yeah,

I hope it has.

Maybe it's beneficial.

Maybe it'll help all of us.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Ari, we can move on from Eddington.

I really want to talk about Bob is afraid because, like, Hesse and I have bonded over this movie.

Like, this movie is like a lip nostalge.

Like, if you like Bob is afraid, like, your name gets written in the book of life.

You are among the elect.

You are among the chosen.

We can hang.

I agree with you.

Yeah.

I saw it in a theater with my ex-girlfriend, and she...

did not like it at all.

And I, meanwhile, was screaming, basically.

I was like, this is the best movie I've seen in like, in years in a theater.

It's unreal.

Thank you.

With Bo, I don't know.

I mean, like, the only question I have is like a stupid one.

Like, what was that all about?

Where are you coming from?

But no, I mean, I guess more like what impresses me about that movie is the way it like just layers upon layers of like building, building upon like layers and layers of reality and psychosis to the point where there is no entrance or exit anymore.

And I'm just like,

what was

the first idea that led to the genesis of Bo is Afraid?

Do you remember, was it like a thought or like an idea, an image in your mind?

It was honestly just, I wanted an excuse to

just jam a lot of gags into a movie.

You know, I mean, it was really as simple as that.

You know, like, you know, I wanted to make myself laugh.

And

so everything came out of that.

And I would say

the first iteration of that movie, the first script, the first draft, was just strictly comedic.

So

there was really

no story.

I mean, I would say you could maybe argue that about

the finished film.

But it

you know, which is, you know, it's got like an Odyssey picaresque structure.

And, you know, the first version, the first draft had had that quality.

It was like an adventure film, very episodic, but it was really

just a gag machine and

even stupider

somehow.

And

then

when I returned to it after midsummer, I

made it maybe more

I tried to add like a certain like soulfulness and sadness to it.

And the ending was totally new.

The penis monster was already, it was always there,

which was just my way of

inflating.

It always is.

It always is.

The trick there was to have this build-up.

It was a subplot that was supposed to, you know, there's a lot of intrigue, who's his father, you know, what's at the heart of this movie really and then just to give you the most disappointing possible revelation

just something that just truly

like you know if

like there there's just no nothing to be gleaned just

you know

well uh as always talking about gags but probably my favorite gag from both afraid is in the first hour where uh joaquin phoenix gets uh locked out of his apartment.

And like, you could just see it coming.

What I love is just like, all the worst fears you have in your head, they're going to happen to you.

And like, that sense when he goes out to the store across the street, and then someone leaves the door, he like leaves the door open

for like the mob of vagrants outside his house, and he just sees one after another.

And then, like, the street is like empty after just shriek into the apartment building and go directly into his house to destroy it.

That was like, that killed me.

But like,

the sort of scenes of like urban chaos and like fear in the beginning of that movie, I thought was like really funny, but also really uncomfortable.

Because like, you're, you're, I think you're being very honest and playing with like people's sense maybe that they don't want to admit that it's like both funny and frightening to just like see mental illness and the homeless everywhere.

Like, was it, did you ever get mad at you for that?

I was expecting people to, but, but, but mostly people just love to tell me, I love the first 45 minutes of Beau is afraid.

So

now I like to be introduced as the director of Hereditary, Mitsumar, in the first 45 minutes of Bo is Afraid.

But yeah, it's basically just life staying.

Well, I mean,

if they only like the first 45 minutes,

then they're selling themselves short because that doesn't even get to the girl drinking paint, which is another another one of the funniest scenes I've ever seen in a movie.

That's my name.

That's my name.

My favorite line.

Yeah, I was,

I love that too.

I also, I got to ask about

when they're doing the play in the woods, one of my

favorite laughs or favorite like little moments in the movie is like when they're doing the play and it's very serious for a while.

It's telling the story.

and then the narrator goes, sometimes your wife will appear as a man to you and it shows like

one of the actors.

I love that guy.

I just want to

ask about that.

What's that all about?

It just made me laugh.

I'm just goofing.

Yeah.

Yeah, for...

For me, yeah, people,

there's a contingent of person that just really, really doesn't like that section of the film but I I find it that that's one of my favorite jokes which is we we go into this like you know like this fantasy of his that's so supposed to be kind of a mix of like you know being moving

and really artificial and really stupid but

there's something there that I that I that is

sincere on my part that I that I find moving and I I just love breaking it and it was all just nothing like it just there's something to me that's so because you know because he you know he he he comes together with his sons and then he's confronted with the fact that he couldn't have sons and yeah anyway I you know that's just

I don't know I love that joke I yeah so I don't know I don't know what my point is it's me just I guess

griping it's my grief it's just one of my many grievances about how that film was received.

Well, speaking of jokes, Hessa, I don't want to put you on blessed, but I would like to share your comment about the genius of Bo is afraid, where you said,

it takes a genius to make a movie that, if successful, means that no one will ever have sex with you again for the rest of your life.

So I guess I'm at Harry, how's that going for you?

You know, it's a it's uh uh

it it it it it didn't it didn't hurt.

Well, you're still a successful filmmaker.

So, you know, there's movies and then there's reality.

I guess, like, and then the last time we have here, I'd like to just talk to you about movies in general.

And I'd like to give you credit for turning me on to a movie that has fast become one of my favorite movies.

And I believe this is when you did one of those Criterion channel adventures in movie going.

And the film is Hobson's Choice by David Lean,

starring Charles Lawton.

And, like, you know, that's an example of a nice movie, but even, you know, even though Charles Lawton plays a miserly alcoholic, I think that is a very sweet and beautiful movie.

And I'm just wondering, like, what can you share of your experience of Hobson's Choice and the films of David Lean?

Oh, I'm so glad that

you watched that film and loved it.

It's one of my favorite films, and it's a film that I wouldn't normally love.

Like, in anybody else's hands, it would be so cloying and like, and schmaltzy uh but as it is i i just find it to be so moving and uh well first of all it has maybe the best production design of any film ever the like the shoe store yeah shoe store it's just incredible so beautiful it's such a world and like like the way they keep their like little like cockney slave and like the basement and he's just like always kind of popping in

coming out of the shoe dungeon but then the love story between him and the older the eldest daughter is just like is so captivating.

And like the way he just sort of like, through love, becomes like a real person is like.

He becomes a man.

He becomes a man.

He gains this like autonomy and it feels so earned.

And he also saves her from her father.

And, you know, like, if there's anything false, it might be like the

silliness of the father's like.

alcoholism and like abuse

but but there are also these amazingly strange sequences

that have to do with his alcoholism.

The effort he gives to walk across a puddle when he's blinded, drunk, trying to come home.

It's like some great drunk acting by Charles Lauden.

Yeah, and him

the sinister moon in the puddle that he has to evade, which I think I'm guessing the Cohens were

alluding to that in

Hail Caesar.

There's

a musical number with like a moon

in a trough.

And then there's the scene where he wakes up and he's hung over.

I'm not sure if it's like withdrawal that he's going through, but like he's hallucinating mosquitoes everywhere, and there's a giant rabbit at the base of his bed,

or the foot of his bed, rather.

Yeah, just weird, weird shit.

But I, yeah,

David Lane is amazing.

I uh that and Brief Encounter and and Bridge on the River Kwai are as perfect as movies get, I think.

Well, uh, you mentioned the Cohens being very like formative as like a kid watching those movies, and I think that would be the case for like, you know, anyone who got into movies of a certain age who like saw Raising Arizona or Fargo or the Big Lebowski.

But, like, can you remember like when you were a kid, like, what were like the big films that like turned you on to movies or just like made a huge impression on you?

Like either as a kid or like maybe later in adolescence when you started to like maybe take films a little more seriously?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I it's all the usual suspects, you know, like Scorsese was huge and is still probably the biggest for me.

And and you know, Kubrick and the Cohens and Polanski and

and you know, I was

like, you know, cinephilia was like my identity as a kid, and I was very obnoxious.

And, you know, when you first become a cinephile, you know, you kind of follow the book, and you, and so you watch Breathless and start acting different.

Yeah, and you love the people you're supposed to love, and you know, you're, you're totally undiscerning.

So, yeah, I love, you know, I, I, because I needed to, I loved Godar and Tarkovsky and Brisson and

Antonione.

And a lot of those filmmakers I still really love.

Some of them I've rejected.

Like, I still love Brisson,

and

I love a lot of Tarkovsky, although I think he can be kind of a bad influence

on certain filmmakers,

Sokin Godar.

But, you know, but Bergman was huge for me.

And he's somebody who kind of only

grows in my estimation.

And,

you know, for me,

a big one, and

I know it's the same for you, is Paul Verhoeven.

He, for me, I think is one of the goats.

I just think he's the greatest.

I probably feel closest to him, or I think I,

which is not to say that I...

that anything I'm doing is anything like what he's doing.

It's just when I watch his films, I get very, very excited excited by the mission.

And I find it very,

it's like home to me.

I just, I, I,

and that's all of his films.

I mentioned this the other day, but uh, uh, over the weekend, I did watch a live stream of the president's uh wonderful birthday military parade, and I was watching a live stream of that, and it's like, you know, a group of soldiers walks by, the announcer goes, We'd like to take time now to thank our sponsors at Coinbase.

And I was like, Mr.

Verhoeven, you've done it again.

Yeah, he really, I mean, Starship Troopers and RoboCop

are

so beyond prescient.

And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that his parents were Nazis, were Nazi sympathizers.

Did they?

I also remember reading that the Nazis built a V2 rocket platform in Belveron's backyard as a kid.

Oh, that's perfect.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, no,

he's the greatest.

He's so funny.

Black Book, too, is under.

Oh, Black Book is so good.

It's so good.

Is underappreciated.

Really, just, you know,

what he's doing there with

having the resistance be the.

Yeah, it's like, let's do a Holocaust movie where, like, the good guy and Romantic Lead is a Nazi officer and the bad guys are like the Dutch resistance fighters.

And it's just like a ripping yarn.

It's just so, it's so, it's so old-fashioned and fun.

And I don't know.

There's nobody better.

Turkish Delight, kind of, now that I'm thinking about it, reminds me a lot of Beau's Afraid and Eddington because of how

something totally ridiculous and insane and over-the-top funny will happen, but there's still a heart at the center of it that...

it keeps you like locked in and keeps you caring for the characters.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah, there's, well,

I appreciate that.

There's definitely

a real warmth to his films.

He's really

for films that are so bleak and cynical, there is something really joyful about them.

And especially in those early Dutch films like Soldier of Orange and The Fourth Man and Turkish Delight, he's just playing around.

But he's

an incredibly political filmmaker

who just never forgets that movies are supposed to be fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You mentioned Scorsese as being like a big influence.

Obvious.

Like, I mean, he's the goat.

But like, what is it like?

Because I've seen Scorsese talk on several occasions about how much he

admires your films and says, this kid's got the chops.

So that must feel pretty good, right?

I've got this.

Well, first of all, yeah, of course.

It's like, it's, you know, it's in a way like life-change, life-changing.

Um, but it, but at the same time, I've got this disease where I can't internalize anything nice, only like anything nice being said.

So, I also just feel like it's bullshit.

Um,

well, actually, that's good.

That's good because it leads to my next question.

I don't really care how it makes you feel.

My question for you is: do you think Scorsese would like me?

Like, think we could like hang out.

Yeah, can we, like,

would he like Hessa and myself?

Uh, yeah, can you set up a dinner where all four of us maybe?

No, no, you don't have to be there.

It's fine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think so.

Yeah,

take it from me.

He would love you.

I mean, he's,

in my experience, he's been incredibly generous and warm and

likes it when people care about things.

And that's, you know,

that's the thing about him is that

he's

and I

think you'll probably agree with me that what makes him unique is that, well, first of all, he has a body of work that's that is unique.

And I can't think of anybody who who's made so many like unimpeachably great films.

And then at the same time, he just has spent his entire life championing other films and propping other people up and fighting for preservation.

And I mean, he's probably done, he's probably a more successful film preservationist than any other film preservationist who's ever lived.

And so

he's just like an impossibly giant figure

and just

the fucking greatest.

I mean, you know, like he's he's done everything.

You know, he like the Age of Innocence is like, for me, like maybe the great tragic romance

in film.

And, you know, that After Hours is maybe is maybe the best dark comedy and or king of comedy.

Goodfellas just, like, don't even bother, you know, like, just, you know, or casino.

And, yeah, it's just,

he's.

Yeah,

there's nothing left to say, but he's the greatest.

Well, there is nothing left to say.

We're going to leave it there, but before we go ahead, I have one more question.

You have one final question for our yeah.

Okay, who do you think would win in a fight?

Sheriff, Sheriff Cross, King Payman, or Bo's mom?

If all three of them went head-to-head freestyle, probably Bo's mom.

Yeah, she's right now.

She's really, yeah,

she's almighty.

But

I do want to say

I am a very

big fan of this podcast and Chapo Trap House.

I've been listening forever.

And so I'm really, really

happy to talk to you both.

And

I hope to do it again.

Absolutely.

All right.

It really means a lot to me and Hesse to hear that from you because, like,

we have talked extensively among ourselves about how much we love your movies, and particularly Bo is afraid.

And then thank you for giving us the opportunity to see Eddington.

To our listeners, for when this comes out, believe me when I tell you,

the boy Ari done it again with Eddington.

You're not going to want to miss this one.

Believe me.

Yeah.

He's cooking.

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for all your movies and for taking a little time to hang out with us today, man.

I really appreciate it.

No, thank you.

Thank you.