"Denis Villeneuve"

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Speaker 1 I want you guys to know. I hope you're rolling on this.
You ready? Here we go. I want you guys to know that this morning,

Speaker 1 this is the most serious gold open. Yes.
I've been in a rough place and this really, I feel like I've shared a lot. The last year I've been a rough place, but I have been.
A lot going on.

Speaker 1 And this saved me this morning. After a few days, it really saved me.

Speaker 2 You might not have made it. You might not have made it to lunchtime.

Speaker 1 No, I would have made it. I'm not, I wasn't going to take my own life, but

Speaker 1 I was in a pretty bad place. And knowing that I was coming here and then getting on and seeing you guys, this is just made-by-day.
That's it. Isn't that nice?

Speaker 2 And is that why you took a little shower, a little self-care, combed your hair, put on a nice top?

Speaker 1 I wanted to look nice for you guys. You know, I wanted to show up here and be respectful of the process.
That I, the one, the thing I can count on is

Speaker 1 you two ding-dongs. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then the other, and then the other three ding-dongs who we work with as well, Robin, Bennett, and Michael. So

Speaker 1 I know it's a late, Thanksgiving's been a minute, but I want to say thank you, and I'm very grateful for you guys. We love you, and we thank you, and you make our day too.
Anytime you want.

Speaker 2 And so let's try to make other people's days.

Speaker 1 And let's wreck it all and get a fresh episode of Smartless.

Speaker 1 Smart.

Speaker 1 Smart Smart.

Speaker 1 Less.

Speaker 1 Smart.

Speaker 1 Less.

Speaker 2 Oh, speaking of medical conditions.

Speaker 1 I know. I can't even.
I can't. Do you want to talk about it? We can talk.
I'm an open book. I'll talk about anything.

Speaker 2 Shawnee wakes up in the middle of the night with his heart thingy

Speaker 2 for

Speaker 2 everybody other than Tracy.

Speaker 2 The reminder is he's got an AFib situation, right? Which necessitates the paddles at the emergency room every once in a while.

Speaker 2 It's just insane. It's like if you had a car that would constantly just like have trouble getting started, you would eventually replace the battery.

Speaker 1 So you're replacing me on Smartless? Well, nor just your heart.

Speaker 1 No, we thought about it for one second. We never.
We'll get you on a list. We didn't even do a fresh pump.
We didn't do a deep dive.

Speaker 2 So he wakes up in the middle of the night and his heart's not working correctly, or so he thinks. And so he doesn't want to wake up Scotty.
So he calls a Waymo for himself and gets himself to the ER.

Speaker 2 And Scotty wakes up later with a phone call from Sean from the ER saying, hey, buddy, I'm here. I just want to give you a heads up.

Speaker 1 Oh, good.

Speaker 2 So I guess it's kind of nice that he doesn't want to trouble Scotty and worry him.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 JB, not once, twice that night. Yeah, in the same night.
I got cardioverted twice. So I went under and then they came.
Jimmy Kimmel calls me Paddles, right? Because of this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So Paddles got it twice that night

Speaker 1 for my cardio.

Speaker 1 And yeah, it's pretty sad.

Speaker 2 And yet you still made it out to dinner the following night. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You weren't insane. You weren't in a great place that night.
No, it was a little foggy. I was a little foggy.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, of course you were excited. More so than usual.

Speaker 1 You've been

Speaker 1 electrocuted twice.

Speaker 1 Your body had been, you know,

Speaker 1 that's a lot. That's wild.

Speaker 1 By the way, the nurse told me while before I did it, she goes, you know, I had a big tough cop come in here once, and he said, I don't want to be put under when you cardio, when you do the paddles, you know, clear,

Speaker 1 and they're like, he's like, I don't want it. I don't want to be put under.
She's like, sir, no, everybody is put under. He's like, nope, nope, I don't want it.

Speaker 1 And she goes, I've never heard somebody scream so loud in my entire life.

Speaker 1 The guy got clear, gonk, and he was like,

Speaker 1 why? Because it hurts when it's an electric

Speaker 1 body goes, it's like being tased. Right.
So wait, how do you know what it's like being tased?

Speaker 1 Sean Tays.

Speaker 1 Sean Taze. That's who your new name is.
Not paddles. Sean Taze.

Speaker 2 All right. That's enough.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, you got, weren't you Taze once at an Indigo Girls concert or something?

Speaker 1 What's the story on that? You had parked your

Speaker 1 super with all the stickers coexist and all that stuff. You had parked.
You were at.

Speaker 1 We were saying college for the indigo. You were at Bendor again.
Okay, keep going. Sorry.

Speaker 1 No, I said it's college. And we'd say, if you take the N and the O out of Indigo Girls, it says, it says I dig girls.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Thanks, everybody.
What a college. Now, was this, you were at least with Harvard? What a call.

Speaker 1 Hey, Sean, just to close the loop,

Speaker 2 are you on the back side of figuring out this heart thing?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm going today after this. I just want to get, I want to say this.
All jokes aside,

Speaker 1 I, and we, I speak for Jason, love you very, very much. Likewise.
And the idea of you not being fully well is very distressing to me, to be honest. Oh, thanks.

Speaker 1 And I want to make sure that you're okay. So are we doing everything? Is there anything else? Today I'm going to like a super specialist.
Okay. But what does that mean?

Speaker 2 You're going up into the thigh again. Is it like, are we knocking you out again?

Speaker 1 Like, is this a major surgery? It's not surgery. It's just, it's like a two-hour procedure.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it's not a general. It's just that the

Speaker 1 it's not even two hours. It's an hour.
You getting the twilight? Propofol. Propofol, yeah.

Speaker 2 This is crazy. This is what's driving all of this.

Speaker 1 You're so addicted to anesthesia. It's pretty beautiful.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 2 You know what happens?

Speaker 1 Propofov is something else.

Speaker 2 Mr. Jackson, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I'm not taking it to sleep.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, slippery slope.

Speaker 1 JB, you had it right when you got your thing. What do I have? When we had our things, when we all had our things looked at.
What happened?

Speaker 1 When they went up our butts. Oh, no, you mean a body scan?

Speaker 2 A body scan? No, you're talking about a

Speaker 2 colonoscopy. Yeah, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, remember? And hey. Yeah, that's just a Twilight.
Is that propofol? That's propofol. Now, like the cop, I requested no anesthesia.

Speaker 2 Come on, keep it a respectable guest.

Speaker 1 Yeah, come here. We got a real respectable guest on deck.
Okay, let's, well, let's hear it. Here's the, go to the intro, Davey.
This is great.

Speaker 1 Hey, guys, fresh off the pages of Wikipedia comes his very special. He always talks about his special intro that he does.

Speaker 1 And it turns out he looked at, again, it goes back to that thing that I hate, which is people go like, I did some research. And I'm like, oh, do you have the internet? I do, too.

Speaker 2 That's my wife's line. I don't, I've never, I never say I've done research on anything.

Speaker 1 I know you don't. I know you don't.

Speaker 2 Man, today we have simply put one of our finest filmmakers living in the world.

Speaker 2 Okay, his films have received 28 Academy Award nominations, taken home nine of them, and grossed nearly two billion dollars. Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 His films have captured the small and the nuanced human condition as well as the enormous scope and scale of sci-fi's most complicated stories.

Speaker 2 Guys, he's our perfect guest. For Will, he's a Canadian.
For me, he's a beast of a director. And Sean, no way.
He's a titan in the sci-fi world right now.

Speaker 2 Ladies and gentlemen, here he comes.

Speaker 1 Denis. Oh,

Speaker 1 no way. You're kidding me.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 You're kidding me.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry to interrupt your conversation. I apologize for you.

Speaker 1 I was learning a lot of dramatic things.

Speaker 2 One cigarette, one mistress.

Speaker 1 One of the things I've got to do is

Speaker 1 take a coffee with my mistress. No, no, no, Denis.

Speaker 1 What an absolute

Speaker 1 pleasure to be with you. I just wrote you an email, like a a dorky email, like three or four months ago.
I don't know if you got it. You did? Yeah.
Hold on.

Speaker 1 Do you know him? No, I don't.

Speaker 2 It's just a fan email.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just wrote you an email. I was just like, oh my God.
He got it, but no comment.

Speaker 2 That's right. What was it? Was it notes? Was it notes on a lot of them? Notes.

Speaker 1 It was notes on arrival.

Speaker 1 You did?

Speaker 1 I'm not sure I got that email.

Speaker 1 No. But, you know, Arrival, I've seen, I don't know how many times.
I just think it's one of the best movies ever, ever. I mean, it's just incredible.
Thank you, Sean.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Thank you. So much good work.
My goodness. Thank you.

Speaker 1 That's it. That's it.
Yeah, that's the interview.

Speaker 2 Thank you for joining us. Bye.

Speaker 1 All right. I go back in the dark.
Bye. No, no, no.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it was pretty dramatic because I don't. I don't know you, gentlemen.
And it was a very intense conversation you were having about your common friend that

Speaker 1 I did.

Speaker 1 I feel the...

Speaker 1 It actually sounds more intense than it is. Like AFib, AFib doesn't cause a heart attack.
Untreated, it can cause a stroke, but AFib itself is not that serious. I'm told.
We are not a medical podcast.

Speaker 1 We are not giving any.

Speaker 2 I want a second opinion on all of this.

Speaker 2 It's just too common, these trips to the freaking

Speaker 1 emergency room.

Speaker 2 Anyway, well, you know, we're all of that age. Denny,

Speaker 2 you're near us, right? We're all in our mid-50s or close to it.

Speaker 2 All this shit starts to wobble a little bit. The nuts on the wheel start to get a little loose, right? And we all are.

Speaker 1 We are at the peak, and now we're starting slowly.

Speaker 1 Let's think that we're maybe plateauing. Before we get to the downhill, Denny, let's think that we're just enjoy a little bit of a plan.
We are on that plateau, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 Keep talking about this part. But we talk about it.
We end up talking about a lot of this stuff because Jason says, because it's happening and also we're friends.

Speaker 1 And it's i don't know about you guys it does seem like i said to sean the other day

Speaker 1 no life is in session right now yeah it does feel like in the world life is in session yeah for and and you have to i i've had a certain amount of not to get lately of of surrender to it and just like

Speaker 1 I can't fight it. I have to kind of go with the flow a little bit these days.
And I'm concerned about things with health and with family and friends.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I literally listed all the things Will's going through last night. He's like, oh, yeah, wow.
That's everybody.

Speaker 1 Nothing's happening to me. Life is just happening.
Yeah. And so, anyway, so Denny, you're catching us at a moment.

Speaker 1 This is about as philosophical as we get. Yeah, yeah.
But the thing is, that it's good that Sean is

Speaker 1 actually taking care of it and making tests. And because

Speaker 1 the bad thing is when you have a surprise that comes out of nowhere. Oh, God.
And that as I like, I lost a friend of mine that was like 58, Jean-Marc Valley, the director of a Dyer's Buyers Club.

Speaker 1 And just

Speaker 1 biggest surprise. He was a healthy guy.
He just fell on the floor, bang.

Speaker 1 And it seems that it's good that

Speaker 1 at least you know you are taking care of it. There's someone say it's also going to be good.
Yeah, you have, and that gives you perspective, right? When you have that sort of, when you get that

Speaker 1 contrast, when you see that happen, and these guys know I lost my friend, my dear friend Jeremy last year quite suddenly as well.

Speaker 1 He wasn't even,

Speaker 1 I guess he was, had just turned 53

Speaker 1 at the time. And it was very sudden.
And

Speaker 1 it really does, it really puts everything in perspective a little bit, you know. For me, it did.
I don't know about you with losing your friend, but the perspective is. Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 1 It's a big shocking. The thing is that the doctor said what is shocking and what we don't accept is that people actually have days of preemption.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's a sometimes we are meant to be of a certain length and sometimes some people are meant to live less long.

Speaker 1 It's shocking, but it's true. And expiration date.
Yeah. Yeah, expiration date.

Speaker 1 I was doing French. Sorry.

Speaker 1 That depends on.

Speaker 2 Well, somebody put it well the other day to me. They said, life is a journey.
Death is a destination.

Speaker 1 You know, and it's true because we're all going there. That's true.
That's true.

Speaker 2 And it's like, what do you do?

Speaker 2 What do you do with your time?

Speaker 2 Are we using our time correctly? We're at that age where we are sort of past the midway point. We're at that age where you start losing your parents and mortality really comes into focus.

Speaker 2 And have you used your time well to this point? And what are you going to do with your remaining time?

Speaker 1 A wonderful theme in all of Denny's work. Yes, exactly.
But it's a theme that

Speaker 1 is one of the main themes of Arrival. And that's one of the things that I loved about the short story.
It was based on The Story of Your Life written by Ted Chang. That is a little masterpiece.

Speaker 1 And it's about, yeah, living

Speaker 1 to the present time to make the best out of it and not to be afraid of living because of the fear of death.

Speaker 1 And that I thought was a nice thing in this movie.

Speaker 1 In the short story, sorry.

Speaker 1 First of all,

Speaker 1 I didn't know it was based on a short story, Sean. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 You have to read the short story. The short story is a masterpiece.
It's like 28 pages or something written by Teng Chuang,

Speaker 1 a very, very strong sci-fi writer. And

Speaker 1 it's a little gem.

Speaker 1 I'm going to look it up today. And I also think just hearing you say that reminds me of, it's really brought into focus

Speaker 1 to,

Speaker 1 and it seems almost elementary, like kind of so obvious, but you've got to tell the people you love that, that you love them and you've got to make the most of those.

Speaker 1 It's not about living the most remote, like I'm going to go out and I'm going to parachute today or whatever.

Speaker 1 It's more that go and spend time and tell the people you love that you love them and be as loving as possible.

Speaker 1 And I've really been...

Speaker 1 I think so too. You know, I just saw this thing, Willie, everybody, that the the pastor was saying at a commemorate, what is it called, a speech at a college, a commencement speech.

Speaker 1 And he said, when you're, he goes, I've seen thousands of people die. I've been on the, you know, or hundreds or thousands or whatever he said, standing next to them on their deathbed.

Speaker 1 And he goes, not one person said in their last breath, bring me all my awards. I want to see my awards one more time.

Speaker 1 Bring me my certificate from college. I just want to hold it one more time.
And he said, what people ask for are the people that they love, like Will was just saying. And that's the only thing.

Speaker 1 They don't say, bring me all

Speaker 1 the stuff I've made. They're so

Speaker 1 all the achievements I've made. They say, I love the people I love.
Yeah. Yeah.
And that's it.

Speaker 2 Well, Danny, so, so

Speaker 2 I imagine you get access to some of the greatest writers, stories, ideas, scripts.

Speaker 2 Is there, it must be hard to pick. And is there something that jumps out at you quickest when a project

Speaker 2 comes before you? You know,

Speaker 2 if it's a story about mortality or the human condition or just the human part of something.

Speaker 2 Is there something that that you really like to make movies about, sort of a through line that exists in everything?

Speaker 1 It's a good question, because

Speaker 1 through

Speaker 1 the movies I've made, I always have the weird impression sometimes that the movie are choosing me more than is it like the project comes and there's something a connection that is sometimes difficult to explain, that is very intimate with the project.

Speaker 1 But recently I have been more drawn towards books that

Speaker 1 books that have been with me since a long time, like the Dune books, the books that I read when I was a teenager, and those books have deep roots. in my

Speaker 1 mind, in my soul, and those books have been with me through

Speaker 1 the years.

Speaker 1 And I know that because i have a relationship of decades with the these books i know that it it it means something so deep that i i it makes sense to spend years trying to adapt them i will have the same uh i have the same relationship with the book that i i i um i'm starting to work on uh an adaptation of arthur clarke rendezvous with rama which is a a space

Speaker 1 movie that takes place

Speaker 1 in space it's a book that i've read when i was very young again it's a book that stayed with me through through the years. And

Speaker 1 when they have roots like that, it's a but to answer to your questions, yeah, existentials movie about the question about our

Speaker 1 why are we here?

Speaker 1 I love that.

Speaker 2 And then is it, is it, but is it, is it somewhat daunting to, you know, especially with books that you, that you love, that you've had as a part of you for so long, is it, is it brutal to try to adapt those?

Speaker 2 Because, you know, most books are too long to fit inside of a 120-page page script and so you've got to get rid of a lot of stuff now with dune fortunately you were able to break it up into two parts and uh the second one was the second half of the book um massively

Speaker 2 as opposed to a sequel so it's just you broke the book up into into two films which is incredible the third one potentially three right well the third coming up right is a is a is a brand new story um

Speaker 1 is the second book that will be the adaptation of Dune Messiah, which is the second book.

Speaker 1 The two first movies movies were about that first book, Dune.

Speaker 1 It is.

Speaker 1 The first artist I've approached when I decided to make this adaptation was Ans Zimmer, because I was just out of a movie with him, and I absolutely adore working with him on Blade Runner.

Speaker 1 He's amazing, yeah. 2049.

Speaker 1 Heard Tracy, that's the composer, Hans Zimmer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Why did you choose the composer first?

Speaker 1 Because I knew that I will need

Speaker 1 the score in Dune will be essential, will be absolutely crucial to the success of the movie, to bring that kind of sacred quality that I wanted. And also because it's like

Speaker 1 it's a matter of context. I was working with Ans.
He asked me what will you do next.

Speaker 1 And we were talking about Dune and I saw his face change because it's his favorite book too.

Speaker 1 And we start to talk about it.

Speaker 1 and the brainstorm about it. And Ants said to me that he had not seen the David Lynch movie because he wanted to stay pure, a virgin.

Speaker 1 He didn't want to see, he said that one day I know I'm going to make the score for a new adaptation. I want to know nothing about what has been done.
I want to stay.

Speaker 1 Why am I talking about this is because

Speaker 1 Ant right at the beginning said, but is it a good idea? to tackle to the to get close to a

Speaker 1 teenager dream to try to bring to the screen something that is so dear into our hearts and it is dangerous.

Speaker 1 You're meant to fail. You're going to fail.

Speaker 1 It's like you have to accept that you're going to fail, that you will be able to bring a little bit of it, a part of that dream on screen, and the rest will be far away from it.

Speaker 1 And that space between what you achieve, what you were able to bring, and the things that are different means that I have

Speaker 1 space to grow and to

Speaker 1 get better, to make another movie. If I had absolutely succeeded, then I'd be in deep trouble.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean,

Speaker 1 by that measure, Denis, by that measure, it would seem that if you were to look at it, trying to hit that target of that dream, of a teenage dream, if you will, if you were to do that to the letter, to the number, to be exact, that would be, in effect, the failure, because the success would be everything beyond that, the unknown that you would bring in that's new, right?

Speaker 1 Like that idea.

Speaker 1 I wonder if,

Speaker 1 you know, I think about the films that you've made, and they have such scope to them.

Speaker 1 There's a sort of an epic nature to all of them. I'm such a, like Sean, I'm and Jason, I'm such a massive fan of your films.
And

Speaker 1 I wonder,

Speaker 1 they're so ambitious, visually,

Speaker 1 storytelling-wise, all of it, musically,

Speaker 1 all those elements. They are very ambitious.
They are very big. And

Speaker 1 was there a moment when you were young when you saw a certain film or a certain type of film and you said, that's.

Speaker 1 Because for me, and Jason, you may be able to answer this too, as a director, are there moments where you go, this is where I want to go? Like, this is the kind of thing that inspires me.

Speaker 1 I remember that one of the first movie that had a big impact on me was an exploit on TV, frankly, was 2001, A Space Odyssey.

Speaker 1 When I saw that film, I was like, oof, that really was like almost a trauma at first.

Speaker 1 To see those hapes

Speaker 1 being afraid of that sculpture in the middle of the desert, it was so frightening and strange and poetic and powerful images.

Speaker 1 I will say that

Speaker 1 discovering the work when I was young,

Speaker 1 discovering the work of Steven Spielberg.

Speaker 1 It was

Speaker 1 through Close Encounter of the Third Kind. That's a movie that really blew my mind when I was a kid.
Totally. Also, when I saw Blade Runner the first time, that is another one.

Speaker 1 The original Blade Runner. That was something that I really.

Speaker 1 And I'm a Star Wars generation. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The first movie that

Speaker 1 I asked my parents to see in the theater the first time I said, I want to see that.

Speaker 1 Usually they were bringing me to the theater, but first time I said, I would love to see that. Looking at my dad's newspaper, it was Star Wars.
And that was something that changed.

Speaker 1 I remember the

Speaker 1 oomph, the energy coming out of this movie. It was incredible at the time.
I was 10 years old, like probably you. I was like the target audience.

Speaker 1 I mean, I was like, it was the impact of that film was insane. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And we will be right back.

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Speaker 2 Well, you know, something that

Speaker 2 I love about, I think 2001 might be my favorite film. And the thing that I think really draws me to it time and time again is not only the music,

Speaker 2 but the,

Speaker 2 and his composition, et cetera.

Speaker 2 But something that I just realized while you were talking that it does so well, that your films do incredibly well, is, as Will said, your scope, your scope, your ability to

Speaker 2 cinematically capture scope and scale in the obvious large scale, but in also in the internal scale as well,

Speaker 2 the massive scope of a human's internal experience in a certain story. Like there are things that are incredibly small and intimate that goes on in

Speaker 2 2001, as well as the obvious external large scope of space and

Speaker 2 these machines and et cetera.

Speaker 2 Talk a little bit about

Speaker 2 your ability to capture that and the departments that you're drawn to in filmmaking that allow for you to travel as wide on the internal journey of a character as well as the external of these massive undertakings that you do from

Speaker 2 from a production standpoint.

Speaker 1 I think that scope and visual effects and things like it's not that difficult.

Speaker 1 I think that the thing that is a challenge that I'm focusing a lot on set is to try to make sure that the emotional journeys of the actors, of the characters are authentic.

Speaker 1 People are talking to me about intimacy, but I think it's more it's

Speaker 1 everybody, all the directors are trying to

Speaker 1 bring the intimacy, the inner world of the actors, of the characters, sorry,

Speaker 1 their inner journey on screen, but it's about the inner logic, the authenticity of that journey to make sure that it feels like

Speaker 1 genuine human reactions. And

Speaker 1 I think that's where the strong emotional impact comes from when you feel that there's something that feels real, that feels like you can relate to.

Speaker 1 And it sounds obvious, but specifically in sci-fi, I feel that very often characters are not, they don't behave like real humans.

Speaker 1 It's a personal

Speaker 1 sensation sometimes that I have. It can be two dimensional.

Speaker 1 And it's it's coming yeah, maybe it's it's just like I I uh coming from the documentary, I did documentaries when I w I was young. I I um

Speaker 1 it's something that I think that I I'm really focusing

Speaker 1 as I'm writing, when I write or when I I I'm I read the screenplay or when I'm I'm r r

Speaker 1 I participate uh the writing process of a screenplay, I I try to focus on and and with the actors as well, to make sure that that journey is feels like grounded,

Speaker 1 has roots in something real. So when Amy Adams see the aliens, we believe it because it feels genuine.
It feels like

Speaker 1 a real human reaction. Does it make sense? Well, you did.
Yeah, well,

Speaker 1 Jason, you kind of brought it up about that inner, and then you were just touching on it. I was thinking about specifically

Speaker 1 Stella Scargard character in the two Dune films, yeah? As this,

Speaker 1 I forget his character's name. Yeah, the Baron Arkanen, yeah.
Yeah, and he's this, he's this, I mean, he's this incredible villain of all villains in a way.

Speaker 1 He's this sort of despicable person who does the most, sometimes capable of the most awful things.

Speaker 1 And yet you see, in that moment when he's, you see him eyeing the throne, and

Speaker 1 the throne is available, that moment you see he's not just a bad guy like Jabba the Hutt, not to make the comparison or talk down, but you see the envy, you see the desire for that, the thirst, the hunger for it, to reach with his eyes or reaching for it, could it be mine?

Speaker 1 In this way that's almost Shakespearean, yeah, and but very real and human, too.

Speaker 1 I found that shot of him when you cut to him, I found that very alarming. Yeah,

Speaker 1 well, you're making my day.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much because you're the first one who's talking about that moment. It's exactly this idea of addiction to power.
The man is about to die, but still the idea that he could get closer to

Speaker 1 power is like a human addiction. I'm really, thank you very much for pointing that.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 there are components to building a moment like that that you're just uniquely...

Speaker 2 incredible at in your ability to to balance all departments to create that moment.

Speaker 2 And so for our listeners out there that aren't as familiar with

Speaker 2 what happens on set and the sequencing of things, talk a little bit about how you approach a moment like that where you know that it needs to have the authenticity of sort of the human condition to counterbalance this crazy odd sort of space world, nether world

Speaker 2 that's not really that

Speaker 2 tangible, but the human emotion is. And so that needs to be real while this other stuff is not that real.

Speaker 2 And are you thinking I'm fully reliant on the actor to really ground this with no acting and just being raw?

Speaker 1 Or

Speaker 2 do you predetermine a certain visual language, a certain piece of music from Hans, a certain bit of sound design from your mixers?

Speaker 2 Like, you know, there's so many different elements that you can do to build a moment just perfectly like that.

Speaker 1 Talk a little bit about that. It's a very good question.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 All shots are different from that specific moment where the baron is like lying on on the on the stairs it's a character for those who haven't seen the movie it's a character that that is just about to die and see suddenly the throne the king is left the throne and the throne is up the stairs and he's looking at the this the throne and is crawling towards it

Speaker 1 And with a moment like that,

Speaker 1 I will say it's a very simple image. So it's about Stellen.

Speaker 1 I explained to Stellen the idea and Stellan Skarzgaard, who plays the Baron, will perform and bring that

Speaker 1 to life. Sometimes I will say that the camera angles and the camera movement can help

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 enhance or

Speaker 2 elevate.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
That's why I'm here.

Speaker 1 Elevate it. That's why you bring force into an idea.
The camera is always very powerful, but

Speaker 1 the the the birth of the idea is uh acting of course yeah yeah that's cool but but let's say perhaps especially in this and to answer to that the about music it's something for me that it's a power

Speaker 1 it's very music is super powerful and but i try to not think about it as i'm shooting because uh uh it needs to be on screen first

Speaker 1 it's something that well i had a question about that well

Speaker 2 let me just finish this one point though sorry um but so uh while the music can come and does come much later in the process, the assets you may need on the set to create the visual of it, i.e.

Speaker 2 a techno crane or whatever it is that you want to shoot that scene in a certain way,

Speaker 2 you need to have a lot of that stuff predetermined so that you've you've got your crane there that day and

Speaker 2 your riggers have set up the lighting in such a way, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 So how do you manage the balance between having an actor have the freedom that you want to give them, but also fit inside sometimes a very technical and pre-thought and heavily prepped visual sequence that you need them to fit inside of, hit this mark, react this way, turn this direction, you know, to fit something that may have other departments all predetermined?

Speaker 1 It depends. A good example will be the sandworm riding, where Timothy Chalemé playing Paula 3Ds will

Speaker 1 attract a sandworm and then when the sandworm arrives nearby him he will jump on the worm and ride the worm. So it's a sequence that is like heavily storyboarded

Speaker 1 and needs a month of prep.

Speaker 1 And at this moment the let's say that the choreography that

Speaker 1 I impose

Speaker 1 I'm more of a dictator, I impose a rhythm, a precise choreography that Timote has to follow. But inside that choreography, there are tiny moments where Tsimati, when I'm in close-up on him,

Speaker 1 how he can anticipate the arrival of this beast toward him, the way you can act with his eyes, or there's tiny thing in the micro-precisions of acting that he can bring.

Speaker 1 I mean, that I'm open to ideas, but general, sometimes it's more loose.

Speaker 1 Some sequences

Speaker 1 there's more space for the actor, and those are also I love when

Speaker 1 i have time to um

Speaker 1 give space yeah to the actress to to let them freestyle bring some ideas to breathe to to uh to bring some ideas i'm talking about the uh the the the settings of a scene it's it's it's gonna be um that uh it's gonna it's it's very inspiring when when when when people bring good ideas but yeah but complicated sometime when you when you have stuff that's predetermined and then you've got an actor that's got different ideas and it's like well no no no we can't this isn't one of those scenes where you can freestyle you guys

Speaker 1 no exactly. But at the same time, it requires tremendous acting skills to be able to

Speaker 1 perform and to bring life to like Timate facing the worm or any Adams facing the aliens or to be in a relationship with something that doesn't exist.

Speaker 1 It requires nice imagination and

Speaker 1 it's not easy for actors to perform in those movies with big toys and all these things. And

Speaker 1 to answer to your first part of your question about techno cranes or dollies or etc., cetera, those

Speaker 1 it's all planned

Speaker 1 in advance. As when I built the scene, it's all drawn, prepared.
So we know exactly what kind of technology we'll use on the day, of course. Aaron Powell,

Speaker 2 was there a lot of green screen versus volume stage on Dune 1 and 2?

Speaker 2 Did you use any of the volume stages? Was it all green? Was there a split happening?

Speaker 1 Was it all practical? We were almost as possible outside in the real environment or

Speaker 1 with real sets.

Speaker 1 We built as much as we could

Speaker 1 or we were in the real environments in the desert.

Speaker 1 And those landscapes

Speaker 1 for the people who have been in

Speaker 1 the landscape that have

Speaker 1 that are bigger than life, that bring humility inside you, the impact on those landscapes is tremendous on the actors and myself.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I watched the whole whole behind the scenes, all of it, all of the Dune. You know, both Dunes.

Speaker 1 I couldn't consume enough of it. It was just, I was just blown away with how it's made.
And one

Speaker 1 dumb question I have is when people are walking in the sand and it's the first print footprints in the sand,

Speaker 1 that's one tape. Like, how do you, how do you do that?

Speaker 1 Do you know what I mean? You're going to love show business. You're going to love show business.
Nobody so much. It's a red crew.

Speaker 1 It required

Speaker 1 a certain amount. We can erase footsteps in the background, things like that with CGI, but

Speaker 1 you cannot have an actor walking in their own footsteps again because that's a nightmare for VFX.

Speaker 2 So you have a crew with rakes?

Speaker 1 So it means that

Speaker 1 we have to plan to find areas where we will each take, move the camera,

Speaker 1 put the camera on a dolly and move

Speaker 1 to make sure that we have the perfect

Speaker 1 place to do five or six or seven or eight takes that we will also uh uh have the the crew will have the discipline not to make any footsteps on the other way we choose it's it's it feels it sounds simple but it's not it's like uh when you have a crew of 800 people in the in the sand to uh to make sure that everybody follow the same path and and

Speaker 1 and that it gives the opportunity to see crazy things like every night when i was going back from the set when i had sunset the the the there were 100 people brooming the the sand dunes to remove the footsteps that had made.

Speaker 1 So the wind will do his work during the night. And it's very poetic.

Speaker 1 That I felt, oh my God, I might make it a man. Yeah,

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 people grooming the place are sweeping the sand.

Speaker 1 Believe me, I've had the same thought.

Speaker 1 Jason made some footsteps in the sand and he yelled at his caddy. He said, You missed a footprint

Speaker 1 when he was playing golf. He's a real monster.

Speaker 1 But Denny, you know,

Speaker 1 when I was thinking about, you were talking about the actors actors and

Speaker 1 asking them to have imagination and working with them on all these thoughts and this inner life and stuff.

Speaker 1 And I was thinking about the collaboration that you've had with a bunch of different actors across a bunch of your films. You've used,

Speaker 1 and worked, not used, you've worked with lots of people in different roles.

Speaker 1 I was trying to think

Speaker 1 who was, well, certainly our friend Josh Brolin, you've worked with a lot.

Speaker 1 I think starting in Sicario, Sicario,

Speaker 1 which I want to get into. That's a great one, yeah.
Which is an incredible. I urge anybody, if you've never seen Sicario, to please see that.
Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 1 It's so phenomenal. Thanks.

Speaker 1 Jake Gyllenhall, you've worked with a couple of times, I think,

Speaker 1 with Prisoners.

Speaker 2 Emily Blunt.

Speaker 1 And then our good friend Emily.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you've had a lot of repeat collaborators.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's all about the nature of the project and the parts are reminds her. It's a bit boring, but a

Speaker 1 yeah, I I wish I could work with uh all of them again to

Speaker 1 do it and and uh but it's it's just

Speaker 1 but it's uh it's a it's a thing that uh honestly I I adore working in in the United States, it's to have access to uh

Speaker 1 all of these uh incredible actors. I mean, it's like uh and it's casting is very strange.
I mean, it's uh

Speaker 1 you you um

Speaker 1 bring someone uh uh on and uh it's intuitions about the the the proximity of

Speaker 1 an actor and a role. And

Speaker 1 it's a gamble in some ways. But

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 Can I go back?

Speaker 1 Just one really quick question about the music, because I thought that was interesting. You said you were talking to Hans

Speaker 1 before you started. And do you listen to cues or music before you even

Speaker 1 start thinking about how you're going to film it to get ideas? Or writing? Do you envision stuff from listening to music? Or

Speaker 1 do you wait to incorporate it later? I'm going to be very honest. Every time I

Speaker 1 write

Speaker 1 or direct listening to music, and that's why I say music, I'm very sensitive to music. I absolutely love music, but it has like,

Speaker 1 you know, I remember once, one of my first films, I was directing a specific scene and as I was like alone in my bubble with my headphones listening to this fantastic piece of music and I was saying to myself it's gonna be amazing.

Speaker 1 Whoa, it's gonna, whoa, it's gonna extract.

Speaker 1 It's the power of music. You know, then you look at this thing with all the music like, hmm.

Speaker 1 And the same with writing. Sometimes I write something and I get emotional.
I'm like, oh my God.

Speaker 1 Maybe I'm great. And then you read it the next morning.
It's like, no, it's the music. Maybe.

Speaker 1 It sounds stupid, but

Speaker 1 it's the truth. I cannot work with music.
I work with silence. Then I can try to...

Speaker 1 And silence is my friend. I love...
My sets are very boring.

Speaker 1 I'm not a funny director.

Speaker 1 I'm someone who loves

Speaker 1 to be...

Speaker 1 When I get in the car in the morning, it's total silence. I need silence.
I arrive on set. I need silence.
And I try to protect that bubble all day long. That's where I can.

Speaker 1 find my way. When there's music, I'm gone.
It's too powerful.

Speaker 1 And this is why, to answer to your questions, it's like

Speaker 1 even I have music from

Speaker 1 the past movies right now.

Speaker 1 I cannot listen to this music. It's too powerful.
Oh, yeah, you introduced me to Max Richter because

Speaker 1 I never heard of him. And then I was like, what is incredible? It's so powerful.

Speaker 2 Staying with music, though,

Speaker 2 where for you

Speaker 2 does

Speaker 2 the score

Speaker 2 and the sound design begins?

Speaker 2 Talk to us about that process for you and when does it happen?

Speaker 1 First of all, yeah, it has to, I try to think about the sound and the structure of the sound design as much as possible in the screenplay.

Speaker 1 And I know

Speaker 1 as I'm writing that I will need music there, there, I will create a sequence, musical sequence more. It's something that is embedded in the DNA of the screenplay.

Speaker 1 But then when we edit the film,

Speaker 1 there's like I'm working with an editor, Joe Walker, who is a master that Joe is coming from, was

Speaker 1 studied as a composer. He was a composer first, then he did sound at the BBC

Speaker 1 as a sound editor. So where I'm going is that sound, what I love and one of the reasons I started to work with Joey, we made many movies together,

Speaker 1 is that for him

Speaker 1 sound is as important as the image. And it's something that when I was making indie movies, I felt that the sound was coming at the end of the process and with very little time.

Speaker 1 And I was always kind of disappointed not having the proper time to make a real embedded sound design and so now i try to bring the sound as early and as possible so it's like as i'm shooting there we uh we have a sound designers that start to create the specifically with sci-fi to create the sounds that will be fed to the editing room very early on on so i i'm i'm these sounds uh time to

Speaker 1 live with them and make sure that they will endure the test of time and

Speaker 1 and get used to them and make sure that they are right through time. It's not just flashes, that are last-minute flashes.

Speaker 1 And it gives of course more time to explore, experiment.

Speaker 1 And so the sound is something that is

Speaker 1 again

Speaker 1 as important as the image. And

Speaker 1 with

Speaker 1 Johan Johansson and Anzemmer, both composers, we're flirting close to

Speaker 1 the sound design sometimes, meaning that the music, sometimes

Speaker 1 there's like a dance that I install between the designers and the composer that they will flirt and cross sometimes the border of one of each other. And for that it needs communication.

Speaker 2 But that sound design is embedded prior to you spotting with the composer and figuring out where you're going to put some of the music.

Speaker 2 So it's the sound design first then, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I will say that it depends on the sequence. Sometimes I said to the team, here is Ans.

Speaker 1 Ans Zimmer is not known to be subtle. When he

Speaker 1 invade

Speaker 1 the soundtrack, it means there's no... So there are some moments where we say, okay, that's the area.
I said, here it's going to be,

Speaker 1 we go full ants, or here we go. See, it's trying to find the right balance between what the sequence, the scene needs.

Speaker 1 It's about the needs. It's the movie that guides me.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 2 And now back to the show.

Speaker 1 Can we just touch on Sicario for another moment, if we could? Because I'm.

Speaker 1 And just talk about how that came,

Speaker 1 how that came to be, how that came into you, into your purview, and what sort of led you.

Speaker 1 I don't know, there's something about that film that I find I just adore.

Speaker 1 So visceral.

Speaker 1 I've been very

Speaker 1 interested by

Speaker 1 the border between the United States and Mexico. I thought it was like a very meaningful

Speaker 1 place in the world about our reality, about it. It was very and

Speaker 1 I was looking for, I was reading about it, I was looking for a project

Speaker 1 that will be for a story, something that will allow me to explore that zone. And came into my hands at one point.
I read a lot, but one project came called Sicario written by Taylor Sheridan.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the great Taylor Sheridan. The Terridan is well known now for all the work he's done, but at that time it was one of his first screenplay.

Speaker 1 And still today, it is by far, by far, one of the best screenplay I ever read. Wow.

Speaker 1 The amount of research that Taylor had done to bring that world to life.

Speaker 1 The best compliment I have about Sicario is when I meet border officers or people that police policemen or

Speaker 1 DEA officers that people work at the border who saw Sicario and said, that's the real deal. And honestly, it is because of the work that Taylor had done.
He had done his own works.

Speaker 1 And when you were reading the screenplay, you knew you were in front of something that felt authentic. Very, very strong screenplay.

Speaker 1 I remember reading it, and I was like, the screenplay was so intense.

Speaker 1 I finished the screenplay, I was drained of energy. I was like, oh my God, I love it.
I'm so sad that I love this so much. I will have to go in the dark.

Speaker 1 And I was just out of three very dark movies in a row and I was able to go back there. But

Speaker 1 it was exactly what I was looking for. And it's by far the movie that was the fastest process.
I read the screenplay, met the

Speaker 1 studio, we got along spontaneously and we did the casting. It went bang.
I was behind the camera with Roger Dickens. It was like one of the fastest projects I ever made.

Speaker 1 And still to this day, it's a very nice shoot because there was like just a nice balance between the budget and the the subject and and uh uh it went uh quite uh it was a nice shoot. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I just wanna say, JB, I wanna get your point, which is I just wanna touch on the the great Taylor Sheridan.

Speaker 1 I I again I it you can tell I I I never read the script, but you could tell the material was so strong.

Speaker 1 Uh it really comes through all you know, not just obviously the visual and the way the film is is incredible, but also that the material was was really strong. I think it was pretty

Speaker 1 I had crazy ideas. I mean, like that border shoot, that slow-motion car chase at the border.

Speaker 1 Great ideas, great. Taylor is amazing to write cinema.
Very cinematic ideas.

Speaker 1 With great dialogues, with great characters, but very strong sense of cinema. And

Speaker 1 I'm still grateful that I had a chance to bring that on screen.

Speaker 2 That shootout you mentioned there at the border is one of the most tense things I've ever seen. Yes.

Speaker 2 Probably ever will see. And, you know, there's,

Speaker 2 you know, there's obviously great planning that goes into something like that because it's just so intricate.

Speaker 2 But I guess that's my question. How much planning did go into something like that? And just more generally, when you're working and

Speaker 2 your visual taste, your aesthetic, your sense of composition and whatnot is just unmatched.

Speaker 2 And you're working with your equals in cinematography with people like Roger Dinkins and Greg Frazier. And

Speaker 2 when you sit down and you start to shot design and shot list and pre-vis and all that stuff in prep and decide how you're going to actually photograph something,

Speaker 2 what is the relationship with cinematographers like that that are so accomplished and so

Speaker 2 in a good way opinionated?

Speaker 2 What's the back and forth that goes there?

Speaker 2 Do you let them know kind of what you're seeing and look for them to kind of plus that? Or is it the other way around?

Speaker 2 Do you let them start to design things and then you let them know whether that fits inside your plan?

Speaker 1 It's a sequence like that battle sequence, for instance, has to be planned months in advance because it's a puzzle.

Speaker 1 Different parts have been shot in different places and you have to create a piece of highway with

Speaker 1 all these cars. It has to be very, very well planned according to sun positions and

Speaker 1 so it's storyboarded and and uh um

Speaker 1 of course uh working with uh someone like uh

Speaker 1 Roger Dickens will have a will have a strong input.

Speaker 1 That's what I love. It's like a collaboration.
I mean, it's like we will find together

Speaker 1 the right angle according to the board that I did. But

Speaker 1 I'm always open if someone has a better idea on set that will make the shot even stronger.

Speaker 1 The thing I love working with Roger is that we both are, when we are looking for a shot, looking for the angle, not multiple angle, but one, and we work, we used to work with one camera and just making sure that

Speaker 1 that's something that

Speaker 1 search for the best angle possible is something that with a you're only working with one camera really really uh loved on sikariu yes it's a it's a only one wow

Speaker 1 no no it's i i i will say it's because

Speaker 1 i'm monomaniac and it's something that roger has We try once to put a second camera on one and it was a disaster. I mean you feel it.
You know it's not right.

Speaker 1 It's like there's one place to put the camera and the rest is a. We are both

Speaker 1 on a movie like Doom. Sometimes

Speaker 1 there was

Speaker 1 additional cameras. It's because of the nature of the piece I didn't have the choice and Greg Fraser had that flexibility to

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 I will say it's I have four cameras on me right now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and we wish it was zero. And we wish it was zero.
We wish is there a possibility to do zero? No, because I want to make sure to get it. Denis, I want to say,

Speaker 1 I was thinking about

Speaker 1 your films and your filmography, all the things that you've done. And they've

Speaker 1 not only have they been epic, as we've discussed before, and had tremendous scope,

Speaker 1 but also they've been, you've tackled a lot of

Speaker 1 I don't want to say that they're dark, but there is darkness there.

Speaker 1 you challenge people in that in the sort of the darker realms certainly some of your your earlier films and your canadian films that these guys might not know about but

Speaker 1 i'm thinking about polytechnique which is about the montreal massacre which is uh which was a terrible incident in montreal in 1989 i was there at i was in montreal that at that time you were yeah yeah and um i was living there and and and i

Speaker 1 Those films were,

Speaker 1 as I mentioned before, prisoners and enemy and and then you get into even Sicario.

Speaker 1 These are heavier

Speaker 1 subjects that you're tackling. My question is,

Speaker 1 when's the rom-com? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Actually,

Speaker 1 my first feature film was some kind of a rom-com. Wisdom or not? Yeah, it's not a good one, but it was.

Speaker 1 She did lose her life at the end, but

Speaker 1 actually he dies.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Hopeless.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 it is one of the reasons when I did Secario,

Speaker 1 I knew Arrival was coming after. And I did Sicario knowing that I will make a movie with more light.

Speaker 1 And because I was like, it's true that I had made a series of films that were pretty violent and dark. And that is a,

Speaker 1 there's a toll to this. There's like a weight.

Speaker 1 and I needed to go toward. And I think that science fiction also helped me to go toward something like looking

Speaker 1 in the future, something that's more,

Speaker 1 there's more light there, I feel right now. So it's a

Speaker 2 please don't stop making the dark stuff, too, because there is an up.

Speaker 1 No, but seriously,

Speaker 2 there's an uplift and an excitement watching a filmmaker do things at your level, no matter what, what the genre, what the mood is.

Speaker 1 JB, would you agree that if somebody says there's a new Denis Villeneuve film coming out, it doesn't matter what it's about.

Speaker 1 where do I line up thank you gentlemen you're very generous with me no it's true yeah yeah oh I'm gonna I'm gonna talk you when this is over yeah yeah

Speaker 2 well speaking of the of the earlier stuff let's ask Brolin let's ask Brolin for the real deal you should know are there any films are there any films from the beginning of your career that you would enjoy perhaps reshooting nowadays that knowing what you know now and and do not that you have any regrets but anything that which which I should phrase it differently which film from your past do you think would be most fun to to redo now that you know things now that you didn't know then wow that's a nice question uh do you know that uh the past movies are like uh you you you tell the father of those movies i i uh it's like i see movies sometimes as as a as a selfie of yourself see when you know when you look at pictures like picture of yourself when you were a teenager

Speaker 1 the shame yeah

Speaker 1 it's the hairdo and the clothes yeah yeah and i have that relationship with my past work you know sometimes i look at it and I'm like,

Speaker 1 totally. That's the truth.

Speaker 1 I would like to go back to my teenage years. Nope.

Speaker 1 Hey, how do you, how do you, Denise, how do you take care of yourself with these massive months-long shoots?

Speaker 2 Yeah, health-wise, or

Speaker 1 honestly, that, what, what, what, uh, very simply, I need good hours, sleeping hours. And one, one thing that I did on the past two movies, which was like

Speaker 1 advice and frag for from Ridley Scott because I said I asked Ridley how do you do it how do you how can you make

Speaker 1 say when I make a movie Ridley make three movies and he has a very high pacing and it's just the how to make sure that your hours shooting hours are regular that there's no and

Speaker 1 so I

Speaker 1 we do what we call French hours meaning we shoot 10 hours a day but without break no lunch no breaks so it means that the hours are always the same you always

Speaker 1 start the day at the same time and end the day, no overtime. So it's like it creates a balance in your schedule.
So you're not all content.

Speaker 2 You do that on every job.

Speaker 1 On the past jobs, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 I didn't do that on Blade Runner and I almost died. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, how are you on night shoots? Night shoots will kill people. I mean, literally, unfortunately, at times.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's about to create a balance in the schedule, trying to find a balance so you will protect the crew from being exhausted.

Speaker 1 Because for the people who don't know about shooting, it's just that the nature of

Speaker 1 the structure of the schedule, because of the turnaround of the actors, sometimes you end up starting your day in the middle of the afternoon and finishing late at night.

Speaker 1 So it's like being in constant jet lag. Yeah.
And it's not good for creativity.

Speaker 1 It's terrible for creativity. It's terrible.
Terrible, terrible.

Speaker 1 Knocking on an actor's trailer at 3 in the morning. We're ready for you.

Speaker 1 Or when they say they go, hey guys, it's lunch and it's 12 midnight. And you're like, I mean, lunch.
Yeah. This is not lunch.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 Are you land on set at 6 p.m. and say, hey, good morning and said, cut the crack.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Yeah.
Exactly.

Speaker 2 Danny, aside from the.

Speaker 1 Are you a Montreal Canadians fan? Is that what you're going to ask him? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 Well, it was part of it. It's like, aside from the good sleep,

Speaker 2 what's the other thing that you do to really sort of decompress and get away from the incredibly

Speaker 2 immersive work directing is?

Speaker 2 Do you watch something silly on TV?

Speaker 1 Are you you a sports do you watch hockey no but as i'm shooting honestly when i shoot i make i make a film it's a 24 hour seven days a week commitment there's no uh way to relax that's a for me it's a it's a it's a

Speaker 1 i'm i'm 100

Speaker 1 present to the project so there's no

Speaker 1 specifically a movie of the sci-fi movies it's it's every second

Speaker 1 not even sci-fi any movies i there's no uh the way i will recover from a movie is to go back home in Canada, in the forest, go with my family, spend time with the kids, with the family, and that's where I recharge my batteries.

Speaker 1 But during a shoot, during a shoot, there's no moment where I can, I know that. And it's that, yeah.
And because of that dedication,

Speaker 1 you will now have made, it will go down in history, Dune as a franchise, just like you loved Star Wars as a franchise as a kid. You created

Speaker 1 a franchise that will last forever

Speaker 1 in the minds of these kids. I would say I didn't do it thinking about the

Speaker 1 franchise. For me, it was I was making two movies

Speaker 1 and it was not,

Speaker 1 it's it there was no

Speaker 1 because franchise for me is always like something that is linked with commerce or like there's a plan for okay three great movies.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Three great movies that are connected.
No, but it's not it's not bad. It's just that I was not saying to myself, okay, I'm starting a franchise.
It'sn't you're going to be.

Speaker 1 I'm adapting this book in two movies and see what happened after that. But for the fans, we're so happy you're making three of them.

Speaker 1 But Sean, not only that, but also, does it ever occur to you, not unlike you looking at your father's newspaper and saying, please take me to this movie,

Speaker 1 it must be kind of cool knowing that there's somewhere there's a kid who said to his parents, please take me to Dune, please take me to Dune,

Speaker 1 who 10 years from now says, I want to study film,

Speaker 1 who makes a a film with people they know and makes a big huge film and they do it because they saw Dune when they were seven eight nine ten to to be inspiring in that way I think it's uh it must be very cool I don't know if it it had happened or something but it would be moving to think that

Speaker 1 people could be inspired.

Speaker 1 One thing for sure is that I made those movies. We were talking about darkness and violence earlier.
The movies were made

Speaker 1 for PG-13 instead of Rated R. It was the first time after, apart from arrival, all my other movies are for adults.

Speaker 1 This one, I insisted, I agreed with the studio also to make it PG-13 because I wanted the movie to be accessible to a younger audience that

Speaker 1 would have the same age as when I read the book.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I thought it was inspiring for me. And adults like me who have the brains of a a 13-year-old.

Speaker 1 Yeah, at best. Yeah, but for me, I like the idea that those movies are taking themselves seriously, meaning that they are sci-fi that

Speaker 1 doesn't apologize to be sci-fi.

Speaker 1 I remember when I saw The Empire Strikes Back when I was 13 years old, the impact of that movie on me. Yeah, yeah.
12 years old. Oh, God.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I thought the darkness of it, I felt that someone was talking to me as I was

Speaker 1 trusting me as a kid. And when Darth Vader said, I am your father, I was like, what would that feel like?

Speaker 1 Inside joke, just

Speaker 1 having a work.

Speaker 2 Well, Denny,

Speaker 2 you seem as kind as you are talented. I just can't thank you enough for talking to us three ding-dongs for an hour.

Speaker 1 It was a pleasure to chat with you this morning. Thank you, gentlemen.
A pleasure. Thank you very much for the invitation.
And thank you for your generosity as well. That means the world to me.

Speaker 2 Well, thank you, sir. Thank you.
Congratulations on all your great work. Please keep it coming.

Speaker 1 Take care. See you later.
All right.

Speaker 1 Good luck, Sean. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 2 Bye.

Speaker 2 Well, you got blessed by the great Danny Villeneuve. Sean, Sean, your prospects look good.

Speaker 1 He just said, keep basically like, hope you live. Yeah.
Yeah. From just

Speaker 1 Denny Villenov. He's, yeah.
I mean.

Speaker 1 Hey, hey, if you're, if you're, if you're out there and you're not familiar, and again,

Speaker 1 I know that we do like, we compliment our guests a lot because we have people on that we like and we respect and we get shit for sometimes. You guys just, all you do is compliment.

Speaker 1 Well, we like to compliment people who are really good at what they do. And if you're not familiar who Denis Vilneuve is, and you're not familiar with his films for some reason.

Speaker 1 I really, this is true. I urge you to go and watch some of his films, all of his films, his Canadian films that he made and his current.

Speaker 1 He's just an incredible, I mean, JB is a doctor, right? Just stunning.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 There aren't many in his league. I think it's probably about, it ain't deeper than 10, and it's probably closer to five.

Speaker 1 No, and again, he made Brolin look good. You know what I mean? Oh, that's very hard to do.
I mean, think about that shows when I'm talking about it. Yeah, think how many cameras does it take.

Speaker 1 But he's really cool. He's

Speaker 1 so cool. Yeah, and you can tell he's in charge, which I love.

Speaker 1 Canadians are cool, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah. The accent I think he needs to work on a little bit.
He's from Des Moines.

Speaker 2 I think.

Speaker 1 No, he's not from Des Moines. No.
No, dummy.

Speaker 1 God.

Speaker 1 He's from, I think he's from Montreal. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Quebec.

Speaker 1 Montreal is in Quebec.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 He's not related to Jacques Villeneuve or

Speaker 2 Gilles Villeneuve.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 1 But I don't know who those people are.

Speaker 2 Those are Formula One drivers.

Speaker 1 Oh, excellent. Wonderful.
They were.

Speaker 1 You know what?

Speaker 1 Here he comes.

Speaker 1 I love that he brought Close Encounters up.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Why is that?

Speaker 1 Well, because when I remember that one moment when you all saw the movie, yeah.

Speaker 2 This is going to be so ladies that they saw.

Speaker 1 This is honestly.

Speaker 1 This is going to be so freaking when the little kid is standing there waving, waving to the aliens as they're leaving. He actually says out loud.
What does he say?

Speaker 1 Bye.

Speaker 1 Bye.

Speaker 1 Nice.

Speaker 1 Nice, buddy.

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