"Denis Villeneuve"

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Details at lowes.com slash terms subject to change. I wanted 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, this is the most serious cold to 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 in a rough place, but I have been.
A lot going on. And this saved me this morning.
After a few days. I love that.
You're saying you might not have made it to lunchtime. No, I wouldn't.
I wasn't going to take my own life, but 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? And is that why you took a little shower, a little self-care, combed your hair, put on a nice top.
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 you two ding-dongs.

Yeah.

And then the other three ding-dongs

who we work with as well,

Robin, Bennett, and Michael.

So 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.

And so let's try to make

other people's days

and let's get into

a nice fresh episode

of Smartless.

Smart.

Smart.

Smart. Smart.

Less.

Smart.

Less.

Oh, speaking of medical conditions.

I know, I can't even.

You don't want to talk about it?

We can talk.

I'm an open book.

I'll talk about anything.

Shawnee wakes up in the middle of the night

with his heart thingy. For everybody other than Tracy, the reminder is he's got an AFib situation, right? Yeah.
Which necessitates the paddles at the emergency room every once in a while. Right.
Resuscitates. 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. So you're replacing me on smartless? Well, no, or just your heart.
John, no, we thought about it for one second. We never even- Can we get you on a list? We didn't even do a deep dive.
We didn't do a deep dive. 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.
And Scotty wakes up later with a phone call from Sean from the ER saying, hey, buddy, I'm here. Just want to give you a heads up.
All good. So I guess it's kind of nice that he doesn't want to trouble Scotty and worry him.
JB, not once, twice. Yeah, in the same night.
I got cardioverted twice. So I went, and then Jimmy Kimmel calls me paddles, right, because of this.
Yeah. So paddles got it twice that night where my cardio...
And yeah, it's pretty scary. And yet you still made it out to dinner the following night.
Yeah, the same day. You weren't in a great place that night.
No, I was a little foggy. I was a little foggy.
Oh, yeah, of course you were. More so than usual.
You've been, you know, electrocuted twice. Yeah.
Your body had been, you know, that's a lot. So wild.
By the way, the nurse told me wild 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 do the paddles. You know, clear.
And the cop was like, he's like, I don't want it. I don't want to be put on her.
She's like, sir, no, everybody is put on her. He's like, nope, nope, I don't want it.
And she goes, I've never heard somebody scream so loud in my entire life. Huh? The guy got clear, gunk, and he was like, ah! Why, because it hurts when it's an electrical shock, right? Well, your whole body goes, it's like being tased.
Right. So wait, so the new under energy.
How do you know what it's like being tased? Sean tased. Sean tased.
That's your new name. It's not paddle, Sean tased.
All right, that's enough. Yeah, I mean, you got, weren't you tased once at an Indigo Girls concert or something? What's the story on that? You had parked your Subaru with all the stickers, co- and all that stuff.
You had parked. You were at...
We used to say in college for the Indigo Girls. You were in Bend, Oregon.
Okay, keep going, sorry. No, I said in college, and we'd say, if you take the N and the O out of Indigo Girls, it says, I dig girls.
Yeah. Thanks, everybody.
What a college. Now, was this, you were at Harvard?

What a college.

Hey, Sean, just to close the loop,

are you on the backside of figuring out this heart thing?

Yeah, I'm going today after this.

I just want to get, I want to say this.

All jokes aside, 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. Well, thanks.
And I want to make sure that you're okay. So are we doing, is there anything else? Yes, today I'm going to like a super specialist.
Okay. But what does that mean? You're going up into the thigh again.
Is it like, are we knocking you out again? Like, is this a major surgery? It's not surgery. It's just, it's like a two-hour procedure.
So it's not a general. It's just that the...
Or an hour. It's not even two hours.
It's an hour. You're getting the Twilight? Propofol.
Propofol, yeah. This is what's driving all of this.
You're so addicted to anesthesia. It's pretty beautiful.
I know. You know what happens to Mr.
Jackson, right?

Well, I'm not taking it to sleep.

Well, you know, slippery slope.

JB, you had it, right, when you got your thing?

What did I have?

When we had our things, when we all had our things looked at.

What happened?

When they went up our butts.

Oh, no, you mean a body scan?

Who looked at what?

A body scan?

No, you're talking about a colonoscopy, right?

Yeah, remember?

Yeah, that's just a twilight. Is that propofol? That's propofol.
Now, like the cop, I requested no anesthesia. The propofol.
Come on, keep it clean. We've got a respectable guest.
Yeah, come on. Respectable guest on deck.
Okay, well, let's hear it. Go to the intro, JB.
This is great. Hey, guys, fresh off the pages of Wikipedia comes his very special.
He always talks about his special intro that he does, and it turns out he looked at it. 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.
No, that's my wife's line. I don't, I've never, I never say I've done research on anything.
I know you don't. Man, today we have simply put one of our finest filmmakers living in the world.
Okay? His films have received 28 Academy Award nominations, taken home nine of them and grossed nearly $2 billion. Oh my God.
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. Guys, he's our perfect guest.
For Will, he's a Canadian. For me, he's a beast of a director.
And Sean,

he's a titan in the sci-fi world right now. Ladies and gentlemen, here he comes,

Denis Villeneuve.

No way!

You're kidding me.

You're kidding me.

I feel bad to interrupt your conversation.

I apologize for the mic.

I was learning a lot of dramatic things.

But it's not true.

It's incredible that you're here today, Denis. Put out the plastic, please.
You speak French. A little bit.
It's incredible. One cigarette, one mistress.
I took a coffee with my mistress. No, no, Denis.
What an absolute honor. This is my great pleasure to be with you.
I just wrote you an email, like a dorky email,

like three or four months ago.

I don't know if you guys...

You did?

Yes.

Hold on.

Do you know him?

No.

It's just a fan email.

Yeah, I just wrote you an email.

I was just like, oh my God.

He got it, but no comment.

That's right.

What was it?

Was it notes?

Was it notes on a lot of pictures?

It was notes on Arrival.

You did?

I'm not sure I got that email. No.
But, you know 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.
Yeah. So much good work.
My goodness. Thank you.
That's it. That's it.
Yeah, that's the interview. Thank you for joining us.
Bye now. All right.
I go back in the dark. No, no, no.
All right. Yeah, but it was pretty dramatic because I don't know you, gentlemen.
And it was a very intense conversation you were having about your common friend that is having a conversation today. It's not, I feel that.
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. We are not giving any...
I want a second opinion on all of this. It's just too common, these trips to the freaking...
I. Anyway, well, you know, we're all of that age.
Denny, you're near us, right? We're all in our mid-50s or close to it. All this shit starts to wobble a little bit.
The nuts on the wheels start to get a little loose, right? We arrive at that peak and now we're starting slowly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It starts to ache. Let's think that we're maybe plateauing.
Before we get to the downhill, Denny, let's think that we just enjoy a little plateau. We are on that plateau, yes, yes.
Keep talking about this part. But we'll 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. And I don't know about you guys.
It does seem like, I said to Sean the other day, life is in session right now. It does feel like in the world, life is in session.
Yeah, for sure. And you have to, I've had a certain amount of, not to get lately, of surrender to it and just like, 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. Yeah, I literally listed all the things Will's going through last night.
He's like, oh yeah, wow. But everybody is.
Nothing's happening to me. Life is just happening.
Yeah. And so anyway, so Denny, you're catching us in a moment.
This is about as philosophical as we get. Yeah, yeah, that's it.
But the thing is that it's good that Sean is actually taking care of it and making tests. Because the bad thing is when you have a surprise that comes out of nowhere.
Oh, God, yeah. I lost a friend of mine that was like 58, Jean-Marc Vallée, the director of Dyer's Buyer's Club.
Ah, yes. And just biggest surprise, he was a healthy guy.
He just fell on the floor, bang. And it's good that at least you know you are taking care of it.
There's someone saying, so it's going to be good. Yeah, you have.
And that gives you perspective, right? When you have that sort of, when you get that contrast, when you see that happen, and these guys know I lost my dear friend Jeremy last year quite suddenly as well. He wasn't even, I guess he had just turned 53 at the time.
And it was very sudden. And 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. Absolutely, absolutely.
It was a big shock, yeah. The thing is that the doctor said, what is shocking and what we don't accept is that people actually have dates of preemption.
I mean, sometimes we are meant to be of a certain length and sometimes some people are meant to live less long. It's shocking, but it's true.
And expiration date. Yeah, expiration date.
I was doing French, sorry. Date de péremption.
Well, somebody put it well the other day to me. They said, life is a journey, death is a destination.
It's true because we're all going there. That is true.
And it's like, what do you do? What do you do with your time? Are we doing, are we using our time correctly? We're at that age where we are sort of at, you know, past the midway point where we're at that age where you start losing your parents and mortality really comes into focus. And have you used your time well to this point? And what are you going to do with your remaining time? And a wonderful in all of Denny's work.
Yes, exactly. It's a theme that is one of the main theme 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 Chiang.
That is a little masterpiece. And it's about living to the present time to make the best out of it and not to be afraid of living because of the fear of death.
And that I thought was a nice thing in this movie. In the short story, sorry.
First of all, I didn't know it was based on a short story, Sean. You knew that.
You have to read the short story. I will.
The short story is a masterpiece. It's like 28 pages or something, written by Ted Chiang, a very, very strong sci-fi writer.
And it's like, it's a little gem, yeah. 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 to, and it seems almost elementary, like kind of so obvious, but you got to tell the people you love that you love them. And you've got to make the most of those.
It's not about living the most of your moment. Like I'm going to go out and I'm going to parachute today or whatever.
It's more that go and spend time and tell the people you love that you love them and be as loving as possible. And I've really been...
I think so too. You know, I just saw this thing, Willie, everybody, that the pastor was saying at a commemorate, what is it called? A speech at a college, a commencement speech.
And he said, 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.
And he goes, not one person said in their last breath, bring me all my awards awards i want to see my awards one more time bring me bring me 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 they don't say bring me all this all the stuff that is so i love that all the achievements i've're the people I love. Yeah.
And that's it. Well, Danny, so I imagine you get access to some of the greatest writers, stories, ideas, scripts.
Is there, it must be hard to pick. And is there something that jumps out at you quickest when a project comes before you? You know, if it's a story about mortality or the human condition or just the human part of something.
Is there something that you really like to make movies about, sort of a through line that exists in everything? It's a good question because

through

the movies I've made, I always

have the weird impression sometimes that the movies are

choosing me more than us. It's like the project

comes and there's something, a connection that

is sometimes difficult to explain that is very

intimate with the project.

But recently

I've been more drawn towards

books that I've been with me since a long time, like the Dune books, the books that I read when I was a teenager. Those books have deep roots in my mind, in my soul.
Those books have been with me through the years, and I know that because I have a relationship of decades with these books, I know that it means something so deep that it makes sense to spend years trying to adapt them. I will have the same relationship with the book that I'm starting to work on, an adaptation of Arthur C.
Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama, which is a space, a movie that takes place in space. It's a book that I read when I was very young.
Again, it's a book that stayed with me through the years. When you have roots like that.
But to answer your questions, yeah, Existentials movie. About the question, about our why are we here.
I was going to say, yeah, right. I love that.
And then is it somewhat daunting to, you know, especially with books that you love, that you've had as a part of you for so long, is it brutal to try to adapt those? Because, you know, most books are too long to fit inside of a 120 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 massive 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 brand new story.

Yeah. which is incredible.
The third one potentially... Three, right? Well, the third coming up, right, is a brand new story.
It's the second book. That would be the adaptation of Dune Messiah, which is the second book.
The first movies were about that first book, Dune. It is...
The first artist I've approached when I decided to make this adaptation was Hans Zimmer because I was just just out of a movie with him, and I absolutely adore working with him on Blade Runner. He's amazing, yeah.
In 2049. For Tracy, that's the composer Hans Zimmer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why did you choose the composer first? Because I knew that I would need, the score in Dune will be 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 a matter of context I was working with Hans he asked me what will you do next and we were talking about Dune and I saw his face change because it's his favorite book, too.
And we start to talk about it and brainstorm about it. And Hans said to me that he had not seen the David Lynch movie because he wanted to stay pure, a virgin.
He didn't want to see. He said, one day I know I'm going to make the score for a new Dune adaptation, and I want to know nothing about what has been done.
I want to stay. Why am I talking about this? It's because Hans, right at the beginning, said, but is it a good idea to get close to a teenager dream? To try to bring to the screen something that is so dear to our hearts.
It is dangerous. You're meant to fail.
You're going to fail. 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.
And that space between what you achieve, what you were able to bring, and the things that are different means that I have space to grow and to get better to make another movie. If I had absolutely succeeded, then I'd be in deep trouble.
Well, I mean, 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 that's new, right? Like that idea. I wonder if, you know, I think about the films that you've made and they have such scope to them.
There's a sort of an epic nature to all of them. I'm such a, like Sean and Jason, I'm such a massive fan of your films.
And I wonder, they're so ambitious visually visually the storytelling wise uh all of it musically uh all those elements they are very ambitious they are very big and what was the was there a moment when you were young when you you saw a certain film or a certain type of film you said that, that's... 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?

I remember that one of the first movies

that had a big impact on me was,

and I saw it on TV, frankly, was

2001, A Space Odyssey. When I saw that film,

I was like, oof, that really was like

almost a trauma at first. To see those apes being afraid of that sculpture in the middle of the desert.
It was so frightening and strange and poetic and powerful images. I would say that discovering the work, when I was young, discovering the work of Steven Spielberg was a true Close Encounter of the Third Kind.
That's a movie that really blew my mind when I was a kid. Also, when I saw Blade Runner the first time, that is another one, the original Blade Runner.
That was something that I really... And I'm a Star Wars generation.
The first movie that I asked my parents to see in the theater, the first time I said, I want to see that. Usually they were bringing me to the theater, but the 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.
I remember 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.
I was like, the impact of that film was insane. Yeah.
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Well, you know, i i i love about i think 2001 might be my my favorite film and the thing that i i think really draws me to it time and time again is not only the music um but the um and his composition etc but something that i just realized while were talking, that it does so well that your films do incredibly well is, as Will said, your scope. Your scope, your ability to cinematically capture scope and scale in the obvious large scale, but also in the internal scale as well.
The massive scope of a human's internal experience in a certain story. There are things that are incredibly small and intimate that goes on in 2001, as well as the obvious external large scope of space and these machines and etc.
Talk a little bit about 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 a production standpoint. I think that scope and visual effects, it's not that difficult.
I think 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. People are talking to me about intimacy, but I think it's more, everybody, all the directors are trying to bring the intimacy, the inner world of the actors, of the characters, their inner journey on screen.
But it's about the inner logic, the authenticity of that journey to make sure that it feels like genuine human reactions. And 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. And it sounds obvious, but specifically in sci-fi, I feel that very often characters don't behave like real humans.
It's a personal sensation sometimes I have. They can be two-dimensional.
You know what I mean? It's just like coming from the documentary. I did documentaries when I was young.
It's something that I think that I'm really focusing as I'm writing, when I write, or when I read the screenplay, or when I participate in the writing process of a screenplay, I try to focus on and with the actors as well to make sure that that journey feels like grounded. It has roots in something real.
So when Amy Adams see the alien, we believe it because it feels genuine. It feels like a real human reaction.
Does it make sense? Jason, you kind of brought it up about that inner, and then you were just touching on it. I was thinking about specifically Stellan Skargard character in the two Dune films, yeah? As this, I forget his character's name.
The Baron Orkinen, yeah. Yeah, and he's this, I mean, he's this incredible villain of all villains in a way.
He's this sort of despicable person who does the most, sometimes capable of the most awful things. And yet you see in that moment when you see him eyeing the throne and the throne is available, that moment you see he's not just a bad guy like Jabba the Hutt, 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? In this way that's almost Shakespearean yeah? But very real and human too.
I found that shot of him when you cut to him, I found that very alarming. Yeah.
Well, you're making my day. 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 power is like a human addiction.
I'm really, thank you very much for pointing that. But there are components to building a moment like that that you're just uniquely incredible at in your ability to balance all departments to create that moment.
And so for our listeners out there that aren't as familiar with 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, netherworld that's not really that tangible, but the human emotion is. And so that needs to be real while this other stuff is not that real.
And are you thinking I'm fully reliant on the actor to really ground this with no acting and just being raw? Or do you predetermine a certain visual language,

a certain piece of music from Hans,

a certain bit of sound design from your mixers?

There's so many different elements that you can do

to build a moment just perfectly like that.

It's a very good question, thank you.

All shots are different from that specific moment where the Baron is lying on the stairs. It's a character, for those who haven't seen the movie, it's a character that is just about to die and sees suddenly the throne.
The king left the throne and the throne is up the stairs and he's looking at the throne and he's crawling towards it. And with a moment like that, I will say it's a very simple image.
So it's about Stellan. I explained to Stellan the idea, and Stellan Skarsgård, who plays a baron, will perform and bring that to life.
Sometimes I will say that the camera angles and the camera movement can help to enhance or... Elevate.
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
That's why I'm here. It's to bring force into an idea.
The camera is always very powerful, but the birth all, the birth of the idea is acting, of course, yeah. Yeah, that's cool.
But let's say perhaps, especially in this... And to answer to, about music, it's something for me that it's a power, it's very, music is super powerful, but I try to not think about it as I'm shooting because it needs to be on screen first.
It's something that... Well, I had a question about that.
Let me just finish just one point though, Sean, sorry. But so 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.
a technocrane or whatever it is that you want to shoot that scene in a certain way, you need to have a lot of that stuff predetermined so that you've got your crane there that day. And your rigors have set up the lighting in such a way, et cetera, et cetera.
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, to fit something that may have other departments all predetermined? It depends. A good example would be the sandworm riding, where Timothée Chalamet, playing Paul Atreides, will 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 heavily storyboarded and needs a month of prep. And at this moment, let's say that the choreography that I impose, I'm more of a dictator, I impose a rhythm, a precise choreography that Timothy has to follow.
But inside that choreography, there's tiny moments where Timothy, when I'm in close-up on him, how he can anticipate the arrival of this beast toward him, the way he can act with his eyes. There's tiny things, the micro-precisions of acting that he can bring.
I mean, that I'm open to ideas, but in general, sometimes it's more loose. Some sequences, there's more space for the actor.
And those are also, I love when I have time to give space to the actors to bring some ideas. I'm talking about the settings of a scene.
It's very inspiring when people bring good ideas. But complicated sometimes when you have stuff that's predetermined and you've got an actor that's got different ideas.
This isn't one of those scenes where you can freestyle. You got to do what I say.
Exactly, but at the same time, it requires tremendous acting skills to be able to perform and to bring life to like Timothy facing the worm or Amy Adams facing the aliens or to be in relationship with something that doesn't exist. It requires nice imagination and it's not easy for actors to perform in those movies with big toys and all these things.
And to answer to your first part of your question about technocranes or dollies, etc., it's all planned in advance. 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.
Was there a lot of green screen versus volume stage on Dune 1 and 2? Did you use any of the volume stages? Was it all green? Was there a split half and half? No, we were almost as possible outside in the real environment or with real sets. We built as much as we could and we were in the real environments in the desert.
And those landscapes are, for the people who have been in the landscape that are bigger than life, that bring humility inside you, that the impact on those landscapes is tremendous on the actors and myself. Yeah, I watched the whole behind the scenes, all of it, all of the Dune.
We know. Both Dune.
I couldn't consume enough of it. I was just blown away with how it's made.
And one dumb, dumb question I have is, when people are walking in the sand and it's the first footprints in the sand, that's one take. How do you do that? You're going to love show business.
You're going to love show business so much. The rake crew.
It required a certain amount. We can erase footsteps in the background, things like that with CGI, but you cannot have an actor walking in his own footsteps again because that's a nightmare for VFX.
So you have a crew with rakes? So it means that we have to plan to find areas where we will each take, move the camera, put the camera on a dolly and move. Find another spot.
Make sure that we have the perfect place to do five or six or seven or eight takes, that we will also have, the crew will have the discipline not to make any footsteps. It sounds simple, but it's not.
It's like when you have a crew of 800 people in the sand to make sure that everybody follows the same path. It gives the opportunity to see crazy things.
Every night when I was going back from the set, at sunset, there were 100 people grooming the sand dunes to record the footsteps that we had made.

That's terrible.

So the wind will do its work during the night,

and it's very poetic.

That I felt, oh my God, am I a Megalomania?

Yeah, you're a monster.

Because people grooming the desert.

Sweeping the sand.

Believe me, I've had the same thought.

Jason made some footsteps in the sand,

and he yelled at his caddy.

He said, you missed a footprint. When he was playing golf.
He's a real monster. But, Denis, you know, when I was thinking about, you were talking about the actors and asking them to have imagination and working with them on all these thoughts and this inner life and stuff.
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 and worked, not used, you've worked with lots of people in different roles.
I was trying to think who was, well, certainly our friend Josh Brolin, you've worked with a lot. I think starting in Sicario, which I want to get to.
Another great one, yeah. Which is an incredible, I urge anybody, if you've never seen Sicario, to please see him.
Oh, my goodness. It's so phenomenal.
Thanks. Jake Gyllenhaal, you've worked with a couple times, I think, right? With Prisoners.
Emily Blunt. And then our good friend Emily.

You've had a lot of repeat collaborators. Yeah.
Yeah, it's all about the nature of the project and the parts of my insert are a bit boring, but I wish I could work with all of them again. I'll do it.
But it's just a thing that honestly

I adore

working in the United States.

To have access to

all these incredible actors.

And his casting is very

strange.

You bring

someone

and its intuitions about the proximity of an actor and a role and it's a gamble in some ways but Can I go back just one really quick question about the music because I thought that was interesting you said you were talking to Hans before you started and do you listen to cues or music before you even start thinking about how you're going to film it to get ideas? Or writing, you mean? Do you envision stuff from listening to music? Or do you wait to incorporate it later? I'm going to be very honest. Every time I write or direct listening to music and that's why I say music I'm very sensitive to music I absolutely love music but it does like I remember once one of my first films I was directing a specific scene and as I was alone in my bubble with my headphones listening to this fantastic piece of music and I was saying to myself it's going to be amazing.
It's going to be something. It's the power of music.
Then you look at the scene with all the music like hmm. It's the same with writing.
Sometimes I write something and I get emotional. I'm like oh my god, maybe I'm great.
And then you read it the next morning, it's like, no, it's the music. It sounds stupid, but it's the truth.
I cannot work with music. I work with silence.
Then I try to, and silence is my friend. I love, my sets are very boring.
I'm not a funny director. I'm someone who loves to be, 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 find my way.
When there's music, I'm gone. It's too powerful.
And this is why, to answer to your question,

it's like, if I have music from the past movies right now, I cannot listen to this music. It's too powerful.
You introduced me to Max Richter, because I never heard of him. And I was like, what is that piece that's so powerful? It's powerful.
Staying with music, though, where for you does the score and the sound design begins? Talk to us about that process for you and when does it happen? First of all, yeah, I try to think about the sound and the structure of the sound design as much as possible in the screenplay.

And I know as I'm writing that I will need music there,

I will create a musical sequence more.

It's something that is embedded

in the DNA of the screenplay.

But then when we edit the film,

I'm working with an editor, Joe Walker,

who is a master that Joe is coming from, was studied as a composer. He was a composer first, then he did sound at the BBC 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 Joe, we made many movies together, is that for him, 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.
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 as possible.
So it's like as I'm shooting, we have sound designers that start to create, specifically with sci-fi, to create the sounds that will be fed to the editing room very early on. So these sounds, I had time to live with them and make sure that they will enjoy the test of time and get used to them and make sure that they are right through time.
It's not just flashes that are last minute flashes. And it gives, of course, more time to explore, experiment, and so the sound is something that is, again, as important as the image.
And with Johan Johansson and Hans Zimmer, both composers were flirting close to the sound design sometimes, meaning that the music, sometimes 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. 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.
So it's the sound design first then, yeah? Yeah, but I would say that it depends on the sequence. Sometimes I said to the team, here it's Hans.
Hans Zimmer is not known to be subtle. When he can invade the soundtrack.
So there are some moments where we say, okay, that's the area. I said, here it's going to be, we go follow Hans.
It's trying to find the right balance between what the sequence

and scene needs.

It's the movie that

guides me.

Yeah, yeah.

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Can we just touch on Sicario for another moment, if we could,

because I'm...

Just talk about how that came to be,

how that came into you, into your purview,

and what sort of led you... I don't know, there's something about that film that I find I just adore.
So visceral. I've been very interested by the border between the United States and Mexico.
I thought it was a very meaningful place in the world about our reality. It was very...
I was looking for, I was reading about it, I was looking for a project that will be for a story, something that will allow me to explore that zone. And it came into my hands at one point.
I read a lot, but one project came called Sicario, written by Taylor Sheridan. Yeah, the great Taylor Sheridan.
Taylor is well-known now for all the work he's done, but at that time it was one of his first screenplays. And still today it is by far, by far one of the best screenplays I ever read.
Wow. The amount of research that Taylor had done to bring that world to life, the best compliment I have about Sicario is when I meet border officers or policemen or DA officers or people who work at the border who saw Sicario and said, that's the real deal.
Honestly, it is because of the work that Taylor had done. He had done his homeworks, and when you were reading the screenplay, you knew you were in front of something that felt authentic.
Very, very strong screenplay. I remember reading it, and I was like, the screenplay was so intense.
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 and I was just out of three very dark movies in a row and I said to go back there.
But 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 studio. We got along spontaneously and we did the casting.
It went bang. I was behind the camera with Roger Dickens.
It was one of the fastest projects I ever made. And still to this day, it's a very nice shoot because there was just a nice balance between the budget and the subject.
And it was a nice shoot. Yeah, I just want to say, JB, I want to get your point, which is I just want to touch on the great Taylor Sheridan.
Again, you can tell, I never read the script, but you could tell the material was so strong, it really comes through. Not just, obviously, the visual and the way the film is, is incredible, but also that the material was really strong I think it was pretty I had crazy ideas I mean like that border shoot that slow motion car chase at the border great ideas Taylor is amazing to write cinema very cinematic ideas great.
Great dialogues, great characters,

but very strong sense of cinema.

I'm still grateful that I had a chance

to bring that on screen.

That shootout you mentioned there at the border

is one of the most tense things I've ever seen.

Still, probably ever will see.

There's obviously great

planning that goes into something like that because it's just so intricate. But I guess that's my question.
How much planning did go into something like that? And, and just more generally when you're working and your, your, your visual taste, your aesthetic, your, your sense of composition and whatnot is just

unmatched and

you're working with

your equals in

cinematography with people like Roger Dinkins and Greg Frazier. When you sit down and you start to shot design and shot list and previs and all that stuff in prep and decide how you're going to actually photograph something.
What is the relationship with cinematographers like that that are so accomplished and so, in a good way, opinionated? What's the back and forth that goes there? 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? Do you let them start to design things and then you let them know whether that fits inside your plan? It's a sequence like that battle sequence, for instance, has to be planned months in advance because it's a puzzle. Different parts have been shot in different places and you have to create a piece of highway.
With all these cars, It has to be very, very well planned according to some positions and so it's storyboarded. And of course, working with someone like Roger Dickens will have a strong input.
That's what I love. It's like a collaboration.
It's like we will find together

the right angle according to the board that I did. But I'm always open if someone has a better idea on set that will make the shot even stronger.
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 angles, but one, we used to work with one camera and just making sure that that's something, that search for the best angle possible is something. You're only working with one camera? It's something I really, really love.
On Sicario, yes. Only one? Wow.
That's crazy. No, no.
I will say it's because I'm monomaniac, and it's something that Roger has. We try, want, to put a second camera on one, and it was a disaster.
I mean, you feel it. You know it's not right.
It's like there's one place to put the camera, and the rest is... We are both...
On a movie like Doom, sometimes there was additional cameras. It's because of the nature of the piece that didn't have the choice and Greg Fraser had that flexibility to...
But I will say it's... I have four cameras on me right now.
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 we get it.
Denis, I want to say, I was thinking about your films and your filmography, all the things that you've done, and they've, not only have they been epic, as we've discussed before, and had tremendous scope, but also they've been, you've tackled a lot of... I don't want to say that they're dark, but there is darkness there.
You challenge people in the darker realms. Certainly some of your earlier films and your Canadian films that these guys might not know about.
Polytechnique and Cindy's. I'm thinking about Polytechnique, which is about the Montreal Massacre, which was a terrible incident in Montreal in 1989.
I was there. I was in Montreal at that time.
You were? Yeah, yeah. And I was living there.
And those films were, as I mentioned before, Prisoners and Enemy. And then you get into even Sicario.
These are heavier subjects that you're tackling. My question is, when's the rom-com? Actually, my first feature film was some kind of a rom-com.
Was it? Yeah, it's not a good one but it was.. She did lose her life at the end.
Actually, he dies. Wow.
But it is one of the reasons when I did Sicario, I knew Arrival was coming after. And I did Sicario knowing that I would make a movie with more light.
And because I was like, it's true that I'd made a series of films that were pretty violet and dark. And there's a toll to this.
There's like a weight. And I needed to go toward.
And I think that science fiction also helped me to go toward something like looking in the future. or something that's more, there's more light there, I feel right now.
So it's a... Please don't stop making the dark stuff too because there is an uplift.
I know, I was joking. Seriously, there's an uplift and an excitement watching a filmmaker do things at your level, no matter what the genre, what the mood is.
JB, would you agree that if somebody says there's a new Denis Villeneuve film coming out, you're like, where do I line up? Thank you gentlemen, you're very generous with me. I'm going to shit talk you when this is over.
Speaking of the earlier stuff. Let's ask Brolin for the real deal.
Are there any films from the beginning of your career that you would enjoy perhaps reshooting nowadays, knowing what you know now and do? Not that you have any regrets, but anything. I should phrase it differently.
Which film from your past do you think would be most fun to redo now that you know things now that you didn't know then? Wow, that's a nice question. You know that the past movies are like the father of those movies.
It's like, I see movies sometimes as a selfie of yourself. You know when you look at pictures of yourself when you were a teenager? The shame? Yeah.
It's the hairdo and the clothes. Yeah, yeah.
And I have that relationship with my past work. Sometimes I look at it and I'm like, ooh, ouch.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. That's the truth.
They say, I would like to go back to my teenage years. Nope.
Yeah, yeah. Hey, how do you, Denis, how do you take care of yourself with these massive months-long shoots? Yeah, health-wise.
Honestly, very simply, I need good hours, sleeping hours. And one thing that I did on the past two movies, which was like advice from Ridley Scott, because I said, I asked Ridley, how do you do it? How can you make? When I make a movie, Ridley makes three movies.
He has a very high pacing. It's just to make sure that your hours, shooting hours are regular.
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 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 content. You do that on every job? On the past jobs, yes, yes, yes.
I didn't do that on Blade Runner and I almost died. How are you on night shoots? Night shoots will kill people.
I mean, literally, unfortunately. 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. Because for the people who don't know about shooting, it's just that the nature of 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.
So it's like being in constant jet lag. It's not good for creativity.
No, it's terrible for creativity. It's terrible.
Knocking on an actor's trailer at three in the morning, we're ready for you. You're like, what? Or when they say, they go, hey guys, it's lunch and it's 12 midnight and you're like, what do you mean lunch? This is not lunch, I'm sorry.
Or you land on set at 6 p.m. and say, hey, good morning, and say, cut the crap.
Exactly. Danny, aside from the...
Are you a Montreal Canadiens fan? Is that what you're going to ask him? Yeah, exactly. Well, it was part of it.
It's like, aside from the good sleep, what's the other thing that you do to really sort of decompress and get away from the incredibly, you know, immersive work directing is? Do you watch something silly on TV? Are you a sports fan? Do you watch hockey? No, but as I'm shooting, honestly, when I shoot, I make a film at 24 hours, seven days a week commitment. There's no way to relax.
For me, I'm 100% present to the project, so there's no, specifically a movie of them. Sci-fi movies, it's every second.
Not even sci-fi, any movies. There's no, 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 family, and that's where I recharge my batteries.
But during a shoot, there's no moment where I know that. And because of that dedication, 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 a franchise that will last forever in the minds of these kids. I didn say I didn't do it thinking about the word franchise.
For me, I was making two movies. Because franchise, for me, it's always something that is linked with commerce.
There's a plan for... Three great movies.
Three great connected. No, but it's not bad.
It's just that I was not saying to myself, okay, I'm starting a franchise. It was more about I'm adapting this book in two movies and we'll see what happens after.
But for the fans, we're so happy you're making three of them. 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.

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 2, who 10 years from now says,

I want to study film, who makes a film with people they know

and makes a big, huge film.

And they do it because they saw Dune when they were 7, 8, 9, 10 to be inspiring in that way I think it must be very cool I don't know if it had happened or something but it would be moving to think that people could be inspired one thing for sure is that I made those movies. We were talking about darkness and violence earlier.
The movies were made for PG-13 instead of Rated R. It was the first time after, apart from Arrival, all my other movies are for adults.
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 will have the same age as when I read the book. So I thought it was inspiring for me.
And adults like me who have the brains of a 13-year-old. 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 doesn't apologize to be sci-fi. I remember when I saw The Empire Strikes Back when I was 13 years old, the impact of that movie on me, 12 years old.

Oh, gosh.

I thought the darkness of it. I felt that someone was talking to me

as I was trusting me as a kid.

And when Darth Vader said,

I am your father,

I was like, what would that feel like?

Inside joke.

Well, Denny, you seem as kind as you are talented.

I can't thank you enough for talking to us

three ding-dongs for an hour.

It was a pleasure to chat with you this morning.

Thank you very much for the invitation

and thank you for your generosity as well.

That means the world.

Thank you, sir.

Congratulations on all your great work.

Please keep it coming.

Take care.

See you later.

Bye-bye.

Good luck, Sean. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you, thank you. Bye.
Well, you got blessed by the great Denis Villeneuve, Sean. I think your prospects look good.
He just said, basically, like, hope you live. Yeah.
From the great Denis Villeneuve. He's, yeah, I mean.
Hey, if you're out there and you're not familiar, and again, 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 it sometimes. You guys just, all you do is compliment.
Well, we like to compliment people who are really good at what they do. And if you're not familiar who Denis Villeneuve is and you're not familiar with his films for some reason, 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, he's just an incredible, I mean, JB is a director, right? Just stunning, yeah.
He's not, 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.

No, and again, he made Brolin look good.

You know what I mean?

Oh, it's very hard to do.

I mean, think about that shows what a filmmaker he is.

Yeah, I think how many cameras that takes.

Just off the, you know?

Yeah.

But he's really cool.

He's...

So cool.

Yeah, and you can tell he's in charge, which I love.

Canadians are cool, right? Yeah, the accent I think he needs to charge, which I love. Canadians are cool, right?

Yeah, the accent I think he needs to work on a little bit.

He's from Des Moines.

I think...

No, he's not from Des Moines.

No.

No, dummy.

God.

He's from...

I think he's from Montreal, yeah?

Yeah.

Quebec.

Well, Montreal is in Quebec, but...

Yeah, yeah. He's not related to Jacques Montreal is in Quebec, but it's a province.

He's not related to Jacques Villeneuve or Gilles Villeneuve.

Sure.

Yeah.

I don't know who those people are.

Those are Formula One drivers.

Oh, excellent.

Wonderful.

They were.

You know what?

Here he comes.

What's up, Sean?

I love that he brought Close Encounters up.

Oh, yeah? Why is that? Well, because when I remember that he brought Close Encounters up. You know?

Oh, yeah?

Why is that?

Well, because when I remember that one moment

when you all saw the movie, yeah?

This is going to be so lazy.

This is, honestly,

this is going to be so freaking lazy.

When the little kid

is standing there

waving to the aliens

as they're leaving,

he actually says out loud,

What does he say?

Bye.

Bye. Bye.

Bye.

Do, do, do.

Do, do.

Bye.

Nice.

On your arm.

Nice, buddy.

Smart.

Nice.

Smart. Nice.
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