"Alejandro Iñárritu"

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Is it 23 or is it 22?

It's 23.

Welcome.

I've been here for a minute

and I just want to welcome you guys.

I was waiting for you guys to get here.

Cool, right?

It's pretty cool.

It feels a little bit like last year, but...

No, it's way different.

Also, the episodes are way different too.

It's so insane.

Come on, join me.

Welcome to Smartless.

Smart.

Smart.

Smart. Less.
Smart. Less.
Smart. Less.
Yeah, hi, guys. Hey.
Sean and I were just, I'm getting down a late breakfast here with the oatmeal. doesn't He says he doesn't It's Listen Sloppy Joe When I was really little You eat the worst crap on the world in the world and you won't eat oatmeal? No when I was really young I had issues about being so thin and like you too, I was too thin.
I used to get made fun of for being super skinny.

Right.

And so I would eat tons of oatmeal

and milkshakes and ice cream and burgers

and I couldn't gain...

Oatmeal doesn't make you fat.

No, but oatmeal had a lot of protein in it.

So I was trying to like gain weight

and muscle weight and all that.

But I just couldn't have it.

But it's so good.

Let's take a look in that bowl again. Let's just look at...
It would help clean out all of the garbage you put in your system, Sean. I know, that's true.
You know, get like that little bike license plate out of you. That says eight-wheeler on it.
What do you usually have for breakfast? Are you a breakfast guy? Well, remember last time I said I had chili and cornbreadbread oh right right but usually because it's i'm i never really eat breakfast i usually wait till like lunch to eat something and then i'll eat like you know like tuna fish sandwich or whatever so that's kind of my breakfast willie you're not a breakfast guy are you no it depends sometimes on the weekend i am um i'm a late morning little. And will you cook up a breakfast for the kids? Are you one of those guys? I don't usually cook up like school day.
They don't want breakfast now because they're older in the morning before school. So like they just, they'll have like toast.
But I, well, we FaceTimed last week like at 10 o'clock at night and Abel was in the background. Eating cereal.
And I'm like, Abel, what are you eating? He's like, cereal. Yeah.
At 10 o'clock at night. I love cereal at night.
I love cereal. They both do, both the kids, we eat dinner so early, so both of the older kids generally hit that thing where at about 8, 9 o'clock, they get real snacky.
But will you worry them going to school without food? Like, I've always got like a power bar for the girls in the car going to school, making sure they got something. I always make sure that they eat something at home.
They sit at the counter and eat something at home before they go. Usually like a cereal yogurt with granola or some kind of a cereal.
Or a sugary cereal. I've seen your pantry.
Yeah. Yeah, I know you've seen my...
But I think you got the wrong impression. It's envy.
Wrong impression? So when I'm looking at Frosted Flakes, it's not really Frosted Flakes? No, because, like, for instance, the Frosted Flakes that you're referring to have been in that container. No, not three boxes.
At all. And have been there for so long.
This is just above the Oreos, right? It's just above the three different kinds of Oreos. By the way, the Oreos are in those little packages.
And they were, again, they were for the kids, for school. They were snacks.
I can't remember the last time I saw somebody in this house eating Oreos. I think it was you when you came in and grabbed them.
Yeah, well, I've run into your pantry. It's my first stop because we have, you know, oats and barley and quinoa at this house, which I love, but I do like to shake it up every once in a while.
I love it. Remember when we had dinner a while ago, Jay, and I said, before I come over, can Amanda please get me a Coca-Cola? Yeah, I think she did.
She bought a few of them. Yeah.
All right. Listen.
Yeah. Well, I'm listening.
Listen up. I'm pulling up my, uh, I spent some time on this intro here.
Cause this is, yeah, this is not some silly guest. Tighten up today.
We've got a guest that is the closest thing to a magician that we've ever had. Okay.
Well, he doesn't pull bunnies out of hats or miraculously saw women in half. He is able to magically take us into environments and experiences that not only feel and look real, but they managed to access our most protected and personal places of thought and emotion.
He does this with incredible writing, extraordinary images, and raw performances. He has received five Academy Awards, including Best Director in Back-to-Back Years.
Only the third person ever do that. Really? He's the youngest of seven kids.
He was kicked out of high school. He became a radio DJ.
He became a cargo boat sailor. He eventually found a camera to play with, and thank God because this man has brought us some of the best films ever made.
Films like Babel, Birdman, The Revenant, and his latest and perhaps greatest, Bardo. please welcome one of my heroes alejandro inaritu alejandro how are you guys good morning hello morning yes we're classing it up today you really classed it up right yes these guys they can't i've never heard them so quiet they're stunned i know i was like the second you started naming the films i I was like, it up.
Right? These guys, they can't. I've never heard them so quiet.

They're stunned.

I know.

I was like, the second you started naming the films,

I was like, are you kidding me?

Yeah, you thought it was a joke.

So I saw Bardo last night, and it truly is,

I think, given even with all the films that you've done,

it could be your best.

Do you feel, like, I think I've read something

where you said that you think it might be your best,

and that's saying something.

Well, first of all, thank you for that incredible, generous introduction that you gave. This is our strategy, though.
We build you up, and then we're going to hit you with some really embarrassing questions. And I was just having a hungry, just listening to you about the breakfast.
About breakfast. I have some chilaquiles, guys.
That's the Mexican way to go in the morning. Chilaquiles, they're in your movie.
Exactly, exactly. Chilaquiles and fricoles.
So what do you think? Do you think Bardo's your best? It's a big statement. You know, the thing is, what I felt about Bardo and I feel about Bardo is that I think it's the film that I have spent much more time with, cooking it, you know, preparing it and conceiving it.
And then all the things that I have learned, I think, that technically and how to say things, the material or the fabric of this film was very complex so i was very um happy just to have made it you know that i could turn that thing into something yeah and that's why i consider that uh that yeah i think it's my that the the the you know the film that i felt that i have accomplished in a better way or in a much more honest way close to my heart. You know, that's why I consider it.
You felt that maybe you asked yourself to bring everything that you have learned thus far technically and also, I mean, emotionally and spiritually. I mean, it is.
So just for you, Sean and Will, and also the listeners, Bardo is, and I had to look this up, it is a, and correct me if I'm wrong, Alejandra, it is a Tibetan phrase that means or describes the place post-death and pre-rebirth or reincarnation. So it's sort of that, some people call it...
Purgatory? Yeah, thank you.

Purgatory or... Well, Purgatory is a place between heaven and hell, I think.
But so the film spends a lot of time or toggles back and forth between what could be real or could be this nether place or... I don't think that that's spoiling anything, Alejandro.
I hope it's not but um it obviously lends itself to a lot of filmmaking techniques uh both visually i can't wait to see this so in just sort of the the the storylines of things uh it's it's it's very very beautifully uh complex uh not not complicated not difficult but um just so rewarding it uh it it does ask you It does ask of you everything that you've learned, certainly, it seems. Yeah, well, thank you.
Thank you very much for that, Jason. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, you know, basically in the Catholic tradition is kind of what we know as limbo, which is that kind of purgatory where little kids that are not baptized, they go after if they die. But it's a very narrow kind of conception.
And Bardo in the Buddhist tradition is exactly that. When something dies, you know, something is transforming to another place, but it's in the between, you know.
It's exactly in the middle point before to becoming something. And that's kind of the concept of that word word the way i wanted to use it you know yeah it's so exciting as a as a viewer you never know whether it is current time or a flashback or real or imagined or dreamscape or not do you remember the adrian line film guys uh jacob's ladder sure yeah where it's it's basically about you don't know until the end that where we have been is on this guy's you know deathbed he's sort of purgatory and but it allows the film to travel in so many crazy spaces and uh it's talk to me a little bit about the the writing process of that the not only you know all of your clearly deeply felt emotional places, but also playing with time and the complexity of the nonlinear aspect.
You're constantly flashing forwards or back or real or unreal. Was that difficult or was it simple for you? No, actually, I think it was one of the most challenging things, I will say, and scary because there was no real recipe, you know, because structurally, you know, in the film, you can play very well with flashbacks or flash heads.
And they are very, I will say, constructed in a way that they are very, in a way immediately you recognize that the film has shifted or traveled to another thing. You can use different photography or different things to point out that kind of thing.
So these are more conventional narratives or grammatical ways that you can use in filmmaking. And I think I love that film, by the way.
I haven't seen it in a long time. Now you're going to see it again.
I remember Jacob's Ladder was amazing with Tim Robbins, right? Yeah, yeah. It was Tim Robbins.
But in this case, the challenge was this film, Bardo, is a walk in the consciousness of somebody, right, which is all memories and images and reflections and thoughts and emotions are basically interacting simultaneously and coexisting in the way when we dream, you know, and when you have a lucid dream, that you are aware that you are dreaming, you know that things are off or some person is in a place that should not be there.

Or maybe you are in your uncle's house,

but the one guy is there and then the house becomes something else.

You're guarding.

And you have a little bit of control over it too

sometimes in a dream, right?

Like you do in this film, you know?

Well, you know, really quick,

a super quick story about Jimmy Burroughs.

You know James Burroughs, Alejandro?

He's a TV director, friend of ours.

I was in New York and I had just flown there.

I was super, super, super tired from working all week

and then the flight and everything.

I laid down for a nap in the hotel.

And in my dream, our sweet friend, Jimmy Burroughs, he was like having a heart attack or something in my dream. I was like, oh no, I got to help him.
I got to help him. So I pick up the, you know, in the dream, I'm like, I'm dialing 911.
I call the ambulance. Everybody comes.
It's so freaky. And then the hotel phone rings and it wakes me up from my nap and I go, hello? And they say, yeah, 911, what's your emergency? So I called.
Wow. called wow while you were sleeping while i was sleeping but it seems so real yeah isn't that great that's never happened to me before yeah it's uh dreams are an incredible place i think we just had we had uh uh james cameron on uh on the podcast the other day uh alohandro and i think we said to him he would be an incredible filmmaker, as would you, to tackle dreams, to do a film about dreams.
It would take somebody of your skill or his to tackle all that. It's a rich place for a film.
All right, so your films benefit so much from your visual strategy. Can you trace that back to, you certainly didn't learn that in your brief radio career, did you? Where did you get that taste for visuals and the technical know-how of it? I will say that I'm still trying to learn a lot.
I think my guide always has been music. You know, I think I have a better ear.
And I try to first kind of listen to the film and kind of determine what kind of genre it is and what is the rhythm and the sound and the beat. And then the question that I have been much more, always is challenging for me, is the point of view.
You know, which point of view I would like to be putting the audience. And that is what really makes me decide how I'm going to shoot.
So those two things really help me to understand how I want the audience to leave the experience because I would like them to leave depending in the point of view, which sometimes get complicated when you have two, three characters or four characters in a scene. So you want to have the, you know, to receive or to land the emotional kind of challenge of a scene in somebody's.
And that is always a tough question for me that I have to answer. And then I decide where I put the camera and how open.
And then about the context, you know, because in the first films I did, I normally tend to isolate the characters. And I was very keen into the close-ups, which I think is an incredible landscape to show everything and emotional and everything what's going on.
But then little by little in the last three films, I have been very obsessed about the context of the character. You know, what really made that character a character? And so then I have been trying to involve more and more the context of the situation.
And I have been now rejecting every lens that is more than 21. I felt that it's like a long lens.
You know what I feel like? Yeah, yeah. We'll be right back.
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Shop Skinny Pop now. skinny pop popcorn deliciously pop perfectly salted shop skinny pop now and now back to the show can i talk to you a little bit about because it's funny you say that because i forget we were talking to somebody but i think we were talking to a director about it about this idea of if you look at a lot of those films from the 70s, like even Spielberg in the 70s, one thing that comes to mind is like Close Encounters.
So many of those scenes played with virtually no coverage at all. Right.
And everybody's talking over each other. Everybody's talking over each other.
And you had these scenes that played out in these big sort of, you know, almost masters. And sometimes, you know, characters would come in and out of the scene.
Robert Altman did a lot of that and Woody Allen. Yeah.
And then Robert Altman did that as well. And so that you got to talk about context.
I mean, you got to kind of see so much of the world and we, we become, and not to get too deep in the woods, in the weeds on this, but do you feel like we've become too,

I think, for my taste, too dependent on close-ups,

especially when you come to things like comedy?

Because it ends up, I love seeing two,

at least two characters in the same frame together

reacting off each other in a way that doesn't feel like

you're telling me how I should be reacting to this.

You allow the scene to play out, and I can decide for myself what I feel about the story and their relationship. Yes, I think you're right.
I think you're right. I think like if you see Billy Wilder, for example, comedies, he always was like really much more relaxed and the things were happening in front of you.
And as you said, the characters come close to the camera or further. And that is kind of the blocking of that and spielberg is the master of blocking actors i think every staging right staging is just so so incredible i think he's the best in the world doing yeah well i feel the same way like whenever there's like a a film about like dance or like i'm watching like a cheerleading thing on espn or whatever we're like the camera, like if you go in close to watch a whole dance number, it's like, no, I can't see the whole, the whole point of a dance number is to see everybody doing it at the same time.
So that it's five, six, seven, eight. And not cut to seven, eight.
You want to see five, six, seven, eight in the same frame. No, but I do.
I think that that's true. And I think that we have been, you know, it's so funny when you go and you work, Alejandro, my experience as an actress, certainly is when you go and you work on stuff, people are so scared and everybody's so nervous now of protect.
So it's always like for protection. Well, we're just going to do, so that when we go, when I go and do my own and and i go where where i'm kind of the boss or i'm running the show or whatever and i'll go they'll go like well we should get the other thing i go no no no i'm never gonna use it well shouldn't we get just to have it i go no i don't give a shit i'm never gonna use it yeah fucking i know how i'm gonna cut it and i don't give a shit well well i think it be really important.
And you want to be like, to you? Yeah. Yeah.
And the one shot, the one-er is super good for that, right? Or a one-er for sure. Alondra, you use that a lot, right? You don't even give yourself an option in the editing room.
You're going to stay there until you get it. And you're going to dictate to the audience where you're looking, when you're looking.
And you never tap them out of it by making a cut. You keep it all smooth in one thing so that it stays sort of meditative and you're in it.
Yes? Exactly, and I think every film demands different things, so not all the films needs to be that way. I think, again, I learned to do that by necessity in Birdman, was the one that radically I knew that I wanted to make this as an spaghetti experience, right? It was all tied together, and I wanted that the people feel in the head of Michael Keaton, and it was a radical point of view of one single moment that was, again, shifting in time, but I want the people to be in his head so I designed the whole shooting based on one single shot obviously with stitches but that was a radical thing.
Yeah it was mind blowing. Did Sam Mendes or Roger Dinkins come to you and talk to you about some of the tricks before they did 1917? Yeah.
No I think Sam and Royer, they are masters. They know exactly what they did in 1917.
I think it's something that, again, I think it's the demand of the film. But it's very fun.
I just find, too, that I agree with you when you were saying about coverage, right? To cover yourself all the time is not healthy because then there is no I like when there is limits principle, not rules because I don't like to use rules but principle and if the principle of the film has limit or frame or borders I think it's much more fun work that way and you say okay this is going to be the principle and the design of this film and then you stick with that. It forces you to explore whatever rules or principles you set up.
I think everybody go into that and it's much more exciting, I think. I would imagine after winning or receiving the Academy Award back to back, I would imagine the pressure on you going forward or just sort of the expectations, like you know eyes are going to be on you.
Does it limit the kind of swing you want to take going forward? You know, it must be tough. Yeah, I think, yes, it's true.
It's true that the expectations always, you know, play against you in some way. And but at the same time, it's challenging.
After the Revenant, something that I really appreciate was that I took a time to do a virtual reality installation that I have never done that was called Carne y Arena. And it was a radical, that was a very radical point of view because I put you a headset and then I put you in a space, a big space with sand and you were barefoot.
So you were, and it was about immigrants crossing the border in the desert at dawn. And you were sensorially feeling the air of the helicopter coming.
So you were walking and basically you become the camera. So you were a ghost floating into these 14 characters being trapped by the officers in the border.
And it was very, very beautiful and very emotional because suddenly, you know, I broke the dictatorship of the frame. Let's put it that way.
So instead to be a whole that you see a fragment of reality, you were basically navigating and walking 360 degrees, walking with these guys. Virtual reality, right? You could turn around and look.
Exactly. And it was incredible experience because it's everything that cinema is not.
I mean, this literally, you become the camera, you become the character. And then the police officer was pointing at you, you know, so wherever you move, were really being threatened.
So, you become those guys in a radical way and physically your body was present there and feeling the details about it. So, very much, I think, was a big important thing for me to make this actually film, you know.
Alejandro, tell me a little bit about the impetus of doing something like that because your experience as a guy who's a filmmaker who is from Mexico, who grew up in Mexico City, I'm assuming, yeah? Yeah. And then to make a film about this migration of people crossing, you know, the desert and doing that, what is your relationship from that side of that perspective? You know, because, you know, we're fed all sorts of different narratives here about immigration and people, you know, migrating north across the border and blah, blah, blah.
From where you are physically, what is that perspective shift? What is your, you know, obviously you were driven to make a film that is sort of a film experience about it.

Where does that land with you?

Where does that sit with you,

that dynamic of this sort of migration of people?

Well, I think in LA where I live now

and I have been living here,

there's almost like 5 million Mexicans, right?

And for that project, I interview like more than 500 immigrants with incredible, you know, heartbreaking stories. Wow, yeah.
There was a mom that crossed seven times to bring one by one of her daughters, and it took her 20 years working as a maid, getting money little by little to go back and then turn back. And the way these guys abused them, like the coyotes that charge them a lot of money, and then they left them even in the other side of the border and making them believe that they are in the United States and the way they are treated.
And then the most heartbreaking kind of thing is the kids, the kids that have been taken here for, you know, when they are three, four years, and they don't know they are not citizens, that they don't belong to nothing. And that's the real battle, you know, that suddenly they realize at 18 that they don't have any rights, that they don't have a future and they don't know even how to speak Spanish.
And there's no way for them to go back because there is no other territory. So those stories for me has been always close to me and obviously, you know, socially, I know many of these stories.
And so I feel very close, even when my circumstances has been completely different. I have been incredibly lucky, supported, privileged.
But anyway, that doesn't mean that I'm not feeling kind of close to these stories.

And yeah, I mean, for me, it's just the situation of so many millions of people.

It's really hard.

It's very hard to understand.

That's actually a nice segue into a question that I've had, which is, you know, and forgive

me because I'm asking because I don't know.

I'm uneducated in this area.

But, you know, growing up... What is more, a bag of Skittles or a bag of M&M's? Sorry.
But, you know, growing up in Chicago and in America, we have these tremendous resources to, you know, when I grew up in Chicago, I was like, oh, Hollywood. And, you know, there's universities and colleges now where your major can be filmmaking and everything in this country.
And there are programs in other countries too, but what was it like for you as a kid? What kind of resources did you have? What kind of anything did you have growing up to know that this is your path? To prepare for this career, you mean? Yeah. No, no, you cannot prepare.
I think that I never thought that I would be living here. You know, our plan was after Amores Perros, my wife and I decided to come here for one year.
The situation in Mexico, I'm from a generation that in our country, there was only six to seven films being made a year. So there was no actually, you know, something that as filmmakers, Alfonso Cuarón or Guillermo del Toro or Chivo Lubezki, we have to come to look for something that we want to pursue, which was a filmmaker career, and our country cannot provide that at that time.
Security was not very good, as it is even now. So when you become a public figure, it's a little challenging.
So in a way, we have two little kids, and we said, well, let's go one year. And and then 21 years has passed and it feels that it happened in one week that's part of the and that's that's what the film is kind of that was the reason i make this film like to clean the closet emotionally and and just to put things in order you know and and i think you don't have to leave that you're from toronto or i have a lot friends, American friends that are from little towns in the south and they are living here.
And when they return, all their friends or their family stays one way that they have been evolving and transforming. And it's a huge change.
I mean, that's another battle. You don't have to leave your country to feel that your past is not belonging to you anymore.
that was another person kind of thing right yeah talk to me about about uh about music um so so you started with uh working radio and dj and interviewing some incredible people but you've also done a little bit of scoring for films before you became a director yes and then yes i also want you to talk about your the the the strategy for doing the music in birdman where the camera would actually show the drummer every once in a while it was just it's so inventive and so bold and so exciting for an audience member and that you're able to pull all those big swings off somehow um just talk to me about about music and film and and uh um how how you enjoy writing music for films as well. You know, when I, in a way, writing and developing and thinking about a film, as I told you, it's so important for me to hear the film, to listen to the beat, the rhythm, and how it sounds.
So I always felt that, you know, I was very clear with Amores Perros that it sounds like sticky fingers of the Rolling Stones, for example, that album. It was that sound that I wanted to portray.
And then there are some times I listen to one album only when I'm, you know, 21 Grams I hear to Pat Metheny album that I love about, it was in a spiritual film. Well, there was something attached to some song that suddenly I get stuck to that.
And are you saying that the album you listen to or the songs you listen to creates imagery in your head? Is that what you're saying? It just creates a mood, you know? I think it's something that suddenly the sound of an album can portray you a mood and the sound in a way, there's something that makes me feel close to the pace, to the spirit of the film. And for me, an embarrassment, for example, I knew that I need drums because I knew that I wanted to make a one take by that reason of the radical point of view.
So being a comedy, I said, oh shit. I mean, comedy, as they said, is made in cuts, right? And it's like the rhythm, it's creating the editing room.
I knew that I will not have that opportunity. So I needed a rhythm.
I need something. Or like a rim shot, right? It sort of ends a joke or ends a scene and carries you into the next one.
Exactly. And then I was, I have been very lucky because my first four films, I worked with Gustavo Santaolalla, which is an incredible musician, and he do like minimalistic things, you know, with a couple of guitar moves and things, he just creates again.
I like to use very minimalistic music in that sense. And so every experience has been different.
Then in Revenant, I worked with Ryuchi Sakamoto, that you cannot ask for more than the master Sakamoto, and it was another experience. And then in this one, I did it with Bryce Dessner, you know, which is incredible.
From the National? From the National, yeah. Bryce is just so eclectic.
I mean, he do classical music, he do jazz. He do everything.
So I was able to work with him this time, and it was fantastic. And you do have all those different sounds in it.
Bryce is a super talented guy. He and those guys just did that.
Well, my buddy Bon Iver just did a collab with those guys, but Jason doesn't. Do you like Bon Iver at all, Alejandro? I love Bon Iver.
Oh, no kidding. Now I do.
Keep going. Now I do.
Keep going. Of course you do.
That guy is genius. Oh, really? Bryce has just worked with Tom York, too.
Yeah. Or even with Steve Reich, you know? So he's in all these kind of genres, you know? It's crazy.
Thank you, Alejandro. Thank you, Jason.
Why? Who don't like Bon Iver? Jason's made fun of it for like two years because he doesn't now that he now that he thinks the cool kids like him he's gonna be all over it now I'm on you said Tom York I'm in oh my god I'm rage quitting this episode we'll be right back hey guys do you ever open up your underwear drawer and just go like, oh, you know what?

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That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P.com slash smartlist. And now back to the show show let me stop you at Revenant for one second and I apologize if you've answered this question on this subject before I'm sure you have because it I don't know if a sequence will ever be made that is more...
The bear fight is something that when I was watching it, I knew it wasn't real, obviously, because Leo takes a lot of risks, but that one would be too much. So I'm studying, I saw it in a big theater too, and I'm looking for, where is, where's the cut? Where's the, where's the special effect? Where, how are they doing? And I could not see it, not once.
And, and to your point about one take, it was a one-er, was it not? It was all, so why would you in something so technically difficult as that sequence, why would you choose to, to really make it even more tough by making it one take? How did you come to that decision? I did a lot of research about the bear attacks and the description of it. There's a book, actually, of people that survived.
It's a weird book with like 120 cases of people that have survived. I'd love to read that.
Oh my God. Sean's seen over 120 bear fights over a long weekend once during Pride.
On Santa Monica. So when I was reading these attacks, normally it was about the cops.
You know, when you cross and there are cops, they're closed.

Then you know that you are screwed. You know that you are in danger.
And the description of the people, the way they felt it, the way they remember, the way they felt, again, they experienced in a point of view of them. And it was shocking to see, you know, the fear, everything.
So I said, I would love instead to rely on the cutting and in the objective point of view of a filmmaker and a camera, seeing things and putting pieces together, I would like, again, to observe and just to be present as if I'm witnesses that in real time, which will be the most terrifying thing, how somebody's been divorced. And I remember with Berner Herzog, you remember his documentary, and that moment that Berner is sitting with the headphones and he's hearing how this guy was divorced and how these guys were divorced by this.
And I said, Berner, what did you hear? He said, Alejandro, you don't want to hear. I said, you don't want to tell me what I heard.
And what he described me, we were in a dinner, it was so terrifying what he described me about that, you know, the bears in a way first pull out your skin and little by little, what I'm saying, they don't kill you immediately. They want warm meat and And so they keep you alive and they are taking your skin off little by little.
So they are deboring you in pieces. Anyway, the descriptions that I have were so terrifying that I want the audience to, for a moment, try to put the audience in witnessing something horrific like that.
So that's why I decided to do that. Yeah, no, it worked.
So when you decided that this is what you would love to do, that's your ambition, but then you've got to check it with who, your visual effects supervisor or Chivo, or who told you that this was going to be possible? Because I don't think anyone's ever seen anything like that before, and it'd be tough to see it again. I don't know if everyone's ever going to be able to do that again.
But who told you that was technically possible to do? Well, I think that it's possible because I think the visual effects and the CEI has arrived to a point that I was really, you know, worried that it will look good. But I have to credit here ILM.
I think they did an amazing job by creating this incredible, believable bear with all the hair. So now the technology allows you to create something like that.
But you have to just prepare it very well. You have to really have a good idea how you want to make it.
So we rehearsed for weeks. first of all, the blocking, and then obviously study and analyzing how really a bear will hit you, will scratch you, will do it.
So we have some expertise about that. And what I read was I was applying to what it was actually factual of the attacks of the bear.
So then with Leo, we start rehearsing with a trainer, with a stunt that will be doing kind of the bear character. And we were saying, okay, now he will do that.
Then he will grab it by the leg. He will drag him here.
And then we, Chiwo and I, start designing the camera move to understand what. So little by little, we were kind of shaping the moments.
And then we knew that we had to make it in one shot. So we started rehearsing with the camera, with the stunts, with Leo.
And then we knew that we would have to use arnesses, you know, to... Yeah, the harnesses, the wires.
He was tied up to a bunch of wires. It had to pull them all over the place as a bear would easily would easily pull and push and throw him all over the place yeah it was very challenging because we shot that actually in the middle of of the woods you know in vancouver so in a way it was you know we have to prepare the whole territory the arnest the camera didn't have to cross with that so again that's a boring and technical thing that i i don't think is so difficult i i just think you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve, and then everything almost is possible.
You have to have the bare necessities. Oh, very nice.
The bare necessities, Sean says. He loves the pun.
You have to have the bare necessities. Talk to me, Alejandro, about your relationship with your collaborator, writer Guillermo, and I don't want to say his name wrong.
Arriaga. Arriaga.
Yeah. Tell me a little bit about that relationship.
You guys worked together on a lot of films, yeah? Yeah, we did three films together. That was this trilogy that was, we were exploring, you know, the possibilities of structures and how, you know, people, one event in a way was affecting different lives in a different way.
Sure. Or in Babel, that was extreme, you know? Is Guillermo the cinematographer or writer? The writer.
Sorry, the writer. But what I was sort of asking more, yeah, I know that you, right, you guys were creating this incredible trilogy, but the relationship that you guys have and how that changes over writing three films together and that process of your relationship and what that, you know, for instance, my relationship with, I'm going to mention Chappie again, my guy that I write with whom I love and I adore.
And I have such a deep connection with him because we spend so much time writing in a room together and what that relationship, you guys have written these great films together talk to me about your personal relationship and how it is sort of brought you guys together or how it's changed and i don't know i think that i i think we met uh uh in tooth in 1997 so we start developing like short stories that end up being Amores Peros first. And it was a great time for both of us.
You know what I mean? We were sharing the same kind of sensibility, writers. Faulkner was kind of an inspiration about his rawness, raw and humanity and things.
So in a way, we were sharing a lot of things during those years, you know, and that was very, very profound because when you share, it's very hard to find a collaborator that you share points of view, you know, our sensibilities and sources of inspiration. So it was great.
And I think that after the last film, you know, I think it was great because I was a little bit burned out about the structure and the fracture narratives. And I wanted to make a film about one single character, which for me was super unconventional, very difficult.
so then it ends you know any creative relations

sometimes

find an end

or a transformation

and then you need

to find yourself

and then the next

film in beautiful

I Any creative relation sometimes finds an end or a transformation and then you need to find yourself. And then the next film in Beautiful, I just found two co-writers that were fantastic, which is Nicolás Giacobone, which is the one who I have been collaborating in this last film, and Armando Bo.
So anyway, I think for me it was a way to be evolving and transforming. And that relation in a way was very, very, very productive by having three films and was great.
You know, it was great. All right.
Lastly, Alejandro, we've been heaping so much praise on you about how good you are at making movies. What are you terrible at? Are you really bad at anything? How about singing or dancing or sports or anything like that what what are you worst at i i am so bad in almost everything let me tell you the only thing that i i i try to attempt to do my best is to make films but i'm so bad my my hands are really clumsy let me put it that way i cannot draw for example i cannot draw an apple so you don't storyboard yourself no i don't myself.
I would love to, but I can't. And then I wanted to be a musician and I had terrible fingers to play the guitar, so I'm absolutely bad with my hands are clumsy.
So in a way, the only thing that I could possibly do is what I do. I think that's why I do what I do.
Because I'm very bad in most things. Please keep doing it.
You're one of our greatest ever and I love watching everything you do. You don't need to be good at it.
You're very kind. You make incredible films.
I'm so glad that you enjoy Bardo. I really hope that you two guys see it and I'm very happy.
Bardo is just... I'm going to see it this weekend.
I can't wait. I'll go with you.
Let's go see it in a movie theater. I want to go with you and see it in a theater this time.
I will totally do that. It's just stunning.
Everybody should rush out. I just want to tell you something.
I think when you see it, guys, don't try to demand logic on it, okay? I mean, turn off your co-pilot of rational demandings and just let yourself go. Oh, I don't.
I wake up and go to bed that way. And it goes by in about 10 minutes.
It is one of the fastest watches I've ever seen, too. It's just, you just get transported.
It's great. I can't wait.
Thank you so much for being with us today. No, please.
What an honor. Thank you very much, guys, to include me in this podcast.
It's fantastic to talk to you. And thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you.
Cheers. Enjoy your day.
Bye-bye. Thank you.
Ciao. Bye.
Well, man, I feel cultured, bathed. Yeah.
Bathed in greatness. Great guy.
Well, guys, thank you for letting me vomit all over my hero there. Yeah, he's great.
I know. Do you think that we'll be able to cut in any of him talking for the first 20 minutes? Was I going on? Was I going on? I was in a blackout.
I loved it. I loved that.
That was so cool. No, it was good.
It was good. You were obviously like super into it and he...
I mean, the guy's got more talent than... I mean, I just...

He could probably...

If time would allow,

he could probably make

three or four great movies every year.

I know.

It's just...

It's pretty stunning.

And what a nice person too, right?

Super sweet and super sort of generous

with like his process.

Way to see this movie too.

Yeah, he seems like a very calm,

calm director, like a calm presence. Like there's calm presence.
There's some directors that are like, I would be a terrible director. He's like, what's going on? And I'd freak out.
But he's more like, hey, we're going to make this happen and everything's going to be just fine. Sean, would you do Revenant too? Sure.
If he was like, I'm going to do Still Revenant? Pending script approval. Still Revenant.
Yeah, and when you do revenant too sure if he did if he was like i'm gonna do still reven i'm pending script pending script still reven yeah just would you do a movie would you do a movie called bear attack and the whole movie is just you yeah we can film it in my bedroom scotty you you wrestling scotty yeah well that's let's be honest that's cub attack. That is cub attack.
Which is a lot easier to get out of. Right.
Do you speak? But you don't speak bare, do you? You're not. Bilingual.
Bilingual. Bilingual.
Very nice. Smart.
Less. Smart.

Less.

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