"Alejandro Iñárritu"

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Speaker 2 2023, 2023. Happy New Year, happy new year, happy new year, happy new year.
Is it 23 or is it 22? It's 23. Welcome.
I've been here for a minute and I just wanted to welcome you guys.

Speaker 2 I was waiting for you guys to get here. Cool, right?

Speaker 3 It's pretty cool. It seems feels a little bit like last year, but.

Speaker 2 No, it's way different. Also, the episodes are way different too.
This is so insane. Come on, join me.
Welcome to Smartless. Smart.

Speaker 2 less

Speaker 2 smart

Speaker 2 less

Speaker 2 smart

Speaker 2 less

Speaker 3 yeah hi guys um hey sean and i were just i'm i'm getting down a uh a late breakfast here with the with the oatmeal he doesn't

Speaker 2 he says he doesn't it's listening i try when i show with you when i was really young are the the worst crab on the world in the world.

Speaker 2 And you won't eat oatmeal? No, when I was really young, I had issues about being so thin. And like, you know, I think we talked, we mentioned this before.

Speaker 2 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 get.
Oatmeal doesn't make you fat.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 But it's so good.

Speaker 2 let's take a look in that bowl again.

Speaker 3 Let's just look at it would help clean out all of the garbage you put in your system, Sean.

Speaker 2 I know that's true.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 get like that little bike license plate out of you.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 that says eight wheeler on it.

Speaker 3 What do you usually have for breakfast? Do you are you a breakfast guy?

Speaker 2 Well, remember last time I said I had chili and cornbread. Oh, right, right.
But usually,'cause it's I'm I never really eat breakfast.

Speaker 2 I usually wait till like lunch to eat something and then I'll eat like,

Speaker 2 you know, like tune-fish sandwich or whatever. So that's kind of like my breakfast.

Speaker 3 Willie, you're not a breakfast guy, are you?

Speaker 2 No, it depends. Sometimes on the weekend, I am.

Speaker 2 I'm a late morning little snack.

Speaker 3 And will you, and will you cook up a breakfast for the kids? Are you one of those guys?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But I, well, we FaceTimed last week like at 10 o'clock at at night, and Abel was in the background.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, Abel, what are you eating? He's like, cereal. Yeah.
At 10 o'clock at night. I love cereal.
I love cereal. They both do.
Both the kids, we eat dinner so early. So both of the older kids

Speaker 2 generally hit that thing where at about eight, nine o'clock, they get real snacky.

Speaker 3 But will you worry about 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.

Speaker 2 Well, they always make sure that they eat something at home. They sit at the counter and eat something at home before they go.

Speaker 2 Usually, like a cereal yogurt with granola or some kind of a cereal or sugar.

Speaker 3 Or a sugary cereal. I've seen your pantry.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah, I know you've seen my, but I think you got the wrong impression.

Speaker 2 It's envy.

Speaker 3 Wrong impression? So when I'm looking at frosted flakes, it's not really frosted.

Speaker 2 No, because, like, for instance, the frosted flakes that you're referring to have been in

Speaker 2 a container. No, not three boxes at all.
And have been there for so long.

Speaker 3 This is just above above the Oreos, right? It's just above the three different kinds of Oreos.

Speaker 2 By the way, the Oreos are in those little packages, and they were, again, they were for the kids, for school. They were snacks.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 It's my first stop because we have, you know, oats and barley and quinoa at this house. It's this house.
Which I love, but I do like to shake it up everyone's.

Speaker 2 You know, remember when we had dinner a while ago, Jay, and I said, before I come over, can Amanda please get me a Coca-Cola?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think she did. She bought a few of them.

Speaker 2 Yeah. All right.

Speaker 3 Listen.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I'm pulling up my, listen up.

Speaker 3 I'm pulling up my,

Speaker 3 I spent some time on this intro here.

Speaker 3 Yeah, this is not some silly guest. Tighten up.

Speaker 3 Today we've got a guest that is the closest thing to a magician that we've ever had.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Well, he doesn't pull.

Speaker 3 bunnies out of hats or miraculously saw women in half.

Speaker 3 He is able to magically take us into environments and experiences that not only feel and look real, but they manage to access our most protected and personal places of thought and emotion.

Speaker 3 He does this with incredible writing, extraordinary images, and raw performances. He has received five Academy Awards,

Speaker 3 including best director in back-to-back years. Only the third person ever do that.
He's the youngest of seven kids. He was kicked out of high school.
He became a radio DJ.

Speaker 3 He became a cargo boat sailor.

Speaker 3 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 this guy babble birdman the revenant and his latest and perhaps greatest bardo please welcome one of my heroes alejandro inaritu

Speaker 2 alejandro hey how are you guys good morning hello

Speaker 2 yes god it's we're classing it up today you really classed it up right

Speaker 3 yeah see these guys they they can't, I've never heard them so quiet. They're stunned.

Speaker 2 I knew I was like,

Speaker 2 the second you started his name in the films, I was like, are you kidding me?

Speaker 3 Yeah, you thought it was a joke. So I saw Bardo last night, and it is, it truly is, I think, given even with all the films that you've done,

Speaker 3 it could be your best. Do you, 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.

Speaker 2 Well, first of all, thank you for that incredible, generous introduction that you made.

Speaker 2 gave you. I can't wait.

Speaker 3 So this is our strategy, though. We build you up and then we're going to hit you with some really embarrassing questions.

Speaker 2 And I was just like having a hungry

Speaker 2 listening to you about the breakfast.

Speaker 2 I have some chilaquiles, guys.

Speaker 2 That's the Mexican way to go in the morning.

Speaker 3 Chilaquiles are in your movie.

Speaker 2 Exactly. Exactly.
Chilaquiles. I'm feeling good.
So what do you think?

Speaker 3 Do you think Bardo's your best?

Speaker 3 It's a big statement.

Speaker 2 You know, the thing is,

Speaker 2 what I felt about Bardo and I feel about Bardo is that

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 that technically and how to say things,

Speaker 2 that the material or the fabric of this film was very complex. So I was very

Speaker 2 happy just to have made it, you know, that I could turn that thing into something.

Speaker 2 And that's why I consider that,

Speaker 2 yeah, I think it's my the

Speaker 2 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 that.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 you, Sean and Will, and also the listeners, Bardo is, and I had to look this up,

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 some people call it.

Speaker 3 Purgatory.

Speaker 3 Yeah, thank you. Purgatory or, well, purgatory is a place between heaven and hell, I think.
But so

Speaker 3 the film spends a lot of time or toggles back and forth between

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 it obviously lends itself to a lot of filmmaking techniques, both visually and

Speaker 3 also in just sort of

Speaker 3 the storylines of things.

Speaker 3 It's very, very beautifully complex,

Speaker 3 not complicated, not difficult, but just so rewarding.

Speaker 3 It does ask you everything that asks of you everything that you've learned, certainly, it seems.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, thank you.
Thank you very much for that, Jason. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But it's a very narrow kind of conception.

Speaker 2 And Vardo in the Buddhist tradition is exactly that.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 that's kind of the concept of that word, the way I wanted to use it, you know.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's so exciting

Speaker 3 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 Lynne film, guys, Jacob's Ladder?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Where it's basically about, you don't know until the end that where we have been is on this guy's

Speaker 3 deathbed. He's sort of purgatory.

Speaker 3 But it allows the film to travel in so many crazy spaces. And

Speaker 3 it's, talk to me a little bit about the writing process of that, the not only putting in all of your

Speaker 3 clearly deeply felt emotional places,

Speaker 3 but also playing with

Speaker 3 time and the complexity of the non-linear aspect. You're constantly flashing forwards or back or real or unreal.

Speaker 3 Was that difficult or was it simple for you?

Speaker 2 No, actually, I think one of the most challenging things, I will say, and scary because there was no recipe.

Speaker 2 You know, because structurally, you know, in the film, you can play very well with flashbacks or flash aheads, and they are very, I would say, constructed in a way that they are very

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Now, you're going to see it again. I remember Jacob's Ladder was amazing with Tim Robbins, right? Yeah, it was Tim Robbins.

Speaker 2 But in this case,

Speaker 2 the challenge was

Speaker 2 this film, Bardo,

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 in the way when we dream, you know, and

Speaker 2 we are, you know, 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 house but the one guy is there and then the house becomes something else and you're gardening and 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 real really quick is a super quick story about jimmy burrows you know james burrows alejandro he's he's a tv director friend of ours um i was in new york and uh i'd just flown there.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And in my dream,

Speaker 2 our sweet friend, Jimmy Burroughs, something 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And it wakes me up from my nap. And I go, hello.
And they say, yeah, 911, what's your emergency? So I called

Speaker 2 while you were sleeping. While I was sleeping, but it seems so sleepable.

Speaker 2 Isn't that great?

Speaker 2 That's never happened to me before.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 dreams are an incredible place. I think we just had, we had

Speaker 3 James Cameron on the podcast the other day, Alejandro. And I think we said to him, he would be an incredible filmmaker, as would you, to tackle dreams,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 All right, so

Speaker 3 your films benefit so much from your visual strategy.

Speaker 3 Where can you trace that back to? You certainly didn't learn that in your brief radio career, did you?

Speaker 3 Where did you get that taste for visuals and the technical know-how of it?

Speaker 2 I will say that I'm still trying to learn a lot.

Speaker 2 I think my guide always has been music. You know, I think I have a better ear.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And then the question that I have been much more

Speaker 2 always is challenging for me is the point of view. You know, which point of view I would like to be putting the audience.

Speaker 2 And that is what really makes me decide how I'm going to shoot.

Speaker 2 So those two things really help me to understand how I want the audience to live the experience because I would like them to live depending on the point of view, which sometimes get complicated when you have two or three characters or four characters in a scene.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And then I decide where I put the camera and how open.

Speaker 2 And then about the context, because in the first films I did, I normally tend to isolate

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But then little by little, in the last three films, I have been very obsessed about the context context of the character. You know, what really make that character a character.

Speaker 2 And so then I have been trying to involve more and more the context of the situation. And I have been now rejecting every

Speaker 2 lens that is more than 21. I felt that it's like a long lens.
You know what I mean? I feel like. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 2 Can I talk to you a little bit about, because it's funny you say that, because

Speaker 2 I forget, we were talking to somebody, but

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So many of those scenes played

Speaker 2 with

Speaker 2 virtually no coverage at all. Right.
And everybody played over each other.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 you know, characters would come in and out of the scene.

Speaker 3 You know, Robert Altman did a lot of that and Woody Allen.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and then Robert Almond 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.

Speaker 2 And we've become, and not to get too deep in the woods, in the weeds on this but do you feel like we've become too dep 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 how what I feel about the story and their relationship.

Speaker 2 Yes, I think you're right. I think you're right.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 film. Staging, right?

Speaker 2 Staging. Staging is just so, so incredible.
I think he's the best in the world.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, I feel the same way.

Speaker 2 Like, whenever there's like a film about like dance, or like I'm watching like a cheerleading thing on ESPN or whatever where 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 no you want to see everybody doing it at the same time

Speaker 2 so that it's five six seven eight and not cut to seven eight you want to see a 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 as 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.

Speaker 2 So it's always like for protection.

Speaker 2 Well, we're just going to do, so that when we go, when I go and do stuff on my own and I go 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.

Speaker 2 I go, no, no, no, I'm never going to use it. Well, shouldn't we get just to have it? I go, no, I don't give a shit.
I'm never going to use it.

Speaker 2 Fucking, I know how I'm going to cut it and I don't give a shit.

Speaker 3 And well, well i think it would be really important and you want to be like oh to you yeah yeah and the one the one shot the one or is is is is super good for that right um for a one hundred you use that a lot right where you don't even you don't even give yourself an option in the editing room you're gonna stay there till you till you get it and you're gonna 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 uh every film demands different things.

Speaker 2 So not all the films needs to be that way. I think again, I think

Speaker 2 I learned it to do that by

Speaker 2 necessity in Berdman. That was the one that radically I knew that I

Speaker 2 wanted to make this as an espaghetti experience, right?

Speaker 2 That 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.

Speaker 2 So I designed the whole shooting based on one single shot, obviously with stitches.

Speaker 2 But that was a radical thing. Yeah, it was mind-blowing.

Speaker 3 Did Sam Mendes or Roger Dinkins come to you and talk to you about some of the tricks before they did 1917? Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, I think, 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 is the demand of the film but it's very fun.

Speaker 2 I just find too that

Speaker 2 I agree with you when you were saying about coverage, right? To be cover yourself all the time is not healthy because then there is no I like when there is limits, no,

Speaker 2 principle, not rules, because I don't like to use rules, but principle and if the principle of the film has

Speaker 2 a limit or a 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I would imagine after

Speaker 3 winning or

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Does it limit the kind of swing you want to take going forward?

Speaker 3 It must be tough.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think, yes, it's true. It's true that

Speaker 2 the expectations always

Speaker 2 play against you in some way.

Speaker 2 But at the same time, it's challenging. After the Revenant, something that I really appreciate was that I took

Speaker 2 a time to do a virtual reality installation that I have never done that was called Carnell Arena.

Speaker 2 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 in a in a in a space, a big space with

Speaker 2 sand

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So instead to be a whole, that you, you see a fragment of reality, you were basically navigating and walking 360 degrees walking with these guys. Virtual reality, right?

Speaker 3 You could turn around and look.

Speaker 2 Exactly. And it was an incredible experience because it's everything, but cinema is not.
So, I mean, this literally, you become the camera, you become the character.

Speaker 2 And then the police officer was pointing at you. You know, so wherever you move, you were really being threatened.

Speaker 2 So you become those guys in a radical way, and physically, your body was present there, and feeling the details about it.

Speaker 2 So, very much, I think, was a big important thing for me to make this actually film, you know.

Speaker 2 Alejandro, tell me a bit 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.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 then to make a film about this migration of people crossing the desert and doing that. What is your relationship from that side of the perspective?

Speaker 2 You know, because

Speaker 2 we're fed all sorts of different narratives here about

Speaker 2 immigration and people migrating north across the border and blah, blah, blah. From where you are physically,

Speaker 2 what is that perspective shift? What is your,

Speaker 2 you know, obviously you were driven to make a film as sort of a film experience about it.

Speaker 2 Where does that land with you? Where does that sit with you,

Speaker 2 that dynamic of

Speaker 2 the sort of migration of people?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I think in LA, where I live now, and I have been living here, there's almost like 5 million Mexicans, right?

Speaker 2 And for that project, I interview like more than 500 immigrants with incredible, you know, heartbreaking stories. Wow.
There was a mom that crossed seven times to bring one by one of her daughters.

Speaker 2 And it took her 20 years working as a maid, getting money little by little to go back and then turn back.

Speaker 2 And the way these guys abuse 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.

Speaker 2 And the way they are treated. And then the most heartbreaking kind of thing.

Speaker 2 thing is the kids, the kids that have been taking 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And there's no way for them to go back because there's no other territory. So those stories for me have been always close to me.
And obviously, you know, socially, I know many of these stories. And

Speaker 2 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 is is really hard it's very hard to understand yeah that's actually a nice segue into a question that I've had which is you know and forgive me because I'm I'm asking because I don't know I'm uneducated in this area, but, you know, growing up.

Speaker 2 He's more, a bag of Skittles or a bag of MM? Sorry, what were you going to do?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 passion? To prepare him for this career, you mean?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, no,

Speaker 2 you cannot prepare.

Speaker 2 I think that I never thought that I will be leaving here. You know, our plan was after Amor Esperos, my wife and I decided to come here for one year.

Speaker 2 The situation in Mexico, I'm from a generation that in our country, there was only six to seven films being made a year.

Speaker 2 So there was no actually, you know, something that as filmmakers, Alfonso Cuarón or Guillermo El Toro or Chivo Lubeschi we had to come to look for something that we want to pursue which was a filmmaker career and and we couldn't our country cannot provide that at that time security was not very 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 then 21 years has passed and it feels that it happened in one week

Speaker 2 yeah yeah that's part of the and that's that's what the film is kind of that's what's the reason I make this film like to clean the closet emotionally and and just to put things in order, you know?

Speaker 2 And and I think you don't have to leave that you are from Toronto or I have a lot of friends, American friends that are from little towns in the south and they are living here.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So I mean, there's that, that's that, that's another battle. You don't have to leave your country to feel that your past is not belonging to you anymore.
Or that was another person kind of thing.

Speaker 3 Talk to me

Speaker 3 about music.

Speaker 3 So you started with

Speaker 3 working in 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 I also want you to talk about

Speaker 3 the strategy for doing the music in Birdman, where the camera would actually show the drummer every once in a while.

Speaker 3 It 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.

Speaker 3 Just talk to me about music and film and

Speaker 3 how you enjoy writing music for films as well.

Speaker 2 You know, when I was 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.

Speaker 2 So I always felt that, you know, I was very clear with Amor desperos that it sounds like sticky fingers of the Rolling Stones, for example, that album. It was that sound that I wanted to portray.

Speaker 2 And then there are some times

Speaker 2 I listen to one album only when I'm, you know,

Speaker 2 21 grams. I hear to Pat Mythini 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.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 are you saying that

Speaker 2 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 muth, you know?

Speaker 2 I think it's something that suddenly the sound of an album can portray you a mooth and the sound in a way there's something that makes me feel close to the pace, to the spirit of the film.

Speaker 2 And for me, super,

Speaker 2 and in Bergman, for example, I knew that I need drums because I knew that I wanted to make a one take

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I knew that I will not have that opportunity. So I needed a rhythm.
I need something.

Speaker 3 Or like a rim shot, right? It sort of ends a joke or ends a scene.

Speaker 2 carries you into the next one. Exactly.
And then I have been very lucky because my first four films, I work with Gustavo Santaulaya, which is an incredible musician.

Speaker 2 And he do like minimalistic things, you know, with a couple of guitar moves and things. He just creates again.

Speaker 2 I like to use very minimalistic music in that sense.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so, every experience has been

Speaker 2 different.

Speaker 2 Then in Revenant, I worked with Ryuchi Sakamoto, that you cannot ask for more than the master Sakamoto. It was another experience.

Speaker 2 And then in this one, I did it with Bryce Dessner, you know, which is incredible.

Speaker 2 From the national? From the national. Yeah,

Speaker 2 Bryce is just

Speaker 2 so eclectic. I mean, he does classical music, he do

Speaker 2 jazz, he do everything. So I was able to work with him this time, and it was fantastic.

Speaker 3 And you do have all those different sounds in it. Bryce is a super talented guy.

Speaker 2 He and those guys just did that.

Speaker 2 Well, my buddy Bonnie Vera just did a collab with those guys, but Jason doesn't. Do you like Bonnie Vera at all, Alejandro? I love Bonnie Vera.
Oh, no kidding. Now I do.
Keep going. I do.

Speaker 2 Keep going.

Speaker 2 That guy is genius. And he has just

Speaker 2 Bryce has just worked with Tom Tom York, too. So or even with Steve Reich, you know, so he's in all these kinds of genres.
You know, it's crazy. Thank you, Alejandro.
Thank you. Jason.

Speaker 2 Who don't like Boni Vera?

Speaker 2 Jason's made fun of it for like two years because he doesn't. Now that he

Speaker 2 thinks the cool kids like him, he's going to be all over. No, I'm on.
You said Tom York, I'm in. Oh, my God.
I'm rage quitting this episode.

Speaker 2 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 2 and now back to the show

Speaker 3 let me stop you at revenant for one second um and i am good i apologize uh if you've answered uh this question on this subject before i'm sure you have because it

Speaker 3 it i don't I don't know if a sequence will ever be made that is more.

Speaker 3 the bear fight is something that when when i was watching it i i was i knew it wasn't real obviously uh because uh

Speaker 3 leo takes a lot of risks but that one would be too much um

Speaker 3 so i'm so i'm studying the the 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 wonner was it not It was all.

Speaker 3 So why would you, in something so technically difficult as that sequence, why would you choose to really make it even more tough by making it one take?

Speaker 3 How did you come to that decision?

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 did a lot of research about the bear attacks and the description of it. There's a book actually of people that survived.

Speaker 2 It's a weird book with like 120 cases of people that have survived bear attacks. I love to read that.
Oh my god, Sean's seen over 120 bear fights over a long weekend once during Pride.

Speaker 2 I'm Santa Monica.

Speaker 2 So, so no,

Speaker 2 when I was reading these attacks,

Speaker 2 normally it was about the cops. You know,

Speaker 2 when you cross and there are cops, they're closed, then you know that you are screwed. You know that you are in danger.

Speaker 2 And the description of the people, the way they felt it, the way they remember, the way they felt, again, Again, they experiencing a point of view of them and it was shocking to see, you know, the fear, everything.

Speaker 2 So I said, I will 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.

Speaker 2 I will 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 the born. And I remember with Bernard Herzog,

Speaker 2 you remember his documentary, and that moment that Bernard is sitting with the headphones, and he's hearing how this guy was divorced and how these guys were debored by this.

Speaker 2 And I said, Bernard, 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.

Speaker 2 And what he described, 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.

Speaker 2 They want warm meat, and so they keep you alive, and they are taking your skin off little by little. So they are deboring you in pieces.

Speaker 2 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 so horrific like that.

Speaker 2 So that's why I decided to do that. Yeah, no, it worked.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 when you decided that this is what you would love to do that's that 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

Speaker 3 and it'd be tough to see it again. You know, 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?

Speaker 2 Well, I think that it's it's possible because I think the visual effects and the CEI has a right to a point that

Speaker 2 I was really you know worried that it will look good and but I have to credit here ILM. I think they did an amazing job by creating this incredible believable bear with all the hair.

Speaker 2 So now the technology allow you to create something like that but you have to you have to just prepare it very well. You have to really have a good idea how you want to make it.

Speaker 2 So we rehearse 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

Speaker 2 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 started rehearsing with a trainer with a stunt

Speaker 2 that will be doing kind of the bear character and and we were saying, okay, now he will do that, then then he will grab it by the leg he will drag him here and then we she and i start designing the camera move to understand what so little by little we were kind of shaping the the the the moments and then we knew that we have to make it in one shot so we start rehearsing with the camera with the stones with leo and then we knew that we will have to use arnesses you know too yeah the harnesses the the wires he was tied up to a bunch of wires it had to pull him all over the place

Speaker 3 as a bear would easily pull and push and throw him all over the place.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It was very challenging because we shot that actually in the middle of the woods, you know, in Vancouver.
So, in a way, it was, you know, we had to prepare the whole territory.

Speaker 2 The Arnaz, the Camara didn't have to cross with that. So, again, that's a boring and technical thing that I don't think is so difficult.

Speaker 2 I just think you need to have a clear idea what you want to achieve. And then everything almost is possible.
You have to have the bare necessities.

Speaker 3 Oh, very nice. The bare necessities, Sean.

Speaker 2 You have to love bare necessities. Talk to me,

Speaker 2 Alejandro, about your relationship with

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But right, but what I was sort of asking more, yeah, I know, right, you guys were creating this incredible trilogy,

Speaker 2 but the relationship that you guys have and how that changes over writing three films together and that process of

Speaker 2 your relationship and what that, you know,

Speaker 2 for instance, my relationship with, I'm going to mention Chappie again, a guy that I write with whom I love and I adore.

Speaker 2 And I have such a deep connection with him because we spend so much time writing in a room together and what that relationship. Anyway, you guys have written these great films together.

Speaker 2 Talk to me about your personal relationship and how it has sort of brought you guys together or how it's changed. And I don't know.

Speaker 2 I think that I think we met

Speaker 2 in 1997. So we start developing like short stories that end up being amor esperos first.
And

Speaker 2 it was a great time for both of us. You know what I mean? We were sharing the same kind of sensibility,

Speaker 2 writers.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 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, or sensit sensibilities and sources of inspiration so it was great and i think that after the the last film you know i think it was great because i was a little bit burned burn 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,

Speaker 2 very difficult.

Speaker 2 So then it ends, you know, any creative

Speaker 2 relations sometimes find an end or a transformation and then you need to find yourself.

Speaker 2 And then the next film in Beautiful, I used found two co-writers that were fantastic, which is Nicolas Jacobone, which is the one who I have been collaborating in this last film, and Armand Dobo.

Speaker 2 So, anyway, I think for me, it was a way to be evolving and transforming. And that relation, in a way, was very, very,

Speaker 2 very productive by having three films and was great. You know, it was great.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 2 Are you really bad at anything?

Speaker 3 How about singing or dancing or sports or anything like that? What are you worst at?

Speaker 2 I am so bad in almost everything. Let me tell you that.

Speaker 2 The only thing that

Speaker 2 I try to attempt to do my best is to make films, but I'm so bad. My hands are really clumsy, let me put it that way.
I cannot draw, for example. I cannot draw an apple.

Speaker 2 So you don't storyboard yourself? No, I don't storyboard myself. I would love to, but I can't.

Speaker 2 And then I wanted to be a musician, and I have terrible fingers to play the guitar, so I'm absolutely bad with my

Speaker 2 hands, they 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. Except I'm very bad in most cases.

Speaker 3 Please keep doing it.

Speaker 3 You're

Speaker 3 one of our greatest ever. And

Speaker 3 I love watching everything.

Speaker 2 You need to be good at anything. Oh, you're very kind.
You're very good at it. You make incredible films, really.
I'm so glad that you enjoy Bardo.

Speaker 2 I really hope that you two guys see it and uh i'm very i'm very happy bardo is yeah i'm gonna see it like this weekend

Speaker 3 i'll i'll 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

Speaker 2 it's just stunning everybody should uh rush i just want to i just want to tell you something i think when you see it guys don't try to demand logic on it okay so i mean turn off your your co-pilot of rational demandings and just let yourself go.

Speaker 2 Oh, I don't. I wake up and go to bed that way.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 it goes by in about 10 minutes.

Speaker 3 It is one of the fastest watches I've ever seen, too. It's just, you just get transported.

Speaker 2 It's great. I can't wait.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much for being with us today. And

Speaker 2 I want to thank you very much, guys, to include me

Speaker 2 in this podcast. This fantastic talk to you.
And thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much,

Speaker 2 Hannah. Enjoy the rest of your day.
Bye-bye. Thank you.
Ciao. Bye.

Speaker 2 Well, man,

Speaker 3 I feel cultured, bathed.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Bathed in greatness. Great guy.

Speaker 3 well guys uh thank you for uh

Speaker 3 letting me um

Speaker 2 vomit all over uh my hero there um yeah he's great i know do you think that we'll be able to cut in um any of him talking in for the first 20 minutes was i was i going on

Speaker 2 i i was in a blackout i loved it i love that that was so no it was good it was good no you were obviously like super into it and he i mean what the guy's got more talent than i mean what i i just he could probably, if time would allow, he could probably make three or four great movies every year.

Speaker 2 I know.

Speaker 3 It's just, it's pretty stunning. And what a nice person, too.

Speaker 2 Right. Super sweet and super sort of generous with like his process.

Speaker 3 Way to see this movie, too.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he seems like a very calm, calm direct, like a calm presence.

Speaker 2 Like there's some people, there's some directors that are like, you know, like I would be a terrible director because they're like, what's going on? And I'd freak out.

Speaker 2 But like, he's more like, hey, we're going make this happen and everything's gonna be just fine Sean would you do revenant too

Speaker 2 sure if he did if he was like I'm gonna do still reven I'm pending script pending script approved still reven yeah

Speaker 2 would you do a movie would you do a movie called bear attack

Speaker 2 and the whole movie is just you yeah we can film in a movie running from Scotty you you wrestling Scotty yeah

Speaker 2 well that's let's be honest that's cub attack I mean that's cub attack that is cub attack which is a lot easier to get out of.

Speaker 2 Do you speak, but you don't speak bear, do you? You're not bilingual.

Speaker 2 By

Speaker 2 very nice.

Speaker 2 Smart.

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