TDS Time Machine | Filmmakers Pt. 2

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Speaker 9 You're listening to Comedy Central.

Speaker 9 Please welcome JJ Abrams.

Speaker 9 Thank you for joining us. Thank you all.

Speaker 10 Sid, Sid.

Speaker 9 Congratulations. The number one film, not just in this nation, this great nation of ours, but in the entire of the Americas, as well as,

Speaker 9 I'm going to go with Indonesia and

Speaker 9 parts of Brazil.

Speaker 11 Thank you very much.

Speaker 9 It's very exciting.

Speaker 12 Thank you. Thank you very much.

Speaker 9 Is it difficult? You know, we do this show every day. And some days it can

Speaker 13 suck.

Speaker 9 But when it does, we come back in the next day and we do it again. A film you invested, how much time did you put into making just this film Super 8?

Speaker 11 The movie was, it took about a year or so from the idea to actually start shooting. And then we started shooting last September.
So it was a very quick...

Speaker 9 That is for filmmaking, that's awfully quick.

Speaker 11 It was a very quick production and post-production schedule. Insanely tight post-production schedule.

Speaker 9 But even within that, how difficult is it to lay something like that out and wait for that one weekend?

Speaker 9 What do you do on that one weekend when all this effort, all this creative energy, all this writing goes into the opening? Yeah,

Speaker 11 you're a nervous wreck because the idea that it's actually out there. It's a weird thing, you know, in post-production, it's like eight people.

Speaker 11 It's the editors, it's like the assistant editors, and they're all just like working together for months in this cave. And then in an instant, it's just out there.

Speaker 11 And you're meeting strangers who are like, you know that scene where you're like, how do you know? Like, it's weird, the idea that suddenly not just the eight of you, you know?

Speaker 9 Have you thought about not being in a cave?

Speaker 16 Because,

Speaker 9 and again, I don't know I don't I don't know Hollywood and I don't know how things work out there, but a man of your you could do this from let's say

Speaker 10 not a cave

Speaker 11 Next time I'm gonna try not editing in a cave I think that would be the

Speaker 9 choice there Do people feel that they can speak to you like that? Do they do they like people just come up to you on the street and be like that one scene yeah I didn't care for it like that kind of

Speaker 14 dad no

Speaker 9 no I think what happens you too huh?

Speaker 10 Yeah

Speaker 11 No, no, no.

Speaker 11 I think

Speaker 14 my dad liked this movie.

Speaker 11 I think

Speaker 11 it's hard sometimes because people just don't tell you the truth. And they'll, of course, say things, oh, hey, that was great.
And you kind of see the shallowness and you're like,

Speaker 11 you know. And so the key is finding people like, I don't know, my wife, who will just, you know, just kick your ass if there's something that's not right.

Speaker 11 And to be totally honest with you, because then when they love it and they say, I love it, you know it's real.

Speaker 9 And it means something. It means something.

Speaker 9 Can I have your wife?

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 11 Because she sounds like... No.

Speaker 9 No, my wife has to say, it's trust their opinion because they have the ability to say to you, wow, that was terrible.

Speaker 19 Thank you.

Speaker 16 No,

Speaker 9 and how do you work? Do you work backwards? Do you know, you know, your movies and your television shows are so layered and there's so much going on.

Speaker 9 Do you start with a destination and work your way back? Or

Speaker 11 you know it all depends. I mean obviously

Speaker 11 TV is you know linear narrative drama shows are very different than doing a movie because it's you know beginning middle and end in a movie. And then a TV show it's always a leap of faith.
Always.

Speaker 11 So you can have big ideas and you go, I think I know where this is going. So like when Damon Lindloff and I wrote The Pilot for Lost, we had a ton of big ideas.

Speaker 11 But there were fundamental characters, like if anyone who knows the show, like Ben Linus was not in the pilot. He wasn't in the first year.
We had had no idea.

Speaker 11 And Damon and Carlton, who ran lost, Carlton Cughes, those guys came up with everything that followed. I went off and did a movie.
Those guys were busting their ass on that show for six years.

Speaker 11 So my point is that you can have ideas, but it's like driving in the fog.

Speaker 11 Like you sort of, the closer you get to the destination, the more detail you see, and the more you realize, oh, you know, let's take this road that you couldn't have even seen back there.

Speaker 11 So it kind of evolves as you go.

Speaker 9 So in that fog,

Speaker 9 as you're pulling up closer, and then the fog clears and you go, oh my god, Carrie Russell cut her hair. You know, exactly.

Speaker 9 But it is, you know, it's unbelievable.

Speaker 9 The creative synergy of that, it's very difficult to trust that collaborative process. It is.

Speaker 9 To create something that complex, hand it over and say, I trust that you will take this, especially with science fiction, which has so many boundaries and rules

Speaker 9 of engagement that occur within the universes that you create.

Speaker 11 Well, I don't know what you're talking about, but the thing is that

Speaker 9 I'm talking about. So yesterday on the show, I said that Jewish pubic hair is similar to the planet Endor.

Speaker 9 I walk back there to like, Endor is a moon, you know, and I'm like, oh, I know. Did I say planet? I'm sorry, and it's a planet, it's a moon.
But that's my point.

Speaker 9 You hand this over and people are going to pour over it.

Speaker 11 It is, but to, in television, what's interesting about it is that people start to find connections that you didn't even know existed. So it's a weird thing.

Speaker 11 You'll start to, you know, have an idea and you start to do something.

Speaker 11 When we did Alias, it was unbelievable in in that first season the connections that people who are watching the show were making to things that we didn't really even know there were connections to.

Speaker 11 So we would decide sometimes to follow something and someone will say, oh yeah, yeah, I read that online. Someone wrote, you're like, what?

Speaker 11 And they would show me this thing where someone had already made a connection. So it's this weird thing where when you're doing a show, you have to listen to it as much as it listens to you.

Speaker 11 But the viewers are so smart and some have a lot of time.

Speaker 9 And they will literally extrapolate based on where you are.

Speaker 11 Oh, they must be related.

Speaker 10 know, and you're like,

Speaker 10 you know, so you're in the writer's room.

Speaker 11 You're like, what if it's your father? And someone else is like, oh, you mean like, you know, Alias Fen Sevens wrote?

Speaker 10 And you're like, damn it.

Speaker 9 And you just hope that they prove you to be brilliant as opposed to, you know,

Speaker 14 exactly.

Speaker 9 That go through there. Well, it's so nice to see you.
It's so nice to have you on the show. Thank you.
Great work, as always.

Speaker 24 Please welcome Spike Lee.

Speaker 24 Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 25 Glad to be here.

Speaker 19 Is Brooklyn in the house?

Speaker 24 Great to see you again. And let me start by saying this.
I have been in many a movie theater. I have watched many movies, Spike Lee.

Speaker 24 And I will tell you this, I have never experienced what I experienced watching this movie.

Speaker 24 I watched this movie in Connecticut this weekend, and the cinema was completely filled with old white people, the area I was in, it was Mystic Lake or something like that, right?

Speaker 24 And the movie plays end to end, I think, two hours and eight minutes, and we sit there, and nobody gets up. Like, credits start rolling, nobody moves.

Speaker 24 And then I stood up, and we were like in the middle, and then all the white people around me were just like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, just keep.

Speaker 24 And then, like, even when we were walking out, people were just like, Yeah, no, you first, you first.

Speaker 12 Like, everyone,

Speaker 24 it's a powerful film. Are you feeling that in the responses you get from that?

Speaker 26 I'm on Instagram, man. I got several

Speaker 26 people telling me that they were,

Speaker 26 you know, not

Speaker 26 one or two black people in the theater.

Speaker 26 And then, after the film, when the lights finally go up,

Speaker 26 the white people who love the film, they were still hugging them. They're hugging the black folks in theater saying, I'm sorry, I apologize, I apologize.

Speaker 9 I never heard anything like that before in my life.

Speaker 24 It's a beautiful film. And just to those who don't know anything about the story, Black Klansman is inspired by the true story of Ron Stalworth, right? He's an African-American detective in the 1970s.

Speaker 24 In the 1970s, the first.

Speaker 26 First police officer in Cotoram Springs.

Speaker 16 Right.

Speaker 24 And this is a black man who gets into a police department. And I mean from the get-go, let's start with that part of the story.
You lay out how difficult it is to play

Speaker 24 that role of being a black man and a police officer. And this is in the 1970s, but in some ways it feels like it hasn't changed.

Speaker 26 Well, what we tried to do was, even though it takes place in the 70s, I still wanted to be contemporary.

Speaker 26 So there are many things that my co-writer Kevin Wilmot and I, we put in so people, it would click like, you know,

Speaker 26 this stuff is still happening today.

Speaker 26 And then it, I know, I'm not trying to spoil anything because it's out already. Right.
But the ending that really hammers home where we are in this world today.

Speaker 24 It's a story that connects with you on so many levels. So Ron Stallworth is a black man who goes undercover as a Klan member, which is, I mean, the premise sounds ridiculous.

Speaker 24 If you don't tell me that it's based on a true story, I'd be like, this is the wildest thing from the imagination.

Speaker 26 That's what I thought when Jordan Peele called me.

Speaker 24 And he said, so he says to you, this is the story.

Speaker 5 Six words.

Speaker 26 Black man infiltrates Ku Klux Klan.

Speaker 25 High concepts.

Speaker 25 You can't get more higher than that.

Speaker 26 So when Jordan Peel said, I said,

Speaker 26 automatically I thought of David Chappelle skit.

Speaker 5 Right, right, right.

Speaker 26 But he said it's true, and then I read the book,

Speaker 26 and it was a great opportunity for me, even though it took place, even though the story took place in the 70s, I still thought it was a great opportunity to comment.

Speaker 26 on the world we live today with Agent Orange of the White House.

Speaker 24 Let me ask you this.

Speaker 26 I don't say his name.

Speaker 26 Shout out to Buster Rhines, that's what I got him.

Speaker 5 Buster?

Speaker 24 Let me ask you this. Why do you think a story about the 1970s and the Klan and a black man and the police force comments on what's happening today in America?

Speaker 26 Because

Speaker 26 I like to say,

Speaker 26 I think one of the mistakes people are making, I feel, is that they're saying this is just an American phenomenon. The rise of the right, this is happening globally.

Speaker 26 And with this guy in the White House, he's made it okay for these supremacist white suppressors to come out in the open.

Speaker 26 They're coming from out from the rocks, and he's legitimized them. And I wouldn't even call it dog whistles.

Speaker 5 He's like on a bullhorn.

Speaker 24 The film ends, and I won't spoil the ending of the film for you, but the film ends.

Speaker 26 Go ahead, peep it's been.

Speaker 24 Well, not the ending, because I still want people to enjoy that. This is a magical ending.
It's a beautiful film. But what happens post-the-movie part is we get thrust into modern day.

Speaker 24 We go from the 1970s to 2017. We go to a Charlottesville.

Speaker 26 We go to a year ago, what happened, a year ago, yesterday. Right.

Speaker 24 And

Speaker 24 again, I could feel an audience that was taken from a world of make-believe, which was real, to like very much what you don't want to believe is real. Right.

Speaker 24 When you are putting that on screen, when did you make that decision?

Speaker 24 Because this movie you had been creating, when did you make the decision to put current-day Charlottesville into a 1970s film about the Klan?

Speaker 26 Well, Well, we didn't start shooting till the fall.

Speaker 26 So I was in my summer home in Marlin's Vineyard, and it hit me just like that. This has to be the ending.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 26 I

Speaker 26 got Susan Bro's number, the mother of

Speaker 26 Heather Hare, who was murdered,

Speaker 26 and I got her blessing, so she gave me the permission to use

Speaker 26 her daughter's photo at the end. So that was a year ago, yesterday.
She was murdered, and it was nothing but Trevor. It was nothing but an American homegrown

Speaker 26 act of terrorism when that car drove down that crowded street and

Speaker 26 murdered her.

Speaker 26 That's a fact.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 26 the President of the United States had an opportunity to tell the world

Speaker 26 that

Speaker 26 we are not for hate

Speaker 16 and

Speaker 26 he did not denounce the Klan, the alt-right,

Speaker 26 the KKK. He didn't do it.

Speaker 26 And a lot of times for me, I found like, you know, he'll say something and then they pull him on the back and say, you got to change it. Then he says, you know, he.

Speaker 26 But I feel, whatever comes out of his mouth the first time, that's the truth. And that's what's in his heart.

Speaker 24 I just want to say thank you for making another amazing songhang. Thank you so much for being on the show.

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Speaker 8 Rules and restrictions apply.

Speaker 9 Please welcome back to the show, Ben Ablink.

Speaker 9 Thank you, thank you. Young man, despite the

Speaker 15 whiz-bang nature of that clip, there's a lot of excitement in the movie.

Speaker 9 It's a very special. Okay, and I'm going to say this now.

Speaker 15 A bureaucracy movie.

Speaker 9 It's not a bureaucracy movie at all. I have a lot of actors on the program.
Not a ton, a few, but enough. Sure.
And I oftentimes will

Speaker 9 lie to their faces, will say to them,

Speaker 9 well, this is a tremendous work you've done and excellent. The actor Hugh Grant comes to mind.

Speaker 9 I watched this film today. Phenomenal.
Thank you. Phenomenal.
Suspenseful.

Speaker 9 Interesting.

Speaker 9 Well researched, well acted, well directed. I mean, the energy of it, the kinetic energy.
Do you know when you're in the middle of this? I'm done.

Speaker 15 Thank you very much.

Speaker 10 No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 9 This thing is.

Speaker 9 I was incredibly impressed. Thank you very much with the film.

Speaker 15 I appreciate it. And I think the actors only rarely lie to your face.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 9 Had a great time. Thanks.
Good to see you.

Speaker 10 I'll see you.

Speaker 9 It's terrible.

Speaker 9 Yes. Where did this, did you spend time, you know, to do a film about Iran in 1979? Where did this story even come from? I've lived in this country a long time.
I'd never heard of it.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it's a true story. It happened obviously around the host era, you know, during the larger hostage crisis.
Six people got out.

Speaker 15 They escaped. They hid out with the Canadians.
They were rescued by a CIA exfiltration officer who teamed up with some folks in Hollywood.

Speaker 15 They pretended to be a B science fiction movie crew to go back and get them out of Tehran. Sounds, it's like a horrible movie if it wasn't true.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 15 But it's tense and it's funny and it's exciting.

Speaker 15 And I just got this, a guy read the, named Josh Bierman, found the declassified material Clinton declassified in 97 a guy named a brilliant writer named Chris Terrio then wrote a script from it they sent it to me and it seemed clear that even just with the most you know feeble execution I could do something special with the movie but this is no this is not feeble you clearly had worked out there was a scene in the movie is his shirt off it's

Speaker 9 that's kind of a trademark I don't know if I gotta tell you it was at the time I was thinking that's a little gratuitous.

Speaker 9 I cut that

Speaker 15 down. I showed that to some of the producers, and it was me getting out of the shower and toweling off and the whole thing.

Speaker 15 And we got, you know, I don't have any notes except, do you want to tell them or should I? You know, the shower scene.

Speaker 21 Maybe.

Speaker 9 Close it down a little bit, Darling. A little bit, yeah.
Did you meet the foreign service workers, the people that were in the embassy in Iran? Did you meet with them? Are they alive? I did.

Speaker 15 There are five of the six, what we called the house guests who were there, who were the diplomats,

Speaker 15 the family members of Chambers, the guy who Alan Arkin played, obviously my character I worked with very closely.

Speaker 15 So we had this whole nucleus of people who worked with us and helped us keep it real, and also who landed to me the fact that this really is, in part, a tribute to the dangers that our diplomats face, our Foreign Service people face, our clandestine service face without any hope for recognition.

Speaker 15 I mean, obviously in Benghazi, you saw tragic results there, and that this is really something that,

Speaker 15 in addition to your family, being away from your wife, being away from your kids, all this tough stuff.

Speaker 15 And so when I saw that stuff happening, I think the silver lining for me about this movie was, you know, we were paying honor to these folks.

Speaker 9 What's amazing to me, and it always has struck me, is no matter how the situation is in any country, how chaotic, how volatile, Canadians can travel freely. It really is.

Speaker 10 It's very...

Speaker 9 You know, this is, honestly, like, there's guys in the streets with machine guns, they're blowing each other away, there's all kinds of things and chaos, people getting shot in the streets, and all of a sudden a car pulls in with just two Canadian flags and just drives right there.

Speaker 10 Go on, go on.

Speaker 9 I didn't realize, we're in the middle of a violent revolution, but

Speaker 9 you're Canadians, you're good people, go on.

Speaker 15 It's remarkable. They're a peaceful people.

Speaker 15 And they're a known peaceful people. And this was a big, you know, we worked together with them.
They housed our folks, saved our lives. It was international cooperation.

Speaker 15 All the good things that we like to see for the sake of peace and hiding under the shelter of Canadians, which is, you know, that's us, that's America, hiding behind the Canadians.

Speaker 22 You know what?

Speaker 9 I think they will enjoy that interpretation very much so,

Speaker 9 from what I can understand.

Speaker 9 I'll tell you, this directing thing, though, I would continue to do this. Kaputsky or a novel?

Speaker 10 No, no, no, Kaputsky.

Speaker 9 I would say. I'm telling you, you're doing a nice.
I'm beautiful.

Speaker 15 Thank you very much. Just a beautiful thing.
I appreciate it.

Speaker 5 You're very good.

Speaker 9 Argo, it's in the theaters on Friday. You've got to go see this thing.
Ben Affleck, everybody.

Speaker 9 Please welcome Ava Duvernack.

Speaker 9 Thank you for being here.

Speaker 5 Hey.

Speaker 5 First of all,

Speaker 9 congratulations.

Speaker 27 Thank you.

Speaker 9 This is such a beautiful film. Thank you.
And so well done.

Speaker 17 I'm glad you think so.

Speaker 9 Oh, absolutely. I was incredibly moved.
The lead performance, David Oyelowo.

Speaker 28 It's just yellow.

Speaker 27 Yellow. O yellow O.

Speaker 9 O Yellow O.

Speaker 27 Yeah, yellow with two O's.

Speaker 19 Yellow with two O's.

Speaker 13 Remarkable.

Speaker 28 He's amazing. He's amazing.
We got to know the name because this guy is going places. You got to learn it now.

Speaker 9 He's already gone places in this film. How does it feel to present a story like this now that racism is over?

Speaker 21 Is it

Speaker 19 to be able to

Speaker 9 present it as a part of our learned and shared history

Speaker 9 that we no longer deal with?

Speaker 29 That's right, that's right.

Speaker 28 Well, it's interesting because we opened the film with King accepting Nobel Prize at a time when he was at the height of his powers. And at that time, if you read

Speaker 28 a commentary and columnists at that time, we're talking about how we had gotten past racism because he had gotten the Nobel Prize. I mean, this post-racial thing is not new.

Speaker 28 The idea that

Speaker 28 one achievement

Speaker 28 just kind of cleans the slate for everything else. So it's interesting.

Speaker 28 And these events took place 50 years ago.

Speaker 9 I thought it was very interesting the way that you portrayed

Speaker 9 his pragmatism because it humanizes him to a large extent in that he chose certain moments for their

Speaker 9 cinematic quality at times. He had to be careful and cautious about what moments could represent his highest aspiration.

Speaker 9 And you show him suffering as he watches individuals be punished for that choice.

Speaker 28 Yeah, I mean, during the Selma marches were really the first time that people died under King's watch. I mean, you know, you have three people who lost their lives during the Selma campaigns.

Speaker 28 And so that was a great weight upon him, a great guilt that he was carrying, you know, non-violent theory resulting in violent death. And so that's why

Speaker 28 this time in his history is just so ripe, so robust for exploration.

Speaker 9 You know, the big controversy is that Lyndon Baines Johnson is not enough of a hero in this. Does it surprise you?

Speaker 9 Because in the film, I mean, to be honest with you, when I read the controversy, I expected the film for him to be villainous.

Speaker 9 He is in no way that. He's a politician.

Speaker 19 I know.

Speaker 9 I'm a little baffled now.

Speaker 28 I'm doing the same things you are. I mean, literally, people cheer in the theater for LBJ at the end of it.
I mean,

Speaker 28 I'm a little baffled as to what the challenges are, but everyone has a right to their opinion. I mean, the bottom line is we don't paint anyone as a saint in this.
We don't paint anyone as a sinner.

Speaker 9 Tell me about your esteem for Dr. King after going through this process.
Does it enhance it in any way?

Speaker 9 Were there sobering moments to it?

Speaker 9 Ultimately, what's your feeling through that?

Speaker 28 I think, you know, my feeling before was that I thought I knew him and I was comfortable with what that was. It was very compartmentalized.

Speaker 28 A brave man, a courageous man, but not really a man, you know, really an idea. You know, he believed in nonviolence, he had a dream, he believed in peace, he died.

Speaker 28 Those are the broad strokes of what I think people understand about him. And he was a radical, he was a charismatic, he was a dynamic,

Speaker 28 he was a strategist, he was a tactician, he was a prankster, he was guilty, he had ego. He was like me, he was like you.
And I gained so much, you don't have ego?

Speaker 9 No, I just, when you say like Martin Luther King, he was like like you.

Speaker 8 You're like, no, I don't.

Speaker 5 But no, I mean, I would argue.

Speaker 9 I'll say like, yep, I'll give you prankster.

Speaker 28 I would argue that he is because he was just a brother from Atlanta who got swept up in history and was able to step into that greatness.

Speaker 28 But truly, he was a human being, and that's what we try to paint.

Speaker 13 I think that's so interesting, too, when you talk about, you know.

Speaker 9 when it starts out where he's stepping onto the stage of the Nobel ceremony and he's uncomfortable with the trappings of this newfound and worried how it will make him appear.

Speaker 9 And you never sort of think of that aspect of him in the third person going, hey, I represent this. I can no longer

Speaker 9 be this. It's as though he came to see himself

Speaker 9 as a mythological feature, a figure as well.

Speaker 28 Right, right. Well, he knew what he meant to people on both sides of it, you know,

Speaker 28 for folks that were not steeped in the culture of people of color. He was

Speaker 28 a safety to him.

Speaker 28 Some of them saw him as safe, some of them saw him as dangerous, but not as dangerous as Malcolm X.

Speaker 28 So he was the safety.

Speaker 5 I'm exactly how that's portrayed with Linda Baines Johnson.

Speaker 13 That's the correct. If we don't let Dr.

Speaker 28 King or Malcolm X, our option, there's some interesting ideas in there, and I would just invite people not to dismiss it based on the challenges that a few people who are supposed to be the custodians of one man are riling up.

Speaker 28 I think there's a lot of good stuff to it.

Speaker 9 I hope they don't.

Speaker 9 It's moving and complex, and the narrative,

Speaker 9 the Linda Benz Johnson is the least interesting. It's the people that did that March and Selma.
It's about their courage and struggle. It's so beautiful.
Oh, I'm glad you're so happy.

Speaker 9 And I congratulate you to the high heavens for it. Really lovely work.
Thank you so much.

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Speaker 18 Welcome back to the show, John Appetal.

Speaker 18 What's up, baby?

Speaker 9 Oh, I thought I saw like fluorescent green in there or something.

Speaker 19 I don't know what the hell is going on. How are you?

Speaker 12 I'm doing great.

Speaker 18 Great to be here.

Speaker 9 Very nice to have you here. Congratulations

Speaker 9 on the this is the trilogy.

Speaker 12 This is it is the trilogy of sex, marriage, and death.

Speaker 9 This is death.

Speaker 8 This is, well, not really.

Speaker 12 It's a funny mortality play that stars funny people. I don't know why you're not in it now that I think about it.

Speaker 9 Are you suggesting that I have the same neurotic obsessions?

Speaker 12 I think, well, have you seen it?

Speaker 18 Wait, what?

Speaker 9 Knocked up? It was hilarious. I love that.
No, this new movie, 40-year-old virgin, was great.

Speaker 12 No, because we sent you an invite to see funny people, and they said that you were going to go, and you were really into it.

Speaker 9 I thought Knocked Up was phenomenal.

Speaker 9 And what was the other one you did? 40-year-old Virgin was like, that Steve Corell is going places. And I think that he...
What's the name of this one?

Speaker 18 I did see it. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 19 I think. Who's in it?

Speaker 12 Are you scared to see it?

Speaker 24 What?

Speaker 12 You might feel something in here

Speaker 12 in your heart.

Speaker 13 You know that wouldn't happen.

Speaker 9 Is this a film that lays open your deepest

Speaker 9 fears about mortality and these types of situations?

Speaker 12 Well, I thought talking about mortality through the eyes of comedians would be a way to talk about a serious subject with an enormous amount of f ⁇ k jokes.

Speaker 12 Because the truth is, there's no limit to how much a comedian will talk about his penis.

Speaker 12 And people say there's so many f ⁇ k jokes in the movie, and I'm like, in real life, it would be 300 times more penis jokes. Because they're endlessly funny, I think.

Speaker 12 In your office is how many penis jokes per day?

Speaker 13 There's quite a few penis jokes in our office.

Speaker 9 I have to say that oftentimes, some of them can be incredibly erudite.

Speaker 13 Yes. And some of them actually can just be drawings on note cards.

Speaker 9 But I do admit there is

Speaker 9 quite a lot of that.

Speaker 9 Not a lot of death talk, though. So I think it's a good conduit.

Speaker 12 It is. It is.
And it's about a young comedian played by Seth Rogen, and he plays this guy, Ira Wright.

Speaker 19 Oh, someone recognized that name. One guy.

Speaker 19 Wait, what? Who?

Speaker 12 And he plays Ira Wrights, and Ira Wright, his real name is Ira Weiner.

Speaker 19 What's he running away from?

Speaker 12 Apparently there are some people who have Jewish names and they change them so they don't sound Jewish.

Speaker 9 Wow, that's ridiculous.

Speaker 9 Whoever does something like that should stand up because the only thing that matters in this world is that what you do personally is okayed by other people of your same ethnic persuasion.

Speaker 12 I think that you think that you're passing for non-Jew and you're not.

Speaker 19 What?

Speaker 19 Do you think people think I'm one of you?

Speaker 9 Well, wait till they hear about this at the club.

Speaker 19 I mean, Marge is going to have a real

Speaker 9 in-hergin gimlet.

Speaker 12 Do you know I'm such a big fan of the show and something weird happened the other night and I thought I would admit it on the show because it just seemed interesting to me, which is I was watching William Crystal and Bill Crystal, I call him William, but he's the editor of the Weekly Standard and I was home and I thought, you know, it's late and I'm going to masturbate and

Speaker 12 I thought...

Speaker 19 To the interview? Well, here's the thing.

Speaker 12 What I thought was, I wonder if I could pull it off while the interview was going on with Bill Crystal.

Speaker 9 Would you turn the sound down or would you leave it on?

Speaker 12 No, I left the sound up.

Speaker 19 And I thought you had some great jokes.

Speaker 12 You had some really funny jokes.

Speaker 19 Thank you. And did you have a sound? Did you look at the screen?

Speaker 19 Let me ask you a question. Yeah.
And this is important. Yeah.

Speaker 9 Who did you focus on?

Speaker 19 I have to admit, I looked into Bill's cold, dead eyes.

Speaker 19 So that's what you get off on.

Speaker 9 How long was the interview? It was kind of a long interview, so not that impressive a feat. It'd be one thing if in a shorter interview you could pull it off.

Speaker 19 I mean, eight minutes. I could pull it off three times.
I mean, for God's sakes.

Speaker 13 It gave me four minutes to cuddle with Bill afterwards.

Speaker 12 Now, I don't know if you guys heard about this, but I became, I was this close this week to being on the cover of Time magazine. Really?

Speaker 19 Yes. And what do you think?

Speaker 12 Well, basically, they said, if there's a big story, you're going to get bumped, but for entertainment, we think you're going to make it. And then at the last second, it changed to something else.

Speaker 12 I'd like like to show you the cover because they let me see what it was.

Speaker 19 There it is, right there.

Speaker 18 And that is not fake. And look how handsome I look.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 19 And you can't see my baby's head.

Speaker 12 You can't see that.

Speaker 9 It looks like you went down to the Jersey Shore and won that on the boardwalk.

Speaker 19 Exactly.

Speaker 18 And that is it.

Speaker 18 And it looks bad, but that is it.

Speaker 12 And then they switched it. I just want you to know that they thought this was more important than me.

Speaker 12 How much publicity does this guy need?

Speaker 19 That's what I want to know.

Speaker 12 He doesn't have a a movie coming out at this point.

Speaker 19 Can I tell you something?

Speaker 9 Time magazine is like O magazine. Like, Obama has to be on the cover.

Speaker 9 It is like Oprah Magazine. I think he's been on like 30 times this year.

Speaker 12 Well, it was a heartbreaker for me.

Speaker 13 Well, let me tell you something.

Speaker 9 You're on the cover of your heart.

Speaker 13 Mensch magazine. Yes.

Speaker 9 You're a good man.

Speaker 5 Thank you, sir.

Speaker 19 Funny people, it's in the theaters on Friday. John Appental!

Speaker 25 Please welcome Ryan Kugler.

Speaker 25 Thank you very much.

Speaker 25 Thank you so much.

Speaker 24 This is great for so many people to see the face behind the films. Congratulations, by the way.

Speaker 5 Oh, thanks, John.

Speaker 24 Creed is amazing. Thank you so much.

Speaker 16 It really is.

Speaker 22 It really is.

Speaker 24 I'd like to take a moment and go back on this. First of all, let's start with the fact that you are just 29 years old.

Speaker 24 Yeah, 29 years old. And already there's Oscar talk around the film.

Speaker 24 Does that make you nervous?

Speaker 24 Is that a humbling experience? What's that like to do?

Speaker 25 It is humbling, man. Like with filmmaking, it's an art form that you don't do on your own.

Speaker 25 I saw several collaborators come and go. I wrote the script with a buddy of mine, Aaron Cummington.
I got to work with one of my best friends, Michael B. Jordan.
And it really feels like

Speaker 25 it's just a blessing to be able to do this job. You know what I mean? So I have people talk about your movies at the end of it for awards and things like that.
It's just icing on the cake.

Speaker 24 My barber literally said to me,

Speaker 24 he was cutting my hand. He's like, yo, man, you seen Creed?

Speaker 6 You see Creed?

Speaker 24 And I was like, no, he's like, yo, that's the Black Rocky, man.

Speaker 23 He's like, that's Black Rocky for this generation.

Speaker 24 Is that what you were setting out to do when you wrote it? Because

Speaker 24 I read a fascinating story. You wrote this film.
You were inspired by your father.

Speaker 25 Yeah, absolutely. My dad was a huge Rocky fan.
Whenever you put these Rocky movies on, he would cry. You know

Speaker 25 So I know these movies had a

Speaker 25 special power over my dad.

Speaker 25 And I came to like him because my dad liked him. I wanted to be just like him.
And then when I finished up filming school, my dad got sick.

Speaker 25 And he started to develop a neuromuscular condition. He was losing his skeletal muscles.
He basically was becoming weaker.

Speaker 25 And had to help him from the car to the house sometimes. And all of a sudden, this dude who was always so strong became...

Speaker 25 became weak and it really did a number on my on my psyche you know um but then i came up with this idea that that maybe if this hero you know

Speaker 25 went through something similar, you know, and it was a young man who formed a relationship with him, you know, maybe it could be something that my dad would be into.

Speaker 25 Maybe it'll cheer him up, maybe it'll motivate him to fight through it.

Speaker 24 That's beautiful, man.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 24 how does a young black man from a rough neighborhood, like you said,

Speaker 24 go into making films? I mean, you said your dad was an ex-football player. You were going to get into football.

Speaker 25 Yeah. What changed?

Speaker 25 I mean, school, and I always had great teachers. And then I got a football scholarship to a school called St.
Mary's College.

Speaker 25 And I had a teacher there, you know, during my first year of school, read something that I wrote and called me into her office

Speaker 25 and basically suggested that I get into writing movies because my writing was real visual.

Speaker 24 No, no, I'm sorry. Just the image for me, because I watch a lot of movies, just the image that a football player gets called in and the teacher goes, you need to write more.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 13 You should quit football and you should write more.

Speaker 25 So you went straight into that you didn't i laughed at her being in the class and then you know while we were sitting in her office i thought she was crazy at first i was you know i thought i was in trouble when she called me into her office yeah i would think that too that's what i would think i never forget she called she was like hey you know i called me my dorm room i was in the dorm room with my friends she was like hey are you busy right now and i'm like uh you know i couldn't i couldn't lie because i'm in the dorm room you know

Speaker 23 like i said like there's no lies in dorm rooms

Speaker 25 i couldn't lie because i was in the dorm room but she knew it she knew where i was you know you know what i mean she could like walk down from her office and knock on the door if she wanted to so she said, I want you to come by my office hours right now.

Speaker 25 So I had to kick all my partners out the room. I got to go.

Speaker 25 Maybe the teacher,

Speaker 5 I can't remember what I wrote about.

Speaker 25 The story was actually about my dad crazy enough.

Speaker 25 And I thought maybe, because it was something that crazy that happened, I thought maybe she was like, hey, you need to see a psychiatrist. What you're writing about or something,

Speaker 25 or like,

Speaker 25 we're going to get to her office, it's going to be like the dean of school, like the police stairway for me. Like, hey, man, you know, true salt, you know what I mean, you're out of here.

Speaker 25 You know, I went in there, her name was Rosemary Graham, and it was just her, you know, and she, she, you know, she sat me down and asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Speaker 25 You know, and I had, I had no idea really at the time. Um, and, you know, she suggested that I get in there, you know, writing screenplays.

Speaker 24 Doing amazing things. Thank you so much.

Speaker 25 I appreciate it.

Speaker 24 Creed is amazing. Fruitville is amazing.
You're amazing, my friend. Thank you so much.

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Speaker 5 Please welcome Catherine Bigelow.

Speaker 24 Welcome to the Daily Show.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 24 I am such a huge fan of your work. You have directed some of the most gripping films we have had the pleasure of experiencing.

Speaker 24 You were awarded an Academy Award for your directing. Looking at this film, Detroit, would you say that this was one of the more difficult films that you have worked on?

Speaker 3 I would definitely say yes. Emotionally, it was very, very difficult, not only for

Speaker 3 the cast, but the crew. I mean, everybody, everybody was, you could not be immune to the emotionality of this piece.

Speaker 3 And I would oftentimes, after I'd say cut, I'd go out to the porch whenever you see it, you'll know that this all takes place in this one house and there's this porch.

Speaker 3 And I'd find the cast, you know, sometimes with their head buried in their hands, you know, and just, I tried to just move it along as quickly as I could, because it's a very tragic story.

Speaker 24 Why did you choose to tell this story about what was happening in Detroit?

Speaker 3 Well, I think the thinking going in was the canvas is huge.

Speaker 3 I mean, you're looking at a rebellion that took place over five days in 1967, and that was only one of almost almost 300 in the year of 1967.

Speaker 3 So there was a tremendous amount of social unrest, understandably.

Speaker 3 And so you have this beginning of it starts with the riot, and then it begins to telescope down to several characters, and then it telescopes down even further to this one character.

Speaker 3 So it's an opportunity for me to humanize what I think is somewhat unthinkable, which is the degree of police brutality and racial injustice that took place

Speaker 3 in those few hours in the Algiers Motel.

Speaker 24 Is it ever strange for you telling a story that is set in a time many decades ago and yet it still seems timely? It still seems like the story could have been of a few days ago?

Speaker 3 Well that was exactly my entry point. When it was first presented to me by Mark Bull, the writer that I work with, Hurtlocker and Zero Doc 30.

Speaker 3 I was just around the time of Ferguson, Missouri, and I was thinking, this sounds like today. I mean this is 50 years ago, yet it's today and if it's today could it be tomorrow?

Speaker 3 And so my hope was that the film could possibly be part of a larger conversation and encourage a conversation about racial injustice in this country and I think that

Speaker 3 or perhaps other stories coming forward you know I think it's a really meaningful

Speaker 3 conversation for this country to have at this point.

Speaker 24 What you cannot escape though when you're tackling any subject like this is because you're dealing with police brutality, because you are dealing with racial injustice, there is an element of people always questioning, people asking the whys.

Speaker 24 And I know one of the toughest whys that came to you was, why are you telling the story? You are a white woman telling a story of black people in Detroit. Why would you do that?

Speaker 3 Well, I think that, I mean, I certainly had to do some soul searching in order to answer that and then go forward with it.

Speaker 3 But I found the story so moving and I felt that it was an an important story to tell and so compelling that and I had the opportunity to tell it.

Speaker 3 So I thought perhaps that mitigated the negative aspects of the fact. You know, I thought, am I the right person to tell this story? Absolutely not.
But does the story need telling? Yes.

Speaker 3 And that's what was my motivation.

Speaker 24 When you worked on the story as well, I noticed that you worked with some key figures within the African American community, people who could lend credence to the story, make it factually correct.

Speaker 24 It was based specifically on the Algiers motel incident.

Speaker 24 Why that incident in particular? And why did you feel it was so important to get prominent African Americans who were steeped in history involved in the project?

Speaker 3 Well, we're very lucky to have people like Michael Dyson and Henry Louis Gates help us with this project. And what was so important

Speaker 3 was to base it on actual events. You know, that the research, it was extremely well

Speaker 3 researched. And

Speaker 24 it was very important that we get it right you know that it be accurate that it be authentic and that we were true to the events that took place we also had eyewitness accounts right now when you're a director we understand there's the commercial aspect you're trying to make money from the film it is a business at the same time you're trying to tell stories you're trying to move people if there was one thing you would hope would move after people watch this movie, what would you hope that thing would be?

Speaker 3 Well, I would hope that it encourages a conversation, you know, invites a conversation about the racial injustice in this country.

Speaker 3 I mean, for instance, you're from South Africa and there's a meaningful conversation about truth and reconciliation, but here I feel like there's just silence.

Speaker 3 And, you know, young African-American men are afraid to drive in their own car. And, you know, there's just who knows what will happen.
And I just think this is, you know,

Speaker 3 there's a situation out there that has need, in my humble,

Speaker 3 I'm just a filmmaker, but in my humble opinion, needs to be addressed and

Speaker 3 I hope this can certainly encourage that to happen.

Speaker 3 I mean we had a screening the other night in Capitol Hill hosted by Representative John Conyers and he has a bill to end racial profiling and he's he's

Speaker 3 encouraging people to see the movie and gender conversation.

Speaker 24 You call yourself a humble filmmaker, but we think you're exceptional. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Speaker 21 Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 21 Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Fairmount Plus.

Speaker 9 This has been a Comedy Central podcast.

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