Episode 1664 - Ari Aster

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Lock the gates!

All right, let's do this.

How are you, what the fuckers?

What the fuck, buddies?

What the fuck, Nicks?

What's happening?

Where are you at?

How you feeling?

I am going to talk to Ari Astor today.

He's a film director.

He's the writer and director of Hereditary, Midsomer, and Bo is Afraid.

His new movie, Eddington, is now in theaters, shot in my home state of New Mexico.

Also, Ari Astor's home state.

Challenging movie, man, but kind of great.

It's kind of great to see a movie that is provocative, challenging, and not seamless in a way.

Not, you know, the narrative of it, the story of it.

It hinges on a story, but it's what happens on the peripheries of the story and the characters within the story and their sort of sub-stories and psychological

character defects and pluses that make it very interesting.

It really is about, it's a very sort of

isolated small town in New Mexico at the precipice of the world changing because of COVID and what that did to people's brains, what it did to politics, you know,

where it brought people's brains.

And it also deals with the sort of weird humanness at the core of it all.

But somehow or another, he tends to mash all the forces that were upon us during that time.

The Trump presidency, the Black Lives Matter protests, police action, masks, no masks, paranoia,

radical politics that came out of it, government dubiousness.

And just he takes on everything on a very intimate level through people and through small town dynamics.

And the sort of broader idea is that this small town

at its,

you know, a big story point is whether they should build this data cloud,

I guess, I don't know what you call them, cloud storage facility, you know, the thing that stores everything that makes us crazy.

It was, I highly recommend it.

You will probably have to see it twice.

That said, this Thursday, July 31st, I'll be at the 92nd Street Y in New York City in conversation with Jim Gaffigan after a screening of my HBO special, Mark Maron Panicked.

Go to wtfpod.com slash tour for links to tickets.

Panicked premieres the next day on HBO and streaming on HBO Max.

And that's also the release date of The Bad Guys 2.

Also, new cat mugs from Brian R.

Jones go on sale today at noon Eastern.

These are the handmade mugs I give to my guests.

This is the second to last batch he's making, so you only get two more cracks at this.

Go to wtfmugs.co at noon Eastern today

for the famous Brian Jones mug.

Been doing a lot of press for bad guys.

Full junket.

Went to Comic-Con for the first time.

They aired us in.

They chartered a plane to take the entire cast in to do, I guess it's the big H H room.

I don't know.

You know, I'm not a Comic-Con.

It was the big big room.

About 5,000 people in there.

And me and the rest of the cast were all there doing the thing and, you know, doing the talk.

Got some laughs, showed some trailers.

This movie is pretty dynamic for an animated thing.

And I'm not an animated guy, but it's a seat rumbler, man.

It's going to be good for the kids.

And I think even the grown-ups will like it.

And I'm not supposed to say that, but I believe it's true.

It's a pretty exciting thing.

So look, I do want you to know I'm reeling it in, people.

I'm reeling it in.

All right.

Look, I know I've been a lot the last couple of weeks, maybe for the last 16 years.

You know, it was a lot for me, too.

I've had enough of myself as well.

Believe me, I'm exhausting, mostly to me.

So I empathize with you if you've had enough of my anxiety trajectory in the last couple of weeks.

I get it.

It just happens sometimes.

What can I tell you?

I mean, it's just the way my brain is.

Everything's coming in hot, and I couldn't stop any of it from making impact and detonating fire.

So be it.

That is the way my brain works.

Eventually, like today, maybe yesterday, maybe happened the day before, possibly even last Wednesday, eventually I reel it in.

All right.

I compartmentalize.

I assess what is really happening against what is disastrously speculative, and I just try to shut down the shit generator, the psychic shit generator, all right?

And I'm having some success.

As of this speaking, I'm having some success for today, all right?

I think it's just my mind.

It's just the way my mind prepares for change, prepares for challenges.

And once the fires settle down, I can sort of parse what needs to be done, break that shit down into steps to be taken and get a fucking handle on it with the help of a few good friends.

who understand the the dryness of the forest of my mind.

And at any time,

there might be a problem, and we might need to contain the fires.

Got to have a couple of guys for that.

And maybe a therapist.

I have

two guys, a therapist and

a girlfriend that is, you know, I think getting more exhausted as each day goes by, as they all do, understandably.

But look, I mean, I imagine that most people have some version of this process.

It's just that I yammer about it, and I have a lot of different things going on.

And not more than other people.

I'm not

saying that

my problems are more than others.

Some people have bigger and more difficult lives than me, certainly.

But

it's just the way my brain works.

I've always wanted to be a smoother character, folks.

You know, maybe a cowboy of some kind, you know?

Yeah, well, maybe I am, actually.

Maybe I'm like half bull rider and half rodeo clown.

And that means I'm just writing or distracting bulls of my own making.

This sort of psychological bulls in the mental rodeo ring of my fucking brain.

But look,

I think I feel better for a couple of reasons.

Yeah, I'm making some decisions about Charlie.

You know, I do have to be away a bit and I'm just going to, I was going to board him.

I know there was talk of giving him away, but I'll hang on.

I love the guy and it's just too much.

Yesterday I came home, there was tufts of hair everywhere, piss, blood.

He's just, he cannot

get past his buster obsession, his beat the shit out of buster obsession.

So I was going to board him, but I said, dude, just board him in your house.

I texted Jackson Galaxy, and I think it's going to be okay for a few days, and then I'll deal with it more hands-on when I get home and decide whether or not I need to put him on Prozac or how to

fucking deal with the problem more efficiently, but to keep him separated, to keep him occupied, he's got plenty of room in my room.

And I just want to be away and have peace of mind and not spend the day waiting to hear whether or not my cats are killing each other.

That's just, that's part of my life.

And I also think I feel better because I think I had a major breakthrough last week.

All right, look, you guys know this.

I've been playing guitar for a long time, mostly alone.

All right.

Over the last few years, as some of you know, I've started to play with other musicians on stage because it was something I wanted to do like my whole life, but I never pursued it like that.

But I wanted to do it confidently.

I think I'm an okay guitar player, but the confidence just never, it never came, you know, when I play with other people.

I would feel okay about the gigs and the playing and the singing, but just not great and not really relaxed.

I would be very hard on myself after the show and during the show.

Look, I mean, I know, I believe that I have a lane that I can be in as a singer and player.

And again, I'm not trying to be a professional musician, okay?

And I don't expect to be like as good as a professional musician, although I do play with professional musicians.

But I'm very hard on myself primarily because I want to feel like I do it well for me.

And these are things, like as you get older, to try new things and to take the next step with things that you've been doing all your life or try to you know take a hobby or or or even a whole new thing just try it you know not i'm not talking about jumping off mountains or hang gliding maybe that's something that you can you know get better at but i'm talking about creative endeavors it's it's it's scary it's scary

and as a player and a singer i just i fucking choke on stage all the time.

I lose my place.

I lose the words.

I screw up the chords.

My throat tightens up and I don't sing well.

It's fucking annoying.

And I just want to be good at something immediately.

Who doesn't want to just be good at something immediately?

I mean, I play all the time.

Why can't I just be good at something with other people and in front of people?

Why can't I just do it immediately?

I mean, after every gig that are supposed to be fun, you know, I generally feel like I don't really need to do it again.

Like, I'm lying to myself.

What's the point of it?

I can't really play well enough.

I'm not a good enough singer.

I fucking choke.

It's fucking annoying.

But

I made some progress.

But

I'll tell you about it in a minute.

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All right.

So look,

my friend Paige Stark, who I've played with and sung with in the past, we did a song together for that Love LA compilation.

And she kept bugging me.

She kept saying, I got these guys that I play with that, you know, will get you.

They get you.

I know that I get where you're coming from, you know, as a musician.

And maybe we should put these guys together.

And I play with guys who are good, you know, Ned and

Brandon, Jason, sometimes Jimmy Vivino, you know, and we have a good time, but I always felt like, okay, so we, we kind of crammed together a couple of rehearsals, pick a bunch of songs, just do our versions of it.

I think the most time we spent on a song was probably Warfrap by The Grateful Dead.

But, you know, it's like, I want to feel like I'm really doing the work.

It's like me and acting.

These are new things for me, really,

in the big picture of my life.

And I want to feel like I'm doing the work so I can get better, you know, and be more consistent with it.

So I relented and I told the other guys that I'm going to play with this other group of musicians.

It was Luke, Paquin, Dan Horn, Jerry Borges.

And we rehearsed, like we really rehearsed.

You know, before I was just kind of jamming out loose versions of covers that I just wanted to do my way, you know, just sloppy and easier.

And we would rehearse, like I said, a couple of times, a few days before the gig.

Basically, it was good enough for rock and roll.

I just never felt like I was really like doing the work to become better.

Like, you know, really kind of doing the rehearsing and the practicing.

You know, I always had the lyrics on paper in front of me and I knew the guys would carry me and I had fun kind of, but I wanted to really rehearse and learn the process of making choices about songs and working them and getting the hours in to nail something that sounded like well rehearsed.

I mean, that's, that's how you get good.

And I, and I know I have to suck to get good, but I'm kind of tired of sucking, you know, in my mind.

I mean, people appreciate the effort and I'm very self-effacing when I do these music shows on stage.

And, you know, I'm kind of taking the piss out of it because I'll fuck up and stuff and then have a monologue around that.

And I'll fuck up the lyrics and I'll have the lyrics in front of me.

Whatever.

So

I started practicing.

with these with this new group of musicians and and we did it and i think i broke through to some other like to some other place some higher place for me as a musician and singer.

Like I learned all the words to all the songs we covered.

That's a first.

I learned and rehearse the structures of the songs, honoring originals a bit more than I usually do.

And

it just all paid off.

I didn't choke.

I didn't have the lyrics in front of me.

I didn't make myself crazy.

And I had fun.

And I did pretty well, I think, all around.

The band was great.

But the real fucking doozy of the night,

I don't know.

You know, I'm not a normal person, and sometimes I look back at the choices I make,

and I'm like, why would you even try to do that?

What would you do?

Why would you do that?

I decided to cover the Taylor Swift song that had a profound impact on me in terms of sitting with grief.

I do a whole big bid on it in my special, which I told you premieres this Friday, August 1st on HBO.

The song is bigger than the whole sky.

And I wanted to cover it.

And

we decided the arrangement would be kind of like Mazzy Star-ish.

And it just, it just fucking broke me.

But my throat was open.

Like I was singing from my guts.

And it was kind of amazing.

Like I made it through the last verse, you know, almost.

And then

I choked up.

I didn't choke.

I choked up.

It was pretty raw.

And on the last, you know, chorus, you know, it was pretty raw.

It was very emotional, but, but it landed.

And I felt I felt pretty good about it.

And there's actually a reel of it

on Largo at the Coronets IG page.

If you want to watch me kind of do something that is the most terrifying thing in the world to me.

And

I actually think that that breakthrough, just the creative one, might have helped.

you know, lighten the load of all the other anxiety I was feeling.

And I think that may be the cross to bear of the creative creative person is that you need it to live.

You know what I'm saying?

So Ari Astor is here and I watched all his movies and all of them are unique.

All of them are challenging.

All of them are kind of provocative.

And he's a real auteur, a real artist, a guy with a vision that will, you know, he'll manifest his vision.

as he sees it.

And that's a rare gift.

And he's got the gravitas to do it after his first couple movies, and he's doing it.

And this new movie, Eddington, is now playing in theaters, and it's not a horror movie.

He's done a couple of horror movies.

He's done sort of

a three-hour lyrical ode to

panic.

That's

pretty challenging in and of itself.

But challenging movies are where it's at.

That's the problem with this movement towards a Christian nation is that, you know, the type of Christians that want to take over this country are myopic and fucking boring.

and anything that's different to them that doesn't fit into their purview, deserves punishment

or just complete disappearance.

And it's movies like these, and also things like the New South Park episode, or things like people speaking out through art or through their platforms, that is much needed

in the big picture.

It may not stop the authoritarianism we're living in, but it does keep the human voice alive and human creativity alive.

It was a pleasure talking to Ari, and now you can listen to it as well.

You nervous?

No.

I'm always nervous to be recorded.

Are you?

Yeah, what am I going to say that's going to haunt me forever?

Oh, really?

So you've got that paranoia.

I mean, you know, I do too.

And now that I'm finishing the podcast,

you know, I'm out in the wild.

I have a producer generally that protects me from myself because he edits.

Okay.

So he'll say like, you know, maybe you shouldn't say that.

But now I'm just out in the wild talking shit and it makes me nervous.

How long have you been unprotected?

Well, no, I mean, the podcast, we're wrapping up in a couple months, but I've been doing a lot of promotion for my HBO special and I'm doing podcasts.

I'm talking about the state of comedy.

I'm talking about politics.

But the truth of the matter is, is that only a few people really at a certain level are going to give a shit, and it'll probably disappear in three days.

That is true, especially with the nature of just, I mean,

everything else.

It just goes away eventually, unless it really sticks.

But people also love to go digging.

Yeah, right.

So

whenever there's something new by somebody,

it's always, it's a nice pastime to dig through their archives and see what pisses you off.

Well, right.

But I mean, but you just made a movie that was designed to piss people off in a very specific way on some level.

Maybe not designed to piss people off, but at least to be provocative

on all fronts.

Yeah.

So

you're fortunate in that it succeeds in that.

So everybody can kind of pick and choose what they like or what they're pissed about.

That's right.

You know, to see it as a whole, I think, is a daunting but exciting task.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you know, I grew up really loving

just art, art that was provocative,

but I didn't have the internet.

And so

it's a very different world.

Well, yeah, because things can be taken apart and recontextualized immediately.

Yeah.

And so it's.

And now it's all about just like casting your own, like your like finding your stance.

So I feel like there's like, you know, how would I say this?

The responsibility of like the audience or the viewer or the reader is different now than it used to be.

I think

it should be, I think, and I and I feel this way when I walk into a theater.

It's like I want to submit to whatever the thing is.

But now it's so much about, you know,

you sit there and you have to find your take and then you have to cast it because you're also,

everybody's just,

you know.

Yeah, I think that's true, but it's self-serving.

Because, I mean, the finding the take thing, and then you've got these sort of amateur or relatively popular critics or political pundits who are going to use your work,

you know, fragmented in order to make their point and generate attention for themselves.

So the whole idea of functional art criticism or film criticism doesn't exist that much anymore.

And I know you grew up in New Mexico, right?

Yeah,

I was born in New Jersey, in Princeton, New Jersey, but I spent like a week there.

And then

I was a baby in New York.

And then my parents moved to

England for a few years, to Chester, which is near Wales.

Why?

My dad wanted to start a jazz club.

Did he do it?

It didn't happen, no.

But then we all moved when

I think I was seven.

Yeah.

I must have been seven.

And then we all moved to

New Mexico, to Santa Fe.

And then he started a jazz festival that lasted for a few years.

I was just there.

I just bought this ring.

Oh, yeah.

I grew up in Albuquerque, and I too was born in New Jersey.

I know that.

I know that.

And you, and

is that turquoise?

Of course.

Oh, man.

You sell for it.

I can't believe it.

It's a big one.

Well, this one I've had for years.

This is a Zuni ring.

As I got older, for some reason, because I grew up there, you know,

I felt that I wanted to have something attached to it.

It's not really, I mean, I dig this shit.

And the truth of the matter is, as far as jewelry goes, turquoise silver, kind of native jewelry, is relatively inexpensive to get kind of a big, chunky piece.

I'm not sure if this is too big or not, but

I'm going to try to rock it.

Oh, yeah.

It's funny.

Turquoise is like, I had to really restrain myself from using it in Eddington.

It felt like just too...

It's kind of back.

Oh, no, of course.

It never left.

I don't know.

You didn't want to put one squash blossom on somebody's chest?

You know, just a dangling U of turquoise?

I'm realizing I probably should have relented because it is just important.

Like, how do you do it without?

It's the only place it really exists.

Sometimes it moves to Texas, and then occasionally it shows up out here when there's a southwestern trend going on.

But it is definitely part of New Mexico.

A huge part of New Mexico.

Especially Santa Fe.

Oh, yeah.

I got it right on the plaza, too.

And it's got a kind of an exciting backstory of this ring.

The artist, uh you know who is uh zuni has passed away and the stone is from a mine that's been closed so this is oh wow yeah it's got a whole beautiful well thank you my uh and i know and i know you're from albuquerque that's where my family lives now so oh really i i uh what part i was a kid when i was an adolescent yeah i grew up in in santa few uh um in corrales oh of course they do yeah like have they been there a long time they've been there since you know the the year before i went to college which is the college of of Santa Fe they moved to

Corrales so that so they've been there for for

20 years now I I grew up down the street I grew up off of Rio Grande you know like right Northwest Valley wow yeah I know what you're talking about I know do you remember I don't know how long ago were you were the buffaloes there when you were growing up on Rio Grande there was a guy that owned a herd of buffaloes you know right past Los Poblanos where the big curve is on Rio Grande if you're coming west

you know there there used to be an actual herd of buffalo there that a guy owned.

They're gone now.

Wasn't there when you missed that, huh?

They must be, yeah.

Still got the balloons.

Sure, the balloons are there, yeah.

Do you feel a connection in New Mexico?

You know, when I was there,

as a kid, I resented the place and I did not like it.

And I think that has to do with having, you know,

had like New York in my system.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so

I didn't like it.

But now when I go to visit family, when I go home,

I really appreciate it in a new way.

And shooting the film,

I mean, the entire process of making the film

was really, it brought me back to it.

And I really enjoyed it, you know.

Well, it's beautiful.

And I think you did a good job capturing New Mexico.

Thank you.

Your folks were both in the arts?

Yeah, my mom is a visual artist

who is a poet.

She kind of moved from printmaking

to

painting and printing.

Printing at home or doing like high-end printing, like going down to Albuquerque to do prints at Tamarind or something.

Well,

it was in New York that she was

a printmaking.

And then she became a poet.

Yeah.

And she's been a poet for a long time.

How's she doing with that?

Good.

She has had

a book published, and she's published several books, and I think she's a great poet.

You do?

Yeah, she's great.

She's really,

I would say her work can be like punishing.

Oh, really?

In a great, in a good way.

I mean, you know, I'm her son.

And punishing.

I'm a guy who, you know,

in my past, if anyone went digging, has written some poetry.

And, you know, I was, you know, I thought myself a poet in college.

And, you know, what is punishing?

Oh, well,

let me amend that because I didn't have the time to really find the words.

I think her stuff is very

is

very honest and like unvarnished

and painful.

Okay.

And

I find it funny too, like very funny.

In terms of personal vulnerability and the honesty and the pain, like, you know, when you read her poems, you can see parts of her that you're like, wow, that's happening inside my mom.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I just recognize my mom in the writing.

Yeah.

And I

yeah, I think she's I think her work is great.

And your dad's a jazz guy?

My dad is a jazz drummer.

Yeah.

Great.

And when he was when he was younger, he

was on the road with

for a period he was with the OJs.

Okay.

Playing the drums.

Uh-huh.

So he's a touring musician.

He was, yeah.

So you had that element in your house, the lounge act element.

Yeah.

That's right.

That's right.

I think he tried to make me a musician, and I probably, I guess I rebelled.

But I think what's amazing, because in watching the movies, which I crammed a lot of them in,

and I've seen all the feature films of yours, because I don't like, first of all, I'm not generally a horror guy.

Me neither.

No, I know.

I'm starting to understand that.

But I got it all in there.

And it strikes me that your sense of

freedom in terms of doing the movie you want to do

had to come from some confidence in what art is.

And it seems that you grew up with that,

in a house full of artists,

certainly a drummer who was maybe not a

free jazz drummer, but the power of improvisation and honoring your own vision was kind of ingrained, I would assume.

Yeah, yeah, I have to give my parents and especially my mother credit that, you know, I

it's,

you know, when I was a baby, she

would, she would give me, you know, crayons and put me on like butcher paper.

And but I assume like you were like educated in, like, you know, my mom was kind of a painter at one point, and there was a lot of going to the Museum of Modern Art and seeing the stuff and having your mind blown by art that was so ingrained in the family

fabric, or at least my mom's desire to paint, you know it it gave me a sort of wonder and awe of art yeah did you have that yeah I definitely had that

and

you know my my

my my mother is a a tough critic and I and she gave me that too she you know like I I would as a kid like take her to a m a movie that I thought was good.

And she would, you know, if she didn't think it was good, she'd be like, you thought that was good?

Really?

That was bullshit.

And do you find

do you find that she's right or do you argue oh yeah no i think i think that was really uh

hugely useful because it it just it it it it uh from a very young age made me

uh

i think maybe at a certain point i was probably too censorious for my own good like just like not really right you know just like

that thing i was talking about right where it's like are you submitting to the work and are you really giving yourself to it and giving it a chance to come into you and yeah that there was probably a period at which

I wasn't allowing the work in.

But

I would say

a lot of my taste

was adopted from hers.

And from being critical and understanding the depth of any sort of

final piece.

Because you can be jacked around by art and you can be stunned, whether it's a film or a poem or

a painting.

Right.

So a lot of times when you're younger, you're like, that's amazing.

And they're like, no, this is garbage.

And then you have to be like, why?

And then all of a sudden the depth of your kind of aesthetic understanding grows.

And you realize like, okay, all right, this is the context of how I have to see art.

And you were given that by your mother.

Yeah, yeah.

But, you know, but I have a lot of memories of seeing certain films with her in theaters that were like, you know, f form formative.

Right.

Like what?

I would say the big ones, the big memories I have where like we were both kind of blown away

and it was really nice to like kind of share that experience

would be Songs from the Second Floor by Roy Anderson.

That was huge.

The piano teacher.

Yeah.

I think I was 15 when I went to see that and that I and that that that was huge.

Yeah.

You know mulholland drive uh

her her favorite movie is defending your life and that and that and that and that has become you know that's that's for me just a perfect movie i've really

yeah yeah i i love albert brooks comedically oh me too the comedically there are beats in that movie

that that if i think about them right now i'll laugh yeah there are because brooks like you know he'll put together like each scene is going to be a comedic scene and sometimes they string together well, and sometimes it doesn't matter.

You know, but there are beats in that movie that are just spectacular.

There's Shirley McClain in the Past Lives Pavilion, where she goes, hi, I'm Shirley McClain.

And you hear the woman in the back going, oh my God.

She's like so scandalized.

That's so funny.

Just, yeah, he's, I mean, yeah,

he's like a

master of like the

prolonged, like, extended scene.

Like a scene that goes goes for like 10, 15 minutes but doesn't die.

Yeah.

Well, that's true.

And all of it's sort of founded in his ability to stretch out a comedic beat.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The sort of, it's not even a tension he creates, but there's a kind of like, you know, going back and forth with him that, you know, he can just keep going and really deliver all the way through.

But that beat in Defending Your Life, where, you know, he's like, well, they're showing him his shortcomings.

Oh, yeah.

And the scene where he's going to, you know, ask for the raise.

You know, like, I'll give you a 20,000.

I'll take it.

Yeah, I'll take it

right away, the first thing.

And even the guy is disappointed.

Even the guy was like, getting ready to.

That's it.

Yeah.

To negotiate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, it's so funny.

That's so funny.

He was such a big influence, but not just comedically, but filmically.

Oh, I think he's just, I think he's one of the great directors.

Yeah, I love those scenes.

Oh, my God.

Have you told him?

Yeah.

Oh, no, no.

I have told him, and

I wrote a bunch of stuff stuff for, I wrote two big pieces for Criterion about his work.

And so he read those and then reached out to me, and he

liked those pieces, and that meant a lot to me.

Yeah, I'm sure it means a lot to him

that you did that.

Oh, my God.

Because I think he does feel a bit underappreciated.

Does he still?

Because I feel like the reassessment has, I mean,

I hope he feels appreciated.

I know so many filmmakers that just

worship at the

altar that's great because that's it's surprising I wouldn't have assumed that I well I mean if you watch that that uh that doc on him with Rob Reiner you know there there are every at every turn the movies do not do as well yeah so that's well Rob Reiner you know I mean there's this is spinal tap right which comes like I don't know five years after

or more after real life yeah yeah right and real life was the was the first of those the best that's that beat in where you know where you clearly see uh uh Grodin, you know, ask for this extra shot.

And he goes, can we not put that?

Where he kills the horse.

And Brooks is like, no, I think it's going to be.

Right, where he's a veterinarian.

It's too much anesthesia, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He asked for it twice or something.

But what seems to be happening

in terms of independent filmmakers in a real sense or people with a vision that for some reason right now, horror seems like a decent kind of genre to really figure out

you know whatever you want yeah in terms of of how you want to make a movie that the horror thing is is just sort of a framework but you can go a lot deeper with a lot more freedom as opposed to just you know do a movie that's a that's not a genre film yeah yeah i think i think i think if you if i think if your sensibility is on the darker side,

it's a very good genre to be working in.

I might have even taken it a little bit for granted because these last two films that I've made

have left the genre

and have not reached the same audience.

Well, I mean, the way they build hereditary, this is going to be the scariest movie ever.

And a lot of horror people

really took to it.

So, I mean, that's a built-in audience of very specific people.

Yeah, and

I say that I'm not like a horror guy, but that's not necessarily true.

I love horror films.

I just

it's not, you know, I feel like there are certain people who like, you know, almost exclusively watch horror movies.

Like that's, that, that's all they're interested in.

And that's not me.

I love a good horror movie.

I think, you know, if when those films are like working,

they're thrilling.

Yeah.

And they're, and they can be, and they can feel dangerous in a really exciting way.

But I would say

I just find that it's a because it's a genre that kind of traditionally does do well and

it can,

I find that it attracts a lot of like cynical people.

And a lot of those films just feel cynical to me and just feel kind of like

I get bored easily.

Well, that's the interesting thing about Hereditary is that you have this story, you know, the story of a cult.

you know, that you don't know is a cult until later in the movie, but that ultimately is not what the movie is essentially about.

Right.

So you use this template to kind of explore whatever you want.

And a good horror movie may do that,

not necessarily on purpose.

They're provocative in a certain way.

But it seems like with all the movies, there's a layering of the frailty of humans, but also family issues, tragedy issues.

So the backstories of the characters are much more in-depth than just putting horror out there to sort of time fear.

Yeah, I hope so.

I tend to believe that the more invested you are in the story or the people, you know,

especially when you're making a horror film, which is kind of essentially, you know, I think at its best, like kind of based on betrayal and kind of like you're, it's like, what's going to happen to these people?

Right.

And if the people are just ciphers, like, who gives a shit?

But if you are invested, then suddenly it can become a really complicated,

like, upsetting

experience.

And so that's that

I'm interested in that.

But then I realize when I leave the genre, it's like

I'm still kind of doing that.

But it really, like,

the through line

all the way to this film, like even at the core of Eddington,

in the middle or at the heart of all this political conflict

and

sort of social conflict is trauma

on some level.

I mean, do you read that?

Yeah, I do.

And I think in some ways

it's like quicksand that people get stuck in.

As opposed to like, you know,

I think especially at this moment where like the present is so unpleasant and

it's so difficult to even think about the future.

And also there's so many forces at hand that are destroying people's minds.

The mind is very vulnerable.

Exactly.

I think,

and it's very plastic.

And I would say at this moment, it feels like people are really retreating into either nostalgia or trauma, right?

But it's always, but it's the past.

And also to make sense of the president.

Yeah, no, of course.

Yeah.

I said president.

To make sense of the present.

Yeah.

But the past is mythic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But like in hereditary, you're dealing with this, you know, psychological trauma that, you know, is not, you don't, the turn doesn't happen until like almost, what, a third, you know, halfway through the movie.

Yeah.

And, and so you're just dealing with this family that is strained beyond understanding because of the mother's, you know, experience with her own mother and her mother's passing.

And also, like, I was talking to my producer yesterday.

You know, the decision to make her art, you know, some sort of strange,

you know, kind of attempt at control by creating these miniature, you know, lives and houses and everything was sort of of interesting I mean and and when you make a decision like that to like all right this character is an artist and this is the art she does yeah do you have intention there or you just thought it was cool oh no of course I mean I mean I yeah there's intention there

I

there there's a character in Eddington played by Emma Stone who's doing kind of the same thing who's with the little dolls with the little dolls who's who you know can't there There's something that she doesn't even really have access to because it's so painful.

So it's coming out out in these distorted ways.

And so, you know,

I find those dolls are, you know, the most access we have

to her inner life.

Yeah.

And then the rest is suggestion.

Yeah, the rest is suggestion.

And I think my hope is that there's enough there that you can kind of put it together.

But you're with her husband who doesn't really understand her and who's kind of afraid to understand her.

I think he senses

the depth of maybe what has happened to her.

But he doesn't want to face it.

And so because he's our surrogate,

she's kept at a remove.

And so I wanted her to be kind of ghostly, but I wanted there to be enough that was

evident to us that

even just on a strictly emotional level, that we

have a strong sense of her.

And I think that's a really hard thing for an actor to work with.

To play the damage and not let on.

Yeah, and not do something that's obvious and

not like telegraph anything.

And

I just think what she does in the film is really special and very subtle.

Oh, yeah, no, it's great.

It just seems to me, first of all, in Hereditary,

the way you...

There were definitely horror tropes that were identifiable.

It always seems that when a cult, the cult members always look like your neighbors or the guy who works at the hardware store.

I like that element because I said that to my girlfriend who's a horror freak.

I'm like, they always like, Lynch does that too.

It's not that they're normal people, but they're almost like an amplified normal, like, you know, just these regular kind of school teacher looking in a way.

Slubby.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it's like, it seems like you have to do that.

They have to be that way.

Yeah.

Well, you know, I think the more that you bring the mundane into it, the more disturbing it gets.

Yeah, because the mundane becomes just

horrifying.

But I like the way you played all that with the corpses and everything else.

But I just want to, like, the way I read that final scene, you know, because it was brutal that you, you know, decapitate the daughter before you know what's going on.

But I enjoyed that.

Me too, me too.

And then when you had the mother kind of using that in her artwork, you know,

that was a moment of honesty, you know, for her to try to grapple with her life.

But it seems to me that the torment of the teenage kid and the relationship with his mother and her sort of overbearingness and then, you know, borderline abuse, that I really felt at the final shot of the movie, that there was something I read into that moment where he becomes possessed by the demon, where he has this look in a very kind of

sweet way, like, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me.

Like this, like there was confusion, there was a little bit of like, you know, this is fucked up, but there was also like, wow, this is, this is, this is quite, this is a high point in my teenage life.

Oh, I like that.

I like that.

I, I,

I feel like he's almost like been lobotomized.

But yeah, he's no, but I just feel like wiped, wiped out.

Right, but the arc of the character and the struggles that he's had, like, you're like, is it going to work out for this teenage kid who's had a hard time with girls and he's trying to have friends and he's like the weed guy and then all this shit starts happening.

But there was just this moment where it's like, oh, man, this is fucking cool.

Yeah, it's been, yeah, it was a bumpy road for him.

But,

you know, at least

he's king now.

Yeah.

Did you feel that?

Well, I definitely like the idea of

having an ending that almost feels

like triumphant and where the catharsis is.

There's like an emotional catharsis where it feels like something has come to fruition.

Yeah.

And where that, you know, the horror of what that thing is is sort of underneath the tone, which is telling you something else.

Right.

I do like a complicated tonal ending.

Yeah.

Well, it's the same with Midsomer because

after all you go through with that film, you kind of feel good for her.

Yeah.

Like she's arrived.

You know, she's where she needs to be.

That's right.

And it's going to be okay.

She's the May Queen.

That's right.

She's another person who's been utterly wiped out,

but it is a triumph.

And that was a clear path,

because you went into the horror of her tragedy

was graphic in the film, to lose your family like that.

And then the sort of being shattered by grief and detachment like that and almost disassociating,

that is a prime candidate for any sort of

comforting support

or to feel included.

But I like that in that movie, you know, outside of the cult thing, that you did have that sort of horror trope of like,

these kids are going to die.

Yeah.

And that is just something that we take for granted.

And that's something that I wanted the movie to take for granted.

It's like, okay, this is a horror movie about like American kids in another, you know,

who are going to an exotic country.

We know how this works.

They're all going to die.

They have to die.

Okay, fine.

So I'm going to do that.

But I'm going to barely pay attention to that because we know that that's happening.

So it was about somehow making that be done, like doing that

so casually

that

that starts to get under your skin where it's like, well, how's it going to go?

Yeah.

And then it's all about aftermath, right?

Like, well, there are the bodies.

Like, who cares?

Right.

This is going to happen.

And also, like, the, the, the, but you play those characters, you know, when confronted because you played the horror so, I don't want to say realistically, but in a kind of almost beautiful and poetic way, that the humanities characters, when they're faced with, you know, that, that first turn, not unlike the decapitation and hereditary, where that older couple jumps off the cliff because it's part of the...

the ritual of this community and that woman's face just blows apart.

The reactions of all these, you know, they're sort of like, oh, you know, one of them, well, I guess this is what they do, and, you know, this is, we have to respect that.

And then there's the other sort of like, are you out of your fucking mind?

Those are human responses that we're not

kind of

hacking anyway.

You know, I feel like, you know, you really let them play those for real.

Oh, good.

Well, that's, yeah, I feel like that's important.

I feel like, you know, that's sort of the fun of,

well, is it the fun?

It's the fun of genre filmmaking, but I find that the more I believe the behavior of people, the more immersed I am in the, you know, in

the experience of the film.

Like, you know, the minute that somebody

is taking something in a way that I don't buy,

it's annoying.

It's like, well, it's just like, okay, so this is bullshit.

I don't care.

Yeah, yeah.

And the funny kid was really funny in that.

Will Poulter?

And Will's a great, a really great guy.

I love Will.

It's just like that, you didn't tell me we're going to Waco.

I mean, I got, I laughed out loud at that one.

Yeah.

And then when he pisses on the sacred tree,

and then you just knew it was over.

You know, like

he doesn't quite know.

He's just like.

He doesn't know right up into it.

And you kept a lot of the killing out of the frame.

And then the, I guess a lot of people compare Midsomer to Wickerman, but I didn't find that association

bothersome

or necessarily relevant?

Well again, that was just one of the things that was like, you know, okay,

I'm making this film in this genre.

I was approached by people to do that.

It's like, okay,

that's an inescapable film in like the folk horror genre.

And so

you nod to it and then you keep going.

But I find the films to be at their heart very different animals.

and Wakerman's an interesting one because I think it's just one of the best scripts

ever.

It's just a perfect script.

Some of the execution is

kind of goofy, especially the musical stuff.

But I mean, I love that film.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I thought it was beautiful.

And I really do think it's interesting at the end of both of those, specifically genre horror movies,

you're kind of like, oh, they're going to, good for them.

You know, like there is that,

in in contrast to the horror, like you said, there is this element of deliverance for these characters that is not horrible somehow.

Yeah, I want the feeling to be really complicated.

I want you to come out with something that you have to kind of

wrestle with.

Sure.

Because I.

I may be being too surface about it, but it was just that vibe of like.

Well, no, I don't think you are.

I think that's the, it's the, that I'm really interested in in what in it's a very manipulative medium.

I mean, anything where there's music involved because music is so emotional.

The minute you start using music, you're manipulating, whether it's for suspense or to make somebody, you know, whatever it is,

that alone.

And then you have certain filmmakers who kind of devoted themselves to avoiding manipulation, which

you can't do.

The nature of it.

People like Bresson.

Right.

He can't really, because the nature of the construction is manipulative.

Yeah.

And

I think the way that Bresson went about it was essentially to just alienate you as much as possible.

Those films are really fucking strange.

So

when you do these movies, like Hereditary, and then moving into Bo, I mean,

do you find yourself resolving, you know, there's a,

and I've done this with singers, I've done it with writers.

I mean, how much, you know, of you is in that in terms of, you know, dealing with your mother?

I mean, obviously with Beau is afraid, you know, this is like,

I was thinking about it yesterday where if you have an anxious mind, you know, to the point of paralysis, you know, what your mind will generate as possibilities for anything

that you're afraid of is it's almost infinite.

And it seems like this is sort of an experiment in following all those trajectories to

their most extreme

arc or conclusion.

Like

it's really, it may be a comedy, but it's the horror of anxiety that you're really living in to the point where what's in his head, what isn't, right?

Now, are you that person?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm very anxious

and I'm given to, you know, catastrophic thinking.

Me too.

I just got diagnosed with obsessional anxiety.

I'm full-on catastrophic thinking.

It's paralyzing.

Yeah, it is.

I would say that

I'm avoiding...

that diagnosis,

but

I could self-diagnose right now.

I didn't want it, but as I get older, it's gotten sort of worse.

And I was sort of like, well, I need to figure this out because

it's sort of like,

I wish my imagination, I had more control over it so I could just, you know, make puppets or whatever, you know, or at least get out of myself.

But it's all driven by catastrophic thinking, a lot of it.

Yeah.

And you just, did you exercise anything with Beau?

Well, yeah,

no, I mean,

maybe to a point, I probably did exercise some stuff.

In some ways, you don't even notice these things.

Like

sometimes things just like, you know, kind of drift off your shoulder and you don't ever see them go.

Right, that's true.

It happens when you get older, too.

You give less fucks.

Yeah, it's just too exhausting.

Yeah.

I can't care about this anymore.

Well, I've been saying on stage recently that like, you know, the sort of connection between depression and anxiety from my observation is that like if you're really anxious, eventually your brain will peak with it and then your brain will be like, oh, let's just be sad.

So it's sort of like the resting plateau between anxiety episodes.

It's just sadness.

It's kind of comforting, you know, once you've depleted yourself with your catastrophic thinking.

Yeah, yeah, which is, yeah, yeah.

At a certain point, you just get exhausted.

Yeah.

And you're sort of like, oh, this is kind of sad, I guess.

Yeah, it all ends in depression.

A little bit.

But

it's not only categorically like depression, depression.

It's really just the final stage of anxiety, you know, in its movement.

Yeah, I would say so.

I would say, yeah.

I toggle back and forth.

Yeah, but with Bo, you knew, like, this is the thing about all the movies and why I sense from the horror movies that, you know, you were executing a vision that you were going to free eventually from genre.

And with Bo, right, you just sort of like, fuck it.

You had to write that thing and then look at it and go like, this is it.

This is the movie.

Well, and it's, you know, and it's a comedy.

You know,

I want it to be funny.

Yeah.

Well, no, there's definitely very funny parts in it, but there is that element.

I want it all to be funny,

like, to be honest.

It's just that

it's got this weird structure.

Okay.

It kind of begins in like this

40-minute Rube Goldberg kind of like climactic,

quick thing.

Right.

And it does this thing that

anybody would...

would talk you out of, which is if you're,

like, you don't make the movie slow down.

Like, movies are supposed to speed up.

And Bo is a movie that kind of begins in a frantic

manic way and then just slowly grinds to

this like, you know.

But then it, but it, then it elevates into,

you know, it starts in a very sort of like, you know, frantic, but very city-driven vibe.

Yeah.

And then it kind of like it moves into, you know, a type of almost theatrical,

you props.

And it almost starts, and then there's actually a play at the, like it moves into this other zone where you're not even sure where you are or why you're there, but it may start in a frantic thing that doesn't really have resolution.

But then when it does arc into resolution, it becomes this sort of like crazy theatrical piece.

So it does have a build.

Yeah, I hope so.

And, you know, like the giant balls.

You have the giant balls.

Those are important.

Yeah.

It could be a play.

I talked to my producer, Brendan.

I said, because he thought that a lot of your stuff feels like

you're kind of

a playwright in a way.

Interesting.

Yeah, I guess that one, I don't know, maybe like Ionesco.

Yeah, but still that sucks.

But I thought I talked about the balls would be great on stage.

You know, the big balls.

Oh, yeah.

And he goes, yeah, like Little Shop of Horrors.

Oh, that's right.

That's that.

That's, yeah.

And Bo is sort of like Seymour in that case.

Yeah,

I love the little shop of horrors.

And that's a film, yeah, that's a film that, you know, kind of is supposed to have an Ereburos quality where it begins with himself.

Well, yeah,

it begins with him, like, emerging from the womb as a baby, and it ends with him going back into the womb, you know.

Right.

But there's also that sense of wiring at that moment that like, you know, he was doomed from the get-go.

Yeah.

Do you feel that way?

Well, I think we all are in a sense.

It's all about,

how you look at it.

But you seem pretty well adjusted.

Maybe it's just you on the mic.

No, it's just what we were talking about.

I'm just tired now.

Oh, yeah.

I'm in the sadness.

But did you know?

I mean, you have to know that these films are going, like, there's an element of what you're doing that is specific, and it's going to be kind of a challenge, and that's being diplomatic to most people.

Well,

I guess I

was surprised that Bo was not a blockbuster.

Well, in a way, I didn't think it was going to be a blockbuster.

I knew that it was very specific, and I knew that it was kind of deliberately alienating in certain ways.

But I still, you know, the whole time I was making it, it was like, everything here is designed to be funny in one way or another.

And so for me, it was just like this, I'm making like a giant epic

comedy.

And like, it's, I want one of those.

So for me, it was like, I can't believe I'm providing this thing that I am so hungry for.

That's so exciting.

So this is

your homage to Albert Brooks.

Well, I mean,

I think I became aware of,

for instance, the influence of defending your life on the very last scene,

pretty late in the game.

while we were cutting it together, I was like, oh, yeah,

this is sort of nodding to that.

I mean, of course, that's

so in my

system.

But

it's sort of, as far as comedy goes,

I'm a comedy guy.

I love comedy.

So I was thinking about Chris Morris and I was thinking about

I don't know.

I was thinking about Naked Gun and I was the Zuckers.

I was just thinking like, you know,

I want to make something that is like a gag machine.

And I want it to go for as long as possible.

And a lot of these jokes are very different, and they kind of belong in different worlds, you know?

So it's almost like we're jumping

sub-genres.

If you're in the city, okay, this is like, again, it's like Rube Goldberg.

Yeah.

And then you go into the...

the

country.

Well, next you go into the suburbs.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

With Nathan Lane.

And my first idea for that was, I mean,

the first script was much wackier.

Yeah.

And that was supposed to just have the terms of endearment, like soundtrack playing.

And it was just supposed to be like this

bizarre, you know, parody of

like, you know, like a suburban.

For some reason, I'm getting, like, you remember Natural Born Killers?

Of course, yeah.

There's a lot of comedy in that.

Yeah, that's

a lot of really rough comedy.

Yeah, like

the laugh track while Rodney Winterfield beats his family.

Right.

Yeah.

That's a really interesting film.

I think Oliver Stone for like 10 years,

starting with probably talk radio,

and then like peaking with JFK and Nixon.

Yeah.

Like

he was doing really interesting stuff.

He definitely did what he wanted to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And there's, there's definitely elements of the insanity of Natural Born Killers that heightened that genre.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's definitely like everything in the kitchen sink.

Yeah.

That's right.

That thing is.

Same with Bo, right?

Yeah, I mean, very, very different films.

Of course, I find

I hope that there's like sort of a sweetness to Bo.

Yeah, well, well, I think Joaquin brings that, like, you can't help it.

Yeah, you know, he liked the way he plays, and even in Eddington.

But, but ultimately, how did you feel about the reaction to Bo?

Well,

I was

pretty sad that

it was kind of so

like maligned and i and and i i there were a lot of people who you know kind of reached out to tell me that they loved it and i and i i i i really

that that helped but yeah no it was it was a bummer uh because it it was a huge it was you know it it it lost money and uh critically i wouldn't say it was like reviled but it was definitely like

there there was no consensus whatsoever yeah um uh and then

i would say now it feels like I hear about it more and more from people, like, you know, and that it's like sort of being reassessed, which is nice because I love the film.

I'm really proud of it.

There are things that

I might do differently if I did it now.

Yeah?

Like what?

Oh.

How do you correct a movie that's three hours long?

Three hours long.

I think I, while I was making it, I was really excited excited about how exhausting it was.

It was like supposed to be exhausting, and that last hour is meant to be like a real gauntlet.

And

there are jokes where basically the joke is like

how long it's taking?

How long it's taking, and like you thought this was going to be something, and it's a dick in an attic.

Like, it's not.

It's like, I'm going to just completely deflate this whole thing.

Which in some ways was, there was like an aspect of like parody there where it's like, you know, I've already become kind of like known for a certain thing, and I'm going to complain.

I'm going to upend it.

Exactly, the attic.

We're going to go up into the attic, and what's going to be there is going to be

just stupendously disappointing.

You know what I mean?

And I think

I would say I might

probably tighten the last

hour in a certain way

that I was not willing to in the edit there.

But these are, you know, I think these are all these things you take away after you release a film and you're just like, okay,

it's out of my hands now.

I can't really avoid people's reactions, responses.

It's like you kind of learn something and you find what you

decisions you made that you like, no matter what the response,

you're proud of, you're sticking with.

And then certain things where you're like, I'm not sure if it was worth losing

much of the audience.

That decision.

Right, right.

That decision.

Yeah, it's like how, you know, it's balance.

Yeah, like, like, I think I, I ejected like a number of people from the theater that maybe like, you know, I could have used them.

With the balls in the attic.

Maybe.

With the big, yeah, with the, with the big dick in the attic,

which, which I think that that's a good example of something where it's like, that's, I think that's something I really wanted to do when I was like a teenager in like maybe my early 20s.

It was like something I really would have found funny then.

And it was like, I was sort of doing it for him.

Oh, good.

But then I think there's a point where I was like, you know,

I'm not, I think that's more for him than even for me at this point, where it's like, I like need to do something to yeah, that's a bit of an exorcism.

You know, it's like,

I, I, I, I, I always compulsively like drew these like dick monsters.

I don't know what, I don't know what that says about me.

That I, I, like, I, I, I, I, it's five of them.

I have hundreds or thousands of them.

Of dick monsters.

Yeah, it's just something that I just went to.

I was just like,

I'm going to do this again.

And

so it felt like, you know, okay, I got to.

This is the conclusion.

This is where we land.

This is the last dick monster.

It's almost for my friends.

It's just like, all right, here it is, guys.

The guy who drew the dicks,

he made a big one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's good.

I got to watch it again now.

Good, please.

Yeah.

Get some friends in there.

But Eddington, I watched, and what compelled you?

You know, what was the seed of it?

I mean, just like living in this country and living in this world and, you know, and just

feeling,

I don't know.

Well, it's kind of an exploration of

when and where it broke.

the country and the brains of the people in it in a lot of ways, where something was all of a sudden humans were taken out of the community of humans and

sort of thrown into this kind of whirlwind of bullshit and politics

and all the sort of fear and anger that was residing in the human community had now had a place to sort of go with the propagandized bullshit.

And it was elevated into this

kind of divisive shit show, right?

And this was sort of the cauldron of that.

And you picked a small town to kind of explore all of what was happening in early COVID that now defines the end of

civilization as we know it.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know,

I don't think it started, I don't think anything started with COVID.

I think COVID just felt like, you know, the moment at which like the door kind of slammed shut behind us and it's like, oh shit.

We're stuck here now.

Something broke.

Something absolutely broke.

I think it it was a huge inflection point.

And I think we're still living through it.

That's what I mean.

Yeah.

We're still living through it.

And it's, I think, the moment where we were like stranded for good.

You know, like, it's just like, well,

now we're stuck.

And

how do we ever get out of this?

Right, but you know, the

real demon or the real sort of villain of the film is essentially propaganda.

Yes.

And

people's inability to protect their minds

or think rationally in a cauldron of fear and anger and what they grab onto, right?

Well, and we're living in this like hyper-individualized

achievement society.

Everybody's their own brand.

Yeah, and we're self-exploiting.

Yeah.

And so we also have, and identity is so important to us.

And so, you know, we, these ideas we hold, these convictions we hold,

that's our self.

But it's also like, but where are these?

Are they really coming from us?

So are we really the source of those convictions, you know, like, or are we being fed these things?

Well, but they're markers of virtue on some level.

Oh, yeah.

And they're not rooted in principle necessarily.

I just read a book about this, and it was a very difficult book.

But what, you know, his basic idea was that communities don't really function or exist anymore, that people are unto themselves, and

what they are is just a series of markers that are identifiable as

a part of a point of view that really have nothing connected to it.

And so that's a good

interesting idea that who are we serving?

I've noticed that with comedy, too.

I mean, if you're trying to get a clip to go viral,

your freedom of voice is really not part of it.

It's how do I design this to be symbiotic with the corporate platform that's going to enable me to get this part of myself out there or how I want to be seen, right?

But I thought it was, I saw a little bit of a review that, you know, I watched the movie and I found it, you know, I had to really think about it and think about the humanity at the core of it.

And you brought in everything.

I mean, you brought in.

you know, kind of leftist young protesters.

You brought in, you know, conspiracy theorists.

You had a character in there played by Austin Butler that was definitely Russell Brand-like.

And I don't know if that was the starting point for him.

Russell Brand was one of several people that we were talking about.

And you had

the mother who was a conspiracy freak.

And then you had this fairly impotent legacy sheriff

who's married to the old sheriff's daughter,

who is indecisive, relatively

mundane,

and not that principled,

who evolves into,

you see the brain break.

yeah

and it's easy to forget I think because everything is so

so politicized immediately yeah it's easy to forget like

how much of the landscape you know we are projecting our petty shit onto like onto the architecture of reality yeah you know it's like it's it

and and and that's a very important part of the film is that everybody is is fighting on id on like you know on on on what seem to be ideological grounds, like really important ideological grounds.

But it's all but

just beneath that is just a bunch of, you know, broken people.

Yeah, people living in a small town who have like, you know, personal histories.

Yeah.

And that.

And they get infected.

Yeah.

And they, and they, and they're, you know, they're projecting.

Projecting, but they're, they're infected with information that's, that's, you know, you know, quelling their anger and quelling their fear and giving them definition.

Yeah.

But it's ultimately shallow.

And I think that to play it in a small community was kind of great because, you know,

it eventually infects them to the point where the community is impossible.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

And I just, I thought, like, well, the framing was that it's a Western.

Yeah.

Were you conscious of that?

Oh,

100%.

Yeah.

And yeah, it's about a community, as you're saying, that is not a community.

Right.

They're living in the same rooms and

on the same streets, but they're not living on the same plane.

Yeah, because

their plane

social media or it's information.

Yeah,

and ultimately, the film is really about a data center being built just outside of town.

That's right.

And so these people are killing each other based on a lot of the signals they're kind of receiving in this feedback system.

Meanwhile, big things are happening right over their heads.

They're being changed.

The world is being changed.

And,

you know, and they're

and I I hope that somewhere inherent in the film is this idea like that that there is big power out there and

you know and and and there's a big problem and it's not it's not it's not necessarily between ourselves of course but but it's dividing us yeah well that's interesting because the the the basic you know premise of the political conflict is it's about masks on on a surface, but then it's really about corporate investment investment in a state that will bring jobs, bring money,

but the devil's bargain is that you're creating a generator for the thing that's destroying the fabric of community.

That's right.

And these corporations

benefit from constant engagement in these

ideological arguments and in these, you know, and

anything that'll hold the eyes.

It could be cats.

Yeah.

And I'm, you know, like, look, I'm left and I, you know, like, I, I've, I've heard some accusations that the film is like centrist, and I think that's, I just, that's what else is the left at all.

What else is the left going to say?

Yeah.

That for me feels like a pretty bad faith reading of the film.

And I, and I, I, I would say, you know, for me, it was important to

It was an exploration of all sides.

Yeah, and I think it's important to like question ourselves and also look and try to find the humanity in the people that you know we see as against us and that we you know abhor you know it's it's um and that and and and that that was part of the exercise for me was like i'm gonna i'm gonna try to pull back as far as i can out of myself right and take as sociological a stance as possible which you know again as possible right because i'm i'm

i I only have my subjective point of view.

And part of this was also like, you know, when I decided to start writing this in 2020, in June 2020, I was like, you know, in Twitter.

I was like,

I wasn't posting, but I was retweeting.

I was being, you know, in some cases, pressured to retweet.

And I

started a bunch of like burner profiles.

I started a bunch of just separate profiles, and I got myself into different algorithms.

And I just took like a lot of screenshots so that I wouldn't forget anything about the moment.

But I also found like these algorithms I got myself into, I could not, for the life of me, get myself out of.

Wow.

And I tried.

That was part of the experiment.

Like, okay, now that I'm here and now that I've kind of identified myself to this

feedback system,

this feedback

system.

Yeah.

Sorry, I have a stutter.

That I'm, in this case, like a Nazi, right?

Like, can I get out of that?

No,

I could not.

It just keeps coming for your brain.

Yeah.

It's just, it's, once you're there, you're stuck.

Yeah.

Well, I just thought, you know, that the humanness at the core of it, the raw humanness, which is a guy that, you know, is supposedly the guy who's going to save the town if we're going to talk about the Western, you know, an utterly impotent cowboy,

you know, finds his

moxie and his strength in, you know, in slander to kind of turn the tables and, you know, as like, fuck you fuck all of it i'm gonna you know i'm gonna be this guy you know he crossed the rubicon of self or whatever that is and and became this you know doubling down monster but he still plays it with a certain amount of sensitivity that is kind of crazy yeah well that's important i think you know and and i want the film to sort of function as like a roller coaster ride of like sympathy right you know oh yeah jerk you around yeah yeah where you know everybody's complicated and maybe you understand him in a way you don't

based on whatever your politics are, right?

Like maybe in the beginning you don't want to be this close to this guy.

So it might be a relief when things turn for.

Yeah, but I think that the miracle of the movie is that all of them,

you can find empathy with all of them.

Yeah.

Really?

You know, all the major players in the community system.

You can

empathize with.

Some of them are obviously empathetic characters, but even the ones that aren't.

I wanted it to be a film that was empathic in multiple directions.

Right.

And some of those

are oppositional.

And they're hard.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, good job.

And hopefully it's funny.

I hope it's funny.

Did you laugh?

I did it a couple of times.

Okay.

You know, but I mean, but again, you know,

it's not horror.

It may be structurally Western on some levels.

It's not a comedy, but I do like when you, the ending is funny,

but it's horrifying.

Yeah.

But yeah, so I, you know, I yeah, I'm going to have to re-watch all your movies as comedy.

Yeah.

Just out of respect for you.

I think he'll be able to find it.

No, I'm not saying it's not there, but I get very consumed with the humanity of something.

No, me too.

Well, well, me too, you know.

And then comedy is relief.

If the humanity is profoundly dark, you may not come up to the point of like laugh out loud, but the relief is there.

No, you laugh so you don't have to cry.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

Believe me, yeah.

The laughter that's that should be crying is my favorite.

And I, and, you know, I, I,

And that's what's tricky, is that the film is the film is satire,

but I never wanted any of the characters to be like objects of

derision or

I just want to reduce I

You know, certain characters are more cynical than others, but even but even the but even the most cynical bad actors in the film are all looking for community.

I mean,

you know,

some of them are pretty bad.

Yeah, it's like satire on the level of, do you remember that movie Walker?

Of course, by Alex Cox.

Yeah.

I love Walker.

The anachronisms of that film are so interesting.

And that's sort of like in that world of horror, satire.

You know, there's a lot of movies that ride align with that.

I'm a big fan of the movie Ravenous.

I love Ravenous.

Yeah.

One of my favorite scores, too.

It's the music.

Exactly.

That is a genius satire.

It's brilliant.

Yeah.

That's Antonia Bird, right?

Antonia Bird.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

She also made that film Priest.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But Ravenous is a masterpiece.

I love that film.

I'm glad you mentioned that.

I'm always talking about, especially that score, which is Michael Nyman and Damon Albarn.

It's just one of the great.

That was something of a reference for

the music in this film.

Oh, really?

Yeah, interesting.

Well, yeah, because that is a satire on Manifest Destiny.

I mean, it is like straight up.

You know, there's nothing, it's framed as a horror movie, but I think a lot of horror movies are satire.

But that thing can only be read like that, and it's funny.

Oh, it's really funny.

Yeah.

It's really bleak.

It's really funny.

It's really exciting.

It's hard to find.

It is hard to find.

I remember seeing that

in theaters

in Santa Fe with my friend, Zach, and we were just...

like giddy coming out of that theater.

That's great.

So much fun.

So in closing, how's your mom feel about your movies?

She's proud of me and she likes the movies.

She's very supportive.

I think certain things she likes more than others.

Of course,

you're not going to get everything you need.

No.

No,

but no, I'm lucky in that sense.

When Beau is afraid

flopped, my dad did tell me,

maybe you shouldn't write the next one.

Get back on your feet.

Yeah, you might have been right.

Also, just a little

shout to my, well, one of my best friends is Dan Clowes, and he was telling me before I came over here, like, oh, yeah, Mark,

that's my best conversation.

That was

the best one.

Oh, good.

Yeah, he's great.

He's the best.

He's the great.

I love him so much.

Oh, Oh, yeah.

All that stuff had a profound impact on me, too.

Yeah, his work.

Huge.

Eight ball.

Oh, the best.

Yeah.

Eight ball was like

as big to me, like for me, like as a kid as like, you know, Kubrick or any of those guys.

Totally.

Oh, yeah.

Some of those stories are just fucking great.

Just so great.

And my humor just like, you know, that's.

Well, it's just, I mean, so much of it I like kind of like found in

his work.

Where it's like, okay, this is what I find funny.

This is what I love.

yeah the underground comics in general are a savior to me

absolutely well say hi to him for me i will great talking to you thanks for having me yeah

he was great right yeah go see that movie eddington it's now playing in theaters hang out for a minute

hey folks let's talk about ocd for a minute if you watch a lot of movies and tv you might think OCD is all about being clean or being organized all the time, but it's a highly serious condition that involves unwanted, intrusive thoughts that can be very distressing and can make your life unmanageable.

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That's nocd.com.

It's time to take care of yourself.

Folks, on Thursday's episode, I talk with my bad guy's co-star, Aquafina.

Before that happens, you can check out my talk with another bad guy, Mr.

Piranha, Anthony Ramos.

I thought about quitting because I was like, yo, this shit is too hard, man.

Like, what part of it was too hard?

Just the auditions and being like,

I can't be in South Pacific.

I can't be in, like, ain't misbehaving.

I ain't going to be in,

you know, I'm not going to be in Carousel.

It feels like they've opened that up more now.

Now, it's now, for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, now, I mean, I don't feel, I mean, I'm excited about,

you know.

But then it was still kind of like, you know,

they're not going to cast it.

They only started doing that shit like in the last, like, I would say five years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, where they really started to be like, oh, yeah, let's open it up.

Cast it up.

You know, let's cast it.

You know, but it wasn't.

Yeah.

They weren't really doing that shit for a week.

So you were frustrated?

I was super frustrated, man.

I was like, yo, like, you know, first three years of auditioning, I was like, yo, like, what the, what do I have to do?

Like,

well, did they tell you to act differently?

I mean, I had, I mean, you know, one of my teachers, and this was, you know, the teacher was just trying to help, but I, you know, but I was, he was like, yo, they were like, yo,

maybe if you grow your hair out, you might be a little ethnically ambiguous.

You know, people won't really know your race.

And then you can audition for different roles.

You can also audition for white and maybe, you know, Arabic and

Latin.

So many Arabic parts.

Right.

Good idea.

You're right, Emil.

You're missing out on

want to go from Latino to Arabic.

A lot more opportunity.

Oh, my gosh, bro.

Thanks for that advice.

Thanks.

Thanks.

That's episode 1441 with Anthony Ramos.

You can listen to that for free wherever you listen to podcasts.

To get every episode of WTF Ad Free, sign up for WTF Plus.

You can go to the link in the episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF Plus.

And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by ACAST.

Here's some Brock.

Boomer lives, monkey and the fonda, cat angels everywhere.