Speaker 1: You are listening to the IFAH podcast Network. For more
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Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three eighty four.
Speaker 2: There's nothing more nasty than giving kids hope and then
Speaker 2: snatching it away as fast as you can. Brad Silberly
Speaker 2: broadcasting from a dark, windowless.
Speaker 1: Room in Hollywood when we really should be working on
Speaker 1: that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you
Speaker 1: the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how
Speaker 1: to make your screenplay bulletproof.
Speaker 2: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another
Speaker 2: episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host,
Speaker 2: Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage.
Speaker 3: Now.
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Speaker 2: by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot com. Well, guys,
Speaker 2: I promised you a special episode and I hope I
Speaker 2: deliver it with this one we have on the show today,
Speaker 2: writer director Brad Silberlin. Now, I've had a long love
Speaker 2: affair with Brad from a distance for a long time.
Speaker 2: I love his films. He made films like City of Angels, Casper, Lemony, Snickets,
Speaker 2: and also has worked on some amazing television shows like Jane,
Speaker 2: The Virgin Dynasty, Charmed, La Law, NYPD, Blues, Doodiy Hauser,
Speaker 2: and many, many more. And I sat down with Brad
Speaker 2: and talked to him about his journey, what it's like
Speaker 2: having a mentor like Steven Spielberg in your life, and
Speaker 2: how he's been able to overcome a lot of the
Speaker 2: obstacles that this business throws in front of all of us. So,
Speaker 2: without any further ado, please enjoy my inspiring conversation with
Speaker 2: Brad Silverlin.
Speaker 3: I like to.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show, Brad Siberlin. How you doing that, Brad?
Speaker 3: I'm excellent man. How are you?
Speaker 2: I'm doing great?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for coming on the show. Man.
Speaker 2: I am humbled and honored. As I was telling you before.
Speaker 2: You and I met in two thousand and five at
Speaker 2: my first Sun Dance and you were speaking, had a
Speaker 2: fantastic panel, and I got a picture with you. I'll
Speaker 2: see if I could put it in the show notes.
Speaker 2: I have it in my archive somewhere. And you were
Speaker 2: always you. You're very kind to a young filmmaker, just
Speaker 2: asking probably stupid questions, Uh.
Speaker 3: How do we get an agent?
Speaker 2: Like? You know? Like dumb probably stuff at the time,
Speaker 2: but you were very kind. I never forgot you, and
Speaker 2: I followed your career as you moved forward, and I
Speaker 2: just the other day I was like, you know what,
Speaker 2: gotta get Bright on the show to see if he's
Speaker 2: to be interested in coming on the show.
Speaker 3: And here you are, sir, here I am direct from
Speaker 3: the San Fernando Valley to you.
Speaker 2: So how did you so? How did you get started
Speaker 2: in this ridiculous business that we love so much.
Speaker 3: I you know, I'm not alone. I was a kid
Speaker 3: with a camera. I was a kid with a Super
Speaker 3: eight camera here in the valley. And it's interesting because
Speaker 3: I so my dad, who passed away eight years ago.
Speaker 3: He was a documentary producer. He I was born in
Speaker 3: d C. Because he was working for the USIA, which
Speaker 3: is actually our government's propaganda into arm We do Headland
Speaker 3: and No. He was producing documentaries during the Kennedy administration,
Speaker 3: and only in the sixties would logic have dictated that
Speaker 3: he would move from that job into network television. Don't
Speaker 3: ask how they made that leap. It was a smaller
Speaker 3: business then. So we moved out to la in sixty
Speaker 3: seven and he started working at that point at ABC
Speaker 3: as a programming executive. So oddly enough, they thought his
Speaker 3: skills would translate. So he worked as a network executive
Speaker 3: the whole time I was growing up. But he always
Speaker 3: loved production, and so I took advantage of that by
Speaker 3: I would go beg to be dropped off at a
Speaker 3: set at any point I could. From probably about age nine,
Speaker 3: when I was old enough to ride a bike, I
Speaker 3: would steal over to Universal I'd met a really nice
Speaker 3: secretary who would like slip me call sheets at a
Speaker 3: drive on which was a bicycle, and I would spend
Speaker 3: every Friday afternoon there. But I just was fascinated by
Speaker 3: the process. And again my dad was always coming at
Speaker 3: everything from a story perspective. But I'm that guy who
Speaker 3: you know, I still hadn't really picked up a camera.
Speaker 3: I was just absorbing. And then I was there that
Speaker 3: first day in nineteen seventy five, first day for showing
Speaker 3: of Jaws. I made my dad drop me off. There
Speaker 3: was a we had a theater called the Plit. It
Speaker 3: was in Century City where ABC was, where he was working,
Speaker 3: and I begged him to just drop me off. It
Speaker 3: was like an eleven am showing and I'm sitting there alone.
Speaker 3: The theater was not full, even though obviously days to
Speaker 3: come it was going to be incredibly full, huge airplane
Speaker 3: kind of recliner seats. Some alone in my row, and
Speaker 3: I get to the attack on little Alex Kintner, the
Speaker 3: kid on the raft, and I'm just having a heart attack,
Speaker 3: and I don't know if I can make it through
Speaker 3: the movie, looking around to see if there's anybody there,
Speaker 3: but I hung in thank God. And by the time
Speaker 3: it was done, I had that feeling, which was who
Speaker 3: got to do that? Who did that? Who took me
Speaker 3: through that ride? That is something I will never get
Speaker 3: out of my system. And I went home that day
Speaker 3: and snuck into my dad's photography Clauset stole his He
Speaker 3: had a it was it was it a Minolta super
Speaker 3: a camera and I started shooting. So that day it
Speaker 3: was just like the switch was thrown. And Steven's really
Speaker 3: funny about this because I'm not alone. I mean, I
Speaker 3: can tell you the number of other filmmakers who were
Speaker 3: switched on in that moment by that movie. And so
Speaker 3: I started shooting. Yes, So I was all. I did
Speaker 3: two things in junior high school. In high school, I
Speaker 3: shot movies and I played soccer. And that was what
Speaker 3: I did. And this was duper eat again, where was
Speaker 3: I mean? I look at everybody now with their phones
Speaker 3: in which possible, and back then you're shooting three and
Speaker 3: a half minute cartridges. Every second counted. You had to really,
Speaker 3: so you're getting in the camera, you're really thinking through
Speaker 3: your material, you're splicing your little you know, super eight splices.
Speaker 3: But I so that's what I did, and I was
Speaker 3: very obsessed, and I did that right up through. I
Speaker 3: got a lot of good advice to not do film
Speaker 3: as an undergrad, but to try to actually learn anything else,
Speaker 3: have sort of more an open humanist mind, start writing.
Speaker 3: And so then I went to grad school and I
Speaker 3: went to CLA and made you know, sc is more
Speaker 3: famous for its, you know, thesis final films, whatever they're called,
Speaker 3: but I made I made my thesis film. And I
Speaker 3: was fortunate that we fought to have our first industry
Speaker 3: screening because UCLA was super egalitarian and they didn't normally
Speaker 3: like things like that, but we did. And so coming
Speaker 3: out of that screening, I ended up going under contract.
Speaker 3: I went under contract Universal. There had been a woman
Speaker 3: there who's still a great friend, Nancy Nayer. She ran
Speaker 3: casting at Universal. She was there just aatrol for actors.
Speaker 3: She saw my film and she said, would you mind
Speaker 3: if I took your film back to the studio? And
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, no, please, please don't plead, please
Speaker 3: don't know. Can I walk you to your car? I
Speaker 3: mean it was And so I got a really funny
Speaker 3: set of phone calls. One was from from the TV
Speaker 3: group and one was from the Future Group. And again
Speaker 3: at that point in time, they did not communicate. They
Speaker 3: still don't often, and they basically both one to try
Speaker 3: to put together some sort of deal. They hadn't really
Speaker 3: done term deals for directors since like the early seventies,
Speaker 3: Stephen Stielbert, Richard Donner, a number of these guys actually
Speaker 3: basically were on term deals, and so they dusted off
Speaker 3: an old term deal and they they just did like,
Speaker 3: he's young, he's cheap, Hopefully you know some talent, let's
Speaker 3: do this. And they covered everything from writing, directing, producing,
Speaker 3: you know, making omelets. They they had me, but it
Speaker 3: was incredible. So I was prepared to start, you know,
Speaker 3: parking cars out of grad school, but I went under contract.
Speaker 3: So that meant immediately trying to figure out who's producing
Speaker 3: on the lot, is there television, who's making movies? And
Speaker 3: that became home for the first two and a half
Speaker 3: three years that I got started. And then ironically Steven
Speaker 3: Botchko and his then sort of in house director, a
Speaker 3: really great guy named Greg Hobblett.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: Saw my graduate film and they said come over here.
Speaker 3: And Universal was very wise because they're like, good, let
Speaker 3: them go fuck up on their on their time. So
Speaker 3: but I so my first three years of work were
Speaker 3: directing television, primarily over at Botchko's company. Then yeah, so.
Speaker 2: I have to ask you though, because looking through your filmography,
Speaker 2: you have the distinct honor of being one of the
Speaker 2: directors who directed an episode of the infamous Cop Rock.
Speaker 3: I'm one of only eleven and the original order was
Speaker 3: for twelve and they killed it. Well. I remember Stephen
Speaker 3: coming down that set one day and he was just like, well,
Speaker 3: this didn't work. It was my second hour of television.
Speaker 3: It was crazy.
Speaker 2: I'd mean so for people that so people listening, if
Speaker 2: you don't know what Cop Rock is, google it on
Speaker 2: YouTube and watch a scene of Cop Rock. It was
Speaker 2: this musical cop show, which is it is such an
Speaker 2: oddity in television history, you know, from such a big
Speaker 2: I mean, Stephen.
Speaker 3: Boschko was like he was he wants the dude. He
Speaker 3: was it.
Speaker 2: So, you know, it'd be the equivalent of I don't
Speaker 2: know whoever nowadays you know, big showrunner shot in the
Speaker 2: rhymes doing a cop cop musical and it was I
Speaker 2: saw so, I mean, I'd never seen a full episode
Speaker 2: because I wasn't. I didn't see it when it got released,
Speaker 2: and I don't know whatever's on YouTube, but I just
Speaker 2: remember these cops just like singing about drugs and it
Speaker 2: was just the weirdest thing. And when I saw it,
Speaker 2: I had to ask you, what was it like being
Speaker 2: inside of that?
Speaker 3: Here's the truth of it that so Steven had seen
Speaker 3: there was a great British series called The Singing Detectives,
Speaker 3: and I think he was feeling his muscle and feeling
Speaker 3: his strength and thinking, I can do anything. Let's do that.
Speaker 3: The problem is Stephen didn't really and God bless him
Speaker 3: who passed away a few years ago. He was an
Speaker 3: amazing guy. He didn't really care about music, didn't really
Speaker 3: like very much. So this was the problem. And you know,
Speaker 3: the whole I did musicals is you only you only
Speaker 3: burst out into song when you have to when when
Speaker 3: when basically the spirit moves and the story needs it.
Speaker 3: But he didn't approach it that way. The cop rock
Speaker 3: outlines were like normal Hill Street. It was like procedural, procedural, Uh,
Speaker 3: maybe a song in here. And so there's the problem.
Speaker 3: They were ledged in which meant that in production they
Speaker 3: came very late. So it wasn't like you had this
Speaker 3: great chance. I mean, Steven Spielberg talks about this beautiful
Speaker 3: process on one side, story about working for six months
Speaker 3: even as they're doing the choreer and just say cop rock.
Speaker 3: You would be shown the number on the day of
Speaker 3: shooting because the music had only just got into the
Speaker 3: choreographer who's kind of winging it, and so all the
Speaker 3: actors are like the fuck and and but it was
Speaker 3: recorded live. In terms of the singing, which also is
Speaker 3: usually you do you know that a pre record. It
Speaker 3: was crazy and and yet there there would be there
Speaker 3: were numbers that kind of worked, and then there were
Speaker 3: a lot of them were called groaners that were just
Speaker 3: like oh no, and you just felt for these actors
Speaker 3: who had to commit and you know, so it was
Speaker 3: it was an exercise in insanity. And like I said,
Speaker 3: it was not. If somebody who just loved the musical
Speaker 3: form could tried it, maybe it would work. But anyway, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was good. But that was my second hour Dollarson.
Speaker 2: So I was like, so this is is this is
Speaker 2: this what I'm doing?
Speaker 3: Is this is this how it right? Okay, you go
Speaker 3: over there, you dance to the locker, you get your gun,
Speaker 3: let's do this.
Speaker 2: And you've never directed a musical at this point, and
Speaker 2: you're like, oh god, of course, of course, because how
Speaker 2: many people have really directed musicals? So that list is
Speaker 2: fairly shocked, all right, And so you're there as a
Speaker 2: young How old are you at this point? Twenty two three?
Speaker 3: I was probably twenty five twenty yeah, I was probably
Speaker 3: twenty five, twenty five years old.
Speaker 2: Second time, my god, all right, so let me let
Speaker 2: me ask you the first day, because I always love
Speaker 2: asking this question the first day on the first job
Speaker 2: that you got after you signed that deal with Universal,
Speaker 2: when you walk on set, I gotta believe you're losing
Speaker 2: your mind. You're you, the imposter syndrome is running rampid.
Speaker 2: You're like, any moment now security is going to scort
Speaker 2: me off the lot. How did you like walk on
Speaker 2: and like do your job with all?
Speaker 3: I mean?
Speaker 2: I'm assuming?
Speaker 3: So am I correct? Well, you're right, you're assuming, and
Speaker 3: your assumption would be correct. But for three they all
Speaker 3: tell you two different stories. But for three things. One
Speaker 3: is I you know, I even remember when I got
Speaker 3: my contract. Everyone was like, oh my god, are you
Speaker 3: losing your mind? And I wasn't. And it wasn't Hubris,
Speaker 3: but I felt like I'd been doing what I was
Speaker 3: doing for a long long time, and I trusted myself.
Speaker 3: I felt like, oh, okay, I've got more than just
Speaker 3: the kid next door to me, my crew. Now this
Speaker 3: is good. So my crew got bigger. But the single
Speaker 3: biggest reason my Canadian friends are going to kill me,
Speaker 3: but the single biggest reason I didn't fully of that
Speaker 3: was my first episode for Universal. I ended up being
Speaker 3: in Toronto. They were doing a second batch of Alfred
Speaker 3: Hitchcock Present, and so I finagled my way into one
Speaker 3: of those, and I swear I don't know what it was,
Speaker 3: but I was not intimidated by the Kine crew and
Speaker 3: I was working. It was awesome. I was working with
Speaker 3: Mike Connor's Mannix. He was lead, and he was couldn't
Speaker 3: have been more dear and awesome, and so I just thought,
Speaker 3: of course, why not me? So it that part didn't
Speaker 3: really overwhelm me. I felt, fine, I'll tell you the
Speaker 3: moment that you're thinking of. It was less imposture than
Speaker 3: just like, how did this happen? So that's my first
Speaker 3: directing job in television. My first feature directing job is
Speaker 3: Casper and We're shooting in nineteen ninety four, and as
Speaker 3: I've told you, I picked up a camera because of
Speaker 3: Stephen Steven ended up becoming my mentor and giving me
Speaker 3: my first feature job. And the first morning of our
Speaker 3: shoot we were shooting in the big kitchen. There was
Speaker 3: a big, long kit sequence. I was gonna end up
Speaker 3: having more CG than all of Jurassic part was insane.
Speaker 3: He's awesome. He shows up a call to be there
Speaker 3: for my first shot and would go and rehearse and
Speaker 3: it's awesome. And when the time came to call action,
Speaker 3: I just sat there and he's next to me and
Speaker 3: I'm looking at him. I'm looking at this whole situation
Speaker 3: and it's like everything just dropped on my head. I
Speaker 3: was dumbfounded by the universe that this was actually the case.
Speaker 3: And he just looked at me and smiled and he
Speaker 3: meant to say it, and I was like action and
Speaker 3: it was. It was still one of the most incredible moments,
Speaker 3: and it was just that thing of confluence, like how
Speaker 3: did this happen? I'm grateful it happened, but yeah, so
Speaker 3: in a weird way, that was my bigger moment, but
Speaker 3: I did. Yeah, I had maybe unfounded, but I did
Speaker 3: always have a belief that if you have the story
Speaker 3: and you know what every setup is and you're there,
Speaker 3: the crew is going to follow you. Doesn't mean that
Speaker 3: there's not going to be testing and that they're not
Speaker 3: going to sit there with their arms folded. At times,
Speaker 3: you get all of that. I had the DP on
Speaker 3: that very first Alfred Hitchcock episode by I don't know,
Speaker 3: it was like night number three, like wanting to quit
Speaker 3: because I'm very hands on. I don't just say yeah,
Speaker 3: let's go do a nice two shot and I'm going
Speaker 3: to go get some coffee. I'm still a kid with
Speaker 3: a camera. I set every shot, I I rehearse with
Speaker 3: a lens in my hand. I'm just who I am.
Speaker 3: And this guy wasn't used to that, and it was
Speaker 3: really funny. I've had that a few times, even in
Speaker 3: some of my movies Where to Pay, So I now
Speaker 3: my litmus test for whom I'm going to collaborate with
Speaker 3: as a DP. In particular, it has to feel like
Speaker 3: a friend from film school. It's not agistic. They can
Speaker 3: be ninety, but it has to be that spirit We're
Speaker 3: in this thing together. Ooh look what I'm seeing? What
Speaker 3: are you saying ooh, look at this. But those who
Speaker 3: work in such a way that it's like, I'm the
Speaker 3: director of photography. You go sit in your chair, little man.
Speaker 3: I'm just not there. So that was that was an
Speaker 3: interesting early moment for me with my confidence, but how
Speaker 3: to keep a collaborator close without losing them?
Speaker 2: Now I heard I remember years ago when Casper came out,
Speaker 2: Because when Casper came out, it was a fairly big
Speaker 2: It was a fairly big deal because CG was just starting.
Speaker 3: We were the first character with dialogue CG animation. So
Speaker 3: Steven had done Jurassic in ninety three and as he yeah,
Speaker 3: that first morning when he came to my set in
Speaker 3: the kitchen, he's like, dude, you're about to blow through
Speaker 3: more shocks than we did.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: In the whole movie. And he's But then he came,
Speaker 3: he came like week three and he's like, oh, man,
Speaker 3: if you had known what you were getting into, you
Speaker 3: never would have said yes to this. And I laughed.
Speaker 3: He said, you're now directing these characters. There's dialogue, there's monologues,
Speaker 3: there's soliloquies. I just had to have the dudes turn
Speaker 3: and roar, and it was a deal. It was a deal,
Speaker 3: and it was were There was like an early glimpse
Speaker 3: of motion capture that was experimented with, but it was
Speaker 3: not ready from prime time, so unfortunately I didn't have
Speaker 3: that to go to. It was all here and then
Speaker 3: I basically had to go with a with an old
Speaker 3: school two D line animator. I had to go and
Speaker 3: basically after making the movie, direct every performance in pencil
Speaker 3: sketch right, then take those to ilm and go through
Speaker 3: the So it was very handmade.
Speaker 2: Now, watching some behind the scenes or an interview that
Speaker 2: you did, was it true at one point that you
Speaker 2: turned it down and said I can't do this, and
Speaker 2: that Stephen had to literally call you off the ledge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we met again. It's only he could have
Speaker 3: done this. We met because he happened to see some
Speaker 3: television that I had directed. Not a watch ghost Show,
Speaker 3: but Gary David Goldberg who's passed away, and he was
Speaker 3: amazing and did family ties. But then he Gary did
Speaker 3: a show called Brooklyn Bridge that was really memorance remembrances
Speaker 3: from his growing up in Brooklyn in the fifties and
Speaker 3: I happened to direct an episode. I can say this
Speaker 3: because I'm a tribe member. But Gary said, yeah, you
Speaker 3: directed the least jewy episode that we did, because it
Speaker 3: was an episode about this kid and his family going
Speaker 3: to Abittsfield to try after this thing, and it was
Speaker 3: so non jewey that it was more of an Americana episode,
Speaker 3: and they ran it and it's crazy. I was just
Speaker 3: thinking about this this morning. It was in Thanksgiving of
Speaker 3: ninety one, so thirty years ago. Last Move, you know,
Speaker 3: a month ago. They ran this episode because they needed
Speaker 3: to fill the extra half hour after the first running
Speaker 3: CBS did of et Sote Steven's movie ran. They needed
Speaker 3: to fill a half hour. They thought, oh, this is
Speaker 3: a very heartwarming, very Americana apps. So Gary called me
Speaker 3: the next week and said, you're not gonna believe the
Speaker 3: phone call I got and I said yeah, and he said,
Speaker 3: my friend Steven Spielberg was obviously watching his own movie
Speaker 3: and stayed through the commercial break and he saw your
Speaker 3: show and he called me and wanted to know who
Speaker 3: did it. That's how I met Steven. So I went
Speaker 3: and sat down with Stephen and he happened like a
Speaker 3: Schwab story. He happened to see that episode and he
Speaker 3: walked in his office and amble and and you know,
Speaker 3: my heart's through my mouth at that point. He's the
Speaker 3: most disarming, kind, warm human ever. So that goes away
Speaker 3: in thirty seconds. But he didn't even let me say anything.
Speaker 3: He said, Okay, let me tell you about your last
Speaker 3: three years. And I look at him, and he proceeds
Speaker 3: to tell me exactly what I had been going through
Speaker 3: as a young director under contract in television. And I'm
Speaker 3: like my jaws hanging open, and he's loving it, and
Speaker 3: he said, yeah, I know I because I experienced that,
Speaker 3: and I saw what you did, and I could see
Speaker 3: you were making a movie, but she's only a half
Speaker 3: hour to make it, and I'd like to help you
Speaker 3: make a longer movie. And so that, Yeah, so that's
Speaker 3: what started us. Originally, he had in mind a much
Speaker 3: more reasonable first movie. It was like a little Louis Mall.
Speaker 3: And there was a thing called The Divorce Club that
Speaker 3: we were going to do that was about kids and
Speaker 3: divorce kind of comedy drama was Warner Brothers. And so
Speaker 3: when he went to go make Schindler's List, I was
Speaker 3: starting to prep that movie, but I noticed some real
Speaker 3: foot dragon from the studio about hiring my crew, and
Speaker 3: so I called it. Lucy Fisher, who's great producer now
Speaker 3: was the executive and I called her. I said, Lucy,
Speaker 3: is there are problems? She said, I think you should
Speaker 3: call your friend Steve and I don't think they want
Speaker 3: to make this movie. And so I called him in
Speaker 3: Poland and he was like, hey, haw's it going on?
Speaker 3: Your first movie. Isn't it amazing? Isn't it great? And
Speaker 3: I was like, dude, it's wonderful, but I don't think
Speaker 3: they want to make the movie. What that's crazy. I'll
Speaker 3: call them. And he called Terry Semmel and Bob Dale
Speaker 3: and he called me back two days later. He said,
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry. You're right. They don't they're scared of it.
Speaker 3: They think it's the subject is too sensitive, and he said,
Speaker 3: I don't know what to say. I'm so sorry. I'm like,
Speaker 3: don't worry about it. I'll go back to my day job.
Speaker 3: Thank you for trying. And that was the timing where
Speaker 3: I went backack to watch go to direct one of
Speaker 3: the first ten episodes of NYPD Blue. So that so
Speaker 3: Steven takes credit for my marriage because I ended up
Speaker 3: hearing Amy Brenneman, who was in the cast of NYPD
Speaker 3: below at first eason. But then he called me and
Speaker 3: he said this is months later. I was doing a
Speaker 3: pilot in white for Botchko and he said, Okay. He
Speaker 3: starts the call saying, Okay, this one's really going to happen.
Speaker 3: Promise it's going to happen. We have a start date,
Speaker 3: I have a release date, and the movies kind of
Speaker 3: I said the movie's what He's like, He's like, can
Speaker 3: you say it's Casper? And I said, Casper Mike is
Speaker 3: in the Friend that goes yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 3: it's going to be live accent. It's gonna be CG.
Speaker 3: I just did these dinosaurs. You're going to be this
Speaker 3: and that, and I'm dumbfounded, you know. And I said
Speaker 3: to him, you know which Brad you called? Because I
Speaker 3: was like, dude, I you know, I had no animation background.
Speaker 3: I'd done some small visual effects work in television, but
Speaker 3: I dated an animator at UCLA. It's like I I
Speaker 3: but I really didn't have any clothes. And he was amazing.
Speaker 3: He was like, no, what you do You're technically savvy.
Speaker 3: What you do and emotionally, what you do and what
Speaker 3: this movie needs is you and so. But I didn't
Speaker 3: just say yes on the call. I had to take
Speaker 3: a weekend because I was overwhelmed by the prospect of
Speaker 3: mass failure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that's a that's a huge that was a
Speaker 2: that was a big movie.
Speaker 3: When I came out, huge movie ended up where we
Speaker 3: knew it would be. It was like sixty five million
Speaker 3: dollars at that point. This is in ninety five, and
Speaker 3: I'll so I'm there in Hawaii and I'm just thinking, Okay,
Speaker 3: if this movie works, Steven Spielberg presents great, great great.
Speaker 3: If it doesn't work, I'm like one of those direct
Speaker 3: first time directors littering the beaches of Balibou who can't
Speaker 3: get a second job. And so I was really anxious
Speaker 3: about it. He did a very shrewd thing. What he
Speaker 3: did was he sent the young producer, Colin Wilson, who
Speaker 3: was going to do the movie. He sent him to
Speaker 3: Why with a trunk of basically almost like illustrations from
Speaker 3: my alemba about how this could work, what the modeling
Speaker 3: would be like, blah blah blah blah blah. And I'm
Speaker 3: just driving around to Scout my pilot with Colin the
Speaker 3: whole weekend saying I said, no, this can't work, you know.
Speaker 3: And then it was awesome because I had a conversation
Speaker 3: with with now my wife then girlfriend Amy, and she's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: it's like pros and cons. Why you know what are
Speaker 3: the pros. I'm like, well, it's an incredible opportunity and
Speaker 3: I love the fact that the movie's actually embracing this
Speaker 3: idea of loss and that there's an emotional story. But
Speaker 3: and she's like, okay, so what are the cons? I'm like,
Speaker 3: I could tank. And so that's when I just realized, Okay,
Speaker 3: the only thing keeping me from this is fear. I
Speaker 3: gotta fucking dive in. And so yeah, I called him
Speaker 3: back and I said okay, let's go, and it was
Speaker 3: just like lightning from there.
Speaker 2: That's amazing because I remember, I mean, I still remember
Speaker 2: when that movie came out. I loved the movie when
Speaker 2: it came out, with such a tough, heartwarming and touching film,
Speaker 2: but it was technically everyone was just talking about the
Speaker 2: character and it was just a first real use of animation
Speaker 2: as a talking characters.
Speaker 3: And yeah, they were go.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's not avatar, but without Casper, it's
Speaker 2: hard to get the avatar, like you need a minute.
Speaker 2: It's part of the evolution. But it was so beautifully
Speaker 2: even it still holds to this day. It's still hoods
Speaker 2: he did.
Speaker 3: He I was waiting. I was waiting for the big
Speaker 3: Yoda moment, and I was when I was in prep
Speaker 3: to talk about the effects and about the effects work,
Speaker 3: and we're getting closer and closer to shooting. I'm like
Speaker 3: two weeks out and Steven still hasn't talked to me
Speaker 3: about He at at one point said to me, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll have the office send you a couple of tapes
Speaker 3: of work sessions with ILM. You can see how I
Speaker 3: gave them notes on the dinosaurs and say you'll know
Speaker 3: how to do It's like, yeah, okay, great, we still
Speaker 3: haven't done it. So finally I said, hey, can we
Speaker 3: grab five minutes. He's like yeah, great, great, And I said, okay, well,
Speaker 3: first of all, I think this affects budget doesn't really
Speaker 3: reflect what it's going to be. And he looked at
Speaker 3: me with that great Grannie said I wouldn't worry about it,
Speaker 3: just go shoot your movie. And I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is the guy. This is his like close Encounters, thinking.
Speaker 2: That we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: I know it's gonna be will pretend it's the other number,
Speaker 3: but it's really gonna be this. But more importantly, he said, again,
Speaker 3: what you know how to do? You know how to
Speaker 3: stage beautifully, you know how to really you know where
Speaker 3: the camera goes, you know what to do to do
Speaker 3: an elegant job in the live action. Don't treat this
Speaker 3: any differently. You have to basically just don't try to
Speaker 3: like compensate, do it just as you would, but only
Speaker 3: you're gonna know where those characters are and you're gonna
Speaker 3: have to communicate that. And that was exactly the right advice.
Speaker 3: So I stopped thinking, Wow, I have to kind of
Speaker 3: put on a different filter, and I treated those four
Speaker 3: ghosts just like any other character in the movie. And
Speaker 3: I'm gonna stage with them, I'm gonna counter the camera.
Speaker 3: The focus shift's gonna happen, because there's the moment It
Speaker 3: made me look like a madman on set, because it's
Speaker 3: like orchestrating, you know, getting the crew to understand where
Speaker 3: these ghosts were, how quick they were moving, getting the
Speaker 3: camera operator to tilt at the right moment to an
Speaker 3: empty part of the set, and then so I was
Speaker 3: doing this all the time. It was it was crazy,
Speaker 3: but it felt completely natural. And that movie made me
Speaker 3: fearless because once you've done that, they can't throw anything
Speaker 3: at you that you And also I have friends who
Speaker 3: are live action directors who still have this envy of
Speaker 3: going to do a big effectstrip movie right, and it's funny.
Speaker 3: For me, It's just another tool in the tool kit.
Speaker 3: I don't thirst for that, but I know how to
Speaker 3: I know how to basically use those tools and how
Speaker 3: to communicate with with the lighting TV, you know, lighting
Speaker 3: tds and animators. And so it was like this incredible
Speaker 3: two year learning curve that was invaluable. I've had the.
Speaker 2: Pleasure of having some amazing guests on my show and
Speaker 2: it doesn't cease to amaze me. I could probably count
Speaker 2: twenty instances that Steven Spielberg launched their careers or helped
Speaker 2: them along their career. He is one of those those
Speaker 2: guiding forces in Hollywood that he doesn't get credit for
Speaker 2: that he has helped so many filmmakers off the ground,
Speaker 2: either to start or later in their career are at
Speaker 2: one point. He's always kind of the man behind the
Speaker 2: curtain in a lot of ways, just giving that nudge,
Speaker 2: helping a little bit out here. And I've heard nothing
Speaker 2: but the nicest, wonderful things about I mean, the craziest stories.
Speaker 2: It's amazing stories. But and I know he That's why
Speaker 2: I knew that he worked with you and Casper. But
Speaker 2: your story about him doesn't surprise me in the least.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it comes out of sheer love of film and
Speaker 3: filmmaking and storytelling, and it's what keeps the ego out
Speaker 3: of it. He just wants to push a good work along.
Speaker 3: You know, a couple of movies of mine that weren't
Speaker 3: ones that he was involved with. He's just the best.
Speaker 3: I got on the City of Angels, which I did
Speaker 3: over at Warner Brothers. He said, Oh, when's your first preview?
Speaker 3: Can I come? And I was like, oh, yeah, let's
Speaker 3: do that. That's going to freak them out. And so
Speaker 3: I literally took Steven to my first you know, audience recruit.
Speaker 3: They didn't see him, but he wanted to come because
Speaker 3: he felt so you know, proprietary, and we felt like
Speaker 3: family and indeed like the studio was freaking out there
Speaker 3: like oh shit, And yet it was the best because
Speaker 3: he just had this reaction and then he's like, hey,
Speaker 3: I carved out a day next week. You know you
Speaker 3: want me to, I'll run the picture when do you want?
Speaker 3: You know, do you want to hear some thoughts? I
Speaker 3: was like, yeah, man, he's done that a couple of times,
Speaker 3: three times on movies where he'll come and spend the day,
Speaker 3: just run the picture in the cutting room again, offer
Speaker 3: up thoughts and no, no, you know, no ties to
Speaker 3: any of those, like here's what I see do with that?
Speaker 3: What you will, I'm so proud of what you're doing,
Speaker 3: blah blah blah, and that's it. Actually what is?
Speaker 2: And I just heard a story of a friend of
Speaker 2: mine who released a film and he's like, dude, do
Speaker 2: you know I just got a letter from the producer.
Speaker 2: I just got a call from my producer who got
Speaker 2: a letter, a handwritten letter from Steven saying Hey, I
Speaker 2: saw my film and I just want to let you
Speaker 2: know I really liked it.
Speaker 3: That was it, Like there was nothing.
Speaker 2: No, I don't want to do anything with you, like
Speaker 2: I don't want to like I'm not and there's no
Speaker 2: agenda just like I saw the movie. I thought, you
Speaker 2: like to know that I liked it.
Speaker 3: He's like ahead of the curve because what I have found.
Speaker 3: I I think it was after City of Angels came out.
Speaker 3: One day. I remember I got a phone call and
Speaker 3: I thought it was a friend playing a prank, and
Speaker 3: it was Dustin Hoffman who following me, and I thought, wow,
Speaker 3: somebody's doing a really weird Dustin Hoffmann invitation is this?
Speaker 3: Brad was like and he he called me because he
Speaker 3: had seen the film and he really really enjoyed the movie,
Speaker 3: and he said, you must like actors. You like actors.
Speaker 3: I feel like you like actors a lot. And so
Speaker 3: we talked and I finally said to him, this is
Speaker 3: so kind of you to do do do this, and
Speaker 3: he said, you know, I didn't for many years. I
Speaker 3: didn't know it was too competitive, he said, but I'm
Speaker 3: getting a holder and I like to acknowledge great work.
Speaker 3: And that was the most incredible thing. And then, of
Speaker 3: course I took that because then I built him into
Speaker 3: my next movie. But I Steven has been ahead of
Speaker 3: that curve, and I think it is because he knows
Speaker 3: the pain. You know, people forget his first directing job
Speaker 3: for him was a nightmare, you know, the night gallery
Speaker 3: sent him back to Arizona for a year and a half.
Speaker 3: He was like, I'm not ready to do this. So
Speaker 3: he knows what it's like to get real support, he
Speaker 3: knows what it's like to he always he always says
Speaker 3: it to me when I made a film, a film,
Speaker 3: my Nether Light Mile again with something that I'd written,
Speaker 3: and he's like, it is your DNA, it's you, true
Speaker 3: and true, I feel you in every frame. That is
Speaker 3: what we're here to do. And so he's it's it's
Speaker 3: an incredible thing. And I know, I know he knows it,
Speaker 3: but I remind him of it yearly. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 3: in Yiddish, like what a mitzvah it is you do
Speaker 3: for your kind every every day? He and he loves movie,
Speaker 3: loves television. He watches everything.
Speaker 2: It's remarkable. And the thing I always find fascinating about
Speaker 2: him is that he says like he doesn't have to
Speaker 2: do anymore, like he had he could have stopped decades ago,
Speaker 2: you know, after et, he could have after Writerers of
Speaker 2: the Lost, he didn't have to do this. But he
Speaker 2: does it without agenda, without gupro quo. He's just truly
Speaker 2: wants to help and wants to be and he knows.
Speaker 3: He knows in a.
Speaker 2: Very humble way that he's the eight hundred pound gorilla
Speaker 2: in the room. He he knows that very very well,
Speaker 2: and he uses that power for good.
Speaker 3: Well. And he'll also tell you, which is really funny.
Speaker 3: I remember between movies at one point he was it
Speaker 3: was ambal And Television, or maybe it was DreamWorks Television
Speaker 3: and they were producing one of their first TV shows.
Speaker 3: He was like there all the time. He's like, Hey,
Speaker 3: come meet me up. I'm on the set of so
Speaker 3: and so out in chats Worth. Come come hang. And
Speaker 3: I was like, and I went there. I was like,
Speaker 3: what are you doing? And he's like, oh, this is
Speaker 3: like my methadone. He said, if I'm not actually shooting,
Speaker 3: I need to be really close to it and get
Speaker 3: a fix. And that's his true So he calls he
Speaker 3: calls the movies he produces or the TV shows his methadone.
Speaker 3: And I've always thought of that because I share that
Speaker 3: it's my favorite thing. I'm the best director ever. When
Speaker 3: I go visit a friend set, I got no pressure.
Speaker 3: I'm really happy with the snacks the actors look really nice.
Speaker 3: I'm really he just loose, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh, anytime you've visit a set, you're just like, it's
Speaker 2: not my it's I'm just I'm a I'm a passenger
Speaker 2: on this ship. I don't have to I don't have
Speaker 2: to drive. It's great.
Speaker 3: I read a friend of mine is starting a movie
Speaker 3: next week out in Boston. I'm going to go visit him.
Speaker 3: And he said, what day are you coming? And I said,
Speaker 3: I think I'm coming on the blow. I goes, oh,
Speaker 3: that's really funny. That's guest director day. That's amazing. And
Speaker 3: so he's like, I'm like, no, no, no, no, doesn't work
Speaker 3: that way, my friend.
Speaker 2: So one of yours you mentioned City of Angel, which
Speaker 2: I absolutely adore. I watched that film every few years
Speaker 2: because I absolutely adore that film. And it was obviously
Speaker 2: made a remake of a masterpiece of a film, which
Speaker 2: is Wings of Desire. How do you approach remaking It's
Speaker 2: really a mastard piece and I'm not exaggerating. Wings of
Speaker 2: Desire is a master.
Speaker 3: Oh, Wings of Desire. So you want to go, you
Speaker 3: want to go on a bad blind date, go see
Speaker 3: Wings of Desire, which is how I saw that film.
Speaker 3: I went on a blind date and I went to
Speaker 3: see Wings Desire and I was I couldn't move out
Speaker 3: of my seat at the end of the movie, and
Speaker 3: I looked to my left and woman that I was
Speaker 3: there with clearly was just looking for popcorn remnants or
Speaker 3: whatever it was, and there was like no response and
Speaker 3: I couldn't. It was a really short date after that.
Speaker 2: You know, we'll be right back after a word from
Speaker 2: our sponsor and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: It was poetry and it was she will just life,
Speaker 3: humor and observing a nuance. So it was an incredible movie.
Speaker 3: The only way you make that that film when we did,
Speaker 3: is you you. You can't approach it as an actual
Speaker 3: remake because if it were you, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: You know you can't do it. And so when I
Speaker 3: got a call about the film, I was really interested.
Speaker 3: In My agent then said, oh, Dawn steegol producer Don
Speaker 3: Steele is doing a remake of Wings a Desire, And
Speaker 3: I was like what. I couldn't put those elements together. Don,
Speaker 3: who's been gone down twenty years, was arguably one of
Speaker 3: the most commercial movie brains as a studio head and
Speaker 3: then as a producer, so I went in to meet her,
Speaker 3: and what I realized, and I say this lovingly, I
Speaker 3: don't know if she ever saw the original film, and
Speaker 3: that's what that's what set me free. I was like, Oh, okay,
Speaker 3: she's thinking of this as a high concept premise and
Speaker 3: had engaged Dana Stevens, who's a wonderful writer. Dana as well,
Speaker 3: was late to the Dana was not a Venders Efficionado
Speaker 3: was not, so they were freed up at the initial
Speaker 3: stage of development by not chasing that but by trying
Speaker 3: to come up with a story. And I knew that
Speaker 3: for me, if I could bring the emotional response I
Speaker 3: had to Vim's film and some of the tonal play,
Speaker 3: but also be able to just own it and just think, again,
Speaker 3: we're not doing because it obviously wins. It desires like
Speaker 3: gossamer threads. It's there's that much story. And the incredible
Speaker 3: thing is so Nick Kidge and I have a real
Speaker 3: instinct because I remember asking Don Steele. I said, so
Speaker 3: tell me about your conversations with Vim, what has that
Speaker 3: been like, And she's like, oh, oh, I haven't talked
Speaker 3: to him. I was like, really, you've never engaged her.
Speaker 3: He goes, oh, no, I was like wow. And so
Speaker 3: when Nick had signed on, he and I both were like,
Speaker 3: I'd really love to get the script to Vim and
Speaker 3: just sort of who knows, get any thoughts, but more
Speaker 3: so just reach out and say we want there to
Speaker 3: be a continuity, because we really are so indebted to
Speaker 3: the initial impulse he had. And he was amazing, and
Speaker 3: he read it quickly and responded, and then he ended
Speaker 3: up becoming like a beautiful kind of godparent to the
Speaker 3: movie from that point, or an angel, if you will,
Speaker 3: or an angel, a guardian angel, a German guardian angel.
Speaker 3: He was great. But what he said to me and
Speaker 3: Nick at that point, which was amazing, he said, this
Speaker 3: is crazy. Do you know that in my original concept
Speaker 3: for the movie, it was going to take place in
Speaker 3: a hospital, and the female lead, of course, who's a
Speaker 3: trapeze artist, was going to be a doctor. He said,
Speaker 3: my dad was a surgeon. That's where I wanted it
Speaker 3: to take place. We couldn't afford it. We couldn't afford
Speaker 3: a location, and we couldn't afford it. That's why I
Speaker 3: think about it, that's why she did trapeze Artist. We
Speaker 3: put a tent up and we were like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: that's the beauty of film. It's like, you can't imagine
Speaker 3: that film any other way. And the you know, the
Speaker 3: visual conceit a flight and all that goes no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: that was budget. You couldn't afford it. So again, so
Speaker 3: them came to my first test screening with his wife,
Speaker 3: and they were fantastic because I you know, the way
Speaker 3: test screenings go, lights come up at the end, you
Speaker 3: as the filmmakers at the studio, you leave through everybody
Speaker 3: gets handed their little note cards and they fill out
Speaker 3: shit and Vim and Donata his wife, were really funny
Speaker 3: because they nobody knew where he was, so they were
Speaker 3: like spying on people's cards and then they would come
Speaker 3: running out to me, Oh, it's looking really good. They
Speaker 3: like this, and they like that, and they need to
Speaker 3: run back in. And so he was awesome through the
Speaker 3: whole process. But again didn't expect it to be, you know,
Speaker 3: a xerox copy. Appreciated that we weren't just doing that,
Speaker 3: but still fel really happy to be connected to the film,
Speaker 3: and that was the only way I was able to
Speaker 3: do it. Otherwise it would have just been.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you can't and you know, I had John
Speaker 2: Batamon I had John Bathamon and I talked to him
Speaker 2: about point in our Return. I'm like, how do you
Speaker 2: take lefev Nikita and like redo it?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: But he didn't have a guardian angel from France. He
Speaker 2: was on his own.
Speaker 3: I d and I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, John's John's I'd love John absolutely John.
Speaker 3: And you've seen his book which I contributed. He's written.
Speaker 3: He cares so much about the craft of directing and
Speaker 3: what directors go through, and he's the best.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, no question. Now, how did you how do you
Speaker 2: approach taking a popular children's series and turning it into
Speaker 2: a series of unfortunate events? Like how because that was
Speaker 2: at that point in your career the biggest budget you've
Speaker 2: ever worked with at that point.
Speaker 3: Correct, Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, Foreshore, Camine, Casper, and City
Speaker 3: of Angels were probably within five million dollars of each
Speaker 3: other somewhere in the sixties and well, yeah, Lemony Snicket
Speaker 3: by you know, over twofold, partly because Scott Rudin and
Speaker 3: very solvent Felt had been in early development on trying
Speaker 3: to make a movie at Paramount and they spent some money.
Speaker 3: They spent some money, and the studio got very scared
Speaker 3: because the script it's interesting. Handler is a friend of
Speaker 3: mine and Daniel Handler, who's the real Lemony Snicket, and
Speaker 3: Daniel had done an adaptation, but the adaptation was like bonkers.
Speaker 3: It wasn't it really wasn't honoring his own work, which
Speaker 3: amazed me. And I think because he's so prolific and
Speaker 3: he's so imaginative, I think he thought, why am I
Speaker 3: just going to go recreate what I've done? I want
Speaker 3: to go do some other stuff. So what I remember
Speaker 3: asking if I could read where they had been headed,
Speaker 3: and it was crazy town, but it was also very expensive.
Speaker 3: So that's how DreamWorks got involved was they basically decided
Speaker 3: they were going to have the wrong path at Paramount
Speaker 3: reached out to DreamWorks partner on the movie, and it
Speaker 3: was mutually decided that they would bring on a whole
Speaker 3: new filmmaking team, new script, new director. And so I
Speaker 3: was in Europe. It was with Dustin Hooff and I
Speaker 3: was in Europe promoting Moonlight Mile when I got a
Speaker 3: call from Walter Parks, who was then running DreamWorks under
Speaker 3: Steven and he said, are you familiar with these books?
Speaker 3: And I said no, and he said, go get your
Speaker 3: hands on them and call me back. And I went
Speaker 3: to the biggest toy store hat have Leys, I think
Speaker 3: it's called in London and bought the first three books
Speaker 3: and was so again for me, it's like tone and character,
Speaker 3: and it was so blown away by you know, the
Speaker 3: essential premise of those books, which is that the kids
Speaker 3: are the adults, adults are idiots, and that there's a
Speaker 3: real straight look at darkness, that there's a real straight
Speaker 3: look at loss and perseverance and what that means. And
Speaker 3: so I was reading these and just again the sense
Speaker 3: of wisdom, huge intelligence, tone. I just thought it was fantastic.
Speaker 3: So I called them back and I said, this is great.
Speaker 3: What's the situation and he said, well, when you come back,
Speaker 3: come sit with me, Stephen. But if you want to
Speaker 3: do this, we should do this. And so that began
Speaker 3: the process. You know, there's thirteen books. At that point
Speaker 3: there weren't thirteen, but it was decided that we would
Speaker 3: tackle the first three. But by nuture, they are like cereals,
Speaker 3: they're episodic, and for me, the biggest challenge was going
Speaker 3: to be making it still feel like a three act
Speaker 3: film and not just like and then we're here and
Speaker 3: then we're here, which some of it is naturally still
Speaker 3: that way, but that there had to be some sort
Speaker 3: of little, bigger arc. So we spent a good bit
Speaker 3: of time, and thankfully Handler was willing to come back
Speaker 3: into the process because I didn't want to lose his voice.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to lose his you know, just that
Speaker 3: sort of sweet and sour thing that he does. And
Speaker 3: then we had But yeah, I mean, it was a
Speaker 3: very expensive movie. I asked Cherry Lansing not to make
Speaker 3: my life harder. But I said to her when I
Speaker 3: met her, don't you want to, frankly, give him them
Speaker 3: money or spending Don't you want to do it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's Back the Future two and three. Don't you want
Speaker 3: to do two back to back and amortize the costs?
Speaker 3: These sets are going to be insane.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3: And now back to the show, and Sherer's awesome shares like,
Speaker 3: oh no, honey, I'm very superstitious that I'm too superstitious.
Speaker 3: I let's let the first one come back that we'll
Speaker 3: just said. I was like, okay, and I had over
Speaker 3: the course of early the that you look, you pick
Speaker 3: up one of those books, there's a sense of there's
Speaker 3: like a sense of that everything being handmade, the illustration.
Speaker 3: And I wanted the film to feel like an illustration.
Speaker 3: And so when I started scouting and trying to kind
Speaker 3: of design the film with Rick Heinrix, who's awesome, we
Speaker 3: were actually going out into the real world looking for
Speaker 3: Lok and we both were like, can't do it. This
Speaker 3: is Night of the Hunter. We have to find a
Speaker 3: way to make everything feel handmade times more two dimensional
Speaker 3: than three dimensional. That means we have to control it all.
Speaker 3: That means we're gonna have to be on set the
Speaker 3: whole time, including for exteriors. And so that's how we
Speaker 3: approached it, and then gain in the studio back to
Speaker 3: but yeah, it was was it was an expensive movie.
Speaker 2: It was. Now it's how do you direct a force
Speaker 2: of nature like Jim Carrey. I mean he's he I
Speaker 2: mean obviously he's very similar in energy to Robin Williams.
Speaker 2: You know, like this kind of pinetic energy that you
Speaker 2: just like, you can't control it. All you could do
Speaker 2: is corral it.
Speaker 3: Well, what you do It would be like if you
Speaker 3: did a two hour interview and you hopefully made great
Speaker 3: prompts and let that interview go and then sit down
Speaker 3: together and say that's salient, that's great. This not so
Speaker 3: much what I realized early with Jamble two things. What
Speaker 3: people don't know about Jim Carrey. Everything seems like like
Speaker 3: Robin Williams, like, oh my god. So he is a
Speaker 3: preparer and he feels most grounded and safe when he's prepared.
Speaker 3: So what I realized was like, Okay, how do I
Speaker 3: do that and still capture all that's Jim? And what
Speaker 3: I realized was I want to basically get the most
Speaker 3: out of his freedom and then create. So normally, when
Speaker 3: you do makeup hair wardrobe tests on a film, they're
Speaker 3: no sound recorded. You just put it after up there.
Speaker 3: And I had this crazy idea that I got from
Speaker 3: actually John Schlesinger doing this on Midnight Cowboy, which is
Speaker 3: I brought the sound mixer and I decided to interview
Speaker 3: each of these potential characters that Jim was going to do,
Speaker 3: meaning Jim's Olof and then Jim's you know, Stefano, and
Speaker 3: then Jim is. I'd ask him about public policy, asked
Speaker 3: him about his thoughts on you know, secondary education, you know,
Speaker 3: on Las Vegas, and he just had a great time
Speaker 3: and we were recording it and we looked at each
Speaker 3: other after the first day and thought, it's all in there.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. It's all in there. And so what we
Speaker 3: did was I I went and took from these really
Speaker 3: hopefully well prompted, but great improvs. I took the best
Speaker 3: of what we thought could play within the story, because
Speaker 3: I did bring it around often to the kids, into
Speaker 3: the situation and what he's gonna do with the money
Speaker 3: and Titanic sucked. I could do better. And so what
Speaker 3: you do is you it's less hemming him in and
Speaker 3: more like, here's your pasture, let's go play, and I'm
Speaker 3: gonna take your best moves and we're gonna bring that
Speaker 3: into the story. And so that's what we did. We
Speaker 3: brought all that material back into the s So the script,
Speaker 3: what you have on screen is all material that derived
Speaker 3: from improvs that we did well ahead of the time.
Speaker 3: And again, like a kid, you know, teenagers with a camera,
Speaker 3: he and I responded on a really fundamental level, like pals,
Speaker 3: and I realized that I had to make him feel safe,
Speaker 3: but also not just pull big surprises, but that let's
Speaker 3: go through let's prepare. He would know if he had
Speaker 3: to work the staircase in that mansion, he knew how
Speaker 3: many steps there were, how many he was going to
Speaker 3: take before a gesture, and if God forbid, the night
Speaker 3: before the construction crew changed the number of steps, that's
Speaker 3: where he'd get thrown. Because it was like, no, I'm so,
Speaker 3: I'm so, I'm a dancer, I'm so prepared. And so
Speaker 3: if you know that's the animal you're dealing with, you
Speaker 3: lean into it and you make him feel safe. The
Speaker 3: studio got very scared. They got scared off and through
Speaker 3: the process about you know, the reason kids loved those
Speaker 3: books and why they love them series is because it's
Speaker 3: super honest. Is it goes really dark. They got very
Speaker 3: scared of that at times, and like the eleventh hour,
Speaker 3: they got a little worried about count all loss makeup,
Speaker 3: and I said to them, oh, we're past that point
Speaker 3: and this is exactly what it's supposed to be, you know,
Speaker 3: And they they but they I forget what they did.
Speaker 3: And they asked the Walter Parks to see if there
Speaker 3: was anything he could do, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is not going to end well, because we've committed
Speaker 3: it's going to get in his head and it's going
Speaker 3: to blow up. And our first day of shooting, Jim
Speaker 3: never got on camera because I think one of the
Speaker 3: producers had gotten in his ear, like, well, maybe we
Speaker 3: can have a little less darkness under the eyes. And
Speaker 3: I remember saying to the producers like, that is going
Speaker 3: to come at a cost. You wait, And sure enough
Speaker 3: I went into Jim's trailer and he was like, wow,
Speaker 3: are we are we just making a mistake? What's going on?
Speaker 3: And I said, absolutely not, you are the character. This
Speaker 3: is the makeup. Go home. Today was a great rehearsal
Speaker 3: from putting on your makeup for three and a half hours.
Speaker 3: Go home, get some sleep. We're going to start tomorrow morning.
Speaker 3: Fuck then, And that's what we did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's that's awesome. That's an awesome story, now
Speaker 2: is there? You know, as directors, there's always that day,
Speaker 2: And it could be at the beginning of your career,
Speaker 2: could be at the end of the career. It could
Speaker 2: be the middle of your career. On a day on
Speaker 2: the set when the entire world is coming crashing down
Speaker 2: around you and you're like, oh my god, like the
Speaker 2: actor won't come out like you were saying before we started,
Speaker 2: like the actor's drunk, he's getting it, he's getting a divorce,
Speaker 2: we're losing the sunlight. The camera fell in the lake,
Speaker 2: And every minute that goes by, it's literally thousands and
Speaker 2: not hundreds of thousands of dollars go by. What was
Speaker 2: that day for you? And how did you overcome that
Speaker 2: obstacle that day?
Speaker 3: Wow, it's so funny because I'm smiling when you're saying
Speaker 3: that day, it's more like days every day.
Speaker 2: I asked that question often.
Speaker 4: Then it was like, you mean every ah, Well, I'll
Speaker 4: tell you here's a really I think. I think I'm
Speaker 4: happy that I don't have a litany of them in
Speaker 4: my head, partly.
Speaker 3: Because listen you, the days that you think are going
Speaker 3: to be a cake walk slam you like a ton
Speaker 3: of bricks, and then you're like, holy fuck, how did
Speaker 3: this get so hard? And then the days that you're
Speaker 3: ain't anticipating hell become like joyous. So it happens throughout
Speaker 3: the process. I think, as you do it, more what
Speaker 3: you know. I always say, it's a shot at a time.
Speaker 3: You go one shot at a time. When I would
Speaker 3: in my golf cart driving myself to set on Lemony
Speaker 3: Snick it we shot. I think we shot one hundred
Speaker 3: and forty six days on that movie. It was amus
Speaker 3: one hundred and forty six days, and I remember like
Speaker 3: a third of the way into it, thinking this could
Speaker 3: really become overwhelming. And I remember just driving my cart
Speaker 3: with my happiest moment was like driving my golf cart
Speaker 3: to the stage with my little one cup coffee, and
Speaker 3: I thought, I think I'm just like a minor. I
Speaker 3: go into the mine and I come out with film
Speaker 3: each day. I can't even begin to think about the
Speaker 3: end of this journey because it will take me out.
Speaker 3: I just have to go in and really concentrate one
Speaker 3: shot at a time, one performance at a time, and
Speaker 3: that's how you can persevere and not get overwhelmed. I
Speaker 3: over the years have gone to sit just again my
Speaker 3: method done. I'll go sit with Steven on a set,
Speaker 3: and it's what's always given me the joy of one
Speaker 3: shot at a time, because as much as people like
Speaker 3: to prepare, he prepares, but he still comes up with it.
Speaker 3: It's like jazz. He comes up with it a shot
Speaker 3: at a time on set, and if you do that,
Speaker 3: you could be shooting ten days or one hundred days,
Speaker 3: and as long as you're getting some sleep and you're
Speaker 3: eating okay, and you believe in what you're doing, you
Speaker 3: can get through it. The one I remember one day
Speaker 3: that was pretty amazing on Lemony Snicket that is about
Speaker 3: as close to what you're describing as I probably ever come.
Speaker 3: Where we had we were doing a sequence with Billy
Speaker 3: Connolly and there's a character in the books, the incredibly
Speaker 3: Deadly Viper. It's this huge viper, of course is harmless,
Speaker 3: but it looks really meant. So we had a giant
Speaker 3: prosthetic version of the viper created just to basically be
Speaker 3: able to rehearsing for the camera operator and scale.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: And now back to the show.
Speaker 3: And the babies, where these were babies who were playing Sunny.
Speaker 3: They were fourteen months old. There were twour mintons when
Speaker 3: we made the movie, and one of them on the rehearsal.
Speaker 3: Rehearsal though I always shoot by rehearsal, so everything's always
Speaker 3: on film or digital because why not. It's like, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to lose a great performance. So I don't
Speaker 3: like just a came rehearsal. I always roll and it
Speaker 3: gets everybody focused, and so we rolled on the rehearsal
Speaker 3: and the grip, who was sort of manipulating this huge
Speaker 3: fake snake, got a little too overzealous in his performance,
Speaker 3: and like what And the gate of this pen that
Speaker 3: the snake was in was, you know, flies open, goes
Speaker 3: right at the baby who's being held by the kids,
Speaker 3: and she and it's all it's in the movie. She
Speaker 3: looks and screams bloody murder and she's toast. She's like off.
Speaker 3: They got to take her off the set. She was scarred.
Speaker 3: I still feel bad she was scarred from that for
Speaker 3: the rest of the movie. Most of the rest of
Speaker 3: the movie was her twin sister, who was just like
Speaker 3: a joy baby. She though freaked out and at that point,
Speaker 3: when you're dealing with incense, you only have so many
Speaker 3: minutes on set. Her sister had already worked that day.
Speaker 3: I had nowhere else to go. There wasn't another scene
Speaker 3: we could jump into there was. It was one of
Speaker 3: those where it was like and I remember, I just
Speaker 3: it was that moment's like, holy shit. I turned to
Speaker 3: my ad who's done every movie with me, and she's amazing,
Speaker 3: Michelle vinnie Is. I turned to her with this look,
Speaker 3: and I said, I need to take a walk. I've
Speaker 3: never in my career left my set. I never leave
Speaker 3: the camera. I was so overwhelmed by this wall we
Speaker 3: had walked into that I literally walked out the stage
Speaker 3: of this a paramount, and you know, on a big
Speaker 3: movie you've got, it feels like a thousand and radios
Speaker 3: all around, there's PA's, there's cranks, right, And what I
Speaker 3: hear as I'm walking out of the stage and I'm
Speaker 3: walking down, you know, I hear, don't let him get
Speaker 3: to Melrose. Don't let them get to Melrose. They literally
Speaker 3: thought I was gonna walk and never come back. And
Speaker 3: I don't know if I didn't think about it, but
Speaker 3: it was amazing.
Speaker 2: So I got like half way.
Speaker 3: Down and I took a deep breath. You know, I'm like,
Speaker 3: okay again. Shot at a time. It's their movie. I
Speaker 3: sometimes too, in my head, I think it's their movie too,
Speaker 3: meaning I take it all on my head. I take
Speaker 3: responsibility for everything. But everybody has come together. They want
Speaker 3: to tell this very challenging story with real babies and
Speaker 3: real this, and that it's their movie too. We'll figure
Speaker 3: it out, you know. And the more you do it,
Speaker 3: and this friend of mine is starting this movie in
Speaker 3: Boston next week. I was mentioning a lot of it
Speaker 3: takes place at a boarding school. He just lost two
Speaker 3: weeks out his primary location, like incredible primary school location,
Speaker 3: all the architecture because of COVID. The board of directors,
Speaker 3: I guess got together and we're like, no, can't do it.
Speaker 3: And I was on the phone with him when he
Speaker 3: got the other call in the other line and he's
Speaker 3: like And I checked in with him next morning, he's like,
Speaker 3: you know what, this is what happens. We do this
Speaker 3: long enough, we kind of get unflappable, and you do.
Speaker 3: It's not that you don't care. You just know there's
Speaker 3: going to be a solution. And as always happens in film,
Speaker 3: you look back and think it couldn't have been any
Speaker 3: other way. So there's a faith in the process. Yeah,
Speaker 3: casting and recasting. No, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: There's there is that thing that you're like, oh, why
Speaker 2: did I lose that? I will like the trapeze thing
Speaker 2: in Wings of Desire, perfect example. I mean, he wanted
Speaker 2: an hospital, but he could afford it, so we got
Speaker 2: the Trapiez. It's it's it is such an insanity that
Speaker 2: we do. I call it the beautiful sickness because it
Speaker 2: is uh, because it is it is you know whichause
Speaker 2: once you get bitten by that book, you can't get
Speaker 2: rid of it ever. It really it's always inside you.
Speaker 2: And uh, it's beautiful. But it's I've spoken to so
Speaker 2: many filmmakers over the course of my career that there's
Speaker 2: an insanity to what.
Speaker 3: We do because what we we have, we have have
Speaker 3: got to the circus. We've ran away with the circus. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's a compulsion. Yeah, And there's a comp and
Speaker 3: I've had it again since I was younger this day.
Speaker 3: So when I was making my little Super eight films,
Speaker 3: lived in a neighborhood that had turned over and really
Speaker 3: there were not a lot of younger families. There was
Speaker 3: one kid next door to me who was younger, who's
Speaker 3: the only actor I had. He was in every movie
Speaker 3: that I made, and he got really smart. At one
Speaker 3: point he started saying, I'm all tired today, Like you
Speaker 3: hold his hand out, I have to give him five bucks,
Speaker 3: and you know, it's my first time dealing with unions.
Speaker 3: He but it was funny because he the compulsion. He
Speaker 3: would look at me some days and go, oh no,
Speaker 3: you've got another one, because you just get bitten and
Speaker 3: you want to tell another story and you want to
Speaker 3: go do that thing. And I always say different with
Speaker 3: different filmmakers. I can look at their movies. Paul Anderson,
Speaker 3: another fantastic director from the Valley. We are Valley people
Speaker 3: here in La I adore and I looked at it
Speaker 3: and I said, he wanted to make a movie, meaning
Speaker 3: he was very excited to create a feeling. It wasn't
Speaker 3: that he was sitting there chiseling out a story that
Speaker 3: was just like this, and just like that. He got
Speaker 3: really excited to go make a movie. And sometimes our
Speaker 3: movies are that. It's like, I want to go make
Speaker 3: a movie and I'm going to find enough that I
Speaker 3: can care about to hang on this movie and just
Speaker 3: enjoy the process. Peter Weir, who among you know the
Speaker 3: Pantheon of Living directors, is one of my faves. And
Speaker 3: I sought him out after castp actually because I was
Speaker 3: going to go to Australia. He happened to be in
Speaker 3: La and he's become this incredible again friended mentor. He
Speaker 3: said a really brilliant thing about he made a movie
Speaker 3: called Green Card with Depardieu and yeah, that's right, and
Speaker 3: the movie flopped and just got kind of and and
Speaker 3: he just had the greatest attitude and he said of it. Later,
Speaker 3: I realized that the audience was in the wrong place.
Speaker 3: They should have been with us while we were making
Speaker 3: the movie, because the process was so pleasura when we
Speaker 3: had such a great time, and I guess I wanted
Speaker 3: them there maybe less so sitting in a theater watching
Speaker 3: the movie, and I knew exactly what he meant, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, sometimes it's just I want to go and
Speaker 3: have this great experience and so but it's all from
Speaker 3: that compulsion, and part of your job, and people do
Speaker 3: it with more or less success, is how do I
Speaker 3: manage that compulsion and have a life. You know, it's
Speaker 3: not for reason that most of these marriages go down
Speaker 3: with filmmakers and other artists, and it's like, you have
Speaker 3: to find a balance, and we're always working at that,
Speaker 3: but the bug is still always there. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's this I called the great harum. It's this creative
Speaker 3: harum for your unsettled because you're searching for that next
Speaker 3: thing to just lock into.
Speaker 2: And i'd imagine, you know, being someone like yourself, who's
Speaker 2: had success as a as a director in your career,
Speaker 2: when you start getting those first big jobs, you know,
Speaker 2: when you're on the set of Casper and on the
Speaker 2: set of City of Angels, and that I guess has
Speaker 2: to amplify because the high is so much higher for
Speaker 2: someone directing with all the toys in the world, like
Speaker 2: on limits, nickets, that high must be pretty immense for
Speaker 2: someone like yourself, as opposed to an independent filmmaker who's
Speaker 2: used to make one thousand, hundred fifty thousand dollars movies.
Speaker 2: Don't get me wrong, it still could be a high
Speaker 2: for them as well. But I can only imagine the
Speaker 2: level of like height you get the car movies get released,
Speaker 2: you get huge audiences, You're working with the best collaborators
Speaker 2: in the world. You have Steven Spielberg sitting there visiting
Speaker 2: the set. I can imagine as a director you that
Speaker 2: that compulsion must be even more so. I think that's
Speaker 2: probably why you do so much television. That because television
Speaker 2: you're constantly or as opposed to features that think.
Speaker 3: Forever, well, this is this is right. Pilots and I
Speaker 3: love making pilots because pilots are little movies that have
Speaker 3: to be done my may second, and they have to.
Speaker 3: They're not going to wait for the actor because they can't.
Speaker 3: They have to have it on their schedule. No, it's true,
Speaker 3: so I'll tell you. And I remember this while I
Speaker 3: was shooting Casper Kevin Reynolds, who made among the other thing,
Speaker 3: water World. So Kevin's an old friend because he married
Speaker 3: one of my oldest friends. Kevin was on the Universal
Speaker 3: lot and he God, I don't know if he was
Speaker 3: in post on water World or ninety five. I think
Speaker 3: he was.
Speaker 2: I think he was imposted around that time.
Speaker 3: I remember he came by and I was like, you know,
Speaker 3: famous in water World, the first movie to ever break
Speaker 3: the hundred million dollar figure on a budget. And I said, God,
Speaker 3: that just must be amazing and crazy and great and Chilli, we'll.
Speaker 2: Be right back after a word from our sponsor. And
Speaker 2: now back to the show.
Speaker 3: When he's looked at me and he said, you know what,
Speaker 3: it's still all the same problems, he said, I'm still
Speaker 3: fighting to make my days. I still don't have enough
Speaker 3: for certain things I want to do, he said. So yes,
Speaker 3: it's great, he said, but don't don't have an illusion
Speaker 3: that it just suddenly changes and so when you're talking
Speaker 3: about the size of the movie's there too. I'll tell
Speaker 3: you where. We're all in the same spot in a
Speaker 3: beautiful way. The first time we walk in with that
Speaker 3: first audience, we're sitting there. If the movie costs two
Speaker 3: million dollars, two hundred million dollars or twenty thousand, your
Speaker 3: heart is here because how are they going to receive this?
Speaker 3: How are they going to laugh? Are they gonna cry?
Speaker 3: That's the great equalizer, and for me is still what
Speaker 3: I'm most excited about. It's one thing to sit and
Speaker 3: just go make a film for myself, but it is
Speaker 3: an audience experience that I crave. Nothing is better, or
Speaker 3: it can be worse, but usually nothing is better. And
Speaker 3: that's kind of an interesting equalizer. The rest of the
Speaker 3: size is again, can be great at times. It can
Speaker 3: be like I say, like, oh shit, I just got
Speaker 3: to put on my mining cap because this thing.
Speaker 2: Is cut wood, carry water. Cut wood, carry water.
Speaker 3: Saturday time, cut carry water.
Speaker 2: Now I'm going to ask a few questions. Ask all
Speaker 2: of my guests, what advice would you give a filmmaker
Speaker 2: trying to break into the business today.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you remember that great line from Glengarry Glenn Ross.
Speaker 3: Always yeah, mine is always be writing, and if you
Speaker 3: can't write, always be dating a writer seriously because in
Speaker 3: the end it is all about content and for somebody
Speaker 3: trying to break in, somebody trying to sustain. So it's
Speaker 3: the Rocky story. It's like Stillune saying, yeah, you can
Speaker 3: make my movie, but I'm going to star in it.
Speaker 3: And the only way for filmmakers to get to guarantee
Speaker 3: their place unless they're coming off of, you know, John
Speaker 3: watt last movie, the only way you're going to guarantee
Speaker 3: your place is primacy of And this was Stephen has
Speaker 3: said to me many times too. It's like that's the
Speaker 3: thing when it's your baby. They may not don't want
Speaker 3: to make it, but if they make it, it's only
Speaker 3: going to be with you. Always be writing, always be dreaming.
Speaker 3: And like I say, truly, if you're not a writer,
Speaker 3: then find somebody to collaborate with. It's going to be
Speaker 3: the I mean, I will say without a doubt, my
Speaker 3: most enjoyable experiences, be the large or small, have been
Speaker 3: on the films that I've written. I've done both, and
Speaker 3: I've loved my other movies too, but the experience of it.
Speaker 3: I'm the most free in a weird way. I'm not
Speaker 3: like I remember Dustin Hoffmann on Mulight Mile was waiting
Speaker 3: to see if I was going to be like mister
Speaker 3: letter perfect, and I was like, oh God, no I
Speaker 3: because I've already written it. Now we can play if
Speaker 3: we need to play. So But but it's that it's
Speaker 3: always and the other thing too. It's like when I
Speaker 3: was growing up soccer player. You know, we used to
Speaker 3: watch these Pepsi training films that they would scream and
Speaker 3: they were always starring Pele, of course, and Pele was
Speaker 3: always basically dribbling a grapefruit on a beach in Brazil,
Speaker 3: and his whole thing was, anybody can do this with
Speaker 3: just a grepe fruit. And I think of that all
Speaker 3: the time, which is, if I have that creative, if
Speaker 3: I to have to wait to pull together one hundred
Speaker 3: million dollars, ten million dollars two hundred thousand, if I
Speaker 3: have to wait to be creative because of other people's money,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be doomed and bitter. And so writing
Speaker 3: gives me the control. There's nothing but keystrokes or a
Speaker 3: piece of paper or journal that's going to stop me
Speaker 3: from continue, you know, And Stephen has a great phrase Bilberg.
Speaker 3: He he talks about your your your your writing eye
Speaker 3: and your directing eye. And he has said to me,
Speaker 3: you know that that the reason he knows I love
Speaker 3: to write is it's my directing eye getting to play
Speaker 3: but lay on the page. So that's that's the key is.
Speaker 3: I can't stress it enough. I every time I go
Speaker 3: back to film schools and talk to young people, I'm like,
Speaker 3: you have to be a creator.
Speaker 2: Now what is the lesson that took you the longest
Speaker 2: to learn, whether in the film industry or in life.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's a great question. I would say probably it's
Speaker 3: it's an ongoing lesson. You can begin to equ wait
Speaker 3: stubbornness with I guess integrity and stubbornness, for many go
Speaker 3: hand in hand. And I can be super stubborn. When
Speaker 3: I want to do something, I'm going to get it done.
Speaker 3: It may take two years, ten years, it may I'm
Speaker 3: going to get it done. And it's funny. I have
Speaker 3: three movies that I've made, each of which had that
Speaker 3: about it. Light Mile I wrote a first draft of
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety three. I made it in two thousand
Speaker 3: and one. Ten items are less similar picture I did
Speaker 3: with Ben Kingsley Ordinary Man. By the time things got
Speaker 3: together fell apart. So I'm stubborn. What I've realized is
Speaker 3: that I can't be singular and stubborn, meaning of the
Speaker 3: open too. I was always of the belief that I
Speaker 3: have to just stay on one project. I can't be
Speaker 3: distracted by others. And the challenge there is that's fine
Speaker 3: if you literally are prepared to not go and do
Speaker 3: something for a long period of time because there are
Speaker 3: elements that are out of your control. And so I'm
Speaker 3: both creatively staunch, but I do. It's like you can
Speaker 3: jumble more plates in a successful and enjoyable way. The
Speaker 3: more you do it, you get confident. So I might
Speaker 3: be developing a limited series that might go, but I'm
Speaker 3: also out to cast on another movie that it would
Speaker 3: have been once upon a time. I would have only
Speaker 3: just sat and waited for that cast come together on
Speaker 3: that movie it light mile and suddenly or the money
Speaker 3: to come with it. And so suddenly it was from
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight to time we released the movie
Speaker 3: two I Sorry ninety eight to two thousand and two
Speaker 3: like almost four years. And on the one hand, like
Speaker 3: Peter Weir had always said to me, make sure you
Speaker 3: live your life. Some people just go movie to movie
Speaker 3: to movie. You need to take time and read and
Speaker 3: hike and listen to music and fulfill yourself. So I'm
Speaker 3: I have both in me. I can wait. But I've
Speaker 3: learned to not cut off other opportunities, and so that
Speaker 3: initially would have been probably more of a challenge for me,
Speaker 3: and I have a bigger view of it now.
Speaker 2: And what is your What are three of your favorite
Speaker 2: films of all time?
Speaker 3: Oh man? Well, as every filmmaker will tell you, it's like,
Speaker 3: don't ask me that question, but I'm gonna tell you obviously,
Speaker 3: Jaws is what lit my little views. You can ask
Speaker 3: that question and get a different answer every day. I'm
Speaker 3: going to tell you I love again talking about Peter
Speaker 3: Weir in a in a more commercial film of his.
Speaker 3: Uh Okay, I'm cheating. I'm giving you two. I love
Speaker 3: Gallipoli and I love Witness. Witness is this remarkable movie.
Speaker 3: It's like this, and then I'm gonna give you it
Speaker 3: only because I recently saw it again and I was like, God,
Speaker 3: I wish I had made that movie. I'm going to
Speaker 3: even mention a Jhong Yimou movie that most people have
Speaker 3: not seen and they must see it. And it's it's
Speaker 3: the smallest movie he ever made. It's called not One Less.
Speaker 3: He made it with with non actors in a little
Speaker 3: Chinese village, and it is the most breathtaking beautiful. It's
Speaker 3: like not even verite because it's still beautifully controlled the
Speaker 3: way he can. But it's what movies can be. And
Speaker 3: I come back to it from time to time to
Speaker 3: you know, reinvigorate me. I'm a big o Zoo fan
Speaker 3: and I love I love Floating Weeds. Floating Weeds is
Speaker 3: a movie that I come back to for tone, for
Speaker 3: just exactly where that camera is on that fifty millimeter lens.
Speaker 3: So those are movies that always stay with me. But
Speaker 3: I do have those movies that I call like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's just a perfect movie that you can go back
Speaker 3: to from time to time. And they can be indifferent,
Speaker 3: they can be all the presidents men, it can be
Speaker 3: can be the verdict, it can be you know, you
Speaker 3: name it. So I have a I have a you know,
Speaker 3: one of those revolving CD changers. It's not too fix.
Speaker 2: Exactly, it's constantly it's the rotation you got rotation.
Speaker 3: But it's just it's it's honestly, to tweak myself. It's
Speaker 3: to go God, that's beauty. Every time I see something
Speaker 3: that I enjoy, it makes me want to go that
Speaker 3: day and make a movie. And that's what it is,
Speaker 3: my friend.
Speaker 2: I shait you coming on the show, Brad. I really do.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: It's been a wonderful conversation. I hope it's inspired a
Speaker 2: few people to go out there and make a movie
Speaker 2: and scared the hell out of others to not make movies.
Speaker 2: But I truly appreciate your time, my friend. Please continue
Speaker 2: making the work that you do, and good work, so
Speaker 2: I appreciate you, my friend.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it too. This is fun. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2: I want to thank Brad so so much for coming
Speaker 2: on the show and dropping his knowledge bombs on the
Speaker 2: Tribe today. Thank you again so much, Brad. If you
Speaker 2: want to get links to anything we spoke about in
Speaker 2: this episode, head over to the show notes at Bulletproof
Speaker 2: Screenwriting dot tv Forward Slash three eighty four.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening, guys. As always, keep
Speaker 3: on writing no matter what.
Speaker 2: I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof
Speaker 1: Screenwriting dot tv.