- 10 hours ago
John Krasinski, Tamara Jenkins, Peter Farrelly, Bo Burnham, Paul Schraeder and Eric Roth joined the Hollywood Reporter Roundtable to discuss the current state of screenwriting and filmmaking a changing industry.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:06Welcome to Close Up with a Hollywood Reporter, Writers, and I'd like to introduce Tambra Jenkins.
00:13Hi.
00:14Paul Schrader, John Krasinski, Peter Farrelly, Eric Roth, and Beau Burnham.
00:23I'm going to plunge you in the deep end.
00:25And you've all agreed to take on an assignment, and that assignment is writing a film about Donald Trump.
00:32Where do you start?
00:33What's the challenge?
00:34Oh, my God.
00:35Who's feeling brave and wants to go first?
00:37Tamara.
00:39Wait.
00:40Okay.
00:40We're writing something about Donald Trump, and where do you start?
00:44How are you going to do it?
00:45What's the challenge?
00:46What interests you?
00:47Where you start is you immediately ask for ten times as much money as they bought them.
00:52Yes.
00:53I thought you did that in any case.
00:56There's abortion on the table.
00:58Anything you like.
01:00You know, I always drive by on the way to the airport.
01:03It says Trump Pavilion.
01:05It's a very low-slung building on the way to the airport, from Manhattan to the airport.
01:10And it's a really, really sad, desolate-looking building that says Trump Pavilion, and it's a nursing home.
01:18And I don't know.
01:19I think that that would be a really striking first image.
01:21It looks like it's the most forgotten, nobody cares about it place, yet it has the Trump name.
01:28Maybe I'd start with that first image.
01:30My problem with it would be is I keep trying to find something Shakespearean about it, and I can't.
01:35And I don't find much humor in it.
01:37So, I mean, you could certainly play him as the fool, but I don't think he's quite a Falstaff.
01:43Why is it not Shakespearean what makes something Shakespearean?
01:46I think Shakespearean characters seem to somehow be aware of their fate in some way, and I don't find him
01:52aware of mostly anything, except for his own ego, you know?
01:57Do you agree with that, Peter?
01:58You know, my movie has a lot of parallels.
02:02It takes place in 1962 to what's happening now, and I've thought about this.
02:07I knew someday somebody was going to ask me something like this, and no matter how I answer this, I'm
02:11going to lose half the crowd.
02:13And this is a movie that I want everybody to see, because it's about both sides.
02:18So I don't want to weigh in on this, because I think it could actually hurt, you know, what I've
02:23been working on for the last two or three years.
02:24Whichever way I went, the other half's going to say, yeah, half.
02:27So basically you're saying, I've been thinking about this a long time, but I'm not going to answer it.
02:32No, let me, I'm sorry.
02:33My answer is, my saying it right now is not going to help anything, but the movie will.
02:38So I'd rather not weigh in.
02:39I'd rather have people watch the movie, then kind of figure it out.
02:43How would you do it?
02:44It's obviously a huge question.
02:45I'd be really interested in the circle of people around one person.
02:49I always like movies that are about a person that you never see.
02:53So maybe it's sort of diving into anyone who's around him, or whether it's staff or political or otherwise.
03:00And obviously, like Peter's saying, the political aspect of it is such a hotbed that I'd actually want to, I
03:05always try to tell the human story.
03:06Certainly that's what A Quiet Place is about.
03:08And, you know, if you told me that I was going to do a horror movie three years ago, I
03:11would have said you were crazy.
03:13So I just said, why don't I tell a family drama and Trojan horse it as a horror movie?
03:18So I always look for the human aspect of it.
03:20Well, I could give you an interesting, I've always been offered three times to do a Hitler movie.
03:25Really?
03:25Yeah, and each time I balked because I felt like I was going to humanize him.
03:30And then I saw a movie called Downfall and realized I was completely wrong.
03:33I had been wrong from the moment I started, you know.
03:36He can be human, but also be a type of human being that shows all sorts of dimensions, you know,
03:42that you may not want to be part of.
03:45Paul, you've humanized a lot of villains in your movie, people who might seem like villains.
03:49Would you do the same with Trump?
03:51And do you ask yourself morally, am I right to do this?
03:54I wouldn't do it.
03:56For me, it's a mental health issue.
03:58It's like, you know, choosing to live in a polluted space or to drink polluted water.
04:07There's just not enough time left in my life to get involved with Trump and his world.
04:15How about you both?
04:17At the risk of being a one-trick pony, I would be interested, maybe not in a feature, but in
04:21a short about him as a child.
04:23I have wondered about his relationship with his father, what he was like as a five-year-old or a
04:28six-year-old.
04:28But the issue with just anything in regards to Trump and the arts that I find is that, like, the
04:34weapon that doesn't seem to work or just be exciting to me is satire.
04:37He is self-satirizing.
04:38So an approach to a story with him, I want it to be natural and cold and boring and show
04:46the sort of quiet moments that he shares and not the sort of pyrotechnics of what he is as a
04:51person.
04:52Because you try to spin that, he's already spinning at a rate that's so fast there's nothing else to do.
04:56So he is his own art installation.
04:59He is his own performance of himself.
05:02So I don't know what I could spin other than to, like, wonder who that five-year-old blonde boy
05:07was and what his dad was telling him.
05:10But, again, that is deeply humanizing him and trying to excuse what he's doing as being implanted by daddy, which
05:15I think is a little bit easier.
05:16I'm old enough to remember when Terry Southern was thought to be implausible.
05:22And now we're living in Terry Southern's world.
05:24Yeah, exactly.
05:25That's true.
05:26Great call.
05:26Yeah, yeah.
05:27Does that make you pessimistic about the future?
05:30Well, I mean, look, anybody who is optimistic hasn't been paying attention.
05:34It's pretty clear what's going on.
05:35I think we've made our choice as a species.
05:39And it's just a question of how long it takes to play out.
05:43Agree?
05:43Disagree?
05:44Cheers.
05:44I agree.
05:45But if you're pessimistic, what is the purpose of writing?
05:49Well, it's like Camus said, I don't believe, I choose to believe.
05:53And we're at a point now where there's no reason to hope, but you can choose to hope.
05:58And you can choose to write.
06:00And it's probably one of the few things left you have control over.
06:06Even when somebody else is directing what you write?
06:10Yeah, I would agree with that.
06:12I'm enamored with words and the sound of words and what things could feel like.
06:16And the director can fuck it up, I guess.
06:18I mean, maybe they will.
06:19But they can't take that away from me, in a sense.
06:22You know, in other words, that moment of, like, reading.
06:25I mean, to me, it's like such a joy to read.
06:28Yeah.
06:28So, and maybe I'm a throwback, though, because I don't know if words are irrelevant now, maybe.
06:32Well, I'll throw in my plug for First Reformed.
06:37The premise of the film, it begins when a young man seeks counseling from a reverent because he does not
06:46believe it's right to bring a child into this world.
06:49And that sort of sets the story in motion.
06:52And that's not a question we would have been asking 25 years ago.
06:57But my kids, as well as their friends, do ask this question now.
07:03My wife can no longer live with me.
07:06I left the military.
07:09I was lost.
07:13And Reverend Jeffords from Abundant Life, he gave me this position, my first reformer, and here I am.
07:20And Michael, I can promise you that whatever despair you feel about bringing a child into this world
07:28cannot equal the despair of taking a child from it.
07:33My movie touches on that a tiny bit, too, in that it's about a contemporary couple who are on a
07:39course of trying to have a baby
07:40and the odds are against them because they're in early middle age and they've waited too long
07:44and they're sort of reproductively challenged in each of them.
07:47And there's a line in the film where she says, you know, our friend said, you know, that having a
07:52baby is a selfish act
07:54and that it's immoral to have a baby.
07:56Okay, uh, you need to sign these.
08:00Oh my God, what are we doing?
08:02Are we really doing this?
08:03Are we insane?
08:04No, we're not insane.
08:06We're normal.
08:06Oh, this is not normal.
08:08This is the opposite of normal.
08:10I'm not sure it's even ethical.
08:12Remember what Marty said?
08:14Having a baby is an immoral act.
08:16Marty's an idiot.
08:18Overpopulation, climate change, rise of neo-fascism.
08:24Did you take your Valium?
08:25Yes.
08:26Why?
08:27In the case of the film, there's an irrational desire to procreate that has nothing to do with thinking
08:36or making the right choice, at least in terms of this couple.
08:40Their humanness is kind of propelling them and there's nothing logical about it.
08:45That's probably writing as well.
08:46I think the creation of writing is the same way.
08:48I think you do it because it's just in you and it needs to be done.
08:51And that's how we process the current moment.
08:53Not because it's necessarily productive, not because it's necessarily going to solve anything.
08:57And not that it's necessarily about exactly what's happening in that moment.
09:01But the stillness that is necessary to write, the act of silencing yourself, silencing your cell phone, silencing everything,
09:13and to bring yourself to a table, to actually stop, to think, to bring words, there's something holy about it.
09:21It's so interesting to me that you wrote a movie about silence.
09:24Yeah.
09:25What prompted you, we're living in a very noisy world.
09:28Yeah.
09:29What prompted you to that?
09:30And is it different writing a screenplay that really has almost no dialogue?
09:33Very different.
09:34And terrifying.
09:35But it was...
09:36It's only four pages long.
09:37Yeah, yeah, yeah.
09:38It was easy.
09:40I basically cheated.
09:41Yeah, you did it in a couple hours.
09:43No, it was one of those things that came as a spec script to me as an actor first.
09:47And the spec script had the idea.
09:49The idea was fantastic.
09:50This idea of a family living silently to protect themselves from creatures.
09:53But we had just had our second daughter.
09:55And so I was legitimately holding a three-week-old baby, reading about a family of what would you do
10:00to protect your kids.
10:01I've never had this before.
10:02I connected to this material more than anything I've ever connected to before because I was living it.
10:07I was living those days.
10:09You know, anybody who has kids knows that you're actually checking their breathing.
10:12And you're checking to make sure they're alive and healthy and happy and all those things.
10:15And I said, if I could rewrite the script, I could bring this to be the best metaphor for parenthood
10:20that I could, you know, that I had experienced at least.
10:23And I went down and I pitched my wife.
10:25I said, I think I can rewrite this script and make it about our kids.
10:28It's a love letter to our kids.
10:29And she's like, the one about creatures killing everybody?
10:32Yeah.
10:32Perfect.
10:34And she was actually the one who said, then you have to direct it.
10:36Because I pitched her in about three hours and she said, you have to go direct the movie too.
10:40Which turned out to be a good idea.
10:43Thanks to my wife.
10:44Were you scared of screwing up your own screenplay?
10:46Absolutely, yeah.
10:47Because, I mean, to me it was a high wire act.
10:49And I'm sure everybody can agree there's something about the high wire act that's so much more appealing than the
10:54easy one.
10:55And so I was terrified of sound being not only a main character, but the main character.
11:02But I was also so excited by it.
11:04And it was really nice to be a part of a movie for me that on set it was unraveling
11:09its ability to be successful every day.
11:11So what I mean by that is the first time we shot the scene of the family walking to the
11:15bridge, I could actually hear crew members saying, wow, the woods sound so amazing.
11:19And you realize that they hadn't listened to their environment in years.
11:59So we sort of every day found little hints as to why the movie could be great.
12:03Did you go to any writer for advice?
12:05And with all of you, is there a writer who's ever given you a great note or a great piece
12:10of advice?
12:11In grad school I had John Irving for a week and it was a fantastic thing.
12:16But I remember him telling me this one thing that stuck with me, which is, you know, he writes six,
12:21seven, eight, nine hundred page novels.
12:23He says he'll never begin a novel until he knows the last sentence.
12:27Wow.
12:28Exactly the opposite way that I write.
12:30Yeah, that's the way I work too.
12:32That's why I work too.
12:33And I can't write unless I know the title.
12:36Really?
12:37I'm with you.
12:38I need the title, names of the characters, and I need to know the beginning scene and the last scene.
12:42Really?
12:42And not one movie that I've written, and I think I've written like 20-something, except for Munich, got changed
12:48at the end scene.
12:49And because Twin Towers he had to put back up, you know what I'm saying?
12:53He decided to do that.
12:54You know, I had an interesting situation with First Reformed.
12:57I wasn't quite sure how to end it.
12:58You know, there was a possibility of the Zabriskie Point ending with body parts, endless explosions and slow motion.
13:04And then I had put in the Diary of a Country Priest ending, where the priest falls out of frame.
13:11And Kent Jones, an old friend of mine who runs the New York Film Festival, I gave him the script.
13:16And he said to me, oh, you went for the Country Priest ending.
13:19I thought you were headed for the Ordet ending.
13:22And as soon as he said it, I said, boom, say no more, say no more.
13:25I know exactly.
13:27And I changed the ending into the Ordet ending.
13:29But if you can find somebody who can just say that one thing, that's a lucky moment.
13:37I never know my ending, and I feel like I've been doing it wrong.
13:40And I know I have been because it takes me so long.
13:43But I have a few secret weapons.
13:45My husband's a screenwriter, and he and Alexander Payne.
13:49Yeah, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, who are great screenwriters.
13:52I'm married to one of them, and I feel like actually my husband's probably married to Alexander.
13:57And I'm the second wife.
13:58I don't know.
13:59Something.
13:59But those guys, when you give them your screenplay, and it comes back to you with lines running through it.
14:06And a lot of sort of distilling.
14:10What's the one big idea one of them said?
14:11I don't know, big idea.
14:13It's not usually big.
14:15It's always very incremental.
14:16And I'm not a big idea person.
14:19It's always very small ideas and accumulate details that then reveal people and characters.
14:26What about you both?
14:27I can't speak too much to my overall process of work.
14:31I'm very early into my career, or late into my career, if this goes poorly.
14:36But yeah, for me, when I write, I kind of have to work inside out.
14:42It has to work moment to moment before I even start to extrapolate from a scene to figure out that
14:48it can work over a feature length.
14:49Like, it has to breathe.
14:51So I just sort of have to dive in and start writing it in my movie, Eighth Grade, which is
14:55about a young woman at the end of eighth grade who's recording YouTube videos.
15:00And then the sort of life that's happening around those videos.
15:03The initial impulse for the script and the start of it was watching videos of young kids online speaking about
15:09themselves and talking about their life and just transcribing those monologues.
15:14Because I found the way that these kids express themselves to be so visceral and meaningful to me and sort
15:20of existed in, like, really sharp contrast to the way I had seen young people be portrayed on screen, which
15:25was perfectly articulate, perfectly in command of their own narrative.
15:29And for me, what it means to be alive right now is to be out of control of your narrative,
15:33to be constantly trying to be your own storyteller, your own biographer, your own filmmaker, and failing to do that.
15:39And these kids were doing it so beautifully and viscerally that I just was watching these videos thinking, if this
15:44were a performance in a movie, it would be incredible.
15:47And to see the life that this person was living outside of this video and what they're expressing, however it
15:53was similar or different, would be engaging to me.
15:55You made me brave.
15:59And if you could just see yourself how I see you, which is how you are, how you really are,
16:05how you always have been, I swear to God, you wouldn't be scared.
16:21So I kind of start pretty granularly.
16:25I have to sort of feel like I can feel the moments of the film working before I can then
16:32pop out and, you know, take out index cards.
16:33What led you to those videos in the first place?
16:36I'm from the internet.
16:37I sort of got my start on the internet.
16:39I go to the internet for a lot of the things.
16:41You're a 3D printed human.
16:43I am, yes.
16:44Yes, yes, yes, yes.
16:45These joints move fairly.
16:48The internet is a well of humanity if you dig past the surface of it.
16:51You know, all you sort of see on the internet is like the trending viral videos, which are usually corporate
16:56made, and talk show appearances and music videos.
16:59But if you search something on the internet and sort it by upload date, you see that it's like the
17:03most pure exchange of material between the public and us.
17:07So I'm going online searching middle school advice and seeing videos of 10 views of a 13-year-old girl
17:13in her bedroom doing a 10-minute soliloquy about her own life in real time.
17:18And it was just so engaging.
17:20And why it was engaging to me was it was so clear that these kids were trying to sound like
17:26the cultural representations of themselves they had seen in movies.
17:29They were trying to sound like good characters in movies, and they were failing to sound like that.
17:33And I wanted to do a story about one of those kids.
17:37I wanted to do a story about being alive where it's almost the main stress of the main character was
17:43that the movie of her life wasn't interesting.
17:45Because I do think that's what it means to be alive right now, especially young and online.
17:50Were you ever tempted to make it a boy instead of a girl?
17:53No.
17:53I mean, there's a lot of answers to why it was a girl.
17:56I mean, one is that I didn't want to make a nostalgic story.
17:58I didn't want to make a movie that was about my past experience.
18:01So it being a girl, sort of, I couldn't project my own experience onto her.
18:05I sort of had to just humble myself and listen to her truth.
18:08Also, the real answer is I watched hundreds of these videos.
18:10The boys tended to talk about video games, and the girls talked about their souls.
18:13I mean, it just, like, truly is what happened.
18:16For whatever reasons, maybe culturally, the girls were just asked to go deeper quicker, which I think is true.
18:21Do you ever feel, especially for the not 20-something writers here, do you ever feel out of touch with
18:26the zeitgeist?
18:28I feel like I'm 92 years old all the time.
18:31It's changing so fast.
18:32I thought I was pretty hip.
18:35And then I found out that iPhone has 10 versions.
18:38And I was like, which one's mine?
18:39I used to think we were going through a period of transition.
18:43But now I realize we've entered a period of constant transition.
18:47I've got to say, I think I felt vital writing Star is Born.
18:50And it's not that I didn't feel vital writing other movies, you know, in some recent.
18:56But it put me into a different mindset, I think.
18:58It wasn't my more traditional sort of training of what is the theme of this piece?
19:04Why am I writing this?
19:05And all those questions.
19:05It was more sort of thrown into the morass, if you will.
19:09And it was a good morass.
19:10And I think the movie does reflect the zeitgeist.
19:15You know, and I wasn't really, it's not that I was unaware of it, but that it wasn't something that
19:18would motivate me.
19:19Do you write songs or anything?
19:22I don't sing my own songs.
19:26Why?
19:27Um, well, because, like, almost every single person that I've come in contact with in the music industry has told
19:34me that my nose is too big and that I won't make it.
19:37Your nose is too big?
19:38Yeah.
19:40Your nose is beautiful.
19:42It's a traditional story that's been remade since the Janet Gaynor version.
19:47That's right.
19:47How did doing, remaking a classical film revitalize you?
19:50Well, I think it was twofold.
19:52One was Bradley Cooper, who had a point of view of wanting to do it first person so that you
19:57had an intimacy to it, which remains, even though I'm not sure how much is really improvised.
20:03I mean, I think early on I could see that set pieces were not going to be sort of the
20:08way of the day, which is more traditional to the way I wrote.
20:11And so we tried to write out sort of conversational dialogue that felt improvisational, you know, in many cases, sometimes
20:20it was.
20:21But it also was this kind of let's, you know, get a barn and put on a show in an
20:27odd way because they said, here we go, we're going to start doing rock concerts, you know.
20:32And what did it feel like to do that?
20:34And we had, you know, a number of pretty well-known artists come and watch the thing and say, about
20:38as close as you got, you know.
20:40So he really captured that.
20:41But also speaking of zeitgeist, I was saying earlier that I hope romance and romance stories are always a fraction
20:47of the zeitgeist.
20:48Agreed.
20:48If we lose that, then I think we're out of it.
20:50But I was just saying, I don't know the last time I saw a classic romance, you know, it feels
20:54like people are afraid to do that type of beautiful, honest story about people.
20:59Why has romance vanished from society?
21:03You're asking me?
21:05I don't know.
21:05Come on, Tamar.
21:06Only you.
21:08I feel like my movie is about a marriage and there's something, you know, it's not a traditional romance and
21:16it's not romantic, but it's about a kind of a love story.
21:21And, you know, the intrepidness of this couple surviving through this obstacle course of what they're doing.
21:28So I don't know.
21:29I feel like love stories come in lots of different packages.
21:31But maybe tragedy, your movie is a tragedy.
21:35It is Shakespearean in that sense, has disappeared.
21:38Why?
21:39Well, I think, I'm not sure that's quite true because I think a good love story will always have a,
21:43probably a heartbreaking ending.
21:45I mean, at least, you know, an ending that people's dreams are not quite fulfilled, so there's a bittersweet quality.
21:55But I think for me it was different because I think it did have the tropes you needed to have
21:59for this particular movie.
22:01And I've written probably, I'll say at least two love stories, Benjamin Button and Forrest Gump, right, in some way.
22:09And I was trying, in those cases, to be as imaginative as possible.
22:13I wasn't trying to stay with the more normal or norms of love stories, you know.
22:19On the other hand, I do have a love story I'd like to read as a novel or a movie
22:22that is completely normal in that sense.
22:26I mean, like the way we were normal, you know what I'm saying.
22:30So, I'm not sure the reason for that.
22:32I mean, in other words, he needed to go to La La Land, right, to get people in to see
22:35that movie.
22:35Right.
22:36Probably if he had the real emotion with the real story, he'll probably succeed, I would think.
22:40I think they're just probably not, they're a little cowardly about doing it.
22:43It's not branded and all those things, you know.
22:45I just love that there was no lead up in the movie to certain moments.
22:48Yes, yes.
22:48Like when she comes to his concert, I love that there was no, I don't know, you didn't milk it
22:53long.
22:54Yeah.
22:54You know, it was like as soon as the song ended, he was like, come on, I want you to
22:57sing your song.
22:57We talked about that, yeah.
22:59It was so, it felt so real rather than, let's see, Bradley do six songs and then realize she's in
23:04love with him and then he asked her.
23:05It's like, no, no, just do that.
23:06It's very dirty.
23:07I attribute that to Bradley.
23:21Is there a major film, well-known film, not even so well-known, that you'd like to remake?
23:27Foreign film, classic Hollywood film?
23:29Hmm.
23:30I get terrified by that.
23:31Well, we, we, that's all we do.
23:34Good point.
23:34Perfect.
23:35Exactly right.
23:36You're a good duo.
23:38I mean, you're just, you're picking and choosing.
23:41You don't actually originate anything.
23:43Nothing.
23:43You just go through this huge buffet of cinema and, and make your own plate.
23:49And even though all the elements are out there at this endless Chinese buffet, everybody's plate is different.
23:57Yeah.
23:58There are certain tropes.
23:59It's like I noticed in our, this movie that I did and yours, which is in ours, we have, you
24:05know, Southern cops, bad guys who are not nice to, you know, black people in 1962 at all.
24:11And then on the way back, just when you think they're out of the woods, they get pulled over by
24:15another cop.
24:15And you're like, oh God, here it goes.
24:17This is going to be the bad one.
24:18It turns out to be a nice one.
24:19He's a decent guy who's just noticed something about the car and he's saying, make sure you're okay.
24:24And it's a relief.
24:26And it's also a feeling of, you know, not all cops are bad, you know, and they weren't bad back
24:30then.
24:30There's good cops and bad cops.
24:32And you, I love in your story, the senior girl who takes her under her arm and is a nice
24:38person.
24:39You know, she's just a really good person.
24:41And I kept, when it first came along, I thought, oh God, don't have her turn because that would be,
24:45if you did do that, then to me, it's not real.
24:48Because there's not just bad people in high school either.
24:51There's some nice people.
24:52And I love that.
24:54That was very satisfying for me to have that girl come into it.
24:57And truly, it's those nicer elements that actually do pull the tragedy down, I think, realistically.
25:02Because the tragedy of life is that there is actually love to be had.
25:05There is goodness to be had in the world.
25:07And when it feels just the entire world is conspiring against everyone in every moment, it's like, oh,
25:11well, just lie down and dunk it up.
25:13But don't you think part of it is from whatever your own sense of yourself is?
25:18In other words, and I guess, I think I write from a place of loneliness, oddly, and a little bit
25:24of depression.
25:25So my things would necessarily have, sort of, I guess, a tragic element to it.
25:30I mean, even if I don't want it to.
25:32Is that true?
25:33Because you know the line that the natural mode of the comic mind is tragedy and vice versa?
25:39Aren't you ever tempted to write something with a comic, an optimistic ending?
25:44Be more ironic, I think.
25:46I like what you were saying about depression and writing.
25:50I wonder if anybody else at this table, I mean, I certainly feel connected to, you know, depression.
25:56And it's always driving me into, like, sitting there by myself and writing.
26:03Yeah, well, I mean, I began on spec.
26:05I'm still writing on spec.
26:07I think I've only had a handful of paid jobs in my life.
26:12So I walked in the door seeing this as a form of therapy.
26:17And I still do.
26:18And so, of course, you're going to get into what are the things that are motivating you.
26:24And the first grip, Taxi Driver, was loneliness, you know, boom.
26:29And you find a metaphor, a taxi cab, take a plot and run through the metaphor.
26:35And I've wished many times that I could be a better employee because there's certainly money to be made.
26:41But I've tried a number of times, and it's not really worked.
26:46I like that.
26:47Have you ever been fired?
26:50Yes.
26:51Well, not so much fired as you hand in the first draft.
26:57You get no notes.
26:59You get paid for your rewrite.
27:01And the phone doesn't ring.
27:03I guess that's kind of telling you what they think of your draft.
27:07I'll give you an example.
27:08I was fired, actually twice.
27:10But the one I remembered I knew was coming because I won't mention the personality, but the personality is very
27:16narcissistic.
27:17And I knew at one point he was not going to want to see me in that mirror.
27:21And sure enough, he didn't.
27:22You know, that was the end of that.
27:24Direct, so you mean?
27:25Director, yeah, director.
27:26Why don't you direct?
27:28I don't have the math for it.
27:30I don't have the math mind or the patience, I guess.
27:33I did when I was in college.
27:35I won some student shorts and stuff.
27:36But beyond that, uh-uh.
27:39Is it frustrating working with directors to change your work?
27:42Not when they make it better.
27:44I was about to say, it depends on who it depends.
27:46Yeah, we both agree.
27:47It depends on which direction it's going.
27:51Yeah, when they make it better, you take credit for it.
27:53Yeah, exactly.
27:53Loud and clear.
27:55Yeah, we only started directing because we'd been out here nine years and we finally had
27:59a movie made.
28:00And we saw it and we were like, no, that's not our movie.
28:04We want our names off.
28:05We put our brother-in-law's names on.
28:07And I remember my agent saying, are you crazy?
28:10You have zero credit.
28:12Get a credit.
28:13It's a studio film.
28:14I said, I'd rather die with no credit than have that as my only credit.
28:19And the next movie that we were up, which was Dumb and Dumber, when we went in the room,
28:23they said, who's directing?
28:24They said, we are.
28:25And they're just, no one questioned it.
28:27When you say we, you're referring to your brother, Bobby.
28:29My brother and I, yes.
28:30But now you're on your own making films.
28:32Why?
28:33Well, I mean, honestly, the truth is my brother had a tragedy in his immediate family, a big
28:38one, and he had to step away.
28:39He was, he needed time.
28:41And so at that moment, I ran into the guys who told me this story.
28:45It's about a guy with a sixth grade education, an Italian-American bouncer who's racist, driving
28:51a black concert pianist with five doctorates through the Deep South.
28:55And it's them gradually realizing they actually have something in common.
29:00Are you kidding me?
29:01This is the home run.
29:02I love this story.
29:03And so I just jumped into it.
29:04How is that?
29:08Salty.
29:11Have you ever considered becoming a food critic?
29:16No.
29:18Not really.
29:19Why, is there money in it?
29:20I'm just saying you have a marvelous way with words when describing food.
29:26Salty.
29:28So vivid one can almost taste it.
29:31Believe me, you know, it would, this movie, it would have been better if my brother were
29:36involved.
29:36I'm telling you the truth.
29:37He always makes things better.
29:39I miss working with him.
29:40Yeah, I did four scripts with Scorsese.
29:45And on the fourth one, I could tell this would be the last one because I was really thinking
29:52like a director now.
29:54And there were two directors in the room.
29:56And one was calling himself a writer.
30:01And I realized that, you know, I'm going to have retained my friendship with Marty and
30:06going to know him all my life.
30:08But the friction, I can feel the friction in the room.
30:11Wow.
30:11What's the best note you've been given or what's the worst note?
30:14I was at the Sundance Lab when I wrote my first movie.
30:18And I had...
30:19Was that The Slums of Beverly Hills?
30:20It was The Slums of Beverly Hills.
30:21And it was a work in progress script.
30:23And, you know, the way it works is that Hollywood screenwriters come and they read the script.
30:28And then you do a kind of like mentor session where they tell you what they think.
30:32And this man, he was a male screenwriter, incredibly successful financially, sat me down and he
30:40said, well, you can't start a movie with a girl getting fitted for a bra.
30:44You can't waste five pages with a girl getting her first bra.
30:49And I was like...
30:50Yeah, you can.
30:50Yeah, I love that.
30:51I'm going to keep that.
30:52Yeah, yeah.
30:53Nobody would call me as a writer and say, hey, by the way, I have an idea for you.
30:57But I've learned from watching people's work.
30:59And the one I always remember is when we were writing something about Mary, we got to...
31:03It was an old script by Ed Dechter and John Strauss, by the way, that was great.
31:08We rewrote them, my brother and I.
31:10No, they were old friends of ours and we knew that story.
31:14But anyway, we were rewriting it.
31:15We're on page probably 45, 50.
31:18And we hit a wall and the wall was, well, you know, she's going to end up with Ted.
31:22It's just, we knew it.
31:23And I couldn't go on.
31:24I was like, this...
31:26We spent like a week or two looking at each other.
31:28They're like, why do you make it?
31:29The whole...
31:29Everybody knows they're going to end up together.
31:32And during that week, I happened to watch Bottle Rocket, which is Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson's
31:37first movie.
31:38And I'm watching it and it opens up where, you know, they break him out, kind of break
31:42him out of a mental institution.
31:44And, you know, Owen has a five-year plan.
31:46This is what we're going to do.
31:47First year, we're going to rob, you know, mom and pop stores.
31:49Second year, we're going to move into, you know, banks.
31:51And after five years, we're going to have enough money to retire.
31:54And they set off to start robbing places.
31:56And the first night, they stop at a motel and Luke Wilson sees the chambermaid, falls
32:01in love with her.
32:02And they don't leave.
32:03They just let it go that way.
32:05They let the story...
32:06And I promise you, they didn't sit down and say, hey, what if it's about a bunch of guys
32:10who want to do robberies and then fall in love with the chambermaid?
32:13You can see that they found it.
32:15Right.
32:15And I remember, why does she have to end up with Ted?
32:18And I got my brother.
32:19I said, you've got to watch this movie.
32:20And we learned from it.
32:21I said, she doesn't have to end up with Ted.
32:23From that point forward, all the guys, we were fair to them.
32:26We wrote, like, we didn't know.
32:28We honestly didn't know who she'd end up with until page 100 when we had fooled ourselves
32:34and the audience.
32:35It was going to be Brett Favre.
32:38And she was going to get him.
32:40And at that point, we said, hey, wait a second.
32:42Let's give her Ted.
32:43I mean, now, you know, we've already done it.
32:44We've done the work.
32:45How about Ted?
32:46It'd be a nice surprise.
32:47And, you know, it was just a really good lesson.
32:50Did Fox give you a good notice?
32:51I seem to remember them saying you can't have the guy, you know, jerking himself off.
32:55Yeah.
32:56We got a lot of resistance to that, you know, that it would be NC-17.
33:01And we said, no, no, no.
33:03Because they said, you know, R is, if it's for titillation, it's NC-17.
33:06If it's for humor, it's R.
33:08And we had to fight.
33:08I have to say, Bill Mechanic stood up on that one.
33:11And this is, we were in a meeting.
33:12Who then was the head of Fox.
33:13He was the head.
33:14And we were in a meeting.
33:15And we had gone probably a couple months where they said, you've got to cut this.
33:18And we're like, we're not cutting it.
33:19Please don't make us cut this.
33:20We think, give it a chance.
33:21But we'll have a way if it doesn't work, because it could have easily not worked.
33:25It could have been a disaster.
33:26Where we get out of it.
33:27Get rid of it and move on.
33:29They kept, no, don't do it.
33:30You're wasting money.
33:31Don't do it.
33:31And finally, I looked at Bill one day.
33:33I said, Bill, how many movies are you guys making this year?
33:34He said, I think he said 22.
33:37I said, how about make 21?
33:39Let us make one.
33:41Great comment.
33:42And he goes, and I swear, he looks at us, he goes, all right, let him do it.
33:47Let him go.
33:48And that was it.
33:49We never heard another peep.
33:50See, I do that exact thing, but silently.
33:52So less is more, right?
33:54The absolute thing.
33:55I happen to write like 180 page screenplays, right?
33:58And I'm trying to think, how do I do?
34:00All of them?
34:00Almost all of them.
34:01Me too.
34:01Almost all of them.
34:02Not always.
34:03Anyway, there's a famous story about.
34:05They're not good.
34:06They're just long.
34:06John Huston, Sartre writing Freud.
34:10He turned in his draft.
34:11It was like 180 pages, I'd say.
34:13Sartre turned in the draft.
34:14Sartre turned in the draft.
34:16And Huston said, spectacular, but it's just way too long.
34:20So we'll get somebody to see how we cut it.
34:22And Sartre said, I'll take care of it.
34:24He left and he came back with a 224 page draft.
34:28So the point being, I don't know.
34:30I don't know the answer.
34:31So I'll give you a more recent.
34:32I'm not sure I did the right thing, but on Dune, which is this gigantic thing, I wrote
34:41about a 200 page draft.
34:43And the head of the studio said, this is never going to work.
34:46Which Dune are you talking about?
34:47The new one?
34:48The brand new one.
34:49The new Villeneuve is coming out in March.
34:51And they eventually got somebody short.
34:52And I just can't do it.
34:55I feel strongly that the additive process is much more creative than the subtractive
35:01one.
35:02And so if you can have a first draft that works at 70 pages, you know you're going to
35:07have a first draft that works at 90 pages.
35:10And it's just going to get better.
35:11And the same thing with the editing process.
35:13At some point, you say to the editor, let's make a cut of the film with just the stuff
35:18that's good.
35:19See how long it is.
35:20Maybe it's 45 minutes long, 55 minutes long.
35:23Then you put the bad stuff on.
35:25And then see how much of the rest we have to put in.
35:29And now you're thinking in an additive way rather than a subtractive way.
35:34When you're always thinking subtractively, how can I make this shorter?
35:37How can I cut this down?
35:39It's not good for your creative process.
35:41Marty, as I told you when we were talking in the other room, I'm working with now on
35:45something.
35:45And he encourages me to be as long as possible.
35:48We have like 90 tiny little movies in the thing.
35:52What are you working on him with?
35:53Killers of the Flower Moon.
35:54It's little vignettes, I guess.
35:58And some are 10 seconds, some are half a minute or whatever they are.
36:01But he encourages you more and more and more.
36:04And then we'll decide what it'll look like when we get in the editing room.
36:07When you got that original script, what was your approach to rewriting it?
36:11What changed?
36:12And you know the famous William Goldman line, you have to lose your darlings.
36:15What did you lose?
36:16It's interesting.
36:17I lost a few things.
36:18But when I got the spec script, like I said, the idea was there.
36:21But it was very much more a horror movie.
36:23As I was reading, I started knowing what I would do with it if I could really make this
36:27a family drama and really push this idea of family and get into the detail of that.
36:32And so that's really what I started with and changed.
36:35So for instance, the opening of the movie didn't exist in the script.
36:38You met the family on the farm.
36:40And I just felt you have to meet the family before all this and then after.
36:45And it's just little things like that that I knew right from go.
36:48Again, with the three-week-old in the room, she was typing for me.
36:53But it's funny.
36:54I think that one of the things that's hugely beneficial for me about being an actor first
36:59is I've learned from all my heroes that I've worked with that collaboration is king
37:03and the best idea wins no matter who it's from.
37:05And so I do take that approach.
37:07There's a real benefit to me directing the things that I'm writing because I'm directing
37:11as soon as I start typing.
37:13And then when you get on set, I remember Sam Mendes actually told us on Away We Go,
37:17Maya and I, it was like halfway through shooting, and we asked him a question about our characters.
37:21And he said, well, I have an idea.
37:23But to be honest, you guys are the characters now.
37:25At some point in the movie process, these characters become yours than mine.
37:29And I thought, that's so smart.
37:30And so that goes for the whole crew.
37:32And so actually the ending of our movie was our producer's idea.
37:35There was a much more, it was a much different ending.
37:38And he said, not to give it away, but I'm giving it away.
37:41But he said, I really think Emily needs to shoot the monster.
37:45And I remember thinking, that's insane.
37:47I'm not doing that.
37:47I was so against it.
37:49And bizarrely, I was driving into work the next day and was listening to a podcast,
37:53an old podcast, or not podcast at the time,
37:55but it was an interview with Steven Spielberg in the early 80s.
37:58And someone said to him, why is your generation of directors different?
38:02Why are you moving away from making art?
38:05And he basically said, I'm paraphrasing and butchering it,
38:07but he basically said, why can't we make art films that you can also eat popcorn to?
38:11I'm not going to shy away from making people happy and making them enjoy,
38:15you know, really exciting movie moments too.
38:17And I thought, oh my God, that was my sort of wake up moment to this idea
38:21that shooting the creature at the end of the movie isn't actually abusing
38:25this sort of artistic take that I had on it.
38:27It was actually fueling it in a whole different way that I wasn't aware of.
38:31But changing the ending can change the entire meaning of something.
38:35When the ending was reshot for Fatal Attraction,
38:39Glenn Close was turned into a real villain,
38:42and she was very upset about that.
38:45Has anybody said to you, we have to change this ending
38:47in a way that you feel alters the meaning of what you're doing?
38:51The creature was very upset.
38:53He was very upset.
38:54Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I had it done on one film with Hardcore,
38:59and Biegleman and Melnick made me change the ending.
39:03David Biegleman, who was the head of the studio at the time.
39:06And I swore at that moment that that would never happen to me again.
39:09And it didn't.
39:12But my favorite change was on Cat People.
39:16It ended with the protagonist shooting the monster and the house burning down.
39:21And I had an insight.
39:22I said, well, what if instead of shooting the monster,
39:26he fucks it and then puts it in a cage and builds a shrine to it?
39:30Perfect.
39:31And that's what we did.
39:33I love that.
39:34It's like the idea.
39:35Personal story.
39:37I was told with my story that, you know,
39:41the ending was maybe a little too similar uplifting,
39:43and I had a similar struggle with you, John, a little bit,
39:46where I felt like, oh, do I need to end it like some cool, you know,
39:50teenage Scandinavian movie where she, you know,
39:53chops the head off a fish and drowns herself or whatever.
39:55You know what I mean?
39:56And, but to me, it's, you just choose what's meaningful for yourself.
40:01And I try not to meta-analyze it too much in the world of, okay,
40:06what does this mean in light of movies and in light of other narratives?
40:09Where is this person landing?
40:11What do they feel?
40:12What feels honest and meaningful to me?
40:14I get a little in my head when I start to try to think about it
40:18in, like, the pantheon of other films.
40:21That's toxic for me to think about.
40:23Is this film, though, that has particularly influenced you in your work?
40:27Woman Under the Influence and Cassavetes just, like,
40:29the energy that he has clearly created on set.
40:33I mean, Jenna Rollins and Peter Fogg,
40:35just, like, the spontaneity of that action
40:37and the way people speak to each other,
40:39which feels like they are not only surprising you, the viewer,
40:44they are surprising themselves moment to moment.
40:46Yeah, but I think the operative is which feels like,
40:48because John's work was much more calculated
40:51and less improvisational than people think.
40:55Yeah.
40:56The verdict for me is the sort of seminal movie,
40:59and I saw it really late.
41:00I think I was 19 or 20 the first time I saw it,
41:03and there was something that I connected to about,
41:05I grew up very Catholic, and so there was something about that,
41:08but then there was also this idea of redemption
41:10that to me felt more spiritual than actual religious teachings.
41:15There was something about watching an actual parable
41:17rather than reading about a parable or studying a parable,
41:20to watch someone be able to do that
41:22and have it be, like we said, a little dirtier
41:25and not violins at the end of this is all beautiful,
41:28but to end the movie on a phone call
41:30that you don't know what's going to happen.
41:31So every single thing that I sort of love about movies
41:35was encapsulated in that one movie that I was just,
41:37it blew me away.
41:38What about you, Pete?
41:39Something Wild.
41:40Something Wild really inspired me in a huge way.
41:44It blew my mind.
41:45It was one of those movies, Jonathan Demme, 1986,
41:48and when I saw it, I just thought,
41:50God damn.
41:51It felt like rock and roll.
41:53It felt great.
41:54The music, the look, the characters,
41:57that's why I fell in love with Jeff Daniels.
42:00After that, I was begging them to use him,
42:02and that was years later,
42:04but I was like, you've got to have this guy.
42:05He's unbelievable.
42:06But I liked that, you know,
42:08it just had such a fun, happy, cool feeling to it.
42:12And in fact, for years,
42:13every time I was going to do another movie,
42:14I'd watch it again just to get that feeling again.
42:17And someone recently asked me,
42:19they said, well, why do you,
42:20you know, we have a lot of road trips in our movie,
42:22and I don't, you know,
42:23I didn't consciously do that,
42:24and then I thought, something wild, you know?
42:27There's something about being on the road in America
42:29that makes me happy.
42:43Are there shows that are purely American?
42:45Is there a kind of filmmaking
42:46that does not belong in America?
42:49And Paul, you know I'm going to talk to you about that.
42:51I don't know if you've read Paul's book.
42:54He wrote one of the seminal books about film history
42:56called Transcendental Style and Film.
42:58And now, when we first met 20 years ago,
43:03I asked you about that influence on Taxi Driver.
43:06And here you are now making First Reformed,
43:08which is clearly influenced by Ozu, Bresson,
43:13Carl Theodore Dreyer.
43:13In March of 1969,
43:15I was a film critic for the L.A. Free Press.
43:18I went over to the Lindley Theater
43:19and saw a screening of Pickpocket.
43:22And I reviewed it.
43:24And in that 75 minutes, it's a short film,
43:27two things happened that changed my life.
43:29One was I realized that there was a bridge
43:31between my spiritual life and my film life,
43:34and it was a bridge of style, not a bridge of content.
43:37And the other thing I realized is that, in fact,
43:39there was a place for me in the film business
43:41other than a critic.
43:44And two years later, I'd written the book,
43:46and three years later, I'd written Taxi Driver,
43:48which is a pickpocket.
43:50And then 50 years later,
43:52those two seeds, which fell in that Petri dish,
43:56came and wound up, and I made First Reformed.
43:58So I'm done.
44:00You're finished.
44:01It was a great moment for me when we met,
44:03because when I saw Taxi Driver,
44:05I thought, oh, wow, it's Bresson,
44:08but with all the non-dramatic bits thrown out.
44:11You know, so it's an extraordinary American urban version
44:15of Bresson.
44:18Do you agree that style and content are different?
44:22Yeah, I do think they're different.
44:24I think that, at least for me, style should come out of,
44:28it should come second.
44:29That style presents itself to you as your, you know,
44:34the story informs the style.
44:37It's second.
44:39Not that I don't like super stylized films,
44:41but I like when they, I mean, duh,
44:44form and content work really well together.
44:47But personally, I like to move with the story
44:53and the humans and the, I don't know,
44:55when you were saying, like, what's your favorite,
44:56you weren't saying what's your favorite movie.
44:57And I wanted your answer to that.
44:58I was sitting here and I had, like, so many of them.
45:01The one that most, no one.
45:01But then the one that always I return to in a kind,
45:04but it's almost from a writer's perspective
45:06is Dog Day Afternoon, because it's brilliant.
45:09Right.
45:09And it's so immediate,
45:11and it's so the exact thing
45:14about dropping characters into action
45:17without any backstory
45:18and then finding your way through it
45:20and figuring out why you're there
45:23when you find out when you're there
45:25without being, you know,
45:27explained why they're robbing the bank.
45:29That's what he did in his movie.
45:30Yes.
45:31I love that.
45:32That he started, it's already,
45:33we're off to the races.
45:34Yeah.
45:34It's like, you know, and yet you quickly-
45:37Catch up.
45:37You catch up, you know, just little hints.
45:39It was funny.
45:40I actually, I wrote the whole backstory.
45:41I know where the creatures came from,
45:43how they all, you know, ended up in this place.
45:46And you were talking about advice
45:47that I had or something like that.
45:48And it wasn't a note,
45:49but my first script was Promised Land that I wrote.
45:51And Focus Features did it.
45:52And we went into this marketing meeting
45:54and I was super new to the whole business,
45:56but certainly the aspect of writing.
45:57And at the end of the marketing meeting,
45:59there was this amazing guy, Jack Foley,
46:00still also one of the best accents I've ever heard.
46:03And I remember just leaving the room,
46:04I turned to Jack and I said,
46:05what's the biggest misconception in the movie business?
46:07And he didn't even hesitate.
46:08He said that audiences are stupid.
46:10And he seemed very frustrated by it.
46:12And he said, nobody wants anything delivered to them,
46:15you know, sugar-coated on a spoon.
46:17They actually really want to work.
46:18They're frustrated that you're not making them work.
46:20And without a doubt, when I was writing the script,
46:23I literally thought of that story and said,
46:25all right, Jack, you better be right.
46:27And so I basically took out all the backstory.
46:29And what I thought was if I could pull off the magic trick
46:32of having the entire backstory in one set,
46:35which is my office downstairs, my workspace,
46:38the entire backstory is on that board.
46:41And my whole idea for it was,
46:42I don't want the audience to be ahead of the family.
46:44The family doesn't know what's going on.
46:46And if you're ahead of them, you won't care about them.
46:48And so you can only get this information
46:50as the characters are getting this information.
46:52And it was really, really fun to do.
46:53Well, you did that, too, in yours, Tamara.
46:55It opens in the middle of the thing.
46:57Yeah, and then there's, I like the flashbacks.
46:59Right.
47:00I remember thinking, was that the right,
47:02just trying to figure out where to have that.
47:05Yeah.
47:07But the other thing about Dog Day Afternoon
47:08is that it's just truly character-driven.
47:12It's just, how will these humans respond
47:15to these circumstances?
47:16And they all respond in their own way.
47:19And it's so beautiful.
47:20And also the believability of introducing wild storylines
47:23and just saying, like, go with it.
47:24You know what I mean?
47:24When you find out why he's doing all this.
47:27Yeah.
47:27There's no way.
47:28Yeah, it's beautiful.
47:30So beautiful.
47:30And that it's based on a real event.
47:32Exactly.
47:32Yeah, yeah, yeah.
47:33From the headlines.
47:34Yeah.
47:34From your own experience with writing,
47:36is there one piece of advice you'd give
47:37to a starting writer?
47:40Don't do it.
47:41I like that you look at me.
47:42No, no.
47:43I don't know.
47:44I mean, I don't really like to speak,
47:45and maybe I will someday.
47:47I don't really like to speak
47:48in the second person very much.
47:50I know what works for me.
47:52I mean, there's a specific struggle.
47:54You prefer the first person.
47:55Yeah, yeah, truly.
47:56I feel like there is a definite specific struggle
48:00of being young and creative now
48:02that I think is bleeding to all of us.
48:03But certainly for young creative people,
48:05there's because of the mediums,
48:07because of social media,
48:08because of the internet,
48:09this sort of creative process
48:10has kind of collapsed in on itself.
48:12And part of writing something long form
48:14is about retreating and disappearing
48:16and not engaging with people
48:18to engage in your own creative process.
48:21I don't really understand
48:22what you mean by it's collapsing.
48:23Well, the line between writing something,
48:26testing it out,
48:27seeing how it's going to be received,
48:29revising it,
48:29is collapsing to a single moment.
48:31When someone has an idea for a film
48:34or a book or anything,
48:35maybe they'll tweet out a little bit of it
48:37and see what the reception is.
48:38There's a constant sort of temperature taking
48:41in every moment.
48:42There's also a want to really capture
48:46whatever is happening in the current moment
48:48when our culture is aging like milk.
48:50And so the moment you capture now
48:52is completely gone by your next dentist visit
48:56or whatever.
48:57And so that's...
48:59Someone's writing this down, right?
49:00So part of it is...
49:03So and it's what I really loved about your film
49:08and First Reformed,
49:10it's feeling like there's a little bit of...
49:11To feel like the zeitgeist for me
49:13is actually of the moment
49:15is letting go of the current moment.
49:18Letting go of trying to desperately clamor
49:21for what's so obvious.
49:23Well, I can tell you my writing more recently
49:25is I think I'm braver
49:26that I'll go to really some strange directions.
49:30The other day I was really realizing I was...
49:32I'm younger than that now.
49:34That's a line from the Dylan song.
49:35Oh, right, of course.
49:36I was much older.
49:37Yeah, I was older than that.
49:38Then I'm younger than that.
49:39What would you give as advice to a younger writer?
49:41Oh, I don't know.
49:42I mean, I don't have the arrogance
49:43to really know anything that way.
49:44Even though...
49:45I mean, the only thing I always tell people,
49:47I guess,
49:47when you're doing these screenwriting things
49:48is if you get in trouble,
49:50change the weather.
49:51And as a younger writer,
49:53the younger writer,
49:54the lessons that I have gotten
49:55from writers older than me
49:58was from their work.
50:00You know, I think the work provides the lessons
50:02much more than the commentary
50:04by the artist on the work.
50:06I actually don't like to even hear authors speak
50:08because I don't like to know what they sound like.
50:09I can't stand it.
50:09I'm like the Q&As.
50:10I've heard Don DeLiro speak.
50:12I was like, oh, my Lord.
50:12Like the Oscars Q&As.
50:13I'm not saying this is,
50:15but they're so obnoxious.
50:16People talking about themselves.
50:17Do you want to vomit?
50:18And I always find the rights
50:20that's the most interesting to be.
50:21I'm glad.
50:22That's it.
50:22What about you, Tammy?
50:23I'd like to read really nerdy things
50:27about writers,
50:28like where they write,
50:29what their room looks like,
50:31like just their sort of dorky daily thing,
50:35what time.
50:37I guess I'm always sort of,
50:38I'm always trying to steal,
50:40you know,
50:41ideas that other people have about,
50:43like Twyla Tharp.
50:44I read a book about her
50:46and her creativity process,
50:48and she does this thing
50:49where she writes ideas
50:50down on index cards
50:53and just throws them in a box.
50:55And it became this thing
50:57that when I was writing the screenplay,
50:59because I feel like sometimes
51:00I'm writing something
51:01and then I get an idea
51:02for something else
51:02because I'm actually doing the writing
51:04and I don't know where to put it.
51:05And I used to put it
51:06in the margins of things,
51:08but then I would never know
51:09where they were.
51:09So I took this technique
51:11of just writing things
51:12and sticking it in the box.
51:13And eventually I dig through it
51:15and I was like,
51:15oh yeah,
51:16that was a funny idea
51:16or a piece of dialogue
51:17or a detail
51:18or it's a kind of ADHD approach
51:21which works for me.
51:22What I tell young writers
51:26is don't confuse screenwriting
51:29with writing.
51:31Screenwriting is part
51:32of the oral tradition.
51:33It's not part
51:34of the literary tradition.
51:35You have to tell your story.
51:37You know,
51:38it's not about the words.
51:39It's about the telling.
51:40And of course,
51:42young writers are so afraid
51:44to tell their story
51:45because they're afraid
51:46that it isn't going to work.
51:47Well, that's the point
51:48of telling it.
51:49Yeah.
51:50Yeah, it's really
51:51a bastardized form.
51:52I mean, screenwriting.
51:54You're not a novelist.
51:55You get to use dots
51:57and dashes in a pod,
51:58you know, ellipses.
51:59And you don't have
52:00to even finish the...
52:01Is there one novel
52:02for all of you
52:03that is really...
52:04Or other piece of writing
52:05that's about to blow up.
52:06You say,
52:07let's put this in the pod.
52:09Let's save this piece of writing.
52:11Lolita.
52:12Huh.
52:13Huh.
52:13Yeah.
52:14That's a good one.
52:16My...
52:16And you did a beautiful job with it.
52:19Brief interviews, actually.
52:21The story in brief interviews
52:23by David Foster Wallace,
52:24Forever Overhead,
52:25was actually what inspired my movie.
52:27It's a 23-year, 17-page story
52:31about a 13-year-old boy
52:33just jumping off a diving board.
52:35You know,
52:35it's like 30 minutes
52:37or one minute of action
52:38basically told over 17 pages.
52:40and I read it and thought,
52:43you know...
52:43I think mine are more
52:44about images.
52:46I'm not trying to be pretentious,
52:47but I mean,
52:48like Al McCord,
52:49the cow on the beach.
52:51Some of the dream sequences
52:52and things
52:52that don't mean anything,
52:55but they seem to still
52:57inhabit our lives.
52:58The imagery,
52:58I think maybe
53:00that's what transcends for me.
53:01For me,
53:02I think it's the shifts
53:04that I remember most.
53:05Weirdly,
53:05I don't...
53:06I love words
53:08and I love the phrases
53:09and how people tell stories,
53:11but I remember how I felt.
53:12So in sixth grade,
53:13I remember the visual
53:15of our teacher
53:15dropping to kill a mockingbird
53:17on our desk.
53:17And I remember thinking,
53:19this is thick.
53:21Like,
53:21I think I was just reading
53:22my Clifford the Big Red Dog
53:23and now it's
53:24a real mockingbird.
53:25And I actually specifically
53:26remember having one of...
53:28Probably I'd had some before,
53:30but a seminal conversation
53:31with my dad
53:31about To Kill a Mockingbird.
53:33And he revealed
53:34that it was his favorite book.
53:35And there was something
53:36about his admiration
53:38of the teacher,
53:39his interest in the fact
53:40that I was connecting
53:41to this story
53:41as a sixth grader
53:43and I really wanted
53:44to talk about it.
53:44And I remember
53:45that opened a whole door
53:46of truly it changed my life.
53:48I mean,
53:49my dad was always
53:49so open and amazing,
53:51but my dad was the type
53:52of person who would ask
53:53me your opinion
53:53about everything
53:54and make sure
53:54that you always had
53:55your own opinion.
53:56And that book
53:57really started that
53:58and it was huge for me.
53:59Tamara.
54:00I always never know
54:01if it's Franny and Zoe
54:02or Franny and Zooey,
54:03but I always,
54:04anytime I see it
54:05in a bookstore,
54:06even though I've read it
54:06a billion times,
54:07I flip it open
54:08and I just get this kind of...
54:09Yeah.
54:10And I think I also like
54:12this sort of,
54:12I like the shimmer
54:14between the sadness
54:15and the comedy of it
54:16and I like that tone
54:18and the humanity of it
54:21and the sagging bookshelves
54:22and the mother smoking
54:23outside the shower curtain
54:25and I like her,
54:29you know,
54:29at the restaurant
54:30and sleeping on the couch
54:32and reading
54:32Pilgrim's Progress
54:33and I just find it comforting.
54:36I like the bravest books.
54:38Like, for me,
54:39are the ones that are
54:40the honest,
54:40like, Portnoy complaint books.
54:42Like, you know,
54:43I always tell people,
54:44I've actually had,
54:45I was writing with a guy once,
54:47this will piss you off,
54:48but I'm writing with this guy
54:49and we had this scene
54:50and this guy said,
54:51I don't know, man,
54:51you know,
54:52my grandmother's
54:53going to see this movie
54:53and I was like,
54:54are you fucking kidding me?
54:56You give a shit
54:57what your grandmother thinks?
54:58There would never be
54:59a Portnoy's complaint
55:00if you had to think
55:02what your grandmother
55:03would think.
55:04It really pissed me off.
55:05But anyway,
55:06I like those.
55:07There's something about Mary.
55:08Yes.
55:09I like the ones where
55:11you've got to,
55:12the ones where someone
55:13had to like,
55:13you know,
55:14when Roth,
55:15you know,
55:15put that in
55:16and his,
55:16you know,
55:17he didn't give a shit.
55:18Yeah.
55:18You know,
55:19those kind of books,
55:20like, you know,
55:20End of the Road,
55:21John Barth,
55:21is the same thing.
55:22It's just like
55:23so nasty in it
55:24and Lolita.
55:26Lolita's never made,
55:27you know,
55:27if you care about that stuff.
55:29So the brave ones
55:29really get me.
55:30By the way,
55:31I just read a really good book
55:32and it's kind of
55:33a non-secretary,
55:34There, There.
55:34Have you heard this
55:35by Tommy Orange?
55:36Yes.
55:37A Native American.
55:38Yes.
55:38It's excellent.
55:39I just have to say that.
55:40This guy,
55:41first novel,
55:42it's impressive.
55:43Really impressive.
55:44Peter just alluded
55:45to the elephant in the room,
55:46which is political correctness.
55:48You know,
55:49I mean,
55:51our job is-
55:52There's a few elephants,
55:52to be fair.
55:53Yeah.
55:53No, no, truly,
55:54there are.
55:54And that's not going to work.
55:55And our jobs are not made easier
55:57by people who say,
56:00you know,
56:01you can't do that,
56:03you shouldn't do that,
56:05and trigger alerts
56:06and all of that.
56:07And it's not,
56:09it's not very good
56:11for the creative process.
56:12But there are risks here
56:12and there is damage
56:13to real people.
56:15And my understanding
56:15is that when you first
56:16conceived a taxi driver,
56:18you wanted this to be
56:20with an African-American character
56:22and show that point of view.
56:24Well, the danger is
56:25you are sending
56:26a racist message.
56:27No, I was making a racist,
56:28it's a racist script.
56:29He only killed black people.
56:31Because when you're
56:32kind of low on the total pole,
56:33you're looking for people
56:34who are lower.
56:35And that's why
56:36these kind of kids
56:37are racist.
56:39And then Melnick
56:40over at Columbia.
56:42And Melnick,
56:43who's the head of Columbia.
56:44He just said,
56:46there will be riots.
56:48There will be violence
56:49in the theater
56:50if we do this.
56:51And we knew he was right.
56:53And so we took
56:54the main Pym character
56:56and made him white,
56:58made him Harvey Keitel.
57:00And that was a case
57:01where in a novel
57:02that would not have been
57:04irresponsible,
57:04but in a crowded theater,
57:07it was irresponsible.
57:09And so there's no
57:11hard and fast rules.
57:12Right.
57:13So there is a line
57:13between political incorrectness
57:16and actually being
57:17morally responsible.
57:20Yeah.
57:21I mean,
57:21I have sympathy
57:23for the conversations
57:23that are happening
57:24right now.
57:25Obviously,
57:25there's this sort of
57:26core issue
57:28at the center
57:28of the country
57:29right now.
57:29And I think oftentimes
57:30people point to
57:32the symptoms
57:32when we all sort of
57:33know where the tumor
57:34of this thing is
57:35that all these things
57:36are maybe these
57:36over-corrections
57:37are emanating from.
57:38But there's obviously
57:39a, yeah,
57:40there's a lot of elephants
57:41in the room right now
57:41as there should be.
57:42Maybe there were elephants
57:43there the entire time.
57:45Maybe for the first time
57:47people like me
57:48are being pointed
57:49at the elements
57:50that other people
57:50are pointing at
57:51the entire time.
57:52Representational,
57:53you know,
57:53we are talking about
57:54hopefully encroaching
57:56diverse group of storytellers
57:57that are not necessarily
57:58represented by the people
58:00around this table fully.
58:01And that has to be
58:03acknowledged.
58:04And I think
58:05what I understand
58:06is that I felt like
58:07when the sort of
58:08election happened
58:08it felt like the sort of
58:10tail was really
58:11wagging the dog
58:12and it felt like
58:13this was a cultural
58:14failure of our country.
58:16And so I understand
58:17the impulse
58:17even if it's an
58:18over-correction
58:19for people to go,
58:20okay,
58:21let's tear apart
58:21every part of our culture
58:22and see where
58:23this all started.
58:24Is it our stories?
58:25Is it our archetypes?
58:26Is it our representation?
58:27In arts?
58:28And I understand that.
58:29And I think
58:30it's slightly unfair
58:31for us to expect
58:33the solution
58:35to these inequities
58:37to be perfectly fair.
58:39That's where I think
58:40it gets,
58:41you know,
58:41it's people throwing up
58:42and all of a sudden
58:43it goes a little too far
58:44the other way
58:44and it's panic.
58:46So I try to listen
58:48in the best way I can.
58:49I'm frustrated.
58:50I'm certainly
58:51having conversations
58:52that are different
58:53in private
58:54than I'm having in public.
58:55But I don't know.
58:57I'm just trying
58:58to be open
58:59and listen to it
58:59and I do think
59:00as much as it may
59:03overly criticize
59:04certain things,
59:05I think the overall
59:06mentality is leading
59:07to much more diverse
59:09exciting art
59:09that I'm excited to see.
59:11So I'm happy
59:12to be a part of it.
59:13I wish we could
59:14continue with that
59:15but our time is up.
59:16I want to thank
59:16all of you enormously
59:17for taking part in
59:18The Hollywood Reporter
59:19Close Up Writers.
59:21I appreciate it.
Comments