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Tetragrammaton.
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>> [music] >> Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton.
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And now I don't want to make this whole thing about death and uh but I just had thoughts of like, you know, which I'll repeat with that uh comment my mother had made as she was dying when who's a lifetime atheist and uh communist and didn't believe in anything past this and I asked her, "Are you afraid?"
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when she was kind of at the end and she said she was curious.
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And I thought, "Well, that was a good place to start with something, you know."
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And then you sent me that beautiful poem um about uh that when we're not watching ourselves, maybe somebody else is watching us as we move move through something else, you know.
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And uh I loved your book, by the way.
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I have it right behind me here.
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It'll stay here now forever. Thank you so much.
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I'm so glad you liked it.
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>> beautifully architectured.
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Uh And then, you know, in all ways, in all ways.
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Are all stories good for the same reason?
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I think they might be because uh I think you get to unleash the use of words into uh ideas.
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I'm trying to put the as a writer trying to put the put the best word in front of the other.
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Some people are way better at it than others, you know.
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Um just to relate uh to well-known artists uh writer named Denis Johnson uh who I think was one of the great American writers, wrote a short a short story called Jesus' Son that is pretty well recognized as one of the great short stories and then more recently I've been friendly with George Saunders who's a wonderful combination of words and science.
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And I I to sort of compete with them in emails. It's like a joke.
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You know, it's like talking to a poet.
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Uh but I think it's how they've learned as the great writers have or great artists, same thing as painting or something, being able to put one brushstroke in front of another to you know, to communicate an idea.
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So, in that sense, I think all storytelling's the same and that's just how good you're able to do it.
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But, I think it's a cliché probably but probably true that everybody does have a story to tell.
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It's like that always please everybody There's somebody for everybody. Same kind of thing.
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Do do stories need a structure and do they need the same structure?
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I would say neither's true.
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I think that's the that's up to the artist.
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It's however they're best communicate.
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I mean, you know that better than anybody with music.
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That there's somebody who'll make just a sound and that sound will be everlasting and someone else will do it a different way.
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I'm pretty traditional in my structure.
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Very Shakespearean, you know, not that I'm Shakespeare but uh even though I think Shakespeare said the two greatest lines in the English language, exit ghost.
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You can think about that for a while.
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But uh yeah, I think you need that.
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It was scaring me with AI a little bit.
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It's now learned to it learned dramatic um function of Shakespeare.
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So, it knows about catharsis and act structuring it uh and that will then use that to obviously uh you know, increase its ability to tell stories.
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But uh I I think people can tell stories any any way they can.
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I think you just do what you think is comfortable.
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I think one thing I've I've I've learned and I think I learned this oddly a little bit from Bob Dylan um just by osmosis um that uh anything's culturally appropriate in the sense that you can use anybody else's work to if it encourages you, it creates for you something that you hadn't about.
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Um And then it becomes a wide kind of mass of what bubbles over in you, something uh maybe beautiful or corny, you know, or uh that I remember was writing something and uh there was a Emmylou Harris duet with like I think um Lefty Frizzell or somebody, you know, and it was like it was always very moving to me and it always kind of just just stuck with me.
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But it it helped me to then use that to appropriate that to not the particular song but that sound, whatever that felt like, to be able to try to articulate that.
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So, I think there's, you know, haikus and there's uh I I wrote a movie uh a long time ago for uh and I haven't told this story, so not my that much.
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>> [laughter] >> Uh for for Kurosawa and um he had asked me to help make a uh an Anglo character in his uh movie called Rhapsody in August and uh we had had we talked through a translator, but he'd sent me the script which was translated and uh it was like a haiku.
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it was like a haiku. I mean, it was just uh so beautiful, just an ant on an anthill and however he was describing things and it was really really quite lovely and then I realized I wrote in this kind of Jewish, intellectual, psychiatric, kind
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of prosy, you know, and it was so so different from what the beautiful way he was explaining things and and you know, any artist will do things differently than another and uh but I think they all kind of have to borrow from each other and also have to learn through some experience, you know. So, you don't get to be uh
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So, you don't get to be uh Kandinsky or something without spending the time uh you know, learning to be Kandinsky.
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And you don't get to be Rick Rubin without learning how to be you.
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On the uh psychological note, have you ever done therapy? I have some. Uh not much.
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Uh I had done it individually for a while in like uh uh like late '60s, '70s, I found myself uh uh kind of straying with uh my married life, let's put it that way.
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And I did a lot of hallucinogenics.
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Um uh all kinds, you know, with uh privately and also with like people like Jerry Garcia and stuff.
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I mean, in other words, lots lots lots of uh you know, acid tests and everything else.
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And uh So, uh yeah, I I I had one psychiatrist I found was very uh enlightening, let's put it that way.
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When My problem is I get too hung up on kind of the style of the of the psychiatrist.
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But, they've been incredibly helpful and then it became psychologist, obviously, when they started to just prescribing drugs.
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She was pretty amazing, yes.
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She was not She wasn't intrusive at all.
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Very sensitive and but I thought she let us in great areas.
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Yeah, so that's psychiatry to me.
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>> How did you connect with a police psychologist?
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Somebody made a recommendation, just her being really strong and yeah, I mean, she was really unobtrusive and uh let us kind of fight it out, you know, where we had to and love it out where we could.
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And um it was important, yeah.
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She was a great facilitator that way.
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Uh have you done much psychiatry at all?
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Done a lot of therapy, different kinds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love that, yeah.
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And I think it's important, yeah. Been helpful. >> Yeah.
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But, I think that's part of what when I sort of introduced myself to you that I want to go back to that in some form or fashion, whether it's with a orthodox rabbi or you know, a shaman, you know.
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What motivated you to reach out in the first place?
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Oh, well Oh, no, this is why, because I've been having these kind of incredible, I call them the porch sessions, you know.
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Uh these guy during I don't know why, right before I guess more during the pandemic, people just started coming over and want to sit on the porch and talk and we could talk 6 ft away and I don't know, I think it's more they were like old man Roth, you know, what does he have to say?
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And uh all these people just start showing up, you know, it's like sometimes announced, sometimes not announced and uh and they've always been I'm sorry I didn't tape them even though I'm I understand since we have a ring camera, they're all on there.
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And um I was I was talking to Judd Apatow who we both know together and a couple of other people too who love you.
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Um James Gray and a few other people and uh and really kind people and I was saying, you know, I've just been enjoying this enlightening conversation about uh things that I wouldn't necessarily normally think about, you know, and how does it affect my work and my children and everything and everybody said Rick Rubin.
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And so it was pretty easy, you know, and then I thought I figured when I text you you would just never text back and I thought that was cool too, you know.
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That'd be fine, but you been very generous with your time.
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Tell me about the first time you took a hallucinogenic drug. Um wow, first time.
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I was with a group of people in the Haight-Ashbury, truthfully, which sounds kind of corny.
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Um and someone said, "Try this."
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Um and someone said, "Try this." And I I'm always willing to try, you know, and I've had some pretty scary things, but not I mean where I never minded like the floor opening up, you know, or all of a sudden I was, you know, sitting in a cloud or I think I had once uh experience of feeling like I was having an affair with Time magazine, which was pretty interesting, you know, I don't know what that was all about, but uh
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I never felt that I was going to become psychotic, you know, but I could see how it could become psychotic for somebody who has really tremendous uh fear, uh you know, and unresolved things and but I think, you know, from just playing with marijuana and stuff,
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you know, and having lovely times with the whatever, you know, the eroticism of it or just the taste of a brownie or some nonsense, you know, but that I always felt it was expansive to my mind. I was never I never liked cocaine,
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I was never I never liked cocaine, though.
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I just don't like that feeling.
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I mean, I guess I'm more toward I'm not advocating this anyway, but heroin or something, you know, more masculine and uh, you know, but I mean, I think drugs have their purpose, you know.
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I guess it's uh I've always been interested in trying to find out what's the limits of what I'm trying to think about, you know, and where all this comes from.
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I mean, to me the greatest story, what I said to Bob Dylan with the Bob Dylan thing was that in his book called Chronicles, uh he talks about um he was at the time uh with Daniel Lanois, who I'm sure you knew or know quite well.
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I think he's gotten out, but um uh he was struggling creatively, Bob Dylan, and he took a trip out to like the bayou cuz they were in I think working in New Orleans or something, and they went out to Lafayette, and he said he'd walked into a in in his book, he said he'd walked into a gift shop and he sort of found the secret to everything.
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It was a card that said world's greatest grandpa.
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And so, that somehow put together whatever he was struggling with, you know.
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And I thought, yeah, sometimes it's the most simple thing. Yeah.
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Do you feel like you're the same person now as you were before you took any hallucinogens? No. No, not at all.
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I think the same person's in there, but I think it's uh it's been um it reinforced in a way, you know, that at least it it opened up the possibilities of things.
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But I I don't want to emphasize this because my life hasn't been, you know, particularly about that.
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I mean, I think that's a a nice afterthought in a sense.
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I mean, I'm I'm way more interested in um Uh for me, for the creative process is really important.
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And these things that I I mentioned earlier about what am I What are sources am I taking this from?
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What I do as a screenwriter is kind of a bastardized form of It's more of a craft than an art.
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You could You could be artful at it.
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But it's uh it's not a novel.
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You know, you have to fill a page up.
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A lot of ellipses and half thoughts, but uh strong visuals, you know?
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And uh But it's a form of writing, you know?
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And it's like I've I've been lucky enough to um People have appreciated I think some of the things I had to impart, you know?
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One of my proudest was more recently with uh the uh actor Josh Brolin.
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Um I had written a play of High Noon.
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We were considering that he was considering and it was very close.
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And I wrote a play of of High Noon.
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See what cuz they had never had a drama on Broadway, a Western um on Broadway.
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And I was told that uh Josh was telling people about he he decided not to do it, but that his philosophy at the time, at least more recently, was uh of Scott Fitzgerald's story.
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More of an essay to an extent about about life and death and this and that.
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And he was telling people about it.
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Turned out I had written it.
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It was from when I did Benjamin Button and I had written a speech toward the end of it.
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And it was actually a speech that uh Nora Ephron asked me to who was planning her funeral asked me if I she could use it.
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But it's funny how they attributed it to Scott Fitzgerald who I couldn't hold a candle to, you know?
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But uh in this one instance, it's pretty it's pretty powerful, I think, about just uh about life and about how yeah, there's no rules or anything, you know?
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Uh as long as you're not hurting anybody else, then you can if you're not If you're not succeeding at what you want to, you can just stop and change it, you know?
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Uh it's easier said than done, obviously, but that at least you can have the If you have the courage to go and try something else.
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Yeah, I the idea of a Western on Broadway is a is a really cool idea. I like that. Thank you.
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Yeah, I think it's a pretty powerful play that I the play itself is very powerful.
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It's about the blacklist really and uh and the movie was and Gary Cooper and all and sort of American iconography of the whole thing and uh and it's about guns and you know, but uh I think I I made it in a hopefully a contemporary way I mean, you'd appreciate this I'm sure this is your métier anyway uh is uh I'm trying to put some contemporary music in it.
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So that it feels uh and the songs are all apt.
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I mean, there's uh that Ry Cooder song across the borderline and then uh somebody you know quite well and I actually know knew earlier than you Johnny Cash song which was from Nick Lowe, the um Beast in Me which they he used on The Sopranos.
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Yeah, I when I was younger um I was asked by the cabaret department at William Morris.
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I was a client of William Morris.
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I was pretty young to travel with a bunch of artists and they were all just kind of basically jerking off uh wanting uh these little video ideas, you know.
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There was no MTV then or anything and so I rode on the buses with Johnny with the the Cash family and that was really interesting and and then uh Van Morrison was singing with his back to the audience at that point and >> [clears throat] >> and then and of course great Jerry Garcia, you know, so How much do your experiences work their way into your work?
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Well, I think they do but I try to make it what I think it's more about the feeling is than the experience itself necessarily um I mean, there's the best kind of writing which I still don't think I've mastered anyway is subtextual writing which is probably true about music too or certainly about filmmakers I know.
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I think Marty Scorsese is a great subtextual filmmaker because he even in like uh Taxi Driver all of a sudden there'd be some graffiti on a wall that he decided to show you, but it the graffiti didn't say anything of any value.
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It was just a sense this is an art and this is part of the city, you know.
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So, he he expressed a lot that way, but uh you know, the worst kind of writing is kind of Ernie the explainer, you know, it's like, "Good morning, Mr. Water Commissioner." Um that kind of writing.
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So, you want to try to find a way to have someone articulate what their most intimate concerns are through some other story about something, you know, if you're creating it fine or if it's a true story that comes from life and uh that says the same thing without having to do this kind of thing with big headlines.
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It's it's a hard it's a hard thing to do.
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I think the I think the great musicians do it.
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I mean, I think they do it uh through the the lyrics are just spectacular, you know, where they they don't necessarily talk about what they're talking about, but you know what they're talking about.
16:25
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18:28
>> [music] >> When you're adapting a story, [clears throat] how do you decide what's important enough to keep and what you can let go of?
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That's a great question because uh you know, every book that was been given to me, I sit and I read it, right?
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And I start underlining what I think this could be dramatically interesting in this, and all of a sudden the whole book literally is underlined.
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So, now now what do I do, you know?
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But I think he also gives you a sense of what you're very smart about um as to what you're not going to use.
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Cuz you you can start coalescing things into where one dramatic moment takes care of four or five.
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Now, I always warn the author that it might not seem akin to what you wrote, but it will be.
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In other words, so I hope, you know, I hope it will make it better if this possible.
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Or at least it would It's just a different form.
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Uh cuz I guess my calling is I'm a dramatist, I guess, right?
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Hopefully some humor on along the way.
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But then if I'm able to somehow uh express the human condition in an honest way and somebody could take something from it just uh even in its entertainment, something as farcical as Forrest Gump or something, you know.
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>> [snorts] >> Which was silly at its heart, but there's something was uh constant about it.
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Uh and then there are I think some more sophisticated movies like The Insider that I did and a few others that uh that I think articulated things that were important to this you know, society.
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Uh Tell me the story of The Insider.
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Uh The Insider was a um a guy who wanted to um basically [clears throat] get his pension. That's all it was. He was going to retire.
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Um his wife was a daughter of a tobacco farmer.
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He was a very complicated man cuz he was scientist, legitimate scientist, PhD in something chemistry or something, but you wonder what he was thinking.
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He was working for the tobacco company.
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So, he was sort of advocating, you know, the poison that they were putting out there.
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And he knew all about it. He knew what was wrong.
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He He could tell you in a second about the blood-brain barrier.
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And I happened to smoke at the time, so I was aware of it.
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I couldn't talk to him now because he was under a kind of a hold from the government.
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He wasn't allowed to talk.
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So, we had to create kind of a guy in whole cloth.
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I mean, who was this man?
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And but the first thing I remember saying what what kind of guy is a tobacco scientist?
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And he didn't want really very much.
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He just wanted to retire and wanted his his pension wasn't even very much, but the when they said we're not going to give you your pension."
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He said, "Well, I'm going to start talking about what's wrong with this industry, you know." And he was pretty brave. He was pretty brave guy.
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He was a very prickly guy.
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Um when I finally get it to meet him.
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Anyway, that was a story and and it dovetailed with 60 Minutes uh the television show.
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They did a a report on him and um then they squelched it cuz uh tobacco companies didn't want it, but also the government was kind of involved and uh it became very complicated with the personalities.
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Mike Wallace, the interviewer, the great journalist, cuz I think he was a great journalist.
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He was very He was unafraid.
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And uh so they tried to uh not run the story.
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And uh which made the producer nuts um and said, "What about the integrity of CBS?"
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And so it became a a lot about uh honorability, you know, and uh I remember Mike Wallace calling me um journalist [clears throat] um there was a man named Lowell Bergman whose story it was.
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He was a producer of the thing. He was very brave.
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And he was a great reporter.
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And uh he kept yelling at me, Mike Wallace, "Well, what makes moral What makes Lowell Bergman a moral [ __ ] arbiter?" And this and that. So I just wrote it down. So it's in the movie. Wow, that's great. Yeah, yeah.
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It was I couldn't have said it couldn't have said any better, you know.
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>> Yeah, how often does that happen where real life works its way into the story?
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If you have real life people and uh I this this happened in this Killers of the Flower Moon where we imagined various things that we were we wanted the Osage to say, you know, and then there was no way I could say it as well as or Marty or anybody else could say as well as the real people.
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I mean, we can give them we could give them uh sort of the ideas we want maybe them to express and then they turned it into what was affecting them as human beings and their life stories, you know.
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So, I could have written that with a kid from Brooklyn, you know. I have no clue.
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Uh only other instance that comes right off the top of my head, it would be on Star is Born.
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I said to Lady Gaga, "Let's just sit down here and talk and I'll write dialogue for you from what you're telling me, you know?
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So, if you see And Bradley did the same thing, uh Cooper and like the scene in the parking lot where they're sitting and they're bullshitting.
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Well, that most of that's written.
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But it made her comfortable, you know?
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So, that when the real person shows up, uh they have, you know, either limitations or uh abilities that you don't even know.
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And she's uh she's an interesting human being because the thing that was so striking about her, we were doing a read-through and the songs were in there, uh there was no need for anybody to sing them.
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Uh Bradley Cooper would just sort of talk them through, but she started singing and God showed up, you know?
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I'm sure you know that, huh?
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She has something Amazing.
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Yeah, that you can't uh So, you have to work with, I think, who the person is.
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I mean, Gold story, Russell Crowe was not He didn't understand certain thing about his character in The Insider, so Michael Mann had me fly down to Louisville.
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He said he won't come out of his trailer, all that nonsense and so I went in there and did Rick Rubin >> [laughter] >> with him and said, "Is there a way we can find a happy medium here?"
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And I explained the scene again to him and he said, "I'll try it." You know, eventually.
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And Michael, the director, was trying to avoid having a continuing fight with him, you know, which wouldn't have been very productive.
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>> Let's use that case as an example.
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When there's a a logjam like that, what's really going on? What's it really about?
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>> Um I think he had fear.
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He just He was afraid, you know?
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In other words, and if if an actor feels he doesn't understand it, whether he's right or wrong, I mean, you you need to find a way to articulate to them um what you intended.
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And it doesn't mean you end up with the exact same thing.
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For The Insider again, um I got a call one morning from Al Pacino saying I had written a like a page and a half monologue and Al said I could do this with one look.
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And I said, "Let me ask Michael.
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I have no problem with it."
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And so they should Michael said, "Let's shoot it both ways."
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And they left the look in.
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All the words I wrote were out the window, you know, cuz he could do it with that, you know, without necessary And I thought, "That's fine."
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As a writer, that's something that you can't account for or prepare for.
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An actor who can get the story across without saying the words.
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There's no way to prepare for that.
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There's no way to write for that.
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No, except for I think after a while you get the experience of that.
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Certainly less is more if you can, you know, um even though I think there's some great monologues.
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And then as some directors just go like this, you know, "Cut. We'll take it out."
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Cuz I had a thing recently on a I think a pretty particularly beautiful movie that I just finished called Here. We'll see if it works. It might be a disaster.
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It's all It's all set in one room over 100 years in a house and the camera's locked off so there's no coverage. It's just one angle.
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But the stories are beautiful um of all the people that live there and um so you don't know what to anticipate, you know?
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But I know I feel the storytelling is very solid. How did that come about?
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>> Bob Zemeckis, the director uh Forrest Gump and I have a nice relationship over the years and I've done some other work for him and uh he called me.
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He felt I felt it's a graphic novel called um Here.
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Uh and the and the artist drew everything from this point of view.
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Everything was uh one way through a window.
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Uh well, not through a window, but you see a window in the back.
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So, we he said you have the right melancholy for it. So, maybe I do. I don't know.
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But I I also have a sense of uh my mortality, which is what it's about eventually, you know?
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So, uh I could write that.
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And then he put in some He's very humorous and kind of farcical and lovely.
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And uh But it's about everything cuz the dinosaurs walk through because anything that happened in that property, marsh birds, and it's quite beautiful. I will see. Maybe it won't work.
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I I think the tone is right.
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I start crying like a baby in the first 5 minutes, but I think it was cuz the Rachel Portman music was on it.
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It was really beautiful, you know.
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So I don't know, but uh We'll see.
27:18
How do most projects originate?
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Does it usually start with you getting a call from a director or what are the different ways that a project will happen?
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Uh I think there's everyone you can imagine, you know, like we did one recently I did with my son called Walt Grace.
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It's from a John Mayer song, an old John Mayer uh uh I don't know if you know the song.
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John loves it and uh I didn't know John, but but my son asked me, "You think this is a good idea for a movie?" I said, "It's great.
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It's about a guy who uh is kind of trapped in life, doesn't have a great relationship with his wife.
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He has one kid that does love him, one kid doesn't or doesn't have a good relationship with him.
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And he has kind of a Groundhog Day life.
28:00
He designs wings for like Lockheed.
28:02
It's supposed to be set in 1967.
28:07
And uh he decides to build a submarine in the basement, which I don't know how he's going to get it out of there, but uh in ours it's like an outbuilding, a garage.
28:14
And sure enough, he takes off in a homemade submarine where he's got, you know, propellers that are made of fans and from the ceiling and he's gone to the junkyard and it's spectacular.
28:23
So there's a there's also a feeling of Yellow Submarine with it, I think, but uh uh it's quite lovely, I think.
28:30
Uh we have some people who seem to want to do it actually now. So we'll see.
28:33
And John Mayer will do the music, I guess.
28:35
But uh So that's one way it came. Things come.
28:40
Um Uh others are just books sent to me, you know, would I be interested in it's really about the subject.
28:45
And then directors Ten Evil and who asked me to rewrite arrival which I did and then and then he asked me to do Dune, you know, so we had a relationship and Dune was a little complicated for me cuz it wasn't my favorite book ever written but it was an interesting assignment as to how to make this the best and I tried, you know.
29:05
It's one that's been attempted many times over the years and Yeah. It's a fraud history. Yeah. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's tricky.
29:15
I think you did a good job.
29:17
I think it's my problem with it was I'm being a little too honest probably but that there's a character named Duncan Idaho in it.
29:23
Now, this isn't a translation.
29:23
I mean we're supposed to be milk some milk.
29:28
I said where does this name come from?
29:30
You know, I understand it's a translation of whatever you want jam or jacket but it's not.
29:34
So, I but I think it's a prodigious book cuz he invented a glossary and a geography and everything else and uh it was a surprise.
29:43
I mean, I think A Star Is Born was the most important movie in the more recent times not because it's a great movie.
29:49
I think it is a good movie and certainly I I love the fact that it put me more in touch with the young people cuz young people really seem to enjoy it even though it's an old story.
30:01
Um but it made me feel vital, you know.
30:03
And so I was in my 70s so I said, "Hmm, you can still write that, huh?"
30:08
That I think gave me a I you know, I'm not saying I was done but it did so well and then all of a sudden they figure I know something still.
30:15
You know, it's just ridiculous.
30:15
Is it different writing for theatrical release versus something that's going to be watched on a streaming service?
30:22
Well, that's a that's a great question cuz I have a tremendous guilt about I began House of Cards.
30:31
So, Fincher who's my best friend I guess in the world and one of the more loyal people you would ever meet and I hope you have a time to meet him.
30:40
He decided to do with me and I had actually been aware of it from earlier when we had seen the English version that Pacino and I and Michael Mann were going to make uh make it as a movie cuz it's just Richard III.
30:53
It's like, you know, um you think these guys are so tough, watch me go in this room and [ __ ] them.
30:57
And then he'd go in the room and [ __ ] them.
31:00
>> How's the English version? I've never seen it.
31:02
It's the same thing basically.
31:04
It's just but the guy is not um he never wants to go past the um station in life he is, which is sort of the whip of the party.
31:12
In other words, and he's going to just manipulate everybody, you know, it's it's Succession in that way, I guess, or Succession is that, you know. And um but it caught on.
31:23
but it caught on. I wanted to sell it to HBO figuring we just get water cooler conversation like The Sopranos or something, but uh people started bingeing it, you know, and all of a sudden these eyeballs became available, and I'm not happy about particularly the
31:37
results, you know, um I still fortunately get to write movies that are that doesn't mean they don't go right on streaming, but they start at least with the idea of uh but the only one I think if if there hadn't been a pandemic, I think Dune would have played for quite a while. But
31:50
But with the pandemic, you know, people just sat and watched at home.
31:56
>> benefit in that idea of binge watching or episodes that you can tell a story over 6 hours, 10 hours, season after season as opposed to having to get it into a 2-hour film?
32:10
I've just been presented with that, and I'm not sure the answer.
32:11
It's the same Denis Johnson.
32:15
I I thought how come they haven't done a movie about the guys who came home from war, right?
32:20
Cuz every other era has done The Best Years of Our Lives, a movie called The Men that Marlon Brando was in, um Coming Home, of course, famous one about Vietnam.
32:30
So, they haven't done that for this war these wars, the Afghanistan, Iraq stuff, you know, and the guys are obviously in bad shape, and uh so I I was going to write that, and um Spielberg came to me with something else, and I started conflict, and the head of the studio said, "Why don't you just sell it to HBO?" So, I did.
32:46
And he said they said, "Who do you want to write it?"
32:49
I said, "Dennis Johnson."
32:50
They They didn't know who he even was, and I said, "I'm getting him."
32:52
And he wrote five of the most amazing scripts that called Unarmed.
32:58
Everybody in it's uh an amputee or burn victim.
33:01
And the only uh triumph of it is one guy to walk across the street to leave.
33:08
And it is so spectacular, and it's all written, as I say, in the subtextual way. And we're close now.
33:12
Uh Kathryn Bigelow might do it.
33:15
Um but uh it's important, I think, and we get to use all uh we would have all disabled actors, disabled veterans, and disabled civilians, and I think it'd be pretty incredible.
33:26
I I mean years ago, I was uh going to do Cuckoo's Nest, and my agent said, "Don't ever make it."
33:36
Jack Nicholson was not involved.
33:36
And so, and I was friends with Michael Douglas, really good friends, and uh so, I went off to do a movie called Onion Field.
33:43
But, uh then they got Jack Nicholson, and I went, "Oh my god, I [ __ ] the dog here, man."
33:49
But, I did come back and do rewriting, which was nice.
33:52
But, um that has the same tenor of this, the black humor and uh anger, you know?
33:58
So, I'm hoping that we'll be able to do this. We'll see, you know.
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35:34
From the time you finish a script and you're happy with it, how different might the movie be than what you're visualizing when you're writing? Um they're all vary.
35:44
I mean, I think sometimes events take over.
35:48
I'd say the movie is different from what the the original was with Killers of the Flower Moon.
35:52
I think it might be a more important movie.
35:55
I had leaned into the western nature of it and then De Niro decided he didn't want to play the hero and he was right cuz he was worried that I'm going to be the great white hope here.
36:04
Uh you know, saving the Native Americans and that's what the book was.
36:06
This happens to be fact, but uh so we went away from that and they did the Marty did his work and saw the movie.
36:14
He always was uh we always tried together to get the culpability of uh everybody that people would just walk over dead bodies, you know, in other words, what is that all about?
36:22
I mean, there's even a great trailer about saying, "Who is the wolf.
36:28
You know, and that's the metaphor, right?
36:29
Uh you can spot the wolf. Don't worry.
36:33
And I think they leaned into it the right way.
36:34
And so that the movie doesn't have that uh sense of um having to do what's sort of the white guy saving everybody.
36:43
And but it's not done in a kind of I don't want to put her down, Rachel Maddow, but it it's not done with headlines, you know.
36:51
It's it's done with great taste, I think.
36:53
I think Marty's uh he's an extraordinary artist.
36:57
Um and I would work with him and we're going to work again together.
37:00
Uh I'll work till the end of time with him, you know.
37:05
But he's not always faithful to what you did.
37:06
So you have to have pretty strong ego, you know.
37:08
Well, that's what I wanted to ask about about not being faithful.
37:11
Are you ever surprised by the direction it takes?
37:14
And do you ever come around to think, "Oh, this is actually better than what I had originally envisioned?" For sure. For sure.
37:19
And I also think things have gone where they haven't gone as well as they could have. For sure.
37:27
I did a movie uh called Lucky You that I never understood I it I found out why later on that the director had Alzheimer's, but um I never understood why he wanted to do it.
37:37
I figured, "Oh, he's going to come in and do something about it."
37:39
It's about a love story set in Las Vegas with a poker player and Drew Barrymore and Eric uh Bana.
37:46
And uh I thought it was pretty good.
37:46
And uh and I actually took it from uh there was a movie that Elizabeth Taylor did with Warren Beatty called The Only Game in Town.
37:56
And that was about her playing basically a hooker, even though they don't call it they didn't call it that then.
38:01
And uh he's a just a degenerate gambler.
38:04
And at the end of the movie it's quite beautiful where he's sitting on the curb and water's running down the curb and you figure he's just dead broke, man. He's got nothing left.
38:12
And she comes sits beside him and he he sort of says, "That's the way it goes, you know.
38:17
If you're going to be a gambler."
38:19
And uh he starts taking out $100 and making them into little boats going down the river, right? So, guess it worked out.
38:29
But, uh that was supposed to be the feeling of it, you know?
38:30
What is luck and you know all that? And it didn't work. It was just no good. So, I don't know.
38:37
I guess I was disappointed, but I think you have to rely on the director's going to realize something, you know?
38:45
Uh you have to hope they have something.
38:47
I mean, I have a sort of philosophy that and I've worked with everybody.
38:50
Uh that you have to take a third way.
38:56
You know, there's your way, there's a director's way, and the director's always going to win.
38:58
One of the stories I tell occasionally is I did a movie called This was The Onion Field, actually, and I wrote a I thought a great scene, and the director kept saying, "It's not working."
39:08
And I said, "Yeah, it's really great.
39:09
You know, just shoot it."
39:11
And he said, "You know what?
39:11
I'm going to go the other way.
39:12
I'm going to leave it in the script and not shoot it."
39:15
And that was the end of that conversation.
39:16
It wasn't very kind, and I don't think it was very brave of him, but that's the way it goes, you know?
39:22
So, you got to figure out a way to be part of what they need to articulate what their vision is, you know? And they're the boss.
39:28
And when it says a film by, I don't think it's [ __ ] I think it's their film, you know?
39:31
It's like a musician, and it doesn't go any other way. I think, you know?
39:37
Did a movie called Mank, which was about uh the guy fighting for credit with Orson Welles, you know, on on Citizen Kane, and and he set the boat No question, he set the boat off with the right architecture and the right journey, but director's got to take it there, you know?
39:50
And if you don't get there and get to the right place, you're it's not worth seeing.
39:54
Do you do a lot of research for the projects? Tremendous amount.
39:59
Uh I I like every God is in the details, you know that.
40:03
Yeah, I do, but everything I think everything I read at that point is all grist for the mill.
40:09
You know, and that's why I'm back to at 78, particularly, what are the things that are going to define um So, I'm doing a thing called Rendezvous with Rama, which is an old Arthur C.
40:21
Clarke book that uh they made two It's not that they made 2001 out of It was written around the same time. Same philosophy.
40:27
And uh I have an astronaut that's uh been helping me and uh he said when he went out of the spacecraft, he just laid back like he was in a bath and looked up at the stars. You know? And so, I said, "Okay."
40:42
So, uh if I can get that feeling cuz I think the feeling this particular piece really dovetails to the things I've been thinking about that the thing that comes and interrupts these people's world doesn't have to have a reason. It might just be God.
40:57
And some of the people who who are like kind of religious believe in this 2130 that Jesus showed up uh sent by God from the planets.
41:05
And uh he just showed up in, you know, Palestine or Israel, wherever you like, and did what he did, and then they crucified him and went back up to the planets, you know?
41:17
And that he's still doing that, you know?
41:19
So, everybody adapts, you know, to whatever their ear is.
41:24
But uh I think this overriding sense, and I don't think you can escape it you get a particular age.
41:30
Doesn't mean you have to dwell on it to where it uh immobilizes you, but I think it expands your horizons, you know?
41:37
And that's a good way to say it, I guess.
41:39
When you're writing, let's say a monologue for character, how important is the content of what they're saying versus this is a great line.
41:49
I mean, you would like to be say presidentially that you just want to put the No, no, I know, but I'm sure your >> There's no right answer.
41:57
I mean, there's only your answer.
42:00
>> there might I get you, but I mean, I but I think it's kind of narcissistic to only dwell on what you think will last, you know?
42:10
Maybe the the whole speech will last, and it's more important that way, but I don't know if I really think about it either way.
42:15
I mean, I think I try to write what's human. It's just what I do.
42:19
Someone called me a sappy dog heart.
42:19
Um, I try to write that will be remembered.
42:25
I like the fact that I built a legacy of things that I think I chose pretty well, you know, not always.
42:31
We've had some monster failures, but uh I think pretty well and I still think I continue to choose pretty well and I I mean, I have other issues.
42:39
So, it gets more complicated.
42:41
So, my mother was very tough on giving love and so, I always felt I needed some validation, right? And I still do.
42:49
And my wife says to me, "You're 80 years old.
42:52
You feel like you need validation.
42:53
You like an Oscar nominee or something."
42:55
I said, "I don't want to, but it's like I want to go call my mom and say, 'Look at my report card.'"
43:01
You know what I'm saying?
43:03
So, there's your psychiatry again.
43:03
It's like, "Yeah, I'm like I don't know if I'm getting over it or not. I don't know. I'd like to."
43:08
That's an interesting thing though when our parents pass away, who do you call?
43:12
You know, when you get good news, you don't have that that feeling anymore.
43:19
>> you don't have that thing that you could just share, you know, that you really love sharing, you know?
43:24
Uh yeah, I think that's true.
43:24
I guess I think they do with my wife maybe, you know.
43:28
She's a she's a doctor and she's pretty supportive.
43:32
Uh but, she doesn't quite get this world I'm in, you know?
43:35
She It's just different, you know?
43:37
She She relies strictly on science.
43:39
You Whatever you say it's got to be accurate, you know what I'm saying?
43:43
You can't just make it up.
43:44
I remember Fincher being angry at me because in Benjamin Button I had some silly speech about with Brad Pitt in the middle of the night at the hotel.
43:54
Um, I gave her some [ __ ] about how how you have to steep tea and this and that, you know?
44:00
And David said, "This is such nonsense, you know?" And he left it in.
44:06
>> [laughter] >> Have you ever had a mystical experience? I think one. Um it ended up pleasant. It wasn't pleasant.
44:14
I had had cancer a couple times in my life.
44:16
I've been very sick a lot.
44:18
I had cancer twice and the first time I was just 32 and it was directly from my grandfather, colon cancer.
44:25
And in those days they just bombarded you.
44:27
I mean, they just didn't really quite know, you know, and um I remember laying in bed and uh and I'm not religious and I'm certainly not Catholic and uh an angel showed up.
44:37
And uh sort of form of a nun kind of and and she says, "Time to go."
44:42
And I said, "I don't really want to want to go yet and I love my wife and I love my kids and can we just forestall this, you know?"
44:50
And she thought about it and said, "Okay." So, I don't know.
44:53
That was my wish fulfillment, you know, but it felt real. It felt real. Beautiful.
44:59
>> other thing the the the other side of it the bad side of it is when I I think when I get afraid or I don't want to see certain things, I imagine rats going around.
45:11
I see a rat run across the ceiling or something, you know, something weird like that.
45:15
That's about as mystical I I haven't got I think I feel more mystical when I'm writing that I can feel what imbues me, you know, um what makes me soar and at least makes me feel like I'm soaring and uh I don't know.
45:29
I wish I could say I did mystical I'm not sure I completely believe in magic. So, I I wish I did.
45:35
So, I I mean, I think that's what I'd like to learn how to, honestly.
45:39
When you've had that feeling of soaring while you're writing, is it just that the lines are coming?
45:42
It's like, "Oh, this is good. This is good. This is good." Describe it.
45:47
It feels like you've I love to go swimming in a lake in the summer where it's just cold and feels like you're coming alive, you know, and uh that's what it feels like.
45:57
And it you don't have to judge it and you don't even know cuz I it's so corny the way I do it.
46:03
I I say out loud the dialogue in the worst acting known to man.
46:05
The voices never change, you know, not any of that and yet you feel like, "Wait a minute. You're not Mozart.
46:12
This isn't coming right to you or you not you don't you don't even have to erase a [ __ ] note, you know?"
46:18
But you do feel like you're imbued with something.
46:22
Um I don't know what it is and I guess that's the creative spirit that you uh and if it works it's great.
46:25
Even if it doesn't work, if you can try it out, why not, you know?
46:28
Do you always write dialogue out loud? Pretty much.
46:30
I have the uh I can't I say each of characters is so bad it's embarrassing.
46:35
So you'll basically act it out for yourself. Uh it's less acting.
46:40
I sort of almost whisper it, you know, like uh to see I don't know why, just to see if it's feels right, I guess.
46:46
Um and I also learned a long time ago there was a director, Michael Cimino, and he had prepared a wallet for um Mickey Rourke.
46:56
So Mickey Rourke knew where he came from.
46:58
I'm sure Mickey Rourke never looked at the wallet.
47:00
But it had a fortune from a fortune cookie in there, picture of his daughter, his draft card and this and that.
47:07
And his point was that every single character has to have their own voice.
47:11
Every single character has to have their own psychological makeup, that they came from something, they're going to go somewhere.
47:17
And I I took that to heart.
47:17
So I think that's the big key about how with the dialogue kind of thing, that everybody sounds different and interesting and doesn't have A follow B and says something off the cuff and I mean in other words, where you try to make it as real as possible.
47:32
Do you know all of that about the characters before you start or does their character come into focus as you're writing?
47:39
When the as I'm writing, pretty much, unless there's something so defined for them in a book or something where you don't want to make the audience go crazy, you know?
47:50
Uh no, I think uh like this one I'm writing with this uh Rendezvous with Rama is a thing it that that I I've slowly kind of made this commander of the ship into somebody that was not really there.
48:03
And whatever I felt he should be, you know?
48:06
And you just start describing things like, you know, I think I I wrote that he has uh he's very taciturn but he has a great sense of irony or something, you know?
48:14
So, wherever that took me, you know?
48:17
That was my first impression of him and then a lot of it's just for What I will say is that almo- I think every movie I wrote except for Munich began and end with the exact same scene I wrote. Almost every one. Yeah.
48:29
And you start with the beginning and the ending, is that typical?
48:35
Typical, I always want to know where I am to begin with and where I end.
48:36
The The middle's a big mess.
48:38
I have no clue which is I think part of the fun, you get to take a journey, you know, and discover people and things and things you'd never expect.
48:45
If you do it well, great.
48:47
If you don't do it so well, it's not so pretty.
48:50
But um it's yeah, I I mean I think it's wonderful and then I'll I'll find that I'll really struggle over the first like 25, 30 pages or 20 pages and think I'm just not going to get through this and all of a sudden I'm page 70, you know what I'm saying? And then you're done.
49:05
Uh something unlocks something and I never fight it, which I think is what happens with people.
49:09
It's like um when they get this fear of continuing, you know, on the blank page and all that stuff, writer's block.
49:16
Um I just change the weather.
49:20
Um and I'll just make it rain or snow and all of a sudden you look at it differently, you know?
49:23
Do you always change the weather for story or do you ever do something to change your condition to allow the change? >> I think I do both. Yeah.
49:30
I think that will lead me to do something differently. Yeah.
49:34
Like might you go for a drive or, you know, do something different instead of just sitting at the desk? That's exactly right.
49:40
Now, that's exactly right.
49:42
I'm very um hidebound and kind of this has to do with I think with being born in the late '40s and being a '50s and '60s kid and that uh look at it as a job in that way.
49:55
I mean I formally go to work.
49:55
I get up, you know, whatever time or same day as it's gotten earlier as I've gotten older and try to do the Marshall McLuhan thing, stretch out the amount of hours available.
50:05
>> [snorts] >> But it's this came for a little bit from John Cheever who I'd read got up at 7:00 or 6:30, got dressed, put his hat on, his tie on, his suit on, took the commuter train into New York, at rented a small basement I think basement or boiler kind of room place under apartment building where he
50:25
worked from, took his pants off, folded them really neatly, sat in his underwear, uh took his hat off, uh wrote wrote wrote wrote, 12:00 chime went off, got up, went and had a three martini lunch, came back, wrote till 4:00, put the suit back on, went to the computer, you know, took the computer train home. And so he
50:44
And so he felt that was a job.
50:46
I mean there's a lot I can A lot of artists do that, a lot don't, you know, so I don't think there's there's no rule for it.
50:51
Same way you asked about how do you [snorts] approach these things and what would you, you know, is everybody's different how they do it.
50:56
I think I'm sure you find every musician you work with is different, you know.
51:01
Can you work on more than one project at a time?
51:05
Try not to, but uh the good news would be if they start dovetailing where you're rewriting one and starting another, um the I have the next year pretty well laid out.
51:14
After that we'll see, you know.
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52:55
Does the breakthrough moment happen at the beginning of a project?
52:58
Like, let's say you're asked to adapt a book.
52:59
You read the book and as soon as you have an idea of this is my way in, is that the big breakthrough or does it happen later? It can do either.
53:09
Like, I read a book called Damnation Spring.
53:14
I was just looking at the book.
53:17
That I assumed it was going to be about something it quite wasn't, but I'm going to make it about what I thought it was going to be.
53:23
I thought it was about Yeah, I thought it was going to be about Moby Dick with the redwood trees.
53:26
It's about a It's about a logger and his sort of cantankerous kind of guy and cutting cutting down trees cutting down trees and it it's not quite the story and I wanted to make this guy be tall as redwood is his Moby Dick, you know, and eventually I don't want to give it away but what I think he does with this but uh I also like to or as I say God's in the details.
53:52
I love to go off on tangents like I want to do what a life of a tree is and why the tree survived nuclear holocaust and well how do trees how their roots join together and all these things we just don't see or know about, you know.
54:10
I was a book called Overstory spectacular that way about sort of like short stories about trees and things you never thought about and so I love that.
54:19
So that's part of the you know, the excitement of doing something new um and then there are other times you just kind of founder along and then all of a sudden something just hits you and you get it, you know, and you at least you think you get it you know, you don't know till it's all said and done and then you have to give it to somebody else and all that stuff but once you write fade out and you should feel pretty good for about an hour.
54:42
You know, and then then you then you think you [ __ ] the whole thing up and you think you could do it all over again, you know.
54:46
>> What's the typical length of time that you'll work on a script?
54:47
I used to work about a year.
54:49
I've cut that down just cuz I really want to get more things accomplished with limited time.
54:53
So I think it's like five six months now probably and that's probably shorter than I would rather but I think I have to and then I made the script shorter, too.
55:04
I used to do really long like 180, 90, 200 page scripts, you know.
55:07
Do you think in going from a year to five or six months for a script that the scripts have gotten better or worse? Mhm.
55:16
Uh I think it's the material, you know, probably some of it is just better cuz I think I've learned how as through experience learned how to say things which I before try to say in 17 different words and now could say twice and also have a certain I would say technique about how to uh tell who people are and identify their personality but but every every single thing I write does does does sort of give the same problem.
55:41
How you going to articulate this in best possible way and how you can tell the story and is the story going to mean anything?
55:49
I want it to mean something.
55:52
Not to just fill up space, you know.
55:54
>> Is every great movie about something bigger than what the story of the movie is? I think so. I think so.
55:59
I think it's something that's lasting.
56:01
Yeah, I think you've done something of value. I think that's true. I hope that's true.
56:06
Is the theme of the movie the same as the moral of the story?
56:11
Well, that's interesting.
56:11
Well, I happen to write toward theme and I think theme is most important rather than story.
56:19
Most people completely confuse story with theme.
56:22
But I think you also have to but you have to know what the thing is eventually going to be about.
56:24
Tell me what the theme is. That's why I'm asking. Is the theme the moral?
56:31
I would say I'd say that's a little facile.
56:32
I I think it's more than that.
56:34
Like I think it's uh I think it's what um makes something profound and not profound.
56:41
It's not for me to judge what's profound, you know.
56:42
I'd rather producers or lives to look at that, you know, but uh I know on Killers of the Flower Moon, Marty wanted to do this culpability about people being culpable with this destruction of these people. And how do we do that?
56:56
And so it's really interesting to figure out how to do that.
56:59
And I knew that made this thematically more than just the this murder mystery kind of thing.
57:06
This made it about the sort of sadness and the destruction and the quality of what human beings do to one another at the worst part and what could be the best, you know, what's justice and all that.
57:17
I mean, in other words, so I think it become it could become where you'd like to make it feel profound.
57:21
I mean, that's that's pretty arrogant.
57:23
It's make you think you know what that is, but at least you you to yourself you feel like I really said something here, you know.
57:31
Can the theme always be reduced to a couple of sentences? Should.
57:35
Should best of all, yeah. I think should.
57:38
Yeah, I guess that's another thing I really learned was uh you know, I was kid about less is more, less is more, less is more, less is more.
57:47
I think and I I would like to learn more about that, you know, I think still I probably overload my life and things I do, but maybe sitting being quiet is fine, too, you know.
57:57
I mean, my wife says that, you know.
58:01
She says, "Don't take somebody not answering you on a text meaning anything. It's just silence."
58:06
You know, and she's great that way.
58:10
And and I think I wish I wish I could get that, you know, that's it goes back to that validation.
58:13
What the hell, they didn't answer me back, you know?
58:17
And uh the silence is what I'd love to get to, you know, I think it That's that's what I think I'd like to lead to and maybe that's seems a little cliché about wanting how you want to end things, but I'd rather end quiet, you know, in a certain way.
58:32
Otherwise, it's just a [ __ ] noise, man. It just seems too much.
58:34
Do you watch a lot of movies?
58:36
Every yeah, I watch like every day almost.
58:41
And I like I'm going to go today.
58:41
I go like once or twice a week. Um yeah, I love them.
58:45
I mean, even if I don't like them, I like something about it.
58:48
I like sitting at theater.
58:50
Big [snorts] screen, I like something, you know, 40 ft.
58:51
I mean, it's not that I don't watch movie on television, my phone like anybody else, but uh yeah, I love to I love that moment where something really moves you or a sound, I mean, I remember in All Quiet on the Western Front last year, it was a sound of uh just uh music, I'm sure it was music.
59:07
Um as they were going to battle or something, it was so profound.
59:12
I mean, it's I profound is used too much, but it was it just so soaked into your inside you and your vertebra, you know, it's like that sound was so powerful.
59:24
I mean, I'm I'm such a wish I I guess if I had two things that I didn't do in life, I wish I'd become a novelist, but I was always afraid.
59:31
And I wish I had the ability to do music.
59:33
I think I think musicians as I said to Greg um are the most non-judgmental people.
59:38
I don't know if you feel that way, but uh non-judgmental, carry their art with them, uh don't really care much mostly about race of anybody um just want to make want that music to sound, you know, when it's it's just transcendent to me.
59:53
I don't know really how to just I could describe it, you know, and you know and you know how.
1:00:00
>> There's always uh grass is always greener.
1:00:02
I know that actors always wish they were musicians and most musicians wish that they were actors. Really? Is that true?
1:00:08
I didn't know that about musicians.
1:00:09
I never I knew I never knew a musician wasn't basically except for whatever their you know, problems with drugs or whatever else trying to recreate experiences and get that feeling all the time uh I never knew they wanted to be actors.
1:00:21
I thought they were pretty happy with what they did, you know, if if they're successful.
1:00:25
If you're not successful, it's a whole different world.
1:00:28
Have you ever been asked to work on an adaptation and read the book and just felt like I don't see a way into this?
1:00:34
I well, I've done it slightly differently.
1:00:36
I've started it and I realized I can't do it and I sent the money back.
1:00:39
I've done that like five, six times. Mhm.
1:00:41
And not because of the quality of the book, it just didn't I just I thought I saw something in it that I just didn't ever see and then I never thought it went went where I'd like it to go, I guess, which might be just my arrogance, not the books. Yeah.
1:00:54
And then the other way around, are there ever times where you'll see something that you think it's either not good or doesn't have much potential and then it turns into something really great without your involvement?
1:01:02
Yeah, most times actually, but but the famous quotes are bad books and bad plays make great movies.
1:01:11
So, uh yeah, cuz they sort of you know, sort of people ignored them.
1:01:17
And I would give Forrest Gump that.
1:01:17
I mean, the book to me, I I rest his soul, the man who wrote it.
1:01:20
Um but uh it's just farcical, you know, sort of silly.
1:01:25
And um I'm not sure I made anything more than silly, but at least it had a heart to it, you know?
1:01:31
Was it a popular book before the movie? No. Not much.
1:01:32
And how did you come to the book?
1:01:35
I came to the book through um I worked with Tom Hanks on a what turned out to be a really bad movie that we were had a whole different approach to, which was called The Postman, which was a post-apocalypse thing that uh I tried to do as Candide.
1:01:52
What he had four mules and he said they were called John, George, Ringo, and I don't know, Sarah.
1:01:59
You know what I'm saying? And uh and it was funny. It was sarcastic.
1:02:02
It was supposed to be sort of like Lilliput. It was like Gulliver.
1:02:06
And he's in this, you know, dystopian world and he's supposed to be an ex-postman.
1:02:11
And so it had this kind of whole tongue-in-cheek look to it and also I I liked it.
1:02:15
I don't know if it was any good, but uh then 10 years down the line, um uh Kevin Costner made a made a very serious movie out of it and it I won a Razzie, which means you made the worst movie of the year.
1:02:30
>> [laughter] >> So uh yeah, I don't think you can quite know, you know, but uh it's it has to I mean, to me, and especially now, it really has to speak to me in some way that I feel like it can be additive to it, you know?
1:02:43
There's no point in just uh retyping it.
1:02:46
So did Tom bring you the book? Is that how it started?
1:02:48
No, uh um the woman who uh had the book of The Postman also owned Forrest Gump.
1:02:54
And they had tried a couple scripts with the author and somebody else who won of the studios and she said, "What do you think of this?"
1:03:03
And I said, "Well, I like the way it transports you over the years and his kind of constant belief in God and the girl, Jenny, and his mother, you know, it's kind of interesting."
1:03:13
And him being challenged, which we couldn't do anymore.
1:03:16
But uh I thought maybe I could say some things about how I felt about where I grew up and how I grew up and what the turmoil was in the world and and then the director's a stick in your eye kind of guy, but equal opportunity stick in your eye and he doesn't care if you're Democrat, progressive.
1:03:33
He puts, you know, Marilyn Monroe's picture in the bathroom of the White House, that kind of thing with the Kennedys and he just didn't care, you know, and I think the thing struck a nerve though and even though I don't think uh it's it's it's funny how that movie lasted, boy.
1:03:47
It's kind of amazing, you know.
1:03:50
People really really grew to that. But you don't know. You don't know.
1:03:55
But as long as it occupies it occupies sort of the most important part of your life in that way.
1:04:00
I mean, equal with your children and wife and everything.
1:04:05
That's how when you get up, you can't wait to go.
1:04:09
I like to um I like to be able to know what I'm going to write the next day.
1:04:15
So not to be anxious about it.
1:04:15
So I I won't won't write that.
1:04:17
But I'll just sort of, you know, sort of scrap it out and then be ready to write it the next day so I know I have something to start with, you know.
1:04:26
Yeah, I have almost the opposite, I think.
1:04:29
I like having a schedule where I'm showing up to do something.
1:04:34
But if I think too much about what it is that I'm doing, then I'm already working on it before I get there and then it undermines it.
1:04:39
So >> Wow, that's interesting.
1:04:41
So I >> Yeah, I try to keep it distance from the work when I'm not in the moment with it. >> Nice, I love that.
1:04:48
I mean, I I I would be afraid of that.
1:04:50
I would be afraid I wouldn't be able to get back into it or something.
1:04:54
I don't know that wouldn't carry over.
1:04:55
Yeah, I like that feeling of coming to it new. I love that. Wow.
1:05:00
>> Every day like I've never seen it or heard it before. Wow. Wow.
1:05:02
But I do See, I'm so hidebound that I'm opposite of you completely is that I read from page one every day. Wow.
1:05:10
So I think you >> something >> to that though because context really is everything and if you understand the the flow of the information, I imagine it would be easier to continue it than to just pick it up where you left off.
1:05:24
Yeah, so it's like I just was looking here that I want him I'm going to put into this particular Rama thing that I want him to his opening line to be I am a navigator.
1:05:35
So, I love that what that what that could mean, you know.
1:05:36
could mean, you know. I said >> Yeah, I haven't thought about it, you know, and then all of a sudden I said, well, that unlocks a bunch of things, you know, which what this guy wants to do and and I have a thing with him where his wife supposedly had died and he went back in the service and but people live they can live to 140 and such it's supposed to be 2130 but
1:05:56
anyway, she said you'll see me in your dreams and he hasn't seen her in his dreams until he gets into a certain part of this alien ship they get into that has a water feature to it and he gets in the water and all of a sudden it it opens up all these other things like a hallucinogenic kind of thing where he starts to you know, seeing her and I think it could be beautiful. I think
1:06:14
I think it'd be beautiful. That sounds great.
1:06:16
I like also someone saying you'll see me in your dreams. It's beautiful.
1:06:21
>> I say somebody said that in a song, I think.
1:06:24
I think I think in a song, yeah.
1:06:27
Yeah, I get a lot from the music.
1:06:27
Um one of the ones I took was um I don't know the group's name, you probably know where he says over and over I can't take my eyes off of you.
1:06:38
Yeah, it's a really good song.
1:06:38
I like >> yeah, I just love that.
1:06:39
It's a standard so there's so many different versions of it.
1:06:43
I'm not sure which is like the >> Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.
1:06:46
>> It this one was not somebody group I knew but he says it like 30 times in a row, you know, and [snorts] I use that in um this thing I did with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright where he first time he looks at her and says, I can't take my eyes off of you.
1:07:01
So, I know that's a good romance line, you know.
1:07:05
How does poetry work its way into your work?
1:07:09
>> [sighs] >> Well, I'm really well read and I'm really interested in what the words are one in front of the other, you know, how do people why do people put these in this order?
1:07:19
And some are so much better at it than others, you know, and that the poetry to me I think is a sense of feeling that it's the same sort of soaring you get uh and then starting to believe that maybe this actually is poetry.
1:07:33
I don't know if it is, but uh you start feeling like it could be, you know, which is pretty freeing.
1:07:41
That you you're now writing something and but it that can either dovetail or can conflict with the director.
1:07:49
Some love you to try to be as uh expansive as you can be with prose and poetry and others don't like it.
1:07:55
I mean, they feel like it it inhibits their process.
1:08:02
And for instance, David Fincher is as I say, I think he's a he's a savant in some kind. He's just a genius.
1:08:07
But he likes things really logical.
1:08:09
He wants you to follow A and like that and you have to explain to him why it isn't. And I like that, too.
1:08:16
I mean, I think that that that really presses you into rethinking what you thought you could just sort of willy-nilly throw out there, you know, to the universe and then for him he needs to understand it and that that it makes some sense what you put and adds to something else.
1:08:32
While others are much more gracious and saying go for it, you know, Marty Marty's that way.
1:08:38
Marty'll let you if you want to write the movie backwards, just let's try it, you know. Let's try it, yeah.
1:08:43
Directors are interesting people.
1:08:45
Tell me about the different styles of the directors you've gotten to work with. How different are they?
1:08:50
What do they expect from you and what are they like to work with?
1:08:52
Well, Marty is Marty's very generous during the writing process, a little more reclusive when he's about to go make it. So he then takes over.
1:09:01
I think he inhabits the movie then that I think it's part of my job to have them understand the movie that they're going to make oddly, you know.
1:09:09
In other words, this is what I can tell you I think it is and whatever you can add to that would be amazing, you know, if you have a point of view. Fincher's rough.
1:09:18
We argue like crazy, but um he he has he has something in mind that I want to try to get to for him.
1:09:25
Tell me about an argument.
1:09:25
Like what's the kind of thing you would argue about?
1:09:28
He would say to me he'd read it back to me and say, "This makes no sense."
1:09:32
And I say, "What do you think everything you say to me makes sense?"
1:09:35
You know, we'd get That's how we'd have an argument.
1:09:36
And he says, "Well, that's just your writer in you thinking you're going to bring out words that are going to you know, somehow attribute back to you."
1:09:46
It may get very personal.
1:09:46
He also I know he knows he knows things about me with the validation stuff.
1:09:50
He'd say, "Oh, you want to win an Oscar." Whatever it is.
1:09:53
But no, we would I'd sit behind him during Mank and he would turn around, "What do you think?"
1:09:57
And I say, "Well, I don't know, Dave. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba."
1:10:01
And he'd say, "Well, you're wrong about that, you know."
1:10:02
But we kind of fight it out and get to where we I mean, we always love each other.
1:10:05
He's most loyal man I know. Most loyal man I know. So, he's that way.
1:10:10
Um Denis is very visionary.
1:10:13
He said that he felt that I was the kind of the spiritual quality of Dune, you know, cuz I I I got that hallucinogenic you know, that whole tribal thing.
1:10:25
Um and uh early I worked with a man named Bob Mulligan who did Kill a Mockingbird.
1:10:31
He was very generous guy.
1:10:31
Those guys in that era were very um sort of Playhouse 90, if you remember that, or television. Yes.
1:10:39
That's what they were steeped in.
1:10:43
Uh and I'm not talking about deep theater.
1:10:44
I'm not talking about Glass Menagerie or something, but uh they got um telling drama dramatic stories from stage plays in a way who their television shows.
1:10:55
Stuart Rosenberg was another one.
1:10:57
Um Uh he did Cool Hand Luke and uh he he was one who introduced me to Paul Newman, who I became friends with for life.
1:11:04
I was I I walked on the set when I was like 19 or 20 with my They needed rewriting and went down to Lafayette, Louisiana, and I bought a new pair of corduroys and I had a new briefcase and Paul said, "Our savior's here."
1:11:18
>> [laughter] >> I don't think so.
1:11:20
But we were friends for life then, you know.
1:11:22
And I I stay friends with a lot of these people.
1:11:24
I like to maintain relationships with them.
1:11:26
I think uh they all uh expand my universe, I think, you know.
1:11:31
And uh in my in a main, a few are a little toxic.
1:11:34
You you were saying about scripted versus ad-libbing earlier when you were talking about um A Star Is Born.
1:11:41
And in a way, it sounds like it stemmed from an ad-lib.
1:11:45
You got them to talk to you, and then you organized it and refined it, but it starts with an ad-lib.
1:11:53
>> Start No, you're 100% right, and I think it started more with Bradley Cooper first directing assignment, and not really I'm not saying he doesn't know music, but he it's not his life.
1:12:05
He wanted to um portray a character that he created.
1:12:10
Uh which I I suggested him he should use Sam Elliott's voice.
1:12:13
That's the the huskiness that he kind of has there.
1:12:18
So, I think I was going along I I rewrote that.
1:12:20
I mean, cuz what they gave me, I just didn't like, and I said, "I have to start from scratch."
1:12:23
And I said, "I'll do it really fast, but we'll do it together."
1:12:26
So, at 3:00 in the morning, we were changing, you know, but there was that ad-lib stuff, you're right.
1:12:29
It was or the improvisation probably better than ad-lib.
1:12:35
Uh improvisational quality of it, but also it had an accuracy, cuz Lady Gaga knows what that life is.
1:12:41
Bradley maybe doesn't know it to that extent.
1:12:43
>> I was going to say, other than the dialogue, how much descriptive writing do you do in a script? >> A lot. Probably too much.
1:12:50
Probably too much, but I think it Some directors like it cuz it establishes a tone.
1:12:58
It gives kind of wonderful, I think, visual possibilities.
1:13:00
I just wrote I realized I was reading a thing I'd written about um James Cook, the uh navigator, the explorer.
1:13:11
And uh I was writing something about that he had he had docked his ship somewhere in the Antarctic and but letting the men have um a Christmas Eve celebration and they got cold and they went down below and he stayed up and he sang he started singing Silent Night by himself, but I thought I love that.
1:13:29
But I said I don't know if I have the boat right and so I looked at the boats and I forgot they had those oil lamps.
1:13:34
So I put the oil lamps in, you know, and they're like rocking and I said that somehow refers to it and then we cut from that to the spaceship in 20 129 that's kind of a junky ship.
1:13:44
It's supposed to be a workship. But it's very sterile.
1:13:51
Um and the people inside are very sterile and they're like monkish almost because they go for 7 months without doing anything and they're supposed to be putting these beacons up on asteroids to warn people about the asteroids coming.
1:14:04
Anyway, uh it's quite different than the the oil lanterns, you know. Um so I love that.
1:14:09
Yeah, so I do put a lot of put a lot of uh pros in there, but I think it's my uh my downfall in the sense of cuz I want to be a novelist, so this is the way I can do it.
1:14:20
People still let me do it.
1:14:22
They don't let most other writers do it anymore.
1:14:25
But I think it it does impart to the director what I think it's going to look like.
1:14:28
Some get annoyed, say why do you have to just talk so much? So I said, "Okay."
1:14:32
In an adaptation, how close do you feel like you need to stay to the original material?
1:14:37
Depends on how good I think the original material is, you know?
1:14:41
And then then there's the other side of um what does the audience expect?
1:14:48
And don't know that somebody's there.
1:14:50
Somebody's You're looking at somebody.
1:14:52
No, I thought I saw a I saw a feather out the window. It's strange. >> Oh, I love that. Oh, that's not strange. That's far as Gump.
1:15:00
Well, it was a bird, but it was just a feather.
1:15:02
So, maybe it was a bird holding a feather, but I couldn't see the bird.
1:15:06
I could just see the feather.
1:15:06
I was like, that's strange. That's interesting. I like that. >> beautiful. Yeah.
1:15:11
I just put up a hummingbird feeder yesterday.
1:15:13
I'm a big >> hummingbird person. Beautiful.
1:15:15
And yeah, I I I put I had at my window at the where I lived in Malibu um in the colony there.
1:15:21
I had a window that I didn't look at the beach cuz that's too distracting to me.
1:15:25
I was looking at a tree and these hummingbirds just kept coming and coming and my parents died that particular year and somehow my mother somehow related to me hummingbird and I I put it in Benjamin Button where David let it stay where Brad Pitt's on the sea like the Atlantic Ocean and he's just been he's there on a tugboat and got crashed by a submarine, which was true story.
1:15:49
And he was uh on now like a a boat that he was safe and he looked down and he saw a hummingbird come up out of the sea and he said, "How did that get here?" You know?
1:15:58
And I know how it got there.
1:15:58
It's like a Robert Hunter lyric, right?
1:16:02
>> [laughter] >> Like, where did that come from?
1:16:06
So, uh yeah, that's the um adaptation part of it. Yeah. Are you superstitious?
1:16:13
I am to a certain extent. Are you? I don't think so.
1:16:16
I think I may have I may have been at times.
1:16:18
I don't think I am right now.
1:16:21
But most people don't think they're superstitious even though they're superstitious about things. It's kind of funny.
1:16:27
They they think that's science in some way. I I like to gamble. So, I play horses.
1:16:32
So, I'm superstitious about that a little bit.
1:16:35
>> go to the track on a regular basis? >> once a once a week.
1:16:37
And I sit with guys who are 800 years old.
1:16:40
What's the first time you went to the track?
1:16:42
Uh my grandfather, little Russian man, barely spoke English, spoke Yiddish, uh and I spoke Yiddish at the time.
1:16:49
And uh uh he would take me He had four loves in his life.
1:16:53
He loved boxing, which I did. I fought.
1:16:55
And uh uh he loved the horses.
1:16:57
I'd go with him when I was like 6 7 years old. He loved baseball.
1:17:00
We'd go stand on an apple box at Ebbets Field. And he loved fishing.
1:17:05
And I still love fishing.
1:17:05
So, did you grow up on the East Coast? Yeah, Brooklyn.
1:17:08
I wasn't For some reason, I thought you grew up on the West Coast. Bedford-Stuyvesant. Mhm. To a certain extent.
1:17:14
Then I went to high school out here.
1:17:16
Has there ever been a window where you've stepped away from horse racing, or has it been a continuance since 6 or 7 years old?
1:17:21
I think I stayed with it the whole time, yeah. It's amazing.
1:17:27
>> Yeah, but I But I like I like um But that's That would That would be superstitious stuff.
1:17:30
I like all sports, I guess.
1:17:32
So, um But I I think I am superstitious to a certain extent about some things.
1:17:36
I'm not OCD about You know, I won't count steps backwards or anything.
1:17:43
But I think I am Yeah, I'm interested that you're not.
1:17:45
That's kind of interesting, but I'd love to know what you think of magic and stuff, you know, which is close to superstition.
1:17:49
Well, I believe in magic. So, I don't know.
1:17:53
>> Yeah, I think you might. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
1:17:55
I don't know what uh It's like some Someone I can't remember who told me this believes in thing called manifestation, that if you manifest things, you can make them come true. And maybe that's true. Well, I think we do. Yeah, I guess we do.
1:18:08
We can vision these lives, and they've appeared, and it's unbelievable. Doesn't make sense.
1:18:15
No, it makes no sense, but you're able to inhabit them, you know?
1:18:19
And that's how I feel about characters I write.
1:18:21
I'm able to inhabit them, even though I may not know much about them, except for the psychological thing that everybody has is different, you know?
1:18:27
And some things I don't understand, because I don't understand the person, but uh I try to make him not understandable into some extent, but then you find that the character may understand himself better than you think you did. Those kind of things.
1:18:41
I think there's a reality to writing these things, you know.
1:18:42
Is it harder to write for women?
1:18:44
Probably is, but I haven't found it to be.
1:18:47
I mean, I think they all have the same properties. I mean, I I don't know.
1:18:51
Then we get into the whole sexual conversations with themes and I don't know if men or women I don't think men or women are the same that way particularly, but I think I've written a lot of good women.
1:19:01
I mean, I think that the you know, I I think I wrote a beautiful character with Cate Blanchett in Benjamin Button where she's a ballerina, you know, I thought it was pretty lovely.
1:19:11
And but I always infuse these things with time.
1:19:13
Like in that was like sort of the sliding doors idea where if something didn't happen and another thing didn't happen and another thing didn't happen, then she wouldn't have been hit by a cab, you know, that kind of thing. And I love that.
1:19:25
I love the randomness of things.
1:19:27
And I did the same thing in Forrest Gump, you know, is he just flying around and or is it destiny?
1:19:30
I don't know the answer to any of that.
1:19:33
So, maybe I believe in magic.
1:19:34
You're probably right, you know. Yeah.
1:19:36
I remember in Forrest Gump, I don't know if they were reenactments or actual old footages. Do you remember?
1:19:42
Those were old footages, yeah.
1:19:44
Did you write it in the script that we're going to use this footage from this event?
1:19:48
In some cases I didn't some I they they researched what what that what would happen.
1:19:52
Like I I had for instance his uh he's supposed to have been an All-American and with a University of Alabama they won the national title or something and so he went and visited Kennedy, you know, and I have him visit him John uh Lyndon Johnson as a veteran from Vietnam and he he got shot in the butt and Lyndon Johnson makes a joke out of it.
1:20:13
The interesting thing about that was that um that was all brand new technique.
1:20:16
The only one who had done anything like it was Woody Allen in Zelig.
1:20:22
So, Bob Zemeckis sort of perfected this, but if you look at it now, it's so rudimentary.
1:20:26
It's it's still silly, you know.
1:20:29
But he's always that this thing here has a whole longer conversation for us about basic about AI, but this first this deep fake stuff.
1:20:39
Um where they the movie will have Tom and Robin Wright off stage say, "Hi Mom and Dad, this is Margaret."
1:20:46
And they'll walk into the living room and they'll both be they'll be 22 years old.
1:20:52
Tom will look like he's right out of Big and she'll look like she's out of um Princess Bride.
1:20:56
So, I don't I don't know the morality of all that gets real tricky.
1:21:01
Um I don't know how the I'm also curious how this will affect music.
1:21:03
Had you seen Zelig and realized I can use this technique in Forrest Gump?
1:21:08
It's a really radical idea.
1:21:10
This guy can be in these different places and we can use actual footage.
1:21:15
Yeah, I'm pretty visual and I thought, "Well, I think we can do this."
1:21:19
Yeah, I think if someone knows how to do it, um yeah, we can put him in that scene.
1:21:23
And even worse, I know no one's quite done it, but I could put words in people's mouths and have them or said.
1:21:31
So, John Kennedy could have said, "I love Hitler."
1:21:32
You know what I'm saying to him, whisper to him.
1:21:35
Um and it's obviously you're you're taking liberties there, but uh yeah, we had whatever he said and he laughs and this and that.
1:21:41
So, they they they linked it to something that was part of a another all-American ceremony and then they just put him in there, you know.
1:21:50
Yeah, I don't know how I envisioned that.
1:21:52
It just happened, you know.
1:21:52
It's just a something that came out of the blue.
1:21:55
It's a radical idea and I think it's as significant in the long-term success of the movie as anything else about it. >> Oh, no question. No question, yeah. Oh, I think so.
1:22:07
And that's magical again.
1:22:10
Yeah, we just had never seen anything like it before and that idea of seeing a fictitious character in a familiar real-world situation is very interesting.
1:22:21
Yeah, it's very odd and there was a Do you remember the comedian on the radio, Phil Henry? Yes.
1:22:25
Yes, he did all those kind of different voices.
1:22:30
He was kind of something nasty, a little racist, but somebody called me and said, "You need to listen to Phil Henry tonight." So, why did I say?
1:22:36
He said, "He's announcing Forrest Gump is dead."
1:22:39
>> [laughter] >> So, I said, I joined in and I said, "I am the writer of Forrest Gump."
1:22:43
And yeah, we're sad to say.
1:22:44
And I see Quentin Tarantino just that that that with uh um Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the character that um Leonardo played, he said he was dead.
1:22:56
>> [laughter] >> He that he had died.
1:22:59
So, sometimes yes, confusing what's real, what isn't.
1:23:02
What are your all-time favorite movies as a fan?
1:23:03
Uh I love a movie called Amarcord um that Fellini made. It's like a dream.
1:23:12
Um 2001 is probably my most favorite.
1:23:16
Godfather II, probably the ones that are traditionally, you know, that most people would uh I was talking yesterday with somebody um I used to when I was young, much younger, I loved the movie Giant.
1:23:26
Thought that just summed everything up uh for big movies and I watch it again, it's not very good, you know.
1:23:31
But, there's that James Dean being heroic and climbing up and getting oil and Elizabeth Taylor and there's something very American about it.
1:23:40
I'm I'm very American in my own way.
1:23:42
I love I love things about America what that are uh I think it's very moving about um people who put their lives in jeopardy and and then there's an ideal that we uh we used to have and I hope we still have. I don't know.
1:23:57
We have a a very rural place in Montana and I'll talk to these guys and we have completely different points of view and fortunately we get over them, you know, just so we can have other things to talk about, but uh it's just it's a shame the country is so uh divided about the things that we all care about.
1:24:15
I don't know what that's all I don't know what's happened, you know, is it there's so much hatred and racism and everything else, you know.
1:24:20
Are there any things that you firmly believed when you were young that now you've gone 180 on?
1:24:27
Yeah, I think well, my parents were both dyed-in-the-wool communists. I was a red diaper baby.
1:24:33
I can't tell you the number of times we stood in the rain to free the Rosenbergs and I think [clears throat] their their intentions were only good, but they they forgave the same fault to those people that, you know, you have to you have to forgive all sorts of things and my dad was a communist till his dying day and he he thought even Stalin was pretty great, you know.
1:24:52
So, those are those are things that just don't resonate anymore that way.
1:24:56
I think as American Communist Party members, they probably had some good beliefs about sort of socialism, you know, that you know, who how can you help people?
1:25:08
And I think that was good.
1:25:09
The other thing is this um since I've had had cancer and stuff, I'm not afraid of dying, but I am I am so interested in what I thought was kind of constant and they're not it's not anymore about as you get older, what what are these things that come toward the end of things and what can you expect and what you can't and I think I probably earlier on felt, well, you know, maybe it's X, Y, or Z.
1:25:36
I even thought the other day we were in London and outside of London in a this beautiful old cathedral, 19th century or something and I said, "What if it was all true?
1:25:45
That maybe all this was it wasn't Jeez, I mean, maybe that never mind that.
1:25:51
Maybe all Buddhism to whatever it is that all what we think is just you know, made up mythology, but what if some of it's true?
1:25:58
I mean, maybe it could be. So, why not? Why not open your mind?
1:26:02
I remember Tom Hanks once yelling at me.
1:26:04
We were having he was a evangelical, I think early on in his life and we were talking about religion and I was saying something kind of atheistic and kind of adamant about it and he said, "How do you know?"
1:26:18
>> [laughter] >> And I said, "I don't know.
1:26:19
I I don't know why I think I know."
1:26:21
And I think that's the big difference, you know, you assume you know so much and then all That's your ego and narcissism and all and then you find out you are wrong about many things.
1:26:30
It's like you know, I used to love to This was before TSA and all, but I I followed um Joan Didion in the sense of I was actually friendly with her and John.
1:26:42
But she would sit in airports and write about people as they came off of planes.
1:26:46
That's how she would design characters and I did that for a little bit.
1:26:50
And then you realize, well, you're wrong about these people, you know, you you have certain ideas you're going to create. Yeah, it's a fantasy. Yeah. Yeah.
1:26:57
It's fun to do, but you're just always surprised you're judging a book by its cover and you figure this tattooed beast and and then all of a sudden they start talking about Keats or something, you know, it's like, what the hell?
1:27:12
>> [laughter] >> I love that.
1:27:13
I remember we were um Tupac Shakur came in to actually read for Forrest Gump to play Bubba.
1:27:22
I I don't didn't know who he was and he Then he was renting a house in the colony and he was sitting on the stoop and he said, "Mr. Roth."
1:27:28
I said He came over and I said, "How are you?"
1:27:30
And I knew he was Tupac Shakur at that time and he said, "You don't remember I had tried out for that."
1:27:36
I said, "Why would you try out for that?" He said, "I don't know.
1:27:39
I wanted to try something different.
1:27:39
I wanted to find out who I was and this and that."
1:27:42
And there you go, book by the cover, you know.
1:27:44
And then here's this great artist, yeah.
1:27:46
Great great artist, yeah.
1:27:49
Did you ever see Unforgiven?
1:27:49
Oh, yeah, I love that movie.
1:27:52
Yeah, I love the writer, David Peoples.
1:27:55
He wrote Blade Runner also. I know. He's an amazing writer.
1:27:58
And then I rewrote him on Munich.
1:28:00
And I know him quite well. He's about my age.
1:28:02
He's an incredible writer.
1:28:04
There used to be a whole world of screenwriters that were only screenwriters, not writer-directors.
1:28:10
So, there's very few left.
1:28:10
but Bo Goldman was probably one of the better writers ever.
1:28:16
Uh he he won an Oscar for Harold and Melvin and for Cuckoo's Nest.
1:28:19
We call it by both sides of the plate. Yeah.
1:28:25
One of the things that was interesting I remember when I saw Unforgiven, I bring it up because up until then in a Western you expected the good guy was a clear-cut good guy and all of the attributes he had was noble and the bad guy was the bad guy and he was evil.
1:28:40
And Unforgiven broke that mold where >> Completely. Yeah.
1:28:45
And it feels like maybe everything changed since then.
1:28:50
That idea of just the good guy versus the bad guy, maybe that became obsolete with that movie. I think it probably did.
1:28:57
I mean, uh to some extent except for that big act super action heroes and you know, so I don't know.
1:29:03
Uh you know, those were the black hat and the white hat.
1:29:04
You wear the white hat, you're the hero. Black hat, you're not.
1:29:07
I tried to write a movie for Clint Eastwood, a Western, his last Western and Bradley Cooper got me involved in Um he said the only thing I don't want is you to do a sequel to the Unforgiven.
1:29:19
And I said, "I get that."
1:29:21
So, what I did was invent him as a an ex-outlaw that that's supposed to be 1906 at the San Francisco right after the San Francisco earthquake and he's a kind of policeman in in quote Chinatown for that era and um somebody comes back cuz he'd been an outlaw in the olden days who he supposedly killed the person's father
1:29:44
and he came back and stabs him in this and that and then he says he's dying and they they they they have this whole journey to take him home and what happens along the way these people and Bradley Cooper plays his son, but the big point of it was he's he's completely full of [ __ ] He'd never been an outlaw. And he created this whole myth for
1:30:00
And he created this whole myth for himself.
1:30:03
And so when you have to when he had to get in trouble kind of it at the toward the end of this.
1:30:07
He got himself out of it by being brave.
1:30:10
And he didn't have to make up a story.
1:30:12
But I love the I love the whole idea.
1:30:14
They sort of to Clint, he said, "Oh my god, the idea of just pretending you're somebody and everybody giving you, you know, your props for that and turns out to be feet of clay, you know? Yeah.
1:30:26
Pretty But it turns around. It's beautiful. Beautiful. >> I did at the end.
1:30:29
I turned it around for him. Yeah. Yeah.
1:30:30
Would you say every story is a love story? Yes, 100%.
1:30:37
Yeah, I mean, I think what is the only thing we can't define? Love.
1:30:43
I mean, it's the probably the most primordial important thing there is, probably, right?
1:30:50
I don't know if you can define I can't define it. Maybe other people can.
1:30:52
How far can you stray from the archetypical Hollywood movies happy ending romantic tension conflict?
1:31:01
Are those rules to follow or can you break those rules?
1:31:07
Well, I think you can break any rule.
1:31:09
But I think you always will end up oddly with the same Shakespearean structure.
1:31:15
Like the perfect example is Pulp Fiction.
1:31:17
He told the story backwards and forwards and but he still had to have a beginning, a middle that has a beginning that states the problem, a middle that exacerbates it, has a catharsis which leads you to the ending.
1:31:31
And so, I think it's harder to do that.
1:31:33
But I think as we modernize things like the great Charlie Kaufman would do um things like Adaptation where he's uh adapting the adaptation and making it part of his life and his brother's life or an imagined brother or I mean, so it's wonderful complications or Sunshine of the Eternal Spotless Mind, all that.
1:31:56
And but you still have this I always found at least even in those I could tell you the structure of them, you know?
1:32:00
So, I think that's a constant. I guess it has to be. Maybe it has to be.
1:32:06
But the ending stuff, I think the only truth about I think in love stories that you should end where things are not resolved.
1:32:14
That where they they feel either broken-hearted.
1:32:17
Very rarely are happy love stories.
1:32:20
You want to have a bittersweet ending where somebody can't resolve it and you can't bring it to fruition.
1:32:26
Whether someone dies or someone leaves or you want to sort of wish fulfillment hoping that they in another world.
1:32:33
I also believe So, here's magic.
1:32:35
I believe that Francis Coppola and I were talking about this that great movies just continue great books, plays, music, whatever inhabit you and it's like they they live on the other side of the moon and they're all continuing their lives.
1:32:50
That the Godfather people are all out doing whatever they do and whatever movies you love.
1:32:58
And they're there and you can always just go pick them up and put them in back in your pockets, you know. And I love that idea. It's beautiful.
1:33:07
>> I I was once going to didn't work out too well, but I I did Cat in the Hat.
1:33:13
And I started that he was one of these kind of magical creatures that lived on the other side of the moon and would get a phone call, we need your help kind of thing, you know.
1:33:22
But the only thing I loved about that script was I think it was a good script all together, but I rhymed every word like a like a Seuss book. You know, I love it.
1:33:30
Was it going to be animated or not? No, no.
1:33:32
No, it was live action and they ended up doing a really I I thought bad movie with Jim Carrey.
1:33:36
Just over the top stuff, but what I made it was primal that the mother was pregnant and the children were very jealous and afraid of what was coming into the house and so the Thing One and Thing Two, you know, all this stuff.
1:33:53
Thing One and Thing Two, all that. It's kind of great. Yeah, it's kind of fun.
1:33:56
Tell me about the old days in New York, the experimental film world. Oh, I love that.
1:34:00
I was really part of that.
1:34:03
I was going to NYU film school and I gravitated down to Well, actually I was an English major to begin with at Columbia, but gravitated down to this everything was on Alphabet City, you know, below St.
1:34:13
Mark's Place and uh Bob Downey Jr.
1:34:18
, Ed Emshwiller, all these people doing these things in place called Millennium Film Workshop where you could just move around rooms and Was this in the '60s? Uh like '68, '67, '65. Yeah, that whole era.
1:34:31
Andy Warhol, you know, some of his people were there. Um I knew some of them.
1:34:37
I know Moriarty and a few other people, but um I knew Bob Downey I worked for on like four movies. They were all insane. Bob Downey Sr.
1:34:46
And uh Uh but all these really interesting artists, but they it's interesting how they just disappeared.
1:34:53
I don't know some just got old, obviously, but there were continuation I think a lot about from, you know, Jack Kerouac and all that Cassidy. >> Beatniks. >> Yeah.
1:35:04
Yeah, Beatniks basically.
1:35:04
That's like Bob's in here his mother was a Beatnik.
1:35:09
You know, she always wore black and that whole thing.
1:35:11
How has the movie business changed over the course of your life?
1:35:16
Well, the the loss of theaters.
1:35:16
I mean, the idea that not to watch a movie in a theater is the most important thing.
1:35:22
After that would be there used to be personal relationships.
1:35:26
You mean, I didn't like the people, but you sort of knew everybody.
1:35:28
There was a lot less content providers.
1:35:29
There were probably seven, whatever the big studios were.
1:35:33
Was it just a smaller business overall?
1:35:36
>> Smaller world, felt like high school.
1:35:38
But now it's a big high school.
1:35:40
You sort of knew your place in it, what you wanted to get to, all that.
1:35:42
Um But you know, if uh I just now I had this happen recently that if somebody decided not to do a project of yours saying, "I'm I'm going to pass on this, right?"
1:35:54
They would call you up and tell you why, you know, and or it's just not for me, it's not my cup Even if that's simple, might not my cup of tea.
1:36:00
You would have They would have But we I would appreciate you trying, you know, that kind of thing.
1:36:05
Now, you never hear from anybody.
1:36:07
It's just your agent says they're not going to do it.
1:36:11
You know, the personality That's me. That's how I felt.
1:36:13
I mean, It feels like less of a human business. Yeah, exactly.
1:36:18
More commerce than Yeah, and it's become even the rallying cry, which is a sad, is that everybody says nothing matters.
1:36:27
And that's that's tragedy to me.
1:36:29
I'm sorry, cuz I think it should matter, you know.
1:36:31
What you're doing, what you're saying, even if it's not my cup of tea, it doesn't matter, you know.
1:36:38
Write the best action movie, write the best Star Wars, whatever you want to do. It's just I don't know.
1:36:43
I don't know what I don't know about the younger people.
1:36:45
The way I wish I had I My son's young, he's a What he's a director now, and my other son's a wonderful writer, and they have different looks at things, you know.
1:36:55
When you're writing a character, do you typically have an actor in mind to play it? Not mostly. No, I don't know.
1:37:01
I don't like to do that too much.
1:37:03
Sometimes I mean, it's part and parcel of the deal.
1:37:05
Like I knew Tom Hanks was going to be Forrest Gump, so he was great because he could go in and pitch the thing.
1:37:12
He said, "I'm sitting on a bench."
1:37:13
And they'll do all that stuff as an actor.
1:37:16
I would prefer I have a general idea, general idea.
1:37:19
And then you got to get more >> Is that a common thing for an actor and a writer to get together and put something together and then pitch that as opposed to coming from a director?
1:37:28
It feels to me like it is.
1:37:30
I don't know anymore, you know.
1:37:34
Yeah, I think it is I think it is, yeah.
1:37:37
But I've still do I'm like before when we're done here, I'm going to I zoom with Jeremy Strong, that actor.
1:37:43
And we have I think a pretty great idea.
1:37:45
But maybe we'll have figured it out with him.
1:37:47
I'll be to do it him, you know.
1:37:49
But, it's it's more unusual with actors.
1:37:52
Actors are good because um they're only busy for like 4 months out of the year or you know, and then they have time.
1:37:58
Directors are impossible because they you know, it's a year and a half of their lives or whatever, 2 years.
1:38:04
And so, you if you don't get it done, you ain't seeing them for 2 years.
1:38:08
They'll be doing something else, you know. Yeah.
1:38:09
And it also seems like they're so in for 2 years on a project that after it it's like they're not even themselves.
1:38:18
No, that's absolutely right.
1:38:18
It's I mean I mean, I had opportunities to direct when I was younger and I made a decision I'd rather stay with my children, you know.
1:38:26
I'm not saying this I'm so heroic, but uh uh that's what I decided cuz you're gone. You're just gone.
1:38:31
You miss you're missing their lives and they they know it.
1:38:35
But, something else more important to them.
1:38:37
Did you always want to be a writer from the beginning? Pretty much, yeah.
1:38:41
Yeah, I mean I've I've toyed with One point, I said I think I'll be doctor, which is ridiculous.
1:38:45
I can't even add six and eight.
1:38:48
And uh so, I think I'll go back to school and take all those courses, all the organic chemistries, all that and then go to some bad medical school like Grenada or Yankton or something, you know.
1:39:00
I mean, what I admire about your life uh as little as I know about you is that you at least are experiencing so many things and I wish I'd experience more things. Well, I am now.
1:39:09
I didn't for the majority of my life.
1:39:12
I was >> No, I was set in a dark room for 18 hours a day for 30 years. Oh my god. I'm sorry.
1:39:21
Or I'm not sorry, whatever.
1:39:21
You probably learned a lot from that. Yeah.
1:39:23
I would I would never have that discipline.
1:39:25
No, this is a new adventure.
1:39:27
I realized I can do my work anywhere. Anywhere?
1:39:30
And I might as well do it in a beautiful place.
1:39:34
And I first had that revelation when I started working in Los Angeles versus New York because even And I would still work all day, it felt like I was on vacation compared to being in New York. I got you. Wow.
1:39:45
Well, my sort of regret is so like juvenile.
1:39:48
It's like romantic, right?
1:39:51
I wish I had had that romantic year in Paris with whoever, you know, or just on my own or, you know, I never did those things or, you know, London, whatever, you know, Ireland.
1:40:03
And it's not going to happen, you know, so all of a sudden it can.
1:40:05
I mean, it would just be it'd be a different one.
1:40:09
It would be the different version of a romantic year in Paris. You can do that. Yeah. Now, you're right. You're right. Now, you're so right.
1:40:15
I sort of wish I had done when I was 30, you know what I'm saying? I don't know why.
1:40:19
It was just what I had to my experiences.
1:40:20
I always wanted my life to be like a Jack London flyleaf of a of his a novel.
1:40:24
He said he was a you know, a a fisherman and whatever else.
1:40:31
He went to the Alaska and all that stuff, you know.
1:40:35
And uh that's creating a personality I guess I'm not, you know. It all worked out. It all worked out. Exactly.
1:40:40
If I I would just get that in my head, you know, cuz there's too many small things.
1:40:48
It's like my mother would say to me, "Don't sweat the small stuff, you know." And she's so right.
1:40:51
And I sweat the small stuff still though.
1:40:53
It's like I wish I could stop this nonsense about things that don't matter.
1:40:59
You know, I'm a little better with it.
1:41:00
I'm a little better with it.
1:41:00
I had a whole thing I won't mention what it was but this whole weekend I was like kind of upset about something and I realized this is so [ __ ] stupid. What in the world?
1:41:09
And then you get in yourself into a situation where I was mad at somebody and then they texted me and should I ghost them and all that whole thing, you know, it's like so petty and you know. >> So juvenile. I was so juvenile.
1:41:24
>> [laughter] >> So I did. That's amazing.
1:41:28
For the moment, for the moment. That's amazing. Yeah, it's funny. Technical regrets.
1:41:51
>> [music] >> Tetragrammaton is a podcast.
1:42:02
Tetragrammaton is a website.
1:42:05
Tetragrammaton is a whole world of knowledge.
1:42:14
What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammaton?
1:42:19
Counterculture, Tetragrammaton.
1:42:19
Sacred geometry, Tetragrammaton.
1:42:21
The avant-garde, Tetragrammaton.
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Generative art, Tetragrammaton.
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The tarot, Tetragrammaton.
1:42:28
Out-of-print music, Tetragrammaton.
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Biodynamic, Tetragrammaton.
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>> [music] >> Graphic design, Tetragrammaton.
1:42:37
Mythology and magic, Tetragrammaton.
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Obscure film, Tetragrammaton.
1:42:39
Beach culture, Tetragrammaton.
1:42:42
Esoteric lectures, Tetragrammaton.
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Off-the-grid living, Tetragrammaton.
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Alt spirituality, Tetragrammaton.
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>> [music] >> The canon of fine objects, Tetragrammaton.
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Muscle cars, Tetragrammaton.
1:42:56
[music] Ancient wisdom for a new age.
1:43:02
Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day.
1:43:06
Take a breath and see where you are drawn. tetragrammaton. com