March 6, 2024 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:11:30
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
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unidentified
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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! | |
| The Joe Rogan Experience. | ||
| Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. | ||
| What's going on, man? | ||
|
unidentified
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How are you? | |
| I'm good. | ||
| Welcome aboard. | ||
| Thank you for being here. | ||
| No, thanks for having me. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| You made two of my all-time favorite movies. | ||
| The Watchmen, which I fucking love, and 300. Okay, awesome. | ||
| I have a top 20 list. | ||
| I've never formally put together a top 20 list, but those are in there. | ||
| Oh, that's cool. | ||
| Well, first of all, I appreciate that because, you know, 300 was a complete labor of love and insane—like, you know, 300 was—I was a Frank Miller fan for a long time, right? | ||
| And I— I thought I would do another... | ||
| I thought I would do Dark Knight Returns, frankly. | ||
| That was the movie I wanted. | ||
| I still want to do it. | ||
| I always tell everyone, like, Dark Knight Returns. | ||
| If I could do Dark Knight Returns, I'd be done with comic book movies. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Well, because, like, if you've done Watchmen... | ||
| Oh, sorry, I'm banging the mic. | ||
| If you do Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, like, for me, your legacy is... | ||
| So, Batman vs. | ||
| Superman literally steals a lot of Dark Knight Returns. | ||
| I'm not going to say it didn't. | ||
| It did. | ||
| But it's still not Dark Knight Returns. | ||
| So, I think that's still out there. | ||
| But I always... | ||
| You know, for a long time, I had that... | ||
| I had 300, like, on my coffee table at my house when I was making TV commercials, you know, and I'd have my friends over. | ||
| I'd be like, I'm going to make this one day. | ||
| It's going to look exactly like this comic book. | ||
| And they'd be like, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Sure it is. | ||
| And, yeah, I was having a general meeting with Gianni Nunari, who was one of the producers, and he was asking me about what I like. | ||
| And he had... | ||
| That graphic novel in his office, like on his table. | ||
| And I went, well, okay, you know what? | ||
| If I could do anything, that book right there, I would make that. | ||
| And he goes, well, what do you mean? | ||
| How would you make it? | ||
| And I literally just opened it up and I go, we'd film this. | ||
| We'd film these pictures. | ||
| It would look like this. | ||
| And he goes, okay, that's cool. | ||
| So you're saying you would just shoot the movie and it would look like this graphic novel. | ||
| I go, that's what I'm saying. | ||
| But at the time, we couldn't sell it. | ||
| We tried. | ||
| We went around town with it. | ||
| Literally, we went to all the studios. | ||
| They were all kind of like, yeah, sword and sandals. | ||
| Wasn't it the same time that Troy was being made? | ||
| It was exactly the same time as Troy. | ||
| And when we went to Warner Brothers originally with it, they literally were like, we have... | ||
| Troy. | ||
| So why would we want this? | ||
| We have Brad Pitt. | ||
| Like literally Brad Pitt is in our movie. | ||
| What are you? | ||
| I go, we're going to do something crazy. | ||
| We're not even going to shoot it outside. | ||
| And they were like, what? | ||
| Okay, you're nuts. | ||
| And I go, yeah, we're not going to go for one shot outside. | ||
| We ended up going for one shot outside for this. | ||
| When the Persian messengers are coming, that super high speed shot where the horses are kind of coming over the hill. | ||
| We shot that outside because we just couldn't get the horses going fast enough. | ||
| It's the shot right before this, I think. | ||
| Oh no, it's this one. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| It's that shot. | ||
| So that shot was the horses. | ||
| That was the high-speed shot we did with Photosonics outside. | ||
| But that was it. | ||
| That's like the only shot outside. | ||
| Everything else is on stage. | ||
| Because we couldn't get the horses to run fast enough inside. | ||
| Because we couldn't get the horses to run fast enough inside, yeah. | ||
| And it was too expensive. | ||
| That was a low-budget movie, you know, and we couldn't get... | ||
| $300 was a low-budget movie? | ||
| Yeah, because we shot it all on stage, 60 days. | ||
| Like, that's like why there's no director's cut of 300 is because every frame of film we shot is in the... | ||
| You shot that movie in 60 days? | ||
| 60 days, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| It was crazy, yeah. | ||
| That's insane. | ||
| It was... | ||
| We were just... | ||
| It almost killed us, but it was fun. | ||
| But yeah, so when we took it to Warner Brothers, they were like... | ||
| Well, what happened was I did Dawn of the Dead, and then from Dawn of the Dead, I was supposed to do I Am Legend, right? | ||
| And I Am Legend was this movie that was at Warner Brothers that they were like, what do you think? | ||
| And then there was some kind of crazy mix-up, and they ended up giving that movie to someone else. | ||
| And then I think they felt bad or whatever, and they said, well, what do you want to do? | ||
| And I said, well... | ||
| I really still want to do 300. And so we shot that test shot. | ||
| I think it was on the DVD. There's a test shot we did and they said, okay, if you can make the movie look like that, go do it. | ||
| Was that one of the first movies that was ever shot in front of a green screen? | ||
| Basically most of the movie except that one scene? | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Yeah, I don't think it was like... | ||
| Green screen photography was, like, a well-known way to make a movie, visual effects and all that. | ||
| A whole movie? | ||
| Yeah, I don't know about a whole movie. | ||
| That was weird. | ||
| I always say, like, they go, like, well, what innovations? | ||
| Like, what? | ||
| And I always go, like, it's basically the same technology that the weatherman uses, you know? | ||
| Like, when he stands in front of the green screen and says, like, oh, the front's coming in from the north. | ||
| You know, it's literally, yeah, it's literally the same technology, you know? | ||
| Because look, easily you could put the weather behind that guy right there and it'd be the same. | ||
| That's Eli, that's my son. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| He's now making movies. | ||
| He was the second unit director on Rebel Moon. | ||
| Oh, that's so cool. | ||
| He also plays the young Rorschach in... | ||
| Watchmen? | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, the baby Rorschach, yeah. | ||
| Because, like, you put your kid in a movie, and I always was like, oh, let's have Eli do that, because it's easier, you know? | ||
| Like, he has to, like, beat the other kid up. | ||
| Just Eli's better, because, like, I don't have to talk to, like, some, you know, other... | ||
| Because, like, actually, there's a scene to watch when you know where he bites the kid's face, and he pulls the flesh off the face, and I go, you know what? | ||
| Let's just get E to do it, because then I can just be like, okay, E, bite this! | ||
| Now pull it, like, rip it off! | ||
| Right. | ||
| The only troubling part of that is that there was a scene that we did in that movie where the, you know, because Rorschach's mom was a prostitute, right? | ||
| So there's that scene where Rorschach's mom, in the flashbacks, like, I should have had that abortion, right? | ||
| And she slaps him in the face, right? | ||
| Because he hears, Mom, is he hurting you? | ||
| Like, because she's having sex with some John in there. | ||
| And then she opens the door and she's like, you know... | ||
| He's like, is he hurting you? | ||
| I should have had that abortion and slapped him. | ||
| And I had wanted the mother to be topless in that scene. | ||
| And they were like, nah, you can't have... | ||
| And it's cool because his mother was visiting set that day and his mom was there and she was like, oh, you're putting our son in a movie? | ||
| We weren't together at the time, his mom and I, but we're really close friends. | ||
| But she was an actress and I said... | ||
| And they went, the only way that the woman could be topless is if it was actually his mom. | ||
| And I was like, oh! | ||
| I go, Denise. | ||
| And she was like, no chance. | ||
| Imagine asking your ex-wife to play a terrible prostitute who slaps their son and says, I wish I had an abortion. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| I go, come on, it's for the drama. | ||
| It's not like... | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| And she was like, you were insane. | ||
| And I was like, come on, that would have been awesome. | ||
| It's at least slightly insane. | ||
| But that would be the only way to do it. | ||
| Could you CGI boobs on her? | ||
| Yeah, that's cool. | ||
| At the time, probably. | ||
| Now I think we could. | ||
| Now I think we could have. | ||
| Yeah, I think we could have. | ||
| If I had wanted to do it now, I think that's how you would do it. | ||
| You'd do it with some sort of chest rig and they would paint them out and then redo the boobs. | ||
| That's a good idea, actually. | ||
| I'll go back in. | ||
| How much of any CGI was used on their bodies in 300? | ||
| Zero CGI on the body. | ||
| Really? | ||
| We didn't have the money, honestly. | ||
| So many people talk so much shit. | ||
| I swear to God. | ||
| I'm like, you know, you did Mark Twight on this show, and then Mark will tell you. | ||
| You know, Mark trained the guys. | ||
| Mark's like this amazing... | ||
| He's like, I've known Mark for years, and he's an incredible alpine climber. | ||
| He's like this, he's just like this insane, he can shoot, he can fucking, he can do anything that anyone can do. | ||
| And like when I asked him to train the guys, he's like, this sounds like Hollywood bullshit, like train actors for a movie, like they're all fakers, they're all liars. | ||
| And I was like, look, you will make them honest. | ||
| And so he's like, alright. | ||
| So he started training everybody. | ||
| Yeah, there's Mark right there. | ||
| And his gym was called Jim Jones, right? | ||
| Like, just as an example of, like, how hard he is. | ||
| But yeah, and so, like, you know, he had trained all these SEALs and, you know, basically, it was basically the same thing that he was doing with the SEALs he did with these actors. | ||
| So a prerequisite had to be, though, you had to be in some form of shape. | ||
| You had to be in some shape. | ||
| A teeny bit of shape. | ||
| A couple guys came to us that were pure actors, but 90% had some shape. | ||
| How much time did you have to work with them? | ||
| I'm trying to remember. | ||
| Normally what I like is at least five weeks. | ||
| I like five weeks, and I'll take more if you'll give it to me. | ||
| Sure, for a film, but I mean to prepare physically. | ||
| I'm talking about before the film starts. | ||
| Two months or three months, I like, before the film starts of training. | ||
| That's enough time to get them into that kind of 300 shape? | ||
| It never is. | ||
| These guys trained doubly as hard, and they knew a lot of them were athletes anyway, so they came in with, like—and Jerry had had more time. | ||
| And Jerry trained with his own guy. | ||
| Jerry didn't train with Mark. | ||
| But, like, yeah, so— You know, it depends. | ||
| Like, you know, Henry Cavill, Mark trained Henry for Superman. | ||
| And that was a real... | ||
| That was longer. | ||
| I think that was three months or four months. | ||
| But yeah, it's never enough time because you just can't get it. | ||
| Like actors, you know, they just... | ||
| Ideally, you know, you'd have... | ||
| Half a year. | ||
| Six months would be perfect, really. | ||
| At least. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, just to get you visibly... | ||
| I always say the one thing is like... | ||
| I always say the one thing about movies is that... | ||
| And the thing about Mark that I love was that he went to psychological war with the actors in the best possible way. | ||
| What he was looking for, he would always say, I'm going to put you in your pain cave and you're going to find out a lot about yourself when you're in there. | ||
| And then when you come out of the workout, you're going to grow. | ||
| I'm going to grow you here. | ||
| And some people just don't... | ||
| They don't like that. | ||
| Especially people who haven't like, you know, fitness isn't like a lifestyle that they've chosen, you know? | ||
| No, that's a journey that you have to be really dedicated to go down. | ||
| If you're just a kind of a casual and someone comes along and says, I want to put you in the pain cave, you're like, I'm not interested in that. | ||
| I think it works with actors because he makes it part of the crucible of the performance. | ||
| And I think if you can connect it to the performance, it makes the training mean something. | ||
| I was always... | ||
| I've always been like a sort of bodybuilding fan like in the 80s. | ||
| I trained with this guy in the 80s who was just like a teacher that lived, you know, this guy Jim Arden who lived in Greenwich, Connecticut where I grew up. | ||
| He was a teacher at this school called Greenwich Country Day, which was near the boarding school that I went to. | ||
| And I was like, you know, everyone expected me to be like, I played soccer. | ||
| I was like an athlete. | ||
| I was really, but then I sort of got into like weight training. | ||
| I was like, that's what I want to do. | ||
| Everyone thought I was insane. | ||
| But like, you know, and I think it was my meeting Jim and Jim being like, because Jim had this, in the basement of Grinch Country Day, there was like this weirdo Jim and like, you know, Chris Dickerson and like, you know, Mike Katz, all these like crazy 80s bodybuilders would show up and train with him and it was like this weird, I'd be like, this is awesome. | ||
| And like we went to the Olympia, like he took us to the Olympia in New York City, I don't know, what year was that, like 82 or 83, I forget what year. | ||
| But anyway, it was just really cool. | ||
| And then, of course, I was like Schwarzenegger. | ||
| I read his book, Education of a Bodybuilder. | ||
| It's a weirdo book. | ||
| Did you get involved in bodybuilding yourself? | ||
| I mean, I trained with Jim because I thought, okay, yeah, maybe I'll be a bodybuilder one day. | ||
| That'd be cool. | ||
| But, of course, I was also painting. | ||
| I remember when I was a senior in high school, After I graduated, I went to London for a year to art school to paint. | ||
| And I lost like 40 pounds of muscle in that year. | ||
| Just like literally, I was in like the best shape of my life, went to England to be a painter and like literally just ate baked beans on toast for a year and like starved to death. | ||
| But I was like, this is amazing. | ||
| You know, like I'm an artist, you know, but it was definitely, it definitely put a, but I always had the like, but I always had that aesthetic You know, bug in my head. | ||
| And now I have, my trainer now is this guy, Alessandro. | ||
| He trained everyone for Rebel Moon. | ||
| And he's like this, he's like, in his early 60s, Italian, was a bodybuilder, was a power lifter, became a bodybuilder. | ||
| And he's like, you know, he's just like this, he's a hard Italian, no bullshit. | ||
| Like, you know, it was cool because during the training for Rebel Moon, one of the actors was like, I have an idea for a workout. | ||
| Do you want to hear it? | ||
| He's like, I have an idea for a movie. | ||
| Stay in your lane. | ||
| Exactly! | ||
| He's like, or like the guys at the gym, like, because, you know, he used to, like, judge bodybuilding competitions, and, you know, has his pro card and everything, was like a real bodybuilder, and they'd say, like, hey, can you come and look at me? | ||
| You know, I have a contest coming up in the bathroom, and they'd go in there, and the guy'd take his shirt off, and he'd be like, how long till the competition? | ||
| Oh, he'd be like, I got two months till the competition, and all the time he'd be like, I think next year for you is gonna be better. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| He has no problem saying, I think I need to lose 40 pounds. | ||
|
unidentified
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More like 80. Jesus. | |
| He's hard, but he's awesome. | ||
| He's like, no bullshit. | ||
| He trained the guys for Rebel Moon, and he's like a pure aesthetic. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mm-hmm. | |
| Trainer. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Pure aesthetic. | ||
| He's just going for a look. | ||
| He's seen everything. | ||
| And he's just like, okay, your abs could be sharper. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a weird thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like a whole thing. | ||
| It is a whole thing. | ||
| It's like a whole thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I had Ronnie Coleman on. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And Ronnie Coleman, at one point in time, was the freak of all freaks. | ||
| Oh, he is... | ||
| Hands down, no one's ever going to be better. | ||
| He's the freak of all freaks. | ||
| The way his muscles attach is crazy. | ||
| You can't. | ||
| Well, he was probably one of the strongest bodybuilders ever. | ||
| And that's part of the reason why he looked the way he looked. | ||
| He didn't look just big. | ||
| He looked super powerful. | ||
| Well, also the thing about Ronnie Coleman, you see guys that are just incredibly swole where they're muscle-bound. | ||
| And he could just touch the back of his head. | ||
| Look at him back in his prime, dude. | ||
| Look at that picture. | ||
| That is so insane. | ||
| Alessandro was in a competition with him, Night of the Champions, I think, in San Francisco, and he said, like, He goes, I come from Italy. | ||
| I'm in my first competition. | ||
| I pull a card and I realize I'm next to Ronnie Coleman and me. | ||
| He's like, great. | ||
| This is fucking perfect. | ||
| And he goes, the guy, you know how bodybuilders, the whole thing is about your skin being super thin so everything shows. | ||
| He goes, I saw him backstage and I thought, you know what? | ||
| The skin's not there. | ||
| It's not going to happen. | ||
| He goes, but then, like, you know, he, like, so much muscle, he, like, pulls, and he's just like, he's like, oh my god, like, where, how is it possible that the skin just can't, the muscle's so thick, it just, like, pushes all the- It stretches all the skin out. | ||
| You see all the striations and everything that you do. | ||
| With him just relaxing, like, backstage, he thought, ah. | ||
| I'm more ripped than him, but then he's like, no way. | ||
| It's such a weird sport because they're literally on death's door. | ||
| Oh, literally. | ||
| They dehydrate themselves to the point where they have kidney failure almost. | ||
| The thing that we can all learn from the bodybuilders is... | ||
| I think that just now in everything that's happening with longevity and all this... | ||
| The bodybuilders will do stuff... | ||
| To their bodies that nobody else would dare do. | ||
| They'll do dosages that no one will do. | ||
| And so it's cool to say, okay, if you want to know what quadruple the dose of anything does, just ask those guys. | ||
| They'll tell you. | ||
| You'd be like, okay, this is the most you could take, and then it's toxic. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, cool. | |
| I'll take triple that and see what happens. | ||
| They're all searching for the magic bullet. | ||
| It's kind of amazing how few of them have died. | ||
| Well, and also they do die all the time, so it's not... | ||
| They do die, but it's not like you'd expect it kills all of them. | ||
| No, you'd think every single one of them. | ||
| Dorian Yates is in great shape. | ||
| Yeah, and how can you have been on the edge of it for so long? | ||
| Yeah, how could you... | ||
| The body's incredible, that's what you learned. | ||
| He's really suffered, unfortunately, Ronnie, but I think he suffered from surgery. | ||
| I think the surgery got him. | ||
| You know, there's so many guys who get back surgery, and back then, stem cells weren't available, and people weren't aware that there's other ways to fix your back. | ||
| The doctors just want to go in there and start fusing discs, and it scares the shit out of me. | ||
| Everybody that I know that's had that done has had real problems afterwards. | ||
| It puts extra pressure on the above and below discs as well, because it's an unnatural sort of unit now. | ||
| Instead of having three pieces, you now have one. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It can be a real problem. | ||
| It can be a real problem. | ||
| Yeah, and I think that healing, the science behind healing is, you know, it's changing so much. | ||
| Leaps and bounds. | ||
| Leaps and bounds. | ||
| And I think that really that's where the future is. | ||
| In my opinion, like, how we learn to heal is really how we learn to, like, really stay, you know, active and, like, getting stuff done for longer. | ||
| Because, like, you know, recovery is the whole thing, you know. | ||
| Oh, 100%. | ||
| Recoveries and also being cognizant of what your little issues are and not letting them get chronic. | ||
| When I was young, I was just too much of a meathead. | ||
| Ignore, ignore it. | ||
| I just worked through pain and also when you're doing jujitsu, you're always in pain. | ||
| So I was just like just work through the pain, but then I started developing some like real chronic problems and it wasn't until I started doing stem cells and then starting to understand like You can, but it's not wise to just go and only do jujitsu. | ||
| Really, you should be doing maintenance weightlifting that's designed to strengthen your joints. | ||
| And so I really started doing that, and that made a giant difference too. | ||
| And instead of just thinking of it as a workout, it's always like, okay, is your car ready to get on the track? | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| You need to change your tires. | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| Your suspension's off. | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| You need more gas. | ||
| Whatever the fuck it is. | ||
| Sure, absolutely. | ||
| Treat your body like that. | ||
| Don't just say, I'm fuckin' tough, I'm gonna show up with the flu, and I'm gonna go seven rounds. | ||
| No, don't do that. | ||
| That's stupid. | ||
| That's stupid. | ||
| Every time I've ever done that, it's set me way back. | ||
| It's never helped me. | ||
| Never one time that I was like, push through the pain has it ever been good. | ||
| Not a single fuckin' time. | ||
| So now, at 56, Now I'm smart enough to go, okay, don't do chin-ups. | ||
| You're getting tendonitis in your left elbow. | ||
| Stop. | ||
| You know where this goes. | ||
| It's right here. | ||
| You get at the same spot every time. | ||
| Every time. | ||
| Let's start doing some wrist curls. | ||
| Let's work the legs. | ||
| Let's do a bunch of other shit. | ||
| Let's do heavy bag rounds. | ||
| Stop doing the chin-ups. | ||
| You can do a pull-down, too, by the way. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| Yeah, there's different stuff you could do that doesn't pull on that very specific tendon, but, you know, overuse injuries, those kind of things. | ||
| So when you're doing a film like 300 and you're getting these guys prepped for this... | ||
| Are you telling them what to eat? | ||
| Do you have a nutritionist? | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
| If I ever put you in a movie, the cool thing is you show up, you work out, they hand you food, they massage you. | ||
| It's like the greatest. | ||
| Oh, that's great. | ||
| They treat them like pro athletes. | ||
| Yeah, like pro athletes. | ||
| You're just a pro athlete. | ||
| You're like in training camp, you know? | ||
| Dude, I just watched 300 again this summer because my family and I went to Greece. | ||
| Oh, cool. | ||
| And so we watched 300. And my 13-year-old had never seen Greek 300 before. | ||
| And she was like, holy shit. | ||
| I'm like, yeah. | ||
| That's a fucking movie. | ||
| We were just in Greece this summer, too. | ||
| And it was cool because we were in Athens and we were walking up to the Parthenon. | ||
| And I noticed all the gift shops, they have Spartan shit in them. | ||
| And I said to the guy, I go, I'm sorry about that. | ||
| And she goes, what are you talking about? | ||
| And I go, I apologize for all this Spartan stuff in here. | ||
| And she goes, yeah, it's a fucking movie 300. Did she know you made it? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| And I said, I go, yeah, that's why I said I'm sorry. | ||
| I made that movie. | ||
| And she goes, what do you mean you made it? | ||
| And I was like, yeah, I... That's my movie. | ||
| That's my movie. | ||
| And she goes, no. | ||
| And I go, yeah. | ||
| And then she was like... | ||
| That's awesome! | ||
| Now she likes you. | ||
| Yeah, it was cool. | ||
| It was a cool swing, but it was... | ||
| Well, it's a fucking awesome movie, man. | ||
|
unidentified
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If you don't like 300, you can go eat shit. | |
| If anybody didn't enjoy that movie, do you hate fun? | ||
| Do you hate... | ||
| Well, the thing is, also, I met a lot of... | ||
| A lot of seals, a lot of first responders, as you can imagine, really, really... | ||
| I've seen a lot of Spartan tattoos because of that, and I'm proud that they find some sort of inspiration. | ||
| Dude, Leonidas is what every man wants to be. | ||
| Yeah, you know, it's... | ||
| He was perfect. | ||
| He knew where... | ||
| Look, he knew where his... | ||
| He knew who to look to, to find out whether to burn the whole thing down. | ||
| And, you know, she gave him the okay. | ||
| It was also the movie was brutally representative of both. | ||
| It was both like mythical and beautiful and magical, but also very tied into the ethics of the Spartans and how absolutely brutal their world was and how they just accepted things. | ||
| In a way that's just like, wow. | ||
| Yeah, that's the thing that people are always like, you know, with me, I mean, they ask me, like, what about the morality of the movie? | ||
| What do you think of it? | ||
| And I go, like, Sparta is also another planet. | ||
| Like, if you, like, we can't, we would not make it. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Like, to say, like, oh, yeah, I'm cool, like, with the Spartans. | ||
| They would have chucked me off the cliff, like, day one. | ||
| You know, it's not like a... | ||
| It's hard for us to imagine. | ||
| It's a cool thing to imagine. | ||
| You want to say, yeah, I'm with the Spartans in this. | ||
| But they were brutal people. | ||
| From the jump. | ||
| They were a tool. | ||
| They were a tool. | ||
| We have democracy maybe because they existed, but they weren't necessarily democratic. | ||
| They didn't, there was no voting on whether or not we would like go in and die. | ||
| Like that was just like what they wanted. | ||
| You know, that was in their, like, you know, in their basic genetic makeup or in their philosophical makeup was like, okay, a beautiful death. | ||
| If I can get one of those, I'm good. | ||
| I'm good. | ||
| And I won't give it to you. | ||
| You've got to take it. | ||
| I love that Fassbender when he's looking down and he says that whole thing about, you know what's awesome is that with all the world's armies, there's got to be one guy down that fucking place that can kill me. | ||
| And do it right, you know? | ||
| And they're like, are you serious? | ||
| Like, that's what's turning you on? | ||
| You're excited about the fact that the guy that kills me might be down there? | ||
| Like, that's crazy. | ||
| But it's also, I think, when we look at things like that and we put ourselves in the mindset of someone who lived so many years ago like that, there's this understanding that human beings are capable of fitting into a bunch of different bizarre groups. | ||
| A bunch of different strange cultures can rise. | ||
| And when you have a particularly barbaric time in history, and you have this group of people in Athens that are literally changing the world through democracy and through the Eleusinian mysteries and all the shit that they were doing. | ||
| People are traveling from all over the globe to come to this one spot. | ||
| And then you got these fucking savages. | ||
| These people are the savages of savages. | ||
| The Spartans. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you think about it, if someone says, like, what kind of a warrior would you want to be? | ||
| Right. | ||
| If you're a little kid, I want to be a Spartan. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| That's why all these sports teams have Spartans as their, like, mascots. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And to imagine that there was a group of people that existed, a culture that existed that was completely warlike and had these tenants that were just unbendable. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And from the time you were a child, they tested you. | ||
| Yeah, that's it. | ||
| And if you fucked up, if you failed, if you fell apart, if you quit, you were chucked out. | ||
| Yeah, the Kryptaea, like, you know, that whole thing, like, where they would send you, like, around seven, you'd go, in the Agogi, you'd go, like, into the wilderness, and you're basically living among other kids that were between, like, seven and thirteen, and you just were, like, wild. | ||
| And the... | ||
| The sort of elite of those groups were called the Kryptaea, and the Kryptaea would come down and just kill helots whenever they wanted. | ||
| They were encouraged. | ||
| The helots were the slave class that maintained Spartan society. | ||
| And these guys, these kids, imagine if you lived in the hills, you knew there was just this 13-year-old gang of 13-year-olds that were going to just come down and murder you at any moment. | ||
| And they were encouraged to do it. | ||
| And also, the Helots were fine. | ||
| If the Helots killed them, that was fine. | ||
| Because that meant they weren't good enough anyway. | ||
| And then they did this ritual with this table of cheese where all these Spartan warriors would stand around the table and all the 13-year-olds who were ready to transition into becoming true Spartans, you'd have to try and get and pull a piece of cheese off this stone table. | ||
| And the Spartan warriors who guarded the table could do anything to stop you. | ||
| And it was just beating the crap out of these 13-year-olds. | ||
| And finally, if you got it, then you were given to a Spartan soldier who raised you. | ||
| And basically, the idea was that he was your lover, he was your teacher, he was everything to you. | ||
| Because the Spartans believed that, really, they believed that you... | ||
| You would die for your brother if you were also lovers. | ||
| You know, they thought that, like, if you were confused about why we're fighting, fight for that guy, who's not only your best buddy, but, like, there's, like, a story, I guess, where they were, like, when the Persians first came, they sent a scout over, and they looked down at the Spartans right the night before the big battle, and he goes—he went back, and he goes, they were all, like, having sex with each other. | ||
| It was, like, a weird— They're like, we're going to be good. | ||
| And there was this... | ||
| One of the Spartan kings was... | ||
| The old Spartan king was now working with the Persians and said like, oh no, we're fucked. | ||
| They're saying goodbye to each other. | ||
| Do you know what that means? | ||
| Like, we're completely screwed. | ||
| Like, they're going to... | ||
| Like, we're going to get murdered tomorrow. | ||
| And they were like, you're nuts. | ||
| You don't know what you're talking about. | ||
| They're a bunch of softies. | ||
| Like, let's go get them. | ||
| What if that's the key to being the absolute greatest armor? | ||
| You have to be gay. | ||
| You have to be gay. | ||
| There's precedent, so I don't know. | ||
| There is precedent, right? | ||
| Like, imagine if that was applied today. | ||
| Yeah, it could be amazing. | ||
| Yeah, but that would be a real problem. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| The family structure. | ||
| We'll see what they say. | ||
| By the way, in the end, the Spartans had a real problem because they couldn't... | ||
| There's this really crazy thing where on their wedding night, they would have to shave the head of your bride and dress her like a man, and she would fight you because there was no... | ||
| That was the only way they got hard? | ||
| That was the only way they could get her ass because they needed... | ||
| Unless they got like... | ||
| Unless they got like a bloody lip, you know, they were like not, it wasn't going to happen. | ||
| That's so insane. | ||
| Isn't that crazy? | ||
| That's so insane. | ||
| So like you can imagine that it was hard to like keep the, you know, generate enough offspring, you know, with that. | ||
| Like you had an awesome army. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They were fucking the best. | ||
| But like you, as far as your procreation was going, it wasn't awesome. | ||
| God, imagine being a woman back then too. | ||
| Well, they had to run the whole show because basically the guys were just training. | ||
| So all the commerce and the deals they were making to like, you know, okay, we're going to make a trade deal with this. | ||
| That was all done by the women because the guys were like, no, we've got to fucking work out. | ||
| It's kind of awesome in some ways. | ||
| It's kind of awesome, but it's kind of crazy. | ||
| And it's kind of crazy that it requires you to be gay, to be the greatest army, because that's the one element. | ||
| How much do you love this person beside you? | ||
| Yeah, you've got to love them with everything. | ||
| Imagine the difference between you being with some random stranger on the street and a bunch of thugs attack the random stranger. | ||
| How you would treat it versus if they attacked your wife. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's different. | ||
| It's totally different. | ||
| I did that in Rebel Moon. | ||
| There's a bit where I put that... | ||
| There's a part where Sophia's character says that they basically say they encouraged me to find a lover in the military academy because when the politics of war became too abstract, like, okay, take that beach or climb that mountain... | ||
| A lot of times, you know, soldiers are like, why? | ||
| Like, there's no why. | ||
| But if you have a lover who's next to you, who's your life, and if they get killed or they're in danger, you're going to be back on it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's different. | |
| It's an interesting, we don't, of course, in our modern society, we don't play with that aspect of, you know, in war, we try not to anyway, we seem not to, you know, like with using the relationship to create a bond. | ||
| I mean, there's camaraderie, brotherhood, of course. | ||
| But they've replaced that aspect of it with technology. | ||
| Yeah, a little bit. | ||
| Yeah, which is interesting. | ||
| And maybe that's good. | ||
| Maybe it is good. | ||
| But I mean, I could imagine a world in the future where things go totally sideways, where we go back to that. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| We'll make a movie about it. | ||
| I mean, that is a possible future dystopian movie. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like a new Spartas, the Spartas of 2059. Well, as soon as, like, you know, what is that Einstein thing? | ||
| You know, if World War III is fought with nuclear weapons, World War IV will be fought with rocks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Sticks in rocks, you know? | ||
| So it's like a... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, if it's World War that does it, it's probably going to wipe out the whole race. | ||
| But if it's something else, there could be a... | ||
| Like, everyone thinks of dystopia as being something man-created, which is real possible. | ||
| But it's also possible we get hit by an asteroid. | ||
| Oh, yeah, absolutely. | ||
| That's more possible, I think. | ||
| That's more likely. | ||
| I think we could fuck up and nuke each other, but it's probably not going to happen because people have been really good about it since 1947. Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's nice. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good work, guys. | |
| Or 45, I guess. | ||
| Good work. | ||
| But there's a giant difference between things that you can control and things you can't control. | ||
| Through diplomacy and people aging out, it's possible that we could never have a nuclear war. | ||
| It's not possible we're not going to get hit. | ||
| Oh yeah, I know. | ||
| That's why, I mean, I very much encourage any NASA programs that are, you know, they got their telescopes pointed into the stars. | ||
| They're like, oh, here comes one. | ||
| Let's see if we can go get it. | ||
| Nudge it. | ||
| Nudge it. | ||
| They're close. | ||
| They're close to being able to do that. | ||
| Neil deGrasse Tyson said they're about a decade away from being able to deflect asteroids. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That'll be a big deal. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But the hope is in that decade that we don't miss one. | ||
| We don't get it. | ||
| We don't miss one because some of them come in from behind the sun. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah. | ||
| No, they're like... | ||
| Yeah, that's not cool. | ||
| There's so much weirdness in space anyway. | ||
| There's solar flares that could take out our whole grid and kill all our communication systems. | ||
| And also the thing is we don't know. | ||
| Say we had one of those 300 years ago, which in cosmic time is not that long ago. | ||
| It's nothing. | ||
| It's nothing. | ||
| And we didn't have the infrastructure to know that it would happen. | ||
| We were just a bunch of guys hanging out. | ||
| So we were just like, whoa, that's a weird, like the Aurora Borealis is pretty strong today. | ||
| Yeah, that's cool. | ||
| But now we're like, oh shit, our computers are fried. | ||
| So it's like a whole different, yeah. | ||
| The stakes are different. | ||
| We have the ability to go and look at the data that they had from a couple hundred years ago and say, it appears that there was an event. | ||
| And the event, if it happened today, we would be fucked. | ||
| And we did not prepare for this event when we were constructing all this equipment. | ||
| Because also the equipment got built over time. | ||
| It was like a slow, you know, this made this and this made that, and we relied on this, so now we made this. | ||
| We built our house of cards pretty quickly, too. | ||
| And the foundation's the weakest part. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It doesn't exist. | ||
| I don't think there is a foundation. | ||
| Because it's all dependent upon the grid. | ||
| I really don't think there is a foundation. | ||
| Well, the foundation is what powers it. | ||
| And it's all dependent upon a grid. | ||
| And the grid's very vulnerable. | ||
| Physically vulnerable. | ||
| It's vulnerable to cyber attacks. | ||
| I like that also we were like, we thought we were geniuses by putting all that online. | ||
| Like, oh yeah, we'll make the grid automated. | ||
| No, don't do that. | ||
| It's much better when there was just a guy throwing switches. | ||
| Yeah, way better. | ||
| You can't do anything to him. | ||
| Just guard that guy. | ||
| Yeah, guard that guy. | ||
| Give him a lot of money. | ||
| I love that expression, in the cloud. | ||
| Bitch, where is this cloud? | ||
| That cloud is in fucking Cleveland. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| There's no cloud. | ||
| The cloud is not cool. | ||
| That's such a lie. | ||
| Stop calling it the cloud. | ||
| That's a dirty lie. | ||
| Oh, it's in the cloud. | ||
| Just go get it. | ||
| How do you say that? | ||
| Why don't you say it's in the stars? | ||
| Why don't you just lie to me and say it's in heaven? | ||
| Tell me it's in heaven. | ||
| Say it died. | ||
| All my photos of my baby. | ||
| We can resurrect it. | ||
| Yeah, we can resurrect it. | ||
| My family, my dog, they're all in heaven. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Print everything. | |
| I say print everything. | ||
| That's my philosophy. | ||
| Even the print everything thing. | ||
| The real problem with us is all of our data is on hard drives. | ||
| All of it. | ||
| There's just paper books, hard drives, and that's it. | ||
| So if something big happens, everything's useless, and we start from scratch. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Paper books are still kind of work, but a lot of the modern... | ||
| Like innovations are probably even in paper books. | ||
| A lot of them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| A lot of them. | ||
| Well, it's funny because like the movies, for instance, one of the things is I always archive a film print of all my movies because the digital storage of movies, if you ask anybody, even in the business, they don't know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Whether in 10 years you'll be able to play a movie that you have now, like whether you physically or how it degrades, all those things, they don't know. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| And so I'm like, that's why I make film prints, because I'm like, I know that we keep the film prints in the... | ||
| In this, you know, locker, and you can at least pry them out and always have it. | ||
| But, like, I just think it's crazy that we don't know whether the movies will exist. | ||
| It's a crazy thing. | ||
| Don't worry about it, Zach. | ||
| It's in the cloud. | ||
| Yeah, it's so fucking in the cloud. | ||
| Cheers. | ||
| Cheers, brother. | ||
| Thanks for doing this, man. | ||
| Yeah, no, it's my pleasure. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| It's in the cloud. | ||
| Why are you worried? | ||
| Yeah, that's a dirty expression that they should ban that expression. | ||
| They love that expression, though. | ||
| I know, but it's a dirty lie. | ||
| There's no cloud. | ||
| But it makes people feel safe. | ||
| It does. | ||
| It makes them feel good because it's like the cloud is so reliable. | ||
| And also a thing you don't need to worry about or understand. | ||
| It's also beautiful. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's fluffy. | |
| It's in a blue sky. | ||
| And all your info is safe in there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yay! | |
| Nothing can hurt it, except for everything. | ||
| It's just horse shit. | ||
| It's total horse shit. | ||
| It's so crazy. | ||
| It's on hard drives. | ||
| It's so crazy. | ||
| And if you had to start from scratch, imagine stumbling upon some ancient Egyptian hard drives and go, okay, where do we even begin? | ||
| You can't play it. | ||
| You can't play it. | ||
| What is this? | ||
| You might be looking at it and you don't know. | ||
| How is it encoded? | ||
| What is the equipment I need to connect it to in order to, does it play out loud? | ||
| Do I see it? | ||
| What is this? | ||
| Do I experience it in my head? | ||
| It's like when you show your kid a vinyl record, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I'm showing my kids a vinyl record and they're like, this is incredible! | ||
| How does it work? | ||
| I'm like, well, the needle kind of bounces up and down on those grooves and makes sound. | ||
| Sounds like a song. | ||
| And they're like, that's... | ||
| That's insane technology. | ||
| I'm like, no, that's not insane technology. | ||
| Your iPod or your fucking phone, that's insane technology. | ||
| That's a thing you can't... | ||
| You can't explain this to me. | ||
| I just explained that to you. | ||
| I love the fact that I'm in my car and my daughter loves Melanie Martinez. | ||
| So I have no idea what the song is. | ||
| Tell me what the song is? | ||
| And she'll tell me what the song is and I can say, play Melanie Martinez, whatever the song is. | ||
| And it just instantly plays it. | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
| Instantly. | ||
| And it's coming through the speakers and it sounds amazing. | ||
| There's all this sound. | ||
| That is incredible. | ||
| It's bananas! | ||
| Or you could say like, play Johnny Cash. | ||
| Instantly. | ||
| Instantly. | ||
| Play Hurt. | ||
| Yeah, play Hurt right now. | ||
| Instantly. | ||
| Instantly. | ||
| And it just starts playing it. | ||
| And you're like, oh God, why'd I say that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Why'd I say play Hurt? | ||
| Play God's Gonna Cut You Down. | ||
| What a world that we live in. | ||
| Instantly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Instantly. | |
| By the way, I was just listening to that the other day. | ||
| Is this going to get us in trouble with YouTube? | ||
| Is it? | ||
| Oh, sorry. | ||
| I did want to show you this picture of Alessandro's legs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If you hum it too well... | |
| We were so much better off when we were trapped in our walled garden. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh yeah, we got out and now it's over. | ||
| Yeah, it's fucking nuts, man. | ||
| It's nuts. | ||
| I think it's beautiful because I love the fact that you can tell me about something and I can get it instantly. | ||
| Like someone could say, oh my god, you have to see... | ||
| That's Sandro's legs. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| That's insane. | ||
| He looks like he's gonna die. | ||
| Yeah, and he loves that. | ||
| That's particularly ridiculous. | ||
| Isn't that crazy? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| That guy has no body fat. | ||
| Zero body fat. | ||
| What is his body fat? | ||
| The guy at the gym said, are you 8% body fat? | ||
| He goes, if I was 8% body fat, I'd kill myself. | ||
| That's so ridiculous. | ||
| But that's his thing, though. | ||
| He literally is like, I'm in space. | ||
| You know how we get stuff from the space program? | ||
| We figure out how a razor works or get shaving cream that keeps the hairs from flying? | ||
| That's what he is to me. | ||
| He's like, I'm up here on the ragged edge so I can give you this information back. | ||
| That's an interesting way of looking at it, right? | ||
| You do learn health and wellness things from people that are on the fringes in the bodybuilding world. | ||
| Yeah, and he's in his 60s, so it's like, you know, you're like, okay, this guy can have legs like that in his 60s, so... | ||
| Give me some. | ||
| Give me a little of the knowledge. | ||
| And he's funny too because he's like, look, I don't have a family. | ||
| I don't have kids. | ||
| This is what I do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus. | |
| You know, this is what I do. | ||
| I just get jacked and I like research. | ||
| I test my body constantly. | ||
| He's like on the ragged edge with every single like, you know, like he's always making these small adjustments. | ||
| He goes, I ate a sesame seed and I saw that I was a little less ripped. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| What? | ||
| It's so ridiculous! | ||
| Because it's like, oh, he's constantly like, you know, like, it's like he's on a razor's edge, which I love, you know, because it's extreme. | ||
| People like that are to be super beneficial to any sort of extreme sport. | ||
| Well, that's what I mean, like extreme sport. | ||
| That's what I'm saying is that, like, you can, the little, that, that, those little pieces of information they tell you about, like, oh, you know, like, whatever, I'm taking this, or like, I thought about this, and I experimented with that, and you're like, oh, okay, like, Thanks for being out there. | ||
| Thanks for being the oxygen mask up on the stratosphere. | ||
| Yeah, the possessed mad genius. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| By the way, the world's made of that. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| There's a guy out here in Austin, Texas. | ||
| His name is John Donaher. | ||
| He's widely considered to be the greatest jiu-jitsu coach ever. | ||
| Oh really? | ||
| He's here? | ||
| He's a professor. | ||
| He was a professor of philosophy at Columbia. | ||
| That's cool. | ||
| And was spending time as a bouncer. | ||
| Wanted to learn martial arts. | ||
| Got into Jiu Jitsu and became a Jiu Jitsu fanatic to the point where he was teaching it. | ||
| Did he have an actual gift for it anyway? | ||
| Well, he's a very strong guy. | ||
| He's very strong. | ||
| He played rugby, but rugby destroyed his knee, fucked his body up, which kept him from ultimately competing. | ||
| Just a crazy mad genius that doesn't give a fuck about anything but fighting. | ||
| So all he's doing is like teaching people how to strangle people during the day and then watching tape and reviewing techniques and creating the next workout schedule. | ||
| And they work out 365 days a year. | ||
| 365 days a year. | ||
| And his number one student is Gordon Ryan, who's widely considered to be the greatest jiu-jitsu athlete of all time without question. | ||
| That's his belt up there, the Abu Dhabi belt, when he won Abu Dhabi, but he's his number one student, and they just train 365 days a year. | ||
| They take no days off. | ||
| Christmas, fuck you. | ||
| Your birthday, fuck you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's cool. | |
| And it's just, you've got days where you don't train as hard. | ||
| Are you worn out? | ||
| Well, you're not going to train as hard today. | ||
| Yeah, it's like you were saying, like, yeah, like, you understand, like, at that point, you're in a rhythm, you understand your body, you know, like, okay, I'm hurt today, I know how to do this, but we're always learning, we're not gonna stop learning, we're not gonna stop understanding. | ||
| That's the one thing that's crazy about YouTube, too, is that this idea that there's a resource, you know, like it used to be to find a technique or to learn something, you have to go to the guy's house, fucking sleep on his porch, he's not gonna fucking train you, he's gonna slap you around, like, whatever. | ||
| We're now like these kids today, they get like a lot of their shit, the basic shit, they're like, I'm learning this. | ||
| I can learn something that I had no access to. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Zero access, which I think is incredible. | ||
| I have a folder on my phone that's all jujitsu moves that I didn't know existed. | ||
| And I just watched the jujitsu moves. | ||
| How is he doing that? | ||
| Left leg in. | ||
| Oh, he went with the right arm. | ||
| Wow! | ||
| And then I'll send it to my friend Eddie Bravo, who's a jiu-jitsu instructor. | ||
| I'll go, is this legit? | ||
| And he goes, I'm gonna try this tonight. | ||
| And then we'll text each other back and forth. | ||
| So we're like, it's a constant new thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| There's the basics. | ||
| Put it in the workshop and let's see what happens. | ||
| A kid could be just all you need is a computer that connects to the internet and a friend. | ||
| You can get good at jiu-jitsu. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's better to have private instruction. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| It's better to have a coach who, you know, when you're teaching your classes, you've got to make sure this arm is protected and keep this here. | ||
| And you have to have the defense. | ||
| You have to put your hand on the hip. | ||
| If you don't have something like that, it's going to take you longer to figure it out. | ||
| But if you are diligent and you're really dedicated and you have a fucking YouTube connection, you can get good at jiu-jitsu. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I used to have to go to the mountains. | ||
| Well, that's what I mean. | ||
| And that's true of a lot of things now. | ||
| Recently, I had this crazy Fortnite addiction, right? | ||
| Oh no! | ||
| I could get it! | ||
| I started playing Fortnite with my son, who's 10, and he was like, nah. | ||
| He tapped out immediately. | ||
| And I was like, well, you should come back, because this is kind of cool. | ||
| So I'm playing, and then three months later, I'm like, what the fuck does the matter with me? | ||
| My wife is like, you've got to stop. | ||
| I am done with this. | ||
| I am done. | ||
| You and I are the same thing. | ||
| She's like, I'm so done. | ||
| You need another fucking hobby. | ||
| And so she's like, I bought you some clay. | ||
| And so I started doing some pottery. | ||
| And that's where I was like, oh, YouTube is insane. | ||
| Because I just, in like three weeks, I had done... | ||
| So now she's like... | ||
| Every search engine is like hand-billed pottery, like glazing, firing kilns. | ||
| Oh, that's cool. | ||
| Much more productive. | ||
| By the way, I get something at the end. | ||
| And you feel better. | ||
| I feel so much better. | ||
| The feeling that you get when you play video games for 12 hours in a row, you feel terrible when it's over. | ||
| You feel sick to your stomach. | ||
| It's literally too like you have something good happen and you're like, yeah! | ||
| I'm like, fuck yes! | ||
| I look over and my wife is in the doorway going like, What's wrong with you? | ||
| Are you serious? | ||
| You're a grown-ass man. | ||
| Should you not be making a movie right now or writing something or doing something? | ||
| Well, it's important for people to know that even people who are successful movie makers are still going to get addicted to those goddamn things. | ||
| They're heroin. | ||
| They're too good. | ||
| They're so good. | ||
| They're so well-made. | ||
| We had a giant quake problem. | ||
| And I had a giant quake problem for years, and I quit. | ||
| And I quit cold turkey when I realized I was playing eight, ten hours a day. | ||
| You can't see the hours. | ||
| When you see the hours, when you see a total number of hours that you've played, you're like, okay, I could have written a novel. | ||
| I could have done so much. | ||
| I could have done so much. | ||
| So I stopped, but then when we had a new studio in Los Angeles, we had a big warehouse, and we said, let's put a fucking LAN in here. | ||
| So we put a local area network and bought some gaming computers and set it up for Quake, and... | ||
| Instantly, I was a junkie again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Back. | |
| Scratching my face. | ||
| I was fucking every day. | ||
| We were playing three, four hours a day. | ||
| It was nuts. | ||
| It was nuts. | ||
| See? | ||
| It just gets right into your... | ||
| It's too good. | ||
| It's too good. | ||
| They're good at it. | ||
| They're getting better, man. | ||
| Racing simulator? | ||
| Racing simulator. | ||
| I haven't even hopped on that yet. | ||
| We've had it for over a week. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm scared of it. | |
| The problem with it is it's too... | ||
| It's like racing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The one thing I did... | ||
| I saw this the other day where they had one of the F1 guys went against some kid and he beat him. | ||
| And I was like, that makes me happy. | ||
| On the racing simulator? | ||
| On the racing simulator. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I was like, that made me happy. | ||
| Well, only just because, you know, you want that skill set. | ||
| You want in your mind that skill set to translate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Like, you're like, see? | ||
| I was watching this thing on 401 Drivers. | ||
| Like, all the different things that they have to be able to do. | ||
| Their response time is so much faster than anybody else's. | ||
| They had this thing where they had the lights, and the lights go off, and you have to touch the light when it goes off. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And the Formula 1 race car drivers were like off the charts. | ||
| Oh really? | ||
| They're just wired different. | ||
| They all have crazy thick necks. | ||
| Oh yeah, from the... | ||
| Because it's just... | ||
| And also the helmet's not light. | ||
| It's serious. | ||
| Yeah, it's a fucking serious piece of weight up there. | ||
| Bouncing your head around. | ||
| No, it's fucking crazy. | ||
| And you're whipping around. | ||
| I'm sure you've seen the comparison between a GT3 car and then a Formula 1 car on the same track. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| What is the difference? | ||
| The GT3 car looks amazing, and then the Formula 1 car, like, no way! | ||
| That's not real. | ||
| Is this real time? | ||
| Oh, as far as, like, it being able to stick to the track where, like... | ||
| It's so much faster. | ||
| And the time that you have, watch this. | ||
| So on the left side, you have the GT3 cars. | ||
| So these are just GT3 cars. | ||
| That's the... | ||
| Oh, the right is the GT3 car, the left is the Formula 1 car. | ||
| Look how much faster they go. | ||
| It's gone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They're fucking insane. | ||
| I mean, they're so fast, and the way they hug. | ||
| I went to the COTA, the Formula 1 race out here. | ||
| Here, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's insane to see it live. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| To see it live, you really appreciate it. | ||
| She's like, oh my god. | ||
| My daughter, Willow, is addicted to Formula 1. She's like, I sent her down two years ago to it, and it was like, you know, look at that. | ||
| That sound, too, is amazing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, like the GTQ, they look like they're not even moving in comparison. | ||
| Yeah, it's not even close. | ||
| Yeah, and she, I sent it out because at the time Formula One was wanting me to, we were going to do a film, I was going to do like a commercial for them, you know, and I was in the middle of pitching them and they were like, oh, can we send you down to Austin to the race? | ||
| And I said, you know, I can't because I'm in the middle of this thing, but you can send my daughter. | ||
| And Willa was like, she had like pit access, she was like losing her mind, she's calling me every five minutes going like, are you insane? | ||
| Look at, there's like, you know, Hamilton, I can't believe you're right there! | ||
| And I was like, Okay, calm down. | ||
| Don't be a groupie. | ||
| She has a tattoo of Formula One, like a car. | ||
| Yeah, she's really into it. | ||
| Well, I know that Netflix series out here in America made it way more popular in America. | ||
| Because it didn't make any sense that it was so popular worldwide, but not popular in a place that's most obsessed with cars? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Makes no sense. | ||
| You feel like we would just be drinking the Kool-Aid. | ||
| That's so hard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, our thing is just going around in a circle real quick. | |
| Our thing is so silly in comparison. | ||
| Like NASCAR? NASCAR is so silly. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| And you'd think that we would dig all the turns and the insane technology. | ||
| It feels like it's right on our wheelhouse. | ||
| And I think it can be. | ||
| Well, it turns out it is. | ||
| It's just got to... | ||
| It has something like a Netflix special has to happen for it. | ||
| It's like what happened with the UFC with the Ultimate Fighter. | ||
| The UFC was always crazy exciting, but then the Ultimate Fighter put it on television and everybody's like, wow, this is nuts! | ||
| And you get to invest in a personality. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| In the end, Americans love... | ||
| They want to hook onto someone and ride them, you know, through the whole thing. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Yeah, that's the fun. | ||
| They want to get connected to that person and root for them and feel the journey, especially The Ultimate Fighter was such a brilliant idea because you get these guys to live in a house together and then they're going to beat the fuck out of each other. | ||
| And they know they're going to have to fight. | ||
| So there's all this psychological warfare going on. | ||
| There's like chest puffing and there's so much weird shit happening. | ||
| By the way, it's a great show. | ||
| Also, because the drama, if you have fighting and drama together, it's kind of an amazing combination. | ||
| You can't look away. | ||
| And it's real fighting. | ||
| And it's absolutely real fighting, yeah. | ||
| It's not like fucking around. | ||
| And these guys are fighters, you know what I mean? | ||
| That's the thing. | ||
| It's not like you got a bunch of schmucks and said, okay, you guys get in a ring and sort of see what happens. | ||
| These guys suddenly are like... | ||
| And guys have gone from that show to become world champions. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Which is wild. | ||
| That's cool. | ||
| Yeah, it's very cool. | ||
| And you're like, oh yeah, I saw them when they were just scrapping around the house. | ||
| It's cool to see them rise like that. | ||
| It's an amazing show. | ||
| It's cool. | ||
| Well, there's a few things like that, like Formula One racing and fighting, that it just has to get in front of enough eyes. | ||
| It's just we have these things that we've always, like baseball, that's always been around. | ||
| If you brought baseball out today... | ||
| No chance. | ||
| It doesn't have a chance in hell. | ||
| No chance. | ||
| It's zero chance. | ||
| Golf, no chance. | ||
| I think golf would still make it. | ||
| Well, also because it's a ludicrous concept, golf. | ||
| That's what I love about it. | ||
| It's like, and I, you know, I'm an okay golfer. | ||
| I've done a... | ||
| A lot of golf commercials. | ||
| My dad's a scratch golfer. | ||
| He's an amazing golfer. | ||
| You've done a lot of golf commercials? | ||
| Yeah, back in the day. | ||
| When I got out of college, I did like 10 years of TV commercials. | ||
| And every day, I've done all the brands. | ||
| I've done a bunch of Super Bowl spots. | ||
| I did the Clydesdale 9-11 tribute spot. | ||
| There's a lot of all these kind of, for me, that were all these kind of touchstones. | ||
| But along the way, I did like, you know, PGA, I did Titleist, I did like all these like, you know, I have a tour bag, like in storage that says like Zack Daddy Snyder on it, like on my tour bag, yeah. | ||
| But like the guys, like you see these like, I mean, they are, like, Phil Mickelson is like an insane, like, he does this trick where you stand with your hands like this, you know? | ||
| And then he's behind you with his pitching wedge, and he takes a full swing and cuts it. | ||
| If he skulls it, it's going to crack you in the back of the skull, but it goes over your head and lands in your hands, right? | ||
| What? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know if it's standing right in front of you. | |
| I haven't seen the landing in hands, but this kind of video goes around. | ||
| Yeah, it's literally this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch. | |
| He's going to do it. | ||
| He's going to do it. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| See that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I did a spot with Phil. | ||
| Bro, fuck that. | ||
| I did a spot with him. | ||
| I think it was with David Robinson for the PGA Tour and he was sick. | ||
| He had like a hundred degree temperature. | ||
| And like what it was, was basically we did these, these guys are good. | ||
| It was, was the name of the campaign. | ||
| And it was like all these football players and like golf would be, it was, it was a ludicrous idea, but golf would be in these scenarios. | ||
| And this was basketball. | ||
| It was like one second left, you know, up Phil Mickelson comes in to play this basketball game. | ||
| They're going to play with a golf ball. | ||
| And they throw him the ball. | ||
| The ref throws the golf ball to him. | ||
| And he's, he, Catches the ball on the blade of his pitching wedge, traps it on the ground, and then picks it off the gym floor, and the ball flies up, and then David Robinson dunks it. | ||
| That was the commercial. | ||
| So he's sick and he's like, Zach, I don't know, man. | ||
| Oh, also we did a version of it where we had made the floor about a balsa wood so he could take a divot. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| And then the PGA was like, well, we don't want to look like it's... | ||
| They were kind of mad because they were like, we don't want to look like we're destroying property. | ||
| I was like, come on, guys. | ||
| It's like, cool. | ||
| It's cool that he digs the floor up, right? | ||
| They can fix wood. | ||
| Yeah, it's also not real. | ||
| You know, like you can't actually do that. | ||
| That's funny they were that sensitive. | ||
| Yeah, it was cool they were that sensitive. | ||
| But, like, Phil comes out and he's like, Zach, sorry, man, I'm sick. | ||
| Like, I don't know. | ||
| Like, I go, well, let's just try, you know, do what you can. | ||
| And, like, it'll only be a couple shots. | ||
| And so he's like, I'll do the best I can. | ||
| So, like, you know, I throw him the ball and he just, like, cuts it in the air. | ||
| And, you know, like, he, like, cuts it in the air and he traps it with his club. | ||
| I'm like, holy shit. | ||
| And he's like, how's that? | ||
| I'm like, how's that? | ||
| It's, like, fucking unbelievable. | ||
| He was like, I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm like, I don't know what you would do different. | ||
| It's so crazy. | ||
| It's interesting when you see wizardry at that level. | ||
| The technique and the perfection of it at that level. | ||
| It's so incredible. | ||
| You're like, fuck. | ||
| I didn't even play golf and I could appreciate it. | ||
| John Daly, too. | ||
| I did a spot with John Daly, too, and he comes out. | ||
| And I guess the The tournament before the one we had done, before the shoot that we did, we were doing it in Kaminsky Park in Chicago, right? | ||
| And he was, the idea on that one was like, you know, top of the ninth, two outs, down by three, bases loaded, whatever, whatever, you know, and pitcher... | ||
| Here comes John Daly, right? | ||
| And so what we did was, so the idea was like we had this like minor league pitcher was supposed to throw a pitch and he's, you know, we did it with visual effects. | ||
| He takes the ball out of the air. | ||
| So what we did was we got this super long tee, right? | ||
| And we put the ball on it. | ||
| And I was like, John, do you think you can... | ||
| Can you hit a drive with a two-foot tee? | ||
| That sounds crazy. | ||
| He's like, no problem. | ||
| But when he came out, he was mad because he had picked up his ball. | ||
| He got fined by the PGA. If you pick up your ball halfway through the tournament, you can't just leave. | ||
| They don't like that. | ||
| And I guess he was having a bad round. | ||
| And so he just said, fuck it. | ||
| And he just picked up his ball and walked off. | ||
| And they were like, so they fined him. | ||
| And he was super mad that he got fined. | ||
| And so he goes, I'm going to fuck up that Jumbotron. | ||
| And I was like, John, I go, that's me. | ||
| I'll have to pay for it. | ||
| It's not the PGA. And then he was like, oh man, I'm so sorry. | ||
| Like, okay, I won't hit it. | ||
| I didn't know. | ||
| Like I thought, you know, he's like the sweetest guy. | ||
| And then he just like... | ||
| He just cranks this... | ||
| He's like our Babe Ruth. | ||
| He literally... | ||
| I've done a bunch of spots with him. | ||
| You know like on his backswing, the club head is pointing down at the ground because he's so twisted. | ||
| And then he just uncoils. | ||
| And it's just unbelievable the amount of power that the guy... | ||
| And he hits the ball out of the stadium... | ||
| And it goes literally, we had PAs in the parking lot. | ||
| And they're like, the ball just goes over their heads and like into the freeway. | ||
| You know, he's just a frickin'- Jamie, do you have that video that I sent you recently of that guy? | ||
| There's this fucking guy who does this step in move- Oh right, sure, like the Happy Gilroy? | ||
| Well, not quite that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not quite? | |
| Not quite that, but with technique. | ||
| And it's perfect. | ||
| And the drive is insane. | ||
| And the torque is insane. | ||
| Again, this is coming from someone who doesn't know jack shit about golf. | ||
| Look at this kid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus. | |
| Jesus. | ||
| I mean... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus. | |
| That is fucking insane. | ||
| The fact that he can actually, with that amount of backswing, the fact that he can actually hit the ball cleanly is unbelievable. | ||
| Is he from, is that Chinese? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know about, I don't know. | |
| It looks like Japanese to me. | ||
| Is it Japanese? | ||
| His writing is Japanese. | ||
| So he's Japanese? | ||
| Isn't it? | ||
| There's a lot of, I mean, it's very popular in Japan. | ||
| Yeah, his name is Japanese. | ||
| That's unbelievable. | ||
| But that fucking technique is mad! | ||
| That's so cool. | ||
| Let me hear that again, because the sound... | ||
| The sound is awesome! | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's where... | |
| That could be... | ||
| There's balls that do that. | ||
| Bro, I don't give a fuck what does that. | ||
| Look at where it ends. | ||
| The club ends in front of his face. | ||
| Past his face. | ||
| Near his left shoulder. | ||
| So much whip on the... | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| But yeah, it's fun. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| It was fun, actually, that time in my life traveling around and doing all those TV commercials all over the world. | ||
| I had a crew of guys. | ||
| It was me and my boys, and we would just literally... | ||
| One job, Papua New Guinea. | ||
| One job, Germany. | ||
| One job, Mexico. | ||
| One job, Iceland. | ||
| We were just on the road, completely out of our minds. | ||
| Whatever product, we'd be like, okay, I'd be pitching. | ||
| The guys would be like, what are we doing next? | ||
| I'm like, I've got to get on a call. | ||
| I have an agency, and I'd get on the call in the hotel room, and I'd pitch them, and I'd be out of my mind. | ||
| I don't know what I'm saying. | ||
| I'd come out, and they'd be like, how'd it go? | ||
| I think I got it. | ||
| And they were like, did you nail it? | ||
| And I was like, yeah! | ||
| I told them it's going to be like low angles and slow motion and it's fucking cool. | ||
| And they were like, okay, cool, let's go. | ||
| And it was just this, we were just in this machine. | ||
| And frankly, I learned everything. | ||
| Like I spent 10 years, you know, like that 10,000 hours thing? | ||
| It literally, I spent 10 years with every production problem. | ||
| Because I was a director of photography. | ||
| I was a DP and the director. | ||
| And, you know, we were a pretty small show, you know, but we had giant clients, anything you can think of. | ||
| So then when I went to make a movie, it wasn't like there was no thing I hadn't seen, you know? | ||
| It wasn't like I stepped on a set, like, oh, I'm a first-time director. | ||
| Everyone's like, oh, this guy's a first-time director. | ||
| Like, what's his, you know, what's he going to say? | ||
| And I'd be like, there was like... | ||
| The tools were my tools, you know what I mean? | ||
| Like, I was very comfortable with the tool set that I had in front of me, like more so than I probably should have been. | ||
| You know, I remember Matt Leonetti, who was the DP of Dawn of the Dead, that was my first movie, was like, halfway through the thing, he's like, You know, you know what you're doing. | ||
| Like, you know what I mean? | ||
| Like, you know what you're doing. | ||
| Like, he goes, they can't fire you now. | ||
| Because, like, we were halfway through. | ||
| Because, like, I was so diligent. | ||
| Like, on my first movie, I was so scared. | ||
| You know, Scott Stuber, who was the executive at Netflix, who was my executive on Army of the Dead, he was the one that hired me to do Dawn. | ||
| I wanted to be so conscientious and I was so scared of going over budget and not nailing it and making sure it was cool and all that. | ||
| Matt Leonetti at one point was like, look man, you gotta just... | ||
| Fuck it. | ||
| Make it cool now. | ||
| Don't give a fuck. | ||
| Just do what you think. | ||
| And it was such great advice because I think the movie's edge and all the coolness in the movie and the man comes around and all the weirdness, the whole montage with the Richard Cheese song in the middle, that was all just me going, all right, good. | ||
| Thanks, Matt. | ||
| I'm going to just go. | ||
| And he goes, good. | ||
| Because otherwise, he goes, you're just going to make a movie that this zombie movie is going to disappear. | ||
| You know, unless you fucking... | ||
| Add your sauce. | ||
| Yeah, go... | ||
| You gotta add your sauce. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because he goes, otherwise, it's like, look, another zombie movie. | ||
| Like, who cares? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, he goes, you... | ||
| He goes, I know you know what's cool. | ||
| Well, you made it fun. | ||
| I think that that was the whole thing. | ||
| For me, it was like, how do you make a B-movie That's self-aware that it's a B-movie, right? | ||
| And in that self-awareness, it lets you off the hook to enjoy it. | ||
| Because you can still be smart, like you deconstructed the genre. | ||
| Because I've always been fascinated with genre and the deconstruction of genre. | ||
| I'm a genre filmmaker. | ||
| I always say to everybody, people are like, I'm a genre filmmaker. | ||
| And that is to say that in genre, though, you can explore philosophy, you can explore mythology, especially, which is like, myth is my main... | ||
| We make myth. | ||
| Modern myth. | ||
| Movies are modern myth. | ||
| Superhero movies are modern myth. | ||
| Is it not the same when you say... | ||
| Like, we have Superman, right? | ||
| And Batman or whatever. | ||
| Are they not... | ||
| The mythic answer to a lot of modern questions about how we should live. | ||
| You say, Superman, is he not an invention, a 20th century invention that says to us all the fucking shit that we run up against, whether it be war or class struggle or whether it be interrelationships between different countries. | ||
| Does Superman not appear in answer to us primitive brains trying to figure out where we are? | ||
| Like, you make a guy like Superman so he can answer some of those questions. | ||
| He can represent a point of view that is not helpless in the face of the insanity that is like, you know, the problems of the 20th century. | ||
| And I think Batman, in the same way, he's an answer to, like, urban... | ||
| What is urban... | ||
| The urban jungle needs a myth, you know? | ||
| Just like the ancient jungle needed a myth or the ancient... | ||
| You know, those all... | ||
| Like, in those days, we'd say, like, why is the volcano erupting, right? | ||
| But now we say... | ||
| Because we didn't know, you know? | ||
| We're just like, I guess it's the gods are mad, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| But now we have... | ||
| Now the problem is, why do I feel helpless in the face of technology or whatever? | ||
| So we need an additional answer. | ||
| And I feel like genre has allowed me to make those comments. | ||
| And I think... | ||
| The funny thing about, you know, what I always find interesting, you know, the thing that I always find fascinating about sort of the movies I've made and how they've landed on pop culture is that, like, I remember, like, in the last article, it was, like, it said, Zack Snyder, love him or hate him, right? | ||
| And I'm like, hate him? | ||
| Like, what? | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| Like, what? | ||
| It's just, it's a movie, you know? | ||
| Like, it's not... | ||
| I mean, you look at Rebel Moon, you're like, okay, well, there's not a lot... | ||
| It's not... | ||
| It's not... | ||
| It's not weird enough. | ||
| It's not offensive enough to hate him for, right? | ||
| In my opinion. | ||
| People find a reason to hate today. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And 99% of those people also hate themselves. | ||
| That's exactly what's going on. | ||
| And when people are very hateful over art... | ||
| You can like it. | ||
| You don't like it. | ||
| There's a lot of stuff I don't like. | ||
| I have no issue with you not liking the movie. | ||
| That's not the question. | ||
| Who cares? | ||
| The thing is like... | ||
| You would personalize? | ||
| You'd hate me? | ||
| Because I'm like, I don't understand that. | ||
| Because you're unreasonably successful. | ||
| That's how they feel. | ||
| And that's what happens with people. | ||
| You've done so many hit movies. | ||
| Like, fuck this guy. | ||
| People compare themselves to someone like yourself that's been so successful. | ||
| And they get angry. | ||
| That's why you can't read comments. | ||
| No, that's why you cannot read comments. | ||
| Comments are, you know, they're essentially long-form comments are what a lot of articles are. | ||
| It's the same thing. | ||
| That's exactly what they are. | ||
| It's these people that are film snobs that get, you know, very pretentious about certain aspects of movie making and decide that their way is the only way. | ||
| Like, listen, I like the Barbie movie, okay? | ||
| I found it enjoyable. | ||
| I went with my daughters and I had a good mindset. | ||
| I said, let me just enjoy this movie. | ||
| Just not be like, what the fuck is this? | ||
| Men didn't fuck this. | ||
| I just said, this is a fun movie. | ||
| It didn't offend me. | ||
| I laughed a bunch of times. | ||
| I thought it was fun. | ||
| And I went online and saw so many people angry about that fucking movie. | ||
| And it was all men. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| As it would be. | ||
| Listen, first, you're out of your fucking mind if you go to a Taylor Swift concert and expect to see ACDC. You're out of your fucking mind. | ||
| You're going to a Taylor Swift concert. | ||
| You know what it is. | ||
| So if you go to see the Barbie movie, you know what it is. | ||
| Why are you mad? | ||
| Yeah, no one... | ||
| Like, were you shocked? | ||
| It's literally about a girl's doll! | ||
| Yeah, what did you think was gonna happen in it? | ||
| Also, and I, by the way, I love the movie, and I'm actually... | ||
| It's lampooned in that film. | ||
| There's a line in the movie that says, I feel like I was in a dream where all I cared about was the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League. | ||
| That is a line in that movie. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
|
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Literally. | |
| And I'm like, that's awesome. | ||
| I was like, okay. | ||
| My wife was like, she goes, that's cool, right? | ||
| That's cool that they came after you. | ||
| I was like, that's 100% cool. | ||
| Yeah, it's fun. | ||
| But it's interesting to see when there's such a strong reaction to certain things. | ||
| And especially amongst really wild, hardcore fans. | ||
| Trust me, I know. | ||
| Well, you also face it because you cover these... | ||
| Genres. | ||
| You cover these subjects that are iconic. | ||
| Superman. | ||
| Batman. | ||
| I mean, just those alone. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| And by the way, that's a lifestyle choice for a lot of people. | ||
| It's not a movie. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's not a movie. | ||
| It's not like if I made a romantic comedy, you'd be like, okay, that was fun. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The people who love... | ||
| And by the way, I love that they feel this passionately. | ||
| I'm not... | ||
| In no way would I criticize that because I feel I live the same life, right? | ||
| Because for me, it's morning, noon, and night. | ||
| But so for those guys, it's not just a movie. | ||
| And so you have to, on some level, you have to acknowledge that... | ||
| This is their religion. | ||
| And they feel strongly about it. | ||
| And by the way, the truth is it's my religion too. | ||
| I tend to get in trouble because of my... | ||
| I do take a deconstructivist point of view because of Dark Knight Returns, because of Watchmen. | ||
| If you've read those two comics, it's hard to go back. | ||
| And it's because I care that I want to take them apart. | ||
| I want Batman... | ||
| Like, people are always like, well, Batman... | ||
| Batman can't kill, right? | ||
| So Batman can't kill is canon. | ||
| And I'm like, okay, the first thing I want to do when you say that is I want to see what happens. | ||
| And they go like, well, don't put him in a situation where he has to kill someone. | ||
| I'm like, well, that's just like you're protecting your God in a weird way, right? | ||
| You're making your God irrelevant if he can't be in that situation. | ||
| He has to now deal with that. | ||
| You know, if he does do that, what does that mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| What does it tell you? | ||
| But does he stand up to it? | ||
| Can he survive that? | ||
| Right? | ||
| As a god. | ||
| As your god. | ||
| Can Batman survive that? | ||
| I never thought that that was canon. | ||
| That Batman can't kill. | ||
| Well, for a lot of people it is. | ||
| It seems ridiculous given the circumstances in which he operates. | ||
|
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|
Yeah, well... | |
| And all the weapons that he has. | ||
| Don't read the comments right now. | ||
| Don't read the comments. | ||
|
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|
Yeah. | |
| It seems ridiculous. | ||
| Well, I mean, and, you know, there's this huge, like, there's, so in Dark Knight Returns, there's a scene where, and I copied it kind of in Batman v Superman, where he grabs the M60, he busts through the wall, and he grabs the M60, and he's like, the guy's like... | ||
| In the comic book, he's got this kid. | ||
| The mutant has this kid with a gun to his head. | ||
| And he's like, I'll kill him. | ||
| I swear I'll do it. | ||
| And Batman says, I believe you. | ||
| And he shoots him straight in the head. | ||
| Because it's like a no-win scenario. | ||
| It's like the Kobayashi Maru of... | ||
| You know the Kobayashi Maru is that... | ||
| In Star Trek, it's that... | ||
| Test, they put Kirk through, where there's a no-win, right? | ||
| Because they want to see how you'll react. | ||
| So they say, okay, we're going to make a scenario, a test scenario, where you don't win, where there's no way to win. | ||
| And in that situation, we find out what you would do in a no-win situation. | ||
| If you're going to be the commander of this spaceship, you're going to be in situations where it's life or death, and especially when there's no tricking it, right? | ||
| There's no tricking death in this case. | ||
| And the famous thing with Captain Kirk is he went and hacked the machine and made it so there was a solution. | ||
| And so that was his response to the no-win situation, was create a scenario where he wins. | ||
| Which is a cool character, you know, that's a cool character move. | ||
| But that's kind of how I felt. | ||
| That's what they would say, don't do that to Batman. | ||
| Don't put him in a no-win situation. | ||
| Because we don't want to see him lose. | ||
| Like, we can't see him lose. | ||
| He has to maintain this godlike status. | ||
| And that's what the cool thing about Frank Miller, Frank Miller said, fuck it, I'm gonna like, I wanna see who this guy, like if a guy, so you're saying to me that I've got a gun to this kid's head, you're Batman, I'm gonna, there's no move, there's no trick, there's no throwing the batarang, there's no dust ball to distract me, like I've just gotta pull the trigger and I kill this kid. | ||
| So you're saying in that scenario, what's Batman supposed to do? | ||
| Right. | ||
| He's going to lay down his gun. | ||
| What's he going to do? | ||
| The guy says to him, I'll do it. | ||
| I swear it. | ||
| I believe you is perfect. | ||
| Yeah, I believe you. | ||
| I believe you. | ||
| So I'm just like, that's where Frank Deacon takes Batman and just tears him in half. | ||
| And you've got to now come out the other side of that. | ||
| And Batman is still the hero. | ||
| Batman's still... | ||
| Does the right thing. | ||
| He maintains his code. | ||
| He doesn't change, but our perception of him changes. | ||
| And I think that's like a... | ||
| And I have run afoul of... | ||
| But a lot of the fandom who have... | ||
| I feel like who have gotten to the same place I have with the characters where they need to test them. | ||
| And I feel like the characters... | ||
| It's been my experience that the characters have not let us down. | ||
| These myths have not let us down. | ||
| You put them to the ragged edge into that scenario and they come out the other side and you're like, fuck yeah, there's a reason why Superman is Superman. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| He can handle it. | ||
| He can fucking take it because he's so iconic. | ||
| You see the red ass, you go anywhere in the world With that Superman t-shirt on anywhere. | ||
| And you say to any kid, like, what's this? | ||
| Oh, that's Superman. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Like, you know, that means something. | ||
| That's, like, fucking cool. | ||
| Well, not only that, it's one of our first ever superheroes. | ||
| Literally. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, just think of the name. | ||
| It's so unoriginal. | ||
| Superman. | ||
| It's It's the most... | ||
| You couldn't think of that today. | ||
| That's so ridiculous! | ||
| You can't do that today. | ||
|
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|
I know. | |
| Have you tried to come up with a Superman today? | ||
| Everybody, shut the fuck up. | ||
|
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|
Superman? | |
| That's horrible. | ||
| That's your guy? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Come on, man. | ||
| We've got so many different interesting characters out there. | ||
| That's why the Trinity, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman are so powerful because they're literally, obviously, the origin concept, right? | ||
| Wonder Woman? | ||
| Literally, yeah. | ||
|
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|
Yeah. | |
| Batman is the only anomaly because he's like, oh Batman, what does that mean? | ||
| He doesn't even have powers. | ||
| Yeah, he's half Batman. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| He's just got a lot of money. | ||
| Yeah, he's got a lot of money. | ||
| That was my favorite thing we did in Justice League where Bruce says that line about when Flash says, what's your power? | ||
| And he's like, I'm rich. | ||
| I always thought that was cool. | ||
| Kind of crazy that no one decided to genetically experiment on a Batman. | ||
| Make a Batman. | ||
| Yeah, for another version of Batman. | ||
| Like, take a guy and hit him with some Wolverine juice or whatever the fuck. | ||
| Oh, other animals. | ||
| Just turn him into a superhero. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Instead of have him just be a rich guy, give him some crazy genetic mutation, something that they do to him that turns him into something. | ||
| But I think that is the thing, I mean, not to that extent, but that's the thing that Frank does. | ||
| And that's the reason why I wanted Affleck, because to me, Batman's a big dude, right? | ||
| Affleck's 6'4", you know? | ||
| He's like a... | ||
| Legit big dude and you know like in the shoes the shoes the boots are like two inches so like he's literally almost like you know 6'6 in the in the costume like when he comes out in the costume with that little bit of I mean we put some muscle on him and then there's a muscle suit under the suit and he's like it's a he's like Legitimately a scary looking thing, | ||
| you know, he's just like standing there and you're like holy shit Dude, the chin is so insane in that cowl. | ||
| I mean, look at him. | ||
| I took that picture, by the way. | ||
| He's legitimately... | ||
| That's Batman to me. | ||
| I don't know what... | ||
| Christian Bale was a great Batman as well. | ||
| He's a great Batman, but he's still like, you know, 5'10". | ||
| You know, it's cool. | ||
| I mean, not to be... | ||
| Yeah, that does mean something. | ||
| I'm not being rude about... | ||
| Was Batman giant in the comic books? | ||
| In some of the... | ||
| Like, in Dark Knight Returns and in Frank's comics and, like, you know, in the classics, he's a pretty big dude. | ||
| You know, he's always been... | ||
| In Dark Knight Returns, if you look at Dark Knight Returns, there's a line where he's trying to hold someone's gun and his finger can't get in the trigger guard because he's so big. | ||
| I like things like that. | ||
| He has this genetic gift of just being this big fucking dude. | ||
| And other than that, his parents were murdered in front of him. | ||
| And he's also a billionaire. | ||
| That weird... | ||
| You want it to not be just one of those things, right? | ||
| It needs to be all of them in order for him to really... | ||
| To do what he can do. | ||
| But if somebody really wanted to fuck around with the genre today, if he had all that money, wouldn't he invest in some wild genetic engineering that turns him into an actual superhero? | ||
| Yeah, I think that that... | ||
| That's the real, that's the fun of it. | ||
| Batman fans are pulling their hair out. | ||
| Yeah, like they don't like their hair. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What are you saying? | |
| Batman's on steroids? | ||
| Not just steroids. | ||
| Not just steroids. | ||
| You wish it was steroids. | ||
| I'm talking something way crazier. | ||
| Well, it's funny because I did that scene, like there's that scene, I don't think it's in the, it might be in the theatrical, but it's definitely in the director's cut, where he wakes up and there's some chick in the bed with him from the night before. | ||
| Because I always say, Batman fucks to forget, for sure. | ||
| Batman's a drunk, for sure. | ||
| Because he has huge trauma. | ||
| Right? | ||
| And I think that, you know, you wonder why he's a Playboy because like, you know, like anybody, like that's a common, you know, fucking forget is a common, that's a real thing. | ||
| That's a way to deal with trauma. | ||
| You know, and I think that like, there's that bit, he like wakes up and there's like just painkillers on his bedside table and he just like pops them and drinks some wine. | ||
| I'm just like, you know, to me that's like, that's like, that's Batman. | ||
| He's got a Mapplethorpe above the bed, he's got his glass house, and he has an aesthetic that's clean, but that's all he does. | ||
| That's his life. | ||
| The thing about Batman, the modern versions of Batman, the Miller Batman, your Batmans, what's interesting is that now superheroes are these flawed, very distressed characters. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| Like the Watchmen is the best example. | ||
| Watchmen is all trauma. | ||
| It's all trauma and they're all crazy. | ||
| They're completely crazy. | ||
| And it's such a good movie. | ||
| Why the fuck was there never a Watchmen 2? | ||
| Well, because, you know, frankly, the comic book doesn't exist. | ||
| For me, that's why there wasn't. | ||
| I just was like, the thing that's awesome about also that, it's one of those things like when you start to really, you know, look at like Night Owl not being able to get it up. | ||
| Because he's not in his costume. | ||
| That's just a cool... | ||
| To me, that's just like a... | ||
| That's like pure... | ||
| That's boiling down superhero to its fucking purest thing. | ||
| I don't get turned on unless I like... | ||
| I gotta go out, fucking save some people, do some crime fighting, and now I'm fucking ready to go. | ||
| That to me was like... | ||
| That was like... | ||
| That, as a superhero movie, as a concept, took a long time to land with the boys or these other kind of superheroes where now it's cool to deconstruct superheroes. | ||
| It's kind of fun. | ||
| Everyone's having a good time with it. | ||
| And I was doing it, whatever, almost 15 years ago. | ||
| And I just don't think superheroes were as deep in the culture as they are now where all those things would land. | ||
| All that deconstructive... | ||
| Kind of work that we were doing at the time was really in reference to comic books, not comic book movies. | ||
| Because Watchmen was written, you know, in response to the comic book industry. | ||
| Not necessarily... | ||
| Comic book movies didn't exist when the book was written. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, so it's a very much... | ||
| You know, Alan Moore was very much obsessed with the morality of comic book heroes within comic books. | ||
| And he just took an adult look at it. | ||
| He's a smart genius. | ||
| He's a fucking pure genius. | ||
| Well, that was the thing that people figured out along the way with graphic novels as well, was that comic books aren't just a thing that children like. | ||
| You know, I was a giant comic book fanatic when I was a kid, and I wanted to be a comic book illustrator. | ||
| That's what I wanted to do. | ||
| Oh, cool. | ||
| Oh, that's awesome. | ||
| And I had one bad high school art teacher, and it ruined it for me. | ||
| Fucking guy. | ||
| Fucking guy. | ||
| He ruined it for my friend John DeVore, who was the most talented guy in the class. | ||
| When I found out that he gave him an F, I was like, are you out of your fucking mind? | ||
| This guy was so talented. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And he was like, I was pretty good, and he was quite a bit better than me. | ||
| And then there was this other guy named Kevin, who was in our class, who was also, like, really good. | ||
| And all of us wanted to be comic book artists. | ||
| And I was really into the more adult versions of it. | ||
| Like, there was some... | ||
| Amazing, like, horror genre comic books back in the day. | ||
| Like, Creepy and Eerie that have these incredible, like, Frazetta covers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Have you ever seen Creepy and Eerie? | ||
| Sure, of course. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| God, I love those things. | ||
| I'll tell you, my... | ||
| Sorry, go ahead and finish your... | ||
| No, no, go ahead. | ||
| Oh, so what I was going to say was that, like, I... I was obsessed with growing up this comic book called Heavy Metal. | ||
| Yes! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Love it! | |
| And Heavy Metal is like my thing. | ||
| Basically what happened was my mom, I had bought, I was like 13 or whatever, maybe 12 even, I bought a copy of Heavy Metal, whoever sold it to me, because you know it says Adult Illustrated Fantasy Magazine, right underneath, like in kind of small letters, but it's there. | ||
| I would cover it with my thumb when my mom was around. | ||
| But she, one Christmas, got me a subscription to Heavy Metal. | ||
| Did she know? | ||
| She didn't know. | ||
| She just thought it was a cool comic book. | ||
| And I didn't say anything, of course. | ||
| And that really... | ||
| That comic book... | ||
| And when you see the R-rated version of Rebel Moon when it comes out... | ||
| Because basically the deal I made with Netflix was... | ||
| They said... | ||
| I wrote this script, and I said, this is the script I want to make. | ||
| And they said, that is insane. | ||
| And I said, yeah, but it's like heavy metal, but in live action. | ||
| And they were like, yeah. | ||
| Is there any way it could be PG-13? | ||
| And I was like, well, if it's PG-13, it kind of misses the whole point a little bit. | ||
| But I can imagine that for a mass audience and for viewership, That seems like the smart way to go. | ||
| I go, what about this? | ||
| What if we make, if I make, take this script, I make you a PG-13 version that you can just blast into the world and hopefully as many people see it as possible. | ||
| And then you let me, as a bonus, you just let me make this version exactly as I think. | ||
| And they were like, okay, that sounds cool. | ||
| So coming at the end of the summer, you'll see my two three-hour versions of Rebel Moon that are like hard, R-rated, the hardest... | ||
| Which you wanted to do. | ||
| Which I exactly wanted to do. | ||
| So they said, yeah, go do that. | ||
| And so they were able... | ||
| Because normally when I do this... | ||
| Director's cuts, you know, which is a thing now I'm weirdly famous for. | ||
| The director's cuts were always an answer to a thing that the studio made me do, right? | ||
| Like, here's my movie. | ||
| They're like, yeah, we really want you to cut these parts out because they're not cool. | ||
| They're like, the movie's too long or the movie's too violent or whatever. | ||
| And I would be like, wow, really? | ||
| Because I really think that's kind of the why of the movie. | ||
| And they'd be like, no, it's really important. | ||
| Focus groups told us that they don't like that. | ||
| So take it out. | ||
| So I'd take it out. | ||
| But then I'd go like, you know, I'd go over to home video right across the street. | ||
| And I'd be like, hey, guys, you want another movie to release? | ||
| Because I got the shit. | ||
| And they'd be like, absolutely, whatever you say. | ||
| Because, you know, at that time... | ||
| second kick at the can in home video. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So they would be like, that's so cool. | ||
| We get a whole other movie to market that like never before seen footage. | ||
| You know, it just feels like a cool thing. | ||
| And so, that was how I've always done my directors because always as a response to what the studio was telling me couldn't be in the movie. | ||
| Because I never planned I would always go into it bright-eyed, like, oh, everyone's going to love this. | ||
| The studio, when you see my cut, you're going to think it's amazing. | ||
| And they would look at it and go like, bro, that's no. | ||
| This is too much. | ||
| And so that's where my director's cuts, just as a practice, were born. | ||
| It was born out of that me needing to show the world what I intended originally. | ||
| By the time, now that I've got to Netflix with this Rebel Moon movie, And my sort of... | ||
| The mythology around my director's cuts was kind of a thing, especially with Justice League, as you can imagine. | ||
| They were like, you know what? | ||
| Why don't we do a director's cut as part of the process rather than as a response to it? | ||
| And I was like, that's really smart. | ||
| Like, that's really cool because in a lot of ways, I totally get the economics of making a PG-13 version of this insane genre film. | ||
| Because what I'm asking, you know, from a budgetary standpoint is high for like a boutique-y space movie that's like, you know, a heavy metal comic, you know, that's like a, people who love that will love it more than anything else, right? | ||
| If I can land that, they'll think it's the coolest thing ever. | ||
| But like for a mass audience, it might not be exactly what you would imagine. | ||
| So I'm like, I can do both. | ||
| And that's kind of where I... And that's why when you see the R-rated version of Rebel Moon, you're like, fuck, this is heavy metal. | ||
| I come to life is really what it is. | ||
| And that's kind of what I really wanted to do. | ||
| That was the thesis of my whole, like, me being turned on by the sci-fi. | ||
| Because, like, the thing you can do... | ||
| I feel like the thing that you can do with that format was you could really deconstruct sci-fi. | ||
| Like, we always talk about, like, I said this at the director's guild, like, when Luke Skywalker walks into the cantina and, like, is confronted by Walrus Man, like, is that sexual? | ||
| Like, is that... | ||
| Is he, like, he's fucking with Luke. | ||
| Luke's like some farm boy in this bar, in this rough bar. | ||
| Like, what's gonna happen to Luke? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Like, that's a conversation you cannot have in the context of Star Wars, right? | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| There's no chance. | ||
| Like, that's not gonna... | ||
| But like in heavy metal, that's real. | ||
| That threat is real. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And it's not anything other than like a naive farm boy walking into like a gritty city bar that he doesn't know what the fuck. | ||
| He's out of his element. | ||
| Other than that he's our hero. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And he's got to go through a crucible. | ||
| And he's got to learn. | ||
| You know, he's got to like... | ||
| These are the like Joseph Campbellian parts of his journey. | ||
| So anyway, but that... | ||
| And that's kind of what... | ||
| It's cool because, you know, I've always been like the hugest fan of heavy metal. | ||
| I think it's like the fucking cool... | ||
| It was the coolest thing. | ||
| Heavy metal was amazing. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| It always like made me... | ||
| It kind of broke me for comics a little bit because, you know, it was always like super sexy and super violent. | ||
| And so you'd get a normal comic and be like, uh... | ||
| When are they going to start fucking? | ||
| Yeah, it was always sexual. | ||
| There was one that I remember that was very stunning to me, very shocking when I was a kid. | ||
| I'm pretty sure it was heavy metal, but it was one of those genres where it was a guy and his wife started a relationship with a robot. | ||
| Oh yeah, cool. | ||
| And he tried to fight off the robot, and the robot broke his arm with his big dick hanging out. | ||
| The robot had this big, giant, flaccid dick, and he broke the guy's arm and was smiling at him. | ||
| And it was just like, Jesus Christ. | ||
| Sounds amazing. | ||
| It was amazing, but it was also indicative of that genre, those days, like this is the 70s, right? | ||
| The 70s when they first started publishing that. | ||
| Yeah, all that was on the ragged edge, which was so underground and so cult and so weird. | ||
| That's what I loved about it, and that's what I wanted to do with the movies. | ||
| I'd say, what does the cult, underground, raw, sci-fi movie look like, you know? | ||
| So is it hard to do the PG-13 version? | ||
| It was very hard. | ||
| Is it conflicted? | ||
| What does it feel like? | ||
| It was super conflicted. | ||
| Although the only thing I will say is that I was liberated by the fact that I knew the R-rated version exists. | ||
| So there was... | ||
| In the other versions of this work, in the other director's cuts, there was a version where that director's cut never was seen. | ||
| There's a very good chance that that movie never got... | ||
| Saw the light of day because where would you show it? | ||
| In the old world, in the movie days, all you had was DVD as your option. | ||
| And if DVD said, yeah, we're good with just the normal version, then that would have been it. | ||
| And it would just die a death. | ||
| And whatever you intended for the movie would just never be seen. | ||
| And that's just how it was. | ||
| And so this... | ||
| In this scenario, I was super grateful to Netflix because I was like, you guys have done a thing that I've never been able to do in my entire career. | ||
| And that is know that this version of the movie exists and it's going to be seen. | ||
| So I'm happy to do whatever you guys think is right for the PG-13. | ||
| I'm a good soldier and I'm proud of it and I love it. | ||
| But yes, it is different from what I was... | ||
| What if the R version, is it NC-17 or R? Do they do NC-17 anymore? | ||
| I won't say the exact rating. | ||
| We're waiting to see. | ||
| We're still up against it, but we're trying to get it. | ||
| It's TVMA right now. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| No one does. | ||
| Mature audiences? | ||
| Yeah, you know, like any TV show that's not... | ||
| Because in TV, the cool thing about TV is they have TV14, and then it goes to TVMA. TVMA literally has no top on it. | ||
| I think it's almost like porn is TVMA. I don't know what... | ||
| Look, no one understands the ratings. | ||
| No one does. | ||
| It's an alchemy that is impossible to know. | ||
| It's all subjective. | ||
| It's all subjective and bizarre. | ||
| And so, you know... | ||
| And they also... | ||
| It's genre-related, right? | ||
| So, like, say, for instance, the ratings board might say something like, well... | ||
| This is a sci-fi movie, so it's too much. | ||
| If it was a horror movie, it'd be fine. | ||
| But it's a sci-fi movie, so it's not fine. | ||
| Or it's a superhero movie. | ||
| That was the whole thing with Batman vs. | ||
| Superman. | ||
| I remember the ratings board said, we just don't like the idea of Batman fighting Superman. | ||
| I was like, but how is that your opinion? | ||
| That has nothing to do with the rating. | ||
| The ratings didn't like that? | ||
| Yeah, they kept making it an R. They kept coming back with an R for us. | ||
| And we were like, what do you want us to cut out? | ||
| And they were like, well, we just don't like the idea of Batman fighting Superman. | ||
| I was like, I can't take that out. | ||
| That's the movie. | ||
| That's so ridiculous. | ||
| They would have that kind of power. | ||
| So it was crazy. | ||
| So we really had to trim it super. | ||
| Do you think that affected the final version? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, if you see the director's cut of Batman v Superman, it's much better. | ||
| It's a much better movie. | ||
| In my opinion, it's a much better movie. | ||
| Well, it's representative of what you actually wanted to create. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think that that's true of all the director's cuts that I've done, is that it's just a glimpse into the why. | ||
| You get to see better the why of the movie, the why of its origin, how it... | ||
| Because obviously something kept me awake for two years writing. | ||
| Something kept me jazzed about like, fuck yeah, I can't wait to do this. | ||
| I'm drawing. | ||
| For Rebel Moon, I drew 3,000 storyboards for that movie. | ||
| That is a lot of work. | ||
| That's a lot of work. | ||
| You've got to care. | ||
| That's five months of drawing after I've written the script. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So I've written the script for a year and a half, and then I draw the movie for another five months. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| It's fucking insane. | ||
| Oh my god, you must have been going nuts. | ||
| Must have been missing Fortnite. | ||
| Yeah, that was before Fortnite. | ||
| By the way, it's a good thing I didn't have Fortnite because I would have like... | ||
| It would have ruined everything. | ||
| The problem with writing and for me drawing is if I have one procrastination I can do, one, I'll take it. | ||
| Because if I look at that blank pad, And I look at the video game controller, I'm like, oh yeah, this is way more satisfying. | ||
| That thing wants to fuck me up. | ||
| That pad is trying to fuck me up. | ||
| The thing about the delayed satisfaction though, is that if you could force yourself to get to the pad, When you're done, you'll feel good. | ||
| And if you play the video game, you'll feel... | ||
| Last night, I started fucking around in my office. | ||
| I was just watching YouTube videos and looking at pool cues. | ||
| And then I said, all right, go to work. | ||
| And I snapped and I went to work and I worked for a couple hours. | ||
| And when it was done, when I went to bed, I felt great. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Awesome. | |
| No, I agree. | ||
| I did. | ||
| I did something. | ||
| The feeling of doing something is so much better than the feeling that you have to carry for hours of fucking off when you knew you were supposed to do something. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I couldn't agree more. | ||
| And then, by the way, in the end, I did it. | ||
| I did that work. | ||
| When we went to film the movie, And I've always drawn the storyboards for my movies. | ||
| It's a problem, but it's a thing that I do. | ||
| It's my only process. | ||
| It's funny, because when I made Sucker Punch, I remember we were talking about it, and I think it was my script supervisor. | ||
| She said, one day you're going to not need to draw these drawings, and you're not going to need to spend that time. | ||
| And it's just funny that in retrospect, it's like, obviously, I have to draw the drawings. | ||
| It's like, let... | ||
| That's my process, now I realize. | ||
| There's no way around it. | ||
| You want a cheat. | ||
| I wish I had a cheat where I didn't have to draw the drawings, where I'd be like, oh no, it's going to be fine. | ||
| I think I can make it up on the day, and it'll be good. | ||
| And I do make it up on the day, but the truth is... | ||
| That process of drawing is the process that I vet a lot of the ideas in that drawing. | ||
| It's not just drawing, it's writing as well. | ||
| I'll change the script, I'll do whatever, I'll be like, no, no, because that doesn't make sense. | ||
| When I see it physically, I'm like, no, you can't, that doesn't work. | ||
| So I have to re-construct it in the drawings a little bit sometimes. | ||
| When did you start doing that? | ||
| I started doing it... | ||
| I did it throughout... | ||
| I did it 300. Did you learn it from someone? | ||
| I'd always drawn. | ||
| Like, I draw. | ||
| And, like, you know, I'd gone to school for fine art, so I was always drawing shots. | ||
| It's also a thing, like, in film school or when you're trying to think of something, movies take so much resource, right? | ||
| You need, like... | ||
| To make a movie, you're like basically an architect and you have to convince someone to build a building, right? | ||
| And it's so much work to convince people to invest, to get all the cranes and the steel. | ||
| It's like impossible. | ||
| So drawing is like... | ||
| A little taste of it. | ||
| These are the shots I want to make. | ||
| In a weird way, it's drawing that beautiful sketch of the building. | ||
| In a lot of ways, that's what it's going to be. | ||
| You can get a feeling for it. | ||
| I think that's what it does for me. | ||
| It satisfies the impossible group activity that's going to require me to Maybe that's why I love Fountainhead. | ||
| It's that process of getting people to believe in this thing that it's going to take resources and so much crew and building and designing and all that other work that's down the road. | ||
| It's the drawing that I think is a little bit of a... | ||
| It satiates that desire a little bit for me. | ||
| It gives them a framework, too. | ||
| Oh, it's hugely beneficial in the production process. | ||
| Once they have that, everyone knows exactly what to do. | ||
| It's an incredible tool, once I have it. | ||
| Did you do it for Watchmen? | ||
| 100%. | ||
| My Watchmen books are insane. | ||
| Did you draw Dr. Manhattan's dick? | ||
| Oh, of course. | ||
| That's the question. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Here's the question. | ||
| Could you make that movie today? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Would they allow? | ||
| That's what's interesting, right? | ||
| Someone once gave me a statistic of how much time Dr. Manhattan's cock is in the movie, like just full frontally in the film. | ||
| And I think it's a fair amount. | ||
| I think it's the only studio film that holds the record for most frontal nudity, male frontal nudity of any... | ||
| And it's kind of important. | ||
| It's super important. | ||
| He doesn't give a fuck. | ||
| He doesn't give a fuck. | ||
| Obviously. | ||
| He walks around like that. | ||
| He's a god. | ||
| He's a god. | ||
| Like, what the fuck? | ||
| You can't deal with it? | ||
| I'll fucking vaporize you. | ||
| Or I don't even care what you think. | ||
| You're a cockroach. | ||
| It's like, what does he say? | ||
| He goes... | ||
| The world's smartest man is no more dangerous to me than its smartest termite. | ||
| It's such a cool thing to say. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You really realize in the face of a god, I've walked across the surface of the sun. | ||
| He was the coolest. | ||
| He's the best. | ||
| He's the coolest. | ||
| And the transformation scene is fucking amazing. | ||
| By the way, we were just talking about it the other day. | ||
| One of my favorite sequences in any movie I've made is the birth sequence of Dr. Manette. | ||
| It's Philip Glass who did the music, right? | ||
| We borrowed the music because I had heard that music and I was like, it's gotta be this music. | ||
| Tyler Bates, who's an amazing composer, I go, write me something that's better than this. | ||
| And we just couldn't do it. | ||
| So we just had to license it. | ||
| And I had to send Philip Glass the sequence. | ||
| And he watched and he said, okay, it's cool. | ||
| You can have the music. | ||
| That's so cool. | ||
| Yeah, because it's like, you know... | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's just so... | |
| Yeah, play this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Play this. | |
| It's just so rad. | ||
| I love this fucking scene. | ||
| Hear this. | ||
| That's Philip Glass, this music. | ||
| When he knows he's fucked. | ||
| We built this giant oversized watch for those shots. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| Yeah, that's that Philip Glass. | ||
| So good. | ||
| That music is crazy. | ||
| That fucking birth scene is insane. | ||
| It's so good. | ||
| It's so insane. | ||
| It's so good. | ||
| The skeleton in the hallway with the muscles screaming. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| I remember shooting that exactly as if it was yesterday. | ||
| We had this air cannon. | ||
| We had to fire at that guy with the mop. | ||
| Because when he gets hit with it, he was overacting. | ||
| I think we did three takes. | ||
| I was like, guys. | ||
| The first time he flew on the ground, I was like, okay, it's too much. | ||
| It's good fun. | ||
| Yeah, that's really cool. | ||
| It's interesting because like, you know, I think one of the things that we, after Justice League, I think one of the things that we really, as a group, as a family anyway, you know, because I lost my daughter over that. | ||
| You know, at the post side of Justice League, I lost my daughter to suicide. | ||
| And, you know, I left the movie famously, and then the movie went on, and then later we were able to, like, you know, finish the movie sort of in the way that we had always hoped. | ||
| And I think the thing is that, like, the thing that I kind of sort of come back to when I look at that and when I look at the movies is, like, you know, we... | ||
| They're these markers, you know, the movies are really these markers of time that we... | ||
| Even though they sort of transcend time, weirdly, you know, they exist beyond the time they were recorded. | ||
| You know, these weird... | ||
| Like, they're in the computer as sort of these singular, like, little... | ||
| You press it, but then it runs, and it's real, and it's time. | ||
| And it takes time to enjoy it, and time to, like... | ||
| You can't just say it. | ||
| You have to watch it and feel it again, you know? | ||
| It's like a cool... | ||
| It's a weird thing in that way. | ||
| And I think that, like, it just... | ||
| And the thing that you hope is that in the end, you know, the markers meant something to people, you know? | ||
| And I think that that's... | ||
| We've really fought around... | ||
| Because a lot of these... | ||
| Mental health has been a big thing for my wife and I, you know, since losing my daughter. | ||
| And we've always tried. | ||
| We've tried the best we can to, like... | ||
| The fans have raved over a million dollars just to support AFSP, which is the Against Suicide in America Foundation. | ||
| And we've been like just it's been cool that the movies these moments have like now in retrospect have like a purpose you know and that they have like that the fans have gotten this opportunity to kind of like you know join with us and kind of like be with us to like you know Because it's a huge stigma. | ||
| Nobody wants to talk about that they're having trouble, that they're not okay. | ||
| And I think that what we've been trying to do lately, as much as we can, is say, no, it's good. | ||
| It's okay. | ||
| It's not a sign of weakness. | ||
| It's nothing. | ||
| It's real. | ||
| It's part of being human. | ||
| It's 100% part of being human. | ||
| And I think that it was a, you know, we've all, it's an easy thing to kind of say that, you know, it's just stress or it's just like, you know, I'm good, I'm not depressed, I'm fine, you know. | ||
| And it's an easy thing to just try and muscle through. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Where, like, you know, I think that, you know, it's my hope anyway that, like, As a family, the movies and our connection to the fans and our connection to that cause has been really, really deep. | ||
| And just watching this actually just started me thinking about what the movies mean. | ||
| What is their legacy? | ||
| And if they can do... | ||
| On one hand, they are the moments you see, for me. | ||
| Dr. Manhattan, Leonidas, whatever it is. | ||
| But then on the other hand, there's this other narrative outside of the stories. | ||
| What I was experiencing and what made me think of it, what I was going through at that moment, On that day when we filmed it, what I was struggling with, what I was trying to deal with is real. | ||
| That's hard stuff. | ||
| That was just life being lumpy for us. | ||
| Just trying to make a movie, living in Canada, being away from the kids, just all that struggle. | ||
| And then it's cool when, you know, it's been cool for me that when the fandom and the movie, like in the case of Justice League, they lined up, you know, where these people were like, no, we're not gonna, we want, there's a movie out there that we want to see. | ||
| And it's around a struggle that we had as a family, and all of it sort of came together. | ||
| I always say like, you know, people are like, you know, the fandom was toxic or whatever. | ||
| They were like, they were so angry to get the cut that they were like... | ||
| I go, also, also, they literally, people's lives were saved by the money that those kids raised. | ||
| Like literal, like lives... | ||
| Real, tangible lives were saved by that money. | ||
| That those kids that you called, that you would say are these toxic fans, they're also responsible for the saving of lives. | ||
| And that's just real. | ||
| You have to acknowledge it because if you don't, like, you, in some ways, the legacy that they were able to create is, like, dismissed. | ||
| And I just, I won't. | ||
| I can't. | ||
| Well, that's just a reductionist view of things that people always like to apply to things that are controversial, especially when they're talking about your fans and saying something like they're toxic. | ||
| That's such a dismissive thing. | ||
| No, there's going to be some elements of any passionate, rabid fans that are going to be toxic because it means so much to them. | ||
| And that's what you have to understand. | ||
| The reason why they're behaving the way they're behaving, the reason why they're screaming is, first of all, they don't think they're being heard. | ||
| And second of all, it means everything to them. | ||
| These people that are like deeply invested in your films and in particular like things that have like this sort of iconic history like the Watchmen or like Batman. | ||
| I mean these are very important things to people. | ||
| It's like the same way people are fanatical about sports teams, the same way they're fanatical about, you know, music. | ||
| It's tribal, you know. | ||
| It's tribal. | ||
| It's very tribal. | ||
| So for you, When you have vision and you have these storyboards and you have all this stuff and then you see something like... | ||
| In my opinion, that birth scene is one of the great masterpieces of that genre. | ||
| It's a masterpiece. | ||
| It's like watching him be born and become Dr. Manhattan is fucking amazing. | ||
| I remember being in the movie theater watching going, oh shit! | ||
| It was the perfect feeling. | ||
| It's like what you want from these... | ||
| Fantasy, escapism, graphic novel turned films. | ||
| It was perfect. | ||
| Yeah, it's cool. | ||
| And even just like watching it and like, you know, the comment, like I never said that the Superman was real and he's American. | ||
| I said that God was real and he's American. | ||
| And if that doesn't give you like religious, like fear, then like you're not, then you're just not human. | ||
| Like you gotta like, it's okay. | ||
| It's okay to be scared. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because it's fucking scary. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, he's real. | ||
| Yeah, it's a scary thing. | ||
| It's a very scary thing. | ||
| But it's cool. | ||
| But when you have these ideas and you have all this work and then it comes together, I mean, that's got to be insanely satisfying to watching a scene like that. | ||
|
unidentified
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It is. | |
| It's a cool... | ||
| I guess for me, the process of putting it together and then when you... | ||
| When it literally lands and it's what you drew and it's what you thought and the music and everything, like, lands, it really, it is, there is a, like, I mean, I'm sure it's like anything, it's probably like the same thing, like, doing stand-up or whatever, like, when you... | ||
| When you're in the groove with it, and it's just happening, you're kind of surfing it, and you're like, God, this is the feeling right here. | ||
| You can't acknowledge it in the moment, but you can feel it. | ||
| It can push you. | ||
| It's like a wave, and you can feel it. | ||
| That's how it is. | ||
| For me, it's such a long process. | ||
| It's not instant gratification. | ||
| It's like you really have to have a head-down mentality to get it to that position. | ||
| You know, but I do, when I watch it that first time, and it comes back, and I'm like, yeah, that's like fucking, that's what we, that's the why of it right there, you know? | ||
| And I think that that keeps me going, frankly, you know, that little high is really, it's really fun. | ||
| Well, that's the goal, right? | ||
| The goal is to create that high. | ||
| And that high, people leave a film like that, that's like, there's, you'll do things that you wouldn't have ordinarily do, right? | ||
| Maybe you'll be inspired. | ||
| Maybe you'll start working on something. | ||
| I think that's the beauty of creation in a lot of ways. | ||
| It's not just escapism, but it's like a drug. | ||
| It gives you this... | ||
| A boost of excitement that often leads to inspiration and inspires you to action. | ||
|
unidentified
|
100%. | |
| 100%. | ||
| I feel like if you can do that, then your movie's a huge success. | ||
| If one guy comes up to me... | ||
| The thing about Man of Steel that I've always felt like is that Man of Steel is the movie that... | ||
| The people will come up to me and say, that movie changed my life. | ||
| I thought it was about me. | ||
| I'm an immigrant. | ||
| I just saw myself in Superman. | ||
| I was struggling at the time, and when I saw it, I'd just be like, man, that's so cool. | ||
| I'm so... | ||
| I'm grateful that you felt that way about the movie. | ||
| Because I don't... | ||
| For me, it's like I send it off into the world. | ||
| You think about Netflix, for instance, where you push a button and Rebel Moon... | ||
| The zeitgeist is crazy because like Rebel Moon, so say right now, there's like, it's like almost 90 million views, right? | ||
| 80, 90 million people, 90 million starts, so, or 90 million accounts said, turned it on, okay? | ||
| Give or take. | ||
| They assume two viewers per screening, right? | ||
| That's the kind of math. | ||
| So you think if that movie was in the theater as a distribution model, so that's $160 million. | ||
| Or people supposedly watching, based on that math. | ||
| So 160 million people at $10 a ticket would be, what is that math? | ||
| I don't know, 160 million times 10. That's $1.6 billion. | ||
| So you look at the view numbers, you can use that rough... | ||
| So more people probably saw Rebel Moon than saw Barbie in the theater. | ||
| That's how crazy Netflix... | ||
| That's the distribution model that they've set up. | ||
| I was at this thing the other day, and we were talking about Rebel Moon 2. And they were like, well, talk about Rebel Moon 1. I'm like, no. | ||
| Go fucking watch it. | ||
| I know you have it at your house. | ||
| It's not like a theater situation. | ||
| You could turn it on your phone right now and watch it right here if you wanted. | ||
| That's how crazy it is. | ||
| This model, this machine they built is really something else. | ||
| It's really crazy if you think about it. | ||
| Just like we were saying about the Formula One, they're able to insert something into popular culture that's so... | ||
| Like a deep cut, like a documentary about Formula One. | ||
| How else do you get that to the people? | ||
| Right. | ||
| No way. | ||
| You release that in a theater, five people go. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Literally five people go. | ||
| Yeah, but you put it on TV. And like a hundred million people see it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| It's strange. | ||
| It's interesting because it shows that there was an audience there. | ||
| It's just like to get someone to go out of their house and buy a ticket. | ||
| That's just too much of a tough sell. | ||
| It's a different model. | ||
| It's a different model. | ||
| And it's weird how they think about it. | ||
| When you think about it in those terms, that you give the audience an alternative. | ||
| Like you give them a chance to like go on this, you know, like Rebel Moon's like, okay, that's new IP, right? | ||
| No one knows what the fuck that is. | ||
| What's a Rebel Moon? | ||
| Some space thing? | ||
| I guess. | ||
| Like, okay. | ||
| Well, let's watch it. | ||
| You know, it's that, the barrier for entry is so low that it allows, I think, what's cool is it allows a lot more original and weirdo stuff to exist because, you know, especially like you think about the director's cut of Rebel Moon, which will be, if it was in theaters... | ||
| A very boutique-y concept, right? | ||
| Very singular. | ||
| It's like the animated version of heavy metal. | ||
| The movie, I'm a huge fan, but not a lot of people have seen it. | ||
| Where I feel like this is a chance where when this movie is released, the amount of people that can lay eyes on it is crazy compared to what it would be if I was releasing it theatrically or whatever. | ||
| It's a three-hour movie. | ||
| Both of them are three hours. | ||
| So it's much different. | ||
| Both the PG-13s are two hours. | ||
| That was one of the things that we talked about also. | ||
| I want the movie short, PG. That's kind of the prerequisite. | ||
| Where I'm like, on the R-rated version, it's like, there's no rules. | ||
| There's no expectations, no rules, no nothing. | ||
| That experience is a completely different experience. | ||
| And when does that one come out? | ||
| It comes at the end of summer. | ||
| The end of summer. | ||
| End of August? | ||
| I want enough time. | ||
| Yeah, probably right in there. | ||
| We don't have an exact date, but somewhere. | ||
| I wanted enough time so that... | ||
| I don't want them to be too attached to the PG version. | ||
| By the way, like I said, I'm proud of the PG version. | ||
| I think it's fun. | ||
| I think when you see Rebel Moon 2 on April 19th, you will see a war movie. | ||
| It's a fucking war movie is what it is. | ||
| The first thing is gather the team. | ||
| The second movie's a war movie. | ||
| The R-rated version is just a different journey. | ||
| Like, you just get there in a different way. | ||
| And it's just more, like I said, it's just more weird. | ||
| It's more boutique-y and more bizarre. | ||
| And more like the original. | ||
| More like heavy metal. | ||
| Yeah, more like a genre. | ||
| You can't really pitch a studio a live action heavy metal movie right now. | ||
| I don't know how to do that. | ||
| I don't know how you'd make that. | ||
| Unless you are willing to do some sort of song and dance. | ||
| which I think that as a product, like I said, I'm proud of it, and I think it works for what they've generated. | ||
| Because basically for the same price as two movies, right, they get four movies, which is pretty crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because the director's cuts, for the hour, additional hour, and extra stuff that we did inside of each of those movies, each of the movies is an hour longer. | ||
| What we did inside those movies with tone and with gore and sex and all that stuff, within the same framework, you're getting two entirely different movies. | ||
| It's not, like, extended version. | ||
| You know, like, that I'd be like, okay, whatever. | ||
| You know, like, oh, you did an extra, like, weird little... | ||
| Here's the thing you cut out that you thought was too long. | ||
| It's not like that at all. | ||
| Like, you know, it's just a lot more... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's just... | ||
| True to the vision. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's got balls. | ||
| It's got a lot of balls. | ||
| And is that... | ||
| I mean, there's got to be this thing where you're waiting. | ||
| Like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. | ||
| I want you to see the real thing. | ||
| I don't think... | ||
| You know, it's a weird thing because I don't think... | ||
| I mean, look, it's a... | ||
| It's up to the viewers, you know, in a lot of ways. | ||
| I don't want to, like... | ||
| By no means am I saying that you can't watch both. | ||
| For sure you can. | ||
| It's really how you do it. | ||
| I feel like if you've seen PG-13 Rebel Moon Part 1, you should see PG-13 Part 2 because they're really closely related. | ||
| I mean, they're like... | ||
| It's a direct... | ||
| You know, like you... | ||
| It could be one movie. | ||
| You could cut them together, literally, and just keep going. | ||
| Where it's chapter two, it's part two. | ||
| Where I feel like in the R-rated experience, it's just like a different... | ||
| They're both going to release on the same day. | ||
| So you can just fucking binge it. | ||
| That's the way to do it, too, with Netflix. | ||
| One of the things I love about Netflix is when I don't find out about something until two or three seasons in, I'm like, yes! | ||
| Yes, 100%. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| 17 episodes. | ||
| It's the same muscle that made me play Fortnite for six months. | ||
| If you have the time and a good series is bingeable, God, it's so satisfying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's the best. | |
| It's so satisfying. | ||
| I think we can do another. | ||
| That's what I always say to my wife. | ||
| I'm like, how do you feel? | ||
| And she's like, I feel good. | ||
| Are you sleepy? | ||
| No. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| Have you ever thought about doing a Netflix series, something that's so big that you couldn't do in one or two films? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| We've talked about it a lot. | ||
| I mean, nobody wants Fountainhead, but that's what I wanted to do. | ||
| I pitched him Fountainhead because I've written this super adaptation of that book, and I just think it's... | ||
| I think it would be amazing, but no one wants to make it because they think it's taboo. | ||
| Ayn Rand is taboo. | ||
| Why is she taboo? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| She's taboo among the intelligentsia because they think she's a fascist and they think the book's a piece of fascist propaganda. | ||
| That's not why I like the book. | ||
| I happen to just like it because, to me, it's a direct comment on making a movie. | ||
| A movie about an architect who won't make the buildings that everyone wants him to make and what the struggle he goes through to get the buildings made the way he wants to make them. | ||
| Of course I like that. | ||
| No movie director... | ||
| I'm sure there's plenty of movie directors that don't like Fountainhead, but I just think that it says so much. | ||
| Ayn Rand wrote Fountainhead in direct response to being noted on a script that she had written. | ||
| And she had been studying this movie about skyscrapers and they told her she kept submitting versions of the script and they kept noting her and noting her. | ||
| Until it was unrecognizable, and then she was like, this is what happens to work. | ||
| It gets noted until it disintegrates, until it disappears. | ||
| So that's one thing that I've always wanted to do, but I don't know that the world will allow that. | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
| It's one of those weird things where Ayn Rand is connected to incels or angry white guys or finance people that are cruel. | ||
| It's this very strange... | ||
| Steve Jobs' favorite book, by the way. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| That is interesting. | ||
| But it's one of those things where it's like, if you hear that, like, I'm an Ayn Rand fan, you're like, oh, okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're one of those guys. | ||
| One of those guys, yeah. | ||
| Are you into Bitcoin too, buddy? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| You know? | ||
| It's true. | ||
| Right? | ||
| But it's funny because, look, and I get, by the way, Alice Shrugged. | ||
| Fair. | ||
| You know, you can play with that. | ||
| That's a game that I, I mean, I'm pretty exclusively a Fountainhead fanatic. | ||
| And for that, also because it's melodrama too. | ||
| Like, it's the most melodramatic thing ever. | ||
| I mean, as far as just like... | ||
| Why won't Netflix let you do that? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I feel like they should. | ||
| I just, I feel like, I think it would have a huge, again, like I said, I know it would work. | ||
| I know it would work. | ||
| I know it would work too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Why don't, fuck, come on, Netflix. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| Let's Well, I'm a fan of letting artists like yourself do what is their vision, you know? | ||
| And I think people are often wrong about whether or not something is going to be successful commercially or whether or not it's going to resonate with a lot of other people. | ||
| But that's the thing that no one knows. | ||
| Like, that's the awesome thing about movies is like, and why, you know, I'm not that worried about the AI influence over motion picture because there's obviously no formula. | ||
| No one can predict what's going to be successful or they would have gotten rid of the directors and writers a long time ago. | ||
| You know, like, it's still, there's alchemy, there's still magic. | ||
| There's still, like, an impossible, like, you know, all these elements come together and you're like, you feel something. | ||
| And you're like, what, that was cool. | ||
| Fuck, you know, and it's a thing, like, who knows, you know? | ||
| It's like, you know, anything, you know, that you see that maybe if someone described it to you, In an abstract, you'd be like, that sounds dumb. | ||
| Like, I know. | ||
| And then you sit and you watch it and you experience it moment by moment and you feel it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's fucking cool. | ||
| Well, it's also, I think there's always going to be a thing that people resonate with where they know it's made by a person. | ||
| They know that an artist's thoughts were involved in the creation of this thing. | ||
| This is the vision. | ||
| They worked tirelessly to produce this and they put it out and they're proud of it. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| And there's something about that, that you're getting to take in another human beings, a group of human beings, creation. | ||
| And that means something to us. | ||
| And I think it's always going to mean something to us. | ||
| I think there's going to be AI songs and AI movies and AI art, and it's going to be cool. | ||
| But it's not going to be as cool, because it's not going to be from a human. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Or from human beings. | ||
| And I do feel like the fingerprints, the squishy fingerprints on the thing are the thing that make it unbelievably cool. | ||
| Chisel marks on the statue. | ||
| Yeah, I want the chisel marks. | ||
| I love them. | ||
| I live for them. | ||
| To me, that's the bit. | ||
| The best movies, my favorite movies, the best movies are where you can feel the hand of the filmmaker. | ||
| I want that. | ||
| I do not want the movie made by committee. | ||
| When you go to a movie that feels like it was made in the boardroom, I feel dirty when I watch that. | ||
| I don't like it. | ||
| I don't want the cold hand of marketing on me like that. | ||
| That's why I love the weirdness. | ||
| I feel like, in the end, all my movies are just a little bit weird in a good way. | ||
| 300, for whatever it's... | ||
| All the coolness of it as far as like, yeah, let's go fight. | ||
| It's still a weirdo movie. | ||
| Did you ever think of putting a bunch of gay stuff in there? | ||
| You know, it's Frank's book. | ||
| I made what Frank wrote. | ||
| Now, in retrospect, we've been talking about doing a series where I really wanted to introduce those concepts a lot more because I just feel like it's important if we go forward and do more in the 300 universe, I would want to bring that part in and let people... | ||
| Which I think just shakes it up again. | ||
| Like, you're like, what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that would be interesting. | |
| Yeah, right when you thought you knew, like, how to feel. | ||
| Like, I'm going to make you feel like another way. | ||
| People have always said, like, you know, 300, you know, people have accused me of being, like, homophobic or whatever. | ||
|
unidentified
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Why? | |
| And I'm like, I don't know. | ||
| Somehow they feel like that. | ||
| Because the Spartans weren't doing gay stuff? | ||
| Yeah, or because they, you know, there's that one line where he says, you know, philosophers and boy lovers. | ||
| But, like, I think that he's clearly being cheeky, Leonidas, because I, of course, was hyper aware at the time that the reality of Spartan culture was... | ||
| He means philosophies and boy lovers, not... | ||
| He's using that maybe as a derogatory comment, but when in reality, he's a lover of men, probably, you know? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And so, like, I just think that, like, and we talked about, like, as we go forward, I would love to, like, just kind of stress... | ||
| I said, look, 300, in some ways, is one of the gayest movies ever made. | ||
| It is incredibly male-centric, male-obsessed. | ||
| You know, like, you really feel, like, very strong male energy from the movie, even though there's a strong, you know, Gorgo's an incredibly strong female character, and we wrote her and made her. | ||
| Like, he doesn't decide to kick the person messenger into the well without getting approval from Gorgo, because, you know, he's like, I'm going to burn it down. | ||
| Is that cool? | ||
| And she's like, go do it, you know, and he's like, all right, here we go. | ||
| And you know, this is Sparta's that guy, and that's like, that was, and I just think, but I just think that like, you know, And maybe that was just me understanding, doing the research and understanding the reality of Spartan culture that I really, that energy was in there because I just felt like it was important, you know, to make sure that it was, you know, that there was this kind of visceral sexuality to the way the men actually interacted, you know, that was there. | ||
| I mean, regardless of whether you acknowledge it, it's there, you know. | ||
| That would be, but... | ||
| But it wasn't acknowledged really in the film. | ||
| Like, if anybody didn't know the history of the Spartans, they wouldn't know... | ||
| No, no. | ||
| But I just feel... | ||
| I just mean from sort of an iconic standpoint as far as like the... | ||
| There's just sort of indulgence in the male form, you know, is very... | ||
| It's not casual. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It would be fascinating to see if you did do a series and you had them behave the way Spartans actually did, the reaction... | ||
| Yeah, it'd be interesting. | ||
| I think that hopefully we'll find out one day. | ||
| That'd be fun. | ||
| Yeah, that would be fun. | ||
| Yeah, it's just, I mean, like, look, in the end, it's a weirdo show, you know? | ||
| Like, it's fun to enjoy it. | ||
| It's fun to fuck with it, you know? | ||
| Like, that's what we do. | ||
| You gotta tear it apart a little bit to, like, take a look at it. | ||
| You gotta know, you know? | ||
| When you choose things to do today, how do you go about doing it? | ||
| Do you just sit with an idea and bring it to studios? | ||
| Do they come to you? | ||
| How do you choose what you... | ||
| I don't develop. | ||
| I kind of have a bunch of... | ||
| I've always had a bunch of stuff that I work on, and I just go, I want to do this, and then whoever wants to do it, then we do it. | ||
| That's a nice position. | ||
| It is. | ||
| It's an awesome position, and I appreciate it, and I don't take it for granted. | ||
| There's a few things. | ||
| I've always been obsessed with Richard Bach. | ||
| I don't know if you know. | ||
| He has this book called Illusions that I've owned for a long time and I've always wanted to do. | ||
| I grew up as a Christian scientist. | ||
| Isn't that a book about channeling? | ||
| Well, Illusions is a book about this guy flying his biplane around in the 1970s, and he lands in a pasture, because in the 70s, he would fly his biplane around, land in a pasture, and then sell rides for $3. | ||
| Like, for 10 minutes. | ||
| And that's how he lived, right? | ||
| He's just a gypsy pilot flying around the Midwest. | ||
| And he happens to come across this guy, who also is flying a biplane, who happens to be like a messiah. | ||
| Who happens to be like this super spiritually advanced dude who's on the run from... | ||
| He doesn't want to be the messiah. | ||
| He's like... | ||
| It's called Illusions, the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. | ||
| And it's about the two of them spending a summer together, just the one guy teaching him about, like... | ||
| It's a shit job, being the Messiah. | ||
| Like, don't do it. | ||
| Because you know what happens, the Messiah's in the end. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He goes, do you always have to die a violent death? | ||
| And he goes, yeah, I don't think always. | ||
| And he's like, really? | ||
| He goes, yeah, you know what, it's cool for like... | ||
| He goes, what about just a quiet little ascension, you know, just on the side? | ||
| And he's like, yeah, I don't think the universe will let that happen. | ||
| So it's a cool... | ||
| So it's this really cool... | ||
| Again, it's like this sort of, it's again like a spiritual deconstructivist messiah story. | ||
| It was like this book when I was growing up. | ||
| In a lot of ways, its religious philosophy is similar to Christian science. | ||
| So I superimposed my religious beliefs onto this book, and I felt like it kind of spoke to my doubts and my questions about my religious upbringing and what I thought for real. | ||
| So my brother passed away when I was 13. He got in a car accident, and he was this incredibly spiritual dude. | ||
| Anyone who knew my brother was like, that guy was the guy. | ||
| He was the man. | ||
| Sam Snyder was among his peer group. | ||
| In retrospect, he was into Tai Chi. | ||
| Just a super cool 70s dude. | ||
| He kind of looked like Billy Crudup. | ||
| Billy Crudup from Almost Famous. | ||
| Imagine that guy. | ||
| But just like... | ||
| The coolest guy, you know, smoking dope, just being cool as hell. | ||
| So when he passed away, I always thought, like, okay, my brother just, like, tired of this world and went looking for another one, you know? | ||
| Like, he was just, like, on a spiritual journey. | ||
| But then, like, when you see... | ||
| When you're 13 and you see, like, what that... | ||
| Event, though, does to your family, your mother and father, you know, your sister, all of their friends, like, the devastation that they feel. | ||
| And these are people that I believed, believed in the religion that I believed in. | ||
| And the pain, like, it made me really go, like, what the fuck? | ||
| Like, what's real? | ||
| Like, what are we supposed to believe? | ||
| You know, it really tested me. | ||
| And I think that Illusions, that book, in retrospect, and I won't spoiler alert, I won't tell you what happens on the last page of the book, but it kind of speaks to where I was. | ||
| And I think, so it's always resonated with me. | ||
| And I'm friends with Richard Bach. | ||
| I became friends with him. | ||
| And his wife is constantly texting me, like, when are we making Illusions? | ||
| And I was like, soon, soon. | ||
| She's like, I found the planes! | ||
| You know, so it's cool. | ||
| Like, we have the planes. | ||
| We can make it any time. | ||
| That's how we develop. | ||
| It's all these things that I have that are kind of close to me that I'm always constantly saying, what about that? | ||
| Maybe it's time. | ||
| That's awesome, dude. | ||
| Well, listen, it's been great to talk to you. | ||
| I really appreciate what you've done. | ||
| I love how excited you are about filmmaking. | ||
|
unidentified
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Cheers. | |
| You've done some awesome shit, man. | ||
| You should be proud. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Look, man, I'm a fan of the show. | ||
| And, you know, it's an honor to come on and talk to you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It's an honor to have you. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| Bye, everybody. |
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